Wartime

ALL UNDER HEAVENS

Stars will move a different way.

We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.—William Stafford

Faith in healing wells and a promising turn isn’t just a poet’s fancy. Historical experience, too, provides some comfort. During and immediately after every major catastrophe, people predict the world will never be the same again. Yet, time is witness to the sameness of the world. It is true that periodically there are some changes in lifestyle—a new fashion or passion and some technological advances to make life more comfortable. But otherwise, the world spins back to the same loop as before, and the predictions of big change lie buried with the remains of the catastrophe. Occasionally, as a new tragedy begins to unfold, those with long memories recall for the world the horror it had experienced before and its vow not to let it happen again. Yet, it happens again because it is fated that humans will not learn from their mistakes. Even as the world retreads its familiar path, there are bound to be some changes. This is the way of the world. Some of this mix of repetitive mistakes, the decline and the change is already being seen at the individual, national and even global level.

The old order that held the post-World War world together is slowly withering away. A new order will get defined, and illiberal forces are already raring to fashion it in their manner. This possibility of the rise of illiberalism should be of worry because, unlike democracy with its many demands, populists make just one. They insist that people be loyal, and in their dictionary, loyalty means surrender to the nationalist vision. The distinction between fact and fiction, and the distance between true and false must cease to exist for people. What State dictates must be the only truth. In trying times like the one the world is going through now, the promise of a firm hand at the helm appeals to people. This is also the case at the international level. There, too, power is expansionist. Therefore, international order will remain as hierarchical as it was in 1945. The central issue of global politics will be who wields how much power.This invariably translates to a periodic churn in the affairs of the world. It is equally certain that it leads to selection, even pruning, among countries. The fit and the strong thrive, the weak and the meek miss the bus. Some get pushed up the global ladder in this new arrangement, others find themselves reduced. To paraphrase V.S. Naipaul, the world being what it is, countries that are insignificant, which do not pull their weight, have no place in the making of global affairs.Contrarily, there are wayward countries like North Korea that punch well above their weight; they somehow manage to make a place for themselves in the world. In direct contrast, there are countries like Bhutan that seek the world within; they would rather chase Gross National Happiness. But Bhutan is an exception.

For most other countries, it is not practical to be an island content within their boundaries; they must reach out to carve their place in the world. Each of these is valid as a proposition. But in the trauma of the present, the shock of Covid-19 has made people wonder whether the world is entering an entirely new age, where the rules of governance, people’s behaviour and their place in the world will be determined by an altogether different standard. A standard that is even more severe and constricting than the one George Orwell imagined in Ninteen Eighty-Four, where ‘the eyes follow you about when you move, where the big brother watches you’.This flight of Orwell’s imagination has, ever since, terrified the succeeding generations with the possibility that one day it may actually happen. But people were content with the thought that it wouldn’t happen during their lifetime. That comfort is no longer available.The ‘eyes’ that Orwell anticipated have arrived.It is now taken as a given that Big Government is watching people as never before. So far, surveillance was associated with foreign powers and their prying agencies. The big difference, as we enter an overwhelmingly intrusive age, is that the surveillance now is of our own making, by our own people, and already upon us. It is all-embracing. The State, for instance, might want to know how many of us are watching the authoritarian leader when he decides to address the nation via TV. How normally, or abnormally, our pulse beats when we are watching the leader speak? How many showed disrespect to the leader by not switching on the TV to watch him? The art and science of watching people assumes a frighteningly new dimension, leaving the totalitarianism of a Hitler, Stalin or Ceaușescu far behind.It is no longer a question of if and when this will happen. This intrusive age is already upon us. In this new age, is there still a place for democracy that many in the world had taken for granted? Is there scope for free movement of people and goods at a time when nationalism is busy putting up protective and protectionist walls?

A Place in the WorldThese questions will be debated by the world in the months and years ahead. Let us, for now, reflect on the proposition that in the hierarchical reshuffle after Covid-19, countries will squiggle to find their new place in the world. The fundamental point that we must start from is: when did this quest for a place in the world begin? Is it a new pursuit—a modern-day chase in a connected world?It is true that people are more aware now of the inter se ranking of countries, and there are periodic surveys to rank countries on any and everything. While people may have become more conscious than ever before of a country’s latest status, the desire to conquer the world or be its best part has existed from the earliest times. The king and the philosopher, each for his own reason, adopted a Universalist view. If one goes by the ancient Indian scripture Maha Upanishad, India has had the world in its view from the earliest times. ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (The world is a family) may have been an ambitious coinage in those unconnected times. Or it may just have been the aspirational wish of a liberal society, reflecting the then upwardly mobile country’s attitude towards the world. Whatever it was, the emphasis certainly was on reaching out.As mobility increased, this concept got translated into practice. People started seeking new lands for trade, employment, out of curiosity or in a population shift due to disease or war at home.There were other reasons as well for migration. The curiosity about the other took the significant shape of a Silk Route about two millennia ago. Its trade reach was phenomenal, and the route it followed led through high mountains, deserts and swamps, over thousands of miles. It wasn’t just lucre that drove men to take the risk of this long journey, they were also fired by the spirit of adventure and a desire to discover the wider world.The military variation of this broad theme triggered Alexander’s desire to conquer the world. He almost succeeded in this mission by creating one of the largest empires of the ancient world that stretched from Greece to northwestern India. After him, the early Roman Caesars were not as ambitious; still their empire covered a broad swath of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. A thousand years later, in the early thirteenth century, rapacious Genghis Khan, the founder of the Mongol Empire, ruled almost all of Eurasia. While these early conquerors may have been driven by ego and ambition, the British Empire, between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, combined its lust for trade with a desire for empire-building. At its peak, this empire covered more than 20 per cent of the world’s surface, giving validity to the claim that ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’. Later, in the second half of the twentieth century, the US could have claimed that its influence covered much of the world. But its’ was an influence with a difference. Unlike the previous overlords of history, America’s was not a conquest of territory but a control over the policy mechanism of other countries.However, conquest alone did not drive men to leave their homes. Wanderlust and curiosity set them off too. In the late fifteenth century, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India (the real India) by sea. Around the same time, his rival, the Genovese explorer Christopher Columbus, also set sail for India but ended up discovering America.It wasn’t just the men of action and explorers who were restless, writers and philosophers, too, were driven by the spirit that the world could be their oyster.

From Homer’s Odyssey to Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, the thinker’s mind has floated free. This desire to embrace the world was idea-driven and idealistic. Alas, all this was possible in a different age. Today’s world is one of multiple restrictions; of Covid-19-imposed isolation; of economic decline; of obsessive surveillance; and of mistrust at the individual, societal, national and international level. The age of innocence is behind us. The world seems to be entering a frightful new period of conflict, even multiple wars, with China as the raging bull. Xi often terms this era as one of ‘changes unseen in a 100 y e a r s .’1 By this, he seems to convey that the US, the world’s top superpower, is in decline and it is China’s moment to rise. This bold assertion is worrying because Xi is sometimes called a ‘mafia boss’. Within China, he is also derided as the ‘accelerator in chief ’, meaning that his aggressive approach is leading to domestic and international conflict.It is not China alone that wishes to order the world in its fashion. Others, too, are furrowing for a larger place in this new world. Therefore, in the coming times of frequent contention between states and multiple wars, the enquiring mind will wonder whether Russia will continue to menacingly lurk in the shadows, fixing an election here, nibbling a bit of some neighbour’s territory there and manipulating regimes elsewhere. Will Pakistan still terrorize all except China? Israel, too, is restless; it worries incessantly about Iran going nuclear. A war between the two is just one impulsive trigger away. And, what about America? Will it still have the energy to police the world?