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CIAO DATE: 04/01
International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
The 21st Century: Prophecies Galore
Aleksei Utkin *
Today, stability is retreating under the pressure of unending changes. We have entered a century of hectic exchange of opinions and concepts, uncompromising criticism and undiscriminating apology. To know what is in store for us we have to sift out obvious propaganda and meaningless information.
One thing about the future is certain: rivals will move up quickly to punish conceit and biding one's time. Complete isolation will amount to suicide, survival will depend on prompt analysis and energetic quest for new, more efficient means of problem settlement and prevention of deadly conflicts, saving of resources, flourishing and continued existence of mankind.
Prophecies Galore
Intellectually and emotionally all prophets are either optimists or realists or pessimists.
The optimists are convinced that the problems the future has in store for us can be resolved through the experience the Earth inhabitants have accumulated in the course of history that common sense and worldwide evolution benevolent to it will help overcome all barriers no matter how high. Their faith is based on the long list of problems resolved, on reason as people's life-belt, on the precious principles of science and the faith that human nature can bridle passion. Indeed, mankind that has survived two world wars will surely find adequate answers to any future challenge. Driven by the "CNN effect," supersonic aviation and the Internet the nations will draw closer together. Like organizations before them people are growing more and more similar–they wear similar clothes and use one common language. Their culture, food, manners, likings and dislikings, entertainment, labor, mental and psychic codes are strikingly similar too. They share values and this drives them even closer until the entire planet becomes a huge common village.
There will be no dividing line between "us" and "them" and no mutual misunderstanding that is plaguing world history. Science will move forward to save mankind through genetic engineering, cloning, robotics and information sciences. They will change the world beyond recognition, bring progress within the reach of all thus making survival for all a reality. Worldwide access to information will diminish the role of the state and some of its bodies (central banks and secret services).
In the face of the treat of terrorism, and nuclear terrorism, the nations will hand their sovereign rights to international organizations that will establish strict rule and order worldwide. Transnational civic society will result from it. Global businesses will shoulder some of the functions of governments. There will be no left and right in domestic politics since there will be no longer class distinctions and class consciousness that are feeding the present division. The dividing line will run between those ready to accept changes and to think in global terms and those whom tradition, prejudice, inertia and fear of changes weight down.
The futurologists of this school are enthusiastic about globalization and its unquestionable boons for mankind. They are swept away by the spectacular advances of communication technologies that are carrying money, ideas, cultures and pop images across transparent borders and believe that modernization is not far away. Today, mankind has enough production facilities to produce 70 m cars a year–the market trimming the figure to 50 m. Globalization apologists insist that world politics will adjust to worldwide economy.
The nations are invited to abandon their old state frontiers and grant the right to self-determination to all who claim it. American researcher R. Wright insists that the transitional period will go on until "American and European politicians realize that the surest way towards stable peace lies through creating new, small and homogeneous nations." 1
The realists do not believe that the golden age is round the corner; day dreaming about it will do mankind no good, they say. They are convinced that throughout thousands of years of their history people have not developed immunity against evil and violence that know no limits. A deeper analysis of possible developments casts doubts on simplified and mechanistic solutions. A pessimistic approach is as justified as an optimistic one: human reason is equally able of destruction.
Even the most successful people of the twentieth century, of whom George Soros, financier and philanthropist is one, believe that the market mechanisms do not meet the human community's basic interests and are, therefore, heading into a crisis. Soros is lamenting an excessive faith in "natural progress" and the "magic of the market." Henry Kissinger, who made a no less spectacular career in diplomacy, is concerned over the future predominance of interests over principles in state policies.
Can we say that the world market, which has elbowed nearly a half of Earth’s population out of the world economic cooperation, is benevolent to all? One is struck by the harsh assessments offered by the 1999 UN report on the world's economic situation. It seems that against the background of a possible economic catastrophe the "market fundamentalism" of sorts based on the "Washington consensus" of the U.S. Treasury, IMF and the World Bank that has taken shape in the Anglo-Saxon world is threatening the future. It aims at lowering all barriers in world trade. According to President of Brazil F. Cardoso, "the market is important for production and efficiency yet it is unable to solve all problems. The market can easily fell prey to all sorts of manias, panic and crises. It cannot offer solutions to problems related to fundamental moral values, for example, the idea that all people are born equal." 2
Anybody who wants to predict future should take into account the fact that the poorest 20 percent of the world population account for the meager 1 percent of the world's GDP and that the ratio between the richest and poorest one-fifth of the Earth population climbed up to 1: 75. An honest observer will refuse to be dazzled by high technologies and unlimited information exchange. The critical level of worldwide inequality will inevitably lead to a widespread desire to change the situation, which is fraught with global catastrophes.
The constantly progressing chaos in the community of sovereign states may breed more catastrophes. M. Van Creveld, professor of history has written: "From Indonesia to Scotland, from the former Soviet Union to South Africa political splitting, decentralization and even disintegration of states is the most typical process today. Nearly every month a new state appears on the map of the world. Political transformations occur outside the will of the states: every time the user buys a TV dish or switches on to the Internet the nature of politics changes... Splitting damages the state structures and it blows up the importance of multinational corporations, ngos and mass communications. This pushes us back to the Middle Ages. Mass migrations like those that took place in the Middle Ages are in store for us." 3
Academic science is not alone: the interests of the world are not identical to the interests of the absolute minority–the most flourishing part of mankind. Some members of the Western business community identify the current developments not with modernization but rather with being sucked up into the spheres of U.S. influence.
One regrets to say that the phenomenal might of the United States has not been translated into positive hegemonic leadership. Even those people in the West who have pinned their hopes on "enlightened leadership" are loosing confidence: "The United States proved to be overtaken with their own success, they fail to discern the need to subjugate their interests to certain abstract general principles. The United States are zealously guarding their sovereignty and are behaving as the only arbiter vested with the right to separate the right from the wrong. To be able to lead the open society Washington should experience an internal change." 4 There are no signs of it. So far the U.S. are still able to interfere in future Kosovo or Somalia yet they are in no hurry to introduce profound changes thus alienating the UN.
The critically minded futurologists point out that personalities have become pettier. Francis Fukuyama, for example, does not believe that people of Blair, Jospain and Miadzava type can create a great future and points out that politicians of Roosevelt, Stalin or Churchill type are nowhere to be seen.
The pessimists insist that the hazardous global processes, ecological catastrophes included, are calling for special attention. The eight-billion-strong population of the Earth (the minimum that will be reached by 2050) will not survive if the poorest and modernizing countries reach the consumption level of the United States. Today, the area and the volumes of land and water used by 1 American are equal to 10 hectares; for the poorest countries the figure is 1 hectare.
The forecasts in politics are equally gloomy: the next decades will make the nineties of the twentieth century the period of relative calm despite the tragedies of Yugoslavia, Ruanda and Tajikistan.
There is no stability in store for us since the United Nations Organization, the only worldwide structure, is losing its viability, prestige and influence. Inevitably, the attempts to turn the military organization of the rich North Atlantic nations into a world policeman will meet with stiff resistance of the excluded countries. The past has taught us that an alternative is never far off.
Our future is already crippled by the only superpower's frantic drive to set up control of its population (approximately 5 percent of the world's total) over a third of world resources and riches. Probably there will be no armed confrontation–the less lucky nations and those treated unfairly by history will close ranks. In the past, too, the leader has been always confronted with more or less concerted efforts of the rest of the world. This is the logic of history and the country that announced that "all people are born free" will find it hard to move against the stream. All type of national antimissile defense and similar projects will be seen as attempts to realize the country's special status and as mistreatment of the rest of the world.
The European Union and China are seen as the most probable candidates able to transform the unipolar world into a more ramified structure. EU has nearly reached a trade and financial parity, it can move forward in geopolitics. Having accepted Finland it acquired a thousand-kilometer-long frontier with Russia. With Cyprus as another new member it will get access to the Middle East and a say in its problems while Turkey's membership will move it to the Iranian and Iraqi doorstep. Ch. Bertram who for many years served director of the London International Institute for Strategic Research has written that European strategy will differ from American and that "American unipolarity is imbibed with conceit and this will kill it." 5
Chinese believe that by 2050 their country "will become a medium-sized power, at the very least" that later it will tap its global potential to the full. What the Chinese will do in their corner of the world will depend on their relationships with the United States, in the first place, on Japanese policies and on their partnership with Russia.
Very soon world history will have to answer three questions: will the center of world ideological creativity shift southeast to follow the production forces? Will self-contained political self-assertion appear on the new industrial basis? Will the world move back to the traditional cultural and religious principles?
Main Scenarios
Western futurologists do not predict "end of the world" in the nearest 30 to 50 years yet all agree that the Earth will live through large-scale conflicts or even world wars.
Some of the predictions proceed from prerequisites plausible enough to cause concern. Indeed, in the world there are several spots of contradictions that may erupt into a worldwide blast: the forces involved are considerable while the location is of key importance for mankind's activities.
The following Western forecasts are of especial interest.
Proliferation of Nuclear-Missile Weapons
If any of the rogue countries chose to toughen its positions the US Administration may use this as a pretext to ignore Russia's objections and go ahead with its NMD project. The Russian government will reciprocate with announcing itself free from the START-2 treaty that will undermine both legal and practical reasons to resume the non-proliferation treaty. Its extension for an indefinite period in 1995 and 2000 was conditioned by further progress of nuclear weapons and ratification of the treaty on comprehensive nuclear test ban.
We cannot exclude a possibility that Japan will agree to contribute to the anti-missile defense system which will urge China to warn that if Japan or Taiwan create such system it will hasten to create offensive weapons of its own. India will feel threatened–in fact the country is working on long-range ballistic missiles. In this context U.S. Congress will feel that the NMD system became a must. Jonathan Shell, an American researcher, has said on this score that any development of nuclear weapons or systems of their delivery will create a pressure acutely felt in the global network of actions and counteractions. 6
Persian Gulf Blockade
The Persian Gulf is a crisis-ridden region. It is the repository of a third of total oil reserves, the main energy source on Earth. The state in control of the Strait of Hormuz will be able to control two most developed areas–Western Europe and East Asia.
In pursuance of domination in the Persian Gulf the United States relied on Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two strategic allies used exclusively American weapons, their top military were trained across the ocean. The 1979 revolution in Iran disrupted the balance making Iran a state hostile to the former ally while its positions at the strait strengthened.
Western analysts described Iran, the former U.S. shield, as a country seeking to tip the balance of forces in this critical area in its favor by challenging the Saudi Arabia's role in the Islamic world and the American armed control. Teheran is well aware of its constantly growing force.
Iran is the master of 9 percent of prospected world oil reserves and of 15 percent of gas reserves. It claims the Abu Musa island from Qatar and is prospecting oil on the Gulf shelf.
Its military might is quickly increasing. Early in the twenty-first century Iran will launch a fifteen-year-long rearmament program that will pay particular attention to the air forces. It has already increased its armed forces from 350 thous in 1988 to 545 thous in 1999 (with 350 thous of the guard and reservists).
Iran and China are working together in nuclear power production–the latter will supply a 300 mgw nuclear reactor. In fact, Iran is cooperating in this sphere with certain other states such as Korea, Pakistan, Argentina, and Brazil. The Pentagon is convinced that Iran gets dual technologies such as better radars and navigation devices, fast computers and jet engines. According to Western sources Iran will test its own nuclear devices early in the twenty-first century. In this context the purchase of submarines and far-range aircraft is of special importance. Having proclaimed themselves the guarantor of the Gulf region and the Strait the United States offered the Iranian neighbors a four-point program: (1) joint military planning; (2) stronger ties with the U.S. in the military sphere; (3) American military presence in the region; (4) involvement of Britain and France as allies in the region.
In the twenty-first century the Hormuz area may develop into one of the sore spots. A crisis in the Gulf will inevitably develop into a worldwide economic, oil and political crisis with the Arab countries finding on different sides of the barricade depending on their relationships with the U.S.
The Most Probable Scenario of a World War
Out of the numerous scenarios of another world war few reached the wide public. One of them was created by S. Huntington, former Director of the Planning Department, U.S. State Department and famous political scientist from Harvard. He says that the constantly changing balance of forces among various civilizations and large states representing different civilizations is the most probable and the most dangerous source of a possible conflict. If the present trends continue, says he, China, which is developing fast and is becoming more and more self-assertive, will exert colossal pressure on the international situation in the twenty-first century.
Obviously, the interests of China and the United States will clash. How will a conflict start and when may this happen? Huntington writes about the year 2010. America withdrew its forces from united Korea; there are fewer American troops in Japan. Taiwan and continental China struck a compromise: the de facto independent island recognized China as its head and was admitted to the UN like Ukraine and Byelorussia during Soviet times. The conflict starts when an American company finds oil in the South China Sea, parts of which belong to China and Vietnam.
The crisis revived latent conflicts elsewhere. Encouraged by the fact that China is tied down India dealt a blow at Pakistan in an attempt to paralyze its nuclear potential. The shared threat will give new impetus to the old allied relations between China, Pakistan, and Iran. The latter hastened to Pakistan's help. Pressed by them India retreats while quenching revolts of minorities in its heartland. Meanwhile the anti-American forces in the Muslim world inspired by China launch an offensive against pro-Western political figures in the Arab countries and Turkey. They forced their governments to move against Israel unsupported by the weakened U.S. Sixth Fleet.
The Muslim world that joined ranks with China supplied it and Japan with Gulf oil through Indonesia. The West finds itself dependent on oil supplies from Russia, the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Russia finds itself in favor with the West. The United States asked Western Europe for help. In an attempt to scare Western Europe China and Iran secretly deployed their medium-range nuclear missiles in Bosnia and Algeria. They warned Western Europe of possible retaliation if it joins forces with the U.S.
Irrespective of an outcome those civilizations that protect themselves against huge losses and destruction in this hypothetical conflict will win. They will be India, Latin America and Indonesia. The WASPs will be blamed for the conflict and their influence in the United States will drop dramatically. The global center will move to the south where considerably stronger Indonesia will stand opposed to all, from New Zealand to Sri Lanka; China that will be licking its wounds. India and China will stand opposed throughout the latter half of the twenty-first century.
On the whole the scenario looks implausible–each of its elements are quite possible. 7 The United States as the global leader and the keeper of international order will probably try to support the international legal norms and to oppose aggression. They may move forward to preserve the freedom of the seas, to keep the access to energy sources open and to prevent domination of any single power in East Asia.
China may find armed opposition necessary if it finds it intolerable that the power far removed from the region and posing as the guardian of law and order in the world will encroach on China's right to address the problems within its sphere of interests and unilaterally denying it the role of a great power. Huntington writes: "In the coming era prevention of civilizational wars will demand of the states at the poles of power to refrain from interfering into domestic conflicts of other civilizations. Certain states, the United States especially, will find it hard to accept this truth. Yet the rule of non-interfering into conflicts in other civilizations will be the most important rule of preserving peace in the multi-civilizational and mutli-polar world. Joint consideration by the states-poles of force in different civilizations of all disputes at the borders where civilizations meet will be the second most important rule." The author believes that "the West will find it hard to recognize these rules that will call for a great deal more of equality between civilizations." 8
***
Little by little futurology is shedding its "end of history" syndrome and the feeling of triumph typical of the end of the Cold War. Theoreticians have demonstrated a great deal of mutual understanding when talking about future crises and the difficulties of grasping this after several decades of more or less predictable developments.
Does the world need a dominant power to smoothly develop and assert itself? Some of those who would like to preserve the status quo give an affirmative answer. They are convinced that the ruling political class needs stability to preserve its privileges. "The leading power wants stability in the world. It wants to preserve the system which allows it to enjoy great influence and wellbeing." 9 It seems that the majority of analysts do not agree.
Unipolarity will meet with powerful opposition. This is even more true of claims to the world hegemony. At the same time the leader (the United States) is not prepared to abandon its position and is preserving calm. A switch to multipolarity, during which the hegemonic power will inevitably suffer losses spells troubled times.
It seems that we are heading not towards unlimited progress but terrorism armed with high technologies, economic collapses here and there, belligerence stemming from disappointments and extremism. Optimism against this background can hardly convince anybody.
The countries that are chasing the West will be disappointed and full of doubt about the wisdom of sudden changes of their sociopolitical and economic principles. The deprived groups are increasingly dissatisfied. Time will probably come when the civilizations clash, when the poor rise against the rich and when the depleting resources of the Earth will be redivided by force. If the West goes on with saying that its success is "the result of its unique culture" the rest of the world will conclude that it has no chance. Western futurologists agree with this.
***
An analysis of the main futurological trends has testified that in the twenty-first century the opposition and cooperation between the sole leader, the West and the rest of the world trying to catch up with it will go on just as in the last 500 years. If the present trends continue the West will remain for at least several decades the world's leader. It will remain the world scientific laboratory, the planetary university, the source of humanitarian and technical knowledge, the center of high technologies and special services, world-wide investor and the center of military might.
The West will cede its leadership from the mechanical point of view: the center of contemporary (second in the history of mankind) technological revolution will move from Northern Atlantic to East Asia. Conveyor and ecology-crippling productions will leave the West. For the first time in the last 500 years science will become a truly international, laboratories and test grounds outside the West will be drawn into exchange with the Silicon Valleys, the Harvards and Oxfords of the West. This will be the most important development.
Globalization will provide the sophisticated production of the West with huge advantages. It will also encourage the young and hard-working population of the East. In 1999, in Seattle skilled workers went into the streets to protest against globalization. In Congress the lawmakers, for the first time, felt proud because they had no foreign passports. Huge regions, and Africa is one of them, will fell victims of globalization. The rest of the world will depend on their leaders' ability to tap the revolutionary achievements in information sciences and management.
***
There are two forces able to challenge America's leadership in the next several decades, EU with its common currency (accepted by its majority) being one of them. If it achieves a qualitative integration leap it will be able to pool the forces able to compete with the U.S. The European Union will stand opposed to the United States because of its real material interests, rivalry over the markets and raw material sources rather than because of artificial personalized irritating factors. If Brussels is capable of ruling the capitals and if the Old Continent knocks together a common policy and common armed forces NATO will stop being a unifying factor. The two regions jointly accountable for a third of the world gross product will no longer stand united. They will compete, and this will depend on the domestic situations, which call for defending their interests.
In East Asia China is persistently rising higher and higher in plain view of its highly developed neighbor, Japan. If America fails to agree that the country, a leader in its region for many millennia, becomes the regional leader it will have to mobilize itself against China. So far the two countries are incomparable in their might yet to preserve this inequality Washington will have to work for China's decentralization. Otherwise, its growth will go on and within two decades its GDP will topple down that of the United States.
There are three factors that will strongly affect the restructuring of the world community's power structure. First, the demographic factor that will tip the balance in favor of the East, change America and leave its impact on Europe and Japan that are growing old. It was for the first time in 2000 that the number of those among the Internet users who know no English was larger than those who know it. Another billion of people in the Confucian world, another billion in the Muslim world and half a billion more in the Hindu world will change the world, which has been European for 500 years.
Second, the widening gap between the rich billion and the rest of the world. Indeed, three richest persons on earth possess a wealth larger than 47 poorest countries; 475 richest people are controlling the wealth that is larger than half of mankind has amassed. This may lead to a social explosion hardly averted by nuclear weapons and information satellites. A billion and a half of starving people have nothing to lose when the information revolution has revealed their misery to them. There will be new social theories that will unite the world's poor.
Third, the national state structures are crumbling under the pressure of transnational monopolies' omnipotence, information flows that ignore state boundaries, fast moving money that ignore state capitals. Decision-making has shifted to other centers, and non-governmental, ecological in the first place, organizations are gaining weight. The end of the 300-year-old Westphalian system of sovereign states is near at hand. The regimenting role of the state and its institutions will be discredited and will cause a crisis of national awareness.
The commonly accepted pyramid of the world order on top of which the U.S. are complacently sitting will soon collapse under the burden of the young hungry world that knows no state shackles yet is exposed to unlimited information. One finds it hard to believe that there are people still convinced that another "Desert Storm" or a Yugoslavian-type bombing would settle all conflicts. In front of our eyes the poor world (represented by India and Pakistan) acquired nuclear weapons, several scores of other states are consistently working to get access to mass destruction weapons and means of their delivery.
The fast-changing world can offer new, and unheard of, possibilities. Indeed, we have seen India to develop within several years into the main supplier of software engineers and China (shelved for a very long time) to move up quickly. We all know that science and perseverance are two keys to fantastic changes in the world so there is still hope.
Everywhere, from the United States to China, patriotism has been and remains the main instrument of history. Russia has never lagged behind in this.
History never repeats itself in details–predictions are inevitably limited. In 1895, the British Royal Society offered its "final conclusion" that the machines heavier than the air cannot fly. Today, in the age of manned space vehicles and jet aviation we are still capable of blunders yet it would be wrong to abandon all attempts to peer into the future. Otherwise we might fell victims to it.
Endnotes
Note *: Aleksei Utkin is head of the foreign policy department at the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, RAS, and Doctor of Sciences (History). Back
Note 1: R.Wright, "Pax Capital," Foreign Policy, Summer 2000, p. 67. Back
Note 2: F. Cardoso, "An Age of Citizenship," Foreign Policy, Summer 2000, p. 42. Back
Note 3: M. van Creveld, "the New Middle Ages," Foreign Policy, Summer 2000, p. 39. Back
Note 4: G. Soros, "The Age of Open Society," Foreign Policy, Summer 2000, p. 33. Back
Note 5: Ch. Berthram, "Interegnum," Foreign Policy, Summer 2000, p. 54. Back
Note 6: J. Schell, "The Folly of Arms Capital," Foreign Affairs, September/October 2000, p. 27. Back
Note 7: Scenario is borrowed from S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York, 1996, pp. 313-314. Back
Note 8: Ibidem, p. 315. Back
Note 9: P. Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, New York, 1993, p. 293. Back