Towards the dawn of a new millennium and beyond...

The sudden fall of communist Russia left the world with a solitary super power, with the world as its playground. Democracy and Capitalism had been vindicated, it seemed. As with the historical pattern, the verdict would not be without a few surprises. 

With its nemesis vanquished, the USA now had free reign to recreate the world according to its own image. The first opportunity to flex its geopolitical muscle arrived soon, in the form of the Gulf War that it dispatched with devastating efficiency. This period coincided with the dawn of the “Information Age”, which precipitated a sustained economic boom in the US. US President Clinton, who had the fortune of presiding during this period, simply could not put a foot wrong in the eyes of many Americans. Indeed, deservedly or not, his name is destined to go down into the annals of US folklore. 

Like all fairytales this one too had to come to an end. This end was brutal if not surreal. It came in the form of a surprise attack on the symbols of American economic and military power, the Twin Towers and the Pentagon respectively. The world, it seemed, was not as safe as had been imagined. This time the instigator was a “faceless enemy” from hardened Islamist militants, whose hatred for Israel was matched only by that of its key ally America. An exceedingly costly war on terror that included simultaneous wars with Iraq and Afghanistan ensued, with untold fiscal consequences, which may yet define its future hegemony.

The event precipitated a chain of events of far reaching implications. The shock to the markets was tangible, with the New York Stock Exchange closing for a few days. Consumer confidence and trade plummeted. Exacerbated by the recent bursting of Internet bubble, the US economy plunged into deep and unfamiliar recessionary waters. 

An attempt to ameliorate these economic travails led to a reduction of interest rates to near zero by Governor of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, leading to a welcome but specious recovery. It carried hidden dangers, which would only fully manifest later, when the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Europe was busy celebrating the fulfilment of a fifty-year-old dream. In a quest to forever banish any possibility of a European war, under the 1957 treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community and the Common Market were established, institutions which were to be consummated with the formation of the European Monetary union in 2002. And thus was the Euro birthed. The multilateral arrangement consisted of fifteen countries, with a population of almost 400million. This diverse union consisted of countries of such economic disparity as Luxembourg and Portugal with GDP per capita of $108,952 and $21,542 respectively. From the onset, it seemed an unsustainable marriage of convenience. 

The silent rise of China was now beginning to be tangibly felt. By sheer force of its population size, this erstwhile global power was beginning to stir geopolitical waves, bringing to mind words attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte on China,"Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." An inflection point had been traversed and China began to shake the world indeed. Following the market friendly reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Gross Domestic Product had grown by a remarkable average 10% from 1979, continuing to this day. From a mere footnote, it would later overtake Japan to become the second largest world economy, with some forecasts predicting that it will ascend to the summit by 2020.

The low interest rate years of the Greenspan years, had given rise to a property bubble, which duly burst in 2007, resulting in a collapse of a number of financial institutions. Thanks to the wonders of collateralisation, banks across the world were affected, some of which never saw the light of day again. The so-called sub-prime crisis was soon to turn into an economic crisis that plunged much of the world into the deepest crisis since the Great Depression. 

As though the world had not seen enough crises, the excesses of a previous boom, financed through volumes of debt, gave rise to a Eurozone crisis the end of which is not yet fully known in 2011. Elaborate if not desperate efforts to rescue a profligate Greece are well in progress. At the root of the crisis is the misguided pursuit of a monetary union without a commensurate fiscal union. In turn, the latter would be impractical to implement without a corresponding political union. With entrenched cultural homogeneity and deep-seated historical rivalry and antipathy, the sustainability of such a political union is difficult to envisage. 

At the end of 2011, the world faces deep and ominous challenges, which this platform does not allow for much scope to exhaustively explore. The image of a rudderless ship drifting aimlessly on treacherous seas, tossed this way and that way, seems an apt description of the condition of the nations of the earth. Where exactly this voyage will lead, is yet unclear. The death of idealism, the so-called “death of God” and the mortification of objective truth have robbed the world of a substantive anchor, such that the best it can hope for, in the absence of fundamental change, is an aimless drift from one crisis to the next, as it navigates its way through the unchartered waters of the third millennium AD. Indeed, if man is truly the measure of all things, the events of the previous century have taught, there is good reason for uncertainty and a sense of foreboding. 

The advent of postmodernism and the mortification of objective truth

If the Enlightenment was characterised by boundless optimism and hope, it is unsurprising that the post-WWII world, yoked with the hangover of two brutal wars, was marked by scepticism and despair. 

The atrocities of the first half of the 20th century had all but dashed man-centred idealism and to borrow Nietzsche’s imagery, Western civilisation had also long ‘killed‘ the Biblical God. With the absence of a substantive societal anchor, scepticism could only flourish, and it did.

Truth became relative and the only absolute of this era became the absurd, “there are no absolutes.” 

The growing affluence of the West, gave rise to a value system that came to define the spirit of the age. Francis Schaeffer defined it as, “the pursuit of personal peace and affluence.”

The defeat of Hitler, who had been the common enemy, led to the swift redrawing of fault lines between the Capitalist West, led by the United States and the Communist East, lead by the Soviet Russia, both of which harboured a visceral distrust of the other. 

With the presence of nuclear weaponry, the world lived under the unnerving and constant shadow of yet another world war. It is with some irony, however, that the presence of nuclear weaponry was perhaps the very reason open conflict between these two superpowers was largely avoided.

For much of this period, the quest for world dominance by these two ideologies defined social, political and economic engagement. 

Though they would pretend otherwise, both sides understood the self-destructive consequences of direct conflict and were careful not to provoke it. The rest of the world became the playground of the simmering hostilities, where both sides, to further their ideological ends, manipulated local and regional political contentions to further their strategic aims. 

This was particularly true in Eastern Europe, the Middle East developing Asia, Africa and South America, often leaving a trail of destructive consequences.

While the Cold War continued to smoulder, Europe and Japan, with the aid of the Marshall Plan, were busy rising from the proverbial ashes. By the beginning of the 80s, they had once again become affluent. 

“The winds of change”, meanwhile were blowing mightily through much of the African continent, bringing with them an infusion of optimism regarding the ‘endless possibilities’ of a postcolonial Africa. 

On the other side of the world, seemingly unnoticed by the rest of the world, following sweeping market oriented reforms by leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979; China was quietly but steadily beginning to emerge from the ash heap of communism-induced poverty. 

Its quiet ascent was soon to reach a game changing inflection point for the global political economy on the other side of the new millennium.

The long coming and sudden collapse of communist Russia in 1989 was celebrated as a triumph of good over evil by many, perhaps not without reason, as the system was associated with gross repression, severe human suffering and multitudinous mindless executions. To others, it merely marked the triumph of a lesser evil over a greater one.

The fall of communist Russia, perhaps as with its rise, was undoubtedly among the most significant events of the twentieth century. While there is much that is true about US sentiments of it having been an “evil empire”, as famously stated by President Ronald Reagan, certainly the record of tyranny speaks for itself, its rise and subsequent fall offers a few lessons:

1)There is no telling what exploits can be accomplished with an unflinching commitment to a clear vision. Beginning with a contemptible cadre that numbered only a handful of people in 1917, at its apogee, Marxist-Leninism had overrun roughly half of the world’s landmass and population.

2)Socio-economic disparities are dangerous breeding ground for all manner of destructive socio-political movements. 1917 Russia was a classical example of what perils this may pose. It was characterised by a small island of a landed aristocratic elite that lived in obscene opulence amidst an ocean of penury. The lot of the disenfranchised, frustrated and economically excluded serfdom gave rise to the dangerous mindset that there was nothing to lose. 

3)Contrary to the postmodernist paradigm, ideas are not all equally valid and beneficial. Which can only lead to the conclusion that there is such a thing as objective truth, with applicability not only to moral but also economic matters. While the nobility of the communist vision to rid the world of exploitation and “class differences” deserves to be acknowledged, it is clear that the principle of choice and personal responsibility are built into the very fabric of the material world. Thus, because it sought to flout this reality, the eventual collapse of Marxist-Leninism could only have been a matter of time.

With the elimination of the communist threat, surely there was no stopping the rise of the West? Indeed, this appeared true for most of the 1990s, often nicknamed “the roaring 90s”, with good reason…

Where can wisdom be found?

"Surely there is a mine for silver and a place where they refine gold.... but where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? (Job 28:1,12)

The pursuit of wisdom has been a preoccupation of man from time immemorial. The unfolding drama of history is set amidst the backdrop of a spurious promise for the "knowledge of good and evil" for Adam and his lineage. And so began mankind's elusive search for wisdom. Since then, generation after generation has embarked on this epic journey with notably impressive if not fleeting success.

Covering the spectrum of history has been the rise and fall of a plethora of renowned civilizations whose power, riches and knowledge at times seemed insuperable. In this regard, one thinks of the great Qin Empire that straddled parts of modern China, boasting artistic, cultural and technological exploits the fruits of which we are yet to fully exhaust.

Indeed, limited time does not allow for much detail, for we could discuss without end the glory of the ancient Egyptian empire, the cultural prowess of Ancient Japan, the might of South American empires including the Wari, Incas, the Mapuche and Araucanian peoples who all reigned supreme in their context. We could talk about the wonder of the classical Greek and Roman empires to which the foundation of our very own contemporary culture and thought are greatly indebted. Their glorious ascent, followed invariably by their ultimate decline, underlies the fundamental bankruptcy at the core of all our labours.

Standing at the dawn of the 21st century as we do, we are once again confronted by brittleness of our very own civilization. The purported brilliance of our economic theories and models have failed to prevent the melt down of our mighty economies. Our treasuries are overladen with debt that threatens to yoke us for generations to come.

Our unrivalled medical know-how stands coyly at the face of a rampant global pandemic that has accounted many millions of our very own. The brewing internal turmoil occasionally interrupts our busy lives with manifestations of inexplicable brutality. Our marriages are falling apart. Great advances in science, art and technology have failed to assuage the gnawing restlessness that respects neither the rich nor the poor, the young nor the old, eating away at our insides, our families and our communities.

The patriarch Job's ancient probing musings, ponder mankind's elusive search for wisdom, questions to which we are yet to find satisfying answers: but where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? 

Maybe the truth to the questions that have taunted us for millennia are found at a source we have hoped we may never have to sincerely consult. Perhaps our millennia of wanderings have accumulated for us enough humility to contemplate the possibility that the ultimate answers lie with a source other than ourselves. Or maybe we are content to meander for another generation before we muster the courage to face the inevitable conclusion. Whatever our choice in this regard, we are confronted by Job's answer to this profound conundrum that astounds in its simplicity:

"God understands its way, and He knows its place. "For He looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. "When He imparted weight to the wind and meted out the waters by measure, when He set a limit for the rain and a course for the thunderbolt, then He saw it and declared it; He established it and also searched it out.

And to man He said: 

'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.'" 

(Job 28:23-28)