From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu Feb 05 2009 - 15:45:27 EST
"In Falling off the Edge, Perry also covers Somalia and Sri Lanka, showing
himself to be equally comfortable with American commanders in the former and
ragtag rebels in the latter. In the Horn of Africa, he travels extensively
with US Special Operations Forces hunting Islamist assassins in what has
become the "third front in the war on terror" spreading across Eritrea and
Ethiopia. In Mugabe's Zimbabwe, he is arrested and imprisoned for five days,
eventually paying an exorbitant fine in local currency that is equivalent to
approximately one half of an American cent" Slumdogs, millionaires
- Last Updated: February 06. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 6. 2009 5:30AM
GMT
Split personality: India is a laboratory of global extremes. Is it a
nuclear-armed superpower or a failed state home to a dozen separatist
movements? Or is it both? Rajesh Nirgude / AP Photo
*Parag Khanna considers the dark shape of globalisation to come in Alex
Perry's new book, Falling off the Edge. *
*Falling Off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization*
Alex Perry
Bloomsbury
Dh60
Globalisation has become so synonymous with our contemporary, interconnected
existence that the word hardly merits usage anymore.
And yet we can no longer take our stale understandings of the term for
granted, especially in a time of global financial crisis – when trust has
frayed, tensions run high, and national economic survival has become the
overriding priority. Rather than think of globalisation as a single,
inevitable phenomenon, we should consider several different scenarios that
could emerge for the future world order. I can think of at least four
possibilities: a neo-medieval world of diverse actors and fragmented
authority, a regionalised world of trade blocs and spheres of influence, a
neocolonial world of imperial competition, or a global "one world" of human
solidarity.
While elements of all four futures can be spotted in our collective reality
today, I believe we are entering a neo-medieval age, characterised by a
worldwide splintering of power and sovereignty. Already we see the world
divided up by a layering of empires like the EU and China, trans-national
forces like the Catholic Church and al Qa'eda, multinational
corporation-dominated supply chains, philanthropic interventionists like
Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, who some describe as modern Medicis, and
globally deployed mercenary armies like Blackwater – the conditierri of the
21st century. There is no global peacekeeping force or social safety net.
Responsibility no longer rests with centralised entities like the UN or even
in governments, but with whichever group is closest to the problem to be
fixed. The only correct answer to the question of who has power is "Where?
And over what?"
The diffuse milieu of the Middle Ages lasted over a thousand years, so to
speak of any certain collective future is futile. Globalisation may evolve
into any of the forms alluded to above, but it is unlikely to provide the
world with one shared bridge to the future. As Alex Perry puts it early in
his riveting new book Falling off the Edge, "globalisation is global
governance without global government". It has no rules, and cannot be
explained through a single narrative. Greater prosperity and greater peril
are the two sides of the same coin.
The multiple, cross-cutting narratives of globalisation are in good hands
with Perry. Since September 11, his travels have taken him much more to
places in the midst of upheaval than to the cosmopolitan capitals of
emerging markets – but in Perry's mind, the two are subliminally connected.
He pauses, for example, in his riveting account of the Qala-I-Jangi prison
riot near Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, in late 2001, to discuss Joseph
Stiglitz and the antiglobalisation movement. As a reporter in the Middle
East, Africa and Asia, Perry realises, he has often been "there" on the
scene of unexpected turmoil of the sort implied in Stiglitz's
Freudian-inspired title Globalisation and its Discontents. And with the
capture of the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh during that fateful
riot, Perry connects antiglobalisation with anti-Americanism, pointing out
rightly that violence has been globalised as well. Indeed, rising inequality
in most of the world's countries creates a sense of moral equivalency on the
ground between self-interested globalisers and the global underclass
defending its own freedom. From Andaman Island tribes devastated by contact
with modern civilisation to Afghan tribes resisting it, this is the same
global struggle that has already been felt on the streets of Seattle.
But Perry's mission is not to denounce economic globalisation as humanity's
postmodern scourge; rather it is to follow stories from surface to root.
Where other writers have limited themselves to viewing globalisation through
one lens – usually that of economics – Perry succeeds at keeping a
political, economic and cultural perspective. He is at his best when showing
how all these aspects intertwine. After all, there is no terminological
splicing on the street.
Perry's story begins in Hong Kong at the turn of the millennium. Most
Westerners hadn't yet heard of Shenzhen, which was inaugurated by Deng
Xiaoping in 1980 as China's first Special Economic Zone – and has since
become a symbol of mainland China's audacious, self-assured growth. Perry
discovers a city that is, despite China's authoritarian rule, rife with
criminal syndicates, prostitution rings, plastic surgeons and narco-fuelled
Triad gangsters. Far from the rule of law, Shenzhen is an apocalyptic
free-for-all, with the soaring heights of its skyscrapers providing, among
other things, a popular avenue for suicide.
After Hong Kong, Perry spends over four years walking the narrow ledge
separating India's billionaires from its billion poor. What troubles him
there is not just the reality of inequality, but the psychology. Everywhere
he sees that India's nouveau riche, who have become iconic role models to
the Bollywood-swooning media and society, regard their fellow citizens as
unwanted semi-humans who interfere with their social efficiency. He boozes
with the rich and famous, but never fails to remind the reader that these
trust fund elites are not living in New York or London, but just steps from
the world's largest and most destitute slum, Dharavi.
Those who have sought to juxtapose the two sides of globalisation know that
India presents the ultimate laboratory of extremes. Is India a superpower (a
nuclear-armed global IT hub) or a failed state (home to over 800 million
poor and a dozen separatist movements)? Or is it both? Perry describes
Mumbai, India's economic motor, as a chaotic "temple of inefficiency" even
though it is just as much a part of the global economy as tech-savvy
Bangalore. And for anyone wondering what global warming and rising sea
levels might do to a crowded mega-city, Perry's account of the summer 2005
monsoon floods in which hundreds drowned in the sewers and in their cars
makes for apocalyptic foreshadowing.
Perry's pursuit of India's deeply unsettling reality flies in the face of
the euphoric "Incredible India" branding campaign that has been promoted so
successfully in recent years by a mix of business associations and public
relations agencies. But he has not always been rewarded for his efforts to
see past the hype: Falling off the Edge began as a collection of articles
that the editors at Time magazine declined to publish, calling them too
negative.
Perry's great strength is his knack for picking up on the day's burning
transnational challenges – from sex-trafficking to piracy – well ahead of
other observers. He also dissects these challenges admirably. As sailors'
salaries fall in Indonesia, he is there in rickety ships with rebellious
pirates who have now become overt rivals to the state. Globalisation, he
realises early on, is a growth opportunity for piracy. He visits the
sophisticated offshore insurgents of the Niger Delta, whose attacks have at
times crippled Nigerian oil exports and contributed to global oil price
spikes. He succinctly explains the conflict in Darfur, then drives past a
camel's skeletal carcass in northeastern Chad and argues that the first
major water war looms like a "dry tinderbox waiting for a spark." And in
2002, Perry goes inside Nepal's Maoist insurgency – which eventually takes
over the mountainous nation and spreads into Naxalite groups across eastern
and central India.
When Perry shifts to Cape Town, he sees it as only a partial respite from
India's extremes. While the post-apartheid African National Congress
transforms itself from guerrilla group to political party, South Africa is
falling into a state of virtual civil war, with the highest murder and
violent crime rate in the region. As he wanders through the country's slums
and attends the self-congratulatory press conferences of the elite, he sees
that in South Africa, free trade agreements bring neither freedom nor
equality, but simply exacerbate crime and despair. Meanwhile, the
continent's three regional anchors – South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya – are
effectively at war with themselves, while being called on to lead
interventions to stabilise their neighbours. He leaves us with a picture
that bears little resemblance to any notion of an "African Renaissance".
In Falling off the Edge, Perry also covers Somalia and Sri Lanka, showing
himself to be equally comfortable with American commanders in the former and
ragtag rebels in the latter. In the Horn of Africa, he travels extensively
with US Special Operations Forces hunting Islamist assassins in what has
become the "third front in the war on terror" spreading across Eritrea and
Ethiopia. In Mugabe's Zimbabwe, he is arrested and imprisoned for five days,
eventually paying an exorbitant fine in local currency that is equivalent to
approximately one half of an American cent.
The western reader can hardly be blamed for his original inclination to
accept globalisation as a noble process that expands trade, lowers prices
and fosters integration. But once a road is paved, why wouldn't
sex-traffickers and arms dealers use it to expand their own trades? Perry's
reporting drives us head-on into the complacent traffic of Western
assumptions. Every page of his book brings a collision.
To Perry, globalisation is the process whereby elites capture world
resources through rampant deregulation: "Globalisation is capitalism out of
control." Perry's book makes us angry at the inequities of globalisation,
but we shouldn't conflate our visceral anxieties about the effects of
globalisation with an equally deserved but more distinct anger at the abject
failure of efforts to manage it. Globalisation is ubiquitous; it is the
unevenness of efforts to control it that is the hallmark of a neo-medieval
world.
And yet in certain cases, someone is in control, as Perry admits when
arguing that globalisation leads to a "standardisation" of global news that
is always in search of the "one big story." (Of course, without getting
close to the story, corporatised media sells the glossy, prefabricated
narrative of India's bounding tiger and China's surging dragon.) Perry also
recognises and admires the global influence of corporate philanthropists
like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Ratan Tata.
What Perry seems to be saying, though not explicitly, is that we will have
to accept good governance and leadership from whomever provides it, for
there is certainly no utopian resurrection of the United Nations on the
horizon. In this he is undoubtedly correct: mega-philanthropists,
multinational corporations and NGOs already deliver far more tangible
financial and material benefit to the world's poor than do Western
governments, the World Bank and the UN put together.
It is perhaps fitting that one of Perry's final vignettes takes place on the
tsunami-ravaged Nicobar Islands, which an Indian government surveyor
describes as "the end of the world". Is it? Is globalisation an accelerated
ride into disaster? Will countries like India actually last the one century
it will take (according to the UN) to raise living standards to western
levels? Is killing not just the Sri Lankan way of politics, but the world's
way, with just a veneer of diplomacy? Amazingly, Perry ends on notes of
hope. The world has always been violent, he says; globalisation just allows
us to see more of it. And war is just one of the things that happens in the
world, not the sum of all things. In the end, the Dalai Lama captures this
sentiment best for Perry: "The future? Not bad."
*Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and
author of The Second World: How Emerging Powers are Redefining Global
Competition in the 21st Century.*