During the cold war the primary contests were between the Soviet Union and the US, between communism and democracy, between command economies and market economics. While those debates have largely been resolved, today’s issues are much more regional in nature, and in some ways more critical, since international relationships are more a factor of the internal stability – political, economic, social and religious – of each country, than a factor of regional or broader international alliances. The need for courageous domestic national leadership is more critical today than perhaps at any time in recent history.
More than any country in the past thirty years, China has demonstrated what can be achieved with pragmatic, fact-based, focused, technocratic leadership and implementation. Without much fanfare, China discarded its outdated and ineffective Maoist ideologies and got down to the business of remaking itself as a modern, manufacturing powerhouse, putting people to work, enabling people to work for themselves, expanding opportunities and replacing shopworn ineffective slogans with the infrastructure of capitalism in the modern world. By laying the groundwork for the rule of law, by establishing more clear rules of commerce including banking, insurance, real estate, economic development, labor relations, and by creating highways, railways, shipping, air transportation, and communications networks, and facilitating and adapting to increasing flows of ideas, products, people and capital which are essential to the growth and development of the world today, China reinvented itself. It has made some errors and will need to retool, such as switching from an export driven economy to one driven more by domestic consumption, by ending rampant corruption and opaque banking practices and expanding reforms in the areas of political expression, free-press and democratic institutions – concepts still anathema to China’s central leadership. But China still stands as an example of what a nation can do for itself, without waiting for or blaming external factors and factions.
In contrast, in that same time period, the US seems to have lost its “mojo” if not its way. Starting with defeats in Vietnam and Teheran, the US entered a period of reflection and self-doubt regarding its role in the world, followed by a period marked by scorched-earth politics of character assassination and destruction. Under new largely Republican and Tea Party “rules of engagement”, US national politics became focused on destroying national unity in favor of localized sectarian sensationalism and success. The Bush-Cheney team led the US inward, replacing international leadership with swagger and sloganeering, replacing ideas and engagement with isolationism. Most damaging of all, Bush-Cheney adopted an intellectually dishonest and factually fraudulent method of national accounting, championing Enron like “off the balance sheet” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other budgeting gimmicks to hide the rapidly inflating national debt and other financial irregularities that were the foundation of the economic collapse of 2008, and then had the audacity to blame TARP on Obama. Obama, with Clinton as Secretary of State, has repaired some of that international political damage but the US has yet to resume its leadership role in the world, instead remaining disengaged in Syria, retreating from Central Asia and pivoting toward but not engaging or leading in Asia or indeed anywhere else. The key reason for the continued US disengagement is as much economic as anything else. We cannot be strong abroad unless and until we are strong at home. We cannot be strong at home, unless and until the feuding parties once again champion our constitutional values of leadership, excellence and equal opportunity for all. With the US domestic house in such chaos and disorder, it is difficult for nations around the world to expect or want much of what wisdom the US might have to offer the world.
While China has soared economically and the US has stagnated politically and economically, most other nations across the globe have been wandering aimlessly in their respective historical quagmires of ineffective and uninspired leadership, of tribal and ethnic animosity, as if waiting for some external force to rescue or destroy them, while granting them the luxury to blame someone else for their national lot.
There is too much suffering and sorrow, too much strife and famine, too much at stake, for the world’s would-be leaders, whether of developed or developing countries – to accept this world-wide malaise of mediocrity, to continue down dark alleys of national feuding and intrigue that do little or nothing to improve a nation or its people. It is time for the people of each nation to demand more from their leaders and for the leaders of each nation, each province and each city, to demand more of themselves, inspired by the vision and courage of the likes of Mandela and de Klerk, of Anwar Sadat and Deng Xiao Ping. If South Africa can rebuild, if China can rebuild, if Singapore and the US can build, so can any nation on earth.
Sovereignty is not just about ruling or dominating the people and resources within the geographical confines of a territory. Rather, it is about creating the conditions for a nation and its people to foster and expand the mighty power of human ingenuity and determination to grow and strengthen a nation, for the betterment of its people and its more useful interaction on the world stage.
The US, Russia, China and many other countries have leadership roles to play across the globe and in certain regional theatres. More importantly, the less developed countries and regions need to discard time honored and self-defeating systems of social, racial, religious, ethnic and nationalistic self-identification and aggrandizement with systems and values that recognize and reward multi-ethnic, cross-border, integrated cultures and societies that draw strength from their own diversity, and from the diversity and perhaps differing resources of their neighbors. The world is gravitating to more collaborative models of human interaction stretching across national and regional and geographical markers that once were barriers and now are merely coordinates on integrated planes.
The US Congress in 2013 has reminded the world of a simple but important lesson: it is very easy and takes no real leadership or moral courage, to be destructive and disagreeable, to destroy and damage one’s own society, nation and national standing. Indeed, it only takes a tea-party to shut down a government, to humble and embarrass a nation.
With a remarkable sense of timing, Mandela’s passing served to remind the world – if anyone was listening more than they were trying to have some of his luster rub off on their coat-tails – what moral courage and national and international leadership is at its best.
Those who would be or pretend to be leaders, of nations and regional and party factions, from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Greece, South Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the South China Sea, Europe and even from the decisively Red States and Blues States of the USA, would do well to imagine what the world can be, what each nation and region can achieve, when it focuses on creating the most good for the most people, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin or other form of discrimination.
Most certainly the developed and richer nations of the world have a duty to share their wealth of ideas and resources to help the poorer nations of the world, but not if all that help goes only to making corrupt rulers richer and more corrupt. And most certainly the poorer and less developed nations of the world have a responsibility to work to improve the lot of all of their citizens, not just those at the top. Acquisition of the objects of capitalism – the jets, jewelry, homes, yachts and couture of wealth do not reflect true achievement or enlightenment – unless that wealth, and more importantly, equal opportunity for education and self-determination, are shared at all levels of society, among men and women alike.