Last week I was at the UN General Assembly, the Parliament of Mankind, listening to world leaders and meeting colleagues and experts of the fine trade of international relations. In one such meeting, the much-experienced president of a leading think tank told me that I depicted a gloomy picture regarding world affairs. I was surprised by his comment given that his own think tank focused only on nasty crises around the world. I leave it to the judgment of my readers but this is how I see the state of the world one week after the UN high-level meetings:
We are living in the age of protracted economic austerity where phenomenal growth stories and euphoric forecasts are no longer there. India is doing relatively well and so is Turkey. But for most of the world and particularly the prosperous West, growth is something that is experienced at modest levels. Unless you belong to the new economic elite producing advanced robotics, nanotech, AI, social media and a host of such cyber tech stuff then you must have realised that your time of irrelevance is fast approaching. Instead of the glory of social welfare, healthcare and education you can afford and other lucrative public goods, the citizens of the world are offered a return to some imagined olden days of glory, safety against migration and a raw and unrealistic form of ethnic chauvinism.
Emphasis on law and order is increasing because the world is failing to address fragile and imploding states, vast zones of ungovernable spaces, rampant inequality within and among states, terrorism and irregular migration.Calls for walls are replacing the praises for global village, cosmopolitan and flattened world. Islamophobia is now violent and politically exploitable animosity against Islam. Richard Rorty was writing about the onset of an Orwelian world, Zizek about trouble in the capitalist paradise instead of the end of history, Geiselberger about the great regression. Europe is now in the grasp of precipitous decline of the political centre and latest German elections should scare everyone. Once politically incorrect, the language of de-globalisation and naked geopolitics are admissible.
And, I did not even mention global warming, referendum in northern Iraq and US weapons supplies openly to YPG terrorists in Syria, the North Korean quagmire, among plethora of other irresponsible misdemeanors. Please tell me if these are not accurate. Last week at the UN only the Turkish President was brave enough to warn that humanity is regressing.At our meeting the same think tank president also asked me with solemn face whether I had anything positive to say. I replied that there is still hope. Another global great transformation like the one Karl Polanyi wrote about is underway. This time national welfare state, which superseded feudalism, is struggling under the mounting pressure of transnational forces.
Amidst revolutionary change, including in how we produce and share economic wealth and probably in how we will wage our future wars, we are all striving to comprehend and manage the inevitable transition.
In the meantime, five evils are leading the charge against our well being: extremism; separatism; terrorism; political (read democratic) decay; and economic exclusion and inequality. Because everything including those are transnational, the solution too is to be sought in global politics. We need cooperative management of security, stability and prosperity as national remedies alone would fall short. The UN Secretary General is also onto something big with his emphasis on focusing on people. But which coalition is going to lead the wave of global reform? Or which global political movement?
Burak Akçapar
Turkish ambassador, scholar and author
Follow him on Twitter @akcapar