Asia’s Century and the Age of Dread

Graphic from here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

We are living in an age of dread – quite different from earlier periods since the Second World War. In most of the recent past, there seemed to be a sense that we could change or fix things – end war, abolish poverty, create social justice. That’s no longer the case.

Now there seems to be a sense that the world's problems are intractable: nuclear proliferation, terrorism and religious conflict; peak oil; increasing immiseration of the poor in much of the developing world, recently amplified by a food crisis; rising and possibly incurable homelessness in the rich world; greater threat of global pandemics; the cynical abuse of political systems in such hellholes as Zimbabwe and Burma; blatant destruction of ecosystems around the world. That sense seems far more dominant in Canada than it did in Thailand, where I lived until recently.

Despite years of prosperity and an economy happily based on resource extraction, Canada is yet less optimistic that global crises can be solved than I remember. Indeed, there seems to be greater cynicism about the willingness of government and the “international community” to act responsibly, and greater doubt about even their ability to effectively intervene. Thus, an age of dread - dread that even more problems of the seemingly intractable sort are on the way.

There are many ways to explain this. “I found your thesis on the Age of Dread interesting,” wrote my friend Peter Freeouf from Thailand, “especially since you compared it with how we looked at the world when we were young in the 1960s and the 1970s.”

Baby Boomer Theory: “I think you circled on the reason right there but didn’t hit on it directly,” he continued. “We’re getting old - into our 60s – and we dread our advancing decline and coming demise. And this colours our perspective enormously – in most developing countries the portion of the population over 60 is mushrooming in proportion to the rest of the population.

“There are horrific problems facing humanity – no doubt of that. There were, too, in the 1960s. With all the young people around then – the post-WWII generation was huge in America, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere – there was a certain air of optimism, frivolity even, in the way we thought we could change the world. But now that we’re much older and we can feel decrepitude creeping upon us, our underlying mood has shifted to one of ‘dread.’

“That doesn’t mean that the world isn’t facing some very dreadful problems and that life is not increasingly miserable for millions upon millions. It most certainly is – and since there are so many more humans on Earth than there were 40 years ago, the conditions for many have worsened. Africa is the most obvious example, but elsewhere too - in Central Asia, the Middle-East (especially places like Egypt, Sudan, Somalia), Latin America, Southeast Asia (Burma, Cambodia).

“And the most powerful country in the world – economically, militarily and culturally – has had the self-inflicted disaster of nearly eight years of rule by a clique of strutting, incompetent, ignorant and arrogant frat boys....”

I like Peter’s theory, but I think it is wrong. There are many moving parts in the Age of Dread, but in my view the represent several fundamental but intertwined global conflicts. These are economic, environmental, political and religious.

Asia’s Century: The optimists among us would point to the dramatic improvement in life expectancy and living standards in recent times, nearly miraculous achievements in science and technology, the rapid spread of literacy and numeracy in the developing world, and the creation of small-scale wealth and opportunity through such remarkable innovations as micro-credit and rapid developments in global infrastructure for mobile communications.

To this rejoinder, those firmly footed in the age of dread would point to dreadful interlinks among these optimistic developments. The harder China works, the scarcer oil will become and the more the natural environment will turn upon humanity. The faster India grows, the higher food prices become.

People from Dubai to Shanghai say this is Asia’s century, and they may be right. For example, according to the report from a 2006 economic forum,

“The new century belongs to Asia” agreed more than 300 senior government, business and civil society leaders at the World Economic Forum on East Asia. The region will fulfill this potential, participants said, provided it meets the following top challenges:
• Create or assign regional institutions to discuss energy, security and environmental issues
• Address the impact of Indian and Chinese growth on the future competitiveness of South-East Asia
• Increase energy efficiency in major consuming countries and industries
• Sustain Japan’s recovery while cutting its fiscal deficit and resolve Japan’s historical and territorial disputes with China and Korea.

They've got the issues right, but can a talking club find solutions? Probably not: national self-interest almost always reduces areas of agreement to their lowest common denominators.

The issues are greater than the privileged West observing its power and privilege drifting into Asia. That said, this is undoubtedly a time in which the West is being occluded. Less than a decade into the third millennium, this seems obvious.

It is happening in part because we have passed the limits to growth – a concept first popularized in a 1972 book by that title. Published in an era very like the one we face today, The Limits to Growth modelled the impact of a rapidly growing world population on a world of finite resource supplies and rising pollution. It lost favour to the point of eventually becoming an object of derision in some business circles. Read it again, Sam – but be sure to get the 30-year update, summarized here.

From the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (that event precipitated the First World War) to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, terrorism is religious or ideological when it isn’t state-sponsored. Today’s atrocities are no different, but the possibility for mayhem is greater; witness 9/11. Conflict between the West and the House of Islam arises. Resource wars begin in Iraq.

All recent nuclear proliferation has been in Asia. One of the three recent members of the nuclear club, Pakistan, is increasingly anti-Western and Islamic. So are both of the wannabees: Iran and Syria. The other two nuclear-armed countries on the list are India and North Korea. Asia’s Century looks increasingly nuclear.

Like economic growth and resource limits, rogue regimes are part of this general malaise – the age of dread. A cyclone hits Myanmar’s breadbasket; its thugs are unable and unwilling to help a people who, without bad luck, would have no luck at all. Rice becomes yet scarcer.

Look around you. There is much to dread but, as that icon from the 60s has it, "with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."