By Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević.

Does our history only appear overheated, but is essentially calmly predetermined? Is it directional or conceivable, dialectic and eclectic or cyclical, and therefore cynical? Surely, our history warns. Does it also provide for a hope? Hence, what is in front of us: destiny or future?

One of the biggest (nearly schizophrenic) dilemmas of liberalism, ever since David Hume and Adam Smith, was an insight into reality; whether the world is essentially Hobbesian or Kantian. As postulated, the main task of any liberal state is to enable and maintain wealth of its nation, which of course rests upon wealthy individuals inhabiting the particular state.

That imperative brought about another dilemma: if wealthy individual, the state will rob you, but in absence of it, the pauperized masses will mob you. The invisible hand of Smith’s followers have found the satisfactory answer – sovereign debt. That ‘invention’ meant: relatively strong central government of the state. Instead of popular control through the democratic checks-&-balances mechanism, such a state should be rather heavily indebted. Debt – firstly to local merchants, than to foreigners – is a far more powerful deterrent, as it resides outside the popular check domain. With such a mixed blessing, no empire can easily demonetize its legitimacy, and abandon its hierarchical but invisible and unconstitutional controls. This is how a debtor empire was born. A blessing or totalitarian curse? Let us briefly examine it.

The Soviet Union – much as (the pre-Deng’s) China itself – was far more of a classic continental military empire (overtly brutal; rigid, authoritative, anti-individual, apparent, secretive), while the US was more a financial-trading empire (covertly coercive; hierarchical, yet asocial, exploitive, pervasive, polarizing). On opposite sides of the globe and cognition, to each other they remained enigmatic, mysterious and incalculable: Bear of permafrost vs. Fish of the warm seas. Sparta vs. Athens. Rome vs. Phoenicia… However, common for the both was a super-appetite for omnipresence. Along with the price to pay for it.

Consequently, the Soviets went bankrupt by mid 1980s – they cracked under its own weight, imperially overstretched. So did the Americans – the ‘white man burden’ fractured them already by the Vietnam war, with the Nixon shock only officializing it. However, the US imperium managed to survive and to outlive the Soviets. How? The United States, with its financial capital (or an outfoxing illusion of it), evolved into a debtor empire through the Wall Street guaranties. Titanium-made Sputnik vs. gold mine of printed-paper… Nothing epitomizes this better than the words of the longest serving US Federal Reserve’s boss, Alan Greenspan, who famously said to then French President Jacques Chirac: “True, the dollar is our currency, but your problem”. Hegemony vs. hegemoney.

House of Cards

Conventional economic theory teaches us that money is a universal equivalent to all goods. Historically, currencies were a space and time-related, to say locality-dependent. However, like no currency ever before, the US dollar became – past the WWII – the universal equivalent to all other moneys of the world. According to history of currencies, the core component of the non-precious metals money is a so-called promissory note – intangible belief that, by any given point of future, a particular shiny paper (self-styled as money) will be smoothly exchanged for real goods.

Thus, roughly speaking, money is nothing else but a civilizational construct about imagined/projected tomorrow – that the next day (which nobody has ever seen in the history of humankind, but everybody operates with) definitelly comes (i), and that this tomorrow will certainly be a better day then our yesterday or even our today (ii).

This and similar types of social contracts (horizontal and vertical) over the collective constructs hold society together as much as its economy keeps it alive and evolving. Hence, it is money that powers economy, but our blind faith in (constructed) tomorrows and its alleged certainty is what empowers money.

Clearly, the universal equivalent of all equivalents – the US dollar – follows the same pattern: Strong and widely accepted promise. What does the US dollar promise when there is no gold cover attached to it ever since the time of Nixon shock of 1971?

Pentagon promises that the oceanic sea lines will remain opened (read: controlled by the US Navy), pathways unhindered, and that the most traded world’s commodity – oil, will be delivered. So, it is not a crude or its delivery what is a cover to the US dollar – it is a promise that oil of tomorrow will be deliverable. That is a real might of the US dollar, which in return finances Pentagon’s massive expenditures and shoulders its supremacy.

Admired and feared, Pentagon further fans our planetary belief in tomorrow’s deliverability – if we only keep our faith in dollar (and hydrocarbons’ energized economy), and so on and on in perpetuated circle of mutual reinforcements.

These two pillars of the US might from the East coast (the US Treasury/Wall Street and Pentagon) together with the two pillars of the West coast – both financed by the US dollar and spread through the open sea-lanes (Silicone Valley and Hollywood), are an essence of the US posture.

This very nature of power explains why the Americans have missed to take our mankind into completely other direction; towards the non-confrontational, decarbonized, de-monetized/de-financialized and de-psychologized, the self-realizing and green humankind. In short, to turn history into a moral success story. They had such a chance when, past the Gorbachev’s unconditional surrender of the Soviet bloc, and the Deng’s Copernicus-shift of China, the US – unconstrained as a lonely superpower – solely dictated terms of reference; our common destiny and direction/s to our future/s.

Winner is rarely a game-changer

Sadly enough, that was not the first missed opportunity for the US to soften and delay its forthcoming, imminent multidimensional imperial retreat. The very epilogue of the WWII meant a full security guaranty for the US: Geo-economically – 54% of anything manufactured in the world was carrying the Made in USA label, and geostrategically – the US had uninterruptedly enjoyed nearly a decade of the ‘nuclear monopoly’. Up to this very day, the US scores the biggest number of N-tests conducted, the largest stockpile of nuclear weaponry, and it represents the only power ever deploying this ‘ultimate weapon’ on other nation. To complete the irony, Americans enjoy geographic advantage like no other empire before. Save the US, as Ikenberry notes: “…every major power in the world lives in a crowded geopolitical neighborhood where shifts in power routinely provoke counterbalancing”. Look the map, at Russia or China and their packed surroundings. The US is blessed with neighboring oceans – all that should harbor tranquility, peace and prosperity, foresightedness.  

Why the lonely might, an empire by invitation did not evolve into empire of relaxation, a generator of harmony? Why does it hold (extra-judicially) captive more political prisoners on Cuban soil than the badmouthed Cuban regime has ever had? Why does it remain obsessed with armament for at home and abroad? What are we talking about here – the inadequate intensity of our confrontational push or about the false course of our civilizational direction? 

Indeed, no successful and enduring empire does merely rely on coercion, be it abroad or at home. However, unable to escape its inner logics and deeply-rooted appeal of confrontational nostalgia, the prevailing archrival is only a winner, rarely a game-changer.

To sum up; After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans accelerated expansion while waiting for (real or imagined) adversaries to further decline, ‘liberalize’ and bandwagon behind the US. Expansion is the path to security dictatum only exacerbated the problems afflicting the Pax Americana. That is how the capability of the US to maintain its order started to erode faster than the capacity of its opponents to challenge it. A classical imperial self-entrapment!! And the repeated failure to notice and recalibrate its imperial retreat brought the painful hangovers to Washington by the last presidential elections. Inability to manage the rising costs of sustaining the imperial order only increased the domestic popular revolt and political pressure to abandon its ‘mission’ altogether. Perfectly hitting the target to miss everything else …

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When the Soviets lost their own indigenous ideological matrix and maverick confrontational stance, and when the US dominated West missed to triumph although winning the Cold War, how to expect from the imitator to score the lasting moral or even a momentary economic victory?

Neither more confrontation and more carbons nor more weaponized trade and traded weapons will save our day. It failed in past, it will fail again any given day.

Interestingly, China opposed the I World, left the II in rift, and ever since Bandung of 1955 it neither won over nor joined the III Way. Today, many see it as a main contestant. But, where is a lasting success?

Greening international relations along with greening of economy (geopolitical and environmental understanding, de-acidification and relaxation) is the only way out. Historically, no global leader has ever emerged from a shaky and distrustful neighborhood, or by offering little bit more of the same in lieu of an innovative technological advancement. Ergo, it all starts from within, from at home. Without support from a home base, there is no game changer. China’s home is Asia.

Hence, it is not only a new, non-imitative, turn of technology what is needed. Without truly and sincerely embracing mechanisms such as the NaM, ASEAN and SAARC (eventually even the OSCE) and the main champions of multilateralism in Asia, those being India Indonesia and Japan, first of all, China has no future of what is planetarily awaited – the third force, a game-changer, lasting and trusted global leader.

About the author: Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarević, is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria.  He has authored six books (for American and European publishers) and numerous articles on, mainly, geopolitics energy and technology.

Professor Bajrektarević, is editor of the NY-based GHIR (Geopolitics, History and Intl. Relations) journal, and editorial board member of several similar specialized magazines on three continents.

His 7^th book, ‘From WWI to www. – Europe and the World 1918-2018’ has been just realised.

By Dr. Dorine van Norren.

In May this year the Netherlands Central Bureau for Statistics brings out its Monitor Broader Wellbeing for the second time. No longer Gross National Product (GNP) is the sole leader of the wellbeing discussions.  It is the outcome of the advice of the Parliamentary Commission on Broader Wellbeing. This Commission got its inspiration from  the report commissioned by French President Sarkozy (Stiglitz et al. 2009), but above all from a small country in the Global South: Bhutan. This is where the Green Left Party got its idea for a call for Gross National Happiness as a measurement of the functioning of society (2010).

The word Happiness leads to a lot of confusion (van Norren 2017). How do you measure happiness? Moreover, isn’t Bhutan ranked very low in the World Happiness Report? (Number 97 of 156 in 2018). A Japanese researcher told me that the way happiness (subjective wellbeing) is measured in international rankings is misleading. A Buddhist is more likely to fill in a score of 5 as ideal (median between 0 and 10), a Westener judges this score to be insufficient.

In Buddhism happiness has a different connotation that in the West. It is about balance and harmony. In the first place, inner harmony, then a harmonious society and finally harmony with nature. The term Gross National Harmony would be a better translation of the policies of the Bhutanese government, which are based on four pillars: culture as the basis of your identity, social and economic progress, good governance and harmony with nature. Bhutan uses an index that is composed of nine domains with unusual indicators such as: the balance between work and sleep; community vitality (for example the time and money people donate); psychological wellbeing (such as positive and negative emotions); and culture (such as the degree of cultural participation).

Not only Bhutan (and other countries in Asia such as Thailand) is active on different concepts of wellbeing. In Latin America countries like Ecuador and Bolivia are clamoring for harmony with nature and respect of Mother Earth. These countries decided to include Buen Vivir (Good Living) in their constitutions. This is based on indigenous wisdom and a bio-centric worldview. Human beings are not above creation, but all living beings are equal. The regenerative principles of Mother Earth would have to be leading for the conception of the law and the economy. This lead to inclusion of the rights of nature in their constitutions. In the Dutch Monitor Broader Wellbeing a dashboard is included not only on ‘here and now’, but also on ‘overthere’, meaning our use of resources in other parts of the world.

In Africa wellbeing is mainly defined as good human relations (rather than the measurement of income). Humanity is defined differently than in Europe. People speak of Ubuntu (I am because we are). As an individual I exist because of the community. This community automatically includes the ancestors and the future generations. Ancestors are considered  ‘living dead’ as long as they are remembered and they are connected to the earth. For the ‘yet to be born’ natural resources are equally essential. In the South African constitution they are therefore explicitly mentioned. The Dutch Monitor Broader Wellbeing also includes a ‘Later’ dashboard on future resources for the coming generations.

How ‘development’ is defined is therefore different in every culture. GNP was easy to measure. Broader wellbeing opens a different debate. Traditions in the Global South prioritize culture, inner wellbeing, human relations and nature. How you view wellbeing depends on what you measure. And not all cultures share the Dutch proverb: knowing is measuring.

About the author:

Dr. Dorine van Norren, is an independent researcher at Tilburg University, this article is written on a personal title and does not reflect the opinion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, where the author is working.

Literature

Norren, D.E. van (2017). Development as service: A Happiness, Ubuntu and Buen Vivir interdisciplinary view of the sustainable development goals. Proefschrift, Tilburg University.

Stiglitz, J., A. Sen, en J. Fitoussi (2009). Report by the Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress.