GEOPOLITICAL MEMOIRS - QUARTER CENTURY IN PERSPECTIVE

Those days it seemed that the Sun would start rising from the west.

  

The man who started dismantling an empire, and apparently made the world a safer and freer place, came into power in 1985; something which went unnoticed by me born on the same year. This was not the only event that that I missed out. For about five consecutive years, all the significant events happening in the old Heartland was hopelessly beyond the reach of my senses. Then came the landmark year of 1989. The great wall was opened up at one end of the globe and closed shut at the other. Events unfolded in a chain reaction within the next two years, requiring a redrawing of world map, once again out of my range of perception.

The closest that I could recollect without much clarity is the one which happened the same year –some images of troops storming the deserts in Iraq. Soon, names of countries came to settle into my head, and maps followed. I still remember drawing them on the sand, which would resemble more the globe well before the continents attained their present shape. Within a year or two, I improvised the art of cartography, and details of most of the nations. Meanwhile, images of a drastically transformed world in chaos kept flowing in.

The earliest, most vivid images that had been archived in my memory is that of the Afghan civil war, the massacres of the Balkans and Central Africa, the poverty stricken near-human shapes of the African Horn, conflicts in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and of course, the most famous faces of those times – Bill Clinton, Yitshak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussain, Boris Yeltsin, Slobodan Milosovic, Paul Kagame and Jiang Zemin, among others. Slowly, as years passed by and as I went on through the mid-phase of my schooling, it felt more and more inescapable from the influence of one big force – the West. Its effect was all pervasive and to me, personified by the most powerful man in the world, and of course, Hollywood. The new American dream lured all, including myself.

Then, a series of newspaper reports in 1997 required me to do a radical reconstruction in thinking and attitude towards the globe. It was about a threat so grave that it made me curse at that time the great explorers who set out to the West almost five centuries back. The reports were on global warming, in the wake of the Kyoto Protocol. Anti-globalization, or to be more correct, anti-Amerianization became the corner stone of my first real global perspective. It was further strengthened on getting an exposure in the media and real life on the destruction of sustainable environments, native cultures and wisdom. The increasing awareness about the hegemon’s support to despotic, exploitative regimes in the Middle East and Latin America since its rise reinforced this stance. But after being tele-witness to the shocking 9/11, the jammed global war on terror and the hard hitting recession, the feeling that a sunset is inevitable in the West after almost a decade (in effect) is sinking in now.

My next transformation in attitude came with the philosophy of realism enlightening on the nuances of morality in geopolitics, as I stepped into the shoes of a scholar. Geopolitics has never been the same since; especially, in the context of a tectonic shift taking place in the geopolitical structure. The sun is starting to rise again in the east as it has now started offering and delivering promises for billions - a new opportunity to transform lives. This eastern promise even seems to deliver for anyone attempting to comprehend the inner workings of this rising power.

Now, the future does seem promising from this new sunrise in the east. 

GEOPOLITICAL FUTURE: NEW ACTORS AND GLOBAL INTEGRATION

The events of 9/11 cast the spotlight on the importance of a new player in geopolitics: the non-state actor, who does not have allegiance to any nation state, and is almost impossible to negotiate with. These actors create the rules in which the new geopolitical games are to be played. The Nuclear warheads stockpiled by the great powers suddenly found their deterrent value diminished and their liability value augmented, as the states went on an alert to keep them out of reach of these new actors. Thus, the terrorist non-state actor threat gave the states a jolt never felt before. There is yet another class of the non state actor without any direct threat, but no less powerful and even challenging the role of the state. These groups have seen a proliferating role in geopolitics in the wake of the wave of neoliberalism and the onset of globalization towards the end of the cold war period. These are bodies like the MNC's and the NGO's. In the current scenario, one can see the MNC's influencing and even controlling the states (they have been doing it earlier too, although under powerful states – the case of “Banana Republics”). They have GDP's greater than some of the nation states, and even own sports teams like the states. They have their own "dynamic" citizen base across the world. The top MNC's even have their own Foriegn Policy strategies in view of their growing role in geopolitics. As for the shortage of armies, the governments have always been there to assist.  NGO's have also made their presence felt on a global level, thriving in the onset of globalization. No doubt, these powerful new actors exist now alongside the nation state, having their own role in the geopolitical dynamics.

In the future, another actor may be in the joining, or may have done so long back. This new actor will be unlike any other actor in the current geopolitical system, and this is because it will not be of this system. This actor will be in an entirely different league of its own, since it will originate from beyond the realm of terrestrial space. Since every actor in geopolitics is known by virtue of origin of its power - the state actor from a particular state, and the non-state actor from no particular state (all this in terrestrial space, that is); this new actor can be called as the "Non-Terrestrial Actor". So, what will the terrestrial actors do about the emergence of such an actor? First of all, will these actors meet in the realm of geopolitics or astropolitics (in other words, will we go and find them in outer space or will they find us on earth)? What will be the intention of these non-terrestrials? What will be the possibility of them co-operating or confronting with the terrestrial actors? In which theatre and in what manner will the struggle for survival and supremacy be played out if it is a conflict? What will be the terms of engagement if there is co-operation? Above all, what the future will hold for geopolitics if such a contact happens? There are more questions than answers. Some of these aspects must have already been covered by science fiction products like "Close encounters of the third kind", “Alien”, "E.T", “Contact” or "Independence Day". The possibility of co-operation happening first is highly unlikely, given the realistic world that we live in. But, how possible this scenario is? The possibility of finding intelligent life outside earth may be debatable. But one thing is certain: there is absolutely no way that one can rule out completely the existence of such extra-terrestrials. In fact, scientific communities have been continuously searching for this with the likes of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) active in the field.

So, the question which now poses itself is this: would the world have to wait for these "Non-Terrestrial Actors" to come, so as to enable true global integration in an effort against such a threat in the form of a collective security system? Are there not enough causes in the terrestrial domain that demand such a global integration or consensus? Yes, but those are of our own creation like Nuclear Weapons and climate change and therefore subject to different perceptions. Therefore, ultimately, it has to be acknowledged that it is only external threats unrelated to us, which will bring out the spirit of fraternity in humans, as evident from human nature from the numerous instances in the history of geopolitics.