It’s a chaotic world

S P SETH

The western democracies are in a bit of a muddle, bordering sometimes on panic.   The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US seemed to come out of nowhere, and any intelligence about it was ignored/lost as nothing like this had happened before. Not surprisingly, the US response was both instant and chaotic. At one level, with all the power at its disposal, it mounted an attack on Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where its mastermind, Osama bin-Laden, was their houseguest. And not surprisingly, the US prevailed, with Taliban and the al-Qaeda on the run.

Even as Afghanistan crumbled, the US looked elsewhere for a deeper conspiracy. And they came to see it in a Saddam Hussein-ruled Iraq imagining a spurious al-Qaeda connection and possession of weapons of mass destruction. Which led to the US invasion of Iraq. As we now know that there was no al-Qaeda connection and no weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration wanted to dominate and control the Middle East, starting with Iraq. Iraq was to be made an example that whoever stood in the US way would face the same fate. But it didn’t work, as is evident from the continuing chaos and disaster in the Middle East.

The continuance of chaos is one aspect of the terrorist threat. Another aspect is the political impact within western societies, where one country after the other has sought to pass legislation to curtail aspects of its citizens’ freedom to deal with the terrorist threat. The question here is not whether these measures are necessary to create a right balance between security and freedom. Which is for each affected country to decide. But its cumulative effect has been a growing sense of fear and insecurity, sometime creating an impression that there might be a terrorist lurking around every street corner. The specter of a ‘lone wolf’ terrorist is an example of this, making many Muslims as suspect.

While terrorism appears, at times, to have become an all-consuming concern, it has also overlapped with and/or accentuated by a seemingly uncontrolled political eruption in some Middle Eastern countries. First, christened hopefully as the Arab Spring, it later degenerated into chaos and disaster that appears to have no solution or end, as in Syria and Yemen. And the interaction between it and an even messier version of terrorism represented by IS is there for us all to see. The US-led coalition to contain/destroy al-Qaeda terrorism and its more sinister version, IS, is consuming the resources of these countries with apparently no end in sight. The military successes against the IS in itself-declared caliphate is not making the situation significantly better.

This continuing war against terrorism over the last 15 or so years has had a damaging effect on the economies of western countries, and is continuing to do so. Even as they were grappling with the political, security and economic dimensions of a prolonged war-like situation in terms of terrorism and chaos in the Middle East, the world was hit by a global financial crisis (2007-8), considered the second worse since the 1930s Great Depression, caused largely by unregulated and rampant capitalism.

Until recently, this version of capitalism was considered a model for international economic development. Its eruption tended to upend the economic security of many people in western societies, with increased unemployment, falling/stagnant incomes and a growing sense of frustration and disillusionment with their institutions and generally with things around them.

This is reflected particularly in the loss of trust with the governing elites who are seen by many people as self-seeking, untrustworthy and incapable of working for the general good. Many people feel that they have lost control of their destiny and their country, with no one now to turn to rectify the situation. Among other reasons for this situation, many people in the west blame globalization as a critical factor. Globalization is no longer seen as working for the common man in western societies. It is blamed for destroying jobs in the manufacturing sector, with western companies setting up shop in China, particularly, to take advantage of cheap labour, unconstrained by restrictive labour laws and trade unions.

The global financial crisis led many people to turn to populism as the solution to their problems. Brexit is an example of it, with the Brits voting to wrest control of their affairs by voting to quit European Union. In all this, there is this fear of the “other” like, among other things, the immigrants. And when these immigrants/refugees are from Muslim countries, it is also overlaid with the fear of terrorism.

While Britain is wrestling with Brexit, with Theresa May’s grip on power shaky, the US threw up the phenomena of Trumpism, with Donald Trump elected as the US president. And he is all the time trying to stir up popular passions of his countrymen against all and sundry considered hostile to the US, both within and outside the country. We find this against Muslims, Mexicans, crisis around North Korea, threat of a trade war with China and stirring up racism within the country, the latest example being targeting of football players who have been kneeling during the playing of national anthem to protest against attacks on Afro Americans, their exclusion and denial of justice.

Not surprisingly that with so much and so many in Europe and the US wanting to turn inward, the world is looking even a more dangerous place than ever. This is because most of the fears and problems that plague the world have global dimensions requiring global solutions.