What can we expect in the world in the decade ahead?
The unexpected, as in Tunisia. Tunisia shows two things: we should not underestimate the social impact of digital technology, and we should not underestimate the fierce love of freedom that burns in every human breast.
This is cause for hope even in the most chilling dark.
There are some trends of note.
Free trade has come to a screeching halt with nations scrambling to maximise their share of a severely shrunken world demand for goods and services. The United States is no longer able to fill the gap in demand. Currency manipulation is the weapon of choice in this war.
We can look forward either to a continued cut-throat race to the bottom, or managed trade and financial coordination. The solution lies essentially with China and the United States.
All this has implications for Barbados’ own international business sector. We should be preparing for existing niches to disappear and new ones to open up. As long as there are taxes, there will be businesses seeking to minimise their tax liability.
Relations rise
We’re seeing the rise of a genuinely multipolar structure of international relations. China will soon be the world’s largest economy and will be a military superpower to rival, though not surpass, the United States. But China has a problem. Several, in fact, which I’ll look at in a separate column.
India is the other growing economic power in Asia and may even surpass China in the long run because its population is much younger. Besides, India’s more open and democratic political system encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. Yet much of India’s population is still mired in poverty and there is endemic corruption among the political and economic elites.
Brazil has made enormous strides, not just in economic growth but also in tackling poverty and inequality in the last decade. It is certainly the rising power of the Americas.
Then there is Russia.
All this suggests that the Group of Twenty (G20) will be the guiding group in international relations in the next decade, making the old G8 irrelevant. Twenty is just about the right number to reflect international realities without it becoming unwieldy.
The United Nations (excluding the Specialized Agencies) will remain an anachronism, unless we can summon the courage to euthanize it.
The Middle East will either erupt into a conflagration or find some new pragmatic basis for co-existence. It cannot continue much longer on its present path. This has as much to do with Iran’s nuclear weaponry ambitions (the Arabs distrust the Persians more than the Israelis) as with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Closer to home, the Organization of American States (OAS) will remain a decrepit retirement home for senescent Latin American diplomats, and CARICOM has limped to a halt with seemingly little hope of regaining momentum.
Cuba will continue plodding along the path to a more open economy and democratic society. Haiti remains mired in a morass from which it can never emerge by itself. On the heels of a hurricane and earthquake, the long-suffering people have now been inflicted with outbreaks of cholera and Baby Doc.
One solution
There’s only one solution: make Haiti a ward of the international community for ten years. Let Canada, Brazil and CARICOM form the group to administer the country; appoint the Haitian-born former governor general of Canada, Michaelle Jean, as the resident administrator, supported by as many of the qualified and motivated Haitian diaspora as possible; and use the aid billions to build infrastructure, establish free education for all; provide free health care and social security and otherwise develop the country over a ten-year period.
The best hope for Haiti is to create a broad middle class that will provide support for the institutional reforms – free and fair elections, independent judiciary, free press, and so on – necessary for genuine democracy and a humanely regulated market economy to flourish.
We can only dream.
• Peter Laurie is a retired diplomat and a commentator on social issues.
