Tag: New World Order

A tragic historical role reversal

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In 1948, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, Paul-Henri Spaak, made a speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is referred to as the ‘Discours de la Peur’: the Discourse of Fear. It is one of those moments that may be associated with the start of the Cold War, and the breakdown of the international system that was put in place to prevent a new war. I read it again today, and I am thinking we might well substitute the Soviet Union for the United States in that speech. Let me do that by paraphrasing a few of his lines:

“I am scared. I am scared because the United States and Europe are in a undeclared war with Russia. I am scared because of the insane level of the United States’ defense budget and the insane level of arms and sophisticated weapon systems it supplies to third countries that cannot be said to be of strategic importance for our security. I am scared because, this year, critical energy infrastructure has been blown up, right in the heart of Europe, and one cannot accuse Russia of what happened there: it is an act of international terrorism that has been left unexamined. I am scared because a defensive alliance of democracies has become an offensive one. I am scared because of the belligerence of our leaders. I am scared because of the lack of democratic legitimacy of our political system, especially when it comes to questions of war and peace at our borders. I am scared because our discourse on rights, freedom, democracy, international trade and business has been contaminated with moral fascism, unwarranted protectionism, neo-colonialism and misplaced talk of empire.”

Text and video link to the speech:
https://lnkd.in/e9xAGUNA
https://lnkd.in/embs2TtR

Beyond Mariupol and the Krim

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The battle for Mariupol resembles the WW II battle for Stalingrad both in its strategic as well as symbolic significance. For the Russians, it turned the tide after the frontal assault on major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev itself, stalled and, ultimately, turned into defeat and a full and complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the center and west of the country. They turned all of their military might to the east of Ukraine. Mariupol was the last city they had to take to clear the land corridor to the Krim and the Black Sea which – it would be foolish to deny this – is historically Russian. It also allowed Mr. Putin to effectively claim a victory on neo-Nazis, because the ideology of the Azov Regiment was effectively very right-wing – and that is a euphemism. It is also foolish to deny the support it got – since its creation in 2014 – from extremist groups abroad, and from the US in particular.

However, just a few days after the Russian Army could finally clear the Azovstal bunkers (19 May, to be precise) after rather enormous military efforts, Mr. Biden’s pushed a US$40 billion package through the US Congress – mainly military assistance. The initial David versus Goliath geometry between the Ukrainian and Russian armies has now been reversed completely: such packages are of the order of Russia’s entire annual defense budget. Another comparison to put these US$40b or 50 US$b figures into perspective is this: Belgium’s government decided – also as a result of what is seen as the new Russian threat – to invest about 10 billion Euro to replace its outdated defense equipment, but this investment program covers 10+ years (it runs till 2030) – so it amounts to about €1b per year. In contrast, the US delivers this immense support now, in just one go.

It amounts to this: in just a few months, the US has turned the Ukrainian army into one of the most modern and powerful armies of the world: Ukraine is now – for all practical purposes – a strong US ally outside of NATO and outside of the EU right in the heart of Asia. From a geopolitical point of view, its strategic location is even better than Afghanistan. Is that we Europeans wanted? I do not think so.

Yesterday (16 August), Putin accused the US to ‘drag out’ the war in Ukraine. I do not agree with most of his statements – and, to be fully clear, of course I condemn Russia’s invasion – but Mr. Putin is right here. Yesterday also, Finland – NATO’s new poster boy – imposed limitations on tourist visas for Russians, further antagonizing not Mr. Putin but ordinary Russians. Politicians all over the EU – but most vocally those from former satellites of the Soviet Union – call for tougher economic sanctions. Why? Economic warfare hurts us more than Russia, and reinforces Mr. Putin’s only appeal in his own country – which is that of a tough but reliable leader in very tough times (which is, by the way, the same image which Mr. Biden and Ms. Pelosi try to cultivate with their own constituencies back home now).

What is rather remarkable is that Mr. Putin did not see this coming: his own visit to Beijing just before his invasion (in February this year) was preceded by Mr. Zelensky going to Washington DC in September last year, purportedly sounding out the chances of Ukraine joining NATO. Mr. Putin cannot say he did not notice that because it was what led to him stationing and building up troops at Ukraine’s borders. Hence, looking back, one might look at all this as something that could be foreseen.

So what is next? I am not sure. Sun Tzu was a very wise general: one of the principles of his Art of War is that, in a war, the purpose is to defeat the enemy militarily. The objective is not to try to destroy him. That is exactly what we are trying to do now. It will fail, and it does nothing to work towards long-term peace on the European continent. There is hope, however. Little hope but whatever hope is there, we must highlight:

1. The UN Secretary General and Turkey are actively involved and working with Mr. Zelensky (and, hopefully, Mr. Putin) to work towards solidifying the grain exports deal and – hopefully – a ceasefire agreement. Rumors – credible rumors – have it that, in September or October, Russia will organize referenda in the areas that it currently is holding. Hopefully, Mr. Zelensky will see that it is in the interest of his country to work towards a ceasefire agreement before that happens. Mr. Putin has clearly signaled that he wants to talk: his 9 May public speech at the occasion of Russia’s national Victory Day was not belligerent. On the contrary, independent media analysts rightly marked it as “far from triumphant.”

2. Gerhard Schröder – one of the very few sensible great European politicians who is old enough to remember the Cold War back in the 1980s – has not been expelled from his party and is becoming increasingly vocal. He is right: the current madness must stop. Europe is not, and should not be, at war with Russia. We may not like it, but Russia is our neighbor, and we cannot move away from it. It is time for hawks to back off and tone down. The belligerent voices of a von der Leyen or a Josep Borrell do not represent what Europe – or NATO – should stand for: we are not at war with Russia. Ukraine is at war with Russia and, because of its huge military support, the US is now at war with Russia too. The EU must cut its umbilical cord with the US when it comes to this hot war and – more recently – the new cold war with China.

Yankee, please go home. Now! The US should not be barging around in the world as we Europeans did during colonial times. The Black Sea is Russian. The China Sea is Chinese. They must, of course, remain open and free for all trade and to all people – and both the East and the West should work together to ensure they remain that way. But we live in a multipolar and very multicultural world, with different political systems and very different relations and a very different distribution of geopolitical power now.

Not accepting that amounts to a new moral fascism which Europe and Europeans, having learned what it learned through the painful experiences of two 20th century world wars (the second following the first because we did not go for a genuine people-to-people peace with Germany), should not accept. I’ve used such strong wording a few times already and I got censured for it on LinkedIn, but I do not retract it. The US keeps investing in hard power. It is about time we start investing in soft power: brains, respect, and truly liberal (or, if you prefer that term: Western) values.

I am happy to see that Mr. Fukuyama now also sees his much proclaimed ‘end of ideology‘ cannot be imposed by the US. I quote one of his recent comments: “Expect more violence before America returns to sanity.” I hope more violence can be avoided. Hot or cold wars are the worst thing now as truly bright global citizens are trying to address much more important issues to avoid long-term disaster and the end to civilization and mankind as we know it – first and foremost things such as climate change and the rapid exhaustion of natural resources that do not belong to this but to future generations.

We all know the golden rule for people and states to avoid war: si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war). Today we should turn that on its head, in line with Sun Tzu’s advice: if you are at war, prepare for peace. It is about time that Europe’s politicians start doing that. I have no hope that America’s politicians will ever do that. We can only hope the Republicans take US Congress again in November’s mid-term elections and that we will see a bit more of a lame duck government in the US. That would be good for the world.

However, even that we cannot hope for: the praise of Republicans for Pelosi’s rash visit to Taiwan – which triggered this new Cold War with China – and the fact that both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly vote for further increases of US military expenditure and more arms shipments to Ukraine confirms US politicians are all on the same line when it comes to warmongering and creating new enemies. As such, they have – what irony of history – much in common with what is currently providing legitimacy for Mr. Putin: a rather recent survey (May-June) finds that over 75% of Russians now support Putin’s Ukraine war. That is an increase as compared to when the war started. I have no doubt the economic sanctions were very counterproductive in that way. The new sanctions, which target people-to-people exchanges such as tourism, will only cause further alienation, and a further increase in the above-mentioned numbers. If, as Mr. Biden did not imply just once but several times already, American support to Ukraine would also aim at some kind of regime change in Russia, what he and loyal allies are doing is producing exactly the opposite effect.

Post scriptum: We do need a new peace movement in Europe. I have read both Oppenheimer’s excellent biography (American Prometheus) as well as General Groves’ account of the Manhattan project (Now It Can Be Told: The Story Of The Manhattan Project), so what recently declassified reports on the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (6 and 9 August 1945 – yes, another sad anniversary this month) reveal does not come as a surprise. Oppenheimer – after having turned into a anti-nuclear weapons activist (with other eminent scientists such as Einstein) – died a miserable death as a victim of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

General Groves received a Distinguished Service Medal and went into business, becoming part of what Eisenhower, in his rather alarming farewell address as President to the nation, referred to as the military-industrial establishment. A lot of old people start speaking up. One of them is the 82-year old Australian journalist, writer, scholar, and documentary filmmaker John Pilger. I warmly recommend watching his latest contributions to the debate. Yes: Yankee, please go home. And please take the nuclear weapons that have been stationed in Europe for too long now with you. :-/

We have anti-war and anti-US protests in Korea now as the US are about to launch their own military exercises close to China now. Where is the peace movement in Europe?

The old new world order

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The current Taiwan Street crisis is not the first tense moment in the history of China’s difficult relations with the US. However, previous crises were triggered by China: this is is the first time that such crisis was triggered by the US. That is a fact, and it is what leaves observers like me totally baffled. Why? Why now? Regardless of whether or not Ms. Pelosi’s visit was coordinated with Mr. Biden and the US foreign affairs and security establishment, it is a fact that it trashed all credibility of the United States as a predictable and reliable partner for peace and stability in Asia.

With a war against Russia in our backyard (I am a Belgian living and working in Brussels) and the US acting irresponsibly in Asia (barely recovering from its disastrous 21st century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and plenty of lesser adventures in Africa and elsewhere in their self-declared war on terrorism), Europeans are left wondering what will be next. Optimist hawks point to the new relevance of NATO with the joining of previously neutral Sweden and Finland. I am not so optimistic. Two points may be made here:

1. Such NATO expansion confirms Russia’s worst existential fears: NATO is not about coexistence with Russia (or China) but about further expansion of a US-led block that refuses to accept the fact that the world has, de facto, become multipolar: one world, many cultures, different political systems. Unlike China, the West refuses to move beyond ideology and focus on peaceful coexistence and work towards “the greatest good for the greatest number.” I am quoting the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham here. I am doing so very consciously: when talking liberal ideologies or democratic values and all that, it is always useful to go back to the original liberal and utilitarian views that inspired our societies rather than refer to some kind of new variant of it (think of the American Dream or other modern rephrasing of the values of democracy and freedom).

2. Ukraine no longer needs NATO. NATO is irrelevant: it is mainly the US that is providing the sophisticated multi-billion dollar weapon systems that Ukraine has been asking for. The Ukrainian Army is now one of the most powerful armies in the world (much behind the US but probably at par with European countries such as Germany, France and the UK). That is not because of European support, which is counted not in billions but in millions. That is also not because of NATO support (there is none). It is because the US decided to just take over. After its pull-out from Afghanistan, it is rather convenient to have the old enemy back again: Russia.

And now China is back as the number one enemy well. Good old bad China. And good old bad Russia. The war on terror became a bit difficult to defend domestically anyway. So we are back to the future. Or back to the past: a new Cold War with supposedly communist and dictatorial regimes that supposedly threaten our lifestyle, culture and freedom.

There are a few differences, however. Back in 1989, when the Tiananmen protests were suppressed and led to a profound restructuring of China’s economic and political system, China’s population was the largest in the world (as it is now, even if India, which did not manage to make the demographic transition, will soon have even more people to feed than China), but its gross domestic product (GDP) was only the world’s ninth largest. China’s GDP is now commensurate with its population: measured in purchasing power parity terms, it is now the largest economy in the world.  

A somewhat more relevant difference is that trust in the US acting as a benevolent protector of world peace and stability has been eroded. I do not have any statistics on this but I would not be surprised if confidence levels would now resemble those of Americans themselves: a 2021 Reuters-Oxford study shows less than 30% of US citizens trust what they are being told by their own media outlets. I quote: “The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released [last year] found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. Finland leads at 65%.” Now that I look at it again, I see that the 2022 report is out. There is no improvement: “Only 26% of Americans trust news generally.” That is a 3-point decrease and still the lowest figure in the sample. If US citizens do not trust their own government and/or media, why would we?

I am not a China expert but, from what I read and know about the political system in China (and from discussions with Chinese friends here in Brussels), I have more trust in China’s one-party democracy than in the two-party cut-throat system in the US. Just for the record and to be clear on where I stand here: I do not have such trust in Russia’s political system: President Putin must end the war and Russia’s political system will have to change and evolve with the times. I am not talking regime change here: I am just talking plain sensible domestic reforms, just like what China does. Putin has got what he wanted: a large land corridor to the Black Sea which, yes, is vital to Russia’s interests (historically speaking, the Crimea is Russian). So, yes, now it is time for Mr. Putin to back off and for both sides to cut a painful but acceptable deal ending the killing and suffering.

I had hoped Mr. Biden and Mr. Jinpeng would have worked together to jointly convince Mr. Putin of such point of view, broker some armistice and freeze the conflict so as to stabilize Russia’s economy and stop hurting citizens on either side, but Ms. Pelosi’s unannounced and totally random visit to Taipei dashed all hopes in that regard. One can only conclude that Uncle Sam loves and hates the good old bad Russians so much that he is happy to be at war with them again. So where are we headed, then?

1. As mentioned above, as a European, you may think that NATO is relevant again and that our governments doubling defense spending will make things better but that is a mirage (meaning: an optical illusion). NATO is irrelevant. Us buying more guns or having more nuclear-tipped missiles on our soil makes zero difference in terms of posture or possible deterrence of any security threat that may or may not be out there.

2. The largest threats to world peace and security now are, without doubt, flashpoints in Asia. Such threats range from Iran over Pakistan and India (tensions between those two countries can also not be analyzed without taking China into account) all the way to the Pacific Ocean with, yes, the Taiwan Strait and North Korea as the most ‘clear and present danger’ to peace and stability in Asia.

I am not worried about these threats. To be blunt: they are none of our business. They may have been our business 30 years ago, back in the old days of this Cold War between East and West. Today, we are well into the 21st century and that is a entirely new era in which we should just tag along with whatever happens around us. To be extremely blunt and very clear on where I stand on this: there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why we Europeans would want to be dragged into the next war which, as outlined above, is likely to be in Asia. For example, why would we or our sons want to get killed in the defense of, say, Taiwan against a Chinese invasion? We only need Taiwan’s microchips, right? Why would we care if those are produced in China or in Taiwan or in some kind of new Greater China? Also, South Korea is well equipped to deal with a conventional challenge from the North. No reason for us to get involved.

Having said that, wars always have a tendency of spiralling out of control and that is why we should be worried. We can, therefore, only hope that China will effectively maintain the status quo and continue its long-held goals of peaceful coexistence – as it did when Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony and went back to the mainland as per the terms of the 1898 lease agreement between what was then Qing China and the United Kingdom (one country, two systems).

So what role is there for Europe and the US then? There is none. In my previous post, I wrote this: “It is about time that China, Korea and Japan find the peace they never had – still mourning the injustices of the second world war – a war that was not theirs to choose. This Taiwan crisis makes it clear that the US has outplayed its role in the East. The Europeans remain powerless in the middle (but Europe has plenty of brains and true multiculturality to offer). Peace in Asia will be peace for the world – and the only nations that can bring it to Asia are Asian countries.”

Two friends of mine (one Korean, one Belgian) told me such view is naive. So be it. I tell my kids not to worry about war in Africa or Asia. In contrast, war in Europe – as we have now – is an obvious worry, but dropping more and more multi-billion arms packages in there and refusing to talk to Russia (and China) – as the US Secretary of State did when he had a golden chance to talk to his Russian and Chinese counterparts but did not grasp it two days ago (at the occasion of the East Asia Summit) – is not a great way of starting to deal with it.

[I am polite and phrasing this very euphemistically. Think about it honestly: who was/is not talking to whom here? Also, if Ms. Pelosi would be serious about peace and democracy in Asia and, perhaps, want to talk about things she does not like about China, then why did she not want to see Xi Jinpeng himself and/or his much beloved (in China, that is) wife Peng Liyuan while flying around in the region there? Knowing a thing or two about protocol and hospitality in Asia, I am sure she would have been well received. Anyone who knows Asia, knows how important it is to respect protocol and, surely, how to avoid a loss of face, which is exactly what she caused: a loss of face for China. This is not going to be fixed or pardoned any time soon. Diplomacy is wasted now.]

In short, yes, it is back to the future, with one big difference: we should not trust the US to defend our interests anymore. We should do that ourselves. And we can do that by staying clear from irking large and powerful nations such as China and Russia: let them run their country the way they see fit. Let us accept to live in this multipolar but largely peaceful world and accept diversity: many cultures, different systems of governance, and all the richness that comes with it. We do not need a global cop. Especially not a global cop that keeps repeating the same line over and over again: “You are either with us or against us.” It may be a military principle (not part of Sun Tzu’s rather successful Art of War principles, however), but politics – national or international – simply do not work that way. We can self-regulate based on well-established international rules: territorial integrity, non-interference in domestic affairs, no extrajudicial killings in foreign lands, etcetera. Global cowboys have no place in such system. If the US would want to be constructive, it could, possibly, lead the way if it wants to by, for example, bringing its own defense budget closer to the NATO average rather than us ramping it up.

[…] Hey ! I like that idea ! That is a nice compromise to offer to the US telling us to arm up, isn’t it? We go up if you come down ! I really like that idea. It would make us feel safer. It would also make NATO look more like a true alliance. Consider this: when the US went to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, they just dragged all NATO countries with them. It was qualified and justified as an ‘out of area’ NATO operation with, of course, most of the command and control done by the US. The NATO Council members were bullied into it and justified it legally to the taxpayers and other audiences by a reference to the war on terrorism which, as far as I know, has no real legal basis from an international law point of view. But that was it. I was there too for my own country (Belgium) and it was all very interesting. But so now we have a real war much closer to Brussels or Berlin or Paris and London but NATO shits in its pants and leaves the war to international volunteers and, yes, the US.

I went to Ukraine too, by the way. Unofficially, this time around. And only very briefly, back in March. As a volunteer fighter. Yes. Watch this newsreel if you do not believe me: I am featured in it, shortly after we went underground after a Russian missile strike on our training basis. I could see all those guns coming in after a month or so, plus a lot of other people who were either more naive or – the opposite – much more useful than me, and so I decided to come back home. Not because I got scared (I stayed much longer than others) but because I was not needed: there were enough guns coming in and, yes, more than enough other volunteers who, unlike me (I was just a diplomat in Afghanistan doing civ-mil cooperation as Belgium’s chargé d’affaires), had real combat experience and better reasons to not like the Russians. I think of the many Georgians joining the Legion, for example. And, yes, many crazy Americans with no knowledge of the law of war and no respect whatsoever for the enemy (they found it strange, for example, when I would remind them of the fact that Russian soldiers were also fathers or sons and were not at the front because they wanted to be at the front – unlike them trigger-happy American volunteers). :-/

OK. Let me get back to the point instead of talking personal stories. The point is this: if the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a clear and present danger but NATO does not want to get involved because it got cold feet after the failure of the Afghanistan operation (what were we doing there, anyway?), then what is the use of NATO? It is a bit hard to not conclude that it currently just serves as some kind of collective market for buying US defense equipment, right? That is another reason why I am against a rise in defense spending:

1. It does not make us safer (see above).

2. I do not think European taxpayer money should be used to enrich the shareholders of US defense companies and further strengthen what the great American general Eisenhower and then US President warned his own countrymen for back in 1961: the growing military-industrial complex and its influence on politics.

It is now clear that Eisenhower’s nightmare has become true: the US military-industrial complex is now a fully-fledged military-industrial-political complex. Democrats or Republicans make no difference any more, as evidenced from the GOP praise for Ms. Pelosi’s brinkmanship. All leading US politicians are anti-China and, therefore, there is little hope either of the two parties will contribute much to peace and stability in Asia. If, as is very likely judging from the polls, we will see a lame duck government in the US after the November elections (when Republicans are likely to take over US Congress), Republicans and Democrats are likely to agree on the following: keep increasing the already enormous US Defense budget, keep pestering China, keep the war in Ukraine going and, possibly, send troops to other flashpoints (there is plenty of choice in Africa, and no one really cares about that continent anyway – except for China, perhaps).

Does this sound arrogant? Probably. Most probably. Plain arrogant. You are right. However, having survived a suicide attack, multiple RPG barrages, cross-fire, and other hazards in Afghanistan as well as, more recently, a missile strike in Ukraine as part of the volunteer International Legion in Ukraine (that strike made hundreds of casualties but I was lucky, again), I think I have the right to speak up and repeat the core message of my previous post: Yankee, please go home. You are not helpful when it comes to avoiding, preventing, or mitigating conflicts, and you are surely not very helpful when it comes to trying to broker compromise and end conflict.

Yes, your army is more powerful than all other armies combined and does easily ‘win’ wars in true Blitzkrieg style (‘shock and awe’ tactics as you call it). However, you have demonstrated that you never ever win the peace that should necessarily follow. The Cold War was followed by a very cold peace, and now you have turned back into another Cold War. Worse, proxy wars have given way to a real war with Russia. Its start was Russia’s mistake, for sure. But the multi-billion dollar equipment packages and the trainers that come with it do not help in bringing it to an end. That requires hard-nosed diplomacy, and the Pelosi visit shows you do not want to use that. So please stay away then and stop fueling fires. Surely avoid starting new fires. It is simply too hot right now. Also, one of the many Afghan sayings I learned from my 12 years there (7 years permanently and 5 years on and off) is this: jangal ke dar gereft, khushk o tar mesoza. Literally translated it means this: “If a forest catches fire, both the dry and the wet will burn up.” We Europeans really do not want any forest to burn. Forest fires are hard to control. :-/

On climate change and global warming

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The flash floods in Uttarakhand (and in other areas of the Himalayas – but the burst of a glacial lake made things worse in Uttarakhand) and the increasing number of freak weather phenomena in Europe and the US (such as Europe’s extraordinary cold spell this year, or this year’s record number of hurricanes in the US) have given the issue of global warming a prominence which it did not enjoy before. While that is good in itself, I do not expect it to have any real impact on international and national policies. As one expert puts it: “At its root, global warming is the product of the decisions and behavior of 6.5 billion human beings.” While this expert (his name is Anthony Leiserowitz), after having stated this obvious fact, then passionately makes the case for some kind of New World Order, I think it is entirely unrealistic to expect these decisions and behavior to change over the next decades.

While I was travelling from Nepal to Belgium a few days ago (do politicians sincerely believe that a tax on aviation emissions – the IPCC has estimated that aviation is responsible for around 3.5% of anthropogenic climate change – will change the travel plans of people like me – or you?), I had a pleasant conversation with a representative of a major European lamp producer (yes, lamps: the bulbs you are using to light your house). He just came back from a visit to a factory in Chandigarh, India, to which his company had outsourced the production of their energy-saving light bulbs. The man obviously liked his job – a quality which I greatly admire: because a job is so important in one’s life, I think one should really be passionate about it. That being said, the economist in me quickly grasped the irony: we, in Europe, are now saving energy by using energy-saving light bulbs produced in an Indian sweatshop. What’s the energy saved here – if we’re looking at it from a global perspective?

This is obviously only possible because the costs of international transportation have come down so much, and because markets have effectively become world markets. Even labor has become an international commodity now, as anyone who has traveled through a Middle Eastern airport will have noticed: these airports would not be there if it weren’t for the cheap Asian workers they are exploiting – people who are separated for their country and family for at least a year or even more.

I should write a separate post on this but it is clear there are societal costs to the increased international mobility of labor at both ends: domestically we lose jobs and suffer high unemployment – a key ingredient of social malaise – while the temporary or permanent immigrants do earn good money but struggle with integration and other psychological issues and – in the majority of cases – also leave a gap in the social fabric back home (as I live in Nepal, I could tell more than one story about this – but then this post would be way too long). But, again, humanity – despite all of the forms of collective action it is capable of – will not reverse globalization: it does not want to – and even if wanted to, it can’t.

Indeed, the trends we have observed since the end of the second World War will not change. The costs of international transportation will continue to decrease (and, if they would increase – because of rising energy prices or because of some kind of international tax (no, don’t think about it) – they will not increase significantly) and markets – for products, for capital and, importantly, for labor – will become more, not less, integrated. More importantly, no international deliberations will be able to request or force developing countries to not become developed: cities like Mumbai or Kathmandu (or Kabul, if you want a more outlandish example of a burgeoning urban area) will continue to grow, and the ‘middle class’ in all of Asia’s and Africa’s countries will continue to grow and want what they want: a refrigerator, a TV, and a motorbike (or, better, a little car). That will continue to fuel global warming.

European or American politicians are utterly unable to do anything about this. So, yes, the ice sheets covering the Antarctic and Greenland, and the Arctic sea ice, will continue to melt. And, yes, many island nations (the Maldives, the Kiribati islands, the Seychelles,…) and even some nations (Bangladesh – and large parts of Holland!) are under threat. And, yes, there will be more disasters like the ‘Himalayan tsunami’ of June this year (which killed thousands), or like the tornadoes in the US (which killed dozens), or like the floods in Central Europe – which damaged thousands of homes.

Global warming and its consequences are here already – and it’s only going to get worse. As usual, some will be more affected than others. But history has never been equitable – and humanity has never been able to change its course. We will soon be 7 billion. It will only get worse.