In search of a fairytale

Nine years back, a sultry Tuesday morning in September forcibly became the hallmark of a new generation, similar to the way the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo became a hallmark for a previous generation a hundred odd years before. Fast-forward. Almost half a century after the debut of the charismatic John F Kennedy, the cameras click and the lights flash as the first black man in the history of the United States is sworn into office, and the great-grandson of slaves gracefully moves to occupy a house once built by them. And as President Obama steps onto the podium, and into the role of a lifetime, the prevalent balance of power in the international system and the fate of US hegemony rests in the hands of one man who comes bearing a four-letter words called ‘Hope’, a philanthropic beacon for millions of wanderers in search of a new world order. Fighting against him: the rise of China, the new regional super-hubs forming in India and Brazil, and fermenting alliances within the EU, all signal the end of an era, and the beginning of a dark, intangible future.

But ruts are easy to fall into. Awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was, for humanity, presumably the result of a deep crisis of faith; burial grounds in Baghdad, Kabul and Gaza are a haunting indication that the human civilization is well in the midst of civil turmoil. History, fortunately or unfortunately, is not a fairytale. This may well be because it shame-facedly chooses to repeat itself. The battle between Washington and the Taliban, as predicted to the hilt in Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, bears the same traces of the antagonism between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War years, Britain and the Axis Powers during the First World War, and Napoleon and his European counterparts after the French Revolution. War is very much an intrinsic part of human life. To detract the concept of anarchy from the structure of the international society would be to mitigate the realist foundations laid down by Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes. The Cold War years epitomized a clash of ideology and sentiment which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even after Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union, turbulent hotspots still dot the globe with alarming propensity. The 2008 Mumbai attacks brought sharp focus onto the subcontinent and the nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. Elsewhere North Korea and Iran dangerously dance with the potent threat of nuclear proliferation, Washington’s worst nightmare. Elsewhere, crises manifest themselves in different guises. The new millennium brings with it the issues of climate change, human rights violations, the drug trade, and international terrorism, all perpetuated by an increasingly globalized international community. The outbreak of H1N1 is a small example of the increased need for heightened global governance and the requirement for stringent attention to the interplay between states for the wellbeing of their citizens – 2 billion people stretching from Buenos Aries to Melbourne were estimated to be potentially affected by the global pandemic.

More importantly, with the advent of the new millennium has arrived of age a new voting generation, the grandchildren of the veterans who witnessed the Blitzkrieg, Guernica and the Holocaust, and the great-grandchildren of those who saw the dissolution of the mighty empires, the emergence of a new arms race, and the forging of a body they called the League of Nations. Since then there have been strides in all fields, and yet failings in others. Apartheid has been dismantled in South Africa, but Tibetans still clamor for justice in their battle for sovereignty against China. The 640km long separation wall that zigzags through Jerusalem and Palestinian territory, running through stony fields and olive terraces is easily a modern day descendent of the Berlin Wall that truculently scarred the face of Germany during the height of the Cold War years, and triggered such international crises such as the Berlin Blockade, the subsequent airlift, and the cementing of the Iron Curtain. Some would argue that Republican dogma has made Guantanamo but a lucid ghost of Nazi concentration camps. What was once a swastika on a public banner in a Polish village is now a cartoon caricature in a Danish newspaper: sensibilities are as vulnerable as ever to the capricious follies of history’s pen. Interestingly, the media has developed into perhaps the most powerful, lethal weapon on the planet. Leaked intelligence reports, scandals made public, all make Nixon’s Watergate seem like child’s play. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth etc were designed to sway the masses. These were countered by slogans of “Drill baby drill” which cost the Republican Party a third term in the White House. Never before have Sky, CNN, Fox, BBC and Al-Jazeera been frontlines of communicative warfare like this; as a result the generation of today is more privy to international conflict than would have been imaginable a hundred years ago. Call it the YouTube generation. Call it the Copenhagen generation. Call it what you will. A generation in search of solutions and commitments, and leadership truly worthy of our support. For students of history, Churchill, Kennedy and Mandela are the stuff that legends are made of. Skimming though the ink-sodden pages of world affairs, however, one finds little solace in the rest of the characters. The millions of dollars pumped from the US treasury into hunting down Baitullah Mehsud is a resounding indication that the rules of the game are as political as ever. Asymmetrical warfare now dictates the strategies employed by anarchist counsels the world over. In an ideal world one would see the coming together of Hugo Chavez and Hilary Clinton to discuss topics of mutual interest, with co-relation breeding cooperation. Unfortunately forging a fairytale out of the rubble will require looking beyond the follies of mistrust and subterfuge. Looking at Washington, we ask ourselves, is this the making of a hero, of change, of revolution? History so far has been unkind. But then again it is the juxtaposition of conflict and compromise that truly defines history today as the grey area between right and wrong, the hangman’s chamber and the hero’s promenade.

By Fahd Humayun