Book Review

A Threat to World Peace?

In private life we say money makes you wealthy, not happy. Translated into the political life of nations, this means: wealth makes you powerful, but not necessarily peaceful.

The man I had a chance to observe during his visit to New York last September was living proof. His country is beautiful and wealthy. Its businesses have tightly woven relationships with trading partners the world over. Its economy has grown twice as fast as the US economy for a number of years, and its young people are motivated and well educated. But the man who represents this beautiful and wealthy country is aggressive to the core.

He stood at the podium in front of the UN General Assembly in New York, the collar of his white shirt open, his black hair freshly parted. Heared at close distance, his voice sounded soft, almost silky.

A Living Example

But these external features were deceptive. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was there to provoke, especially to provoke the West. The sentences he was hurling at his audience were as fiery as they were calculated. He said the countries that claim to be the greatest champions of human rights are in fact the worst violator of those same rights. He told the delegates that he was pleased to see that many nations are resisting this aggressor. Of course, he was referring to the United States. The world’s major powers, he said, are incapable of solving the problems of today. A day earlier, in an appearance at Columbia University, he questioned the mass murder of six million Jews during World Ward II. When asked about his government’s harsh treatment of homosexuals, Ahmadinejad said: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

The man wouldn’t be worth our effort if he were a savage among civilized people. But he is in fact a crackpot among the naive. Indeed, the most surprising thing about his speech was the resounding applause at the end. His gaze traveled across the main United Nations assembly hall until it had reached the visitors’ section, where I was sitting. I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. Everyone around me was clapping: men in suits, women in business attire, young people and somewhat older men were celebrating the man who wants to wipe Israel off the map, as he had announced in one of his earlier hate-filled speeches.

I should note that no one in the visitors’ section was wearing a headscarf, a turban, or a Palestinian scarf. My fellow human beings have rarely been as foreign to me as they were in that moment. The most generous interpretation is that many in the audience simply wanted to show their respect to the guest speaker. Or perhaps many simply lacked the imagination to realise that actions can follow words, and that the current era of relative peace could be nothing but an interlude on the road to the next war.

It is a common misconception that intensive trade and close economic cooperation make the world a more peaceful place. The captains of industry believe this, as do many politicians. And it is no less a misconception when great thinkers fall prey to it. John Stuart Mill, the famous economic theorist, once said, “The great extent and rapid increase of international trade are principal guarantees of the peace of the world.” In 1910, Sir Norman Angell, who would later become the publisher of Foreign Affairs, even said that a war between the major powers had become unthinkable, because of the “complete economic senselessness of conquests.” World War I began four years later. Within months, previously close trading partners became bitter enemies, trading nothing but cannonballs and bombs, and eventually dumping phosgene and mustard gas on one another’s heads.

A Lesson Learnt?

Did the nations of the world learn any lessons from the experience? There is good reason to believe that they did not. Economic relations had barely normalised after the war before the losing power, Germany, began instigating the next conflict. The Japanese, following Hitler’s example, also reckoned that war was the best way to rake in a handsome profit. On the morning of December 7, 1941, they launched an aerial bombardment of the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Instead of the usual oil shipments, the United States returned the favor by dropping two atom bombs on Japan. If there were a lesson to be learned, then it would be this: when war approaches, merchants are forced into the passenger seat while politicians and military men take the wheel.

Today’s globalisation of our economies is also not a work of peace. It can produce wealth and well-mannered political interaction, but it also achieve precisely the opposite effect—and with great force. The world is home to more than Ahmadinejad. And there is a relationship between wealth and the eagerness to go to war, one that many overlook.

For national governments, the world’s economic interdependence is primarily an opportunity to increase power and wealth. Although peace creates trade, the reverse does not apply. Trade is no guarantee of peace among states, nor does globalisation establish some pacifistic international order. As difficult as it is for economists the world over to accept, human beings are driven by motives both more exalted and lowly than engaging in trade. When interests change, so does the flow of goods. The prospect of a nation’s trade being interrupted for a period of time has never stopped it from going to war with others.

Two seemingly contradictory sets of circumstances come to mind. The world’s economies have never been as interdependent as they are today. The volume of world trade has grown twenty-five fold in the last 100 years. Yet these surging flows of goods and wealth are making the world more dangerous, not more peaceful. In fact, in many ways accelerated globalisation even increases tensions in the world because it heightens inequality, both within and between nations.

A threat to world peace is unlikely to come from Africa.

Excerpt from 'The War for Wealth' by Gabor Steingart. Published by Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited.