On Sunday 01 Feb 2009 2:33:37 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Sterling was claiming that the Westphalian System was (i) a form of > consensus reality that (ii) could cause global disruption if it unravelled. > > <q> > Let's consider seven other massive reservoirs of potential popular > dread. Any one of these could erupt, shattering the fragile social > compact we maintain with one another in order to believe things contrary > to fact. > </q> > > Do you disagree? Why? And what, exactly, is "getting better" in 2009?
It's my pleasure to address these questions: First the Prelude: a little history.. The Westphalian system sorted Christianity out good and proper and squeezed out the juice of secularism from the Christian states of Europe. These Christian states then had the reformation and the blossoming of science as we know it followed by the technological and military power to dominate the world. That ability to dominate set the stage for exploration, "discovery" and colonial occupation of much of the world. With the world having been colonized, dominated and old empires (such as the Islamic Caliphate) "defeated", religion was considered passe as a reason for conflict and the dominant (European) powers of the "world" (dominant powers) set about fighting a series of "secular" wars that got bigger and bigger until the world saw "World War 1" (Which was a "world" war only in name) World War 2, and the Cold war. In this secular phase of world history, Islam was still there, still unreformed and considered to be "defeated". The division of Bengal in 1905 was one attempt to maintain domination over restive colonies by creating two smaller states out of a larger state on the basis of religion - one state being predominantly Islamic and the other not. This was a prelude to a bigger partition in which Pakistan was created in an act of political sleight-of-hand that threw all Westphalian secular, democratic norms to the winds, but created geographical entities that were given honorable status as "nation state". This happened in 1947. It is not something new that is happening in 2009. Now let me come to the juicy bit and explain how Bruce Sterling is an underinformed and naive gringo American Afghanistan was a fairly stable monarchy until 1973. A coup in 1973 set the stage of making it a nation state on Westphalian lines, with the encouragement of secularism and womens' education and other signs of modernity. The Soviet Union was called into help, but this secularism was unpopular. These two factors, namely 1) Unpopularity of secular reform and 2) The presence of the Soviet Union got the US involved. The US did everything possible to support a military dictatorship and Islamic extremism in Pakistan in order to force Islamic extremism on previously stable Afghanistan in order to defeat the Soviet Union. The US even stood by while nuclear bomb designs were given to Pakistan. What we are seeing now is not some accidental failure of the Westphalian system, but the results of deliberate acts of bending the system in the first place to create a religion based state called Pakistan, and then using that state as a launching point to destroy a nascent Westphalian state in Afghanistan just to spite communism. Bruce Sterling appears to have no more information about Afghanistan or the region than Dubya gave him and fails to mention the key player in the region that is holding superpower America (and for that matter India) by the balls and squeezing them - Pakistan. With Bruce, ignorance is not a problem. The real problem is when the same ignorance soaks the entire governmental apparatus of the United States of America. What's getting better in 2009? The US is showing signs of understanding what's up - with even cold warrior Madeline Halfbright making the right noises. That may not nean much, but its a start. shiv
