The return of geo-politics

China makes little pretence about what it is up to as it makes new connections with the undeveloped world, especially Africa.

In a highly significant diplomatic cum trade initiative, China hosted two major summits last year - the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which involved leaders from nations with about half the world’s population, and another involving 48 African nations.

Some of these countries are led by international pariahs like Robert Mugabe, but unlike the West, China will deal with anyone to ensure its material needs.

Nobody seriously doubts that Peak Oil (the point where as much oil as has been produced is available in reserves) is at hand, that oil will become ever more scarce and that prices will rise steeply. The oil companies know it and governments know it.

Oil is not only the lifeblood of modern industrial societies, it is also the essential necessity of military force. The US military machine is the single largest user of oil in the world, and all armies, air forces and navies run on it.

We have recent experience of how disastrous global resource wars can be: World War II was largely about resources, and specifically oil - the Allies basically won by starving Germany and Japan of oil.

No one seriously doubts that oil security is behind the American move into the Gulf, the American bases in the ex-Soviet Stans, or the sudden interest by Washington in oil-rich regions of Africa. However, the US is in direct competition with booming China, rich Europe and Japan, newly assertive Russia, and a gaggle of other more or less developed nations, including fast-growing India.

This is not the “all boats are raised by the rising tide” situation of globalisation, but closer to old style naked imperial competition.

This already tricky situation is compounded by the growing realisation that global warming is indeed serious and imminent. There are currently no serious attempts to deal with the problem, and no signs that anything is about to happen. In fact, the rapid rise of China and India, and the determination of the rich world to maintain its privileged position suggest that the problem will not be resolved by some decisive collective action.

There is no sign that the developed nations will pay any price or that the developing nations will forgo economic development to in order to curtail the worst of global warming.

So all of a sudden it’s back to the all-against-all jungle of the late 19th century, a predicament that was eventually resolved by two world wars. And in those days there was not an environmental crisis looming.

With each model from the climatologists looking worse than the last, with world order falling apart just as nuclear weapons proliferation is growing (as I write, reports are circulating that Israel is preparing to launch a nuclear attack on Iran to prevent that country from developing nuclear weapons: as soon as any nuclear power uses such weapons on a non-nuclear power, any genuine attempts to head off a global nuclear arms race will be over) and the global economy looking ever more shaky, “crisis” is almost too tame a word.

There is of course only one solution: effective global governance, with a real commitment to cultural diversity and economic fairness to neutralise violence and ensure collaboration. And a decision-making process that values the evidence from scientists over the wishes of economists.

But of course, such a thing would require a new kind of politics in the rich countries where this project would have to originate, because only these countries have the necessary resources. And such a transformation would necessarily rest on informed and open debate involving a decent proportion of the world’s population.

Globalisation was never as great as it was cracked up to be, but the preceding age of geo-politics was absolutely fraught with danger. Any return to such a condition, in an age when the real problems are now inherently global, would likely signal the death for civilisation itself on this pretty blue planet.