Teetering On The Edge

Do I really want you to feel badly as we approach the holidays and the New Year? Shouldn’t I tell you about the brave new future awaiting all of us? Goldarn it! Just can’t!

Do you feel it? I think I do, and it feels really scary! Will we continue to make progress as an international society, united in actions that benefit all nations, all people? Or will we descend toward a survival of the fittest, (strongest?) world regime? Only with all of us working together can we tackle the big questions, finding the answers that will be more likely to enable humans to survive on this planet.

What are the signs and symptoms of the challenges we currently face, the indications that the road we are taking point to bad choices?

Where did we come from to get to here?

After World War II, in 1945, U.S. leaders, using the enormous military power they had amassed with their Allies, encouraged the founding of international bodies to tackle issues that could only be handled effectively on a multi-national basis. Institutions like the U.N, the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.), the General Agreement On Tariffs And Trade (G.A.T.T.), the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), were set up. The U.S. surrendered some elements of national sovereignty to these bodies, (to encourage other nations to do the same,) and played a disproportionate role in their financing.

They did this, surrendering short term national interests, to reap the enormous benefits to be derived from peaceful mechanisms to settle conflicts, freer trade, the productive resolution of financial crises through international lending and such funding of international development, not to mention international measures to cope with epidemics that now know international boundaries.

The whole world, as well as the U.S., did reap enormous benefits from these institutions. None of them worked as well as their founders envisaged, but the benefits were substantial in terms of avoiding global wars, improved economic conditions for many, mechanisms to better cope with spreading disease, and the rationalization of trade. Democracies were established in many countries replacing despotism, and international military intervention rolled back some instances of aggression. Other instances were discouraged by such actions.

Goods and services were being provided from sources where they were cheapest. Countries tended to concentrate on producing products where they had an economic advantage in the marketplace. International shipping mechanisms responded so that inventories of all manner of products in consuming countries were reduced to a minimum. All the world began working on the “just in time”, (replenishments arriving just as the last of stored supplies were be shipped to market,) system that minimized storage costs, system costs and consumer costs.

Today we are seeing some of these gains rolled back. The U.S. of that day no longer exists and the world knows that reality. It no longer stands as a guarantor of peace at any cost. The system when pure economic advantage dictating where products are being produced is also breaking down because some countries are blocking product movements for strategic reasons. If countries can no longer count on economics dictating product movement, the system breaks down. They will secure domestic production regardless of economics. That is what is happening now.

Countries are beginning to worry about being vulnerable, that unhampered access to strategic commodities might be subject to economic blackmail. Or that they might face actual shortages of commodities necessary to the normal performance of their economic functioning. Some are rushing to establish domestic capabilities even at higher costs as insurance.

Russia’s recent action, using oil and grain as weapons of policy persuasion, and the impact of its aggression in Europe, threatens the economic basis of international trade. Just-in- time shipping regimes have broken down, leading to shortages, rising costs and prices, and a drive toward domestic production of goods even at a higher cost. Foreign companies in China face unusual limits on their freedom, and often, an insistence on technology transfers.

China is insisting on only using a poorly performing domestic vaccine rather than buying the best abroad out of national pride, at the cost of the lives of their citizens. China prefers to use a shutdown of substantial segments of their economy, now the second largest in the world, to fight the pandemic. This has had world-wide product supply repercussions, affecting the prices of the goods involved. Russian aggression in the Ukraine, and sanctions associated with that, has affected world food supplies, and both these developments have caused skyrocketing prices for industrial products, food, and energy. World confidence in the reliability of trading practices built over many years has been destroyed.

All over the world countries are accelerating the development of crucial manufacture and the supply of strategic products and substances within their own borders regardless of cost. These actions can only aggravate the climate impact of human industrial activity.

We are seeing a proliferation of political acts that are anti-democratic around the world. The weakening of American democracy, the support which a person-centered Donald Trump, and the lies he has told, have garnered from the American public, the current divided nature of that country, have destroyed the confidence the world has had that the U.S stood as a bold guarantor of world democracy. Historically, the U.S. government recognized its overwhelming national interest in that. With the failure of the U.N to perform that role, we have relied on American leadership to fill that gap. The U.S. government had in the past shown itself willing to do that even at a cost in American blood and treasure. It is evident that that willingness is no longer there. This, in fact, began in the Obama presidency.

There is no substitute for the presence of an effective world regime if we are to tackle problems of every kind that can only be dealt with effectively on a world scale. Some of the advances the world has made in the last seventy-five years are now being rolled back. America’s lukewarm response to the leadership challenges we face is symptomatic. The threat we face from world climate change that we have created will inevitably be aggravated by the pause in our efforts that will be forced on us consequent on current events.

We continue teetering on the edge, and things are now worse than they have been.