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| Globalisation, its contents and discontents | |
| Kanika Datta / New Delhi December 03, 2008, 0:52 IST | |
 Chris Patten has been able to study the world from a unique vantage as politician, bureaucrat and academic. Best known as the last governor of the United Kingdom's last colony Hong Kong, and later European Commissioner for external relations, Patten evolved into something of a maverick within the Conservative Party, stoutly criticising its “little England” outlook and more radical economic policies. His earlier book Not Quite the Diplomat: Home Truths about World Affairs was largely devoted to explaining why the traditional Conservative worldview may be out of synch with reality.
Written with a light hand, that 2005 publication proved an entertaining and sensible exposition of the realities and challenges of globalisation, which earned him good reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. For subscribers to the liberal view Patten comes across as a rational globaliser.
Preaching successfully to the converted is one thing. The question is whether Patten can convince the doubters. This, no doubt, is the intention of What Next: Surviving the Twentieth Century, a weightier tome both in tone and pagination.
Patten said one of the motives for writing the book was the “consternation and occasional rage” with the policies “George Bush pursued from 2000 to 2004”. In a sense, he’s been overtaken by events; Barack Obama’s election can almost guarantee a reversal of the Bush era, though whether this presidency will result in the kinder, gentler world that liberal opinion craves is to be seen.
Patten has not shied away from tackling all the big, troublesome issues of the day— from global warming, to drug trafficking, weapons proliferation, Islamic terrorism and so on. The view is both telescopic and kaleidoscopic its approach. The tone, too, is a shade more academic— Patten is, after all, Chancellor of Oxford and Newcastle universities.
The book starts from the premise that we are living, to extend the Confucian observation, in extremely interesting times that require new responses and solutions.
“What on earth is happening to us, and is it really new at all or simply more of the drifting spied in his world-weary way by the late-Victorian statesman Lord Salisbury over a century ago?” Patten mused in the opening chapter.
If reading this book is less than urgent, it’s because his conclusions are hardly novel, as Patten is the first to admit. The overarching view is a belief in democratic institutions and the rule of law, transparent international debate and recognition of the new emerging global political economy. Realpolitik with a conscience, in other words.
All of this comes wrapped in robust optimism for the future, even though Patten’s book highlights how little of the world subscribes to these views— whether it is Afghanistan’s warlords or America’s cussed approach to climate change.
As an instinctive diplomat, Patten inclines to the nuanced approach, which has the virtue of being more workable. His solution—he calls it a “fallback approach—to western consternation at Iran’s nuclear programme is a case in point. “…[A]ccept that Iran has the right to produce nuclear energy and to enrich domestically with Iran in return agreeing to a several-year delay in beginning its enrichment programme… and a more intrusive inspection regime,” he writes. He is probably correct when he says it would be a lot easier to gain international support, especially from China and Russia for such an arrangement.
It is also a relief to see a less breathless account of India and China than most contemporary commentators. As he points out, for example, after a visit to Infosys’ impressive Bangalore campus, “…it did not convince me that the world is entirely flat….Moreover, the road to the Infosys campus is anything but flat, the sort of incongruity that is still so present in India for all its progress.”
This readable book is unlikely to throw up startling new insights or new viewpoints. The virtue lies in the detail—Patten is able to draw connections across history, geography, economics, science and philosophy to build his case.
But the overall result is rather like reading a collection of well-written and thoughtful newspaper columns on globalisation, contents, discontents and all rather than a convincing call for change.
WHAT NEXT: SURVIVING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Chris Patten
Penguin India
Price: Rs 795
Number of pages: 491
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