Stop ‘the Fear Factor’

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

Terror attacks, threat of nuclear war, severe weather conditions due to global warming, and economic crises all contribute to uncertainty.

In a culture of fear, society is crippled by these anxieties and is increasingly frightened for its future.

Politics has sometimes embellished on the ‘fear factor’ in order to justify certain policy choices.

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003, for example, illustrates this point.

On other occasions leaders might have downplayed the seriousness of certain fears to justify other policy choices.

For a long time President G.W. Bush dismissed any evidence linking human actions to global warming.

History Repeats Itself
‘Culture of fear’ is not a new phenomenon.

During the Cold War, the world was rife with (very justified) fears of nuclear war. In the post-9/11 era fears run high once again.

And now a looming global economic depression is fear factor number one.

Today, in The Sunday Times we could read commentaries by six economics experts on the global economic crisis.

Summarising what the experts said: the outlook for the world economy is very bleak, Great Depression bleak.

My favourite comment was the one by Professor of European Political Economy at the LSE Willem Buiter: “The recession in the US, the UK, the eurozone, Japan and the rest of Europe is, with probability verging on certainty, going to be so deep and so prolonged that the zero lower bound (on interest rates) will be reached even by the most anal-retentive gradualist central bank before the middle of 2009.”

How helpful are these comments?

When 2008 Nobel Prize Winner for economics Paul Krugman comments on the crisis by saying “I’m getting scared,” what hope is there for the man on the street to have any confidence in the economy?

It is ironic that these same economic experts and politicians are desperately urging consumers to spend their way out of the economic crisis.

Perhaps it is all just wishful thinking (and a little naïve), but keeping the ‘fear factor’ to a minimum right now might just be the ticket to get us through recession.

If anything, not living in fear will keep society just a little happier in gloomy times.

More than Humanitarian Aid for Zimbabwe

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

New outrage is voiced over how Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe is ruling the country amidst the severest cholera outbreak Zimbabwe has known in ten years.

According to the UN on 5 December, there have been 589 reported deaths so far and the number of supposed cases of cholera has climbed to 14,000.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown now joins ranks with Condoleezza Rice and Archbishop Tutu in calling upon the international community to act.

The BBC reports the Prime Minister stating that this is now an international crisis where there “is no state capable or willing of protecting its people”.

In the words of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon: “The UN and its relief partners must respond quickly to address the needs of Zimbabweans and prevent the cholera epidemic from spreading.”

After Humanitarian Aid
Naturally focus is given to the immediate humanitarian crisis at hand but there is, as of yet, no consensus on further action on President Mugabe’s rule of Zimbabwe.

Reuters reports on the European Union’s intentions to impose more sanctions on the government of Zimbabwe.

But as past sanctions have done little to remedy the political and economic state of affairs in Zimbabwe, imposing new sanctions might only make the situation worse.

Perhaps it is now time to finally pull out, dust off and give some real teeth to the 2005 notion of ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).

As it states on the R2P website: “In 2005, world leaders agreed, for the first time, that states have a primary responsibility to protect their own populations and that the international community has a responsibility to act when these governments fail to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

The international community is acting by giving much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Zimbabwe.

But in the true spirit of the R2P statement; humanitarian aid is just not enough.

Waning American Power?

By Anneloes van Iwaarden

 

 

The outlook for US dominance in world affairs in the 21^st century looks very bleak, a leading American intelligence agency has concluded.

 

According to the National Intelligence Council (NIC) report, “the whole international system—as constructed following WWII—will be revolutionized. Not only will new players—Brazil, Russia, India and China— have a seat at the international high table, they will bring new stakes and rules of the game.”

 

This is a very different picture to the one Lord Patten paints in his new book ‘What next? Surviving the Twenty-First Century’.

 

Speaking to over 400 students from the London School of Economics (LSE) on Wednesday, the Lord referred to today as being ‘the new world’ with America as its prime architect.

 

Despite the growth of Asian powers and America’s loss of moral authority during the Iraq war, Lord Pattens believes that the United States will remain the only super-power in the world.

 

“Open up any newspaper in any country. America is still the only country in the world that matters everywhere,” said Lord Patten.

 

End of leadership?

To my question of whether he gave any merit to views of the end of American leader-status in the world, the Lord brusquely answered “no, not very much.”

 

Lord Patten downplayed the power of India and China as shapers of the 21^st century, stating: “We must be aware of the problems facing India and China and we shouldn’t assume that this exponential economic growth will last forever, just look at the Japanese example in the 1980s.”

 

I suppose it is all a matter of identity.

 

If the world still believes the United States to be the most important player in world affairs despite evidence to the contrary, the United States will remain the most important player in world affairs.

 

But in the unlikely event of powerful players deciding not to look to the United States for leadership, we might see a very different 21^st century.