Politicians, we are told, are people who think only of the next election, while statesmen take a longer view and think of the next generation and how best to ensure that it thrives. Until fairly recently, this seemed fair enough. It was assumed that even unexpected developments, such as the rise of new and in all probability aggressive powers, would take place gradually enough to give far-sighted and courageous individuals plenty of time in which to warn those willing to listen that they had better get ready to face what was coming their way. .
But then things started speeding up. New challenges arose which were so different from those of the past that few took much notice of them until it was too late and, for their own reasons, sectarian groups began making matters worse by inventing new crises to add to a rapidly growing list.
Among the ones that should be taken really seriously are those related to the steep decline in the birth rate, which in much of the world falling far faster than anyone had predicted; climate change, which suddenly became such a major issue that governments the world over committed themselves to phasing out fossil fuels and, in some countries, even farming, by mid-century; and mass migration, with tens of millions of people leaving their violent and usually poverty-stricken homelands and, at the risk of their lives, seeking salvation in Europe or North America where only the really talented and willing to adapt to the local customs are welcome.
What is more, a few months ago Artificial Intelligence leapt into prominence; if the presumed experts have it right, it threatens to transform big economies almost overnight by, among other things, taking over millions of jobs which are currently performed by humans.
These novelties have distracted attention from the geopolitical dangers that traditionally kept serious politicians awake at night, dangers such as those caused the rapid emergence of China as an economic and military power to be reckoned with. In hindsight, North American and other Western governments recognise that they were foolish to allow such a formidable country that had temporarily lost ground to take charge of a wide range of industrial activities while kidding themselves that they would continue to monopolise the difficult technological part of the process and the Chinese would always be happy to provide them with a docile, diligent and poorly paid workforce, but it was only a couple of years ago that they came to the conclusion that they had made a mistake.
Equally short-sighted was the belief that, after the Soviet Union dismantled itself, the United States and the European countries had nothing to fear from Russia. It would seem that before Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to occupy Ukraine, the only people who expressed concern about what was going on in the heads of members of the Russian elite were military chiefs in the US and the United Kingdom, but their warnings were attributed to their desire to get more money for their own departments. Now their countries’ governments – and those of others, among them Japan and Germany – have decided they have no choice but to increase military spending because, as things stand, they are unable to supply Ukraine with the arms it so desperately needs. Russia may be an economic dwarf, but it is still capable of producing more artillery shells than are the Europeans.
All this means that, to qualify as a suitably farsighted statesman, a politician must take fully into account not just a number of variables of the kind that have always been with us but also what, back in 2002, the late Donald Rumsfeld famously called “unknown unknowns.” One such was the Covid-19 pandemic which immediately led to Chinese-style lockdowns across much of the planet. Another, whose impact was far more limited, was the devastating tsunami that on December 26, 2004, killed hundreds of thousands of people in parts of southern Asia bordering the Indian Ocean. However, even if there are no more “unknown unknowns” out there waiting to pounce, forecasting the effects of those trends that have already been detected will continue to be extremely difficult.
Many people have made what, at the time, seemed to be quite reasonable predictions that turned out to be completely wrong. Remember the “population bomb” that, according to the Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book on the subject proved widely influential, would soon lead to mass starvation and a dire shortage of natural resources? Instead of growing exponentially in Malthusian fashion as he and many others assumed was inevitable, populations in big countries, among them China, Japan, Russia and most members of the European Union, soon began to shrink at such a rate that their very survival has become an open question. This is something that must worry would-be statesmen, but so far no-one has come up with anything approaching a plausible solution to what is surely a major problem, perhaps the toughest facing our species because it poses questions about the role of women in contemporary societies that most people, especially politicians, would rather not have to answer.
President Javier Milei clearly sees himself as a statesman who thinks in terms of centuries and not just weeks, months or, at most, a few years as do ordinary politicians obsessed with the coming elections. But even he cannot see through the murk that is covering the relatively near future, let alone what it could be like when, if present tendencies persist, Japan, South Korea, China and many European countries have come to resemble old folks’ homes, the United States, wracked as it is by political conflicts involving bizarre culture wars has gone isolationist and AI has eliminated an enormous number of jobs. The way things are going, this, more or less, is what the world will be like before those who are still at school are old enough to prepare for retirement.
Can Argentina or, for that matter, any other country buck the trends that are causing such concern not only in the West but also in China and Russia? In theory, this should be possible, but it would require a degree of clear-sightedness that has always been rare both here and in the rest of the world. What is more, before anything resembling a long-term strategy can be hammered out, Argentina will have to cure a broken-backed economy of its many ailments, which is something which even the most optimistic believe will take several years, by which time the international environment will look radically different from the one we are trying to get used to.
Comments