Surveying

What have I learned and what do I want to learn? I have studied Europe, IR and globalisation 101, security in contemporary times and some more globalisation along with governance. I have written on democracy and it’s effect upon relations between Taiwan and China, post-national understandings of Europe (with special ref. to Habermas), the international community’s responses to intra-state conflict in Liberia and Somalia and global poverty and it’s causes. The areas of the world I have largely studied are East Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East (although just briefly). I have not studied Australia, the Pacific, South-East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, North America and Latin America. If I had to list specific topics I have focused on I guess I’d say I’ve focused on democracy/democratisation, foreign policy, regionalism, cosmopolitanism/nationalism, international interventions (peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention), conflict (especially intra-state), trade, development aid and global poverty. Things I meant to get around to more are environmental issues (especially climate change), energy (oil, gas, coal etc.) and resources at large, everything from water to iron ore to uranium to rubber to minerals like Coltan and more (really intend to learn more about the top traded and so on). Also I’m interested in power shift and great power politics (who isn’t), but am maybe slightly power interested in the phenomenon of power diffusion, along with ideas about power in general (hence, also the work at large of Joseph Nye). I am also interested in conflict and would like to learn more about the new and historically unique features to conflicts around the world.

Now for some normative discussion. There are things I expect to see, and believe should, come to pass roughly in my lifetime or by the end of my life. I hope these changes happen in 30 or 40 years, but if they come to fruition before the end of the century then that would equally satisfy me. I expect famine, poverty, war and much (if not most) disease to become history. I expect global solidarity and some form of global identity. Some kind of global common understanding and global common feeling. I expect climate change to be pacified and the world’s environment to become respected and sustainable, along with the eradication of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. I also expect (I long time before I near my demise) statehood, dignity and peace for the Palestinians and democracy to reach China. Not only do I expect poverty to be eradicated but I expect development for all countries, so everyone will be able to have the standard of living I experienced growing up. Lastly, I expect religious, ethnic and national conflicts of identity to become history, which especially entails coexistence and even solidarity between Muslims and non-Muslims. The death of conflicts over identity (not identity/difference, but just the conflicts between them) I expect to be correlated with the demise of great power politics (this applies especially to tensions between China and ‘the West’). There is nothing new under the sun, and I believe all of humanity at heart want the free, equal, just and peaceful future I strive to articulate and work towards. Richard Rorty, a long time inspiration, has pretty well summed up the world I hope to see once the difficulties noted above have been overcome: “a global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society” and “my sense of the holy, insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hope that someday, any millennium [or sooner] now, my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law. In such a society, communication will be domination-free, class and caste will be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the free agreement of a literature and well-education electorate” (my sense of the holy is marginally larger though).

The roads I pick to travel are the roads will I believe will reach this destination. Sometimes these roads are labelled ‘liberalism’, ‘social democracy’, ‘centre-left’ and possibly ‘Third Way’. I believe in global governance (especially a more reformed and muscular version) and cosmopolitanism. I believe in some broad form of global ethics, perhaps something like what Hans Kung articulates. I believe politics will live on and there will always be a bustling marketplace of ideas, but I think there will be a broad group of politics engaged globally which excludes all exclusivist forms of politics, like fascism, excessive nationalism and hateful and/or destructive forms of politics like communism, military juntas, strongman rule and so on.  I believe politics around the globe for this century will be roughly between the centre-left and the centre-right, and that will be this century’s equivalent to the last century’s left right politics (maybe in the future, perhaps when we are post-scarcity, something similar to what some call socialism will appropriately come to pass). Ian Morris has articulated this well, I believe this century will be high stakes, and we will probably either destroy ourselves or achieve utopia. I think I can just make out of the outlines of utopia and I hope given the life I lead uniquely placed at such a time in history I will witness the achievement of utopia and the avoidance of destruction.

 

Topics I could focus on:

– China in Africa

– Conflict in Africa (or international responses to)

– Development in Africa

– Hegemonic decline and the fall of empires

– Power diffusion

– Social movements and democracy

– The responsibility to protect / new ideas about sovereignty

– China’s development/modernisation/urbanisation

– Population growth and sustainability

– Trade and development

– Islam and democracy, the youth in the Middle East and democracy

– Human rights

– The UN and global governance

– Dialogue between difference