In his life of Augustus Caesar, the Roman writer Suetonius reports the emperor as saying that wars should only be undertaken in the confident expectation of large rewards. To go to war for small or uncertain returns is, Augustus said, like ‘fishing with a golden hook’: nothing one could catch is worth the risk of the hook’s loss.
In this age of asymmetric conflicts, in which tribal insurgents can bleed mighty military empires for years on end, many a golden hook has been lost in sterile waters. Among the many thoughts this prompts, one is that to reduce conflict in the world, the world should deglobalise. Less developed regions should be left to themselves, which in any case is exactly what their inhabitants wish. If they export trouble, they should be put into quarantine, in the not-too-sanguine hope, at least in the medium term, of maturation.
And deglobalising does not have a price, but a prize: not just the saving of lives, but the saving of the planet. For globalisation is principally about profit and economic growth; it is driven by the quest for raw materials, cheap labour and new markets – not always a consistent triad. And it is the restless quest for more profits, more growth, more wealth, which is increasing conflict while reducing the health of the planet.
Alas, deglobalisation is unlikely to be feasible; its opposite has too long a history. Rome conquered much of the world it knew about, at great expense; Julius Caesar’s Gaul campaigns cost more than a million Gallic lives and the extermination of whole tribes, among them the Nervii. While Rome was the sole superpower it easily dealt with the recalcitrants along its borders, save for the Germans, who after many centuries of frequent violent stand-off eventually conquered the Western empire and sacked Rome itself.
From then until the mercantilists began preying on other people’s spices and silver in the sixteenth century, globalisation reversed; conflicts again took place mainly along the margins between tribes and peoples and the few emerging nation states. But it was with the beginning of modern globalisation at the hands of Portuguese adventurers, and then the Dutch and English, that the real trouble started.
Globalisation as the quest for raw materials, cheap labour and new markets often involved and still involves forcing others to accept the incursion if they will not accept it willingly. It is driven by the old economic imperative of getting wealth or protecting it when got, and it is initiated by businessmen who then drag their governments and militaries along to protect their investments.
Conflicts arise when different perceptions collide. By its nature, globalisation brings deeply different perceptions into contact with one another. For a familiar example: the West and its bikinis, bars and secularism meets the Islamic world with its closeted women and simple, unshakeable religious certainties. There is less immediate fraternal recognition there than would be helpful.
Sometimes one side of the equation adopts with fervour some of the other side’s perceptions. When a numerous people embraces an alternative perception, as China has embraced the essentially nineteenth-century idea of an industrially rich base for military prowess, there is just as much potential trouble, because the embracing tends to be selective. China goes for the money and guns without the democracy and civil liberties, which sends a chill down one’s spine in contemplating the world’s future.
But in all cases the trouble arises from the attempted mixing of cultural and ideological oil and water. Developed and major developing nations are trampling around the planet in search of profit, and many of the trampled resent it, and become pugnacious. The pugnacity of the tribesman with a Kalashnikov is enough to nail down the feet of the mightiest military power, as we have seen repeatedly in the stony valleys of Afghanistan to this day.
Deglobalising would mean leaving those regions, fencing them off if necessary, letting them get on with their own business their own way; and accepting the diminution of cash profits that result from losing access to raw materials, cheap labour and potential markets. The real profit, to repeat, would be saving the lives of our soldiers, and slowing the despoliation of the planet from unrestrained ‘growth’, as the economists, in unconscious Orwellian Newspeak, like to call it.
It means that we all take a drop in living standards to sustainable levels. It cannot be a cheering thought that the amount of stuff we buy and energy we consume is paid for by the lives of men killing each other along with the women and children who get caught in the crossfire.
No doubt some will be horrified at the thought of leaving residents of undeveloped lands without internet access and modern medicine, and it is true that it would be good if they could have them peacefully. But the point is that they and the whole of the rest of mankind are being asked to pay a very high price for those things, even if they want them (and do the Pashtuns, for one vivid example, really want them?).
An alternative use for the money spent on those military golden hooks currently being dangled and lost in murky waters would be to invest in women all over the developing world. Female literacy in the Middle East is only 46 per cent. In Africa elementary education for women results in their having fewer and healthier children and taking a greater part in public affairs. Almost everywhere in religiously devout parts of the world women (and gays, and minorities of other religious persuasions) suffer oppression; there is a healthily inverse relationship between education and religious fervour. The globalising of female literacy is the only kind that promises rich returns for the world as a whole.