Adam Victor Brandizzi

We live in times of profoundly shifting tectonic plates. To cope constructively with the challenges facing the current international order requires the skills of the historian to understand what is new for our time and what is not.

It also requires increasingly the skills of the philosopher to understand the conceptual fundamentals of what ultimately constitutes the intellectual and practical foundations of that order.

Furthermore, we have to ponder deep questions of the values that underpin different concepts of order, as these all affect the nature of the future international system as well.

These considerations cause us to conclude that we are indeed in a period of deep transition, from one order to another. This requires deep reflection by policy planners in all capitals.

We also live in a period requiring considered actions by policymakers actively to shape the future, rather than simply to respond passively – almost with a sense of resignation – to the silent forces of some form of historical determinism.

European imperialism in the Asian hemisphere

As an Australian, I would like to reflect on just one aspect of this question, particularly given the centenary of World War One: The impact of European imperialism on the Asian hemisphere and the impact of the Versailles settlement, especially on China.

In Australia, we see ourselves as being the West in the East, but also, at our best, the East in the West. This enables us, again at our best, to reflect openly on the deep historical sensitivities that silently rage across the many civilizations of our own Hemisphere.

Yet, we also translate these historical sensitivities through the prism of what for us in Australia remains a predominantly Western tradition of civilization.

For us, this has been a century-long endeavor. Participation in what was then called the Great War not only created a new Australian national identity.

It also has provided us with 100 years of national reflection on the wisdom, or lack thereof, of British global leadership, from one battlefield to the next, from the Somme to Singapore.

More recently, following the Vietnam War, there has been a further deep reflection among a number of Australians on the phenomenon of European imperialism and colonialism in general on the current political consciousness of Asia.

In Asia, the impact of WWI had three major effects. It resulted in the Indian independence movement, in the events that were to unfold in China, and in the arbitrary carve-up of the borders of what we now call the Middle East. Or from London’s neat view of the world at the time, the sub-continent, the Far East and the Near East.

On China specifically, we should focus on three main points:

First, European imperialism in the course of the 19th century – over less than three-quarters of a century – ended up destroying imperial China, a system of government with a continuing political personality spanning some 2,100 years.

That was no small achievement, even for the Europeans. Europeans effectively delegitimized the Qing Empire. That process started with the Opium Wars in 1839-1842. It ended with the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1901.

China’s last dynasty collapsed only a decade later in the Xinhai revolution of 1911. European imperial behavior over the course of the 19th century affects China’s national historiography to this day.

Simply put, it created a profound sense of grievance with the collective imperial West. In turn, that has created in the Chinese mind a sense of righteous cause about its own rise today as it pertains to its re-emergence as a – and perhaps prospectively the – global great power.

The damaging behavior at Versailles

Second, through the subsequent behavior of the Western great powers at Versailles in their deliberations and conclusions on the post-war global settlement in 1919, the Europeans also managed effectively to destroy the legitimacy of the early Chinese Republic.

That, too, has consequences to this day.

How did that happen? By 1916, the Triple Entente had convinced the infant Chinese Republic, barely five years after its inception, to enter the war against Germany.

Back then, in language that sounds very familiar now, they were called upon to behave as a responsible member of the international community and support the allied cause.

It is little known on the European continent that, as part of WWI, the Chinese actually dispatched several hundred thousand workers, manual workers, to dig trenches and undertake all sorts of dangerous work on behalf of the allied cause. Many were killed in action. Many more through disease.

When the war concluded, the Chinese sent a delegation to Versailles. However, they were kept in the waiting room and never admitted to the full negotiating table. Worse, deliberations at Versailles decided that former German colonies in China would not be returned to China, but they would be handed instead to Japan.

That single event delegitimized the early Chinese republic at home, resulting in large-scale student protest movements in Peking and two years later, the formation of the Chinese Communist Party.

Democratic politics, at home and abroad, had not only failed to deliver China’s most basic national interests. Versailles also legitimized, in the eyes of Tokyo, international support for Japan’s ambitions over time to become the future imperial masters of Asia.

When we later saw the full-scale Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and the rest of Asia in 1941, this reflected a mindset on Japan’s part that it was simply replacing European colonialism with a better form of Asian colonialism.

What Japan learned from the Europeans

Japan had learned from the Europeans that “there was nothing intrinsically wrong with imperialism,” that it was almost the natural order of things. The Japanese also learned that possession of an empire was, it seemed, the necessary prerequisite for great power status in the world at large.

The success of the Japanese invasion of China was also decisive in the long-term delegitimization of the second Chinese Republic under Chiang Kai-shek.

The Japanese success fundamentally weakened the KMT (Kuomintang) Government in terms of its popular support throughout the 1930s until Japan’s final defeat by the Americans in 1945. The KMT, despite its military superiority, lost the subsequent civil war to the Communists.

In China, therefore, the historical reverberations of Versailles continue to this day, not just in the continued political success of Communist Party rule in China, but also in the current state of Sino-Japanese relations.

Third, a century after the outbreak of WWI, what does all this mean for today with a resurgent China with the largest global economy (in PPP terms) and the world’s second largest military?

Given this sorry history of Western imperialism in China, the question for Europe and the wider West as a whole is that China today looks at the post-1945 global order. The basic question from Beijing is this: Why is it that a Western-made order is somehow inherently legitimate?

The Chinese realize that there are distinct advantages to the current order, such as open economies. But they also know full well that they were not around the negotiating table in 1945 when this order was drafted. Or at least the People’s Republic was not.

A responsible global stakeholder?

So when the U.S. government and leading U.S. public intellectuals often refer to the need of China’s accepting its future role as a responsible global stakeholder, the Chinese often find it difficult to accept.

In Chinese minds, when they embraced that concept a century ago through their participation in the first World War, they were not only not rewarded for it. They were punished for it.

Given China’s national historiography and its collective national memory, it may be useful for Westerners to understand the future of the global order from a Chinese perspective.

We may not agree with the policy conclusions that may come from it, but it is respectful and useful to understand its genesis.

It is more useful to understand China’s perspective than, high-handedly, as a demander, to simply expect China to buy into the Western canon of values and the order based on it. The fact that we somehow believe it is self-evident and that it is better than anything else on offer cannot suffice.

This has profound implications to this day. On the one hand, China’s Foreign Minister and the Chinese State Councilor for Foreign Affairs openly state that China, with its emerging global presence, must now engage in further reform of the global order.

Such engagement would not just mean buy-in as a “stakeholder” to the existing order constructed under the aegis of Western geo-political power. In China’s view, the order must be made “more fair and just” for the future.

While the Chinese quite deliberately leave it unclear and undefined what precise changes this might require, what is clear is that their aspiration for change is shared by other developing countries beyond the West as well.

For these reasons, as well as the breakdown in the relationship between Russia and the United States, the time has come for deep international reflection on the future of the order itself.

Henry Kissinger rarely writes books for fun. His recent book on “World Order” reflects that he, too, senses an emerging crisis in the current order that must be addressed. Crises of legitimacy. Crises of effectiveness.

A century on, the “War to end all Wars” indeed has much to answer for.

Editors Note: This piece is based on a presentation given at the Salzburg Global Seminar in August 2014.

Pesquisadores da Universidade de Rochester, nos Estados Unidos, desenvolveram um método de fazer metais repelirem de forma forte a água utilizando lasers para gravar nanoestruturas em sua superfície. O resultado é tão incrível que a água, ao entrar em contato com o metal, acaba quicando até ser empurrada para fora da superfície.

Você já pode ter visto materiais repelentes antes, mas até hoje eram usados componentes químicos para alcançar o efeito. Com isso, depois de pouco tempo o efeito se perdia quando o material era removido. O processo descrito pelos pesquisadores é parte intrínseca da superfície e, portanto, é “eterno”.

A ideia por trás das pequenas estruturas desenhadas no metal é imitar propriedades encontradas na natureza, que reduzem o ângulo entre as gotas e a superfície, facilitando que elas rolem para fora. A comparação feita é com a diferença entre jogar uma bola murcha e uma cheia no chão.

Mas e no mundo real, quais seriam suas aplicações? Várias, mas a principal delas é criar superfícies que são mais fáceis de limpar e menos corrosivas, o que poderia ser um diferencial em locais onde a água é escassa.

No entanto, apesar de ser interessante, ele ainda está longe da vida real. Os cientistas levaram uma hora para tratar uma superfície de metal de pouco mais de 6 centímetros quadrados. E o laser utilizado consome uma quantidade absurda de energia, tornando inviável sua aplicação prática até mesmo em médio prazo.

Segundo os pesquisadores, o laser puxa uma energia equivalente a toda a rede elétrica da América do Norte, que só não causa um colapso porque cada pulso de laser dura cerca de 1 femtosegundo (1 segundo dividido por 1 quatrilhão).

Anteontem, 27 de janeiro, foi o aniversário de 70 anos da libertação do campo de concentração de Auschwitz pelas tropas soviéticas. A data ficou como símbolo do fim do pesadelo, embora Auschwitz não fosse o primeiro campo encontrado pelos Aliados avançando rumo à Alemanha.

A Congregação Israelita Paulista comemorou o dia antecipadamente, no domingo. Os protagonistas da cerimônia eram os sobreviventes do genocídio que vivem entre nós –quase todos meninas e meninos quando entraram nos campos, logo antes do desfecho.

Foi especialmente bom estar lá, porque estamos atravessando dias obscuros. Como sempre em tempos de intolerância, o que fala mais alto é o ódio por quem é apenas um pouco diferente. Os sunitas (do Boko Haram) massacram os xiitas na Nigéria. A mesma fúria assassina aparece no Paquistão, na Síria ou no Iraque (com o dito Estado Islâmico). No conflito aberto do Oriente Médio, como na Europa, o futuro é incerto.

Claro, o horror pode ser a obra de fanáticos ou de "monstros", mas ele nunca é eficaz se não for acompanhado pelo silêncio e pela distração do homem comum –ou seja, o horror sempre pede alguma cumplicidade das ditas "pessoas de bem".

Domingo, ao longo da cerimônia, eu pensava em Tocqueville (1805-1859) e em Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997), que são, para mim, os dois grandes defensores dos valores democráticos e liberais –melhor: defensores do indivíduo, inclusive (e sobretudo) contra o Estado que ele mesmo inventa para conviver com seus semelhantes (e com seus diferentes).

Ambos, Tocqueville e Berlin, nunca esquecem que uma democracia pode facilmente vir a ser inimiga da liberdade de seus cidadãos. Exemplo recente e apropriado: Hitler chegou ao poder, se não propriamente por via eleitoral, por uma espécie de aclamação que poderia ser considerada "democrática".

Em geral, a lembrança desse fato (e de outros análogos) produz considerações sobre a burrice do povo, que não saberia escolher seus candidatos e se deixaria seduzir por populistas de cada tipo. Surgem assim propostas recorrentes para abolir o sufrágio universal e criar um censo eleitoral. Será que é certo mesmo que todos votem? O voto já foi privilégio de quem possuía bens e terras e de quem sabia ler. Por que não instituir um exame de conhecimentos gerais para poder votar?

A essas propostas recorrentes, respondo que, na verdade, pouco importa se o eleitor sabe ler, se ele "entende" de política ou se conhece as instituições da república.

Pouco importa, porque o que acaba com a democracia não é que o eleitor não sabe ou não entende; o que acaba com a democracia é que o eleitor se vende muito barato –e, geralmente, por medo de perder o nada que ele tem.

O último (imperdível) filme dos irmãos Dardenne, "Dois Dias, Uma Noite" (com Marion Cotillard, extraordinária), é a história de uma mulher cujos colegas aceitam que ela perca seu emprego porque, em troca, cada um deles receberá mil euros de bônus. A classe operária da minha juventude, se é que ela existiu, não existe mais. No seu lugar, no filme, há uma pequena (e terrificante) classe média, que está disposta a quase tudo para preservar seu status ou para melhorá-lo marginalmente (quando você assistir ao filme, lembre-se de que mil euros são três mil reais).

Você topa trocar um pouco de sua liberdade por mais segurança? Por exemplo, aceitaria poder ser parado e revistado a qualquer momento sem motivo legal, para que seja mais fácil identificar eventuais criminosos? Você é dos que hesitam antes de responder?

Pois bem: você topa trocar a liberdade dos outros (não a sua, desta vez) pela mesma segurança suplementar? Por exemplo, toparia que todos os ciganos fossem expulsos da França se, com isso, você fosse roubado com menos frequência, no metrô?

Você acha esse exemplo distante de nossa realidade? Passe uma manhã cedo na Polícia Federal de São Paulo, na Lapa, e veja a longa fila dos que pedem asilo. É só esperar, o Brasil terá seu momento-França.

O proletariado devia ser o pilar da justiça social, e a classe média, o pilar da liberdade do indivíduo. O proletariado acabou idolatrando a máquina burocrática do Estado. A classe média só se preocupa em não deslizar para baixo, e é sempre facílimo apavorá-la: para que renuncie à liberdade (a sua e a dos outros), basta murmurar em seu ouvido, por exemplo, que os estrangeiros tomarão seu lugar, seu emprego, e, claro, suas mulheres.