9/11 was a deeply dramatic and traumatic event. In the comments that follow, by no means do I wish to minimise the human tragedy, but rather to look at some broader developments and implications. The most poignant of these is the fact that since 9/11, we have entered an unprecedented era of uncertainty. This is not due exclusively to 9/11, but to a series of multiple simultaneous discontinuities. Uncertainty has a different meaning than risk. Risk can be measured in a context of familiar parameters. Uncertainty cannot be measured since for the most part it arises from being in uncharted territory. Think back ten years ago, of the world up to September 10, 2001.
Apart from some policy wonks, no one had heard of Al-Qaeda or of its founder, Osama bin Laden. The cold war had ended ten years previously. There was the ?peace dividend?: the ?new world order?. Yet 9/11 not only shattered that illusion but also introduced a totally new paradigmatic threat: the role of non-state actors in geopolitical conflict. Wars have traditionally been between states or within states (civil wars). Since 9/11, there are non-state actors engaged in intra- and cross-border warfare. In the past, when you wanted to calculate risk, you measured: how many tanks, how many cruise missiles, how many aircraft carriers, etc, on either side. How do you measure non-state actors when you are not sure where/who/what they are?
Up until the evening of September 10, 2001, one apparent certainty was the American global hegemonic position. The erstwhile rival superpower, the Soviet Union, had imploded. The Japanese economic threat had evaporated. Bush beamed a triumphant, hegemonic and unilateralist America. It is difficult to think of a precedent for the speed and depth of both the hard power and soft power decline that ensued. In 2000 the
US had a budget surplus of some $300 billion, which, ten years later, has metamorphosed to a deficit of $1.3 trillion! And who is covering US debt? The Chinese, of course! Never in history has one of the world?s poorer (in per capita terms) countries been the financial saviour of the world?s richest power. This relationship has an added piquancy when one remembers that China is still, after all, a ?communist? power!
Speaking of China: in September 2001 China was still not a member of the WTO?it acceded to membership at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Doha, Qatar, a couple of months later. From having been a relatively minor global economic actor, since 9/11 China has overtaken Germany to become the world?s biggest export power and overtaken Japan as the world?s second biggest economy in terms of GDP. In the course of the last decade, China has become the biggest trading partner of many countries; for example, trade between Brazil and China has multiplied by more than twenty times. It is estimated that more Chinese have visited Africa in the last decade than Europeans have since Livingstone met Stanley in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on October 27, 1871.
The global financial crisis, precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Bros in 2008, has intensified the trends of a massive economic power shift from North to South and West to East. And this, in turn, has mammoth implications. As the highly populated countries become richer, so do, of course, their citizens. About 110 million Asians a year have risen to become middle income earners?known as the ?aspiring classes??over the course of the last decade. In terms of sheer numbers, there has never been such a massive ?bourgeois-urban revolution?. Availability of resources (food, energy, water) is simply one of the many uncertainties arising.
The IT revolution started a decade or more before 9/11?the conventional starting date being in 1989 with the launch of the world wide web?but it has intensified greatly in the last decade. On September 10, 2001, Google and Wikipedia were little more than embryos, while Facebook only showed itself, so to speak, in 2004. We have NO idea what the impact of social media will be in multiple domains, including, of course politics. Facebook is closely associated with the Jasmine Revolution and the Arab Spring that has ensued. Put that in your hookah and smoke it!
Uncertainties are highly exacerbated because complexities have surpassed capabilities. This has been the case really big time in finance. A great deal was made of the greed factor in the financial crisis, and, of course, there is a strong dosage of that, but much more fundamental was sheer incompetence. A friend in a senior position in one of the collapsed financial institutions admitted to me that while he was supposedly ?in charge?, in fact he never really understood what the traders were on about but felt that showing his ignorance would diminish his authority. I lie awake at night not because our financial world is run by rogues, but by incompetents. We have an upside down world in which instead of the real economy being on top and finance being on tap, finance is on top and the real economy is on tap!
In such a situation there is no way risk can be measured: we live in an economic twilight zone!
The phenomenon of climate change is not new. But the awareness and debate have deeply intensified. Scientists can calculate, or at least approximate, the risks in climate change, but they cannot integrate the uncertainties of human behaviour. The cacophonic kafuffle of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009 quite vividly illustrates governance uncertainties for the planet. We are not only in an economic twilight zone; we are in a planetary climate twilight zone. So what do we do?
First, is to get rid of much of the old tool-box of global analysis: especially mathematical models that are responsible for generating a lot of the hubris that has got us into a much worse mess than we needed to have been in. Second, is to recognise that we do not really know much of what is happening and the consequences arising, but what we do know is that the solution to these challenges, whatever they may be, can only emerge in a spirit of collaboration; we need collaboration not only across nations?especially between those of the North and those of the South?but also across constituencies. Business leaders, NGOs, IGOs, government officials, media, students and scientists must cease living in silos and cross-fertilise. Third, while science remains, of course, critical to our survival and economists still have a role to play(!), there has to be also a more prominent place in the policy debate given to philosophers, historians, anthropologists and the literati.
As things stand on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, there are many reasons to fear that the world will be going to hell
in a hand-basket. There are also many reasons to believe that if the will is there, we can transform these challenges into fantastic opportunities. We need to focus on the next generation. To do that we need one more revolution, the one we have not had yet, the one that provides the missing link from the nightmare we are in now to the dream for tomorrow: a cultural and mindset revolution!
Jean-Pierre Lehmann is professor of International Political Economy at IMD and the founding director of The Evian Group @ IMD