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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Global Disorder – Are we already
fighting the next world war? Robert Harvey was introduced to me
largely by accident, a year and a half ago. I was looking for books on the American revolution for an
Alternate History that never really got off the drawing board (although Scott
did something similer with his Brooklyn
Redone) and I came across a new book by Harvey on the subject – called
‘A Few Bloody Noses’, which at first impressed me as a particularly
bloody-minded book on the same lines as Mud,
Blood and Poppycock, but slowly grew on me.
However, I did feel that Harvey was not the best historian of the past
world and this was confirmed, in my eyes at least, by his book ‘The Return
of the Strong’, which was updated, modified and reissued under the title
‘Global Disorder’. These
books were far easier to read and read much better than his history books. Harvey begins his analysis with a short
description of the final events of the twentieth century, beginning with the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 and the
subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. As
he notes, the economic and political analysts saw the world as a much safer
place after the demise of the USSR, which had made an uncomfortable neighbour to
many states in Eastern Europe, Asia and China.
Robert Harvey, a political journalist and former member of the House of
Commons, had different ideas and in The Return of the Strong, Harvey
published his fear that on the tides of ethnic nationalism and economic
globalisation the world was drifting toward a new crisis. The attack on the
World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, justified Harvey’s
alarm and prompted him to extensively revise and update his analysis of the
profound dangers facing western democracy today. After describing
the emergence of the United States as the world’s first ‘megapower’ in
part one of Global Disorder, Harvey explores the sources of global instability
and international tension in part two, and then in part three lays out the
perils inherent in the globalisation of capitalism without political control.
Finally, in part four, he presents the necessary short- and long-term
reforms in policy and action that the West, especially the United States, must
undertake to restore stability around the world and to truly ensure
international security. Harvey is oddly
dismissive of the threat from China, believing that the nation has too many
problems to sustain an offensive against the US or its other possible foes.
However, the pacific is turning into a dangerous place, with a possible
alliance of convenience between Japan, South Korea and Taiwan looming.
Taiwan is determined to avoid reabsorbing into the mainland on communist
terms – seeing the fate of Hong Kong as a rehearsal for the fate of Taiwan –
and is apparently considering counter attacks on the mainland in the event of a
Chinese invasion. Harvey sees Japan
as the major national-scale threat, although perhaps more to China than America.
Japan, unlike Iraq (formerly, but Harvey wrote before the fall of Iraq)
has the ability to develop both nuclear weapons and the ability to build up a
sizable deterrent force swiftly (which is beyond the capability of most states
we spend time worrying about), as well as expanding the Japanese military. He sees Japan as preparing to repeat the mistakes of the
past. Harvey sometimes
loses track of his realism to take a non-existent moral high ground.
In several places, he criticises US intervention and/or non-intervention
(noting contemptibly that it took the media to push the US and NATO into
conducting air strikes to force the Serbs to retreat in the Bosnian crises),
which suggests that the US is going to have trouble whatever it does.
He also puts forward the theory – as subscribed to by Hitler – that
the US has no staying power (unlike Hitler, he puts forward good illustrations
of that suggestion) and that the US will withdraw as quickly as possible before
they take too many casualties. Like
Gordon Corrigan on the British troops in the First World War, one might
expect US servicemen to be understandably annoyed at what is basically a
suggestion of cowardice on the part of the US troops.
Harvey does emprise the effects of the media in US society, but I suspect
that he exaggerates its effects. Considerable
media coverage was given to attempts to prevent the recent fall of Iraq, but the
invasion went ahead regardless. Harvey
tries to put the September 11 attack in perspective. Although he says it was the worst single act of terrorism in
human history, it was not disastrous when put beside of the vast number of
people terrorists killed over a long period; in fact it was tiny compared to
that, the number of civilians killed in Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima during WWII
and the massive numbers of people who die everyday from lack of health care,
food, supplies or fighting. However,
most of those deaths happened as the result of a long-term problem/conflict -
September 11th came out of nowhere to a population that believed
itself safe. Harvey
puts forward too many problem areas for a single book to examine.
Nationalism, terrorism, corporate polices and globalisation,
and well as many others. This
sometimes makes the book confusing, but, as a introduction to the problems of
the new century, its not a bad read. Some Important Points:
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