By GHK Lall- The world was crumbling long before China’s strongman Xi Jinping said so. The leader of the free world surrenders the high ground, the first flakes fly, the crumbling begins. Standards fragment. Come alarmingly close to a world shredded, left tattered. Rarely do I find common agreement with Chairman Xi’s postures, practices. But the mandarin, no Mother Teresa himself, speaks to truth. “The international order is crumbling into disarray.”
Hitler trampled Europe, throttled the world, a hundred years ago. He had opportunity, came dreadfully close to succeeding. There’s gratitude for the resolve of some dauntless men and women, formidable figures in themselves. Ideology and interests aside, America led from the front. For a righteous cause, a civil world, a stable global order. Wasn’t cheap, no Sunday driving. Portions of the world’s soul had to be incinerated to regain calm, quiet. Unsettled and uneasy, at best. From the embers came commitment: ‘never again.’ Not this road.
Architecture erected, shaky, spotty. A machinery, self-serving, undeniably. But a predictable modus operandi. One based on visions of freedom, the greater good. Plus, a good slice of that for the orchestrators, sponsors, and enforcers. Interests were always paramount. Clinical execution was the way, regardless of how much blood had to be shed. The sense was of missions contained; of controlled and limited scopes. Boundaries respected; crossed only in pursuit of those two elusive holy grails: peace and democracy. Even the small and poor, the different and outsider, felt that they stood a chance, could get a fair shake. Rules that apply. Are followed. Hold. Whither those today?
When American darts from world policeman to world leading exploiter, then Chairman Xi has it right. The anchor that binds others to order and stability gone. The respected leader, once trusted, also vanquished. Respect for the rights of others and standards held firm. Definitely precariously, at times; but held it did. A champion of humanity, that was America. Not a leader in depravity, like today.
Today, concentrated viciousness has replaced American tolerance, American exceptionalism. I shared in both, through ups-and-downs, the warming glow of belonging. The sense of being in the midst of something unprecedented, extraordinary, peerless. Today, what once towered as inclusive and productive is replaced by a vindictive, seductive siren call to the basest tribal impulses. The leader in what was pacesetting and difference making is ecstatic to be a low, demented, splintered, trendsetter for all that’s wrong at a fundamental level.
The international order is crumbling in disarray, said the unflappable, unswerving one Chinese potentate. He counts time in centuries, not in soundbites and photo ops. Tragically, America’s internal forces that maintain balance, that serve as a much-praised check against the reckless and uncharted, are also crumbling: slivers now, planks next. Study the US Congress. Cast an eye at the US Supreme Court.
I recall 100 years ago, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried packing the court that gutted New Deal programs, how the US Senate revolted against his abomination. A Senate consisting of 76 Democrats, yet FDR lost, because American super constitutionalists and superpatriots, such as Burton Wheeler, Joe O’Mahoney, and Pat McCarran stood tall. (More on this later).
In sum, there was a time that when the hour was grim, men and women stood at the brink, and said ‘thou shalt not stand. Thou shalt not pass.’ It was what made America great. Where are such Americans now, when most needed to save the Republic from barbarism, reckless, and from itself? The time of its greatest arc of triumph has passed. It is not this pseudo, crypto, fascistic greatness that is prostituted about, like cheap flesh flaunted around in taunting, rasping, swaggering nonchalance. And menacing arrogance.
I agree, accept, that the world of the last century (the American Century) is crumbling, almost fully collapsed. The question, challenge, is who can wade through the wreckage, emerge, inspire? To revive and restore a world now unmoored, listing heavily, most perilously. The same question is asked in Guyana. It also must be honestly interpreted and reimagined here.
