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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
November 18, 2001
On boundaries
I am tempted to write a rather shy and humble article about how my own views of the world have changed since Sept. 11. Various ideas or rather political positions which I have held with some vigour in the past have come back to haunt me. It is not that my ideals have changed; rather that I must confess to having been naive. And naivete -- I have long held and still do -- can be a moral failing not just an intellectual one. To be naive worse to play naive is to refuse to acknowledge the consequences of one's actions. For one must do one's best before giving advice to anticipate what the consequences would be if the advice were taken. Let me give the most excruciating example. I have been generally against borders in the past. I did not want them eradicated for that would mean no order in the world. I have often quoted in conversation the old New England aphorism that "good fences make good neighbours". But I wanted the borders to be as open as possible and my ideal for a national boundary was that which existed between England and Scotland for about the last three centuries: just a sign set beside the road. Let people freely come and go let trade flow without interruption and let the police in the various jurisdictions pursue criminals as they would within the boundaries of a single country without the help of customs posts and permanent agents at national borders. I looked back on the "golden age" of Europe in the late 19th century and in the early 20th before the First World War. It was possible then to travel without a passport for a European or an American or indeed anyone with sufficient money to wander to the ends of the earth without anything resembling proper I.D. The volume of international trade was at levels not restored until quite recently and proportionally to the size of the economies not yet restored even today. There were customs bureaucracies but these were tiny and ineffectual compared with our present ones; customs duties were derisory in most places. The world was free the roads to every horizon were open a hundred years ago to an extent not enjoyed since the retreat of the Roman Empire. But the conditions on which the world was open did not return after the "Great War" have never since and are unlikely to return in any currently foreseeable future. We have lived instead in an age of warring ideologies and have developed the technologies of mass destruction. We have lived to see the ideals of nationalism and self-determination turned to poison. The great European empires have passed and with them the time in which European or "Western" ideas had their monopoly over the rule of the world. Much can be said for diversity and actually more of it existed a century ago in societies cultures ways of life. The European imperialists tended to rule with a light hand were compelled to focus on the narrow issue of who holds the political power and leave foreign peoples to get on with it for the most part in their accustomed poverty. More often than not they sensibly assimilated local traditions and hierarchies under their political command. India for instance was much less "Westernized" under British rule than it is today; and the same is true of every other African and Asian nation freed from "colonial" rule. It was the Western missionaries who set themselves the task of effecting cultural change not only by trying to convert people to Christianity directly but more subtly by introducing schools by educating the local elites as much as they could to Western standards. The colonial administrators tended to despise these missionaries who only made their lives more complicated. And in the long run native but Western-educated leaders -- educated not only in Western universities but from childhood in what were usually mission schools -- rose up to form the nationalist socialist and even the anti-Christian religious movements that successfully challenged European rule. It has been said that Osama bin Laden is only dangerous because he appropriates Western technology to his fanatical Islamist cause. But it is worse than that: his mind is itself a witches' brew in which incompatible Western and Eastern ideas -- the worst from both sides -- are mixed explosively together. His "Islamism" itself is "contaminated" by such Western ideas as "the liberation struggle" and when he has spoken through videos and interviews he has showed an acute tactical understanding of the modernity that he otherwise rejects. In the end he depends entirely on a camcorder. And Mullah Omar seemingly run to ground or fleeing with his collapsing army feels the need and somehow finds the time to be interviewed by the BBC. (It was one of their more complicated hook-ups.) That for me was among the biggest revelations of the Taliban state of mind. In the words of this self-styled Emir of Afghanistan: "You (the BBC) and American puppet radios have created concern. But the current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause -- that is the destruction of America." It was his very first unbidden remark in the interview the point at the top of his mind. It revealed a man who knew even in a moment when he was still central to events that Afghanistan was just a side-issue; that "America" the West is the central reality of life on this planet. This "America" -- in its broadest definition not merely a country but the captain of the West -- may be despised may be hated with a murderous zeal but in the end it is the focus of everyone's attention. This may seem a long and winding way to come to my excruciating confession. But it is nevertheless the path I have come down. Since Sept. 11 I have realized that there is no assimilating the "non-West" through open borders. That the borders could only be open on the condition of some kind of Empire some overarching authority that makes the law on both sides of a border essentially the same; which enforces a kind of reciprocity not only in trade but in principles of justice. The European empires used to supply this essential condition. The condition is not available to us today and therefore open borders are not available. It is the fact of life that militates against any far-reaching libertarianism any vain hope for an "end of history". David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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