Wolf on elite anxieties

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

 [yup, they're scared...]

[Financial Times]
The view from the limousine
By Martin Wolf
< martin.wolf@xxxxxx >
Published: November 6 2001 19:54 | Last Updated: November 6 2001 20:29



The terrorist attack of September 11 was a well executed assault on
focal symbols of western financial and military power - New York's
tallest buildings and the Pentagon.

The attack, and its aftermath, taught us lessons about the fragility
of relations between the west and the Islamic world and the impotence
of power. But it also taught us something even more fundamental, by
killing the post-cold-war delusion of effortless international harmony
and risk-free introspection. It made the world palpably dangerous.

For moralists in the mode of Woodrow Wilson, this shock has created
the opportunity to make the world a better place. Tony Blair, the
prime minister, is such a man. But there is a darker perspective,
brilliantly laid out by the American "realist" Robert Kaplan. For him,
"the end of the cold war merely set the parameters for the next
struggle for survival".*

Yet if moralists and realists disagree on the response, they must
agree on the analysis of today's world. Mr Kaplan describes it as
bifurcated. Think of a stretch limousine driving through an urban
ghetto. Inside is the post-industrial world of western Europe, North
America, Australasia, Japan and the emerging Pacific Rim. Outside are
all the rest.

In Mr Kaplan's dark view, the combined stresses of population,
urbanisation, environmental degradation and failed development are
creating a world of gangster states and states eaten out by gangs,
both with a terrifying capacity for anarchic violence. Where does
Islam fit in? "Beyond its stark, clearly articulated message, Islam's
very militancy makes it attractive to the downtrodden. It is the one
religion that is prepared to fight."

This is a world in which the rising aspirations of billions of people
are failing to meet an improving reality. Now, after September 11,
those lucky enough to ride in the limousine need to try to understand
the world in which they and their children will live.

Consider a few facts. In 1999, according to the World Bank, world
average real income per head (at purchasing power parity) was $7,000.
High-income countries, with a combined population of 900m, had average
incomes of $26,000. In the developing world, 5.1bn people had average
incomes of $3,500, 2.4bn of whom lived in low-income countries with
average incomes of $1,900.

The high-income countries generated 79 per cent of world gross
national income at market prices and 56 per cent of it at purchasing
power parity. The US, Canada and the EU alone generated 59 per cent of
income at market prices and 43 per cent of it at PPP.

Between 1965 and 1999, real incomes per head of those "in the
limousine" rose at 2.4 per cent a year, against 1.6 per cent a year
for the world as a whole. Average real incomes in sub-Saharan Africa
fell, while those of the Middle East and north Africa stagnated. East
Asia was the only developing region whose real gross domestic product
per head rose faster than that of high-income countries.

The high-income countries consumed just over half of the world's total
output of commercial energy in 1998. The US alone consumed 23 per
cent. The ratio of commercial energy consumption per head in
high-income countries to that in the rest of the world was 5½ to one.
The ratio of US consumption per head to that in developing countries
was eight to one.

Forty-seven per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide in 1997 came
from high-income countries. Their emissions per head were five times
those of developing countries. US emissions per head were eight times
those of developing countries, seven times China's and 18 times
India's.

In short, the world's elite enjoys vastly superior incomes and absorbs
a correspondingly disproportionate proportion of the world's
resources. Its ability to do so is the fruit of the physical, human,
social and intellectual capital accumulated by its forebears over
centuries. These ancestors did a remarkable job in seizing their
opportunities. But they also enjoyed a favourable environment and
first-mover advantage in exploiting the world's resources, from the
Americas to oil and the atmosphere.

Naturally, the elite has no intention of giving up what it has. Which
elite ever has? The domestic politics of elite countries are about
obtaining still more. It is no accident that the Kyoto targets for
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions were virtually irrelevant to
global warming or that redistribution of incomes within rich countries
exceeds cross-border redistribution by up to two orders of magnitude.

Yet this pampered global elite is shrinking. In 1950, today's
high-income countries had 32 per cent of world population. Today, this
is just over 19 per cent. By 2050, according to the US Bureau of the
Census, it will be down to 13 per cent. The share of western Europe in
world population is forecast to shrink from 6.4 per cent today to 4.0
per cent in 2050, while Japan's is set to fall even more sharply, from
2.1 per cent to 1.1 per cent. Ninety nine per cent of the 3bn increase
in world population forecast for the next 50 years is expected to be
in the developing world.

The moralist responds by arguing that the task is to make the world a
better place by promoting development in the world's poorest
countries, sustaining a dynamic global economy and managing movements
of people in a humane way.

This is no doubt right. But it is going to be frighteningly hard to
achieve. China and India, for example, may be catching up on the
living standards of the high-income countries. But more fragile
countries will continue to stagnate. Two years ago, the ratio of
average US incomes to those in Sierra Leone was 70 to one; on current
trends, it will reach at least 120 to one by 2050.

Realists agree with this bleak prospect. They add that ahead also lies
the challenge of China, of an outbreak of wars over resources -
particularly water - and of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, some
perhaps into terrorist hands. September 11 tells us that the position
enjoyed by the elite may be more fragile and less easy to defend than
many have, until recently, assumed.

On one point moralists and realists should agree. It is necessary to
contemplate the risks and challenges that lie ahead with intellectual
rigour and courage, not with the wishful thinking that marked the
1990s.

* The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War,
Random House