Trigger Point

by Matthew Glass

  ‘I’m guessing this relates to our current standoff with China,’ said Ehrenreich eventually.

  ‘The economic standoff, you mean?’ said the president.

  ‘Is there another one?’

  For a moment Tom Knowles stared. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Well, it’s not an economic standoff, is it, Mr President? It’s a political standoff. The economic element is the instrument. It’s not the cause.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘That’s how I do look at it. It’s an example of what we’re going to face more and more often. At an international level today, we’re in a mismatch. We have a set of global problems – but we deal with them through national governments. Every government – including ours, if you’ll allow me to say so – is perfectly unashamed about saying it puts the interests of its people first. And it has to. Any government that didn’t wouldn’t last very long. But the global problems can only be solved by global, coordinated action. Yet national governments want different actions because their national interests are different. Some want vigorous action. Some don’t want any action. Some have an election and change their government and want the opposite of what they wanted two weeks before. What we end up getting is either nothing, or only the most diluted, uncontroversial elements that everyone supports. But those are never enough to deal with the problem. At best, they deal with the immediate effect and leave the root cause to fester.’

  ‘Sounds like you think we need some kind of world government,’ said Gary Rose.

  ‘Dr Rose, it’s easy to ridicule what I’m saying, but I’m not saying that. Although whether we will eventually see a world government – or world governance, I should say – at some time in the future, in a hundred or two hundred years, say, I wouldn’t be surprised. With the level of globalization and interconnectedness we have even today, who could possibly be so naïve to imagine that the governance of our planet is going to look the same in a couple of hundred years? And why should it? If you’d asked the Native American tribes the day before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock whether there’d ever be a pan-continental government in what is today the United States, they would have laughed in your face.’

  Marion Ellman winced. This was exactly the kind of big, sweeping historical sense of context that Joel loved to project, which would go down in the White House right now about as well as a Chinese fund manager. She also didn’t think it was such a great idea to tell Gary Rose he was naïve as soon as you opened your mouth.

  ‘In principle,’ continued Ehrenreich, oblivious to the glances Rose and Abrahams were giving the president, ‘I don’t know why something that works for a continent can’t work for a planet. What that might look like is something we can debate. I don’t think it looks like our federal government. It might look like a council that has the right to deal with certain issues – a defined set of truly global questions – in a way that is genuinely binding on everyone. Is that council elected through direct representation, nominated by national governments …?’ Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘The answers are a long way off. But our global problems aren’t. They’re here now. They’re not waiting, they’re growing. And if we don’t deal with them in a global fashion, if we continue to deal with them competitively like a bunch of schoolkids trying to guard their piece of the pie, I’m not sure that anyone’s going to be around in a hundred or two hundred years to even laugh at people who suggest we may end up with some kind of global government.’

  ‘What are these global problems?’ asked Knowles.

  ‘I’m sure you know them as well as I do, sir.’

  ‘I’m interested in your thoughts.’

  ‘I count six.’ Ehrenreich numbered them off on his fingers. ‘Climate change and other environmental constraints; allocation of natural resources, especially water but also arable land and of course industrial commodities; financial regulation; communications; epidemic disease; terrorism, organized crime and corruption. There’s more, but at a high level those are the flashpoints. There are no borders for these things, Mr President. Every country’s interests in them extends around the world, because every country is affected by what every other country does. Those are the ones over which we’ll go to war.’

  ‘That’s a big statement,’ said Rose.

  ‘Dr Rose, you’re a student of politics like me. When the interests of human societies conflict, they fight. They might talk a lot first, they might try to find a way out, but when they genuinely conflict, in the end we return to our primitive instincts and fight.’

  ‘Our interests conflicted with the Soviet Union and we didn’t fight them.’

  ‘We did. We fought them in the Middle East, we fought them in Afghanistan, we fought them in Africa, we fought them all over the world. Through proxies, I grant you, but we fought them. And in fact, our interests didn’t even conflict. Our interests were the same, which is why in the end that empire dissolved.’

  ‘That’s not how I’d put it,’ said Rose.

  ‘Who will we fight?’ asked the president, who was a lot less interested in the last war than in the next.

  ‘Us?’ said Ehrenreich. ‘The United States? China.’

  ‘No one else? Not India? Not Brazil? Russia?’

  Ehrenreich shook his head. ‘China.’

  The president glanced briefly at Abrahams, then looked back at Ehrenreich. ‘Why? Neither of us wants to fight.’

  ‘But we will. The global problems I talked about, we can’t solve them by ourselves and nor can they. But together, no one in the world can stand against us. Forget India, forget Brazil. Forget Russia. Forget the EU, which breaks down into its individual states as soon as a serious problem is on the table. No solution to any global problem will work unless both the US and China are signed up to it. You can call it a bipolar world, you can call it a G2, you can call it whatever you like. It may not be the way the UN likes to see it but that’s tough. Only two facts matter. One, any solution to a global problem that isn’t solidly backed by the US and China won’t work. Two, any solution to a global problem that is solidly backed by the US and China – and which they’re prepared to put their economic weight behind – can’t be resisted by anybody else.’

  ‘And why do we fight?’

  ‘Because we don’t agree on the solutions. In fact, most of the time we don’t even agree on the problem. So long as we persist in trying to deal with global issues through a competitive lens of national sovereignty, we’ll eventually come to blows. It might happen through proxies, but it’ll be over one of these issues. Take what we’ve got going on right now, this economic crisis. It is a crisis, a historic crisis that has arisen because we insist on forcing our interconnected, single, global economy into a framework of separate national sovereignties rather than managing it through an integrated set of common laws and regulations. Foreign state ownership of our corporations has enabled elements of our economy to become a weapon through which those tensions can be expressed. So now we have a crisis and potentially this crisis undermines the entire market system on which our economy is based. So what do we do? We take certain measures that we think will protect our economy, and they retaliate with others. We’re already fighting, aren’t we?’

  ‘That’s not exactly a war,’ said Gary Rose.

  ‘I’m not saying we go to war directly over this. I’m not saying we fire missiles at Beijing because Beijing brought down Fidelian Bank. But effectively, indirectly, that’s what will happen, because it creates the context. We’re in this crisis, and we’re trading economic blows, so we start to flex other muscles. Incidents happen. Where are we in proximity? Uganda. They have troops in Sudan, as we all know. We’re right across the border from each other. Now two of our men have been taken into Sudan. You ask me, we have a hell of trigger for a conflict right there.’

  There was utter silence around the table.

  ‘No? Alright, say the South China Sea. Say they go after one of our planes. They say it was in the
ir airspace, we say it was in international airspace. That happens all the time but normally we shrug it off. This time we respond. They do something to Taiwan, maybe some incident that results in a few Taiwanese soldiers getting killed. Things escalate. Normally they wouldn’t, but because we’re in conflict over this economic thing, they do. No one feels they can back down because the perception of weakness will translate itself into the financial arena and reduce their ability to get what they want. Or the arena of climate change, or epidemic disease control, or control of the blogosphere, or whatever the real issue of the moment is. So we do something, they do something, we do something, they do something – then we’re at war, or our proxies are. You’ve got what you wanted, Dr Rose.’ Ehrenreich paused. ‘If you ask me, Mr President, if I had to bet on a scenario, that’s how it’ll happen. Something like that.’

  The president glanced at Gary Rose. Almost imperceptibly, Rose raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Marion,’ asked the president, ‘do you agree with this?’

  ‘I think there’s a lot of plausibility in it,’ said Ellman. ‘I do see us trading blows, sir. I said that to you before. If we continue to trade blows then I think at some point the blows are likely to leave the diplomatic arena and the financial arena and get to something more physical. I think Joel’s articulated a somewhat more pessimistic view of human nature than I hold but I do agree with him that there’s a route to that scenario that’s very plausible.’

  Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘Human beings fight when they’re in conflict. We like to think they don’t, but they do. You look at every century, including our own. The way to prevent fighting isn’t to pretend that we don’t, but to admit that we do and deal with it by removing the cause of the conflict.’

  ‘As I said,’ said Marion, ‘Joel’s a little more pessimistic than me.’

  ‘Mr President,’ said Ehrenreich, ‘you may disagree with me that the issues I mentioned are intrinsically global in scope.’

  ‘No, Professor, I don’t disagree with you on that.’

  ‘Then if you don’t, it follows from that – it absolutely, one hundred per cent follows, inevitably, logically – that we have to deal with them globally. As one, single, global community. Otherwise, it’s like saying that here in the United States, state governments with conflicting interests can come up with whatever solution they want to a shared problem. That doesn’t work, which is why we have a federal government. At the global level, we need one coordinated, clear, explicit, shared set of objectives that everyone supports through actions everyone is prepared to take. Until we do that, we’re kidding ourselves. Take climate change. If this was a local problem, if one country alone could deal with it, don’t you think it would have been dealt with by now? Years ago, without any of the damage that we all know is inevitably going to happen? Of course it would. Well, if you accept that, you can’t accept that our system of decision-making at a global level is right.’

  ‘That’s a big thing to ask a politician to accept.’

  ‘I agree. And it’ll take a big politician to change it. Not just one big politician. A generation of big politicians.’

  ‘Professor Ehrenreich,’ said Ed Abrahams, ‘you obviously take the long view of things. I can’t remember the last time anyone asked me what the Native American tribes would have thought before the pilgrims arrived.’ He paused and smiled for a moment. ‘Let’s say we agree with you. What you’ve given us is a diagnosis, not a solution. It tells us what’s wrong, not what we should do. It’s fine to say we need a single, shared set of objectives, but how do we get them? You’re in the White House. This is the place for decisions, not theories. Put yourself in our shoes. What are you suggesting we do?’

  Ehrenreich wondered, again, why he had been called down here in such a hurry. He doubted the president had suddenly decided that the one thing he craved for entertainment on the second-last day of the year was an urgent seminar in international relations from someone who wasn’t exactly known as his biggest supporter. Something must be going on. For all his intellectual confidence, it suddenly scared the hell out of Joel Ehrenreich to think that something he said might actually have an influence on a real, practical decision that the president needed to take.

  ‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ he said carefully. ‘But I can tell you what you shouldn’t be doing, at least in my opinion. We shouldn’t be trying to deal with these things by ourselves. We don’t have the power to do that – not economically, not militarily. We did once, and when we did have it, we used it. The international system that we set up after World War Two was a US-inspired international system. We designed it, we implemented it. The UN, the IMF … That was us. Effectively, for a space of three to four years in the mid-1940s, when the rest of the world had been pretty much destroyed by war, the US was a de facto global government on the few genuinely global issues of the day. We had the power and no one else did. Now, we lost that relative advantage in power once the Soviets developed the bomb–’

  ‘Professor Ehrenreich,’ said Abrahams, ‘can we skip the history lesson?’

  ‘The point,’ said Ehrenreich curtly, giving Abrahams a dismissive glance, ‘is that during the Cold War there were very few genuinely shared global issues. Climate change and the environment weren’t on the agenda. Financial integration wasn’t an issue. Mr President, let me put it this way. During the Cold War, you could have dug a trench along the land borders of the Soviet Union, blown the whole thing up and let it sink into the sea, and life for us would have gone on just like before. Better than before. But think about China. If we could sink China tomorrow, our economy would be down the tube as quick as theirs. We’re no longer separable. So, here’s the problem. Fundamentally, give or take a few tweaks over the years, the system we have is still the one we designed after World War Two, when the Soviet Union could have disappeared into a hole. It’s a system for nation states where nation states are pretty much independent. But the world’s changed. The big problems aren’t national any more.’

  ‘Professor,’ said the president, ‘I’m not sure you’ve answered Mr Abrahams’ question. The question was what should I do?’

  Ehrenreich nodded. ‘With respect, Mr President, I did answer it. I said I didn’t know.’

  ‘With respect, Professor, that’s not good enough. I’m going to ask you for more. Let’s say I agree with you. I can’t change the world’s global system overnight, even if I wanted to.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So let’s say I want to take these global issues and share them. You say China’s the one to watch. Let’s say I agree with you again. Here’s my problem. I look at China, and I see an autocratic regime that systematically abuses human rights and acts on global issues in a way which pretty much ignores what the rest of the world requires. It’s only worried about its own growth. So how do I–’

  ‘Mr President, may I interrupt you?’

  Knowles stopped. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Let me replay what you’ve said in a slightly different way. I look at China and I see a country that only thirty years ago came out of an almost unimaginably horrible period of revolutionary communism that choked its development and put a large part of the country a good way back towards the Stone Age, a country that’s eager to improve the standard of living for its people and that is utterly bemused by the insistence of other countries – and chiefly the United States – that it should replicate foreign political practices, while those same countries are trying to constrain its carbon emissions and its growth so they can boost their already exceptional standards of living.’

  The president gazed at Ehrenreich.

  ‘I hate authoritarianism and suppression of civil rights as much as anyone, but there is another way of looking at it.’

  ‘I guess you can look at it that way,’ said Knowles, ‘but I don’t know how that helps me. I don’t know how I go along and say, let’s drop everything and pretend like we don’t have national interests and work this stuff out together. How do I give them
more say in the IMF, more say over international financial regulation, more say over all that kind of stuff after what they’ve just done? Why should I have any confidence they’ll use that power for our mutual benefit? Everything I’ve seen tells me the opposite.’

  ‘Can I replay that again for you, sir? I’m China and I’m looking at you, and I’m saying, why should I work with him when he doesn’t want to give us anywhere near the influence we should have in the IMF and in international regulation in proportion to our size and importance in the global economy, when there was all this talk in 2008 and 2009 about giving us a meaningful voice at the top and it didn’t happen? Where’s the evidence that he’s got any interest at all in mutual benefit or that’s he’s doing anything more than simply looking after America?’

  The president shook his head. ‘I don’t know where we go if we start talking like that.’

  ‘Exactly. Where do we go?’ Ehrenreich sat forward in his chair. ‘Mr President, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, and I sense I take a little more historical a view than Mr Abrahams is comfortable with, but … I’m going to say it anyway. You’re a pawn in this process. You’re a tiny little piece in the middle of a big historical process, as the peoples of this planet become so integrated that a bunch of interests have to be balanced against each other for the good of all peoples as a whole. Because if they’re not – everyone suffers. Not just them, but us. It’s impossible to overstate how new, how utterly new, this situation is for our civilization. That’s why it’s so hard for us. But Mr President, here’s the thing. It’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. You, and the United States, are not powerful enough to stop that. The only question is, how much pain is it going to take as this historical process plays out? Is it going to be excruciating, are we going to fight war after war as a way of balancing those interests, and perhaps destroy ourselves entirely? Or is it going to be peaceful? Disorienting, but peaceful? Are we going to be able to live with the ambiguity long enough to construct a way to do it without violence? That’s the choice. You do not have the power to take that choice away. No one does. But in your position, you do, sir, have the ability to influence the choice that we make. It could be that this financial crisis is the chance you have to start exerting that influence. It could be that it isn’t. But what it definitely isn’t – what I can guarantee you, absolutely, one hundred per cent guarantee you that it isn’t – is an opportunity to make that choice disappear. The process is in place and has been for decades. It can’t be stopped, sir. Whatever you do, please don’t mistake it for an opportunity to hold it back. There is no such thing.’