Greatest Nation Questions

Which is the greatest nation on earth?

Well, there are lots of ways of answering this. We could look at legacies from ancient history, and choose Egypt, Iran, Greece or Italy. Or more recent history at retaining independence or avoiding invasion and choose Thailand or even Afghanistan. Doing well after independence might favour Botswana.

Natural beauty might lean us towards Norway or Austria or even Indonesia. Retention of ethnic diversity would suggest Papua New Guinea. More literally, Russia has the largest land mass and Nepal the highest mountains.

Culturally, Bach was from Germany, Monet from France and Shakespeare from England. But Argentina gave us their tango.

Australia has always punched above its weight at sports. But if we take sport down to its most fundamental, Jamaica’s sprinters or Kenya’s marathon runners have a claim.

Socially, we could take Canada for its tolerance, New Zealand for its balance, Uruguay for its progressiveness, Sweden for its female emancipation, Switzerland for its quirky local democracy, Bhutan for its happiness index or Denmark for its overhyped hygge. Singapore leads once again on recently published PISA education statistics, followed by Estonia. Japanese live the longest after people from Monaco, while Ukraine might be the most equal. Costa Rica has a great renewable energy performance.

Economically, China’s recent development has been amazing, but Qatar has the highest GDP per capita.

If we wanted to be really radical, we might choose Antarctica as the place humans have managed to mess up the least so far.

The last answer is the only meaningful one that any alien could come up with, and the one that reveals what a pointless question this is. Just like trying to identify the greatest corporation, or religion or song or painting, context is everything. If I was not so ignorant of most of the world, I could probably make a claim for every nation that ever existed.

Even the USA. The US still has a narrow lead in total GDP and a large one in military might, though the latter has not led to many triumphs, at least recently. Culturally, there are great cities. American firms rank among the world’s most successful innovators too. A claim based on values would be on rather shakier ground. But for sure, the US is a great nation and New York is a great city and I feel honoured to spend time here.

I was drawn to the question by a recent poll quoted in the Economist, which asked citizens of many countries if they thought their own nation was the greatest on earth.

You may not be too surprised by the results. Less than 10% of people from most places considered their own land the greatest – France even scored 0%. But the score in the US was 60%. More than half of those polled thought their nation was the greatest.

The reason, in my opinion, is simple. People here are conditioned to believe it.

The world is regularly portrayed as a sort of playground or colony to Americans. US products are routinely described as the best in the world, with no evidence, indeed no likelihood than any comparison outside US borders has been attempted. This week, we have been invited to buy the world’s softest pyjamas, of all things.

I actually cheered last week on Thursday Night Football when (amidst the usual glorification of the military and references to world champions of a sport nobody else plays) a venerable commentator described a barbecue joint in Kansas City as perhaps the finest in the US. This was a departure – commentators would nearly always claim the joint to be the finest in the world. Well done, Al Michaels.

Time Magazine, who should know better, publishes an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world. Invariably, over half are Americans. Now it is fair enough that a US magazine should see mainly US people in its sphere of influence. But I would have expected just one small reference in four years to this context, and the possibility, however small, that someone in Johannesburg or Kuala Lumpur might come up with a different list.

Does this matter, or is this just a bitter old pedant having a moan or even expressing some jealousy? Well, indeed belief and pride have an upside. They create optimism, innovation and the ability to rally people around to an idea. Some of that has helped the US in the past, and its opposite arguably holds back some European nations.

But I believe that overall the belief of exceptionalism does serious damage, and I think the history of all fallen empires supports this claim. In the end, it happens to corporations and sporting superpowers as well. Groups of people who believe themselves inherently superior become arrogant, they fail to learn from outside, they try to impose flawed ideas on others, and eventually they implode.

The US really struggles to learn. I saw this in business whenever I was part of a team that included a US delegation – they spoke the loudest and listened the least. There is remarkably little US journalism or academia setting out to discover how the nation can learn from other nations.

US foreign policy has been a litany of imposing flawed ideas, or at least attributing false expectations to others about US values. Partners and allies become vassals and clients. The widespread assumption, right to the very top, that Iraqis or Venezuelans or Vietnamese would want to be invaded still amazes me, and the same mistake is repeated again and again.

The implosion starts when the fantasy starts to crack among its own subjects. If we really are the greatest nation, how could 9/11 happen, and how can it be that a generation grows up poorer than the previous one and in constant fear of unemployment or foreclosure?

If the premise is exceptional greatness, there can only be two explanations. Either the leaders are failing, or the very fabric of the nation is being infiltrated and weakened by outsiders. These are precisely the arguments used by Trump, and we saw in November how powerful they are. I fear that we’ll see in the coming years where they lead.

It will be hard to achieve, but the best advice for well-meaning leaders in the US would be to gradually wean the nation away from its delusion. It is hard because there are easy votes in building up the nation and personal risks to realism, such as attacks as someone who doesn’t love one’s country. It is telling that Hillary used her invited column in Time just before the election to laud US exceptionalism.

But it is feasible to change the mindset gradually. Few nations have achieved it without serial humiliations – Suez did quite a lot of good for the UK in the longer term. I predict a few humiliations over the next few years, which might help an honest coalition in four or eight years. For in the end, this delusion of greatness is truly toxic.  

Are we all Bullies?

I was a bully at high school. I think most kids were actually, it was an all boys’ school and it was survival of the fittest. But I recall I did more than some others, taunting one particular defenceless kid, not with anything physical, but with nicknames and getting into his face when I am sure he would rather I were some place else.

As an adult, I’ve often thought back to that phase with some shame and wondered what led me to behave like that. I don’t know if there was any sadism involved; my best guess is that it was a sort of fear-based way of avoiding being bullied myself. If I was a predator, maybe I was less likely to become a prey, despite being a weakling and a nerd.

I believe that fear will be behind most bullying. I just looked up that an American study found that among athletes, “the strongest predictor was the perception of whether the most influential male in a player’s life would approve of the bullying behaviour”. Although I don’t recall any particular male influencing me, that seems to account for much of the bullying I witnessed at school.

Shell went through a phase when bullying was called out. After the reserves crisis, new CEO Jeroen van der Veer made a big point of stamping out any bullying culture, clearly because he had witnessed (even suffered?) it himself at the hands of his predecessor. It was a brave, and vulnerable intervention, and successful too, at least for a time. Sadly, corporate bullying seems to be alive and well.

I have been thinking about bullying since it seems to have been something of a theme of dismal 2016, and we can expect more of it in the coming years. Putin is a classic bully, and his behaviour is certainly driven by fear: he is tactical and not strategic, and often trying to divert risks or negative attention to himself.

Then there is Trump. He seems to be plenty of evidence that he has been a corporate bully. In the campaign there was plenty of belittling and imagined conspiracy. And now he seems to be trying the tactic on China. Further, his supporters seem to include a lot of cyber bullies and even those who would physically taunt minorities.

Cyber bullying is insidious, but interesting because it is so widespread. Seemingly, many of us can’t resist the temptation to take a free hateful shot at defenceless others. Even us optimists can’t gloss over or marginalise this phenomenon; it is too omnipresent for that.

So this leads me to a very negative thought about human nature. Are we all (or at least nearly all) bullies? Is bullying the natural way of things, only tempered by some learned societal decorum?

Perhaps it is. And perhaps more of us practice forms of bullying on a regular basis than we are aware of. Because there are many ways to be a bully, and lots of those don’t have much societal decorum in their way.

I was in a long relationship of unequal power. I was the young one, the rich one, the brainy one, the quick-witted one, and the one not suffering from an affliction. Often I felt bullied, when the affliction induced a lashing out. But was I a bully too?

No doubt there could be all sorts of psychological analysis as to how I landed in such a relationship in the first place, with some fear and some predator-before-prey sub conscious thinking a possibility. But I also have to consider the possibility that my behaviour drifted into a form of bullying too, thereby cementing the affliction ever deeper. On balance, I don’t think that is correct, but it is very healthy to consider the possibility in terms of identifying underlying risk factors in my make up.

There are a lot of abusive relationships in this world, whether parental, marital, corporate or anything else. I wonder how many of those are characterised by mutual bullying, with each partner using a different weapon. The more desperate partner’s bullying will be obvious to outsiders, but the behaviour of the other might be just as damaging. And that partner will generally be seen as societally acceptable, and oblivious to the effects of their own behaviour.

So, in 2016, have we got this the wrong way around, or at least only focused on one half of the story? The whole remain campaign in the UK felt like a demeaning lecture. Renzi’s failed campaign in Italy had a bullying, back me or else, feel. And Clinton’s infamous deplorable remark displayed her ugly true colours. Meanwhile, across Europe, the establishment tries to bully the public into rejecting the far right, without being fully honest about its own platforms and undermining of democracy. All this could be summarised as the public finally reacting to years of intellectual bullying by elites.

It is tempting to push back. Trump’s vilification of Clinton and much else in his campaign were fact-free bullying. And somehow the playing field doesn’t feel equal - outsiders and minorities seem to get the benefit of the doubt. A US policeman trying to do his job may sense double standards when provoked by unruly kids or organised gangs.

But this is where the buck stops. Outsiders and minorities and the historically disadvantaged have a right to express a grievance, while incumbents must beware of bullying. Sometimes it doesn’t feel fair – and in another way the Trump populists are the incumbents rather than the outsiders – but such asymmetry leads to a fairer society ion the end.

One of the smartest statements in the US campaign came from Trump when he suggested banning Muslims until they understood why they hated us. Instead the ugliness of that statement is a kernel of potential value. The reasons many Muslims do hate the US is that they are fed up with decades of bullying, including invasions, sanctions and abuse of UN vetoes. The powerful tend to resort to bullying. And power comes in many forms that are not physical, including intellectual power.

I recall again the Prodigal Son parable, specifically the attempted bullying of the elder son who so resembles most of us. The whole Gospel could be argued as a parable about abusing power, via repeated exposure of those like the Pharisees, and culminating in the crucifixion made inevitable by the mob. I’ve been in mobs, for example at soccer matches, and I know they do not bring out the best in me.

So what should we do? As usual, the best place to start is with ourselves. I have bullied, I can still bully, in some ways my natural tendency is to bully. It is powerful and empowering to be aware of that, because it is the first step to doing something about it. Just like in a twelve-step programme, the first step is to acknowledge a weakness and its near inevitability.

Then we can look at specific situations and relationships that carry a bullying risk, and work on them, with plenty of self-awareness and feedback. For those of us challenged by events in 2016, I believe that approach has more promise than doubling down, or blame, or despair.                

A Globalist Agenda

This dismal year has spawned many new words, among them Globalist. This was one of the barbs Trump used to discredit Clinton and Obama. Somehow being a globalist was being unpatriotic, for unrestricted trade and pro elite.

Then my own prime minister, the increasingly unimpressive Theresa May, chose to take a pot shot. In her conference speech, she claimed: “But if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means”.

Well thanks for that, Theresa, so much for the values of the enlightenment. Apparently the original reference for this sort of sentiment was in the nineteenth century, when it was used to pillory the “rootless Jew”.

I have long considered myself primarily a citizen of the world, one with a UK passport. And this anti-globalist talk made me think further about the concept of the nation state and nationality.

The nation state is an artificial human construct. Most of the evil in the world today stems directly from the division into nation states and the barriers and restrictions and conflicts that generates. I will go further – it is at the heart of the last great repression of our time.

Thankfully, the last hundred years or so have seen the dismantling of most of the systematic repressions in the world. We no longer talk of colonies. Women now have similar rights to men. There is a global concept of human rights. Religion and sexual preference is increasingly seen as a private matter. Race no longer automatically condemns one group to subordination by another.

These are magnificent victories, though none is complete and recent political events may pause progress in some areas. But progress in each is cause for celebration. In each case, reactionaries tried to block change, using specious arguments of genetic superiority, legal ownership and impracticality of change. In each case, these arguments have been increasingly shown to be what they are – shameless attempts to maintain unwarranted privilege.

Isn’t nationality exactly the same? What gives one group dominion of one bit of land and its bounty, and the right to deny access or citizenship to others? Of course we need some local form of governance for administration, but nationality is used much more menacingly than that. How different is it really from slavery, an attempt to codify unjustifiable rights for an arbitrarily chosen sub-group? Think about it.

I look forward to a time in one or two generations when a passport carries about as much significance in life as a driving licence, and where a social security card feels more like a bus pass. Slowly or suddenly, whether through war or enlightenment, education or human mingling, the Trumps and Mays will eventually be replaced by globalists.

How can we speed things up? Well, I took to wondering what an agenda might be of an incoming US president who truly was a globalist. Not someone who had no pride in his or her nation, not someone trying to exploit some elite advantage, but someone committed to the benefit of humanity and the breaking down of the final great repression of nationality. In these depressing times, I found the exercise rather uplifting.

The starting point would be an audacious goal. By 2050, 95% of humanity would belong to a club of nations with free movement of goods, people services and capital. The EU already has these freedoms, and the US aspires to join by 2025 and all other nations are free to join when they wish. There will need to be transitional arrangements, and there may need to be some economic limits, for example the liability for benefits may remain with an emigrants source rather than destination for a period.

Another group of nations, which hopefully will converge to the same group, will be a subset of the United Nations with tighter connections. This group commits to ratify all existing UN statutes, including the human rights declaration, law of the sea and international criminal court. The governance will be equalised, with no vetoes and representation based on regional population rather than power or history or GDP. Existing economic institutions such as the WTO and IMF will be integrated into this club. Again, transitional arrangements will be necessary, and joining members must undertake not to sue other members for any past misdemeanours. The US aspires to be a founding member of this club by 2025.

A key role of this new club of nations will be collective defence. 50% of all defence assets will be immediately assigned to collective control, as will 75% of all future defence investments, including people, and 100% of all special assets such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, with full disarmament of such assets a goal to be achieved once all nations with such capabilities have joined the club. Covert and Special Forces are included, and all activities of these forces deployed within the club will be made transparent.

Individuals and firms from the economic club of nations may trade their national passport for a new international one, in order to be eligible for the full benefits of the four freedoms. Corporate taxation policy is ceded to the international club, and so is some individual taxation policy, but nations retain significant control of their currencies and most social and economic policy, so long as they operate within boundaries set down by the economic club. Stated goals of the economic club include environmental sustainability, equality of opportunity for citizens and transitional support for the historically disadvantaged and those adversely affected by change. 

This world feels eminently attainable and wonderfully desirable. What stops it from happening?

The obvious first blocker is the current global political climate. To change that depressing tide might require demonstration of failure of the petty nationalism of today, even via wars. But what would be great if some courageous politicians and parties were able to start making the positive case for a more integrated and fairer world. This may happen sooner than we think. Already, disgruntled liberals are starting to understand the challenge involved.

The second blocker is the US itself. The economic and defence clubs would have to include the US to be viable, yet be designed in such a way to entice China and India to join. This is currently a big stretch for the US, but a few more humiliations at the hands of the Chinese might change things quickly. It could be argued that the major inhibitor for the US currently is its stance on Israel, which would be incompatible with the defence alignment. So perhaps the US attitude to Israel and the Middle East is the domino that would have to shift in order to set things off in the right direction.

If the US, the EU, China and India all joined, it would be overwhelmingly in the interests for nearly everyone else to join too. The only holdouts would be Russia and places like North Korea and some African dictatorships, and the publics of these nations would eventually topple those regimes too. This dream is not as hopeless as it might seem. And I for one find positive dreams somewhat comforting in these times.