Dalrymple outlines lessons in history for imeprial ambitions

Book Review: Return of a King by William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury, 567 pp; Rs799 (Hardback)
Imperialism never gives of its own accord. The all-season historian, William Dalrymple, echoes this message in the thickness of his latest scripture-sized book, 'Return of a King'. In comparison to his research on India, which is always submerged in complex historiography, this new book is a rattling good read.

Afghanistan has one of the most difficult geographies on earth. Its morphing into a strife-torn country has much to do with its history of conquest and warfare. Many warriors have crossed this land over the ages, laying it to waste over and over again. Western "engagements" in Afghanistan have long been determined by strategic impulses to control and colonize the land. (The secondary reasons, such as rescuing Afghanistan's beautiful human and natural resources, were no less nefarious.)

Dalrymple's book focuses on the 19th century and analyzes the ill-fated reign of King Shah Shuja of the Sadozai Dynasty. The fluctuations in his reign, caused by the loosening of power and marked by humiliating defeats, forced exile and planks of homecoming, gives ample material to Dalrymple for his mammoth book. The book begins with an inquisition of Shah Shuja's overtures to the British East India Company. The "game" was to initially counter Russian advances in Afghanistan. But soon enough the Afghans turned against British occupation. (The Afghan natives are shown by the author to be a genuinely losing side.)

Anyone with a sense of history knows that the insurgency in present-day Afghanistan has striking parallels with its predecessor in 1842. The Game is repeating itself, concludes Dalrymple at the end of this book: President Hamid Karzai, in his dummy position, resembles Shah Shuja; and the Taliban are a re-enactment of the virulent Dost Mohammad. Dalrymple supplies lots of juicy details, including the sexual temptations of men at different levels of the hierarchy, not all of them suited to serious historiography.

Afghanistan has long been used as a battleground for wars by mighty and territorially ambitious external powers. This is because of its strategic geographic position between the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. Moreover, the fragmented and polarized nature of Afghan society, which is made up of many different ethnic groups, has led to endless internal struggles, in which neighbors and external powers can participate by deploying proxies. Afghanistan in the mid-19th century was therefore a story of imperial struggle and local resistance to external aggression.

Today, despite neo-imperial intervention, Afghanistan is a better place than it was 15 years ago. But the US is repeating follies similar to the ones committed by imperial Britain in the 19th century. Dalrymple doesn't suggest that this besieged nation will attain complete peace in the foreseeable future, though his guess - that first the US, and later China, will be the defeated imperial powers here - is probably a little far from the probable outcome.

Nevertheless, this book persuasively shows how powers become blinded in the race for strategic domination. The US has to pay, and is still paying, a heavy price in economic terms to maintain its occupation in Afghanistan, and there are fewer and fewer chances that it will recoup the money thus squandered on a land where prospects are dim for peace on the ground, much less for the extraction of mineral wealth under its soil. The US has definitely overreached in its strategies and has only made the world more violent and full with regional confrontation.

Though the author has some sense of China's imperial ambitions and likely role in the region's future, he overestimates it by placing the country on the side of the US as the next superpower to suffer a fall. China has no territorial loads like Afghanistan or Iraq. Why would it be in deep trouble like the US in the future? The author fails to supply persuasive reasons for why China will supplant the US from its superpower status, and in the terms familiar to us today.
Atul K Thakur
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Friday Times(January4-10,2013)-a different and short version of this review was also published in The Financial World, on December26,2012)

The breaking-down momentum

Book Review: Non-fiction/ Breakout Nations by Ruchir Sharma, Penguin/Allen Lane, 292 pp; Rs599 (Hardback)
Ruchir Sharma is possessed with both knowledge and narrative, which is not an ordinary blend. As an investment banker, he heads Emerging Market Equities and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, exposure he gained from his global career in high finance makes the strong foundation of his book -Breakout Nations. The major focus of his highly publicised book is on emerging economies and on the sliding developed world, but in patches book also looks on the issues related to business itself in straight terms.
The story hits the headlines quite often, how China and India have become the world's major economies. How Russia recuperating its old materialistic might by transforming sic British football. News are on global scale about the economic miracles and power shift from the so-called advanced world to what has been categorised the emerging world, including the BRIC countries, Goldman Sachs's shrewd acronym for the four largest economies of that caliber- Brazil, Russia, India and China. This diverts attention from the other powerful middle-income economies, such as Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, or the few African countries, notably Nigeria.
Ruchir does thorough introspection on the other strong emerging economies too, where his judgement appears apt. He superlatively rates South Korea for evolving as manufacturing hub; he calls it ‘Germany of Asia’. Though only recently, in the Asian financial crisis of 1998, it was bailed-out-by the IMF in emergency, but ahead, crisis was taken proactively by the industry and its policy regime. So things are structurally different now, he also believes Korea’s unification is not a utopian imagination.
For investors, Breakout Nations is a rare cautionary tale- if countries can act wrongly by not displaying the right political will; investors often reverts the same by relying on herd behaviour. The book has some sharp observations on bubbles of various kinds, for asset prices, technology booms and the impending commodity bubble. The future appears more shaky-greater volatility, unjustified inflation, political uncertainty-and end of incorrigible optimism of the 1990s and even of the time spent few years back. Now, investment climate would be based on more skewed judgments than even before.
What decides the economic success of countries? Book provides meticulous observations on emerging economies and their cases-winners like South Korea and Poland; disappointments like Hungary and Mexico-foregone success stories of Malaysia; potential hope like Turkey and Indonesia; wonder like Sri Lanka and the BRICS. Ruchir is not exuberant on Brazil, forecasts a slowdown for China with intelligent reasons. India gets a fifty-fifty chance though the actual analysis is far more pessimistic- he finds many problems in categorising India as ‘breakout nation’. One of them is erratic political decision-making. Only damage control on persuasion he performs by quoting scientist Antoine Lavoisier, ‘Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.’
Author stress that there is no mechanism which guarantees the state of political will; democracies can stumble as much as authoritarian regimes-regionally inclined nationalist politicians like Rajapaksa and Erdogan can often perform more than their liberal counterparts.
Sharma also examines a handful of countries he classifies as the Fourth World of Frontier Economies. These are countries where the rule of law has a limited occupancy and where the prospects are as uncertain as are the stock markets across the world. All Gulf States fall into this category. So do the African countries, though some of which show promise. Sri Lanka is classified as a Frontier economy but he corrects it to admit lastly as breakout nation.
World is not passing through a decent phase, Breakout Nations reveals it, offers some solution too for coping the dangers around the corner…its realisation is though not so easy!
Atul Kumar Thakur
June 6th, Tuesday, 2012, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Financial World/Tehelka,June08,2012)

Loud thinking on economic issues just creates confusion

Book Review: Non-fiction/The Next Convergence by Michael Spence, Random House, 296 pp; Rs499 (Paperback)
Many of our most celebrated economists’ effort in surprisingly oversimplified or sensationalized rhetoric, especially in times of market uncertainty. Michael Spence has long been pointing out the fault lines that interfere with competent markets. He won the Nobel Prize in economics for working on the same theme in 2001, together with George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz. Here, Michael Spence’s new book, “The Next Convergence”, warns of the rough patches that arise when the world tries to accommodate both rapidly-growing emerging economies like India and China and slow-growing USA and western European economies.
This book refers that in the decades since 1950, as political, social and technological barriers fell, the growth impetus spread to populous developing economies, particularly in Asia. So far, such convergence has been unheard off- as only thirteen developing countries have managed to grow at an average rate of 7 per cent or more in first twenty five years. The formula for success is evident like buzz-embarrass the spirit of capitalism and get into the vibrant world of globalized trade. Nevertheless, nor is that easy bandwagon for success quite as achievable as many free-market economists would have us believe.
In 1950, author writes, “the average incomes of people living in these countries had raised twenty times, from about $500 per year to over $10,000 per year.” Though ironically, he missed stressing, these blocks account just fifteen percent of the earth’s total population. In recent years Spence has been majorly preoccupied with the economics of development and growth, and his active concentration in laissez-faire’s flaws has stayed with him. His book however is not sure about this nor, unfortunately, of many of the other macroeconomic policy issues he tackles. “The Next Convergence” adds hardly anything new as an overrated book and author’s relentless loud thinking on contemporary economic issues creates more confusion than solution.
The book primarily tries to survey the current state of both the growth and development economics, but without having standing to deal with the complexities of foreign aid, trade liberalisation, natural resources and the difficulty that countries experience when they begin evolving from middle-income nations to the next level economies. Any anticipation for breaking little new ground would be over expectation from this work, which is akin to rest on the broad generalities, finally leaving little in terms of outcome. The book has more questions than answers that may or not be bad enough but from readers’ perspective such mode of narration is hardly satisfying.
The crux of Michael Spence’s book exposes that future of global economy is going to be promising, in which perhaps 75 per cent of humanity will enjoy standards of living similar to those of today’s high-income countries by the middle of this century. Such unrealistic optimism seems based more on the ground of feeble research and weird hypotheses. Though, he further contradicts his own optimism by citing the potential risks against the future high growth in developing economies.
Lastly, his four findings are not new though gives the book some ideational foreground, to recognise the limits of one’s knowledge and the need to feel the way; appreciate the benefits of adversity; understand that sustainable wealth is built on people; finally, realise that governance matters. Altogether, these four are the Spence’s superstructure for “The Next Convergence” in a multispeed world!
Atul Kumar Thakur
May 17th, 2012, Thursday, 2012, New Delhi
Email: summertickets@gmail.com
(Published in The Financial World/Tehelka on May15th,2012)