Month: August 2016

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Helvetia

In this rapidly overpopulating planet it helps to put the geo-political focus on population instead of focusing, as the media so often does, on celebrities, the nation state, warfare and the global economy. For this I use the lens of the “millisphere” (a region with roughly one thousandth of the world’s population).

As my millisphere analysis of “Palestine” showed, this model can confront nationalism and religion and sometimes meets head-on deeply held beliefs about the nature of the state and god.

Our friends Ross and Marie (ex communards from the Ahu Ahu Ohu) have just returned from visiting “Helvetia” – the old name for Switzerland. With a population of 8.4 million, it is a state that also qualifies as a millisphere.

Ross described it as a “beautiful country, like the Southern Alps on steroids, and very ordered.” As a timber miller and a greenie, Ross was surprised by the number of small sawmills and impressed with the management of their selectively logged mountain forests and the high alpine pastures.

They stayed in a typical village, “bigger than Waverley but smaller than Hawera”. High tech wood burners heating the houses are so efficient that “all you see is a little plume of steam and the air in the valleys is sparkling clean”. This winter the lakes froze over for the first time in decades.

Helvetia is ranked first for protecting the environment and the Swiss are reputedly top recyclers. Switzerland is the world’s wealthiest country per head of population and has the most dense rail network in the EU, 100 percent of which is electrified.

Helvetia has a long history of armed neutrality. There is compulsory military service and all reservists are issued with a gun from age 18 until 34. Referenda to disband the military in 1989 and 2001 were firmly defeated.

Switzerland was the birthplace of the Red Cross and Albert Einstein. It is where LSD, Velcro and the World Wide Web were invented and is the home of Nestle, Novatis, Credit Suisse, FIFA, the IOC and the ILO.

Their GST is 33 percent (compared with 15 percent in NZ). Food and housing are expensive and unemployment is very low, as is their tax rate. Last year a referendum on introducing UBI (universal basic income) was defeated.

Their constitution is that of a federation of “cantons” which, technically, have not handed over power to the centre and they are famous for “direct democracy” and have a referendum for nearly everything. Helvetia has an upper house of representatives from the cantons and a lower house elected from the general population.

In 1920 the League of Nations was formed in Geneva, which, after New York, has the United Nations’ second largest office and is home to the WHO, UNHRC and the WTO; but it was only in 2002 that the Swiss finally decided, by referendum, to become a full member of the UN, on condition that they are exempt from military requirements.

The Swiss were foundation members of the European Free Trade Association but have consistently voted not to join the EU and to retain their own currency. Through bilateral treaties they have minimal trade barriers to the EU and in 2009 joined the Schengen Zone, which allows for free movement across European borders.

Researching this column I talked to Sandra and Azian, both from Switzerland and now residents of Whanganui. I put it to them that “Helvetia” was an exemplar as far a well-run millisphere went.

Neutrality in an increasingly connected world was like balancing the Yin and the Yang Sandra thought; on the one hand maintaining independence and on the other being a global player. Like the USA, UK and Europe, Switzerland is experiencing rising xenophobia and nationalism.

Between 2012 and 2013 Switzerland took in 30,000 refugees. For a country with twice the population as New Zealand they take forty times as many refugees! Twenty percent of the Swiss population are immigrants but in 2014 a referendum to restrict the numbers of new immigrants was narrowly passed.

Switzerland has taken many Tibetan refugees form Northern India, settling then in the high plateau, and the Dalai Lama regularly visits this Tibetan enclave.

Azian thought that their high standard of living wasn’t as green as it appeared on the surface. Selling second hand cars to Poland “isn’t recycling” and the quest for material goods just made the Swiss unhappy and grumpy. “Too much all for one,” she concluded, referring to the Swiss motto: “all for one and one for all.”

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Juarez/El Paso

Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton reality television show

Two American elections ago during their primaries, when Barak Obama beat Hillary Clinton for the candidacy of the Democrat Party, we found ourselves in El Paso USA. That night we had crossed from Juarez on the Mexican side. George Bush had recently given the Mexican government US 1.4 billion dollars worth of weaponry to fight the ‘war on drugs’, much of which ending up in the wrong hands. When we passed through, we were blissfully unaware that the Juarez police were holed up in their police stations, too frightened to come out, as two cartels battled for possession of the ‘plaza.’

‘Safe’ in the USA, I was outside our hotel winding down with a cigarette and met a fellow smoker sheltering from a bitter winter wind. He was attending a political meeting around the corner and invited me along. In a bar, a rally of Ron Paul libertarians supported their candidate, running against John McCain for the Republican nomination. They were an interesting bunch of outsiders: small businessmen, blacks, Navahos, gays and intellectuals for the unfettered right. A city councillor engaged me in conversation. “How does the rest of world see America?” she asked. “As a nation or individuals?” I asked. “As a country, how do you see the United States?” “Well for me,” I replied, “an arrogant bully.” “Can you give me an example?” she continued. “Good question,” I told her, “ in a motel in Chihuahua last night I watched CNN; ‘blessed are the peacemakers’ CNN said, referring to George Bush’s recent trip to Israel, the following item reported his next stop, Saudi Arabia, where he gave them US ten billion dollars worth of military equipment, well,” I concluded, “blessed indeed are the peacemakers, and cursed are the arms dealers.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the councillor – but she had asked.

Barak Obama went on to win the presidency and CNN opined about how far civil rights in their country had come when a black man could be installed in the oval office and there was hope that Obama could disentangle America from the war in the Middle East. By the end of Obama’s two terms, American police have become militarised with surplus equipment from the Middle East and blacks are getting increasingly vocal about being shot down in the street.

Meanwhile the Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton reality television show, currently beaming out of the USA on the global infotainment channels, shows us that life does indeed mimic art. A veteran reality TV star, Trump understands the value of shock for increasing ratings.

Just as ‘America needs a black president,’ was part of Obama’s appeal, now ‘America needs a woman president,’ is part of Clinton’s pitch. Should a woman become the next American president, expect CNN to celebrate gender equality at the highest levels of power – as the daughters of the’ Third Wave’ feminists aspire to be Kardasians, and their granddaughters star in their own porn movies. Either way expect America to continue spending half of its annual budget on ‘defence.’

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Swessex

In the 1960s and eccentric English aristocrat, Alexander Thynn, the seventh Marquess of Bath, proposed that the world should consist of a thousand roughly equal population states.

Alexander’s father had been wounded in North Africa in World War II, and his father had only become the previous sixth marquess because his older brother had been killed in the Belgium trenches in World War I. Empires cause wars young Alexander reasoned – better to dismantle empires.

At the time New Zealand along with 70 other states such as Austria, Cuba, Israel and Laos – fell into that order of magnitude. Let’s call them millispheres – a state inhabited by roughly one thousandth of the total world population.

Since then another 20 states have joined the list of millispheres. Newly independent states such as Belarus, Turkmenistan, Bosnia and Croatia have appeared after the sundering of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, while Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Newly independent colonies such as Papua New Guinea have become millispheres. Most recently South Sudan voted to become one, while Syria is trying to break up and to illustrate the marquess’ original observation, the main suppliers of military hardware to that conflict are the United States, Russia and China.

In India there are aspirant millispheres such as Bodoland and Gorkhaland, and there is the Chin state in Burma, and the millisphere of Kashmir straddling the India-Pakistan border.

Indonesia, after the fall of Suharto, devolved political and economic powers to their regions, many roughly the size of millispheres, to placate independence campaigns in regions such  as Banda Aceh.

China, on its periphery, has aspirant millispheres such as Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang and in Europe there are independence movements in the Basque country, Catalonia and Flanders.

In all, the geo-political trend since World War II indicates the move to a world of “millispheres” along the Marquess of Bath’s lines. Even the United States is not immune. In June 2016 when a 52-48 majority in the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, using the hashtag #Brexit, there was renewed interest that Texas formalise efforts to secede from the United States, using the hashtag #Texit.

The UK, after their historic Brexit vote, faces renewed calls for Scotland’s independence. During Scotland’s recent vote on whether to leave the UK and form an independent Scotland but still be in the EU, the “Yes” faction believed Scotland should take back responsibility, secure funds from North Sea oil and stop building nuclear weapons, and use their resources and finances to create jobs, with more equal wages and a fairer social system.

Meanwhile the “No to independence” faction ran a campaign of fear. Scotland can’t make its way in on its own, they  said, adding that independence created an unsure economic future with doubtful benefits for the individual.

They theorised that it was doubtful whether the UK would remain in the EU (which came to pass). The pro-uk bloc followed the military line that in a dangerous world it is better to have strong partners and nuclear weapons.

Should the Marquess of Bath’s prediction of a world of one thousand independent “millispheres” come to pass, what would this mean for the UK?

It would mean an independent Scotland and Wales, and Northern Ireland would have no option but to join with the rest of Ireland. The millisphere of the Greater London urban area would probably continue as one of the great global financial centres and to the north there would be another largely urban millisphere centred on Manchester, with the rest of England divided into four or five rural/urban millispheres.

To the southwest of London there would be the millisphere of “Swessex” (Wessex and the Southwest) where the Marquess of Bath, now in his 80s, still lives.

The disintegration of the world’s superpower states and the creation of more millispheres probably wouldn’t mark the end of the world, and it might just put and end to war.

In the meantime the millisphere is merely another lens to examine human geography.