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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.

 

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Te Moananui

mapTemoananui
The millisphere of Te Moananui

A Samoan geographer once said about the island nations of the Pacific that “The rest of the world sees us as islands in a far sea; we see ourselves as a sea of islands.”

The ‘millisphere’ is one ‘lens’ through which to look at the Pacific. By my definition a ‘millisphere’ is the ‘the sphere of interest’ of roughly one thousandth of the world’s total population. By this analysis we are looking for entities of roughly eight million people, let ‘s say less than four million is too small and over sixteen million too big.

By this standard Aotearoa/NZ  fits, (five million, 2020) but all the other Pacific island nations are too small. By adding them all to NZ we get a total population of roughly ten million – and the millisphere I call Te Moananui. (It is estimated that the population of Te Moananui will be nearly ten million by 2020).

What then are some of the characteristics of Te Moananui? 500 years ago, when Magellan was the first European to sail across the Pacific, one language covered the largest area of any language group on earth. Whether it was aloha, alofa or aroha, the word for love could be understood from Hawaii to Tonga and Aotearoa.

The indigenous flora and fauna of Te Moananui had developed in isolation and the effects of introduced species were profound, and irreversible. Historical nuclear testing and dumping, predatory fishing practices on a vast scale, the accumulation of floating plastic pouring out of the industrialised ‘Pacific rim’ and sea-level rise from climate change are some of the unique environmental issues facing Te Moananui in the new millennium; problems that have their making in the rest of the world but impacting on Te Moananui.

The American travel writer Paul Theroux, who lives in Hawaii, covers some of the human geography of Te Moananui in his book ‘The Happy Isles of Oceania’. One characteristic is that many of the people go elsewhere for work. Former US president Barak Obama, from Hawaii, was one notable example; Tongan/English basketball player Steven Adams is another, and there are now Polynesian players in most American NFL teams. One in five New Zealanders are currently working overseas, primarily in Australia, and whereas Auckland is the world’s largest Polynesian city, now there are significant Polynesian populations, both Maori and Pacific Island, in Los Angeles, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Remittances back constitute an important part of many island states’ economies.

Te Moananui is made up of over twenty independent states, protectorates and territories – and one state of the United States of America. The Pacific Island Forum, which has observer status at the United Nations, is one emerging governance entity; with the potential to manage the $6 billion dollar plus annual tuna fishing industry, for example. The appointment of the ex-Labour MP, Shane Jones, as an economic development ambassador to the Pacific, recognised the growing importance of the Forum.

When Hone Harawira was still in parliament a delegation from Rapanui (Easter Island) met with him, calling for separation from Chile and monetary union with NZ and in Hawaii some native Hawaiians fly the flag upside down as a protest against the continuing American occupation following the Dole coup of 1894, which ended the rule of the Hawaiian Kamehameha royal family.

The NZ geographer Kenneth Cumberland, in the seventies, described the Pacific as “an American lake.” This is reinforced today with American super-bases in the Pacific – primarily world’s largest ‘gas-and-go’ military arsenal on the island of Guam and the whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, revealed the importance Pearl Harbour in Hawaii as a “five-eyes” cyber-spy base.

One of the last things George W Bush did before leaving office was to create the world’s largest fishing reserve in the Mariana Trench, near Guam. Laying claim to the deepest part of world’s oceans naturally appeals to American exceptionalism; but were the Pacific Island Forum members ever consulted?

In the1980s David Lange’s Labour government declared New Zealand “nuclear free.” The American position, that they would “neither confirm nor deny” if their ships carried nuclear weapons lead to a thirty year standoff between the USA and NZ.  It was resolved with the pragmatic “don’t ask” position taken by John Key’s National government in 2010.