*spark>>

http://www.spark-online.com

THE FATE OF THE NATION

By G.J. Lau

So here we are at the end of a century, our 20th by modern reckoning. It has been a tumultuous 100 years, filled with bright lights and deep shadows. Certainly the deepest of the shadows was cast by the wars that have raged almost continuously since its beginning.

Millions of men, women, and children perished in wars all over the globe. The big hits were taken in the two World Wars. Some 37.5 million in Word War I. Another 61 million in World War II.

But before and after both wars, millions died in smaller conflicts. The century began and ended with ethnic conflicts in the Balkans. The first Balkan War lit the fuse to World War I, which in turn led to World War II. Korea and Viet Nam were outgrowths of the rivalry between democracy and communism that erupted after World War II and that dominated word politics for the next 40 years.

Viet Nam was also an aftershock of the breakup of the great colonial empires that were the chief legacy of the 19th century. The creation and then dissolution of these colonial empires led to many more millions of deaths from nasty civil wars and from brutal colonial occupations. Africa was especially hard hit. The darkness at the heart of Africa was European greed. The scramble for Africa and the enslavement of an entire continent was the 19th Century's bridge to the 20th Century.

The Europeans went there for the raw materials essential to fuel the Industrial Revolution. In the Belgian Congo alone, an estimated10 million Africans were killed by the Belgians, who used Africans as slave labor to harvest rubber for Mr. Dunlop's bicycles and later for all those automobiles rolling off Mr. Ford's assembly lines.

When those raw materials were exhausted or were no longer needed because science created manmade substitutes, then the Europeans departed, leaving behind governments that to this day have been wracked by endless civil wars caused in great measure by the artificial boundaries drawn up by the colonialist powers. To make matters worse, Africa became the stage for surrogate wars, especially in the early '60s, where American and Soviet money financed an endless round of bloodletting in hopes of gaining some slight advantage in the Cold War.

The scrambling of ancient African chiefdoms into a hodgepodge of European colonial fiefdoms was due in large measure to European notions of statehood. Europe had long since been carved up into a series of autonomous states with sharply defined boundaries. Since Africa had no nations with recognizable boundaries, then the Europeans looked upon it as “empty” territory ripe for the geopolitical plucking.

This pattern repeated itself throughout the Near, Middle, and Far East. And if there was an existing government, then military force was used to seize control, or in the case of China, enslavement to the vice of opium, introduced on a wide scale by the British.

But even as the nation-state was entrenching its grip on society, other forces were at work that would by century's end begin to change our view of sovereignty. On the high seas, wind gave way to steam, while on land the horse and buggy gave way to planes, trains, and automobiles. Movement of peoples within continents and across the oceans accelerated. In the first 30 years of this century, 14 million immigrants fled the Old World in search of a new beginning in the United States.

The movement of information underwent a similar change. First came the telegraph. The whole notion of being ''wired'' originated with the telegraph lines that crisscrossed the globe. Then came radio and television. News did indeed travel fast. Without even realizing it, we began evolving into something that could never have existed before, a global community.

How does this still emerging global community affect the future of the nation-state? Well, for one thing, if no news was good news for those who would do their dirty work in secret, then more news is very good news for the victims of war and famine and injustice.

A hundred years ago, the events in Kosovo or Ruwanda or East Timor would have been just a distant rumor of war. Now this morning's atrocity is this evening's “film at eleven.” And whether it is a pediatrician in Serbia or an environmentalist in St. Petersburg or a member of the Falun Gong in Bejing, attempts by governments to silence their critics and enemies through extralegal methods are now front page news on papers all over the globe.

John Lennon asked us to “imagine there's no countries.” We are still a long way from that, but the sovereignty of a nation, the ability of a nation to operate with absolute autonomy within its own borders, has been severely eroded by the web of communications that casts its bright shining light into even the darkest corners. And to that extent, the world does indeed live as one.

NOTE: To learn know more about the atrocities on the Belgian Congo, read Adam Hochschild's wonderful book, ''King Leopold's Ghost.'' For a broader perspective, Thomas Pakenham's ''The Scramble for Africa'' comes highly recommended.

Check out more of G.J. Lau's maverick writings on politics in Singleminded .