When Civilizations Clash
Alazar Kebede
Political analysts and historians realized that world politics is entering a new phase. They have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what will be the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries between nation states, and the decline of the nation state from the conflicting pulls of tribalism and globalism, among others.
In his famous and controversial book “Clash of Civilizations”, Samuel Huntington hypothesised that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. He noted that nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations.
Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is considered one of the foundation texts of our time, given its appearance in the decade prior to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in September 2001. But Huntington’s focus on “the West” and “Islam” has done little to illuminate an even more fundamental and far-reaching clash, the one pitching the waning fossil fuel civilization against the waxing civilization based on renewables and resource-efficiency.
The evidence for this “civilizational clash” clear in terms of the struggle of the renewables industries to be born and prosper, while the fossil fuel industries along with the companies, subsidies, regulations and laws that uphold their privileges refuse to leave the field. China and the United States represent the polar extremes in this clash, with China acting to build renewable energy industries. It is racing ahead as fast as is physically possible in order to ensure energy security, even as it builds a coal- and nuclear-fired thermal energy system. The United States, in contrast, is focusing on innovation, while Congressional leaders are subject to heavy fossil fuel lobbying and act to delay the transition to renewables.
Several American economists indicated that the clash is heating up in the current spat over trade in solar photovoltaic modules, where the United States now, and potentially the European Union as well, is leveling countervailing tariffs on Chinese solar equipment imports into the United States. This move is inviting tit-for-tat retaliation by China against United States energy exports where the United States currently runs a strong trade surplus with China. The dispute even threatens an all-out trade war.
According to Matthew Stepp, an American energy specialist, this is actually a clash of civilizations becomes evident when examined the ideological support for each side’s position in this dispute. China is supporting its policies to promote its solar industry at home, and for companies that then export their product, on the grounds that it is a developing industry that needs support in order to become established in the face of incumbent intransigence. It is a market-oriented strategy that is proving to be extremely effective. The United States, by contrast, is ideologically promoting a transition away from fossil fuels through support for innovation and creative destruction.
In its first term, the Obama Administration promoted renewables against fossil fuel incumbents through tax credits and loan guarantees, sometimes at very high levels. This policy was aimed at offering strong support for a few chosen recipients to help them bring new versions of existing products to market. Where things become interesting is on the ideology-based flanking moves undertaken by Washington-based think tanks in support of the United States position. It conveniently labels the two sides in this clash as “innovation” which is the United States approach, on the one hand and “green mercantilism” which is China’s approach, on the other . Innovation is “good” and green mercantilism is “bad.”
As Washington Post reported in August this year, many think-tanks have taken sides in the current trade dispute, arguing that the United States Department of Commerce and a coalition of companies led by SolarWorld urging it forward are simply trying to enforce the rules of global competition, while the green mercantilists are threatening the survival of the rest of the industry.
A number of American energy analyst argued that the problem with this position is that it ignores the reasons for China’s success. Chinese firms are not “dumping” products on the rest of the world, but are benefiting from the cost advantages they have reaped through scaling up production. According to them, this is a time-honored approach to reducing costs and enlarging the market, perfected in the United States ever since it was applied so effectively by Henry Ford to the luxury automotive market at the time.
In the solar race, United States firms are in difficulties not because of Chinese dumping, but because their market in the United States was not allowed to expand fast enough, thanks to Congressional hostility linked to fossil fuel lobbying. The American slowness to diffuse renewable energies does not so much reflect a lack of innovation as a plethora of regulatory and institutional blockages. In China, by contrast, there is strong focus on building a national smart grid as counterpart to policies promoting renewables. This is not just a “fast follower” technology strategy, but one where China intends to take the lead through development of new standards and their promotion through domestic market creation.
The European giant, Germany finds itself mid-way between the United States and China in this clash, making it a somewhat reluctant party to the EU-initiated trade dispute over solar panels. Germany has been promoting renewables through a policy targeted at market expansion mainly in the form of the very successful feed-in tariff policies, which encourage independent power producers. But this carries cost burdens for consumers that appear to have hit their ceiling in Germany.
Mercantilist or not, China’s approach to highly-focused building of new export-oriented industries and expanding the markets for their products to drive down costs is winning. The United States-led approach that focuses exclusively on innovation and creative destruction as drivers of market transformation is too slow. As Matthew Stepp adamantly argued, most painful for the United States perhaps is recognition of the fact that its traditional advantages over other Western economies in the global era have been transferred to China.
According to him, all of this is good news for developing countries around the world, in that they are provided with an alternative to fossil-fuelled industrialization. It is also good news for entrepreneurial innovators in the EU and Japan, who can take advantage of the lower costs to fashion new business models. And it is good news for our industrial civilization, which has to de-carbonize rapidly if it is to have any hope of a future.
PEOPLE & POWER
‘People’s power’ or ‘democracy’ (demo=people & kratos=rule) has always been a grandiose ideal pervading many an organized society, old and new. However, praxis on the ground (various systems of political governance) have had and still have difficulties achieving this sought after objective. In fact, the history of highly organized societies is anything but (democratic), at least in the original sense of the word! The more organized a society, the more hierarchical it becomes. Thereafter, the notion of people’s power recedes to the background giving way to representative political governance! This deep-rooted discordance is one obvious affliction of modern societies. A technical name exists for such incongruity in the world of psychology. Unfortunately, ‘civilized societies’ have many such discordant issues that squarely fall in the category of ‘cognitive dissonance’! Even though the phrase is frequently used to describe a psychological condition of an individual, it has recently gained currency in the description of the larger human collectives and its constructs!
One hundred years ago to the day, an experiment to install a system of genuine ‘people’s power’ was initiated in Imperial Russia. The Bolsheviks spared no effort in trying to set up ‘people’s power’ across the vast land of various nations and nationalities, in what later became the USSR (United Soviets Socialist Republic). To help achieve their project of ‘people power’, the soviets started out by classifying the general populous along class lines. The peasants and the workers were to be the vanguards of the whole movement, as they constituted the majority of citizens. In addition, an enlightened group of elites was selectively assembled to steer the radical transformation at all levels. This group became the communist party of the USSR and ultimately monopolized all representation of the people! The whole country was subjected to the doctrine of the ‘dictatorship of the proletarian’, the party being the sole proxy of the people. The experiment in the USSR was used as a template to forging development and democracy. The distilled observation is; direct people’s power was proxied to selected elites; and herein lies the problem! The rest is history!
Western democracy is also predicated on representative governance or representative politics. Here again, direct democracy (by the people) is not seriously entertained. Participatory democracy is not encouraged in the West, as it tends to undermine the role of the manipulative politicos and their dominant bosses, the 0.1%, who literally owns these countries. Admittedly and at times, smaller countries like Switzerland conduct plebiscites to decide on certain issues. Many of the so-called Western ‘democracies’ have morphed into outright plutocracies, the ‘rule of money’. See the articles on page 52 & 53. Nonetheless, the project of continuously hoodwinking the sheeple (human mass), facilitated by representative political governance, seems to be losing steam, so to speak! It is well known that all sorts of manipulations are used to discourage wide spread voting by the sheeple, lest the massive turnout pushes the whole process of representation towards direct democracy! In the west, it is ‘capital’ that has become the ultimate decider, not the demos, establishment rhetoric aside. It is the ‘deep state’ that is in charge here. No wonder ‘populist movements’ (to use the phrase of the establishment) are sprouting all over.
We believe, the western model, however hard it is pushed by global dominant interests, might not get wide reception in the countries of the periphery. Reasons abound. To start with, domestic capital is very weak and hardly independent. It also lacks broader vision, outside of its immediate interests. These and other reasons makes domestic capital a highly suspect entity in the periphery. As a result, capital might not be able to install sustained plutocracy, as it did in the North. On the other hand, ‘mafia states’, the equivalent of ‘deep states’ in the South, are fledging. The ‘mafia state’ is mostly composed of oligarchs, officials of reigning political parties, policy makers, government officials/functionaries, lumpen bourgeoisie, etc. The Arab Spring was one such reaction to the ongoing criminal arrangement of the ‘mafia state’. Resistance movements along these lines are gradually moving south to sub Saharan African countries. Kenya, Ethiopia, etc. are all facing public outcry about their entrenched ‘mafia states’, clandestinely operating behind established formal states. Moreover, the sheeple in the periphery, just like the sheeple up north, is becoming increasingly aware of the unsustainability of the modern world system. All these spell trouble to representative political governance!
In all the above, it is representative democracy and not people’s power, (i.e. the original idea of democracy) that is running the show! Very importantly, under representative politics the prevailing economic paradigms are not to be interrogated by routine elections, however much it is desired by the majority. Such things are regarded as sacrosanct, not subjected to democracy. One should wonder why countries waste time/resources by conducting regular elections that have no measureable impact on established economic dogmas! As the political activist and writer vividly put it: “If election mattered, it would have been disallowed.” Emma Goldman. Good Day!
Cultural Bureau to sue Muller Real Estate over historical site demolition
The Addis Ababa Cultural and Tourism Bureau plans to file charges against Muller Commercial Real Estate for demolishing the historical Ras Abebe Aregay House located at Adwa road near Aware. Muller is planning to build a G+19 apartment complex in that location.
The Bureau told Capital that the home was listed as one of the 440 historical houses in the city’s master plan. It sits on 1,800sqm and was constructed 70 years ago, and was used as a residence for Ras Abebe Aregay and his family.
Initially the famous athlete Kenenissa Bekele bought the house from Ras Abebe family. Then he later sold it to Access Real Estate. Then Access Real Estate sold it to Muller for 14 million birr.
Before the demolition Italians rented the house from Muller and used it as a restaurant.
Abebe Abera, a legal expert at the Bureau said Muller Real Estate was warned not to demolish the house.
“We received comments from people in the middle of the demolition and we wrote a letter telling Muller to cease and desist but they completely destroyed the place. As a cultural bureau we are responsible for protecting heritages and we have sent documents to Yeka Police to sue Muller,” he said.
Mulegeta Tesfakiros, founder of Muller Real Estate said the company passed through legal procedures before they demolished the house.
No procedure was overlooked before we began the demolition. We got approval for the construction and demolition of the house from the concerned bodies. We also received approval from the city which said the old house was not on the list of historical heritage sites.
“However, after we demolished the house the Wereda officials told us that the house actually was on the list of historical heritages when we began building the new apartment, so we received mixed messages” Mulugeta told Capital.
Under the current heritage proclamation in Ethiopia if somebody illegally demolishes a heritage site they may face up to 10 years imprisonment plus a fine.
Apart from the demolished house there are two old Ras Abebe Aregay homes found in Addis Ababa located in Arada Sub City.
Ras Abebe Aregay was a major leader of the resistance in Shewa against the Italians during the fascist occupation, and leader of the largest anti-occupation force in Ethiopia. Abebe Aregay was the grandchild of Menelik II’s loyal General Ras Gobena Dachi. As Balambaras Abebe Aregay, he had been commander of Addis Ababa’s metropolitan police before the 1936 occupation of the capital. After the Emperor’s departure and the Italian occupation, the then Balambaras Abebe Aregay was proclaimed a son of Lij Iyasu at Amba Aradam as “Emperor Meleke Tsehai” in 1938, and was given the title of Ras. However the young claimant died of an illness soon after, and Abebe Aregai returned to supporting the restoration of Emperor Haile Selassie. Emperor Haile Selassie again granted him the title of Ras legitimately, and he was among the guerilla leaders that escorted the Emperor back into Addis Ababa on Liberation Day, May 5, 1941. Ras Abebe served as governor general of Shewa, governor general of Tigrai, Minister of Defense, Minister of the Interior, Crown Councilor and Senator at various times. He was killed during the Imperial Guard coup attempt of 1960 and was buried at Debre Libanos Monastery.
