The Need for Strong Institutions, Leaders, and Policies
INTRODUCTION
The greatest threat to our Western democracies comes not from totalitarian states but from within – from the accelerating centrifugal forces of populism in our own countries. Together, the 2016 US elections and Brexit – the British decision to leave the European Union – threaten the West with political turmoil. To restore equilibrium following the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, the financial collapse of 2008, and the disaffection of all those citizens who feel left behind by governments and society, we desperately need new visions, ideas, and projects, and a reshaped, inclusive world order.
Before we can achieve this goal, we will require leaders and followers as well as institutions that can be trusted. All our institutions are experiencing trust deficits. They are often justified, but we need institutions we can minimally trust. Erich Fromm, the Frankfurt-born psychologist, said that the rise of Hitler was made possible by a flight from freedom. Americans too often regard freedom as the absence of restraints. Fromm saw that aspect, but he also realized that freedom needs to be constrained by our shared humanity and what others need. The only freedom that is worthwhile needs to be limited, but more by ourselves than others. Mutual accommodation is one of the best sources of needed limits. It constitutes an accepted blend of inner and outer restraint.
The whole world, not just the West, has been increasingly driven by two powerful forces: liberty and science. The rigid either/or forces have steadily overbalanced the flexible both/and capacities for compassion and mutual accommodation. Both forces originate in the West and have moved on to the rest of the world. This lack of balance has become the central challenge of the twenty-first century.
In The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Samuel P. Huntington argued that the West faced a conflict between Western and other cultural and religious identities. Not so: the greater threat to the West is from within. If Western values and civilization are to endure, the West must first diagnose the nature of that threat. The West still has huge strengths, but if so-called populism further weakens them, the fight to preserve our freedoms will be lost. What replaces them will not be better.
The 2016 US election and the British decision to leave the European Union are the symptoms of a much bigger moment in world history. Both represent and propel the rising centrifugal forces in the world. They remind us of two grave past events: the US Civil War (1861–65) and the fateful Munich appeasement – “peace in our time” – of Germany’s strongman, Adolf Hitler, in 1938. Together, the US election and Brexit threaten the West with renewed political turmoil.
A New Moment in History
I have found the idea of a new moment in history quite useful. Eras come to an end when the strong momentum that has overridden everything in their wake weakens while, simultaneously, the counterforces they provoke gain strength. When the tumultuous Napoleonic era ended in Europe in 1815, it was followed by a long period of mostly rising peace and prosperity. It ended when an emerging and aggressive Germany could not be accommodated in a wider global order – something that hardly existed at the time.
The following period of 1914–45 was marked by the horror story of two world wars, a global depression, the Holocaust, and the near suicide of Europe. A relatively golden period of increasing peace and prosperity followed until the turn of the century. Then two calamitous events broke the magic: the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers. These major challenges are now playing out in intensifying centrifugal forces within the West and the return of expansionist forces in Russia, Iran, and China (perhaps somewhat less so in China, which better understands its economic dependence on the rest of the world).
The Centrifugal Forces of Populism
There is a backlash against too much and too fast integration. So-called elites, who believed in and profited from the broad values of inclusiveness, failed to account for their impact on those who could not keep up with the pace of change. Brexit supporters and Donald Trump capitalized on the fallout. Most of the suggested solutions so far stand to make things worse, not better.
The elites understood that the world is complex but failed to see that integration would only increase complexity and make outcomes even less manageable for more people. Nor did they see its unfairness. The Brexiters and Mr Trump correctly saw the need for a very big shakeup. The European Union and the Washington/Wall Street establishment need reshaping, not destruction. Will the arsonists who are trying to burn them down be able to do the reshaping? Not much they have said so far suggests they can – or even that they comprehend the complexity of our world.
Things could get a lot worse before they get better – and that might not be during our children’s or even our grandchildren’s lives. It depends on what we start to do now. We have the strengths, but do we have the will?
The Challenge for the West
Two developments would change prospects for the better: strong, visionary leadership and a reshaped, inclusive global order. First, able leaders and a sufficient number of followers are needed to contain and then reshape the dangerous centrifugal forces within Europe and the United States. Second, a change of heart toward an inclusive global order is needed from Russia and China.
The West will become more vulnerable to hostile outside forces unless the centrifugal forces within can be contained. The only current leader who might take on her share of the task is Angela Merkel, whose party lost so many seats in the 2017 election that she was forced into a shaky coalition. She is threatened on multiple fronts – primarily from the refugee challenge in Europe, reinforced by the continent’s pervasive economic insecurity, for which Germany bears a lot of responsibility. The US economy has more favourable prospects. But how long will they last? The country is undergoing its worst political turmoil in 150 years.
On the world stage, Russia and Iran stand against most actions to strengthen the postwar inclusive global order or to work for its constructive reshaping. It is difficult to see needed change from either, but that could end. Although pro-democracy forces in Europe have been weakened, they do not yet face authoritarian takeovers in either France or Germany. The situation is different today from that in 1938. The West is much stronger; authoritarian powers are weaker than Germany and Japan were at that time; but the United States is no longer the powerful “good guy” available to help – rather, it’s becoming part of the problem.
The Path to a Better Balance
Two quite different but related ideas help clarify the urgent need for better fundamental balance. First, the great philosopher Alfred North Whitehead suggested two seemingly contradictory ideas: narrowness is the basis of all achievement, and the universe is vast. The challenge of all life is to mutually accommodate the narrowness needed for achievements and the vision to understand the vastness and complexity of our world. Unfortunately, the West has too often concentrated on the narrowness at the expense of the vastness.
The second idea came from a CEO friend. He said that all good leaders require four strong characteristics (producer, administrator, integrator, and entrepreneur), but no one has more than two. When you choose an executive with a particular two, you must make sure that the No. 2 executive has the other two – yet another example of how pervasive the need for mutual accommodation has become.
Four Ways of Doings Things in a Better Fashion
The four broad ways humans have found to go about things in a better way are freedom, science, mutual accommodation, and compassion. The West’s problem is that its driving force since the Renaissance in the early 1400s has been liberty and science. The power of that narrowness and what it has achieved is enormous.
Now, the rise in centrifugal forces needs to be balanced by a greater capacity for mutual accommodation and compassion. Countries are like leaders. If they tend to be strong in two areas, they may not be able to find ways within themselves to achieve a better balance and will need other countries to assist.
Countries strong in the capacity for mutual accommodation are scarce, but Canada is one of them. This ability gives Canada a potentially important role to play in global affairs.
What We Can Learn from Japan and the New Testament
On my first visit to Japan, in 1975, I bought the only serious book about the nature of Japan I have ever seen written by a Japanese author – Japanese Society by Chie Nakane (1970). It gave me a new way of comparing societies and countries. Nakane argues that societies are shaped by the relative dominance of vertical and horizontal forces and institutions. She sees Japan as deeply vertical.
Adopting her perspective, I rate the United States as deeply horizontal. This diagnosis means that strong horizontal forces, such as freedom and markets, are less influential in Japan; while strong vertical forces based on relationships, mutual obligations, and consensus are much stronger in that country. It comes down to a preference in the United States for rights and freedom, in contrast to the preference in Japan for relationships and consensus. Arguably, relationships in the United States are too weak, while rights in Japan could be stronger.
Some years ago I used this comparison, along with two quotes from the New Testament, to explain to a group of CEOs that people want to be treated both as equals and as special. In the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying that the rain (nature) falls on the just and the unjust alike (equal treatment), while also saying the very hairs of your head are numbered (each person is special).
To my surprise, all seven executives agreed. In their experience, everyone in their companies wanted to be both equal and special. The threat to Western institutions and values today is that their driving forces have been too horizontal and impersonal. They have not been sufficiently balanced by the vertical and the personal. One result is the populism and growing unmanageability we now face.
A Need for Magical Thinking
The best approach to a post-Brexit, post-Trump world is to be calm and creative. We need calm to face the combined internal and external challenges that could bring the end of Western civilization – losing its values while gaining nothing comparable to replace them.
We also need to be creative to overcome the limits of the post-Brexit, post-Trump world. Four years ago the clever Las Vegas magician Jeff McBride said yes to my assertion that “magic would not be magic if it really was magic.” He added that limits can only be overcome by creativity – which is where magic comes from. Calm and common sense seem the best ways forward most of the time. Big, deep, broad crises also call for creativity. If you get the diagnosis right, you greatly improve the chances of getting the cure right.
The West’s crisis comes from the deep sources of its increasingly unmanageable imbalances over six centuries. The world’s challenge now – not just the West’s – is to maintain and improve the strength of freedom and science, and to use creativity to match them with the needed limits that flow from mutual accommodation and compassion. That is the only way for Western values to survive. And there are no other competitive values on offer.
If you doubt that science, freedom, and compassion can come together, look at what Médecins Sans Frontières has accomplished. Consider how much more this humanitarian organization could do if there was more mutual accommodation. Freedom, science, compassion, and mutual accommodation are all beneficial in their own ways. Together, they provide the cumulative strengths the whole world needs.
I have been a modest and passionate Methodist all my life. However, I am deeply grateful that Pope Francis, the only religious leader (indeed, the only leader of any kind) able to speak to the whole world, is not a man of rules, doctrines, or hierarchy but of compassion. The Pope’s compassion and Canada’s mutual accommodation are what the world most urgently needs. Together, they are the antidote to a kind of politics that, while recognizing the needs of some of the marginalized and left-out groups, also exploits and aggravates them.
Liberal democracy is in peril. The rule of law and a political system that make governing possible are key to the future of both Canada and the West. What we took for granted after 1945 is now under threat – this time from within. As Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Published as “Calm, Compassion, and Common Sense Will Help Forge a Way Forward,” Globe and Mail, January 13, 2017.