There is just one world

In the wake of the terrorist attack on New York that we remember today, two broad international developments followed. One was what President George W. Bush calls the war on terror. The other development, not explicitly announced, was the painting of the world as really being made up of two worlds - the World of Order and the World of Disorder. Two years on, these developments, alas, each tell a story of misjudgment.

It is indicative in itself that we need not spend too much time on assessing the "war on terror". In Afghanistan, the warlords wield effective power while the Taliban are making a comeback. Iraq is in a mess and, while its connections with terrorism before the war have yet to be demonstrated, the terrorists now are there to behold.

This is not to deny that there has been much useful tightening of security in western countries but in several places, notably in the US and UK (perhaps not coincidentally, the most hawkish countries), this has come at some cost to civil liberties.

The "war on terror" has provoked sharp disagreement in the West itself. The portrait of the world as divided into two, on the other hand, is much more widely endorsed. A mark of how natural and realist a portrait it is taken to be is the small number of scholars who have actually challenged it.

The idea of a world of Order and another of Disorder requires some background. It has long roots in western thought. The ancient Greeks, proud of their democracy, discoursed with horror about Persian imperialism; in the early modern period, the Venetians contrasted their republicanism with Ottoman despotism. The idea of the East as a totalitarian "anti-West" has been around for, literally, ages.

It is a Manichean idea, dividing the world into black and white, good and evil, us versus them. Stated that way, it might be easier for us to see that such a world view can actually do more than just describe a "way of seeing": it blinds its followers to the more complex nature of the world and in so blinding them it might create more disorder. We should be alert to the ways in which western traditions of thinking about the "world of disorder" might actually help create more mess.

At this point many readers might protest: who are you to say that the West has a Manichean view of the world? Is it not Osama bin Laden and his paranoid followers who divide the world into a realm of (Islamic) order and another of (Western) disorder? Do they not use this to justify their strikes of terror?

Yes, they do. The Manichean tradition may be found in certain strands of Islamic thought too (although Mr bin Laden's definition of order and disorder departs from that of classical and modernist Islam). It is part of the pity that, instead of causing a widespread rejection of all Manichean world-views, Mr bin Laden should have provoked so many western commentators into endorsing a Manichean view of their own.

Being a contemporary Western Manichean view, it is, of course, largely secularised. Few commentators endorse the secular moral terms in which President Bush talks of the "axis of evil" or "rogue states". They speak instead of the disorder of stagnant economies, repressive politics, and "breeding grounds" of terrorists.

The very terms, "world of order" and "world of disorder" have been used by Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times:

"In this World War III (meaning post-9/11)... the new bipolar system is divided between the World of Order and the World of Disorder. The World of Order is built on five pillars - the US, the European Union, Russia, India, and China, along with all the smaller powers around them. The World of Disorder is comprised of failed states (such as Liberia), rogue states (Iraq and North Korea), messy states - states that are too big to fail but too messy to work (Pakistan, Colombia, Indonesia, many Arab and African states) and, finally, the terrorist and Mafia networks that feed off the World of Disorder."

Friedman wrote this last March, before the start of the Iraq war. He used his analysis to justify the war on Iraq, as a means to apply shock therapy to the "messy" Arab states in the region, also members of the World of Disorder.

Although not many European commentators would follow him in his choice of "therapy", many do share his view of the Middle East as essentially a disordered world of stagnant economies, "too many people", "not enough land" and no democratic traditions.

The problem with this analysis is not the assessment of the state of the economy, democracy or investment in human resources: across the Middle East, these three factors fare poorly. The problem lies rather making it seem as though these disturbed societies exist in an underdeveloped universe separate from ours.

How can Arab regimes invest much in schooling, when they spend so much (an average of 7.4 per cent of GDP) on hi-tech weaponry sold to them by the west? When US and European agricultural subsidies drive local farmers out of business, how is the region to free itself from chronic economic dependence?

Until Western societies acknowledge that there is only one world, not two or three, it will be difficult to tackle the political dangers that come with underdevelopment.

ranierfsadni@europe.com