*This is the transcript of Sundeep Waslekar’s speech at ISRO, Compiled and edited by Melike Kucuk and Omer Faruk Kotan
It is a great pleasure to be in Turkey and to be at ISRO and to be one of your first guests. It is a new organization but it looks really well established. You have a very beautiful building and I am sure that you must be having very nice people, colleagues, whom I hope to get to know better; so I think that this visit not as a priority but as a beginning of a sentence. This is the second time in my life I am in Turkey. The first time was in 1987 and that was for three or four days in Tarabya near Istanbul and that was in summer. Now, I am here but to be for the first time if you discount that short tour to Turkey we are back 17 years ago with my colleague Yılmaz Fatih Ali who is in fact executive director of our organization and it is really a sign of changing times the nature of my visit the way I come here. My visit here has been organized to a large extent due to our collaboration with an European organization that in fact have a contact with take a part in Turkey and requested him to facility this visit. So this is kind of an example of globalization that taking this release is not bilateral even though we are based in India I like to be in Turkey but rather this is happening in the context of a global project to a walking on the security.
Before I start addressing my subject of this evening, I would like to take these opportunities of this public meeting to thank to take a part and to thank ISRO for inviting me as a guest here.
Well, the global security challenges for the next ten years. If you ask a politician a question, most of the time, his answer will be “may be”. If you ask a businessman a question before his answer he will probably say “yes I want to make the bill”. If you ask somebody from a think tank a question, and normally he will not say “yes”, he will not even say “no” he will not even say “maybe”, he will say “I want a conceptual framework to answer your question.” So from this perspective, I want a conceptual framework to answer your question of what would be the challenges for global security in the next ten years in a typical think tank style. For this reason, I will divide the issue into three categories; firstly, we have, as you look at the next decade, conceptual challenges, then secondly we have economic challenges and lastly we have hard code military or security challenges.
In this respect, the pillars of the next decade or even the next two decades will be much different from the pillars which we have seen in the recent past in the last 50-60 years because in the last half of the century, if you look at the security challenges you will normally talk about military and the security issues, but in the evolving period I would say that the challenges will be broadly in these three categories of conceptual economic and military security.
First of all, I will start with the conceptual challenges because that is the most difficult one of all. One of the most important years in the modern history of the world was 1648, when the peace of Westphalia was signed. It was important because at that time some basic concepts and basic theoretical issues, some basic arrangements were settled and these were the suppression between church and state or between the religion and poverty. The sovereignty of the state, the relationship between individual and state and the monopoly of force in the hands of the state were the basic issues which were settled through the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Since 1648 the world has seen many conflicts, the world has seen many wars but there has not been any basic conceptual conflicts. Most of the time, the wars have occurred between the states or within the states challenging the state authority but the issues which were settled at the time of The peace of Westphalia in 1648 were not disturbed. Afterwards The peace of Westphalia celebrity, approximately 350 years later, through the last five years going through the next ten or 15 or maybe in 20 years it is very important because the concepts and the theoretical issues which were settled for last 350 years. I think the challenge to the global security in the next ten years is a lot more serious that anything the world has seen in last 400 years. We have seen some worst periods in the last century that the two world wars resulted with the death of 50 million people, but still the basic issue is the conflict within the states. But if you don’t understand the cause of this happening we could have a major holocaust taking place in this century. What are some of the concepts which are going to be challenged in the next ten years or 15 years or maybe twenty years? First of all the concept of sovereignty of state which was given so far has been challenged and it has been challenged in both constructive way and destructive way.
Experimentally, the European Union is; I would say a constructive challenge in the concept of sovereignty of state because the European states are willingly relinquishing their sovereignty and sharing with on a horizontal base with the other European states. This is a voluntary relinquishing of sovereignty and that I will call it constructive. So do not worry, similarly in Turkey, you also have developments in technology, communication, media they are also making the state’s sovereignty which is difficult to manage. That is again a constructive challenge to the sovereignty of the state but we also have a growing tendency of destructive challenge to the sovereignty of the state. This is considered to be one of the biggest fears in the next ten to twenty years. For example; the US policy, doctrine of preemption, suggests that they can intrude in any state with their wish whenever they think there is a threat from that state without referring to chapter seven of the UN and without referring to the international law. This kind of an approach basically protects the sovereignty of the US but it questions the rights of the other states to have their own sovereignty.
You also have other forces of challenge to the sovereignty of states and Al-Qaeda is an example of that. Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization but terrorism has been on the stage for about thousand years. Second World War started with an act of terror. What is distinct about Al-Qaeda, as well as other like founded organizations, is not just the terror but the philosophy underlies it. Al-Qaeda and the other organizations that go with it, is that they are not accepting the sovereignty of the states, they want the sovereignty of god, the divine sovereignty. That is the challenge, they don’t accept the states, they do not accept the boundaries of the states and they don’t accept the human beings ruling the states but they want the god sovereignty to be restrained in the hands of the god. Therefore, this is a very big, psychological challenge and it is more serious than the superficial military challenge. One good example of these challenges is Hizb-ut Tahrir organization. Hizb-ut Tahrir is not involving in any terrorism. They are not even so far want to be involved in any terrorist attacks or preparing for any kind of terrorist attacks but Hizb-ut-Tahrir believes in sovereignty of god, not in sovereignty of states. They have managed to get ground support for this concept in Central Asia and South East Asia.
This brings me to the other conceptual challenge which we will face in the next 10-20 years for the international system and that relates to the suppression of religion and state or religion and politics. So far in most parts of the world since Westphalia we have agreed that the religion and the church in the state should be separated but since 1979 since Iran’s revolution this concept has been challenged and we will see more and more organizations and more and more political forces worldwide arguing for unity of polity and religion. This is not just in the Middle East or in Central Asia or in other countries where Islamic groups are having influence on. The bigger danger is in the United States and in some parts of Africa. There is a growing indication of the influence of religion on American politics. There is a systematic spread of pentagon to Christianity being spread in parts of Latin America and Africa. When you have this growth of influence of the religion in politics in US and other areas cover about pentagons’ Christianity and one side and some of the groups who advocate extremist Islamic ideology on the other side this could be a big challenge for the rest of the world to maintain all system on separation of religion and politics. One area where this challenge has occurred most is Europe. Europe is already in the post-modern phase, has gone beyond state sovereignty, they have gone beyond the religious politics. The Copenhagen criteria which are used for expanding the membership of the EU shows that Europe really wants to run its affairs and expand its scope on the basis of some principles of governance of democracy, human rights and free market.
On the other hand, Europe will also face demographic challenge in the next twenty to 30 years. Therefore, Europe have to either expand and include countries like Turkey and maybe even other countries and also allow and open door policy to invite migrant laborers but there are already some sides in small pockets in Europe of resistance to migrant labors or interaction of the people from the different religions and different cultures. This is also one of the reasons while you have pockets of resistance to Turkey’s entry into Europe. I don’t consider that this is a big problem and this is a problem in small pockets. However, if all over the world, US and in the Middle East if some of the basic concepts change then it will really be interesting to see how Europe reacts. Therefore; I think Turkey is going to be a very interesting case for us in the next twenty years. As we are in the side of modern Turkey is best co-separation of religion and polity and the current Turkey is engaged with the product of economic development and economic modernization. Both of these projects will depend upon what happens in this conceptual level around Turkey in the world. Thus, if we don’t understand these deeper psychological and philosophical issues if we don’t understand there is a risk that we may just treat the sentence of the problem and not the root of the problem and we could run into unexpected security risk in the next twenty years.
Now, the conceptual discussion might appear to be abstract and boring. As we see the second set of problems which are the economic problems. If you look at these problems in the context of what we first discussed then we understand gravity of the problems to come. Currently, five countries which are located between Turkey and India, these are, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan have ten million unemployed young men in the age group of 15 to 35. This does not include all unemployed men and this doesn’t include unemployed women. I focused in this age group because this is the age group when you may join the young men maintain to join organized crime or terrorist rings or other non-state activities. Now if you look beyond these five countries, at other parts of Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, North Africa and at sub-Sahara in Africa, you will have millions of unemployed young men at this moment in 2005. Now, normally, when you have such a large problem of unemployment, the normal response would be fully economic, to create jobs and to engage these young people in productive or constructive activities. Nevertheless I just do not see realistically any possibility of anybody being able to either the government or the private sector or the World Bank or anyone being able to create anywhere from ten to 30 million jobs in Asia and Africa in the next ten years. As a result this is a big bomb, much bigger then the nuclear bomb, I mean this several million unemployed young men. I am not suggesting that all of the men going to become terrorists or criminals or whatever, but when you have such a large pool of unemployed young men who can not possibly be employed those who have restrained interest will have a luck to pick up from.
On the top of that, what we have seen is a very strange phenomenon of many countries dropping their income. I mean normally what happen to the countries’ grow acts are certain based and some countries may grow out very little growth rate maybe one percent or half percent. Actually decline in their income is very rare. For instance; Saudi Arabia’s per capita income came down 50 percent in the last twenty years. It was 17000 dollars in 1982 and currently it is about 8500 dollars. In Iraq and Afghanistan there is no realistic way of measuring the per capita income but all indications show that substantial drop 50 to 60 percent in the last twenty years. Almost all of the five Central Asian states dropped their per capita income but 50 percent has dropped just in last ten years. This is a very dangerous phenomenon of coexistence of unemployed young people and slipping income in many of the countries.
Above all, we have inequalities between the regions. For example the Saudi per capita income is 8500 dollars but in the area around the Yemen, in the boarder part, there is a per capita income which is nearly seven hundred dollars. Consequently, when the 9/11 incident took place, lots of people said ‘oh Saudi Arabia is a rich country and how can the rich people from the rich country participate in terrorism; so it doesn’t make sense. However the point is that 15 of the 18 or 19 terrorists who were involved in 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. What people don’t realize is that 11 out of this 15 were from the areas, from border of Yemen. For an unemployed young man it is not without the say of 700 dollars income you go to some village in Central African Republic or distant part of India and there they have work income of only 200 or 300 dollars. He is not comparing himself to the situation in the world. He compares himself to his parents and how easy it was to get jobs in his parents’ time and how difficult it is now for him.
Therefore, economic deprivation can lead people to join crime or terrorism. It is more related with the psychological problem then the economic problem per se and these people are getting attracted to the alternative psychological concepts which are mentioned in the first part of my presentation. So, a man who is unemployed can be well off, he might have has good education and can live in a good house, but if he sees that he can’t get a job like his parents or his uncles and if he feels that he can not try to elective higher situation through some kind of a political courts for him it is a sort of frustration. Such a man is a very easy target for the politicians who want to use this kind of person to capture power or to challenge the existing power structure. It can take a very short time to use these unemployed young men and to mobilize them into destructive activities. For example, only ten years ago and in 1993-94, approximately, ten years ago, Nepal was the peaceful beautiful country, a nice place to visit for tourism and to go on your honeymoon and to go and to play in the casino. That is what Nepal wants just ten-twenty years ago. The Nepalese young people particularly were always very friendly and hospitable; therefore they had a rich tourism industry. Today, in a matter of twelve years, these young people have joined terrorist organizations, mafia crimes and the whole Nepalese political system has been destroyed. So there is a lesson to learn from what happened in Nepal.
Thailand is another country which is successfully evolving in economic terms but again in a matter of last five to seven years, the whole of the South Thailand, have been taken over by a federation of terrorist groups Bersatu (The United Front for the Independence of Pattani). Bangladesh is another country which has really concerns about future that they wonder what will happen in the next ten years. So, finding out these economic challenges, if you look at them in isolation, they would just appear to be very simple, however you can not create employment for this ten to thirty million people in the world. Therefore we are going to have a very serious problem in the next ten to fifteen years arising of this large pool of unemployed people.
This leads me to the third set of problems that are military and security issues. Now again the military and security has two aspects when you have the official armistice and then you have the unofficial armistice. The world spends billions of dollars on armament every year and still it is not able to stop incidents. Still there is a tendency to invest more and more in the military technologies and military equipment. What is dangerous is that force is being recognized more and more as something to get accepted through the world. For example; when Iraq did not have nuclear weapons Iraq was attacked, but when North Korea comparably has nuclear weapons North Korea has not attacked. In fact; if you look around the world you can find that the countries which have nuclear weapons and have links to terrorism are not attacked. On the contrary, countries which are weak are immediately targeted. Therefore; this encourages people to acquire more and more weapons and more and more arms. Now, of course this looks like a very gloomy picture if you look at all of the three fronts.
However; I don’t think that we have reasons to be pessimistic as of now. There are also some positive developments taking place in the world. The most important one is, of course, the technological developments. We have seen so far that the human societies show a lot of resilience and come together whenever there is a crisis; for instance tsunami, is a recent example. European expansion will also show that countries are willing to give up their selfishness and they wish to collaborate with each other. In brief; when we look at the next ten years, there is a world at risk and the world of opportunities. The future of the world will depend on our ability to reduce risk and increase the opportunities. That means that we did tremendous amount of international cooperation to transform the state of the world as it is. I would like to complement to the current Turkish leadership and the current elite for showing that they can transform the society as we have seen in the last couple of years. I understand this is work in progress and there is still a lot work to be achieved here but there is commitment to transformation. We need similar commitment to transformation in other parts of the world and not only in the national level but through international cooperation. Consequently, the dice has been thrown up for the next ten years, it is coming down slowly we have to catch and decide whether we want to put it on the side of cooperation or destruction.
Thank you very much.
Q and A Session
Q: What is the role of or the function of religion in the next twenty or thirty or fifteen years? What is going to happen, the religion will be a kind of peacemaker because we know all the religions concentrate on humanity to be a good human being or to do good things, and all religions propose those kinds of explanations. However, on the other states, as we have seen in the Al-Qaeda case, many people destroy the lives of other people by the name of god or religion. What do you think about the function of the religion is going to create a good atmosphere for the human being or in other words is it going to create a heaven or a hell?
A: Well, the religion, if you look at the scriptures or the teachings of any religion in the world there is absolutely no doubt that every religion teaches humanity, it teaches brotherhood it teaches mutually respectful relationship between human beings. I haven’t come across any scripture in any religion which categorically advises violence. In fact, all religions have the commitment to humanity and human values as something common among them. In fact, most religions were established to introduce justice in the society when there was injustice at that time. Judaism was established when there was exploitation of slaves and the peasants and poor workers. The Christianity was established when they were excesses in the place of temple and also by the king. Islam was established when there was tremendous amount of injustice and exploitation of particularly farmers and domestic workers and other people manual workers in the Byzantine Empire. Also it was a time when the Kureysh tribe in Saudi Arabia which had always lived in peace and on the basis of equality and sharing had lost its values. And a lot of distortions had taken place in the Kureysh tribe. Therefore; when Islam was established in the Kureysh area it quickly spread all over Saudi Arabia and then to the Byzantine Empire and then to the east. So all religions, at least many religions which are prevalent in this part of the world which are referred to they were all established to create justice in the society. That is really the function of the religion to provide justice and to establish brotherhood and humanity. Even today, when political Islam is under attack we have to look at the reality. There are 1.4 billion Muslim people in the world, Islamic people in the world. Our calculations show that those who are associated with extremism or terrorist group would be around one million. Similarly, even on the other side I refer to pentagon still in evangelical Christianity earlier. However; if you look at the numbers it is really a small part of the US and small parts of Africa and Latin America and I don’t think the numbers would be more than you know what compares to the Islamic religion. Thus, the capacity of religion to be destructive is actually limited. You have both in Islam and in Christianity and I would also say same thing about Hinduism, in my own country the people who belong to the extremist school of thought in Hinduism would be a small fraction of one percent in all the cases. Therefore; the problem is not of religion, the problem is that, this small one percent or two percent people who believe in extremist philosophies in all the religions, their leaders, they have been able to hijack the agenda and define the religion in there will. It is a problem of leadership, it is a problem of ideas and it is a problem of concepts and intellectual debate. This is not a problem of religion. Consequently; in the beginning I focused so much attention on concepts and ideas which might have appeared very boring but that is the real problem.
Q: You have mentioned about the armistice and its effects. However there is also another argument that investment in military technology creates jobs and helps to development of technology and science. On the other hand, under-developed states have to buy those weapons which are produced in developing countries. What do you think about the investment in military technology and also nuclear weapons in developing states? What will be the effects of security of those states and the effects of global security?
A: I fully understand this view that investment in military technologies that have some positive aspects in themselves; spill of all effects and in themselves normally creating job in the military industries that is very small but more important is that the technologies which have developed in military are often transfer to the civilian sector.
Q: What about the effects of nuclear technology?
A: For instance; the name of this organization is ISRO, if I go back to India and if I tell anywhere that I was speaking at ISRO they will all be surprised because ISRO to the Indians means Indian Space Research Organization. Now, ISRO is one of our leading research organizations in space and it has on one side linkages with the military program informally. I mean not very directly but developing from the technologies but also that technologies which are developed in ISRO are then transformed into the Indian civilian sector. When I go back to my country and tell that I spoke in your organization with your Turkish name rather than the ISRO. That is coming back to the main issues as you have asked that, even in the past the whole US military program, we know that the development of the US military has had some civilian linkages. Therefore; this is one aspect but that can not be allowed to dominate the entire debate on the relevance of military technologies and its implications for human society. There is absolutely no doubt that beyond some small gains like will maybe important in some restrict but beyond limited gains like this and the over all impact of the spread of military industrial complex is destructive. The most adverse implications are to be seen in the countries which are economically underdeveloped and which are trying to come up. The resources that they are spending on military development, you can not be naive and idealistic and say that, they can stop all of that, but there is a good portion which can be transferred into the civilian sector. We have recently done some study; we are in the process of doing a study of situation in Sri Lanka which is next door. In Sri Lanka there has been the cease-fire in operation for the last two years and we found out that in this last two years the military expenditure has gone down as the result of cease-fire and investment in economic areas has gone up and this has valued the economic growth rate up. Therefore, I mean there is absolutely no doubt that military expenditure does reflect the distorted allocation of resources in the economy. What is ironic is that lots of the military expenditure is also wasteful or irrelevant. For example, the US spends 400.000 dollars on armament and it has a capacity to bomb Baghdad from far away, but finally when it has to enter to the slums of Baghdad it has to negotiate to the slum lords. When it has to rule Afghanistan it has to negotiate with warlords then what is the use of all distinctly expenditure. This is not only that the poor or developing countries who can own their military expenditures but the US is an excellent example of how military expenditures can disturb economy currently. I mean this government inherited a fairly balance budget and it thanks to this military expenditure extraordinary military expenditure of the last few years that there is a major deficit which has resulted in the slide of dollar. What will happen in the next four years if this trend continuous, the dollar will continue to fall and it will slowly to some extend to limited extend lose its position as a reserve currency. Already more and more people have been trying to transfer to Europe and transfer their reserves to euro. Therefore; whether it is a developed country or a developing country, they are all affected by military expenditure and excessive military expenditure to a certain extend, you need it but beyond that if you cross your limits you are going to be affected.
Q: India will be great power or more likely to be one of the big powers in the next twenty-thirty years time for the global world than when it comes to for instance, take this power what will be the main framework of the Indian security concept for the world’s security other than American composes at the present time for instance.
A: Well, first of all most of the people in India are hoping that India will become a good power rather than a big power. I mean, of course, we want the country to be a great power but great by values not just great by the muscle power. At the end of the day, the historical records show that whenever greatness of power has been majored in terms of muscle power that power has collapsed. Roman Empire, the eastern part of Roman Empire was more open to attacks from outsiders and western part was secured but because of the deterioration of values the western part collapsed in the beginning of the fifth century. Eastern part survived for two hundred years. Therefore; I don’t have to give many examples since you are familiar with Ottoman Empire, and you are familiar with Middle East, you are familiar with this part of the world and again and again when you see you find that whenever greatness is measured in terms of values and economic modernization it has survived, otherwise it has collapsed. There is a growing consciousness among the Indian elite that as we progress, as we modernize, as we have a bigger role in the world affairs; this must be dictated like an economic agenda and by an agenda which is best on some kind of a value framework. Of course as in any other society there are different views, and there are schools of opinion, who would like to have a conventional view of great power, so this is an issue under debate and I hope that in the next twenty-thirty years we really have some kind of cloud in the international system we will settled in favor of greatness I mean values and rather than greatness as in muscle power.
Q: We know the US is superpower and doing anything whatever she wants. Mainly France opposes to the actions of the United States and criticizing somehow. On the other hand, we know Indian has sum of a power, China also, Japan is one of the most developed countries and they are not effective and they do not criticize in anyway the actions of the United States. What do you think about this situation what would be the reasons why they are not so much powerful sizing or involving in the world problems, they are so quite, what is the reason in your opinion?
A: Well, first of all US is not a superpower, it is a super force. It makes a difference between super force and superpower. Super force is a force which has physical dimension, power has non physical dimension. Therefore, the US is very strong in the physical dimension and the military dimension, but when it comes to the power aspect it is weak its total army is only 500.000 and that’s why it needs Turkish army, Indian army, everybody else’s army to fight in battles. Its total armed forces including navy and air forces are 1.4 million but army which is needed for the ground level battles is only 500 thousand it doesn’t even have enough man power, it has only technology. It has shares in the world economy; it has come down from fifty percent to thirty percent and by all at once is likely to go on to fifteen percent. Dollar as we are really discussed is loosing its place as a primary currency and the US is fast loosing its leadership as a community of values. For the last fifty years the US was really powerful because it led up community of North America, Western Europe and many other parts of the world. It was seen as a leader of values of democracy and human rights. The US is no longer seen as a leader of community of values of democracy and human rights. Now in order to answer your question, the problem is not only with the elite in China or India but many other parts of the world is also that they don’t understand this difference between super force and superpower and we recognize the US is the superpower when it is not a superpower and we want to obey its orders when it is not even a superpower. I mean the US can not too much forces, it has only 500.000 arm forces. The US can not do anything with all its military gathers and it wants to attack Iraq and Afghanistan but it can not go on destroying every country. If you oppose to the US policy, I don’t think US can attack India or Turkey or China. I think one of the big problems stressing the world right now is that we are allowing ourselves and our perception of global security to be governed by perception and not by facts. This looks like a boring abstract, a point again which is theoretical but this is a very serious problem. We think that the religion is going to be a problem, when you look at the facts, less than one percent of the population of every religion in the world is coming to the extremism more than 99 percentages. However, we are allowing to perceptions to create a big problem unnecessarily when the facts are not justifying. So in the beginning when I listed those three big sets of problems then I say I am still optimistic because I look at the facts and I distinguish them from the perceptions. I think it is a tremendous responsibility for intellectual readers around the world including you, including my boss and my colleagues, and the politic leaders to make this distinction between facts and perceptions. Rarely to bring the facts of the scientific analysis to do rational analysis to bring the facts to the table so those who are using perceptions to fully global public opinion should not be allowed to fool us.
Thank you.
