Strategies of Conservation by Apparent Involution
Klaus Schebesch and Viorel Roman
Abstract:"Retirer pour mieux sauter:" Evolution of social and cultural human systems provides but also hides the answers to future crises and catastrophic changes. Present times expect a series of such challenging impacts. The end of the cold war was the first in the series. Others, not necessarily restrained to political dimension will follow. The world seems to be divided into an ascending hemisphere of western culture and power, and, a diffuse peripherized but growing residual. A key step towards evolutionary stability is to allow for a new or to re-vitalise a dormant third player in the game of hemispheres. This could be achieved by supporting a largely self-contained limiting culture which acts as a filter for the first world and as a model for periphery, possibly to the mutual benefit. But this end can not be achieved by pursuing present day global village strategies and by aspiration to global social logic.
- Introduction
As long as historical mankind recalls, the world is ruled by power centers which regenerate from periphery through the complex filters of geo-political and cultural limiting walls. Historically minded man is to be contrasted with a-historical man in the sense of Eliade ([El76]). Power centers form a collection of regions and nations which we call empire and the limiting walls which act much like permeable or semi-permeable membranes will be called limes in the sequel. Not unlike biological evolution (see Maynard Smith & Szathm`ary [MS95]), historical and political mankind uses compartmented (niche) evolution to breed and maintain a sufficient diversity of political and cultural strategies. These strategies are needed to be resistant against unpredictable events in the future. Economic organization and coordination as well as law are the operating system of this open ended adaptive process. They are themselves subject to slow but continuous change.
Following Huntington ([Hu93]) we assert that the cultural and especially the social value systems determined by religious traditions (see also Roman & Schebesch [RS91], [RS92] and Roman [Ro94a], [Ro94b]) are the most immutable traits of the hemispheres and the principal germs of conflict. Our abstract hemispheres empire, periphery and limes are geographically disconnected ensembles of regions and countries which share basic cultural strategies of combat or cooperation with opponent hemispheres.
The chances to transform the world into a single and uniform empire as tacitly implied by the western global village invasion strategy (expression coined by Marshall McLuhan) are extremely small, given the limited propensity and will for sustained hot global military conflict over many generations. Such conflicts were the rule in medieval Europe. Today, we observe (deceptive) signals of the spread of the rules of democracy throughout the world (see Modelsky & Perry [MP91]). But from any sensible evolutionary point of view the utility of diffusion of a culture of asserted social universality is highly questionable.
The virtual eternity of the abstract empire under historical man is to be contrasted with the rise and fall of particular great powers, be they modern national states or ancient single empires. In the last century the German chancellor von Bismarck noted that the essence of a great (particular) power always was to fill up a void left by the fall of another power, perhaps because a great power cannot afford to "... stay aside ...". This continues to be inherent in todays political evolution, which we take as given. It is a strong argument for our abstract empire to continue to exist and against a global village in any naive sense.
These problems were involuntarily uncovered towards the end of the cold war. The rigid bipolarity of the east-west conflict was misleading in its strategic stability in the sense that, during its period of influence, any more complex strategic situation with innovative potential immanently reduced to the very two-person game of the super-powers.
The first catastrophic event, the collapse of this rigid conflict, opens a door towards considering the more challenging, much bigger but essentially unpredictable outcomes of catastrophic events of the future:
Growth of world population. It occurs in wider parts of the periphery, accompanied by a desire to imitate economic and some cultural traits of the empire. This development might have two outcomes: 1) success of imitation which leads to ecological catastrophes, or 2) failure, which leads to social catastrophes. Both can motivate future wars.
Economic globalization. In theory it can provide a fair distribution of wealth. In practice, its implementation seems to be unstable unless we have a world wide empire. In the present "global village" the gap of income between empire and periphery widens, but at the same rate, the incompatible culture of the empire (e.g. forms of democracies, forms of entrepreneurial organizations) spread out. At least superficially, cultural niches of potential future value seem to be destroyed.
In the light of the possible catastrophes caused by ongoing regional and global adaptation three main points stand out for investigation:
The preeminent question of the empire is whether periphery should be organized according to the empire's standards? And, above all, is the periphery organizable at all?
The world, being historic and adaptive, cannot "tolerate" a static dis-functional limes like the one installed by cold war forces in Europe for long. Therefore the role of a functional limes similar to the ancient Roman limiting regions between "barbarian" and imperial citizens is a much more credible and viable solution for intra- and extra-limes populations. This type of limes can sensibly sustain the necessary cultural and strategic diversity in the ongoing historical evolution. Therefore the main questions are: Who should be part of the new limes? How should a stable limes be organized to assure a strategic and economic equilibrium between empire and periphery?
Periphery is constantly starring at the empire. Having nothing to lose except its "chains", periphery consistently (and in a sense rationally) conspires when and how to blackmail the empire, or, to what extend to invade empire and limes in a direct sense.
All problems of our triad of hemispheres are "rational" from their respective points of view and they are supported by hard empirical facts.
What is the Empire?
The privilege of the empire is law, order and justice. In this sense we have societies where civil and human rights in the western sense are taken for granted. The empire perceives itself entitled to intervene into the periphery whenever the own interests or cultural values seem to dictate such action. The core of social consensus within the empire gravitates around property and the right to individualism, which in turn cannot be stable except in a sustained state of economically wealthy populations. Especially, we find ongoing accumulation of capital which is inheritable to future generations. This means a high level of accountability and in economic terms it implies a stable financial system, which acts as an important guard of social discipline. To achieve this ends the empire uses rationality and science extensively and a complicated system of contracts which transforms interpersonal obligations into impersonal norms. The infrastructure is a collective product of many generations with a very high level of functionality and reliability. [Ro02]
Elites combine very long cultural traditions and social power or wealth. Undisrupted long term cultural traditions combined with undisturbed accumulation of wealth eventually lead to new life styles and economic cultures which can only be sustained with massive protection. Protection is invariably directed against invasion of peripheral forces which range over economic and cultural to massive "illegal" immigration.
After world war II territorial expansion is replaced by economic and cultural invasion. News of military conflict have a devastating effect on public opinion in the empire. As long as such conflicts are very short, of limited implications and relatively rare empire perceives expansion as a success. Eventually the real costs of simultaneous expansion and self-protection exceed any collectively acceptable level, and further expansion is improbable or impossible. The crisis of expansion then determines the empire to dictate or to advance the creation of an intermediate culture - the limes.
Owing to its strength and wealth, but also to the inertia of a formidable social regulatory machinery, the empire seems to set the trends of global action by playing open loop1 strategies against the other hemispheres. That is to say, empire formulates an "optimal program of action and reaction" a social and political convention, which is a policy convened by democratic or learned conspiratorial consensus. In the period following the convention empire tends to adhere to the principles of the program.
The forces of economic rationality oblige the empire to operate at its social and technological limits, inducing maximal exploitation of its cultural assets. But this is possible only by maximally revealing both structure and potential of social and economic actions. In practicing a {global village} type expansion strategy empire implicitly assumes the same type of cultural logic outside its frontiers.
What is the Periphery?
The economic misery of the periphery most invariably produces abundance of social misery, injustice and corruption. Consequently human and civil rights are perceived as instances of a surrealist state of mind. If the periphery suffers major drawbacks, it cannot aggressively intervene into the empire. It directly demands compensation or, in the worst case, the most elementary goods for survival.
There is no public social consensus to be found, which resembles the functional imperial cultures. The right to individuality is replaced by a strong sense of family, clan or other collective social atomic units, which can frequently be traced to ancient times or even to a-historical man. This social culture successfully undermines accountable accumulation and any individual life-styles for ages. Without such rational mechanisms there is no collective acceptance for the need of a stable financial system as a supreme social moderator.
The infrastructure is exclusively a copy of imperial models and is consequently lacking contextual functionality and reliability. Elites are transitory and mostly confined to social power or wealth. More traditional elites do understand the real incompatibilities between empire and periphery. They therefore are instinctively non-cooperative, but they are the only capable of effectively communicating with the empire. This often leads to maximally confusing relationships between empire and periphery.
In general periphery uses a cautious closed loop type political and economic strategy closely following the signals set by the empire. The main difference in strategy formation is the absence of coupling to the enormous cultural reserves of many peripheral societies. Eventually periphery uses the means of empire's technology to uncover and perpetuate the cultural reservoir to its ever growing population. Historically sunk cultures that can be re-vitalized to the effect of creating a competitive limes culture presumably abound. The case of Japan is the story of successful vitalization of coordinating cultural principles and to a lesser degree the story of successful imitation of western technology. Today, the Japanese blend of traditional and western social and industrial culture is itself a source of inspiration and a subject of imitation. Owing to post world war II development Japan effectively joined the empire and can no longer serve as a model for periphery.
To react against imperial pressure, the periphery often sticks to arms which do not respond in terms of imperial values. This happens especially when there is no mediating limes at hand. Different forms of fundamentalism or extremism lead to this end. To the very surprise of the empire, the periphery nowaday uses old and effective open loop threat strategies. By continuity of power only the empire can be entitled to pursue open loop strategies with wealth-increasing effects. Periphery has found a way to undermine this tradition of the empire. This is a serious potential for future conflict. Strategies to effectively mediate between the two principal cultural hemispheres seem non-existent.
- The Limes: Old and New
In discussing the limes which at least in visible terms is the most volatile of the three abstract hemispheres, historical examples will be confined to Europe. But similar strategic situations do occur in other parts of the world as well. To give a perspective to the main questions of limes formation we describe the geo-politically or militarily inspired limes, and proceed with the religious and ideological types (examples for different historical epochs in Europe are furnished by Bârlea [Ba90] and Szücs [Sz90]).
The expansion of the ancient Roman empire - as a first historical template for our abstract empire - grained to a halt by an internal mutation of imperial organization. The politically legitimated will of unlimited geo-political expansion of senatorial Rome was replaced by the Asian-influenced imperial institution of Imperator Romanorum. In contradistinction to the former senatorial government this new institution could loose all its prestige by loosing a single war. Hence the design of a geo-political limes gained uppermost priority. Eventually this limes divided a vast territory, in spanning from North England along the Rhine-Danube river system down to the Black Sea. This limes started out as a purely military concern, but during the following centuries it transformed into a culture. The population of this limes swapped high tactic mobility of the imperial (central) military organization for a more local role but with high adaptability to peripheral (nomadic) pressure.
This role of cultural interface proved to be self-amplifying for the limes population. Eventually the experience accumulated there became crucial for the empire itself. Even after the collapse of the Roman empire the limes survived and came into new flower. Subsequently it represented a self-contained culture which successfully combined the resistant cultural traits of the old empire with the many cultures of the migrating peripheral tribes.
After 500 years of medieval transitory development in Europe the geometry of the limes becomes more complicated. Following the Christian crisis of religious Europe - the division into western and eastern churches - a new perpendicular branch to the old limes spans from the Adriatic to the Baltic Sea. Focal points like, e.g. Vienna and many other regions of intense inter-cultural coordination activities can be detected starting with the Baltic states along the eastern Polish border, including Transylvania and the Danube border regions down to Dubrovnic.
After the end of cold war this geographically fat limes candidate suffers from confusing change of direction of transitory goals. Neither the empire nor the new European limes candidates themselves are presently willing to formulate a consistent set of developmental goals which fit the natural role of the presently undefined hemisphere. The foregone conflict of ideological Europe left convincing evidence that it does not pay to use a rigid impermeable limes whose borderline is planted with mines and guarded by dogs. Cultural pressures in central Europe gradually undermined a not so seriously impeded functioning of the military barrier. In fact the separation did function almost to perfection and the exercise is easily repeatable - even with appropriate populist consensus.
The true reason for of the rigid limes to disappear lies in the traditionally high mobility of ideas and technologies (see e.g. Aulin [Au89]) as well as the cultural vicinity of "models" from western Europe, at least as perceived in the educated social classes of communist and post communist eastern Europe. But the crisis of the soviet experiment and new Russian indulgence was needed in the first place to bring about this new situation. Furthermore we insist on recalling two decisive factors: 1) The western model is not a literal goal of any wider population in the region 2) The region as a whole shares abstract strategic positions and cultural properties, but it lacks any will and coherence in performing coordinated moves in its own interest (which would automatically qualify it as an ascending wing of the empire).
- What are the Cultural Strategies of the Limes?
Faced with the open loop strategies of the empire and the predominantly closed loop strategies of the periphery the limes is mediating between this hemispheres as long as it is recognized as a credible third player. Post cold war Yugoslavia provides an eclatant example of empire lead de-construction of a limes culture which finally erupted in civil war. Uniform and "universal" globalization plans of the empire seem to undermine the credibility of the limes, in that it (empire) increasingly seeks for direct interaction with the periphery. This brings about a flow of conflictual situations, which can be avoided by an effectively operating limes, probably resulting in mutual benefits.
Where did the culture and forces of the formerly effective limes disappear? Francis Fukuyamas "End of History" implicitly started this debate after the end of the cold war. Furthermore, even Huntington's famous "Clash of Civilization" continues this strand of ideas. But the concept of "modern but not western", is tied to past unfolded economic performance, and hence does not pay attention to the existence or the re-vitalization of the involuted role of the limes. The limes is itself a strategic concept of an abstract hemisphere independent of empirical cultural particularities or the strength and future role of the nation-state.
- Transitions Between the Hemispheres
Our abstract hemispheres empire, limes and periphery are not static with respect to their member regions or countries of the world. To a certain extent they all are mobile in space and time. Apart from certain historical transitions of single regions between the hemispheres we also find "chronic" members of empire and periphery and to a less obvious extend those of limes.
Superficially the limes can be thought of regions or countries which in alternating succession were members of empire and periphery. In digressing on the mechanisms of transition it will be clear that it is more appropriate to view the limes as a strategic self-sustaining culture, and in that train of thought, a valuable third player in global evolution.
In its present expansion strategy the empire seems to be deeply inspired by technologistic and economistic views in the following sense: Adoption processes can be governed by lock-in phenomena. As was impressively formulated by e.g. Arthur [Ar89], in the presence of externalities (increasing returns of adoption in the number of past adopters in that case) a technology can rationally exclude a rival one, irrespective of the objective relative merits of the candidate technologies. Transposed to cultural strategies (social technologies) this means the west is betting on the objective superiority (universal validity) of its choice of the expansionist program and is heavily counting on the eventual lock-in. This is a deformed perception of the evolutionary social systems at large. Even if solely using Arthurian arguments, this concept would grossly overestimate "universal values" in favor of the power of evolutionary dynamics.
In addition, the development of the hemispheres is constrained by the presence of hysteretic and other asymmetric functions between effort and perceivable results. Empire and periphery are stable in the sense that, as soon as a region or country reaches one of the two extreme respective states of development, it cannot easily be driven out by variation of financial, political and other effort. In contradistinction the limes is by now a reservoir of stable cultural strategies. But this does not mean that it is a perceivably functioning hemisphere. To awake and maintain its effective operation, it needs a fine balance of effort continuously preventing it from becoming imperial or peripheric in its functions, or, by implicitly stabilizing its credibility as a third player endowed with mediatory and model roles vis-a-vis the empire and respectively the periphery. The last variant of the concept is not yet mature as show "Desert-Shield"-strategies in the geo-political domain and "Peso-Shield"-strategies in finance (Mexico 1995, amounts of roughly $50 billion)!
Why did a new "empire" develop and then collapse in the Russian hemisphere as a project of Moscow ranging from Berlin to Vladivostok and from Finland to Afghanistan? The communist experiment can be seen as a necessary side effect of the capitalist evolution and by no means the last one. But eventually the communist experiment - in many respects similar to the pharaons pyramid projects with their human victims -, which was hence a heroic dictatorial attempt to imitate the millenar accumulation of the European empire, did also formulate similar goals which seemed to have universal social logic (the communist world revolution). This experiment was conducted with rationality and scientific method borrowed from the empire, but by preserving all the vital social and cultural structures of the periphery. In this period the limes degenerated into the dead rigid ideologic barrier without performing any of its traditional functions of cultural osmotic membrane. In fact the creative energy of the limes was de-naturated and absorbed into the soviet experiment.
Ultimately the soviet system failed to serve both as a limes and as a credible model to periphery. The experiment was abandoned and eventually the hemisphere turned back to its genuine historical role. The empire seems to look at the eastern European post communist hemisphere as some cultural strategy which is "locked-out" already in the sense of Arthur's technologies. Encouraged by the self-fulfilling and fulfilled prophecy of the "end of history" (and especially of end of cold war) the empire drops all phantasy concerning the real future role of this geographical hemisphere and retracts towards the view of natural peripherization of the region. The involution of this very hemisphere is indeed measurable in terms of economic and military power or influence. But the the involution is only apparent! The Byzantine-orthodox empire is being described as declining for roughly a 1000 years. Its regeneration under communist aegis with a surprizing vitality is - in historical terms - a short but impressive act of regeneration out of much more desperate situations. We question if the "end of history" has really arrived! The school of Byzantine-orthodox social and strategic thinking of considerable tradition was underestimated by empire and periphery alike. Under the new world order the involution by means of the voluntary de-construction of the soviet apparatus is an ultra-stable means of conservation of the Russian-orthodox long range core interests.
What are the most probable transitions between our hemispheres? Both empire and periphery enjoy a high probability of having constituents which do not leave their respective hemisphere in the foreseeable future. Direct transitions between the two extremes (empire and periphery) are practically excluded. Aiding periphery by the current programs of the empire and its international organizations further cements underdevelopment! The limes needs to face the two stable hemispheres, but never has command of the powers to effectively change the rules of the game. The passive resistance against imperial pressure to transform it into periphery or to be drowned by periphery into periphery is involution. This is a move which is outside of the spectrum of possible simple (direct) transitions between the hemispheres.
Having identified the cultural strategies and inertias of our three abstract hemispheres we conclude with the discussion of a possible new limes in the new world order, in many respects abating from the "mainstream" as is for instances documented in an influential international magazine [TE94].
- How to Design a Future Limes?
The aspiration of globally acting projects and institutions, starting with institutions like the World Bank, continuing with a worldwide standardized economy but also by indiscriminate propagation of ecological "values" (with political implications and long term conflict potential) which are part of the global village strategy, must fail if they cannot, or do not wish to, re-create and stabilize the limes. Present day development points towards destabilizing, ignoring or even destroying the forces of limes, in drawing on issues like universally valid goals of coherent global development. And all this in spite of the ever growing gap between the two principal hemispheres.
All the global and universal aspirations of the well-planned soviet socialist project failed as will eventually fail any similar aspiration formulated by e.g. global village advocates. The soviet experiment will be remembered by the fact that it was an attempt to create an evolutionary niche. The crucial fault of the experiment was its inability to use the functions of the old limes or to remodel a new functioning limes (present day mainland Chinese dictators seem to have grasped something of this idea).
But the main point in designing a future limes is, besides making it functional, to endow it with evolutionary stability. The utility of a stable limes is widely underestimated by empire and periphery alike, perhaps because their inhabitants are not inclined to think about structural change. Starting with the Roman empire, the limes was designed as a ephemere artifact. Even the later Roman-catholic limes was seen as a mere small step in the envisioned conquest of the world. Rome needed a whole millennium to understand the necessity of this construct: an important step towards ecumenism, which today is mistaken as a model for the future global village as is sometimes envisioned by the UN.
The chances of a stable future global network (say, more evenly distributed outposts of empire and a substantially increased number thereof) rise with the ability to recognize and develop the function of the limes. A phrase like "think global and act local" is in fact empty without the experience and the interface of the limes. The limes acts as chief coordinator of economic transactions between empire and periphery, because the limes by itself incorporates both methods and cultures besides having its own culture which is less accessible to both empire and periphery.
Although any substantial long term historical plan is a product of the empire, which is understandable from its mere stability, the limes develops the real elites and masters of inter-cultural coordination. The limes culture iterates a million-fold exercise of inter-cultural coordination of actions on all levels of magnitude, but in general with adjacent partners. Signals of communication are correctly interpreted and effectively understood. The necessary collective intelligence for successful coordination of (and not just communication about) inter-cultural affairs resembles the intelligence of collective action performed by markets in economic coordination. Non of the two can sensibly be simulated to the point of substantial gains by a system which is much simpler than the original, i.e. it cannot be executed by a "central plan". Such arguments should be always considered whenever top-down strategic decisions about inter-cultural issues are due!
Effective inter-cultural coordination cannot be capitalized by a thin elite of the empire which is far from the battle fields. This can induce severe instability between empire and limes, because the inter-cultural intelligence of the limes has no immediate power vis-à-vis the wealth of the empire. The long term ultra-stable life styles of the empire cannot compete with the "local" competence of the limes. At present this incompatibilities prevent a consensus on the adequate role of the limes. In many cases the empire feels in charge to "solve" conflicts with the periphery by using arrogance of power instead of intelligence and the "know-how" of the limes. Most of such conflicts are in fact not resolved but postponed only to face up later on in history with even more destructive potential.
- Apparent Involution of the Limes
The fact that the limes is out of the general perception does not mean that its design is lost! Its design hides behind the structures of apparently involuting former organizational centers and cultures. Again, for the case of Europe, we find them in disintegrated and peripherized small eastern nation-states and in the Russian hemisphere. How and to what benefit can these forces be re-vitalized without provoking an immediate conflict or clash with the empire? Or, can these forces self-organize in the sense of sudden reappearance?
In the first place, insisting on combating the "communist idea" in the culture of e.g. the former soviet block region is useless, because it was not created there and it never constituted a real substitute for local populations, which are historically geared towards the traditional limes cultures. Even the extension of NATO and EU into these regions must use a fine balance of the real historical heritage and should advance any autonomous initiative to revitalize the limes culture. Vishegrad countries obviously speculate to jump into the empire. This can be a destabilizing factor to a much needed and well functioning fat limes which cushions the empire effectively from undesirable and unpredictable invasions from any periphery. Invasion is undesirable from two standpoints: 1) it clashes with the traditions of the empire, 2) it deprives the periphery of its entrepreneurally minded class. In consequence the gap is widened again.
For the case of Europe, the present empire collaborates with a part of the old effective limes to shift the (not so old) rigid ideological limes a bit to the east. This resembles a virtual Chinese wall and by no means the creation of an effective economic limes as in present day socialist China, which takes place to a certain degree in its southern provinces adjacent to Hong Kong.
To comment the case of sudden reappearance of the involuting limes, we note that by the very culture of these regions a credible signal of the empire can lead to a very fast re-vitalization. The pace of such a development will exceed everything comparable in either empire or periphery. Halving the per head income after the end of the cold war did not produce major disruptions in these societies. This is so, because there act extremely strong and stable informal economic and social coordinating forces. These are complemented by a technocratic class which at least matches the diligence of comparable imperial structures.
To conclude, it would most probably pay for the empire to voluntarily involute its present expansive global village strategy by signalling an (apparently) new scheme for the division of labor on global affairs. This move could even underline the long term expansive prospects by adding to stability: Room can be left for re-vitalizing a limes which can coordinate cultural forces at low global expense. The central intelligence of the empire and its global organizations are misdirected in assuming to provide the only valuable strategic choices to answer future catastrophes and crises. They can successfully delineate very broad programmatic lines (open-loop startegies) but they cannot implement them in a sustainable inter-cultural manner. This requires a limes with market-like intelligence. Such a limes can further stabilize propensities to hot conflict. But even more important, it can provide credible models for the periphery which act at least in the sense of stabilizing (economic) expectations. This is an important ingredient for slowing polarization which is the onset of conflict.
In our view a re-vitalization of the limes (in its different locally adapted forms in the world) can mobilize the valuable strategic reserves which are impossible to "re-invent" but are implicit in dormant cultural heritage. This is one of the principal forces at our disposal which can help to answer coming catastrophic events and crises, which for someone - unknown to us all - will surely produce new chances and perspectives.
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Western Democracy Confronts Orthodoxy and Islam
Prof. Dr. Viorel Roman, advisor at the Bremen University, Germany
In 1989, after the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War, the world at large became euphoric, on the account of no longer having to contemplate the ravages of a global nuclear confrontation. Suddenly all prospects turned fine and dandy; the Westminster type democracy practiced in the First World -- the accepted winner of the forty-year old conflict -- will have naturally spread into the Second World -- the Orthodox realm -- also into the Third World, the latter largely living under the tenets of Islam. Finally the proverbial lamb was about to lay down with the lion. Perhaps, many people still remember Fukuyama’s famous quip: The world has arrived at the end of history. The fact that both The Second and The Third Worlds were -- and are -- rich in energy resources, some say, happened to be just a very lucky coincidence. For anybody who remembers those wonderful times, and cares to look at the world as it turned out be, that hasty euphoria seems now, in hind sight, rather phantasmagoric, not at all realistic. Let us review what happened in the interim.
The former Communist, and mostly Orthodox, countries went through a so-called transition period, which can aptly be branded as a farce. Actually, this tragic-comedy is continuing, and is being played as an endless joke on the economic backs of many millions of disappointed peoples, for whom the end of misery is not even barely visible on the future’s horizon. The former Communist party hierarchy, under the leadership of the former state security apparatus --made up by high-ranking members of the famous Nomenclature, -- in a very short time managed to turn around their former ideology, by beginning enthusiastically and conveniently to mimic the majority of the noisiest democratic slogans. One has to admit, they gave a masterful performance since, with a few notable exceptions, they are still ruling in many of those countries today, where they obtained, this time around, also the blessings of the Church, of the Patriarchs, while the situation of the masses at large continues to deteriorate steadily. During this period, the operating concepts, for instance in Romania, might be reduced to two, very simple phrases: privatization, and we do not sell our country -- (to foreigners). Many, more serious analysts, might consider this approach as an oversimplification. Maybe so, but these two simple phrases can sum up essentially what happened. Under the guise of privatization the new political classes acquired, sold, degraded or liquidated most of the county’s wealth, while -- in the light of a catchy slogan, -- we are not selling out our country, -- they skillfully kept at bay the inflow of serious foreign investors and capital. It is not at all surprising that some called this type of transition piratization (in Russian prikhvastiatzia). Consequently, the State budgeting process, the bulk of the remaining industry, as well as the mass-media --Television included -- remained and still are in the hands or under the influence of the old-new oligarchs. Essentially nothing has changed. The newly made, suddenly-turned-pious Orthodox capitalists, -- rejoined in their same former clans and groups of interests, which manipulate everything in politics, control the flow of information, and disperse their brash propaganda almost with the same success as in the past, if not more so. Welcome to the Orient, dominated as ever by informal networks and not so informal mafias!
So why should anybody be surprised when the common folk in The Orthodox world appear now flabbergasted by the newly born individualism (which they see as a sinfully aggressive selfishness), absolutely foreign to their faith and norms of acceptable behaviour. Is it then so miraculous that people have taken refuge once again into their proverbial apathy, and relinquished their salvation into the hands of the Redeemer? Man, be patient, thy kingdom will come, the last will be the first, and the meek will inherit the earth. Although under the leadership of Boris Yeltzin, Slobodan Miloshevitch, Ion Iliescu, Vladimir Putin and the KGB, the respective countries managed to stay economically afloat, while Communism seemingly had suffered a great defeat, in spite of the piracy inflicted on them, by the same token, these same countries, when it comes to Western imports, are still subjected to many of the COMECOM prohibitions, decreed against them during the past. Can these barriers contribute to an honest process of development? Probably not. Naturally, this sorry Cold War leftover today proves to be more troublesome for Russia and Serbia, because there it was superimposed on top of the other handicaps, inherent to the code of behaviour everywhere else in the Orthodox inspired world.
In the 22 countries of the Arab League the social, political and military situation is equally caught in an impasse. Across this part of president Bush’s axis of evil -- Iran, Irak, and now, Lebanon, Syria -- the implementation of Democracy looks more as a “Dream of One-Thousand-and-One-Nights” than a fairly feasible outcome. After the neo-conservatives’ unexpected success with the Oriental, Southern Slavs, as well as with the Moldo-Valahs at the end of the Cold War, it is suddenly very hard for them to understand why installing democracies among the Orthodox and the Moslems proves to be a task impossible to carry out overnight. For both religions acquiescing to the principles of competition --inherent to democracies -- is equally difficult to accept, which in their minds can produce mostly undesirable social discord, or lead to the creation of counter-productive political adversaries. Instead they favor the subtleties of the less formalized, more oriental structures, inherited respectively from Bizantium the Caliphates.
This state of mind may be simply illustrated by an example. When sometime ago, between the Orthodox and the Moslem’s a conflict ensued, which ended up by the Hezbollah organization taking a Soviet diplomat as hostage, the latter camp’s response had been conceived in a manner absolutely different from the way that challenge is expected to be answered in the West. Responding promptly to the provocation within the principles of tit-for-tat, the KGB went on to take a hostage from among the ranks of the Hesbollah, than castrated the victim and sent his testicles back to the same guerilla organization with the following message: This surgical operation will be readily applied to other Hezbollah members if the Soviet diplomat will not be immediately freed. Naturally, the diplomat quickly regained his liberty, and since then, hostage taking from among the Orthodox folk became taboo. This is exactly why, when Romanian hostages were taken in Iraq, the news elicited both in the West and East nothing less than perplexity.
What would it take for the neo-conservatives to wake up? It is high time for them to learn and accept the customs, traditions and the sensitivities of the Orthodox and Moslem’s before forcing upon their peoples democracies, either through deceptive transition processes or military actions.
1 We use the game-theoretic concepts of open loop and closed loop policies to have a template for the typical strategic information use within the hemispheres. But hereby we do not assert to know a formal game which aptly describes the payoff structure of the game of the hemispheres.
