The Lion And The Gazelle

“Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up and knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.  Every morning a lion wakes up and knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.  It doesn’t matter whether you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better start running.” – African Proverb

Tom Friedman writes another great piece today in which he nails a very important point.  When it comes to the backlash against globalization, we often think of the shifting cultural norms that come with connectivity.  Religious fundamentalist fear globalization because it shines a light on the lies they’ve been able to tell their followers.  In other words, you can’t brainwash someone who has access to the internet.  And this will continue, all over the world, as society after society has its ridiculous belief systems blown up by access to information.  Why do you think the church was so afraid of the printing press?

But it has become evident over the past few weeks, that the march of globalization is producing a new backlash.  China’s 1.3 billion people have joined the global economic game.  India, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Brazil and several other developing nations have flooded the world market with labor.  These countries, among others, are doing what needs to be done in order to give their people the ability to compete on the world stage.

Back to that African proverb.  Before this recent round of globalization, that gazelle had only to run faster than the fastest lion within 20 miles.  Today, the same gazelle must run faster than the fastest lion in the world.  Get my drift?

Tom writes, “Egypt’s government has wasted the last 30 years — i.e., their whole lives (the 20 year olds) — plying them with the soft bigotry of low expectations: “Be patient. Egypt moves at its own pace, like the Nile.” Well, great. Singapore also moves at its own pace, like the Internet.”

While all of these people in the Middle East watch China, and India, and Brazil climb out of poverty, their governments investing in their futures, the Arabs get nothing.  The pace of economic development and the effect it’s having on the price of natural resources is producing a monster backlash now.  These young people are revolting because they see their governments are not giving them the same opportunity as those in the rapidly developing world.  This revolution isn’t necessarily about democracy, it’s not necessarily about the huge gap between rich and poor within their individual countries.  It is a call of panic from these people who see the world moving by their eyes at the speed of the internet, and they aren’t part of it.

A little bit of a side note here.  I realized during my sophomore year of undergrad that I wanted to trade for a living.  But I continued through to the end with my study of political science, focusing on war theory and strategy along side my study of economics.  Specifically my study centered around Friedman’s main globalization backlash, transnational terror in the Middle East.  In order to understand the roots of that discontent I embarked on an in depth study of the region’s history, militarily, politically, socially, and economically.

When I came back to New York after my sophomore year at the University of San Diego to work for Geller Capital, I found an amazing professor at CUNY Hunter where I finished my degree.  This professor had quite an interesting story, one that just hit home with me tonight as I was writing this piece.  She grew up during the cold war and went to school to study the Soviet Union as it was the predominant political science/defense issue of the time.  She completed her Phd in the field and went to work for think tanks and consulting groups.  She has strong ties to intelligence agencies, defense departments, and diplomatic arms.

But this woman ran into a problem.  Right at the height of her relevancy and ability to have an impact on this issue, it disappeared, the Soviet Union collapsed.

This is one of the smartest people I know, and of course Russia is still relevant on the international stage, and her understanding of such is in high demand.  But she told me something while studying with her, about my own quest to understand this backlash against a globablizing world.  She warned me that by the time I would be in a place to contribute significantly, in whatever fashion that may be, the issue would most likely change dramatically.

I didn’t believe her.  I assumed that it would take 50 years for Islamic radicalism to play itself out as a real trend.  Other cultural backlashes would take place of course, and create stability issues, but none would be more central than this.

I was very wrong, and recent developments in the region signal a very important shift which is taking place.  These popular uprisings, let by young people connected to the internet, scared of being left behind, starved and left in the dark by rising commodity prices, these uprisings are going to shake the religious extremists to their core.

Why?  In the past the religious extremists were able to perpetuate the belief that the west was at fault for spreading a culture of indecency, non belief, and materialism.  Secular dictators were guilty of working with the west, or worse, Israel, the Zionist arm of the west.  And for a while they have been able to capture the minds of a decent slice of the public.  They were able to point the finger at us when their people saw the world rushing by without them.  It was our fault, and the answer was to turn inward and backward, to preserve their culture, preserve their backward values, the become more radical as a way to preserve themselves.

It’s over.  The veil of these lies if falling, quickly now.  The internet has reached enough of this region, it has connected enough of these people, it’s becoming hard to tell these lies when you can look through your computer screen and see that globalization does not equal westernization.

It has been interesting to watch what is taking place in Lebanon recently.  Hezbollah, an Islamic extremists group bent on Israel’s destruction and an enemy of the United States of America, has taken complete political power of the country.  Not that they didn’t already have power over the country in a defacto way, through military means.  What is interesting to me is that a group which for so long was able to throw rocks from the outside at the corrupt dictatorial governments of the region, has assumed political power themselves.  They, and they along, must now offer their people a better life.  What a monster mistake.

Many may see their rise to power in Lebanon as a threat to Israel and the west.  It is dangerous, don’t get me wrong, they will arm souther Lebanon to an extent which would make it extremely difficult for Israel to clean up a buffer zone if Hezbollah decides to start a confrontation on the border.  Not an unlikely scenario.

But more likely is that Hezbollah has laid the groundwork for their destruction already by coming to political power in Lebanon.  Like Mubarak, the Ayatollah in Iran, Assad in Syria, and the kings Abdullah of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern leaders, Hezbollah will soon face a crippling assault on its values from young people who want to be part of the globalized world, not left behind.  They have placed themselves in that position, the position of blame, just as any leader does.  They can no longer point fingers at the west, or at a corrupt political establishment.  It’s do or die time for them.

And since I still hold the belief that all people who come to power become pragmatic above all else, they will reform.  The will reform because they know they don’t offer a better option to the people who will throw them from power.  We are already seeing this in the Gaza strip as protests against Hamas are beginning.  These extremists groups which don’t currently offer a real solution to their people’s problem will transform or fold.  Them coming to political power thus can be seen as a great thing, it only speeds up their eventually transformation or destruction.

We live in amazing times, the world is transforming faster than any of us could have imagined only five or ten years ago.  The last few weeks have been exciting.

The sun is rising on this region of the world, there are a lot of starving lions ready to run, and a few gazelles who are looking a bit slow right now.

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