There is not much satisfaction, or shadenfreude either for that matter, in correctly predicting disasters. Twenty years ago I wrote a book[1] arguing a crisis in the near-failed nation on our southern border might well one day skew Washington’s world strategy as a superpower.
That is precisely the nature of President Bush’s fumbling argument now, not only with the Congress but with his own base at a crucial mid-term election and in run-up to picking his successor. Bush is trying to reach a compromise on the border-illegal immigrant issue quickly to get back to critical world policy.
That is not to demean the issues involved in the illegal immigrant morass. Continued rational immigration patterns are part of our mother’s milk. All those clichés about our being an immigrant nation — melting pot of civilizations, our “frontier” character and ethic, our economy’s underpinnings – are all true.
But sending military to police the border – something our officers for years resisted for good and sufficient reason – while less than the President’s critics claim and certainly less than a solution of illegal entry, is a touchstone. [Our tacticianers opposed this deployment because of its essentially police activities and the risk of contamination by narcotics.].
True, sending a few units of the National Guard to the Border for short periods will not destroy our incredibly sophisticated military no more than it will make much of a contribution to solving the problem. Never mind that the gringo baiters in Latin America – and their claque in American academe – see it as part of some right-wing conspiracy to perpetuate U.S. imperialism.
What is crucial is at a time when the American military are stretched, poised at the cusp of winning or losing in the Middle East, with a half dozen other crises from North Korean weapons to a retrogression in nuclear-armed Russia brewing, the relatively modest job of managing our borders is bowdlerizing our political processes by hogging the public platform..
In fact, there is a larger issue at stake. It is the American contribution to a solution to the worldwide problem of population movements. Never in history have such large numbers of people moved so rapidly — and with the all important continuing communication with their origins..
It is not only burgeoning populations moving from poorer countries in Asia and Africa and Latin America to the wealthier societies with declining birth rates – although that captures most headlines and is becoming the major social issue for Western Europe. But people movements within these poorer regions are having equally if less publicized consequences.
An aspect of the current reality is elites in the poorer countries and those in their migrants’ destinations differ far less in their ambitions and their lifestyles than generally publicized, often less than the growing gap between these elites and their own impoverished masses. Significantly, for example, the leadership of Islamicist terrorism is largely recruited from failed Westernized psychotics. The pattern is not new: advocates of Communist totalitarianism with its demands for “sacrifices” by everyone except the elites were more often than not drawn from the ranks of maharajas and the tribal chiefs.
That is why, rather than Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s clash of civilizations, what is happening is a clash of populations. The growing gap between elites in rapidly developing China and India and their huge populations is in no small part a reflection of the elites modeling themselves after those in the wealthier societies. It is no accident, as the Communists would have said, that “the golden ghettoes” of information technology out-sourcing in Bangalore look not unlike similar neighborhoods in San Jose. And the lifestyle of those who live there is modeled on what they know of America.
In Asia, the diversion of resources to urban areas helps to create huge reservoirs of impoverished people in rural China, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere, who threaten to overwhelm the touted accomplishments of rapid growth of the gross national product. Civil conflict – the half century of warfare in Aceh, Indonesia, against Javanese immigrant/soldiers, the disguised disproportionate growth of a Moslem underclass in India or the South Indians slums of Mumbai, the growing violence between villagers and Chinese Communist apparatchiks, Iran’s volatile youth’s battle against the mullahs – are all manifestations of this phenomenon.
Simple-minded population control fanaticism/dilettantism – China’s one-child policy turned into a demographic nightmare, threatening gender and youth to age imbalance, is the most flagrant example — are not an answer. Nor are some European attempts to simply shut down immigration. We are close to the Camp of the Saints!
While it is perfectly true, for example, in the long run only Mexicans can solve Mexico’s problems, in the long run, too, Washington – and the world – needs effective U.S. policies seeking to do just that rather than banking on a corrupt and stupid oligarchy to understand its own self interest...
[1] Mexico: Chaos on Our Doorstep:, Sol Sanders, Madison Books, Lanham, Md., 1986.ISBN 0-8191-5035-5
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
