Transcript parag khanna maps the future of countries
1. Parag Khanna maps the future of countries
Do we live in a borderless world? Before you answer that, have a look at this map.
Contemporary political map shows that we have over 200 countries in the world today.
That's probably more than at any time in centuries. Now, many of you will object. For
you this would be a more appropriate map. You could call it TEDistan. In TEDistan,
there are no borders, just connected spaces and unconnected spaces. Most of you
probably reside in one of the 40 dots on this screen, of the many more that represent 90
percent of the world economy.
But let's talk about the 90 percent of the world population that will never leave the place
in which they were born. For them, nations, countries, boundaries, borders still matter a
great deal, and often violently. Now here at TED, we're solving some of the great
riddles of science and mysteries of the universe. Well here is a fundamental problem we
have not solved: our basic political geography. How do we distribute ourselves around
the world?
Now this is important, because border conflicts justify so much of the world's military-
industrial complex. Border conflicts can derail so much of the progress that we hope to
achieve here. So I think we need a deeper understanding of how people, money, power,
religion, culture, technology interact to change the map of the world. And we can try to
anticipate those changes, and shape them in a more constructive direction.
So we're going to look at some maps of the past, the present and some maps you haven't
seen in order to get a sense of where things are going. Let's start with the world of 1945.
1945 there were just 100 countries in the world. After World War II, Europe was
devastated, but still held large overseas colonies: French West Africa, British East
Africa, South Asia, and so forth. Then over the late '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s, waves
of decolonization took place. Over 50 new countries were born. You can see that Africa
has been fragmented. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South East Asian nations created.
Then came the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of
the Soviet Union. You had the creation of new states in Eastern Europe, the former
Yugoslav republics and the Balkans, and the 'stans of central Asia.
Today we have 200 countries in the world. The entire planet is covered by sovereign,
independent nation-states. Does that mean that someone's gain has to be someone else's
loss? Let's zoom in on one of the most strategic areas of the world, Eastern Eurasia. As
you can see on this map, Russia is still the largest country in the world. And as you
know, China is the most populous. And they share a lengthy land border.
What you don't see on this map is that most of Russia's 150 million people are
concentrated in its western provinces and areas that are close to Europe. And only 30
million people are in its eastern areas. In fact, the World Bank predicts that Russia's
population is declining towards about 120 million people
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2. And there is another thing that you don't see on this map. Stalin, Khrushchev and other
Soviet leaders forced Russians out to the far east to be in gulags, labor camps, nuclear
cities, whatever the case was. But as oil prices rose, Russian governments have invested
in infrastructure to unite the country, east and west. But nothing has more perversely
impacted Russia's demographic distribution, because the people in the east, who never
wanted to be there anyway, have gotten on those trains and roads and gone back to the
west. As a result, in the Russian far east today, which is twice the size of India, you
have exactly six million Russians.
So let's get a sense of what is happening in this part of the world. We can start with
Mongolia, or as some call it, Mine-golia. Why do they call it that? Because in Mine-
golia, Chinese firms operate and own most of the mines -- copper, zinc, gold -- and they
truck the resources south and east into mainland China. China isn't conquering
Mongolia. It's buying it. Colonies were once conquered. Today countries are bought.
So let's apply this principle to Siberia. Siberia most of you probably think of as a cold,
desolate, unlivable place. But in fact, with global warming and rising temperatures, all
of a sudden you have vast wheat fields and agribusiness, and grain being produced in
Siberia. But who is it going to feed? Well, just on the other side of the Amo River, in
the Heilongjiang and Harbin provinces of China, you have over 100 million people.
That's larger than the entire population of Russia.
Every single year, for at least a decade or more, [60,000] of them have been voting with
their feet, crossing, moving north and inhabiting this desolate terrain. They set up their
own bazaars and medical clinics. They've taken over the timber industry and been
shipping the lumber east, back into China. Again, like Mongolia, China isn't conquering
Russia. It's just leasing it. That's what I call globalization Chinese style.
Now maybe this is what the map of the region might look like in 10 to 20 years. But
hold on. This map is 700 years old. This is the map of the Yuan Dynasty, led by Kublai
Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. So history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it
does rhyme.
This is just to give you a taste of what's happening in this part of the world. Again,
globalization Chinese style. Because globalization opens up all kinds of ways for us to
undermine and change the way we think about political geography. So, the history of
East Asia in fact, people don't think about nations and borders. They think more in
terms of empires and hierarchies, usually Chinese or Japanese.
Well it's China's turn again. So let's look at how China is re-establishing that hierarchy
in the far East. It starts with the global hubs. Remember the 40 dots on the nighttime
map that show the hubs of the global economy? East Asia today has more of those
global hubs than any other region in the world. Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong
Kong, Singapore and Sidney. These are the filters and funnels of global capital.
Trillions of dollars a year are being brought into the region, so much of it being invested
into China.
Then there is trade. These vectors and arrows represent ever stronger trade relationships
that China has with every country in the region. Specifically, it targets Japan and Korea
and Australia, countries that are strong allies of the United States. Australia, for
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3. example, is heavily dependent on exporting iron ore and natural gas to China. For
poorer countries, China reduces tariffs so that Laos and Cambodia can sell their goods
more cheaply and become dependent on exporting to China as well.
And now many of you have been reading in the news how people are looking to China
to lead the rebound, the economic rebound, not just in Asia, but potentially for the
world. The Asian free trade zone, almost free trade zone, that's emerging now has a
greater trade volume than trade across the Pacific. So China is becoming the anchor of
the economy in the region.
Another pillar of this strategy is diplomacy. China has signed military agreements with
many countries in the region. It has become the hub of diplomatic institutions such as
the East Asian Community. Some of these organizations don't even have the United
States as a member. There is a treaty of nonaggression between countries, such that if
there were a conflict between China and the United States, most countries vow to just
sit it out, including American allies like Korea and Australia.
Another pillar of the strategy, like Russia, is demographic. China exports business
people, nannies, students, teachers to teach Chinese around the region, to intermarry and
to occupy ever greater commanding heights of the economies. Already ethnic Chinese
people in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are the real key factors and drivers in the
economies there. Chinese pride is resurgent in the region as a result. Singapore, for
example, used to ban Chinese language education. Now it encourages it.
If you add it all up what do you get? Well, if you remember before World War II, Japan
had a vision for a greater Japanese co-prosperity sphere. What's emerging today is what
you might call a greater Chinese co-prosperity sphere. So no matter what the lines on
the map tell you in terms of nations and borders, what you really have emerging in the
far east are national cultures, but in a much more fluid, imperial zone. All of this is
happening without firing a shot.
That's most certainly not the case in the Middle East where countries are still very
uncomfortable in the borders left behind by European colonialists. So what can we do to
think about borders differently in this part of the world? What lines on the map should
we focus on? What I want to present to you is what I call state building, day by day.
Let's start with Iraq. Six years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the country still exists
more on a map than it does in reality. Oil used to be one of the forces holding Iraq
together; now it is the most significant cause of the country's disintegration. The reason
is Kurdistan. The Kurds for 3,000 years have been waging a struggle for independence,
and now is their chance to finally have it. These are pipeline routes, which emerge from
Kurdistan, which is an oil-rich region.
And today, if you go to Kurdistan, you'll see that Kurdish Peshmerga guerillas are
squaring off against the Sunni Iraqi army. But what are they guarding? Is it really a
border on the map? No. It's the pipelines. If the Kurds can control their pipelines, they
can set the terms of their own statehood. Now should we be upset about this, about the
potential disintegration of Iraq? I don't believe we should. Iraq will still be the second
largest oil producer in the world, behind Saudi Arabia. And we'll have a chance to solve
a 3,000 year old dispute. Now remember Kurdistan is landlocked. It has no choice but
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4. to behave. In order to profit from its oil it has to export it through Turkey or Syria, and
other countries, and Iraq itself. And therefore it has to have amicable relations with
them.
Now lets look at a perennial conflict in the region. That is, of course, in Palestine.
Palestine is something of a cartographic anomaly because it's two parts Palestinian, one
part Israel. 30 years of rose garden diplomacy have not delivered us peace in this
conflict. What might? I believe that what might solve the problem is infrastructure.
Today donors are spending billions of dollars on this. These two arrows are an arc, an
arc of commuter railroads and other infrastructure that link the West Bank and Gaza.
If Gaza can have a functioning port and be linked to the West Bank, you can have a
viable Palestinian state, Palestinian economy. That, I believe, is going to bring peace to
this particular conflict. The lesson from Kurdistan and from Palestine is that
independence alone, without infrastructure, is futile.
Now what might this entire region look like if in fact we focus on other lines on the map
besides borders, when the insecurities might abate? The last time that was the case was
actually a century ago, during the Ottoman Empire. This is the Hejaz Railway. The
Hejaz Railway ran from Istanbul to Medina via Damascus. It even had an offshoot
running to Haifa in what is today Israel, on the Mediterranean Sea. But today the Hejaz
Railway lies in tatters, ruins. If we were to focus on reconstructing these curvy lines on
the map, infrastructure, that cross the straight lines, the borders, I believe the Middle
East would be a far more peaceful region.
Now let's look at another part of the world, the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia,
the 'stans. These countries' borders originate from Stalin's decrees. He purposely did not
want these countries to make sense. He wanted ethnicities to mingle in ways that would
allow him to divide and rule. Fortunately for them, most of their oil and gas resources
were discovered after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Now I know some of you may be thinking, "Oil, oil, oil. Why is it all he's talking about
is oil?" Well, there is a big difference in the way we used to talk about oil and the way
we're talking about it now. Before it was, how do we control their oil? Now it's their oil
for their own purposes. And I assure you it's every bit as important to them as it might
have been to colonizers and imperialists. Here are just some of the pipeline projections
and possibilities and scenarios and routes that are being mapped out for the next several
decades. A great deal of them.
For a number of countries in this part of the world, having pipelines is the ticket to
becoming part of the global economy and for having some meaning besides the borders
that they are not loyal to themselves. Just take Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was a forgotten
corner of the Caucuses, but now with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline into Turkey, it
has rebranded itself as the frontier of the west.
Then there is Turkmenistan, which most people think of as a frozen basket case. But
now it's contributing gas across the Caspian Sea to provide for Europe, and even a
potentially Turkmen- Afghan-Pakistan-India pipeline as well.
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5. Then there is Kazakhstan, which didn't even have a name before. It was more
considered South Siberia during the Soviet Union. Today most people recognize
Kazakhstan as an emerging geopolitical player. Why? Because it has shrewdly designed
pipelines to flow across the Caspian, north through Russia, and even east to China.
More pipelines means more silk roads, instead of the Great Game. The Great Game
connotes dominance of one over the other. Silk road connotes independence and mutual
trust. The more pipelines we have, the more silk roads we'll have, and the less of a
dominant Great Game competition we'll have in the 21st century.
Now let's look at the only part of the world that really has brought down its borders, and
how that has enhanced its strength. And that is, of course, Europe. The European Union
began as just the coal and steel community of six countries, and their main purpose was
really to keep the rehabilitation of Germany to happen in a peaceful way. But then
eventually it grew into 12 countries, and those are the 12 stars on the European flag.
The E.U. also became a currency block, and is now the most powerful trade block in the
entire world. On average, the E.U. has grown by one country per year since the end of
the Cold War. In fact most of that happened on just one day. In 2004, 15 new countries
joined the E.U. and now you have what most people consider a zone of peace spanning
27 countries and 450 million people.
So what is next? What is the future of the European Union? Well in light blue, you see
the zones or the regions that are at least two-thirds or more dependent on the European
Union for trade and investment. What does that tell us? Trade and investment tell us
that Europe is putting its money where its mouth is. Even if these regions aren't part of
the E.U., they are becoming part of its sphere of influence. Just take the Balkans.
Croatia, Serbia Bosnia, they're not members of the E.U. yet. But you can get on a
German ICE train and make it almost to Albania. In Bosnia you use the Euro currency
already, and that's the only currency they're probably ever going to have.
So, looking at other parts of Europe's periphery, such as North Africa. On average,
every year or two, a new oil or gas pipeline opens up under the Mediterranean,
connecting North Africa to Europe. That not only helps Europe diminish its reliance on
Russia for energy, but if you travel to North Africa today, you'll hear more and more
people saying that they don't really think of their region as the Middle East. So in other
words, I believe that President Sarkozy of France is right when he talks about a
Mediterranean union.
Now let's look at Turkey and the Caucasus. I mentioned Azerbaijan before. That
corridor of Turkey and the Caucasus has become the conduit for 20 percent of Europe's
energy supply. So does Turkey really have to be a member of the European Union? I
don't think it does. I think it's already part of a Euro-Turkish superpower.
So what's next? Where are we going to see borders change and new countries born?
Well, South Central Asia, South West Asia is a very good place to start. Eight years
after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan there is still a tremendous amount of instability.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are still so fragile that neither of them have dealt
constructively with the problem of Pashtun nationalism. This is the flag that flies in the
minds of 20 million Pashtuns who live on both sides of the Afghan and Pakistan border.
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6. Let's not neglect the insurgency just to the south, Balochistan. Two weeks ago, Balochi
rebels attacked a Pakistani military garrison, and this was the flag that they raised over
it. The post-colonial entropy that is happening around the world is accelerating, and I
expect more such changes to occur in the map as the states fragment.
Of course, we can't forget Africa. 53 countries, and by far the most number of
suspiciously straight lines on the map. If we were to look at all of Africa we could most
certainly acknowledge far more, tribal divisions and so forth. But let's just look at
Sudan, the second-largest country in Africa. It has three ongoing civil wars, the
genocide in Darfur, which you all know about, the civil war in the east of the country,
and south Sudan. South Sudan is going to be having a referendum in 2011 in which it is
very likely to vote itself independence.
Now let's go up to the Arctic Circle. There is a great race on for energy resources under
the Arctic seabed. Who will win? Canada? Russia? The United States? Actually
Greenland. Several weeks ago Greenland's [60,000] people voted themselves self-
governance rights from Denmark. So Denmark is about to get a whole lot smaller.
What is the lesson from all of this? Geopolitics is a very unsentimental discipline. It's
constantly morphing and changing the world, like climate change. And like our
relationship with the ecosystem we're always searching for equilibrium in how we
divide ourselves across the planet. Now we fear changes on the map. We fear civil wars,
death tolls, having to learn the names of new countries. But I believe that the inertia of
the existing borders that we have today is far worse and far more violent.
The question is how do we change those borders, and what lines do we focus on? I
believe we focus on the lines that cross borders, the infrastructure lines. Then we'll wind
up with the world we want, a borderless one. Thank you. (Applause)
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