It is 100 years since we were supposedly getting over the war to end all wars, World War I, and forming the League of Nations with the purpose of preventing such a conflict and slaughter happening again. Regrettably, the only good that came out of it was the proposal to form the League of Nations; it was not much more than an idea though otherwise stillborn and we needed another World War before something solid resulted, the United Nations with some teeth, although they need sharpening. It was the time that the Chinese Communist Party was formed and has just celebrated its centenary. What have we done in the time, apart from multiplying ourselves by a factor of 3, and perhaps upsetting the planet on the way.

There are exciting scientific advances, of course, some of which we must use to address the wasteful manner in which we live.

The 1920s and 1930s were times of turmoil, new ideas. Socialism in the forms of nationalism and communism, each with an end result of forming a ruling elite, who would brook little or no interference from their perceived mission. The damage from WWI caused a Depression in the developed world, many of them democratic in form, and this meant they paid not or were not able to pay enough attention to the looming Nazi power growing in Germany. In China, the Communist movement was putting down roots, establishing itself and, in the Far East the colonies of British India and the Dutch East Indies, the elite of those nations were listening with sympathy to the socialism that was being preached in Europe.

The end of WWII saw the proponents of each doctrine – Communism and free-market Capitalism/Democracy – sharpen their dividing lines which led to the Cold War between east and west. However, this is too simplistic; Britain, for example, after WWII voted in a Socialist Labour government, which promptly set about nationalising key industries and created the National Health Service, all the basics of socialism, central government control.

The key industries didn’t prosper, lacking accountability and arguably fleetness of the free market and in time, after Thatcher, were returned to the private sector. This was not entirely successful as times changed, but the National Health Service has been deemed a success in the overall scheme of things, looking after a nation’s health. Perhaps it was different because it only required social accountability.

Returning to the division of doctrine, emerging from WWII, this saw the sharp divide of Europe between, on the one hand, the Lenin/Stalin Communist, centrally controlled regimes of the Soviet Union, which had gathered within their scope, whether they liked it or not, many of the countries of Eastern Europe. On the other hand, there were the democracies of Western Europe, which were bolstered by the US.

Germany was divided into two parts but Berlin, the capital, which lay in the Soviet jurisdiction, was a separate entity managed by the four allies who had together opposed the Nazis, namely the US, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. This arrangement continued, not without its problems, until a new American president, John Kennedy, in 1961 made a declaration against Communism which alarmed the Soviet Union’s leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who had taken power after Stalin had died.

A Wall was put up by East Germany (the so-called German Democratic Republic) in East Berlin in 1961, which became a symbol of the freedom of the West against the restrictions that the Soviet Union enforced in the East. The East German Communist government was alarmed at the very large number of skilled citizens who were defecting to the West. The Wall brought the number down to a trickle, which lasted until the autumn of 1989, by which the times had radically changed.

In the East, China at war end was in the grip of a Communist movement that was fighting to overcome the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai Chek. The Communists prevailed and the nationalists departed for the island of Formosa, today known as Taiwan, taking with them the Emperor’s ancient, valuable signatures of office, a bone of contention that still remains.

Meanwhile, Japan was healing from the bitter defeat inflicted on it from WWII with the help of the US and was showing its resilience in recovery towards becoming one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

The first test for Communist China came in the early 1950s on the Korean peninsula, where they wholeheartedly backed the forces of North Korea in their fight against the armies of the South, which was backed by the Western democracies. A truce was signed after a few years of hard fighting, with no side prevailing, and Korea was divided between North and South. To this day they have entirely different styles of government, the Communist North being dependent on China with the people languishing in poverty while their ruling elite are well off. The South is one of the Asian ‘tigers’ and one of the most successful democratic economies in the world. The difference is glaring.

The next conflict between Communism and a semi pro-democratic form of government, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, had different origins. It was originally part of an anti-colonial struggle to depose the French from their Indo-China possessions, which also included Laos and Cambodia. The defining moment came when the French forces were beaten by the North Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which was a signal for the French to withdraw. The North Vietnamese government was led by Ho Chi Minh, who had also studied Communism while living in Western Europe and been persuaded by its ideas.

The American government had been watching closely and were very worried that if all of Vietnam were to fall to Communism, it would lead to the rest of Southeast Asia succumbing to influence from Moscow or Beijing, as well.

As the leader of the ‘free’ world, the US stepped in and gradually increased its presence to the point that it became a full-scale war. The North Vietnamese devised a way in which they could frustrate the American troops by building a network of underground tunnels from which they could appear unexpectedly and avoid direct confrontation with the better-armed American troops. The war did not seem to have an end, and either it had to be escalated or the troops would have to be withdrawn. The former route would require going to Congress in Washington and, since the war was becoming increasingly unpopular with the public, this was not something that the American government would want to do.

The Richard Nixon administration of the early 1970s decided on a strategic withdrawal. As a result of the Americans’ decision to quit the war, the whole of Vietnam was quickly taken over by the Communist government of the North. Times had changed. The world was changing. Some countries were prospering and trading. The old Communist guard was getting on, some dying.

In the meantime, India and Indonesia, each with huge populations and significant colonial histories, had leaders who had been educated in Europe about Socialism and Communism. However, the countries they would be serving had large other complex problems to resolve. In India’s case, they had to deal with its partition with a mainly Islamic country, Pakistan, on each flank. The mainly Hindu government of Jawaharlal Nehru sympathized with Socialism and were suspicious of the West and Western aid agencies such as the World Bank, which were not allowed in to help develop the country.

India, for the rest of the century, moved slowly but did not make a move to align itself fully with the Soviet-led Communism bloc or the Western democracies. This was done, perhaps, because it inherited a system in which much power rested within the state governments. The national government operated from Delhi in the form that the British had left behind.

Indonesia spent the first few years from its independence in 1947 establishing itself as a whole. Soekarno, the country’s first president, was a gifted orator, and was a firm believer in both Socialism and Communism, but was a poor administrator. The country had to fend off two breakaway actions in the 1950s in the North Sulawesi and West Sumatra provinces, which were ferociously put down.

One interesting development that came from this occurred in 1955 when Soekarno emerging as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement of mainly Third World and developing countries. This firmly put him in the neutral camp, although his time in Europe had imbued him with left-wing leanings. His inability to take the country out of poverty greatly frustrated Indonesia’s political elite. When Soekarno began to show his Communist leanings, the Indonesian Army had had enough; he had to go and was forced to resign.

The newly-installed leader, Soeharto, made it clear that he had no love for Communists. He was also quick to realize that he needed the private sector to fix the country’s broken economy. He appointed UC Berkeley trained economists to deal with the major problems of food, water and education, with the goal of lifting the country out of poverty, which they did very successfully for thirty years. The country was run as a benign autocracy, with a guided parliament that re-elected Soeharto every 4 years until the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis struck and forced him to step down.

By the end of Soeharto’s rule, Indonesia was firmly aligned with the Western powers and was invited to join the G-17, the organization of the world’s richest economies.

It should be added that the grouping of Southeast Asian nations formed an alliance, ASEAN, in August 1967 to establish itself as an independent bloc, headquartered in Jakarta. Currently, there are now 10 countries in the bloc with widely differing forms of government.

In the latter part of the last century, other feuds, some centuries-old, emered to cause some alarm. They were not ostensibly part of the main struggle between rigid rules, centrally controlled Communist regimes and the free market Western economies, but those involving several differing elements, based on the struggles between Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The struggle had some of its roots in the Balfour declaration of 1917, which was fully endorsed in 1926 at a Commonwealth Conference, and the non-acceptance of the existence of the State of Israel after WWII by the Palestinians.

This conflict has metastasized due to the involvement of right-wing Islamic fundamentalist and terrorist groups to form a purely Islamic caliphate. It fed off old rivalries and brought differing factions into the conflict. Syria, a land of numerous ancient civilizations, has been torn apart with a refugee crisis that has caused much discomfit in Europe. The politics of the Middle East are very complicated. They don’t, however, directly affect the main arguments of those who want a secular democratic approach to governance or those who seek a Communism government.

There are other disruptions in Africa and South America, but they did not greatly affecting the outcome of the main struggle between left and right. In much of Africa, where colonial power had held sway for many centuries, and where a huge number of slaves had been shipped across the Atlantic to support American and Caribbean plantations, little had been done to prepare the indigenous peoples to govern themselves.

The main industries that were put in to take out the minerals that were needed in Europe had systems in place which were devised to ship out the minerals to the controlling country. There was little or no attempt to better the country, in terms of education, infrastructure and skills development, where the extraction had taken place. The result was that the elite of the country, after having gained independence, carried on the way things had been before. They became wildly rich, while the poor just became poorer and poorer. This was, and still is, one of the most terrible lasting legacies of colonialism. And certain countries in the north have, in the past few years, been severely affected by fundamental Islamic factions.

In the case of South America, the way the mix of countries were run by their Spanish and Portuguese masters has left an indelible mark. The main problem is the production and export of narcotics, and the mass emigration of people to the US, has left much of South America poor and under-educated. No major war has taken place in South America in over 100 years, but attempts by some internal factions to take over a specific country for personal gain has been rife.

As a stark contrast to Latin America and Africa, China is a large country with a centrally controlled communist regime in charge. In the past 30-40 years, with the passing of Mao Zedong and the accession of Deng Xiaoping the strict rigidity of the rules of government were eased and the economy started to grow. As a result, their economy has steadily ticked upward, if not spectacularly, at times.

Over the years, the Chinese have shown that they are not averse to openly stealing new ideas from the West, which is of considerable concern. This has, unfortunately, established the norms, rules and style of doing business in China. There was hope in the 1980s that changes were coming, including some democratic freedoms, but this all ended in 1989 when a student demonstration was brutally quashed by the Chinese military on Bejing’s Tiananmen Square, an event that caused hundreds of deaths. The Communist Party leaders were frightened by the movement and thought things were getting out of control. This was also a warning to the Western democracies that there was only one way to do business in China and that was the Chinese way.

In 1997, the lease that the UK government held over the territories that encompassed Hong Kong came to an end and the territories were due to be handed back to Beijing. There was some discussion on trying to extend the lease, but this was really a non-starter. One of the terms that the British extracted in the departure agreement was that for the first 50 years, the conditions which had been set up for the citizens of Hong Kong would be honored. China agreed to approve the idea of ‘’one country and two systems’’. However, in the last three years, with China’s Maoist General Secretary Xi Jinping feeling that his and the Chinese government’s power is on the rise, he could ignore the agreement. There have been mass demonstrations in Hong Kong over that same time period as Beijing turns the screws on the territories’ democratic freedoms.

Xi’s government is trying to bring the Uyghur people, who are of the Islamic faith and live in the west of China, into line by brainwashing them. The Uyghurs have been subjected to genocide and are also used as slaves to pick Xinjiang cotton, which is a significant and high-quality product from the region. This is another worrying example of Communist control, as George Orwell highlighted in his book 1984. The UN and the American government have repeatedly raised the issue strongly, but have been told by the Chinese Communists that the internment of the Uyghurs is part of an anti-terror campaign.

In the past two decades, the Chinese have ‘made’ small islands in the South China Sea to illegally expand their territorial waters. The ASEAN countries have woken up to this and have sounded the alarm as China is using these islands as military outposts. Beijing is using the issue to test the reaction of the Eastern ASEAN countries, all of which are not strong enough to resist a Chinese attack.

The Americans are aware of this and is watching the situation carefully, particularly since it is still China’s aim to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control.

The Chinese government appear to have a policy that ensures that the country has the ability to widen its borders and to secure, by whatever means, the resources the mother country requires. This would put it in a very strong position among all nations and supersede the work of past dynasties, justifying its central control – essentially a Chinese Communist empire.

Russia has always been in conflict with the democracies of the West, but in the 1980s, during the final decade of the Soviet Union, there was a period of ‘honesty’ from the Soviet government. The Soviet Union could not keep up with the US economy. Moscow released its hold on Eastern Europe in 1989. After the twin disasters of Chernobyl and the decade-long Soviet-Afghan War, the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991. As an independent state, which much-reduced borders on its western flank, the new Russian Federations retained only a small piece of territory next to Lithuania that gives Moscow a better outlet to the Baltic Sea. in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine to secure a firm position in the Black Sea.

Russia has to deal with a significant, admittedly rather unwieldy, EU, as well as the powerful NATO alliance. This doesn’t stop Russia from trying to meddle with the former countries of the Soviet Union. Belarus has a dictatorial regime that is close to the Kremlin, but the government of Alexander Lukashenko does not reflect the will of the people. For over a year, huge rallies against the Lukashenko regime have rocked the nation.

A few of the ‘freed’ Eastern Bloc countries have adjusted in the years that have followed the end of Communist rule. The peoples of Czechoslovakia decided to split along nationalistic lines into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but one has to draw attention to the former Yugoslavia. Formed as a country of Southern Slavs, which was not part of the Soviet bloc, it went through a bloody disintegration throughout the 1990s.

The European Union has greatly enlarged since these countries became independent and could confirm their willingness to join the EU.

Ukraine, while looking west towards the EU, has struggled to pull itself out of the endemically corrupt practices of the post-Soviet years and has had to fend off Russian aggression since a war between the two countries, which continues to this day, first broke seven years ago.

In the Middle East, Russia offers support to parties that are opposed to the West, but overall, Vladimir Putin has not posed as much of a long-term threat as that offered by China. Average Russians, themselves, wish to open up the country. However, this will take time as change is often slow.

ASEAN, as a bloc, is partly modelled on the EU, but is still feeling out its way. The military coup that occurred in Myanmar took ASEAN by surprise and their offer to mediate was firmly rejected at the ASEAN annual meeting. This was to be expected as the military have been involved in actions against some of the Burmese people since independence. In recent years, the military displayed its worst savagery against the Rohingya people, a minority Muslim population in the north of the country.

Myanmar is of great strategic value to China and hence the Burmese can rely on their backing. Its value, apart from Myanmar’s considerable resources that include jade mines, lies in the fact that Myanmar provides a gateway to the Indian Ocean and access to China’s significant resources in Africa, where they have been slowly entrenching themselves for the last thirty-plus years.

 Looking ahead

Taking note of President Xi Jinping’s recent speech at the Centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, it is clear that the government of China feels confident that they are now in a strong position to push on with expanding their strategic aims. These will be pushed ahead by both fair and dishonest means; clandestinely, if need be; or even by force (in the case of Taiwan and Hong Kong). Xi’s speech was a warning to the Western Allies, as well as to ASEAN, which is deeply concerned about the South China Sea.

Russia over the next several years will not want to upset the current world order too much and will be reasonably content to have matters stay as they are. A significant revenue for them is oil supply to the EU. They will, however, have to recognize that there is a growing mood in the general populace that wants more freedom. This will be difficult for the Kremlin to permanently resist.

The Middle East has rumbled on for centuries. A solution does not appear to be likely in the short term, although the majority of people want peace. They cannot reach this position because the leaders feel that they are on some God-given mission.

The democracies of Europe have some internal voices of dissent, but at the moment their biggest problem is dealing with a refugee crisis. The other area where there is a significant problem is in the southern US, where there is an unrelenting migration of peoples from Central and South America.

A problem has become larger in the past half-century is that the world’s population has tripled. Not surprisingly, CO₂ emissions have also increased. This has alarmed some scientists, and the two issues may be related, because we breathe out CO₂ as well as significantly use up more resources, some of which, in turn, generate CO₂. We must remember, however, that carbon dioxide is a building block of life; below 150 ppm the world starts dying, both flora and fauna.

The world, whatever political persuasion, Communist or Democratic, has to take notice of the climate issue which is to be highlighted at the COP26 conference in November. It is interesting, however, that the leading countries espousing these opposite forms of government, China and US, are responsible for 36% of the CO₂ output in the world. Each of them, so far, has shied away from taking a leadership role when it comes to climate change. The question not is: Will we see much progress on this issue if they don’t take a leadership role?

The Future

Science, building on what came before, has achieved almost unbelievable advances in less than a century. One of the foremost of them was finding the properties of the silicon chip, which led to the computer. Now we are in the digital age with quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence. We have broken the barriers of space and there is a veritable limitless opportunity to be explored.

On the other hand, we haven’t yet resolved the problems of poverty, pollution and an apparent climate crisis.  The problems have only become bigger, which means the Millennial and subsequent generations will have plenty to do.

The world is changing. Almost two-thirds of its population already live in Asia and there is a shift in the ethnic balance. The United Nations is more important than ever, but it has disappointed in not getting involved in a positive and robust way in certain disputes where forms of genocide have taken place.

The new generation has inherited a number of problems but, at the same time, they have the skills and tools to deal with them. One can but hope they do use them and with common sense.