Timothy Garton Ash6 January 2005
A tsunami of human solidarity is sweeping across the surface of the globe in response to the physical tsunami that has ravaged the shores of the Indian Ocean. Every day brings a staggering upward estimate of deaths - and of aid donations. At a season of religious festivals, the rich peoples of the world indulge in a benign competition to do good. Private donations in Britain have reached about £90m. Worldwide public aid pledges are now over $3bn. Taken all in all, this is probably the biggest humanitarian relief operation in history.
But what will be left when this tsunami of international solidarity has subsided? The detritus of broken promises, as with so many previous headline pledges? Hasty half-measures of disaster relief, not properly followed through with projects of long-term reconstruction? And a harvest of orphans - some, we gather, already kidnapped into prostitution.
Meanwhile, in a warm afterglow of moral self-satisfaction, the generous British, Germans, Americans and other rich peoples revert to their old ways. A British election this summer is decided by which party can make the middle class even more comfortable. The Bush administration gives yet more tax breaks for the rich. The Germans go back to worrying about unemployment, sluggish growth and their embattled social model. Europeans and Americans combine - in a rare example of transatlantic harmony - to avoid the far-reaching debt relief and opening of our markets, which alone can start the Sri Lankas of this world on the slow ascent out of chronic poverty.
Looking at the past record of the rich north, a sceptic would confidently make that prognosis for 2005. The sceptic may well be proved right. Standing in the centre of Oxford yesterday at noon, I saw the recommended three-minute commemorative silence largely ignored by the crowds of shoppers, eagerly pushing on to the next new year sale. But let me at least sketch another more heartening possibility: what the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 were to the "war on terror", the tsunami of December 26 2004 can be to the war on want.
The British government has already declared its intention to make poverty in Africa and global warming the twin focuses of its presidency of the G8 this year. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are both, in their parallel if strikingly separate ways, pushing an agenda of global poverty reduction. The United Nations, keen to move the spotlight of world opinion on from the embarrassment of the Iraq "oil for food" scandal, will be glad to refocus on the realisation of its millennium development goals, which remain the best strategic definition we have of what needs to be done. And if the United States and the European Union do want to repair their relationship, here surely is something on which they can agree.
Admittedly, stepping up the global war on poverty in response to a natural disaster is not perfect logic. But it's at least as logical as invading Iraq in reply to an attack by al-Qaida terrorists - and a much better idea, to boot.
Such a shift in public policy will be sustainable if, and only if, this wave of human solidarity is more than just a tsunami: here today, gone tomorrow. There are a few indications that it may reflect a deeper sea-change in public attitudes in the rich world. Wonderment has been expressed at the scale of private donations in response to the Asian disaster.
In fact, the scale of regular charitable giving in prosperous western democracies is far from negligible. For example, the Charities Aid Foundation estimates that we British give, on a national average, something like 1% of our annual income to charity. That is still a long way short of the estimated average 1.9% of annual income given by individual Americans, although a great deal more than the 0.4% given by the French.
To be sure, most of this charity remains at home. The figures do not enable us to say how much of the money we give ends up abroad, but it's almost certainly no more than one-fifth - or roughly 0.2% of average income. For comparison, the philosopher Peter Singer, in his inspiring book, One World, suggests that we should aim to give 1% of our annual income to those in poorer countries "who have trouble getting enough to eat, clean water to drink, shelter from the elements and basic healthcare". So, taking that admittedly arbitrary target, we still have some way to go. And incidentally, if we do go that way, we will need to scrutinise very carefully how the money is spent.
Nonetheless, I find a growing sense that it's important to move in this direction. There are streets in English towns where every other frontage seems to be a charity shop. This year sees the launch of a great, imaginative initiative to Make Poverty History (www.makepovertyhistory.com). Many young people do adventurous volunteer work for international charities.
Underpinning these material facts of giving, whether in cash, kind or work, is a mental phenomenon. It has been called moral globalisation. Increasingly, citizens of rich countries identify with people far away and see themselves as having some moral obligation towards them. Probably the response to the Asian tsunami would not have been half so generous had it not hit western holidaymakers taking their Christmas sun on the shores of the Indian Ocean. But the fact that more and more people do travel to more and more places, thanks to cut-price air travel, is itself an engine of this moral globalisation. And those who don't travel still see the suffering close-up, on the front pages of their newspapers and on television, where they can watch it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In short, the "imagined community" of strangers to whom we feel some ties of obligation is no longer confined to our own nation-state. Peter Singer argues that there are compelling reasons, also of long-term self-interest, for now aiming at an imagined community of the world. This is an argument that we may recognise as being of the left, whereas political thinkers of the right, such as Roger Scruton, argue that we should respond to globalisation by reinforcing the nation-state.
Indeed, if there is any credible, coherent, larger project of the left in the early 21st century, it can only be defined in global terms. To be on the side of the poor, the oppressed and the exploited today must mean to attack the greatest inequality of our time - between the rich north (where, among other expensive things, we have warning systems to alert us to impending earthquakes) and the poor south. So the question "what will be left?" after this tsunami of spontaneous solidarity may be seen as a question particularly to, and about, the left. For what is the oldest, boldest dream of the left? It's the vision expressed by Robbie Burns, in terms that obviously apply to both men and women:
For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5096665-115399,00.html
