{"id":58691,"date":"2013-07-05T15:23:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T15:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=58691"},"modified":"2013-07-05T15:23:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T15:23:17","slug":"president-koroma-challenges-old-world-in-new-world-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=58691","title":{"rendered":"President Koroma Challenges \u2018Old World\u2019 in \u2018New World China’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just last week, in his epoch-making speech at the\u00a0 World Peace Forum<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 organized by the\u00a0 Tsinghua University\u00a0 in China<\/span><\/b>, President Ernest Bai Koroma could have triggered \u2018tsunami-like\u2019 waves whose ripples could be now heading for distant shores of powerful nations.\u00a0\u00a0 We have to find a way to get the profound words of President Koroma amplified on the global media stage.\u00a0 Close\u00a0 watchers of the international stage, especially as it relates to Africa, would ponder on this question: Was it a coincidence, or, a calculated design by\u00a0 the gigantic China\u00a0 with its 1.3billion people in a land area of 9,000,000 square kilometers, or\u00a0 a strategic thrust by the government of Sierra Leone representing just 6,000,000 mile people in a land area of 71,000 square kilometers, that President Koroma\u2019s\u00a0 speech was being delivered at almost the same time that U.S. President Barrack Obama was touring Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa\u2026.\u2019in Africa\u2019?\u00a0\u00a0 Was our President\u2019s speech a symbolic \u2018peaceful saber rattling\u2019 to emphasize the tenor of President Koroma\u2019s words that a \u2018new world order\u2019 has emerged?\u00a0 Maybe, we could concoct a credible answer when we pore on the profundity and sheer revolutionary essence of President Koroma\u2019s words, and, reflect on its symbolisms.\u00a0 Here is an excerpt of President Koroma\u2019s speech:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in the same boat.\u00a0 Plugging\u2026holes in the boat is\u2026wise action\u201d<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\u201cWe appreciate Tsinghua University for inviting the leadership of a small developing nation in West Africa to contribute to this landmark discussion. In a changing world of converging spaces and technologies, insecurity anywhere could introduce breaks in the chains and networks of worldwide security, which could negatively impact the infrastructures of development, peace and progress everywhere. The impacts of insecurity can no longer be confined; the benefits of security can no longer be monopolized<\/b>. We are in the same boat.<\/b> Plugging emerging holes in the boat, wherever they are and however small they are, is a wise course of action. The successful voyage to the destinations of our converging aspirations requires the integration of this wisdom into discussions, mechanisms and actions for international security\u2026.\u201d<\/i>: President Koroma.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Can the powerful nations listen?\u00a0 Can we make them to listen?\u00a0\u00a0 Virginia Gamba, writing on the topic \u2018Challenges To International Peace And Security: An Alternative View<\/a>\u2019, <\/b>\u00a0\u00a0postulates that, \u2018horizontally, global violence can be found in the multiplication of criminal organizations and trans-national mafias -operating fundamentally for economic motives and backed by a very competitive and accessible black market dynamic- and by terrorist cells who do not have clear political direction nor goals save that of expanding the deterrent value of violence. As the world of states have been particularly incompetent at addressing these threats, so have these organizations been evidently successful in generating the environment of insecurity in which we all move today….\u2019\u00a0 Al Qaeda!! Boko Haram…..\u00a0 <\/b>The world is quite aware of these \u2018global threats\u2019.<\/p>\n

What is \u2018global security\u2019?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

President Koroma went to talk about \u2018global security\u2019 and \u2018peace\u2019?\u00a0 What is \u2018global security\u2019?\u00a0 It has become over the past twenty years increasingly difficult to define \u2018global security\u2019.\u00a0 A leading Western intellectual, Edward Kolodziej, compares concepts of\u00a0 \u2018global security\u2019 to the proverbial Biblical \u2018Tower of Babel\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Another intellectual, Roland Paris, is cynical; he writes\u00a0 that \u2018global security\u2019, like beauty, becomes what it is \u2018in the eyes of the beholder\u2019….. No matter the diversity of what \u2018global security\u2019 is \u2013 from food security; environmental security; trade security; health security; finance security; religious security –\u00a0 there is now a global consensus that it is important; that is it multi-dimensional.\u00a0\u00a0 US President George W. Bush used the concept of \u2018global security\u2019 to justify suspending civil liberties (bugging the phones of US citizens; jailing for many years non-prisoners-of -war in Guantanamo Bay without right to legal counsel), making war (in Iraq, and Afghanistan), and expending\u00a0 a huge quantum of the United States $1.7 trillion (!!) annual military budget to wage wars.\u00a0\u00a0 Walter Lippmann<\/a>\u00a0 in his book,\u00a0 \u2018US Foreign Policy\u2019 (1944),\u00a0 views security as the capability of a country to protect its core values<\/a>, both in terms that a state need not sacrifice core values in avoiding war –\u00a0 and can maintain them by winning war.\u00a0 These are relatively \u2018old concepts\u2019 of \u2018national security\u2019 which largely evolved after the Second World War \u2013 with the United States and the former Soviet Union emerging as the biggest bullies on the \u2018global block\u2019; and, all other countries aligned behind one or the other of these super powers, directly or indirectly.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, what the \u2018old world\u2019 has been watching over the past twenty years with trepidation is the arrogant and timid strut of the\u00a0 \u2018new kid on the global block\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 China!!<\/p>\n

\u2018The new kid on the block\u2019 is\u2026\u2019a very old wise kid, indeed\u2019<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

The \u2018new kid\u2019 is, paradoxically, literally, a \u2018very old wise kid\u2019: China has a civilization that is over 5,000 years old (China was already civilized when nearly all\u00a0 European were literally savages, living in caves).\u00a0 China invented the printing press, gun powder, paper\u2026.when people in the British Isles lived in thatch houses, in tiny fiefdoms, ruthless predators across village boundaries, believing\u00a0 in witchcraft for every human aberration.\u00a0\u00a0 China floundered; was conquered; and, started re-emerging with Moa Zedong marched into the capital cities to establish the Communist People\u2019s Republic in the 1940s.\u00a0\u00a0 After about after a century of convulsive political life, and hundreds of thousands of lives massacred in internal purges, stoical industrial and social growth, China is now again in the sun\u2026..\u00a0 President Koroma has, apparently, been chosen by China as the leader in Africa to recognize, and, \u2018fight for\u2019\u00a0 China\u2019s\u00a0 right place in the global stage.<\/p>\n

President Koroma lived up to China\u2019s expectations in his speech at the Peace Forum: \u201cWe are here because we believe China is the biggest driver of our changing world. From issues relating to trade, investments, security and possibilities of prosperity for most of the world\u2019s people, China moves many of the actions and responses of most of the nations of the world. This changing world is, in the main, also China\u2019s world, and we are heartened by the fact that China has committed its role within it to a Peaceful Rise\u2026.\u201d<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

A China Empire being built not with \u2018blood and iron\u2019?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Few would dispute the reality that China is on the march to building a \u2018global empire\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 And, it does appear as if Africa is the bridgehead for the new \u2018Chinese empire\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 What the Chinese leaders and strategists are saying, and what African leaders like President Koroma are hoping for, and what the Peace Forum in China which President Koroma addressed symbolized, is that for the first time in the history of humanity …. forging a\u00a0 \u2018new empire\u2019….\u2019conquest\u2019 of other peoples…would be through peaceful means<\/b>.\u00a0\u00a0 Is Africa\u00a0 just being naive in this expectation of a \u2018peaceful empire\u2019?\u00a0 Or being short-sighted?\u00a0\u00a0 With a 5,000 year history, China is not naive about its emerging role in the world.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 December 2011\u00a0 report by a leading arms publisher, SIPRI,\u00a0 titled, “<\/span><\/b>Arms Flows to Sub-Saharan Africa<\/b><\/a>“,\u00a0 revealed that by 2010 China was the number one exporter of arms to Africa, ahead of Ukraine and Russia. Between 2006 and 2010, China gained 25 percent of\u00a0 Africa arms market compared to 9 percent between 2001 and 2005. China\u2019s growing influence in the market is fuelled by its desire for natural resources and its willingness in a global recession to offer military aid or cheaper deals in exchange for natural resources rather than cash.<\/b> Some analysts however believe the role of the Chinese has been overplayed by Western powers more keen on hiding their own involvement in the often shady business. \u201cI think there has been a certain amount of scaremongering from the West towards China,\u201d\u00a0 stated Paul Midford of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology .<\/p>\n

China still is a relatively poor cousin compared to the only \u2018Gulliver-like super power\u2019 in our world today – the United States.\u00a0 Global defence spending was about\u00a0 $1.8 trillion last year.\u00a0 The U.S\u2019s expenditure was about $1.3 trillion \u2013 compared to about $600 billion of Chinese military expenditure.\u00a0\u00a0 Compute the GDP and GNP of the U.S. as against China, take into account the per capita living standards in both countries, and, one can safely say that China\u2019s 175% rise in\u00a0 military expenditure over the past couple of years means that it is taking military security much more seriously than the Americans.\u00a0\u00a0 It does appear as if China has learned the doctrine of the US immediately after World War II: peace and\u00a0 progress under the umbrella of a formidable military machine.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Power being Fuelled by Science and Technology<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

David Shukman<\/span><\/b> Science and environment correspondent, BBC News<\/span><\/b> ,\u00a0 had publishing this chilling (for the West) reality of China\u2019s new power: \u201cChina is on course to overtake the US in scientific output possibly as soon as 2013 – far earlier than expected…..That is the conclusion of a major new study by the Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy.<\/span><\/b> ….The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing is set for a globally important comeback…\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Shukman, \u2018An analysis of published research – one of the key measures of scientific effort – reveals an “especially striking” rise by Chinese science.\u00a0 The study, Knowledge, Networks and Nations,<\/span><\/b> charts the challenge to the traditional dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan. …..The figures are based on the papers published in recognised international journals listed by the Scopus service of the publishers Elsevier.<\/span><\/b> ….In 1996, the first year of the analysis, the US published 292,513 papers – more than 10 times China’s 25,474. ….By 2008, the US total had increased very slightly to 316,317 while China’s had surged more than seven-fold to 184,080<\/b>…..Previous estimates for the rate of expansion of Chinese science had suggested that China might overtake the US sometime after 2020…..\u2019.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

What lessons\u00a0 are Sierra Leone learning from China?<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

President Ernest Bai Koroma took a heavy weight delegation of cabinet ministers and key State House officials to China.\u00a0 It is expected that they would come with a \u2018Father Christmas-type\u2019 bag of goodies for us in Sierra Leone.\u00a0 I hope the goodies would include lessons on the \u2018mind of China\u2019<\/b>; lessons on how China has made such accelerated scientific, technological,\u00a0 economic and power growth –\u00a0 when 50 years ago, most of China was at the same developmental stage of countries like Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria.\u00a0\u00a0 One big lesson that should be stark to President Koroma and his delegation is that Sierra Leoneans, indeed, Africans, have to\u00a0 escape from the dungeons of their \u2018village-doms\u2019 \u2013 tiny countries carved for them by European colonialists who wanted to perpetuate the Atlantic Slave Trade \u2013 in other to be taken seriously as peoples on the global \u2018war arena\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Either to better exploit Africa, or, as a genuine emancipator of African peoples, China in donating $200 million to build the new African Unity headquarters in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia…stands ready to give support to Africa to more speedily unite itself as one strong political and economic entity.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 President Koroma\u2019s revolutionary words about the \u2018Old Powers\u2019 who need to\u00a0 \u201cend notions of dominance\u201d, and to free themselves of thoughts \u2018zero-sum\u2019 games in international relations, and his rich imagery of the \u2018tsunami\u2019 of the global space…..needs more elaboration for comprehension.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For now, we in Sierra Leone should be heartened that our President has stepped into that lofty pedestal of the most iconic African\u00a0 and global leaders – …like Kwame Nkrumah,\u00a0 John F. Kennedy….Nelson Mandela…..<\/b><\/p>\n

Oswald Hanciles<\/em><\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

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