I am travelling in Costa Rica. Though Costa Rica has little to do with Central Asia, some general comments might be applicable for Central Asia watchers. In particular, those of us in developed countries struggle to understand the other side of issues and arguments in the international arena. I am hoping this post will be a springboard to new avenues of thought. I also hope that those readers from other states will bring comments to this post that will illustrate problems of dialogue in international relations: those parts of issues that are so difficult to get across most of the time.
1. Different states have different items of importance:
Likewise, Costa Rica isn't carrying a ton of information on Iraq, either.
2. What seems unfavorable to one does not give benefits to others:
Considering CAFTA again as an example: many people in the U.S. are in favor of free trade. However, other sectors of the U.S. are worried about a job drain from the U.S. to Costa Rica. Just because something looks bad for the U.S. (lost jobs) it does not follow that it looks good to Costa Rica (lost small business). Frequently, we find careless writing on issues of most concern. Thus we may be led to believe that if it hurts one country, another country gains in equal amount: but not so. Each country, particularly in democracies, chooses among a catalogue of interests far more complex than a competition for a single prize.
3. Standardization versus exceptionalism:
Globalization generally refers to practices and procedures that more and more people follow all over the world–standard practices. In many cases, standardization is useful to world trade. For instance, being able to get interchangeable fasteners for machines, a unified symbolic system for air traffic control, and other procedures increases safety and convenience. HOwever, globalization of an economy does not really imply a total standardization. In competition, differences are known as competitive advantages or disadvantages. Every difference has the potential to be either, and states need to look at each of their differences as a potential source of advantage as well as disadvantage. For instance: we are used to considering only ease of transport or labor cost as competitive advantages in the world economy. But aren't there others? A different agricultural product or a different solution to a social problem: both of these have the potential to bring advantage and commerce to and from a particular country.
Culture creates solutions
With this in mind, I have been walking around now in a foreign country (excuse me, I mean that I have been a foreigner walking around in another country) seeing the solutions that this culture, strange to me, has taken in regard to problems with which every society must contend. These include: how to educate the young; how to procure energy resources; how to care for the aged; how to allocate costs and benefits; how to confer prestige or administer justice; how to make sure that information is spread; even those thankless tasks such as how to manage trash collection. One enormous example for the world today of a local/regional solution that has turned into a world market is Brazil's development of biofuels.
Conclusion:
So what's the point of these observations? Mostly, this “walking around” underscored (for me at least) that there is nearly always another side to any question in international relations. But the other side, and the compromises that must be made in order to solve the most intractable issues, require a little research. Those of us who really want to understand issue positions more fairly do have options. First, we can read more than what is provided for us by our own political parties and favorite thinkers. We can move onward to other thinkers within our own culture. Second, we can try to read more of what is available from the states in question: (for instance, some are in the Central Asian Newsroom). And we can ask, or we can visit, the states in which we have the most interest. In five days of walking and talking I’ve learned more about issues of free trade than I have in a good long time.
You can bet I’ll be studying that Russian and reading more local Central Asian news from this day forward. And then someday soon, that visa to each and every Central Asian state that will have me. I can hardly wait.