BOOK REVIEW ARTICLE
Amy Chua’s World on Fire: Ethnic Hatreds
and Their Implications for the United States
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market
Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability
Amy Chua
Anchor Books,
2004
Amy Chua is a Yale Law
School professor whose family has been
among the wealthy Filipino Chinese elite that, even though only 1 percent of
the Philippine population, has for centuries dominated the Islands’
commercial economy. (Almost all rural
land is controlled by a Spanish-blooded gentry
class.) In 1994, Chua’s aunt was
murdered at her home in the Philippines
by her chauffeur with the collusion of other servants—a crime that is not at
all uncommon in light of the ethnic hatred that exists.
The murder might have caused Chua to
take a highly subjective, ethnically partisan view of such ethnic
conflict. Instead, it stirred her
scholarly instincts, leading her to a study of ethnic hatred on a worldwide
basis. The result is a book that is
encyclopedic in its information about one of the most potentially explosive
aspects of the world today.
In much of the world, she reports,
minority ethnic groups have long dominated the economies and often the politics
of nations otherwise inhabited by much larger impoverished masses. The market domination is exacerbated today by
the globalization of trade, with the dominant minorities reaping the benefit
and the rest of the populations being raised some, but relatively far
less. At the same time, the worldwide
move toward “democracy” provides the fulcrum for populist appeals to the ethnonationalism felt by the impoverished peoples. (This reviewer doesn’t like the word
“masses,” which depersonalizes and seems to belittle. It is a word Chua uses, however; and in the
context of her book it is a useful shorthand term.)
The United States and the international
institutions such as the World Bank and the I.M.F. that it sponsors have for
several years been militating for what Chua calls a “raw” form of laissez-faire free markets. These lack the redistributive features that
have historically come to be felt essential in Europe
and the United States. Those same sources have simultaneously
militated for a “raw” form of democracy consisting of immediate universal
suffrage—again in a form of ideological violation of the historical experience
of Europe and the United States, which saw suffrage granted gradually and in
contexts that safeguarded the rights of individuals and of minorities. The result, Chua says, as she does in the
subtitle to her book, is that “exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic
hatred and global instability.”
A reader will note that although
some of the peoples involved are Islamic, the problem Chua describes is much
more universal. In an even broader
context than the current face-off between a world-interventionist United States
and the vast span of Islamic peoples, we see that there are, across the globe,
ethnic cauldrons into which the United States should step, if at all, only with
fear and trepidation. Again, we are reminded
that the messianic ideology that has for the most part held sway in the United States
since 1898 and that makes the United
States the policeman and social worker of
the world is a dangerous one. We are
reminded, too, that American ignorance of the historical and cultural specifics
of the societies in which it intervenes is profound; and that there is
considerable moral presumption in wading into the countless situations in which
the people who live there insist that they, not the United States, are the ones
who have an inherent right to take care of their own business.
Although the overarching importance
of Chua’s discussion is apparent from such considerations as these, much
additional value comes from the information she imparts about a wide range of
countries. The book isn’t long (346
pages) and is easily readable, but neither of those qualities detracts from its
scholarship and informative content.
Here, in capsule form, is some of what she tells us:
·
Argentina.
By the mid-1930s, Western investors had become a “market-dominant
minority” who owned about half the country’s industrial capital. This “culminated in a powerful nationalist
reaction under the charismatic populist leader Juan Peron.”
·
Bolivia. A Spanish elite held most of the land until
1952, when the immense Amerindian ethnic “underclass,” “encompassing the great
majority of the Bolivian people, most of whom have no access to heat… clean
water, or medical care,” revolted, introducing universal suffrage and a program
of land-expropriation and redistribution.
More recently, there has been a pronounced move into privatization and
free market policies, with cuts in social spending and “soaring unemployment.”
·
Brazil.
Less than one-tenth of one percent of the population owns most of the
land. Although there is a pervasive
“myth” of Brazilian “racial democracy,” there is in fact a “color
hierarchy.” Chua says “a tiny,
light-skinned market-dominant minority has always had a stranglehold on
economic and political power.”
·
Burma (now Myanmar). A minority from India once dominated the economy,
but “in 1930 and again in 1938 enraged Burmans…
proceeded to slaughter Indians in an orgy of violence.” Hundreds of thousands of Indians fled
additional violence in the 1960s. Now,
however, it is Chinese, especially drug kingpins, who “dominate Burmese
commerce at every level of society,” while the indigenous population lives in
“abysmal” poverty. One of the things
Chua notes about Burma,
as about several societies, is the development of “crony capitalism” consisting
of an alliance of the wealthy ethnic minority with dictatorial local political
leaders.
·
Burundi.
“The Tutsi still control approximately 70 percent of the country’s
wealth.”
·
Cambodia.
“Cambodia’s
capital city Phnom Penh
is now teeming with thousands of prospering Chinese businesses.”
·
Cameroon. Chua says Cameroon is economically dominated
by one tribe, the Bamileke, who (in an allusion to Nigeria) are
called “the Ibo of Cameroon.”
·
Chile.
Allende’s program was, in addition to being Communist, in part ethnonationalist, proclaiming “Chile for the Chileans.” It is noteworthy that “the Mapuche Indians in southern Chile have been invading
white-owned farms in a style similar to that of Zimbabwe’s war veterans.”
·
Ecuador. The military coup in 2000 “appears to have
been supported by a majority of Ecuador’s
impoverished population.”
·
Ethiopia.
There has long been ethnic resentment of Eritrean businessmen, who were
centered in Addis Ababa. This led to the 1998-9 expulsion of those of
Eritrean origin.
·
Gambia, The.
“The tiny Lebanese community owns nearly all the stores and restaurants
in the capital of Banjul…
and controls the groundnut industry, the country’s predominant cash crop.”
·
Germany (Weimar). Jews, composing slightly under 1 percent of the population, “were widely perceived as
an ‘outsider’ ethnic minority wielding outrageously disproportionate economic
power vis-à-vis the indigenous majority.”
·
India.
There is no “market-dominant minority” at the national level, but
several at the state level.
·
Indonesia.
Suharto became president in 1966 and established a “crony
capitalism” with Chinese tycoons, enriching them and his own family while “the
vast majority of Indonesians [mostly Muslims] remained in chronic
poverty.” Anti-Chinese riots in
Jakarta in 1998 forced
Suharto’s resignation, after which the Indonesian government nationalized
Chinese properties. In the wake of that,
the businesses “have simply stagnated while the country descends further into
frustrated poverty.”
·
Israel.
There is no better example of a prosperous ethnic minority in a sea of
impoverished, and seething, indigenous masses.
The hatreds and violence are well known.
·
Kenya. The dominant ethnic minorities here consist
of three groups: about 5,000 whites who live in opulent enclaves; about 70,000
Indians, who make up less than 2 percent of the population and are
“dramatically more affluent” than the 31 million blacks who “struggle to
survive on less than two dollars a day,” with 45 percent unemployment; and the
Kikuyu tribe [one of 40 in Kenya], who “have for generations been
disproportionately wealthy.” In 1978,
President Daniel Arap Moi
created a “crony capitalist” arrangement between the government and “a handful
of wealthy Indian businessmen.”
·
Laos.
“The 1 percent Chinese minority more or less constitute
the country’s entire business community.”
·
Lithuania.
In the 1920s, the Jewish minority conducted about three-fourths of the
country’s commercial activity.
·
Malaysia.
There were anti-Chinese riots in Kuala
Lumpur in 1960, followed by “extensive affirmative
action policies for the indigenous Malay majority.”
·
Mexico. Chua says old Spanish wealth and more recent
immigrant wealth combine to create a white market
dominance. She quotes
Mexico City’s La Jornada, which says “the booty of
privatization has made multimillionaires of 13 families, while the rest of the
population… has been subjected to … gradual impoverishment.”
·
Namibia.
The business sector is still “almost entirely white” a decade after the
end of Apartheid. We are told “President
Nujoma recently condemned his country’s white
farmers.”
·
Nigeria.
The Ibo tribe, which Chua describes as active in
global fraud and drug trafficking, have “sophisticated social networks
that are almost impenetrable to outsiders.”
In 1966, “tens of thousands of Ibo were slaughtered by furious mobs.”
·
Panama.
“In Panama,
the minuscule Jewish minority—only .25 percent of the
population—disproportionately dominates the country’s wholesale, retail, real
estate, and services sectors.”
·
Philippines.
As we noted earlier, Chua reports that a Chinese Filipino minority of
just 1 percent of the population controls 60 percent of the private economy,
while virtually all land is held by “a Spanish-blooded gentry
class.” While the Chinese see the ethnic
Filipinos as lazy and unintelligent, the latter see the Chinese “as exploiters,
as foreign intruders, their wealth inexplicable, their
superiority intolerable.”
·
Poland. In 1921, Jews, according to Chua, constituted
11 percent of the population, doing 60 percent of the commerce.
·
Romania.
The Hungarian minority has historically been economically dominate. Between the
two world wars, Jews were 4 percent of the population, but controlled many of
the industries.
·
Russia, post-Communist: Jews, who constituted
less than 1 percent of the population, had been quite active in the black
market while the Soviet Union still existed,
and hence were well positioned to step in to the economy once it was opened up
after the fall of Communism. Seven
oligarchs, six of them Jewish, gained great wealth out of the mass
privatization. A “crony capitalist” relationship existed between them and the
Yeltsin administration; and the oligarchs supported Putin in his election
bid. Putin, however, has since cracked
down on them. There is rising
anti-Semitism.
·
Rwanda.
“The 14 percent Tutsi minority dominated the Hutu majority economically
and politically for four centuries.” The
Tutsis were a cattle-raising elite. While Rwanda was a Belgian colony, the
Belgians favored the Tutsis. A revolution in 1959 led to independence in 1962,
with a series of anti-Tutsi massacres culminating in the killing of 800,000
Tutsi during an 8-month period in 1994.
·
Sierra Leone.
A Lebanese minority dominated the economy, including the diamond
fields. A rebellion amounting to a
“reign of terror” of unspeakable brutality “destroyed Sierra Leone
between 1991 and 1999.”
·
South Africa. Years after the end of Apartheid, whites
remain a market-dominant minority with 80 percent of the land and 90 percent of
the agricultural production. There is
widespread violence and anti-white feeling.
·
Sri Lanka. Historically, the educated, prosperous Ceylon
Tamils have dominated the economy. Colomon Bandaranaike “swept to electoral victory in 1956
by… championing the cause of ‘Sinhala only.’”
After he was assassinated in 1959, his wife continued those
efforts. There was a “wave of
anti-Tamil reprisals” during the 1970s.
“Ethnic strife continues to this day.”
·
Tanzania.
There was “bitter anti-Indian brutality” after the country abandoned
socialism and adopted a market economy in the 1980s.
·
Thailand.
After the socialism of the 1950s and ‘60s, there is now market dominance
by the Thai Chinese. Although the
Chinese have in the past blended into Thai society through intermarriage, there
is today a move among them to assert “Chinese pride and identity.”
·
Uganda.
The Baganda tribe has historically constituted
a market-dominant minority. There is
strong ethnic resentment against wealthy Indian businessmen.
·
United States of America. World
on Fire points to a fact that is no less important for being well known:
that the United States
constitutes, vis-à-vis the rest of the worth, a “market dominant
minority.” “Throughout the world,” Chua
observes, “global markets are bitterly perceived as reinforcing American wealth
and dominance.” The feeling has long
been strong in Europe that the ubiquitous
American products and cultural influences threaten to “swallow up” the
indigenous cultures, which the European peoples greatly value. Significantly, Chua says that even though
such feelings are strong in Europe,
“anti-American hostility is a thousandfold more
intense in the non-Western world.”
·
Venezuela. Chua says President Hugo Chavez has
devastated the economy after he “generated mass support by attacking Venezuela’s
‘rotten’ largely white elites.”
·
Vietnam.
For 1,000 years beginning in 100 B.C., Vietnam was a
province of China. In 1782, Chinese were massacred in Saigon. After the
French arrived in the middle of the 18th century, the Chinese
flourished under their laissez-faire
policies. “Constituting just 1 percent
of Vietnam’s
population, the Chinese controlled an estimated 90 percent of non-European
private capital in the mid-1950s.” When
the Communists took over, they labeled the Chinese as “bourgeois” and
“brutalized thousands.” The Communist
government shifted to market liberalization in 1988, and this has brought back
the Chinese.
·
Yugoslavia (former). There was a sharp ethnic division between the
Croats and Slovenes, who have roots in the West, and the Serbs, who have roots
in the Ottoman Empire. The Croats were a “market-dominant minority,”
and, with Nazi support, killed large numbers of Serbs during World War II. Tito’s dictatorship held things together between 1945-1980, but Chua says Yugoslavia “was
a bomb waiting to explode,” as indeed it did.
·
Zambia.
There were “bloody mass riots” against “greedy” Indians in the
mid-1990s.
·
Zimbabwe.
Whites comprised only 1 percent of the population, but “controlled 70
percent of the country’s best land,” producing “more food than a million black
farmers.” After creation of the
black-controlled government, President Mugabe restrained his anti-white program
for a variety of reasons during the 1980s and 1990s, but has declared “the
white man… our real enemy,” designating “over three thousand [white-owned]
farms for confiscation.” The upshot is
that Zimbabwe’s
economy is in shambles, so that “more than half a million people face
starvation.”
Several
important points are raised by all this:
1.
Chua focuses her discussion on the current features: that globalization
of markets is increasing economic polarization, that the stress on “democracy”
is inspiring
indigenous populations to assert themselves against the few who
are economically successful, and that ethnicity plays a central role in both of
these. While these points are no doubt
correct, Chua’s examination of the many countries we have reviewed shows that
the minority market-dominance and severe ethnic tensions existed in many places
long before the “globalization” of the most recent decades. Ethnicity and rich vs. poor have long been
themes.
2.
It is apparent that during the 70-year struggle between Marxism-Leninism
and the “free world,” Communism was able to take advantage of and in part
provide an ideological cover for the hatreds that existed on ethnic and
economic grounds. As the world’s
“impoverished masses” continue to become more and more self-conscious, it is
very possible that one or more ideologies will arise to give voice to the same
impulses. The fight to “contain”
Communism ultimately succeeded when Communism’s state-sponsor collapsed. There will be much reason to question whether
“containing” a future populist ideology will be a viable option, since the
phenomenon it will represent will have no one superpower as a state sponsor and
will have roots that are far too deep and widespread for any surgical excision.
3.
Chua concludes her book with a review of policy options. She champions neither the dominant groups nor
the indigenous masses, hoping instead (although without a naïve failure to see
the difficulties) for an accommodation through a generous inclusion of the
masses in economic life, mentioning a possible sharing of ownership of
productive enterprise (this is presumably the important “shared market economy”
concept that would, through widely distributed ownership, distribute the
profits of industry even though that industry is non-labor-intensive).
Here, certain omissions from her
discussion are especially relevant.
(This is not especially a criticism of World on Fire. No author can
hope to anticipate all that a book’s many reviewers may think pertinent.) She never comes to grips with why it is that
so many “indigenous masses” have proved, or seemed to prove, so incapable. We know that in Europe
and America
the “masses” who were long submerged under the slave-regimes of the ancient
world and the aristocracy-dominated regimes of the Middle
Ages eventually were shown to be amenable to success within a market economy
and to be capable of forming a large middle class. It is, perhaps, an open question whether the
same is true of the “masses” of the “undeveloped world.” Chua doesn’t consider such things as the role
of superstition, of cultures that disclaim the profit-motive, and of
disparities in I.Q. among peoples.
Perhaps that question, which would
seem vital under ordinary circumstances, will be rendered moot, however, by the
march of non-labor-intensive technology.
If, as Jeremy Rifkin has predicted, the “end of work” is approaching,
there will be massive productive potential but little income-producing “work”
for billions of human beings to do. In
that event, some form of ubiquitous sharing, such as through the distribution
of ownership and of the income that capital creates, as we just mentioned, will
be imperative if the global market, technology, science, and civilization in
general are not to be swamped by revolution.
Yet another question raised in the
“dialectic of possibilities” reflects an additional factor Chua doesn’t
consider: whether science and technology will continue as major forces—and
hence as a source for immense capital productivity--in a world where Western
civilization has been inundated by massive immigration from the Third World. Right
now, the West is gaining enormous intellectual capital from the influx of
brilliant minds from India,
China
and elsewhere who now occupy many of its professorships, research positions,
professional positions, and the like. We
must ask whether that will continue as the West itself comes to experience,
partly through mass immigration, ever-sharpening polarization of wealth,
intelligence and education.
Further, Chua shows no awareness of
the position held by conservatism’s most thoughtful journal in the United States, The American Conservative, and by
Patrick Buchanan in his book A Republic,
Not an Empire. This is the view that
the United States will continue to ensnare itself in “tar babies” (which once
hit, won’t let go) until it relearns the principle that guided American policy
during the United States’ first century and a quarter of existence: that the
United States can be a good world citizen, and can lead by example, but should
by no means seek to direct the affairs of other peoples. The only reference Chua makes to this is a
passing one to “belligerent isolationism.”
Such a cliché hardly counts as serious discussion; and, with it, she
dismisses the only possibility the United States has of not becoming
whip-sawed by the world’s innumerable ethnic conflicts. She may hope for an accommodation between
rich and poor and among ethnicities in the many countries she has reviewed, but
what she doesn’t consider is that any attempt by the United States to take
sides in or even to referee the potential conflict in any of those countries
will almost certainly intensify the hatred of one or often even both
parties. (Why both? Someone who comes between two men in a brawl
runs the risk of being
appreciated by neither of them.)
These omissions are important, but
readers will keep in mind that it is Chua’s scholarship that calls them to the
forefront. She has performed an
invaluable service in gathering in one place the information about economic and
ethnic conflict.
4.
It is worth noting that her descriptions of conflict founded in
ethnicity and economic polarization are far removed from a Marxist analysis,
even though she has looked at many of the same things such an analysis would
cover. Hers is a realistic sociological
examination without a superstructure of ideology.
5.
It is also worth noting that the “crony capitalism” Chua describes in so
many countries is far removed from the model of capitalism favored by
proponents of the free market. The
cronyism involves a great deal of government favoritism and intervention.
6.
Chua, by the very fact she is describing extremes of wealth, shows
empathy for “the impoverished masses.”
It is surprising, then, to see her describe, as she does many times, any
leaders who angrily champion the cause of those masses “hatemongering
demagogues.” Such a description could
cause a serious conceptual shortcoming.
Much as it has become commonplace to describe Osama bin Laden as a
“fanatic” who “hates us because of who we are,” and thus to fail to come to
grips in any serious way with the grievances he articulates, a description of
future champions of the impoverished in any part of the world as a “demagogue”
will do the same. There is a smug
presumption in assuming that indigenous peoples who have been towered over by
an alien faction have no legitimate grounds to be angry--and very angry,
indeed. They may or they may not have
such grounds, depending upon whether they could plausibly have “made it on
their own.” For an outsider to decide,
and especially to decide by a facile adoption of a certain semantic, is to go
far beyond anyone’s competency.
7.
Her discussion of “democracy” is for the most part a good one, pointing
out its dangers and need for restraints.
And she sees that democracy, as in Latin America,
can easily be “more formal than actual.”
One thing she doesn’t seem to see is that it is necessarily more formal
than actual even in the major “democracies.”
As the issues of modern life have become increasingly complex, there is
no way anyone but “experts” can even presume to have “mastered” them; the
average citizen, busy with his own life, takes the experts’ conclusions on
faith. Further, elites exist within a
seemingly “true democracy” (just as an elite does within the contemporary United States),
and those elites have far more directive power than even the great mass of the
electorate. This very fact constitutes a
major predicament for the United
States.
World
on Fire is a book every educated reader would do well to study. It is informative and provocative in areas of
untold importance.
Dwight D. Murphey