Daily Times

Jonathan Power has a knack for nudging readers into uncomfortable corners and making them ask tough questions. His gloves off approach towards making the inquiries no one else makes, stealing the spotlight from the ‘fashionable’ matters of the moment to the universal issues of humanity, battles for resources and policy equations, and chugging along a perpetual insistence to report and critique for the greater good have made him a household name in highbrow circles and one of the International Herald Tribune’s leading foreign affairs columnists for over two decades. Coming from such inspired inclinations, his first book, The Conundrums of Humanity, The Big Foreign Policy Questions of Our Day, is a revelation: a narrative based on the simplest answers to today’s most complex questions, if only we enter the imbroglio with an open mind and accepting heart. With chapters divided into 11 questions such as ‘Can we feed all the people?’ ‘Can we get rid of nuclear weapons?’ ‘Can we diminish war?’ and ‘Does Africa have a future?’ Power takes us to the heart of the matter without having to look too far. We have all felt the need to bite back at these burning questions but Power becomes a small voice of conscience in a world of digital overload and limited attention spans.

You can tell the author wants to make the world a better place; as a foreign affairs analyst and a civil rights campaigner he has seen the worst man is capable of but he has also witnessed the good. It is this propensity for hope, meeting the essence of the good in man that has egged him on to publish a work where he unabashedly critiques the cruel sport of western imperialism but embraces the appetite of humans everywhere to pay it forward, hope and believe in a better tomorrow, and that is just what the 11 questions in this book do: strive for a world that is not embroiled in war, greed and violence.

From the motivations for war even in the presence of viable alternatives, to the fact that most world hunger is manufactured in an age where there are actually less hungry people than before and to the crumbling of human development behind the façade of progress, Power outlines the extremes but tells us not to be pessimistic: “We live in the most extraordinary times, an age of enormous potential yet with the capacity to self-destruct still intact. In that we are no different from our forefathers. Yet what is different, as we stand at the onset of a new century, is that never before has there lived a generation that shares so many common aspirations and accepts that humanity is bonded together in a way that their parents and grandparents could have only dimly perceived.” And that is just Power warming up.

He is unafraid to call a spade a spade and blames, to a degree, Samuel Huntington’s oft quoted work Clash of Civilisations of being the panacea for a post-Cold War era where research funds had dried up and think tanks needed a new public enemy number one: “When Huntington published this essay, it was as if a benign wind had rekindled dying embers.” He goes on to elaborate the growing disenchantment of the Muslim world when cornered by the excesses of the west but also cautions against rolling together all fundamentalists and Muslims into one package like Huntington did and stresses on fundamentalism present in Christianity as well. Refusing to give in to common folklore of the ‘big bad Muslim’, Power disperses responsibility on all.

And he gives respect and credit where it is due, no holds barred. Citing the indomitable Mahboob ul Haq, the creator of the Human Development Report, in his chapter on human progress, he goes on to say: “We overlook that the main goal of life is to ensure survival and, beyond that, to enable the pursuit of well-being, achievement and the pursuit of happiness.” And that is what drives the author: a common, collective goal for happiness by moving past the hardest questions and finding a solution in a world more populated, more diverse but more connected than ever before. He broaches every topic with a caution that is actually loveable if the debate were not so serious and crucial at this point in our history. When speaking of diminishing war he admits that while the world can resolve its conflicts without recourse to war because most wars do not “make sense”, and that there has been a decrease in violence in the last 3,000 years, the world still needs a faster change from feudal and despotic rule. Speaking of diminishing nuclear power he cites how important it is to win the “intellectual battle” than to yield nuclear deterrence through “convictions”.

There is a vast pool of knowledge and whispers of constant soothing throughout the narrative of this book because the hard questions, man’s volatile history and our current trajectory are all abetted by Power’s ability to tell the reader that, in the end, things will be okay. Man can make that happen, if he so chooses.

The reviewer is Op-ed Editor Daily Times