The Hindu Business Line : Can confidence be measured at a national level?

Humiliation in Ifrane, hope in Mumbai, fear in London. With these three vignettes opens The Geopolitics of Emotion by Dominique Moïsi (www.landmarkonthenet.com).

The first is about the author’s interaction in 2000 with students in the University of Al Akhawayn, a school of management set up jointly by the kings of Morocco and Saudi Arabia in the Atlas mountain city of Ifrane, 60 km west of Fez. Young women were walking hand in hand, when they were not casually lying next to each other on the immaculate grass, whose shining green stood out from the arid surroundings of the campus, he finds, but what struck him was their lack of self-confidence.

“Globalisation is not for us… We won’t make it; we can’t be part of it,” a student tells the author. But why? Perhaps, they are doubtful about the political prospects of their government, Moïsi wonders. “Or perhaps their lack of confidence was linked to their country’s geographical position – so close to Europe but on the ‘wrong side’ of the Mediterranean – or to their cultural and religious heritage.”

Whatever the reason, he finds the message to be clear: “If they were to succeed in the world of globalisation, it would be one by one, as individuals on the world stage rather than as representatives of their homeland, and it probably would not happen within Morocco.” What’s currently happening in that country may not be too encouraging, either. While Jerusalem Post speaks of ‘Marvellous Morocco,’ Peninsula On-line cautions, ‘Tough times for media in Morocco.’

The London tale is about the author feeling terror down the spine in a tube train, exactly a year after the bombings had racked the city in 2006.

And, interestingly, the Mumbai story is a narration of Moïsi’s fascination with what he saw during his first visit in 2006. “Amid the incessant, noisy traffic, the poor and homeless lived by the side of the road. Yet I was impressed by the sheer energy of the city; Mumbai seemed to emanate hope.”

Mumbai, city of opportunity

Mumbai is a place ‘where your caste doesn’t matter, where a woman can dine alone at a restaurant without harassment, and where you can marry the person of your choice. For the young person in an Indian village, the call of Mumbai isn’t just about money. It’s also about freedom,’ he hears from an Indian friend.

The very poor keep streaming into Mumbai motivated by the conviction that even if they are unable to improve their own lives, their children or their grandchildren will have a better chance, discovers Moïsi. And, to him, the contrast between the affluent young people of Morocco and the poor of Mumbai is striking. “While the former perceive globalisation as a challenge already lost, the latter, against all odds, see it as an opportunity.”

Importance of emotions cannot be discounted when studying international affairs, the author notes. Without our recognising the crucial influence of emotions, which seem to control us much more than we control them, it is simply impossible to understand the course of history, he avers.

The choice of the three primary emotions, viz. fear, hope, and humiliation, for the book’s focus is because of their close link with the notion of confidence – the defining factor in how nations and people address the challenges they face and how they relate to one another, Moïsi explains.

Sadly, humiliation is the injured confidence of those who have lost hope in the future, as the author elaborates. He adds that when the contrast between your idealised and glorious past and your frustrating present is too great, humiliation prevails.

Sceptics may doubt if something as abstract as confidence be measured at a national level. Yes, assures Moïsi. Architecture, art, and music can be expressions of national confidence, he argues. Among the objective indicators are spending patterns and levels of investment.

Significantly, in geopolitics, confidence may be expressed by agreements between states, he suggests. “From that standpoint, confidence-building measures established between China and India in the early 1990s reflect the growing hopefulness of the two Asian giants.”

In that context, fresh hopes, again, are from the day’s headlines, such as that ‘India, China reaffirm need to keep border peaceful,’ and that India, China are ‘in talks for free trade pact.’

Compulsory read.

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