New possibilities in catastrophe's wake

Africa@Work

The Indian Ocean tsunami wrought death and devastation and is a human tragedy of epic proportions. But it has also had something of a cleansing effect, helping to dislodge much of the disunity and mistrust caused, mainly, by America's unfortunate and ill-judged reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks - particularly its invasion of Iraq in 2003. The response to the calamity, while slow at first as the sheer scale of the disaster sunk in, has been nothing short of remarkable...

The response from political leaders also indicates a desire for a compassionate rather than a vengeful world order: one where far greater attention is given to the root causes of conflict than to the symptoms....

(Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon -ed)Brown cautioned that Millennium Goals, agreed five years ago at the United Nations, was in danger of being 'downgraded from a pledge, to just a possibility, to just words'. “The danger we face today is that what began as the greatest bond between rich and poor for our times is at risk of ending as the greatest betrayal of the poor by the rich of all time,” he added.

These sentiments, underpinned by the good-will of the post-tsunami world, now have to be backed by action. There are no easy victories and African leaders must seize the moment - together with the likes of Brown - to ensure a far different order from the one we have lived since the end of the 2001.

While the hard-core neo-cons want to forget about the post-tsunami world as soon as possible (see Tom Watson in next post), will other more pragmatic neo-cons try to hijack the post-tsunami world to shape in their images? Can progressives seize the initiative in the PTW before the Gap and MacDonalds turn it into the latest commodity and fad?