Some significant convergences make these ruminations inevitable. First was the spirited reaction of some of our readers to the piece published last week about the seventieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference. Second is the current economic condition of the country and President Tinubu’s ongoing international efforts to expand the frontiers of trade, international cooperation and socio-cultural possibility for the nation, which shows that either intuitively , ideologically, programmatically or pragmatically, he may be pursuing a policy of spirited non-alignment for the nation.
Third is the swift imposition of a fifteen percent tariff on Nigeria by President Trump over the apparent refusal of the West African giant to be “contained” by geopolitical and ideological iron jackets. Canoodling with a “rogue” militantly leftwing country like Brazil has its implications and is a source of extreme irritation to America’s resurgent, authoritarian rightwing. Finally, there is the stirring advocacy this past week at the annual Nigerian Bar Association conference by Julius Malema, the South African opposition leader, for a pan-African union of nations with a unified military command and a unified currency to confront the existential threat collectively facing the Black race and its atomized and fragmented nations.
It is important to disentangle the key terms. Autarky is the imposition of extreme self-isolation or self-closure by a nation for the optimization and maximization of its economic, productive and entrepreneurial possibilities. The country generates its own markets, produces its own stuff and consumes what it produces. The postcolonial condition is the actual and lived circumstances of colonized nations after the cessation of physical colonization. What is far more intriguing is not whether autarky is possible or feasible in a world of extreme globalization marked by the penetration and interpenetration of diverse societies by rampaging forces of universalization but the countervailing contradictions spawned by the two opposing forces. Arguably, the most famous expression of autarky in the modern era was when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru defiantly declared that if Indians could not feed themselves, they should starve and if they could not produce their own indigenous automobile they should trek. Indians took the cue and set to work.
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Before then, America’s policy of “splendid self-isolation” for most of the nineteenth century allowed the behemoth to generate an industrial and technological momentum the like of which had never been seen before. But then America is a continent-nation which, unlike its European forbears, did not need to colonize any nation for its raw materials or its market. Even then, when America was ready for the world, it sent Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his submarine fleet to Japan and ordered the ancient Tokugawa shogunate to open its market to the world. It was a humiliation which was only partially avenged by the destruction of the American naval base decades later at Pearl Harbour with perilous consequences for Japan.
The most successful example of autarky in modern times is the Chinese model. After its successful revolution in 1949 and faced with relentless western hostility, the Chinese leadership closed off the country, relying on the Spartan discipline of its cadre steeled by the epic march and the hardihood and thrift of the average Chinese peasant. It was not until China was ready to meet the world on its own terms that the draconian self-blockade eased. Four things to note. Like America, China itself is a semi-continental mammoth which could generate a lot of internal resources. Second, China is an ancient entity which has existed continuously in the same corner of the globe for over five thousand years and therefore had no feeling of inferiority to an emergent civilization however temporarily advantaged. Third, it has a subsisting existential and ontological philosophy which has shaped and guided its people for epochs. Finally, it gave America something to think about when it sent its “human waves” after the invading Americans in Korea barely four years after its revolution steamrolling them back to starting point.
A friend of the columnist, a professor and former senator of the Federal Republic, rhapsodizing about America’s capacity for endless innovation and relentless re-imagining, puts it down to measured self-isolation. He goes on to give China the same kudos and bears quoting at length:
America’s isolationism enabled self-strengthening and development until its cocooning pupa yielded an imago whose wings enable(d) travelling far and wide into unoccupied and occupied territories. For crying out loud, America’s wings reached the moon! China, in its own cocoon, was much despised! In 1984, at the opening of the Los Angeles Olympics, Peter Jennings remarked that the city of Los Angeles had more cars than the entirety of China which comprised a quarter of the human population! Four decades later, it is now very obvious, in retrospect, that what matters for any country is not the number of cars but the (silent) gestation of a robust future…..
A younger intellectual and professor at the University of Lagos countermanded vigorously, wondering whether the Bandung confreres did not strategically undermine their own potency by punching above their weight ab initio. “Would their erstwhile colonial masters sit idly by and watch them punch above their weight? Being masters of cunning and criminality themselves, western leaders in particular had installed puppets where they could and completely eradicated antecedent conditions for people-oriented patriotic leadership classes in countries they couldn’t “control directly”.
Echoes of Mohammed Mosaddegh, Iran’s pre-Islamic revolution prime minister, who was brought down in 1953 in a social upheaval after attempting to nationalize his country’s oil industry which at that point in time was considered a vital artery by the American military/industrial complex? It struck the fear of the Lord into many developing countries. Almost two decades after while campaigning for Nigeria’s presidency, Chief Obafemi Awolowo famously retorted that he did not wish to become Nigeria’s Mosaddegh when he was asked if he intended to nationalize Nigeria’s oil industry if he were to be elected president.
These countervailing positions provide rich historical nuggets for resolving the autarky conundrum and its postcolonial realities and manifestations. First as we have seen with the example of America, China, and India perhaps, size matters for any country embarking on a project of autarky or self-closure either in its limited, modified or full manifestation. Second, and as we have seen with the examples of America, China, North Korea and Vietnam, a degree of military self-projection is mandatory for any country embarking on a journey of economic self-determination in a world of hostile interlocutors. Third, and as we have seen with these countries, any country embarking on autarky must also have considerable homogeneity either natural or externally imposed by a visionary elite bent on shaping the economic destiny of the nation at any cost. Finally, there must be a considerable degree of elite unanimity and critical consensus for any project of economic self-determination to take off.
Unfortunately for postcolonial Africa, all the preconditions highlighted above are marked by their glaring absence rather than presence on the continent. The postcolonial condition is a distressing psychological state indeed, full of economic traumas and disconcerting political polarizations. Only one or two nations in Africa can be said to boast of full homogeneity and in at least one of them clannish disorder is the order. The African postcolonial reality is of a continent brimming with atomistic societies contained in atomized nation-states surging with mutually unintelligible nationalities in different and countervailing state of economic, cultural and spiritual productions. There is no unified purpose in most of these countries and no unifying elite. Most of the national armies cannot withstand the rigours of modern engagement which makes the nations very weak internally and vulnerable to external destabilization.
This is what makes Julius Malema’s panacea dead on arrival. As it is, it is a brilliant prognosis of the postcolonial condition which harks back to the days of Nkrumah’s heady pan-Africanism and Nasser’s imperial pan-Arabian union. No contemporary African ruler would willingly negotiate the sovereignty of his country away and be willing to return home. No mighty imperial African army or international order to enforce compliance. And it is also a question of inherited colonial cultures which makes it very difficult for “independent” African nations to act with independent concert. For example, between the old Dutch degeneracy which threw up apartheid South Africa and the ancient Kongo kingdom with nucleus around present day Angola, there are four different types of colonial rationalizations, namely Dutch, Portuguese, French and Belgian—with the various indigenous people maintaining absolute fidelity to the inherited cultures of their former masters. When you add to these the inherited British, Spanish and German cultures elsewhere on the continent, it is a postcolonial Babel indeed.
Autarky is virtually incompatible with the postcolonial condition in Africa, particularly in a multi-national behemoth like Nigeria seething with ethnic tensions and mutual misperception. The greatest ally of autarchic growth and development was the instance of precoloniality which allowed the various African precolonial societies a degree of organic coherence and cohesion before they were conquered and parceled into the rubric of different multi-ethnic nations with some nationalities finding themselves stranded in different colonial nations under different colonial cultures. But we cannot continue to cry over spilled milk forever.
When one path to development and growth is blocked off, another is inadvertently opened. This is where human ingenuity and creative exertions often turn historical disadvantages into advantages. In many African multi-ethnic nations, particularly in Nigeria and its continental Babel, the postcolonial condition which is the greatest foe of autarky with its lack of organic coherence and cohesion, its squabbling and dissolute elite formation and absence of homogeneity, has opened up hitherto unimaginable riches in music, literature, sports, films, fashion and culinary culture which if carefully exploited and husbanded will put Nigeria and Africa in the frontline of nations and continents in due course. It is akin to the case of the man who is putting on a ring of adornment while his hand is being severed.
By courting international limelight for his country and showcasing its rich endowments and natural wealth before a global audience, President Tinubu’s hunch is in the right place. It may not be a perfect choreography for now, for example the international waters are full of sharks ready to devour any heedless nation at short notice. The president will need to watch his back as he negotiates the dangerous currents. Current efforts also appear too freewheeling and haphazard and could benefit from a more powerfully integrative and holistic framework. But if we keep going at it and stay the course, the efforts are likely to be finessed by equally focused and determined future governments. We did not get here overnight and are not likely to get out in a jiffy.
