Social contributor – Dickson Igwe
Globalism and internationalism are two themes dictating political, social, and economic, agendas, everywhere.
The Learjet begins to make its final descent into Terrance B Lettsome International Airport, British Virgin Islands. It drops deliberately, discriminately, and stealthily, banking gracefully, from 40, 000 feet above the North Atlantic. It is a warm, brilliant night. Over the past few hours the private jet has flown south and west, from a frigid Central Europe towards a tropical West Indian clime. A billion stars light up the night sky. It is full moon.
The key occupant on board is a fit, lean and tanned Caucasian, in his sixth decade of life; a very famous man, who sits on a thickly padded leather armchair. He opens an invite to the US President’s Inaugural ball. He is parked behind a massive mahogany desk that squats in a thickly carpeted and superbly wood paneled interior cabin. His seat belt is buckled.
He taps away at a slender laptop. Smiling broadly, his brilliant timing and tough negotiating skills have just closed another multimillion dollar deal. A first class aviator and navigator, the classic adventurer has spent two weeks skiing the Matterhorn, descending snowy gradients that shine bright at night under moonlight, and skirting past deathly steep canyons and precipices, at spine chilling speeds.
Action on Europe’s icy slopes was just what was required to keep this man at the cutting edge in the game of life. Cold mountain airs coupled with icy zephyrs have tested his mountaineering skills and formidable endurance. With the aid of his panoply of rope and climbing gear, he has very recently been hanging hundreds of feet above an ice covered and snowy gorge, finding that rocky cleft required to pull him upwards to the next level as he ascends toward the summit. This dangerous and risky exercise however, has simply served to sharpen his well honed killer instinct.
Sir Richard Branson was voted Britain’s top business leader for the second time in a row recently. In a developed and industrialized nation of over 60 million, that is a massive achievement. Some men are mere watchers and writers, while others are the subjects described at the nib of a pen. These are larger than life characters the commentator, journalist and author live off, in their storytelling. Branson is such a man: a player and grandmaster on the chessboard of life.
Richard Branson. Photo courtesy astounde.com
The billionaire entrepreneur took on a colossus named British Airways in the 1980s. This was a time when being in the airline business, even for an enterprising private individual, could have been termed madness. However Branson, who began his career in the music business, succeeded with his Virgin Atlantic adventure, and beyond the imagination of many pundits and airline industry watchers of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Branson, also a major player in the British railway industry, is truly a Renaissance man: a modern day swashbuckler and buccaneer, who would equally have excelled as admiral of a fleet of frigates battling all enemy men of war on the Caribbean high seas two centuries ago. As of this January 2013, the Airline Guru is a permanent fixture in these Lesser Antilles, and to the great benefit of this geography. Global personalities such as Richard Branson are a natural advertisement for any geography.
Now why this introductory analogue? Well, this Supreme Adventurer and Globetrotter, with a gift for daring to venture where angels fear to tread, including diving into a new odyssey in space travel and tourism, made some extremely important remarks in his blog on January 3, 2013. This was a story titled, ‘’ WHY AN EXIT FROM EU WOULD BE BAD FOR BRITISH BUSINESS.’’
What struck this Observer of all that was, is, and ever will be, was the timeliness of the short narrative to these Virgin Islands. The country today is facing a paradigm termed globalization. This spells surviving in a world driven by digital technology, international trade, and the movement of human and financial capital across national borders, sometimes very swiftly, at the blink of an eye. A paradigm that is very difficult for national governments to monitor and control, placing the global entrepreneur with savvy, in the driving seat in terms of wealth and power.
There is a discussion in the local media on the subject that has often been heated. Wise heads fully appreciate that the days of nationalism and jingoism are over: dead and gone. The entitlement culture in the Virgin Islands is an economic and social albatross. And most individuals this Investigator meets in his ambles around Road Town and farther afield appear to understand that there is no avoiding this new epiphany that is changing both the world and this tiny and beautiful country in ways yet to be determined.
Globalization is affecting the Virgin Islands in ways thought improbable decades back. One example is the challenge of protecting the local labour force from foreign businesses that prefer to employ their own nationals; another is the ability of businesses, especially in the financial industry, to simply up and go when necessary leaving Virgin Islanders and Belongers on the unemployment line. Globalization is creating unpredictable synergies in this territory: in the job market, in retailing, in politics, in the media community, in learning, financial services, tourism, and more.
Using Great Britain as an analogy, and Sir Richard’s – as he is popularly known- assertions in his blog, the statement was made by this ultimate risk taker, that an exit of the UK from the massive trading bloc of 500 million people known as the European Union, ‘’ would be very bad for British business and the economy as a whole.’’
Sir Richard stated that, ‘’ the UK has always been a successful trading nation and has built relationships around the world to help its companies prosper.’’ Branson understands that British prosperity has been built on international trade and international trading relationships. Regional integration within the European Economic Community is no longer an option for a Britain that has for decades preferred to stand on the sidelines and watch as the European social and economic mural unfolds.
But this is where the Billionaire was most instructive in his story. Branson went on to warn that, ‘’ today global business relies on LARGE TRADING AGREEMENTS created by REGIONS and not by countries.’’ And that is the core theme in the reality that is termed globalization. Global collaboration, regional integration, and cross border trade and investment are no longer options for nations that want to be successful in this new age.
Branson, in his short story placed Britain squarely at the center of the European Market Community, stating that through the EU relationship, Britain could benefit from, ‘’ new partnerships with the emerging markets of Latin America and Asia.’’ Again Branson was talking about region with region cooperation, not country with country or island with island.
The only way Britain would be able to compete in a world driven by powerful regional players such as China, the United States, and Germany, was to integrate and into one polarity or another. Then, using the economies obtained through integration, Britain would be in a much stronger position to trade competitively.
Branson further warned that failure to integrate with Europe, Britain’s largest trading partner, would see Britain, ‘’ become a peripheral country on the edge of Europe.’’ And that this failure would, ‘’ be damaging to long term prospects of British business, and also in the country’s ability to attract new international companies to set up and employ people.’’ Again, Branson here was referring to core advantages of globalization for the British economy.
St Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony
Now, the same is true for the West Indies, which is made up of tiny island sates and dependencies exponentially smaller than Britain. If an industrialized and developed nation such as Britain sees it as critical to integrate with the economic bloc in its own geopolitical region that is the European Community, the Caribbean is going to have to look at similarly coming together, probably within a Latin American economic geosphere. The precise model for regional integration for Latin America is unclear today, but it is going to have to happen sooner or later.
Recently the St Lucian Prime Minister and a prominent Caribbean Diplomat both warned, that the region was facing decades of economic stagnation owing to the fact that island states were too small to compete in the world today by themselves. The leaders cited heavy food import bills, slow economic growth, and an emigration of skilled professionals from the region to the North as evidence of a continuing recession in the Caribbean.
Well, it appears a billionaire airline entrepreneur, and national West Indian leader, both read from the same playbook.
