A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (62 page)

As a by-product of their wars, the Europeans developed their concept of competition. Everything must be settled through competition. As in war, the winner or victor is right. Thus very early the Europeans subscribed to the belief that “might is right”.

The idea that competition will not only establish who the winner is but who is right pervades the thinking of the Europeans. All their games are based on this belief. An early game was jousting, in which the contestants riding on horses would try to unseat each other using a long lance. Since then more and more games have been invented and all would involve competition. The winner is then venerated.

An old way of settling conflicts was duelling to the death. That it was usually the more skilful who would win, did not matter. The winner just had to be right.

Likewise, in English common law courts it is usually the more skilful lawyer who gets his client acquitted even though he knows and others may know that the person acquitted was guilty.

In disputes between workers and employers, the competition is about finding who would suffer more and eventually give in. Who is right or who is wrong is not the point. If the unions can inflict damage on the business and force it to give in then the conflict would be regarded as resolved. The process is unimportant: that much damage is suffered by the employer and the business itself is of no consequence. Winning in industrial action is all that counts.

This belief that competition will settle all is also seen in business. Companies and businesses are often bankrupted in order to determine who the winner is and who should then be able to carry on unchallenged. Government must not interfere. Like gladiators, the winner takes all. The loser is left to lick his wounds, that is, if he is allowed to live after his defeat.

However, Europeans also have many redeeming characteristics. They can be very caring. They can be dedicated to the truth in science. They can be absolutely honest and considerate. They can be strongly dedicated to justice and fair play.

They are forever trying to improve things, never satisfied with whatever they have. In the governance of nations they have come up with many systems. Those who care to study the Europeans and their thinking as to the best forms of government will notice that the Europeans would be initially enthusiastic with the system they had in place. However, disenchantment sets in sooner or later and they would then start designing a new one to replace it.

And when they adopt the new system they would insist that it is the best, the most perfect. They would not only practise the system but would want everybody else to do the same. Many who refused would be killed, forcing the survivors to be more ready to accept the new ideas.

Thus it was that the Europeans became disenchanted with their absolute monarchy and replaced it with republicanism. Finding that it was not as perfect as they believed it to be, they came up with socialism, and then communism. Then they discovered that these ideologies did not deliver the equitable societies they had hoped for. Seeing that capitalists were doing better, they discarded their egalitarian ideas in favour of capitalism. Through all these, millions of lives were lost in promoting and subsequently discarding the different ideologies and governmental systems.

Not content with killing their own people in order to spread their beliefs, they would go to war with other countries and invade them with the same purpose. Yet later they would again become disenchanted with their current system, would devise a new system and would fight and kill to spread their new beliefs. Currently they believe that democracy, the free market and a borderless world will create heaven on earth. Again they invade countries and kill people in order that democracy and its accompaniments be accepted by all. But already they are seeing disaster in their own countries as the free markets wreak havoc on their finances. In time, we can expect them to introduce a new system and woe betide anyone or any country that refuses to accept their latest brilliant idea.

Europeans will continue to believe they know best what is good for the world. The idea of a world that is not Eurocentric is repugnant to them. That is why they are worried that a new power in the East might arise to displace them, spelling the demise of Eurocentrism.

I have described the character of Europeans as briefly as I can. But it is not out of place to relate incidents and revolutions in European history which illustrate their behaviour.

Firstly, it is obvious that Europeans are different from Asians and Africans. For millennia the Europeans were confined to their small continent. But the Greeks, who I believe to be more Asian than European, went beyond Europe to invade Asia. But they were eventually assimilated by the peoples of the countries they conquered. Other than the Greeks, the European tribes of Europe never got out of Europe for centuries.

The Asians had very early reached eastern Europe where they settled down and built new nations. Later the Turkic Asians and the Mongols also reached Europe, to pillage and to rob the cities. But after their raids the Asians preferred to return to Asia, although some did indeed extend their domains into Europe.

It can be truthfully said that Asians discovered Europe first. European discoveries of non-European continents came much later, after the Arabs, the Turks and the Mongols had already invaded Europe. Columbus crossed the Atlantic and Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope very much later to find that there were other continents besides Europe.

But European attitudes towards their discoveries were different from those of the Asians. As has been pointed out earlier, the warlike Europeans always coveted what belonged to others. If they had the power to seize it for themselves they would do so.

Thus when the Europeans sailed to the new continents they did so in armed merchantmen. They were keen to trade but they distrusted the people they wanted to trade with. Whereas the Indians, Chinese, Arabs and the peoples of the Asian archipelagos sailed in unarmed ships with their trade goods and exchanged these goods among them, the Europeans did not care for the entrepôts set up for this purpose by the people of the Malay Archipelago.

They always wanted to secure the supply of trade goods which they were anxious to procure. Having come in armed merchantmen, they demanded to be given land to set up fortified trading stations at strategic points. They wanted trade agreements for monopolistic rights. And finally they simply conquered their trading partners to ensure supply. Thus empire followed trade.

Europeans acquisitiveness knows no bounds. Having been used to fighting each other in Europe in the quest of more land, the Europeans naturally resorted to wars when simple trade was slow and frustrating to their greed and acquisitiveness.

The Indian sub-continent and Southeast Asia were conquered through trade, when unscrupulous traders gave support to pretenders to local thrones and then extracted treaties from them for exclusive rights.

The Malay Sultans were persuaded to give up the administration of their states simply by bribery. They were offered substantial political pensions, palaces and Rolls-Royce cars if they signed agreements to hand over to the British the administration of their states. A clause in the agreement made the British administrators, called Advisers or Residents, de facto rulers of the states simply by stipulating that their advice, when given to the Malay Rulers, must be followed. The Rulers were paid from revenue collected in their states, and so were the numerous British expatriate officers, thus spending not a single penny of their own money. With the power and authority they gained for themselves, the British were able to ensure that the wealth of these states accrued to the British Government and their business people.

And all these were obtained without shedding a drop of British blood. Literally, the Malay Sultans and their subjects had to pay the British to become their masters and overlords.

In other parts of the world a few bottles of whisky were enough to exchange for vast stretches of land; Manhattan Island was obtained in this way. And when the local inhabitants became troublesome and refused to give up their land, force was used to evict them. The natives usually did not have the capacity to defend their land. Their forces were just unorganised irregular warriors armed with primitive weapons like bows and arrows, spears and machetes.

The European forces were well organised, well trained and they were equipped with muskets, guns and cannons. Later they invented the Gatling gun, a machine gun capable of mowing down the native warriors by the hundreds and thousands.

In these unevenly-matched wars, the natives invariably lost. Tens of thousands of them would be killed. Whole tribes would be wiped out. Genocide was carried out everywhere, and today we can no longer find many of these tribes.

The natives, much reduced in number and decimated by new diseases, would be confined to reserves which effectively served as prisons for these once-free people who roamed the plains and forest. In North America, the bison, the principal food of the Indians, was almost completely wiped out by white settlers clearing the plains for their plantations and farms.

In South America there was much intermarriage with the Amerindians, resulting in large populations of mestizos. The Indian languages and cultures were displaced by European languages and cultures. Most were forced to convert to Christianity.

In Australia the aborigines were treated like wild animals who could be shot on sight. The Maoris of New Zealand were forced to sign the Treaty of Waitangi and gave up their beautiful islands to the European invaders.

The blacks of Africa were partially wiped out but they were so numerous and prolific that a very substantial number survived to fight for freedom later. But their territories have been so torn up and divided between numerous European nations that they can now no longer be identified with the original tribes living there. And so the different Africans living in their artificially-created countries frequently fight each other, using the weapons they buy from European arms merchants.

Wherever they went the Europeans created demographic chaos. Peoples of different races were thrown together without regard for the rights of the indigenous people. A divide-and-rule policy kept the races apart. Yet when these people demanded for independence, the indigenous people, usually less well-off than the immigrants, were forced to give citizenship rights to all and everyone. Failure to do so would prolong their serfdom to the European colonisers. Even if the different racial groups were to accommodate each other the Europeans would continue to harass them with demands for them to be more democratic, uphold all kinds of human rights and generally force the weaker races to give in to the stronger on the principle of equal rights, regardless of the inequality created by the European colonisers themselves.

Where the Europeans could not gain total control and maintain their superior positions, they would leave time bombs in the form of racial incompatibility. Thus the countries achieving freedom from European rule would become unstable and incapable of growth and development. Many would remain in a state of civil war long after the Europeans left. Their instability would provide excuses for the Europeans to continue interfering in the affairs of these nations.

That is the world the European imperialists left when they apparently abandoned colonialism. Almost all the ex-colonies have failed to achieve stability and growth. Most have become basket cases, and the Europeans then label these countries as “failed states”. The impression created is that these countries should never have been given independence. They should have remained colonies of the Europeans.

After the Europeans had been forced to dismantle their empires they started to make a bastion of their continent. They have now consolidated their position in the world with the creation of a United States of Europe, now known as the European Union. Already individually powerful, their coming together has made them even more powerful. Now once again they are ready to take on the world. Together with the North American Europeans, the Europeans will continue to be the centre of the world.

World War II once again demonstrated the superiority of the Europeans in war. This war determined what the world should look like. Victory somehow divided the Europeans into Eastern Europeans and Western Europeans. A Cold War then ensued and like it or not, the rest of the world had to become a part of this European confrontation. They had to take sides and suffer the pains of someone else’s war.

Western Europeans had always regarded Eastern Europeans as somewhat inferior. The arranged marriages between members of their royal families improved relations a little. Then during the 1917 Russian Revolution, Tzar Nicholas II, who was related to the British royal family, was murdered. Relations between Britain and communist Russia became strained. Although Russia sided with the Western Alliance during World War II, the moment the war was over the Western Alliance broke off from the largely communist Eastern Europe headed by Russia.

Unwilling to openly wage war against each other because it would again mean destruction for Europe, West and East fought a Cold War through their proxies. The West claimed a right to emplace its nuclear missiles in Turkey just across the border from the USSR. The Russians then decided to have their missile based in Cuba, just next to the United States.

Both sides moved to the brink of a nuclear war that could have destroyed the whole world. But at the last moment the Russians agreed to abandon the Cuban base if the United States would give up its Turkish missile base.

The Cold War went on for decades. Non-European countries were forced to align themselves with one or the other of the protagonists. Proxy wars were fought in third countries to test each others’ weapons, and their willingness and readiness to go to war. But each time the principal protagonists pulled back, they left the proxy countries devastated.

The cost of this confrontation was enormous and it was a drain on the coffers of both. Finally Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the President of the USSR, realised that the East was worse off than the West and decided to put an end to the wasteful war.