ANGLOSPHERE'S ADVANTAGES LEAVE IT WELL-POSITIONED

Date: Saturday, February 4, 2006

James Bennett's book The Anglosphere Challenge explores the reasons why the group of nations he calls the Anglosphere, who share not only English as a common language but a long tradition of common law and participatory government, is favorably placed to cope with onrushing technological change.

The Anglosphere arose in Great Britain, and -- after a somewhat lengthy period of unpleasantness -- now includes Ireland as well. It consists primarily of the former colonies to which English culture was transplanted, in varying degrees; the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But, to the extent they want to be considered part of it, the Anglosphere will cheerfully accept other countries with more distant, or more resented, colonial pasts such as India and Malaysia.

After the Asian tsunami in December 2004, Bennett observes, the ability to project naval capacity into the devastated areas was crucial. Ships had water, power, medical facilities and the capacity to get them to coastal areas where they were most needed.

It wasn't surprising that the American, British and Australian navies, for example, worked together smoothly; they've had plenty of opportunity to practice over decades.

But cooperation with the Indian navy also went smoothly, which was perhaps less predictable.

"If I were starting the book today," Bennett said recently in Denver, "I would say a lot more about India." With a core English-speaking population of 400 million, and an extensive and successful diaspora, India is potentially one of the most influential of Anglosphere nations.

Anglosphere ancestry isn't required; adoption is also a possibility. Bennett's blog, Albion's Seedlings (on the Web at anglosphere.com), linked Friday to a story in Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper about Dubai, which has set up a free-trade area governed by English common law, the Dubai International Financial Centre.

"Under a formal decree of the United Arab Emirates, and local laws signed by the late Ruler of Dubai," the newspaper reported, "the two authorities that hold absolute power carved out an area from which they withdrew their own system of laws. The concept is breathtaking: here in DIFC, English common law reigns supreme -- and under a British chief justice."

The then crown prince, now the ruler of Dubai, wanted to establish a major financial center, "that would rival New York, London and Hong Kong, but in a time zone where one had never existed before.

"But foreign investors would not be attracted without a regulator they could trust and a legal system on which they could rely."

In other words, if you're a CEO looking to locate the headquarters of a multinational corporation, you're probably not going to put it anywhere it could be subject to the vagaries of a sharia court.

Bennett is working with an initiative called the Mountain West Connections Project. It is based on the idea that the American states and Canadian provinces in the intermountain West have a particularly strong heritage of "common law, individual initiative and effective voluntary cooperation." Neither the U.S. nor Canada is entirely composed of common-law jurisdictions, so there is, the project's organizers believe, the potential for developing cross-border institutions embodying closer connections than are possible at the federal levels. They also favor stronger Asian and Pacific ties, possibly even an expansion of NAFTA to Australia and New Zealand.

Of course the U.S. and Canada are Pacific nations, but that important fact is easily overlooked in Ottawa and Washington, D.C., where people are inclined to look across the Atlantic.

In a blog post the day after the Canadian elections, Bennett hailed the win by Stephen Harper and the Tories as "welcome news to the entire Anglosphere."

He continued, "This is not so much on account of what Harper may do, although there are some interesting possibilities, but at a minimum for what he will not do: ride anti-Americanism as his substitute for an honest patriotism."

Even though American-Canadian relations may be less difficult than they have been recently, Harper shouldn't try to cozy up to President Bush -- the Canadian media will be lying in wait for him to do exactly that, Bennett observes.

Instead, "he should become buddies with John Howard of Australia and to a lesser extent Tony Blair." Harper might also consider inviting the new British Tory leader David Cameron to visit Canada, Bennett suggests, adding somewhat snarkily, "Cameron might spend some time thinking about why his party is now the only major Anglosphere right party to be out of power."

Bennett's book argues that the technological, military and financial gap between the Anglosphere and the rest of the world is likely to increase over the next 20 years, "in the context of a rapid acceleration of genuine technological revolution," where an entrepreneurial culture with the ability to adapt quickly has a head start on success.

But the relative success enjoyed so far, he says, "has not been due to any inherent superiority of Anglosphere language or peoples. Rather, it is the result of a long series of developments, more than coincidence but less than foreordained fate."

Future success, he warns, is hardly foreordained either.