The destruction of the Berlin Wall and the global marketrevolution that followed emancipated hundreds of millions of people.Though censorship and various forms of state control persist indifferent parts of the world today, never have so many people on thisplanet been able to penetrate through the walls of information to gainknowledge and connect with others. Estonians are members of the EU,many children of the new Russian elite attend Swiss schools, while theChinese appear among the most visible tourists at the Olympic Museumlocated in the city in which I live, Lausanne.
Yes, but. While justifiably celebrating the 20thanniversary of the Berlin Wall's destruction and the progress made byhumanity, it is difficult nonetheless not to feel sadness. For intruth, while the Berlin Wall may have been torn down, there remainmany walls that are defiantly standing and indeed new ones that havebeen erected.
In the mid-19th century, the British statesman Benjamin Disraelidescribed what he perceived as two "nations" coexisting in Britain yetseparated by a wall of mutual incomprehension: "Two nations betweenwhom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant ofeach other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellersin different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich andthe poor."
Today there may be one globe in which elites from Mumbai, Shanghai,Dubai, London, New York and São Paulo converge to discuss commonprofessional interests and share the same vintage wine, whileremaining connected to their home-base with their Blackberrys oriPhones. But there are still the hundreds of millions of people whoare globally disenfranchised, over three billion of whom do not evenhave access to a proper toilet. To paraphrase Disraeli: there may beone globe, but there are two very separate worlds between the globallyincluded and the excluded.
To separate from the poor, the residences of the rich aresurrounded by high and thick walls, with barbed wire, guards andsometimes dogs, just as the Berlin Wall separated East and WestBerliners. The film Slumdog Millionaire and even more so the awardwinning novel The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga show what is needed tocross from one side of the wall to another -- crime being one of thefew options available. These walls all over the world are likely toget higher and thicker following the crisis and the prospects of ajobless growth recovery. In two years the numbers suffering frommalnourishment have increased by 200 million to a staggering onebillion. With the current population explosion due to continue wellinto this coming decade, the prospects for tearing down the wallsbetween these two worlds seem increasingly remote.
Soon after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, a new wallwas being constructed over a stretch of 1200 kilometers along theUS-Mexican border. With the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the newera it seemed to herald, the rich countries in North America, Europe,Japan and Australia could have been expected to create a genuine"borderless" world by bringing down the walls to people on other partsof the globe. But that is emphatically not what happened; rather thereverse. In the EU, the Berlin Wall came down; the Schengen Wall hasgone up, making it more difficult for non-EU citizens to get in. Justas the wealthy have erected walls in their own countries to keep outthe riff raff, the rich countries have turned into heavily guardedfortresses.
Just as a borderless world is distant, we are also farfrom a just and open global market economy. There are many trade walls(usually referred to as barriers). The most pernicious are the manythat discriminate against poor countries; to cite one out of hundredsof possible examples: the tariff rates imposed by the US on importsfrom three of the world's poorest countries, Cambodia, Bangladesh andPakistan, are respectively 16.7%, 15.3% and 9.9%, while the tariffrates imposed on the UK and France, two of the world's richestcountries are 0.6% and 0.8% (Edward Gresser, "Trade Fact of the Week", 14 October 2009.) As these prohibitive tariffs undermine the poor countries' growth efforts, they will help ensurethat the walls between rich and poor countries will remain thick andhigh. These are among the iniquitous walls that the WTO DohaDevelopment Agenda was supposed to eradicate. However after beinglaunched almost a decade ago (2001), it remains totally bogged downwith little prospect of conclusion in the foreseeable future. Not onlyare old trade walls not coming down, there are signs that new ones arebeing constructed.
Walls are by no means limited to geography and economicstatus. More than 60 years since Partition, the wall between India andPakistan remains almost impenetrable (except to intrepid smugglers!).There is only one rather desolate border crossing -- known as the WagaBorder. (The Waga Border does have its elements, however, of flourish). In spite of professing great unity, citizens of the 22member states of the League of Arab States find many walls in seekingto cross from one member state to the other. And there is the wallthat isolates Palestinians.
There are multiple walls separating different ethnicities,religions and language groups. Also, though recent decades have seenimprovements in the condition of women, still there remain thick wallsbetween genders. As civilization advances, freedom of choice for themajority of individuals -- where they live, where they are educated,where and how they work, how they live -- must become a constant goal.Thus individuals should retain the choice to live behind walls, ifthey wish, but there should be no case of persons being forced to.Until women throughout the world are given this freedom, thegender-walls will stand out as an indictment of humanity.
Looking to the future, one can already see that thespecter of climate change is erecting new walls between states. Notonly does this apply to the politics and negotiations of climatechange, but will be even more so in respect to those vulnerablecountries that will experience -- or indeed are already experiencing -the consequences immediately, and those that see it as a distant speckon a very remote horizon. Walls will soon be going up to keep outclimate change refugees.
What are the implications for global business leadership?
The general forte of business has been to go around thewalls. The Berlin Wall notwithstanding, many astute companies managedto do great business in the Soviet Union. The same applied in SouthAfrica during the decades of the apartheid wall; ingenious ways werefound by the astute to continue business. Japanese businessmen, forexample, even accepted the humiliation of being labeled "honorarywhites"! Going back further into history, business was also of courseable to draw benefits from the labor found behind the walls of Naziconcentration camps.
Business philosophy has been to accept the reality of thewalls. "Pragmatism" they call it. As we are well into a new centuryand able on occasions such as the anniversary of the destruction ofthe Berlin Wall to reflect on where we have come from and where we aregoing to, it behooves business leaders to think differently aboutwalls, to envisage being part of the destruction crews, and relinquishtheir erstwhile position of propping up walls. This is not onlybecause it is the responsible and ethical thing to do; but alsobecause it is the only way to ensure our survival.
Jean-Pierre Lehmann is Professor of International Political Economy atIMD, the leading global business school based in Lausanne,Switzerland. He is also the Founding Director of The Evian Group.Professor Lehmann teaches on the Orchestrating Winning Performance(OWP), Leading the Global Enterprise (LGE) and the Building on Talent(BOT) programs.