Fans of Chinese author Liu Cixin’s science fiction trilogy, loosely called The Three-Body Problem, range from former US president Barack Obama to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and author George R.R. Martin (of A Song of Ice and Fire fame, the book on which Game of Thrones is based).
The Three Body Problem starts its journey in the 1960s China of cultural revolution excesses, segues to the present and then gradually travels thousands of light-years into the future.
The book’s title refers to a distant planet located in a solar system with three suns which, drawing references from Newtonian physics, renders it unstable and unpredictable. The resulting climatic extremes force the planet’s civilizations to go through alternating cycles of prosperity and obliteration.
And then the planet’s citizens discover Earth, thanks to a politically discredited Chinese astrophysicist posted to a secret radio-frequency transmitting and receiving facility.
The trilogy means many things to many people. For example, the scientifically minded might appreciate how the book examines whether the laws of physics are universal. At its heart, though, the work remains an allegory for climate disasters and the ensuing competition for resources. It also interrogates what kind of domestic politics makes a nation-state vulnerable to external depredations. Let’s unpack this.
The history of planet Earth, for example, can be viewed as a series of wars. Many of these were fought for burnishing the ruler’s ego, many others were pursued for a naked power grab or to finesse a succession battle; but many wars were also waged for control over natural resources, whether it was aquatic, agricultural or mineral.
Historians claim that the first war for resources probably occurred around 2500 BCE in Sumeria (modern-day Iraq) for control over irrigated farmlands. Passage of time does not dampen this aggression: fast forward to 1991, and we had Iraq attacking Kuwait over oil, or to 2003, when the US attacked Iraq (under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction) to control oilfields.
This is just Iraq over the millennia; extrapolate the story across the world and imagine the violence unleashed for resources.
Colonial extraction of natural resources, using brutal and coercive methods, created prosperity for many European powers. Violent appropriation of land belonging to native Americans, and the systematic extinction of their tribes, allowed settler colonies in the US to generate agricultural surpluses.
Russia’s war with Ukraine, for example, has undertones of both an ego-trip and aggressive acquisition of natural resources. Look at Russia’s occupied zones in Ukraine: Donetsk, which used to produce half of Ukraine’s coal and finished steel, now services the Russian military; Kherson—a major agricultural hub for cereals, sunflowers and vegetables—now adds to Russian exports; Zaporizhzhia once supplied 25% of Ukraine’s electricity, but is now Moscow’s strategic asset.
And though US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland were couched in geopolitical terms, it is a reasonable bet that his covetous gaze was actually lit up by the region’s vast and untapped reserves of rare-earth minerals. China has leveraged its Belt and Road Initiative to bind many resource-rich but underdeveloped nations in crippling debts.
This naked smash-and-grab tendency among the rich and powerful has sent shivers down many a resource-rich nation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos this February, urging middle powers to band together over shared values, has struck a common chord: “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
While Carney’s call to arms was initially viewed with some scepticism, given the wide ideological divergences among middle powers, the idea is resonating once again in the backdrop of renewed superpower belligerence.
N.K. Singh, a former Indian bureaucrat and member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has written (tinyurl.com/3e5e8kd9) that India is well-positioned to provide leadership to fragmented blocs and construct an environment of “conscious cooperation” among middle powers.
This is where Liu’s investigation of a nation’s domestic politics and its interplay with global peers, especially in the context of erecting a common front against common challenges, assumes importance.
While the trilogy’s initial critique of state-sponsored intolerance that later morphs into an endorsement for authoritarian efficiency is politically confusing, its demand for interrogating internal contradictions remains undeniable.
Singh’s call for India’s leadership of middle powers fails to take into account many shortcomings in the context of an apparent democratic deficit. An increasing number of population cohorts—students, farmers and sportspersons—have had to take to the streets to make the administration hear and heed their demands. The administration, unfortunately, has often responded with silence and suboptimal responses.
This is not to deny India’s potential to be part of a middle-power multilateral resurgence. But a key factor behind such a platform coalescing under New Delhi’s leadership will be India’s democracy quotient.
In the middle of the 20th century, when many former colonies were gaining independence, India stood out for choosing democracy and democratic institutions rather than authoritarian rule. It is time to regain some of that global admiration.
The author is a senior journalist and author of ‘Slip, Stitch and Stumble: The Untold Story of India’s Financial Sector Reforms’ @rajrishisinghal