Pacific

Title: Pacific – The Ocean of the Future

Author: Simon Winchester

Publisher: William Collins, 2016 (First published 2015)

ISBN: 9780007550777

Pages: 492

The Pacific is the world’s largest ocean, covering almost a third of the total surface area of the planet and contributes hugely to its long and short-term weather and climate patterns. The ocean is sprinkled with an enormous number of islands that played a significant part in the colonial game. Even now, a few Western powers claim foothold and sovereignty on most of these islands. The dismantling of the colonial edifice in Asia and Europe has still not reached the Pacific, which was first sighted by a European in 1513, in the person of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and crossed by Ferdinand Magellan seven years later. It was this great mariner who christened it mare Pacifico. The book includes ten events that took place in the ocean or its rim, after January 1, 1950. The date is set arbitrarily as it is argued to be the cutoff date in radiocarbon dating on which the era of the Present was assigned. As noted, the Pacific is marked by unmistakable signs of occupation by the mighty, even though the book ends by rhapsodizing about the new consensus slowly emerging, in which the culture and customs of the native people are respected by their masters and a happy blending of values is taking place. Simon Winchester is a best-selling British author who has now settled in the U.S. He has published many excellent titles like Krakatoa and The Map that Changed the World’.

Owing to its mammoth size and unimaginably vast quantities of water it contains, the Pacific ocean play a very critical part in forming the climate anywhere on the planet. Winchester makes interesting and absorbing descriptions of how the interplay of heat and water generate such phenomena as El Nino and La Nina, which can make or mar the economies of many countries due to its capacity to change the pattern of rain elsewhere. People who are gleefully unaware of the peculiar changes of wind and warming in the Pacific are given a rude jolt of reality when the monsoon fails, or a typhoon descends on them, which can lead to loss of lives and disruption of normal life for a long time. It is a lesson to learn for all mankind that the little planet we call our home is so fragile and sensitive. Perhaps people may look up with some more gravity on ecological issues after reading this book.

Climate change and global warming may or may not be induced by man’s actions. But, the author describes another set of actions that are fraught with extreme peril and can lead to lasting effects. The remote Pacific islands have long been a favourite testing ground of nuclear weapons by the U.S. This is a thing of the past, now no nation explodes them above ground. The gruesome description of how the bombs were detonated makes chilling reading, especially the apocalyptic narratives of eyewitnesses who saw thermonuclear devices unleash the terrifying destructive forces hidden in their bellies. A group of inhabitants in a nearby island was subjected to radiation from the bomb, as the planners forgot to take the direction of the wind into account. It was a new piece of knowledge that people had in fact died of nuclear bombs in peacetime too.

The author takes a survey of the islands and nations encircling the Pacific, by telling a story about an interesting incident connected to it. Readers thereby get a vivid image of the various states over which the narrative slowly weaves its warp and woof. The separation of the Koreas and the intransigence of North Korea makes one chapter in the book. In 1968, a U.S. spying vessel was captured by North Korea and its occupants were imprisoned. A long and winding negotiation process began, during which the prisoners were tortured and manhandled at will by the dictatorial regime. After a slew of apologies and dispiriting admissions of guilt from the American side, the hostages were freed after eleven months of captivity. This chapter is very relevant now, since we see the rogue grandchild of the man who was the President of North Korea then, engaged in a standoff with the U.S, whose navy has moved its big aircraft carriers to the South China Sea and Kim Jong Un is readying the nuclear-tipped missiles which are boasted to be capable of striking the American mainland. If Kim Jong Un makes any foolish move such as a direct strike, that would surely be the end of him as well as of his regime, but the loss of lives in such an encounter would be frighteningly huge. Kim would do better by not gifting another Pearl Harbour to the U.S.

Pacific ocean is not so pacific as the name implies, but the first widely appealing images that come rushing to our mind would be of paradisiacal tropical islands and cheerfully careless inhabitants. The author identifies the seeds of a future conflict in the region between the U.S. and the rising superpower of the east, China. It has been the studied program of China to spread its maritime influence to a range of islands known as the First Chain in the near term, to the Second Chain in the medium term, and possibly to the Third Chain which includes Hawaii in the long term. China suddenly got a shot in the arm when the Pinatubo volcano erupted in 1991 in the Philippines. The dust and ash fell heavily on two nearby U.S. military bases which had to be closed down. They couldn’t be reopened owing to nationalistic compulsions of Philippine politics. China duly stepped into the power vacuum in the area by forcefully occupying islands near the archipelago which belonged to nobody and began intimidating Philippine fishermen who inadvertently landed there. China’s highhanded and disdainful policies towards its neighbours are bitterly resented by the East Asian nations. It now browbeats them with its fleet of gleaming new warships built during the last quarter century. Winchester presents a scary scenario of Chinese hegemony in the West Pacific which is increasing day by day and is not effectively checked even by American naval power. He has put forward the shift of American attention from Europe and the Middle East to the Western Pacific as a defining feature of the current century in which the possibility of another cold war can’t be entirely ruled out. The book maintains a firm posture against China and its expansionist policies. Is it a sheer coincidence that in the long list of acknowledgements declared by the author, there is not even a single Chinese man or woman?

The book is very easy to read and is a page-turner most of the time. The relevance of some of the chapters to the Pacific theme is somewhat labored. The history of the rise (and possibly fall) of the Sony Corporation is a moot point. Riding on the establishment of a positive business environment after the Second World War, Sony quickly rose to eminence around the world. The most notable display of its competence was in America, but still, no Pacific ethos can be attributed to it without stretching the point too much. Japan’s transition from a naturalistic temperament to a scientific one is a specifically Japanese phenomenon and have nothing to do with the Pacific. The chapter on surfing is totally unappealing to most readers and appears superfluous. On the other hand, a good number of monochrome plates are added as an excellent visual backdrop to the arguments. A comprehensive number of notes and footnotes are provided. The book is also accompanied by a good bibliography and a huge index.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star