Archive for September, 2007
National Geographic suggests a discontinuity for Italy: there is a significant chance of a giant eruption by Vesuvius, the volcano in southern Italy that destroyed Roman Pompeii.
The volcano could destroy much of Naples and the surrounding area, endangering the lives of over a million people. Evacuation plans are rudimentary, according to the magazine.
Volcano image copyright Tom Pfeiffer (www.VolcanoDiscovery.com), used with permission
Writing in the Washington Post earlier this month, Jackson Diehl argued that events in Iraq are pushing the country to a kind of solution:
This is a loose confederation of at least three self-governing regions, each with its own government, courts and security forces; and a weak federal government whose main function will be redistributing oil revenue so that each region gets a share based roughly on its proportion of the population.
He notes several drivers:
- The Kurds are proceeding with their projects in the long-autonomous north, and have passed their own oil and gas law.
- The south is organizing itself for autonomy as well, with SCIRI, the most powerful Shiite party, pushing the project.
- The ethnically mixed areas around Baghdad that were home to many Iraqis in favor of a stronger federal state are being cleared out (as noted by Future Atlas earlier).
- Iraqi opinion is shifting: as of March, 42% of Iraqis supported “regional” or independent states as a political solution to Iraq’s instability, more than double the 18% who favored that outcome in 2004.
Diehl also suggests that new anti-al Qaeda sentiment among Sunnis provides a future alternative to jihadist rule in Sunni areas even if Iraq fragments. (See this April Future Atlas post.)
There are downsides, Diehl writes: “It’s possible that one of the regional mini-states, in the oil-rich Shiite south, will become an Iranian client, while Sunnis in the West may be ruled by the same toxic Arab national socialism championed by Saddam Hussein.”
It is also clear that an oil-sharing agreement is crucial to any settlement between the regions, and any agreement could quickly unravel as the regions eyed each other with animosity. With the collapse of an agreement, the temptation to shift the new borders to secure oil fields could easily trigger new wars between the fragments of what was once Iraq.
Recent bellicose remarks by French officials underline that one of the more likely future wars for France (and most other Western military powers) is war with Iran.
It remains to be seen, however, whether there are any viable military options for those attempting to block a nuclear path by Iran.
Earlier this month Lee Kuan Yew, who effectively created the nation of Singapore based on his personal vision, suggested to the New York Times that the United States–unlike China–was not effectively preparing for the future in Asia:
One of his concerns now, Mr. Lee said, is that the United States has become so preoccupied with the Middle East that it is failing to look ahead and plan in this part of the world. “I think it’s a real drag slowing down adjusting to the new situation,” he said, describing what he called a lapse that worries Southeast Asian countries that count on Washington to balance the rising economic and diplomatic power of China. “Without this draining of energy, attention and resources for Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, there would have been deep thinking about the long-term trends — working out possible options that the U.S. could exercise to change the direction of long-term trends more in its favor,” Mr. Lee said. As the United States focuses on the Middle East, Mr. Lee said, the Chinese are busy refining their policies and building the foundations of more cooperative long-term relationships in Asia. “They are making strategic decisions on their relations with the region,” he said.
Mr. Lee also notes a pattern that suggests Singaporean cultural power vastly disproportionate to its small size: China’s ministers meet with Singapore’s twice a year “to learn from their experience,” and “50 mayors of Chinese cities visit every three months for courses in city management.”
The Washington Post reported last week on the possible breakup of Belgium into Flanders and Wallonia.
The Flemings and Walloons have diverging outlooks on many issues, and are already substantially separated; the articles notes that “each side has its own autonomous parliament, political parties, schools, newspapers, television stations, celebrities, Boy Scouts and pigeon-racing clubs.”
In recent poll, 40% of Belgians said that Belgium will not exist in a decade.
In some respects, Europe now provides the ideal environment in which to pursue this kind of self-determination: the two parties could separate peacefully, and both new countries would then exist within the larger European Union. That is the most likely course if a division of Belgium proceeded.
The larger European project might not be well-served by such a path, however: every Flanders, Scotland, and Catalonia that appears within its borders adds to the drag on decision-making, and reduces the chance of Europe being a vigorous, decisive actor in the larger world. At some point, it might come to resemble the Holy Roman Empire more than the United States of Europe.
Last week Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote that he would “bet on America” when forecasting the dominant world power of 50 years from now.
He recites the “declinist” case, but argues that
The evidence for our nation’s downward spiral isn’t sufficient to rule out the very opposite possibility: that the United States will become, in purely geopolitical terms, even stronger in coming decades. The mistake we make is not so much overestimating our problems, but underestimating the problems of our potential rivals.
Achenbach notes the weaknesses of potential rivals:
- China’s economy is currently much smaller than that of the US, and the country is beset by environmental problems. It’s population is aging rapidly, and it “will be the first country to get old before it gets rich.”
- Russia, Japan, and Germany also all face demographic decline; Russia is already shrinking.
- The European Union lacks a level of unity basic to an effective nation-state.
The US, meanwhile, has completely unrivaled military power.
Achenbach does suggest these caveats:
- The American “machine for wealth creation has also been a machine for income inequality;” “geopolitical dominance doesn’t guarantee that we’ll have a country we can be proud of.”
- “Globalization may make the nation-state increasingly irrelevant.”
- As Joseph Nye Jr. puts it, “by traditional measures of hard power …. the United States will remain number one, but being number one ain’t going be what it used to be.”
Achenbach is correct the the US has the strongest shot at remaining number one for decades.
European nations and Japan are under fundamental constraints. China–and India too, though it is unmentioned in this article–are both more likely to stumble or even melt down than is the United States.
But 50 years is a long time. By 2050, some models project the Chinese economy to be considerably larger than that of the United States. India may have caught up by then as well.
Power follows economics. For those sure of America’s perpetual ascendancy, consider a statement at the start of the 20th century by the First Lord of the Admiralty of a then-dominant Britain, as he observed economic trends: “The United Kingdom by itself will not be strong enough to hold its proper place alongside of the U.S., or Russia, and probably not Germany. We shall be thrust aside by sheer weight.” (Quoted in Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 229.)