International system
This week Brendan Borrell suggested in the New York Times that it was time to reconsider the status of Antarctica.
Antarctica is now effectively an international, stateless, demilitarized zone, on the basis of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Many countries have land claims, but they effectively put them aside when they sign the treaty, as most powers have.
Borrell advocates dropping the treaty and letting nations claim pieces of Antarctica, as he thinks that national interests would drive stronger environmental protection. This could lead to significant downsides, however:
- Opening up national claims could expand environmental abuses, both in the fisheries that concern Borrell and on land. Do we really want Chinese and Russian companies to have free rein in parts of the continent?
- Abandoning the treaty would mean stepping away from a system that has been remarkably successful in fostering cooperation and non-militarization, even at the height of the Cold War. Borrell himself notes the British and Argentines exchanged gunfire in Antarctica before the treaty.
- Letting the treaty lapse would open up Antarctica to competition just as climate change may make exploitation of polar resources more plausible, setting the state for more conflict.
Perhaps instead the treaty could be strengthened, especially those aspects dealing with marine conservation?
(Image courtesy Eli Duke, Flickr)
In an attack on the Obama administration’s policy of “strategic reassurance,” Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal make an interesting point
“Strategic reassurance” seems to chart a different course. Senior officials liken the policy to the British accommodation of a rising United States at the end of the 19th century, which entailed ceding the Western Hemisphere to American hegemony. Lingering behind this concept is an assumption of America’s inevitable decline. Yet nothing would do more to hasten decline than to follow this path. The British accommodation of America’s rise was based on close ideological kinship. British leaders recognized the United States as a strategic ally in a dangerous world — as proved true throughout the 20th century. No serious person would imagine a similar grand alliance and “special relationship” between an autocratic China and a democratic United States.
Leaving aside that the writers are straining to detect how Obama differs from his predecessors — some see unusual continuity — it is true that the US lacks a natural protege. Brazil and India come much closer than China, as multicultural, democratic countries strongly shaped by Western culture, but real “kinship” is absent.
In any case, having a protege offers no guarantees: the US actively worked to deprive Britain of its chief global-power asset, its empire, even as the “special relationship” formed.
Given the strong odds that China and other countries will singly or collectively surpass the United States, the lack of proteges reinforces the value of the embedding the rising powers in an international system that Americans find amenable. It also argues for vigorous pursuit of soft power, converting rising powers to think more like us. Both of these tools were battered by the Bush administration, but Obama is pursuing them.
It should also be noted that an “autocratic China” is not forever. In many respects China is already less oppressive than South Korea and Taiwan were 50 years ago, when they were bastions of “the free world.” China may follow a similar course, and Kagan and Blumenthal imply that that matters. (Pure realists might object. After all, the US and Britain spent the first 100 years of their relationship warring or talking about warring with each other.)
Decline can be gradual: Britain remains a great power, 120 years after losing its place as the world’s largest economy. By that math, America will still matter in 2150.
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Io9 has a useful review of George Friedman’s The Next 100 Years.
We’re in for the return of Cold War politics, the rise of new dominant powers, and a full-blown space war, according to a new book. What are the chances his dire predictions will come true?
In the details, the chances are virtually nil, of course. But this book should be judged more on the broad outlines than on the scenario particulars.
Suspiciously, it is the same future that Friedman always sees: 19th-century style realpolitik, with great powers contending violently for position. That is hardly inevitable, as ideological, economic, and military factors that enabled that environment are no longer in place. Great powers have not fought each other directly for over 50 years, a gap that cannot be found in previous centuries. Indeed, a variety of factors could tip the world toward full-blown peace in coming decades.
As for the details:
Conflict will arise between the United States, which, in his view, will remain the most powerful nation on the planet, and these new players. Friedman singles out three countries, in particular, that will become the next major powers during the 21st century: Turkey, Japan and Poland, with other nations, such as Mexico, becoming far more powerful in their respective regions.
Friedman’s casual dismissal of China, India, and Brazil should raise some eyebrows. He plausibly explains why Russia might falter, but seems to drop the others either to be deliberately contrarian, or out of deep faith in the determinative power of geography.
It is geography which seems to anoint Turkey, Japan, and Poland. Turkey bears watching, as this blog has noted. As for Poland and Japan, they suffer from the same demographic malady as Russia. Poland is embedded in the pacifying embrace of Europe, and is expected to lose two million people by 2030. Japan cannot be counted out, but is also shrinking already.
How will countries fight at mid-century?
Warfare will be characterized by air forces, robotic forces and enhanced soldiers, and will rely in electrical power grids and other resources as soldiers fight across new battlefields in Europe and Asia. Space will be a vital element, as it allows for communications and the ability to watch a battlefield from a better birds eye view.
That is not a bad forecast for conflict, though other paths are possible. Some would point to nanotechnologies and biotech weapons.
As for the overall book, as Io9 suggests, it is a better introduction to “realist” thinking than an actual guide to coming developments.
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Radiolab recently asked the question, “Will humans ever stop fighting wars once and for all?” Passerby confronted with this query were skeptical, citing “human nature.”
Now, “once and for all” is an extreme criterion, but most people seem to take the question to mean, “Is peace possible? Might wars stop?” And a variety of factors suggest that this could happen, possibly within decades.
The drivers are diverse:
- Decline of violence — Violence is less tolerated globally, within cultures and between them. Behaviors in warfare that were routine a few decades ago — such as targeting civilians — are now deeply controversial. The number of states that engage in large-scale, serious human rights violations has also greatly declined, and abusers receive global attention. (See this Stephen Pinker article for more.)
- Decline of state-to-state warfare — The Catholic Church itself was more likely to engage in armed violence only a few centuries ago than are most dictatorships now. Even “civilized” states routinely attacked each other in the recent past, but this happens more and more rarely. (This is one reason the US invasion of Iraq was widely seen as such an aberration, and as morally repugnant.)
- Democracy and freedom — Both have been spreading in recent decades; even authoritarian states such as China have far more social freedom than they did in the past. This trend reduces pent-up frustration against governments that can result in violence, and provides outlets for self-determination, one of the more common causes of war.
- Transparency — Formal or crowdsourced media have an ever-growing reach, and fewer and fewer things will happen outside the reach of the camera lens. In a couple of decades, 80-90% of the world’s population will be carrying the equivalent of their own broadcast stations, upping the price to be paid in public opinion for those engaged in conflict or oppression.
- Rising wealth — Wealthy states are less violent, internally and externally. Middle classes are more educated, less likely to support authoritarianism, and have much more invested in stability. Setting aside artificial oil economies, no countries with a per capita income of more than $30,000 have significant human rights issues — and many countries are headed for that level of wealth in coming decades.
- Human nature — It is not a prohibitive obstacle. We need look no farther than Scandinavia: the same genetic pool that produced the Vikings, who engaged in savage violence from Greenland to Russia only a millennia ago, now yields peoples with essentially zero chance of waging aggressive war. Their genomes have probably barely changed: it is their social and physical environments that have shifted.
Peace is hardly inevitable, of course. Any number of factors could produce more rounds of wars:
- New or resurgent scarcities could pit nations against each other, fighting over energy or water, for example. Many forecast that climate change and population pressure could drive this result.
- Western values that have slowly evolved to make war less likely might be replaced in the international system by other perspectives as the 21st century wears on.
- A sufficiently serious calamity — peak oil combined with a severe climate shift, for instance — might rip away the social underpinnings of more peaceful societies, setting humanity back centuries.
- Humanity may begin to modify itself, creating new divisions; willingness to use genetic enhancement is one possibility.
Still, peace might break out, and it might do so relatively soon.
(Image courtesy cell105, Flickr)
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People are not that certain of China’s rise. Majorities or pluralities in only half of the countries surveyed “believe that China will — or already has — replaced the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower.” Sensibly, only minorities believe that the handover has already occurred — 4 to 17% think so, with no clear pattern emerging in countries with larger percentages within this range. Only 8% of Chinese believe that they are already on top.
People in developed countries –and thus likely higher education levels — are more likely to expect Chinese dominance.
Two exceptions set the stage for future clashes of expectations: only 26% of Americans foresee being replaced by China, with 57% doubting that this will ever happen, while 59% of Chinese expect to replace the US, and only 20% are skeptical that this will occur.
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The Economist reports that the concept of “responsibility to protect” — the idea that countries have a responsibility and right to protect people when their own governments cannot or will not — is facing increased resistance at the UN.
Smaller Third World countries such as Nicaragua are leading the counterattack, characterizing the notion instead as the right to intervene — and a right which would only in practice be held by the rich and powerful. (Nicaragua’s role is yet another case of history coming back to haunt the United States, which characterized its proxy war on the Central American country in the 1980s as support for “freedom fighters.”)
The responsibility to protect may be crucial in securing a future in which human rights are broadly protected, but it will make only slow progress at best: too many small countries are suspicious that it will be only an excuse, not a principle, and too many more powerful players — including China, India, and Turkey — may be too worried that it might someday be brought up in the context of their own self-determination and human rights issues.
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This spring The Economist wrote about the extension of maritime claims to continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from land. Huge areas of ocean are being claimed, with rights to oil, metal, and seabed methane hydrates.
While some issues are being worked out amicably, the move could intensify other disputes, such as those around the multiple claims to the South China Sea.
This could also make more important a concept noted by Professor James Lee earlier this year: will islands that cease to exist due to global warming still have sovereignty based on their former existence?
He wrote:
Some remote islands — particularly such Pacific islands as Tuvalu, Kiribati, Tonga, the Maldives and many others — may be partially or entirely submerged beneath rising ocean waters. Do they lose their sovereignty if their territory disappears? After all, governments in exile have maintained sovereign rights in the past over land they didn’t control (think of France and Poland in World War II). Nor are these new questions far away in the future. The first democratically elected president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, is already planning to use tourism revenue to buy land abroad — perhaps in India, Sri Lanka or Australia — to house his citizens.
Absolute sovereignty, territorial waters, and marine exclusive economic zones are all ultimately based on land in current international law. Will a strip of the northern Indian Ocean remain Maldivian even if the islands begin to vanish? Will the Maldivians and others fund their displaced lives with the mineral rights to the waters that swallow their homes?
(Image courtesy Rappensuncle — Creative Commons use via Flickr)
International system
Pei suggested that there will not be an “Asian century” in the same way that the 20th century was the American century: Asia will lack the capabilities and skills to remake the world in the way the United States did. Moreover, the region is too divided, and intraregional rivalries will cancel the individual powers out, for no net effect.
Martinez agreed that, in the short term, the narrative of American decline due to the financial crisis was overblown. He emphasized that the US and China are now in a position of mutual dependence, a relationship could actually help the US perpetuate the American century. He does not see any innovative ideological worldview motivating China: no great ideological challenge is coming out of Asia.
Japan does not want to be second to China in Asia, Pei noted.
Asian economies
Continued growth in the 7-9% range should not be assumed, Pei asserted, given the challenges countries face in as little as 10-15 years. He suggested that Asia lacks an ecosystem for innovation, and that such a system is obstructed by the entire Asian “way of life.”
China’s domestic evolution
China will become a democracy at some point, Pei said. It will come from the top down, when members of the political elite choose to use popular discontent to further their personal goals. This could actually undercut its economic performance, he added.
He said that the Communist Party has successfully whitewashed history, and Chinese know little of the repressions from the 1950s to Tiananmen. As a result, the Party’s legitimacy could be threatened when it all comes out, as happened to the Party in Russia during glasnost.
Martinez forecast that, if economic growth falters, the Party would need an alternative rationale for its continued dominance, and might turn to nationalism, for instance on the Taiwan issue. He noted that even young, educated, cosmopolitan Chinese are in full agreement with the government on nationalistic issues such as Tibet and Taiwan.
Pei said that the financial crisis has not disillusioned Chinese about Western capitalism, but it has provided an “aha” moment, as they have watched the US make serious mistakes.
The discussion is at the NAF site on video.
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The Somali pirates have managed to invoke the multipolar 21st century:
- The European Union is sending a force of 20 warships to patrol around the Horn of Africa, including countries such as Spain and Sweden, an unusual display of military power by the organization.
- China is also sending three warships, a striking extension of its global reach. This is likely the first time a Chinese flotilla has operated in these waters since the great fleets of Admiral Zheng He, in the early 15th century.
Image: Ben Walther (Flickr)
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.)