By historical contrast, the US (and Japan t a lesser extent) grew and was able to contest space with European colonial powers through protected, domestically-oriented industrialization, not through exports and trade as China is doing. The US didn't need Europe to grow economically, so it could overtake Europe without endangering its own growth. China can't do the same because it lacks the mineral and agricultural resources it needs domestically. Lacking a global military which can secure resources by preventing others access to them, China must trade to get them. So it must abide by largely American-made rules and norms if it wants to continue its wave of prosperity.
Think of it in this extreme this way to see who's still in charge and likely will be for the forseeable future: What if hostilities were to break out between the the West and China? This could easily occur over something like Taiwan, for instance, if China simply decided it wouldn't work within American-made rules regarding Taiwan anymore and decided to contest them military.
Could the US directly defeat China in an all-out conventional war? Probably not, especially if you consider Chinese victories over US forces in Korea the last time they met.
But could China continue its economic prosperity while in a military contest with the US? No. The US Navy is bigger than the rest of the world's navies combined, most of which are close US allies. China would find itself unable function as a mercantile power because it would lose its markets for exports as well as lose the foreign mineral and food resources it now depends on for its newly wealthy urban population and industry. The US Navy would simply prevent Chinese access to its foreign assets while hostilities continued and no one could do anything about it. Furthermore, the US, EU, and the rest of the world would suffer only marginal, if any, economic loss as they find that there are lots of inexpensive substitutes, domestic as well as foreign, for Chinese labor.
That's the kind of power that a global Pentagon buys you in today's world. It compels China to act within the rules whether it wants to or not, and my reading of China's support for the Euro is that they don't have a choice, which means they are as powerless as ever.
Furthermore, the US, EU, and the rest of the world would suffer only marginal, if any, economic loss as they find that there are lots of inexpensive substitutes, domestic as well as foreign, for Chinese labor.
Except not, because the US does not have any capital plant left that's worth shit, outside the armaments industry. And most of the countries that the American capital plant has been relocated to (other than China) are in Korea, which will be a Chinese client about ten seconds after the commencement of hostilities, and Indochina, which is a region where China can stir up a whole lot of trouble even under an all-out naval blockade.
Oh, the US can build capital plant. But that will take them at least ten years, which is an eternity when a fifth of the (net) internationally traded steel and well over a third of the total global steel production just got taken off the market, and you're a net importer of both steel and finished products containing it.
That is not to say that the US couldn't make China lose more than China could make the US lose. But the US would lose.
But then again, why should China stop playing by the Americans' rules? They're beating the Americans at their own game, after all...
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The US doesn't need its own capital plant to survive a conflict with anyone because it has a military capable of securing all of the resources it needs from anyone else. While China's borders are just China's borders, as far as political control over resources goes, America is effectively borderless due to its unique, global military reach. Unless a country today opts out of American empire by opting out of trade, America's military really does make all other countries mere constituencies of an American polity.
While China and other countries may be only able to politically secure economic resources within its nation-state borders, the global network of bases, ships, and aircraft that the US has allow it to secure anything it needs from anywhere just by buying it and shipping it. No one else has that capacity, and until they do, the world pretty much has to follow the leader.
Korea won't go with China, because China can't protect its trade-based economy like the US Navy can, and without US and EU markets, Korea faces famine and devastation. Korea therefore, like China, also has no choice of allies. Beating America at its own game really is the best strategy out of a very limited set of options available to would-be imperialist competitors to American power today.
an ecological disaster like we might face from unchecked global warming, for instance.
Financial collapse is not the same thing as economic collapse, though.
The thing is that the American economic collapse has already happened and should be treated in the past tense.
What's keeping the American empire going is its mental capture of the European elites and its control of the financial system. For a country whose only significant civilian economic activity is finance, financial collapse is a generalised economic collapse.
that's something that can take a thousand years to happen,
The US doesn't need its own capital plant to survive a conflict with anyone because it has a military capable of securing all of the resources it needs from anyone else.
Korea won't go with China, because China can't protect its trade-based economy like the US Navy can,
It's not about "going with China," it's about not being able to prevent China from going in there and taking it over. In a working or not so working condition...
You're right about Russia and Korea, but it's still the same catch-22 situation. If China invades Korea, but has no access to the resources it needs, then famine occurs in Korea as well as China, so Korea will always stick with America, and Chinese contesting power with America is off the table. So if China were to get cozy enough with Russia to be able to secure resources without a need for ocean transport (just as the US was able to do (and Napoleon was not) without worrying about England in the 19th century) then, yes, you have a scenario for the end of the empire.
Hence, US geopolitical strategy should be, and likely is, to keep that kind of relationship from ever occurring. That's where policy matters and mistakes can be made. Empires aren't deterministic organisms. People have to actually be smart enough to keep them working. My point is that really the only way American power can fall in our lifetimes is if American political leadership screws up. Without American mistakes, China can't overtake her, so it's America's game to lose, not China's game to win.
There is no inevitability in China's rise here, and that was even the thesis of Giovanni Arrighi in his otherwise anti-American tome about China's rise. China still has to solve the currently insurmountable problem of how to retain access to global resources without the military capability to do so. Without an American (or climatic, perhaps) calamity, China isn't likely to ever get the capacity to be independent of American power, even if it becomes a more powerful constituency for American political leadership to deal with. At the rate China is rising, however, it should be able to overtake Israel within the next decade or two, I think. /snark
And everybody else lives happily ever after.
And you don't need to defeat China to prevent China's access to resources. You just have to be able to dissuade the world's ship owners, even Chinese ones, from doing business with China, which an aircraft carrier battle group is really good at.
Only if you are prepared to interdict all shipping in the Sea of Japan. That will hit Korea and Russia as well. Now, Korea you can live without, but unless Russia actively collaborates in your embargo - and they have no particular incentive to do so - China can run their commerce under Russian cargo manifests and in Russian bottoms (the Vladivostok Global Shipping Company and the East Siberian Industrial District Consolidated Import/Export Company would suddenly become the most productive enterprises in the world...). So you'd have to be prepared to interdict Russian-flagged vessels sailing out of Vladivostok. The Russians will not be happy about that.
You're talking about a generalised confrontation with all of Asia here.
You're right about Russia and Korea, but it's still the same catch-22 situation. If China invades Korea, but has no access to the resources it needs, then famine occurs in Korea as well as China, so Korea will always stick with America, and Chinese contesting power with America is off the table.
No, it means that Korea will not be the ignition point of such a conflict. But once the conflict does escalate to the point of naval blockade
So if China were to get cozy enough with Russia to be able to secure resources without a need for ocean transport (just as the US was able to do (and Napoleon was not) without worrying about England in the 19th century) then, yes, you have a scenario for the end of the empire.
It's not a matter of being cozy - if the Americans join Israel and Somalia as state sponsors of piracy and target Russian-flagged vessels, they're going to get a lot more cozy than they are real fast. It's a matter of building the relevant infrastructure. It's a question of whether the infrastructure to transport enough crop far enough can be built fast enough for the Chinese political system to survive a blockade.
There is no inevitability in China's rise here,
I actually agree with you on that.
What is happening right now to strengthen China's hand is that American industry is being moved to China. Mechanically, what happens is that China sells industrial goods to the US at discounted prices (through a variety of means, including but not limited to maintaining currency discounts) and uses the proceeds to buy the raw materials that make up the American colonies' tribute, in order to power Chinese industry. The reason that China is trading with the US rather than buying raw materials directly from the producers is that by discounting against the Americans, they incentivise the movement of the American industrial base to China (at the cost of selling their products for less than the full value).
It is always in the US' power to stop this process by changing policy away from favouring finance and towards favouring industry.
If and when that happens (and I predict that it will happen when the US runs out of civilian industry to ship overseas, because they will be understandably reluctant to ship their armaments industry overseas), the game changes. Then China no longer has any incentive to sell stuff to the US at a discounted price, and every incentive to deal bilaterally with the American colonies.
China then faces opportunities and challenges. To take the opportunities first, they can nationalise the Chinese-based holdings of transnational companies with relative impunity, since the only reason that those transnats are currently being treated according to the American rules is the prospect of them moving more of their operations to China. In the face of determined industrial policy, that prospect radically diminishes. The Americans are going to piss and moan about that, just as the British bitched a lot when Putin renegotiated their transnats' fraudulent Yeltsin-era contracts. But like the British, they will suck it up, because the alternative - a generalised trade war with all of Asia - is more expensive.
China can also begin to demand the full price for their goods from the Americans - they won't need to be hyper-competitive anymore, because there is no serious prospect of getting more of the American industrial plant (and for the same reason, they can always erect trade barriers to avoid losing what they have).
The challenge - and where the Americans can make monkey business for China - will be diverting colonial tribute from the American colonies to China while no longer paying the Americans a cut. But they are not entirely powerless here. The Americans keep their colonies not by virtue of military superiority - they have the capacity to wreck a colony, but not really to conquer it in any useful condition. Mostly they keep their colonies in line by bribing the local strongmen and then saddling them with unpayable debts... both activities denominated in US$ (and the way the Americans have traditionally saddled their colonies with unrepayable debts has been by building infrastructure projects with revenues in local currency but financed by loans denominated in US$ - but there's no reason why the Chinese can't play that game too).
Take away the post-Bretton Woods monetary system, and you take away the American empire.
But I agree with you completely on the need for the US, and the West in general, to break its relatively recent addiction to financing wealth instead of creating it through industry if remaining powerful in the world is important to them. Long term, allowed to continue, poor industrial policy will doom an imperialist project.
That was a diary by by richard carlucci on May 11th, 2006. There was also Hot Summer for Mr Bush by FarEasterner on May 22nd, 2006; and Afghanistan neglected - and now Russia and China want US out by Jerome a Paris on July 7th, 2005. But 2006 was a different era and after the Global Clusterfuck started we haven't heard a lot about the SCO. Is it still alive? Can it be revived? Does it matter? By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
You don't have to win a war (in the conventional sense of achieving your stated objectives) in order to wreck a country and deny its resources to everyone else. By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
I fully agree with santiago's description of the asymetry of the relationship between China and the US. China has to play by the rules of the game, as set by the dominant power. The US can isolate any country form the rest of the world; no country can do that to the US. Wind power
China's government has the great advantage of being able to conduct policy without particular regard for popular sentiment, and can always play the Chinese nationalism and Han exceptionalism cards to good effect. And they have the advantage of powerful cultural traditions that, well played, bolster the government -- so long as the economy keeps working.
Something from the I Ching relevant to the US-China relation comes to mind:
The Taming Power of the Small
"The yielding obtains the decisive place, and those above and those below correspond with it: this is called THE TAMING POWER OF THE SMALL."*
Subtle and inscrutable these Chinese. The Book of Changes is thought to have taken shape in the centuries before Confucius and is basic to Chinese culture and habits of mind. China will play to its own advantages, which are considerable, when it can, while accommodating US advantages where it must.
For now probably advantage China. They have the currency reserves, a growing economy and the ability to conduct foreign policy strategically, even if they play by US rules. Meanwhile the USA is run by a cabal of pirates and is constrained to act and react according to the short term needs of that constituency. The Chinese undoubtedly think us to be barbaric fools, even if dangerous and powerful fools.
Time will tell just how valuable our military power is in this relationship. But we cannot readily use it to immediately get whatever we want. Most frustrating.
*From the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, Princeton, 1961 As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
the WestTM plays chess...
With friends like Fox And Friends and the American Petroleum Institute ... who needs external enemies?
Seriously, if war is politics by other means, then the question if whether "America can survive a conflict with anyone" is a massive non sequiter when it seems increasingly plausible that American cannot survive business as usual, with the ongoing destruction of our industrial capacity and pillaging of our natural resources as thorough as any foreign occupier ever could aspire to accomplish. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Except not, because the US does not have any capital plant left that's worth shit, outside the armaments industry.
That's not quite true. US industry is employing less and less, and has abandoned some sectors, but its output has never been higher, when measured in the value of the goods produced. I'm not sure it would be so hard to rebuild, if a war-type effort were put into it. Wind power
The US grew in the 19th century because it had a continent to colonize, not because of international trade rules. By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
If it hadn't been for the first world war, we would be having this conversation in German.
Incidentally, there's another parallel: The countries that won the first world war did so by being neutral.
please provide proof..
please proof
and every your statement deserve the same questioning.
Given: China's economic growth in the last decade has occurred mostly due to its national strategy of export promotion, aka mercantilism. (Is this false? If so, support your refutation.)
Given: China doesn't produce enough oil, soybeans, and other key minerals it needs domestically to satiate the demands of its greatly expanded economy.
Given: China currently does not have a non-oceanic transportation system or the political trust in place to be capable of supplying resources from land routes with neighboring sources such as India and Russia, which are presently relatively minor importers of Chinese production in the first place.
Given: China lacks the military capability of preventing the US from denying access to critical foreign export markets and resources if such a situation occurred.
Where will China obtain the mineral and agricultural resources it needs to maintain middle class lifestyles of its urban population as well as provide for industry, state, and military infrastructure?
Argument: If China cannot obtain sufficient income to support its current level of development and growth without international trade, then it cannot opt out of trade. (Is this not true?)
Argument: If China cannot presently obtain the mineral and agricultural resources it needs to maintain and grow its current level of industrial development, then it cannot opt out of trade.
Proof: If China cannot obtain the resources it currently needs from foreign sources if US were to choose to deny Chinese access to foreign markets and foreign sources of mineral and agricultural supplies, then China has no real alternative available other than to comply with the present world economic regimes.
China is stuck to trade, at least for the time being. It has no other option. This might change if it can become energy independent or if it develops a global military capable of contesting space with America, but that's not the situation today or, I argue, for the foreseeable future.
The difference is that China can afford to throw the US against the wall, providing it stays on good terms with the EU and also supports development in other nations which it can grow as export markets.
The US can't afford to throw China against the wall because it wants, and sometimes needs, the stuff that China makes, which now underpins a huge segment of the US corporate economy.
A trade war with China would be catastrophic for the US, because the shops would soon run out of everything - from food to clothes to toys to consumer electronics. Among others.
You're also ignoring the point that China is already supporting the US financially. If China allowed its currency to float, China would suddenly discover a significant source of wealth.
The relationship is on a knife edge. So far it's been expedient for the Chinese to continue with it, but it's immensely naive to assume that this has to continue because of some kind of implied non-specific US awesomeness that China lacks.
And China has far more options, and is in a much stronger economic and geopolitical position than the US is.
China is a low-income food-deficit country. The US is neither.
In other words, the US could literally starve China to death in the event of war.
This (the food deficit, not the war scenario) has to be one of the main reasons China is greatly expanding its hold on African agricultural production. I wonder how much of what officially counts as Chinese food imports is already "off-shore food production" on land leased by China. By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
As for food imports:
LJ Anderson: Rise in food imports heightens contamination risk - San Jose Mercury News
As computer jobs have gone offshore, so has the production and processing of food. In addition, the U.S. now imports more food than it exports -- with fresh produce, and fresh and frozen fish and shellfish among the leading imports. Mexico is the No. 1 exporter of fruit to the U.S., and China is in second place. This unprecedented growth in globalization of food sources is accompanied by concerns about health risks to consumers. Regulations governing food production in many developing countries are often negligible. For example, two-thirds of the world's production of farmed fish is grown in ponds fertilized by animal manure or human sewage.
As computer jobs have gone offshore, so has the production and processing of food. In addition, the U.S. now imports more food than it exports -- with fresh produce, and fresh and frozen fish and shellfish among the leading imports. Mexico is the No. 1 exporter of fruit to the U.S., and China is in second place.
This unprecedented growth in globalization of food sources is accompanied by concerns about health risks to consumers. Regulations governing food production in many developing countries are often negligible. For example, two-thirds of the world's production of farmed fish is grown in ponds fertilized by animal manure or human sewage.
There are a lot of vacant warehouses just south of Salinas, and many growers have shifted to growing grapes for wine production to replace lost lettuce and vegetable crops.
To be sure, the overall picture is still one of enormous agricultural productivity, but shifts are under way. And the world will live as one
Does this mean American growers would grow lettuce which would then be shipped to China and South America for packing and processing before being shipped back to the US for consumption? By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
Does this mean American growers would grow lettuce which would then be shipped to China and South America for packing and processing?
A trade war with China will just replace Chinese goods on US store shelves with goods made in any number of other countries that the US can continue to access. Walmart can replace their suppliers in days, if not minutes, as can any other retailer. China is a low-cost producer, not a specialty producer. It is utterly replaceable.
China is financing the US, but even when China reduced it's bond investments when the crisis ensued, other buyers of US private and government debt stepped right in and kept rates low. China is a good option for the US. The US is a critical actor for China. That's the power disparity at play. In portfolio theory terms, the US's risks are very diversified, while China's remain concentrated.
What, exactly, are the strong economic and geopolitical positions of China relative to the US that you are talking about. You seem to be mistaking mere, short-term momentum for actuality here. Fortunately for the Chinese, they seem to have a more realistic outlook on their own place in the world themselves.
the US is the only one with a navy capable of securing access to all of the foreign resources it ever needs.
And that's working really well in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, isn't it? Or how about in South America?
You seem to believe that all the US has to do is turn up with a carrier strike force and help itself to whatever it wants.
Firstly, the US has always preferred to install puppets and do less shooting. Installing puppets actually works quite well, but it's not quite as easy as it used to be, as the US is discovering in Iran and Eastern Europe.
Secondly the idea that all you need is a navy is obvious strategic nonsense. Most resources are landlocked or at least somewhat remote, and if the US wanted them it would have to capture ports and secure extraction and supply lines.
Considering that the US can't even take out the Somali pirates, this seems like a less than entirely plausible scenario.
Successful US naval actions in the last couple of decades are rarer than unicorn testicles. Iraq was a lot of shouting and shelling to no great effect, Afghanistan is a fiasco, USS Cole was another disaster, Somalia continues to be a source of fail, and the rest is - where?
Actually, yes, it is. At least as far as securing access to resources goes. Iraq and Afghanistan just prove, for the umpteenth time, that military force is a poor way to provide for economic development and nation-building, not that military power is useless for killing enemies, toppling opposing governments, or denying other nations access to critical resources while securing them for yourself.
Still, this doesn't really matter that much as the role of capital ships is power projection and keeping the sea lanes of communication open. If you want to deny them to others you use subs. Which the US Navy is shock full of. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
And exactly which resources has the US secured in Afghanistan? (Apart from heroin.)
The point is that Iraq and Afghanistan are primarily corporate welfare wars, not resource wars.
In terms of value for money and practical success, it's insane to pretend that they've bee anything other than disasters.
What they have done - and what they were likely designed to do - is put tax money into the pockets of a select few lobbyists and corporations.
Which is fine as far as it goes, but it's not a good precedent for a real resource war.
China can only buy oil from the Middle East, or any other ocean-dependent source, because it is not engaging in armed hostilities with the US. The US has no such constraint.
Apart from the fact that if you piss off the people who sell you the stuff you need to buy, they may stop doing that.
And unrestricted commerce warfare is a really good way to piss people off. Especially if it's against their biggest customer.
But actually, I wasn't thinking so much about the oil producers as about the merchant marine. The US directly controls a fairly small share of the global merchant marine. And there's a difference between being able to blow up a ship and being able to take it over in a useful condition. Tick off enough of the rest of the world's maritime nations through unrestricted commerce warfare and you will find yourself unable to find civilian shipping for your own needs.
I guess I'm thinking that the merchant marine is basically like any other business. Ship owners, when they are not a government, have real fortunes and savings invested in them and stand to lose a lot if someone wrecks a boat, and crew members have even more to lose. (Ship insurance doesn't cover acts of war, generally, so the owners have a lot of skin exposed in such situations.) Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt many ship owners, flagging their vessels out of Liberia and Panama as the vast majority of ships are, are going to risk putting their investments in harms' way if the world's big boys came to blows, which means that the only way they could continue to pay their loans and bills is to sail them with non-Chinese cargo. To me it looks like the very market forces that allow China to benefit now, would act completely the opposite if the risk level of doing business with Chinese cargo increased. Risk gives advantages to those with the greater power, or biggest guns, all the more so when you can't afford to idle your capital (or labor) as most ship owners are.
False. What about working pipeline from Kazakhstan and under construction from Russian Far East?
Neocon crap.
We used to hear such stuff from John Bolton. Are you his deputy on ET?
No attempt to back your neocon statements?
I am happy to receive "2" marks from neocons every day.
It's possible to discuss this without name-calling, isn't it?
If you want to show what you think is of neocon inspiration in santiago's comments, that is a different matter.
So you calling santiago a neocon doesn't tell me anything about what you think is the correct view of China's motivations, nor what evidence one can get about it from outside.
You can call a spade a spade but the question of what China wants is more interesting than the question of whether santiago is a neocon. By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
Successful US naval actions in the last couple of decades are rarer than unicorn testicles.
The truth is that van Ripen did something so important that I still can't believe the mainstream press hasn't made anything of it. With nothing more than a few "small boats and aircraft," van Ripen managed to sink most of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf. What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won't last one single day in combat against a serious enemy. The Navy brass tried to bluff it out, but they were pretty lame about it. They just declared the sunken ships "refloated" so the game could go on as planned. This is the kind of word-game that makes the military look so damn dumb. Too bad Bonaparte never thought of that after Trafalgar: "My vleete, she is now reflotte!" Too bad Phillip didn't demand a refloat after the Armada went down: "Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK?"
What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won't last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.
The Navy brass tried to bluff it out, but they were pretty lame about it. They just declared the sunken ships "refloated" so the game could go on as planned. This is the kind of word-game that makes the military look so damn dumb. Too bad Bonaparte never thought of that after Trafalgar: "My vleete, she is now reflotte!" Too bad Phillip didn't demand a refloat after the Armada went down: "Oye, vatos, dees English sink todos mi ships, chinga sus madres, so escuche: el fleet es ahora refloated, OK?"
And that's working really well in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, isn't it?
Iraq is a failure precisely because they moved away from their usual modus operandi. They did not need to invade Iraq to get its oil (in fact, the opposite is true). But it doesn't disprove either the point that they can isolate any country they want whereas nobody can isolate the US from the resources of the rest of the world. Wind power
As in the turn of the last Century, places like Afghanistan and Burma are near the pivots of the great game. And China is already better positioned to cope with a massive disruption of Arabian oil exports than the US is, and pulling further ahead. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Where is the proof that China "must trade"? UK for example trades very little with China and Asia so we have to read often in local newspapers desperate pleas from UK ministers that their country "means business". Why can't we say that UK "must trade with Asia to survive?".
Really? How about landgrab from France, UK and genocide of native Indians as factors of American growth in 19th century?
Surely? China BTW has rare minerals which the West is in desperate need. Also China has money and able to buy all necessary raw materials from neighbours even with exclusion of Australia and New Zealand which really will be screwed if Beijing frowns.
This is false statement. China does not need "global military" to secure resources.
This neocon cry [patently false] you repeated several times on this thread, one time is enough, we have eyes to read.
After speculation on military conflict between the West and China you says:
Rhetorical statement because the same applies to US if Washington's loonies decide to have military contest with China. No way US can continue its anaemic economic recovery in case of full-blown nuclear war with China.
