Is the World Reverting to its Tradtional State?

In my last blog entry, I mused about the probability of war between China and the USA. Since then, I have noticed President Trump ramp up the invectives against China, and even Alberta’s Premier, Jason Kenney, has joined that choir with his own comments against China a few days ago. This may stop at “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me” but I doubt it. I think we will see nations realign as America and China polarize the world through incentives or their lack. For decades, America has kept the seas safe for shipping, has provided markets for its allies’ exports, and has gone to war to defend its allies’ interests (such as in Korea to show Japan that the USA is a reliable ally, and in Vietnam to promote the same sentiment among the French and other European allies).

Now the USA is pulling back. The number of American troops located outside the USA is now the lowest in about 100 years. Granted, drones remotely operated by naval battle groups can do a lot of damage, but I think the intent in America is to scale back and to build a relatively isolated USA economy. With only 8% of its GDP comprised of exports, the USA is the least internationally integrated of the major economies in terms of trade, and there isn’t much that the USA imports that it cannot do without.

People play the rare earths card when debating the foregoing. The USA gets its rare earths from China, and rare earths are critical to some modern technologies. We must not get the idea that they are only found in China. The reason they are called rare is that they are not found in high concentration: a lot of ore has to be refined to obtain a small amount of a rare earth. China just happens to be a country that goes to the trouble of doing it.

When I suggest that there will probably be a war between China and the USA, I am simply relying on the odds. The usual outcome of a rising power bumping against the interests of a superpower has been war, yet there have been exceptions, a recent one being the fact that the USSR and the USA never fired on each other. Maybe there will be a Sino-American cold war. It seems so foolish for China to actually militarily engage the USA. Chinese naval ships typically have a range of 1500 kilometers or less. The Chinese air force is not “a force to be reckoned with.” China has a big army, but no way to transport it safely very far. American military personnel could basically destroy China from inside of air-conditioned offices while sipping on Dr. Pepper or root beer. So maybe a cold war is more likely.

I expect we will see China gathering smaller nations under its wings like a mother hen (or hawk) as the USA ignores them. Central America can become a Chinese farm. Yet such initiatives could easily be fruitless if Chinese merchant ships are attacked by regional powers. China lacks the naval capacity to protect its shipping. Her navy needs a string of ports no more than 2000 miles apart to hop its way around the world. A string of pearls is what the strategy is called. There is a problem with it.

As the USA pulls back, the resulting power vacuum will be filled regionally by local powers. Western Europe would likely coalesce around France, another self-sustaining and self-sufficient economy with a substantial military. Central Europe would be Germany’s backyard. I think Poland is positioned for dominance in Eastern Europe. Japan, with a very large and powerful navy and a robust economy, will likely be dominant in the Far East. Why not China? I think that, for reasons scattered within this post and the previous one, China could ultimately break up into smaller domains.

How about the Middle East? Well, right now, Iran is the major power there, but is fading quickly. She is now a net importer of oil, which at current prices is not a big deal by itself, but when we consider that her major export earnings had been from oil, it is serious. Saudi Arabia, now aligning itself more and more with Israel, may want to knock out Iran. Iran, out of money and out of power, might want to focus on its nuclear program to protect its Shiite society from Sunni Saudis, but if the Saudis get even a small sense that Iran almost has the bomb, they will react…..pick themselves up a few of those from Israel or Pakistan and then demolish Iran. I think Turkey would put a stop to things and restore something like the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has the military might to do that, and it seems to me is the only power in the last thousand years who was able to bring peace to the Middle East.

Anyway, you get the picture: regional mini-superpowers staking out their turf. Many countries who might want to trade with China may have vocal and pushy neighbors dissuading against such trade. China is a country that imports 80% of its calories. If China can’t procure the energy, food, and minerals she needs, where will that leave her? With a large mass of hungry people with nothing to lose. The CCP may themselves facing the Chinese version of the Arab Spring.

So, for many reasons, I think China is in a bad position. Desperate people do desperate things. The CCP may become desperate people. Nuclear weapons have only once been used in war: in Japan in 1945. The USA did not use them against Germany. There was no need to; conventional warfare was doing the job. The assessment was that a million American lives would be lost if America invaded Japan. Unacceptable. The atomic bomb made more sense.  It isn’t the big powers of the world who are likely to use nuclear weapons; it’s the little guys who don’t have the conventional military muscle to get the job done. It is far more likely that Saudi Arabia would nuke Iran than it is that Japan would nuke North Korea for example. Maybe some part of a disintegrating China will elect to use the bomb.

These are just some thoughts to ponder. We need to think outside the box and realize that the current geopolitical status is not the norm. It is an aberration from the norm.