Global Energy Crunch

Jorg Friedrichs-whose earlier paper "Global Energy Crunch: How Different Parts of the World Would React to a Peak Oil Scenario" I mentioned on this blog back in October-has a new paper out on the same issue, "Peak Oil Trajectories: Same Crisis, Different Responses." Setting aside the case for and against the peak oil theory (referring the reader to other papers, my own "The Impending Oil Shock" included, for a quick overview), it similarly concentrates on reactions to the situation.

Tracking three possible trajectories, "predatory militarism, totalitarian retrenchment and socioeconomic adaptation" (based on the cases of Japan, North Korea and Cuba examined in the previous paper, and revisited here), much of its analysis will be familiar to those who read the first paper, but this second one offers a more comprehensive and polished set of projections-which are, perhaps predictably, "not a cosy world to imagine" as Friedrichs notes. However, as he rightly notes, the scenario (which differs from my own in key points, not least of them his predictions of how the standing of Europe and Japan would shift relative to that of the U.S.) nonetheless should not be treated dismissively.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009

The latest edition of the annual State of Food Insecurity in the World report from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization has just come out, and is getting a fair amount of attention-not least, because it is presenting a side of life overlooked by those given to ecstasies over globalization. Not only is it the case that the attainment of the heavily-hyped Millennium Goals seems very unlikely, but the number of "undernourished" people is actually rising, crossing the 1 billion person mark this year for the first time. As noted in the report, "The increase in food insecurity is not a result of poor crop harvests but because high domestic food prices, lower incomes and increasing unemployment have reduced access to food by the poor."

Particularly worth noting is that the progress of the '70s, '80s and early '90s was, despite the slowing of the world's population growth (p. 11), reversed in the middle of that decade (not incidentally, when Thomas Friedman-style hucksterism and mindless tech-boom hype came to dominate economic dialogue), with hunger increasing in the Asia-Pacific region, the Near East and Africa (p. 9).

Simply put, structural factors are at work, not least that "developing countries today [are] more financially and commercially integrated into the world economy than they were 20 years ago, [so that] they are far more exposed to shocks in international markets" (p. 4), and a pattern of falling private and public investment (with agricultural investment not exempt) amid the budgetary pressures (p. 39) which have been widely acknowledged as the norm in the post-'73 period.

The deterioration worsened during the "food and fuel crisis of 2006-2008," a result of which was that

domestic staple food prices [were] . . . on average, 17 percent higher in real terms than two years earlier. The price increases had forced many poor families to sell assets or sacrifice health care, education or food just to stay afloat (p. 4).

Given the precariousness of the world's economic recovery, and the likelihood that another fuel crisis may not be too far off (even if the decline in oil prices and the explosion of the mortgage crisis diverted attention, the foundations of the argument that peak oil may not be far away have not vanished), the possibility that things might get worse still has to be taken seriously-and offers all the more reason to ask questions too long avoided.

Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, by Gabriel Kolko

New York: The New Press, 1994, pp. 546.

In Century of War, noted historian and foreign policy commentator Gabriel Kolko focuses on the effect of war on civilian populations, and the political consequences of those effects. Predictably it devotes considerable attention to writing history from the "bottom-up," not a new idea by any means (a hundred years ago, Peter Kropotkin was offering such a take on the events of 1789 in The Great French Revolution), but it remains the rarity--too rare, to go by the content of pop history, which is absolutely dominated by "great man history" and "gentlemen's history." Military history (a robust, if incomplete, critique of which can be found in Jeremy Black's study of the field) has been perhaps more wide-ranging, but has only rarely taken this tack.

Kolko is wary of offering general theories, and stresses the need to pay attention to the specifics of historical situations. Nonetheless, he identifies significant recurring patterns, not least of them the impact of domestic class structures on policymaking, and in particular that:

* The pursuit of concrete foreign and defense policy objectives of states necessarily interacts with the domestic (e.g., class) interests of national elites.
* Careerist pressures, and the socialization of decisionmakers more broadly, tend to weed out those capable of seeing the holes in the "conventional wisdom," and willing to call it, so as to sharply narrow the range of ideas and options regarded as "realistic" and "serious"-and to undermine any institutional learning processes, and lead to the repetition of the same mistakes.
* The remainder of society (e.g. the working classes) acquiesces to the lead of elites out of apathy (or risk-avoidance) at least as much as approval, their primary concern being their own private lives.

In the twentieth century, war has been the great accelerant of otherwise slow social processes, because it disrupts the day-to-day lives of the usually passive majority, frequently making politicization a matter of life or death, without which it is difficult to understand crucial developments in this period, such as the rise of fascism, or the wave of decolonization which followed the end of World War II. Kolko notes as particularly significant the effects of military mobilization, inflation-the great traumatizer of the middle class-and demographic shifts that may ensue as a result of related economic developments, or deliberate military action. He also points to the role that war has played in concentrating business, a process Kolko has long described as not simply a reflection of Marxist "laws of economics," but also of state action (as in his classic study of the Progressive era, The Triumph of Conservatism), the military build-ups involved leading to government-assisted consolidations of industrial enterprises and contributing powerfully to their accumulation of capital through government orders.

In Kolko's view these patterns have much to do with the nature of twentieth century warfare, and in particular its tendency to defy the expectations of leaders (typically exemplifying the worst of what Kolko describes in their socialization process, and frequently obsessed with their "credibility") planning on quick, cheap victory. Time and again those leaders instead find their countries embroiled in conflicts that escape their control--despite their increasingly developed technology and expanded firepower, which serve only to make war more expensive, more destructive and more brutal (as in its explicit targeting of civilians). The result is that not only do the wars started by such elites prove much more costly in economic, human and political terms than they imagined, but they drive the consensus within their societies to (and often beyond) the breaking point.

The revolutions that followed in the wake of these disasters (as with those in Russia, Germany, China and Vietnam, all examined in some depth) have tended to be less a matter of a group bringing down an order through its actions than the collapse of that order, following which a new group (typically that most capable of articulating the desires of their countrymen, and making fewer tactical and strategic mistakes than its rivals) steps in. They typically fail to deliver the changes they promise, however, because political movements such as these too draw their fair share of ambitious, self-serving, opportunist careerists; while Kolko also sees the elitism of the Leninist political model (centered on a small "vanguard party" of activists rather than really mass-based movements) as having been a poor foundation for deep, broad, progressive change.

Indeed, in his view they have been such a drag on these movements that where at this time Francis Fukuyama was proclaiming "the end of history" (essentially, the victory of capitalism-democracy over all other social models), Kolko, who went so far as to speculate that socialism may have had a better track record of success without the 1917 Russian Revolution, saw the "bankruptcy" of Marxism and Leninism at the end of the Cold War as clearing the way for a reconstruction of socialism along new lines.

It is putting it mildly to say that a great many readers will find that prognosis doubtful (more now, perhaps, than at the time of the book's writing). However, Kolko's book--which is meticulously researched and argued, combines great breadth with great attention to detail, and for all that is highly readable--still offers a great deal that should be of interest to readers of all ideological persuasions for its attention to the interactions between war and the rest of social, political and economic life. Those interested in Kolko's larger body of work will find this a particularly significant piece of his longstanding project of critiquing the Marxist legacy from the left.

Revisiting Head to Head

Lester Thurow's book Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe and America (New York: Morrow, 1992, pp. 336) is perhaps the first serious book on economics and business I looked at, and reviewing it now is a powerful reminder of how different the last two decades have been from the expectations current then.

His book cast the first half of the 21st century as a three-way competition between economic quasi-blocs—the United States/NAFTA, a German-led European Community (which he pictured potentially stretching all the way to the Pacific as it incorporated the former Soviet Union, with the help of a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe) and Japan-as the post-World War II GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) died.

His bet was on the EU because of the sheer size of its market, and the range of competencies it could bring to bear, though he also expected the U.S. to address many of the problems that the "declinists" of the 1980s and early 1990s (correctly) identified-deindustrialization, unsustainable trade deficits, the drag on the economy of a bloated and underperforming health care system, low educational standards and underinvestment in infrastructure-while the world economy went on to even brisker growth in the 1990-2030 period than it saw in the 1950-1990 era.

Instead of dying, GATT survived and flourished, becoming institutionalized in the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, China and India, which Thurow dismissed as certain to be of little importance in this period, emerged as economic heavyweights (though not without serious problems or obstacles in their paths). Japan stagnated in the 1990s, while Euroskeptics disdainful of the continent's way of doing business, despite a penchant for gross exaggerations (and outright intellectual dishonesty), found sufficient ammunition in the realities of the EU to flourish. (The disparity in GDP growth between continental Europe and the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s, for instance, virtually disappears when the figures are adjusted for higher U.S. population growth, the expenses of German reunification, and the greater outlays the U.S. makes for questionable results in areas like health care, for instance.) Certainly the idea of the EU launching a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe seems wildly implausible in hindsight, and almost twenty years on, the inclusion of Russia in the organization seems remote.

Additionally, worldwide global economic growth has only continued to suffer, in the 1990s and 2000s running far below the levels seen in the 1960s, 1970s and perhaps even the 1980s, such weak growth as has occurred (which according to the calculations of Alan Freeman may have barely kept pace with population growth) unraveling in the economic contraction that has dominated business news these last two years.

This left the U.S., despite its failure to deal with the problems he identified (all of which have got worse in the view of most of those observers willing to acknowledge their existence), and its being no exception to the pattern of unimpressive growth rates for the period (excepting the now-long faded "tech" boom of the late 1990s) looking the winner, and the "Anglo-Saxon way" (in labor relations, for instance) appearing to be the only way.

Still, given the pieties of our times, Thurow seems refreshingly frank about the limits and failings of markets in theory and in practice, and of the weaknesses of the economic model favored by the U.S. (and Britain), while his observations about the deficiencies of the track on which the U.S. economy was clearly moving in the 1980s seem to have been validated by the problems it continues to face today. It is also well worth remembering that even if Germany and Japan have not performed as well as had been hoped earlier, they remain great industrial powers, and great exporting nations, as the U.S. continues heading in the opposite direction with its deindustrialization and ever-larger trade deficits. There can be little question that despite doing quite a few things wrong, they've also done quite a few right, and that the debate over the path to prosperity-reopened during the recent global contraction, but closing again fast as opinion-makers breathe sighs of relief-is nowhere near over.

A Question of Balance (RAND on the China-Taiwan Conflict)

Over at Wired's Danger Room (you can see it in my blog list) David Axe offers a nice summary of a new RAND study, A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute. The study's authors (David A. Shlapak, David T. Orletsky, Toy I. Reid, Murray Scot Tanner, Barry Wilson) argue that "Looking to the near future, improved air defense capabilities, including shipboard defenses, a growing inventory of modern fourth generation fighters, and a powerful and flexible force of offensive ballistic missiles place in jeopardy the long-held assumption of the defense’s control of the skies over the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan’s coastline" (p. 118).

The 185 page study, the PDF edition of which can (like much of that think tank's output) be accessed freely online, posits a scenario circa 2013 in which China uses those ballistic missiles to suppress the Taiwanese Air Force and make it a simpler matter for its own modernized air force (which might deploy 350 to 400 generation 3.5 and generation 4 fighters, while benefiting from better electronic warfare and precision guided munitions capabilities) to seize air superiority over the island (especially in the event that the missile attacks hit U.S. bases on Okinawa).

Chapter 3 works out the details with regard to the missile attack, Chapter 4 those with regard to the aerial fighting. This makes for a much more effective assault of any sort, and raises the odds of a successful invasion (the focus of Chapter 5)--but the latter (which the authors acknowledge is the "only . . . military course of action that guarantees China control of Taiwan") remains pretty unlikely. Even assuming the expansion of China's assault fleet in accordance with the scenario described it would have the capacity to deliver only 30,000 troops to the beachheads, far too few to conquer the island--and even these would not be certain of getting there, even with air superiority, because of land-based cruise missiles, mines, helicopters and fire from ground forces on the Taiwanese coast.

As a result, they conclude that "an invasion of Taiwan would, in the face of properly prepared defenses, remain a bold and possibly foolish gamble on Beijing’s part."

And even that may be overoptimistic. As David Axe points out, the study fails to properly acknowledge the impact U.S. submarines (and it might be added, Taiwan's subs as well) could have on the invasion, relegating it to a single footnote on page 118, though conceding that "their firepower would substantially increase the defenders’ odds of success."

It might also be suggested that the assumption of an attack on U.S. bases in Okinawa is a little too pat (as partially acknowledged in the sidebar on pages 86-87), given, if nothing else, the risk that Japan's own very large and very capable air and naval forces would enter the conflict, which would work strongly against China.

And then, of course, there is the broader political context, and all the factors in it that work against any decision to undertake a large-scale attack on Taiwan: that China has prioritized development over military confrontation; that China's trade with Taiwan, the U.S. and Japan approaches $800 billion a year, or about 18 percent of the country's GDP (measured at official exchange rates), and so could not be lightly jeopardized; that the damage China would likely do to its military establishment and its relations with key neighbors and trading partners apart from those it fights in such a scenario would damage its security position and diminish its influence, and its economic growth, for years to come, while likely subjecting the country to even worse internal stresses than a war against Taiwan would be meant to alleviate; and that "any PLA combat with U.S. forces involves China’s tacit acceptance of the risks of fighting a nuclear-armed superpower" (p. 86).

These factors may not make a conflict between mainland China and Taiwan impossible (a move toward formal, permanent independence on Taiwan's part is seen by many as an exception to China's usually scrupulous practice of rational realpolitik, in part because Taiwan's status is seen as an "internal matter" and key legitimacy issue), but I suspect they diminish the likelihood of a major conflict much more than is generally appreciated.

On The Risk of Sino-Indian Confrontation

I remember a decade ago hearing about a Sino-Indian competition for influence in the Indian Ocean-not an entirely new thing then, but quite different with the loss of the old Cold War context (inside which China and India fought a month-long war in 1962, and China aligned itself with Pakistan while the Soviets sided with India), and the rapid growth of China's economic and military weight (providing it with a regional influence not seen in centuries). In particular there was a widespread impression that Myanmar was fast becoming an extension of China, and that very soon the Chinese navy would become very visible indeed in the Indian Ocean.

Talk about this competition seems to be heating up again with China's combat deployment of a naval unit to the western Indian Ocean to fight pirates (something India also did, one result of which was a reported stand-off that may have been overblown in the press), and recent Chinese projects aimed at developing port facilities in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka (widely interpreted as potential bases for the Chinese navy, though as ex-Indian Cabinet member B. Raman acknowledges in this paper, the Hambantota facility in Sri Lanka is not slated to become a base, nor likely to be used against India, even if the interest is "more strategic than purely commercial").

The launch of India's first nuclear sub last month seems likely not only to be viewed in this context, but also to be taken as another data point testifying to the rising danger level.1 As implied by the ambiguity of much of the above data, the talk strikes me as overblown. There are real conflicts between them (over border claims in the Himalayas and the status of Tibet), but the relationship between the two nations is more complex than implied in such discussions, considerable cooperation also taking place (in their negotiations with the industrial nations over matters like trade and climate policy, for instance), and some real signs of improvement, not the least of it the reopening of Nathu La (closed after the '62 war).

Additionally, predictions about the development of the military capability of both these nations consistently overestimate the rate of their expansion, and both of them have other, bigger concerns closer to home. Even overlooking the pressing domestic problems that (certainly in an age of climate change and potential energy scarcity) could make their economic booms go the way of the Brazilian miracle, their biggest military/security considerations are domestic upheaval and the collapse of neighboring states (Pakistan or Bangladesh in India's case, North Korea in China's). Even where the list of potential conventional conflicts is concerned, a Sino-Indian fight is far from the top of the list, and in particular a big sea war in the Indian Ocean. (As things stand, China lacks the means to control the Taiwan Strait, let alone project enough power into the Indian Ocean to fight the much bigger Indian Navy and Air Force at their home base; and of course, the nuclear element in the situation is likely to constrain the moves of both actors.)

Laying out a base prediction for the next century last month, my guess was that

generalized economic stagnation (and the tendency toward short-term thinking reinforced by the economic culture) will encourage cautious, conservative statesmanship, risk-averse and commitment-shy (even if governments find it politically expedient to rattle their sabers and play up the foreign menace for the benefit of domestic consumption) . . . Accident, blunder or the hijack of foreign policy by fanatics inside of a key power will pose a bigger danger than any "inevitable" collision of essential state interests-[but] it is not to be taken lightly.

That certainly holds for the situation in the Indian Ocean basin.

NOTES
1. My analysis of the Arihant's launch can be found here. I emphasized in it that the sub does not yet represent a credible capability-as the ship will not be operational for some years, that a force of several subs is usually required for a continuously functional deterrent, and that the range of the missiles on-board is limited. This quickly attracted criticism, not all of which I agree with, but I do acknowledge the regional nature of the deterrent, the expectation that the missiles will be replaced with longer-range weapons, and that more subs are under construction, all of which may make it operational by the middle of the next decade.

The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033: The New Elite of Our Social Revolution, by Michael Young

New York: Random House, 1959, pp. 160.

Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy is, of course, the book that brought that word into the language, presenting the titular event and its consequences as a piece of future history, composed by a sociologist of the 2030s, as a way of commenting on a current issue.

This future history imagines post-war Britain undergoing a very thoroughgoing scheme of social engineering, intended to make it internationally competitive in an age of intense scientific-technological-industrial competition, by closely connecting social position with merit. Here "merit" is essentially a function of IQ test score (as the nation's psychologists, apparently, have succeeded in eliminating the causes of underachievement), with the high scorers unfailingly streamed through the most lavish schooling available to elite positions, creating a hierarchy of affluence and status neatly in line with the hierarchy of intelligence and ability.

In his much more recent study of the history of standardized testing, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, Nicholas Lemann (who devotes a full chapter to discussing Young's earlier book), rightly points out that Young seems naïve in expecting that "inheritance of wealth and position would be abolished . . . government . . . fund education so abundantly that private schools would wither away . . . scientists would rule the society, and . . . schoolteachers . . . be highly paid."1 Indeed, one could say that the degree of centralization, systematization and rationalization seen in the book (and also, the optimism about what applied social science would soon permit) appear awfully dated.

Nonetheless, like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a story (and at one point, Young had intended to present it as a story, writing it as a novel) may be written with the purpose of taking an idea to its logical conclusion, rather than really plausible extrapolation--with the idea in this case a societal embrace of the meritocratic principle. Young's point is, above all, the unavoidable problems to which inegalitarianism leads, even when it is more rationally arranged, and the need to diminish inequality rather than just rearrange it.

Some of the problems the book envisions could only rise in the kind of thoroughgoing meritocracy no real-world society has ever achieved, like the anxiety of parents knowing their children will do less well than they did (and knowing this from earlier and earlier on in their upbringing), not because of a weakening economy or increasing downward social mobility, but because of their lesser abilities on a genuinely level playing field; and the compromises and personal sacrifices entailed in the eugenics program intended to maximize the next generation's share of desired talents. Others, however, are only too familiar to our time, like the frustration of women, particularly educated, high-status women, who find themselves torn between child-rearing and family on the one hand, and career on the other; the narrowly utilitarian basis by which "merit" is judged in his future ("the ability to raise production, directly or indirectly"); the argument that "common" workers do not deserve, and ought not be afforded, a share of the gains in economic productivity; the push by a radical right-wing of the political spectrum for an acceptance of greater inequality on the grounds that earlier concessions to a more egalitarian society were wrong-headed and unnecessary; and the invocation of the imperatives of international competition as an excuse for harsh treatment of the lower orders.

The same goes for the idea of the gap in sympathy and concern between the ruling elite and the mass of the people whose lives they run, which the meritocratic rationale widens. Young's son, Toby Young (who of course does not deny his being a beneficiary of Britain's class system), noted in his book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People that the meritocratic idea (which as he notes, is undeniably powerful in the United States, despite its hugely flawed application, as Lemann also succinctly shows in the afterword to his own book) gives elites an excuse to wash their hands of those who fail to thrive, to look down on the "losers" of the world.

Thinking about that, I find myself coming back to Ayn Rand's most famous work, Atlas Shrugged (1957), which appeared at almost the same time, espousing a view toward the subject of meritocracy that is a hundred and eighty degrees away from what the elder Young set forth in his book. Rand's novel is by far the better known book among the general public in the United States today, and ironically, is becoming even more popular in the midst of an economic crisis that in other quarters has led to the widest and deepest questioning of the prevailing version of capitalism seen in some time.

Make of that what you will.

NOTES
1. Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), p. 118.

Second Quarter Growth, 2009

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its latest figures. Interest naturally is focused on the country's second quarter performance. As predicted, U.S. GDP shrank again, for the fourth straight quarter. However, this was not the only data awaited, the big once-every-five years update of the whole statistical base also appearing. According to the BEA's National Economic Accounts the U.S.'s GDP shrank about 1.9 percent during 2008, when measured in chained 2005 dollars-mote than twice the estimate current before this latest recalculation, which had it at 0.8 percent. (Incidentally, the CIA's World Factbook officially lists U.S. GDP as having grown 1.3 percent that year, a very substantial difference.) When the time frame is shifted just one quarter forward, to cover the twelve months between March 2008 and March 2009 (and three quarters of contraction), the U.S. economy appears to have shrunk by about 3.3 percent using the same measure (compared with 2.5 percent in the earlier calculation). Between June 2008 and June 2009, after four full quarters of economic contraction, it shrank by about 3.9 percent, about evenly divided over the two years. In short, things were worse than they said. Of course, bad as this looks, the "conventional wisdom" (I'll say it again: certainly conventional, but so rarely wise) is that we've seen the worst of it, noting that the drop in GDP slowed markedly in the second quarter (the economy contracting at an annual rate of just 1 percent, instead of the 5-6 percent rate of the three previous quarters), and the third quarter of 2009-this one, the one we're actually living in-will end with a return to growth in the U.S. and much of the world. My take: the business press has been too quick to breathe a sigh of relief. As Rex Nutting of Marketwatch reports, consumers-constrained by still rising unemployment (into the double digits) which even optimists do not expect to see come down for a long while, the flat wage growth that goes along with that, and the maxing out of consumer credit-are in no position to generate the kind of demand that will keep real growth going, barring continuous, unsustainable stimulus injections of the kind that quadrupled U.S. Federal debt in the 1930s, and ran Japan deep into the red in the 1990s. (Indeed, the recent data suggests the drop in consumer spending was sharper than earlier recognized.) Quite naturally, Larry Doyle asks "Are We in the Early Stages of a Economic Depression?" Of course, some might argue that we are already there, at least in some countries (Ireland, for instance, according to Ernst & Young), but what he means is the continued, prolonged deepening of the national and global economic contraction. No one wants the answer to be "yes," but taking the question too lightly could make that outcome more likely.

The Next 100 Years: Another View

George Friedman offered his image of The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (reviewed here).

Now I'll offer mine.

As I explained before, it is better to think in terms of a spectrum of possibility (inside of which some outcomes are more probable than others); to recognize patterns of diminishing returns, the irrationality of vested interests and simple friction impeding particular lines of development; and make clear the qualifiers up front; than insist on a single, overdetailed scenario. It was with this in mind that I prepared the following.

The Great Powers
My guess in regard to how the big powers will stack up against each other, as discussed in my review of the book, is a weaker U.S. than Friedman predicts (due to the hollowing out of its economy), and a more robust Western Europe (given its relatively strong economic foundations, and the failure of the usual metrics to fully capture its performance, as well as a tendency to exaggerate its demographic issues), while huge question marks hang over China (and India).1

Rather than dynamic contenders battling it out for supremacy, I expect we will see a more defensive game, brought on in part by ecological challenges (particularly climate change and energy shortages), as well as the continuation of the post-1973 stagnation of the world economy (even if we happen to crawl out of our current hole) I have described many a time earlier, as well as the increasing vulnerability of advanced societies to disruption.2

On the whole, I expect that Germany/Western Europe and Japan will adapt more effectively than the other players, but Europe's disunity, and Germany and Japan's relative smallness, will constrain their exploitation of any such advantages relative to bigger actors like the U.S. and China. As a result, while there will be regionally dominant actors, global dominance of the kind exercised by the U.S. in the 20th century, or Britain in the 19th, will prove elusive, and dramatic challenges like those posed by Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, will accordingly lack an analog.

Instead, there will be muddle as they all do their best to hold on to what they have.

War in the 21st Century
As one might expect, the domestic, intrastate and interstate conflicts among poorer and weaker states will be the principal sources of political violence in the decades to come. Despite the human toll that violence will take, it will only arouse more than passing or superficial interest from the "international community" when it touches on a particular political or geopolitical interest of the larger powers (for instance, a threat to some desired resource), though this will likely happen often enough to keep those bigger powers constantly occupied. (Venezuela's Orinoco Belt, for instance, could have a geopolitical significance comparable to the Persian Gulf region if its "extra heavy crude" becomes a viable source of unconventional oil, and unconventional oil assumes an important place in the world's energy portfolio-a big "if," but nonetheless one deserving of mention here.3)

This will raise the risk of great power military conflict, but it is likely to be much lower and less global than in the twentieth century-in part because demographics, slow growth, tight finances and debt will limit what these powers can afford; because of the high cost of long-range, large-scale intervention, all the more important because of the physical distance (often across oceans, or very difficult terrain) of most of the major powers from one another (the Sino-Russian border the principal exception); because of a tendency toward smaller "footprints" in third countries by the larger powers (rather than giant bases on sovereign territory), lowering the stakes in many a situation; and because spending on the requisite conventional military capabilities will compete with rising personnel costs and the cost of the other kinds of operations they are more likely to perform ("Military Operations Other Than War"), which will absorb more resources.4 Additionally, generalized economic stagnation (and the tendency toward short-term thinking reinforced by the economic culture) will encourage cautious, conservative statesmanship, risk-averse and commitment-shy (even if governments find it politically expedient to rattle their sabers and play up the foreign menace for the benefit of domestic consumption).

When states do fight it out, outright territorial grabs will be rare, changes to state borders more likely to occur as a result of fragmentation (which may be assisted from without) than annexation, with action undertaken from behind a facade of action by internal actors (as in the First Congo War in 1996-1997, and the Kargil conflict in 1999), and control later exercised through them (again as with the regional players in the Congo conflict of the late 1990s, or Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008). Additionally, the wars will likely be fought in limited ways, full-blown marches on foreign capitals rare (again, as in the 2008 war in Georgia). The priority the belligerents give to holding down the risk of escalation will be further encouraged by the likelihood of more widely dispersed nuclear capabilities, which will not be so easily countered as enthusiasts of missile defense imagine.5

Accident, blunder or the hijack of foreign policy by fanatics inside of a key power will pose a bigger danger than any "inevitable" collision of essential state interests-and it is not to be taken lightly.

The "Developing" World
Outside the narrow club of relatively affluent countries (the established industrial states), the constraints imposed by the reality of overtaxed resource bases and institutions will be felt more sharply. Due to their poverty, the economic life of these countries will also be more susceptible to the price shocks resource scarcity will bring, with some areas (like sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh) especially hard hit by climate change. While the global population boom is waning, many of these states will still see significant population increases, generally those least capable of handling them (like Nigeria and Pakistan).

Given the larger political and economic framework, and the real but relatively low level of great power discord, the chances that such countries get to play big powers off against each other or seek patrons as a way to secure aid or widen their room for maneuver in resolving their problems (the way, for instance, that many East Asian countries were able to pursue heterodox economic policies to successfully develop their economies inside the context of the Cold War) or pursuing other agendas will be limited. Despite this, these regions may be the most likely scene of ideological challenges to the global status quo, though these places are also the least likely scenes of a successful challenge, given their relative vulnerability, and their distance from the core of the world-system (to use the language of dependency theory). These challenges may most frequently be rooted in ethnic or religious movements (and Islamic fundamentalism is not the only conceivable one), but as the situation in Latin America has demonstrated, a revival of socialism is also not as implausible as the proponents of the "end of history" school of thought would have us believe.

It is conceivable that falling birth rates and modest development will take some of the pressure off many of these states, but any gains coming from that direction might be overwhelmed by the worsening of other problems (like resource depletion), and few undeveloped states will succeed in joining the club of industrial heavyweights. (Eastern Europe, for instance, will likely remain the periphery to the West European core, while Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia's southern littoral generally remain in the "Third World.")

Trouble From The Bottom Up
In any case, the troubles occuring in the less-developed states (which great powers may find it steadily harder to control, or to insulate themselves against barring really extreme measures) could get serious enough to upset the games of high politics-not only in the form of conflicts that threaten to draw in great powers on opposite sides, but refugee flows, the havens they provide for criminality and the like. Indeed, the sorts of internal troubles typically associated with developing nations might be seen inside the developed ones, especially if living standards fall, government services fail, and poverty increases; and particularly if societies fragment sharply along sub-national lines. (The troubles in Greece in December 2008 could be just the beginning.)

Straddling the line between the two groups are states like the "BRIC" countries (Brazil, Russia, China and India), large, populous and playing significant roles in the global economy and international affairs, but also relatively poor, and subject to especially severe internal stresses. Potential superpowers, they are also potential scenes of global disruption (though in the event of fragmentation, pieces of them may still be capable of playing global roles, like a bloc comprised of the relatively prosperous southeast provinces of China, perhaps with Shanghai for a capital). This also applies to Mexico, particularly because of its proximity to the U.S., just as India will be vulnerable to a crisis in poor, populous and low-lying Bangladesh, perhaps triggered by rising sea levels. (Other particularly worrisome collapse risks: Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, North Korea-the latter two because of their combination of nuclear capability and proximity to one or more major powers.)

That said, much will depend on the speed with which the problems defining the century develop, the severity they attain, their interaction with other factors that may be hard to predict by their very nature (like particular political crises or disease outbreaks), as well as the technical state-of-the-art at the moment, and the quality of decisionmaking by elites. Nonetheless, a "hard crash" (think Martin Rees, think Peter Ward) is a very real possibility.

Wild Cards
Of course, "wild cards" could change fundamental aspects of the framework laid out above. The range of these is nearly endless, from the emergence of some super-virus to a massive natural disaster, like an asteroid strike or the eruption of a supervolcano. Still, two are particularly deserving of attention.

The first is technological, and while this includes the possibility of a technological disaster, there are more positive possibilities, like an easy "technological fix" to some of the major problems discussed above, as with an idiot-proof mix of carbon capture tech and renewable energy production that moves out of the lab and comes online in the next decade or so.

More radical, there is the possibility of a technological Singularity, the odds and consequences of which I will not even attempt to guess at, though we could see anything and everything come about from the fears expressed by Bill Joy to the utopia imagined by Ray Kurzweil. (Like I said, it's a wild card.)

The second wild card is that we pull off the miracle of "social ingenuity" for which optimists have for so long hoped, and something serious is done about the most pressing economic and ecological problems without the aid of an easy fix of the sort described under the heading of the first wild card. The capital and technology currently exists to blunt and in cases, even reverse, many of the difficulties described-but for the time being, only at a high premium in political will, and through an unprecedented level of international cooperation.

It may be that the exceptional challenges the world faces now will bring forth an exceptional response (to use the vocabulary of Arnold Toynbee), but if I had to bet on one of the two helping to actually bring about a brighter picture, it would be the technological fix. Of course, such a convenient outcome is not something anyone ought to count on, but between this, that and the other thing, we just might make it through the twenty-first century to see a twenty-second.

NOTES
1. I suspect "labor shortages" (so commonly exaggerated for political reasons) will be less of a problem than it is fashionable to expect, precisely because unemployment/underemployment has steadily worsened in recent decades, and can be expected to go on doing so in the years to come (even if IT and robotics make only slow advances), meaning plenty of slack in labor markets, because of the numerous factors that will constrain the economic expansion that creates jobs, while economic realities will collide with neoliberal reform to keep people working longer (even without any great biotech boons). Indeed, joblessness will be the bigger problem, especially at the global level, and this fact will be reflected in immigration policy, likely to be schizophrenic: open enough but difficult enough to maintain the size of the underclass, while the anti-immigrant bandwagon remains a major political tool.
2. I refer here to my 2004 article in International Security, "Societal Complexity and Diminishing Returns in Security" (available here) in which I argued that the security of advanced societies was declining as they became more complex because of the following three points:
(1) Increasing complexity is producing diminishing marginal returns (in the form of economic growth) and eating into slack (as measured by the piling up of debt, and the more strained, rigid patterns of central government taxation and spending). (I have since extended this argument considerably in another, even more catchily titled piece published on this blog, "A Long-Term Trend Toward the Depletion of Fiscal-Macroeconomic Slack?")
(2) The increasing tendency toward tightly coupled (and scale-free) systems is producing increasing vulnerability, both by presenting more points to attack and creating a susceptibility to greater disruption as a result of such attacks.
(3) The cost of the means for providing an "acceptable" level of security is also rising disproportionately in the face of attacks based on late twentieth century tactics and technologies (a problem highlighted by the challenges of ballistic missile defense).
3. Another area which might acquire a new strategic importance is Russia, which between its declining population and warming weather, could regain something of its old importance as one of the world's granaries.
4. The irrelevance of advanced military technologies in the most common operations major powers actually undertake, such as peacekeeping; the susceptibility of many of these technologies to relatively low-cost countermeasures; and the diminished willingness of the U.S. to lead the way in this area on account of its economic troubles (and the inability of anyone else to fill those shoes) will also diminish the tempo of conventional forces development, qualitatively but also quantitatively (important, as mass will still matter far more than proponents of the Revolution in Military Affairs commonly appreciate).
5. The combination of increased use of Generation-III nuclear technology, and increased insecurity, could easily translate to a larger number of nuclear weapons states, a point I discussed in my Parameters article "The Next Wave of Nuclear Proliferation."

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman

New York: Doubleday, 2009, pp. 272.

All too often futurists limit themselves to describing past and present trends which they tell us will or will not continue with some vague result, rarely putting themselves out there by making specific, concrete, readily testable claims (or even offering a range of possibilities that may or may not approximate what could happen). George Friedman cannot be accused of that in his latest book, The Next 100 Years, in which he offers the forecast promised in his subtitle, in sufficient detail to comprise a future history.

The essential "plot" of the book has the U.S. focus on southwest Asia and Islamic fundamentalism fading after Iraq and Afghanistan, the next great challenge coming from Russia instead. Specifically a Russia politically and militarily resurgent on the basis of natural resource exports will collide with the U.S. and its allies in a second, scaled-down Cold War--which Russia (because of its demographic slide and limited power base) will inevitably lose.

China's growth, too, will prove unsustainable, especially in the face of worsening internal stresses.

As a result, both Russia and China will collapse before 2030, leaving most of Eurasia up for grabs by neighboring countries, from Finland to Taiwan. Along with the failure of Europe to become a coherent politico-military entity (and the decline of Atlantic Europe in general) this still leaves the U.S. the world's hyperpower.

Nonetheless, the scenario has the makings of a challenge to U.S. hegemony, with the activity of three powers on the fringes of the collapse zone--Poland, Turkey and Japan--particularly relevant.

Japan is of course a great economic and technological power now (with the means to become a greater military one as well), whereas Friedman expects Poland and Turkey to eventually become that due to heavy U.S. support for these front-line players in the second Cold War.

Friedman foresees Poland as the core of a coalition of East European states, much as some Polish statesmen had hoped for in the interwar period, with influence reaching east into Belarus and Ukraine after Russia's collapse; while Turkey's sphere of influence becomes something like a resurrected Ottoman Empire, covering North Africa and the Middle East to the borders of Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria (excluding Israel, of course), as well as a large chunk of southern Russia, and even including a Balkan presence in Bosnia and Albania.

The growing power of Turkey and Japan puts a strain on their alliances with the U.S., particularly as Turkey's sphere of influence collides with Poland's in the ex-Soviet space and the Balkans. As a result, Turkey and Japan, in alliance with a Germany that is down but not yet out, confront the U.S. and its allies (not just Poland, but an America-leaning Britain and Iberia, and friendly parties inside China) in a third world war around mid-century.

The U.S. and its allies win this war decisively, with the result that not only is the new Axis chastised, but Japan loses its sphere of influence in East Asia, and Turkey is contained, while an already powerful Poland becomes the dominant power in Europe and in due course, the U.S.'s next worry. (As a result, the U.S. supports Britain in organizing a counterbalancing alliance on Europe's Atlantic seaboard.)

More importantly, the U.S. secures the exclusive right to militarize space, and with it, control of the space-based solar energy production key to meeting the world's energy needs.

The 21st century therefore proves to be another American century, but the U.S. will face a serious test closer to home, from a populous, prosperous and potentially revanchist Mexico to its south, and its own changing demographics, much of the American southwest having become Mexican-American and "an extension of their homeland," setting up a confrontation over dominance of the North American continent, and by extension, the world as well.

The early chunk of the narrative is admittedly plausible--the turn away from the Middle East, the limited confrontation between Russia and the U.S., the problems in China. But the further the book goes into the future, the less persuasive it becomes. This is only natural enough in even the best-considered such effort. However, I would also argue that Friedman's analysis is deeply flawed in many ways.

To his credit, Friedman appreciates:

* That the war against al-Qaida will not be the sole concern of U.S. foreign policy in the twenty-first century (and indeed, may be eclipsed by other matters fairly quickly).
* The limits of Russian "hard" power for all the talk of Russian resurgence (something I have also written about).
* That the rise of China is a more complex and less certain matter than generally appreciated (ditto, in my Survival Forum article last year).
* The limits of European integration, particularly in the politico-military sphere.
* The speed with which alliances turn to enmities, and in particular the historical tendency of the U.S. to back one actor, then find itself confronting it militarily a short time later (as with Saddam Hussein's Iraq).
* The reality, and some of the significance, of the demographic turnabout in the direction of a declining world population by mid-century, including the cultural changes underpinning it, which simply reflect the shift from an agrarian to an urban-industrial world.

Still, he leaves out a number of important factors, in many cases not even deigning to discuss them, including:

* The effects of climate change, or for that matter, environmental challenges of any sort.
* The likelihood of a scarcity of energy in the near term. Instead he defers serious shortages of hydrocarbons to the latter part of the twenty-first century. (His response to the question of U.S. dependence on energy imports specifically is a reply that the U.S. also happens to produce a great deal of oil and natural gas, something of a non sequitir.)
* The impact of deindustrialization, overfinancialization and unsustainable trade imbalances on the long-term power and prosperity of the U.S..
* The role of India, which is almost a non-entity in the story (save in its helping tear Tibet away from a crumbling China).
* Events in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, not only as places where major players might emerge, but also as junior partners for the bigger players, and even as pawns or flash points in the game.
* The fact that China is so large, and portions of it already so affluent, that even pieces of a fragmented China (for instance, a bloc formed around the provinces of the southeastern coastal region, perhaps in confederation with Hong Kong and Taiwan) may by themselves have the weight of great powers; or the damage a Chinese collapse is likely to do to other parts of the world economy.
* The impact of sub-state actors, which are dismissed wholesale.

He trivializes a number of others, like

* The significance of nuclear weapons, and in particular the constraints they place on great power war. (Of course, in an earlier book Friedman classed World War II as a "limited" conflict.)
* The potential impacts of new technologies, like robotics and genetic engineering, which many observers would characterize as laughably conservative.
* The effect of internal politics on state conduct.

He is also too eager to embrace a number of claims that fail to stand up to serious scrutiny, like:

* The image of an economically and demographically stagnant Western Europe. The truth is that when adjusted for population growth, the expenses of German reunification and higher American expenditures on health care and security (which can be thought of as "bad growth"), Europe's economic performance looks broadly equivalent to the U.S.'s. When European energy efficiency, trade balances and infrastructure are considered, as well as the greater robustness of Western Europe's industrial bases in the face of globalization to date, they actually appear healthier. Additionally, as Friedman himself notes, the rest of the world is not far behind Europe's changing demographic profile.
* The countervailing image of a vigorous and dynamic Eastern Europe. The East European nations are not only less populous and less economically developed than France or Germany, but in the same demographic boat as Western Europe, and while experiencing faster growth in recent years, there are grounds for real doubt as to whether they will attain comparable per capita GDP.
* The view that technological change in the twenty-first century must necessarily redound to the advantage of the U.S. relative to other major powers.
* A complacent optimism regarding the possibilities of economic growth in the twenty-first century (and especially the economic development of many of his key players), and along with it, the possibility of a backlash against capitalism.

In contrast with much recent politico-military futurism, Friedman avoids the Wall Street utopianism of Thomas Barnett, and the Kiplingesque zeal for imperialism of the neoconservatives. Still, for an author insistent on the pragmatism of his views, his thinking seems thoroughly dominated by a good many vulnerable theories:

* A state-centric, billiard ball model of international relations in which only the great powers count for very much, definitions of the national interest are unchanging, and nuclear weapons do not rule out great power-on-great power war as a viable political option.
* The salience of the geopolitical tradition in which both Halford Mackinder and Alfred Mahan are prominent.
* A "conservative" view that there is a "constancy in the human condition" that is no more than a slogan when not backed up by some serious thought about what precisely is being referred to as "constant" (as is the case here).
* A neoliberal approach to economics, which (at least in my view) is overoptimistic about the prospects for development inside the context he describes (which is to say, even without taking into account all the other obstacles he overlooks).
* An acceptance of the most extravagant claims made for the Revolution in Military Affairs (and for U.S. investment in it), particularly the combination of precision-guided munitions, Starship Troopers-style armored infantry and space-based command and weapons systems ("battlestars") as the defining factors in the conduct of future warfare (the focus of his 1996 The Future of War, which discusses these ideas in much greater detail and at much greater length), and the idea that by wielding these the U.S. will enjoy unquestioned military superiority over any and all potential challengers.

Hence the exclusive focus on the balance among the great powers in Eurasia, the dismissal of both the ecological concerns and the important weaknesses of the U.S. economy referred to above, the embrace of an Old Europe/New Europe rhetoric that has more to do with the distaste many American conservatives have for the continent's social model than the facts on the ground, and the expectation that we could survive the conflict he imagines circa 2050. Pull out these threads, and his conception quickly falls apart--and anyone who has followed this blog for long realizes that I doubt all of those presumptions. Consequently, even without the wild cards, from a technological "Singularity" to the emergence of a brand new ideology, it seems highly unlikely to me that history will follow the track he lays out. (Indeed, I am nearly certain that some of the things he describes--for instance, anything resembling his version of World War III--will not happen, though that side of my response would be better reserved for another blog post, at another time.) Nonetheless, the sheer ambition and breadth of the conception makes for interesting, provocative and often entertaining reading, and it is in this way that the book should be approached.

New From The New Security Blog (CNA's Military Advisory Board Report on Energy Security, Climate Change)

By way of the New Security Blog: the CNA think tank's Military Advisory Board has just issued a report, Powering America's Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security. The findings, as presented in the preface, are as follows: 1. The nation’s current energy posture is a serious and urgent threat to national security. a. Dependence on oil undermines America’s national security on multiple fronts. b. The U.S.’s outdated, fragile, and overtaxed national electrical grid is a dangerously weak link in the national security infrastructure. 2. A business as usual approach to energy security poses an unacceptably high threat level from a series of converging risks. 3. Achieving energy security in a carbon-constrained world is possible, but will require concerted leadership and continuous focus. 4. The national security planning processes have not been sufficiently responsive to the security impacts of America’s current energy posture. 5. In the course of addressing its most serious energy challenges, the Department of Defense can contribute to national solutions as a technological innovator, early adopter, and testbed. There is little here that strikes me as radically new. (I made every one of the main points myself in an article that ran in the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Parameters-"Toward a Long-Range Energy Security Policy" back in 2006, and raised them again in Survival last year.) Nonetheless, this lengthier, comprehensively researched report-which can be thought of as a follow-up to their 2007 report National Security and the Threat of Climate Change (which interested readers can check out at the following page, featuring different versions attuned to reader convenience, as well as a downloadable briefing for those interested in the short version)-makes its case well, a particular strength of it its attentiveness to the interactions of climate change with energy security. It goes into particular depth about how "carbon constraints" and climate change will impact the U.S. military, touching on some generally unconsidered aspects of it (including the Arctic security issue, and the loss of Diego Garcia in the event of a 1-meter sea level rise). It also devotes much of chapter three to what the Department of Defense could do directly to alleviate the problem, while chapter four lays out in somewhat broader terms a direction for the country to go in. The blog's latest Reading Round-up Radar also contains plenty of interest on the issue.

New in Environmental Security (From Thomas Homer-Dixon, Nick Garrison, Julio Friedmann, James Hamilton)

Those wondering about how the problems of climate change and oil depletion will interact with one another, Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison have co-edited a new essay collection, Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

Incidentally, Professor Homer-Dixon also published an article in the April 4 edition of the Toronto Globe & Mail arguing-I think correctly-that the current problem in regard to our economic and other troubles is an excess of optimism, not pessimism; and co-authored an op-ed with Julio Friedmann regarding the prospects for an underground coal gasification (in combination with sequestration) as a partial solution to Canada's energy problems. (I've generally been wary of the promises made for the contribution "unconventional oil" can make to alleviating our energy problems, and especially the environmental dimension of those problems, but this particular approach is making me take a second look at the issue.)

Those looking for a broader analysis of contemporary issues by Homer-Dixon can, of course, check out his book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization, which I reviewed for Strategic Insights back in 2007.

Of related interest, economist James D. Hamilton has also published a recent Brookings paper, Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08 in which he argues that this price shock was different from those preceding it, the others having been due to physical interference with oil production, rather than changes in the "normal" supply-demand relationship.

The Human Cost of the Economic Crisis

Lest we forget what the hard times indicated by the latest unemployment numbers really mean at an individual, personal level, here's Tom Engelhardt with a round-up of stories suggesting an epidemic of "extreme acts precipitated by the economic disaster" across the country.

The Military Balance on the Korean Peninsula

By Nader Elhefnawy

Once again, talk of military confrontation on the Korean peninsula is much in the news, following what has been taken for a nuclear weapons test in North Korea on May 25 (its first since 2006, and likely another fizzle), and a succession of missile tests (which have included but not consisted wholly of the test of long-range ballistic missiles, an important distinction the media tends to miss), as well as saber-rattling gestures like the renunciation of the armistice that marked the end of the Korean War (1950-1953) and threats of attacks on the South. A repeat of the basic facts anyone who has followed the issue for any length of time has in all likelihood repeatedly encountered seems to be in order.

The North Korean and South Korean Militaries: A Comparison
While much is made of the military capabilities of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), there is virtually no comparison between the two countries in the conventional indices of international power. The Republic of Korea (ROK) has roughly twice the population of the North (49 to 24 million) and a Gross Domestic Product at least thirty times as large (some $850 billion to $26 billion at market rates, almost $1.3 trillion to $40 billion when Purchasing Power Parity is counted in) according to the current edition of the CIA's World Factbook.

This gives the ROK a First World per capita GDP of $26,000 in 2008 - compared to a figure of $1,700 in the DPRK (which puts it among the world's poorest countries, at the rank of 192 out of some 230 states surveyed). Additionally, where South Korea has a world-class high-tech sector and nearly unfettered access to the world market, the DPRK's industrial capital stock "is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts," and the country's so short on food and energy that as many as 2 million are thought to have died as a result since the mid-1990s (equal to almost 10 percent of the population), with only large-scale international assistance preventing worse.

Inevitably, this is reflected in the military establishments they have been able to raise, the DPRK straining to spend perhaps a quarter of what South Korea easily does on its own armed forces. While the DPRK has a "million man army," South Korea too fields one of the world's largest militaries (some 700,000 strong, with over 1 million more in the reserves), with a long qualitative edge in virtually every relevant area.

Even the "tank-counting" toward which the hastier journalism tends demonstrates this. While North Korea possesses the larger "tank park" (perhaps 3,500-4,000 tanks to the ROK's 2,300 or so), the vast majority of its tanks are T-55 and T-62 variants (and even the reports of the few hundred more advanced tanks - domestically built models incorporating later Soviet technology -are sketchy). By comparison, the ROK fields well over 1,000 K-1 tanks, roughly equivalent to the American Abrams (including several hundred of the later K-1A1s, comparable to the A2 version), while the still-more advanced K-2 is entering service, with implications obvious enough for a land battle.

In the aerial and naval realms, the disparity between the two is wider, generally in the ROK's favor. While the DPRK's air force may have a larger total number of combat aircraft (perhaps 50 percent more of them), their operability is questionable in most cases, and the types are generally obsolete. Even when this is overlooked, all told North Korea has only 40 "fourth-generation" fighters (MiG-29s), with trainer versions included in the figure, whereas the ROK has well over 200 (F-15s and F-16s) - a 5 to 1 advantage in favor of the South in this important area. The remainder of South Korea's force consists of F-4s and F-5s, while North Korea depends on Chinese-built versions of the MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21, according to the 2003-4 edition of the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance, widening the ROK's margin of advantage yet again. (Not to be overlooked, the same survey estimated that North Korean pilots get a wholly inadequate 20 hours or less in the air annually, which may leave what aircraft the North does have virtually useless in a serious confrontation.)

The North Korean navy is vastly larger when the total numbers of vessels are counted - roughly 300 combat-capable surface vessels to 120 or so by my count from the listings at Globalsecurity.org - but virtually the entire North Korean fleet consists of small coastal craft, half of which are patrol vessels unequipped with missiles or torpedoes (and many of them suitable only for inshore work). South Korea, however, has ten destroyers to the North's zero, nine frigates to the DPRK's three, and twenty-eight corvettes to its six (making for another 5 to 1 advantage, this one in "major surface combatants"). And again, technological quality, operability and training all favor the ROK's navy by a significant margin - disadvantages which may also reduce to nearly nothing such value as North Korea can get from its large force of submarines, the core of which is twenty-two 1950s era Romeo-class vessels. (And of course, it is worth noting that the South has its own, superior submarine force, smaller in total numbers but using more capable German Type 209s, currently being supplemented by the later Type 214 - the export version of the Type 212 which is currently setting the standard for conventionally powered subs.)

Though such matters are more speculative, it has also been noted that the North Korean army is "simply too big to be kept happy and well fed," its discipline and morale (and even the physical health of its soldiers) under pressures which do not have an analog south of the DMZ, and that these factors may already be taking their toll.

In short, even without the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense, the DPRK is badly outmatched; and in the scenario of an attack on the ROK, would have the disadvantage of being on the offensive, especially problematic in the peninsula's mountainous terrain, channeling the assault into obvious routes where it would be extremely vulnerable to the defenders' firepower.

Considering the Asymmetries
Of course, certain details complicate the picture. These include:

* The concentration of the DPRK's army along the Demilitarized Zone (perhaps two-thirds of the army or more), exemplified by North Korea's massive artillery collection. Consisting of over 10,000 guns and multiple rocket launchers (MRLs), it has a 2 to 1 advantage over the ROK in this area (further bolstered by 7,500 mortars). These have also been concentrated along the border, along with perhaps a million tons of ammunition, enabling it to launch a massive strike with little warning, with some guesses about the sheer weight of shell it can drop going as high as 300,000 rounds per hour.
* The DPRK's massive investment of effort in tunneling and fortification, and the extensive nature of such facilities, which is expected to diminish the value of South Korean and U.S. technological superiority, something which in particular extends to the survivability of the artillery in the border area.
* The proximity of Seoul (not just the political capital of the country, but its economic and cultural center, with over a fifth of the nation's population in the city and half in the metro area) to the border (just 25 miles south of it, and so parts of the city are within range of at least some North Korean artillery from the outset) is a significant vulnerability, both in terms of South Korea's capacity to continue its practical functioning, and the effect on the morale of the civilian population.
* North Korea's exceptionally large special forces establishment (some estimates of which put its manning as high as 180,000, though estimates of 80-100,000 are more common) expected to infiltrate the ROK and wreak massive havoc behind the lines (with the aid of such assets as a large fleet of midget submarines, and perhaps, underground tunnels leading beneath the DMZ into South Korean territory).
* Efforts by the DPRK to modernize its military at the informational level, particularly with regard to computerizing its command and control, and networking its air defenses.
* The difficulty of any northward march for ROK-U.S. forces undertaking a counteroffensive, the peninsula's rough terrain then working in favor of North Korea, especially given its vast reserve military (5 million-plus) which might plausibly wage a guerrilla war against advancing forces, also saddled with the very large challenge of administering captured territory under those circumstances.
* At least equally important, there is the widespread expectation that China would simply not allow North Korea to collapse, or accept the presence of a large U.S. or allied army near its border (and while less often mentioned, and neither willing or able to offer the support to North Korea it did in the past, Russia may be similarly-minded).
* Finally, the DPRK has a considerable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction-chemical, biological, and now apparently nuclear as well, in addition to a large stock of crude but not useless ballistic missiles (perhaps 800 of them, with about 600 Scuds and 200 NoDongs).

Yet, the value of these assets should not be exaggerated, none of them as simple or clear-cut an advantage as it is made to look when, as all too often happens in the kind of superficial discussion we get, just one side of the balance sheet is examined.

* Just as North Korean forces are concentrated along the DMZ, so are the ROK and U.S. forces which would oppose them, in defensible and well-prepared positions of their own (which include the politically problematic minefields running along the southern end of the DeMilitarized Zone). Additionally, while North Korea's larger number of artillery pieces is not to be taken lightly, it will still face a very substantial collection of artillery on the south side of the line (South Korea has nearly 5,000 guns and rocket launchers, and 6,000 mortars), which are also likely to be more effective in the counter-battery role due to better-trained crews and better intelligence resources (as well as being quantitatively and qualitatively supplemented by U.S. forces). The North Korean systems will also be immediately subject to heavy air attack, a danger to which U.S. and South Korean forces are far less exposed.
* It is possible to exaggerate Seoul's vulnerability. To say that the city is within range of North Korean artillery is not the same as saying that the entire capital (let alone the whole metropolitan area associated with it) would immediately fall under all of the North's guns, rockets and mortars; any attack on the capital at the conflict's outset would be much more limited than that (if still likely to take a heavy toll in lives, property and disruption). Additionally, such vulnerability can be balanced against the reality that R.O.K.-U.S. forces will almost from the start have air and sea dominance over and around the peninsula. This means the entirety of North Korea's territory will be much more thoroughly open to attack for the duration - extending not just to a portion of the 2-3,000 daily sorties likely to be flown, but Tomahawk cruise missiles and naval gunfire. Finally, claims for North Korea using its artillery collection in some "shock and awe" demonstration grossly exaggerate the effectiveness of such strategies. Far from breaking the will of the citizenry of the country targeted, they have tended to rally a population to its government. (This applies as much to the prospect of an operation consisting wholly of a short but deliberate attack as well as to its use as an opening act in a larger war.)
* The image of hundreds of thousands of North Korean commandos hitting the South all at once which might be taken away from the reports about its special forces establishment is grossly overblown. The Soviet Union, with its vastly greater resources, had fewer than 30,000 Spetsnaz in the late 1980s. The whole of the U.S. Special Operations Command today comes to fewer than 50,000, the vast support component included. Instead the high figure reflects a confusion about the classification of those units. The term "special forces" might be equated more simply with "shock troops" (as with the "commando" units of the Iraqi Republican Guard) since the units encompassed in the high figure include the army's light infantry, airborne and amphibious units, not normally considered special forces in that sense. The reconnaissance battalions, which might be considered closer to the usual Western usage of the term "special forces," contained 9,000 soldiers in 17 battalions as of 2002, a much more plausible figure for this type of unit (though the 21,000 troops assigned to "sniper battalions" may perform some similar functions).
* The discussion of a more computerized North Korean military command system is sketchy, and certainly where its air defenses are concerned, the effects are open to question, especially given that the basis of the system remains an arsenal of SA-2, SA-3 and SA-5 missile batteries that were old twenty years ago. Yugoslavia's air defenses in 1999, which were built around similar (in cases, more advanced) weaponry, were supposed to have been upgraded in the way some analysts believe North Korea's to have been, but were largely neutralized by massive defense suppression efforts and the restrictive rules-of-engagement observed in Allied Force (confining NATO pilots to 15,000 feet). Such caution may prove impracticable in the event of a North Korean attack on the ROK, but that is far from saying they can inflict sufficient losses to significantly interfere with ROK-U.S. aerial operations.

That leaves just three points: the difficulty of North Korea's terrain for an allied advance, the constraints Chinese political opposition may impose on an operation, and the role the WMDs might play. The first is not just irrelevant to the North's ability to conquer the South, but likely to be overrated when one considers the ability of the regime in the North to survive a failed invasion, given its sheer military weakness, and the likely reaction of Washington and Seoul; and the second and third may not be the factors they seem at first glance. After all, the idea that China would support an attack on the ROK is ludicrous, given its desire for stability in the area, and its valued trading relationships with South Korea and the U.S. - not necessarily the dominant considerations in the country's decisionmaking, but not to be discounted lightly either. (South Korea accounts for some $170 billion of annual business, while China also runs a $200 billion trade surplus against the U.S. - and does comparable business with Japan, which is also relevant here.) On the contrary, it seems that China's most likely role would be to restrain a North Korean action before it could get started.

Additionally, it is unclear what practical gain North Korea could extract from its WMDs inside of an actual conflict scenario, given not only the certainty of retaliation, but the reasonable speculation that North Korea would not use them inside the peninsula (biological and chemical weapons always being hard to control and notoriously problematic when the combatants, and their armies, are so close together). In the nuclear sphere, it may even be the case that what North Korea has is what Jonathan Pollack calls a political capability, rather than a fully operational one.

In short, while North Korean forces could present a greater challenge than did their Iraqi counterparts in 1991 and 2003, and a major conflict would cause vast damage on the peninsula (and beyond it), not only is a conquest of South Korea out of the question, but even the existence of a convincing North Korean "theory of victory" (to use the terminology preferred by Colin Gray) is extremely doubtful. Particularly where WMDs are concerned, this has left experts frequently speculating about irrational action.

Yet, there is little proof that it is actually insane - and as the case of Iraq proved, those arguing for the continuing salience of the "rational actor" model where deterrence is concerned (an argument Martin Van Creveld summed up nicely in his 1991 book The Future of Nuclear Proliferation) have generally had the evidence on their side, and there seems plenty of reason to wonder if obsessing over the much less likely alternatives does not do more harm than good. The exaggeration of the military threat North Korea poses only muddies the water and unnecessarily alarms, and may well make an already troubling situation more dangerous. The DPRK's collapse is the more plausible scenario, and while this turn of events is not necessarily exclusive of aggression, given the facts on the ground, the most destructive possibilities are, fortunately, not the most likely ones.

New in Fusion Research

The New York Times recently carried an article on the goings-on at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where a project to generate energy via inertial confinement fusion (essentially, igniting a pellet of hydrogen fuel with a battery of lasers) was dedicated on Friday, May 22.

The renewed interest in fusion is a natural enough response to the concern with climate change weighing ever more heavily on us (a new report on the problem takes stock not only of the risks to the future, but the toll on human life and prosperity taken by climate change now) and the rise of oil prices (which, from 1998 to 2008, shot up about tenfold, until they hit $150 a barrel last July), which have given the fears that peak oil is nigh much more attention than they have enjoyed in a long time-as well as the headaches still associated with atomic fission.

Such concerns seem to have contributed to the long-delayed International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project getting back on track, at least for a while (with France selected as the host site last year). It has also extended to greater interest in less conventional approaches to fusion, such as the use of helium-3 as the fuel (the virtues of which field leader Gerald Kulcinski explains himself here) which, in turn, has created much excitement in certain circles about space development schemes to mine the stuff off the moon, a goal explicitly claimed by Russia, China and India.

There has even been renewed consideration of cold fusion (a field which has not recovered from the Fleischmann-Pons affair). This led to a second look by the Department of Energy at the phenomenon back in 2004 (the report on which you can read here), and more recently, caused a stir in March when U.S. Navy scientists (specifically with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Research Center) reported new evidence for the phenomeon. (Those who would care to follow developments in this area can check out the Cold Fusion Times, which regularly posts links to news items relevant to the issue.)

So far, though, nothing really solid's come of the more intense activity in this area-by which I mean a proven basis for a commercially useful power plant that will banish the old saw about fusion always being forty years away (which we've been hearing for at least that long).

Still, that doesn't rule out a future breakthrough that could make a viable technological future a lot easier to picture, and even if it would be a mistake to unduly get one's hopes up, this may still be something worth watching.

The New French Base in the Gulf

This story first caught my eye because I thought I had misunderstood it-France opening a base in Abu Dhabi (part of the United Arab Emirates) in May this year.

That France is opening new overseas bases is by itself an oddity, not only in light of the country's limited military establishment (just under 260,000 regulars), and in particular, its limited power-projection capabilities, but also its policy ever since decolonization began in earnest in the wake of the Second World War. As noted in recent press reports, the new facility is the country's "first permanent overseas military installations outside its former colonies in Africa in fifty years," and "the first time that France has installed a military operation in a country where it has never been colonial master."

Why a French base, in this region, now?

There has been talk of "safeguarding the sea lanes" and "supporting allies," commonplaces that are awfully abstract when left at that. (Safeguard the sea lanes from what? Support which allies--against whom?)

There has been mention of the base supporting operations to combat piracy, but the truth is that the base is a thousand miles east of the "hot spot" off East Africa, and a rather longer sail than that around the southern end of the Arabian peninsula, in the wrong direction from the French homeland from a logistical standpoint. (Indeed, the bigger base France already has in Djibouti, which is already playing a role in facilitating an anti-piracy operation that does not seem about to drastically expand, makes such a facility in the UAE appear all the more insignificant to such an effort.)

The base would hardly be more useful to France's ongoing peacekeeping operation in Lebanon, for much the same reason. The support of French operations in Afghanistan would seem to be a more plausible purpose, but oddly enough this was not mentioned in the press reports I saw.

The New York Times cites unnamed analysts identifying the UAE's grant of a base to France as an "insurance policy" as the U.S. presence in Iraq winds down.

Mustafa Alani, an analyst with the Gulf Research Center in Dubai who has been widely quoted on this matter, has pointed to the significance of the base being in its "breaking the United States' long monopoly to the Gulf region"--concerns apparently connected to worry in the UAE about the stand-off over Iran's nuclear program dragging the country into war, as well as the broader power politics of the region--and the greater political "acceptability" of France in the region (in comparison with the U.S. and Britain).

Yet, both those views seem inconsistent with the practical limits of French military capability in a heavily armed region like the Gulf (in contrast, for instance, with places like Rwanda, the Ivory Coast and the Central African Republic), constraining its capacity to both provide insurance, and (especially in light of the tendency to exaggerate the Trans-Atlantic rift) some counterweight to the U.S. as some seem to hope.

Even in the 1980s France's confrontation with Libya over Chad put it in a very difficult position, despite its possession then of a rather more extensive array of military assets than it has today. Realistically, France can only participate in a major regional military action as a supporting player in a U.S.-led operation (something the base would of course assist in, and can reasonably be taken as a preparation for), or as part of the long envisaged but yet to be realized European force. Indeed, France's recent return to the NATO command structure from which Charles De Gaulle withdrew the country in the 1960s seemed to be an acknowledgment of such realities. (Of course, one could spin out a scenario in which the French base functions as a trip wire in the event of a confrontation between the UAE and Iran, with France's nuclear arsenal playing a deterrent function. This strikes me as wildly implausible techno-thriller stuff, but there's never a shortage of analysts eager to think in such terms.)

This leaves it more a matter of appearances and vague notions of "influence," instead of push-comes-to-shove realities. Examining the situation that way, the purpose of such ties seems to be to encourage sales of French arms (the French government is said to be pushing a multi-billion dollar arms sale to the UAE, perhaps all the more important given the trouble it has had scoring buyers for the Rafale) and French nuclear technology (the UAE is looking to build two plants, an area where the French, of course, also hope to do business-perhaps $40 billion worth of it in that deal) in the country and the region more broadly. The token military presence's bolstering of France's image as an independent regional actor can only help such dealmaking.

It could also be for the benefit of observers from outside the region, including domestic opinion in France itself, where the closer relationship to NATO is far from universally popular, inviting protest not only from the left (as in the Strasbourg protests), but from the Gaullist right as well. Yet, not everyone is mollified by this apparent concession to national sovereignty (and even grandeur), "centrist" politician Francois Bayrou notably criticizing the facility for the risk of entanglement in overseas conflict it introduces into France's strategic situation.

On the Global Economic Mess

While it is grabbing fewer headlines, the global economy remains in the dumps (even by the low standards of growth of the post-1973 era), and I suspect it will do so for quite a while. The problem seems to be a structural one, simply that an economy fueled by easy lending and focused on speculation can't run very well or very far for very long. Unfortunately, that's what we've increasingly moved toward since the 1970s.

I laid out the description in detail in an article I published here on this blog, but here's a short(er) version. The raw deal labor has been getting these last three decades (like wages falling in relative or even absolute terms) translates into weak consumption, and/or unstable, debt-fueled consumption. This means a combination of high profits (because of that gap between wages and productivity), and a discouraging environment for the productive investment that is the true basis of meaningful economic growth.

Instead, investors put their money into speculative investments (purchases of assets for resale at higher prices rather than for income). Financialization prevails, complete with a search for quick profits from the pouring of money into the buying and selling of assets rather than the making of things. As this has played out, the financial sector has ended up dominant over non-financial corporations (NFCs), themselves treated as assets to be bought and sold for quick profits.

Apart from the money absorbed by this mergers and acquisitions game (which, in its forcing companies to expend critical resources sustaining stock prices and fighting takeovers, often on credit, in a manner reminiscent of feudal princes fighting over fiefs), this encourages a "short-termist" mentality. (Just think about how often you hear the expressions "last quarter," "this quarter" and "next quarter" on CNBC.) The evidence shows that short-termism means axing things like necessary maintenance, and corporate R & D, in favor of the "smooth earnings" that get CEOs their preposterous bonuses.

This is also inimical to robust economic growth, and the distorting and disrupting effects of the speculative bubbles into which they feed do not help.

As a result of these things-weak consumption, high debt, the channeling of investment into merger and acquisition games and speculative booms and busts, and an obsession with the short-term (and a particularly narrow view of it at that), you have a long-term pattern of slow growth and periodic crisis, the current one especially sharp.

To date, little substantive action on these aspects of the global economy seems forthcoming, governments instead tending to prefer corporate welfare and band-aids in the hope that the engine can be patched up enough for yet another go, instead of addressing structural issues. (The crackdown on banking secrecy, I have to admit, strikes me as a red herring.)

What might it look like?

Well, there would be an emphasis on getting consumption up. That means, among other things, money in people's pockets. There would be moves, too, to tame the Electronic Herd. (Indeed, the "pre-release" edition of the UN's World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009 acknowledges inadequate financial regulation-and "to a significant degree . . . the dismantling of firewalls within and across financial sectors over the past two decades" as a major cause of the crisis.)

In the U.S., there would need to be action on rebuilding the U.S.'s industrial base, and the long-neglected infrastructure-and on getting health care costs under control, given their extraordinary drag on the American economy (in return for mediocre results). (The stimulus could be a start, but just that.)

There would definitely be talk about labor-friendly changes, such as an increase in the minimum wage. (Just to get back to where it was pre-Reagan administration, it would need to be bumped up past $10 an hour.)

We'd also see talk about things like repealing the Gramm-Leach-Blilely Act, which predictably contributed to the mess we're all in.

And of course, if this is all to mean very much in the long run, the phrase "green economy" would have to be much more than an empty slogan, since we're long past the point where we could keep growing the economy by increasing global throughput. (After all, the energy to support all this consumption has to come from somewhere, and failing to stave off the already advancing climatic catastrophe would wreck the economy in ways we dare not imagine-from savaging crop yields and fisheries, to inundating vast tracts of prime real estate.)

Politically, however, all this seems unlikely. I hope that isn't the case, but so far there have been little basis for optimism besides wishful thinking.

In the end, we'll just have to see.