The Geopolitics of the United States
stratfor.com
stratfor.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Friedman
After I told him this a few months ago when we were talking about this article, my dad read it a little more critically and found at least one blatant factual error. So take it with a grain of salt.
The authors do not intend to deceive or have lazy fact checkers. Instead the writings are intentionally speculative and many of the sources are often speaking off the record or sometimes trying to promote a specific political agenda (i.e. a Chinese official could have been the source for your stated fact).
Another thing that seems hardly believable is Mexico threatening Usa in 50/100 years (I think that was in part 2).
China falling apart could also mean an economic disaster to America given their mutual symbiosis nowadays.
And a Russian/Chinese alliance could also become possible eventually if China starts to have it too hard to access the natural resources they need.
Probably the saddest thing here is the fact that America seems to be condemned to fight wars all around the world, because of it's own growing interests are generating more and more dependence in foreign affairs, and thus, creating a vicious cycle.
In Risk there are two tendencies that tend to emerge: everyone gets a continent or nobody gets a continent. In the former the player(s) who resist the ESS by not acquiring continents are left with diminished armies and quickly eliminated. In the latter the player(s) who resist the ESS by attempting to acquire continents are rapidly allied against by the others.
The ESS involves random psychology within the constraints of geopolitically fundamentally dictated equilibria. The agents, in this case nations, tend towards one of those equilibria by acting independently on limited information about others' intentions.
The dominant equilibrium then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you have observed. It does not follow, however, that there is no rational basis for the phenomenon. There is also no known mechanism outside a supranational authority with enforcement capability to force a shift from one equilibrium to another.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy
Mexico isn't likely to be a threat to the United States in our lifetimes per se. But it's not inconceivable to see a future Mexico infuriated over some political stance in the United States allying with another power. Deutschland's plans in the World Wars for the United States alternated between allying with Mexico against the US to inciting war between the two to bog down the US [1].
>"China falling apart could also mean an economic disaster to America"
Given that geopolitical power is relative and China is the most likely regional power with the potential to become a great power one cannot discard the position that America would be strengthened with a tamer China (similar to the situation in the 1990s). That said, the world would be worse off (barring the possibility of a Chinese-American conflict in Asia-Pacific).
>"a Russian/Chinese alliance could also become possible"
A Sino-Russian alliance would be unstable, similar to the Hitler-Stalin alliance in World War II. They both compete for resources in Russian-influenced Central Asia and in Northeast Asia. Given Russia's history of using its energy dominance with Europe as leverage it seems unwise for China to accede too much control with regards to critical resources to it. Further, Russia's demographic situation doesn't portend well for it as a great power in the coming decades.
>"America seems to be condemned to fight wars all around the world"
The United States isn't condemned to fighting wars around the world. Similar to the UK in times past and Turkey as its emerging today, the US is, as a geopolitical "island" (a great power amongst no other current or potential great powers in its region) free to pursue its interests overseas. Take for example Iraq: the biggest downside to the US is economic and diplomatic. The Middle East, on the other hand, was set to experience significant geopolitical volatility regardless of the endeavour's outcome.
I'm not agreeing with the Monograph (nor disagreeing with you) wholeheartedly, but there is a valid debate to be had on each of these points.
America would be greatly strengthened by a stronger China. The longer we go without a super competitor, the weaker we will get.
With a stronger China we might just stop being such a lazy, take-it-all-for-granted nation, and get back to doing what it takes to make sure the next generation lives better than the last. It'd be nice just to have a functional government again, focused on real progress for its people.
If nothing else this is valuable in that it follows closely the mindset of the US intelligence community (and many others, most precisely Russia's and Eastern Europe's).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Politics-College-Edition-Norto...
It seems that grain meant the same in 19 century that oil means today. And for grain, you need a lot of territory with population and transportation and security. With oil it's different, you have to be lucky and here it is: population isn't that important anymore, neither is territory per se.
Oil plus security might. But Middle Eastern countries have no security.
It's like chess, checkers, risk, go, Starcraft, etc.
You can put a crappy player in a great position on the board, giving them great "resources". But a significantly better player will often still be able to win.
Compare North Korea to South Korea. Same culture, same geography, same genetic pool -- but as a society the North Koreans went horribly horribly wrong. North Koreans went with a political and economic philosophy (communism) that was and is far inferior to capitalism.
That's my fundamental disagreement with this article. Human intellect driven by forces in the culture and society have a great more to do with a country's "importance" on the geopolitical stage than resources.
To make a sweeping generalization like that in the article, you'd have to ignore the timeline of the founding of America and the massive influx of people who wanted to be here before anyone even knew about our great resources or how to use them in a modern sense.
America was recognized all around the world at the time of its founding (and a bit before, even) because it was a grand experiment in personal liberty under the rule of law. The resources were a nice bonus, I think, but then again there have been many counter examples where countries/societies have had tremendous resources and failed to rise because of it (oil in the Middle East), or had very little resources and dominated the economic or geopolitical landscape at one time or another (Japan, Hong Kong, Great Britain, etc.)
If anything, there is a lot of evidence that resources are actually not helpful or even counter-productive to progress in a society http://dean2004.blogspot.com/2009/02/zakaria-on-curse-of-oil....
Look at the historical dominance of societies that were farther away from the equator vs the most lush areas of the world closer toward it.
The necessary traits for survival when you have a winter (planning for a shortage of crops, living in close quarters with others by following rules, reduced tolerance for corruption) combined with the unique (at the time) notion that individual liberty and free enterprise trumped the tyranny of a central government played a far greater role in the importance of America than acreage of contiguous croplands.
Fear not, those of you who think that America's success was all resources and geography, not discipline and philosophy... America is being brought low quickly enough. As we've pretty much thrown away most of the restraints on the Federal Government spelled out in the Constitution, America will be the next century's counter-example of a nation with great resources but little importance on the geopolitical stage as we destroy Liberty and the Free Enterprise system that was the true engine that originally brought America to power.
The article specifically mentions the Mississippi River, and compares the cost of transport by sea, road, and rail. Control of waterways has always been key to great power status. Controlling the world's oceans, especially chokepoints like Panama, Singapore, and Hormuz, lets the US project maritime power. Controlling the Altantic slave trade gave England, France, and Spain the upper hand at various times, and big wars were fought for the prize. Joining the Yellow and Yangtze rivers into one via the Grand Canal around 600ad by the Sui/Tang dynastry is what propelled China to become the world's greatest power for a thousand years. The Romans took over the entire Mediterranean, settling the entire coastline, after smashing Hannibal. And of course, control of the Nile, Euphrates/Tigris, Indus, and Yellow river basins is what made agriculture viable in the first place.
It was the abundant crops that allowed some Americans to think about liberty. An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the "liberty" and "rule of law" there's been.
The funny thing is that you even quoted the part of my post that shows that what you're saying isn't supported by the facts of the timeline according to a written historical record.
The first settlers who left Europe mostly left for Liberty -- religious and otherwise. These were people concerned about Liberty before there even were colonies. There was no great farmland available. There was no Mississippi. There weren't even any slaves to leverage as resources. Yet, if you read the historical records, those early settlers wanted mostly to get away from the oppressive States of Europe. Freedom was their issue and it was tightly ingrained in the American culture from the beginning.
Fast-forward to the American Revolution (all about Liberty, read the writings of the Revolutionaries), and you'll see that these people were fanatics about restraining the central government long before it even had any interest in anything outside of the 13 colonies.
> An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the "liberty" and "rule of law" there's been.
Slavery was horrible and really the poison that was allowed into the US founding that led to the destruction of the notion of States' Rights when we fought over the issue during the Civil War. That original sin has pretty much cost us our Liberty, since after the Federal government forced its supremacy it broke the ability of States to protect themselves. It shifted the American power structure from being bottom-up to top-down.
Amerindians were killing and DISPLACING each other over primitive tribal issues long before we arrived. Unfortunately for them, the European technological advantage was so great. That said, I like to think that we've learned a lot as a society as we proved after World War I and beyond where we never tried to keep by force any land where we fought battles for some cause.
You bring up an unintentionally interesting point: If American resources and geography were such a societal advantage, then why isn't the Amerindian culture the most dominant in the world now? They had numbers, access to the same resources, geographic isolation to protect them from other countries for centuries, etc. But they never progressed and became "important" as a society. Even after Europeans showed up and allowed them access to our technology, they used some of it pragmatically (horses and guns), but they never embraced the cultural underpinnings that would have allowed them to challenge us.
> Yet, if you read the historical records, those early settlers wanted mostly to get away from the oppressive States of Europe
This has happened throughout history many times, from the ancient Greek diaspora around the Mediterranean to the modern-day Chinese diaspora around the Pacific rim.
> There was no great farmland available
People from various European states went to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, which were fertile.
Where there's land to settle, people go there. The southern Europeans migrated to South America in large numbers. The Russians migrated across the steppe. The Polynesians rowed to New Zealand. The coast of North America was no different, just a lot smaller scale than the Mississippi, which came later.
> after World War I and beyond where we never tried to keep by force any land where we fought battles for some cause
why bother keeping any land when you control the world's oceans?
> why isn't the Amerindian culture the most dominant in the world now?
for the same reason humans didn't become dominant anywhere until they discovered agriculture.
To argue that, you'd really have to ignore thousands of documents written by the Founding Fathers as well as the Declaration, the Constitution, and the very actions the Founding Fathers. They could have granted themselves and their families royalty status. George Washington literally turned down the offer to be King of the new nation as well as the chance to reign as a perpetual President.
We have their words to read and their historical deeds to examine to show that they were nothing like the Greek Diaspora who folded themselves into the cultures they moved to. They were nothing like the Chinese Diaspora who had no culture, history, or even writings that I could Google that expressed even the remotest philosophy of Democracy or Individual Sovereignty.
> for the same reason humans didn't become dominant anywhere until they discovered agriculture.
But agriculture is just an idea. The main thesis of the article is that resources made America important. That's not true. The resources were here before the Euro-American settlers were. It was the ideas and the culture to use them that made the resources anything more than "worthless" empty fields.
as did Mao Zedong, who could've turned China into a defacto Emperorship like North Korea.
Some countries/peoples talk about "Freedom" with religious fervor, others talk about "The People" with religious fervor, but it's all just a narrative constructed to unite a people.
>as did Mao Zedong
Okay, that's downright disingenuous trolling. Mao ruled for over 30 years and then handed over power to his hand-picked successor. Mao killed over 50 MILLION of his own people in order to hold on to his power.
Equating George Washington's action in turning down power to Mao's while ignoring the historical record of both of their actions has got to be intentional.
"The article specifically mentions the Mississippi River, and compares the cost of transport by sea, road, and rail. Control of waterways has always been key to great power status. Controlling the world's oceans, especially chokepoints like Panama, Singapore, and Hormuz, lets the US project maritime power. Controlling the Altantic slave trade gave England, France, and Spain the upper hand at various times, and big wars were fought for the prize. Joining the Yellow and Yangtze rivers into one via the Grand Canal around 600ad by the Sui/Tang dynastry is what propelled China to become the world's greatest power for a thousand years. The Romans took over the entire Mediterranean, settling the entire coastline, after smashing Hannibal. And of course, control of the Nile, Euphrates/Tigris, Indus, and Yellow river basins is what made agriculture viable in the first place. It was the abundant crops that allowed some Americans to think about liberty. An Amerindian displaced from the Mississippi 200 yrs ago or a homeless Black 50 yrs ago won't understand any of the liberty and rule of law there's been."
The discussion of United States history since the founding of the United States in the article brings to mind often forgotten facts. The territorial expansion of the United States as a unified political grouping had to take advantage of the Mississippi River basin as a matter of first importance. The article mentions building paved roads (the Cumberland Road) and neglects the history of canal projects in the United States while mentioning canals in other places. Of course the cost advantage of water transport via natural watercourses continues to this day, and has been very influential in world history. Thomas Sowell points out that Africa has exceptionally few rivers that are navigable all the way to a harbor on a seacoast compared to other continents, and very few rivers that are navigable at all. That constrained the development of trade networks in Africa and the development of many other learned cultural attributes of what countries with navigable rivers call "civilization." China developed early along navigable rivers that lead to the sea, and when the United States was settled by seafaring Europeans from trading cultures, its course of development was largely set.
The legal and cultural factors shaping national development should not be underestimated. In the 1770s, as the United States was breaking away from Britain, the world's greatest political scientists mostly wrote in English and lived in Britain or America. At the same time, the world's greatest mathematician (Leonhard Euler) was living in Russia, teaching the first of many generations of great Russian mathematicians. The United States, messy as its system is, has long benefited from the draw that freedom and democracy give the country to bring in talented people from around the world. More than half of all Americans are descended from ancestors who arrived in North America not speaking English (as is true of more than half of my ancestors), but day by day freedom with opportunity for voting and public expression of opinions on issues and an economy based largely on Adam Smith's principle of free trade joined together disparate groups of immigrants into a unified national population.
For the future, I don't think that the United States has any need to encourage fission or strife among countries on the Eurasian land mass, contrary to what the submitted article suggests. Rather, the United States can go on promoting what really has done the most to contribute to its national strength: democracy, civil liberties, free trade, and the rule of law. Those disruptive ideas do much to bring peace and stability to other countries and to remove the threat of war. "American identity" is an identity based on shared ideas, and as Abraham Lincoln noted in the Gettysburg address, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" is an idea that can spread around the world far beyond the borders of the United States. Whatever the geographic conditions, everyone lives better where they can express dissent without fear of a government death squad and vote in new leaders from time to time.
Our government is currently busy abusing and or destroying all of the things that made it a great country.
We don't need to shovel those ideas on other people as much as we need to stand for them again. Leading by example is radically more powerful than trying to tell people to do what I say but not what I do.
I remain to be convinced it is a lot worse than previously, and most of the world still tends to believe Churchill's maxim - democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others
Tl dr - keep insisting on an end to torture sure, but don't say it was better in the old days.
The thought experiment could be tamed a bit by substituting climate change as the geographical change agent.
(1) I would argue that these changes are rarely absolute but always in a comparative context. For example if such a weapon would come into existence, it wouldn't exist very long in a proprietary form but other nations would reproduce it. But if we are talking about such substantial climate change, I would suspect that the negative consequences are going to impact many nations at the same time, i.e. an overall downward spiral would set in. Or just very specific regions (i.e. coastal lines).
(2) If we are talking about "just" specific regions, or "just" an American desert, the example of Israel demonstrates that with enough resources and willpower it is possible to survive even in an almost desert based environment. Sure, Israel gets quite a few subsidies and support by other nations, but never the less they put them to excellent use and demonstrated that it is possible to "run" a successful economy despite substantial natural challenges.
Given the diversity in geographies and a bounded "sweet spot" for productivity (by presently known means) I would argue that a global event would not have uniform effects on all nations. For example, global warming would devastate the Chinese and Indian breadbaskets while opening up Siberia and Greenland to agriculture.
My usage of a weapon, which being technology would be replicated by others over time, was flawed. Oops =P.
Regarding Israel, I don't think the conclusion from geopolitics is that geography is a limiting factor in a nation's potential. Israel has exploited its human capital expertly. That said, given its present borders it will tend to be a client state of an outside power; its geopolitical situation is highly leveraged in that the loss of American military and economic backing would spell existential chaos for it. Singapore, Taiwan, Luxembourg, et al do very well by this model. But their sovereignty is, at the end of the day, subordinated to an outsider's. Further, not everyone in the world can follow this strategy (it would be too easy for one to start shooting and upset the illusion of stability).
There's a great deal of land in the Far North, but I think most of its topsoil has been scraped off by glaciers.
ADDED. I have a tentative answer to my own question: glaciers probably cannot push topsoil over mountains, which is probably why there is farming in Alberta, Canada, at latitudes where there is no farming in Quebec. (The Rockies take a big zap westward there.) Since there are lots of mountains running east-to-west in western Siberia, there are probably regions rich in topsoil north of those mountains, but not in eastern Siberia, and not in the high latitudes of European Russia.
Unless in the regions north of those west-east mountains, the presence of the mountains caused the glaciers to flow from south to north. hmm.
China has been doing a lot of things lately, with its attempts to barter influence in South America and Africa, that look a lot like the actions of a historically normal great power to me, and if you've got great powers acting normally then there isn't an actual superpower around.
China and India will have a much harder road than most are willing to admit. India is already displaying massive political paralysis, with an economy that has stopped growing properly. China is taking on very large amounts of debt domestically, with national growth that has slowed considerably (and some would say dramatically, as numbers are being lied about at a local level to falsify growth according to a recent NY Times article). If you run what may in fact be 4% to 5% national growth against their inflation rate, the Chinese economy has all but stopped growing (which explains the massive sitting hoards of commodities at their distribution points that are going unused and the collapse in electricity usage). China had to instigate a huge real estate bubble to keep their economy going, using substantial stimulus to generate 'growth.' As those imbalances in their economy adjust, growth will be harder and harder to come by. Studies have shown that for each dollar of investment that China makes, they're getting radically less growth out of it than they were 10 or 15 years ago.