war with China

It seems increasingly likely that a war with China is on the horizon. As that nation keeps growing, its demands for ever shrinking resources become louder and clearer. So too its displays of force. Most recently, the excursions into the China Sea and the gas-field disputes with Japan have racked up tensions in the East. These are signs nobody should ignore.

It is clear that China's economy is growing at a furious pace. Despite a worldwide recession and presumably lower demand from the West, China keeps on chugging along. Although it initially showed signs of collapse, that danger is now averted and it appears China will keep growing no matter what. Unfortunately for us, that means an even greater danger is developing.

I have remarked earlier that there are few options here. Either China cools off, or implodes or we are on a path to war. It will not happen in the next few years, but you can see it coming from a mile away. There simply aren't enough resources on the planet to bring China up to our standard of living. Not that that standard of living is all that wonderful, mind you. It is mostly a standard of waste. But apparently, that is what humans crave. The ability to gobble up and waste tons of goodies. And it appears this is one nightmare that will ultimately come true.

endless war

George Orwell understood that oppressive governments need wars to keep their populace under control. Wars focus the mind like nothing else. And wars also bring the specter of fear, another great means of crowd control. Fear has been applied with great success in America lately. Ever since 9/11 brought real fear into the hearts and minds of East Coast residents -the effect on the West coast was much less pronounced- our government has done whatever it can to make sure these feelings are kept alive. So effective and enticing is the fear mongering that presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton grabbed it from the Republican playbook and used it in her now famous 3 am ad.

The same 3 am ad that alarm companies use on a regular basis to convince home owners to plunk down hard earned cash, and subscribe to never-ending, but hopelessly unproductive monitoring services. Never mind that most burglaries happen during the day time. People are afraid of the dark, and nowhere more so it seems than in America. That must be one reason why everyone feels so compelled to leave their lights on all the time.

Recent studies have shown that fear works. It works even when our conscious mind dismisses it. Or when we make fun of it. It works because it is of primary importance in survival. Humans are a fairly weak species. Nearly every other species is faster and stronger than we are. A small chimp can easily outdo the most buffed up, steroid pumped body builder. And not by some tiny amount. Chimps routinely generate four to five times as much force as Mr. Universe. And they do it without breaking a sweat. As many drunken college students find out even birds like ducks, geese, or swans can be serious adversaries. A deer can kill an adult human in a heart beat. And so many dogs have been killing people lately that we are all aware of the pitbull factor. Yes, we have reason to be fearful out there.

Unfortunately, the only defense against fear-inducing advertising is to limit your exposure. I know that you will say, it doesn't affect me, I can see through it, I ignore it. I think it is funny. But brain studies show what Madison Avenue knows to be true. It does affect you and very powerfully so. The White House knows too. In these times of economic uncertainty, high gas prices, and a dying American dream, nothing better than to engage in a bit of war dance to keep that brain occupied and focused.

First there was Al Qaeda, then Afghanistan and finally Iraq. Unfortunately, none of these turned out the way we wanted them too. We let Al Quada get away and then the "battle" turned into an endless search for a tall man with a beard wearing a robe. There are plenty of fearful images out there, but a soft-spoken, tall and skinny bearded fellow is not one of them. Even if we know he is very dangerous. This type of rational thinking does nothing to the fear centers in our brain. Neither do beat up, grimy looking fellows like the "9/11 mastermind." They are less scary than good-looking Ted Bundy. What we need here is some good direct and subconscious stimuli. Like the 3 am ad.

Ditto for Afghanistan. It turned out to be a dusty, backward, stone-age patch that nobody cares about. No photo-ops here either. Iraq was fine as long as we had Saddam and some feigned resistance, but once we got rid of him, and nothing changed what more is there to do? The place turned into an endless rioting quagmire. The images on TV look like LA after the Rodney King trial, except a bit more bloody. Poor neighborhoods with burned out cars and foreign looking natives. How is the mighty American military ever going to score here? Not even the machine gun fire can dispel the image of inner city. Neither can John McCain walking around in a bullet proof vest in a place that looks every bit like South Central LA. Shopping?

Desperate for images, we tried Syria and North Korea. North Korea had the "bomb," except it proved to be a dud. It is a poor country and we all know it. Poor countries are the last thing on earth for us to fear. Nothing here either I am afraid. Furthermore, Kim Jung Il is too aloof to be scary to us. He looks so passe, like the Soviet Union in the last century.

Syria also eluded us. Assad is too much of a cold fish to arouse much enthusiasm and Damascus looks too much like the friendly souk where you buy peppers and henna. But Iran is a godsend. Ahmenidjad is a natural enemy. He taunts us, he laughs at us. He displays all the attributes Madison avenue needs to make a successful enemy. And he is endorsed by the Israelis who are also looking for serious distractions. Our friend Olmert too is quite desperate for diversions.

Unfortunately the Europeans are yawning. They can't be roused. Their stance on Iraq proved correct and now they are smug. And that is why our beloved President is out there rallying the troops. Forget about the mortgage crisis, the sluggish economy, the high gas prices. Let's get our European friends to help us out a bit here. We need to unite against a common enemy. We need a coalition of the willing. The willing to pay that is. Because we are bit cash strapped at the moment. So if you have the cash, we have the fear. Let the games begin.

food and survival

As any mother knows, food is essential to well-being and survival. Produce more food and more people will appear. Furthermore, more will survive into adulthood and more will reproduce and have healthy offspring. Food is the single most important contributor to longer and healthier lives. Well-fed people get sick less and often, and when they do, they survive better than those who are not. The main reason we have so many people on the planet today is because the Green Revolution of the 1950s produced so much excess food. That food was produced thanks to a wealth of cheap fossil fuels.

But food alone is not enough and food prices do matter. If people cannot make a profit, food ends up being wasted. Farmers have thrown away food time and again when they felt their margins were insufficient. As for feeding the world, there has always been enough food to feed everyone alive, but the number of hungry has stayed more or less the same throughout. These people are hungry, not because there is a lack of food, but because they cannot afford to buy it. They starve while we in the West battle with obesity.

Given how world economies work, producing more food will not solve the hunger problem, ever. If we make good food available for cheap prices, then people will quickly reproduce more and more of their offspring will survive. That will lead to higher demand and at some point production improvements, which are rather linear, won't be able to keep up with population growth, which is more exponential in nature.

Chances are things will get worse, a lot worse, before they get better. We already have a severe food crisis and instability is rising around the globe. Prices are rising because of increasing fuel costs, the lure of biofuels, and the increasing demand for higher quality, lower yield items such as beef. All these have some relationship to global warming or remedies for global warming, and all will continue to cause deterioration in the food supply for decades to come. The days of cheap fuel are over and so are the days of cheap food.

Many important food sources are also overextended. Fish stock are at capacity or past capacity and some have predicted the oceans will be empty within 50 years. Given how many people depend on fish as a source of protein, massive starvation is likely to ensue. But global warming -whether man made or not- is also going to rear its ugly face. Some of the best food producers of today are likely to suffer the most. Countries like India will be affected in major ways and that will have repercussions around Asia. With over a billion people, most of them young, and many educated with access to technology, this could give rise to a rather interesting fight.

Already the anger of the world is directly almost exclusively at the US. Many high level foreign officials have used bad words to describe our venture into biofuels. Lots of people around the world look at America as a nation of overweight individuals driving around in oversized cars who show no sign of concern for their starving neighbors. Oh no, rather than help, the Americans are now growing and burning food in their oversized engines to sustain their bad driving habits. And with Congress looking to please constituents in an election year, don't expect anything but more money going into biofuels.

Many Americans are aware of the deteriorating status the country enjoys abroad. But too few are paying attention to this next wave of anti-American sentiment that is building. How would you feel if you saw people hoarding corn for their SUV while your family is starving to death?

looking for an accusation that will stick

One of the unfortunate side-effects of the Iraq debacle is the growing power of Iran. While this was an entirely predictable outcome, the pros in Washington did not see it coming. So much for highly paid advisors with Ivy league pedigrees. The fact that these people expected the Iraqi population to welcome us a liberators shows how disconnected the video war games are from the real world. The real Iraqi's did not behave as our Iraqi Sims predicted.

In a very real sense, Iraq is the price we pay for mistakes the British made. Mistakes we subsequently compounded. Mistakes may be a big word, and it would perhaps be better to say, decisions the British made that looked good in the short term. So good that we reinforced them. This type of shortsightedness is quite common in empires. History shows that it eventually catches up with them.

An easy way to contain the Iran problem would be to "solve" Iraq. That is getting more difficult the longer we wait. Nevertheless, the solution to the Iraq problem is very simple indeed. Except that it is tantamount to admitting a big mistake was made. And we would lose face.

Our acceptable "solution" to Iraq is a Sunni dictator. The Sunni minority is the only group that can keep the country together. And the only way a dictator from a minority group can rule is if they have a solid base of support and a deep network of informers and secret police.

Acceptable means we hold Iraq together is because it is sitting on very large oil reserves. Those reserves are crucial to us if we are to persist in our luxurious and wasteful life-style. It is part of our energy dependence. Addiction is an even better word. If Iraq were to fall apart two large groups, the Kurds and the Shi'ites, would be let loose. These groups have natural alliances that can severely upset the balance of power in the Middle East.

Power in the Middle East means oil. For us, it is best if nobody has a majority stake and if there is some tension between the parties that control it. Some tension that allows us to chose sides and keep the situation in a fluid equilibrium. Every time someone gets too powerful, we side with the others to restore the balance. Today the balance is out of whack in a rather dangerous way. That part at least, the Washington elite is getting. The other part is more difficult. It means selling another war to the public.

One thing the American public requires is wars without casualties. That is without American casualties. The solution to low casualties is high tech. It lies in cruise missiles, smart bombs, remote control vehicles, surveillance, satellites, etc. While it is unrivaled at killing the enemy with little risk to our soldiers, it is proving rather inept at solving problems. High tech surveillance may pinpoint items with uncanny accuracy, but it is very poor at reading human emotions and alliances. It sends us into never ending quagmires.

Never mind all that for now. Now the emphasis is on selling another war. A war that can sufficiently weaken the Iranians so they no longer control the region. But not so much that we enlarge the already troublesome power vacuum. A vacuum that we created by destroying Iran's enemies East and West. And for no good reason really. Other than a bit of blood thirsty revenge for 9-11. Except that it was not directed at the real perpetrators.

chinese miracles

I think it is time to go on record with another prediction. This is not a prediction like the ones fortune tellers give you. It is not vague and universally applicable like "good things will happen to you next year." But it also does not predict specific details. That would be impossible in any case. The future is by definition unpredictable. What we can do however, is extrapolate from current trends and see where that leads us. And currently we are on a collision course with China.

I can see three possible outcomes with respect to China -and to some extent India - if current trends persist. An example of a change in trends would be if China somehow decided to stop growing. Another change would be if we somehow started consuming less. Both are unlikely to the point of being ridiculous. Current trends means we are both persisting in what we are doing. The West continues to consume at its wasteful rate and China and India continue to move in the direction of matching us in wasteful consumption.

The first outcome, and maybe the best one for us -that means the West- is if China were to somehow implode. If it were to choke on its growth to the point where it had to stop. That will not happen voluntarily and it may not happen without a fight, but under this scenario the fight would be largely internal and have only a minor effect on the rest of the world. I spoke to some friends who go to China often and do business there and they think this could happen. But it is hard to say how likely it is. One key reason is because we do not have good data on China. Nor do the Chinese for that matter, except maybe some of the leadership, but even that is doubtful. It is a closed society and that means a lot is unknown.

The other two outcomes are much less appetizing. Both for us and for them. The second scenario would be war. It too is something that many consider likely. War could come as a series of regional conflicts and it may even resemble the cold war we had with Russia. It maybe fought in Africa, the Middle East or even SouthEast Asia. It may involve little direct or overt confrontation.

Or, it could be an all out world war scenario. At this time China is not ready for this type of all out war, but over time its readiness may improve. There is also little rationale for a war at this time. There is still a ways to go before resource limitations become critical. However, if war is the outcome, the sooner it starts the better. If tensions are allowed to mount to the point where an all out war is the only option, outcomes will be very poor. An all out scenario is very unlikely in any case, but one never knows.

The third outcome is a more global type of collapse or implosion. I like to envision it as a new middle ages. A generalized and profound drop in the standard of living for nearly everyone on the planet. This could also be the Club of Rome scenario, although the Club reports predicted conflicts and wars. But an implosion without conflicts or regional wars is almost impossible. So what distinguishes the "global collapse" scenario from the "war scenario" is that there is no overall winner in the former whereas the latter does imply someone would come out ahead -either us or them.

My intuition is that a new middle ages scenario is the most likely outcome. There are several internal weaknesses that could cause a collapse in our fortunes. And if we collapse, the rest of the world is likely to follow.

As for timing, that is much harder to predict, but I suspect events will start unfolding sooner than anyone realizes. The world will be a different place by the middle of this century for sure.

war a la woodward

I heard Bob Woodward speak yesterday and it made me think about war and what motivates people to fight wars. Woodward is a great speaker, who is very funny and very serious at the same time. He certainly spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what was behind the war in Iraq. He is now in the process of writing his fourth book on Bush's war and I spent some time yesterday reading parts of volume three. I also read some reviews on that book earlier last summer.

It got me thinking about the causes of war. And especially about why it is so difficult for people to see what the real drivers are. That is because people are good at hiding their motives. "People lie," Woodward said, although he also said he thought Bush did not lie when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Weapons of mass deception would be a better term. For anyone to think WMD had something to do with the war is quite naive really. People fight wars for one reason and one reason only: resources.

No it is not ideology, beliefs, or religion that lead to war. These things have very little do with it. What drives people is resources and the key resource of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century is oil. I have already highlighted how important oil is. Oil not only gives us mobility, heating and cooling, but also materials like plastics and polymers. And perhaps even more important, oil is essential for food. We put in 9-10 calories of oil for every calorie of food we harvest. Without oil, lots of people would starve, and many others would have to settle for unappetizing foods -or at least food they consider unappetizing.

Ideologies, beliefs and religions do play a role in warfare but mostly to do one of the following: to band and group people together, to justify the cause, to stir emotions, and to make news headlines. I have no doubt Woodward is right when he said Bush felt it was "his duty to liberate people (or set them free)." This is a great American header. Freedom is the American religion of choice. In practice though it means very little and history has shown that the US has supported dictators and other adversaries of freedom at least as often as more democratically minded politicians.

The US supports democracies -even those that follow from free elections -only when it suits our needs. Many times the US has helped overthrow freely elected governments in favor of ruthless dictators. But the header let freedom ring is a big crowd pleaser nonetheless. And one all presidents in modern history have resorted to in times of need.

It seems obvious that there would have been no Iraq war if Iraq were an African country without oil. There have been scores of atrocities, genocide, and other problems in Africa in recent years. Yet we never intervened other than maybe condemn the situation. As a matter of fact, often we have used the statement to bury the matter and keep a lid on it. This is a great political ploy and one the current administration is very good at using: talk about issues or agree to talk about them at a later time. In the meantime, you can just forget about it. If Darfur comes to mind, you are with me. But Washington also used a similar tactic to silence the global warming crowd. And with great success I might add.

Whatever convictions or justifications Bush and his bedfellows may have, it seems more than obvious that Greenspan was right when he said, "I thought it was mostly about oil." And anyone who is honest will agree.