Tag Archives: superpower

Could the United States really go to war with China? | Foreign Policy

Are we on the brink of a new Cold War? The question isn’t as outlandish as it seemed only a few years ago. The United States is still the sole reigning superpower, but it is being challenged by the rising power of China, just as ancient Rome was challenged by Carthage, and Britain was challenged by Germany in the years before World War I. Should we therefore think of the United States and China as we once did about the United States and the Soviet Union, two gladiators doomed to an increasingly globalized combat until one side fades?

The Unstoppable Force vs. the Immovable Object – by Noah Feldman | Foreign Policy

The Coming Demographic Crisis | Hoover Institution

But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, “Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things.” Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource.

Finally, foreign policy will increasingly be impacted by the global decline in fertility. Those who fear China as a future superpower threat to our interests should remember that by 2050, China’s population will be declining by 20 million every five years, and one out of four people will be over the age of 65. China’s public pension system covers only 365 million people and is unfunded by 150 percent of GDP. What we need to prepare for “is not a shooting war with an expansionist China,” Last writes, “but a declining superpower with a rapidly contracting economic base and an unstable political structure. It’s not clear which scenario is more worrisome.”

Let us not forget the other rapidly aging and shrinking superpower, Russia. It has a fertility rate of 1.3, and an average life expectancy of 66 years. By 2050, its population will be a third smaller than it is today. Russia’s current global belligerence under Vladimir Putin in part reflects the fact that, as Last writes, “the country has very little to lose.” A “wounded bear,” as Last calls Russia, armed with nuclear weapons is likely to remain a serious font of global disorder.

The Coming Demographic Crisis | Hoover Institution

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster: Jonathan V. Last: 9781594036415: Amazon.com: Books

Amazon.Com comment:

94 of 98 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars

The lamps are going out in maternity wards all over the world, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime… February 4, 2013
By L.B.
Format:Hardcover

Having just finished this well-written and sobering look at fertility decline and the coming population implosion both here and abroad, I’m tempted to paraphrase Sir Edward Grey’s famous remark on the eve of the First World War: “The lamps are going out in maternity wards all over the world, and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime…” Contrary to the worries of the overpopulation crowd, we’re simply not having enough babies, due to what the author describes as a “giant constellation” of factors — and the likely consequences of this global baby bust are grim.

Demographics can be a tricky subject to write about, and difficult to read about. But have no fear — Mr. Last lays out the facts and data about our demographic & fertility dilemma clearly and thoroughly (and in under 200 pages sans footnotes!); he teases out the implications of these facts judiciously; and he does it all with enough dark humor and interesting vignettes to make the demographic medicine go down easy. (One fascinating example: He notes that last year in Japan — a nation well-advanced in a demographic death spiral — consumers bought more adult diapers than diapers for babies, for the first time ever. Let that nugget sink in for a minute.) Mr. Last is clear-eyed about the probable consequences of population decline, and he does a fine job showing its likely effects on everything from the unsustainability of our entitlement programs to foreign policy to American economic growth and innovation — while always cautioning that Demography is not inevitably Destiny.

No doubt some will assume the author wants to pin blame on feminism, or on selfish women who sacrifice motherhood for careers. I would respectfully ask such persons to read the book with an open mind, because Mr. Last does no such thing. In fact, he goes out of his way to say that our birth dearth results not from some sinister anti-family conspiracy, but from a whole variety of causes, many of them unquestionable goods (e.g., the decline in infant mortality rates, the greater career opportunities available to women, even something as mundane as child car-seat laws). But as he notes, even net goods like these can come at a broader social cost.

Certainly, Mr. Last doesn’t shy away from discussing the real effects on fertility of things like the invention of the birth-control pill, or the rise of cohabitation and no-fault divorce (and their negative effect on marriage) — and he makes no secret of his own (conservative) views on these topics. But as another reviewer noted above, he scrupulously refrains from preaching on these matters. In fact, he’s even willing to highlight data suggesting, for example, that abortion might not reduce fertility rates nearly as much as you’d think. His intellectual honesty shines through on every page of the book.

Mr. Last concludes with a chilling observation: Our looming demographic crisis shows that after a century of trying, we have still not figured out “how to balance liberalism, modern economics, and family life.” Resolving this conundrum is a matter of utmost importance for America and for all nations in the 21st century. “What to Expect…” is a much-needed conversation-starter on this topic, and a lucid and engaging tour through our increasingly barren landscape (if you’ll pardon the pun!).

Chinese, French leaders vow to seek ‘multipolar’ world as French president visits China | Fox News

China’s President Xi Jinping and France’s President Francois Hollande pledged to push for a world free of domination by any superpower Thursday as the French leader visited the Chinese capital in hopes of boosting trade amid his country’s worsening economic woes.

Both leaders stressed their desire for a “multipolar” world that would dilute Washington’s influence — though they did not mention the U.S. in their comments.

Chinese, French leaders vow to seek ‘multipolar’ world as French president visits China | Fox News

The problem with a multipolar world is that historically it has led to wars.

The World Is Marching Toward Anarchy – Robert Kaplan

The fact is that domination of one sort or another, tyrannical or not, has a better chance of preventing the outbreak of war than a system in which no one is really in charge; where no one is the top dog, so to speak. That is why Columbia University’s Kenneth Waltz, arguably America’s pre-eminent realist, says that the opposite of “anarchy” is not stability, but “hierarchy.”

The World Is Marching Toward Anarchy – Robert Kaplan

The Icy Fingers of Virulent, Barbaric Russian Anti-Americanism | Dying Russia

On Valentine’s Day, the Russian newspaper Vedemosti wrote a tough-love letter to the people of Russia. It pointed out that one-fifth of the Russian urban population has no hot water in its homes, and that one third of the population, nearly 50 million people, have inadequate hot water supply.  More than 20 million Russians have inadequate heat, and over 13% rely solely upon their stoves for heating (a massive fire hazard, one reason Russia has one of highest fire fatality rates in the world).

These facts are reflective of Russia’s continuing backwardness compared to the Western nations with which it would compete. Russia ranks #130 in the world for life expectancy of its citizens, right behind Bangladesh and Philippines.  It ranks #53 in the world for per capita nominal GDP, behind Uruguay and Equatorial Guinea.

So why is this backwards, impoverished nation declaring war on the United States, the world’s only superpower? The evidence shows conclusively that is exactly what is happening.

The Icy Fingers of Virulent, Barbaric Russian Anti-Americanism | Dying Russia

Russia’s Return To The Middle East: Rebirth Of A Superpower? | Economy Watch

Putin is certain that he is holding the winning hand in this very high stakes poker game. An offshore naval task force, the presence of Russian air defense forces, an electronic intelligence center in latakia, and the port facilities at Tardus will guarantee the independence of the enclave. As the supplier of sixty percent of Turkey’s natural gas, Moscow does have leverage that Ankara will not be able to ignore; and Ankara well knows that gas is one of Putin’s diplomatic weapons.

Related: A New Russian Empire: What Exactly Is Putin Planning?

Related: The Shifting Sands of Power In The Middle East: George Friedman

When the Turks and U.S see that there is little chance of removing Al-Assad, they will have no option other than to negotiate a settlement with him; and that would involve Russia as the protector and the mediator. That would establish Russia’s revived standing as a Mediterranean power; and Putin could declare confidently that “Russia is back.” After that, the Russians will be free to focus upon their real interests in the region.

And what is Russia’s real interest? Of course, it is oil and gas and the power that control of them can bring.

Russia’s Return To The Middle East: Rebirth Of A Superpower? | Economy Watch

How France Got So Lazy – The Daily Beast

Ironically, the high-profile dig made headlines just as France’s president, François Hollande, was winning praise for launching gutsy military campaigns in Somalia and Mali this winter. A recent Newsweek piece even hailed Hollande for putting France back on the map as a “manly superpower.”  But back at home, it’s increasingly clear that stifling union rules, high unemployment (and higher taxes), and a baffling lack of entrepreneurial spirit signal a country in crisis. And the deepening sense of dread can be traced directly to the educational system.

“It’s a culture of nul,” says Peter Gumbel, whose bestseller On Achève Bien les Écoliers (They Shoot School Kids, Don’t They?) criticized the French school system for creating a generation of bureaucrats who refuse to think out of the box. Nul, or “worthless,” is a familiar word to the French—it’s often tossed at schoolchildren who do not get their lessons right.

How France Got So Lazy – The Daily Beast

Obama cyber strategy limited to diplomacy, law enforcement | Washington Free Beacon

However, policy specific to China is not mentioned in the text of the strategy.

“This strategy is not focused on any one country nor is it focused on cybersecurity exclusively, though cyber does play an important role in the strategy,” said a White House official.

U.S. officials said the strategy deliberately played down the major role played by China in order to avoid upsetting relations with Beijing.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the report for lacking substance.

“Repeating its strategic mistake of treating international terrorism as primarily a matter of law-enforcement, the Obama administration sees cyberspace the same way conceptually,” Bolton told the Free Beacon.

Obama cyber strategy limited to diplomacy, law enforcement | Washington Free Beacon

Why don’t US officials want to upset Beijing? Notice that Beijing isn’t worried about upsetting the US. Why not?

Here we have the US terrified of upsetting Beijing. Beijing acts with impunity. Who is the superpower here? Has the student become the master? I think the US is in big trouble.

Chinese attack on US media sets new bar for digital wars – The Times of India

The attacks were routed through US universities in an attempt to hide their origin, but investigations by a cyber security firm employed by NYT to track the hacking led them to China. Expectedly, Beijing rubbished the charges, saying it is “totally irresponsible” to accuse China of participating in the online attacks without proof. But Washington thinks there is enough evidence and has said it will take it up with Beijing.

US analysts believe the Chinese attacks are state-sponsored if not state-led. For one, the forays were mainly aimed at newspapers that were investigating corruption in the Chinese leadership, particularly at journalists covering the political and economic beat in China.

The attackers also kept government timings — typically clocking in at 8 am Beijing time and winding up at 5 pm, although on occasions they continued till midnight.

Chinese attack on US media sets new bar for digital wars – The Times of India

Why does China feel it can do this? Why isn’t China afraid? Why hasn’t the US been aggressively responding to these types of attacks?

Isn’t this really just a sign of greater things to come?

Here we have a weakened superpower that is decline. It hasn’t been responding appropriately to China for decades. This has now emboldened China to the point where it attacks, undermines or intimidates the US and its allies. It seems to have little fear of the US. All of this can only bring greater danger in the future.

Europe: The world’s new superpower | Full Comment | National Post

“A decade of war is now ending,” U.S. President Barack Obama declared Monday. Maybe that’s true in America, but it isn’t true anywhere else. Extremists are still plotting acts of terror. Authoritarian and autocratic regimes are still using violence to preserve their power. The United States can step back from international conflicts, but that won’t make them disappear.

Fortunately, there is another power that shares America’s economic and political values, that possesses sophisticated military technology and is also very interested in stopping the progress of fanatical movements, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. That power is Europe.

Europe: The world’s new superpower | National Post

China’s me-first foreign policy

The nation’s behavior as a modern superpower is reminiscent of its imperial past.

China’s more assertive foreign policy over the last two years has played a key role in getting two arch-conservatives — Japan’s Shinzo Abe and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye — elected to lead their respective countries. Some Chinese observers believe that Abe and Park will be forced by China’s inexorable rise to come to terms with their giant neighbor. Don’t count on it. To much of its region, China’s behavior as it is coming of age as a modern superpower is eerily reminiscent of its past policy as a regional hegemon.

For a very long time, imperial China dominated its wider region. The Chinese imperial court considered itself the indispensable center of a regional order in which China had the right and the duty to set international norms and standards, and to intervene if these were broken. It was an ideological system in which Chinese principles had to be the starting point for all things.

China is again tripping over its own foreign policy – latimes.com