I discussed the rather conventional geopolitical scenario for the United States in my last post. I wanted to discuss economics next.
Or rather, if we are talking about an existential threat, there's not a lot that we should truly be worried about. But tanks can't fight if they don't have fuel. People can't live if they can't get food. And there's a lot more to security than just having a lot of tanks and planes and soldiers.
Economics - well. I'm not an economist, and I recommend you take what I'm about to post with some skepticism, since I admit I am not an expert here. (When I daydream, I sometimes imagine I was wealthy enough to just putz around taking classes in economics, computer science, and finance...and then blog here about any interesting intersectionality. I don't want a degree in those fields, I just want to know them well enough to help build my understanding of the world we live in today.)
So anyways, there are two or three points I want to make about economics. First, nations do compete for scarce resources. Access to those resources may not quite count as an existential threat, or maybe it does. I phrased it that way to make a point about how different countries view this issue. One way of assessing our economic security is to see how capable we are of guaranteeing the resources we would need. (With regards to energy, for example, we have a somewhat mixed outlook. We do have our own domestic energy supplies. Oil, natural gas, etc. Some of that has been aided by fracking, and where energy security fits in with environmental concerns is a debate worth having at some point. But we are still a net consumer, not producer, of oil. So even though we probably could tighten our belts and ration resources if need be, we would struggle to keep our current standard of living without external sources. We are in a much better condition than Europe, however, and Russia's use of Gazprom in their foreign policy is something to pay attention to.)
Btw, economic security isn't just about energy. Or rare earth minerals, even. It's also about the basics of food, water, and enough resources for a sustained wartime effort. The US is in a good position, again, w/regards to food. We are quite the breadbasket, after all. I get a little fuzzy on exactly what is necessary here, but I do believe Athens lasted so long after their failed Sicilian Expedition in part because of their strong maritime trade-based economy. And that it's worth paying attention to the debate on how effective the Anaconda Plan was during the Civil War. There's also merit to those who point out that our enemies used very inexpensive IEDs to take out very expensive Strykers and other pieces of military equipment. In a sustained effort, can we afford to keep spending millions of dollars on equipment that our enemies destroy using parts that only cost a couple hundred dollars?
Economic security, however, gets into tricky territory. After all, our involvement with installing the shah in Iran was allegedly about oil security, and it rather backfired on us.
Second, I want to go into the importance of trade routes, and trade in general. Given what's been going on in this election year, a lot of people are questioning the benefit of trade and globalization. We have grown so interconnected, btw, that it's really hard to say who is dependent on what, and where. That is, we have Toyota cars built in the United States. American finished goods with subcomponents from China, Malaysia, Singapore, and more.
Again, I want to emphasize that you should talk to a good economist if you're interested in the subject. But I'll give a little anecdote that, oversimplified though it is, may be useful.
Picture the original independent farmstead. The family living there grows their own food, weaves their own clothes, milks their own cows, builds their own houses with material from their own fields and nearby land.
Now picture a neighbor moves in close by. The neighboring family has a field that isn't very good for planting, but is pretty good for pasturing cows. So the second family decides to get a few more cows than they need for their own sake, and offers to sell the extra milk to their neighbors. Those neighbors no longer need to keep their own cow, so maybe they sell the cow and turn the cow pasture into another field. Now they're growing more corn or wheat or whatever than they need for themselves, so they can turn around and sell that to their neighbor. Or take it to market.
Trading that surplus benefits both families. They're able to get more of what they need, they don't have to spend as much effort trying to do it all themselves, etc. But trade also makes it harder to go back to true independence. If disaster struck, the family that had sold their cow would have to invest in a new cow and turn a field back into pasture if they wanted to get their own milk again.
So anyways. Trade is good, mostly. But it leads to specialization and interdependence. And when you throw in nationalism, elite gamemanship, imperialism, globalization and multi-national corporations then the benefits may go to one particular group more than the others (and hurt others more than they benefit by it.)
The third factor I wanted to discuss was trade routes. Shipping, btw, is still one of the fastest and cheapest ways of getting material from point A to point B. Basically you can fit a lot more product on a ship than you can on a train, plane, or truck. You can't use trains and trucks to ship across the ocean, and planes just can't hold as much material. So shipping lanes are pretty important.
Take a look at this map:
It kind of gives you a sense of the largest shipping routes and some key locations. The Strait of Malacca, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Suez Canal are all areas where trade must either flow through a constricted area or take a very long way around. Actually, here's a nice little article talking about 8 global choke points. Primarily discussing the flow of oil, but more trade goods than just oil ship through these chokepoints.
If you pay attention to history and/or current events, most of these names should already be familiar. I want to point to our history with Panama and the Panama Canal, though, because the transition from our control to Panama illustrates some strategic points. Namely that we don't actually have to control these choke points, so long as we have the freedom to navigate through them.
This is part of why the South China Sea is so tense right now (the possibility of oil within the sea itself is also a factor). We sail around to make a point of the freedom of the seas, China sees it as an infringement on their territory, and all it will take is one stupid hothead and a few leaders unable or unwilling to look weak and we could wind up in a war with China. The thing of it is, though, that so long as everyone is able to sail through the Strait of Malacca (and so long as there is no unreasonable taxes or duties that effectively limit usage) it shouldn't actually matter to much who has nominal control. I'm sure that betrays something about my own ignorance of the area...and perhaps it doesn't matter so much to us (given how far away we are), whereas to the small nations around there it could make a tremendous difference to their economy.
And, of course, there's always the fear that if China did control the straits and was hostile to the US, it would seriously impact our shipping.
Or rather, if we are talking about an existential threat, there's not a lot that we should truly be worried about. But tanks can't fight if they don't have fuel. People can't live if they can't get food. And there's a lot more to security than just having a lot of tanks and planes and soldiers.
Economics - well. I'm not an economist, and I recommend you take what I'm about to post with some skepticism, since I admit I am not an expert here. (When I daydream, I sometimes imagine I was wealthy enough to just putz around taking classes in economics, computer science, and finance...and then blog here about any interesting intersectionality. I don't want a degree in those fields, I just want to know them well enough to help build my understanding of the world we live in today.)
So anyways, there are two or three points I want to make about economics. First, nations do compete for scarce resources. Access to those resources may not quite count as an existential threat, or maybe it does. I phrased it that way to make a point about how different countries view this issue. One way of assessing our economic security is to see how capable we are of guaranteeing the resources we would need. (With regards to energy, for example, we have a somewhat mixed outlook. We do have our own domestic energy supplies. Oil, natural gas, etc. Some of that has been aided by fracking, and where energy security fits in with environmental concerns is a debate worth having at some point. But we are still a net consumer, not producer, of oil. So even though we probably could tighten our belts and ration resources if need be, we would struggle to keep our current standard of living without external sources. We are in a much better condition than Europe, however, and Russia's use of Gazprom in their foreign policy is something to pay attention to.)
Btw, economic security isn't just about energy. Or rare earth minerals, even. It's also about the basics of food, water, and enough resources for a sustained wartime effort. The US is in a good position, again, w/regards to food. We are quite the breadbasket, after all. I get a little fuzzy on exactly what is necessary here, but I do believe Athens lasted so long after their failed Sicilian Expedition in part because of their strong maritime trade-based economy. And that it's worth paying attention to the debate on how effective the Anaconda Plan was during the Civil War. There's also merit to those who point out that our enemies used very inexpensive IEDs to take out very expensive Strykers and other pieces of military equipment. In a sustained effort, can we afford to keep spending millions of dollars on equipment that our enemies destroy using parts that only cost a couple hundred dollars?
Economic security, however, gets into tricky territory. After all, our involvement with installing the shah in Iran was allegedly about oil security, and it rather backfired on us.
Second, I want to go into the importance of trade routes, and trade in general. Given what's been going on in this election year, a lot of people are questioning the benefit of trade and globalization. We have grown so interconnected, btw, that it's really hard to say who is dependent on what, and where. That is, we have Toyota cars built in the United States. American finished goods with subcomponents from China, Malaysia, Singapore, and more.
Again, I want to emphasize that you should talk to a good economist if you're interested in the subject. But I'll give a little anecdote that, oversimplified though it is, may be useful.
Picture the original independent farmstead. The family living there grows their own food, weaves their own clothes, milks their own cows, builds their own houses with material from their own fields and nearby land.
Now picture a neighbor moves in close by. The neighboring family has a field that isn't very good for planting, but is pretty good for pasturing cows. So the second family decides to get a few more cows than they need for their own sake, and offers to sell the extra milk to their neighbors. Those neighbors no longer need to keep their own cow, so maybe they sell the cow and turn the cow pasture into another field. Now they're growing more corn or wheat or whatever than they need for themselves, so they can turn around and sell that to their neighbor. Or take it to market.
Trading that surplus benefits both families. They're able to get more of what they need, they don't have to spend as much effort trying to do it all themselves, etc. But trade also makes it harder to go back to true independence. If disaster struck, the family that had sold their cow would have to invest in a new cow and turn a field back into pasture if they wanted to get their own milk again.
So anyways. Trade is good, mostly. But it leads to specialization and interdependence. And when you throw in nationalism, elite gamemanship, imperialism, globalization and multi-national corporations then the benefits may go to one particular group more than the others (and hurt others more than they benefit by it.)
The third factor I wanted to discuss was trade routes. Shipping, btw, is still one of the fastest and cheapest ways of getting material from point A to point B. Basically you can fit a lot more product on a ship than you can on a train, plane, or truck. You can't use trains and trucks to ship across the ocean, and planes just can't hold as much material. So shipping lanes are pretty important.
Take a look at this map:
It kind of gives you a sense of the largest shipping routes and some key locations. The Strait of Malacca, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Suez Canal are all areas where trade must either flow through a constricted area or take a very long way around. Actually, here's a nice little article talking about 8 global choke points. Primarily discussing the flow of oil, but more trade goods than just oil ship through these chokepoints.
If you pay attention to history and/or current events, most of these names should already be familiar. I want to point to our history with Panama and the Panama Canal, though, because the transition from our control to Panama illustrates some strategic points. Namely that we don't actually have to control these choke points, so long as we have the freedom to navigate through them.
This is part of why the South China Sea is so tense right now (the possibility of oil within the sea itself is also a factor). We sail around to make a point of the freedom of the seas, China sees it as an infringement on their territory, and all it will take is one stupid hothead and a few leaders unable or unwilling to look weak and we could wind up in a war with China. The thing of it is, though, that so long as everyone is able to sail through the Strait of Malacca (and so long as there is no unreasonable taxes or duties that effectively limit usage) it shouldn't actually matter to much who has nominal control. I'm sure that betrays something about my own ignorance of the area...and perhaps it doesn't matter so much to us (given how far away we are), whereas to the small nations around there it could make a tremendous difference to their economy.
And, of course, there's always the fear that if China did control the straits and was hostile to the US, it would seriously impact our shipping.
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