They’re trying to recover their position as a major world power. For a long time they were the major world power before what they call the “century of humiliation.” They are now coming back to a three-thousand-year tradition of being the center of the world and dismissing the barbarians. So, okay, “we’ll just go back to that and the US can’t do anything about it,” which is causing enormous frustration. That’s why they get terribly upset when China doesn’t observe US sanctions on Iran. By now it’s not China and Iran that are isolated on Iran sanctions; it’s the United States that’s isolated. The nonaligned countries—118 countries, most of the world—have always supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium, still do. Turkey recently constructed a pipeline to Iran, so has Pakistan. Turkey’s trade with Iran has been going way up, they’re planning to triple it the next few years. In the Arab world, public opinion is so outraged at the United States that a real majority now favors Iran developing nuclear weapons, not just nuclear energy. The US doesn’t take that too seriously, they figure that dictatorships can control the populations. But when Turkey’s involved or, certainly, when China’s involved, it becomes a threat. That’s why you get these desperate tones.
Apart from Europe, almost nobody’s accepting US orders on this. Brazil’s probably the most important country in the South. Not long ago, Brazil and Turkey made a deal with Iran for enriching a large part of the uranium; the US quickly shot that down. They don’t want it, but the world is just hard to control.[60] The Grand Area planning was okay at the end of the Second World War when the US was overwhelmingly dominant, but it has been kind of fractured ever since—and during the last few years, considerably. And I think this is related to the proliferation issues. The US is strongly supporting India and Israel, and the reason is they’ve now turned India into a close strategic ally—Israel always was. India, on the other hand, is playing it pretty cool. They’re also improving their relations with China.
President Obama recently secured military basing rights in Australia and formed a new free-trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which excludes China. Is this move related to the South China Sea?
Yes, in particular that, but it’s more general. It has to do with the “classic security dilemma” that I mentioned before, referring to the strategic analysis literature. China’s efforts to gain some measure of control over nearby seas and its major trade routes are inconsistent with what the US calls “freedom of the seas”—a term that doesn’t extend to Chinese military maneuvers in the Caribbean or even most of the world’s oceans, but does include the US right to carry out military maneuvers and establish naval bases everywhere. For different reasons, China’s neighbors are none too happy about its actions, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, which have competing claims to these waters, but others as well.[61] The focus of US policy is slowly shifting from the Middle East—though that remains—to the Pacific, as openly announced. That includes new bases from Australia to South Korea (and a continuing and very significant conflict over Okinawa), and also economic agreements, called “free-trade agreements,” though the phrase is more propaganda than reality, as in other such cases.[62] Much of it is a system to “contain China.”
To what degree are current maritime sovereignty disputes related to oil and gas reserves?
In part. There are underseas fossil-fuel resources, and a good deal of contention among regional states about rights to them. But it’s more than that. The new US base on Jeju Island in South Korea, bitterly protested by islanders, is not primarily concerned with energy resources. Other issues have to do with the Malacca Straits, China’s main trade route, which does involve oil and gas but also much else.[63]
In the background is the more general concern over parts of the world escaping from US control and influence, the contemporary variant of Grand Area policies. Much of this extends the practice of earlier hegemonic powers, though the scale of US post–World War II planning and implementation has been in a class by itself because of its unique wealth and power.
5.
China and the Green Revolution
Laray Polk: In researching the cutting-edge innovations in energy in the US, it’s pretty much the same players: GE; IBM; Raytheon; the DOE, they’re funding fusion research; and a whole new department called ARPA-E based on DARPA, but with a focus on energy. Soldiers are currently using solar cells in the field and the navy is testing algae-based fuel.[64]
Noam Chomsky: Got to keep the military going, doesn’t matter about the rest of us. Profits and the military: those are the two things that matter. And the military, of course, is not unrelated to profit.[65]
It’s discouraging to see who is developing what. I can’t see any of those entities marketing energy any differently than from the past.
It’s even true of very simple things just take weatherization of homes. That’s not high technology. It could put huge numbers of people to work, it would be a great stimulus for the economy, and it would be quite effective in retarding the effects of climate change. It’s not a solution to the problem, but at least it provides more time to do something about it.
Recently there was a company in England that does weatherization that announced it had essentially done about everything you can in England. Almost everybody had it and they wanted to shift to the United States with a huge untapped market, but they’re not sure it’s going to be economically feasible here because they don’t get any assistance.[66]
And, in fact, that’s what’s happening with the green technology. China provides a support system for development of green technology.[67] The United States does too, but a lot is for the support of military technology. That’s actually a change from the past, a regression from the past. The actual US economy since the colonies has relied quite substantially on government intervention. That goes right back to the earliest days of independence, and for advanced industry in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The American system of mass production, interchangeable parts, quality control, and so on—which kind of astonished the world—was largely designed in government armories. The railroad system, which was the biggest capital investment and, of course, extremely significant for economic development and expansion, was managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. It was too complicated for private business.
Taylorism, the management technique that essentially turns workers into robots, came out of government and military production. The same was true of radio in the 1920s, but the big upsurge was in the postwar period—right where we are, in fact. Down below where we’re sitting, there used to be a Second World War temporary building, where I was for many years, where they were developing—this was the 1950s, and then on through the ’60s and beyond—computers, the beginnings of the Internet, information technology, software, everything that became the modern high-tech revolution. Almost all of it was on Pentagon funding—ARPA, it was then, now it’s DARPA—or just the three armed services, and that laid the basis for the US high-tech industries, very substantially, and, in fact, often with a long delay. Even computers, the core of the modern economy, were being developed from around the early 1950s, mostly with government funding. They weren’t commercially viable for about thirty years.
60
“Iran Says Uranium to Go to Turkey, Brazil for Enrichment,” Voice of America, May 17, 2010; David E. Sanger and Michael Slackman, “U.S. Is Skeptical on Iranian Deal for Nuclear Fuel,”
61
Journalist Zoher Abdoolcarim describes the disputes as a complex of regional relationships: “When it comes to feuds in the Pacific over islands and what lies beneath, it’s not simply a case of China against everyone else. Depending on the dispute, it’s also South Korea vs. Japan, Japan vs. Taiwan, Taiwan vs. Vietnam, Vietnam vs. Cambodia and numerous other permutations—for many of the same reasons supposedly behind China’s actions. Resource grab. Patriotic posturing. Historical baggage (mostly to do with Japan’s brutal occupation of most of East Asia before and through World War II)…. Amid East Asia’s island fever, there’s big and small, strong and weak, rich and poor, and enlightened and unenlightened self-interest. But not as innocent as good vs. evil.” “Why Asia’s Maritime Disputes Are Not Just about China,” TIMEWorld (World.Time.com), August 19, 2012.
62
On tensions between free-trade agreements and the “higher values of the protection of the earth and people’s livelihoods,” see Vandana Shiva,
63
Jeju Island, located in the Korean Strait, is being prepared as “an expansive base which would be home to 20 warships and submarines and would serve as a strategic component in the U.S. military’s sea-based ballistic missile defense system.” In July 2012, the Indian Navy announced a new base on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a means to patrol the Malacca Straits, one of the busiest sea-lanes in the world. In 2006, the
64
Yoni Cohen, “Green Startups Target the Department of Defense
65
Since the late 1980s the Pentagon has been working on transforming the infantry soldier into a complete weapons system, currently referred to as Future Force Warrior. Work is conducted at MIT (ISN) and UC Berkeley (BLEEX). Based on projected trends in a “future security environment,” Future Force Warrior is being readied for climate change and natural disasters, rising resource demands, and the proliferation of WMDs. The program’s research investment has “demonstrated commercial spin-off benefits for the nation’s civilian economy.” US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center (Nsrdec.Natick.Army.Mil), s.vv. “NSRDEC Future Soldier 2030 Initiative,” “Doing Business with Us.” On nanotech and federal funding, see notes 11 and 12, chap. 2.
66
The US Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) is limited to serving low-income households at or below 150 percent of the poverty guidelines. DOE, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, s.v. “Weatherization & Intergovernmental Program.”
67
According to Bloomberg, one source of loans and credit lines for China’s green technology, CDB, has “more than twice the World Bank’s assets.” CDB funds Sinovel, Xinjiang Goldwind, Suntech, and China Ming Yang Wind. Natalie Obiko Pearson, “China Targets GE Wind Turbines with $15.5 Billion War Chest,” Bloomberg.com, October 14, 2011. The US imported $3.1 billion worth of Chinese solar cells in 2011; in March 2012 the US Department of Commerce announced a tariff on imported Chinese solar cells and panels after seven manufacturers filed a complaint alleging: “illegal government subsidies have made it possible for Chinese companies to gain unfair trade advantages. The subsidies include loans, lines of credit, tax breaks, and favorable terms for insurances, land and utility costs.” Ucilia Wang, “Obama Administration to Impose Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels,”