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Deleted ScenesDeleted Scene #12Chapter Four: The Core and GapSection: The Flow of Security, or How America Must Keep Globalization in BalanceCommentary: This twelfth "deleted scene" was originally slated in the planned sixth section of the chapter, which subsequently was merged with the fifth one. This small bit about downstream energy issues in Asia simply did not make the cut as we merged the two together. I include it simply because it's interesting and topical. Recently, news stories began appearing that suggest Japan has beaten out China for the much anticipated and needed pipeline project from Siberia. Deleted Scene: Downstream Issues in Asian Energy[TEXT BEGINS] But our permanent intervention into the Middle East means America is now responsible for ensuring the flow of energy out of that region on a level far beyond that of decades past. Securing that flow is no longer just part of our national interest, it becomes our global responsibility. How we transform the Middle East will reshape the world's energy market in coming years and decades. When we ran our World Trade Center workshop on the future of energy in Asia in the spring of 2000, our expert participants seemed convinced that energy pipelines linking Siberia and East Asian economies would remain political difficult to achieve, what with all the cheap energy flowing smoothly out of the Middle East.1 In short, they were saying that so long as the global markets worked well, China and Japan would probably put off all the hassle and cost of constructing relatively inefficient pipelines from Russia. After all, China and Russia have never been the best of friends, and Japan and Russia are still technically at war with one another! Oh how circumstances can change! Now China and Japan stumble over one another in their ongoing efforts to be the first East Asian economies to link up to Siberian oil fields, with Chinese officials already bragging about how their dependency on Middle Eastern oil should be quickly halved by this new connectivity.2 As a senior Chinese trade official remarked when fellow-Core Australia recently won a huge natural gas contract with Beijing, trumping two competitors from the Gap (Indonesia and Qatar), "Pricing is an important, but not exclusive, factor."3 Such sentiments are to be expected but not welcomed, because in a world in which security trumps economics, everyone loses: the Core may stay tight but at the loss of economic efficiency; meanwhile the Gap grows a little bit more disconnected. [1] Thomas P.M. Barnett et. al, Asian Energy Futures: Decision Event
Report I of the NewRuleSets.Project, Center for Naval Warfare Studies,
U.S. Naval War College, revised edition posted 16 April 2001, available
online at <http://www.nwc.navy.mil/newrulesets/AEFreport.htm.> [2] James Whalen, "Japan and China Compete for Russia's Crude Oil," The Wall Street Journal, 13 January 2003; and "China To Cut Dependence On Mideast Oil To 26% by '06-HSBC," Dow Jones Newswires, 10 June 2003, 03:59:10. [3] Keith Bradsher, "Australia Wins 25-Year Deal to Sell Gas to China," The New York Times, 9 August 2002. [TEXT ENDS] |
Putnam, 2004 |
