■"China Expands, Europe Rises. And the United States . . . As the dollar falls and debt grows, America no longer seems indispensable," by Fred Kaplan, New York Times, 26 December 2004, p. WK6.
■"Canada's Oil: China in Line As U.S. Rival," by Simon Romero, New York Times, 23 December 2004, p. A1.
■"A Corner of China in the Grip of a Lucrative Heroin Habit: Peasants find an escape from poverty in a new version of the opium industry," by Howard W. French, New York Times, 23 December 2004, p. A4.
China's emerging as a global counterweight to the U.S., as is the euro. Is this a sign of "chaos" and "uncertainty" and "frightening" multipolarity where the U.S. isn't in charge of everything?
Yeah, I guess it is. It always amazes me that the same analysts who decry U.S. "unilateralism" and "empire" also seem to wax pessimistic whenever any real balance begins to emerge in the system.
This balance in the economic realm is not only necessary, it's absolutely essential for the Core to win this war on terrorism. America needs to be economically healthy and well-connected to the global economy if its going to continue being the lead military player in this effort. We won't discipline ourselves all by ourselves, so a rising balance in both Europe and Asia on this score is exactly what the doctor ordered, just so long as we don't dissolve into the usual paranoia about being held "hostage" to the demands of others. The global rule set is always a "test," whether it's Russia failing the test on the Yukos auction, or Asia adjusting to pass the test on the avian flu, or America checking the necessary boxes whenever it deems it necessary to push for regime change inside the Gap. Global "tests" are good, essentially the Core as a whole saying "this is how we define playing by the rules." China is, through its rise, playing a huge role in this, and that's very good.
Of course, China will engage in seemingly "bad" activities as it emerges, like daring to compete with the U.S. in oil markets around the world, and perhaps even in our backyard! But viewing this as zero-sum is stupid in the extreme. China securing oil is China continuing to develop economically and move increasingly in the direction of our political and social model, while simultaneously helping us maintain our standard of living through a complex series of economic transactions. Expecting them to somehow "get theirs" always at no competitive cost to the U.S. is bizarrely myopic. Again, there is no "free riding" anywhere in the Core; it's all one big system of checks and balances. If we want to remain the world's sole military superpower, then we have to accept certain economic realities vis-à-vis China.
We have to accept those realities because there is still a huge, interior chunk of China that is stuck in the Gap—otherwise known as its largely rural, agrarian, poor, interior provinces, or where my daughter came from. There, we're going to see very Gap-like behavior, like growing poppies and exporting them to the rest of the Core to support our continuing heroin habit.
Facilitating China's explosive growth is how that Gap gets shrunk. So again, there's no free riding here. There's only seeing the world in all its complexity and understanding the trade-offs. The U.S. wants China to be in charge of "in-Coring" its own internal Gap regions, as well as "in-Coring" those Gap states in the rest of Asia that line its very long borders. If America is going to focus on transforming the Middle East, we need a China to continue that process in East Asia. Shrinking the Gap is a Core-wide effort. China isn't a free rider. It's pulling its weight just fine, if only we take the time and effort to see the full spectrum of its interactions with the world outside, as well as with its interior Gap regions.
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