[Excerpted from their weekly summary for June 1st. The whole piece is not posted on their website yet, but will doubtless be up there in in the next day or two at http://www.stratfor.com/services/giu/FORECAST/WEEKLY.ASP]
In the minds of some, the end of the Cold War marked the end not only of an era in history, but of a fundamental, millennial shift in how the world worked. According to many extremely practical and influential people, the end of the Cold War inaugurated a new era in which commercial and economic forces had supplanted political and military issues. From Tokyo to Bonn to New York, there was a general consensus that borders had become archaic and meaningless and that they had been rendered so by the globalization of economic life.
The dynamics of economic life, this theory went, had taken us to a point where international trade had created an intensifying interdependence among nations. Markets were so intimately tied together that the disruption of any one market would disrupt all other markets. This made war and even deep-seated political conflict unthinkable, since war and conflict would inevitably disrupt economic and commercial relations which, in turn, would wreak havoc on not only the combatants, but also on third parties who would be affected by any hot or cold war. Given this, even if two nations were inclined to engage in intense politico-military competition, their irrationality would effect the interests of other members of the international community immediately, who would act to suppress this disruptive behavior.
Consider the case of U.S.-Chinese relations. Under this theory, intensifying commercial relations between the two countries had reached such a point of intensity that both countries had a fundamental interest in maintaining and expanding them. Each country would suppress any action that might disrupt those relations. Thus, it began to appear as if the fact that China was a communist country was purely incidental, an archaic legacy rendered irrelevant by commercial interests and in no way incompatible with its splendid relations with the capitalist world. Similarly, deep-rooted geopolitical issues, such as China's relationship with Taiwan, were regarded as archaic. Taiwan, China and the United States all wanted the same thing: robust economic growth fueled by international trade and investment. The issue simply appeared meaningless in the broader context of globalization and interdependence.
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There were two roots to this theory. The first was that global economic interdependence had now risen to unprecedented levels that changed the rules of the international system. The claim was plausible. It wasn't true. International merchandise trade and cross border investment were no higher in the early 1990s than they were in 1913, measured against Gross Domestic Product. What had occurred was an optical illusion. International trade and investment had collapsed after World War II. By 1990 they had struggled back to not quite the same level as they had achieved in 1913. Now, 1913 is an important year, since World War I broke out a year later. Since the 1913 level of interdependence had not prevented World War I, there was no reason to believe that lower levels in 1990 had abolished the politico-military dimension. So one root of the theory, the assumption that interdependence had reached unprecedented levels, was simply untrue.
The other assumption was that interdependence increased cooperation. The problem with that assumption was that interdependence was a constant over time,and that everyone always benefited equally from interdependent relations. Take the case again of China. During the early 1990s, investment and loans flowed from the West to China. By the late 1990s, the flow had slowed down and China was facing the fact that Western interests owned substantial portions of the most dynamic sections of the Chinese economy. Indeed, the loans were coming due and, in spite of China's trade surplus, paying some of those loans could prove difficult. The interdependence remained, but the benefits shifted. As the benefits shifted, each party sought to manipulate the other's actions, leading to friction. The friction didn't arise in spite of interdependence; it arose because of interdependence.
These two fundamental misreadings of the international system gave rise to a theory in which global relations rendered nationalism meaningless and archaic. In this view, the multinational corporation (MNC), regardless of its origins, had no home and no obligation to anything but its investors. It had no task but the maximization of return on capital. And with the rise of the MNC, it was believed that the real news was to be found on the business pages.
The event that shattered this view of the world was the Asian economic meltdown. It did this in two ways. First, it is easy to ignore politics, domestic and international, in times of extraordinary prosperity. Distributing wealth is easy. Distributing scarcity is much more difficult. As Asia's economies declined, each nation struggled to maintain its internal stability. Some like Indonesia failed. Others, like China, succeeded, at least until now, by increasing repression. Others, like Japan, maintained stability by refusing to make the radical changes needed to refloat its economy. Each nation went its own way domestically. As domestic realities shifted, national interests shifted as well, both within Asia and between Asian countries and the rest of the world.
Second, and perhaps more important, was the dog that didn't bark. According to globalist theory, the integration of world financial markets meant that a major downturn in any one market would inevitably have substantial effects on all markets. That simply didn't happen. Asia collapsed in 1997. American markets continue to move to new heights, as do many European markets. The question, "What effect Asia's collapse would have on the global economy?" has been answered: very little if any.
The Asian collapse challenged globalist theory while at the same time resurrecting Asian nationalism. Indeed, that nationalism has been on the rise throughout the world. We do not mean, by nationalism, the extreme manifestations we see in the Balkans or among some Russians. We mean by nationalism something much simpler and more profound. First, we mean the resurrection of the idea that there is a shared fate within nations, and that being an Egyptian or Japanese or American is a profoundly important, defining component of someone's personality which, in turn, defines a shared interest and fate among compatriots. In its extreme form, it means that dying for one's country makes rational sense in a way that economists simply don't understand.
Second, we mean that the nation is not simply an arena for economic activity, but is, in addition, a political and a military entity. There is no such thing, outside of academic departments, as economics or politics as distinct entities. Every nation is simultaneously an economic, political, military, and moral entity distinct from all other nations. That means that nations do not simply engage in economic activity, but that they engage in politics, war, and espionage - a host of things. What defines a nation is its place in the world and its people. Everything, economics, politics, and security derive from the nation's geopolitical reality. A place needs to be exploited and defended. Hence economics and war go hand in hand.
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