Accidental Superpower : The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder (9781455558049) by Zeihan Peter

Author:Zeihan, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science / Comparative Politics
Publisher: Hachette Book Group USA
Published: 2014-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

American involvement with Myanmar, Thailand, and Singapore raises potential solutions to the economic problem raised by America’s possible interest in Taiwan and Korea. Those solutions are Australia and New Zealand. Between them they are low-to mid-cost reliable producers of nearly every significant industrial and agricultural commodity under the sun: oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, aluminum, wheat, fruits, vegetables, dairy, beef, and lamb. There is no more perfect mating to the resource-poor and hungry states of Taiwan and Korea than the Anglos of Australasia.

While a commitment to keep trade lanes to the Middle East might be more than the Americans are interested in, commitment to keep the far shorter and less fraught lines to political and cultural mates in Australia and New Zealand would be comparatively simple. The pair are also so physically removed from the Asian mainland that the defense commitment required to maintain their sovereignty would be minimal. American involvement in Australasia would also solve—at least partly—Singapore’s problem. A web of trade among the United States, Korea, Taiwan, Myanmar, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand would put Singapore smack in the middle. In fact, in the middle along with Singapore would be its current economic partners: the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

All four of those Southeast Asian countries will never be able to project meaningful amounts of power on the water. The first three are archipelagoes, but so disassociated across distance that they cannot develop into a powerful empire as Japan did, or even maintain a navy that might more than marginally threaten their neighbors. The fourth, Vietnam, has its northern and southern populations so separated by distance and geography that simply solidifying internal integrity is a century-long process that the Vietnamese are not even halfway through. These weaknesses also create a very peculiar demographic geography. All of the countries sport only lightly populated hinterlands, instead being extremely urbanized with very dense population centers packed with people trying to carve out a better life for themselves than is possible in tropical agriculture.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.