Comments on: Here we go!! China is using its new economic power to counter the U.S. power in the Pacific. https://habitablezone.com/2011/08/16/here-we-go-china-is-using-its-new-economic-power-to-counter-the-u-s-power-in-the-pacific/ Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:03:37 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: CJB https://habitablezone.com/2011/08/16/here-we-go-china-is-using-its-new-economic-power-to-counter-the-u-s-power-in-the-pacific/#comment-4883 CJB Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:22:21 +0000 http://habitablezone.com/?p=3096#comment-4883 That's what power is all about, and that's what world powers do. Economic power leads to military power, but not necessarily the reverse. The Soviet Union learned that the hard way. Now that the US economy has declined to the point where it can no longer support the military needed to be a truly global world superpower, other nations are upgrading theirs to become regional powers. Iran wants to be boss in the Middle East, China is taking over from Japan and the US in the far East, Russia is flexing its muscles in Europe and Central Asia, and India and Pakistan are disputing who gets Southwest Asia. The USA's natural sphere of influence is the Americas, as President Monroe determined many years ago, but it has been neglecting that area because of its preoccupation with the North Atlantic and Western Pacific (no doubt because of its WWII successes) so that it is not clear it can emerge as a real leader in Latin America. Maybe Brazil will challenge it for that role. I predict it will if it finds oil. We still have the world's most powerful military, but as our support structures for it weaken, the temptation will be to 'use it or lose it' while we still can. I know the US is not a particularly militaristic or imperialist nation, but under the stress of severe domestic economic and political threats, who knows what the future will bring? It is not unheard of for a nation undergoing trouble at home to get involved in distractions abroad, especially if it can convince or delude itself that it's foreign rivals are responsible for its decline. You will note the end of the Cold War did not put an end to that kind of talk. If you step back far enough so that the clutter of detail doesn't obscure the real forces and players involved, the world makes more sense. But if the causes and drivers of geopolitics aren't always obvious to parochial interests and personalities, the results and consequences usually make themselves clear immediately, whether they like it or not. The post-war period of stability was primarily the result of the tensions between East and West. Without that ideological rivalry the world looks very different, the issues now are more economic and strategic than social or political. I don't think that, geopolitically, we have made the transition yet. We don't have the historical instincts or experience the Old World does and we tend to see things more in terms of human ideas than natural forces. We are destined to live in interesting times. That’s what power is all about, and that’s what world powers do. Economic power leads to military power, but not necessarily the reverse. The Soviet Union learned that the hard way.

Now that the US economy has declined to the point where it can no longer support the military needed to be a truly global world superpower, other nations are upgrading theirs to become regional powers. Iran wants to be boss in the Middle East, China is taking over from Japan and the US in the far East, Russia is flexing its muscles in Europe and Central Asia, and India and Pakistan are disputing who gets Southwest Asia.

The USA’s natural sphere of influence is the Americas, as President Monroe determined many years ago, but it has been neglecting that area because of its preoccupation with the North Atlantic and Western Pacific (no doubt because of its WWII successes) so that it is not clear it can emerge as a real leader in Latin America. Maybe Brazil will challenge it for that role. I predict it will if it finds oil.

We still have the world’s most powerful military, but as our support structures for it weaken, the temptation will be to ‘use it or lose it’ while we still can. I know the US is not a particularly militaristic or imperialist nation, but under the stress of severe domestic economic and political threats, who knows what the future will bring?

It is not unheard of for a nation undergoing trouble at home to get involved in distractions abroad, especially if it can convince or delude itself that it’s foreign rivals are responsible for its decline. You will note the end of the Cold War did not put an end to that kind of talk.

If you step back far enough so that the clutter of detail doesn’t obscure the real forces and players involved, the world makes more sense. But if the causes and drivers of geopolitics aren’t always obvious to parochial interests and personalities, the results and consequences usually make themselves clear immediately, whether they like it or not.

The post-war period of stability was primarily the result of the tensions between East and West. Without that ideological rivalry the world looks very different, the issues now are more economic and strategic than social or political.

I don’t think that, geopolitically, we have made the transition yet. We don’t have the historical instincts or experience the Old World does and we tend to see things more in terms of human ideas than natural forces. We are destined to live in interesting times.

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