NC Extension #1 No Miscalculation

Maritime agreements check conflict

Nonetheless, concerns over maritime incidents, miscalculation, and spiraling conflict contain enough intuitive logic to have endured. A shared Cold War concern over miscalculations led to accords that are still in effect, such as the Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on and Over the High Seas (INCSEA) and Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities (DMA) agreement, and may be credited with helping keep incidents between the U.S. and U.S.SR under “control.” However, the fact that agreements were reached at all is likely more significant than their content. Such agreements indicated a shared belief between U.S. and Soviet military leaderships that despite their feverish preparations for war against one another, neither wanted war to come as the result of a tactical-level incident between individual ships and aircraft. This suggests neither would let an incident, however serious, become an independent casus belli. The substance of these accords (and those reached in the South China Sea) further strengthens this thesis. While INCSEA and DMA contained rules of behavior, these were, again in Zumwalt’s words, “little more than a reaffirmation of the [maritime] Rules of the Road” (international rules that direct how ships stay safe around each other at sea). What was groundbreaking was that in concluding the accords, the U.S. and U.S.SR implicitly recognized their intentions to violate those rules and practices when advantageous (consider the Yorktown and Caron). The accords created new parallel rules by which each could do so “safely,” as well as new communications protocols to inform one another of their intentions. Together, this affirms that both sides were playing a (serious) game to establish positions and assert rights more than they were interested in war. Of course, incidents intended to reinforce maritime claims and hostile actions can look the same right up until ordnance is exchanged, but now both sides could be more confident that if shooting did start, it was an intentional act of war.

Impact Defense – US/China War

No impact – US-China war extremely unlikely

Strabone 16 [Matthew is an attorney and a political partner of the Truman National Security Project. “Beijing's Blunder” March 11, 2016 US News http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/articles/2016-03-11/china-gave-the-us-an-opening-in-the-south-china-sea c.shack]

Certainly, China’s actions in the South China Sea may be viewed as a victory for Beijing given that the United States has not offered a military response to such moves beyond freedom of navigation operations – there does not appear to be any appetite in Washington to risk a shooting war with China over the matter. This apparent success is sure to satisfy nationalist impulses at home, something the current regime in Beijing has been careful to cultivate. But all this posturing might prove to be a blunder in the long run. Beijing seeks dominion over the disputed islands to, at least in part, prevent a giant American blockade of China’s coast in the event of an armed conflict, but the odds of a full-blown shooting war breaking out between the U.S. and China remain incredibly low given the astronomical potential costs of such an encounter. Thus, Beijing has pursued a solution to a merely imagined problem. Perhaps worse, deeper U.S. engagement in the Western Pacific is something Beijing has overtly sought to avoid, but the pressure China has placed on its neighbors have forced them to turn to the U.S. for support, providing convenient diplomatic cover for American activity and interest in the South China Sea. As long as China continues to exacerbate tensions with its neighbors in the South China Sea, the United States should seek greater engagement. While Beijing may see imagined military benefits from, and domestic support for, its endeavors, in reality China has given the U.S. an opening to exploit. Far from dissuading American involvement in the region, Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea are in fact only giving the U.S. more and more of a reason to be there.

Their vague impacts are academic junk – China isn’t a threat

Fettweis, 11

Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University, 9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint? Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 30:316–332, EBSCO

Assertions that without the combination of U.S. capabilities, presence and commitments instability would return to Europe and the Pacific Rim are usually rendered in rather vague language. If the United States were to decrease its commitments abroad, argued Robert Art, “the world will become a more dangerous place and, sooner or later, that will redound to America’s detriment.”53 From where would this danger arise? Who precisely would do the fighting, and over what issues? Without the United States, would Europe really descend into Hobbesian anarchy? Would the Japanese attack mainland China again, to see if they could fare better this time around? Would the Germans and French have another go at it? In other words, where exactly is hegemony is keeping the peace? With one exception, these questions are rarely addressed. That exception is in the Pacific Rim. Some analysts fear that a de facto surrender of U.S. hegemony would lead to a rise of Chinese influence. Bradley Thayer worries that Chinese would become “the language of diplomacy, trade and commerce, transportation and navigation, the internet, world sport, and global culture,” and that Beijing would come to “dominate science and technology, in all its forms” to the extent that soon the world would witness a Chinese astronaut who not only travels to the Moon, but “plants the communist flag on Mars, and perhaps other planets in the future.”54 Indeed China is the only other major power that has increased its military spending since the end of the Cold War, even if it still is only about 2 percent of its GDP. Such levels of effort do not suggest a desire to compete with, much less supplant, the United States. The much-ballyhooed, decade-long military buildup has brought Chinese spending up to somewhere between one-tenth and one-fifth of the U.S. level. It is hardly clear that a restrained United States would invite Chinese regional, must less global, political expansion. Fortunately one need not ponder for too long the horrible specter of a red flag on Venus, since on the planet Earth, where war is no longer the dominant form of conflict resolution, the threats posed by even a rising China would not be terribly dire. The dangers contained in the terrestrial security environment are less severe than ever before. Believers in the pacifying power of hegemony ought to keep in mind a rather basic tenet: When it comes to policymaking, specific threats are more significant than vague, unnamed dangers. Without specific risks, it is just as plausible to interpret U.S. presence as redundant, as overseeing a peace that has already arrived. Strategy should not be based upon vague images emerging from the dark reaches of the neoconservative imagination. Overestimating Our Importance One of the most basic insights of cognitive psychology provides the final reason to doubt the power of hegemonic stability: Rarely are our actions as consequential upon their behavior as we perceive them to be. A great deal of experimental evidence exists to support the notion that people (and therefore states) tend to overrate the degree to which their behavior is responsible for the actions of others. Robert Jervis has argued that two processes account for this overestimation, both of which would seem to be especially relevant in the U.S. case.55 First, believing that we are responsible for their actions gratifies our national ego (which is not small to begin with; the United States is exceptional in its exceptionalism). The hubris of the United States, long appreciated and noted, has only grown with the collapse of the Soviet Union.56 U.S. policymakers famously have comparatively little knowledge of—or interest in—events that occur outside of their own borders. If there is any state vulnerable to the overestimation of its importance due to the fundamental misunderstanding of the motivation of others, it would have to be the United States. Second, policymakers in the United States are far more familiar with our actions than they are with the decision-making processes of our allies. Try as we might, it is not possible to fully understand the threats, challenges, and opportunities that our allies see from their perspective. The European great powers have domestic politics as complex as ours, and they also have competent, capable strategists to chart their way forward. They react to many international forces, of which U.S. behavior is only one. Therefore, for any actor trying to make sense of the action of others, Jervis notes, “in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, the most obvious and parsimonious explanation is that he was responsible.”57 It is natural, therefore, for U.S. policymakers and strategists to believe that the behavior of our allies (and rivals) is shaped largely by what Washington does. Presumably Americans are at least as susceptible to the overestimation of their ability as any other people, and perhaps more so. At the very least, political psychologists tell us, we are probably not as important to them as we think. The importance of U.S. hegemony in contributing to international stability is therefore almost certainly overrated. In the end, one can never be sure why our major allies have not gone to, and do not even plan for, war. Like deterrence, the hegemonic stability theory rests on faith; it can only be falsified, never proven. It does not seem likely, however, that hegemony could fully account for twenty years of strategic decisions made in allied capitals if the international system were not already a remarkably peaceful place. Perhaps these states have no intention of fighting one another to begin with, and our commitments are redundant. European great powers may well have chosen strategic restraint because they feel that their security is all but assured, with or without the United States.

No US entanglement in allies’ wars with china

Chellaney 13 [Brahma Chellaney (Prof of Strategic Studies @ Centre for Policy Research-New Delhi; leading geostrategist and author, w/ focus on Asian geopolitics); Washington Times; “Obama's great Asian dawdle: The U.S. is shying away from China's stealth aggression”; September 2, 2013]

Washington has made it amply clear that despite its "pivot" toward Asia, it will not put American lives at risk to defend its allies' territorial claims against Beijing or act in ways detrimental to its close engagement with China. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has gone to the extent of saying in a recent BBC interview that the United States does not see China's military modernization as a threat.¶ Indeed, the Obama administration has recalibrated its "pivot" policy. After initially raising Asian expectations about a robust U.S. response to China's assertiveness, Washington has tamped down the military aspects of its "pivot" and instead started placing emphasis on the economic elements.¶ Mr. Obama's Asia policy charts a course of neutrality on territorial disputes between China and its neighbors, while seeking to reap the economic and strategic benefits of closer engagement with Asian states.¶ Washington, for example, is chary of getting drawn into Sino-Japanese territorial disputes, although Tokyo is its close ally and U.S. forward military deployments in Japan are a linchpin of America's strategy to retain primacy in Asia. In fact, the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands to which China had laid claim are close to Okinawa, home to the largest U.S. military presence in Asia.¶ Similarly, even as China purposely badgers India along the Himalayan frontier, Washington has shied away from cautioning Beijing against any attempt to change the territorial status quo by force. In fact, on a host of Asian disputes, including China's claim since 2006 to India's Austria-size Arunachal Pradesh state, Washington has chosen not to antagonize Beijing and has stayed neutral.¶ Even in a case when China has forcibly changed the status quo - by taking effective control since last year of the Scarborough Shoal, located in the South China Sea within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone - the Obama team has done little more than counsel restraint and talks.¶ The paradox is that China's rising assertiveness has helped the United States to return to Asia's center stage, yet Mr. Obama is wary of taking sides in the territorial disputes. The only issue on which Washington has spoken up is freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.¶ The China factor, which has allowed the United States to strengthen its existing military relationships and build new strategic partnerships in Asia, can remain useful for America only if it is seen by its allies and partners as a credible guarantor of stability and security in Asia. That is a function not of its military strength, but of its political will.¶ To be sure, Washington has an interest in preventing the emergence of a Sino-centric Asia. It has no interest, though, in getting entangled in Asia's territorial feuds. If it can, it would like to find a way to support its allies and partners in their disputes with China, but without alienating Beijing - a tough balancing act.

No SCS war---the region is too dependent on China to risk conflict

Nicolas Jenny 15, final year double degree master student currently based at Fudan University in Shanghai, 1/28/15, Trade Goes on as Usual in the South China Sea, www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/01/28/trade_goes_on_as_usual_in_the_south_china_sea_110939.html

International relations scholars and journalists have intensely debated the reasons behind China's increased assertiveness in the South China Sea. But Beijing's foreign policy actions in the region have made most countries suspicious if not completely resentful of China.¶ This has led some to claim that, ‘China today faces the worst regional environment since Tiananmen. Its relations with Japan are at a record low; China-ASEAN ties have similarly deteriorated due to the South China Sea disputes and China's heavy-handed use of its clout to divide ASEAN.'¶ Despite this resentment, analysts have largely overlooked the trade dynamics between China and other claimants in the South China Sea dispute. One would naturally assume that deep suspicions or resentment of Beijing would translate into diminishing trade ties, yet the opposite has taken place.¶ For example, Vietnam recorded an 18.9% increase in Chinese imports in 2014 despite Hanoi's attempts to broaden its import partners. The issue became particularly relevant following China's decision to place an oil rig in disputed waters earlier in 2014.¶ The Philippines, no stranger to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea, also reported a 12.4% increase of exports to China during the first nine months of 2014. Coincidentally, China is also the Philippines' third largest, and Vietnam's largest trading partner.¶ While smaller East Asian states continue to hedge their bets against China, there is a resounding pattern in their trade statistics - they all present a strong trade deficit in China's favour. Vietnam's trade deficit with China reached a record high in 2014 while the Philippines' highest trade deficit is with China, representing 16% of imports, a 35% increase from previous years.¶ Herein lays the conundrum of the South China Sea dispute: while claimant states rally against Beijing's nine-dash line, economically, they need China more than China needs them. Access to China's market has forced foreign companies and their governments to compromise on politics. While European companies have compromised on issues such as internet censorship, Southeast Asia's governments have been forced to compromise on sovereignty in the South China Sea.¶ This economic fact of life for Southeast Asian states has produced ripple effects across policy. For example, following the deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam, Hanoi promised to reimburse and rebuild China's factories damaged by the protests. Similarly, the Philippines' economy suffered tremendously in 2012 when China drastically cut banana imports.¶ China will soon have successfully leveraged its economic power to reach political ends - the consolidation of the South China Sea as Beijing's core interest. It will not have primarily been through vast military expansion as many had predicted, but rather through its economic might. Trade has arguably been China's most widely used foreign policy tool and as China's wealth increases, this is only set to continue.¶ As it should be remembered, the South China Sea dispute is not all about potential energy deposits in the region. It is a dispute over competing visions of the South China Sea and a weary China who sees itself surrounded. Heightened trade flows between China and the claimant states can assure a certain amount of stability in the region.¶ And although many are quick to remind us that trade cannot serve as a deterrent to conflict, today's globalised world stands in stark contrast to the beginning of the 20th century. Even the Philippine president, Aquino, argued that territorial disputes in the South China Sea were unlikely to lead to conflict because no one was willing to sacrifice the huge trade flows in the region.¶ Therefore, despite the issues over sovereignty and the occasional flare-ups between various claimants, peace, no matter how precarious, will prevail - no country is ready, particularly China, to sacrifice trade at the expense of stability.

Experts agree and new agreements solve

Zhao Yinan 14, China Daily, 11/14/14, China, ASEAN to forge new ties, aepaper.chinadailyasia.com/asia-weekly/article-3591.html

China is working toward establishing closer ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with a treaty to formalize mutual friendliness and put aside sea disputes, as a multinational meeting convenes in Myanmar. Premier Li Keqiang arrived in the capital city of Nay Pyi Taw on Nov 12 to kick off a three-day visit, where he mingled with world leaders including US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at two major events taking place simultaneously in the capital — the ASEAN Summit and East Asian Summit. Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the Beijing-based China Institute of International Studies, says China and ASEAN member countries are likely to ink a treaty of good neighborliness and friendly cooperation, the first of its kind that ASEAN has signed with a single country, during the China-ASEAN meeting on Nov 13. If signed, the treaty will formalize the mutual friendliness between China and ASEAN countries, a grouping that includes members involved in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. Ruan says working panels from the two sides have been researching the feasibility, and there is a high possibility of such an agreement. “That would definitely see a big leap in bilateral relations. It means that good neighborliness will be fixed in a legal form after the signing,” Ruan says. “Signatories will have to solve the issue of the South China Sea in a peaceful way. It will mean a great deal to regional stability.” As it is, experts say China and ASEAN countries are getting closer in economic terms, and disputes over the South China Sea will remain regional and stable.

Apart from a document that would legalize peace and cooperation, Ruan says the economy is a major factor in promoting China-ASEAN cooperation, as both China and leaders from ASEAN countries are pushing for an upgraded version of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) with wider market access. The first talks on the upgraded version of the CAFTA were held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in September and the next round will be hosted by China in 2015. China has been ASEAN’s largest trade partner for five years, and trade volume to ASEAN countries took up more than one-tenth of China’s total imports and exports. Bilateral trade hit $346.4 billion from January to September this year, up 7.5 percent year-on-year, a considerable increase against the backdrop of China’s sluggish export and import sectors. Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, believes that China-ASEAN cooperation is doing well, such as the sub-regional development, and such cooperation will grow in the coming years with the assistance of the newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road fund. “China has funded many of the sub-regional development projects, like the Mekong,” he says, referring to the 4,880-kilometer Mekong river, which flows from China to Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. By the end of September, mutual investment had reached $123.1 billion. China and ASEAN have cooperated on a variety of projects in electric power generation, bridge construction, agriculture and manufacturing. President Xi Jinping has pledged $40 billion to a new Silk Road fund for investing in infrastructure, resources and industrial and financial cooperation across Asia, and many of the ASEAN countries are important geographical sections along the Maritime Silk Road. In addition, Beijing has promised to provide half of its $50 billion startup capital to help build ports, roads, power projects and other desperately needed infrastructure across the region, as nine of the 10 ASEAN countries have signed a memorandum earlier in Beijing, which will enable them to join the new AIIB as founding members. “The Silk Road, no longer just a concept in history books, has evolved into a story of modern logistics and Sino-European cooperation,” said Yang Jiechi, China’s top official in charge of diplomacy, earlier this month. The New Silk Road Economic Belt — going from China to Central Asia via Russia and Europe — and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road — going through the Malacca Strait to India, the Middle East and East Africa — have become the centerpiece of China’s economic diplomacy since the proposal was brought up last year. Zhai Kun, a professor of international relations at Peking University, says the initiative on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is an important strategic path to connect China and ASEAN countries, and will become the Chinese version of global interconnectivity and mutual access with multi-country inclusiveness. “The proposal of building a silk road will integrate with the 2+7 cooperation framework between China and ASEAN countries,” Zhai says. This covers two political consensuses and seven areas of cooperation, such as connectivity, financial cooperation and maritime cooperation. China has included three rail lines in its medium- and long-term railway blueprints that will link the country to Southeast Asian nations. Engineers have started preliminary work on the network, which will start in Kunming, capital of Southwest China’s Yunnan province, and connect Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The huge network aims to provide a 14,000-km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul in Turkey, with possible onward connections to Europe and Africa, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Yang Yi, secretary general of the China Institute of International Studies, says China is promoting a strategic partnership ensuring peace, stability, cooperation and other perspectives for regional stakeholders. Substantial cooperation between China and ASEAN has already been carried out in more than 20 sectors, he adds. The overall situation in the South China Sea, as the unavoidable issue in the China-ASEAN relations, is stable, since “we don’t see any problems with the freedom of navigation”, says Yang.

2NC Extension #3 – AT: Economic Decline

Econ resilient

Donald Kohn 15, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, 1/30/15, U.S. Monetary Policy: Moving Toward the Exit in an Interconnected Global Economy, www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2015/01/30-us-monetary-policy-global-economy-kohn

The global financial authorities have made major strides in making their systems more resilient to unexpected developments, in particular with higher capital and greater liquidity for banks and bank holding companies. In several jurisdictions, banks have been stress tested with scenarios that included rising rates. Moreover, we’ve seen several episodes in which volatility and risk spreads have risen, including the summer of 2013 during the so-called taper tantrum, and in the past few months amid mounting uncertainty about global economic prospects, plunging oil prices, growing political and economic tensions in the euro area, and strong monetary policy responses. Although there’s been some fallout from these financial market developments, none has threatened financial stability.

Economy is resilient and decline doesn’t cause war

Zakaria 9

Editor of Newsweek, BA from Yale, PhD in pol sci, Harvard. He serves on the board of Yale University, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and Shakespeare and Company. Named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" (Fareed, December 12, 2009, “The Secrets of Stability: Why terrorism and economic turmoil won't keep the world down for long” Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/2009/12/11/the-secrets-of-stability.print.html)

One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global financial system, which had fueled a great expansion of capitalism and trade across the world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of globalization—about the virtues of free markets, trade, and technology—were being called into question. Faith in the American model had collapsed. The financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil were sinking. Worldwide trade was shrinking to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been vindicated predicted we were doomed to a long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote: "The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.' This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression." Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that "the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year." Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn't add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. "The question I have at the back of my head is 'Is that it?' “says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. "We had this huge crisis, and now we're back to business as usual?" This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. The world today is characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each historical in nature.

[2] Their historical arguments are wrong

Ferguson 6

(Niall, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He is also a Senior Reseach Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct)

Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.

[3] Globalization checks

Zakaria 9

- Editor of Newsweek, BA from Yale, PhD in pol sci, Harvard. He serves on the board of Yale University, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and Shakespeare and Company. Named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" (Fareed, December 12, 2009, “The Secrets of Stability: Why terrorism and economic turmoil won't keep the world down for long” Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/2009/12/11/the-secrets-of-stability.print.html)

Political and economic stability have each reinforced the other. And the third force that has underpinned the resilience of the global system is technological connectivity. Globalization has always existed in a sense in the modern world, but until recently its contours were mostly limited to trade: countries made goods and sold them abroad. Today the information revolution has created a much more deeply connected global system. Managers in Arkansas can work with suppliers in Beijing on a real-time basis. The production of almost every complex manufactured product now involves input from a dozen countries in a tight global supply chain. And the consequences of connectivity go well beyond economics. Women in rural India have learned through satellite television about the independence of women in more modern countries. Citizens in Iran have used cell phones and the Internet to connect to their well-wishers beyond their borders. Globalization today is fundamentally about knowledge being dispersed across our world. This diffusion of knowledge may actually be the most important reason for the stability of the current system. The majority of the world's nations have learned some basic lessons about political well-being and wealth creation. They have taken advantage of the opportunities provided by peace, low inflation, and technology to plug in to the global system. And they have seen the indisputable results. Despite all the turmoil of the past year, it's important to remember that more people have been lifted out of poverty over the last two decades than in the preceding 10. Clear-thinking citizens around the world are determined not to lose these gains by falling for some ideological chimera, or searching for a worker's utopia. They are even cautious about the appeals of hypernationalism and war. Most have been there, done that. And they know the price. In fact, the most remarkable development in the last few years has been the way China, India, Brazil, and other emerging markets have managed their affairs prudently, taming growth by keeping interest rates up and restricting credit in the middle of the bubble—just as an economics textbook (and common sense) would advise. Instead it was the advanced industrial world, which had always lectured everyone else about good political and economic management, that handled its affairs poorly, fueling bubble after bubble, being undisciplined in the boom, and now suffering most during the bust. The data reflect this new reality. By 2014 the debt of the rich countries in the G20 will be 120 percent of GDP, three times the level of debt in the big emerging-market countries. The students of the global system are now doing better than their teachers.

Download 272.79 Kb.

Share with your friends: