Relations impacts and cp’s
Relations Key to Middle east and Russian Stability
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Relations Key to Middle east and Russian StabilityCalder 09[Kent E. Calder, Director of the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. “Pacific Alliance” 2009 pp165-167 ]To begin with, the stability of the Middle East and particularly the Persian Gulf must rank high on any list of shared global concerns. Three countries there—Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran—possess nearly two-thirds of world oil reserves, while the region as a whole likely holds three-quarters of the global total. Fully a quarter of the world's natural gas supplies also likely lie beneath the Persian Gulf and its littoral nations. Just as important for the U.S.-Japan relationship, Japan is overwhelmingly dependent on the Gulf for its oil and, to a lesser degree, for its gas supplies. It gets 90 percent of its oil and slightly more than 20 percent of its gas from that volatile tegion.10 Those ratios are among the highest on earth and have been steadily rising over the past decade. The United States is much less dependent, getting only 21 percent of its oil in 2007 and virtually none of its gas from the Persian Gulf." Washington has, to be sure, crucial interests in the stability of the broader global energy regime and also in the security of Israel. These strategic concerns transcend its narrower national energy stakes and provide a crucial rationale for some sort of continuing American geopolitical involvement in the region. Japan, by contrast, clearly has a strong energy and economic interest in the stability of the Middle East, especially the Gulf, and few political-military means to assure it. This transpacific asymmetry regarding Middle East affairs—entering on the stability of the Gulf and access to it—provides one of the most important political-economic rationales for the U.S.-Japan alliance, especially from the Japanese side. Russia also figures importantly in the Middle Eastern stability equation, especially in its geopolitical dimensions. It is a neighbor to the Middle East, as shown in figure 7.1, bordering both Iran and Turkey to the north. This geographical propinquity is a matter of utmost importance in global terms, especially when viewed in conjunction with the energy equation. Russia is also a strong complement to the Persian Gulf in the world of energy, with roughly one-third of proven world gas reserves and another 10 percent of global oil. Russia and rhe Middle East together thus hold around 70 percent of proven world oil reserves and 67 percent of global gas, as indicated in figure 7.2. Together, they have the potential to exercise a controlling influence on a resource of vital importance to both the United States and Japan, which are the two largest energy importers in the world. The former Soviet "near abroad"—-primarily Central Asian states over whose energy access to the broader world Russia continues to hold substantial sway—contributes another 6 percent to the world gas and 4 percent to the world oil equation, thus compounding Central Eurasian dominance with respect to global energy supply.12 Several of the most crucial emerging security issues that confront the United States and Japan in the unitary global political economy now emerging thus relate to stability in the Persian Gulf and surrounding regions. There is, first of all, the question of political-economic stability in the countries concerned. This is a crucial question with respect to Iran, the largest of the nations bordering the Persian Gulf, and also Saudi Arabia, which holds a quarter of the worlds oil reserves, not to mention Iraq. These countries face enormous looming demographic and employment challenges and joblessness over 10 percent in some Persian Gulf countries. Yet the GDP of all the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)13 nations combined—oil wealth notwithstanding— remains less than that of Spain alone.14 Apart from this stability issue, there is the pressing question of how Russia and the Middle East, immediate neighbors that they are, will relate to one another politically and diplomatically in future years. Confrontation and en-flamed relations between Russia and the world of Islam are not, in the post-Cold War era, in the interest of either the United States of Japan, as they could exacerbate the already delicate and volatile ethnic balance of the region. Yet neither has intimate and plausible understandings with the other, especially with respect to energy pricing and supply. A2: US-Japan relations Bad- Re ArmRe Arm won’t occur- its against the Japanese ConstitutionTaboo SolvesYoshihara and Holmes ‘9 (Toshi, Research Fellow and resident expert on Security Issues in the Asia-Pacific – Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, MA Int’l. Affairs – Johns Hopkins, Phd Candidate – Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts U., and James, PhD – Fletcher School and Senior Research Associate – UGA Center for International Trade, Naval War College Review, “Thinking about the Unthinkable: Tokyo’s Nuclear Option”, 62:3, Summer, Ebsco) In any event, Japan's "nuclear allergy" persists to the present day. Matake Kamiya explains Tokyo's self-imposed injunction against bomb making in terms of the general pacifism codified in Japan's peace constitution, lingering memories of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and antimilitary sentiments dating from the interwar years. (11) As a result, concludes Kamiya, opposition to nuclear weapons "is deeply embedded in postwar Japanese culture and society.... [I]t is still far stronger, even today, than those who warn of impending Japanese nuclear armament realize." (12) The vast majority of observers in Japan and in the West are inclined to agree with Kamiya, if for different reasons. Indeed, very few scholars have lent credence to rationales for a nuclear buildup. (13) Tetsuya Endo, a former vice chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan, argues that while Japan possesses the technical capabilities to stage a nuclear breakout, the material costs combined with the prospects of international isolation would deter Tokyo from pursuing such an option. (14) Brad Glosserman cautions that Japan likely would not survive intact as a nation-state following a nuclear exchange--even a limited one--owing to its lack of strategic depth and the extremely high population density throughout the Japanese Archipelago. (15) Llewelyn Hughes identifies a series of domestic institutional constraints, ranging from constitutional to informal, that have anchored Tokyo securely to the U.S. nuclear guarantee. (16) Others believe that Japan is actively pursuing other strategic options, including strengthening its own conventional military capabilities and deepening its alliance ties to the United States, as substitutes for an independent nuclear deterrent. (17) In sum, normative, material, geographic, institutional, and strategic considerations militate against going nuclear. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.27 Mb. Share with your friends:
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