Thomas PM Barnett: Fear Not China

Thomas P.M. Barnett has a good piece on China today. He thinks (and I tend to agree) that we’re better off working with China than shunning it: Expecting China to suddenly turn loose Tibet or Xinjiang is far-fetched. We may not care for its policy of settling Han Chinese out west, but I can find you plenty of Lakota and Mexicans who still feel the same way about past American actions.

Don't hold your breath on the U.S. returning Texas or the two Dakotas anytime soon.

With Beijing, better to shine spotlights on religious freedom and environmental degradation, two issues where we'd find plenty of ordinary Chinese in our corner.

China's becoming a lot more religious, common when a country experiences a lot of positive economic change, and its grass-roots environmental movement is growing by leaps and bounds. By tapping into those growing popular sentiments, we give Beijing more palatable choices than dismembering the country.

Barnett thinks we’re moving away from “big wars” in the future. (Including a potential “big war” with Iran; Barnett argues that country is too close to nuclear status to justify invasion. He’s repeatedly been much more accepting of a nuclear Iran than most of the political class, to include Senators Obama and Clinton… but I digress.)

In lieu of big wars he thinks the Pentagon will begin to look at resource wars as an alternative:

When these remaining "big war" scenarios go away, the Pentagon's going to need a new justification for its lavish spending on big-ticket weapon systems, aircraft and ships. The emerging favorite? The coming resource wars between America and China.

Here's the problem with that notion: During the Cold War, resource wars with the Soviets could have made sense because each superpower operated its own mini-me global economy, making such conflict a true zero-sum game.

The same is not true with today's China, whose integration into global supply chains and financial markets is already vast, meaning it cannot lock in raw material suppliers exclusively without endangering its financial suppliers and demand markets in the West.

I find- often in spite of myself- that Barnett’s logic, particularly on the so called Big Wars, is pretty convincing. Though I’m yet to become a fan of a nuclear Iran the way he apparently is. Lots of important stuff wrapped up in this article. Implicit is the idea that the important wars of the future will be ones to integrate the failures (Sudan, Zimbabwe, terrorist refuges in places like the Philippines, etc.) into the 21st century world system.