TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
- (september 2007)
We are still dismantling the Ottoman Empire.
At the end of World War I there were three obvious losers. Germany
was a young country, and the winning powers (mainly Britain and France)
could only think of an economic punishment. Austria and the Ottoman Empire
were multi-ethnic empires and the punishment was obvious: let all the ethnic
groups become independent nations. World War I was truly a war of homogeneous
nation states (France, Britain, Italy, Japan) against etherogeneous multi-ethnic
multi-national empires (Austria, Ottomans). The former won and went on to
create a world of nation states. The Austrian part of the equation was not
too difficult to deal with, but the Ottoman empire proved to be harder to
manage as a broken entity: the Balkans, Cyprus, Palestine and Iraq are
all British creations, carved out of the old Ottoman empire. They have remained
among the hottest spots in the world. Cyprus is still divided between a Greek
zone and a Turkish zone. Israel, the Jewish country that eventually emerged
out of a multi-ethnic Turkish province, was at war with all its Muslim
neighbors. Lebanon, half Christian and half Muslim, was torn by a bloody
civil war. The Balkans were the last place where Europe fought a war (Bosnia,
Kosovo). And now Iraq has shown its true face: another multi-ethnic state
created by the British while dismantling the Ottoman Empire. Ironically,
Turkey (the core region of the old Ottoman Empire) has been by far the most
stable of all these new states.
(Ironically, the very nations that dismantled the multi-national Ottoman
Empire are now trying to create a multi-national European Union).
In a sense, the wars in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and so on are the consequence,
one century later, of dismantling the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. It is also
interesting that the regions that are causing problems are regions in which
the British and the French repeated the same mistake that had caused the demise
of the Ottoman Empire: they created multi-ethnic entities:
Iraq (multi-ethnic), Palestine (multi-ethnic) and Lebanon (multi-ethnic)
have had a much more turbulent history than their homogenous neighbors.
It is also telling that the Soviet Union lost the Cold War and collapsed:
that was another multi-ethnic empire, defeated by a melting pot (the USA)
that had the advantage of creating a nation state out of millions of
immigrants, not out of defeated enemies.
History seems to teach that multi-ethnic entities are doomed to collapse.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (august 2007)
The new cold war.
During the Cold War, the world was neatly divided between Western-style
capitalist democracies and Soviet-style communist dictatorships.
Since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
the world has been dominated by the USA but there are signs that it was
an unstable situation and that a new realignment is underway.
On one hand there are the fast-growing economies of Russia and mainland China. It is
no longer ideology that makes them "rivals" of the USA, but sheer economic
power and the nationalistic ambition that comes with it. Russia and mainland China tend
to tolerate (if not ally with) any regime that is opposed to the USA:
Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea. But they also try to solidify ties with
countries that have nothing against the USA, from sub-Saharan Africa to
some Latin American countries. The new spheres of influence are not based so
much on ideology or geography but on economic interests.
The prime ministers of Russia, mainland China and four Central Asian states meet
periodically as the "Shanghai Group". Russia and mainland China are engaged in joint
military exercises.
At the same time, the USA is cultivating a new friendship with India.
A few days after the meeting of the Shanghai Group the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, led the largest corporate mission to India ever (and explicitly said that relations with India may become more important than links with mainland China).
One can see how Japan and India would find common ground in countering the
expanding power of mainland China in Asia.
(They also have the advantage that India was not scarred by Japan's imperialism
during World War II as much as other parts of Asia).
On one hand large pieces of the old Soviet empire (from Eastern Europe to
Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan and, soon, to Vietnam) have fallen into the USA orbit.
So has the entire Arab world except Syria
(Iraq and Libya used to be "socialist" and dependent on the Soviet Union for arms).
Most of the Far East still views the USA as the natural defender of their
independence and is unlikely to think otherwise for as long as there is a madman
in North Korea and as long as mainland China keeps arguing about its lost
territories instead
of granting independence to the territories it invaded (Tibet, East Turkestan,
Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Hong Kong, etc).
Pakistan is, for the time being, in the USA's orbit although it still maintains
close military ties with mainland China.
On the other hand
some of the former western colonies that the USA has abandoned to their destiny
are now openly flirting with mainland China and Russia, eager to take
advantage of their economic booms and hunger for natural resources. There is
no question that many African and Latin American countries are benefiting
from increased Chinese investment and purchases.
Luckily, there are two big differences between this Cold War and the previous
one. Firstly, the two blocks are happy and even eager to trade with each other.
The USA would make a big mistake if it decided to curtail trade with mainland
China or Russia on the grounds that their economies are growing faster than
the USA economy: it would return the world to a real "cold war".
The USA has to compete with them on fair terms, by proving that its model is
still the best in the world. A bad president has tarnished its supremacy, but
it doesn't mean that a better president cannot rectify the problem.
Secondly, the alliances are fluid: countries are free to shift allegiance at
will, without the constant threat of being invaded by the Soviet army or that
the CIA will engineer a coup or that the Soviet Union will fund a guerrilla
movement or that the USA will fund a terrorist group.
Those days are largely gone. The superpowers have learned that the economy
is a much more powerful weapon to win wars, and, more importantly, to win the
hearts and minds of ordinary people.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (june 2007)
Climate change.
It was Tony Blair who decided that Western Europe had the moral duty to restore
order in Serbia. It was Tony Blair who felt that the situation with Saddam
Hussein in Iraq was untenable. It was Tony Blair who felt that climate change
is a real issue. We don't give Blair enough credit for what the... USA did.
At the G8 meeting of june 2007, suddenly Bush expressed his concern with
climate change and agreed on a united policy to reduce the emission of dangerous
gases.
The Kyoto protocol was a failed protocol, that rewarded Russia and punished
the developed countries (the countries that drive the world economy's biggest
economic boom in history) and that absolved mainland China of its polluting acts (China
will soon overtake the USA as the main polluter in the world). The Kyoto
Protocol was also based on really bad science, which is never a good way
to plan the future
(See The US reneges Kyoto: idiot or savant?).
If the G8 comes up with a better plan to control pollution (and not only
"global warming", but the many instances of pollution that account for thousands
of deaths every year in countries like mainland China), that would be welcome
by almost everybody (except, possibly, the government of mainland China).
But one has to be suspicious of these Western leaders who suddenly feel
compelled to fight pollution, after having been elected by special-interest
lobbies that represent the very polluters.
There might be two reasons for Bush's change of heart and for much of the
passion with which Blair and Merkel support it. The first one is nuclear power.
The West (except France) has lived in the fear of nuclear power for too long.
The West is becoming a vassal of the Middle East because its dependence on oil
kept increasing for three decades, instead of decreasing after the first oil
crisis. This amounts to collective suicide. The only way out of this economic
slavery is to install hundreds of nuclear powers all over the Western world.
This cannot be done because the suicides are not the political leaders but
the masses. The Western masses would rather send trillions of dollars/euros
to the Middle Eastern tyrants than risk a nuclear accident on their own soil.
It's a very expensive form of life insurance. And, ironically, it has resulted
in the deaths of thousands of Western citizens by Islamic fundamentalists who
were funded with the money that the West used to buy oil from the Middle East.
Nuclear power would solve the problem forever, making each country largely
independent of the energy resources of other countries. The good news is that
uranium is mostly in the hands of democratic and responsible countries such
as Australia and Canada.
The political leaders of the West may have come to see the debate on "global warming"
as an excellent opportunity to promote nuclear power to the masses.
Basically, the question is becoming: do you want life to become extinct on
Earth or the minor risk of a nuclear accident near your home?
The second reason for rediscovering the danger of climate change is that
it hurts mainly mainland China, not the USA. The Western leaders are beginning
to realize that the countries that would be punished the most by a fair
world policy to control dangerous emissions are the emerging competitors.
Basically, any policy to effectively control gas emissions would be a tax
on emerging powers such as mainland China.
As the USA well knows, taxing the colonies is a good way to keep them from
becoming too competitive (that's how the USA's independence war against Britain
started). Mainland China is right to be suspicious of any talk about "gas
emission reduction". It almost certainly means that the more technologically
developed West will come up with a new line of business while developing
countries like mainland China (and most of the poor countries of the world)
will be left behind yet again.
A fair deal in the name of protecting the poor peoples of the world would
result in the poor peoples of the world becoming even poorer, missing the
chance they have today of catching up with the rich countries.
The British and French empires specialized in this kind of deals with their
colonies, and always found a way to do it in the name of a moral duty.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (march 2007)
The danger with national oil companies.
We live in the age of nationalization of the oil companies. While most of
the world is moving away from government-owned businesses, the governments
of oil-rich countries have been moving towards nationalizing their oil
industries. Mostly, this is due to the desire to maximize profits from the
oil business and use them for the domestic economy.
Thus today the "seven sisters" are not Western multinations but national
oil companies: Saudi Arabia's Aramco, Russia's Gazprom, Iran's NIOC,
Venezuela's PDVSA, Malaysia's Petronas, etc.
Socialist-leaning ideologues might be happy to see that profits from a
country's oil wells go directly to the people of that country (minus, of course,
the money lost because of inefficiency and corruption). But there is a reason
if capitalism has won its war against communism: over the long distance,
capitalism works better. If i give one dollar to the 100,000 poorest
people in the world, all of them will be one dollar richer for one day, but
the following day we will all be penniless (not only them, but also myself).
On the other hand, if i take from them the few pennies they have and put
together enough money to invest wisely, tomorrow we will all be rich.
Communism may sound more humanitarian, and capitalism more cruel, but capitalism
tends to feed people while communism tends to starve people.
That is precisely the fear. The national oil companies do not invest in the
future as much as the multinationals do. It sounds great that Chavez is spending
oil money for the poor people of Venezuela, but this means that he is not
investing much on the future of his oil industry, which means that tomorrow
Venezuela may not be able to sell as much oil as it does today.
On top of the uncertainty about the growing demand for oil in the developing
world, the world is now facing another uncertainty: the one about the decreasing
will of oil producers to invest in producing oil.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (January 2007)
Banning plastic.
Plastic has been one of the key inventions of the 20th century. Now the world
is afloat in a sea of plastic. Unfortunately, the processes of manufacturing
plastic and of recycling plastic are extremely polluting. Countries that
do not have facilities (or the culture) to recycle plastic are literally
submerged by millions of plastic bottles and plastic bags. The stench of
burning plastic is becoming pervasive in many poor countries.
A few good reasons to ban plastic:
A few governments have begun to notice:
BUt this is only about plastic bags.
Best Life Magazine of november 2006 had an article on how poisonous are the
toxins released by plastic food containers...
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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