The more you hoard the power, the less you control
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
ARTICLE: "Trouble in the pipeline: Despite booming demand and record prices, Russia's oil industry faces problems," The Economist, 10 May 2008, p. 71.
This is all too predictable, despite the West's frantic fears that the oil producers have us somehow over a barrel. The truth is, the producers get addicted to the oil money much worse than we get addicted to the oil. There is no supply threat out there, just an adaptation threat on our side—namely, do we respond reasonably fast to the permanently heightened prices. Just wait long enough for the reality of climate change's impact on global agricultural production patterns to emerge, because more of the planet will begin to recognize that it's North America who holds most of the cards there, and food is a lot more precious than oil. Anyway, no reason to get all freaked about Putin anymore that Chavez. We've seen this show too many times before, like with Mexico: the more you nationalize and try to "control" your precious resource, denying it outside capital and expertise, the less you actually command in terms of production.
The next-order network perturbation
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
INTERVIEW: "David Hightower on the Explosion in Commodities Markets," by Maria Bartiromo, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 021.
Rising Asia gets you rising energy costs, which contribute to the rise in food costs, which soon enough (as in, next year) will help drive high meat (beef and pork) costs. Why? Price of feed to the animals goes up, so farmers reduce their herds.
The end is near on gas combustion! Repent! (or maybe just trade in)
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
ARTICLE: "GM: Live Green or Die," by David Welch, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 036.
Waggoner's big bet on Volt, or basically a car run on giant cellphone batteries, is intriguing. He's promising a crash program that produces large numbers of cars available as soon as the 2010 season. It is described as a "nerve-shattering schedule" and an almost Apollo-like effort. How well GM succeeds is not the point, the movement and the direction is the point. The market signals, and businesses respond—not out of nobility but out of a survival instinct.
India works to catch up with China in Africa
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
ARTICLE: "India Plays Catch-Up In Africa: Giants in telecom and pharma, among others, are sinking big money into the promising market," by Manjeet Kripalani and David Rocks, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 055.
India has fewer bodies in Africa than China, but a longer historical presence and one more embedded in African society than the Chinese who tend to enclave themselves. No question that trade is booming, up from $6.5B in 2003 (two-way) to $25B last year. And yeah, plenty of Africans see India as the alternative model, given the similar focus on villages as the center of life, but with all the urbanization going on in Africa, the Chinese model will be prevalent as well, so expect plenty of mixing and matching and merging. But clearly, it's the modern frontier-integrators and rising powers like India and China that present the logical models for Africa, not the West with its focus on aid and demands for instant democracy.
The SysAdmin Industrial Complex is looking good—thank you very much
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
ARTICLE: "Iraq Contractor In Shooting Case Is Rehired By U.S.: Blackwater Rebounds; U.S. Lacks Alternatives to Security Firm—Intense Lobbying," by James Risen, New York Times, 10 May 2008, p. A1. ARTICLE: "Lucrative Privatizing Of Defense Drives Deal," by August Cole, Peter Lattman and Joann S. Lublin, Wall Street Journal, 17-18 May 2008, p. A1.
Remember when I wrote that Blackwater is too big to fail? So no surprise here. A frontier-integrating age naturally spawns new Pinkertons. For the same reason why mafias bloom (a sort of legal authority you turn to when you can't turn to the government, for whatever reason) in this age of expansive globalization, you see private security firms booming (a sort of quasi-police/military that governments turn to when they're operating in lawless areas—i.e., the Gap). So the rise of the private contractors merely represents the reality that shrinking the Gap is being done, must be done, and will continue to be done. Not a "theory" or a "vision," but a simple, observable dynamic and reality. You add three billion new capitalists and roughly two billion new middle class consumers to the mix and the global economy simply will not be contained. The Gap must be shrunk to meet all that demand. So those who see the war on terror as a supply function are wrong, even if the Bush administration wrongly employs too many supply-depressing tactics. It is a demand function, just like transnational terrorism is, and the driver of that demand is globalization's rapid extension around the planet. So don't expect privatization to go away anytime soon in the national security realm. It's only going to increase.
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