Posts Tagged ‘Obama’
Down Under
Nov17
By John Feehery
I always thought that if we got into a war with China, it would be because of a misstep in Taiwan.
Now, I am more inclined to believe it be because of a Chinese effort to invade Australia.
President Obama announced yesterday that he was sending the Marines to Australia. From the vantage point of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, it was a curious decision.
But if you are living in Australia or if you are an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, the decision couldn’t come soon enough.
There isn’t going to be shooting war in Australia any time soon, but the fact of the matter is that the Aussies are more than just our strategic partners. They are our brothers in arms, an outpost of Western civilization in a part of the world that will soon be overrun by a boisterous and rich communist regime.
Australia is important strategically for many reasons. Many of our intelligence gathering operations are there. They have vast natural resources that will become more important as the century unfolds.
They are the largest exporter of coal in the world.
They have strategically important minerals there, more specifically rare earth minerals that play an important role in everything from your iPhone to weapon systems. China has a near monopoly on rare earth minerals, and the Australians are quickly moving to break that monopoly.
Australia is a threat to China because it is a free-market democracy. The Chinese don’t really like free-market democracies.
The Chinese see the Australians as a threat to their hegemony and they see their resources as a prize to be plucked. Chinese companies are already trying to buy land and make moves into the land down under. Immigration from China has also picked up the pace, and because the Aussies reproduce at about the same rate as white peoples everywhere, the Australian government is going to be under great demographic pressures in the years to come.
All of this serves as a backdrop to the President’s correct decision to bolster our relationship with our friends in Canberra. We need Australia to stay strong and independent and they need our help to fend off the Chinese.
Mr. Obama quite rightly said that America is a Pacific country and that we must continue to project power in the region. Nothing projects power more than sending in the Marines.
The 7 Billionth Person
Nov1
By John Feehery
According to the United Nations, the 7 billionth person came into the world the other day.
I was wondering why it felt kind of crowded around here.
The 1 billionth person arrived when Thomas Jefferson was president. No. 2 billion came when Calvin Coolidge was president, the 3 billionth when Dwight Eisenhower was president, the 4 billionth when Nixon was getting impeached, the 5 billionth when Reagan was in his second term, the 6 billionth when Clinton was in his second term, and now Obama is president with No. 7 billion.
If it seems like the pace is picking up, well, you are right. At this rate, we will hit 10 billion by 2050.
Most of the growth is occurring in Asia, Africa and South America. The United States and Europe are expected to stay fairly flat in their population growth, but that doesn’t mean that Europeans and Americans won’t be profoundly affected by the population explosion in other parts of the globe.
The CIA and the Defense Department planners are already thinking through the implications of this population boom. Politicians need to follow suit.
Food security is an obvious concern. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, food production will need to increase 70 percent in the next two generations. That’s a lot to ask of an industry that is being hampered by all kinds of government regulations.
Water security is a perennial flashpoint, and has been throughout American history. We like to build retirement communities in deserts, but the nice weather only really is nice if you have access to air conditioning and easy access to water. Yes, conservation is important, but it won’t solve the problem by itself.
Transportation infrastructure is the key to long-term competitiveness in an increasingly crowded world. This is no time for small ball, either. We have to think and then rethink why and when people commute to work, if the work can be better done at home or in a mobile office.
As the planet gets more crowded, its inhabitants also get older. Population-control policies (like China’s one-child policy) make retirement systems (like Social Security) harder to sustain in the long term. It is fine to live a long time, but having a billion people live until they are 100 will put an incredible strain on the world’s economic system.
As the rest of the world grows, economies will demand more resources and consume more commodities. We have already seen how China’s rise has affected the price of rare earth metals, for example. How will American policymakers and business leaders confront that reality?
This population explosion will also strain our borders as more people from the less developed world will seek to come to America. Who do we let in? Who do we keep out? And how will that affect America’s standing in the world?
Perhaps the best way to deal with the long-term population explosion is to rapidly and aggressively search for livable planets in other parts of the galaxy, and then pour resources into encouraging exploration and settlement. But because we already spend so much money on our retirement programs, we can’t afford to fund a first-class space program anymore. So how do we encourage the private sector to take the lead on this exploration?
I would like to think that the free market can take care of all of this, and I do believe that there is an important place for market capitalism in our future. But the invisible hand is not going to take care of all of the problems that come with 10 billion people.
I am an optimist about the future, and I believe that we will find a way to manage our population problem. But we need our political class to start taking a serious look at all of the ramifications of all of these people, and start having an adult conservation about how we are going to manage the future.
