Demography is Density

Reason's hit and run blog recently posted about National Review conservatives' phobia of Muslim birthrates. (Don't worry, I have far better things to do than read the New Republic or National Review). You've read the sound bites, e.g., Mark Steyn's "the future belongs to those who show up," deployed like infantry squares against the cavalry charges of political correctness, Muslim terrorism, and Mexican illegal immigration.

Relax--the "demography is destiny" people are out to lunch. Here's why.

1. Global birth rates are dropping. Let me repeat that for people who haven't realized Paul Ehrlich has been full of shit for decades. Global birth rates are dropping. The United Nations Population Division (that's right, the UN, America's third oldest enemy behind France and the Mahometans of the Barbary Coast) predicts global population to be from about 7-10 billion in 2050, with a median estimate of 9 billion for 2070 and beyond. The fertility rate (number of children born per woman) is below 2.5 and dropping in Mexico (2.39) and below 2.1, the steady-state level, in both China (1.75) and Iran (1.71)!

2. "Demography is destiny" is the desiccated husk of a metaphor from the dying industrial age. Once upon a time economic and military might emerged from the assembly line and conscription, but even then, the ability to manipulate information was a force multiplier--consider how its bureaucracy and school system gave Prussia under Frederick the Great (pop. 5-10 million) an army superior to that of vastly more populous, but poorer and less centralized, Russia.

But now, both wealth and the ability to convert it to military advantage are a matter of knowledge and communication, and not the bashing of bulk materials or the bludgeoning of conscripts. As I've told Curtis, one bullet in the right place at the right moment can do more to achieve victory than a million bullets fired blindly. (This photo served North Vietnam better than anything the NVA did in combat). The US victories against the Iraqi Army in 1991 and 2003 were won by superior knowledge, to which our fancy firepower was a servant. The US stalemate in Iraq from 2003-2007, conversely, emerged from inferior knowledge, specifically our failures to understand Iraqi language, culture, and social networks.

Not to encourage complacency--the US's position as the world's sole superpower isn't ordained by God--but let's be serious for a moment. Would the Caliphate Navy and Air Force be able to achieve enough air/sea superiority to land an invasion force on US soil? Would the Fuerza Occupada de Aztlan be able to suppress an anglo insurrection in Texas and California? China, India, and Europe look to be the only states capable of competing with the US in the information age. Hmm, someone should blog about that....

Eight Futures 3

First, arherring had a comment on the previous post that suggested a superpower is an entity that can do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants. By that definition, there has never been a superpower. Even Rome at its height was constrained by its number of men under arms, its internal politics, and "soft power" considerations, such as the need for favorable omens to persuade it it was carrying out the will of its gods, and the memory of its annihilated legions and lost eagles at Carrhae and Teutoburger Wald. Much as behavioral economics is overturning the Homo economicus of a Randian's dreams, behavioral political science will overturn the national interest of a Kissingerian's. See Robert Axelrod's The Complexity of Cooperation, chapter 4.

Second, I wanted to say a few words about failed superpowers, meaning powers that sought to drive the interpolity agenda in the medium term, but fell short. The two leading examples are France from Louis XIV to Napoleon I, and Germany from 1890 to 1945. Both sought to drive the agenda of continental Europe by winning wars and planting puppets on foreign thrones, but both were opposed in the attempt to reach that status by Britain. The Spanish Armada made clear the only possible threat to Britain was from a power that commanded the continent to such an extent that it could afford to build a massive fleet. Hence, Britain opposed any attempt to command the continent, by diplomacy, by subsidizing allies, and, less frequently, by landing its own ground forces. (Yet even as clear-eyed a power as Britain fell into traps of memory and habit--as late as 90 years after Waterloo, a faction in Whitehall sought an alliance with Germany against France).

A power need not be a superpower to defeat another power's attempt to reach that status: Britain wasn't a superpower from 1588 to 1815, yet foiled France's attempts. Also, a power need not defeat all other powers, even other superpowers, in war to achieve that status: Britain was on the winning side of both world wars, but doing so spent its will and gave the USA and USSR a vacuum to fill. Yet a power most often becomes a superpower by defeating its rivals in war.

Concerning the future, many Americans worry about a US-China war, and for good reason, see above; but India is potentially as likely a source of global disorder and challenge to American hegemony. Will it be or not? More later.

Eight Futures 2

Curtis asked for the definition of "superpower" I'll be using in this series. Here it is:

A superpower is an organization that drives interpolity relations in the medium term (decades) and leaves a legacy across polities in the long term (decades to centuries).

I use "organization" to leave open the possibility of non-state actors being superpowers. Another aspect of "organization" is that it excludes the actions of lone geniuses, e.g. Alexander of Macedon or Shaka Zulu, from consideration as superpowers. I'll talk more about future organizations later.

"Polities" instead of "nations" or "states" reflects my reading of Martin Van Creveld: the state as we know it is an invention of European bureaucracies in 1500-1945.

"Drives" implies an active, chosen component. Hence the US, the only entity capable of being a superpower from 1918-1945, was not one because it had no such desire, despite Wilson's international progressivism.

Why "legacy"? It is the residue of that drive; it reflects a psychological impact hardened into memory and culture.

Examples of superpowers?

Rome: Rome drove affairs in the Mediterranean from Scipio's victory at Zama (202 BC, crippling Carthage for good) for about six centuries in the west. Construing Byzantium as Roman, Rome remained a superpower in the eastern Mediterranean until at least the rise of the Caliphate (or Manzikert, the Fourth Crusade, the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor). Rome's legacy? Latin still influences the English language, e.g., viz., etc., sic and its descendants are spoken by hundreds of millions of people with little, if any, ancient Italian descent. Thanks to the Romans, Christianity is a world religion; ten percent of Egyptians still adhere to it after fourteen centuries of Muslim domination. Last point: a European political leader claimed the title "Roman Emperor" until 1806; Franz II abolished the title, not because it had no meaning, but because it had too much meaning to let it fall into Napoleon's hands.

Other examples:

· The Muslim caliphate.

· Classical China--compare the area settled by the Han ethnicity in 200 BC with the area currently ruled by the PRC.

· Britain in the 19th century: it unilaterally banned the trans-Atlantic slave trade and conquered a quarter of the world. No European great powers fought a war without Britain's express or implied permission from 1815-1914, except of course for Bismarck's wars for German unification. Britain's legacy lives on in the prevalence of the common law, the pervasiveness of colonialism in 1880-1960, and the corrupt and inefficient socialist economies across the Third World born when future Third World dictators studied under Keynes at the London School of Economics.

· The USA is obviously a superpower, and even were it to vanish today, the WTO, GATT, IMF, World Bank, and all its other Bretton Woods offspring would survive.

· The USSR? Yes, it too was a superpower, and its legacy is tangible: UN obstructionism and the AK-47, the tool of choice of the DIY guerrillero.

What will "superpower" mean in the future? Accepting arguendo Curtis's view that 5GW is inevitable--a view consonant with both my reading of Van Creveld and my sfnal thoughts on molecular manufacturing, cheap simple robotics, and distributed emergent computing--the time will come when no state has the power to police its territory for criminals and rebels. When no state can prevent pirate and terrorist predations. When no state can conquer territory save by nuclear genocide. Yet within these constraints, some states could be superpowers and drive the international agenda, just as ancient rulers could, in one sense, dominate a large chunk of the world while, in an another, being utterly ignorant of the assets and attitudes of their subjects and the capabilities and intentions of their neighbors. For this reason, the term "superpower" has legs left.

Alternatively, could a non-state actor be a superpower? Picture a James Bond supervillian who really can build a moonbase with a giant "laser" capable of destroying a city; or more plausibly, an organized crime gang using molecular manufacturing/robotics/computing to dominate affairs in Third World slums or the communes of an ethnic diaspora. Whether such an organization can drive international affairs for decades is another question, but it's not automatically ridiculous to ask. I'll leave the question of whether such an organization would leave any legacy other than "you too can become Keyser Soze/Dr. Evil" to the reader.

Eight Futures 1

Anyone writing science fiction set in the next century has to think about three questions in international politics:

• Will China become a superpower or not?
• Will India become a superpower or not?
• Will the United States remain a superpower or not?

Three binary questions yields 2^3 = 8 possible futures, hence the title of this series of posts.

"But what about my particular hobby horse?" you may ask. Fair enough. But whether you think the real question is whether or not we'll prevent global warming, nuclear terrorism, or 5GW, any realistic answer will depend, at least in part, on which of these eight futures will come to pass. For example, if the US, China, and India are all superpowers, the factions willing and able to engage in nuclear terrorism (and the targets they would select) will be vastly different than if China and India are not superpowers and the US has been weakened by economic depression, climate change, and post-Bush-overreach isolationism. The broad outlines of the world of the 21st century and beyond will be laid down by events in these three countries in the coming decades, just as the medieval struggles between Emperor and Pope were laid down six centuries earlier by the Christianization of Rome.

The next three posts in the series will weigh the evidence on both sides of the three questions given above, as well as giving some consideration to what sort of superpower each of these three polities could be. After that, future posts in the series will explore at least some of these eight futures.