The Rise and Decline of Great Powers
by tdaxp ~ June 23rd, 2008
Tom Barnett and Jennifer Chou have a pair of great posts on the expanding influence of the great powers of the Core: the United States, the European Union, and China. While the posts and the articles they link to don’t address the reasons directly, an important one are the three factors of production: capital, land, and labor. While the US, the EU, and China are all well run economically, each has a special advantage: large-scale immigration increases the US pool of labor, the incorporation of new states increases the EU pool of land, and the continuing market reforms increases the Chinese pool of capital.
One formerly great power that doesn’t enjoy legitimate growth in these factors of production is Russia. While Russia has been trading land for cash for generations (losing influence in more and more countries in order to keep revenues up, most recently seen in Moscow’s squeezing of Belarus), she has been unable to create a productive economy. Even these days of high energy prices only further addict Russia to energy-export, a dead end for nearly every country that tries it.
The increase in land, in capital, and labor is vital for America to be not just a great power, but also a Super Power. Part of this is keeping a liberal economy. Part of this is comprehensive immigration reform which will increase the arrival of both high- and low- skilled labor. Part of this is adding new states.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:24 am
Since land is so important, how might global warming affect the three big powers you discuss? It seems that the U.S., and the EU (as well as Russia) are poised to do better if the worst case scenarios come true, whereas China’s coastal cities would seem most at risk.
Also, Russia and the EU have large tracts of land in the north that are mostly uninhabitable b/c of the artic. (And of course to does Canada.) Might global warming make these areas habitable while hitting Asia and Africa quite harshly?