Sunday Cutdown III (12/17/2023)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) Have dividend, will travel
SCMP: Labour-rich Indonesia to send 100,000 workers to ageing Japan, reap benefits of ‘demographic dividend’
Japan estimates that it will need almost 7m workers by 2040 to meet their planned growth rates amidst a radical aging of the population.
Seven million divided by 17 comes to 500,000 workers imported on average per year, so this deal with Indonesia? All Tokyo needs to do now is rinse and repeat 425 times over the next 17 years, so get used to this headline.
2) The “forever war” with us still
Aljazeera: ‘Elephant in the room’: The US military’s devastating carbon footprint
Don’t really care about the CO2 bit here. The US military wants bad to get off fossil fuels for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest is the reality that moving fuel around a battlefield is supremely expensive ($100s per gallon cost) and puts a lot of people in harm’s way. It’s got nada to do with any “woke” or “green” agenda per se, it’s just the difference between staying stupid or getter smarter and more efficient and, believe it or not, the US military prefers the latter each time.
So what attracted my attention?
This chart:
Besides pointing out the obvious (the great spread of bases equates to moving a lot of fuel around), what I find fascinating as I watch yet another great doc on Netflix re: WWII is how the WWII and early Cold War reality still dominates our global basing footprint: namely, #1 Japan, #2 Germany, #3 South Korea, then Italy.
All the talk about “forever wars” always struck me as sort of ahistorical, as we’re still paying dues on WWII, looking at this footprint. In short, that’s how you win the peace for sure: the boys never come home.
Does that mindset still hold for globalization writ large? With climate change coming on and creating all sorts of North-South tensions, dynamics, and migrations? It’s hard to see America troops still managing that across the Eastern Hemisphere when it’s also happening on our doorstep across the Western Hemisphere.
Again, check out Congress linking border protection funds to military aid to allies in need like Ukraine and Israel. That’s a sign of the future, alright.
So, short answer? No, this historical pattern won’t hold this century, and we need to plan for that when it comes to power projection. A new balance will have to be found, as will new forms of force presence.
3) Score one for deterrence
Forbes: An Israeli F-35 Has Given China Something to Think About
The evidence of note:
Noted analyst, Rebecca Grant, says an Israeli F-35I which shot down what’s believed to be a Houthi cruise missile has set a precedent which is “bad news” for China.
Grant, who is a national security analyst with Washington, DC-based IRIS Independent Research, connected the intercept and shoot-down - the first-ever air-to-air kill of a cruise missile by an F-35 - with China’s well-known anti-access, area-denial (A2AD) strategy which is founded upon large volumes of cruise and other missiles to strike, hold at long range and defeat western forces in the Pacific.
All we have to do to keep China off Taiwan is to continue creating enough uncertainty about its ability to pull off a rapid invasion. Xi and the CCP won’t survive a long fight because of the domestic pain it will trigger.
Real-world evidence like this is very powerful. Remember: China hasn’t fought a war in decades.
4) More clear evidence of non-de-globalization
Visual Capitalist: Cross-Border Payments: A $150 Trillion Catalyst for Economic Growth
Cross border payments measures people to people transfers, biz/people transfers, and B2B transfers.
From the always fabulous Visual Capitalist, check out the trend line here and see if you can spot de-globalization:
Not only does this global dynamic blow through the pandemic, it’s slated to continue its rapid growth through 2027 toward $250T in flows.
The globalization doom-and-gloomers need to stuff some this data in their pipes and puff on it a bit, pulling their chins slowly in the realization that they’re full of shite.
5) Global Peak Power Emissions Reached
BBC: The clean energy milestone the world is set to pass in 2023
This is a very big deal:
Greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, the largest source of the world's emissions, are expected to fall for the first time, according to London-based think tank Ember. That's despite the fact that the world's demand for electricity is still growing. Emissions are set to fall because expansion in renewable energies such as solar and wind is outstripping that growth in demand.
Does this fix climate change?
No.
Does this significantly alter the unfolding of climate change for the next half century or so?
No.
Does this matter for the world and its inhabitants come the final decades of this century?
Yes, yes it does.
6) The notion of a long war over Taiwan
Yahoo: Why the Indian Ocean could be China's Achilles' heel in a Taiwan war
Some basic analysis that says: you know, China imports a lot of energy from the Middle East and it has to come through the Indian Ocean, where China’s navy doesn’t come close to ruling the roost, thanks to US naval presence and the growing capabilities of the Indian Navy.
So … Beijing would find it hard to wage a long, Russia-v-Ukraine type conflict.
A solid pat on the back from me for contextualizing war scenarios within the real world.
But … duh! The same thing applies to the US in any planned-for long war involving China, and that’s even before we start examining the dangers of two nuclear powers very easily lapsing into head-on-head warfighting in any such scenario — short or long.
There is a lot of strategic fantasizing going on within the US military establishment right now, planning and training for a long, direct, drawn-out struggle that would be self-immolating for all involved and the world economy. I mean, I like it when this tiny fragments of self-awareness are spotted, but this war is far too important to be left to the generals and admirals — under any circumstances.
Don’t get me wrong. We train as we expect to fight, but we have to realistically gauge the fight so our training isn’t a waste of time and resources and sending the wrong signals re: deterrence.
There won’t be any long Taiwan-China conflict. Nobody can afford, least of all the CCP.
7) Nothing provocative here
Proceedings: The War of 2026: American Sea Power Project Phase III
American sinologists come across some PLA white paper suggesting this or that regarding Taiwan or the US and …. boy oh boy, do they run with this “clear evidence” of China’s “aggressive intent.”
Then our US Navy’s flagship publication (I was their Author of the Year in 2001) comes out with a cover story like this:
Nothing provocative here folks! Can’t possible see why the Chinese would find this threatening.
Me personally, I find the dating part kind of cool. Gives them a heads-up and all.
8) Nice labor if you can exploit it
NYT: Children Risk Their Lives Building America’s Roofs
Another in a long litany of such stories that explains why our economy is just fine with our currently f##ked-up immigration system in which getting in legally is almost impossible so there’s this constantly available large pool of undocumented workers for US industries to use and abuse.
In short, the US economy likes our nation’s screwed-up immigration system. That’s why Congress doesn’t change it despite making it such a hot-button issue.
I know, unbelievable hypocrisy being fed to Americans on a daily basis.
Your tax dollars and votes at work, America!
9) What happens to Japan now, happens to China very soon
NYT: Japan Wants a Stronger Military. Can It Find Enough Troops?
Swap in China for Japan as the aging superpower and then swap in India for China as the scary rising power.
It will happen in the historical blink of an eye.
10) The need to invent new mechanisms for adapting to climate change
Nikkei: Indonesian coral reefs to get U.N.-backed weather insurance
The UN (United Nations Development Program Asia) thinking ahead by “delving into insurance mechanisms linked to climate change hopes to change that and build financial resilience by accelerating funding for reparation efforts.”
I don’t particularly care for the term “reparations” here because it’s such a red flag, but the idea of socializing the risk North-South is a key argument of America’s New Map. We can’t get enough experimentation like this because the more we engage such things, the faster we collectively learns what works and what doesn’t.
Other weather-triggered insurance is being considered or piloted across Asia-Pacific by various donor organizations and institutions, including the Asian Development Bank, Group of Seven wealthy nations, and nongovernmental organizations. They offer donor-backed projects or subsidized premiums. Many involve major private insurance companies, such as Generali and WTW.
I say, bring it!
In many ways it’s about bringing insurance to the un-insured and making its execution rapid enough to really matter:
Munich Re, a leading German provider or reinsurance and primary insurance, noted in an overview of natural disasters in 2022 that in many instances disaster losses in developing Asia are almost totally uninsured.
"In far too many communities and countries of the world, the burden of financial risk is sitting on the shoulders of every family," Kellett said. "Whether it's debt directly in their own assets, their lives and livelihoods, things that they have and which are important to them, or the public assets on which they depend."
Mutual trusts and cooperatives exist in some areas to provide collective cover, but the hope is this form of donor-supported, parametric-triggered insurance can provide more targeted, affordable cover in a simple and sustainable way. Parametric triggers set in motion a pre-determined payout once certain climatic or meteorological thresholds are met, such as wind speed, heat level and typhoon categories.
America has long had these sorts of financial derivatives where Wisconsin and Texas trade risk: snows too much in WI and the Badgers collect from the Texans, but if a heatwave rocks TX then Wisconsin pays — so to speak. In many ways, then, this is just a global version of a ruleset that has long existed within these United States.
Again, this is the core logic of America’s New Map.
11) Where India catches a climate break?
BBC: The desert going 5000 years back in time
Fascinating video offering from the BBC looking at how the Great Indian Desert may go progressively green this century in response to climate change shifting the oceanic center of gravity for its annual monsoons, thus shifting where they hit land. I mean, we’re talking about the environmental revival of one of the great cradles of civilization.
As always, the what of climate change is not what’s so mind-blowing but the where.
12) Rethinking one’s purpose WRT climate change
WAPO: Climate change is pushing American farmers to confront what’s next
This story feels a lot like an echo of what I wrote about fertility throughout history in America’s New Map: humans had this forever-like prime directive of max procreation and then modernity and the complexity of climate change really throws a wrench in that logic. Well, the argument in this great WAPO piece is similar:
For more than half a century, American farmers have had a clear mandate: Grow more. In the 1970s, Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz encapsulated the mission by urging them to plant “from fencerow to fencerow” and to “get big or get out.”
These exhortations worked: Total farm output nearly tripled between 1948 and 2019. That happened even as development pressures reduced total U.S. farm acreage by more than 140 million and the number of American farms fell from a peak of 6.8 million in 1935 to just over 2 million today.
In recent years, however, the demands on farmers have grown more complex. Drought, floods and other extreme weather have challenged many of the traditional ways, causing yields to fall. Vast cattle feedlots, chickens crowded in cages and heavy use of chemicals have come under criticism from environmental advocates and consumers. Agricultural policy has gotten caught up in culture wars that have snarled other aspects of American life.
All this is fascinating to me, having worked on farms in Wisconsin as a teenager back in the 1970s. It also matters for a speech/exec workshop I’m giving to the Dairy Board Association in Green Bay in January.
Now, if only the Detroit Lions can collapse … and then I can stay for a playoff game.
I know, who else sees a speaking gig in Green Bay in January and goes … oh yeah!
But hey, me, Green Bay, January, Lambeau Field … that’s a ton of great memories … and some frostbite.
Nah, just kidding. No frostbite. I was born just south of Green Bay! I am built for it!
But the larger point of rethinking one’s professional/industry purpose in the light of climate change is big-time. EVERYBODY is going to have to do this eventually, so the earlier you start, the better.