Slashdot Mirror
How Technology Promotes World Peace
Hugh Pickens writes "Ayesha & Parag Khanna write in the Atlantic that there are many important differences between the U.S.-China relationship of today and the U.S.-Soviet relationship before the outbreak of the Cold War. One is that the U.S. and China are deeply intertwined through geo-economic interdependence, and the rapid and global diffusion of technology is accelerating these changes. 'As the global economy has become more integrated, states have greater interest in cooperating and less interest in conflict, which can lead to a kind of mutually assured economic destruction,' write the Khanna. 'If military power is inherently competitive — the stronger your army and the weaker your neighbor's, the more powerful you become — then economic power is more cooperative. After all, much of America's power today is economic, but that power would decrease if China's economy collapses.' This economic inter-dependence, the theory goes, promotes peace, but technological power is also cooperative in this way, perhaps even more so. For example, medical research crosses borders, as do the pharmaceuticals or treatments that research can produce. China can increase its power by developing better solar panels — perhaps in part by building on foreign technologies — then turn around and sell them to other high-energy-consuming states, making us all better off. Like economics, technology doesn't just increase cooperation, it is the cooperation. 'The increasingly integrated global system is shaping the states within it, much as individual powers shape the system. The question is thus not who controls technology, but the way in which we develop, guide, and control it collectively.'"
We just need to watch everyone....for peace
The same type of arguments circulated before WWI. Surely, in a modern, globalized world where German and English bankers could both own shares in Argentinian railroads, and where British citizens bought German paints and medicines, and Germans bought licences for British patented manufacturing, war could never break out.
Comments, A_Lee
"Nucular bombs have done far more to promote world peace than economic inter-dependence."
Well said.
The end result of war is... wait for it... peace.
Our goal should be that of the winner. Unless you are a statist of course.
Sorry, doesn't work like that anymore.
US is waging war with states they don't care about, economically: Afghanistan, Iraq. They would happily go after North Korea and most North African states are free game too. They're not getting anything vital out of there.
China is another matter. Imagine the US waging war against China: that would lead to total destruction. First all consumers would complain that they would not be able to buy clothes, DVD players, and many other manufactured goods, as the supply from China would stop and the US doesn't have their own manufacturing anymore. Soon after the US military would come to a grinding halt due to the lack of supply of spare parts for their weapons systems, parts that are also more and more made in China.
The US is at least as dependent on Chinese manufacturers as the Chinese manufacturers are dependent on US buyers. They can't survive without one another. China may even have the best chance of survival in such a war scenario, because at least they can produce the goods they need themselves...
I'm sorry but the wall fell in 1980. While Reagan was yelling for Mr. Gorbachev to tear down his wall, American business was ripping down ours so they could take their collective shows on the road and exploit all that cheap labor, resource and markets in the developing world. Over the next 30 years the American Corporations became truly global, no longer owing allegiance or even interest to the well being of the U.S. and as such have since been sucking off the overflow as the American economy implodes in a global economic free fall.
There has perhaps been some recent back peddling trying to reestablish some barrier to preserve what little is left, but its too little too late, and at this point its probably just as well the American worker is now economically on a par with those in the third world. It means soon work will be coming back to the United States (in fact its already begun.) So the walled garden of which you speak only exists in a couple specific technologies, and pretty much the rest of it is a distant historical condition enjoyed by Americans who are long retired or dead.
Tertullian, an early Christian author (ca. CE 160-220), was one of the first to describe famine and war as factors that can prevent overpopulation.[5] He wrote: "The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our complaints against Nature's inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.
Knowledge and technological advance keep solving and bringing back this age old problem. I wonder if we bent all of Earth's resources to our needs how much of the biomass of the Earth could be comprised of human beings.