If you weren’t outside this planet over the last few weeks, you heard some sabre rattling.
And maybe you heard also of the proposed doctrinal change on war from the US military.
More a litany, than just few examples.
Such as shifting on Iran from engagement to de-facto containment , the Turkish political side trying to take over control of the secularist military through judicial initiatives and, as often repeated by the former Italian head of the UN forces in Lebanon, the continued violations of Lebanon’s airspace from Israeli forces
To say nothing about the recurring news items, such as the sale of weapons to Taiwan and the reassertion of the unease at yet another EU member accepting to be the hosting site for antimissile defense.
The paradox is that all this is counterbalanced by even more integration and increase in the need of mutual assistance from the countries involved.
Starting from the facts
Following the guidelines that I described in the previous article (see “Maximizing costs, minimizing ROI“”), this article was inspired by simply connecting strings of unrelated but mutually influencing news items.
Why “drawing maps”? Because sabre-rattling is, in my humble opinion, often but one of the many tools available in a negotiation.
As an example: the first answer to the build-up to “contain” Iran was that the Iranian authorities started discussing about “outsourcing” the enrichment of uranium – still a long way to go, but better than yet another war.
At the same time, something with equally long-term potential consequences is happening in Russia, albeit is seems to be just a technical detail.
During the Cold War, when IBM had a significant share of the market for mainframes, a clone of IBM 3XX series was developed by the Soviet Union.
While your desktop PC has usually a shelf-life (i.e. in shops) of few months, and a working life (i.e. on your desk) of few years, mainframe computers (and programs) routinely outlive their expected working life.
To cut a long story short: in our new, globalized economy, IBM is helping Russian Railways to “optimize its IT infrastructure and is using new technologies to improve its freight and passenger management systems “.
From articles and press-releases, part of this activity involves consolidating data centres, and reorganizing all the management of its operations, to achieve a 99.9% system reliability and fault-tolerance.
If you are not into IT: this means making things smoother and faster to manage in a network covering from Europe to the Pacific, across multiple time zones, in a business employing over 1.3 million people and representing more than 3.6% of Russiaˇs GDP (all the statistics are from an official IBM press release).
A third issue, that you can read about almost on a daily basis, is the damage and cost inflicted to international trade from the pirates attacks reportedly originating from Somalia.
A sea lane critical for the world trade and the oil-producing countries, along with all the African countries, is becoming increasingly difficult to use.
Last but not least: US economy is growing again at over 5% (i.e. beyond the “creative accounting” level), China reportedly more than 10%, with an accelerating urbanization and expansion of the internal demand.
And despite the mutual noises about Taiwan, the economies of ROC and PRC are integrating more and more.
Finally, China has a “vested interest” (i.e. the pile of US dollar-denominated debt and reserves it is sitting on) in sustaining US’s economy growth, and needs to think about future production facilities, while securing the natural resources needed for the expansion of its economy.
Just few regions- but interesting possibilities.
The World’s trade backbone
I read few articles published by an Italian magazine talking about “Chimerica”- a merger of China and America.
But in Italian it sound more like “Chimera”-like, i.e. a mythical animal.
So, I will not get into the naming game- also because I think that it makes more sense to foresee a tripartite entity (Russia/China/US).
As far as I remember, there are more Chinese than Russians in Siberia (I just searched online- it seems that my memory is working).
If Russia completes the renewal of Russian Railways, and it becomes integrated into the logistical system of China and Northern America, it could increasingly make the countries involved mutually dependent.
Admittedly, there is still work to do in the US to increase the railway network- if not for people, at least for goods.
Also, removing intermediaries (i.e. third-party countries used by current trade routes) would increase both the reliability and ease the management and evolution of the distribution network.
With a further potential to then integrate with the European logistics network.
Just thirty years ago, high-speed trains were mainly on the drawing board, and I heard chuckling at the supposed madness of the German and French governments heavily subsidizing a network of high-speed railway connections.
A similar integration is currently being developed, to join Northern Africa to the European “electrical backbone”, using the potential of Northern Africa for solar energy production, while allowing to introduce the stability and resilience of the local electrical distribution system needed to support economic development.
Looking at the numbers, I think that joint infrastructural projects (physical, like the train and electricity network, or virtual, like Eurocontrol or Schengen) have been what kept Europeans from turning again from each other.
On Wednesday- adding another crazy idea to the stability and development puzzle.
Tags: china, development, economic, ibm, infrastructure, international, logistics, railway, russia