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.'"

Technologies are only delaying the real thing

[Taco Cowboy]

I am not a luddite, but I still gotta say this ...

The technologies that we have today have given us a lot of good things

It has made our lives "better", in the sense that a lot of diseases that previously can kill us, nowadays are not that lethal anymore

But, the consequence is that the world human population has exploded

20 years ago, there were less than 5 Billion people

Now, 7 Billion people, and, as we speak, the figure keeps going up and up

Our planet simply can't support it

Either we human completely depleted the planet and we die off - and in the process a lot of other plants and animals wiped off as well,

Or ...

There will be another full scale global war, that ends up cutting down the human population to more manageable size

In other words, the "world peace" that we have today is but only an illusion - our technologies are delaying the what will have to come, ultimately
 

If you ...

[PPH]

... cooperate with me and buy my technology or pay me rent for access to my markets with your technology, there will be peace.

If you expect me to cooperate with you, or you expect free access to my walled garden (a.k.a. the US marketplace) on your terms, there will be war.

Re:Pft...

[pegasustonans]

Technology doesn't promote world peace, that's a side effect. Free trade promotes world peace. It's that trade of goods, information and ideas that makes people respect and want to know someone else. Though societies that don't have anything to export are generally pretty good importers of said culture, throwing the "fear of god" into said places.

I agree with you with one caveat:

Taking government subsidies for domestic industries such as agriculture into consideration, what many people refer to now as 'free trade' in bi-lateral and regional trade agreements isn't even close to 'free trade,' as in trade unencumbered by restriction.

Sounds like Pre-WW1 Talk

[ranton]

I remember reading speculation from dawn of the 20th century, that claimed the expanding global economy made wars between major powers unlikely (sorry, no citation). It was wrong then, and it is probably wrong now. Nucular bombs have done far more to promote world peace than economic inter-dependence.

We have lived almost an entire century where resources were so abundant that major powers simply didn't need to fight each other. We will see what happens once these resources (oil, water, etc) start to dry up.

tell this BS to Germans and Russians

[decora]

Germany and Russia were major trading partners in the 19th and early 20th century.

In the late 1930s, Hitler and Stalin were allies, agreeing to carve up Poland, which they did in 1939.

In 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of people. The Eastern Front of World War Two was one of the primary atrocities that the human species has perpetrated upon itself and upon the planet Earth.

Please tell me again how their 'integrated economy' prevented war.

When the facts of measurable reality (in our case, history) disagree with your theory, your theory must be thrown out and disregarded. In every science people to understand this, but in History they so often ignore it for some bizarre socio-bio-emotional reason. People appear to be fascinated by theories, and don't really care about the data.

Re:Technologies are only delaying the real thing

[Taco Cowboy]

"Our planet simply can't support it"

I call bullshit.

How much land in the United States alone is sparsely populated and in fact owned by the Federal Government? Do your own research, don't believe me. Go on genius, I dare you!

What exactly do you want, AC?

You want to cut down all the trees ?

You want to turn all those "sparsely populated land" into densely populated and highly polluted cities ?

And you want to dare me ?

LOL !!
 

Compatible Economies

[slew]

The primary difference between the US-Soviet pre-cold war relationship and the US-China is that in the first instance, we were forced together (fighting germany in WWII) and never really developed a trading relationship, where the current US-China relationship formed from common economic forces. If you look at the US-China relationship post WWII, and pre-Nixon, it might remind you a bit of the US-Soviet relationship. Or maybe even worse (supporting the KMT/taiwan/south-korea/south-vietnam) didn't really put us into China's good graces back then...

The turning point with china? Basically Mao's death in 1976 and US agreeing that taiwan was part of china in 1979. These have nothing to do with technology. The change in leadership and economic orientation made the economies more compatible (perhaps best summarized by the quote "I don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice").

The turning point with Russia? Collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin started things along, but of course Mr Putin's influence basically rendered their economy (apparently some wikileaked documents called it a virtual mafia state) incompatible with ours.

I think we technophiles hate to admit it, but events (even in the world of technology) often revolves more around people (e.g., rms, linus torvalds, bill gates, steve jobs, in the tech world etc) than any underlying technology.

Boy, are these 2 idiots

[WindBourne]

Economic IS peaceful, but only when the 2 economies are interdependent. Chinese leaders work hard to block Western goods, but make the west dependent on them, while building up their own economy AND military. Since China's economy has grown massively and CHina has amassed a load of dollars (us and australian) and europes, they should see their money rise relative to these money. But that is NOT the case. Likewise, in a normal economic relationship, there would be regular 2-way trade. There is not. Resources account for the vast majority of what the west trades to CHina. When something like an auto is exported there, if it is selling well, then China will put a tariff on importing that specific companies cars, until they move manufacturing there. Once it is there, they will subsidize the energy there, and then encourage the company to sell it on the global market. Just recently China put a massive tax on ALL GM cars. That is, until GM turned over the patent rights for electric cars to CHINESE GOV. IOW, GM was going to be killed from manufacturing or importing cars there, unless they allowed 100% of Chinese made cars to have free and clear access to their entire patent DB related to electric cars.

This is NOT about economic trade. This is a cold war. Sadly these 2 idiots are like the rest of the ppl that ignore facts.

Now to wait for the Chinese lobbyists that will post here as ACs claiming that I am lying.

Re:tell this BS to Germans and Russians

[shutdown -p now]

I still don't understand how he isn't considered the greatest monster of the 20th century having killed 50,000,000 people...

That would probably be because the country under his leadership had, effectively, won WW2 in the end (2/3 of all Axis casualties were on the Eastern Front). Victors get to write the history.

As a side note, 50 million is not a realistic figure. IIRC, it was first quoted as 47 million by Solzhenitsyn, with no real sources to speak of, and then widely distributed, and sometimes even further inflated in propaganda literature of dubious quality. Heck, even the "Black Book of Communism", which itself is not exactly an impartial scholarly source, quotes 20 million.

But it is not supported by demographic data from Soviet archives, unless you assume that Russians suddenly started to breed like rabbits just before Stalin's purges, and then just as suddenly stopped doing so. The more realistic figure would be somewhere around 1 million directly executed, and around 6-7 million if you include unaccounted victims as well as indirect ones due to famines induced by state policies. That figure is usually padded further by including the so-called "demographic losses" (i.e. counting the unborn children that people would have had if they didn't die, assuming average birth rates), which is how you arrive at 20 million quoted in BBoC.