Implications for America's Global Role :
International Institute of American Studies, Public Lecture Co‑sponsored by: Policy and
Management Association of Doshisha University, Fall 2019
著者(英) Kent E. Calder
journal or
publication title
Doshisha American studies
number 56
page range 81‑90
year 2020‑03‑06
権利(英) International Institute of American Studies, Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/00027866
講演録
2019 年アメリカ研究所秋季公開講演会、共催同志社大学政策学会 International Institute of American Studies, Public Lecture
Co-sponsored by: Policy and Management Association of Doshisha University, Fall 2019
Deepening Eurasian Continentalism:
Implications for Americaʼs Global Role
Dr. Kent E. Calder (ケント・E・カルダー氏)
Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs and International Research Cooperation Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies School of Advanced International Studies Johns Hopkins University
Before I begin or as I begin, I should just say a word about how it is that I became interested in this particular subject for today, which I call super continent. But itʼs the story of the deepening relationships, political and economic, across the continent of Eurasia.
Part of it was, as I was growing up, my father was with the USAID [United States Agency for International Development], and we spent quite a bit of time in Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia around the rim of Eurasia.
In the time between I was eight years old and the time I went to college, in those ten years I spent five and a half of those years in different parts of Asia and Africa around the rim of Eurasia. But of course in those days, we, as Americans, could not spend much time in places like Russia and China right at the heart of Eurasia.
I can still remember when I was about ten years old, we were in Hong Kong, and I was looking out from the new territories out toward Guangdong in China and just wondering what it was like, what sort of transformation China was going to have. Of course we couldnʼt go, we couldnʼt see, we didnʼt have a chance to know, but somehow itʼs not only something romantic, but also
something that I was convinced was quite important for the future of the world.
Later on as I went to graduate school at Harvard University and then later as I was at the CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies], as the director of Japan Studies at CSIS in Washington, I read a lot of [Sir Halford John] Mackinder who talked about the heartland of Eurasia, but also I got to know Zbigniew Brzezinski who was the National Security Advisor of President Jimmy Carter, and also one of our professors for many years at SAIS [School of Advanced International Studies].
Something that Brzezinski was always stressing was how large the mass of Eurasia was. Eurasiaʼs area was more than 40 percent of the world, Eurasiaʼs population was more than 50 percent of the world. If youʼre talking about China, India, Europe, Japan altogether, GDP is over 60 percent of the world, oil supply 60 percent, gas, conventional gas 80 percent, and foreign exchange reserves as much as 85 percent. Of course that doesnʼt include the dollar. The dollar is the key currency, but the mass of Eurasia, in short, was, and is today, very large as a share of the worldʼs total.
But then, he ended his discussions about how big Eurasia is by always saying, “Fortunately for America, Eurasia is too big to be politically one.”
I think youʼll see as I get into my talk that I believe that geography matters in the world. We donʼt study geography very much today, but it does seem to me that itʼs a subject that we are going to need to know more about.
There are some important puzzles and realities that are hidden in geography, even though some people, Thomas Friedman for example, says “the world is flat,” “we have the internet, we can communicate, or social media, we communicate across huge distances just by pushing a button, and geography, where things are, doesnʼt really matter.” But as I think youʼll see as I get into my topic, for certain purposes, I think geography does matter. You have some of them right here: Natural resources where energy is located in the world, how much time it takes you to get from a place to another, or how the relationships of countries are affected by geography. Geography does matter in all those ways, as weʼll see once I get into it.
First, let me show you just something that does not necessarily relate to politics, and for many years, really was not an important reality of world affairs. As you can see by looking at this map, this is a map of all of Eurasia.
Thereʼs Japan, you can see Japan right at the edge of the continent of Asia, and on the other side of the Eurasian continent, of course, are large nations of Western Europe. And in the middle, thereʼs all of this huge vast space.
Geographically speaking, of course, there are some things we can say. One is that China is a very large portion of the distance across the continent of Asia.
Half of the distance from Shanghai to the borders of Europe is inside China. As you can see, half way. Also, half of the distance from Beijing to the Persian Gulf is inside China. Two-thirds of the distance. So as we see from the map, China is quite central in the map of Asia.
One other simple thing that you can say is the distance across Asia by land. This way just straight across is 30 percent shorter than the distance around Asia by the sea. If you go by sea, for example here in Kansai, supposing you go from Kobe, you have to go around all this way through the Suez Canal and up to Europe. That were 30 percent quicker if you just go across the land.
This is another reality of the map without any relationship with the politics.
Now, in the years of the Silk Road of course, there was quite a bit if we go back seven hundred years or so. There was a lot of transportation across Asia across the land, and even as recently as maybe a hundred years, hundred and twenty years ago, the beginning of the twentieth century. But after that, because of the coming of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the revolution in China, for a variety of reasons, for at least 75 years, Eurasia has been cut up into small pieces, and this kind of travel across the continent was very difficult.
Even as late as 1975, there was very little ̶ I mean I could remember just as I was sort of being conscious of these things ̶ as late as 1975, there was really not much commerce across Asia and very little communication. But since 1990 to last year, the amount of commerce, the amount of trade across Eurasia, between China and Europe for example, has gone up by more than 30 times.
Since 2011, there have been more than 10,000 transcontinental rail crossings. These days there are more than 30 trains moving transcontinental, across the continent each week between Central China and Germany, for example. Thereʼs a large number of new organizations that are developing.
Germanyʼs Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited China twelve times, of course she has visited Japan, I think, four times also, but the communication and the trade across the continent has exploded.
Now you might wonder why this is happening. And the focus of my book and of what I want to say today is to address these questions, “why is Eurasia changing in such important ways and so rapidly?” And since this is American Studies, what does this mean for global affairs and particularly for the role of the United States?
Now, many people talk about the growth of China. And certainly, the growth of China is a part of this. And I think most of us have heard that story many times before. What I would like to say, however, is that I think itʼs a much broader phenomenon than simply the growth of China ̶ something much more fundamental is happening in the world today.
The entire continent of Eurasia, from Europe across Russia, is changing in fundamental ways. China is changing in fundamental ways. The space inbetween is opening because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the incentives for deepening interdependence are rising for many reasons that I will briefly try to explain.
The basic concept is what I call critical junctures, very sharp but important historical developments that affected the broader pattern of world affairs. Specifically what has happened, the story I believe, begins around 1978.
The first thing, Chinaʼs modernizations. Then the Soviet collapse. . Then, two important global shocks, the Lehman Shock of 2008, the world financial crisis, and then the Ukranian Crisis of 2014.
Together these have fundamentally transformed the continent of Eurasia.
To try perhaps the best way to explain this is the relationship between economic changes and ways that really changed the meaning of geography.
First of all, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, you might ask “what difference did that make?” Until 1991 all of these areas was one country, and this blocked the possibility of communication and transportation across the continent. But because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central Asia suddenly became a power vacuum through which India became more involved, China became more involved, the Europeans became more involved. After 1991, this area began to change rather rapidly.
There are some very important changes that happened in Europe as the Soviet Union was collapsing, also the wall went down. We just celebrated, of course, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier this month, November 9. And Europe began to change in some very fundamental ways
that made it much easier to develop ties with Asia. China also developed new policies, President Jiang Zemin initiated western development policies and Chinaʼs center of gravity moved further to the west. So a phenomenon that I call “continental drift” began to occur across the continent of Eurasia.
Let me say just a word about the changes in Europe as the Berlin Wall went down and as the Cold War ended, because these have had a very important implication for Eurasia that I think the analysis of the rise of China or just the country-specific analysis does not show. Look at these countries in the east of Europe. All of them for many years have had a strong, in the days of the Cold War even, a strong relationship with China.
Particularly after 2014 after Russia invaded the Crimea, relationships with Russia and these countries were very bad. But relationships with China for many reasons continued to be good and the Chinese have placed a strong emphasis on deepening relations with these countries, including some other countries, the weaker and poorer countries in southern Europe. Perhaps as you know, in April of 2019, so just six months or so ago, President Xi Jinping visited Italy. And just a few days ago, President Xi Jinping visited Greece. And the Chinese have developed major port projects in Greece. Also a major port project that President Xi announced at Trieste on the gulf at the top of the Adriatic Sea. The Chinese are doing other major projects throughout this region, the largest industrial park in the world, the Great Stone Industrial Park the Chinese recently opened in Belarus. So the Chinese are very actively developing ties across the continent with this part of Europe.
You might wonder why these things are happening, why it is that trade is so rapidly increasing across the continent, why China is becoming so active in Europe, especially southern Europe and eastern Europe, and what these things mean for the world, and of course, particularly for the United Statesʼ global role, because that is the topic that we have today.
There are three basic reasons that I point out in my book, and all of them of course are based on the underlined geography. This is one continent. So if the political barriers get out of the way and thereʼs enough economic stimulus, the interdependence across the continent of Eurasia should deepen just as a century ago or a hundred and fifty years or so ago when the golden spike was driven in the United States and the Panama Canal was built. The relationships across the American continent also began to deepen. If the political barriers
were out of the way, some of those trends toward deepening interdependence could very well happen in Eurasia as well. And Iʼd like to look at those reasons for deepening interdependence.
The three are energy, logistics and finance. But let me explain them one by one.
First of all, energy. The largest energy producers in the world, I mentioned that 60 percent of the oil reserves of the world lie on the Eurasian continent. Also certainly at least that percentage, perhaps even slightly more, of the energy demand in the world, of course the Middle East, the Persian Gulf has huge oil reserves. Russia has, and Kazakhstan, Central Asia and so on, the Caspian area particularly, also has huge gas reserves. In the very large countries with huge populations, of course China is the largest country in the world in population, India is the second largest, the third is the United States.
But the fourth largest population in the world is down in Indonesia. So Asian countries have three of the four largest populations with low level still of energy consumption. So they have a long way to go in a future likely to greatly increase their consumption. And then, the Persian Gulf, which supplies 75 percent and more of the oil for Japan, Korea, China, has huge oil reserves.
So thereʼs huge potential for energy complementarity between the large populous countries of Asia, and the countries with huge reserves, particularly the Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Russia.
The second important factor that is creating deeper integration across the continent is important changes in logistics and transportation. We talk a lot about the Belt and Road, the Chinese , but the phenomenon I think is much deeper and is related to changes in technology, especially robotics, internet of things or IoT, the technological processes that are revolutionizing port management and the technology of going from road to rail to ports and back and forth between different forms of transportation. Because of robotics and digitalization, those processes are becoming much more efficient than previously, and are making transport across the continent, unit including such complex processes as crossing the Caspian sea or like going by boat for some distance, come to the port of Pireas that the Chinese just took over, and then, moving to railroad up into central Europe and then putting things on trucks.
These kind of complicated transportation processes are becoming much simpler in the last five years or so than they were before.
This is exactly why, as you probably noticed, the Chinese have been focusing quite heavily on distribution. COSCO, for example, the Chinese shipping company is now the third largest in the world. Itʼs grown very fast.
China has been purchasing port facilities like Pireas, where President Xi was last week, or Trieste, where he was in April. Theyʼve been very interested in Singapore, Gwadar in Pakistan. The revolution in logistics I think is something which China, not only China, the Germans also, some countries have understood. And Nihon Tsuun, for example, in Japan, and the Japanese trading companies are coming to understand this too. But thereʼs a revolution in logistics which is making transportation across the continent of Eurasia much quicker and more efficient than before and allowing production chains to develop that didnʼt exist even five years ago.
Now, the third important change is finance. Many new means of financing infrastructure have developed within the last decade that did not exist or were not nearly as important before. Many of these have related, again, to China ̶ not all, there are some such as the Asian Development Bank that have been active ̶ but they havenʼt expanded as rapidly. The ones that have been the largest have been those developed by the Chinese. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Fund, the China Development Bank, whose loans are, in the infrastructural area, larger even than those of the World Bank. So finance, all of these new forms of infrastructure that are possible and that are more economically attractive because of the logistics revolution and the complementarities for energy demand and so on could not be financed until recently. And now, because of all of these new institutions, they are beginning to be financed. Of course there are problems. There is the so-called debt bomb, there is overlending, there is bad debt problem certainly.
But the scale of lending for projects in infrastructure across Asia has rapidly increased even in the last five to ten years.
Now, I know this is complicated and I apologize to go through things that are so complex. But I think thereʼs an important implication of this for the world. And now I would like to move toward that question, “what do these transformations, this deepening economical relationship and geopolitical relationship across the continent of Asia, particularly among Europe, Russia, China ̶ what does this mean, what does it mean for Japan, what does it mean for the United States and its global role?” In conclusion, that is the subject I
would like to look at.
The traditional system of world affairs has been rule-based and has had a unitary leadership structure with the United States being the preeminent power in the world affairs. I think thatʼs fair, something similar to this quadrant here. I call it a bit of well-thought regulatory system like the Bretton Woods system. In other words, it has a set of rules and someone to enforce the rules, sort of the world policeman who enforces the rules in a rule-based system, be trade or whatever it might be.
Now, traditionally Chinaʼs systems of international affairs, I think, have not been rule-based ̶ theyʼve been benefit-based, in other words someone shows respect to the central leadership and then receives some benefits in return, not because they obey the ruler but just because they agree to go along with the leader.
And in this case, , the Belt and Road initiative, I think is very much of this character. Itʼs not the Chinese trying to rule the world in the same sense as the United States has been the preeminent world power for the last 50 years, 70 years. But itʼs more pluralistic, in that sense. One can make many criticisms of the ideas that the Chinaʼs presenting in Belt and Road. I think itʼs true that they are not trying to establish some sort of overarching rule-based system like Bretton Woods. Itʼs a pluralistic system, but itʼs basically by just distributing benefits, by giving money or it could be considered corrupt but giving benefits to different countries or to different politicians in return for some benefits without rules. So itʼs very different - the system which China is proposing. I think it is a very different system of international affairs from what we have traditionally had. But itʼs not necessarily contradictory.
Now, finally in conclusion, let me just suggest five implications of the changes in the Eurasian continent for world affairs, particularly for Americaʼs global role. The first of them is, I think thereʼs greater leverage as relations across Eurasia become stronger and the connectivity across the continent become stronger. This does give some advantages to China because itʼs right in the middle of the continent.
The second implication is, I think it creates new options for Europe.
Europe has an option to the East across Asia, more so than was previously true. Europeʼs traditional ties through NATO and so on have been particularly across the Atlantic and particularly for countries in the middle between
Europe and Asia, such as Turkey. I think the implications geopolitically are quite important. We saw this recently ̶ Turkey has had a rather aggressive attitude in some ways and even toward the United States, as we can see in Syria recently.
I think the coming of the super continent phenomenon ̶ of course it is not there yet and it might never be fully realized ̶ but movement in that direction of a more integrated Eurasia, I think creates some very important dilemmas for Japan. Of course previously in the Meiji era, Fukuzawa Yukichi and many Japanese thinkers were concerned of , should Japan move out of Asia or should it be connected to Asia. I think the problem that Fukuzawa Yukichi was concerned about is going to become perhaps more prominent in the future than has been in the past.
One thing for sure, I think it does mean that Japan should be more active in its relations with Europe to balance the deepening ties between China and Europe. I think that is one implication of the emergence of super continent.
Also Japanese diplomacy needs to be more proactive in a global sense than it has been in the past.
For the United States, it seems to me the implication of the emergence, or the beginnings of the emergence of super continent, has extremely important implications. And before getting into those which should be my last point, I do want to stress, I think the United States has three enduring strengths in world affairs that will continue even though, because of super continent, its geopolitical position in the world is becoming more complicated. Let me say what I think those strengths are because I think they will sustain the role for the United States, a central role. But itʼs going to be different. Itʼs going to be a very different role than it historically has been.
First of all, I think the United States in food supply has an unusual position in the world, which contrasts strongly to the vulnerabilities of China and indeed for a good part of Asia. The United States has a large productive agricultural capability and it has a population that even though we now have over three hundred million people, still has the potential to produce productively a large amount of food for other parts of the world.
The second, I think, enduring strength of the United States has to do with energy. The US is gradually becoming, because of shale gas, and shale oil is becoming, will be in the next decade one of the largest energy exporters in the
world. And meanwhile, China, because of its huge population and relative lack of energy resources and rapid increase in demand, is becoming one of the largest oil importers in the world. So I think energy is the second geoeconomic strength of the United States looking to the future.
And the third important strength I think is technology. The institutional structure of technology, some of this is the incentive to creativity, that exist in the American political economy that you can become easily a millionaire overnight if you create a new software or some new component or something.
So the American system is structured very dynamically to create new technologies. And I think because it has institutional roots, the structure of Silicon Valley, of course the defense industry also has another element, I think the creativity of American technology and the ability to innovate more rapidly than more socialist-oriented systems, is one of the three enduring strengths.
Again, we could discuss it but those three, food, energy and technology, it seems to me, are enduring strengths of the United States and then I have one last point I would like to make.
Although there are those strengths, in conclusion I think I should stress that the implication of super continent, the implication of the kinds of changes that are occurring in Eurasia are going to mean that the United States, that the issue for the United States is not, itʼs not exactly what Donald Trump thinks when he says “Make America great again.” Itʼs not a matter of unilateral assertion. Itʼs a matter of understanding the new world thatʼs emerging, and accommodating the changes in Eurasia, the emergence of super continent through new relationships. I think certainly the relationship of Japan and the United States is a major part of that new world thatʼs emerging, and another new relationship that will deepen is certainly the United States and India.
Probably things like the quad of the United States, Japan, India, Australia, some of those alternative relationships certainly will be important, but the need for creativity is going to be extremely great because I think the emergence of super continent means a very different geo-economics configuration in the world than we have seen so far in world history.