大国間競争時代に再発見された古代の地政学定理 / Ancient geopolitics law rediscovered in "big-power competition" times
( 英語が苦手な場合は、オンラインの機械翻訳を使用してください)
First off, the strategy master reformulate a geopolitics theorem in modern language, the theorem dates back to roughly the same time as Thucydides trap conjecture(~2300 years ago), although may be less as well-known, but more important and more relevant to us, since this theorem is about the fate of all countries. Because people in the ancient countries did not take this theorem ( 蘇秦の合従説 ) seriously, nobody could have foreseen something worse than the worst nightmare could become reality, all those countries failed eventually and ended up being conquered one by one by the topmost superpower at that time:
For any country, if some country is clear-cut world's topmost superpower and has bullied other countries, it is strategically beneficial to impede that superpower in association with all others. Unless the whole world gets united to contain it, the superpower's advantages over other countries will enlarge further with no limit, there is a tendency for the world to fall into a more dangerously lopsided state.
If a country has bullied other countries, then no matter how it tries to project itself as morally noble, it is essentially a greedy bully. It is in its nature to grab interests by exploiting and bullying other countries, and it will attempt to continuously increase its advantage over other countries, because the bigger its advantage over others is, the easier it can exploit and bully other countries so as to gain even more interests.
In pedantic terms, there is an intrinsic positive feedback loop for the power of the world's topmost superpower, such that its power, and in turn its power advantages over all other countries in the world, tends to be self-amplifying. The positive feedback loop can be easily inferred, and it works like this, a superpower, being selfish, will use its advantages over others to bully around and grab national interests at the expense of others, and this makes it even stronger and grow faster than others, which in turn help it to bully others more easily and grab more national interests from others. As a result, the world has a tendency to slide to a more lopsided state in favor of the topmost superpower. This is how animals differentiate into herbivores and carnivores in evolution.
In fact, there is indeed a positive feedback loop for America's advantage over the world. This is through US$ and its global currency status. US has been using kiting cheques of ~US$ 500 billions per year to draw huge amount of real wealth from the world for some ~40 years, this is gigantic stealing, that is the true meaning of its chronic annual trade deficits. US has been putting this stolen wealth into good use to enhance its advantages over the rest of the world, e.g. by luring top talents from other countries to enhance its R&D capability so as to increase its advantages in key scientific and technological fields, or by spending munificently to enhance its military capability to such extent that its military spending is more than the combined sum of the next 12 countries. See my other article: Dire prospect for the world if the US leech on world economy is allowed to suck blood for 100 years.
This theorem can also be stated in another way:
The top superpower of the world will conquer all the other countries, one by one, unstoppably and with bloodshed, unless they get united to confront the top superpower.
It sounds cold and stony, but that's how the history in the ancient past had evolved in a period of 100 years or so.
In the cold war times, the US power was checked by the nearly equal power of Soviet Union. Now US has won, and the world entered a unipolar configuration, is this really good for the world other than US? If the world stays unipolar for long, Americans will be spoiled, so US will do more evil things to more and more countries. I dare to bet on this trend. Can you imagine the world after USA stays the dominating superpower for 100 years?
I'd like to talk about the incantation words used by Americans very frequently in its recent selling of China/Russia threat theory: "Common Value". Americans refer this to democracy in a country's internal politics. We all love democracy, how about we extend it to the realm of international relationship? Compared with the internal democracy in another country, the former is much more relevant to us than the latter. This common value of international democracy would mean USA can not wage wars arbitrarily against small and weak countries without UN authorization, it would mean USA can not mass-produce tens of millions of refugees that floods Europe and Asia, so the people there would not have to absorb the refugees and make sacrifice for Americans for nothing. Obviously this international democracy is a higher level of common value than the internal democracy of countries.
Another common value, the last but not the least, I'd remind your attention. USA is recently pumping out extra large amount of newly printed US dollars, in trillions. Since US$ is the de facto global currency, this means Americans are stealing wealth worth of trillions of US$ from the whole world, a sharp increase than its usual stealing over the years. Clearly the newly printed US$ is a common value, how about we put it under UN management and distribute it through UN to the whole world? Or at least distribute the dollars to its allies with whom USA is emphasizing common value?
Based on how US had treated Japan and other allied countries, I have a gut feeling that, even if China had a democratic political system, or the American "common value", US would still consider China a threat and would invent some other excuse as an appealing slogan to facilitate it to convene an anti-China union.
For any country, the bully's current targets in focus may be other countries, but when it completes these goals, it will emerge as an even stronger power. Even if you are its ally now, as it becomes stronger and stronger, your value to it will diminish, and finally its bullying targets will cover all countries. So, before it has a chance to bully you, try to contain it and drag it down. Otherwise, you'll wait for it to bully all of you one by one.
Only the world's topmost superpower has the chance of turning into a carnivore, and any other countries have chance of being turned into herbivores, preys for the carnivore. The difference is only the time of being turned into a prey. However, different from animal evolution, humans are intelligent, and the above dangers could be gradually realized by the world, so countries may unite together to thwart the topmost superpower's attempt to enlarge its advantage over the world.
In contrast to the above theorem, Americans have been advocating a fallacy:
If a country has the potential to become the world's new topmost superpower, then the world should unite to curb it.
So, which of the above two statements should be adopted as the basis for your country's national strategy?
Obviously, if countries of the world choose their strategy with my geopolitics law as a basis, the power gap between the world's topmost superpower and other countries will be capped, because, whenever a country becomes the topmost superpower, it will be curbed by a united front of the rest of the world, this makes it harder for its advantage relative to other countries to grow anymore. If the world adopts the fallacy advocated by Americans, i.e., to curb China or Russian rather than the topmost superpower (US), then the power gap between the world's topmost superpower (US) and other countries will expand with no limit. The world can slide speedily and acceleratingly into a more serious imbalance in favor of US. Is this the anticipated result of the pro-America politicians in all countries (including Japan)?
Moreover, it is still uncertain whether the world's potential topmost superpower can become the world's real topmost superpower at all, it may be just a hype. This is like asking the judge to punish a potential crime that has not yet occurred. If it is necessary for all countries in the world to jointly contain China or Russia, it won't hurt to wait until they really become the world's top superpower.
The Americans may further argue that these two countries are dangerous expansionists. But the argument is invalid for the following reasons. First the so-called "expansionist" is highly exaggerated by US, US has the motivation and means to mislead the world. Japanese scholar 白井聡 said: "US's bad is reported with 1/10 dilution, while China's bad is reported with 10 times exaggeration". After years of being duped, the whole world now knew how US had successfully utilized a tube of laundry powder to falsely charge Iraq as having WMD (plus some other fabricated crimes), and turned its illegal aggression war into a war of justice. Aren't these enough to set off the alarm about the misleading and brainwashing pwoer of US and western main stream media which is largely controlled by US (ref. 3 & 4) .
From a neutral standpoint, although the two countries have territory contentions with some neighbors, but they also have been getting along well with many neighbors, and there are legitimate reasons for the the contended areas, e.g. Crimea was originally Russia's territory. The reason why US has no outstanding territory dispute nowadays is not because US got its land from God long time ago, but because Americans grabbed the lands from its original residents ruthlessly and resolutely (e.g. by race extermination), not to say the huge exploitation profits that US has been raking in through aggression, intervention and control all over the world. Moreover, who on earth can outmatch US in terms of military bases on foreign lands, number of aggression wars waged over the years, innocent people killed, refugees generated. Facing the souls of millions of innocent victims (ref. 2) killed in American aggression or intervention wars, I doubt whether anyone dares to say that, since Americans have a more noble or kind heart than people in any other countries, therefore, US is the only country suitable for always being the topmost superpower of the world.
Exaggeration of Russia and China threats and "Common Value" are the harness that US fastens on the west through which US distributes a "Common Burden" on the west for America's own national interests, it will be called two factors harness from here on. The exaggeration of the threat is a sales gimmick for the overpriced "US protection", not to mention that US is constantly provoking the two countries so as to increase the tension and hype up the threats of the two countries. The two factors harness has been quite effective, e.g. now the west countries like Canada, Germany, Australia etc. are going to share the responsibility to absorb Afghan refugees for a war that is totally a US war, it must be noted that 911 is a retaliation by the Arabs on US for US's reckless support of Israel and the cruelness on Arabs by Israel and US, therefore the war on terror is the war of Americans themselves, not the common war of western countries. For this US war, the west has already sacrificed too much, esp. the refugee immigrants flooded into Europe caused by US wars is a huge problem.
In the case of Japan, it must first be acknowledged that the entire Japan society is highly influenced by Americans. Clearly US will lead or mislead Japan in the direction of US interests first, not Japan's interests first. It should also be noted that the territory contentions with Russia and China are limited in scope, apart from these contended spots, Japan is not at threat of real invasion. Japan needs to carefully weigh the pros and cons of various choices, such as placing emphasis on my geopolitics theorem, or to borrow the US power to contend with China or Russia. Neutrally speaking, the contended island between Japan and China is an uninhabitable small island close to Taiwan and claimed by Taiwan too, the Republic of China (ROC). If Japan labels China (PRC) as expansionist because of this, then China has equal justification to label Japan as expansionist. It is undoubtedly very unwise if the two engage in an arms race or even an all-out war because of this contention. I highly doubt that US deliberately used this island as a trap for China and Japan. Once Japan embarks on the track of confrontation with China, it will turn completely blind to the more important and better strategies that may be derived from my geopolitical theorem. From a country enjoying peace and prosperity, Japan will go on a one-way track with no-return path, and eventually become a front-line country (think about Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan etc., these are frontline countries!). A very likely final outcome is that it will end up in a lose-lose together with China and the US can walk in at the end and collect the trophy while staying out of the reach of bombings and destruction.
Unfortunately, with its powerful propaganda machine, US has successfully brainwashed the above fallacy to influential people in many countries around the world, including politicians, think tanks pundits, journalists and so on. These people will be instigated and misled by US to help US to turn the world into a world completely dominated by US.
A key question, is US the world's top superpower? Certainly! In today's world, the US controls global news media and public opinion (moral high ground), the formulation of world rules (legislative power), the police (law enforcement power, US is the world's top military power, its military spending exceeds the combined sum of the next 12 countries), the banking system (the dollar is the de facto global currency), the Internet and SNS, high tech and many other key components of the world. If this is not enough to convince you, think about this, US not only has the power to cheat the world into believing its lies about Iraq with a tube of laundry powder, but also has the power to make the world to live with its illegal aggression and mass killing in Iraq as if nothing significant had happened after its lies were exposed. So, the world have become accustomed to not questioning and not challenging anything by USA. The country that can match up with US power does not exist in the solar system. The power advantage of US over other countries is so overwhelming already and still increasing, that the peace and security of the world at large has to rely on a few unreliable conditions: 1. A person morally more corrupt than Trump would never be elected president of US, otherwise, the “America First" may become "Americans rule all". 2. The majority of Americans remain largely satisfied with the current extent and scope of their exploitation on the world. The risk is not so much as to affect my sleep right now, but, in the long run, to rely such important things on such fragile conditions is certainly a huge issue.
See the above photo, I raise three questions for you to consider. 1, If the world goes the American way, after 20 years or so, how low a Japanese (and other countries too) prime minister would have to bend down his body in situation like this? 2. Most Japanese have found nothing wrong with this photo, but if we change the face of Blinken with the face of Chinese foreign minister Yi Wang, or the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, how would they react? 3. What would happen to a kowtaoing leader if it were the head of state of Germany, France, Italy, or South Korea?
Therefore, the fate of the world is really on the line. If the world can not wake up and unite to contain the US, US will have greater and greater advantages over all other countries of the world, so as to differentiate into a carnivore and all other countries will become its prey. Now, my dear readers, please think about what you should do to avoid this dire prospect, please do the part of your duty as a world citizen.
This geopolitics law was first postulated in my previous article:
Dystopia democracy: a world ruled by a global emperor with only Americans having the voting right /3
参考資料/References:
1. US, the refugees mass production factory has produced tens of millions of refugees worldwide
2. Americans have killed 6 millions since 911
4. The British-American coup that ended Australian independence
