Water, Energy and Future Peace, Part III

As their fiery cyber dance rises higher into the ionosphere, the oxygen needed for the eagle and dragon to talk, rebuild bridges, and map a new path to shared peace is quickly burning away.??As one swoops upon the other, each maneuvers desperately for the upper hand.??In the visible skies below, advanced fighter jets swarm into contested zones and hypersonic energy trails radiate a message of the perilous realities that may follow.??On the timeless oceans below, the dragon – a mythical protector of water – is beginning to breathe fire.???

The Dragon and the Eagle: A Dangerous Dance

The year is 2022.??In the zero-sum game between nations, the stakes have never been higher.?

In 1989, and the 12 short years that followed before 9/11, the United States had the world at her fingertips.??Today, she looks back in a daze. The simplistic, win-lose military formula she has applied to the complex Middle East region has failed.??While struggling to process the fires of chaos she has fueled in this region of ancient civilizations, a new volcano has erupted in Ukraine.??As images harking of World War II flood our screens, many are beginning to understand that the global ecosystem and world as we know it is in a deeply unstable place.

We don't want to believe it - but the risk of another global war is real. ??

Each day, local and regional tremors across the globe open new cracks across a complex web of intersecting national, cultural, and sectarian fault lines.??With each tremor, bubbling red magma squeezes closer to the quivering surface above.??Localized eruptions and spouting lava coughed up from below reveal integrity shortcuts of the past – incinerating fragile relationships and flimsy attempts to paper over our collective legacy of exploitation, betrayal, and distrust.??

Greedy egos and confused souls, gripped by the?Paradigm of Scarcity?that brought us here, maneuver ravenously across the combustible landscape – lustfully injecting flammable digital narratives into the explosive magma below.

Amid the gathering storm and tossing waves of change, the pillars of the bridge connecting the world’s two most powerful nations are crumbling.??In a growing cyber storm over the Pacific, the Chinese dragon and American eagle watch each other through the salty spray.??Their mutual contempt grows with each passing day.??

In the skies above the world’s greatest ocean, the tension is thick.????

Eighty years ago, in 1941, simmering tensions between Japan and the United States erupted when Japan tried to destroy the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor.??In the 1930s, Japan invaded China and resource-rich territories in Southeast Asia to secure its dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.??Japan’s decision to attack Hawaii was triggered by its fear of losing access to its most critical finite resource – oil.??When the US cut off Japan’s access to American oil in mid-1941, it made plans to invade Indonesia and Malaysia to secure an alternative source.??It also began planning its attack on Pearl Harbor – the most daring strategic move in its long history as one of the world’s most daring warrior nations.?

In 2021, a?Forbes?analyst outlined how similar tensions simmer between the US and China today – this time over a different resource upon which the national security of both nations depends – semiconductors. In 2020, China spent $350 billion buying semiconductor chips based largely on Western technology – more than it spent on oil.[1]?

In 1941, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and Malaysia held the answer to Japan’s thirst for oil.??Today, the island of Taiwan holds a key qualitative edge over mainland China in the production of semiconductors.??Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the most valuable semiconductor company in the world.??Together with the US, Taiwan dominates the industry, and TMSC is 10 years ahead of mainland China in the key IC sector of the industry.

As interlinked economic and security factors around the Taiwan issue approach critical mass, the competition for the control of semiconductors is a critical factor in China’s strategic calculus.??In the last 18 months, as zero-sum game tensions have grown, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) moved decisively to take back full control of Hong Kong from the West.??The focal point of US-China tension, however, is Taiwan.??With the dragon growing more and more restless, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command predicted last year that it will move to take back full control of Taiwan by 2027.[2]??

As with many complex issues in our fractured world – geography and the heavy burdens of history tell us more.??Geopolitical analyst George Friedman explains how?Han China?– the cultural core of this ancient civilization – has historically relied upon the buffer regions of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet to defend itself from the constant threat of invasion over land.[3]?

Unlike the island nations of Britain and Japan – whose history is one of using naval power to attack other nations to gain control of finite resources – the history of China is one of using its army to defend its home on the massive Asian landmass.??In Britain and Japan, the navy has long held the prestigious status as the senior service – a symbol of their imperial past.??In China – as symbolized by the Great Wall and Mao Zedong wearing simple field khakis – it is the ground forces of the army that dominates the psyche of the nation and its people.

For thousands of years, China’s armies have defended the borders in its north, south and west from invasion over land.??Between 1839 and 1949, however, one imperialist nation after another used their overwhelming power over water to breach China’s defenses and exploit her permeable eastern border – the Pacific Ocean.??In these 100 years, China’s people, choices, and resources were ruthlessly manipulated and exploited by foreign powers.?

With a hundred years of humiliation buried deeply in the memory of the nation and its leaders, China has learned the hard way that offense is the only defense in the dirty zero-sum game of international relations.??Since World War II, and particularly in the last 20 years, China has focused unwaveringly on adding a mix of sharp arrows to the quiver of tools history has taught it are the only way to ensure its security – including an advanced blue water navy and sophisticated technical and human intelligence programs.

There is an old Chinese proverb that says:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.

In the last 20 years, as the United States has misused her power, depleted her strategic resources, contaminated her reputation as the global protector of freedom and human rights, and compromised her moral high ground in the world – China has maintained strict strategic discipline.??With laser like focus, the Chinese dragon – a mystical creature with the power to control water – has closed the economic, military and technology power gap with the American eagle – a majestic bird that the Navajo tribe believed to be a protector.??

In the?Great Seal?of the United States, a bald eagle holds thirteen silver arrows in one set of its talons and a green olive branch in the other.??In its beak is a scroll inscribed with the words?E pluribus unum?… “Out of Many, One.”??For the last 75 years, the American eagle has held in her talons the most formidable arrows in the history of mankind – the power to intimidate.??Her true power, however, is the dream symbolized by the fertile branch – the power to inspire.??In this image of paradox – the Idea of America – she grips tightly to the arrows but focuses her eyes on the green leaves … a brave vision of future peace.??

This is her true north.

In the last 20 years, however, the majestic eagle has behaved in strange and conflicted ways – speaking the words on her scroll while firing arrows recklessly from above.??Once noble and magnanimous, her vision has become blurred and her power diluted.??Diving from her high flight path into murky swamps below – she has allowed her energy to be compromised by the dark arts of parasites infesting her inner space.??

Instead of building bridges to shape future peace – she has manufactured intelligence, subverted nations, and greedily sucked financial resources from the marrow of her own people to feed a voracious corporate war machine.??Leading with fear, she has lost her way in a dark swamp from which she is struggling to extricate herself.??

In the process, she has fractured her own spirit.

Now, as she grapples with her inner conscience, her family questions who she has become.??Young warriors within her inner sanctum – those who volunteer to fight and die in her name – have grown weary of her reckless choices, moral compromises, and blood spilt in vain.??Confused and angry – some have lashed out and many taken their own lives.??Most have stoically absorbed the betrayal of their elected leaders – vowing to never join their sordid palace intrigues.??

In the?Three Kingdoms?period between 220 and 280 AD, Zhuge Liang, one of China’s greatest strategists, explained in simple terms the consequences of this confused behavior:?

When people are in harmony, they will fight naturally … [but] if the officers and soldiers are suspicious of each other, warriors will not join up; if loyal advice is not heard, small minds will talk and criticize in secret. When hypocrisy sprouts, even if you have the wisdom of ancient warrior kings, you could not defeat a peasant, let alone a crowd of them.??This is why tradition says: “A military operation is like a fire; if it is not stopped, it will burn itself out.”??????

As she grapples with the confusing contradictions in her soul, a devious game of hide and seek high above the Pacific skies grows more dangerous each day.??As their fiery cyber dance rises higher into the ionosphere, the oxygen needed for the eagle and dragon to talk, rebuild bridges, and map a new path to a shared peace is quickly burning away.??

As one swoops upon the other, each maneuvers desperately for the upper hand.??In the visible skies below, advanced fighter jets swarm into contested zones and hypersonic energy trails radiate a message of the perilous realities that may follow.??On the timeless oceans below, the dragon – a mythical protector of water – is beginning to breathe fire.???

Between 2015 and 2019, the nation whose history is one of using its army to defend its home from invasion over land has built 132 naval vessels – the equivalent of the entire French naval fleet.??In 2021, China had 360 warships.??The United States had 297.??By 2025, China’s naval fleet is expected to grow to 400.[4]??

In response to the dragon’s growing anger, the US, Japan, Australia, India, and others are shaping an alliance to contain its flames across the seas.??Tensions spiked in September last year as the US and UK announced a joint plan to provide Australia with sensitive nuclear-powered submarine technology – a geopolitical chess move that triggered China’s state-run?Global Times?to warn that Australians were likely to be the “first to die” in China’s “counterattack.”[5]

The tremors of war are growing in frequency and amplitude.???

The Dragon Breathes Fire, Exhales Smoke, Leaks Waste and Dams Water?

In ancient Western mythology, fire breathing dragons are slain by brave knights and other heroes.??In ancient China, however, dragons are seen as the protectors of precious water sources, including rivers, waterfalls, and the seas.??

As China’s?hundred years of humiliation?drew to a close after World War II, the wounded dragon vowed never again to fall victim to foreign exploitation.??Like the eagle, its insecurity in a world of distrust has led to inner conflict.??In the 75 years since World War II, the dragon whose role it is to protect water has begun to breathe fire, exhale smoke, contaminate its own water, and block the flow of water in its high mountain borders.?

In the distrustful zero-sum game between nations, the equation for security is simple:??

Economic Power = Military Power = National Security

In this linear security equation of power acquisition, retention and projection, China is a prime example of the self-destruction we have inflicted on the fragile ecosystem around us as the linear economy and fear-driven?Paradigm of Scarcity?has dictated our choices.

Since its economy re-opened to the world in 1978, China has worked relentlessly to rebuild the powerful legacy of its past. As it entered the global Take, Make, Use, Waste?economy, China chose to rebuild its strength on the platform of a manufacturing-centered model that served the voracious diet of the eagle and other hungry consumers in the world.??

As we trace the exponential growth of the world's linear economy in the last 170 years, there is no clearer evidence of its consequences than the exponential growth of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere in this period.??In 1850, eight years after the First Opium War in China, the UK led the world in CO2?emissions, at 127 million tons.[6]

When the Chinese Communist Party came into power in 1949, US emissions had reached 3.2 billion tons.??China’s emissions remained negligible.??Six years later, however, China had catapulted into 7th?position on the list.[6]??

The dragon had made a choice.??Its path forward would be defined by relentless economic growth.??Everything else – including the air its people breathed, the soil to grow its food, and the fresh water it needed to drink – was necessarily secondary in its mind.?

In 1949, China’s GDP by purchasing power parity (PPP) was $290 billion, barely more than Italy’s.??By 2000, it was the world’s second most powerful economy in GDP (PPP) terms.??Today, its GDP (PPP) is $26.5 trillion.??America’s is $19 trillion.[7]???

Environmental damage has mirrored this story.??In 2005, China overtook the United States as the world’s largest ever CO2?emitter.??By 2018, it emitted 10 billion tons of CO2.[6]

In the last few years, the role of CO2?emissions and fossil fuels in degrading the earth and igniting wars has captured the world's attention.??In the next few years, however, it is our decisions around the?flow of water?that will either ignite the wars of the future or light a new path out of the suffocating darkness we have created.??

A simple prediction by the World Bank simplifies the problem.??In the next 8 years, our demand for fresh water in the world will exceed supply by 40%.[8]

As fearful and easily intimidated creatures, we have found many sophisticated ways to divide ourselves.??Water, however, can never become one of them.??Water makes up 60% of our bodies.??It connects everyone and everything – all life depends on it.??The earth today has the same quantity of water as it has ever had before.??What changes, however, is its distribution (where it is) and its quality (how clean it is).??????

We have 1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km3) of water on, in and above the earth.??If this was all sucked up and stored in a single sphere, that sphere’s diameter would be 1,385 kilometers.

Of this total volume, only 2.5% is fresh water (medium-sized sphere above).??Of this fresh water, ? of 1% is what we rely upon from rivers and lakes (smallest sphere). The diagram below shows us the volume each of these sources in relation to the earth’s volume.[9]

The rest of the fresh water we rely upon is groundwater (30% of the total) below the surface of the earth and the water contained in glaciers and ice caps (69%).??The US Geological Survey graphic below simply illustrates the percentages of all forms of water contained on, in and above the earth.

China – with 1.4 billion of the world’s 7.9 billion people and its largest economy in GDP (PPP) terms – needs a lot of water.??Yet, the massive growth from China’s manufacturing has come at a staggering cost to the quality of the fresh water sources inside its borders.?

As of 2014, a variety of sources revealed the following on China’s water usage:?[10]

1)????One third of China’s industrial wastewater is released untreated into rivers and lakes.?

2)????90% of China’s household sewage is released untreated.

3)????90% of the groundwater in China’s cities is polluted, most of it severely.

4)????Every day, 980 million people (over two thirds of its population) drink polluted water.

5)????Every day, 20 million people drink water with high levels of radiation.?

6)????Much of China’s water contains high levels of arsenic, fluorine and sulfates.

7)????Water pollution is linked to China’s high rates of liver, stomach and esophageal cancer.

8)????Rural villages near factory sites are often known locally as “cancer villages.”

The quality of China’s water (how clean it is) is a serious issue, but it is the distribution of water (where it is) that stokes fear in its leaders and its neighbors in Asia.??Fear around sustainable access to water is also growing quickly in other regions, including Southwest Asia, the Middle East, North and Southern Africa, and the Southwestern United States.?

We can live without oil, but we cannot live without water or food.??

Physical geography explains many of the world’s mysteries. In the land of the water dragon, the 15 inches of annual rainfall needed to sustain food production explains why 94% of its 1.4 billion people live in the wet and fertile eastern half of the country and only 6% live in the desolate and culturally fractured regions west of the?15-inch Isohyet?–?a weaving line that divides wet from dry.??It also divides majority Han Chinese from minority Tibetans, Uyghurs and Inner Mongolians, and relative prosperity from poverty.[3]

In the 1940s, Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Revolution, harnessed economically parched communities in China’s interior to grow the popular support he needed to overthrow the Nationalist central government.??After failing to start an uprising in the prosperous coastal city of Shanghai in 1927, Mao focused instead on the interior.??His famous?Long March?from Jiangxi Province in the south to Shanxi Province in the north ended in 1935 on the south bank of the Yan River in Yan’an – a strategic town that symbolically separates the fertile parts of the province where agriculture is possible from the deserts to the north.??

Desperate people do desperate things.??In the years ahead, revolutionary movements and radical political, religious and other actors will continue to leverage water scarcity – and the hunger and economic desperation it fuels – to recruit the foot soldiers they need to pursue their narrow agendas.??

Water and food speak in a language that is clear and common to all.?

2021 China map showing economic disparity between east coast and the interior

Today, economic imbalance between the prosperous cities on China’s east coast and its vast interior explain many of the central government’s choices.??To ensure its stability, China must keep growing economically.??Local economic growth is critical to China’s future – but this alone is not enough.??

For now, China's economy and security rely heavily upon trade with the world.??

The?Chinese Dream?articulated by President Xi Jinping is his vision for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” that sees it reclaiming its rightful position in the world as the?Middle Kingdom?between heaven and earth.??Xi’s?dream sees China becoming the most powerful nation in history, while ensuring that any exploitation by the West is banished to the pages of its history books. [11]

To achieve this bold vision, China has prioritized several strategic goals, including:?

1)????Securing its maritime trade lanes in the East and South China Seas at all costs.?

2)????Maintaining firm control of historically unstable buffer zones in Xianjing and Tibet.

3)????Developing alternative overland trade routes in the event the US Navy blocks the trade lanes in the seas off its coast (a key reason for its Belt and Road Initiative).?

4)????Accelerating its transition to a consumer-centered economy, while developing higher value products to export to the world.?

Relentless economic growth and expanding its influence in the region around its borders are the common denominators in all of Xi Jinping’s priorities to achieve the?Chinese Dream.?But there is another common stream that flows all the way through the Chinese story. It can be traced from the present day all the way back to the original spring of this civilization.

It is the?flow of water.

4,000 years ago – in the grey area between China’s myths and recorded history –?Yu the Great?established his iconic status in Chinese culture by enabling the naturally?circular flow?of water.??

For 9 years, Yu's father had tried and failed to mitigate the devastating?Great Flood?in the Yellow and Yangtze River valleys by trying to block and dam flooding rivers.??Learning from this, Yu spent 13 years implementing a strategy that united local communities around a new model to build irrigation canals and dredge riverbeds to ease the natural flow of water to the seas.??This ended the devastation, enabled the birth of agriculture in China, and led to Yu emerge as the first leader of the Xia dynasty – the first dynasty in China.

Today, China’s faces a bigger and more complex water crisis.??In the same way that?Yu the Great?stabilized China as a civilization 4,000 years ago, Xi Jinping’s choices on how he shapes the flow of water will shape the economies and security of China and greater South and Southeast Asia – the most populated and economically powerful region of the world.?

China has almost 20% of the world’s population, but only 6% of its fresh water.?Half the population lives in 15 northern provinces that contain only 20% of this 6%.??

To rebalance this internal water imbalance, it has attempted the biggest infrastructure project since the CCP came to power in 1949: the multi-decade?South-to-North Water Diversion Project?of canals and pipelines.[12]??

With mixed success, the project’s consequences have included ecosystem damage and complex changes to a) local production and b) the export of water intensive products like livestock from water scarce areas in the interior to water rich locations, such as Shanghai.

China’s growing hunger for energy and thirst for water has caused it to turn its attention to the Tibetan Plateau in its border region with India – the mystical?Water Tower of Asia?– to supply its future water needs.??

How Xi Jinping and China choose to interact with the transboundary rivers flowing from the icy mountains of Tibet is poised to shape a future of regional peace or war.

Part IV to follow ...

[1]?Calhoun, G.?War With China? The Economic Factor That Could Trigger It.?Forbes, September, 2021. Retrieved from - https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2021/09/12/war-with-china-the-economic-factor-that-could-trigger-it/?sh=a0659315d264

[2]?https://news.usni.org/2021/03/09/davidson-china-could-try-to-take-control-of-taiwan-in-next-six-years

[3]?Friedman, George. Facing Reality: China’s Strategy. Geopolitical Futures, August 2021. Retrieved from https://geopoliticalfutures

[4]?China vs the world: Here’s a look at Naval power in the Pacific in numbers. The Economic Times, September 2021. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/china-vs-the-world-heres-a-look-at-naval-power-in-the-pacific-in-numbers/articleshow/86285514.cms

[5]?Aukus: US and UK face backlash over Australia defence deal. BBC, September 2021. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58592613

[6]?Top 15 Countries by CO2?Emissions (1850-2020).?Stats Dekho, October 2020.??Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghS39ugNU_s

[7]?Top 20 Country GDP (PPP) History & Projection (1800-2040).?WawamuStats, May 2019. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg&t=304s

[8]?2030 Water Resources Group. Retrieved from - https://www.2030wrg.org

[9]?US Geological Service (2021).??Retrieved from - https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-water-there-earth

[10]?Facts and Details (2021). Retrieved from - https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat10/sub66/item391.html

[11]?Allison, Graham. (2017).?What Xi Jinping Wants.?The Atlantic, June 2017. Retrieved from - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/what-china-wants/528561/

[12]?Silvers, Jack.?Water is China’s Greatest Weapon and its Achilles Heel. Harvard Political Review, October 2020. Retrieved from - https://harvardpolitics.com/china-water-policy/