Afghanistan, Bitcoin, and Asia Hegemony in the 21st Century
Dr. Asher Idan, Israel News, 1988
Twice in the current century the world economy has collapsed. The first time, in 1929, led to World War II. Will the second collapse, in October 1987, lead to World War III? The answer depends on many factors. What is clear — the balance of power in the world, after October 1987, is different from that before it.
As in 1929, the 1987 stock markets collapses in Western Europe and East Asia followed the US stock market. But this time we are in a tectonic disruption: at the end of the 20th century a fundamental change in world power relations emerged, the 21st century would be, it seems, the Asian century.
About a year before the last collapse, two books were published, outlining the basic changes in the balance of power in the world: one is “The Rise and Fall of the Powers”, the very much talked about book by Paul Kennedy, the American, and the other — “The Great Depression of 1990”, the Indian prophetic book Saturated Batra, now published in Hebrew. The two books come to similar conclusions — the weakening of the United States and the Soviet Union and the rise of new empires.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Depression-1990-happen-How-yourself/dp/0671640224
Structurally, humanity is facing a critical shift in the global power map in East Asia.
After the collapse of the American stock market on October 29, many economies in the world collapsed, followed by internal and military political changes: the Germans moved to Nazism, the Americans moved to the “New Deal” statatism, which strengthened the state’s involvement in the economy, the Italians moved to fascism, the Russians moved from soft to tough statism. The culmination of the process was after World War II; The world was multi-bloc before the war, it became bi-bloc. “
The expected change now is the way back; A two-bloc world controlled by the United States and the Soviet Union will become a multi-bloc, with the top four: the United States, East Asia and Europe.
An economic report prepared this year by a group of experts, led by Henry Kissinger, paints a clear picture.
The East — Asian bloc has about 1.3 billion inhabitants, with a gross national product (GDP) of about 8 trillion dollars.
The North American bloc (United States and Canada) — about 330 million inhabitants, and a GDP of about 8 trillion dollars.
The European bloc — about 400 million inhabitants, and a GDP of about 4 trillion dollars.
Paul Kennedy attributes the decline of North America and Eastern Europe, among other things, to a military force without an economic base. The Soviet Union and the United States, Kennedy argues, are becoming heavy and armored dinosaurs, unable to generate the resources they need to sustain themselves. The defense expenditures of the two empires are inflated above and beyond any proportion, in relation to their declining economic power. At the same time, Western Europe and East Asia are indirectly exploiting America: cheaply using its military umbrella.
In a possible military confrontation between Japan and the United States, it will for the first time be able to quickly transform itself from a tremendous economic force, to a huge military force. Fuel tankers will be converted to aircraft carriers, passenger aircraft and research spacecraft will be converted to fighter jets and war missiles. In addition, disciplined industrial organizations will be converted into disciplined divisions, and factories engaged in robotics and industrial artificial intelligence will be converted to a military production line. The Japanese military will benefit from a Chinese nuclear umbrella and the large number of troops that China can put up.
It is common to think that a Chinese-Japanese alliance is not possible. Professor John Geltong, of the Universities of Oslo and Hawaii, founder of the International Institute for Peace Studies, thinks otherwise. From what he and I said two weeks ago at a conference at the Hebrew University, it appears that such an alliance is quite possible. As proof, he brought two opinion polls conducted in Japan. The first was held in 1978, the second ten years later. Both surveys examined what the Japanese think of their enemies and allies.
The results were astounding: in 1978, about 60 percent of Japanese believed that the Soviet Union was Japan’s main enemy; About 30 percent said China is the main enemy, and only 10 percent voted for the United States.
Now in 1988, however, 50 percent of Japanese answered that the United States is the main enemy, 40 percent voted for the Soviet Union, and only 10 percent gave the title to China. The cultural proximity between China and Japan, Geltong added, is a good platform for the unification of the East Asian bloc.
In the face of these changes, it is easier to understand why the Soviet Union and the United States are becoming friends before our eyes. Gorbachev’s perestroika completes regency in the American economy. Glasnost in Russia is the other side of the coin of the Reaganist conservatism.
As the Victorians marked the fall of the British Empire, so did conservatism and the new right in America marked the fall of the American Empire. The Soviet Union and the United States today look like an elderly couple falling in love again, after their children in East Asia and Western Europe left home.
To understand the place of the third world in the new picture, one has to go back in history. In the past, a primitive mentality was attributed to Afro-Asia, by the white colonialists. Only beyond modernization — the adoption of Western ways of thinking — will it improve its situation, they argued. This perception began to be undermined with post-World War II decolonization.
The scholars Gundar Frank and Emanuel Wallerstein from the United States, and the Egyptian Samir Amin, proposed the following concept: With the discovery of America, in 1492, a political economic creature was born in Europe that was unknown at the time: capitalism. About 500 years later the European bloc was divided into two larger blocs: the United States and Western Europe on the one hand, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on the other. In the 1950s, the two new blocs embarked on an imperialist — insane capitalist journey south, to swallow attempts by Asian, African, and South American countries.
https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Underdevelopment-Latin-America-Historical/dp/B019L5MG88
The journey was three stages. In the first stage, the European colonial capitalist system was depleted, whose main form was exploitative trade relations sponsored by guns. The conquerors of South America did not stop there, and continued towards Africa and Southeast Asia.
In the second stage, Europeans began to reap the achievements of commercial capitalism: they had sufficient resources, which they invested in scientific and technological research and in the development of ideologies of control and supremacy. Thus were born concepts such as the Industrial Revolution, Representative Democracy, Social Darwinism, Western Cultural Superiority and the like. The economic and military superiority of the colonialists stemmed not from moral cultural superiority, but from economic fueling and political military oppression. Fact: Developed civilizations such as those of the Incas and Aztecs in South America, or the Indians and Chinese in East Asia, did not withstand capitalist and colonial attacks.
In the third stage, classical, relatively disorganized capitalism was replaced by state capitalism, culminating in the New Deal in the United States, led by Roosevelt, and Keynesian economic theory. At the same time, the colonies of France and Britain fell, followed by American neo-colonialism and Russian socialist imperialism.
The current period is the “post-era”: post-capitalism, post-modernism, post-liberalism. The culture of the post-era era whose buds were seen in the student revolution in the late 1960s, was like a sensitive detector of the impending crisis in huge strides.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the disengagement in East Asia over the past two decades has served as a pillar of fire for all the peoples of the Third World. The blocs are beginning to crystallize and the potential is there: in South America Brazil is leading: in Africa several countries can accept the leadership: Nigeria, Zaire, Angola or Mozambique.
The words of the scholars presented here give a historical perspective, not only on everything that has happened in the last 500 years, but on the past 3000 years. Since the beginning of culture, the center of the world has moved west. The civilization that began in the East — China, India, the Tigris and Nile, moved to Greece, Rome and Europe, and from there continued to America. Now she’s back to the east.
The first civilizations arose around rivers. As it moved west, the area expanded, from the size of a river to the size of a sea. Greece was the first to discover sea culture, Rome developed it to the maximum possible. Romans fell and Christianity came, in the north of the Mediterranean, and Islam in the south.
The center of the world continued on its way west, and again the area grew. The Atlantic Ocean replaced the Mediterranean Sea. With the discovery of America the world received a tremendous boost to the west, and the center was conquered by the Atlantic Ocean for example about 500 years ago. At the end of the 20th century it is again the center: the Atlantic Ocean gives way to the Pacific Ocean. A 3000-year-old cycle ended, the center returned to the east. This thesis was presented in one of the last issues of Newsweek.
