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FT: The long shadow of the 1930s - 忍び寄る1930年代の影2011/11/30 06:23

FT: The long shadow of the 1930s - 忍び寄る1930年代の影


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現代に忍び寄る「1930年代の影」
2011.11.30(水)
(2011年11月29日付 英フィナンシャル・タイムズ紙)
http://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/30988


世の中の状況が再び悪くなる可能性はあるのだろうか? そう、1930年代の大恐慌とか世界大戦といったレベルの非常に悪い状況のことだ。筆者の世代が思い浮かべるようになった激変と言えば、もう歴史書でしか目にしないものばかりだ。

 今の欧州に不吉な予感が漂っていることは確かである。ポーランド外相が28日に訪問先のベルリンで、欧州は「崖っぷちに立っている」と警告したことは最新事例にすぎない。

欧州大陸の平和を保証するユーロの危機

 フランスのニコラ・サルコジ大統領も先日、「もしユーロが爆発すれば、欧州も爆発するだろう。恐ろしい戦争がたびたび行われた大陸で平和を保証しているのはユーロなのだ」と述べていた。

 欧州の政治家は以前から、お気に入りの欧州統合プロジェクトへの支持を取り付けるために、戦争の脅威に言及する手をよく使ってきた。平時であれば、この種の話に真剣に耳を傾けるヨーロッパ人はほとんどいない。

 それどころか、平和で繁栄した西欧で生まれ育った人々にとっては、戦争の話は本質的に信じがたいものに思える。筆者がこれまで生きてきた世界では、多少の浮き沈みはあったものの、世の中の状況は着実に良くなっているように思えた。

 ナチスは既に打ち負かされていたし、スペインやポルトガル、ギリシャでは独裁政権が倒れた。ソビエト帝国も崩壊し、南アフリカ共和国ではアパルトヘイト(人種隔離)が終結した。

平和と繁栄が当たり前になっていた世代

 西側に住む筆者の世代にとって、平和と繁栄は当たり前なものとなった。その点で自分たちがほかの大半の国々と異なっていることも、忘れてしまいがちだった。筆者はつい先日も、知人の中国人学者ヤン・シュエトン(閻学通)氏の著作で次のような一節を見つけてたじろいでしまった。

 「文化大革命のころは、殴り殺される人をよく見かけた。そうなると、そういうことにはあまり動じなくなる」

 しかし過去30年の間に、平和や繁栄、そしてそれなりの快適さを求める気持ちは、国境を越えて恵まれた西側以外の国々へも広がっていった。

 文化大革命の中国はショッピングモールと工場の中国にその座を譲った。マザー・テレサのインドも、部分的ながら情報技術(IT)革命のインドに取って代わられつつある。

 グローバル化のために、世界は以前よりも安全になって均質化も進んだと思われるようになった。アジアや東欧の新しい中間層が資本主義の安心感と価値観を受け入れたのだ。

 冷戦の時代には核兵器頼みであるように思われた世界平和も、今では国際貿易と、多くの国々が受け入れた大量消費主義が支えているように見える。

 世界経済危機が勃発するまでは、トニー・ブレア氏が1997年の選挙で使ったテーマ曲「Things can only get better(状況はもっと良くなる。それしかあり得ない)」の文句が時代の空気をつかんでいるように思えた。

 しかし2008年のリーマン・ブラザーズ破綻以降、我々は、状況が間違いなく悪くなり得ることに気づいた。では、果たしてどの程度悪くなり得るのだろうか?

大恐慌がもたらしたカオスと国家主義

 欧州は深刻な経済危機のリスクに直面している。ソブリン債務のデフォルト(債務不履行)や単一通貨ユーロ解体の恐れが高まりつつあり、それに伴って銀行の破綻、人々のパニック、深刻な景気後退、大量失業などが生じる可能性も出てきている。まさに大恐慌の現代版といった感じだ。

 欧州連合(EU)を1つの単位と見なすなら、その経済規模は世界で最も大きなものとなる。従ってEUで経済が混乱すれば、その影響が全世界に及ぶことは避けられない。貿易は停滞し、世界金融システムも脅かされることだろう。

 1930年代の教訓とは、世界恐慌は民主主義を弱体化させ、極端な政策を掲げる新たな政治勢力を台頭させ、その過程で国際紛争のリスクを高めてしまう、というものだ。

 1930年代の現代版が現実のものになれば、欧州では経済の混乱とEUの分裂を背景に、新しい世代の国家主義者たちが政権を握ることになるだろう。世界経済の状況が悪化するにつれ、欧州以外の地域でも緊張が高まるだろう。

 台頭する中国が弱体化した米国と相対するアジアでは、勢力バランスの変化がさらに加速するだろう。中国でも米国でも、経済危機になれば国家主義者や保護主義者が影響力を強めるだろう。

 いずれも、あり得ないシナリオではない。だが、これだけ似ている面があっても、筆者はまだ、我々が1930年代に戻りつつあるとは思えずにいる。そういう事態は回避できそうだと考えている理由は主に3つある。

1930年代の再来は回避できると考える理由

 第1に、80年前にどこをどう間違えたかという知識が、同じ間違いを政治家が回避するのに役立つ可能性がある。例えば、中国は「平和的台頭」の必要性をずっと強調しているが、これは戦前の大日本帝国がひどい過ちを犯したことを知っているためでもある。

 第2に、強国や先進国の間で1945年から66年間も平和が維持されてきたことは、世界史のサイクルに恵まれたからではなく文明の進歩を反映しているのだという説得力のある指摘がある。

 ハーバード大学のスティーブン・ピンカー教授は最新刊『The Better Angels of Our Nature(人間の本性に住まう善良な天使たち)』で、人類は次第に好戦的でなくなってきており、「我々は今日、人類史上最も平和な時代を生きているのかもしれない」と論じている。

 最後に、先進国は現在、1930年代が始まるころよりもはるかに豊かな暮らしをしている。経済が破綻すれば人々は貯蓄や職、住宅を失ってしまうかもしれないが、貧困のどん底にまでたたき落とされることは考えにくい。その結果、過激な政治主張にはあまり傾倒しない可能性がある。

 例えば、ラトビアでは2009年に経済規模が18%も縮小したが、先日行われた選挙では2つの中道政党が勝利を収めた。またスペインでは失業率がすでに22%を超えており、若年層に限れば45%超に達するが、それでも今月の選挙では穏健な中道右派政党が勝っている。

 従って、深刻な経済危機が訪れるリスクは非常に現実的なものではあるが、世界が再び戦争への道を歩み出す恐れがあるとは筆者には思えない。もっともこれは、過去に例のないほど平和で繁栄した時代に生まれ育った幸運な男の想像力が欠けているだけなのかもしれないが。


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November 28, 2011 7:48 pm
The long shadow of the 1930s
By Gideon Rachman
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/79656ee4-19b3-11e1-ba5d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eskLmmRu

Could things go bad again? I mean really bad – Great Depression bad, world war bad? The kind of cataclysmic event my generation has learned to think belongs only in the history books.

There is certainly a sense of foreboding in Europe at the moment. Speaking in Berlin on Monday night, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, warned: “We are standing on the edge of a precipice.” President Sarkozy of France cautioned recently: “If the euro explodes, Europe would explode. It’s the guarantee of peace in a continent where there were terrible wars.”

European politicians have often indulged in shroud-waving about the threat of war, to rally support for the beloved European project. In normal times, few Europeans take such talk seriously.

On the contrary, war talk seems inherently implausible to people raised in prosperous, peaceful western Europe. I have lived my entire life in a world in which, for all its ups-and-downs, things seemed to be getting steadily better. Nazism had been defeated; dictatorships fell in Spain, Portugal and Greece; the Soviet empire collapsed; apartheid ended in South Africa.

Peace and prosperity became the norm for my generation in the West. It was easy to forget that this set us apart from most of the rest of the world. Reading a book recently by Yan Xuetong, a Chinese academic I know, I was taken aback to come across this sentence: “During the cultural revolution, we often saw people being beaten to death, so you become somewhat immune to it.”

However, over the last 30 years, the hope for peace, prosperity and a reasonable degree of comfort has spread beyond the privileged confines of the West. The China of the Cultural Revolution has given way to the China of the shopping mall and the factory. The India of Mother Theresa is being partly displaced by the India of the IT revolution.

Globalisation has made the world seem like a safer and more homogenous place – as the new middle-classes of Asia and eastern Europe embraced the comforts and values of capitalism. Global peace, which during the cold war seemed to depend on nuclear weapons, now seemed to be underpinned by international trade and a shared embrace of consumerism.

Until the global economic crisis, the words of Tony Blair’s election campaign song in 1997 seemed to capture the spirit of the age – “Things can only get better”.

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, we have discovered that things can definitely get worse. The question is how much worse?

The risk of a grave economic crisis in Europe is severe. The threats of sovereign-debt defaults and the break-up of the European single currency are rising – and with it, the attendant threats of collapsing banks, popular panic, deep recessions and mass unemployment. That would indeed feel like a modern version of the Great Depression.

The European Union, taken as a whole, is the largest economy in the world – so economic chaos here inevitably has global ramifications. It would depress trade and threaten the global financial system.

The lesson of the 1930s is that a global depression weakens democracies, leads to the rise of radical new political forces – and, in the process, raises the risk of international conflict.

A modern version of the 1930s would see a new generation of nationalist politicians rise to power in Europe, against a background of economic chaos and the break-up of the European Union. Tensions would also rise outside Europe, as the global economic situation worsened. The balance of power in Asia would shift even faster, with a rising China facing a weakened America. In both China and America, an economic crisis would see nationalist and protectionist forces gain influence.

These scenarios are not implausible. And yet, for all the parallels, I still cannot bring myself to believe that we are heading back to the 1930s. There are three main reasons why I think we are likely to escape.

First, the very knowledge of what went wrong, 80 years ago, may help politicians avoid the same mistakes. China’s continued emphasis on the need for a “peaceful rise” owes something to a knowledge of the terrible errors of Imperial Japan.

Second, there is a plausible argument that the 66 years of peace between the major powers and developed nations since 1945 actually reflects the progress of civilisation, rather than a lucky cycle in world history. In his recent book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, Steven Pinker of Harvard University, argues that mankind is becoming steadily less warlike and that “today we may be living in the most peaceable era in human history”.

Finally, the developed world is starting from a much higher level of affluence than it did the 1930s. In an economic crash people might still lose their savings, their jobs and their homes – but they are less likely to be reduced to utter destitution. As a result, they may be less prone to political radicalisation. The Latvian economy shrank by 18 per cent in 2009 – but in the recent election there, two centrist parties came out on top. In Spain, unemployment is already over 22 per cent – and over 45 per cent for the young. And yet a moderate centre-right party won this month’s election.

So, although the risk of a severe economic crisis is very real, I don’t believe that we are at risk of sliding back into war. But that may simply be the failure of imagination of somebody lucky enough to be raised in a period of unparalleled peace and prosperity.

The US navy fostered globalisation: we still need it - Robert Kaplan2011/11/30 19:54



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November 29, 2011 7:10 pm
The US navy fostered globalisation: we still need it
By Robert Kaplan
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f9d59564-19b7-11e1-ba5d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eskLmmRu

The financial world is obsessed with stock market gyrations and bond yields. But the numbers that matter in the long run are those of US warships. Asia has been at the centre of the world economy for decades because security there can be taken for granted, and that is only because of the dominance of the US navy and air force in the western Pacific. Because 90 per cent of all commercial goods traded between continents travel by sea, the US navy, which does more than any other entity to protect these lines of communication, is responsible for globalisation as we know it.

There is no guarantee that this situation will last, however. In the 1980s era of high Reaganism, the US navy boasted close to 600 warships. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that number fell to about 350. The US navy’s current strength is 284 warships. In the short term that number may rise to 313 because of the introduction of littoral combat ships. Over time, however, it may fall to about 250, owing to cost overruns, the need to address domestic debt and the decommissioning of ageing warships in the 2020s. Meanwhile, the bipartisan quadrennial defence review last year recommended that the US move toward a 346-ship navy to fulfil its global responsibilities.

There is a big difference between a 346-ship US navy and a 250-ship navy – the difference between one kind of world order and another.

Armies respond to unexpected contingencies, but it is navies and air forces that project power. Power is relative. If other nations were not building up their own navies and air forces, these numbers would matter less than they do. In fact, the western Pacific is in the middle of an arms race. This is not a low-tech expansion of ground forces; but a high-tech acquisition of submarines, surface warships, fighter jets, missiles, and cyberwarfare capabilities. The US armed forces have rarely been needed more to preserve the balance of power, and so maintain a peaceful environment for economic interaction.

China is increasing its submarine fleet from 62 to 77 – surpassing the size, if not the quality, of America’s own undersea fleet – even as Beijing acquires hundreds of fourth- and fifth-generation fighter jets. Meanwhile, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are acquiring submarines, as advances in missile technology make surface warships more vulnerable. Australia, with a population of only 23m, is expected to spend a whopping $279bn in the next two decades on new subs, destroyers and fighter planes. In all, given military modernisation programmes under way in South Korea and Japan, Asian nations are expected to purchase as many as 111 submarines by 2030, according to AMI International, a research outfit for governments and shipbuilders.

Multipolar military orders are more unstable than unipolar ones because there are more points of interaction where miscalculations can occur. Yet unless the US is able to maintain a vigorous naval and air presence in the Indo-Pacific, the future of military power arrangements will be more multipolar.

A world without US naval and air dominance will be one where powers such as China, Russia, India, Japan and others act more aggressively towards each other than they do now because they will all be far more insecure than they are now. Even China and Russia take advantage of secure sea lanes partly provided by the US.

An Indo-Pacific without a strong US military presence would mean the Finlandisation by China of countries in the South China Sea, such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Indeed, Beijing, with its economic might and geographical proximity, may be less benign to its southern neighbours than has been the distant and democratic US.

Now that the congressional supercommittee in Washington has failed to achieve a compromise, the debt crisis may force historic cuts on the US navy and air force, resulting in fewer warships and curtailment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme. The business community should hope that it does not happen.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and author of ‘Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power’