As oil, gas and gallium reshape America’s security strategy, we can expect peace prospects to brighten

The realpolitik of this document is breathtaking, yet the underlying logic is not stated. It is a logic of resources. With oil flowing thick and fast from Texas and reserves in Canada and Venezuela, the US can exit the Gulf in West Asia and even (in principle, not in practice) leave Israel to its own devices.

Russian gas, more precisely the lack of it, has sealed the fate of Europe: Germany is de-industrializing while Britain and France, their empires long gone, sink toward irrelevance. Sanctions having failed, Russia’s eventual victory in Ukraine is now assured.

With China, the resource issue is rare earths, especially gallium, a byproduct of refining bauxite into alumina. China controls rare earths through a near-monopoly on refining, which could erode with determined efforts over time.

Gallium is different; US aluminium capacity peaked in 1980 and China’s advantage in the underlying process of refining is now estimated at 90 to 1. The US cannot own-source gallium on any timescale. As there is no substitute for gallium in advanced microchips, the US military cannot now confront China and prevail. A détente is therefore necessary for America, as desired by and acceptable to Beijing.

As strategy, the new order is not ironclad and should not be taken too seriously until military bases are closed, aircraft carriers decommissioned and nuclear weapons mothballed. It is also hedged in several unrealistic ways, such as the notion, quickly quashed by China, that perhaps Japan (and Korea) might defend the “first island chain,” a euphemism for Taiwan.

As economics, it is a mass of contradictions, in particular its quest for US re-industrialization while simultaneously protecting the financial system and the dollar’s global role. The syndrome is of the child who wants every shiny package under the tree. One may expect a tantrum once the reality dawns that one can’t have it all.

Then there is the undisguised notion that the nations of Latin America are not really countries, but dependencies and satrapies—colonies in all but name—run by caciques (local leaders). That there have been (and still are) such countries in the region cannot be denied. But Mexico and Brazil, not to mention Colombia and Venezuela, not to mention Nicaragua and Cuba, have other ideas.

The brazen, Miami-mobster tone of this document is its most retrograde feature, scarcely removed from the years before the American Civil War, when Cuba and Mexico were seen as new frontiers for southern slaveholders.

Still, for all its defects, as an assault on the previously sacrosanct, unipolar and Eurocentric world order, the new US strategy is an ice-breaker. It opens up policy space not seen in 40, 50 or perhaps 60 years—not since Reagan and Gorbachev, Nixon and Mao, or Kennedy and Khrushchev , who each in their own way tried to forestall a final nuclear confrontation.

The panicky reaction of European political leaders and US foreign policy, media and Democratic Party elites portends a colossal struggle to keep the old order going. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s pastiche of cringe and cope is a telling example of what to expect.

Previous efforts at peacemaking all came eventually to nought. Kennedy’s overtures of 1963, notably the test-ban treaty and his decision to exit Vietnam, ended with his assassination. Nixon’s opening to China led to deep a relationship that only lapsed into hostility as China emerged as a leading economic power while the 1990s-era illusion of an ‘end of history’ convergence to ‘liberal democracy’ fell apart.

The end of the Cold War engineered by Gorbachev and Reagan gave way, under George H. W. Bush, to claims of ‘victory’ with an inevitable repercussion—revanche.

Yet, in each of those episodes, the material conditions of the US were stronger and its need to dominate the world greater than is true today. The US is now self-sufficient in energy; it can get along without Europe or the Gulf, and it can prosper without antagonizing Russia or China. At the same time, US military capacity has eroded; an era of missiles and drones has superceded that of aircraft carriers and bases. The material conditions, in short, favour peace.

One cannot be optimistic. No doubt, those committed to unilateral American hegemony will make every effort, in the months ahead, to reverse any move towards balanced peace. But they would be defending a global order that no longer exists, whereas the new conditions really do call for regional consolidation and multi-polarity in a world where peace and stability are paramount.

India, nicely balanced among great powers, will benefit if a peaceful system prevails. And its diplomacy can help, if it chooses, to make it happen.

The author is co-author of ‘Entropy Economics: The Living Basis of Value and Production’.