Total Recall

Matthias: Mr. Hauser, What is it you want?

Doug Quaid: I want to help you.

Matthias: That is not the only reason you are here.

Doug Quaid: I want to remember.

Matthias: Why?

Doug Quaid: So I can be myself, be who I was.

Matthias: It is each man's quest to find out who he truly is, but the answer to that lies in the present, not in the past. As it is for all of us.

Doug Quaid: But the past tells us who we've become.

Matthias: The past is a construct of the mind. It blinds us. It fools us into believing it. But the heart wants to live in the present. Look there. You'll find your answer.

The present tries to forget the past. The past even if washed by the sands of time serves a reminder every now and then.

When Napoleon armies marched across Europe winning many wars despite adverse numbers his confidence in his destiny magnified. He was then the Emperor of Europe from the Atlantic to Poland (Austria in alliance), the largest Empire ever carved in Europe. Having won peace with Russia (however brittle) and the English beyond his reach, he tried the disastrous occupation of Spain across the Pyrenees and lost many men in the Spanish guerilla war before giving up. Lacking the naval force he tried enforcing a continental blockade on the English. When the Russians reneged from the blockade he took the largest force ever assembled to attack the Russian marching across all of Europe. The Russians did not give battle and when Napoleon occupied Moscow, they burnt it down. Over half a million men lost their lives. As Napoleon’s star dipped, old enemies rose to fight again. And, in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815 he lost it all. Creating an empire is one thing, managing it can be quite another.

Bismarck in the same way created Germany out of what were many principalities on the western and southern side of Prussia, maneuvering militarily and diplomatically the Austrians, French and the Russians as he did this. However, once this had happened, he was aware of the power of united German nation and sought to diplomatically assuage the fears of other powers on the continent.

In February 1888, during a Bulgarian crisis, Bismarck addressed the Reichstag on the dangers of a European war. He warned of the imminent possibility that Germany will have to fight on two fronts; he spoke of the desire for peace; then he set forth the Balkan case for war and demonstrated its futility: "Bulgaria, that little country between the Danube and the Balkans, is far from being an object of adequate importance ... for which to plunge Europe from Moscow to the Pyrenees, and from the North Sea to Palermo, into a war whose issue no man can foresee. At the end of the conflict we should scarcely know why we had fought."   

He left a marker for the future leaders of Europe. Ironically, World War I started with Austro-Hungarian Empire attacking Serbia (in the Balkans) leading from one conflagration to another and Germans were fighting the French and the Russians (two-front war). A leading historian of the era, William L. Langer sums up Bismark's two decades as Chancellor: “Whatever else may be said of the intricate alliance system evolved by the German Chancellor, it must be admitted that it worked and that it tided Europe over a period of several critical years without a rupture.... there was, as Bismarck himself said, a premium upon the maintenance of peace.”

We now see another nation rise to change the balance of power in Asia – China. As China changes the status quo, it is changing the behavior of all its neighbors – the bordering countries of its newly propounding maritime boundary (the nine dash line) like Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore; Australia; India; South Korea; and most importantly that of United States and Japan. Japan has as a consequence started reversing the limits it bound its military in post-World War II. This is like all the nations of Europe were aligned against Napoleon. One is already seeing some impact on military spending in the region, SIPRI reported, "Vietnam also continued its rapid rise in military spending, with an increase of 9.6% in 2014, reaching $4.3 billion. Since 2005 Vietnam’s spending has risen by 128%, reflecting tensions with China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. However, Indonesia decreased its spending by 10% in 2014—a reversal of recent trends, which may prove to be only temporary, given Indonesia’s ambitious military modernization plans. Although military spending in Asia and Oceania remains on an upward trend—with all states in the region except Fiji, Japan and Laos increasing their spending since 2005—the growth rate for most states has been substantially lower since 2009, when the effects of the global financial crisis began to  be felt. For example, while China’s military expenditure doubled in real terms between 2004–2009, it increased by only 48% between 2009–14. Japan, meanwhile, approved a record budget for 2015.” China, however, has the benefit of geography, an ocean frontage of 9,000 miles in the temperate zone, which the other Eurasian power Russia never had, making it both a land power with access to the resources of central Asia and a capability to build sea power.

The Chinese have during the last 30 years tried to transition to proactive engagement with the international system and from a taker to a maker of international order. The ability to maintain the current trajectory of change is significantly dependent on it economic growth. As Kaplan points out, “Two debates are under way over China. The first, about Beijing’s aggression in the South and East China seas, is between naval strategists and diplomats who know little about economics. The second, about the fragility of the Chinese economy, is between economists who know little about naval strategy and diplomacy.” But depending on the trajectory one could see internal strife with Tibetans or the Uighurs or increasing friction at sea inspired by nationalism or a managed transition where US power gives way to Chinese in the South China Sea. The number of annual protests in China has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8700 “mass group incidents” in 1993 to over 87,000 in 2005. In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010. These incidents are a marker of the break in social contract with its people as income divide widens, job security reduces or the environment degrades and this is what could seriously tear down internal political consensus of a single party rule. The downturn in the Chinese economy is already causing global pain; an implosion would seriously damage global economic stability and internal security. For my views on the Chinese economy please refer to http://poleconomyindia.blogspot.in/2015/08/china-everything-overdone.html.

It is not that the American Empire rose in complete harmony with world. Thomas Jefferson, in the 1790s, awaited the fall of the Spanish Empire "until our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece." In the late 19th century, foreign territories such as Hawaii and Latin America were sought after by the United States. Roosevelt supported the Panamanians to revolt against Columbia and in turn they granted US control of the Panama Canal Zone. The Teller Amendment and the Platt Amendment were used in unison to grant the United States the right to intervene in those territories if that particular government was deemed unfit to rule itself. The American government held the power to both criticize and occupy these nations if they were deemed to be unstable. But two things that were important through all of this - consistent growth in economic might (barring the great depression) and World War II which literally tore down the European empires and with it the old world order.

The Chinese may like to be like the Americans but are behaving like Napoleon when they ought to manage like Bismarck.