The Global Politics of the Diaoyu Islands

china-vs-japan-cartoon-01-598x473 — By Bryant Arnold. via:http://www.cartoonaday.com/china-vs-japan-at-sea/

As The Japanese government’s moved to purchase the Diaoyu Islands (also known as Senkaku Islands) three days ago the government of the People’s Republic of China reacted energetically. Initially, Chinese media reporters influenced mediatic understanding of the situation by emphasizing the nationalization of the islands by Japan (ringing the history bells to Chinese people on how Japan had previously nationalized Manchuria and renamed it as the puppet state of Manchukuo during the WW2 period). And later, by making strong diplomatic statements on how Chinese sovereignty and control of the islands had been violated by the Japanese purchase.

The purchase of the islands is of relevance regionally and globally. Why China, Japan, and S. Korea aren’t backing down on this islands should be understood by taking a look at the map and see how the position of the islands is central for the passage of containers and oil that comes all the way from Middle East via the Strait of Malacca. A route that is of priority importance for China and which I explored in the essay “The Strait of Malacca as one of the most important geopolitical regions for the People’s Republic of China” which ca be read in pdf at Academia.edu for free.

Locally, the geography of the islands is meaningless. The island group consists of five uninhabited islets and three barren rocks which zooming out are located approximately 120 nautical miles northeast of Taiwan, 200 nautical miles east of the Chinese mainland and 200 nautical miles southwest of the Japanese island of Okinawa. And which zooming out are in the center of the route of all the containers that go to the ports of East and North East China, of which the most important is Shangai.

The Japanese central government formally annexed the islets on 14 January 1895. And after WW2 they were occupied by the United States. The islets were later returned to Japan during the 70s and it was only until the last two decades that they became of relevance as the People’s Republic of China started to project is New Economic and Global Plans for economic sustainable expansion. Plans in which they have invested billions of dollars in military expansion, naval trade/military shipbuilding, regional economic investment via state-owned companies and diplomatic sovereignty claims all over the region.

The islands are officially Japanese territory, but as Chinese official statements continue being broadcasted they claim a violation of sovereignty that could takes decades to be resolved via a diplomatic arbitrage and/or scalate to more direct military statements and naval occupations of the beaches of the islets.

Whoever said that trade is the most (or only) pacific way of organizing society should reconsider this evaluations when thinking about how global trade works and on how diplomatic and economic control of trade routes is sometimes more powerful and dangerous than a bunch of battleships.

Past and present of the globalization of knowledge

Globalization of knowledge is what I define as the process by which actors conceptualize and interconnect ideas in a global scale. In the past, the globalization of knowledge required initially an extensive research in books, magazines and other print resources of ideas that could be connected in order to create a larger image of the field being studied. Later, these ideas were linked and related one to another in the creation of conceptual maps that looked very similar to the nets of spiders in whiteboards. Later, these ideas were interconnected and global conclusions, hypothesis and thesis arised from the evaluation of information.

However, with the advent of technology these complicated and extenuating research process have been shortened and made much more efficient. Now, these interconnections and global images of our research are almost done automatically by computers.

The following video has a great example on how the past and present of the Globalization of Knowledge looked like. I hope you will enjoy watching it as much as I did,

Global integration of trade

National Geographic is running a wonderful website on Globalization, the international exchange of goods, services, cultures, ideas, has brought increased wealth for many and transformed forever the way humans interact. But while its roots may be in commerce, globalization‘s effects can be very personal.

Advances in communication and transportation have created a rich, unprecedented mixing of cultures throughout the world. But there is a drawback. As international travel, economic migration, and the global spread of music, films, and literature bring more people than ever into intimate contact, human diversity is vanishing.

A shared language is perhaps the most profound expression of group identity and a critical tool for passing cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. But globalization is about integration. Whether by choice, by circumstance, or under duress, thousands of cultural and linguistic traditions are disappearing as their new generations adopt dominant national and global languages.

Workers, from wealthy consultants to unskilled laborers, are also on the move as never before. Some migrants are encouraged by host countries or regional agreements; others avoid official avenues and often live a shadowy, parallel existence once they arrive. Immigration is high, but it is economic migrants—seeking work more than a new homeland—who define our age.

Read more from them here: EarthPulse by National Geographic

Drugs: A Legal Market is not a Free Market

A couple days ago, Otto Perez Molina, recently elected as President of Guatemala; announced that he was willing to decriminalize the commercialization of drugs. According to U.S. authorities, Guatemala has became the transshipment point for more than 75 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States since 2005. Along with this, the Opium poppy cultivation is already done in large parts of the countryside making the production of Guatemalan heroin a greater and the newest worry for the United States. The country’s elites are already part of this business and the paranoia of crimes that used be a remembrance from Colombia‘s 1990s history seems to be repeating in these Central American countries.

What impresses me the most now is how this news has started spreading around my Facebook contacts (mostly libertarians and liberals). Both groups seem to be happy to hear this announcement by Guatemala’s President. However, both groups applaud the news for different reasons. The legalization/decriminalization of drugs will not be the panacea we all are hoping for. Specially not if started by any of the Central American governments. The reasons are many and I will begin by listing some of them to open the discussion,

Corruption, lax enforcement, and judicial impunity levels in Central America are among the highest of the world.
Drug lords and their new and powerful money have been mentioned by many analysts to be already part of the politic and economic elites of these countries.
The Central American countries in which this drugs are produced and transported are inhabited by a large majority of people living in the lowest leves of Human Development.
If legalized, the trade, production and commercialization of drugs (cocaine and heroine mainly) will be regulated by these governments.
Without any doubt, this regulations will enable and create legalized monopolies ruled with the partnership of previous drug lords and government officials.
It has not been advocated by any of the political leaders which road would take the legalization of drugs. This is important, because under current legalization procedures it is not the same to get the approval for a new medicine in the market as to get the approval for a new liquor, a new energizing drink or of a new edible product.

The history of the legalization (production, trade and commercialization) of items considered by many as drugs and for others as commodities has shown that for as long as a government elite hold the power to legalize it; it was in their power to take the first steps into the acquisition of a monopoly of its trade and production.

If legalized, the emergence of a coercive monopoly would be inevitable. As noted by Ayn Rand, the governments and their partners in these coercive monopolies “will be able of setting the initial prices and production policies independently of the market, with immunity from competition, from the law of supply and demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and stagnant.”

If we support the complete and absolute free trade of all commodities it is necessary that we do not grant to government an intrinsic right to regulate it. No compromise should ever be done with a government that requires regulation in order to give us legalization. Legalization should result in freedom and not in regulation. The drug trade should be opened to businessmen and entrepreneurs in the freest way possible. The freest way is that of requiring the traders to inform their buyers about all the necessary information about the products they are offering.

We may be taking part in a historical moment in which the most important thing are principles. Let us remember that one of the most valuable principles of trade is Freedom; and that one of the most valuable principles of government is to seek that i will Protect Individual Rights and not to regulate their lives.

Note: To understand more which are the principles that really matter in this discussion, I invite you to take a look to the video titled: The Drug War in Guatemala: A Conversation with Giancarlo Ibarguen.

Friday Book Recommendation

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
Need a short monograph on Austrian business cycle theory? This is the one to get.Murray Rothbard was the master of reducing complicated theories to their very essence while retaining theoretical rigor, and this essay is a case in point. It was written in 1969 and published in the form of a tiny book that achieved a huge circulation. It has not been in print since that time, but it is now back in this new release.