Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

it changed the water center of Europe by several cm

Quote from: Frenzie on 2016-06-04, 16:13:15

it changed the water center of Europe by several cm

? where's the "water center" of Europe?

Just nodded to my excellent picture of Her majesty above my fireplace and told her to forgive you and explained that routine ex-colonist have little knowledge of the outside world.  

Perhaps too much flicker and too little real data, this WSJ video claims China spends too much on infrastructure and the US/West too little.

America's D+ rating is about maintenance,

the famine of populations

They were built after 1946 to relieve flooding but soon refitted with hydroelectric generators and had a 50yr life expectancy. D+ may be high for the TVA's system of dams. I was afraid to keep looking as lots were built under the same act - same time.

I'm not quite sure what you meant to say (I doubt you were, either...).

But you've been an advocate of substance farming -- which would cut the world's population by how mcuh? 

Substance farming would cut infrastructures not population. As obvious.

Btw, it's called subsistence farming.

Also called One Belt, One Road, the B&R is a massive undertaking that will shape Eurasia’s future. It will extend from the Pacific to the heart of Europe, stimulate some $4 trillion in investment over the next three decades, and draw in countries that account for 70 percent of the world’s energy reserves.

So far, however, the United States has either fruitlessly attempted to undermine the initiative or avoided engaging with it altogether. That is the wrong course. Washington should instead cautiously back the many aspects of the B&R that advance U.S. interests and oppose those that don’t. The United States does not have to choose between securing its global position and supporting economic growth in Asia: selectively backing the B&R would help achieve both goals. [...]

Driven by the belief that the B&R’s success depends on stability in the Middle East, meanwhile, China has recently taken an activist approach in the region that contrasts starkly with its historical reluctance to get involved there. In January, Xi became the first foreign leader to visit Iran after the lifting of international sanctions on that country; on the same trip, he met with the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. China has also attempted to mediate between the rival factions in Syria’s civil war; has supported Saudi Arabia’s efforts to defeat the Houthi rebels in Yemen; and, in December 2015, passed a law that will allow the People’s Liberation Army to participate in counter­terrorism missions abroad. [...]

Washington has not only refused to acknowledge the importance of the B&R; in some cases, the Americans have attempted to undermine it, as when the United States futilely opposed the creation of the AIIB.

This passive-aggressive approach is misguided: it allows China to shape Eurasia’s economic and political future without U.S. input; it denies American investors opportunities to profit from major infra­structure projects; and, insofar as it seeks to weaken the initiative, it could stifle a source of much-needed growth for Asia’s developing economies and Europe’s stagnating ones.

As the failed U.S. attempt to prevent its allies from joining the AIIB shows, resisting China’s regional economic initiatives puts Washington in an uncomfortable position with some of its closest partners, many of which see the B&R as a useful tool for pulling the global economy out of the doldrums. U.S. officials should also be mindful of history: transnational infrastructure projects have often bred hostility among great powers when not managed collaboratively, as the grandiose rail projects of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom did in the years leading up to World War I.

The United States’ failure to properly respond to the B&R is especially striking given that Washington inadvertently helped precipitate Beijing’s interest in the project. The “rebalance,” or “pivot,” to Asia that U.S. President Barack Obama initiated in 2011 has proved hollow, but it has nevertheless reinforced China’s sense of encirclement by the United States and its allies, as has the Obama administration’s de facto exclusion of China from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Those actions killed many of China’s ambitions in the Pacific, leading Beijing to seek strategic opportunities to its west. In addition, by opposing China’s calls for a larger voting share at the International Monetary Fund in the first decade of this century, the United States pushed Beijing to establish a multilateral lender of its own.

And by backing restrictions on projects that violated American environmental standards at the World Bank—where, in 2013, the United States supported a ban on funding for most new coal-fired power plants—the United States made room for Beijing to develop alternative institutions with the knowledge that it could find customers among its less scrupulous neighbors. Even the United States’ unsustainable federal debt played a role in the creation of the B&R: as it ballooned in the years after the 2008 financial crisis, the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds plummeted, pushing China, the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, to direct more of its massive savings to infrastructure instead. [...]

Instead, Washington should approach the B&R with an open mind. U.S. officials should publicly acknowledge China’s initiative and the potential benefits it offers, provided that Beijing leads the effort trans­parently and ensures that it works largely in the service of inter­national development rather than China’s own gain. The two countries should then find a bilateral forum—the Strategic and Economic Dialogue is just one option—in which to discuss a joint economic development agenda and come up with a role for the United States that plays to its strengths.

American defense contractors, for example, could provide physical security and cybersecurity services to B&R projects, and the U.S. military could help secure some of the more volatile regions where Washington already has military assets, such as the Horn of Africa. That would spare China the need to increase its overseas military presence and bolster the legitimacy of the U.S. forces working in those areas. The United States should reassure some of its allies, particularly those in Southeast Asia, where anxiety about China’s ascendance runs deep, that the B&R is largely a force for economic development rather than Chinese expansionism. And U.S. officials should seek a role for Washington in the AIIB, either as a member of the bank or as an observer.

The United States, however, should not give the B&R its blanket support, since doing so would pose serious risks. First, it would feed Russia’s fears of U.S.-Chinese collusion, triggering paranoia in the Kremlin, where there is already concern about China’s push into former Soviet states, and Moscow could lash out in response. India poses a similar challenge. It recognizes the B&R’s economic promise, but like Russia, it is wary of China’s motives; specifically, New Delhi is troubled by the commitments Beijing has made to Pakistan and by China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean and the neighboring countries of Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Any perception that China and the United States are attempting to change the status quo in the region might feed New Delhi’s anxiety and accelerate an arms race between China and India. In both cases, Washington should tread carefully, doing everything it can to avoid creating the appearance of unwanted collaboration between China and the United States. As for the Middle East, the Gulf states will chafe at the prominent role the B&R could give Iran as a land bridge between Central Asia and Europe. So Washington should make clear that its support for China’s infrastructure push will depend on Beijing’s commitment to preserving the delicate balance of power in the Persian Gulf, and it should try to ensure that projects that provide economic boons for Iran are balanced by investments of similar benefit to the Gulf states.

And to ensure that it is seen as a leader on global infrastructure itself, Washington should launch and promote its own infrastructure projects, such as the New Silk Road initiative proposed in 2011 by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to connect Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India with roads and pipelines.

The greatest risk that the United States would face by supporting the B&R wholesale is that China could use American goodwill to advance its own ascendance to the United States’ detriment—above all, by attempting to change the delicate status quo in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. If China is indeed pursuing a long-term strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, as some China watchers contend, then giving it the chance to take such a course would be a grave mistake. In response to the recent rejection of China’s historical claims to most of the South China Sea by an international tribunal, for example, Beijing might try to build dual-use infrastructure that would further militarize the region and intimidate its rivals there. That is something the United States should not tolerate, as no degree of economic integration can justify compromising the United States’ Pacific alliances.

Chinese officials would likely recognize that U.S. involvement in the B&R would place some limits on Beijing’s ability to redraw the lines of the Eurasian economy. But for reasons of self-interest, they should still welcome American cooperation. Infrastructure projects tend to carry a high risk and produce only modest returns on investment; the B&R is too vast and expensive to rest on one country’s shoulders. American engagement would clear the way for co-investments by U.S.-, European-, and Japanese-led institutions, such as the World Bank, the Asian Develop­ment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; it would attract private capital to China’s projects, as well. [...]

It will take a great deal of magnanimity for the United States to resist the urge to oppose such a grand strategic initiative as the B&R, especially since China’s westward push comes at a time when Washington is increasingly confused about its own role in the world. But the United States must remember that its response to the project will help determine the future of U.S.-Chinese relations and of the international order. And as the global economy slows down and hundreds of millions of Asians languish with few hopes of escaping poverty, the United States must recognize that its fate is linked to that of the developing world—and that it should give its blessing to initiatives that will lift all boats.