World War III???

World War III????

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 2005

Reference: This is a response to a query from a reader of a previous essay on “When the Leadership Lost Its Tribe.”



Some of you do read my long missives. Thank you. A reader found this expression in my essay somewhat troubling:

"...the nation spiraled down into double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. The bubble had burst. The United States believed itself invulnerable to what the rest of the world experienced. It could not fathom the idea of World War III being an economic war."

She asked, "How could you suggest such a war? What is your evidence? And by the way, do you ever relax?"

In answer to the first question, I read. I think. I wonder. And I conceptualize the possible meaning of events, trends and circumstances, always in the context of an observer without portfolio, in other words, not as an expert.

In answer to the second question, our greatest allies are the Western European nations of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and in the Far East, Japan, and they are all in trouble.

Tony Blair is suffering some of the same problems as George Bush regarding credibility due to Iraq; England's social and economic situation is precarious; the French people don't want to work and they are in more denial than Americans; Germany can't even come up with a stable government, and it has massive unemployment, while the German people, like the French, still desire to cling to their ludicrous welfare system despite threats to national security; Italy is surprisingly resilient despite problems of corruption and lire fluctuation; and Japan has never completely recovered from its past recession. To put it in military terms, their arsenals are not ready for defensive much less offensive purposes.

Against this reality there is China.

China has been waging economic war against the West for the past quarter century, but now it is coming to fruition. While the focus is on the totalitarianism of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, they are comparatively free to the state of the Chinese people. Remember the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989? A student stood defiantly in front of the tank symbolizing the courage of the young and their desire for liberty. More than a thousand students paid for that public display while the world watched.

Little has changed sense.

China uses capitalism to further its political agenda. And its economic policies have nothing to do with political principles. Human rights are political rights, and in China the only political party is the Communist Party. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer has had a series of programs on just how controlling this government is.

My point had to do only with economics. China's policies are built around the principle of exporting more than it imports in order to earn as much money as possible. This money is used to finance its expanding military might, which our Secretary of Defense told his Chinese counterpart, is four times greater than China has reported. Meanwhile, little is provided for the infrastructure or the social needs of the people.

The Communist Party builds the factories, selects the people to work in them, and for how long and how much they should be paid. It manipulates its currency to give it a 40 percent discount in addition to all the other subsidies so it can maximize its trading advantage.

To put it in graphic terms, last year the United States had a trade deficit of $162 billion with China; this year it is $210 billion. China is using this money to strengthen its military might with our American dollars.

Remember when they used to say that $1 billion in exports represents 20,000 jobs. Imagine what $210 billion represents in imports in lost jobs. Do the math.

Since 2001, the US has lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs. In August of this year, the US lost 14,000 American manufacturing jobs, and the trend is not likely to stop anytime soon.

The point is that the working middle class, created following W.W.II, has all but disappeared.

Nearly 90 percent of all developing new jobs are "soft jobs" in which workers, whom I call "professionals," never touch the product.

Compare this to "hard jobs" or manufacturing jobs where workers make the products.

Less than ten percent of Americans are in these jobs today, and that number will continue to shrink.

Meanwhile, most new jobs are part of what I call the "homeless army of professionals." I see professionals performing at about forty percent of their capacity, mainly because they have never been recognized as different from workers, and they certainly are not managers.

Professionals are doers dangling in the wind and tied only to their dreams. That is my view.

Now, there seems little chance that we can reverse the "sucking sound" of lost manufacturing jobs, as Ross Perot put it, and bring American society back to 1945 nostalgia and working class prominence.

We are still a hard working society, harder working than anything I saw in Europe in both of my tours, one in the 1960s and the other in the 1980s. We have also become a more cerebral society, a society that works less with its hands and more with its mind. Information controls the world and we hold the keys to it, less we give them away, too.

There is no reason for panic, but every reason to think through our actual situation and negotiate it for the most positive impact on our society, and our relationship to the rest of the world. We will always have to be diligent, and we must somehow get rid of our hubris and naiveté.

China has 1.5 billion people. We have 300 million. China's present middle class is as large as our whole society.

We operate as a capitalistic system based on democratic principles. China operates as a mercantile system based on communistic principles. These are worlds apart, and I think Congress could remind China of the fact by imposing 40 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports. Perhaps that might get China's attention.

It is not the first time that we have created our enemy by financing it into good health. Before, as I say in my essay, there were no weapons that could reach across thousands of miles of ocean, but now such weapons exist. So, it is not paranoia, but vigilance that is required with a modicum of sense.

Regarding my method of relaxation, I do relax, actually, a surprisingly amount of time. I find my Beautiful Betty the most relaxing company just being with her. I also spend time with my grandchildren, and of course read, listen to music, watch television, and play tennis with "Tony," the mechanical ball machine, as well as play basketball, and walk. I've never enjoyed being around a lot of people, and now I can afford not to endure that necessity.