Optimal Friction™

Taking on Superpowers is the subject of the next talk featuring two past POPTech heavyweights, Juan Enriquez and Thomas Barnett.

Enriquez begins and we immediately delve into a remarkable presentation about nationalism, patriotism, and identity. He challenges us to consider the question of who we are as a nation. One question posed is – “How many stars will there be on the US flag 50 years from now?” 55? 65? Or fewer? We started with 13. Interesting note: No US president ever died with the same number of stars on the flag as on the day that he was born.

Will there be no border between US and Canada in 50 years? People assume continuity with regard to nations, when there is not and never really has been. He showed is a dynamic map illustrating the changing empires in Europe and the Middle East to illustrate the point. It was remarkable.

As an example, he discussed the British empire contraction from 1905 to 1955 by a factor of about 15. Over the span of those 50 years, they never dreamed of the contraction that unfolded. He says that the real danger to the United States is not “from the outside,” but that the real “danger” in the USA is from what happens on the inside.

No one is really talking to each other from each side of the left/right political camps in any serious form of collaboration. He says to remember that flags and countries can disappear just like companies. He says there is an enormous amount of churn in our institutions and that our national divisions can tear apart this country.

Message: Don’t take your country for granted. It is not guaranteed that it will stay. There are fundamental divisions and polarizations occurring with both sides becoming increasingly polarized and isolated. This has to stop – and to do so we have to start a serious conversation. One thing he closes with are trend graphs technology exports showing how we are now contracting, with countries like China expanding. We have a collapsing population of science and engineering graduates and long term, this will render us less relevant. He believes that we must fix our education system or there will not be 50 stars in the flag.

Later on he makes note that in the course of US history, New England states pressed the idea of seceding – 4 times. (Quebec isn’t the only province/state to want to leave.)

Now Tom Barnett takes the stage.

He starts be addressing the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After ideology, what do we fight over? We now experience wars of the spirit, and wars of identity. Globalization as an irresistible and never ending progression will change the face of the globe whether we want it to or not.

One consequence: there are 3 billion new capitalists and consumers worldwide.

(I recall Lester Brown saying yesterday that China already consumes more basic resources than the US, like cement, steel, and building products. What happens if China catches up with USA per-capita consumption? If they spend their money the way that the US does (and we are selling them on this way of life), at 1.5B people, they will consume twice as much paper as everyone else and there go the forests. If they have the same number of cars per capita, they alone would need 99M barrels of oil/day (84M of oil per day is our present worldwide availability. Answer: It’s not possible for China to consume per capita as US. We will have to change or things will unravel. Claims on the Earth’s resources are unsustainable.)

Barnett’s talk is rapid-fire and intense from this point on about winning the war with failed nation states and the incredible underestimation about the time and resources needed to winning the peace in the aftermath of our Leviathan military being able to project force. This is a major aspect of his books that is far too complex to address here.

However, he closes with a compelling discourse about how critical the “other superpower” – China, will be in the future of the geopolitical landscape. They will be critical in every part of the world, including with regard to North Korea.

In short, there will have to be a powerful collaboration between the US and China for world stabilization.

In the follow up Q&A, Enriquez says that our national priorities in the US must shift. One way to effect that shift is to give every parent with a child, a proxy vote for each child, so as to change how we prioritize the future.
Barnett talks about the collaboration between the “New BRIT” of the future - Brazil Russia India and China. They are the new “core” for securing the peace in post-war failed states.