Obama's New Map of the World  

Tom Barnett has a look at the geopolitical challenges facing Obama (although he ignores the energy aspect almost entirely) and notes the days of America going it alone are gone - Obama's New Map of the World.

For roughly the past quarter century, America has run the world using the following two levers: its massive consumption rate and its willingness to deploy military forces around the planet. Together these two drivers facilitated the rise of many new great powers by enabling their export-fueled growth and obviating any need for them to engage in distracting military buildups or overseas interventions.

That U. S. grand strategy has essentially run its course, having proven both amazingly successful (the death of great-power war in East Asia) and extremely exhausting (our crippling debt overhang). ...

First, and most obviously, is the second global economic summit in April to deal with the world's ongoing financial crisis. With the EU and Japan accompanying us into recession and our economy unlikely to turn any corner until early 2010, China's Keynesian role as globalization's "spend to save" stimulant is of critical importance, meaning that China today plays the same role vis-à-vis America that we played to imperial Great Britain at the end of World War II: The imperial power needs a bailout, and the rising power has the cash. As a rule, the price for such cooperation is steep — to wit, America got to call most of the shots in the resulting Bretton Woods financial order.

So what does China want? It wants to graduate from the kiddie table that is the expanded G20 crew of emerging economies and gain a seat at the more exclusive G8, where actual heads of state meet. If Obama is serious about his "team of rivals" philosophy, he'd do well to acquiesce, even to the point of permanently expanding the G8 to include the adjunct dozen.

But here's the tough compromise that may hold up this much-needed expansion: The EU seems determined to get some sort of global securities-and-exchange commission to regulate intermarket financial flows in the future — in effect, viewing the current global crash as Washington once did Wall Street's 1929 collapse. As far as emerging markets are concerned, that's going to feel suspiciously constraining; having just achieved some wealth, the rising East and South now face the West's desire to regulate crucial investment flows so as to smooth out an inevitable global business cycle. Which is like wanting to go all the way on the first date — that trust simply does not yet exist in the system.

Obama's balancing act here is difficult. No one wants to derail the emergence of a global middle class, the bulk of which will be found overwhelmingly in emerging markets in coming years, but globalization's periodic panics have clearly grown more frequent and more volatile. Obama must ask China to grow up very fast and assume a lot more leadership (read: exposure to monetary risk), meaning his "fair trade" agenda must inevitably yield to Beijing's definition — and, by extension, New Delhi's and Brasília's — of a fair deal for its still-impoverished masses. ...

Flash point No. 2 will be the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, which took on more urgency after Pakistani militants tried to trigger a diversionary war with India by launching the frighteningly effective mini-invasion of downtown Mumbai.

Washington's national-security community is wrapping up a comprehensive strategy review, much like it did on Iraq a couple of years ago, and this time the logic of regionalizing the solution damn well better prevail. If the Obama administration displays an inkling of Bush-Cheney's Great Gamesmanship, then say goodbye to the "good war," because the Hindu Kush is where bankrupt empires go for slaughter.

If Obama is smart enough to socialize the problem beyond NATO (because it's truly beyond NATO in every sense of the word), then we're into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's roster of member states and observers. ...

The next two potential flash points are equally intertwined: No. 3, the presidential election in Iran, and No. 4, the question of Obama's follow-through on Bush's August deal to deploy missile-defense facilities in Eastern Europe — ostensibly to protect NATO from Iranian missiles. (Feeling out of the loop on ancient Polish-Persian hatred? You're not alone.) ...

And in the end, everything depends on how many new frenemies Obama is willing to add to his great-power Facebook. If our new president decides that America is still stuck with the same old friends we've always had, then he will quickly find himself as boxed in as George W. Bush was at the end of his second term and as impotent as Jimmy Carter was at the end of his only term.

The worst thing Obama can do coming out of the gate is attempt to demonize any of these rising powers with doofus labels (e.g., axis of evil/diesel, league of autocracies) or to simultaneously "contain" all their regional ambitions. Trust me, if they're not a significant part of the solution, they'll invariably constitute the insoluble heart of the problem.