Great summarizing FT article on "global food security" risk

Notice the equatorially-centric band? Remind you of another map?

Starts by calling farmers "the canaries in the mine when it comes to climate change."  Brilliant.

What affects farmers affects the global food supply and causes the price rises that hit middle class wallets and increases the risk of hunger for the world's poor.

CC isn't the "only culprit" when it comes to good security.

The primary drivers, the article notes, are population growth and the stunning growth of the global middle class, which, as we know, likes to eat and eat well.

Next is the loss of land to food crops due to urbanization and the diversion of crops to fuels (dumbest idea in human history).

But here's the quote that caught my eye:

If these were the only pressures on the global food supply, feeding the world sustainably could still be achievable, says Jerry Nelson, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).  "If you didn't have climate change, you could tell a story about how it will be challenging and how we need to invest more in productivity, reduce waste and manage international trade," he says.  "But this would be something we could accomplish.

"When you throw climate change into the mix, that makes everything a lot more difficult."

Or better said - with regard to risk - more uncertain.

Great little piece in "FT Special Report: Managing Climate Change."

Brilliant movie-chart on Kiva loans from Core to Gap

HT to Thomas Frazel at Tulane.

I wrote about Kiva in Great Powers, naturally, because there my focus was on subnational and transnational actors (the trilogy, in Waltzian terms, went PNM = system, BFA = states, and GP = trans/subnational & individuals).

No surprise on the flows here: it's virtually all Core to Gap (wait for the "actor" credits at the end).

What I saw were four big flows:

1) US to Africa

2) US to Greater Middle East

3) US to Asia

4)Europe to Asia.

Fascinating stuff.

Meanwhile, I'm on the road giving a speech to a financial conference in Atlanta.

Time's Battleland: NATIONAL SECURITY Death to “Resource Wars”!

Nice Washington Post piece on Saturday about how the “center of gravity” in global oil exploration and production is shifting to the Western hemisphere.  No, the bulk of global conventional oil reserves still sits in the Persian Gulf, but the larger point is worth exploring: we no longer project global futures where East and West logically fight over Middle East energy reserves.  Those expected long-term dynamics are collapsing right now before our eyes.

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Canada looks east, as US market complications pile up

Per the recent Wikistrat simulation (North America's Export Energy Boom), Canada grows weary of the complications of exporting energy to the US market (see Keystone XL) and starts to spot easier venues going West to Asia:

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP KMP +0.40% said Thursday it will begin a $5 billion expansion of its Trans Mountain pipeline, nearly tripling the capacity of crude oil it can ship to Canada's west coast—the latest project aimed at moving the country's rising oil production to markets outside the U.S.

Currently, almost all Canadian crude exports travel to the U.S. While Canadian oil output has been climbing fast, pipeline capacity to move it from the country's biggest oil patch in landlocked Alberta to U.S. refining markets is stretched. 

The resulting glut, and rising oil production in the U.S. itself, has depressed prices for Canadian crude.

Our dysfunctional politics not only scares off the Canadians, it creates the same weird glut dynamic amidst our fabulous boom in natural gas production.  While Asian markets scream for LNG and can't get nearly enough, we refuse to export. An objective look at that would suggest some dumbass mercantilist logic having gripped some immature rising economy, but - of course - those who seek to deny LNG exports have all sorts of economic illogic at their disposal.

Meanwhile, we demonize China over similar bouts of stupidity, but at least there you can spot some legitimate developmental logic (all those rural interior poor still to be delivered).

We are living through some very bad political leadership and have for years now. I think history will judge the Boomer generation as among the worst political leadership cohorts ever suffered by America.

The future of American agriculture has arrived

Been briefing and writing about this one going back to about . . . I wanna say 2006.  I remember the slide I had my old slidemaster Bradd Hayes generate for what was still the Blueprint for Action brief.

Here is the reality as captured in the piece: US demand flattening, China's skyrocketing - especially for dairy (it's a growing middle class, mind you).

The head of California Dairies: "We're in an evolution. No question."

Markets "once treated as an afterthought" are now "reshaping the relationship between rural America and the rest of the world."

What are you really exporting when you export milk - even milk powder?  Water.  Whether or not you take it out for packanging, a whole lot of water goes into milk - directly and indirectly.

That's why the Kiwis have been in the lead.

It wasn't just the geographic proximity but the excess of water on a per capita basis (New Zealand has about 5 times the water it needs).

California ag exports to China and HK are up 85% since 2008: "All of a sudden, milk powder has become this valuable commodity." The sent this year's Miss California to China to hawk pistachios.

Amber waves of grain, my friends, in a back-to-the-future development that marks the resurgence of the economy - with ag and energy in the lead.

And yeah, both are plenty high-tech.

WPR's The New Rules: Extended Life Expectancy Globalization's Next Political Battleground

Human life expectancy at birth, which remained stunningly fixed for thousands of years before suddenly doubling over the course of the 20th century, now seems destined to experience a similarly bold leap across the 21st century. When it does, it will shift human thinking about population control from its present focus on the outset of life to the increasingly delayed final curtain. The problem is that the technological advances that will make extending life expectancy possible are likely to come far faster than our political systems -- including the democracies -- can handle. 

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Chart of the day: More likely to be India's century than China's?

A compelling analysis from The Economist on how India's freer style of doing business, when combined with a huge and still unfolding demographic divided, could well trump China's current star turn in the global economy.

As I have noted for a while, China's demographic "golden hour" ends right now, as from here on out they add old people to their non-working-age population--despite the continued cut-off pressure applied through the single-child policy (Deng's gift to the world, for which we must be eternally grateful).  

Point being:  China's labor gets more expensive from here on out, but the good news should be, that means China's domestic consumption (higher wages) should become a huge driver in globalization.  It's just that China will no longer have a no-brainer--pun intended--advantage.  From here on out, the extensive growth must yield to intensive growth--as in, brain-fed.  For somebody who believe his work has a lot to do with capacity-building (i.e., raising a generation of strategic thinkers), China looks like a huge market to me already:  they're having outsized impact throughout the world but aren't assuming commensurate responsibility, which I believe the Chinese shudder from out of fear that it'll be draining (yes) and complex (yes) and demand all manner of innovative thought on their part (absolutely).  But the Chinese have no choice; the world simply will demand it all from them.  So developing China's human capacity is magnificently important for the future of the world--as in, we depend on it.  So whenever I hear about China cranking all manner of this or that skill set, I say, bring it on, and--by doing so--elevate your game and ours. Our education is stuck in industrial era mode and must be radically reformed, but we won't do it without the push of serious competition.  

Conversely, China's own internal reforms, I believe, will be increasingly driven by a sense of India coming up on its heels--all good stuff with all the same attendant dangers.  The question always to be asked when great powers compete intensely on the economic landscape is, "What is the state of the military-to-military relationship?"

When I look at China-US, I spot a moribund relationship.  When I spot India-US, it looks promising but still too embryonic.  And when I spot India-China, I spot another extremely weak bond.  

These are the three dominant economies that will have both the will and wallet, over the long haul, to shape the global security landscape.  Europe is taking a pass, primarily for demographic reasons.  Russia is similarly cursed.  China has a solid window, with India's even bigger.  America, a demographic freak of nature, retains it own.

So, from a security standpoint, the most important hearts-and-minds to win are all found within that trio of powers.  Keep the relations open and cooperative, and the economic competition will never spill over into anything truly bad, but keep them weak, and all sorts of bad choices linger out there.

I stick with my tighter logic that says:  go for China and you get India in the bargain, while going for India as a China hedge, if done too vigorously, gets you neither, for China will withdraw from the logic of security cooperation and India, as we all know, hates being played as pawn more than anything.

So the goal must be:  do whatever it takes to work the security cooperation with China, encouraging India to join at every possible junction.  The tiny bit of naval cooperation on Somali pirates is a start, but so much more can be done.  In a world of frontier integration, America needs two friends with million-man armies (with Turkey the next logical spoke in that wheel).  No one but America will retain the warfighting power-projection capacity, but it's clear there are strong limits to what we can do with that and that alone.  My concept of the SysAdmin was always about reorienting our major alliance relationships, and demographics was always the underlying driver.  Why?  The rise of the middle class triggers the resource relationships, and those relationships must be protected.  Same thing that happened with the US in the late 1800s; same thing happening with China, India, Turkey, Brazil, etc. now.  We are in the midst of a huge swapping out of allies, from North/West to East/South, and America is the connection that binds the two eras, because America's system of states-uniting, economies-integrating, networks-expanding, collective security and so on is the underlying template of this era's hugely successful globalization.

On food, Asia can't keep pace with rising middle class demand

WSJ story on how Asia's food demand continues to rise while the amount of land devoted to food production is pretty much capped this decade due to urbanization and planned investments just aren't happening as envisioned (so yield per acre not rising enough to cover the delta in demand).

The plan was to dramatically boost farm investment in Asia's developing countries after the scary price spikes in 2007-08, which may be remembered in the same way as the original OPEC price spikes of the early and late 1970s--a harbinger of a permanently tight market where any de-synching of demand and supply leads to real and perceived crises of the highest order (as in, governments fear for their regime stability).  

Examples of the investment:  opening up land previously considered marginal and improving farm-to-processor infrastructure (mostly roads and storage facilities).  The big hold-up, unsurprisingly, is the financial crisis.  Then there's the usual uncertainty on land ownership and fears of environmental ruin.  

Why things won't get so bad globally this time around:  grain stores are up and the economy is weaker, but these are temporary conditions that do not obviate the strong underlying trends.  As one researcher on rice puts it in the piece, "2008 was not just a blip, this is the way things will be, with repeated shocks."

The financial crisis, in my mind, caught Asia about a decade too early--not enough rules and not enough positive evolution on politics (especially the talent level of leadership) and not enough development of financial markets (in terms of being more fluid and responsive).  Asia in general is still burdened by rules and leadership and mindsets better attuned to extensive growth (throw in more stuff!) and the ag scene calls for intensive-growth answers (much higher yields on same amount of land).  The Philippines, as the piece notes, produced 92% of its rice in 2000, but is already down below 80% today.  That gap will only grow, because most dreams of getting access to unused land won't come true (the urbanization going on is likewise intense) and even if access is had, yields won't be so high without serious investment.

In the end, all the brave talk about food self-sufficiency in Asia is just nonsense; ain't never gonna happen. But Asia certainly could do better, so that the demand doesn't outstrip local supply too intensely too fast.  We've seen more than a few Asian states move into that outsourcing trend of renting or buying up nice farmland overseas (in Africa, for example), but that only buys you a whole new load of responsibilities that I think a lot of these countries--especially China--are ill-prepared to follow through on.

I remember driving from Addis Ababa down to Awassa in southern Ethiopia and seeing huge chunks of the best farmland sort of tarp'd off--as in, covered on all sides and seemingly roofed with simple metal skeletons wrapped in this thin but opaque poly skin (I assumed the topsides where clear enough to let in the bulk of the sunlight).    It was a stunning sight to behold:  all this open, rich farmland still operated in very early 20th century terms and then these huge, fenced off and covered up tracts where--apparently--a whole new level of effort was being made.  Unsurprisingly, I saw labor barracks nearby with a Chinese flag flying out front.

Now, you can say, this all works so long as the local government makes it work, but if a food crisis really comes along and the local population is suffering in a way that's undeniable in terms of global news coverage, then that thin poly cover-up won't be enough to keep that food production secret and safe.  And China will find itself unusually responsible for what comes next in places like Ethiopia.

And that's when the whole "non-interference" things gets revealed as so much empty talk.  There is no way China rises and becomes what it is becoming without have huge interfering effect all over the planet, and people will hold it responsible for all that change--both the good and bad.  

Don't get me wrong:  I think China's impact will be overwhelmingly positive overall, as the sustained demand for resources does plenty to jump start and fuel development in places like Africa in ways that the boom-and-bust cycle previously offered by the West did not.  But with the good will come the bad, and that means China gets dragged into all sorts of uncomfortable dynamics it has previously sought to avoid.  

This is why I argue that serious strategic partnership with the U.S. is hardly just in America's short- and medium-term interest (due to its current straining to meet its global security obligations). Over the long term, it's far more in China's interest. Back in "Blueprint," I said America needed to "lock in China at today's prices," but the obverse is equally true now:  prices will never be lower and China will never find a more pragmatic leader than Obama, because if he loses in 2012, expect the usual "apres moi, le deluge!" reactions to kick in. 

This is another example of why I think the 2010s are a turning-point decade--as in, get it right and globalization's future is secured, but screw it up, and far different global pathways are made possible.  Inside all those dynamics, the US-Chinese relationship is the long pole in the tent:  get it right and nothing can go wrong, but get it wrong and nothing will likely go right. Why?  The rise of the global middle class means there will be so little slack in so many systems, that it'll feel like we're collectively in constant crisis.  This environment yields the "keeping all the balls in the air" mindset currently on display at State with Clinton (who needs to aspire to higher goals than just this).  The same is unfortunately true in Beijing.  All this kicking-the-cans-down-the-road lack-of-ambition serves the world poorly at this moment of great structural change: everybody of note seems to avoid leadership.

But there's no question about China becoming far more of a global leader; it has no choice.  The question is how much of this leadership emerges pro-actively from Beijing, and how much is teeth-pulling from the rest of the world.

China's JFK is yet to emerge, but he was one of the "heroes of the future" I cited at the end of "Blueprint for Action":  the leader who steps up and asks China to think less of what the world owes it (after all those decades of "humiliation" and the long slow climb back up from widespread poverty) and more about what China owes the world.  That moment/leader will be a defining dynamic for the 21st century and how the world evolves.

And food is more likely to drive that process than energy or anything else.

Wal-Mart moves into Africa big time

WSJ and FT pair of stories.  Scanned graphic from latter.

Apparently, Wal-Mart didn't get the "deglobalization" memo.

Wal-Mart bids $4.6B for Massmart Stores chain, a South African company.  The offer, if it goes through, would give Wal-Mart an instant presence of 290 stores in 13 countries.  

The offer is a good one--almost too high for the industry, indicating Wal-Mart's sense of urgency.  As the WSJ piece declares, it's an "aggressive and expensive bid to expand in Africa ahead of its international competitors."

Unlike in booming Brazil, where Wal-Mart has spent plenty and still trails Carrefour in sales share, the company is looking to springboard ahead in Africa.  Carrefour also holds the top international retail spot in China.  Clearly, Africa is a riskier bet/environment than either of those too, but with consumer spending in the trillion dollar range (aggregate), the continent is hard to ignore.  

Emerging/overseas markets now make up one quarter of Wal-Mart's $400B-plus annual revenue, and it is clearly the growth engine in the company.  Wal-Mart is said to be examining Russia and the Middle East as well.  

Places where this strategy of buying a local chain have failed for Wal-Mart tend to be more established markets--to wit, Germany and South Korea.

But when it comes to sub-Saharan Africa, the clear choice is to buy South African chains.  They draw neighboring states' consumers and typically reach back into those same states with satellite stores.

Wal-Mart is paying 13 times pre-tax earnings, which is a nice price for most industries but particularly good for a retail player in developing markets.

As usual, Wal-Mart's entry is expected to shake up the existing grocery oligopoly.

You want an example of how the Gap gets shrunk?  It doesn't much better than this.

SWFs as a way to protect national resource wealth from the government

Intriguing argument from a CSM op-ed:  African nations taking cue from Arab sovereign wealth funds. Argument: better to secretively stash the cash in a SWF that is kept distant from the bureaucrats' and politicians' corrupt hands.

The key logic:

The continent’s top oil exporters, and even some of its newcomers like Ghana, are taking advice from similarly resource-endowed countries that run state revenues through SWFs, many of them in the Middle East and Asia.

Some of Africa’s oil exporters, like Nigeria, have wrestled for decades on how to safeguard resource revenue at a distance from venal bureaucrats.

Other, more nascent oil powers, like Ghana, are simply trying to get their system right from the get-go.

Middle Eastern oil giants – whose money managers often tuck away state earnings in safe, if not transparent, investments – may be an example for the continent. "The model works well because they're relatively secretive. You can't say transparency is a golden ticket," Gary Smith, head of central banks, supranational institutions and SWF business at BNP Paribas Investment Partners, recently told Reuters in an analysts of Africa's entry into the SWF market.

A $3 trillion industry

An SWF is essentially a massive, state-held investment fund – something like a 401k for the Nigerian people – that invests in a smorgasbord of assets, whether they be property, currency, sacks of gold, or Goldman Sachs shares.

The one thing they don’t do – and this is where the controversy erupts – is invest that money at home. After all, the Ghanaian cedi, the Ghanaian interest rate, the competitiveness of Ghanaian exports, and the average price of a Ghanaian home, are all wed in sickness and health to the Ghanaian economy. Piping some of that oil money toward a far-off market is a way for the country to protect its revenue far from the vagaries of its national economy.

On one hand, a sad admission of a sad state of government affairs.  On the other, whatever gets the development train moving is a good thing.

For now, judgment withheld.  Africa doesn't have a good history of secretive money stashes overseas.

Ag "wars"! (fought with money and lawyers--damn it all!)

Target acquired!

FT full-page analysis on how economic (more calories) and demographic (more mouths) pressure on ag production is leading to an M&A fight over PotashCorp--the fertilizer giant.  The UN now predicts a 70% increase in food consumption by 2050.  

Mining giant BHP Billiton is making a hostile bid for the Canadian firm, prompting talk of a counterbid by a Chinese national company, presumably because China fears a loss of access down the road.  The fertilzer industry in general is experiencing heightened mergers and acquisitions deals (like the expected merger of two giant Russian fertilizer firms).  Potash, a key fertilizer component, has seen its per ton price rise from $150 to $1,100 over the past half-decade, leading more nations to view the drab component as being on par with oil--a as in, a strategic asset.

Another example of how China's appetites and resulting connectivity are racing ahead of its political-military ability to defend them.  Some look at that and see the rise of Chinese military power as the solution, but as I've explained many times, I don't think the Chinese political system could withstand an aggressive era of overseas wars--even to protect "vital interests." That vision just doesn't jibe with a nation of only-child "little emperors."

Alternative?  China better have a lot of military allies around the world to help it deal with the fact that it's becoming the more resource-dependent--and thus vulnerable--economy in the world.

Chart of the day: China as the world's biggest navy

Economist story on defense spending in a time of austerity. 

Unsurprisingly, the focus is on how the West keeps reducing its platform numbers because of its addiction to speed, stealth and other forms of high technology (i.e., every platform costs so much more to build over time, that we can afford far fewer of them).  Poster child right now is the F-22, whose production runs for the US ends at 187 units instead of the originally planned 750.

But what do commanders in the field want?  Helicopters and drones--not F-22s.  So why worry about the numbers?

Well, on the naval side, we can now say that China's Peoples Liberation Army Navy is the world's biggest fleet of major combatants, even though nobody would seriously suggest that the PLAN comes anywhere near our overall naval combat capability nor global reach.

So how impressed should we be?

The only question that matters, in my mind, is whether or not China is building a force that counters our capacity to shape the global security environment.  That's not simply a numbers game, but a willingness-to-use mindset, which I don't see China possessing now, or in the future so long as the Party rules. Why? If you use forces, you will lose forces, and China's single-party state can't afford such losses of face.

If you think major naval battles are in the offing, then you're spooked by China's PLAN build-out, but I myself don't see the larger nuclear correlation of forces impacted by this whatsoever, so China's numerical superiority impresses no more than the old Sov version did.  We dare not go to the mattresses over anything important because we know how that will end.  China may still dream of Taiwan in these terms, but America does not.

Hence, the only military developments that impress me are those that involve bolstering China's ability to do counterinsurgency and nation-building, and I see none in the offing or on the horizon.  Instead, China mindlessly apes America's past in its military build-up, as though it's more interested in appearances than global capabilities, and more interested in narrow sea denial than expansive sea control.

I'd be more impressed with a PLAN that eschewed classic major combatants and went in for vast fleets of unmanned vehicles, because I don't see countering traditional naval capabilities to be all that hard--or all that expensive.

What the system really needs right now is more Somali-like pirates the world over to encourage more navy-to-navy collaboration like the Somali version has.

In the end, it's not a matter of who has more ships, but whose ships are most welcomed around the world.

Chart of the day: Worst traffic woes found mostly in New Core economies

Bloomberg Businessweek blurb on global traffic (image blow-up below).

The numbers suggest a profound shifting of woes from Old Core to New.

The US adds 2% more cars from 2003 to 2007, while China adds 113%, for example, so the traffic-suffering indices presented here show America's worst case, NYC, coming nowhere near the complaint level of your average New Core capital, whose woes are only going to get dramatically worse in coming years.

Indonesia leads the way--down the runway

Just another pleasant story (FT) on how Indonesia, much like Turkey, provides a hugely positive example for the rest of the Islamic world.  Here the story is on Jakarta's ambition to make itself the fashion capital of Islam.

As the director of Indonesia's Islamic Fashion Consortium puts it:

Our main strength is that we are an Islamic country.  We are immediately outstanding.  Who can compete with us on in that?

Certainly not crabby old Iran or stick-in-the-mud Saudi Arabia.

Diversity reigns:

"Every single island, every single community has its own type of Islamic dress.  There is no one who says: 'No!  You have to do it like this'," Ms Hadi [editor-in-chief of Noor, the country's leading Islamic lifestyle magazine] said.

Ooh!  You just know how much Osama loves to hear that argument.

Chart of the day: Who adds labor and who doesn't

From WSJ column by David Wessel--always good.

This is the most interesting demo slide I've seen in a long while. Already put it into the brief.

What I note:

1. the decline of Europe and Japan (almost off the chart--pun intended)
2. how closely China's trajectory mirrors Old Core Europe
3. America as Old Core outlier without peer
4. India's fantastically long "golden hour" of declining ratio of dependents to workers--much longer than China's was.

But it's the numbers that jump out at you. Between now and 2050 we add 35m workers, China loses 100m and India gains 300m.

WPR's The New Rules: The Changing Food Security Equation

While the world doesn't yet face a food crisis on par with the summer of 2008, it's clear that the drought currently affecting the Black Sea trio of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan -- all big-time global exporters of wheat and barley -- has suddenly made food inflation a primary threat to the somewhat fragile and decidedly uneven global economic recovery. At the very least, it reminds us just how tight global food markets are, due to the contradictory combination of rising middle-class demand and the enduring commitment by brittle governments around the world to keep prices low -- at whatever the cost.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Wikileaks: the transparency standard we inevitably face in the Long War

NYT story on Wikileaks' motives in publishing what the Times is calling "the war logs," which they and several other big mainstream media players were given access to a while back by the organization, leading to the flood of analyzing stories we shall now encounter.

In "Great Powers," I praised Wikileaks for serving as a "wormhole between the two communities--the secret and the unclassified," describing it as "the Radio Free Europe of the surveillance age."  To me, the organization characterizes an emerging standard of transparency in what many call the "long war," and what I refer to as the integration of frontiers as part of globalization's continuing expansion.  It's this emerging transparency standard, sometimes generated by well-meaning friends, other times by insurgents simply looking to brag or recruit others by displaying their deeds, that pushed me to argue, as one of my "grand compromises" between America and the world, that we will eventually pursue an openness WRT to our security efforts around the planet that will mimic what Americans expect from their own police departments--as in, every round accounted for, like the NYPD has done for the last couple of decades.

Why reach for such an amazingly high standard?  Because the ballooning transparency of this networked world will simply demand it--from the bottom up.  Wikileaks is part of that bottom-up demand, and no matter what you think of its motivations, its impact will be viral--and lasting.

This is the inevitable--and painful--evolution we face: the Leviathan can stay in the secret shadows, but the SysAdmin is held to a supremely more difficult standard--behavior so clean that it can assuage shareholders' values, because if it can't, there's no hope of connecting investments by multinational corporations--aka job creation, and jobs are the only exit strategy.

As usual, such arguments are considered by some in the warrior class as complete nonsense--the fantastic attempt to civilize that which is inherently uncivil.  But stepping back from the challenge is simply to admit that we cannot play in this arena, which in my estimation is damn near the whole enchilada going forward. Yes, we can pull back, stock up on our preferred platforms, and dream of getting it on with China over some distant lithium mine.  But that would be holding on to the past instead of moving toward the future.  China will simply disappoint.

So the US military either moves to that impossible standard over time, or it will forced out of the global policing business, only to see all manner of other entities fill that space sub-optimally.  We can either lead or follow.

Because if done well, displaying sufficient progress over time, we will set a profound example that will revolutionize global security. 

The East has fewer qualms about messing with nature

WAPO story on how loose and fast--by our standards--China explores the world of biotechnology.

Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess -- think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word -- China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China's scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research.

Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the limits of ethics and principle as they create a new -- and to many, worrisome -- Wild West in the Far East.

I can't remember if it was captured in PNM or "Blueprint," but I explored this theme years ago in the brief when I'd tell the story of how a genetic therapy for cancer was invented in the U.S. but couldn't get tested for legal reasons. It was thereupon pursued in China, with its looser rule set on such things, and once it was proven out, the Chinese company came to the US to get a patent. That was an eye-opener for me.

Part of it is the difference in philosophy and religion: we have this one-life view of reality but the East is a lot fuzzier on that concept (Buddhism), so it's naturally more relaxed on the subject.

Another reality:  when you're on your way up, you have little regard for the environmental consequences.  In that sense, I've always delighted in Futurama's character of Leo Wong, whose attitude toward the environment is emblematic of a lot of Chinese industrialists right now.  Another good reference:  Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Daniel Plainview in "There will be blood."  Talk about a plain view!

China, with its hundreds of impoverished rural folk, will remain in this "conquering nature at all costs" mindset for a while--or until it gets too expensive. Yes, we'll hear about and see all sorts of efforts to go "green," but even there, you will see corner-cutting bravado that will frighten to no end. 

Chart of the day: dropping defense budges in Europe

Apologize for grubbiness of scan.  WSJ online version didn't include the charts, and all I had was my marked up version.

Point is simple enough:  none of our traditional allies feature anything but seriously declining defense budgets, and with our own budget coming up huge strains, it's clear we need new friends if we're going to continue playing the role of military superpower.  Indispensable?  Yes.  Sufficient?  No.

Professionalizing the Indian political scene?

 WAPO story on parliamentary bill in India to raise salaries of members, a contentious subject anywhere in the world but more so in India, due to the Gandhi ideal.

Politicians have an image problem in the world's largest democracy. They are blamed for everything -- airline crashes, poverty, terrorism, hunger, cricket scandals. They are lampooned in movies, stand-up comic routines and street plays. In opinion polls, they often rank lowest as youth icons and highest as those viewed most corrupt.

Many Indians cling to the image of a frugal and bare-chested Mahatma Gandhi as the epitome of a politician, even as the burgeoning middle class experiences new wealth and conspicuous consumption.

So when a committee of federal lawmakers submitted a proposal last month seeking a fivefold pay increase, people were shocked. They bashed the idea in tweets, around the dinner table and on TV. Some even praised the British, whose members of Parliament recently decided to trim their salaries in these uncertain economic times.

Indian lawmakers currently take home about $372 a month, an amount most say is embarrassingly low. If the raise goes through, they would make about $1,860 a month -- a little less than the average IT graduate makes fresh out of college in the big city.

"We cannot forever be stuck in Gandhi's image from the freedom movement. In comparison, people think we are all corrupt crooks looting the nation," said Sanjay Nirupam, a Congress Party lawmaker from Mumbai, who wrote a recent op-ed in the Indian Express newspaper arguing for a raise.

Nirupam calls himself a "professional politician," a near-blasphemous term in India.

"My expenses are enormous. About 200 people come to see me every day. I have to offer them all at least a cup of tea, or they will abuse me and call me a miserly politician," Nirupam said. "Most of Mumbai's politicians own beer bars to supplement their incomes."

But in a country where about 300 million people earn less than $1 a day, the thought of a politician enjoying a meal in a five-star hotel or traveling in luxury cars still rankles the masses.

Independent studies show that parliamentary members tend to see their incomes rise substantially once in office, but it ain't because of their salaries, so one side of the argument says you need to pay them better to make them less dependent on lobbyists, etc.

"There is a lot of hypocrisy among Indians. They want young professionals to enter politics, but do not want them to be paid well," said M.R. Madhavan, head of research at the PRS Legislative Research, a group that tracks parliamentary practices.

But not all members of Parliament want more money.

Lawmakers from Communist parties, many of whom live in modest apartments and often carpool to work, told the prime minister that they do not want a big raise.

"The idea of leaders giving themselves a raise is inappropriate. There should be an independent body to decide this," said D. Raja, a lawmaker from the Communist Party of India. "The raise should not appear to be exorbitant in the present economic conditions. Only then people will understand."

Sounds like reasonable advice.

Every country on the rise faces this moment:  when you need to make politics a more honorable and worthy profession.  When Teddy Roosevelt told his rich family that he planned to go into politics, they were aghast at the potential family shame. Politics was then considered such a low and corrupt business, a situation that resurfaced with the Boomer era.  

Why?  Just like back in the late 19th century, this is an era of expanding business empires and rapid frontier integration--just on a global scale this time. So the most "worthy" career tracks are to be found in those realms, not politics. 

But as we enter into a period of great consolidation, when all that natural populist anger must be channeled into useful political progressivism, that's got to change.  And it's got to change especially in rising pillars like India.

All this expansion of globalization means we head into an era of many new rules, and making those rules happen has to be considered an honorable profession.