Wag the island

War with China? Who the heck wants to even think about such a thing? I’d rather think happy thoughts about Paris Hilton and five dollar bottles of champagne…but the fact of the matter is that Uncle Sam and China are going to inevitably compete for dominance of the Pacific, and little ol’ Saipan is going to feel the heat.

And things are, indeed, warming up. The U.S. Navy is reportedly sending 12—yes, 12—aircraft carriers to waters in the Chinese vicinity for a naval exercise. They’re exercising more than ships; they’re exercising a reminder to China that Uncle Sam’s naval might is unmatched on the globe. And as much as I exercise my feeble memory, I can’t recall the Navy ever (in my lifetime, at least) sending that many aircraft carriers to sea on an exercise.

Meanwhile…back at the ranch, as they say…the Commonwealth continues to strive to obtain approved destination status from the Chinese government. Thus far, no success, as reported in the Tribune earlier this week.

In the near term, hopefully the tensions will blow over and Saipan can capitalize on the excellent potential for Chinese tourism.

But in the long term, this isn’t going to be the first time we see strains and trouble. In fact, if (if) China continues to grow economically, and if (and this is a big “if”) it can build enough military muscle to do justice to its economic potential, a U.S. war with China is far more likely than a war with the USSR ever was. Only a bone-headed blunder would have seen Uncle Sam and Ivan the Commie slug it out. Ivan was never a commercial or economic rival. He was just a big, hard-drinking brute menacing the world’s happy hour. But China is something else entirely. And the Chinese are something different entirely.

If you bother to poke your nose into any top American university, you’ll come away with one conclusion: The future belongs to Asia. They’ve claimed the intellectual high ground. They are becoming engineers and chemists while my brethren are becoming sociologists and self-esteem experts…bubble gum for the mind is easy to chew, but there isn’t much of a global market for it.

Oh, those markets. As regards the Chinese specifically, anyone with any knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region knows that the Chinese are gifted and hard working entrepreneurs. They typically comprise the backbone of the business class just about anywhere you look: the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the CNMI, and probably a lot of places that I have yet to visit.

Back to the martial side of the equation, China continues to rattle its saber over Taiwan, which is a favorite topic for international news stores. Pity that most reporters and desk-bound pundits can’t see beyond their noses when looking at Taiwan, as bigger, more profound, things are happening on the Sino-U.S. stage.

In fact, I recently caught wind of one pundit discussing nuclear war with China in the same terms we used to talk of it with the USSR. Tactical nuclear skirmishes…strategic exchanges of ICBMs…acceptable megadeaths…I’ve heard it all before, studied it all before, and here it is again. It’s not going to be a factor this year or next year, but, after that, who knows?

Geopolitics is the dog, and the CNMI is the tail on this count. As promising as the specter of Chinese tourism is, the Commonwealth has already learned the hard way that the world is full of unhappy surprises. It’s a bummer to be dependent on events that you can’t influence…that kind of stuff drives me crazy. So pass the Rolaids. And the five-dollar champagne. And tell Miss Hilton to return my phone calls; the world is an uncertain place, so let’s live for the moment, baby.

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)