IMAGINE a small indigenous farming town. The villagers of this town use a series of communal rice fields to grow their crops. For generations, these fields were protected by a specific family who, having the only guns and educated persons in the village, were the only ones who had the will and the capability protect the communal rice fields.
However, one day, this family decides to move to the city, leaving behind a power vacuum that none of the other villagers could actually fill. Soon, people began talking about ‘owning’ the communal rice fields or even selling them to outside groups.
It seems that no one wants to ‘enforce’ the village commons, and the few who do, lack the means to do so. Soon, land disputes erupt as the villagers began fighting over who owns what, and a little while later, stories of stabbings and nighttime battles begin to circulate in the village. To keep the peace, the communal rice fields were eventually partitioned and sold off, thus ending generations of communal farming; and all because no one wanted to protect the commons.
Now, take this story and apply it to the global commons (i.e. global trade routes, international waters and global air space). Without these commons, life as we know it, will radically change for the worse. Trade and travel will slow down, and we will go back to an era where everyone had to protect their real estate from their neighbors.
Since the end of the Second World War, America has protected the global commons with air and naval power. The Soviet Union also did its share (back when it still existed, of course) but their reach was limited compared to the US. In short, it was the US that kept the global commons intact for two to three generation.
This is why the US military budget is so large in comparison to the rest of the world. If your country’s military is in charge of propping up the global commons then you will need a larger budget. It’s also the reason why American foreign policy is often so dysfunctional: The US was originally set up to be a non-interventionist republic but it was forced to function like an empire in global affairs soon after the Second World War.
Now, the US is abandoning the global commons, and some analysts believe that this disengagement will continue. Without US military guarantees, the global commons will start to collapse, as countries start to impose their claims on all the new real estate. We recently saw a preview of this when Japan declined to join a coalition of forces to guard energy supply routes in favor of sending its own military to protect its own Middle East interest.
Expect these phenomenon to continue. We may still see regional commons appear in the future, but the global commons – as we know them – cannot exist without a global hegemon. For the Americans, however, that’s no longer their problem./PN
