Peter Grimes: THE HORSEMEN AND THE KILLING FIELDS #3of3

Inter-Core War

 One last factor left hitherto untouched is the prospect of global war.  
This
topic is sufficiently complex that it has generated a substantial literature
(e.g.--Chase-Dunn and Bornschier, 1998; Goldstein, 1988; Thompson, 1990;  
Modelski
and Thompson, 1988; 1998).  The central question motivating many of these 
works is
whether global war is cyclical and, if so, what are the mechanisms 
governing its
frequency.  The answer adopted by many of these authors is that it is indeed
cyclical, that the governing cycle has a period of between 40-60 years, and 
that
the recurrent issue is the need to update the inter-state hierarchy implicit
within the existing international political structures to reflect the 
economic
changes in that hierarchy experienced since the preceding inter-core 
("world")
war.  Put simply, world wars are the means by which the obsolete global 
political
institutions are smashed and reorganised to make them reflect the new 
economic
power hierarchy.  Should the ordinary war cycle continue, the liklihood for 
the
next war should be greatest around around 2010-20.  If, however, one 
factors in
the current apparent collapse of the states in the periphery; the growth of
inequality in the core leading to worsening ethnic tension and state
de-legitimization as disparities within the core reflect ever-more 
faithfully the
disparities outside of it; and, finally, the uncertainties of harsher 
weather and
rising food prices addressed here; then the resultant threats to "global 
security"
(however defined and by whom) may greatly accelerate the timing of the war 
cycle.
Finally, should such a war break out, it will almost certainly be nuclear 
(if only
in part), in which case every single biospheric problem cited above will be
grossly worsened and the probability of total social collapse far more 
likely.

>>>CONCLUSION<<<


 The title of this essay is a deliberately mixed metaphor.  The "Killing 
Fields"
refers to the genocide perpetrated on the people of Cambodia by the 
administration
of Pol Pot.  The "Horsemen" refer to the legendary four forces of the 
"Apocalypse"
found in the book of Revelations in the Bible: starvation, disease, 
pestilence
(insects), and war.  The former was, in retrospect, an early example of the
genocidal collapse of a peripheral state, the latter a plausible prediction 
about
our collective future based on biospheric and world-system processes.  My 
choice
of this title was to suggest the linkage between the capitalist imperative 
to use
fossil-fuel technology against labor and the destruction of the biosphere; 
how
that ecological destruction will necessarily entrain starvation, disease, 
and war;
and, finally, how the stresses created by this social dissolution will 
enhance the
likelihood of wars of "ethnic cleansing."
 Unchecked global capitalism has put us in a double-bind:  if the supply of 
fossil
fuels were unlimited, global warming would eventually eliminate arable land 
and
cook us to death.  Alternatively, assuming the supply of fossil fuels is 
limited,
their exhaustion will drive up prices for food, housing, and transport to 
levels
beyond the reach of most people, fueling class and ethnic conflict.  Either
scenario is fatal.  But the second is more likely.  Although stocks of 
fossil
fuels unknown today may yet be discovered, the energy required to locate and
retrieve them must eventually grow exponentially.15  This fact will 
inevitably
become manifest as increasing prices for energy.  Obviously alternative 
energy
sources will become more frequent, and perhaps even dominant.  However, 
neither
solar, geothermal, or nuclear energy can be converted into fertilizers,
herbicides, and pesticides.  These attributes are unique to fossil fuels.  
As they
diminish, agricultural yield/acre must fall, and food prices rise 
proportionally.
This is particularly true of the soils in the tropics, which have by now 
become
almost completely dependent on imported chemicals based on fossil fuels
(McMichael, 1996; Colinvaux, 1978).
 When one includes in this picture the probability that robots could 
displace all
but the most highly trained "knowledge workers", the scenario becomes 
bleak:  a
huge mass of malnourished and desperate people struggling to live from a 
shrinking
black market trafficking in illegal goods, packed tightly together in 
dilapidated
ghettos rife with virulent diseases and gang violence, and sporadically 
involved
in ethnic/neighborhood/gang wars.  Even in the absence of another 
inter-core and
nuclear war, the extremely high death rates that would accompany this grim
scenario would, over several generations, reduce the global human 
population back
down to levels supportable by low-energy agriculture--perhaps the 2-3 
billion we
numbered globally before WWII.  Of course nuclear war would itself 
dramatically
reduce population levels as well as infrastructural support.  But even 
today, we
must remember that the destruction of the tropics is creating a mass 
extinction
already worse than that accompanying the loss of the dinosaurs (Wilson, 
1990,
1992).  For example today there remain no more than 3,000 tigers alive on 
the
entire planet (NPR, ATC, 7/09/97).  The numbers of black Rhinoceros are 
similar,
and lions not far behind.  But for every "charismatic" large animal 
endangered,
there are millions of species of smaller insects, plants, and amphibians
disappearing with every acre of deforestation, not just in the tropics, but 
as
well across the countries of the core.  To the extent that these issues 
have been
publicly addressed at all, the problem has been laid at the doorstep of 
population
growth, particularly in the periphery.  But it should by now be clear that 
such a
belief is at best misinformed: both the growth in population and the 
threats to
life on the planet in general are caused by the use of technology solely 
for the
pursuit of capital accumulation on a world scale.
 The human historical record reveals many examples of the rise of societies 
whose
complex organization allowed for the production and distribution of enough 
food
that all could live.  But the same record also shows that every one of these
societies crumbled, often because of resource depletion accompanied by civil
and/or border wars (Tainter, 1988).  The argument that I have presented here
merely shows that we continue to be constrained, as were our ancestors, by 
the
boundaries imposed by the physical laws of energy flow (thermodynamics).  
Unlike
them, we have the intellectual tools to predict and even avoid our fate.  
But
these tools and knowledge are ignored and unheard when they imply social 
changes
that are contrary to the needs of those in power.
 The power for change lies with the general population world-wide.  If they 
remain
uninformed, their spontaneous revolts will simply accelerate the descent 
into
anarchy.  But if properly informed, the popular mobilization required to
reorganize the social order--already implicit within the delegitimation of 
the
current states--can be focused into a coherent global objective.  The 
occurrence
of  several major "natural" disasters may yet be necessary to provide the 
correct
unifying vision.  Tragic as this may be, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson: 
"There is
nothing like a hanging to concentrate the mind."




 ENDNOTES


1  At its most simplistic level, this collision appears to be merely a
re-statement of Malthus:  the human population is growing faster than our 
ability
to increase food yield per acre.  However there is an important 
modification to
this apparent acceptance of Malthus that must also be included.  Malthus 
and his
followers have tended to blame poverty on "over-population", thereby 
shifting the
blame for income inequality away from capitalist accumulation to the 
victims of
that accumulation.  In stark contrast to this temptation to 'blame the 
victim',
the analysis here will demonstrate that the primary culprits of our 
collective
predicament are to be found in the mechanisms that sustain the rich, not in 
those
that perpetuate the poor.


2  The lingering presence of conifers in the smokey mountains of southern 
north
america provides silent testimony to the southern extent of the last 
glaciation.
Once the dominant species, they have eventually been pushed out by the 
warming
driving the glacial retreat, yielding their territory to the better equipped
deciduous.  Those conifers that survived did so by gradually climbing 
higher up
the mountainsides, where they remain today stranded thousands of miles 
south of
their brethren in the arctic.


3 The red soils of the southern United States seem at first an exception to 
this
generalization, because they are fertile when cared for.  However, it may 
be that
the lower incidence of solar energy there as compared to the tropics has 
prevented
the development of a biomass as aggressively efficient in extracting food 
as that
found in the tropics.


4 Exactly consistent with the Darwinian "exclusion" principle explained by 
Bonner
(1988).


5 The two most obvious exceptions are the Mayan and Kmer (Angor Wat)
civilizations, each relatively recent entrees to the historical stage.  
However,
each were located in floodplains, whose local fertility is greatly enhanced 
by the
importation of run-off  from all of the catchment areas upstream.



6  An attribute the ecologist Colinvaux nicely captures by the label of
"niche-shifting" (1979, Chapt. 16).


7  The label "tributary" was originally applied by Amin (1976) to 
characterise the
principal form of surplus accumulation used by the pre-capitalist empires.  
It
refers to the institutional forms that accumulation took: on an individual 
level,
the peasant or slave that worked the land was expected to give up a portion 
of his
crop to the representatives of the state as a "tribute" or tax; while 
surrounding
client or colonial states purchased their continued nominal "independence" 
also by
the payment of "tribute".  On both levels, the revenue of the state was a 
form of
what would now be called a "protection rackett."  For further information 
see
Amin, 1976; or Chase-Dunn and Grimes, 1995.



8  Even though it did greatly catalyze the conversion of large areas of 
land from
traditional uses to sheep production while simultaneously encouraging the
foundation of plantations using slave labor for cash crop production.



9  An  excellent account of the development of these higher incomes in the
colonies of european settlement can be found in Amin (1976).



10 The regimentation of worker movements in commodity assembly based upon 
the
time-motion studies of Frederick Taylor, extensive discussion of which can 
be
found in Braverman (1974).



11 Fossil fuels are solar in origin as well, but insofar as their initial 
solar
"charge" happened during and before the dinosaur eras, our use of them now 
is like
taking money out of a savings account without any restoration.  We are 
living off
of our solar "capital."



12 A longer and more specific list can be found in Commoner, (1971).


13 Dengue fever has already been observed moving north from Central America 
into
Mexico.


14 Ironically counter to this trend, the withdrawal of cold-war patronage 
has
actually facilitated peace agreements and democratization in El Salvaodor 
and
Guatemala, because the support of the US was essential to the power of the
military supporting the oligarchies there.

15 This is another manifestation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics 
elaborately and
persuasively explained by Commoner, (1977).


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