One-Child Foreign Policy

By James Kurth
The American Conservative, August 27, 2007

Edited by Andy Ross

Many major nations are undergoing rapid changes in their demographic structure. In Western countries, the combination of a sharp decline in the birth rates of the European or European-descended population, on the one hand, and the sharp increase in the non-European immigrant population, on the other, is causing a great transformation.

The birth rate for almost every Western nation has fallen below 1.5 during the last couple of decades. Although the United States has a rising population, that growth is entirely due to immigration and to the higher reproduction rates of peoples of non-European origin.

When one projects these demographic statistics forward, it appears inevitable that in half a century most European-descended peoples will have only two-thirds or less of the population that they have today. Furthermore, a much larger percentage of that population will be old.

A transformation in Western military strategy has occurred alongside this demographic transformation. New technologies have issued in great improvements in command, control, communication, and computers. The U.S. military has incorporated these improvements into its strategies, operations, and weapons acquisitions, with the results being called the revolution in military affairs (RMA).

There has also been a parallel revolution in attitudes toward the military (RAM). Whereas the RMA has principally been propelled by the new technologies of the information economy, the RAM has been driven by the new demography of low birth rates.

Today, it is very rare for a child in postmodern society to die from disease while his parents are alive. And if he should die in military combat, this is seen as a shocking surprise. Indeed, for one of these rare children to die in such a rare way will increasingly seem a unique catastrophe and an unacceptable scandal.

This low-casualty imperative imposes major limitations upon strategy, especially the strategy of the U.S. Army. It is also a major factor promoting the revolution in military affairs, as the United States seeks to use high technologies to ensure low casualties.

After the Vietnam War, the Army tried to reinvent itself in a way that would make it difficult for civilian policymakers to put it into a war involving guerrillas or insurgents. After the Iraq War, the Army will probably turn to some new version of the RMA. Moreover, the post-Iraq and neo-RMA Army will have to operate within a sort of neo-RAM.

Given these constraints, the Army is left with no specific and identifiable enemy. This makes it difficult to develop a credible strategy.

The two military revolutions have very different consequences for the U.S. Air Force. From its beginning, the Air Force has seen itself as being the most able to win victory with low casualties.

In World War II, the U.S. Air Force promised victory through air power and precision bombing. In the Cold War, it promised not only more bang for the buck but also less blood for the bang. The Gulf War of 1991, with its initial air campaign of five weeks and its subsequent ground campaign of only four days, brought it closer to that goal.

The Air Force's idea of fighting is bombing. And although bombing is largely useless against insurgents, it can be very useful against conventional militaries. The Air Force really likes to bomb civilian targets. But it recognizes that massive bombing is not seen as legitimate by the publics of postmodern societies.

With the exception of insurgents, the Air Force will seek to bomb the very enemies that the Army will seek to avoid. Whereas the Army sees the size of China and even of Iran as presenting a formidable obstacle, the Air Force sees a target-rich environment.

Of course, because China is a nuclear power, U.S. civilian policymakers will be extremely reluctant to launch any air bombardment of its civilian installations. And so, in the end, the Air Force may not be left with many more specific and identifiable enemies than the U.S. Army.

China, like the U.S., is also characterized by a sharp decline in its birth rate. China's lowered birth rate is not a result of postmodern values but of the government's one-child policy. And China has undertaken its own version of military transformation. China seeks to trump the U.S. advantage in capital-intensive, high-tech weapons systems by leaping over these to a new, information-age version of asymmetrical warfare.

Russia has been afflicted with the greatest decline in birth rate of any major power in the past two decades. For this reason, but also because of economic constraints and bureaucratic corruption and incompetence, the Russian Army has become hollow. Russia's low birth rate means that its army probably will be weak for years to come.

It might thus seem that the consequences of demographic change are rather benign, at least with respect to the prospects for greater international peace and tranquility. America’s historical and potential peer competitors and military rivals are less likely to engage in aggression because they lack large reserves of surplus manpower.

Unfortunately, radical demographic change means that the prospect for greater peace and tranquility abroad is dialectically and diabolically connected to the prospect for greater conflict and violence at home.

Current social attitudes and demographic trends in the West suggest that there will be a continuation of low reproduction rates among Western peoples. Conversely, there will be a continuation of high immigration of non-Western peoples into the Western nations and of higher reproduction rates among the non-Western communities.

The most dramatic consequences are likely to occur in Europe. Europe as a whole will become two civilizations. The first will be a Western civilization or a post-Western civilization comprised of people of European descent. It will be secular, rich, old, and feeble. The second will be the non- Western civilization, descended from non-European peoples. It will be religious, poor, young, and vigorous. The two civilizations will regard each other with mutual contempt.

Analogous, but less dramatic, developments are likely to occur in the United States. Here the most numerous of the non-Western communities will be Latin American in their origin. It is possible that the United States might also become two nations or even two civilizations, although this is not as likely as in Europe. Gated communities could become a central part of the Anglo way of life.

This challenge is obviously not one of traditional war against a foreign military. Neither is it one of attacks by small, separated terrorist groups. What we face instead are episodic and perhaps endemic terrorist attacks and violence perpetrated by a minority supported by a much larger community hostile toward the majority society.

In the past, a minority community that turned militant has almost always been confronted with a majority that also became militant. In short, the majority could come together and put down the militant minority. The outcome is less certain when a minority community confronts a majority that is only one in the numerical sense.

For the nations of the West, a viable strategy for the nation is no longer really possible because they are no longer really nations at all.

James Kurth is the Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College.
 

AR  Nations are today what the British Empire was fifty years ago, namely venerable institutions bordering on dysfunctionality and obsolescence. In an age of rampant globalization, human collectives based on shared interests of various kinds must trump those based only on geography and history. It seems clear to me that we need to organize and orchestrate demographic and military policy globally. I suspect a few decades of turmoil will precede the realization of any such vision.