OPINION:
China’s current national security strategy — titled “Unrestricted Warfare” in Beijing — was conceived at the turn of the 21st century, then given political, economic and military meaning over the next decade, and adopted as national policy in 2013 as President Xi Jinping took power.
Over the next seven years, we have seen its goals and methodology revealed in the so-called Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); China’s plan for establishing a dominant global empire. It relies upon seemingly benign offers from China’s state-owned and heavily subsidized industries to build heavy infrastructure (e.g. highways, nuclear power plants, ports).
China’s near-term goals include: securing control over strategic minerals (e.g. cobalt in Congo and lithium in Chile) for use in the production of high tech products (i.e. cellphones and batteries); gaining control over critical terrain (e.g. straits, ports and waterways); and assuring secure access to major markets (i.e. the United States and Europe).
It’s working. Using traditional mercantilism and predatory lending, China has now penetrated and established a prevailing influence in more than 60 countries without deploying a ship, a soldier or firing a shot. Following public remarks on China’s aggressive move toward global dominance I’m often asked “… well why don’t we just make a better offer and win the competition?”
The truth is that we are no longer competitive in many domains — we haven’t completed a new nuclear power in more than 30 years. At the end of the Cold War, our country assumed that victory would set in motion a tide of countries adopting democracy and open markets. We neglected to remain watchful for such historically predictable phenomena as ambition, authoritarianism and the lust for power and empire. We rested on our oars, sold our intellectual property to China and fell far behind.
Fortunately, unlike the authoritarian model freedom fosters innovation and discovery. Although China has stolen a march on us we are about to see perhaps the most productive era in history unfold in the years ahead. For example, in the energy sector our 30-year lapse in building nuclear plants stimulated an awakening in the energy industry to a few fundamental truths: Large nuclear power plants take too long to build and cost too much.
Faced with this reality but in the interest of preserving the very positive energy properties of nuclear power — the most reliable means of generating electricity in history — a dozen companies here and among our allies are competing to deliver a totally new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) that deliver enormous gains in safety, versatility and cost. How? Each SMR module will be built in a factory and delivered to the site for assembly thus saving years in construction time and billions in cost.
Further, the smaller size and versatility of SMRs make them a natural fit for a broad menu of applications; such things as providing district heating, power for desalination, and chemical processing including the production of other fuels such as hydrogen — itself a power source for lifting space craft, powering cars, trucks and for use in hydrogen fuel cells.
We and our allies are about to lead a breathtaking revolution in energy systems. Indeed, we must, for secure, affordable, reliable energy is the sine qua non of economic growth and political stability for all countries in the years ahead — especially for people in developing countries. Energy and the source who provides it are the ultimate measure of a nation’s national security. If you were the president of Nigeria, India or the United States would you want China to be able to turn your lights, your industries and your very survival on and off as a matter of imperial whim?
Between now and 2050, we must face several challenges; most notably climate change, population growth and urbanization which will take us from 7 billion to almost 10 billion people — almost all of them in dense urban settings in desperate need of clean water, clean energy and food. The good news is that we have at hand the means for providing safe, clean, affordable solutions to each of these challenges.
We, together with our allies in NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, plus Egypt, Israel and Jordan in the Middle East, the Quad Four countries (India, Japan, Australia and the U.S.), the 12 member-states of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) in Eastern Europe, must win this competition with China. Together we can do so.
And when we do, the icing on the cake will be that we will have nurtured adoption of the safest, cleanest, most reliable power source in the world, and in the process — while China is still building coal-fired plants — we will have exceeded our climate change commitments to the United Nations and all of humankind.
• Robert McFarlane is chairman of an international energy company and a former assistant to the president for national security affairs.
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