WILD CARDS - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 183

But peak oil is not the only wild card that might fundamentally alter
the consequences of the revolutions that are under way in American
energy.

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In 1910, Norman Angell, an English journalist then living in Paris, pub-
lished a book titled h e Great Illusion . 7 Europe had become so deeply
integrated, he argued, that leaders would be mad to even contemplate
war. h e British Empire supplied one-i t h of German raw materials
and food, and the transactions behind that trade were i nanced through
London. 8 Fully one-third of the rapidly growing foreign investment in
Russia came from France. 9 Only a fool would risk a major conl ict.
Four years later, the Continent was engulfed in a conl agration.
World War I lasted four years and took more than sixteen million lives.
It required nearly half a century, and a second world war, for Europe to
start a sustained recovery and for the world to begin to move on.
Similar thinking to what prevailed at the turn of the twentieth
century pervades modern thinking about the future of international
conl ict. Many go further to argue that war is not only stupid; it is
highly implausible. h e United States and China—the leading world
power and its chief challenger—are deeply integrated economically.
Americans depend on Chinese products to keep consumer prices and
industrial production costs under control. Chinese rely on U.S. markets
and American technology for economic growth. U.S. i rms have staked
massive amounts of capital in major investments in China, and Chinese
i rms are increasingly doing the same in the United States. Moreover,
China relies on the United States to provide a stable global system: U.S.
control of the world's sea lanes ensures the stable l ow of raw materi-
als and i nished products to and from China, while American strength
deters aggression in Asia and the Middle East. h e U.S. Federal Reserve
remains the lender of last resort, and even though Beijing sometimes
chafes at the preeminent role of the U.S. dollar, the currency remains
an essential ingredient to Chinese export-led growth.
h e case for optimism appears even stronger than it did amid similar
circumstances a century ago. h

e new factor is the prospect of nuclear