The Rod Martin Report: Happy New Year in The New American Century

The Rod Martin Report – Happy New Year!

Dear Friends,

The New Year is upon us, and rather than writing our normal “Rod Martin Report” I want to share with you some deeper thoughts, on America’s place in the century ahead.

Before I do that, I am going to cover just a few points about the past week. We’ll get to that in a minute.

But 16 years ago — two full two-term Presidencies — on January 1, 2001, I wrote a predictive piece called “The New American Century“.

“The New American Century” has held up extraordinarily well, indeed much like my batting average in the 2016 election cycle, which was close to .1000. Reading it is valuable because it will help you judge the quality of the analysis you get at RodMartin.org: we have a track record, and we’re not ashamed to put it out there for all to see.

But the essay is also valuable because while much of it has come to pass, much of it is still ahead. And while I might say a few things differently now, in the main, I think it is still correct both in broad brush and in most of its specifics.

Please take a few minutes to read “The New American Century”, which I am re-printing below. Give me your thoughts! And rest assured that we’ll be expanding on it dramatically in the year to come.

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One way in which we’re expanding is this:

No, you can’t pre-order it yet (I wish you could). But it will be one of the things you’ll get free when you join the new RodMartin.org premium service we’re planning to launch in 2017. Again, let me know if insider interviews, premium analysis and a whole new level of service might interest you. We want your feedback, especially as to what would most serve your needs.

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Before we move on to that, I would be remiss not to point out the vile betrayal of Israel by the cowardly Barack Obama this week.

Why “cowardly,” you may ask? Because much like his opposition to same-sex marriage until he was safely past the 2012 election, the Lame Duck In Chief had eight years to stand on this “principle” and instead waited until his Presidency was over, Hillary was cloaked in failure, and the only harm he could foresee from his action would befall Israel and Donald Trump.

Yeah, Obama is really someone you want in your foxhole.

We predicted this was coming, of course, in this piece from November 5th: we told you what Obama was planning and how it would come down. We also told you how Israel could thwart it, though it appears they didn’t have time.

They will now.

Of course, the bigger point remains that Obama and the anti-Semitic left — which not coincidentally turned viciously against Israel right about the time it abandoned its historic socialism and became, through free markets, the Hong Kong of the Middle East — think it’s perfectly okay for 20% of Israeli citizens to be Arabs, but think it is the height of evil for a single Jew to live anywhere in Jerusalem or the West Bank.

This is the same sort of latter-day apartheid that has brought American universities to start re-segregating dorms. And when you see it, you realize that the left has never really changed, terminology and professed allegiances notwithstanding. The left is a parasitical movement which exists always and only by “redistribution” — theft, not production. It can only achieve this by dividing people into warring tribes.

This is true from the Paris Commune to the Ku Klux Klan. It’s true from shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to murderous tyrants like Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.

Socialist Jews were “on the right side of history” and were also useful for keeping Southern Christians in the Democrat fold while demonizing anyone who left that plantation as a “Nazi”. A Capitalist Israel, living in freedom with the enthusiastic support of now-Republican Evangelicals are anathema, gleefully sacrificed to the anti-American (and anti-Capitalist) Hamas.

The designated class enemies change. The script stays the same.

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Aside from Obama’s racist hypocrisy, there remains this essential point, so articulately expressed years ago by Benjamin Netanyahu:

“If the Palestinians were to lay down their arms, there would be no more war. If Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be no more Israel.”

Precisely. And if you don’t believe it, consider this: the Palestinian government actually pays a lifetime salary to anyone who murders any Jew.

How do you make peace with that? Where is the “compromise” with that?

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Before we get to “The New American Century”, I think it’s worth noting the joke of Obama’s “sanctions” against Russia. “Joke” because (1) no one, not even Barack Obama, claims that Russia tampered with the election results (though 52% of Democrats conveniently believe they did); because (2) the CIA has so little evidence that it actually refused — illegally — to brief the House Intelligence Committee on the matter; and because (3) does anything Barack Obama says at this point actually matter? To anyone?

It mattered so little to the Russians that Putin refused to respond tit-for-tat, and then allowed the Russian embassy to tweet — yes, tweet — this:

It’s hard to remember such open mockery of an American President by a foreign leader. And Putin isn’t the only one.

In any case, the not-at-all-conservative L.A. Times reminds us that, if trying to influence a foreign Presidential election is “a threat to democracy”, it sure is odd that the United States government has done it 81 times since 1946. The Times leaves out Obama’s own campaigning against Brexit, against David Cameron, and — with taxpayer dollars! — against Benjamin Netanyahu.

But Russia releasing emails proving the DNC screwed Bernie Sanders — assuming the Russians did it, and they probably didn’t — is “a threat to democracy.”

Ri-ight.

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Okay, enough of that. We’ll get back to our usual, more comprehensive analysis next time. But for your New Year’s reading pleasure, enjoy this, my look not at one week’s events, but at the entire century ahead. Let me know what you think, both about how these predictions have borne out so far, and about where we’re going in the 84 years to come.

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The New American Century

by Rod D. Martin
January 1, 2001

As we finally enter the new millennium (yes, those parties last year were premature), it’s worth looking ahead a bit: maybe not 1,000 years, but at least the next century. And what a century it’s going to be.

Now many things could surely go awry. A British writer in my position a hundred years ago would not have imagined just how awry things could go. The sun then never set on the Empire, which ruled a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of its people. The Royal Navy was beyond compare. Peace had reigned little broken since Napoleon’s defeat at Albion’s hand.

I note this as caution, to the reader as well as to the writer. Germany was ascendant then too; and lain waste 20 years later; dominant in 20 more; lain waste five after; and dominates the EU today. A lot can happen in a century.

But I believe America is different, at least today. And I believe there is reason for much hope.

First, geopolitics. America occupies the most essential parts of North America, the seacoasts and the Mississipi-Missouri-Ohio valley. This, combined with the intercoastal waterway, constitutes a globally unique internal transportation system which is perhaps the single greatest reason for America’s rise: the world’s cheapest cost of capital formation. In 1808, at the outset of the steam era, it cost the same amount to move one ton 32 miles overland as it did to move that same load across the Atlantic. While technology has changed the differential significantly, our absolutely unique integrated waterways remain a powerful advantage that keeps America united and rich. That won’t be changing any time soon.

Likewise, regardless of the powers which may arise, America’s mastery of the seas keeps most danger at bay. Eurasia’s disunity and endless conflict keeps away most of the rest, and tends to reduce the level of capital formation that would translate into an opposing fleet. As trade increases and capitalism spreads that may change; but so will the likelihood that a rising power might be hostile.

Rising aerospace technologies will bring new challenges, as have ICBMs in the past. But these fundamentals render America uniquely rich and safe. It would take something radical to alter that foundation, unequaled anywhere on Earth.

Second, electoral politics. American politics is subject to periodic realignments, but they’re usually fast. The discrediting of the Federalists after Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts was so complete that their party ceased to be. The Civil War wiped out the Democrats (except in the South) for 70 years; the Depression did the same to Republicans for 50.

But unlike the previous sharp realignments, the Carter-Reagan-Gingrich realignment has been slow motion. As the Democrat Party has moved left, its conservatives and moderates have moved out, “mugged by reality” as Irving Kristol famously put it. This has produced a defensive alliance: stop the abortions, uphold traditional values, don’t surrender to the Soviets, quit taxing people into welfare.

That’s good enough for a start, but it leaves a lot of room for retrenchment. The longer Republicans take to advance a thoroughgoing reform agenda – truly tackling the size and scope of government, the fundamental unfairness and unworkability of Social Security and Medicare, fixing an education establishment that’s rotting away before our eyes – the more certainly a competing and potentially compelling leftist response will arise; and likewise, the more upset conservatives will become with their own party.

Will we rise to this occasion? I have every hope that George W. Bush and a Republican Congress will do so. But if they do not, danger looms. The lack of a clear resolution of the realignment-in-progress will continue in bitter, seemingly inconclusive struggle, eventually bringing a very sharp resolution indeed: either hard to the left or hard to the right. One of those futures represents vastly greater liberty and prosperity. One of them…doesn’t.

Ultimately, I believe the break will be to the right, toward smaller, less intrusive government and a renaissance of entrepreneurship not seen since the years of the Homestead Act. The internet revolution now underway will pour gasoline on this prairie fire. The online world is a necessarily individualist world, where anyone can be a publisher, anyone can be a business owner, huge numbers can become wealthy or at least improve their lot in the process, and anyone can be part of the conversation. This will feed into politics: the internet will increasingly show up the foolishness and obsolescence of mid-20th Century thinking on how to run a society. And freedom will win.

Third, faith. While seemingly counterintuitive, Christianity is the world’s fastest growing religion. South Korea is now 40% Christian, up from 1% at the end of the war. Latin America and Africa are on fire, and it is said credibly that 10,000 people a day come to faith in Jesus in China alone. A tidal wave is sweeping the world. It’s gathering strength as it goes.

This will change all in its path, and it will feed back into the “post-Christian” parts of the world in due course. It will root out corruption, it will demand human rights as it asserts human dignity rooted in the Imago Dei, and it will establish a strong work ethic, private property and the rule of law. It will also make the whole world marvel, as the new Christians demonstrate their love for one another and the world. This more than anything will confound the secularists.

The Christians will not be alone. The rise of post-modernism is, at least in part, a rejection of the modernist dismissal of the supernatural. Islam is also rising, and militantly so: it will come after the West in jihad, and the post-Christian West will not understand why. Mormons will have their day too; and the rise of India could well produce a resurgent Hinduism.

Christianity will come out first in this race. But it will not lack competitors. And atheism, after an early-century boomlet, will not be one of its important ones.

Fifth, energy. The structural reforms just named pale in comparison to the energy revolution coming. Oil and gas are great, and the incessant harping about “peak oil” is at best a grave misunderstanding of supply and demand. But while you’ll have plenty of both commodities for the near future, neither of them is the century’s main event.

If you think the 20th Century was the century of electricity, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Reliable energy storage will completely remake our economy. Already under way in your laptop computer, this starts small, literally: in phones, in mp3 players, in Palms and BlackBerries and so forth. But it won’t end small, as the introduction of the Toyota Prius demonstrates; and as all these devices spread, costs will drop, capabilities will mushroom, renewable energy will become real, and the copper-wired world will disappear.

Similarly, fuel cells, heretofore the province of the Apollo Program and the Space Shuttle, will decentralize power generation and radically reduce its cost. From office buildings and hospitals to private homes and hydrogen-powered cars, they will change the face of America, and end the vast wealth transfer from the West to the Arabs.

A resurgence in nuclear power – particularly of the much safer third and fourth generation varieties now becoming available, combined with fuel reprocessing that eliminates nearly all nuclear waste and makes fuel supply nearly infinite – would help. But even if that never comes to pass, safe non-radioactive nuclear fusion will toward mid-century, greatly aided by increased access to space and the recovery from there of priceless Helium-3. Combined with unlimited solar energy beamed down from collection stations in space, energy scarcity will be to the late 21st Century what salt scarcity is to us.

Sixth, space. Energy is not the only thing that will cease to be scarce. Scramjets (or supersonic combustion ramjets) will make flying to orbit from your local airport as easy as flying across oceans today. That will begin this decade, and probably achieve some level of maturity by the 2040s, driven at first by the Pentagon as it seeks to reduce foreign deployments without compromising security. The ability to reach any point on Earth in two hours will change the strategic equation drastically, but it will transform how we live even more.

Why? Because cheap, easy access to space will almost immediately lead to asteroid mining, meaning almost unlimited access to metals and especially the Rare Earth minerals on which a modern economy depends and whose costs are sky-high today. Think what happened when the cost of aluminum plummeted, and now apply that to every metal and mineral in the world (plus some we have not yet discovered). And woe be unto the country that adopts the gold standard just before this starts.

It won’t stop with mining: Zero-G manufacturing holds tremendous promise, including for materials impossible to produce on Earth, and the combination of these two trends will greatly reduce pollution and the despoiling of Earth’s environment. At some critical mass, a significant exodus from Earth will begin, at first of people supporting these industries, but before the end of the century, of people who just want a new beginning on a new frontier, far from the restrictions back home. This too will unleash an age of plenty, opportunity and liberty.

Seventh, a new geopolitics. Adding a real third dimension requires controlling near-Earth space, the Lagrange points, the Moon, and other territories off the Pentagon’s current map. A “Starfleet” will become a necessity.

Earth will change too. The decline in petroleum’s importance will render the Middle East a backwater, short of a capitalist reformation reaching far beyond just Israel and Dubai. China’s rise will push low-wage jobs to new parts of Asia, Latin America and even Africa; in time, this could take the “Asian Miracle” global. Mexico will lead that, and will become a First World power by mid-century. By contrast, China’s barbaric one-child policy will catch up with it: contra the conventional wisdom, by 2050 it may well face an old and diminishing population, plus an economic disaster to make Japan’s lost decade look like the Roaring Twenties. Russia will rise briefly, and then wither away.

India will go capitalist and build a real navy. An English-speaking former British colony like us, it should become our close ally. Japan will build a navy too, and without significant effort on our part, will go its own potentially dangerous way.

The EU will continue to expand, and other nations will similarly group themselves together. America, if it’s resurgent conservatism results in significant devolution of power to its states, may find many of those nations seeking statehood: we are, after all, the original EU, originally minus the bureaucracy and restraints. The trend toward smaller autonomous regions begun with decolonization and the falls of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia will continue, necessitating bigger customs unions and defense arrangements (like the EU). America could benefit tremendously from this, but either way, the map will be very different in 2100.

Yet space will refocus everything. Turning space into the new ocean will reorder things more than Columbus discovering the New World. The accretion of nations to one another will accelerate because of the need to be part of this, and to defend against those who already are; but also because the world will just seem smaller. This process will predictably create unpredictable rivalries: Britain was unconcerned about a German Navy in, say, 1850. And indeed, as the century progresses, navies – today the guarantor of American global dominance – may cease to matter, replaced by a beefed up Aerospace Force, a new “Starfleet”, and a much-enhanced Coast Guard dedicated to law enforcement and disaster relief. Whether the new order produces new world wars remains to be seen.

I could go on. Medical technology – and human life expectancy – will explode, in part driven by our new knowledge of nanotechnology and of life in space, but also from our growing knowledge of (adult) stem cells and cloning technologies. Seemingly intelligent self-driving cars and digital assistants will increase safety, productivity and wealth. Capitalism unleashed through better laws and exponentially expanding technology will lift billions of people out of poverty. By 2101, we will not speak of “the world,” but of “the worlds.”

Why do I think this a new American Century? Because all of this derives from innovation – nearly all of which happens in America, and will continue to for the foreseeable future – and all of it depends on large-scale capital formation and its smart deployment. There are no Sand Hill Roads in the rest of the world. There’s a reason why. And all of this translates to an almost insuperable American lead, giving America the chance to define the entire century ahead.

Unless we screw it up. Because that’s certainly within our power. But I have great hope. The trends are with us. And by century’s end, most of humanity should be free, poverty as we know it today should be largely abolished, and the United States will likely be more powerful than we today can possibly imagine.

So let’s get to work.

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You can read about the world anywhere. You come to RodMartin.org to understand it. The Rod Martin Report was the most accurate analysis of 2016. Do your friends a favor and pass it along; and remember, there’s a lot more we publish each week that doesn’t make the newsletter.

For Freedom,

P.S. If you like what you’re reading, please pass it along to your friends. The dominant asset class in 2017 — and every year — will not be stocks, or bonds, or even knowledge: it will be understanding.