War-related Deflections of Economic Trends in Eastern and Western Civilizations

David J. Krus and Edward A. Nelsen
Arizona State University

James M. Webb
Kent State University

Summary.- Economic trends for the Eastern and Western Civilizations were compared over the past three centuries and extrapolated into the next one. The convergence of these trends following World War I was deflected following the World War II. Without this war, the combined economies of the Far East countries appeared likely to surpass the industrial output of Western countries around the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries. The 1941-1945 war with Japan delayed the projected intersection of these trends. Extrapolation of the post-WW II trends to 2040 suggests that, without deflection of these trends, the economies of the Far East countries would be likely to surpass the economies of the Western countries around the middle of the 21st century.

 Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, interest in economic determinants of warfare was reflected in the widespread attention paid to Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1987). Kennedy convincingly argued that the outcomes of major wars are determined by the economic potential of the adversaries. Also, Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1997) revived interest in cultural determinants of warfare. Huntington predicted that the future global conflicts would involve European countries in wars with the Islamic civilization of the Middle East and the United States in wars with the Confucian civilization of the Far East. The present study describes projection and analysis of economic trends within the Eastern and Western civilizations, the likely role of such trends in the initiation of future wars, and the possible deflections of these trends by the impending wars.

 East-West Economic Trends

On a global scale, no division among civilizations is more marked than that between the civilizations of the East and the West. At its apex, the civilization of the East included China, Japan, countries of the Pacific Rim, the Indian subcontinent and, indirectly, pre-Columbian America. Following the decline of the Roman Empire, the economies of the Eastern countries outperformed the economies of the West. After the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, the economic trends of the East and West began to converge. Our analysis is based on the 1750 - 1980 segment of these trends, obtained from data in Bairoch's (1982) database and plotted in Fig.1.

 
Fig 1. Shares of world economic output by the Eastern and Western civilizations, 1750-1980.

One may observe in Fig. 1 that following the World War II, the slope of the converging trends began to decline.

Linear Projection of East and West Economic Trends

The forecast of the economic trends for Eastern and Western civilizations, obtained by linear projection of the deflected trends, is shown in the Fig. 2.

In the absence of a deflection of these trends, they seem likely to intersect around the fourth decade of the 21st century.

Extrapolation of East and West Economic Trends

Extrapolation of the economic trends for the East and West civilizations in the absence of the deflection associated with the World War II is shown in Fig. 3. This was obtained by generalized adaptive filtering forecasting method (Makridakis & Wheelwright, 1978, pp. 226-244) applied to Bairoch's data.

Fig.3. Extrapolation of the economic trends for the East and West civilizations
 with deflection associated with the 1941 - 1945 war with Japan removed.

Extrapolating the observed trends, without the 1941 -1945 war with Japan, the economic trends of Eastern and Western civilizations appeared likely to intersect around the turn of this century. However, this extrapolation is only of theoretical interest.

Discussion

 Our quantitative analysis supports the notion that in absence of a major military conflict, the share of the world manufacturing output by countries representative of the Eastern and Western civilizations will be about the same around the middle of the 21st century. If this trend continues, the economies of the Far East countries are likely to surpass the economies of the Western countries. This hypothesis was contemplated by other sinologists; e.g., De Mente (1996) considers the possibility that "some time before the middle of the 21st century China will be the most powerful nation on Earth"  (p. 500).

References

Bairoch, P. (1982) International industrialization levels from 1750 to 1980. Journal of European Economic History, 11, 269-334.

De Mente, B. (1996) China's cultural code words. Chicago: NTC Publishing Group.

Huntington, S. (1997) The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kennedy, P. (1987) The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House.

Makridakis, S., & Wheelwright, S.C. (1978) Interactive forecasting. San Francisco: Holden-Day.  Home