In what some experts are calling the third great wave of outsourcing -- after manufacturing and services -- cash-rich Arab and Asian governments are buying up arable farmland (read: water rights) all over the developing world. Naturally, the worst-case artists in my field of national security see only one possible outcome: a long, steady decline into a chaotic, Mad Max-like dystopia, characterized by that favorite of the alarmist set -- resource wars.
Get used to such predictions, as today's still-stunning production inefficiencies are mechanically projected deep into the future, despite all indications of a biological revolution looming just over the horizon. In grand strategy terms, it's the intellectual equivalent of making a sow's ear out of a silk purse.
America has spent the last seven decades expending blood and treasure to birth and then enlarge an international liberal trade order, now known as globalization.