TIDES OF STEEL, TIDES OF CHANGE
When containers are transported, the world is transformed.
The time-and-space-shrinking capacity of the freight container has radically stimulated global interconnectedness. It has also played a critical role in generating the most significant upheavals of our time. First, it has raised crucial global security issues. These pertain mainly to the worldwide tracking of freight containers and their contents. Most glaring in this regard is the container’s natural ability to facilitate the activities of illicit global actors—particularly terrorists—in the transport of hazardous materials, particularly chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons, into any one of the world’s sea- or airports. Just as September 11, 2001, terrorists commandeered the global air network; they could also infiltrate and utilize shipping containers to mount equally or even more devastating attacks. Thwarting the activities of these barbaric actors without disrupting the unprecedented flow of international trade has become a key issue of our time.
The container has engendered another radical shift. This is marked by the incredible political discord that is rapidly spreading across the globe. Myriad complex and intertwined trends have driven suspicion and contention. At the core of the conflict is the fantastic uniting of economies that have resulted in an unprecedented clash of global movements, particularly, between the populist and globalist movements. A mounting sense of political and economic helplessness has led working-class populists to demand the capacity to chart their own national destiny. Globalists, on the other hand, believe that the more the world economies and cultures integrate, the greater the chance for global harmony and cooperation. This blending of markets has inspired a widespread reevaluation of globalization’s effects on national sovereignty and spotlighted the extraordinary divisions it brings about.
Today, a new group of ascending economies have declared their arrival. This new reality is most evident when considering the wealth and power transition among states from West to East, particularly from the United States to China. Since its opening in 1978, China has used the container to supercharge its market integration and bolster its meteoric rise from communist isolation to an emerging superpower. China continues to use the container as a device to deepen its influence and power worldwide. By undertaking the most extraordinary economic development and construction project the world has ever seen—the One-Belt One Road initiative—China is determined to shift the entire terrain of 21st-century politics, strategics, and economics.
By fashioning a world of unparalleled economic freedom and openness, the freight container has allowed global actors to break the shackles of national borders and help to foster far-flung economic interdependence and wealth. At the same time, the run-away globalization the ubiquitous box has engendered has created a porous and volatile world where power and influence expand on an unprecedented scale. The result is a global village where terrifying new security threats increase quickly and state authority is significantly challenged; where a vast polarization in world politics marches steadily; and where a new variety of rising economies from the far corners of the world are redrawing the geopolitical map of the 21st century.