Helium-3 da

Impacts

Oil Dependence Impact (Econ Heg, :58)

Note: “Jade Rabbit” and “Yutu” are the same thing.

Jade Rabbit will spark a new space race for helium-3.

Reynolds 13 writes⁴

On Saturday, a Chinese lunar probe made the first soft landing anyone's made on the moon since 1976. The Chang'e-3 probe means that China is one of only three countries -- joining the United States and the old Soviet Union -- to accomplish such a feat. The probe includes an unmanned rover named Yutu that will spend several months exploring "geological structure and surface substances and looking for natural resources.'' But will China try to claim the ground it explores? Possibly. Though the landing was a big deal in China, most of the rest of the world responded with a yawn. Moon landing? Been there, done that. But October Sky author Homer Hickam was more excited. He wondered on Twitter if China might want to make a territorial claim on the moon, noting that the area the lander is exploring may contain an abundance of Helium-3, a potentially valuable fusion energy fuel that is found only on the moon. According to former astronaut/geologist Harrison Schmitt, China "has made no secret" of its interest in Helium-3. Schmitt observes, "I would assume that this mission is both a geopolitical statement and a test of some hardware and software related to mining and processing of the lunar regolith." Followed by a mining claim, perhaps. Is that possible? Well, China seems pretty big on making territorial claims lately. And, really, there's not a lot to stop them. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty provides that "outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." But that's not much of a barrier. First, the treaty only prohibits "national appropriation." If a Chinese company, instead of the Chinese government, were to stake a claim, it wouldn't apply. And, at any rate, China -- which didn't even join the treaty until 1983 -- can, like any other nation, withdraw at any time. All that's required under the treaty is to give a year's notice. So if the the Yutu rover finds something valuable, Chinese mining efforts, and possibly even territorial claims, might very well follow. And that would be a good thing. What's so good about it? Well, two things. First, there are American companies looking at doing business on the moon, too, and a Chinese venture would probably boost their prospects. More significantly, a Chinese claim might spur a new space race, which would speed development of the moon. The 1960s space race between the United States and the old Soviet Union saw rapid progress in space technology. We went from being unable to put people in Earth orbit, to landing men on the moon and returning them safely to earth, repeatedly, in less than a decade. It happened so fast because each nation was afraid the other would get there first. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, in fact, was basically a deal to throw the contest out. Each nation was more afraid of being beaten than it was, really, anxious to win itself. As soon as the ink on the treaty was dry, space efforts began to dry up, too. That's one reason why no one has had a soft landing on the moon in almost 40 years -- and why it's been 41 years almost to the day since the last man, astronaut Eugene Cernan, stood on the moon. If, like me, you'd like to see a gold rush on the moon -- or, at least, a Helium-3 rush -- then a Chinese claim might be just the thing to get it started. Personally, I'm hoping Hickam's prediction is right.
Helium-3 development solves Middle East oil dependence.

D’Souza et al 6 write⁵

Energy is the most important driving force for powering industrial nations. In fact, a measure of a country’s industrialization is its annual energy consumption. Fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas are the chief means by which most nations get their energy. Because of the world’s increasing standards of living and its increased dependence on oil, fossil fuel amounts might not last longer than a few decades. Also with the world’s population expanding to almost 12 billion by the year 2050, our oil demand will also increase drastically. Oil has become a key issue in the political and economic affairs of many nations especially after the United States second war with Iraq. In such cases of crisis, the development of He-3 will alleviate the dependency on crude oil. Fossil fuels also release a lot of harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that have detrimental effects on the atmosphere, whereas the usage of He-3 fusion technology will be a great substitute to the fossil fuels as it doesn’t release any harmful byproducts. In addition to the non- polluting properties of He-3 fusion on Earth, the mining of He-3 from the Moon will not contaminate the Moon as the gases that are released during the extraction process (water and oxygen) aren’t harmful, and instead could be used for sustaining a lunar colony as outlined in the technical section. 74 The United States leads the research in He-3. In 2004, President Bush released his new vision of space exploration. He wants to complete the International Space Station by the year 2010. The completion of this project will greatly increase the working research on the lunar mining of He-3 as the astronauts can experiment on different techniques to extract He-3 from the Moon’s regolith. The International Space stations could be used a trade center for the distribution of He-3 for worldwide distribution. Another goal of the current White House administration is that NASA returns to the Moon by 2015 and to have a permanent living settlement for astronauts by 2020. President Bush has allocated 12 million dollars to the Moon Development Initiative. This initiative would help tremendously in the progress in the He-3 research if a permanent colony is established on the Moon (Hurtack, 2004). The developed world would no longer have to depend on the Middle East, where the most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves are located, for its energy supply. American scientists have already declared that the Moon could be the Persian Gulf of the present century. Two liters of He-3 would do the work of more than 1,000 tons of coal (Chowdhuri, 2004).

Oil dependence kills US economic heg. Reynolds 10 writes⁶

Oil dependence is slowly eating away at the true source of American power (our economy) as each year the U.S. exports more and more of its wealth in exchange for oil. U.S. trade deficits have created a situation that forces reliance on overseas capital to support the economy. Much of that capital comes from the petroleum exporting countries that, in turn, get it from oil consumption by American businesses and consumers. Today the American economy is based less on producing either goods or services and more on consumption. This drives what is known as the “petrodollar” system. It begins with the purchase of oil by the U.S. consumer, which sends massive dollar-denominated cash flows to oil exporting countries. In addition, U.S. consumers buy imported goods resulting in flows of dollars to those countries. In turn, the manufacturing nations must purchase oil, which they accomplish with the dollars they obtained from selling products in the U.S. market. At this point, the oil exporters are awash in dollars, which they must either spend or invest.  The consequence is that, to a large extent, governments in the Middle East are funded by American consumers. The same money you use to fill your gas tank is ultimately funding things like terrorist groups and the Iranian nuclear program, but, perhaps more importantly, it is being used to buy assets in the United States. At the end of 2008, foreigners owned $3.5 trillion more in assets in the U.S. than Americans owned abroad, and the bulk of that difference can be explained by the oil trade deficit. The petroleum trade deficit is a wealth transfer. In 2008 alone, Americans purchased $453 billion of foreign oil (which accounted for more than 65 percent of the total trade deficit). The oil we purchase quite literally goes up in smoke. When all is settled, Americans have swapped our equity for short-term consumption while the oil exporters have swapped their oil for long-term financial assets. I don’t think there is any question as to who is getting the better end of the deal. It’s leading to the decline of the dollar. Although, in previous decades, the Federal Reserve has viewed energy prices as a component of inflation and reacted to increasing oil prices using anti-inflationary measures, the modern Federal Reserve has feared that increasing oil prices are more likely to precipitate a recession. The Fed has responded to price shocks by increasing the money supply in hopes of stimulating aggregate demand. The long-term trend of the dollar is downward, which places upward pressure on oil prices. The Fed has responded to increasing oil prices by printing more money. Increasing the money supply makes a given dollar worth less, which means that more dollars are needed to buy a given quantity of oil. The falling dollar and the increasing price of oil have elicited policies from the Fed that cause the dollar to fall still further and the price of oil to increase even more, accelerating and intensifying the effects. The increasingly unstable fiscal situation in the U.S. is not only a concern for Americans, it is also alarming to foreign holders of dollar-denominated assets. Oil exporting nations continue to accumulate dollars, but they also recognize that the lack of fiscal sanity in Washington will eventually erode the dollar’s value and, with it, their investment portfolios. Our fate is in their hands. If they begin selling oil in other currencies or divest their dollar-denominated assets, the dollar will go into free-fall, and the fallout in the U.S. economy could be far-reaching. It is vital to U.S. economic security to ensure that a breakdown in the petrodollar system, which may well be inevitable, does not precipitate an absolute economic collapse. It helped cause the housing crisis. The housing bubble, which burst in 2008, has been the most damaging event for the U.S. economy in recent memory, but few realize the central role oil played in creating it. The first culprit was the petrodollar system. American consumers paid for billions of barrels of oil. That money landed with the oil exporters—oil sheiks and petro-state autocrats—who then bought financial assets in the U.S. market. In fact, between 2003 and 2008, the U.S. purchased $1.65 trillion of foreign oil, but over 45 percent of the money can be traced directly to funds used by foreign oil suppliers to purchase assets in the United States, and about half of that amount went straight into the bonds of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or the U.S. government. Another factor was increased liquidity. As previously mentioned, in recent years the Fed has printed more and more money and made it available to banks, which then made loans in the market. Of course, the Fed also controls banks’ reserve requirements and short-term interest rates, which they can manipulate to create more liquidity. And all that liquidity must go somewhere. Among other places, it ended up in questionable mortgage investments simply compounding the effects of petrodollar recycling.  The flow of petrodollars into government securities artificially depressed interest rates. Lower interest rates encouraged greater lending and borrowing. As a result, homeowners found a favorable environment and plenty of capital to encourage over-borrowing. Without foreign oil dependence, the system that made possible the excessive borrowing that led to the crisis would not have existed. Individuals and even domestic corporations make much different investment decisions than do foreign governments. Without foreign oil, Americans would still pay for energy, but instead of being concentrated in financial assets like Treasury bonds, the price paid at the pump would be used to buy things like capital equipment and to create jobs and pay workers. Cash would ultimately end up in the hands of individuals in this country, not foreign governments. Equity that belongs to you is much better than debt you owe to someone else.
Empirics prove economic hegemony solves global conflict. Hubbard 10 writes⁷

Research into the theoretical underpinnings of this topic revealed that there are two main subfields within the literature on hegemonic stability. One line of study, an avenue pursued by prominent theorists such as Kindleberger, Keohane, and Ikenberry focuses primarily on questions of related to the economic system. The other avenue, pursued by theorists such as Gilpin, looks at the role of hegemonic governance in reducing violent conflict. In my research, I focus on this aspect of hegemonic stability – its implications for military conflict in the international system. To research this question, I undertook a broad quantitative study that examined data from both the American and British hegemonic epochs, focusing on the years of 1815-1939 in the case of British hegemony, and 1945 to 1999 in the case of American hegemony. I hypothesized that hegemonic strength was inversely correlated with levels of armed conflict in the international system. Using the data from the Correlates of War Project, I was able to perform a number of statistical analyses on my hypothesis. To measure hegemonic strength, I used the Composite Index of National Capability, a metric that averages together six different dimensions of relative power as a share of total power in the international system. I then matched this data with data cataloging all conflicts in the international system since 1815. I organized this data into five-year increments, in order to make statistical analysis more feasible. Regression analysis of the data revealed that there was a statistically significant negative correlation between relative hegemonic power and conflict levels in the international system. However, further statistical tests added complications to the picture of hegemonic governance that was emerging. Regression analysis of military actions engaged in by the hegemon versus total conflict in the system revealed a highly positive correlation for both American and British hegemony. Further analysis revealed that in both cases, military power was a less accurate predictor of military conflict than economic power. There are several possible explanations for these findings. It is likely that economic stability has an effect on international security. In addition, weaker hegemons are more likely to be challenged militarily than stronger hegemons. Thus, the hegemon will engage in more conflicts during times of international insecurity, because such times are also when the hegemon is weakest. Perhaps the most important implication of this research is that hegemons may well be more effective in promoting peace through economic power than through the exercise of military force. II. Research Question In examining hegemonic stability theory, there are several important questions to consider. First of all, an acceptable definition of what constitutes a hegemon must be established. Secondly, a good measure of what constitutes stability in the international system must be determined. Certainly, the frequency and severity of interstate conflict is an important measure of stability in the international system. However, other measures of stability should also be taken into account. Conflict in the international system takes on a wide range of forms. While military conflict is perhaps the most violent and severe dimension, it is only one of many forms that conflict can take. Conflict need not be confined to wars between traditional states. Terrorism, piracy, and guerilla warfare are also types of conflict that are endemic to the international system. Economic conflict, exemplified by trade wars, hostile actions such as sanctions, or outright trade embargos, is also an important form of conflict in the international system. States can also engage in a range of less severe actions that might be deemed political conflict, by recalling an ambassador or withdrawing from international bodies, for example. Clearly, “stability” as it pertains to the international system is a vast and amorphous concept. Because of these complexities, a comprehensive assessment of the theory is beyond the purview of this research. However, completing a more focused analysis is a realistic endeavor. Focusing on international armed conflicts in two select periods will serve to increase the feasibility the research. I will focus on the period of British hegemony lasting from the end of the Napoleonic wars to 1939 and the period of American hegemony beginning after the Second World War and continuing until 1999, the last year for which reliable data is available. The proposed hypothesis is that in these periods, the hegemon acted as a stabilizing force by reducing the frequency and severity of international armed conflict. The dependent variable in this case is the frequency and severity of conflict. The primary independent variable is the power level of the hegemon. This hypothesis is probabilistic since it posits that the hegemon tended to reduce conflict, not that it did so in every single possible instance. One way to test this hypothesis would be through a case-study method that examined the role of Britain and the United States in several different conflicts. This method would have the advantage of approaching the problem from a very feasible, limited perspective. While it would not reveal much about hegemony on a broader theoretical level, it would help provide practical grounding for what is a highly theoretical area of stuffy in international relations. Another method would be to do a broader quantitative comparison of international conflict by finding and comparing data on conflict and hegemonic strength for the entire time covered by British and American hegemony. The hypothesis is falsifiable, because it could be shown that the hegemon did not act as a stabilizing force during the years of study. It also avoids some of the pitfalls associated with the case study method, such as selection bias and the inherently subjective nature of qualitative analysis.