A Bipolar Hunt for Energy

In the recent hunt for energy, businessmen from China and the United States, two oil-guzzlers, are running around world to lock in their foreign oil supplies. Since such a bipolar hunt for oil resources is often assumed by a strict zero-sum vision of the world's natural-resources market, most politicians in the United States unanimously regard Chinese hunger for oil as a threat to its own security. In the meanwhile, Chinese state diplomatic and domestic economic cooperation with Iran, Myanmar and Sudan has challenged the United States' diplomatic hegemony.

However, beyond all goods and evils, each country is depending on foreign oil production for her own domestic energy demand. Washington and Beijing share a common interest in securing open sea-lanes to ensure their cargo shipment. China typically picks up secondary deals or moves into markets from which the US is absent. And a general consensus is that it would be irresponsible for politicians in Beijing to curb its oil supply. Henceforth, great demand for oil from both countries not only creates a global energy competition, but also plants a natural ground for cooperation between the two countries. If two countries would simply consider themselves as consumers in global oil market, a cooperative common pool between the two, such as International Energy Agency with China joined, would combine and maximize their bargaining powers by creating a market monopsony in the global market, which may strategically protect both interests in maintaining oil supplies steady, stabilizing international oil prices instead of competing privileged relations with oil supply countries. Such practice would transform a bipolar hunt for oil resources into a non-zero-sum game.

In order to achieve such monopolistic bargaining power, it is necessary to have farsighted leaders on both sides of the Pacific to adapt to rapid changes in the global distribution of economic and political power, not leaders who let such shifts push them into an increasingly acrimonious confrontation.