Hey there. I’ve never done this before, but with today’s video I’ve re-purposed a snippet of a longer conversation I had last week with Jon Coumes of the Safe For Democracy podcast. I’m doing this because I went on a (somewhat profane) rant that answers a question I get from a lot of people. What is Obama’s foreign policy legacy, and how should we look at it historically speaking? It’s way too early to tell of course, but I have a pretty good idea. The channel usually tries to deal with current issues, and though we’re still dealing with all of his wars, Obama is not a current issue. So I won’t be doing a more produced video on the topic.
But I think this video answers the question pretty handily…
One of the most important aspects of development in Saudi Arabia, and in the Gulf more broadly, is the fact that it often doesn’t happen. The Gulf countries are mostly run by monarchs, and they all have pharaonic ambitions. They want to build monuments, cities, and other great works that illustrate their magnificence. If it’s something as simple as a museum or giving a foreign university a local campus it happens. But the great ambitions that mix local development, innovation, or anything else that requires real buy-in from the people of the country, either never happen, or happen in such a small way as to make the initial announcements look ridiculous.
When NEOM, the 500 billion USD sustainable city was announced, I couldn’t help but think of the UAE’s Masdar city. It was announced with similar fanfare back in 2006. It was going to be green, it was going to be amazing, there were going to be tons of people there! Parts of Masdar did end up being built, but most of the plan was scrapped, and the Guardian now describes it as in danger of becoming a ghost town. Masdar isn’t the only hi-tech wonderland city that never was. Saudi Arabia has one too. Anybody remember King Abdullah Technology City? It was the last king’s NEOM. It was still moving along, or at least reported to be so back in 2015.
And that’s the important bit here. All of this constant churn of projects seems to be done more for a foreign press audience than to create real change in Saudi Arabia. I don’t doubt the sincerity of any of the Saudi Royal reformers, I just doubt their ability. The world press gives them a free pass on all of this. Almost none of the articles reporting on NEOM mentioned King Abdullah city or Masdar. Actually, now that Abdullah is dead, his city seems to have disappeared from the news completely. It’s clear that it’s now longer a public relations priority, and I’d guess that the 100 billion that is supposed to build that city is now quickly moving on to MBS’s NEOM. This is not a good way to run anything. But the Saudis get a pass from the world press. Today’s video, on the ridiculousness of the Saudi Aramco IPO is an attempt to push back on that a bit.
So with this week’s video am I claiming that conflict between the US and China is inevitable? After mocking it for years have I finally fallen into the “Thucydides Trap” trap?
Absolutely not.
I still believe that China will never be able to be a hegemon the way that the British were and the US still is today. I firmly believe that it’s possible for the world to survive the rise of China without World War III.
But that doesn’t mean that the rivalry won’t exist. China will be dominant in Asia by the end of the century, and it is very, very likely to be the richest and most powerful country in the world by that point as well. The question, as I’ve said before, is how we get there. Will it be peacefully, or after another war? I believe that continued growth in the United States is necessary to meet that peaceful result. China won’t be tempted to assert itself militarily if it doesn’t think it can win, so the US needs to fade slowly. Which means it needs to keep growing…
In the US we are pretty sure we hate the Chinese Communist Party. But we will miss it. What this video lays out is the service that that party provides to the rest of the world. The Party would like us to think it’s responsible for Chinese growth, and that might have been true once. But today it acts instead as a limiting factor on Chinese growth. The Chinese Communist Party gives the rest of the world the breathing room necessary to make sure that China’s rise isn’t too destabilizing.
One note to those watching from Latin America. Did it bug you that this video seemed to use “America” to refer to the United States? Well it didn’t, and that formulation was very conscious. I’ve got a lot more thinking and researching to do, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about geopolitics in a hemispheric sense. I’m becoming convinced that the American countries, north and south, have a lot more that unites them than divides them. But I suppose that’s a very obvious thing for a guy from the US to think. Like I said, there’s a lot more thinking to do on this topic, and what the United States would have to give up to build a true “American Community” and century, but I’d love to hear what you think…
Also, I wanted to mention it in the video, but didn’t get the chance. Like many of my better ideas, this came out of a work of Science Fiction. This video was inspired in part by the book “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” by P. W. Singer. Singer lays out a somewhat fanciful picture of what a war between the US and China would look like. It’s interesting that his war requires a post-Communist China to be plausible in the slightest. It’s a fun read, blurbed by all manner of Defense Department muck-a-mucks, including HR McMaster, the current National Security Adviser, if I remember correctly. Well worth a read, if that’s your type of thing. I found it’s simple laying out of the weakness of the Chinese Communist Party to be one of its best observations.
Taiwan is something we don’t talk about too much. In fact, that’s pretty much US policy, and one of the rare ones I agree with. It’s possible to see the question from the Chinese position, and from the Taiwanese position as well. In this video I do both. Please watch the video all the way through. It starts out forcefully arguing the Chinese position, then it forcefully argues the Taiwanese position. I happen to believe both things. Which is very confusing. It makes my head hurt a bit. I look forward to the comments section on this one. Maybe it’ll change my mind?
As confusing as Taiwan can be, it’s vital that we all learn more about it. It’s central to one of the more pressing issues of the Trump Presidency and the coming decades…
Also I love that my research for this video involved unearthing my once treasured collection of He-man figures. It provides an interesting window on manufacturing in the early to mid 1980s. I thought that they had all been “Made In Taiwan” but that wasn’t the case. The figures I had were manufactured in Mexico, Taiwan and Malaysia. Interestingly the most recent, and most complex figures, ca. 1985, were manufactured in Malaysia. Perhaps Taiwan was already moving on by that point. The later complexity may be down to the fact that Mattel had more money to dedicate to the line, after it had proved insanely popular. I also found a Thundercat figure, but Mumm-Ra will have to wait for another video.
Wow I need to get out of my mom and dad’s house. Want to help?
