Tag Archives: Huawei

Europe Doesn’t Want The US’s China Cold War (Yet)

It’s amazing how little investment the US has in the priorities of our allies. It’s well established that our foreign policy establishment is utterly incapable of seeing anything from the perspective of any of our “adversaries”. This would be a tremendous problem if the United States were actually in anything like a real competition with anybody. The dumbest actor in a contest rarely wins. But it’s not a contest. At this point, we’re so much more powerful than any of our opponents that it just doesn’t matter (leaving aside moral questions). What we should be doing, in this waning, but still present historical moment, is building up our position with allies, and working to stretch this sweet spot out as long as possible. We’re doing the exact opposite of that, of course.

A system that wants to stand the test of time needs to be aware of, and at least not obstruct, the wishes of smaller members of that system. As today’s video illustrates, we’re not doing that. Our oldest and strongest allies in Europe have opted to kick off the “New Cold War” by committing to an investment agreement… with China. This should be a wake up call. I doubt it will be.

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If China Were Smart… | Firewall vs. FAANG | Markets Are Dumb 15

It’s amazing to me how much of the Security/geopolitics conversations happens around stuff that will never matter. The Pentagon and their pet think tanks and congresspeople are pushing the “New Cold War” with China because they know that it will keep the money rolling in. But it really doesn’t make sense. All the defense related crap we are buying will be superseded or sunk within the first month or so of an actual shooting war with China. Nobody really knows what such a war would look like, but it’s obvious to me that most of the trillions we spend on weapons will be wasted.

What I have done this week, and with last week’s video, is try to talk about areas of competition that actually matter. Diplomacy, Business, and the degree to which the rest of the world is still willing to put up with US hegemony are vastly more important factors in the resolution of this competition than almost anything that will happen in the South China sea. It’s the management of these other competition spaces that will determine whether war with China happens in the 2030s, the 2130s, or not at all. The Big Tech companies are another one of those great benefits, like the peace dividend at the end of the cold war, that we in the United States may be in the process of wasting. We should maybe spend a billion or two thinking about these companies strategically, among the trillions we’ll spend on useless weapons platforms. Today’s video is a place to start.

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The EU Declares Independence | Instex | Iran Sanctions 2

Today’s video sort of unintentionally ended up being the second video in a series dealing with the ramifications of Donald Trump’s destruction of the Iran Nuclear Deal last year. The more I think about it, the better an “Iran Sanctions” series sounds. It’s interesting how much that one terrible decision will end up driving world politics for the next couple years, if not the next couple decades. Almost every day we see things happening that can in part be traced back to it, including Germany’s reluctance to act against Huawei the way the US wants, reported today.

Today’s video focuses on INSTEX, the new European exchange that is the first stab at building a post-dollar trading and banking system. It may seem like a boring topic, but if you understand it, whole volumes of current and future geopolitical maneuvering will be revealed to you. Today’s video does what very few do, and attempts to describe the history of the secondary sanctions imposed by the US in an engaging way. Supposedly journalism is a first draft of history. I’m kind of excited by the fact that nobody else is attempting that draft this way. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that a history focusing through the lens of the Iran Sanctions will provide a clearer picture of the 2020s than anything else.

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Why the Huawei CFO Arrest Is Crazy | Iran Sanctions

Today’s video skirts an interesting question. How much do the US people know about the power our government, financial and legal sectors exercise in the world? My sense is not much. I have this, perhaps naive, hope that if they did have a better sense of that power, they would want the US government to use that power more responsibility. Instead, at this point we’ve got a government and media that actively misleads the people on this topic, and often misleads itself.

A key part of Washington DC’s ability to benefit from ever increasing defense budgets is keeping people scared. Emphasizing that US financial and legal power is capable of shutting down almost any real threat would kind of sabotage that effort. So we pretend that places like Russia and China are somehow independent actors that can do us harm, rather than stakeholders than are almost as wrapped up in benefiting from the status quo as the US is. I dunno. It’s something I think about a lot.

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Video Transcript after the jump…

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