Weaponized Globalization

 Here's the first of a thread in which Henry Farrell updates the thesis of a previous book in light of today's developments:

1. Six stories in the last few days about the weaponization of the world economy. It's very strange for @ANewman_forward and me to see the logic of our 2019 article (and forthcoming book - Underground Empire - Holt 2023) playing out. https://t.co/Z742KIljsl

— Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell) October 12, 2022

The thread is interesting. But I've a "but".  I remember back in the early Clinton administration when there was a big controversy over export controls on 486 chips (the hot PC cpu of the day). The Times made a big thing out of it, in my view misunderstanding  the problems of coordinating regulations between two cabinet departments.  Anyhow, Moore's law quickly made the 486 a dead issue.  It suggests to me that the "weaponization" which Farrel describes might be a bit more impressive on the surface, than it is when you get into the details. 

Bottom line: It's difficult for bureaucrats to keep up with innovation; even more difficult for Congress to keep up.

Me and Drezner

 I always found Dan Drezner interesting to follow, on twitter, blogging, and in the Post.  Now he's moved to Substack and is trying to drum up readership.

He offered three contrarian positions for consideration as possibly attracting interest.

Here's my comments:

Trump voters? May not be that interesting.  Remember the yellow dog Democrats? We have rattlesnake Republicans, people who've always voted Republican and will continue to do so.  I grew up in upstate NY where if you wanted a choice, you voted in the Republican primary.  It took Goldwater's candidacy to break the hold, at least for a while.

Globalization? I'm too old to change from being a free trader.  We don't yet know how to have a good safety net for those displaced by it, but I was one of the liberals in the 60's and 70's who opposed Ike's "trade, not aid" (IIRC).  Turns out he was righter than we thought. I can't get past the changes in what we called the Third World..  Anti-globalism is just an example of the thermostatic effect on a world scale.

Pandemic northingburger?  That's too obvious to be interesting, at least when confined to IR. Sociologically, a different story.

The Future and Ukraine

Dan Drezner had a piece in the Post on the use of sanctions. As I understand him, he's afraid that we're imposing sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine more out of emotion than a plan, whether to contain them or to coerce them, and how and when the sanctions might be lifted. I commented there:

 Do we essentially call for unconditional surrender (of all of Putin's goals) or are we willing to offer a fig leaf? More importantly, can we and Zelensky remain united--there's no guarantee that he will see things the same way we do. Are we willing to fight on until the last Ukrainian fighter is killed? Is he?

Part of the problem I didn't make clear in my comment is we've got multiple decision makers-- Zelensky on the one hand and the "West" as represented by Biden on the other.  (And that's oversimplifying--while NATO and the EU and the rest of Europe seem united now, that's not necessarily the case in the futre.)  

I think we can predict that our high regard for Zelensky today will fade as we and he come to realize we have different priorities and aims. 

Whither Bipartisanship?

 Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Congressional Democrats to the climate change conference in the UK. 

I'm old enough to remember when we used to have bipartisan representation during many major international efforts.  I don't know when that stopped.

Gorbachev and Other Leaders

Just finished reading William Taubman's Gorbachev.  It's a good book, as a winner of the Pulitzer should be.  The  focus is, of course, on political history.  I don't remember any great surprises that weren't fairly clear in the newspapers of the time, except for the closeness of Mikhail and his wife and family.  Yes, he faced a lot of opposition over the years, from both liberals who wanted to go further and differently and conservatives who didn't want to change the system in which they had prospered. Yes, he maneuvered back and forth first to rise to power and then to maintain his power while trying to move  the country towards his goals, which turned out to be a liberal social democracy (though that seems to have been a post facto realization.

Taubman writes well, seems to have interviewed those Soviet figures still living, and doesn't force his conclusions.  He reports differing assessments from friends and foes, including a number of people who began as allies and ended disappointed and disaffected.

I, as I suspect most American readers would be, was most interested in his foreign policy and  dealings with other world leaders.  He got on well with his counterparts, from Thatcher and Reagan, Mitterand and Kohl, to Bush.  The glimpse of Thatcher through Soviet eyes was particularly interesting. Taubman's assessment of the Bush approach to Gorbachev is mixed: Bush's personality and upbringing meant he eased Gorbachev's way, but it also meant he perhaps missed a chance to push events in a better direction, one which might have averted our current state of hostility between Russia and the U.S., but who knows?

Interesting Questions on Foreign Investigations

When should an American official at any level suggest/request a foreign government investigate an American citizen?

I think the first question you have to answer is, what is the purpose of the investigation?  Is it because the official believes the citizen violated the laws of the foreign country?  Do we assume the country's judicial system is fair?  What is the US interest in seeing the citizen investigated and possibly convicted of a crime (or suffer civil penalties)?

Another set of questions around "investigate".  Is it okay for an American official to give incriminating information to a foreign government if the government is unaware of any offense?  What is the US interest is seeing the crime investigated?

How about trades of information--an intelligence operative trades info on citizen A for info on foreign citizen B?

How about cases where a crime/offense perhaps has crossed jurisdictional lines, so the start of an investigation in the foreign country might start dominoes toppling and permit an investigation in the US?

Without delving further into the issues, it seems to me possible circumstances in some cases could justify a request or a passing of information.  But, none of those would apply as I understand it in the case of Ukraine and the Bidens.

[update--addendum: I think the propoer course is to refer any suspicions to DOJ for an FBI investigation and possible grand jury.  If there's no offense under US laws but might be under foreign law, passing information from the FBI to the foreign country is possible.]

Deja Vu All Over: India vs Pakistan

It was 40+* years ago that India and Pakistan last fought a war,, but in my youth such conflicts, and the rumors and threats of conflicts, were a constant in international affairs. 

*  It turns out it's just 20 years, at least according to Wikipedia--there was a 1999 conflict in Kargil.  They count 4 wars, and innumerable confrontations and conflicts of a lesser nature.

It seems there are fewer such conflicts since the end of the Cold War--not sure there's any causal relationship but 1989 is a convenient date.  Obviously there's Iraq I and Iraq II and Agfhanistan forever but I buy Steven Pinker's thesis of a gradual decrease in violence over the ages.

The Improbability of Sustaining Sanctions on North Korea

I'm no expert in this area, but the Post had an article on Kim's visit to China which caused me to think.

Based on our experience with sanctions against various countries: Iran, North Korea, Russia, etc., I draw this lesson:  to some extent imposing sanctions is a moral cascade--there's a triggering event which gets leaders of countries/the ruling class upset and determined that "something must be done".  The answer is imposing sanctions.  Sometimes the sanctions are more for show, rather like arresting a few prostitutes used to be back in the middle of the last century, or cracking down on gambling in a gin joint in Casablanca.  But sometimes the outrage is enough to support strong sanctions, sanctions that hurt.

This seems to have been the result with Iran before the nuclear deal and North Korea after the tests of long range missiles and the hydrogen bomb.  It's hard, however, to sustain outrage.  It's particularly hard when the leaders who imposed the sanctions, Xi and Trump, are making nice with the leader of the sanctioned company.  The sanctions may be in effect still, but the bureaucrats who have the job of enforcing them aren't going to have their hearts in it.  They know there's not going to be calls from the leader's office asking them "what did you do today to make life hard for North Korea."

The analysis of the Singapore summit has been that Trump didn't give Kim anything which couldn't be reversed in the future, except the first meeting with the US president. But that analysis will be wrong if the sanctions are slowly eroding because of the change of attitude at the top,

Morell on Many Things

I recommend the Politco interview by Susan Glasser of Michael Morell, former CIA big shot.  What especially struck me was his ability and instinct to try to understand and present things from the other's point of view: as in how Trump viewed/s the intelligence community as affected by people from the community, like Morell, opposing his election, as in how Putin views America, as in how world leaders view Trump.

On Nuclear War

Back in the day we were very concerned about nuclear war.  First strike, second strike, security of deterrents, all were important subjects, to be explored by academics and movie makers.  The concern then was that the Soviet Union would do a first strike, a strike sufficient to destroy our ability to retaliate.

Since 1989 we've lost the edge on that concern.  But because our nuclear forces are getting obsolete, and because North Korea is developing the missile/Hbomb combination needed to attack the US, we're seeing a resumption of the discussion, including in the Post today.

Personally I'm supportive of the argument.  I don't see Russia or China as the sort of power which aims for global dominance (based on what we've learned since 1989, it seems the USSR never really aimed for that dominance) and other powers, like North Korea, see nuclear warfare as a deterrent.

So yes, I'd cut our forces back.

Good Reasoning from a Conservative on Iran Deal

The bloggers at Powerline most of the time are way off for my taste, but occasionally one of them, usually Paul Mirengoff, comes through with a post I can applaud, even if I don't agree with every detail.

He's done it again, this time working out the logic of the Iran deal.  As I understand, he reluctantly  concludes that it doesn't make sense to withdraw because we can't must the united stand on sanctions needed to reopen negotiations and if we don't withdraw, how does it make sense to decertify, as Trump is expected to do.

Problems in Predicting the Future

I never dreamed in the early 70's we'd see a Sunday NYTimes paper we see today.  Back then we were worried about overpopulation, exhaustion of resources, and the failure of the newly decolonized nations to achieve development.  See this piece.  

The Chinese were an ant-like people, all dressed in Mao jackets and still starving from the effects of his ideology.  In that they weren't much different than the residents in the rest of the Third World.The developed world was bad on foreign aid, often funding projects which were strategic in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, not worthwhile for the recipient.

But today we have an article on obesity in Brazil and Nestle's role in pushing First World junk food on willing Brazilians.  And we have an article in the Times mag about the billions of Chinese investments abroad, and the possible debt trap they pose for the recipient nations.

Of course there's no Soviet Union and rich Chinese are buying Western baubles.

It's a strange world.

America the Isolationist?

Those of us of a certain age can remember when there was a significant faction of American politicians who were basically isolationist, who wrapped themselves in the history of "no entangling alliances" and "America goes not abroad in search of dragons.

Thus it's startling for me to read this piece including these words:

"Several permanent stations had been established after the War of 1812: the Mediterranean, Pacific, and West Indies Squadrons. But Jackson would give his imprimatur to a new one. Asia appealed to Jackson as part of his effort to expand American trade routes. Like the merchants of the northeast, Jackson understood that America’s economic future lay not only with its traditional European trading partners but also with new partners in the East. Simply having Navy ships in the eastern Pacific was insufficient. Consequently, Jackson established the East Indies Squadron."

Anti-Missile Defenses and Modern Ag Technology

We liberals had a long and eventually unsuccessful fight against various anti-ballistic missile systems. Back in the 60's it was the Nike-Zeus system which eventually got cancelled.  Then it was Reagan's Star Wars and finally it's the system now in place.   Part of the argument was that the technology couldn't work, wouldn't work, or at least could be overwhelmed by counter-measures.

These days we seem comfortable with the idea it works, perhaps because our faith in technology is greater these days?  That faith is boosted by reports such as this, which describes the test of a system of cameras and laser beams for zapping insects, specifically psyllids which attack citrus. Somehow that seems more impressive to me than attacking ballistic missiles, which as the name states have a path determined by gravity (though modern ICBM's launch maneuverable warheads so are no longer solely ballistic.)

Three Female Heads of Government?

This possibility was mentioned in a Washington Post piece on June 30. With Angela Merkel head of German government, Hillary Clinton currently favored to be elected president, and Theresa May the frontrunner for UK prime minister, we could see it happen.  Interesting to speculate on the impact on the dynamics of G-7, G-8, G-20, etc. etc. meetings which typically these days just have Merkel surrounded by business suits.

In this context I recall an article on Sen. Mikulski, who organized a weekly/monthly? luncheon for female senators which was credited with helping them to assume a greater role in the Senate. (IIRC she was an early, maybe the first elected female senator in the current era.  Just checked wikipedia--I thought maybe I was slighting Nancy Kassebaum (KS) and I was.  She and Hawkins were the female senators present when Mikulski was elected.)

Assuming it happens, I predict there will be multiple articles on the issue of how a common gender has affected the dynamics of the group.

[Corrected: Paula Hawkins served only one term, ending on the day Mikulski was sworn in.  So it was a bipartisan club of two from 1987 to 1992.]

Brexit

May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese curse. 

I share the conventional wisdom of most of the political class that the decision is wrong.  We shall see.

When The Right Was Wrong

Remember when the hot issue in American politics was Jimmy Carter's Panama Canal treaty, where we agreed to turn over the Canal to Panama over 20 years?  If I recall correctly, Ronald Reagan rode to the presidency by ranting about the issue, mostly to please Jesse Helms so he could win the primary in North Carolina.

Carter got the treaty approved in the Senate, just barely, to a chorus of Republican predictions of doom.  Bottom line: the Panamanians were incapable of managing the canal and it was indispensable to American security.

Move forward some years and Panama hired the Chinese firm Hutchison-Whampoa to manage port facilities in the area.  Again Republican uproar.  This was the Chinese sneaking their Oriental tentacles into a strategic area. Some Republicans wanted to discard the treaty.  But time wounds all heels.

Today the canal is operating well and Panama has just finished expanding it.

Biggest Defense Budgets

According to a Times piece on our Middle East policy, specifically Saudi Arabia:

1. United States
2. China
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Russia

The Surprising Globalization of Pre-Revolution American Trade

My title says it all.  Boston 1775 quotes a 1765 letter from the head of the British customs service for America to his bosses, describing the implications of the protests against the Stamp Act--no stamps meant no legal exports and: 

But the Evils necessarily occasioned by a Stop to the internal business and Police of the Colonies, are not equal to the Consequences of shutting up their Ports at this season of the year—permit me briefly to enumerate a few of them.

Thousands of Seamen and Others whose sole Dependance is on Navigation not only rendered Useless to their Country but deprived of the Means of Subsistance, Provisions for which there are at this time large Orders, particularly for Corn for France, Spain, Portugal, the Mediterranean &c. must perish on hand, while famin may spread itself through our West India Islands by being suddenly cut of from their usual Supplies; Ireland would be greatly distressed by the Want of flax seed from hence, on which her linen Manufacture depends; Other Articles of Produce by which Remittances may be made to Britain detained in the Country—the Revenue lessened, and trade and Navigation the Source of Wealth and the Support of a Maritime and Commercial Nation, entirely stopped, which must be attended with Ruin to Multitudes and distress to All

 Go to Boston 1775 for a series of posts describing the events as the Stamp Act was adopted, protested, and eventually disposed of.

The Iranian RINOs

The Republicans have their RINOs (Republicans in name only).  Today's Post made it seem that Iran also has RINOs (Revolutionaries in name only).


Also see this piece on Iranian views of the agreement