The lights wink out in Asia
scholars-stage.org
scholars-stage.org
That was all fiction. China has never had free trade. Not to single them out, they're just the most obvious. NAFTA was mighty long document for a "free trade agreement" because it wasn't. The powers are all still trying to maintain power and will continue to do so. It has been interesting to see how intertwined things got under this fiction. Not sure where we go next.
Do you disagree with this quote? And if not, then what is your definition of free trade?
In other words, the GPs comment of "mighty long document" meant that it doesn't take many pages to write "reduce tariffs on the following goods".
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agre...
That's not elimination. A free trade agreement IMHO in laymans terms would be about a paragraph explaining that no party to it will restrict or tax in any way trade between the parties. I would expect good lawyering to expand that to a few pages of legalese. NAFTA was hundreds of pages and carved out particular niches for industries in the US and Canada at least. It might have been less restrictive than whatever was in place before, but it wasn't what I'd call a free trade agreement.
Of course human hubris cannot be defeated. Several of these rulers successing each other can ruin everything.
Let’s face it, there are people hungry for power who are not prioritizing prosperity, but ... power.
The reaction is basically “things are not ideal. Therefore the problem must be globalization. Or late stage capitalism. Or wokeness”. Depending on what they’ve watched on TV or read on their social media of choice. Never mind that they can’t even define what some of those things mean.
You're probably using "globalization" as "trade, communication, and, to a lesser extent, travel, on a global scale".
They're using "globalization" as "the process seeking to erode sovereign countries, national identities, and distinct cultures, until the only remaining force and identity are corporate international conglomerates, free to do as they please since all competing systems of belonging and organization have been eliminated."
In their view, globalization is not complete until all "discrimination" by a formerly sovereign nation is made toothless. I put "discrimination" in quotes, because while it probably makes you think of whites-only water fountains, I am referring to things such as Article 27 of Mexico's constitution forbidding the sale or privatization of indigenous land, or Canada's ban on foreign house buyers [1]. I.e. discriminating against non-Canadians, or non-indigenous-Mexicans. Laws that see people as not just "global citizens", but local ones.
That NAFTA did in fact involve the cancellation of Article 27 [2], that the 100 orders imposed on Iraq included a prohibition against saving newly designed seeds [3], and that "free trade" agreements in general involve a host of demands that go far beyond lowering tariffs, implies the view of "globalization" as merely trade is incomplete, and that seeing it as a force opposing sovereign nations is more accurate.
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/who-s-exempt-from-canada-s-f...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agre...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders - order 81
Sure, China is authoritarian. But it has always been. And it has never promised otherwise. Maybe some naive neoliberals expected it to become democratic due to some magical thinking that trade brings democracy, but as far as I know this is just Western imagination at work, not anything that China ever vowed to do, so why is China acting coherently with its decades-long policy is suddenly seen in America as some sort of treason?
And then, there is the military aspect... and sure, China is warlike, threatens Taiwan, etc., but is anyone going to seriously defend that the US is less warlike than China? Come on.
The only real explanation seems to be that China has lately been successful in becoming more powerful (the goal of any country) and the US isn't taking that well at all, the rest looks like blatant propaganda.
In the 00’s there were some hopes and signals and work done to see more democracy in those spheres, but it never materialized.
So while you are right in the sense of China doing China things as it has, or Russia Russian things, the fact that one guy could wake up in a grumpy mood and start a war is what makes things a lot more fragile than they ought to be.
Democracy is a bulwark against this type of fragile type of government.
Nobody wants to live in a world where China defines the world order. They don't care about their own citizens and will care even less about the other countries they plan to control in one way or another.
Also, the US is war-like but it's still a functioning democracy despite all its flaws and the power can change every x years. With China you end up with a dictator-for-life and good luck with that.
The naïve neoliberals weren't fully wrong. When you trade with a foreign civilization, elements of their culture do tend to seep into yours. And American culture is particularly infectious. Where the calculus went wrong is that the CCP isn't dumb, they recognized the existential threat to their rule and countered it
There you got the Champions of humanity
This is the TLDR; I guess Japan will not be the only country taking similar steps. With a looming energy crisis (it's not clear how more sustainable energy sources will support the same historic growth) and an automation crisis (technology will make irrelevant many jobs before there is demand fornew ones) the social orders will be disrupted.
In any case it painted a picture (to me; I have no idea if this was the authors intent or view) of WWI starting because all of the parties were convinced that they were at a point of maximum relative strength. Germany wanted war in 1914 because they believed Russia would soon be an unstoppable colossus, France wanted war in 1914 because they thought an alliance with Russia and the U.K. in it was untenable and would soon split apart.
Maybe it's a convincing argument, maybe not but it appeals to me because it's not so much apportioning blame as it is describing motivations.
WWII on the other hand. Blame is easy to hand out. The motivations I can ascribe to Germany/Japan/USSR start out vaguely plausible in a geopolitical sense but the more you look at them the more it seems just madness in a way that none of the parties in WWI seem.
china hasn't finished its paused independence war yet...
china is still butthurt over the burning/looting of its buckingham/versailles/whitehouse...
maybe it just took a pause from the tang/song/ming dynastys? and does think the 9-line is its pond...
it might be like...what would congo do to belgium if it could?
It may not have been intended as one, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t one.
As the author says, the good that comes from trading with ideologically different countries is a semblance of peace. It's a weak one, but becoming more self-reliant and less global removes the last reason superpowers have to keep diplomatic and peaceful channels open.
I'd rather have US and China begrudgingly trading because they need each other than the opposite.
The West in general can't endure much because it's no longer used to it, <<unless>>, and this is super important, that pain comes from a clear, mortal threat. In which case democracies are at least as resilient, probably more resilient than dictatorships because the decision making is spread around more and more individuals decide it's bad for them if the other side wins[1].
With Russia at least several countries (Eastern and Northern Europe) decided that Russia is a clear, mortal threat and they're lobbying the bigger and less decided actors (US, Western Europe) to hold the line.
With China, in case of a conflict, alarm bells would go off around the world, much more than for Russia. The US population is quite apprehensive of the PRC regime, already. In Europe a similar thing is happening.
I hope nothing happens, but I think people will be shocked how quickly the hostility ramps up if we get to it, even from people they wouldn't expect.
[1] It's basically A) "someone tells you should be afraid of something" versus B) "I've figured out on my own I should be afraid of it". B) is a much stronger and more enduring learning process.
Case in point: 2014 Ukraine vs 2022 Ukraine vs 2022 Russia. The volunteer movements in UA seem to be very strong and resilient, while the war effort in RU is so centralised it's almost a satire.
We have been fighting our neighbours for hundreds of years, and after WW2 we decided to enter a huge trading agreement with each other, hoping that it would create lasting peace and prosperity.
China inports 80% of energy and 80% of its food chain, either finished food or fertilizer for domestic growth. Stopping globalization trade means famine in less than a year.
Also, the extremely forced looking diagram at the top has literally nothing to do with their thesis other than being low hanging fruit for a counterargument.
Edit: I was curious, here's a larger version of the map: https://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/577812/8159481/128200...
It makes less sense the longer you look at it...shrug.
They just regurgitate narratives without ever having an original thought and they don't understand they're lead to war step by step.
Then, once the war reaches their country they will wonder how all of this could have happened.
It seems humans never learn.
When any of those are badly off track, then alternatives/fallbacks start looking good. ;)
That's what they get for having lost the last war in which they were involved, i.e. they get to play the music their victor is singing (also see the Plaza Accord).
It may be that the Japanese see hegemony of the US as a lesser evil than the CCP, and hegemony of the latter a risk well worth dying over. This may be quite rational.
I do wonder why there are so many western voices that seem almost giddy about the rise of China as a power. I imagine they don't like the west much. But unless they've also lived in China in recent years, it's just maligning the devil you know.
I'm mirroring de Gaulle right now, in saying that the US have been blind-sided by not having had any real war on their homeland for more than a century (he was saying it in 1968), that's why they have all this messianic instincts. No, almost nothing is worth dying for en masse (which what a US vs China war would mean).
Famed critic of cultural and national sovereignty?
I think you got him wrong, he was in fact a supporter of national sovereignty (also see his NATO-related policies). I got that quote from a transcript of a discussion he had with Ceausescu (I'm from Romania myself), during his last visit outside of France as a president (in May '68).
He also did take some risks regarding his personal safety when it came to the sovereign future of Algeria. Granted, what his henchmen did in connection to Africa was definitely not ok (I'm right now reading a book about Foccart), but unfortunately that was par for the course for the big powers back then.
Whom you’re mirroring to argue Japan should submit to Beijing.
I don't think China would mirror France's policies against Guinea, it has never done so in, what? 1000+ years?. Saying otherwise is preposterous. But, hey, whatever gets the Western war machine going, I guess. Also, you're ignoring the part about de Gaulle being right about NATO and about its real meaning (US direct control over Western Europe).
It’s Western Europe that is unable to wean itself off the sweet sweet American funded protection.
It's not the non-violent choice any more than England trying to appease Nazi Germany was the non-violent choice. Or Ukraine trying to make friends with Russia.
Or France calling Nasser as literally the new Hitler when they had become upset about the Suez Canal (real title from the NYTimes: "Nasser Is Hitler Imitator, France's Premier Charges"). It doesn't work that way.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1956/07/31/archives/nasser-is-hitler...
The idea of racial might has been disproven, but international might (including allies) very much still makes right. The undisputed winners of WWII were the USSR and the US, both with internationalist ideologies and very strong industrial bases. One might say that inclusive might makes right. (Another lesson would be to stay out of the fight and build up industrial capacity, supporting your allies by proxy while the other parties wear themselves down.)
One of these states collapsed and was replaced by nation-states which are more or less inclusive of minorities, more or less democratic; some very much so, others not at all. The other, although it still projects power around the world, is riven by internal dissent and the type of self-questioning of its own history and validity that would never fly in a nationalist, expansionist, authoritarian state like Germany or Japan during the war.
Some people think that's a sign of weakness for the US, but since the US's hold on the world hasn't lapsed perhaps we should consider it a sign of strength. In that case it's not just inclusive might, but self-reflection against the foundations of "might" that lets one write and rewrite history by appealing to people stuck in less flexible systems.