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Comment by poszlem | Hacker News Reader

I think the reason we can imagine conflict easier than peace is pretty structural. Wars usually happen because of disequilibrium, and we're sitting right in the middle of a big one.

The world order we know was built by and for the US when it was the uncontested superpower. Thats just not the case anymore. Countries that spent decades being the West's cheap labor pool have risen up, industrialized, built real militaries, and they are not going back to where they were. But the West isnt going to voluntarily get poorer to make room for them either. Both sides have real competing interests, this isnt some misunderstanding that better diplomacy can fix. Its a genuine redistribution problem.

Thats why peaceful outcomes are so hard to picture. They require everyone to accept losses and nobody is lining up for that.

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> US when it was the uncontested superpower.

significant parts of the current world order evolved when the US was very much a contested superpower, c/o the USSR. While many things have changed since the dissolution of the USSR, many things have remained the same.

Further, you can guarantee that if Russia had announced in the days of war rumors re: Iran that they would militarily (not just intelligence & logistics, if stories are to be believed) support Iran, the US would likely not have attacked in anything like this way. That they did not doesn't mean that the US is "uncontested", merely that Russia wasn't interested in that sort of positioning of its own (nuclear) military threat over US action in Iran.

Russia has its own war, they can not afford to militarily support Iran or other countries. They do not have the troops, weapons or money.

And they would totally not enter a nuclear war with US for Iran.

Totally agreed on the last line, but my point was that just because Russia wouldn't do that doesn't mean that the US is "uncontested" at this point.

I don't think there are major unresolved economic tensions between US and Iran or the likes. US isn't, somehow, mad because Iran or Venezuela are suddenly very rich and prosperous and independent - that simply isn't true.

The closest to your dynamic would be that between US and China, and those two aren't at war as of yet. Iran is vaguely supported by China, but it's a low level of support, and it isn't China's proxy.

One theory is that control over Venezuelan and Iranian oil is a means of constricting Chinese economic competition.

It definitely is control over the currency in which oil is traded.

Yes that's the "it actually makes sense" the more repugnant conservative pundits have been pushing because those guest spots on the right wing networks require you not to criticize the administration in any way.

Trump may be a violent moron, but this goes back further. US sanctions and intimidation of Iran and Venezuela has been supported by both parties when in power. It's a US regime thing, not a party/administration thing (that stuff is for the mugs who believe they have a democracy).

The US relationship with China is fascinating. My entire life it has both been an economic boogeyman, the nation nipping at our heels, and yet also the manufacturing engine powering everything out companies were creating.

Ignoring the one sided benefits of that even though you shouldn't it kind of reminds me maybe of the US and Britains relations?

Not a 1:1 but the continental separation, the "greed" of external companies trying to exploit the natural resources and work force.

And yet we're allies today.

If you're interested in the topic I'd highly advise checking out Sarah Paine and her lectures. An interesting view point of Mao and the rise of China.

>The world order we know was built by and for the US when it was the uncontested superpower.

You mean after the fall of the Soviet Union? Because Soviet Union used to contest US power.

>Countries that spent decades being the West's cheap labor pool have risen up, industrialized, built real militaries, and they are not going back to where they were. But the West isnt going to voluntarily get poorer to make room for them either.

So you believe relations between countries are a 0 sum game?

The soviet union did not contest that order so much as exist outside of it. When it collapsed, those institutions didn't change they just lost their counterweight.

aggregate economic growth is positive sum, but the things that actually matter in geopolitics, namely who controls chokepoints, who sets standards, whose currency denominates trade, who has military primacy in a given region are zero-sum or close to it. china getting richer grows the pie. china getting rich enough to contest US naval dominance in the South China Sea does not. both are happening simultaneously. pointing at the first doesn't make the second disappear.

>But the West isnt going to voluntarily get poorer to make room for them either.

How is it that Hacker News people can be so smart on tech, yet lack Econ 101 understanding that the world is not a zero-sum place? The pie can grow for everyone.

Why do you suppose that the World Bank and the IMF make loans to developing countries? Under a zero-sum frame, wouldn't it be better to keep them underfoot by denying them credit?

Before you complain about someones economic knowledge, you must first learn that while econ 101 tells you trade creates surplus, econ 301 tells you the distribution of that surplus is a power struggle.

The World Bank/IMF were designed to integrate developing countries into a system on WESTERN TERMS as suppliers of raw materials and labour, as markets for Western goods, as borrowers denominated in dollars. The loans weren't charity but architecture. They worked great as long as the recipients stayed in their lane. The tension now is precisely that countries like China used that system to climb the ladder and are now competing for the parts of the pie that were never supposed to be on the table, semiconductor fabs, AI leadership, alternative financial infrastructure, military projection in their own regions.

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