Hacker News Reader

Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

The end of the US hegemony and the unstable regime in the US makes decoupling the best strategy.

> unstable

Well. Not sure. Untrustable system, maybe. (The whole chain that brought to this stage is improper - and the damaging factors are still active.)

Edit: Again. First, that the current regime in the usa would be unstable is an idea to be justified. Especially given the efforts made before the 2024 elections already to plan its stabilization.

Then, from a system engineering perspective, the political system in the usa remains broken by design. See the 2000 elections as a strong demonstration.

Then, if there have been progress to fix the issues, show it.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573845

You’re not sure that Trump is unstable?

I take it that you are joking ;)

I am not sure that the regime they have created will disappear with their fronter.

Oh I see. Well these do seem like end times for US democracy, very similar to the fall of Rome. So yes the problems are broader than Trump and probably won’t end with him, but he is the most dangerous character so far and I’m entirely unsurprised that other countries are disengaging

As we’ve seen from the violated norms so far and the attack on the capital building, it would not be a big step to dictatorship disguised as firm leadership in time of war or civil disturbance.

Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? Or are we pretending someone else might somehow hold that position?

China is making trade deals and integration left and right and even Canada and Mexico are looking in other directions and cooperate more closely with china and eu. Maybe not a single power has to hold power

Even Canada and Mexico aren't stupid enough to align with China, and if you think a power vacuum will simply exist and remain in balance in perpetuity, I've got a bridge to sell you.

If you're just talking about the relatively brief period before it's clear who will emerge as the default hegemony, I don't really care about that period and am discussing after.

Nothing says a hegemony has to form, this is not a given. Power vacuums can be filled by different actors at once.

The end of hegemony isn’t usually immediately followed by the appointment of a new leader, usually it means fragmented power and war.

Yes, China is a likely eventual successor and in some parts is the world has replaced the US in being the influential superpower.

Nobody appointed the US leader of the world, what are you talking about? It's just a matter of "whoever is most powerful and influential". There's no war needed, and the US never conquered the planet.

I'm not doubting that China is the likely eventual successor, I'm doubting that they can succeed anything at this particular point in time. Nobody wants China in charge. It would make any issues experienced with the US in charge like a joke. Maybe once their dictator dies?

> Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony?

No, not really. For now we are headed towards a multipolar world rather than a hegemony.

China has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.

I think it will change.

China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.

Next it will go for Taiwan.

Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.

At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.

Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.

Everyone is just gonna stop trying to acquire influence for some reason...? Or do you just think that, for some reason, this would now magically balance itself out any time any world leader thinks "wow that's a huge vacuum that needs filling!"

Empires expand when the benefit exceeds the cost. The US is currently doing quite poorly against Iran. The US military is not incompetent, nor is the Iranian army supercompetent, so why? It's technology. The traditional way the US invaded countries was by assassinating the leadership, gaining air superiority, and then basically playing shoot fish in a barrel.

Iran, and likely all major US adversaries now, were/are fully prepared for the US assassinations. And gaining full air superiority is no longer possible in the era of drones, because you're no longer shooting down a small number of high value targets (like planes), but instead a practically infinite amount of low value targets that can be readily replenished.

Spending interceptors that cost millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost thousands of dollars just doesn't work. We might be able to obtain air superiority in terms of e.g. Iran being unable to fly fighter jets over their own country, but that says nothing about their ability to launch endless drones and otherwise inflict a severe toll on any invading army.

So it's likely that modern war has mostly gone back to times long since past where the bottleneck is no longer cost in $$, but cost in lives. And that makes militarism far less attractive for every single country, even moreso in the era of plummeting fertility rates when the people who are going to be killed are precisely those who are supposed to be birthing and raising your next generation.

So there will certainly be wars when nations see the benefit as being especially high, but I think the idea of trying to casually 'project strength' half way around the globe is probably already dead. The cost is too high, and the benefit too low.

This entire statement relies on the idea that world leaders are highly rational actors, which they absolutely are not.

It does not, because it imposes extrinsic constraints on what is possible. Iran is imposing a severe cost on the US. It doesn't matter what the US wants to do. When such a relatively minor power is able to extract such a high price, it limits what we can do. Ukraine was probably a big mistake, because it's the first time in modern history that the US got involved in a relatively large scale conflict against a peer level power. That severely damaged the perception of Western weaponry, training, and technology as being superhuman in capability. The US was obviously banking on Iran not counter-attacking out of fear, and that might have indeed been the outcome prior to Ukraine.

What little rational justification for Iran there was, probably rested in some part on trying to undo the perceptual damage to the US military tech by scoring a quick victory over a minor power. But the catastrophe that has unfolded there has essentially nailed the coffin shut on any concept of military superiority, let alone dominance. This doesn't mean that the US will just completely surrender Taiwan or whatever, but rather that it's clear to every single world power that such claims of protection are now just empty rhetoric. And that's almost certainly going to be acknowledged frankly between nations in private discussions going forward.

Those intrinsic costs are still muddled within digital payment systems which represent nothing tangible. You can take loans out from world banks, you can run your country into slavery, or you can do a million other things you want which are irrational but still overcome these nonexistent constraints. Do you think the US is printing out a dollar for every single bill they pay? Do you not understand that the US is currently trillions of dollars in debt? Do you not see how constraints are, at best, suggestions enforced only when the majority agrees something is not worth profiting off of?

What do you mean it doesn't matter what the US wants to do? The US doesn't want to go into another war. One man at the top forcing his army against their will and advice to do something is simply obedience, not a sign of what a country wants anyways.

Nobody wants this in the US, and it's why even traditionally extremely neutral outlets like Reuters and AP News are willing to state that Trump is currently deeply unpopular with Republicans.

Pay attention, and let go of your strawmen, I beg of you.

You're not seeing the big picture. The US is losing in Iran. How can that change? It would require a ground invasion. The losses there would easily be in the tens of thousands, and very likely order(s) of magnitude higher. And at the end, it's reasonably doubtful that even that would be successful.

So on the cost the constraint is not just in dollars, but blood. Although even in dollars - I'd also observe another issue. Inflation and money printing is making money increasingly meaningless, but 'things' are not. You can fart a quadrillion dollars into existence, but you can't fart a trillion artillery shells into existence. During WW2 certain metals became so scarce that we started making nickels out of silver and pennies out of steel to have more copper and nickel for war purposes.

The US is already blowing through massive resources against Iran, and we'd likely need orders of magnitude more for a ground war. These sort of resources simply do not exist, and arguably cannot exist. The defender has always had an easier time in war, but drones have bumped up this power by orders of magnitude. Decentralize your drone production, organize your military to prepare for assassinations, ensure significant decentralized under-ground logistics and production facilities, and you're basically good to go.

I don't really understand what you think I'm straw manning. We're disagreeing while agreeing in a way that's slightly bemusing to me.

Europe-China trade has already overtaken the US. If only you knew how bad things really are...

As for hegemony? Well the Chinese actually don't want to be world police.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com