What would a post-dollar world look like? Would the U.S. collapse into a slightly-less-dysfunctional version of the EU? Or split into a bunch of separate countries Eastern Europe-style? For the former, how would the U.S. state legitimate itself? I can't be the only one to have noticed that basically no one in America younger than 50 really believes the U.S. state is legitimate. How do we convince people (especially educated elites) that being part of a territorial liberal nation-state is worth the emotional sacrifices it imposes (e.g. why should e.g. pro-life and pro-choice people tolerate living in the same country, or secularists and people of faith, or so-called "creative class" professionals and old-style industrialists, etc)?
We seem to in the middle of a "hateful awakening" where the greater contact engendered by social media is causing lots of Americans to realize that, actually, they really really hate each other.
One other point that bears mention: How much do we really know about political, economic and social conditions inside China? Recall that back in the Cold War era, Western intelligence on the economic condition of the USSR turned out to be quite wrong. Can it be safely assumed that we're not simply "making a picture," as Napoleon put it, that matches our assumptions?
Martin Jacques's argument is very reminiscent of arguments once made on behalf of the late, unlamented USSR. Back then there were people called "Sovietologists"—learned scholars, eminent in their field—who preached a similar gospel. That they almost unanimously failed to grasp the true nature of the Soviet regime or notice the USSR’s gradual decline and decay, should serve as a cautionary tale for those who see China as the coming global hegemon.
We are in for a rude awakening when China is number one and we plunge to number two. China is far and away the single most racist nation in the world. Those woke academics who think that math is inherently racist (you would be amazed how many members of the Harvard faculty actually believe this) are in for a shock when China is the world’s hegemon. They will get to see what racism really is.
The United States may still boast that the world’s greatest brands are ours, but we don’t actually make much anymore. When it comes to world power, software simply can’t compete with hardware. Forget about going to Mars; if China beats us in 5G (a foregone conclusion) and supercomputing, we’re toast.
Cosmopolitan globalists don’t seem to be reflective enough to understand that the ideology they promote is as responsible as anything else for the decline of the west. The United States and Western Europe can’t survive the death of Christianity yet cosmopolitans and globalists eschew religion in favor of secularism. Cosmopolitan elites at western universities obsess about the politically correct usage of pronouns, the number of genders that characterize our species and where various races, creeds, sexual identities and disability status fall along the grim spectrum of oppression. Do our cosmopolitan friends really believe that Chinese students and faculty focus on the same obsessions or do they suppose Chinese educational institutions have more material concerns.
Cosmopolitan globalists are centralizers who don’t realize that the more centralized a system is, the more fragile it is. While the Chinese, Russians, Turks, Israelis and maybe the Indians tend to be chauvinistic to one degree or another about their culture, globalists find this chauvinism both primitive and repulsive. Who do these globalists believe is more likely to thrive, societies that believe their culture is special and unique or societies that believe their culture is so racist, homophobic, transphobic and bigoted in numerous other ways that the only credible response is self-hatred? Sadly, cosmopolitan globalists mostly number themselves among the later not the former.
The authors of this article are right; the United States and Western Europe are declining. Trump’s supporters may have been uneducated deplorables, but it’s not them who are killing the West, globalist cosmopolitans are doing that all by themselves. Sadly, the wounds are entirely self-inflicted.
One last thing, Claire, there is one major difference between Taipei and Tallinn on the one hand and Tel Aviv on the other. The nation where Tel Aviv is to be found has a substantial nuclear arsenal and sophisticated means for delivering those weapons. The nations where the other two cities are located don’t.
That means that while Israel is not facing existential risk, Taiwan and the Baltic nations are. If Taiwan is smart they will develop an independent and credible nuclear deterrent very soon; sheltering under the U.S. nuclear umbrella no longer passes the smell test.
Of course, given their druthers, globalist cosmopolitans would never recommend that Taiwan develop its own nuclear deterrent and they would writhe with delight if Israel gave up its nuclear arsenal. It’s just one more example of how cosmopolitan globalists are their own worst enemy.
In response to Claire and Owen Lewis: I have some additional thoughts on China’s space program. If you look closely beneath the surface I would argue China’s advances in Space are in fact weaker than they appear. China’s first manned space mission was back in 2003. This was in fact from a technological perspective essentially the same level of advancement for China as the US was at in 1962 during John Glenn’s orbital flight. Now for the US within 6 years of Glenn’s flight there was the Apollo 8 flight around the moon(which should have happened in 2009 if China was on the same pace as the US was) and within 7 years(2010) Armstrong had landed on the Moon. In fact on the US timeline at this point China should have gotten “bored” from going to moon too often and be moving on the first Space Shuttle launch THIS year. Again this isn’t taking into account that with all the advances in computers and technology this whole process should have been spread up considerably for China. So overall I wouldn’t get too excited about China’s “rapid” progress in Space.
Now to be totally fair about this rate of technological advancement of mankind generally leading up to Armstrong’s landing. Remember we as a human race went from the Wright Brothers to Armstrong within the same lifetime of quite a few people or even more specially as Elon Musk’s top technical adviser Tom Mueller once said we went from Goddard to Armstrong in just a little over 40 years(Mueller was point out even a few years ago during an interview that more time has passed between the last moon landing and today than it took to get from Goddard model rockets to Armstrong landing on the moon. I will also add in the same timeline for the US we also launched the Voyager probes still in operation which are the first man-made objects to leave the Solar System.
**Another aside is there are increasingly credible claims that the USSR was far closer to the US in getting to the moon first than has previously been reported but that is another story. There is actually a whole TV Show on Apple TV called For All Mankind based on this premise created by Star Trek writers Ron Moore and Mike Okuda along with former NASA Astronaut and another Elon Musk/SpaceX lieutenant named Garrett Reisman.
Nukes are largely irrelevant. For one thing, there's no reason to believe that the men of the PRC government think like we do and care about lives lost in the exchange, so long as they win the war. And yes, two things: nuclear war is most assuredly winnable in the near term, and second, even in a MAD scenario, who does anyone think would recover first and become the superior power between the two--the nation so dependent on its high economic and technology level, or the nation not so exalted?
Aside from that, a nuclear war, or any sort of invasion--cyber or otherwise--of the US is unnecessary for the PRC to conquer us, which they've set out as their goal in the near- to mid-term. One flash point--and its breaking the wrong way eliminates all of the gradualism of the OP commentary--is the Republic of China.
The PRC decides it will invade the RoC, does so, and wins, whether it defeats our Navy or we just sit by clucking and shaking our fingers very firmly at the PRC's bad deed. What results is this:
it will have destroyed the Republic of China and regained the island.
With that, it will have humiliated us, driving us from the western Pacific, opening up the Republic of Korea and Japan—hated enemies—to tacit, if not explicit, control, and putting Southeast Asia, which it has failed repeatedly in invading, under its thumb.
And gained control of the South China Sea shipping lanes, further strangling the RoK and Japan, and inflicting sufficient economic damage on us as to be able to control, in large part, our behavior.
That evolution would occur over a short few years--well within the lifetime of one generation.
Those may well be goals, in PRC eyes, worth spending a bit of political and economic capital, even lives, to attain.
The PRC certainly is building, as fast as it can, a military capability designed for the purpose. The PRC, to repeat, also has the stated goal of replacing, in the near-to-medium term, us as the sole world power.
The sole world power. Being number two is not materially different from a conquered territory of the PRC.
1. In response to Jon Nighswander: While I expect the US Dollar to continue as a "major" global currency I think the story of the Euro and EU capital markets is still yet to be written especially post Brexit. In fact I am myself working on possibly writing an article on what the future might hold in this department.
2. In response to Jon Nighswander again: I hate when people use the term Anglosphere. What exactly are they referring to. Is Quebec part of the Anglosphere? Anyways I think usage of the term Anglosphere is way overdone as in most major crisis of my lifetime the performance of the different countries that make up the Anglosphere supposedly is all over the place. Canada, New Zealand and Australia did much much better than say the UK and US during the 2008 Financial Crisis(France was somewhere in the middle). Only Iceland and Greece were probably dead last behind even the UK.
3. To everyone in general: I think the broader issue is not even so much Covid-19 related but the US has had an awful record of state failure now for almost 25 years(and perhaps going back even further). French people for example might like to complain about the poor performance of there government and rightfully so for example with Covid vaccinations but France for example I don't think you can say has had this constant of one blunder after another. The French state stopped what would have been a 9/11 style attack on Paris back in 1994 during the Air France flight 8969 hijacking, stayed out of the 2003 Iraq War and while really didn't do great during the 2008 crash probably performed as the best EU member state. To put it another way there is something very wrong when it costs 10 times as much to build a subway line in NYC as it does in Paris and this from perspective of Paris being city whose main airport CDG is hardly anyone's idea of great efficiency.
1. In response to Jon Nighswander: While I expect the US Dollar to continue as a "major" global currency I think the story of the Euro and EU capital markets is still yet to be written especially post Brexit. In fact I am myself working on possibly writing an article on what the future might hold in this department.
2. In response to Jon Nighswander again: I hate when people use the term Anglosphere. What exactly are they referring to. Is Quebec part of the Anglosphere? Anyways I think usage of the term Anglosphere is way overdone as in most major crisis of my lifetime the performance of the different countries that make up the Anglosphere supposedly is all over the place. Canada, New Zealand and Australia did much much better than say the UK and US during the 2008 Financial Crisis(France was somewhere in the middle). Only Iceland and Greece were probably dead last behind even the UK.
3. To everyone in general: I think the broader issue is not even so much Covid-19 related but the US has had an awful record of state failure now for almost 25 years(and perhaps going back even further). French people for example might like to complain about the poor performance of there government and rightfully so for example with Covid vaccinations but France for example I don't think you can say has had this constant of one blunder after another. The French state stopped what would have been a 9/11 style attack on Paris back in 1994 during the Air France flight 8969 hijacking, stayed out of the 2003 Iraq War and while really didn't do great during the 2008 crash probably performed as the best EU member state. To put it another way there is something very wrong when it costs 10 times as much to build a subway line in NYC as it does in Paris and this from perspective of Paris being city whose main airport CDG is hardly anyone's idea of great efficiency.
Well an initial response to Toomas comment about France's decline from Great Power status is obviously one solution for the US to preserve "Great Power" status would be to merge or become part of a larger entity such as the European Union. While this might seem a shocking proposal so was the idea of France in the 1940s and 1950s becoming part of the ECSC and later the EEC. The second thing France did under Charles De Gaulle was basically make the decision that technological advancement both in civilian and military spheres(in particular the use of Atomic energy as a weapon, a source of naval propulsion, and a source of civilian) electricity was more important to Great Power status than the French colonial empire. A video I linked to below from France makes this argument. I guess an American response to this would be to cut back on land forces permanently based in Middle East instead invest more in space and naval forces.
Question: it appears to me that the Cosmopolitan Globalists frown upon China's recent pressure on Jack Ma. Claire, is this true? And if so, how would CG respond to Facebook listing its new banking company on NYSE, and this bank is not regulated by the Fed?
What would a post-dollar world look like? Would the U.S. collapse into a slightly-less-dysfunctional version of the EU? Or split into a bunch of separate countries Eastern Europe-style? For the former, how would the U.S. state legitimate itself? I can't be the only one to have noticed that basically no one in America younger than 50 really believes the U.S. state is legitimate. How do we convince people (especially educated elites) that being part of a territorial liberal nation-state is worth the emotional sacrifices it imposes (e.g. why should e.g. pro-life and pro-choice people tolerate living in the same country, or secularists and people of faith, or so-called "creative class" professionals and old-style industrialists, etc)?
We seem to in the middle of a "hateful awakening" where the greater contact engendered by social media is causing lots of Americans to realize that, actually, they really really hate each other.
One other point that bears mention: How much do we really know about political, economic and social conditions inside China? Recall that back in the Cold War era, Western intelligence on the economic condition of the USSR turned out to be quite wrong. Can it be safely assumed that we're not simply "making a picture," as Napoleon put it, that matches our assumptions?
From the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a grim premonition,
https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/digital-yuan-could-bust-the-united-states/
Martin Jacques's argument is very reminiscent of arguments once made on behalf of the late, unlamented USSR. Back then there were people called "Sovietologists"—learned scholars, eminent in their field—who preached a similar gospel. That they almost unanimously failed to grasp the true nature of the Soviet regime or notice the USSR’s gradual decline and decay, should serve as a cautionary tale for those who see China as the coming global hegemon.
Thunderdome
We are in for a rude awakening when China is number one and we plunge to number two. China is far and away the single most racist nation in the world. Those woke academics who think that math is inherently racist (you would be amazed how many members of the Harvard faculty actually believe this) are in for a shock when China is the world’s hegemon. They will get to see what racism really is.
The United States may still boast that the world’s greatest brands are ours, but we don’t actually make much anymore. When it comes to world power, software simply can’t compete with hardware. Forget about going to Mars; if China beats us in 5G (a foregone conclusion) and supercomputing, we’re toast.
Cosmopolitan globalists don’t seem to be reflective enough to understand that the ideology they promote is as responsible as anything else for the decline of the west. The United States and Western Europe can’t survive the death of Christianity yet cosmopolitans and globalists eschew religion in favor of secularism. Cosmopolitan elites at western universities obsess about the politically correct usage of pronouns, the number of genders that characterize our species and where various races, creeds, sexual identities and disability status fall along the grim spectrum of oppression. Do our cosmopolitan friends really believe that Chinese students and faculty focus on the same obsessions or do they suppose Chinese educational institutions have more material concerns.
Cosmopolitan globalists are centralizers who don’t realize that the more centralized a system is, the more fragile it is. While the Chinese, Russians, Turks, Israelis and maybe the Indians tend to be chauvinistic to one degree or another about their culture, globalists find this chauvinism both primitive and repulsive. Who do these globalists believe is more likely to thrive, societies that believe their culture is special and unique or societies that believe their culture is so racist, homophobic, transphobic and bigoted in numerous other ways that the only credible response is self-hatred? Sadly, cosmopolitan globalists mostly number themselves among the later not the former.
The authors of this article are right; the United States and Western Europe are declining. Trump’s supporters may have been uneducated deplorables, but it’s not them who are killing the West, globalist cosmopolitans are doing that all by themselves. Sadly, the wounds are entirely self-inflicted.
One last thing, Claire, there is one major difference between Taipei and Tallinn on the one hand and Tel Aviv on the other. The nation where Tel Aviv is to be found has a substantial nuclear arsenal and sophisticated means for delivering those weapons. The nations where the other two cities are located don’t.
That means that while Israel is not facing existential risk, Taiwan and the Baltic nations are. If Taiwan is smart they will develop an independent and credible nuclear deterrent very soon; sheltering under the U.S. nuclear umbrella no longer passes the smell test.
Of course, given their druthers, globalist cosmopolitans would never recommend that Taiwan develop its own nuclear deterrent and they would writhe with delight if Israel gave up its nuclear arsenal. It’s just one more example of how cosmopolitan globalists are their own worst enemy.
In response to Claire and Owen Lewis: I have some additional thoughts on China’s space program. If you look closely beneath the surface I would argue China’s advances in Space are in fact weaker than they appear. China’s first manned space mission was back in 2003. This was in fact from a technological perspective essentially the same level of advancement for China as the US was at in 1962 during John Glenn’s orbital flight. Now for the US within 6 years of Glenn’s flight there was the Apollo 8 flight around the moon(which should have happened in 2009 if China was on the same pace as the US was) and within 7 years(2010) Armstrong had landed on the Moon. In fact on the US timeline at this point China should have gotten “bored” from going to moon too often and be moving on the first Space Shuttle launch THIS year. Again this isn’t taking into account that with all the advances in computers and technology this whole process should have been spread up considerably for China. So overall I wouldn’t get too excited about China’s “rapid” progress in Space.
Now to be totally fair about this rate of technological advancement of mankind generally leading up to Armstrong’s landing. Remember we as a human race went from the Wright Brothers to Armstrong within the same lifetime of quite a few people or even more specially as Elon Musk’s top technical adviser Tom Mueller once said we went from Goddard to Armstrong in just a little over 40 years(Mueller was point out even a few years ago during an interview that more time has passed between the last moon landing and today than it took to get from Goddard model rockets to Armstrong landing on the moon. I will also add in the same timeline for the US we also launched the Voyager probes still in operation which are the first man-made objects to leave the Solar System.
**Another aside is there are increasingly credible claims that the USSR was far closer to the US in getting to the moon first than has previously been reported but that is another story. There is actually a whole TV Show on Apple TV called For All Mankind based on this premise created by Star Trek writers Ron Moore and Mike Okuda along with former NASA Astronaut and another Elon Musk/SpaceX lieutenant named Garrett Reisman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZS9M52Bd_w
Nukes are largely irrelevant. For one thing, there's no reason to believe that the men of the PRC government think like we do and care about lives lost in the exchange, so long as they win the war. And yes, two things: nuclear war is most assuredly winnable in the near term, and second, even in a MAD scenario, who does anyone think would recover first and become the superior power between the two--the nation so dependent on its high economic and technology level, or the nation not so exalted?
Aside from that, a nuclear war, or any sort of invasion--cyber or otherwise--of the US is unnecessary for the PRC to conquer us, which they've set out as their goal in the near- to mid-term. One flash point--and its breaking the wrong way eliminates all of the gradualism of the OP commentary--is the Republic of China.
The PRC decides it will invade the RoC, does so, and wins, whether it defeats our Navy or we just sit by clucking and shaking our fingers very firmly at the PRC's bad deed. What results is this:
it will have destroyed the Republic of China and regained the island.
With that, it will have humiliated us, driving us from the western Pacific, opening up the Republic of Korea and Japan—hated enemies—to tacit, if not explicit, control, and putting Southeast Asia, which it has failed repeatedly in invading, under its thumb.
And gained control of the South China Sea shipping lanes, further strangling the RoK and Japan, and inflicting sufficient economic damage on us as to be able to control, in large part, our behavior.
That evolution would occur over a short few years--well within the lifetime of one generation.
Those may well be goals, in PRC eyes, worth spending a bit of political and economic capital, even lives, to attain.
The PRC certainly is building, as fast as it can, a military capability designed for the purpose. The PRC, to repeat, also has the stated goal of replacing, in the near-to-medium term, us as the sole world power.
The sole world power. Being number two is not materially different from a conquered territory of the PRC.
Eric Hines
Some additional comments of mine as follows:
1. In response to Jon Nighswander: While I expect the US Dollar to continue as a "major" global currency I think the story of the Euro and EU capital markets is still yet to be written especially post Brexit. In fact I am myself working on possibly writing an article on what the future might hold in this department.
2. In response to Jon Nighswander again: I hate when people use the term Anglosphere. What exactly are they referring to. Is Quebec part of the Anglosphere? Anyways I think usage of the term Anglosphere is way overdone as in most major crisis of my lifetime the performance of the different countries that make up the Anglosphere supposedly is all over the place. Canada, New Zealand and Australia did much much better than say the UK and US during the 2008 Financial Crisis(France was somewhere in the middle). Only Iceland and Greece were probably dead last behind even the UK.
3. To everyone in general: I think the broader issue is not even so much Covid-19 related but the US has had an awful record of state failure now for almost 25 years(and perhaps going back even further). French people for example might like to complain about the poor performance of there government and rightfully so for example with Covid vaccinations but France for example I don't think you can say has had this constant of one blunder after another. The French state stopped what would have been a 9/11 style attack on Paris back in 1994 during the Air France flight 8969 hijacking, stayed out of the 2003 Iraq War and while really didn't do great during the 2008 crash probably performed as the best EU member state. To put it another way there is something very wrong when it costs 10 times as much to build a subway line in NYC as it does in Paris and this from perspective of Paris being city whose main airport CDG is hardly anyone's idea of great efficiency.
Some additional comments of mine as follows:
1. In response to Jon Nighswander: While I expect the US Dollar to continue as a "major" global currency I think the story of the Euro and EU capital markets is still yet to be written especially post Brexit. In fact I am myself working on possibly writing an article on what the future might hold in this department.
2. In response to Jon Nighswander again: I hate when people use the term Anglosphere. What exactly are they referring to. Is Quebec part of the Anglosphere? Anyways I think usage of the term Anglosphere is way overdone as in most major crisis of my lifetime the performance of the different countries that make up the Anglosphere supposedly is all over the place. Canada, New Zealand and Australia did much much better than say the UK and US during the 2008 Financial Crisis(France was somewhere in the middle). Only Iceland and Greece were probably dead last behind even the UK.
3. To everyone in general: I think the broader issue is not even so much Covid-19 related but the US has had an awful record of state failure now for almost 25 years(and perhaps going back even further). French people for example might like to complain about the poor performance of there government and rightfully so for example with Covid vaccinations but France for example I don't think you can say has had this constant of one blunder after another. The French state stopped what would have been a 9/11 style attack on Paris back in 1994 during the Air France flight 8969 hijacking, stayed out of the 2003 Iraq War and while really didn't do great during the 2008 crash probably performed as the best EU member state. To put it another way there is something very wrong when it costs 10 times as much to build a subway line in NYC as it does in Paris and this from perspective of Paris being city whose main airport CDG is hardly anyone's idea of great efficiency.
Well an initial response to Toomas comment about France's decline from Great Power status is obviously one solution for the US to preserve "Great Power" status would be to merge or become part of a larger entity such as the European Union. While this might seem a shocking proposal so was the idea of France in the 1940s and 1950s becoming part of the ECSC and later the EEC. The second thing France did under Charles De Gaulle was basically make the decision that technological advancement both in civilian and military spheres(in particular the use of Atomic energy as a weapon, a source of naval propulsion, and a source of civilian) electricity was more important to Great Power status than the French colonial empire. A video I linked to below from France makes this argument. I guess an American response to this would be to cut back on land forces permanently based in Middle East instead invest more in space and naval forces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcOT9pLSeUs&t=724s
Question: it appears to me that the Cosmopolitan Globalists frown upon China's recent pressure on Jack Ma. Claire, is this true? And if so, how would CG respond to Facebook listing its new banking company on NYSE, and this bank is not regulated by the Fed?