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Piwin -> RE: Mars, do we really need to go there? (Feb. 27 2025 23:30:11)
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I'm not sure what you mean by negative leverage, but I can assure you that the intent wasn't to be critical of you. In fact I've done my best to leave politics out of it, and that was rather the point. Stephen told me to spare him the "sanctimonious laundry lists of the sins of the evil capitalists", presumably implying that my posts here were ideological in nature, along with the usual strawman of what he thinks my politics involve. Perhaps "begrudge" wasn't the right word, but I brought up our political differences (in my view our politics are fundamentally at odds with one another) simply to point out that the reason I was posting here wasn't to hash out those political differences, but rather to focus on narrower, factual points of disagreement where I thought I could add some nuance.
For the specific factual points, I can simply refer back to your own words:
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Well, "free trade" gets a bad rap because many mistakenly think it has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing and the loss of American jobs.
I argued that this was factually incorrect, at least from the perspective of what economics as a profession has to say about it today. As one example, the paper I mentioned from Autor, Dorn and Hanson is widely cited and seems to be quite respected in the profession. It certainly doesn't rule out automation and other factors as contributing to the loss of American jobs, but as far as I can tell it is factually incorrect to say that people "mistakenly" believe free trade has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing. That belief is in fact correct. There can be errors in the weight we assign to different factors, but that doesn't rule out the factors themselves.
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She at least supports Ukraine in its war with Russia, and she supports the NATO alliance. The far right in Germany and France, both gaining strength, supports neither that I can see.
I argued that this should also be nuanced from a factual perspective, at least as far as the French far-right is concerned. But perhaps I misread you. In my book, when a party argues that we should keep arming Ukraine with some qualifications on long-range weaponry and that we should remain in NATO, just not in the Integrated Command, as has been the case for over 4 decades up until 2009, that cannot be accurately described as "support(ing) neither". So I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that you thought the RN was against arming Ukraine and was pushing for leaving NATO, both of which would be factually incorrect at this point in time (or at least at the time I wrote that post).
None of that hinges on our political inclinations, neither mine, yours or Stephen's. The same concern about facts drove my response to Stephen about Europe. Missing the larger trend of deteriorating trans-Atlantic IR over the past two decades and attributing all of it to Trump will only lead to an incorrect analysis, and in turn solutions that won't work. In my view, the facts point to a broader trend, which is that, after a short-lived grace period in the 90s, trans-Atlantic IR have become tenser and tenser ever since, almost consistently. More speculatively, I attribute the seeming ignorance of that trend in the US to the "autism of great powers". None of that hinges on any of our political inclinations either.
So, what I think about your politics and whether or not I have an accurate understanding of them isn't particularly relevant to the point I was making. However, since you asked me to describe what I think your positions are, it's only fair that I do so. So here it is, along with my own for contrast:
From our discussions here over the years, I think your economic assumptions could be broadly qualified as neo-classical. On free trade and globalization, you would align more closely with a Krugman than a Stiglitz, and probably very little with an Amartya Sen. I would align more closely with a Stiglitz, and even more closely with a Sen. A Krugman makes me want to pull my hair out. To use the famous aphorism, I think the rising tide has sunk a lot of ships, whereas you think it lifts all of them.
As most in foreign service (in my experience of it), you see states - at least the democratic ones - as being the expression of the cumulative interests of the people who are part of them, which you are in turn representing on the international stage as a professional working in the foreign service. I would disagree with that assumption about the nature of states. Related to that, you value primacy to an extent that I don't. I.e. in key areas what's important is not just that the US does alright independently of what others do; it's also important that the US maintains a position of leadership. Of course that's quite different from the zero-sum "America first" program and there's plenty of room for cooperation and non-zero-sum games in your approach, but from my perspective, at its core it shares the same fundamental mistake as MAGA's approach to IR, granting far too much importance to primacy as a means of securing national interests, and assuming that "national interests" is even a viable concept to begin with.
And lastly, I would qualify your positions as being in essence technocratic, though you might disagree with that specific term. "Populism" shouldn't be trusted not because politicians lie and scheme, but because, in matters of statecraft, the people don't know what is good for them and they are best governed by experts to whom they should delegate decisionary authority. It remains democratic in the sense that the people get some choice in whom they delegate to, but top-down hierarchy is vital to the functioning of society. If we were talking Plato, you would say that he's right and the ship needs a captain. I would say throw the captain overboard.
If anything in how I characterised your positions is incorrect, then of course I'll stand corrected and apologise for the mistake. I don't think any of that matters to the discussion at hand, and I hope you might charitably chalk it up to a clumsy use of the term "begrudge", since my point was certainly not to deride your political assumptions, but simply to point out that I think they're radically different from my own.
One thing you said where I am 100% in agreement with you is this:
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My concern is, even if federal judges rule against him, who is going to enforce their ruling?
Which is why Stephen's assurance that the US won't invade Canada is probably no solace to our Canadian friends. But there too I'm happy to stand corrected. From my perspective, I'm not even sure that the rapidly declining approval ratings of Trump matter at all for what comes next. Without a show of force, peaceful or otherwise, I'm not sure what could prevent him and his goons from bulldozing their way through the entire democratic architecture of the country, and possibly of other areas of the world. It's both tragic and bewildering to witness, even from half a world away, so presumably much more so up close...
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