A global order is a description of the global decision space such that for any given location and for any specific issue, there is a ranking of agents in order of decisiveness. Obviously, each such ranking may be contested at any point by various actors or interest groups or forces more vague and difficult to specify.
In international relations, the security dilemma (also referred to as the spiral model) is when the increase in one state's security (such as increasing its military strength) leads other states to fear for their own security (because they do not know if the security-increasing state intends to use its growing military for offensive purposes).[1] Consequently, security-increasing measures can lead to tensions, escalation or conflict with one or more other parties, producing an outcome which no party truly desires (Wikipedia)
This concept had relevance in the Bretton Woods world where nations enjoyed greater economic sovereignty and trade and capital flows were managed within hegemonic blocks- the dollar zone, sterling zone, Communist zone etc.Dani Rodrik tries to relate what we are currently seeing- which is the adjustment of the Global Order to the West's having done nothing but stupid shit for more than two decades and thus the West's having lost both dominance and hegemony- to some narrow 'security dilemma' which never existed because post-war conflict was ideological, not economic at all.
Rodrik writes in Project Syndicate (which has ably curated the stupidity of the class of 'public intellectuals who have led us down the garden path)
The global order we are leaving behind rested on the premise that the world could rely on economic interests – mostly of large corporations, banks, and investors based in the US and Western Europe – to spread prosperity and mitigate conflict.
This is nonsense. The United Fruit Company was the last MNC which could topple Governments- but only in banana republics. Allende wasn't really brought down by CocaCola.
It was obvious, in the Nineties, that just bringing in McDonalds and City Bank wouldn't constitute a Marshall Plan. In any case, 'appropriable control rights' went to 'oligarchs' or specific mercantile communities subject to greater or lesser scrutiny or extortion by the holder of 'residuary control rights'. What was not obvious till about 2007 was that 'investors based in the US etc' were as stupid as shit. Their Governments had to take on the downside risk and allow recycling of Chinese, but also Russian, ASEAN, OPEC and other surpluses under liquid trap conditions- i.e. with no significant upgrade in indigenous infrastructure.
Why does Rodrik think 'prosperity mitigates conflict'? America is prosperous. That's why it keeps starting stupid wars all over the place. Fear of being nuked, however, can keep a check on the belligerence of the prosperous.
As middle and rising powers such as Russia and China
Russia defeated Napoleon and Hitler. But China was a top power long before the very word Russia existed. Why does Rodrik speak of such countries as 'middle' when they are in the Security Council? China is rising. But Russia has fallen in recent decades and though stronger, it is far from certain that it really has risen back to anything like the force it once represented. But then Tzar Nicholas looked like the master of Eastern Europe in 1848- able to prevent Revolution and thus preserve Hapsburg and Honenzollern power. By 1857, this bulwark of reaction had been humbled by France and Britain- a self-defeating move as became obvious in 1870 to the French- who being French could ignore the obvious- but also to the Brits in 1914- who being Brits obviously felt it good form to make the same obvious mistake by pushing the Bolsheviks first towards the Turks and then towards revanchist Germany.
became richer, they would become more like “the West,” and the imperatives of geopolitical competition would give way to the search for gains from trade.
The notion of 'gains from trade' is associated with Ricardian comparative advantage. However, it says nothing about rent extraction or just grabbing territory and enslaving or ethnically cleansing the locals regardless of their opportunity cost ratios.
Rodrik is writing this stupid shite because teaching Econ has made him as stupid as shit.
While free-market economists supplied the old order’s founding narrative, geopolitical “realists” will most shape the coming order.
Very true. A guy who says 'We can't really have a picnic outside coz it's raining cats and dogs' plays a big role in shaping the weather.
The fact is crazy sociopaths may shape the coming order by killing millions here or impoverishing billions there. Realists may save our skins by telling us not to get involved, but that doesn't really amount to 'shaping' anything of consequence.
And the picture they paint is not pretty: a world of zero-sum great-power competition where the quest for national security, inevitable uncertainty about adversaries’ motives, and the absence of a global rule enforcer lead to mostly conflict rather than cooperation.
Who the fuck is painting any such picture? It is obvious that China appreciates Putin's ability to prop up existing regimes from Kazakhstan to Belarus. This does not mean China is not as appalled as the rest of us by what is happening in Ukraine- indeed, I suspect, they get more queasy about the bombing of maternity hospitals and so forth precisely because their political philosophy features humanistic utilitarianism not eschatological theism- however, they have gained a vast bounty in terms of assured supply- indeed, captive supply- of cheap energy and raw materials and agricultural products. Moreover, Germany and Netherlands etc will lose very high value adding capital good export markets to China. Finally, Putin's 'passionary' Slavo-Turanian ideology, created by Anna Akhmatova's son, is now both complementary and subordinate to Han Civilization values in an unprecedented manner.
On the other hand, the Ukraine crisis has brought a 'hawk' to power in South Korea. But this is also a guy who opposes even very basic justice for women. How long will he last? In any case, if Putin takes his time pulverizing Ukraine there will be a demonstration effect on small nations. The question is whether Putin can survive to do so. However if he falls, or even if he stays but some of his loyalist oligarchs are brought down by a younger generation of patriotic siloviki- i.e. military or intelligence 'strongmen'- then China may still want to diversify supply chains. But this also means leaving a vacuum to its West which could be even more dangerous. Thus the overall effect of the Ukraine horror show is to solder together an increasingly interdependent Eurasian bloc.
Rodrik asks
In such a world, the dominant question facing the West is how to contain Russia and China. Is it possible to drive a wedge between them?
Trump tried this by blowing kisses to Putin while farting loudly at Xi. But Biden can't conceal the fact that he hates them both. However, he is content to do his hating while running tearfully away from any conflict with them.
Or should the West accommodate Russia’s goals in Europe in order to form a common front with it against the more potent economic and technological challenge posed by China?
But Russia's goals in Europe were complementary with China's. Indeed, an EU state could serve both masters.
All other matters, including trade, investment, climate change, global poverty, and public health, become subordinate to these questions.
It would be terrible if this were the only alternative to the unfulfilled expectations of the “liberal international order.” Luckily, it is not. It is possible to create a prosperous and stable world order while remaining realistic about the nature of great-power competition.
There is no way to prevent stupid shit being done by stupid shitheads.
But whether we can achieve such an arrangement depends on how countries pursue their national-security goals, and on the stories they tell about themselves and their adversaries
is a stupid story told by a stupid shithead.
The central conceptual framework that informs realist thinkers is the “security dilemma.” The idea explains why a system in which major powers emphasize their national security can be fundamentally fragile. Because it is impossible to distinguish defensive from offensive measures, attempts by each side to become more secure simply add to the insecurity of the other, triggering countermeasures that sustain the vicious cycle.
Fragility arises in the absence of anti-fragility- i.e. 'robust' or 'trembling hand' equilibria which aren't too greatly perturbed by stupid shit. The problem is that if doing stupid shit is the outcome of any and every election result then anti-fragility requires an ever diminishing role for the stupid shithead. In America, stupidity is assured by Congress undercutting the President. Obama opposed the Magnitsky Act. Congress tied Trump's hands on Putin.
There is a more fundamental problem facing signal extraction for correlated equilibria when 'virtue signals' relate to mutually incompossible Structural Causal Models of a deterministic type. Essentially, signals genuinely are from different universes though univocal in this world. Thus they create a discoordination game- all sides gain most by interacting less with those they feel are different.
Here, Globalization would be a perverse outcome. Indeed, 'realism' as the perspective of the arbitrageur class, would appear immoral or meretricious.
Realists would argue that something akin to the security dilemma was at play in the run-up to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Military interventions in Kazakhstan and Belarus preceded it. Looking at the map, it is obvious that there was a strategic motive and a closing window of opportunity. What if Biden died and somebody with balls became Pres?
No doubt Rodrik is correct to think that Putin was wetting the bed due to 'security dilemma' arising out of the fact that Ukraine was had a professional comedian as a leader. Another name for comedian is 'clown'. Have you seen 'It'? Pennywise the clown is ruling You Cranium what if he shows up in Me Cranium? I'll fudge my parents for sure and then all the other Tyrants will laugh at me.
Ukraine, and the West in general, perceived the country’s incorporation into a Western economic sphere and possibly a Western military alliance as largely bolstering its economy and security. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, saw these moves as inimical to Russia’s security interests.
Also he wanted some cool real estate them You Craniums have.
If this seems outlandish, the argument goes, consider how the US would react if, say, Mexico were to contemplate a military alliance with Russia.
No. Consider how the US would feel if Russia supplied a Mexican cartel with nuclear weapons. Putin has already said he won't rule out supplying Cuba and Venezeula with nukes. The real fun starts when a cartel can nuke US cities.
But a lot about this realist explanation, and in the security-dilemma framework in general, hinges on how countries think about their national-security goals, and the effectiveness of alternative mechanisms for achieving them. A country that invested all its resources in military capabilities and neglected to build up its economy and strengthen its institutions would not be very secure in the long run – even if it started out as a global power.
Nonsense! It can keep grabbing territory and extorting money.
South Korea provides an instructive example.
Fuck off! It always had twice the population of the North. The trouble was that it was actually more corrupt and initially had worse leadership. The existential threat it faced had to do with Uncle Sam maybe deciding to make Japan its local franchise and washing its hands off the Koreans as a bunch of stupid wankers. Thankfully, Korea got a ruthless dictator who listened to Irma Adelman and then discovered that his people were happy to work harder than the Japs in export industries so as to show they weren't actually genetically inferior at all. Still, it is a deeply divided country. The good news is that Ukraine has helped a young right-wing nutter become President. He hates affirmative action so women are sure to make actual, as opposed to token, progress during his presidency. One needful measure is conscription being extended to women. Also Biden will probably bottle it on THAAD or whatever so South Korea is not in any greater danger.
In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, the country focused on its military buildup against North Korea.
It focused on being corrupt and factionalist. Syngman Rhee had as many American degrees as Nkrumah and was about as much of a cretin.
But as the US began to reduce its military and economic assistance in the early 1960s, South Korea’s leadership changed course, calculating that economic strength through export-oriented industrialization would provide a better bulwark against a potentially belligerent northern neighbor.
Which had half their fucking population! The fact is Communism in the Fifties compared favorably with corrupt 'Democracy'. However Koreans like competition. They fucking excel at it. This is a Squid Game nation. The export sector was competitive and so the South Korean ethos was 'the Brits work eight hours a day. The Yanks work ten hours a day. The Japs can go twelve to sixteen hours a day. We will just sleep in the factory and average 20 hours a day! Whatever they do- be it ship-building or pop music- they just work harder and end up doing it better. But this remains a deeply divided society. Also it has the worst economists in the world. That's why it isn't a basket-case.
Likewise, it is not at all clear that Russia will be more secure if it achieves its immediate military goals in Ukraine but emerges from the conflict as an economic weakling cut off from Western technology and markets.
Either it can dominate Ukraine- where its soldiers can live off the land and make some money on the black market- or it can't dominate its own vast interior. Ultimately China will have to help. The hope is that, as in Afghanistan, the West pays for both its allies and its enemies.
Equally important are the stories that great powers tell themselves about their intentions, and how others perceive them.
The stories we tell ourselves are very important because...urm... narratives matter. They fight our wars and they clean our homes. Yet we discriminate against them- casually, unthinkingly. Take the story of Snow White and the 7 dwarves. Do you know that it had applied for a job as a postal carrier and was walking to the interview when it was shot four times in the back by an off duty police officer? The cop was drunk but he wasn't even charged because he explained he'd always found the story a little dark coz of his own recovered memories of sexual abuse by people of restricted growth.
US and European policymakers view themselves in the international arena as well-intentioned benign actors.
No. They view themselves as competing with each other for prizes of an essentially corrupt sort.
But when they talk about a “rules-based international order,” they forget how that order has been constructed to suit their own countries’ interests,
No. The 'rules' were constructed to fuck over the Unions and Lefty Local Governments in their own countries so that Money could globalize itself and buy mouthpieces of an unctuous sort from a corrupt Academia and a meretricious Media.
and overlook their various transgressions of it. They do not realize – or are puzzled by the fact – that ordinary people in many non-Western countries regard Western powers as opportunistic, hypocritical, and motivated purely by selfishness.
That shit doesn't matter. What matters is that the West is viewed as stupid and cowardly.
This sense of exceptionalism exacerbates the security dilemma, because it leaves little room for other powers’ legitimate security concerns when Western countries expand their military presence and wield economic influence.
But the West becomes safer when it shits itself, runs away, and then voluntarily dismantles its own soft-power and 'exorbitant' monetary privilege so as to make itself a less attractive target for subversion. The cool part of this is that it might genuinely become energy self-reliant and then focus on welfare enhancing, subsidiarity based, 'Tiebout sorting'- i.e. diversifying localized economies to cater to diverse life-styles associated with high value adding knowledge work. All of this will be underpinned by 3 D printing and cryptocurrency and other shit I don't understand.
While nothing might have guarded against Putin’s military adventurism, he feeds on many Russians’ hostile views of the West. Similarly, US attempts to exclude Chinese firms such as Huawei from global markets and deny them access to key inputs, ostensibly on national-security grounds, fuel China’s concerns that America wants to undermine its economy.
Why not simply say that Xi is afraid Biden wants to bugger him? Putin is worried that Biden will demand golden showers of the sort which made Trump's paltry combover so thick and glossy? These concerns are widely shared by ordinary people of the sort we can easily meet in lunatic asylums.
The security dilemma comes fully into its own when a great power seeks hegemony rather than accommodation.
Hegemony means a type of leadership or dominance which permits quicker accommodation. The thing resolves concurrency deadlocks and livelocks and promotes correlated equilibria on the basis of public signals. The trouble is stupid hegemony leads to shitty outcomes. On the other hand, if you genuinely are stupid, the smart thing to do is to let everybody know you are stupid unless they too are genuinely stupid in which case...dunno... by brain hurtz! That's realism for you.
The US is often guilty of this, by framing its foreign-policy goals in terms of global supremacy. Similarly, when countries like Putin’s Russia question the legitimacy of another country’s existence or aim to remake it in their own image, it becomes difficult to imagine a path to compromise.
But there is no reason why the security dilemma cannot be tamed. It is possible for great powers to have national-security goals that are not overtly offensive. It is also possible for them to communicate their intentions and concerns better, thereby reducing misunderstanding and achieving a degree of cooperation. There is a lot of wiggle room to escape from the realists’ cruel world.
But this will still involve 'discovery' at the margin involving foreign military operations if not proxy wars. The problem is that it may be that Putin is right about Eurasia. His way is the best to keep a lid upon it till China sorts out the underlying problem by creating infrastructure and jobs. Oligarchs have to yield to siloviki before siloviki can yield to... fuck... a cadre based Single Party State.
The alternative is comedians taking over and then maternity hospitals getting bombed. On the other hand, Punjab's new CM is a comedian. But India is unique. It is the only Empire which transitioned to cohesive multi-ethnic Democracy- at least for Hindu majority areas. But for that outcome, an economic price had to be paid. Also 'global orders' had to be kept at arm's length.
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