I think I read something along similar lines from Thomas Friedman (NYT) several months ago. China wasn't as far ahead of us as it is now, but it was like looking at the negative of the Trump disaster: US demeaning universities, China growing them; US standing in the way of innovation, China urging it; US stopping anything related to climate change, China fast-tracking it. Not a surprise that just a few months later, here we are.
Thanks for the comment. The core problem, as I see it, is that both parties take the wrong approach to answering the challenge. The instinct is to bash China and create an artificial enemy because the American foreign policy vanguard thinks it must have one.
The answer is the same as China's: industrial policy.
Ditto on Geoffrey Deihl for where we are, with a lot of caring and cheering others on.
If and when China’s whim is in play, us becoming extraordinarily nice in response would get us an alternative story. Not forging into the mess, but backing-up -- to go forward. How good would that be for us!!! Being nice would be getting the best for everyone! Maybe put your good writing skills to work on that story.
Wow, the Substack phone app is truly atrocious. I thought I replied to this, but it's gone.
Anyway, I've written fairly extensively on America's rotten to the core foreign policy, which has long been a bipartisan issue.
As I mentioned in another comment: The instinct is to bash China and create an artificial enemy because the American foreign policy vanguard thinks it must have one.
The answer is the same as China's: industrial policy.
To some degree, this effort to turn China into an enemy harkens back to the bad old days of power politics, the kind espoused by Hans Morgenthau, which insisted that all nations, no matter the size, are in the business of constant empire building, even if that empire is a small local one. Then Keohane and Nye came along and said, "Wait, no, interdependence is the key to everything," which was actually the approach taken for most of China's rise.
But American leaders were unable to compete with China for reasons that can't be covered in a substack comment, and here we are, turning China into an adversary when it should have been the opposite all along.
Politics in general does not attract our best and brightest. If you look at world leaders everywhere, this appears to be a universal rule.
Accepting the premise that China takes over, instead of the scenario being the one you took on, us becoming extraordinarily nice in response would get us an alternative story.
My story: Trump so loves the idea of affecting every human being on earth that he gets MDMA into the world’s water supply and we have a worldwide love-in. With China having taken the ascendancy from the U.S., we just love them for their smarts and they live up to the trust we put in them to be fair, fair being that everyone gets a good chance. They see that taking care of everyone beats killing people, so, from the top down, with everyone in the afterglow of dropping hostilities, we do the radical work to change our civilization from being an exploitative one to being a loving, caring, humanitarian one. With defense unnecessary, all the world’s wealth goes to what makes the world the beautiful, cooperative place it is at this writing.
I got stuck on the glueballs and wandered off to Schrödinger's cat… 🐈⬛
This kind of thing happens. :-)
I think I read something along similar lines from Thomas Friedman (NYT) several months ago. China wasn't as far ahead of us as it is now, but it was like looking at the negative of the Trump disaster: US demeaning universities, China growing them; US standing in the way of innovation, China urging it; US stopping anything related to climate change, China fast-tracking it. Not a surprise that just a few months later, here we are.
Thanks for the comment. The core problem, as I see it, is that both parties take the wrong approach to answering the challenge. The instinct is to bash China and create an artificial enemy because the American foreign policy vanguard thinks it must have one.
The answer is the same as China's: industrial policy.
Yep
Ditto on Geoffrey Deihl for where we are, with a lot of caring and cheering others on.
If and when China’s whim is in play, us becoming extraordinarily nice in response would get us an alternative story. Not forging into the mess, but backing-up -- to go forward. How good would that be for us!!! Being nice would be getting the best for everyone! Maybe put your good writing skills to work on that story.
Wow, the Substack phone app is truly atrocious. I thought I replied to this, but it's gone.
Anyway, I've written fairly extensively on America's rotten to the core foreign policy, which has long been a bipartisan issue.
As I mentioned in another comment: The instinct is to bash China and create an artificial enemy because the American foreign policy vanguard thinks it must have one.
The answer is the same as China's: industrial policy.
To some degree, this effort to turn China into an enemy harkens back to the bad old days of power politics, the kind espoused by Hans Morgenthau, which insisted that all nations, no matter the size, are in the business of constant empire building, even if that empire is a small local one. Then Keohane and Nye came along and said, "Wait, no, interdependence is the key to everything," which was actually the approach taken for most of China's rise.
But American leaders were unable to compete with China for reasons that can't be covered in a substack comment, and here we are, turning China into an adversary when it should have been the opposite all along.
Politics in general does not attract our best and brightest. If you look at world leaders everywhere, this appears to be a universal rule.
Where is your reply to what I said? This is unresponsive to it.
You'll need to explain how it's unresponsive. I'm not understanding what you're looking for
Accepting the premise that China takes over, instead of the scenario being the one you took on, us becoming extraordinarily nice in response would get us an alternative story.
But that would be your concept. So that’s something you should write.
My story: Trump so loves the idea of affecting every human being on earth that he gets MDMA into the world’s water supply and we have a worldwide love-in. With China having taken the ascendancy from the U.S., we just love them for their smarts and they live up to the trust we put in them to be fair, fair being that everyone gets a good chance. They see that taking care of everyone beats killing people, so, from the top down, with everyone in the afterglow of dropping hostilities, we do the radical work to change our civilization from being an exploitative one to being a loving, caring, humanitarian one. With defense unnecessary, all the world’s wealth goes to what makes the world the beautiful, cooperative place it is at this writing.