Putting Great-Power Rivalry in Context
Bad stuff happens when you decontextualize the decisions of power. Because then you start to obscure who benefits, who’s eating shit. The crucial questions of politics get erased when you erase the context.
I went on Security in Context’s flagship video podcast to talk about The Rivalry Peril. The theme of the conversation was about putting Sino-US rivalry in the proper domestic and global context, so I explained that:
One version of the Cold War analogy is nonsense; another version makes sense, but in a way that should make everyone reject competitive approaches to the world.
Great-power rivalry is inter-imperial rivalry in multiple ways. We’re in this jingoistic mess partly because of the Global Financial Crisis and its consequences; a world of meager economic growth propels inter-imperial competition. But also because domestic inequalities in China and the US are requiring state-capitalist responses to political economy.
China is highly unequal, it has a youth unemployment crisis, housing affordability is a major issue, and its working class has no power to speak of. All of that also describes the US over the past decade.
Modern states are basically bad, give or take. No great power will save us.
In a more multipolar world, doing a version of primacy is a recipe for World War III because others (including China) have the ability to say “Go f*ck yourself, Uncle Sam!” This is more or less where we’re at now.
Taiwan’s sense of siege only became acute with the onset of great-power rivalry. Easing great-power tensions is the surest way to secure Taiwan.
I sketch out the “grand green bargain” we present at the end of the book as a way to stimulate a cooperation spiral rather than a conflict spiral. I wrote an op-ed about it last year but had trouble placing it. Maybe I’ll post it in the newsletter.