Geopolitics/Geoeconomics Thread - June 2015

[Cyrano]

Great power competition is not bad but great power collaboration is definitely bad because then it will squeeze the rest of us out. - Dr SJ.

This is such a profound statement.

[bala]

x-Posting:

EAM: Raisina Dialogue Panel - A Tapestry of Truths: Can the Two Hemispheres Agree

Feb 22, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60fxwrYpZMo

Africa thinks that India can shape world leadership, UN does not work! The current UN Security Council does not work for them and frankly does not deliver what the world needs. UAE also believes that UN does not work.

[Cyrano]

Like someone said here in brf India will get the UNSC seat when it either becomes irrelevant or when we don't need it

[drnayar]

Like someone said here in brf India will get the UNSC seat when it either becomes irrelevant or when we don't need it

Quite so, the worthies at the UNSC will cling on to their illusions of grandeur till they become soo irrelevant., the rise of the middle powers in the economic power hierarchy will lead directly to such an event. In 2050 3 of the top 5 economies will be in Asia, what's the relevance of UK and France in such a scenario., come 2075 , UK would be 10th and France at a new high of 15th in the global economic pecking order!

[Cyrano]

^^^That's very unconvincing. Indonesia, Pakistan?!!

[Pratyush]

Indonesia, being one of the largest economies is understandable. It's a well educated population, with moderate Islamic leanings. So if, it continues with the current trends, no reason why it should not become one of larger economies in future.

Pakistan, nice joke. What do they have, or will have that will turn them into a top 10 economic power in 2075. Second, will it even exist by 2075.

[bala]

This is a chat with desi interviewers both in Angrez and Hindi and EAM S. Jaishankar who answers in both languages with ease. A range of questions were asked - rise of India, added responsibilities in the world, global south, China, Kaneda/Khalistanis and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uj07MEhnu4

[Manish_P]

...

Quite so, the worthies at the UNSC will cling on to their illusions of grandeur till they become soo irrelevant., the rise of the middle powers in the economic power hierarchy will lead directly to such an event. In 2050 3 of the top 5 economies will be in Asia, what's the relevance of UK and France in such a scenario., come 2075 , UK would be 10th and France at a new high of 15th in the global economic pecking order!
...

Is this for real ?

Pakistan is nowhere in the list till 2050 and then in 2075 they jump straight to number 6

Must be all due to Jazba

EDIT- is it because between now and 2070 Pakistan will have turned into a desert. By 2071 they will discover oil.

Seriously though i guess that maybe the calculations are factored in terms of population. The jihadi beggars will have grown exponentially so much that even with very low per capita their total GDP will be put them high on the list.

[disha]

The chart is from Goldman Suchs.

The past is pure data and future is only projection. China, S. Korea and Japan will go through a bust in next decade or two. Starting with S. Korea, followed by China.

Bakistan will not exist even by 2030. Demographics do not matter. The sudden jump in the chart is someone doing a humour to favour somebody up in the chain at Goldman Suchs.

Just rely on data on the past and see that India jumped ahead in between 2000 to 2020. More so between 2014 to 2024. Since that is real data.

[Manish_P]

The chart is from Goldman Suchs.

The past is pure data and future is only projection. ...

Is the data reliable? China is known to fudge data.... less said about bakistan sialkoti statistics the better

Bakistan will not exist even by 2030.
...

Jihadistan was created to keep a check on Bharat. It will be kept propped up until Bharat chooses to destroy it. It's shape and form may change. But it will be there

Demographics do not matter

Demographics is destiny.

[disha]

Jihadistan was created to keep a check on Bharat. It will be kept propped up until Bharat chooses to destroy it. It's shape and form may change. But it will be there

Looking at Ukraine, 10 years back, nobody thought that it will now exist as a moth-eaten rump state. Looking at Bakistan, and what is happening in Lawhore, Bakistan will exist only in memory.

Demographics is destiny.

Pure numbers by itself is useless. By that token, Bakistan has lot of demographics and all TFTA. Still ineffective. So demographics is destiny only when you have a good leader at the top.

[vimal]

^^ "Bakistan will exist only in memory nightmares"

[Manish_P]

Looking at Bakistan, and what is happening in Lawhore, Bakistan will exist only in memory.

It's not new... has happened for a long time. Lahore was once part of Bharat.

Pure numbers by itself is useless. By that token, Bakistan has lot of demographics and all TFTA. Still ineffective. So demographics is destiny only when you have a good leader at the top.

It will not be jihadistan which will need to have a good leader. 50+ years ago we helped dismember Bakistan, defeated their military, created Bangladesh. And we still have a huge problem there. Good leader or not, one cannot just dismiss demographics.

[bala]

Dr Ankit Shah has a lot to say about Modi 3.0. He has some interesting observations to make in the geo political sphere.

Printing of dollars and the petro dollar has caused some huge side affects - radicalization and excessive consumption in the world. The China story is well known wherein funds were indiscriminately shoveled into break-neck building. Now China has ghost cities, buildings are vacant with no tenants, large cities with gleaming buildings with no-one occupying them. Its stellar high speed railway system is dropping in clientele usage, most labor in china has disappeared back to their villages. Excessive and blind growth has led to a huge loss for China. He thinks that the cheap production of various products for western consumption has led China into this abyss and he feels it is a good thing for China that there is stop to export driven behavior. China needs to re-calibrate its entire thinking and re-adjust its living norms.

Similar things have happened in the west. The average home size has ballooned from 1000 sq ft to well over 3000 sq ft. People have empty bedrooms, the family unit is broken and almost all of them have pets like dogs and cats to make up for their loneliness caused by family breakup. On a average they consume too many things 4-5 TVs, 4-5 cars, huge electricity consumption per person, wastage of packaging/plastics, food and resources of gigantic proportions. Consumption has gone awry, yet the people feel lonelier than ever, very empty.

He says this is not the Sanatani system. India has respect for the environment and its resources. The family unit ensures people can sanely live their lives with support. The excessive build up of multi-stories is causing a western way of life and many couples/singles are living an empty life. The sense of family support is fast disappearing and excessive consumption is on the horizon for Bharat. He cautions against this.

Shifting of manufacturing to India is not going to yield lower costs for products, in fact could be much higher. Over time, the dollar reigning supreme is going to disappear and a barter system which involves good/services will evolve. The shift will be profound and major adjustments will happen worldwide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJl3EFYrIR8

[bala]

S Jaishankar takes on the moronic policies of Neverwho. How many blunders by Neverwho - Tibet, Security Council seat, Kashmore, Aksai Chin 1962 war with poor equipment for the army and did not use the Indian airforce to smash the Chinese, adopted Britshit imposed constitution, judiciary, babucracy, stunted the growth of India with socialist/communist policy. Essentially got both China and Pakistan wrong.

This is the short take on Neverwho...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LfDst-OxG0

Longer interview (at around 17:00 on Neverwho)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhzfdYYhKEY

[ricky_v]

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/tom-f ... raq-syria/

Among their whistlestops were U.S. installations in Syria. About 900 American troops are there, distributed in penny packets among seven bases. Some of these protect oil fields that supply U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities; others are in the far northeast, where they assist Kurdish units, help secure and supply the cluster of camps that house ISIS prisoners and their families and continue to hunt ISIS fighters; and still others in the southeast, at a road junction where the Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet. This base was set up to interdict Iranian-backed forces attempting to entrench themselves in Syria and transport supplies to Lebanon.

In Friedman’s recap of this visit, he explained that the importance of these U.S. deployments lay in the need to fight the terrorists over there so we would not have to fight them over here.

Let’s say, for the moment, that there are several other rationales for maintaining troops in Syria. Iran, for example, does seek to use Syria as a land corridor to Lebanon and the Israeli-Syrian border, from which it can carry the fight to its enemy. Iran is 1,200 kilometers from Israel, so if it wants to reach out and touch someone without using ballistic missiles, it needs to be on Israel’s borders. Rendering this a bit more difficult than it might otherwise be makes a regional blow-up marginally less likely.

Maintaining a garrison at the oil fields is meant to secure them from capture by either ISIS or the Assad regime, against which the U.S. maintains heavy sanctions. Reserving the oil for use by Kurds, both for sale and consumption, reflects a longstanding policy that favors Kurdish autonomy in Syria. This policy preference, which owes in part to a romanticized image of Kurds as daring fighters fending off terrorist hordes to spare the U.S. an onerous burden, also dictates the use of U.S. forces in northeast Syria as a tripwire deterrent against Turkish attempts to suppress Syrian Kurds.

One can have this or that view on the validity of these rationales or the salience of these objectives for core U.S. strategic interests. If the Turks and their radical Arab militias rip into the Kurds to get at the PKK, as they have done twice already, U.S. strategic interest is unlikely to suffer very much. If ISIS fighters escape the camps in Syria, Iraqi forces with U.S. help could probably limit the threat to Iraqi stability. The U.S. installation at al-Tanf in the southeast can be bypassed by Iran-backed militias via an Assad-controlled base at al bu-Kamal, a bit northeast of al-Tanf, so the U.S. base there might have outlived its usefulness.

Of course, on any given day there are about 30,000 U.S. military personnel in the region, as there have been for decades, so 900 isn’t a particularly impressive number. It’s a good example of limited interests served by a commensurately limited commitment. Whether to stay or go comes down to a narrow judgment call.

But of all the factors to consider there is one that does not merit concern: the idea of fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. It’s a vacuous meme trotted out to defend the controversial commitment and use of forward deployed forces and creation of distant security perimeters.

[bala]

Another dialog with Palki Sharma and John Mersheimer centering on the four powers are discussed - US, Russia, China and India. This is an often discussed topic and there are no clear answers. We can model all possibilities but as they say, "you have to play the game" to get any clarity. You need chanakya thinking to play this multi-dimensional game.

Around 23:00 in YT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZOmpl00Ihk

One of the points that J Mersheimer makes on China is not correct, he thinks they will become a "Blue Water" Navy and they will get wealthier. Both of these are not true. The US withdrawing from China in terms of manufacturing has put a dagger in the heart of economic wealth of China. Their Navy is a completely useless entity, just look at their clout in the red sea area, having huge numbers of everything is not the point. Their aircraft carriers have never gone on independent expedition outside their border areas and I heard their carriers have cracked their tops and a fully loaded aircraft has never taken of from their deck. Their submarines are noisy as hell. All they have are missiles galore but their missile commander was sacked and a non-missile man is in charge. So effectively China is on a downward slide. J Mersheimer does observe that China will have a tough time to take on Taiwan. He thinks the quagmire would be the South China sea and conflicts with Philippines, Japan and South Korea could escalate quite quickly. India is helping the Philippines with Brahmos and other weapons.

One of the side outcomes in the discussion, is that India has to shore up its defense prowess, make the Navy a "Blue Water" navy by augmenting carriers, submarines and various classes of ships while simultaneously the Airforce and Army have to be thoroughly modernized and augmented in numbers. Lots of work ahead.

[sanman]

Can industrial output decide US v China war?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9qL83M3ebk

[NRao]

I found this 1.5 hrs podcast to be fascinating.

[vijayk]

https://archive.is/92FIe
Germany Arrests Dozens Suspected of Planning to Overthrow Government
Many the police detained had military training and were believed to belong to a recently formed group that operated on the conviction that the country was ruled by the so-called deep state.

[chanakyaa]

Chip manufacturing is being moved out of Taiwan at a rapid pace, based on a roadmap which was established few years ago. #Taiwan #ChipsEmbargo ??

Taiwan Semi (TSM) to get up to $6.6 billion in direct funding for its Arizona plant

[Pratyush]

I found this 1.5 hrs podcast to be fascinating.

I watched it. It was an educational session. Clearly bringing out the weakness of the Indian business houses. Why it was a weakness . Along with priscription for a solution.

[ramana]

Chatham House has two articles on India
Will post links.

One link

https://twitter.com/ramana_brf/status/1 ... oa-WA&s=19

[ricky_v]

https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/the ... -caucasus/

The Caucasian Chalk Circle

In the context of the so-called emerging New World Order, Russia was at first left on the periphery, while Turkey and Iran were the first countries affected by geopolitical turbulence. Entering the ‘Mittlespiel’ of this ‘Great Chess Game,’ the United States and the European Union quickly exploited the opportunity to increase their influence in the region of the Central Caucasus. Hence the latter soon became a space of competition between original geopolitical players and so-called ‘newcomers.

Iran is one of the classical players in the Central Caucasus, however, due to its internal turbulence and international pressures, it was forced to temporarily retreat from the contest. The latest trends show the revitalization of Iran’s interests in the Central Caucasus. In the regional context, Iran is an ally of Armenia and Russia.

Turkey, as Brzezinski suggests, must not be alienated from geopolitical calculations, because a rejected Turkey can not only become strongly Islamic but will be able to upset the region’s stability. Turkey’s role in this contest, along with its geopolitical inclinations, is to counter-balance Russia’s domination over the region. That is why Brzezinski argues that political developments in Turkey and its orientation will be crucial for the states of the Central Caucasus.

The EU presence in the region is perceptible as well. In the framework of its Eastern Neighborhood Partnership, the Union encouraged countries of the region toward reform and as an accolade granted Georgia candidacy status. Furthermore, the location and the mentioned potential to provide transit roads allow Central Caucasus to serve as an energy security guarantee to Europe. In line with this, Europe needs to assist the region in its peaceful development and assure its security as a strategic partner.

Contrary to Armenia and Georgia, Azerbaijan does not openly express willingness to join either military or economic blocs. The country is neither pro-Russian, nor pro-Western, but emphasizes the importance of regional cooperation. Consequently, the countries are at different steps in the process of Europeanization. Nevertheless, the EU’s need for a reliable partner in the Central Caucasus is currently at odds with Turkey’s estrangement from the Union and Russia being non-responsive to sanctions.

The United States has long viewed the region, and especially Georgia as a strategic buffer zone to assist its interests in the Middle East, as well as against the expansion of terrorism. In 2016, Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense, highlighted the strategic location of Georgia in his article in The Wall Street Journal, by stating that “[Georgia] provides a barrier to the flow of jihadists from other parts of the former Soviet Union to the Middle East. And it will doubtless figure large in the strategies of any NATO consortium for securing the Black Sea and ‘New Europe’ against Russian adventurism.”

An additional newcomer to the regional chess game is China with its growing geopolitical influence, making the region’s importance even greater through participation in the Chinese Silk Road project and, since 2017, in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route project.

The cultural dimension, specifically the ethno-religious factor, in a time of growing resurgence of nationalism and fundamentalism, is a factor directly influencing geopolitical considerations. Historical differences have shaped difficult relations between Turkey-Armenia and Armenia-Azerbaijan, leading to friendship between Russia and Armenia. Russia’s betrayal and mistreatment of Georgia has alienated the country from its northern neighbor, with whom it shares a common religion. Despite diverse religions, Georgia maintains a friendly relationship with Turkey and Iran, with the latter enjoying a somewhat positive attitude among all the Caucasian republics.

Its location and its experience as a borderland of various religions and ethnicities permit the region to be crucial in what is claimed to be the primary menace and security challenges of the 21st century- terrorism, further enhancing the Central Caucasus’s role as a border of civilizations.

As observed, the developments of the post-Soviet era brought new actors such as the US, EU, and China into the contest of imposing influence over the region, as well as extracting benefits from it. Such unfolding of events, however, runs contrary to the aspirations of the major neighboring geopolitical powers, such as Russia, Turkey, and Iran; the concentration of political interests of the great powers in such a small region emphasizes its favored geopolitical position and economic advantages.

Borrowing from Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, the configuration of international interests in the region spotlights power conflicts. Such concentration of global powers in its turn shapes the foreign orientations of the countries of the Central Caucasus. In the realm of geopolitical discourse, a region can be geopolitically significant if it serves the geopolitical and economic benefits of major geopolitical players or has the potential to challenge such political-economic aspirations of great powers. The Central Caucasus, as a result of its strategic location and diversity, possesses both characteristics. Consequently, Central Caucasus stands amid a complex geopolitical landscape, and next to presenting economic opportunities for great powers, finds itself in the hotspot of 21st-century security considerations.

"south asia" has also been enmeshed in this chalk circle, as it were, there is growing azerbaijan-turkey-paki linkage and the equally growing india-armenia linkage; it is our own In in the wider game though we would most likely remain passive players.

[sanman]

Fall of Japanese Yen - Does it Portend Another Crisis?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz3r36ZTe7Q

JPY reached 160 to USD on Monday

[sanman]

China Abandoning US Treasury Bonds, Buying More Gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-bnIrbZjaM

[sanman]

Who is this Sridhar Chityala? He speaks quite intelligently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8EYYUm6bx8

[vijayk]

[S_Madhukar]

Reserves totalling 511bn barrels of oil – about 10 times the North Sea’s entire 50-year output – have been reported to Moscow by Russian research ships, according to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week.
It follows a series of surveys by the Alexander Karpinsky vessel, operated by Rosgeo – the Russian agency charged with finding mineral reserves for commercial exploitation.
The EAC’s decision decided to challenge the Foreign Office’s management of the UK’s Antarctic interests following reports in the Daily Maverick, a South African online journal, which discovered Moscow’s activities after its survey ship docked in Cape Town.
Such issues will likely come to a head in India later this month at the annual meeting for signatories to the Antarctic Treaty, where Russia will be challenged on its plans for extracting fossil fuels.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/news/russia-f ... 20394.html

[Haresh]

Indian Navy Carries Out First Drug Interdiction as CMF Member
Published by Combined Maritime Forces

on APRIL 16, 2024

https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/2024 ... mf-member/

[vijayk]

https://x.com/Pamphlet_in/status/1791439162190750123

The Wire journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani’s shady narrative journalism has been exposed!

Is it because of her mysterious marriage to a former CIA political analyst?

Find out:

WATCH VIDEO in the tweet...

[sanman]

So I was hearing about this rumour that China is arm-twisting US into sending US students to study at Chinese learning institutions.

Rumour is that when Janet Yellen met Xi Jinping, he insisted to her that if US expects a more coordinated approach to de-dollarization, then US needs to send more students to China, as part of cultivating people-to-people ties.

Does this sound plausible?

[ricky_v]

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/05/ru ... it-working

Russia has been courting the states of the Global South to circumvent Western sanctions and avoid international isolation – with notable success. In February 2024, Moscow hosted the first ‘For the Freedom of Nations’ forum with 400 delegates from 60 countries, aiming to rally the countries of the Global South against ‘Western neo-colonialism’.

The previous year, it hosted both a Russia-Africa summit and a first international parliamentary conference of Latin American countries. Moscow has also actively lobbied for the expansion of BRICS, which it currently chairs, and sent Foreign Minister Lavrov on several tours across the Global South. This week, Russia is hosting its Russia and the Islamic World Kazan forum, expecting more than 11,000 delegates from 79 countries.

Moscow’s objectives are not only establishing full domination over Ukraine and the wider sphere of influence but also fragmentation of the global order into ‘civilizational’ centres of power, curtailing perceived US hegemony. The new multipolarity, according to Putin, would be more just, tolerant of cultural and ideological differences, and supposedly based on the sovereign equality of states.

In its war on Ukraine, Moscow has turned the Global South into both an instrument and a theatre of geopolitical competition, capitalizing on long-held grievances of colonialism and power imbalance. Much like its Soviet predecessor, Russia uses ‘anti-imperialism’ as its main propaganda theme and as an ideological basis for its global engagement. It has effectively leveraged legacies such as memories of Soviet support for decolonization and traditions of non-alignment, bringing deep-seated resentment against the West to the fore.

First, Russia does not have the same objectives as the USSR. Its aim is uncontested regional hegemony that can best be guaranteed in the multipolar world. This requires weakening of the US and its allies through pressuring them in many directions simultaneously. The destruction of the existing order does not require a coherent plan of action or an attractive ideology, it is sufficient to galvanize discontent and convince enough actors to join in the fight.

Establishing a dialogue on global consequences of the war could be one such area. Many countries in the Global South have been suffering from soaring food and energy prices and dealing with supply chain disruptions for critical commodities. Helping them mitigate these consequences and engaging in open communication to tackle common challenges, such as energy security, climate change and economic development, will generate better goodwill than applying pressure to join sanctions.

In parallel, however, increasing costs for those who enable sanctions evasion is equally important. This could be done both through targeted secondary sanctions and through a more political provision of trade incentives and assistance programmes.

[ricky_v]

https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... pdf?x85095

Building an Enduring Advantage in the Third Space Age - is an exhaustive study from a US pov, posting some excerpts

The United States is leading the world into a new era of space activity known as the third space age. Unlike the militarization and exploration of the first space age (1957–90) and the diversification and stagnation of the second space age (1991–2015), the third space age (2016–present) is defined by rapid commercialization and proliferation. In this new era, US space capabilities and capacity are second to none, but China, Russia, and other nations are actively working to erode this advantage. This report provides quantitative insights and analysis of the trends in space launch, satellites, and space debris and makes recommendations for how to build an enduring advantage or the United States in space.

The global annual launch rate hit an all-time high of 211 successful orbital launches in 2023, driven mainly by the United States and China, which each logged their highest launch rate ever at 103 and 66 launches, respectively. The US lead is even more stark considering that it comprised 81 percent of global effective launch capacity in 2023—four times the rest of the world combined. The introduction of much larger US launch vehicles, particularly SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and the higher degree of reusability these vehicles employ will further increase the US lead. These disruptive changes will give the United States a unique ability to launch much larger
payloads at much lower costs, enabling new generations of satellites with designs unconstrained by size, weight, and power. The US advantage in space also extends to satellite capabilities and production capacity. Globally, more satellites were launched in the past five years (2019–23) than in all previous years combined.

In 2023, 78 percent of satellites launched were US satellites, driven mainly by the deployment of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. Commercial satellites comprise 84 percent of all satellites launched in the third space age, and market projections indicate that the satellite launch rate will remain high for the foreseeable future, driven by the deployment of highly proliferated commercial constellations, such as Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper.

[ricky_v]

https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir ... _logan.pdf

Although many observers may think of the twenty years from 2001 until now
as a pivot from a costly effort to reengineer the Middle East to a focus on con
taining China, the truth is more prosaic. In fact, defense planners had had their
eyes on China since the 1990s. Throughout the global war on terror, the central
defense-procurement decisions were still being made on the basis of assuming secu
rity competition with a major power such as China. There was never an effort to
expand the ground forces to the size at which they could hope to decisively win the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This paper proceeds in four parts. First, it shows the extent to which defense
planners were focused on competition with China—not on the Middle East or small
wars—in the 1990s through September 11, 2001.

Second, it outlines the initial plans
that emerged after the 9/11 attacks through the start of the war in Iraq as well as
the public mood and the notable disjuncture between budgetary priorities and policy
initiatives during the global war on terror.

Third, it discusses the derailment of Bush’s freedom doctrine in the years from 2003 to 2009. Fourth, it describes the normalization of perpetual war during the Obama and Trump years, coupled with a restored focus on containing China.

In conclusion, it highlights the extent to which the decade
and a half following the attacks were a costly waste followed by no accountability. By
2021, Washington planners had returned to an emphasis on China, lost the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, contributed to the collapse of Libya and Syria, and held almost
no one accountable for the immense costs of their mistakes.3

Part 1: the aftermath

That scholars are still puzzling over why the Iraq War happened suggests the
war was overdetermined (Cramer and Thrall 2012; Butt 2019). The WMD/nonproliferation, counterterrorism, humanitarian, and regional-transformation arguments
covered the waterfront of possible justifications, and for the administration they all
pointed to war. The central argument for the war involved WMD, but it always
looked more like an assumption than a conclusion resulting from careful review of
the evidence. The administration did not develop a concern about Iraq or its alleged
WMD because administration principals consumed bad intelligence. Their conclusions existed prior to and independent from the intelligence (Butt 2019, 253–58).

The run-up to the war was a high point for the influence of think tanks in for
eign policy. “Black coffee briefings” at the American Enterprise Institute cultivated
groupthink among scholars and journalists. It became such an intellectual hothouse
that the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman announced that the Iraq War
was really the “war of an elite.” According to Friedman, “I could give you the names
of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office)
who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war
would not have happened” (qtd. in Shavit 2003).

Part 2: The Freedom Doctrine Explodes on the Launchpad: 2003–2009

During this time, as it had been in 2002 and 2003, the war in Afghanistan was
largely ignored. The implication from those who raised this point, such as Barack
Obama, was that there was much left to do in Afghanistan, which had been shunted
to the side by the distraction of the Iraq War. By 2003, however, the Taliban had
been deposed, and a significant military blow had been dealt to al Qaeda; by September, the government judged that two-thirds of al Qaeda’s leadership had been captured or killed (Bowers 2003). But the Bush administration and after it the Obama administration seemed to have no vision for producing the conditions that would
allow U.S. forces to return home. Instead, with al Qaeda significantly disrupted and
the Taliban punished, the mission drifted toward an ambitious state-building campaign in Afghanistan.

By 2007, the revolutionary fervor in American elite circles was still riding high,
although its support among the population at large was flagging. In a speech to the
Economic Club of New York’s Centennial Celebration Dinner in June 2007, Sec
retary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that the ideological turn in American
policy should have surprised no one: in her telling, “America has always been, and
will always be, not a status quo power, but a revolutionary power” (Rice 2007, 6).

Part 3: Normalizing Forever War amid Great-Power Competition: The Obama/Trump Years, 2009–2020

But in practice the growing rhetorical and elite focus on China was a reversion
to Obama’s effort at a “pivot” and to the emphasis of defense planners in the 1990s
and the pre-9/11 period. For all of the manias of the 2000s and 2010s—lessons on
how to duct-tape ourselves into our homes in the event of a chemical attack, worries
about terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons, lectures about the Aum Shinrikyo sarin
attack as a harbinger of the future—the global war on terrorism in the end just faded,
leaving behind only the exuviae of military deployments, eroded civil liberties, deference to executive authority, and a militarized politics that frequently deferred to
power

Part 4: Self-Harm in Slow Motion

Powerful as the United States was, the American foreign-policy elite dreamed
up policies extravagant enough to outstrip that power. During the period from 2001
to 2021, the United States destroyed political orders in Iraq and Libya, prolonged
civil wars in Afghanistan and Syria, and danced on the brink of war with Iran. During
this same period, by its own scorekeeping, its trade policies created a monster in the
form of a much more powerful People’s Republic of China.
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison argued that
“the means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments
of tyranny at home” (qtd. in Ekirch 1956, 25). Not all of the consequences of
U.S. foreign policy during the past twenty years remained overseas or contained
among members of the military. The wars poisoned America, from its politics to its
policing to the ways Americans’ government surveils them (Coyne and Hall 2018;
Ackerman 2021).

The “political support system for American pri
macy” (Betts 2005) remains strong, although it is under more stress than it has
been in decades. At this writing, the proposed withdrawal from Afghanistan owes
credit both to the current Democratic president and his Republican predecessor and
enjoys broad support from the public (CBS News 2021). The Biden administration
has announced an end to the OCO budget gimmick. That it has taken this long and
this much failure to undo these measures suggests that ending the other legacies of
the post-9/11 period will be difficult and that many of these legacies may survive as
nuts tightened onto the American ship of state by what Robert Higgs (1987) has
famously termed the “ratchet effect.”