I really don’t understand you here, Walt. You want to hold the purse strings for the whole world and you think that it comes with the perks of surreptitiously stealing from everyone? It’s one thing to want some compensation for your work or for your protection and it’s quite another to brazenly steal and expect people to put up with it indefinitely because you have been useful to them in other ways. If “might makes right” is the game you want to play then don’t be upset that the people you’ve tried to bully start building a coalition to overcome your dishonest self.
If you want US dollar to stay the world reserve currency then the stealing has to stop. “Well, I took advantage of you because you let me” is a disgusting justification and it will always backfire.
by "stealing" do you mean exporting inflation via the petrodollar? If so
1) I would argue that lots of countries (i.e. Germany and Japan) have optimized their economies around the dollar hegemony and made it work for them
2) The idea is leveraging asymmetric preferences...Europe doesn't want to be innovative or competitive, it wants to be cozy. They can have a less dynamic, safer, and functionally disarmed society in exchange for eating some of our inflation. This is just a transactional arrangement.
3) I don't advocate massively profligate spending and would still advocate slashing Medicare/Social Security for example...but the rest of the world is MASSIVELY benefiting from America securing freedom of the waves with our fleet and we deserve to milk some extra GDP per capita from that arrangement in terms of favorable trade deals and deficit spending.
It doesn’t matter what name you give it, stealing, sanctions, exporting inflation, “leveraging asymmetric preferences” or anything else. To the rest of the world US dollar as the world currency, in the way that it currently operates, is looking extremely dishonest and corrupt, no matter what justifications you use. Germany and Japan have historically been some of the most innovative cultures when left on their own and they’re stagnant and going bankrupt trying to “optimize” around the US dollar. The other European countries have been culturally homogeneous and ethnocentric, and I do believe that they have lost their vitality and are committing a seppuku because their economies have been globalized so much. I am not relaying a threat to you here, I am warning you of a turning tide that is going to blindside and wallop you in your beliefs.
If you really believe that the rest of the world is benefitting from the protection of the US fleet, which I would tend to agree with, it should be compensated as a service and not used as justification to steal from people. Let’s have some accountability- let’s have the countries that are benefiting have a say in the running and maintaining of the fleet and let them put forward a chunk of revenue to fund it.
(I might be ill informed in this but I was under the impression that the US has recently completely cut down their smaller vessel policing fleet and only has large “wartime” vessels left now. If this is the case, then there really is no reason that the rest of the world should accept US dollar as the reserve currency anymore)
I don't think it's helpful to call it "stealing from people", and I don't think the average citizen of, say, Britain or Korea would characterize it that way.
I suspect that most people have zero understanding of the international monetary system and simply intuit (correctly) that America enjoys certain economic and cultural advantages from being global hegemon and in exchange is obliged to protect the rest of the world in various ways.
By "compensated as a service" you seem to be suggesting that we formalize this relationship in various ways. The problem is that keeping it informal allows lots of stakeholders to benefit from asymmetries:
- A blue water navy is tremendously expensive and requires lots of infrastructure and specialized training that a small/poor nation can't really afford.
- Right now America can absorb all the ire from i.e. telling China they can't arbitrarily claim the entire South China Sea, and everyone else who isn't direct impacted can shrug their shoulders and claim plausible deniability.
- Compared to the "shadow tribute" they currently pay in absorbed inflation, the governments of most European countries would find it A LOT more annoying to pay the US an equivalent amount in formal tribute. It would be much harder to sell to normie voters (right now they can disguise it because inflation is a "hidden tax) and it would feel a lot more humiliating. Right now America can maintain "soft tributaries" and it doesn't matter if France or Germany publicly chimps out from time to time so long as they keep the dollar. If the system were formal we'd need to keep everyone on a much shorter leash and our allies would resent us far more (like the Warsaw Pact resented the USSR).
Yes, the people that are economically illiterate would not call it stealing but they certainly feel the dishonesty in the bargain. How much longer would they tolerate it, do you think? And since when are we taking our cues from what might benefit stakeholders? I thought that the entire point is to sway the stakeholders toward better and more anti-fragile positions.
You almost make the US sound like the harrowed exhausted housewife that constantly complains about how much work she’s having to do for everyone but refuses any help when it is offered. Remember that literally everyone in this implicit arrangement resents each other. I would prefer all the international relations to not turn into that.
It seems the relationship between America and the Anglosphere/Europe is extremely robust.
I think your observations are applicable to America and India today, as they were to America and China 20 years ago (or Russia 30 years ago). But Europe and CANZUK are basically the imperial core--Greece to our Rome. In those countries only weird dysfunctional commies don't like America and the most ambitious people want to come here.
You might say the brain drain is bad and America is stealing europe's vitality but I'd say that is just the natural relationship between the metropole and the hinterlands. The vast majority of Europeans are incredibly happy with this arrangement--only France is occasionally bitchy and they are easily mollified by letting them play around in the Sahel and act snooty about language.
The problem with the Pew polls is they just fluctuate based on whether the president has a D or an R next to his name. There's a deep resentment towards America in the Antipodes and Canada, and much of the European establishment is riled up at the moment over America blatantly breaking trade rules. Ultimately, they have no choice but to put up with it because in addition to depending on the US for security, they have no digital infrastructure of their own. One of the most effective weapons America has besides USD is Silicon Valley. See the case of Huawei (which is from the only important country that's generally technologically independent)
Not many dare to criticize an insecure hegemon and yet the average approval ratings are a lukewarm 61%. I suppose we will have to wait and see how strong these partnerships really are, in the end. I will try not to say “I told you so” when most of the world starts using some other reserve currency.
Brain drain is not a point I will ever bring up btw, because it doesn’t capture the complexity of elite migration in my opinion. When I said that globalization has ruined Europe’s vitality, I meant that they have lost their pride in their own cultural identities to the global urban monoculture. That is far more damaging than losing some economically productive individuals.
A good middle ground between liberal internationalism, neoconservative interventionism, and isolationism would be realism. What is the realpolitik national interest?
Yugoslavia wise... I've spent months in the various former Yugoslav countries. Almost everything is a conspiracy theory there. As to why the US intervened, it was likely all the live CNN coverage of the siege of Sarajevo. Then Kosovo was a not again one, that also set the stage for the hubristic nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Border wise... Some counties in South America allow Middle East and Africans to fly in without a visa. People then just start heading north. Another thing you run into is people actually granted asylum by Brazil or Peru, and then decide to try their luck in another country which might have better benefits. In Peru I met one very obnoxious Afghan, who complained Brazilians and Peruvians weren't bending over backwards to accommodate him enough with asylum benefits. He planned to try in the US. Many Haitians coming to the US were illegal migrants in Chile, who left when that country had an economic downturn. Meanwhile most of the Brazilian and Argentinian middle class we'd want as immigrants go to Europe instead because of easy citizenship by ancestry.
I really don’t understand you here, Walt. You want to hold the purse strings for the whole world and you think that it comes with the perks of surreptitiously stealing from everyone? It’s one thing to want some compensation for your work or for your protection and it’s quite another to brazenly steal and expect people to put up with it indefinitely because you have been useful to them in other ways. If “might makes right” is the game you want to play then don’t be upset that the people you’ve tried to bully start building a coalition to overcome your dishonest self.
If you want US dollar to stay the world reserve currency then the stealing has to stop. “Well, I took advantage of you because you let me” is a disgusting justification and it will always backfire.
by "stealing" do you mean exporting inflation via the petrodollar? If so
1) I would argue that lots of countries (i.e. Germany and Japan) have optimized their economies around the dollar hegemony and made it work for them
2) The idea is leveraging asymmetric preferences...Europe doesn't want to be innovative or competitive, it wants to be cozy. They can have a less dynamic, safer, and functionally disarmed society in exchange for eating some of our inflation. This is just a transactional arrangement.
3) I don't advocate massively profligate spending and would still advocate slashing Medicare/Social Security for example...but the rest of the world is MASSIVELY benefiting from America securing freedom of the waves with our fleet and we deserve to milk some extra GDP per capita from that arrangement in terms of favorable trade deals and deficit spending.
It doesn’t matter what name you give it, stealing, sanctions, exporting inflation, “leveraging asymmetric preferences” or anything else. To the rest of the world US dollar as the world currency, in the way that it currently operates, is looking extremely dishonest and corrupt, no matter what justifications you use. Germany and Japan have historically been some of the most innovative cultures when left on their own and they’re stagnant and going bankrupt trying to “optimize” around the US dollar. The other European countries have been culturally homogeneous and ethnocentric, and I do believe that they have lost their vitality and are committing a seppuku because their economies have been globalized so much. I am not relaying a threat to you here, I am warning you of a turning tide that is going to blindside and wallop you in your beliefs.
If you really believe that the rest of the world is benefitting from the protection of the US fleet, which I would tend to agree with, it should be compensated as a service and not used as justification to steal from people. Let’s have some accountability- let’s have the countries that are benefiting have a say in the running and maintaining of the fleet and let them put forward a chunk of revenue to fund it.
(I might be ill informed in this but I was under the impression that the US has recently completely cut down their smaller vessel policing fleet and only has large “wartime” vessels left now. If this is the case, then there really is no reason that the rest of the world should accept US dollar as the reserve currency anymore)
I don't think it's helpful to call it "stealing from people", and I don't think the average citizen of, say, Britain or Korea would characterize it that way.
I suspect that most people have zero understanding of the international monetary system and simply intuit (correctly) that America enjoys certain economic and cultural advantages from being global hegemon and in exchange is obliged to protect the rest of the world in various ways.
By "compensated as a service" you seem to be suggesting that we formalize this relationship in various ways. The problem is that keeping it informal allows lots of stakeholders to benefit from asymmetries:
- A blue water navy is tremendously expensive and requires lots of infrastructure and specialized training that a small/poor nation can't really afford.
- Right now America can absorb all the ire from i.e. telling China they can't arbitrarily claim the entire South China Sea, and everyone else who isn't direct impacted can shrug their shoulders and claim plausible deniability.
- Compared to the "shadow tribute" they currently pay in absorbed inflation, the governments of most European countries would find it A LOT more annoying to pay the US an equivalent amount in formal tribute. It would be much harder to sell to normie voters (right now they can disguise it because inflation is a "hidden tax) and it would feel a lot more humiliating. Right now America can maintain "soft tributaries" and it doesn't matter if France or Germany publicly chimps out from time to time so long as they keep the dollar. If the system were formal we'd need to keep everyone on a much shorter leash and our allies would resent us far more (like the Warsaw Pact resented the USSR).
Yes, the people that are economically illiterate would not call it stealing but they certainly feel the dishonesty in the bargain. How much longer would they tolerate it, do you think? And since when are we taking our cues from what might benefit stakeholders? I thought that the entire point is to sway the stakeholders toward better and more anti-fragile positions.
You almost make the US sound like the harrowed exhausted housewife that constantly complains about how much work she’s having to do for everyone but refuses any help when it is offered. Remember that literally everyone in this implicit arrangement resents each other. I would prefer all the international relations to not turn into that.
I mean most of America's allies are still very pro-American:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/22/international-public-opinion-of-the-u-s-remains-positive/
It seems the relationship between America and the Anglosphere/Europe is extremely robust.
I think your observations are applicable to America and India today, as they were to America and China 20 years ago (or Russia 30 years ago). But Europe and CANZUK are basically the imperial core--Greece to our Rome. In those countries only weird dysfunctional commies don't like America and the most ambitious people want to come here.
You might say the brain drain is bad and America is stealing europe's vitality but I'd say that is just the natural relationship between the metropole and the hinterlands. The vast majority of Europeans are incredibly happy with this arrangement--only France is occasionally bitchy and they are easily mollified by letting them play around in the Sahel and act snooty about language.
The problem with the Pew polls is they just fluctuate based on whether the president has a D or an R next to his name. There's a deep resentment towards America in the Antipodes and Canada, and much of the European establishment is riled up at the moment over America blatantly breaking trade rules. Ultimately, they have no choice but to put up with it because in addition to depending on the US for security, they have no digital infrastructure of their own. One of the most effective weapons America has besides USD is Silicon Valley. See the case of Huawei (which is from the only important country that's generally technologically independent)
Not many dare to criticize an insecure hegemon and yet the average approval ratings are a lukewarm 61%. I suppose we will have to wait and see how strong these partnerships really are, in the end. I will try not to say “I told you so” when most of the world starts using some other reserve currency.
Brain drain is not a point I will ever bring up btw, because it doesn’t capture the complexity of elite migration in my opinion. When I said that globalization has ruined Europe’s vitality, I meant that they have lost their pride in their own cultural identities to the global urban monoculture. That is far more damaging than losing some economically productive individuals.
A good middle ground between liberal internationalism, neoconservative interventionism, and isolationism would be realism. What is the realpolitik national interest?
Yugoslavia wise... I've spent months in the various former Yugoslav countries. Almost everything is a conspiracy theory there. As to why the US intervened, it was likely all the live CNN coverage of the siege of Sarajevo. Then Kosovo was a not again one, that also set the stage for the hubristic nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Border wise... Some counties in South America allow Middle East and Africans to fly in without a visa. People then just start heading north. Another thing you run into is people actually granted asylum by Brazil or Peru, and then decide to try their luck in another country which might have better benefits. In Peru I met one very obnoxious Afghan, who complained Brazilians and Peruvians weren't bending over backwards to accommodate him enough with asylum benefits. He planned to try in the US. Many Haitians coming to the US were illegal migrants in Chile, who left when that country had an economic downturn. Meanwhile most of the Brazilian and Argentinian middle class we'd want as immigrants go to Europe instead because of easy citizenship by ancestry.