Quote of the Month
“Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age?”
- W.B. Yeats, “On Hearing that the Students of our New University have Joined the Agitation against Immoral Literature”
My recent scribblings:
1. Why China’s decline - not its rise - could lead to conflict with the United States
Why you should read it: In Foreign Policy, international relations scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argue that China’s declining power - not its ascent - may lead to conflict with other nations as Beijing looks to take advantage of a rapidly closing window of opportunity to achieve its strategic objectives.
“Now imagine a different scenario. A dissatisfied state has been building its power and expanding its geopolitical horizons. But then the country peaks, perhaps because its economy slows, perhaps because its own assertiveness provokes a coalition of determined rivals, or perhaps because both of these things happen at once. The future starts to look quite forbidding; a sense of imminent danger starts to replace a feeling of limitless possibility. In these circumstances, a revisionist power may act boldly, even aggressively, to grab what it can before it is too late. The most dangerous trajectory in world politics is a long rise followed by the prospect of a sharp decline…Over the past 150 years, peaking powers—great powers that had been growing dramatically faster than the world average and then suffered a severe, prolonged slowdown—usually don’t fade away quietly. Rather, they become brash and aggressive. They suppress dissent at home and try to regain economic momentum by creating exclusive spheres of influence abroad. They pour money into their militaries and use force to expand their influence. This behavior commonly provokes great-power tensions. In some cases, it touches disastrous wars… If a rapid rise gives countries the means to act boldly, the fear of decline serves up a powerful motive for rasher, more urgent expansion. The same thing often happens when fast-rising powers cause their own containment by a hostile coalition. In fact, some of history’s most gruesome wars have come when revisionist powers concluded their path to glory was about to be blocked.”
“This is the real trap the United States should worry about regarding China today—the trap in which an aspiring superpower peaks and then refuses to bear the painful consequences of descent…The Chinese economy has been losing steam for more than a decade: The country’s official growth rate declined from 14 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2019, and rigorous studies suggest the true growth rate is now closer to 2 percent. Worse, most of that growth stems from government stimulus spending. According to data from the Conference Board, total factor productivity declined 1.3 percent every year on average between 2008 and 2019, meaning China is spending more to produce less each year. This has led, in turn, to massive debt: China’s total debt surged eight-fold between 2008 and 2019 and exceeded 300 percent of GDP prior to COVID-19. Any country that has accumulated debt or lost productivity at anything close to China’s current pace has subsequently suffered at least one “lost decade” of near-zero economic growth…In maritime Asia, resistance to Chinese power is stiffening. Taiwan is boosting military spending and laying plans to turn itself into a strategic porcupine in the Western Pacific. Japan is carrying out its biggest military buildup since the end of the Cold War and has agreed to back the United States if China attacks Taiwan. The countries around the South China Sea, particularly Vietnam and Indonesia, are beefing up their air, naval, and coast guard forces to contest China’s expansive claims… No doubt, counter-China cooperation has remained imperfect. But the overall trend is clear: An array of actors is gradually joining forces to check Beijing’s power and put it in a strategic box. China, in other words, is not a forever-ascendant country. It is an already-strong, enormously ambitious, and deeply troubled power whose window of opportunity won’t stay open for long.”
Why it matters: “In some ways, all of this is welcome news for Washington: A China that is slowing economically and facing growing global resistance will find it exceedingly difficult to displace the United States as the world’s leading power—so long as the United States doesn’t tear itself apart or otherwise give the game away. In other ways, however, the news is more troubling. History warns the world should expect a peaking China to act more boldly, even erratically, over the coming decade—to lunge for long-sought strategic prizes before its fortunes fade…The United States, then, will face not one but two tasks in dealing with China in the 2020s. It will have to continue mobilizing for long-term competition while also moving quickly to deter aggression and blunt some of the more aggressive, near-term moves Beijing may make. In other words, buckle up. The United States has been rousing itself to deal with a rising China. It’s about to discover that a declining China may be even more dangerous.”
2. How China uses technology and propaganda to export autocracy
Why you should read it: Think-tankers Charles Edel and and David O. Shullman observe in Foreign Affairs that while Beijing may or may not present an ideological challenge to democracy, its attempt to gain power and influence on the global stage makes it a distinction with out a difference.
“Although some analysts continue to argue that China does not pose an ideological threat to prevailing democratic norms and that the CCP does not export its ideology, it is clear that the CCP has embarked on a drive to promote its style of authoritarianism to illiberal actors around the world. Its goal is not to spread Marxism or to undermine individual democracies but rather to achieve political and economic preeminence, and its efforts to that effect—spreading propaganda, expanding information operations, consolidating economic influence, and meddling in foreign political systems—are hollowing out democratic institutions and norms within and between countries… Beijing seeks less to impose a Marxist-Leninist ideology on foreign societies than to legitimate and promote its own authoritarian system. The CCP does not seek ideological conformity but rather power, security, and global influence for China and for itself. To this end, the party has issued stark declarations of confidence in its own ideology and in the country’s antidemocratic political path. Xi has made clear that he regards China’s illiberal model of governance as superior to so-called Western political systems and that he seeks to popularize this ‘Chinese wisdom’ throughout the world as a 'contribution to mankind.’"
“China’s international efforts to subvert democracy fall into three broad categories. The first includes its attempts to shape the narrative about China in developed countries. In nations ranging from Canada and Germany to Australia and Japan, Beijing aims to silence critics of China and amplify the voices of individuals and institutions that promote closer ties with Beijing or a more positive portrayal of China…The second category of antidemocratic actions are those that take place in developing countries. Unlike in the developed world, where China’s political and economic coercion and “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy have engendered a growing backlash, Beijing has received a warmer welcome in many developing countries, where elites hope to learn from a political system that has enabled China’s transformation into the world’s second-largest economy. In a growing number of fragile democracies, Beijing has captured small coteries of corrupt elites and helped them centralize power by insulating them from the demands of civil society and deploying Chinese technology to repress their citizens and help them maintain power indefinitely. This is how the CCP is exporting authoritarianism around the globe: not through seminars on Marxist ideology, as some analysts have claimed, but through a broad range of antidemocratic activities… The last category of international antidemocratic actions involves those aimed at weakening international institutions that instill democratic norms and creating new ones that do not, thereby neutering the liberal presumptions that prevail in the current global order. China uses the clout it has gained by consolidating influence in UN agencies to ensure institutional alignment with Chinese priorities: it has wielded its authority in the International Telecommunications Union, for instance, to promote policies that facilitate the authoritarian use of technology to repress citizens. Beijing’s efforts to topple the current liberal order—which China views as an obstacle to its emergence as a great power—are unprecedented. China is enshrining its own ideological concepts and foreign policy strategies into international statements of consensus, substituting Chinese concepts, such as the ‘right to development’ and ‘Internet sovereignty,’ for more widely held values. It is also promoting its own view of human rights, in which governments can cite supposedly unique local conditions to justify disregard for individual or minority rights and in which civil or political rights are secondary to so-called economic and social rights."
Why it matters: “Today’s China is not yesterday’s Soviet Union. But Beijing is nonetheless working to amplify authoritarianism around the world. It is hollowing out democratic institutions and enhancing the tools of repression in developing countries. And Chinese leaders are working to dilute the liberal norms and erode human rights protections that are enshrined within many international institutions to make themselves—and like-minded autocrats the world over—more powerful and less accountable… At a time when governments are searching for quick solutions to massive pandemic-related challenges, China’s provision of illiberal answers and the means to achieve them without relinquishing power is fueling authoritarianism’s global resurgence. China is not fanning the flames of violent revolution or even advocating for one-party rule. But that is not the right metric by which to judge its actions. A better measurement is to look at the totality of the ways Beijing is corrupting democratic governments, societies, and individuals.”
3. How China aims to censor and subvert its critics overseas
Why you should read it: British commentator Nick Cohen details Beijing’s campaign to bully local European governments and civil society organizations for the Spectator.
“Let a story from the Czech Republic illustrate how apparently benign entanglements become threatening. In 2018, Zdeněk Hřib won the race to become mayor of Prague. He represented the Pirate party, which campaigns for civil rights and participatory democracy, and naturally had little time for one-party states… China insisted that even organisations that have no international power, such as a municipal council, must endorse its foreign policy aims, Hřib explained. The logic behind the pressure on the Prague authorities is not as crazy as it seems. If China, or any other power, can get every conceivable body it deals with to conform to its wishes, regardless of whether they have a voice in international affairs, it can make its aggression appear uncontroversial… The apparently bland process of twinning cities was controlled at the Chinese end, not by local authorities in Beijing, but by the CPAFFC – the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, a part of the communist party’s United Front organisation that seeks to co-opt and influence elites in every country it can.”
“The only western country where Chinese influence has caused a scandal is Australia. Its United Front tactics provoked a huge backlash which led to the country upgrading its submarine fleet today. The Leninist concept is a strategy for suborning any area of society that might challenge the party. Inside China, that means forcing ethnic minorities, religious groups and intellectuals into line. Abroad, the United Front targets universities, the Chinese diaspora, business and politics…In Europe, it’s easy to feel that we are far from such conflicts. Subverting a Mainz music festival, stopping a panda delivery: these are ridiculous rather than sinister acts. But the power of Chinese money is global. In Prague, businesses and finance firms with Chinese interests hired hack journalists and politicians to produce propaganda, which said that upsetting Beijing would hurt the Prague economy. Milos Zeman, the republic’s president, who has ingratiated himself with China and Russia, warned of ‘unpleasant consequences’ if the Prague-Beijing partnership ended.”
Why it matters: “The experience of Russian money in the UK tells us what will happen here. Financiers will fall over themselves to get at Chinese wealth. London libel lawyers will beg to sue journalists who investigate Chinese power. Vince Cable is already softening Chinese crimes, and trust me, there will be many more like him soon… we need to build up our home defences, reform our libel laws to stop them being exploited by hostile foreign powers and – as the woke say – ‘educate ourselves’ about what the Chinese Communist Party wants and how it intends to get it.”
4. Why France has only itself to blame for the world’s failure to take “European sovereignty” seriously
Why you should read it: Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth warns that French attempts to cultivate “strategic autonomy” and “European sovereignty” have failed because Paris and other European governments still pursue their own narrow national interests and fail to display solidarity with smaller countries like Lithuania when they’re bullied by China or Russia.
“You can expect to hear a lot from him in coming weeks about ‘European sovereignty’ and ‘autonomy,’ nebulous slogans [French President Emmanuel Macron has] been pushing alongside his more evocative ruminations about the alleged ‘brain death’ of NATO, which remains the most concrete manifestation of a strategic West. If it were up to Macron, the European Union, now unencumbered by those pesky Brits, should finally become a distinct geopolitical and military power, at eye level with the U.S., and presumably led by France… It’s understandable that the Europeans are frustrated about not being taken all that seriously, either by adversaries like Russia and China or by friends like the U.S. and Australia. But rather than fume impotently, they’d do better to take an honest look at themselves to find the reasons.”
“They could start by asking Lithuania, that former victim of Soviet imperialism which is now a proud member of the EU and NATO. It’s become the latest European country to get the full bullying treatment from Beijing. The reason is that Vilnius allowed Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, to set up a representative office… The U.S. immediately offered its support to Lithuania. And the EU? Its member states aren’t so sure. After all, they do a lot of business with China — Germany’s largest trading partner — and feel that Lithuania could have been more diplomatic. It fell to the prime minister of Slovenia, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, to plead with his counterparts to stick up for Lithuania at a gathering in two weeks."
Why it matters: “While it lasted, the West — not in an ethnocentric but in a normative sense — made the world, on balance, a better place. Its ongoing fragmentation therefore bodes ill for stability and peace. The U.S. should keep trying to salvage this West, even as others, like the U.K. and Australia, are wise to draw up a Plan B. But ultimately it’s the Europeans who have to decide what they want — and then do what it takes to become credible.”
5. Why France got so upset over a cancelled submarine sale
Why you should read it: In the New York Times, editorial board member Serge Schmemann contends that France’s over-reaction to its cancelled submarine contract with Australia has its roots in the foreign policy mindset post-war leader Charles de Gaulle imprinted on the country.
“It’s hardly surprising that France would be furious over losing a multibillion-dollar arms deal with Australia… But recalling ambassadors, as France did from Washington and Canberra, a step just short of breaking relations, is not normal behavior among allies, no matter how miffed they may be. The lost sale of a dozen submarines is painful, but not fatal to the French arms industry, especially as the hulls and engines were to be built in Australia and the electronics and armaments were to come from Lockheed Martin, an American company. And, as the Australians argue, France should have seen it coming: The diesel-powered submarines France offered were no longer what confronting a rising China required.”
“What really got the French seeing red was something else. It was being callously shunted aside by the United States and its Anglophone allies — ‘les Anglo-Saxons,’ as Gen. Charles de Gaulle somewhat disparagingly referred to them — and being excluded from a role in what is shaping up to be the central geopolitical action for decades to come…Yet Mr. Macron is not General de Gaulle. The French president knows the limitations of French power and the ways of realpolitik, and he is not likely to take the squabble any further. Mr. Biden, too, will seek ways to make up to France, and the world will keep turning. For all the recurring talk of making Europe more militarily independent of the United States, there is little likelihood of a major change anytime soon.”
Why it matters: “But that does not mean that the French fury is not real, or justified. Being presented with a fait accompli by three close allies is something no country would swallow. To claim that the ‘pivot' to Asia somehow justifies humiliating America’s oldest ally sounds like a lame excuse for arrogance and shoddy diplomacy… The best allies are not necessarily those that march in lock step behind you, and an America going through its own crisis of identity should be wary of alienating its friends.”
6. Good news, everyone! There’s a labor shortage
Why you should read it: Economist David Autor lays out why a labor shortage is just what America’s workers and economy need in the New York Times.
“The labor scarcity we’re experiencing is real. But this is an opportunity, not a crisis… If the lack of enthusiasm for bad jobs lasts, does this bode ill for the U.S. economy? The answer is no — and here’s why: The U.S. doesn’t have a job quantity problem; instead, it has a job quality problem.”
“Imagine that the U.S. had a market mechanism that spurred employers to voluntarily pay higher wages, offer better benefits and use workers more productively. Actually, that mechanism exists — it’s called a labor shortage. Indeed, the only times in the last four decades that U.S. workers without college degrees saw rapid, sustained improvements in working conditions were during similar periods of labor scarcity: in the late 1990s, during the dot-com boom, and in the years immediately before the pandemic, when the unemployment rate fell below 4 percent. The period of labor scarcity, then, is an opportunity to catalyze better working conditions for those who need them most.”
Why it matters: “As pandemic stimulus programs wind down, the current labor crunch could vanish, but I wouldn’t bet on it. For years, social scientists have warned that because of declining birthrates, retiring baby boomers and severe immigration restrictions, we’re approaching an era of labor scarcity. The good news is that this long-term demographic crunch is going to make cheap labor more rare. Countries undergoing similar demographic changes have seen rising wages among young non-college-educated workers, falling inequality, and more “healthy” automation — like those fast-food robots. Labor scarcity may mean you’ll be speaking your orders to a conversational AI at the drive-through… Labor scarcity won’t solve all our labor market problems. Numerous institutional maladies have made life abysmal for many less-educated workers in the U.S. Those maladies need to be fixed. But on this Labor Day weekend, let’s also raise a (self-serve) toast to labor scarcity — while hoping that the Delta variant does not weaken the strong hand that labor was recently dealt.”
7. Why Biden’s climate hypocrisy is good, actually
Why you should read it: Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute and Morgan D. Bazilan of the Colorado School of Mines make the case in the Wall Street Journal that a dose of hypocrisy from President Biden is necessary to make progress on climate change.
“Even in rich countries, energy costs remain highly salient, despite representing a relatively smaller share of household expenditures for most voters… In the U.S., strong majorities of the public say that they support action to address climate change, but that support generally collapses when pollsters place a price tag on those actions. Voters appear to mean it. Many observers believe that Democratic efforts to raise energy prices—via a federal BTU tax in 1994 and a cap-and-trade program in 2010—contributed to their loss of congressional majorities in the elections that followed. Little wonder that earlier this month Mr. Biden was eager to boast that he had resisted efforts to pay for his infrastructure and climate investments with a gas tax.”
“The administration’s recent OPEC statement provoked predictable outrage from many in the environmental community. But while it was no doubt hypocritical, given the administration’s at times apocalyptic rhetoric about climate change, it also offers a useful lesson in how detached the global climate discourse has become from global realpolitik…Progress in Paris [in 2015] was made possible by finally severing global temperature targets from national commitments to reduce emissions. Nations would submit detailed plans to cut emissions, which would be updated every two years at global climate meetings. But those commitments were nonbinding and subject to revision. Climate progress, in this way, would proceed as nations were able to build political will and economic and technological capabilities domestically—and only insofar as national climate action could be aligned with other important economic and geopolitical objectives.”
Why it matters: “Faced with an economy that still runs mostly on fossil fuels and voters who don’t share the priorities of activists when it comes to the short-term costs of rapidly cutting emissions, President Biden speaks from both sides of his mouth: He warns of the existential threat of climate change and calls for a rapid energy transition while at the same time proposing more incremental clean energy policies and demanding that OPEC crank up oil production… The politics of an actual energy transition can only proceed by detaching it from the grandiose demands of the global climate commentariat. That makes the necessary changes harder to talk about but perhaps easier to implement. Like it or not, the world is not going to address climate change through the heroic emergency action that many long for; it is much more likely through what the economist Adam Tooze recently called ‘improvised, politically dictated adhocracy.’ We’ll need to make the best of it.”
8. How the progressive left killed the New Deal
Why you should read it: In The Atlantic, historian Paul Sabin holds the anti-government progressive left responsible for the demise of the New Deal-Great Society politics and policy paradigm.
“How did government go from being the solution to society’s ills to being the cause of its problems? The answer, paradoxically, lies with the political left as well as the right. In the ’60s and ’70s, as the federal government expanded its reach, and as a growing conservative movement fulminated against it, many liberals also grew disillusioned with the government’s unchecked bureaucratic power. The postwar liberal faith in government crashed against the realities of how that government was working, its excessively close ties with industry, and what it was doing to the American people and to the land itself. Citizen advocates turned to new nonprofit organizations to protect a ‘public interest’ that the government, they argued, did not reliably serve.”
“It was against this conjunction of administrative power—the postwar alliance of big government, big business, and big labor—that best-selling writers such as Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader rose up in full-throated opposition in the early ’60s… Nader and other citizen activists searched for ways to build something larger than individual crusades. They aimed to enlist energetic young researchers and professionals to press government agencies to fulfill their public missions and regulatory roles. The media, the courts, and administrative and legislative processes would be their field of operation. Civil-rights and anti-war movements fueled their belief that the government could not be trusted and needed to be watched over and held accountable. Notable liberal foundations, including Ford and Carnegie, played important roles launching this new public-interest law movement… These activists outlined a new understanding of political economy that saw both business and government as flawed institutions that needed to be counterbalanced by a ‘third sector’ consisting of nonprofit and public-interest organizations. Liberals had long emphasized that market failures and inefficiencies justified the government’s regulatory role. The new environmental regulations of the early ’70s appropriately aimed to remedy classic examples of market failure, such as air and water pollution. But public-interest advocates aimed at a different problem: what some observers called government market failure.’ As a seminal 1978 study of public-interest law sponsored by the Ford Foundation explained, the public-interest movement assumed ‘both types of failures—the market and the government.’ The movement’s adherents believed that ‘political and economic pressures on the decision-making process’ caused failures that could be solved only by ‘extra-governmental efforts.’”
Why it matters: “Even before Covid-19, teens were finding themselves increasingly lonely in school. The rapid transition to smartphone-mediated social lives around 2012 is, as we have shown, the prime suspect. Now, after nearly 18 months of social distancing, contagion fears, anxious parenting, remote schooling and increased reliance on devices, will students spontaneously put away their phones and switch back to old-fashioned in-person socializing, at least for the hours that they are together in school? We have a historic opportunity to help them do so.”
9. How the pandemic exposed the pointlessness of managers
Why you should read it: Tech and business writer Ed Zitron levies a broadside against professional managers in The Atlantic, noting that they provide little of actual value and siphon away talent from where it might be best used.
"The United States, more than anywhere else in the world, is addicted to the concept of management. As I’ve written before, management has become a title rather than a discipline. We have a glut of people in management who were never evaluated on their ability to manage before being promoted to their role. We have built corporate America around the idea that if you work hard enough, one day you might become a manager, someone who makes rather than takes orders. While this is not the only form of management, based on the response to my previous article and my newsletters on the subject, this appears to be how many white-collar employees feel. Across disparate industries, an overwhelming portion of management personnel is focused more on taking credit and placing blame rather than actually managing people, with dire consequences.”
"The pandemic has laid bare that corporate America disrespects entry-level workers. At many large companies, the early years of your career are a proving ground with little mentorship and training. Too many companies hand out enormous sums to poach people trained elsewhere, while ignoring the way that the best sports teams tend to develop stars—by taking young, energetic people and investing in their future (‘trust the process,’ etc.). This goes beyond investing in education and courses; it involves taking rising stars in your profession and working to make them as good as your top performer… Right now, we basically have only one track (management), and it actively drains talent from an organization by siloing and repressing it in supervisory roles. Employees may rise into management, then leave to go make more money managing somewhere else. What we need—and will likely see—are more organizations opening a different track for people who are very good at their specific job, where these people are compensated for being great at what they do and mentoring others. While not everybody is a born teacher or mentor, I’ve yet to see someone very good at their job who doesn’t have anything useful to impart to the younger generation. Countless companies let high-flying performers write books and do seminars about their successes, but rarely take that success and look inward to see how it might be given to others. And instead of vacuous perks such as pool tables and free lunches, perhaps we simply give talent the means to get distractions and annoyances out of the way, such as assistants and software that automates parts of their job.”
Why it matters: “What i’m talking about here is a fundamental shift in how we view talent in the workplace. Usually, when someone is good at their job, they are given a soft remit to mentor people, but rarely is that formalized into something that is mutually beneficial. A lack of focus on fostering talent is counterintuitive, and likely based on a level of fear that one could train one’s own replacement, or that a business could foster its own competition. This is a problem that could be solved by paying people more money for being better at their job. Growing talent is also a more sustainable form of business—one that harkens back to the days of apprenticeships—where you’re fostering and locking up talent so that it doesn’t go elsewhere, and doesn’t cost you time and money to have to recruit it (or onboard it, which costs, on average, more than $4,000 a person). Philosophically, it changes organizations from a defensive position (having to recruit to keep up) to an offensive position (building an organization from within), and also greatly expands an organization’s ability to scale affordably… Hopefully we can move beyond management as a means of control, and toward a culture that appreciates a manager who fosters and grows the greatness in others.”
Odds and Ends
What archaeologists discovered when they unearthed a mass crusader grave in Lebanon…
Why male giraffes prefer to pick on male giraffes of their own size…
How researchers discovered that dogs may have a “theory of mind” that distinguishes intentional and unintentional behavior…
Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams describes taking his children to the site of Plato’s Academy in Athens, inspired by his own father’s dedication to learning and education…
What scientists learn when the study the scat of swift foxes.
Music of the Month
A live performance of “Moby Dick” from Led Zeppelin’s 2003 live album How the West Was Won.
“I’ll Play the Blues for You,” the title track from blues guitarist Albert King’s 1972 album.
A 2021 cover of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” from Hootie and the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker.
Image of the Month
