Dean
23d ago
From a game theoretic perspective China has no incentive to pick a fight over Taiwan. The rates of change in technological and military power favor China. If they want a military victory, then the longer they wait the better their chances.
Between China and Taiwan, sure. Between China and the US, not necessarily. Between China and the US-alliance-network that might back Taiwan, no. Particularly since more than one of those network members could enable Taiwan to achieve something like near-breakout capability, drone swarms, or other dynamics that drastically increase the costs.
The gametheoretic perspective is that China has a relatively limited window of relative disproportionate advantage, before degrading, possibly sharply.
Dean
23d ago
It's not hugely discussed because it's not particularly controversial, to the point that it's like water that the fish swimming through don't recognize.
The 'issue' is that many scientific developments with military applications aren't actually all-that visible, being more about integration of capabilities than distinct form. A 'post-sputnik space effort' is visually impressive when there are no space rockets. A re-usable space-launch rocket is not visually all that distinct from a non-reusable one, and only (greatly) expands the amount of material moved into space, rather than introducing first-of-its-kind capabilities.
Another issue is that a lot of significantly advancing technology is also a lot more democratized, with periods of sole-state advantage being shorter than ever before. Thirty years ago, GPS-guided weapons and real-time tracking of forces was an unprecedented technological advantage that allowed the Gulf War US to slice through one of the largest Soviet-style armies in the world to an unprecedented degree. Now you have the same technological capability in your pocket, in some cases provided by the same companies putting satellites into orbit rather than the states that once had a monopoly on doing that. What isn't invented can still be replicated, often for a fraction of the cost.
That doesn't mean that the technology -> military loops isn't occuring, or having strategic payoffs. After being the target of proxy war for the better part of two decades, the US is arguably waging one of the most effective proxy wars in human history, in large part because of the technologies it has developed and deployed in favor of it's backed party while using lessons from the previous conflicts. The advent of drone warfare is a revolution in military affairs which will be a great weakness to all major military powers by greatly increasing the costs when operating in hostile terrain- but effect the US less due to the US's geographic and alliance contexts. This is far more relevant and impressive on a strategic level than, say, a carrier-killing ballistic missile, a weapon with only about 50 applicable targets in the world.
But drones aren't sexy a decade after the Iraq War, and a carrier-killing missile is whoosh.
Dean
23d ago
Never the worst decision, but Paul Krugman in particular stopped being an economist and traded that for being a credentialed political attack dog... probably decades ago at this point. Certainly back in the 2000s he was serving the role of the Certified Economist to tell NYT readers how stupid his political opponents plans were, and how good the Democratic policy was as being based in Science and Facts.
Dean
23d ago
This is just believers in government policy believing there should be a floor in government's ability to mismanage, rather than accepting that technocrats can easily make things worse for short-term political advantages. This is dispiriting to visions of top-down technocratic control, but is completely in keeping with far more banal expectations that politicians who run the economy for political benefit will not actually prioritize economic health.
That Argentina has some relatively unique political interest entrenchments in the way- such as regional ability to incur debt not found in most centralized economic systems- simply provides more obvious purchases for the later view. That Peronism was adopted functionally entrenched for so long is another.
Dean
23d ago
And yet, the replication crisis is real, so much so that 'every field has bad papers' can very well be that bad papers are norm, and good papers the exception, to the degree that 'the field' is based on the bad and not the good and can be routinely disregarded when appeals to academic authority are made.
Dean
23d ago
And yet you already identified a significant number of very relevant political, economic, diplomatic and other factors that Argentina lacked but their countries of origins had. Those are literally explanatory factors: post-war saw a huge amount of growth because the pre-war entrenched system had just been leveled and so there was only one direction to go, that rebuilding in that context after entrenched political interests had been bloodily wiped away changed the foundational dynamics from the first half of the century, that cultivation of prosperity was considered a strategic interest of the United States who gave the Europeans preferential market access that Latin Americans didn't, that European economic integration overturned local political-economic interests in key factors that enabled economic growth, even as it was shackled to one of the richest economic zones on the planet.
By contrast, post-WW2 Argentina was not subject to major economic reconstruction, its prosperity was not prioritized at a policy level of the United States, it was not part of a premium economic block, and it did not submit to external rulings to overrule domestic political-economic fusion.
The questions is comparison is thus reversed: the question is not why Argentina would fail despite it's failings, the questions should be why Argentina should be expected to succeed despite lacking major- even decisive- factors of success that could overcome failings.
Dean
23d ago
Worse than Yeltsin and the 1990s? Worse than the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Ukraine has been by far the worse Russian strategic failure.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, and even legitimacy- a lack of belief that the system was worth maintaining. However, recognizing that no one believed in the project, that it was ruining the nation vis-a-vis reforms, and that brutal oppression of unwilling subjects was not necessary was... an accurate and even validated strategic assessments. The Russians lost their empire, and yet the military suppression of their neighbors was proven to NOT be necessary to prevent war or an invasion of Russia. The Soviet empire was unnecessary for Russia's security needs, because Russia was not, in fact, at meaningful risk of NATO invasion despite the loss of a major conventional military, even as the Gulf War of '91 already demonstrated that they had lost military dominance.
By contrast, Ukraine was a failure of strategy because it was unforced error born of systemic incompetence at strategic evaluation. All the costs- direct and opportunity- have been unnecessary, and it was incredibly counter-productive on even its own stated goals and rationals, propagandized as many of those were.
A common failure of armchair strategizing is to treat states like they exist in strategy games, where the populace is implicitly supportive of the controlling player and where the agent only has to get the Technologies and Industry and all the good metrics just go up and up and up.
I spent some time talking about popularity and how well the strategy was communicated through to the population. Just lie flat gets a lot of hype in certain parts of Western media - but what results have come from it?
The results are that despite how 'well' the strategy is being communicated through to the population, there is a growing subculture in China's increasingly important and undersized youth pillar, required to maintain the system as the ideological generation retires, who are increasingly don't care to maintain the ideological project, for reasons that are both compounding and beyond the the CCP's ability to stop. Reasons like the pending loss of generational savings of the retiring ideological generation due to the property crisis that is resulting from party policy, which will place more of the burden of supporting (and recovering) on the youth-generation where the passive-resistance has manifested and spread because of, and not despite, social pressure efforts.
Their existence is a counter to arguments of social mobilization behind Xi's national rejuvination narrative, and their growth is a strategic vulnerability to strategies which rely on a supportive populace, as opposed to an apathetic-indifferent one.
Similarly, there are NEETs and quiet quitters in the West - they're not exactly bringing down the govt. This looks like it's part of the modern lifestyle, common to all developed countries.
And this defense is what undermines the previous sentence and the implicit premise of the first post, which attempted to set up a contrast to the popular unity of the Chinese strategy versus the unpopular dissent of the American strategy. Equivalence of NEETs and cultural equivalencies isn't an advantage remaining with China, it's the undermining factor of any strategy that depends on social elan by denying it unique advantages proscribed to it.
There certainly have been strategies over history that attempted to rely on the assumption of a hyper-motivated populace on one's own side, vis-a-vis the apathetic and decadent losers on the other. They are typically poor strategies, serving more as rationalizations of those dependent on the offense rather than actually well founded, and just as often built on the rhetoric of the propaganda state being echoed by the compliant subjects, who by the nature of the state lack the outside perspective to actually make well informed conclusions of their system.
Promote a Free and Open Indo-Pacific -Deepen Our Alliance with Europe -Foster Democracy and Shared Prosperity in the Western Hemisphere -Support De-Escalation and Integration in the Middle East -Build 21st Century US-Africa Partnerships -Maintain a Peaceful Arctic -Protect Sea, Air, and Space
Yes, that's the part I described as 'rules based order', one of the three strands of US strategy.
And that would an inaccurate characterization, particularly given what is behind the (multiple pages) of each of those geographic and technical areas.
Note that I said national strategy as opposed to national security strategy.
And note that I predicted you might try this deflection-
Now, you could argue that the US fails to achieve that (meh), isn't consistently being followed (sure), that it's not the real strategy of the United States ...
-and as I said then- it is. This is how the American government- by law- articulates and communicates national strategy. It is called the National Security Strategy by the virtue of the same law- the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, because that's what they called it in 1986, and no one in the US Congress has felt a need to rename it even as the Presidents have gradually broadened it to the whole-of-government strategy.
Unless you wish to identify some other document as the the real actual national strategy document, I charge this as a No True Scotsman appeal to a semantic that the American government doesn't abide by.
You seem to be thinking about national strategy only in the field of security, which is a very important factor but not everything.
You seem to be under the impression that the national security strategy is only about the field of security, which is a very important indicator that you haven't read it. And are probably confusing it with the National Defense Strategy.
The US National Security Strategy only 48 pages, including the cover and agendas. Admittedly more than some other countries, but nothing a serious commentator on national strategies should find overwhelming. Here you go. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf
By contrast, the National Defense Strategy is a wee 30 more pages, but does go into far more detail as to how the 800-lb-gorilla of the US government thinks about going about competition. https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=872444
DEI isn't just a policy used to achieve a strategic goal, it's an end in itself. The US has tried influencing Estonia to be more multicultural. Blinken apparently brings up LGBTQI in every conversation with the Saudis. US media pushes the virtues of blacks just like Chinese media pushes nationalism, albeit in a less hamfisted way. I was watching an Avengers film the other day, the super-smart black African girl in the hidden hyper-advanced African country clowning on the white physicist was a little cringe-worthy. There's a huge affirmative action apparatus in the USA, subsidies and assistance for non-white businesses.
And yet, this does not make DEI the American national strategy, and does not keep DEI from being a policy. I would certainly agree that DEI is a policy that it's advocates believe in as a good in and of itself, and even that is irrelevant to whether the spread of DEI is viewed as a advancing American strategy, but neither of those are relevant to the difference between being a strategy and being a policy advanced on the basis of strategy.
They didn't naively read that McKinsey paper and think 'hey diversity is really efficient and improves our other goals, let's do it'. There are true believers that the US Air Force ought to be more representative of the country's demographics, that there should be plenty of female construction workers building chip factories, that there need to be more people from marginalized communities on company boards. The people who write these papers believe in reshaping the world in a certain direction and that is happening in all kinds of different areas. China teaches national rejuvenation in schools, America teaches diversity in schools, you've got the gay-straight alliance and various other initiatives. Perhaps I could add China's 'uphold the supremacy of communist party' as a strategy with all kinds of supporting policies but that really goes without saying.
This, too, does not make DEI the American national strategy, nor does it keep DEI from being a policy. In fact, it is directly compatible with DEI being a policy- policies counter eachother.
Such a large-scale and comprehensive effort isn't just a policy. A policy would be something like the semiconductor suppression against Chinese high-tech industry, it's subordinate to US national security. It's specific, discrete and focused, usually in just one sector like economics.
Such a large-scale and comprehensive effort is precisely what an American WGA entails.
Whole-of-Government Approach (“WGA”) refers to the joint activities performed by diverse ministries, public administrations and public agencies in order to provide a common solution to particular problems or issues, and involve some form of cross-boundary work and restructuring.
Which is to say- a government policy.
Dean
23d ago
Well, obviously you don't, but we also obviously disagree on the relative merit of various factors, with you discounting the core point of governance and politics I placing a high priority on it.
Even your choice of the 1970s is both odd and seems to lack an obvious political/policy dynamic that others had opportunity to partake in, but Argentina did not. Europe's ability to afford imports after WW2 was immediate crushed because, well, WW2 happened in Europe and the colonial empires were subsequently shattered, but European reconstruction entailed integration not only into the American market (which Argentina lacked equivalent access to), but the South Korean and Japanese markets (due to the special US trilateral economic deals where the US offered its Asian and European allies market access to the US in exchange for them granting access to eachother). As such, the Korean Miracle and the Japanese golden decades- and their stratospheric, extremely efficient, industrial output growth- were well underway into the 70s, undercutting the industrial-sectors of the Peronist system, even as the trifling things like the coup of Peron and the Dirty War undermined the agricultural sectors by running a terror campaign.
To cut to a core disagreement: I contest that Argentina is, and ever has been since WW2, a higher-performance tribe.
Peron was not an high-performance economic manager as much as someone who had the fortune of seeing the rest of the world blow itself up but not good enough to long-term capitalize, Peronism was not a high-performance ideology, it was not a political choice or economic model taken equivalently amongst the Latin American region, and the cross left/right dynamics of Peronism that let it outlast the coup meant that it's malefects continued to entrench well beyond where other countries purged their ideological opponents' systems.
Dean
23d ago
As are the core claims, because the core claims as much from what people believe on twitter as in the non-consensus-but-valid research.
Skepticism and not deferring belief is as valid against a non-consensus as it is against the replication-crisis-tainted consensus, as the counter-establishment types are operating in the same fundamental ecosystem, with the same underlying incentives: to over-claim, under-demonstrate, and fail to replicate without selective utilization of data.
When the bad research is the norm, and not the exception, skepticism of anything from the field is warranted and sensible. The issue is not that one of a thousand papers are compromised- it's that upwards to 900+ of the 1000 papers are compromised, and if you can't determine which are which, 'look for the good ones' is meaningless admonishment.
This is true, and ultimately a detriment to China in terms of manufacturing strategy as the advanced robotics factories have to be installed in place of the old ones, and there are multiple reasons- ranging from economic to political- to build your new manufacturing low-labor-cost factory in somewhere other than China. China could be the place... but if the cost-savings are primarily from the automation, you could just build them behind someone else's tariff wall, and not risk being caught in the geopolitical risk factors.
Currently China is trying to leverage the sunk-cost advantage, rather than a worker advantage, but the key investors on the more advanced robotics factories are external companies, and they are the ones being pressured (or lured) by other governments to be elsewhere.
China will have its own robotics factories all the same, but the normal international response to this is tariff walls to prevent dumping, and the more China leverages it's current strength to keep barries low for its own advantages, the more diplomatic costs it incurs even as it expands the dependence on others to consume.
The US still spends more on research but they're not exactly growing their research spending like China is:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locations=US-CN
So long as the US economy has as much or more real growth than China- and there many reasons to believe it is- that is precisely what your own link indicates is happening.
Just at an initial look, both China and the US have been increasing their % of GDP to science at about the same rate for the last decade, with the US staying between .7 and 1% of GDP ahead of PRC. Not only would the US be spending nearly an entire % of GDP more, and not only would the GDP have grown faster, but the overall economy remains much larger, meaning the same % growth actually entails larger numbers of $ being spent.
Now, you could try to change the terms by arguing effective spending should be considered in PPP terms, and the general pro-China economic framing at the moment is to make PPP rather than nominal measures, but not only would you have to significantly re-do your money argument and support the implicit claim that science-per-PPP is a consistent metric worth using, you'd have to factor in the US's extended scientific partnerships with other countries, and how their money should be factored in.
I'll stop you right here. No, the fall of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin era was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not. Massive impoverishment of the population, economic collapse, social collapse, demographic collapse, military collapse. Gorbachev had a strategy to reform the Soviet Union with policies of perestroika and glasnost. He wanted socialism with a human face and to preserve the Union. It failed massively and disastrously. I'm not sure if Yeltsin had a strategy other than 'remain in power' but it certainly wasn't good for the country.
And yet, none of this challenges the point you are protesting, which is that of a catastrophe of strategy as opposed to a catastrophe of other forms. That the fall of the Soviet Union was catastrophic for Russia in a way that Ukraine is not a rebuttal- it is the original argument!
The distinction- and this returns to the original context of that quote you've chosen to focus on- is of the nature of choice and necessity. The commonality of Stalin being backstabbed by the Nazis after making an alliance with them, and Russia's decision to invade Ukraine on incredibly mis-informed impressions born, is that they were the results of unnecessary strategic decisions born of bad information (that the leaders themselves cultivated). Stalin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings of the attack before it occurred to the detriment of his military forces, and the choice to ally with the Nazis to partition eastern europe before that was equally unnecessary for Russian defense, making the direness of 41-42 a result of unnecessary decisions. Similarly, Putin disregarded numerous indicators and warnings that he was not going to be welcomed as liberators and warnings, including the fact that a previously astroturfed uprising failed to garner major Russophile-support a half-decade previously. The consequences of both, beyond being massively costly, were that they were the result of unforced decisions driven by bad strategic understandings, and would have been considerably better for the Russians had they had a more accurate understanding of the strategic situation.
By contrast, Gorbachev's decision to undertake reforms were taken because of accurately-identified issues, and the fact that many of the factors went on to undermine his desired result actually validates the strategic perception that went into them. Gorbachev wanted socialism with a human face not because that had never been done before, but because he recognized it was (rightfully) perceived as fraudulent by many across (and below) the system. Gorbachev identified that change would be needed to keep the system together as something other than a conquest-suppression state because that's how the system was built and enforced, as opposed to the ideological paeons that official position had been taking for decades. And Gorbachev identified a need for major economic system change, as the communist materialist rational had abjectly failed to the degree that the late-Soviet economy was taking perfectly good raw resources and turning them into inferior goods. That the 90s followed doesn't mean that the strategy of change was a wrong decision- it's reflective that any strategy taken for the 90s was starting from an incredibly bad position, and that the issues derived from those issues aren't the result of the strategy chosen, but the realities the strategy had to be chosen from.
It's possible to reform a socialist country into a market economy without shock therapy, without shelling Parliament, without a decade of chaos. China did exactly that. Ideology is a part of national strategy, if people stop believing that's a problem in and of itself. With better management of the economy and internal politics, the crisis of belief would've been mitigated. They could've transitioned to other sources of legitimacy in a more graceful manner. And hey, there are people in the West today who still believe in socialism. Indeed, the Russian communist party was quite competitive electorally - it took some trickery to keep them from ejecting Yeltsin.
When I referenced there is a common failure point to assume that historical states actually work like video games, with the results in control of the player's agency, this is the sort of rhetoric I'm alluding to. This demonstrates both an ignorance of the history and politics involved, as well as a conflation of the merits of the deciding on a strategy with the strategy's results.
The first point returns to the point of the original first question on the value of planning, and the importance of tying that to realistic understandings of the dynamics and actors involve. Come the late 80s/early 90s, there was no 'graceful' alternative to maintaining the Soviet Empire because from the start to the end the Soviet Union from the start was an incredibly ungraceful conquest-and-suppression state, that directly and violently both annexed its extremities, violently put down attempts to gracefully leave the imperial sphere, and systematically relies on pervasive surveillance states and systemic abuses to disrupt dissent. The result was a Union where even Crimea wanted to leave it, and when ungraceful suppression was ended, did. The constituent conquests were not looking for another source of Russian imperial legitimatization to be subjugated under, they did not want the Russian empire, and only continued ungraceful suppression would keep them in it as the Soviets were well on their way to yet another uprising come the late 80s. This is the strategic context Gorbachev was operating in, and from which any strategic decision on maintaining the broader union was being made from.
Similarly, the 90s was indeed an incredibly corrupt time and impoverished time... and was always going to be in transition, as the sort of corrupt leaders who led and looted Russia in the 90s were literally the sort of leaders the Soviet Union had on hand and was producing for decades, and their level of competence and public care was always going to be reflective of that no matter what style of reform onetook in a continuity of government effort because they were the continuity of leadership. The 90s didn't occur, and then a whole host of corrupt gangsters emerged to be corrupt and mismanage the system- the Soviet system had been run by the same sort of people for decades, and their mismanagement was what brought the situation to Gorbachev's position in the first place. The transition being run by gangsters wasn't a strategic choice, it was a limitation enforced onto the strategy by the previous generations of the Soviet Union being a suppression state led by, and selecting for, gangsters.
Which goes back to the point that strategies are chosen for addressing strategic problems, and not the implicit inverse where the strategic problems are a result of choosing the strategy. Unlike in some video games, there is no easily-identified 'corrupt politician' flag or a counterpart 'honest bueracrat' trait, and there is no magical anti-crime/encourage loyalty option. Strategies are chosen from the problems facing the chooser, and the failure of a strategy to pan out as desired is not the same as a failure of strategy, or that the strategic considerations that went into choosing it. Sometimes a bad hand of options is a bad hand of options, and the 90s were going to be a bad hand for the Russians due to many factors the Russians had stacked against themselves.
The reform of the Soviet Union was always going to be carried out by gangsters, for gangsters, after the same gangsters had looted Russia and the empire for decades.
You don't see the kinds of hysterically aggressive Western nationalists that are found in China.
If you mean 'see' as in that it's not covered by the media, this is because the general political tribal dynamics of the media class tend to see nationalism as uncouth and coded as their opposition parties.
If you mean 'see' as in 'it's not there,' this would be flatly incorrect, and anyone who lived through the early 2000s could probably recount more than a few American examples.
You seem to be under the impression that the national security strategy is only about the field of security, which is a very important indicator that you haven't read it. And are probably confusing it with the National Defense Strategy.
Above you were saying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, unrelated to security issues
And above was a different topic, while this is on the American national strategy.
I realize it can be embarrassing to have been predicted and called out, but the sub-thread you are and were responding to was not on the fall of the Soviet Union, but the specific national policy documents the Americans use to present national strategy which you mis-characterized (your original second question), and your objection demonstrated your lack of awareness on the role of the document.
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
(which is wrong, given how Chechens and Islamists immediately took advantage of Russian weakness).
No, not really. The Chechens are precisely the sort of release-or-suppress challenge that the Russians faced across the broader Soviet empire, validating strategies made with that consideration in mind, and the Islamists were fighting Russia even at the Soviet Strength, hence Afghanistan.
Come the late 80s, the Soviets were facing the buildup to a number of major uprisings as the Polish and Baltic independence movements gained steam, and come March 91 after the Americans cut through the Soviet-style Iraqi Army it was very apparent to the broader world that in a conventional conflict in Europe, the Russians were likely to be decisively beaten in any conflict with the Americans- including if the Americans intervened in any attempted Soviet suppression campaign in eastern Europe.
The Soviet strategic challenge of the early 90's wasn't simply that the state was decrepit and the economic system breaking and the society didn't want to be a part of it. It was also that the primary military competitor was not only ideologically inclined to intervene when the next anti-Soviet/pro-Western uprising occurred, but had demonstrated to a global audience that doing so was well within its martial capacity. The only credible model for contesting tactical defeat over non-existential imperial holdings would have been nuclear- and if you don't see the numerous ways that could have turned out worse for Russia than the 90s, you aren't trying.
Anyway, you were saying strategy was about security. Now you want to say that US strategy encompasses more than security?
Yes, and your attempt to play semantic on this demonstrates that you aren't familiar with the American strategy architecture, which undermines the credibility of your assessment of American strategy when you don't even know what it's based on or derives from. Hence the question if you'd ever read it before your opening post.
The National Security Strategy is a document whose publication is required by American law. The law specifies what the document is going to be referred to as. The National Security Strategy isn't called such because it focuses solely 'Security' in the framing you are appealing to, it is called such because in the 1980s 'National Security' was the buzzword de jure that was written into the law as what the document would be referred to.
This is classic example of (bureaucratic) semantic drift, in the same way that 'Homeland Security' refers to a framing that had a particular moment of emphasis in the Bush era US government and which Obama then diminished, and broadly refers to the same concepts that another set of words could. (Bush used Homeland Security to emphasize the implications to the north american continent, but other Presidents tend to National Security for it's broader implications for overseas interests and allies.)
I had a look through the document you nominate as the holy text of US national strategy and there's loads of ideological and legitimacy content in there, the need to defend democracy and human rights. Plus there's a fair bit of DEI stuff as well - they want more STEM for girls, there's anti-racism content, they affirm diversity as a national value...
And yet, 'more STEM for girls' is not the strategy, it is the identified policy to achieve a strategy. And not a particularly controversial policy objective, unless you think less STEM for girls is somehow the preferable end-state.
Come now, I know you've opened the document now. I also know which section you are pulling from, what higher-level goal that example supposed to advance, and how STEM is treated across the document.
The answer for the audience:
STEM for girls is in reference to page 15, as in
We are focused on strengthening the economy by building from the bottom up and the middle out. To that end, we know the most impactful public investments are the ones we make in our people. We seek to increase equitable access to affordable health care and child care; career-long training and skill building; and high-quality education and training, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially for women and girls. These investments will boost our economic capacity by ensuring our workforce is better educated, healthier, and more productive. This stronger workforce will also build enduring advantages that bolster our strength and resilience. We are also supporting workers by promoting union organizing and collective bargaining, and improving workers’ job quality.
This is part of the "Investing in our People", which is a subset of "Investing in our National Power to Maintain a Competitive Edge," which itself is the first part of Part II: Investing in Our Strength.
In this context, STEM for girls is not the strategy- STEM "especially" for women and girls is one of multiple elements of the goal of developing the national workforce.
And if one values STEM over other degree fields, then the lower hanging fruit in terms of which gender could have STEM expanded more is...
Well, 'women are under-represented' is another way of framing 'the absolute and relative number of women who could be in STEM is low.' There is absolutely a reasonable policy debate to be had as to whether it's better to increase STEM by increasing the number of men doing it, or whether women in STEM is a relatively low-hanging fruit that should be encouraged, but DEI-esque systemic encouragement of "under-represented demographics" is, again, a way to frame 'the absolute and relative number of [demographic] in STEM is low' when bigger STEM number is considered better.
Given that additional references to STEM in the document are-
Attracting a higher volume of global STEM talent is a priority for our national security and supply chain security, so we will aggressively implement recent visa actions and work with Congress to do more.
[We are] Creating more effective and efficient hiring, recruitment, retention, and talent development practices, particularly in STEM fields, economics, critical languages, and regional affairs.
...and I think an accurate characterization of American STEM strategy is not 'DEI for its own sake,' or even 'STEM for girls,' but rather 'STEM from any source', with DEI-coded policies being a way to encourage an overall increase in STEM-participation not only by demographics in the United States, but demographics from outside of the US to be head-hunted into the United States.
In other words- the American National Strategy is to encourage STEM training (especially among the demographic least participating), attract more STEM talent from across the world, and improve the recruitment/retention of STEM.
This is indeed something very compatible with DEI-ideology. It's also the sort of policy you'd expect to see if you believe STEM should be increased as a matter of national strategy.
There's certainly an argument to be made on the strategic merits of quantity vs quality, but arguments that DEI fails this on a strategic level while PRC diploma-mills of STEM are uniquely successful are going to face internal contradiction. For people who believe the PRC has a STEM advantage because it's increasing the numbers of STEM graduates, and that Westoid commentary on the quality of PRC STEM education is suspect is just silly cope...
Congratulations. You officially won the argument and convinced key American elites years ago. DEI and migration policy are how the US government under a Democratic administration believe the US will long-term compete with PRC STEM diploma numbers, and it made it into policy.
Thank you for your service.
They don't outright say DEI is at the core of their ideology, they say many things they don't really mean. It's a public document, not to be viewed as a window into their innermost beliefs. Only in the implementation, in the specifics of outcomes do we see what they truly desire. That's what's important and why I brought up the DEI/CHIPS article in the first place.
While I am always pleased to see yet more flourishing psychics able to divine the True Beliefs of people they've never met, I will again conclude that this is demonstrative of the point that you do not understand American strategy, or how the most governments think of strategy or approach it at a state-level.
While it may strain your belief, the American strategy is indeed a public document, and it is indeed intended to be a window for others both inside and outside the US to understand the objectives and directions of the US government. This is for many reasons, ranging from that coordination of the US government and its allies and aligned civil society is hard if no one knows what the strategy is (and when most don't have security clearances to view classified items), to that secret national strategies are stupid for a host of reasons and liable to be posted online within a few weeks anyway.
Contra wiki-leaks founder, the American government (and Western governments in general) do not operate as a conspiracy, where the public motives are false and the true motives are state secrets. The West generally operate as democratic administrations with relatively high turnover of national leadership, often between parties with personal and partisan animosity and no particular interest in keeping their predecessors differing secret desires a secret. There are indeed classified policy documents out there- when you review them, you will find that they are consistently about the 'how' of implementing the strategy, not secret real strategies in and of themselves. The distinction between 'how' and 'what' is part of the endurance of continuity of activities: because the public intentions are generally non-controversial, there are rarely strong motives to unearth the more secretive 'how' programs. (However, it does occasionally happen- see the European government phone-tapping schedules, where upon realizing they were spied upon while in office, new governments have outed previously secretive political espionage programs. This sort of revelation is far less common in states with far less administration turnover.)
Ultimately, national strategies aren't just a plan of how to operate, they're also a signaling and communication device. A secret strategy that no one outside a select few knows is a bad strategy at the scale of the nation-state, because the scale of governments overseeing coalitions of hundreds of millions of people is too large to be coherent. Public strategies are far superior for the purpose of coordination, as in the absence of specific direction anyone can know a more general direction, and it has also been a way for governments to signal evolutions in their postures that mitigate the risks of strategic surprises to their allies and their enemies.
Ayup. And why the Japanese economic strategy of farshoring (Japanese companies investing into foreign countries instead of japan), and broader American/western 'friendshoring' (investing manufactories in more local supply chains in friendly-ish countries) is the crux of the US/western divestment strategy: by putting the industry in non-chinese countries, it guides those countries to have an interest in tariffs as an anti-dumping measure in order to keep domestic industry viable and employing.
A further... issue? Contingency? Is that as the PRC investments more influence/resources into keeping trade barriers low, the dependence on the maritime flows increases. This increases the advantage of the US's blue water capabilities, as while the PRC has invested significantly in local maritime denial capabilities, it's ability to project maritime power remains limited and subject to both phsyical and economic disruption. If/when there comes a conflict, the PRC's ability to maintain the low-tariff dynamic will be militarily and not just politically challenged, and various countries will have strong incentives to assume more direct control of their PRC-paid for investments and sell to viable consumers even as the PRC is cut off.
Not a clear or clean approach by any means, but one of the key strategic questions for the US in a conflict with the PRC is how to manage/mitigate the economic fallout.
Ah, excellent. While the abandonment of previous lines of argument to ever shifting deflections and changes of argument is as enjoyable as always (Really? You tried to use Macron warning about a Ukrainian defeat as a counter to Russia's invasion of Ukraine being a strategic disaster of choice? In the same post rejecting government strategic positions as unreliable due to lying, no less?), I think we can close this exchange by returning to one of the original points that you've been defending against all this time, which your attempt to avoid acknowledging illuminates nicely.
As was forewarned-
As we are back to the American national strategy, I will offer you a direct question to establish your familiarity with American national strategy, which in full forewarning I will call out if you try to evade.
Before I posted the link, and before you posted your opening thesis on American strategy, had you ever read or reviewed an American National Security Strategy?
And your response is more than telling.
This may be news to you but you do not have to read these documents to discuss national strategy. You can look at what actually happens in the real world. You can interpret govt priorities with your own eyes. This is better than trusting in the documents. Govts lie! The Chinese might say that they're interested in purely peaceful development - yet actually build up a gigantic navy and forces targeting their near abroad. The US might say it's worried about Iraqi WMDs and Saddam's links with terrorists - but have other motivations and goals for invading Iraq.
And when govts don't lie, they try to be tactful, they massage their words and adopt a certain frame. The Chinese adopt this supercilious tone where their military may be forced to take action if foreign provocateurs incite a rogue province into illegal independence activities. That's not a lie but it's not straightforward communication. Better to ignore the cheap talk and look at results.
This is a rather unsubtle attempt to waive aside the relevance of having read the American strategy, when a simple affirmation would have bolstered your position considerably more in a single word. Add to that your earlier ignorance of the documents in question and attempt to cherry-pick contents of the document after introduction without awareness of how they fit into their own location, I feel reasonable concluding...
No, you did not read or review the American National Security Strategy before your commentary on American national security strategy.
And given your word choice in this non-rebuttal to as to what the Chinese 'might' say in their strategy- as opposed to what they do say in their strategic policy documents- I strongly doubt you've read Chinese equivalents either.
Which makes a fair degree of sense, given your obvious lack of familiarity with not only American strategic thinking, but how Western strategic policy systems work in general, including the distinctions between strategies and policies. And your simultaneous attempt to assert that it doesn't matter if you read national policy documents or not because of your powers of observation, but also that the American national strategy document isn't the real strategy anyway so, like, it double doesn't matter if you read it or not.
I fully expect you to continue this denial of relevance defense, of course. After all, it's far more palatable to deny that the strategy exists or that it matters if you are aware of it than to concede that you didn't read it before trying to summarize it in boo-words.
While prioritizing the personal truths of one's own interpretation is typically more associated with progressive DEI advocates than detractors, it's a common enough retort when challenged over inconvenient external objective facts that might challenge their interpretation, like the publicly available national strategy documents that anyone could check their claims against.
Which returns to the original question that led to this exchange, and the structural answer that resulted.
Do you agree with my characterization of national strategy for either country?
No. Because you never bothered to learn what their strategies are, and it shows in what you've chosen to project and focus on instead.
Dean
16d ago
That would be better, but not significantly enough so to solve the underlying problem.
This is a bit old (2007), but the fundamental challenges and dynamics are still valid, and material sciences involved in transmission haven't change that much.
In a nutshell, at a relatively normal transmission line cost/load, you can stand to lose about 8% of generated per 1000 miles. (This is very rough- it can be notably better, or considerably worse.) That means you have to push more (to get what you need at the end), and you're paying for what is required to be generated, as opposed to what is consumed. This assumes away any disruptions to the transmission paths, such as any sort of natural disaster / malign actor effort to disrupt the transmission medium. (Hope you don't have any strategic rivals who can afford cyber-attacks / drones.)
It makes far, far more sense from just about any planning context other than ideology- whether financial or reliability or safety or resiliency to hostile interests- to just generate the power considerably closer to the consumer. Given that the overwhelming most important aspect of an electrical grid at scale is baseline power- the ability to meet the need you have as you need it- it doesn't really make sense to invest in mass-renewable, short or long distance, if you're just going to need a redundant power generation capability anyways.
Dean
15d ago
You are probably thinking of the Icelink proposal.
This was a proposal as opposed to a project, and more or less died in the later 2010s at the Feasibility study level. There are probably three main reasons for that. One, cost-benefit on a technical level, as Icelink was more of an environmental proposal for UK governments to boast green credentials than an actual way to most efficiently use green energy in industry (as you could just invest the energy consumption infrastructure in Iceland). Two, related to cost and benefit, was Brexit, on top of the internal budget disruption to the UK governmental also put the UK and Iceland on opposite sides of the EU single market wall at a time when UK and EU relations at the regulatory and policy level were, shall we say, uninterested in major investments to the UK benefit. Third was the point that any UK investment in Icelink would land in territories with significant risk of separating from the UK over the medium/long term, as the cables would either naturally land in Scotland- where the SNP was having a strong period and polling near-majorities in hypothetical separation referendums- or in Northern Ireland- which the post-Brexit EU policy was to have economically segregated from the rest of the UK economic-legal architecture. A major, UK-level investment which would provide EU baseload power to territories with significant political interests who would rather be a part of the EU than UK would be a territorial integrity risk.
So, don't expect it to go through.
Which is a shame, because when it is available at economically viable rates, geothermal is one of the 'better' green power systems because it meets the baseload power requirements of predictable, non-swingy power. The economic viability is dependent on geography that isn't necessarily where you want it, but that's actually why long-range transmission makes sense in that context because you can't simply build a closer geothermal plant, but geothermal is good baseload generation and if you do build it, you don't have to build duplicative generation capacity like with intermittant green sources.
Dean
15d ago
Not really what your article shows, which doesn't actually indicate a German government role. Rather, it's a threat by the company that wants to be paid to build the project in order to pressure the UK to provide more money, with the threat to build to Germany instead. However, the article doesn't claim that Germany is interested in this, and the underlying context is that the company (XLinks) is in the capital/financing accumulation phase (trying to identify investor governments), of which the UK was the primary interested investor.
Xlinks garnered initial UK interest, in the 'UK is sending civil servants to study this in depth if it actually makes sense' sort, because it claimed the project would be profitable for it if it was guaranteed a solar energy cost floor (minimal price) of 48 pounds per MegaWatt Hour (GBP/MWh), when the UK cost is generally higher. The route was intended to be a shallow-water cable basically bypassing Spain to go direct to the UK, meaning it wasn't to enter the EU energy market (which would risk/compromise the viability of the project for the UK for multiple reasons).
But that's kind of where the project has stalled. It's unclear if the UK found other information indicating it's not viable, whether the costs are higher than initially advertised, or what. But implicitly the project is under negotiation. And this article isn't the Germans saying they want in, but rather the company involved threatening to go ask the Germans to see if they want to replace the UK as the recipient... but naturally if the UK isn't delivered to, it's not going to be a load-carrying investor, and as for the Germans...
Well, there are a couple problems for that. One being that it have to enter the European energy grid, unlike the sea transmission route to the UK, and the French have typically opposed solar transmission network proposals (such as from Spain) linking solar producers to their consumers... surely unrelated to France's own substantial electricity exports to Germany, and its desire to expand its nuclear energy exports to its European neighbors.
But there's also the point that the Xlinks Morocco project started being pushed in 2021, and the Ukraine War kicked off in 2022. Germany energy policy since has been about (re)building natural gas import capacity, as natural gas is not only critical for stable baseload power generation, but specifically as an input for many of Germany's industrial processes as a resoruce separate from the electricity. As a result, Germany's energy investment priority has been on scaling up its import capacity / storage for gas as it fights to keep as much industrial capacity as it can.
Dean
14d ago
...you, uh, are aware that Iranian-aligned and supplied groups have been shooting rockets into northern Israel for months now, right? Like, well into the hundreds of rockets. To a degree that 60,000 Israelis were mandatorily evacuated from parts of northern Israel due to the ongoing campaign.
And you are aware that one of the main groups doing so, Hezbollah, is regionally seen and understood as an Iranian proxy-ally, with significant degrees of coordination / support / direct armaments?
And you are aware that the primary agency of Iran that conducts this coordination/arming is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose commander was the one targeted in the strike?
This is really not a mystery. Iran has been participating in the Gaza conflict for several months. It has been directly instrumental in its efforts to expand the conflict to a second front in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which it has been arming and coordinating with via its positions Syria. It's not even the first effort to cause a multi-front war, which date to the start of the conflict.
The metaphor of kicking a hornet's nest relies on the implicit pre-state that the hornets are not already out and trying to sting you.
Are you, “… uh … ”, aware that America and Israel have funded insurgency groups in Iran’s backyards for more than a decade now?
Considering how I posted multiple times over the years on various external supporters for groups in the Syrian Civil War, sure.
Just as you are no doubt aware that Iran was supporting insurgency and terrorist groups to attack its geopolitical enemies for decades before the Syrian Civil War, and as such the Israeli/US involvement in the Syrian civil war was neither the instigating factor nor the basis for Iran adopting such a tactic.
Groups that went on to kill civilians in Iran?
Per your own citation excerpt- and what's not hidden behind a subscription wall- the groups supported by Israel did not, but rather had members who defected to other groups, which were not being funded or directed by the US or Israel to do such.
In fact, the correlation in the citation- of group members who defected to the Islamic State- is a notable contrast with the policy purpose- which was for groups to fight the Islamic State and keep it from the Israeli borders. While a conflation of groups is indeed a convenient and common policy to try an critique Israeli and US policy in Syrai, as far as the policy purpose of 'funding insurgency groups', the rather clear purpose here is not 'to attack Iran.'
Now, while there is certainly an argument to be made for responsibility for unintended/undesired consequences of policy, that argument would be far broader and also self-incriminating to Iran itself given the influence it and its proxies had in kickstarting ISIS. Which, while interesting, negates any real relevance to why Iran is supplying and helping direct hundreds of missile strikes into Israel over the last 6 months, and why that context shouldn't be relevant to why a country might retaliate to that.
Iran is no more responsible for Hezbollah as Israel is to the insurgent terrorist groups that attack them domestically.
If Israel were to arm and direct insurgent terrorist groups for the purpose of attacking Iran to the degree that tens of thousands of Iranians were displaced by conflict, they would indeed be deemed responsible by most reasonable persons.
Now, unless you intend to argue that Iran is to be deemed less responsible for what it has done than Israel is to be in your hypothetical, I'm pleased to see we have a consensus that Iran is no more, and no less, and indeed just as responsible as Israel would be were Israel to pursue an equivalent policy of provocation.
Now, as Israel did not pursue such a policy, but Iran has and is...
What else could they do? Israel bombs their consulate and kills their people.
They could credibly signal they intend to no longer actively engage in proxy warfare and distance themselves from their proxies. They won't, but they could.
Israel bombed the Iranian consulate because the Iranian asymetric warfare commander who has been organizing a multi-month bombardment campaign of Northern Israel was at the consulate, where he was quite likely in the business of facilitating further bombardments because that literally was part of his job. Everyone with an understanding of the region understood that context as soon as the Iranians publicized and admitted it was the IRGC Commander, and that as such this was not a tit-for-tat provocation stand-alone incident where Iran was responding to an Israeli kinetic instigation, but a tat-for-tit-for-tat cycle where Iran would be responding to an Israeli response.
The difference is significant- and telling in how the Arab states responded- as the difference between responding to a response versus responding to an instigating response is that any game cyclic equilibrium will look at the response of the response for indications on whether the cycle will continue. People who believe that an Iranian non-response would be perceived as cowardliness and Israel believing it can act with impunity aren't familiar with the region. The accusations could come regardless- how Iran chose to respond is indicative of how it intends to continue with the policies that provoked the Israeli retaliation.
Dean
14d ago
There's also the points that one of the key premise of the Iron Dome system as a system that doesn't just bankrupt the country is it's trajectory tracking for when things are believed to be going for low-risk impact areas. Rather than shooting expensive interceptors at everything, it, well, doesn't, and the parameters for what it does/does not accept risk on are subject to different factors.
As such, Ranger's twitter doesn't really indicate as much as one might want one way or another. Things 'getting through' the Iron Dome isn't the failure state, it's the intended state. At the same time, it doesn't mean the system wasn't being overwhelmed... but also doesn't mean that the system was running out of ammo / got hit / etc.
Without clarity on to what was being hit, there's not much saying whether the system succeeded of failed at it's purpose.
Dean
14d ago
Which was also state terrorism.
Unless it was for the purpose of terror, especially against civilians, for political purposes, it really wasn't.
State terrorism isn't a catch-all term for any sort of lethal activity done by a state, or even illegal actions. And that, in turn, turns to the legality when a party is a military target.
If you want to make an international law argument of it, international laws of conflict absolutely do allow for the deliberate targeting of military commanders, which Soleimani and Zahedi were, of belligerent parties, which the IRGC is and has been.
If we're going to go the route of "political assassinations are okey-dokey", then you can't object to foreign countries attempting to assassinate American political and military figures on American soil.
There's never been a legal objection to parties in conflict killing eachother in the course of armed conflict. It's curious you think that is a retort.
Ultimately international law exists to regulate conflicts between nations by the mutual agreement of said nations, and the derivative force behind this is reciprocity, not external enforcement. The flip side is that if Country A attempts to assassinate Country B military and political figures, Country A doesn't get to claim any defense when struck back... and in this context, Iran has a long history of assassinating political and military figures, as well as targeting civilian targets.
The Americans killed Soleimani because Soleimani was involved in the business of killing Americans. Likewise, the Israelis killed Zahedi because Zahedi was in the business of killing Israelis. Under the laws of armed conflict- which do not require that either beligerrent declare a state of war- that made them legitimate military targets.
Unless you deny that the states involved were in a state of armed conflict- which is not prevented simply due to Iran working through proxies- that would make them valid military targets under the international laws of war. The same laws of war are constructed in such a way that when a valid military target moves into a location protected by laws of armed conflict, that location is no longer protected due to having a valid military target.
Ultimately, international law for armed conflicts is not nice, and does not have an 'It's okey-dokey for me to hit you, but no hit backs' requirement. States may voluntarily choose to refrain from retaliating militarily, but they are under no obligation to.
Dean
13d ago
Setting aside that you confused two different countries in two different hemispheres with over 200 million population difference, your own article has the slight issue with ignoring some inconvenience context- like the numerous Russian demands that were rather obviously not close to being agreed to.
For example, terms like what Ukraine could defend itself with if Russia launched a third continuation war-
The draft treaty with Ukraine included banning foreign weapons, “including missile weapons of any type, armed forces and formations.” Moscow wanted Ukraine’s armed forces capped at 85,000 troops, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. Ukrainian negotiators wanted 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces, according to the document. Russia wanted to have the range of Ukrainian missiles capped at 40 kilometers (about 25 miles).
-or who the question of security guarantors for Ukraine in lieu of NATO-
Other issues remained outstanding, notably what would happen if Ukraine was attacked. Russia wanted all guarantor states to agree on a response, meaning a unified response was unlikely if Russia itself was the aggressor. In case of an attack on Ukraine, Ukrainian negotiators wanted its airspace to then be closed, which would require guarantor states to enforce a no-fly zone, and the provision of weapons by the guarantors, a clause not approved by Russia.
In other words, Russia was perfectly willing to accept a peace in which Ukraine dismantled the military that had just stopped it's advance, Ukraine limit itself to being unable to hit back to any significant distance against the extensive Russian use of long range fires, and so long as Russia could veto any external support to Ukraine in case it invaded a fourth time.
Truly, the Ukrainians and Russians negotiators were close to the same page.
Or, alternatively, the Ukrainians lack agency, and the UK-US-ians are to blame.
But my money is that history will remember that the people who launched the war of national destruction, on claims that there was no Ukrainian nation, who went prepared for mass graves and torture chambers and kill lists, and who deliberately attempted to trigger humanitarian crisis of winter power outages and mass floodings and endangering nuclear reactor plants... I suspect they'll be the one blamed for any genocide they cause.
Dean
13d ago
I've noticed that sci-fi games are far more likely to qualify as "quality writing" for me. Even my contemporary examples (such as Prey) are sci-fi as well. That's not to say I can't enjoy other types, but I'm wondering if I either have a bias; if sci-fi lends itself to deeper writing, or attracts writers who can do so; or both. Note that I can give some very bad sci-fi examples of games (I am outspoken in how much I find Mass Effect completely awful in almost every way).
Whoah. I was just about to bring up Mass Effect as an example of popular bad sci-fi. Not simply for its ending, but from structural design perspective (a terribly managed/planned trilogy structure that led to the ending), an inability to stick to character arcs (many reoccuring characters flip from their initial story arcs to fit into the narrative / character appeal niches as needed), it's heavy power fantasy dynamic verging into sycophantism, the tendency to emotionally heal traumatized women by boning them, and so on. A good enough contrarian could even write an amusing spiel on it's fascistic themes and narrative style (though admittedly most who do aren't good enough to pull it off).
Sure, in the sense that planning is a good practice. However, bad planning can easily produce results worse than no planning, especially when built on bad foundations, such as understanding one's own strengths, surrounding contexts, and how others respond. For a more modern example of a failure of this, Russia indisputably has a national strategy, is led with people with very deliberate intent for national-interest maximization, and the invasion of Ukraine was well within the scope of that vision, but it has been the biggest national strategic disaster for the Russians since 1941.
The importance of contextual understanding matters to strategy just as much, and that includes acknowledging costs and benefits. DEI as a policy is unpopular with substantial parts of the US public.... but it's also popular with other substantial parts of the public, and there are a variety of strategic benefits of a DEI 'strategy' that acrue from the sort of mentality/policy considerations making that generates DEI, such as how corporate-demographic interest behind DEI is also what drives how the US relates with population inflows that will occur regardless and to structure relations with the sources sending them.
For all the political tension and contortions it brings- and there are arguments that the costs of migration outweigh the benefits, or that actively facilitating illegal migration against established laws undermines popular support- if in the Cold War the US had a strategic opportunity to take 5% of the Soviet population in a 3 year and incorporate them into the Western coalition, few would fail to see that as a meaningful strategic shift. Well, that hasn't happened with China- but that is basically what happened with Cuba in the last four years, and similarly anti-American Nicaragua since Ortega got back in power in 2007, while something like 3% of the Venezuelan population has left the Bolivarian revolution for the US alone- and the US is far less than the migration into Latin America. While DEI didn't cause that, DEI-mentality is behind the sort of policy construct of the sort of people to accept that migration flow and try to incorporate it.
So when you say DEI is a strategy, you allude terms of its more pejorative/unpopular form of discriminatory hiring policies. But when I hear DEI as a strategy, a DEI-strategy for the US entails the US's most bitter and ideological foes losing or even sending their own people to be part of the US's labor and potential military pools, the built-in cultivation of loyalist interests more interested in the DEI-archetecture than in their source country interests, while coincidentally closing one of the more significant gaps between the US and the PRC.
Is DEI worth it, on a strategic level? That could be an interesting discussion, but it's not the one that was being raised.
Similarly, just as understanding strengths is important, so is understanding weaknesses behind strengths. A common failure of armchair strategizing is to treat states like they exist in strategy games, where the populace is implicitly supportive of the controlling player and where the agent only has to get the Technologies and Industry and all the good metrics just go up and up and up. There's almost no reflection on the implications of the Tang Ping subculture growth, how that relates to the Chinese demographic trajectory, and how that (or both of those) relate to the unfolding property debt crisis, and how that is likely to rebound on both of those.
And just the property crisis alone- no matter one's politics- has significant implications for Chinese strategic strengths and vulnerabilities, as the loss of private consumer life savings at a nearly unprecedented scale is almost certain to neuter the prospects of a Chinese consumption-based economy, and thus it's dependence on a maritime-blockadable export economy, which in turn drives a number of third and fourth order effects on how the Chinese economy is structured, it's external-trade and financial dependencies the US could target, demographic pressures, and so on.
(And while the PRC certainly isn't seeing the sort of demographic outflow that, say, Latin America is, in the last two years the Chinese have become the largest extra-hemispheric source of southern border migration the US receives, with an exceptional growth rate, and the Chinese private-capital flight from the country has been leagues ahead of it. These are consequences not only of current strategic policies, but almost certain to increase as a result of the housing investment crisis.)
Will that make it a net negative? It doesn't really matter. The point is that it's a factor of consideration, and evaluation, and something someone else could benefit from.
Finally, to return to the starting question, there's always the metacontext that not having a strategy is, itself, a strategy, it just is one that is far more reactive and non-deliberate and these are rarely good things in and of themselves. A bad strategy can be worse than no strategy, but a lack of strategy is rarely as good as a competent strategy.
Not really, though this is more structural to the argument, and as a consequence most of your follow-on arguments fail.
Edit: And also, as revealed down threat, because you never actually read the national strategy for the United States.
For one, the US has a public national security strategy, which is the American strategy as far as country strategy goes, and your characterization-summary is really not really reflective of that position. Which itself is helpfully summarized in its own agenda as-
PART IV: Our (US) Strategy By Region -Promote a Free and Open Indo-Pacific -Deepen Our Alliance with Europe -Foster Democracy and Shared Prosperity in the Western Hemisphere -Support De-Escalation and Integration in the Middle East -Build 21st Century US-Africa Partnerships -Maintain a Peaceful Arctic -Protect Sea, Air, and Space
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf
Now, you could argue that the US fails to achieve that (meh), isn't consistently being followed (sure), that it's not the real strategy of the United States (it is), or that Biden has a separate strategy (possible- the Democratic Party is not the US government, and it has its own strategy which itself would have a different success criteria).
But summarizing a strategy down to a pejorative boo-word (DEI) that isn't advanced by the other party in that way* makes as much sense as saying China's strategy is a property crisis. That's a strawman to jouse against, to which the fair refutation would be- no, the property crisis isn't the strategy, it's a consequence of the strategy (industrial development driven by infrastructure investment fueled by local-area land sales). To which the defenders against the DEI-strategy can agree, and say that DEI isn't the strategy, it's a consequence of trying to manage a large number of regional relationships with migratory implications in a way that promotes buy-in to the American international system.
*And to be clear, DEI is referenced in the strategy... but in the following terms-
Note that this is on page 46- sharpening statecraft. As in, as a tool for how to influence other states.
...and now consider how that fits into the 'stealing the enemy's pops' strategy, as part of a series of policies. IF you're going to face mass-migration regardless, THEN you might as well leverage. But how do you leverage demographic dividends, get buy-in from emerging demographic interests/power centers, bolster perceptions of legitimacy from people without historic ties, and frame it in a way that boosts relations with outside powers from across the world?
Well... there's a reason that the DEI mention is in the 'how do we shape our national security workforce to meet our statecraft modernization needs', and not as one of the seven modernizable statecraft tools above it. Because DEI is not the strategy- it's a policy to support a workforce to pursue the strategy.
Which is also the point of structural disagreement two, the difference between policy and strategy.
You fail to draw a distinction between them, treating them as synonyms, but the former are a subset of the later. Strategies will encompass many policies, but a policy should not be the strategy. If it is, this is a red-flag of the weakness of the strategy, as singular policies can dominate all other considerations, or reconsiderations, as those invested in the continuation/growth of the policy have interests distinct from the achievement of the strategic objective.
More prevalent in your post is your handling of DEI, when DEI would be the archetypical policy as opposed to strategy. DEI is a principal of action to be pushed and adopted by bureaucracies, but it's not a national strategy in and of itself, any more than traffic lights are street crossings are. Those are means, a part of a larger strategy (the overarching traffic control system, with overlapping systems of public signals, enforcement, penalization, maintenance, and so on). DEI, in turn, is part of something else- and while 'what' that strategy is a part of is up for debate, if it's being framed as part of an international competititon strategy, then it should probably be framed in terms of how it fits into the overarching picture of racial-diversity organization and co-option, i.e. the idea of a strategy of stealing the enemy's pops and making them your own citizens.
The reason this matters- aside from the accuracy of the merits of a policy in and of itself- when you compare policies to strategies, it's only natural that the strategies are going to come off looking better. Of course they would- they tend to be broader and more comprehensive, because that's what they are by design. But this is as relevant to the relative merits as comparing a horse to a herd- a 1.25 horsepower horse is always going to be out-muscled by a 40 horse-herd, and it also doesn't matter. The policy of 1.25 horsepower horse-breeding can still be a winner as part of a strategy of herd-quality competition. Choosing to frame policy versus strategy is apples to fruit basket comparisons at best, or little more than argument gerry mandering at worse.
The result is not a surprise- and often not an accident per see- but it's not that useful.
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