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Discussion starter, but something I'm sincerely interested in and don't have strong opinions about: do modern Western states (e.g., the US, UK, Japan) have more or less state capacity than they did 20, 40, 60 years ago?
The concept of state capacity seemed to enter mainstream geopolitics wonkery about a decade or so ago, and I find it very useful. I'm sure most of you have heard of it, but in short it refers to the ability of the state to accomplish its policy goals through the use of military, industrial, infrastructural, economic, and informational resources. Each of these is important, but I'd flag that informational resources have a special role insofar as they directly feed into the efficiency by which other resources can be deployed for ends. For example, a piece of infrastructure like a new dam or a rail network may advance policy goals or it may be a waste of time and money, and informational resources will help the state predict which will be the case.
Two other key points to note. First, state capacity of course does not only refer to internal state capacity (i.e., resources proper to the state), but also the ability of the state to persuade or coerce domestic non-state actors such as corporations to co-operate with the state's goals. Most of the major players in WW2 - Britain, the United States, but also Germany and Japan - drew most of their state capacity from these more indirect mechanisms. Second, state capacity is hard to directly assess for the simple reason for it is a fact about potentiality rather than actuality: outside of wars or similar crises, there are good reasons both political and pragmatic for the state not to use the full force of its coercive power.
Recent or ongoing test cases for state capacity in the West include the COVID pandemic, ramping up of basic munitions production like 155mm artillery rounds (especially in Europe), and the new vogue for industrial policy in critical industries like ship-building in the US. My gut instinct is that right now, state capacity in the West is historically at a very low ebb, possibly lower than it has been for more than a century, and that this may be helpful for understanding the behaviour of governments. However, I don't have strong confidence in this assessment, and would love to hear what others think.
I think we might need to distinguish between positive capacity and negative capacity here. Consider the contrast in an example just written up this afternoon. The ability for an arm of the (US) state to quickly get people to the moon may not be as high as it was 60 years ago; the ability for other arms of the state to ensure that leisurely reexaminations of their own concerns take precedence may have never been higher.
Link summary: either Musk has started writing the SpaceX blog himself, or even the grunts have moved from diplomatic to pissed about licensing timelines "derailed by issues ranging from the frivolous to the patently absurd". I'm surprised the "it uses literal drinking water" quote (bold in original) doesn't link to a hot take on
TwitterX.On the other hand ... do you have any quantitative analysis of the munitions problem? I think issues with artillery production are somewhat more alarming than issues with Starship development, because the latter is designed for long-term economics rather than to give a middle finger to Russia (like the Apollo program or current munitions production) or to secure weapons capabilities (like 1960s expendable rockets in general or current munitions production). DoD isn't yet interested enough in Starship to butt in the way I'd expect them to do for an ammo factory, so any issues with that must be more fundamental than just bureaucratic infighting.
It could, of course, be that the government has pushed more patently absurd and frivolous issues onto SpaceX as licensing obstacles for some reason as of late. Not like Musk is a political enemy of the ruling party or anything.
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