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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29410 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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If you don't understand, it would probably help to work on the metaphor.

A tariff barrier is not a closing of a supermarket, not least because tariff barriers already exist between American allies. That is what the EU common market is- a trade barrier between the European group of allies and their other allies, including the Americans, the Brits, and so on.

Even more relevantly, a threat of tariff barriers is not a closing of a supermarket either, particularly when everyone (should) understand that the threat is conditional on [insert trade / political concession here]. The conditionality is critical because it can be used to create and either-or dilemma of which supermarket the consumer goes to, as opposed to the consumer has no choice.

The rise of deglobalization and the multipolar world order is not a close off of markets entirely, but a process of choosing / forcing choices of which markets to associate with. Globalization may have been a 'choose any supermarket you want' dynamic, but deglobalization is a mutually exclusive membership program, where association with one supermarket will lead to increasing limits with the other.

The issue for some countries, of course, is that the two supermarkets are not anywhere near to competitive in attractiveness. The European Family, for example, is not going to fine any meaningful offers from ChinaMart on in the 'expeditionary armies to fight in your defense' market, particularly when ChinaMart is close business partners with 'WeSwearWeWon'tBlackmailYou' Russian Discount Gas, which is currently in a special hostile takeover operation against the cousin down the street.

It’s a supermarket simultaneously raising its prices while rolling out an anti-competitive new policy where you can’t buy there if you also buy from the competitor. It assumes that the supermarket has infinite leverage, that it is so unilaterally indispensable that the customer has no choice. This kind of blackmail works until it doesn’t, like russia banking on europe’s gas dependency.

Psychologically, people prefer a less competitive supermarket to being coerced in that way. I think you overestimate your leverage, and how “rational” your customers are. I’m way more pro-american than average, and even I think US allies should tell trump to take a walk.

Who knows how "rational" Europe is in this scenario but the US has a lot of leverage. In a world where

  1. Europe goes to China, and
  2. The United States withdraws its military umbrella from Europe

Europe is now

  1. At the mercy of Russia from a conventional land invasion (it's unlikely Russia tries to, say, take over Italy but coercion against e.g. Estonia is on the table, I think)
  2. At the mercy of China if China ever decides to do coercive diplomacy
  3. At the mercy of the US – not only could the US cut European shipping in any war with Europe, it would cut European shipping in a war with China – so Europe's entire pivot to China is gambling not only that the United States doesn't become hostile, but also that the US and China never go at it.

The only way for Europe to collectively mitigate these problems is to build a large military, quickly, or to develop European autarchy, relieving the need to trade with China (or possibly both!) But Europe hasn't demonstrated the ability to do that. Building a conventional navy is extremely expensive and the requisite nuclear capability is fraught (I can absolutely see Russia attacking Poland if they try to develop nuclear weapons). And this is assuming Europe can pull this off in perfect harmony instead of getting locked in another European arms race or getting dominated by the only European power with nuclear weapons (France – I doubt England splits from the US and I'm counting Russia as its own thing.)

I dunno the exact numbers involved so who knows how the math plays out. But to me it seems like the supermarket has a lot of leverage.

Building a conventional navy is extremely expensive and the requisite nuclear capability is fraught (I can absolutely see Russia attacking Poland if they try to develop nuclear weapons).

Building submersible suicide drones is extremely cheap though.

How do cheap submersible suicide drones solve any of the problems I outlined?

You don't need conventional navy if you sink everything that moves.

How are you going to deploy a "sink everything that moves" drone force from Europe to the Strait of Malacca?

Why do we need to project force in the Strait of Malacca?

Not sure who "we" is, but if you are Europe and you've pivoted to China as your main trading partner, and China goes to war with the US or India (as in the scenario Tree and I cooperatively outlined) the answer may be "to protect trade with China."

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