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Half of congress in the 80s had literally fought Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese hostility was far from purely economic.
China was at best a secondary antagonist in the Cold War (and no longer after 1972). Korea is little remembered, before the memory of almost all living Americans and the present state of North Korea means that most people have no idea of how involved the PLA was. So the last ‘real war’ that was USA vs China was what, the Boxer Rebellion?
It could change if Xi panics and decides to abandon the slow game for Taiwan (which would be surprising) by staging the most audacious possible invasion involving a first strike at American bases, but even in the event of a ground invasion (unlikely) I consider that relatively unlikely.
Some grand global game of competition in which AMERICA NUMBA ONE just doesn’t really exist in the minds of most Americans in the way it does for the Chinese or even for, say, the French. American identity is tied to more amorphous things that don’t really have anything to do with global affairs like the Wild West and country music. A Dane or Swiss will gladly lecture you on why Denmark or Switzerland is the best country on earth (both would be mostly correct). Americans don’t really do that except in a very tongue in cheek Team America World Police way and even that is mostly limited to the middle class.
Italians abroad will talk about Ferrari and Columbus and pasta. Americans abroad don’t really lecture anyone about Google and Microsoft and Chevron. It’s not shame in the German way, but it’s not really pride either; global economic and cultural hegemony just isn’t central to American self-conception.
Eh, the political class really does have Main Character Syndrome, in the sense that you hear things like "Venezuela is evading sanctions." Um, yeah? Venezuela is not, in fact, part of the US. US law does not apply in Venezuela.
The deliberate pretension of inability to comprehend this sort of thing is something the political class will have to come to grips with as the relative strength of US power wanes.
But US law does apply to US firms, and those firms are prohibited from assisting Venezuela in any way. The target of this statement is the former, not the latter.
The US is seizing tankers transporting Venezuelan oil in international waters close to Venezuela with neither the ship nor the cargo having any connection to the US. In plain English this isn't sanctions, it's a blockade. The US carefully avoids saying this through official channels, although Trump has used the word in social media posts.
The ship was sanctioned (for Iranian connections, not Venezuelan) and thus subject to seizure. Venezuelan oil exports are sanctioned. If you and (in particular) Europe wishes to use "sanctions" as some sort of intermediate path between pure diplomacy and actual warfare, there has to be enforcement of those sanctions. Otherwise sanctions are a farce.
The wording only matters in that a blockade is an act of war. Certainly Venezuela is free to respond to it that way. But enforcing sanctions isn't generally considered that.
Normally, "sanctions" refers to laws a state makes which restrict its own citizens, residents, businesses etc. (including foreign-owned businesses operating on its territory) from doing business with the sanctioned country, and increasingly to laws which restrict its banks from financing (even indirectly) transactions to and from the sanctioned country. (And it is effectively impossible to transact in USD without a US bank being indirectly involved, which is why US sanctions even in the conventional sense have such a powerful extra-territorial effect). Enforcement of traditional sanctions, like enforcement of the vast majority of laws, is territorial. States enforce laws against activity taking place on their own territory - even if in this case the aim is to produce an extra-territorial effect. The US has a long tradition of effectively enforcing sanctions by prosecuting US-based entities who trade with/finance sanctioned parties, and the EU has a long tradition of effectively enforcing sanctions by prosecuting EU-based entities likewise.
The passive voice is obfuscating what happened here. The US declared the ship "sanctioned" despite the ship being entirely outside its jurisdiction. (The claim that it was sanctioned for Iranian connections is a distraction - the ship was seized because it was trading with Venezuela. The US does not generally seize ships on the high seas based on vague "Iranian connections", because you are not pirates). The ship is "subject to seizure" as a matter of US law, because the US made a law which applies outside its territory. As a matter of international law, it probably isn't. (There are some technicalities here because most of the flags of convenience used by oil tanker operators are US client states - the situation where the US seizes a Liberian or Panamanian-flagged ship and the country of registration doesn't object is messy).
Regardless of legal technicalities, the policy here is seizing ships which export Venezuelan crude. That is the essence of a blockade. Is it an act of war? The Trump administration is deliberately blurring the distinction between peace and war here.
There are also secondary sanctions: US entities cannot do business with an entity in a third country that does business with a sanctioned entity.
Well, you'd hope that the US government follows its own laws first.
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Sanctions refer to what you describe, but not just what you describe. In particular, these sanctions disallow flag registry for participating nations. Any ship in international waters not flying a legitimate flag -- a stateless vessel -- is subject to seizure. That's what the US did here.
Yes, a law which applies on "the high seas". Which is certainly not anything unusual.
The seized vessel in this case -- the Skipper -- was flying a Guyanese flag. However, it does not have a Guyanese registration; this was a literal false flag. There's no flag state to object.
(Also, the Skipper wasn't exporting anything from Venezuela. I believe it was delivering naphtha)
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Americans don't do that because we don't need to. We know we're number one, we know everyone else (especially the French, who hate it, but excepting the Chinese) knows we're number one, and there's no point in arguing about it.
Anyone denying America is #1 is silly
But on the other side, Americans going "we're #1 and always will be, lalalala I can't hear you" when anyone points out China's rise is equally silly.
What's the plan to stay #1? Because right now it's not looking like there is one (see: infinite US Navy procurement disasters, absolutely sclerotic internal politics, and the absolute whiplash of elected political leaders).
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Honestly, I think the "We're number 1" mentality is integral to American's self-conception, but it doesn't necessarily need to be on wealth/power. We were happily number 1 in Liberty for a long while without any corresponding wealth, and that high will sustain us long after our global dominance ends.
I wish I could agree. That is a future that previous generations would have been fine with, but modern Americans continue to value liberty less and less. See the steady attempts to carve away at the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, tenth, and fourteenth Amendments.
Just to mention a few.
The whole "private property cannot be seized" has to be one of the greatest missteps by the founders of the USA. There are lots of times where taking private property makes total sense (like income tax for example), even the US's current civil asset forfeiture regime leaves a lot to be desired.
What sort of actual beneficial policies would be prohibited by the 5A?
Also, it's "cannot be seized except for a public purpose and after paying just compensation". That's a fairly big omission IMO.
Currently there's an incentive for people to act in dodgy ways to make money because unless the fact that they acted illegally can be proven to a criminal standard (high bar) the worst that can happen to them is that the proceeds of their acting in a dodgy way can be taken away from them, which is a probability less than 1 event. Hence there's some non-zero probability they'll get to keep the proceeds of their dodgy behaviour so the expected value not accounting for the time it takes to set up and run the dodgy scheme is positive as the worst that can happen to you unless you're extremely stupid and write down "I'm going to do this illegal thing to make a lot of money" and mail it to the police is that you're put back on Square 1 where you started as if you'd never done the illegal thing in the first place. The incentives are lined up towards making people want to do dodgy things.
With a proper civil asset forfeiture scheme you can have rules like "if we prove to a certain standard that you did something bad then we're not just going to take the money you made through your illegal actions, we'll also come after a portion of the rest of the wealth you own" which can make the expected value of dodgy behaviour negative because now you're not just risking wasting your time and effort when you do something illegal but rather you're risking actual bankruptcy which helps to keep people's incentives to not do illegal but profitable things aligned.
I don't think I agree with the premise here. In the US, at an administrative/civil level you can be fined. That is not "to a criminal standard" (beyond a reasonable doubt) it's to a much lower civil standard (preponderance of evidence) and has far fewer procedural safeguards. For example, in a civil suit, even defending against the government, one isn't entitled to a free lawyer.
That sounds very sensible. It also exists, and we call it "civil enforcement". And there is virtually no limit to the fines that can be exacted this way -- although the Court has set some outer limits. See, e.g. Timbs v Indiana and US v Bajakajian
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Frankly I kinda doubt you are familiar with civil asset forfeiture in the US of A. Governments in the US seize an insane amount of goods through civil asset forfeiture (I believe some estimates have placed it as more than all the value of goods stolen in the United States). And the government here can seize property without proving the owner did anything illegal. In my humble opinion, this creates its own bad incentives and the proper direction is to make civil asset forfeiture harder, not easier.
You guys are confusing civil asset forfeiture, in which the US files a suit in rem and merely fining someone, in which the US files a suit against the defendant.
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You are unfortunately correct directionally, but you underestimate just how bad it can get in other places. We can remain "first" of a metric that craters globally for some time.
I agree, but will Americans still care that they’re first in liberty, or will they see that as an unfortunate holdover from earlier times? If things continue as they are, I think most Americans will see that as something in need of fixing, not something to proudly base their identity on.
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