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Notes -
US and Chinese national strategy
Here’s an article about DEI’s negative impact on the US CHIPS Act for reshoring semiconductors:
I note that this is an opinion piece. There are many other issues with the CHIPS Act, this rather dry article lays the blame on aggressive industry lobbying eating the original ‘boost US production’ idea and wearing it like a skinsuit:
Recently the Centre for Strategic Translations recently put out their take on a Chinese book “General Laws of the Rise of Great Powers”, a work designed to communicate to Chinese officials what the grand plan is, what China’s national strategy shall be and why.
Essentially, the book argues that while population size, land, resources and such are important for national strength, the most important thing is technology. Population and land get you into the game, (Iceland will never be a world power) tech lets you win it. With technology you get the military and economic power needed to rule the world.
All facets of statecraft are considered through the lens of how they can develop technology. The chapter goes through how some countries did well and did poorly: the Soviet bloc pursued imbalanced industrialization favouring heavy over light industry. The Great Leap Forward inhibited Chinese industrial development, damaging the agricultural base. Diplomacy affects how you industrialize and develop: Argentina foolishly moved towards the UK rather than the US in 1944 (I’ve never heard anyone else say this before), while West Germany and Japan had good relations with America and were able to quickly reindustrialize with their market access.
The authors regret that just when Song China was at the peak of science and industry, the Mongols showed up and wrecked their chance at early industrialization and world hegemony. Clearly technology used to be less of a key factor back in the day. But China’s time is coming! They conclude that the New China has stable foundations and has made prudent long-term investments in infrastructure and institutions. Unlike the silly Indian democrats, China has no need to pursue popular but foolish policies. Shortly they’ll achieve comprehensive scientific superiority to the US, as the huge Chinese population becomes highly educated. Replace ‘demographic dividend’ with ‘talent dividend’. That’s the plan anyway.
In another poll (scroll down to the graphs), Americans were far and away proudest about their country’s freedom. Wealth, military power, political system… all far behind freedom. What were the Chinese most proud about? Science and technology followed by economic development, then power and so on... See also the stats saying Chinese kids want to be astronauts, Americans want to be youtubers.
You can see a clear national strategy coming from the top down and widely embraced by the population, China wants to lead in all facets of science and technology. They’ve had great success in dominating whole sectors like solar panels, electric cars, 5G and drones. More electric vehicles are made in China than Europe, Japan and America combined.
In addition to science, there’s also ‘national rejuvenation’ which means annexing Taiwan and presumably becoming the world’s strongest superpower. A Chinese acquaintance told me about how the media was going on about the race to acquire ‘Zeus-shield’ (AEGIS-tier) destroyers, it reminded me a little of pre-1914 Dreadnought discourse: We want eight and we won’t wait! Those who are insufficiently nationalistic on the Chinese internet sometimes get cancelled and dogpiled by extremely online, hysterical women. They’re called ‘little pink’ and heaven help you if you besmirch the reputation of the People's Liberation Army - the censors will be knocking on your door. There’s a certain level of nationalist-jingoism in stuff like Wolf Warrior 2 and The Battle at Lake Changjin (China’s two highest grossing films) that might shame even neocons, were such a thing physically possible. I conclude that national rejuvenation is fairly popular too.
The Chinese ending caption:
I’m not saying that a focused national strategy is automatically great. The Soviets had a national strategy and failed because the strategy was based on wrong premises (that communism worked, for one). China’s system does encourage a certain amount of fraud, they accept that handing out billions to semiconductor development companies will produce a lot of waste and failures. That’s a price they pay for speed. However, it seems a much more effective national strategy than America’s.
If pressed, I’d define US national strategy as DEI, green economics and the Rules-Based International Order.
Firstly, the US’s national strategy is unpopular. A lot of people are unhappy about DEI conflicting with meritocracy, a race spoils programs has winners and losers within the country. Green economics are expensive and the rules-based order has many high-profile detractors – Trump for one. An unpopular strategy is harder to implement and it carries the risk of getting reversed. Strategic limbo is not a good place to be. What Americans actually want is freedom, yet US national strategy is going in the other direction.
Secondly, the US strategy seems much less workable. DEI saps efficiency but the rules-based order needs a powerful war machine to suppress two great powers. At the same time, green economics demands huge amounts of capital for investment. It has never been shown that a major economy can operate purely off renewable energy, green economics has a remarkable similarity to communism in its untested and transformative nature. While China invests heavily in renewables, they are also committed to coal power – China is building enormous amounts of power infrastructure generally as part of their commitment to industrialization and technology.
Charitably, there could be a synergy between DEI and the rules-based order in that privileging blacks will make them more likely to support the US in the global struggle. Even so, said synergy seems much weaker than the ‘technology -> economic/military power’ spiral that China’s committed to. African nations weren’t terribly powerful in the Cold War and they aren’t strong now. Wagner can casually coup three of them while mostly focused on Ukraine – Ukraine might be worth 50 or 100 Malis and Nigers.
Thirdly, the US strategy is unfocused and contradictory. There’s nobody at the top directing all the strands into a single, harmonious grand strategy. Thus the DEI strand can harm the Rules-Based Order and interfere with reshoring semiconductors. Greedy and unconstrained companies can consolidate or offshore their production in the first place, creating and maintaining these vulnerabilities. They can lobby so that the state won’t stop them doing share buybacks with their CHIPS funding. The American Affairs article suggests that recipient firms can even invest in Chinese manufacturing facilities under certain conditions, defeating the whole point of the operation! While the US might want to sabotage Chinese growth, they also want access to China’s huge solar industry.
There are also contradictions in China’s strategy – they admit the need to learn tech from overseas but national rejuvenation makes foreign countries anxious about China’s intentions. Nevertheless, the contradictions in US strategy seem greater to me. In the US you have many groups struggling for control, a multi-sided tug of war: hence the existence of this forum. China is not monolithic but the ruling faction enjoys incredible dominance over big tech, doves and liberals. After a significant state harassment campaign they shut down the Beijing LGBT centre.
Fourthly, US strategy seems more focused on wielding strength rather than accumulating it, spending rather than investing. Rhetorically, the strategy is justified with economic theory but those don’t seem to be the underlying reasons. For instance, globalization under the rules-based-order clearly hurt US power. American deindustrialization and offshoring of key industries was harmful and destabilizing. DEI cannot help but undermine meritocracy and efficiency. Recent research has undermined McKinsey studies on the [economic value of diversity](https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/03/new-study-shows-mckinseys-studies-promoting-dei-profitability-were-garbage/
In contrast, Chinese strategy revolves around cultivating strength. Technological power enables military strength, strength grants economic privileges. A victorious China could extract more resources from contested sea areas, Paperclip Taiwanese scientists, open up markets for their export industry.
Lest it seem that I’m slagging on the US excessively, my home country of Australia is just as bad, possibly worse. We dithered on procuring submarines for a decade, costing billions. Now we’re buying hypothetical Virginias that the US probably can’t even produce (the US submarine force is considered understrength already) after snubbing France and Japan. Our military is fundamentally unserious. Our national strategy is to prop up our economy selling iron and coal to China, even as we ally with America against China. Meanwhile we’re also playing the green/DEI game.
In my opinion, the US should follow a more defensive freedom-centric strategy. Dump DEI and green economics and reduce regulations to foster industry. Let people build things, fewer approvals and more construction. Less spying and less censorship. Lower taxes, lower spending. Defend allies without going off on overseas adventures. Instead of an expensive power-projection military, pivot towards a defensive military. More fortifications and missiles, fewer aircraft carriers. Instead of trying to penetrate defended airspace with stealth aircraft, try and defend airspace instead.
Now obviously this won’t happen. It takes a lot of luck, skill and organization to change course for a country like the US. Strategy isn’t coherently decided by a grand planner or a committee as in China, it’s a hodgepodge of vibes, class interests and traumas. Internal or external shocks are important – COVID prompted a global shift towards self-reliance.
Questions: Do you think national strategies are a good idea? Do you agree with my characterization of national strategy for either country?
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.
Worse than Yeltsin and the 1990s? Worse than the collapse of the Soviet Union?
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? 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.
Yes, that's the part I described as 'rules based order', one of the three strands of US strategy. Note that I said national strategy as opposed to national security strategy. You seem to be thinking about national strategy only in the field of security, which is a very important factor but not everything.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And that would an inaccurate characterization, particularly given what is behind the (multiple pages) of each of those geographic and technical areas.
And note that I predicted you might try this deflection-
-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 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
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.
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 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.
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.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita-ppp
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.
You don't see the kinds of hysterically aggressive Western nationalists that are found in China. There's a reason why I highlighted Little Pink and not lying flat. You don't see many novels in the West heaping xenophobia and revanchism into their story, demonizing national rivals. Furthermore, US social elan is in a pretty poor condition - January 6th is proof of that.
Above you were saying that the fall of the Soviet Union was a failure of ideology, unrelated to security issues (which is wrong, given how Chechens and Islamists immediately took advantage of Russian weakness). Anyway, you were saying strategy was about security. Now you want to say that US strategy encompasses more than security? 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.)
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
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-
...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.
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.
Yes but the way he dealt with issues was poor. Reducing military spending would've greatly ameliorated the economic situation, it was sucking up a good 10%+ of the Soviet economy. Gorbachev didn't even have the power to control military spending but he thought he could radically alter the whole ideological and economic structure of the Soviet Union - in a controlled way! The man was dreaming.
If a strategy is launched in an inept and naive way and fails, it's a failure of strategy. A return to hardline Stalinism would be a 'strategy of change' yet that wouldn't have helped either. Change and reform is not sufficient, it needs to be the right change done in the right way. Implementation is important - gradual and controlled marketization beats chaos. Nothing about the Soviet system required handing everything over to robbers in a mad rush to privatize all assets before the communists could be elected, the Yeltsin approach was extremely counterproductive. Gorbachev's ineptitude led to the hardliner coup, he didn't manage the situation sufficiently well. Now nobody had ever done this before, it's a difficult task that he wasn't trained to do. Indeed, the Soviet failure helped inform China's success. Yet it was still a failure.
However, good management is not some made up video-game skill, it requires a sound understanding of the people and institutions that control a country, it requires certain personal characteristics that Deng clearly had. Even Putin did a decent job in cleaning up much of the mess that Yeltsin left behind - Putin is not an exceptional leader but he's not a Gorby/Yeltsin-tier blunder-addict.
That was the result of mismanagement and a certain level of naivete (itself a result of poor management) about how things would be outside the Soviet Union. As late as 2013 Ukraine regretted leaving the USSR.
Anyway, you started this diversion saying the war in Ukraine was the worst disaster for Russia since '41 - did you miss the increasingly frantic rhetoric coming from Macron and the Pentagon about how the Russians are about to roll the Ukrainians?
It's not looking good for the rules-based order.
No, American nationalism is not on the same order as Chinese nationalism today or in the 2000s. Not even after 9/11. The US ambassador in Beijing was trapped for days after the Belgrade embassy bombing as hordes of rioters threw rocks. China routinely blows up tiny maritime incidents into completely disproportionate affairs. The most popular movie in US history wasn't a patriotic war story like Saving Private Ryan toned up to 11 with 'the eternal glory of the US Army remains in our hearts forever and ever, amen' on the postscript. What are you thinking of - Islamophobia? China is way more Islamophobic than the US has ever been, as the US govt delights in telling us so often.
Firstly, the Iraqi army is not the Soviet army. Just the arsenal Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union is a whole other world to the SA-8s and Rolands Iraq was fielding. The Iraqi army was also saddled with Iraqi soldiers, who were not known for excellence under US tutelage either. We've yet to see how Airland Battle deals with S-300s or the arsenal of a proper military. Secondly, conventional inferiority was no problem for NATO in the 1970s or Russia today, they have nuclear deterrence.
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.
The migration policy of having a de facto open border? I note this is contrary to what is indicated in your august strategy document. US migration policy isn't primarily about improving the quality of the STEM workforce but about demographic and political change, plus serving certain corporate interests. The vast majority of the millions of people arriving in America (many flown in at state expense) are not trained in STEM. In fact US legal immigration is a rather byzantine and complicated mess, making it difficult for the most skilled to arrive.
This is where the advantage of my 'look at what's actually going on' approach kicks in. I can observe that DEI and migration policy is not motivated by a desire to acquire STEM talent. If they wanted talent, they could adopt a points-based system like Australia and enforce the border. If they wanted talent, they'd favour meritocracy as opposed to diversity quotas and affirmative action. It's not rocket science. This policy isn't secret - its publicly observable and it does get communicated. But people massage the truth, they arrange their intentions in certain ways to make it sound more defensible. Children are taught things like 'diversity makes us stronger' in school and via the media, just like how China is taught nationalism via school and the media.
Furthermore, relying on Chinese STEM talent to counter China has a number of rather obvious flaws. This is what I was pointing out initially. The DEI and Rules-based order strands are in conflict. The US wants to skim off Chinese STEM talent but not end up training them so they take skills back to China, not have them spy for China. They want to whip up popular sentiment against China (another thing you won't find in official strategy documents but which can be observed through funding of various organizations and media slant) but do so without inciting racism or civil unrest. These are the contradictions I've been talking about the whole time.
The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it says in the PR brochure.
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-
And your response is more than telling.
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.
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.
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