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US Foreign Policy 3.0: We're The Mets of International Diplomacy

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Yesterday’s US economic orthodoxy is today’s heresy

The new Washington consensus is different to the old in three key respects. First, Washington is no longer the uncontested Rome of today’s world. It has competition from Beijing. The new consensus is thus largely confined to Washington itself rather than the swaggering US that set the global standards after the end of the Cold War. It is an American political consensus with Donald Trump its harshest exponent. He talks of how trade with China has created “American carnage” and led to the “rape” of America. Joe Biden’s language is far gentler but his enforcement is more rigorous. Biden’s policy is Trumpism with a human face.

Second, the new consensus is geopolitical. It does have economic tools, such as reshoring supply chains, prioritising resilience over efficiency, and industrial policy. But these are largely means to a national security end, which is to contain China. The old consensus was a positive sum game; if one country got richer others did too. The new one is zero sum; one country’s growth comes at the expense of another’s.

The third difference is that the new consensus is as pessimistic as the old one was optimistic. In that sense it is less intuitively American than what it replaced. The spirit of can-do has given way to a roster of can’t-dos. Today’s US cannot make trade deals, cannot negotiate global digital rules, cannot abide by WTO rulings and cannot support Bretton Woods reforms. Washington has lost faith in economic multilateralism.
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Will the new consensus be effective? The ultimate test is whether China can variously be contained, engaged, competed and cajoled into accepting the US-led order. Today’s Washington subscribes to all of these approaches, some of which are more sophisticated than others. Biden himself focuses more on competition than cajoling. His aim is not to decouple from China but to create what Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, calls a “small yard” with a “high fence”.

That means America will continue to trade with China except in goods that can be used to upgrade China’s military, which means high-end semiconductors and anything that boosts China’s AI ambitions. It is not obvious where you can safely draw that line, which suggests Sullivan’s small yard will expand over time. Compared to the China hawks outside the Biden administration, however, Sullivan’s approach is nuanced and flexible. Yet it still begs the question: how can China be squeezed into a US-led order in which America itself has stopped believing?

Biden has not yet given a clear answer to that question because it is so hard. He wants to deprive China of the means to reach military parity with America without provoking a US-China conflict or global economic retrenchment. A full-scale decoupling would make everyone poorer and create an Orwellian world of hostile blocs. A return to the status quo ante — what Clinton was extolling — would accelerate China’s rise.

The middle way between the old Washington consensus and the new is to preserve what was good about the old, rather than to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Of course history did not end. By the same token, however, the future has yet to be written. No power will be its sole author. But America still has an outsized say on whether the script will be dark or light.
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FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Who knew they even had T-55s still mothballed? They probably aren't even the upgraded kind China uses/used. Good chance some of them rolled into Budapest and Prague back in the days of Soviet rule.
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They were probably sitting outside the Russian equivalent of an American Legion/VFW. Nothing but show/museum pieces.
 
RaceBoarder said:
Interesting analysis on Ukraine

I'm curious to see how this plays out over the Summer. I kind of buy into the theory that BOTH sides are spent and that the international community will step in just like a Linesman does when players are done doing their thing.

Russia has shown that they are basically done with an offensive. They have nothing left in the tank to take land. Even if they do take some, they don't stand a shot at holding it.

Ukraine has done a wonderful job of punching above their weight. But they simply don't have the means to push Russia out if the Russians can put up any sort of resistance. They will get one shot, but it needs perfect execution to happen.
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No. They aren't going to stop with Russia occupying their country. France did that; it's called surrender. They'll keep fighting and if we stop helping they die and we killed them.

We are treating this like Risk, blithely making decisions about other countries with Samuel Huntington-level entitlement. It's all just Call of Duty-like fanboyism. We either support Ukraine until they get rid of Russia, or Russia collapses, or we let Ukraine die. There is no way for us to do our usual "f-ck the Kurds and walk away with a clean conscience" geo-political drag act.

The rest of the world does not exist for our convenience. That was the lesson of 9/11. We matter, but we way overestimate how much we matter. Nobody else really gives a sh-t about our agenda.
 
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Deutsche Gopher Fan said:
Special forces evacuate US embassy in Khartoum.
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Yikes:

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum continues to closely monitor the situation in Khartoum and surrounding areas, where there is ongoing fighting, gunfire, and security forces activity. There have also been reports of assaults, home invasions, and looting.

Due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens.

We are aware of convoys departing Khartoum traveling towards Port Sudan. The embassy is unable to assist convoys. Traveling in any convoy is at your own risk.
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Meanwhile, life during wartime when you're being attacked by Dumpies.

The 206th Battalion in which Pavel served had fought in the southern Kherson and north-eastern Kharkiv regions. But the battles over Bakhmut were very different from what they had seen before.

"The intensity of fighting to break through our positions was shocking," says Mykola Hlabets, platoon commander. "Sometimes, [Russian soldiers] would get as close as 20 metres from us, crawling and moving under a treeline or across an open field. This is where we had our first gunfights at such proximity."

"They would just stand and walk towards our positions without any cover. We wiped out one group after another, but they kept coming."

Hlabets described them as a suicide squad. Others call them cannon fodder.

A number of videos have been shared on telegram channels recently where newly mobilized Russian soldiers appealed to President Vladimir Putin and the authorities to stop what they called "illegal orders" to send them "to be slaughtered".

Last month mobilised soldiers from Belgorod posted a video saying that they were sent for an assault mission without proper training. After suffering heavy losses, they said they refused to carry out their orders.

Often these poorly trained soldiers are reportedly forced to keep pushing forward. The assault group Storm of the 5th Brigade of the Russian army said in a video appeal that they couldn't leave their position because of zagryad otryad, or blocking troops - detachments that open fire at their own men who try to retreat.

These wave attacks are similar to World War One tactics, when troops charged the enemy and engaged in close combat. And despite their lack of training and experience, sending newly recruited soldiers to such assaults are bringing some results for Russia, albeit at a very high cost.
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I hadn't been paying very close attention until recently, but looks like there may be ties to Wagner group in the paramilitary group fighting the government. I vaguely recall seeing a bunch of pictures of Wagner in the region back just before the war in Ukraine.
 
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