Probably nowhere on the radar really. Even today the US has oil shipments at around near pre-war levels and the discrepancy between the pre and current war levels are mostly just Iran not being able to ship oil. The blockade worked.
Now there is still a lot of danger. Iran’s strategy to attack regional countries like Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others is by funding violent militias and terrorist groups and it has the potential to actually create revolutions in some of those countries or just destabilize them enough so that Iran can colonize them as it is attempting to do now. One of the primary lessons that has been learned here is the failure and inability of the global community to enforce peace or protect innocent people and instead simply expects the United States to do it.
Alongside drones and other technologies, the advent of social media and excellent propaganda by Iran/Hamas and friends were seeing many of the policy choices and cultural characteristics of western nations come under attack from decentralized forces which can inflict asymmetric harm.
You only need one viral post from Hamas to convince a bunch of people to support a group that is opposed to western liberal values (anti-LGBT, anti religious liberty, etc.), only so many drones or missiles to block shipping, or just one maniac to try and take down an airliner (suicide bombers).
Future historians may look at this time period as one in which these technologies proved to be existential challenges for incumbent powers.
I don't think it's fair to only point at alleged Republican roadblocks, though those can certainly be important, you also have to point out that European, Japanese, and American automakers (to a lesser extent) who simply failed to create and market affordable electric vehicles with a good design. Tesla was the only one that really did it and you can see a number on the road. Though Elon screwed up the brand. We've had a few other startups (Rivian, Lucid, &c.) and that's great but it's a bit of a chicken-egg problem.
Unfortunately because of China's economic policy we can't allow the import of their cars because what's more important than electrification is defending a manufacturing base and jobs.
>Unfortunately because of China's economic policy we can't allow the import of their cars because what's more important than electrification is defending a manufacturing base and job
What’s so frustrating about this situation is that the US has been here before, and we solved it with joint ventures with Toyota in the early 1980s.
It wasn’t tariffs though, it was quotas, which seems smarter. Let the brand get established (taste of the market) and then get them to build here.
Apologies for responding to you so quickly I just happened to hop on here shortly after your post.
I think what might be materially different was that while Japan was considered an economic threat, in some ways, similar to China, Japan was also an American ally. It's just a different fundamental level of trust and so things like joint partnerships are more possible. China, unfortunately under the yoke of the CCP, did not liberalize to an extent that was hoped for after the US advocated for them to join the World Trade Organization.
We really did them a huge favor there and it's so unfortunate that they used that against us when nobody in America has any issues or qualms with China besides their actions that they've taken largely on their own and without any prodding from the West.
Even in the case of Hong Kong and Taiwan, there is an easy to see world where China had democratized and nobody in the west would have given a damn about reunification, nor would we really need to have our military built up in the region.
North Korea was another problem there, which we can owe the existence of that pariah state and the wonton destruction it has imposed upon the people held hostage there, at the feet of the Chinese Communist Party and of course the Soviet Union too. Communists and other authoritarian ideological adherents did a loooooooooot of damage to the world and are still wreaking havoc.
I mean sure, but China still has factories in the US. There’s even a movie about it: American Factory (2019). These are the factories I know about: Fuyao Glass (Moraine, OH; IL), Gotion (Manteno, IL), Trina Solar (Wilmer, TX), GE Appliances/Haier (Louisville, KY; also SC, AL, GA, TN, CT), Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube (Wilcox County, AL), Keer Group (Lancaster County, SC), Nanshan America (Lafayette, IN), Smithfield Foods/WH Group, Nexteer, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, Longi, Hounen, Runergy, Boviet….
>Unfortunately because of China's economic policy we can't allow the import of their cars because what's more important than electrification is defending a manufacturing base and jobs.
Cool, when do we do this in something other than a foot gun approach. Let me know and we'll think about caring. Until this, this line of argument is a facade.
Your framing is wrong, for example. You’re implying we are doing something wrong or provocative or that we are stirring up trouble, but the opposite is true. We are responding to provocations. If anything the what you wrote here would apply to China. Why is China hitting us with a crowbar (industrial overcapacity)? Now they’ve stirred the hornets nest.
I really have no idea what you are talking about. It seems like you are just stringing together a few incoherent sentences and then drawing a faulty conclusion.
If you have a specific question I can answer for you or something you actually want to talk about, let me know.
The EU will take action too. Germany isn't going to allow its automobile industry to be hollowed out. [1]
The American car market 17% of the market with ~4% of global population seems very easily sustainable. A country like Japan who operates and is expanding in the United States [2] runs strongly counter to your point of view here.
Fun article. I think that there is a lot of interesting information here that would help explain what we saw with the Bronze Age Collapse, though I would submit that this is just another of the multiple factors that led to the collapse. Maybe a drought occurs, folks turn to iron weapons, and then take over another town or village for their resources, and so on.
This could lead to supply chain collapses and such. Maybe just general destabilization and raids and such sort of collapsed the larger empires. But at the same time, those larger empires would also have had access to iron, so why couldn't they by matter of numerical superiority, access to greater resources, tactics and military organization, and more simply, overwhelm smaller armies or bands utilizing the same technology and restore order or at least defend themselves?
I just started reading Conrad Black's historical series and in the Egyptian chapter and also the Assyria/Babylonia chapter he references the historical accounts where time and time again Egyptian forces led by the pharaoh would march into the broader Middle East to restore order. Why couldn't they continue to do that?
Because pure iron, with no carbonization, is useless as a material for tools or weapons.
Carbonization was invented/discovered after the Bronze Age collapse, slowly over hundreds of years, exactly because they didn’t have access to bronze anymore.
Despite being "useless", almost all early iron age weapons were iron, not steel nor bronze. They generally knew about steel, but could not control the carbonization well enough to outfit the whole army with it. Steel did not become widespread until the Roman era.
It could be the Bronze Age empires were based on violence and coercion. When the small polities had the means to defend themselves, the empires fell apart.
Well all of civilization and society is based on violence and coercion to some extent. I'm not sure that small tribes polities were any less violent than larger empires, and I'd generally have a bias that larger empires were more peaceful per-capita because if you are the king war is tiresome and threatening. Better to be at peace.
I'm also not sure about your suggestion. Yes small polities had the means to defend themselves, but the pharaoh's army is much larger and you're definitely going to die if he shows up and you fight back. So why wouldn't the pharaoh have shown up to put down a rebellion? Time and time again in the history of the region a king, pharaoh, or other despot would make examples of rebels, put down rebels, and march armies up and down the region to ensure fealty and assign minor lords to protect a region. They could have found the smelters and destroyed them or seized them, those working on it could have been killed.
I'm just not sure that this democratization of violence is the answer. Though it may be a key contributor. Curious about your thoughts or others. Incredibly fascinating topic.
Have you read about the Assyrians? Those early empires were nasty.
And yes, the common people might have been better off under larger empires than under smaller ones, but who has ever cared about the common people? The upper class were probably more "I'd rather be the king of a small kingdom than bend my knee to an emperor."
Bronze age empires were large -- if the pharaoh couldn't trust his subordinates he could only be in one place at a time.
> Have you read about the Assyrians? Those early empires were nasty.
Barely. My knowledge of ancient empires and peoples before the Greeks is rudimentary at best, and that may be a charitable description.
The more I've learned and read the more I've forgotten and the more I've learned I don't know. But I do read about these kinds of dynasties, civilizations, empires, and peoples and it is endlessly fascinating.
As I have become a little bit older and well traveled I keep coming back to the Normans. What they built and the effect they have had on civilization development in Europe and beyond is amazing! I've seen it in France, but the Bayeux Tapestry is, in my mind, one of the premier cultural artifacts of all of civilization (I'm not doing to disagree with anyone who suggests otherwise, feel free to :) ) and it would have been great to see it while it temporarily resides at the British Museum but alas work and life here in the United States takes precedence.
One of the most violent and brutal conducts in times of war was the Assyrian practice of ripping open pregnant women in order to expose their fetus. In his article, “‘Ripping Open Pregnant Women’ in Light of an Assyrian Analogue,” Mordechai Cogan quotes an Assyrian poem, probably dated to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I.
>Time and time again in the history of the region a king, pharaoh, or other despot would make examples of rebels, put down rebels, and march armies up and down the region to ensure fealty and assign minor lords to protect a region. They could have found the smelters and destroyed them or seized them, those working on it could have been killed.
And when all those rebellions cost the Pharaoh 3x what they used to to put down you're forced to be a lot more diplomatic. Less extraction under threat of violence means smaller army means worse negotiating position for the next one. It's a cycle.
And for every full scale armies meeting in the field type rebellion there's a lot of "sir a second village has lynched the tax men" which compel you to dispense policing forces, etc, etc.
Just because you "can" do something in moderation doesn't mean it's a sustainable way to run your empire at scale.
You can't "just regulate the smiths" like some 21st century despot because those smiths also make the iron tools those people need to farm to pay your taxes. And you can't just "supervise" them with your loyal people because this is pre-industrial and there do not exist sufficient surpluses to feed those nonproductive mouths.
> You can't "just regulate the smiths" like some 21st century despot because those smiths also make the iron tools those people need to farm to pay your taxes.
There is a superstition in the Middle Ages that blacksmiths should not be killed, in the context of battles. Blacksmiths were an absolutely essential part of the support of an army, but his skills and tools were just as useful to the winning side. Minus his skills, his tools were just surplus, heavy items.
Other army support crew like washerwomen, stable boys, and even prostitutes were of course much easier to replace.
Not to mention that even people who could barely read (and maintain efficient long-distance communications and even barely understand the concept of a standard) were in extremely short supply.
America has not just a lot more people, but a lot more immigrants, refugees, and more.
In a more homogenous society, such as Poland’s in comparison to the United States, it also in my observation trends to be easier for wealth distribution to flatten.
Maybe the US has more kids per capita too which would also affect that value depending on how it is being measured. Not to say that anything is being hidden there, just something to think about that may make you interpret the data differently or think about it differently.
> Less obvious where to run to these days as the US not-an-empire looks like it may crumble.
How are you supposing that it looks like the US may crumble? I don’t understand where these kinds of comments come from, aside from perhaps verbalizing something one might want to see instead of what is factually true.
The US isn't just a land. It isn't even just an economy or a currency. Most fundamentally, it's a set of rules that limit the power of government, and thereby allow more freedom for people. Everything flows from that, even the reserve currency. (Why put your foreign currency holdings in a currency where the government can arbitrarily decide to change the value? This is why the renminbi isn't catching on, despite China's power.)
That limited government is looking shaky right now. It's mostly Trump, but it's not just Trump - Congress has been increasingly worthless over the last couple of decades, and so the President has to rule more and more by executive decree. But Trump is pushing the boundaries of what the Constitution allows the government to do far harder than any President that I remember, even Nixon.
And if we lose the limited government, then within a generation or two, we're going to lose the rest. It won't be immediate (unless you fall afoul of the government), but it will come.
> This is why the renminbi isn't catching on, despite China's power.
Well it's part of it. The other part is China does not want the value of its currency to rise and as an export-oriented economy they have a desire to manipulate their currency to keep it lower to ensure exports are highly competitive. That's not an allegation or a conspiracy or anything, but a policy choice and a fact. Being the dominant reserve currency as the USD is (remember it's not the only reserve currency) has a lot of benefits but some drawbacks too.
I don't think that American limited government is looking shaky right now. I agree Congress is becoming increasingly worthless but it's something that can be fixed if we want to. I also would suggest not being confused about Trump does big headline thing as a representation that America's government is shaky or something. He has pushed boundaries, but some of those boundaries are quite literally up for interpretation and while he may push those boundaries he also doesn't go around and advertise all the court or legislative set backs that have occurred.
The Iran war is actually a decent example - he does not have an authorization to use force beyond the limit authorized by Congress. While we're conducting limited retaliatory strikes (Congress wouldn't disagree with doing so except maybe the pro-ayatollah/anti-liberal faction (Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for example) and engaging in a naval blockade, Trump has had to follow the rule of law here and step back more grand ambitions and plans. Now of course he may do something and we'll have to see how the system responds, but everyday law and order and such is proceeding as it has for quite some time. To be frank, it's actually a little bit worse but that's not really due to Trump so much as it is to policing failures and anti-social behavior we're tolerating when we shouldn't.
The world bought only 20% as many treasury bonds in the past year as in the year before that. This is what a slow decoupling from the US reserve currency looks like.
The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
The US has canceled all military guarantees and aligned with two different fascist states, so military cooperation is unwinding.
It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
> The world bought only 20% as many treasury bonds in the past year as in the year before that. This is what a slow decoupling from the US reserve currency looks like.
That's not what a decoupling looks like. Investors are probably just not buying because they know rates are going to go up. The Federal Reserve already strongly signaled another rate hike by end of year. Why would you buy something today that you can wait and buy for a better price later?
Second, if you want to make an argument about interest rates or the debt, you first have to make that argument and resolve it for the UK, Italy, France, and others.
Third, the USD is just the dominant reserve currency. It's not the only one. A reserve currency is just one that banks hold in reserve. The reason the US is involved in the Middle East is to protect the Petro-dollar which generally "requires" oil purchases to be settled in dollars. The trade off is we keep Iran in check from destroying the gulf countries.
> The US is the most oil-dependent country (although all western countries are quite dependent on it) and it cut off its own supply of oil.
This doesn't make any sense. The US is also the largest oil and gas producing country in the world. Even for the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea you can read for yourself that the US has been able to break through and Saudi Arabia has quickly repaired the east-west pipeline and 3.5+ million barrels are flowing through there now (IIRC 60% or so of pre-attack volume). Either way, most of those flows go to Europe and Asia, not the US. So while the US is oil dependent (all countries are) I don't think your assertion is entirely accurate.
> It's been unable to manufacture anything effectively for a while now as all the money gets siphoned off corruptly (identical to Russia in the Ukraine war), not even the weapons used in Israel.
That doesn't make any sense either. We manufacture all kinds of things, including incredibly advanced equipment. We make airplanes, we make semiconductors, pharmaceutical goods.
> What else is there to being an empire? Its nuclear aircraft carriers - with no aircraft since they run on oil?
If we don't have oil neither does anyone else. Except that we do have oil so our nuclear powered aircraft carriers would just use our own oil for the jets.
Sure, but that's nothing new. Russia has always been investing into domestic alternatives, even going to great lengths to build their own CPU architecture and such. But they've been a sworn enemy of the West so that's nothing surprising, and neither is China doing the same. The EU so far was considered firmly in the sphere of influence of the US, which is why this development is interesting.
Right - but American sanctions have a big effect. What happens when that power goes away? Who is going to sanction Russia?
You can complain about well America is sanctioning countries I disagree with, but it also affects countries you would agree with. When we don't have sanctions power perhaps military force gets used more.
Regardless of what happens both the EU and America are still within each other's spheres. That's not going to change anytime soon. We've gone through much worse.
Trump isn't sweaty about the ICC. There is next to 0% likelihood that an American president would be sent to the ICC to be tried or something. Anyone who thinks that might happen or thinks the ICC might have the power to compel such a scenario is quite delusional or just misunderstands how the world actually works.
Trump has a lot of domestic enemies, and not just in politics. Unless he goes all-in and refuses to leave office, it must concern him that some future US president might decide to Milošević him to the ICC - either as score-settling or to simply get him out of the way.
Personally I'd love to see Trump on trial at the ICC. Along with Putin and Netanyahu. And Blair (the former prime minister of my country) and George Bush.
It'll never happen. He is not losing any sleep over this. It's just a fantasy about retribution.
The United States doesn't recognize the ICC. So there's nothing for him to be referred to. If the ICC wants to create a legal case against him, all the US has to do is point at Xi Jingping and is ethnic cleansing programs and ask why they haven't brought a legal case against him and tried to extradite him.
Everyday Americans would not tolerate it. Remember that while many don't like Trump and for good reason - me included - it would be viewed as a violation of American sovereignty which would not be tolerated. I would oppose it myself even though I think he belongs in jail over January 6th. But he'd belong in American jail, tried in our courts, under our legal system.
I also have to add it is always interesting to hear the things people proclaim to care about. I don't think everyday Americans even if they know about this alleged[1] double-tap, really care much or even think about it at all. I know I don't. Has anyone brought a case to the ICC? I know that South American countries referred Maduro to the ICC. :)
[1] It seems clear that it happened, and I'm not disputing that. But I say alleged simply because there has been no prosecution that I'm aware of. If there's a better word choice than alleged I'd be happy to use it, it was just the one that I thought fit the sentence best.
Clearly. And I'm sure you're right about US public sentiment.
I was perhaps trying to make the point that powerful authoritarians like Trump always have to consider future threats because, unless they can stay in power forever, the future is where they are most vulnerable. Eventually they no longer have the energy to keep it going, and someone else is in charge - someone who then has more power than they do, and may not owe them any loyalty.
The usual work-around is dynastic power, but I don't see any signs of that this Trump's case.
> But he'd belong in American jail, tried in our courts, under our legal system.
For January 6th, sure. But the war with Iran, the Venezuela thing - they're international crimes the like of which a non-trivial proportion of the world considers the ICC to have jurisdiction over.
But anyway... if he doesn't die in office he'll realistically be too old to face justice in any court.
> I was perhaps trying to make the point that powerful authoritarians like Trump
He's authoritarian in many respects but he is still constrained by the rule of law. Where he loses legal cases he is forced to follow the law. He may have workarounds or gotchas or try again, but by and large I have yet to see any clear law-breaking violations. There is corruption which I see plain as day, but that's separate from this view of Authoritarianism since you can be corrupt without being an authoritarian.
> But the war with Iran, the Venezuela thing - they're international crimes the like of which a non-trivial proportion of the world considers the ICC to have jurisdiction over.
This is why the US doesn't recognize the ICC. Neither of these are international crimes. Maduro himself was referred to the ICC by other neighboring countries and there is an alleged sealed indictment by the ICC itself.
Should the US have referred the Iranian government to the ICC for funding terrorists in the Middle East? What about violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? What would the ICC do? Did the ICC indict and try to arrest the members of Hamas who killed all those people in 2023? Maybe they did, but what were they going to do about it?
I'm one of Trump's domestic enemies, I think we should imprison him and his minions the instant he's thrown out of the White House, and I'm still not sure it's realistic to send him to the ICC. It would radicalize a lot of people who have wrong but principled objections to it.
On the other hand, the US is still negotiating with lots of countries across the world, continuing to invest and be invested in, continuing to grow economically, and more.
Your personal point of view which primarily exists in a silo on the Internet does not match the viewpoints of most of the rest of the world, including folks in Europe.
So, yes again, America. That's how the world works.
> Are you seriously suggesting America's influence is increasing?!
I'm not sure. In some ways yes, in other ways no. It's also changing. Negotiation doesn't always look like two countries come together and have a handshake and photo opportunity and declare some thing. But the OP is implying "it's all gone". That's just incorrect. America by virtue of simply being America always has a seat at the table.
1. It's not a assumption. Only americans use terms like "classical european"
2. "Those Europeans with their opinions" are the problem and not the manchild elected in place? yeah, so point 1.
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