On RSJ's piece, I don't see any "flight to safety" benefiting USD. The dollar has depreciated against several currencies including the Euro, GBP, and CHF. Even Taiwan and China have been compelled to let their pegged currencies appreciate over the past year. India's weak BOP of late and chronic CAD puts pressure on the rupee. In any case, INR depreciation in of itself isn't a problem or an affront to national pride.
Fantastic analsis on chip export controls! The comparison to rare earth restrictions really cuts through the noise. If we're seriously arguingthat 2000 GPUs (roughly DeepSeek-v3 training needs) can be blocked from reaching an adversary state, we're missing the bigger picture. I worked on supply chain resilience projects and watching the mental gymnastics around "strategic" export controls reminded me that security theater often wins over actual strategic thinking.
The cricket analogy is interesting but I'm not sure there's any predictive value here . When the Brits were the 'lords' of cricket, did they behave in ways that reflects their geopolitical stance now? There's probably consistency in single party systems.
As far as geopolitics is concerned, I'm beginning to see that Susan Strange was prescient in her model of structural power but she was mostly ignored during her time & mostly forgotten now.
Pax Brittanica facilitated global trade & kept the sea lanes open - I was thinking Britain pre WWII. But their colonial record was mercantilist-extractive.
On second thoughts, Strange's work could help here.
Strange's four structures - security, production, finance, knowledge - aren't just categories. They're modes of power, and each mode shapes how a hegemon extracts value and how it misbehaves when it overreaches.
America was unusual in dominating all four simultaneously - which is why American hegemony has been so totalizing and why its misbehavior takes multiple forms at once. Military intervention and dollar hegemony and Hollywood/Silicon Valley narrative dominance.
China's rise, in Strange's terms, has been primarily through production (manufacturing, supply chains) with increasing leverage in finance (Belt and Road lending). This predicts exactly the mercantile-extractive pattern you identified - not military adventurism, but infrastructure-for-resources deals and debt diplomacy.
On RSJ's piece, I don't see any "flight to safety" benefiting USD. The dollar has depreciated against several currencies including the Euro, GBP, and CHF. Even Taiwan and China have been compelled to let their pegged currencies appreciate over the past year. India's weak BOP of late and chronic CAD puts pressure on the rupee. In any case, INR depreciation in of itself isn't a problem or an affront to national pride.
> Authority is power plus legitimacy. Legitimacy disarms others, making them willing to accept your leadership without coercion.
Very well put!
Fantastic analsis on chip export controls! The comparison to rare earth restrictions really cuts through the noise. If we're seriously arguingthat 2000 GPUs (roughly DeepSeek-v3 training needs) can be blocked from reaching an adversary state, we're missing the bigger picture. I worked on supply chain resilience projects and watching the mental gymnastics around "strategic" export controls reminded me that security theater often wins over actual strategic thinking.
The cricket analogy is interesting but I'm not sure there's any predictive value here . When the Brits were the 'lords' of cricket, did they behave in ways that reflects their geopolitical stance now? There's probably consistency in single party systems.
As far as geopolitics is concerned, I'm beginning to see that Susan Strange was prescient in her model of structural power but she was mostly ignored during her time & mostly forgotten now.
But Britain is not a great power.
Pax Brittanica facilitated global trade & kept the sea lanes open - I was thinking Britain pre WWII. But their colonial record was mercantilist-extractive.
On second thoughts, Strange's work could help here.
Strange's four structures - security, production, finance, knowledge - aren't just categories. They're modes of power, and each mode shapes how a hegemon extracts value and how it misbehaves when it overreaches.
America was unusual in dominating all four simultaneously - which is why American hegemony has been so totalizing and why its misbehavior takes multiple forms at once. Military intervention and dollar hegemony and Hollywood/Silicon Valley narrative dominance.
China's rise, in Strange's terms, has been primarily through production (manufacturing, supply chains) with increasing leverage in finance (Belt and Road lending). This predicts exactly the mercantile-extractive pattern you identified - not military adventurism, but infrastructure-for-resources deals and debt diplomacy.