Nightcap

10/11/201910/11/2019 Brandon Christensen Links China, Hong Kong, Hong Kong protests, land ownership

Disney, the NBA, and China in Hong Kong Tyler Cowen, MR
Blizzard, esports, and China in Hong Kong Layne Vandenberg, the Diplomat
China’s dirty little secret: land ownership Ian Johnson, NY Times
The People’s Republic of China at 70 Austin Williams, spiked!

Turkey, Syria, the Kurds, and the American Foreign Policy Establishment

10/11/201910/10/2019 Brandon Christensen Current Events alliances, geopolitics, Iran, Kurds, Syria, Turkey

Donald Trump pulled the US out of Syria, and Turkey brutally pounced on the Kurds. What a mess.

I have just two quick notes on the subject: 1) the American Foreign Policy Establishment has upset me for many years now, mostly because they are liars. The allegations of American betrayal in regards to our Kurdish allies are simply not true. If the Kurds were truly American allies, then the hawks would have gone out of their way to call for a Kurdish state in the region (something some Kurds have been trying to found for a long time). This has not happened in the 50 or 60 years that the United States has been deeply involved in the Levant. Have you heard hawkish politicians in the US call for an independent Kurdish state? Instead, Washington’s Foreign Policy Establishment has been content to use the Kurds as pawns against its Persian and Ba’athist enemies. Once the Kurds outlived their usefulness, they were abandoned by the American Foreign Policy Establishment, ironically in the name of state sovereignty.

2) The Kurds should have known better by now that their only friends are the mountains. I don’t know why they thought they could hold Syria. I don’t know why they thought they could trust Washington. My best guess is that geopolitics is hard to do when you’re as politically decentralized as the Kurds, and there was simply no overall game plan for going to war alongside the Americans, except to maybe slaughter some Arabs and Turks and build rapport with Washington for an eventual Kurdish state.

One last note: Not only is Turkey slaughtering Kurds, but Iran is calling for Turkey to stay out of Syria. The Russians are still there, too. The withdrawal of American troops from Syria means that Russia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and several non-state actors will now fight for control of the Levant. Having Moscow bogged down in the Levant bodes well for peace in Europe for the time being. A Turkish-Persian small war would likewise give the West a breather, at least militarily. If anti-refugee parties in Europe thought the first wave of refugees was unbearable, they’re in a for a world of surprise now. The bloodshed that will result from the world’s hegemon leaving a power vacuum will likely make Europe’s populist parties even more popular.

Nightcap

10/10/201910/10/2019 Brandon Christensen Links British Empire, free speech, Michel Foucault, Slovakian literature

“To speak on everything in the world, including everyone’s elections” Robin Hanson, Overcoming Bias
Foucault on the courageous practice of speaking truth to power Deborah Clark, Footnotes to Plato
The idea of Global Britain ignores reality (and an imperial past) Robert Saunders, New Statesman
“No nation in Europe today is as good at self-deprecation as the Slovaks” Donald Rayfield, Literary Review

Nightcap

10/09/201910/09/2019 Brandon Christensen Links diplomacy, Liu Cixin, modernity, terrorism

China’s three-body problem Niall Ferguson, Jewish World Review
The perplexing case of indigenous art Morgan Meis, the Easel
Can Pakistan mediate between the US and Iran? Adam Weinstein, War on the Rocks
On “terrorism” as a toxic term Vicente Medina, Policy of Truth

Nightcap

10/08/201910/08/2019 Brandon Christensen Links Austro-Hungarian Empire, authoritarian bargain, nationalism, sovereignty

Can Indigenous sovereignty survive colonisation? Pekka Hämäläinen, Aeon
Is the nation-state the best we got? Paul Emiljanowicz, Africa is a Country
Dining with Stalin Branko Milanovic, globalinequality
An assassination in Sarajevo Nick Nielsen, The View from Oregon

Be Our Guest: “How to make Brexit Really Worthwhile – Example: Financial Regulation”

10/08/201910/07/2019 Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics Be Our Guest, Brexit, costs, Freeconomist, government regulation, market regulation, subsidies

Be Our Guest is an open invitation to NOL‘s readers to participate with us. Pretty much anything is on the table. The latest article comes from the Freeconomist, who is following up on his earlier piece about making Brexit worthwhile via information asymmetries. His new piece is on financial regulation through the prism of Brexit. Check out this excerpt:

I do not want to write a lengthy discussion on the question of which alternative is the least costly in dealing with the incentive problems arising from the implicit subsidy by the taxpayer. There are good reasons to believe an incremental, decentralized and evolutionary system of market-based regulation to be superior to centrally designed government regulation. (4)
But even if this is the case, private regulation arising as a response to the incentive problems resulting from explicit and/or implicit government guarantees is still costly. Indeed, the evolved system of private regulation in the UK banking industry was giving the appearance of a restrictive cartel. If my analysis is correct, this “cartel” served a useful social function, namely to deal with the incentive problems created by the implicit government guarantee. Nevertheless, it also involved costs.
At the root of the problem are the taxpayer guarantees.

Please, read the rest. It’s another excellent piece of work.

And don’t be afraid to submit your thoughts to us.