- The ABCs of Israeli occupation Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- The board game of the alpha nerds David Hill, Grantland
- It’s now China against the world Lily Kuo, Guardian
- Majority rule, slavery, and Hobbes Michael Rozeff, LRC Blog
Post-pandemic trends in post-Brexit British foreign policy: Asia or the Atlantic?
Introduction
In January 2020, the UK had given a go-ahead to Chinese telecom giant Huawei to participate in its 5G network – with restrictions and conditions. The Trump administration conveyed its displeasure to the Boris Johnson administration. Not just the US President, but senior officials of the US administration are supposed to have said that this decision would impact economic and security relations between the UK and the US.
In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, ties between the UK and China have steadily deteriorated. As a result of increasing strains with Beijing, and the imposition of strong US sanctions against Huawei, London began to rethink its approach towards Huawei’s role in its 5G network.
First, it was decided that Huawei’s participation would be reduced to zero by 2023. In May, Britain had also proposed a multilateral grouping of 10 countries, D10 (G7+ India, South Korea and Australia), which could work collectively for reducing dependence upon Chinese technologies.
UK-China ties after the imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong
London further hardened its stance vis-à-vis China after the imposition of the National Security Law in Hong Kong, which, according to the UK, is a violation of the ‘one country two systems’ arrangement safeguarded by the ‘Basic law’ of Hong Kong and the Sino-British joint declaration signed in 1985. According to the Boris Johnson administration, the National Security Law will impinge upon not just the autonomy of Hong Kong but freedoms and rights of the residents of the former British colony, guaranteed by the 1985 declaration (these rights were to remain in place for a period of fifty years from 1997 – the year in which British left Hong Kong and handed over sovereignty to China).
Decision regarding Huawei
On July 14, 2020, on the recommendation of National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the Boris Johnson administration decided that Huawei will be removed from the 5G network by 2027. It was also decided that the purchase of 5G kits from Huawei will not be allowed after the end of December 2020.
China reacted strongly to the UK’s recent announcement, while it was welcomed by US President Donald Trump. China stated that the UK’s decision will exacerbate tensions, while the US President stated that the Johnson administration took this decision as a result of pressure from Washington. A top official in Boris Johnson’s administration stated that this decision was not driven by US pressure. Said the British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab:
But I think that decision was made not because the US said it was a good decision but because the leadership in the UK concluded the right thing to do was to make that decision for the people of the UK.
Interestingly, some media reports suggest that British officials have stated that the recent ban on Huawei was imposed with a view to placate Trump, and the UK could revise its decision, if the mercurial US President is voted out in November 2020.
UK-Japan relations
Britain has already begun to look for alternatives to Huawei for developing its 5G network. On July 16, 2020, just two days after the decision was taken to remove the Chinese telecom giant altogether by 2027, British officials are supposed to have met with their Japanese counterparts and sought assistance for developing Britain’s 5G network. Two companies which were discussed as possible alternatives to Huawei were NEC Corp and Fujitsu Limited.
It would be pertinent to point out that in recent months Britain has been aiming to strengthen trade ties with Japan, and is also looking to secure a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Japan. Both countries have also been at the forefront of pitching for diversifying global supply chains.
Conclusion
While it remains to be seen whether Britain and Japan can work together for developing the former’s 5G network, the London-Tokyo relationship has witnessed an upswing in the aftermath of Covid-19. Both countries have already begun to take steps for reducing economic reliance on China. It would be interesting to see if Britain sticks to its announcement of removing Huawei from its 5G network by 2027, in case Donald Trump loses in 2020. While Britain is seeking to strengthen ties with countries wary of China’s increasing economic dominance, the former would not likely to be perceived as a mere appendage of Washington.
Nightcap
- Communist China’s dream of total information Arunabh Ghosh, Aeon
- The romance of American Communism Hannah Gold, Commonweal
- The Last Utopians: Four late-19th century visionaries Robert Greer, History Today
- The role of science in Enlightenment Universalism Nick Nielsen, Grand Strategy Annex
Nightcap
- Is there a social history of Indian liberalism? Anirban Karak, JHIblog
- In praise of the liberal world order Freisinnige Zeitung
- The great cover-up of biological weapons Daniel Immerwahr, New Republic
- What on earth is happening in Portland? Jamelle Bouie, NY Times
“The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa”
We explore the consequences of ethnic partitioning, a neglected aspect of the Scramble for Africa, and uncover the following. First, apart from the land mass and water bodies, split and non-split groups are similar across several dimensions. Second, the incidence, severity, and duration of political violence are all higher for partitioned homelands which also experience frequent military interventions from neighboring countries. Third, split groups are often entangled in a vicious circle of government-led discrimination and ethnic wars. Fourth, respondents from survey data identifying with split ethnicities are economically disadvantaged. The evidence highlights the detrimental repercussions of the colonial border design.
This is from Stelios Michalopoulos and Elias Papaioannou, in the American Economic Review.
Is there a way of out this quagmire for Africa? The status quo, with its multilateral institutions, doesn’t seem to be working (perhaps because multilateral institutions have been grafted on to the old imperial structures), and colonialism-slash-imperialism started this problem to begin with.
What about a more radically moderate approach? What if the US (or even the EU) opened up its federation to applicants from Africa?
Nightcap
- Ron Paul on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (2002)
- The chilling effect of an attack on a scholar Conor Friedersdorf, Atlantic
- The childhood, schooldays, and death of Jesus Siddhartha Deb, Nation
- Andrew Sullivan is going back to the blog New York‘s “Intelligencer”
There is an asteroid headed to Earth
There is an asteroid headed to Earth.
With the current projected momentum no living creature will survive the impact. It slipped neatly out of its 100 million mile parabola when the magnetic poles switched just right.
First the planet will become very cold as its mass creates shadow out of Sun, permanent night. Earth’s climate becomes uniform months before its topology.
NASA estimated it was 100 kilometres in diameter. It will leave a crater 400 times its size, it makes the Richter scale look like an abacus.
Thousands of tonnes of debris and tsunami waves ten miles high will pulverize our puny footprint, quickly Paleolithicizing our few centuries of enterprise. Humans, all flesh will be ripped to shreds, incinerated by heat and dissipated by winds 20,000 kilometres per hour. Humans in bunkers and bomb shelters will be crushed into gelatin. Humans above the surface in planes will suffocate while their eyes explode with pressure. Humans on their way to the moon or International Space Station never made it, immured after the electromagnetic pulse until starvation or they kill themselves.
Remnants of the rock reconnect with space and, along with ash and dust, form a dome around what was once Earth over the course of a few years, and a ring over a century. Without sunlight the planet cools until it looks like there was never life at all.
Now, there’s a couple things humans can do in this situation.
You can try to cool the asteroid to slow it down. You can maybe change the trajectory with lasers, diverting its path to at least hit Earth at an angle. You can try to set off an explosion near its surface to deflect it entirely. You can create a magnetic pull using another massive object to slow and divert it off course.
In fact, we will do all this, when it comes. My people and my government will fight for the right to live, and your people and your government will, too, and we may all join together and fight as brothers. And they will devote all of our resources, all of our creativity, all our time, all our children and unconceived children, all our money which is frozen time, all of our blood, sweat and tears, all our storage and bandwidth, all our savings and pension accounts, all our donations, all our taxes, all our secrets, and all our passion and all our devotion and sex and emotion and drugs and flings and night-outs and beers and parks and concerts and nature and nurture and games and sports and haircuts and massages and movies and meetings and handshakes and exercise and giving money to that junkie on the corner, and they will devote him, and they will devote your unconceived children.
And you might not ever get it back, you probably won’t, but nevertheless my people will take it all from you for the mere chance that they can change things, because if they can’t control the meteor they can at least control you.
So ultimately there are some things, that are only a little bad, and you can helm a lot; then there are things that might be sincerely bad, where your influence is the arbiter; and then there are the eschatologically bad, that position the human imagination into the context of the size of the universe.
Everyone wants to convince you, now, that either things are only a little bad or are apocalypse, but in either case they want to convince you that your participation is absolutely analytically necessary and things cannot possibly do without. It’s nothing stupid like pick a side, tyranny of the inside or wasteland of the outdoors; more primitive, it’s put a quarter in the game. The rest of us can’t rest without hitting the buttons.
When hard work doesn’t equal productive work
In March 2020, David Rubenstein gave an interview in which he lamented the vanishing of a system in which “hard work” guarantees success. While the source of nostalgia is understandable, there is an epistemological problem with the conjoined assumptions underlying the concept of hard work and also what a “system” promises, i.e. if one works hard, then one become successful. The issue appears to be one of qualifying and quantifying “hard work.”
My previous article “An aspirational paradox” mentions Abigail Fisher and her failed lawsuit against University of Texas – Austin over her non-acceptance to the institution. The case was a painful example of the disillusionment which must follow when believers in the exceptionality of the commonplace are finally made aware of its mediocrity. The Fisher saga represents the modern tragedy of familial ambition: a child’s parents place her on a systemic path, promised by wise public-school teachers and caring guidance counselors to lead to success, only to discover that the end is the furnace of Moloch. Caveat emptor.
The strange, disembodied entity called “the system” doesn’t fail; what fails is individual and collective concepts of what the system is and what it requires. Mankind has a capacity for filling a void of ignorance with figments of its imagination. In general, such practice is harmless. But when a person believes his own creation and builds his future upon it, that is when the ‘systemic failure’ narrative begins.
Drawing again from my own encounters, for many years I knew a music teacher who believed that one must never listen to repertoire. Yes, you read that correctly: a teacher of an aural art form believes that listening to music is detrimental. The person had many long, pseudo-pedagogical explanations for this peculiar belief. His idea was atypical. Professors at the world’s top conservatories and musicians from major ensembles all emphasize listening as a crucial part of study. Listening as a formal component of music study dates to the invention and mass distribution of the phonograph in the early 20th century. Even further back, students attended live concerts.
This teacher had a pedagogical system built around his beliefs, which included that students should neither learn basic keyboard skills nor how to play with accompaniment. Unsurprisingly, students who adhered to his system didn’t progress very well. Problems ranged from poor intonation and lack of ensemble skills to arriving for college auditions with no grasp of appropriate repertoire. Feedback from competitions was kind but completely honest. The more students failed, the more obstinately he insisted that political maneuverings or class biases were to blame. “The system,” by which he meant auditions, was “broken,” designed to not give people a “fair chance.”
Sadly, this man affected a large number of students, many of whom worked hard – practicing long hours, racking up credits, participating in multiple ensembles – only to discover that their “system” was a fraud. All of their hard work was for naught.
There was one particularly heartbreaking case of a young woman who applied to a fairly prominent private university. By her own account, her audition was catastrophic. In the lead up to the audition, she did her best to ensure success; she had two lessons a week, increased her daily practice time by an hour, and played along to background recordings. The amount of work she did, measured in terms of effort and time spent, was brutal. But she didn’t pass the audition and was understandably devastated.
A system she had followed religiously since fourth grade had failed her; moreover, her hard work was guaranteed to fail. There was no way for her to succeed based upon her training. In some ways, this girl’s story parallels Abigail Fisher’s history. For years both put in hours of effort only to discover that they had misjudged and misplaced their energies. Bluntly, these young women worked hard but not strategically.
The failure of these girls was unrelated to the broader “system,” whether that system was auditions or college applications. To argue that “the system” is broken on the basis that hard work is not rewarded is irrational, albeit understandable on an emotional basis. Before rushing off to denounce “the system” for not rewarding hard work, one should critically examine the foundational premise and ask: Was this hard work or was it productive work?
Nightcap
- Is the 2nd Amendment a rejection of nobility? John DeMaggio, Hill
- Is Big Tech wrecking democracy? Jonathan Taplin (interview), ScheerPost
- The virtue in violence? Faisal Devji, Los Angeles Review of Books
- When is speech violence? Bill Rein, NOL
Nightcap
- On broken treaties with the Natives Anderson & Crepelle, the Hill
- The EU’s last shot at redemption? Austin Doehler, War on the Rocks
- The flailing states of Britain and the US Pankaj Mishra, LRB
- Political freedom’s revelatory effect Matthew Crawford, Hedgehog Review
Slate Star Codex and the rationalists
Rick first alerted me to the end of the popular rationalist blog Slate State Codex. Then it was all over my internet. I have never been a huge fan of the rationalist community, mostly because they don’t do history very well, but this is a big deal.
It has also produced some great conversation on both sides of the American cultural divide. Gideon Lewis-Kraus wrote an excellent meta-piece on the whole affair. Lewis-Kraus uses “Silicon Valley” as shorthand for the intellectual right. This is more correct than wrong, even though the region votes Democrat, because Silicon Valley is more of a mindset than a geographic place.
Lewis-Kraus’s Silicon Valley is a new, decentralized informational ecology. He contrasts Silicon Valley with the old media: big corporations trying to maintain a stranglehold on “the narrative.” (Lewis-Kraus readily admits he’s part of the old media.) For Lewis-Kraus, Silicon Valley is trying to build an alternative mediascape. Big corporations such as the NY Times are fighting back.
It’s an interesting cultural war to follow, if you’re in to that kind of stuff. I can’t seem to shake my uneasiness about the rationalist community, though. As I mentioned, they don’t do history, or they don’t do it well. They are also into communes, which I distrust immensely. Utopian and communitarian experiments are bad for all of your healths (physical, emotional, etc.). I don’t know how the rationalists ended up on the side of Silicon Valley. My guess is that the big corporations didn’t like what the rationalists had to say, or how they lived, so the rationalists found solace in the decentralized ecology of Silicon Valley.
I think the verdict is still out on who the victor of this cultural war will be. The big corporations have government backing, and they own the narrative bought by most of the American public, but the old media has shown its true colors in how it covers Donald Trump. I didn’t vote for the guy but it’s obvious his administration is not being reported on by the old media; it’s being slandered and attacked, with lies or with small untruths, rather than objectively reported on. The rationalists and their decentralized allies in the Silicon Valley informational ecology at least have truth on their side. Not the truth, but a commitment to the truth by way of discussion, the sharing of information, and fighting to protect the freedom of everybody’s conscience, rather than just their own team’s conscience.
We live in interesting times, and this makes blogging – a decentralized activity if there ever was one – all the more important.
Nightcap
- On LBJ’s (not so) Great Society William Voegeli, New Criterion
- All roads need not lead to China Parag Khanna, Noema
- The guileful, soulful art of Khadija Saye Stuart Jeffries, Spectator
- Being black in Argentina Gabby Messina (interview), Latitude
Throwing the Bums out is Insufficient
It’s election season (those quite weeks between October and November three years later) which means a resurgence in political economy superstitions! A particular tempting one is the Throw the Bums Out Theory of Governance.
The theory goes like this: things are awful, awful people are in positions of power, therefore we need to get rid of those awful people.
As instincts go, it’s not the worst. But it’s Twitter level thinking. Yeah, it’s worth celebrating the regression to the mean that will be the end of Trump’s presidency. I’m looking forward to the “regular” amounts of corruption and embarrassment. But those “regular” amounts are still problematic. The lesser of two evils still sucks. The mean we’re regressing to is the real problem.
In other words: the political outcomes we get reflect the underlying political reality (give or take). As Mencken said: we get what we want good and hard. Political outcomes involve (mostly bad) luck, but Trump wasn’t some utterly random accident. He happened because enough American voters wanted that (more than the next best alternative, anyways).
Throwing the bums out is cathartic, but there’s no shortage of bums to replace them.
The problem is not the bums, it’s the system as a whole. Trump was able to screw things up so badly because we’ve set up ground rules that a) gave him the ability, and b) required more competence than he was ready or able to apply. But elections don’t choose the qualified candidates, they choose the popular candidates. And if one thing is obvious in 2020, it’s that we can’t count on magically educating our political opponents into having the enlightened views necessary for us to make sure the best candidates are always the most popular.
In the long-run, the task is to make incompetent morons less important–something I hope everyone can agree is a worthwhile goal (#neverHillary, #neverTrump). The current system means ideological tribes have to be constantly warring with each other to make sure presidential power doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Can we please agree that this is a terrible system?
We can lower the stakes. We can push power back to the state and local level (and give people an incentive to actually pay attention to local issues!). Let’s take a break from partisan entertainment–as fun as Project Lincoln is, let’s face it, they’re not convincing anyone–and get to the hard task of being a self-governing society. Let’s ask how we could set things up so we don’t have to worry about the next Clinton or Trump.
Until we change the system, we’re going to keep seeing more of the same. Let’s shift the conversation away from “that candidate’s terrible, how can we defeat them?” and towards “this setup attracts terrible candidates, how can we fix that?”!
The importance of gardening, isonomia, federation, and free banking
I’ve recently taken up gardening, in a very amateurish way. Right now I’ve got two plants growing out of a bucket filled with dirt. I water them every day. I talk to them. I rotate them so that different sides face the sun at different times of the day. I spray them with water, too. I have no idea what they are. I suspected they might be peppers, but I’m not sure now because there are tiny white flowers that bloom and then quickly wilt away.
I plan on building a few garden beds when I finally buy a house.
I have become convinced that if Charlie Citrine had simply taken up gardening he would not have gotten into all that trouble.
As a libertarian I think three topics are going to be huge over the next few decades: 1) inequality, 2) foreign policy/IR, and 3) financial markets. Libertarians have great potential for all three arguments, but they also have some not-so-great alternatives, too.
1) Libertarians are terrible on inequality. We try to ignore it. Jacques’ debt-based approach to reparations for slavery is as good as any for addressing inequality in the US. In addition to reparations for slavery, I think Hayek’s concept of isonomia is a great avenue for thinking through inequality at the international level. (I even thought about renaming this consortium “Isonomia” at one point in time.) Isonomia argues for political equality rather than any of the other equalities out there.
2) I think federation as a foreign policy is a great avenue for libertarians to pursue. It’s much better than non-interventionism or the status quo. It’s more libertarian, too. Federation addresses the questions of entrance and exit. It allows for political equality and market competition and open borders. It also takes into account bad international state actors like Russia and China. Dismantling the American overseas empire is needed, but large minorities want the US to stay in their countries. Leaving billions of people at the mercy of illiberal states like Russia and China is morally repugnant and short-sighted (i.e. stupid). It’d be better to dismantle the American empire via federation.
3) Free banking is a wonderful way forward for libertarians to address financial markets. Finance is a boogieman for the Left and can be used as a scapegoat on the Right. They’re not wrong. Financial markets need to be reexamined, and libertarians easily have the best alternative to the status quo out there.
Nightcap
- It’s time for socialists to re-embrace freedom Jodi Dean, Los Angeles Review of Books
- Hagia Sophia and the politics of heritage Elif Kalaycioglu, Duck of Minerva
- The nation-state versus the civilization-state Bruno Maçães, Noema
- Yo-Yo Ma and the acid-free box Shepard Barbash, City Journal
Notes On Liberty 