[HN Gopher] The Status Quo Coalition
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The Status Quo Coalition
Author : JumpCrisscross
Score : 40 points
Date : 2023-08-04 09:13 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| hackandthink wrote:
| >And remember for the United States, like every status quo
| country, our interest is not having a war in the first place.
|
| I agree with Mr. Devereaux but many influential people do not
| agree:
|
| "List of wars and rebellions involving the United States of
| America"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
| none_to_remain wrote:
| It's an interesting article but I think has to be read as
| American propaganda.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Wars vs. wars of conquest. The invasion of Iraq was so damaging
| to America precisely because it blurred that delineation.
| golergka wrote:
| A single data point is useless without another to compare it
| to.
| User23 wrote:
| When I think about this kind of thing I always think about how
| for the first couple generations, the overwhelming majority of
| people who lived in the Roman Empire weren't even aware there was
| an empire. They still believed that they lived in a republic.
|
| Europe is de facto a military protectorate of the USA. They are
| imperial clients in all but name. And they know it. We see this
| overt control (not influence!) from time to time, for example how
| for some reason US policy makers control ASML's exports.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _for the first couple generations, the overwhelming majority
| of people who lived in the Roman Empire weren't even aware
| there was an empire_
|
| Source? Even at the peak of the Republic, Rome was an imperial
| power: economic gains came principally from new conquests.
| Caesar had to enact land reforms in part because the Romans
| were half crap at maintaining the agricultural productivity of
| the Italian peninsula.
|
| > _Europe is de facto a military protectorate of the USA. They
| are imperial clients in all but name_
|
| The article provides evidence directly undermining this claim.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Don't forget that the rules of Roman Republic required the
| assembly to vote to declare war, without any "special
| military action" escape clause. Which the assembly did
| basically every single year for a few centuries.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Most of Europe _wants_ more US military protection, while the
| US would prefer to wind it down and Europe to contribute more.
| Whether you 're Germany, Italy, or Spain, with severe
| deficiency in the NATO ask of 2% GDP to defense, _or_ Poland
| who contributes far more than their required share and still
| prefers more US defense. Lest we not forget that 5 years ago,
| the US moved significant troops from Germany to Poland, because
| of Germany 's continued unwillingness to spend on their
| defense. This caused uproar in Germany and applause in Poland.
| hackandthink wrote:
| "Status Quo Coalition" (of rich and free countries)
|
| I think Mr. Devereaux is mostly right from a german point of
| view.
|
| (West) Germany became rich and free because of the USA.
|
| But there were and are considerable differences of interest, for
| example with regard to Russia policy.
|
| The U.S. was not happy about Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. (1)
|
| Many Germans were not happy about nuclear armament in Europe
| (limited nuclear war in Europe) (2).
|
| The Nord Stream pipelines are a story of their own.
|
| Mr. Devereaux is right, however, about the current German stance
| in the Ukraine war.
|
| (1) https://www.jstor.org/stable/23032805 (The Nixon
| Administration and Willy Brandt's "Ostpolitik")
|
| (2) https://www.britannica.com/topic/limited-nuclear-options
| lantry wrote:
| Interesting stuff, and I hope that it's true. Would be really
| great if humanity can outgrow war.
|
| Not mentioned in the article, but very similar to the "McDonald's
| Theory of Conflict Prevention"
| publicola1990 wrote:
| Analysis seems to miss out considering most of Middle East and
| Africa.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| TL; DR Classic international relations "theory was based on
| agrarian states or early industrial states. And one of the
| features of agrarian interstate relations was that returns to war
| outpaced returns to capital, which is a fancy way of saying you
| could get richer, faster by conquest than by development. Under
| those sorts of conditions, most powers were going to be, in some
| form, 'revisionist' powers because most powers would have
| something to gain by attacking a weaker neighbor and seizing
| their resources (mostly arable land and peasant farmers to be
| taxed)...
|
| But, as we've discussed, industrialization changes all of this:
| the net returns to war are decreased (because industrial war is
| so destructive and lethal) while the returns to capital
| investment get much higher due to rising productivity. In the
| pre-industrial past, fighting a war to get productive land was
| many times more effective than investing in irrigation and
| capital improvements to your own land, assuming you won the war.
| But in the industrial world, fighting a war to get a factory is
| many, many less times more effective than just building a new
| factory at home, especially since the war is very likely to
| destroy the factory in the first place. This was not always the
| case! The great wealth of many countries and indeed
| industrialization itself was built on resources acquired through
| imperial expansion; now the cost of that acquisition is higher
| than simply buying the stuff. War is no longer a means to profit,
| but an emergency response to avoid otherwise certain extreme
| losses.
|
| So whereas in the old system, almost every power except
| potentially the hegemon, had something to potentially gain by
| upending the stability of the system, the economics of modern
| production means that quite a lot of countries will have
| absolutely nothing to gain from a war, even a successful one. Now
| that dispassionate calculation has arguably been true for more
| than a century; the First World War was an massive exercise in
| proving that nothing that could be gained from a major power war
| would be worth the misery, slaughter and destruction of a major
| power war. Subsequent conflicts have reinforced this lesson again
| and again, yet conflicts continue to occur. Azar Gat argues in
| part that this is because humans are both evolved in our biology
| (and thus patterns of thinking and emotion) as well as our social
| institutions, for warfare and aggression. We have to unlearn
| those instincts and redesign those institutions and this process
| is slow and uneven."
| [deleted]
| stainablesteel wrote:
| really missed on not using "The Status Quoalition"
| pphysch wrote:
| > the coalition isn't bound together by American power but by
| common interests
|
| We can test this theory by looking at instances where coalition
| members' sovereign interests conflict with Washington's
| interests. Who ultimately gets their way?
|
| There was an analogous study done IIRC in the late 90s where
| policy interests of poor vs. rich Americans were compared. In
| virtually every case, the rich/powerful people got their way,
| despite the poor constituents having vastly more democratic power
| on paper. This shouldn't be surprising to anyone living in
| America.
|
| I believe it's the same story for this Western nominal
| "coalition". The cases where Washington compromises on its
| interests are rare and not conceded without a fight. Did Germany
| really consent to its pipelines getting blown up by another
| coalition member? Is it really in European interests to suffer
| massive economic blowback from sanctions? And then Washington's
| interest gets rebranded "common interest" without much
| investigation.
|
| The bottom line is that elite-aligned liberals (in the classical
| sense) like the author are blind to the machinations of power.
| They presume _a priori_ that the status quo is _natural_ ,
| structural and broadly consented to, rather than imposed through
| the vast and tireless efforts of an enormous, mostly-unelected
| power complex (media, financial, military, intelligence) based in
| Washington DC.
|
| ...and that power complex is gradually collapsing, partly because
| of these ideological blinders which hamstring action.
| anovikov wrote:
| Those sanctions have been introduced by Europe itself, not the
| U.S.
|
| America had nothing at all to do with it: it's not threatened
| by war in Ukraine in any way.
|
| Of course, sanctions always hurt both sides. If they did not
| hurt Europe itself, there won't be any need to introduce them-
| it means that if say, energy trade was unprofitable, it won't
| be happening. There are no sanctions that hurt only one side
| because when they are, they are simply not needed as actions
| that are to be prohibited, don't happen anyway.
|
| And we got out of it only in a few months, unharmed, things
| basically got back to normal in 2 quarters.
| lantry wrote:
| The article talks about this - about how the US benefits from
| being the "Team Captain" of this coalition. The US generally
| gets what it wants, or at least gets preferential treatment.
| The article talks about the fact that most of the institutions
| in the coalition (e.g. IMF, NATO) were created by the US and
| slanted towards the priorities of the US.
|
| The article also doesn't claim that the US isn't using it's
| influence (media, financial, military) to enforce its hegemony.
| It argues that these actions are actually detrimental to
| continuing US hegemony, and that the real reason this
| "coalition" hangs together is because all the members have a
| common interest in maintaining the status quo. The article
| talks about the fact that if the US were to press too hard on
| it's hegemony, the other members of the coalition would turn
| against it and choose a new "team captain". The article
| completely acknowledges the fact that most of the members
| aren't huge fans of the US, for example they don't participate
| in the russia sanctions, but it points out that they also
| aren't trying to bust the sanctions. If all these other
| countries were trying to get out from under the thumb of the
| US, you'd see them taking this opportunity to align with russia
| and china to form a "containment coalition", but this hasn't
| happened (yet)
| jcranmer wrote:
| Europe suffered no consequences as a result of disagreeing with
| the US over the Iraq War. It suffered no consequences as a
| result of disagreeing with the US (and other European
| country's) concerns over Russian imperialism. It continues to
| suffer no consequences as a result of disagreeing with the US
| over China. Turkey suffers no consequences of its considerable
| disagreement from US foreign policy, despite reaching the point
| that it is objecting to new entries to the coalition for
| essentially spurious reasons.
|
| The US does maintain a hegemony, but NATO isn't a vehicle of
| political compulsion, especially when you compare to the Warsaw
| Pact, which very much was. Recall that the Warsaw Pact's sole
| military operation was to invade a country that wanted out, and
| the Warsaw Pact itself fell apart pretty much the moment the
| USSR indicated it wouldn't invade countries that wanted out
| anymore.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Europe suffered no consequences as a result of disagreeing
| with the US over the Iraq War.
|
| They also didn't prevent it, so I'm not sure what your point
| is here: Washington got their way. It was Europe that was
| burdened with millions of refugees created by Washington's
| unprovoked invasion of Iraq (then Libya, then Syria).
|
| > It suffered no consequences as a result of disagreeing with
| the US (and other European country's) concerns over Russian
| imperialism.
|
| This doesn't make any sense. Europe's economy is in dire
| straits, and Washington continues to get exactly what it
| wants.
|
| > It continues to suffer no consequences as a result of
| disagreeing with the US over China.
|
| Simply not true. One example from this week: https://www.ft.c
| om/content/095e76a1-6ffd-4962-99e6-33268eebc...
|
| > Turkey suffers no consequences of its considerable
| disagreement from US foreign policy
|
| Huh? Erdogan blames the US for being behind the failed
| Gulenist coup, and Turkiye continues to straddle the line
| between West and East.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > It was Europe that was burdened with millions of refugees
| created by Washington's unprovoked invasion of Iraq (then
| Libya, then Syria).
|
| You are aware that intervention in Libya was driven by
| France and UK far more than the US, right? In fact, part of
| the goal of the intervention in Libya was to demonstrate
| that Europe didn't need to rely on the US to tackle
| security concerns in its immediate backward--even if that
| demonstration was a failure.
| pphysch wrote:
| Yes, I am aware of that, and that it doesn't affect my
| argument. Washington was still a huge fan of and
| participant in that brutal unprovoked invasion that saw
| slave markets return to Libya.
|
| Washington did lead the unprovoked illegal invasions of
| Iraq and Syria, which had more of an impact on the
| refugee crisis.
| golergka wrote:
| > Is it really in European interests to suffer massive economic
| blowback from sanctions?
|
| Is it really in European interests to be literally conquered in
| a bloody war?
| User23 wrote:
| Is it really helping Europeans not get conquered in a bloody
| war to expend virtually all of their materiel on a US lead
| proxy war intended to bring about regime change in Russia?
| scatters wrote:
| Yes. Given the regrettable failure of Wandel durch Handel,
| Russia would have attacked sooner or later. As it is,
| expending mostly obsolete European materiel in a trade for
| Russian materiel at an _extremely_ favorable ratio, in the
| course of a war fought off NATO soil with a reduced risk of
| nuclear escalation, is about the best possible scenario.
| User23 wrote:
| Have you got any impartial source for that "extremely
| favorable ratio" claim?
| scatters wrote:
| There are no impartial sources. Oryx estimates a ratio of
| nearly 3:1, but do you class that as impartial?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _intended to bring about regime change in Russia_
|
| Nobody wants this. Russia reverting to a hermit kingdom
| monitored by China is the best-case exit scenario.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Regime change is inevitable. It's just whether it happens
| before or after Putin dies, and how much chaos occurs
| then. I don't think Putin has laid out a succession plan,
| and no o e dares try to appear like they could fill his
| shoes, as is the case of every other dictator.
|
| Best case is Russia doesn't devolve into a bloody civil
| war.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't think Putin has laid out a succession plan
|
| Technically, he (or, at least, the Russian Federation)
| has, in that the Russian Federation has, on paper, a
| representative-democratic Constitution which handles
| succession to the office of the President (the Prime
| Minister succeeds).
|
| In reality, of course, the real lines of power in the RF
| have little to do with the formal constitutional order of
| government (heck, Putin hasn't even been President the
| whole time he has been in charge), but with application
| of influence at the time of the decision, so what has
| been "laid out" (either Constitutionally or, if Putin
| indicated a preference outside of that in advance for his
| successor) makes very little difference. What will matter
| is the actual positions of influence at the time a
| successor is called for.
|
| > Best case is Russia doesn't devolve into a bloody civil
| war.
|
| That's a feature of the best case; but it may also be a
| feature of the _worst_ case. Bloody internal disorder
| _isn't_ the worst thing that has happened as a result
| with dissatisfaction with the existing government and
| conditions in a major world power.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The "virtually all their material" line is pretty rich.
| European countries have been sending their military surplus
| to Ukraine and little more.
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