Comment by bigyabai
4 days ago
Conversely, it must take a truly wild level of indifference towards American politics to watch globalism go up in flames and cheer. Regardless of where you stand on the aisle or how old you are, surely you can't feel much hope for America's economy watching the Apple supply chain capsize. The economy isn't scripted by Seth McFarlane, America's automotive business and manufacturing bases aren't going to start hiring again overnight.
America has supported perpetual war in Palestine for decades and will continue to do so regardless of how globalism fares. There is not an informed citizen in America that will take this rhetoric seriously, we treat Tel Aviv like they're fighting WWIII but can't spare Maxar access to Ukraine during an active conflict.
You want to associate globalism with conflict so badly, but you just can't deny that America will wage war regardless. It's tragic.
>watching the Apple supply chain capsize.
A professional geographer says that Apple is almost unique among major American corporations in how dependent they have chosen to become on Chinese manufacturing. The US economy is in fact much less dependent on international trade than places like China, Germany, the Netherlands and most of the developing nations are. This self-sufficiency of the US economy has been true for at least a century (with a notable exception that the US was dependent on oil imports from about 1960 to 2018, which had the full attention of the US national-security establishment because of how important access to oil is during war).
You don't hear about that much because the small parts of the US economy (mostly in the professional-managerial class) that profits the most from trade with China has been effective at convincing the public that the trade is more vital than it actually is. (Note that most Americans don't even know that the US economy is no longer dependent on oil imports.)
And Apple will survive their mistake.
I'm not a fan of Trump, but I'm even less a fan of the ideology that Mearsheimer calls "liberal hegemony" that is so quick to wage war on any non-democracy anywhere in the world no matter how tangential to American national security interests and no matter how awful and large the number who have died or become refugees in places like Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria because of past applications of this ideological commitment.
FWIW, the alternative to "liberal hegemony" in places like Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria is nuclear proliferation and human rights abuses. Between the window of Mearsheimer and Chomsky we see a pretty clear-cut obligation to protect our trade partners. We invoked Article 5 of NATO to fight a war on "terror" with the lives of other countries ken, now we're unwilling to even consider their own security?
This isn't a path of conservative rectification, America isn't going to make itself less reliant on partners like Taiwan or more attractive than cheaper alternatives like China. We aren't going to fight less wars as a result, we aren't going to somehow create international demand for our goods while pricing them out of reach for most consumers. I don't know what to tell you here - Trump is far from my worst nightmare but it's plain to see that this will give America's faith-based economy a seizure.
> the alternative to "liberal hegemony" in places like Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Syria is nuclear proliferation and human rights abuses.
IMHO, US intervention in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or Syria increased human rights abuses as long as you include violent death in the definition of "human rights abuse".
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We voted to watch globalism go up in flames! Many of us thought Obama would do it but he turned out to be the consummate globalist.
Israel/Palestine is a unique situation, I’ll give you that. But I don’t think we must inexorably be “Team America: World Police.” I think our commitment to propping up the so-called “rules based international order” really is in service of free trade.
America's commitment is absolutely arbitrary. There is no reason America has to defend the First Island Chain, the bases in Guam, Pakistan and Poland. We don't have to base troops near Israel or Iran, we don't need to install tripwire brigades near places of international importance. China is happy to take over for America - they've certainly got a fast-growing Navy and the commitment to deploying carrier groups abroad.
Look - I don't really see China or America as the "good guy", you won't scare me (or most liberals) by suggesting a draw-down of American forces abroad. But, any casual wargamer will tell you that this has consequences. If America gives up our hard-power military installations and forfeits our attempts at soft-power economic expansion, absolutely nothing stops China from taking America's seat at the table. If you want that, fine, but I would argue that it is an obvious problem for America's own stability and accountability abroad. We cannot make our money exporting software in a world where we can't import the best hardware.
> Israel/Palestine is a unique situation, I’ll give you that.
No, it is outright proof that your "warmonger" characterization is invariably false. The warmongers aren't the globalists, by some measures the people trying to stop infinite war are the globalists. We've tried ceasefires, treaties, negotiations and more, every time it gets interrupted by Israel. We refuse to punish them, and the motivation for censuring discontent is entirely nationalist.