BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-12-19 Su: First: On the Usefulness of the “Wilhelmine China” Analogy as a Tool for Thought: Apparently contra the super-brilliant Adam Tooze, I have long thought—because history rhymes—that the analogy between pre-World War I Germany and contemporary China is an interesting one to think about. Wilhelmine China—a rising industrial power with a parasitic upper class, unsure if it truly has and anxious to demonstrate meaningful social role, and a leadership striving for national self-assertion both for its own psychological reasons and to unify a country that might otherwise be riven bye Economic and equality pressures...
Worth noting that Imperial Prussia did pretty well while it had competent administrators like Bismarck, and started losing its mind when the incompetent Wilhelm II took over.
Similarly, China did pretty well under Deng and the generations of his successors, and started losing its mind when the incompetent Xi Jinping took over...
The historical parallel I see is that autocracy is a weakness for a country because idiots can get into power too easily and are too hard to remove. You don't notice the weakness as long as a competent autocrat is in power, but when Wilhelm dismisses Bismarck as Chancellor and decides to rule personally, or Xi Jinping eliminates term limits and turns the Central Committee into sycophants, the governmental errors start happening immediately....
Seems to me the Wilhelmine China analogy really ought to be focused on the British response rather than the German one. That is, the tragedy of WWI was that a fading power elected to duke it out with a rising power and the fight just went on far too long. Had Britain sat it out, the whole affair would have been (probably) nothing more than another Franco-Prussian war. Therefore, to pursue the analogy, we ought to consider more the British calculations and see whether there are parallels to present-day American strategic thinking. I've always thought the biggest blunder for Britain was the Anglo-French naval agreement of November, 1912. By that agreement Britain moved its Mediterranean fleet to the North Sea, to bottle up Germany, and France moved its Atlantic fleet into the Mediterranean to protect British interests there. Effectively, this committed Britain to a joint defense pact against Germany without securing a British voice in French policy. It's generally accepted that Britain did this to avoid the great expense of outgunning a rising power in Germany. My view is that the motivation to save money was because of the great pressures being put upon the old elite (the Liberal Imperialists) to adopt social programs to improve the lot of the lower classes in order to bridge divides within the Cabinet with the Radicals. (The theme of my undergraduate honors thesis from 40 years ago). Therefore, I am asking myself whether the current divisions within the US, and the urgent need to restore employment, renew infrastructure, avoid a turn to authoritarianism (and kleptocracy), etc., will egg us on to adopting strategic policies that will push us into unwinnable conflicts either to bridge internal divides or make resources available for domestic programs. At the moment, I'm thinking maybe not. I do not see how we will loose autonomy of action in East Asia. Are the players there who are important to us (Japan, Australia, Indonesia) going to trap us into conflict with China? (Maybe India, but we never treat India as a serious player, do we?) Will the defense of Taiwan (that is what we are actually talking about, right?), bear a meaningful relationship to our domestic troubles? Only if we make the decision to unequivocally dominate the Formosa Straits, as that decision would require either lots of debt or lots of taxes (both doable in theory but politically impossible). But that decision seems to be ours alone, not one thrust upon us. That is, I think we will either blunder or not based on purely "strategic" considerations, whether or not China is rising or waning. The non-kinetic conflicts (technology pirating and mercantilism), are ones for which we have broad coalitions to oppose China, and given time they should work out without bullets or nuclear weapons. I seem to be coming down on the side that while China may be Wilhelmine (a rising power with a parasitic leadership class looking to impress the peasants with nationalistic bluster), and the US may be (no...is) a fading power trying to avoid the inevitable, I am not sure that dynamic is prescriptive in present circumstances.
The problem with Wilhelmine China as an analogy is that the times have altered.
Leaving aside the very sharp distinction in the construction of military power -- today, there's no such thing as a Power or Great Power; there are nuclear powers, and everybody else -- the construction of industrial power -- those long supply chains and a post-nationalist industry that maximizes profits -- that is, money flows to plutocrats -- above all other concerns, and the futility of gaining by war -- the US hasn't managed to do this despite massive advantages in capability; war is profitable for those positioned to extract profits from the public purse, it's not profitable overall as it could be in the 18th and 19th centuries for those doing the looting -- the construction of a US/China rivalry misunderstands a bunch of stuff.
Both entities are in the early stages of collapse. (that is, there's a central authority, but it's not consistently effectual. The degree to which its writ runs is a matter of ongoing contention.)
The US is incapable of enacting or defending a sufficient construction of the public good to deal with a pandemic; it will certainly fail in respect to climate change. It's been taken over by an apocalyptic death cult and cannot make decisions on a materialist basis. Since the system has to make materialist decisions to function at all, while this inability holds, collapse will continue.
China has bought internal peace through rising prosperity; to do this, they've repeated the Soviet mistake and created an excessively specialized mechanism of industry. (the Soviet version was focused on armaments; the Chinese version focused on exports.) They haven't got and cannot build without thoroughly displacing incumbents a mechanism to secure general prosperity. (they're aware of the problem and they're trying to refocus from money to prosperity, but the definition they're using and the widely agreed definition differ and there's the inherent limits of incumbent-driven reform getting in the way.) Their success has now landed them in a position where they're too large to continue with this strategy, and their internal legitimacy is the source of such confidence that they've resorted to a massive program of social control. (Note that it's only really distinct from the Western credit-based systems in being notionally public and centralized.)
All of that is bad, but none of it is certain. The loss of hydrological stationarity is certain; it's happening, and the system it's happening within is too large for any control signal sent now to alter this outcome. With that loss goes reliable agriculture. All considerations of economy and constructions of power rest on a sufficient food supply.
Could a reliable food supply be secured for the post-agricultural world?
Maybe, given an every-nerve-and-sinew effort. (You have to be done before you need it, you don't know when you're going to need it, and you can today be uneasily confident that you're going to need it soon.)
Is anyone making that effort?
Not on a sufficient scale.
It's _easier_ to worry about spheres of influence and contention and the risk of nuclear war, but none of those are the actual problem we have today.
Worth noting that Imperial Prussia did pretty well while it had competent administrators like Bismarck, and started losing its mind when the incompetent Wilhelm II took over.
Similarly, China did pretty well under Deng and the generations of his successors, and started losing its mind when the incompetent Xi Jinping took over...
The historical parallel I see is that autocracy is a weakness for a country because idiots can get into power too easily and are too hard to remove. You don't notice the weakness as long as a competent autocrat is in power, but when Wilhelm dismisses Bismarck as Chancellor and decides to rule personally, or Xi Jinping eliminates term limits and turns the Central Committee into sycophants, the governmental errors start happening immediately....
Seems to me the Wilhelmine China analogy really ought to be focused on the British response rather than the German one. That is, the tragedy of WWI was that a fading power elected to duke it out with a rising power and the fight just went on far too long. Had Britain sat it out, the whole affair would have been (probably) nothing more than another Franco-Prussian war. Therefore, to pursue the analogy, we ought to consider more the British calculations and see whether there are parallels to present-day American strategic thinking. I've always thought the biggest blunder for Britain was the Anglo-French naval agreement of November, 1912. By that agreement Britain moved its Mediterranean fleet to the North Sea, to bottle up Germany, and France moved its Atlantic fleet into the Mediterranean to protect British interests there. Effectively, this committed Britain to a joint defense pact against Germany without securing a British voice in French policy. It's generally accepted that Britain did this to avoid the great expense of outgunning a rising power in Germany. My view is that the motivation to save money was because of the great pressures being put upon the old elite (the Liberal Imperialists) to adopt social programs to improve the lot of the lower classes in order to bridge divides within the Cabinet with the Radicals. (The theme of my undergraduate honors thesis from 40 years ago). Therefore, I am asking myself whether the current divisions within the US, and the urgent need to restore employment, renew infrastructure, avoid a turn to authoritarianism (and kleptocracy), etc., will egg us on to adopting strategic policies that will push us into unwinnable conflicts either to bridge internal divides or make resources available for domestic programs. At the moment, I'm thinking maybe not. I do not see how we will loose autonomy of action in East Asia. Are the players there who are important to us (Japan, Australia, Indonesia) going to trap us into conflict with China? (Maybe India, but we never treat India as a serious player, do we?) Will the defense of Taiwan (that is what we are actually talking about, right?), bear a meaningful relationship to our domestic troubles? Only if we make the decision to unequivocally dominate the Formosa Straits, as that decision would require either lots of debt or lots of taxes (both doable in theory but politically impossible). But that decision seems to be ours alone, not one thrust upon us. That is, I think we will either blunder or not based on purely "strategic" considerations, whether or not China is rising or waning. The non-kinetic conflicts (technology pirating and mercantilism), are ones for which we have broad coalitions to oppose China, and given time they should work out without bullets or nuclear weapons. I seem to be coming down on the side that while China may be Wilhelmine (a rising power with a parasitic leadership class looking to impress the peasants with nationalistic bluster), and the US may be (no...is) a fading power trying to avoid the inevitable, I am not sure that dynamic is prescriptive in present circumstances.
"who are not in perceive themselves as not receiving their fair share of growing prosperity."
Somewhat applies to the Us.
The problem with Wilhelmine China as an analogy is that the times have altered.
Leaving aside the very sharp distinction in the construction of military power -- today, there's no such thing as a Power or Great Power; there are nuclear powers, and everybody else -- the construction of industrial power -- those long supply chains and a post-nationalist industry that maximizes profits -- that is, money flows to plutocrats -- above all other concerns, and the futility of gaining by war -- the US hasn't managed to do this despite massive advantages in capability; war is profitable for those positioned to extract profits from the public purse, it's not profitable overall as it could be in the 18th and 19th centuries for those doing the looting -- the construction of a US/China rivalry misunderstands a bunch of stuff.
Both entities are in the early stages of collapse. (that is, there's a central authority, but it's not consistently effectual. The degree to which its writ runs is a matter of ongoing contention.)
The US is incapable of enacting or defending a sufficient construction of the public good to deal with a pandemic; it will certainly fail in respect to climate change. It's been taken over by an apocalyptic death cult and cannot make decisions on a materialist basis. Since the system has to make materialist decisions to function at all, while this inability holds, collapse will continue.
China has bought internal peace through rising prosperity; to do this, they've repeated the Soviet mistake and created an excessively specialized mechanism of industry. (the Soviet version was focused on armaments; the Chinese version focused on exports.) They haven't got and cannot build without thoroughly displacing incumbents a mechanism to secure general prosperity. (they're aware of the problem and they're trying to refocus from money to prosperity, but the definition they're using and the widely agreed definition differ and there's the inherent limits of incumbent-driven reform getting in the way.) Their success has now landed them in a position where they're too large to continue with this strategy, and their internal legitimacy is the source of such confidence that they've resorted to a massive program of social control. (Note that it's only really distinct from the Western credit-based systems in being notionally public and centralized.)
All of that is bad, but none of it is certain. The loss of hydrological stationarity is certain; it's happening, and the system it's happening within is too large for any control signal sent now to alter this outcome. With that loss goes reliable agriculture. All considerations of economy and constructions of power rest on a sufficient food supply.
Could a reliable food supply be secured for the post-agricultural world?
Maybe, given an every-nerve-and-sinew effort. (You have to be done before you need it, you don't know when you're going to need it, and you can today be uneasily confident that you're going to need it soon.)
Is anyone making that effort?
Not on a sufficient scale.
It's _easier_ to worry about spheres of influence and contention and the risk of nuclear war, but none of those are the actual problem we have today.