The inability of the US to maintain soft power, or any power that isn't rooted in the use of force, will be its international demise. An American belt and road initiative would be politically impossible. So instead, you have those timid humanitarian aids program which largely served as intelligence and subvertion network. Those NGOs end up being so secretive that most of the money disapears in the pockets of the middleman.
Another problem is the US is broke. With a 6% of the GDP deficit, it can't invest abroad. This is the curse of being the reserve currency. Subversion is the only thing the U.S. can afford. Countries around the world knew that about the U.S. and USAID.
The most compelling explanation for US soft power is balance of threat theory[0]. Soft power comes from you not being seen as a threat, and you being seen as a way to prevent other threats. Because above all, countries prioritize security.
The status quo in US foreign policy was that as long as you're pliable to US interests, then the US was nice to you. You get democracy and get bounded autonomy, more autonomy than was afforded to subjects under any previous empire, to the extent that people would question whether the US even was an empire. Despite US being incredibly powerful militarily, the US was seen as non-threatening to friendly countries. That was an incredible magic trick, since those two things are usually correlated. This drew countries into its orbit and expanded its influence.
Countries could see the contrast to being in the Soviet Union's orbit and having your grain stolen, your people getting kicked out (Crimea) or being put into a camp.
This theory is a way to conceptualize the problem with Trump's bellicose and volatile attitudes towards Canada and European countries. If everyone sees you as a threat, this theory predicts that they will balance against you. In concrete terms, this theory predicts that countries who aren't threatened by China (due to being far away) will become closer to China if they feel threatened by the US.
Very well put. As a Canadian, what I see is Trump's attitude gave the green card for Canadian politicians to take a stand, sacrifice short term goals for long terms strategies, and indeed, we end up seeing China as less dangerous comparatively, it being true or not. Trump made overt what was happening covertly (and also objectively hurt allied relationships).
"politically impossible" is giving up on Americans ability to perceive the national advantage as well as the moral good.
Similarly, the deficit probably has solutions if the electorate is willing to approach thoughtfully and consider the revenue as well as expenditure side.
This may be another way of saying it's impossible, at least until it isn't.
> An American belt and road initiative would be politically impossible.
I think you misunderstand soft power if you think the belt and road initiative is better. The belt and road initiative largely builds infrastructure to aid Chinese interests and locks countries into loans, while providing minimal employment to the locals.
Go to any Sub-Saharan African country, for example, that have benefited from the belt and road initiative and poll them on their opinions of the United States and China. It's not even a competition.
> So instead, you have those timid humanitarian aids program which largely served as intelligence and subvertion network.
Those programs have saved millions of lives. Hell, PEPFAR alone (Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) is estimated to have saved 25 million lives. Millions of vaccines have been delivered, millions of children provided childhood nutrition.
> Another problem is the US is broke.
USAID cost next to nothing compared to everything else in the budget, these arguments about tightening our belt is disingenuous at best. The USAID budget was less than $45B a year. If we paid for that with a flat tax distributed evenly across all US taxpayers (the least fair way to do it!), that would come out to ... $24.50/month/taxpayer.
I'm not saying it's "better" in the moral sense, but from the point of view of the dominant, it's definitely more effective. The justification outlined for USAID is that it was "softpower". While this is true, we have to admit it's limitations. As you said, it was only 45B. You don't shape the world with such small amount of money. So, you do the next best thing which is to plant covert agents in NGOs. That's was the real purpose of USAID.
> I'm not saying it's "better" in the moral sense, but from the point of view of the dominant, it's definitely more effective
By what metric does the Belt and Road Initiative provide more soft power than USAID? Do you have any evidence of this?
> So, you do the next best thing which is to plant covert agents in NGOs. That's was the real purpose of USAID
That’s offensive to the men and women who worked hard as part of USAID and other foreign aid programs to help others. My wife didn’t spend 2 years in the middle of nowhere in Zambia teaching children to spy on them. My friends didn’t spend 4 years in Mongolia to spy on them.
It indeed sucks for the honest workers like your friends who are losing funding because the CIA can't help itself.
The Belt and Road Initiative is reputed to be 7 times bigger than the Marshall plan in today's dollar. It's getting hard for the US to compete with that.
> It indeed sucks for the honest workers like your friends who are losing funding because the CIA can't help itself.
So you find an organization filled with aid workers who are dedicating themselves to saving lives, with some instances of CIA infiltration. And the Trump administration, which is fully in charge of both the CIA and USAID, decides the right thing to do is ... get rid of the aid workers?
I invite you to watch Mike Green videos. In short, the current market rely on inflow of money to substain itself. P/E ratio can't increase forever. There will be a tipping point and if most of the money is invested based on an algorithm, it can unravel rapidly.
Great! This, along with Webb, the other Epstein AI tool, are amazing effort to find documents. The way you link to files instead of just outputing an answer is amazing. Great works!
There will be consolidation has few players will have the revenues to justify training their own model. Google has enough cash and revenues to be one of the survivors of this race. Openai and Claude will survive in some form or another, at least as a brand. xAi will burn through SpaceX revenues and capital so it will stay around for a while. China will keep subsidizing models. Meta might keep a subpar model around. It still a race for relevance so not everyone will make the cut.
The biggest challenge is that it's a very slow process and most people don't have the patience for it. I have been practicing Vipassana for 14 years, including all day long body awareness (so, not only on cushion, but basically integrating Vipassana to normal activities like work) and it's took close to a decade to be satisfied by the results. That being said, permanent relaxation of muscle is really what you gain from it. There have been period with faster developpement but there are up liits to progress. Notably, the release of muscle release all sort of chemicals in the blood streams, which would make my body smell during intense practice and if we progress too fast, we get bizarre side effects. For instance, relaxation of some of my muscles meant that other muscles in my legs had to be "trained" when walking, or I would be in pain for a while, etc, etc.
>A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.
I wonder if the way we have to look at the A.I. race is as a form of cold war. During the cold war, military expenses made no economic sense but we had to do it anyway to come on top. At this point, it's "who can borrow the most without bankrupting itself or can survive until a government bailout".
Your father was a great man.
reply