Erratic, Kinetic America
Peter Zeihan on big picture foreign policy.
I have long worried about internal conflict in the U.S., this is pretty much the sixteen year anniversary of the genesis of that concern. What I see in chat rooms today, are reports of things that are … that would have been headlines from The Onion just a few weeks ago, but which are apparently legitimate news now. The foolishness will continue until it escalates into bloodshed, then systemic bloodshed, and then Insurrection Act.
Internationally, the U.S. is now everyone’s problem. Bad behavior radiating, rather than focusing, will create an “us vs. them” dynamic. I think that’s a bad idea.
Peter’s take, namely that we’re back to the 19th century period where the military existed to rescue American business from foreign misadventures, makes sense. I am not sure how well that is going to work this time around. Unlike the gunboat diplomacy of that era, our economy is going to hit the skids, and as we’ve seen there are a LOT of nasty things that can happen to large kinetic formations … like the Red Army.
The peak oilers who first got me thinking about this stuff back in 2007 expected mercantilist policies to emerge as the norm for all nations. The focus will be on bringing in what is needed to keep the populace from hanging bureaucrats from lamp posts. Makes sense, in an awful, short sighted kind of way.
The system of Cold War globalism is collapsing quickly, and with it I think we lose the ability to face the global existential threat of climate change. If you’ve read Zeihan’s The End of the World is Just The Beginning" you might have noticed his grimmest prognostication, delivered as a simply aside, rather than placed in a position of prominence. I’m paraphrasing from memory here:
When the tankers can’t sail safely and the decline of oil availability really starts to bite, low grade brown coal mining will experience a resurgence.
In Donald Trump’s America, the government can’t even mention the thing that stands to end not just our country, but our entire species. We have indeed begun what William Gibson calls The Jackpot.