When WW2 ended, America, Britain, an Russia were on top...Britain's position has fallen, but China and Japan are now 2 and 3 but America is still solidly #1. As shown by Pinker, the evidence since WW2 suggests more peace (the Long Peace)and less conflict, not more.
Trump's rise to power is more symbolic of national angst than in terms of substantive change in policy. I predict there will be some disappointment by former Trump voters who think that Trump is going to be this huge reformer.
Literally Obama. This election really burned me out on US politics to be honest. Seeing smart people I generally respect instantly taking the opposite position to Trump no matter what has been a big bummer. It's a bizzaro mirror image of the last 8 years and is really tiring and disheartening.
I mean, some people get it wrong sometimes. Sure. And Trump seems to get it wrong a lot. I'm not so sure there should be any position by Trump that can be seen as indisputably good.
Sounds like false equivalence on your part.
Reforming the H1B visa system. I think Trump yelled about it and a Democratic Congresswoman from California put forward a fairly sane bill. We'll see what happens.
Do you have any cites?
It's my impression that the biggest threat to peace currently is the Middle East and Russia, but neither are new. Russia is acting out because it has a GDP the size of California and is isolated and the Middle East is...the Middle East. There's a lot of flexing but that's always happened and the US is a hegemon that really can't be challenged save a land war in Asia (hopefully we aren't that stupid).
The Soviets were invading Afghanistan in the 1980s. It's foolish to say war can't happen, but things look ok from a geopolitical standpoint and historically.
What countries really want to engage in war and disrupt the global economy?
Joe Biden says the:"Liberal international order is at risk." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_-iFOwxh20
Also
"French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud foretold of a new world order. "After Brexit and this election, everything from now on is possible," Araud tweeted. "A world is collapsing before our eyes. Vertigo."
"It's the end of an era, that of neoliberalism. What will succeed it, is yet to be known," Araud said in another tweet. Both tweets were later deleted." http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/world-rea...
All of these people recognize that the post WWII world order is failing. There was no "end of history." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
> What countries really want to engage in war and disrupt the global economy?
Humans are passionate animals. We will wage war for ideology. We always have. And while some will lose [economically] others will profit. War is big business.
That being said, those are politicians (not military leaders). Both of them have something to lose and a worldview that is antithetical to recent changes (Biden vs the Trump election, Araud vs Brexit). As of a year ago neither of those people would have predicted current events. Why should we believe they now know something we don't?
Brexit sucks but the UK has always been resistant towards the EU. The EU as it exists today (or did last year) didn't even exist in 1990. Nobody is going to war over that, though.
Humans are passionate animals. We will wage war for ideology. We always have. And while some will lose [economically] others will profit. War is big business.
Of course, but what specifically suggests we are in a more dangerous situation now than we were in say 1982 when we still did nuclear attack drills, the USSR was invading countries, and Iraq and Iran were in the middle of war? What makes it worse than the 1990s when places like the Russia and Yugoslavia were crumbling? There will always be wars and rumors of war.
Military leaders are great tacticians, but that doesn't mean they know anything about the power structures of the world. Politicians on the other hand have to develop a keen sense for where things are headed [politically]. And don't forget, war is the ultimate expression of politics.
> There will always be wars and rumors of war.
Right, and we won't be able to predict when the next one will be or how it will start. What we can say though is that things are getting unstable. The current system is bleeding. Now that it has shown weakness it will be challenged by groups hoping to fill a [potential] power vacuum.
I think you mean the post-Oil-Crisis, post-stagflation, post-Bretton Woods world order. The post-WW2 social-democratic order was put down in the late '60s and early '70s.
I wonder if what we're seeing now is simply the consequence of a large generation (i.e. gen Y) coming of age. Following this line of thinking, perhaps the replacement of social-democratic ideals with neoliberal ideology (and washington consensus macro) was similarly due to the baby-boomers coming of age in the late-60s and early 70s.
I'd say passionately irrational..
Great content. Thanks.
The threats are the western countries themselves, they are repeating mistakes some past empires did, and becoming vulnerable, if Russia and Middle East defeat them, it wasn't because they are the threats, but because the defeated ones let them.
Examples:
* Decline in birth rates results in strained economy, and in case you have an actual war in your hands, you might lack manpower.
* Families are weak on the western countries, some particular groups have staggering 70%+ amount of kids raised in fatherless homes, divorce is too high, marriages too low.
* The current young generation is basically "lost", with massive amounts of debt (not only in the US! this problem repeats in several countries), underemployment, few prospects for having a "solid" future.
* Too much relies purely on the governments, for example most people have their money in banks, only because central banks guarantees they will bail them out if there is a bank run, and in turn central banks are guaranteed to be bailed out by the government, if the government has a "hiccup" for any reason, a problem (for example a well planned attack by an enemy, or just even a random big company failing for a random stupid reason) might topple the whole thing down.
* Almost all western (and related, like Japan) countries have educated everyone currently alive, that the state is responsible for taking care of the older people, yet all of them don't have anymore enough money for that, almost all western countries have their social security systems going into debt.
All these countries are in a way strong, have overwhelming military (in terms of technology and raw firepower), record highs levels of safety (with record lows crime), health (with research being forced to move into new medical areas opened when people stopped dieing for the reasons that were common in the past centuries), and so on...
But at the same time, there is excessive bureaucracy, and interlocked moving parts, a combination of mistakes is all that takes to make the whole thing collapse, for example the US dollar, currently USA have a staggering amount of debt, trillions high, and there is no chance of the government fixing its balance sheets in short term, the only reason USA can keep paying its mighty military (among other things) is the fact that it can "print" virtually infinite amounts of USD, because the global trade market will absorb it. If something happens that shift the trade suddenly away from USD (I dunno what could do that, lets hope it doesn't happen), suddenly USA would fail to pay its military, and since USA military include scores of mercenaries stationed in distant countries, this might result in USA-equipped mercenaries suddenly causing trouble all over the world.