Chinese and American flags flying together
For a long time I thought the new world order would be a perverse mirror of the Cold War: two blocs facing off, periphery war, minimal trade between them (There was some trade, mostly in commodities.) The difference this time would be that the US was leading the weaker block, not the stronger.
Trump has made this very unlikely. His tariffs and threats have broken the unanimity of the alliance and vassal circle. The EU is in China right now seeking to cut a trade deal with the possible of end of many sanctions on the table. Canada’s presumptive PM has said the old order is dead. When China cut off US LNG who stepped into the gap? Australia and Canada. Even Japan, the most loyal of vassals, has noted that you can’t make a deal with Trump, because blackmailers always come back for more.
With the EU, Japan, South Korea, and the Anglosphere, the US had a credible trade and military bloc. Without them, there’s no goddamn way. They don’t even have to go over to China’s bloc, they just have to be neutral.
And that’s the way this is tending, economically, with signs that military is to follow. The EU is attempting to remilitarize and it is trying to stay away from American weapons as much as possible. Canada is reconsidering both Aegis and F-35s. And so on. Without allies to buy its weapons, the US mil-industry complex will wither. If Japan isn’t considering getting its own nuclear deterrent, it would be geostrategic malfeasance.
Trump thought that the US was still the essential nation. That if it put the pressure on, everyone else had to buckle. But those days are gone, and Trump’s stupidity is not only going to cost the US its empire, its dollar privilege and inflated standard of living, it is costing the US even its leadership position.
This is likely a good thing for the world, overall, though lack of some sort of secondary great power able to resist China somewhat will have costs.
But Americans will regret it bitterly.
bruce wilder
Hegemony has been costing way too much. On so many levels. All power corrupts, they say. Breaking this deal with the devil will be regretted most by the worst.
mago
“Americans will regret it bitterly “
Which Americans?
The ones sleeping in their cars?
The ones shitting in their pants?
The everyday walking around dazed and confused?
The cohort already lost and gone?
There’s no regret and no respect.
Who cares?
SRL
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Bob
Ah, I’m relieved that your last sentence at least suggests that you’re weary of Chinese power unlike so many online who seem to see China as the socialist messiah instead of an accelerator of full authoritarianism and the end of the natural world.
someofparts
Golly. I have friends/relations who have been doing a lot of world travel since they retired. They are in solid opposition to Trump from the start, so if his policies are making their travel plans problematic they will be quick to place the blame where it belongs. The thing is that, since they are good blue-no-matter-who Democrats, they also seethe with contempt and indifference to anyone who isn’t very very prosperous, so that whole solidarity thing is not an option with them.
If ever a citizenry deserved the miserable fate that awaits them it would be the denizens of the good old USA.
thermobarbaric
Reply to Bob and his read of Ian’s final sentence:
I think Ian is suggesting that for every dominant hegemon, some kind of counterbalance is always a good idea. Bob’s highly emotive language, “…… instead of an accelerator of full authoritarianism and the end of the natural world……” is more than a bit extreme. China, after all, is now the world’s biggest supplier and user of clean energy.
GlassHammer
Americans are taught at a young age that being the “exceptional nation” means “you don’t need anyone for anything”. (Alliances and Trade are filed in the “oh by the way” sections of U.S. textbooks, never anything important.)
This teaching holds through high-school and the only time young adults might learn the necessity of international connections is college.
My gut tells me that when the cost for this comes due Americans will not blame changes in trade policy or even other nations (how do you blame something your convinced you don’t need and nations you think are irrelevant) instead they will double down on some already identified domestic culprit. The culprit will probably be “other Americans” but since the nation is split down the middle on party lines the animosity won’t go anywhere unless it’s channeled by a large group of elites. (Right now Tech, Finance, and Nat Sec are very unhappy but they are waiting for an opening.)
DanFmTo
They have made it extremely hard to feel any sympathy for them. Bleakly hilarious that instead of the new cold war we feared we’ll skip past that to a unipolar Chinese century.
Tallifer
The old world order of NATO, EU, World Bank, IMF, UN, Voice of America, support for liberal democracies and free trade sure looks good now.
Jessica
If the niche for a secondary great power is left open, someone may step into that niche.
EU+Russia is obvious though would take time for the EU to replace its current leadership and new leadership to solidify enough for Russia to even think of trusting it.
But Russia (Soviet Union) and China have had intense ups and downs in their relationship over the decades and centuries.
someofparts
Ditto what GlassHammer just said.
My globe-trotting relations will know that Trump caused their problems, but they will double down on blaming the ones who voted for him.
Oakchair
It’s going to be an authoritarian nightmare when China dethrones America.
Half the Middle East will become a graveyard and war zone.
Central America will be overrun by gangs, terrorists and genocidal militias.
Few nations in South America will avoid having their government overthrown and mass murdering dictators installed.
The global south will see stagnant life expectancies and stagnant living standards.
The rulers will get richer while everyone else gets sicker and poorer.
Europe will be forced to become a continent of pro-genocidal war sluts violating the Nuremberg codes over and over.
Everyone with any sense of humanity and morality will lament having to live in that dystopian nightmare though many will cheer it on and defend it with vigor.
different clue
As Mago asks, “which” Americans would regret this “very bitterly”?
If American Okayness Ordinarians can take command of the culture and the society and drive American Exceptionalists into humiliated irrelevance, then American Okayness Ordinarians might be able to spend the next few decades creating a Shared Social Survivalist America.
Most Americans are already “middle income” or below, so if America becomes a Middle Income country, most Americans lose nothing. If the American Upperclass and Overclass can be torn down to Middle Income levels ( or physically exterminated in personal physical detail in their entirety if they resist), then America has the chance to be a better country for Americans to live in than what it has been ever since Carter began the neoliberal infection, Reagan accelerated and deepened it and Clinton locked it in.
Loss of Empire does not bother me. Am I just being too stupid to know better? I don’t think so, though I may be wrong. Anyway, let those Americans who desire Exceptionalism, Empire and all the rest move to China; so they can uphold Great Middle Kingdom Exceptionalism, the Great Han Hegemony of Heavenly Peace Under Heaven and all the rest.
Steve
Russia will be a restraining influence on China. Although future leaders may not be as discerning as Putin is.
different clue
Here is a coming-soon brand of pickup truck which I had never heard of before. Could it be the shape of cars to come in America’s middle-income survivalist future ( if America can exterminate the ruling classes of people who want to keep America from having any future at all?)
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1k7pnzi/the_20000_americanmade_electric_pickup_with_no/
And here is the internal link to the article this comment was based on.
https://www.theverge.com/electric-cars/655527/slate-electric-truck-price-paint-radio-bezos
A car without digital cooties for those who wish to be more analog.
someofparts
Joke just spotted online –
Q: How can you tell when a cyber truck has been vandalized?
A: It looks better
plus a second joke making the rounds in D.C.
During Trump’s Easter egg hunt at the White House, Musk replaced the eggs with Teslas because they are cheaper
Oakchair – Have to say I find your post confusing. The problems you describe in the Middle East or Latin America sound like the problems caused by Washington. If the U.S. becomes too broke to meddle I would expect global mayhem to decline. Once we are not around to send chaos agents to foment color revolutions or forcibly install unelected puppets, sovereign nations might finally be free to fix their internal problems. In the Middle East, for example, the disappearance of Israel would be the best thing that happened to the nations in that area in my lifetime.
Oakchair
@someofparts
“The problems you described (are) caused by Washington.”
That was exactly my point. That and the fact in the last 50 years China hasn’t done any of the the listed atrocities.
bruce wilder
I wish the USA was exceptional (in a good, moral way).
The USA is an ideological nation-state, one defined by its ideological ideals — a contested ideology to be sure.
Just as the Soviet Union — also an ideological state (and empire) — crumbled as its people and its leadership lost all faith, so, too, has the U.S. crumbled into a kind of collective moral bankruptcy.
Complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is an aspect of that — or a symptom? Not sure what the right metaphor would be. But, it indicates something important about the “moral state” of the state that political leadership is nearly unanimous, but popular opinion is more evenly divided. Half the country has no official voice. On a moral issue where there really is not a lot of room for confusion. The “other half” of popular opinion is mostly not paying attention — there is a great deal of not-paying-attention at work in popular opinions about politics. I don’t think there are a whole lot of ordinary people approving of genocide, beyond a small number of rabid Jews. But, that makes it all the more remarkable that there are so few politicians (or prominent, mainstream pundits for that matter) willing to give voice to views and moral judgments that are arguably widely shared. Not to mention, basic to a Christian or humanistic ethic presumably foundational to the shared political culture of an ideological nation-state that has long invoked those ethical principles as legitimating.
I think this elite solidarity with Zionism and the cynical use of accusations of “anti-semitism” to persecute opinion is a symptom of a moral degeneracy that is pervasive in American political culture on the eve of imperial collapse, if that is what we are witnessing and experiencing.
Considered as a general phenomenon, it is hard to find bounds. I think the cynical attitude that nothing matters and no one can or should be held accountable — an attitude fed by the political memory deficit and general popular disconnect from and disinterest in politics — reflects a general demoralization. I would connect it to outrage-exhaustion induced by a prolonged excess of often partisan cheerleading for misdirected “hate” and moral quarantine.
I told a surprised friend recently that I thought that they had broken their own capacity for moral political judgment in the Obama years and never recovered it. I cited several things Obama had done and failed to do, which my friend had had to disappear from his own memory in order to look back with admiration on the Administration of that slimy, evil bastard. Objectively, Obama was evil. I do not think anyone can retain the capacity to recognize political evil while pretending Obama was otherwise. And, that applies to roughly half the country’s population at least, including many deeply enmeshed currently in passionate TDS. “Resistance” imho remains impotent and ineffective because it is conducted with a long broken moral compass.
That moral compass — individual, but shared in common across the political culture —was broken systematically and even deliberately by thousands of assaults, some blatantly cynical manipulations and some subtle psychological subversions, but always carried on the continuous flood tide of propaganda and none of it diverted effectively by any of the protective barriers which once existed to channel and filter Western political discourse.
The U.S. is a deeply demoralized political culture, rapidly losing faith principles of any kind and lacking enough capacity for political memory to learn from experience. This moral bankruptcy may be more devastating and harder to recover from that any fiscal crisis or military catastrophe.
different clue
It has been said by some that Americans are not citizens. Americans are merely consumers. If that is true, then what can Americans do about this, that or anything else?
Perhaps we should think of ourselves as not merely consumers but as consumptioneers, consumptionists, consumptionologists ( at least at the amateur level) , as connosseurs of consumption. If we decide to think of ourselves that way, perhaps we can think about how to target, leverage and weaponize our consumptionization to achieve certain possible political goals and aims.
In particular , those Americans who consider themselves to be anti-Trump one way or another can think about how to change their consumption and purchase patterns over the short haul, the medium haul and the long haul to weaken the political power position of pro-Trump Americans, both at the political base level and hopefully maybe even at the UpperClass and RulingClass levels. Perhaps we can show this face:
https://exiledonline.com/we-the-spiteful/
to the UpperAnd OverClass . . .
and this face: https://exiledonline.com/elite-versus-elitny/
to Trump’s MAGA and Christian Fascist base.
I have been biting my fingers in order to give my fellow commenters a fair chance to offer particular ideas on how to do this, that or the other to perhaps force a Tilt in the Luck Plane leading to the deletion of Trump from office and from power one way or another. So now I feel like it is fair for me to start offering thoughts in case they might be useful. And maybe that could even inspire others to offer thoughts which could be more useful than my own.
So . . . Naked Capitalism has run an entry from Xitter on the slow rolling “fall of the dominoes” resulting from the Trump Tariffs on China. The Xitter commenter re-offered on NaCap opines that even in the best case scenario . . . Trump and Xi both go back to a zero tariffs either way position and turn back on the trade flows as before . . . that you can’t just turn trade off and then back on like a faucet. Everything that got shut down has to be spun back up. And until everything is spun back up that all the things currently in the pipeline will flow out the trade faucets till the pipeline is bare and the faucet is dry, and then it will stay that way for a long time. Here is the link.
https://x.com/Molson_Hart/status/1915248938753392642?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1915248938753392642%7Ctwgr%5E7efdcd4bb84de2e6b6911a2b36f84324fe25848f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2025%2F04%2Flinks-4-26-2025.html
Does this present an opportunity to 50-80 million counter-Trump Americans? Or “Consumericans” as some would call us? Maybe it does. 50-80 million Blue Team Consumericans should buy, horde and hold as much imported-from-China essentials and desirables as they reasonably can and then prepare to use them slowly over the next couple of years. Build up their personal inventories and then run their personal inventories back down to zero. They should quietly go to big box stores, Walmart and etc. , in their tens of millions and buy down those things they know they and other people use, and take those things back home. They should do it quietly and stealthily.
They should deplete the Trump Country big box ( and otherwise) stores as close to “bare shelf status” as they reasonably can, so that when the rolling falling-domino shortage hits, it will make the shelves there barer than bare . . . so bare the metal shines. And then when the rolling shortages really hit, the Trump Voting community can feel the full effects of what they voted to impose on the rest of us as it happens to them as well, or instead. And the counter-Trump community should do whatever it can to make the pain unbearable and keep it unbearable for the Trump voting base until it is tortured into torturing its Officeholders into deleting Trump from office and power. Whether by Impeachment-Conviction-Removal or by Article 25 or by some other non-illegal method doesn’t matter. Deleting Trump from power and from office is what matters.
That will buy us time to consider and hopefully begin to apply other methods of weaponized targetted consumptioneering up the class ladder against our Wealth-Based enemies. Perhaps we can reach out and touch them with our rage and our hate, in a purely legal way. Why shoot an executive if you can “shoot” a whole company? ( Target’s former customers have been spontaneously “shooting” Target after its early obedience to Trump’s wishes. Target may get “shot to death” as a company if that spontaneous boycott goes on long enough).
The most I will do to achieve that is to lift a finger. It is up to 50-80 million other allegedly counter-Trump Consumericans to each lift a finger. If they all do, that would be 50-80 million lifted fingers. Weaponized targeted fingers.
Every dollar is a bullet on the field of economic combat.
With a head full of plans and a heart full of hate, we can make things happen.
enHate me, Dobbs! O enHate me!
different clue
Here’s a post titled ” Website for MAGA-friendly businesses backfires as people use it for boycotts. Spread the word, because everyone on Reddit is a bot except you. ” Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chaoticgood/comments/1k8fdui/website_for_magafriendly_businesses_backfires_as/
Here is the internal link to the huffpost article itself.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/publicsquare-trump-critics-boycott-businesses_n_680900d2e4b00850c6839b0b
And from the huffpost article, here is the internal internal-link link to the Public Square listing of pro-MAGA/Trump businesses.
https://www.publicsquare.com/blog/culture/parallel-economy-meaning
Here is what PublicSquare has titled that article . . .
” America’s Marketplace
The Parallel Economy and Its Importance for Personal Freedom ”
Actually “parallel economy” is a good name for what Separate Survivalists need to create. But since they have already taken the name “parallel economy” , Separate Survivalists would have to call their Separate Survival economy by the name Separate Survival Economy, because ” Parellel Parallel Economy” would sound too clunky.
shagggz
@bruce wilder,
“Complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is an aspect of that — or a symptom?”
Sine qua non, I’d say. After all, if Isnotreal didn’t exist America would have to invent it, as Genocide Joe was fond of saying back in his more lucid years.
“Objectively, Obama was evil.”
Yes, his pretending to drink iron-poisoned Flint water that was actually bottled water so that untold thousands of poor children would be irreversibly retarded showed his evil core to be unmistakable.
rkka
Trollifer: “ The old world order of NATO, EU, World Bank, IMF, UN, Voice of America, support for liberal democracies and free trade sure looks good now.”
That world order got p*ssed down the Tigris, Euphrates, & Helmand rivers, with the killing thrust delivered in ‘08.
Self-inflicted by George W. Shrub, every bit of it.