jwdwerner.bsky.social
Historian, director for East Asia @quincyinst.bsky.social, cofounder Justice Is Global. Previously @gdp-center.bsky.social, University of Chicago. Writing on US–China relations and global capitalism.
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The only way out of US–China conflict is also the only way out for US society: not striking a different balance of exclusion but opening up new possibilities for a broader accommodation both in the US and internationally.
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Trump is trying to strike a different balance but is wrestling with the same forces in a forlorn attempt to reconstruct political legitimacy and economic growth. There is good reason to think he will fail, as well.
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Finally, foreign policy should be understood in the larger political and cultural economy, not pitted against it.
Biden struggled to navigate intense, incompatible demands from nationalist insecurity and imperial anxiety.
He called the balance he sought “great power competition”. It failed.
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In any case, zero-sum dynamics in the global system will constantly push us toward conflict, continually renewing the opportunity for China hawks to persuade Trump on confrontation.
Trump 1 didn’t want war with Iran but was vulnerable to advisers who nearly got him there. China is not as weak.
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Dividing the world into exclusive imperial spheres of control is in the abstract one possibility, but the US ruling class would never accept its exclusion from Asia.
Trump is poised to seek his own imperial sphere in the Americas while offering none to China, which is a recipe for conflict.
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Second, it ignores the structural drivers of conflict and the trajectory of global developments.
Even if Trump genuinely wanted a stable relationship, US–China conflict won’t be left behind until there is a robust new foundation for the relationship.
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bsky.app/profile/todd...
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This also proves deductively that businessmen cannot be involved in corrupting the political process or exploiting their workers. No wonder they all have beautiful full heads of hair!
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bsky.app/profile/kevi...
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There are indications that Trump wants some sort of a division of spoils among the powerful as the alternative to unrestrained conflict.
But a latter-day scramble for colonial plunder is unlikely to be any more peaceful than the inter-imperialist violence of the early 20th century was.
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Trump, in contrast, is gleefully throwing aside the status quo—both its devastating hypocrisies and its crucial if eroding structures for aligning interests.
Is the alternative nothing more than naked coercion? Perhaps not.
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Second, the US under Trump is starting to line up behind Russia in rejecting the constraints of global order.
Biden, like Xi Jinping, sought to manage the acute tensions of neoliberal disintegration by simultaneously defending the status quo and demanding that it change.
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First, that polemic was always wrong about China—which is deeply invested in the existing global order even as it seeks specific reforms—if not Russia, which moved in an increasingly reactionary direction from 2012.
I explained why here:
www.thenation.com/article/worl...
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UNGA votes are notoriously irrelevant so why does it matter? Because it makes visible a deeper reality.
The US foreign policy establishment has long charged that China and Russia want to overturn the existing global order and replace it with the rule of force.
This vote reflects two key points.
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This configuration is characteristic of blood and soil nationalism, and is coherent within its social ontology. The nation is the political subject and the only proper object of allegiance; the struggle among nations carries no ethical restrictions.
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4/ The hardest hit agencies are those that regulate industry, protect public health, and expand access to education. Meanwhile, conservative-leaning agencies remain largely untouched.
If this were about efficiency, we’d expect an even spread. Instead, we see clear ideological bias.