#van_jackson

  • The Problem With Primacy | Foreign Affairs
    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/asia/problem-primacy

    U.S. officials […] are demanding that Asian states work against their own long-term interests. They insist that Asian governments betray the interdependence that has fostered regional peace because doing so might give Washington—not Asia—a marginal advantage in a geopolitical struggle of questionable merit. In the best of times that would be unrealistic, and this is far from the best of times. As China grows more and more embedded in Asia’s regional architecture, the United States is in a worse material and symbolic position to levy such demands than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

    #états-unis #Pacifique #Chine

  • Great-Power Competition Is Bad for Democracy
    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-07-14/great-power-competition-bad-democracy

    The Washington establishment’s view that great-power conflict is a net good for the United States derives from a tortured reading of Cold War history. In this view, Soviet rivalry provoked the passage of civil rights legislation, the space race led to innovations in technology and computerization, and the Cold War economy created affluence and enabled homeownership for many Americans. This historical interpretation of the Cold War lies behind recent legislation, including the 2021 Strategic Competition Act and the 2022 America COMPETES Act, both of which seek to marshal federal resources to spur economic development and job creation, all in an effort to compete with China.

    But the Cold War’s influence is much more complicated—and grimmer—than policymakers’ standard telling of it.

    #Michael_Brenes #Van_Jackson

  • Do realists and leftists want the same thing?
    https://inkstickmedia.com/do-realists-and-leftists-want-the-same-thing

    It’s not the first time the left and realists have agreed on something. Both vehemently reject neoconservatism and military interventionism. Both vocally protested the US invasion of Iraq. Both see the US’ alliance with Israel as a militaristic distortion of the its role in the Middle East. And both opposed the successive rounds of NATO enlargement after the Cold War.

    [...] Yet, the ideological tensions run deeper still. Realists believe security is divisible — that my security might need to come at the expense of yours and that’s just fine with me because, shrug emoji, that’s how the world works. Most leftists view security as something that’s either indivisible or that needs to sort classes in a manner that pits workers against the wealthy. Anti-war leftists, for example, have rejected balance-of-power politics since World War I — the conceptual stock-and-trade of realist politics —and many still reject it today. The left is also divided on the merits of engaging in sphere-of-influence diplomacy; a practice that realists find natural.

    Realists center the state — not its classes or its people — in their analysis, and I’ve never heard a realist embrace the slogan, “No war but class war.” Similarly, what leftist would, in formulating their policy positions, systematically forsake the well-being of workers in other countries in favor of winning security in a violent, highly abstracted “great game” where progress rarely means more than improving one’s relative power position?

    #Van_Jackson