and do we want it to be?
George Friedman provides his definition of a superpower:
The idiosyncratic point I am trying to make is that great power depends on weapons, warriors, bravery and training, but it also depends on the power to persuade or induce, or even more generally, the ability to get things done. War is not waged with tanks; it is waged with the delivery of fuel to tanks. This is not an Earth-shattering statement, nor am I the first one to say it. But in constructing a model that forecasts the future of, say, the Chinese military, words matter.
We think of military power as the massive engine of war. There is truth in that. But the root of that power is the ability of a force to maintain itself at the essential operational level. Some nations have both. In China, power is determined largely by whether Beijing can sustain it for an extended course. China’s geography internally and along its boundaries indicates that a war waged on its territory could be long, complex and, above all, subtle. This is China’s history and its future. How it handles the subtle will determine whether it can be called a superpower.
And, even beyond “the delivery of fuel to tanks”, remaining a superpower is contingent on having the fuel to deliver to tanks and being able to deliver components to maintain our weapons systems in the field and the ability to produce those components. Today we do not have that ability. That has been the cost of our deindustrialization.
The bottom line is that we can’t remain a superpower unless we continue to produce our weapons of war and the fuel and components to maintain them domestically. The question I can’t answer is whether to remain a superpower. To whatever extent our own security depends on our remaining a superpower, I think the answer is “yes”. To the extent that it means our continuation of what I’ve called “the Batman theory of the U. S. role in the world”, I think the answer is “no”.
It all comes back to factories. We no longer have the manufacturing capacity to compete as a superpower.
There is another question, Are our engineering and science schools any good? Boeing’s problems and NASA’s, the ineffectiveness of our Patriot and artillery and rocket systems, our failure to produce hypersonics imply they are not. A recent ranking of engineering and science universities gave 8 of the top 10 spots to Chinese schools, and a majority of the top 20 spots to China. Chinese researchers now produce more patents and more refereed technology articles tha we do.
Well, there’s this:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/drones-military-pentagon-defense-331871f4
That they permitted it and then admitted that they permitted it says incompetence and unawareness of their incompetence.
“It all comes back to factories.”
I like the way Bob puts that. Factories are where the rubber hits the road. I was a classic process engineer: cost, quality, productivity. In a way its an apprenticeship endeavor. I think the Purdues, Ohio States and Ga Techs of the world can still produce people with the necessary grounding or conceptual training.
What feeds the shop floor is the R&D etc work. People who want to do that tend to gravitate more towards the MITs, Northwesterns and Cal Techs of the world. Are they still on par with China? I don’t know. Maybe Bob would know better.
I can, however, tell you what are inefficient allocations of resources: DEI, women’s studies etc.
So you riffed off of a concept from a recent posting. I’d rather be a superpower than not in a mean world. To do so you had better not lose the industrial base and knowhow that got you there. That’s common sense.