As tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, U.S. efforts to deter Chinese aggression suffer from a fundamental credibility problem. The United States has conventional and strategic tools to deter Beijing, including the threat of punishing economic sanctions. But China is much too big and integrated into the global trading system to expel it from the world economy overnight. A sudden economic break between Beijing and Washington would be devastating for the United States and catastrophic for the rest of the world. Financial panic and supply chain disruptions would fracture the international economic order and undermine U.S. leadership. China might calculate that the United States would be unwilling to take such risks—or that even if it tried, the rest of the world would resist U.S. pressure to choose between the two powers.
Punishing Beijing for unprovoked aggression would be essential to maintaining U.S. credibility and leverage, but it would have to be balanced with U.S. interests. These include preserving macroeconomic and financial stability, dollar hegemony, and a functional and rules-based international trading system, as well as breaking U.S. and allied dependence on the Chinese market. Even in an extreme crisis scenario—for example, if Beijing attacked U.S. bases in East Asia during an invasion of Taiwan—attempting a total and immediate economic decoupling from China would be a costly and dangerous gamble. It would subordinate all other U.S. interests to a punishment strategy that might not even work.
The only real prospect for “decoupling” from China was abandoned more than 20 years ago when China was granted Most Favored Nation trading status and membership in the World Trade Organization. Since then the United States’s imports from China have grown enormously: Find more statistics at Statista
and deindustrialized considerably. To decouple from China we would need billions if not trillions in additional capital investment in reindustrializing and at least a decade to do it in. The actions we have taken most recently, e.g. blocking Nippon Steel from acquiring U. S. Steel have not been targeted at reshoring our industrial capacity but at further deindustrializing.
They go on to advocate something they call “avalanche decoupling”:
If Beijing crossed one of Washington’s redlines, the United States could work with its allies to manage the resulting global financial crisis, reshore critical supply chains away from China as fast as possible, and trigger a ratcheting trade policy to unlink noncritical supply chains over the longer term. The plan would also initiate the creation of an Economic Security Cooperation Board, a new institution with membership open to all countries except rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, Russia, and of course China. The ESCB would ensure that the decoupling process was rules-based, driven by market forces rather than command and control, and protective of its members’ national and economic security interests, while acknowledging that most countries would continue to trade with both the United States and China. A credible U.S. commitment to this kind of economic leadership during a crisis would not only help stabilize the international economic system but also potentially transform it in a way that benefited most of the world at China’s expense.
With what? At this point we can’t even build our own military systems without components from China. How will we “reshore supply chains away from China”?
The Democratic Party is the most unpopular it’s been in polling that dates back to 2008, according to a new survey from Quinnipiac University.
Why it matters: Democrats are struggling to repair their image with voters after a bruising 2024 election that put President Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.
Democratic lawmakers are grappling — and in some cases, experimenting — with how best to respond to Trump’s rapid, sweeping changes in the early days of his administration.
By the numbers: 57% of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, the highest percentage since Quinnipiac started asking the question in 2008.
45% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party.
43% of voters have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, the highest since 2008.
By contrast, 31% of registered voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party.
That’s the largest favorability advantage the GOP has had over the Democratic Party since 2008, according to Quinnipiac.
In short those are the worst favorable/unfavorable ratings for the Democratic Party not simply for as long as Quinnipiac has been asking the question but for the last thirty years or more, as long as the question has been asked.
The kneejerk reaction of apologists to that has emphasized messaging. The Democratic Party’s problem is not merely a messaging problem. As Ruy Teixeira has been saying for some time the party is adopting positions on a variety of issues that are wildly unpopular among historic constituencies. That’s not just a messaging problem. The party needs to change what it’s doing or risk becoming a fringe party.
My advice: execute. Crime should be lower, education results better, and economic performance better with less political corruption where the party is the strongest like Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City than in places where the party is the weakest. The Democrats need for people to be flocking to these places rather than leaving them in droves.
The trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longest-serving speaker in U. S. history, on charges of corruption and racketeering has gone to the jury. Michelle Gallardo reports at ABC 7 Chicago:
CHICAGO (WLS) — 14-and-a-half weeks after the jury was first seated in former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s federal bribery and racketeering trial, his fate, and that of his co-defendant Mike McClain is now in their hands.
While the case is now in the hands of the jury, any actual deliberations are unlikely to take place before Thursday. The delay is due to the countless recordings and documents that must be set up in the jury room for them and a foreman must be selected.
Including the more than 100 pages of instructions they have to go through.
The jury is made up by eight women and four men, including a nurse, a woman who works at a Goodwill donation center and a manager for Aramark food company.
Former Federal Prosecutor Chris Hotaling said they may start by taking an initial poll.
Today is the first full day of deliberations and I honestly have no idea of how long they will deliberate or what their verdict will be. Considering that Speaker Madigan made the unusual move of testifying on his own behalf, the verdict may depend primarily on whether the jury believes him or not.
A report from the National Academy of Medicine identified three potential benefits of AI in healthcare: improving outcomes for both patients and clinical teams, lowering healthcare costs, and benefitting population health.
From preventive screenings to diagnosis and treatment, AI is being used throughout the continuum of care today.
I think they’re just scratching the surface. I saw artificial intelligence (mostly pattern recognition rather than generative AI) being used in remarkable ways in radiology several years back. One of the factors I don’t believe they’ve come to terms with yet is that GAI has implications for how good physicians will be selected and trained.
Carl Thayer’s assessment at The Diplomat of the situation in the South China Sea is somewhat disquieting. After detailing the situation with respect to China and the Philippines and China and Vietnam, he concludes:
Major developments in the South China Sea in 2024 do not augur well for 2025. China will remain committed to asserting its sovereignty over land features and adjacent waters that lie within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone, and the PLAN and CCG continue to expand in numbers. China will continue to pressure the Philippines to convince it that resistance is futile because the Trump administration will be a fickle ally and the Philippines lacks the capacity to stand alone against China.
The Philippines will have to weather the uncertainty of the U.S. commitment to the Mutual Defense Treaty now that President Donald Trump has taken office. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s secretary of defense, admitted he didn’t know which countries were members of ASEAN when questioned at his confirmation hearing. When Hegseth tried to make up for this lapse by noting he knew the U.S. had alliances with Japan, South Korea and Australia, he failed to mention the Philippines. Also, Marcos was not invited to Trump’s inauguration (while Xi Jinping was, although he sent China’s vice president in his stead).
Vietnam will continue to build infrastructure on its land features in the Spratly islands. It is unclear, however, if Vietnam will construct more air strips and militarize these features. This could provoke China into ending its “softly, softly” approach.
Malaysia has replaced Laos as ASEAN chair and this has given rise to guarded optimism that progress can be made on the South China Sea Code of Conduct in 2025. China can be expected to press for a quick conclusion to negotiations on the Code of Conduct with ASEAN members as one means of undermining a U.S. security role in maritime affairs.
I think this is a situation to which the United States needs to accustom itself. It is not a hegemon. It does not possess overwhelming force. Other countries including China do, in fact, have interests and will pursue them.
In the kerfuffle over Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship there have been quite some number of opinion pieces and articles forthcoming. One of those I found worthwhile was this this one by Michael Anton at The American Mind. What I found particularly interesting were his citations of the discussion around the 14th Amendment. Here’s one I found particularly interesting sine it illustrates that its authors understood the risks they were introducing:
There is nothing whatsoever in the debate that explicitly states, implies, or contextually suggests that the framers of the 14th Amendment meant to grant birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. They don’t talk about illegal immigration much because on that question, there was no need for debate. The children of persons “subject to any foreign power,” “owing allegiance to anybody else” were—all agreed and the law already declared—not citizens.
When they do talk about immigration—particularly Senator Cowan—they express concern that the amendment be carefully drafted so as not to allow or provoke unchecked immigration by offering too broad a definition of citizenship. (As an aside, I note that Senator Cowen’s long speech is quite triggering to our ears in 2018. It’s amusing to be called “racist” by people whose arguments rest on the views of men whose words I blush to read.)
One of the aspects of our situation today which most commentators miss is that we are facing unprecedented circumstances today. With 15% immigrant population and rising we have the highest immigrant population in the nation’s history. Furthermore, that so large a proportion of our immigrant population comes from a single country, that country shares a land border with the United States, people from that country think of large areas of the U. S. to rightfully belong to their country of origin, a high percentage of those who come here never seek citizenship, and they continue to participate in their country of origin’s politics provides challenges that are unique to our present situation.
At the Civitas Institute Richard Epstein argues that the case for birthright citizenship is not quite as opened and shut as some are claiming. Basically, his argument is that the case law is scant, United States v. Wong Kim Ark only addresses the citizenship of permanent legal residents not temporary or illegal residents, and that the 14th Amendment’s history does not support the interpretation that those claiming unambiguous birthright citizenship for all born in the U. S. regardless of status or permanence make.
I presume this case will ultimately make it to the Supreme Court and I have no idea what the Court will find. My intuition is that the case for the children for temporary residents is different than that for permanent residents.
Political, economic and cultural power have become concentrated in recent decades. Public-health officials, activists, tech executives and others press everyday Americans to let “experts” and “authorities” control decisions that affect all of society. Technology allows unprecedented monitoring and steering of civilians’ actions.
Throughout U.S. history there have been periodic backlashes against potentates attempting to hoard influence. In 1968 presidential candidate George Wallace said Americans were fed up with “pseudointellectuals lording over them . . . telling them they have not got sense enough to know what is best for their children.” This won Wallace nearly 10 million votes and shocked grandees of the Boston-Washington corridor who thought they had foreclosed arguments over who should run America.
Ronald Reagan recognized that Americans were chafing against intellectual authoritarianism. His administration collected mounds of evidence that bureaucratic central planning was having disastrous results. He pumped the brakes on impositions from Washington and discredited its manipulations of economy and culture.
Reaganism proved most effective as an economic force. Its cultural victories were rarer and didn’t last. A monolith of liberal activists, judges, educators, entertainers and media continued to overshadow our public square. The range of “acceptable” worldviews narrowed dramatically from 1988 to 2024.
Read the whole thing.
Where I disagree with Mr. Zinsmeister is that I think that the United States since its very inception has been a paradoxical combination of plutocracy and populist state. They are in tension, uncomfortable equilibrium with one another. And in every country whether China or the United States, every government at every level once it has reached a size above that of a neighborhood association is necessarily a bureaucracy and the behavior of bureaucracies is well-known. Bureaucracies don’t accomplish things; they grow.
Our system, too, has certain strengths and weaknesses. We should ignore those who long for the United States to be China or France or Germany or Denmark and deal with the United States as it is.
David Goldman has an introduction to China “as it is” at Law & Liberty I found interesting. I agree with his observations materially. The TL;DR version is that by virtue of the Chinese language family, the orthography developed to express it, and history China is a natural technocracy. Those are my words not Mr. Goldman’s.
Since the introduction of the imperial examination 2,500 years ago and its modern successor, the Gaokao, the university entrance examination, China has been selecting the experts who will run the country. Here’s a snippet from Mr. Goldman’s piece:
Ambition is the glue that holds the polyglot, ethnically mixed Chinese empire. Napoleon invented the modern mass citizen army, saying that each of his soldiers kept a field marshal’s baton in his rucksack. That is, he awoke the ambition of the downtrodden peasants of France and made them into a force that crushed the professional armies of the European monarchs. The Chinese are more practical than the French. Every Chinese person carries flash cards for the Gaokao, China’s formidable university entrance examination taken by 13.4 million Chinese in 2024. The United States has just 3.8 million graduating high school seniors; I doubt that 5 percent of them could pass the Gaokao. China is a ruthless meritocracy. Top officials and billionaires can buy admission to Harvard for their children, but not to Peking University. For well over two thousand years, academic achievement has been the path to success for the Chinese. It should be no surprise that China now graduates more engineers than the rest of the world combined.
Chinese people are not as too many an American is struggling to get out imagine, “Americana is struggling to get out”. China’s emergent system has strengths and weaknesses. We must deal with China as it is not as we might imagine it to be.
