The International Blue Flu

At The Spectator Yascha Mounk laments about the end of what has mischievously called the Pax Americana:

Would either Kamala Harris or Trump be willing to risk the lives of American soldiers to maintain American deterrence in the Taiwan Strait? (Trump previously remarked that protecting the island wasn’t even possible: ‘Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China.’) And failing boots on the ground, would either candidate be willing to impose sanctions that meaningfully hurt China’s economy if those same policies also lead to a serious economic shock back home?

The answer to both questions is likely no. Trump, for instance, has publicly lamented that ‘immensely wealthy’ Taiwan took America’s chip business; echoing remarks he has frequently made about Europe, he called for the island to ‘pay for its own defence.’

This bipartisan retreat puts America in a strange position. It would be easy to believe that the will to play the world’s policeman has gone. In some quarters, the obituaries for what, until recently, was thought to be the world’s only remaining superpower are already being written. Historian Harold James dubbed the country ‘late Soviet America’ in the dying days of Trump’s first presidency. Niall Ferguson, meanwhile, now concludes that, in what he considers the new cold war between America and China, it’s the former rather than the latter that resembles the Soviet Union.

The irony of this is that Americans would just like to do what our European allies have been doing for the last 40 years: letting someone else pay for their defense so they can use that money for food, healthcare, education, etc.

I would challenge the claim that we have been serving as the world’s policeman. We don’t observe the rule of law. We attack whom we want to when we want to. That’s the “Batman theory” of America’s role in the world. We attack those we don’t like when it suits our fancy.

In response to Mr. Trump’s claim about Taiwan IMO Trump’s remarks cited above are a good example of my problems with Mr. Trump. They’re mistaken. Taiwan is paying quite a bit for its own defense. Its defense spending has declined considerably relative to GDP compared to what it was 35 years ago (2.3% today vs. 50% 35 years ago) but that’s because its GDP has grown so rapidly over the last 35 years, much of that due to the growth of its semiconductor industry.

Some say that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has just out-competed those of other countries. I think that’s some of it but I don’t think it’s the whole story.

As I’ve said before I don’t believe we can afford to be the “world’s policeman” without tightening our belts and home and rebuilding our manufacturing sector. I don’t believe that either a Trump Administration or a Harris Administration will do that.