If you know @stephenWalt’s ‘balance of threat’ theory, states balance an especially threatening power, not the most powerful state, out of fear. The unrestrained violence and escalations of post-10/7 Israel are basically forcing Iran into a war it does not want. 1/

https://twitter.com/scholars_stage/status/1841647182316769682

The fear in Tehran is that after the Israelis gut Hezbollah, they’ll come after Iran. War could be averted through reassurance. But … 2/

I've been reading all the major newspapers on the Middle East crisis. There's a general sense that the Israeli response to yesterday's missile barrage will determine whether this escalates to regional war. That's a misunderstanding of the situation. 1/ We're beyond tit-for-tat symbolic strikes. Yes, Israel has to respond. And the scale of that response will determine the Iranian response, and thus, to a degree, the prospects of escalation to higher levels of conflict intensity. 2/

A short 🧵 on this extremely egregious title and the relatively less egregious. 1/ For professionals, a two-war capability is identical to a two-power standard: it means that you have a military capability put up a fight with your two strongest adversaries (or, more strictly, the two strongest powers in the system besides ego). 2/

Is our military even preparing for the right war? A short 🧵. A seaborne invasion of Taiwan is the pacing scenario for the Pentagon. The question being how can the US militarily resist a Chinese seaborne invasion of the island. 2/

The data reported by shows some astonishing patters.

The US is far and away the economy with the most value chain links with others. 1/ nature.com/articles/s4146…
Shockingly, most of the links are neither with China nor Canada/Mexico. Rather, the largest number of value chains links for the US are with Britain! Canada is #2 and China #9. 2/

Workforce size and skill are industry-specific. If you let them atrophy, they decline and vanish. This is of great policy concern. Here we look at industrial workforce sizes by power. 1/🧵 Using numbers reported by Damodaran, we find our first surprise. China accounts for only 12.8% of global defense workforce. The US accounts for almost half, and Europe for more than one-third! (He does not provide information on Russia.) 2/

Russia is a gas station with a pump and some old nukes, right? Certainly we're vastly richer and better off than Russians right? Right? If that is roughly correct, then tell me why:

(1) Six times as many Americans die of nutritional deficiencies per capita than Russians*? 1/🧵 (2) Five times as many Americans as Russians are overdosing on opioids? 3/

The problem is not that our military spend is not commensurate with our commitments. It is that we’re making poor decisions and these poor decisions are hurtling us towards a scenario where we suffer simultaneous strategic defeat in Europe, the MidEast and possibly even Asia. 1/

https://twitter.com/jamescrabtree/status/1750262799345778972

The entire Paul Kennedy framing is a
red herring. It does not matter how much we spend if what we do with those resources does not deliver any political goals whatsoever. This is where we are in Europe and the MidEast. 2/

Interesting analogy bw the “in-between zones” in Braudel and Buzan: world economies are separated by “dead zones” of little activity; regional security complexes by “boundaries of indifference.” Are they the same? 1/ No. The two not congruent bc power decays faster over distance than economic influence. World economies are monsters of history—“the largest plane on which the law of one price prevails,” whereas RSCs are of middling size. 2/

Four of every nine Americans with only a high school diploma are not even looking for a job. And no, this is not confounded by gender composition. This is not the only signal of working-class despair—it is, in fact, impossible to not see this signal in ANY variable that contains any signal of well-being. So don’t give me bullshit about Case and Deaton, @mattyglesias. Their work is merely the tip of the iceberg. A vast body of evidence for working class despair exists independent of ‘deaths of despair.’

https://twitter.com/policytensor/status/1711956336089378852

“In 2019, only 54 percent of high school graduates were married, compared to 60 percent of those holding an associate degree, 64 percent of those holding a college diploma, and 71 percent of those with a master’s degree.”

From my forthcoming piece on US China policy.

This is wrong—@ElbridgeColby, @OrenCNN, #RuyT. 1/

The US has $118bn worth of FDI in China. Chinese investment spending is $7.6 trillion per annum. https://t.co/zCnmBOyTLLtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@ElbridgeColby @OrenCNN US pension funds do not have much exposure to China. Chinese equities and bonds are a small portion of institutional allocation to liquid assets and private assets. 2/ https://t.co/TGYMpNcqqmtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

I find both sides of this debate—and I have great respect for Reed and Singh—to be lost in theory without a leash to the empirical reality of social class. Specifically, both miss the class antagonism bw the working class and the underclass. 1/

https://twitter.com/left_hegelian/status/1659569698449571840

This is not merely systematics. The antipathy that the working class has, and the sympathy that the professional class has, for the underclass is a source of persistent friction—beyond antiracism. 2/

.@70sBachchan the S Koreans aren’t worried so much about N Korea—which they can handle on their own—they’re worried about China—which they cannot, now and forever. 1/ If Korea is involved in a Taiwan contingency, the conflict would immediately extend to the peninsula. So they’d rather skip it. This is ultimately fine from the US pov since ultimately Korean arms are needed to hold the peninsula—which is *more* exposed than Taiwan! 2/

.⁦@EdwardGLuce⁩ it’s quite right that “Though India remains a democracy of sorts — I would argue it is an electoral autocracy — New Delhi’s foreign policy is strictly realist.” But this doesn’t mean that it won’t be an ally. 1/ on.ft.com/3LYrnJ1 India won’t be there in a fire fight in the Western Pacific for reasons explained by Tellis in that essay. And it won’t be joining our containment of Russia, for reasons we explained here: policytensor.substack.com/p/the-geometry… 2/

What matters to our competitiveness is not the net balance of flows but the access that our firms have to the world’s stock of skill and know-how—whether through market relations, long-term relationships (Apple/TSMC/Foxconn), or fully-owned subsidiaries. 1/

https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1652546003663470592

Every firm must carefully decide the mix: what can be simply bought on the market is stuff that’s fully commoditized and for which there are functioning and resilient markets; pencils etc. This is the first-best solution—you simply buy the pencils when you need them. 2/

In 2022Q1, before the war, median food price inflation was 8.3% per annum in the LDCs; after the war began, it jumped to 11.2% in Q2 and then 12.6% in Q3. Massive shock to the world's poor. 👀 At least until 2022Q3, it wasn't as bad as 2008, when it peaked at 18.5% in 2008Q3, on the eve of the Lehman collapse.

@tedfertik @ElbridgeColby @nfergus For deterrence to work, a credible threat must be held in reserve *and* the enemy must be reassured that he will not come to harm unless he defies us. It’s hard to deter when you’re intentionally and continually harming the enemy. This point was clarified in Schelling (1966). 1/ @tedfertik @ElbridgeColby @nfergus When a parent wants to deter a child, the threat that *if you do this bad thing, then mommy won’t let you watch tv for a whole month*, cannot work if mommy declares in the same breath *oh, and no tv for a week anyway*. 2/

The Biden team is isn't dumb. They know how escalatory their anti-China policy is. They think what they're doing amounts to a controlled escalation. But does that actually add up? 1/

https://twitter.com/policytensor/status/1650328549079777280

I would suggest it does not for a number of reasons. First, either the measures are too small bore to move the needle on Chinese power accumulation, in which case, they're needlessly escalatory; and perhaps being undertaken for political reasons (Trump). 2/

.@MESandbu writes that "Beijing acts against their [European] strategic interests". What Chinese actions is he talking about? ft.com/content/c32b36… 1/ Then, he says the EC president von der Leyen "went much further in threatening to block China’s economic opportunities with Europe if Beijing stays on its current course."

What course is Beijing pursuing that is against European interests? 2/

I'm afraid neither @ElbridgeColby nor @PatPorter76 have responded to Cote's compelling argument. I, for one, won't be persuaded unless they can spell out how China could suppress US firepower enough to get an army across. drive.google.com/file/d/1nW-C-k…

https://twitter.com/ElbridgeColby/status/1650222185921880065

@PatPorter76's argument is that Xi may be irrational enough to attempt the impossible? "An attack may fail badly. But wars happen because of miscalculations." It's true that statesmen can resort to extraordinary gambles out of desperation (Japan) or miscalculation (Germany '41).

The vision of a low trust society is at the heart of the crypto idea — permission-less automated compliance, smart contracts, and other devices for purely arms-length transactions designed for a world where no one can be trusted. 1/

https://twitter.com/izakaminska/status/1650058490864386049

A bit less obviously, the same vision of a low trust society animates the broader Silicon Valley project of algorithmic management of human and non-human assets. Amazon’s model of worker control is merely an internal version of Uber and AirBnB’s purer variants. 2/