Beached
Quote of the Day
”I don’t know what I’m doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm.”
- Woody Allen
(Me too)
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan | Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (LIVE) –
Long Read of the Day
Looking Ahead To The 19th Century
As the post-war international order dissolves, the big question now is what will replace it. The most convincing idea is that we will move to a world in which several major powers will have ‘Spheres of interest’ with an implicit understanding that each can do what it likes within its zone. I can see four such Spheres: American, Chinese, Russian and (maybe) Indian.
All of which is by way of explaining why I liked this piece in Noema.
The rules-based liberal international order, underwritten and guaranteed for decades by American might, has been consigned to the ashcan of history by the summary defection of its founding architect from its terms and premises.
After only one month in power, Team Trump has fundamentally broken ranks with the long-standing orthodoxy of the Washington establishment on almost every front. Where free trade was once gospel, now it is tariffs. Europeans are considered valuable allies only if they can pay for their own defense, share the ideological disposition of the administration and open their over-regulated markets to make way for the digital dominance of American Big Tech.
Instead of expressing outrage at China’s plans to take Taiwan, Russia’s bloody attempt to seize Ukraine or Israel’s vision of annexing the West Bank, Team Trump is openly considering its own Anschluss of other people’s territory in Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada. From what we can tell so far, the president’s idea of any peaceful settlement to these conflicts entails giving the stronger power what it wants.
That the U.S. has now joined the other revisionist powers of China and Russia by baldly asserting sovereigntist self-interest unencumbered by the rules of others portends a world not unlike the 19th century when the great powers carved out exclusive domains of influence.
This is the prospect ahead envisaged by both historian Niall Ferguson and political theorist Francis Fukuyama in conversations last week…
Do read on.
Books, etc.
Screenshot
I read this book by the co-founder of Palantir over last weekend and have written a piece about it that will come out in next Sunday’s Observer. All I’ll say here is that I found it absorbing — and timely, given what’s going on just now.
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- Waymo is building genuinely autonomous cars (robotaxis) at scale. See this drone footage.
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