Interesting links

Multipolarity, wokeness, Nord Stream, chatbots

Hi and welcome back to my regular update (for paid subscribers only) on some of the most interesting reads to have come out in the past week or so. Geopolitically speaking, it’s been a rich week, so I’ll start from that.

• “America Is Too Scared of the Multipolar World” by Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University. “Instead of engaging in a futile effort to roll back the clock, Americans should start getting ready for a multipolar future”, says Walt. Indeed.

• And here’s another important piece by Walt on the myth of the rules-based order:

  Saying the United States is just trying to uphold the rules is politer than saying its goal is to preserve US primacy in perpetuity, weaken China permanently, topple governments it doesn’t like, or undermine its other adversaries.

• This is from a few weeks back but well worth reading: “Ukraine and the tunnel at the end of the light” (great title!) by Robert Freeman:

  There is no light at the end of the tunnel. If there’s a common thread running through it all it is the sickening recognition that the war is lost, militarily, economically, and diplomatically, that there is no plausible scenario in which those losses will be turned around by soldiering on, and that what is needed now is a hide-the-loss, get-out-any-way-you-can, face-saving exit strategy. That will not be available, either. That’s where the tunnel at the end of the light comes into play: a multi-polar as opposed to a unipolar world. It means increasing isolation of the US from the rest of the world, the closing in of options, the narrowing of opportunities, the loss of strategic primacy that once graced the greatest power in the history of the world. It will mean dramatically reduced power and influence vis-à-vis the US’ strategic adversaries, and markedly constrained ability to operate militarily, economically and financially in the world, what with the hot checkbook soon to be taken away.

• Ray McGovern on “The banality of Biden’s ‘exceptional’ elite advisers”:

  President Joe Biden’s sophomores running US foreign policy today live in a dream world on the verge of becoming a nightmare. The nightmare – military confrontation with both Russia and China – now looms.

• This is funny: apparently the UN’s Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Farhan Haq doesn’t know that there are US troops in Syria.

• Also, the UN Security Council rejected Russia’s resolution for the establishment of a commission to investigate the sabotage of Nord Stream. Only Brazil and China voted in favour, alongside Russia. Now I wonder why… 🤔

• Moving on to Covid, the New York Times published a pretty extraordinary piece