'The truth is that the United States is an imperial power. Generally speaking, it does not give foreign nations free rides and it does not hand out unearned favours.'
Hey, I'm an American and I have no doubt this is true. For decades we've known about nefarious behavior by our intelligence services and government.
We've acted like the Sheriff of Nottingham pretending to be Robin Hood.
End of possibly premature comment. I will now continue reading past paragraph number two ;)
Empire is expensive and maintaining it requires a trade-off. Europe does the political bidding of the US, and the US subsidizes Europe economically. As US citizens, we are not involved in the imperial machinations, so we see no benefit for ourselves. On the other hand, we feel the economic costs directly. Empire is great for those running the empire. For the rest of us - not so much.
That’s part of what a trade deficit means – dollars get created, they trickle down from favoured parties in the US (see Cantillon Effect https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/biflation.asp) through much of the US economy and finally we get them and send you stuff in exchange.
Then the dollars we received largely get put back into US investments, creating demand for t-bills giving USG good lending conditions and contributing to the US equities permabubble creating so much boomer consumer confidence.
Other dollars get used to purchase energy, which is another subsidy to the US even if bought elsewhere because that also helps sterilise US inflation by recycling it back into US asset markets through various golf potentates.
Now I agree that this is not necessarily good for most Americans – it helps you get more stuff, of which a lot tends to stick to the top of the hierarchy anyway but in any case creates a Wall-E world of atrophied industry, and tremendous anomie in former working, now welfare classes devoid of the meaning that objectively productive employment delivers.
So tariffs are probably good for the US in that they restore industry both in the economic sense and in the sense of the inner virtue, but it will almost per definition give you somewhat less average wealth in the sense of “access to stuff”, and probably less in the median as well.
You could make the case that Europe subsidizes the US because the US trades IOUs for physical products and services. Those products and services have only a limited lifetime or are disposable. Treasury Bills are not. Right now, our ever-growing debt is our liability and your asset. But when the bill comes due, and it will, and the US either fully or partially defaults, that asset will now become your liability. GAE has bankrupted us as surely as The Empire bankrupted the British, and it happened fast. In 1945 the US was the wealthiest nation in the world, with over 50% of the world's industrial capacity and the world's largest gold reserves. In less than 30 years we ended Bretton Woods and left the gold standard because France wanted to be paid. Our "access to stuff" has been financed on credit, and Europe is just one of many creditors. If we are forced to start making stuff ourselves, we will experience the real cost of this "stuff" without the Imperial subsidy.
That is one justification given for globalisation which has shredded manufacturing in Britain leaving millions with no prospect of a decent, satisfying, adequately paid job.
It has left us unable to provide for ourselves. In its place we have huge deficits and unbearable interest costs, quite apart from the impossibility of repaying the loans.
Globalisation has been used as a vehicle to trade people. Politicians have made all sorts of claims why that was a good idea for us but most people must now realise it was to cement in office the elites.
If Eugyppius wants us to believe that Germany has lost out financially from the arrangements he describes then I disagree. Germany abused markets through monopolising strategies and currency manipulation. If Germans did not understand what their post war elites were doing then shame on them. The Euro was one of the main tools in recent years but the achievement has been undone by green over reach.
As an American, I'd bet it doesn't feel to most of us like the US is an imperial power. Especially since the last couple of decades of our Fearless Leaders being so corrupt and floundering -- from in here, it looks like we must be a joke, falling apart at the seams, having no idea what to do. The Biden years were a particular hellhole. I had some slight hope that Trump might make a difference, but now I'm thinking it's just the same thing in a new guise. Floundering. Corrupt. Same old, same old.
That’s just what being a non-elite in an imperial power is all about. Ask Roman plebeians how much good Rome’s control of the known world did for them, or what British working/middle classes gained from the spoils of empire (and that’s even before the backwash came in after its end).
Nice take on current events, particularly in contrast to recent history. As far as I’m concerned, I’d much prefer the US quit butting into everyone else’s business (as well as exporting degeneracy and McDonald’s) around the world. We’ve got plenty of our own damned problems to deal with.
I agree with your concise description of how the US treated Germany in the past, clipping her wings so that she couldn’t fly. However, as you also mentioned, many of the thousands of paper cuts were also self-inflicted by Germany and their socialist policies. I’m not sure that Trump actually just wants money from Germany right now (I mean sure he wants money, but lol), I see him being good friends with Abe (before his untimely death) and Farrage from the REform party in the UK.Maybe Trump is inpatient and wants Germany to get a strong leader that unshackles them from the EU bureaucracy so they can embrace innovation and manufacturing again. I think he’s thinking of his youth when Germany had traditional industries and he also wants the same for America. He desperately wants allies, real allies, to help him push back on China. However, there is no clear cut exit ramp for Germany from their present course of punishing self-effacement because the political structure forces parties to make horrible sacrifices in order to get majorities (see effete Merz).
Take up the mantle that belongs to you guys. Trump supporters are largely tired of the U.S. mucking about in the internal affairs of other countries and we have no desire to be an "empire." We are not isolationists. That game is for the globalist and elitist dipsticks who dream of such things and have repeatedly demonstrated to us how bad they are at the job. Typical working stiff Americans who comprise Trump's base? We do not seek to be the world's cop, the benevolent, mettlesome interventionist every time some problem arises in the world. So we have bigger headaches to deal with of our making and an emerging national security threat on the other side of the Pacific. The EU needs to tend to her own backyard and that includes helming NATO.
'We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged.'
This observation gives me the excuse to drag in my pet social theory of human nature: In any population, there is a not-insignificant proportion that falls somewhere on the sociopathic scale, going all the way up to pure psychopaths. These are very skilled at working for their own benefit and have no interest in, or empathy for, others. Thanks largely to these elements, *every* attempt at creating a hierarchical, economic, or governing structure will end up being gamed for their benefit.
eugy, I just opened this and read the first paragraph. It’s 09:45 in the Mountain Time Zone and I have work to get done today, but I am SO EXCITED to read this piece tonight! I so appreciate your perspective from the other side of the pond. You are such a breath of fresh German air!
I don’t know if you peruse Peter Zeihan. His take is we made a (tacit) post-war deal: the U.S. patrols the oceans to guarantee generally free trade to everyone at the cost of helping man the barricades against the Soviets.
That raison d’etre fell down in 1992, and its proponents (military-industrialist, globalists, American Imperialists, Europeanists) have been looking for an alternative justification ever since. The general populist U.S. sentiment is isolationist, and sees continued spending to maintain Cold War level defenses as burdensome to the point of revolution-inducing. Meanwhile, the Europeans currently seem hell-bent on rekindling all-out superpower conflict to maintain their freedom to indulge their welfare-state, migrationist self-flagellation.
And the Chinese have been making out like bandits.
You more or less capture the whole thing correctly. The stressor on the system is the american debt spiral, which is accelerating exponentially - particularly under biden. Trumps people can do math and are trying to reset the current system so that it has an additional functionality of serving not just the US economy but also the US debt
It is absolutely a tribute system and the justifications are several such as the trope of the European freeloader. Fair enough. But this is 100% a protection racket now, mafia style. The bitter medicine the US economy needs is digestible, that is not the problem. It is the GAE that is utterly unsustainable but at the same time irresistible.
We are on the way to an epic climax and its going to go very, very badly, no matter how you want to look at it
Today’s post is simply too much fun. I did think at one point (in the Schmidt era) that Germany was going to take a more positive role in European affairs (repressing Communists in Italy and Portugal, intermediate-range missiles) but that sure came off the rails. The USA would be better served by true allies not subject cats to be herded into compliance. Indigenous Europeans should be alarmed that no less a figure than JD Vance is taking it as a given that someday day the continent will be Islamized.
At the risk of arrogantly telling a European about his own situation:
> The Americans and the British before them expended enormous effort to preempt the emergence of a dominant power on the European Continent that might challenge their successive naval empires. They fought two world wars to stop Germany from becoming just such a power. This great struggle ended in 1945 with Western Europe as a fully subjugated imperial province. Since then, the Americans have coordinated the NATO alliance and guaranteed the security of European countries not out of charity, but because Europe is their provincial possession. As a rule, they have not wanted Europe to assume full responsibility for its own defence, because a world in which America no longer guarantees the security of Europe is a world in which Europe is no longer an American province. It’s that simple.
You are 100% correct, and I also rankle at the quote 'low-resolution' MAGA bitching about it. It is absolutely 100% true that Europe 'enjoys' more generous social welfare services than they otherwise could afford if America wasn't 'defending' them. But, as you say, America chose this, and imposed it. Maybe now, 80 years into this state of affairs, the European establishment likes it this way, but of course they do; if they didn't, they would have already been replaced, by the GAE(*), by ones who did. But either way, it is just fundamentally wrong for Americans to blame Europe for this. For that matter, it's not even clear to me that Europe is getting the better deal out of this; +/- I might be underestimating the risk of an inter-Europe World War 3, it seems like Europeans would be better off if they didn't have to take this deal.
But, that's the thing. They aren't choosing the deal. They are being made to take it, by America. For Americans to turn around and get mad at Europe for doing what America made them do at literal gunpoint, is the archetypal example of why everyone outside of America hates America.
----
(*) GAE = Global American Empire. Because it's so gae.
Man is intrinsically sinful, (I.e. selfish, proud, lustful), and as long as that’s the case, no matter how good it gets, he’s gonna find a way to ruin it for himself and eventually pretty much everyone else.
‘Tis the nature of the beast, and the unfortunate state of our human affairs: the eternal battle of good vs. evil.
Great insights. Trump is definitely acting like a powerful ruling king of the past trying to force countries into doing what he wants using tariffs as his bargaining chip. Yup pretty king like, some countries buckled some didn’t, but I agree with him in that I also feel our biggest threat is from China due to their generations long mission to turn the entire western world Communist like they are.
Mass immigration to replace us in all our countries is a reality and boy oh boy is there a war going on against Christianity to be replaced with Islam! No thank you, I’m good.
Europe believes in Nato, but has not paid its way, hence freeloading on defence. Europe believes in vat, hence, perhaps naively being unaware of the ‘tariff effect’ of vat, freeloading.
'The truth is that the United States is an imperial power. Generally speaking, it does not give foreign nations free rides and it does not hand out unearned favours.'
Hey, I'm an American and I have no doubt this is true. For decades we've known about nefarious behavior by our intelligence services and government.
We've acted like the Sheriff of Nottingham pretending to be Robin Hood.
End of possibly premature comment. I will now continue reading past paragraph number two ;)
Empire is expensive and maintaining it requires a trade-off. Europe does the political bidding of the US, and the US subsidizes Europe economically. As US citizens, we are not involved in the imperial machinations, so we see no benefit for ourselves. On the other hand, we feel the economic costs directly. Empire is great for those running the empire. For the rest of us - not so much.
In fact Europe subsidises the US economically.
That’s part of what a trade deficit means – dollars get created, they trickle down from favoured parties in the US (see Cantillon Effect https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/biflation.asp) through much of the US economy and finally we get them and send you stuff in exchange.
Then the dollars we received largely get put back into US investments, creating demand for t-bills giving USG good lending conditions and contributing to the US equities permabubble creating so much boomer consumer confidence.
Other dollars get used to purchase energy, which is another subsidy to the US even if bought elsewhere because that also helps sterilise US inflation by recycling it back into US asset markets through various golf potentates.
Now I agree that this is not necessarily good for most Americans – it helps you get more stuff, of which a lot tends to stick to the top of the hierarchy anyway but in any case creates a Wall-E world of atrophied industry, and tremendous anomie in former working, now welfare classes devoid of the meaning that objectively productive employment delivers.
So tariffs are probably good for the US in that they restore industry both in the economic sense and in the sense of the inner virtue, but it will almost per definition give you somewhat less average wealth in the sense of “access to stuff”, and probably less in the median as well.
You could make the case that Europe subsidizes the US because the US trades IOUs for physical products and services. Those products and services have only a limited lifetime or are disposable. Treasury Bills are not. Right now, our ever-growing debt is our liability and your asset. But when the bill comes due, and it will, and the US either fully or partially defaults, that asset will now become your liability. GAE has bankrupted us as surely as The Empire bankrupted the British, and it happened fast. In 1945 the US was the wealthiest nation in the world, with over 50% of the world's industrial capacity and the world's largest gold reserves. In less than 30 years we ended Bretton Woods and left the gold standard because France wanted to be paid. Our "access to stuff" has been financed on credit, and Europe is just one of many creditors. If we are forced to start making stuff ourselves, we will experience the real cost of this "stuff" without the Imperial subsidy.
"..left the gold standard because France wanted to be paid.."
Lol...
The US left the gold standard so the Govt(like all western govts) could "print" unlimited fiat money to finance war and fiscal madness...forever..
The Fiat Standard Saifedean Ammous
The Mystery of Banking Murray Rothbard
The Creature from Jekyll Island G. Edward Griffin
That is one justification given for globalisation which has shredded manufacturing in Britain leaving millions with no prospect of a decent, satisfying, adequately paid job.
It has left us unable to provide for ourselves. In its place we have huge deficits and unbearable interest costs, quite apart from the impossibility of repaying the loans.
Globalisation has been used as a vehicle to trade people. Politicians have made all sorts of claims why that was a good idea for us but most people must now realise it was to cement in office the elites.
If Eugyppius wants us to believe that Germany has lost out financially from the arrangements he describes then I disagree. Germany abused markets through monopolising strategies and currency manipulation. If Germans did not understand what their post war elites were doing then shame on them. The Euro was one of the main tools in recent years but the achievement has been undone by green over reach.
As an American, I'd bet it doesn't feel to most of us like the US is an imperial power. Especially since the last couple of decades of our Fearless Leaders being so corrupt and floundering -- from in here, it looks like we must be a joke, falling apart at the seams, having no idea what to do. The Biden years were a particular hellhole. I had some slight hope that Trump might make a difference, but now I'm thinking it's just the same thing in a new guise. Floundering. Corrupt. Same old, same old.
That’s just what being a non-elite in an imperial power is all about. Ask Roman plebeians how much good Rome’s control of the known world did for them, or what British working/middle classes gained from the spoils of empire (and that’s even before the backwash came in after its end).
Good point!
Nice take on current events, particularly in contrast to recent history. As far as I’m concerned, I’d much prefer the US quit butting into everyone else’s business (as well as exporting degeneracy and McDonald’s) around the world. We’ve got plenty of our own damned problems to deal with.
I agree with your concise description of how the US treated Germany in the past, clipping her wings so that she couldn’t fly. However, as you also mentioned, many of the thousands of paper cuts were also self-inflicted by Germany and their socialist policies. I’m not sure that Trump actually just wants money from Germany right now (I mean sure he wants money, but lol), I see him being good friends with Abe (before his untimely death) and Farrage from the REform party in the UK.Maybe Trump is inpatient and wants Germany to get a strong leader that unshackles them from the EU bureaucracy so they can embrace innovation and manufacturing again. I think he’s thinking of his youth when Germany had traditional industries and he also wants the same for America. He desperately wants allies, real allies, to help him push back on China. However, there is no clear cut exit ramp for Germany from their present course of punishing self-effacement because the political structure forces parties to make horrible sacrifices in order to get majorities (see effete Merz).
Take up the mantle that belongs to you guys. Trump supporters are largely tired of the U.S. mucking about in the internal affairs of other countries and we have no desire to be an "empire." We are not isolationists. That game is for the globalist and elitist dipsticks who dream of such things and have repeatedly demonstrated to us how bad they are at the job. Typical working stiff Americans who comprise Trump's base? We do not seek to be the world's cop, the benevolent, mettlesome interventionist every time some problem arises in the world. So we have bigger headaches to deal with of our making and an emerging national security threat on the other side of the Pacific. The EU needs to tend to her own backyard and that includes helming NATO.
'We have had a nearly incalculable gift in the form of 80 years of peace, which may yet be offset by the equally incalculable costs of the lunacies this peace has encouraged.'
This observation gives me the excuse to drag in my pet social theory of human nature: In any population, there is a not-insignificant proportion that falls somewhere on the sociopathic scale, going all the way up to pure psychopaths. These are very skilled at working for their own benefit and have no interest in, or empathy for, others. Thanks largely to these elements, *every* attempt at creating a hierarchical, economic, or governing structure will end up being gamed for their benefit.
This is why we can't have nice things.
They're just the bottom of the bell curve of empathy; the moral equivalent of mentally retarded people. They are morally retarded.
The bottom 1% are the worst, but the bottom 5% are not much better. That's one person in twenty out to screw everyone else for their own gain.
morally retarded...I like that.
Isn't it strange how enforced peace always results in mass cultural outbreaks of self-flagellation?
eugy, I just opened this and read the first paragraph. It’s 09:45 in the Mountain Time Zone and I have work to get done today, but I am SO EXCITED to read this piece tonight! I so appreciate your perspective from the other side of the pond. You are such a breath of fresh German air!
Your admirable self-discipline far exceeds mine.
A *noble* sheep, unperturbed by solitude. The faces of all creatures reveal their characters.
I will correct the caption.
You've no idea the degree to which I feel honored by any instance of your regard.
I don’t know if you peruse Peter Zeihan. His take is we made a (tacit) post-war deal: the U.S. patrols the oceans to guarantee generally free trade to everyone at the cost of helping man the barricades against the Soviets.
That raison d’etre fell down in 1992, and its proponents (military-industrialist, globalists, American Imperialists, Europeanists) have been looking for an alternative justification ever since. The general populist U.S. sentiment is isolationist, and sees continued spending to maintain Cold War level defenses as burdensome to the point of revolution-inducing. Meanwhile, the Europeans currently seem hell-bent on rekindling all-out superpower conflict to maintain their freedom to indulge their welfare-state, migrationist self-flagellation.
And the Chinese have been making out like bandits.
You more or less capture the whole thing correctly. The stressor on the system is the american debt spiral, which is accelerating exponentially - particularly under biden. Trumps people can do math and are trying to reset the current system so that it has an additional functionality of serving not just the US economy but also the US debt
It is absolutely a tribute system and the justifications are several such as the trope of the European freeloader. Fair enough. But this is 100% a protection racket now, mafia style. The bitter medicine the US economy needs is digestible, that is not the problem. It is the GAE that is utterly unsustainable but at the same time irresistible.
We are on the way to an epic climax and its going to go very, very badly, no matter how you want to look at it
Today’s post is simply too much fun. I did think at one point (in the Schmidt era) that Germany was going to take a more positive role in European affairs (repressing Communists in Italy and Portugal, intermediate-range missiles) but that sure came off the rails. The USA would be better served by true allies not subject cats to be herded into compliance. Indigenous Europeans should be alarmed that no less a figure than JD Vance is taking it as a given that someday day the continent will be Islamized.
At the risk of arrogantly telling a European about his own situation:
> The Americans and the British before them expended enormous effort to preempt the emergence of a dominant power on the European Continent that might challenge their successive naval empires. They fought two world wars to stop Germany from becoming just such a power. This great struggle ended in 1945 with Western Europe as a fully subjugated imperial province. Since then, the Americans have coordinated the NATO alliance and guaranteed the security of European countries not out of charity, but because Europe is their provincial possession. As a rule, they have not wanted Europe to assume full responsibility for its own defence, because a world in which America no longer guarantees the security of Europe is a world in which Europe is no longer an American province. It’s that simple.
You are 100% correct, and I also rankle at the quote 'low-resolution' MAGA bitching about it. It is absolutely 100% true that Europe 'enjoys' more generous social welfare services than they otherwise could afford if America wasn't 'defending' them. But, as you say, America chose this, and imposed it. Maybe now, 80 years into this state of affairs, the European establishment likes it this way, but of course they do; if they didn't, they would have already been replaced, by the GAE(*), by ones who did. But either way, it is just fundamentally wrong for Americans to blame Europe for this. For that matter, it's not even clear to me that Europe is getting the better deal out of this; +/- I might be underestimating the risk of an inter-Europe World War 3, it seems like Europeans would be better off if they didn't have to take this deal.
But, that's the thing. They aren't choosing the deal. They are being made to take it, by America. For Americans to turn around and get mad at Europe for doing what America made them do at literal gunpoint, is the archetypal example of why everyone outside of America hates America.
----
(*) GAE = Global American Empire. Because it's so gae.
Man is intrinsically sinful, (I.e. selfish, proud, lustful), and as long as that’s the case, no matter how good it gets, he’s gonna find a way to ruin it for himself and eventually pretty much everyone else.
‘Tis the nature of the beast, and the unfortunate state of our human affairs: the eternal battle of good vs. evil.
Great insights. Trump is definitely acting like a powerful ruling king of the past trying to force countries into doing what he wants using tariffs as his bargaining chip. Yup pretty king like, some countries buckled some didn’t, but I agree with him in that I also feel our biggest threat is from China due to their generations long mission to turn the entire western world Communist like they are.
Mass immigration to replace us in all our countries is a reality and boy oh boy is there a war going on against Christianity to be replaced with Islam! No thank you, I’m good.
Power corrupts
Absolute power corrupts absolutely
King? I don’t think so. A good negotiator has and knows his leverage and uses it strongly. The other party is free to walk, agree, or haggle.
Not just a bird's-eye view, but a view from orbit. Fascinating and appreciated.
Europe believes in Nato, but has not paid its way, hence freeloading on defence. Europe believes in vat, hence, perhaps naively being unaware of the ‘tariff effect’ of vat, freeloading.
What defense ? If you let military age males roam your streets, harassing people and raping teens you obviously have no defense
NATO is a straight jacket imposed on Europe by the US. And the European Union is the matching set of shackles.