Several important processes or issues have either come to a conclusion or have “ripened” to the point where we might be able to ask, “What have we learned?” The “we” in the question is particularly true with respect to the US and China.
The situations include the ending of the Covid mania; continued feckless irresponsible deficit sending, amounting to trillions of dollars that are claimed to address climate changes a hundred years in the future; and the development of a stalemate, or at least an unexpected frustration of Russia’s hopes for a quick victory in Ukraine.
The West made a contrary but parallel mistake, and so thought the Russians could be initially sent back across the border after a “closing of ranks” among the NATO partners, in respect of the West’s willingness to present a united front against the Russian military; this resulted in a supplying military aid to the Ukrainians, thus raising the level of diplomatic tensions between China and America over the South China Sea, balloon overflights, and Taiwan.
Careless and countradictory words have been spoken on both sides of the Pacific involving all these irritants. Here are recent examples from AOL’s news service: “Putin says Russia to deploy Sarmat nuclear missiles” and “Biden taunts Putin from Warsaw.”
I have seen news reports that say, on the one hand, that China is willing to supply President Vladimir Putin with advanced weapons systems to help offset the effectiveness of US fighting equipment, and at the same time, other news sources reporting that major Chinese spokesmen say they do not wish for the Ukrainian struggle to continue (of course those stories may not be contradictory at all, but let us hope the proposed end to hostilities is not brought about via a raising of the stakes).
Seeking a cure
In the mid-1970s in Canada, a separatist political party won power in the province of Quebec, and the worried English-Canadian population was advised to “calm down” by a newspaper cartoon caricature, drawn to represent the figure of the separatist leader, showing him “popping a pill” with a comment ballooning over his cartoon head, advising the Anglo readers of the paper to “take a Valium.”
Today’s collection of maturing international problems are too serious to be addressed with sedatives, but there is a relatively simple lesson to be learned by way of a political strategy useful on both sides of the Pacific Ocean; remember history/tradition and absorb the lessons it teaches.
The panacea I suggest is a metaphorical pharmaceutical made up of skepticism and cynicism, adding up to that necessary respect for historical lessons and the almost forgotten model of realpolitik.
The real solution to the damage done by the “throw paper money at it” solution to the now fading issue of Covid is simple to explain. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has recently done so in an article suggesting respect for the historical idea of monetarism: Stop printing money. This basic notion is correct and needs no improvement, but it is hard to get governments “off the drug” of buying votes.
The BIS rediscovered and reported data (BIS Bulletin 67, January 26) that now shows, as it has done ever since Tacitus remarked about it, the monetary explanation of recession/inflation is: Don’t cheapen the currency and don’t burden the productive power of industry with regulation and redirected ideological motivated spending that has the effect of reducing useful output and then replacing it with politically correct showboat extravagant outlays combined with over-the-top welfare bribes that buy off constituencies-for-for-sale.
Much more difficult to work out are solution strategies for the quasi-military problems that beset us.
American and Chinese leaders are (or should be) realists above all else, and they should have the courage to make their own decisions, rather than relying on “experts, consultants, advisors or theorists” when their courage fails them and they surrender their place at the gaming table after the gods of politics threw bad numbers against them written on the dice of destiny.
An example of this mistake is the role played by the (by now) disgraced Dr Anthony Fauci (former director of NIAID/NIH USA).
Having de facto near control of Covid policies in both the Republican and Democratic US administrations, he advised that masks were unneeded, then double masks were correct, then 3 feet was a correct distance between persons, then 6, then advised against holiday family parties, then against hospital visits with sick family members and even with “canceling” professional opinions that differed from his own “true science.”
In my opinion his errors caused great economic, social and political damage to the US and served to disrupt a truly scientific, skeptical, questioning debate over best policies during the time he exercised his undeserved moment in the media spotlight. I suspect China’s leaders got similarly bad advice from “experts” whose names we do not know.
In both nations leaders should have “put on their big-boy pants,” as we say in America, and should have taken up the task of picking up ownership of policy, even if “best practice” in a period of great uncertainty was difficult to “get right.”
Recent history, now that leaders have developed the courage to step “in front” of the Covid problem and implicitly admit they should have been more prudent is an example of the benefits of truly responsible, even when imperfectly informed, leadership.
The DMZ solution
Allow me to be bold enough to suggest a 50-year-old, admittedly imperfect but practical, pragmatic part-military part-political, possibly even cynically part-propagandist solution to a world “sore spot” that has been “healed over” by a realization that the best solution (unattainable) is the enemy of workable compromise.
A possible model solution is the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The nettle that could not be grasped at the time open hostilities in the Korean Peninsula had reached stalemate has parallels with Ukraine and Taiwan. Players on both sides of all three conflicts had the same problem: Their ideal solutions had no “Venn diagram” overlaps.
In Korea, China could not countenance the presence, right against its border, of a potentially successful Western entity, and the Americans would never accept a “takeover” by a Marxist regime of lands they had paid a blood price to obtain.
Likewise, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists upon a return to the 2014 borders, giving him control of the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, which had been occupied by Russia beginning in 1783 during the time of Catherine the Great. But in President Putin’s mind, Ukraine is not even an independent nation; he seems to understand it to be the homeland of the Rus’, dating back to the time of the Viking founding fathers of Mother Russia. No Venn diagram commonality here.
Taiwan has de facto become, in terms of trade, a center of Western economic practices, and has developed (but wisely has not insisted on de jure recognition of it) a sense of independence from the mainland. President Xi Jinping says, as he is obliged to do in order to maintain domestic political balances intact, that the island is part of China.
In fact, Taiwan has a rich and complex history linking it to both Europe and Asia. An indigenous Asian agricultural society dates back to 3000 BC. Han Chinese settlers were established between the 13th the 17th centuries. Political and émigré populations from the Ming and Qing communities played a role then too.
The Portuguese conferred the name “Formosa” on their explorations there. In the 17th century, colonies were operated by the Dutch, the Spanish and even by multicultural international trading pirates. In the 19th century, especially after an 1895 treaty, Japan was present.
Like the Roman god of gates, doors and therefore, in a modern interpretation, the god of trade plus intercommunication named Janus, Taiwan has two heads, each looking in a contrary direction. It is probably impossible and certainly unwise to chop either one off.
A demilitarized pragmatic neutral zone, with shared sovereignty and especially “freedom of the seas’’ on all sides, is imaginable for eastern Ukraine, but not before an on-the-ground stalemate is achieved. I think that could happen in a year or two.
It is difficult to say something similar could readily come to pass, certainly not in Taiwan itself. But maybe the various “island building” efforts by President Xi in the South China Sea, if these areas, or at least some of them, could be “freedom of the sea” neutral zones, with de facto but not de jure sovereignty in mainland hands, a pragmatic Korea-like “peace” might be arranged, but not for years yet. We can only hope there is time.
Perhaps these suggestions, intended to be practical, are too much the thinking of a longtime professor/academic/journalist – me.
But the fact that President Putin is once again talking atomic will motivate better imaginations than mine, in the name of achieving something imperfect but serviceable. As I mentioned above, a practical solution to these military matters is much more complex and difficult than the relatively easy solution of “stopping the (money) presses.”
Inflation we can control. Conflagration we have not often enough found a way to smother. We had better learn.
Tom Velk is a libertarian-leaning American economist who writes and lives in Montreal, Canada. He has served as visiting professor at the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve system, at the US Congress and as the chairman of the North American Studies program at McGill University and a professor in that university’s Economics Department.