Comments by "yop yop" (@yopyop3241) on "Deglobalization: The US Navy's Withdrawl as Global Protector || Peter Zeihan" video.

@@LTNetjakExactly. If there’s something that the US needs, the US military will still be everywhere to ensure that the US gets it. Allies’ or neutrals’ needs? Case by case basis. If we like you a lot, we’ll take care of it on the cheap. Neutrals will have to pay a hefty markup to cover overhead and a healthy profit margin. If you want to move up the liked-by-America scale, you know what you need to do: democracy, transparent governance, respect for human rights.
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He cut off and moved to the next thought too soon. The US didn’t do it for its own economy. It did it as a guns-for-butter trade. “You fight with/for us, and we allow you to have the global trade access that only Britain used to have.”
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You put your finger on it: India. Not a major trading nation as it has always pursued autarky. Most of its trade is in things like call center services and medications that don’t need to go by ship to be profitable. Either that or it’s exchanging grain for energy with the Gulf states, which is trade that India has the military strength to protect themselves. India has gained very little from US-imposed freedom of navigation. Meanwhile, an enormous fraction of global trade lumbers just off their shores. India will definitely gain far more by interdicting trade within their reach than it gains from freedom of navigation. And once India starts, that will set off a feeding frenzy as other countries and non-state actors move to take what they can get before trade as we know it today disappears forever. If the US pulls back, keep your eye on India. And no, there’s no one else. Only the US has the ability to defeat India in the Indian Ocean, which is what protecting freedom of navigation there requires.
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Bases and allies. Global reach requires a global footprint. The US has 800+ overseas military bases around the world. China has 2. The US acquired the core of its network by having the only navy to survive WW2 and has been able to build on that core because other countries trust the USA. China has no hope in either of those areas. When the US steps back, China is not going to have the chance to step up. It will be countries that have access to the US’s base network like Japan, the UK, Australia, etc. that will. China whines about US meddling. We’ll see how China enjoys needing unanimous assent from a committee of US allies instead.
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The US isn’t going to abandon its global footprint. But it makes a difference if those forces are used to keep the peace vs wreck stuff that the US wants wrecked.
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China has more ships. US has more combat capability. Much more.
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In the past, instead of heading to Israel, that carrier would have been headed towards the Gulf and preparing to run sorties into Iran….
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You think those carriers are there to protect freedom of navigation? To defend the global commons? I don’t. I think those carriers are there because Hamas just killed and captured dozens of Americans. Those carriers are there solely to protect American interests, not global ones. That’s entirely in line with what Zeihan has been saying. The US military is shifting from defending the commons to only working for strict American interests.
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⁠ @SignalCorps1 No reason that light sweet oil can’t be refined in a heavy sour facility. There’ll be major inefficiencies and poor yield, but that’s small potatoes compared to what the rest of the world will be facing. US gas prices might, what? Double? Meanwhile, Beijing starves from lack of fuel for trucks and farm equipment. Temporary doubling of gas prices but no shortage vs shortage-driven starvation.
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We are about to find out. Maybe the US Navy was superfluous all along. Maybe lumbering, defenseless modern merchant ships carrying cargoes worth hundreds of millions of dollars never needed any protection in the first place. Maybe Somali pirates were the exception not because they were exceptionally desperate but because they were the only ones who had any interest in big payouts for minimal up front costs.
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Not even close. Zeihan is right. US carriers and US carrier-launched planes are much, much better than China’s.
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The business as usual destination would be Iran to administer a beat down in response to Iran’s escalation with the attack on Israel. Until you see US missiles and stealth aircraft pounding Iran, Zeihan’s prediction is on the nose. If instead of American missiles and planes, you see Israeli missiles and planes attacking Iran, you’ll know that globalization is over and multi continental mass famine is incoming.
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The “protect my shipping or I’ll nuke you” gambit. I’m sure that’ll work out well.
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It was bad for US economic well-being, as expected. It was supposed to be good for US security. By gifting other countries with access to global trade, those other countries were supposed to be grateful and eventually become friendly. Didn’t work with China or Russia, so it turned out to be counterproductive. Might have been a nice theory, but it only ended up making the US both poorer and less secure. Countries do dumb stuff. This was the US version. China’s versions are in their real estate, financial, and demographic bubbles. And in deciding to piss off all of the countries with the power to sever China’s critical trade lifelines. The US wasted a bunch of treasure, but at least it didn’t cost itself its place in the world. China’s idiocies are so bad that they may result in the permanent end of Chinese civilization.
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The US is shifting from defending to attacking. Step back, let large chunks of the globe turn to crap, come back in and destroy the crappy parts that survive, start over. You don’t let the military rot during the interim “step back” phase. You use the time to gear up for “come back in and destroy.”
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Sending them to Israel instead of to Iran means that Zeihan is being proven right again.
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To Israel instead of to Iran. Which means Zeihan is right again.
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They don’t have the bases needed to project power, and even as the US pulls back, the US isn’t going to allow China to get the bases it wants.
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(1) The US is the least trade-dependent country on the planet as a percentage of GDP. (2) The US Navy isn’t going to pull back from everywhere all at once. It’s going to happen by stages with the sea lanes that the US cares about least being let go first. (3) That means that the opportunity to step in isn’t going to go to China. The US is going to pull back from the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean first. China can’t project power there. The opportunity to step in goes to India and to the countries that the US allows to operate out of the US network of military bases— Japan, Australia, the UK, etc.
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Spoken like someone with no experience with democracy backed by freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc. The US electorate has reached near-consensus on this issue. Special interests lose all power in the face of consensus.
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Watch where it goes. In the past, it would be headed to the Gulf to pound Iran.
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The US is going to switch from protecting everyone’s trade to only protecting its own and its allies’ trade. And shanghaiing the trade of countries it dislikes. Try to trade in anything other than US dollars, and the US or one of its allies will definitely snatch that cargo. Or at least charge you a giant transit fee for sailing through their sphere of influence. There are a lot of spheres of influence between China and Middle East oil or Brazilian soybeans or African cobalt ore.
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Why would you need to fund them? Modern merchant vessels carry cargoes worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and their only means of defense is to shut the engines down while the crew lock themselves behind thick steel doors and wait for the US Navy to show up. Take away the US Navy, and you’re left with defenseless cargoes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Human nature takes care of things from there. Without the US Navy (many times more powerful than the combined navies of the rest of the world) operating out of the US’s globe-spanning network of overseas military bases(many times more numerous than the combined networks of the rest of the world), global freedom of navigation dies.
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Big winner will be India. Big losers will be the Middle East, parts of Africa, and especially China.
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You expected the US to do nothing in response to the killing and capture of dozens of Americans? Not a chance. And the fact that those carriers were surged into the region should only underscore the fact that there were no carriers in the region already. You know, the way you would expect if the US were still in the business of propping open maritime trade routes that the US doesn’t use.
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@CtrlFireAndFury Incorrect. There were no carrier groups in that part of the Mediterranean. Then the killings and abductions happened, so now there are two there.
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⁠ @CtrlFireAndFury Incorrect. It was out of range for its fighter wings by around 4x. Now it is in range. Major difference.
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To Israel instead of to Iran. Zeihan is right, at least so far.
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@bostonrailfan2427 The US has done nothing to prevent escalation yet. In the past, the US would have already pounded the crap out of Iran and dared the Iranians to keep escalating. So far this time? Carrier in the eastern Mediterranean. Totally different. Totally in line with the principles at the core of Zeihan’s hypothesis.
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Compare the era of US dominance to how the Brits, Japanese, and French behaved during the up-to-WW2 era. When the US steps back, you are likely to see countries emerge to act like the Brits, Japanese and French from back then. Keep an eye on India, Turkey, and France in particular.
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Only two overseas military bases, and no prospects to acquire more.
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Now check the carrier based planes….
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@jorehir I think you are underestimating (and Zeihan is underselling) the task of maintaining freedom of navigation. There’s patrolling, but there’s also “encouraging” buy in. Consider India. India would be better off if it could control trade across the Indian Ocean. India doesn’t trade in bulk goods much beyond the Indian Ocean, so trade beyond India’s reach doesn’t interest them much. Maintaining freedom of navigation means giving India enough incentive to go along with freedom of navigation. The US’s carrier based fighters give India that incentive.
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China’s “maritime militia” started things years ago. But the death blow to the system— keep an eye on India. India has every incentive to tear it down.
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He’s talking combat capability. Which is what matters.
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Bretton Woods is where the allies conferred to work out the postwar monetary system.
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“Ensuring US dominance” in response to an attack that killed and captured dozens of Americans is not the same thing as the US acting as the global protector.
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The value is supposed to come in the form of friendship and avoided wars. Worked with Germany and Japan. Utterly failed with the PRC, Russia, and Iran. If the strategy isn’t working, it only makes sense to change it.
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@karatsurba4791 Spoken like someone from a country with no real friends or allies. The US military has been in Japan and Germany because the Japanese and Germans have wanted the US military in Japan and Germany. All the Japanese and Germans ever needed to do to eject the US military is ask. Look what happened when the Philippines asked the US to leave. They packed up and left. Anyway, the Japanese, German, and American populaces know that their countries are friends and allies, and theirs are the only opinions that matter. That sort of real friendship is the greatness of democracy. When accompanied by all of the necessary institutions like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary, etc., democracy is the most transparent form of government ever devised and implemented at scale. That transparency, allowing anyone, even outsiders, to see the underlying workings, allows trust to grow. In turn, that trust allows real friendship to blossom. It is no coincidence that the world’s mutually demilitarized borders have all been between healthy democracies.
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In the Med instead of in the Gulf. Israel doesn’t need any help in the Med. What it needs are retaliatory strikes on Iran.
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Not on the table. It’s India and Japan that will be unleashed, not China. India is obviously perfectly positioned to step up as the US pulls back from the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, the first locations to be abandoned. Japan has the world’s #2 navy that has a green light to operate out of the US’s global network of bases. They will be forced to increase their operations as the US pulls back.
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It hasn’t. The US has never been a major trading nation. For the US, the economic benefit of trade was likely more than cancelled out by the economic cost of higher military spending.
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Except it didn’t work. That’s his point. The US did it to earn gratitude and hopefully build friendship. Didn’t work with China and Russia. Since it hasn’t been working, the US has been doing it and getting no benefit. That’s why the US is stopping. And of course since the benefits have been going to China and Russia with little benefit going to the US, the resulting pain from the US stopping will fall heaviest on China and Russia.
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To the Mediterranean instead of to the Gulf. Zeihan’s right— in the past, we would be gearing up to bomb the crap out of Iran. Not this time, apparently.
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@SignalCorps1 Zeihan has been telling the industry that they’re not going to have a choice. Apparently, the President has the power to stop exports of crude. That light sweet stuff is going to be trapped in the US market.
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Those carriers aren’t doing anything, are they? Just sailing around the neighborhood. We’ll see how long cruising around without actually doing anything keeps the sea lanes open and the rats in their holes.
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