Query: Why are liberals learning to love the new Cold War?
Answer: Because it makes Joe Biden’s economic policy appear less stupid and lets them work their brand.
Yes, depressing but true: both liberal stalwarts and occasional AV whipping boys Brad Delong and Matt Yglesias are both getting on the Noah Smith “Let’s kick China in the ass” train. I mean, what was so wrong with our war with Japan few decades ago, other than the, you know, 3.2 million combat deaths and the 27 million civilians?1 Wasn’t it all, when you look back on it, a heck of a lot of fun?
That’s what one gets from Brad, who eagerly seconds Noah’s fervid nonsense, exclaiming “A sudden shift to a world in which there are major wars that stay subnuclear but nevertheless require a substantial manufacturing base has profoundly changed the game”—because what happened in Ukraine can happen in Taiwan, can’t it? I mean, case closed! Case closed!
You can invade Ukraine from Russia by walking. To invade Taiwan from China, you have to swim a hundred miles. There is a difference. And if Brad doesn’t believe me, he can try it himself.
Even the militantly interventionist American Enterprise Institute, where über war mongers Danielle Pletka and John Bolton both hang their chapeaus, says that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is simply not in the cards: “But an exclusive focus on military-technical challenges relevant to a single, narrow subset of invasion scenarios tends to understate, if not ignore, the enormous risks and challenges the PRC [People’s Republic of China] would face. An all-out invasion of Taiwan would be an operation larger and more complicated than the World War II Normandy landings, but unlike the Allied forces, the PRC’s military has never done such a thing and has not fought a serious war in more than four decades.” Unlike the United States, which has fought a number of serious wars in the past few decades and has lost them all disastrously!
I amplified AEI’s analysis a bit here, pointing out, among other things, that when the U.S. and Great Britain invaded Normandy in 1944, the Allied fleet assembled for the occasion had some 3,261landing craft. Today’s Chinese navy has 72 landing craft. When China builds another 3,000 landing craft, maybe we should expect an invasion, but not before.
It’s bad enough for both Brad and Matt to uncritically endorse Noah’s “The Chinese are coming! The Chinese are coming!” rap/crap, but Matt even insists on going an absurd extra mile—though perhaps “extra parsec” might be le mot juste—to demonstrate how “no bueno”2 the “Axis/Allies” (please) balance of power is, juggling his figures to “prove” that us good guys are at a disadvantage: that “we” have only a $1 trillion advantage in manufacturing compared to the “Axis” ($6.25 trillion versus $5.27 trillion), while we’re behind in warships (1,445 versus 2,016), and in troops (3.4 million versus 4.7 million).
First of all, let’s look at how Matt defines “Allies” and “Axis”. “Axis” includes Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, while “Allies” includes the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and “Europe”. Well, what about Australia? Don’t they have any skin in the game? And the Philippines? And Taiwan? And, hey, what about, you know, India! Have you heard about “India”, Matt? If you have, you probably know that it’s only the biggest country in the world, that’s all! One that has had historically terrible relations with China! And if we’re getting into it with Iran, wouldn’t Saudi Arabia and Israel want a piece of that action too? Why aren’t they on your list!
And let me supply a few more figures, via Wikipedia, for military expenditures: U.S., $916 billion; China, $296 billion; Russia, $109 billion; India, $84 billion; Saudi Arabia, $76 billion; U.K., $75 billion; Germany, $67 billion; France, $61 billion; Japan, $50 billion; South Korea, $48 billion; Italy, $35 billion; Australia, $32 billion; Poland, $32 billion; Israel, $28 billion; Canada, $27 billion; Taiwan, $17 billion; Iran, $10 billion; Philippines, $4 billion; North Korea $4 billion (this is an estimate; but to help with the comparison, North Korea’s total economy is only about $29 billion, compared to South Korea’s $1.7 trillion).
Now, Matt’s so-called “Axis” isn’t an “axis” at all. These countries have only limited common interests, other than the fact that we like to harass them from time to time, thus driving them together, often more for domestic policy purposes and to create “tension”, thus requiring additional wasteful defense spending, not to mention seminars and conferences and books and studies and increased budgets for Beltway think tanks. And, hopefully, votes!
Why does Brad endorse, and Matt amplify, Noah’s hysteria? Noah, of course, is simply working his brand. He’s “Mr. China War” now and he’s loving it! He clearly thinks a new Cold War will be good, not only for his own bottom line—though, hey, he’ll take the cash if they’ll give it to him—but for “America” as well. The simple fact is, too much peace makes you flabby. Americans need to shape up, and get in line, and do what they’re told. And pay Noah to tell it to them.
Brad and Matt, I think/hope, have a different motivation. They’ll accept—and, sadly, even amplify—Noah’s fraudulent rap because it provides a cover story for Joe Biden’s quasi-xenophobic “industrial policy”. Now, Matt of course, insists that we need to be “smart” about this, that our tariffs and restrictions should be directed only at the “bad guys” and that otherwise we should engage in, yes, “free trade”. We shouldn’t be building aircraft carriers because doing so creates jobs. “We should stop complaining about cheap Canadian lumber. We should stop blocking imports of Latin American sugar. We should let Toyota sell cheap small trucks to Americans who want them. We should, frankly, probably start buying (or leasing) warships from Japan and Korea, where they actually know how to build ships.”
The problem is, Matt knows that that is exactly what Biden isn’t doing and won’t be doing. Instead, he’s promising to rebuild Baltimore’s fallen Key Bridge with “union labor and American steel”, guaranteeing that getting the job done, and reviving Baltimore’s not too bouncy economy, will be a slow, inefficient, and expensive process. Biden has also pointlessly objected to the sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese company, Nippon Steel. Steven Rattner, writing in the New York Times, describes the many downsides of tariffs and why so many of Biden’s actions look less “strategic” than “nakedly political” (my words).
All of this feeds into the demonism of China for “destroying” U.S. manufacturing, when the continuing decrease in the employment share in the U.S. economy for manufacturing is, for the most part, due simply to automation, a process that will certainly continue, a process exactly comparable to the dramatic (but not “disastrous”) decrease in the percentage of agricultural jobs, which has, of course, been in process for well over a century. This “thinking” also continues the sentimentalization of manufacturing jobs themselves, as though they somehow allow relatively unskilled workers to make high wages. But in the glory days of U.S. manufacturing, U.S. blue collar workers were not “relatively unskilled”. Rather, they constituted the best educated workforce in the world, operating the one “advanced” industrial plant in the world, allowing U.S. firms to pay “exorbitant” (aka “union”) wages to American workers because they could charge what were effectively monopoly (or oligopoly) prices, both abroad and at home, prices that American consumers could afford to pay, thanks to an expanding population, a massive rebound from both the Great Depression and World War II, and advances in productivity. We were also, conveniently enough, the only advanced country in the world with its own oil supply (other than the Soviet Union, which didn’t really count in the world market).
None of these conditions exist today. I can accept the fact that we need to “maintain” a large industrial base in this country, but manufacturing jobs are not nearly the panacea that so many supposedly brilliant economists at least pretend to believe is the case. I strongly suspect that people like Paul Krugman and Brad are simply afraid of getting too far of “received opinion” on the left to speak the truth here.3 I am also hopeful that the subsidies Biden is handing out to chip manufacturers will have a significant pay off, but, again, it will be “interesting” (and, I hope, not depressing) to see if Uncle Joe can keep the capitalist-hating younger set from micro-managing these projects into oblivion. AOC/Liz Warren liberals love to micro-manage because they hate capitalism and want to keep the reins of power for themselves. If only we could keep them from making any profit at all! That would be perfect! Of course, if you read Chris Miller’s Chip Wars (which I found to be not always accurate), chip entrepreneurs are as unwoke as you can get, hating unions, demanding sixty-hour weeks as a minimum, and hiring and promoting (and firing) strictly on “merit”, and to hell with “diversity”! If we have a staff of 250 white guys, or 250 Asian dudes, so what? They can get the job done! If Joe’s “chip initiative” ends up gagging on one of Ezra Klein’s “everything” bagels, I won’t be surprised.
Estimates via Wikipedia, setting the start of the “Pacific War” at 1937 (Japanese invasion of China) rather than 1941.
Matt is, of course, half Hispanic, but I’ve never “heard” him speak Spanish before. He could have spared us this one.
Somewhere on the Internet (I’m afraid I can’t find it) is a touching piece Paul wrote back in the day, describing his frustration over not getting a job with the Clinton administration because he wouldn’t tell Bill Clinton what Bill wanted to hear—that free trade would create “jobs, jobs, jobs”—a higher standard of living, yes, but that wasn’t what Bill wanted to hear.