Global Strategies

Orina Mastro

Noted:

 

 

DeLong: "A Smart Approach to China-U.S. Relations" (here)

From Brad DeLong's blog post "A Smart Approach to China-U.S. Relations" (here):

Consider a country that is the global superpower.

Its military is best-of-breed. Its reach extends from Japan to the West Indies to the Indian Ocean, and beyond. Its industries of the most productive in the world. It Is predominate in world trade. It dominates global finance.

But, when this global superpower looks to the west, across the sea, it sees a rising power—a confident nation with a larger population, hungry for wealth, hungry for preeminence, seeing itself as possessing a manifest destiny to supersede the old superpower. And, unless something goes horribly wrong with the rising power to the west, its rise is indeed all but inevitable.

Thus the proper goal for the current superpower is to ensure a soft landing—ensure that the world will still be a comfortable place for it, once its preeminence as the global superpower is over.......

But, when this global superpower looks to the west, across the sea, it sees a rising power—a confident nation with a larger population, hungry for wealth, hungry for preeminence, seeing itself as possessing a manifest destiny to supersede the old superpower. And, unless something goes horribly wrong with the rising power to the west, its rise is indeed all but inevitable.

Thus the proper goal for the current superpower is to ensure a soft landing—ensure that the world will still be a comfortable place for it, once its preeminence as the global superpower is over.......

"The Hispanc Challenge"

From the 2009 Foreign Policy article "The Hispanic Challenge" by Samuel Huntington (here):

The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and linguistic enclaves -- from Los Angeles to Miami -- and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores this challenge at its peril......

 

Hong Kong Protests

"Is It Too Late To Stop a New Cold War With China?"

For the past twelve years,  I have been urging Oregon educators to expand Mandarin and study abroad in China programs as a means of engaging China and seeking a peaceful future. I have not been successful.

Noted: From Stephen Wertheim's NY Times op-ed (here):

.... At the moment, confrontation with China might seem to offer something for everyone, much as the anti-Soviet crusade initially promised. In the late 1940s, businesses saw an opportunity to expand trade and secure capitalism; organized labor signed on, agreeing to discipline its ranks for a slice of the economic pie. It seemed like a good bargain, at least until growth stalled and the Cold War turned out to mean dying in Vietnam.

The costs were immense then, and they could be steeper now. For one, it is no coincidence that a president who denies climate change is leading the charge against China, the top emitter of greenhouse gases. Arresting climate change requires America and China to cooperate and channel their competition into salvaging the planet rather than seizing its resources. The American people can live with an authoritarian China. They cannot live on an uninhabitable Earth.

Nor should the American people fear a Chinese military attack. Even in East Asia, Chinese forces are not about to displace American ones. The United States has time to assess China’s ambitions and encourage its neighbors to defend themselves. Unremitting hostility may prove self-fulfilling, inducing China to seek to oust the United States military from the region. Although some think containing China offers a rationale for leaving the Middle East, they should think ahead: A new cold war could plunge the United States back into gruesome proxy wars around the world and risk a still deadlier war among the great powers.

Liberal hawks will say the survival of freedom is on the line. One wishes them luck: Having proved powerless to stop Mr. Trump’s rise, they hope to control China’s and bend what follows to their will. A cold war will more likely propel than diminish the forces of illiberalism. Demagogues like Mr. Trump will find it easy to swap the “red scare” for the “yellow peril” and accumulate power to keep the nation safe.

In 1946, Henry Wallace, President Truman’s Commerce Secretary, cautioned that America should stop rearming and acquiring bases around the world. These actions would make the Soviets insecure, ensuring the conflict they meant to prevent. “To other nations,” he counseled, “our foreign policy consists not only of the principles that we advocate but of the actions we take.” Mr. Truman asked Mr. Wallace to resign, and the superpowers launched the first Cold War. Will we avoid a second?

 

...,..

 

"The Cairo Affair"

Books: I listened to the audiobook “The Cairo Affair” by Olen Steinhauer. From Goodreads (here):

Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed.

Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated.

Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game. Foreign agents pass him occasional information, he returns the favor, and everyone's happy. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fall-out wherever it leads.

American analyst Jibril Aziz knows more about Stumbler, a covert operation rejected by the CIA, than anyone. So when it appears someone else has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Jibril alone knows the danger it represents.

As these players converge in Cairo in The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer's masterful manipulations slowly unveil a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed

"The Tale Teller"

Books: I listened to the audiobook “The Tale Teller” by Anne Hillerman. From Goodreads (here):

Legendary Navajo policeman Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn takes center stage in this riveting atmospheric mystery from New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman that combines crime, superstition, and tradition and brings the desert Southwest vividly alive.

Joe Leaphorn may have retired from the Tribal Police, but he finds himself knee-deep in a perplexing case involving a priceless artifact—a reminder of a dark time in Navajo history. Joe’s been hired to find a missing biil, a traditional dress that had been donated to the Navajo Nation. His investigation takes a sinister turn when the leading suspect dies under mysterious circumstances and Leaphorn himself receives anonymous warnings to beware—witchcraft is afoot.

While the veteran detective is busy working to untangle his strange case, his former colleague Jim Chee and Officer Bernie Manuelito are collecting evidence they hope will lead to a cunning criminal behind a rash of burglaries. Their case takes a complicated turn when Bernie finds a body near a popular running trail. The situation grows more complicated when the death is ruled a homicide, and the Tribal cops are thrust into a turf battle because the murder involves the FBI.

As Leaphorn, Chee, and Bernie draw closer to solving these crimes, their parallel investigations begin to merge . . . and offer an unexpected opportunity that opens a new chapter in Bernie’s life

"The First Lady"

Books: I listened to the audiobook “The First Lady” by James Patterson and Brendan Dubois. From Goodreads (here):

"Sir, the First Lady ... has gone rogue."

President Tucker is caught up in a media firestorm. The scandal of his affair has sent shockwaves through his re-election campaign, and threatens to derail everything he has worked for. To win the vote, he needs the First Lady to stand by his side.

But Grace Tucker has a mind of her own.

After years of compromise, unfulfilled promises, deception and betrayal, Grace refuses to give in to her husband's demands. Escaping the city and her Secret Service agents, she is officially off the radar.

But did the First Lady run away? Or is she in far greater danger than anyone could have imagined?

"Cemetery Road"

Books: I listened to the audiobook “Cemetery Road” by Greg Iles. From Goodreads (here):

Sometimes the price of justice is a good man’s soul.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Natchez Burning trilogy returns with an electrifying tale of friendship, betrayal, and shattering secrets that threaten to destroy a small Mississippi town.

“An ambitious stand-alone thriller that is both an absorbing crime story and an in-depth exploration of grief, betrayal and corruption… Iles’s latest calls to mind the late, great Southern novelist Pat Conroy. Like Conroy, Iles writes with passion, intensity and absolute commitment.”
   —  Washington Post

When Marshall McEwan left his Mississippi hometown at eighteen, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington, DC. But as the ascendancy of a chaotic administration lifts him from print fame to television stardom, Marshall discovers that his father is terminally ill, and he must return home to face the unfinished business of his past.

On arrival, he finds Bienville, Mississippi very much changed.  His family’s 150-year-old newspaper is failing; and Jet Turner, the love of his youth, has married into the family of Max Matheson, one of a dozen powerful patriarchs who rule the town through the exclusive Bienville Poker Club.  To Marshall’s surprise, the Poker Club has taken a town on the brink of extinction and offered it salvation, in the form of a billion-dollar Chinese paper mill.  But on the verge of the deal being consummated, two murders rock Bienville to its core, threatening far more than the city’s economic future.

An experienced journalist, Marshall has seen firsthand how the corrosive power of money and politics can sabotage investigations. Joining forces with his former lover—who through her husband has access to the secrets of the Poker Club—Marshall begins digging for the truth behind those murders.  But he and Jet soon discover that the soil of Mississippi is a minefield where explosive secrets can destroy far more than injustice.  The South is a land where everyone hides truths: of blood and children, of love and shame, of hate and murder—of damnation and redemption.  The Poker Club’s secret reaches all the way to Washington, D.C., and could shake the foundations of the U.S. Senate.  But by the time Marshall grasps the long-buried truth about his own history, he would give almost anything not to have to face it

"The Huntress"

Books: I listened to the audiobook “The Huntress” by Kate Quinn. From Goodreads (here):

From the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel, The Alice Network, comes another fascinating historical novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track the Huntress, a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America.

In the aftermath of war, the hunter becomes the hunted…

Bold, reckless Nina Markova grows up on the icy edge of Soviet Russia, dreaming of flight and fearing nothing. When the tide of war sweeps over her homeland, she gambles everything to join the infamous Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on Hitler’s eastern front. But when she is downed behind enemy lines and thrown across the path of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, Nina must use all her wits to survive.

British war correspondent Ian Graham has witnessed the horrors of war from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials. He abandons journalism after the war to become a Nazi hunter, yet one target eludes him: the Huntress. Fierce, disciplined Ian must join forces with brazen, cocksure Nina, the only witness to escape the Huntress alive. But a shared secret could derail their mission, unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.

Seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride grows up in post WWII Boston, determined despite family opposition to become a photographer. At first delighted when her long-widowed father brings home a fiancée, Jordan grows increasingly disquieted by the soft-spoken German widow who seems to be hiding something. Armed only with her camera and her wits, Jordan delves into her new stepmother’s past and slowly realizes there are mysteries buried deep in her family. But Jordan’s search for the truth may threaten all she holds dear.