Is Trump embracing aggressive withdrawal?

[Mikebert]

(03-02-2017, 09:40 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

Quote:According to M&T what sets up a country for future leader role is beginning a new K-wave.

I'm sorry, just so we are clear, am I to understand that you are abandoning this claim?  Because M&T absolutely did not say this.

Yes. After thinking about it I realized that was my take.

Quote:No, I would expect the M&T macrodecision phase to start about when they said it would.

M&T put together the elements of their model in the late 1970's and 1980's.  The USSR was still around then, and Japan was a rising economic power.  The European countries still had big economies.  Remember the MD phase involves a challenger making a bid  for leadership against a collation that includes the old and new leader.  It was entirely possible that at the end of the MD phase the "winner" would be China who had grown all during that period.  But with the collapse of the USSR and the lack of great power behavior on the part of the other rich country who have had a US as the only country playing the game.  So to even have an MD phase the new leader (China?) will have to play the role of challenger. 

In that case they have to be strong at the start of the phase like the challengers before (Spain, France, Germany).  Future hegemons do not have to be all that strong at the beginning.  In 1689 Britain was weaker than France. Even in 1792 they were still not stronger than France, about even.  But during the war they pulled well ahead.

Although America was the economically strongest in 1914 it was neither the financial not military powerhouse that it would be by the end of the MD phase.  In contrast both France and Germany would at their strongest in terms of economic/military share at the beginning of the phase--which is why they were able to play the role of challenger in the first place.  China is not ready to take on the US and allies in a war analogous to the War of Grand Alliance or WW I.

I came to this stuff in the late 1990's.  At this point it was clear that China would not be ready to play a challenger role in the classic sense.  More likely would be for them to wait for us to collapse like the Soviets did, which I considered to be a MD event.  My argument was with the existence of nukes old-style great power coalition wars had become a thing of the past. The US in the 1990's was in a new Global power phase to end around 2008 and followed by a DC/AS phase over 2008-2026 when China would make a bid for regional dominance--maybe acquire Taiwan if it could be done peacefully like HK (artificial islands never occurred to me).  And that is what the are doing.