Is my memory wrong or has it not been the U.S. warning China that China “must handle the Taiwan issue with utmost caution” if it didn’t want to wind up in a conflict?
Today, I have two reasons to have second thoughts about my profound pessimism: Trump going against expectations in China, and Trump's negative polling on economic issues is even worse than economic data would normally suggest.
Great piece. However, to your statement that, "maybe Trump has more in the way of non-zero-sum impulses than is commonly recognized," I would add, maybe in a parallel universe.
I don't know. He's done business deals. Those are typically non-zero-sum, even if Trump likes to emphasize their zero-sum dimension, saying he got the better of whoever he's dealing with.
That, "Trump likes to emphasize their zero-sum dimension," is exactly what I was alluding to. A more elegant framing might be James Carse's distinction between finite and infinite games. In my observation Trump most often plays the former while dissembling with lip service to the latter.
Well, remember, there *is* a zero-sum dimension within many non-zero-games, including most business deals. If a car is worth $5K to me (i.e. that's the most I'll pay) and a dealer makes money at anything over $4K, the bargaining between 4 and 5 is zero-sum. And if Trump buys the car for 4.01K (maybe after lying to the dealer and claiming he can get it for 3.9 somewhere else), he kind of did get the better of the dealer--even though the deal remains non zero sum since both considered it better than no deal at all. The difference between Trump and most businesspeople is that he always claims he got the better of the other person--most businesspeople don't say that out loud even if they think it's true.
I'm with Bob on the intransigence of the Blob and the desirability of sidelining it. My concern here is that the quid pro quo that likely got transacted is that Xi offered to pressure Iran to open the Strait in exchange for Trump backing away from Taiwan once the new chip fabs in the US make the island expendable. The downside of global governance is that the little guys will get squashed in the name of "peace and stability" and although that may be realpolotik, it's a bit depressing.
I don't think Iran will give up the toll gate under any pressure China is willing to exert. As for the little guys: Little guys get a bad deal in pretty much any scenario; power matters in a condition of governance and in a condition of anarchy. But *good* governance (as I define it, at least) is better for the little guy than anarchy.
It would be amazing if Trump stumbled into something that increased international cooperation. I'm afraid his basic instincts will make it unlikely. As for the NYT and WP always reporting negatively on him, it's hard not to when little he says is the truth or doesn't even make sense. I've definitely come to pay more attention to and believe what is said by other governments than what comes out of this administration.
Bob, I think you're confusing damage control with strategic insight here. Xi's invocation of the "Thucydides Trap" isn't a call for cooperation between equals. It's China announcing the power transition. Rising power (China) and declining hegemon (USA) should avoid war. That framing asks the US to accept subordinate position gracefully, to "make space" for China's rise.
Trump didn't choose this position from wisdom. He's negotiating from weakness after self-inflicted catastrophes: Iran War (nuclear Iran now guaranteed, Strait of Hormuz closed, allies refusing cooperation), trade war losses (China's rare earths and industrial leverage), abandonment of Ukraine (whose support we now need for drone defenses).
There's a difference between Bismarck choosing constraint from strength and operating from an exhausted position after destroying your own leverage. The first is strategic restraint. The second is forced retreat.
You're right the summit could have been worse and that cooperation beats confrontation. But you also note Trump might invade Cuba "next week." That's the pattern I trace in my Iron Laws essay: humiliated powers don't learn through defeat alone. Without institutional reform, they prepare revanchism. Germany after WWI didn't accept limits.
It's good that this summit avoided escalation. But it's not Trump "recognizing limits." Xi is actually telling Trump what the limits are, from a position where Trump has no choice but to accept them.
Managed multipolarity (post-1945: institutions, frameworks, strength maintained) looks very different from chaotic adjustment after abandoning your allies and exhausting your leverage.
China has 4x the population of the United States. The idea that we were going to indefinitely be the world's sole superpower was always a fantasy. It's good that this transition is happening peacefully.
Even if they stop at 50% of our GDP on a per-capita basis, their economy will be well larger than ours, simply because their population is so massive.
India is also less divided than the US and has a sense of national self-confidence and patriotism that the US does not have. Indians reflexively defend India; Americans reflexively criticize the United States.
The standard critique — careerism, material interests, ideology — doesn't explain the most puzzling feature: why failed prophecy strengthens rather than weakens conviction.
The better framework is theological. The Blob runs on providentialism, covenant, and theodicy of failure. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan are not refutations. They are tests of faith.
Interesting theological framing, but I think you're describing the symptom, not the cause.
The Blob is Ben Rhodes' term for the intervention/regime-change hubris of US foreign policy establishment. It doesn't treat failures as "tests of faith" but rather as execution problems. "Iraq failed because we didn't commit enough" becomes "next time we'll do it right."
This isn't providentialism. It's what my Iron Laws of Strength essay traces historically: leaders mistaking appetite for strategy, abandoning constraints, ignoring accumulated wisdom about sustainable power. Athens did it (Melos → Sicily catastrophe). Germany did it (Wilhelm abandoning Bismarck → WWI). Japan did it too. Trump just did it in Iran.
The pattern isn't theological conviction surviving refutation. It's each generation thinking they've transcended the old rules, then repeating the error. Trump's Iran War was peak Blob thinking. His forced retreat from the wreckage isn't anti-Blob wisdom. It's the Blob pattern completing: hubris → catastrophe → consequences.
Fair point on hubris as universal pattern — Athens, Germany, Japan all fit.
But it doesn't explain why the American variant specifically survives institutional correction. Athens lost and stopped. The Blob loses and rotates — same people, same framework, next intervention.
And "execution problems, not doctrine" — that is the theodicy structure. When the Blob says "Iraq failed because of execution problems" — wrong generals, insufficient troops, bad de-Baathification decisions — the doctrine of liberal intervention is preserved intact. The framework didn't fail. The world failed to cooperate with the framework.
Also — providentialism is just one piece. The article covers the full theological package: covenant, witness as duty, Manichaean dualism, theodicy. The Blob isn't just hubristic. It's a church.
Providentialism was frequently featured in discussions of European political and intellectual elites seeking to justify imperialism in the 19th century, on the grounds that the suffering caused by European conquest was justified under the grounds of furthering God's plan and spreading Christianity and civilization to distant nations.
You're pushing me to be more precise. I think there are several overlapping factors:
1. Catastrophic defeat matters. US lost wars but society/elites didn't face existential consequences. Costs externalized to soldiers and foreign populations, not decision-makers.
2. Wilsonian providentialism. Goes back to 1918—'make world safe for democracy' as national mission. That's the theological structure you're identifying. It predates Israel lobby, explains Vietnam/Korea, persists across partisan changes. Niebuhr warned about exactly this in The Irony of American History (1952): Americans "playing God to history," believing providence justified their power. But Niebuhr's Christian realism was about restraint from recognizing human fallibility, not license for intervention.
3. Post-1945 hegemonic role. US built the international order and defending it became institutional mission. When order succeeds (Cold War), it validates interventionist impulse. When it fails (Iraq), theodicy kicks in ('execution problem, not doctrine'). There was some correction after Vietnam. Telling detail: Morgenthau and Kennan, founding realists of the post-1945 order, both later opposed Vietnam and Iraq, warning against the militarization they saw emerging. My Iron Laws essays covers this pattern.
4. Material interests. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. Defense contractors, think tanks, revolving door create rational incentives for persistence independent of strategic necessity.
5. Democratic accountability failure. Voters elect candidates promising restraint (Trump 2016: "no more endless wars"), those candidates appoint the same hawks (Bolton, Pompeo, Miller), then abandon frameworks (JCPOA) and launch regime change wars (Iran). Voters can't escape the structure even when they vote against it.
6. Executive power concentration. Constitutional design gave Congress war powers as check on executive adventurism. That constraint has eroded (Korea, Vietnam, War Powers Act ignored, post-9/11 AUMF blank check). Presidents now launch wars on 48 hours notice without congressional deliberation. Removes key reality-testing mechanism Founders built in. Nuclear age makes this harder.
7. Special interests. Israel security doctrine and lobby creates specific Middle East constituency (AIPAC, Christian Zionism), but doesn't explain non-Middle East interventions.
Your theological frame captures the discourse (Wilsonian providentialism, American exceptionalism). My institutional frame explains persistence (no catastrophic defeat, bipartisan consensus, material incentives, democratic capture, executive power unchecked).
So maybe: The Blob is a church (you're right), and its founding scripture is Wilsonian providentialism (1918), institutionalized post-1945, sustained by material interests (Eisenhower's warning), protected from correction by externalized costs and captured democracy.
One last point: Wright calls the NYT reporter critiquing Trump's weakened position a 'Blob' member. But that inverts the meaning. The Blob is about intervention hubris—believing US force can reshape countries. Trump just did textbook Blob: Iran regime change through decapitation. It failed catastrophically. The reporter noting Trump now negotiates from weakness was just observing the consequences. Wright celebrates the Blob's forced retreat as 'anti-Blob wisdom.' But retreating after your intervention fails isn't transcending the Blob—it's the Blob pattern completing.
You have material on this. Are you writing/drafting something on this topic?
I think we’re converging.
Your seven-factor model shows why the Blob won't die—it’s about externalized costs, a broken democracy, and unchecked executive power. My theological take explains their mindset and why they’re incapable of learning. They’re almost two sides of the same coin.
What is interesting about this theological mindset is that it is probably unconscious — not doctrine deliberately chosen, but cultural inheritance so thoroughly absorbed it is no longer recognised as inheritance at all.
That Niebuhr point hits the nail on the head. "Americans playing God to history" is the perfect way to describe their messianic complex. The fact that they ignored him just proves the point.
You might like my article on George Kennan and the X article and how his careful doctrine of containment got militarized; it is a tragic story ending with 58,000 American dead in Vietnam.
I think you kinda nailed it with Mr. Trump & China. But another element of contemporary punditry that seems odd to me is focusing on Trump's weird destructive behavior, while completely ignoring Mr. Xi's weird destructive behavior. Just saying.
I see a lot of dark assessments of Xi in mainstream discourse. China hawkism remains pretty strong in the foreign policy establishment and elsewhere, and part of that is seeing him as disturbingly authoritarian and repressive. But if you're asking why he's not depicted as crazy in the way Trump is depicted as crazy, I think the answer is that he's not crazy in the way Trump is crazy.
Yeah, "weird" is probably the wrong adjective for Xi. Other than apparently making zero plans for departure, his governance seems very competent. Excellent tactics. Not so sure about strategy, but perhaps that's intrinsic in the system he lives within?
Volumes are written in the West about Xi's oppression of his western fringes, authoritarian tones in Hong Kong, threats towards Taiwan, even a shaky economy. But I believe he is consciously drumming up a chorus of dangerous indigenous jingoism, and I read little about it.
Is my memory wrong or has it not been the U.S. warning China that China “must handle the Taiwan issue with utmost caution” if it didn’t want to wind up in a conflict?
"New York Times reporter David Sanger, the dean of Blob scribes, also depicted the summit as a kind of comedown for America..."
Love this line! The "dean of Blob scribes..." made me giggle. It's so Bob!
Today, I have two reasons to have second thoughts about my profound pessimism: Trump going against expectations in China, and Trump's negative polling on economic issues is even worse than economic data would normally suggest.
tarrific Bob.
Great piece. However, to your statement that, "maybe Trump has more in the way of non-zero-sum impulses than is commonly recognized," I would add, maybe in a parallel universe.
I don't know. He's done business deals. Those are typically non-zero-sum, even if Trump likes to emphasize their zero-sum dimension, saying he got the better of whoever he's dealing with.
That, "Trump likes to emphasize their zero-sum dimension," is exactly what I was alluding to. A more elegant framing might be James Carse's distinction between finite and infinite games. In my observation Trump most often plays the former while dissembling with lip service to the latter.
Well, remember, there *is* a zero-sum dimension within many non-zero-games, including most business deals. If a car is worth $5K to me (i.e. that's the most I'll pay) and a dealer makes money at anything over $4K, the bargaining between 4 and 5 is zero-sum. And if Trump buys the car for 4.01K (maybe after lying to the dealer and claiming he can get it for 3.9 somewhere else), he kind of did get the better of the dealer--even though the deal remains non zero sum since both considered it better than no deal at all. The difference between Trump and most businesspeople is that he always claims he got the better of the other person--most businesspeople don't say that out loud even if they think it's true.
This peaceful coexistence will not last. And trump will just see this meeting as a green light to extort neighbours and allies.
I'm with Bob on the intransigence of the Blob and the desirability of sidelining it. My concern here is that the quid pro quo that likely got transacted is that Xi offered to pressure Iran to open the Strait in exchange for Trump backing away from Taiwan once the new chip fabs in the US make the island expendable. The downside of global governance is that the little guys will get squashed in the name of "peace and stability" and although that may be realpolotik, it's a bit depressing.
I don't think Iran will give up the toll gate under any pressure China is willing to exert. As for the little guys: Little guys get a bad deal in pretty much any scenario; power matters in a condition of governance and in a condition of anarchy. But *good* governance (as I define it, at least) is better for the little guy than anarchy.
It would be amazing if Trump stumbled into something that increased international cooperation. I'm afraid his basic instincts will make it unlikely. As for the NYT and WP always reporting negatively on him, it's hard not to when little he says is the truth or doesn't even make sense. I've definitely come to pay more attention to and believe what is said by other governments than what comes out of this administration.
Bob, I think you're confusing damage control with strategic insight here. Xi's invocation of the "Thucydides Trap" isn't a call for cooperation between equals. It's China announcing the power transition. Rising power (China) and declining hegemon (USA) should avoid war. That framing asks the US to accept subordinate position gracefully, to "make space" for China's rise.
Trump didn't choose this position from wisdom. He's negotiating from weakness after self-inflicted catastrophes: Iran War (nuclear Iran now guaranteed, Strait of Hormuz closed, allies refusing cooperation), trade war losses (China's rare earths and industrial leverage), abandonment of Ukraine (whose support we now need for drone defenses).
There's a difference between Bismarck choosing constraint from strength and operating from an exhausted position after destroying your own leverage. The first is strategic restraint. The second is forced retreat.
You're right the summit could have been worse and that cooperation beats confrontation. But you also note Trump might invade Cuba "next week." That's the pattern I trace in my Iron Laws essay: humiliated powers don't learn through defeat alone. Without institutional reform, they prepare revanchism. Germany after WWI didn't accept limits.
It's good that this summit avoided escalation. But it's not Trump "recognizing limits." Xi is actually telling Trump what the limits are, from a position where Trump has no choice but to accept them.
Managed multipolarity (post-1945: institutions, frameworks, strength maintained) looks very different from chaotic adjustment after abandoning your allies and exhausting your leverage.
China has 4x the population of the United States. The idea that we were going to indefinitely be the world's sole superpower was always a fantasy. It's good that this transition is happening peacefully.
If population was the criteria India would be a superpower
Give them some time to get their per capita GDP up. India's economy is currently skyrocketing.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-worldbank-constant-usd?tab=line&country=~IND&mapSelect=~IND
Point taken, but sustainability as they approach our GDP is doubtful.
Even if they stop at 50% of our GDP on a per-capita basis, their economy will be well larger than ours, simply because their population is so massive.
India is also less divided than the US and has a sense of national self-confidence and patriotism that the US does not have. Indians reflexively defend India; Americans reflexively criticize the United States.
That is unlikely unless their rate of population increase slows to match ours.
Been stucked on Blob reference:)
The standard critique — careerism, material interests, ideology — doesn't explain the most puzzling feature: why failed prophecy strengthens rather than weakens conviction.
The better framework is theological. The Blob runs on providentialism, covenant, and theodicy of failure. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan are not refutations. They are tests of faith.
Written today: https://substack.com/inbox/post/198030317
Interesting theological framing, but I think you're describing the symptom, not the cause.
The Blob is Ben Rhodes' term for the intervention/regime-change hubris of US foreign policy establishment. It doesn't treat failures as "tests of faith" but rather as execution problems. "Iraq failed because we didn't commit enough" becomes "next time we'll do it right."
This isn't providentialism. It's what my Iron Laws of Strength essay traces historically: leaders mistaking appetite for strategy, abandoning constraints, ignoring accumulated wisdom about sustainable power. Athens did it (Melos → Sicily catastrophe). Germany did it (Wilhelm abandoning Bismarck → WWI). Japan did it too. Trump just did it in Iran.
The pattern isn't theological conviction surviving refutation. It's each generation thinking they've transcended the old rules, then repeating the error. Trump's Iran War was peak Blob thinking. His forced retreat from the wreckage isn't anti-Blob wisdom. It's the Blob pattern completing: hubris → catastrophe → consequences.
Fair point on hubris as universal pattern — Athens, Germany, Japan all fit.
But it doesn't explain why the American variant specifically survives institutional correction. Athens lost and stopped. The Blob loses and rotates — same people, same framework, next intervention.
And "execution problems, not doctrine" — that is the theodicy structure. When the Blob says "Iraq failed because of execution problems" — wrong generals, insufficient troops, bad de-Baathification decisions — the doctrine of liberal intervention is preserved intact. The framework didn't fail. The world failed to cooperate with the framework.
Also — providentialism is just one piece. The article covers the full theological package: covenant, witness as duty, Manichaean dualism, theodicy. The Blob isn't just hubristic. It's a church.
Btw, wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providentialism) has nise relevant paragraph:
Providentialism was frequently featured in discussions of European political and intellectual elites seeking to justify imperialism in the 19th century, on the grounds that the suffering caused by European conquest was justified under the grounds of furthering God's plan and spreading Christianity and civilization to distant nations.
You're pushing me to be more precise. I think there are several overlapping factors:
1. Catastrophic defeat matters. US lost wars but society/elites didn't face existential consequences. Costs externalized to soldiers and foreign populations, not decision-makers.
2. Wilsonian providentialism. Goes back to 1918—'make world safe for democracy' as national mission. That's the theological structure you're identifying. It predates Israel lobby, explains Vietnam/Korea, persists across partisan changes. Niebuhr warned about exactly this in The Irony of American History (1952): Americans "playing God to history," believing providence justified their power. But Niebuhr's Christian realism was about restraint from recognizing human fallibility, not license for intervention.
3. Post-1945 hegemonic role. US built the international order and defending it became institutional mission. When order succeeds (Cold War), it validates interventionist impulse. When it fails (Iraq), theodicy kicks in ('execution problem, not doctrine'). There was some correction after Vietnam. Telling detail: Morgenthau and Kennan, founding realists of the post-1945 order, both later opposed Vietnam and Iraq, warning against the militarization they saw emerging. My Iron Laws essays covers this pattern.
4. Material interests. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. Defense contractors, think tanks, revolving door create rational incentives for persistence independent of strategic necessity.
5. Democratic accountability failure. Voters elect candidates promising restraint (Trump 2016: "no more endless wars"), those candidates appoint the same hawks (Bolton, Pompeo, Miller), then abandon frameworks (JCPOA) and launch regime change wars (Iran). Voters can't escape the structure even when they vote against it.
6. Executive power concentration. Constitutional design gave Congress war powers as check on executive adventurism. That constraint has eroded (Korea, Vietnam, War Powers Act ignored, post-9/11 AUMF blank check). Presidents now launch wars on 48 hours notice without congressional deliberation. Removes key reality-testing mechanism Founders built in. Nuclear age makes this harder.
7. Special interests. Israel security doctrine and lobby creates specific Middle East constituency (AIPAC, Christian Zionism), but doesn't explain non-Middle East interventions.
Your theological frame captures the discourse (Wilsonian providentialism, American exceptionalism). My institutional frame explains persistence (no catastrophic defeat, bipartisan consensus, material incentives, democratic capture, executive power unchecked).
So maybe: The Blob is a church (you're right), and its founding scripture is Wilsonian providentialism (1918), institutionalized post-1945, sustained by material interests (Eisenhower's warning), protected from correction by externalized costs and captured democracy.
One last point: Wright calls the NYT reporter critiquing Trump's weakened position a 'Blob' member. But that inverts the meaning. The Blob is about intervention hubris—believing US force can reshape countries. Trump just did textbook Blob: Iran regime change through decapitation. It failed catastrophically. The reporter noting Trump now negotiates from weakness was just observing the consequences. Wright celebrates the Blob's forced retreat as 'anti-Blob wisdom.' But retreating after your intervention fails isn't transcending the Blob—it's the Blob pattern completing.
You have material on this. Are you writing/drafting something on this topic?
I think we’re converging.
Your seven-factor model shows why the Blob won't die—it’s about externalized costs, a broken democracy, and unchecked executive power. My theological take explains their mindset and why they’re incapable of learning. They’re almost two sides of the same coin.
What is interesting about this theological mindset is that it is probably unconscious — not doctrine deliberately chosen, but cultural inheritance so thoroughly absorbed it is no longer recognised as inheritance at all.
That Niebuhr point hits the nail on the head. "Americans playing God to history" is the perfect way to describe their messianic complex. The fact that they ignored him just proves the point.
And your take on Trump and Iran is spot on.
You might like my article on George Kennan and the X article and how his careful doctrine of containment got militarized; it is a tragic story ending with 58,000 American dead in Vietnam.
I think you kinda nailed it with Mr. Trump & China. But another element of contemporary punditry that seems odd to me is focusing on Trump's weird destructive behavior, while completely ignoring Mr. Xi's weird destructive behavior. Just saying.
I see a lot of dark assessments of Xi in mainstream discourse. China hawkism remains pretty strong in the foreign policy establishment and elsewhere, and part of that is seeing him as disturbingly authoritarian and repressive. But if you're asking why he's not depicted as crazy in the way Trump is depicted as crazy, I think the answer is that he's not crazy in the way Trump is crazy.
Yeah, "weird" is probably the wrong adjective for Xi. Other than apparently making zero plans for departure, his governance seems very competent. Excellent tactics. Not so sure about strategy, but perhaps that's intrinsic in the system he lives within?
Volumes are written in the West about Xi's oppression of his western fringes, authoritarian tones in Hong Kong, threats towards Taiwan, even a shaky economy. But I believe he is consciously drumming up a chorus of dangerous indigenous jingoism, and I read little about it.