'How Washington Works' with Joshua Steinman
Added 2022-11-24 03:26:56 +0000 UTCAn interesting talk with former Senior Director for Cyber Policy & Deputy Assistant to President Trump Joshua Steinman about the DC bureaucracy, John Boyd, and China.
You can find Josh at steinman.substack.com and as @JoshuaSteinman on Twitter.
Comments
Lee Kuan Yew was pretty convinced that Taiwan would be annexed by China.
Roy S
2022-12-01 02:27:52 +0000 UTCGreat talk, Steinman seems like a good egg, but I was a little bit frustrated when the topic came to China (to his credit, he did say China wasn't his expertise). China is many things, but there's this weird insinuation that they want to spread communism around the world. China departed from being a proponent of global communism back in the Deng years in the late 70s/early 80s. In all the talk that commentators make about the Chinese investments into Africa, China doesn't try to push partnering countries into becoming any sort of Socialist or Communist state. The Chinese are fairly apathetic to the governmental structures of the countries receiving investment. The only hard red line whatsoever is wrt China's "territorial sovereignty" (Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc). This is a huge distinction from the USSR that many westerners don't get, maybe because they're stuck in an old cold war frame of thinking. Now, the CCP WILL say in their own words that China seeks to become the economic center of the world. That is their long-term goal. But there is simply no rhetoric around exporting revolution. Xi Jinping has been very explicit in his internal speeches to party cadres that Chinese socialism is unique for the Chinese Nation, and that other countries need to choose a system that fits their particular needs (this may be bs rhetoric, but the fact that he's saying this to other CCP members as opposed to the western press is noteworthy). To put things in comparison, the last decade or so of US foreign policy should demonstrate to us that the US is radically *more* fervent in spreading liberalism and other ideologies around the world. USG is incredibly more universalist in their beliefs. They're certainly going to push for changes in the global order that make things more favorable to them. Tiktok should probably be banned in the US. But China is not dreaming that one day kids in Kansas will be carrying around copies of Mao's red book.
hacrus
2022-11-28 17:29:43 +0000 UTC
