This post will break the fourth wall a bit. I have been away for the last three months to prepare for my PhD program at the University of Texas at Austin and related work. Mainly, this was preparation for a conference hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies in Richmond, VA, including scrambling to throw together a 6000-word draft (requested unexpectedly).
This was followed by an extended trip through Washington, Philadelphia, and then to Europe by way of Barcelona. I followed a route via high-speed train along the southern Mediterranean, spending time in Marseille, Lyon, Milan, Florence, and Rome. I had never traveled internationally like this, and it seemed like something to do given how much I write about the world.
I fully disconnected from the American news cycle, and tried to fully immerse in the European perspective, as much as I could, on the world and the United States. My 30,000-foot view is Europeans are concerned about the U.S. and understand that our current chaos is basically a phase. And there is sympathy. Southern Europe in particular is experiencing the same anxieties around immigration and cultural change, only more acute given the cultural distinctiveness of European countries in comparison to a melting pot like the United States.
Italy has a “right-wing” nationalist government, and the Alternative for Germany party has made significant gains (which the German government, for obvious historical reasons, finds concerning). Italy temporarily withdrew from the European Union’s customs union (the Schengen Area) over the surge of Moroccans into the Spanish city of Ceuta. But that was likely a political move for an Italian audience; Ceuta is on the African mainland, and breathless concerns about an “invasion” of Europe are background noise.
While I was there, nothing major seemed to change the major trends in the U.S. policy landscape, or around the world really. The two major conflicts, Ukraine vs Russia and the US vs Iran, continued on the same course. Russia keeps signaling escalations in Ukraine, but really it’s been more of the same as Russia bombards civilian targets with no military value and Ukraine uses its emerging mastery of autonomous warfare to turn the strategic tide in its favor.
The Iran war continues mostly at a stalemate, with the U.S. unable (and unwilling) to muster the force needed to force a surrender, and Iran continuing to lock down the Strait of Hormuz and waiting out a potential change in the U.S. presidency. Oil prices continue to fluctuate on this, but they will likely stay elevated for the foreseeable future.
What I find to be the most interesting story, and the one that is central to my research at UT Austin, is the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, and the emergence of “economic statecraft” as central to U.S. foreign policy. This began in fits and starts, with the Obama second term introducing some of the first measures to address China’s “unfair” trade practices. These tools expanded dramatically under both Trump terms and the Biden administration, as terrorism receded as the organizing issue of U.S. foreign policy and “great power competition” took its place.
China has traditionally had a more holistic view of its security, rather than separating economic, foreign policy, policing, and military issues into separate buckets as in the United States. But this is definitely a place where the U.S. is converging on a more China-like approach. Ironic, given that integrating the Chinese economy with the rest of the world was done with the intent of making China a more western-style free market economy.
The word that’s emerged for this is “geoeconomics” and its basically at the front edge of where international relations scholars are. Whatever you call it, there is definitely a broad change from the U.S. approach to trade since the end of the Cold War, where trade is considered within the context of national security. It’s an ongoing trend that is definitely accelerating at the moment, and one I’ll be covering more frequently going forward.