Happy Thursday.
To be ITK, know this:
How foreign policy amateurs endanger the world: Political appointees have too little experience and too many delusions. Derek Leebaert
+ Why do such bad ideas get injected into the making of U.S. foreign policy, particularly with an ease rarely found in other advanced democracies? Much is due to the political appointments system which the country uses to staff its government, including the national security apparatus. The White House has the responsibility to fill roughly 4,000 senior jobs throughout the federal departments and agencies.
+ When it comes to roles concerning foreign policy and defense, such appointees from outside the executive branch often have more experience in academia, law firms or in business than on the front lines of world affairs.
+ Furthermore, the problem with the system of political patronage goes deep: The influence of cabinet members and nearly all ambassadors can be secondary to that of their subordinates who structure and execute decisions day-to-day at State, the Pentagon and on the NSC staff.
+ Those confirmed by the Senate stay in office for an average of 17 months.
+ A system which depends heavily on short-term officeholders imposes a sense of urgency on itself. And urgency is dangerous when, say, negotiating arms accords.
+ A third limitation of many appointees — shared by cabinet members — is the recurring belief that America can pretty much shape entire geostrategic environments, like the one around Beijing.
+ It’s to the excitements of war and peace that they are drawn. Nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burckhardt called them “emergency men,” and the genre has abounded in Washington.
+ Ultimately, America’s peculiar approach to selecting talent undercuts the ability to handle strategy, let alone grand strategy, which entails unifying long-term ends with the most broad-based means.
+ Derek Leebaert is a founding editor of the Harvard/MIT quarterly International Security, was in the US Marine Corps Reserve, and launched the Swiss management consultancy MAP AG. His last book, Grand Improvisation, won the biennial 2020 Truman Book Award.
What broke Britain? The UK has seemed to be in constant crisis for a few years now. There’s one big reason why. Michael Bluhm
A power balance shifts as Europe, facing a gas crisis, turns to Africa for help: Officials from Algeria to Mozambique say they hope to take advantage of an abrupt change in a long-unequal relationship. NYT
+ European leaders have been converging on Africa’s capital cities, eager to find alternatives to Russian natural gas — sparking hope among their counterparts in Africa that the invasion of Ukraine may tilt the scales in the continent’s unequal relationship with Europe, attracting a new wave of gas investments despite pressure to pivot to renewables.
+ In interviews, African leaders lamented that it had taken a war, thousands of miles away in Ukraine, to give them bargaining power on energy deals, and they described what they saw as a double standard. Europe, after all, used not just natural gas, but far dirtier fuels like coal, for hundreds of years to drive an age of empire-building and industrialization.
+ Their main complaint: Less developed nations should be free to burn more gas in coming years, despite the climate crisis and the need for the world cut back on fossil fuels, because their citizens deserve higher standards of living and greater access to reliable electricity and other basics. But European and international lenders have made it far too costly, Africa’s leaders say.
+ More than 600 million Africans do not have access to power and nearly a billion use firewood and charcoal, fuels that are causing significant respiratory problems and death, to heat their homes and cook.
+ Electrifying every African home could be done by 2030 with investments of just $25 billion a year, according to the International Energy Agency, a fraction of what’s invested in global energy today.
+ The International Energy Agency projected this year that if African countries developed all their known gas reserves, Africa’s contribution to global emissions would only rise to an estimated 3.5 percent from 3 percent.
+ Outside of the continent’s biggest emitters (coal-dependent South Africa, as well as the established oil and gas producers of North Africa) the 47 other African countries combined emit less than even some of Europe’s smaller economies, like Greece.
+ Acknowledging the double standard is just the beginning, African leaders said in interviews. More important, Europe needs to come around to financing African gas projects quickly, and not just with an eye toward exports to Europe.
Ethiopia-Tigray peace talks open in South Africa: DW reports peace talks aimed at ending the two-year-old conflict in the Tigray regions of Ethiopia have begun in Pretoria. The negotiations follow a surge in violence in recent weeks.
China’s Xi Jinping set to give ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy more bite: The Chinese leader is overhauling his foreign policy team with promotions for some of his most loyal and combative envoys, a move likely to embolden his diplomats’ aggressive ethos in confronting the West. WSJ
+ The personnel shuffle, to be completed over the coming months as Xi assigns portfolios for his third leadership term, suggests that Beijing remains committed to an adversarial stance toward Washington, undeterred by rising tensions, experts say.
+ “While Mao relied on violence, and Deng relied on money, Xi is increasingly relying on ideology to legitimize his rule. This certainly constrains the flexibility of Chinese diplomats and diplomacy,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University who studies China’s foreign policy. “There is very little room for alternative, fresh thinking on foreign policy issues. Even if there is, it would not be articulated by people who matter to the person that matters most.”
German exporters rethink €100bn ‘love affair’ with China: Geopolitical tensions, zero-COVID policy, and domestic competition endanger the trading relationship. FT
+ “Expanding in China is not a topic under consideration. It’s about how we can limit the damage,” said Betz, who added that 65 percent of his company’s exports last year were to the country. He blames the decline on slower growth, Beijing’s zero-COVID strategy, and an increasing preference for buying local as Chinese manufacturers catch up with foreign brands.
+ Betz’s experience is becoming more common among Germany’s small and medium-sized enterprises, which are finding their relationships with Chinese partners tested after years of surging sales.
+ Germany’s Mittelstand companies increasingly realise that they cannot rely on Chinese profits as they once did, according to Jörg Wuttke, president of the influential trade lobby EU Chamber of Commerce in China. “It’s a lost love affair,” said Wuttke.
+ Since the turn of the millennium, China has gone from accounting for just over 1 percent of German exports to commanding a 7.5 percent share of sales abroad, putting it second to the US. In 2021, more than €100bn worth of German goods were sold there.
+ Olaf Scholz, who will fly to Beijing next week for his first meeting with Chinese leaders as German chancellor, is set to unveil his new China strategy next year. He is under pressure from his coalition partners, the Greens and the Free Democrats, to loosen ties.
+ Scholz courted controversy when he asked ministries to back an investment from Cosco, a state-owned Chinese shipping conglomerate, in a container terminal at the Port of Hamburg. The deal was approved this week, though Cosco took a smaller-than-planned stake that would limit its capacity to influence decisions.
+ “The China strategy will include clear messages on the need to reduce dependencies and diversify supply chains and trading partners”
+ Berlin has signaled it will offer fewer guarantees to insure companies against political risks in China. Its due diligence law, which comes into force in January and makes larger companies responsible for monitoring human rights violations by their suppliers, could further dissuade German investment in China, which has become increasingly concentrated among carmakers Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler, as well as chemicals giant BASF.
+ The war in Ukraine has focused companies’ minds on the risk of sanctions should China invade Taiwan. US-China decoupling has led many companies to already look for alternative suppliers.
+ The days of China being a “one-way bet” for German companies were done. “They are not pulling out yet, but they are looking at ways to shield their operations from geopolitical headwinds. And some are now preparing for the day when they might have to leave.”
House Republicans have major plans for China Semafor
The new GOP majority’s planned targets would cross multiple committees and include:
- The COVID-19 outbreak
- Export controls targeting industries in China
- Foreign investment by US companies in China
- Global Chinese language and cultural programs known as Confucius institutes
- Changes to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)
- Intellectual property theft by China
Reshoring supply chains
- US policy on Taiwan
- Human rights in China
- China state-owned companies’ purchase of US farmland
- The space race
The real corporate cost of decoupling is becoming clear: Asian chip manufacturers and others recognize they might not be able to straddle the Sino-American divide forever. Leo Lewis
+ The SK Hynix semiconductor plant in the city of Icheon, South Korea. The chipmaker said it was making contingency plans in case US restrictions obliged it to move its operations out of China.
+ The US and China, the head of one global fund believes, we are now in a cold war; the pressure to pick a side is irresistibly mounting in Japan and South Korea; the corporate world must ditch the notion that this will all soon resolve itself without too much fuss.
+ In a call with investors, SK Hynix’s chief marketing officer, Kevin Noh, said that it was making contingency plans for an “extreme situation” in which the restrictions enforced by Washington threatened the operation of Hynix’s huge memory-chip factory in China and obliged a reshoring back to Korea.
+ The chips act, argues Goldman in light of that calculation, should primarily be viewed in the context of US geopolitical strategy: the inferior economics make it difficult for Asian companies to expand their manufacturing footprint in the US, but a cold war might make it a necessity.
+ The problem, explains the Tokyo managing partner of one law firm, is that if you even whisper the phrase cold war, the companies have no choice but to hear that as the end of globalization, in which they are far too invested.
America’s brittle consensus on Ukraine: Pressure on Biden to negotiate with Putin is bound to grow. Edward Luce
+ “Diplomacy” is a taboo word in American politics right now.
+ Yet they were guilty only of speaking out too soon. Wars end in one of two ways: with the unconditional surrender of one party or in a negotiated settlement.
+ As the world’s equal largest nuclear power, Russia’s full capitulation is almost unimaginable. That means the west and Ukraine will eventually have to negotiate an end to this war. That moment has not arrived. But it is probably nearer than most people think.
+ But the situation on the ground — the American ground, that is — will have changed a lot between now and then. Two big factors will weigh on when Biden will try to bring this war to an end
+ The first is Republicans’ probable capture of one or both chambers of Congress in midterm elections in two weeks - he likely next Speaker of the House of Representatives, has warned that Republicans will not provide a “blank check” for Ukraine’s self-defence.
+ The second is that the US will be entering a recession. Economists are virtually unanimous that America will not escape that fate in 2023.
+ The return of Trump in 2024 would be Putin’s ultimate get out of jail free card.
+ In addition to surrender or deal, war has a third outcome — indefinite suspension. The hotter America’s politics becomes, the greater the temptation to freeze Ukraine’s.
Jamaica’s music ban: The Jamaican government has banned certain music, and other cultural broadcasts, in an attempt to curb the country’s issues with violence. Andrew Mueller looks to recent history to explain why this probably won’t work. Monocle
IEA expects global emissions to peak in 2025: FAP reports the International Energy Agency said Wednesday it believes global emissions will peak in 2025 as surging energy prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine propel investment in renewables.
+ Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their efforts to fight climate change have followed through, the UN said.
10 takeaways from Matt Levine’s ‘The Crypto Story’: Bloomberg Businessweek just dropped 40,000 words on you. But at least it’s from one of the best financial writers around! Here’s a cheat sheet. Bloomberg
1. Databases are a foundational part of our existence
2. Crypto is ‘trustless’
3. Wait a sec—crypto runs on trust!
4. Yes, you can create your own cryptocurrency
5. Bitcoin’s appeal as a financial asset is questionable
6. Crypto can’t avoid the real world
7. NFTs take the Bitcoin idea one step further
8. Stablecoins can be deeply unstable
9. Traditional finance people can feel right at home in crypto
10. As our lives move online, crypto could come into its own
FTX is in discussions to raise cash as he scans the devastated crypto sector for acquisition targets.
Are the days of massive profits over for Big Tech? As Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, and Meta, the fabulous five of Silicon Valley, face a grim set of profits, even the mightiest cannot defy the market’s economic gravity. The Times
+ Apple and Microsoft — have become so big that they are worth more combined ($4.1 trillion) than all the 2,000 companies listed in London ($4 trillion).
The pandemic uncovered ways to speed up science: There doesn't have to be a trade-off between good research and fast research. Wired
+ While it usually takes years to test drugs against a new disease, this time it took less than one to find several vaccines and treatments.
+ Once, scientists discovered new strains of viruses only after an outbreak had already happened, but now they were able to use sewage samples to predict outbreaks in advance.
+ Within six months of the outbreak, there were more than 30,000 genome sequences of the coronavirus—whereas in the same amount of time in 2003, scientists were able to get only a single sequence of the SARS virus.
+ This clues us to one way to speed up science: Big institutions, such as governments and international organizations, should collect and share data routinely instead of leaving the burden to small research groups.
To get out of your head, get out of your house: Spending time in nature can help relieve stress and anxiety. Arthur C. Brooks
+ One hundred and sixty years ago, in this magazine, Henry David Thoreau lamented that humankind was losing contact with nature. “Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard,” he wrote, “and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man.”
+ Americans working outdoors fell from 90 percent at the beginning of the 19th century to less than 20 percent at the close of the 20th century.
+ According to the Outdoor Foundation, Americans went on 1 billion fewer outings in nature in 2018 compared with 2008. Today, 85 percent of adults say they spent more time outside when they were kids than children do today.
+ According to US census data, 6.1 percent of the American population resided in urban areas in 1800; in 2000, 79 percent did.
+ Technology is displacing the outdoors in our attention: A 2017 study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives noted that screen time is rising rapidly for all age groups—adults averaged 10 hours and 39 minutes a day in 2016—even as hunting, fishing, camping, and children’s outdoor play have declined substantially.
Get outdoors.
Want an electric Hummer? Be prepared to pay more than $100,000 over the list price.
+ @howardlindzon: “The reason that ‘guru’ is such a popular word is because ‘charlatan’ is so hard to spell.” -- William Bernstein
+ @claresduffy: Meta shares opened Thursday down more than 23%, and below $100 per share, after last night's disappointing earnings $META
Ford posts loss as it takes $2.7 billion charge on Argo driverless-venture: WSJ reports the automaker intends to absorb several hundred workers from the startup, which is shutting down.
Pure autonomous vehicles ain't happening anytime soon, if ever.
Brazil’s election offers even more intense echo of US culture war WP
+ Toxicity and polarization defines the national discourse. While this absolutely could be the United States, we’re talking about Brazil, which, on Sunday, will stage the second round runoff vote in its presidential elections.
+ “That Brazil is mirroring American politics should come as no surprise,” writes Correspondent at Large for The Washington Post Anthony Faiola in a forthcoming piece. “They are both continent-sized, New World countries saddled with unresolved issues over race and the legacy of slavery. They share cultural similarities — from rodeos to evangelical voting blocs — that remain alien to most nations in Western Europe.”
Fundamentals favor Republicans: For much of this cycle, the question has been whether Democrats would be able to defy the traditional midterm fundamentals and make the 2022 election a 'choice' instead of a 'referendum' on the president and his party. Amy Walters
+ With less than two weeks until Election Day, it looks as if the fundamentals — an unpopular president, deep frustration with the status quo, and stubborn inflation — are ultimately going to define this midterm.
+ For Democrats, voter opinions about the economy are the most challenging to overcome.
+ Democrats may be mobilizing their voters with calls to protect democracy and abortion rights, but independent voters are much more focused on their cost of living concerns. There's little that Democrats can do between now and Election Day to make that economic squeeze feel less significant.
+ The roller coaster ride of a 2022 midterm is about to round its last turn. And, while there's still a lot of fluidity as to the final results, the momentum and the issue environment favor the GOP.
Campaign press aides move from the shadows to star on social media: Merely speaking for a candidate and dealing with reporters are not enough for a new breed of influencers, as some pugilistic campaign aides have tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers. NYT
+ With more than 100,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 70,000 others on Instagram, Courtney Holland, the communications director for Adam Laxalt’s Senate campaign, reflects a new breed of campaign aides — those whose online profiles more closely resemble social media influencers than traditional behind-the-scenes press operatives.
+ The shift seizes on the transformation in how American voters receive information about their candidates, and is changing the way campaign press shops function.
+ Both parties are increasingly using social media to build loyalty to a particular political brand, and targeting critics and journalists to energize supporters and drive online contributions.
+ Instead of drafting political positions for their candidates, these staff members take to social media to make their own statements.
+ Holland has shown little interest in dealing with mainstream reporters to shape stories about Nevada’s closely watched Senate race — and she didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.
+ “Influencers are being subsumed into the political apparatus on the right and the left. There has been a blurring of the line between influencers and their positions as staffers that has historically been behind the camera.” -- Samuel C. Woolley, who has studied social media and politics as the project director of the propaganda research team at the University of Texas at Austin.
What’s the inflation rate? It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer: Microeconomic analysis suggests underlying inflation could be as low as 3%; macroeconomic analysis suggests it isn’t. Greg Ip
+ The actual rate of inflation can be hard to gauge due to the many factors.
+ What is the true rate of inflation? There are credible arguments for above 8%, below 3% and almost anything in between.
Bono is still trying to figure out U2 and himself NYT Magazine
Barcelona bet its financial future on the Champions League—and lost in the group stage WSJ
+ For a club that won the Champions League three times between 2008 and 2015, and defined an era in the process, this is more than a humiliation. This European flameout is also a failure that will be measured in tens of millions of euros that won’t wind up in Barcelona’s accounts.
+ “Football is a game of mistakes, and you always have to minimize them. Mistakes are costly in the Champions League.”
12 teams are through to the Champions League last 16:
Bayern (GER)
Benfica (POR)
Chelsea (ENG)
Club Brugge (BEL)
Dortmund (GER)
Inter (ITA)
Liverpool (ENG)
Manchester City (ENG)
Napoli (ITA)
Paris Saint-Germain (FRA)
Porto (POR)
Real Madrid (ESP)
+ The 2022/23 UEFA Champions League last-16 draw takes place on 7 November.
Why Qatar makes this football fan so uneasy: Allowing autocrats to stage a World Cup is wrong, and advice to fans to ‘respect’ their hosts adds to the sadness. David Aaronovitch
+ “Less democracy is sometimes better for organizing a World Cup . . . When you have a very strong head of state . . . that is easier for us organizers than a country such as Germany, where you have to negotiate at different levels.” -- Jérôme Valcke - former secretary general of FIFA
+ " I don’t think I can stomach this one, and I wouldn’t dream of going. Even watching from afar feels horribly like collusion. It’s all a bit sad."
F1: Lewis Hamilton set to extend Mercedes contract beyond next season The Times
+ Lewis Hamilton has confirmed he is taking his Formula One career into the 2024 season.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
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