Geopolitics

Chronocentrist bias notwithstanding, I feel like we are truly living through a pivotal moment in History, as the pendulum forcefully swings away from the most progressive era on human record toward, well, the great unknown. A nine-part thread 🧵

Aviator, diver, Etherean, nexialist, PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Specifically, I feel like we're reaching the end of a liminal period in time, bookended on one side by the hubristic Western confidence of the triumphant post-Cold War period, best embodied by the fall of the Berlin wall (to the tune of The Scorpions' "Winds of Change") and Fukuyama's End of History; and, on the other, by the most recent indiscriminate and shameless reexamination of every 20th-century dogma about domestic politics, economic theory, foreign affairs, national identity, territorial sovereignty, the concept of money, and more. 2/9

But what I am referring to is extending now beyond the mere postmortem tremors of a defunct Soviet empire. In South America, Milei defied expectations with a radical approach to fiscal turnaround, and so did Bukele with both his extrajudicial crackdown on gangs and subsersive experiment in crypto sovereignty. Both of them enjoyed apparent successes, which are further comforting others in risking unorthodox stances. 4/9

In the US, the incoming administration is not just shifting the Overton window, it's tearing down the whole load-bearing wall around it. Should we stop fluorinating the water? Declare national emergency to impose tariffs? Shut down three out of every four federal agencies? How about we just grab Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, and overthrow the British and German governments in favor of political outsiders while we're at it? 5/9

Nothing is off-limits anymore, and unlike in 2016, any "woke" voice that dissents gets ignored like an out-of-touch relic of a bygone era. And the show hasn't even begun: the inauguration is in 11 days. The US may end up looking quite different in four years, with perhaps 60 or more states and half a billion citizens, or an internal secession, or neither — who knows. 6/9

As I observe these radical departures from established norms, I try to avoid tying myself to a typical "blue vs red" analytical lens. Instead, I see two alternative takes. One is to prudently remind ourselves of Santanaya's adage: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It *may* be virtuous for leaders to take a tabula rasa approach to domestic and international affairs, and question absolutely everything; as long as they are informed by a strong moral compass and an educated understanding of History. You be the judge of whether there is enough of both right now. 7/9

The other take is to give experimenters, no matter how radical, the benefit of the doubt. I am reminded of Henry Ford's argument against so-called "best practices" a century ago (1922): "I am not particularly anxious for the men to remember what someone else has tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done. That is one of the troubles with extensive records. If you keep on recording all of your failures, you will shortly have a list showing that there is nothing left for you to try — whereas it by no means follows that because one man has failed in a certain method, another man will not succeed." 8/9

To be frank, I don't yet know where these two positions (broadly, the prudent and the bold) stand in relation to each other on the Bell curve wojak meme. It will become obvious in hindsight, and there will be enough of one camp or the other to tweet "I told you so".

All I know is that more than ever before, I feel ambivalent about the near future. I have no idea which branch it will take, nor which ones are best (or least worst) for the world. I can only intuit that we will look back on this period in time as a historical inflection point, and not only due to the technological asymptote on the horizon. 9/9 🎬

9/11 was arguably the first major Western event to chip away at the post-Cold War certainties, reminding us that History is less Fukuyama than it is Huntington. To those paying attention, the 1992 Bosnian War and the 1998 Kosovo War were leading indicators that the world order was not as settled as we had assumed. The 2008 Georgia War and the 2022 Ukraine War are merely further evidence of that erosion. 3/9