Tanks v Trade, I: Educating Hegseth (if that's possible)

(Quick post to keep the lights on as I deal with some personal business that keeps me away from more regular blogging. We’ll be back to building complex interdependence without American power soon; this post reiterates the seriousness of that project.)

Cordell Hull, the longest-serving Secretary of State of the United States of America, deserving winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy during WWII and work creating the postwar governance institutions that secured relative peace and significant prosperity for the US and its allies over the next 75 years, while also providing pathways for development that did not exist during the era of overt imperialism:

Free trade dovetails with peace.

So it did, as the most sturdy leg of the Kantian tripod that we will be continuing to explore on this blog over time.

Contrast with Pete Hegseth, newbie man-child very much in over his head:

Hegseth he was “in the business of tanks, not trade.”

Which means war. Particularly when the tough guy who claims to not be in the business of trade also says things like this:

Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension.

The purpose of creating a post-WWII trade system in which we could exchange butter instead of bullets was to make war against each other very costly due to interdependence (current theme of this blog).

I.e., “complicating the defense decision space during times of tension” is the entire goddamn point.

Have we really forgotten that so quickly?

One more “blast from the past” quote regarding the ways in which cross-border economic interdependence can promote peace. The context is the 1950 announcement of a new Europe, organized around mutual benefit rather than zero-sum competition:

The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.

Thus began the European Union, remarkably successful in its primary ambition: to make war between France and Germany not only unthinkable, but materially impossible.

That is the society of states that so many post-communist countries, including Ukraine, was so desperate to join; the society of mutually-beneficial interdependence so thick, so solid, that war is not only unimaginable but impossible. That is still the dream of Europe, and it was once the dream of the United States also.

Let us hope that one day the leaders of the United States will find a similar spirit buried somewhere in the deep depths of their consciences. But, for now, Hegseth is moving in the opposite direction at speed. One might even say he is moving quickly and breaking things. Important things. This makes war between the US and China not only materially possible, but very thinkable.

There is no project in the world more important than the project of maintaining, and deepening, economic interdependence. If the US refuses to participate in that then it is the US that must be isolated, not China.