Tag: Imperialism

The New Tsar

Mike Coté6 Comments

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine stems not from Soviet nostalgia, but a deeper desire for Russian Imperium. How should the West respond?

As you likely have seen, the predicted invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has indeed come to pass. It has only been a few days, and the fog of war is still thick on the ground, but the invasion seems to be total and the resistance has been fierce. Russian forces have attacked all across the country, from the coastal cities of Odessa and Mariupol, to the northern areas around Kharkiv and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to the capital of Kyiv itself. Ukraine’s defense has been stronger than many observers – including the Russians – had anticipated, and acts of heroism have been reported widely. The war is moving very quickly, and the facts on the ground may have even changed by the time you read this; as such, this piece is not meant to be an exhaustive update on the military situation in Ukraine – there are far more knowledgeable people than I writing about that. What I can do, however, is explain and correct a key misconception in how many Western pundits and politicians – President Biden included – view Vladimir Putin’s motivations for this attack. They are correct in seeing Putin as driven by historical factors and nostalgia for past glory, but they ascribe that longing to the wrong era. He looks not to the Cold War of the 20th century, but to the Great Power conflict of the 19th. The Russian President does not seek to become the leader of a revived Soviet Union, but a new Tsar. That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but it isn’t; understanding this historic rationale and properly contextualizing it can help us better understand Putin’s worldview, learn a great deal about his future ambitions, and determine how best to respond to this unprovoked invasion.

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Book Review: The China Nightmare

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This monograph on the China threat is a must-read for anyone interested in the defining challenge of the 21st century.

The rise of a militarily and economically aggressive China and its impact on global politics is the biggest issue in all of international relations. This impacts the United States significantly, as China is a clear and present challenge to American global hegemony and the liberal world order that was cemented after the Cold War. Dan Blumenthal’s book The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State is an excellent primer on the China challenge, delving into the history of Chinese imperialism, the political theories of Chinese Communists, and the impacts of those ideas and events on the policies and actions embraced and promulgated by the Chinese government today. It is a fantastic overview of the problem and how America should respond, and – while quite detailed – it still retains an accessibility that other modern policy books can lack.

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Compared to What?

Mike Coté6 Comments

A plea for context.

In our modern Western society, a disturbing trend has become incredibly prominent in the media, education, and common discourse: the complete decontextualization of historic and current events so as to present the West as uniquely evil or especially horrible. One often sees this coming from people – usually on the political left – who use it as a cudgel to demean modern Western societies as part of a project of radical change to those very societies. This seems to be more present in the Anglosphere than in other developed societies. Much of the radical activism we’ve seen over the past year or two has emanated from the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia, where statues have been toppled, history decried as uniquely genocidal, and modern societies seen as evil and immoral simply for existing in previously-colonized lands. Don’t get me wrong, all nations have blemishes and blights on their histories and each and every country has injustices in the modern day; still, these cannot be understood in a vacuum or without context.

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Yellen’s Folly

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The newly-proposed Global Minimum Corporate Tax is an impracticable plan that diminishes American economic sovereignty and competitiveness.

As I write this post, American officials are meeting with their counterparts from the UK, France, Japan, Italy, Canada, and Germany at the G7 Summit currently underway in Cornwall, UK. One of the main issues they are discussing is the promulgation of what they are calling a ‘global minimum corporate tax’, which would involve all seven of the world’s wealthiest democracies agreeing to not move corporate taxes below 15% so as to better capture the profits of large multinational corporations. When I first read that the Biden administration – and particularly Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen – was seeking to push this international agreement on taxes, I was flabbergasted at the fact that any American administration would think this is a good idea. There are several reasons for my skepticism, many of which were expertly laid out by the Wall Street Journal, but this post will focus on one major issue that’s dear to my heart: the fact that the agreement necessarily diminishes American sovereignty for no good purpose.

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