Tag Archives: japan

The Power Of Contingency: Why China Didn’t Rule The World

Pomeranz, Kenneth – The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2001) Category: economy, history, world systems; Rating: 5*/5 Summary: Brad DeLong’s review; The Bactra Review; Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? It’s a rare book that not only … Continue reading

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Walled Off By Complexity: Did China Stagnate Because Of Its Writing System?

One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been … Continue reading

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Top 10 Most Powerful Countries In 2011

The Chinese have an interesting concept that quantifies Great Power status, called Comprehensive National Power (CNP). This index is produced by processing the economic, military and cultural factors that make countries powerful: GDP, technological development, number of tanks and ICBM’s, as … Continue reading

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A Response To Vadim Nikitin’s Arguments For The “Liberation” Of Khodorkovsky And The Kuriles

Over at his Foreign Policy Russia blog, and (provocatively?) a few days before Russia’s Unity Day, Vadim Nikitin penned the post Khodorkovsky = Kurils in which he argued for their mutual liberation from the Russian state. Whereas in their time both … Continue reading

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The Endgame Begins

A year ago I predicted that there will be a “decoupling from the unwinding“, as “emerging markets” by and large ride out the temporary shocks of declining Western demand for their exports (China) and the interruption of Western credit intermediation … Continue reading

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SSR #13: China, The Last Superpower

This is the third of my Sublime Strategic Reports (SSRs) covering global trends, regions, and geopolitics. After two hundred years of global ascendancy, the West is in rapid relative decline to (re)emerging Asia, which is mounting a steady “Great Reconvergence”. Likewise, the legitimacy … Continue reading

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The Road to Economic Sovereignty

Review of “Kicking Away the Ladder” (H. Chang) Chang, Ha-Joon – Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) Category: economy; history; industrial policy; Rating: 5/5 Summary: Kicking Away the Ladder:How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have … Continue reading

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Review of “Global Catastrophes and Trends” (V. Smil)

Smil, Vaclav – Global Catastrophes and Trends (2008) Category: futurism, climate change, geopolitics, catastrophes; Rating: 5/5 Summary: Google Books Vaclav Smil, an energy theorist and language connoisseur, brings his talents to bear on this idiosyncratic, incisive and balanced book on … Continue reading

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The Struggle between Europe and Mankind

Though Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) remains more famous for his contributions to the field of linguistics, his other great achievement was as one of the founding fathers of the Eurasian movement. Riding on the dark wave of disillusionment sweeping the world in … Continue reading

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Bitch Slappers of the Next 100 Years

George Friedman at Stratfor is one of my favorite analysts on world geopolitics. This is because he tries to look at the world as it is, without the pointless moralizing, neoliberal ideologizing and end-of-history triumphalism that clouds too much American … Continue reading

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