Coercive Diplomacy
June 18, 2023 10:25 AM Subscribe
Coercive diplomacy [PDF], "where international politics often takes place in a gray region involving no-peace and no-war, wherein the threat of violence – more than its mere application – is the critical variable," is everywhere. China recently published a laundry list of the US' efforts, while China's are also well-known, if less-than-effective.
Related:
‘Complete denial’: Europe largely blind to Chinese influence, says EU adviser [Politico]
Chinese propaganda is surprisingly effective abroad [The Economist]
Related:
‘Complete denial’: Europe largely blind to Chinese influence, says EU adviser [Politico]
Chinese propaganda is surprisingly effective abroad [The Economist]
Also known as "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
posted by moonbiter at 12:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by moonbiter at 12:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
When, exactly, was that not what diplomacy is?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:13 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:13 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
(I should have worked Clausewitz into that.)
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:36 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:36 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's better than the other kind, where we just beat the shit out of 'em.
There's probably another kind of diplomacy that I haven't thought of, but no one else has either, so it's either coerce 'em or beat them like a rented mule.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:23 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
There's probably another kind of diplomacy that I haven't thought of, but no one else has either, so it's either coerce 'em or beat them like a rented mule.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:23 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
What is coercive diplomacy? An oxymoron.
posted by polymodus at 2:17 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 2:17 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Boy I wish commenters would actually read the links.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:20 PM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:20 PM on June 18, 2023 [6 favorites]
I sheepishly admit I didn't and you're quite right, but I'm not sure everyone can be expected to read a PDF.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:33 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:33 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
The first link is a 1000 word brief.
Moreover I’ll point out that this thread has two glib comments where on says all diplomacy is obviously coercive and the other saying it’s an oxymoron.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:38 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Moreover I’ll point out that this thread has two glib comments where on says all diplomacy is obviously coercive and the other saying it’s an oxymoron.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:38 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
America's propensity towards violence plays a major part here, but really the purely economic side hits many parties harder, and honestly feels more interesting.
Arnaud Montebourg, former French Minister of Economy, answers the question "what method do the Americans use to wage economic warfare against us?"
Alex Gladstein's interview with Nate Hagens discusses American economic agression in grandiose terms, right up until Alex dives off into bitcoin pumping stupidity. Alex himself does bitcoin colonialism, hence no link from me.
Also..
As I understand it, Rumsfeld wanted the American war machine to become inexpensive robots, so then American could credibly threaten violence against more nations. Javelin missiles represent a partial success maybe, except they're proving more defensive. Yet, Rumsfeld seemingly failed at reducing costs otherwise, which signaled the beginning of the fall I think.
Africa's interest in dedollarization. Saudis looking elsewhere. American companies defying Biden in their China trade. etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:19 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Arnaud Montebourg, former French Minister of Economy, answers the question "what method do the Americans use to wage economic warfare against us?"
Alex Gladstein's interview with Nate Hagens discusses American economic agression in grandiose terms, right up until Alex dives off into bitcoin pumping stupidity. Alex himself does bitcoin colonialism, hence no link from me.
Also..
As I understand it, Rumsfeld wanted the American war machine to become inexpensive robots, so then American could credibly threaten violence against more nations. Javelin missiles represent a partial success maybe, except they're proving more defensive. Yet, Rumsfeld seemingly failed at reducing costs otherwise, which signaled the beginning of the fall I think.
Africa's interest in dedollarization. Saudis looking elsewhere. American companies defying Biden in their China trade. etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:19 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
"дипломатія примусу" in ukrainian means: _________ ____________.
posted by Fupped Duck at 5:53 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Fupped Duck at 5:53 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
I guess my question is what is the problem with coercive diplomacy, per se? While I will grant that diplomacy should always seek for mutually beneficial relations, the reality is that won’t always be the case. Sometimes, you have to draw a line and make clear what will happen when the line gets crossed.
That being said, that the US generally uses coercive diplomacy in service of economic interests rather than democratic ones is a legitimate criticism that will get no argument from me.
I think China doth protest too much, however. As was pointed out in the last article, they simply have been unsuccessful at using it themselves. Frankly, I see China making many of the same mistakes that the US did in the 20th century (and still does). By turning a blind eye to the actions of the governments they partner with, China will develop a bad reputation among people harmed by those partner countries who use China’s aid to suppress dissent. Of course, the PRC does this with their own citizens, so I think they’re likely to underestimate the extent of the damage to their reputation.
I know many in the US have no understanding of the resentment we’ve earned around the world.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:00 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
That being said, that the US generally uses coercive diplomacy in service of economic interests rather than democratic ones is a legitimate criticism that will get no argument from me.
I think China doth protest too much, however. As was pointed out in the last article, they simply have been unsuccessful at using it themselves. Frankly, I see China making many of the same mistakes that the US did in the 20th century (and still does). By turning a blind eye to the actions of the governments they partner with, China will develop a bad reputation among people harmed by those partner countries who use China’s aid to suppress dissent. Of course, the PRC does this with their own citizens, so I think they’re likely to underestimate the extent of the damage to their reputation.
I know many in the US have no understanding of the resentment we’ve earned around the world.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:00 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
“That being said, that the US generally uses coercive diplomacy in service of economic interests rather than democratic ones is a legitimate criticism that will get no argument from me.”
I think it was George Kennan who argued that the US's hypocrisy of using diplomacy to pursue nakedly self-interested ends while invoking high ideals and chastising other countries on their basis is not at all lost on the rest of the world and ultimately has damaged the US's interest more than it has benefited from hardball realpolitik.
Back in the 80s, when I read Kennan and others on international politics, I thought about this a great deal. I have strong values and love to think abstractly, but when it comes down to it I am very pragmatic, so this issue confounded me.
It's hard not to agree with the pragmatic view that there's barely such a thing as rule of law in the international sphere and one can hardly expect nations to not act in their naked self-interest (and would their citizens even want that?), but, wow, have I always hated the US's hypocrisy with a passion and I so badly want its foreign policy to reflect its (ours, as I'm American) supposed values, so my pragmatism and my values seemed irreconcilable. Kennan's argument answered that: in his view, it'd be in the US's greater long-term interest to act internationally truly according to its purported values while the apparent benefit of realpolitik is limited only to the short-term, not the least because its adversaries successfully call attention to the hypocrisy.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:11 PM on June 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
I think it was George Kennan who argued that the US's hypocrisy of using diplomacy to pursue nakedly self-interested ends while invoking high ideals and chastising other countries on their basis is not at all lost on the rest of the world and ultimately has damaged the US's interest more than it has benefited from hardball realpolitik.
Back in the 80s, when I read Kennan and others on international politics, I thought about this a great deal. I have strong values and love to think abstractly, but when it comes down to it I am very pragmatic, so this issue confounded me.
It's hard not to agree with the pragmatic view that there's barely such a thing as rule of law in the international sphere and one can hardly expect nations to not act in their naked self-interest (and would their citizens even want that?), but, wow, have I always hated the US's hypocrisy with a passion and I so badly want its foreign policy to reflect its (ours, as I'm American) supposed values, so my pragmatism and my values seemed irreconcilable. Kennan's argument answered that: in his view, it'd be in the US's greater long-term interest to act internationally truly according to its purported values while the apparent benefit of realpolitik is limited only to the short-term, not the least because its adversaries successfully call attention to the hypocrisy.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:11 PM on June 18, 2023 [13 favorites]
It’s hard to act in long-term self interest when the people finding your electoral campaigns require increasing profits next quarter.
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:23 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:23 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
I dread the day that game theory inspired thinkers in China get the upper hand and say that the fact that coercive diplomacy isn't working for them proves that they need to establish credibility by escalating pressure tactics against some country or other to war just for the hell of it.
That argument really played a large role in Cheney/Rumsfeld thinking and Iraq, often quite explicitly. And then it kept us going even after it was obvious that the invasion had the exact opposite effect.
posted by mark k at 11:14 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
That argument really played a large role in Cheney/Rumsfeld thinking and Iraq, often quite explicitly. And then it kept us going even after it was obvious that the invasion had the exact opposite effect.
posted by mark k at 11:14 PM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]
Surprised there's no mention of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010 requiring financial institutions worldwide to report on US account holders, which has cost $574 million dollars to implement, caused untold numbers of Americans* overseas to have their bank accounts closed or frozen, and so far generated only $14 million of the projected $8 billion in additional tax revenue. To add insult to injury, the US has still not made good on its promises to reciprocally share information on foreign account holders in US banks with participating countries.
* Including "accidental Americans" who technically have US citizenship by descent or birth on US soil but have never lived in the US as adults. The only way for them to drop their US citizenship is to pay a $2350 renunciation fee + travel costs to the nearest US consulate.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 2:05 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
* Including "accidental Americans" who technically have US citizenship by descent or birth on US soil but have never lived in the US as adults. The only way for them to drop their US citizenship is to pay a $2350 renunciation fee + travel costs to the nearest US consulate.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 2:05 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
and so far generated only $14 million of the projected $8 billion in additional tax revenue
Is it supposed to generate revenue by taxing foreign holdings, or is it supposed to generate revenue by leaving assets in the US to get taxed normally? I mean revenue-wise global taxation seems a roaring success. Not because expats pay a shit-ton of tax but because it means all the Walton kids etc don't bother to pretend to live in Bermuda or wherever.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:52 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is it supposed to generate revenue by taxing foreign holdings, or is it supposed to generate revenue by leaving assets in the US to get taxed normally? I mean revenue-wise global taxation seems a roaring success. Not because expats pay a shit-ton of tax but because it means all the Walton kids etc don't bother to pretend to live in Bermuda or wherever.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:52 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is it supposed to generate revenue by taxing foreign holdings, or is it supposed to generate revenue by leaving assets in the US to get taxed normally? I mean revenue-wise global taxation seems a roaring success. Not because expats pay a shit-ton of tax but because it means all the Walton kids etc don't bother to pretend to live in Bermuda or wherever.
It was supposed to generate revenue by both smoking out income being hidden offshore for tax evasion purposes and levying penalties on taxpayers who didn't file the new additional form 8938 to report their offshore accounts (which were already required to be reported in another filing, the FBAR).
As for the practice of global taxation being a roaring success... you're right that it doesn't bring in any significant revenue (something like $1.6 billion a year, which is only about 0.4% of total tax revenue, and this includes military and diplomatic personnel as well as long-term civilian emigrants). As for it being a deterrent to the ultra-rich moving abroad to avoid US taxes: 1) Why would they bother, they're already doing that just fine in the US? 2) Other countries have already figured out better ways to do this that don't effectively criminalize their middle class emigrants. Canada and Australia don't tax their citizens abroad; instead, they apply an exit tax on all unrealized capital gains upon termination of residency - given what the 2021 ProPublica article revealed about legal tax avoidance strategies, this would actually generate way way more tax revenue in the hypothetical situation of the Walton kids moving to Bermuda.
And when I say "criminalizing their middle-class emigrants", I'm not exaggerating. As a thought experiment, if a US state added a provision to their highway code that failing to signal a lane change correctly (something to be avoided, certainly, but a mistake most human beings will make occasionally) carried a automatically applied civil penalty of $10,000, most people would consider that outrageous and conclude that driving had been de facto criminalized for the poor and middle class. Well, this is exactly the default penalty for making a material error on any of the many "international informational return" forms US taxpayers abroad are required to file to report mundane assets like the cash in their bank accounts and their employer pension or retirement fund (if their country of residence even offers an arrangement where the IRS won't double-tax away their savings). In 2017 US citizens with businesses abroad got hit with a new tax that was applied retroactively back to 1986 because the tax reforms made no distinction between big FAANG-level multinationals and the Mom and Pop businesses of folks who hadn't lived in the US for decades. I could go on and on about taxation of foreign maternity benefits and pensions, incentives for US citizens to be denied title to family assets by their foreign spouse, the insane cost (and often poor quality) of so-called "expat tax preparation services", the fact that most who renounce their citizenship these days aren't doing it to avoid taxes but because they can't afford tax prep and/or they're unable to save for their retirement in an IRS-compliant manner, etc., but I have to get back to generating my own "foreign earned income" at the moment, so I'll just end with the following tl/dr:
1) Global US taxation generates very little revenue and mostly hurts the middle class.
2) Citizenship is a human right, it is not a commodity you purchase through tax payments.
3) The US is the only developed country that taxes its citizens abroad. It could easily move to a saner, more humane system without creating new opportunities for the ultra-wealthy to dodge paying their share.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:23 AM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
It was supposed to generate revenue by both smoking out income being hidden offshore for tax evasion purposes and levying penalties on taxpayers who didn't file the new additional form 8938 to report their offshore accounts (which were already required to be reported in another filing, the FBAR).
As for the practice of global taxation being a roaring success... you're right that it doesn't bring in any significant revenue (something like $1.6 billion a year, which is only about 0.4% of total tax revenue, and this includes military and diplomatic personnel as well as long-term civilian emigrants). As for it being a deterrent to the ultra-rich moving abroad to avoid US taxes: 1) Why would they bother, they're already doing that just fine in the US? 2) Other countries have already figured out better ways to do this that don't effectively criminalize their middle class emigrants. Canada and Australia don't tax their citizens abroad; instead, they apply an exit tax on all unrealized capital gains upon termination of residency - given what the 2021 ProPublica article revealed about legal tax avoidance strategies, this would actually generate way way more tax revenue in the hypothetical situation of the Walton kids moving to Bermuda.
And when I say "criminalizing their middle-class emigrants", I'm not exaggerating. As a thought experiment, if a US state added a provision to their highway code that failing to signal a lane change correctly (something to be avoided, certainly, but a mistake most human beings will make occasionally) carried a automatically applied civil penalty of $10,000, most people would consider that outrageous and conclude that driving had been de facto criminalized for the poor and middle class. Well, this is exactly the default penalty for making a material error on any of the many "international informational return" forms US taxpayers abroad are required to file to report mundane assets like the cash in their bank accounts and their employer pension or retirement fund (if their country of residence even offers an arrangement where the IRS won't double-tax away their savings). In 2017 US citizens with businesses abroad got hit with a new tax that was applied retroactively back to 1986 because the tax reforms made no distinction between big FAANG-level multinationals and the Mom and Pop businesses of folks who hadn't lived in the US for decades. I could go on and on about taxation of foreign maternity benefits and pensions, incentives for US citizens to be denied title to family assets by their foreign spouse, the insane cost (and often poor quality) of so-called "expat tax preparation services", the fact that most who renounce their citizenship these days aren't doing it to avoid taxes but because they can't afford tax prep and/or they're unable to save for their retirement in an IRS-compliant manner, etc., but I have to get back to generating my own "foreign earned income" at the moment, so I'll just end with the following tl/dr:
1) Global US taxation generates very little revenue and mostly hurts the middle class.
2) Citizenship is a human right, it is not a commodity you purchase through tax payments.
3) The US is the only developed country that taxes its citizens abroad. It could easily move to a saner, more humane system without creating new opportunities for the ultra-wealthy to dodge paying their share.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:23 AM on June 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
In the interest of accuracy, I made a typo in my comment above, it should say "something like $6.6 billion", not "$1.6 billion", but the relative share of 0.4% of total revenue is correct.
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:34 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by nanny's striped stocking at 5:34 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
It’s hard to act in long-term self interest when the people finding your electoral campaigns require increasing profits next quarter.
And when Pax Americana exposer domestic labor to foreign competition, as required to make the US the hub through which all these free trade deals that bind alliances together flow. I'll be generous and estimate 2 percent of the electorate has read Kant.
Maybe the political elite is more well read on average, but while Trump is often criticized for dismissing the TPP and allowing China to fill the void, virtually every single 2016 presidential candidate came out against it. Including Hillary Clinton.
Anyways, I assume this thread is really a placeholder for whatever comes from Blinken visiting China this week.
posted by pwnguin at 12:56 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
And when Pax Americana exposer domestic labor to foreign competition, as required to make the US the hub through which all these free trade deals that bind alliances together flow. I'll be generous and estimate 2 percent of the electorate has read Kant.
Maybe the political elite is more well read on average, but while Trump is often criticized for dismissing the TPP and allowing China to fill the void, virtually every single 2016 presidential candidate came out against it. Including Hillary Clinton.
Anyways, I assume this thread is really a placeholder for whatever comes from Blinken visiting China this week.
posted by pwnguin at 12:56 PM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
« Older A Shrine To Inflexibility | another kind of spanglish Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by pwnguin at 11:51 AM on June 18, 2023 [4 favorites]