[xnull2guest]

C-51, like the NSA legislation inside the United States, France, the Five Eyes, Germany, Japan, and like the reaches made by Russia and China do not have anything to do with terrorism. Terrorism is the excuse these countries use to get the laws to pass by their citizens.

What's going on is that the global order of power is shifting and recent advances in technology have enabled ~40 minute intercontinental nuclear strikes (using hybersonic delivery vehicles, etc). NATO and the Bretton Woods institutions are being challenged and rising populations and emerging economies will soon shift economics for the next half century in favor of nations in the Asia Pacific.

By its Wolfowitz Doctrine and by similar postures of allies, the Western world has to do what it can do to land gently (or be the better bombers) into whatever world comes next.

Internet surveillance, mass propaganda, high altitude missile defense batteries, satellite kill vehicles - all of this is due to hollowing out of the old institutions of world order and the challenges of a new one.

The debate therefore needs to be about how necessary these capabilities are for bringing about whatever new world there will be with as little possibility for violence as possible - not another fake conversation about terrorism.

[zymhan]

I got to "Bretton Woods" and realized you had gone off the rails.

[xnull2guest]

I'm willing to defend any statement you find 'off the rails' with evidenced and falsifiable statements.

With regard to the Bretton Woods System, the AIIB has gotten sign off from European allies despite the US's efforts to keep the AIIB underwater. Paired with the BRICS bank and Asean trade deals the IMF and World Bank are being seriously challenged in their ability to make strategic infrastructure investments. If you would like an example of what that looks like: the AIIB is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in Pakistan and more broadly Eurasia to build out oil pipelines and trade routes - a land route in Eurasia to pair with South China Sea and Indian Sea trade routes for China's "new silk road". Please feel encouraged to ask more questions.

[leoc]

Michael Pettis presents a (to me) pretty strong-looking argument that the AIIB is not important http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/04/will-the-aiib-one-day-matter... though he does believe that the post-war/post-'71 dollar economy is likely coming to an end, for other reasons. For one thing, it's easy to lend money to the developing world only if you're not careful about making sure you'll get it back. (I am not an expert.)

[xnull2guest]

There are a number of scholars, even some in the circuit of the Defense Industry of the West, who have ranges of ideas with regard to how big a deal the AIIB is or will be. Although there are none that I know of who don't think the Western order isn't being challenged. What matters is that the West on the whole believes very strongly that the AIIB and associated institutions are a serious challenge because it is their belief that determines their actions. Since the West believes that its superpower status is hollowing out - even if it were not true - it will act in correspondence with this belief: in this case with surveillance, etc.

I happen to agree with the West's national security posture that their status is hollowing and that the AIIB and other institutions propose viable alternatives for large portions of the world and threaten the old order (though I'm no expert either).

The reason is that foreign investment is a way that countries can use to very strongly project power. Take the activity in the Baltics - the IMF packages to Kiev - to influence political and geostrategic outcomes which is often worth huge amounts of wealth in the long run. That is to say you aren't always going to get money from the country you are lending to, but you will get influence on political outcomes. And we can see that with China's plans in Eurasia and how these plans for example align with their veto votes on UN activity in the Middle East. Russia had tried to create a Eurasian Union, which has kind of staled but it's likely that with a giant investment bank to fund infrastructure that it can be pulled off.

Long argument short - it's not always about getting money back on your loan: it's often about getting your pipeline, your highway, your port, or your defense garrison.