I will assume a reader's familiarity with the first two panels of this ongoing discussion of a book by Barry Buzan and Ole Waever. With our authors, we turn now to the east of Asia, the Pacific rim. Looking with the eyes of these scholars affiliated respectively with the London School of Economics and the University of Copenhagen, let us start with this quote. [p. 145.] "After the east Asian economic crisis in 1997, the succession crisis facing Indonesia became critical, and at the time of writing it was far from clear whether the muddled shift to electoral politics would be able to handle the turbulent mix of economic disaster, secession, (East Timor, Aceh, Irian Jaya) and recurrent bouts of communal violence in various places. Indonesia had all the appearance of a crumbling empire, and its internal disarray and weak leadership contributed to the paralysis of ASEAN, which was already burdened by both over-ambitious expansion and the impact of the regional economic crisis....
That is a photo of a graveyard. Included here for no reason. Consider it an arbitrary visual. At Quora, I was asked recently whether Democrats are "mentally incapable of understanding that the purpose of tariffs is precisely to make foreign products more expensive in order to make domestic products more competitive?" I answered for you, Democratic friends. ------------------------------------------------------------- friends. There is room for some confusion, in part because our Dear Leader himself seems to have multiple ideas about what “THE purpose” of tariffs is. Tariffs are such wonderful things, in his view, that they can serve many purposes. In part, yes, he does seem to want to encourage what some economists call “import substitution,” where buyers in an importing nation learn to bring their own supply chain within the borders. But: no one has ever postulated that import substitution is a smooth or costless process, and Trump is not leveling with us about ...