The World Is Moving on Without Us
How Europe and China are approaching the new world order.
Bonus Secret! Sarah and I taped a Monday Secret show talking about the plane, the big, beautiful China trade deal, and Trump’s absolutely-don’t-call-it-socialism price controls.
Keep an eye out for the show this afternoon.
1. Big News
Two big pieces of geostrategic news last week. The first was the selection of an American pope, which can be read as the Catholic Church no longer viewing the United States as the exceptional leader in world affairs.
You’ve already read a lot about that.
The second piece was much quieter: France and Germany announced that they are creating a joint defense council. Which is tantamount to saying that the two largest economies in Europe believe that NATO is dead and a new security order must be created. Without the United States.
Before we get into the details of what this means, I want to share something that Eric and Eliot talked about on our Shield of the Republic podcast a couple weeks ago.
One way to think about the start of World War II is that it broke out at a very specific moment—a moment when, following the end of World War I, Great Britain was no longer capable of leading the world order but the United States was not yet willing to lead it.
As Eric and Eliot pointed out, our current moment half-rhymes with that:
The United States is no longer willing to lead the world order, but China is not yet capable of leading it.
Once you understand this dynamic, a bunch of things about the future become clear.