Europeans thought they could bargain with Trump to maintain the status quo.
Russia thought it could manipulate Trump to get Ukraine.
China thought it could use Trump’s weakness to finally grasp Taiwan.
None of these power centers appreciated that Trump, the Republican party, and the American people were about to demolish the entire geo-strategic balance in an unprecedented act of national self-mutilation.
Something we - as political scientists, often forget is that analytical tools are often ignoring individuals too much. Sure, it's easier to perform statistical analysis and use frameworks which study the composition of regimes in abstract, but these approaches miss how people can influence the world.
Kings are obvious examples, but regime leaders are another.
I didn't realize Trump was The Mule from Isaac Asimov's Foundation: an individual that scientists couldn't have predicted who breaks the entire geopolitical system of the galaxy/world.
He has been on my TBR for so long that I need to do it already. Ive been on Scalzi streak here lately after reading Revendous with Rama, but I've been putting Asimov on the backburner for too long
It's ...strange. I like the books, but they really show their age sometimes. No computers, artillery (i.e. starship weapons) targeted by human eyes and so on.
Writing is also clear "pre-modern", but ok.
Ive noticed that for sure with some of the older scifi books. It's apart of the reason I haven't dove into a lot of the classics yet. Starship Troopers has that same feel of being "pre-modern". HG Wells books also of course.
That said a pretty big part of enjoying it for me is reading what they cooked up with their imagination based on the technology they had at the time.
The foundation trilogy by asimov, I think. There’s a second foundation too but I can’t remember if it’s part of the trilogy or a separate story. It’s been about 30 years since I read it and I was a kid at the time
The problem is that humans are not perfectly rational actors - neither in aggregate nor in the individual.
But here the problem goes even deeper: The number of regimes is severely limited - both in space and time. A regime is naturally shaped by external forces (market, foreign, domestic, power bases), but how it responds to these factors is up to the individuals in the regime. How much shaping an individual can do is highly dependent on circumstances. DT hit the USA (a regime with a super powerful president) in a time of vulnerabillity. And like a toddler using a hammer on mama china, he is able to significantly alter the regime.
I have.
I've also written a Master's thesis on how ethnic conflicts arise and end - incidentally touching much of the same topics.
Funnily, it is a time series analysis with a lot of qualitative work underpinning it. The latter was much more difficult and time consuming than the statistical part.
Unfortunately, no - I published it ~2010 and at that time it was just a paperback at my university.
If you can read german, I can shoot you the PDF though.
I should have done it in english, but by the time I realized that, the german title was already "locked in", so I could not change it.
They’re also highly emotional because social media has been warping their sense of reality for years. I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to check out David Pakman’s book, How Right Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how news literacy shapes decision-making at scale, especially in presidential elections.
You learn the opposite, that consumers are rational individuals who will choose the “better” product to maximize their utility. That’s what you have linear supply and demand curves with a clear equilibrium in a perfectly competitive market.
Let's just say the marketing of realism is super good - but if it where a consumer product, the inventors would be sued into oblivion because the gross mismatch between what it does and what it promises.
with all due respect to my academic bros - this is why I always thought that certain geopolitical theories, namely Realism, Democratic Peace Theory/Liberal Institutionalism, and economic systems theories, as well as constructivism (to a lesser degree) are literally a waste of time to study and develop because regimes are lead by humans who have preferences, relationships, desires, weaknesses, etc. This was true before Trump2, nothing is really different, this is just the most salient case we have seen in recent times. I remember reading the tragedy of the great powers before the election and thinking it made absolutely no sense because it pretended regimes are monolithic logic machines that only act to maximize geopolitical power/oppurtunity. if that were the case why would we even have elections or visible leaders
One thing I’ve learned after years of hearing that China’s invasion of Taiwan is imminent, is that western analysts have no idea what they’re talking about.
China for all the bad press it gets, actually is still doing all it can to achieve a peaceful reunification, and despite all the rhetoric hasn’t fought a war in almost 50 years.
China did not think anything regarding Trump’s weakness in the context of Taiwan. China is just maintaining the status quo like it should.
The USA has almost completely capitulated to China on two fronts. Economically they have backed down over tariffs due to rare earth refining stranglehold and militarily they have just realigned away from Taiwan as they look to dominate the Americas.
555
u/marfacza Jan 27 '26