I encourage you to check out my book, Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare. It is quite relevant to the topics you are exploring here.
Your commentary here reminded me of an article I read last summer, by Wesley Clark, here: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/08/27/info-wars/ - Looks like his review was a week or so ahead of yours last year to print.
And when I retrieved it, it turned out to basically be a review of Underground Empire. In Clark, or his ghostwriter's, review, he took the advantage of digital control points *very* seriously.
It was disturbing, but reassuring at the same time, since I am an American.
I had not heard of the other book, but I find the exertions of the EU regulators to not let their digital sphere get played as easily by corporate big tech as the American government admirable and reassuring as well, and not disturbing at all. Australia tried to do some similar things I think but turned out to be too small or weak a market, or lacked the tenacity to persist.
Speaking of your "research in economic coercion", have you updated your 1999 "The Sanctions Paradox" in any later editions? How do you think it has aged? I completely appreciate the argument you made there and saw it summarized in shorter article forms.
However, one thing that struck me during the Trump Administration pull out from American JCPOA participation and resumption of Iranian sanctions is that US allied powers most certainly, but even scores of firms and enterprises based in unfriendly to the USA countries like China and Russia have been slow to actualize ways to work around the US dominated financial and payments system. West European countries and business sectors, and plenty of major Chinese and Russian firms with western exposure found themselves severing business with US-sanctioned Iranian entities, *for fear of incurring second-party penalties*, even when *they substantively disagreed with the US pulling away from the agreement*, and even when *objectively judged by the terms of the agreement, the USA was in the wrong and far more a demonstrable deal-breaker than Iran*.
So, while US sanctioning behavior will naturally increase *motives and incentives* for other actors, especially who have frequent disagreements with America, to find non-US alternatives, the record seems to show that effort and cost is too much, the task is too difficult to get very far in that endeavor to date, and the convenience and practicality of US dominated exchange mechanisms is worth tolerating an enormous amount of BS and capriciousness from the US.
I encourage you to check out my book, Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare. It is quite relevant to the topics you are exploring here.
David Sloss
Daniel,
Your commentary here reminded me of an article I read last summer, by Wesley Clark, here: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/08/27/info-wars/ - Looks like his review was a week or so ahead of yours last year to print.
And when I retrieved it, it turned out to basically be a review of Underground Empire. In Clark, or his ghostwriter's, review, he took the advantage of digital control points *very* seriously.
It was disturbing, but reassuring at the same time, since I am an American.
I had not heard of the other book, but I find the exertions of the EU regulators to not let their digital sphere get played as easily by corporate big tech as the American government admirable and reassuring as well, and not disturbing at all. Australia tried to do some similar things I think but turned out to be too small or weak a market, or lacked the tenacity to persist.
Speaking of your "research in economic coercion", have you updated your 1999 "The Sanctions Paradox" in any later editions? How do you think it has aged? I completely appreciate the argument you made there and saw it summarized in shorter article forms.
However, one thing that struck me during the Trump Administration pull out from American JCPOA participation and resumption of Iranian sanctions is that US allied powers most certainly, but even scores of firms and enterprises based in unfriendly to the USA countries like China and Russia have been slow to actualize ways to work around the US dominated financial and payments system. West European countries and business sectors, and plenty of major Chinese and Russian firms with western exposure found themselves severing business with US-sanctioned Iranian entities, *for fear of incurring second-party penalties*, even when *they substantively disagreed with the US pulling away from the agreement*, and even when *objectively judged by the terms of the agreement, the USA was in the wrong and far more a demonstrable deal-breaker than Iran*.
So, while US sanctioning behavior will naturally increase *motives and incentives* for other actors, especially who have frequent disagreements with America, to find non-US alternatives, the record seems to show that effort and cost is too much, the task is too difficult to get very far in that endeavor to date, and the convenience and practicality of US dominated exchange mechanisms is worth tolerating an enormous amount of BS and capriciousness from the US.