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Saturday, May 30, 2026 - 22:49 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

For He So Loved The New World

"And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed, saying, Of a truth this fellow also was with him: for he is an American. And the citizens said, Man, I know not what thou sayest; I voted for him not. And immediately, while they yet spake, the cock crew, and they remembered."

- Cool Hand Luke 22, on bluffing


Words (As Numbers)


I think our chatbots are getting along!
(Source: GPT Image 2)


Before explaining my answer to the cliffhanger question at the end of the previous post, on whether the United States of America can retain its long-held primacy without their President's current policies, a brief comment on LLMs such as ChatGPT and Gemini. While perhaps still occasionally prone to gross factual errors (on which more next time), I think it fair to say that their expositions are, on the whole, no less good than the average human adult, and certainly near-impeccable in technical execution, if perhaps somewhat recognizable in tone.

This consistency and blandness in A.I. voice does make them especially suited to formal and commercial contexts - including but not limited to boilerplate news articles and advertising copy - and public communication in general. If nothing else, major chatbots have been tuned to be entirely sycophantic and inoffensive, channelling that preppy pal that just "fits in" and gets accepted about anywhere, like a platinum credit card. There has to be a temptation, then, of simply augmenting one of those open-source LLMs using RAG on previous blog posts, for effort-free content generation. Were approval by the widest possible readership the objective, one could do far worse.

But that was never the point, was it?

Ladies and gentlemen, before proceeding, I offer contrition for any ill-feeling from the suggestion that America may well not remain First; but perhaps the fact that mere words could engender such repugnance, indicates that "America First" is indeed a status taken for granted by Americans and their supporters. Oh, they may badmouth their politicians (quite eagerly, as it happens), complain about taxes and the cost of living, and readily admit to ongoing crises of healthcare and infrastructure and random warmongering - but when push comes to shove, one believes that a majority of them will still assert that yes, America is still the Greatest Nation on Earth.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, in the sense that most everyone believes that their parents are (among) the best parents, their football team is the best football team (or should be anyway, had the management not messed it all up), and their dog is the bestest boy of all. Returning to a more-neutral perspective, however, I would have to say that whether America can remain First, by the quantitative metrics that matter, has at least become a valid question. To this, I boldly add the claim that TRUMP is by and large operating to preserving America's position - as we shall soon see.


Population


You didn't actually think it would work a second time, did you?
(Source: GPT Image 2)


The key point raised in the previous blog post was that a country's Strength correlates strongly with its population, particularly over the longer term. Historically, consider the greatest empire directly preceding America*, that of the British. At its height about 1913, it contained some 23% of the global population, much of that attributable to the British Raj in and around India, which numbered some 315 million people then. Do note that the focus on China's population advantage is not because I happen to be ethnically Chinese (or at least I was, last I checked this morning); this will likely apply for India too, sometime in the future. However, since China's GDP is currently about 2.3 (PPP) to 4.7 (nominal) times that of India's, it may be some years before America's baleful gaze turns on them.

Before Britain, the title of First (in Europe at least) had been carried by the French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese in turn, going by reserve currency status - and it is perhaps no fluke that all of these powers were supported by burgeoning (often colonial) populations. Much of America had been French, after all, the Dutch controlled present-day Indonesia (the fourth most-populous nation after India, China and the U.S.) as recently discussed, and the Spanish and Portuguese (later combined for extra Strength) conquered much of the Americas (yes, again), including Macau (in China) for good measure. Right before them, there were the Mongols, who like the British controlled about a quarter of everybody living, aided by a willingness to transfer dissenters to the other side of that ledger.

With this understanding, the drive towards expansion by the reigning GOD-EMPEROR of America is self-explanatory. As the Chinese probably understand better than most, "alliances" are often unreliable, and one can only count vassals and actual subjects under one's true Strength. Towards the former, TRUMP has contributed Venezuela and maybe Cuba to come, with expansion targeted for Greenland, Canada (with an Alberta secession referendum already arranged) and southwards as well. All this is not even remarkable in a historical context, mind, especially if purchase (as proposed for Greenland) is considered - just ask Britain, France, Spain, Mexico and Russia.

To put it another way before moving on to the next point, the eclipse of a smaller entity by a larger one would be entirely expected, in the general sense; one might read about Qin conquering the other contenders during the Warring States period due to being larger and more centralised (especially compared to the comparably-large but fragmented Chu), and shrug because that's how it usually goes. David beats Goliath qualifies as news, exactly because it is so rare; ninety-nine times out of a hundred, "kid gets brutalized by trained warrior" doesn't get recorded, because as the Romans well knew**, slingers and velites simply aren't a match for triarii.


[*Here, let us confirm that America is an Empire in no uncertain terms, and by all indications the greatest one that the world has yet seen. When one has over five thousand nukes and perhaps seven hundred foreign outposts/bases, one tends to set the rules, and therefore the "rule-based order" (which our Foreign Minister apparently preferred over "international law" during his visit to China - who're skipping the Shangri-La Dialogue again)]

[**The Iranian foreign ministry has just drawn allusions to how the Roman Emperor came to terms with the Persians in the third century, thus acknowledging the GOD-EMPEROR's pedigree.]


Numbers (In Green)


What took an actual World War before...
(Source: livewiremarkets.com)


The sheer preposterousness of American advisers, and much of their general citizenry, claiming that "(national) debt and (aggregate) trade deficits don't matter" had been addressed last September, but it is unclear as to whether any minds had been changed, given that the national debt remains increasing at a clip of some US$2.25 trillion annually - which may soon have to be refinanced at higher rates. Seriously, one has totally no idea as to how these conceptions about debt and deficits had become popular. That said, America has always been able to roll their borrowings over up to now, and are of course able to simply print money to pay it up in the worst case, thanks to Nixon abandoning the gold standard. It should be said that no fiat currency has sustained such free-spending indefinitely either, though, and this is not for lack of trying.

On the persistent aggregate trade deficit front, China may indeed have something to answer for, given their record trade surplus of nearly US$1.2 trillion from last year, which roughly matches America's annual deficit. Such surplus-hogging has been customary for China, with the Qing Dynasty for example running up a huge silver surplus with Europe through the 16th to 18th centuries, thanks to their constant exports of goods such as tea, silk and porcelain - while importing next to nothing in return. Given an inability to print or mine more of this rare metal (also mirrored today), this had the British push opium on China to balance their trade deficit, which ended poorly.

The above, then, explains the GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP's unprecedented Global Imperial Tariffs from last April, to which half the world bent the knee to by August (this just reaffirmed by the European Union), and which remain largely in effect despite some implementation hiccups. This led to the lowest monthly deficit in over fifteen years last October, though a more-permanent adjustment may be some time in coming, no thanks to an uncooperative judiciary - who aren't the ones paying the bills to come, by the way.



Pandemic and shutdowns, we hardly knew ye!
[N.B. That rising debt may have summat to do with this.]
(Source: stlouisfed.org)


Even the spectacle of America's post-pandemic GDP soaring against China's might not be as rosy as it appears. Firstly, the other leg of TRUMP's tariff intentions was to bring (some) manufacturing back to the United States, which will definitely take time to come into effect. Jobs aside, it may be often missed that the ability to actually make things, has and always remains a keystone of a country's Strength in practice. America's near-total abandonment of their shipbuilding capacity had been noted last December, and while the current plan is to lean on allies such as Japan and South Korea, an obvious concern is that there are no permanent allies; what if, faced by pressure from perhaps North Korea and others, South Korea then decides to exercise their sovereign right to cancel external orders?

And to cap it off, China's GDP by purchasing power parity (i.e. actual goods and services as-is) is already almost half again as large as America's (US$43.5T to US$31.8T), which makes the corresponding gulf in nominal terms rather questionable. To explain this in more concrete and relatable terms, consider the Tesla Model 3 (about US$38k in America) to the roughly-equivalent BYD Seal (about US$15k in China). This means that for the same money, one can get either one car in America, or 2.5 cars in China. Now, let us say that Tesla makes (and sells) ten thousand cars in America, and BYD does twenty thousand cars in China. In this case, American nominal GDP from car sales would be about 20% higher... but China would have twice the number of cars in actuality!

While Redditors have for some reason been quite adamant about nominal GDP being the more appropriate measure (as opposed to PPP) for international trade and superpower status determination purposes, let's just say that I wouldn't want to be an admiral staring down a fleet that's some three times larger, while holding a certified missive assuring that our fleet was however bought (much) more expensively. Indeed, one gets the feeling that China has not been eager to disabuse the U.S. of this (twisted) notion either, for instance by generally keeping the yuan undervalued against the U.S. dollar within their managed float, with recent estimates being that it remains over 20% undervalued. This in turn implies that were China simply to allow the yuan to appreciate to equilibrium, its nominal GDP would also rise about 20% against America as a result, immediately snuffing out much of the latter's supposed lead.


Energy


Well, well - bystanders no more?
(Source: businesstimes.com.sg)


As explained in April, Hormuz was quite possibly partly a means to get America's erstwhile "allies" to experience getting their own hands dirty (in principle similar to the "head tax" imposed by various enforcement organizations), and from how the U.S. almost seems to be trolling on the Iranian peace deal (re: a US$300 billion reconstruction fund), they may well be happy to drag it out until July to get NATO involved, and restore some balance to the one-sided alliance. It took TRUMP bringing the hammer down to get the freeloaders to take their own defence more seriously, and thus finally distributing a responsibility that Europe was delighted to have America bear mostly alone - with Spain getting called out after recent approaches to China.

The U.S. naval blockade of Hormuz remains very much in place, and from how the Chinese Premier has just been inspecting*** their strategic oil and grain stockpiles, one figures that America may well have some secondary aims in mind. While China has been reported to be sitting on the world's largest petroleum reserves, their quantity is not officially reported (unlike for Australia). From a conference I attended several years ago, there has been ongoing research on estimating petroleum inventories using satellites, which may be quite relevant given how indispensible oil remains to military operations. Is the oil there, or is it not? Well, some countries will attempt to keep a brave face for as long as they can...

[***Necessary, from how fuel had been siphoned off and replaced by water previously, an old dodge indeed.]


At Once Lion And Lamb

And we return to the Man, the King of Kings.

And ask a question: can one man truly do, all that he has been said to have done? America has over three hundred million souls, after all; why is it then that they seem satisfied to shift responsibility to but one of their number? He built a wall; He raised the tariffs; He bullied NATO, snatched a President, started the wars; that has to be a very busy and capable man indeed!

On this, the answer is much the same as that great Story, from two thousand years ago. Then, there was another man, a Lion, a Lamb, a Scapegoat who assumed the sins of his fellows, a Lord who was sacrificed; he did what had to be done, though those he saved would not admit it; they would instead gladly crucify him for it, entirely unaware of the gift they had received. Blame him, and receive Salvation by his hand - that America might yet be First, and Greatest, for a little longer...



...that he gave his favourite† and most stably genius son
(Source: ebay.co.uk; also in his version of the Good Book; perhaps illegal)
[†Fine, so he made a few billion extra in the process, but to him who has more will be given and all that - unlike previous less-entrepreneurial holders of the office. This is a virtue that congresspeople are picking up on.]


"It isn't fair, is it?"

"No, they know not what you do for them."


[To be continued...]



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