what i don't understand is this: if canada and australia decide they are both middle powers and want to increase trade with each other, as much carbon as that might waste, and as unrealistic as that may be, what exactly is stoppng the chinese from just blowing up the trade vessels and telling them both to buy from china, in a world without american hegemony?

if you would tell me the answer is "the rule of law", and "the international order", the reality is that that answer is laughable. that really would be the end of history, but in a different way. it would be the erasure of all history from the first world war to the colonial wars to the crusades to the roman civil wars, the punic wars and beyond. further, it is a uniquely orwellian response, as you are replacing concepts of american hegemony with ideas about following the rules. what has defined the world since 1945 is not an overwhelming american military backed up by a menacing nuclear threat, it's just that we all decided to be nice to each other and play by the rules. america's ability to enforce it's dictates at the tip of a nuclear missile is just the "rules based international order". who wrote the rules? and who enforces them?

i'm an anarchist, so maybe i'm more predisposed to these sorts of analysis than others, but who do i argue with about it? enemy ancaps. ancaps, an orwellian sounding term itself (anarcho-capitalists for those that don't argue about anarchism online), are the evil bastards that emanate from hell to destroy anarchist utopias with their property rights. and, what is my most potent rhetorical attack against these enemy ancaps, the argument they can never defeat? it's to remind them that markets are make believe, and you need a state with a monopoly on power to enforce the market, otherwise it collapses into feudalism or organizes into socialism, within about five minutes. the only people on the planet that want market economies are economists. everybody else is fighting for any other system they can come up with.

without american military hegemony, there is no possibility, whatsoever, of a rules-based international free market trading system. that will either get blown up by the chinese, or torn down by canadians, in about five minutes.

if the answer is that canada will protect itself by building it's own navy, and i worry it might be, then we need to brace for that. that means canada is actually arguing that it will replace american hegemony with canadian hegemony, and canada will need a war to accomplish that. a big one, one it will probably lose, like the germans did twice in the last century.

i'm just trying to understand mr carney, first. i'm having difficulty. he doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. he is constantly contradicting himself, and enacting policy that undoes his articulated theory.

but, perhaps the obvious orwellian answer right in front of us is actually the best one.

we do, after all, live in the era of orwell.