A thought provoking analogy in today’s times; however, how nations negotiate is as complicated as Quantum Computation and Quantum Information as explained in their elementary textbook on the subject titled as such by Dr. Michael Nielsen (PhD, University of New Mexico, 2004) and Dr. Isaac Chiangmai (PhD, Stanford University, 1997), but often referenced in circles that talk about things like that on Saturday mornings at Cafe Pasqual's (in Santa Fe) as simply “Mike and Ike.” Military might is but one component of the global system in which people through their collective ids, egos and super egos (nation-state governments) interact with the world, often engaging their emotions at an intelligent level, but sometimes not so much. The problem is that we really don’t know whether the system is an open or closed system. If it is closed, then Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice to princes, written after he was exiled and then briefly imprisoned when the Medici returned to power ending the Florentine Republic, may work being explained by analogies to the laws of thermodynamics. On the other hand, if it is not closed, then we get a system that appears to have been drawn by Rube Goldberg, who maybe not coincidentally also drew the comic strip “Mike and Ike (They Look Alike).”
I am still contemplating this morning the significance of the Biden Administration’s persuading the Philippines to grant American naval forces access to its ports and China’s spy balloon still floating at FL 600 over United States sovereign soil, last reported over Kansas.
The explanation given for the latter is that “we” don’t “think” it has the capacity to gather information that China can’t already know using their low orbit satellites, and to shoot it down would risk hitting someone with the debris field left by the encounter. I buy the latter explanation as the 2-or-3-school-bus-sized balloon migrates from Kansas into the more densely populated East and Northeast. What I don’t buy is that we have apparently been tracking it as it came across the Bering Strait, over Alaska, provinces of Canada, and the Great American West and Midwest. A balloon can be popped by a missile without an explosive war head attached or even some rounds out of a GAU-22/A cannon. And by shooting it down we can select the general area in which it will fall to earth, unlike satellites, spent rocket components and space station parts falling out of orbit. There has already been a lot of country that it has flown over in Alaska, the West and Midwest that can easily accommodate 3 school buses, even 4 or 5. We might have been able to find it on the ground, analyzed what really is in it and what it was up to, and then put it in a museum in Roswell, New Mexico.
The Philippines’ opening its ports to the USN to thwart Chinese territorial ambitions just strikes me with a little irony. If my recollection of Chinese history serves me, the world importance of the Philippines grew in the 16th Century as Ming Emperors, wanting to keep their society and culture free from Western influence but needing American silver, would allow Chinese intermediary merchants to meet with Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch traders on Philippines’ soil, but not welcome them onto the Chinese mainland. But I may be oversimplifying the dynamics of the whole affair. Which is why I am coming to believe the world situation is an open system and more like a Rube Goldberg machine.
A thought provoking analogy in today’s times; however, how nations negotiate is as complicated as Quantum Computation and Quantum Information as explained in their elementary textbook on the subject titled as such by Dr. Michael Nielsen (PhD, University of New Mexico, 2004) and Dr. Isaac Chiangmai (PhD, Stanford University, 1997), but often referenced in circles that talk about things like that on Saturday mornings at Cafe Pasqual's (in Santa Fe) as simply “Mike and Ike.” Military might is but one component of the global system in which people through their collective ids, egos and super egos (nation-state governments) interact with the world, often engaging their emotions at an intelligent level, but sometimes not so much. The problem is that we really don’t know whether the system is an open or closed system. If it is closed, then Niccolo Machiavelli’s advice to princes, written after he was exiled and then briefly imprisoned when the Medici returned to power ending the Florentine Republic, may work being explained by analogies to the laws of thermodynamics. On the other hand, if it is not closed, then we get a system that appears to have been drawn by Rube Goldberg, who maybe not coincidentally also drew the comic strip “Mike and Ike (They Look Alike).”
I am still contemplating this morning the significance of the Biden Administration’s persuading the Philippines to grant American naval forces access to its ports and China’s spy balloon still floating at FL 600 over United States sovereign soil, last reported over Kansas.
The explanation given for the latter is that “we” don’t “think” it has the capacity to gather information that China can’t already know using their low orbit satellites, and to shoot it down would risk hitting someone with the debris field left by the encounter. I buy the latter explanation as the 2-or-3-school-bus-sized balloon migrates from Kansas into the more densely populated East and Northeast. What I don’t buy is that we have apparently been tracking it as it came across the Bering Strait, over Alaska, provinces of Canada, and the Great American West and Midwest. A balloon can be popped by a missile without an explosive war head attached or even some rounds out of a GAU-22/A cannon. And by shooting it down we can select the general area in which it will fall to earth, unlike satellites, spent rocket components and space station parts falling out of orbit. There has already been a lot of country that it has flown over in Alaska, the West and Midwest that can easily accommodate 3 school buses, even 4 or 5. We might have been able to find it on the ground, analyzed what really is in it and what it was up to, and then put it in a museum in Roswell, New Mexico.
The Philippines’ opening its ports to the USN to thwart Chinese territorial ambitions just strikes me with a little irony. If my recollection of Chinese history serves me, the world importance of the Philippines grew in the 16th Century as Ming Emperors, wanting to keep their society and culture free from Western influence but needing American silver, would allow Chinese intermediary merchants to meet with Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch traders on Philippines’ soil, but not welcome them onto the Chinese mainland. But I may be oversimplifying the dynamics of the whole affair. Which is why I am coming to believe the world situation is an open system and more like a Rube Goldberg machine.
Thank you for a brilliant piece that offers such a wonderfully accessible entry into a longstanding dialectic on a vital issue.