Live from the Chaos-Monkey Cage: Instead of conquest, the role of foreign-policy statecraft in producing a prosperous polity is in shaping world market conditions so that one’s imports and exports are carried out at attractive terms of trade. The role of foreign-policy economic statecraft in providing for security lies in using threats to adversely change others’ terms of trade to guide their behavior—“sanctions policy”. There is no chance the forthcoming Trump administration will understand that this is the point, or how to do this. Here Paul Krugman recommends Henry Farrell on the foreign-policy configurations we are likely to see under Trump II: Reign of the Neofascist Chaos Monkeys:

Henry Farrell: ‘Internal battles…. Traditional national security hawks will want to double down on sanctions and export controls, without any clear sense of where to stop. Fans of tariffs—a group that currently includes Trump—will apply them to remedy economic insecurity and all else that ails the United States. They will eventually discover the limits and costs of tariffs, but probably not soon enough. Well-connected firms will call for more traditional, business-friendly measures, combined with sweetheart deals and carve-outs…. Fraught alliances, palace politics, knifings in the dark, and Trump’s whims will send economic security policy reeling. The one area in which Trump shows unwavering determination is his enmity toward technical expertise… hinder[ing] the ability of the economic security state to get things done…. Everyone—businesses, allied governments, and adversaries—will be trying to figure out what is happening within a chaotic administration, and, if possible, to shape it…. Once, and not too long ago, it was possible for U.S. elites to believe that technocrats could order the world… making it secure and predictable for them…. The sun is setting on the sanctions technocrats, and indeed on traditional technocracy more generally… <foreignaffairs.com/revi…>