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… read about the dueling Gilded Ages of China and the United States.

Nearly a quarter century into the new millennium, an industrial giant struggles. The excess of wealth has created an elite hostile to the well being of the nation, and the global economy on which the giant sits is shifting and threatening continued prosperity. At Noema [[link removed]], Yuen Yuen Ang tells this story twice. She says that both the United States and China are great power rivals, yes, but they are also both subject to parallel gilded ages, the forces of capital and elite power on a collision course with the broader public and the power of the state. The US has already endured one Gilded Age, which ran from the end of the Civil War through the abandonment of reconstruction, and into the establishment of the US as an overseas empire. Its undoing, in part, was through aggressive labor agitation, as well as government reform that moved the country from backroom deals to public (and accountable) funding. It is this backroom form of monetary capital for political capital that persists in both powers today, as political leaders can be cheaply bought and lucratively exploited. That means escaping the Gilded Age runs through internal politics more than overseas rivalry. Yuen Yuen Ang concludes, “If there is a race, whichever nation ‘wins’ is the one who avoids self-inflicted wounds and makes capitalism work for the common good rather than for a small sliver of super-elites.”

Steward Kings

Is there a responsible way to be a nuclear power? The lack of world-ending war between states armed with atomic and thermonuclear powers shows that at least the most irresponsible way to possess nuclear weapons has not come to pass, but averting apocalypse is hardly a brag-worthy record. At the 10th Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France drafted a working paper together that emphasized their particular responsibility as nuclear nations, creating an implicit contrast with countries that fall shy of this standard.

Writing at NK News [[link removed]], John Carl Baker invites readers to consider how the news would describe Trump’s last month if it had happened abroad, suggesting media might say “‘After Failed Coup, Embattled Ex-President Takes Nuclear Secrets to Private Residence.’”

There is one factor distinguishing nuclear nations from other nations, and framing some powers as irresponsible overlooks the stakes or risks from even ostensibly careful ones. Baker continues, “A mistaken launch or the theft of nuclear secrets — these are risks that simply do not exist in countries without nuclear weapons. For the countries that do have nuclear weapons, though, they are risks held in common, which means there is a shared interest in addressing them.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Spectacle of the Misread

In November 2019, the people of Chile overwhelmingly voted to begin the process of drafting a new constitution, to replace the present one, in place since the Pinochet dictatorship. The process, begun with street mobilization, saw a wide range of delegates elected without prior affiliation with any political party. This approach, which was designed to create a living document unshackled from past ties, may have missed an equally important component of policy making: it did not have the buy-in of moderates, eager to move beyond the old order but wary of a constant state of protest.

Writing at Nueva Sociedad ( and en español [[link removed]]), Noam Titelman argues that the constitution’s attempt to enshrine Chile as a plurinational nation alienated Chileans who took pride in their existing national identity, and hated seeing the symbols of that nation disrespected by delegates tasked with creating a new legal order.

Even as Chilean people continue to reject partisan identification, Titelman expects a third plebiscite on the constitution to emphasize constitutional convention candidates with expertise, in the hope that skilled nonpartisans could find agreement conducive to social peace.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Rebel Alliance: Part II

Revolutionaries, in form and function, frame their work as a cure for the body politic. The history of revolutions is at least as much a history of organization and skill by those seeking to overthrow political order, as it is a failure of a political establishment to cure what ails it. This failure can take many forms, variations of an existing political and social order inadequately addressing the needs, rights, and desires of a wide cross-section of people within a country.

When revolutionaries and rebels seek to challenge that order, they can do so by addressing the harms done to the bodies of the people within it. In “ Defending Society, Building the Nation: Rebel Governance as Competing Biopolitics [[link removed]],” authors David Brenner and Martina Tazzioli argue that the way revolutionaries treat bodies is part of how they define and demonstrate the world they are trying to build.

To understand this in practice, the authors open with the role of the Pat Jasan, a non-state movement waging a war on drugs in northern Myanmar. The Pat Jasan is linked to the Kachin Independence Organization, a ethnonational rebel movement.

“Locally, the cheap availability of opiates and methamphetamines has fueled a public health crisis among already marginalized ethnic minority populations in the context of protracted civil war,” the authors write. They then pose this question: “Why would a rebel movement involve itself in a public health campaign against drugs, especially in a context where many other armed actors fund themselves through the drug trade? And what kind of political and social orders emerge from such interventions?”

Last week [[link removed]], and also in March 2021 [[link removed]], Critical State examined resource dependence and resilience among rebel groups, and how control of drug fields or smuggling routes can sustain rebellions. While there are merits and disadvantages to both direct control and functioning as intermediaries, actively destroying a resource with direct black market value must come with some benefit, or else rebels wouldn’t do it.

In this case, the authors argue, “rebels might not only or even primarily provide public goods in exchange for public support. Rather, we propose that rebels engage in governing populations because sustaining and optimizing life is precisely what establishes their sovereignty in the absence of formal statehood.”

The provision of material aid, from bread to shelter, can be seen across rebel groups, looking to win over a population they need against a more heavily armed and repressive central government. But governance is more than material, and the authors point to the role of justice administration and health clinics as ways in which rebels demonstrate themselves as providing government in ways the central government won’t.

By governing in direct contrast with the state, including both destruction of poppy fields and movement-operated rehabilitation camps for users, the movement provides an alternate vision and even reality of governance. Or, as the authors put it, this work molds a population “into imagined communities in direct opposition to the existing nation state.”

By forsaking the material benefits of controlling narcotics that cause direct public health harms, the rebels are demonstrating an imagined cure for body politic.

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Rebecca Kanthor observed [[link removed]] China’s heat wave as it hit Chongqing in southwest China. The massive city of 31 million suffered both soaring temperatures and overstrained resources to take care of people in them. Some people have beat the heat by seeking the solace of underground, using the damp cool of WWII bomb shelters or even cooking hotpot in nearby caves. Kanthor reports elderly people took chairs to sit in the air conditioning of supermarkets, as those with means paid for lodging where they could sleep in cooled air. It is, at once, a foreshadowing of worse climate futures, an a fulfillment of past unheeded warnings.

Niku Jafarnia surveyed [[link removed]] the bleak water situation in Yemen. The country, enduring eight years of war and deprivation on top of already-poor resource management, may be running out of water. Part of this is from the use of opportunity or survival, as communities and farmers dig wells to meet immediate need, without any coordination, draining groundwater beyond sustainable rates and leaving wells dry. Part of this is because the war itself makes it unsafe to manage water, while leaving explosives in the ground that contaminate supplies. Jafarnia notes that in Aden, an inability to get repair parts for a sewage treatment facility pump after it was destroyed in 2015 meant spillover into protected wetlands, a compounding loss.

Tibisay Zea reported [[link removed]] on drought and water inequality in Monterrey, Mexico. The city has been struck by bad drought, and water rationing that appears to fall hardest on the poorest residents. “We were supposed to have water for six hours a day during the mornings, but it never happens,” Brenda Sánchez, a school teacher who works in Monterrey, told Zea, “We’ve had up to six weeks without any running water at home.” Meanwhile, wealthy areas close to wells have enough water to fill pools. Exacerbating this problem, 19% of Moneterrey’s water is sold to private industries, like brewing and bottling.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

This is the most straightforward chart [[link removed]] I’ve ever seen the national security state produce, and it’s a mess of pools and pipes to outline kinds of secrecy.

The state of the memes? Exceptional [[link removed]].

Explaining the Pentagon’s logistical prowess [[link removed]] to Alexander the Great and watching him weep with envy [[link removed]].

When your enemy is making a mistake, the most important thing to do is to try and repeat their same mistake [[link removed]] but faster and harder.

The international symbol of finding out [[link removed]].

When you’ve already had five republics [[link removed]] and start considering a sixth.

Enter Newman and Elaine, wearing Yellow Turbans [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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