Econo-secure: The Big Picture

SECURE

According to this paper, "Economists cannot evaluate whether America’s national security goals are worthy, only note that it can achieve them far more cheaply because of America’s control of the international trade and financial systems by virtue of our reserve currency status."

That statement is a bid to make the economy useful in war and national security. The sensibility is very "Math" in that there is no claim about the purpose to which the math is applied, only that when it is applied, you can generally expect to see something very definite.

The idea here is that to the extent that a country uses (for example) US dollars as a backup and repository of value, the control and manipulation of another country's access to that reserve can apply force in a financial manner.

Presumably, seeing people under financial pressure is a more palatable sight than seeing people under physical duress.

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AGREEMENT

There is also a discussion of unilateral versus multilateral policy. Unilateral policy is more agile but also more (chaotic?) volatile. Multilateral policy is more stable but also slower, as it requires agreements among multiple partners.

I heard my dad tell me that there was a certain communication style among Mexicans (or he could have been talking more broadly) where they would come together and talk with great intensity, and then they would all just go and do their own thing.

It's interesting to contemplate this style because (if I can characterize this fairly here) the communications are styled multilaterally, but the subsequent actions are styled unilaterally. As Mexico is not really all that unstable, the only conclusion I can reach here is that there are actual agreements being made during these discussions, even though they are not codified on paper.