Smári McCarthy

Techie, geopolitics nerd, foodie, pilot, writer. Not necessarily in that order. Used to do politics. Now building strategic resilience systems.

Joined: Dec 11, 2019

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Last Notes

2025-04-24 12:19:43 UTC

This is a good analysis, specially when you bear in mind that the US government has announced at least 95 different tariff policies over the last 45 days.
https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-difficulty-of-bringing-manufacturing-back

2025-04-07 14:43:44 UTC

Never before has such a substantial, sustained and significant market crash been as easily and unequivocally attributable to the decisions of one single person. And we haven't necessarily seen the bottom yet - most of the effects will take weeks to manifest.

2025-03-25 11:24:28 UTC

Kosovo, Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya.
These are a few of the occasions when Europe has "bailed out" the US in their many military misadventures and geopolitical faceplants.
Somebody needs to give JD Vance and Pete Hegseth a history lesson.

2025-03-06 08:53:51 UTC

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good point. I've always been bad at that. Will try to be better!

2025-03-06 08:10:39 UTC

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I think the EU should rush to fill the vacuum left behind by the US setting fire to their soft power base, and I guarantee it'll cost less in the long term than letting the thousands of problems fester that USAID was previously helping to solve or prevent. Justify it however you feel comfortable, but it's simply the right thing to do, and we'll be a stronger continent for it. END/

2025-03-06 08:10:27 UTC

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It's unfortunately not uncommon for people, specially conservatives, to mistrust or misunderstand soft power, or to see no value in it. But soft power actions promote values and reduce problems now so they don't need to be met with hard power in the future. Think of it as a power projection time machine, which saves lives, helps people, reduces poverty and makes life better. 10/

2025-03-06 08:10:09 UTC

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All the above and more are examples of how USAID has in the past, and the EU could in the future (and to a degree does now) use money as a "soft power" mechanism to build resilience in other countries, which increases the degree to which the EU would be recognized as a global good actor while also staving off entire categories of problems that might otherwise develop into hard power problems down the line.
Soft power is cheap legitimacy and cheap stability in one go. It's super effective! 9/

2025-03-06 08:10:01 UTC

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Cultural promotion is again similar: funding community theater, youth groups, exchange programs, etc can increase people's understanding of their own culture and of other neighboring cultures and provide both common tooling for resolving conflict peacefully and aiding understanding. Friends rarely attack friends. Again, reduces risk of conflict, migrant flows, etc. 8/

2025-03-06 08:09:50 UTC

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Public health measures include things like awareness campaigns that can reduce the spread of STDs like HIV/AIDS or waterborne illnesses, improve sanitation, and support vaccinations, all of which reduce infant mortality, contribute to reducing poverty, and thereby reduce the likelihood of epidemics, famine, and related civil unrest and refugee flows, etc. 7/

2025-03-06 08:09:39 UTC

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It's ironic that the Trump admin talk so much about stopping fentanyl and such flows from Mexico but then defund the organizations that are best suited to expose and publicly discuss the problem. Funding independent journalism is incredibly important. You don't get to buy the results you want, but you do get to make sure somebody other than (often corrupt) police are paying attention to what's happening. 6/

2025-03-06 08:09:24 UTC

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The journalism and transparency bucket contains things like funding investigative groups who track organized crime, exposing money laundering, arms trafficking, human trafficking, drug trade and more. (I used to do this for a living, and yes, USAID paid a small fraction of my salary for a while.) This kind of activity is cheaper and more socially acceptable than funding police forces and can compliment them, reducing entire categories of problems. 5/

2025-03-06 08:09:14 UTC

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Another form of democracy strengthening is funding training courses for election monitors, judges, and so on to increase the likelihood that democratic elections be run fairly, or providing educational materials in schools for better coverage of topics like democracy and geography that might otherwise be ignored. Both reduce the risk of countries becoming problematic. 4/

2025-03-06 08:09:03 UTC

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Strengthening democratic institutions involves things like providing small amounts of money to facilitate meetings among young people or women who aren't likely to otherwise get into politics, in countries where there's a risk politics might be taken over by oligarchs or specific ethnic groups. It's a small thing but it helps long term stability of those countries, making the less likely to become a source of war, refugees, or threats in the future. 3/

2025-03-06 08:08:58 UTC

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USAID hasn't always been effective, but there are buckets of programs they funded that are both worth discussing and immensely valuable to the EU. Broadly:
- Democratic institution strengthening
- Journalism and transparency
- Public health
- Cultural promotion
Each of these has a direct impact on the safety of European (and American, and global) citizens, and on world peace. 2/

2025-03-06 08:08:28 UTC

In reports of USAID shutting down, the soft power vacuum being filled by Russia or China is discussed ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/05/diplomats-usaid-letter-rubio ). Nobody ever mentions the #EU. Why? Two reasons:
- Nobody thinks the EU can do it.
- Nobody would be concerned if the EU did.
But with talk of EU dumping €800bn into defense, which is good, why is nobody suggesting that the EU find €50bn or so to fill the soft power vacuum? It would be good policy. Here's why: 1/

2025-03-05 08:44:34 UTC

Hearing that the US has cut Ukraine off from intelligence sharing. The total impact of this is unclear, but undoubtedly awful. Intel cut off presumably includes info from US human assets in Russia, US reconnaissance satellites, and US signals intelligence, all of which are virtually impossible to replace with European equivalents. EU countries have their own assets which can still help, but the scale of this betrayal of Ukraine is hard to fully understand.

2025-02-28 19:59:05 UTC

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I've seen some breakdowns of diplomatic decorum. None came anywhere near this level of insanity. I can't stress how much this not only broke any semblance of Trump being capable of diplomacy, but also crossed a line that I don't think has ever been crossed. The closest thing I can think of is Shoe banging incident ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident ), which still pales in comparison.

2025-02-28 19:55:11 UTC

Trump had a meltdown in the Oval Office, screaming conspiracy theories and accusations, in the kind of failure of diplomatic decorum that never happens, as a rule, let alone gets caught on camera. He then called off his one-sided, mafioso style minerals deal with Ukraine, which would only have benefitted the US, while an outpouring of support floods in for Ukraine from Europe.
Trump dramatically overplayed his hand, and I'm waiting to see how his sycophants try to spin this in his favor.

2025-02-28 18:09:34 UTC

Zelenskyy and Trump presser just now. Trump and Vance yelling absurdities and wouldn't let Zelenskyy finish a thought. Their takes were nonsensical and belligerent. Zelenskyy tried to make the pretty basic point that Putin never honors his agreements, which is well evidenced, to which Trump responded with nonsense. My take:
- Zelenskyy did as well as possible, but gained nothing.
- Trump came off as unhinged.
- Vance came off as petty.
- The whole thing looked like a mob shakedown.

2025-02-26 19:59:12 UTC

Alright, let's be clear here. Contrary to what Trump just said:
- 🇪🇺 The European Union was NOT founded to "screw with" the United States. It was founded to strengthen European countries through cooperation.
- 🚙 The EU does NOT reject American cars in general, just ones that fail to meet EU safety requirements.
- 🐔 The EU does NOT reject American agricultural products in general, just ones that fail to meet EU safety requirements.
... if you're seeing a theme, good.
The EU is not about the US.

2025-02-25 10:49:52 UTC

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I don't think the US can entirely recover from this. Damage is done. But if Americans recognize that this is one of many, many ways in which Trump and his goons are actively harming the United States, and respond appropriately, it's possible that some of the damage can be repaired over time.
As for Europe: we've got work to do, reducing our dependence on the US, building more strategic resilience, and taking our future into our hands.
End thread.

2025-02-25 10:47:01 UTC

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What this means in practice: Less ability to get help. Less ability to buy important things. Less ability to sell military equipment to other countries. Less ability to do trade in general. Less ability to set up bases all over the place. Less ability to impose will, for better and unfortunately for worse. The US just abdicated from 80 years of global soft power hegemony. That sound you're hearing is the cheers from Russia, China, Iran, and every other country that opposes democracy or liberty.

2025-02-25 10:46:53 UTC

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This all feeds into the most important point: The US has for decades maintained a massive soft-power base, by seeming legitimate, broadly democratic, broadly in favor of human rights, and explicitly supportive of their allies. Even when these things have failed (via torture, extrajudicial murder, etc) they've been broadly trusted. What Trump has done in recent weeks has been a soft power bonfire, destroying 80 years of trust that the US had built with global allies.

2025-02-25 10:46:42 UTC

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- Europe's defensive capabilities have shrunk in the last decades, in part because they've been reshaping their military force structure to be better at expeditionary actions, such as helping the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- The fact that Trump is ignoring and belittling these pivots and sacrifices by European countries will make European countries a lot more hesitant to help out the US in the future.

2025-02-25 10:46:34 UTC

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- Europe hasn't been freeloading on NATO. The ONLY country that has asked for help under article 5 is the US, and European countries (including Non-NATO countries like Ukraine!) spent billions and sent soldiers, aid agencies and experts to help.
- When the US demands x% of GDP in defense spending from NATO allies, the subtext is they want the money to be spent on buying bling from the US, like F35 jets.

2025-02-25 10:45:55 UTC

Europe got caught with its pants down and is scrambling to figure out what a future without the US as a reliable ally looks like, let alone a security guarantor. Conversations I've had over the last week lead me to believe that regardless of what else happens, Trump has permanently harmed the US-Europe relationship. But there are nuances that need to be understood that get lost in the debate: (thread)

2025-01-23 19:09:06 UTC

It occurred to me that many of the quality qualms aimed at Free/Open Source are a reflection of an assumption of inherent quality made in the early days of the free software movement that got lost in Eternal September, rather than any inherent flaw in the idea of open, participatory development.
"Whether it be morality, or a culture of quality, to consider an important value so obvious as to not need stating is to invite that value to be disregarded or forgotten."
https://smarimccarthy.is/posts/2025-01-23-quality-culture/

2025-01-13 16:42:38 UTC

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Arguably, we need fewer such lists -- coupled strongly with fewer occasions to make them.

2024-10-01 20:33:29 UTC

Anybody in #Oakland know a good bar, ideally slightly divy, to watch the debate at?