My friend Michael Mandelbaum has a new book out this month with the timely title and theme The Frugal Superpower. It’s also short, as if Michael were reminding us this is not a good moment to overspend on excess paper in our cash-strapped world. As an advocate of the short book in general (with some obvious exceptions), I call that a win-win.
Of particular interest is his chapter “The Return of Great-Power Politics?” (note the question mark) on China and Russia, long areas of Michael’s expertise. Mandelbaum sees China as a rising power and Russia as a declining one. Makes sense, probably, but at least Russia’s prime minister-president-or-whatever-he-is-this-week took the bull by the proverbial horns during his country’s current catastrophe and became firechief-in-chief, personally dumping water from a helicopter on the conflagrations. Ours played golf, which, besides the Nero-like implications, is not a particularly frugal sport. Michael Mandelbaum take note.
Others, check out the book here.
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