Alexandru Georgescu

Economist, Research Fellow with the EURISC Foundation, studying geopolitics, international security issues and critical infrastructure protection, currently in a Ph.D. research program on the latter subject

Evergrande – a Test of China

Alexandru Georgescu

For several months, the financial world has been watching with concern the evolution of Evergrande Group in China, whose financial problems have conjured up the specter of an economic contagion that can destabilize not only China's opaque financial system but also that of a world in which China has assumed a central role of the economic engine. China's biggest real estate company is, in some ways, emblematic of its explosive business model in the world's most dynamic economy. The company has more than 770 projects in 200 Chinese cities and has nearly two million apartments to deliver to buyers who, in some cases, have pre-paid the delivery price in the overheated real estate market of this country. The non-delivery of these units could generate social disturbances and affect the trust of the population in the economic governance of the country provided by the Communist Party, whose "Chinese dream" and "national regeneration" have an important economic component based on ensuring the prosperity of the common Chinese. After a series of delays in due bond payments, Evergrande found last-minute resources to make some payments and resume construction, sparking theories of government involvement. At the same time, even policies of the government precipitated this crisis against the background of the attempt to restore financial order in an economy characterized by speculative bubbles, primarily in real estate. More

The Return of Microeconomics

Alexandru Georgescu

The recent launch of the English version of the seminal study “Some Microeconomic Landmarks of the Transition Process in Romania” by Prof. Cezar Mereuță is an important step in the process of exposing the notable work of Romanian scholars to their peers abroad.The initial Romanian edition appeared in 2015 and crowned 17 years of research into the structure of 1,009 markets between 1995 and 2012. His work is not only a peerless assessment of the developmental history of the Romanian economy post-transition, but a valuable work of microeconomics in its own right. More

Voices from the Goulash Archipelago

Alexandru Georgescu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made his yearly pilgrimages to Băile Tușnad (Tusnádfürdő in Hungarian) in Romania into opportunities for oracular speeches on the fate of the Hungarian nation and for the West. This is part of his successful attempt to portray himself to the electorate back home and in the Hungarian near abroad, but also for partners in the West and the East, as a visionary statesman addressing civilizational and national decline rather than just another opportunistic politician seeing a line he could cynically use. His forays into ideological dialogue with American and European political forces (through appearances by him and his allies in CPAC in the US and the recent National Conservatism Conference in Brussels) have made him a persona non grata to the European liberal set, but also raised his and his country’s stature in the minds of disaffected Westerners. His recent speech in Băile Tușnad / Tusnádfürdő was erudite and wide ranging, and inspired significant outcry in Europe and, partly, in the US, through his use of racial language in describing Western decline and his hopes for Hungarian continuity and flourishing. Everybody and his mother are either praising or attacking Orbán for this speech and I thought I would briefly throw my hat into the ring, not necessarily for commenting his speech but rather the metapolitical context in which it was made. More

The Three Seas Initiative – Much Ado about Something

Alexandru Georgescu

In pre-war Poland, Marshal Józef Piłsudski developed a grand strategy titled Prometheanism, which meant to weaken the Russian Empire and its successor state, the Soviet Union, by encouraging national independence movements. The movement eventually incorporated a related initiative, that of the Intermarium, a system of alliances, which some had hoped would become a future Federation, linking the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, as a united front against the advance of the Soviet juggernaut. It failed, but the concept held lingering appeal and was resurrected time and time again as a geopolitical solution to perennial Eastern European insecurity in relation to Russia in its various incarnations. More

To the Moon and Back

Alexandru Georgescu

On July 20th 2019, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first manned mission to touch down and explore the Moon’s surface. At the time, this was generously presented by the Americans as an achievement for all mankind, but it was, in fact, a near knock-out punch in the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union. This race was, among other things, a competition for prestige in the eyes of the world and a validation of each country’s individual development model. It was also what Jerry Pournelle and Stefan Possony termed “technological war” in their landmark book “The Strategy of Technology”. Conquering and developing space or “the high frontier” became a priority for the rapid advancement of the military applications of the new space technologies – reconnaissance, early warning, command, control and coordination of conventional and strategic military assets etc. More

Europe’s Self-Inflicted Energy Disaster

Alexandru Georgescu

The European Union has many inherent advantages and a number of good policy decisions made over the years, to promote convergence and take advantage of its size for economies of scale. However, there are a few sore spots as regards major policy trends that produced significant damage to the fabric of the European Union and divided it. One such problem is that of energy, and the impact of the recently begun war in Ukraine and the response of the EU to the war throw these issues in stark relief. Having achieved a surprising unity of perceptions throughout the West as regards the illegality of Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the need to both deter, discourage and punish those actions, a comprehensive set of sanctions was agreed upon and implemented. More

The US Supreme Court – Kritarchy and Compartmentalizing Manias

Alexandru Georgescu

A recent leak from the Supreme Court of the United States (a very serious breach of trust, probably with political aims) is whipping up a severe political disturbance, right before the mid-term elections, which the Party in the White House traditionally loses when all does not become milk and honey after the Presidential elections. The leak hit a particular sore point for American politics, since it is on the issue of abortion, a problem that arouses massive emotional reactions in inverse proportion to the actual ability of politicians to address the issue. Apparently, the current Supreme Court, following a tactical case brought to its attention from Texas (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization), is leaning towards repealing the 50 year-old constitutional ruling on Roe v. Wade (1973), which set hard limits on the restriction of abortion rights. Chief Justice Roberts confirmed that the draft by Samuel Alito was real, but mentioned that it is an old version and it is not indicative of the current version of the Court’s opinion. Following this possible repeal, individual states would be able to set a wider variety of abortion policies which are much more restrictive than the current norm and likely more in keeping with the view of the median American voter, who is more conservative than American elites. This has naturally resulted in much wailing and gnashing of the teeth and much posturing by politicians of all stripes. It is impossible to even discern right now the motivation behind the leak – whether it was a Republican sympathizer trying to drum up support from conservatives now that they are tantalizingly close to an important dream, or maybe it was a Democrat sympathizer trying to galvanize a disappointed electorate to show up to vote for an Administration which, in most practical ways, has been quite moderate and an overall failure on the big issues. More

The European Union Is in a Limbo of Its Own Making

Alexandru Georgescu

The current woes of the European Union are intentionally treated superficially or obtusely in public discourse, as it also emanates from the prestige media which generally co-opts European elites to its worldview, even when they nominally disagree with specific policy prescriptions. Beyond the crisis of the moment and the tendency to transform everything into a morality play involving good and noble Europeanists and regressive nationalists, there are specific factors of its own making which hinder the EU’s adaptive processes and make it increasingly likely that the project may founder. Whether it does so under the blows of an unknown or unremarked crisis or threat (as most empires do), or whether it will simply strain under the accumulated errors and stresses of a thousand bad policy compromises, one should dismiss the “illusion of inevitability” that accompanies public discourse on globalization in general and EU regionalism in particular. More

The Year 2050, the Imaginary and the Unimaginable

Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Alexandru Georgescu

Both “imaginariums” and “histories”, while differing on essential ingredients, visions and vestiges respectively, share an essential imperfection – incomplete information and/or bounded rationality. We compose mosaics (using also our imagination) about a past which we did not witness; and we extrapolate tendencies/trends (undoubtedly, with a historical basis) for a future which we may or may not be there to witness. Combining “path dependencies” with “disruptive revolutions”, we can generate scenarios with varying confidence. More

North Korea: “Reading the Tea Leaves”

Alexandru Georgescu

The “hermit kingdom” of North Korea is back in the news, at the center of a new round of exchanges of bellicose declarations, underpinned by failed tests for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that, nevertheless, show the impressive progress of the country’s indigenous program. The missile capabilities are meant to provide a delivery device for the country’s nuclear weapons, the other great program beset by a string of failures and shoestring successes. Western observers are now attempting to “read the tea leaves” in order to predict when the country will have achieved the ability to threaten the continental United States, while the threat to its immediate neighbors, South Korea and Japan, remains real but uncertain. The weapon systems involved are complex and, as has been suggested of the recent failed test, prone to cyber-attacks and sabotage through the component supply chain. Rather, the immediate threat to a country like South Korea is all of the conventional artillery pointed at its capital, which would make flattening Seoul in a matter of hours a foregone proposition. With Donald Trump at the helm of the US and sending carrier groups in the vicinity, a man given to grand gestures as negotiating bids, the latest tensions with North Korea seem momentous, as if some form of denouement to the regime in Pyongyang is looming. The form it would take is critical to its neighbors, who fear both the ways in which the country can lash out violently, as well as the consequences of a collapse of power, such as millions of refugees trying to cross land borders or internecine warfare. More

Trump and the Paris Agreement

Alexandru Georgescu

The negotiations for the Paris Agreement were concluded at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2015, and it entered into force in October 2016. It has been signed by 195 countries and ratified by 144. President Trump has repeatedly spoken out against the Paris Agreement and the “climate change industry” and made it a campaign plank to exit the Agreement. For all of its apparent randomness, there is one obvious trend in his Cabinet appointments, past and present, which is to appoint people who exhibit an ideological break from the policies of the past Administration or who are skeptical of the worldview of their respective agencies. Naming a “climate change skeptic” and pro-business advocate, Scott Pruitt, to the Environmental Protection Agency was one such move. Naming a China and free trade skeptic, Robert Lighthizer, to be US Trade Representative (a Cabinet level appointment) was another. And there are still more examples, such as the failed nomination of fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor. More

Ethnogenesis in Davos

Alexandru Georgescu

The Davos World Economic Forum, established in 1971, is emblematic of our era for its courtship of notoriety, as opposed to the old Bilderberg Group’s more discrete operation, along with a calculated transparency regarding the power of those attending and the topics of high interest on a global level that are discussed (among some trivial diversions). If you are rich and affluent, then you will be present at Davos, and if you are present at Davos, then it is confirmed that you are rich and affluent. The fact that Davos is a phenomenon in itself, which transcends its components, is confirmed by the emergence of numerous events that imitate the Davos style or that take place simultaneously, just three streets away, in the ghetto of the millionaires in the alpine resort, so that the striving classes can also experience a counterfeit Davos for signalling their social status. When the famous Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington were silently confronting each other, the former with the theory of “the end of history” and the latter arguing for “an end of the beginning” (in Winston Churchill’s words) through the clash of civilizations, Huntington was the one proven right by history, not only through the rise of militant Islamism, but also after inventing the atavistic formula of the “Davos Man”. This subspecies of Homo sapiens sapiens has no national loyalties; he is able to consider himself a citizen of the world and to be inclined towards thinking globally and acting in this direction. More