# Grand Strategy for a Divided America



## Edward Campbell

Despite our varying views on Iraq and the Arab world and Afghanistan and, indeed, Burnett’s *gap*, which includes pretty much all of the so-called Muslim Crescent, I think we can agree that the single most important driver for the coming decade and more, for that region and the world, is US foreign policy.  Here, reproduced from _Foreign Affairs_ (July/August 2007) under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act is a lengthy article which might provide a good jumping off point.

The authors, two distinguished American academics, offer a valuable history lesson, reminding us that what most Canadians – especially journalists and the _commentariat_ – think of as _traditional_ American foreign policy is only about 70 years old – dating from the Roosevelt administration.  Next they offer a six point programme which I think is worthy of debate.

While I find nothing to which I might object, I suspect that all six points will be controversial in some most almost all US political circles.  Readers who are familiar with Walter Russell Mead’s  _Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World_ (Knopf, 2001) will recognize that president Bush is, in Mead’s terms, a pure _Jacksonian_ while Kupchan and Trubowitz are proposing a mix of _Hamiltonian_ and _Jeffersonian_ policies.

We are still a bit away from the day when China or India will challenge American hegemony but, as Prof Pan Wei of Peking University wrote (Harvard International Review), _Under this poor leadership_ [provided by President Bush]_, a previously “benign hegemon” is becoming an oppressive tyrant that suffers opposition almost everywhere in the world._  Prof. Pan worried that _vis à vis_ China President Bush’s foreign policy _” will ultimately cause the decline of US power, and it may not succeed in precluding China’s emergence from a new decade of political reform. Instead, belligerent confrontation will only lead to an escalation of tensions.”_  It is, in my view, likely to do the same with India, Europe and much of the rest of the world, too.

That being said, it will be hard for a Republican administration to turn its back, completely, on Bush and his policies if only because of the political power of the *religious right*.  It will be equally hard for Democrats to do the same.  American power needs to be rebuilt, enhanced and then maintained – cutting and running is not the best way to build power.

Anyway, here it is:

*Part 1 of 2*

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86406/charles-a-kupchan-peter-l-trubowitz/grand-strategy-for-a-divided-america.html


> Grand Strategy for a Divided America
> 
> By Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz
> From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007
> 
> Summary: Deep divisions at home about the nature of the United States' engagement with the world threaten to produce failed leadership abroad -- and possibly isolationism. To steady U.S. global leadership and restore consensus to U.S. foreign policy, U.S. commitments overseas must be scaled back to a more politically sustainable level.
> 
> _Charles A. Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Henry A. Kissinger Scholar at the Library of Congress. Peter L. Trubowitz is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas, Austin, and a Senior Fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law._
> 
> MIND THE GAP
> 
> The United States is in the midst of a polarized and bruising debate about the nature and scope of its engagement with the world. The current reassessment is only the latest of many; ever since the United States' rise as a global power, its leaders and citizens have regularly scrutinized the costs and benefits of foreign ambition. In 1943, Walter Lippmann offered a classic formulation of the issue. "In foreign relations," Lippmann wrote, "as in all other relations, a policy has been formed only when commitments and power have been brought into balance.... The nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes."
> 
> Although Lippmann was mindful of the economic costs of global engagement, his primary concern was the political "solvency" of U.S. foreign policy, not the adequacy of the United States' material resources. He lamented the divisive partisanship that had so often prevented the United States from finding "a settled and generally accepted foreign policy." "This is a danger to the Republic," he warned. "For when a people is divided within itself about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unable to agree on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepare adequately for war or to safeguard successfully its peace.... The spectacle of this great nation which does not know its own mind is as humiliating as it is dangerous." Lippmann's worries would prove unfounded; in the face of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, the bitter partisanship of the past gave way to a broad consensus on foreign policy that was to last for the next five decades.
> 
> Today, however, Lippmann's concern with political solvency is more relevant than ever. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the shock of September 11, and the failures of the Iraq war, Republicans and Democrats share less common ground on the fundamental purposes of U.S. power than at any other time since World War II. A critical gap has opened up between the United States' global commitments and its political appetite for sustaining them. As made clear by the collision between President George W. Bush and the Democratic Congress over what to do in Iraq, the country's bipartisan consensus on foreign policy has collapsed. If left unattended, the political foundations of U.S. statecraft will continue to disintegrate, exposing the country to the dangers of an erratic and incoherent foreign policy.
> 
> The presidential candidate who understands the urgency and gravity of striking a new balance between the United States' purposes and its political means is poised to reap a double reward. He or she would likely attract strong popular support; as in the 2006 midterm elections, in the 2008 election the war in Iraq and the conduct of U.S. foreign policy are set to be decisive issues. That candidate, if elected, would also enhance U.S. security by crafting a new grand strategy that is politically sustainable, thereby steadying a global community that continues to look to the United States for leadership.
> 
> Formulating a politically solvent strategy will require scaling back U.S. commitments, bringing them into line with diminishing means. At the same time, it will be necessary to stabilize the nation's foreign policy by shoring up public support for a new vision of the United States' global responsibilities. Solvency is the path to security; it is far better for the United States to arrive at a more discriminating grand strategy that enjoys domestic backing than to continue drifting toward an intractable polarization that would be as dangerous as it would be humiliating.
> 
> FINDING THE WATER'S EDGE
> 
> For Americans who lived through the bipartisan consensus of the Cold War era, the current political warfare over foreign policy seems to be a dramatic aberration. To be sure, Bush has been a polarizing president, in no small part due to the controversial invasion of Iraq and the troubled occupation that has followed. But in fact, today's partisan wrangling over foreign policy is the historical norm; it is the bipartisanship of the Cold War that was the anomaly.
> 
> Soon after the republic's founding, political parties formed to help overcome the obstacles that federalism, the separation of powers, and sectionalism put in the way of effective statecraft. With them came partisanship. During the nation's early decades, the main line of partisan competition ran along the North-South divide, pitting the Hamiltonian Federalists of the Northeast against the Jeffersonian Republicans of the South. The two parties disagreed on matters of grand strategy -- specifically whether the United States should lean toward Great Britain or France -- as well as on matters of political economy.
> 
> The Federalists worried that the new republic might fail if it found itself in a conflict with the British; they therefore favored tilting toward Great Britain rather than extending the alliance with France that was struck during the American Revolution. On economic matters, the Federalists defended the interests of the North's aspiring entrepreneurs, arguing for tariffs to protect the region's infant industries. The Republicans, however, continued to lean toward France, hoping to balance Great Britain's power by supporting its main European rival. And as champions of the interests of the nation's farmers, the Republicans clamored for free trade and westward expansion. At George Washington's behest, the two parties found common ground on the need to avoid "entangling alliances," but they agreed on little else.
> 
> Partisan passions cooled with the end of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, and an era of solvency in the conduct of the nation's foreign affairs ensued. The collapse of the Federalist Party and the revival of an economy no longer disrupted by war ushered in what one Boston newspaper called "an Era of Good Feelings." For the first time, the United States enjoyed a sustained period of political consensus. Meanwhile, the peace preserved by the Concert of Europe, coupled with the tentative rapprochement with London that followed the War of 1812, made it possible for the nation's elected officials, starting with James Monroe, to turn their energies to the demands of "internal improvement." Americans focused on the consolidation and westward expansion of the union, limiting the nation's reach to what was sustainable politically and militarily.
> 
> This consensus was upended in 1846, when James Polk took the country to war against Mexico in the name of "manifest destiny." The Democrats -- the southern heirs to Jefferson's Republicans -- championed seizing Mexican territory and saw the war as an opportunity to strengthen their hold on the levers of national power. Fearing exactly that, the northeastern Whigs -- the forerunners to modern Republicans -- waged a rear-guard battle, challenging the legitimacy of Polk's land grab and the rise of southern "slave power." Polk's war, the United States' first war of choice, unleashed a new round of partisan struggle, aggravating the sectional tensions that would ultimately result in the Civil War.
> 
> An uneasy domestic calm set in after the Civil War, but it was soon brought to an end by divisions over the United States' aspirations to great-power status. Over the course of the 1890s, the United States built a world-class battle fleet, acquired foreign lands, and secured foreign markets. Republican efforts to catapult the United States into the front ranks, however, reopened sectional wounds and invited strong Democratic resistance. The Republicans prevailed due to their monopoly on power, but their geopolitical ambitions soon proved politically unsustainable. Starting with the Spanish-American War, the United States engaged in what Lippmann called "deficit diplomacy": its international commitments exceeded the public's willingness to bear the requisite burdens.
> 
> After the turn of the century, U.S. foreign policy lurched incoherently between stark alternatives. Theodore Roosevelt's imperialist adventure in the Philippines quickly outstripped the country's appetite for foreign ambition. William Taft tried "dollar diplomacy," preferring to pursue Washington's objectives abroad through what he called "peaceful and economic" means. But he triggered the ire of Democrats who viewed his strategy as little more than capitulation to the interests of big business. Woodrow Wilson embraced "collective security" and the League of Nations, investing in institutionalized partnerships that would ease the costs of the United States' deepening engagement with the world. But the Senate, virtually paralyzed by partisan rancor, would have none of it. As Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the League of Nations' staunchest opponents in the Senate, quipped, "I never expected to hate anyone in politics with the hatred I feel towards Wilson." By the interwar period, political stalemate had set in. Americans shunned both the assertive use of U.S. power and institutionalized multilateralism, instead preferring the illusory safety of isolationism advocated by Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.
> 
> One of Franklin Roosevelt's greatest achievements was overcoming this political divide and steering the United States toward a new era of bipartisanship. With World War II as a backdrop, he built a broad coalition of Democrats and Republicans behind liberal internationalism. The new course entailed a commitment to both power and partnership: the United States would project its military strength to preserve stability, but whenever possible it would exercise leadership through consensus and multilateral partnership rather than unilateral initiative. This domestic compact, although weakened by political struggles over the Vietnam War, lasted to the end of the Cold War.
> 
> The nature of the geopolitical threat facing the United States helped Roosevelt and his successors sustain this liberal internationalist compact. Washington needed allies to prevent the domination of Eurasia by a hostile power. The strategic exigencies of World War II and the Cold War also instilled discipline, encouraging Democrats and Republicans alike to unite around a common foreign policy. When partisan passions flared, as they did over the Korean War and the Vietnam War, they were contained by the imperatives of super-power rivalry.
> 
> The steadiness of bipartisan cooperation on foreign policy was the product not just of strategic necessity but also of changes in the nation's political landscape. Regional divides had moderated, with the North and the South forming a political alliance for the first time in U.S. history. Anticommunism made it politically treacherous to stray too far to the left, and the public's worries about nuclear Armageddon reined in the right. The post-World War II economic boom eased the socioeconomic divides of the New Deal era, closing the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans and making it easier to fashion a consensus behind free trade. Prosperity and affluence helped nurture the United States' political center, which served as the foundation for the liberal internationalism that lasted a half century.


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## Edward Campbell

*Part 2 of 2*

Reproduced from _Foreign Affairs_ under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86406/charles-a-kupchan-peter-l-trubowitz/grand-strategy-for-a-divided-america.html



> A NATION REDIVIDED
> 
> Contrary to conventional wisdom, the collapse of bipartisanship and liberal internationalism did not start with George W. Bush. Bipartisanship dropped sharply following the end of the Cold War, reaching a post-World War II low after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994. Repeated clashes over foreign policy between the Clinton administration and Congress marked the hollowing out of the bipartisan center that had been liberal internationalism's political base. The Bush administration then dismantled what remained of the moderate center, ensuring that today's partisan divide is every bit as wide as the interwar schism that haunted Lippmann. Democratic and Republican lawmakers now hold very different views on foreign policy. On the most basic questions of U.S. grand strategy -- the sources and purposes of U.S. power, the use of force, the role of international institutions -- representatives of the two parties are on different planets.
> 
> Most Republicans in Congress contend that U.S. power depends mainly on the possession and use of military might, and they view institutionalized cooperation primarily as an impediment. They staunchly back the Bush administration's ongoing effort to pacify Iraq. When the new Congress took its first votes on the Iraq war in the beginning of this year, only 17 of the 201 Republicans in the House crossed party lines to oppose the recent surge in U.S. troops. In the Senate, only two Republicans joined the Democrats to approve a resolution calling for a timetable for withdrawal. In contrast, most Democrats maintain that U.S. power depends more on persuasion than coercion and needs to be exercised multilaterally. They want out of Iraq: 95 percent of House and Senate Democrats have voted to withdraw U.S. troops in 2008. With the Republicans opting for the use of force and the Democrats for international cooperation, the bipartisan compact between power and partnership -- the formula that brought liberal internationalism to life -- has come undone.
> 
> To be sure, the Republican Party is still home to a few committed multilateralists, such as Senators Richard Lugar (of Indiana) and Chuck Hagel (of Nebraska). But they are isolated within their own ranks. And some Democrats, especially those eyeing the presidency, are keen to demonstrate their resolve on matters of national defense. But the party leaders are being pushed to the left by increasingly powerful party activists. The ideological overlap between the two parties is thus minimal, and the areas of concord are superficial at best. Most Republicans and Democrats still believe that the United States has global responsibilities, but there is little agreement on how to match means and ends. And on the central question of power versus partnership, the two parties are moving in opposite directions -- with the growing gap evident among the public as well as political elites.
> 
> In a March 2007 Pew Research Center poll, over 70 percent of Republican voters maintained that "the best way to ensure peace is through military strength." Only 40 percent of Democratic voters shared that view. A similar poll conducted in 1999 revealed the same partisan split, making clear that the divide is not just about Bush's foreign policy but also about the broader purposes of U.S. power. The Iraq war has clearly widened and deepened ideological differences over the relative efficacy of force and diplomacy. One CNN poll recorded that after four years of occupying Iraq, only 24 percent of Republicans oppose the war, compared with more than 90 percent of Democrats. As for exporting American ideals, a June 2006 German Marshall Fund study found that only 35 percent of Democrats believed the United States should "help establish democracy in other countries," compared with 64 percent of Republicans. Similarly, a December 2006 CBS News poll found that two-thirds of Democrats believed the United States should "mind its own business internationally," whereas only one-third of Republicans held that view.
> 
> Fueled by these ideological divides, partisanship has engulfed Washington. According to one widely used index (Voteview), Congress today is more politically fractious and polarized than at any time in the last hundred years. After Democrats gained a majority in Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, many observers predicted that having one party control the White House and the other Congress would foster cooperation, as it often has in the past. Instead, the political rancor has only intensified. The White House, despite its initial pledge to work with the opposition, has continued its strident ways, dismissing the Democrats' call for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq as a "game of charades." Just after capturing the House and the Senate, the Democrats also promised to reach across the aisle. But as soon as the 110th Congress opened, they gave Republicans a taste of their own medicine by preventing the minority party from amending legislation during the initial flurry of lawmaking.
> 
> The sources of this return to partisan rancor are international as well as domestic. Abroad, the demise of the Soviet Union and the absence of a new peer competitor have loosened Cold War discipline, leaving the country's foreign policy more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of party politics. The threat posed by international terrorism has proved too elusive and sporadic to act as the new unifier. Meanwhile, the United States' deepening integration into the world economy is producing growing disparities in wealth among Americans, creating new socioeconomic cleavages and eroding support for free trade.
> 
> Within the United States, the political conditions that once encouraged centrism have weakened. Regional tensions are making a comeback; "red" America and "blue" America disagree about what the nature of the country's engagement in the world should be as well as about domestic issues such as abortion, gun control, and taxes. Moderates are in ever shorter supply, resulting in the thinning out of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., aptly labeled "the vital center." Congressional redistricting, the proliferation of highly partisan media outlets, and the growing power of the Internet as a source of campaign financing and partisan mobilization have all contributed to the erosion of the center. A generational change has taken its toll, too. Almost 85 percent of the House was first elected in 1988 or after. The "greatest generation" is fast retiring from political life, taking with it decades of civic-minded service.
> 
> With the presidential campaign now building up to full speed and the domestic landscape already deeply etched along regional and ideological lines, the partisan confrontation is poised to intensify -- a recipe for political stalemate at home and failed leadership abroad.
> 
> RESTORING SOLVENCY
> 
> In the early twentieth century, deep partisan divisions produced unpredictable and dangerous swings in U.S. foreign policy and ultimately led to isolation from the world. A similar dynamic is unfolding at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The assertive unilateralism of the Bush administration is proving politically unsustainable. Eyeing the 2008 elections, the Democrats are readying ambitious plans to breathe new life into international institutions. But they, too, will find their preferred grand strategy politically unsustainable. The Republican Party, virtually bereft of its moderates after the 2006 elections, has little patience for cooperative multilateralism -- and will gladly deploy its power in the Senate to block any programmatic effort to bind Washington to international agreements and institutions. Especially amid the domestic acrimony spawned by the war in Iraq, partisanship and stalemate at home could once again obstruct U.S. statecraft, perhaps even provoking an unsteady retreat from abroad.
> 
> The U.S. electorate already appears to be heading in that direction. According to the December 2006 CBS News poll, 52 percent of all Americans thought the United States "should mind its own business internationally." Even in the midst of impassioned opposition to the Vietnam War, only 36 percent of Americans held such a view. Inward-looking attitudes are especially pronounced among younger Americans: 72 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds do not believe that the United States should take the lead in solving global crises. If Washington continues to pursue a grand strategy that exceeds its political means, isolationist sentiment among Americans is sure to grow.
> 
> The United States needs to pursue a new grand strategy that is politically solvent. In today's polarized landscape, with Democrats wanting less power projection and Republicans fewer international partnerships, restoring solvency means bringing U.S. commitments back in line with political means. Finding a new domestic equilibrium that guarantees responsible U.S. leadership in the world requires a strategy that is as judicious and selective as it is purposeful.
> 
> First, a solvent strategy would entail sharing more burdens with other states. Great powers have regularly closed the gap between resources and commitments by devolving strategic ties to local actors. The United States should use its power and good offices to catalyze greater self-reliance in various regions, as it has done in Europe. Washington should build on existing regional bodies by, for example, encouraging the Gulf Cooperation Council to deepen defense cooperation on the Arabian Peninsula, helping the African Union expand its capabilities, and supporting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' efforts to build an East Asian security forum. Washington should urge the European Union to forge a more collective approach to security policy and assume greater defense burdens. The United States also ought to deepen its ties to emerging regional powers, such as Brazil, China, India, and Nigeria. Washington would then be able to better influence their behavior so that it complements rather than hinders U.S. objectives.
> 
> Second, where the war on terrorism is concerned, U.S. strategy should be to target terrorists rather than to call for regime change. This would mean focusing military efforts on destroying terrorist cells and networks while using political and economic tools to address the long-term sources of instability in the Middle East. Recognizing that reform in the Arab world will be slow in coming, Washington should pursue policies that patiently support economic development, respect for human rights, and religious and political pluralism. It should also fashion working partnerships with countries prepared to fight extremism. Pursuing regime change and radical visions of transforming the Middle East will only backfire and continue to overextend U.S. military power and political will.
> 
> Third, the United States must rebuild its hard power. To do so, Congress must allocate the funds necessary to redress the devastating effect of the Iraq war on the readiness, equipment, and morale of the U.S. armed forces. The Pentagon should also husband its resources by consolidating its 750 overseas bases. Although the United States must maintain the ability to project power on a global basis, it can reduce the drain on manpower by downsizing its forward presence and relying more heavily on prepositioned assets and personnel based in the United States.
> 
> Fourth, the United States should restrain adversaries through engagement, as many great powers in the past have frequently done. In the nineteenth century, Otto von Bismarck adeptly adjusted Germany's relations with Europe's major states to ensure that his country would not face a countervailing coalition. At the turn of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom successfully engaged the United States and Japan, dramatically reducing the costs of its overseas empire and enabling it to focus on dangers closer to home. In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon's opening to China substantially lightened the burden of Cold War competition. Washington should pursue similar strategies today, using shrewd diplomacy to dampen strategic competition with China, Iran, and other potential rivals. Should U.S. efforts be reciprocated, they promise to yield the substantial benefits that accompany rapprochement. If Washington is rebuffed, it can be sure to remain on guard and thereby avoid the risk of strategic exposure.
> 
> The fifth component of this grand strategy should be greater energy independence. The United States' oil addiction is dramatically constricting its geopolitical flexibility; playing guardian of the Persian Gulf entails onerous strategic commitments and awkward political alignments. Furthermore, high oil prices are encouraging producers such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela to challenge U.S. interests. The United States must reduce its dependence on oil by investing in the development of alternative fuels and adopting a federally mandated effort to make cars more efficient.
> 
> Finally, the United States should favor pragmatic partnerships over the formalized international institutions of the Cold War era. To be sure, international collaboration continues to be in the United States' national interest. In some areas -- fighting climate change, facilitating international development, liberalizing international trade -- institutionalized cooperation is likely to endure, if not deepen. It is already clear, however, that congressional support for the fixed alliances and robust institutions that were created after World War II is quickly waning. Grand visions of a global alliance of democracies need to be tempered by political reality. Informal groupings, such as the "contact group" for the Balkans, the Quartet, the participants in the six-party talks on North Korea, and the EU-3/U.S. coalition working to rein in Iran's nuclear program, are rapidly becoming the most effective vehicles for diplomacy. In a polarized climate, less is more: pragmatic teamwork, flexible concerts, and task-specific coalitions must become the staples of a new brand of U.S. statecraft.
> 
> Far from being isolationist, this strategy of judicious retrenchment would guard against isolationist tendencies. In contrast, pursuing a foreign policy of excessive and unsustainable ambition would risk a political backlash that could produce precisely the turn inward that neither the United States nor the world can afford. The United States must find a stable middle ground between doing too much and doing too little.
> 
> BREAK ON THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE
> 
> Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson once claimed that 80 percent of the job of foreign policy was "management of your domestic ability to have a policy." He may have exaggerated, but he expressed an enduring truth: good policy requires good politics. Bringing ends and means back into balance would help restore the confidence of the American public in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. But implementing a strategic adjustment will require dampening polarization and building a stable consensus behind it. As Roosevelt demonstrated during World War II, sound leadership and tireless public diplomacy are prerequisites for fashioning bipartisan cooperation on foreign policy.
> 
> The next president will have to take advantage of the discrete areas in which Democrats and Republicans can find common purpose. Logrolling may be necessary to circumvent gridlock and facilitate agreement. Evangelicals on the right and social progressives on the left can close ranks on climate change, human rights, and international development. Democrats might support free trade if Republicans are willing to invest in worker retraining programs. The desire of big business to preserve access to low-wage labor may be consistent with the interests of pro-immigration constituencies; building a bridge between the two groups would reconcile corporate interests in the North with immigrant interests in the Southwest. Democrats who support multilateralism on principle can team up with Republicans who support institutions as vehicles for sharing global burdens. Although these and other political bargains will not restore the bipartisan consensus of the Cold War era, they will certainly help build political support for a new, albeit more modest, grand strategy.
> 
> So will more efforts to reach across the congressional aisle. Roosevelt overcame the Republicans' opposition to liberal internationalism by reaching out to them, appointing prominent Republicans to key international commissions and working closely with Wendell Willkie, the candidate he defeated in the 1940 election, to combat isolationism. The next administration should follow suit, appointing pragmatic members of the opposition to important foreign policy posts and establishing a high-level, bipartisan panel to provide regular and timely input into policy deliberations. Form will be as important as substance as U.S. leaders search for a grand strategy that not only meets the country's geopolitical needs but also restores political solvency at home.



Congratulations to those who read it all!


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## tomahawk6

Both authors are democrats living in their ivory tower. America in my opinion is alot more unified than the democrats/socialists want to admit. The voters are hanging tough on Iraq and illegal immigration. The democrats control Congress and 6 months into their term have passed none of the legislation that they promised the voters. The democrat strategy is to try to divide America and to pound out the theme that Bush is the great evil in the world and that if we would just communicate with the islamists then we could come to an agreement. Negotiating with bad guys from a position of weakness is a prescription for disaster. There are many modern day Neville Chamberlins but damn few Churchill's in the world. To fight an implacable enemy requires the will to win but all we hear from Washington's democrats and some republicans is doom and gloom. Iraq is a lost cause blah blah. The reality is that the democrats are invested in our defeat. If Petreaus reports in the fall real progress then the democrats lose politically.They cannot allow for a victory hence the constant efforts to defund the war. The Senate Majority leader is encouraged by some skittish republican senators and feels that he has the votes to defund the war.

Our troops are out on the frontline of the war on terror risking their lives all the while their politicians are busy undermining their efforts to protect the nation. This spectacle is disheartening and disgraceful.


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## 54/102 CEF

Tomahawk - well said - we too have 3 major defeatists up here

- Defeatist Number 1 - Jack Lay(down) Your Arms
- Defeatist Number 2 - Stephane (let someone else do the) Dion
- Defeatist Number 3 - Certain willfully mis informed and Spinning media channels - both electronic media and print - You'll ID them with these articles where the KIAs and the Mission are always praised then 1/3 of the way into the article "many critics say we should pull out."


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## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> ... America in my opinion is alot more unified than the democrats/socialists want to admit ...



That would seem to be borne out by at least one opinion 'research' report which shows that:

1. Only 30% of Americans approve of President Bush's handing of the war;

2. Americans are evenly split on the question: was the decision to go to war in Iraq correct?

3. Less than 40% of Americans think things are going well in Iraq;

4. More than half of Americans want to bring the troops home now; and

5. Only 1/3 of Americans think the _surge_ will make things better.

Maybe Americans are *united*, but not in the way one might wish.


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## tomahawk6

I think the polls are slanted. If that many Americans opposed the war doe example where are the mass anti-war demonstrations ? If so few support the war then why are the democrats having a hard time forcing a troop withdrawal ? Finally many polls seem to show Congress with a much lower approval rating that the President. The MSN has been pounding Bush for six years now and yet the President seems to have enough political support to get his way on Iraq. It is not lost on the public that we have not had another terrorist attack - so Bush is keeping Americans safe which is really what leadership is all about.


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## Edward Campbell

I don’t think that even the modest ‘agreements’  Kupchan and Trubowitz advocate as preliminary steps in the process of developing a (much needed, in my view) bipartisan _Grand Strategy_ are possible now or even in the first term of the next administration.

My sense, an outsider’s ‘sense’ to be sure, is that the political divisions in America are, by and large, domestic – a battle for the ‘soul of America’ to be a bit dramatic.  Foreign policy and _grand strategy_ are peripheral issues.

If the polls and reports I have read are anything like accurate then America is very hard for outsiders to interpret.  It is, uniquely in the West, a religious society.  There are inexact parallels (how’s that for a contradiction in terms?) with Japan where some _Shinto_* practices strongly influence domestic politics and foreign policy.

(Some commentators have suggested that only Muslim countries mix faith and politics so thoroughly.  I don’t accept that.  I don’t believe that most (even very many) Americans believe that the bible is a better political instrument than the US Constitution; I understand that most *faithful, believing* Muslims must believe that the Quran provides all the political guidance any state needs.)

But, Islam aside, public morality, legislated morality is an issue in the US to a degree that is difficult for foreigners to imagine.  For example: abortion and homosexual rights (both issues of ‘privacy’) are regarded as being both legally and socially ‘settled’ in Canada, Europe, Australia/New Zealand and parts of Asia; not so in the USA where a deeply rooted *conservative* (not, in any way _neo-*liberal*_) element wants to legislate individual liberty.

That, I think, is the issue with which Americans must come to grips, in their own internal political debates, during the next generation.  And, absent a *major* war, they will not, because they cannot, develop a bipartisan foreign policy and _grand strategy_ until the domestic political divisions are resolved – one way or the other.

I think President Bush is right: Americans are “war weary” – just like Canadians.  America’s mythology says that when the US acts, solutions (victory, etc) follow along quite quickly.  Viet Nam is a festering exception that proves the rule: a long, long war which ended poorly.  Iraq is getting longer and longer and a mix of fatigue, disillusionment and fear of another Viet Name style failure are taking hold.

That war weariness does not help the Democrats in congress.  They now have their hands near the levers of power and most understand that their options are very limited.  The current ‘pull out’ resolutions are political posturing: Democrats doing to the Republicans and President Bush what Harper did to the Liberals with the Afghanistan mission extension decision – embarrassing them by highlighting their own internal divisions.  The congress is not going to cut off funding – its only meaningful (and immensely powerful) course of action – that would be a political ‘nuclear strike’ on the White House and it is politically unacceptable to most (enough, anyway) Americans.

Anyway: I agree with Kupchan and Trubowitz that a new, bipartisan _grand strategy_ is necessary – not just for America, either.  I doubt it is possible until sometime after 2012, maybe even later, after some key domestic, social issues are sufficiently ‘settled’ to allow the political focus to be widened.

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* Shinto is, in my limited understanding, both more and less than a ‘religion’ as we tend to use that word.


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## GAP

I essentially agree with what ER just said, with one exception..... That sometime in the near future there is not a strike at the US from outside....like 911, it will pull everybody together temporarily, and if it is bad enough, keep them there for a long while. The best thing AQ can do now is nothing.


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## tomahawk6

Interesting ER. Whenever a democrat talks about bipartisanship it is a misnomer. If you look at the way they are operating in Washington today there is very little in the way of bipartisanship. If the democrats had enough votes as they do in the House to ram legislation through without republican support they do so. The democrats are socialists trying to spread their ideology and the majority of americans are not prepared to go down that road just yet. We see the failure of socialism in Europe and its something that isnt very attractive to the average american.

Right now most americans take positions on domestic issues from a religious perspective such as abortion and gay marriage. On gun issues its a matter of a right guaranteed under the constitution. The democrats see abortion as a civil right and do not extend that view to the right to bear arms - gun ownership. The democrats when given a chance believe in higher taxes which is the opposite view of many wage earners. 

For me a winning strategy for foreign policy would be this - act always in America's national interest irregardless of the view of the rest of the world. Be prepared to act with or without allies. The democrats dont like military power and prefer to negotiate away the issues of the day. Its impossible to negotiate with stateless terrorists. I believe that negotiation is possible in many instances after you have secured the peace - meaning if you have killed enough of the bad guys to the point where they dont want to fight anymore. State sponsors of terrorism cannot be ignored they must be dealt with effectively and with a wide range of tools. As they are police states to one degree or another they can be destabilized and eventually overthrown. Iran for example lacks the ability to refine oil and must import gas this would be an ideal way to apply pressure to the regime. State sponsors of terrorism is the #1 national security issue and defeating terrorism is #2.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I suspect that American opinion will fit rather neatly under a bell curve.  My guesstimate is that Tomahawk6 is over close to the right end – but by no means too near it, and Michael Moore, for example, is over towards the left end.

I’m  guessing that most of those Americans who voted Democrat in the last election (pretty close in number to those who voted Republican at 39.6 vs 34.7 million, respectively) do not regard the Dems as being socialists.  I’m also guessing that only a minority of Republicans see the Dems as being socialists.

Caution, off topic:  I wonder how Americans will deal with David M. Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and his ‘Fiscal Wake-up Tour.’  His numbers and the implications in them are frightening, to say the least and higher taxes and reduced expectations may not be negotiable. 


Edit: hyperlink to Fiscal wake-up presentation - http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d061084cg.pdf


----------



## 54/102 CEF

A paper on the US National Security Strategy 2006 is attached. Prof is with DND's Strategic Policy Directorate.

Paper was part of a recently completed MA course in War Studies at Royal Military College. This is half paid by DND so here's your tax dollars coming back to you! 

Extract

Bruce Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution  believes that in the face of a resilient threat the U.S. Government has to itself become quicker to adapt. He compares citizens of the old Soviet Union making jokes about how inept their government was but notes that the same jokes that used to be passed back to Washington are not heard from widespread support for the ideas of Islam confronting the west. He suggests there is a decades old real military limit to what the USA can bear which is on the order of 370 billion adjusted for inflation and when it gets to that level it declines by disengagement or a change of government at home. It happened with the abrupt cutoff of aid to England after the Second World War and in the mid 1970s in Vietnam. So in the end no perfect solution exists – and classic realism, means versus ends come back into vogue vs idealism – even the richest countries have limits. He offers some general principles to maintain a manageable engagement with the world:

“In sum, a strategy recognizing the need for sustainability would be developed consistent with these principles:

Know your long-term resources; aim for a concerted, sustained effort that is affordable and commands broad public support. 

Be proactive in dealing with threats, even if this requires unilateral military measures; modest amounts of force now may avert the need for larger, unaffordable amounts of force later. 

Be pragmatic in dealing with allies and potential coalition partners; don’t create unnecessary animosity, costs, or friction. 
Yet be clear about the enduring values and goals the United States seeks. Officials need to be frank and sincere, not coy and calculating in public statements. We can trim our values from time to time when the situation demands, but officials need to be honest about it if they hope to keep public support. 

Work as hard as necessary for a bipartisan consensus on long-term goals; the United States cannot maintain a predominance strategy based on 51 percent of the public as measured every four years on election day. Containment worked because it enjoyed broad support for many years. 

Military power will be important, but soft power — American culture and international commerce — will, over time, have a greater effect in defeating or transforming our adversaries. 

Like an expert mariner, the United States needs to ride these tides — which do run in our favor — so that we can reach our destination efficiently and assuredly. Maintaining our predominance requires a deft touch. Achieving this level of sophistication in U.S. strategy and policy may be the greatest challenge of all.”

Full paper at link


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## tomahawk6

The vote tally was Bush - 60,693,281 which was 51% of the vote. Kerry had 57,355,978 or 48% of the vote. If you look at the state by state results you see the strength of the democrats. You are right I am a conservative which to the moonbats on the left make me something akin to Atilla. ;D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:US_presidential_election_2004_map.svg


----------



## Edward Campbell

Army.ca veterans will not be surprised to know that I agree, again, with Timothy Garton Ash.  Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_ is his latest:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070719.wcoash0720/BNStory/specialComment/home


> Iraq is over. Iraq has not yet begun
> *The public wants the boys to come home, but the war's consequences will still range from bad to catastrophic*
> 
> TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
> 
> From Friday's Globe and Mail
> July 20, 2007 at 12:00 AM EDT
> 
> STANFORD, CALIF. — What conclusions can be drawn from the American debate about Iraq, which dominates the media here to the exclusion of almost any other foreign story?
> 
> First, that Iraq is over, in that American public has decided that most U.S. troops should leave. In a Gallup poll earlier this month, 71 per cent favoured "removing all U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1 of next year, except for a limited number that would be involved in counter-terrorism efforts." CNN's veteran political analyst Bill Schneider observes that in the latter years of the Vietnam War, the American public's attitude could be summarized as "either win or get out." He argues it's the same with Iraq. Despite President George W. Bush's increasingly desperate pleas, most Americans have concluded America is not winning. So: Get out.
> 
> Since this is a democracy, their elected representatives are following the people. Whatever the result of the latest round of congressional position play — which included an all-night marathon on the floor of the Senate from Tuesday to Wednesday, as Democrats attempted to outface a Republican filibuster — no one in Washington doubts this is the way the wind blows.
> 
> Publicly, there's still a sharp split along party lines, but leading Republicans are already breaking ranks to float their own phased troop reductions and proposals for partitioning Iraq among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
> 
> Mr. Bush says he's determined to give the commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, exactly the troop levels he asks for when he reports back this September, and the White House may hold the line for now against a Democrat-controlled Congress. Leading Republican contenders for the presidency are still talking tough. However, the most outspoken protagonist of hanging in there to win in Iraq, John McCain, has seen his campaign nosedive. Even if the next president is a hard-line Republican, all the current Washington betting will be confounded if he does not, at the very least, rapidly reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. After all, that's what the American people plainly say they want.
> 
> The American people's verdict is remarkably sharp on other aspects of the Iraq debacle. Asked who they blamed most for the current situation in Iraq, 40 per cent of those polled for Newsweek said the White House and another 13 per cent said Congress. In a poll for CNN, 54 per cent said the U.S. action in Iraq is not morally justified. In one for CBS, 51 per cent endorsed the assessment — shared by most of the experts — that involvement in Iraq is creating more terrorists hostile to the United States, rather than reducing their number. If once Americans were blind, they now can see. For all its plenitude of faith, this is a reality-based nation.
> 
> So Iraq is over. But the second conclusion is that Iraq has not yet begun. Not yet begun in terms of the consequences for Iraq itself, the Middle East, the United States' own foreign policy and its reputation in the world. The most probable consequence of rapid U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in its present condition is a further bloodbath, with even larger refugee flows and the effective dismemberment of the country. Already some two million Iraqis have fled across the borders and more than two million are internally displaced.
> 
> Now a pained and painstaking study from the Brookings Institution argues that what its authors call "soft partition" — involving the peaceful, voluntary transfer of an estimated two million to five million Iraqis into distinct Kurdish, Sunni and Shia regions, under close U.S. military supervision — would be the lesser evil. The lesser evil, that is, assuming that all goes according to plan and that the American public are prepared to allow their troops to stay in sufficient numbers to accomplish that thankless job: two implausible assumptions. A greater evil is more likely.
> 
> For the United States, the world is now, as a result of the Iraq war, a more dangerous and hostile place. At the end of 2002, what is sometimes tagged al-Qaeda Central in Afghanistan had been virtually destroyed and there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. In 2007, there is an al-Qaeda in Iraq, parts of the old al-Qaeda are creeping back into Afghanistan, and there are al-Qaeda emulator-groupuscules spawning elsewhere, notably in Europe. The U.S. government's own latest national intelligence estimate, released earlier this week, suggests al-Qaeda in Iraq is now among the most significant threats to the security of the American homeland.
> 
> America has probably not yet fully woken up to the appalling fact that, after a long period in which the first motto of its military was "no more Vietnams," it faces another Vietnam. There are many important differences, of course, but the basic result is similar: The mightiest military in the world fails to achieve its strategic goals, and is, in the end, politically defeated by an economically and technologically inferior adversary. Even if there are no scenes of helicopters evacuating Americans from a flat roof of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, there will surely be some totemic image of national humiliation as the military struggles to extract its troops and all the equipment it has poured into Iraq. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have done terrible damage to America's reputation for being humane; this defeat will convince more people around the world that it is not even that powerful. And Osama bin Laden, still alive, will claim another victory over the death-fearing weaklings of the West.
> 
> In history, the most important consequences are often the unintended ones. We do not yet know the longer-term unintended consequences of Iraq. Maybe there is a silver lining hidden somewhere in this cloud. But so far as the human eye can see, the likely consequences of Iraq range from the bad to the catastrophic.
> 
> _Timothy Garton Ash is a professor of European studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford_



I need to begin by saying that despite my reservations about attacking Iraq at all (I would have preferred Saudi Arabia if we had to go after the good ol’ _root causes_) had I been prime minister of Canada we would have been ‘in’ – part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, despite Canadians’ very real opposition, because I would have valued _Western solidarity_ higher than my (and my fellow citizens’) concerns about George W Bush’s strategic grasp.  Australia and Britain made the *strategically* ‘right’ choice; Canada and France did not.  Australia and Britain now regret their choices, right as they may have been, Canada and France do not.

I think the ‘meat’ is in the penultimate paragraph.  America’s _soft power_ which is, unlike Canada’s, real and great is badly damaged.  The American military’s capability to defeat almost anyone, almost anywhere, quickly and thoroughly is mostly unimpaired.  America’s capability to ‘lead’ in the world is taking a hit.  America’s ‘strategic judgement’ is open to serious question.  

Asia, beginning with India and Japan, is slipping, visibly, away from America – *not towards China* or anyone else, but, rather, into their own, regional ‘orbits,’ less tightly tied to America.  They will remain allies but more independent allies.  The so-called ‘quad’ is necessary to ‘balance’ China’s growing _soft power_ which is markedly enhanced by America’s current problems.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I’m resurrecting an old thread because I think this relates to _grand strategy_.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Ottawa Citizen_, is a column by the _CanWest_ chain’s George Jonas:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=3edf0a6b-e292-4f71-ab5e-e7c3357ab829


> George Jonas .
> The duties of empire
> 
> George Jonas, The National Post
> 
> Published: Monday, March 03, 2008
> 
> Why are western military coalitions participating in the civil wars of the Hindu Kush and the Balkans? A partial answer: Entropy. We're in Afghanistan and Kosovo because - as they used to say in the old days - nature abhors a vacuum.
> 
> Empire wasn't the direction in which the world seemed to be heading as the 19th century turned into the 20th. On the contrary, old empires were ascending their funeral pyres, with independent nations, newly created or resurrected from history, rising phoenix-like from their ashes.
> 
> The first to self-immolate was the Ottoman Empire, soon followed by the Romanov (Russian), Hohenzollern (German) and Habsburg (Austro- Hungarian) Empires. The Second World War did away with the nascent imperiums of the Japanese, the Italians and the Third Reich.
> 
> In the postwar years the sun finally set on the British Empire, along with remnants of Belgian, Dutch, Portuguese and French imperial holdings from Southeast Asia to North Africa. The last to implode was the Soviet Empire, which collapsed in 1991. The period of empires seemed to be over.
> 
> Even confederations withered. Early in the 20th century the Scandinavian attempt at union ended in the divorce of Norway and Sweden. Arab experiments fared no better - the United Arab Republic barely lasted three years, before Syria jumped ship - nor did Slavic unions survive in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, or the former Soviet Union. Czechs, Slovaks, Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians, Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc., reverted to ethnic nationhood, while elsewhere, Tamil, Basque, Chechen and Kurdish nations tried to bomb themselves into being.
> 
> But there was also a counter-trend emerging. Many post-colonial nations had trouble with self-government. Some countries couldn't get a grip on, look after, or come to terms with themselves or their neighbours. They were engaging in bloody squabbles next door and in deadly civil wars inside their own borders. The latter sometimes amounted to genocide, as in the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Many countries permitted themselves to be taken over by the most horrid dictators, unbalanced tyrants of the Idi Amin class, worse than their former imperial masters.
> 
> The United Nations, which was supposed to step into the breach, did not. The world body excelled only in posturing and dithering, whether under its furtive and indecisive Egyptian former secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, or his Ghanaian successor, the magisterially ineffectual Kofi Annan.
> 
> If Le Corbusier's architectural marvel in New York proved anything, it was that while being set loose in general assemblies can't turn hogs into humans, herds of swine, such as Third World dictatorships, can reduce lofty buildings to pigsties.
> 
> Strong and mature nations have had it with weak and immature nations, but more importantly, weak and immature nations have had it with themselves. The unforeseen situation that developed in the past 30 years saw the emergence of an inchoate yearning for big-power protection around the globe. Revealingly, while existing confederations (Belgium, Canada) teetered on the brink of secession, multicultural "Europe" emerged as a super-state.
> 
> By the 1980s, emergency response became essentially America's call, aided by some NATO countries. U.S. president Ronald Reagan responded in Grenada and Panama; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands; George Bush (the First) in Kuwait, the French on the Ivory Coast, the British in Sierra Leone. NATO intervened in Kosovo; George Bush (the Second) in Afghanistan and Iraq.
> 
> Even President Bill Clinton, much as he disdained projecting America's power in theory, found himself obliged to intervene in Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo and Haiti. And, arguably, one of the worst blemishes on his foreign policy was his failure to intervene in Rwanda - a failure that resulted in an estimated hundreds of thousands dead.
> 
> Today, the world is crying out for big-power intervention. Paraphilia for colonization or re-colonization is the love that dare not speak its name - if anything, the rhetoric goes the other way - but the desire is plain. Countries unable to feed or govern themselves are looking to be rescued. The process accelerated in the last 18 years, with invitations to interfere, spoken or unspoken, from fratricidal Bosnia, Taliban-contested Afghanistan, war-torn Liberia, ethnically cleansed Kosovo, starving Somalia, oppressed Zimbabwe, or genocidal East Timor (where Australia found it advisable to land a small contingent only a few days ago to restore order after an attempted coup).
> 
> The collapse of the old world order created a vacuum - a black hole, really. It's a parallel universe, with all the duties of empire and none of its privileges. Riding America's coattails, Canada is being sucked into it.
> 
> _*George Jonas* writes for the National Post.
> 
> © The Ottawa Citizen 2008_



His seven paragraph history of the 20th century (_”Empire wasn't the direction ... herds of swine, such as Third World dictatorships, can reduce lofty buildings to pigsties.”_) ought to be required reading in all high-schools and ought to be committed to memory by all journalists.

Sadly, his deductions are a little weak.

It is true that _“Strong and mature nations have had it with weak and immature nations, but more importantly, weak and immature nations have had it with themselves.”_ See, also: Robert Calderisi’s *The Trouble with Africa* (New York, 2006) for an insider’s view of the world from the point of view of the _Weak and immature_ world. What is not true is that _”emergency response became essentially America's call”_. What happened is that, post 1945, the world called out *to* America, seeking demanding help and America, usually reluctantly,* answered. 20th century America, like 18th century Britain, may have, absent-mindedly, stumbled into _empire_, but it, from Truman through Bush, did not seek one.

Canada is, as Jonas puts it, being sucked into a strategic black-hole, but we are not riding America’s coattails, at least not at America’s bidding. We chose to be a junior partner to the USA, in Ogdensburg, in 1940. About ten years later we assumed a realistic _’leading middle power’_ role but we abandoned that after only twenty years. Thirty-five years later (under Prime Minister Paul Martin) Canada tried to enunciate a renewed _’leading middle power’_ role but Mr. Martin’s government was short-lived and his successor has been less interested in such foreign policy declarations. We set our own course, in 1940 and again in 1970, and, despite our attempts to _isolate_ ourselves from the world and its great issues, we are being sucked into the vortex, despite, not with, America.


----------
* The Kennedy (1961-63) and Bush (2001-2009) administrations being the activist exceptions


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## Greymatters

It cannot be denied that the general public is likely highly confused by such insightful articles.  There have been at least three 'marketing' efforts over the past 5 years to convince the public that the US has a victory in Iraq.  Many leaders have been quoted as saying 'we are winning' or 'we have won'.  What is the public to think when articles like this come out and declare the problems are worse than when Iraq started? 

It seems like the first thing to resolve, before trying to come up with solutions (good or bad as some of them may be), is whether the US leadership can agree on whether the battle has been won or lost and whether the enemy (along with which enemy) has been defeated.


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## Edward Campbell

I’m bringing an old tired thread to life because the G8 is part of our (America's and Canada's) _grand strategy_ for the 21st century.

This opinion piece, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, by former Ambassador to NATO and Ottawa insider/heavy hitter Gordon Smith deserves some attention:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080709.wcosummit10/BNStory/specialComment/home


> We either lead, or we get left
> 
> GORDON SMITH
> 
> From Thursday's Globe and Mail
> July 9, 2008 at 9:07 PM EDT
> 
> Canadian prime ministers have been part of the summit process now known as the G8 for two decades. This has allowed us to punch above our weight – something that may not be the case for much longer.
> 
> In an article on who should be at the summits, and who should not, the Forbes website stated: “Though it currently ranks near the top of the G8 in job growth and currency stability, the outlook for Canada as an economic world power is somewhat grim. It's losing manufacturing jobs to emerging markets in India, Mexico and Brazil, which will soon vault over Canada in the world GDP rankings. Canada's membership in the G8 makes the exclusion of those more prosperous nations even more egregious.”
> 
> Then, of course, there is China.
> 
> One of two things is likely to happen. The first is that the feeling that the wrong countries are meeting will develop to such a point that the summit will be reconstituted ab initio. Several countries will be dropped – Canada and Italy are the top candidates; others will be added, with China, India and Brazil the bare minimum.
> 
> The second possibility is that the +5 or Outreach 5 (Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa) will be added as full-time members. This is the position of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain. The French President has gone one step further, suggesting that an Islamic Arab country also should be added.
> 
> Another leader who has spoken of the need to grow summit membership is President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia. The group's enlargement, beyond Russia's inclusion a decade ago, has not occurred as a result of opposition by the United States, and also by Japan. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany also hasn't been enthusiastic at the prospect.
> 
> The U.S. position, however, is about to change.
> 
> Republican presidential candidate John McCain advocates dropping Russia from the G8 and creating a concert or league of democracies. While the idea of sitting only with other democracies may sound agreeable, it is hardly the way to break major global deadlocks. The countries that count must be around the table.
> 
> For his part, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama understands the need for the leaders of key countries to be at the table. He has proposed precisely this to deal with the challenges of climate change.
> 
> The heads of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa are becoming increasingly frustrated by their roles at summits. They have now taken to meeting on their own, mirroring the heads of the G8 countries. This is half the world's population. What this leads to is the G8 coming up with a position on a critical issue like climate change, then trying to sell it to the others.
> 
> It doesn't work very well. The leaders of the five countries don't want to be treated as second-class citizens.
> 
> Who can blame them?
> 
> As the world becomes increasingly interdependent, a “steering committee” is required. The G8 has been too slow to recognize the new realities of the world; we are very close to institutionalizing a G5 alongside the G8. This division is the last thing we need. Instead, we need to engage key countries in an equal manner in solving global problems.
> 
> Canada has long prided itself on being a leader in building international institutions and, more broadly, an international order. The summit in Japan is now history. The next summit in Italy will be very important. A new U.S. president will be there, probably with other new faces around the world.
> 
> President Sarkozy has said the +5 countries will be included for a full time, not just “for dessert,” as was the case. This will give Canada the opportunity to go all the way in 2010. We took a leadership role in bringing Russia in. Now, the same needs to be done for China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. As well, there probably should be an Islamic Arab country – Egypt, perhaps?
> 
> If we don't help reconstruct the summit architecture, we soon may find there's no longer space for us in the building.
> 
> _Gordon Smith directs a research project on summit reform at the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria._



Canada (and the whole G7) was wrong to invite Russia in; it is neither a major economy nor a world leader in much of anything.

There are a few sensible options, including:

•	The McCain plan – limit the G_n_ to functioning democracies that are, also, strong, important global economies. That probably shuts Russia *out* (as it should be) keeps Canada *in* and makes room *inside the wire* for Australia and India and, perhaps, Brazil. This makes the G_n_ something akin to the _Anglosphere_+ that some, here on Army.ca,  have advocated as a new global ‘strategic planning group;’

•	Reduce the G_n_ to a ‘sensible’ few: perhaps only those with GDPs above, say, $3 Trillion - America, China, Germany and Japan. This returns the G_n_ to its original, economic, focus;

•	Reduce the G_n_ to a few ‘blocks:’ the EU (GDP=$15+ Trillion), NAFTA (GDP=$15+ Trillion) and ASEAN + China, India, Japan and South Korea (GDP=$10+ Trillion) (that’s $40± Trillion out of a global GDP of $55± Trillion). This also returns the G_n_ to its original focus but recognizes the current realities and broadens the base. 

Personally, I prefer the last but I’m guessing that the first is the more likely. In fact, I suspect that the Sarkozy _plan_ will succeed: expel no one, ever, just enlarge and enlarge until the G_n_ becomes a huge, loose, amorphous and quite useless mass.


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## a_majoor

You have hit the nail on the head once again Edward. Why we are in the G8 is somewhat embarrassing to begin with, Canada wasn't invited because of our stirling properties or vast economic and military strength but mostly to provide some extra North American "weight" for the United States to counterbalance an otherwise Eurocentric organization.

If we do need a G_n_, then lets focus first on what the purpose of the organization actually is, then look for suitable candidates. There is no reason to be too bent out of shape if some nation or group (or ourselves) is excluded from the G_n_, our dealings with that nation or block would probably be expedited by membership in a different forum, or simply through bilateral agreements.

By this reasoning, Canada should be a member of the _Anglosphere_ group, a mamber of the G_n_ bloc encompassing North America or perhaps the Americas, and NATO or whatever successor organization that arises for collective security of the West (and as Iran gets closer to gaining nuclear and long range missile capabilities, the need to refocus on the collective security of Europe and the Americas as the "West" will only grow). Large amorphus groups with no real focus (like the proposed G_n_ that includes an Islamic Arab country as window dressing) should be avoided as a waste of time and resources.


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## tomahawk6

The surge in Iraq has clearly worked and the Iraqi security forces have made great strides.As Iraq winds down this should enable the US to deploy additional forces to Afghanistan.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article4276486.ece

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror. 

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul. 

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10. 

Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. 

The group has been reduced to hit-and-run attacks, including one that killed two off-duty policemen yesterday, and sporadic bombings aimed at killing large numbers of officials and civilians. 

Last Friday I joined the 2nd Iraqi Division as it supported local police in a house-to-house search for one such bomb after intelligence pointed to a large explosion today. 

Even in the district of Zanjali, previously a hotbed of the insurgency, it was possible to accompany an Iraqi colonel on foot through streets of breeze-block houses studded with bullet holes. Hundreds of houses were searched without resistance but no bomb was found, only 60kg of explosives. 

American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south. 

Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism. 

“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them.” 

The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster Al-Qaeda’s numbers is thought to have declined to as few as 20 a month, compared with 120 a month at its peak. 

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: “We’ve limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they’re mostly not succeeding.” 

Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”


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## a_majoor

If in the long term the American political class loose their will or focus, this might forecast the outcome:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/opinion/16friedman.html?em&ex=1216440000&en=d77cee3b3772836d&ei=5087%0A



> *So Popular and So Spineless *
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> 
> Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.
> 
> But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.
> 
> Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them. *But how would they like a world of too little American power?* With America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the world into which we may be heading.
> 
> Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.
> 
> I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling clique in Zimbabwe.
> 
> The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.
> 
> In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.
> 
> Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.
> 
> And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment, hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now taken refuge in neighboring states. (I have close friends from Zimbabwe, and one of my daughters worked there in an H.I.V.-AIDS community center in January.) The Associated Press reported in May from Zimbabwe “that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent, based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs.” Zimbabwe’s currency has become so devalued, the A.P. explained, that “a loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago.”
> 
> No matter. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the targeted sanctions that the U.S. and others wanted to impose on Mugabe’s clique exceeded the Security Council’s mandate. “We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous,” he said, describing the resolution as one more obvious “attempt to take the Council beyond its charter prerogatives.” Veto!
> 
> Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation didn’t strike Churkin as “illegitimate and dangerous” — only the U.N. resolution to bring a halt to it was “illegitimate and dangerous.” Shameful. Meanwhile, China is hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.
> 
> But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.
> 
> As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.
> 
> So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.
> 
> *Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these “popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people.
> 
> So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up. *



The "Grand Strategy" need not be completely "Wilsonian" in character, and I think most Americans recognize that targetted interventions in the mode of the "Bush Doctrine" need not lead to quagmires or the Jacksonian "Terrible Swift Sword" (especially now that the American military seems to have relearned the lessons of the long ago Moro Rebellion and the "Indian Wars").  On the other hand, a retreat into Isolationism will lead to terrible results around the world, and certainly be no blessing to us (consider how authoratarian regimes view property rights and contract law, and ask if Canada can exist as a global trading nation in these shark infested waters?).

How strange this isn't the topic of much greater discussion in the United States (especially in an election year)


----------



## a_majoor

More on the alternative world where autocratic and authoritarian Powers have greater sway in global affairs:

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=675322



> *Hugs For Thugs
> *
> Russia and China don't care much about democracy and human rights. Their no-questions-asked foreign policy is drawing in some of the world's nastiest tyrants
> 
> Robert Kagan,  National Post  Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008
> 
> It is a mistake to believe that autocracy has no international appeal. Thanks to decades of remarkable growth, the Chinese today can argue that their model of economic development, which combines an increasingly open economy with a closed political system, can be a successful option for development in many nations. It certainly offers a model for successful autocracy, a blueprint for how to create wealth and stability without having to give way to political liberalization. Russia's model of "sovereign democracy" is attractive among the autocrats of Central Asia. Some Europeans worry that Russia is "emerging as an ideological alternative to the EU that offers a different approach to sovereignty, power and world order."
> 
> In the 1980s and 1990s, the autocratic model seemed like a losing proposition as dictatorships of both right and left fell before the liberal tide. Today, thanks to the success of China and Russia, it looks like a better bet.
> 
> China and Russia may no longer actively export an ideology, but they can and do offer autocrats somewhere to run when the democracies turn hostile. When Iran's relations with Europe plummeted in the 1990s after its clerics issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, the influential Iranian leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani made a point of noting how much easier it is to maintain good relations with a nation like China. When the dictator of Uzbekistan came under criticism in 2005 from the administration of George W. Bush for violently suppressing an opposition rally, he responded by joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and moving closer to Moscow. The Chinese provide unfettered aid to dictatorships in Africa and Asia, undermining the efforts of the "international community" to press for reforms -- which in practical terms often means regime change -- in countries such as Burma and Zimbabwe.
> 
> Americans and Europeans may grumble, but autocracies are not in the business of overthrowing other autocrats at the democratic world's insistence. The Chinese, who used deadly force to crack down on student demonstrators not so long ago, will hardly help the West remove a government in Burma for doing the same thing. Nor will they impose conditions on aid to African nations to demand political and institutional reforms they have no intention of carrying out in China. In the great schism between democracy and autocracy, the autocrats share common interests and a common view of international order.
> 
> *In fact, a global competition is under way. According to Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, "For the first time in many years, a real competitive environment has emerged on the market of ideas [between different] value systems and development models." And the good news, from the Russian point of view, is that "the West is losing its monopoly on the globalization process."*
> 
> This comes as a surprise to a democratic world that believed such competition ended when the Berlin Wall fell. The world's democracies do not regard their own efforts to support democracy and Enlightenment principles abroad as an aspect of a geopolitical competition, because they do not see "competing truths," only "universal values." As a result, they are not always conscious of how they use their wealth and power to push others to accept their values and principles. In their own international institutions and alliances, they demand strict fidelity to liberal democratic principles. Before opening their doors to new members, and before providing the vast benefits that membership offers in terms of wealth and security, they demand that nations who want to enter the EU or NATO open up their economies and political systems. When the Georgian president called a state of emergency at the end of 2007, he damaged Georgia's chances of entering NATO and the EU anytime soon. As a result, Georgia may now live precariously in the nether region between Russian autocracy and European liberalism. Eventually, if the democracies turn their backs on Georgia, it may have no choice but to accommodate Moscow.
> 
> This competition is not quite the Cold War redux. It is more like the 19th-century redux. In the 19th century, the absolutist rulers of Russia and Austria shored up fellow autocracies in post-revolutionary France and used force to suppress liberal rebellions in Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain. Palmerston's Britain used British power to aid liberals on the continent; the United States cheered on liberal revolutions in Hungary and Germany, and expressed outrage when Russian troops suppressed liberal forces in Poland. Today, Ukraine has already been a battleground between forces supported by the West and forces supported by Russia and could well be a battleground again in the future. Georgia could be another.
> 
> It may not come to war, but the global competition between democratic and autocratic governments will become a dominant feature of the 21st-century world. The great powers are increasingly choosing up sides and identifying themselves with one camp or the other. India, which during the Cold War was proudly neutral or even pro-Soviet, has begun to identify itself as part of the democratic West. Japan in recent years has also gone out of its way to position itself as a democratic great power.
> 
> There is no perfect symmetry in international affairs. The twin realities of the present era -- great power competition and the contest between democracy and autocracy -- will not always produce the same alignments. Democratic India in its geopolitical competition with autocratic China supports the Burmese dictatorship in order to deny Beijing a strategic advantage. India's diplomats enjoy playing the other great powers off against each other, sometimes warming to Russia, sometimes to China. Democratic Greece and Cyprus pursue close relations with Russia partly out of cultural solidarity with Eastern Orthodox cousins but more out of economic interest. The United States has long allied itself to Arab dictatorships for strategic and economic reasons, as well as to successive military rulers in Pakistan. Just as during the Cold War, strategic and economic considerations, as well as cultural affinities, may often cut against ideology.
> 
> But in today's world, a nation's form of government, not its "civilization" or its geographical location, may be the best predictor of its geopolitical alignment. Asian democracies today line up with European democracies against Asian autocracies. Chinese observers see a "V-shaped belt" of pro-American democratic powers "stretching from Northeast to Central Asia." When the navies of India, the United States, Japan, Australia and Singapore exercised in the Bay of Bengal last year, Chinese and other observers referred to it as the "axis of democracy." Japan's prime minister spoke of an "Asian arc of freedom and prosperity" stretching from Japan to Indonesia to India.
> 
> Russian officials profess to be "alarmed" that NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are "reproducing a bloc policy" not unlike that of the Cold War era. But the Russians themselves refer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an "anti-NATO" alliance and a "Warsaw Pact 2." When the Shanghai Cooperation Organization met last year, it brought together five autocracies -- China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan--as well as Iran.
> 
> The divisions between the United States and its European allies that opened wide after the invasion of Iraq are being overshadowed by these more fundamental geopolitical divisions, and especially by growing tensions between the democratic transatlantic alliance and autocratic Russia. European attitudes toward Russia are hardening. But so are European attitudes toward China: Polls show that in Britain, Germany, France and Spain, China's image has been plummeting in recent years. Only 34% of Germans had a favourable view of Beijing in 2007, which may explain why Chancellor Angela Merkel felt free to incur China's ire last year by meeting with the Dalai Lama.
> 
> This does not mean Americans and Europeans will agree on how best to handle relations with Moscow or Beijing. China is well beyond Europe's daily strategic concern, and Europeans are therefore more inclined to accommodate China's rise than are Americans, Indians or Japanese. When it comes to Russia, Europeans may want to pursue an accommodating Ostpolitik, as they did during the Cold War, rather than a more confrontational American style approach. Nevertheless, the trends in Europe are toward greater democratic solidarity.
> 
> The question is: How long will the Middle East remain the exception to this pattern? It is possible that, over time, autocracies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia may see virtue in drawing closer to their fellow autocrats in Moscow and Beijing. It is also possible that a more democratic Lebanon, a more democratic Iraq and a more democratic Morocco may form a new bloc of pro-American democracies in the region, alongside the more moderate, democratizing autocracies of Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.
> 
> The global divisions between the club of autocrats and the axis of democracy have broad implications for the international system. Is it possible any longer to speak of an "international community"? The term implies agreement on international norms of behaviour, an international morality, even an international conscience. Today, the world's major powers lack such a common understanding. On the large strategic questions, such as whether to intervene or impose sanctions or attempt to isolate nations diplomatically, there is no longer an international community to be summoned or led. - Excerpted from The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams by Robert Kagan. Copyright 2008 by Robert Kagan. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
> 
> Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.



There actually never was an "international community" to be summoned or led, and there will not be one in the near future, fantasies about international law etc. notwithstanding.


----------



## a_majoor

If the world reverts to the 1930's. This is the possible result of the hoped for drawdown of American power across the world; be careful what you wish for, it may be granted:

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/17/brave-old-world/



> Sunday, August 17, 2008
> *HANSON: Brave old world*
> COMMENTARY:
> 
> Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing.
> 
> Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch - all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing.
> 
> "Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism. But was that ever quite true?
> 
> In reality, to the extent globalism worked, it followed from three unspoken assumptions:
> 
> (1) The U.S. economy would keep importing goods from abroad to drive international economic growth.
> 
> (2) The U.S. military would keep the sea lanes open, and trade and travel protected. After the past destruction of fascism and global communism, the Americans, as global sheriff, would continue to deal with the occasional menace like a Moammar Gadhafi, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il or the Taliban.
> 
> (3) America would ignore ankle-biting allies and remain engaged with the world - like a good, nurturing mom who at times must put up with the petulance of dependent teenagers.
> 
> But there have been a number of indications recently that globalization may soon lose its American parent, who is tiring, both materially and psychologically.
> 
> The United States may be the most free, stable and meritocratic nation in the world, but its resources and patience are not unlimited. Currently, it pays more than a half trillion dollars per year to import $115-a-barrel oil that is often pumped at a cost of about $5.
> 
> The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans hold trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds - the result of massive trade deficits. The American dollar recently has been at historic lows. We are piling up staggering national debt. More than 12 million live here illegally and freely transfer more than $50 billion annually to Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
> 
> Our military, after deposing Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, is tired. And Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the cheap criticism of global moralists.
> 
> But as the United States turns ever so slightly inward, the new globalized world will revert to a far poorer - and more dangerous - place.
> 
> Liberals like presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama speak out against new free trade agreements and want existing accords like North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) readjusted.
> 
> More and more Americans are furious at the costs of illegal immigration - and are moving to stop it. Foreign remittances that help prop up Mexico and Latin America are threatened by any change in America's immigration attitude.
> 
> Meanwhile, the hypocrisy becomes harder to take. After all, it is easy for self-appointed global moralists to complain that terrorists don't enjoy Miranda rights at Guantanamo, but it would be hard to do much about the Russian military invading Georgia's democracy and bombing its cities.
> 
> Al Gore crisscrosses the country, pontificating about Americans' carbon footprints. But he could do far better to fly to China to convince them not to open 500 new coal-burning power plants.
> 
> It has been chic to chant "No blood for oil" about Iraq's petroleum - petroleum that, in fact, is now administered by a constitutional republic. But such sloganeering would be better directed at China's sweetheart oil deals with Sudan that enable the mass murdering in Darfur.
> 
> Due to climbing prices and high government taxes, gasoline consumption is declining in the West, but its use is rising in other places, where it is either untaxed or subsidized.
> 
> So, what a richer but more critical world has forgotten is that America largely was the model, not the villain - and that postwar globalization was always a form of engaged Americanization that enriched and protected billions.
> 
> Yet globalization, in all its manifestations, will run out of steam the moment we tire of fueling it, as the world returns instead to the mindset of the 1930s - with protectionist tariffs; weak, disarmed democracies; an isolationist America; predatory dictatorships; and a demoralized gloom-and-doom Western elite.
> 
> If America adopts the protectionist trade policies of Japan or China, global profits plummet. If our armed forces follow the European lead of demilitarization and inaction, rogue states advance. If we treat the environment as do China and India, the world quickly becomes a lost cause.
> 
> If we flee Iraq and call off the war on terror, Islamic jihadists will regroup, not disband. And when the Russians attack the next democracy, they won't listen to the United Nations, the European Union or Michael Moore.
> 
> Brace yourself -we may be on our way back to an old world, where the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must.
> 
> Victor Davis Hanson is nationally syndicated columnist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.


----------



## a_majoor

Edward Campbell found this piece, which outlines the challenges facing both America and the West:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080910.wcoash11/BNStory/specialComment/home



> *TIMOTHY GARTON ASH*
> 
> From Thursday's Globe and Mail
> 
> September 10, 2008 at 11:14 PM EDT
> 
> STANFORD, CALIF. — The seven years since 9/11 reveal an old truth: Problems are usually not solved, just overtaken by other problems. Those of 8/8, for example. On Aug. 8, 2008, two mighty nations announced their return to world history. Russia, invading Georgia, did it with tanks. China, launching the Olympics, did it with acrobats. The message was the same: World, we're back.
> 
> Don't get me wrong. A grave jihadist threat hangs over us still. They have a faith-based ideology with proven appeal to a minority of disaffected Muslims, especially those living in the West, and the means to wreak cut-price mayhem are alarmingly easy to find. Protecting us from "another 9/11" without destroying freedom is a major challenge.
> 
> What has proved false is the neo-conservative claim that this single threat defines world politics in our time. Returning to the United States after a year's absence, I'm struck by how relatively little even the American right is talking about the "war on terror."
> 
> Beyond terrorism, two giant changes define our world. Both can, to a large extent, be traced back to globalization.
> 
> The first is the "rise of the rest," made manifest on 8/8. Non-Western powers challenge the West's economic dominance. They are beating the West at the game it invented, quietly changing the rules along the way. Goldman Sachs analysts predict that by 2040, China, India, Russia, Brazil and Mexico will have a larger combined economic output than today's G7. The date matters less than the trend.
> 
> At the same time, worldwide economic development on the basis of the free movement of goods, capital, services and people is exacerbating a whole set of problems. Climate change, mass migration, pandemics: All cry out for international, co-operative responses. The need for liberal international order has never been greater. Yet by contrast with the 1990s, when U.S. president George H. W. Bush spoke of replacing the Cold War with a "new world order," the prospects of achieving it no longer look so good. Power is diffused to too many competing states, many illiberal, as well as to networks such as al-Qaeda.
> 
> So we of the FLIO (friends of liberal international order) must now soberly confront the prospect of a new world disorder. Or rather old-new, for disorder is the more natural condition. International order - peace - is always a fragile achievement. I hardly need to repeat that in these seven lean years since the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush's administration has contributed to the erosion, rather than the building, of international order. Russia's invasion of Georgia was, among other things, payback for the invasion of Iraq.
> 
> *While order is threatened, liberty is no longer self-evidently on the march*. The French refer to their 30 years of growth after the Second World War as the trente glorieuses. Future historians may see the three decades from Portugal's 1974 revolution of the carnations to Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution as a trente glorieuses for the spread of liberty. But Russia and China are not just great powers challenging the West. They represent alternative versions of authoritarian capitalism, or capitalist authoritarianism - the biggest potential competitor to liberal democratic capitalism since communism.
> 
> Radical Islamism may appeal to millions, but it cannot reach beyond the faithful, except by conversion. More important, it cannot plausibly claim to be associated with economic, technological and cultural modernity. By contrast, the opening ceremony of the Olympics, like the skyscrapers of Shanghai, show authoritarian capitalism already staking that claim. In the Bird's Nest stadium, the latest audiovisual hi-tech was placed at the service of a hyper-disciplined collectivist fantasy, made possible by financial resources no democracy would have dared devote to such a purpose.
> 
> For close to 500 years, modernity has come from the West to the world. Historian Theodore von Laue called this "the world revolution of Westernization." I*n 20th-century Europe, liberal democracy faced two powerful versions of modernity that were Western but illiberal: fascism and communism*. Part of these systems' appeal was precisely that they were modern. Liberal democracy finally saw them both off, although not without a world war, a Cold War and a lot of American help.
> 
> *Now, in China, we glimpse a modernity both non-Western and illiberal. But is authoritarian capitalism a stable, durable model? That, it seems to me, is among the greatest questions of our time.*
> 
> As we of the FLIO think how to respond, I have some sympathy for the notion, canvassed by U.S. policy intellectuals, of a "concert of democracies." We should look first to countries that share our governing values - but only with several vital caveats.
> 
> First, we should not kid ourselves that we can have only liberal democracies as partners. Our values may pull us that way, but our interests will necessarily push us toward illiberal states as well.
> 
> It's also not the smartest idea to identify this concert too emphatically with the West. Historically, both modernity and liberalism have come from the West. *But the future of freedom now depends on the possibility of new versions of modernity, whether they evolve in India, China or the Muslim world, that are distinctly non-Western yet also recognizably liberal, in the core sense of cherishing individual freedom.*
> 
> I wouldn't bet on this outcome, but working toward it is the best long-term chance we have. Pessimism of the intellect must be matched by optimism of the will.
> 
> Timothy Garton Ash is professor of European studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford.


----------



## a_majoor

While this is an article from 2004, it does state the fundamentals of the "Anglosphere" idea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/28/uselections2004.usa4



> *Explaining the 'Anglosphere'*
> George Bush's coalition is bound by more than a common language, writes US blogger Glenn Reynolds
> 
> American students protest outside the French embassy in Washington, DC. Photograph: Mike Krempasky/RedState.org
> Last week's column mentioned George Bush's "Anglosphere-heavy coalition". I think it's worth taking a moment to note the importance of the Anglosphere in today's world, and the deeper divisions it reflects.
> 
> Columnist James Bennett defines the "Anglosphere" as follows:
> 
> "This term, which can be defined briefly as the set of English-speaking, Common Law nations, implies far more than merely the sum of all persons who employ English as a first or second language. *To be part of the Anglosphere requires adherence to the fundamental customs and values that form the core of English-speaking cultures. These include individualism, rule of law, honouring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values.*
> 
> "Nations comprising the Anglosphere share a common historical narrative in which the Magna Carta, the English and American Bills of Rights, and such Common Law principles as trial by jury, presumption of innocence, "a man's home is his castle", and "a man's word is his bond" are taken for granted. Thus persons or communities who happen to communicate or do business in English are not necessarily part of the Anglosphere, unless their cultural values have also been shaped by those values of the historical English-speaking civilisation."
> 
> (Bennett also has a forthcoming book on this topic.)
> 
> I must confess that this construction struck me as odd at first. It's a bit too reminiscent of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter's theory that freedom was fundamentally a characteristic of the "English-speaking peoples", and faced far more uncertain prospects elsewhere. On the other hand, Jacques Chirac certainly seems to think there's something there, with his frequent outbursts against "a prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture which eclipses the others".
> 
> At any rate, it has been America's experience - and you can bet that plenty of Americans have noticed it - that when the chips are down it's usually other members of the Anglosphere, and particularly Britain and Australia, who can be counted on, and who are worth standing beside in turn. (Canada has been a bit dodgy in recent decades, ever since the Pierre Trudeau era and the Quebecois ascendancy). This is, of course, the reason why Tony Blair and John Howard wield such influence, while Chirac can barely get his calls returned. As Mark Steyn observes:
> 
> "The result is that, even though he's hardly ever in the souvenir photo line-up, Howard's a more consequential figure in world affairs these days than Chirac. Indeed, he's a transformative figure. I know this, because my nation has been on the other end of the transformation. I'm Canadian and, for those who remember when the Royal Canadian Navy was once the third largest surface fleet in the world, it's sobering to hear Australia spoken of as the third pillar of the Anglosphere.
> 
> "Under Howard, Australia is a player while Canada is a global irrelevance."
> 
> France's problems go deeper, of course. Even within the European Union, it is described by some observers as "increasingly isolated" in opposition to the more dynamic nations of the East. But the extent to which French behaviour has forfeited American goodwill over the past few years is poorly appreciated among French leaders, I'm afraid. America would go to the mat to support Britain and Australia. But - though it has done so before, twice - I'm no longer sure that it would similarly exert itself on behalf of France. As Andrew Sullivan wrote in the Times last year: "I've lived in the United States for almost 20 years and have rarely heard anything but condescension towards successive French governments. But now that condescension has turned to contempt."
> 
> That seems about right to me. (There's even a new book, called Our Oldest Enemy, that takes a rather unflattering view of France's role.) This is a bit of a problem for John Kerry, whose greater-than-average admiration for French policies has received some attention. And it's also a reason why Kerry, even if elected, will find it hard to take a more France-friendly approach. There just isn't political support.
> 
> But though tensions between the United States and France are an issue, similar tensions exist within the United States, and around the world beyond France. As Bennett has observed:
> 
> "_t is worth considering the possibility that the root source of anti-Americanism in the world lies in the deep-rooted anti-modern tradition of Continental Europe.
> 
> "Just as the Ba'athist movement lately of Iraq and still in power in Syria is a localised variant of European fascism, the broader anti-Americanism currently fashionable on all continents comes ultimately from what some have called the industrial counter-revolution. This is a comprehensive category for the various reactions in Europe against the programme of the industrial and democratic revolutions, or liberalism in the classical sense - individualism, free markets, and technological and social progress."
> 
> Osama bin Laden's rather backward-looking form of Islam constitutes an extreme reaction against modernity, of course. But the dirigiste statism of the traditional French approach, which has produced a political situation in which even modest adjustments to civil servants' pensions can produce widespread social unrest, is another, milder version.
> 
> Nor is this purely a matter of international relations. Within the United States - and, indeed, within all countries, even the most capitalist - the industrial revolution, and capitalism, pose a threat to those who prefer hierarchy and status to dynamism and meritocracy. (Indeed, Virginia Postrel has looked at this division in her book, The Future And Its Enemies, and concluded that the big division of the twenty-first century is between "dynamists" and "stasists".)
> 
> As both Bennett and Postrel note, the Anglosphere has been far more open to progress and change than, say, the Francosphere, such as it is. *But within the Anglosphere one finds people - often academics, or government employees, or others who operate in environments where competition is less fierce, and status hierarchies more important - who are threatened by dynamism. In this regard, concerns about American power are as much a symptom of anxiety as a matter of substance.* This may explain why so many such people around the world, and even within America, favour John Kerry, widely regarded as the French-leaning candidate in the American election. On the other hand, the division exists in the other direction, even on the Continent, too. Within France are activists like Sabine Herold, who are challenging the ossified structures of French society and standing up against social rigidities. (Herold, in a very un-French way, is an unabashed admirer of hard work.) And, of course, within Europe as a whole the countries of "New Europe", like Poland, are far more anxious for progress and change than the inward-looking countries of Old Europe, like France and Germany.
> 
> The good news is that the American elections will be over soon. The bad news is that the tensions they represent are not limited to America, and will continue long after George Bush, or John Kerry, is sworn in in January.
> 
> · Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, runs the instapundit.com US political blog.
> _


----------



## a_majoor

If American power is drawn down through accident or design during the next administration, then we will be living in a world much like this:

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_16-2008_11_22.shtml#1227277856



> The latest Global Trends report is out. Here are some of its predictions for 2025, with some comments.
> 
> A global multipolar system is emerging with the rise of China, India, and others. The relative power of nonstate actors—businesses, tribes, religious organizations, and even criminal networks—also will increase.
> 
> By 2025 a single “international community” composed of nation-states will no longer exist. Power will be more dispersed with the newer players bringing new rules of the game while risks will increase that the traditional Western alliances will weaken. *Rather than emulating Western models of political and economic development, more countries may be attracted to China’s alternative development model.*
> 
> International legal institutions will weaken as the power of members with diverse ideological and political goals increases relative to that of the United States and the rest of the west. *Consensus-based organizations (nearly all of them) will become paralyzed*. As the still wealthier west finds itself increasingly outnumbered it will pull out of or subvert majoritarian institutions such as they are. Likely victims: the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the WTO, and the International Criminal Court. A “league of democracies,” a “responsibility to protect” (civilian populations from genocide), and other fantasies that can be found in political discourse from time to time today will disappear entirely. Human rights norms, however, will expand to include prohibitions on defamation of religion and of ethnic groups.
> 
> Terrorism is unlikely to disappear by 2025, but its appeal could lessen if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorists that are active the diffusion of technologies will put dangerous capabilities within their reach.
> 
> Opportunities for mass-casualty terrorist attacks using chemical, biological, or less likely, nuclear weapons will increase as technology diffuses and nuclear power (and possibly weapons) programs expand. The practical and psychological consequences of such attacks will intensify in an increasingly globalized world.
> 
> The early twenty-first century civil libertarian critique of government surveillance and detention activities will seem as eccentric in 2025 as the early nineteenth century critique of the national bank seems to us today.



Canadians may *already be* living in this world, comfortably sending 80% of our exports to the United States and studiously ignoring the rest; sheltering under the US nuclear umbrella and only doing the minimum required to advance our interests. Watching the rest of the world close into hostile or indifferent trade and political blocs won't make too much of a difference to us in the long run, we seem to have retreated into our shells a long time ago (Edward Campbell would say in the late 1960's early 1970's under PET's "inspired" leadership).

 Such a world isn't in our long term interests, however, so our grand strategy should be to engage with as many similar-minded nations as possible, extending our reach and increasing the number of friends we can count on whenever there is a crunch (and we will be feeling a lot of them). Call it the G_n_, the Anglosphere or whatever other grouping makes you happy (The "Liberal Democracy Tiger Team" has a ring to it!).

The only factor which does not seem to have been accounted for in this analysis is the demographic crunch; China will have dangerously unbalanced demographics in the 2020's, Europe, Japan and Russia will start really feeling their demographic decline in the 2030's (Russia most of all) and even we will be falling into a demographic crunch starting then. Most of the "bottom billion" nations will still have positive demographic growth (into an increasingly impoverished social and economic infrastructure), only the United States seems set to maintain her population ar replacement levels through this time period (and note "Red States" with Sara Palin sized families will be the bulk of the American population then).

We _*will*_ be living in interesting times.


----------



## tomahawk6

Dangerous times.


----------



## a_majoor

VDH on some of the issues at home. Americans will be able to prosper and thrive if they can clean up some of _these_ messes:

http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ten-random-politicially-incorrect-thoughts/



> *Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts*
> Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers
> 
> 1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies—indeed, anything “studies”— were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.
> 
> 2. Hollywood is going the way of Detroit. The actors are programmed and pretty rather than interesting looking and unique. They, of course, are overpaid (they do to films what Lehman Brothers’ execs did to stocks), mediocre, and politicized. The producers and directors are rarely talented, mostly unoriginal—and likewise politicized. A pack-mentality rules. Do one movie on a comic superhero—and suddenly we get ten, all worse than the first. One noble lion cartoon movie earns us eagle, penguin and most of Noah’s Arc sequels. Now see poorer remakes of movies that were never good to begin with. I doubt we will ever see again a Western like Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch. If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant. Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.
> 
> 3. All the old media brands of our youth have been tarnished and all but discredited. No one picks up Harpers or Atlantic expecting to read a disinterested story on politics or culture. (I pass on their inane accounts of ‘getaways’ and food.) The New York Times and Washington Post are as likely to have op-eds as news stories on the front page. Newsweek and Time became organs for paint-by-numbers Obamism, teased with People Magazine-like gossip pieces (at least, their editors still cared enough to seem hurt when charged with overt bias). NBC, ABC, and CBS would now make a Chet Huntley or Eric Sevareid turn over in his grave. A Keith Olbermann would not have been allowed to do commercials in the 1950s. Strangely, the media has offered up fashionably liberal politics coupled with metrosexual elite tastes in fashions, clothes, housing, food, and the good life, as if there were no contradictions between the two. No wonder media is so enthralled with the cool Obama and his wife. Both embody the new nexus between Eurosocialism in the abstract and the hip aristocratic life in the concrete.
> 
> 4. After the junk bond meltdown, the S&L debacle, and now the financial panic, *in just a few years the financial community destroyed the ancient wisdom: deal in personal trust; your word is your bond; avoid extremes; treat the money you invest for others as something sacred; don’t take any more perks than you would wish others to take; don’t borrow what you couldn’t suddenly pay back; imagine the worse case financial scenario and expect it very may well happen; the wealthier you become the more humble you should act.* And for what did our new Jay Goulds do all this? A 20,000 square-foot mansion instead of the old 6,000 sq. ft. expansive house? A Gulfstream in lieu of first class commercial? You milk your company, cash in your stock bonuses, enjoy your $50 million cash pile, and then get what—a Rolex instead of a reliable Timex? A Maserati for a Mercedes, a gold bathroom spout in preference to brushed pewter? The extra splurge was marginal and hardly worth the stain of avarice on one’s immortal soul.
> 
> 5. California is now a valuable touchstone to the country, a warning of what not to do. Rarely has a single generation inherited so much natural wealth and bounty from the investment and hard work of those more noble now resting in our cemeteries—and squandered that gift within a generation. Compare the vast gulf from old Governor Pat Brown to Gray Davis or Arnold Schwarzenegger. We did not invest in many dams, canals, rails, and airports (though we use them all to excess); we sued each other rather than planned; wrote impact statements rather than left behind infrastructure; we redistributed, indulged, blamed, and so managed all at once to create a state with about the highest income and sales taxes and the worst schools, roads, hospitals, and airports. A walk through downtown San Francisco, a stroll up the Fresno downtown mall, a drive along highway 101 (yes, in many places it is still a four-lane, pot-holed highway), an afternoon at LAX, a glance at the catalogue of Cal State Monterey, a visit to the park in Parlier—all that would make our forefathers weep. We can’t build a new nuclear plant; can’t drill a new offshore oil well; can’t build an all-weather road across the Sierra; can’t build a few tracts of new affordable houses in the Bay Area; can’t build a dam for a water-short state; and can’t create even a mediocre passenger rail system. Everything else—well, we do that well.
> 
> 6. Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience. In the old days, I remember only that I first heard a variant of this accent with the old Paul Lynde character actor in one of the Flubber movies; now young men sound closer to his camp than to a Jack Palance or Alan Ladd.
> 
> 7. We have given political eccentricity a bad name. There used to be all sorts of classy individualists, liberal and conservative alike, like Everett Dirksen, J. William Fulbright, Margaret Chase Smith, or Sam Ervin; today we simply see the obnoxious who claim to be eccentric like a Barbara Boxer, Al Franken, Barney Frank, or Harry Reid. The loss is detectable even in diction and manner; Dirksen was no angel, but he was witty, charming, insightful; Frank is no angel, but he merely rants and pontificates. Watch the You Tube exchange between Harvard Law Graduate Frank and Harvard Law Graduate Rains as they arrogantly dismiss their trillion-dollar Fannie/Freddie meltdown in the making. I suppose it is the difference between the Age of Belief and the Age of Nihilism.
> 
> 8. Do not farm. There is only loss. To the degree that anyone makes money farming, it is a question of a vertically-integrated enterprise making more in shipping, marketing, selling, packing, and brokering than it loses on the other end in growing. No exceptions. Food prices stay high, commodity prices stay low. That is all ye need to know. Try it and see.
> 
> 9. As I wrote earlier, the shrill Left is increasingly far more vicious these days than the conservative fringe, and about like the crude Right of the 1950s. Why? I am not exactly sure, other than the generic notion that utopians often believe that their anointed ends justify brutal means. Maybe it is that the Right already had its Reformation when Buckley and others purged the extremists—the Birchers, the neo-Confederates, racialists, the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracists, anti-Semites, and assorted nuts.—from the conservative ranks in a way the Left has never done with the 1960s radicals that now reappear in the form of Michael Moore, Bill Ayers, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, etc. Not many Democrats excommunicated Moveon.org for its General Betray-Us ad. Most lined up to see the premier of Moore’s mythodrama. Barack Obama could subsidize a Rev. Wright or email a post-9/11 Bill Ayers in a way no conservative would even dare speak to a David Duke or Timothy McVeigh—and what Wright said was not all that different from what Duke spouts. What separated Ayers from McVeigh was chance; had the stars aligned, the Weathermen would have killed hundreds as they planned.
> 
> 10. *The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked*. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.
> 
> Well, with that done—I feel much better.


----------



## HunterADA

Mind if I add an 11th?

Failure is okay. It's what happens when you don't make the cut. Keep failing in school, and you too can become an expert hamburger-flipper with a 5th grade education. Kids who grow up with the culture that it's important to maintain their self-esteem and keep passing them through school despite the fact they can't read, speak, do basic math or anything besides shoot hoops at recess (which 99.999% aren't going to ever make anything approaching a liveable wage from), are the same kids whose employers find themselves handicapped against the competition because their workforce is dumb. Not stupid. Willfully, intentionally ignorant. Dumb. And it's holding back the nation. Give the kid a few F's when he still can't read after 3rd grade and his parent(s) will tan his butt. Do the same thing in 12th grade and you've already lost him. Don't do it at all, and you've produced an absolutely worthless drain on society. The same applies throughout the rest of life. Unemployment is a crutch, not a wheelchair to let you coast through life.

I do have a bone to pick with #9. I don't recall too many Christian Fundamentalist churches getting firebombed lately. Nor have I ever heard of any rashes of shootings of say, plastic surgeons. And despite the cute story about a college woman who claimed she was beat up and had a 'B' scratched into her face, liberal vs conservative hate crimes are darn near nonexistant. The leftist 'entertainers' rely on rhetoric about unfairness, or the wrongness of someone's actions. They've even been known to say that vital members of the American government should be impeached. More than anything else though, they _whine_ at their listeners. Those on the other side of the isle are more pragmatic. They just say that someone should silence the opposition once and for all. Or that abominations and evil like that can not be tolerated to exist on this earth. Since they're 'entertainers', they don't actually mean anyone should actually go out and KILL anyone. But to much wringing of hands, every now and again someone takes what they're saying literally and decides to go take care of 'those (insert perjorative here) people' with a gun. They'll sadly proclaim such was never intended to happen, but nutjobs do exist... especially those trained by the liberal, communist, godless, anti-American evil bastards trying to take over your country right this very minute.


----------



## a_majoor

Jerry Pournell looks at one of the few examples of a functioning social democratic state (Sweden). This is always touted as the "model" that Canada, the United States, Togoland etc. should emulate, but Dr Pournell notes that Sweden's success could be attributed to Sweden's _culture_. In many ways this idea follows Samuel Huntington's arguments on the roots of American _Civic Nationalism_ in "Who are We?" and VDH's arguments on the primacy of culture in the rise of the Greek _polis_, constitutional democracies and the growth of Western Civilization.

If these ideas are correct, then attempting to put America on a more socialist course will fail not ony because socialism is a flawed philosophy to begin with, but also because there is still a large segment of the American population that is culturally hostile to Socialism and "progressiveism" in its many forms, and will take active measures to oppose these ideas. (This does not necessarily mean violent opposition, a "John Galt" strike will rapidly cripple the economic agenda of the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress without firing a shot).

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q1/view554.html#Friday



> Can Socialism Work?
> 
> Dr. Pournelle,
> 
> I am trying to fight my depression regarding the coming anointing of Barrack Obama. Since he carries a lot of our fate for the next 4 (8, 12??) years I have to wish him well, too. But, do you or the readers of your site know of areas where liberalism/socialism have actually worked? I would think that if the liberal agenda really worked well then there should not be a poor person in the Santa Clara Valley, or Boston/Cambridge, or for that matter in the area of Bellaire and Malibu. So, unless other areas are exporting their poor into these areas, I am wondering what track record Mr. Obama is running on? Please enlighten me.
> 
> Douglas
> 
> First, despair is a sin; one must never forget that.
> 
> As to places where socialism and liberalism work, one needs to define what it means for a regime to "work". Sweden is very liberal to the point of socialism, and it's quite a pleasant place to live. How long that will continue is not known to me, but one of my oldest friends is a retired medical colonel from the Swedish army. When I visited Sweden I had a very pleasant time and every single one of the people I met was polite, nearly all spoke English, and all without regard to their social class seemed happy. There was a water festival going on in Stockholm and everyone seemed to be having a great time. I saw few beggars. There were street musicians hoping for donations, but that's not the same thing. The police were polite.
> 
> *Whether that can last, and how much of it is due to the nature of the Swedish people and the Swedish culture is a matter for lots of discussion*, of course. *I am told that as the older generation brought up under the Protestant Ethic and accustomed to working without complaining dies off things change and are changing, but I don't follow the news very closely*. Denmark is said to have the happiest population on Earth. The Netherlands is the most densely populated nation in the world (or was back in the 80's when I wrote about such things), certainly has a decidedly liberal government, and seems pleasant enough although there are growing problems.
> 
> *Whether this kind of liberalism is exportable can be debated, and whether or not this sort of government can thrive in a very large and diverse nation -- or federation of states, or however you want to describe the American polity -- is very much a subject of debate*.
> 
> As to whether liberal democracy can eliminate all poverty and raise the entire population of the United States to middle class status, and do that by government action and government fiat, probably not. Most socialist states don't work, and end up with people competing for civil service positions as the only assured way to have a career. India used to be that way and seems to be dismantling some of its socialist tendencies.
> 
> As an aside: Sweden has universal manhood conscription; I was told that the main penalty for not serving one's time in the army was that you could never get a civil service position, and employers were allowed to discriminate against you in hiring practices. This is an interesting way to deal with bureaucracies.
> 
> The main argument against socialism (other than indignation over taking from the productive to subsidize the unproductive) is that it destroys the incentive to work and work hard, or to take entrepreneurial risks. Schumpeter discusses this in his Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, and I urge all those interested in these matters to read his book.
> 
> Burke said that for a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely. I think few disagree: the question is, how to bring that about. And of course what we mean by lovely. No one thinks Detroit is lovely just now.
> ==============
> 
> One note: several commentators said yesterday that this is the 44th peaceful transfer of power in these United States (Obama being the 44th President).  Oddly enough, I didn't think that through, and when I remarked on the subject I said 43rd peaceful transfer; I don't count Lincoln's accession as peaceful, given that it triggered Secession and the the Civil War.
> 
> Bob Thompson reminds me that unless one counts the accession of George Washington and the beginning of the Constitution as itself a peaceful transfer of power, this the 43rd transfer, meaning the 42nd peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution. That's still quite a record, particularly since World War II, when the President of the United States became arguably the most powerful person on Earth.


----------



## a_majoor

Alas, it would seem that the new Administration is unable or unwilling to mount a coherent foreign policy (the new Secretary of State has been reduced to pleading with China to continue buying US Treasury bonds only a month into the Administration's tenure), and predatory regimes are taking their cue:

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2009/02/22/rapidly-collapsing-us-foreign-policy/



> *Rapidly Collapsing U.S. Foreign Policy*
> BY Herschel Smith
> 17 minutes ago
> 
> Iran is quickly advancing towards becoming a nuclear state.  In troubling developments in air power, Iran can now deploy UAVs, and Russia may have supplied Iran with new air defense systems, including their long range S-300 surface to air missiles.  If they haven’t, the system is being used as a bargaining chip by Russia.  There are reports that they have refused to sell the missile system, but responding to the Israeli plan to sell weapons systems to Georgia by saying that Moscow expected Israel “to show the same responsibility.”  In the first case, Iran is armed with an air defense system that would make an attack against its nuclear assets much more difficult.  In the second case, Russia has used this potentiality to weaken Georgia and prime it for another invasion.
> 
> Pavel Felgenhauer at the The Jamestown Foundation has recently published a commentary entitled Russia’s Coming War with Georgia.  The commentary very smartly connects the isolated Russian base in Armenia - which in itself is further demonstration of Russian intentions of control over its “near abroad” - with the need to control Georgia.    Says Felgenhauer, “The ceasefire last August has left the strategically important Russian base in Armenia cut off with no overland military transit connections. The number of Russian soldiers in Armenia is limited to some 4000, but during 2006 and 2007 large amounts of heavy weapons and supplies were moved in under an agreement with Tbilisi from bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki (Georgia). At present there are some 200 Russian tanks, over 300 combat armored vehicles, 250 heavy guns and lots of other military equipment in Armenia - enough to fully arm a battle force of over 20,000 (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozrenie, August 20, 2004). Forces in Armenia can be swiftly expanded by bringing in manpower by air transport from Russia. Spares to maintain the armaments may also be shipped in by air, but if a credible overland military transit link is not established within a year or two, there will be no possibility to either replace or modernize equipment. The forces will consequently degrade, undermining Russia’s commitment to defend its ally Armenia and Moscow’s ambition to reestablish its dominance in the South Caucasus.”
> 
> Concerning the timing of the potential invasion, Felgenhauer observes:
> 
> While snow covers the Caucasian mountain passes until May, a renewed war with Georgia is impossible. There is hope in Moscow that the Georgian opposition may still overthrow Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime or that the Obama administration will somehow remove him. However, if by May, Saakashvili remains in power, a military push by Russia to oust him may be seriously contemplated. The constant ceasefire violations could escalate to involve Russian servicemen - constituting a public casus belli. The desire by the West to “reset” relations with Moscow, putting the Georgia issue aside, may be interpreted as a tacit recognition of Russia’s right to use military force.
> 
> In addition to the Biden pronouncement that the U.S. would “press the reset button” with Russia, the U.S. is now in the throes of a logistical dilemma.  On the one hand, the missile defense program for NATO states is meant as a deterrent for a potential Iranian nuclear and missile based military capability.  On the other hand, the current administration is seen as likely to jettison the whole project.
> 
> The U.S. is now beholden to Russia for logistical supply lines to Afghanistan.  General David Petraeus has visited numerous European and Central Asian countries recently, including Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.  Supplies are soon to leave Latvia bound for Afghanistan.  But the common element in all of the logistical supply lines are that they rely on Russian good will.  This good will exists as long as the missile defense doesn’t, and the missile defense was intended to be used as a deterrent for Iranian nuclear ambitions.
> 
> Alternative supply routes have been suggested, including one which wouldn’t empower Russian hegemony in the region, from the Mediterranean through the Bosporus strait, into the Black sea, and through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.  From there the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  An alternative to the air route from the recently closed Manas Air base is sea transport to India, rail or truck to the Indian-controlled Kashmir region, and then air transport to Kabul.  But none of these options has been pursued.  The current administration is locked into negotiations that empower Russia.
> 
> Pakistan President Zardari has observed, and correctly so, that Pakistan is in a state of denial concerning the threat posed by the Taliban, yet rather than eliminate the threat, the strategy has been to make peace deals with the Tehrik-i-Taliban and plead for the same financial bailout being offered across America, saying that in order to defeat the Taliban Pakistan needs a “massive program,” a “Marshall Plan” to defeat the Taliban through economic development.
> 
> Certainly, some of the foreign policy problems were present with the previous administration, from the failure to plan for logistics for Afghanistan, to support for Musharraf’s duplicitous administration, assisting the Taliban by demure on the one hand while money was received with the other.  But the currents appear to be pointing towards a revised world opinion of what the U.S. is willing to sustain on behalf of “good relations,” and the current administration’s prevarications appear to be going headlong into numerous dilemmas.
> 
> We wish to use the missile program in Europe as an bargaining chip to avoid the reality of an Iranian nuclear program, while the Iranian supreme has said that “relations with the U.S. have for the time being no benefit to the Iranian nation.”  Russia, who is assisting Iran in its military buildup, is unimpressed because we have planned for no other option for logistics for Afghanistan except as dictated by Vladimir Putin.  The best that we can come up with, so far, is to forestall the planned troop reduction in the European theater, a troop reduction that is needed to help fund and staff the war against the global insurgency.
> 
> Pakistan’s Zardari figures that if the administration is willing to give away on the order of a trillion dollars, they can play the game of “show me the money” like everyone else, from Russia over logistical lines to Afghanistan to over-leveraged homeowners in the U.S.
> 
> Israel figures that all of this points to throwing their concerns under the bus, and thus they have launched a covert war against Iran, a program that is unlikely to be successful, pointing to broader regional instability in the near term.  Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, has said that they will acquire or have acquired anti-aircraft weapons.  While they have stood down over the war in Gaza, they are apparently preparing for more of the same against Israel.
> 
> The current administration has attempted to befriend Syria, while at the same time the USS San Antonio has interdicted Iranian weapons bound by ship to Syria, intended for Hezbollah or Hamas.  Most of this has occurred within less than two months of inauguration of the current administration in Washington.  It may prove to be a difficult four years, with unintended consequences ruling the day.


----------



## tomahawk6

Obama is more focused on his domestic agenda. Think Carter and thats where this administration is heading.


----------



## a_majoor

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> where this administration is heading.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022702485.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns



> *Obama's Intelligence Blunder*
> 
> By Jon Chait
> Saturday, February 28, 2009; Page A13
> 
> Most of President Obama's "missteps" to date have been Washington peccadilloes of the "let's find something to complain about" sort. But Obama has made one major mistake that has attracted little public attention: his appointment of Charles Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman was attacked by pro-Israel activists, but the contretemps over Freeman's view of Israel misses the broader problem, which is that he's an ideological fanatic.
> 
> That may sound like an odd description for a respectable bureaucrat and impeccable establishmentarian such as Freeman. What's more, he's not an ideologue of the sort who draws most of the attention. When most people think of foreign policy ideology, they mean neoconservatism, which dominated the Bush administration. Broadly speaking, neoconservatism is obsessed with the moral differences between democracies and non-democracies. At its most simplistic (which, alas, it nearly always is) neoconservatism means supporting the "good guys" and fighting the "bad guys." As most of us have seen, neoconservatism has trouble recognizing that the good guys aren't perfectly good and that the bad guys aren't comic book villains.
> 
> Freeman belongs to the camp that's the mortal enemy of the neoconservatives: the realists. Realist ideology pays no attention to moral differences between states. As far as realists are concerned, there's no way to think about the way governments act except as the pursuit of self-interest. Realism has some useful insights. For instance, realists accurately predicted that Iraqis would respond to a U.S. invasion with less than unadulterated joy.
> 
> But realists are the mirror image of neoconservatives in that they are completely blind to the moral dimensions of international politics. Realists scoffed at Bill Clinton's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, which halted mass slaughter. Realists tend not to abide the American alliance with Israel, which rests on shared values with a fellow imperfect democracy rather than on a cold analysis of America's interests.
> 
> Taken to extremes, realism's blindness to morality can lead it wildly astray. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, both staunch realists, wrote "The Israel Lobby," a hyperbolic attack on Zionist political influence. The central error of their thesis was that, since America's alliance with Israel does not advance American interests, it could be explained only by sinister lobbying influence. They seemed unable to grasp even the possibility that Americans, rightly or wrongly, have an affinity for a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships. Consider, perhaps, if eunuchs tried to explain the way teenage boys act around girls.
> 
> Freeman praised "The Israel Lobby" while indulging in its characteristic paranoia. "No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article," he told a Saudi news service in 2006, "given the political penalties that the lobby imposes on those who criticize it." In fact, the article was printed as a book the next year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York.
> 
> The most extreme manifestation of Freeman's realist ideology came out in a leaked e-mail he sent to a foreign policy Internet mailing list. Freeman wrote that his only problem with what most of us call "the Tiananmen Square Massacre" was an excess of restraint:
> 
> "[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action. . . .
> 
> "I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' 'Bonus Army' or a 'student uprising' on behalf of 'the goddess of democracy' should expect to be displaced with despatch [sic] from the ground they occupy."
> 
> This is the portrait of a mind so deep in the grip of realist ideology that it follows the premises straight through to their reductio ad absurdum. Maybe you suppose the National Intelligence Council job is so technocratic that Freeman's rigid ideology won't have any serious consequences. But think back to the neocon ideologues whom Bush appointed to such positions. That didn't work out very well, did it?
> 
> The writer is a senior editor at the New Republic.


----------



## a_majoor

The new administration isn't getting off to a good start:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODdmNmEzZjljY2Q3MzMwZGMzZWY1ZTMzNTQzMDE0NWM=



> *Krauthammer's Take*   [NRO Staff]
> 
> 
> From last night's All Stars.
> 
> On President Obama’s secret letter to Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev proposing a deal on missile defense:
> 
> This is smart diplomacy? This is a debacle. The Russians dismissed it contemptuously.
> 
> Look, if we could get the Iranian nuclear program stopped with Russian's helping us in return for selling out the Poles and the Czechs on missile defense, I'm enough of a cynic and a realist to say we would do it the same way that Kissinger agreed to delegitimize and de-recognize Taiwan in return for a large strategic opening with China.
> 
> But Kissinger had it done. He had it wired. What happened here is it was leaked. *The Russians have dismissed it. We end up being humiliated. We look weak in front of the Iranians, and we have left the Poles and Czechs out to dry in return for nothing.*
> 
> The Czechs and the Poles went out on a limb, exposed themselves to Russian pressure, and we have shown that Eastern Europe is not as sovereign as it appears if the Russian influence is there, and we will acquiesce in what they consider their own sphere of influence.
> 
> This administration has prided itself, flattered itself on deploying smart diplomacy. "Smart diplomacy" is a meaningless idea, but if it has any meaning at all, it is not ever doing something as humiliating, amateurish, and stupid as this.
> 
> On the president’s proposed cap-and-trade plan:
> 
> It is an ill disguised tax on the production of carbon. It will be a blow to American industry, particularly in the heartland, to the American economy. Particularly in our economic distress, it makes no sense at all.
> 
> The only purpose is the reduction of global warming, which in and of itself is speculative. And even if it were not, the fact that India and China are not in on this means that any of our savings on that, which are going to add a huge expense to our economy, will be swallowed up entirely by increased pollution by India and China.
> 
> India this week has said it will not cooperate on a regime of enforced carbon reduction. We will get nowhere on this except really injuring our economy.


----------



## tomahawk6

America will be even more divided as time goes on. Gun sales are through the roof. People want to be able to protect their family if law and order breaks down,but that could easily become a second revolution should we see a collapse of the economy. You might call it have's vs the have nots.


----------



## a_majoor

Top ten political risks(?):

http://docs.eurasiagroup.net/2009toprisksannouncement.pdf



> *Top Ten Political Risks of 2009 by Eurasia Group*
> 
> Here is a list of the top ten political risks of 2009 by the Eurasia Group Risk consultancy.
> 
> The risks
> 1 *Congress* - The current financial crisis has created an unprecedented
> space for government interference in economic affairs within developed states. Risk of wasteful and not useful over-regulation like Sarbanes Oxley. Sarbanes Oxley was implemented to prevent further Enrons. How useful was it for preventing or minimizing the current situation ?
> 
> 2 *South Asia security* - The security environment in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan will deteriorate significantly over the coming year. Afghanistan's Taliban is mostly funded by the illegal drug's they produce. This is discussed below in the section on Mexico.
> 
> 3 *Iran/Israel* - 2009 is the critical year for conflict (both direct and through proxies) between Iran and Israel.
> 
> 4 *Russia* - With oil prices well below what the Russians can afford, but Putin’s (and Medvedev’s) popularity still high, the initial moves have been to consolidate power. Yet despite no organized political opposition to speak of, we’re still starting to see social unrest. For the first time in years, there have been widespread demonstrations in Russia—in 30 cities, following the imposition of import duties on used cars
> 
> 5 *Iraq* - The real concern at this point is the politics, not the security situation. How long the United States can maintain a commitment to significant force levels. [NOTE: The recent timetable seems sufficiently long and flexible into 2010]
> 
> 6 *Venezuela*- Chavez plans for a referendum in the coming month to reform the Venezuelan constitution and abolish term limits (which would allow Chavez to run again for the presidency in 2012) show little likelihood of success. Then the Venezuelan president will have a real political fight on his hands.
> 
> 7 *Mexico* - The Drug Cartel security situation there has worsened and is almost certain to deteriorate further over the course of 2009. Well armed and well financed narco-criminals have effectively declared war on the state of Mexico—increasingly singling out elected government officials, bureaucrats, and the armed forces and police for their attacks.
> 
> 8—*Ukraine*-As I mentioned, Ukraine isn’t likely to spur the kind of direct military conflict we saw last August in Georgia. But it merits a slot in our top risks because of the government’s inability to deal effectively with the severe challenges posed by the current financial crisis and economic downturn—and one certainly not helped by its volatile relationship with Moscow.
> 
> 9—*Turkey*-Speaking of internal distractions, Turkey is essentially defining the problem. The country has all sorts of factors in its favor—a diversified economy, strong demographics, an extremely favorable trade route geography, and solid ties with both western countries and its Middle Eastern neighbors. Yet the fight pitting secularists in the judiciary, military, and industry against Islamists in government is becoming a serious obstacle to economic advancement. And the AK party leadership, feeling that it increasingly carries the weight of popular support on its side, is unwilling to compromise—instead, casting out potential dissent from within the party (and losing critical bureaucratic competence as a result). To make matters worse, the AK party has long lost its reformist spirit and has embraced a more nationalist attitude, making it more difficult to find a solution to the thorny Kurdish question.
> 
> 10—*South Africa*-Rounding out the top risks for 2009 is South Africa. Upcoming elections will dominate the news, but it’s more political context than electoral results that will cause concern. It’s pretty clear that the African National Congress (ANC) will keep its majority in parliament, though the emergence of a new splinter party will reduce its numbers. In principal, that’s not a bad development; popular concerns over the ANC’s abuse of power should be reduced accordingly.



These are precis of the full article, read the rest on the link


----------



## a_majoor

The full piece is on "Chaos Manor" as well as the FPRI site:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q1/mail560.html#Sunday
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200903.noonan.defenseshowstoppers.html



> DEFENSE SHOWSTOPPERS:
> 
> NATIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
> 
> A Conference Report
> 
> by Michael P. Noonan
> 
> On February 12, 2009, FPRI's Program on National Security held a conference on potential "defense showstoppers" for the Obama administration--critical issues that, if not fixed, could lead to a serious deterioration of American military capabilities. The event was hosted and co-sponsored by the Reserve Officers Association in Washington, D.C. Program-affiliated scholars Michael Horowitz, Michael P. Noonan, Mackubin T. Owens, and Frank G. Hoffman served as panel moderators. More than 100 individuals from academia, government, NGOs, the media, the military, and the public participated in person, and another 300-plus individuals from around the world participated by webcast. Audio and video files of the proceedings are posted at FPRI's website: http://www.fpri.org/research/nationalsecurity/showstoppers/index.html The papers presented at the conference will be published in Orbis and other outlets.
> 
> FPRI thanks W.W. Keen Butcher, Robert L. Freedman, Hon. John Hillen, Bruce H. Hooper, and Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr. for their support of the Program on National Security. The views expressed herein are those of the speakers and should not be construed to represent any agency of the U.S. government or other institution.


----------



## a_majoor

Thinking longer term, George Friedman lays out a case for The United States to remain the premier power for the next century. Some of the sub predictions are not immediatly obvious...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038551705X?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwviolentkicom&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=038551705X



> The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (Hardcover)
> by George Friedman (Author)
> 
> Amazon.com Review
> Amazon Best of the Month, January 2009: "Be Practical, Expect the Impossible." So declares George Friedman, chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies. Gathering information from its global network of operatives and analysts (drawing the nickname "the Shadow CIA"), Stratfor produces thoughtful and genuinely engrossing analysis of international events daily, from possible outcomes of the latest Pakistan/India tensions to the hierarchy of Mexican drug cartels to challenges to Obama's nascent administration. In The Next 100 Years, Friedman undertakes the impossible (or improbable) challenge of forecasting world events through the 21st century. Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future, some intuitive, some surprising: more (but less catastrophic) wars; Russia's re-emergence as an aggressive hegemonic power; China's diminished influence in international affairs due to traditional social and economic imbalances; and the dawn of an American "Golden Age" in the second half of the century. Friedman is well aware that much of what he predicts will be wrong--unforeseeable events are, of course, unforeseen--but through his interpretation of geopolitics, one gets the sense that Friedman's guess is better than most. --Jon Foro
> 
> 
> From Publishers Weekly
> With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (Americas Secret War) offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The author asserts that the United States power is so extraordinarily overwhelming that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the 2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile systems that Friedman names battle stars. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedmans 100-year cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising. *The armed border clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science fiction.* Whether all of the visions in Friedmans crystal ball actually materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. (Feb.)
> Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


----------



## a_majoor

Or this is how it could all end:

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/04/26/left-to-ourselves/



> *Left to ourselves*
> 
> Posted By Richard Fernandez On April 26, 2009 @ 8:12 pm In Uncategorized | 70 Comments
> 
> Eli Saslow chronicles the slow decline of Greenwood, SC during the first 100 days of the Obama administration in the [1] Washington Post. It’s a town with unemployment over 11%, with people unable to pay their bills, pay for heating. It’s a place where old ladies have only a box of grits in the cupboard.  It’s an story centered on the efforts of a city councilwoman that is without villains; but it is also one without transcendent heroes.
> 
> It was nobody’s fault, really, that councilwoman Edith Childs had such high expectations. She followed the election of Barack Obama with mounting expectation and rode the slow trajectory of disappointment to its still-plunging depths. Slowly it dawned on her that Obama had no box of magic tricks in his repertoire; that nothing that would stave off the relentless deluge of bills in the mailboxes of her constituents and slowly shrinking job base of her community.
> 
> Across the dark living room, one of Childs’s favorite pictures is displayed on a worn coffee table. It shows Childs with her arms wrapped around Barack Obama, his hand on her back, her eyes glowing. They met at a rally attended by 37 supporters on a rainy day in 2007, when Childs responded to Obama’s sluggishness on stage with an impromptu chant: “Fired up! Ready to go!” She repeated it, shouting louder each time, until Obama laughed and dipped his shoulders to the rhythm. The chant caught on. “Fired up!” people began saying at rallies. “Ready to go,” Obama chanted back. He told audiences about Childs, “a spirited little lady,” and invited her onstage at campaign appearances. By the day of his inauguration, when Childs led a busload of strangers bound for the Mall in her now-iconic chant, her transformation was complete. She was Edith Childs, fired up and ready to go.
> 
> But now, as Obama nears the 100-day milestone of his presidency, Childs suffers from constant exhaustion. In a conservative Southern state that bolstered Obama’s candidacy by supporting him early in the Democratic primaries, she awakens at 2:30 a.m. with stress headaches and remains awake mulling all that’s befallen Greenwood since Obama’s swearing-in.
> 
> The unasked question in Saslow’s article is whether or not Greenwood, SC isn’t a glimpse into the future of other places across America. *What happens if 11% unemployment or worse becomes the norm rather than the exception? Will they become places where people have given up on magic politics and turn to working the phones, paring the cheese more thinly and racking their brains in search of ways to make ends meet?* Atheists have long imagined a world without belief God; but are we prepared for something philosophically rarer: a world without a belief in politicians? Or will the opposite occur? Will a downturn, taken far enough, result in a desperate search for extreme political solutions by a people tired of making applications without result, of making job calls without return? *Men on white horses are far more common in history than nations with a belief only in themselves.* Except in America, the first country in modern times to try the tides without a king are men on white horses rare. But the ocean is wide, perhaps endless; and the distant shore behind still beckons to those who imagine safety there.
> 
> Albert Camus in the Plague described a world suspended on the edge of a decision; a curiously quiet place of private struggle above which an invisible cloud hovered. It is always a world that can go one way or the other.
> 
> “Only a few ships, detained in quarantine, were anchored in the bay. But the gaunt, idle cranes on the wharves, tip-carts lying on their sides, neglected heaps of sacks and barrels — all testified that commerce, too, had died of plague.”
> 
> “It was the time when, acting under orders, the café-proprietors deferred as long as possible turning on their lights. Gray dusk was seeping into the room, the pink of sunset glowed in the wall mirrors, and the marble-topped tables glimmered white in the gathering darkness.”
> 
> “They found nobody on the terrace — only three empty chairs. On one side, as far as eye could reach, was a row of terraces, the most remote of which abutted on a dark, rugged mass that they recognized as the hill nearest the town. On the other side, spanning some streets and the unseen harbor, their gaze came to rest on the horizon, where sea and sky merged in a dim, vibrant grayness. Beyond a black patch that they knew to be the cliffs a sudden glow, whose source they could not see, sprang up at regular intervals; the lighthouse at the entrance of the harbor was still functioning for the benefit of ships that, passing Oran’s unused harbor, went on to other ports along the coast. In a sky swept crystal-clear by the night wind, the stars showed like silver flakes, tarnished now and then by the yellow gleam of the revolving light. Perfumes of spice and warm stone were wafted on the breeze. Everything was very still.”
> 
> It was waiting, and still waits, for us.
> 
> Article printed from Belmont Club: http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/04/26/left-to-ourselves/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> [1] Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042501870.html


----------



## a_majoor

Another huge misstep for this administration.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/world-muslim-president-2446787-obama-one



> *Mark Steyn: Obama's message of weakness*
> A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past.
> By MARK STEYN
> Syndicated columnist
> Comments | Recommend
> 
> As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it's not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed, and the media were focused on the president's "address to the Muslim world." As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It's a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America – What's good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it's more emblematic than ever: Like General Motors, the U.S. government spends more than it makes, and has airily committed itself to ever more unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It's not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?
> 
> But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department Web site, "President Obama Speaks To The Muslim World From Cairo."
> 
> Let's pause right there: It's interesting how easily the words "the Muslim world" roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who'd choke on any equivalent reference to "the Christian world." When such hyperalert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they're implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an "Organization of the Islamic Conference," which is already the largest single voting bloc at the United Nations and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an "Organization of the Christian Conference" that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and Presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no "Christian world": Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Barack Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." Perhaps we're eligible for membership in the OIC.
> 
> I suppose the benign interpretation is that, as head of state of the last superpower, Obama is indulging in a little harmless condescension. In his Cairo speech, he congratulated Muslims on inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less-bloodcurdling sections of the Quran. As sociohistorical scholarship goes, I found myself recalling that moment in the long twilight of the Habsburg Empire when Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling – either a double suicide, or something even more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers emigrate to America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania. Recently, my old comrade Stephen Fry gave an amusing lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular Americanism, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade" – or, if something's bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That's what the president did with Islam: He added sugar and sold it.
> 
> The speech nevertheless impressed many conservatives, including Rich Lowry, my esteemed editor at National Review, "esteemed editor" being the sort of thing one says before booting the boss in the crotch. Rich thought that the president succeeded in his principal task: "Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, 'We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don't hate us and murder us in return.'" But those terms are too narrow. You don't have to murder a guy if he preemptively surrenders. And you don't even have to hate him if you're too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush, sharing a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers – including the wish to expand the boundaries of "the Muslim world" and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The nonterrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to Western notions of liberty and pluralism.
> 
> Once Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamoschmoozing to the details, the subtext – the absence of American will – became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakness: "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons." Perhaps by "no single nation" he means the "global community" should pick and choose, which means the U.N. Security Council, which means the Big Five, which means that Russia and China will pursue their own murky interests and that, in the absence of American leadership, Britain and France will reach their accommodations with a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea and any other psychostate minded to join them.
> 
> On the other hand, a "single nation" certainly has the right to tell another nation anything it wants if that nation happens to be the Zionist Entity: As Hillary Clinton just instructed Israel regarding its West Bank communities, there has to be "a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions." No "natural growth"? You mean, if you and the missus have a kid, you've got to talk gran'ma into moving out? To Tel Aviv, or Brooklyn or wherever? At a stroke, the administration has endorsed "the Muslim world's" view of those non-Muslims who happen to find themselves within what it regards as lands belonging to Islam: the Jewish and Christian communities are free to stand still or shrink, but not to grow. Would Obama be comfortable mandating "no natural growth" to Israel's million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced "the Muslim world's" commitment to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the West but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.
> 
> And so it goes. Like General Motors, America is "too big to fail." So it won't, not immediately. It will linger on in a twilight existence, sclerotic and ineffectual, declining unto a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what's happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past, but able on occasion to throw out impressive words albeit strung together without much meaning: empower, peace, justice, prosperity – just to take one windy gust from the president's Cairo speech.
> 
> There's better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The president emeritus is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, "The country's economy, infrastructure, public schools and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less-vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit." That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not "a mediocrity of spirit." A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.


----------



## a_majoor

Probably the defining moment of the American Century was the Space Race. The spirit that drove the race seems to have become dorment, and this really bodes ill for the future of the West. 

Pericles noted in the Funeral Oration that what made Athens great was *Men with a spirit of adventure, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard...*. Where are these men and women now.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2U5MDcxZTUxODhiOTNmOGMzZjJhODIzZTBiZWE3YTc=



> *The End of the Space Race*
> 
> [Hans A. von Spakovsky]
> 
> Hopefully, the readers of The Corner can stand one more posting about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I grew up in Huntsville, Ala., the home of the Marshall Space Flight Center. My parents knew and socialized with many of the German scientists who came to Huntsville with Werner von Braun to start building our space program. Unlike most kids, who live in neighborhoods where their parents are in every kind of different profession, the parents of everyone I knew worked as a scientist or an engineer either for NASA or for the Army Missile Command out at Redstone Arsenal. One of our neighbors was the head of astronaut training at Marshall and a lot of very famous astronauts used to come over to his house for dinner. We lived 15 miles from the engine test stands out on the space flight center, but I can still remember the windows in our house rattling when they were testing the huge rocket engines they were building at Marshall. I saw many of the exhibits that you can now see if you visit the Space Museum in Huntsville, except I saw them out at the space flight center before they became exhibits when, in those pre-9/11, pre-paranoia security days, parents would take their kids (and their friends) out to show them what they were working on.
> 
> The development of our rocket program and the drive to get to the moon was one of the brightest and greatest achievements of the American spirit and of American know-how, a true showing of what we can achieve through science, engineering, a can-do attitude that comes from our unique culture, and the bravery and determination that was the common, shared trait of all of our test pilots and astronauts. The fact that we have not only not been back to the moon since the end of the Apollo program, but have not expanded our horizons in trying to reach the other planets in our solar system, is a sad indication of what may be the beginning of our decline as a great nation.
> 
> There is almost no doubt that the Chinese will be on the moon within a decade, while we will still be earthbound and potentially bankrupt as a nation with our economy, our technology, and our industrial might in ruins because of uncontrolled government spending, borrowing, and taxing. I had an exciting childhood living in the midst of the space race, but it saddens me to think that time, 40 years ago, may end up being the historical high point of our going out into space, the final frontier.
> [/b]


----------



## a_majoor

Choices are being made without the consent of many Americans. The Charles Krauthammer article is very long (too long to post, actually), but a very good read :

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/They-still-spell-it-Amerika-63893957.html



> *A little weekend reading: They still spell it 'Amerika'*
> By: Mark Tapscott
> Editorial Page Editor
> 10/09/09 6:20 PM EDT
> 
> For those of us who grew up in the era when Weather Undergrounders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn were familiar names in the news, it is always discomforting to be reminded of Barack Obama's many associations with people of the radical left - Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, etc.
> 
> Such folks' political thought never progressed beyond the 1960s because the revolutionary New Left didn't disapear, it simply went on to graduate school and then careers, mostly in the mainstream media, academia, the non-profits, the bureaucracy of state and local social work, and Blue State politics. Many bought BMWs and flat screens who nevertheless never stopped dreaming of revolution. In their hearts, they still spell it "Amerika."
> 
> More recently, as the first year of the Obama administration has unfolded and the basic outlines of his domestic and foreign policies have emerged, that discomfort has steadily become more tangible as the radical roots of the Sixties have broken ground in the White House and now are spreading rapidly into every corner of the federal government.
> 
> Obama grew up suffused in this culture of obsessive alienation and its distempered worldview, it is his fundamental frame of reference concerning America's past and its principles. Early on in places like Harvard and Chicago, he learned to speak always in language that appears to reassure when in fact it obscures and conceals his roots and what those roots tell us about who he appoints and why he follows the policies he does.
> 
> Whatever Barack and the people he has surrounded himself with may profess with their mouths at any particular time, their actions show they still loathe America and our standing as most powerful nation on earth, as well as our free enterprise, individual liberty, reverence for family and local communities, Main Street, the U.S. military, Christianity, and every other hallmark of the traditional culture and values of Western civilization.
> 
> *And now they think they have the power and position to do what they've always wanted to do - tear it all down and remake it in their millenarian image of Leviathan.* As philosopher Erik Voegelin would say, they don't merely intend the immanentization of the eschaton, they are securing the appropriations and regulations to make it happen.
> 
> Viewed from that assumption, things become so much clearer. On foreign and military policy, Obama's dominant principle is to apologize, to reverse a previous course - thus disavowing the intrinsically moral role of America in protecting freedom - and to seek rapproachment with our enemies on their terms.
> 
> Everywhere it is withdrawal, falling back, humbling of the nation that defeated Hitler and Japan, then rebuilt both as well as the rest of Europe, and engaged and won the Cold War with the Soviet Union. There can be no legitimate U.S. national interests overseas to be protected because Obama and his mentors never accepted America's legitimacy on the world stage. For them, we have always been the imperialist power and we must therefore be brought down.
> 
> On domestic policy, deficit spending as never before seen enslaves present and future generations with debt, destroys the currency and renders a crippling inflation all but inevitable. They have effectively nationalized key sectors of the formerly free economy - banking, the auto industry,  communications - and they are moving to put freedom of speech and the press under the supervision of federal bureaucrats.
> 
> They are suffocating the remainder of the productive economy with more and deeper regulation that will eventually kill the animating spirit of entreprenurial innovation and risk-taking that powers economic growth and job creation. And they are rendering the country permanently dependent on foreign oil and hamstringing its future development by forcing conversion to unproven alternative energy sources.
> 
> And no matter their promises or rationale now,  when they are finished, they will have turned the shining city on a hill into something more resembling a Third Word ant heap. No wonder Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and Muhammar al-Ghadafi heap praise on Obama.
> 
> Obviously my ability to put these things into words falls far short of the gravity of the times, but fortunately there is Charles Krauthammer's extraordinary piece in The Weekly Standard. He brings all of these strands and more together in far more and telling detail than I can summon in this space. If you read nothing else this weekend, you must read  his "Decline is a choice."
> 
> And then reflect on the fact that the choice is being made for us, not by us.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I never agree with Rick Salutin, not even when, as in this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_, he manages to stumble on to _part_ of the right answer:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/evasion-of-the-body-scanners/article1423077/


> Evasion of the body scanners
> *Security requires talking foreign policy, not airport screening*
> 
> Rick Salutin
> 
> Published on Friday, Jan. 08, 2010
> 
> There's an earnest, high-school debating tone to the ubiquitous discussions of airport security. It has many worthy subjects like,Full body scanners: Will they work? High moral concerns such asThe invasion of privacy. There's Human rights versus racial profiling, which would be a better topic if it hadn't already been a reality for males of a certain age and hue since 9/11. There's room for witty replies, like Billy Connolly's, who'd like to say, when asked if he packed his own bags: “No, no, a big Arab guy in a hotel – a nice big man, named Mohammed, who had a flying licence – packed it for me.”
> 
> Now add Yemen. The underwear bomber got fitted there. People who couldn't spell it the day before yesterday worry about it. Doesn't Yemen make the airport debate even more urgent? No, it makes it more irrelevant. A mom at her kid's karate class this week said: “They keep applying Band-Aids, but it doesn't stop the bleeding.” Yes! All the security babble amounts to evading the key issue: why this continues and how to reverse the trend line. But that requires talking foreign policy, not airport screening.
> 
> This is what's so irritating: The security issue seems to drain scarce public discourse resources from that other topic, foreign policy. You'd think both could be talked about at once but apparently not. We hear more on security and less on the sources of the problem. Why are they angry in Yemen? Because U.S. drones invaded their space and menaced innocent people, once in 2002 and again (shhh, it's supposed to be secret) last month. They didn't like the 2003 invasion of Iraq either. The first attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen came right after that, long before the one planned recently.
> 
> It's not an obscure subject. The U.S.'s 9/11 commission said chief planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was motivated by American Mideast policy. Osama bin Laden said he reached his decision to strike the U.S. while watching its ships bombard Beirut in 1983. The supply of terror will remain endless if you keep replenishing it with invasion, war and other such policies.
> 
> This hostile reaction isn't inherently religious, although it may go in that direction. Iraq was a secular Muslim country before the 2003 U.S. invasion. The same dynamic applies to “homegrown terror threats.” France is about to ban the burka, which is worn, according to report in this paper, by just 367 women in the whole land. If I were a young, secular Muslim woman there, I'd be tempted to put one on. As Paul Scott wrote in The Raj Quartet, “Hit a man in the face long enough and he turns to his racial memory and his tribal gods.“
> 
> But instead of this discussion on policies, we get ever more reports and debates about air travel. This week, Transport Minister John Baird, recommending another batch of screening techniques, said, “The reality of our generation is the fact we have to deal with terrorism.” Would that he'd felt as urgently about global warming when he was environment minister. It amounts to the old Cold War dualism in shabbier garb. At least the commie menace had an ideology that could be identified. The war against terror is so vague it can't be defined, and therefore may never end.
> 
> The sane approach would be to deal with the problem by dismantling and rebuilding Western policy toward the Muslim world. Well, that's unlikely. Why? Partly due to vested interests: oil companies, arms-makers, body-scanner builders. But it seems to go deeper, as if there's a human need for a permanent enemy to explain why your life didn't go quite right or your heroes didn't pan out or whatever woke you up in the middle of last night.
> 
> And if it did happen, would some people miss their fears? Probably. You might need a parallel campaign to persuade them to live without deep, irrational enemies: a sort of war on fear, to replace the war on terror.




Now, Salutin is right to suggest that the solution to our counter-terrorism problem is to revise our foreign policy, *even as we take all necessary and prudent security precautions*_. Where he is, almost certainly, off the rails is to suggest that Muslims are not the enemy; *not all* Muslims are our enemies – not by a long shot – but a whole lot of our real enemies are Muslims.

The *problem* is not with Islam, it is with how Islam is interpreted by an intellectually and socially stunted, even retarded Arab/Persian/West Asian culture. What that Arab/Persian/West Asian culture and its ‘established’ religion need is a thoroughgoing *reformation*, à la 16th century Europe, and the sort of enlightenment that Europe enjoyed in the 17th and 18th centuries and South and East Asia managed more than 2,000 years ago.

Our (the American led West’s) foreign policy aims (our grand strategy) need to be, simultaneously:

1.	To contain the further spread of radical, jihadist Islam;

2.	To provoke a (maybe several) reformation and enlightenment movement(s);

3.	Restore the unity, cultural strength and spiritual – *not religious* – pride of the West: many of the dead white men had important things to teach us;

4.	Preach and practice free and fair trade – globally – to allow all nations to see and understand that our ‘system’ is, at least, as good and possibly better than any other. Which leads back to 2.
_


----------



## Edward Campbell

Jeffrey Simpson, the _Good Grey Globe_’s *domestic political* expert turns his less than well informed attention once again to counter-insurgency and foreign policy in this column, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s _Globe and Mail_. He’s read another book and has seized upon yet another excuse to preach _isolationism_ and moral relativity:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-accidental-guerrilla-is-the-latest-jihadi-threat/article1427526/


> The ‘accidental guerrilla' is the latest jihadi threat
> *The key to breaking the al-Qaeda cycle is winning the support of local populations*
> 
> Jeffrey Simpson
> 
> Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010
> 
> Al-Qaeda and its network of friends must be delighted these days. One foiled attack aboard an airliner and new layers of costly and inconvenient security arrangements are added. Suddenly, Yemen, a place many Americans have never heard of, has become the terror country du jour.
> 
> About 30,000 more U.S. soldiers are heading for Afghanistan, their costs all paid for with borrowed money – the U.S. being in hock way over its head, and Barack Obama having fallen for his presidential predecessor's vocabulary, describing his country's fight as a “war.”
> 
> What do the United States and its friends face almost a decade after 9/11 and the start of the “war on terror”?
> 
> At least four trends are animating the jihadi threat: a backlash against globalization, whose modernity and worldliness threaten traditional, conservative cultures; an insurgency that, because of the tools of global communications, is a global one; a civil war within Islam that takes many forms, such as conflicts between Shia and Sunni and anger by Muslim ultra-fundamentalists against regimes in Muslim countries they detest; and asymmetric warfare that renders an overwhelming U.S. military power of surprisingly limited use.
> 
> The confluence of these (and other) factors has led to the creation of “the accidental guerrilla” many times over, according to terrorism specialist David Kilcullen, an Australian who's studied insurgencies up close in many countries and whose services were used by many high-ranking U.S. military and civilian officials. His book, The Accidental Guerrilla, is as good a guide to what we are facing and how to combat it (and how not to) as is likely available.
> 
> The “accidental guerrilla” arises from a four-stage strategy of al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. First, al-Qaeda moves into a remote, ungoverned or turbulent area (border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, parts of north-central Africa). Second, it uses this haven to spread violence and ideology. Third, outside forces (read U.S. and its allies) intervene to deal with al-Qaeda. Fourth, the local population becomes an “accidental guerrilla” by rejecting the outsiders' intervention and siding with al-Qaeda, especially if it's believed that al-Qaeda might eventually win the fight.
> 
> Al-Qaeda counts on its adversaries' overreaction to win “accidental guerrillas” and, over time, to disillusion Western publics who spend all this money and treasure on a “war,” only to find the conflict(s) dragging on and on.
> 
> The key to breaking this cycle is winning the support of local populations: respecting their traditions, bringing them tangible help, ensuring their security, convincing them that al-Qaeda is a threat rather than an ally. Counterinsurgency, therefore, is not about killing al-Qaeda and other “scumbags,” as a Canadian general once said, but of winning the local population. Body counts, in other words, don't count, a lesson conventional militaries struggle to understand.
> 
> The “accidental guerrillas,” Mr. Kilcullen writes, are “people who fight us not because they hate the West and seek our overthrow but because we have invaded their space to deal with a small, extremist element that has manipulated and exploited local grievances to gain power in their societies. They fight us not because they seek our destruction but because they believe we seek theirs.”
> 
> By treating Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda as the No. 1 security threat, by throwing huge resources against them, by invading Muslim countries, and by declaring a “war” to be on offer, we have turned a “mouse into an elephant.”
> 
> This reasoning is arguably a bit naive, since Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda do pose mortal threats, both to Western societies through terrorist acts and to Muslim regimes. It's their world view, coupled with the convictions of the religiously righteous, that makes them dangerous, in and of themselves, and as an inspiration for certain people raised in the Muslim faith.
> 
> It is estimated that, for every dollar that al-Qaeda spent mounting the 9/11 attacks, terrorists inflicted $544,000 in damage (the cost in human lives and suffering, of course, cannot be measured). In response, the U.S. has spent $1.4-million for every al-Qaeda dollar.
> 
> This is not a war in any traditional sense, in which overcommitment, overreaction and misuse of the forms of conventional power risk alienating the very populations on whom the blunting of al-Qaeda and its allies depends.



There is merit in David Kilcullen’s ideas: we do, indeed, alienate more people than necessary and we fail to befriend as many as we might. But what is the alternative?  

The ill named and less than well managed ‘war on terror’ is, in reality, a war *for* civilization and modernity – our _Western_ (and, increasingly, South and East Asian) view of secular, sophisticated, capitalistic modernity. It is a war on barbarism; it is a war on the forces of theocratic dictatorships; it is a war on _going back_ to the bad old days.

Question: But, what should ‘we’ – the Americans, mainly, but including the American led _West_ - ‘do about’ the Muslim Middle East, Africa and West Asia? After all, ‘they’ attacked ‘us.’

Answer: nothing. No attacks; no invasions; no aid; no trade; no nothing at all. If they want to sell oil ‘we’ will buy it, at fair market prices, FOB destination; but no ‘free trade’ deals, no ‘most favoured nation’ status and so on. Immigration from Africa, the Middle East and West Asia should be stopped. No state visits to and fro. No military exchanges. No foreign military sales deals. Isolation. Let ‘em stew in their own juices. This is quite contrary to my “preach and practice free and fair trade” mantra but it may be a necessary, interim, step to produce the _internal_ upheaval we need in Muslim Africa, the Middle East and West Asia.

The only best solution to ‘our’ problem with the forces of medieval _reaction_ consist of religious reformation(s) and _enlightenment_. Both must, can only be instigated from within those less than modern societies, *cultures*. They will occur if we let them. We can do a bit of provocation by using our tremendous _soft power_ against the forces of reaction through, especially, popular culture and popular style. It – propaganda - can be a more potent weapon than bullets and bombs in the war that really matters: the war for the _hearts and minds_.


----------



## a_majoor

Finding a Grand Strategy means being able to encompass what is going on around you, conceptualizing what it all means and finding what your vital interests are (and how to acheive them) in the mix. This article suggests that sort of thinking is in perilously short supply right about now:

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/04/18/the-washington-monument/



> *The Washington Monument*
> 
> Mike Allen’s account* of the grievance meeting between the White House Press Corps and Secretary Robert Gibbs feels like watching a once famous profession in a sad state of decline.  At a 75 minute meeting the White House Correspondents Association begged for crumbs. They complained the administration was going direct to the Internet on everything; as in staff photographers posting Presidential pictures while the Press Corps was denied photo opportunities; of news releases being posted after the business day was closed (“full lid”); of cutbacks in travel pools on Air Force One at a time when news organizations couldn’t afford to charter their own planes. The most pathetic demand of all was for Internet access in situations when they had to file. How important could they be if the pool reporting wasn’t worth a couple of dozen megabytes of uploads? That’s less than a few minute’s action on World of Warcraft.
> 
> Where one is on the totem is everything in Washington. The idea of hierarchy permeates every situation. Behavior is a question of knowing your place; when to say ‘thank you’ and never speaking out of turn.  If you can’t understand the rules you’re a rube. Because of the default presumption that you are at Court; it follows that beneath every courteous speech ultimately you want something from the king or the duke or the duchess. And this is where Bill Clinton has got it subtly wrong.
> 
> 
> The former President argued that political discourse had gotten so strident that certain individuals on the right have crossed the line between criticizing government officials and “demonizing them.” Things now remind him of the days preceding the Oklahoma City bombing when Clinton’s unpopular actions were unappreciated by an America lucky to have him.
> 
> CLINTON: I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. … I just think we all have to be careful. We ought to remember after Oklahoma City. We learned something about the difference in disagreement and demonization.
> 
> TAPPER: You said that this time reminds you of — of that time. Politically does this year remind you of 1994?
> 
> CLINTON: A little bit. We passed the bill which reversed trickledown economics by one vote. Close like the healthcare bill. And it led to an enormous flowering of the economy in America. And that bill was responsible for, take is more than 90 percent of the weight of the balanced budget. But people didn’t realize its benefits.
> 
> I think the same thing is happening now with the healthcare bill. Where people are still reading into it all manner of dark things. And they haven’t felt the benefits of it yet. But America is a different country now. We are culturally a different country. We are more diverse. We’re more communitarian. That is, we understand we have to solve a lot of these problems together.
> 
> The point Bill Clinton is missing is that the danger doesn’t come from right wing ‘anger.’ The anger is just a byproduct. The voices he hears from the Tea Party crowds aren’t threats; they’re warnings. The real peril is coming from somewhere else: the demographic decline in industrial world working populations, the increasing cost of energy and the international movement in the factors of production. A whole generation of failed policy from both parties is coming to a head and it probably means that the welfare state, the European Union and by consequence the Chinese economy are heading for a cliff.
> 
> What’s driving the Tea Parties isn’t amorphous hate. It is concrete fear: worry that pensions have been devalued; medical care will become unaffordable; taxes are too high and jobs are gone, never to return. And a look around the world shows there’s no place to hide. When the wave hits it will be global. In the UK membership in political parties is at near historic lows.  In America Congress’s popularity is lower than whales**t. The Eurozone is cracking up under its weight of debt. First Greece, now Portugal are being ripped off the cliff face like a zipper — and all the climbers are roped together. Japan is like a kamikaze sub heading for the depths and tapping out a sayonara. Russia was history long ago. And China, when it has used up its flowering moment, will face the consequences of its one-child policy. And Middle Eastern potentates,  stuck in the same old, same old, are warning about a Summer War.  The Tea Parties aren’t about putting some country club Republican in the White House, though Bill can’t help hearing it like that.
> 
> The cheese-paring scene at the White House Press Corps is just as indicative of the coming storm as the Tea Parties. It is yet one more sign that the old institutions are making plans for a future that isn’t there; moving trillions of dollars in projected revenues around a five year plan like Hitler’s fictive armies were moved around a map in 1945. When you hear Gordon Brown describe the billions he’s going to spend to save the world and heal the planet; when you read news about the proposed legislation on “cap and trade”– the issue isn’t the “right wing hate” but where’s the money going to come from? The most telling fact about Bill Clinton’s speech is that 2010 reminds him of 1994. If he — or the political establishment — can’t tell the difference between the decades, that’s your problem right there.
> 
> But the average Joe can. His pocketbook talks to him as loud as his cell phone; he has to live in a world where five bucks is a lot of money.  So the man in the street can see things that are invisible from Olympian Washington. Robert McCartney of the Washington Post found to his surprise that once he tuned into the frequency that he could hear it too.
> 
> I went to the “tea party” rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just how reactionary and potentially violent the movement truly was.
> 
> Answer: Not very. …
> 
> I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America’s swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.
> 
> A lot of people live in 1994. Time to switch the channels.
> 
> But  perhaps the most unremarked thing about the Tea Parties is that they’re not calling for a repeal of the Constitution but for its enforcement. They are the complete opposite of what Clinton thinks they are; an affirmation, not a call to create “a different country” that Clinton congratulates himself in attaining.  And that may be an advantage. If the world descends into a prolonged and tectonic crisis, the one clear advantage that America will have going into it is a clear and widely shared sense of the legitimacy of its foundational principles. That may not seem like much, but if a crisis impends a widely shared sense of legitimacy will be among the most precious things in a planet gone awry.
> 
> Yet politicians can’t see it. For perfectly natural reasons they fall into the habit of thinking everyone is a supplicant. It’s an understandable outcome of living in a world where someone is constantly asking them for something: photo opportunities, access to news releases, seats on Air Force One or Internet access. Nothing throws them for a loop more than something that doesn’t want anything they can bestow. The Tea Partiers already know the establishment is bankrupt. They don’t want to be the next Botox Queen, the next guest on Oprah or the man with Internet access on Air Force One; they only want their freedom and a chance to meet the crisis with common sense, if that’s not asking too much. It’s a novel idea which will take a little time for politicians to understand. But give them time and eventually someone will take credit for it. Tolkien understood both how power worked and its blindness.
> 
> *For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.*
> 
> *I misattributed this to Jake Tapper. This was a grave error on my part for which I sincerely apologize. I’m sorry Jake, sorry Mike.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is a report on the revised US National Security Strategy:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/obamas-new-national-security-plan-distances-us-from-bush-era-emphasis-on-going-it-alone/article1583870/


> Obama’s new national security plan distances U.S. from Bush-era emphasis on going it alone
> *Calls for renewing economy, expanding partnerships beyond traditional U.S. allies*
> 
> Washington — Reuters
> 
> Published on Friday, May. 28, 2010
> 
> The Obama administration has unveiled a new national security doctrine that would join diplomatic engagement and economic discipline with military power to bolster America’s standing in the world.
> 
> Striking a contrast to the Bush-era emphasis on going it alone, President Barack Obama’s strategy calls for expanding partnerships beyond traditional U.S. allies to encompass rising powers such as China and India in order to share the international burden.
> 
> Faced with a struggling economy and record deficits, the administration also acknowledged that boosting economic growth and getting the U.S. fiscal house in order must be core national-security priorities.
> 
> “At the centre of our efforts is a commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power,” the wide-ranging policy statement says.
> 
> Mr. Obama’s first official declaration of national security goals, pointedly omitted predecessor George W. Bush’s policy of pre-emptive war that alienated some U.S. allies.
> 
> Laying out a vision for keeping America safe as it fights wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the document formalized Mr. Obama’s intent to emphasize multilateral diplomacy over military might as he tries to reshape the world order.
> 
> The administration even reiterated Mr. Obama’s determination to try to engage with “hostile nations,” but warned nuclear-defiant Iran and North Korea it possessed “multiple means” to isolate them if they ignored international norms.
> 
> The National Security Strategy, required by law of every president, is often a dry reaffirmation of existing positions but is considered important because it can influence budgets and legislation and is closely watched internationally.
> 
> Mr. Obama, who came to office faced with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, took a clearer stand than any of his predecessors in drawing the link between America’s economic health at home and its stature overseas.
> 
> “We must renew the foundation of America’s strength,” the document says, asserting that the sustained economic growth hinges on putting the country on a “fiscally sustainable path” and also urging reduced dependence on foreign oil sources.
> 
> There was no discussion of what has become an emerging consensus in foreign policy circles – that heavy U.S. indebtedness to countries like China poses a security problem.
> 
> But the report does reflect Washington’s enigmatic relationship with Beijing, praising it for a more active role in world affairs while insisting it must act responsibly. It also reiterates unease over China’s rapid military buildup.
> 
> Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States’ fiscal problems presented a long-term threat to its diplomatic clout. “We cannot sustain this level of deficit financing and debt without losing our influence, without being constrained about the tough decisions we have to make,” she said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
> 
> Mr. Bush used his first policy statement in 2002 to stake out the right to unilateral and pre-emptive military action against countries and terrorist groups deemed threats to the United States in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
> 
> Mr. Obama’s plan implicitly distanced his administration from what became known as the Bush Doctrine and underpinned the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which lacked UN authorization.
> 
> While renewing previous presidents’ commitment to preserve U.S. conventional military superiority, the new doctrine puts an official stamp on Obama’s break from what Mr. Bush’s critics called “cowboy diplomacy.”
> 
> “We need to be clear-eyed about the strengths and shortcomings of international institutions,” the document says. But it said Washington did not have the option to “walk away.”
> 
> “Instead, we must focus American engagement on strengthening international institutions and galvanizing the collective action that can serve common interests such as combatting violent extremism, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials, achieving balanced and sustainable economic growth, and forging co-operative solutions to the threat of climate change,” it says.
> 
> Mr. Obama’s insistence the United States cannot act alone in the world was also a message to current and emerging powers that they must shoulder their share of the global burden.
> 
> Mr. Obama already has been widely credited with improving the tone of U.S. foreign policy, but still is struggling with two unfinished wars, nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea and sluggish Middle East peace efforts.
> 
> Critics say some of his efforts at diplomatic outreach show U.S. weakness, and they question whether he jeopardizes American interests by relying too heavily on “soft power.”
> 
> _Reuters News Agency_



Obama _may_ (accidentally, I suspect) have stumbled upon a vitally important _soft power_ factor: America’s economic success made its military prowess possible (and, equally, limits it today) and was a key factor in making America the world’s most popular country. People want to emulate their more successful peers; it’s the same with countries. China has not copied America’s system of government but, after careful study, it copies many of America’s economic policies and methods. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The economic situation constrains Obama’s administration. It is unsound policy to borrow too much to support the Pentagon, but, similarly, it is unsound politics to deny the Pentagon its bloated budget.

The critics cited in the last paragraph do not understand the components and nature of _strategic_ power. That’s a common failing of American politicians, officials and military people post Ronald Regan. 


Edit:format


----------



## tomahawk6

At a time that we are fighting two wars the defense budget is 5% of GDP and we cant get our allies to spend 2%. If the economy implodes it wont be because of defense spending.


----------



## Edward Campbell

It's "fun with numbers time." First we have to agree on what 'defence spending' means:

•	Is it the $663 Billion the Congress has appropriated for DoD? or

•	Is it the $1.03 Trillion one gets when e.g. NASA (defence related) and Veterans' Affairs and Homeland Security (defence related) are added?

In any event, even at only 5% of GDP (although it may be as much as 7%) it is, still, a very, very large programme.

But it is *about* 25% of the federal budget (depending upon how much non DoD spending one counts) and, far worse and potentially unsustainably, approaching or even exceeding 30% of tax revenue.

The US national debt is quickly approaching $13 Trillion against a GDP of *about* $14.5 Trillion (depending on whose data your accept). That is far worse than Canada’s situation when _The Wall Street Journal_ shocked us with the “northern peso” prod.

Americans appear, to me, to be very reluctant to accept new taxes for anything, but many, many Americans still expect governments (federal, state and local) to keep providing the programmes and services they (Americans) want – that includes a strong national defence programme. In that respect they are just as fiscally irresponsible as Canadians.

At some point someone has to reconcile revenues and expenditures. It's not going to be fun.


----------



## tomahawk6

Just so that we can keep the numbers in perspective. Total budget was $6.5t for FY2010. Of which .9trillion went to defense and to fight 2 wars. That is right up there with welfare .8t,education and healthcare at $1t.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_ is an important article about some of America’s top _strategists_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/fukuyama-keeps-up-the-fight/article1585152/?cmpid=rss1


> Fukuyama keeps up the fight
> *In the 1990s he declared the ‘End of History.' Then in 2006, he put a rhetorical bullet in the backs of his neo-conservative allies. What remains for a right-wing apostate to do today?*
> 
> 
> Konrad Yakabuski
> 
> Washington — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
> Published on Friday, May. 28, 2010
> 
> When three American thinkers – an unbowed neo-conservative, a cheeky liberal and neo-conservatism's best-known apostate – gathered in the capital this month to discuss a young French scholar's new “biography” of the neo-con movement, they first had to settle on how to pronounce the author's name.
> Francis Fukuyama, the Chicago-born former neo-con, begged the indulgence of Justin Vaïsse for pronouncing his first name _à l'américaine_.
> 
> Liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne nodded to his own family's Quebec roots. “I'm a French Canadian, so I love saying Joos-tin,” he jested, pursing his lips.
> 
> As for editor William Kristol, whose Weekly Standard remains a safe house for neo-conservative opinion, he was true to its precepts of U.S. supremacy and unilateralism.
> 
> “As a neo-conservative, I have to give him the American pronunciation,” Mr. Kristol quipped, before poking his former brother-in-arms: “I'm a little shocked that Frank bowed to such a hegemonic and almost nativist manner of discourse, but that's okay.”
> 
> Emotions, apparently, are still a little raw. In 1992, Prof. Fukuyama's celebrated book _The End of History and the Last Man_ helped provide neo-conservatism's intellectual fuel. His 2004 break with the movement accelerated its descent into foreign-policy purgatory.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dr. Francis Fukuyama Reuters
> 
> As he wraps up his nine-year stint at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies – he's headed to Stanford in the fall – Prof. Fukuyama harbours no regrets about slamming the door on the house he helped to build. But neither has he turned his back on all of neo-conservatism's leading edicts.
> 
> The theorist, set to speak Monday in Toronto, still thinks democracy promotion should remain a key tenet of U.S. foreign policy. And he fears Barack Obama – for whom he voted – does far too little of it.
> 
> *REVENGE OF THE REALISTS*
> 
> “Although he gave a speech in Cairo almost exactly a year ago about the importance of democracy and accountable government in the Middle East, as far as I can tell he has done almost nothing to actually promote this,” Prof. Fukuyama insists in his bright but cloistered office on Washington's stately Massachusetts Ave. “He occasionally makes a nod towards democracy and human rights, but you don't get the sense that it's central to what he wants to accomplish.”
> 
> Not that Mr. Obama would get far if he tried. George W. Bush's go-it-alone “freedom agenda” sullied the name of democracy – and America – in much of the world. Neo-cons justified the use of unilateral military force to “democratize” Iraq based on the conviction, expressed a few years earlier by Mr. Kristol, that “American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality.” The rest of the world could be forgiven if it didn't always see it that way.
> 
> By comparison, Mr. Obama has been deferential to multilateralism, noting in his first National Security Strategy, unveiled Thursday: “The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone – indeed our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.”
> 
> Prof. Fukuyama supports the multilateral approach, but criticizes the narrowly “realist” foreign policy that appears to be favoured by many in the Obama administration, which is reminiscent of the Cold War détente of the Nixon era. If the neo-cons seem hopelessly utopian, the realists come off as overly cynical.
> 
> “American foreign policy has to be grounded in certain ideals. It's kind of in the American DNA,” argues Prof. Fukuyama, who, incidentally, was born the same year – 1952 – as Mr. Kristol and Mr. Dionne. “It's something we're hypocritical about a lot of the times because we don't live up to [our ideals].
> 
> “But creating an open, democratic world order is something that didn't begin with the Bush administration. It's been there from the beginning in terms of American objectives and the world is, on balance, better off for that.”
> 
> *NEO-CON WARS 2: HISTORY STRIKES BACK*
> 
> The fissure between Prof. Fukuyama and his fellow neo-cons arose over what he describes as their misreading of his celebrated 1992 bestseller. Its irresistible, if much-oversimplified, idea – that the fall of communism at the end of the Cold War marked the triumph of liberal democracy as humankind's political endpoint – underpinned the neo-con argument that the U.S. should use its opportunity as the world's sole superpower to spread democracy abroad, by force if necessary.
> 
> Ronald Reagan, neo-cons argued, had proved that intimidation, not détente, was key to eliminating the Soviet threat and freeing the citizenry of the “evil empire” and its satellite states. It was the failure to respond forcefully enough to Islamic terrorist attacks on Bill Clinton's watch, they reasoned, that led to 9/11.
> 
> By then, neo-con hawks such as Paul Wolfowitz had assumed pivotal positions in the Bush administration. And the Bush Doctrine – with its emphasis on pre-emptive strikes and unilateralism – became the motor of foreign policy.
> 
> “The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack,” the Bush administration asserted in its 2002 National Security Strategy (a document every president must submit to Congress).
> 
> The 2003 invasion of Iraq – to topple Saddam Hussein, destroy his (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction and install democracy – marked a neo-con high point.
> 
> But barely a year later, watching disaster unfold there, Prof. Fukuyama sent America's salon set into fits of chatter by renouncing his peers in what was then their bible, The National Interest. As he would further explain in 2006's _America at the Crossroads_, he faulted them for egging on the Bush administration to conclude, wrongly, that “history could be accelerated through American agency.”
> 
> The neo-cons did not take it lying down. Robert Kagan, who had helped Mr. Kristol pen the blurb about America's “unusually high degree of morality,” shot back in 2008 with the impertinently titled _The Return of History and the End of Dreams_. China's inexorable rise, Mr. Kagan argued, had shown that “growing national wealth and autocracy [are] compatible, after all.”
> 
> But despite robbing the neo-cons of their argument, history's return has only made democracy promotion an even greater imperative. “It may not come to war,” Mr. Kagan asserted, “but the global competition between democratic and autocratic governments will become the dominant feature of the 21st-century world.”
> 
> Prof. Fukuyama has not repudiated his own “end of history” thesis, even if he concedes that China's progress has led many thinkers to cast doubt on the inevitability, much less desirability, of democracy as the ultimate form of political organization. Even Russia, which a decade ago might have looked to the West for guidance, would now rather emulate China.
> 
> “The problem with that model is that you have to have good authoritarians,” Prof. Fukuyama counters. “They tend to produce them in East Asia for a number of reasons – historical and cultural. But in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, it's pretty hard to find Lee Kuan Yews.” (Mr. Lee is the iron-fisted ex-leader of Singapore, credited with turning his city-state into an Asian Tiger.)
> 
> Like the Soviet Union, China has its own internal contradictions, which, in time, are bound to catch up with the regime. “It is extremely hard to govern that large a country in such a top-down manner without any kind of bottom-up accountability,” Prof. Fukuyama adds. “The question I would really raise is whether, in the long run, that part of the model is sustainable.”
> 
> History should take care of China, he argues. Modernization “tends to drive demands for political participation.”
> 
> *NEO-CON WARS 3: ATTACK OF THE CLONES?*
> 
> The neo-cons are not so patient. And they have a new bounce to their step. The 2007 troop surge in Iraq – which Robert Kagan's younger brother, Frederick, helped devise – worked. Even Prof. Fukuyama concedes Iraqis now have “a reasonable shot” at establishing a workable democracy.
> 
> What's more, isolationists such as Kentucky Republican candidate Rand Paul notwithstanding, the party has pretty much surrendered the formulation of its foreign policy to neo-conservatives such as Mr. Kristol, the Kagans and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.
> 
> “If Republicans want to oppose Obama on foreign policy to score political points, they naturally tend to gravitate around neoconservative ideas,” Mr. Vaïsse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in _Why Neoconservatism Still Matters_.
> 
> Mr. Krauthammer and Robert Kagan “both attack what they consider to be Obama's underlying assumption – America's inevitable decline – as well as his remedy – adapting to a ‘post-American world' by accommodating other great powers (most of them autocracies) at the expense of traditional allies (most of them democracies).”
> 
> If Mr. Obama falters – if his attempt to rein in Iran and North Korea by multilateral means fails, if he defers too much to China or Russia – the neo-cons are ready to pounce. Should the Republicans retake Congress this fall or (in their dreams) the White House in 2012, U.S. foreign policy could again come under their thrall.
> 
> It would not mark the end of history; just its repetition.
> 
> _Francis Fukuyama addresses the Grano Salon Speakers Series in Toronto on May 31._



I think Prof. Fukuyama was, mostly, right in both _The End of History and the Last Man_ (1992) and _America at the Crossroads_ (2006) but (there’s always a *but* isn’t there?) while I agree that democracy is the likely “end state” for our modern, 21st century world it _may_ well be that we have not yet seen the contest between democratic forms. Prof. Fukuyama, like almost all Western thinkers, says “democracy” when he really means “*liberal* democracy.” There is another form: *conservative* democracy, which is what we see, full blown, in Singapore and, largely, in Japan.

What’s the difference? *Liberal* democracies, our kind of democracy, has as its core value: the rights of the individual. Conservative democracies have for their central value: the rights of society. We expect our *liberal* democratic system to protect each of us, as individuals, from the actions of the _collectives_: big business, big banks, big labour, organized religion and government itself. People living in a *conservative* democracy expect the state to protect their fundamental rights (life, liberty, security of the person, etc) but, also, to promote and protect social harmony, possibly at the expense of some individual rights. The explicit “trust” between the citizen and the *conservative* state is that it will keep you, the individual you, safe, and allow you, in fact _enable_ you, to prosper, but it will do so will maintaining social harmony amongst all citizens.

Consider Singapore: elections are free and fair but many of the rights we take for granted, including freedom of expression and freedom of association and assembly are restricted to a degree that some Western observers consider anti-democratic. But every individual’s right to property is protected to a greater degree than in any other country in the world, including the USA – in fact, on matters of property rights, the USA, under either Bush or Obama, looks positively _communistic_ and downright lawless compared to Singapore. Singapore is a full fledged democracy but it is not at all *liberal* and that’s why many _liberals_ (Westerners, all) think it is some sort of dictatorship.

It is that model, *conservative* democracy, towards which China is, glacially slowly, moving. The Chinese _centre_ doesn’t want democracy but it understands that the alternatives are either doomed to fail or unworkable or, as yet, invisible. They look with envy at the *conservative* democracy Lee Kuan Yew crafted for Singapore. They (the Chinese) lack many of the advantages he had, such as deep public *trust* in the institutions of the state – such as courts and the bureaucracy, legacies of British colonial administration. The Chinese people do not trust their courts or government agencies and the Chinese cannot manage a transition to a *conservative* democracy until they can lick their HUGE corruption problem. It was, despite a head start, Lee’s biggest challenge in Singapore and it remains a challenge in many, many (indeed most) countries including some *liberal* democracies and most democracies of the third sort: *illiberal* democracies.

But, I suspect the battle between East and West will be between *conservative* and *liberal* democratic values. I hope the two can coexist and that they can cooperate against the common foe: barbarism.


----------



## a_majoor

This "grand strategy" isn't going to help:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-national-security-doctrine-naive/?singlepage=true



> *Obama’s National Security Doctrine: Naive — Frighteningly So*
> 
> The administration releases a document that misidentifies threats and tells our enemies we intend to be weak.
> June 2, 2010
> - by Barry Rubin
> Share |
> 
> Yes, children, there is an Obama Doctrine. The administration has now produced a national security strategy. Be afraid, be very afraid. And those who should be afraid are Americans and their friends, not their enemies.
> 
> The administration wants to prove, most of all, that it isn’t George W. Bush. But in doing so, it also proves it isn’t the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Bush I, or even the Clinton administration, either.
> 
> It all looks good on paper: America is not a superpower. It is limited, and this circumscribed power requires bringing in lots of partners. Obama writes in the introduction of the strategy released last Thursday:
> 
> The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone. … Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.
> 
> Yet that point is missed. You don’t overextend precisely so you can concentrate on what’s important — say, pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq to focus on containing Iran. You don’t reduce commitments in order to abandon the remaining ones.
> 
> Much of this worldview is intended to counter what the left hates about George W. Bush. Yet while one can certainly argue Bush did not wisely use the resources of American power, that doesn’t mean American power itself isn’t there. The remedy for excessive unilateralism isn’t excessive multilateralism. And while there might be times or situations where such a response did little harm, the present day — with threats from revolutionary Islamism, an aggressive Iran-led alliance, anti-American leftists, and resurgent Russian and Chinese ambitious powers — makes the Obama Doctrine a very dangerous course indeed. While Obama argues that America faces no real military competitor and global power is increasingly diffuse, these are likely to be temporary conditions. If there’s going to be a vacuum, there are a number of candidates eager to fill it.
> 
> Obama’s doctrine calls for bringing these candidates in as partners — hiring the foxes to guard the chicken coop. China and Russia, Iran and Syria, Brazil and Turkey — among others — are naively seen as reliable buddies. Or, in the words of Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes:
> 
> We are deeply committed to broadening the circle of responsible actors.
> 
> It’s a dangerous idea — the United States cannot make these countries, or any, “responsible actors.” There’s a reason why responsible actors include countries like Britain, France, and Germany. And the fruit of this mistaken policy is the kind of thing we just saw with the Brazilian-Turkish stab in the back over Iran.
> 
> We’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.
> 
> Why is the Obama administration so concerned with engaging enemies? Because it is precisely, according to the Obama worldview, the “bad boy” powers which must be appeased. If the United States is conceived as weak and overextended, the ones threatening to disrupt everything may be too strong to oppose, and so must be coopted.
> 
> Hillary Clinton said:
> 
> We are shifting from mostly direct application and exercise of American power to one of indirection, that requires patience and partners, and gets results more slowly. … In a world like this, American leadership isn’t needed less, it is needed more. And the simple fact is that no global problem can be solved without us.
> 
> Clinton, judging from the opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapon project, seems to be at best much too late. How much will you pay your enemies to pretend to be partners? Suppose certain countries don’t want to solve global problems, but merely to take advantage of them — do they still need the United States?
> 
> Imagine a town full of outlaws, with a weak sheriff. The sheriff can deputize the criminals in the belief that this would make them “responsible actors.” Of course, as you probably guess, they would use their badges to rob, rape, and murder even more effectively.
> 
> If Obama and his colleagues feel the United States is overextended, it is partly because they misidentify the threats and reject the best ways of dealing with them. The doctrine says that nuclear weapons are the main threat to America, followed by climate change, dependence on fossil fuels, and cyber warfare.
> 
> This is dangerous claptrap. Without denying a threat posed by any of these, one could point out that there is no big threat from nuclear weapons (especially compared to the 1950-1990 period); that climate change as a threat is not proven nor is the ability of countries to do anything about it given the realistic options they have; that a combination of drilling and technology can deal with the energy problem; and that cyber warfare is still a very speculative threat. Compare that with Iran taking over much of the Middle East; Russia rebuilding its empire; terrorism spreading in scope and intensity; and China gaining hegemony over large parts of Asia. I’m not saying those things are going to happen, but they are much greater threats than Obama’s list.
> 
> In a move that qualifies him for a Nobel Prize in chutzpah, Obama warns that the high budget deficit is a major threat to U.S. strategic power. Since his policies have been responsible for creating this problem, and his administration shows no sign of changing them, one can only gasp at such audacity.
> 
> There’s a lot more of interest. The paper says:
> 
> While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can, and carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs and risks of inaction.
> 
> Sounds great. But how about the use of power politics, threats, leverage, sticks? Once you assert America is weak and overextended, how are you going to convince anyone that they better do what you want? Obama’s posture makes the idea of containing Iran, for example, unthinkable. Once you announce you have no teeth, your enemies will naturally conclude that your bark is worse than your bite:
> 
> Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.
> 
> Yes, but those adversaries are equally happy to see you voluntarily throw away America’s strength by denying it and hiring them to run the nursing home for what you see as a pitiful, helpless giant. One day there might be another president, neither a Bush nor an Obama, who will stand up straight, get rid of the wheelchair and canes, and decide that reports of America’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
> 
> Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition, Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth about Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).


----------



## a_majoor

The proper use of a "Grand Strategy" is to decide where to apply limited resources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1



> *Superbroke, Superfrugal, Superpower?*
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> 
> In recent years, I have often said to European friends: So, you didn’t like a world of too much American power? See how you like a world of too little American power — because it is coming to a geopolitical theater near you. Yes, America has gone from being the supreme victor of World War II, with guns and butter for all, to one of two superpowers during the cold war, to the indispensable nation after winning the cold war, to “The Frugal Superpower” of today. Get used to it. That’s our new nickname. American pacifists need not worry any more about “wars of choice.” We’re not doing that again. We can’t afford to invade Grenada today.
> 
> Ever since the onset of the Great Recession of 2008, it has been clear that the nature of being a leader — political or corporate — was changing in America. During most of the post-World War II era, being a leader meant, on balance, giving things away to people. Today, and for the next decade at least, being a leader in America will mean, on balance, taking things away from people.
> 
> And there is simply no way that America’s leaders, as they have to take more things away from their own voters, are not going to look to save money on foreign policy and foreign wars. Foreign and defense policy is a lagging indicator. A lot of other things get cut first. But the cuts are coming — you can already hear the warnings from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. And a frugal American superpower is sure to have ripple effects around the globe.
> 
> “The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era” is actually the title of a very timely new book by my tutor and friend Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert. “In 2008,” Mandelbaum notes, “all forms of government-supplied pensions and health care (including Medicaid) constituted about 4 percent of total American output.” At present rates, and with the baby boomers soon starting to draw on Social Security and Medicare, by 2050 “they will account for a full 18 percent of everything the United States produces.”
> 
> This — on top of all the costs of bailing ourselves out of this recession — “will fundamentally transform the public life of the United States and therefore the country’s foreign policy.” For the past seven decades, in both foreign affairs and domestic policy, our defining watchword was “more,” argues Mandelbaum. “The defining fact of foreign policy in the second decade of the 21st century and beyond will be ‘less.’ ”
> 
> When the world’s only superpower gets weighed down with this much debt — to itself and other nations — everyone will feel it. How? Hard to predict. But all I know is that the most unique and important feature of U.S. foreign policy over the last century has been the degree to which America’s diplomats and naval, air and ground forces provided global public goods — from open seas to open trade and from containment to counterterrorism — that benefited many others besides us. U.S. power has been the key force maintaining global stability, and providing global governance, for the last 70 years. That role will not disappear, but it will almost certainly shrink.
> 
> Great powers have retrenched before: Britain for instance. But, as Mandelbaum notes, “When Britain could no longer provide global governance, the United States stepped in to replace it. No country now stands ready to replace the United States, so the loss to international peace and prosperity has the potential to be greater as America pulls back than when Britain did.”
> 
> After all, Europe is rich but wimpy. China is rich nationally but still dirt poor on a per capita basis and, therefore, will be compelled to remain focused inwardly and regionally. Russia, drunk on oil, can cause trouble but not project power. “Therefore, the world will be a more disorderly and dangerous place,” Mandelbaum predicts.
> 
> How to mitigate this trend? Mandelbaum argues for three things: First, we need to get ourselves back on a sustainable path to economic growth and reindustrialization, with whatever sacrifices, hard work and political consensus that requires. Second, we need to set priorities. We have enjoyed a century in which we could have, in foreign policy terms, both what is vital and what is desirable. For instance, I presume that with infinite men and money we can succeed in Afghanistan. But is it vital? I am sure it is desirable, but vital? Finally, we need to shore up our balance sheet and weaken that of our enemies, and the best way to do that in one move is with a much higher gasoline tax.
> 
> America is about to learn a very hard lesson: You can borrow your way to prosperity over the short run but not to geopolitical power over the long run. That requires a real and growing economic engine. And, for us, the short run is now over. There was a time when thinking seriously about American foreign policy did not require thinking seriously about economic policy. That time is also over.
> 
> An America in hock will have no hawks — or at least none that anyone will take seriously.



The key prescription is to have a real and growing economic engine. Hobbling the engine with taxes and regulation is counterproductive (the call for a vastly higher fuel tax in the article, for example). Like the man said, politicians will have to operate under the rule of "taking" rather than "giving", so if political leaders are at all serious then a controlled drawdown of programs and benefits will be needed to exit this mess in an orderly fashion.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced in three parts under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act fro,m _Foreign Affairs_ is an interesting caution from Joseph Nye (who always merits a our attention) for those, including me, who are too quick to speculate about America's relative _decline_:

*PART 1*

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66796/joseph-s-nye-jr/the-future-of-american-power?page=show 


> The Future of American Power
> *Dominance and Decline in Perspective*
> 
> By Joseph S. Nye Jr.
> November/December 2010
> 
> The twenty-first century began with a very unequal distribution of power resources. With five percent of the world's population, the United States accounted for about a quarter of the world's economic output, was responsible for nearly half of global military expenditures, and had the most extensive cultural and educational soft-power resources. All this is still true, but the future of U.S. power is hotly debated. Many observers have interpreted the 2008 global financial crisis as the beginning of American decline. The National Intelligence Council, for example, has projected that in 2025, "the U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished."
> 
> Power is the ability to attain the outcomes one wants, and the resources that produce it vary in different contexts. Spain in the sixteenth century took advantage of its control of colonies and gold bullion, the Netherlands in the seventeenth century profited from trade and finance, France in the eighteenth century benefited from its large population and armies, and the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century derived power from its primacy in the Industrial Revolution and its navy. This century is marked by a burgeoning revolution in information technology and globalization, and to understand this revolution, certain pitfalls need to be avoided.
> 
> First, one must beware of misleading metaphors of organic decline. Nations are not like humans, with predictable life spans. Rome remained dominant for more than three centuries after the peak of its power, and even then it did not succumb to the rise of another state. For all the fashionable predictions of China, India, or Brazil surpassing the United States in the next decades, the greater threat may come from modern barbarians and nonstate actors. In an information-based world, power diffusion may pose a bigger danger than power transition. Conventional wisdom holds that the state with the largest army prevails, but in the information age, the state (or the nonstate actor) with the best story may sometimes win.
> 
> Power today is distributed in a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely unipolar, and the United States is likely to retain primacy for quite some time. On the middle chessboard, economic power has been multipolar for more than a decade, with the United States, Europe, Japan, and China as the major players and others gaining in importance. The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations. It includes nonstate actors as diverse as bankers who electronically transfer funds, terrorists who traffic weapons, hackers who threaten cybersecurity, and challenges such as pandemics and climate change. On this bottom board, power is widely diffused, and it makes no sense to speak of unipolarity, multipolarity, or hegemony.
> 
> In interstate politics, the most important factor will be the continuing return of Asia to the world stage. In 1750, Asia had more than half the world's population and economic output. By 1900, after the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, Asia's share shrank to one-fifth of global economic output. By 2050, Asia will be well on its way back to its historical share. The rise of China and India may create instability, but this is a problem with precedents, and history suggests how policies can affect the outcome.
> 
> *HEGEMONIC DECLINE?*
> 
> It is currently fashionable to compare the United States' power to that of the United Kingdom a century ago and to predict a similar hegemonic decline. Some Americans react emotionally to the idea of decline, but it would be counterintuitive and ahistorical to believe that the United States will have a preponderant share of power resources forever. The word "decline" mixes up two different dimensions: absolute decline, in the sense of decay, and relative decline, in which the power resources of other states grow or are used more effectively.
> 
> The analogy with British decline is misleading. The United Kingdom had naval supremacy and an empire on which the sun never set, but by World War I, the country ranked only fourth among the great powers in its share of military personnel, fourth in GDP, and third in military spending. With the rise of nationalism, protecting the empire became more of a burden than an asset. For all the talk of an American empire, the United States has more freedom of action than the United Kingdom did. And whereas the United Kingdom faced rising neighbors, Germany and Russia, the United States benefits from being surrounded by two oceans and weaker neighbors.
> 
> Despite such differences, Americans are prone to cycles of belief in their own decline. The Founding Fathers worried about comparisons to the Roman republic. Charles Dickens observed a century and a half ago, "If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, [the United States] always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise." In the last half century, belief in American decline rose after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, after President Richard Nixon's economic adjustments and the oil shocks in the 1970s, and after the closing of rust-belt industries and the budget deficits in the Reagan era. Ten years later, Americans believed that the United States was the sole superpower, and now polls show that many believe in decline again.
> 
> Pundits lament the inability of Washington to control states such as Afghanistan or Iran, but they allow the golden glow of the past to color their appraisals. The United States' power is not what it used to be, but it also never really was as great as assumed. After World War II, the United States had nuclear weapons and an overwhelming preponderance of economic power but nonetheless was unable to prevent the "loss" of China, to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, to overcome stalemate in the Korean War, to stop the "loss" of North Vietnam, or to dislodge the Castro regime in Cuba. Power measured in resources rarely equals power measured in preferred outcomes, and cycles of belief in decline reveal more about psychology than they do about real shifts in power resources. Unfortunately, mistaken beliefs in decline -- at home and abroad -- can lead to dangerous mistakes in policy.
> 
> *CHINA ON THE RISE*
> 
> For more than a decade, many have viewed China as the most likely contender to balance U.S. power or surpass it. Some draw analogies to the challenge that imperial Germany posed to the United Kingdom at the beginning of the last century. A recent book (by Martin Jacques) is even titled When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. Goldman Sachs has projected that the total size of China's economy will surpass that of the United States in 2027.
> 
> Yet China has a long way to go to equal the power resources of the United States, and it still faces many obstacles to its development. Even if overall Chinese GDP passed that of the United States around 2030, the two economies, although roughly equivalent in size, would not be equivalent in composition. China would still have a vast underdeveloped countryside, and it would have begun to face demographic problems from the delayed effects of its one-child policy. Per capita income provides a measure of the sophistication of an economy. Assuming a six percent Chinese GDP growth rate and only two percent American GDP growth rate after 2030, China would probably not equal the United States in per capita income until sometime around the middle of the century. In other words, China's impressive economic growth rate and increasing population will likely lead the Chinese economy to pass the U.S. economy in total size in a few decades, but that is not the same as equality.
> 
> Moreover, linear projections can be misleading, and growth rates generally slow as economies reach higher levels of development. China's authoritarian political system has shown an impressive capability to harness the country's power, but whether the government can maintain that capability over the longer term is a mystery both to outsiders and to Chinese leaders. Unlike India, which was born with a democratic constitution, China has not yet found a way to solve the problem of demands for political participation (if not democracy) that tend to accompany rising per capita income. Whether China can develop a formula that manages an expanding urban middle class, regional inequality, rural poverty, and resentment among ethnic minorities remains to be seen.
> 
> Some have argued that China aims to challenge the United States' position in East Asia and, eventually, the world. Even if this were an accurate assessment of China's current intentions (and even the Chinese themselves cannot know the views of future generations), it is doubtful that China will have the military capability to make this possible anytime soon. Moreover, Chinese leaders will have to contend with the reactions of other countries and the constraints created by China's need for external markets and resources. Too aggressive a Chinese military posture could produce a countervailing coalition among China's neighbors that would weaken both its hard and its soft power.
> 
> The rise of Chinese power in Asia is contested by both India and Japan (as well as other states), and that provides a major power advantage to the United States. The U.S.-Japanese alliance and the improvement in U.S.-Indian relations mean that China cannot easily expel the Americans from Asia. From that position of strength, the United States, Japan, India, Australia, and others can engage China and provide incentives for it to play a responsible role, while hedging against the possibility of aggressive behavior as China's power grows.



End of Part 1


Edit: format


----------



## Edward Campbell

*Part 2*



> *DOMESTIC DECAY?*
> 
> Some argue that the United States suffers from "imperial overstretch," but so far, the facts do not fit that theory. On the contrary, defense and foreign affairs expenditures have declined as a share of GDP over the past several decades. Nonetheless, the United States could decline not because of imperial overstretch but because of domestic underreach. Rome rotted from within, and some observers, noting the sourness of current U.S. politics, project that the United States will lose its ability to influence world events because of domestic battles over culture, the collapse of its political institutions, and economic stagnation. This possibility cannot be ruled out, but the trends are not as clear as the current gloomy mood suggests.
> 
> Although the United States has many social problems -- and always has -- they do not seem to be getting worse in any linear manner. Some of these problems are even improving, such as rates of crime, divorce, and teenage pregnancy. Although there are culture wars over issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, polls show an overall increase in tolerance. Civil society is robust, and church attendance is high, at 42 percent. The country's past cultural battles, over immigration, slavery, evolution, temperance, McCarthyism, and civil rights, were arguably more serious than any of today's.
> 
> A graver concern would be if the country turned inward and seriously curtailed immigration. With its current levels of immigration, the United States is one of the few developed countries that may avoid demographic decline and keep its share of world population, but this could change if xenophobia or reactions to terrorism closed its borders. The percentage of foreign-born residents in the United States reached its twentieth-century peak, 14.7 percent, in 1910. Today, 11.7 percent of U.S. residents are foreign born, but in 2009, 50 percent of Americans favored decreasing immigration, up from 39 percent in 2008. The economic recession has only aggravated the problem.
> 
> Although too rapid a rate of immigration can cause social problems, over the long term, immigration strengthens U.S. power. Today, the United States is the world's third most populous country; 50 years from now, it is likely to still be third (after India and China). Not only is this relevant to economic power, but given that nearly all developed countries are aging and face the burden of providing for the older generation, immigration could help reduce the sharpness of the resulting policy problem. In addition, there is a strong correlation between the number of H-1B visas and the number of patents filed in the United States. In 1998, Chinese- and Indian-born engineers were running one-quarter of Silicon Valley's high-tech businesses, and in 2005, immigrants were found to have helped start one of every four American technology start-ups over the previous decade.
> 
> Equally important are the benefits of immigration for the United States' soft power. Attracted by the upward mobility of American immigrants, people want to come to the United States. The United States is a magnet, and many people can envisage themselves as Americans. Many successful Americans look like people in other countries. Rather than diluting hard and soft power, immigration enhances both. When Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew concludes that China will not surpass the United States as the leading power of the twenty-first century, he cites the ability of the United States to attract the best and brightest from the rest of the world and meld them into a diverse culture of creativity. China has a larger population to recruit from domestically, but in his view, its Sinocentric culture will make it less creative than the United States, which can draw on the whole world.
> 
> On the other hand, a failure in the performance of the U.S. economy would be a showstopper. Keeping in mind that macroeconomic forecasts (like weather forecasts) are notoriously unreliable, it appears that the United States will experience slower growth in the decade after the 2008 financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund expects U.S. economic growth to average about two percent in 2014. This is lower than the average over the past several decades but roughly the same as the average rate over the past ten years.
> 
> In the 1980s, many observers believed that the U.S. economy had run out of steam and that Germany and Japan were overtaking the United States. The country seemed to have lost its competitive edge. Today, however, even after the financial crisis and the ensuing recession, the World Economic Forum has ranked the United States fourth (after Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore) in global economic competitiveness. (China, in comparison, was ranked 27th.) The U.S. economy leads in many new growth sectors, such as information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. And even though optimists tend to cite the United States' dominance in the production and use of information technology, that is not the only source of U.S. productivity. The United States has seen significant agricultural innovation, too, and its openness to globalization, if it continues, will also drive up productivity. Economic experts project that American productivity growth will be between 1.5 and 2.25 percent in the next decade.
> 
> In terms of investment in research and development, the United States was the world leader in 2007, with $369 billion, followed by all of Asia ($338 billon) and the European Union ($263 billion). The United States spent 2.7 percent of its GDP on research and development, nearly double what China spent (but slightly less than the three percent spent by Japan and South Korea). In 2007, American inventors registered about 80,000 patents in the United States, or more than the rest of the world combined. A number of reports have expressed concern about problems such as high corporate tax rates, the flight of human capital, and the growing number of overseas patents, but U.S. venture capital firms invest 70 percent of their money in domestic start-ups. A 2009 survey by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor ranked the United States ahead of other countries in opportunities for entrepreneurship because it has a favorable business culture, the most mature venture capital industry, close relations between universities and industry, and an open immigration policy.
> 
> Other concerns about the future of the U.S. economy focus on the current account deficit (whose current level indicates that Americans are becoming more indebted to foreigners) and the rise in government debt. In the words of the historian Niall Ferguson, "This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion." Not only did the recent bank bailout and Keynesian stimulus package add to U.S. debt, but the rising costs of health care and entitlement programs such as Social Security, along with the rising cost of servicing the debt, will claim large shares of future revenue. Other observers are less alarmist. The United States, they claim, is not like Greece.
> 
> The Congressional Budget Office calculates that total government debt will reach 100 percent of GDP by 2023, and many economists begin to worry when debt levels in rich countries exceed 90 percent. But as The Economist pointed out last June, "America has two huge advantages over other countries that have allowed it to face its debt with relative equanimity: possessing both the world's reserve currency and its most liquid asset market, in Treasury bonds." And contrary to fears of a collapse of confidence in the dollar, during the financial crisis, the dollar rose and bond yields fell. A sudden crisis of confidence is less the problem than that a gradual increase in the cost of servicing the debt could affect the long-term health of the economy.
> 
> It is in this sense that the debt problem is important, and studies suggest that interest rates rise 0.03 percent for every one percent increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio over the long term. Higher interest rates mean lower private-sector investment and slower growth. These effects can be mitigated by good policies or exacerbated by bad ones. Increasing debt need not lead to the United States' decline, but it certainly raises the long-term risk.
> 
> A well-educated labor force is another key to economic success in the information age. At first glance, the United States does well in this regard. It spends twice as much on higher education as a percentage of GDP as do France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The London-based Times Higher Education's 2009 list of the top ten universities includes six in the United States, and a 2010 study by Shanghai Jiao Tong University places 17 U.S. universities -- and no Chinese universities -- among its top 20. Americans win more Nobel Prizes and publish more scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals -- three times as many as the Chinese -- than do the citizens of any other country. These accomplishments enhance both the country's economic power and its soft power.
> 
> American education at its best -- many universities and the top slice of the secondary education system -- meets or sets the global standard. But American education at its worst -- too many primary and secondary schools, especially in less affluent districts -- lags badly behind. This means that the quality of the labor force will not keep up with the rising standards needed in an information-driven economy. There is no convincing evidence that students are performing worse than in the past, but the United States' educational advantage is eroding because other countries are doing better than ever. Improvement in the country's K-12 education system will be necessary if the country is to meet the standards needed in an information-based economy.



End of Part 2


Edit: format


----------



## Edward Campbell

*Part 3*



> *POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONS*
> 
> Despite these problems and uncertainties, it seems probable that with the right policies, the U.S. economy can continue to produce hard power for the country. But what about U.S. institutions? The journalist James Fallows, who spent years in China, came home worried less about the United States' economic performance than the gridlock in its political system. In his view, "America still has the means to address nearly any of its structural weaknesses. . . . That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world's talent and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke." Although political gridlock in a period of recession looks bad, it is difficult to ascertain whether the situation today is much worse than in the past.
> 
> Power conversion -- translating power resources into desired outcomes -- is a long-standing problem for the United States. The U.S. Constitution is based on the eighteenth-century liberal view that power is best controlled by fragmentation and countervailing checks and balances. In foreign policy, the Constitution has always invited the president and Congress to compete for control. Strong economic and ethnic pressure groups struggle for their self-interested definitions of the national interest, and Congress is designed to pay attention to squeaky wheels.
> 
> Another cause for concern is the decline of public confidence in government institutions. In 2010, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 61 percent of respondents thought the United States was in decline, and only 19 percent trusted the government to do what is right most of the time. In 1964, by contrast, three-quarters of the American public said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. The numbers have varied somewhat over time, rising after 9/11 before gradually declining again.
> 
> The United States was founded in part on a mistrust of government, and its constitution was designed to resist centralized power. Moreover, when asked not about day-to-day government but about the underlying constitutional framework, Americans are very positive. If asked where the best place to live is, the overwhelming majority of them say the United States. If asked whether they like their democratic system of government, nearly everyone says yes. Few people feel the system is rotten and must be overthrown.
> 
> Some aspects of the current mood probably represent discontent with the bickering and deadlock in the political process. Compared with the recent past, party politics has become more polarized, but nasty politics is nothing new -- as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson could attest. Part of the problem with assessing the current atmosphere is that trust in government became abnormally high among the generation that survived the Depression and won World War II. Over the long view of U.S. history, that generation may be the anomaly. Much of the evidence for a loss of trust in government comes from modern polling data, and responses are sensitive to the way questions are asked. The sharpest decline occurred more than four decades ago, during the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
> 
> This does not mean that there are no problems with declining confidence in government. If the public became unwilling to pay taxes or comply with laws, or if bright young people refused to go into public service, the government's capacity would be impaired, and people would become more dissatisfied with the government. Moreover, a climate of distrust can trigger extreme actions by deviant members of the population, such as the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City. Such results could diminish the United States' hard and soft power.
> 
> As yet, however, these fears do not seem to have materialized. The Internal Revenue Service has seen no increase in tax cheating. By many accounts, government officials have become less corrupt than in earlier decades, and the World Bank gives the United States a high score (above the 90th percentile) on "control of corruption." The voluntary return of census forms increased to 67 percent in 2000 and was slightly higher in 2010, reversing a 30-year decline. Voting rates fell from 62 percent to 50 percent over the four decades after 1960, but the decline stopped in 2000 and returned to 58 percent in 2008. In other words, the public's behavior has not changed as dramatically as its responses to poll questions indicates.
> 
> How serious are changes in social capital when it comes to the effectiveness of American institutions? The political scientist Robert Putnam notes that community bonds have not weakened steadily over the last century. On the contrary, U.S. history, carefully examined, is a story of ups and downs in civic engagement. Three-quarters of Americans, according to the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, feel connected to their communities and say that the quality of life there is excellent or good. Another of the group's polls found that 111 million Americans had volunteered their time to help solve problems in their communities in the past 12 months and that 60 million volunteer on a regular basis. Forty percent said working together with others in their community was the most important thing they could do.
> 
> In recent years, U.S. politics and political institutions have become more polarized than the actual distribution of public opinion would suggest. The situation has been exacerbated by the recent economic downturn. As The Economist noted, "America's political system was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. . . . So the basic system works; but that is no excuse for ignoring areas where it could be reformed." Some important reforms -- such as changing the gerrymandered safe seats in the House of Representatives or altering Senate rules about filibusters -- would not require any constitutional amendment. Whether the U.S. political system can reform itself and cope with the problems described above remains to be seen, but it is not as broken as implied by critics who draw analogies to the domestic decay of Rome or other empires.
> 
> *DEBATING DECLINE*
> 
> Any net assessment of American power in the coming decades will remain uncertain, but analysis is not helped by misleading metaphors of decline. Declinists should be chastened by remembering how wildly exaggerated U.S. estimates of Soviet power in the 1970s and of Japanese power in the 1980s were. Equally misguided were those prophets of unipolarity who argued a decade ago that the United States was so powerful that it could do as it wished and others had no choice but to follow. Today, some confidently predict that the twenty-first century will see China replace the United States as the world's leading state, whereas others argue with equal confidence that the twenty-first century will be the American century. But unforeseen events often confound such projections. There is always a range of possible futures, not one.
> 
> As for the United States' power relative to China's, much will depend on the uncertainties of future political change in China. Barring any political upheaval, China's size and high rate of economic growth will almost certainly increase its relative strength vis-à-vis the United States. This will bring China closer to the United States in power resources, but it does not necessarily mean that China will surpass the United States as the most powerful country -- even if China suffers no major domestic political setbacks. Projections based on GDP growth alone are one-dimensional. They ignore U.S. advantages in military and soft power, as well as China's geopolitical disadvantages in the Asian balance of power.
> 
> Among the range of possible futures, the more likely are those in which China gives the United States a run for its money but does not surpass it in overall power in the first half of this century. Looking back at history, the British strategist Lawrence Freedman has noted that the United States has "two features which distinguish it from the dominant great powers of the past: American power is based on alliances rather than colonies and is associated with an ideology that is flexible. . . . Together they provide a core of relationships and values to which America can return even after it has overextended itself." And looking to the future, the scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter has argued that the United States' culture of openness and innovation will keep it central in a world where networks supplement, if not fully replace, hierarchical power.
> 
> The United States is well placed to benefit from such networks and alliances, if it follows smart strategies. Given Japanese concerns about the rise of Chinese power, Japan is more likely to seek U.S. support to preserve its independence than ally with China. This enhances the United States' position. Unless Americans act foolishly with regard to Japan, an allied East Asia is not a plausible candidate to displace the United States. It matters that the two entities in the world with per capita incomes and sophisticated economies similar to those of the United States -- the European Union and Japan -- both are U.S. allies. In traditional realist terms of balances of power resources, that makes a large difference for the net position of U.S. power. And in a more positive-sum view of power -- that of holding power with, rather than over, other countries -- Europe and Japan provide the largest pools of resources for dealing with common transnational problems. Although their interests are not identical to those of the United States, they share overlapping social and governmental networks with it that provide opportunities for cooperation.
> 
> On the question of absolute, rather than relative, American decline, the United States faces serious problems in areas such as debt, secondary education, and political gridlock. But they are only part of the picture. Of the multiple possible futures, stronger cases can be made for the positive ones than the negative ones. But among the negative futures, the most plausible is one in which the United States overreacts to terrorist attacks by turning inward and thus cuts itself off from the strength it obtains from openness. Barring such mistaken strategies, however, there are solutions to the major American problems of today. (Long-term debt, for example, could be solved by putting in place, after the economy recovers, spending cuts and consumption taxes that could pay for entitlements.) Of course, such solutions may forever remain out of reach. But it is important to distinguish hopeless situations for which there are no solutions from those that could in principle be solved. After all, the bipartisan reforms of the Progressive era a century ago rejuvenated a badly troubled country.
> 
> *A NEW NARRATIVE*
> 
> It is time for a new narrative about the future of U.S. power. Describing power transition in the twenty-first century as a traditional case of hegemonic decline is inaccurate, and it can lead to dangerous policy implications if it encourages China to engage in adventurous policies or the United States to overreact out of fear. The United States is not in absolute decline, and in relative terms, there is a reasonable probability that it will remain more powerful than any single state in the coming decades.
> 
> At the same time, the country will certainly face a rise in the power resources of many others -- both states and nonstate actors. Because globalization will spread technological capabilities and information technology will allow more people to communicate, U.S. culture and the U.S. economy will become less globally dominant than they were at the start of this century. Yet it is unlikely that the United States will decay like ancient Rome, or even that it will be surpassed by another state, including China.
> 
> The problem of American power in the twenty-first century, then, is not one of decline but what to do in light of the realization that even the largest country cannot achieve the outcomes it wants without the help of others. An increasing number of challenges will require the United States to exercise power with others as much as power over others. This, in turn, will require a deeper understanding of power, how it is changing, and how to construct "smart power" strategies that combine hard- and soft-power resources in an information age. The country's capacity to maintain alliances and create networks will be an important dimension of its hard and soft power.
> 
> Power is not good or bad per se. It is like calories in a diet: more is not always better. If a country has too few power resources, it is less likely to obtain its preferred outcomes. But too much power (in terms of resources) has often proved to be a curse when it leads to overconfidence and inappropriate strategies. David slew Goliath because Goliath's superior power resources led him to pursue an inferior strategy, which in turn led to his defeat and death. A smart-power narrative for the twenty-first century is not about maximizing power or preserving hegemony. It is about finding ways to combine resources in successful strategies in the new context of power diffusion and "the rise of the rest."
> 
> As the largest power, the United States will remain important in global affairs, but the twentieth-century narrative about an American century and American primacy -- as well as narratives of American decline -- is misleading when it is used as a guide to the type of strategy that will be necessary in the twenty-first century. The coming decades are not likely to see a post-American world, but the United States will need a smart strategy that combines hard- and soft-power resources -- and that emphasizes alliances and networks that are responsive to the new context of a global information age.




In my own defence, whenever I forecast the end of this _unipolar_ world based on American _hyperpuissance_ I always (at least usually) caution readers to “not count America out.”

The biggest _strategic_ danger facing America is, as Nye says, economic. America can and might spend itself ito real _strategic_ trouble where it, like China, will have to put domestic tranquillity (social harmony) ahead of all other interests, and that may mean borrowing recklessly without enough attention to the payback.


----------



## a_majoor

A new book which claims the true reason for American decline is they "ate the low hanging fruit". While the argument seems to have some surface merit, I will disagree based on the argument of culture; the Native people, French and Spanish settlers in the Americas had access to the same "low hanging fruit" of land, labour and resources yet were not able to capitalize to anywhere the same extent as the British/Americans did (and as the lineal descendants of the "British", we certainly never capitalized on our advantages to the same level as the Americans). 

How we are organized, how we relate to each other, how we define and exercise our rights is far more important than what resources are at hand; Ancient Athens, Republican Venice or modern Japan had (or have) powerful economies and the ability to influence events far beyond what might be predicted on their available resources and manpower. American political culture changed through the 20th century, and the culmination of these changes took effect in the late 1960's (LBJ's "Great Society" programs), leading to today.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Stagnation-Low-Hanging-Eventually-ebook/dp/B004H0M8QS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295383584&sr=8-1/insta0c-20



> America is in disarray and our economy is failing us. We have been through the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment remains stubbornly high, and talk of a double-dip recession persists. Americans are not pulling the world economy out of its sluggish state -- if anything we are looking to Asia to drive a recovery.Median wages have risen only slowly since the 1970s, and this multi-decade stagnation is not yet over. By contrast, the living standards of earlier generations would double every few decades. The Democratic Party seeks to expand government spending even when the middle class feels squeezed, the public sector doesn’t always perform well, and we have no good plan for paying for forthcoming entitlement spending. To the extent Republicans have a consistent platform, it consists of unrealistic claims about how tax cuts will raise revenue and stimulate economic growth. The Republicans, when they hold power, are often a bigger fiscal disaster than the Democrats. How did we get into this mess?Imagine a tropical island where the citrus and bananas hang from the trees. Low-hanging literal fruit -- you don’t even have to cook the stuff.In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century: free land; immigrant labor; and powerful new technologies. Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are barer than we would like to think. That’s it. That is what has gone wrong.The problem won’t be solved overnight, but there are reasons to be optimistic. We simply have to recognize the underlying causes of our past prosperity—low hanging fruit—and how we will come upon more of it.


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## a_majoor

Going back to basics. This is an exerpt from a much longer post (well worth reading) about how Thucydides saw how the world was organized, and what that meant for understanding the hows and whys of events:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/02/24/thucydides-hates-realists/



> Reading Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War this semester I’ve been reminded rather forcefully that ‘realist’ is one of those words in common discourse without any consistent or secure definition attached to it. Thucydides is often invoked as the father of realism in foreign policy, but his approach to the way the world works has little to do with the way this term is frequently used by political scientists today. . . . For Thucydides, the internal politics of a state are crucial to understanding and anticipating the policies of that state. Sparta has a set of interests that are not dictated by the nature of the international system so much as by the structure of Spartan society. The need to keep the Spartan population on a constant military footing and the need to keep the armies close at home derive from the need to keep the Helots under control. Another kind of city standing where Sparta stood, and with exactly the same powers and great powers around it, might well have had a completely different set of interests and adopted a completely different set of policies. . . . Theoretical realism would strike Thucydides as barking nonsense — the kind of idea that could only appeal to people with little experience of actual affairs. Thucydides was not a realist in this sense; he was something much smarter. He was realistic.
> 
> In the world Thucydides writes about, interests matter. State interests, personal ambition, family and clan interests, the perceived interests of piety and religion, party and factional interests, economic interests: they all matter. But Thucydides seems more agnostic about which of these matter most at any given time.


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## tomahawk6

The economy and the seeming decline of the US is a direct result of Obama's policies. For example gas prices are on the rise because of the middle east,but Obama's anti-fossil fuels policies prevent the US from even tapping its own resources,as a result we will be at the mercy of the middle east for quite some time. Increasingly on the foreign affairs front Obama gets no respect from anywhere[not that he deserves respect].Pakistan holds a US citizen with a diplomatic passport and despite threats to force his release the man remains in a Pakistani jail. I wonder if Obama threatened Pakistan's foreign aid payments maybe they would deport the CIA contract employee.Meanwhile every day in Pakistani custody the contractor is at risk.


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## a_majoor

A positive assessment. In the long run, I think this is the correct assessment (remember the Reagan Administration turned things around quite quickly after the Carter administration). The issue is culture:

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/02/24/022411-opinions-column-americandream-dalmia-1-2/



> *Long live the American dream*
> There are many reasons why India and China have nothing on us
> BY SHIKHA DALMIA THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2011
> 
> Americans, hit first by outsourcing and then a recession, are becoming deeply pessimistic about their country’s ability to maintain its economic leadership. America’s Aristophanes, Jon Stewart, commented during a recent interview with the author of "India Calling," Anand Giridhardas: "The American dream is still alive — it’s just alive in India." Likewise, 20 percent of Americans in a December National Journal poll believed the U.S. economy was no longer the strongest. Nearly half picked China instead.
> 
> But there are at least five reasons why neither India nor China will knock America off its economic perch anytime soon, at least not by the only measure that matters: Offering the best life to the most people.
> 
> America wastes no talent
> 
> Conventional wisdom holds that America’s global competitiveness is driven by geniuses flocking to its shores and producing breathtaking inventions. But America’s real genius lies not in tapping just genius — but every scrap of talent up and down the scale.
> 
> A 2005 World Bank study found that the bulk of a people’s wealth comes not from tangible capital like raw resources and infrastructure. It comes from intangible wealth: effective government, secure property rights, a functioning judiciary. Such intangible factors put the equivalent of $418,000 at the disposal of every American resident. In India and China, it's $3,738 and $4,208, respectively.
> 
> America’s vast intangible wealth makes everyone more productive and successful. Personal attributes — talent, looks, smarts — matter only on the margins. Having witnessed the life trajectory of many Indian immigrants, what’s striking to me is that, with some exceptions, it doesn’t matter whether they are the best or mediocre in their profession in India: They all end up with similar standards of living here.
> 
> America does not have India’s infrastructure deficit or China’s civil society deficit
> 
> India’s gap with America extends not just to intangible capital but tangible capital as well. Basic facilities in India — roads, water, sewage — remain primitive. For example, a 2010 McKinsey Global Institute report found that India treats 30 percent of raw sewage, whereas the international norm is 100 percent. It needs to spend twice the slated expenditures over the next 10 years to deliver basic services.
> 
> China, meanwhile, has a major civil society problem. Its one-child policy has decimated the natural safety net that old people rely on in traditional societies. And China offers no public safety net to the vast majority born in villages. Worse, many Chinese have invested their nest eggs is various asset bubbles that will wipe out their only means of subsistence if they burst.
> 
> America does not have grinding poverty
> 
> Despite all the recent hoopla about China becoming the world’s second-biggest economy and India hoping to follow suit, the reality is that the per-capita GDP — even measured by purchasing power parity — in both is pathetic. America’s is about $47,000, China’s $7,500 and India’s $3,290.
> 
> Worse, both still harbor medieval levels of poverty, with 300 million people in each living on less than $1.25 a day. India’s IT boom gets big press, but it — along with all the tertiary industries it has spawned — employs 2.3 million people, or 0.2 percent of the population.
> 
> American education is vastly superior to India’s or China’s
> 
> President Obama claims America is in an "education arms race" with India and China. Rubbish.
> 
> Despite all the horror stories about American kids underperforming on standardized tests, things are worse in India and China. India’s literacy rate is 66 percent. China puts its at 93 percent, but between 2000 and 2005, China’s illiterate population grew by 30 million. The same may happen in India, thanks to last year’s Right to Education Act, the regulations of which will cripple India’s private school market. The fundamental problem is that both countries put their resources into educating elite kids — and ignoring the rest.
> 
> Unless more Indian and Chinese kids get access to a quality education, their countries won’t be able to actualize their human potential, precisely what America does so well.
> 
> America doesn’t have a culture of hype
> 
> An important reason U.S. gloom-and-doom is unjustified is that there is so much gloom-and-doom. Indians and Chinese, by contrast, have drunk their own Kool-Aid. Their moribund economies have barely kicked into action and they are entertaining dreams of being the next economic superpowers. That bespeaks a profound megalomania. There is not a culture of hope in these countries, as Giridhardas told Stewart, but a culture of hype.
> 
> By contrast, when America’s government responds ineffectually to the recession, Americans go into panic mode. Grassroots movements like the Tea Party emerge to rein in the government. Pay Pal founder Peter Theil has even given $850,000 to the Seasteading Institute to establish new countries on the sea to experiment with government. This might be wacky, but it puts an outside limit on how out-of-whack Americans will let their institutions get before they start fixing them.
> 
> This, ultimately, is the biggest reason to believe that the American dream is and will stay alive — in America.


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## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 3



			
				Redeye said:
			
		

> ...  In the case of many of the "Tea Party" I've tried to get from them a cogent, coherent argument of what specifically they want in terms of policy directions in the United States, and I have come to realize that a good portion of them (though I have no basis to claim any specific proportion) have pretty much no idea ...




The above, from another, different Army.ca page, is a common complaint. In this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, distinguished historian and foreign policy analyst Walter Russell Mead tries to answer the question, at last in so far as it pertains to foreign policy:



> The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy
> *What Populism Means for Globalism*
> 
> By Walter Russell Mead
> March/April 2011
> 
> During the night of December 16, 1773, somewhere between 30 and 130 men, a few disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded three merchant ships in Boston Harbor and destroyed 342 chests of tea to protest duties imposed by the British parliament. Samuel Adams was widely considered to be the ringleader of the demonstration. The historical record is ambiguous; he disclaimed all responsibility while doing everything possible to publicize the event. The next year, a more decorous tea party occurred in Edenton, North Carolina, when Mrs. Penelope Barker convened 51 women to support the colony's resistance to British taxation. Tea was neither destroyed nor consumed, but something even more momentous happened that day: Barker's gathering is believed to have been the first women's political meeting in British North America.
> 
> Both tea parties stirred British opinion. Although prominent Whigs, such as John Wilkes and Edmund Burke, supported the Americans against King George III and his handpicked government, the lawlessness of Boston and the unheard-of political activism of the women of Edenton seemed proof to many in the mother country that the colonials were violent and barbaric. The idea of a women's political meeting was shocking enough to merit coverage in the London press, where the resolutions taken by the Edenton activists were reprinted in full. The British writer Samuel Johnson published a pamphlet denouncing the colonials' tea parties and their arguments against imperial taxation, writing, "These antipatriotic prejudices are the abortions of folly impregnated by faction."
> 
> Today, tea parties have returned, and Johnson's objections still resonate. The modern Tea Party movement began in February 2009 as an on-air rant by a CNBC financial reporter who, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, called for a Chicago tea party to protest the taxpayer-financed bailout of mortgage defaulters. Objecting to what they saw as the undue growth of government spending and government power under President Barack Obama, Republicans and like-minded independents (backed by wealthy sympathizers) soon built a network of organizations across the United States. Energized to some degree by persistently favorable coverage on Fox News (and perhaps equally energized by less sympathetic treatment in what the Tea Party heroine Sarah Palin has dubbed "the lamestream media"), Tea Party activists rapidly shook up American politics and contributed to the wave of anti-big-government sentiment that made the 2010 elections a significant Democratic defeat.
> 
> The rise of the Tea Party movement has been the most controversial and dramatic development in U.S. politics in many years. Supporters have hailed it as a return to core American values; opponents have seen it as a racist, reactionary, and ultimately futile protest against the emerging reality of a multicultural, multiracial United States and a new era of government activism.
> 
> *The Tea Party itself may disappear, but the populist energy that powers it will not go away soon.*
> 
> To some degree, this controversy is impossible to resolve. The Tea Party movement is an amorphous collection of individuals and groups that range from center right to the far fringes of American political life. It lacks a central hierarchy that can direct the movement or even declare who belongs to it and who does not. As the Tea Party label became better known, all kinds of people sought to hitch their wagons to this rising star. Affluent suburban libertarians, rural fundamentalists, ambitious pundits, unreconstructed racists, and fiscally conservative housewives all can and do claim to be Tea Party supporters.
> 
> The Fox News host Glenn Beck may be the most visible spokesperson for the Tea Party, but his religious views (extremely strong and very Mormon) hardly typify the movement, in which libertarians are often more active than social conservatives and Ayn Rand is a more influential prophet than Brigham Young. There is little evidence that the reading lists and history lessons that Beck offers on his nightly program appeal to more than a small percentage of the movement's supporters. (In a March 2010 public opinion poll, 37 percent of respondents expressed support for the Tea Party, suggesting that about 115 million Americans sympathize at least partly with the movement; Beck's audience on Fox averages 2.6 million.)
> 
> Other prominent political figures associated with the Tea Party also send a contradictory mix of messages. The Texas congressman Ron Paul and his (somewhat less doctrinaire) son, the newly elected Kentucky senator Rand Paul, come close to resurrecting isolationism. The conservative commentator Pat Buchanan echoes criticisms of the U.S.-Israeli alliance made by such scholars as John Mearsheimer. Palin, on the other hand, is a full-throated supporter of the "war on terror" and, as governor of Alaska, kept an Israeli flag in her office.
> 
> If the movement resists easy definition, its impact on the November 2010 midterm elections is also hard to state with precision. On the one hand, the excitement that Tea Party figures such as Palin brought to the Republican campaign clearly helped the party attract candidates, raise money, and get voters to the polls in an off-year election. The GOP victory in the House of Representatives, the largest gain by either major party since 1938, would likely have been much less dramatic without the energy generated by the Tea Party. On the other hand, public doubts about some Tea Party candidates, such as Delaware's Christine O'Donnell, who felt it necessary to buy advertising time to tell voters, "I am not a witch," probably cost Republicans between two and four seats in the Senate, ending any chance for a GOP takeover of that chamber.
> 
> In Alaska, Palin and the Tea Party leaders endorsed the senatorial candidate Joe Miller, who defeated the incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. Miller went on to lose the general election, however, after Murkowski organized the first successful write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate since Strom Thurmond was elected from South Carolina in 1954. If libertarian Alaska rejects a Palin-endorsed Tea Party candidate, then there are reasons to doubt the movement's long-term ability to dominate politics across the rest of the country.
> 
> But with all its ambiguities and its uneven political record, the Tea Party movement has clearly struck a nerve in American politics, and students of American foreign policy need to think through the consequences of this populist and nationalist political insurgency. That is particularly true because the U.S. constitutional system allows minorities to block appointments and important legislation through filibusters and block the ratification of treaties with only one-third of the Senate. For a movement of "No!" like the Tea Party, those are powerful legislative tools. As is so often the case in the United States, to understand the present and future of American politics, one must begin by coming to grips with the past. The Tea Party movement taps deep roots in U.S. history, and past episodes of populist rebellion can help one think intelligently about the trajectory of the movement today.
> 
> *A NEW AGE OF JACKSON?*
> 
> The historian Jill Lepore's book _The Whites of Their Eyes_ makes the point that many Tea Party activists have a crude understanding of the politics of the American Revolution. Yet however unsophisticated the Tea Party's reading of the past may be, the movement's appeal to Colonial history makes sense. From Colonial times, resentment of the well-bred, the well-connected, and the well-paid has merged with suspicion about the motives and methods of government insiders to produce populist rebellions against the established political order. This form of American populism is often called "Jacksonianism" after Andrew Jackson, the president who tapped this populist energy in the 1830s to remake the United States' party system and introduce mass electoral politics into the country for good.
> 
> Antiestablishment populism has been responsible for some of the brightest, as well as some of the darkest, moments in U.S. history. The populists who rallied to Jackson established universal white male suffrage in the United States -- and saddled the country with a crash-prone financial system for 80 years by destroying the Second Bank of the United States. Later generations of populists would rein in monopolistic corporations and legislate basic protections for workers while opposing federal protection of minorities threatened with lynching. The demand of Jacksonian America for cheap or, better, free land in the nineteenth century led to the Homestead Act, which allowed millions of immigrants and urban workers to start family farms. It also led to the systematic and sometimes genocidal removal of Native Americans from their traditional hunting grounds and a massively subsidized "farm bubble" that helped bring about the Great Depression. Populist hunger for land in the twentieth century paved the way for an era of federally subsidized home mortgages and the devastating burst of the housing bubble.
> 
> Jacksonian populism does not always have a clear-cut program. In the nineteenth century, the Jacksonians combined a strong aversion to government debt with demands that the government's most valuable asset (title to the vast public lands of the West) be transferred to homesteaders at no cost. Today's Jacksonians want the budget balanced -- but are much less enthusiastic about cutting middle-class entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
> 
> *Ron Paul looks for ways to avoid contact with the world, whereas Sarah Palin would rather win than withdraw.*
> 
> Intellectually, Jacksonian ideas are rooted in the commonsense tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment. This philosophy -- that moral, scientific, political, and religious truths can be ascertained by the average person -- is more than an intellectual conviction in the United States; it is a cultural force. Jacksonians regard supposed experts with suspicion, believing that the credentialed and the connected are trying to advance their own class agenda. These political, economic, scientific, or cultural elites often want to assert truths that run counter to the commonsense reasoning of Jacksonian America. That federal deficits produce economic growth and that free trade with low-wage countries raises Americans' living standards are the kind of propositions that clash with the common sense of many Americans. In the not too distant past, so did the assertion that people of different races deserved equal treatment before the law.
> 
> Sometimes those elites are right, and sometimes they are wrong, but their ability to win voter approval for policies that seem counterintuitive is a critical factor in the American political system. In times like the present, when a surge of populist political energy coincides with a significant loss of popular confidence in establishment institutions -- ranging from the mainstream media and the foreign policy and intellectual establishments to the financial and corporate leadership and the government itself -- Jacksonian sentiment diminishes the ability of elite institutions and their members to shape national debates and policy. The rejection of the scientific consensus on climate change is one of many examples of populist revolt against expert consensus in the United States today.
> 
> The Tea Party movement is best understood as a contemporary revolt of Jacksonian common sense against elites perceived as both misguided and corrupt. And although the movement itself may splinter and even disappear, the populist energy that powers it will not go away soon. Jacksonianism is always an important force in American politics; at times of social and economic stress and change, like the present, its importance tends to grow. Even though it is by no means likely that the new Jacksonians will gain full control of the government anytime soon (or perhaps ever), the influence of the populist revolt against mainstream politics has become so significant that students of U.S. foreign policy must consider its consequences.



End of Part 1 of 3


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 3



> *THE POPULISTS' COLD WAR*
> 
> In foreign policy, Jacksonians embrace a set of strongly nationalist ideas. They combine a firm belief in American exceptionalism and an American world mission with deep skepticism about the United States' ability to create a liberal world order. They draw a sharp contrast between the Lockean political order that prevails at home with what they see as a Hobbesian international system: in a competitive world, each sovereign state must place its own interests first. They intuitively accept a Westphalian view of international relations: what states do domestically may earn one's contempt, but a country should only react when states violate their international obligations or attack it. When the United States is attacked, they believe in total war leading to the unconditional surrender of the enemy. They are prepared to support wholesale violence against enemy civilians in the interest of victory; they do not like limited wars for limited goals. Although they value allies and believe that the United States must honor its word, they do not believe in institutional constraints on the United States' freedom to act, unilaterally if necessary, in self-defense. Historically, Jacksonians have never liked international economic agreements or systems that limit the U.S. government's ability to pursue loose credit policies at home.
> 
> Finding populist support for U.S. foreign policy has been the central domestic challenge for policymakers ever since President Franklin Roosevelt struggled to build domestic support for an increasingly interventionist policy vis-à-vis the Axis powers. The Japanese solved Roosevelt's problem by attacking Pearl Harbor, but his sensitivity to Jacksonian opinion did not end with the United States' entry into World War II. From his embrace of unconditional surrender as a war objective to his internment of Japanese Americans, Roosevelt always had a careful eye out for the concerns of this constituency. If he had thought Jacksonian America would have accepted the indefinite stationing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops abroad, he might have taken a harder line with the Soviet Union on the future of Eastern Europe.
> 
> The need to attract and hold populist support also influenced Harry Truman's foreign policy, particularly his approach to Soviet expansionism and larger questions of world order. Key policymakers in the Truman administration, such as Secretary of State Dean Acheson, believed that the collapse of the United Kingdom as a world power had left a vacuum that the United States had no choice but to fill. The United Kingdom had historically served as the gyroscope of world order, managing the international economic system, keeping the sea-lanes open, and protecting the balance of power in the chief geostrategic theaters of the world. Truman administration officials agreed that the Great Depression and World War II could in large part be blamed on the United States' failure to take up the burden of global leadership as the United Kingdom declined. The Soviet disruption of the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East after World War II was, they believed, exactly the kind of challenge to world order that the United States now had to meet.
> 
> The problem, as policymakers saw it, was that Jacksonian opinion was not interested in assuming the mantle of the United Kingdom. The Jacksonians were ready to act against definite military threats and, after two world wars, were prepared to support a more active security policy overseas in the 1940s than they were in the 1920s. But to enlist their support for a far-reaching foreign policy, Truman and Acheson believed that it was necessary to define U.S. foreign policy in terms of opposing the Soviet Union and its communist ideology rather than as an effort to secure a liberal world order. Acheson's decision to be "clearer than truth" when discussing the threat of communism and Truman's decision to take Senator Arthur Vandenberg's advice and "scare [the] hell out of the country" ignited populist fears about the Soviet Union, which helped the administration get congressional support for aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan. Political leaders at the time concluded that without such appeals, Congress would not have provided the requested support, and historians generally agree.
> 
> But having roused the sleeping dogs of anticommunism, the Truman administration would spend the rest of its time in office trying (and sometimes failing) to cope with the forces it had unleashed. Once convinced that communism was an immediate threat to national security, the Jacksonians wanted a more hawkish policy than Acheson and his planning chief, George Kennan, thought was wise. The success of Mao Zedong's revolution in China -- and the seeming indifference of the Truman administration to the fate of the world's most populous country and its network of missionary institutions and Christian converts -- inflamed Jacksonian opinion and set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy's politics of paranoia in the 1950s.
> 
> Communism was in many ways a perfect enemy for Jacksonian America, and for the next 40 years, public opinion sustained the high defense budgets and foreign military commitments required to fight it. The priorities of the Cold War from a Jacksonian perspective -- above all, the military containment of communism wherever communists, or left-wing nationalists willing to ally with them, were active -- did not always fit comfortably with the Hamiltonian (commercial and realist) and Wilsonian (idealist and generally multilateral) priorities held by many U.S. policymakers. But in general, the mix of policies necessary to promote a liberal world order was close enough to what was needed to wage a struggle against the Soviets that the liberal-world-order builders were able to attract enough Jacksonian support for their project. The need to compete with the Soviets provided a rationale for a whole series of U.S. initiatives -- the development of a liberal trading system under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Marshall Plan aid tied to the promotion of European economic integration, development assistance in Africa, Asia, and Latin America -- that also had the effect of building a new international system encompassing the noncommunist world.
> 
> *Bobby Jindal is in every way a better governor of Louisiana than Huey Long.*
> 
> This approach enabled the United States to win the Cold War and build a flexible, dynamic, and reasonably stable international system that, after 1989, gradually and for the most part peacefully absorbed the majority of the former communist states. It did, however, leave a political vulnerability at the core of the U.S. foreign policy debate, a vulnerability that threatens to become much more serious going forward: today's Jacksonians are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to defend the United States, but they do not believe that U.S. interests are best served by the creation of a liberal and cosmopolitan world order.
> 
> *AFTER THE END OF HISTORY*
> 
> After the Soviet Union disobligingly collapsed in 1991, the United States endeavored to maintain and extend its efforts to build a liberal world order. On the one hand, these projects no longer faced the opposition of a single determined enemy; on the other hand, American leaders had to find domestic support for complex, risky, and expensive foreign initiatives without invoking the Soviet threat.
> 
> This did not look difficult at first. In the heady aftermath of the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, it seemed to many as if the task would be so easy and so cheap that U.S. policymakers could cut defense and foreign aid budgets while a liberal world order largely constructed itself. No powerful states or ideologies opposed the principles of the American world order, and both the economic agenda of liberalizing trade and finance and the Wilsonian agenda of extending democracy were believed to be popular at home and abroad.
> 
> Clear domestic constraints on U.S. foreign policy began to appear during the 1990s. The Clinton administration devoted intense efforts to cultivating obstructionist legislators, such as Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, but it was increasingly unable to get the resources and support needed to carry out what it believed were important elements of the United States' agenda abroad. Congress balked at paying the country's UN dues in a timely fashion and, after the GOP congressional takeover in 1994, opposed a range of proposed and actual military interventions. The Senate recoiled from treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and refused to join the International Criminal Court. The relentless decline in support for free trade after the bitter fights over the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement and U.S. entry into the new World Trade Organization in the early 1990s left U.S. diplomats negotiating within a tightening range of constraints, which soon led to a steady deceleration in the construction of a liberal global trading regime.
> 
> September 11, 2001, changed this. The high level of perceived threat after the attacks put U.S. foreign policy back to the position it had enjoyed in 1947-48: convinced that an external threat was immediate and real, the public was ready to support enormous expenditures of treasure and blood to counter it. Jacksonians cared about foreign policy again, and the George W. Bush administration had an opportunity to repeat the accomplishment of the Truman administration by using public concern about a genuine security threat to energize public support for a far-reaching program of building a liberal world order.
> 
> Historians will be discussing for years to come why the Bush administration missed this opportunity. It may be that in the years after 9/11, the administration was so determined to satisfy domestic Jacksonian opinion that it constructed a response to terrorism -- the kind of no-holds-barred total war preferred by Jacksonians -- that would inevitably undercut its ability to engage with key partners at home and abroad. In any case, by January 2009, the United States was engaged in two wars and a variety of counterterrorism activities around the world but lacked anything like a domestic consensus on even the broadest outlines of foreign policy.
> 
> The Obama administration came into office believing that the Bush administration had been too Jacksonian and that its resulting policy choices were chaotic, incoherent, and self-defeating. Uncritically pro-Israel, unilateralist, indifferent to the requirements of international law, too quick to respond with force, contemptuous of international institutions and norms, blind to the importance of non-terrorism-related threats such as climate change, and addicted to polarizing, us-against-them rhetoric, the Bush administration was, the incoming Democrats believed, a textbook case of Jacksonianism run wild. Recognizing the enduring power of Jacksonians in U.S. politics but convinced that their ideas were wrong-headed and outdated, the Obama administration decided that it would make what it believed were the minimum necessary concessions to Jacksonian sentiments while committing itself to a set of policies intended to build a world order on a largely Wilsonian basis. Rather than embracing the "global war on terror" as an overarching strategic umbrella under which it could position a range of aid, trade, and institution-building initiatives, it has repositioned the terrorism threat as one among many threats the United States faces and has separated its world-order-building activities from its vigorous work to combat terrorism.
> 
> It is much too early to predict how this will turn out, but it is already clear that the Obama administration faces serious challenges in building support for its foreign policy in a polarized, and to some degree traumatized, domestic environment. The administration is trying to steer U.S. foreign policy away from Jacksonian approaches just as a confluence of foreign and domestic developments are creating a new Jacksonian moment in U.S. politics. The United States faces a continuing threat of terrorism involving domestic as well as foreign extremists, a threat from China that includes both international security challenges in Asia and a type of economic rivalry that Jacksonians associate with the economic woes of the middle class, and a looming federal debt crisis that endangers both the prosperity and the security of the country. The combination of these threats with the perceived cultural and social conflict between "arrogant" elites with counterintuitive ideas and "average" Americans relying on common sense creates the ideal conditions for a major Jacksonian storm in U.S. politics. The importance of the Jacksonian resurgence goes beyond the political problems of the Obama administration; the development of foreign policy strategies that can satisfy Jacksonian requirements at home while also working effectively in the international arena is likely to be the greatest single challenge facing U.S. administrations for some time to come.



End of Part 2 of 3


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 3 of 3



> *THE TEA PARTY CHALLENGE*
> 
> Forecasting how this newly energized populist movement will influence foreign policy is difficult. Public opinion is responsive to events; a terrorist attack inside U.S. borders or a crisis in East Asia or the Middle East could transform the politics of U.S. foreign policy overnight. A further worsening of the global economic situation could further polarize the politics of both domestic and foreign policy in the United States.
> 
> Nevertheless, some trends seem clear. The first is that the contest in the Tea Party between what might be called its Palinite and its Paulite wings will likely end in a victory for the Palinites. Ron Paul represents an inward-looking, neo-isolationist approach to foreign policy that has more in common with classic Jeffersonian ideas than with assertive Jacksonian nationalism. Although both wings share, for example, a visceral hostility to anything that smacks of "world government," Paul and his followers look for ways to avoid contact with the world, whereas such contemporary Jacksonians as Sarah Palin and the Fox News host Bill O'Reilly would rather win than withdraw. "We don't need to be the world's policeman," says Paul. Palin might say something similar, but she would be quick to add that we also do not want to give the bad guys any room.
> 
> Similarly, the Palinite wing of the Tea Party wants a vigorous, proactive approach to the problem of terrorism in the Middle East, one that rests on a close alliance between the United States and Israel. The Paulite wing would rather distance the United States from Israel as part of a general reduction of the United States' profile in a part of the world from which little good can be expected. The Paulites are likely to lose this contest because the commonsense reasoning of the American people now generally takes as axiomatic something that seemed much more controversial in the 1930s: that security at home cannot be protected without substantial engagement overseas. The rise of China and the sullen presence of the threat of terrorism reinforce this perception, and the more dangerous the world feels, the more Jacksonian America sees a need to prepare, to seek reliable allies, and to act. A period like that between 1989 and 2001, when Jacksonian America did not identify any serious threats from abroad, is unlikely to arise anytime soon; the great mass of Tea Party America does not seem headed toward a new isolationism.
> 
> Jacksonian support for Israel will also be a factor. Sympathetic to Israel and concerned about both energy security and terrorism, Jacksonians are likely to accept and even demand continued U.S. diplomatic, political, and military engagement in the Middle East. Not all American Jacksonians back Israel, but in general, rising Jacksonian political influence in the United States will lead to stronger support in Washington for the Jewish state. This support does not proceed simply from evangelical Christian influence. Many Jacksonians are not particularly religious, and many of the pro-Jacksonian "Reagan Democrats" are Roman Catholics. But Jacksonians admire Israeli courage and self-reliance -- and they do not believe that Arab governments are trustworthy or reliable allies. They are generally untroubled by Israeli responses to terrorist attacks, which many observers deem "disproportionate." Jacksonian common sense does not give much weight to the concept of disproportionate force, believing that if you are attacked, you have the right and even the duty to respond with overwhelming force until the enemy surrenders. That may or may not be a viable strategy in the modern Middle East, but Jacksonians generally accept Israel's right to defend itself in whatever way it chooses. They are more likely to criticize Israel for failing to act firmly in Gaza and southern Lebanon than to criticize it for overreacting to terrorist attacks. Jacksonians still believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945 was justified; they argue that military strength is there to be used.
> 
> Any increase in Jacksonian political strength makes a military response to the Iranian nuclear program more likely. Although the public's reaction to the progress of North Korea's nuclear program has been relatively mild, recent polls show that up to 64 percent of the U.S. public favors military strikes to end the Iranian nuclear program. Deep public concerns over oil and Israel, combined with memories of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis among older Americans, put Iran's nuclear program in Jacksonians' cross hairs. Polls show that more than 50 percent of the public believes the United States should defend Israel against Iran -- even if Israel sets off hostilities by launching the first strike. Many U.S. presidents have been dragged into war reluctantly by aroused public opinion; to the degree that Congress and the public are influenced by Jacksonian ideas, a president who allows Iran to get nuclear weapons without using military action to try to prevent it would face political trouble. (Future presidents should, however, take care. Military engagements undertaken without a clear strategy for victory can backfire disastrously. Lyndon Johnson committed himself to war in Southeast Asia because he believed, probably correctly, that Jacksonian fury at a communist victory in Vietnam would undermine his domestic goals. The story did not end well.)
> 
> On other issues, Paulites and Palinites are united in their dislike for liberal internationalism -- the attempt to conduct international relations through multilateral institutions under an ever-tightening web of international laws and treaties. From climate change to the International Criminal Court to the treatment of enemy combatants captured in unconventional conflicts, both wings of the Tea Party reject liberal internationalist ideas and will continue to do so. The U.S. Senate, in which each state is allotted two senators regardless of the state's population, heavily favors the less populated states, where Jacksonian sentiment is often strongest. The United States is unlikely to ratify many new treaties written in the spirit of liberal internationalism for some time to come.
> 
> The new era in U.S. politics could see foreign policy elites struggling to receive a hearing for their ideas from a skeptical public. "The Council on Foreign Relations," the pundit Beck said in January 2010, "was a progressive idea of, let's take media and eggheads and figure out what the idea is, what the solution is, then teach it to the media, and they'll let the masses know what should be done." Tea Partiers intend to be vigilant to insure that elites with what the movement calls their "one-world government" ideas and bureaucratic agendas of class privilege do not dominate foreign policy debates. The United States may return to a time when prominent political leaders found it helpful to avoid too public an association with institutions and ideas perceived as distant from, and even hostile to, the interests and values of Jacksonian America.
> 
> Concern about China has been growing for some time in American opinion, and the Jacksonian surge makes it more likely that the simmering anger and resentment will come to a boil. Free trade is an issue that has historically divided populists in the United States (agrarians have tended to like it; manufacturing workers have not); even though Jacksonians like to buy cheap goods at Walmart, common sense largely leads them to believe that the first job of trade negotiators ought to be to preserve U.S. jobs rather than embrace visionary "win-win" global schemes.
> 
> *POPULISM IN PERSPECTIVE*
> 
> More broadly, across a range of issues, both wings of the Tea Party will seek to reopen the discussion about whether U.S. foreign policy should be nationalist or cosmopolitan. The Paulite wing would ideally like to end any kind of American participation in the construction of a liberal world order. The Palinite wing leans toward a more moderate position of wanting to ensure that what world-order building Washington does clearly proceeds from a consideration of specific national interests rather than the world's reliance on the United States as a kind of disinterested promoter of the global good. Acheson, no friend of grandiose institutional schemes, might find something to sympathize with here; in any event, foreign-policy makers should welcome the opportunity to hold a serious discussion on the relationship of specific U.S. interests to the requirements of a liberal world order.
> 
> There is much in the Tea Party movement to give foreign policy thinkers pause, but effective foreign policy must always begin with a realistic assessment of the facts on the ground. Today's Jacksonians are unlikely to disappear. Americans should rejoice that in many ways the Tea Party movement, warts and all, is a significantly more capable and reliable partner for the United States' world-order-building tasks than were the isolationists of 60 years ago. Compared to the Jacksonians during the Truman administration, today's are less racist, less antifeminist, less homophobic, and more open to an appreciation of other cultures and worldviews. Their starting point, that national security requires international engagement, is considerably more auspicious than the knee-jerk isolationism that Truman and Acheson faced. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was no public support for the equivalent of the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, nor has there been anything like the anticommunist hysteria of the McCarthy era. Today's southern Republican populists are far more sympathetic to core liberal capitalist concepts than were the populist supporters of William Jennings Bryan a century ago. Bobby Jindal is in every way a better governor of Louisiana than Huey Long was -- and there is simply no comparison between Senator Jim DeMint, of South Carolina, and "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman.
> 
> Foreign policy mandarins often wish the public would leave them alone so that they can get on with the serious business of statecraft. That is not going to happen in the United States. If the Tea Party movement fades away, other voices of populist protest will take its place. American policymakers and their counterparts overseas simply cannot do their jobs well without a deep understanding of what is one of the principal forces in American political life.




Now, it helps to understand the constant references to e.g. _Jacksonians_ if one has read Mead’s _Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World_, but I think his broad analysis is both accurate and coherent.

The “Tea Partiers’ are not totally in the thrall of Glenn Beck _et al_ but they are, as Mead says, _”an amorphous collection of individuals and groups that range from center right to the far fringes of American political life._ [The Tea Party]_ lacks a central hierarchy that can direct the movement or even declare who belongs to it and who does not. As the Tea Party label became better known, all kinds of people sought to hitch their wagons to this rising star. Affluent suburban libertarians, rural fundamentalists, ambitious pundits, unreconstructed racists, and fiscally conservative housewives all can and do claim to be Tea Party supporters.”_ Mead gives them a voice and puts some flesh on the skeletons in their thinking.


----------



## a_majoor

Another three parter looking at similarities between Rome at the time of the Punic Wars and the situation today:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/03/21/strategic-lessons-from-hannibals-war/



> *Strategic Lessons From Hannibal’s War*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> With the world melting down and the Bard semester heating up, I’ve fallen behind in my grand strategy posts; apologies to all and I hope to catch up with a post next week (during Bard’s spring break) on Machiavelli. But today’s business is still the Second Punic War, the conflict between Carthage and Rome that engulfed most of the Mediterranean world in what would prove to be the most important war in the history of what would, thanks to Rome’s victory, one day become western civilization.
> 
> In the last post I wrote about how Rome had a grand strategy that was bigger and deeper than tactical questions like where you put your cavalry and your Balearic slingers in the battle.  It was a strategy of state construction and institution building.  Carthage could defeat Roman armies in Italy, Gaul and Spain, massacring troops, capturing standards and killing consuls.  But Rome could always produce more — even coming up with a third Scipio after two successful generals of that family were killed in Spain.
> 
> *This is clearly one of the strengths that the British and the Americans brought to the last three hundred years of world history in which we’ve established a global hegemony as strong and as influential as the great empires of old.  There was a social and an economic resilience to the two English speaking great powers of the modern world that enabled them to outlast competitors like Louis XIV, Napoleon, Hitler and the Soviet Union.  “England loses every battle but the last,” they used to say.  Hannibal and Napoleon (and for that matter Robert E. Lee) were brilliant commanders, but their brilliance could not overcome the deeply rooted institutional and economic disadvantages they faced.*
> 
> More than resilience, there was something about the Anglo-American world that kept it at the forefront of technology and culture.  I’ve written about this in God and Gold; it’s been easier for the English speaking world to adapt to and take advantage of capitalism than for cultures like Russia’s.  Our political institutions are more flexible, our culture less threatened by change, and our people more willing to put up with the inconveniences and upheavals that rapid capitalist development entails.
> 
> There are other points of contact between the Punic War and the modern era.  One is that the Punic War came at a time when the geopolitical center of gravity was shifting.  Historically the eastern Mediterranean had been the home of civilization and therefore of civilization’s constant companion: war.  The international system of the Levant was centuries old by the time of Hannibal.  Three great empires in five hundred years — Assyria, Babylon, Persia — converted their mastery of the fertile delta into hegemonic power throughout the region.  The wars between the Greek city states and the Persian Empire that Herodotus describes, as well as the Peloponnesian War, were centered in the Aegean Sea at the far eastern end of the Mediterranean. Alexander’s conquest of Persia and Egypt, and the subsequent division of his empire into squabbling successor states,  confirmed the idea that the Levant was a kind of self contained geopolitical unit and to master this was to master the known world.
> 
> But by the time of the Punic Wars when Carthage and Rome fought for mastery of the Mediterranean world, the old power centers no longer seemed to matter.  Athens and Sparta were inconsiderable powers in the new world order of Hannibal’s war; even Macedonia’s intervention in the war was of relatively minor importance.  Syracuse was the only major Greek city to play a significant role in the Punic Wars, and even Syracuse could only choose to ally itself with one of the two leading powers — King Hiero was Rome’s loyal sidekick, not an independent actor.
> 
> The great battles of the Punic Wars were fought in places Thucydides did not know much about: Spain, Portugal, North Africa, Gaul and Italy.  Greece was an afterthought in the Punic Wars, the Levant a spectator as its fate was decided in the west.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/03/21/strategic-lessons-from-hannibals-war/



> Change could be quick.  After its defeat in the First Punic War, Carthage rebuilt its fortunes by developing a new economic and political base in Spain.  In 241 BC Carthage controlled a narrow strip of southern Spain; by the outbreak of the Second Punic War in 218 BC, much of modern Spain had been brought into the Carthaginian empire and both Carthaginian and Roman forces would engage in battles as far afield as modern Portugal.
> 
> The booming economic growth in the western Mediterranean created a new political situation as new trade routes, new cities and new sources of minerals transformed the region.   The East was filled with old powers and stable economies; the west would be dominated by either Carthage or Rome, and the winner would enjoy economic prosperity and security, and  those advantages would enable the dominant power in the west to play off its eastern rivals against one another.  Once Rome had defeated Carthage, it was only a matter of time before the entire Mediterranean coast fell under its sway.
> 
> At the time, this meant that whoever controlled Italy would control the Mediterranean world.  Italy faces both east and west; its cities and people had long participated in the Greek economy, but it was also well placed to participate in the economic boom associated with the opening of the west.
> 
> Hannibal understood this.  His strategy in the war was to unite everyone worried about Rome’s rising power into a grand global coalition.  He hoped that by leading an army into Italy and defeating Rome on its home ground, he could attract the Greek city states and Rome’s fallen Italian rivals into the coalition.  He reached out to the Macedonians with an offer of alliance, and sought to bring the Gallic tribes into the war.
> 
> He lost the war where he won so many victories: Italy.  The problem wasn’t, I think, as many have written: that the Carthaginians refused to resupply him by sea.  That was an obstacle.  His real problem was that he was unable to organize an effective power bloc of anti-Roman forces in Italy itself.  Once the myth of Roman invincibility had been shattered by a series of epochal Carthaginian victories from the Lombard plain down to Apulia, many of Rome’s Italian allies and subjects defected to Hannibal.
> 
> But to Hannibal’s horror, these new allies weakened rather than strengthened him.  The defection of the wealthy city state of Capua shook Rome politically, but far from providing Hannibal with reinforcements that could help him beat Rome, Capua turned into a strategic liability.  Hannibal had to protect Capua against Roman revenge or watch all his new allies return to their former allegiance.  In the same way, even the fierce Samnites –  Rome’s most determined antagonists of old — wanted Hannibal to protect them rather than help him beat Rome.
> 
> Hannibal hoped, it appears, that after the annihilating victory at Cannae, brave Italian legions would stream to his banner from all over the peninsula, and he could lead a huge army for the bitter and difficult siege of Rome itself.  And much of Italy did flock to his banners — but his new allies were seeking his protection, not adding to his strength. As the war dragged on, Hannibal lost his freedom of action.  By attacking one or another of his new allies, Rome could force Hannibal onto the defensive, on ground and at times of its choosing.  Hannibal’s military and political triumphs thrust him into a defensive struggle which he could not win.
> 
> This is what Fabius understood and seized on: Hannibal could not win a long war against Rome.  Fabius wasn’t just aiming to keep Roman armies from destruction by avoiding battle with Hannibal — he could have accomplished that much by sitting behind Rome’s walls.  The continuing presence of Roman armies shadowing Hannibal not only annoyed and harassed Hannibal and gradually degraded his army; it kept Hannibal from establishing a secure zone of power outside Rome’s control and gave the Romans a continuing ability to harass and disrupt trade and traffic from allies in revolt.
> 
> It seems that the war had a much deeper impact on the Italian economy than could be accounted for simply by the destruction of battles and the ravages of armies.  Under Roman rule, Italy had become something of a common market, with people and goods able to move freely.  Under Roman naval protection, the ports were able to trade profitably with the east and the west. The disruption of these trade patterns and the radical insecurity that resulted from the fragmentation of Italy as cities broke away from Rome surely created great hardship and reduced the revenues available for self defense or to support Hannibal’s war effort.  That the end of the Pax Romana meant insecurity and want did not do much for Hannibal’s political goals: the longer Italy experienced the miseries of Hannibal’s war, the more benign Roman rule began to seem.  It is not at all clear that more reinforcements from Carthage could have changed this basic equation.
> 
> Hannibal was two thirds right: Italy was the key to world power in the Mediterranean and many of Rome’s allies and clients would defect if they believed that Rome could be defeated.  But he was wrong that his army, even with aid from Italian city-states, could provide the security and prosperity that could build a lasting alternative to Roman control. He could win victory after victory yet never win the war.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 3:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/03/21/strategic-lessons-from-hannibals-war/



> The next writer in our course, Machiavelli, lived at another time when the geographical center of world political and military power was in flux.  The discoveries of Columbus, and the trade routes established around the Cape of Good Hope to Asia and across the Atlantic to the Americas, turned the Mediterranean world from the center of European culture and trade — and the major theater of war — into a sideshow.  The economies of its rich city states and empires — Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Ottoman Empire and even Spain — fell into decline.  Italy became the plaything of foreign powers, like ancient Greece in the centuries after Alexander.
> 
> Machiavelli was haunted by the contrast between old Roman times when Italy was united  and his own day when foreign armies ranged freely and murderously up and down the peninsula.  A united Italy was once able to command the destinies of the world; in Machiavelli’s time Italy could not muster the forces required to unite.
> 
> Once again today we are living through a geographical shift in the world’s center of gravity.  This time the shift is from Europe and the Atlantic toward Asia and the Pacific.  The great European powers whose exploits ring down the centuries of modern history are now secondary powers — as Athens and Sparta were at the time of Hannibal, and as Florence and Venice were in the time of Machiavelli.
> 
> The question Americans naturally ask is what does that mean for us?  Are we also sinking toward relative insignificance?
> 
> My own guess is that we aren’t.  Just as the westward shift of the Mediterranean world benefited Italy at the time of the Punic Wars, the shift to the Pacific may benefit the United States.  Our position in the western hemisphere — despite the rise of Brazil — remains very much like Rome’s position in Italy.  The decline of the European powers means that no future US president will face the problems Franklin Roosevelt did, when the US was simultaneously menaced by hostile great powers in Europe and Asia.  Even Russia is no longer capable of mounting a serious challenge to America’s alliances in Europe.
> 
> Meanwhile in Asia, any potential challenger to the American world position must worry about an unquiet back yard.  Neither India nor China wants its rival to emerge as the only great power in Asia; Japan, Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia also want the balance kept.  The United States, free from nagging concerns about great power challenges in Europe, has a relatively free hand in the Pacific.
> 
> None of this guarantees either global stability or American pre-eminence in the twenty-first century.  But it suggests that the tides of history may still be flowing in our favor, and that America will not soon be moving to a retirement community for former great powers.
> 
> Join the discussion over at StratBlog.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Slightly off topic, perhaps, but following Mead's idea about worthless allies, I belive (and have since I damned near failed university for proposing the idea over 40 years ago) that the biggest single blunder in the entire history of British foreign policy (including the clan Godwin 'cheating' William of Normandy) was the _Entente Cordiale_ which achieved France's _immediate_ policy objective (it gave it an ally) but probably was one of the root causes of the most unnecessary and costly war the British ever fought.

France proved to be a poor, even costly ally for the British. Britain's _natural_ ally, if it really needed one - which I believe it did not - was Germany. In fact, and Anglo-german alliance would have, also, been in France's best interests as the Germans would, most likely, have been constrained, by their Anglo-Saxon ally, from beating the French yet again.

I blame the Irish!
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.
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.
.
Really, I do: Britain was wholly preoccupied with the question of Irish independence - so occupied that too few sound minds were put to the task of making and protecting British foreign policy. Parenthetically, the issues (World War I and Irish governance) also destroyed the British Liberal Party, but that's another issue.


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## a_majoor

Any External "Grand Strategy" is ultimately driven by domestic considerations, and those in turn by the underlying culture of the civilization and society in question. Here is a foretaste of the debates that will take place in the United States (and by extension throughout Western Civilization) as the "Welfare State" model falters and dies. What will replace the Welfare State, and how will that occur?

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/04/06/the-end-of-the-social-democratic-model-will-the-left-respond-by-accepting-reality/?print=1



> *The End of the Social-Democratic Model: Will the Left Respond by Accepting Reality?*
> 
> Posted By Ron Radosh On April 6, 2011 @ 10:22 am In Uncategorized | 23 Comments
> 
> Yesterday, the only adult among a group of congressional kindergartners, Rep. Paul Ryan, released his budget proposal [1] for the future. The Democratic establishment immediately responded with the kind of knee-jerk all-out attacks we have come to expect from them. Rep. Nancy Pelosi tweeted [2]: “The #GOP Ryan budget is a path to poverty for America’s seniors & children and a road to riches for big oil #GOPvalues.”  Not wanting to be outdone, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, said [3]: “It is not courageous to protect tax breaks for millionaires, oil companies and other big-money special interests while slashing our investment in education, ending the current health care guarantees for seniors on Medicare, and denying health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans.”
> 
> It is the usual reactionary Democratic talking points, all meant to scare seniors, make the public believe their access to health care will come to an end, and create a scenario for huge tax increases to make up the deficit.
> 
> That is why I almost fell off my chair when I read the very liberal Jacob Weisberg, editor of the Slate Group, respond with a thoughtful article [4] titled “Good Plan!” which states in the heading subtitle that Ryan’s budget proposal is “brave, radical and smart.” I can just see Slate’s readers scratching their heads and asking themselves what has happened to Weisberg. They must have thought for a brief moment that they had logged on to PJM or National Review Online by mistake.
> 
> Weisberg understands that there is a genuine problem, and that both Republicans and Democrats have, as he puts it, been lax in confronting “the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven by the projected growth in entitlement spending.” Weisberg goes on to write that “this dynamic of political evasion and reality-denial may have undergone a fundamental shift today with the release of Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget resolution.”  Hoping that Republicans will get behind it, Weisberg writes that if they do, the Republican Party “will become for the first time in modern memory an intellectually serious party — one with a coherent vision to match its rhetoric of limited government.”
> 
> Weisberg even argues that liberals, rather than respond in the fashion that they have already begun to, consider whether some of Ryan’s proposals might serve them, as well as the country. He doesn’t even reject Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher plan, and writes that “it’s hard to make a principled liberal case for the program in its current form.” And he adds that “Ryan’s alternative to Medicare hardly seems as terrible as Paul Krugman makes out.” The Ryan plan, he notes, is not one that spells an end to the social safety net. He writes:
> 
> Eventually, cost control would require some tough decisions about end-of-life care and the rationing of high-tech treatments that have limited efficacy. But starting with a value of $15,000 per year, per senior—the amount government now spends on Medicare—Ryan’s vouchers should provide excellent coverage. His change would amount to a minor amendment to the social contract, not a fundamental revision of it.
> 
> Pointing out that Ryan’s proposal would provide “excellent coverage” for seniors is exactly the opposite of the scare tactics all other Democrats are engaging in. Failure to follow Ryan’s lead, he warns, could create a “debt-driven economic crisis” that would “cast a pall over the country’s entire future.” For a moment, Weisberg sounds like — Glenn Beck!
> 
> Of course, Weisberg is still a liberal, who favors modest tax increases, and he has some criticism of the Ryan plan. Ryan, he argues, “skirts the question of which deductions and tax subsidies he’d eliminate to pay for these lower [tax] rates.” But he concludes that “more than anyone else in politics, Rep. Ryan has made a serious attempt to grapple with the long-term fiscal issues the country faces.” So I give kudos to Weisberg. He has dared to go against the liberal grain, and has congratulated Ryan for having a “largely coherent, workable set of answers.”
> 
> All of this leads me to highly recommend one of the most important essays [5] written in many a year, by Yuval Levin, the editor of National Affairs. Levin’s article is the perfect companion piece to both Weisberg’s comments as well as Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. Levin has written a very long philosophical piece that carefully delineates and critiques the liberal world-view, and that reveals the difference between how conservatives and liberals perceive the world around them.  His point is stated right at the beginning:
> 
> But these [regulatory agencies and the massive entitlement system] are mostly symptoms of our mounting unease. The most significant cause runs deeper. We have the feeling that profound and unsettling change is afoot because the vision that has dominated our political imagination for a century — the vision of the social-democratic welfare state — is drained and growing bankrupt, and it is not yet clear just what will take its place.
> 
> Levin continues to throw out his bold challenge to those who still believe in the social-democratic ideal, people such as the late Tony Judt, whose last book [6] before his death  was an impassioned defense of that very ideal.  That ideal has had great staying power. Yuval Levin writes:
> 
> That vision was an answer to a question America must still confront: How shall we balance the competing aspirations of our society — aspirations to both  wealth and virtue, dynamism and compassion? How can we fulfill our simultaneous desires to race ahead yet leave no one behind? The answer offered by the social-democratic ideal was a technocratic welfare state that would balance these aspirations through all-encompassing programs of social insurance. We would retain a private economy, but it would be carefully managed in order to curb its ill effects, and a large portion of its output would be used by the government to address large social problems, lessen inequality, and thus also build greater social solidarity.
> 
> Of course, this vision has never been implemented in full. But it has offered a model, for good and for ill. For the left, it provided long-term goals, criteria for distinguishing progress from retreat in making short-term compromises, and a kind of definition of the just society. For the right, it was a foil to be combated and averted — an archetype of soulless, stifling bureaucratic hubris — and it helped put objections to seemingly modest individual leftward steps into a broader, more coherent context. But both ends of our politics seemed implicitly to agree that, left to its own momentum, this is where our country was headed — where history would take us if no one stood athwart it yelling stop.
> 
> Levin’s article is of importance because we need more than the kind of proposal that Rep. Ryan is putting forth. We need, in addition, a head-on challenge to the ideological hegemony of social-democratic, socialist, and Marxist views that so many of our intellectual class stand by.  Those who will read Levin’s article knows that he does just that, and indeed acknowledges that in past years that vision had legs because it took root, not during an age of decline for America, but during the years of the economy’s expansion and a rise in the standard of living. Social-democratic activism coincided with the years of the New Deal, Fair Deal, and early Great Society. The problem is that as reality flew in the face of the assumptions behind the policies of those years, few were ready to dispense with the ideology. The result is the current entitlement system, in which, as Levin writes, “age-based wealth transfers in an aging society are obviously problematic.”
> 
> So it is up to us to change course. To do that, we must have the kind of intellectual ammunition given to us by writers such as Yuval Levin. He understands that means developing serious answers to the questions that made the social-democratic ideal seem a good one. Levin knows that to develop that, conservatives cannot be made to appear to be enemies of those who need a social safety net, and who believe in making America’s wealth accessible to all in our society. He writes that it is not enough to yell “stop!” What has to be done is focus on the purposes of government itself, helping to show where it must go.
> 
> In our current age, Levin stresses as well that we need a change in nomenclature, as Roger L. Simon has argued in these very PJM pages. We must point out that liberals and most Democrats are “the reactionary party” that has its “head in the sand and its mind adrift in false nostalgia,” and is content with minor tinkering at the edges of our welfare state. Conservatives must do more than fight old enemies; they must do more than simply repeat that we have too much government.  What they must do is develop real alternatives that the public can grasp and adopt, and to work so that others, not just the wealthy, gain access to capitalism’s benefits. To me, he makes the point well in this key sentence: “It would seek to help the poor not with an empty promise of material equality but with a fervent commitment to upward mobility.”
> 
> Most social-democratic programs and arguments, as we know, seek mechanisms they believe will promote material equality, such as a continuing increase of the minimum wage. They do not realize that such policies make things worse for the poor, force businesses to higher fewer people, and in states which had followed suit, force them to shut down or leave for other states that have not mandated such foolish social policies. So, I heartily endorse Levin’s call for a new “policy-oriented conservatism,”  whose proponents will work to achieve its ends gradually, through both persuasion and proof, and in accord with the ways in which conservatives know that change can take place.
> 
> America, Yuval Levin warns, cannot be allowed to fail along with the social-democratic model. So read his article and pass it on. What he offers is precisely the kind of medicine we have long been in need of. We ignore his arguments at our own peril.
> 
> Article printed from Ron Radosh: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh
> 
> URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/04/06/the-end-of-the-social-democratic-model-will-the-left-respond-by-accepting-reality/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] proposal: http://www.politico.com/static/PPM170_1100405_plantoprosperity.html
> 
> [2] tweeted: http://www.habledash.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1142-paul-ryans-budget-proposal-gets-immediate-criticism-from-nancy-pelosi&catid=47&Itemid=65&joscclean=1&comment_id=1574
> 
> [3] said: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2011/04/04/democrat-response-to-rep-ryan-spending-cuts-burn-the-witches/
> 
> [4] article: http://www.slate.com/id/2290509/
> 
> [5] essays: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/beyond-the-welfare-state
> 
> [6] book: http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/0143118765/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302108679&


----------



## a_majoor

Paul Ryan:

http://www.ricochet.com/main-feed/Paul-Ryan-s-Strategic-Vision



> *Paul Ryan’s Strategic Vision*
> 
> On Thursday evening at the St. Regis Hotel three blocks from the White House. Paul Ryan was the featured speaker at a meeting of the Alexander Hamilton Society. I think it telling that his subject was not the fiscal crisis besetting our country. It was, as Michael Warren makes clear in a detailed report on the website of The Weekly Standard, the conduct of American foreign policy. If you have even a passing interest in the current Presidential race, you should read Warren’s report in its entirety. In it, he reprints Ryan’s every word. Here is how the Congressman began:
> 
> Some of you might be wondering why the House Budget Committee chairman is standing here addressing a room full of national security experts about American foreign policy. What can I tell you that you don’t already know?
> 
> The short answer is, not much. But if there’s one thing I could say with complete confidence about American foreign policy, it is this: Our fiscal policy and our foreign policy are on a collision course; and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power.
> 
> Ryan’s main point was that decline is not inevitable. It is a choice – a choice that we can make, a choice that we can resolutely refuse.
> 
> If we continue on our current path, the rapid rise of health care costs will crowd out all areas of the budget, including defense.
> 
> This course is simply unsustainable. If we continue down our current path, then a debt-fueled economic crisis is not a probability. It is a mathematical certainty.
> 
> Some hear these facts and conclude that the sun is setting on America… that our problems are bigger than we are… that our competitors will soon outrun us… and that the choice we face is over how, not whether, to manage our nation’s decline.
> 
> It’s inevitable, they seem to say, so let’s just get on with it. I’m reminded of that Woody Allen line: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
> 
> In his speech, Ryan considered the consequences of making the wrong choice in this regard. It is, he insisted, a matter of paramount importance.
> 
> In The Weary Titan, Aaron Friedberg − one of the founders of the Hamilton Society − has shown us what happened when Britain made the wrong choice at the turn of the 20th century.
> 
> At that time, Britain’s governing class took the view that it would be better to cede leadership of the Western world to the United States. Unfortunately, the United States was not yet ready to assume the burden of leadership. The result was 40 years of Great Power rivalry and two World Wars.
> 
> The stakes are even higher today. Unlike Britain, which handed leadership to a power that shared its fundamental values, today’s most dynamic and growing powers do not embrace the basic principles that should be at the core of the international system.
> 
> A world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place, a place where we have less influence, and a place where our citizens face more dangers and fewer opportunities. Take a moment and imagine a world led by China or by Russia.
> 
> Choosing decline would have consequences that I doubt many Americans would be comfortable with.
> 
> Ryan is persuaded that “we must lead,” and he is also convinced that “a central element of maintaining American leadership is the promotion of our moral principles – consistently and energetically.” We must, however, he continues, not be “unrealistic about what is possible for us to achieve.”
> 
> America is an idea. And it was the first nation founded as such. The idea is rather simple. Our rights come to us from God and nature. They occur naturally, before government. The Declaration of Independence says it best: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
> 
> There are very good people who are uncomfortable with the idea that America is an “exceptional” nation. But it happens that America was the first in the world to make the universal principle of human freedom into a “credo,” a commitment to all mankind, and it has been our honor to be freedom’s beacon for millions around the world.
> 
> America’s “exceptionalism” is just this – while most nations at most times have claimed their own history or culture to be exclusive, America’s foundations are not our own – they belong equally to every person everywhere. The truth that all human beings are created equal in their natural rights is the most “inclusive” social truth ever discovered as a foundation for a free society. “All” means “all”! You can’t get more “inclusive” than that!
> 
> Now, if you believe these rights are universal human rights, then that clearly forms the basis of your views on foreign policy. It leads you to reject moral relativism. It causes you to recoil at the idea of persistent moral indifference toward any nation that stifles and denies liberty, no matter how friendly and accommodating its rulers are to American interests.
> 
> The real question, of course, is the practical one: “What do we do when our principles are in conflict with our interests? How do we resolve the tension between morality and reality?” And here is Ryan’s answer:
> 
> According to some, we will never be able to resolve this tension, and we must occasionally suspend our principles in pursuit of our interests. I don’t see it that way. We have to be consistent and clear in the promotion of our principles, while recognizing that different situations will require different tools for achieving that end.
> 
> An expanding community of nations that shares our economic values as well as our political values would ensure a more prosperous world … a world with more opportunity for mutually beneficial trade … and a world with fewer economic disruptions caused by violent conflict.
> 
> Here, too, Ryan urges prudence and caution. “In promoting our principles,” he argues, “American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions.” Then, he turns to Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, Afghanistan, and China – where you can see a bit more clearly what he has in mind when he speaks of limits and where you can also see just how much care he has given to considering our strategic situation.
> 
> Read Warren’s report. Run it off, and read it again. I think that, if you do, you will see why I think it right that this country do something almost unthinkable that it has not done in more than a century: elevate a mere Congressman to the Presidency.
> 
> There are many reasons why we need to get our fiscal house in order. Perhaps in the long run the most important is that, if we do not, we as a people will lose the hard-won capacity to shape the strategic environment within which we, as individuals, live our daily lives. The political liberty we treasure depends upon our independence -- and ultimately that cannot be sustained if ours is an entitlements state.


----------



## a_majoor

Long article with many interesting points to consider. A Part II is promised for next month:

http://www.baen.com/beatingdecline1.asp



> *BEATING DECLINE: Miltech and the Survival of the U.S. (section one of three)*
> 
> by J.R. Dunn
> 
> Part I
> 
> Dangerous times await the United States in the international arena. We are facing a period of relative decline in respect to other nations and the global community as a whole. Many are aggressive states with little reason to be friendly to us or to defer to our interests. Our status as leading nation will be challenged, imperiled, and disregarded. This circumstance is locked in and we cannot avoid it. Debt, inflation, overextension, and defense cuts, not to mention a strange national diffidence toward acting as world leader, guarantee this state of affairs.
> 
> On the occasion of his retirement in June, defense secretary Robert Gates warned against further defense cuts. “Frankly,” he was quoted as saying, ”I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government … that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.” Extraordinary words from a man who initiated more cuts than any previous secretary: over 30 programs, including the F-22 Raptor, the Army's Future Combat System, and the AF-1 airborne laser. In other words, some of the programs most crucial to maintaining American military capability in the 21st century.
> 
> Even as Gates made his departure, the Obama administration was ordering cuts of $400 billion over a period of twelve years. Leading liberal politicians such as Rep. Barney Frank have gone even further, calling for up to $1 trillion in cuts. And this is not to overlook the recent debt ceiling deal, in which automatic cuts to defense, amounting to $500 billion over and above the amounts already mentioned, will occur if a formal bipartisan budget agreement is not achieved.
> 
> At risk is the USAF’s B-3 bomber, the Navy's CG(X) cruiser and EPX intelligence plane, the Marine’s Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Army's Ground Combat Vehicle, and the Navy’s new TAOX tanker and the next generation ballistic missile submarine. Talk has also been heard of cutting Army battalions, reducing the number of fleet aircraft carriers, basing fleet units in the continental U.S. rather than at forward bases, dismantling most of our nuclear arsenal, and axing that perennial target, abandoning U.S. Marine Corps aviation.
> 
> The reasons for this impasse, while interesting in themselves, do not really concern us as much as the simple reality of what we face. It’s in the cards and we will have to deal with it. How do we go about doing that?
> 
> Other dominant states have undergone the same ordeal. The United Kingdom and the Soviet Union can serve as examples. Following its magnificent WW II stand against fascism, the UK suffered a lengthy period of political decline in which its global empire, one of the best-ordered and in many ways admirable of all imperial systems, was stripped away in less than twenty years. The Soviet Union, a much less admirable state, suffered an explosive collapse in the early 1990s following its failure to implement socialism on a national scale while simultaneously challenging the West in the Cold War. Both nations benefited from the existence of an even more powerful national entity that ensured global stability while they adapted to their new status—the United States itself. Countries that might have contemplated taking advantage of the suddenly weakened superstates were held off by the American presence, allowing the UK and USSR to make their transition in relative security. (Only one nation attempted to throw the dice—Argentina in the 1983 Falklands conflict A shrunken Royal Navy succeeded in straightening out the Argentines with assistance from the U.S.)
> 
> 
> No guarantor of international stability exists today. The United States will go through its period of readjustment very much on its own. As for challenges from lawless and predatory powers, the question is not if but when. What is in store for us is not conquest, not humiliation, not even necessarily defeat, but a slow erosion of influence and power that will limit our ability to meet crises and make our national will felt. We are already experiencing that erosion, and it will continue for some time to come.
> 
> Emerging Threats
> 
> Expansionist states on the cusp of becoming major regional powers will wish to exercise their newfound capabilities. Most see the U.S. as an obstacle. There can be little doubt that each of them views America’s current difficulties as a clear opportunity.
> 
> China—Looks forward to taking back the rogue “province” of Taiwan while at the same time extending its control over the Western Pacific. An internal faction of unknown size and influence involving senior officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would not at all mind giving the U.S. a black eye in the process.
> 
> Iran—Wishes to gain control over the Persian Gulf and the surrounding states in hopes of establishing something on the order of a Shi’ite caliphate. Its current nuclear weapons program is troubled (it suffered a serious setback as the target of the first tailored cyberweapon), but continuing. Further concern arises over extensive governmental influence from a Shi’ite apocalyptic cult comprised of believers in the imminent return of an Islamic messiah, the Twelfth Imam.
> 
> North Korea—After nearly seventy years, still the personal domain of the world’s sole communist dynasty. Unstable and run by a family of doubtful sanity, North Korea is a perpetual irritant. With its arsenal of crude atomic weapons, it is in the peculiar position of being too weak to fully assert itself yet too well-armed to be ignored. Eventually this conundrum will be resolved through some kind of action.
> 
> Russia—Interested in reestablishing military dominance over Eurasia while also clawing back a few strayed remnants of the old USSR. Important sections of the military and security organs are subject to feelings of anti-American revanchism over the results of the Cold War.
> 
> Venezuela—Has eagerly adapted the mantle of spearhead of Latin Marxism from Cuba, with some success among neighboring states. Has also established close military ties with China and Iran, which include agreements for basing rights and emplacement of advanced strategic weapons systems.
> 
> Pakistan—About to explode thanks to an evil synergy involving a totally corrupt military, an effectively unrestrained Islamist element, and seething ethnic rivalries. The problem lies in its possession of up to 110 nuclear weapons. (Nearly as many as the UK.) 1
> 
> There also exist wild cards—threats that while perhaps unlikely, are within the realm of possibility.
> 
> Europe—Union has not proven as easy or as popular as anticipated. It has long been pointed out that the EU has all the trappings of a neofascist state without the controlling ideology. That could change, and not necessarily for the better. Consider the UK or Ireland attempting to secede from the EU under such circumstances. The technical name for this is “civil war.” (Interestingly, one of the few novels to deal with the concept of European union, Angus Wilson’s satirical SF novel The Old Men at the Zoo, climaxes with exactly such a scenario.)
> 
> Mexico—A potential government takeover by one of the cartels, or alternately a front politician under their control, would turn our southern border into even more of a war zone than it is already. We have been ignoring the Mexican drug war for several years now. We may not have this luxury for much longer.
> 
> A Revived United Arab Republic—The “Arab Spring” has not turned out to be as happy an event as many of us hoped. The most powerful political group in the Arab states is the Muslim Brotherhood, a secret society with fascist antecedents considered to be the grandfather of all Islamic terrorist and Jihadi organizations. Any or all of the “liberated” Arab nations could fall prey to this outfit. (It appears that Egypt is doing so now.) The ramifications will be nothing but ugly.
> 
> And let’s not forget the jihadis while we’re at it. That’s a fifty-year war and we are only one-fifth of the way through it.
> 
> Beyond these, we have the “unknown unknowns”—potential threats that we simply cannot foresee. An informed European of 1910 would never have guessed at fascism, Nazism, or communism, which dominated much of the 20th century and came close to destroying Europe. What awaits us in the next half-century is anybody’s guess. (How about a combination of the Singularity and neofascism?) Keeping in mind the words of a great statesman (Calvin Coolidge): “If you see ten troubles comin’ down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into a ditch before they get to you,” one or more of these will confront the U.S. while we are at the same time repairing the ravages of recent excesses, maintaining our standing in the international community, and fulfilling our obligations to our allies and treaty partners. There have been easier periods for this country.
> 
> We are no longer a hyperpower, and the status of superpower is slipping from our grasp. Within a decade, the U.S. will be merely one great power among a rising cohort of powers. We no longer possess the forces that defeated the Soviet Union, twice humiliated the armies of Saddam Hussein, and that for decades have guaranteed peaceful commerce across the oceans of the world. While much can be accomplished through diplomacy and alliances with other powers, situations will arise in which military force is the sole option. We must find alternatives to the vast resources that are no longer available to us.
> 
> We will not, for the foreseeable future, have access to the traditional American method of spending more money to buy more guns than anyone else on earth can afford. What does that leave us? With yet another traditional American method, one that used to be called “Yankee ingenuity”: using technology to solve problems that cannot be addressed in any other way.


----------



## a_majoor

Section 2 of 3:

http://www.baen.com/beatingdecline1.asp



> *The RMA and the American Dilemma*
> 
> The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)2 is the formal name for changes in warfare brought about by technological innovation in the post-Vietnam period. Originally a Soviet concept, the RMA involves advances in such fields as computers, sensor technology, guidance systems, and communications which together hold the potential to increase the destructive capabilities of weaponry by an order of magnitude. Examples include precision-guided munitions (PGMs), stealth aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Considerable debate has occurred concerning the RMA’s effect on operations, strategy, tactics, and doctrine.
> 
> 
> The RMA fell into disrepute after defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld utilized it as the basis of his “transformational” doctrine for the U.S. military. It was the source of the infamous “light footprint,” in which small, technologically advanced forces would destroy much larger conventional armies, requireing reduced outlay in time, resources, and finances. Rumsfeld was not completely mistaken—the forces that defeated Saddam Hussein in 2003 were much smaller than those dispatched to the Gulf in 1990. Technology made up the difference. What Rumsfeld overlooked was the fact that occupation and combat are two different things. Occupation requires large numbers of boots on the ground to assure security, control, and a smooth transition of power. The failure to meet those requirements in the wake of the Second Gulf War resulted in a lengthy guerilla conflict which sapped American resolve and nearly cost us the victory.
> 
> Over the past few years, military thinkers have begun to acknowledge that the RMA, far from being discredited, will continue to influence military affairs for the foreseeable future. Technology remains a major driver of military innovation and despite everything the United States remains the forerunner in technology. A 2008 RAND study, “U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology”3 found that the U.S. spends 40 percent of the world’s budget for research, produces 38 percent of new patents, and 63 percent of cited research papers. We also lead in application. The U.S. is the sole nation to have fielded a fleet of stealth fighters and bombers, the sole nation to have made the transition to combat drones, the first adaptor of battlefield robotics, and is very likely the first nation (along with its junior partner Israel) to have created and utilized a cyberwarhead. Technology will enable the United States to endure the challenges to come, and to put the fear of Uncle Sam anew into the world’s bandits, fanatics, and would-be Napoleons.
> 
> Maritime Power
> 
> Naval power is the most important aspect of American military strength. The seapower thesis of Alfred Thayer Mahan4— that the United States comprises a “continental island” closer in nature to maritime states such as Japan and the UK than to the continental powers of Eurasia—has proven far more durable than most 19th-century geopolitical theories.
> 
> Since the destruction of the Japanese Imperial Fleet in 1944, the U.S. Navy has had no serious rival for control of the seas. For a short period in the 1980s the development of a Soviet blue-water navy caused some worries, but those ended along with the USSR. It is no coincidence that international trade based on maritime shipping underwent a boom during the postwar period. Security provided by U.S. naval dominance of the world’s oceans was a major factor in economic globalization. The vast amounts spent on America’s fleets have repaid themselves many times over.
> 
> In the early 21st century, U.S. maritime power faces its first major challenge in nearly seventy years. The fleet is steadily shrinking. In August 2011 it stood at 284 ships, less than half the 575 in commission twenty years ago. At the same time, several foreign fleets are in the process of establishing themselves as serious competitors. The Indian Navy is friendly. The Chinese and Iranian navies, not so much. In addition, piracy has undergone a dramatic rebirth, in Somalia in particular but also in areas such as the Indonesian archipelago. The 21st century sailor will have his hands full.
> 
> The Navy’s plan to meet these challenges is embodied in a doctrine called “AirSea Battle.” While little is known about this new strategy, it can be assumed to be a maritime version of AirLand Battle, the U.S. Army’s extremely effective late 20th century ground-combat strategy. AirLand Battle was based on the theories of the eccentric but brilliant USAF officer Col. John Boyd5, who spent a lifetime attempting to create a universal theory of warfare. AirLand Battle is a complex strategy of maneuver utilizing Boyd’s “decision cycle” (also known as the “OODA Cycle”)6, in which actions carried out at an accelerated pace deny the enemy any opportunity to respond. Large-scale disruptive aerial attacks are followed with swift flank attacks by mechanized units, assaulting not fixed geographic targets such as cities or bases, or even distinct military formations, but any enemy force within reach. The goal is to confuse and disrupt the enemy until utter collapse ensues. AirLand Battle is a strategy by which small, outnumbered forces can defeat much larger opponents through speed, maneuver, and initiative.
> 
> AirLand Battle never saw action against the Warsaw Pact, its original target, but found its moment in the two campaigns against the Iraqi Army. These were virtual textbook operations, with the U.S.-led Coalition dominating the battlespace from the start and swiftly subduing the Iraqis with very few direct engagements.
> 
> AirSea Battle7 is a combined-services strategy in which the USAF and Navy will act as a single offensive force. Working from the AirLand Battle template, we can assume that USAF long-range air assets will strike first, disrupting and demoralizing enemy maritime forces. They will be followed by naval air, surface, and submarine elements, striking with PGMs, cruise missiles, and long-range torpedoes. If carried out with the same ferocity as AirLand Battle, this strategy would climax with surviving enemy units fleeing the battlespace, leaving it dominated by U.S. naval forces.
> 
> Two major questions arise: can such a strategy be carried out by a steadily shrinking Navy? And can a strategy so dependent on the ever more vulnerable aircraft carrier remain viable into the 21st century?
> 
> Fleet carriers are among the most impressive warships ever to take to sea. But all things move toward their end, and carriers of the Nimitz and Ford class may have seen their day. The Chinese, the most serious maritime challenge facing our Navy, are doing their best to make the carrier obsolete. China considers the South China Sea as its territory, going so far as to refer to it as “blue soil,” an inherent part of the Chinese heritage. It has laid claim to the Spratleys, the Paracels, and other small island chains in defiance of Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. It has never given up its claim to Taiwan. It has suggested that other states—specifically the U.S.—abandon all interest in the area, in clear disregard of current treaties and the traditional law of the sea. (The U.S. is responding by sending its first three operational Littoral Combat Ships8 into the South China Sea. This is a carefully calibrated riposte: while not strategic assets, these shallow-water vessels—which the media have taken to calling “stealth ships”—are capable of a variety of missions including shore assault, reconnaissance and surveillance, special warfare, and deep-water combat. The message is easily read: we’re ready for anything.)
> 
> Whatever Chinese plans may be, one element that can upset them is the aircraft carrier. Each possesses the combat power of a medium-sized nation, unmatched versatility, and the moral force of a weapon that has never been adequately countered. The Chinese have worried about them for a long time, and have put a lot of work into countermeasures. These include:
> 
> Cruise Missiles—Entire families of sea-launched cruise missiles are deployed on both surface ships—including fast patrol craft—and submarines.
> 
> Song Class Diesel Submarines, —quite capable and very difficult to detect9. In 2006, a Song-class sub surfaced without warning only a short distance from the USS Kitty Hawk.
> 
> The J-20 Stealth Fighter——from its size clearly not an air-superiority aircraft, but most likely intended as a strike aircraft10. It would be surprising if it wasn’t used against carriers.
> 
> 
> The DF-21D Ballistic Missile—over the past year, a new version of the DF-21 MRBM with anti-ship capabilities has been fielded11. The Chinese can deploy hundreds of these missiles in a short time frame.
> 
> Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons (EMP)—China has apparently modified a number of nuclear warheads to trigger a high-altitude EMP pulse capable of damaging or destroying nearby electronic equipment12. While some are intended for use against Taiwan, others may target aircraft carriers. The code names of these weapons are “Assassin’s Mace” for older warheads and “Trump Card” for warheads using newer technology. (This is a good opportunity to kill the “EMP as national threat” myth. There’s been a lot of rhetoric expended claiming that the pulse from a single nuclear warhead set off 200 miles above the U.S. could fry all electronics gear across the country and plunge us into a new dark age. Well maybe, under perfect laboratory conditions, but even that’s doubtful. As a physicist pointed out to me, for this to work, you need to have more energy coming out than the original explosion put in. A little thing called the First Law of Thermodynamics forbids this.)
> 
> It would be a difficult trick to carry out a warfighting strategy with one of its central elements at the bottom of the briny deep. Potential defenses exist, chief among them directed-energy weapons. High-energy lasers would defeat most anti-ship threats, in particular missiles of all varieties. Unfortunately, the free-electron laser (FEL), the most well-adapted for naval use (FELs are tunable and can be fired at the best wavelengths to cut through sea haze, salt spray, fog, and other maritime commonplaces), was canceled by Congress last June13. (The Navy’s primary new offensive weapon, the electromagnetic railgun, was canceled at the same time.) Nothing less than such a universal defense will do. The Kamikaze campaign of 1945 clearly demonstrated how difficult it is to defend ships from determined attack. It won’t require the loss of very many $15 billion carriers along with their air wings to drive the U.S. out of the South China Sea or the Persian Gulf more or less permanently.
> 
> While the Chinese launched their first carrier—formerly the Ukrainian Varyag—this past summer, and are constructing at least two domestic carriers, they possess no support craft or escorts to sail with them. They’re unlikely to play a major role in the time-span we’re considering here.
> 
> But the fleet carrier is by no means the ultimate evolution of the aircraft carrier. The Navy has already studied the feasibility of smaller carriers14. In fact, future carriers may not resemble our current models, with their vast and crowded flight decks, in any fashion at all.
> 
> The key to this development is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—the combat drone. The Navy came late to the drone revolution, but in recent years has gone all out to catch up. Last February marked the debut of the Northrop Grumman X-47B, a drone designed to take off and land on a carrier15. The Navy wants drones operating with carrier forces by 2018. Subsequent development of drones is likely to transform the carrier itself. There is no reason why drones need to operate exactly like manned aircraft, requiring a flight deck, arrestor gear, and the entire panoply of traditional naval aviation. Properly designed drones could be launched from any type of surface ship, or, for that matter, from submarines running underwater. It’s possible to foresee a time when every naval vessel, including support ships, operates a unit of drones, from a dozen aboard a support vessel such as a tanker to fifty or more aboard a guided missile cruiser.
> 
> 
> Such drones would be very different birds from today’s pioneer models—nearly autonomous, cheap, and far more capable. They could well be expendable, with no recovery necessary. (The USAF has already fielded such a design, the MALD. See below.) It’s possible that they wouldn’t even be armed, instead destroying their targets by kinetic kill. Consider a swarm of hundreds of small, fast, maneuverable drones suddenly appearing out of nowhere, with no obvious source (and target) like a conventional aircraft carrier in sight. Such a capability would complicate enemy strategy immeasurably. It would also go a long way toward lowering the cost of a fleet and increasing the number of available combat vessels.
> 
> The drone revolution is by no means limited to aerial platforms. Application of drone technology to both surface and submersible craft is in process. Former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead initiated development of a long-range UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle), a robot submarine capable of operating independently for long periods on missions covering thousands of miles16. Roughead envisioned a basic guidance system and power plant module that can be reconfigured with weapon and sensor suites tailored for each particular mission. Such UUVs would patrol independently, report in by satellite linkage, and return to port on their own. Smaller versions could act as drone torpedoes, maintaining station on a semi-permanent basis and launching themselves at enemy shipping when the war signal arrives.
> 
> Necessary technology such as advanced AI algorithms and compact power plants remains enticingly out of reach. But less complex versions of such UUVs could very likely be launched today. These drones could accompany a fleet, acting as a first line of defense against enemy subs, be monitored constantly and rendezvous with surface vessels for maintenance and refueling. Such drones would be relatively cheap and expendable where manned submarines would not be.
> 
> Preliminary work has also been done on surface drones by the Navy in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the DoD’s in-house research department, particularly involving an unmanned frigate, the Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV)17. An ACTUV could patrol vast areas of ocean for months with no human input. On encountering a sub, it would notify its naval HQ, and perhaps also latch onto the sub’s signal and follow it wherever it went, rendering the crew’s life incredibly nerve-wracking. One interesting development involves the Navy’s creation of an online game, ACTUV Tactics, where outside players compete as ACTUV’s or sub skippers, in order to work out the best tactics to encode as operational algorithms18. (What’s that you say? Potential enemy sub skippers can log on too, and learn all the tricks? I guess nothing’s perfect.)
> 
> Another weapon overdue for technological enhancement is the sea mine, an often underrated asset. During the last months of WW II, mines dropped from USAAF B-29 Superfortresses into the Inland Sea and coastal areas brought Japanese maritime activity to a standstill, completely isolating the Home Islands.
> 
> The 21st century mine will be a far cry from the anchored “dumb” mines of WW II. They will have limited autonomous capability, be able to detect and target individual ships, avoid minesweepers, and maneuver into optimal attack positions. Several warheads could be fitted with programmable fuses to suit the targets. Networks of these mines would communicate and coordinate their attacks. Enemy fleets and merchant marine vessels might well be locked into their ports, unable to emerge for fear of hordes of “smart mines.” When hostilities end, the mines would be signaled to surface and wait for pickup.
> 
> A picture of the fleet to come begins to take form, surrounded by a cloud of undetectable drones, preceded by a shield of small unmanned submarines, with robot frigates patrolling the fringes, and the manned ships on the center. Small in numbers, and nowhere near as impressive as a Nimitz-class carrier and its escorts, but with a potential combat power orders of magnitude greater than any current fleet. Stealthed, laser and railgun armed (we can assume that these programs are on “zombie” status, with current work carefully preserved and waiting for funding), integrated into satellite weather, detection, and communication systems, capable of tracking targets at the other side of the ocean and engaging them at half that distance. Such a fleet would possess capabilities unknown up to this point in time, and perhaps unguessable even today.


----------



## a_majoor

Section 3:

http://www.baen.com/beatingdecline1.asp



> *Maintaining Air Superiority*
> 
> For several decades, the U.S. Air Force has carried the banner of military technological innovation. Working with DARPA, the “Pentagon’s mad scientists,” the USAF has been responsible for the most spectacular and effective technological breakthroughs of recent years, including stealth aircraft and the combat drone. Can this partnership prevail into the 21st century?
> 
> Since WW II, the U.S. has possessed effective air superiority over other combatants. Except for short periods over Korea in 1950-51 and Vietnam in 1966-67, American superiority was so overwhelming that at times opponents didn’t even dare challenge it. During the First Gulf War (1991), Iraqi Air Force units defected en masse to Iran to avoid destruction by Coalition air assets. After the Hussein regime was overthrown in 2003, pathetic little monuments were found in the desert where Iraqi MiGs had been buried in sand to protect them.
> 
> Technology was the leading reason for American superiority in the air. Following the Korean War, John Boyd discovered that the USAF had gained ascendancy over Communist air forces when the F-86E Sabre was introduced to combat in 1952. Unlike earlier models, the E Sabre featured hydraulic controls, enabling it to shift from one maneuver to the next before enemy MiG-15s could react. This created an extraordinary situation in which the USAF was provided with the winning edge without even realizing it. (This insight formed the basis of Boyd’s “decision cycle” thesis.)
> 
> While the U.S. currently retains this edge, there’s no guarantee it will keep it. Aviation technology is a fast-changing field, sensitive to breakthroughs in many technical disciplines. Both Russia and China have tested stealth fighters, with the Russians claiming their Sukhoi PAK TA T-50 as fully equal to the USAF’s F-22 Raptor, the premier U.S. air superiority aircraft19. Production of the Raptor was capped at 187 planes by Secretary Gates over the protests of Air Force staff. While Gates claimed that the less-capable F-35 Lightning II would take up the slack, questions about program costs and delays have arisen over the past year. (Both the F-22 and F-35 have experienced serious systemic flaws over the past year that led to some aircraft being grounded. These should be viewed as shakedown problems not uncommon among new high-performance aircraft. The B-29, the bomber that defeated Japan, had numerous failings including uncontrollable engine fires and windows popping out at high altitude. The F-86 killed so many pilots that it was called the “lieutenant eater.” The B-47, the first strategic jet bomber, had a particularly stark drawback—in the early models, the wings tended to fall off during sharp turns.) The Marine Corps S/VTOL version is currently “on probation” and may well be cancelled. We could end up with far fewer than the 2,400 F-35s planned.
> Another threat lies in advances in radar. It is possible to design a radar system that can detect, if not track, stealth aircraft. Australia’s JORN (Jindalee Operational Radar Network) system detects the turbulence created by an aircraft’s passage and is claimed to have a range of several thousand miles20. The Chinese are known to be working on an ultra-high frequency radar for the purpose of defeating stealth. It is easily possible that further advances could negate the stealth advantage, leaving the U.S. without air superiority for the first time since 1944.
> The answer to this dilemma may well lie in the UAV. It’s remarkable to consider that the drone revolution that has transformed so many aspects of warfare was a matter of pure inadvertence. The original MQ-1 Predator drones were unarmed and were retrofitted with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles only after it was realized that the time lag between drones detecting a target and a fighter-bomber response was unnecessary. Since that time, drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper have been designed for weapons carriage from the first. We can assume that all drones from this point on will possess at least the capability of being armed.
> It has been understood since 1972, when a Ryan Firebee operated by remote control easily outmaneuvered an F-4 Phantom in a series of dogfights, that drones could operate in the air-superiority role. It would be a simple matter to fit Predators or Reapers with AIM-9 Sidewinder or AIM-120 AMRAAM missile kits to enable them to operate as fighters. But both lack necessary speed and maneuverability, although the RQ-170 “Beast of Kandahar” drone, with its stealthy features and swept wings, appears to be approaching that level.
> 
> There’s little reason to doubt that DARPA, in its thorough way, is working on such aircraft and that prototypes may be flying at this moment at Groom Lake or a similar test base.
> 
> On the other hand, the future may already have arrived in the form of the Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD), a small, expendable drone designed to confuse and overwhelm air defense radars21. MALDs can be programmed to maneuver precisely like manned aircraft, and can be launched by the hundreds from transports, hopelessly saturating any current air-defense system. Raytheon has begun developing versions of the MALD fitted with sensors and warheads, transforming them into armed fighter drones.
> 
> A MALD air-superiority system could be deployed in a number of ways. They could be launched from transports or AWACs (launch racks have been developed for this purpose), goading an opponent into sending up his aircraft, which would then be downed en masse by the drones. Range could be extended by shutting off the engine and gliding, or alternately by zooming up to high altitude, deploying a balloon or parachute, and drifting until a threat appears. (A USAF anti-radiation missile, the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow, operates on this principle.)
> 
> Manned fighters carrying MALDs in lieu of bombs or external fuel tanks could launch them just before coming into enemy radar range. After the first wave of drones engaged the enemy, the F-15s and F-22s would fly in to mop up.
> 
> Whatever the technique (and experienced pilots and weapons officers will no doubt come up with far more intricate and effective tactics), it is clear that cheap drones can make up for shortfalls in manned air-superiority aircraft. With its current head start in UAV technology, the U.S. need not drop into second place (and in air combat, anything below number one is the loser) anytime soon. It’s also clear that drones will not “replace” so much as supplement manned fighter aircraft for the foreseeable future. There will always be a need for conscious mentalities, if only to figure out when the battle’s over.
> 
> A Bomber Revival?
> 
> The USAF has traditionally been a bomber service, its major mission that of strategic bombing, its legendary figures—Mitchell, Arnold, Spaatz, LeMay—bomber pilots and commanders. It was only in recent years that fighter pilots were granted the same lofty status as the bomber aristocracy.
> 
> But the manned bomber has had a rough time in recent decades, squeezed between improved air defenses and the titanic expense required to overcome them. Of the last three proposed strategic bombers, the B-70 Valkyrie was cancelled outright in the early 1960s, the B-1 Lancer was cancelled and then resurrected in the 1980s, and the B-2 Spirit, the storied “stealth bomber,” was limited by its cost of over $1 billion apiece to only 21 aircraft (20 of which are still flying, one having crashed at Guam in February 2008). The Air Force currently possesses under 200 strategic bombers, a derisory number compared the thousands deployed during the Cold War, much less the tens of thousands that fought WW II.
> 
> But drone technology may, paradoxically, rescue the manned bomber. Secretary Gates cancelled a bomber scheduled to be fielded by 2018. Apparently having second thoughts, Gates green-lighted a new bomber project just before his retirement. This Deep Strike Aircraft will be a stealth model that can fly either manned or unmanned, depending on mission requirements. While little is known about the B-3’s actual configuration, the bomber would possess both conventional and nuclear capability, carrying PGMs, bunker-busters, or air-to-ground rockets. Defense could be provided by high-energy lasers and also by versions of the MALD with the B-3 in effect carrying its own escort force, deployed upon entering hostile airspace and accompanying the bomber on its run against a target. (Aviation buffs will recognize this as the millennial version of the XF-85 Goblin, a late 1940s fighter designed for carriage by the B-36 as an escort plane. If you wait long enough, every technical gimmick comes around for a second run.) Over $4 billion has been budgeted for strike aircraft development. If all goes according to schedule, 80 to 100 B-3s will join the inventory sometime in the mid 2020s22.
> 
> Another revival is the Prompt Global Strike system, a weapon that could hit targets at intercontinental distances from CONUS (the Continental United States) within two hours. This weapon could strike high-value targets of temporary nature (say, a conference of terrorist leaders) without the diplomatic complications that might arise from launching an attack from a third-party state.
> 
> Several attempts have been made to develop such an asset, including a proposal to utilize surplus ICBMs or submarine-launched missiles in the role that was abandoned after it became apparent that there was no plausible way to assure bystander nations that they weren’t packed full of nuclear warheads. Attention shifted to hypersonic aircraft, with several projects initiated, including the Falcon (Force Application and Launch from CONUS), a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle launched by rocket and capable of carrying a 12,000 lb. payload up to 9,000 miles, and the Blackswift, a Mach 6 multimission aircraft developed by DARPA for use as a spy plane, bomber, or satellite launcher23. Although funding of $1 billion was authorized, the Blackswift was cancelled in 2009.
> 
> But the hypersonic aircraft concept proved too tough to kill. The past year has seen some promising developments, including a successful test of the USAF’s X-51 hypersonic missile and flights by the Falcon HTV-2 which, though not flawless (the Falcons lost telemetry links with the ground and shut themselves down), produced valuable data. It was further revealed that yet another hypersonic bomber project, dubbed “Son of Blackswift” is under development. It appears that the U.S. will have an intercontinental fist to add to its conventional arsenal.
> 
> The United States need not relinquish its superiority as regards air power. The crucial question involves funding. Aerospace technology is expensive and often the first to be cut, as shown by the B-70, the B-1, and the Blackswift. But such cuts often represent false economies. Early in WW II, American pilots were forced to fight in sturdy but obsolescent aircraft such as the Bell P-39 and the Curtiss P-40 that simply could not stand up to the Luftwaffe’s Me-109s and Fw-190s, much less the superb Mitsubishi A6M Zero. It required two years for adequate American designs to appear. It would take far longer today, and wars in the millennial era simply don’t last that long. (The UK, on the other hand, spent large amounts during the mid-1930s developing fast, maneuverable eight-gun fighters, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. These aircraft saved the country during the Battle of Britain.)


----------



## a_majoor

An interesting response. I would not be quite so sanguine, many nations like the former USSR/todays Russia sit on a treasure trove of resources yet cannot benefit from it. Politics and culture have a great deal to do with this. Consider in our case, Saskatchewan was an NDP stronghold for decades, and had a very small and stunted economy as a result (especially compared to Alberta, right next door). The emergence of the Saskatchewan Party and its small "c" conservative style of governance threw off the shackles, and now Saskatchewan is flourishing. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8844646/World-power-swings-back-to-America.html



> *World power swings back to America*
> 
> The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.
> 
> 
> By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor5:53PM BST 23 Oct 20111231 Comments
> 
> Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline - so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue - will seem wildly off the mark by then.
> 
> Telegraph readers already know about the "shale gas revolution" that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia.
> 
> Less known is that the technology of hydraulic fracturing - breaking rocks with jets of water - will also bring a quantum leap in shale oil supply, mostly from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves across the Mid-West.
> 
> "The US was the single largest contributor to global oil supply growth last year, with a net 395,000 barrels per day (b/d)," said Francisco Blanch from Bank of America, comparing the Dakota fields to a new North Sea.
> 
> Total US shale output is "set to expand dramatically" as fresh sources come on stream, possibly reaching 5.5m b/d by mid-decade. This is a tenfold rise since 2009.
> 
> The US already meets 72pc of its own oil needs, up from around 50pc a decade ago.
> 
> "The implications of this shift are very large for geopolitics, energy security, historical military alliances and economic activity. As US reliance on the Middle East continues to drop, Europe is turning more dependent and will likely become more exposed to rent-seeking behaviour from oligopolistic players," said Mr Blanch.
> 
> Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, 're-inshoring' is the new fashion.
> "Made in America, Again" - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the "default location" for cheap plants supplying the US.
> A "tipping point" is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.
> 
> "A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back," said BCG's Harold Sirkin.
> The gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.
> 
> The list of "repatriates" is growing. Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas after counterfeiting problems; ET Water Systems has switched its irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee, and NCR is bringing back its ATM output to Georgia. NatLabs is coming home to Florida.
> 
> Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump.
> 
> As Philadelphia Fed chief Sandra Pianalto said last week, US manufacturing is "very competitive" at the current dollar exchange rate. Whether intended or not, the Fed's zero rates and $2.3 trillion printing blitz have brought matters to an abrupt head for China.
> 
> Fed actions confronted Beijing with a Morton's Fork of ugly choices: revalue the yuan, or hang onto the mercantilist dollar peg and import a US monetary policy that is far too loose for a red-hot economy at the top of the cycle. Either choice erodes China's wage advantage. The Communist Party chose inflation.
> 
> Foreign exchange effects are subtle. They take a long to time play out as old plant slowly runs down, and fresh investment goes elsewhere. Yet you can see the damage to Europe from an over-strong euro in foreign direct investment (FDI) data.
> 
> Flows into the EU collapsed by 63p from 2007 to 2010 (UNCTAD data), and fell by 77pc in Italy. Flows into the US rose by 5pc.
> Volkswagen is investing $4bn in America, led by its Chattanooga Passat plant. Korea's Samsung has begun a $20bn US investment blitz. Meanwhile, Intel, GM, and Caterpillar and other US firms are opting to stay at home rather than invest abroad.
> 
> Europe has only itself to blame for the current “hollowing out” of its industrial base. It craved its own reserve currency, without understanding how costly this “exorbitant burden” might prove to be.
> 
> China and the rising reserve powers have rotated a large chunk of their $10 trillion stash into EMU bonds to reduce their dollar weighting. The result is a euro too strong for half of EMU.
> 
> The European Central Bank has since made matters worse (for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France) by keeping rates above those of the US, UK, and Japan. That has been a deliberate policy choice. It let real M1 deposits in Italy contract at a 7pc annual rate over the summer. May it live with the consequences.
> 
> The trade-weighted dollar has been sliding for a decade, falling 37pc since 2001. This roughly replicates the post-Plaza slide in the late 1980s, which was followed - with a lag - by 3pc of GDP shrinkage in the current account deficit. The US had a surplus by 1991.
> 
> Charles Dumas and Diana Choyleva from Lombard Street Research argue that this may happen again in their new book "The American Phoenix".
> The switch in advantage to the US is relative. It does not imply a healthy US recovery. The global depression will grind on as much of the Western world tightens fiscal policy and slowly purges debt, and as China deflates its credit bubble.
> 
> Yet America retains a pack of trump cards, and not just in sixteen of the world’s top twenty universities.
> 
> It is almost the only economic power with a fertility rate above 2.0 - and therefore the ability to outgrow debt - in sharp contrast to the demographic decay awaiting Japan, China, Korea, Germany, Italy, and Russia.
> 
> Europe's EMU soap opera has shown why it matters that America is a genuine nation, forged by shared language and the ancestral chords of memory over two centuries, with institutions that ultimately work and a real central bank able to back-stop the system.
> 
> The 21st Century may be American after all, just like the last.


----------



## daftandbarmy

Deleted because I didn't apply think check.


----------



## a_majoor

J.R. Dunn on the future of American power on the ground. (It is interesting to note that while AirLand Battle was the premier response to the 20th century threat of Soviet military power, the emerging strategy seems to be AirSea Battle; to maximise the maritime power of the United States against enemies around the world):

http://baen.com/beatingdecline2.asp



> BEATING DECLINE V.2
> 
> by J.R. Dunn
> 
> WAR IN THE DIRT
> 
> Land warfare will change most under America’s new circumstances. Since 1918, when the U.S. came to the support of the beleaguered Western Allies with two and half million troops, the massive American expeditionary force has been an international fact of life. For nearly a century, vast armadas carrying hundreds of thousands of American troops have played a critical role on battlefields as far-flung as North Africa, Italy, Normandy, the Solomons, the Philippines, Korea, and Kuwait. No potential opponent could afford to overlook the possibility of America deploying unmatchable military resources to any spot on the globe in defense of an ally or its own interests.
> 
> For the time being, that is over. We simply cannot afford that level of outlay in any situation not involving national survival. The world will be a colder, crueler, and more dangerous place for it. Until at least mid-century, American foreign interventions will be limited and brief. They are likely to follow the model of Afghanistan 2001, with U.S. skill and firepower coming to the assistance of friendly native forces. (But not Libya 2011, which was not an intervention as much as a performance art interpretation of what an intervention might be like.) Larger interventions – though still minor compared to the world wars and the Gulf campaigns – will be restricted to supporting close allies.
> 
> It follows that if the U.S. is limited to dispatching battalions rather than divisions or armies, then those battalions will need to have a bigger impact when they reach the battlefield. This is where technology, acting as a force multiplier, will prove crucial.
> 
> One promising development involves utilizing information technology to increase a small unit’s C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence) capabilities. A unit in which all troops are in communication, officers have a universal view of the battlespace, everyone knows where everyone else is, and all personnel are continually updated, would have an insurmountable advantage over less well-equipped adversaries. Clausewitz’s “fog of war” would be largely a thing of the past.
> 
> That was the thinking behind Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan for a “net-centric Army,” built around a program called Land Warrior. Fifteen years of development and half a billion dollars resulted in a system that was expensive, heavy, fragile, and loathed by many soldiers. A battery-powered CPU ran the system. Communications through a helmet headphone system transmitted encrypted signals up to a kilometer. A screen in front of one eye provided data input, including GPS positions. (Among other things, the screen could show a soldier what was around the next corner. Extending his rifle barrel enabled a digital sight to send a clear picture to the screen. The old dodge of putting a helmet on a stick could be dropped at last.)
> 
> But at sixteen pounds the system was too heavy in addition to the standard pack load, and the cost was edging up toward 80K per soldier. In a final attempt to save the program, the Army replaced military spec equipment with off-the-shelf commercial gear. This cut both weight and cost, but proved too fragile for rough military usage. The Army reluctantly canceled the program.
> 
> Redesignated the “Ground Soldier Ensemble,” remaining Land Warrior units were sent to Iraq for testing with the 4/9 Infantry Battalion, the “Manchus”. In Iraq, the Army learned a trick known to IT pros worldwide: give it to the kids and let them tinker with it. Within weeks, the Manchus had the Land Warrior equipment stripped down, reworked, and improved (e.g. chemlights were added to the screen to denote friendlies and targets). The new system worked so well that it equipped a full brigade shipping out for Afghanistan, the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry. Results there were mixed – the system had been optimized for the Iraqi urban environment as opposed to rural Afghanistan -- but were still promising enough to revive the program.
> 
> The new program, called Nett Warrior, retained the improvements worked out in Iraq and Afghanistan. The weight was only 7.6 lbs., the cost roughly 48K per soldier. Three companies were competing for the final contract, with limited production scheduled to begin this year, when at the last minute, confusion enveloped the entire effort. In late July industry sources claimed that Nett Warrior had been canceled. The Army insisted that it had simply been placed on “hold.” Other sources reported that the program was being replaced with a smart phone using Android technology.
> 
> It’s difficult to imagine a smart phone providing all the functionality of the Nett Warrior system. Eventually something similar will be required on the 21st-century battlefield. Whether it will be introduced by U.S. forces is anyone’s guess.
> 
> Millennial Weaponry
> 
> Infotech has only begun to influence the evolution of infantry weapons. The most impressive result so far is the XM-25 “smartgun,” a 25 mm grenade launcher that fires programmable rounds in several different varieties – airburst fragmentation, high-explosive, and shaped-charge anti-armor.1 The frag rounds drew the greatest interest. The XM-25’s laser sight provides the exact distance to a target – say, a concrete wall. The round is then programmed to explode a meter beyond the wall – that is, directly above hidden enemy forces.
> 
> The XM-25 was tested in Afghanistan beginning in December 2010, to great enthusiasm from the troops, who christened it “the Punisher.” The gun destroyed at least two Taliban machine gun nests (a favorite Taliban tactic is to open up on patrols with heavy PAK machine guns from beyond the range of a squad’s organic weapons, then flee before air support arrives), and broke up four ambushes. So pleased were the troops that they were allowed to continue using the XM-25 after field tests were completed. The gun’s manufacturer ATK was awarded a $65 million contract to begin production.
> 
> DARPA has produced a similar item, a cybernetic gunsight that enables snipers to hit a target with the first shot. An internal CPU calculates distance, wind velocity, humidity, and other variables, and adjusts the sight accordingly. Several operational prototypes are being tested in Afghanistan.
> 
> Yet another DARPA program hopes to provide small units with their own air support in the form of drones. The USAF has never been happy with the ground support role, involving as it does low and slow approaches against dug-in enemy forces. Infantry, for their part, are often less than delighted with the amount of time required for an aerial response. DARPA would overcome this by providing a soldier – a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC) -- with a data link to an accompanying drone (either hovering overhead or in a nearby vehicle) which could be called in immediately in case of trouble. Raytheon is working on armaments for such drones in the form of the Small Tactical Munition (STM), a 13-pound GPS-guided bomb. It’s very likely that these will see combat in Afghanistan, if they haven’t already.
> 
> I, Warbot
> 
> More than 2,000 robots have been employed in combat in Afghanistan, making it in a sense the first robot conflict. A third of these are Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) machines such as the Talon and the PackBot, which are deployed under remote control to detonate or defuse bombs and IEDs. (Technically, these aren’t actually robots but telefactors, but who knows the difference?) Others include mine-clearing machines such as the M-160, a “flail” that clears ground by slamming chains as it passes. These machines have performed valuable work and have saved no small number of lives.
> 
> What we don’t find are actual fighting machines – the “warbots” of SF lore. (At this point, it’s mandatory that Terminator be mentioned. Okay –Terminator.) The problem lies in autonomy. Groundbots, as opposed to aerial drones, are simply incapable, at this point in development, of operating without close human supervision. In the early days of AI research, it was assumed that abstract problem-solving would be the major roadblock to creating useful machine intelligence. But problem-solving through sheer data-crunching presents little difficulty. The real challenge turned out to be everyday matters that we accomplish without a second thought thanks to countless subroutines developed over millions of years of evolution, things on the order of stepping over a rock or climbing stairs. Encountering the smallest distraction or obstacle can trigger what amounts to a cybernetic breakdown – not something you want in an armed machine. So while robot manufacturers such as Foster-Miller have armed their bomb-disposal units with shotguns, machine guns, and grenade launchers, these SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System) units are operated only by remote control. The same is true of more advanced systems such as MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System), an anti-personnel robot that can fire anything from pepper spray to 40 mm grenades2. MAARS features both a mechanical fan to prevent it from swinging its gun toward friendly forces and software delineating no-fire zones. (These are strictly necessary. Robot weapons have already killed innocent victims. In 2007, a computerized Oerlikon antiaircraft gun belonging to the South African Defense Forces suffered a software glitch that caused it to fire wildly in all directions. The gun killed nine soldiers and wounded fourteen others before it ran out of ammunition.)
> 
> So it’ll be a long time before we see actual combat robots. But there are other roles that robots can play. One example is Big Dog, a quadraped robotic mule (I don’t know where they got “dog” either) designed to carry heavy loads over rough ground. Big Dog is another DARPA project, built by Boston Dynamics with assistance from other robotics manufacturers. It can carry over 300 pounds at five miles an hour (slightly faster than walking speed), and is capable of climbing hills. Films of the beast in action reveal disturbingly lifelike activity3. A larger model, Alpha Dog, with a hundred pounds greater payload, is also being tested.
> 
> Even more disturbing is a second DARPA/Boston Dynamics program, the Cheetah, another four-legged robot featuring a head and a flexible spine4. The Cheetah is designed to run faster than any human and operate in a semi-autonomous mode as it stalks and runs down enemy forces. The possibilities of these things accompanying troops into battle are not difficult to envision.
> 
> Getting There
> 
> “I get there first with the most men.” That was how Nathan Bedford Forrest explained his Civil War cavalry victories. Getting there first has been standard American policy ever since, whether it involved railroads, trucks, mechanized units, or helicopters. Maintaining this advantage will provide a necessary edge in decades to come.
> 
> One innovative means is the military exoskeleton. DARPA has spent over $50 million in recent years developing an exoskeleton, the XOS, that will enable infantry to carry heavy loads over long distances at high speeds without arriving exhausted. Such suits could provide troops with ballistic protection and would certainly solve the Nett Warrior weight problem. Videos of the system reveal troops moving with surprising agility5. The sole drawback is the lack of a compact power source. (Another design, the HULC, supports only the soldier’s legs while leaving the arms free. HULC has much lower power requirements.) While it might be impractical and too expensive to fit out all Army soldiers with exoskeletons, it would certainly benefit specialized troops such as mountain units.
> 
> A key element of American strategy for the past half-century has been vertical envelopment – the use of helicopter-borne air assault forces to spearhead attacks. While it has unquestionably proven itself, the helicopter does have drawbacks, including vulnerability, fragility, and a relatively slow airspeed. Helicopters have proven the Achilles heel of many operations, including the 1980 Iran hostage rescue mission (nearly half the choppers involved turned back due to mechanical failures), and this year’s Osama bin Laden raid. The recent deaths of thirty members of Seal Team Six in Afghanistan when their Chinook transport was shot down in what may have been a prearranged ambush underlines these shortcomings.
> 
> The military has attempted to supplement or replace the helicopter since the 1950s with little success. The Marine Corp’s V-22 Osprey is one example6. Despite years of development and billions in costs the Osprey’s introduction to operations has been mixed. One serious shortcoming involves the fact that most Ospreys are unarmed. A version fitted with a chin turret was cancelled. A handful instead feature belly-mounted miniguns. Since the aircraft is simply too fast for helicopter escort, it is generally restricted to noncombat operations, quite a limitation for a military aircraft.
> 
> A partial solution to the helicopter dilemma has been offered by veteran manufacturer Sikorsky, which achieved a long-sought breakthrough in helicopter technology with its X-2 program7. The X-2 mates a coaxial rotor system, in which two separate rotors turn in opposite directions on the same mast, with a rear propeller that can push the chopper up to 250 mph, almost twice as fast as conventional helicopters. The X-2 nearly matches the Osprey in performance without the heavy, sensitive mechanical linkages used in the Osprey’s flip-rotor system. The company is developing a military version, the S-97. Introduction of this helicopter may well revolutionize air assault tactics.
> 
> Even more innovative vehicles are in the works. DARPA has been bitten by the ancient aircar bug on behalf of the Marines in the form of the unfortunately named Transformer (TX) program, an effort to design a Humvee-class vehicle that can drive on roads and cross-country but in rough terrain take off and fly over obstacles much the same as a light helicopter8. The Transformer (TX) will be operated by a cybernetic “autonomous flying system” being developed at Carnegie-Mellon that would enable even the most unskilled driver to take to the air without extensive training.
> 
> The Israeli company Urban Aeronautics has developed a vehicle it calls the AirMule (not the AirDog, fortunately), a ducted-fan lifter intended to carry wounded soldiers off the battlefield swiftly and in comfort9. The AirMule is pilotless, guided solely by an onboard computer system. Such a vehicle could also carry supplies and weapons. Flight tests have been successful, with the Defense Department expressing considerable interest.
> 
> Will these designs go anywhere? Similar vehicles with various arrangements of fans, turbines, and so forth have been investigated for decades with few worthwhile results. But designers can take heart in the success of the new Martin Aircraft “jetpack.”10 The jetpack has been a reality since the 1960s, although its flight duration of roughly 30 seconds rendered it essentially useless. But the new model – not a rocket-propelled system at all but a man-sized ducted-fan vehicle – has overcome that drawback. Tethered manned tests and a computer-guided unmanned distance flight have revealed no basic problems. These vehicles would come in quite handy on future Abbotabad-type missions.
> 
> Yet another old dream has a chance of becoming reality. Ithacus was a 1960s proposal for an intercontinental rocket transport carrying several hundred infantrymen to any spot on earth on a few hours notice11. Our lack of rocket-dispatched troops has gnawed at DARPA, and serious thought has gone into a solution. A program called Sustain (Small Unit Space Transportation and Insertion) overseen by the National Security Space Office has defined the mission and outlined a concept of operations for such a system. Picture something along the lines of an upgraded White Knight/Spaceship One system, a small suborbital module launched by a mother craft with effectively global range. Such a vehicle might carry as few as a dozen troops, which suggests special operations as the chief mission. An active Sustain system is probably decades down the line, but it will come. Imagine what the Seals would do with a capability like that.
> 
> Not even military field uniforms will remain untransformed. Research has begun on the creation of “biometric” fatigues that will monitor a soldier’s vital signs and immediately signal a medic if he is hit. With use of electrically active materials, these fatigues could tighten at the joints to form a tourniquet. Advanced models might even give injections.
> 
> Camouflage is another element aching to be upgraded. Camo gear custom-tailored for a particular area is already in the works. Photos of the area would be used as a pattern, to create a perfect site-specific camouflage that would be printed out using “direct to garment” technology.
> 
> It’s even possible that camouflage as such would no longer be necessary. Consider the “invisibility cloak” invented by researchers at the University of Tokyo12. Microprocessors project the view on either side of the garment on the surface of the opposite side, with the wearer fading into the surroundings. While less than convincing close up, from a distance in a dim environment it might work rather well. Such “optical camouflage” would have no end of military uses.
> 
> We can picture the American soldier on a future battlefield – so speak; he’s a little hard to see. He is in direct contact with the rest of his unit, with a bird’s-eye view in his helmet visor of exactly what lies ahead, armed with a gun that doesn’t miss. He is accompanied by one, and perhaps more, four-legged robots moving eerily through the brush, transmitting imagery as they go. Overhead a barely-visible wraith glides in near-silence, providing recon and air support.
> 
> It’s tempting to think of such a figure as being invincible. But we need to keep in mind that his opponents, whether terrorists or legitimate troops, will have access to many of the same technological advances. Our soldiers have not yet encountered enemies armed with weaponry of that class, but that day is coming. We will need to work at it to remain ahead.



end part one


----------



## a_majoor

Part two:

http://baen.com/beatingdecline2.asp



> Orbital Encounters
> 
> Space is the sad story of the 21st century. The idea that the U.S. would be moving into the millennial epoch with no manned program at all would have been unimaginable as little as ten years ago. No other single development so clearly reveals how much we have declined in power and expertise.
> 
> Does the collapse of American manned spaceflight threaten U.S. security interests? Not directly – US warfighting capabilities are based on orbital satellite assets, mostly in geosynchronous orbit but to a lesser extent in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). These include communications, GPS, reconnaissance and surveillance, and strategic early warning satellites. The U.S. could not mount even the most basic military campaign without its satellite network.
> 
> None of these systems is related to any manned program. But the fact that the U.S. has abandoned manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future (and let’s not kid ourselves about planned “asteroid missions.” That program will last only as long as the next federal budget crunch) will only serve to encourage our rivals in exploiting the “new high ground” of near-earth space.
> 
> This is certainly true of China. The Chinese manned program is going great guns, and they fully intend to carry out a Lunar mission in the early 2020s, long before the U.S. can mount a return to space. More to the point, they have shown no hesitation about engaging in orbital warfare. On January 11, 2007, a Chinese ballistic missile destroyed a defunct weather satellite in polar orbit at an altitude of 500 miles13. This strike generated something on the order of 300,000 pieces of debris, rendering that particular orbital plane unusable and threatening satellites at other altitudes. The Chinese simply shrugged off what was generally viewed as an act of thuggery matching the Soviet Union at its worst.
> 
> This newly-revealed satellite vulnerability may well have influenced the development of the USAF’s X-37B, a reusable unmanned “Space Maneuver Vehicle” operational since April 201014.
> 
> The X-37B has a convoluted development history, beginning as the USAF’s X-40A before being melded with NASA’s X-37 program. When that program was cancelled in 2006 (which seems to be the fate of most NASA programs these days), the Air Force in cooperation with the ever-dependable DARPA came to the rescue, adapting it as the X-37B. The premature shutdown of the STS Space Shuttle program left the X-37B as America’s only operational reusable spacecraft. (There has been no end of rumors about “black” spaceplanes operating out of Groom Lake under code names such as “Aurora” and “Senior Citizen.” These should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s difficult to see why valuable funding would be spent on the X-37B – much less the X-51 or Falcon HTV – if they actually existed.)
> 
> The X-37B is basically a mini-shuttle, roughly 29 feet long, with a wingspan of just under 15 feet and an operational weight of 11,000 pounds. Its launch vehicle is the Atlas V. It can remain in LEO for up to 270 days. It is a multimission vehicle, capable of placing small payloads in orbit, examining satellites, or reconnaissance. It has flown several missions since its introduction, their nature remaining secret, and their execution more than a little confusing to skywatchers.
> 
> The X-37B represents at a least a partial solution to satellite vulnerability. While payload is limited, DARPA is known to be developing a series of “minisatellites” of very small dimensions and weight. It is probable that at least some of these can act as emergency replacements for satellites damaged or destroyed during wartime. Apart from this, the X-37B can also act in the same role, using equipment within its payload bay.
> 
> The X-37B is the model for U.S. military space operations for the near future. Upgraded versions likely under development today will increase payload, time in orbit, and operational altitudes. Armed versions are not out of the question. It is probable that the first orbital strikes will involve combat drones. Since the U.S. has a dramatic head start in drone technology, it is unlikely that China or anyone else will be able to sweep us from orbit.
> 
> Space, of course, is crucial to any workable nuclear defense system in the form of projectile or laser satellites of the type researched as part of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The U.S. has low-keyed such systems for years, largely for political reasons. We have chosen to rely instead on 1960s era technology, a limited number of ABM missiles stationed at Fort Greely, Alaska. We may yet pay an ungodly price for this oversight. Both nuclear weapon and ballistic missile technology are becoming cheaper and more widespread. It is by no means difficult to picture a vicious dictator of the Saddam or Qaddafi type utilizing such weapons under any number of circumstances. At the moment, a defense is out of our hands. It will be decades before we will be able to afford a space-based defensive system. Until then, we must depend on luck to protect us. I’m sure that everyone feels as secure about that as I do.
> 
> CYBERWARFARE
> 
> Cyberwarfare is pure novelty, with everyone feeling their way across a bizarre and unknown landscape. The problem for the U.S. is that we tend to view such developments with a little more equanimity than we should, on the grounds that nobody handles new tech quite as well as we do. This attitude has turned around to bite us on several previous occasions. (See “Pearl Harbor.”)
> 
> There’s a distinct contradiction in the U.S. stance toward cyberwarfare: the U.S. is the leading state in offensive cyberwarfare, while our defensive preparations are pitiable.
> 
> Stuxnet Rules
> 
> American offensive cyberwarfare capabilities are embodied in the Stuxnet worm, which most experts view as a collaboration between the U.S. and Israel15. Stuxnet was not so much an example of malware as a new order of cybernetic weapon, an extremely complex program with numerous capabilities, some of them never before seen in a virus16.
> 
> Stuxnet was first detected in July 2010, although it had been active for at least six months previously. At first it was treated like any other malware outbreak, but in short order IT security experts realized they were dealing with something extraordinary. Stuxnet targeted not only one particular model of equipment – Seimens SCADA industrial control systems – but only those operating in a certain frequency range and sold by two particular vendors that had defied sanctions placed on Iran. It utilized not just one but four distinct “zero-day exploits” (previously unknown software vulnerabilities). It was able to hide in a computer’s rootkit while also propagating throughout any internal network it was introduced into. It was apparently able to communicate with outside servers while also being modified in situ.
> 
> All this was aimed at the Iranian nuclear program, transparently devoted to the development of nuclear weapons. Iran refined weapons-grade uranium at its Natanz site utilizing a gas centrifuge array run by a Windows network driving Seimens SCADA units. Stuxnet caused the centrifuges, whirling at several thousand rpms, to first speed up and then, some weeks later, drastically slow down while at the same time assuring watching techs that all was well. This treatment not only destroyed the centrifuges but also contaminated the uranium being processed at the time. Although an Iranian disinformation campaign claims that little damage was done, a large number of centrifuges were wrecked – the Federation of American Scientists puts the number at 1,000. Further damage was caused to the Bushehr reactor, setting back its ignition by some months. Rumors of a “serious nuclear accident” at Natanz have also circulated.
> 
> Effects are still being felt, with tens of thousands of Iranian computers still infected. An assassination campaign targeting Iranian nuclear scientists has further battered the program, which staggers on, awaiting the appearance of Son of Stuxnet.
> 
> Defenses: Cyberstooges!
> 
> At some point in September (if not earlier) somebody planted a virus in a supposedly secure computer system at Creech Air Force Base, home of one of the most critical – and successful – contemporary American military assets. Creech is the control center for America’s drone fleet, where the Predators and Reapers are flown (through satellite linkages) against our country’s Jihadi enemies. It’s the last place anyone would want to find a virus. But find it they did17.
> 
> The virus in question is a keylogger, malware that saves every keystroke made on an infected computer. By such means an interested party can reconstruct the instruction stream for the system in question. Somebody is really interested in how our drone fleet is operated.
> 
> How did this virus get into the network? Like many critical IT systems, the Creech network is isolated from the Internet through “air gap.” There are no connections, either by pipeline or broadband, between the Creech infranet and the Net at large. So somebody used the Bradley Manning method. They walked in with an infected flash drive or disk, popped it in, and that was all she wrote. Whether it was deliberate or accidental remains unknown. Whatever the case, it indicates a seriously flawed infotech security protocol.
> 
> To make things even worse, the security staff attempted to flush the virus without informing anyone in the armed forces cybersecurity hierarchy, either the 24th Air Force or Cyber Command. The Pentagon’s cybersecurity experts were kept in the dark for two weeks while the Creech team stumbled around fruitlessly. The 24th Air Force had to read about the virus in Wired.18
> 
> At last report, the virus was still infesting the system. But, we’re assured, nobody’s really worried about it. Isn’t that a relief?
> 
> With such unparalleled success in the offensive mode, how do we explain the pathetic state of American cyberdefenses? The record of successful hacking sprees directed against U.S. government and military targets leaves the impression that anyone can break in, take whatever they want, and saunter off at their leisure, much the same as a member of flash mob hitting a convenience store. In addition to the Creech exploit, during only the past year:
> 
> * In March, a defense industry computer network suffered the loss of files containing 24,000 documents19. Many involved classified programs. At least one weapons system under development had to be totally redesigned after the specs and plans were hacked from the contractor’s database.
> * In May, Lockheed Martin and several smaller defense contractors were hacked, with an unknown amount of information on secret projects lifted20.
> * In June, Google revealed that attempts had been made to hack hundreds of Gmail passwords of government officials in the Pentagon, the Department of State, and even the White House21.
> * In early August, IT security firm McAfee revealed that a five-year hacking campaign, which the company dubbed “Operation Shady RAT” (for “Remote Access Tool”, a type of software used to access offsite computers), had compromised 72 different targets worldwide22. Of these, 49 were American. The others included the UN and the International Olympic Committee. Although McAfee was unwilling to state it outright, the guilty party was China. (Dell SecureWorks traced a connection to several Chinese command computers.)
> 
> This is only the tip of the iceberg. U.S. defense-related computer systems were attacked 6 million times in 2006. By 2010, this had grown to 6 million attacks a day. How many of these are successful is unknown. Obviously, someone is deliberately targeting American military cybernetic assets.
> 
> “Someone” could be any number of potential enemies or even allies. Some attacks originate from Russia or other former Soviet states. But in the vast majority of cases, “someone” is Chinese.
> 
> China possesses the largest and most organized cyberwarfare force in the world. While not capable of the sophistication of a Stuxnet-type attack, what the Chinese can accomplish through massed numbers and brute force beggars the imagination. On April 8, 2010, the state-owned China Telecom rerouted 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic through Chinese servers for 18 minutes23. What they did with all that data remains unknown. Last July, China hacked every last member of South Korea's Cyber World social network – 35 million people, virtually every Internet user in the country24.
> 
> The Chinese have accomplished these feats through a state-sponsored hacker militia called the “blue army.”25 In truth, it is probably no militia at all but instead a full-fledged military command. The size and composition of the blue army remain unknown. It is headquartered in Jinan, where many of the most egregious hacking attempts have been traced. China is the sole nation to possess such a cybernetic military force.
> 
> The Chinese inadvertently raised the curtain on the blue army this past August in a propaganda documentary on the glories of the Chinese military. At one point background footage revealed a military computer screen actually set up to carry out a cyberattack by way of a subverted University of Alabama IP address. The screen displayed the name of the software and a window saying “Choose Attack Target” along with a list of addresses. What was the actual target? The Falun Gong, the spiritual sect that the Chinese Politburo for obscure reasons has chosen to persecute as a national enemy. (The footage also reveals that the blue army is not very sophisticated, more or less operating on the level of what we call “script kids,” newbies using prewritten code, as opposed to actual hackers.)
> 
> What is the blue army up to? Reconnaissance, probing, data theft, spying, recruiting for botnets (they had taken over as many as 750,000 zombie computers even five years ago), and loading viruses and logic bombs for later use.



End Part 2


----------



## a_majoor

Part 3

http://baen.com/beatingdecline2.asp



> Targeting the Infrastructure
> 
> A major target exists in the U.S. utilities infrastructure. The control systems of much of America’s technical infrastructure, including power, electricity, water, and sewage, has been made Internet accessible to save money and time on maintenance and operations. Since anything on the Internet can be hacked by one means or another, we have effectively handed a switch to our foreign enemies marked, “Flick this to shut down America.”
> 
> The indispensable McAfee released a report last April prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and titled "In the Dark: Crucial Industries Confront Cyberattacks."26 The CSIS interviewed 200 IT security execs for utility companies handling oil, gas, electricity, water, and sewage in 14 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Over 70 percent of the security chiefs reported that they had discovered malware introduced into their networks during 2010, nearly double the number for 2009. Over 40 percent considered their companies vulnerable, and 30% did not think their security was sufficient. Another 40 percent expected a major attack within the next year.
> 
> This threat is about to grow exponentially worse with the introduction by many utilities of smart grid technology. A smart grid is an Internet-based system that enables remote monitoring and regulation of home, office, or building utilities by either the owner or the utility company itself. Many of these will allow customer Internet access of a company’s systems, which will transform security against hackers from “very difficult” to “absolutely impossible.” Three-quarters of America’s electrical companies are using, installing, or planning smart grids.
> 
> Imagine trying to carry out a military campaign with your country’s utilities flatlined, rioting and violence rampant in what used to be your cities, starvation beginning, and epidemic disease about to swoop in. Enemy strategy writes itself: slip a “blue stuxnet” worm into the U.S. utility net, watch the country dissolve into chaos, wait until American military assets head for home to confront the catastrophe, then take over Taiwan, the Spratleys, and whatever else catches your eye. Afterward, you offer your assistance to the U.S. in purging its systems in exchange for a promise to abandon the Western Pacific. Or just sit back and enjoy the spectacle, whichever you prefer.
> 
> This is not as farfetched as it seems. In 2007 Estonia was crippled by a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by a group calling itself the Nastri. (A DDoS attack overwhelms a network by sending large numbers of information packets (requests, e-mails, messages, etc.) until the network’s capacity to handle them is exceeded. It has nothing directly to do with MS-DOS connections with the outside world.) The attack shut down government websites along with public news sites and came close to bringing down the entire Estonian net. The Nastri was almost certainly supported by Russian military and security assets. (The reason for the strike? The Estonians had dared to move a Soviet-era war memorial. )
> 
> The same thing occurred when the Russian Federation came to the assistance of its oppressed Ossetian brothers in the swift and brutal Georgia invasion of August 2008. The Georgian net was brought down completely, crippling the government response to Russian aggression and cutting off Georgian connections with the outside world.
> 
> It’s not out of the question that such strikes have already occurred in the U.S. The Cleveland blackout of 2003 affected over 50 million people in both the U.S. and Canada. At the time it was explained away as tree branches falling on power lines. Today many IT security professionals believe it was a Net-based utility strike, a beta test of a new app, originating nowhere else but from China. (The first elements to go were power company computers, which had their alarm systems shut off while local power systems were methodically sabotaged.) Much the same has been said about the 2008 Florida blackout.
> 
> (Ironically, it was the U.S. that kicked off this style of cybersabotage with a 1982 CIA attack on the Siberian natural gas pipeline that the Soviets were using to gain precious foreign currency and also influence potential Western European customers27. A “logic bomb” inserted into the control system wrecked the pumps, caused the pipeline to back up, and at last blew it up in an explosion visible from orbit.)
> 
> The Bogus Chip Problem
> 
> If all this wasn’t bad enough, we also have the subverted chip problem, which finally caught the attention of government security agencies only a quarter-century after it was first proposed in a novel by a pair of Frenchmen (Softwar [Le Guerre Douce] by Thierry Breton and Denis Beneich). An unknown but large number of chips and other hardware utilized in military and security devices were produced under contract by companies located within the borders of our friend China. The implications are appalling. Any one of tens of thousands of such chips could be hardwired to short out, shut down the system, send everything in the files to Jinan, or order the weapon it’s operating to attack the White House one dark night. Homeland Security does not even want to talk about this (their spokesman admitted to the problem at Congressional hearings this summer only after furious prodding)28. While it’s theoretically possible to sort out subverted chips (a chip with an extra logic circuit will show a minute but detectable difference in impedance, for one thing), the only practical solution is to replace every last suspect chip with one made in a secure U.S. facility. This will be slow, expensive, and, by the very nature of things, incomplete.
> 
> It’s not merely Junior hacking on a basement PC. So what is the response of the authorities, military and otherwise? The National Security Agency’s (NSA) plans are of course unknown but likely to be potent and well considered. Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) appears to have taken on the role of an über-McAfee or Norton, issuing detailed alerts that will be carefully read after an attack occurs. The FBI has established InfraGard, billed as an “industry-Bureau partnership” intended to protect the country’s infrastructure networks29. But InfraGard depends on voluntary industry reportage and does not seem particularly well staffed or funded.
> 
> As for the military, U.S. Cyber Command’s primary mission was to defend military systems from foreign attack – not government or domestic networks. So it was a relief when last spring the Pentagon released its long-awaited cybersecurity plan30. The Defense Department for the first time declared cyberspace to be “a domain of war,” in which cyberattacks breaching a certain threshold of damage or destruction equivalent to that of a real-world military action would trigger a full response from the U.S. military. This represented a long-overdue shift from the law-enforcement paradigm, in which cybersecurity was a problem for the FBI and the Justice Department, to a matter of national defense, with matching levels of resources and urgency. It also expanded military cybernetic responsibilities from defense of military systems to defense of all systems, government, business, and civilian, on a national level.
> 
> The plan climaxes with a statement of a frankness that would never be found in any civilian governmental document: “The department and the nation have vulnerabilities in cyberspace. Our reliance on cyberspace stands in stark contrast to the inadequacy of our cybersecurity.”
> 
> While we can’t be certain this plan caused any sleepless nights in Jinan, it does represent a useful step toward a doctrine of cyberwarfare, which the U.S. still lacks. And who knows? It may well bring to an end such probes and tests as those that caused the Cleveland blackout.
> 
> In the realm of practical solutions, a number of actions suggest themselves, most of them simply adapting standard IT security practice to the national level.
> 
> Air Gaps Work; Use Them – every critical or secret network, whether governmental, military, or industry, must be isolated from the Internet. No exceptions.
> 
> Personnel Discipline – no more Bradley Mannings wandering in and out of secure facilities with CD-Roms labeled “Lady Gaga.” If someone is carrying a diskette, a CD, a flash drive, a memory stick, or anything else capable of holding data, sooner or later it will be plugged in.
> 
> No Smart Grids – these systems have been promoted to save money. How much in the way of savings makes up for a national catastrophe? The air defense system around New York City was shut down in large part to save money too. Smart grids need to be reexamined in light of the threat they embody. The concept must be reworked to remove any possibility of manipulation by hackers or foreign powers. Otherwise, it needs to be thrown onto the “attractive but dangerous tech” pile, along with dirigibles, the (original) Orion spacecraft, and light-water nuclear reactors.
> 
> Dump Subverted Hardware – immediate replacement is required. The entire inventory needs to be destroyed and all devices and circuits that could even possibly have utilized such a part must be replaced in toto. This is the only method of obtaining security in this case.
> 
> B Team Analysis – we require a “B Team” to examine, analyze, and report on the entire American IT system on a national security basis. This team should not only comprise government personnel, but also military officers, representatives of the staffs of Microsoft, McAfee, the Register, and the computer department of Carnegie-Mellon, the kids who walk around wearing Guy Fawkes masks, and if possible, the ghost of Colonel Boyd.
> 
> Establish a Cybermilitia –We require an independent cyberservice comprised of network defenders in large numbers. Perhaps the best solution would be an actual civilian militia after the model of the old Civil Air Patrol (CAP). The Net has to be guarded actively and constantly. One problem lies in the neo-anarchist posturing common among the IT community, but not everybody acts that way and even fewer actually believe it. Our IT strength lies with wild kids all across the country. We need to think about using them.
> 
> A Full Military Doctrine – not only to defend the U.S. and its cybernetic assets, both military and civilian, but to destroy, if necessary, any cybernetic threat to the nation’s well-being whether national or rogue. Cybersecurity needs to be transferred to military control -- unless we’re satisfied to have it handled by the same type of mentality that paws two-year-olds in airports.
> 
> This is only the beginning. We are at about the same point with cyberwarfare as was reached by air power in 1940 – before the huge raids of WW II, before supersonic jets, intercontinental bombers, radar networks, SAMs, or nuclear weapons. Cyberwarfare is leaving its infancy and is just out of the silk scarf and leather helmet stage. What awaits us is hidden within the bright glare of future days, but we can be sure at the very least that it will be fascinating, unexpected, and very deadly.



End Part 3


----------



## a_majoor

Part 4

http://baen.com/beatingdecline2.asp



> The Long Run
> 
> We’ve established that it’s possible, with some thought, effort, and money well spent, for the U.S. to get through its upcoming trials in relatively good shape. We must also rely to some extent on luck and the bottom not falling out completely. There are truly catastrophic scenarios in which a technological edge would provide us with little or nothing – a full-scale nuclear strike, an attack with tailored microorganisms (I’ve often wondered why most scenarios dealing with biowar, whether fictional or otherwise, are limited to one bug. Surely there would be two or three, one picking up where the other left off?), the destruction of the American – or global – Internet (this has been established as at least theoretically possible), a technological singularity gone wrong (or, for that matter gone right)31. But these are events for which no preparation would ever be enough. We make rational plans for plausible contingencies, and apart from that, we hope.
> 
> One other point relates to how we got into this sorry mess, which was easily foreseeable, and subject to some level of prevention –yet no such effort was made by anyone on any part of the political spectrum.
> 
> Why are we surprised by so many crises and stumble into useless wars that do not support our national interests and gain us nothing? Why do we tend to act too late, why we are so often unprepared? Why does the most powerful national entity in recorded history consistently look like eight kinds of jackass on the international stage? The reason is simple: the U.S. lacks, and has always lacked, a grand strategy.
> 
> The concept of grand strategy is often overlooked. It is the strategy of the long term, the strategy of nations rather than armies, the strategy that sets the overall goals and tells everyday military and diplomatic strategy how to reach them. The most successful states possess a grand strategy worked out and tested over generations that protects the nation and pushes forward its interests. It is usually very simple and can be stated in sentence or perhaps two. The grand strategy of Rome was: keep the barbarians on the other side of the Rhine, the Parthians on the other side of the Euphrates. The grand strategy of the British Empire was: do not allow any single power to gain total control of Europe. Both empires maintained these strategies throughout their peak periods, Rome for close to four centuries, the British even longer, if we count the Anglo-French wars of the 13th and 14th centuries.
> 
> When at last the Romans gave up, and began letting in barbarian tribes as a reward for acting as allies, the end was plainly coming. The British held on until the last ditch, going into what amounted to national bankruptcy in the 20th century to twice prevent Germany from controlling Europe.
> 
> 
> An American grand strategy is a necessity for this century. We could do without it during the splendid isolation of our early years, when the Monroe Doctrine was our sole strategic necessity. Our entry into world affairs with WWI was not accompanied by any reconsideration of national priorities in response to new strategic realities. We have spent much of the past century trying to skitter back into isolation rather than face up to our global responsibilities. After WWII we did have a strategy against the USSR – containment – but it was situational, not universally accepted, and failed when applied in other parts of the world.
> 
> A grand strategy will guarantee this country’s status into the 21st century and beyond. We need to consider what such a thing would look like – how it would serve our national interests, how it would utilize our technological advantages, how it would express the American character, American hopes, and American ideas.
> 
> Because the U.S. will be back. Our decline will not be permanent. Our enemies are deeply flawed and skating ever closer to the edge. Iran has an imploding population, a vanishing resource base, and a government of madmen (as the recently Quds Force assassination conspiracy reveals clearly enough). It will not be the same place in twenty years. China also faces a population crash thanks to its grotesque birth-control policies, centripetal tendencies involving abused minorities, and the inevitable showdown between political tyranny and economic freedom. The Russians will eventually learn the lesson of Al Capone: that blatant gangsterism will take you only so far. They are all facing problems the U.S. has already overcome or simply does not have.
> 
> We are demographically healthy, with an expanding but not exploding population. Our economy will return to full health once the mania for federal intervention is left behind. We will benefit from recent trade agreements that create a Greater American free-trade zone that encompasses every nation on the Pacific coast of the Americas, an 8,000-mile-long chain that is likely to become the richest trade bloc in the world32. Also acting in our favor is the beginning of a resource boom perhaps without parallel in our history. One example will suffice: the Marcellus Shale formation of the Northeast contains from 84 trillion to 410 trillion cubic feet of natural gas33. That’s trillion with a “t.” (It also contains billions of gallons of liquid natural gas and ethane.)That alone makes the U.S. the natural gas equivalent of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, and Iran combined, and there’s more where that came from. We will begin to see the impact of our new resource base over the next twenty years, with full expression by mid-century.
> 
> It is not yet twilight for the United States. Our current drift is an interlude and not an epilogue. We are an old nation (with the second-oldest government on earth, behind the UK) but we are a young country. It is customary for the young to make mistakes, pick themselves up, and go on. We have made a lot of mistakes, but none of them are fatal. We are coming into our maturity, when we will do things differently. The American Century is dead and gone –bring on the American Millennium.
> 
> # # # # # # #
> 
> 
> END NOTES
> 
> 
> 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/xm25_astan_reports/
> 
> 2. http://www.qinetiq-na.com/products-maars.htm
> 
> 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bExqhhWRI
> 
> 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAgY6uL4VQM
> 
> 5. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwaD5-GlHXg
> 
> 6. http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/man/uswpns/air/rotary/v22osprey.html
> 
> 7. http://www.sikorsky.com/Innovation/Vision+of+the+future/Technologies/X2+Technology
> 
> 8. http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/Transformer/Transformer.aspx
> 
> 9. http://robots.net/article/2972.html
> 
> 10. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/29/6743626-jetpack-soars-a-mile-high
> 
> 11. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ithacus.htm
> 
> 12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPVQal851U
> 
> 13. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011801029.html
> 
> 14. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-20003260-42.html
> 
> 15. http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2010-071400-3123-99
> 
> 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=1
> 
> 17. www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/
> 
> 18. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-kept-quiet/
> 
> 19. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14157975
> 
> 20. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/27/us-usa-defense-hackers-idUSTRE74Q6VY20110527
> 
> 21. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-02/google-s-discovery-of-attempted-gmail-hacking-prompts-u-s-investigation.html
> 
> 22. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/03/massive-global-cyberattack-targeting-us-un-discovered-experts-blame-china/
> 
> 23. http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/28/technology/government_hackers/index.htm
> 
> 24. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/28/cyworld_korea_megahack/
> 
> 25. http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/575780/201106171909/Is-China-US-Cyberwar-Inevitable-.htm
> 
> 26. www.mcafee.com/us/resources/.../rp-critical-infrastructure-protection.pdf
> 
> 27. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1455559/CIA-plot-led-to-huge-blast-in-Siberian-gas-pipeline.html
> 
> 28. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/28/v-print/118603/house-probes-policies-on-counterfeit.html
> 
> 29. http://www.infragard.net/
> 
> 30. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories
> 
> 31. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20113-the-cyberweapon-that-could-take-down-the-internet.html
> 
> 32. http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=588075&p=1
> 
> 33. http://geology.com/usgs/marcellus-shale-assessment/
> 
> Copyright © 2011 by J.R. Dunn
> 
> J.R. Dunn is a novelist, editor, and political commentator active both in print and online. His SF novels include This Side of Judgment, Days of Cain, a powerful time travel novel dealing with the the Holocaust, and Full Tide of Night. He is the associate editor of The International Military Encyclopedia and is a contributing editor on military affairs to the American Thinker. His latest nonfiction book is Death by Liberlism, from Broadside.


----------



## a_majoor

America (and by extension we) need to consider competing "Grand Strategies" and how they affect us:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/12/03/the-rise-of-the-fifth-reich/



> *The Rise of the Fifth Reich?*
> 
> Over at the always interesting Small Wars Journal, Tony Corn has a stimulating piece on the implications of the European crisis for world politics.  He sees a clueless German policy establishment recklessly moving toward an unsustainable quest for power reminiscent in too many ways of problems Germany has had in its past.
> 
> Germany, warns Corn, is planning to use its financial domination of Europe to remake the EU into an extension of German power — more or less the way that Prussia used the Zollverein to bring northern Germany under its control and then dominated the Bismarckian Reich through a rigged constitutional system.  Once that is in place, he writes, the Germans will continue their policy of deepening relations with Russia at the expense of NATO and transatlantic ties, and end Europe’s embargo on arms sales to China.
> 
> As an analyst, Corn sometimes goes to what we more placid types at VM consider overexcited conclusions about Eurasian power realignments.  Safely ensconced among the storied oaks and elms, gazebos, pergolas, ha-has, follies and deer parks surrounding the stately Mead manor in glamorous Queens, we tend to take a wait-and-see attitude toward organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization which Russia and China have sometimes posited as a kind of embryonic counter-NATO.  Corn, in our perhaps excessively complacent view, can be too quick to take vague Eurasian fantasies and aspirations about diplomatic revolutions as accomplished facts; it is easier to dream about firm Russian and Chinese anti-US cooperation than for those two countries to make it work.  But that said, there is no doubt that Corn’s industry, historical grounding and sensitive, even over-sensitive nerve endings give him the ability to produce original and striking ideas.
> 
> It would be truly foolish to ignore the reality that in many world capitals there are intelligent people who are not in love with the American world system that now exists, and who spend a great deal of time and energy thinking about how to cripple it.  Russia’s shrewd decision to invade Georgia in 2008 is an example of how, taking advantage of American preoccupation and Georgian overreach, a swift and limited Russian move was able to shift the regional power balance in its favor and catch the US off-guard.
> 
> Corn’s sensitivity to the possibility that actions Americans do not anticipate based on the very different priorities of policy makers in other parts of the world could radically reshape the global picture animates his article on Germany.  He begins provocatively:
> 
> “If Clausewitz is right that “war is the continuation of policy by other means”, then Germany is again at war with Europe, at least in the sense that German policy is trying to achieve in Europe the characteristic objectives of war: the redrawing of international boundaries and the subjugation of foreign peoples….
> 
> Germany’s goal?
> 
> A constitutionalization of the EU treaties, which would irreversibly institutionalize the current “correlation of forces,” and allow German hegemony in the 27-member European Union to approximate Prussian hegemony in the 27-member Bismarckian Reich.
> 
> This is much more exciting than the usual bland pap about European politics one reads in the US, and Corn’s analysis is deeply grounded in what serious people are thinking and writing in Paris, London and Berlin.
> 
> Corn goes on to analyze what this German Europe would mean for Russia and NATO:
> 
> In a not-too-subtle way, German pundits are today hinting that Germany would be better disposed economically toward Europe if Europe, in turn, was better disposed politically toward Germany’s Russia policy – more specifically toward the Meseberg process initiated (without prior consultation with the EU or NATO) by Angela Merkel in May 2010.  The problem is, once you read the fine print, you discover that the Meseberg Memorandum calls for an EU-Russia Committee which would have greater powers than the NATO-Russia Council, would give Russia access to the EU decision-making process and, ultimately, would make NATO altogether irrelevant.
> 
> And on China?
> 
> Or take EU-China relations. Since Germany is responsible for 47 percent of EU exports to China, German pundits are now arguing, the rest of Europe should give Germany the lead in the formulation of the EU’s China policy. The problem is, for all the rhetoric about Berlin having long forsaken military power and become a “civilian power” (Zivilmacht), Germany in the past decade has overtaken Britain and France as Europe’s main arms exporter. Since the Berlin Republic now defines itself almost exclusively as a “geo-economic power,” there is no doubt that the first priority of a German-dominated EU China policy would be to lift the arms embargo in place since 1989.  American taxpayers would thus continue to provide for the defense of the “civilianized” Germans (who spend only 1.3 percent of their GDP on defense) while Germany would be making money selling advanced military technology to America’s peer competitor.
> 
> So: is Germany planning to take over Europe, stab the US in the back and enter an entente with China and Russia?
> 
> Via Meadia thinks not, or at least not yet, though we don’t rule out some thoughts by some serious people in this general direction.  Certainly former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder occasionally seems to have let his mind drift towards vague and ambitious eastern visions even before Gazprom bought him.
> 
> In any case it is clear that too many American policy makers and opinion makers live in a bubble of conventional wisdom, comfortable assumptions and complacent ignorance.  Articles like this one are a useful corrective to that complacency, and even readers who end up thinking Corn goes a little over the top will appreciate the guided tour of European strategic analysis he provides.
> 
> The article also serves as a timely reminder that even in the Age of Asia, Europe still counts.  The euro crisis is a foreign policy crisis and not just a financial headache.  The future of the European Union matters deeply to the United States, and the level of US discussion about the implications of this crisis for the future evolution of the European project is depressingly low.


----------



## tomahawk6

The EU was an interesting experiment,but I think deserves failed state status.The economic policies of its members I think doom the EU to collapse.


----------



## Fishbone Jones

I think it failed the second that France and Germany decided that they would be the only two top dogs in the kennel and everyone else would follow their direction.

In other words, it was doomed to failure from the start.


----------



## a_majoor

American exceptionalism. The tools are there, but is the will?

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/102106



> *'Exceptional' America*
> by Victor Davis Hanson (Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow)
> Is the United States simply one nation among many—or is it the leader of the world?
> 
> Accepting inevitable national decline is the new pastime of both the media and government elite. Some of the pessimism revolves around current federal financial insolvency. In response to the Bush administration’s borrowing of $4 trillion in eight years, Barack Obama, as a presidential candidate, called such profligacy “irresponsible” and even “unpatriotic”—only as president to trump Bush’s debt in three years.
> 
> Democrats now talk grandly of going back to the Clinton-era income tax schedules to balance budgets as was done between 1998 and 2000. Republicans counter that, since 2001, spending has soared to such levels that even a return to the old income tax rates would not come close to ending the serial annual deficits of $1.5  trillion without massive budget cuts—deemed intolerable by Democrats. The worried public senses that sometime very soon there are going to be either massive new taxes or historic cutbacks in federal spending, and most likely both.
> 
> Most sharp recessions lead to robust recoveries. But unemployment continues to be above 9 percent. GDP growth remains anemic. The old “misery index” is at an all-time high—as if this chronic downturn was somehow different from past post-war recessions. Near zero interest rates, unchecked borrowing, and record numbers on food stamps and unemployment insurance—all that “stimulus” has not jumpstarted a stalled economy.
> 
> Then there are the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are still fighting the Taliban, a decade after the September 11 attacks. The United States went into the heart of the ancient caliphate, removed Saddam Hussein, and established a consensual government, which survives to this day. And yet, Iraq is still considered an American tragedy given that a brilliant three-week removal of a dictator was followed by five years of insurgent violence that cost nearly 4,500 American lives. The acceptance that Americans have a massive military and yet cannot win wars quickly and permanently against outmatched enemies contributes to the growing sense of American paralysis.
> 
> The fiscal meltdown of September 2008 shattered American confidence in Wall Street. The sense of despair was heightened as conservatives blamed the disaster on profligate and politicized government mortgage agencies like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; liberals countered that the real culprit was the incomprehensible greed of speculators and grandees at firms like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. The public agreed with both analyses—and grew further disheartened as their 401k retirement accounts continued to shrink. That the panic occurred amid the unraveling of the European Union only intensified the sense of Western despair.
> 
> Despair, anxiety, and paralysis define the current public mood.
> 
> Amid such a depressing landscape, there are also the usual warnings of long-term pathologies. American K-12 students score far behind their counterparts in most industrial nations on math and science tests. Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan have both longer work and school weeks, and greater labor productivity. Americans spend far more per capita on healthcare than other Westernized nations and yet do not enjoy greater longevity. The China chimera is raised constantly—as if its more impressive rate of economic growth will soon doom America to permanent second-tier status.
> 
> In reaction to this assorted bad news, President Obama sought to condition Americans to their newly perceived reduced role. In the trivial sense, Obama bowed to foreign monarchs, apologized for the supposed sins of America’s past, and once quipped, in relativist fashion, that America was now only exceptional to the degree that all peoples—such as the Greeks and the British—share such self-perceptions. More fundamentally, abroad a new “reset” foreign policy seeks to “lead from behind”—outsourcing military and diplomatic leadership to allies, while predicating U.S. intervention in Libya not on authorization from the U.S. Congress, but on a vote from the United Nations. Old enemies now seem to be neutrals—and so do our old allies as well. Sloganeering from the Obama administration—“multilateralism,” “reset,” and the “international community” —often seems aimed at conditioning now “soft” and “lazy” Americans who have lost “their competitive edge” to a new subservient role overseas.
> 
> Yet throughout history, national decline is rarely a result of uncontrollable external factors. It is usually a choice, not a fate. But if America’s future is well within our hands, should we be optimistic that we can still shape our own destiny to ensure continual American preeminence?
> 
> The building blocks of any civilization—demography, political cohesion and transparency, natural resources, social stability, military power, technological innovation, and scientific advancement—still weigh heavily in America’s favor. America is the third most populous country in the world; its fertility rate, with immigration, is about 2.1 children per woman far ahead of Russia (1.5), China (1.4), and the aggregate European Union (1.6). America is aging like all post-industrial nations, but at a far slower rate than its competitors.
> 
> The old misery index is at an all-time high.
> 
> Throughout 2008–2011, the world was plagued by costly riots, demonstrations, and strikes, from the so-called Arab Spring revolutions in North Africa, to the furor in Southern Europe over austerity measures, to little reported disturbances in China over everything from censorship and government confiscation of property to shoddy construction and government indifference to natural catastrophe. In contrast, the Occupy Wall Street protests were minuscule in numbers and, in many instances, peaceful. The Tea Party protests were likewise orderly and almost immediately led to peaceful political change in the 2010 midterm election.
> 
> In truth, the unique American Constitution and the two-party system grant America a degree of political stability simply unknown abroad. We lack the chaos of dozens of small parties and shaky political coalitions found in Europe, the brutality of Middle East dictatorship, and the authoritarianism of Russia and China. A multi-racial, multi-ethnic America suffers little of the religious strife found from the Middle East to the Balkans. There is little of the ethnic factionalism in America that is so common in Arab and African countries. And the aristocratic and class impediments to upward mobility that plague India and still bother the European Union are largely absent in the United States. American stability reminds investors that their money is safer in the United States, and translates into fewer economic losses due to social unrest.
> 
> The United States still possesses vast timber, agriculture, and mineral resources. In the last five years, its known fossil fuel reserves—petroleum, natural gas, coal, tar sands, and shale—and the ability to exploit them seem to have expanded twofold. Some forecasts suggest that should the United States develop all of its new known sources of energy in the American West, Alaska, the Dakotas, and offshore, it might have the ability to produce two-thirds of its daily carbon-based requirements within five years—a stunning and largely unforeseen development that will create millions of new jobs and cut drastically the current half-trillion-dollar cost of importing petroleum.
> 
> The recent nine-month-long Libyan War illustrated that NATO’s two most significant military powers—France and Great Britain—remain light-years behind the United States armed forces. True, China is developing an aircraft carrier, but it lacks the expertise and wartime experience of American carrier forces. We currently deploy 11 carrier battle groups, each one far more powerful than all the commensurate carrier groups of all the nations in the world put together.
> 
> It was common to suggest that the American military was “broken” in Iraq; in fact, enlistments are currently at record numbers, as all four branches of the military in 2010 met or exceeded their recruitment goals. The American military has trained an entire generation of officers in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose knowledge of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism is unmatched elsewhere in the world. In every category of military technology—armor, artillery, aircraft, ships, missiles, drones, robotics, small arms, and space—America remains far ahead of both its allies and rivals.
> 
> National decline is rarely the result of uncontrollable factors.
> 
> Recent surveys of higher education place American universities overwhelmingly in the top twenty internationally. In many surveys, California alone—Cal Tech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCLA—has more of the twenty top-ranked universities than any other nation in the world. Even during the supposed American downturn, most of the world’s largest corporations—Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobile, Chevron—remain American. It is unlikely that an Amazon, Apple, Facebook, or Google could have originated in Germany, Russia, China, or Japan, given their more highly regulated economies, less vibrant popular cultures, and less impressive universities.
> 
> All of this good news is not to deny that America does not have serious problems of an aging population, unsustainable entitlements, a clumsy tax system, growing regulations and impediments to business, disturbing ethnic and racial tribalism, and uncompetitive K-12 public schools. But we must interpret our current crises in two contexts: the manner in which the American political and social system can identify and address such challenges and the degree to which these same problems challenge our competitors.
> 
> By those standards, our recent history suggests that Americans can react quickly to serious threats. Bipartisan efforts piled up three consecutive budget surpluses from 1998 to 2000. Federal protocols prevented another massive terrorist attack in the decade following 9/11. High-tech corridors and idiosyncratic entrepreneurs have provided the world with innovative products like the iPhone, Google searches,  and discount shopping, whether of the Wal-Mart, EBay, or Amazon sort. Surging in 2008 saved a lost war in Iraq. America’s new drone forces can kill terrorists almost anywhere in the world. American engineering developed petroleum fracking that can vastly expand recoverable oil and gas. And the U.S. government helped save the financial system after the 2008 meltdown in a way that the European Union seems still incapable of doing.
> 
> This characteristic ability of the United States to respond to challenges, reinvent itself, and rebound is not to suggest that American preeminence is guaranteed in the coming decades. Rather, it means only that our destiny is in our own hands, should we have leadership that is intent on ensuring American predominance. The current rise of world hegemons like India and China recall similar warnings of a Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a postwar Soviet colossus of the 1950s and 1960s, a supposedly dominant Japan, Inc. during the 1970s, and a purportedly more moral and vibrant E.U. of the 1990s and 2000s. In every instance, the new ascendant rival eventually proved wanting in comparison to the United States. In other words, it is our decision whether China becomes our master or recedes, as did former twentieth-century competitors to the United States such as Germany, Russia, Japan, and the European Union.
> 
> In 2012, the public should ask the presidential candidates whether they believe America should accept a new role as merely one of many, or will they take the necessary steps to ensure our country’s traditional preeminence—as our perennially rebounding nation has done so often in the last seventy years.
> 
> Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a classicist and an expert on the history of war. A regular contributor to National Review Online and many other national and international publications, he has written or edited twenty books, including the New York Times best seller Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. His book The End of Sparta will appear in 2011. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal by President Bush in 2007 and the Bradley Prize in 2008.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Everything Victor Davis Hanson says, in the article posted just above by Thucydides, is true but I suggest that America is in in need of a broad "grand strategy" to define its aims for the next half century - something akin to what Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower enunciated in the 1940s and 50s. I see nothing of the kind from any of the major political parties, the emerging _movements_ nor the _commentariat_.

A "grand strategy" is variously described as:

1. The purposeful employment of all instruments of power available to a security community (Colin Gray); or, better

2. The co-ordination and direction of all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, towards the attainment of the political object of the war – the goal defined by fundamental policy (B.H. Liddell Hart); or, better still

3. Using the collection of plans and policies that comprise the state's deliberate effort to harness political, military, diplomatic, and economic tools together to advance that state's national interest. Grand strategy is the art of reconciling ends and means. It involves purposive action -- what leaders think and want. (Peter Feaver)

Feaver goes on to say, correctly, that Grand Strategy is "constrained by factors leaders explicitly recognize (for instance, budget constraints and the limitations inherent in the tools of statecraft) and by those they might only implicitly feel (cultural or cognitive screens that shape worldviews)" and "Grand strategy blends the disciplines of history (what happened and why?), political science (what underlying patterns and causal mechanisms are at work?), public policy (how well did it work and how could it be done better?), and economics (how are national resources produced and protected?)."

In my view, Grand Strategy is, roughly as Feaver describes it, a a clear statement of a nation's aims presented within a sensible framework composed of that nations history, geography, culture and geo-political/economic situation in the world. America's geo-political and economic situations have changed, are, indeed, constantly changing; it is constrained by its history and culture but emboldened by geography. It is time for an American leader to enunciate the "vision" that lies at the core of Grand Strategy by telling America where she or he wants to lead it and, by implication, the West, including Canada.


----------



## Edward Campbell

On the surface and given its headline, this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, belongs in the _Canadian Politics_ area but after reading it over a few times I decided that there is, really, little about the Liberal Party of Canada and lots about _Grand Strategy_ and, in the final paragraph a sensible prescription for America, divided or not:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/andrew-steele/are-liberals-up-to-challenge-of-total-strategic-overhaul/article2277475/singlepage/#articlecontent


> Are Liberals up to challenge of total strategic overhaul?
> 
> ANDREW STEELE
> 
> Globe and Mail Update
> Posted on Tuesday, December 20, 2011
> 
> Strategy is a word that gets thrown around a lot, and defined too little. Often, it is confused with the challenges of problem solving, optimizing efficiency or issue management.
> 
> The word comes from the Greek, meaning the commanding role of a general in a war. The conduct of individual engagements is tactics; the marshalling of the individual engagements into a co-ordinated, war-winning effort is strategy.
> 
> Texts from The Art of War to Clausewitz, added to the general understanding of military strategic thinking with concepts like positioning and the culminating point. Military strategy emphasizes work beyond simple planning to the adaptations that take place in response to enemy movements and changing conditions.
> 
> However, the military applications of strategy themselves define war as a subset of Grand Strategy or the organizing principals of nations, reducing even their own work to a tactic in the overall national strategy. Examples of Grand Strategy are the “Germany First” decision the Allies made in 1942, or the concept of containment during the Cold War.
> 
> While Grand Strategy is a fascinating topic, the academic work around it is not generally applicable. Study of grand strategy often focuses on the historical choices or current options facing international relations, rather than how to theoretically optimize strategy at its highest level.
> 
> One of the best definitions of strategy comes from business theory, and Harvard Professor Michael Porter. He argued that the essence of strategy was “choosing to perform activities differently than rivals do. Otherwise, a strategy is nothing more than a marketing slogan that will not withstand competition.”
> 
> The argument he makes is that strategy is about building a sustainable competitive advantage, ideally one that is virtuous and builds on itself constantly.
> 
> It must be something that competitors cannot mimic easily, otherwise it is not sustainable. It must be something that provides a real edge in differentiating your offering from others, or it is not a sufficient advantage to matter.
> 
> Perhaps most importantly, a good strategy is about trade-offs, and picking what you will and will not do. There will be excellent tactics offered up that could bring temporary gains, even great ones, but if they do not reinforce your sustainable competitive advantage, they may not be the right tactics.
> 
> A great example is Wal-Mart. Their low prices lead to market share, which gives them the ability to squeeze suppliers, which leads to lower prices, and so on. Each move Wal-Mart makes a decision increases its virtuous circle, whether it is a new IT system to link suppliers directly to their inventory system or an advertising campaign. The clarity of their strategic vision makes decision making more simple at a tactical level, and it makes it very difficult for rivals to catch up to their low price-market share-squeezed suppliers advantage.
> 
> Strategy as sustainable competitive advantage is a definition that can be translated to different settings. Just as there is no one “perfect” strategy for a nation state, the realities of a political campaign or business must be grounded in the resources available, the position of the organization on the competitive terrain, and the actions of the competitors themselves, finding a niche that builds and sustains a competitive advantage.
> 
> Applying this definition to politics, you can see that federal Liberals received a catastrophic thumping in this year’s election due to the loss of any sustainable competitive advantage.
> 
> Liberals are foremost the “party of power,” an organization whose ability to broker consensus among competing interests keeps them in office for long periods of time. However, the advantages of ideological flexibility, incrementalism and moderation become disadvantages in opposition, where clarity, boldness of vision and consistency are typical virtues.
> 
> As such, the Liberal positioning in opposition is a non-ideological “natural alternative government.” The Grits will wait, generally aligned with government orthodoxy but opposing the Conservatives on some symbolic issues, and then wait for the Tories to implode and the country to come back to them. They hold their position of alternative government by virtue of history, shouting down other challengers with claims of inevitability and strategic voting, and resting on a base of past clients of their brokerage politics.
> 
> However, this last election saw the Liberals eclipsed not just by the governing Tories but the traditional third party, erasing not just their government advantage but their opposition differentiation as well. At the same time, the Conservatives may have developed the skills and patience to recreate the strategic advantage over the past few years, adopting a more flexible and incremental approach compared to the Mulroney, Diefenbaker or Bennett eras.
> 
> As such, the Liberals will be hard pressed to use their past strategies to regain power, and will have to rebuild an entirely new strategy different from their typical “wait for the Tories to blow up” approach.
> 
> Canada as a nation has a strategy as well. I wrote a long piece for The Globe last summer on Canada's  Grand Strategy, which I won’t repeat here.
> 
> The Journal of Military and Strategic Studies includes some of the most interesting relevant work on Canada’s strategy. Jack Granatstein argues that Canada cannot actually have a grand strategy akin to great powers, because we lack the resources to sustain them.
> 
> What is intriguing about strategy in the national sense is the difficulty in identifying all but the most obvious examples. China, for instance, clearly has a strategy, but defining it is a difficult effort, far more complex than the classic “Germany First” strategy of the Allies.
> 
> But what is certain is that the United States has failed to develop a coherent national strategy since the end of the Cold War, and that absence can be directly attributed to the scattered and incoherent responses to international challenges like 9/11 and the Arab Spring, but also domestic failures in political consensus building.
> 
> Like the Liberals, the current struggles of the United States are strategic, and require the hard work and decisiveness to decide what they will do differently from competitors and – perhaps most importantly – to make the trade-offs of what they will no longer do.




The "trade-offs," what America will decide *not* to do, will have a real impact in the world. There are few nations able, much less willing to pick up all the pieces. China, for example, recognizes its dependence upon maritime trade and has begun, partially to combat piracy - even as it conveniently ignores the problem of Chinese pirates based in Fujian province and operating in the South China Seas, but it is not interested in becoming a global policeman. If, actually when America decides to make essential trade-offs who will pick up the tasks it "trades" away?


----------



## Kirkhill

There is something to be said for Principle #1:

To wit - Selection and Maintenance of the Aim.

Harper’s flat-tire federalism

Missing Bush


----------



## Edward Campbell

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> There is something to be said for Principle #1:
> 
> To wit - Selection and Maintenance of the Aim.
> 
> Harper’s flat-tire federalism
> 
> Missing Bush




Paul Wells (Haper's flat-tire federalism) might be taken more seriously if he wasn't innumerate - like 90% of his journalistic colleagues.

The _Canada First Defence Strategy_ does indeed promise to raise defence spending from $18 Billion to $30+ Billion *BUT* it also promises to cut defence spending as a percentage of GDP (a much, much more meaningful measure of the government's policy) - assuming any sort of reasonable GDP growth above, about, 1.5% per year. When, not if, the Great Recession ends (in, say, 2015/16) there is still 12 or 13 years during which the economy will likely grow by 2+ then 3+ and even 4+% per year making a sustained average growth rate of 2.5% per year from 2008 to 2018 a likely model and making the _Canada First Defence Strategy_ a recipe for disarmament.


----------



## a_majoor

VDH discusses the idea that there is no "Grand Strategy" being followed by the United States:

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/winning-battles-losing-wars/?print=1



> *Winning Battles, Losing Wars*
> 
> Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On May 20, 2012 @ 1:43 pm In Uncategorized | 29 Comments
> 
> Can We Still Win Wars?
> 
> Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question. We have enough conventional and nuclear power to crush any of our enemies many times over. Why then did we seem to bog down in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? The question is important since recently we do not seem able to translate tactical victories into long-term strategic resolutions. Why is that? What follows are some possible answers.
> 
> No—We Really Do Win Wars
> 
> Perhaps this is a poorly framed question: the United States does win its wars—if the public understands our implicit, limited strategic goals. In 1950 we wanted to push the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel and succeeded; problems arose when Gen. MacArthur and others redefined the mission as on to the Yalu in order to unite the entire Korean peninsula, a sort of Roman effort to go beyond the Rhine or Danube. Once we redefined our mission in 1951 as one more limited, we clearly won in Korea by preserving the South.
> 
> In Vietnam, the goal of establishing a viable South was achieved by 1974. Congress, not the president or the military, felt the subsequent peace-keeping commitments and air support were too costly. They allowed a renewed Northern invasion that led to a second and lost war, and then were surprised that the North Vietnamese proved to be not campus radicals but hardcore Stalinists.
> 
> Panama, Grenada, and Serbia were successful small enterprises. In the first Gulf War, the strategic aim was to oust Saddam from Kuwait—or so we said. That succeeded, though it did not solve the problem of what Saddam would in the future do with his vast oil revenues. In the second war, the mission was to remove him, birth a democracy, and then leave Iraq better than before. That more ambitious aim too succeeded—not, however, without enormous costs.
> 
> Our strategic objective in Afghanistan was to oust the Taliban and ensure that it did not return to host terrorists on Afghan soil. The former mission was done over a decade ago, the latter hinges on the Afghans themselves after we leave. We vowed to rid Libya of Gaddafi and we did—and did not exactly promise that what followed would be immediately better than what we removed. In such special pleading, the U.S. has won its wars as it has defined them. Note the great success of the Cold War that ended with the destruction of the Soviet Empire.
> 
> Not So Fast
> 
> But wait—North Korea was on the ropes and now over a half-century later still threatens our interests, and with nukes no less. Should not the destruction of that system have been the real aim of the Korean War? North Vietnam united the country under a communist government, whatever way you cut it. Iraq was a mess, and its democracy may in time prove no more than an Iran-backed Shiite autocracy. In Afghanistan, does anyone think our Afghan partners will keep out the Taliban after our departure? Are the Libyan riffraff that took over all that better than Gaddafi as they kill tribal rivals, hunt down blacks, and desecrate military cemeteries? What exactly were we doing in Lebanon and what did we do after terrorists killed 241 of our people?
> 
> Strategy, What Strategy?
> 
> Why, then, does the use of American military forces not guarantee sure victory? The most obvious answer ib why we argue over the results of our interventions is an inability to articulate our strategic objectives—what exactly do wish to see follow from our use of force and for how long and at what cost? Do we wish to rid the world of Bashar al-Assad? We could do that quite easily and probably without ground troops. But would the region be more or less stable? Would Iran suffer a blow or find ways to fund more terrorists? Would the collateral damage from funding insurgents or bombing be worse or not as bad as the current Assad toll? Would the insurgents prove reasonable, or more like those in Egypt and Libya—or even worse? Many of our problems seem to hinge on explaining to the public what we wish to do, why so, how, at what cost it is to be accomplished, and what we want things to look like when we’re through.
> 
> Off the Table
> 
> Then there is the question of restraint—the inability to use our full forces to their full effect, in the manner that we did in World War I or World War II. From 1945 to 1989 the Cold War defined and limited the rules of engagement, given the nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union and its various trouble-causing clients who hid behind it. In Vietnam and North Korea there were certain options that were off the table because of fear the Soviets or Chinese might strike elsewhere or the fighting could descend into a nuclear exchange. “Limited” wars are now the new normal when so many countries can claim a nuclear patron.
> 
> Law, not War
> 
> But in the last twenty years there is an even greater restraint to operations—a moral, if not smug, self-restraint that has turned fighting from a quest for victory into a matter of jurisprudence in which how we fight a war is more important than what we actually achieve. The old Neanderthal formula — we will level your cities, defeat and humiliate your military, impose our system of government upon you, and then give you our aid and friendship as you reinvent yourself as a free-market capitalist democracy — certainly worked with Germany, Japan, and Italy.
> 
> But does anyone believe that we could have bombed Saddam as we did those in Hamburg? The country that tore itself apart over waterboarding three confessed terrorists who had an indirect hand in the murder of 3,000 Americans seems ill-equipped to inflict the sort of damage on enemies that in the past made them accept both defeat and redemption. War is now a matter of legality, or nation-building before, not after, the enemy is fully defeated, and that means, given the unchanging nature of man, that it is very difficult to win a war as in the past. Note, in this context, Obama’s drone campaign, which he expanded seven- or eight-fold upon inheriting it from Bush. Is it not the perfect liberal way of war? There is no media hand-wringing over collateral damage; no burned faces, charred limbs, headless torsos on the evening news; no U.S. losses; no prisoners at Guantanamo. There is only a postmodern murderous video game and a brief administration chest-thump that “we’ve take out 20 of the top 30 al-Qaeda operatives.”
> 
> Wars of Choice
> 
> We are forgetting yet another wild card: since World War II, all our serial fighting in Asia, Central America, the Pacific, and Africa has involved optional wars—fighting that did not question the very existence of the U.S. Other than a few stand-offs with the Cold War Soviets at places like Berlin or Cuba, the United States had not faced an existential threat since the end of World War II. September 11 might have posted such a challenge, since had bin Laden or his epigones been able to repeat the initial attacks, then air travel as we know it would have ceased, along with the idea of an open, modern commercial economy.
> 
> But other than the efforts to go after al-Qaeda, most of our fighting has been optional—whether in Somalia or Libya—and that makes it hard to galvanize the American public. (Which also explains why administrations try to hype WMD, or Saddam, or al-Qaeda, or Gaddafi, or the monstrous Assad in order to turn these peripheral threats into existential enemies.) In optional wars, the public can disconnect, as fighting can be conducted without disruption of the civilian economy. Victory or defeat does not immediately either please or endanger the public at home. And the result is that our leaders do not necessarily wage these wars all out, with the prime directive of winning them. (Note how the monster-in-rehab Gaddafi, whose children were buying off Western academics and putting on art shows in London, by 2011 was back in our imaginations to the 1986 troll, and how the Assads of Vogue magazine are once again venomous killers.)
> 
> Too Rich to Fight?
> 
> Then there are classical symptoms of Catullan otium: societies that become leisured like ours grow complacent (otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes). They see military activity of all sorts coming at the expense of social redistributive programs: each dollar in aid campaigning abroad comes at the loss of one less new expansion in Medicare or Medicaid. Why then spend money overseas, when we could redistribute it for bread and circuses at home? A cruise missile is not seen as a wise investment in deterrence, but as a boondoggle that means one less Head Start center.
> 
> In postmodern America, we are all removed from mayhem, the killing of game for dinner, the sight of blood altogether. War is something “they” do, not our far more sophisticated selves, who have far greater claims on the federal treasury. Given that the therapeutic society of iPhones and Facebook believes that human nature has transcended violence, and no longer is prone to Thucydidean irrationality like fear, honor, or perceived self-interest, we believe that Libyan rebels are sort of like errant protestors of Occupy Wall Street, or the sometimes corrupt Chinese communist apparat that can be persuaded to be nice to Tibetans. That means war no longer involves good and evil, much less the elemental dirty means of using the former to destroy the latter.
> 
> Or Too Poor to Fight?
> 
> But wait, we are $16 trillion in debt, with serial $1 trillion budget deficits. Indeed, we are $9 trillion more in debt than when we went into Afghanistan. Any intervention now requires us to borrow the money from someone else. The truth is that for years we have been like Rome around AD 300 or Britain circa 1950—lots of supposed responsibilities, not enough money budgeted to fulfill them. The idea of a nation gearing up to smash an enemy when it has borrowed over $16 trillion on mostly social entitlements and pay-outs makes war a bad, if not absurd, investment.
> 
> On to Syria—or not?
> 
> With all this in mind, consider Bashar al-Assad. There is a growing movement in the press and Congress to go into Syria—either by arming the rebels, training them, or providing them air cover. But while we know that we have the power to do so (or rather can borrow the money from the Chinese to do so), do we have a strategic aim? What should Syria look like after the war (a constitutional state that would not support Iran, fund Hezbollah, undermine Lebanon, start a war with Israel, or build another reactor)?
> 
> Are U.S. arms and influence without ground troops able to see those laudable aims realized, or would a post-Assad Syria end up like Libya or Egypt—and would that still be better or worse than the present-day Syria, for us, for Christians and other minorities, for Israel, etc.? It is not enough to state the obvious: Assad is a U.S. enemy and a monster who is killing his own; we have the ability to take him out; ergo, we should.
> 
> Yet the same calculus applies to dozens of renegade states. If some advisor, pundit, general, or senator wants to go into Syria, then he must explain why Syria is more important than, say, the Congo or Somalia or the Sudan (or that we are following strategic self-interest in the Middle East, not humanitarianism)—and why we can leave the nation a far better place than under Assad, and how that is possible, given the nature of the dissidents and the fact it is the Middle East.
> 
> Remember, there is also an ironclad law about the Middle East, one we keep forgetting: Arab intellectuals (many of them educated or residing in Western universities) hate the U.S. for backing dictators; they hate the U.S. for intervening to remove them; they hate the U.S. for trying to impose postbellum democracy upon them; and they hate the U.S. for staying clear and letting Arabs be Arabs on their own.
> 
> Take out Saddam—”you created him in the first place”; stay to rebuild the country—”a neo-imperial enterprise to impose your values on a traditional society”; stay away and let him kill his own, or allow his successors to kill each other—”a callous disregard for the suffering of innocent others.”
> 
> Remember the critiques of Gulf War I and Gulf War II:
> 
> Gulf War I: a needlessly large coalition that curbed our options, a hyped-up war that did not warrant the huge forces we deployed, a shake-down of our allies to turn war into a money-making enterprise, a cynical disregard for the Shia and Kurds who yearned for democracy, a video-game war in which we slaughtered the inept without incurring much risk or danger;
> 
> Gulf War II: a too-small coalition that did not win international respect, too few forces deployed for the mission, a wasteful enterprise that did not demand monetary contributions from our allies, a naïve romance that Arabs could craft their own democracy, a dirty war in which we needlessly exposed our troops to mayhem and death.
> 
> Common denominator: whatever a Bush was for, critics were against.
> 
> We should posit one simple rule about intervening in the Middle East from now on. Please some honesty: we intervene for strategic advantage (no apologies for that), not humanitarianism. If those who advocate taking out Assad claim that it is to stop the bloodshed, then they must explain why there—and not where far more are slaughtered in Africa.
> 
> Again, state the proposed mission, debate the need and envisioned cost, articulate the strategic outcome, and then obtain it with overwhelming force—or otherwise forget it.
> 
> Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/winning-battles-losing-wars/


----------



## a_majoor

Without articulating the "Grand Strategy", everything could be lost due to indifference and domestic politics:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/05/22/shock-poll-51-of-voters-want-us-troops-out-of-europe/



> *Shock Poll: 51% of Voters Want US Troops Out of Europe*
> 
> The Rasmussen polling organization is out with a shock poll that the entire Washington establishment needs to study: 51 percent of voters surveyed said they wanted all US troops out of Europe, now. Only 29 percent favored keeping the troops where they are.
> 
> US troops have been in Europe since World War Two. In the Cold War, they not only kept the Russians out; they gave the rest of the Old World the confidence that Germany would not come storming back for a rematch. The presence of US troops helped give western Europe its longest era of peace since Roman times.
> 
> Since the end of the Cold War the US presence in Europe has made much less sense to the average American, but foreign policy junkies like yours truly think that it still serves a purpose. Not only do those troops provide security in new NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic republics; US bases in Europe are important in dealing with terror and other problems in the Middle East and without the US presence in Europe it is unlikely that NATO in its present form can survive.
> 
> The Rasmussen poll notes that 29 percent of the public still supports the US presence in Europe and that 20 percent is undecided. My guess is that with strong presidential leadership those numbers would change. The arguments for the US presence in Europe are credible, clear and compelling.
> 
> Unfortunately the current White House doesn’t like to talk about the pointy end of American foreign policy. It uses troops and sends them into battle around the world, but the President doesn’t often use the bully pulpit to explain why we must fight, why we need a strong military, why we need to deploy, and why sometimes it is cheaper and safer to have our first line of defense thousands of miles from our shores.
> 
> My guess is that if President Obama went to leading Democratic and Republican officials, they would join him in an effort to explain the importance of the NATO alliance and our European bases — and that this effort would turn those numbers around.
> 
> But foreign policy in a democracy isn’t a chess game for elites. If you don’t build support for your policies and your commitments, the support ebbs away. It is very natural for Americans to wonder why we still have troops in Europe almost seventy years after World War Two and a generation after the end of the Cold War. And it’s reasonable for people to ask why we should spend so much of our money to provide a security shield for countries who refuse to carry their fair share of the common burden.
> 
> These are reasonable questions — and they have reasonable answers. But this administration hasn’t done nearly enough to lay out the facts and the ideas behind America’s grand strategy in Europe to the public. (To be fair, the same criticism could be made of its predecessor.) Our national leadership is taking the national commitment to Europe and to NATO for granted, and this is a major mistake.
> 
> Americans over a certain age don’t really need to be told why we built NATO and why we are so determined to keep it strong, but every new generation needs to reach its own understanding of the pillars of our foreign policy. Given that many colleges fail to teach much about American foreign policy (beyond, perhaps, some references to the horrors of Vietnam and the dangers of Islamophobia), and that the national leadership is largely silent on the subject of America’s strategy, it’s not surprising that support for our European deployments is weak.
> 
> My guess is that while Governor Romney and President Obama differ on some details about our NATO policy, they are in fundamental agreement on the main lines of our European strategy.  It would be nice to hear some of that during this campaign, but whether or not that happens, the Washington establishment needs to stop taking the public for granted. There is a certain arrogance at work here — a belief that public opinion can be ignored for decades and that the peasants will pay taxes and do what they are told without asking questions.
> 
> That isn’t how it works anymore, and unless the establishment figures this out, much more than the NATO alliance could be at risk.


----------



## tomahawk6

Looking at the poll numbers its pretty clear that this poll is worthless.According to the poll 51% said they wanted US forces out of Europe.Some 29% were opposed and 20% were undecided.The margin of error is 3%. :


----------



## a_majoor

While this blog post is initially about Syria, the destruction of the Westphalian system of states is of much greater concern. Doctrines like R2P explicitly negate the sovereinity of State actors, and other assaults like the proliferation of NGO's essentially claiming State powers or the ability to interfere with and regulate State power continue as well. How the international system will remain workable under these conditions is a good question, (one of the other points this author makes is may nations are not "States" in any real sense of the word). Much to ponder:

http://www.barrelstrength.com/2012/06/24/the-end-of-the-westphalian-state-system-responsibility-to-protect-and-other-nostrums/



> *The end of the Westphalian state system: “responsibility to protect” and other nostrums*
> June 24, 2012 12:17 am Oban Uncategorized
> 
> The Thirty Years’ war was so catastrophic that the system which ended it, called the Peace of Westphalia, insisted that whatever went on inside some Prince’s state was his business. There would be no interference in someone else’s domestic affairs. The principle holds true today, despite the fact that we are no longer ruled by hereditary princes [Kennedy pretensions notwithstanding]. It is thought bad manners, and a breach of diplomatic courtesy, for a foreign leader so much as to comment on the internal arrangements of a foreign state.
> 
> Richard Rodriguez, writing in the Belmont Club, cites the problem of interference in the affairs of other states.
> 
> Nations — and those who formerly controlled them through the vote in countries where they voted — ain’t what they used to be. They’re in the way now. In place of Merkel’s “it’s for the Euro” the principle “it’s for the children” is substituted for a reason everywhere else. But the problem, as Kissinger points out, is that having abolished the Westphalian principle in one country after another where does it stop?
> 
> “If adopted as a principle of foreign policy, this form of intervention raises broader questions for U.S. strategy. Does America consider itself obliged to support every popular uprising against any non-democratic government, including those heretofore considered important in sustaining the international system? Is, for example, Saudi Arabia an ally only until public demonstrations develop on its territory? Are we prepared to concede to other states the right to intervene elsewhere on behalf of coreligionists or ethnic kin?”
> 
> This brought Oban out of his silence.
> 
> “I agree that D2P (duty to protect) is both doomed to fail as too selective and arbitrary to serve as a basis for settled policy. It is only possible where there is no overriding interests of a principal actor at play or where the particular regime is too heinous for even its allies to watch. But we are never going to intervene if Russia or China or the USA decides to slaughter its citizens. I am also under no illusions that the regimes that are emerging from the Arab spring are likely to be sustainable, nor friendly to the West and its values. The suppression of middle class politics has gone on too long and so debased civil society and its institutions that it is unlikely that we will see anything resembling the rule of law, democracy, or anything other than crony capitalism in our lifetimes or those of our children.
> 
> “As Kissinger himself points out, the mid-east never had Westfalian style states or doctrines of non-intervention. It is actually hard to say that there were states there of any description: it always came down to clanship systems of the devision of spoils. The families divided up government posts, industrial jobs etc on a conveyor belt of patronage and personal obligation. Remove that and you get Lebanon. The Egyptian army is intent to protect its spoils system and so is the Assad regime.
> 
> “As I see it, the biggest thing that is going on in the middle east is the reemergence of Turkey as a regional power. It is the most likely power to counteract Iranian interests, and it is closer to the scene to make Russian meddling ineffective in the long run. Iran is also unlikely to to share long term interests with Russia, except to the extent the Mullahs can divert the attention of the Turks from their customary role as liege of the petty dynasties of the Levant.
> 
> “I rather suspect that it will be the Turks who deploy force to stabilize Syria and Lebanon, and in doing so will crush the Iranian puppets and keep the Sunni successors to Assad and his hangmen on a shortish leash.
> 
> “It is too bad that Israel has so badly missed the opportunity to deal with the Palestine issue, as that is the essential element for peace with Turkey in the long term. Netanyahu is not playing a long game in strategic terms. He sees settlement in the West Bank as a key to Israeli security. It is an illusion. Security will come from being able to count Turkey, Saudi Arabia (for the next 20 years or so), and Egypt as unwilling to intervene or upset the status quo in Israel. The settlements issue is destabilizing to any status quo and hence tendentially encouraging of intervention or support for the next intifada.
> 
> “Meantime, with all due deference to Mr. Kissinger, the Westphalian system was destroyed by Napoleon. The result of that was the emergence of Prussian state Germany (Kleindeutschland), which destroyed the state remnants of the Westphalian system, and set in place the race to nation states that destabilized the European state system completely and led to the emergence of a string of pseudo-states in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. We are now seeing the play out of WWII with the emergence of Germany as again the principal glue to European cohesion, France busy squandering its European role on a frolic of its own, the destruction of the Brussels system, and the end of pretence that the European institutions have any meaning without a European state.
> 
> “As it happens, only Germany can be the centre of a European state, and France may again, to the destruction of all that has been built, serve to undermine the European mission. Many won’t regret its passing, but it not be without consequences that will be felt by us all, most likely in a negative way. Bring on the Trans Pacific Partnership!


----------



## a_majoor

Robert Kaplan's new book. Kaplan has always been an exponent of the idea that "History is Geography"; emphasizing how the landscape defines human affairs in his books and articles.  This has been a theme since "Balken Ghosts", and he has explored the concept in depth and in many contexts (read "The Ends of the Earth", "An Empire Wilderness" or "Monsoon" to get the full flavour of this idea).

While History is not always Geography, Kaplan's insights should be read and understood by anyone thinking about policy, foreign affairs or strategy as a foundational grounding.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate is next on my reading list.



> In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world.
> 
> In The Revenge of Geography, Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. The Russian steppe’s pitiless climate and limited vegetation bred hard and cruel men bent on destruction, for example, while Nazi geopoliticians distorted geopolitics entirely, calculating that space on the globe used by the British Empire and the Soviet Union could be swallowed by a greater German homeland.
> 
> Kaplan then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia. Remarkably, the future can be understood in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties: China, able to feed only 23 percent of its people from land that is only 7 percent arable, has sought energy, minerals, and metals from such brutal regimes as Burma, Iran, and Zimbabwe, putting it in moral conflict with the United States. Afghanistan’s porous borders will keep it the principal invasion route into India, and a vital rear base for Pakistan, India’s main enemy. Iran will exploit the advantage of being the only country that straddles both energy-producing areas of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Finally, Kaplan posits that the United States might rue engaging in far-flung conflicts with Iraq and Afghanistan rather than tending to its direct neighbor Mexico, which is on the verge of becoming a semifailed state due to drug cartel carnage.
> 
> A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century’s looming cataclysms.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Despite our varying views on Iraq and the Arab world and Afghanistan and, indeed, Burnett’s *gap*, which includes pretty much all of the so-called Muslim Crescent, I think we can agree that the single most important driver for the coming decade and more, for that region and the world, is US foreign policy.  Here, reproduced from _Foreign Affairs_ (July/August 2007) under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act is a lengthy article which might provide a good jumping off point.
> 
> The authors, two distinguished American academics, offer a valuable history lesson, reminding us that what most Canadians – especially journalists and the _commentariat_ – think of as _traditional_ American foreign policy is only about 70 years old – dating from the Roosevelt administration.  Next they offer a six point programme which I think is worthy of debate.
> 
> While I find nothing to which I might object, I suspect that all six points will be controversial in some most almost all US political circles.  Readers who are familiar with Walter Russell Mead’s  _Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World_ (Knopf, 2001) will recognize that president Bush is, in Mead’s terms, a pure _Jacksonian_ while Kupchan and Trubowitz are proposing a mix of _Hamiltonian_ and _Jeffersonian_ policies.
> 
> We are still a bit away from the day when China or India will challenge American hegemony but, as Prof Pan Wei of Peking University wrote (Harvard International Review), _Under this poor leadership_ [provided by President Bush]_, a previously “benign hegemon” is becoming an oppressive tyrant that suffers opposition almost everywhere in the world._  Prof. Pan worried that _vis à vis_ China President Bush’s foreign policy _” will ultimately cause the decline of US power, and it may not succeed in precluding China’s emergence from a new decade of political reform. Instead, belligerent confrontation will only lead to an escalation of tensions.”_  It is, in my view, likely to do the same with India, Europe and much of the rest of the world, too.
> 
> That being said, it will be hard for a Republican administration to turn its back, completely, on Bush and his policies if only because of the political power of the *religious right*.  It will be equally hard for Democrats to do the same.  American power needs to be rebuilt, enhanced and then maintained – cutting and running is not the best way to build power.
> 
> Anyway, here it is:
> 
> *Part 1 of 2*
> 
> http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86406/charles-a-kupchan-peter-l-trubowitz/grand-strategy-for-a-divided-america.html




Going all the way back to P.1 of this thread (and five years in time) I still think US foreign policy is *vitally important* to Canada and the world. With that in mind, here is a view of foreign policy and presidential politics by Christopher Preble of the (libertarian inclined) _Cato Institute_. It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisons of the Copyright Act from the _Cato Institute's_ website:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/when-obama-and-romney-talk-foreign-policy-who-wins-2/


> When Obama and Romney Talk Foreign Policy, Who Wins?
> 
> Posted by Christopher Preble
> 
> The presidential campaign will focus on foreign policy for a few hours on Tuesday when President Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City while his Republican challenger Mitt Romney will address the Clinton Global Initiative just a few miles away. Each will try to wring some political advantage from speeches that are generally directed at foreign audiences.
> 
> Neither candidate is likely to come out a winner, although for different reasons. It will be difficult for President Obama to convince the electorate and the world that U.S. policies, particularly in the volatile Greater Middle East, are succeeding. But Mitt Romney’s challenge is greater. He must convince voters that his policies would result in tangible gains. It isn’t clear that they would, however, nor that his policies are sufficiently different from the president’s to convince voters to change horses in mid-stream.
> 
> The president is likely to call for staying the course. Echoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remarks from last week, he will try to convince the people of the Middle East that the United States remains their friend and partner, and he will tell skeptical Americans that the feeling is mutual. He may point to the large quantities of aid that U.S. taxpayers have sent to the region to win points with foreign audiences, but this risks alienating the voters here at home.
> 
> Obama may also emphasize that the United States intends to maintain a large military presence in the region so as to, as Secretary Clinton said last week, “help bring security to these nations so that the promise of the revolutions that they experienced can be realized.” But foreign listeners aren’t convinced that the United States has helped bring security to anyone, and they certainly don’t want U.S. help now.
> 
> Obama’s message to Americans, delivered between the lines of his UN speech, is that the United States cannot afford to disengage from the region. Be patient, Obama will say. Many decades of trying to manage the political affairs of other countries, often with the heavy hand of the U.S. military, has carried high costs and delivered few clear benefits, but it could have been worse.
> 
> Not so, says Romney and the Republicans. President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world has clearly failed, they claim. The Cairo speech in 2009, followed by the belated support for anti-Mubarak protesters in Egypt in 2011, and finally the decision to use U.S. military power to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, don’t appear to have purchased us much good will. On the contrary, anti-American sentiment is running high, higher even than when Obama took office, according to some polls. The violence against U.S. officials and property merely punctuates the grim statistics, and invites ominous parallels to 1979.
> 
> But while Obama’s task will be difficult, Mitt Romney has an even higher hill to climb. He must differentiate his policies from the president’s and persuade U.S. voters, especially, but also the skeptics abroad, that his policies would be much better. His surrogates have implied that the events of the past fortnight certainly would not have occurred had Romney been in the Oval Office, but they haven’t explained how or why that is true.
> 
> Meanwhile, the few concrete policies that Romney champions are deeply unpopular in the region, and not much more popular with U.S. voters. His calls to add nearly $2 trillion in military spending over the next decade suggest a willingness to increase the U.S. military presence around the world, but especially in the Greater Middle East. Most Americans want U.S. troops to be brought home. His leading foreign policy adviser has criticized the Obama administration for refusing to intervene in the Syrian civil war. This suggests that the problem with U.S. policy has been too little meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries, whereas most Americans believe that there has been too much. And Romney did not endorse Sen. Rand Paul’s effort to tie U.S. aid to conditions, so it is hard to see how he can score points against President Obama by promising to stick with the status quo.
> 
> However, all of these other issues pale in comparison to the most visible U.S. policy in the region of the past decade: the Iraq war. That disastrous conflict will hang heavily over Romney’s speech, as it has over his entire campaign, and over the GOP for several election cycles. Although most Americans now believe that the war never should have been fought, and most non-Americans never thought that it should have been, Romney refuses to repudiate it. On the contrary, he has staffed his campaign with some of the war’s leading advocates. Given his famous aversion to anything that might be construed as an apology, Romney is unlikely to evince any doubts about the war in his speech on Tuesday. But if he wants to convince voters that he will be a more capable steward of U.S. foreign policy than Obama has been, he must at least explain what lessons he takes away from an unpopular war. Otherwise, his implicit assertion that it couldn’t get any worse will fall flat with those who believe that it certainly could.
> 
> _Christopher Preble • September 24, 2012_




Please: *NO OBAMA OR ROMNEY BASHING OR I WILL, PERSONALLY AND QUICKLY, ASK THE MODS TO LOCK THIS THREAD, TOO*. THE TOPIC IS _GRAND STRATEGY_: YES IT IS ABOUT "DIVIDED AMERICA' BUT IT IS NOT ABOUT TWEEDLE-DUM AND TWEEDLE-DUMBER.

In my view, Preble has it about right: American foreign policy has drifted farther and farther off any _constructive_ course since the 1950s. Eisenhower, and especially the Dulles brothers, gets some of the blame; Kennedy gets a whole lot more, he and people like McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara really _screwed the pooch_ but it kept going downhill, except for a brief Nixon interlude when enlightened self interest regained pride of place, until now it makes no sense at all.

*Rogues gallery:*







  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



John Foster Dulles                                Allen Dulles                                  McGeorge Bundy                 Robert McNamara


----------



## a_majoor

Too right. I cheated a bit and read the penultimate chapter on Americnan destiny in Kaplan's new book, and he makes the rather obvious point that while the Us spends blood and treasure in the Middle East, the American elites tend to ignore the very massive problems on their own borders; especially the southern one.

In Kaplan's view, the American destiny will be fulfilled by embracing a North-South vision rather than an East West one (Kaplan is speaking of the parochial "sea to shining sea" East-West), and expending much of her time and effort to making the North South effort work. (Note, some of his other ideas along these lines flow more from "An Empire Wilderness", seeing the future more as a series of "city states" based on urban and exurban economies linked by local geography and continental trade).

American Foreign Policy seems to be informed by a McKindererite view of the world; preventing anyone from occupying the "heartland" in order to dominate the "World Island" might be the underlying "Grand Strategic" idea; but as any player of Risk will tell you; it is danmed hard to do and most people canot carry it off.


----------



## tomahawk6

I am of the school of thought that evil must be confronted. German and Japanese expansion had to be stopped and the US reluctantly was dragged into WW2. The need to confront communism resulted in two regional wars Korea and Vietnam. Now the fight is against radical islamists who see their calling to force islam on the rest of the world. Were it not for the US and its allies they might be successful. The problem with radicals is that want change now. Whereas if they simply bided their time and worked within the western democracies they might achieve in time the quiet islamization of the west.


----------



## a_majoor

Evil must be confronted, but given limits of time and resources, you need to pick your battles and utilize your resources to the best effect.

Radical Islam in the "heartland" is probably best dealt with through "containment"; the United States was quite successful using this strategy against the USSR, and the supposed membership of the Caliphate is even less able to project power than the Soviet Union. Develop and export Fracking technology will undercut the one main reason the Middle East is interesting at all; collapsing the world price of oil will do wonders  for economic growth and political stability throughout the world


----------



## tomahawk6

Containment doesnt work.Sanctions dont work. The bad guys take and take until finally they have taken everything. Some things are not negotiable. Freedom and our way of life are the biggies for me. All of us have lost friends and loved one's in this fight and we do them a disservice not to confront evil until it is no more.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Containment doesnt work ...




Yes it does! See USSR 1946 to 1991 ~ for 45 years we, the American led West, _*contained*_ the USSR until, finally, it collapsed. It _tested_ us a few time - most notably in Korea, where it used proxies to actually engage us - but it never managed to meet us, face-to-face in battle because it knew it could not win.





George F. Kennan
Author of the _Containment_ idea, and
an American hero in his own right


----------



## Journeyman

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Containment doesnt work.Sanctions dont work.


I would suggest now is a good time to re-read Gaddis' _Strategies of Containment_. While pre-dating the Cold War's end by two decades, it still provides some relevant lessons. In particular, I'd look at the differences between George Kennan's "long telegram" and what played out due to NSC-68. 

Kennan argued that the source of Russia's insecurity [read Islamist insecurity] was internal and could not be alleviated through diplomacy. Because the Kremlin [Ayatolas] could not govern by any means other than repression, portraying the outside world as being "evil, hostile, and menacing" was a boon to Soviet [Islamist] legitimacy.

Unfortunately NSC-68 committed the US to defending everywhere. Kennan's containment vision was one of attacking specific weaknesses, arguing for a strategy of "patience and firmness" that recognized disputes but maintained "a calculated relationship of resources to objectives." 

I suspect that containment will work, letting the "internal contradictions" of the modernizing Persian/Arab world play themselves out. We just need to be rational about how we play out our containment policy, avoiding knee-jerk reactions.





> All of us have lost friends and loved one's in this fight and we do them a disservice not to confront evil until it is no more.


Sorry T6, but the emotional grab actually detracts from any argument's logic. I also suspect that a policy of complete annihilation can only strengthen the Islamists' determination, adding fuel to their argument about the intentions of the "evil west." Containing them as they struggle through their own Reformation is neither appeasement nor a disservice to our fallen.


Edit: Obviously, ERC types faster than I.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I would suggest now is a good time to re-read Gaddis' _Strategies of Containment_. While pre-dating the Cold War's end by two decades, it still provides some relevant lessons. In particular, I'd look at the differences between George Kennan's "long telegram" and what played out due to NSC-68.
> 
> Kennan argued that the source of Russia's insecurity [read Islamist insecurity] was internal and could not be alleviated through diplomacy. Because the Kremlin [Ayatolas] could not govern by any means other than repression, portraying the outside world as being "evil, hostile, and menacing" was a boon to Soviet [Islamist] legitimacy.
> 
> Unfortunately NSC-68 committed the US to defending everywhere. Kennan's containment vision was one of attacking specific weaknesses, arguing for a strategy of "patience and firmness" that recognized disputes but maintained "a calculated relationship of resources to objectives."
> 
> I suspect that containment will work, letting the "internal contradictions" of the modernizing Persian/Arab world play themselves out. We just need to be rational about how we play out our containment policy, avoiding knee-jerk reactions.
> 
> 
> Sorry T6, but the emotional grab actually detracts from any argument's logic. I also suspect that a policy of complete annihilation can only strengthen the Islamists' determination, adding fuel to their argument about the intentions of the "evil west." Containing them as they struggle through their own Reformation is neither appeasement nor a disservice to our fallen.
> 
> 
> Edit: Obviously, ERC types faster than I.




I guess I do type faster than JM, but I wish I had said the highlighted parts.   and +300 Milpoints


----------



## Journeyman

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> .. but I wish I had said the highlighted parts. applied liberally stolen insights from John Lewis Gaddis to our current situation   ;D


   Sometimes "wisdom" is just knowing who to quote.


----------



## a_majoor

Don't think that containment is a passive process T6 (even if our historical example wasn't particularly "activist").

Using communications to implant memes, disrupting their trade (by suppressing oil prices) and judiciously supporting elements within such as the Kurds will keep the self styled Caliphate busy for decades, and given the shape of the Islamic Crescent along the shores of Africa, through the Levant, Iran, across the north of India and south into Indonesia we can employ a maritime strategy, positioning ourselves in the Indian Ocean and using the "interior" position to strike at the times and places of our choosing, should that be the desired strategic response to some provocation or other.

The prohibition against land wars in Asia are fully in force here, especially given the demographic imbalance over a long war, but we also have allies in the containment policy; Russia in the Caucus and Trans Caucus regions and the 'Stans, China in the East and India in the center of the crescent. They mostly do not share our values or even goals, but all have a pressing interest in keeping Radical Islam contained, so will be working more or less in concert with the West on containment.


----------



## Old Sweat

Let me ask a couple of questions. If we accept that a campaign strategy that worked in one theatre will probably fail given a different set of circumstances, how would you apply containment that was successful against the Soviets to the Islamist crescent with its fairly wide variations in culture and the contradictions caused by various branches of creed and tribal/ethnic background? It may be that frontier soldiering like we practiced in NATO for 40 years would be counter-productive. 

On another tack, given that appeasement and apologies can be treated with suspicion and/or considered a sign of weakness, how do we convince them restraint on the part of the west is not a sign of fear?


----------



## tomahawk6

How do you contain a religion ?


----------



## GAP

Maybe we should take a page out of the Soviet doctrine. They were brutal when it came to them being hit by anything....it got the message out quickly and effectively.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Let me ask a couple of questions. If we accept that a campaign strategy that worked in one theatre will probably fail given a different set of circumstances, how would you apply containment that was successful against the Soviets to the Islamist crescent with its fairly wide variations in culture and the contradictions caused by various branches of creed and tribal/ethnic background? It may be that frontier soldiering like we practiced in NATO for 40 years would be counter-productive.
> 
> On another tack, given that appeasement and apologies can be treated with suspicion and/or considered a sign of weakness, how do we convince them restraint on the part of the west is not a sign of fear?




Interesting question ... which I do not propose to answer but which caused me to revisit _The Sources of Soviet Conduct_ which was published in _Foreign Affairs_ in 1947. It was 'signed' by *X* but it as open secret that *X* was George Kennan.

I have highlighted some parts of _The Sources of Soviet Conduct_ that I guess Kennan might have used had he been writing 60+ years later about the _Islamic Crescent_.

Emphasis and edits are mine
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/23331/x/the-sources-of-soviet-conduct?page=show


> The Sources of Soviet Conduct
> 
> By "X" (George F. Kennan)
> 
> July 1947
> 
> The political personality of Soviet _Islamist_ power as we know it today is the product of ideology and circumstances: ideology inherited by the present Soviet _Islamist_ leaders from the movement in which they had their political origin, and circumstances of the power which they now have exercised for nearly three decades in Russia the _Islamic regions_. There can be few tasks of psychological analysis more difficult than to try to trace the interaction of these two forces and the relative role of each in the determination of official Soviet conduct. Yet the attempt must be made if that conduct is to be understood and effectively countered.
> 
> It is difficult to summarize the set of ideological concepts with which the Soviet leaders came into power. Marxian ideology, in its Russian-Communist projection, has always been in process of subtle evolution. The materials on which it bases itself are extensive and complex. But the outstanding features of Communist thought as it existed in 1916 may perhaps be summarized as follows: (a) that the central factor in the life of man, the factor which determines the character of public life and the "physiognomy of society," is the system by which material goods are produced and exchanged their god's will as handed down to them in their _Quran_; (b) that the capitalist system of production is a nefarious one which inevitably leads to the exploitation of the working class by the capital-owning class and is incapable of developing adequately the economic resources of society or of distributing fairly the material goods produced by human labor; (c) that Wetern capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and must, in view of the inability of the capital-owning class to adjust itself to economic change, result eventually and inescapably in a revolutionary transfer of power to the working class the Muslim god's will; and (d) that imperialism, the final phase of capitalism, leads directly to war and revolution.
> 
> The rest may be outlined in Lenin's own words: "Unevenness of economic and political development is the inflexible law of capitalism. It follows from this that the victory of Socialism may come originally in a few capitalist countries or even in a single capitalist country. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and having organized Socialist production at home, would rise against the remaining capitalist world, drawing to itself in the process the oppressed classes of other countries." [see endnote 1] It must be noted that there was no assumption that capitalism would perish without proletarian revolution. A final push was needed from a revolutionary proletariat movement in order to tip over the tottering structure. But it was regarded as inevitable that sooner or later that push be given.
> 
> For 50 years prior to the outbreak of the Revolution, this pattern of thought had exercised great fascination for the members of the Russian revolutionary movement. Frustrated, discontented, hopeless of finding self-expression -- or too impatient to seek it -- in the confining limits of the Tsarist existing political system, yet lacking wide popular support for their choice of bloody revolution as a means of social betterment, these revolutionists found in Marxist fundamentalist Islamic theory dogma a highly convenient rationalization for their own instinctive desires. It afforded pseudo-scientific religious justification for their impatience, for their categorical denial of all value in the Tsarist existing system, for their yearning for power and revenge and for their inclination to cut corners in the pursuit of it. It is therefore no wonder that they had come to believe implicitly in the truth and soundness of the Marxian-Leninist teachings, so congenial to their own impulses and emotions. Their sincerity need not be impugned. This is a phenomenon as old as human nature itself. It has never been more aptly described than by Edward Gibbon, who wrote in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud." And it was with this set of conceptions that the members of the Bolshevik Party entered into power.
> 
> Now it must be noted that through all the years of preparation for revolution, the attention of these men, as indeed of Marx himself, had been centered less on the future form which Socialism [see endnote 2] would take than on the necessary overthrow of rival power which, in their view, had to precede the introduction of Socialism. Their views, therefore, on the positive program to be put into effect, once power was attained, were for the most part nebulous, visionary and impractical. Beyond the nationalization of industry and the expropriation of large private capital holdings there was no agreed program. The treatment of the peasantry, which according to the Marxist formulation was not of the proletariat, had always been a vague spot in the pattern of Communist thought; and it remained an object of controversy and vacillation for the first ten years of Communist power.
> 
> The circumstances of the immediate post-revolution period -- the existence in Russia of civil war and foreign intervention, together with the obvious fact that the Communists represented only a tiny minority of the Russian people -- made the establishment of dictatorial power a necessity. The experiment with "war Communism" and the abrupt attempt to eliminate private production and trade had unfortunate economic consequences and caused further bitterness against the new revolutionary regime. While the temporary relaxation of the effort to communize Russia, represented by the New Economic Policy, alleviated some of this economic distress and thereby served its purpose, it also made it evident that the "capitalistic sector of society" was still prepared to profit at once from any relaxation of governmental pressure, and would, if permitted to continue to exist, always constitute a powerful opposing element to the Soviet regime and a serious rival for influence in the country. Somewhat the same situation prevailed with respect to the individual peasant who, in his own small way, was also a private producer.
> 
> Lenin, had he lived, might have proved a great enough man to reconcile these conflicting forces to the ultimate benefit of Russian society, though this is questionable. But be that as it may, Stalin, and those whom he led in the struggle for succession to Lenin's position of leadership, were not the men to tolerate rival political forces in the sphere of power which they coveted. Their sense of insecurity was too great. Their particular brand of fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which they had emerged they carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of permanent and peaceful coexistence of rival forces. Easily persuaded of their own doctrinaire "rightness," they insisted on the submission or destruction of all competing power. Outside of the Communist Party, Russian society was to have no rigidity. There were to be no forms of collective human activity or association which would not be dominated by the Party. No other force in Russian society was to be permitted to achieve vitality or integrity. Only the Party was to have structure. All else was to be an amorphous mass.
> 
> And within the Party the same principle was to apply. The mass of Party members might go through the motions of election, deliberation, decision and action; but in these motions they were to be animated not by their own individual wills but by the awesome breath of the Party leadership and the over-brooding presence of "the word."
> 
> Let it be stressed again that subjectively these men probably did not seek absolutism for its own sake. They doubtless believed -- and found it easy to believe -- that they alone knew what was good for society and that they would accomplish that good once their power was secure and unchallengeable. But in seeking that security of their own rule they were prepared to recognize no restrictions, either of God or man, on the character of their methods. And until such time as that security might be achieved, they placed far down on their scale of operational priorities the comforts and happiness of the peoples entrusted to their care.
> 
> Now the outstanding circumstance concerning the Soviet regime is that down to the present day this process of political consolidation has never been completed and the men in the Kremlin have continued to be predominantly absorbed with the struggle to secure and make absolute the power which they seized in November 1917. They have endeavored to secure it primarily against forces at home, within Soviet society itself. But they have also endeavored to secure it against the outside world. For ideology, as we have seen, taught them that the outside world was hostile and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their borders. The powerful hands of Russian history and tradition reached up to sustain them in this feeling. Finally, their own aggressive intransigence with respect to the outside world began to find its own reaction; and they were soon forced, to use another Gibbonesque phrase, "to chastise the contumacy" which they themselves had provoked. It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.
> 
> Now it lies in the nature of the mental world of the Soviet leaders, as well as in the character of their ideology, that no opposition to them can be officially recognized as having any merit or justification whatsoever. Such opposition can flow, in theory, only from the hostile and incorrigible forces of dying capitalism. As long as remnants of capitalism were officially recognized as existing in Russia, it was possible to place on them, as an internal element, part of the blame for the maintenance of a dictatorial form of society. But as these remnants were liquidated, little by little, this justification fell away; and when it was indicated officially that they had been finally destroyed, it disappeared altogether. And this fact created one of the most basic of the compulsions which came to act upon the Soviet regime: since capitalism no longer existed in Russia and since it could not be admitted that there could be serious or widespread opposition to the Kremlin springing spontaneously from the liberated masses under its authority, it became necessary to justify the retention of the dictatorship by stressing the menace of capitalism abroad.
> 
> This began at an early date. In 1924 Stalin specifically defended the retention of the "organs of suppression," meaning, among others, the army and the secret police, on the ground that "as long as there is a capitalist encirclement there will be danger of intervention with all the consequences that flow from that danger." In accordance with that theory, and from that time on, all internal opposition forces in Russia have consistently been portrayed as the agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic to Soviet power.
> 
> By the same token, tremendous emphasis has been placed on the original Communist thesis of a basic antagonism between the capitalist and Socialist worlds. It is clear, from many indications, that this emphasis is not founded in reality. The real facts concerning it have been confused by the existence abroad of genuine resentment provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics and occasionally by the existence of great centers of military power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany and the Japanese Government of the late 1930s, which did indeed have aggressive designs against the Soviet Union. But there is ample evidence that the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.
> 
> Now the maintenance of this pattern of Soviet _Islamist_ power, namely, the pursuit of unlimited authority domestically, accompanied by the cultivation of the semi-myth of implacable foreign hostility, has gone far to shape the actual machinery of Soviet power as we know it today in some countries where fundamentalist _Islamist_ regimes have taken power. Internal organs of administration which did not serve this purpose withered on the vine. Organs which did serve this purpose became vastly swollen. The security of Soviet _Islamist_ power came to rest on the iron discipline of the Party, on the severity and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the uncompromising economic monopolism of the state. The "organs of suppression," in which the Soviet leaders had sought security from rival forces, became in large measure the masters of those whom they were designed to serve. Today the major part of the structure of Soviet power is committed to the perfection of the dictatorship and to the maintenance of the concept of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy lowering beyond the walls. And the millions of human beings who form that part of the structure of power must defend at all costs this concept of Russia's position, for without it they are themselves superfluous.
> 
> As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting with these organs of suppression. The quest for absolute power, pursued now for nearly three decades with a ruthlessness unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times, has again produced internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The excesses of the police apparatus have fanned the potential opposition to the regime into something far greater and more dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began.
> 
> But least of all can the rulers dispense with the fiction by which the maintenance of dictatorial power has been defended. For this fiction has been canonized in Soviet philosophy by the excesses already committed in its name; and it is now anchored in the Soviet structure of thought by bonds far greater than those of mere ideology.


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## Old Sweat

This could lead to the somewhat inappropriate self-licking ice cream cone analogy where the ramifications not so serious. Unlike Communism, where the system came to exist for the benefit of the party, and not the masses, Islam as a guide for life could appeal to the population as a whole. The disparities in rewards found in some Gulf states may lead to their replacement by more radical but economically egalitarian regimes. However, some of the more radical groups such as the Taliban, by their excesses may not enjoy as wide spread support as they believe. They certainly were prone to imposing their will by draconian measures. This lack of widespread rewards and the need to enforce the doctrine also ultimately was one of the great weaknesses of Communism. It still remains that Islamist indoctrination could prove to be more successful as a popular movement than Communism ever was, which brings me back to my original question - re how to contain it until it ultimately falters of its own contradictions?

It seems to me that as a principle to appease or to condone outrages against the greater world community outside the cresecent can not be allowed. At the same time, the application of economic power to force them into a race they cannot would seem fruitful, even if it is a long term goal.


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## Edward Campbell

Continuing with _The Sources of Soviet Conduct_:



> So much for the historical background. What does it spell in terms of the political personality of Soviet power as we know it today?
> 
> Of the original ideology, nothing has been officially junked. Belief is maintained in the basic badness of capitalism, in the inevitability of its destruction, in the obligation of the proletariat to assist in that destruction and to take power into its own hands. But stress has come to be laid primarily on those concepts which relate most specifically to the Soviet regime itself: to its position as the sole truly Socialist regime in a dark and misguided world, and to the relationships of power within it.
> 
> The first of these concepts is that of the innate antagonism between capitalism and Socialism secularism and _Islamist_ beliefs. We have seen how deeply that concept has become imbedded in foundations of Soviet power in several Muslim states. It has profound implications for Russia's their conduct as a members of international society. It means that there can never be on Moscow's their side any sincere assumption of a community of aims between the Soviet Union them and powers which are regarded as capitalist secular - including China. It must invariably be assumed in Moscow Muslim capitals that the aims of the capitalist secular world are antagonistic to the Soviet Muslim regime, and therefore to the interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet Muslim government occasionally sets its signature to documents which would indicate the contrary, this is to be regarded as a tactical maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is without honor) and should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor. Basically, the antagonism remains. It is postulated. And from it flow many of the phenomena which we find disturbing in the Kremlin's many Muslim countries' conduct of foreign policy: the secretiveness, the lack of frankness, the duplicity, the wary suspiciousness and the basic unfriendliness of purpose. These phenomena are there to stay, for the foreseeable future. There can be variations of degree and of emphasis. When there is something the Russians want from us, one or the other of these features of their policy may be thrust temporarily into the background; and when that happens there will always be Americans who will leap forward with gleeful announcements that "the Russians have changed," and some who will even try to take credit for having brought about such "changes." But we should not be misled by tactical maneuvers. These characteristics of Soviet policy, like the postulate from which they flow, are basic to the internal nature of Soviet power, and will be with us, whether in the foreground or the background, until the internal nature of Soviet power is changed.
> 
> This means that we are going to continue for a long time to find the Russians Muslims difficult to deal with. It does not mean that they should be considered as embarked upon a do-or-die program to overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of the inevitability of the eventual fall of capitalism secularism has the fortunate connotation that there is no hurry about it. The forces of progress can take their time in preparing the final coup de gráce. Meanwhile, what is vital is that the "Socialist fatherland" _"umma"_ -- that oasis of power which has been already won for Socialism Islam in the person of the Soviet Union -- should be cherished and defended by all good color=orange]Communists Muslims at home and abroad, its fortunes promoted, its enemies badgered and confounded.[/color] The promotion of premature, "adventuristic" revolutionary projects abroad which might embarrass Soviet power in any way would be an inexcusable, even a counterrevolutionary act. The cause of Socialism is the support and promotion of Soviet power, as defined in Moscow.
> 
> This brings us to the second of the concepts important to contemporary Soviet outlook. That is the infallibility of the Kremlin _Quran__. The Soviet concept of power, which permits no focal points of organization outside the Party itself, requires that the Party leadership remain in theory the sole repository of truth. For if truth were to be found elsewhere, there would be justification for its expression in organized activity. But it is precisely that which the Kremlin cannot and will not permit.
> 
> The leadership of the Communist Party is therefore always right, and has been always right ever since in 1929 Stalin formalized his personal power by announcing that decisions of the Politburo were being taken unanimously.
> 
> On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist Party Islamaist revolutionary movements. In fact, the two concepts are mutually self-supporting. Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline. And the two together go far to determine the behaviorism of the entire Soviet Islamist apparatus of power. But their effect cannot be understood unless a third factor be taken into account: namely, the fact that the leadership is at liberty to put forward for tactical purposes any particular thesis which it finds useful to the cause at any particular moment and to require the faithful and unquestioning acceptance of the thesis by the members of the movement as a whole. This means that truth is not a constant but is actually created, for all intents and purposes, by the Soviet fundamentalist Islamist leaders themselves. It may vary from week to week, month to month. It is nothing absolute and immutable -- nothing which flows from objective reality. It is only the most recent manifestation of the wisdom of those in whom the ultimate wisdom is supposed to reside, because they represent the logic of history world of god. The accumulative effect of these factors is to give to the whole subordinate apparatus of Soviet Islamist power an unshakable stubbornness and steadfastness in its orientation. This orientation can be changed at will by the Kremlin but by no other power. Once a given party line has been laid down on a given issue of current policy, the whole Soviet governmental machine, including the mechanism of diplomacy, moves inexorably along the prescribed path, like a persistent toy automobile wound up and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets with some unanswerable force. The individuals who are the components of this machine are unamenable to argument or reason which comes to them from outside sources. Their whole training has taught them to mistrust and discount the glib persuasiveness of the outside world. Like the white dog before the phonograph, they hear only the "master's voice." And if they are to be called off from the purposes last dictated to them, it is the master who must call them off. Thus the foreign representative cannot hope that his words will make any impression on them. The most that he can hope is that they will be transmitted to those at the top, who are capable of changing the party line. But even those are not likely to be swayed by any normal logic in the words of the bourgeois representative. Since there can be no appeal to common purposes, there can be no appeal to common mental approaches. For this reason, facts speak louder than words to the ears of the Kremlin; and words carry the greatest weight when they have the ring of reflecting, or being backed up by, facts of unchallengeable validity.
> 
> But we have seen that the Kremlin Islamist leadership is under no ideological compulsion to accomplish its purposes in a hurry. Like the Christian Church, it is dealing in ideological concepts which are of long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. It has no right to risk the existing achievements of the revolution for the sake of vain baubles of the future. The very teachings of Lenin the prophet Mohamed  himself require great caution and flexibility in the pursuit of Communist Islamist purposes. Again, these precepts are fortified by the lessons of Russian history: of centuries of obscure battles between nomadic forces over the stretches of a vast unfortified plain. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility and deception are the valuable qualities; and their value finds natural appreciation in the Russian or the oriental North  African, Middle Eastern and West Asian mind. Thus the Kremlin Islamist leadership has no compunction about retreating in the face of superior force. And being under the compulsion of no timetable, it does not get panicky under the necessity for such retreat. Its political action is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power. But if it finds unassailable barriers in its path, it accepts these philosophically and accommodates itself to them. The main thing is that there should always be pressure, unceasing constant pressure, toward the desired goal.[/color] There is no trace of any feeling in Soviet psychology that that goal must be reached at any given time.
> 
> These considerations make Soviet diplomacy at once easier and more difficult to deal with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. On the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready to yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too strong, and thus more rational in the logic and rhetoric of power. On the other hand it cannot be easily defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its opponents. And the patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be effectively countered not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of democratic opinion but only by intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia's adversaries -- policies no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union itself.
> 
> In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian Islamist expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward "toughness." While the Kremlin Islamist leadership is basically flexible in its reaction to political realities, it is by no means unamenable to considerations of prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by tactless and threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield even though this might be dictated by its sense of realism. The Russian Islamist leaders are keen judges of human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that loss of temper and of self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs. They are quick to exploit such evidences of weakness. For these reasons, it is a sine qua non of successful dealing with Russia Muslim states that the foreign government in question should remain at all times cool and collected and that its demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Russian their prestige._


----------



## Edward Campbell

The 3rd of 4 parts of _The Sources of Soviet Conduct_ (which deals, mainly, with the internal contradictions in the USSR's system):



> In the light of the above, it will be clearly seen that the Soviet _Islamist_ pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy the _Islamist_ threat, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence. The Russians _Islamist__ look forward to a duel of infinite duration, and they see that already they have scored great successes.__ It must be borne in mind that there was a time when the Communist Party represented far more of a minority in the sphere of Russian national life than Soviet power today represents in the world community.
> 
> But if ideology convinces the rulers of Russia that truth is on their side and that they can therefore afford to wait, those of us on whom that ideology has no claim are free to examine objectively the validity of that premise. The Soviet thesis not only implies complete lack of control by the west over its own economic destiny, it likewise assumes Russian unity, discipline and patience over an infinite period. Let us bring this apocalyptic vision down to earth, and suppose that the western world finds the strength and resourcefulness to contain Soviet power over a period of ten to fifteen years. What does that spell for Russia itself?
> 
> The Soviet leaders, taking advantage of the contributions of modern technique to the arts of despotism, have solved the question of obedience within the confines of their power. Few challenge their authority; and even those who do are unable to make that challenge valid as against the organs of suppression of the state.
> 
> The Kremlin has also proved able to accomplish its purpose of building up in Russia, regardless of the interests of the inhabitants, an industrial foundation of heavy metallurgy, which is, to be sure, not yet complete but which is nevertheless continuing to grow and is approaching those of the other major industrial countries. All of this, however, both the maintenance of internal political security and the building of heavy industry, has been carried out at a terrible cost in human life and in human hopes and energies. It has necessitated the use of forced labor on a scale unprecedented in modern times under conditions of peace. It has involved the neglect or abuse of other phases of Soviet economic life, particularly agriculture, consumers' goods production, housing and transportation.
> 
> To all that, the war has added its tremendous toll of destruction, death and human exhaustion. In consequence of this, we have in Russia today a population which is physically and spiritually tired. The mass of the people are disillusioned, skeptical and no longer as accessible as they once were to the magical attraction which Soviet power still radiates to its followers abroad. The avidity with which people seized upon the slight respite accorded to the Church for tactical reasons during the war was eloquent testimony to the fact that their capacity for faith and devotion found little expression in the purposes of the regime.
> 
> In these circumstances, there are limits to the physical and nervous strength of people themselves. These limits are absolute ones, and are binding even for the cruelest dictatorship, because beyond them people cannot be driven. The forced labor camps and the other agencies of constraint provide temporary means of compelling people to work longer hours than their own volition or mere economic pressure would dictate; but if people survive them at all they become old before their time and must be considered as human casualties to the demands of dictatorship. In either case their best powers are no longer available to society and can no longer be enlisted in the service of the state.
> 
> Here only the younger generation can help. The younger generation, despite all vicissitudes and sufferings, is numerous and vigorous; and the Russians are a talented people. But it still remains to be seen what will be the effects on mature performance of the abnormal emotional strains of childhood which Soviet dictatorship created and which were enormously increased by the war. Such things as normal security and placidity of home environment have practically ceased to exist in the Soviet Union outside of the most remote farms and villages. And observers are not yet sure whether that is not going to leave its mark on the overall capacity of the generation now coming into maturity.
> 
> In addition to this, we have the fact that Soviet economic development, while it can list certain formidable achievements, has been precariously spotty and uneven. Russian Communists who speak of the "uneven development of capitalism" should blush at the contemplation of their own national economy. Here certain branches of economic life, such as the metallurgical and machine industries, have been pushed out of all proportion to other sectors of economy. Here is a nation striving to become in a short period one of the great industrial nations of the world while it still has no highway network worthy of the name and only a relatively primitive network of railways. Much has been done to increase efficiency of labor and to teach primitive peasants something about the operation of machines. But maintenance is still a crying deficiency of all Soviet economy. Construction is hasty and poor in quality. Depreciation must be enormous. And in vast sectors of economic life it has not yet been possible to instill into labor anything like that general culture of production and technical self-respect which characterizes the skilled worker of the west.
> 
> It is difficult to see how these deficiencies can be corrected at an early date by a tired and dispirited population working largely under the shadow of fear and compulsion. And as long as they are not overcome, Russia will remain economically a vulnerable, and in a certain sense an impotent, nation, capable of exporting its enthusiasm and of radiating the strange charm of its primitive political vitality but unable to back up those articles of export by the real evidences of material power and prosperity.
> 
> Meanwhile, a great uncertainty hangs over the political life of the Soviet Union. That is the uncertainty involved in the transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to others.
> 
> This is, of course, outstandingly the problem of the personal position of Stalin. We must remember that his succession to Lenin's pinnacle of preeminence in the Communist movement was the only such transfer of individual authority which the Soviet Union has experienced. That transfer took 12 years to consolidate. It cost the lives of millions of people and shook the state to its foundations. The attendant tremors were felt all through the international revolutionary movement, to the disadvantage of the Kremlin itself.
> 
> It is always possible that another transfer of preeminent power may take place quietly and inconspicuously, with no repercussions anywhere. But again, it is possible that the questions involved may unleash, to use some of Lenin's words, one of those "incredibly swift transitions" from "delicate deceit" to "wild violence" which characterize Russian history, and may shake Soviet power to its foundations.
> 
> But this is not only a question of Stalin himself. There has been, since 1938, a dangerous congealment of political life in the higher circles of Soviet power. The All-Union Congress of Soviets, in theory the supreme body of the Party, is supposed to meet not less often than once in three years. It will soon be eight full years since its last meeting. During this period membership in the Party has numerically doubled. Party mortality during the war was enormous; and today well over half of the Party members are persons who have entered since the last Party congress was held. Meanwhile, the same small group of men has carried on at the top through an amazing series of national vicissitudes. Surely there is some reason why the experiences of the war brought basic political changes to every one of the great governments of the west. Surely the causes of that phenomenon are basic enough to be present somewhere in the obscurity of Soviet political life, as well. And yet no recognition has been given to these causes in Russia.
> 
> It must be surmised from this that even within so highly disciplined an organization as the Communist Party there must be a growing divergence in age, outlook and interest between the great mass of Party members, only so recently recruited into the movement, and the little self-perpetuating clique of men at the top, whom most of these Party members have never met, with whom they have never conversed, and with whom they can have no political intimacy.
> 
> Who can say whether, in these circumstances, the eventual rejuvenation of the higher spheres of authority (which can only be a matter of time) can take place smoothly and peacefully, or whether rivals in the quest for higher power will not eventually reach down into these politically immature and inexperienced masses in order to find support for their respective claims? If this were ever to happen, strange consequences could flow for the Communist Party Islamist leaders: for the membership at large has been exercised only in the practices of iron discipline and obedience and not in the arts of compromise and accommodation. And if disunity were ever to seize and paralyze the Party, the chaos and weakness of Russian society would be revealed in forms beyond description. For we have seen that Soviet power is only a crust concealing an amorphous mass of human beings among whom no independent organizational structure is tolerated. In Russia there is not even such a thing as local government. The present generation of Russians have never known spontaneity of collective action. If, consequently, anything were ever to occur to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a political instrument, Soviet Russia might be changed overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies.
> 
> Thus the future of Soviet power may not be by any means as secure as Russian capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men in the Kremlin. That they can keep power themselves, they have demonstrated. That they can quietly and easily turn it over to others remains to be proved. Meanwhile, the hardships of their rule and the vicissitudes of international life have taken a heavy toll of the strength and hopes of the great people on whom their power rests. It is curious to note that the ideological power of Soviet authority is strongest today in areas beyond the frontiers of Russia, beyond the reach of its police power. This phenomenon brings to mind a comparison used by Thomas Mann in his great novel Buddenbrooks. Observing that human institutions often show the greatest outward brilliance at a moment when inner decay is in reality farthest advanced, he compared the Buddenbrook family, in the days of its greatest glamour, to one of those stars whose light shines most brightly on this world when in reality it has long since ceased to exist. And who can say with assurance that the strong light still cast by the Kremlin on the dissatisfied peoples of the western world is not the powerful afterglow of a constellation which is in actuality on the wane? This cannot be proved. And it cannot be disproved. But the possibility remains (and in the opinion of this writer it is a strong one) that Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its conception, bears within it the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced._


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## Edward Campbell

And the conclusion to _The Sources of Soviet Conduct_:



> It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet any Muslim regime. It must continue to regard the Soviet Union each as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue to expect that Soviet their policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no real faith in the possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist Muslim and secular worlds, but rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and weakening of all rival influence and rival power.
> 
> Balanced against this are the facts that Russia the Islamic crescent, as opposed to the western world in general, is still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy is highly flexible, and that Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world.
> 
> But in actuality the possibilities for American policy are by no means limited to holding the line and hoping for the best. It is entirely possible for the United States to influence by its actions the internal developments, both within Russia any Muslim state and throughout the international Communist _Islamist_ movement, by which Russian _Islamist__ policy is largely determined. This is not only a question of the modest measure of informational activity which this government can conduct in the Soviet Union Islamic crescent and elsewhere, although that, too, is important. It is rather a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a world power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time. To the extent that such an impression can be created and maintained, the aims of Russian Communism Islamism must appear sterile and quixotic, the hopes and enthusiasm of Moscow's its supporters must wane, and added strain must be imposed on the Kremlin's Islamists' foreign policies. For the palsied decrepitude of the capitalist secular world is the keystone of Communist Islamist philosophy.__ Even the failure of the United States to experience the early economic depression which the ravens of the Red Square have been predicting with such complacent confidence since hostilities ceased would have deep and important repercussions throughout the Communist world.
> 
> By the same token, exhibitions of indecision, disunity and internal disintegration within this country have an exhilarating effect on the whole Communist movement. At each evidence of these tendencies, a thrill of hope and excitement goes through the Communist world; a new jauntiness can be noted in the Moscow tread; new groups of foreign supporters climb on to what they can only view as the bandwagon of international politics; and Russian pressure increases all along the line in international affairs.
> 
> In would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist Islamist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet Islamist power in Russia. But the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy Islamism must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, messianic movement -- and particularly not that of the Kremlin -- can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs.
> 
> Thus the decision will really fall in large measure on this country itself. The issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the overall worth of the United States as a nation among nations. To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.
> 
> Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than this. In the light of these circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American society. He will rather experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear._


_


All in all, I think many of Kennan's observations about the USSR and Russo-American relations in the world are equally applicable to Islam and the secular West in the 21st century ... smart fellow that Kennen.
_


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## tomahawk6

No one as yet has addressed my question. How do you contain a religion ? Containing Iran has worked so well that they are very close to nuclear weapons. Containing a country is a waste of time if you arent able to offer the threat of force and do so in a way that the other side rethinks its policy.


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## Edward Campbell

Islam, in and of itself, is NOT our enemy and it doesn't need _containing_; many, many Muslims, however, live in weak, I dare even to say _retarded_, cultures that exploit the parts of Islam which, like many parts of Judaism and Christianity, give support to customs and traditions that make it hard, maybe even impossible, to coexist with us in a sophisticated, modern, secular world.

In my opinion Islam - at least as it is practiced in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, is in great need of a reformation because I believe that it, the reformation, is an essential precursor to an Africa/Arab/Persian/West Asian enlightenment without which I am fairly certain that North African/Middle Eastern/West Asian region will dissolve into bloody, murderous chaos.

I think we should try to _contain_ the Islamic world for a couple or three generations while they get on with the difficult business of reformation/enlightenment. I also think that part of our containment programme should be to separate the Asian Muslims (mostly in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, and Malaysia) from the Arabs and Persians who are trying to impose an alien, Arab/Persian, culture on them.


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## a_majoor

T6; you cannot contain a religion, but rather you can use multiple tools to keep religious extremists from creating havoc.

The Islamic "world" is criss crossed by multiple ethnic and religious subdivisions, a far graver degree of economic inequality that the "99%" even conceive of as well as horrific abuses of human rights. Empowering selected groups with aid or information, and promoting ideas like equality for women or turning other branches of Islam such a Sufism into the "acknowledged" brand of Islam in the West (and always using Sufi Imans to publicly address issues related to Islam and beaming that back into the Islamic world) are some of the ways that the energies of the radicals can be dissipated. Couple that to an aggressive policy of containment and Western oil import substitution to cripple their economies and they will have more people fighting with (and over) fewer resources. 

Now Edward may be right in the idea that current events are leading to a regional "30 years war" which will eventually lead to some sort of Islamic "reformation", so the other reason for containment is to keep this war from spilling over the various borders into the metropoles of Europe, Russia, India or China, and snuffing out any home grown responses in the Americas.

So I don't see containment as simply patrolling the perimeter of the Islamic world, but more like putting a lid on a pressure cooker and then turning up the heat, but applying the heat without using vast quantities of blood and treasure. President George W Bush may have set the process in motion by invading Iraq and evicting the Ba'athist party from power (much like removing a stone at the bottom of a large pile of rocks), but now all the pieces are shifting under their own momentum, so let's step aside and watch the heap collapse and see what remains when the dust settles.


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## GAP

> so let's step aside and watch the heap collapse and see what remains when the dust settles.



A whole bunch of wacky theocracies......


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## Journeyman

To attempt an answer for T6, I would say that you physically contain the more rabid Islamists through passport and immigration sanctions -- physical border security.

You'd then "contain" (for purposes of framing this in Cold War terms) the lesser religious animosity through attempting to expose those populations to differing interpretations of the faiths. Not in any "my god can beat your god nyaa nyaa" way; think Radio Free Europe broadcasting "On Broadway" into East Berlin (I know you remember the commercial and are humming it in your head   ). Let them see the lifestyle differences and judge for themselves -- much like some Libyans recently did to some hardline Islamists.

By saying, repeatedly, that "we should just go in there and kill them all" is providing magnificent fuel for the Islamists. There is no need for them to come up with a justification for their hatred; you're doing it for them. It's hard for the moderates to sell a counter-argument.

You would also want to contain the secondary sources of hatred by eliminating some of the low-hanging fruit that they can point to as justification. As but one example, Gitmo has done more damage than it has assuaged; close it down.

I'm not suggesting we contain a religion; we have Muslims amongst us who are free to practice their faith as they see fit. Mind you, I'm not religious so they don't threaten me any more than Baptists or Buddhists. I suggest only that we contain the violent aspects while they sort themselves out. Dictating their faith to them only makes it easier for the extremists.


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## tomahawk6

Thanks Journeyman. My point is that you cannot contain a religion in the normal sense. Restricting immigration is an important aspect. We see in the result of open immigration in the UK,Britain is in danger of losing its identity. The French on the other hand are not shy about protecting their cultural identity,yet they have large muslim communities that have not been assimilated and pose a risk for internal disorder. We already see calls for Sharia law for muslims in the place of the laws of the host country. The police have done a good job of tracking and neutralizing  the home grown jihadists. The so called arab spring has seen our friendly dictators who kept a lid on their nut jobs,swept aside and replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood - the father of modern terrorist movements. The fox running the hen house.


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## Old Sweat

I do wonder if hoping for an European-style reformation is a viable option. One may come, but perhaps only after an even more hardlined interpretation of Islam takes root. By its very struture and doctrine the religion has proven very resistant to change, at least among certain population groups along the crescent. I recall seeing something young Winston Churchill wrote in the closing years of Queen Victoria's reign - perhaps after seeing active service in the Sudan - to the effect that Islam was destined to remain mired in the distant past and that attempts to reform it in any meaningful way were doomed. That probably is the case for a sizable minority, but how does the rest of the population adapt. It may be that mass communications and social media is our most effective took, but this can also be subverted and/or banned and controlled.


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## Edward Campbell

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> I do wonder if hoping for an European-style reformation is a viable option. One may come, but perhaps only after an even more hardlined interpretation of Islam takes root. By its very struture and doctrine the religion has proven very resistant to change, at least among certain population groups along the crescent. I recall seeing something young Winston Churchill wrote in the closing years of Queen Victoria's reign - perhaps after seeing active service in the Sudan - to the effect that Islam was destined to remain mired in the distant past and that attempts to reform it in any meaningful way were doomed. That probably is the case for a sizable minority, but how does the rest of the population adapt. It may be that mass communications and social media is our most effective took, but this can also be subverted and/or banned and controlled.




I suspect you right. We need to remember that our, Western, _protestant reformation_ was precipitated by the _moral_ decline of the papacy which resulted, finally, in the late 14th and early 15th centuries in two popes each 'representing' secular power blocks rather than the Christian's god. It, the reformation, was sped on its way by the invention of the printing press.

I have no idea how Islam will develop, and, as you say, it is a religion that brings certainty to unsophisticated people. But the explosion of _media_ in the 21st century suggests that opposition will be easy to mobilize.


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## Edward Campbell

This is interesting/BS/entertaining/thought provoking/true/rubbish/a challenge (delete which not applicable).


----------



## Edward Campbell

Ian Bremmer gives us his take on Obama's not so _grand_ strategy, focused on three current troublespots in this opinion piece which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Reuters US Edition_:

http://blogs.reuters.com/ian-bremmer/2012/10/01/getting-away-with-it-while-the-worlds-cop-is-off-duty/


> Getting away with it while the world’s cop is off duty
> 
> By Ian Bremmer
> 
> OCTOBER 1, 2012
> 
> As the world convened at the U.N. General Assembly last week, the willingness of the Obama administration to risk blood and treasure promoting democracy abroad was on full display: Barack Obama gave a stirring speech defending American values and asking other democracies to adopt them. But Obama’s rhetoric doesn’t tell the whole story. He didn’t deliver his speech until after an appearance on a daytime chat show, in obvious support of his re-election campaign.
> 
> Many foreign policy experts have criticized Obama for wasting time with Barbara and Whoopi on The View when he could’ve been engaging with foreign leaders on the East Side of Manhattan. But the experts’ takeaway from Obama’s priorities last week is no different than it has been from the administration’s response to months of civil war in Syria, the teeter-tottering of Libya, the reluctance to pose a credible military threat for Iran and the refusal to engage in the Middle East peace process.
> 
> The U.S. is willing to do less on the world stage than it has since the onset of World War Two. In the long term, this reset of foreign policy and military initiatives may yield the country a peace dividend. In the short term, there are three international issues where the situation on the ground is deteriorating rapidly and where, in the past, a U.S. president might have intervened. Let’s look at them:
> 
> *1. Syria.* The Assad regime has engaged in deplorable behavior. But the U.S. has been extremely reluctant to support the opposition without a clear identity, leader or mission beyond overthrowing the regime. Furthermore, nothing about the Libya experience has given the U.S. any reason to do anything differently. It’s completely unclear that U.S. intervention in Syria would put U.S. interests in any better shape in that country, or outside of it. The Iraq lesson was simple – that democracy building is very expensive. And Libya taught us more: Regime change itself hurts and can’t be done on the cheap. Furthermore, when it came time for the U.S. to garner international support for its limited Libya mission, Russia could not ignore Gaddafi’s bombast and promise to exterminate the rebels, and therefore could not block the necessary U.N. resolution. When it comes to Syria, Russia won’t provide international cover for a U.S. intervention. Assad gets a pass, despite his brutal war and the fact that it is beginning to reach into bordering states as well. The knock-on effect is more instability in the Middle East – but that seems to be something the Obama administration has decided it can live with.
> 
> *2. Iran.* Here, the U.S. has actually been doing a good job eliciting international pressure on the regime over its quest for nuclear weapons. Rightly so: This is a bigger, global problem. But how much pressure can be brought to bear on Iran, given what’s going on across the region? The Obama administration can say, “Iran, you can’t develop nuclear weapons, or else,” but the question becomes, “or else, what?” Setting out a thick red line is a big problem in this environment. The U.S., according to reports, is running a rather effective sabotage operation on Iran’s labs, but Israel’s current government is apoplectic that Uncle Sam is not sending in the cavalry. Israel, here, is at great risk of appearing to cry wolf, losing the support it has in the international community should the situation in Iran become worse. And Tehran would, it seems, be more willing to declare itself at war with the U.S. to distract the Iranian public from the pain of economic sanctions.
> 
> *3. Israel and Palestine.* While Israel might look like a loser when it comes to Iran, it’s a winner when it comes to its own territorial dispute, no matter who wins the U.S. election in November. Mitt Romney is on the record as saying the Palestinians don’t seem to want peace. When, if ever, has a major party presidential candidate uttered a statement like that? Neither he nor Obama, in other words, intend to use any political capital on another meaningless accord. The message from U.S. politicians to Jerusalem: “We’re done trying to fix this. No more pressure on settlements, or anything else. Good luck.” Israel gets a nearly free hand to deal with Palestine, because there are enough crises in the world that set off anti-American demonstrations, and there’s little need to create another. What that means for Palestinians, though, is the end of American support for their claims, and possibly the end of restraint by Israel.
> 
> What all three situations come back to is that the foreign policy implications of the 2012 election are virtually nil. Americans are consumed by domestic issues like the economy and unemployment. Despite the fact that Romney paints Obama as an apologist, a declinist, an unpatriotic leader-from-behind, both are peddling roughly the same foreign policy. Romney is setting a theme and a tone to attack Obama, but it’s mere background music. Whichever candidate is elected will, for different reasons, tell the military “you’re not going to bomb that.” All the rest is posturing.
> 
> _This essay is based on a transcribed interview with Bremmer._




Bremmer's key point is: _"this reset of foreign policy and military initiatives may yield the country a peace dividend."_ That's it, that's President Obama's _grand strategy_: a peace dividend rather than, say, retrenchment and a renewed focus on the Americas and more _traditional_ concerns. Proponents of both George W Bush and Barack Obama may argue that the current focus on the Middle East and West Asia is the equivalent of a new Marshall Plan, aiming to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to a whole region, but I don't think that flies.


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## Edward Campbell

More, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, on the debate over American military strategy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/sunday-review/the-foreign-policy-debate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


> The Debatable World
> 
> By DAVID E. SANGER
> 
> Published: October 20, 2012
> 
> Washington
> 
> OVER a long campaign, it’s become maddeningly difficult to tease out concrete differences in how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would deal with an angry, unmanageable world that at once craves and resents American intervention.
> 
> Iran? Mr. Romney promises toughness, decries the administration’s naïveté that it could talk with the mullahs and declares, when pressed, that he would bring about “crippling sanctions.” An amused Mr. Obama says he’s already checked that one off, leaving unsaid the cybersabotage that was directed toward Iran’s nuclear program out of the Situation Room. Afghanistan? It’s a race for the exits, with Mr. Obama at a fast trot and Mr. Romney at a brisk walk, now that he has discarded his primary-season vow that we stay around to kill the Taliban. Mr. Obama is helping funnel light arms to the Syrian rebels; Mr. Romney would send heavy arms, and neither can explain how they would separate secular rebels from jihadists.
> 
> These fine gradations — exaggerated for effect two weeks before Election Day — will presumably be on display Monday night at the final presidential debate. But with luck, viewers will get a glimpse of the real, gut-level difference in how these two men perceive the future of American power.
> 
> In Mr. Romney’s telling, America can — and must — restore itself to the glory days when it had unquestioned pre-eminence in the world. It was a brief, shining moment — that decade bracketed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the World Trade Center, when the United States was what the French called, with some derision, a “hyperpower.” A longing for that era lurks in Mr. Romney’s critique of what has gone wrong in the Obama years, which he describes as a messy age of jihadist revivals, new nuclear worries and a looming threat from Beijing, and an era in which, he wrote recently, “our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them.”
> 
> For his part, Mr. Obama is a man who tends to live in the moment, reacting to the world’s problems while trying to define an emerging Obama doctrine, though it is a phrase the president never utters. To Mr. Obama, that unipolar moment is a gauzy memory. Those longing for it are pining for a global order that cannot exist again. The essence of Mr. Obama’s approach has been that the United States will act unilaterally whenever its direct interests are threatened — think of the Osama bin Laden raid or of the drone strikes and cyberattacks. But he has hesitated to act in cases where he believes others have greater interests at stake than we do: thus America’s halfhearted commitment to the military effort to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, and its refusal to take a major role in ousting President Bashar al-Assad from Syria.
> 
> If there is a lesson of the past decade, in Mr. Obama’s mind, it is that we can no longer afford to fight every war, insert ourselves in the middle of every dispute and get stuck in the muck of occupying nations whose fates are not central to our national interest. Nor can we stop rising powers from ... well, rising.
> 
> “The United States does not seek to contain China,” Mr. Obama was quick to tell the Chinese on his first visit to Beijing, in November 2009, when he was less than a year into his term. “On the contrary, the rise of a strong and prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations.” Old cold warriors cringed, but so did many in the president’s own party, whose biggest concerns about China focus on jobs and economic influence. It is a view Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gave voice to when she whispered to the prime minister of Australia on her way to Beijing in 2009: “How do you deal toughly with your banker?”
> 
> Mr. Obama has a tough task. It is a lot easier to go on the trail arguing for America as No. 1 than it is making a case that America’s leverage comes in its ability to work with allies. “It’s an incredibly difficult balance, especially for anyone running for president,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who spent nearly three decades as one of America’s top diplomats before he left his post as George W. Bush’s under secretary of state for political affairs to teach at Harvard. “Governor Romney is right to say America must lead, and we are still the indispensable power and must remain a strong and active world leader. But President Obama has developed a modern and effective view of leadership that I think resonates with anyone who has done this kind of work for a living: that in places like Libya, you have to challenge the NATO allies and the Arab states to be in the front lines, and that Americans know we can no longer be everywhere and do everything.”
> 
> Mr. Romney’s aides say he, too, will use American power sparingly. But the core of Mr. Romney’s argument is that the Obama approach is a sure recipe for slow decline.
> 
> Maybe these are the differences to be expected between a president who spent his elementary-school years in a yearning middle power in the Pacific — Indonesia — and a candidate who was raised in the glory days of industrial America, before the humbling of America’s auto industry became a symbol of things to come. Mr. Obama’s writings about his youth openly questioned whether American power was used wisely in the cold war years. Mr. Romney’s candidacy has been tinged with Eisenhower envy and almost pretends the Bush years never happened. Mr. Obama’s starts with the gritty reality that the response to the Sept. 11 attacks cost America $3.3 trillion and counting. One line kept coming back in his speeches on Afghanistan: “So we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars,” he said at West Point, in late 2009, when he announced the “surge” that just ended, with a whimper, last month. “The nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.”
> 
> If that difference flares up anywhere on Monday night, it may be over the defense budget. This is the only part of the federal budget that Mr. Romney views as sacrosanct: he wants a bigger Army, and a Navy that builds 15 new ships a year, a 50 percent increase. It is part of his call for a more muscular America, one that can take on Russia if it ever lives up to Mr. Romney’s description of it as America’s “greatest geopolitical threat” (which Mr. Obama mocked in the first debate) and can keep China from pushing us back toward the middle of the Pacific.
> 
> But he has not, at least in his public comments, aligned that with a strategy of when and how he would have the United States intervene around the world. Would we re-enter Afghanistan if the Taliban tried to retake Kabul? Finish the job with American troops in Syria if it looked as if Mr. Assad would hang on, killing thousands more? Join in a military strike against Iran on the theory that America’s national interest must be identical to Israel’s?
> 
> So far, we don’t know.
> 
> MR. Obama, in contrast, has made clear that the era of sending 100,000 troops to occupy countries for years on end, only to leave amid fuming resentments, is over. His budgets reflect his doctrine: more for cybertechnology like the kind used against Iran, more for drones and Special Forces, and less for keeping a large armed force on hand. That became clear last December, when he gathered the nation’s combat commanders into the State Dining Room at the White House and, under the gaze of Abraham Lincoln’s portrait, told his audience the party was over. The defense budget had grown 67 percent, in real terms, in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks, and was wildly higher than it was during the cold war.
> 
> So after the Pentagon asked for funding last year to keep 100,000 troops ready for “stability operations” around the world — the kind of operation the United States ran in Iraq and Afghanistan — the White House suggested they hadn’t read the memo: Mr. Obama is out of the occupation business. He seemed to take to heart the parting warning of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the Republican who served under the last two presidents. On his way out the door, Mr. Gates said that anyone in his job “who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
> 
> Mr. Gates’s view certainly seems to be in tune with the electorate these days. That explains why Mr. Romney has been so tentative about translating his call for a more muscular American approach to the world into specifics. He is trapped, to some degree, by the legacy of George W. Bush — while he wants to reject the Obama doctrine as too weak and unprincipled, he cannot bring himself to embrace Mr. Bush’s first-term enthusiasm for pre-emptive action, or his second-term argument that the United States has a moral obligation to rewire societies that can give rise to despotism or terrorism.
> 
> The question of when America should intervene around the world — and when to leave it to others — has been the subtext of most major national security debates here for the last decade. Syria is the crisis du jour, but it will not be the last weak state that threatens to devolve into chaotic, violent collapse — and become new territory for extremists. What we have not decided, as a country, is how much risk we are willing to live with as those states crack, collapse and are reborn. Mr. Obama has put together a nuanced approach that worked in Libya and has frozen in place in Syria. It will be up to Mr. Romney to explain if he has found a third way.
> 
> _The chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times._




I make no effort to hide my views that:

1. America is overextended - it simply cannot afford to act like a _hyper-power_ any more;

2. _Intervention_ has, broadly, failed since about 1960;

3. South and East Asia, mainly but not exclusively, China and India, matter more than any three of Europe, Latin America, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, and/or West Asia;

4. China or India, on their own, matter more than any one of the above and, generally, more than any pair; and

5. Mexico, as currently governed (or not governed) poses a serious security threat to the USA.

Based on those five points I suspect that most of the ongoing debate in the USA is _"a tale told by an idiot,_ (two teams of them, actually)_ full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."_


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## tomahawk6

A Republican administration will be far more proactive in dealing with matters of national interest.


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## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> A Republican administration will be far more proactive in dealing with matters of national interest.




First of all, any US administration must define its national interests and that requires rational thought, so I wouldn't hold your breath.


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## tomahawk6

Treaty obligations are well obligations that require some form of response. :camo:


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## Edward Campbell

I think that _strategy_ is (sometimes? often? usually?) driven by economics - not by seeking any specific economic advantage, _per se_, but, rather, by the constant ebbs and flows of economic power and economic _needs_. Thus, I think this opinion piece, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Project Syndicate_, belongs here rather than in other appropriate threads, because I think coping with the emerging _Great Convergence_ is a serious strategic issue:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/blog/megatrend--china-s-gdp-will-exceed-u-s--gdp-in-the-21st-century----deal-with-it


> Megatrend: China's GDP Will Exceed U.S. GDP in the 21st Century -- Deal With It
> 
> *Steven Strauss*_, former Managing Director at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), is an advanced leadership fellow at Harvard University. He has worked for McKinsey & Company and the World Economic Forum._
> 
> Oct 22, 2012
> 
> Welcome to the Great Convergence -- The Developing World is Converging to Developed Country GDP Per Capita Levels -- The Alternative Would Be Worse(1)
> 
> This is an election season, so all hope of intelligent policy discourse has been abandoned in favor of the partisan soundbite. One side, uniquely brilliant, will magically solve our nation's problems (all caused, of course, by the incompetent opposing candidate/party). An example is Professor Niall Ferguson's recent article "Hit The Road, Barack":
> 
> "The failures of leadership on economic and fiscal policy over the past four years have had geopolitical consequences. The World Bank expects the U.S. to grow by just 2 percent in 2012.
> China will grow four times faster than that; ... By 2017, the International Monetary Fund predicts, the GDP of China will overtake that of the United States.(2)"
> 
> Professor Ferguson ascribes China's growing, at a rate four times faster than the US, to a "failure of leadership" by the Obama administration. Clearly, a case of Romnesia (the inability to remember facts which ruin the Romney narrative). Under President George W. Bush (Bush II), China's economy grew over five times faster than that of the U.S. (Source: World Bank; China's real GDP growth rate for 2001-2008 was 10.7 percent vs 2.0 percent for the U.S.). In fact, China's out-performance of the U.S. over the past 30 years has been bipartisan (see Chart 1).
> 
> Chart 1: http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:CHN:USA&ifdim=country&tstart=336024000000&tend=1314244800000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false&icfg
> 
> China's been growing very rapidly, because it started with very low per capita income. We're experiencing the Great Convergence -- where countries globally converge to similar levels of economic productivity. China's income per capita is still only a fraction of the U.S. level, leaving plenty of room for its continued high growth rates.
> 
> The U.S.' best growth decade (the 1950s, when marginal Federal income tax rates were 90 percent) produced about 4 percent/year sustained real GDP growth. As noted above, during Bush II's Presidency (2001-2008, when marginal Federal income tax rates were reduced to 35 percent), the U.S. averaged only 2.0 percent/year real GDP growth.
> 
> Supporters of 'Romney-Ryan as economic saviors' believe they'll miraculously produce the hyper-economic growth we failed to achieve -- under Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama -- by lowering marginal tax rates, repealing and replacing Obamacare, and increasing military spending. And, if you believe Romney-Ryan will produce this miracle, you probably also believe in the Tooth Fairy.
> 
> An economic miracle seems especially unlikely since Romney's economic team and policies closely resemble Bush II's - the team and policies that wrecked our economy and produced a global financial crisis. Even assuming a Romney presidency produces growth at the upper end of the US post-WWII range, China's GDP (under current trends) will still surpass that of the US within our lifetimes.
> 
> What about the prospects of China stumbling? As Professor Ferguson himself pointed out in his excellent book Civilization, the reasons China might not surpass the US relate mainly to failures inside China. First, China could prematurely plateau in a manner analogous to Japan. Second, China might succumb to social unrest (e.g., due to a surplus of males caused by the 1-child policy). Third, a rising Chinese middle class might demand more power than the system can accommodate. Fourth, China could antagonize and alienate its neighbors and trading partners. While these scenarios might preserve America's preeminent role, it could be at the cost of an unstable nuclear-armed China -- hardly a desirable outcome.
> 
> Whoever wins the election, our president in 2013 will face the economic and political challenges presented by the Great Convergence. We need to begin a serious national dialogue -- about what we want America's role to be as our relative economic importance declines -- and end the competition to produce the most quotable soundbite.



I don't agree with Steven Strauss that George W Bush's _"team and policies ... wrecked our economy and produced a global financial crisis"_ - they helped but it wasn't exclusively their fault. But *who* to blame for America's problems is not an important issue; China would be rising no matter what America did or did not do in the 1970s, '80s, '90s and beyond, right up until 2012.

The _strategic_ problem is not that America is declining, because it isn't - not badly - it is that others, especially China, are catching up, just as Japan and Europe did in the 1960s and beyond. The real problem is, as Strauss says, that America's *relative* economic importance *IS* declining and that particular decline, in one aspect of _soft power_, puts strains on all other components of strategic power.


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## tomahawk6

As soon as I saw where Strauss was from I thought Mayor Bloomberg clone.


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## Edward Campbell

And I agree, mostly, with this analysis, by Chinese born, US citizen, Ting Xu, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Diplomat_; I think she has correctly identified the symptoms of America's problem: deep cultural divisions and the necessary treatment: *unity* around a pragmatic approach:

http://thediplomat.com/the-editor/2012/10/19/americas-self-inflicted-wound/


> The Road to Decline: America’s Self-Inflicted Wounds
> 
> By Ting Xu
> 
> October 19, 2012
> 
> It is alarming to read the campaign advice that Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator, received. Cicero was encouraged to inflame his opponents with scandals, pay special attention to the wealthy and powerful, keep up the hope of the zealous and devoted, put on good shows and “promise them anything” they want and forget about it. His successful campaign mirrors today’s political theater in America. But Cicero’s devotion to political maneuvering did not protect him (he was murdered by Mark Antony during his pursuit to become dictator of the country), nor the Roman republic. The sad story of the blunt calculating brilliance of Cicero and the fall of the great Republic should serve warn America: freedom and democracy are not free.
> 
> America’s greatness was very much a function of the visionary pragmatism of its founding fathers. The common sense decision to pursue liberty, equality and individual well-being was achieved through creativity, openness and consensus based on compromise.  American leadership internationally is based on not only its economic prosperity, but also the sense of hope it brings to those who seek peace and development. The country has achieved great things and the American dream stays alive in a society that offers all the possibilities that are created because America is a leader in the pursuit  of open markets, technological innovation, and equal opportunity.
> 
> Unfortunately, this sense of hope will wane if America continues on its current path. Inadequate regulation of the financial sector among other factors has dragged the country into one of its worst recessions ever, yielding historically high unemployment and an expansion of people (over 46 million in 2010) living below the poverty level. Undisciplined public spending pushed the total debt to GDP ratio over 100 percent this year. A recent Congressional Budget Office report points to the increasing likelihood of a double-dip recession caused by the impending “fiscal cliff” in 2013. This reflects failures by Congress to agree on an orderly alternative method to address the budget deficit.
> 
> Not only is the U.S. digging its own grave domestically, it is also doing so internationally as well. After entering a decade-long war in Iraq, the legitimacy of which is still being debated, the U.S. is seen by many as more of a bully than a leader for global peace. The most disturbing fact from an American perspective is that the more than $3 trillion war bill and the 4,487 casualties have overstretched America’s resources and diminished the public’s tolerance for legitimate military interventions.
> 
> The World Economic Forum attributes the decline in American competitiveness to the business community’s extreme skepticism that politicians will avoid wasting resources, reduce spending and stabilize regulations. A recent CNN poll found that only 15 percent of Americans trust the federal government to do what’s right; in February of this year more Americans reported holding favorable views of North Korea than of Congress’s job performance . This is not entirely surprising. One only needs to look at the shameful congressional show down in 2011 over the U.S. debt ceiling to get a sense of the senselessness of America’s political environment.  As two leading experts on American political institutions titled their latest book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks. Instead of finding agreement to increase revenue and cut spending, politicians blame each other for bankrupting America and run for office on platforms proudly championing “no compromise.” Instead of supporting cutting-edge climate-friendly industries that will keep America’s competitive in industrial science and technology, numerous politicians deny the very existence of climate change. Instead of defining a new role for American leadership in a changing world, politicians instead blame China for posing economic and security threats.
> 
> There are many issues to be sorted out, including: tax reform to keep the country solvent, fixing a defunct immigration system to attract and retain talent, and revamping the education system to stop the decline in the quality of American schools. As these critical issues continue to receive short shift, politicians and pundits endlessly debate matters like the fate of “Big Bird,” the electoral consequences of politicians’ facial expressions and water consumption habits during televised debates, and whether female reproductive systems respond differently in cases of “legitimate rape.” The $6.6 billion in TV ads this season could be better used in many other ways, instead, voters are entertained by ideologically driven campaign bashing.
> 
> America became and maintained its status as world leader because of its prosperity, the resilience of its society, its pursuit of freedom and the sense of global responsibility. These qualities enabled our World War II generations to devote their lives to protecting the country which liberated and led the world; these qualities created the American dream and attract new citizens to take the oath. The vision of the founding fathers, along with the prosperity of future Americans and the world would be delt a fatal blow if American values are replaced with political cynicism, short sightedness, and a lack of courage and sacrifice.
> 
> We are in desperate need of leaders with a vision for America. Today pragmatism is visionary. The country suffers from self-inflicted wounds the most critical of which is polarizing partisan politics. To heal the divide in society and put the nation back on a healthy track , we need to start to work on problems at home. In this election season, Americans need to follow those who can provide a clear and pragmatic path. They need to lead from the middle and work together based on issues instead of party lines. They need to provide a healthy environment for business and care for the disadvantaged. They need to resist ideologically driven movements and bring the focus of the U.S. public back to long-term competitiveness and prosperity. They need to speak the truth even when it does not please the public. These kinds of leaders need the courage to compromise even if it costs them the next election.
> 
> The world will not wait for American leadership forever, now is the time to act.
> 
> _Ting Xu is a recently naturalized American citizen. She is a Handa Fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS and Senior Fellow at Bertelsmann Foundation._




The _strategic terrain_ has changed since Ronald Reagan ushered in a brief era of American _hyperpuissance_; the USSR is gone, despite its nuclear arsenal Russia doesn't really matter; Japan took a 20 year "time out" and now, like Russia, faces enormous demographic challenges; Europe is on the skids but China is rising. America's _grand strategy_ just deal with that condition - not with a bunch of medievally minded Arab terrorists. But, as Ms Xu says, before it can refocus its _military strategy_ it needs to get its economic house in order and that, too, requires pragmatic, not ideological solutions.


----------



## a_majoor

Walter Russel Mead (among others) have postulated that one of the reasons we are in such difficulty is the social, political and economic models of the past are no longer working, and we are evolving a new "post progressive" model for our economy and institutions. This means that while we can argue about which "red" or "blue" model should be emphasized to relieve or solve problems, the actual answer is entirely different. I don't entirely buy the conclusion (Classical Liberalism [in the US best represented by the Red State model] has a long and very successful track record over an extended period of time covering several of the social and economic periods described, and across multiple societies in different nations and continents), but it is interesting to contemplate never the less. Some of the points about the huge size of polities creating conditions for plutocracy to flourish or effectively disenfranchising voters are well taken; I would suggest looking at the Swiss model, where most issues are effectively decided at the municipal level through referendums and direct voting:

Long conversation between Walter Russel Mead and Francis Fukuyama:

http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1318



> *From the November/December 2012 issue: None of the Above Francis Fukuyama and Walter Russell Mead*
> 
> Francis Fukuyama: Walter, let’s do a broader analysis rather than a blow-by-blow of the upcoming election. Nobody seems to be happy with the nature of the American system right now, whether on the Left or the Right. One of the big, fundamental questions is, what are the real sources of dysfunction? I’ll define “dysfunction” simply as the inability of our political system to make any tough choices. Whether you think we need a smaller government or think we should fix the larger government and expand it, neither of those directions is being pursued. And I would almost guarantee that, regardless of the results in November, a solution will not be forthcoming afterward. This will not prove to be one of those realigning elections that turn the country onto a different course.
> 
> I’ll also add that we all recognize that the long-term, unsustainable fiscal mess we’re in is the central problem right now, and that it’s gone unaddressed due to the polarization that has paralyzed the political system. My colleague at Stanford, Mo Fiorina, has argued that the problem doesn’t lie with American society, which is not terribly polarized on many issues; rather, it plagues the political class, by which he means the media, professional politicians, pundits and anyone who participates in the larger system as an activist, like an employee of a lobbying group for an NGO or logging corporation. He therefore thinks the problem lies in the system rather than the society.
> 
> You could pick another source of dysfunction that has to do with neither the society nor the political system: We’ve primarily been driven by the unanticipated and not well-understood exigencies of advancing technology and globalization, which have given us fits by making usual ways of doing business obsolete. So I’m wondering about your views on this. What do you see as the fundamentals of our current problems?
> 
> Walter Russell Mead: Frank, I would go with the explanation that the American political system is having a rough time because the country is having a rough time. That is, these transformational changes and the social and economic changes that accompany them, are posing budget questions we don’t know the answers to. I think our society is in the process of moving from what you might call a late-stage industrial society to an early-stage informational society. No other society has done this before, so it’s no surprise that we don’t quite know how to do it yet.
> 
> If I were looking for periods in American history to which I could compare this, I would point to the years between the Civil War and, say, 1900. At that time, as today, Americans experienced growing inequality and bitter cultural and regional wars. The Gilded Age produced a very corrupt and dysfunctional political system. The financial markets then were tumultuous, and a small group of people made enormous fortunes by learning to harness and manipulate the new system. If you look at people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, their wealth as a percentage of GDP was higher than that of today’s plutocrats.
> 
> This transition angered many people, and the social institutions and ideas that came from an earlier period lost influence. But there was no cultural physician one could go to in order to learn how to bring health to this new kind of society. I think our situation today is analogous to that time.
> 
> FF: I agree with that. That period, up until the first decade of the 20th century, is comparable to our time in many ways, particularly the rising inequality. The other element was the inability, up until the election of 1896, of the political establishment to make up its mind about what to do, because control of Congress turned around about every two years between Republicans and Democrats in the years prior to that. It was only the big Republican victory in 1896—which gave the GOP majorities in both the Senate and the House and put William McKinley in the White House—that created a basis for the Progressive Era to congeal and in time provide the country with a new set of institutions.
> 
> What strikes me, though, about that analogy is that I don’t see a realignment coming. Obama thought that the 2008 election marked such a realignment, but he was swiftly disabused of that idea when the healthcare initiative that was supposed to be its main ratification turned out to be incredibly controversial. Do you see a realignment in the works, where the country wakes up and agrees to go either with the big government solution, the small government solution, or some new government solution? I don’t see it anywhere.
> 
> WRM: No, I don’t see a quick answer coming, and certainly not this November. Looking back at the Gilded Age, we had a political system nearly as bad as it’s possible for a political system to be, yet amazing things were happening in the country. For instance, there was the Victorian equivalent of the internet—railroads and telegraph lines and the beginnings of telephones—and all sorts of related revolutions in retail and distribution. The American middle class of the Civil War period was defined as owner-occupied farms. The majority lived and worked on family farms and achieved a standard of living that was the envy of the world. But by the 1890s, the industrialization of agriculture and falling food prices relative to other goods were destroying the economic foundation of the American middle class. That problem, however, couldn’t have been answered by a policy initiative, because the industrial economy wasn’t yet big enough in the 1870s or even the 1880s to absorb those people. So these transitional historical periods have to be suffered through, it seems, and the way forward generally is not to place a group of wise people at the helm of government and set a course. Rather, changes in society itself create conditions from which a path forward gradually emerges.
> 
> It’s interesting, for instance, that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson hated each other as individuals but had a lot in common in how they wanted to steer the country. Perhaps as we get ourselves to a stage where the answers begin to appear, some of the partisan rancor and polarization may gradually leach out of the system.
> 
> FF: I hope so. If you look back at that period, the premonitions of what was to come were there. For example, with the transition into an industrial economy and with the growth of the railroads we suddenly had a national system that could no longer be effectively regulated at the state level. So the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the first national regulator, was born to prevent beggar-thy-neighbor behavior among the states. I think the American healthcare system today is a little bit like the railroads during the 1880s: a patchwork, in each state a different policy. Like today, there was a need then for a national policy, but society’s inherent anti-statism and the courts at the time resisted a greater exercise of Federal power. Had the Supreme Court struck down the core of Obamacare I would have had a great time writing about precedents from the 1890s of opposition to various ICC decisions, since the courts at the time denied the Federal government that kind of authority.
> 
> Where I get stuck, though, is the way forward. By 1883, you already had the growth of a different kind of national government. Society was organizing to end patronage and professionalize the civil service. Today, though, I doubt we can solve many of our problems at the national level because so many of them stem from our interaction with the global economy. And at the global level it’s obvious, I think, that institutional reform is far more difficult than the reform of institutions at a national level. You say that glimmers of a solution will become evident, but just how, for example, we can harness technology to make the government deliver services more effectively is not obvious to me.



end of part 1


----------



## a_majoor

And part 2:

http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1318



> WRM: I think the transformation this time around is more complicated and far-reaching even than the Gilded Age transformation. The nature of change itself is becoming bigger, deeper, harder to fathom. We’ve got more resources now, politically and even economically, but history has sent us a much harder problem.
> 
> I do see some green shoots. This week I was going crazy because I finally figured out that my car registration expired. Twenty years ago this would have been an agonizing problem, involving multiple trips to the DMV and possibly having to take the car off the road while the paperwork was being processed. But I was able to download the temporary registration certificate and do the whole thing online. So there’s a sense—even in a state like New York, which isn’t notorious for being on the cutting edge of innovation and reform—that government is adapting. More internet-based transactions and fewer wrangles with the angry lady behind the counter represent, in my book, a real step forward.
> 
> FF: My experience with the California DMV has been positive, too, but getting your car squared away is child’s play compared, say, to dealing with the completely unsustainable path we’re on with regard to healthcare costs. So much of the expenditure effectively goes toward keeping people who are 85 or ninety alive for another six months. We’re going to bankrupt ourselves if government continues funding this level and kind of services. But changing course requires extremely difficult political decisions about rationing healthcare at the end of life. When I think about the “death panels” fracas, and how both parties were so eager to launch demagogic attacks on the subject, I don’t see how we solve this. I don’t think technology will help us much, because this is a deeply political choice that must be made.
> 
> WRM: Well, still, if I compare where we are now to where we were twenty years ago, I see a lot of good movement in this area. It’s not that people welcome the idea of the government or some outside group telling you or your grandma what to do, but when you talk to older people you don’t hear many of them saying, “I want to be hooked up to tubes until the last possible second, no matter how much pain I’m in or what I’m putting everyone else through.” You usually hear them say instead something to the effect, “I know death is coming, and I hope to die in a way that’s consonant with how I lived and the values I expressed.”
> 
> FF: That seems like wishful thinking to me. When I was on the President’s Bioethics Council in the early 2000s, we spent a lot of time on these end-of-life and caregiving questions. People will say they don’t want a certain kind of invasive care and would choose to terminate it earlier if given the option, but they say that when they’re relatively young and healthy. When the crucial moment comes, almost no one makes that choice; nor do the family members, who don’t want to live with the burden of having pulled the plug. The institutions don’t want to make that choice either, because they don’t want to be blamed for the outcome. So I don’t think this problem will be solved simply by society changing its norms and embracing a more mature acceptance of death.
> 
> WRM: Well, polling on these questions may be scarce or unreliable given the emotional difficulty, but I do see many family members and friends making the decision to forgo intensive care after a certain point. We also see a lot of growth in hospice care; it’s a much bigger industry than it used to be. Changes in healthcare technology and delivery systems can also make the system less unaffordable. And if we can get a solution to those things, then almost everything else we’re looking at in terms of deficits becomes much more manageable.
> 
> FF: Getting solutions won’t be easy for political reasons, I suspect. To continue with healthcare for a moment, one of the central cost-drivers is the fee-for-service model, which makes for a tremendous overprescription of testing and procedures and the like, because doctors and hospitals make money off of it. But it’s almost impossible to bring up in Congress any proposal to restrict or somehow channel fee-for-service, because all the entrenched interest groups are committed to that particular model.
> 
> The larger question here, of course, is plutocracy. Wealth brings political influence. Any honest reading of history testifies to the phenomenon of sclerotic political systems in which the already rich and powerful get hold of the system in order to protect their positions. You can multiply this through the entire American economy. It’s not necessarily a partisan issue, because on the Left there are also powerful interest groups, like public-sector unions and trial lawyers, that have an effective veto over changes to public policy. But corporate America has most of the money, and most of the distortions in the tax code come from there. My perception is that you’re not as exercised about this issue as some are, but it seems to be an issue we’re completely incapable of addressing. Take the Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo (forget about Citizens United; this has been a position of the Court since the 1970s): This decision amounts to the notion that you can’t restrict money in politics because of the First Amendment. I would be interested in your views on this.
> 
> WRM: I think that a lot of the problems in our political system now are the result of failed campaign finance reforms from the past, and other failed reforms that have dismantled party structures and have essentially turned every candidate into a fund-seeking missile. This has shifted power away from organizations and structures that were at least nominally accountable to voters and put it into the hands of interest groups and individuals.
> 
> I’d like to have a conversation about campaign finance involving three smart people: a really good political operative, a really good campaign finance reform advocate, and a really good constitutional lawyer. I’d want the advocate to give us a proposal; the operative to tell us whether it really would dilute the influence of money in politics; and then the lawyer could tell us whether it’s possible. My guess is that the intersection of the three gives you a null set. There isn’t anything substantive that could constitutionally be done that would really change the way hacks make politics run.
> 
> FF: Yes, but the key word there is “constitutional.” The way our courts have interpreted the Constitution makes it correct to say there’s nothing that can be done. In other democratic countries, however, few suffer from an electoral process that is as out of control as ours is right now. Just consider the amount of time candidates spend campaigning to be President: at least two years, and more than that in many cases. In Japan and Britain there’s a six-week campaigning window, and that’s it. I think there are some institutional fixes that would be relatively simple were it not for this constitutional straitjacket we’ve gotten ourselves into, a straitjacket tightened considerably by the moneyed interests that want to keep things as they are.
> 
> WRM: I think we’re going to adopt the metric system before we ever revise the First Amendment, or our basic interpretations of it. That’s one reason, Frank, I may seem less exercised about this. It’s the serenity prayer: This is one of those things I need to learn to accept so I can start thinking instead about the things I can change.
> 
> FF: Well, you’ve already accepted the fact that you’re going to die, which is an important coming to terms with a difficult issue, and now you’ve accepted the fact that we can’t fix money in politics.
> 
> WRM: At least not through this sort of strategy. I think some things can be done. One reason I advocate, for example, breaking up states like California into smaller units is that they’ve grown to such a degree that their size magnifies the role of money in politics and minimizes the combined grassroots clout of individuals. To run on a statewide campaign in California, you have to raise insane amounts of money. And because the state is so diverse, and because the different parts of the state have so little in common culturally and historically, media and impressions based on political ads often dominate the way that politics goes. Just consider: The constitution was developed for a country with about three million inhabitants, and perhaps only about a tenth of those could vote. The city of Los Angeles alone is larger today than the entire United States was then. I think federalism works, but there are places where the states have gotten so gargantuan that money takes over politics and people live in districts where their ability to change things has eroded. I think there are fixes that don’t require changes in the First Amendment.
> 
> FF: When I moved from Virginia, a swing state, to California two years ago I was effectively disenfranchised. If you actually break California up into four or five smaller units—which I’d be perfectly happy to see happen—you would then have a permanent Democratic majority, certainly in the Senate. But the general point is right, that the political system there is completely out of control. It was created in the early 20th century in order to get around the influence of railroad interests in the state legislature. The whole idea was that citizens should be able to mobilize to counter these special interests. But what’s happened, given the size of the state and the amount of money needed to mount a referendum campaign, is that it has become completely professionalized and taken over by consulting firms that do nothing but hatch ballot initiatives. There are highly automated procedures for collecting the necessary number of signatures, and of course they’re only won by massive television advertising campaigns. It’s also striking that a 50 percent vote on the initiative—which does not represent 50 percent of voters—can put in place a measure that can only be undone by a two-thirds vote in the legislature. That’s an interesting theory of democracy, in which a minority can bind a super-majority.
> 
> WRM: Right. Once you have a political system that doesn’t fit the population, things start going wrong and start adding up. I can think of another change that might help, too. In the old days, every ten years when we did the census reapportionment, the size of the House would increase to match population growth. This meant that district boundaries changed less from census to census. If we can get back to that and permit a slightly greater population differential among districts in order to maintain those boundaries, politicians will need more than media appeal. They’ll need to have people at the grassroots level invest in them and build grassroots support in their district.
> 
> FF: Don’t get me started on redistricting. One of the bad outcomes of the Supreme Court decision that required decennial redistricting is that the authority for it was handed over to the political parties. Of course, they redistrict in a way that ensures their hold on power. A lot of the increasing homogeneity of the parties and the fact that they overlap very little is that there are very few House districts that are competitive anymore. That’s not an accident. Having just dumped on California’s referendum system, I’ll note one interesting example that may actually do some good. Redistricting power was taken away from the state legislature and given not to a bipartisan, but to a strictly non-partisan, committee, which has been slicing up districts deliberately to make them more heterogeneous. The hope is that more Congressmen will have to appeal to a wider variety of constituents. None of the political consultants know how this will play out, but this year’s election is the first under this new system. In general, though, more states ought to hand over redistricting to some independent group rather than let the incumbents use it to feather their own nests.
> 
> WRM: That makes perfect sense. I also think increasing the size of the House with the census may be a good thing if it allows us to keep districts as small as possible. That way voters have more of a sense that they can influence the choices of their representatives. There’s a trend where all layers of government are getting further removed from the people. Not only do you get a political class that floats above people and is less connected to them, but also the power of money is magnified. The more politicians are dealing with “the masses”, and the less with groups of voters making decisions about issues they know a lot about, the nastier and messier politics gets—and the more powerful money is.
> 
> At the state level, I’m a great believer in getting rid of bicameral legislatures and having larger Houses of Representatives with smaller districts whose boundaries don’t change much. What I’m saying, Frank, is that given the constitutional roadblock, there are other ways to deal with money in politics—not to ban money from politics, but rather to nurture counterforces like public opinion and grassroots organizations.
> 
> FF: Another possible change that wouldn’t require constitutional modification is for a large group of states to agree to move to proportional allocation of electoral votes. The current system, in which votes are allocated on a winner-take-all basis, means that only six states actually matter in a presidential election, like Ohio and Virginia, and everyone else is disenfranchised. But no single state will unilaterally do this. It would make no sense for, say, the Democratic majority in California to agree to proportional allocation because it would simply hand over a third of their votes to the Republicans. It would have to be a package deal, one in which all or nearly all fifty states agree to act together. Even if that were possible, would it decrease the role of money in American politics? I don’t know.
> 
> WRM: I like the idea of keeping the presidential election to a race in states.
> 
> FF: This idea would do that, but would just make all fifty states matter. Otherwise we might as well just turn it over to Iowa.
> 
> WRM: I disagree. I think the idea of a candidate’s trying to carry individual states is important. Given the growth of population, and the remoteness of institutions and leaders from people’s daily lives, it’s dangerous to weaken the intermediary units. Yes, as you say, there are certain problems, particularly economic ones, that require solutions at the national or international level. But that’s all the more reason to hold on tightly to the places where you have the option to keep things more locally tied.
> 
> FF: The proportional allocation of electoral votes wouldn’t affect that very much…
> 
> WRM: I think it would. Right now it matters intensely who “carries” a state. Under proportional allocation, it wouldn’t matter if a candidate carried, say, Ohio, with its whole spate of local, regional concerns, any more or less than any other state.
> 
> FF: Well, it wouldn’t make Ohio matter any more than California, but it would make California matter in a way it can’t under the present system. It would make politicians compete for California votes in national elections much more intensely. We’ve not seen a single presidential ad in California for weeks, but if you live in Virginia or Florida, that’s all you’re seeing on television.
> 
> WRM: I think Californians’ grief about not seeing those ads is quite limited. I hope, Frank, that’s the worst curse in your life, to be cut off from campaign advertising.
> 
> FF: You’re right, I should count it as a blessing. Walter, this has been fun. We’ll have to have a conversation about the rest of the world at some later date.
> 
> WRM: Yes, let’s.


----------



## Edward Campbell

For want of a better place to put this ... the Secretary of State is charged with implementing America's _grand strategy_ in the wider world so the person who will hold that job matters. This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, discusses two front runners:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/politics/top-candidates-to-replace-clinton-at-state-dept-may-face-hurdles.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0


> Top Candidates for State Dept. Are Both Facing Possible Hurdles
> 
> By MARK LANDLER
> 
> Published: November 12, 2012
> 
> WASHINGTON — For months, the Beltway parlor game about who will succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state has revolved around two names: Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
> 
> But now that President Obama’s re-election has made the exercise real rather than hypothetical, both front-runners for the most coveted job in his cabinet are dogged by issues that could complicate their path to Mrs. Clinton’s State Department office.
> 
> Of the two, Ms. Rice, an outspoken, ambitious diplomat with close ties to Mr. Obama, has emerged as the clear favorite. But she would face stiff resistance on Capitol Hill, where she has come under withering criticism from Republicans for asserting that the deadly attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, might have been a spontaneous protest rather than a terrorist attack.
> 
> Mr. Kerry, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and prepped Mr. Obama for his debates with Mitt Romney, holds a Senate seat that the White House worries could fall into Republican hands if he gave it up for a cabinet post.
> 
> Both Ms. Rice and Mr. Kerry have a reservoir of good will in the Oval Office, and if she gets the nod, officials said, Mr. Kerry could be considered for defense secretary. But politics will inevitably play a part in Mr. Obama’s decision, especially in the wake of the sex scandal that brought down David H. Petraeus as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
> 
> The decision, administration officials said, will likely hinge on whether Mr. Obama would rather risk a bruising confirmation battle for Ms. Rice or the loss of Mr. Kerry’s seat, which could be picked up by Scott P. Brown after the loss of his own seat last week.
> 
> “The question is, does the president want to launch a major fight with Congress over his choice of secretary of state?” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime diplomat who is vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
> 
> The Senate and House have scheduled hearings on Benghazi this week, which will keep the heat on Ms. Rice as the White House begins its deliberations. At least one influential Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has already come out against her. “I’m not entertaining promoting anybody that I think was involved with the Benghazi debacle,” Mr. Graham said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “Susan Rice needs to be held accountable.”
> 
> The White House stoutly defends Ms. Rice, noting that in her remarks on Benghazi, she was reading from a briefing prepared by the intelligence agencies. The administration, citing new evidence, subsequently confirmed that the attack was an act of terrorism.
> 
> “Anyone who opposes Susan, based on one day’s comments, will have to reconcile that with what the intelligence said on that day,” said an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
> 
> In the unforgiving climate of Washington, though, Mr. Kerry might profit from Ms. Rice’s misfortune. He would likely breeze through a confirmation hearing with his Senate colleagues. And he has been a loyal soldier for the administration on a variety of issues. In 2009, the White House dispatched Mr. Kerry to Afghanistan, where he helped talk President Hamid Karzai into accepting a runoff election. In the Senate, Mr. Kerry has pushed for Obama initiatives like the New Start treaty with Russia.
> 
> With his patrician bearing and Massachusetts roots, he was an obvious stand-in for Mr. Romney during debate preparation. While the president’s lackluster first debate almost capsized his campaign, his aides said they did not blame Mr. Kerry.
> 
> Nor does the loss of his Senate seat appear quite as problematic as it did before last Tuesday. Senator Brown, who was defeated by Elizabeth Warren, left the door open to another run. But some political analysts in Massachusetts say he might be more inclined to run for governor, given that the state once elected a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republican — Mr. Romney — to that post. Even if he did run for the Senate, Mr. Brown would face a robust bench of Democrats.
> 
> Among the potential candidates for Mr. Kerry’s seat is Gov. Deval Patrick, who is close to Mr. Obama. On Friday, Mr. Patrick and his wife, Diane, flew to Washington for a private dinner with Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, at the White House.
> 
> Mr. Patrick may have his eye on a cabinet post like attorney general. But there are other formidable Democrats, like Representative Michael E. Capuano and Martha Coakley, who lost to Mr. Brown but has since rehabilitated her image as the state attorney general.
> 
> “I think the administration could feel relatively confident that they will hold on to the seat,” said Thomas Whalen, a political historian at Boston University. “When you look back on Brown, it was a special election against an exceptionally weak Democratic opponent.”
> 
> Weighing against Mr. Kerry, officials said, is that he would be replaced as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey. With his Cuban roots and hostility toward the Castro regime, Mr. Menendez would likely impede any diplomatic overture by Mr. Obama.
> 
> Representatives of Mr. Kerry and Ambassador Rice declined to comment on their prospects, while the White House said it would not comment on personnel deliberations.
> 
> Mrs. Clinton has long insisted that she would not serve during a second term, but she recently left open the possibility of staying on the job long enough for a successor to win confirmation. That could allow the White House to delay Ms. Rice’s nomination to allow the passions over Benghazi to subside.
> 
> Mr. Kerry and Ms. Rice are not the only names in circulation. Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, is been mentioned, though officials said he would prefer to stay put.
> 
> There has even been speculation in foreign-policy circles that the messy departure of Mr. Petraeus might prod Mr. Obama to consider nominating a Republican, like former Senator Chuck Hagel; a hawkish independent, like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman; or even Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who was Mr. Obama’s envoy to Beijing before running for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Huntsman dismissed the rumors of his candidacy as “idle hallway gossip.”
> 
> For all the political static around Ms. Rice, however, she shares many of Mr. Obama’s instincts on foreign policy. She was among those who lobbied successfully for the United States to intervene during the civil war in Libya. Her ties to Mr. Obama — she advised him during the 2008 campaign — could also enable her to hold her own in an administration where foreign policy has been tightly centralized at the White House.
> 
> “You’ve got a guy in the White House who is the most withholding president in memory,” said Mr. Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson Center. “She has the best chance of breaking that withholding pattern.”
> 
> _A version of this article appeared in print on November 13, 2012, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Top Candidates For State Dept. Are Both Facing Possible Hurdles._




In my opinion, worth what you're paying for it: Kerry is the _liberal_ favourite but Rice is the better choice.


----------



## GAP

Mrs. Clinton taking the hit for Obama took massive heat off of Rice.....Clinton can probably out wait the issue, but Rice comes across as acting under her direction...and that's the issue of the day.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> For want of a better place to put this ... the Secretary of State is charged with implementing America's _grand strategy_ in the wider world so the person who will hold that job matters. This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, discusses two front runners:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/politics/top-candidates-to-replace-clinton-at-state-dept-may-face-hurdles.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
> 
> In my opinion, worth what you're paying for it: Kerry is the _liberal_ favourite but Rice is the better choice.




Evidently, Michele Malkin doesn't share my views on the _acceptability_ of Susan Rice. She _tweets_: *"Susan Rice? Perfect. A lying, dhimmi* Secretary of State for the lying, dhimmi POTUS."*


----------
* _Wikipedia_ says that: "A dhimmī (Arabic: ذمي‎ ḏimmī IPA: [ˈðɪmmiː]), (collectively أهل الذمة ahl al-ḏimmah/dhimmah, "the people of the dhimma") is a historical term referring to non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic state. Dhimma allows rights of residence in return for taxes. According to scholars, dhimmis had their rights fully protected in their communities, but as citizens in the Islamic state, had certain restrictions.[3] They were excused or excluded from specific duties assigned to Muslims, and otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract and obligation."


----------



## Edward Campbell

The _Los Angeles Times_ is reporting that, _"Obama reassessing sensitive foreign issues now that election is over."_ The report says President Obama is reviewing _"whether to deepen U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war, accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan, and offer Iran a compromise deal to curb enrichment of uranium ... they also are considering ways to work out new cooperation with China, an undertaking that Obama campaign operatives had feared might alienate swing state voters anxious about Chinese trade policies and competition."_

But ongoing events in and around Israel may put reconsideration of Syria or overtures towards Iran on hold.

_____
Evidently America's _Grand Strategy_ is no longer a "defence" or "security" issue.  :


----------



## The Bread Guy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The _Los Angeles Times_ Evidently America's _Grand Strategy_ is no longer a "defence" or "security" issue.  :


It is once again - my error.

*Milnet.ca Staff*


----------



## a_majoor

Not sure what happened with the US economy thread, but since this is about foreign money flowing into America (and targeted flows at that), then it will impact on both American domestic and foreign policy, and by extension, their Grand Strategy (since securing their domestic economy and preventing deastabilization by foreign "hot" money should be one of the main pillars of their economic policy) Large number of charts and graphs on the link:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-11-16/following-herd-foreign-money-us-real-estate-markets



> *Following the herd of foreign money into US real estate markets*
> Submitted by drhousingbubble on 11/16/2012 13:55 -0500
> 
> China Commercial Real Estate CRE CRE Detroit Federal Reserve Gross Domestic Product Hong Kong Housing Bubble Japan Krugman National Debt Nikkei Paul Krugman Real estate
> 
> 
> Foreign money is flowing heavily into US real estate markets. Now some think that foreign money is going to prop up the entire market but this is simply not the case. The money flowing in from abroad is going specifically into targeted markets. This isn’t necessarily a US trend only. Canada is experiencing a massive housing bubble from money flowing in from China in particular. Here in Southern California many cities are seeing solid money flowing in from Asian countries. You have this occurring while big fund domestic investors are buying up low priced real estate cross the country as investments. What occurs then is the crowding out of your typical home buyer. I get e-mails from local families looking to buy saying they were outbid by $50,000 or $100,000 for properties that had nothing special. Even after the crash, why does it seem hard for domestic buyers to purchase a home?
> 
> 
> Higher net worth group jumping ahead while middle and lower class grows in size
> 
> The below chart is an interesting look at net worth by percentiles:
> 
> 
> 
> Most Americans are still in a worse economic condition than they were over a decade ago. The numbers in terms of net worth, the true measure of wealth, highlight this very clearly. There are two primary drivers for this:
> 
> -90 percent of households have negligible holdings of actual stocks
> -Most households derive their wealth from real estate
> This explains why after the near non-stop run-up of the stock market since early 2009, most families are still in a tight financial pinch. High net-worth households with higher stock holdings rode this boom and bust much nicer. Part of this has to do with the fact that real estate is a small part of their portfolio and the massive stock market run has aided in boosting net worth back up.
> 
> This has implications on purchasing homes. Those in SoCal making $100,000+ think they should reasonably afford a “nice” home in a prime city. Well those are the places currently being targeted heavily by flippers, investors, and foreign money. This group is part of the net worth group that is in much better shape relative to the other 90 percent of households. So in essence, what was once viewed as affordable just doesn’t match anymore in a more uneven market of wealth.
> 
> People talk about simply picking up and leaving yet this trend is tiny.
> 
> "(The Atlantic) There's a connection between certain places and certain jobs. Silicon Valley is to tech what New York is to finance what Detroit is to cars. Call it the Synecdoche Economy. It's what Paul Krugman dubbed the new economics of geography: small differences beget more differences that become big differences. Regions specialize -- or do they still?
> Maybe not quite as much. Silicon Valley still does computers, New York still does trading, and Detroit still does automobiles, but all of us do a whole lot less of one big thing -- moving. Consider that gross interstate migration has halved in just the past two decades, as the chart below shows."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Overall, people for the most part tend to stay where they are. Our cities copy one another so there no longer is the one city hub of say automobiles (i.e., Detroit) so you have tech jobs in Austin, Silicon Valley, or even Utah. In California, those trying to cope and stay are simply using up the easy money from the Federal Reserve and going into massive debt. These families typically also have large auto loans and other luxury expenses that they consider essential. This is why many are willing to take out a $500,000 mortgage for a shack. All debt and no cattle.
> 
> 
> Japan and CRE bubble
> 
> In the late 1980s and early 1990s money was flowing into Hawaii and California heavily from Japan. This was during their real estate and stock bubble. Back then the fears were similar and that somehow, all of California was going to go to Japanese investors. That bubble was mostly focused on commercial real estate however. Of course that bubble ended and Japan finds itself in a stagnation of over two decades.
> 
> China is experiencing a massive real estate bubble. We recently discussed how Hong Kong instituted a 15 percent tax on foreign investors to cool the market down. Yet these actions are merely methods of slowing down the inevitable. People forget that money is flowing here because it largely wants to opt out or hedge against internal risks. Think about this clearly. If things were so fantastic domestically why is so much money eagerly looking to get out? Don’t you think that these local investors in China know what is going on domestically more than some Bloomberg report from New York? Whenever I see money escaping a country with a passion I think of two things:
> 
> -1. Domestic investments are looking weak
> -2. Long-term growth is slowing down which is likely to bring economic and political instability
> Just look at global stock markets since the lows in 2009:
> 
> 
> 
> While the S&P 500 is only off by 5.86 percent from its peak, the Shanghai index is off by a whopping 40 percent. The Hang Seng index is off by 14 percent. Even the Nikkei is off another 22 percent from its recent high. Again, when you see money flowing out of a country in epic fashion you have to ask what is going on internally. You don’t see European investors coming over with suitcases looking to buy properties in large droves. Yet you see this literally happening in California and Canada.
> 
> Supply is low
> 
> So you have this flood of money coming in competing with the Federal Reserve pushing interest rates to record lows. Add to the mix record low inventory and you can see why prices are jumping in some areas:
> 
> 
> 
> It isn’t that sales are back to bubble day levels. Not even close. Yet what is happening is inventory is incredibly low and the mix of foreign money, big domestic funds, and folks moving off the fence is causing some markets to move up in price. Take California for example. The share of foreclosure re-sales are moving lower and lower:
> 
> 
> 
> Foreclosure resales as a share of all sales is now back to levels last seen in 2007. So the sales that do occur, non-distressed sales are pushing the median price up giving the impression that we are in some sort of large appreciation movement. This is why the median price of a California home is now up 15 percent from last year even though incomes are stagnant.
> 
> I’m always weary about home prices rising so fast while incomes remain stagnant. This is a hot money scenario. Congress is likely to do nothing substantive this year but we have some major challenges in 2013. $16+ trillion in national debt is enormous and bigger than our actual GDP. As we have stated before, something needs to give and something will need to be done. The public of course is now accustomed to low interest rates, high levels of services, and a political machine that runs more like a corporation with large advertising arms. Those thinking they can buy homes in certain markets at rock bottom prices are now contending with the above trends. Hey, you can still get deals in probably 40+ states of the nation or even in places like the Central Valley or Inland Empire in California. Yet most want to live where the foreign and big money is. Following the herd is usually not a good long-term investment strategy.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> For want of a better place to put this ... the Secretary of State is charged with implementing America's _grand strategy_ in the wider world so the person who will hold that job matters. This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times_, discusses two front runners:
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/us/politics/top-candidates-to-replace-clinton-at-state-dept-may-face-hurdles.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
> 
> In my opinion, worth what you're paying for it: Kerry is the _liberal_ favourite but Rice is the better choice.




The mainstream _liberal_ media (led by the _New York Times_ and the _Washington Post_) have come out against Ms. Ruice and now I read that Sen John McCain says he will support John Kerry.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Mixed luck for President Obama's _Asian pivot_ strategy: his keynote trip to Asia has been overshadowed by Gaza (Secretary Clinton is getting more and "better" media exposure) but this is, partially, a good thing because his visit to ASEAN was overshadowed, there, by internal dissent over China and the _islands dispute_, and he appears to have flubbed his meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi so, maybe, he's glad the world's attention is focused elsewhere.

I'm having difficulty understanding why this particular trip was planned the way it was ~ the diplomatic objectives are elusive to me.


----------



## Edward Campbell

And here, in an opinion piece by Robert Kagan, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Washington Post_, is *why* the _Asian pivot_ strategy is problematic, regardless of how well it is (or is not) implemented:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-kagan-us-cant-ignore-the-middle-east/2012/11/20/a2b4ede0-3331-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html


> United States can’t pivot away from Middle East
> 
> By Robert Kagan
> 
> Published: November 20
> 
> _Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a monthly columnist for The Post, is most recently the author of “The World America Made.”_
> 
> ABU DHABI
> 
> The recurrent theme at the Sir Bani Yas Forum, hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Chatham House here last weekend, was, Where is the United States? As the conference opened, Israel had just begun launching strikes in Gaza in response to the missile attacks from Hamas; Syria’s civil war raged with no end in sight; answers to the growing challenge of Iran remained elusive; and the course of Egypt’s political evolution had many concerned.
> 
> No one was suggesting the United States could or ought to have all the answers, but among this gathering of Arab, North African, South Asian and European diplomats and international civil servants, the overwhelming consensus was that the superpower is AWOL. The only question was whether the absence is temporary or permanent.
> 
> It was impressive to see how much desire there is for a more active U.S. role in the Middle East. There was little talk here of America’s decline as the world’s preeminent power. No one is preparing for a Chinese, Indian or Turkish ascendancy. Not even the Europeans claim that the European Union has the will or capacity to take on a bigger role in the region. The United States remains by far the most important player.
> 
> What has people concerned and despairing is not American decline but America’s declining interest — the sense that the Obama administration, and the American people, have about washed their hands of the Middle East.
> 
> President Obama was setting off on the first trip after his reelection, and it was to Southeast Asia, a fitting symbol of his proclaimed “pivot.” No one begrudges the United States paying more attention to Asia, but in the Middle East the pivot is seen as an attempt to turn away from this region’s difficult problems. People here believe Obama got burned on the Middle East peace process three years ago and is reluctant to engage again. They see how reticent the United States is to do anything in Syria. Veteran America-watchers complain that neither the White House nor the State Department has a Middle East hand with real clout focusing full-time on the region.
> 
> And it’s hard to deny: Many in the United States, not just inside the Obama administration, seem to think American policy needs to be “rebalanced.” The strategic importance of the Middle East is declining, they argue, as the United States grows independent of the region’s oil supply. Obama does little to push back against a growing public perception that there is nothing but trouble for the United States brewing in the Middle East.
> 
> When the Arab revolutions first erupted, the Obama White House promised to focus great attention and resources on these world-transforming events. That enthusiasm faded long ago. The administration used to trumpet its success in Libya. But lack of attention and follow-through has damaged even that once-bright spot. The Obama campaign boasted about getting U.S. troops out of Iraq. Beyond that, however, administration officials have little to say about one of the most important nations in the Middle East, still engaged in a historic struggle for democratic change.
> 
> The irony, of course, is that every time the Obama administration tries to turn toward Asia, the Middle East drags it back — literally, in the case of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It’s an illusion to think we will not continue to be drawn into Middle East affairs. The world is no longer neatly divided by distinct regions, if it ever was. Events in the Middle East affect the world, just as events in Asia do. Wherever the United States gets its oil, global energy prices are affected by whether oil flows freely from the Middle East, and U.S. allies in Europe and Asia still depend on that as a main source. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, it will affect not just the Middle East but the global non-proliferation regime. The success or failure of the experiment to marry Islamism and democracy that is playing out in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere will affect politics across the Islamic world, from Morocco to Pakistan to Southeast Asia as well as in Europe. And if Syria collapses, the chances are high that well-armed terrorist groups will gain a foothold in a nation with the world’s largest chemical weapons stockpiles.
> 
> The present world order is seamless, and so is the global strategy necessary to sustain it. As one prominent statesman expressed the general puzzlement here, “Can’t the United States walk and chew gum at the same time?” For decades the United States has been able to provide security and remain engaged in three major theaters at once: Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Today those theaters are more interconnected, economically and strategically, than ever.
> 
> So let’s by all means give Asia the attention it deserves. But the world won’t afford us the luxury of downgrading the importance of the other two regions. That’s what it means to be a global superpower: We can pivot, but we can’t leave.



I agree with Robert Kagan that: _"The present world order is seamless, and so is the global strategy necessary to sustain it._"

The _Asian pivot_ threatens to:

1. Persuade the Chinese that America intends to _encircle_ and _contain_ it. In my opinion neither is the case, for this administration, anyway; but either would be a serious strategic blunder unless and until the USA is willing and able to go to war with China; and

2. Weaken American influence elsewhere without a concomitant strengthening of America's influence in Asia.


----------



## Edward Campbell

To illustrate what wrong with the implementation of the the _Asian pivot_ strategy:

1. China almost got what it wanted ("back burner" treatement) last week at the ASEAN meeting; but

2. It, China, settled for less (public disunity), but only because of ASEAN internal disagreements, not as a result of any US influence; and

3. Now the Philippines, a not inconsequential Asian power, has called a separate meeting (with Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam) to deal with China's _island_ claims without US (or ASEAN) involvement.

It looks to me as though some Asians are less than convinced that the US "here to stay": or, for that matter, even "here."


----------



## Edward Campbell

I hate to keep banging on about this, but _Reuters_ reports, datelined Phnom Penh, 1 Nov 12, that:

"When U.S. President Barack Obama and more than a dozen leaders arrived in Cambodia for a regional summit meeting this week, only one of them was feted with banners strung from the venue gates.

*"Welcome Prime Minister Wen Jiabao!"* one proclaimed. *"Long live the People's Republic of China!"* read another.

As the leaders left, the green-and-white banners were still festooned outside Phnom Penh's Peace Palace, a fitting reminder of China's powerful and growing clout as Beijing uses its influence - and money - to win friends and frustrate those uneasy about its sweeping territorial claims and rising military strength."

I guess the _Asian pivot_ needs more money and military strength, both of which are in short supply in Washington, to *win* in East Asia.


----------



## a_majoor

A sort of string from Instapundit earlier today. The US economy is facing huge hurdles and the looming "fiscal cliff" is just one of them. On economic threads I have pointed out the importance of incentives, since this Administration is viciously disincentivizing wealth creation we will see sluggish growth and massively expanded debt for years to come:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/



> A READER EMAILS:
> 
> I have noticed a theme running through a lot of your posts. From tax policy, to health care, to federal criminal laws, it is a constantly changing landscape that is impossible for companies and individuals to navigate. I am working with a company that is looking to start a whole new business program in the healthcare field, but they were holding off until after the election because of all the changes that will of course occur regardless of who won. Now they aren’t even sure if they will proceed with it.
> 
> Politicians will talk about helping American manufacturers, small businesses, etc. But instead they constantly change the rules of the game to “help” (of course it only seems to help big contributors who can navigate the rules or get special waivers). Businesses can handle all sorts of challenges, but they need to know that the time, money and effort they put in wont be undermined by a constantly changing rule book. Why would I sacrifice and risk if some politician is going to decide some day that I was too successful and take what I earned, or some competitor will pay enough to get an unfair advantage bestowed upon them by a politician.
> 
> At this point, most of the business people I know are truly disgusted with politicians from both parties. They go around making policies, rules and laws as if this is some game. This is my business, my family and my life, and it is constantly under attack by an army of bureaucrats.
> 
> Yes, it’s important to have good policies, but it’s also important — perhaps more important — to have stable ones. When things are constantly changing, the problem is called “regime uncertainty.” It can be quite destructive, especially if you want innovation and investment.
> 
> The problem is, *stable policies offer fewer opportunities for graft and electioneering*.
> 
> UPDATE: Reader Janet Shagam writes:
> 
> The email reminded me of this bit from Federalist No. 62 – “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.”
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> Posted at 2:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds
> 
> SO YESTERDAY’S DISCUSSION OF MARGINAL TAX RATES raises a thought: In today’s freelance economy, will the impact of marginal rates on how hard people work be greater than in the past? I mean, if you have an old-fashioned full-time “job” paying X-dollars a year, you can’t easily cut back and lower your income. But if you’re a freelancer of some kind, it’s easy to say that once you’re paying 50% (or 40%) tax on your income you’d rather cut back and substitute more leisure time. With more people earning their living that way, and fewer in full-time jobs, I assume we’ll see a lot more of that than we would have, say, 20 or 30 years ago.
> 
> UPDATE: A reader emails:
> 
> With regard to your last comment on marginal tax rates, I really think that the Collins (the chiropractors mentioned in the articles lambasted on HuffPo, Slate and Mother Jones) are getting a very raw deal. There is no reason to suspect that they don’t know how marginal rates work. Given that they’re pretty much fee-for-service workers, the main way that they’ll make more money is to see more patients. If they see more patients, they have less leisure time. Hence, once they hit the higher bracket, every marginal patient is less profit to them, and the option of going on vacation is more attractive.
> 
> Weigel, Drum and Linkins all assume that the Collins don’t understand marginal tax rates because every patient brings in addition profit, simply not as much–the embedded assumption being that expansion is great marginal revenue is greater than zero. They don’t seem to understand that every hour worked (and thus taken from leisure) has an opportunity cost (and, indeed, a rising marginal cost). The Collins seem to have a perfectly good grasp of economics, and the journalists appear both clueless and, worse, cruel.
> 
> Of course, what’s odd is that they all make the same mistake.
> 
> Groupthink abounds. But yes, the more you work, the greater the value of your remaining leisure time. Set that against a declining return on additional hours worked, and it’s easy to see why people might stop working sooner than purely profit-oriented models suggest.
> 
> And another reader emails:
> 
> Please keep me anonymous if you use this.
> 
> I work in commission sales. I’ve earned a very nice income right below that $250K “threshold”. I’ve spent all of 2011 and 2012 in downsizing my expenses, paying off all debts, and conversing with my wife about how to best enjoy our now empty-nest status. A big part of our consideration is how much various taxing entities will be taking a piece of my hard-earned dollars. As a result, we will significantly reduce my income in 2013 so that I have a LOT more time to enjoy life. We’ll be very comfortable and my employer is very comfortable with me since I’m dependable and will reach my production goals that we’ve mutually agreed to. Could I earn a lot more? Yes. But I won’t because I don’t need to send any more dollars to Washington DC.
> 
> And reader Paul Stueck emails:
> 
> If I am the marginal consultant, the answer is yes.
> 
> My plan is to either raise my rates, so that there is less demand for my services (resulting in more leisure time between assignments), and\or to not take overlapping contracts as I’ve done previously.
> 
> (This from someone who worked from 3:00 AM to 11:30 PM to help out a client on Thanksgiving…)
> 
> I think we’ll see a lot more of this than many anticipate.
> 
> UPDATE: Reader Roger Bogh writes:
> 
> Regarding your discussion on the effect of increasing marginal tax rates on a consultant economy (http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/158226/) I have a point to be made on we salaried slugs. Namely, that many of us have spent the last four or five years getting out of debt and increasing cash flow. I was going to enjoy my new financial clout and freedom. Now I have to assume that various government entities will be grabbing at my new found assets. What is one to do? Well, I am number crunching the various tax increases I am about to be challenged by. My goal is to absolutely Zero Out those tax increases by increasing my 401(k) contributions, increasing my Health Flexible Savings Account, donating more to charity, and grinding on all of my potential deductions.
> 
> The end result is that I will have a backup Winnebago and a boat in my golden years. Maybe I’ll hire a couple of drivers for my Winnebagos rather than a boat and captain. I really don’t want all that stuff in my golden years but you have to do what you have to do.
> 
> Right now, I have mathed out the increase in my 401(k) required to zero out Kalefornea’s Proposition 30 and Proposition Z. Since I am not in the upper crust I am only going to have to zero out $150. I will time that for my first paycheck in January. The bummer is that zeroing out Governor Moonbeam’s tax increase will result in the Feds taking a cut in their revenue. Hope our Economic Black Swan President doesn’t let us fall of the cliff. If he does Kalefornea will wonder where all their money went.
> 
> Bring it on. If nobody on Capitol Hill will starve the beast I will…
> 
> Funny, I’m now reading James Scott’s new book, and he says (on page 14):
> 
> *One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy,” the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.*
> 
> This response seems to me to be something like that — with the added aspect that it is actually encouraged by the regime’s own policy approaches.



The two takeaways are the constant "churning" of regulations and laws is replicating the conditions that caused the Capital Strike of 1937-38 (the single worst year of the Great Depression) and that people are making plans to "go Galt" without any sort of coordination. The Administration and the Blue States might believe they are under some sort of coordinated economic attack, but none exist. They will try to impliment new rules and taxes to "boost the economy", but only push more people past the threshold where they will "go Galt", setting up a new cycle until the system implodes. The end result will not be pretty.


----------



## a_majoor

It seems that the rest of the world can recognize that the US is currently not a serious player, and the TPP has been sidelined by a much larger, "all Asian" trading partnership group. This may also have some consequences for us (and probably not good ones). Lots of charts in the article, follow link:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NK27Dj02.html



> *Post-US world born in Phnom Penh*
> By Spengler
> 
> It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world's population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.
> 
> President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn't. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.
> 
> Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States. As 3 billion Asians become prosperous, interest fades in the prospective contribution of 300 million Americans - especially when those Americans decline to take risks on new technologies. America's great economic strength, namely its capacity to innovate, exists mainly in memory four years after the 2008 economic crisis.
> 
> A minor issue in the election campaign, the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative was the object of enormous hype on the policy circuit. Salon.com enthused on October 23,
> 
> This agreement is a core part of the "Asia pivot" that has occupied the activities of think tanks and policymakers in Washington but remained hidden by the tinsel and confetti of the election. But more than any other policy, the trends the TPP represents could restructure American foreign relations, and potentially the economy itself.
> 
> As it happened, this grand, game-changing vision mattered only to the sad, strange people who concoct policy in the bowels of the Obama administration. America's relative importance is fading.
> 
> To put these matters in context: the exports of Asian countries have risen more than 20% from their peak before the 2008 economic crisis, while Europe's exports have fallen by more than 20%. American exports have risen marginally (by about 4%) from their pre-2008 peak.
> 
> Exhibit 1: Asian, European and US exports
> 
> 
> China's exports to Asia, meanwhile, have jumped 50% since their pre-crisis peak, while exports to the United States have risen by about 15%. At US$90 billion, Chinese exports to Asia are three times the country's exports to the United States.
> 
> After months and dire (and entirely wrong) predictions that China's economy faces a hard landing, it is evident that China will have no hard landing, nor indeed any landing at all. Domestic consumption as well as exports to Asia are both running nearly 20% ahead of last year's levels, compensating for weakness in certain export markets and the construction sector. Exports to the moribund American economy are stagnant.
> 
> Exhibit 2: China's exports to Asia vs USA
> 
> Source: Bloomberg
> 
> In 2002, China imported five times as much from Asia as it did from the United States. Now it imports 10 times as much from Asia as from the US.
> 
> Exhibit 3: Chinese imports from the US and Asia
> 
> Source: Bloomberg
> 
> Following the trade patterns, Asian currencies began trading more closely with China's renminbi than with the American dollar. Arvind Subramanian and Martin Kessler wrote in an October 2012 study for the Peterson Institute:
> 
> A country's rise to economic dominance tends to be accompanied by its currency becoming a reference point, with other currencies tracking it implicitly or explicitly. For a sample comprising emerging market economies, we show that in the last two years, the renminbi (RMB/yuan) has increasingly become a reference currency which we define as one which exhibits a high degree of co-movement (CMC) with other currencies.
> 
> In East Asia, there is already a RMB bloc, because the RMB has become the dominant reference currency, eclipsing the dollar, which is a historic development. In this region, 7 currencies out of 10 co-move more closely with the RMB than with the dollar, with the average value of the CMC relative to the RMB being 40% greater than that for the dollar. We find that co-movements with a reference currency, especially for the RMB, are associated with trade integration.
> 
> We draw some lessons for the prospects for the RMB bloc to move beyond Asia based on a comparison of the RMB's situation today and that of the Japanese yen in the early 1990s. If trade were the sole driver, a more global RMB bloc could emerge by the mid-2030s but complementary reforms of the financial and external sector could considerably expedite the process.
> 
> All of this is well known and exhaustively discussed. The question is what, if anything, the United States will do about it.
> 
> Where does the United States have a competitive advantage? Apart from commercial aircraft, power-generating equipment, and agriculture, it has few areas of real industrial pre-eminence. Cheap natural gas helps low-value-added industries such as fertilizer, but the US is lagging in the industrial space.
> 
> Four years ago, when Francesco Sisci and I proposed a Sino-American monetary agreement as an anchor for trade integration, the US still dominated the nuclear power plant industry. With the sale of the Westinghouse nuclear power business to Toshiba, and Toshiba's joint ventures with China to build power plants locally, that advantage has evaporated.
> 
> The problem is that Americans have stopped investing in the sort of high-tech, high-value-added industries that produce the manufactures that Asia requires. Manufacturers' capital goods orders are 38% below the 1999 peak after taking inflation into account. And venture capital allocations for high-tech manufacturing have dried up.
> 
> Exhibit 4: Venture capital allocations for export-related industries collapse
> (March 2003=100)
> 
> Source: National Venture Capital Association
> 
> Exhibit 5: US capital goods orders nearly 40% below 1999 peak in real terms
> 
> Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis
> 
> Without innovation and investment, all the trade agreements that the Washington policy circuit can devise won't help. Neither, it should be added, will an adjustment in exchange rates.
> 
> It is hard to fathom just what President Obama had in mind when he arrived in Asia bearing a Trans-Pacific Partnership designed to keep China out. What does the United States have to offer Asians?
> 
> It is borrowing $600 billion a year from the rest of the world to finance a $1.2 trillion government debt, most prominently from Japan (China has been a net seller of Treasury securities during the past year).
> It is a taker of capital rather than a provider of capital.
> 
> It is a major import market but rapidly diminishing in relative importance as intra-Asian trade expands far more rapidly than trade with the United States.
> 
> And America's strength as an innovator and incubator of entrepreneurs has diminished drastically since the 2008 crisis, no thanks to the Obama administration, which imposed a steep task on start-up businesses in the form of its healthcare program.
> 
> Washington might want to pivot towards Asia. At Phnom Penh, though, Asian leaders in effect invited Obama to pivot the full 360 degrees and go home.
> 
> Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It's Not the End of the World - It's Just the End of You, also appeared last fall, from Van Praag Press.


----------



## Old Sweat

In this column reproduced from The National Review Online under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act Mark Steyn makes the point, which should be obvious to policy makers and the people in the street alike, that the Americans voted for a European-type welfare state but are not willing to pay for it.

Kindly Note the Impending Bankruptcy
You can’t have American-sized taxes and European-sized government.
By Mark Steyn


Previously on The Perils of Pauline:

Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?

Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set up . . . a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic sequestration.”

Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth of debt over the course of a decade.

So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.

As America hangs by its fingernails wiggling its toesies over the vertiginous plummet to oblivion, what can save her now? An Even More Super Committee? A bipartisan agreement in which Republicans agree to cave and Democrats agree not to laugh at them too much? That could be just the kind of farsighted reach-across-the-aisle compromise that rescues the nation until next week’s thrill-packed episode when America’s strapped into the driver’s seat of a runaway Chevy Volt careering round the hairpin bends on full charge, or trapped in an abandoned subdivision overrun by foreclosure zombies.

I suppose it’s possible to take this recurring melodrama seriously, but there’s no reason to. The problem facing the United States government is that it spends over a trillion dollars a year that it doesn’t have. If you want to make that number go away, you need either to reduce spending or to increase revenue. With the best will in the world, you can’t interpret the election result as a spectacular victory for less spending. Indeed, if nothing else, the unfortunate events of November 6 should have performed the useful task of disabusing us poor conservatives that America is any kind of “center-right nation.” A few months ago, I dined with a (pardon my English) French intellectual who, apropos Mitt Romney’s stump-speech warnings that we were on a one-way ticket to Continental-sized dependency, chortled to me, “Americans love Big Government as much as Europeans. The only difference is that Americans refuse to admit it.”

My Gallic charmer is on to something. According to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics: government expenditures per person in France, $18,866.00; in the United States, $19,266.00. That’s adjusted for purchasing-power parity, and yes, no comparison is perfect, but did you ever think the difference between America and the cheese-eating surrender monkeys would come down to quibbling over the fine print? In that sense, the federal debt might be better understood as an American Self-Delusion Index, measuring the ever widening gap between the national mythology (a republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens) and the reality (a 21st-century cradle-to-grave nanny state in which, as the Democrats’ convention boasted, “government is the only thing we do together”).

Generally speaking, functioning societies make good-faith efforts to raise what they spend, subject to fluctuations in economic fortune: Government spending in Australia is 33.1 percent of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1 percent. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4 percent and revenues are 41 percent — a shortfall but in the ballpark. Government spending in the United States is 42.2 percent, but revenues are 24 percent — the widest spending/taxing gulf in any major economy.

So all the agonizing over our annual trillion-plus deficits overlooks the obvious solution: Given that we’re spending like Norwegians, why don’t we just pay Norwegian tax rates?

No danger of that. If (in Milton Himmelfarb’s famous formulation) Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans, Americans are taxed like Puerto Ricans but vote like Scandinavians. We already have a more severely redistributive taxation system than Europe in which the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans pay 70 percent of income tax while the poorest 20 percent shoulder just three-fifths of one percent. By comparison, the Norwegian tax burden is relatively equitably distributed. Yet Obama now wishes “the rich” to pay their “fair share” — presumably 80 or 90 percent. After all, as Warren Buffett pointed out in the New York Times this week, the Forbes 400 richest Americans have a combined wealth of $1.7 trillion. That sounds a lot, and once upon a time it was. But today, if you confiscated every penny the Forbes 400 have, it would be enough to cover just over one year’s federal deficit. And after that you’re back to square one. It’s not that “the rich” aren’t paying their “fair share,” it’s that America isn’t. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it’s not willing to pay for.

A couple of years back, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute calculated that, if Washington were to increase every single tax by 30 percent, it would be enough to balance the books — in 25 years. If you were to raise taxes by 50 percent, it would be enough to fund our entitlement liabilities — just our current ones, not our future liabilities, which would require further increases. This is the scale of course correction needed.

If you don’t want that, you need to cut spending — like Harry Reid’s been doing. “Now remember, we’ve already done more than a billion dollars’ worth of cuts,” he bragged the other day. “So we need to get some credit for that.”

Wow! A billion dollars’ worth of cuts! Washington borrows $188 million every hour. So, if Reid took over five hours to negotiate those “cuts,” it was a complete waste of time. So are most of the “plans.” Any “debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.

So given that the ruling party will not permit spending cuts, what should Republicans do? If I were John Boehner, I’d say: “Clearly there’s no mandate for small government in the election results. So, if you milquetoast pantywaist sad-sack excuses for the sorriest bunch of so-called Americans who ever lived want to vote for Swede-sized statism, it’s time to pony up.”

Okay, he might want to focus-group it first. But that fundamental dishonesty is the heart of the crisis. You cannot simultaneously enjoy American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has to go.


----------



## tomahawk6

Susan Rice under fire from the left.

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/un-treaties/270293-liberal-group-launches-petition-blasting-susan-rices-outrageous-keystone-investments


----------



## a_majoor

Devaluing the US currency seems to be the only goal this policy has in mind, but the secondary effects of inflation and Hayekian credit bubbles will wreak havoc on the American economy for years to come. Of course, since many metrics coming from the US are suspect anyway (consider the constant use of the BLS unemployment statistics, rather than the more accurate and inclusive U3 figure) the "targets" that are being aimed for are little more than mirages. 

The other problem is this is simply more fun with Keynesian economics. Back when I was learning the IS/LM theory of trading inflation for unemployment I was forces to wonder why Stagflation existed outside the classroom window (something totally impossible under the Keynesian model), or how the Reagan revolution was crushing inflation and generating huge inceases in empoyment despite the vehement assertation of my instructors and leading pundits that this could not be happening. Years of "stimulus", low interest rates and flooding the economy with "liquidity" has failed to move unemployment or economic growth much, so suggesting that supercharging the process will work so much better is madness:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/12/12/terence-corcoran-bernake-steers-feds-monetary-machine-into-uncharted-waters/



> T*erence Corcoran: Bernanke steers Fed’s monetary machine into uncharted waters*
> 
> Terence Corcoran | Dec 12, 2012 8:34 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 13, 2012 11:41 AM ET
> More from Terence Corcoran | @terencecorcoran
> 
> The problem with the policy is that the cause-and-effect link between zero interest rates and the unemployment rate does not exist
> 
> In a stunning and history-making policy departure that challenges some basic tenets of economic theory, Ben Bernanke is taking the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary machine where it has never been before. It may even be where no central banker has ever been before.
> 
> Using the printing presses and control over interest rates, Mr. Bernanke’s Fed said Wednesday it will hold interest rates at near zero and continue to buy up to $1-trillion a year in bond and mortgage securities at a rate of $85-billion a month until the cows come home.
> 
> Targets imply that rock-bottom interest rates will prevail through to 2015 and beyond
> In this case, the cows are measured by the U.S. unemployment rate and inflation. Specifically, the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said it will remain in super-stimulist mode “at least as long” as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5% and inflation is projected to be below 2.5%.
> 
> Related
> U.S. Fed announces fresh stimulus in new approach to support growth
> Fed announces new round of stimulus: What the analysts say
> The targets imply — for Americans and likely Canadians as well — that rock-bottom interest rates will prevail through to 2015 and beyond.
> 
> The appearance of a specific unemployment rate objective — well below the current rate of 7.5%— is a radical departure in economic and monetary theory. The idea, however, has been high on the agenda of monetary liberals for some time and is not a total surprise.
> 
> When Chicago Fed president Charles Evans delivered a keynote lecture to the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto two weeks ago, he outlined the rationale for the jobless target. With inflation low, he said, “a number of macro-model simulations … indicate that we can keep the funds rate near zero until the unemployment rate hits at least 6.5% and still generate only minimal inflation risks.”
> 
> Joblessness is determined by a range of economic and policy forces, all of which are beyond the reach of monetary policy
> Mr. Evans implied that his Fed colleagues were mostly in agreement. An even lower unemployment target might be doable. “Even a 6% threshold doesn’t look threatening in many of these [macro-model] scenarios. But for now, I am ready to say that 6.5% looks like a better unemployment marker than the 7% rate I had called for earlier.”
> 
> And so 6.5% it is, as of Wednesday announcement. The policy — already widely referred to as “the Evans rule”— is an easy sell to politicians, the public, interventionist economists and unions. Use fast money and zero interest rates to create jobs and reduce the high-profile unemployment rate. Of course! Simple, graspable, clear.
> 
> The problem with the policy is that the cause-and-effect link between zero interest rates and the unemployment rate does not exist. Joblessness is determined by a range of economic and policy forces, all of which are beyond the reach of monetary policy.
> 
> http://financialpostopinion.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ben-bernanke.jpg?w=620
> 
> 
> The $1-trillion-a-year U.S. fiscal mess, for example, creates the threat of massive tax increases, spending disruptions and uncertainty that kills growth and investment. New financial regulations and government policies disrupt and distort economic behaviour. If unemployment stays high due to bad policies and economic change, no amount of monetary stimulus can bring down the rate.
> 
> It could, however, create inflation. The Fed claims to reject the idea of using inflation to boost job creation, although more than a few economists think that tradeoff is worth the risk. Mr. Evans once thought 3% inflation might be acceptable. On Wednesday, the Fed sawed it off at 2.5%, above its official target of 2% but below a possible 3%.
> 
> The idea that central banks can target the narrow statistic of unemployment, rather than stick to inflation while keeping an eye on some broader measure of economic performance, is relatively new. So is the companion idea that the Fed and other central banks should begin broadcasting the fact that they will continue to stimulate the economy even after economic recovery has set in.
> 
> To again quote Mr. Evans, the new approach is to “make it clear that the highly accommodative stance of monetary policy would remain in place for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens,” which the Fed has said will take it to 2015.
> 
> So the question, asked by Mr. Evans: “Why should policy remain accommodative even after we have a stronger recovery? The delay is a feature of what modern macroeconomic theory tells us is the optimal policy response to the extraordinary circumstances we have faced over the past four years.”
> 
> Another way of reading the central bank policy shifts, however, is as outright admissions that the past four years of unprecedented monetary expansionism and experimentation have been a failure.
> 
> In America, Canada and around the world, central banks have taken risky bets on their new interventions — now estimated to include nearly $15-trillion in asset purchases along with zero interest rates over almost five years. But still there are no signs of real sustained recovery. Instead, there are widespread predictions of fresh recessions.
> 
> As for the “modern macroeconomic theory” Mr. Evens refers to, it turns out to be a couple of papers by other economists, including one by Michael Woodford at Columbia University delivered to the annual meeting of central bankers in Wyoming in August. Mr. Woodford, over about 100 pages, attempts to figure out what should be done when economies are still stagnant and interest rates have been at zero for years.
> 
> His answer: Central banks should use “forward guidance” to announce how long they intend to keep rates low. If the Fed can’t lower interest rates to below zero, then maybe it can generate growth by telling people it will keep rates low until the cows come home.
> 
> Finn Poschmann, vice-president, research, at the C.D.Howe Institute, says the Woodford paper is essentially a concession. “Roughly,” he said, Mr. Woodford has concluded that “it’s not working, so we have to promise to do it for a really long time and, not only that, promise to keep doing it long after.”
> 
> Mr. Woodford credits Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney with having been a bit of a pioneer in the forward-guidance business. In a speech this week, Mr. Carney — clearly anticipating the FOMC action Wednesday — warned however that “this forward guidance is never a promise.” Actual policy will always “respond to the economic and financial outlook as it evolves. Expectations of policy should do the same.” Mr. Carney also said central banks should adopt precise numerical “thresholds” for inflation and unemployment. He didn’t set any thresholds for Canada, but maybe Canada is next in the great global central banking experiment/gamble/big bet that monetary policy can save us all.


----------



## Edward Campbell

The _Twitterverse_ is suggesting that Chuck Hagel will the the next Secretary of Defence in Washington.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Online rumour mill now says that Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration as Secretary of State.


Edit to add: and it is confirmed by _NBC News_.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> To illustrate what wrong with the implementation of the the _Asian pivot_ strategy:
> 
> 1. China almost got what it wanted ("back burner" treatement) last week at the ASEAN meeting; but
> 
> 2. It, China, settled for less (public disunity), but only because of ASEAN internal disagreements, not as a result of any US influence; and
> 
> 3. Now the Philippines, a not inconsequential Asian power, has called a separate meeting (with Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam) to deal with China's _island_ claims without US (or ASEAN) involvement.
> 
> It looks to me as though some Asians are less than convinced that the US "here to stay": or, for that matter, even "here."




More on the _Asian Pivot_ in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Global Asia_ (A journal of the East Asia Foundation, a Korea based think-tank):

http://globalasia.org/V7N4_Winter_2012/Michael_McDevitt.html


> America’s New Security Strategy and Its Military Dimension
> 
> By Michael McDevitt
> 
> December 2012
> 
> *Much has been made of the military implications of America’s pivot to Asia, especially in the context of perceptions that the US is engaged in an effort to contain China.
> 
> Retired US Navy Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt argues that while China is an important factor in the US strategic shift, the pivot is about much more than China. It is about shaping the environment so that a US-China conflict never becomes necessary, and perhaps someday is even inconceivable.*
> 
> In November 2011 the administration of US President Barack Obama announced a rebalancing of its strategic focus away from the wars of the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific. It also announced that this new strategic rebalancing, or pivot, included an integrated mix of diplomatic, economic, budgetary and security-related initiatives.
> 
> The strategy was widely interpreted in the Western media as being all about China, which the administration denies, while in China, the strategy was widely perceived as being one more step in a Washington containment strategy. The truth, of course, is that China is a significant consideration, but it is also true that the rebalance is not all about China, nor is it an attempt to contain China. In fact, anyone who knows anything about Asia realizes that none of China’s neighbors would support a containment strategy. While they may be nervous about China’s growing power, they are also, in one way or another, historically, culturally and economically linked with China. After all, China is every Asian nation’s largest trading partner. They also recognize that China is always going to be their largest neighbor.
> 
> The rebalance, to be sure, is not officially blind to China’s rise. In a Foreign Policy article that provides the most comprehensive written description of the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote: “China represents one of the most challenging and consequential bilateral relationships the United States has ever had to manage. This calls for careful, steady, dynamic stewardship, an approach to China on our part that is grounded in reality, focused on results, and true to our principles and interests.”1
> 
> The rebalance strategy is really about the fact that over the past 10 years Washington has poured immense resources into Iraq and Afghanistan. In effect, America’s strategic focus was “out of balance.” It was much too heavily weighted toward fighting wars in the Persian Gulf region and Afghanistan—at the expense of America’s more traditional security focus, which was more balanced among regions.
> 
> Thus, the administration’s strategy is more accurately understood as an attempt to restore the traditional balance of interests and focus to American security policy, which since 1898 has always had a strong Asia-Pacific orientation, and at the same time to reassure friends and allies that the US remains committed to the Asia-Pacific and to stability in East Asia. The rebalance is intended to counter the regional narrative of American decline in the face of Chinese growth; hence, the real diplomatic and informational focus of the strategy is reassurance.
> 
> *The Evolving Strategic Setting: China Moves to Sea*
> 
> In those 10 years of US involvement in the wars of the Middle East, the strategic balance in Asia has been changing. For half a century, the military balance of power in East Asia was unchanged. The continental powers of East Asia, the Soviet Union and “Red” China were effectively balanced by the offshore presence of the US and its island and archipelagic allies. This balance began to change about 16 years ago, when China had the political motivation and economic resources to begin to address a historic strategic weakness — its vulnerability to military intervention from the sea. The incentive for Beijing was the fear that newly democratic Taiwan was moving toward de jure independence and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), short of nuclear escalation, was essentially powerless to prevent it, particularly if the US elected militarily to support such a course of action.
> 
> Beijing also had plenty of historical motivations. China’s “Century of Humiliation” started in the mid-19th century with its defeat in the Opium War by the British, who came from the sea. Over the decades, China was repeatedly humiliated by foreign powers that exploited China’s weakness along its maritime approaches.2
> 
> As a result, the combination of economic and geo-strategic factors related to security merge to form the strategic motivation for a historically unique Chinese defense perimeter that extends hundreds of miles to sea. The strategic drivers for Beijing are: the issue of Taiwan itself; the fact that the vast majority of China’s unresolved security issues are maritime in nature; the reality that its economic development depends upon imports of raw materials and exports of finished goods that travel mainly by sea; and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that China’s economic center of gravity is located along its eastern seaboard, exposed to attack from the sea.
> 
> *If China is only defending its interests, is this a problem? *
> 
> By moving its defenses far to sea, China is effectively undermining the traditional maritime-continental balance that has provided the security and stability that have enabled the Asian economic miracle of the last 30 years. As China improves its defenses, it is making the security situation of the countries that live in the shadow of China worse. It is creating what academics call a “security dilemma” — one country’s defenses become so effective that its neighbors fear for their own security.
> 
> In 2001, the US Department of Defense began publicly to fret about this situation, characterizing the military problem as “anti-access” and “area denial.”3 The Chinese have also coined a term to describe what they are trying to achieve militarily: PLA strategists refer to it as “counter-intervention operations.” In practical terms, this refers to the knitting together of a large submarine force, land-based aircraft carrying anti-ship cruise missiles, and in the near future, ballistic missiles that have the ability to hit moving ships. All these capabilities depend on a very effective ocean surveillance system that can detect and accurately locate approaching naval forces.
> 
> No matter what one calls this concept, the desired military outcome is the same — to keep US naval and air forces as far away from China as possible. The strategic implications of this for China’s neighbors, many of whom depend upon the US to underwrite their security as alliance or strategic partners, are obvious. If “we” get into a confrontation with China, can “we” depend upon the United States to be able to support us?
> 
> Beijing argues that its strategic intentions are clear: China is on a path of peaceful development and is not a threat to its neighbors. I believe that China’s leaders believe this. The trouble is that, as any strategist will argue, intentions can change in an instant; what really matters are the military capabilities that China will possess when its counter-intervention force is completed. Will China be able to defeat US forward-deployed forces and prevent additional forces from the US from reaching East Asia in the event of a conflict? Addressing this worry over American staying power in Asia in the face of a rising China is a key issue that the Obama rebalance strategy intends to address.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *The long term US response *
> 
> The US response to the challenge posed by the PLA’s “counter-intervention operation” was actually unveiled in the US’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report. It announced that the US Air Force and US Navy had combined to develop a new operational concept known as Air-Sea Battle (ASB). ASB aims to counter any anti-access threat in the world, including that posed by China. Details of this concept have for understandable reasons remained highly classified, but recent statements by the heads of the Navy and Air Force have indicated that ASB will focus on three lines of effort: 1) disrupting enemy surveillance systems, as surveillance is the backbone of any anti-access system. If you can’t locate an approaching naval force, you can’t attack it; 2) destroying enemy launching systems so that precision weapons cannot be launched (during the Cold War, this was known as shooting at archers not at arrows); 3) defeating enemy missiles and other weapons. This means shooting them down, or decoying them away.4
> 
> *Near-term actions *
> 
> During his November 2011 trip to Asia, Obama announced the creation of a US Marine Corps presence in Australia. Today only 250-strong, it is planned to grow to 2,500, a full Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is likely to trigger an increase in amphibious ships that rotate to the Western Pacific so that these Marines have the lift necessary to be employed within the region. The Obama announcement built upon the statement made earlier in 2011 by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, that several of the US Navy’s newest surface combatants, known as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), would be permanently stationed in Singapore. Finally, the US Navy Chief of Naval Operations also addressed re-establishing some sort of rotation presence in the Philippines.5 Collectively, these posture announcements are intended to signal that the rebalance strategy includes improving the US presence in Southeast Asia, an area that had been neglected when compared to the US presence in Northeast Asia.
> 
> Also announced were specific force posture changes that build on initiatives launched during the second term of former US President George W. Bush. Specifically, the US said that over the next seven years it intends to gradually increase the overall percentage of US Navy ships assigned to the Pacific Fleet to 60 percent. Today, according to the Secretary of the Navy, the fleet is already home to about 55 percent of the US Navy. Since the US Navy currently has 287 ships, that means about 158 are in the Pacific Fleet. Plans are to gradually increase the numbers to the 60 percent target, not by transferring ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but by adding newly built ships to the Pacific Fleet. Building plans for the future indicate that by 2019 the Navy hopes to have between 295 to 300 ships. So, to reach the target of 60 percent of this fleet size suggests that by the end of this decade, the Pacific Fleet will be between 177 to 180 ships strong. So, the rebalance will gradually grow the Pacific Fleet by around 20 ships.6
> 
> Until recently, there had been no public announcements regarding US Army and Air Force posture changes associated with the rebalance strategy. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter broke this silence in August 2012. In a speech in New York, he indicated that the Air Force intends to shift very important surveillance capacity from Afghanistan to the Asia-Pacific, to include the MQ-9 Reaper, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, and the Global Hawk, a high-altitude, unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. The Air Force will also be able to allocate space, cyber and bomber forces from the US to the Asia-Pacific region with little new investment. As operations in Afghanistan end, for example, B-1s will become available, augmenting the B-52s already on continuous rotational presence in the region. Carter also indicated that Washington was working with Australia to establish a rotational bomber presence, building on the success of bomber rotations to Anderson Air Force Base in Guam.
> 
> The Army’s presence in South Korea will be protected from any budget changes, according to Carter. He opined that the Asia-Pacific region will see more Army and Marine Corps presence for the simple reason that they will not be in Iraq and Afghanistan any more.7
> 
> *Thoughts on the future *
> 
> It is unlikely that China will halt development of what it considers necessary for its defenses. It is also clear that the US does not intend to sit idly by and permit the introduction of military capabilities that could deny it access to East Asia in a time of conflict, and in peacetime undermine its credibility as a capable ally. Thus, it seems likely that for the foreseeable future the region will witness a “military capabilities competition” in which China introduces capabilities that could deny access, while the US military, especially the Navy and Air Force, introduces capabilities that will assure access. It will be a period of competing strategic concepts, assured access vs. denied access, manifested by the introduction of military capabilities by both sides to accomplish these ends.
> 
> Importantly, however, as the recent CSIS report on the US posture in Asia advises,8 the top priority is not to prepare for a conflict with China; rather, it is to shape the environment so that such a conflict is never necessary and perhaps someday inconceivable. The military posture changes that Washington and its allies are pursuing are intended to achieve this objective.
> 
> _Michael McDevitt, Rear Admiral, USN (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in Alexandria, Virginia. This paper reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of the US Department of Defense or of the CNA. _
> 
> *NOTES*
> 1 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy, Nov. 2011, www.foreign policy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_century
> 2 See Robert Bickers, The Scramble of China: Foreign Devils and the Qing Empire, 1832-1913, Penguin paperback, 2012, for a recent well-researched assessment.
> 3 US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report 2001, Sept. 30, 2001, p.25. It describes anti-access and area-denial as relating to a fundamental US strategic concept, deterring forward. Specifically, it adds, “Deterrence in the future will continue to depend heavily upon the capability resident in forward stationed and forward deployed combat and expeditionary forces.”
> 4 Norton Swartz and Jonathan Greenert, “Air-Sea Battle: Promoting Stability in an Era of Uncertainty,” The American Interest, Feb. 2012, www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1212
> 5 Christain Le Miere, “America’s Pivot to Asia: The Naval Dimension,” Survival, Vol. 54, No 3, pp81-94
> 6 Mike McCarthy, “New Ships Will Account for Asia-Pacific Buildup, SECNAV Says,” Defense Daily, Mar. 9, 2012.
> 7 Ashton Carter, “The US Strategic Rebalance to Asia: A Defense Perspective,” Asia Society speech, August 1, 2012, www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1715
> 8 David Bertau, Michael Green et al., “US Force Posture Strategy in Asia-Pacific Region: An Independent Assessment,” CSIS, Washington DC, Aug. 2012, csis.org/files/publication/1208_final_pacom_optimized.pdf.




I agree with the three main conclusions:

1. China will not halt development of necessary defences;

2. The US aims to not allow China to dominate East Asia; and

3. The US plans aim to prevent rather than provoke confrontation.


----------



## Edward Campbell

And the _Globe and Mail_ reports that President Obama has, formally, nominated Senator John Kerry to be Secretary of State, a job, the report suggests, that Sen Kerry has long coveted.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> And the _Globe and Mail_ reports that President Obama has, formally, nominated Senator John Kerry to be Secretary of State, a job, the report suggests, that Sen Kerry has long coveted.



Lord help us all.


----------



## Jed

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> Lord help us all.



Why? What is the story behind your comment? Just asking and I don't have an opinion one way or another.


----------



## tomahawk6

At least he wont be Secretary of Defense.


----------



## a_majoor

Jed said:
			
		

> Why? What is the story behind your comment? Just asking and I don't have an opinion one way or another.



Perhaps you should look at his history. A lot of very unsavoury stuff came to the surface when he ran for President, much of which suggests he does not have a very good sense of judgement (to say the least). He is a first class hypocrite as well, he might mouth class warfare rhetoric like the rest of the Dems, but docks his yacht in a different State to avoid paying taxes in Massachusetts, to use a very open source example.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, posted under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Defense University (NDU) Prism_, is a wide ranging interview with Richard N Hass who has some qualifications to speak on American strategy.

If you read nothing else, please take note of the last paragraph re: _how to formulate *strategy*_:

"The government has its own formal process because of Goldwater-Nichols [Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986], and that’s of some limited utility. But by and large, governments aren’t good, or groups aren’t good, at “big think.” That’s actually a role for outsiders to government. that’s what think tanks, people who think strategically, ought to be doing. It’s what people do in war colleges. It’s what people do on planning staffs. The idea that an interagency committee is going to think of a grand strategy—no, that’s not going to happen. Containment didn’t come out of a committee. Containment came out of an individual, an extraordinarily talented individual. Ultimately, ideas have to be vetted by governments and internalized by governments. Policies have to be designed and then implemented by governments. But ideas don’t by and large come _out_ of governments. Ideas come _to_ governments. That is, from individuals. It could be an individual in government, but more likely an individual outside of government. that’s a much more realistic creative process."


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Perhaps you should look at his history. A lot of very unsavoury stuff came to the surface when he ran for President, much of which suggests he does not have a very good sense of judgement (to say the least). He is a first class hypocrite as well, he might mouth class warfare rhetoric like the rest of the Dems, but docks his yacht in a different State to avoid paying taxes in Massachusetts, to use a very open source example.




But here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Washington Times_ is a fairly well known _conservative's_ view of Sen Kerry ~ the best _liberal_ choice:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/18/a-better-choice-for-obamas-secretary-of-state/#.UNIEP0gXDNM.twitter


> [size=14ptA better choice for Obama’s secretary of state[/size]
> *Kerry more qualified than Rice for top position*
> 
> By Michael Taube
> 
> Tuesday, December 18, 2012
> 
> Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently withdrew her name from consideration as President Obama’s next secretary of state. This paves the way for Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry to assume the role.
> 
> This probably is the best scenario that could have happened.
> 
> Regardless of your political affiliation, it boils down to a choice of the lesser of two liberal evils: Who is better suited for this role, and who would provide stronger leadership on the international stage? Using those criteria, Mr. Kerry is more qualified than Mrs. Rice ever could dream of being.
> 
> Certainly, Mrs. Rice has solid experience. She worked in the White House under President Clinton in various roles, including on the National Security Council and as assistant secretary of state for African affairs. She was a senior fellow for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. She also served as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign and to Mr. Kerry during his 2004 presidential run.
> 
> Those are impressive credentials. That being said, they haven’t translated into strong political acumen or a proper balance between leadership and diplomacy.
> 
> In 2008, Mrs. Rice attacked then-GOP presidential candidate John McCain for being “reckless” on foreign policy matters, claiming “his tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later.” When Mr. McCain went to Iraq, she mocked his fact-finding mission as one in which he strolled “around the market in a flak jacket.”
> 
> Mrs. Rice also used colorful language to publicly criticize foreign policy positions held by President George W. Bush and her former boss, Mr. Clinton. As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote, she also “appalled colleagues by flipping her middle finger at Richard Holbrooke during a meeting with senior staff at the State Department.”
> 
> The worst was yet to come, in the form of Mrs. Rice’s troubling comments about the attack in Benghazi, Libya. First she told CBS‘ “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16, “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude” that the attack “was premeditated or preplanned.” Then she went on ABC’s “This Week” the same day and proclaimed the attack was “hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons.” As the motives for Benghazi became clearer, many prominent Republicans, including Mr. McCain, correctly claimed Mrs. Rice had misled the American people.
> 
> In spite of all this, Mr. Obama fiercely defended Mrs. Rice as his top choice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It quickly became obvious, however, that a Senate confirmation would have been very messy. While the White House publicly expressed disappointment when Mrs. Rice withdrew her name, I would guess the president breathed a heavy sigh of relief in private.
> 
> This brings us to Mr. Kerry. He has an extensive military background, having served in the U.S. Navy, including in Vietnam. (Alas, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War upon his return to civilian life.) He has served in the U.S. Senate since 1985 and ran for president in 2004. He played an active role in the Iran-Contra hearings, served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and called for a no-fly zone in Libya last year.
> 
> Most important, he was an envoy in Afghanistan and Pakistan during heightened periods of tension in that part of the world.
> 
> Mr. Kerry was a visible and confident presence on the scene. He used his political skills to sell the Obama administration’s message after the assassination of al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. He told The Washington Post, “We are at a moment where we have to resolve some very serious issues. This is not a moment for anything except very sober, serious discussion with an understanding that there’s a lot at stake. There’s no other way to put it.”
> 
> Sure, Republicans don’t care for Mr. Kerry’s political ideas. Yet they know they can work with him when it comes to war, terrorism and international relations. Unlike Mrs. Rice, he’s a person who knows how to work properly with people across party lines and what it takes to get things done.
> 
> That’s why Mr. Kerry is a better choice than Mrs. Rice to be the next secretary of state. In time, Mr. Obama may come to realize this, too.
> 
> _Michael Taube is a former speechwriter for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a columnist with The Washington Times._




The US has had some *great* (or, at least, famous) Secretaries of State: Jefferson, Webster, Seward, Stimson, Marshall, Acheson and Kissinger come to mind; and some pretty poor ones, too. I would assess Clinton as "fair to middling" and I expect Kerry to do about as well for the reasons Michael Taube mentioned.


----------



## cupper

Diplomacy has just become a bigger ordeal than it was.

Seriously, the man can bore a statue to tears with his speeches. :facepalm:


----------



## Fishbone Jones

Any bets on how fast the Swift boat controversy gets started again if Kerry's nomination starts gaining traction?


----------



## Edward Campbell

recceguy said:
			
		

> Any bets on how fast the Swift boat controversy gets started again if Kerry's nomination starts gaining traction?




I'm sure it will, but it was a controversy in 2004, not a proven, factual case and it is totally irrelevant now. To remind everyone: Barack Obama won the presidential 2012 election; the Senate is, more or less duty bound to approve a qualified nominee for a cabinet appointment. Controversial ≠ unqualified; unpopular views (with some senators and some political factions) ≠ unqualified; even boring ≠ unqualified. If the GOP tries to deny President Obama his choice of a qualified appointee then it will just prove what I said above: the _conservative_ movement is broken, driven only by hate of liberals in general and Obama in particular, and in need of a long "rest" in the political wilderness.


----------



## Brad Sallows

All that ERC wrote.

Plus, it's good to have a wealthy tax-avoiding ex-nominee for the office of president occupying a high position in this administration.  He will demarcate the difference between promises and statements of intent, and reality.


----------



## GAP

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> All that ERC wrote.
> 
> Plus, it's good to have a wealthy tax-avoiding ex-nominee for the office of president occupying a high position in this administration.  He will demarcate the difference between promises and statements of intent, and reality.



Until he gets his hinny in a sling, get a concussion so he can't testify, and moves on to greater things...... :


----------



## cupper

Kerry gets a free ride through the nomination process.

The GOP has an agenda here. They want to put one of their own in his senate seat. Many want Scott Brown back in, but that could change if he continues to go against the herd like he did recently after the Sandy Hook shootings.


----------



## tomahawk6

cupper said:
			
		

> Kerry gets a free ride through the nomination process.
> 
> The GOP has an agenda here. They want to put one of their own in his senate seat. Many want Scott Brown back in, but that could change if he continues to go against the herd like he did recently after the Sandy Hook shootings.



Scott Brown will not be selected to fill the Senate seat vacated by Kerry. Deval Patrick is a democrat and would most likely select the wife of Ted Kennedy Vicki or Dukakis or some other Kennendy. A new election would occur in the spring.


----------



## tomahawk6

The democrats have a majority in the Senate thats why Kerry has a lock on the nomination. In fact his nomination has to first get enough votes in the Senate Foreign Affairs committee.Guess who the chairman is ? If you guessed John Kerry then you would be right.


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Scott Brown will not be selected to fill the Senate seat vacated by Kerry. Deval Patrick is a democrat and would most likely select the wife of Ted Kennedy Vicki or Dukakis or some other Kennendy. A new election would occur in the spring.





			
				tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The democrats have a majority in the Senate thats why Kerry has a lock on the nomination. In fact his nomination has to first get enough votes in the Senate Foreign Affairs committee.Guess who the chairman is ? If you guessed John Kerry then you would be right.



The seat will be temporarily filled by an appointment by Deval Patrick, but they need to hold a special election within a specific period of time to fill the seat until Kerry's full term ends.

All during the Rice speculative period any GOP senator interviewed said Rice was a not starter, but they would welcome and recommend Kerry for the position.

The GOP has been all but drooling over the prospect of regaining the lost senate seat from Mass. I suspect that Kerry will get an all but unanimous vote of approval from the committee (one symbolic vote against) and will win several GOP votes in the senate vote as well.

The problem for the GOP though is do they renominate Brown to run against the Dems or do they find someone else?


----------



## tomahawk6

Its a blue state and the likelihood of another Republican RINO taking the seat is a stretch. Brown should have won re-election but he couldnt even beat wannabe Indian Warren.


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Its a blue state and the likelihood of another *Republican RINO* taking the seat is a stretch. Brown should have won re-election but he couldnt even beat wannabe Indian Warren.



Aren't all Mass Republicans RINO's?


----------



## tomahawk6

I suspect that you are right cupper. ;D


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 3

Going back to the original theme, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, is a "modest proposal" by Prof Barry R Posen, a guy to whom the Pentagon's top brass listens, for the US strategic posture in the early 21st century:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138466/barry-r-posen/pull-back


> Pull Back
> *The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy*
> 
> By Barry R. Posen
> 
> January/February 2013
> 
> *The United States' undisciplined, expensive, and bloody grand strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. It is time to abandon this hegemonic approach and replace it with one of restraint -- giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national security interests.*
> 
> Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should dominate the world militarily, economically, and politically, as it has since the final years of the Cold War, a strategy of liberal hegemony. The country, they hold, needs to preserve its massive lead in the global balance of power, consolidate its economic preeminence, enlarge the community of market democracies, and maintain its outsized influence in the international institutions it helped create.
> 
> To this end, the U.S. government has expanded its sprawling Cold War-era network of security commitments and military bases. It has reinforced its existing alliances, adding new members to NATO and enhancing its security agreement with Japan. In the Persian Gulf, it has sought to protect the flow of oil with a full panoply of air, sea, and land forces, a goal that consumes at least 15 percent of the U.S. defense budget. Washington has put China on a watch list, ringing it in with a network of alliances, less formal relationships, and military bases.
> 
> The United States' activism has entailed a long list of ambitious foreign policy projects. Washington has tried to rescue failing states, intervening militarily in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya, variously attempting to defend human rights, suppress undesirable nationalist movements, and install democratic regimes. It has also tried to contain so-called rogue states that oppose the United States, such as Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and, to a lesser degree, Syria. After 9/11, the struggle against al Qaeda and its allies dominated the agenda, but the George W. Bush administration defined this enterprise broadly and led the country into the painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although the United States has long sought to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons, the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists has added urgency to this objective, leading to constant tension with Iran and North Korea.
> 
> In pursuit of this ambitious agenda, the United States has consistently spent hundreds of billions of dollars per year on its military -- far more than the sum of the defense budgets of its friends and far more than the sum of those of its potential adversaries. It has kept that military busy: U.S. troops have spent roughly twice as many months in combat after the Cold War as they did during it. Today, roughly 180,000 U.S. soldiers remain stationed on foreign soil, not counting the tens of thousands more who have rotated through the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of American and allied soldiers have lost their lives, not to mention the countless civilians caught in the crossfire.
> 
> This undisciplined, expensive, and bloody strategy has done untold harm to U.S. national security. It makes enemies almost as fast as it slays them, discourages allies from paying for their own defense, and convinces powerful states to band together and oppose Washington's plans, further raising the costs of carrying out its foreign policy. During the 1990s, these consequences were manageable because the United States enjoyed such a favorable power position and chose its wars carefully. Over the last decade, however, the country's relative power has deteriorated, and policymakers have made dreadful choices concerning which wars to fight and how to fight them. What's more, the Pentagon has come to depend on continuous infusions of cash simply to retain its current force structure -- levels of spending that the Great Recession and the United States' ballooning debt have rendered unsustainable.
> 
> *It is time to abandon the United States' hegemonic strategy and replace it with one of restraint.* This approach would mean giving up on global reform and sticking to protecting narrow national security interests. It would mean transforming the military into a smaller force that goes to war only when it truly must. It would mean removing large numbers of U.S. troops from forward bases, creating incentives for allies to provide for their own security. And because such a shift would allow the United States to spend its resources on only the most pressing international threats, it would help preserve the country's prosperity and security over the long run.
> 
> *ACTION AND REACTION*
> 
> The United States emerged from the Cold War as the single most powerful state in modern times, a position that its diversified and immensely productive economy supports. Although its share of world economic output will inevitably shrink as other countries catch up, the United States will continue for many years to rank as one of the top two or three economies in the world. The United States' per capita GDP stands at $48,000, more than five times as large as China's, which means that the U.S. economy can produce cutting-edge products for a steady domestic market. North America is blessed with enviable quantities of raw materials, and about 29 percent of U.S. trade flows to and from its immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. The fortuitous geostrategic position of the United States compounds these economic advantages. Its neighbors to the north and south possess only miniscule militaries. Vast oceans to the west and east separate it from potential rivals. And its thousands of nuclear weapons deter other countries from ever entertaining an invasion.
> 
> Ironically, however, instead of relying on these inherent advantages for its security, the United States has acted with a profound sense of insecurity, adopting an unnecessarily militarized and forward-leaning foreign policy. That strategy has generated predictable pushback. Since the 1990s, rivals have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing" -- low-grade diplomatic opposition. China and Russia regularly use the rules of liberal international institutions to delegitimize the United States' actions. In the UN Security Council, they wielded their veto power to deny the West resolutions supporting the bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and more recently, they have slowed the effort to isolate Syria. They occasionally work together in other venues, too, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Although the Beijing-Moscow relationship is unimpressive compared with military alliances such as NATO, it's remarkable that it exists at all given the long history of border friction and hostility between the two countries. As has happened so often in history, the common threat posed by a greater power has driven unnatural partners to cooperate.
> 
> American activism has also generated harder forms of balancing. China has worked assiduously to improve its military, and Russia has sold it modern weapons, such as fighter aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, and diesel-electric submarines. Iran and North Korea, meanwhile, have pursued nuclear programs in part to neutralize the United States' overwhelming advantages in conventional fighting power. Some of this pushback would have occurred no matter what; in an anarchic global system, states acquire the allies and military power that help them look after themselves. But a country as large and as active as the United States intensifies these responses.
> 
> Such reactions will only grow stronger as emerging economies convert their wealth into military power. Even though the economic and technological capacities of China and India may never equal those of the United States, the gap is destined to narrow. China already has the potential to be a serious competitor. At the peak of the Cold War, in the mid-1970s, Soviet GDP, in terms of purchasing power parity, amounted to 57 percent of U.S. GDP. China reached 75 percent of the U.S. level in 2011, and according to the International Monetary Fund, it is projected to match it by 2017. Of course, Chinese output must support four times as many people, which limits what the country can extract for military purposes, but it still provides enough resources to hinder U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, Russia, although a shadow of its former Soviet self, is no longer the hapless weakling it was in the 1990s. Its economy is roughly the size of the United Kingdom's or France's, it has plenty of energy resources to export, and it still produces some impressive weapons systems.
> 
> *FIGHTING IDENTITY*
> 
> Just as emerging powers have gotten stronger, so, too, have the small states and violent substate entities that the United States has attempted to discipline, democratize, or eliminate. Whether in Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, the U.S. military seems to find itself fighting enemies that prove tougher than expected. (Consider the fact that Washington spent as much in real terms on the war in Iraq as it did on the war in Vietnam, even though the Iraqi insurgents enjoyed little external support, whereas China and the Soviet Union lent major support to the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese.) Yet Washington seems unable to stay out of conflicts involving substate entities, in part because their elemental nature assaults the internationalist values that U.S. grand strategy is committed to preserving. Having trumpeted the United States' military superiority, U.S. policymakers have a hard time saying no to those who argue that the country's prestige will suffer gravely if the world's leader lets wars great and small run their course.
> 
> The enduring strength of these substate groups should give American policymakers pause, since the United States' current grand strategy entails open-ended confrontation with nationalism and other forms of identity politics that insurgents and terrorists feed off of. These forces provide the organizing energy for groups competing for power within countries (as in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq), for secessionist movements (as in Kosovo), and for terrorists who oppose the liberal world order (mainly al Qaeda). Officials in Washington, however, have acted as if they can easily undercut the power of identity through democratic processes, freedom of information, and economic development, helped along by the judicious application of military power. In fact, identity is resilient, and foreign peoples react with hostility to outsiders trying to control their lives.



End of Part 1 of 3


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 3



> The Iraq war has been a costly case in point. Officials in the Bush administration convinced themselves that a quick application of overwhelming military power would bring democracy to Iraq, produce a subsequent wave of democratization across the Arab world, marginalize al Qaeda, and secure U.S. influence in the region. Instead, Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds stoked the violence that the United States labored to suppress, and Shiite and Sunni factions fought not only each other but also the U.S. military. Today's Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad has proved neither democratic nor effective. Sunni terrorists have continued to carry out attacks. The Kurdish parts of Iraq barely acknowledge their membership in the larger state.
> 
> By now, it is clear that the United States has worn out its welcome in Afghanistan, too. The Taliban continue to resist the U.S. presence, drawing their strength largely from Pashtun nationalism, and members of the Afghan security forces have, in growing numbers, murdered U.S. and other NATO soldiers who were there to assist them. Instead of simply punishing the Taliban for their indirect role in 9/11 and hitting al Qaeda as hard as possible, true to its global agenda, the Bush administration pursued a costly and futile effort to transform Afghanistan, and the Obama administration continued it.
> 
> *FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS*
> 
> Another problematic response to the United States' grand strategy comes from its friends: free-riding. *The Cold War alliances* that the country has worked so hard to maintain -- namely, NATO and the U.S.-Japanese security agreement -- *have provided U.S. partners in Europe and Asia with such a high level of insurance that they have been able to steadily shrink their militaries and outsource their defense to Washington.[i/]*_ European nations have cut their military spending by roughly 15 percent in real terms since the end of the Cold War, with the exception of the United Kingdom, which will soon join the rest as it carries out its austerity policy. Depending on how one counts, Japanese defense spending has been cut, or at best has remained stable, over the past decade. The government has unwisely devoted too much spending to ground forces, even as its leaders have expressed alarm at the rise of Chinese military power -- an air, missile, and naval threat.
> 
> Although these regions have avoided major wars, the United States has had to bear more and more of the burden of keeping the peace. It now spends 4.6 percent of its GDP on defense, whereas its European NATO allies collectively spend 1.6 percent and Japan spends 1.0 percent. With their high per capita GDPs, these allies can afford to devote more money to their militaries, yet they have no incentive to do so. And so while the U.S. government considers draconian cuts in social spending to restore the United States' fiscal health, it continues to subsidize the security of Germany and Japan. This is welfare for the rich.
> 
> U.S. security guarantees also encourage plucky allies to challenge more powerful states, confident that Washington will save them in the end -- a classic case of moral hazard. This phenomenon has caused the United States to incur political costs, antagonizing powers great and small for no gain and encouraging them to seek opportunities to provoke the United States in return. So far, the United States has escaped getting sucked into unnecessary wars, although Washington dodged a bullet in Taiwan when the Democratic Progressive Party of Chen Shui-bian governed the island, from 2000 to 2008. His frequent allusions to independence, which ran counter to U.S. policy but which some Bush administration officials reportedly encouraged, unnecessarily provoked the Chinese government; had he proceeded, he would have surely triggered a dangerous crisis. Chen would never have entertained such reckless rhetoric absent the long-standing backing of the U.S. government.
> 
> The Philippines and Vietnam (the latter of which has no formal defense treaty with Washington) also seem to have figured out that they can needle China over maritime boundary disputes and then seek shelter under the U.S. umbrella when China inevitably reacts. Not only do these disputes make it harder for Washington to cooperate with Beijing on issues of global importance; they also risk roping the United States into conflicts over strategically marginal territory.
> 
> Georgia is another state that has played this game to the United States' detriment. Overly confident of Washington's affection for it, the tiny republic deliberately challenged Russia over control of the disputed region of South Ossetia in August 2008. Regardless of how exactly the fighting began, Georgia acted far too adventurously given its size, proximity to Russia, and distance from any plausible source of military help. This needless war ironically made Russia look tough and the United States unreliable.
> 
> This dynamic is at play in the Middle East, too. Although U.S. officials have communicated time and again to leaders in Jerusalem their discomfort with Israeli settlements on the territory occupied during the 1967 war, Israel regularly increases the population and dimensions of those settlements. The United States' military largess and regular affirmations of support for Israel have convinced Israeli hawks that they will suffer no consequences for ignoring U.S. advice. It takes two to make peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the creation of humiliating facts on the ground will not bring a negotiated settlement any closer. And Israel's policies toward the Palestinians are a serious impediment to improved U.S. relations with the Arab world.
> 
> *A NIMBLER STRATEGY*
> 
> *The United States should replace its unnecessary, ineffective, and expensive hegemonic quest with a more restrained grand strategy. Washington should not retreat into isolationism but refocus its efforts on its three biggest security challenges: preventing a powerful rival from upending the global balance of power, fighting terrorists, and limiting nuclear proliferation.* These challenges are not new, but the United States must develop more carefully calculated and discriminating policies to address them.
> 
> For roughly a century, American strategists have striven to ensure that no single state dominated the giant landmass of Eurasia, since such a power could then muster the resources to threaten the United States directly. To prevent this outcome, the United States rightly went to war against Germany and Japan and contained the Soviet Union. Although China may ultimately try to assume the mantle of Eurasian hegemon, this outcome is neither imminent nor inevitable. China's economy still faces many pitfalls, and the country is surrounded by powerful states that could and would check its expansion, including India and Russia, both of which have nuclear weapons. Japan, although it underspends on defense today, is rich and technologically advanced enough to contribute to a coalition of states that could balance against China. Other maritime Asian countries, even without the United States as a backstop, could also make common cause against China. The United States should maintain the capability to assist them if need be. But it should proceed cautiously in order to ensure that its efforts do not unnecessarily threaten China and thus encourage the very ambitions Washington hopes to deter or prompt a new round of free-riding or reckless driving by others in Asia.
> 
> The United States must also defend itself against al Qaeda and any similar successor groups. Since such terrorists can threaten Americans' lives, the U.S. government should keep in place the prudent defensive measures that have helped lower the risk of attacks, such as more energetic intelligence efforts and better airport security. (A less interventionist foreign policy will help, too: it was partly the U.S. military's presence in Saudi Arabia that radicalized Osama bin Laden and his followers in the first place.) When it comes to offense, the United States must still pursue terrorists operating abroad, so that they spend their scarce resources trying to stay alive rather than plotting new attacks. It will need to continue cooperating with other vulnerable governments and help them develop their own police and military forces. Occasionally, the U.S. military will have to supplement these efforts with air strikes, drone attacks, and special operations raids.
> 
> But Washington should keep the threat in perspective. Terrorists are too weak to threaten the country's sovereignty, territorial integrity, or power position. Because the threat is modest, and because trying to reform other societies by force is too costly, the United States must fight terrorism with carefully applied force, rather than through wholesale nation-building efforts such as that in Afghanistan.
> 
> Finally, a restrained grand strategy would also pay close attention to the spread of nuclear weapons, while relying less on the threat of military force to stop it. Thanks to the deterrence provided by its own massive nuclear forces, the United States faces little risk of a direct nuclear attack by another state. But Washington does need to keep nonstate actors from obtaining nuclear weapons or material. To prevent them from taking advantage of lax safeguards at nuclear facilities, the U.S. government should share best practices regarding nuclear security with other countries, even ones that it would prefer did not possess nuclear weapons in the first place. The United States does already cooperate somewhat with Pakistan on this issue, but it must stand ready to do more and ultimately to undertake such efforts with others.
> 
> The loss of a government's control over its nuclear weapons during a coup, revolution, or civil war is a far harder problem to forestall. It may be possible for U.S. forces to secure weapons in a period of instability, with the help of local actors who see the dangers for their own country if the weapons get loose. Conditions may lend themselves to a preventive military attack, to seize or disable the weapons. In some cases, however, the United States might have to make do with less sure-fire responses. It could warn those who seized the nuclear weapons in a period of upheaval that they would make themselves targets for retaliation if the weapons were ever used by terrorists. And it could better surveil international sea and air routes and more intensively monitor both its own borders for nuclear smuggling and those of the potential source countries.
> 
> These measures may seem incommensurate with the terrible toll of a nuclear blast. But the alternative strategy -- fighting preventive conventional wars against nascent nuclear powers -- is an expensive and uncertain solution to proliferation. The Obama administration's oft-repeated warning that deterrence and containment of a nuclear Iran is unacceptable makes little sense given the many ways a preventive war could go wrong and in light of the redundant deterrent capability the United States already possesses. Indeed, the more Washington relies on military force to halt proliferation, the more likely it is that countries will decide to acquire the ultimate deterrent._


_

End of Part 2 of 3_


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 3 of 3



> A more restrained America would also have to head off nuclear arms races. In retrospect, the size, composition, doctrine, and highly alert posture of U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces during the Cold War seem unduly risky relative to the strategic problem those weapons were supposed to solve. Nuclear weapons act as potent deterrents to aggression, but significantly smaller forces than those the United States now possesses, carefully managed, should do the job. To avoid a replay of Cold War-style nuclear competition, the United States should pursue a new multilateral arms control regime that places ceilings on nuclear inventories and avoids hair-trigger force postures.
> 
> *RESTRAINT IN PRACTICE*
> 
> A grand strategy of restraint would narrow U.S. foreign policy to focus on those three larger objectives. What would it look like in practice? First, *the United States would recast its alliances so that other countries shared actual responsibility for their own defense.* NATO is the easiest case; the United States should withdraw from the military command structure and return the alliance to the primarily political organization it once was. The Europeans can decide for themselves whether they want to retain the military command structure under the auspices of the European Union or dismantle it altogether. Most U.S. troops should come home from Europe, although by mutual agreement, the United States could keep a small number of naval and air bases on the continent.
> 
> The security treaty with Japan is a more difficult problem; it needs to be renegotiated but not abandoned. As the treaty stands now, the United States shoulders most of the burden of defending Japan, and the Japanese government agrees to help. The roles should be reversed, so that Japan assumes responsibility for its own defense, with Washington offering backup. Given concerns about China's rising power, not all U.S. forces should leave the region. But the Pentagon should pare down its presence in Japan to those relevant to the most immediate military problems. All U.S. marines could be withdrawn from the country, bringing to an end the thorny negotiations about their future on the island of Okinawa. The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force should keep the bulk of their forces stationed in and around Japan in place, but with appropriate reductions. Elsewhere in Asia, the U.S. military can cooperate with other states to ensure access to the region should future crises arise, but it should not seek new permanent bases.
> 
> The military should also reassess its commitments in the Persian Gulf: the United States should help protect states in the region against external attacks, but it cannot take responsibility for defending them against internal dissent. Washington still needs to reassure those governments that fear that a regional power such as Iran will attack them and hijack their oil wealth, since a single oil-rich hegemon in the region would no doubt be a source of mischief. The U.S. military has proved adept at preventing such an outcome in the past, as it did when it defended Saudi Arabia and repelled Saddam's forces from Kuwait in 1991. Ground forces bent on invasion make easy targets for air attacks. The aircraft and cruise missiles aboard U.S. naval forces stationed in the region could provide immediate assistance. With a little advance notice, U.S. Air Force aircraft could quickly reinforce land bases maintained by the Arab states of the Gulf, as they did during the Gulf War when the regional powers opposed to Saddam's aggression prepared the way for reinforcement from the U.S. military by maintaining extra base capacity and fuel.
> 
> But U.S. soldiers no longer need to live onshore in Gulf countries, where they incite anti-Americanism and tie the U.S. government to autocratic regimes of dubious legitimacy. For example, Bahrain is suffering considerable internal unrest, which raises questions about the future viability of the United States' growing military presence there. The Iraq war proved that trying to install new regimes in Arab countries is a fool's errand; defending existing regimes facing internal rebellion will be no easier.
> 
> *Under a restrained grand strategy, U.S. military forces could shrink significantly, both to save money and to send allies the message that it's time they did more for themselves. Because the Pentagon would, under this new strategy, swear off counterinsurgency, it could cut the number of ground forces in half. The navy and the air force, meanwhile, should be cut by only a quarter to a third, since their assets take a long time to produce and would still be needed for any effort to maintain the global balance of power.* Naval and air forces are also well suited to solving the security problems of Asia and the Persian Gulf. Because these forces are highly mobile, only some need be present in key regions. The rest can be kept at home, as a powerful strategic reserve.
> 
> The overall size and quality of U.S. military forces should be determined by the critical contingency that they must address: the defense of key resources and allies against direct attack. Too often in the past, Washington has overused its expensive military to send messages that ought to be left to diplomats. That must change. Although the Pentagon should continue leading joint exercises with the militaries of other countries in key regions, it should stop overloading the calendar with pointless exercises the world over. Making that change would save wear and tear on troops and equipment and avoid creating the impression that the United States will solve all the world's security problems.
> 
> *LETTING GO*
> 
> Shifting to a more restrained global stance would yield meaningful benefits for the United States, saving lives and resources and preventing pushback, provided Washington makes deliberate and prudent moves now to prepare its allies to take on the responsibility for their own defense. Scaling down the U.S. military's presence over a decade would give partners plenty of time to fortify their own militaries and develop the political and diplomatic machinery to look after their own affairs. Gradual disengagement would also reduce the chances of creating security vacuums, which opportunistic regional powers might try to fill.
> 
> *U.S. allies, of course, will do everything they can to persuade Washington to keep its current policies in place.* Some will promise improvements to their military forces that they will then abandon when it is convenient. Some will claim there is nothing more they can contribute, that their domestic political and economic constraints matter more than America's. Others will try to divert the discussion to shared values and principles. Still others will hint that they will bandwagon with strong neighbors rather than balance against them. A few may even threaten to turn belligerent.
> 
> U.S. policymakers will need to remain cool in the face of such tactics and keep in mind that these wealthy allies are unlikely to surrender their sovereignty to regional powers. Indeed, history has shown that states more often balance against the powerful than bandwagon with them. As for potential adversaries, the United States can continue to deter actions that threaten its vital interests by defining those interests narrowly, stating them clearly, and maintaining enough military power to protect them.
> 
> Of course, the United States could do none of these things and instead continue on its present track, wasting resources and earning the enmity of some states and peoples while infantilizing others. Perhaps current economic and geopolitical trends will reverse themselves, and the existing strategy will leave Washington comfortably in the driver's seat, with others eager to live according to its rules. But if the U.S. debt keeps growing and power continues to shift to other countries, some future economic or political crisis could force Washington to switch course abruptly, compelling friendly and not-so-friendly countries to adapt suddenly. That seems like the more dangerous path.




Although not named, Canada is one of the countries that "freeloads" on America's military/strategic largesse. 

Although this will be highly unpopular in many (predictable) circles ~ mainly in Ike's _military industrial complex_ ~ it represents a sound, realistic strategy for America.


----------



## Journeyman

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Going back to the original theme, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, is a "modest proposal" by Prof Barry R Posen....


I've been following Barry Posen's writing for a while, and tend to agree with much of his work. 

The same edition of _Foreign Affairs_ however, also contains a counter-point perspective by some equally well-known US political academics, Stephen Brooks, John Ikenberry, and William Wohlforth, entitled "Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement."

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138468/stephen-g-brooks-g-john-ikenberry-and-william-c-wohlforth/lean-forward#

The editorial synopsis is:


> Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a single grand strategy: deep engagement. In an effort to protect its security and prosperity, the country has promoted a liberal economic order and established close defense ties with partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Its military bases cover the map, its ships patrol transit routes across the globe, and tens of thousands of its troops stand guard in allied countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
> 
> The details of U.S. foreign policy have differed from administration to administration, including the emphasis placed on democracy promotion and humanitarian goals, but for over 60 years, every president has agreed on the fundamental decision to remain deeply engaged in the world, even as the rationale for that strategy has shifted. During the Cold War, the United States' security commitments to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East served primarily to prevent Soviet encroachment into the world's wealthiest and most resource-rich regions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the aim has become to make these same regions more secure, and thus less threatening to the United States, and to use these security partnerships to foster the cooperation necessary for a stable and open international order.
> 
> Now, more than ever, Washington might be tempted to abandon this grand strategy and pull back from the world. The rise of China is chipping away at the United States' preponderance of power, a budget crisis has put defense spending on the chopping block, and two long wars have left the U.S. military and public exhausted. Indeed, even as most politicians continue to assert their commitment to global leadership, a very different view has taken hold among scholars of international relations over the past decade: that the United States should minimize its overseas military presence, shed its security ties, and give up its efforts to lead the liberal international order


The gist of their argument is that it's those "pesky academics" who are to blame for this wrong-headed retrenchment; America _needs_ to be involved in the world for the world's sake, given that it's been a successful strategy for the past 60 years.

I tend to agree with them on the intrinsic value of US forward engagement.....EXCEPT....such a policy as implemented over the past six decades, and as noted by Posen, is no longer fiscally viable; the US has no rational option but to withdraw. Will that lead to more conflict? Quite possibly. That, of course, will lead to the inevitable "ounce of prevention/pound of cure" analogies.


The counter-point presented is a much reduced version of their earlier article from _International Security_ entitled, "Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment." If interested, the complete article is available as a .pdf file here.  Naturally, it provides a more complete perspective.


----------



## Edward Campbell

As you know, JM, I tend to see the world through a lens in which economics is the dominant factor and, thus, I think Prof Posen is, simply, talking good, common sense. 

I'm not so sure that America's _active_ (vs. _restrained_) strategy since, say, 1960, has been all that successful: Indo China, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Iraq (several times), Haiti, etc, etc, etc have not, it seems to me, done a lot to enhance America's (or anyone's) position ... but they have cost a lot of money and stimulated a _military industrial complex_ that, finally, looks to be living up top Ike's warning. President Eisenhower wasn't against _"the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together,"_ what he opposed was a system that, for its own selfish purposes, drove policy and politics with inevitable damage to both. The _Cold War_, on the other hand, did work: it had a clear _strategic_ objective, it was pursued with consistent vigor and good sense and, almost inevitably, it succeeded.

Thus, I see _restraint_, as you suggest, as the "only rational option" for the 21st century But that doesn't mean that:

1. It's going to be a popular option; or

2. It is going to occur ... voluntarily, i.e. in a planned, coherent manner.


----------



## Journeyman

Agreed, and it's the very cost of the products from that military-industrial complex that will increasingly limit US engagement -- the inability to afford risking high-priced/high-valued personnel and equipment for objectives that are seen as increasingly distant from strategic imperatives. There will be (should be?) fewer "discretionary-spending conflicts."

As noted though, restraint may not be popular. Rapid, wide-spread media images of any number of crises -- faster than the speed of thought or context -- cannot help but evoke a hand-wringing response, which may be influenced more by looming election cycles than any strategic calculus.


----------



## tomahawk6

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Agreed, and it's the very cost of the products from that military-industrial complex that will increasingly limit US engagement -- the inability to afford risking high-priced/high-valued personnel and equipment for objectives that are seen as increasingly distant from strategic imperatives. There will be (should be?) fewer "discretionary-spending conflicts."



Canada is an example of this already,albeit on a smaller scale. A small defense budget that limits the size and scope of defense policy. As the cost of major weapons systems increase the quantity that can be purchased is limited. The USN is already facing this. The Navy can no longer replace aging ships on a one for one basis. The once 800 ship Navy is hard pressed to keep 200 ships. The USAF's fighter fleet continues to decline. What's the solution that can be utilized that wont have a negative impact on the defense of the homeland ? Funding during tight budgets will see a constant tug of war between the services. In peacetime the US Army will lose that battle in favor of jets and ships.This is nothing new.What is new is the replacement cost $2b destroyers.+$200m combat aircraft,+$200m cargo aircraft and so on. In a future conflict with say China quantity may well win out over quality.


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## Infanteer

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> In a future conflict with say China quantity may well win out over quality.



Especially when one considers lead times for replacements should quality get shot out of the sky.


----------



## tomahawk6

Agreed. Today you go to war with what you have. Maybe this would be to save money in the future ? Design and  field a program in less than 2 years ?


----------



## Edward Campbell

If you're seriously planning to go to war witha _peer_ ~ if such a _peer_ even exists ~ then you must match or best him in men* and machines.

If your most likely enemy is less than a military-industrial/technological _peer_ then you should consider another discussion wherein the example was used of _Apache_ attack helicopters suppressing enemy air defences so that bombers could do their work unobstructed. Maybe if you have systems (the plural matters, I think) that can give you tactical superiority in one doman then less sophisticated systems can do their business in it or another. Consider, for example, the utility of a large number of affordable F-5 (or F-17 or F-20) type aircraft when air supremacy can be secured and maintained by a small number of e.g. F-22s.

America needs to decide if it plans to fight China. If such a war is deemed inevitable then the American people must sacrifice - a lot - for a generation while the _military-industrial complex_ builds the necessary forces. If such a war is deemed preventable then those same resources can be applied elsewhere. 

Defence spending is, by and large,** unproductive and productivity tends to be a zero-sum game: money 'wasted' on the defence establishment cannot be spent, productively, on e.g. critical infrastructure or education.

-----
*   And women 
** There are exceptions, of course, defence R&D can and does "trickle down" to the broader industrial/commercial sector and there are useful "spin oiff" jobs from defence production but, as a general rule, defence spending is a "waste."


Edit: typo


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## Haligonian

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> America needs to decide if it plans to fight China. If such a war is deemed inevitable then the American people must sacrifice - a lot - for a generation while the _military-industrial complex_ builds the necessary forces. If susuch a war is deemed preventable then those same resources can be applied elsewhere.



Assuming the US decided to follow the authors advice and decided to prepare for war with China what would be its cassus belli? Would Taiwan continue to be seen as an ally that had to be protected? Access to resources in the South China sea between China and other SE Asian states or free movement of oil through the straits of Malacca demand that the US go to war with China?


----------



## Edward Campbell

I don't thing the excuse is important: the decision will be taken long before the war ~ in fact pressing economics _might_ force the USA to decide that a war with China is impossible because America cannot prepare for it - cannot afford to hire the soldiers or build the ships, tanks and aircraft. Everything costs money, even fleshing out pipe dreams.


----------



## tomahawk6

Why not take the U-boat approach ? Flood the sea lanes with submarines and deny China oil. With submarines you have deniability.


----------



## a_majoor

Oddly enough, Robert Kaplan's latest book The Revenge of Geography has several interesting things to say about the possible evolution of both US and Chinese "power".

The prospect of strangling Chinese raw material and energy supplies drives Chinese policy, and explains such things as their investments to build railways and pipelines in central Asia, the "String of Pearls" naval bases in the Indian Ocean and attempts by diplomacy and sabre rattling to break past the "First Island Chain" that Chinese strategists see as blocking their access to the Pacific.

American policy is both restrained by economics, but also the need to stay engaged without being overly provocative. US involvment in the First Island Chain is already diminishing, even as they creat their own "String of Pearls" in Oceana and Australia, just out of sight of the Chinese, but still able to project power across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In some ways this represents a more "Roman" approach (or at least the approach during the _Res Publica Roma_), having many allies and "tributary states" that will act in concert with the Americans, while retaining the bulk of the Legions in a ring around "Rome", ready to move out and project power where needed. (This debate has actually been ongoing with increasing vigour since the late 1990's, with discussions about how to project American power directly from the CONUS).

The other thing which Kaplan highlights is the almost total neglect by US policy and political elites to Mexico and Central America, when many of America's economic, energy, cultural and Demographic issues lie south of the border and along the North-South axis rather than the traditional "Sea to shining Sea" approach. While this is only the briefest of paraphrases, the book is well worth reading and contemplating.


----------



## Edward Campbell

In the realm of military strategy, defence spending is a key indicator of strategic intentions. In this short (4:00 min) video the _Financial Times_ explains some of the dilemmas facing the USA.


----------



## 57Chevy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> In the realm of military strategy, defence spending is a key indicator of strategic intentions. In this short (4:00 min) video the _Financial Times_ explains some of the dilemmas facing the USA.



Your link will only work if paid for.
This link which includes a video and shared with provisions of The Copyright Act may help.


America’s debt dilemma: A looming crisis
By Robin Harding dated 21 Jan
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8c7758c8-63bb-11e2-af8c-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Itc1oOmw

* You may have to google the title (my link doesn't seem to work either)


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> In the realm of military strategy, defence spending is a key indicator of strategic intentions. In this short (4:00 min) video the _Financial Times_ explains some of the dilemmas facing the USA.



Let me summarize:

1. US defence spending is HUGE - including some "non defence items" like nuclear (Dept of Energy) it is about $1 Trillion/year;

2. But while still dominant, US defence spending is already declining when measured against emerging competitors;

3. But it is too big to ignore in Washington and cuts will come.

The question is: how will those cuts be managed - _strategically_ oir _politically_?


----------



## cupper

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The question is: how will those cuts be managed - _strategically_ oir _politically_?



I trust this was rhetorical.

But in response    I think we all know that it will be mostly political and minimally strategic. Even with the driven members of the Tea Party Caucus pushing for slash and burn, members will move to protect programs and policies that would, if cut, effect their chances at re-election. There is a history of useless equipment development programs living on like zombies even though the military side of the bureaucracy show time and time again that there is no need, or the concept doesn't work.

It's no accident that major weapon systems have individual components manufactured in many different locations. Cheaper prices through competition for manufacturing contracts? Maybe. Employ more people in economically depressed areas? Perhaps. Make it less palatable for more congress members to cut  knowing their constituencies will be effected (share the wealth, share the pain)? DING DING DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!.


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## a_majoor

The US Navy prepares for an uncertain future. The best way to get around this is to get more out ofthe Allied navies (the Japanese navy has a multitude of very modern ships, including several pocket helicopter/aircraft carriers and Aegis fleet defense ships). Technology might also come to the rescue, increasing capabilities of existing ships (hypersonic anti ship missiles, rail guns or laser weapons) or putting new capabilities in different platforms (unmanned ships, UCAVs and UUV's,for example). The USN is the premier arm of the US military,being the prime force projection arm and keeping the seas clear for US and allied trade:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/smaller-navy-plan/



> *Navy Plans to Build Fewer Ships, Right as It’s About to Get Busier*
> 
> By David Axe
> 02.04.13
> 4:15 PM
> 
> The U.S.S. Stockdale steams in formation as part of the Nimitz Strike Group Surface Action Group as they transit the Western Pacific. Photo: Navy
> 
> The U.S. Navy has finally and officially given up on long-standing plans to expand the fleet from today’s 285 major warships to 313 sometime in the next couple decades. Instead, the expansion will halt at 306 large ships, according to the latest Navy planning document, obtained by Defense News.
> 
> Officially, the lower goal is a result of careful analysis of U.S. strategy, the needs of regional commanders, ship service-life and the capabilities of the shipbuilding industry. (Navy officials anticipated the shrinkage last year.) “A 306-ship combatant force [is] the current requirement to enable [the] Navy to deter and respond to crises and war,” the sailing branch asserted. As the Navy sees it, it can do that by buying fewer surface warfare ships and more logistics vessels, as well as by pre-positioning warships in allied ports.
> 
> Unofficially, there is another huge factor: money. For all the talk inside the Pentagon about strategy driving budgets and not the other way around, the Navy is anticipating shrinkage right as it also anticipates playing a larger role in U.S. national security.
> 
> The seven-ship reduction is a “reflection of budget realities,” Eric Wertheim, author of the definitive Combat Fleets of the World, tells Danger Room. Pentagon budgets have been steadily flattening for two years. And automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration and mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act, could slice another 10 percent off the military’s top-line starting in March — assuming the White House and lawmakers don’t reach a deficit-reduction agreement to avert sequestration.
> 
> Any way you cut it, there’s not a lot of extra cash padding the Pentagon’s wallet.
> 
> Ships ain’t cheap. A single aircraft carrier can cost $12 billion — and the Navy intends to keep 11 of them. Destroyers, the workhorses of the fleet, range in price from $2 billion to $4 billion. The Navy projects keeping more than 80 of them in service. Even the Littoral Combat Ship, the much-maligned “inexpensive” near-shore fighter, sets back taxpayers around $600 million each for more than 50 copies.
> 
> To build all these ships at a pace of between seven and a dozen per year, the Navy gets only $15 billion or so annually from Congress. With unpredictable labor and materials costs, ship prices can rise unexpectedly. The Congressional Budget Office predicted the Navy’s shipbuilding plan would end up costing 19 percent more than the Pentagon’s own rosy estimates.
> 
> The small decrease in the fleet’s future growth could help close the budgetary gap — assuming budgets don’t fall further. That reflects more realistic planning on the part of the Pentagon.
> 
> What the cuts do not reflect are any expectations of a more peaceful world or a reduced demand for Navy patrols near Iran, off the pirate-infested African coast or in the tense China Seas. The world’s not really getting any less dangerous, Wertheim adds. “I don’t see much on the global scene that has suddenly changed in the past five years so that now we need 306 instead of 313 [ships].”
> 
> In other words, the new, smaller future fleet is budget-driven, not strategy-driven. Wertheim calls that “the tail wagging the dog.”
> 
> The tail’s been wagging for some time. After sticking with the 313-ship goal since 2005, a year ago the Navy began signalling a smaller expansion. The sailing branch’s 30-year shipbuilding plan released last March projected a long-term fleet of 310-316 major warships, including aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and Marine-hauling amphibious ships. And within a couple months, Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert was making vague references to maintaining a fleet of “approximately 300″ ships.
> 
> The overall reduction in planned warship numbers is not surprising. What’s more surprising is the precise mix of ships the Navy is now anticipating. As expected, aircraft carriers and submarines are left untouched, but the new planning document does cut gun- and missile-armed surface warships while adding a fairly large number of support ships. Usually, the military branches protect their most glamorous weaponry, instead trimming the less sexy support forces whenever there’s a cash shortfall.
> 
> This time, the desired number of destroyers and cruisers drops from 94 to 88, mitigated somewhat by the forward basing of four destroyers in Rota, Spain. Homeporting ships overseas means they don’t have to spend time sailing to and from deployment zones, allowing fewer ships to cover the same territory.
> 
> The planned fleet of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) drops only slightly from 55 to 52, despite analysts’ predictions that production of the smaller ships might be halved, and Pentagon testing projections that the ship can’t survive combat. Wertheim chalks up the LCS force’s survival to the personal advocacy of Navy undersecretary Bob Work and other senior leaders who are ardent defender of the speedy, relatively lightweight vessel. Work “believes in LCS,” Wertheim says.
> 
> While armed ships get cut under the new plan, logistics vessels enjoy a big boost, going from 46 to 52. The expanded support force includes more cargo ships, electronic surveillance vessels and the Navy’s planned new fleet of oilers — a type of sailing gas station for other ships. An extra spy ship allows for “sustained operations and crisis response in the Pacific,” the Navy explains.
> 
> Other extra logistics ships are part of the sailing branch’s new requirement for so-called “Afloat Forward Staging Bases,” essentially barges carrying boats, helicopters and special operations forces. The first one, the retrofitted USS Ponce, is currently in the Persian Gulf supporting minesweepers.
> 
> This is a gamble. Right as the Navy’s lowering its shipbuilding sights, it’s about to get a whole lot busier. The anticipated “rebalancing” to Asia and the western Pacific places the Navy at the center of U.S. defense strategy. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are already questioning whether impending budget cuts render that strategy a non-starter. Even if they don’t happen, it remains to be seen if the Navy can shoulder that greater burden with fewer ships.
> 
> All these projections are tentative, of course. The Navy’s new plan is no more set in stone than the previous one, and could change as budgets and strategy do. And the year-on-year shifts mask two important truths: the Navy still expects to get bigger in the near future, if not as big as it anticipated. Even if it doesn’t, it’s still by far the largest and most powerful maritime force on the planet.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 2

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, is a thought provoking article which posits that the Republican Party needs "a renegotiated modus vivendi between the two competing camps, each of which has valuable things to teach the other:"

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138811/bret-stephens/getting-the-gops-groove-back?page=show


> Getting the GOP's Groove Back
> *How to Bridge the Republican Foreign Policy Divide*
> By Bret Stephens (Deputy Editorial Page Editor and Foreign Affairs Columnist at The Wall Street Journal)
> 
> March/April 2013
> 
> It is the healthy habit of partisans on the losing side of a U.S. presidential election to spend some time reflecting on the reasons for their defeat. And it is the grating habit of partisans on the winning side to tell the losers how they might have done better. Most of their advice is self-serving, none of it is solicited, and little of it is ever heeded. Yet still people pile on.
> 
> So it has been following Mitt Romney's defeat by President Barack Obama in last November's election. On domestic policy, pundits have instructed Republicans to moderate their positions on social issues and overcome their traditional opposition to higher taxes. On foreign policy, they are telling them to abandon their alleged preference for military solutions over diplomatic ones, as well as their reflexive hostility to multilateral institutions, their Cold War mentality toward Russia, their "denialism" on climate change, their excessive deference to right-wing Israelis, and so on. Much of this advice is based on caricature, and the likelihood of any of it having the slightest impact on the GOP's leadership or rank and file is minimal: the United States does not have a competitive two-party system so that one party can define for the other the terms of reasonable disagreement.
> 
> Put aside, then, fantasies about saving the GOP from itself or restoring the statesmanlike ways of George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, or Dwight Eisenhower (all of whom were derided as foreign policy dunces or extremists when they held office). Instead, take note of the more consequential foreign policy debate now taking shape within the heart of the conservative movement itself. This is the debate between small-government and big-military conservatives. Until recently, the two camps had few problems traveling together. Yet faced with the concrete political choices raised by last year's budget sequester -- which made large cuts in nondefense discretionary spending contingent on equally large cuts in the Pentagon's budget -- the coalition has begun to show signs of strain.
> 
> On the one side, Republican leaders such as Senator John McCain of Arizona have effectively conceded that higher tax rates are a price worth paying to avoid further defense cuts. On the other, one finds politicians such as Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who, when asked in 2010 about what government programs should get cut, said, "There's not a government program that shouldn't be under scrutiny, and that begins with the Department of Defense." However one may feel about these differences, it is important to understand each side as it understands itself. Then, perhaps, it might be possible to see how the differences can be bridged.
> 
> *LAND OF LIBERTY -- OR LIBERATORS?*
> 
> For big-military conservatives, a supremely powerful U.S. military isn't just vital to the national interest; it defines what the United States is. Part of this stance might owe to circumstantial factors, such as a politician's military background or large military constituency. But it is also based on an understanding of the United States as a liberator -- a country that won its own freedom and then, through the possession and application of overwhelming military might, won and defended the freedom of others, from Checkpoint Charlie to the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula.
> 
> This is a heroic view of the United States' purpose in the world -- and an expensive one. It implies that if freedom isn't being actively advanced in the world, it risks wobbling to a standstill and even falling down, like a rider peddling a bicycle too slowly. It is also a view that is not unfriendly to at least some parts of a big-government agenda and certainly not to the de facto industrial policy that is the Pentagon's procurement system.
> 
> On the other side are those conservatives who, while not deprecating the United States' historic role as a liberator, mainly cherish its domestic tradition of liberty -- above all, liberty from the burdens of excessive federal debt, taxation, regulation, and intrusion. These Republicans are by no means hostile to the military, and most believe it constitutes one of the few truly legitimate functions of government. Still, they tend to view the Pentagon as another overgrown and wasteful government bureaucracy. Some have also drawn the lesson from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that well-meaning attempts to reengineer foreign societies will succumb to the law of unintended consequences just as frequently as well-meaning attempts to use government to improve American society do. Far from being a heroic view of the United States' role, theirs is a more prudential, and perhaps more parochial, one. It also contains a sneaking sympathy for Obama's refrain that the United States needs to do less nation building abroad and more at home, even if these conservatives differ sharply with the president on the matter of means.
> 
> The differences between these two groups are ones that most Republicans would gladly paper over for the party's long-term political good. Republicans fear that Obama's ultimate political ambition is to break the back of the modern GOP, and the defense budget is the ultimate wedge issue to do the job. Republican leaders understand this and will do what they can to hold their party together. Small-government conservatives don't want to turn the Republican Party into a rump faction, capable of winning elections at the congressional or state level but locked out of the presidency. And big-military conservatives aren't eager to become an appendage of big-government liberalism, in the way that Blue Dog Democrats were instruments of the Reagan agenda in the 1980s.
> 
> Yet the philosophical differences between the two camps run deep -- and may soon run deeper. Ask a big-military conservative to name the gravest long-term threat to U.S. security, and his likely answer will be Iran, or perhaps China. These countries are classic strategic adversaries, for which military calculations inevitably play a large role. By contrast, ask a small-government conservative to name the chief threat, and he will probably say Europe, which has now become a byword among conservatives for everything they fear may yet beset the United States: too much unionization, low employment rates, permanently high taxes, politically entrenched beneficiaries of state largess, ever-rising public debts, and so on.
> 
> In the ideal conservative universe, avoiding a European destiny and facing up to the threat of Iran and other states would not be an either-or proposition. As most conservatives see it, supply-side tax cuts spur economic growth, reduce the overall burden of debt, increase federal tax revenues, and thus fund defense budgets adequate for the United States' global strategic requirements. This policy prescription may look like a fantasy, but it has worked before. "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget -- just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits." That was President John F. Kennedy speaking to the Economic Club of New York in 1962. Following the Kennedy tax cut (enacted in 1964), federal tax receipts roughly doubled over six years and military spending rose by some 25 percent, yet defense spending as a share of GDP rose only modestly and never went above ten percent.
> 
> Kennedy's words could have just as easily been spoken by Reagan. The problem for conservatives, however, is that neither Kennedy nor Reagan is president today. In the world as it is, Obama has been handily reelected, Democrats maintain control of the Senate, tax rates are going up on higher incomes, and the Supreme Court has turned back the central legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act. What Republicans might be able to achieve politically remains to be seen, although it will be limited. But it is not too soon for the party to start thinking about how it might resolve some of its internal policy tensions, including on foreign policy.
> 
> Henry Kissinger once observed that U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth century was characterized by "disastrous oscillations between overcommitment and isolation." The oscillation was especially pronounced for Republicans in the first half of the century -- from President Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet of 1907-9 to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes' Washington Naval Treaty in 1922 and from Senator Robert Taft's isolationism before World War II to Senator Arthur Vandenberg's 1945 conversion to internationalism -- although the internal differences became much less pronounced in the second half. Now that the pendulum appears to be swinging again, Republicans have an interest in seeing that it doesn't do so wildly.
> 
> How to do that? Every type of persuasion -- moral, political, policy -- carries with it the temptation of extremes. Contrary to the stereotype, big-military conservatives (along with neoconservatives) do not want to bomb every troublesome country into submission, or rebuild the U.S. armed forces to their 1960s proportions, or resume the Cold War with Russia. Nor is the problem that big-military conservatives somehow fail to appreciate the limits of American power. Of course they appreciate the limits -- but they also understand that the United States is nowhere near reaching them. Even at the height of the Iraq war, U.S. military spending constituted a smaller percentage of GDP (5.1 percent in 2008) than it did during the final full year of the Carter administration (six percent in 1980). The real limits of American power haven't been seriously tested since World War II.
> 
> Instead, the problem with big-military conservatives is that they fail to appreciate the limits of American will -- of Washington's capacity to generate broad political support for military endeavors that since 9/11 have proved not only bloody and costly but also exceedingly lengthy. Taking a heroic view of America's purpose, these conservatives are tempted by a heroic view of the American public, emphasizing its willingness to pay any price and bear any burden. Yet there is a wide gap between what the United States can achieve abroad, given unlimited political support, and what Americans want to achieve, as determined by the ebb and flow of the political tides in a democracy innately reluctant to wage war.
> 
> Small-government conservatives have their own temptations when it comes to foreign policy. At the far extreme, there is the insipid libertarianism of Ron Paul, the former Texas representative, who has claimed that Marine detachments guarding U.S. embassies count as examples of military overstretch. Paul showed remarkable strength in the last GOP presidential primary and has, in his son Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, a politically potent heir.
> 
> Most small-government conservatives aren't about to jump off the libertarian cliff: they may want to reduce the United States' footprint in the world, at least for the time being, but they don't want to erase it completely. Yet the purism that tends to drive the small-government view of the world also has a way of obscuring its vision. "If we don't take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues," Mick Mulvaney, the conservative South Carolina congressman, told Politico in December.
> 
> The heart of the United States' spending issue, however, has increasingly little to do with the defense budget (which constituted 19 percent of overall federal outlays in 2012, down from 49 percent in 1962) and increasingly more to do with entitlement programs (62 percent in 2012, up from 31 percent half a century ago). Just as the Obama administration cannot hope to erase the federal deficit by raising taxes on the rich but wants to do so anyway out of a notion of social justice, small-government conservatives cannot hope to contain runaway spending through large cuts to the defense budget. But ideological blinders get in the way.
> 
> More broadly, small-government conservatives are too often tempted to treat small government as an end in itself, not as a means to achieve greater opportunity and freedom. They make a fetish of thrift at the expense of prosperity. They fancy that a retreat from the United States' global commitments could save lives without storing trouble. The record of the twentieth century tells a different story. Republicans should not wish to again become the party of such isolationists as Taft and Charles Lindbergh.



End of Part 1


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 2



> *A CONSERVATIVE BALANCE*
> 
> Fortunately, there is a happy medium. It's not what goes today under the name "realism" -- a term of considerable self-flattery and negligible popular appeal. Republicans, in particular, will never stand for any kind of foreign policy that lacks a clear moral anchor. And Americans would not take well to a would-be Richelieu at the State Department. As it is, the GOP does not need a total makeover; what it needs is a refurbished modus vivendi between small-government and big-military conservatives, two sides that need not become antagonists and have valuable things to teach each other.
> 
> Small-government conservatives, for their part, can teach their big-military friends that the Pentagon doesn't need more money. What it needs desperately is a functional procurement system. The costs of U.S. jet fighters, for example, have skyrocketed: the F-4 Phantom, introduced in 1960, cost $16 million (in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars) per plane, excluding research and development, whereas the equivalent figure for the F-35 Lightning II, in development now, is $120 million. The result is an underequipped air force that invests billions of dollars for the research-and-development costs of planes, such as the B-2 bomber and the F-22 fighter, that it can afford to procure only in inadequate numbers. The result is not just the ordinary waste, fraud, and abuse of any bureaucracy but also deep and lasting damage to the country's ability to project power and wage war.
> 
> Another lesson small-government conservatives have to offer is that nobody hates a benefactor as much as his beneficiary. From Somalia to Afghanistan, conservatives should look far more skeptically at military ventures in which the anticipated payoff is gratitude. Americans should go to war for the sake of their security, interests, and values. But they should never enter a popularity contest they are destined to lose.
> 
> Small-government conservatives also realize that Americans will stomach long wars only when national survival is clearly at stake. Since modern counterinsurgency is time-intensive by nature, the public should look askance at future counterinsurgency operations. Although he later disavowed his own words, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was largely right when he told West Point cadets in 2011 that "any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it." That's not because the wars are unwinnable from a military standpoint. It's because they are unfinishable from a political one.
> 
> Finally, those in the small-government camp understand that unlike authoritarian states, democratic ones will not indefinitely sustain large militaries in the face of prolonged economic stagnation or contraction. Except in moments of supreme emergency, when it comes to a choice, butter always beats guns. Big-military conservatives, therefore, cannot stay indifferent to issues of long-term economic competitiveness and the things that sustain it, not least of which is a government that facilitates wealth creation at home, promotes free trade globally, is fundamentally friendly to immigrants, and seeks to live within its means.
> 
> Then there are the things big-military conservatives can teach their small-government friends. First, they should make clear that a robust military is a net economic asset to the United States. A peaceful, trading, and increasingly free and prosperous world has been sustained for over six decades thanks in large part to a U.S. military with the power to make good on U.S. guarantees and deter real (or would-be) aggressors. And although the small-government purist might dismiss as corporate welfare the jobs, skills, and technology base that the so-called military-industrial complex supports, there are some industries that no great power can allow to wither or move offshore.
> 
> Big-military conservatives also correctly argue that a substantially weaker U.S. military will ultimately incur its own long-term economic costs. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was right when he said that "weakness is provocative." China's ambition to establish what amounts to a modern-day Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere may ultimately succeed unless places such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines can be reasonably sure that the United States will serve as a regional military counterweight to China's growing navy. Much the same may go for Iran's efforts to become the Middle East's dominant player, especially if its neighbors -- not just Afghanistan and Iraq but also small states such as Bahrain and Kuwait -- lose their remaining faith in U.S. security guarantees. That would go double should Iran acquire a nuclear weapons capability.
> 
> As big-military conservatives also know, shrinking the defense budget is a costly short-term solution to a difficult long-term problem. Small-government conservatives imagine that the United States can stomach steep temporary defense cuts to help bring deficits into line. But as European countries have belatedly discovered, without structural reforms, the overspending problem remains even after defense budgets have been slashed. The result is a continent that is nearly bankrupt and nearly defenseless at the same time.
> 
> Finally, small-government conservatives need to remember that there is no reliable guarantor of global order besides the United States. When the United Kingdom realized in 1947 that it could no longer afford to honor its security commitments to Greece and Turkey, it could at least look westward to the United States, which was prepared to shoulder those responsibilities. But when the United States looks westward, it sees only China. President Abraham Lincoln's "last, best hope" remains what it always was -- perhaps more so, given the deep economic disarray in other corners of the developed world.
> 
> These observations ought to remind Republicans about the necessity of preponderant U.S. power. But they also ought to remind them that U.S. power will be squandered when it isn't used decisively, something that in turn requires great discrimination given Americans' reluctance to support protracted military actions. Ultimately, there are few things so damaging to countries as large and wasted efforts.
> 
> *KEEPING NIGHTMARES AT BAY*
> 
> In retooling its foreign policy, the Republican Party should heed lessons from both types of conservatives. What does this mean in practice? Consider China, where an atavistic nationalism, emboldened by an increasingly modern military, threatens to overtake the rational economic decision-making that largely characterized the tenures of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. U.S. policymakers need to restrain the former and encourage the latter.
> 
> But labeling Beijing a "currency manipulator" and raising trade barriers against it, as Romney proposed to do from day one of his administration, will have the opposite effect. Modern China is often compared with Wilhelmine Germany because of its regional ambitions, and in many ways the comparison is apt. But for now, China remains more of a competitor than an outright adversary, and one that is increasingly aware of its political brittleness and economic vulnerability.
> 
> That status means that the United States can create a policy that is a genuine synthesis between small-government and big-military conservatism. Big-military conservatives are right to worry about China's growing military adventurism and right to advocate a larger overall U.S. naval presence in the region and arms sales to skittish allies such as Taiwan. But that is only one side of the coin. The other is the opportunity to demonstrate to Beijing that an adversarial relationship is not inevitable: that the United States will desist from constantly thwarting efforts by Chinese companies to expand overseas and that Washington is interested in deepening economic cooperation with China, not fighting endless trade skirmishes. The United States should want China to become an economic colossus -- so long as it doesn't also become a regional bully. That differs from the Obama administration's policy, which has been mostly a muddle: a military "pivot" that so far has been more rhetorical than substantive, as well as a pattern of engaging in unhelpful, albeit relatively minor, trade skirmishes with Beijing.
> 
> Now take Iran, where the Obama administration has combined two feckless policy options -- diplomacy and sanctions -- to produce the most undesirable outcome possible: diminished U.S. regional credibility, a greater likelihood of U.S. or Israeli military action, and an Iran that has more incentive to accelerate its nuclear program than to stop it. Along with most left-leaning liberals, many small-government conservatives instinctively look askance at the thought of military action against Iran. More broadly, they would like to reduce U.S. involvement in the Middle East as much as possible, something the discovery of vast domestic U.S. energy reserves has made conceivable for the first time in decades.
> 
> Yet the surest way to embroil the United States in intractable Middle Eastern problems for another generation is to acquiesce to an Iranian nuclear capability. Among the many reasons why it's a bad idea to try to contain a nuclear Iran is that containment entails two things most Americans don't like: long-term effort and high cost. The United States has a strong stake in a Middle East that is no longer the focus of its security concerns. But getting there depends on reducing the region's centrality as a source of both energy and terrorism. A nuclear Iran would make that goal far less achievable, which means that a credible policy of prevention is essential. Obama also claims to believe in prevention, but the administration's mixed messages on the viability of military strikes have undercut its credibility.
> 
> Finally, there is the Arab Spring, which seemed at its outset to be a vindication of President George W. Bush's "freedom agenda" but has, after two years, come to seem more like a rebuke of it. The results of elections in Gaza, Tunis, Rabat, and Cairo are powerful reminders that the words "liberal" and "democracy" don't always travel together, that the essence of freedom is the right to choose political and social options radically different from the standard American ones. In this sense, small-government conservatives, with their innate suspicion of any grand Washington project to reengineer the moral priorities of a society, are being proved right.
> 
> But like it or not, the United States will still have to deal with the consequences of the upheavals in the Middle East. It would be a fool's gambit for Washington to attempt, for example, to steer political outcomes in Cairo or once again roll the boulder up the hill of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. At the same time, the United States maintains a powerful interest in making sure certain things do not happen. Among them: chemical munitions getting loose in Syria, the abrupt collapse of the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan, a direct confrontation between Israel and Egypt over the Sinai, and (further afield) the Taliban's return to Kabul.
> 
> Preventing those outcomes means taking on the negative task of keeping nightmare scenarios at bay, not the positive one of realizing a more progressive and tolerant world. Yet if conservatives of any stripe can agree on anything, it's that utopianism has no place in policymaking. And when it comes to foreign policy, the American people will ultimately reward not the party with the most ambitious vision but the party with the most sober and realistic one.




Were I an American I would be a Republican of the small government variety but I agree with Bret Stephens that precipitous cuts to defence spending are unwise. That the Pentagon overspends is undeniable; why it overspends is a bit more complex. Yes, as in Canada, the procurement system is broken. Yes, as in Canada, there are too many non-defence fingers in the defence spending pie. But: the USA is overextended and it is making mischief in areas where it has few, if any, vital interests.

All US spending must be on the table, the DoD is neither an efficient nor an effective agent of the people of the United States. But cutting it requires careful, far-sighted surgery, not hacking and hewing.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Veteran Anglo-American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave gives a reasoned review of Richard Haass' new book _Foreign Policy Begins at Home_ in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _United Press International_:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2013/05/03/Commentary-Beyond-the-last-war/UPI-90611367580711/


> 'Beyond the last war'
> *Where next for the United States? Foreign policy begins at home, says the head of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass.*
> 
> By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
> 
> Published: May 3, 2013
> 
> WASHINGTON, May 3 (UPI) -- Topic A among geostrategic thinkers is how to avoid getting sucked in to another war while taking on the biggest threats to U.S. security and prosperity.
> 
> It is not rocket science. Richard N. Haass, president of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, writes in his latest book, "Foreign Policy Begins at Home," and "the biggest threats to U.S. security and prosperity come not from abroad but from within."
> 
> Better late than never.
> 
> After the two most recent bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade, and the expenditure of $2 trillion, Haass argues "for a new foreign policy doctrine of Restoration, in which the United States limits its engagement in foreign wars and humanitarian interventions and instead focuses on restoring the economic foundations of its power."
> 
> While engaged in unpopular foreign wars, opposed by the overwhelming majority of Americans, U.S. President George W. Bush and his planners and advisers failed to notice we were sapping the sinews of American power.
> 
> Notwithstanding Haass's warning against foreign military entanglements, the same visionaries that gave us Iraq and Afghanistan are agitating for action against the Assad regime in Syria. President Bashar Assad is using chemical weapons against his own people. And this, they say, demands retaliatory action by the United States.
> 
> Robotic bombing by drones, they suggest. The only problem with hastening Assad's downfall is al-Qaida and its Associated Movements. It is a major factor in the anti-Assad resistance.
> 
> U.S. bombing would enhance AQAM's image and credibility -- against the United States even though fighting the same enemy.
> 
> U.S. President Barack Obama hesitates because everything he has read or heard reeks of mission creep.
> 
> China, meanwhile, has been building the foundations of a 21st-century economy. It has also deployed more than 5 million workers in developing economies, mostly in what was once the Third World, to build future markets for their burgeoning industries.
> 
> In the Bahamas, 20 minutes by cab from Nassau airport, and a 45-minute flight from Palm Beach, Fla., some 6,000 Chinese workers are erecting a casino complex that will dwarf any gambling emporium in the Caribbean.
> 
> There are even serious predictions that China's gross domestic product will surpass the United States' by 2016 (the International Monetary Fund says) or 2019 (says The Economist).
> 
> If China's economy is growing 8 percent a year and the United States by less than 3 percent, some tasseographers -- tea leaf readers -- conclude China's leaders will soon rule the global roost.
> 
> Coffee grind readings, a tad more accurate, show the American giant reassessing priorities and making Haass' prescription a national priority.
> 
> Several books are out predicting an historic shift in the world balance of power.
> 
> Last month, China disclosed plans to build several more aircraft carriers after commissioning its first flat-top, the Liaoning, originally an unfinished Soviet carrier, now undergoing sea trials.
> 
> The petty antics on Capitol Hill, projected as a dysfunctional system of government by global, round-the-clock television news (e.g., al-Jazeera, BBC, A2 France in English) don't enhance the image of American democracy.
> 
> Haass's latest tome argues brilliantly "for a new foreign policy doctrine of Restoration, in which the United States limits its engagement in foreign wars and humanitarian interventions and instead focuses on restoring the economic foundations of its power."
> 
> The United States, busy fighting non-essential foreign wars, barely noticed that its crumbling infrastructure, in many areas, is slip-sliding into nationwide obsolescence.
> 
> America's burgeoning deficit and debt, says Haass, second-class schools and outdated immigration system, all say it's time for a refit.
> 
> Haass rejects any thought of isolationism and firmly believes global leadership is critically important for the United States in the 21st century. But this, he writes, can only be "anchored" in restoration on the home front.
> 
> On the defense front, "Beyond the Last War" is the title of a major study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on "Balancing Ground Forces and Future Challenges Risk in USCENTCOM and USPACOM," abbreviations for the Middle East and the Pacific theaters.
> 
> A former U.S. Army chief of Staff said privately, "the hardest thing in Washington is turning the Pentagon around to face the wars of the future."
> 
> By the "future," he made clear he had robotic and cyber warfare in mind. But the Pentagon is yet to decide what to do with 9,000 tanks as major tank battles recede into a glorious past.
> 
> The CSIS study is the penultimate phase that bridges "five pacing archtypes: humanitarian response, distributed security enabling and support activities, peace operations and limited conventional campaigns."
> 
> Not exactly a recipe for global imperialism.
> 
> U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged as much when he noted in his farewell address at West Point:
> 
> "When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our net military engagements since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right. From the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more -- we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged."
> 
> To complete the list one should add Korea 1950-54 (a draw); Vietnam 1959-1975 (a defeat); Dominican Republic 1965 (win); Beirut 1989 (defeat and withdrawal after 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers killed by terrorist bombs); Grenada 1989 (win three days after Beirut defeat); Gulf War I 1991 (win); Somalia 1993 (defeat); Haiti 1994 (win); Bosnia 1994-95 (win); Kosovo 1999 (win); Afghanistan 2001 (ongoing); Iraq 2003-11 (lose).
> 
> CSIS' "Beyond the Last War" says if this century "is to be another American century ... then this nation must possess a land force -- Army. Marines and Special Forces – of sufficient capacity to meet numerous challenges, as well as opportunities, an uncertain future will present."
> 
> Haass' prescription says charity starts at home.




I haven't gotten to "Foreign Policy Begins at Home," yet - it's on the Spring reading list - but if what Arnaud de Borchgrave says is correct then I suspect I shall agree with Richard Haass prescriptions.

That America's post World War II strategic vision has been cloudy, to be charitable, is beyond question but America's strategic _capacity_ is now in question, too.

If we want American strategic leadership - and I think we do - then we must hope for a new generation of leaders very, very unlike pretty much everyone from John F. Kennedy through to Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, in my opinion, have been second rate. America does need to restore is social and economic base before it can assert itself as a global leader. The social base is still ruptured by the silly, destructive culture wars for which *both* the (misnamed) liberals and conservatives are equally to blame. The economic base has been destroyed by two generations of misguided social engineers. the US military is, in my opinion, poorly led - and has been ever since about 1960, badly managed, and aimless. US strategy ... well,the lack of one is what this thread is all about.


----------



## tomahawk6

> If we want American strategic leadership - and I think we do - then we must hope for a new generation of leaders very, very unlike pretty much everyone from John F. Kennedy through to Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, in my opinion, have been second rate. America does need to restore is social and economic base before it can assert itself as a global leader. The social base is still ruptured by the silly, destructive culture wars for which both the (misnamed) liberals and conservatives are equally to blame. The economic base has been destroyed by two generations of misguided social engineers. the US military is, in my opinion, poorly led - and has been ever since about 1960, badly managed, and aimless. US strategy ... well,the lack of one is what this thread is all about.



Quite an indictment Edward.Unfortunately I cannot agree with your assessment. Overall the military leadership has been better than some of the civilian leadership.From a standpoint of success,we didnt have a nuclear war and we essentially outspent the Russians until their economy collapsed.Pretty good strategy. :camo:


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Quite an indictment Edward.Unfortunately I cannot agree with your assessment. Overall the military leadership has been better than some of the civilian leadership.From a standpoint of success,we didnt have a nuclear war and we essentially outspent the Russians until their economy collapsed. Pretty good strategy. :camo:




A pretty good strategy, indeed ... one put in place by Dwight Eisenhower* in the 1950s, back when America, like the boy scouts, had adult leadership. 


_____
* See e.g. Evan Thomas (Princeton University) "Ike's Bluff," new York, 2012


----------



## a_majoor

While the strategy to defeat the USSR was both effective and correct (the USSR collapsed without triggering a major conventional or nuclear war), the strategy of containment created a lot of stress both within the United States (as people argued about the morality of supporting authoritarian regimes which were nominally on the side of the West) and without (many of these regimes were troublesome not only to the American body politic, but also to their own neighbours).

Post Cold War, the United States has been essentially aimless, which is what Edward is alluding to.

Now Thomas Friedman laid out an implicit "Grand Strategy" in his book "The Next 100 Years", paraphrased in a G&M article below:

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/canadas-grand-strategy/article4329007/?service=mobile



> In his book, The Next 100 Years, realist thinker George Friedman lays out what he calls the "Grand Strategy" of the United States. This is the overriding series of goals that must be achieved to maintain American power, domestic peace and high standards of living. It is a strong example of Realist thinking that coldly calculates the factors necessary in national security, rather than what would be nice.
> 
> The list can summarized as:
> 
> 1. U.S. Army controls the continental United States.
> 
> 2. Naval control of the approaches to the continental United States.
> 
> 3. No rivals in the Western Hemisphere.
> 
> 4. Control of ocean trade routes in the rest of the world.
> 
> 5. Preventing the rise of a rival hegemonic power, particularly in Eurasia.
> 
> The first step is an absolute necessity to U.S. security: control of the heartland itself. Each step builds off of the first other in sequence. So military control of the continental United States allows control of the naval approaches to prevent a foreign invasion. Control of the approaches to the United States allows the containing and destabilizing of hemispheric rivals. And so on.
> 
> Friedman describes the U.S. grand strategy a bit on his website:
> 
> "The United States operates with a grand strategy derived from the British strategy in Europe - maintaining the balance of power. For the United Kingdom, maintaining the balance of power in Europe protected any one power from emerging that could unite Europe and build a fleet to invade the United Kingdom or block its access to its empire. British strategy was to help create coalitions to block emerging hegemons such as Spain, France or Germany. Using overt and covert means, the United Kingdom aimed to ensure that no hegemonic power could emerge.
> 
> The Americans inherited that grand strategy from the British but elevated it to a global rather than regional level. Having blocked the Soviet Union from hegemony over Europe and Asia, the United States proceeded with a strategy whose goal, like that of the United Kingdom, was to nip potential regional hegemons in the bud. The U.S. war with Iraq in 1990-91 and the war with Serbia/Yugoslavia in 1999 were examples of this strategy. It involved coalition warfare, shifting America's weight from side to side and using minimal force to disrupt the plans of regional aspirants to gain power. This U.S. strategy also was cloaked in the ideology of global liberalism and human rights.
> 
> The key to this strategy was its global nature. The emergence of a hegemonic contender that could challenge the United States globally, as the Soviet Union had done, was the worst-case scenario. Therefore, the containment of emerging powers wherever they might emerge was the centerpiece of American balance of power strategy."
> 
> Friedman states that all countries have a grand strategy, verbalized or unacknowledged, achieved or impossible. Many actors in the state, even at a high level, can ignore or remain unaware of this analytical framework, but it is there nonetheless, guiding decisions that may otherwise be perplexing to understand.



Now I suspect much of the problem in the United States comes from the fact the "Grand Strategy" is not consciously recognized by most Americans, hence is unarticulated and largely fulfilled by accident. (While readers may not agree that this is, indeed, the "Grand Strategy" of the United States, it flows from certain assumptions and is logically based on what really is part of the Grand Strategy of any nation: the security and control of the national homeland).

If American politicians were to articulate this or any other logical and coherent "Grand Strategy", and begin organizing American institutions to support and fulfill these goals, then things would become at least more logical, if not necessarily "better".


----------



## Kirkhill

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> If we want American strategic leadership - and I think we do - then we must hope for a new generation of leaders very, very unlike pretty much everyone from John F. Kennedy through to Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, in my opinion, have been second rate. America does need to restore is social and economic base before it can assert itself as a global leader. The social base is still ruptured by the silly, destructive culture wars for which *both* the (misnamed) liberals and conservatives are equally to blame. The economic base has been destroyed by two generations of misguided social engineers. the US military is, in my opinion, poorly led - and has been ever since about 1960, badly managed, and aimless. US strategy ... well,the lack of one is what this thread is all about.



Edward,

Aren't you arguing for the exceptional? 

If the average is second rate should we not plan for the second rate rather than the exceptional?  Or, putting it another way, shouldn't we plan for chaos?

By the way, I am a fan of chaos.  It creates more opportunities for everyone.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Edward,
> 
> Aren't you arguing for the exceptional?
> 
> If the average is second rate should we not plan for the second rate rather than the exceptional?  Or, putting it another way, shouldn't we plan for chaos?
> 
> By the way, I am a fan of chaos.  It creates more opportunities for everyone.




Oh, you're right ... it is a perfect illustration of the triumph of hope over experience, isn't it?

But I admire Truman as much as I admire Eisenhower; was Truman "exceptional?" Not as a man, I don't think, but he was smart enough to spot "exceptional" people and, despite their politics, invite them into his inner circle to serve their country. Truman was involved in sharp, highly partisan political contests with the Congress and the states but he, and most of his friends and some of his opponents, were, broadly but certainly not universally, able to put aside partisanship and serve the _utilitarian_ common good:







   
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




          
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




   
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



                  Two exceptional men who served Truman                                                                 Two equally "exceptional" men who opposed Truman
           George C Matrshall                                     Dean Acheson                                           Joseph McCarthy                                  Joseph Kennedy
            

I don't think Barack Obama is exceptional, either, but I also don't think he's much good at spotting talent or, if he is - and people like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are exceptional - he seems unable to help them to help him. But I think the same thing applied to George W Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy, they weren't exceptional either. But unexceptional Harry Truman rose to the needs of the office and the time, so what not the others?


----------



## Kirkhill

Perhaps there is a problem with the personal versus the institutional?

Obama - for all his 1960s hippie-speak about community - epitomizes in my mind the selfish individualism that arose out of that era.
Truman and Eisenhower, and I suggest their predecessors, were much more creatures of the institutions in which they grew up.

Perhaps it isn't surprising that your list of mediocrity begins with Kennedy: wasn't he elected despite the institutions that supported his predecessors?

Caesar triumphed over the Senate by going direct to the people.  Kennedy used TV to trump the US "Senate" and appealed directly to the people.  His successors have followed the same path.

Now it is all about the man and his coat-tails.  Not the institution's man.

Parties are one form of institution but I believe that parties generally were reflective of other, broader, institutions. 

Truman and Eisenhower grew from the Kiwanis, Kinsmen, Rotary, Lions, Masons, Knights of Columbus, Eagles, Elks, Scouts, Guides, Chambers of Commerce, School boards and PTAs.   All of those institutions are shadows of themselves.  The participatory, and representative form of democracy that they represented is gone.  They aligned behind parties and put their representatives forward.

Now, it seems to me, it is all about the man at the top and how he can manipulate his way to power.  

There are no pyramids of power.  There is only a thin web of finely drawn threads.


----------



## Jed

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Perhaps there is a problem with the personal versus the institutional?
> 
> Obama - for all his 1960s hippie-speak about community - epitomizes in my mind the selfish individualism that arose out of that era.
> Truman and Eisenhower, and I suggest their predecessors, were much more creatures of the institutions in which they grew up.
> 
> Perhaps it isn't surprising that your list of mediocrity begins with Kennedy: wasn't he elected despite the institutions that supported his predecessors?
> 
> Caesar triumphed over the Senate by going direct to the people.  Kennedy used TV to trump the US "Senate" and appealed directly to the people.  His successors have followed the same path.
> 
> Now it is all about the man and his coat-tails.  Not the institution's man.
> 
> Parties are one form of institution but I believe that parties generally were reflective of other, broader, institutions.
> 
> Truman and Eisenhower grew from the Kiwanis, Kinsmen, Rotary, Lions, Masons, Knights of Columbus, Eagles, Elks, Scouts, Guides, Chambers of Commerce, School boards and PTAs.   All of those institutions are shadows of themselves.  The participatory, and representative form of democracy that they represented is gone.  They aligned behind parties and put their representatives forward.
> Now, it seems to me, it is all about the man at the top and how he can manipulate his way to power.
> 
> There are no pyramids of power.  There is only a thin web of finely drawn threads.
> 
> 
> I think you are on to something with this line of thought. So how do we as a society, somehow adjust our course for the greater good?


----------



## a_majoor

I think that is exactly right. Edmond Burke spoke of being part of "small platoons" and Alexis de Tocqueville described America as a "Nation of associations". Civic participation is to be encouraged and supported in order to raise and train civic leaders (people who might, like Truman, not be very smart or talented themselves but can recognize an bring the smart and talented people aboard to help them reach common goals).

Now in the age of Big Government, many of the functions of the small platoons has been crowded out and taken over by the State. Local church charities don't take on the burden of caring for the poor the way they used to, and even the DIY solutions of yeateryear have been actively discouraged by the State (you don't see rooming houses anymore, the poor are stuffed into "assisted housing"). Now you can argue that a patchwork of small, mostly local initiatives is less effective at helping than the vast, well funded bureaucracy of the State, but I think most people can agree that , as a minimum the State isn't very effective at helping peope and in some cases counterproductive.

The small platoons will come back in many of our lifetimes as the welfare state goes bankrupt, the trick is going to be to make the transition smooth and relatively painless. The future small platoons are also not going to resemble the old Kiwanas or Rotary clubs anymore than these clubs resembled a Masonic lodge or Medeival Guild, given the massive amount of information they will have access to and the ability to rapidly link and delink with other like minded people and groupd according to the task they want to accomplish and the resources they need to achieve these goals.

Think of social media + crowdfunding for a possibe model.


----------



## tomahawk6

The current POTUS and his administration are on thin ice with two separate investigations,Benghazi and  the IRS targeting conservative groups. The latter smacks of the Nixon administration.

AP has the latest on the IRS scandal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irs-apologizes-for-inappropriately-targeting-conservative-political-groups-in-2012-election/2013/05/11/ea5d5790-ba0e-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html

AP Exclusive: Watchdog report says senior IRS officials knew tea party groups targeted in 2011

WASHINGTON — Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” ‘’Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

The 9-12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.

Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups “immediately,” the report says.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week. The AP obtained part of the draft report, which has been shared with congressional aides.

Among the other revelations, on Aug. 4, 2011, staffers in the IRS’ Rulings and Agreements office “held a meeting with chief counsel so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”

On Jan, 25, 2012, the criteria for flagging suspect groups was changed to, “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform/movement,” the report says.

While this was happening, several committees in Congress were writing numerous letters IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to express concern because tea party groups were complaining of IRS harassment.

In Shulman’s responses, he did not acknowledge targeting of tea party groups. At a congressional hearing March 22, 2012, Shulman was adamant in his denials.

 “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people” who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.

The portion of the draft report reviewed by the AP does not say whether Shulman or anyone else in the Obama administration outside the IRS was informed of the targeting. It is standard procedure for agency heads to consult with staff before responding to congressional inquiries, but it is unclear how much information Shulman sought.

The IRS has not said when Shulman found out that Tea Party groups were targeted.

Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush, a Republican. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor. The agency is now run by an acting commissioner, Steven Miller.

The IRS said in a statement Saturday that the agency believes the timeline in the IG’s report is correct, and supports what officials said Friday.

“IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details at the time of the March 2012 hearing,” the statement said. “The timeline does not contradict the commissioner’s testimony. While exempt organizations officials knew of the situation earlier, the timeline reflects that IRS senior leadership did not have this level of detail.”

Lerner’s position is three levels below the commissioner.

“The timeline supports what the IRS acknowledged on Friday that mistakes were made,” the statement continued. “There were not partisan reasons behind this.”

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight subcommittee, said the report “raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was.”

 “This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice,” Boustany said.

 “This is an outrageous abuse of power. Going after organizations for referencing the Bill of Rights or expressing the intent to make this country a better place is repugnant,” Boustany added. “There is no excuse for this behavior.”

Several congressional committees have promised investigations, including the Ways and Means Committee, which plans to hold a hearing.

 “The admission by the agency that it targeted American taxpayers based on politics is both shocking and disappointing,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. “We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions.”

The group Tea Party Patriots said the revelation was proof that the IRS had lied to Congress and the public when Schulman said there had been no targeting of tea party groups.

 “We must know how many more lies they have been telling and how high up the chain the cover-up goes,” Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for the group Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement Saturday.

 “It appears the IRS committed crimes and violated our ability to exercise our First Amendment right to free speech. A simple apology is not sufficient reparation for violating the constitutional rights of United States citizens. Therefore, Tea Party Patriots rejects the apology from the Internal Revenue Service,” Martin said. “We are, however, encouraged to hear that Congress plans to investigate. Those responsible must be held accountable and resign or be terminated for their actions.”

On Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration expected the inspector general to conduct a thorough investigation, but he brushed aside calls for the White House itself to investigate.

Many conservative groups complained during the 2012 election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.

The forms, which the groups have made available, sought information about group members’ political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.

In some cases, the IRS acknowledged, agents inappropriately asked for lists of donors.

There has been a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections — conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove’s group Crossroads GPS and the liberal Moveon.org.

These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities, but their primary activity must be social welfare.

That determination is up to the IRS.

The number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

Lerner said on Friday this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn’t the group’s primary activity.

As part of this process, agents in Cincinnati came up with a list of things to look for in an application. As part of the list, they included the words “tea party” and “patriot,” Lerner said.

 “It’s the line people that did it without talking to managers,” Lerner told the AP on Friday. “They’re IRS workers, they’re revenue agents.”

In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, Lerner said. Of those, about a quarter were singled out because they had “tea party” or “patriot” somewhere in their applications.

Lerner said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.


----------



## cupper

:boring: Is it 2016 already?

My how time flies.


----------



## a_majoor

While T6 may have posted in the wrong thread(?), there is an essential point that American politics is driven by domestic considerations to a far greater extent than most outsiders realize. The Cuban embargo has far more to do with the votes of Cuban exiles in Miami than it has to do with overthrowing Castro.

The Administration attempted to sweep the events of 9/11/12 under the rug in order to minimize the impact on the election, a cynical and effective ploy. (Why the Republicans did not revive the "3 AM phone call" meme is perhaps the great mystery of the election). However the questions raised by events like Benghazi, the abuse of IRS power, "Fast and Furious", not to mention the continuing impact of high unemployment and sluggish economic growth will force the Administration into a largely reactive mode, if not paralysis or even savage infighting as people attempt to avoid being thrown under the bus.

US foreign policy, which is largely a continuation of the Bush Administration policy, will continue due to inertia without a guiding hand at the wheel. No coherent "Grand Strategy" will emerge, and if we take the Freidman "Grand Strategy" as an organic extention of the need to secure the American homeland, then we could continue to interpret the event of the next few years in that light.


----------



## tomahawk6

I didnt want to strt a new thread and since this thread essentially is about US politics I threw the Benghazi/IRS scandals into the mix.Who was the last US President that used the IRS against his enemies ? Could it be Richard Nixon ?We all know how that turned out.Unfortunately for Nixon he didnt have a compliant news media.Obama does,at least for the moment.


----------



## Rifleman62

When a US Service person is killed in the line of duty, their family _eventually_ gets a flag and a note conveying sympathy and respect from the United States Government.

When a pro basketball player announces he is gay, he immediately gets a personal phone call from President Obama congratulating him for his courage.

Am I missing something?


----------



## Edward Campbell

While I acknowledge that _"all politics is local,"_ as former US House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neil said, and, therefore, that even "grand strategy" is determined by partisan politics, I  fear that if we let this thread _devolve_ into a broad, general, US domestic politics discussion it will circle the drain and, as with other international political threads (late last year), end up as _Radio Chatter_.

I would invite members to consider the definition of _grand strategy_, as I suggested nearly 18 months ago and try to keep our discussion focused on that.


Edit: typo ~ tired old eyes!  :-[


----------



## Kirkhill

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> While I acknowledge that _"all politics is local,"_ as former US House of Representatives Speaker Tip O'Neil said, and, therefore, that even "grand strategy" is determined by partisan politics, I  fear that if we let this thread _devolve_ into a broad, general, US domestic politics discussion it will circle the drain and, as with other international political threads (late last year), end up as _Radio Chatter_.
> 
> I would invite members to consider the definition of _grand strategy_, as I suggested nearly 18 months ago and try to keep our discussion focused on hat.



I'd like to second that.


----------



## cupper

Me third.


----------



## tomahawk6

Better change the title.You cannot discuss grand strategy in a domestic context without discussing politics.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Better change the title.You cannot discuss grand strategy in a domestic context without discussing politics.




I accepted, nearly six years ago, that domestic politics would decide _grand strategy_ but the original post was about _grand strategy_ ~ why and how America comports itself in the world ~ and while I agree that domestic politics will decide the issues they, domestic political issues, are not components of a _grand strategy_.

This thread was not intended to be a platform for debating the American culture wars nor Pres Obama's conduct; it was meant to be about _grand strategy_. If we drift too far from that then I am confident that this thread, too, will become _radio chatter_.


----------



## tomahawk6

Perhaps I don't understand the premise "Grand Strategy for a divided America". Who's grand strategy ? How is America divided  except maybe in the political context that you don't want discussed ? Don't worry Edward I won't clutter your thread with politics.Although it would be an ideal venue to discuss the Nixonian bent of this administration.Anyway keep an eye on the Congressional hearings.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Perhaps I don't understand the premise "Grand Strategy for a divided America". Who's grand strategy ? How is America divided  except maybe in the political context that you don't want discussed ? Don't worry Edward I won't clutter your thread with politics.Although it would be an ideal venue to discuss the Nixonian bent of this administration.Anyway keep an eye on the Congressional hearings.




The title, and the premise that _*a) *_America needs a _grand strategy_ and _*b)*_ that ongoing political divisions make it difficult to enunciate, are found in the first post from nearly six years ago.

It seems to me that _*a)*_ a _grand strategy_ is still to be hoped for and _*b)*_ the divisions are still deep and are still preventing official Washington from focusing on _strategic_ issues.


----------



## tomahawk6

America required a grand strategy during the cold war. Post cold war a grand strategy isnt possible or desirable.Today we are fighting islamists beyond that world peace may break out or it will be back to a policy to contain the PRC.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I think that deciding how to _engage_ China is a key element of a _grand strategy_: classic containment, à la George Kennan or something else?

Ditto: the Muslims: low level war or something else?

What about how to deal with a shaky, maybe failing Europe?

And there is always Latin America, with its own traditional challenges.

Where does India fit in all this?

Russia?

Africa?


----------



## tomahawk6

National interest has its ebbs and flows.During the cold war India aligned itself with the Russians.Now they seem to have aligned themselves with the West. 
Europe may be shaky but they havent collapsed economically yet.Of all the NATO nations the one country with the strongest economy IMO is Canada.


----------



## Brad Sallows

The US didn't really have a grand strategy shared across the political divide during the Cold War, except by convenience.  The Republicans chiefly wanted to contain the Soviets and the Democrats chiefly wanted to expand the welfare state.  Each went along with the other as the cost of meeting respective aims.  Post-USSR, there is no external threat equal to the Soviets.  Republican attention has turned partly inward (source of friction added) and Democrat support is no longer needed "at any price" (source of cooperation removed).


----------



## Nemo888

The strategy seems to be assisting global capital create a single free market.  The lack of democratic oversight is already revealing the flaws of capitalism without moral or ethical constraints. It's an ideological experiment that I think is fundamentally flawed.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> The US didn't really have a grand strategy shared across the political divide during the Cold War, except by convenience.  The Republicans chiefly wanted to contain the Soviets and the Democrats chiefly wanted to expand the welfare state.  Each went along with the other as the cost of meeting respective aims.  Post-USSR, there is no external threat equal to the Soviets.  Republican attention has turned partly inward (source of friction added) and Democrat support is no longer needed "at any price" (source of cooperation removed).




Containment, which was a _grand strategy_, was a Democratic policy adopted by the GOP. Kennedy, another Democrat was the author of _interventionism_ which is, today, largely associated with the GOP. Nixon was a realist, a _strategic_ posture that appealed to George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, while George H Bush, like Ronald Reagan and LBJ, was a _Kennedyesque_ interventionist.

My  :2c: anyway.


----------



## Rifleman62

FINALLY:

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#axzz2TNW9R0QX

New York Post

*O’s scandals take nation by storm*

By MICHAEL GOODWIN

Last Updated: 2:49 AM, May 15, 2013


As a metaphor for big government, it is hard to top the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ phone records from The Associated Press.

Unless, of course, you think the best example is the Internal Revenue Service turning the screws on groups it viewed as conservative and, therefore, unworthy of fair treatment.

Or maybe the winner is the sneaky spreading of ObamaCare’s tentacles, with insurance companies now predicting the law will drive up the cost of individual premiums by as much as 400 percent.

There are no losers in this race to the bottom — except the American people. It is tempting to ask whether they’ve had enough Hope & Change, but the question is premature. With 44 months to go in the reign of the Great Mistake, the gods are not done punishing us.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the growing cloud of trouble must have the bunker boys longing for the good old days. You know, those idyllic days of yesteryear, a k a early last week, when Benghazi was the only scandal on the horizon.

Everything was much simpler then. All the president had to do was cry “Politics!” and the Pavlovian media mutts declared Benghazi a “partisan witch hunt” and started digging into really important things, such as whether Republicans are evil or just stupid.

Then the dam broke. First, it was the sensational Benghazi hearing, where previously muzzled whistleblowers detailed the administration’s bungles before, during and after the terror attack. Throw in reports showing the infamous Susan Rice talking points were rewritten 11 times, going from fact to fiction, and Benghazi suddenly became the important story it should have been all along.

If that were all, it would have been enough. But the near-simultaneous revelations in recent days about the IRS playing political favorites, the massive phone grab at the AP news operation, and ObamaCare’s cost impact combined to demonstrate something I believed for a long time.

The Obama administration is both corrupt and incompetent. It is a double whammy that spells trouble for the nation, at home and abroad.

The corruption is not like that in Albany, where officials stuff their pockets with taxpayer cash. The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies.

Political allies — think Solyndra and unions — get special goodies, while those who oppose the regime’s agenda are demonized and singled out for scrutiny. The IRS targeting of groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names and those that advocate less spending smacks of the tactics of banana republic strongmen. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be proud.

But America is a nation of laws and not of men, of individual liberty and not of centralized power. And that national dynamic explains the firestorm of anger aimed at the White House. The headlines have sparked a wide and genuine outcry over Obama’s push against the nation’s roots.

He’s been doing it for four years, and mostly getting away with it, but suddenly, there is a critical mass of evidence against him. Maybe the AP case made the media realize they were not exempt from Obama’s overreach.

Whatever the reason, what we see so far is certainly not the end of it. You can bet other nasty, intrusive surprises are hiding in the vast deep of the expanding bureaucracy.

The ultimate danger is a lack of accountability. The idea that ordinary citizens hold the power has no meaning when the political class circles the wagons and the press looks the other way while the president accumulates more power and control.

That is where we have been, but hopefully, not where we are going. Their liberty DNA kicking in, more and more citizens, including some in the media, finally are expressing shock and anger at how big, clumsy and crooked our government is. They are welcome to the discovery, belated though it is.

For those of us not shocked by the inevitable, there is vindication but no satisfaction. Each example of Obama’s chickens coming home to roost just makes more obvious how much damage he’s already done.

The repair begins by throwing open the doors and windows of Washington. We’ll need a lot of sunshine to disinfect this rot.


Read more: Goodwin: Storm clouds brewing in Obama-Land over Benghazi, IRS, AP scandals - NYPOST.com http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#ixzz2TT6YvWEN


----------



## Edward Campbell

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> FINALLY:
> 
> http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#axzz2TNW9R0QX
> 
> New York Post
> 
> *O’s scandals take nation by storm*
> 
> By MICHAEL GOODWIN
> 
> Last Updated: 2:49 AM, May 15, 2013
> 
> 
> As a metaphor for big government, it is hard to top the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ phone records from The Associated Press.
> 
> Unless, of course, you think the best example is the Internal Revenue Service turning the screws on groups it viewed as conservative and, therefore, unworthy of fair treatment.
> 
> Or maybe the winner is the sneaky spreading of ObamaCare’s tentacles, with insurance companies now predicting the law will drive up the cost of individual premiums by as much as 400 percent.
> 
> There are no losers in this race to the bottom — except the American people. It is tempting to ask whether they’ve had enough Hope & Change, but the question is premature. With 44 months to go in the reign of the Great Mistake, the gods are not done punishing us.
> 
> Meanwhile, back at the White House, the growing cloud of trouble must have the bunker boys longing for the good old days. You know, those idyllic days of yesteryear, a k a early last week, when Benghazi was the only scandal on the horizon.
> 
> Everything was much simpler then. All the president had to do was cry “Politics!” and the Pavlovian media mutts declared Benghazi a “partisan witch hunt” and started digging into really important things, such as whether Republicans are evil or just stupid.
> 
> Then the dam broke. First, it was the sensational Benghazi hearing, where previously muzzled whistleblowers detailed the administration’s bungles before, during and after the terror attack. Throw in reports showing the infamous Susan Rice talking points were rewritten 11 times, going from fact to fiction, and Benghazi suddenly became the important story it should have been all along.
> 
> If that were all, it would have been enough. But the near-simultaneous revelations in recent days about the IRS playing political favorites, the massive phone grab at the AP news operation, and ObamaCare’s cost impact combined to demonstrate something I believed for a long time.
> 
> The Obama administration is both corrupt and incompetent. It is a double whammy that spells trouble for the nation, at home and abroad.
> 
> The corruption is not like that in Albany, where officials stuff their pockets with taxpayer cash. The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies.
> 
> Political allies — think Solyndra and unions — get special goodies, while those who oppose the regime’s agenda are demonized and singled out for scrutiny. The IRS targeting of groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names and those that advocate less spending smacks of the tactics of banana republic strongmen. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be proud.
> 
> But America is a nation of laws and not of men, of individual liberty and not of centralized power. And that national dynamic explains the firestorm of anger aimed at the White House. The headlines have sparked a wide and genuine outcry over Obama’s push against the nation’s roots.
> 
> He’s been doing it for four years, and mostly getting away with it, but suddenly, there is a critical mass of evidence against him. Maybe the AP case made the media realize they were not exempt from Obama’s overreach.
> 
> Whatever the reason, what we see so far is certainly not the end of it. You can bet other nasty, intrusive surprises are hiding in the vast deep of the expanding bureaucracy.
> 
> The ultimate danger is a lack of accountability. The idea that ordinary citizens hold the power has no meaning when the political class circles the wagons and the press looks the other way while the president accumulates more power and control.
> 
> That is where we have been, but hopefully, not where we are going. Their liberty DNA kicking in, more and more citizens, including some in the media, finally are expressing shock and anger at how big, clumsy and crooked our government is. They are welcome to the discovery, belated though it is.
> 
> For those of us not shocked by the inevitable, there is vindication but no satisfaction. Each example of Obama’s chickens coming home to roost just makes more obvious how much damage he’s already done.
> 
> The repair begins by throwing open the doors and windows of Washington. We’ll need a lot of sunshine to disinfect this rot.
> 
> 
> Read more: Goodwin: Storm clouds brewing in Obama-Land over Benghazi, IRS, AP scandals - NYPOST.com http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#ixzz2TT6YvWEN




I think that about half of Americans (and maybe fewer than half of Canadians) think that the Obama administration is a mess, but what does the "growing cloud of trouble" have to do with America's _grand strategy_? Do you think that the domestic political problems will paralyze the national security and foreign policy apparatus? Will the _Asian Pivot_ (which is a strategy, like it or not) fall apart because the IRS went after the Tea Party or the FBI looked up lists of reporters?

I'm happy to concede that the domestic political situation makes the kind of bipartisan strategic consensus that some observers think is required more and more difficult. But Truman managed to build a bipartisan consensus for _containment_ and the Marshal Plan despite a resoundingly hostile Republican establishment, one which actually overrode his vetoes on several important issues. Now, maybe Obama is no Truman and maybe Americans do not see the kind of strategic threat today that they saw in the late 1940s, but domestic political problems do not always prevent foreign policy cooperation.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I will have a go at Conrad Black's Flight of the Eagle as soon as it arrives (well not quite then, but it's in line for early summer reading); I am a great fan of his life of FDR, I think he saw trhough all the clutter and got down to the very focused _*grand* strategist_. I admire FDR because he set the real _grand strategy_ and them left e.g. the military _strategy_ to Stimson and Marshall (who shared some of that responsibility Knox, Forrestal and King in a very complex bit of inside the beltway politics that saw Stimson and Marshall having overall control so long as they left the entire Pacific war (less the Manhattan project) to Knox, Forrestal and King).

In any event, Conrad Black holds forth on why, in his opinion, America's _grand strategic_ vision is clouded in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/why-conrad-black-thinks-the-united-states-is-in-decline/article12005862/#dashboard/alerts


> Why Conrad Black thinks the United States is in decline
> 
> MARGARET WENTE
> The Globe and Mail
> 
> Published Friday, May. 17 2013
> 
> For someone who vowed to keep a low profile now that he is back in Canada, Conrad Black has been extremely visible.
> 
> Although he is still dealing with the messy legal aftermath of the crash of his newspaper empire, he is a popular fixture on Toronto’s social circuit, continues to write a weekly newspaper column and is active in various business ventures (“only non-public companies,” he stresses). He is also set to launch a weekly talk show on Vision TV this summer (his old friend Moses Znaimer talked him into it, he says).
> 
> What Mr. Black most likes to talk about, though, is serious history.
> 
> A close student of grand strategists and strategy (his 2003 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was widely praised), he is about to release a new book next week: Flight of the Eagle, he says, is meant to correct a common misconception that the United States stumbled into greatness; instead, America’s destiny was shaped in large part by a series of exceptional leaders.
> 
> *You write about America. And you’ve often held it up as a country that Canada ought to emulate.*
> 
> I used to.
> 
> *Yes, that seems to have changed quite dramatically. You describe the U.S. now, not without affection, as vulgar, banal, slovenly and complacent.*
> 
> There are those aspects to it, yes.
> 
> I certainly don’t take any pleasure in what I would say is the comparative decline of the U.S. – or at least the trajectory of that country – but it does have an advantage for Canadians. I detest the spirit of envy
> and I never gloat over anyone’s difficulties (although I cannot say that I’ve always myself been received in that manner), but Canadians should at least now be cured of the subconscious feeling that we are, in fact,
> inferior to Americans.
> 
> It hasn’t always been so – I think [Ronald] Reagan ran a better administration than [Pierre] Trudeau did – but this is a better-governed country than the U.S. now and it has been for some time.
> 
> *Your book seems to suggest the high-water mark for the U.S. – for American power and prestige in the world – was 1989.*
> 
> In fairness, its vocation for greatness had been realized before. The U.S. dealt with a succession of challenges very effectively: the prevention of a German victory in the First World War, the containment strategy
> against the Soviet Union, even Vietnam – and I don’t make light of it, that war was a serious mistake – led to a complete victory. But then it wasn’t clear what the goal was, so George Bush Sr. talked about a new
> order in the world. But what did it mean? It’s like “a thousand points of light.” You could never say what it actually meant. I guess countries, like people, respond better to a challenge than they do when there
> isn’t one.
> 
> *America has also undermined itself in terrible ways.*
> 
> Ah, but that, in a way, is the development of the challenge – the challenge within. There are lots of things inside the U.S. that are now a real challenge to that society: The education system isn’t competitive,
> the whole wealth distribution/welfare system, broadly stated, is responsible for wasting staggering and horrifying quantities of human resources. The justice system is simply an outrage. The problem of corruption
> in government and in public life generally, the excesses of the pecuniary society…
> 
> *So what happened to American leadership after the people you mention in your book – the Madisons and the Washingtons?*
> 
> This is a terribly serious question. You’re younger than I am, but you remember that horrible year of 1968 when there were assassinations and riots everywhere, 550,000 draftees in Vietnam, undeclared war,
> no one knew what they were doing and 200 to 400 young men were coming back dead every week. But at one time or another Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
> and Nelson Rockefeller were all running for president – and they were all qualified to be president, they were all very substantial people. In this last election, the best Republicans didn’t run. [Barack] Obama was
> a vulnerable candidate…
> 
> *He should have lost.*
> 
> He was actually not a bad president. He wasn’t a good political leader, but he wasn’t a bad president. Still, he didn’t lose. The strongest candidates didn’t run. At the time, I remember writing that this was a very
> worrisome signal of how things were; normally it’s such a great office and Americans are such a patriotic people and you’re automatically going to be a famous person in history if you’re the president. And yet the
> candidates who could have won didn’t run.
> 
> *You said something pretty controversial about President Obama. You said the main reason he was elected in 2008 was “white guilt.”*
> 
> That was the campaign he ran. I didn’t say it critically of him, I thought it was a genius campaign.
> 
> It wasn’t explicit, but not subliminal either. The message was: You Americans – non-black Americans or white Americans – the great majority of you are decent, fair-minded people and you are naturally troubled
> by the aspect of our country’s history that consists of, in Mr. Lincoln’s phrase, “the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil,” followed by 100 years of segregation. Now you can be rid of that. As an added bonus,
> you will never have to listen to charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton again. The African-American community will have a respectable leader that doesn’t grate on your nerves when you hear him speak –
> and all you have to do is vote for me.
> 
> Now, he never quite said that, but if you had interviewed the average white Obama voter and said, “Do you feel that this would be the consequence of voting for him?” they all would have said yes.
> 
> *So vote for me and you can feel good about yourself…*
> 
> I’d put it more respectfully than that: Vote for me and we can turn the page on that terribly difficult time. And he’s right.
> 
> *What about Canada: Are you able to stay?*
> 
> My temporary permit has been renewed.
> 
> *Do you have to get it renewed year by year?*
> 
> Yes, at some time I would be eligible to apply to make it permanent. One step at a time.
> 
> *At this point, do you think you’re a historian or a businessman first?*
> 
> Well, because of the horrible onslaught I had to endure for most of the last 10 years, I sort of cranked up my writing career. It was something I could do while I was trying to conduct my defence. And of course
> for three years I was a guest of the great American people and you can’t run a business from prison. Some people did, but I couldn’t.
> 
> But now I am focused on a commercial relaunch – not large public companies and not in a way that’s controversial, but completely under the radar, which is how I started. I have some aptitude for that.
> 
> *Do you ever wish you’d done history from the start and forgotten about business?*
> 
> I live quite well and I couldn’t live the way I do on what you earn as a writer, even if I was a much more successful writer. It’s not a terrific career in income terms, as you know.
> 
> *What do you think is the most indispensable history book on America, apart from your own?*
> 
> Can’t I have one per century?
> 
> *All right, one per century.*
> 
> I would say Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life. I suppose Carl Sandburg’s life of Lincoln, and this is a terribly self-serving thing to say, but holding one hand over my eyes and repenting as I very tentatively
> put it forward, my life of FDR.




I disagree with Conrad Black that America's zenith was 1989; I think it was about 1950, for the same reasons that I maintain that Britain's peak was around 1830, not 70 years later.

I think _grand strategy_ fell out of favour with John F Kennedy who, it appears to me, was more fascinated with the exercise of power than with the management of it, and I don't think anyone - maybe Richard Nixon is the exception - really wanted to bring it back to the centre of the presidency.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx



> National Post - 25 May 13  Rex Murphy
> 
> *The IRS vs. American Liberty *
> 
> Our long national Senatorial nightmare is far from over. Even as the red Chamber’s expenses scandal receives severe competition from Toronto’s bizarre City Hall drug farce, there is promise of new Ottawa inquiries. The Senate scandal’s epicenter, Mike Duffy, is proving to be more famous off-camera than he was on.
> Douglas Shulman
> 
> It’s all both sad and ridiculous. Sad, because — on an ideal formulation — the Senate is where we should send (and in some cases have sent) those Canadians we are most proud of, those who are an embodiment of Canadiana. Indeed, some good and great people have been and are Senators. Those folks, especially, must be ashamed to see the Senate’s reputation being dragged around like this.
> 
> But some context is necessary: For Canadians, our senatorial melodrama has partly obscured a more ominous series of scandals currently unfolding south of the border, threatening the reputation and agenda of Barack Obama in his second term. The u.S. scandals are, in my judgment, far more worrisome — they go to the very heart of democratic politics — than ours.
> 
> There are a trinity of them. The first two, to cite the shorthand, are (1) the Benghazi coverup; and (2) the Justice department’s spying on the press, including the seizure of phone records and emails from Associated Press and Fox News reporters.
> 
> But it is the third scandal that is by far the most devastating: the discovery that the Internal revenue Service — the fearsome, bullying, virtually unchallengable IRS — has been deliberately intruding into the political process: picking which groups to favour, and which to harass and distress, by targeting groups self-identified as “Tea Party” or “patriot.”
> 
> There is not yet evidence that such actions were performed at the order of elected officials. But even without that connection, the idea that the U.S. tax-collecting agency, with all its powers and investigative reach, has turned “political,” is horrifying. It has shocked even democrats.
> 
> In hundreds of cases — more than 500 according to one report — the IRS applied additional scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. And in doing so, the IRS demanded all sorts of private information from the applicants, effectively intimidating and harassing them on the basis of their political beliefs.
> 
> This is the very nullification of the American idea: It is the long arm of the tax authority targeting the citizenry. All this in a country founded on a tax revolt.
> 
> This week, Congress offered the edifying spectacle of a high IRS official in charge of these filings appearing before its Finance Committee — in one breath sourly proclaiming her innocence, and in another taking the Fifth. Let us put it this way: When a high IRS official pleads the Fifth amendment before Congress, there is something very rotten in the state.
> 
> Initially, there were assurances that all was well, then that it was merely a rogue agent or two in a single city (Cincinnati). It’s beyond that now. It has ramified to the point where officials in the White House are saying that they knew of the IRS scandal but did not tell (which itself is very telling) the President.
> 
> Much like our Senate story, no one is stepping up and either telling all or taking responsibility.
> 
> When he appeared before Congress, former Commissioner of the IRS Douglas Shulman was as sleek as a seal in his dives and evasions. despite a proven 118 visits to the White House (including one for the “Easter egg hunt” — perhaps “find the republican”) he blandly proclaims that he never discussed the issue with “anyone” in that bastion of power.
> 
> Canada’s scandals are bad, but the American ones are frightening. What the IRS has done is twist the system into a partisan persecutory instrument of the party in power.
> 
> The IRS is mighty: When federal and state police could not nail Al Capone, remember, they went to the IRS — who did get him. In the land of the free, it’s terrible to imagine the same tactics being used on political activists.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Commissioner of the IRS Douglas Shulman was as sleek as a seal in his dives and evasions, despite a proven 118 visits to the White House".
> 
> More visits than the Secretary of Defence, the head of the CIA and FBI combined.
Click to expand...


----------



## Jed

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
> 
> More visits than the Secretary of Defence, the head of the CIA and FBI combined.



At last, some MSM showing some perspective.


----------



## cupper

Jed said:
			
		

> At last, some MSM showing some perspective.



No. One Canadian commentator making observations from what he has seen from other media sources.

Let's not make more of Rex Murphy than he really is.


----------



## Edward Campbell

The appointment of Susan Rice as US National Security Advisor might help explain US foreign policy to the world according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Washington Post_:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-susan-rice-a-provocateur-in-the-west-wing/2013/06/05/5b7f0e10-ce22-11e2-8f6b-67f40e176f03_story.html


> Susan Rice, a provocateur in the West Wing
> 
> By David Ignatius
> 
> Published: June 5
> 
> Think of Susan Rice as the president’s assertive kid sister. Where he’s cool and deferential, she’s boisterous and sometimes abrasive. Where he avoids public confrontation, she often relishes it. They have different styles, but make no mistake: What Rice says out loud is often what Obama is thinking privately.
> 
> In appointing Rice to become national security adviser in place of Tom Donilon, Obama is trading a reliable gray sedan for a flashier but more temperamental sports car. He’s exchanging a private political dealmaker for a public provocateur. He’s replacing a man who dislikes taking risks, and has generally been good at avoiding them, with one of the more adventurous people in government.
> 
> And then there’s Benghazi: Obama is swapping a man who generally avoided the Sunday talk shows for someone who nearly committed career suicide for delivering the famous talking points (for which she was otherwise blameless). Enough, already, about Benghazi.
> 
> For an Obama administration that is struggling to find its voice in the second term, Rice’s elevation should be helpful. She will give the White House a compelling new focal point on foreign policy. People may not always agree with her, but they’ll know what she thinks. And perhaps she will galvanize sharper policy thinking from Obama himself, especially on Syria.
> 
> But the Rice nomination brings some obvious risks: She is not a quiet inside player in the tradition of Brent Scowcroft, who was Donilon’s role model as national security adviser. She’s more in the tradition of extroverted policy intellectuals such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, who used the media and other channels to shape events.
> 
> It will be interesting to see how Rice shares the foreign-policy platform with Secretary of State John Kerry. White House officials say that Kerry will own the diplomatic space and that there shouldn’t be much overlap. But this pairing of ambitious policymakers conjures memories of past feuds between Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers, or Brze­zin­ski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
> 
> Obama’s personal relationship with Rice will allow her to speak with special authority when she’s dealing with foreign leaders. But it could undercut Kerry, who is otherwise off to a strong start. The White House doesn’t envision Rice as a secret emissary, a la Kissinger. But foreign leaders may try to use her as a back channel anyway.
> 
> Rice will have trouble matching Donilon’s success as a process manager. Critics argue that he has been overly organized and top-down, but he has run a smooth interagency process: Paperwork is delivered on time to the Oval Office; decisions are made and implemented (or fuzzed because the president wants it that way). Donilon has been a firm and sometimes controlling presence, and he’s known as a hard taskmaster. But he gets the job done, in a way that Cabinet officials generally feel is fair. This won’t be easy for Rice to replicate.
> 
> “Tom is not given enough credit for running the process. He did that masterfully,” says Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense who sometimes butted heads with Donilon.
> 
> Rice’s biggest challenge is to help Obama project a more strategic view of foreign policy. Donilon took on the big issue of rebalancing U.S. diplomatic and military power toward Asia — culminating in this weekend’s summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But beyond the pivot to Asia, policymaking during the Donilon years sometimes seemed reactive and event-driven — closer to crisis management than systematic strategy. Obama said Wednesday that Donilon combined the strategic and tactical, but the world saw more of the latter.
> 
> Obama has some visionary ideas about the United States’ role in a changing world. They’re articulated in his speeches, penned by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, but there’s often a lack of follow-through. That’s the first thing journalists often hear from foreign leaders: Where is your president on big issues? Why don’t we hear more from him? Perhaps Rice can help the White House send clearer policy messages to a world that is drifting without active and engaged U.S. leadership.
> 
> Rice has star power. She is smart, funny, profane and passionate. She can also be her own worst enemy — using sharp words or elbows when a softer touch would work better. In that sense, she and Obama are well-matched: The cool and cautious chief executive may benefit from a more hot-tempered national security adviser, and vice versa.




I am a (tepid) admirer of Ambassador Rice; I agree with David Ignatius that she is "smart, funny, profane and passionate," - all good attributes in a _grand strategist_. But: President Obama, like his predecessors, Bush (43), Clinton and Bush (41), doesn't like grand strategy ~ he's a _dilettante_, unlike, say, Nixon, and he's a good example of Isaiah Berlin's _fox_ mentality, in contrast to, say, Ronald Reagan's _hedgehog_ like focus on defeating the "evil empire." I think/hope she can explain American strategy, such as it is, to friends and foes alike; I doubt she can do much to make _grand strategy_ matter, even if she is so inclined.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Veteran Anglo-American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave gives a reasoned review of Richard Haass' new book _Foreign Policy Begins at Home_ in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _United Press International_:
> 
> http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2013/05/03/Commentary-Beyond-the-last-war/UPI-90611367580711/
> 
> I haven't gotten to "Foreign Policy Begins at Home," yet - it's on the Spring reading list - but if what Arnaud de Borchgrave says is correct then I suspect I shall agree with Richard Haass prescriptions.
> 
> That America's post World War II strategic vision has been cloudy, to be charitable, is beyond question but America's strategic _capacity_ is now in question, too.
> 
> If we want American strategic leadership - and I think we do - then we must hope for a new generation of leaders very, very unlike pretty much everyone from John F. Kennedy through to Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, in my opinion, have been second rate. America does need to restore is social and economic base before it can assert itself as a global leader. The social base is still ruptured by the silly, destructive culture wars for which *both* the (misnamed) liberals and conservatives are equally to blame. The economic base has been destroyed by two generations of misguided social engineers. the US military is, in my opinion, poorly led - and has been ever since about 1960, badly managed, and aimless. US strategy ... well,the lack of one is what this thread is all about.




I have finished Richard Haass' _"Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order"_ and I am in broad agreement with Arnaud de Borchgrave (that shouldn't surprise anyone) but not everyone is. here is a well thought out but quite contrary opinion which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Wall Street Journal_:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323550604578410432065425550.html


> A Noble Responsibility
> *At a time when jihadists have proven capable of conquering Mali, a country roughly the size of Texas, the U.S. can't afford to turn inward.*
> 
> By SOHRAB AHMARI
> 
> May 6, 2013
> 
> In 1944, amid the carnage of World War II, the German-American banker James Warburg published a book titled "Foreign Policy Begins at Home." In it, he hailed "Anglo-American-Soviet solidarity" and expressed hope that it would achieve a "durable peace" at war's end. He railed against America's "runaway capitalism" and predicted that, unless "economic democracy" was established, "some form of fascist dictatorship" would soon arise in the U.S. The book was squarely in the tradition of influential men—Warburg was FDR's personal financial adviser—pondering the geopolitical landscape as it is reflected in the editorial columns of the day and offering grand prescriptions for the betterment of the nation.
> 
> Richard Haass's "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order" borrows more than its title from Warburg's tract. Mr. Haass's basic claim is that the U.S. overcommitted itself abroad in the years following 9/11 and neglected the "domestic foundations of its power." If this sounds like a more sophisticated version of one of President Obama's campaign slogans—"America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home!"—that's because it is. The author says the slogan could serve as a "bumper sticker" for his own foreign-policy doctrine.
> 
> Mr. Haass, who serves as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, knows that the U.S.'s combination of military supremacy and decent values makes our leadership essential to global order. But he says that to maintain primacy, America must downsize its international footprint and attend to its spiraling debt crisis, broken education system, crumbling infrastructure and other domestic concerns. He calls this program a doctrine of "Restoration." In the first half of the book, Mr. Haass sketches the state of the world in broad brush strokes, and in the second half he offers more specific recommendations.
> 
> It's hard to argue with his insistence that, without economic and cultural vitality at home, the U.S. won't be able to defend its interests or project its values abroad—not for long anyway. Mr. Haass correctly warns, "American profligacy at home threatens American power and security." Many of his suggestions for reversing course domestically are sensible (if also unoriginal): solving the entitlements crisis through a combination of raising the retirement age and means testing; attracting jobs and investment by slashing the country's corporate tax rate; enhancing energy independence by building new nuclear power plants. When he steps away from conventional wisdom—calling for the abolishment of the Electoral College to "strengthen the center" or having unelected expert commissions draw up congressional districts—he tends toward the unrealistic and unconstitutional rather than the innovative.
> 
> It's the national-security implications of his doctrine, though, that are the most troubling. The author says the U.S. should "increase the resources devoted to internal as opposed to international challenges"; shift away from the Middle East toward East Asia, "the part of the world most likely to influence the course of this century"; and supplant military power with "economic and diplomatic tools."
> 
> The doctrine's resemblances to Mr. Obama's foreign policy—with its "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region and emphasis on "smart power"—are striking. Its appeal to war-weary Americans is obvious. Yet Mr. Haass puts far too much stock in the fashionable certainties of the think-tank and journalistic echo chamber, where it's now an article of faith that regime change in Iraq and the broader war on terror were irredeemable catastrophes. Indeed, the pages where Mr. Haass lays out the global state of play add up to a compendium of foreign-policy clichés.
> 
> "History," he proclaims early on, "has returned if in fact it ever departed." And in case you hadn't heard, "globalization is a defining feature of this era, differentiating it from previous ones." Oh, and "China's rise is one of the defining features of this era," too. Welcome to the Arab "Winter," the "Brave New World," the "post-European world," the "nonpolar world," where "individuals and groups are empowered as never before" and where "all politics is local."
> 
> Some of these platitudes contain kernels of truth. But the author's casual reliance upon them is an indication of lazy thinking. If "the era of peacemaking between leaders is over," as Mr. Haass flatly declares, then why must "national leaders . . . be able and willing to take political risks and compromise" to achieve peace, as he says three sentences later? And if "the paramount feature of the twenty-first century is nonpolarity," as he says, then why is "the question for today . . . whether the world is becoming bipolar"?
> 
> The author also never makes it clear why he believes defense cuts are necessary for the economic health of the country. As he repeatedly concedes, defense spending isn't a structural cause of our ballooning national debt (Social Security and Medicare are the real causes). Nor does he consider the contributions that assertive foreign and defense policies have made to U.S. economic growth and technological development in the decades since James Warburg thought he saw the future.
> 
> Mr. Haass's doctrine is premised on the notion that the U.S. is currently experiencing a "strategic respite." The global order today, he thinks, is "relatively forgiving; that is, presenting no existential threat," and therefore the U.S. can afford to turn inward. At a time when North Korea's psychopathic rulers issue daily threats of nuclear war against the U.S.—and jihadists have proven capable of conquering Mali, a country roughly the size of Texas, within a matter of days—such confidence may be seriously misplaced. Yet even granting that the U.S. is benefiting from a "respite," a problem remains that the author never pauses to consider: Isn't it possible that the relatively peaceful state of many regions of the world is a product of precisely the muscular policies and hegemonic posture Mr. Haass would do away with?
> 
> History, after all, is full of great powers forgetting that vigilance is the price for peace of mind; the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001, was one such nation.
> 
> _Mr. Ahmari is an assistant books editor at the Journal._




While I agree with some of Mr. Ahmari's criticism, especially of some of Mr. Haass' prescriptions, I think that "the U.S. should _"increase the resources devoted to internal as opposed to international challenges"; shift away from the Middle East toward East Asia, "the part of the world most likely to influence the course of this century"; and supplant military power with "economic and diplomatic tools."_" I believe the US is challenged, internally, by a horrid series of culture wars, for which I blame the Democratic and Republican "bases" equally and by rising tide of domestic political violence ~ some of it inspired by e.g. _al Qaeda_ and some inspired by _nativist_ tendencies which have been part of American culture from 200 years.

I believe that the facts are:

     1. America's _capacity_ to lead the West has been badly damaged by America, itself;

     2. There is no other suitable leader for the West;

     3. China, even though constrained by India, is rising rapidly and confidently to the role of leader of the East; and

     4. The _Islamic Crescent_ IS a strategic problem but it is one which we can, and should, watch, with interest, while it explodes dues to its own internal contradictions.

Thus, I believe Richard Haass prescriptions for America are helpful.


----------



## a_majoor

Looking at it from a different angle, I see one of the key reasons for the difficulty in defining, articulating and asserting American power and the "culture wars" that are paralyzing American political culture (and ours too, make no mistake) is because we are entering a period of transition. Russel Walter Mead has written extensively about it in Via Media on the collapse of the "Blue Model", and many other writers have taken aim at various aspects of the end of the Progressive model as well.

Since the structures and political systems that have worked since roughly the 1930's are now failing due to financial, political and (i9n some cases) moral bankruptcy and the sources of power, economic growth and even demographic footprint have changed radically, new structures need to be created and implemented in order to carry on the business of governance. Since no one knows which models will be successful, we have a situation where the old guard is fanatically fighting to save their vested interests in the existing systems, while various movements are rising around different organizational, political and economic models.

In terms of "Grand Strategy" this also leads to the conclusion that the defining and exercise of "Grand Strategy" may also change, depending on the dominant political, economic and social model that emerges. 

I still think George Freidman's model is a good starting point; all "Grand Strategies" need to begin with the security and preservation of the Homeland, and most "Grand Strategies" then fall out of the specific requirements based on the unique geographical and geopolitical situation the Homeland is embedded in. Robert Kaplan's book "Revenge of Geography" goes into this point in some detail.

If you want a prediction from me; the American Grand Strategy will begin with a realignment and reconstruction of institutions "at home" in response to mounting fiscal pressures, followed by a true pivot from "East-West" to "North-South" as Mexico becomes economically more important, demographically ascendant and exerts more and more influence on her former territories in the American Southwest.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Looking at it from a different angle, I see one of the key reasons for the difficulty in defining, articulating and asserting American power and the "culture wars" that are paralyzing American political culture (and ours too, make no mistake) is because we are entering a period of transition. Russel Walter Mead has written extensively about it in Via Media on the collapse of the "Blue Model", and many other writers have taken aim at various aspects of the end of the Progressive model as well.
> 
> Since the structures and political systems that have worked since roughly the 1930's are now failing due to financial, political and (i9n some cases) moral bankruptcy and the sources of power, economic growth and even demographic footprint have changed radically, new structures need to be created and implemented in order to carry on the business of governance. Since no one knows which models will be successful, we have a situation where the old guard is fanatically fighting to save their vested interests in the existing systems, while various movements are rising around different organizational, political and economic models.
> 
> In terms of "Grand Strategy" this also leads to the conclusion that the defining and exercise of "Grand Strategy" may also change, depending on the dominant political, economic and social model that emerges.
> 
> I still think George Freidman's model is a good starting point; all "Grand Strategies" need to begin with the security and preservation of the Homeland, and most "Grand Strategies" then fall out of the specific requirements based on the unique geographical and geopolitical situation the Homeland is embedded in. Robert Kaplan's book "Revenge of Geography" goes into this point in some detail.
> 
> If you want a prediction from me; the American Grand Strategy will begin with a realignment and reconstruction of institutions "at home" in response to mounting fiscal pressures, followed by a true pivot from "East-West" to "North-South" as Mexico becomes economically more important, demographically ascendant and exerts more and more influence on her former territories in the American Southwest.




That's a good analysis, Thucydides, and Richard Haass would agree with most of it: _reconstruction_, as Bank of Canada Governor Poloz puts it, is ongoing but the Americans are behind us; issues (and countries) that actually threaten America matter - and Mexico does, indeed, fall into that category; but that doesn't address how America deals with China and India and Russia and Iran and the Arabs, and, and, and ... and a real _grand strategy_ has to provide a framework for that, too.


----------



## a_majoor

Not to say that a US pivot "North-South" would leave the rest of the world out in the cold, but I suspect that the Americans need to focus a lot more on issues closer to home than they are today.

Once again, I look to George Freidman and Robert Kaplan as perhaps the best people to outline the two aspects of the problem:

George Freidman's "The Next 100 years" outlines some of the demographic and political changes that might happen (based around his analysis of what American "Grand Strategy" is) while Kaplan outlines the various geopolitical factors that define and constrain the various nation states and regional actors in the world.

This seems to be a reversion to "'The Geographical Pivot of History"  by Halford Mackinder


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Not to say that a US pivot "North-South" would leave the rest of the world out in the cold, but I suspect that the Americans need to focus a lot more on issues closer to home than they are today.
> 
> Once again, I look to George Freidman and Robert Kaplan as perhaps the best people to outline the two aspects of the problem:
> 
> George Freidman's "The Next 100 years" outlines some of the demographic and political changes that might happen (based around his analysis of what American "Grand Strategy" is) while Kaplan outlines the various geopolitical factors that define and constrain the various nation states and regional actors in the world.
> 
> This seems to be a reversion to "'The Geographical Pivot of History"  by Halford Mackinder




I think Robert Kaplan makes it pretty clear that he doesn't accept the popularly perceived whole of Mackinder's theory; in fact he suggests that Mackinder might not have believed it, either - just posited it as one possible "outcome." There is no doubt that geography and demographics do matter: there is no solution to the first, but science - everything from the capacity, range and speed of vessels (sea, land, air and space) to how to detect and exploit e.g. oil and minerals - offers ways to mitigate geography's effects, while history and observation tell us that all one needs to do to change population data is raise the standard of living and simple economics tells us how to do that.


----------



## Edward Campbell

And here is another view on Richard Haass' prescription of "America heal thyself," in an article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Atlantic Council's _New Atlanticist_ blog:

http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/c-castration?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+new_atlanticist+%28New+Atlanticist%29


> C-Castration
> 
> Julian Lindley–French
> 
> June 21, 2013
> 
> Winston Churchill once famously said, “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, but only after they have exhausted all the other possibilities”.  Sadly, having just arrived in Washington I am not so sure. Dear old Johnny Yank seems to have invented an entirely new form of non-government called ’C-Castration’, or something such.  Now, I thought we British had a particular talent for electing the politically incompetent and willfully  impotent but C-Castration is incompetence bigger and better than anything we have thought up for a while. Whatever happened to government of the people, for the people and by the people?  So, for those of you non-Yanks out there let me try and explain C-Castration.
> It seems to involve a lot of American politicians of all persuasions who know they have to make budget cuts (because technically the US is broke) but who do not want to be actually caught in the Act. They are like those ‘perps’ beloved of American cop shows such as CSI who are compelled to return to the scene of their crimes and yet deny any involvement.
> The scene of the crime is Congress, hence C-Castration, which on 1 March applied a particularly sharp knife to a particularly sensitive part of the American body politic.  Known as the Budget Castration Act funding was automatically cut to most of the bits of government that made America virile.  However, as neither Democrats nor Republicans could agree just what parts of government are virile it was NOT decided to cut all of it.  Still with me?
> 
> So, Congress created a mechanism whereby cuts would happen but for which they would not be responsible.  George Washington must be spinning in his grave.  No wonder we British had to kick Johnny Yank out of the Empire for being silly.  Old George might now understand why in 1812 we had to burn down the White House and the Capitol (and to be honest much of the rest of Washington but the lads got a bit carried away – you know the British squaddy - er, sorry).
> 
> However, that is not the funny bit.  Apparently Congress having NOT decided to cut federal spending by $85.4bn in fiscal year 2013 and will continue to NOT decide to cut federal spending by about the same amount until 2021.  However, because of the Harry Potter politics here in Hogwarts, sorry Washington, overall federal outlays will actually INCREASE over the same period by some $238.6bn.  Cutting budgets and increasing expenditure?  It is a 'cunning plan' as Baldrick would say.  George ‘Blackadder’ Osborne, the British Finance Minister, will be over here in a shot when he gets wind of this as it is just the sort of financial alchemy he loves.
> 
> Anyway, I digress.  The best bit is that the castration is to be shared ‘equally’ between ‘defense’ (why can’t the Yanks spell) and ‘non-defense’.  In other words for every dollar that Congress has NOT decided to cut in defence it will NOT decide to cut another dollar across the rest of government.
> 
> This also means President Barack Obama gets to talk a lot about shared values and good ideas as he has been doing this week at British taxpayer's expense at the G-Complete Waste of Time and Money. However, because no-one in Congress has NOT cut the federal budget he cannot actually do anything because the amount of US taxpayer’s money ‘invested’ (good one that) in government is  actually going up.   Got it?  Good, because it makes no sense to me.
> 
> In fact sequestration is no joke precisely because Washington is bringing America - the most inspirational of political adventures into very deep disrepute.  Sadly, the impact on American leadership is becoming all too apparent.  As America untangles itself from Afghanistan and the fog of Afghan dust clears Washington is beginning to realise the sheer scale and complexity of the challenges this country faces – both at home and abroad.  One can argue about whether facing those challenges demands big or small government. However, at this tipping point in international affairs, in which the world could either go east or west Washington has gone AWOL.
> 
> Which brings me to the real tragedy of sequestration.  Americans are constantly and rightly complaining to me about the inability of Europeans to think and act strategically.  And yet what is happening in this town is the very antithesis of responsible strategy or politics. Indeed, it is little politics at its very worst.
> 
> At the end of the day the US cannot expect to lead the rest of us abroad when its politicians abrogate leadership and responsibility at home simply to score self-defeating, utterly narrow and strategically pointless own goals (soccer).
> 
> Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, “Though much is taken much abides, and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved heaven and earth; that which we are we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
> 
> The world is changing dangerously and rapidly and we need you America…but not like this.
> 
> _Julian Lindley-French is a member of the Atlantic Council's Strategic Advisory Group. This essay first appeared on his personal blog, Lindley-French's Blog Blast._


_


So, it's the "same old same old:" we, the US led West need US leadership but the US is losing the capacity to lead because it has no grand strategic vision and even if it did it hasn't the means to execute it. But, see the Star Spangled Recovery thread - despite yesterday's panic on Wall and bay Streets, Ben Bernanke is right: the American economy is recovering. Not even an institution as deeply flawed as the US Government (Executive and Legislatures) can hold America back.
_


----------



## Edward Campbell

More from the same source ~ the _Atlantic Council ~ this time directly on the point of *why* America doesn't have, and likely will not have until post 2016, a grand strategy in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the New Atlanticist:

http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/nostalgia-not-strategy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+new_atlanticist+%28New+Atlanticist%29



Nostalgia Is Not Strategy

Robert A. Manning

June 21, 2013

President Obama’s Berlin speech and trip to Europe came at a historical inflection point: The European Union (EU) has been in recession and financial crisis for more than four years. Youth unemployment is a staggering 25 percent. The very idea of Europe is being called into question. Moreover, NATO’s purpose leaves many scratching their heads, and transatlantic relations are floundering.

It is clearly a time for inspirational leadership. One might have hoped for a Berlin speech that encouraged a European Germany to take EU economic and political integration to a new level. The president might have called for bold German leadership. He might have used the occasion to trumpet the strategic virtues of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a potential game changer that could rejuvenate transatlantic ties, bolstering the leverage of half the world’s economy in shaping the international system of the twenty-first century, not to mention breathing new life in a sagging world trade regime.

But no. Instead, we got a nostalgic walk through memory lane, a playing to the gallery with yet another Cold War victory lap. Obama dusted off Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” and Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” line. Of course, it was Obama at his poetic best, recounting the “yearnings for peace that burns in the human heart,” and Berlin as the “city of hope.”

But it was also a transparent quest for a legacy. Five years after his “zero nukes” Prague speech, the global nuclear reality has become, if anything, more dangerous and complex: it is going in the opposite direction of nuclear zero. So Obama pulled a U.S.-Russian arms-control proposal out of his hat: reductions down to one thousand warheads each.

To give the administration its due, further undoing the legacy of the Cold War is not a bad thing. But whether the United States and Russia have 1300 or 1000 nukes each makes only a marginal difference in a brave new world where problems like Pakistani battlefield nukes, the spectre of North Korean nuclear entrepreneurship, and Iranian proliferation are the contemporary nuclear nightmares.

Indeed, how much does it matter if Russia has 1300 or 1000 nukes, anymore than it matters that France has 300? The main purpose of nuclear weapons (since we can’t uninvent them) is to deter their use by others. Not discounting what a Soprano-state Russian president Vladimir Putin runs, it still strains the imagination to conceive a scenario of major conflict with Russia, let alone one that would escalate to nuclear war.

The bipolar world of a U.S.-Soviet balance of terror is thankfully history. The biggest threat is that of nuclear security, the risk that terrorists obtain a loose or stolen nuclear weapon or nuclear material. To his credit, Obama has made nuclear security one of his signature issues.

*What Legacy?*

But if you were a second-term president contemplating the fullness of your legacy, would reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear arms (that have already been reduced 80 percent from Cold War levels) by a few hundred more be more significant than the future of Europe? The president seems to have forgotten that there is potential a role for the United States in facilitating a more unified Europe, whole and free. This includes a U.S.-EU economic pact that rejuvenates the relationship, creates a transatlantic bond that provides strategic leverage by enhancing Western power to shape the future of the global trade regime and, more broadly, the rules for an international system transforming in a world of diffusing power. Would this not be be a more important legacy? How about reassuring our European allies that his “pivot” to Asia is not coming at their expense?

Why Obama chose nostalgia over using his Berlin speech and Europe visit to stump for meeting the serious challenges facing both Europe and the transatlantic relationship is something that only he can truly answer. But one wonders where the sense of strategy lies in this White House. Berlin was the performance of a politician more than a statesman.

Yet Obama is only six months into his second term. What sort of world will he leave his successor in 2017? It is difficult to see any denouement in a Middle East transformation that is likely to continue unfolding over the course of a generation. In the meantime, the Syrian conflict appears to be threatening to unravel the post-Ottoman state system in the region. A deepening Sunni-Shia sectarian proxy war spilling over its borders appears more likely than a Geneva-negotiated peaceful transition. If you can discern a U.S. Middle East strategy, I would love to hear it.

In Asia, China’s assertive rise has thrown all the balls in the air. Obama’s recent summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping could open a new chapter in a troubled relationship and help reassure the region. But there were few signs in the summit’s aftermath that a new path in Sino-American relations is being taken.

To be fair, in a world where global power is ever more diffuse, where emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and Turkey have their own agendas, there is a dearth of opportunities for bold foreign achievements. This is why efforts to solve global problems, from climate change to a new global trade round, have foundered. Managing this century’s global disorder, where it is easy to block things and very difficult to build enough consensus to achieve success, is just not fun.

All this makes Obama’s behavior in Europe still more puzzling. One would have thought that in this political universe, where achieving U.S. desired outcomes is ever more difficult, that an all-out effort to bolstering what remains a foundation of U.S. foreign policy, the transatlantic relationship would be job one. What better legacy? And how better to position the United States, and indeed the West, to grapple with the strategic challenges of this generation?

Given Europe’s morass, a little U.S. leadership could go a long way. The headline of new arms control talks may have merit. But in terms of strategic priorities, it leaves something to be desired. At the end of the day, I fear we are looking at a serious missed opportunity.

Robert A. Manning is a senior fellow of the Brent Scowcroft Center for International Security at the Atlantic Council and its Strategic Foresight Initiative. He served as a senior counselor to the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs from 2001 to 2004 and as a member of the U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Staff from 2004 to 2008.

Click to expand...



It is, in the 21st century, in America, anyway, "all politics, all the time." The 2016 presidential election campaign began during the 2013 inauguration cermenoies - that was as much a campaign speech as an address to the whole nation. It was a plea for Democrats in 2014 and 2016. America and the West need and deserve better.


_


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have finished Richard Haass' _"Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order"_ and I am in broad agreement with Arnaud de Borchgrave (that shouldn't surprise anyone) but not everyone is. here is a well thought out but quite contrary opinion which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Wall Street Journal_:
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323550604578410432065425550.html
> 
> While I agree with some of Mr. Ahmari's criticism, especially of some of Mr. Haass' prescriptions, I think that "the U.S. should _"increase the resources devoted to internal as opposed to international challenges"; shift away from the Middle East toward East Asia, "the part of the world most likely to influence the course of this century"; and supplant military power with "economic and diplomatic tools."_" I believe the US is challenged, internally, by a horrid series of culture wars, for which I blame the Democratic and Republican "bases" equally and by rising tide of domestic political violence ~ some of it inspired by e.g. _al Qaeda_ and some inspired by _nativist_ tendencies which have been part of American culture from 200 years.
> 
> I believe that the facts are:
> 
> 1. America's _capacity_ to lead the West has been badly damaged by America, itself;
> 
> 2. There is no other suitable leader for the West;
> 
> 3. China, even though constrained by India, is rising rapidly and confidently to the role of leader of the East; and
> 
> 4. The _Islamic Crescent_ IS a strategic problem but it is one which we can, and should, watch, with interest, while it explodes dues to its own internal contradictions.
> 
> Thus, I believe Richard Haass prescriptions for America are helpful.




While foreign policy guru Richard Haass' new book, _Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order_ (New York, 2013), offers some very specific domestic policy prescriptions for America as a necessary precursor to developing and implementing a useful grand strategy, historian Niall Ferguson tackles he whole question of how we all ~ but America in particular ~ got into this mess in his new book, _The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die_ (New York, 2013).

Although well sourced and carefully annotated, in _The Great Degeneration_ is a polemic; Niall Ferguson's trademark breezy, easy to read style cannot hide his anger at what has happened to the West and what he sees are a series of self inflicted wounds.

Ferguson believes that the West has surrendered to a combination of statism and sloth; the important thing that we have lost, he suggests, is the correct understanding of the “social contract.” It (the social contract) is not, Ferguson and I agree Rousseau's idea of a contract between the sovereign and the people, it is, in fact, Edmund Burke's “partnership” between the generations. It is in the enormous inter-generational transfers of debt and obligations that Ferguson sees a betrayal of our history.

Niall Ferguson identifies four key drivers to the ascent of the West over the past 500 years: democracy, capitalism, the rule of law and civil society. He argues that we, in the US led West, have ~ to a greater or lesser degree ~ devalued each. 

Democracy, he suggests, has decayed into little more than partisan bickering and crude attempts at social engineering.

Capitalism has faltered and capital itself is increasingly being hoarded by the infamous 1%. Ferguson argues that we and China have swapped roles: we were a dynamic economy and have become static and China, which was for 500 years, static has learned from us and become dynamic. 

The rule of law, Ferguson tells us, has become the “rule of lawyers.” The ideas and ideals that grew up in the prelude to the Glorious Revolution (1688) have given way to sterile legal debate designed to slice the economic pie more and more thinly. Mother enemies of the rule of law include the growing include the national security state, the growing complexity and sloppiness of statute law, and the mounting cost, especially in the US and Canada of seeking remedy at law.

Finally, Prof Ferguson gives an excellent explanation of the decline of civil society – all those groups and clubs and lodges and orders ~ yes, even the old and now much despised Orange Order ~ which knitted diverse elements of Western societies into vibrant, dynamic communities.

There are many, many points with which men and women of good will can and will disagree with Niall Ferguson but, for myself, I find both his analysis of the problem and his recommendations for changes – especially in areas like law and education, refreshing.

_The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die_ is an easy read and a worthwhile read, too. Because it is Niall Ferguson's book it is heavily weighted towards economic history but that doesn't make the issue and the arguments any less compelling.


----------



## Brad Sallows

To approach the thesis from a different angle: those who despised the established order and sought to replace it, never conceived any proper replacement.  They destabilize institutions faster than people can properly adapt to new ones.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Richard Haass, again, on the same theme, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _New York Times ~ Sunday Review_, this time with an vital message added about the fact - and I believe it is a fact - that _"there is little relationship between our investments and the results:"_

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/opinion/sunday/america-can-take-a-breather-and-it-should.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&


> America Can Take a Breather. And It Should.
> 
> By RICHARD N. HAASS
> 
> Published: June 22, 2013
> 
> THE United States is currently enjoying an unprecedented respite in the foreign policy arena — a temporary relief from the normal rigors of history that allows us to take stock at home and abroad.
> 
> It may seem outlandish to claim that we’re in the midst of a lull, given that America faces a civil war in Syria, an Iran that seems to be seeking nuclear weapons, an irresponsible North Korea that already possesses them, continuing threats from terrorists, a rising China and rapid climate change.
> 
> Yet the United States enjoys a respite all the same. For the three and a half centuries of the modern international era, great powers have almost always confronted rivals determined to defeat them and replace the global order they worked to bring about. In the last century, this process unfolded three times. The results were violent, costly and dangerous, and included two world wars and a cold war.
> 
> Today, there are threats, but they tend to be regional, years away or limited in scale. None rises to the level of being global, immediate and existential. The United States faces no great-power rival. And this is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
> 
> The biggest strategic question facing America is how to extend this respite rather than squander it. This will require restraining foreign involvement and restoring domestic strength. We can no longer seek to remake countries in the Middle East and South Asia, as was tried at great cost and with little success in Iraq and Afghanistan.
> 
> Instead, we must revive the American economy, something that will not only improve the living standards of our citizens but also generate the resources to discourage would-be competitors from choosing the path of confrontation and to deal with them if they opt for confrontation all the same.
> 
> The Obama administration has embraced much of this thinking in its foreign policy, especially when it comes to exercising restraint in the greater Middle East. But it has done less well at home, where it has often held back from pushing much-needed reforms.
> 
> Still, the United States stands first among unequals. American primacy is, in part, a consequence of innate advantages: political stability, healthy demographics and commitment to the rule of law. We have a rich endowment of energy, minerals, water and arable land as well as considerable openness to immigrants who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of innovation.
> 
> There are excellent institutions of higher education, venture capital and a legal system that allows second chances in the wake of failure. And good relations with our immediate neighbors allow us to focus our foreign policy farther afield, rather than on our borders as most other countries must do.
> 
> None of the other major powers of this era — China, Russia, Europe, Japan, India — are tempted to challenge the United States for primacy. America’s per-capita gross domestic product is at least six times that of China, and the United States spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined.
> 
> Moreover, many potential future competitors depend in no small part on their access to American markets, technology, goods and services. They do not always agree with the United States, but they don’t see it as implacably hostile or as an impediment to their own core objectives. And they are often preoccupied with and limited by their own domestic economic, social and political challenges.
> 
> China is the country most often cited as a potential challenger. But it is being held back by slowing economic growth, pervasive corruption, widespread environmental degradation, an aging population and a top-heavy political system. China and the other principal powers seek less to overthrow the existing international order than to join it or something like it. They are more interested in integration than in revolution.
> 
> This situation isn’t cause for complacency. Primacy is not license to do as we please. A respite is, by definition, temporary — a departure from history, not history’s end. It allows a shift of emphasis, not withdrawal from the world.
> 
> Overseas, our attention should be focused on those places where America’s interests are greatest and where our available policy tools — the military, aid, trade and diplomacy — can accomplish the most good. This means limiting wars of choice and wholesale efforts to remake societies like the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the surge in Afghanistan in 2009.
> 
> It also means refraining from direct armed intervention in Syria’s current civil war. And when it comes to Iran, we need to emphasize diplomacy, sanctions and other alternatives to military force to dissuade it from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold.
> 
> Most important, we should step up efforts to maintain stability in Asia and the Pacific Ocean, where this century’s great powers could easily collide and where American diplomatic, military and economic tools are well suited to ensure that they do not. Modest increases in America’s Air Force and naval presence can reassure allies like Japan and South Korea while sending implicit warnings to China and North Korea, and diplomacy can make clear that China is welcome to join new regional trade arrangements, reducing the possibility that the relationship will become adversarial.
> 
> At home, we must work to restore the foundations of American power. In many cases, this doesn’t even require spending more — often there is little relationship between our investments and the results.
> 
> The United States spends nearly twice as much as other industrialized nations per citizen on health care — often with worse outcomes. We spend more per student on education than most other wealthy countries, with few results to show for it. Attracting top-quality teachers, rewarding them for success, and enabling parents and students to choose effective schools would be a better use of resources.
> 
> And with only modest government funds we could foster public-private partnerships to rebuild this country’s often crumbling infrastructure, refashion immigration policy to give preference for visas and green cards to many more immigrants with advanced degrees and needed skills, and above all reduce long-term entitlement obligations, cutting the ratio of public debt to G.D.P.
> 
> These steps, along with individual and corporate tax reform, would facilitate a return to the high levels of economic growth that America enjoyed in much of the post-World War II era.
> 
> This is not a recipe for isolationism. Rather, it is a new grand strategy for America that views national security as a function of both foreign and domestic policy.
> 
> It has been said that a crisis is too valuable a thing to waste. So is a respite.
> 
> _Richard N. Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of “Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order.”_




I trust everyone is familiar with the concept of the _margin_ and _diminishing returns_ ~  in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant ("ceteris paribus"), will at some point yield lower per-unit returns.1

That - the law of diminishing returns - is what happened to the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, to the Spanish Empire 500 years ago, to the British Empire 180 years ago and it is what is happening to America, right now, in 2013. Has says: _The United States spends nearly twice as much as other industrialized nations per citizen on health care — often with worse outcomes. We spend more per student on education than most other wealthy countries, with few results to show for it_ [and] _with only modest government funds we could foster public-private partnerships to rebuild this country’s often crumbling infrastructure, refashion immigration policy to give preference for visas and green cards to many more immigrants with advanced degrees and needed skills, and above all reduce long-term entitlement obligations, cutting the ratio of public debt to G.D.P._" I'm not sure it's quite that simple, and see my review of Niall Ferguson's new book (just above), in my view America does need to reform much more than just its expenditures: all four of Ferguson's _drivers_ ~ democracy, capitalism, the rule of law and civil society ~ are in varying states of disrepair and all four need urgent attention.

_____
1. Samuelson & Nordhaus. Microeconomics. 17th ed. page 110. McGraw Hill 2001.


----------



## a_majoor

Walter Russel MEad on the five great challenges that face America in the 21rst century. Many of the issues that occupy the headlines today essentially obscure these issues, either by accident or design, so most Americans (or Canadian, for that matter) are uninformed and these issues could hit them like an oncoming train without anyone realizing these issues even existed. Think back to the early 1990's, when the deficit and debt, or demographic change was not on anyone's radar or the topic of serious political discussion to get an idea of where this could go. Like I said upthread, much of the turmoil is that the conditions that allowed for structures like the "New Deal" to be created no longer exist. If WRM has identified these correctly, then successful Po0st Progressive society will have structures and institutions in plce to address these five issues:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/05/the-big-five-americas-make-or-break-challenges/



> *The Big Five: America’s Make or Break Challenges*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> So far, 2013 has been a bush league year in American politics. Gay marriage, gun control and amnesty for illegal immigrants are hot button emotional issues and they have a lot of practical importance for a lot of people, but the republic will not stand or fall based on lesbian prenups, gun background checks or green cards for those immigrants formerly known as illegal. Similarly with the sequester; if the country is headed toward fiscal bankruptcy the cuts are too small to save us and if the cuts are unnecessary they are neither large enough to precipitate a depression or so savage and stringent as to take us back to the social conditions of the 19th century.
> 
> So the headlines this year have not, exactly, been much ado about nothing, but it’s a lot of ado about nothing much. That wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have serious issues to deal with.  In quiet times we could let media cover politics the way the Weather Channel covers storms, inflating Winter Storms Chutney and Magpie into major world historical events. But we don’t live in bush league times. The United States has urgent business before it today and until and unless we get the big things fixed, we’re going to stagger from one ill-tempered squabble to another even as our underlying problems become more severe.
> 
> In Africa people talk about the Big Five, originally the most dangerous animals to hunt, these days the most awesome to see. The elephant, the Cape buffalo, the leopard, the rhinoceros and the lion are the Big Five in the game parks; America’s Big Five are the big make or break domestic issues we face. (I’ll take a look at the big international challenges in another series of posts.) We don’t need 100 percent success, but if we don’t get a handle on these five issues, conditions in America are going to deteriorate painfully no matter how many gay couples marry or immigrants get green cards. If on the other hand we do make progress on these issues, we will gradually find ourselves with more resources and better options as we struggle with the less critical but still very important choices our country must make.
> 
> So what are the Big Five?
> 
> *First comes the question of jobs*: what to do about jobs and incomes as the old industrial economy continues to shed middle class jobs? The manufacturing economy is as dead as Prince Albert, at least from the standpoint of providing middle class incomes and long-term job security for a third of the American workforce. If America can’t create new, post-manufacturing jobs to replace the old ones, nothing we do will turn out very well.
> 
> *Second, there’s the service crunch*. The country’s demand for services like education and health care is growing rapidly, but our ability to produce the quantity and quality of services demanded can’t match the need. The systems we have to produce and deliver these services are increasingly dysfunctional. As a result, we are seeing ruinous inflation in costs like college and university tuition and the health care system generally. These problems must be addressed; health care costs are on course to bankrupt the country and education costs have already saddled the younger generation with crippling debt. These problems won’t go away on their own; as time goes on the country is going to need more health care, more education, rather than less, and we also want the quality of both to improve. Governance, by the way, is one of these crises; a more complex and densely populated country needs effective and responsive governance at a reasonable price. In too many ways, all levels of government in the United States are too expensive, too cumbersome and too clumsy.
> 
> It’s both ironic and unsettling that just as the United States is leading the world towards a new kind of service based economy, our largest and most important service based industries are so inefficient and poorly organized. We can’t be a successful service economy until our biggest service sectors start working well.
> 
> *Third, there’s the demographic transition*. Our system of pensions and social insurance was built on the assumption that the high birth rates of the mid twentieth century would continue forever, and that each generation would be so much larger than its predecessor that the country could make a decent provision for old people without skimping on the needs of the young. While the United States fortunately is better placed than many other developed and developing countries (partly because our birthrate remains higher than in many countries and partly because a steady influx of younger immigrants increases the number of working adults), public and private pension systems and entitlement programs face a variety of challenges, and the competition between retirees and the rest of the population for resources is getting sharper.
> 
> The last two areas where the country faces make or break challenges are different. They are cultural, social and spiritual. They cannot be solved by wonkish ideas or government policy changes. But they are real, and unless we address them wisely the country is unlikely to thrive.
> 
> The first of these non-wonky problems is what one could call a* coherence crisis*. In past generations, a less diverse and more hierarchical America was organized around a set of ideas and cultural values and assumptions more or less brought over from Great Britain in the colonial era. This was not a monolithic culture; scholars like David Hackett Fischer have shown how cultural and political diversity were present in American life from the earliest years of the colonial period. And non-English speaking immigrants (like the Germans who settled much of Pennsylvania and the Dutch in New York) brought more points of view. Africans, free and enslaved, a majority in some states and a large minority in others, were also part of the mix.
> 
> But with all the diversity, the country was dominated by a set of values and ideas that came to us from the British Isles: Protestant and individualistic Christianity, an attachment to limited representational government, an affinity for capitalism and a set of ideas and cultural practices around which society cohered.
> 
> For all kinds of reasons that old coherence has been lost and cannot be set up again. Racial, cultural and ethnic differences among Americans have changed who we are as a people. Social and economic changes have challenged old ideas and institutions. Economic inequality challenges the idea of a vast American middle class that shaped national consciousness during the Fordist era.
> 
> There is no going back to the old days. The genie is out of the bottle, and Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall. But even if the old consensus is gone, the country still needs something to rally around. What are the values around which Americans will cohere in the 21st century and will they be both flexible enough to serve the needs of a diverse and diversifying people and robust enough to create a deep and abiding sense of common citizenship and linked destiny among us?
> 
> The problem is becoming more acute not less as American society grows and becomes more complex. A larger population and a more complex and interdependent technological base require more collective restraint on individual freedom in small things and large. Shared values and visions make that restraint seem natural and reasonable, but we are heading toward a situation in which there will be more laws and regulations to live under… and less agreement about what those laws should look like, at what level they should be adopted, and how stringently they should be enforced.
> 
> Finally and inescapably, *there is the question of virtue*. The liberal order of representative democracy depends more on the virtue of its citizens than other forms of government do. If most citizens are tax cheats, most politicians are swindlers, many parents are neglectful and most children are ingrates, democracy cannot last, much less prosper. If everyone is thinking about what they can get from the government and no one is thinking about what they give, and if nobody can be trusted when the lights are out, freedom will shrivel up and die. Our founding fathers were haunted by the example of the fall of the Roman Republic; we need to remember that Rome’s fate could be ours.
> 
> There are many forces working against republican virtue in America today. Consumer capitalism, as Daniel Bell and others have taught us, breeds attitudes of narcissism and self indulgence. The crisis affecting mainline Protestant and euro-Catholic congregations and institutions has weakened one of the chief props of the kind of self restraint and self governance that democracies need to survive and it’s not clear what if anything can take their place.
> 
> These are the Big Five; if we get them largely right, the 21st century in the United States is likely to see another golden age of freedom and prosperity. If we largely fail, things will go badly wrong, and this century could see the end of America as a beacon of hope for humanity. Via Meadia tries to orient our coverage of the news around these big five issues; watch this space over the next couple of weeks for some essays on the most important challenges we face.


----------



## cupper

The biggest problem as I see is the GOP's inability to dig itself out of the hole it has dug. The first rule of being stuck in a deep hole, stop digging.

Their internal turmoil will hold them back as long as it continues. It began with the gerrymandered redistricting process which gradually created more Republican and Democratic leaning districts. As the districts became more solidly red or blue, the prime concern for GOP incumbents was not defeating the Democratic candidate, but losing the nomination in the party primary (being primaryed). With the rise of the hard right conservative "base", incumbents found themselves running further and further to the right in order to retain their nomination. And in order to maintain loyalty of the "base", their actions in Congress had to fall further to the right, regardless of where they really fell on the political spectrum, lest they be primaryed.

As a result we see the GOP being driven at all levels by a small section of the electorate, a small cross section of their own voters. And we end up getting moves to l to limit or end abortion, knowing full well that women's health was a high voltage third rail. We get austerity writ large. We get vote after vote to repeal ACA knowing it was going no further. We get threats to kill immigration bills, inability to pass necessary legislation to create jobs, fix problems with the financial industry, put leadership where it is needed in government agencies.

Until they are able to resolve the turmoil within their ranks I don't see the US making any headway either domestically or on the international stage,


----------



## a_majoor

The problem is far deeper than any particular party; these are really reactions to larger events that are reshaping the landscape.

I characterize these sorts of political games (by all parties and when you look around, in virtually all nations) as the elites "digging in" and attempting to hold on to the perques and privilages that the current system provide. It is pretty clear that they will fight to the last taxpayer to do so, which explains why movements like the TEA Party in the US, or various political parites that represent fairly extremist positions in Europe, or even the "Arab Spring" in Islamic nations have risen throughout the world in rection to this. Even "Occupy" might charitably be looked at as the analogue of the failed revolutionary movements of the 1840's.

This is a transitional period in history, as the various structures that where erected starting as far back as the late 1800's (Otto Bismark's proto welfare atate) reach their "best before" dates and are swept away on a wave of social, economic and demographic changes. 

What will replace these is not visible to me (or a great many commentators, pundits, futurists etc.), so YMMV.


----------



## Kirkhill

I am going to risk a tangent here - because I perceive parallels between the discussions over the Egyptian "coup"  and this discussion.

First and foremost, in my mind, is the oft repeated notion that any group is a collection of individuals. Those individuals can often find common points of agreement.  They seldom find complete agreement.

The Egyptians agreed that Mubarak had to go.  They accepted Morsy's team as an alternative.

Morsy implemented his programme.  Apparently many people did not like his programme.

The Egyptians appear to agree that Morsy has to go.  They have not yet found an alternative.

Their search will continue.


Some argue that a coup has occurred.  I believe that it is a coup of which Thomas Jefferson would approve.  I also believe that it has the opportunity to demonstrate real democracy to the Egyptians and the Arab world.   Morsy was on track to deliver traditional revolutionary democracy - one man, one vote, one time.  This exercise may convince the Egyptians, and perhaps the Turks, that power, legitimacy, resides in the people and while the ballot box is a comparatively neat and tidy method of conferring legitimacy, there are others.

I believe the maxim is "silence implies consent".   If the Egyptians are not silent then their government lacks legitimacy.  If they are silent then the government is accepted as legitimate.


----------



## GAP

:goodpost:


----------



## a_majoor

A bit of a double header here. Upthread, I identified the idea that structures, institutions and solutions implimented during the "Progressive Era" are no longer working, and that alternative models and solutions will be fighting for pre eminence to define the "Post Progressive Era"

The first is from the Atlantic, and point s out that the communications revolution has provided multiple tools to overturn the old order, but is disapproving of the idea that since various companies create and impliment these solutions, this is somehow wrong:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/the-internet-is-the-solution-to-everything/309382/



> *The Internet Is the Solution to Everything*
> Ideas of the Year 2013
> Alexis C. Madrigal Jun 19 2013, 10:05 PM ET
> 
> Silicon Valley’s got 99 problems and the same solution for every one. Take a system ailing for complex reasons—education, Congress, the media—and offer one simple fix: more Internet. Tuition is continuing to rise as states cut funding to higher education? Have students watch lectures on YouTube and get graded by computers!
> 
> In this year’s most controversial technology book, To Save Everything, Click Here, Evgeny Morozov argues that geeks have come down with a bad case of “solutionism,” which recasts all sorts of problems, from the merely irritating to the civilization-threatening, as issues a low-cost, high-growth company should solve. More damningly, Morozov writes, “what many solutionists presume to be ‘problems’ in need of solving are not problems at all.” Inefficiency, opacity, and slowness can be features, not bugs. See: the Supreme Court.
> 
> But what really gets to Morozov is that individualistic, free-marketeer rhetoric derails the possibility of greater public involvement in creating desirable futures—essentially, it lets citizens and institutions off the hook. (_interpolation: see below_)
> 
> Which brings us to the appeal of solutionism in the first place. Silicon Valley may have a one-size-fits-all, morally blind set of solutions, but at least it’s tackling problems. At a time when Congress refuses to act, and universities refuse to cut tuition, and the status quo seems more entrenched than ever, tangible change is especially seductive.



The follow up is actually a reply I wrote several years ago to an article posted on the Internet (sorry, I can't find the article right now), which refutes the idea that the market is somehow not democratic. If being able to push electrons and "vote" all the time with your ideas, your wallet and your feet if needed isn't more participative and democratic than casting a ballot every four or five years, then I really don't know what is. I also have noted the importance of the "small platoons" of social engagement, even if I did not identify it as such then (I actually prefer Alexis de Tocqueville's description of America as "A nation of associations"):



> I think the author totally misses the point.
> 
> The summation contrasting “more democracy” with “more markets” is totally false; markets _are_ democracy. You choose what you want and what resources you will use to get it, you engage with other citizens on a continuing basis in a market.
> 
> In contrast, the programs and mindset being mourned here are products of a mindset which refuses engagement, and which demands only obedience to the dictates of the “empowered”. If you don’t like what the empowered want, or the crumbs they are willing to throw you, there is very little effective recourse.
> 
> Post progressive society, in contrast will reward people who choose to be engaged, and who are willing to be masters of their own fate. The poor and disadvantaged will finally be empowered to act on their own, not exist as wards of the Progressive State (and many will certainly rise to the challenge). Claiming the Progressive State has any interest in actually helping the poor and disadvantaged can be refuted by taking a real look at the statistics; despite billions of dollars spent over more than a half century of the life of Progressivism in Canada, poverty statistics have hardly changed, indeed we constantly hear that poverty is increasing! The equally shoddy results in the fields of healthcare and education should be convincing arguments against the Progressive model, and for much more market participation.
> The Progressive State model is financially and morally bankrupt, we can close out that era of history with a controlled draw down, or we can attempt to continue with the progressive state and suffer through a cataclysmic collapse. Far better to continue with a controlled drawdown, and to create a bright future for our children
> 
> I have to take issue with your contention that there is a link between government cuts and a declining civil society, something which you yourself seemed to question in your response to Mr. McKeown’s comment above.
> 
> As Robert Putnam documented in his book ‘Bowling Alone,’ civic engagement and social capital have decreased dramatically over the past sixty-odd years. I don’t think it is a coincidence that this period also saw a massive expansion in the size and scope of ‘progressive government.’ When the crucial institutions of civil society (the Church, the scout troop, the Rotary Club) have their raison d’être taken over by the government, they inevitably decline – as indeed they have. Robert Nisbet made this case quite well in his book ‘The Quest for Community,’ which took a long-view of social structures and concluded that (1) an expanding government was inevitably replacing the work of local communities and civil society with that of the mass-state and (2) that the mass-state could not fulfill people’s needs in as effective a way as more local and voluntary organizations. In my mind, strengthening civil society means reducing the size and scope of government as a step towards the restoring responsibilities and role of non-state institutions.
> 
> My point is that while the term ‘cuts’ carries negative connotations, the effect of those cuts is to re-draw the boundaries of the state and civil society in a manner more favourable to the latter. In your response to Mr. McKeown, you almost seemed to agree, as you focused on critiquing the effectiveness of civil society compared to that of government in the modern era. Whether civil society is better than the government is a question for another day, but that made me wonder: do you agree with the basic notion that an expanding government is in part responsible for the decline in our civil society? If so, how much of the responsibility does the expanding government bear?


----------



## a_majoor

America's terrible political class has no "Grand Strategy", and can hardly be said to have a "domestic strategy" either. One part of the problem is the elites have constructed a "bubble" and seem to only act and react in accordance to the Narrtive, rather than real events:

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/08/07/fantasy-island/?singlepage=true



> *The Legion of Doom*
> 
> August 7th, 2013 - 4:19 pm
> 
> The second-ranking CIA official now calls Syria the greatest threat to American national security today:
> 
> The Central Intelligence Agency’s second-in-command warned that Syria’s volatile mix of al Qaeda extremism and civil war now poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Michael Morell says the risk is that the Syrian government, which possesses chemical and other advanced weapons, collapses and the country becomes al Qaeda’s new haven, supplanting Pakistan.
> 
> Shouldn’t he ask: “Who armed the Syrian rebels”? And might not he say: ” … in addition to Pakistan”? It is not as if Pakistan has greatly improved over the last five years. Syria is a problem on top of Pakistan. The distinction is important: in assessing a situation, the direction of change is often more important than the current status, and the direction in this case is not encouraging.
> 
> Perhaps one sign that the War on Terror isn’t over comes from the New York Times:
> 
> T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security
> 
> As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.
> 
> The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.
> 
> “The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the squad. “I thought they were just at the airports.”
> 
> He thought wrong:
> 
> “Our mandate is to provide security and counterterrorism operations for all high-risk transportation targets, not just airports and aviation,” said John S. Pistole, the administrator of the agency.
> 
> Does that mean the “War on Terror” is … expanding?
> 
> Maybe. Al-Qaeda, far from being hunkered down in caves, is holding conference calls. An intercept of a conference call ”of more than 20 far-flung al-Qaeda operatives” triggered the latest security alert. “This was like a meeting of the Legion of Doom,” one U.S. intelligence officer told The Daily Beast:
> 
> Al Qaeda leaders had assumed the conference calls, which give Zawahiri the ability to manage his organization from a remote location, were secure. But leaks about the original intercepts have likely exposed the operation that allowed the U.S. intelligence community to listen in on the al Qaeda board meetings.
> 
> Hmmm … maybe Obama is so far ahead of al-Qaeda, he doesn’t care if he concedes a handicap. Why not let them know their lines are tapped? Can they resist his mighty hand?
> 
> The conference among “far-flung operatives” was an amazing achievement for an organization already declared dead and buried. Bret Stephens recalled the obituary while writing in the Wall Street Journal:
> 
> In May, Barack Obama told an audience at the National Defense University that the core of al Qaeda was “on the path to defeat.” The “future of terrorism,” Mr. Obama predicted, would involve “more localized threats … these threats need not rise to the level that we saw on the eve of 9/11.” He ended by calling for repeal of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force — Congress’s declaration of war on al Qaeda.
> 
> Yes, the president’s May speech contained all the required caveats about the abiding terrorist threat and the continued need for vigilance. But the gist of the address was clear, as was its purpose: to declare the war on terror won — or won well-enough — and go home …
> 
> The speech at the National Defense University was billed as a major presidential address. A lengthy article in the New York Times, written days later, reported it was a “window into the presidential mind,” the result of “an exercise lasting months,” a matter not just of Mr. Obama’s policy, but of his very legacy.
> 
> …
> 
> Yet here we are, not three months later, faced with a threat that makes a comprehensive and vivid mockery of everything the president said.
> 
> How could he get it so wrong? The New York Times’ coverage of President Obama’s canceled summit with Putin illustrates one reason why. This time, the NYT argued that Putin would regret not meeting Obama:
> 
> In a statement, the White House said the president had decided to postpone the summit meeting between the two leaders after concluding that there had not been enough progress made on the “bilateral agenda” to make a meeting worthwhile. …
> 
> Mr. Obama’s decision to forgo the summit meeting with Mr. Putin, which was first reported by The Associated Press, is a blow to Mr. Putin that will deprive him of a high-profile moment on the worldwide stage. It also threatens to add to the already chilly relationship between the two countries.
> 
> Now Putin won’t be invited to Leno! He’ll miss a chance to speak to Oprah! He must be crazy.
> 
> This is another case of the “wish being the father of the deed,” yet another instance of the Narrative being taken for reality. The NYT thinks Putin reasons just like them, seeing a world where Barack Obama is at the center of Washington and Washington is the center of the universe. If President Obama declares al-Qaeda to be dead, then al-Qaeda must in fact be deceased. If President Obama supports the Syrian rebels, the Syrian rebels must be worthy of support. If President Obama decides not to meet the president of Russia, then Putin is losing out.
> 
> It’s like Versailles in the days of Louis the XIV: the inmates cannot conceive that an external universe exists, one in which another sun shines more brightly than the Sun King.
> 
> Yet, as Bret Stephens points out, the Emperor has no clothes. He is manifestly capable of getting things fundamentally, spectacularly and catastrophically wrong, and the media elites are pathologically incapable of acknowledging this.
> 
> While a person untutored in the ways of Washington might conclude that recent events show President Obama is in the last stages of losing the vestiges of American influence in the Middle East, passively watching the rearmament of Japan, haplessly presiding over the resurrection of the Cold War, and being driven back by al-Qaeda into a static defense of the homeland, this cannot possibly be true: the Beltway pundits have decreed otherwise.
> 
> None of these bad things is yet fait accompli, but if any are to be avoided, the political establishment has to acquire a degree of intellectual honesty and vision which it has so far conspicuously lacked. They at least have to start calling things by their proper names.
> 
> Historians may mark the middle of 2013, with its cascade of catastrophes and the sale of former media giants for chump change, as the time when the first signs of fear entered the Realm of the Sun King. When they sensed their jobs, pensions, and status were in peril. When they apprehended the first forebodings of physical danger — not from those who they declared public enemies, like the Tea Party, or Sarah Palin — but from those who, in PC piety, they had declared and thought their friends. When they realized they might one day ask: “Where are my legions O Varrus? Where are my legions?” And I don’t mean the Legion of Doom, either.
> 
> In other news, Japan launched a destroyer — the DDH-183, JS Izumo.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Robert Kaplan comments on what he calls "The Tragedy of US Foreign Policy" in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The National Interest_:

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-tragedy-us-foreign-policy-8810


> The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy
> 
> Robert D. Kaplan
> 
> August 1, 2013
> 
> For over two years, the civil war [3] in Syria has been synonymous with cries of moral urgency. _Do Something!_ shout those who demand the United States intervene militarily to set the situation there to rights, even as the battle lines now comprise hundreds of regime and rebel groupings and the rebels have started fighting each other. _Well, then_, shout the moral interventionists, _if only we had intervened earlier!_
> 
> Syria is not unique. Before Syria, humanitarians in 2011 demanded military intervention in Libya [4], even though the regime of Muammar Qaddafi had given up its nuclear program and had been cooperating for years with Western intelligence agencies. In fact, the United States and France did lead an intervention, and Libya today is barely a state, with Tripoli less a capital than the weak point of imperial-like arbitration for far-flung militias, tribes, and clans, while nearby Saharan entities are in greater disarray because of weapons flooding out of Libya.
> 
> The 1990s were full of calls for humanitarian intervention: in Rwanda, which tragically went unheeded; and in Bosnia and Kosovo where interventions, while belated, were by and large successful. Free from the realpolitik necessities of the Cold War, humanitarians have in the past two decades tried to reduce foreign policy to an aspect of genocide prevention. Indeed, the Nazi Holocaust is only one lifetime removed from our own—a nanosecond in human history—and so post–Cold War foreign policy now rightly exists in the shadow of it. The codified upshot has been R2P [5]: the “Responsibility to Protect,” the mantra of humanitarians.
> 
> But American foreign policy cannot merely be defined by R2P and _Never Again!_ Statesmen can only rarely be concerned with humanitarian interventions and protecting human rights to the exclusion of other considerations. The United States, like any nation—but especially because it is a great power—simply has interests that do not always cohere with its values. That is tragic, but it is a tragedy that has to be embraced and accepted.
> 
> What are those overriding interests? The United States, as the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, must always prevent any other power from becoming equally dominant in the Eastern Hemisphere. Moreover, as a liberal maritime power, the United States must seek to protect the sea lines of communication that enable world trade. It must also seek to protect both treaty and de facto allies, and especially their access to hydrocarbons. These are all interests that, while not necessarily contradictory to human rights, simply do not operate in the same category.
> 
> Because the United States is a liberal power, its interests—even when they are not directly concerned with human rights—are generally moral. But they are only secondarily moral. For seeking to adjust the balance of power in one’s favor has been throughout history an amoral enterprise pursued by both liberal and illiberal powers. Nevertheless, when a liberal power like the United States pursues such a goal in the service of preventing war among major states, it is acting morally in the highest sense.
> 
> A telling example of this tension—one that gets to the heart of why _Never Again!_ and R2P cannot always be the operative words in statesmanship—was recently provided by the foreign-affairs expert Leslie H. Gelb. Gelb noted [6] that after Saddam Hussein had gassed close to seven thousand Kurds to death in northern Iraq in 1988, even a “truly ethical” secretary of state, George Shultz, committed a “moral outrage.” For Shultz basically ignored the incident and continued supporting Saddam in his war against Iran, because weakening Iran—not protecting the citizens of Iraq—was the primary American interest at the time.
> 
> So was Shultz acting immorally? Not completely, I believe. Shultz was operating under a different morality than the one normally applied by humanitarians. His was a public morality; not a private one. He and the rest of the Reagan administration had a responsibility to the hundreds of millions of Americans under their charge. And while these millions were fellow countrymen, they were more crucially voters and citizens, essentially strangers who did not know Shultz or Reagan personally, but who had entrusted the two men with their interests. And the American public’s interest clearly dictated that of the two states, Iran and Iraq, Iran at the time constituted the greater threat. In protecting the public interest of even a liberal power, a statesman cannot always be nice; or humane.
> 
> I am talking here of a morality of public outcomes, rather than one of private intentions. By supporting Iraq, the Reagan administration succeeded in preventing Iran in the last years of the Cold War from becoming a regional hegemon. That was an outcome convenient to U.S. interests, even if the morality of the affair was ambiguous, given that Iraq’s regime was at the time the more brutal of the two.
> 
> In seeking good outcomes, policymakers are usually guided by constraints: a realistic awareness of what, for instance, the United States should and should not do, given its finite resources. After all, the United States had hundreds of thousands of troops tied down in Europe and Northeast Asia during the Cold War, and thus had to contain Iran through the use of a proxy, Saddam’s Iraq. That was not entirely cynical: it was an intelligent use of limited assets in the context of a worldwide geopolitical struggle.
> 
> The problem with a foreign policy driven foremost by _Never Again!_ is that it ignores limits and the availability of resources. World War II had the secondary, moral effect of saving what was left of European Jewry. Its primary goal and effect was to restore the European and Asian balance of power in a manner tolerable to the United States—something that the Nazis and the Japanese fascists had overturned. Of course, the Soviet Union wrested control of Eastern Europe for nearly half a century following the war. But again, limited resources necessitated an American alliance with the mass-murderer Stalin against the mass-murderer Hitler. It is because of such awful choices and attendant compromises—in which morality intertwines with amorality—that humanitarians will frequently be disappointed with the foreign policy of even the most heroic administrations.
> 
> World War II certainly involved many hideous compromises and even mistakes on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s part. He got into the war in Europe very late, he did not bomb the rail tracks leading to the concentration camps, he might have been more aggressive with the Soviets on the question of Eastern Europe. But as someone representing the interests of the millions of strangers who had and had not voted for him, his aim was to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in a manner that cost the fewest American soldiers’ lives, and utilized the least amount of national resources. Saving the remnants of European Jewry was a moral consequence of his actions, but his methods contained tactical concessions that had fundamental amoral elements. Abraham Lincoln, for his part, brought mass suffering upon southern civilians in the last phase of the Civil War in order to decisively defeat the South. The total war waged by generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant was evidence of that. Simply put, there are actions of state that are the right things to do, even if they cannot be defined in terms of conventional morality.
> 
> Amoral goals, properly applied, do have moral effects. Indeed, in more recent times, President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, rushed arms to Israel following a surprise attack by Arab armies in the fall of 1973. The two men essentially told the American defense establishment that supporting Israel in its hour of need was the right thing to do, because it was necessary to send an unambiguous message of resolve to the Soviets and their Arab allies at a critical stage in the Cold War. Had they justified the arms transfers purely in terms of helping embattled post-Holocaust Jewry—rather than in terms of power politics as they did—it would have made for a much weaker argument in Washington, where officials rightly had American interests at heart more than Israeli ones. George McGovern was possibly a more ethical man than either Nixon or Kissinger. But had he been elected president in 1972, would he have acted so wisely and so decisively during the 1973 Middle East war? The fact is, individual perfection, as Machiavelli knew, is not necessarily synonymous with public virtue.
> 
> Then there is the case of Deng Xiaoping. Deng approved the brutal suppression of students at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. For that he is not respected among humanitarians in the West. But the consolidation of Communist Party control that followed the clampdown allowed for Deng’s methodical, market-oriented reforms to continue for a generation in China. Perhaps never before in recorded economic history have so many people seen such a dramatic rise in living standards, with an attendant rise in personal (if not political) freedoms in so short a time frame. Thus, Deng might be considered both a brutal Communist and the greatest man of the twentieth century. The morality of his life is complex.
> 
> The Bosnia and Kosovo interventions of 1995 and 1999 are frequently held out as evidence that the United States is most effective when it acts according to its humanitarian values—never mind its amoral interests. But those who make that argument neglect to mention that the two successful interventions were eased by the fact that America operated in the Balkans with the balance-of-power strongly in its favor. Russia in the 1990s was weak and chaotic under Boris Yeltsin’s incompetent rule, and thus temporarily less able to challenge the United States in a region where historically the czars and commissars had exerted considerable sway. However, Russia, even in the 1990s, still exerted considerable sway in the Caucasus, and thus a Western response to halt ethnic cleansing there during the same decade was not even considered. More broadly, the 1990s allowed for ground interventions in the Balkans because the international climate was relatively benign: China was only just beginning its naval expansion [7] (endangering our Pacific allies) and September 11 still lay in the future. Truly, beyond many a moral response lies a question of power that cannot be explained wholly in terms of morality.
> 
> Thus, to raise morality as a sole arbiter is ultimately not to be serious about foreign policy. R2P must play as large a role as realistically possible in the affairs of state. But it cannot ultimately dominate. Syria is the current and best example of this. U.S. power is capable of many things, yet putting a complex and war-torn Islamic society’s house in order is not one of them. In this respect, our tragic experience in Iraq is indeed relevant. Quick fixes like a no-fly zone and arming the rebels may topple Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but that might only make President Barack Obama culpable in midwifing to power a Sunni-Jihadist regime, even as ethnic cleansing of al-Assad’s Alawites commences. At least at this late juncture, without significant numbers of Western boots on the ground for a significant period—something for which there is little public support—the likelihood of a better, more stable regime emerging in Damascus is highly questionable. Frankly, there are just no easy answers here, especially as the pro-Western regime in Jordan is threatened by continued Syrian violence. R2P applied in 2011 in Syria might actually have yielded a better strategic result: it will remain an unknowable.
> 
> Because moralists in these matters are always driven by righteous passion, whenever you disagree with them, you are by definition immoral and deserve no quarter; whereas realists, precisely because they are used to conflict, are less likely to overreact to it. Realists know that passion and wise policy rarely flow together. (The late diplomat Richard Holbrooke was a stunning exception to this rule.) Realists adhere to the belief of the mid-twentieth-century University of Chicago political scientist, Hans Morgenthau, who wrote that “one must work with” the base forces of human nature, “not against them.” Thus, realists accept the human material at hand in any given place, however imperfect that material may be. To wit, you can’t go around toppling regimes just because you don’t like them. Realism, adds Morgenthau, “appeals to historical precedent rather than to abstract principles [of justice] and aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good.”
> 
> No group of people internalized such tragic realizations better than Republican presidents during the Cold War. Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush all practiced amorality, realism, restraint  and humility in foreign affairs (if not all the time). It is their sensibility that should guide us now. Eisenhower represented a pragmatic compromise within the Republican Party between isolationists and rabid anti-Communists. All of these men supported repressive, undemocratic regimes in the third world in support of a favorable balance of power against the Soviet Union. Nixon accepted the altogether brutal regimes in the Soviet Union and “Red” China as legitimate, even as he balanced one against the other. Reagan spoke the Wilsonian language of moral rearmament, even as he awarded the key levers of bureaucratic power to realists like Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz and Frank Carlucci, whose effect regarding policy was to temper Reagan’s rhetoric. The elder Bush did not break relations with China after the Tiananmen uprising; nor did he immediately pledge support for Lithuania, after that brave little country declared its independence—for fear of antagonizing the Soviet military. It was caution and restraint on Bush’s part that helped bring the Cold War to a largely peaceful—and, therefore, moral—conclusion. In some of these policies, the difference between amorality and morality was, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad in _Lord Jim_, no more than “the thickness of a sheet of paper.”
> 
> And that is precisely the point: foreign policy at its best is subtle, innovative, contradictory, and truly bold only on occasion, aware as its most disciplined practitioners are of the limits of American power. That is heartrending, simply because calls to alleviate suffering will in too many instances go unanswered. For the essence of tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good, so much as the triumph of one good over another that causes suffering.
> 
> _Robert D. Kaplan is chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm. His latest book is_ The Revenge of Geography




I read Kaplan as a _principled realist_ and it seems to me, that here and now, in the first quarter of the 21st century, _strategic realism_ equals restraint. China is a competitor but it is not and should not be pushed into being an enemy. Russia is neither an enemy nor a competitor; Russia is a nuisance. Africa is a mess but not a real problem. Ditto Southern Europe. India is on the rise but it remains a friend. Most of Asia, rich (Korea) and poor (Indonesia), remains friendly to the West and China. Radical Islam is, broadly, an enemy but it is one with very, very, very limited means: yes, it can and does _terrorize_ us and yes we, the US led West can and should respond, swiftly and brutally, to each and every act of terrorism, but, other than swatting the Muslims every now and again, they can and should be left alone to fight amongst themselves. Thus, in my opinion, America can afford to be restrained for a while as it does what Richard Haass suggests and get its own, domestic house in order before it contemplates blowing up anyone else's "house."

_- mod edit to remove honkin' strobing graphic -_


----------



## Edward Campbell

This article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, gives me an opportunity to preach a bit on foreign policy, in general:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/a-too-humble-america/article13816105/#dashboard/alerts


> A too-humble America
> 
> JOHN O’SULLIVAN
> The Globe and Mail
> 
> Published Monday, Aug. 19 2013
> 
> In retrospect, we can see that the post-Cold War world ended in 2008, as a result of two events: Russia’s unpunished invasion of Georgia and the financial crisis triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s fourth-largest investment bank.
> 
> The first marked the end of NATO expansion and the West’s unquestioned dominance: Georgia had recently been backed by the United States for membership; Germany and France had effectively vetoed it. Soon afterward, Russia acted to demonstrate that Georgia, far from joining the West, was still very much in the Russian sphere of influence. The West acquiesced, France with enthusiasm, the rest of Western Europe with relief, the U.S. with reluctance, Central and Eastern Europe under protest.
> 
> The financial crisis, almost willfully misinterpreted as resulting purely from the absence of regulation, led to a collapse of confidence. Financial institutions, supranational structures, political leaderships, market theories, Western civilization itself and, of course, bankers all fell victim to popular alarmism, skepticism, even hatred. These self-destructive passions were further magnified by the Euro crisis, which proved even more damaging and intractable than the subprime mortgage crisis. But the U.S., as “hegemon” of the post-Cold War international structure, suffered the greatest loss in power and reputation, if not wealth.
> 
> In the United States itself, that loss translated into a desire to retreat from the arena of failure. This is usually interpreted as “isolationism,” which it never is. More than a decade ago, in The National Interest magazine, Walter Russell Mead described the four factions into which Americans fall on foreign policy: Jeffersonians for an idealistic peace policy of non-intervention; Hamiltonians for building international institutions that protect commerce; Wilsonians for liberal interventionism, recently “democracy-building”; and Jacksonians for a tough policy of national self-interest.
> 
> Jacksonians are the “swing vote” on foreign policy: When they favour intervention abroad, they make it the broad consensus; when they oppose it, its days are numbered. They favour intervention when attacked; they oppose it for misty idealistic or non-American purposes; they especially oppose seemingly endless or “unwinnable” wars. Hence, they gradually swung against the Iraq and Afghan interventions, which they had originally supported.
> 
> Their change solidified a general national mood that produced Barack Obama’s election, the “humbler” foreign policy promised by George W. Bush before 9/11, the rise of Republican doves such as Rand Paul, the “reset button” rapprochement with Russia, the winding down of the Afghan and Iraq interventions, Mr. Obama’s Cairo speech wooing Islam in order to isolate Islamism, Washington’s enthusiasm for the Arab Spring, and much else.
> 
> The problem is that this leaves the world with no “hegemon” to broker and impose settlements. The United Nations cannot do this; it is designed to be an instrument of great power diplomacy rather than a substitute. In 30 years, the world has gone from a duocracy to a monocracy to a nullocracy.
> 
> The result is that states and non-state actors with unsatisfied grievances and ambitions – some of them, I’m sorry to say, “bad guys” – feel freer to pursue them without taking Washington’s likely response into account. Hence Iran’s pursuit of its nuclear ambitions, Russia’s and China’s flouting of the U.S. request for the extradition of Edward Snowden, Venezuela’s support for narco-terrorists next door, the Syrian civil war, the unpunished murder of a U.S. ambassador in a country, Libya, that the U.S. had just helped to liberate from tyranny.
> 
> A humble foreign policy is baffled by such problems, because it has no clear interests or fast friends. In Egypt, it has gone from wooing Islam in vague terms that encouraged Islamists; to edging out autocratic ally Hosni Mubarak without giving him an escape hatch; to naively embracing the Arab Spring; to overinvesting in Mohammed Morsi as he betrayed the Arab Spring; to dithering in the face of the coup; to the current policy of throwing up its hands in horror.
> 
> Even if the U.S. had a clear idea of what to do in such cases, its reputation and thus power to intervene are greatly diminished. Washington’s power to help is no longer assisted by its perceived power to harm.
> 
> Eventually, unrestrained global and regional disorders will seriously damage U.S. interests and people. Jacksonians, outraged, will join alarmed Hamiltonians in favouring a forward U.S. policy. Indeed, at present, the main bright spot in U.S. policy is the Hamiltonian idea of crafting an Atlantic Union – potentially the world’s largest free-trade area with more than half of global GDP – that would stimulate the West’s economies and strengthen Western and U.S. diplomacy worldwide. Ambitiously conceived, it could also solve a great many other European problems from Turkey’s EU application through saving the euro. But that is for another article.
> 
> We are currently living through a period similar to what Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, called “the fatal hiatus” – the years 1945 to 1948, between Yalta and the Truman Declaration, when America demobilized and partied, Western Europe froze, starved and trembled, and Joseph Stalin gradually absorbed Eastern Europe. That period came to an end when America ceased retreating, returned to Europe economically with the Marshall Plan and established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance to enable Europe to recover and develop behind America’s military presence.
> 
> That happened not by accident but because Truman Democrats, leading Republicans and realistic Europeans, notably Labour’s Ernest Bevin, had a certain idea of the West and united to revive it. The same vision is needed now, mainly in Washington, but in Berlin, Paris and London too – because it won’t happen by accident.
> 
> _John O’Sullivan is editor-at-large of the National Review and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute._




There are, or there ought to be three “Ps” in any foreign policy, including America's and Canada's, too:

     *Peace;
     Principles;* and
     *Priorities.*

I have often said that good policy, reduced to its simplest level, usually means “peace and prosperity.” Peace, I have noted, is far more than just the absence of war, and prosperity is more than just “a chicken in every pot,” as Herbert Hoover's (1928) election campaign promised. But there is a direct, causal relationship between peace and prosperity: peaceful societies, societies, where peace is, again, more than just the absence of war, become prosperous, and prosperous societies, in turn, are more and more reluctant to be aggressors.

So the quest for peace should be the main foundation stone of both America's and Canada's foreign policy. If we have real, sustained peace we can prosper and afford all the things our peoples need and want.

But this is not to advocate “peace at any price.” We have principles, principles that drove us to a bloody, cruel war in 1939 and which kept us poised for an even worse war all throughout most of the rest of the 20th century. We went to war and, later, prepared for another war because our principles would not allow us to appease Hitler or Stalin, Khrushchev, et al.

Principles, however, are, as they must be, bounded by realities. Quite simply, we cannot afford to stand on every principle on every issue; no country can. Right now, for example, the Canadian government's top, nearly sole, priority is to return the budget to a balanced state. The government has demonstrated that, when absolutely necessary, it will spend money on the military, but, for now, defence spending – and, therefore, our capability to put some muscle behind our principles – is constrained by national fiscal concerns.

So, the three *P*s always offset one another, the search for peace, and consequential prosperity, is always bounded by our core principles, we cannot and will not accept “peace at any price,” but our principles are constrained by fiscal realities which are, in turn and partially, why we search for peace.

We want peace, with all it brings to all peaceful peoples, but we cannot and must not appease _al Qaeda_, for example, and the like, but the cost of “taking on” and crushing the various and sundry loose _movements_ that constitute “militant Islam” is beyond our realistic capabilities – beyond, indeed, the capabilities of the entire US led West.

There are, it seems to me, two alternatives:

     1. Form a new, broader “coalition of the willing” which must, at a minimum, include America, China, Europe and India, and form a united front against “militant Islam;” or

     2. Step back, accepting the fiscal and strategic realities, from the Islamic world and isolate most of it ~ but not all of it, countries like Malaysia and Indonesia should be persuaded to abandon the _Arabic_ influence and be “enlightened” Asiatic Muslims.
         This is not appeasement, it is a realistic alternative to today's US led policy which is, in my opinion, failing.

The “third option” for which John O’Sullivan wishes requires one key ingredient: leadership. President Obama is not a Harry Truman, he lacks, in my opinion, both Truman's brains and is balls. But there is, equally, no Bevin out there, nor a Dean Acheson, and, sadly, not even a Louis St Laurent.

Three wise men who, in the late 1940s, "made" our world:






   
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




   
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



Dean Acheson               Ernest Bevin                 Louis St Laurent
America                         Britain                           Canada

____
The linked article by Mead led to an excellent book, _Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World_ which I recommend to anyone who wants to understand the nature of American grand strategy.


----------



## Edward Campbell

American _grand strategy_ in 2013:


----------



## tomahawk6

Obama is in trouble so its time for a distraction.


----------



## a_majoor

The problem is ultimatley with the American people; they elected the current crop of leaders and were apparently content with the direction they were going. This piece suggests there is no leadership in waiting on either side of the ailse in the current American political landscape, and this may well take a long time to sort out. In other threads I have theorized that as the economic, demographic and political landscapes change, the structures and institutions that were created in the past are becoming less and less relevant. Unless and until the "new" structures and institutions reach a level of development that they clearly define the social landscape (and these become the incubators of the new leadership), then we will be stuck with the "old" leadership pool, working on old and no longer functional assumptions and principles. As the book "The Big Shift" shows, Canada is not immune to this problem either:

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/09/02/leaderless-america-on-labor-day/?print=1



> *Leaderless America on Labor Day*
> Posted By Roger L Simon On September 2, 2013 @ 12:10 am In American Tea Party,Tea Party,terrorism,Uncategorized,United Nations | 67 Comments
> 
> Conservatives and libertarians can rejoice, if they wish, at the spectacle of Barack Obama proving once again — and perhaps more definitively than ever — that he is the worst president of the modern era [1], through his utter mishandling of the Syrian situation.
> 
> But they ought to wipe the smirks off their faces, because here’s the bitter truth: The GOP bench — the right-wing or even center right-wing presidents in waiting — isn’t a helluva lot better. Not enough, anyway.
> 
> At no time in our history, at least in my increasingly long lifetime, has there been such a dearth of key political leadership in our country on both sides of the ideological divide — and at a moment when the world seems about to explode.
> 
> Much as they have a great deal to recommend domestically, I’m sorry but Ted Cruz and Rand Paul — the leading “conservatarian” lights of the Senate — do not seem prepared to deal with Syria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, North Korea, and, of course, Russia and China.
> 
> It is not enough to roll up the libertarian gangplanks and let the insane of the world blow each other up. That policy rarely works. It certainly didn’t in the 1930s. The insane of the world have a way of coming back to bite you. They’re doing their best at this very moment.
> 
> This is a sad Labor Day. America needs serious leadership and it doesn’t have it. Say what you want about this country, about its mistakes and its flaws, but a Pax Americana has prevailed since World War II. And that Pax has been a great positive for humanity. The Obama era seems to be ending it.
> 
> And the leadership pool does not look capable of recovering it. No Reagans are in the offing.
> 
> On the Democratic side we have the addle-brained Biden and the dishonest, selfish Hillary.
> 
> On the Republican side… who?
> 
> No one of real stature.
> 
> Maybe it’s time to look away from the political sphere to someone like Ben Carson [2], who has at least achieved success doing genuine good as a pediatric neurosurgeon.
> 
> We are at a crossroads. We have a president clearly without the courage to lead. Since that’s the case, why don’t we start to do it ourselves?
> 
> They say that the people get the leaders they deserve — and that may have been our problem. Maybe we have lost the soul of our country and we are, as they trumpet in the Syrian newspapers, beginning our decline. (Maybe we began it a few years ago.)
> 
> But then again, maybe not. Maybe we can take this opportunity as a country to engage with the world in an intelligent way. We are the leaders of the world, like it or not. If we give it up, the center will not hold. You don’t have to be a genius to see that.
> 
> No one else is going to do it — no other country and certainly not the UN. If our president doesn’t want to do it, we the people must take things over from him.
> 
> I know it sounds like a lot of work, but if not now, when? And if not we, who?
> 
> Happy Labor Day.
> 
> (Photo by spirit of america / Shutterstock.com [3].)
> 
> Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/09/02/leaderless-america-on-labor-day/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] worst president of the modern era: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/09/01/is-barack-obama-americas-worst-and-most-incomptent-president/
> [2] someone like Ben Carson: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2013/02/11/sam-tanenhaus-meet-dr-benjamin-carson/
> [3] Shutterstock.com: http://www.shutterstock.com


----------



## Edward Campbell

Now I know what's wrong!

Before one can _consider_ US foreign policy, says Micah Zenko, the Douglas Dillon fellow with the Center for Preventive Action at the _Council on Foreign Relations_, you need to have a handy-dandy pocket translator which he, very kindly, provides in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Policy_:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/04/a_translation_guide_to_foreign_policy_gibberish


> A Translation Guide to Foreign Policy Gibberish
> *Wondering what is meant by 'all options are on the table'? A spokesperson will 'look into that' for you.*
> 
> BY MICAH ZENKO
> 
> SEPTEMBER 4, 2013
> 
> Evaluating U.S. foreign policy starts with the tricky task of understanding what U.S. foreign policy actually is. Analysts endowed with great forbearance can listen to the question-and-answer sessions with spokespersons from the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon. These folks have the unenviable task of putting forward the best case for administration policies, while providing as little newsworthy information as possible.
> 
> This is accomplished by using words or phrases that are consistently positive, action-oriented, and ambiguous enough to maintain maximum flexibility as more information becomes available and goals and interests shift. To help the uninitiated better understand what government flacks really mean, please keep this foreign policy translator handy the next time you are watching C-SPAN.
> 
> *"We're evaluating the situation"*: We still haven't done anything.
> 
> *"Events on the ground are fluid"*: If I articulate an official position on what's happening, somebody could get upset with my word choice.
> 
> *"All options are on the table"*: Bombs.
> 
> *"We can't rule anything out"*: We retain the right to do anything and everything.
> 
> *"Our position has been very clear"*: Let me re-read some nonspecific generalizations from the briefing book that don't address your question.
> 
> *"We welcome this debate"*: After harnessing the federal government's resources to hide the issue, we're going to dilute it with adjectives, already-public information, and selective leaking.
> 
> *"We have serious concerns"*: The harshest possible condemnation of an American ally.
> 
> *"Intolerable"*: Tolerable -- obviously, since we're still only talking about it.
> 
> *"Policy X is not aimed at any one country"*: Policy X is aimed at China or Iran.
> 
> *"We're in close consultation with X"*: We're going through the pretense of listening to others in an effort to spread the blame and burden.
> 
> * "I would refer you to..." (version one)*: See the earlier comments by a senior official that do not address your question.
> 
> *"I would refer you to..." (version two)*: See the spokesperson at another agency who also will not answer your question.
> 
> *"I haven't read that report yet"*: We all read and discussed the report first thing this morning, but it raises uncomfortable questions that I won't address.
> 
> *"Person X is free to speak their mind"*: Person X still doesn't fully appreciate our very clear position; such people are often characterized as having "an agenda."
> 
> *"I think you're reading too much into this"*: Any news item conflicting with White House policy.
> 
> *"I'm not in a position to comment here"*: An anonymous "official" can fill you in via a well-placed leak momentarily.
> 
> *"I don't have anything for you on that"*: That is a particularly uncomfortable question that of course I will not answer.
> 
> *"I'm not going to prejudge the outcome"*: Deferring the articulation of any comments to describe an upcoming event.
> 
> *"That's an excellent question"*: The opening response to every non-answer.
> 
> *"I will look into that"*: I probably won't look into that, but feel free to ask again at tomorrow's press briefing.




The above is, quite possibly, the most useful thing I've posted all week / month / year / in my lifetime _(delete which not applicable)_.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The above is, quite possibly, the most useful thing I've posted all week / month / year / in my lifetime _(delete which not applicable)_.



Yes. And very applicable not just to foreign affairs types but also to most of our domestic politicians, their staffs and spokespersons, corporate leaders and their spokespersons, and sometimes an uncomfortably high percentage of military leaders (sometimes...not always). In short, any public figure or their representatives at one of those moments when people seem to think that the truth should be rationed.

The issue of US domestic politics' effect on its foreign policy, and the rise and fall of consensus, either domestic or international seems to me to be really a cyclic thing rather than some unique and unheard-of development. This isn't the first time that the US has been deeply and bitterly divided over foreign policy issues. I recently read Olson's _Those Angry Days_ (covers the US isolationism vs intervention debate under Roosevelt) and McCullough's _Truman_: both these show that the divisions in US society and politics over going to war were quite deep and bitter.

Although the party roles were reversed from what received wisdom today would lead us to think (GOP was bitterly antiwar (with the notable exception of their Presidential candidate Wilkie), while Dems were generally (but not universally) pro-intervention in Europe), the period featured all the same sorts of nasty name-calling, attack politics, biased media (in one direction or the other) protests and pronouncements by various groups (university students, "Mothers for Peace", etc) that we have come to associate with Vietnam and since.

 It revealed a split that generally showed the Northeast US heavily in favour of war or alignment against Germany, with the South and the Midwest generally favouring isolationism. (That faultline is still there...) The "_Greatest Generation_"-type of rosy memory about those days seems to have obscured this period in US history, and we are left with a false idea of a unified country.

In the longer view, the world changes, and no great power lasts forever. There are no "_Thousand Year Reichs_". Just ask the Dutch, Spanish, French, British and Germans. The US will not last forever as the world's most powerful nation, although it may take a long time to lose that status. Claims that it will be eternal, or that it "must" be, sound kind of shrill and desperate. 

The good thing about Western society, especially in the "Anglosphere", is that it has an inherent ability to adapt, change and evolve to contain many points of view, without dissolving into a bloody trainwreck. America will survive this, too.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group has written a provactive little books called Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World in which he argues (caution: *gross oversimplification* follows) that voters in developed countries such as the United States, China (where they don't vote much), India, Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan expect their elected leaders to focus on domestic challenges rather than problems abroad. The result is a lack of global leadership, one that has developed just as growing numbers of transnational problems from Middle East turmoil, through intensified territorial disputes in Asia, climate change and conflicts in cyberspace, to poorly regulated cross-border financial flows, are gathering momentum. We may have a G-20 and a G-8 but, when it comes to taking _responsibility_ and acting _authoritatively_, it is G-0 world.

Today Prof Bremmer argues that the Syrian situation, and President Obama's dithering about it, amply proves his point. I agree.


----------



## a_majoor

Sounds like another book for the reading list. 

The idea that political leaders are almost exclusively focused on domestic politics is almost a truism (Syrians can't vote for any of our politicians, after all), and looking at the flip flopping of the US Administration it is pretty clear that all these contortions are designed around the singular purpose of gaining domestic support, positioning for the 2014 mid terms and punishing the political opposition rather than actually having anything to do with Syria (the window on that problem closed two years ago).


----------



## Edward Campbell

Conrad Black offers a good summary of American _strategy_ since Eisenhower (and Europe's since Thatcher) ~ a litany of failures in other words ~ in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_. Caution: his penultimate paragraph, regarding what Canada _might_ do, is arrant nonsense:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/07/conrad-black-syrian-slapstick/


> Syrian slapstick
> 
> Conrad Black
> 
> 13/09/07
> 
> Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States.
> 
> The Soviet Union crumbled jurisdictionally: In 1990-1991, one country became the 16 formerly constituent republics of that country, and except perhaps for Belarus, none of them show much disposition to return to the Russian fold into which they had been gathered, almost always by brute force, over the previous 300 years.
> 
> The cataclysmic decline of France, of course, was the result of being overrun by Nazi Germany in 1940. And while it took until the return of de Gaulle in 1958 and the establishment of the Fifth Republic with durable governments and a serious currency, and the end of the Algerian War in 1962, and the addition of some other cubits to France’s stature, the largest step in its resurrection was accomplished by the Allied armies sweeping the Germans out of France in 1944.
> 
> What we are witnessing now in the United States, by contrast, is just the backwash of inept policy-making in Washington, and nothing that could not eventually be put right.
> 
> But for this administration to redeem its credibility now would require a change of direction and method so radical it would be the national equivalent of the comeback of Lazarus: a miraculous revolution in the condition of an individual (President Barack Obama), and a comparable metamorphosis (or a comprehensive replacement) of the astonishingly implausible claque around him.
> 
> Until recently, it would have been unimaginable to conceive of John Kerry as the strongman of the National Security Council. This is the man who attended political catechism classes from the North Vietnamese to memorize and repeat their accusations against his country of war crimes in Indochina, and, inter alia, ran for president in 2004 asserting that while he had voted to invade Iraq in 2003, he was not implicated in that decision because he did not vote to fund the invasion once underway. (Perhaps Thomas E. Dewey would have been an upset presidential winner in 1944 if he had proclaimed his support for the D-Day landings but advocated an immediate cut-off of funds for General Eisenhower’s armies of liberation.)
> 
> As has been touched upon here before, the desire to avoid America in another foreign conflict is understandable. But if that is the policy, the president of the United States should not state that presidents of countries in upheaval (e.g., Bashar Assad) “must go,” should not draw “red lines” and ignore them, should not devise plans to punish rogue leaders but not actually damage their war-making ability, should not promise action and send forces to carry out the action, and then have, in current parlance, a public “conversation” with himself about whether to do anything, and should not thereby abdicate his great office in all respects except the salary and perquisites.
> 
> A Senate committee has voted President Obama the authority to attack Syria. But he is the commander-in-chief. He has that authority already, and what he is doing is implicitly making the exercise of that power dependent on Congressional approval. How does that square with the presidential oath, which requires of the inductee that he “faithfully execute the office” and that he “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”?
> 
> President Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” and he was right. The American public despises Congress, with good reason. Most of the members are venal, politically cowardly, and incompetent; the idea of those 535 log-rolling gas-bags sharing the command of the U.S. armed forces does not bear thinking about. And if the United States is effectively blasé about countries using chemical weapons on their people, as it apparently is about the formerly “unacceptable” development of nuclear weapons by Iran, this depressing news should be imparted to the world explicitly by the administration and not left to be surmised from the waffling of the Congress.
> 
> What is more worrisome than the fact that the United States has an inadequate president, is that the public still accords the incumbent a significant degree of support. If the American people, who have responded to intelligent leadership so often within living memory, has become so morally obtuse that it buys into this flimflam, the problem is more profound than I imagined.
> 
> What American will need in 2016 is a new president who enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to prevent genocide, to avenge extreme provocations, or to preserve world peace, and in accord with constitutional and international law. That policy would have cut post-Korea war-making to evicting Saddam from Kuwait, the Taliban from Afghanistan, modestly assisting the opponents of Gaddafi and Assad, (as leaders who had monstrously provoked the West), and would have spared everyone the chimerical extravagance of nation-building in hopeless places. Vietnam and the second Iraq War would have been sidestepped altogether.
> 
> The Americans show no sign of wanting their country to be regarded as absurd in the world, and they are so America-centric, and so suffused with the heroic mythos of America, that they seem unable to grasp the possibility that it is.
> 
> There is a contagion that makes the condition less startling: The United Kingdom suddenly has begun to appear ridiculous, too. The British replaced leaders who did not conduct wars effectively, during the Seven Years’, American Revolutionary, Napoleonic, Crimean, and both World Wars. But never in their history until last week have they had a prime minister who summoned Parliament to seek authority to make war and then was denied that authority. The Grand Alliance of Churchill and Roosevelt, the Special Relationship of Thatcher and Reagan, is reduced to slap-stick, farce.
> 
> The country that could pick up the slack and lead is Germany, but it is psychologically incapable. A third of its voters are communists, eco-extremists or cyber-nihilists calling themselves “pirates.” They are still in attrition-therapy over the after-effects of Nazi and communist rule. And the European power that can’t take the lead, because it is almost bankrupt, over-centralized, suffocating in pettifogging regulations and governed by idiots, is France (though it yet has the superb, often misplaced, feline confidence of a Great Power, and admittedly has been magnificent on Libya, Mali and Syria).
> 
> Canada could play a role — but first it must acquire an aircraft carrier and the other equipment necessary to project power. For starters, we should buy one of these splendid aircraft carriers the United States is retiring because of the gridlock-fed deficit and the idiocy of sequestration, rename it H.M.C.S. Canada, recruit the 6,000 people necessary for the crew and partner with other countries in the aviation industry that can help provide it with the aircraft it would carry, and show the aid and defence flag in the world. Nearly 70 years ago, recall, we had two — admittedly much smaller — aircraft carriers despite having a population of just 11.5-million. At the least we could get a helicopter carrier.
> 
> The United States is a hard-working, patriotic country with a talented work force and a political system that can generate policy and govern and lead effectively. Unless the environmentalist extremists who predicted that by now Manhattan would be underwater, the average temperature in Toronto in February would be 20C, and that we would all be gasping for oxygen, find richer electoral sugar daddies than the oil industry and get political control of that country (almost impossible), the United States will be self-sufficient in energy in a few years. This will end the suicidal U.S. balance-of-payments deficit, cut the worst terrorist-supporting, oil-producing regimes in the world off at the ankles financially, and drastically reduce the federal government budget deficit.
> 
> _National Post_
> 
> cbletters@gmail.com




I think Conrad Black's strategic _tour d'horizon_ is pretty accurate. When he steps into military operations ~ as with his recommendation that Canada acquire a used USN aircraft carrier ~ he slips and falls, but ...

America will get a new president in 2016; I really doubt (s)he will one who _"enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to ..."_ (I don't agree with all of Conrad Black's list, either.) I _think_ (fear) America will select someone, anyone, who is not Barack Obama, just as they picked Obama because he was the antithesis of George W Bush.


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group has written a provactive little books called Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World in which he argues (caution: *gross oversimplification* follows) that voters in developed countries such as the United States, China (where they don't vote much), India, Britain, Germany, Canada and Japan expect their elected leaders to focus on domestic challenges rather than problems abroad. The result is a lack of global leadership, one that has developed just as growing numbers of transnational problems from Middle East turmoil, through intensified territorial disputes in Asia, climate change and conflicts in cyberspace, to poorly regulated cross-border financial flows, are gathering momentum. We may have a G-20 and a G-8 but, when it comes to taking _responsibility_ and acting _authoritatively_, it is G-0 world.
> 
> Today Prof Bremmer argues that the Syrian situation, and President Obama's dithering about it, amply proves his point. I agree.




More, this time wrong, in my _opinion_ about the approach of _G-Zero_ in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/39507c3a-1408-11e3-9289-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz2eIlZM5y9


> The west is accelerating its strategic decline
> *The trend is towards political limits on force, writes François Heisbourg*
> 
> By François Heisbourg
> 
> September 4, 2013
> 
> The notion that the relative power of the west is receding as emerging economies gain political and strategic heft is not novel. It is clear, too, from the Syrian crisis, that the new great powers, including a reinvigorated Russia, are deeply averse to interference in what they see as inalienable sovereign rights – an attitude explained in many instances by their former colonial or dependent status. Moscow, unreconciled with the loss of empire, takes a particularly harsh stance. This positioning leads in turn to reluctance to give multilateral cover to armed intervention, as demonstrated by the wrangling in the UN Security Council since the beginning of the Syrian insurrection in 2011.
> 
> In light of these developments, the west was inevitably going to lose some of its ability to set the global agenda and to conduct foreign military operations. This process has been accelerated by the west’s economic slowdown since 2007.
> 
> Some of the manifestations of this trend are mechanical: when defence budgets shrink, the ability to intervene is diminished correspondingly. This explains in part why any military strike against Syria was never going to involve more than a handful of countries: only six Nato members field the sort of cruise missiles needed for a brutal and effective one-day operation without having to demolish air defences beforehand in a campaign lasting weeks.
> 
> By contrast, the Kosovo air war in 1999 involved more than 20 countries in combat roles. This trend is accelerating. Europe’s defence spending is plunging (by 15 per cent since the beginning of the economic crisis), with no end in sight. The US defence budget is hammered by across-the-board cuts under sequestration, while China’s military expenditure at a pace roughly equal with gross domestic product growth of 7 per cent or more, a trend emulated by most of the emerging powers.
> 
> The west’s strategic decline has also been hastened by its own divisions, even when there has been agreement in the Security Council to authorise the use of force. During the 2011 Libyan air campaign, fully half of Nato’s members, and the same proportion of the EU, refused to have anything to do with it. Among those that supported it, not all flew combat missions. America’s otherwise apposite decision to shift its strategic focus towards the Asia-Pacific region has compounded the material effect of these divisions by imposing a greater burden on a limited set of allies with shrinking defence assets. A fellow analyst, Camille Grand, styles the strategic outcome as the “coalition of the unable and the unwilling”.
> 
> The Syrian crisis introduces an additional, self-inflicted twist to this situation. The west’s military power may be in relative decline but as the example of cruise missiles demonstrates, countries such as the US, the UK and France continue to have capabilities second to none. The will to act may be weak in most of the west but it is not universally so. The new factor is the sudden decision of the executive branch in the UK and the US to shift war powers to the legislative branch. This is what UK Prime Minister David Cameron did, with parliament’s vote against military action on August 29. President Barack Obama is now seeking not merely Congress’s support or approval for an intervention, but its authorisation. This is understandable in view of the conditions under which those two countries embarked on the catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq.
> The precedent established by these decisions could have been mitigated if – as soon as Syria in all probability crossed Mr Obama’s “red line” last month with the use of chemical weapons – Washington, London and possibly Paris had stated that the issue would be put to an exceptional show of legislators’ hands, given the inevitable absence of a Security Council go-ahead. This was not done. Process in London, and then in Washington, was helter-skelter.
> 
> In the US, it was worsened by Mr Obama’s strange argument that a strike was not time-sensitive. Punishment and/or the restoration of deterrence are by definition urgent in strategic affairs: if you are not ready and able to re-establish deterrence quickly, your ability to do so effectively diminishes rapidly.
> 
> The French situation is undecided. Public opinion is increasingly unenthusiastic, given the country’s isolation and the unpleasant prospect of suspending a proud country’s action on the say-so of US Congress. However, the executive did not lose the trust of voters during the Iraq misadventure, and an eventual US decision to strike could still involve substantial French participation. But whatever France does, the basic trend is one of a west that is limiting its own political ability to use force, above and beyond its internal divisions and the changing balance of military power.
> 
> The events in western legislatures of the past few days have made the world a safer place for those who use chemical weapons to kill their own populations, and for those powers that aid and support them.
> 
> _The writer is a special adviser at the_ Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, _a Paris-based think-tank_
> 
> Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013




Ultimately even _grand strategy_ is political and subject to the "people's" approval.

I doubt that Prime Minister Cameron intended to lose his vote in Parliament but I also doubt that he is overly upset. He authorized a vote because his political instincts told him that the British people wanted that level of consultation ~ he could have made an _executive_ decision, that's what the Constitution authorizes, but he understood that constitutional niceties are, always, trumped by political imperatives. Presidents Hollande and Obama are facing the same dilemma.

But, the headline is correct: our, the American led West's, strategic decline is real and it is accelerating. M. Heisbourg gets one of the issues right: declining defence budgets reduce our _capacity_ toact. But, declining defence budgets are also a political imperative ~ in America's case driven by fiscal irresponsibility, in Canada's, for example, by public "will." The Canadian people do not like, have never liked, spending on their defence and they are willing, even happy, to not "get involved" in too many military adventures. Strategy is, or should be, driven, in large part, by a cold, hard headed appreciation of the _national interest_ but it is, always, subservient to politics.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Conrad Black offers a good summary of American _strategy_ since Eisenhower (and Europe's since Thatcher) ~ a litany of failures in other words ~ in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_. Caution: his penultimate paragraph, regarding what Canada _might_ do, is arrant nonsense:
> 
> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/07/conrad-black-syrian-slapstick/
> 
> I think Conrad Black's strategic _tour d'horizon_ is pretty accurate. When he steps into military operations ~ as with his recommendation that Canada acquire a used USN aircraft carrier ~ he slips and falls, but ...
> 
> America will get a new president in 2016; I really doubt (s)he will one who _"enunciates a clear policy: foreign intervention only to ..."_ (I don't agree with all of Conrad Black's list, either.) I _think_ (fear) America will select someone, anyone, who is not Barack Obama, just as they picked Obama because he was the antithesis of George W Bush.



I tend to take most of what Black says with a grain of salt: he enjoys the sound of his own bombastic pontification.

Is Obama really "dithering"?. Is there another way of looking at his approach? Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent:

-he must have been very leery of being sucked into another "WMD trap" as happened with Iraq. That reasonable fear no doubt imposed some delay on the decision process. No administration would want to repeat that schmozzle;

-seeing the decline in US popular support for foreign military entanglement (as normally happens in the US after every major war...), was he perhaps wise NOT to act unilaterally, but to wait and try and build an evidence-based case to convince a bitter, skeptical and divided public?;

-aware of the impasse that has set in in the Legislative bodies on just about any important issue you might care to name, was Obama wrong to seek Congressional support first, as opposed to acting under Presidential authority alone. After all, who knows where this all might lead? If it goes bad (this IS the Middle East, remember...), it seems wise to me to have Congress on board first. Otherwise, the GOP would have him for breakfast (again); and

-in the end, what is so wrong about letting the people and their elected representatives having a say in the use of force on their behalf by the govt they elected? After all, whose sons and daughters are going to be put in harm's way?


----------



## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> I tend to take most of what Black says with a grain of salt: he enjoys the sound of his own bombastic pontification.
> 
> Is Obama really "dithering"?. Is there another way of looking at his approach? Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent:
> 
> -he must have been very leery of being sucked into another "WMD trap" as happened with Iraq. That reasonable fear no doubt imposed some delay on the decision process. No administration would want to repeat that schmozzle;
> 
> -seeing the decline in US popular support for foreign military entanglement (as normally happens in the US after every major war...), was he perhaps wise NOT to act unilaterally, but to wait and try and build an evidence-based case to convince a bitter, skeptical and divided public?;
> 
> -aware of the impasse that has set in in the Legislative bodies on just about any important issue you might care to name, was Obama wrong to seek Congressional support first, as opposed to acting under Presidential authority alone. After all, who knows where this all might lead? If it goes bad (this IS the Middle East, remember...), it seems wise to me to have Congress on board first. Otherwise, the GOP would have him for breakfast (again); and
> 
> -in the end, what is so wrong about letting the people and their elected representatives having a say in the use of force on their behalf by the govt they elected? After all, whose sons and daughters are going to be put in harm's way?




If President Obama is just being prudent, just testing the political waters then why, in the name of all that's holy, did he invest so much political capital in it?

I'm sorry, but if it walks like a duck, etc ... dithering is the right word. He painted himself into this corner when he thought (if thought is what really happened, maybe reacted is a better word) it would come to nothing. He appears to have used the "red line" as a throw away, maybe as a distraction to divert attention from Benjamin Netanyahu's far more serious red line.





This red line could signal a nuclear war in the Middle East


There is, in fact, nothing wrong with letting the people decide - in fact, in many respects it has become a political imperative. But that's not what President Obama said a week ago, is it? He was organizing a _coalition of the willing_ on a "go it alone" basis until the British parliament pulled the rug out from under that. Then he did a pirouette and decided to consult the US Congress, risking even more political capital for himself and future presidents.

President Obama, not former Prime Minister Martin, has earned the title of Mr. Dithers.


----------



## Journeyman

pbi said:
			
		

> Maybe he isn't "dithering" but being prudent


I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see _absolutely no one_ behind him.  

He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'

 :2c:


----------



## George Wallace

.....And the Israelis have a larger threat when they use the term "Red Line" in the "Samson Option".  It is not in the interests of the US to use any similar option in a situation as this.


----------



## observor 69

Obama is smart, educated, pragmatic and to all appearances a sensible individual but without any military background, like most members of Congress.
In spite of all the advice and intelligence provided how are any of today's politician going to have the ability, experience? to deal with such global problems?
Putting myself in his situation I am afraid my pragmatic nature would lead to me being called "Mr.Dithers."

My thoughts perhaps influenced by Historian Margaret MacMillan on what the ‘war to end wars’ can teach us.


----------



## Jed

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see _absolutely no one_ behind him.
> 
> He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'
> 
> :2c:



I have to agree with that assessment.


----------



## pbi

Baden  Guy said:
			
		

> Obama is smart, educated, pragmatic and to all appearances a sensible individual but without any military background, like most members of Congress.
> In spite of all the advice and intelligence provided how are any of today's politician going to have the ability, experience? to deal with such global problems?
> Putting myself in his situation I am afraid my pragmatic nature would lead to me being called "Mr.Dithers."
> 
> My thoughts perhaps influenced by Historian Margaret MacMillan on what the ‘war to end wars’ can teach us.



With a very few exceptions such as Eisenhower, I don't recall too many US Presidents since 1900  who have had military experience other than at a very tactical level.  None (except Ike) had much (or any...) exposure to the level where strategic understanding is needed. But, really, so what?  That's what military advisors are for.



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> If President Obama is just being prudent, just testing the political waters then why, in the name of all that's holy, did he invest so much political capital in it?



I agree that this was a huge mistake. Never, ever, make threats. Just make promises, or keep quiet.


----------



## tomahawk6

Teddy Roosevelt used to say: Speak softly but carry a big stick. I really don't think Obama wants to take any action.If he wanted to he could have struck Syria without Congressional approval.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Teddy Roosevelt used to say: Speak softly but carry a big stick. I really don't think Obama wants to take any action.If he wanted to he could have struck Syria without Congressional approval.



I tend to agree with you. Viewing it as an outsider (albeit one with a great interest in US political culture) I think Obama felt he needed a "tough guy" moment to offset the impression that he is really just an effete intellectual  who wants to turn the US into a socialist workers' paradise. I don't believe this action really conforms to his political nature, or at least not to how he interprets what it means to be a Democrat. IMHO his nature is more likely to seek consensus for an act he doesn't feel comfortable with, but it is not turning out well for him. I don't really see a good outcome no matter how this turns out.

That said, isn't it true that Democrat Presidents have initiated most of America's wars and major military interventions in the last century or so?


----------



## Edward Campbell

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I don't believe it's dithering or prudence; it's simply a matter of having waved his arm forward while shouting "follow me boys," and after two steps turning to see _absolutely no one_ behind him.
> 
> He had his "oh f*ck" moment, and is now clutching at any straw to salvage credibility -- his and the US'
> 
> :2c:




I'm going to go out on a limb and, probably, off on a tangent here (have I missed any useful metaphors?) by suggesting that there is a _social_ aspect to this.

Some analysts and members here, especially Thucydides, have commented on the quite vital role that _institutions_ make in developing the sort of _liberal_, democratic, _capitalist_/entrepreneurial society we enjoy ~ not just the “big” institutions like courts of law and universities, but, even more, smaller, local institutions like the public library and the service club. They are, in fact, what make us communities, and that is something we have _celebrated_, politically, since 1341 when the House of Commons began to deliberate, separately, from the Lords. We, here in Canada, pay better tribute to that history than do others who use the same term because we call it, in French, _la Chambre des communes_, the “house of communities,” which is what Edward III had in mind when he summoned the knights of the shires and burgesses to sit, in  their own right, to represent their communities.

So, our society is, in my opinion, a collection of communities – each having both a geographic and a _social_ nature. And communities, I also think, are established and maintained by people gathering in place and time and in _institutions_: in local churches, clubs and groups – harvests, barn raisings and winter quilting circles – schools, and even the local, community bank and post office which represented the bigger, broader outside world.

Where and when the institutions were strong communities grew, prospered and survived, even when their original _raison d'être_ ceased to matter. When the institutions were or are weak the community withers and dies and even though people may still live together in place and time they no longer work together, for the common good and they, _de facto_, cease to be a community. That's why there was, and still is a perceived need for someone like Barack Obama to have been a “community organizer.” The people in a place had lost their “community” status.

(I am fairly confident in saying why I believe communities take root and grow; I am less sure about why they wither and die; but I am sure that both happen and I think that when too many communities die then the broader society is in trouble.)

I also believe that communities are the base of political power in the modern world. Political parties are nothing more than communities, united around a legislative platform or manifesto. We can, fairly easily track the rises and falls of Whigs, Tories, Federalists, Liberals, Conservatives, Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Christian Democrats, Labourites, Fascists, National Socialists, Communists, New Democrats and Greens and, and, and, almost _ad infintum_. Some things, some _causes_ united people in each party and, perhaps more importantly, divided them from all the others. Even though, over time, some parties pretty much totally exchanged positions with other parties, some core ideas still united some people in various political _movements_.

The 20th century was tough on communities. Societies became mobile and the “ties than bind” became harder and harder to maintain. In the 1930s and '40s, in America, we saw huge migrations that changed the “face” of many cities and, in the 1950s, created new suburbs ... but neither big cities nor new suburbs were, necessarily, strong communities.

In the 1970s and '80s, in America, the political communities also began to unravel. The phenomenon of the _Reagan Democrats_ (in 1980 and '84) fundamentally reshaped American politics. Both the Democratic and Republic Party bases shifted, radically, away from the _centre_ and towards their respective fringes. American political culture, indeed American culture in general, is so _attractive_, it spreads so easily, thanks to mass media, that what transpires in America soon infected Australia and Belgium, Canada and Denmark and so on down through to Yemen and Zambia.

I believe that what are called the culture wars in America, and which are also being waged more or less globally – represent the decline of social communities and the shifting of political communities away from the traditional centre. Remember what Yeats said: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer; *things fall apart; the centre cannot hold*.”

(Parkinson and Brannen suggest, in their analysis of Yeats poetry, that in earlier drafts of _The Second Coming_ he included the lines: "And there's no Burke to cry aloud no Pitt," and "The good are wavering, while the worst prevail." I suppose that's a bit like me crying out that there is no Stimson, no Truman or Eisenhower, no Margaret Thatcher.)

I wonder if President Obama sees that the American _centre_ is almost vacant in political terms, that it cries out for a leader who will drag one or the other of the parties back towards it? Or are he and his political team simply intent upon the next political goals: the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 general elections? The unnamed official cited in the _Los Angeles Times_ as saying that President Obama's _policy_ goal is “not to be mocked” suggests to me that this is ALL, 100% about domestic, partisan politics, about holding on to a majority in the US Senate, about regaining control of the House of Representatives, about electing another Democrat as president in 2016 ~ all, in other words, about Barack Obama's political legacy.

To tie back: I believe the US response to the Syrian civil war is framed, totally, in terms of US partisan politics. I believe, further that the US political process is badly damaged dues to the ongoing culture wars which, I believe again, are rooted in the decline of the “civil centre” which is caused by the weakening of  the _institutions_ that hold “communities” together.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I'm going to go out on a limb and, probably, off on a tangent here (have I missed any useful metaphors?) by suggesting that there is a _social_ aspect to this....The 20th century was tough on communities. Societies became mobile and the “ties than bind” became harder and harder to maintain. In the 1930s and '40s, in America, we saw huge migrations that changed the “face” of many cities and, in the 1950s, created new suburbs ... but neither big cities nor new suburbs were, necessarily, strong communities...To tie back: I believe the US response to the Syrian civil war is framed, totally, in terms of US partisan politics. I believe, further that the US political process is badly damaged dues to the ongoing culture wars which, I believe again, are rooted in the decline of the “civil centre” which is caused by the weakening of  the _institutions_ that hold “communities” together.



 As usual E.R, your post is well thought out, convincingly researched and a bit daunting to try to follow. 

I agree with you (and Truman...) that ultimately almost everything that a democratic (not "Democrat") government does in the world will be rooted in domestic politics. How the world is viewed, whether or not it is worth committing national resources overseas as opposed to at home, and what constitutes "bad behaviour" that demads intervention, are all filtered very heavily through what the government of the day understands (or thinks it understands...) about the political culture on the home front.

You could almost argue that "_national interests_" are really only what "_interests the nation_" (ie: the electorate), but this might be too much of a simplification, even for me. Still, if this did not have at least some degree of truth in it, I doubt that governments would invest so much time and effort into trying to influence public opinion on the one hand, while trying to gauge it on the other.

I disagree that the US has ever had much of a real consensus in its domestic politics (for other than short moments), and only for brief periods in foreign policy. Going as far back as the War of 1812, there was deep division in the US. Some New England states, for example, wanted nothing to do with the war and did not contribute troops, continuing to trade happily with the British throughout. This lack of total consensus obviously hasn't been a terribly bad thing, as far as the development of the US as a world power has gone. Up until recently, it was probably a healthy dynamic.

That seems, IMHO, to have changed. A few years ago, a Canadian friend who lived and worked in D.C. told me that if somebody brought up politics at a cocktail party, the room quickly split in half and the air became thick. I think I see the same thing in public discourse in the US: issues seem not to be judged on any kind of pragmatic basis, but instead as a polemical screaming match between Right and Left, between "left-wing latte-sipping liberal elites who hate America" and "fascist-militarist book-burning tools of corporate Amerika". The slanging match over the issue of a public health care system is, I think, a case in point. Exaggerations and venom were spewed on both sides.

Supplementing (or aggravating...) this division is the gradual regression of mass media back to the days of the 18th century newspapers that were published to uphold a particular narrow political or social viewpoint, and usually closely identified with one political party or another. People mock "mainstream media", but without it, where is the voice of the pragmatic, moderate centre? On Twitter? How useful is it if all we ever hear or read is preaching to the choir?

Ironic, isn't it, that both the Left and the Right shriek endlessly that they are the victims of a hostile media controlled by their enemies.

Finally, what is bothering me more and more is the creep of tis type of divisive, stupid, unproductive viciousness into Canadan politics. Suggesting that people who might question a pipeline development are "foreign-funded eco-terrorists" or that you must support an Internet surveillance bill wholeheartedly or else you "support child pornographers" are, IMHO, examples of this kind of black and white, my way or the highway, approach to issues. This, in my view, will get us nowhere.


----------



## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> ...
> Finally, what is bothering me more and more is the creep of this type of divisive, stupid, unproductive viciousness into Canadan politics. Suggesting that people who might question a pipeline development are "foreign-funded eco-terrorists" or that you must support an Internet surveillance bill wholeheartedly or else you "support child pornographers" are, IMHO, examples of this kind of black and white, my way or the highway, approach to issues. This, in my view, will get us nowhere.




And you have zeroed in on what frightens me. But it's not because it "will get us nowhere," my fear is that it will get us into a political "place" that will be bad for our country.


----------



## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> ...
> Supplementing (or aggravating...) this division is the gradual regression of mass media back to the days of the 18th century newspapers that were published to uphold a particular narrow political or social viewpoint, and usually closely identified with one political party or another. People mock "mainstream media", but without it, where is the voice of the pragmatic, moderate centre? On Twitter? How useful is it if all we ever hear or read is preaching to the choir?
> ...




I have said, several times, that I'm not dismayed by _biased_ media. In fact I don't think I ever expect unbiased reporting. The trick, it seems to me, is to:

     1. Have Use several different media sources for information ~ this is something that we have been able to do since about the 1930s, when radio, later TV, and later still the internet were able to compete with the print media; and

     2. Accept, even welcome the biases because *policy* is, as you mention, a fundamentally *political* thing and the diverse media, with all its political biases, helps us to see the issues more clearly.

Our big advantage, over, say, China, is that the _Toronto Star_ does compete, in the marketplace of _ideas_, with _Sun News Network_ and for every _Toronto Sun_ we have _Foreign Affairs_, and the _Cato Institute_ is balanced by the _Institute for Policy Studies_.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I have said, several times, that I'm not dismayed by _biased_ media. In fact I don't think I ever expect unbiased reporting. The trick, it seems to me, is to:
> 
> 1. Have Use several different media sources for information ~ this is something that we have been able to do since about the 1930s, when radio, later TV, and later still the internet were able to compete with the print media; and
> 
> 2. Accept, even welcome the biases because *policy* is, as you mention, a fundamentally *political* thing and the diverse media, with all its political biases, helps us to see the issues more clearly.
> 
> Our big advantage, over, say, China, is that the _Toronto Star_ does compete, in the marketplace of _ideas_, with _Sun News Network_ and for every _Toronto Sun_ we have _Foreign Affairs_, and the _Cato Institute_ is balanced by the _Institute for Policy Studies_.



I suppose that you're right, to the extent that people actually do make the effort to read or listen to an opposing viewpoint. But how often does that happen? I once had a US Army Col tell me that "No US Army officer would ever be caught dead listening to National Public Radio". By the same token, some people on the Left would ditch anybody who watches FoxMedia. Today, I think, it has become very easy to surround ourselves with  a media blanket that says only what we want to hear, and either never presents opposing viewpoints at all, or mocks and distorts them beyond recognition.


----------



## Haletown

Couldn't  resist.


----------



## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> I suppose that you're right, to the extent that people actually do make the effort to read or listen to an opposing viewpoint. But how often does that happen? I once had a US Army Col tell me that "No US Army officer would ever be caught dead listening to National Public Radio". By the same token, some people on the Left would ditch anybody who watches FoxMedia. Today, I think, it has become very easy to surround ourselves with  a media blanket that says only what we want to hear, and either never presents opposing viewpoints at all, or mocks and distorts them beyond recognition.




It's always easier to hear _agreeable_ news and views ~ but we don't really _learn_ much that way.

But where this has a deleterious impact is, I think, on the politically committed bases. I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada base, both a party member and a financial donor, and I am sad to say that many, many Conservatives are completely closed minded, as, I think, are equal numbers in the Liberal and NDP bases, too. My _suspicion_, from the time I spend in Texas each year, is that our Democratic and Republican confrères - the rock solid members of those party bases - are even more closed minded. What is not a matter of suspicion is that TV, especially, panders to these bases. None of the major networks, other than PBS, perhaps, even tries to present reasoned, unbiased analysis of policy issues. It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is *boring*; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political _extreme_, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.


Edit: spelling  :-[  Damned auto-spell-check!


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## The Bread Guy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But where this has a deleterious impact is, I think, on the politically committed bases. I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada base, both a party member and a financial donor, and I am sad to say that many, many Conservatives are completely closed minded, as, I think, are equal numbers in the Liberal and NDP bases, too. My _suspicion_, from the time I spend in Texas each year, is that our Democratic and Republican confrères - the rock solid members of those parts bases - are even more closed minded. What is not a matter of suspicion is that TV, especially, panders to these bases. None of the major networks, other than PBS, perhaps, even tries to present reasoned, unbiased analysis of policy issues. It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is *boring*; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political _extreme_, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.


QFT!!!!!!!


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## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is *boring*; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political _extreme_, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.
> Edit: spelling  :-[  Damned auto-spell-check!



Just like courtroom dramas mislead people to think that "real" court is full of exciting yelling and shouting and posturing, when in fact you know (if you spend any time in courts) that it is usually a bit more exciting than watching paint dry.
"Real" politics in a civil society, by which I mean the methods that actually get things done, might consist of a bit of yelling and shouting, but IMHO consists of a lot more talking, horsetrading and deal-cutting. If not, we get an impasse., and then the trench-digging starts.


----------



## Edward Campbell

In a column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _National Post_, Andrew Coyne provides a clear, accurate assessment of where the leader of the free world stands:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/16/andrew-coyne-america-ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you-or-anyone-really/


> America, ask not what your country can do for you, or anyone, really
> 
> Andrew Coyne
> 
> 16/09/13
> 
> It’s been a couple of days since Barack Obama’s latest diplomatic triumph in the Middle East, and already the reviews are in. From the Syrian “minister of national reconciliation,” Ali Haidar: “A victory for Syria, achieved thanks to our Russian friends.” From Georgy Mirsky, of the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow: “Russia has won. America didn’t so much lose as it was humiliated.” From Qassim Saadeddine, a rebel commander in northern Syria: “Let the Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors.”
> 
> It’s possible to imagine how this could have been handled worse: with the involvement of the North Koreans, perhaps, or via a plan to place the Suez under the protection of Iranian peacekeepers. Otherwise the disaster looks absolute.
> 
> A quick review of how we got here: the failure to support the Syrian opposition in the immediate aftermath of the uprising of April of 2011, when it briefly seemed Bashar al-Assad might join his fellow dictators in the tumbrels of the Arab Spring; the two years of dithering that followed, while Assad slowly regained the upper hand and the opposition fell into division and radicalization; the drawing of a “red line” at chemical warfare, with the promise of “enormous consequences” if it were crossed; the instant vacating of that promise when the red line was crossed, repeatedly, without consequence of any kind; the sudden vow of action, when the line was crossed in a way too overt to be ignored, i.e. after the posting of multiple YouTube videos of convulsing or prettily dead children; the equally sudden deferral of action, pending a vote of Congress, as it emerged that military intervention was proving unpopular with the public.
> 
> All culminating in the utter debacle of the past week: the Kerry blunder, the Russian offer, that weird, pointless Obama speech pleading with Congress not to vote on the measure he had asked them to vote on the previous week, the condescending Putin op-ed piece in The New York Times, and the final indignity, the sight of the Obama administration clinging to the Russian lifeline as it lifted them clear of the Congress.
> 
> Well, no, that’s not the final indignity, is it? Because now the administration will have to spend the next year, probably more, explaining away Assad’s refusal to live up to this weekend’s agreement, and the refusal of his Russian patrons to hold him to it, while the slaughter in Syria continues unabated. Indeed, that was the Assad regime’s first response to the agreement, even before the minister of national reconciliation’s ululation: to resume the bombing campaign it had temporarily suspended when it looked like Obama might be prepared to do something about it.
> 
> Not that the agreement would amount to much even if it were honoured. From Obama’s original reluctant, vacillating threat to do not very much to punish Assad — an “unbelievable small” retaliatory strike, his Secretary of State promised, believably — we are now reduced to a promise from the murderer to throw away the murder weapon. Even if the agreement were implemented to the letter, a year from now Assad would still be in power, still under Russian tutelage, still launching missiles into the suburbs of his own capital. He just would have to refrain from arming them with sarin gas.
> 
> But how likely is even that? Suppose Assad lives up to the agreement’s first article, and produces a “comprehensive listing” of his estimated thousand-ton arsenal of chemical weapons, which he has reportedly spent the last several days secreting about the country, within the week. Are we to believe United Nations inspectors will be able to locate and identify all of these, as per the agreement, by November — a process that has taken years elsewhere — in the middle of a civil war? And, further, that these will all be destroyed by the middle of next year?
> 
> And if they are not? Ah, says the administration: in that case, “the threat of force remains.” Well, yes: the threat. Just not the reality. As envisaged in the agreement, it would require a resolution of the Security Council, meaning the Russians — they who still deny that Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks — would have to vote for it. Or perhaps, following precedent, Obama could ask Congress for authority to go it alone. In an election year. Without fresh YouTube videos to remind people of what all the fuss was about.
> 
> And so, Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, or anyone, really — because you might not like the answer. After this, there isn’t any reason for anyone to take the threat of American force seriously. The public hasn’t the stomach for it, and the president hasn’t the authority. You think the Iranian regime, for example, is not watching all this with a cool and appraising eye?
> 
> This is perhaps the bitterest part of the farce. As if an emboldened Assad, an ascendant Putin, the emasculation of the West and the evaporation of the taboo on chemical weapons were not enough, Obama is now talking about engaging Iran in talks — on Syria, that is, talks on Iran’s own relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction having gotten conspicuously nowhere. But not to worry. As Obama told an interviewer Friday, “they shouldn’t draw a lesson that [because] we haven’t struck [in Syria] we won’t strike Iran.” No of course not. Why would they?
> 
> For their part, the Iranians seem open to the invitation, and I can’t say I blame them.
> 
> _Postmedia News_




To be clear, I think President Obama backed into (or stumbled into or was pushed into) most of the right answer: do nothing to or for either side. He would be wholly right if he was selling, not giving, arms to either or both sides.

But the phrase "the emasculation of the West" is apt; it isn't just America that has been tarnished; for better or worse Barack Obama IS the leader of the West and his successes raise us all and his failures diminish us all.

The next "leader of the free world" will be chosen in America, by Americans in 2016. Leading candidates include: Gov Jeb Bush, Gov Chris Christie, Sen Hillary Clinton, Sen Rand Paul, Prof Condoleeza Rice, Sen Marco Rubio  and Rep Paul Ryan. None of them strikes me as being a Roosevelt, a Truman or an Eisenhower ...


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> The next "leader of the free world" will be chosen in America, by Americans in 2016. Leading candidates include: Gov Jeb Bush, Gov Chris Christie, Sen Hillary Clinton, Sen Rand Paul, Prof Condoleeza Rice, Sen Marco Rubio  and Rep Paul Ryan. None of them strikes me as being a Roosevelt, a Truman or an Eisenhower ...



I predict it will be a Republican, who (along with a largely Republican Congress elected out of frustration with the Democrats) will ride to power by rattling on about "making America great again" or "making the bad guys fear us", etc, thus appealing to America's sense of frustration and wounded pride, just as Putin has successfully appealed over the last few years to Russia's frustration at being relegated to a second tier. 

Unfortunately, this new Republican leader will then want to win his spurs as quickly as possible, by rushing off to the nearest fire, probably in the usual ill-considered way. This will feel great, and will provoke all sorts of punditry about "America's Renaissance" etc. And then, like so often before, it will go very badly wrong. But this time, it will be going wrong in a world in which there may be much less manoeuvre room for the US, and much less left in the "credibility account".

Just my  :2c:


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## a_majoor

I expect most of what you say will come true, with the main countervailing argument being there will have to be a huge amount of political capital and time expended on reviving the American economy. This will leave most people inclined to let "them fuuiners" go off and kill each other in peace, without the US getting involved.


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## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> I expect most of what you say will come true, with the main countervailing argument being there will have to be a huge amount of political capital and time expended on reviving the American economy. This will leave most people inclined to let "them fuuiners" go off and kill each other in peace, without the US getting involved.



There is probably some truth to this: another very plausible option. 

If you look at US public opinion about foreign military involvement, starting with the First World War, there has been a pretty clear cycle of "involvement-disillusionment/isolationism-new threat to national interests-involvement".  Despite the US realization of its new world role following WWII, the Korean War had a very mixed reception from the US public.

And, I suppose that it's worth remembering that simply because the ruling party wants to get entangled in something, it doesn't mean the US public does. The US entry into WWII under Roosevelt is a pretty good example of that.


----------



## GAP

What FDR knew about diplomacy, force, tyrants -- and Obama does not
By Fay Vincent September 18, 2013 FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/18/what-fdr-knew-about-diplomacy-force-tyrants-and-obama-does-not/#ixzz2fdYqFRUu


Against the stunning backdrop of the current diplomatic efforts to avoid our use of military force in Syria, I have been reading a superb new book, "Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World" by Michael Fullilove.

There seems no limit to the interest in World War II, and this book examines the efforts of five envoys President Franklin D. Roosevelt used between late 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and December,1941 when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, to represent him as he tried to deal the emerging crisis.

Those envoys, close associates of his, were Sumner Welles, Bill Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Averell Harriman and Wendell Willkie.

The first trip by Welles took place in March,1940, when FDR dispatched him to the capitals of Europe to take the measure of the leaders in those countries during the lull in the so-called phony war when there seemed to be time to avoid a full blown disaster. It was the last sad gasps of diplomacy and it seems all too familiar today.

What is so striking about this new book is how much the circumstances facing FDR resemble those now confronting President Obama. And while history may not repeat itself, I found it impossible not to relate the frenetic efforts by leaders in Britain and France to try to assess Hitler with the present attempts to figure out what Messrs Putin and Assad are thinking.

There is the inevitable tendency of diplomacy to focus on what is said during negotiations, and to hear what one hopes to hear. The wiser course is what history teaches-- to spend more time considering who is doing the speaking.

In 1940 as war in Europe became a reality, polls showed 96% of Americans wanted the U.S. to keep out of it.
more on link


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## Kirkhill

I think that one of the reasons that America has a history of "isolationism" is because it is bred in the bone.  The dominant story of America is of strong aggressors bent on conquering the New World.  There is a contrary view that America is a land of weak refugees who sought asylum, a place of shelter from the interminable struggles of Europe.

In the thread Why Europe Keeps Failing the moving maps, in my opinion, demonstrate the fallacy behind Yeats's plaintive "the centre cannot hold": there is no centre and never was.  There are multiple centres.   There were multiple centres in Europe and there are multiple centres in America.

Microbiology for a moment.  It is the only practical method I know of for testing cultures.

In microbiology, when you have an amorphous stew of bugs, technically known as a broth, competing with each other, the first thing you do is fix them in time and place by locking them into a petrie dish filled with agar.  The bugs cannot move and their individual characters become apparent.  Their colour, shape and form become apparent.  Some prosper and submerge their neighbours.  Some are overwhelmed.  Some create toxic no-bugs' lands that prevent other bugs overwhelming them but equally prevent them growing themselves.   

At this point the microbiologist intervenes and picks, using sterile tools, pure examples of the bugs of interest and transplants them to sterile environments - meaning free of competitors.  The microbiologist transplants colonies.  The bugs are then allowed to grow to their full potential to identify their special characteristics and traits.

David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" does a marvelous job of describing that process as it applies to the transplant of British cultures to America. But he doesn't go far enough.  He doesn't allow for New Amsterdam, New Sweden, New Brunswick (Both of them), New Scotland, New Rochelle, New France and New Spain.

I believe that in early America European colonies were sufficiently dispersed as to allow them to develop their own characteristics and cultures.  It also presented enough space that even when those colonies sprang from cultures that traditionally competed for resources that competition was not necessary.  Indeed it could be seen as counter productive when there were more resource-efficient methods of acquiring the daily bread.

The Americas, despite their involvements in European wars, and perhaps because of their involvement, have become a place where space and isolation were traded for conflict.  If you couldn't get along with your neighbours then move to the Peace district.

Having found a method where even the weakest individual could survive and prosper in isolation, and give the lie to John Donne's "no man is an island",  these surviving colonists have been very reluctant to enter back into the European stew.  And lose their identities.

But even America is not a big enough petrie dish to permit isolation forever.  Eventually the pure colonies expand everywhere and start running into each other with no more room to run.  They are forced to compete with each other.

The phenomenon is particularly apparent in the cities.  Cities are not, and never have been, uniform cultures.  They are amalgams of isolated, competing cultures trapped in a stew.  One man's neighbourhood is another man's ghetto.  

Some years back I met a fellow Scot and one of the parlour games we like to play is identifying where the other fellow comes from by his accent.  I commented that this chap was from Glasgow and then I tried to pin down the district.  I mentioned that he sounded a lot like Billy Connolly. They had grown up two streets apart and were mates.  Three streets over there was a competing tribe with a very different accent.  And they are just two of a number in that one city.  Discrete, identifiable cultures in close proximity vs discrete, identifiable cultures separated by space.  

In Glasgow you end up with the Old Firm.  In Canada you end up with Gravelbourg and Orangeville.

In America population growth in the coastal areas is making America's coasts look more like the European stew.  Meanwhile the centre of America and Canada is still lightly populated enough that Joel Garreau, in his "Nine Nations of North America" can describe it as "The Empty Quarter".

It is a curiosity that in the modern world the most ardent American isolationists seem to come from the stews on the coasts while the people most likely to join the forces and support intervention are from "The Empty Quarter".

I think the situation is much the same in Canada although not as well developed because of the lesser population pressures.

My point.

There has never been a mono-culture with a centre.  In North America, for a couple of centuries, people have had the illusion that such as state was possible but, I believe it was only an illusion and ultimately John Donne is proven correct.


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## pbi

> It is a curiosity that in the modern world the most ardent American isolationists seem to come from the stews on the coasts while the people most likely to join the forces and support intervention are from "The Empty Quarter".



It wasn't always like this. From what I have read, what Roosevelt and the Democrats found as they wrestled with bringing the US into WWII was exactly the opposite distribution of opinion. The support for intervention was strongest amongst Democrats from the Northeastern states, especially New England. The greatest Democrat resistance to involvement came from the South and the Midwest (particularly Chicago with its strong German population). No small part of this was the feeling (sometimes not very well hidden...) that the "New York Jews" were exerting influence on America to drag it into a war that was none of its business.

The Republicans were, at least initially, very strongly against any military involvement in Europe, including Lend-Lease and other measures "short of war". From what I can make out, there were a host of reasons for the Republican position, but these included:

-tacit (and sometimes open...) approval of Fascism as a way to control Communists, labour movements and Jews;

-"nativist" suspicion of anything to do with foreigners, especially England. Republicans frequently derided pro-intervention Democrats as "Anglophiles";

-fear (actually justified, as it turned out...) that war would further extend the powers of Govt machinery and "statism" which the Republicans believed they were fighting by opposing the New Deal policies; 

-a sense that America needed to devote 100% of its resources to defending itself alone; and

-concern over the distorting effect that a major war would have on a US economy that was still not fully back on its feet.

A very interesting exception to the Republican position was the Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, who ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 election. He became extremely unpopular in the Republican party because he supported US involvement. In the end, after his defeat and once war was inevitable, Wilkie took a position with the Roosevelt administration. (Wonder if that could still happen today?)


----------



## tomahawk6

pbi said:
			
		

> A very interesting exception to the Republican position was the Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, who ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 election. He became extremely unpopular in the Republican party because he supported US involvement. In the end, after his defeat and once war was inevitable, Wilkie took a position with the Roosevelt administration. (Wonder if that could still happen today?)



If the candidate were McCain.Most Republican candidates will be conservative's of different stripes,while the democrats are more like socialists every election cycle.Or the successful democrat will try to appear moderate but would govern as socialists.Its a very different Democrat Party from even the 40's - 50's.Since Vietnam the Party has been co-opted by the left.


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## Edward Campbell

With regard to which party is more or less _isolationist_ or _interventionist_, I would hark back to my opening comments, in the first post of this thread, in which I referred readers to Walter Russell Mead's _Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World_ for a look at the four main thrusts of American foreign policy. Americans marshal themselves behind all four, all the time, but, at any given time, one dominates the political and policy processes. Great migrations in the USA, especially in thew 1930s and again in the 1950s and 60s, have radically changed demographics and voting patterns (the latter aided by horrifying and fundamentally anti-democratic gerrymandering) but I agree with Mead that the four main _thrusts_ are the same and some of those thrusts are as old as America itself.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> If the candidate were McCain.Most Republican candidates will be conservative's of different stripes,while the democrats are more like socialists every election cycle.Or the successful democrat will try to appear moderate but would govern as socialists.Its a very different Democrat Party from even the 40's - 50's.Since Vietnam the Party has been co-opted by the left.



As the Republicans of today certainly seem to be different from the isolationist Republicans of the late 1930's. 

What I don't understand is this: if America is in its heart basically a country of conservative  values (ie: more "Right" than "Left"), how has it happened that Americans since Vietnam have ever elected *any* Democrat Presidents or Congresses, if these politicians don't appeal to what most Americans want?

Or is the US electoral system, (when it puts Democrats in the driver's seat of America),  not representative of what "the people" truly want? This is a criticism which is brought against our system here in Canada quite frequently.


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## Edward Campbell

In my _opinion_ America is *not* conservative, nor is it liberal; it is, as the title of the thread and the lead article suggest, deeply (and the numbers in recent presidential elections suggest) almost equally divided.

My _impression_ is that a distressingly large number of Americans, especially educated, employed Americans are saying, "a plague on both your houses," and not bothering to vote at all. Voter turnout in the USA seems to be mired in the mid 50% range, (lower in mid term elections) compared to the 60% range in Canada and turnouts in the 70 and 80% and even higher ranges in many European countries.


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## tomahawk6

Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.


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## Brad Sallows

I don't see any mystery at all in people wanting privileges without paying for them, and very little mystery in how people can be convinced that someone else is going to pay.

The mystery isn't that the US elects Democratic politicians; the mystery is the resilience of classical liberalism in the US.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.



Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.

ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"


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## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.
> 
> ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"




Last year, while "wintering" in the USA, I was chatting with some friends about politics ~ most had degrees above a BSc/BA, PhDs were pretty common, what wasn't common was any interest, at all, in politics. Amongst the American citizens, native born and naturalized, none had voted in the last federal election, the one which had just elected president Obama, some had voted in local elections because there are *critical* issues there: schools, roads and so on. These people, all employed, all well educated, saw little choice in national level politics: nothing differentiated the Democrats and Republicans on the issues that matter. The economy, they believe, is in the hands of a few appointed officials and they suggest that elected politicians are both ignorant and apathetic on important issues. "What about _Obamacare_?" I asked. All agreed that healthcare is critical and that they, themselves, looked closely at a company's health insurance plan before they considered a new job offer, but they felt that their health care was their, individual, responsibility and that government was, mostly, in the pockets of health insurance companies and/or unions.


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## Kirkhill

ERC:

That seems to me to suggest that your median group is closer in outlook to Thucydides and Reaganesque in the sense that government is generally seen as a problem and not a solution.  Is that an overstatement?

It also suggests to me that when the inevitable happens, as Maggie predicted, the supply of other peoples' money dries up, that there is a strong cadre that might find Detroit to be an attractive outcome.  That is to say it puts the community back in the hand of its citizens because it is no longer attractive to those that would purport to supply services to the citizens for attractive stipends.

These would seem to be a less extreme version of the survivalist phenomenon that actually looked toward "the end of civilization".  They have in common a dislike of the status quo and an acceptance of their personal inability to modify it.  They differ in the extent to which they remove themselves from society and the size of the community they consider optimal.


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## tomahawk6

pbi said:
			
		

> Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.
> 
> ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"



You would be correct about division within the country.The numbers that are floated is 40% Dem,40% Republican/Conservative and 20% up for grabs.Last cycle what hurt the Republicans was that there wasn't alot of excitement for Romney.Republicans stayed home just like they did when McCain ran.I would say that the US as a whole is more conservative than Canada. ;D


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## a_majoor

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> ERC:
> 
> That seems to me to suggest that your median group is closer in outlook to Thucydides and Reaganesque in the sense that government is generally seen as a problem and not a solution.  Is that an overstatement?
> 
> It also suggests to me that when the inevitable happens, as Maggie predicted, the supply of other peoples' money dries up, that there is a strong cadre that might find Detroit to be an attractive outcome.  That is to say it puts the community back in the hand of its citizens because it is no longer attractive to those that would purport to supply services to the citizens for attractive stipends.
> 
> These would seem to be a less extreme version of the survivalist phenomenon that actually looked toward "the end of civilization".  They have in common a dislike of the status quo and an acceptance of their personal inability to modify it.  They differ in the extent to which they remove themselves from society and the size of the community they consider optimal.



I think Edward has hit on a key issue in most Western societies at the present time: People are interested in local issues that they, themselves can actively influence. (This also ties into the themes of the "Culture Wars", Culture as the basis of society, and the idea in Classical Liberalism of society being based around "small platoons").

The TEA Party movement in the United States is an attempt to move this philosophy up the food chain, and with 30 US Governorships and State Houses in Republican hands there may be a nugget of truth to this. As we see today, with a relative handful of TEA Party movement members actually sitting in the House and Senate, there is little that can actually be done about the bigger issues. Despite 60% or more of Americans who actively dislike or oppose Obamacare, there just are not enough votes in the Congress to express the "Will of the People" and overturn the legialation (much less defund it), and I'm not sure there are enough members of the TEA Party movement to continue to knock off sitting and party approved political candidates against the entrenched and well funded and organized opposition of the political class and their rent seeking clients. The stakes are simply too high for the political class to allow the TEA PArty movement to gain traction, much less win.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> ...I would say that the US as a whole is more conservative than Canada. ;D



Having lived in the US and spent a fair bit of time serving alongside US folks in various places, I'd agree in general terms, although I learned over the years that the US is not a monolith: there are quite a few regional and sub-regional variations and differences. Exactly the same is true of Canada: there is even a rough correspondence in some ways between the two "Easts", the two "Midwests" , and the two "Left Coasts". We don't have a "South" in the way the US does, so that dynamic doesn't really exist for us.

I have to say that we wonder sometimes about the differences that do exist. For us, for example, having a female or non-white head of state  is really old news now. A few people whinged about our last two Governors General (Chinese Canadian female and Haitian Canadian female). We've only had one female PM, but I can't imagine race or gender being a significant issue there either. It seems to me that these would in fact be very significant issues for the US: witness the amount of ink spilled on both the Left and the Right in the US about Pres Obama's origins and race.

I think you are particularly correct where the public/political influence of religion is concerned. While the overwhelming majority of Canadians who claim a religious affiliation are Christians, we remain highly suspicious of any political party that begins yelling too loudly about imposing any particular set of religious beliefs on the public. Even the current Tory government, who historically have had Christian religious fundamentalism in their constituency, are fairly careful to tone that down, and to shut up the more extreme book-burners in their ranks. 

This is an interesting outcome for a country that in its history has had two "established" Churches: first the Roman Catholic Church (still the single largest denomination) and then  the  Church of England (known as the Anglican Church of Canada).


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## tomahawk6

Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger. 
I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.


----------



## JorgSlice

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger.
> I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.



That's why I moved back to Alberta. Vancouver is toxic.


----------



## Kirkhill

PrairieThunder said:
			
		

> That's why I moved back to Alberta. Vancouver is toxic.



Same here.

Having said that, and having spent a good number of years running up and down I-5, I have to say that there isn't a lot to choose amongst Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco.  Now the places in between, and back over the passes, those are different matters again.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Then there is Vancouver,BC.When I first visited there in the 70's Americans weren't very welcome,unless you happened to be a draft dodger.
> I mentioned this once to a Canadian colleague and he chuckled saying " hell Vancouver doesn't much care for the rest of Canada".Yet I never felt hostility in the Yukon or Toronto.



True, and true.


----------



## cupper

Much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree with Ms. Rubin in her latest opinion piece.

*Bubble Wrap conservatives*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/09/30/bubble-wrap-conservatives/?hpid=z3



> In his book “Coming Apart,” Charles Murray has a quiz intended to gauge how isolated from the average American’s culture the reader is. I often wonder if right-wing pundits and politicians from deep-red states should take that sort of quiz to gauge how isolated they are from the average American’s politics or lack thereof.
> 
> Do the right-wingers know and interact with people who don’t know who the secretary of defense is? Do they have close friends who don’t read the newspaper? Do they have neighbors who have no idea who Bill Ayers, Lois Lerner and James Rosen are? Do  they ever spend an entire weekend without talking or reading about politics? Are they a member of a church or synagogue in which almost all congregants are not conservative?
> 
> If they were, and they fully understood there are more Americans like that (by far) than watch the Fox evening line-up on any given night or have ever heard of their favorite conservative blog, it might help re-orient their thinking just a tad. They might also understand that people who hold views closer to the president’s than to Jim DeMint aren’t the “enemy” or part of the infamous 47 percent; they are neighbors, friends, colleagues and acquaintances who need to be wooed, not denounced.
> 
> Currently, it seems that a great many right-wingers who claim to speak for “ordinary Americans” don’t have a clue how they react to politics or about the overwhelming disgust they feel when they watch sniping and political grandstanding that winds up disrupting ordinary people’s lives. If they did they might learn:
> 
> - No matter how many ads Ken Cuccinelli runs lauding his prosecution of human traffickers, most women in the state are turned off not only by his positions on issues such as contraception but by his persona as an ideological warrior. [_I can definitely attest to this, been inundated with Cuccinelli ads all summer, and his Lt. Gov. running mate is so far in the conservative religious right spectrum, Pat Robertson looks reasonable._]
> 
> - No matter how many times Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) says it’s the president who is inflexible, most Americans will regard the senator as the more polarizing, unreasonable figure if the shutdown happens.
> 
> - No matter how many times they tell one another that the party needs a stronger conservative who is more dogmatic and articulate, the presidential electorate isn’t going to embrace him or her, and, moreover, is going to choose the candidate they like more and identify with on some level.
> 
> In their partisan bubble wrap, partisans (on both sides) delude themselves into thinking that ideology — not personality, abstractions, experience, process or substance — resonate with most voters. The opposite is true. This doesn’t mean that ideology, abstractions and process are unimportant — especially to the base — but they can’t substitute for much less partisan concerns.
> 
> Partisans also don’t fully appreciate that voters can have contradictory impulses. They can oppose action in Syria and be very upset when an American president doesn’t do what he said he would. They can be in favor of getting rid of Obamacare and dead set against a shutdown to achieve it. They can think the president is in over his head and still think Republicans are responsible for a budget stalemate.
> 
> Even more harmful is the tendency to rewrite history to fit their own narrative. Right-wingers are convinced Bill Clinton lost the 1995 shutdown battle. They are certain Ronald Reagan would never compromise on important issues, and that his personality was a trivial part of his success in reaching beyond the conservative base. Naturally they don’t learn from the past when they refuse to recall it accurately.
> 
> In the 1970s, Richard Nixon dubbed ordinary Americans turned off by soft-on-crime, anti-war, counter-culture liberals as the “silent majority.” Republicans today are in danger of ceding the silent majority to the Democrats. Republicans need to get out more, understand how the rightwing pols sound to voters who aren’t staunch conservatives and find some people who don’t sound like college debaters impressed with their own arguments. If they don’t, like the Democrats from 1972 to 1992, they will find themselves out of favor and out of the White House. They might be certain they have “won” the arguments on points, but will have lost power — for a very long time.


----------



## cupper

Marc Thiessen also makes a similar point, although I don't agree with him that the Debt Ceiling would be a better hostage to take, for much the same reasons as made against taking Gov't funding hostage.

Theissen, (I think mistakenly) sees this a a fight over Obamacare, rather than a fight for the soul of the Republican Party

*The GOP flunks Hostage Taking 101*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-the-gop-flunks-hostage-taking-101/2013/09/30/43a4ff00-29d2-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html?hpid=z3



> Democrats are in such a panic over the prospect of a government shutdown that President Obama spent four hours on the golf course Saturday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told his colleagues to take the weekend off, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi left town to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary.
> 
> Why show up for work? The Democrats are following Napoleon’s old adage: Never interfere when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself.
> 
> Obama has accused Republicans of hostage taking. Let’s be clear: I’m all for taking hostages. Both sides do it all the time. But one of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostagethe other side cares about saving. Obama and the Democrats don’t care about stopping a government shutdown. With a shutdown, Republicans are essentially putting a gun to their own heads and threatening to pull the trigger if the Democrats don’t capitulate. Not surprisingly, it’s not working.
> 
> Some congressional Republicans can’t seem to get it though their heads: When it comes to a government shutdown they . . . have . . . no . . . leverage. By contrast, when it comes to the debt-limit showdown, they do have leverage; while Obama can let the government close and blame the GOP, he cannot allow the United States to default.
> 
> As former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner explained during the last debt-limit standoff, the effects of default would be “catastrophic,” resulting in the “loss of millions of American jobs,” and would have an economic impact “potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.” Obama will not permit an economic crisis worse than 2008-09 and the “loss of millions of American jobs” on his watch. He has no choice but to negotiate with GOP leaders and cut a deal to avoid a government default.
> 
> So what’s the smart move here, Republicans? Simple: Pass a clean, short-term continuing resolution to keep the government operating at current levels and then attach your demands to legislation raising the debt limit. That is what House Speaker John Boehner wanted to do. But House Republicans instead insisted on sending the Senate a bill demanding a one-year delay in Obamacare and repeal of the medical-device tax as a condition of avoiding a government shutdown. The shutdown that Democrats not-so-secretly want to happen so they can blame the GOP.
> 
> This is not even smart procedurally. Reid doesn’t need 60 votes to kill the House bill. He can reject it and send it right back to the House with a simple majority vote. Republicans have not so much as spoiled Reid’s lunch plans, much less put him in a political corner.
> 
> What House Republicans have done, however, is undermine their chances of at least getting a one-year delay in Obamacare. They might very well have forced Democrats to swallow such a delay if they had waited and attached it to a debt-limit increase. But now, because they attached it to a doomed continuing resolution, Senate Democrats will be on record voting against a one-year delay. They are not likely to reverse themselves in a few weeks’ time and vote for it.
> 
> The sad part is, Republicans could have been winning this fight. President Obama’s approval rating is at a two-year low, and polls show that only 39 percent of Americans approve of Obamacare. The law is less popular than ever. But only 27 percent of Americans want Republicans to shut down the government over Obamacare. That’s why Obama and Senate Democrats are champing at the bit to let the government close — so they can divide the Republicans from voters who agree with them on substance and torture the GOP with weeks of bad news coverage.
> 
> If Republicans had taken their stand on the debt ceiling instead, there would be no weeks of bad news coverage — because the Democrats would be capitulating instead of celebrating.
> 
> Republicans are failing for one simple reason: They took the wrong hostage.


----------



## a_majoor

Remember in the US system of Government, the House holds the power of the purse, not the Senate or the Executive branch.

This is similar to the situation in Westminister democracies, where Parliament holds the power of the purse, rather than the Lords or the Sovereign (as Charles 1 discovered the hard way). 

So the Executive does not have unrestrained powers to legislate things into being (or given the disarray of Obamacare, with the exchanges simply not ready to operate and a morass or exceptions and exemptions flowing from the Executive branch to paper over flaws and reward/punish constituent groups, attempt to rule by fiat in order to make things work), and the House can indeed use the power of the purse to stop executive overreach.

Now the authority of the Lower House (in both a Republic and a Westminister Parliament) was originally intended to prevent the Executive/Sovereign from going to war or continuing wars without the consent of the people (shutting off the money supply has a negative effect on military operations, after all), but the ultimate reason is to prevent the Executive/Sovereign from having the ability to impose absolute rule.


----------



## cupper

Happy US Government Shutdown Everyone!

And Happy Affordable Care Act Going Into Effect Day!

Alanis Morrisett would be so proud of the irony.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Neither a shutdown - it's happened before, twice in the mid 1990s, not _Obamacare_ are especially dangerous - silly, but not really problematic.

What matters is 17 Oct 13 when the US _Debt Ceiling_ must be raised or the US must, like e.g. Argentina, become a _*deadbeat*_ and default on its debt payments to domestic and, eventually, foreign creditors.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.




And, in an outsider's "look in" to America politics, John Ibbitson, writing in the _Globe and Mail_, suggests that: *"The U.S. budget battle will end in Republican defeat."*

Ibbitson posits that Speaker John Boehner "must now somehow find a way forward that prevents a default and that gets the government running again while contending with the Tea Party militants. One way would be for the Speaker to expend whatever political capital he still has to round up 20 or so moderate Republican representatives and deliver their votes to the Democrats in the House ... [and while] ... such a move would probably cost Mr. Boehner his speakership, as enraged Tea Partiers sought revenge ... he would at least have prevented the world’s largest economy and the holder of the reserve currency from fatally debasing its credit worthiness."

But that will not, I think, be enough. I suspect that America will find itself, temporarily, with the three party system: HUGELY powerful Democrats, shattered, weak Republicans and an ascendant, but still weak, Tea Party. It probably will not matter, much, who the Democrats select to be their presidential candidate in 2016, (s)he'll win in a walk in a three way race and carry both houses of the Congress on his/her coat-tails.


----------



## Journeyman

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ... he would at least have prevented the world’s largest economy and the holder of the reserve currency from fatally debasing its credit worthiness."


Yet these are the same elected officials who chortled as Obama/Kerry were hung out to dry on the Syria/chemical ultimatum, merely to claim a Pyrrhic partisan victory.  I can't see them suddenly considering the bigger picture, economically this time, as 17 October looms.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Yet these are the same elected officials who chortled as Obama/Kerry were hung out to dry on the Syria/chemical ultimatum, merely to claim a Pyrrhic partisan victory.  I can't see them suddenly considering the bigger picture, economically this time, as 17 October looms.




I *hope* you're wrong, even as I fear you're right.

In my mind the "shutdown" is a fairly minor, 100% political _glitch_ that will not, in the greater scheme of things, do much serious harm. Default, on the other hand, is akin to an economic nuclear meltdown. One must hope that even the most committed anti-Obama fanatic must understand that the political, economic and, indeed _strategic_ implications of default are enormous. Defaulting on its debts would do damage to America's reputation that can never, ever be recovered.

But it's all about Obama, isn't it? I think he's a weak, ineffectual president but not as bad as many in the past and unlikely to be worse than many of his successors; but is he really worth debasing America's global credibility? I think not. I wonder if many (a few? any?) Republicans are thinking in Washington today?


Edit to add:

Some further thoughts on the _credibility_ issue in this post from the _Council on Foreign Relations_ blog.


----------



## cupper

Listening to various interviews with "moderate" Republicans today I suspect that they are like the dog that chases the car, and finally catches one. 

"Now that I've caught it, what do I do with it?"

The prevalent view is that they need to end the shutdown as soon as possible, and hope that the electorate has a short memory come next November.

One interesting comment I heard last night after the shutdown became reality was that it could be a ploy by the GOP leadership to regain control of it's fractious conservative caucus by giving them what they want, and seeing the reality of what they wanted coming true. The thought was that the majority of reasonable GOP House members would be forced to finally tell the 30 to 40 Tea Party Caucus members to STFU and allow the Party to start governing. Nice theory, but as they say, sometimes the simplest answer is the correct answer.

I agree with ERC that the larger problem is the upcoming debt ceiling debate, but you cannot under estimate the impact to the economy of a shutdown that extends out beyond the end of the week. Government workers that were hit by furlough days under the sequester are being hit again. The loss of revenue to the local service businesses (restaurants, local shops, daycares, even transit systems) will be substantial. Just because the government is shut down and the paycheck stops, the bills are still coming, mortgages still need to be paid, and so on.


----------



## a_majoor

To understand what is really happening outside of the overheated rhetoric of the politicians and media, this provides a fairly straightforward play by play. Most people haven't noticed the symmetry between the two sides (or avoid commenting on that), so blaming one party or the other is missing the point: they are share part of the blame.

http://www.volokh.com/2013/09/30/terrorism-hostage-taking-government-shutdown/



> *“Terrorism,” “Hostage-Taking,” and the Government Shutdown*
> 
> by Ilya Somin on September 30, 2013 6:14 pm in Congress, Democracy
> 
> Some Obama administration supporters claim that Republicans who refuse to pass a bill funding the federal government are acting like “terrorists” or “hostage takers.” To some extent, this is just your typical exaggerated political rhetoric, similar to that of Republicans who absurdly claim that Obama is a “socialist,” for example. But it also presents a fundamentally misleading understanding of the situation.
> 
> Terrorists and hostage-takers are evil because they threaten lives and property that do not belong to them. “Your money or your life” is a terroristic threat, because the person making the threat has no right to dispose of either your money or your life. But there isn’t any terrorism or hostage-taking if you say you won’t give me any of your money unless I do something you want me to do.
> 
> In the case of the government shutdown, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has no constitutional or other obligation to pass a funding bill that includes funding for Obamacare or [for] any other particular government program. Part of the reason why the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse is so they can decide which government programs are worthy of funding, and which are not. It is also worth noting that the Republicans are not the only side in this dispute who are willing to shut down the government if they don’t get what they want on health care policy. President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate could just as easily avoid a shutdown by accepting the House bill. In its latest version, it doesn’t even defund Obamacare completely, but merely delays implementation by a year and repeals the medical device tax, which is currently part of the law. This is not to say that Obama and the Senate Democrats are acting as “terrorists” or “hostage-takers” either. The Senate is not obliged to pass the House bill. If they do, Obama has every right to veto that bill if it gets to his desk. But there is considerable symmetry between the two sides’ positions.
> 
> Ultimately, how you evaluate the situation largely depends on your view of Obamacare. If you believe, as opponents of the law do, that important parts of Obamacare are unconstitutional, while most of the rest will probably cause more harm than good, then shutting down the government for a few days is a small price to pay for getting rid of this albatross; or even just for a substantially increased likelihood of getting rid of it. Conversely, if you believe – as most liberals and Democrats do – that Obamacare is a great advance in health care policy, a government shutdown is a small price to pay to protect it. Several previous shutdowns have resulted from confrontations over policy issues, and the republic has suffered little if any long-term damage from them.
> 
> There is, of course, also the question of whether the GOP’s tactics in the shutdown battle are likely to prove effective. Like many observers – including some prominent conservatives and libertarians – I have serious doubts about that. Of course, I also expected the GOP to be less successful in managing the fight over the sequester than they turned out to be. My political prognostications could misfire this time too. In any event, this is a question of political strategy rather than fundamental principle. The GOP’s approach to this fight could turn out to be foolish or self-defeating. But that doesn’t mean it amounts to “terrorism” or “hostage-taking.”
> 
> UPDATE: I should note that, in referring to the “latest version” of the GOP House bill, I meant the latest one that has actually passed the House. There have been other versions since that bill passed on Sunday, though none that has actually passed the House. By the time you read this post, it is possible that the version referred to above will have been superseded by a new one. But I doubt it will affect the main point I am making.


----------



## tomahawk6

I think the House is being reasonable in trying to push ACA back a year.The President probably overstepped his authority in postponing the employer mandate a year.Might as well be fair and do the same for the individual mandate.The computer network isn't ready yet.The government had enough time to set it up,but its still not fully ready.The Administration wouldnt budge on implementing ACA and knew there would be a shutdown.Their calculation is that a shutdown is bad for the GOP.We shall see how it pans out. The public expects a compromise but a large segment of the public is against the ACA.The ACA is supposed to deliver affordable insurance,but the premiums I have seen even with a subsidy don't look affordable.If you get a subsidy will you lose your tax return ? Below is a link to a calculator. It will give you a ball park idea of the cost.Every state is different and so are the premiums.

http://kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator./#state=&zip=&income-type=dollars&income=40000&employer-coverage=0&people=1&adult-count=1&adults%5B0%5D%5Bage%5D=21&adults%5B0%5D%5Btobacco%5D=0&child-count=0&child-tobacco=0


----------



## Edward Campbell

In the _National Post_, Conrad Black revisits the same ground we have walked many times: America is not really in decline, it is just the fault of the current generation of the political class. One sentence stood out for me:

     _"Such a fundamentally strong country does not go to pieces as quickly as the antics of the Bush-Obama era would indicate is now happening."_

I'm not so sure. Consider Britain. We can argue about when Britain reached its zenith - I say around 1835 - but we cannot doubt that by, say, 1935 Britain was no longer the world's greatest power, it was not even one of the top two or three. Now, it's fair, also, to say that Britain was never a great military power, although it was the _supreme_ naval power, because it didn't need to be ~ it's economy gave it all the power in really needed. But: Britain was THE _global_ superpower between, say, 1825 and 1875, the decline into second rate status took, at most 100 years, maybe no more than about 50.

One could argue that America reached the zenith of its power in the 1950s, maybe 50 years later we ought not to be surprised that _decline_ is in the air.


----------



## tomahawk6

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> In the _National Post_, Conrad Black revisits the same ground we have walked many times: America is not really in decline, it is just the fault of the current generation of the political class. One sentence stood out for me:
> 
> _"Such a fundamentally strong country does not go to pieces as quickly as the antics of the Bush-Obama era would indicate is now happening."_
> 
> I'm not so sure. Consider Britain. We can argue about when Britain reached its zenith - I say around 1835 - but we cannot doubt that by, say, 1935 Britain was no longer the world's greatest power, it was not even one of the top two or three. Now, it's fair, also, to say that Britain was never a great military power, although it was the _supreme_ naval power, because it didn't need to be ~ it's economy gave it all the power in really needed. But: Britain was THE _global_ superpower between, say, 1825 and 1875, the decline into second rate status took, at most 100 years, maybe no more than about 50.
> 
> One could argue that America reached the zenith of its power in the 1950s, maybe 50 years later we ought not to be surprised that _decline_ is in the air.



I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!


----------



## Rifleman62

cupper said:
			
		

> I agree with ERC that the larger problem is the upcoming debt ceiling debate, but you cannot under estimate the impact to the economy of a shutdown that extends out beyond the end of the week. Government workers that were hit by furlough days under the sequester are being hit again. The loss of revenue to the local service businesses (restaurants, local shops, daycares, even transit systems) will be substantial. Just because the government is shut down and the paycheck stops, the bills are still coming, mortgages still need to be paid, and so on.



My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.

T6:





> I think the House is being reasonable in trying to push ACA back a year.The President probably overstepped his authority in postponing the employer mandate a year.Might as well be fair and do the same for the individual mandate.The computer network isn't ready yet.The government had enough time to set it up,but its still not fully ready.The Administration wouldn't budge on implementing ACA and knew there would be a shutdown.Their calculation is that a shutdown is bad for the GOP.We shall see how it pans out. The public expects a compromise but a large segment of the public is against the ACA.The ACA is supposed to deliver affordable insurance,but the premiums I have seen even with a subsidy don't look affordable.



President Obama has amended "the law of the land" some seventeen times including:
- (as above) exempting employers and unions as well as other groups. Why shouldn't individuals be exempted for a year? 
_ subsidizing all members of the White House staff, members of the House and Senate and all their staffs to the tune of approximately 75% of their premiums. Why shouldn't elected members suffer/gain (your POV) the same as all citizens?

I can see that the computer programs will have glitches even if they had three years to get ready. Look at the CF's record.

I don't know how the approx 30M  people without health insurance now will be able to pay the cost of their ACA premiums. How will the vote go for the Democrats when their young generation base realize that they must pay for the at risk older generation? If they don't enroll and pay, then the IRS will fine. They can stay on Mommy and Daddy's  plan until age 26.

American Airlines and Caterpillar estimate increased costs of $100M. Who do you think is going to pay for that? Work 40 hrs per week? Not now . Many employers  i.e. Home depot slashing hours to get under the 30 hr mandatory.

It's a mess, but the President is leaving on a junket to two "important" potential trading partners, Indonesia  and Brunei but cancelled Malaysia and the Philippines . 

I think the GOP will come out of this better. These 3/4 years are about President Obama's legacy. He does not want his signature legislation to fail, and he does not want to be the first POTUS to default. BUT, "I won" attitude is in the way.

Last but not least, Iran will get the bomb, as they are good guys after all and Bush was wrong again, then use it or have a surrogate 
use it. Israel will retaliate.


----------



## cupper

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.



Not all are on paid furlough, and even those that are could be waiting months for back pay.

Which again goes to the point that the bills are still coming in, and need to be paid now. 

Many have had to dip into savings to cover the furlough days from the sequester this summer, many DOD employees lost 6 days of pay. 

And as I said earlier, this is not limited to just the government employees laid off. The service providers that depends on those workers buying goods and services as part of their work day see a drop in business.

With the uncertainty of how long this may drag on, with the possibility of default looming around the corner, the economy is on the thin edge.


----------



## a_majoor

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!



There are lots of interesting arguments, but the UK's decline in the 20th century can be pretty much be summarized as bankrupting themselves in 2 back to back global conflicts.

Edward's point about the Imperial decline of the UK actually predates socialistic policies (indeed even socialism, since Otto Von bismark didn't start the ball rolling on that idea until the late 1880's). Part of the problem was structural; the UK paid a lot to maintain "balance of power" poltics in Europe and more on maintaining a global Empire in the post Napoleonic Wars period, probably more than Imperialism brought back to the Treasury in the form of trade and payments.

At the same time, the British class system ossified and social mobility slowed considerably compared to the 1700's. British industry stagnated compared to European powers like Germany and especially compared to the United States, even Imperial Russia was industrializing at a greater rate. So I would have to put much of the blame on "cultural" factors that prevented human, physical and financial capital to be deployed to its greatest extent.

Now no analogy is ever exact, but I think you might agree that there are some similarities in this comparison. The massive deficits and debts that the US has accumulated since the post war period are certainly a structural problem, and much of the "culture wars" rhetoric does seem to involve the idea of class warfare and the relative hardening of social positions (the 1% meme, and constant calls for the "protection" of the middle class from taxes, foreign competition, Martians or whatever is politically convenient at the time are symptoms of these ideas), even if the reality is somewhat different.

Now the other thing that needs to be said is that decline may be relative; the British Empire in the period of decline that Edward outlines was still the single greatest Empire ever assembled, and the Royal Navy was the premier naval force in the world, even as other Empires gradually grew and other navies became qualitatively and quantitatively better than before. There is no doubt that the US economy is still larger than any other and the US military is still the premier military force on the planet, even as China, India and other nations grow their economies at a faster rate and upgrade their military power.

Now the US can indeed weather and manage this relative decline, what is frightening is how the entire political class has become so unmoored from reality they cannot seem to understand or act on urgent structural problems like the debt (and a default will be a very frightening event both domestically and globally), and are seemingly unresponsive to the concerns of the taxpayers (their real constituents).


----------



## Edward Campbell

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> To illustrate what wrong with the implementation of the the _Asian pivot_ strategy:
> 
> 1. China almost got what it wanted ("back burner" treatement) last week at the ASEAN meeting; but
> 
> 2. It, China, settled for less (public disunity), but only because of ASEAN internal disagreements, not as a result of any US influence; and
> 
> 3. Now the Philippines, a not inconsequential Asian power, has called a separate meeting (with Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam) to deal with China's _island_ claims without US (or ASEAN) involvement.
> 
> It looks to me as though some Asians are less than convinced that the US "here to stay": or, for that matter, even "here."




More on the _failure_ of the *Asian Pivot[/]*_ in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Policy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/02/nonessential_barack_obama_asia_pivot_shutdown








Nonessential
*Has Obama given up on the Asia pivot?*

BY ALEX N. WONG, LANHEE J. CHEN

OCTOBER 2, 2013

On Oct. 11, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote an article in Foreign Policy titled "America's Pacific Century." The article laid out the theory and practice behind the Obama administration's "pivot" to Asia, an "essential," strategic rebalancing of U.S. focus toward the Pacific.

But what a difference two years makes. On Wednesday, the White House announced Obama's decision to cancel the last two days of his Asia trip, which was supposed to be a six-day swing through the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, that the White House described as part of Obama's "ongoing commitment to increase U.S. political, economic and security engagement with the Asia Pacific." While this was precipitated by logistical obstacles created by the U.S. government shutdown, we can't help but note the irony: on the two-year anniversary of Clinton's article, Obama will not be celebrating and strengthening relationships with U.S. partners in Asia. In truth, there's not much to celebrate.

Two years after the pivot, U.S. influence in Asia has diminished. China's growing military presence and deep U.S. defense budget cuts threaten the longstanding preponderance of American military might in the region. The United States has not signed any new free trade agreements with Asian nations since Obama came to office; nor has it reached any significant diplomatic achievements that could serve to demonstrate and reinforce its role as a Pacific power.

The problem with the pivot is not one of strategy: More robust U.S. engagement is indeed required to take advantage of the opportunities that will arise as trade links throughout the Pacific expand. And the United States needs to channel China's ambitions to ensure they drive growth rather than instability. But like much of the Obama administration's foreign policy, the Asia pivot has been more promise than follow-through: a thin veil of spin masking a deep lack of substance.

At the outset, basing the pivot on a false premise undermined its credibility with U.S. allies.  President Obama's unfortunate and arrogant habit of denigrating his predecessor George W. Bush's eight years in office extended to his Asia policy. The whole notion that the United States needed to "rebalance" in favor of greater engagement with Asia implied that Bush had abandoned the region.

This is untrue. Bush improved the U.S. relationship with Asia-Pacific nations. In 2007, he signed the world's largest bilateral free trade agreement, with South Korea. He reached an historic nuclear cooperation pact with India in 2008. Bush forged close personal relationships with many Asian leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And by initiating the Strategic Economic Dialogue with China in 2006, Bush paved the way for closer economic relations between the two countries.

The significant innovations and successes of his predecessor show just how little Obama's pivot has accomplished.   

On the military front, the Obama administration has routinely mentioned a Nov. 2011 agreement to cycle 2,500 Marines through Australia as an example of its expanding military footprint in Asia. But that contingent is mere symbolism amid the 130,000 U.S. troops already stationed across the Pacific -- and it does not represent an overall troop increase, since it will come from 9,000 troops being redeployed from Okinawa. As a result, this agreement did little to reassure allies -- but still managed to elicit Beijing's ire. In December 2011, Geng Yansheng, a spokesman of China's Defense Ministry, criticized the Australia plan, saying "we believe this is all a manifestation of a Cold War mentality."

More ominously, $1.2 trillion in defense cuts over the next 10 years will overtake the Australian agreement and undermine the America's ability to project military power into the Pacific. The cuts will lay off 120,000 troops and likely force the retirement of three aircraft carrier battle groups and ground a third of our combat wings.

On the economic front, Obama has been largely ineffectual. He has failed to corral China's flagrant theft of U.S. intellectual property, or curb China's manipulation of its currency.  He's failed to initiate talks with any Asian countries over new bilateral trade agreements. And it now appears as though negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be America's largest free-trade pact, may not meet their December target.

Clinton, Obama's first secretary of state, at least paid lip service to a U.S. commitment to Asia -- but her replacement Secretary of State John Kerry may not even do that. During his February confirmation hearings,  Kerry questioned whether the pivot and its military ramp-up are "critical yet," and voiced concern over how Beijing would react to an increased U.S. presence. With Kerry having shown far more interest in the Middle East than Asia, the pivot may be over before it ever really began. 

Such a sudden lurch away from a policy that was so recently the fulcrum of our global strategy would seriously damage our standing in Asia. To mitigate this damage, the administration should take a number of steps. First, it should prioritize reversing the sequester's military budget cuts, in order to invest in the naval assets necessary to ensure the United States plays a central role in Asian security. Second, even if he misses the December deadline, Obama should not let momentum behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership falter. He must insulate the U.S. negotiating position from his political base's protectionist demands -- pressure that has slowed trade talks in the past.

Finally, the administration should avoid reverting back to the soft rhetoric of "strategic reassurance" -- its initial, ill-defined 2009 policy toward China -- which Clinton seemed to think meant allowing U.S. interest in human rights take a backseat to climate change in relations with Beijing. That conciliatory posture shook the confidence of allies who depend on the United States to check China's more coercive tendencies. 

Obama may not have meant for the curtailment of his trip to be a message to U.S. allies in Asia. But this is the third time Obama has cut an Asia trip short because of domestic concerns. We support Obama's Nov. 2011 announcement that in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States "is all in." But we're still waiting for him to make his move.
		
Click to expand...



The problem, for America, is that it is like all other countries, and in all countries grand strategy is a function of the country's economic capacity and of domestic political concerns.
_


----------



## a_majoor

A very interesting look at the recent past. Donald Rumsfeld was interviewed and provides a look at how the Bush Administration was thinking and planning during its term in office, how personalities have a very large influence on how events unfold, and Rumsfeld's own assessment of the future:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/donald-rumsfeld-obama-i-begin-incompetence-problem_759183.html?nopager=1



> *Donald Rumsfeld on Obama: ‘I Begin with Incompetence as a Problem’*
> Talking to journalist David Samuels about his Kindle Singles interview with the former secretary of defense.
> 7:31 AM, OCT 4, 2013 • BY LEE SMITH
> 
> David Samuels’ deeply reported oddball narratives and profiles have appeared on the covers of Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and other magazines. Samuels has also contributed two long interviews for Amazon’s new Kindle Singles series: The first with Israeli President Simon Peres, and his most recent with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (available here, and Rumsfeld has also just published a new book, Rumsfeld's Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life). Recently, I spoke with Samuels to find out what sort of insights this longtime American policymaker had into U.S. foreign policy, past and present.
> 
> Why did you want to speak to Donald Rumsfeld, or more specifically, why now and about what?
> 
> One reason is that I wanted to do a sort of autopsy on the Bush administration’s war on terror, I wanted to see how those decisions made more than a decade ago have continued to shape American domestic politics and foreign policy even under Obama. My sense is that Bush pursued the Harvard business school model as an executive, insofar as the classic move any CEO would make taking on a bigger job would be to find the most experienced people he could and give them vertical areas of responsibility.
> 
> The problem was that each of the principals – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and the Bush-Rice tandem -- all wound up pulling in different directions. As Rumsfeld put it in our interview, “Sometime choosing A over B is preferable when A+B doesn’t make sense.”
> 
> When I asked him how disputes between policymakers were resolved, he shrugged and said he really had no idea. He said there were actually very few meetings in which policy was openly debated between the principals. Instead, everyone’s opinions went into what he described as a “a black box” – namely, the White House, where decisions were made by some unseen combination of Bush and Rice, and were often relayed by Rice, who clearly spoke for the President.
> 
> Rumsfeld struck me as the most interesting of those people to talk to right now because he is not speaking for a large section of the Republican party, as Cheney is, nor at the age of 81 does he imagine he has a political future. He’s got a well-earned reputation for blunt talk, and he has been held accountable for some very major failures, like force levels in Iraq and of course Abu Ghraib – not all of which were his fault. And he is also obviously very smart. So I thought he would make for an interesting interview about whether the war on terror has been a success, where it is going and how he himself experienced the decision-making process in the Bush White House.
> 
> Now, I profiled Condoleezza Rice for the Atlantic when she was secretary of state, and I think you could make a fascinating movie or stage play about the relationship between Rice and Bush. I’m hardly suggesting anything untoward -- just pointing out that two people of the same age and experience both felt themselves to a similar degree to be outsiders and found each other’s company useful and formed a very strong bond. No one besides the two of them knows how that happened, and what the content of that emotional relationship was, or what they talked about, and how it shaped policy. And neither one of them is talking about anything besides football.
> 
> By contrast, you can certainly see Dick Cheney on Fox opining about current events. But as a former vice president, he seems to feel that he has a responsibility to keep the confidences of the president largely to himself. Colin Powell seems not to feel the same sense of obligation. For the Rice profile, I also got to spend a little time with Powell and while I’m not saying he polishes a shiny statue of Colin Powell that he keeps by his bedside every morning, he has jealously guarded his good name, sometimes at the expense of the men he served with – an experience that he seems to feel besmirched by. So he is not necessarily the most interesting or reliable source about what actually happened, either.
> 
> Besides which, who doesn’t want to hear Donald Rumsfeld trying to restrain himself as he talks about what it is was like to travel with Henry Kissinger to China, or what Richard Nixon was like as a boss?
> 
> This wasn’t the first time you’ve taken Rumsfeld as your subject.
> 
> No, as with many people, my sense of Rumsfeld is largely tied to 9/11. I grew up in New York, I live here now, and I had spent a bunch of time in the Middle East, so with 9/11, I felt these two realities come crashing together. I wanted to understand how the U.S. government was going to respond, and the only real notes of clarity I could hear were in Donald Rumsfeld’s press briefings at the Pentagon. His manner was commanding and clear and had a slightly obnoxious Rat Pack-type edge. I think it was the last time that Americans saw a public official acting as an adult dealing on a regular basis with an experienced and well-informed press corps. This was sparring between intelligent people, which showed in the sharpness of the questions and in the sharpness of Rumsfeld’s retorts.
> 
> I had to see this for myself, partly as a reporter and partly for my psychological well-being, so I went down to Washington, for maybe 3 weeks, and attended maybe 5 or 6 of his briefings at the Pentagon. I then wrote a piece for Harpers that focused on one particular briefing, in which Rumsfeld explained to the press corps the nature of conflict, which he said in its scope, intensity and duration would be analogous to the Cold War. As someone who was secretary of defense during the heart of the Cold War, this was obviously something he had thought through. This statement led the nightly news in Germany, but no American news outlet picked it up. *This struck me as dangerous—we were warned that this is what policymakers had in mind. If the popular meme became that the president lied us into war, like with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that led us into Vietnam, the reality is that I saw an outspoken cabinet official who was quite specific and blunt in his description of what was coming.*
> 
> And yet Rumsfeld says in your interview that unlike the Cold War, the administration didn’t have a very clear idea of the intellectual underpinnings of the war. “The White House,” he says, “was very nervous about even talking about religion, for fear of being seen as being against a particular religion. And yet if you don’t pin the tail on the donkey and say that the enemy is radical Islam and Islamism and people who go out and kill innocent men, women and children to try to impose their views on others, and who are fundamentally opposed to the nation-state—we weren’t willing to say that. I was. But as an administration we weren’t.” So why didn’t the administration’s strategy match Rumsfeld’s clarity?
> 
> I think the process that Rumsfeld described – of decision-making by a camarilla, meaning by the President and a tight inner circle of trusted aides, while the heads of major departments like State and Defense are largely kept in the dark – has clearly persisted through the Obama administration. The policy results in both cases seem to be only half-baked.
> 
> What I think America wound up with policy-wise in Iraq was something like the Doctor Dolittle animal, the Pushmi-pullyu. There was Rumsfeld’s slimmed down, modernized strike force, which would sweep into Baghdad and decapitate Saddam’s regime, which fit with Cheney’s inclination to replace Saddam with someone ostensibly friendly to the US and then get out. But the post-invasion policy was actually the opposite of that – namely, the Bush-Rice construct that became known as the “Freedom Agenda,” and which foresaw a longer-term military occupation that would provide the stability necessary to turn Iraq into a model democracy that the rest of the Arab Middle East would want to emulate. Powell’s emphasis was on putting more troops on the ground, and having more cooks in the mix in the form of regional governments. So you had something with the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a cow that didn’t give any milk.
> 
> If you look at Iraq today, the result is a mess of a country that cost America at least $2 trillion, and is currently governed by a pro-Iranian leader who has granted himself nearly dictatorial powers. Meanwhile, the Kurds have established what amounts to an independent country of their own in the north, massive car bombs go off in Baghdad every week, and no one in the Middle East looks at Iraq as a model of anything except of how American good intentions can lead to ruin.
> 
> You have a very nice story from Rumsfeld about Clinton coming up to him at the World War II Memorial after Abu Ghraib when he says “Don, there's no way in God's green earth that anyone with an ounce of sense could think you could know anything that was going on in Abu Ghraib halfway around the world on the midnight shift. You'll get through this, don't worry about it.” Rumsfeld is really impressed by Clinton—“True, gracious, political, and brilliant,” he says—but much less so by Obama.
> 
> I think Rumsfeld was personally and publicly shamed by Abu Ghraib in a way that still haunts him, which is why he says such nice things about Bill Clinton.
> 
> On the other hand, I think he honestly believes that Obama is incompetent, when it comes to geopolitics and also to making decisions that affect the American economy. “I begin with incompetence as a problem,” he told me in the interview. “I think his behavior reflects a lack of experience and a lack of a strategic concept, or some principles or values that he tests things against.” Accordingly, says Rumsfeld, “We are contributing to a vacuum in the world that’s going to be filled by people who don’t have our values and don’t have our interests and our beliefs, and that means it’s going to be a more dangerous world for us and for others.”
> 
> *What seems to bother Rumsfeld most is his sense that America is a country in steep decline – which is a word that he used more than once. While he thinks that Obama’s Syria policy is a fig leaf for a disaster, he actually seemed less focused on specific policy choices than on his sense that the socio-economic foundation of American power is disintegrating. Without sustained American economic strength, neither American threats nor American offers of friendship are likely to carry much weight with the rest of the world.*
> 
> How much Rumsfeld’s own policy choices, and the wars he helped to oversee, have contributed to that decline, is hard to quantify right now – but it’s also hard to argue that they helped. On the other hand, I think the country is definitely ripe for an argument about whether America wants to sustain its role as the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power, and what the alternatives will actually look like.


----------



## Rifleman62

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> My understanding is that these 800,000 public employees, full/part time and contract are on a paid furlough. When funding is approved, they all get back pay.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> cupper said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not all are on paid furlough, and even those that are could be waiting months for back pay.
> 
> Which again goes to the point that the bills are still coming in, and need to be paid now.
> 
> Many have had to dip into savings to cover the furlough days from the sequester this summer, many DOD employees lost 6 days of pay.
> 
> And as I said earlier, this is not limited to just the government employees laid off. The service providers that depends on those workers buying goods and services as part of their work day see a drop in business.
> 
> With the uncertainty of how long this may drag on, with the possibility of default looming around the corner, the economy is on the thin edge.
> 
> 
> 
> http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/05/20822136-house-unanimously-approves-back-pay-for-800000-furloughed-federal-workers
> 
> They will have to wait, but they will not be out of pocket. *A paid vacation.*
> 
> *
> House unanimously approves back pay for 800,000 furloughed federal workers*
> 
> The House on Saturday unanimously approved legislation to provide retroactive pay for furloughed federal workers after the government shutdown ends. The vote was 407-0.
> 
> The White House said Friday that it “strongly supports” the legislation and urged its “swift” passage, even while warning that the single bill alone “will not address the serious consequences of the funding lapse.” The Senate could take it up as soon as today.
> 
> Approximately 800,000 government employees are furloughed during the shutdown.
> 
> Workers deemed essential and who are currently on the job will be paid for their work during the shutdown, although their paychecks could be delayed. But furloughed employees need congressional approval to receive back pay.
> Advertise | AdChoices
> 
> After past shutdowns, Congress passed similar measures, but federal employee unions had warned early in this impasse that there was no guarantee that Congress would act.
> 
> The unanimous vote was the first sign of bipartisan unity between the House and Senate since both chambers approved legislation ensuring military pay during the shutdown.
> 
> During the budget stalemate, the GOP-led House has passed a series of bills to fund some of the most popular programs impacted by the funding lapse - like national parks and care for veterans. But the Senate has declined to take up those piecemeal measures, saying that the government should instead be fully reopened.
> 
> "I'm glad to see at the very least that the Senate has plans to take up this bill," Rep. Hal Rogers R-Ky., said of the Senate's likely action on the back pay legislation. "Stop the presses! The Senate's going to take up a bill!"
> 
> The  back pay measure was introduced by Democrat Jim Moran of Northern Virginia, which has one of the country’s highest populations of federal workers.
> 
> "The issue is fairness," Moran said on the House floor. "It's just wrong for hundreds of thousands of federal employees not to know whether they're going to be able to make their mortgage payment, not to know whether they're going to be able to provide for their families."
> 
> In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner lauded the passage of the measure and called for a resolution to the shutdown that includes measures to modify the Obama-backed health care reform legislation.
> 
> “It’s encouraging to see both parties come together to provide fairness for the 800,000 federal workers hurt by this shutdown," he said. "Now we should do something about the 800,000 jobs being destroyed by the president’s health care law."
> 
> Democrats continued to say they want GOP leaders to allow a vote on a government funding bill without add-ons that would make major changes to Obamacare.
> 
> Saying that ensuring retroactive pay was "the right thing to do," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said the fact that furloughed workers remain unable to go to work "highlights the sheer folly" of the ongoing government shutdown.
> 
> The House's move comes as the shutdown stretches into its fifth day. In an interview with The Associated Press, President Barack Obama again called on House leaders to put the "clean" funding bill up for a vote.
> 
> "We know that there are enough members in the House of Representatives -- Democrats and Republicans -- who are prepared to vote to reopen the government today," he said. "The only thing that is keeping that from happening is Speaker Boehner has made a decision that he is going to hold out to see if he can get additional concessions from us."
> 
> The Senate is in session on Saturday afternoon and could try to approve the retroactive pay bill unanimously.
Click to expand...


----------



## cupper

From the Office of Personnel Management:



> D. Pay
> *
> 1. Will excepted employees be paid for performing work during a shutdown furlough? If so, when will excepted employees receive such payments?
> *
> A. Agencies will incur obligations to pay for services performed by excepted employees during a lapse in appropriations, and those employees will be paid after Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.
> 
> (Note: Presidential appointees who are not covered by the leave system in 5 U.S.C. chapter 63 are not subject to furlough, but are also barred from receiving pay during a lapse in appropriations. These Presidential appointees will be paid after Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.)
> 
> *2. Will employees who are furloughed get paid?*
> 
> A. Congress will determine whether furloughed employees receive pay for the furlough
> period.
> 
> *3. Will employees receive a paycheck for hours worked prior to a lapse in appropriations?
> *
> 
> A. Under Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidance issued in 1980 (below), employees will receive this paycheck. Although the payroll for the last pay period before the lapse will be processed potentially during a period of furlough, the minimum number of payroll staff necessary for this process will be excepted from furlough for the minimum time required to issue the checks, including checks for the last pay period before the lapse. This guidance can be found in OMB’s August 28, 1980, Bulletin No. 80-14, Shutdown of Agency Operations Upon Failure by the Congress to Enact Appropriations, paragraph 3.b.(1) (Appropriations and funds). OMB has reviewed and concurs in this answer.
> ￼￼
> *4. When an employee’s pay is insufficient to permit all deductions to be made because a shutdown furlough occurs in the middle of a pay period and the employee receives a partial paycheck, what is the order of withholding precedence?
> *
> A. Agencies will follow the guidance on the order of precedence for applying deductions from the pay of its civilian employees when gross pay is insufficient to cover all authorized deductions found at http://www.chcoc.gov/transmittals/TransmittalDetails.aspx?TransmittalID=1477.
> 
> *5. May an excepted employee be permitted to earn premium pay (e.g., overtime pay, Sunday premium pay, night pay, availability pay) during the furlough period?
> *
> A. Yes. Excepted employees who meet the conditions for overtime pay, Sunday premium pay, night pay, availability pay and other premium payments will be entitled to payment in accordance with applicable rules, subject to any relevant payment limitations. Premium pay may be earned but cannot be paid until Congress passes and the President signs a new appropriation or continuing resolution.



http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/furlough-guidance/#url=Shutdown-Furlough

Employees who work during the furlough period are still accruing pay for the hours worked, but will not be paid for those hours until after the CR has been passed and signed. The money will not be available to the agency until it has been appropriated.

For workers that are not permitted to work during the shutdown period, they do not accrue pay, since they are not working. However, as we just seen with the bill passed today, that they can be given backpay for the time they would normally be available to work during the shutdown period, but would be only at the discretion of Congress. 

I have several friends and co-workers who's spouses are effected by the shutdown and are dealing with the various issues of not having a paycheck coming in.

There is also an interesting anomaly where employees who's positions are funded through sources other than congressional appropriations are still working. A former co-worker who went to a job at the Federal Highways Administration is still working, as her position s funded by the Federal Gas Tax.


----------



## muskrat89

Always enjoy Thomas Sowell's take on things....

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/10/04/who-shut-down-the-government-n1716292?utm_source=facebook




> There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going -- except for ObamaCare.
> 
> *This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record*.
> 
> As for the House of Representatives' right to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have a right to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.
> 
> Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion. But it is a matter of fact that members of the House of Representatives have a right to make spending decisions based on their opinion.
> 
> ObamaCare is indeed "the law of the land," as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.
> 
> But the whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.
> 
> The hundreds of thousands of government workers who have been laid off are not idle because the House of Representatives did not vote enough money to pay their salaries or the other expenses of their agencies -- unless they are in an agency that would administer ObamaCare.
> 
> Since we cannot read minds, we cannot say who -- if anybody -- "wants to shut down the government." But we do know who had the option to keep the government running and chose not to. The money voted by the House of Representatives covered everything that the government does, except for ObamaCare.
> 
> The Senate chose not to vote to authorize that money to be spent, because it did not include money for ObamaCare.


----------



## tomahawk6




----------



## tomahawk6

Someone finally read the funding bill that was signed into law. 
Civilian employees of DOD will be called back to work.

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=120905

Hagel Announces Recall of Most Defense Department Civilians

By Army Sgt. 1st Class Tyrone C. Marshall Jr.
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2013 – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced today he is recalling most of the Defense Department civilians who were placed on furlough as a result of the government shutdown which began Oct. 1.

 “Today, I am announcing that most DOD civilians placed on emergency furlough during the government shutdown will be asked to return to work beginning next week,” he said.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I respect your opinion Edward,but the US is far from finished as a world power.What did Britain in were its socialist policies.In fact its what ails Europe as a whole.They cannot afford the military power to do much more than protect their own borders.They would fold in days of a Russian invasion.Fortunately Russia cannot afford a modern military.If their economy became like China's watch out !!




It doesn't have to be "finished," and many smart people (whose articles I have posted here in Army.ca) warn that those who posit an American decline are quite wrong. And broadly, I agree with them: America still has HUGE _potential_. It *cannot*, in my opinion, be *pushed* into decline; any outside pressure, such as the bond _fire sale_ that Russia is reported to have proposed in 2008/09 would be met with a fully unified and effective American response - sane, sensible economic policies - fully supported by China, Australia, Canada and Europe.

I'm not worried about America being pushed into decline.

What frightens me is the prospect of America being pulled into decline.

That, a self imposed collapse, is, in my opinion, a very real and very dangerous possibility. The problem is that, unlike the push scenario, a *pull* into precipitous decline will be supported by about 40% of the population! The nature of the ongoing culture wars suggests that Americans will cut off their noses to spite their faces.

The threat to America is not external - in fact, as I have mentioned elsewhere, countries like China who are not, generally, regarded as America's _friends_ would rally around in the event of an outside _push_. But no one, not Canada, not China, will be able to do anything about a self inflicted wound.

It's _Pogo_ all over again:







_________

Edit: to add

And then there is this article from the _National Post_ which suggests that it is a *not* a small Tea party rump that drove the US into shutdown but, rather, it is the broad _bases_ of both parties, the majorities of which are hell-bent on two opposite courses:

     1. Bigger and bigger and more and more intrusive, _activist_ governments for the Democrats; versus

     2. Smaller, less intrusive governments for the GOP.

Polling suggests that the two positions are, each, broadly and nearly equally supported (something like 40% vs 40% with only 20% undecided?) by Americans at large.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ...The threat to America is not external - in fact, as I have mentioned elsewhere, countries like China who are not, generally, regarded as America's _friends_ would rally around in the event of an outside _push_. But no one, not Canada, not China, will be able to do anything about a self inflicted wound....



It's always much easier to drum up unity, restore flagging patriotism and garner domestic political support by depicting an external threat: this is probably an ancient lesson. Witness the rallying of Britons during the Falklands War. It's much more difficult and less palatable to side with Pogo's observation (unless of course you just heap all the blame on The Other Party.)

It seems to me that a serious and productive dialogue about the internal problems that threaten to hollow out America is doomed to failure in the current climate, when all we hear is the Right screaming "_You Hate America_!" and the Left shrieking about "_the Race to the Bottom!_".

Can a reasonable adult dialogue, with thoughtful compromise by both Reds and Blues, even happen anymore?


----------



## tomahawk6

Maybe the US can learn from the dialogue between those in Quebec and the rest of Canada ? Deep divisions and yet Canada has yet to splinter apart.


----------



## Rifleman62

If your a Democrat, and blaming Bush is wearing out, join the Cdn media and blame Harper.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-anti-keystone-billionaire-takes-aim-at-harper-s-pipeline-stance-1.1913098
*
U.S. anti-Keystone billionaire takes aim at Harper's pipeline stance*
Democratic Party fundraiser criticizes Canadian PM on hardline stance on pipeline

The Canadian Press Posted: Oct 04, 2013 

An anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusader has written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, suggesting Canada's aggressive lobbying for the project played a part in the government shutdown south of the border.

Tom Steyer, a San Francisco billionaire and a major Democratic Party fundraiser, chastises Harper for saying he would not "take no for an answer" from U.S. President Barack Obama on TransCanada's Keystone XL.

In a question-and-answer session with the Canadian American Business Council last week in New York, Harper took a hard line on how Canada would respond if the Keystone XL project is rejected by the White House.

    'This won't be final until it's approved and we will keep pushing forward.'- Prime Minister Stephen Harper

"My view is you don't take no for an answer," Harper said. "This won't be final until it's approved and we will keep pushing forward."

Steyer takes issue with those comments in his letter to the prime minister.

"Have your government, your government's lobbyist and/or agents representing TransCanada communicated with House Republicans about including Keystone in the original litany of demands put to President Obama?" Steyer asks in the letter to Harper sent Friday.

Steyer says in the dispatch that TransCanada is launching a new advertising campaign aimed at stakeholders in Washington, D.C.

"News of this advertising campaign comes in the context of House Republicans having closed down the U.S. government as well as threatening to oppose the extension of the country's debt limit unless certain demands were met," Steyer wrote.

"Included in the original list of House Republican demands was that the Obama administration grant approval for the building of the Keystone XL pipeline."

The combination of the advertising campaign and Harper's comments last week "raises the question of whether your office is working hand-in-hand with TransCanada to try to exploit the current situation in Washington, D.C., at the expense of the American people," Steyer wrote.


----------



## tomahawk6

Democrats are long on excuses but short on results.


----------



## PuckChaser

Its pretty difficult to appear not at fault when the Democrat stance is "If you would just let us do whatever the hell we want to do, there'd be no shutdown!"


----------



## Brad Sallows

The current fracas isn't really over the ACA; it's over budgeting and fiscal management.

Consider the division of US federal spending into "mandatory" and "discretionary".  Once passed into law, mandatory spending programs grant people a right to make claims and are outside what most people think of as the annual budgeting process, which concerns discretionary (eg. government operating) spending.  The only check on mandatory spending that forces people to the table is the debt ceiling.  The only check on discretionary spending that forces people to the table is the requirement for appropriations (either in the traditional sense or pay-as-you-go CR).

In the absence of a debt ceiling, Democrats would get everything they want with respect to mandatory spending: they could refuse to negotiate, and all the mandatory spending would still go ahead.  If CRs were the default in the absence of appropriations, Democrats would get everything they want with respect to discretionary spending (ie. spend whatever amount is required each day to keep all government agencies funded to fulfill their purposes).  These basic facts explains why the US federal budgeting process has mostly been ignored by Democrats, particularly in Senate.  Autopilot suits them.

The current Democratic position is "full funding".  The current Republican position is "reduce spending".  The critical issue is long-term mandatory spending.  The ACA features on both sides of the divide because of its huge mandatory spending liability and the requirements of the participating agencies to have the necessary discretionary funding to make it work, and features prominently because it is new and large.

The complication is that neither party really wants to keep the ACA.  The Democrats claim they do, but the ACA is their path to single payer.  They want to break private health insurance in the US, but want to break it on their terms.  The Republicans have their own ideas about health care reform which do not include breaking private health insurance.  (Those of you inclined to instinctively chant that Republicans have no ideas about health care reform, please go find a middle school debating society in which to sound off.)  A common characteristic of revolutionary or unstable times is that government sets out to execute substantial reforms, but one or more factions decide that if change is up for discussion, they have other paths that might be followed.  That is the case now.  The ACA is a pig; it's defenders put a lot of lipstick on it but it is a poorly conceived and written piece of legislation that should only have been passed by a party with a solid 60-70% "mandate" (as in, popular vote for president and Congress).  Its execution so far has been a mess.  Whether it needs to be torn down completely and replaced or modified is debatable.  Democrats punted a lot of things past the 2012 election and would undoubtedly like to punt more things past 2014, but there is a limit to how far they can go without trying to get some benefits into people's hands to allow greed to work its magic.

So there are two incompatibilities: desire to break health insurance vs unwillingness to do so, and desire to maintain spending levels at high watermark vs unwillingness to do so.  Pretending that only one party is stubborn to an unwarranted degree is just an ideological circle jerk.

The way out of the debt ceiling impasse for Republicans is simply for the House to pass short (3 month or so) "clean" lifts.  The risk of default is removed, but the issue stays on the table and consumes everyone's time and energy.  Reid seems to be content doing nothing with the Senate unless it is exactly what he wants.  Obama is the one who needs a long-term lift if he wants to do anything but talk about it for the next three years.  He will have to persuade Democrats in Congress to make deals.  But Reid seems to be the one behind "not one step back", not Obama.

There doesn't really need to be a way to break the appropriations impasse, since it doesn't cause a true "shutdown".  If figures cited in the media are accurate, more than 85% of government function is not impeded.  The House can keep passing appropriations bills or CRs, and Reid can keep rejecting them.  Undoubtedly Obama will sign whatever gets through Senate.


----------



## Brad Sallows

>Deep divisions and yet Canada has yet to splinter apart.

The divisions don't affect the ability of Parliament to function.  We essentially have a unified executive and deliberative body (the Senate chiefly being decoration), and as long as a party forms a majority government in Parliament they "own" public spending.  There is no-one else to blame for irresponsible overspending or underspending, and they want to be re-elected.

I'm not sure how the US could fix its problem.  Assuming the two-party system to be sufficiently embedded as to not have to deal with the complications of a minority government in the House, one solution would be to vest all budgeting authority in the House and eliminate the distinction between mandatory and discretionary spending.  The Senate would get no say, and the president could either accept it or reject it.  A party wishing to win the House would have the same incentive to budget approximately responsibly as any other deliberative body with full control.


----------



## a_majoor

A bit of snark from Instapundit, but hidden within a bit of hope as well. This relates to the evolving cultural divides I have described on this and other threads, changes in demographics, technology and so on have upended the structures and institutions built up since the 1930's, and the current political class (benefiting from the current structure) is digging in to hang on to their perques and benefits (and I mean_ all _the establishment political class) while new structures are growing and new models are being tried out, and new generations of politicians and political movements are emerging in the new landscape. The "America that works" that Glenn Reynolds refers to is the entrepreneurial, high tech segment that built the IT revolution and is now doing things like launching space missions using vehicles and systems built by themselves and not via a government agency. The other half of the comparison is the Obamacare websites:



> MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Washington Isn't Working. Plus, a comparison of the political class with the parts of America that do work. “One America can launch rockets. The other America can't even launch a website.”


----------



## Edward Campbell

I own up to a full share of the blame for this, but: the topic is a "Grand Strategy for a Divided America." I fear we are focusing too much on the _divide_ and not enough on the _strategy_. We all remember what happens to threads about American domestic politics ...

I think we can agree that _strategy_, grand or not so grand, depends upon resources, so the threat of a financial disaster provoked by a default does have an impact on America's grand strategy ... but how?

What are the likely _strategic_ implications of a default? There are _guesstimates_ out there about the damage a default would do to the recovery ... the DoD budget could not, logically, survive a repeat of 2008/09. How many carrier battle groups would be mothballed? How many combat brigades? What are the _strategic_ implications? And: _cui bono?_ Why? And can China, for example, pick up some of the _strategic_ slack?


----------



## tomahawk6

The Obama Administration has a different strategy than would a Republican.You need to remember that Obama is an Alinsky disciple,so its all about the crisis to blame Republicans in time for the 2014 elections.Of course it could backfire on the dem's big time.


----------



## a_majoor

Looking at examples like the rise of "small platoons" in Detroit and other examples of American citizens getting back to the actual job of citizenship, (see here. for example) I would suggest that the interrignum caused by a default would actually be shorter in the United States than anyplace else. America is uniquely blessed by an energetic and hardworking population (most of them, anyway), abundent natural resources and a flexible and dynamic culture.

A default would set off a global shockwave and topple the dominos of heavily indebted states, nations and institutions. Not even China would escape (and there are many who believe they are sitting on the biggest credit bubble in history, so they will fall much faster and harder than many other places).

The hard fact is even with many brigades, aircraft carriers and so on mothballed by a large scale global recession/depression, the Americans would still have a military force that is much larger and more effective than almost anyone else's, and _still_ have the rather unique ability to project forces around the globe, while few potential adversaries can project forces far beyond their borders. The forces will be much smaller than previously, and won't be hanging around very long, but perhaps this is a good thing too; policy makers will have to be very focused on what they want to achieve with a smaller basket of resources. Think of the Falkland Islands war rather than the invasion of Iraq. Since the Americans can't fight everyone, and most fights will be confined far from American borders and not impact on core American interests, the best policy will be to stay put and let everyone fight it out among themselves, then decide who they want to deal with when the dust settles. 

This may also be a "good" thing for the rest of the world as well. Most current institutions, borders etc. generally reflect the immediate post war world, while the same changes in demographics, economics and technology that are creating the real divides in America are at work everywhere else. While the process will be very messy and unpleasant for the people involved, collapsing dysfunctional regimes, unrepresentative borders and unresponsive institutions will create a period of lasting stability after the "reset" (lasting being about the same length of time as we see between WWII and the present).


----------



## tomahawk6

There is plenty of money to pay interest on the debt.The government just wants to be able to spend more money.Go ahead just cancel Obamacare first.


----------



## Edward Campbell

In have discussed _displacing_ the US dollar as the global reserve currency a couple of times in the past. The dollar's staus gives the US economy a HUGE advantage, something that annoys the Chinese and the Europeans.

This article (originally from _The Telegraph_) which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Post_ explains that the issue ~ and its consequences ~ is on the table again:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/10/15/us-dollar-supremacy-decline/


> The sun is setting on the U.S. dollar’s global supremacy
> 
> Jeremy Warner, The Telegraph
> 
> 15/10/13
> 
> All great empires – from the Greek, to the Roman, the Spanish and the British – have at their heart a dominant means of exchange which is very much part of their political and social hegemony. Once upon a time, it was Roman coinage which was the world’s pre-eminent currency. In more recent times it was the British pound. Today, it’s the U.S. dollar to which international investors flock as a safe haven for their money. Highly liquid and apparently reliable – until recently at least – nothing else comes even remotely close to the greenback’s dominant position in the international monetary system.
> 
> That this position – what Giscard d’Estaing referred to as America’s “exorbitant privilege” – could so casually be put at risk by politicians on Capitol Hill is an extraordinary spectacle that may be indicative of a great power already seriously on the wane.
> 
> With the pound, the fall from grace was swift. Britain emerged from the devastation of the First World War an irreparably damaged economic and military power, with crushing debts and a deeply impaired manufacturing sector.
> 
> The dollar was able quickly to usurp the pound’s position. Final defeat for sterling came with Britain’s decision to leave the gold standard in 1931 – an economically sensible decision but a psychological turning point for sterling from which it never recovered.
> 
> Lack of any credible alternative means it won’t happen so quickly with the dollar. For all the progress of the last 30 years, China for now remains a much smaller economy than the U.S. and in any case is nowhere near ready financially to assume such a role. As for the euro, the dollar needn’t trouble itself much about this one-time pretender to the throne.
> 
> Yet rarely before has international dissatisfaction with the dollar’s role as reserve currency to the world been as great as it is now. The most visible anger comes from China, with more than US$3 trillion of dollar foreign exchange reserves, US$1.3 trillion of them held in U.S. Treasuries. For ordinary Chinese, it has come as a revelation to discover they own so much American debt. That they own it in a country which because of political brinkmanship may actually default has provoked understandable fury.
> 
> “It is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanised world”, China’s official government news agency has said.
> 
> A steady erosion of trust which began with the financial crisis five years ago has reached apparent breaking point with the pantomime antics on Capitol Hill. The search for long-term alternatives to the dollar is on as never before. Regrettably, there aren’t any, or not for the time being in any case. Everyone can only look on in horror as the US commits apparent economic suicide.
> 
> Such is the dollar’s dominance that, to begin with at least, investors might simply have to take default on the chin. More than 60% of global foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S. dollars, which also account for more than 80% of global foreign exchange trading.
> 
> So important is dollar liquidity in global trade that if, for instance, you wanted to sell Singapore dollars and buy South African rand, your forex dealer would first typically buy U.S. dollars with your Singapore dollars and then use them to buy the South African rand. The dollar is the middle currency in the vast bulk of international transactions.
> 
> By the same token, U.S. Treasuries are the very backbone of the global financial system. They are the supposed “risk-free asset” against which everything else is benchmarked, and as such are the collateral of choice in a huge array of financial market transactions. The dollar is also the currency used to price most commodities, from oil to gold.
> 
> The dollar’s hegemony is all pervasive. This has given the greenback a degree of leverage unmatched by any other reserve currency in history. If China starts to sell dollar assets, it will only weaken the dollar, undermining Chinese exports and reducing the value of its remaining portfolio of dollar assets.
> 
> I’d been part of the received wisdom that any act of U.S. default would set off a devastating chain reaction of bankruptcies that would provoke a second global financial crisis. But David Bloom, chief currency strategist at HSBC, has convinced me that dollar hegemony might perversely act in the opposite way, at least initially.
> 
> Unlike a generalised credit event, where all instruments default at the same time, the U.S. would initially engage in a series of little, self contained defaults, or “selective defaults”, whose individual impact would probably not be that great.
> 
> Each bond has a life and coupon of its own. The missed coupon payment might therefore be regarded as not so bad – especially as this is a case of “won’t pay”, rather than “can’t pay”.
> 
> Markets see such defaults differently, with missed payments expected to be made up eventually once a political resolution is found. It’s also very likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to counter the damage in financial markets with more QE, buying up the Treasuries that investors dumped.
> 
> Furthermore, the financial uncertainty created by default would likely drive investors towards past safe havens of choice – in particular, US dollar assets. Alternative safe havens, such as Japan and Switzerland, have been rendered defunct by central bank money printing. Ironically, emerging markets are likely be more damaged by default than the US itself, with further capital flight.
> 
> Such is the degree of “exorbitant privilege” enjoyed by the dollar that it might therefore be the first currency in history to see an asset price rally on the back of a default. However, if there were repeated selective defaults, a second, less benign phase would eventually set in. Spooked markets would begin to sell off the dollar.
> 
> The consequent stronger euro and pound would have powerfully deflationary consequences for Europe. Internal demand in the US would also collapse as a result of the wrenching fiscal squeeze that would result from federal government attempts to match expenditures with tax revenues.
> 
> Dollar hegemony has long been a destabilising force at the centre of the international monetary system; it’s a major part of the sharp build-up in global current account imbalances and cross border capital flows that have been at the heart of so many of the problems in the world economy. The unprecedented accumulation of dollar foreign exchange reserves has in turn caused new challenges for the US, making it more difficult to maintain fiscal and financial stability within its own borders.
> 
> Policies that may or may not be good for the U.S. are in all probability bad for everyone else. Loose monetary policy in the U.S. since the crisis began has induced unwanted demand and asset bubbles elsewhere in the world.
> 
> Serious alternatives to the dollar, such as a global reserve currency, are still a long way off, but the latest shenanigans on Capitol Hill have given the search for them renewed and added momentum.
> 
> The U.S. is wrecklessly throwing away its future.




The only sensible alternative to the US dollar as a global reserve currency is an _official_, managed "basket" of currencies, like the International Monetary Fund's _Special Drawing Rights_ which is, however, already heavily (60%+) weighted with US dollars.






But it would be possible to _rebalance_ the SDRs to add Chinese Yuan (¥) (for say 5 to 10%) and to increase the amount of the Japanese ¥ to 5% and _promote_ e.g. Australian and Canadian dollars in the "basket" to something like 1.5% each ~ all at the expense of the US dollar which, at the end of the process would be "worth" only 49.9% of the SDR.


----------



## a_majoor

Digital crypto currencies may come out of left field and disrupt these neatly laid plans. Crypto currency lies outside of government regulation, and is thus much harder to debase or otherwise manipulate for political gain. Bankers hate it since it eliminates their role as middleman for financial transactions, while users apprieciate the ease of use when conducting transactions between parties who have adopted this form of currency. (Non Bitcoin users can see some of these effects by comparing PayPal to transfers using bank instruments or Western Union, for example).

While Bitcoin may be forced out of business, we should think back to "Napster" to see how the market reacts when a new product or service is created that empowers a large population of new users:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520296/leading-economist-predicts-a-bitcoin-backlash/



> *Leading Economist Predicts a Bitcoin Backlash*
> Economist Simon Johnson says governments will feel the urge to suppress the crypto-currency Bitcoin.
> 
> By Will Knight on October 14, 2013
> WHY IT MATTERS
> 
> A distributed, digital currency could allow new forms of online and mobile commerce—and perhaps challenge established financial systems.
> 
> Governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, according to a leading economist and academic. Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.
> 
> “There is going to be a big political backlash,” Johnson said on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last Thursday. “And the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.”
> 
> The system of cryptographic software behind Bitcoin represents a significant technical advance, and the currency has inspired many cyber-libertarians (see “What Bitcoin Is and Why It Matters”). Mathematical and computer networking principles are used to underpin a system through which financial transactions can be made digitally, without the need for any central authority or financial institution.
> 
> The code that supports and regulates the Bitcoin network is built into the software needed to use the currency. It works in a distributed network across the Internet to confirm transactions and prevent counterfeiting. Adding to the mystique, the technical expert or experts who developed the Bitcoin protocol are still unknown.
> 
> After several years as a nerdy curiosity, the currency has recently gained momentum as a legitimate means of payment. Many Bitcoin-based businesses are springing up, some backed by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists (see “Bitcoin Hits the Big Time, to the Regret of Some Early Boosters”).
> 
> However, Johnson says that Bitcoin’s success will draw increased attention from governments and regulators, who are used to having tight control over currencies. He believes they will be egged on by established financial institutions, which will likely seek to quash the currency. Bitcoin enables very rapid, cheap transfers and payments that could compete with existing fee-based ways of moving money around. “Any bankers watching this should be very afraid,” said Johnson.
> 
> Bitcoin opponents could get ammunition for their campaign from the recent case of Silk Road, an online marketplace where bitcoins were traded for illicit drugs. The FBI arrested a man on suspicion of running the site and seized the servers that ran Silk Road. The site was hidden from the open Internet using the anonymous networking technology Tor. (_Interpolation: while they have indeed seized the assets of Silk Road, they do not have the cryptographic keys, so the value of the Bitcoins is unavailable to the US government which seized these assets_).
> 
> Johnson suggested that this kind of controversial association could certainly put pressure on Bitcoin. “People care a lot about how monies are used,” he said. “They care about the various behaviors associated with monies.”
> 
> Indeed, it appears that Bitcoin is coming under increased scrutiny from lawmakers and politicians. Stephen Pair, cofounder and CTO of the Bitcoin payments company Bitpay, says his company has been contacted by state and national officials who have subpoenaed information about its activities.
> 
> Pair rejects any suggestion that the currency has any special association with illegal activities. “Just because you use Bitcoin and Tor doesn’t mean you can get away with breaking the law,” he says. “I would not advise people to see Bitcoin as a means of subverting the legal system.”
> 
> Johnson, who served as chief economist for the International Monetary Fund in 2007 and 2008, said he thinks supporters of the “crypto-currency” could head off opponents by persuading politicians and legislators that it represents an opportunity for international innovation. “They shouldn’t sit back and wait for other people to define them in terms of Silk Road or anything else,” he said in an interview after the conference. “They should be proactive and explain why this would be a great industry for the U.S. to develop, and why they should have appropriate regulation around that.”
> 
> He also said that some governments outside the U.S. may feel threatened by Bitcoin because it allows citizens and companies to sidestep restrictions on the movement of funds across their borders.


----------



## Brad Sallows

>Adding to the mystique, the technical expert or experts who developed the Bitcoin protocol are still unknown.

My.  It will be quite entertaining if the "unknown experts" built in some interesting back doors, and even more entertaining if the unknown experts turn out to be an underadvertised agency of someone's government.

More transparency is in order before I go anywhere near that.


----------



## a_majoor

Absolutely true, Brad. The larger point is that Digital currency is now here and will be proliferating. Looking back, I recall that various on line games have "convertable currency"; players can exchange "gold coins" from the game for real cash; selling gold and game items to other players, a very early example of a virtual economy interacting with a real one.

This will upend much conventional wisdom about "reserve currency", destroy various networks established to collect rents from the flow and exchange of money and potentially put the brakes on much of the activities of the Central Banks (especially the Federal Reserve). The implications are hard to judge, there is little precedent in the modern era, but perhaps this might be similar to the "free banking era", when individual banks could and did issue their own currency, and their solvency was based on the individual portfolios and holdings of the bank, with no form of insurance.


----------



## Edward Campbell

In a way the IMF's SDRs are just such a "digital currency." No such unit of currency exists, in fact SDRs were created to cope with a crisis in the supply of both gold and US dollars in the late 1960s. They became both more and less relevant in 1971 when Richard Nixon upset the global financial apple cart. 

It may be that the SDR's time has come to be the _main_ global reserve/exchange medium.


----------



## a_majoor

While SDR's may indeed serve that purpose for a short while, digital currency empowers individuals, not States. Individual transactions and corporate transactions are easily and inexpensively facilitated by digital media (think of PayPal for the early example), and few will want to add extra steps, time and expense to their dealings.

Undermining USD, Euros, Yen, Yuan and SDR's will have some pretty incalculable results on the world economy. The low cost and high conveinience of digital currency will almost garuntee high levels of adoption (much like downloadable entertainment media was rapidly adopted despite the efforts of the entertainment industry). Perhaps the best thing for the Americans to do is figure out how to deal with the transition in ways that do not drive out savings and investment (i.e. not erecting regulatory or predatory barriers against digital currency).


----------



## cupper

Well, the nonsense has been kicked down the road for another couple of months.

op:

*Default Averted: House Sends Obama Deal to Reopen Government, Raise Debt Ceiling*

http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/house-sends-obama-deal-to-re-open-goverment-raise-debt-ceiling/



> After a bitter 16-day government shutdown and just hours before the Treasury Department’s debt ceiling deadline, the House passed the Senate’s bipartisan deal to reopen the government and extend the nation’s borrowing limit, sending the measure to the president.
> 
> The chamber voted 285-144 late Wednesday night on the Senate-negotiated fiscal package, with 198 Democrats voting “yes” and 144 Republicans voting “no.”
> 
> Earlier in the evening, the Senate voted 81-18 to pass the bill, and President Barack Obama made a statement shortly after the Senate vote to say he would immediately sign the bill.
> 
> “We’ll begin reopening our government immediately, and we can begin to lift this cloud of uncertainty and unease from our businesses and from the American people,” Obama said.
> 
> The proposal would fund the government through Jan. 15, 2014, and put off the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, 2014, with the Treasury Department maintaining its ability to use so-called extraordinary measures to extend the deadline.
> 
> The deal, which was brokered in the Senate after the House was unable to find enough votes for its own plan, would provide back pay for federal workers, including pay for approximately 800,000 workers who were deemed nonessential and furloughed during the shutdown. States that used their own funds to carry on government operations would also be paid back by the federal government.



Apparently the dysfunction within the House has taken it's toll on the House Stenographer.

*House Stenographer Opines About Free Masons*

http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/house-stenographer-opines-about-free-masons/



> House passage of a government funding and debt limit deal got bizarre Wednesday night when a House stenographer went rogue.
> 
> The stenographer apparently began shouting about God, the free masons and a House divided, just as federal workers’ pay was being restored.
> 
> “He will not be mocked. He will not be mocked. Don’t touch me. He will not be mocked. The greatest deception here is this is not ‘one nation under God.’ It never was. Had it been, it would not have been … no … it would not have been,” the stenographer yelled as Capitol Police dragged her from the House floor.
> 
> “The Constitution would not have been written by free masons. They go against God,” she said. ”You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve two masters. Praise be to God. Lord Jesus Christ.”
> 
> Lawmakers watched the scene in a mix of bewilderment and shock. Members stood on the floor watching the scene unfold, and after the floor staffer was removed from the chamber, lawmakers turned to each other to try figure out what it was all about.


----------



## pbi

Although I'm not usually much of a Republican supporter, I salute Mr. Boehner. He has a very difficult task, balancing between the higher responsibility to the nation he serves and the bloody-minded impulses of some people in his party. I honestly believe him when he says he "fought the good fight": it is hard to fault a person who acts from genuine conscience. 

Maybe this episode will bring about a return to some kind of bipartisan pragmatism, so that the internal fires can be put out (or knocked down) before the USS America sinks.

 Or not...


----------



## cupper

pbi said:
			
		

> Although I'm not usually much of a Republican supporter, I salute Mr. Boehner. He has a very difficult task, balancing between the higher responsibility to the nation he serves and the bloody-minded impulses of some people in his party. I honestly believe him when he says he "fought the good fight": it is hard to fault a person who acts from genuine conscience.
> 
> Maybe this episode will bring about a return to some kind of bipartisan pragmatism, so that the internal fires can be put out (or knocked down) before the USS America sinks.
> 
> Or not...



I have to question some of his motivation.

There has been discussion on both sides as to whether he was putting potential loss of his position as speaker above the national interest by giving in to demands of the far right to follow a path that had no chance of success.

The House GOP Leadership was essentially made irrelevant since the complete implosion last weekend.

And all that was really achieved was kicking the issue down the road 3 months. Come the first two weeks of January, we could well see this whole thing play itself out again if the GOP hasn't taken this as a teaching moment.

Which brings me around to my though on how the US could become ascendant again.

What has been the biggest problem with the US since 2001 is the uncertainty that has existed across both the economy and the body politic. It has been most prominent in the period after the 2010 mid-term elections.

Governing from crisis to crisis exacerbated the slow economic growth. Business didn't want to make long term plans when they had no idea what the political sector was going to throw out. Markets became jittery with every congressional impasse. Ineffective leadership on both sides were unable to get any significant resolution to the big problems of immigration, poor economic performance, lack-luster jobs recovery.

The Politicos need to move beyond the petty points scoring, and look beyond their own agendas and do what needs to be done for the country to advance and restore itself to it's former position on the world stage. Regardless of what they feel is best for getting themselves reelected. They have to reach down deep into their pants, grab their sacs and give a good hard squeeze and make the difficult decisions irrespective of it's outcome on future reelection.


----------



## cupper

A new poll out appears to show that America is not as divided as you might think.

The basic take away is that 55% of Americans are moderates, with the Left / Right split at 20% and 25% respectively.

But looking at the data from the poll, you could also say that Americans are all over the map, and trying to pin any individual in that middle spectrum would be harder than nailing Jell-o to the wall.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/14/20960588-the-new-american-center-why-our-nation-isnt-as-divided-as-we-think

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/new-american-center-1113


----------



## Brad Sallows

The divide is that one party wishes to spend as much as the mandatory programs demand and 4% "baseline" annual growth for discretionary spending, and the other party wishes to balance the budget without raising taxes.  What does each party have to offer that the other wants?  What "grand strategy" beckons?


----------



## pbi

cupper said:
			
		

> ...The Politicos need to move beyond the petty points scoring, and look beyond their own agendas and do what needs to be done for the country to advance and restore itself to it's former position on the world stage. Regardless of what they feel is best for getting themselves reelected. They have to reach down deep into their pants, grab their sacs and give a good hard squeeze and make the difficult decisions irrespective of it's outcome on future reelection....



Oh...you mean act like "statesmen" instead of street-paving, pork-barrelling, vote-chasing, donation-scrounging, special interest-cultivating "politicians"?

Silly person! :facepalm:


----------



## cupper

pbi said:
			
		

> Oh...you mean act like "statesmen" instead of street-paving, pork-barrelling, vote-chasing, donation-scrounging, special interest-cultivating "politicians"?
> 
> Silly person! :facepalm:



It's good to have dreams.  ;D


----------



## pbi

But, seriously....

I wonder what actual impact all of this has had on the internal workings of the Republican party? Even if we dismiss 50% of the reports of GOP infighting as just the media gloating, it still looks like there might not be much love lost between the Tea Party crowd and the "mainstream" Republicans.

Third party, anyone?


----------



## Edward Campbell

America's history with third parties is not encouraging.

I agree that there is a civil war raging withing the Republican party. It was, back in Eisenhower's day, for example, the party of small town "middle America:" Main Street, not Wall Street. It was socially liberal ~ far more so than the Democrats which, back then, were strong in the South and which was, in the 1950s, fighting its own civil war between the Norther Eastern _liberals_ and the _Dixiecrats_ from the "Old South."

There was, beginning in the 1950s, another of those great migrations ~ this time by whites from the industrial North to the "New South," places like Atlanta and Dallas. The Southern states turned to the GOP and the North became solidly Democrat.

I'm not sure how the GOP's current civil war will play out. If the Tea Party wins then I expect an exodus to the Democrats which will temper that party, dragging it back to the moderate middle. That exodus will also guarantee the moderated Democrats control of the White House and the Congress for a generation. If the mainstream Republicans win then I expect one or maybe even two election cycles in which several _independent_ candidates score temporary victories before rejoining the GOP.


----------



## cupper

Well, first indicators will come in two weeks with the Virginia off off-year elections. 

The Dems are running a Washington insider with deep ties to the Clintons in Terry McAuliffe. 

The GOP is running Ken Cuccinelli, a far right cultural conservative who has used his position of Attorney General to further his own personal agenda. 

And we have a conservative libertarian as a third party candidate.

McAuliffe should not be leading in the polls in this campaign. He has been touted as the worst possible candidate the Dems could run in Virginia.

Cuccinelli was not supposed to be the choice for the Governor's race. However the conservative right wing of the Virginia GOP along with Tea Party managed to switch the selection from a primary process to a convention stacked with far right conservative members, and chose a slate of candidates that make most of the GOP's 2012 Presidential slate middle of the road.

Cuccinelli has never lead in any poll since being chosen. Now some of that could be accounted for by the presence of the Libertarian, but Cuccinelli had problems garnering support even before the Libertarian entered the race.

It is very telling that in the final weeks of tis race, Cuccinelli is spending more time campaigning to and trying to keep his base than trying to appeal to the independents and moderates.


----------



## tomahawk6

My money is on Ken Cuccinelli. ;D


----------



## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> My money is on Ken Cuccinelli. ;D



 :rofl:

May as well send it to me now. :nod:


----------



## tomahawk6

Seriously with that many kids he needs a good job with great benefits. ;D


----------



## cupper

Well, if Gov. McDonnell is any example, you can make a great living from the benefits of being Governor. Just don't piss off the Chef.


----------



## pbi

This could be an interesting race.

I lived in VA for a while, near Quantico. IMHO while you would naturally assume VA to be a GOP state, I'm not sure it's painted with one brush: even wth one GOP brush. 

When I lived there (97-98) the north part of the state where I lived was heavily suburbanized with many of the residents being Govt and Beltway folks who didn't have long standing connections to the state or to "Southern" culture. It was much more diverse than I expected. I was surprised, for example, to see signs in Spanish and in English in the supermarket. 
It seemed more like Pennsylvania with grits and fried chicken than like "Gone With the Wind".

But, if you went not very far south or southwest in the state, it felt much more like the South that Canadians might think of, particularly in the areas around Fredericksburg and towards the mountains.


----------



## cupper

I've been in VA since 2001 and if anything it has only gotten more so polarized with the more populous Democratic leaning Norther Virginia (DC burbs) and Virginia Beach / Hamton Roads areas growing in population size and electoral power relative to the more conservative GOP leaning rest of the state. 

You will still find significant pockets of GOP districts within these two areas, but they tend to be from the right end of the Tea Party conservative spectrum. I've noted lately that there are a large number of Tea Party "Don't Tread on Me" License Plates showing up on the roads around here (Northern VA).


----------



## pbi

When I was living there I belonged to the Dumfries-Triangle Volunteer Fire Dept. The folks in the dept were almost all "old stock" residents whose families had lived there before the suburban sprawl began to swallow up Prince William County. They were mostly the archetypal "good ol' boys", but they were disheartened and somewhat alienated by the rapid changes happening in the places they grew up in. They felt that people like themselves with a strong sense of community ("real" Southerners) were being replaced by a bunch of commuter types who didn't really belong and sure as hell weren't going to volunteer their time to protect the community they were commuting from.

Maybe this is along the lines of the polarization you referred to.


----------



## mariomike

pbi said:
			
		

> When I was living there I belonged to the Dumfries-Triangle Volunteer Fire Dept.



I looked at the DTVFD website and was very impressed. Especially by the crew quarters. Five star compared to anything we had. Although we didn't get to spend much time in them anyway. 



			
				pbi said:
			
		

> <snip> a bunch of commuter types who didn't really belong and sure as hell weren't going to volunteer their time to protect the community they were commuting from.



Or, commuting into.

Either way, it sounds familiar. When I hired on there was a residency requirement. 

It meant manpower would be readily available in case of emergency, and that by living there you had a better "feel" of the many city neighborhoods and their diverse communities. 

That you would take more pride and interest in the results of your work if your own family lived there.

But, that was later struck down in arbitration. I believe the high cost of housing in the city was cited as the main reason. 

One can only imagine some of the places guys now on 24-hour tours commute from!

Cheers.


----------



## cupper

Actually Mike, most of the commuter traffic is going from Prince William into DC / Pentagon / NoVA Government facilities.

Urban sprawl has boomed since I first moved down, and my 30 minute commute to my office just outside the beltway is mild compared to most. And it's mainly on 2 lane back roads, rather than I-95 or I-66.

It's true that many of the municipal employees in Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax have to drive in from PW and further because rental and house prices were unaffordable on city worker salaries, and they needed to move further out into the burbs. It became a death spiral as growth moved further out, and the housing bubble grew, pushing people further and further away from their work place.

There are people who drive in from West Virginia, a 2 to 3 hour commute at rush hour, each way, simply because the housing is more affordable west of the Blue Ridge.


----------



## mariomike

cupper said:
			
		

> There are people who drive in from West Virginia, a 2 to 3 hour commute at rush hour, each way, simply because the housing is more affordable west of the Blue Ridge.



And I thought the GTA was bad.  

As you probably know, Residency Requirements in American cities have been a political issue for years.

The theory being that city neighborhoods are safer with their emergency services living there while off-duty. It also keeps their salaries within city limits.

Not surprisingly, the unions are opposed to the residency laws. 

Pittsburgh will be having a referendum on it next month:
http://www.post-gazette.com/neighborhoods-city/2013/07/23/Pittsburgh-Council-authorizes-referendum-on-police-residency/stories/201307230203


----------



## cupper

Since the market collapse some local governments in this area have taken to providing subsidies and interest free loans to city employees to purchase houses within the jurisdiction rather than opt for the long commute. It helped address the glut of foreclosed homes on the market as well.


----------



## mariomike

cupper said:
			
		

> Since the market collapse some local governments in this area have taken to providing subsidies and interest free loans to city employees to purchase houses within the jurisdiction rather than opt for the long commute. It helped address the glut of foreclosed homes on the market as well.



Similar to the Retention Pay up here.

It encourages "seasoned" members of the emergency services  ( many with skills in Special Operations ) to remain in the city rather than transferring their skills to an out-of-town service in a lateral move. 

This saves the City the expense of having to recruit and train replacements up to their skill level. 

Cheers.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Despite what Arvind Subramanian in an article posted in the Chinese superthread, the RMB is, most likely still some way away from displacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency but the authoritative _Financial Times_ worries, in an editorial, that the US is squandering its political and real capital and "by [any] yardstick, the US is floundering. Behind confidence in the full faith and credit of the US lies global trust in US democracy." The full editorial is reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5d97f272-3d6f-11e3-b754-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl


> A superpower at risk of slippage
> *The dollar still reigns but underlying confidence is shaken*
> 
> October 25, 2013
> 
> It has been 10 days since the US government shutdown came to an end. And if the bond market were your guide, there would appear to be no lasting costs – the 10-year US Treasury yield dipped below 2.5 per cent this week for the first time since August.
> 
> Yet beneath the surface, Washington’s flirtation with a voluntary default has shaken confidence in American political institutions. There may be no immediate rival to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Markets are more preoccupied by prospects of a delay to the Federal Reserve’s tapering plans. But as John Kerry, US secretary of state, said this week, the world is now monitoring the US to see when it will recover its senses. It cannot afford to make a habit of political recklessness.
> 
> The fact that Washington is undergoing a crisis of will, rather than ability, is not particularly reassuring. There is no question that the Treasury’s has capacity to service US obligations. At about 75 per cent of gross domestic product, publicly held US debt is entirely manageable – and less than a third of that of Japan. And the US fiscal deficit is on course to drop below 4 per cent of GDP next year.
> 
> But the possibility that it may generate yet another fiscal showdown as soon as January or February is on everyone’s minds. Last week a senior Chinese official called on the world to “de-Americanise”. Neither the Chinese renminbi nor the euro are in a position to supplant the US dollar, which still accounts for more than 60 per cent of global reserves. But governments and private investors are far more alert to possible alternatives than before. History is littered with solid objects – and riskless assets – that have melted into thin air.
> 
> There are two further costs to America’s rumbling domestic crisis that are equally hard to measure. As Einstein once quipped, not everything that counts can be counted. The first is to America’s reputation. Bill Clinton observed that the US should lead by the power of its example, rather than the example of its power.
> 
> By that yardstick, the US is floundering. Behind confidence in the full faith and credit of the US lies global trust in US democracy. However, the international impact of Washington’s dysfunction is increasingly tangible. Last month China exploited President Barack Obama’s absence from Asian trade meetings to launch a non-US initiative of its own. And the US government shutdown delayed the critical second round of transatlantic trade talks. Many important bureaucratic functions were put on ice, including monitoring of financial sanctions on Iran and work on fundamental scientific research. As Mr Kerry pointed out, he “could feel and breathe” the world’s doubts about US democracy in his meetings with counterparts.
> 
> Second, the shutdown has further sapped confidence in the US recovery. Last week the delayed jobs figures for September showed that the US labour market looks once again to be stalling. US consumer confidence also dipped to its lowest level in almost a year. And the shutdown has shaved at least 0.25 per cent from US fourth-quarter growth forecasts.
> 
> The world continues to hang on every word of the Fed, which remains the only functional economic game in town. The chances are that it will delay tapering until March after Janet Yellen, the nominee to replace Ben Bernanke, has taken over.
> 
> Assuming Capitol Hill does not block her confirmation, Ms Yellen will quickly need to show she is in the driving seat. It would therefore be a great help to her – and to a warily observant world – if Congress could keep the car on the road between now and then. There is more at stake here than mere reputation. The status of superpower carries responsibility too.
> 
> _Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013_




The wounds to America's power ~ and its economic power is every bit as important as its military power ~ are self inflicted. Americans are kicking America's ass.


----------



## Edward Campbell

According to this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The New York Times_, the Obama administration is attempting a "mid-course correction" on the Middle East (writ largely, one hopes) under the direction of National Security Adviser Susan Rice:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/world/middleeast/rice-offers-a-more-modest-strategy-for-mideast.html?hp&_r=0


> Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast
> 
> By MARK LANDLER
> 
> Published: October 26, 2013
> 
> WASHINGTON — Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America’s future in the Middle East. The policy review, a kind of midcourse correction, has set the United States on a new heading in the world’s most turbulent region.
> 
> At the United Nations last month, Mr. Obama laid out the priorities he has adopted as a result of the review. The United States, he declared, would focus on negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, brokering peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians and mitigating the strife in Syria. Everything else would take a back seat.
> 
> That includes Egypt, which was once a central pillar of American foreign policy. Mr. Obama, who hailed the crowds on the streets of Cairo in 2011 and pledged to heed the cries for change across the region, made clear that there were limits to what the United States would do to nurture democracy, whether there, or in Bahrain, Libya, Tunisia or Yemen.
> 
> The president’s goal, said Ms. Rice, who discussed the review for the first time in an interview last week, is to avoid having events in the Middle East swallow his foreign policy agenda, as it had those of presidents before him.
> 
> “We can’t just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is,” she said, adding, “He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region.”
> 
> Not only does the new approach have little in common with the “freedom agenda” of George W. Bush, but it is also a scaling back of the more expansive American role that Mr. Obama himself articulated two years ago, before the Arab Spring mutated into sectarian violence, extremism and brutal repression.
> 
> The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest.
> 
> For Ms. Rice, whose day job since she started July 1 has been a cascade of crises from Syria to the furor over the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities, the review was also a way to put her stamp on the administration’s priorities.
> 
> The debate was often vigorous, officials said, and its conclusions will play out over the rest of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
> 
> Scrawling ideas on a whiteboard and papering the walls of her office with notes, Ms. Rice’s team asked the most basic questions: What are America’s core interests in the Middle East? How has the upheaval in the Arab world changed America’s position? What can Mr. Obama realistically hope to achieve? What lies outside his reach?
> 
> The answer was a more modest approach — one that prizes diplomacy, puts limits on engagement and raises doubts about whether Mr. Obama would ever again use military force in a region convulsed by conflict.
> 
> For Ms. Rice, 48, who previously served as ambassador to the United Nations, it is an uncharacteristic imprint. A self-confident foreign policy thinker and expert on Africa, she is known as a fierce defender of human rights, advocating military intervention, when necessary. She was among those who persuaded Mr. Obama to back a NATO air campaign in Libya to avert a slaughter of the rebels by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
> 
> But Mr. Obama drove the process, officials said, asking for formal briefings in the Situation Room and shorter updates during his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office. He gave his advisers a tight deadline of the United Nations’ speech last month and pushed them to develop certain themes, drawing from his own journey since the hopeful early days of the Arab Spring.
> 
> In May 2011, he said the United States would support democracy, human rights and free markets with all the “diplomatic, economic and strategic tools at our disposal.” But at the United Nations last month, he said, “we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action — particularly with military action.”
> 
> Critics say the retooled policy will not shield the United States from the hazards of the Middle East. By holding back, they say, the United States risks being buffeted by crisis after crisis, as the president’s fraught history with Syria illustrates.
> 
> “You can have your agenda, but you can’t control what happens,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “The argument that we can’t make a decisive difference, so we’re not going to try, is wrongheaded.”
> 
> Other analysts said that the administration was right to focus on old-fashioned diplomacy with Iran and in the Middle East peace process, but that it had slighted the role of Egypt, which, despite its problems, remains a crucial American ally and a bellwether for the region.
> 
> “Egypt is still the test case of whether there can be a peaceful political transition in the Arab world,” said Richard N. Haass, who served in the State Department during the Bush administration and is now president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “But here, the administration is largely silent and seems uncertain as to what to do.”
> 
> The White House did not declare the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi last July a coup, which would have required cutting off all aid to the government. Instead, it signaled its displeasure by temporarily holding up the delivery of some big-ticket military equipment, delegating the announcement to the State Department.
> 
> Ms. Rice and other officials denied that Egypt had been sidelined, arguing that the policy was calculated to preserve American influence in Cairo. They also said the United States would continue to promote democracy, even if there were limits on what it could do, not to mention constraints on what the president could ask of a war-weary American public. “It would have been easy to write the president’s speech in a way that would have protected us from criticism,” said Philip H. Gordon, the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council. “We were trying to be honest and realistic.”
> 
> Mr. Gordon took part in the Saturday sessions, along with two of Ms. Rice’s deputies, Antony J. Blinken and Benjamin J. Rhodes; the national security adviser to the vice president, Jake Sullivan; the president’s counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco; a senior economic official, Caroline Atkinson; and a handful of others.
> 
> It was a tight group that included no one outside the White House, a stark contrast to Mr. Obama’s Afghanistan review in 2009, which involved dozens of officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Ms. Rice said she briefed Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel over weekly lunches.
> 
> Some priorities were clear. The election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran presents the West with perhaps its last good chance to curb its nuclear program. Mr. Rouhani has a mandate to ease sanctions on Iran and has signaled an eagerness to negotiate.
> 
> But other goals appear to have been dictated as much as by personnel as by policy. After vigorous debate, the group decided to make the Middle East peace process a top priority — even after failing to broker an agreement during the administration’s first term — in part because Mr. Kerry had already thrown himself into the role of peacemaker.
> 
> More than anything, the policy review was driven by Mr. Obama’s desire to turn his gaze elsewhere, notably Asia. Already, the government shutdown forced the president to cancel a trip to Southeast Asia — a decision that particularly irked Ms. Rice, who was planning to accompany Mr. Obama and plunge into a part of the world with which she did not have much experience.
> 
> “There’s a whole world out there,” Ms. Rice said, “and we’ve got interests and opportunities in that whole world.”




It is interesting to note that this "mid-course correction" is being done, apparently, without (direct, face-to-face) inputs from the Defence or State Departments.

I doubt that George W Bush's "freedom agenda" was a sound base for a strategy and I am, somewhat, heartened to read that "it (the Rice plan) does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest." America does have vital, core interests in North Africa, the Middle East and West Asia but I never thought "democracy," as we understand it is a good fit for the regions at this time.


----------



## tomahawk6

The administration has chosen to punish the Egyptian military for ousting the MB by cutting funding.The MB is not a friend to the West.Fortunately the Saudi's have stepped in to make up for the funding shortfall.


----------



## a_majoor

Unless and until the political class changes greatly, I doubt we will see any improvement soon. From Instapundit this morning:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit



> ROGER SIMON: Obama Should Be Impeached . . . For Cluelessness. “When I read Sunday evening in the Wall Street Journal that Barack Obama was ‘unaware’ until last summer that the U. S. spied on thirty-five world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, I was frankly stupefied. No wonder Obamacare and practically everything else from foreign policy to energy policy is an unmitigated mess. This president and his administration have taken hands-off leadership and leading from behind to unprecedented levels. What exactly does our president do for a living? What’re we paying him for?”
> 
> He reigns, but does not rule. He leaves the actual work to the likes of Valerie Jarrett, people formidable enough in their milieu but rather narrow in skills and knowledge.



Of course since most politicians are "professional" politicians and their staffers are equally "professional" (often having done nothing else in their adult lives) the idea that they are quite narrow in skills and knowledge is perfectly understandable. Breaking "professional" politicians might involve such things as term limits, undoing "gerrymandered" districts and a cultural shift back to the idea that politics is an interlude in the lives of otherwise accomplished professionals (sorry gang, but the need to have a recognizable name, heavy CV and ability to raise resources means that middle class wage earners are to be fighting a huge uphill battle no matter what).

"How" to get there is an interesting question in of itself....


----------



## Edward Campbell

And Moody's reports that it isn't just the US Government and the US consumer who are too deep in debt ... it's _Corporate America_, too:






The economy matters: America's _strategy_ ... grand strategy, military strategy, etc ... must be paid for, eventually. Right now America's _strategy_ is in hock to the Chinese.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_ is a useful article which ends with a quote from Adm (ret'd) Michael Mullen, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I am tired," Adm (ret'd) Mullin says "of interventionists picking up a stick *without a strategy*, without knowing the political and diplomatic outcome.” 

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21590103-two-difficult-wars-offer-compelling-lessons-uses-force


> Special report: America's foreign policy
> 
> The uses of force
> *Two difficult wars offer compelling lessons*
> 
> Nov 23rd 2013
> 
> From the print edition
> 
> “AMATEURS TALK STRATEGY, professionals talk capacity.” Jeremy Shapiro, who recently left the State Department to join the Brookings Institution in Washington, has put his finger on a central question for foreign policy. For the liberal, open-market system to endure is in America’s interest—and in the general interest, too. America does not yet face a direct challenge from China and Russia. But as the dominant power it must be able and willing to maintain the system, or norms will fray and tensions grow. Does it have the capacity?
> 
> The question forces itself on policymakers just now because the demands placed on American primacy have changed. In the cold war, explains John Ikenberry, an academic, America provided security and other services to many countries. But the threat is no longer so great and security is therefore no longer so valuable. For many countries in large parts of the world, the past decade has been not about war and financial crisis but about peace and prosperity. Those countries want more of a say.
> 
> At the same time, according to Moisés Naím of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the old centres of power, including governments, have less room for manoeuvre. Their authority to dictate values and behaviour has been undermined by a profusion of new political actors and interest groups who are mobile and connected.
> 
> Some conclude that in such a world dominance is impossible: there are too many actors with the power to block anything they dislike. The rest of this special report will examine how far that is true by looking at the components of American primacy—sharp military power, sticky economic power and the sweet power of American values—before drawing some conclusions about how America should act. In each case, as Mr Shapiro has observed, the starting point is capacity.
> 
> Seen from Washington, the main threat to America’s armed forces is to be found not in Helmand or Hainan but in the automatic budget cuts of the sequester. This roughly doubles the savings that will have to come from the Pentagon’s budget in the next nine years, to about $1 trillion.
> 
> During the summer Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, mapped out a possible first round of cuts: shrinking the army by up to 110,000 troops from its current target of 490,000; and losing possibly two of ten aircraft-carriers, as well as bombers and transport aircraft. The alternative, Mr Hagel said, was to cut spending on modernisation.
> 
> *Cut, but not to the quick*
> 
> Inevitably, the proposed cuts have stirred up a hornets’ nest. But just how bad are they? In the ten years to 2011, when America was at war, pay and benefits for the army increased by 57% in real terms. The number of support staff, too, grew rapidly. Because Congress will not touch this large and politically sensitive part of the budget, the cuts must be borne elsewhere.
> 
> That is a foolish way to run an army. However, even without the sequester, much of the enormous build-up in spending after the attacks of September 11th 2001 should be going into reverse. Moreover, America’s military might will remain unchallenged, even after the cuts. Just after Mr Hagel set out his ideas, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress about the Pentagon’s revised plans for potential wars around the world. Large invasions may be out, but it can draw on quick-reaction forces and stealth air power and ships. And not only does it outspend most of the rest of the world combined on conventional defence (see chart 3), it also has a formidable nuclear arsenal and the wherewithal for cyber-warfare.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The real question is not whether the country can go to war if it has to, but whether it fights the right sort of war when it chooses to. Modern America has shown an unrivalled appetite for battle. During more than half the years since the end of the cold war it has been in combat. That is not just because of the war in Iraq, which lasted from 2003 to 2011, and that in Afghanistan, which began two years earlier and is still unfinished. Even before that, between 1989 and 2001 the United States intervened abroad on average once every 16 months—more frequently than in any period in its history.
> 
> Few are happy about this, especially America’s senior officers. “It’s too easy to use force,” says Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It’s almost the first choice.” General Brent Scowcroft, national-security adviser to Gerald Ford and the elder George Bush, agrees. One reason why politicians have turned to the armed forces, he argues, is that war looks like a shortcut to success. Trying to change people’s minds and influence them in other ways is long and slow. “The fallacy is that often the use of force changes the circumstances of the question. By the time you have finished, the question is different and we frequently find ourselves in an unanticipated situation.”
> 
> That was particularly true of Afghanistan and Iraq. The consensus now is that the first war has been unhappy and the second was a mistake. The Iraqi campaign (which The Economist also supported, to the irritation of many of its readers) especially provokes the experts. A “fiasco” and a “catastrophe”, they say; “a 15-year detour” that “sullied America’s moral leadership”. America needs to look squarely at why it found these two wars so hard to help it decide which wars to take on in future.
> 
> The basic armoured set-piece on a defined battlefield in which one side wins and the other loses now rarely happens in real life. The past few decades have seen no absolute defeat in the style of Berlin in 1945. Even the most successful recent campaign, the first Gulf war of 1990, left Saddam Hussein in power and at liberty to go on murdering his own people. America went to war for a second time in Iraq in 2003 thinking that the fight was a big armoured assault, only to discover that it had stumbled into a seemingly endless insurgency like the one already under way in Afghanistan. Both were a bit like the Vietnam war, but the army had been so keen to forget Indochina that it had to learn the art of counter-insurgency all over again. What did it discover?
> 
> First, that war is even more political than it used to be. Emile Simpson, who was an infantry officer in the Royal Gurkha Rifles and served three tours in Afghanistan, argues that modern war is not defined against the enemy alone. Far beyond the battlefields of Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan are other audiences, including the Afghan people, the Muslim world, NATO, China and voters back home. The idea of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan has become ever less relevant. To the politicians in charge and to the overall national interest, the other audiences have counted just as much, if not more.
> 
> When groups far from the fighting matter, the foundations of warfare shift all the time. Military strategy needs to evolve to take account of all those other audiences. A drone strike like the recent one that killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban might help defeat the insurgents but undermine the coalition among other groups. Just as you do not win an election by destroying the other party, so you do not win such a war by destroying the enemy. You have to destroy the enemy’s legitimacy.
> 
> When the battlefield is diffuse, you get cross-cutting franchises rather than two opposing sides. In Afghanistan the foreign forces were co-opted into tribal and ethnic conflicts that had existed long before they arrived. The allocation of resources was designed to keep the base of supporters as well as win over new ones. It was not about conquering territory and moving forward. America and its allies were dragged into battles that had no clean military solution. Winning the trial of strength could not win over the people: the idea was not destruction but persuasion. If they had sought to destroy the insurgents with raw power, audiences away from the battle would have objected.
> 
> The second lesson America’s armed forces learned is that counter-insurgency, or COIN, is drawn out and hard to pull off. One study looking at the past few decades found that only a quarter of COIN campaigns have succeeded—though this may be partly because fights against insurgencies often start as if they were traditional wars. The campaigns tend to last at least 14 years, which means they have to be sustained during at least four American presidential terms.
> 
> Richard Betts, of New York’s Columbia University, notes that this is all the more demanding because COIN requires a lot of manpower. Insurgents are prepared to bear heavy casualties. Ho Chi Minh told the French in 1946 that “you will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.” That was more or less what happened.
> 
> The force ratio that is often suggested is 20 soldiers for every 1,000 citizens, which works out at about 650,000 troops for Iraq and 600,000 for Afghanistan. The implication is that an insurgency has to be either in a small country or be restricted to a region in a large one. The danger, says Mr Betts, is that the force you send in is too weak to pacify the territory or too big and clumsy to win over the local population.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We’re the US Army and we’re here to help
> 
> Humanitarian operations pose an extra problem. Military interventions in small countries, as in Sierra Leone in 2000, have often been successful; in larger ones, such as Sudan, less so. Humanitarian forces seek to be impartial and tend to be small, because the war is voluntary and domestic political support may not last. Mr Betts points out that this combination often only prolongs the fighting. When you are imposing peace, you need either to take sides and send in a small force that can tip the balance and bring the fighting to an end; or remain neutral and send in a large force which can keep the warring sides apart but will probably be stuck in the country for years.
> 
> The view from the ground
> Many think that in future America can simply avoid such entanglements. Instead, they say, it can restrict itself to big state-on-state “wars of necessity”. American forces are world leaders in this kind of fighting. Any other business can be mopped up by the redoubtable special-operations forces, such as the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden.
> 
> But this is an oversimplification. At the margin, “of necessity” tends to mean nothing more than “justifiable”. Whether the country needs to go to war is always unclear before the fighting starts. Many Americans thought that even Hitler’s Germany should not be attacked—until Japan bombed the American fleet in Hawaii.
> 
> Besides, wars of choice might sometimes be worth fighting. Imagine, for instance, engaging a band of jihadists who were repeatedly attacking American interests in a lawless land; or perhaps dealing with a country bent on nuclear proliferation. And what should America do about a nation devastated by genocide, as the Armenians were a century ago?
> 
> Even in a war of necessity America often cannot force an enemy to fight on its terms. Conrad Crane, a military historian and author of the COIN manual for Iraq, has observed that “there are two types of warfare, asymmetric and stupid.” The enemy might refuse to fight a stupid war.
> 
> Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official, thinks that the army should therefore continue to train its soldiers for COIN among other missions even though, after more than a decade spent fighting insurgents, it has had enough. As today’s troops retire, she says, COIN techniques risk being forgotten. Her fear is well-founded. The Pentagon is preoccupied not by doctrine or the enemy abroad but by budgets and the enemy in Washington.
> 
> Limited wars tend to be long and hard, so America needs a clear sense of what it is trying to achieve before the first shot is fired. As Admiral Mullen puts it, “I am tired of interventionists picking up a stick without a strategy, without knowing the political and diplomatic outcome.” Although such wars cannot be avoided altogether, in future America should aim to fight them less often and more wisely.




Adm (ret'd) Mullin, again:  “It’s too easy to use force ... It’s almost the first choice.” And that's a real problem: Clausewitz may have said that war is politics by other means but war, in the 21st century is far more political that Clausewitz ever imagined ... but it, fighting a war, is still a job best left to military professionals just as _grand strategy_ is a complex job best left to a tiny handful of experts, few of whom wear uniforms.

The Chinese do not plan to go to war against America. They *do* plan to supplant America, sometime late in the 21st or early in the 22nd century, as the most important power on earth, but their _plan_, and I believe they have one, almost certainly discounts war as a viable course of action. Our (the US led West's) plans for surviving the 21st century and prospering in the 22nd ought to be based on a _grand strategy_ that accepts war as a possible course of action but as one which is not good and is a last resort. Our most powerful weapons are social, intellectual, cultural and economic ... not military.


Edit: typo


----------



## jpjohnsn

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Clausewitz may have said that war is politics by other means


Actually, he didn't.  He said 



> War is a mere continuation of *policy* by other means.



The line about politics came well known because of an earlier mistranslation of his work.


----------



## Edward Campbell

More, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_ on the topic of _American primacy_ and the price America has to pay for it:

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21590098-being-charge-hard-work-it-has-its-perks-if-i-ruled-world?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ifiruledtheworld


> Special report: America's foreign policy
> 
> *American Primacy*
> If I ruled the world
> *Being in charge is hard work, but it has its perks*
> 
> Nov 23rd 2013
> 
> TO BE CALLED an isolationist these days is a bit like being called a climate-change denier or a free-market fundamentalist. In the eyes of right-thinking people, you have more or less lost the argument before you start. However, now that the cold war is over, Americans would be entirely sensible to ask themselves whether taking on the job of being the biggest power in an ungrateful world is worth the effort. Why should they pay to protect shipping in the Strait of Malacca or punish the dictator of some far-off country when they have their own medical bills and the federal deficit to worry about?
> 
> To answer that, you need to look at the rules-based system the victors created after the second world war. It still benefits Americans today in lots of ways. It also benefits many other people, whether they like America or loathe it.
> 
> Start with power itself. Walter Russell Mead, a writer and academic, defines four sorts. The sharp power of military force serves as a foundation; the sticky power of economic vitality rewards others for joining the system and makes it expensive for them to pull out; and the sweet power of values attracts and inspires them. The fourth kind, drawing on the work of Joseph Nye, a political scientist, is hegemonic power, which is sometimes called primacy.
> 
> Primacy is to geopolitics what a full card is to a game of bingo. As a prize for scoring in all the other sorts of power, a country may get the chance to set the agenda. Primacy makes a state attractive. Other states want to win its favour and to benefit from its goodwill. Their support is a form of consent which gives the system legitimacy. On the global stage, the hegemonic country becomes what Colonel Edward House, President Woodrow Wilson’s friend and adviser, called “the gyroscope of world order”.
> 
> America has advantages in the primacy game. First is geography. Being self-contained makes America secure, whereas all other great powers have had to defend themselves against their neighbours. Even Britain at the height of empire in the 19th century was repeatedly distracted by the need to stop any one country dominating continental Europe. By contrast, America has friends to the north and south and fish to the east and west. Europeans warily eyeing nearby Russia, or Asians fearful of China, can ask Americans for help, safe in the knowledge that they have a home to go back to on the other side of the world.
> 
> Second is history. America built today’s system out of the rubble of the second world war. Because the other powers were exhausted and the United States was still strong, it could start with a clean sheet. The lesson from the disastrous armistice of 1918 for Roosevelt and, after him, Truman was that the defeated countries had to be turned into democracies and bound into the peace, not shut out. They accomplished this, outside the communist bloc, through a system of open trade, alliances and collective security in which everyone stood to thrive, with America as its guarantor.
> 
> America also benefits from its distinctive political ideology and institutions. Founded on Enlightenment ideals rather than a conqueror’s battle lines or a monarch’s bloodlines, they distributed power among the states and the branches of the federal government. Along with a dissident religious tradition, this has meant that in peacetime the United States is in an almost constant state of turmoil, which is evident even when it ventures abroad. “Americans, in foreign policy, are torn,” writes Robert Kagan, an American historian. “Reluctant, then aggressive; asleep at the switch, then quick on the trigger; indifferent, then obsessed, then indifferent again. They are a revolutionary power, but think they are a status-quo power.”
> 
> However disconcerting it is to be on the receiving end, this attitude means that America has neither the desire nor the ability to conquer and administer other people’s countries. The hegemon’s necessarily modest ambitions help the system command widespread consent abroad. Reflecting political traditions at home, America has created an embryonic separation of powers for the world at large as well. Instead of running everything from Washington, it set up institutions such as the UN, the WTO and the IMF to spread power.
> 
> This international machinery is a forum for its members, not a world government. It is highly imperfect—too steeped in Western ideals for some, too easily ignored for others (including Saudi Arabia, which in a snub to the United States has just turned down a seat on the UN Security Council), and an infringement of sovereignty for a third group (including many Americans, who resent the UN’s constraints, and many Israelis, who often see their country picked on). But it binds the system together, because it gives other states a voice and offers a ready-made mechanism for collaboration when agreement is possible.
> 
> Domestic division seems to imperil good order and common sense while you are living through it. That is one reason why American primacy so often appears to be in dangerous decline. None other than Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s national-security chief and secretary of state, reportedly told a colleague in the 1970s that the United States had “passed its historic high point, like so many earlier civilisations”.
> 
> In fact the system has worked remarkably well. The overwhelming fear in Europe after the second world war was of a third attempt at conquest by a belligerent Germany. Yet America was able to keep the peace by reassuring other Europeans about the German threat as well as protecting them from Soviet aggression. Germany and Japan eventually regained great-power status. But this time they rose peacefully within the system.
> 
> *What’s in it for America*
> 
> America, too, has enjoyed enduring benefits from primacy. It was spared yet another great-power war in either Europe or, after Korea in 1950-53, in Asia. Germany and Japan became markets for the United States and an important part of the defence against communism. Barring the odd scare about foreign ownership of sensitive assets, Germany’s and Japan’s growing wealth has only served to strengthen America’s position in the world.
> 
> Indeed, the economic and philosophical liberalism that underpins America’s beliefs has become so familiar that, to many in the West, it hardly seems like an ideology at all. After the Soviet collapse a sort of liberal determinism took hold. The idea was that capitalism raised living standards, which paid for education, leading to gains in productivity and, eventually, popular demand for democracy. The promise of this “democratic convergence” was that the international arena would tend to bring peace and prosperity of its own accord. As the world headed towards the perpetual peace of republics imagined by Immanuel Kant, an Enlightenment philosopher, the hegemon could look forward to retirement.
> 
> Yet if you examine the spread of democracy, as Mr Kagan has done, a different picture emerges. Democracy flourished under British hegemony and then retreated as fascism took root (see chart 1)—not because of invasion but because of imitation in places such as Latin America. In 1941 the world contained only a dozen democracies. As Samuel Huntington, a political scientist, has explained, the system then spread in waves, partly because America used its influence to help democracy take root in countries like Taiwan and Poland, and to protect young democracies in countries like Bolivia, South Korea and the Philippines. According to Mr Kagan, the fallacy is to think that the liberal order rests on the triumph of its ideals. “International order is not an evolution,” he writes, “it is an imposition.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The corollary is that, without the continuing application of American power, the system would begin to fray. If America were to become weaker or to withdraw, its values would erode along with its power. In a recent book Mr Brzezinski set out some of the risks. Regional powers would vie for pre-eminence and assert their historic claims. States such as Georgia, Taiwan and Ukraine, which all live in the shadow of a much bigger neighbour, would be especially vulnerable. Nuclear-threshold powers like Japan and South Korea that today are content to rely on American nuclear protection may proliferate for fear that, in a crisis, its ally would not credibly threaten to push the button. As emerging powers start to feel that institutions such as the UN Security Council no longer reflect the balance of power, they could begin to reject them.
> 
> The implications are alarming. Autocratic states like China and Russia would not want to see strongmen pushed aside. Coups would be more likely to be defined as internal matters. Territorial disputes in places like the South China Sea, which today America insists must be dealt with diplomatically, may come to be resolved by force. If the Indian and Chinese navies thought that America could no longer guarantee to keep the sea lanes open, they would take the job on themselves, eventually leading to military competition between two nuclear states.
> 
> Americans have many reasons to feel that primacy benefits them. Being able to set the agenda and shape coalitions is an exorbitant privilege. So is being able to prosper in a system that broadly works according to your own world view. However, world leadership takes constant maintenance. “Democracy and open markets have spread so widely in part because they have been defended by US aircraft-carriers,” notes Charles Kupchan, an American academic. This is especially true when the balance of power is shifting, as it is today. A number of emerging powers are looking at a system made in Washington to see what is in it for them. Ahead of the pack is China.




For "the rest," which includes those countries, like Canada, in the US led West, the alternatives to American primacy are few and far between and, I suggest, unpleasant.


----------



## a_majoor

A long article by WRM on "The American Interest" which explains what *we* in the American led west are up against. Knowing the opposition is one thing, do *we* have the will to take effective action and the resources to stay in the game for the long term? Recent history suggests willpower is very short, and the long term financial picture is also not encouraging:

Part 1

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/12/02/2013-the-end-of-history-ends/



> *2013: The End of History Ends*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> 
> Sometime in 2013, we reached a new stage in world history. A coalition of great powers has long sought to overturn the post Cold War Eurasian settlement that the United States and its allies imposed after 1990; in the second half of 2013 that coalition began to gain ground. The revisionist coalition hasn’t achieved its objectives, and the Eurasian status is still quo, but from this point on we will have to speak of that situation as contested, and American policymakers will increasingly have to respond to a challenge that, until recently, most chose to ignore.
> 
> Call the challengers the Central Powers; they hate and fear one another as much as they loathe the current geopolitical order, but they are joined at the hip by the belief that the order favored by the United States and its chief allies is more than an inconvenience. The big three challengers – Russia, China and Iran — all hate, fear and resent the current state of Eurasia. The balance of power it enshrines thwarts their ambitions; the norms and values it promotes pose deadly threats to their current regimes. Until recently there wasn’t much they could do but resent the world order; now, increasingly, they think they have found a way to challenge and ultimately to change the way global politics work.
> 
> This is not, yet, a pre-war situation. The Central Powers know that they can’t challenge the United States, the EU, Japan and the various affiliates and associates of what we might call the Maritime Association head on. The military and economic facts on the ground would make such a challenge suicidal. But if they can’t challenge the world system head on, they can chip away at its weak spots and, where the maritime powers leave a door unlatched or a window open, they can make a quick move. They can use our own strategic shortsightedness against us, they can weaken the adhesion of our core alliances, and they can use the mechanisms of the international system (above all, the United Nations Security Council where Russia and China both wield the veto) to throw bananas in our path.
> 
> Lacking the strength for a head on confrontation, they are opportunistic feeders. They look for special circumstances where the inattention, poor judgment or domestic political constraints of the status quo powers offer opportunities. Russia’s strike against Georgia was one such move; both Russia and Iran have skillfully exploited the divisions among the Americans and their allies over the horror in Syria.
> 
> Think of the Central Powers as an ‘axis of weevils’. At this stage they are looking to hollow out the imposing edifice of American and maritime power rather than knock it over. This is not the most formidable alliance the United States has ever faced. Not everything the Central Powers want is bad; like all revisionist powers, they have legitimate grievances against the status quo. They don’t always agree, and in the long run their differences with one another are profound. But for now, they have not only agreed that they have a common interest in weakening the United States in Eurasia and disrupting its alliances; increasingly, with the United States government still largely blind to the challenge, they are pushing ahead.
> 
> A Miraculous Fall
> 
> A happy Thanksgiving week capped off a successful fall for the Axis of Weevils. As President Obama pardoned a turkey in the Rose Garden and millions of other gobblers headed for the ovens, the three big Eurasian powers seeking to gnaw away at the post-Cold War order across the world’s greatest landmass are celebrating big wins.
> 
> Iran should be giddy with joy; pro-administration commentary from the White House and its media allies has focused on the nuclear technicalities to paint the deal as a success, but there is no disguising the immense diplomatic gains that Tehran made. Washington hasn’t just loosened sanctions as part of a temporary negotiation; it is opening the door to a broader relationship with Iran at a time when Iran and its Shia proxies are making unprecedented gains across the Middle East. Just as President Obama essentially allowed President Assad of Syria to trade a promise to get rid of his chemical weapons for what amounts to a de facto end to US efforts to push his blood stained regime out of power, so Iran believes it can trade a promise to end its nuclear program for American acquiescence to its domination of the Fertile Crescent and, potentially, the Gulf. This would be an epochal shift in the global balance of power and the consequences — in strained alliances and diminished US influence and prestige — are already being felt.
> 
> After the nuclear deal came more joy for Tehran; as the New York Times reports, morale is flagging and unity is fraying among the Syrian opposition even as Butcher Assad’s ground forces continue to grind out more gains. Mussolini and Hitler used to have days like this as Franco’s forces slowly and painfully crushed the Spanish Republic — while a divided west stood by, wringing its hands at the slaughter and dithering over the unsavory nature of the Republican coalition. As the sanctions ease, there will be more money to support Assad and Hezbollah; at a critical moment the United States is giving Iran access to more resources for war. Meanwhile, far from showing restraint, Iran continues to push the envelope of what was agreed in the nuclear talks, as officials announce ambitious plans for lots more nuclear reactors, including more heavy water reactors like the one at Arak. In effect, the United States has tilted toward Iran in the Sunni-Shi’a war; both friends and foes are scratching their heads.
> 
> President Putin, meanwhile, is giving hearty thanks for one of Russia’s biggest successes since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Kremlin is high-fiving its stunning, come-from-behind victory as Ukraine said a polite “No thank you” to the European Union’s offer of an economic association agreement. While the final shape of Russia’s neighborhood remains to be seen, and protests have erupted against the government’s decision in Kiev, an EU-Ukraine agreement would have gutted Putin’s international strategy and hit his standing at home. Flabby and uncertain European diplomacy (as we wrote earlier, the EU brought a baguette to a knife fight in the Ukrainian dispute) enabled a weak Russia to grab the gold.
> 
> Putin may not be able to hold onto his prize, but for now he can justly boast of having outwitted and bested the EU on one of the biggest issues of the day.
> 
> It’s been tougher going in the Far East; China’s declaration of a special air defense zone over the East China Sea met with mockery and disdain from the neighbors until Washington stepped in with a face saving concession. After US bombers blew through the zone, Japan and South Korea followed up with flights of their own. Japanese civilian air carriers announced plans to comply with China’s demand, but after the display of resolution from Tokyo and Washington, they stiffened their spines and announced that they would not change their flight procedures to suit China’s new zone.
> 
> They should have waited a bit longer; the US government has asked American airlines to comply with the new China zone. At one level, this is straightforward common sense; the military will continue to defy Chinese restrictions, but civilian flights out of an abundance of caution will bend over backwards to keep themselves (and their passengers) out of trouble. But China declared this zone in violation of the usual procedures and it is highly unlikely that Beijing would harass civilian aircraft bringing customers and investors to its hungry economy. In context, Beijing is likely to see Washington’s advice to US airlines as less of an olive branch than a white flag — a sign that Washington’s ‘pivot to Asia’ is more about hot air than real political will.
> 
> China believes that time is on its side in the region, and that the Obama administration and the American people generally don’t have the persistence to stand up against a long, slow increase in diplomatic and military pressure in East Asia. Like Russia and Iran, China believes that Washington’s first goal in many confrontations is to find a face saving way to retreat; expect more initiatives from Beijing as it takes advantage of what increasingly is seen globally as a period of drift and vulnerability in American foreign policy. The Chinese are not only putting more military aircraft into their East China Sea air defense zone; they are reportedly planning to proclaim new air defense zones over other hotspots.
> 
> As the Indian strategic analyst Brahma Chellaney points out, China seems to be adopting what PLA General Zhang Zhaozhong called a “cabbage strategy:”
> 
> assert a territorial claim and gradually surround the area with multiple layers of security, thus denying access to a rival. The strategy relies on a steady progression of steps to outwit opponents and create new facts on the ground.
> 
> Chellaney suggests that China’s proclamation of the air defense zone is part of a region-wide pattern that expands China’s reach without triggering a strong US response:
> 
> To be sure, China is careful to avoid any dramatic action that could become a casus belli by itself. Indeed, it has repeatedly shown a knack for disaggregating its strategy into multiple parts and then pursuing each element separately in such a manner as to allow the different pieces to fall into place with minimal resistance.
> 
> This shrewdness not only keeps opponents off balance; it also undercuts the relevance of US security assurances to allies and the value of building countervailing strategic partnerships in Asia. In fact, by camouflaging offense as defense, China casts the burden of starting a war on an opponent, while it seeks to lay the foundation – brick by brick – of a hegemonic Middle Kingdom. Chinese leaders’ stated desire to resolve territorial disputes peacefully simply means achieving a position strong enough to get their way without having to fire a shot.
> 
> If this is the game, Washington’s decision to advise civilian aircraft to observe the new zone has played right into Beijing’s strategy and will strengthen perceptions in Beijing and elsewhere that the American position in Asia is already on the wane.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/12/02/2013-the-end-of-history-ends/



> Myopia in DC?
> 
> Just as China’s cabbage strategy depends on flying just under America’s radar, advancing Chinese claims without triggering the kind of confrontation which the Middle Kingdom cannot (yet) win, so the Central Powers generally prosper best when American diplomacy doesn’t grasp the nature of the game. Fortunately for them, many American analysts and most if not all senior officials in the Obama administration have yet to sense or to interpret the change in the weather.
> 
> Three factors keep many Americans inside the government and out from connecting the dots. The first is the habit of supremacy developed in the last generation. From the middle of the 1980s on, the declining Soviet Union and its successor states were no match for the United States. China’s horizons were more limited than they are now. And after the triumph of the First Iraq War demonstrated America’s overwhelming conventional military supremacy in the Middle East, American attention turned to managing specific issues (like terrorism, WMD and the Arab Spring) on the assumption that the United States no longer faced significant geopolitical rivals in the region.
> 
> The strategic dimension in the sense of managing intractable relations with actual or potential geopolitical adversaries largely disappeared from American foreign policy debates. Instead, American foreign policy was about “issues” (like non-proliferation, human rights, terrorism, inequality, free trade) and “hard cases” (rogue states like Iraq and North Korea and non-state actors like Al-Qaeda that could cause trouble but were unlikely to affect the global power balance in a serious way). The balance of power in Eurasia, the great question which forced the United States into two world wars and a long cold war, largely disappeared from American policy thought.
> 
> The disappearance of geopolitics reinforced a second tendency in American foreign policy that further hampered American ability to perceive and respond to the new challenge. That is the habitual American tendency, fruitlessly bewailed by actors as different at George Kennan and Henry Kissinger, to approach international politics through some combination of moral and legal ideas in an uncomplicated atmosphere of Whig determinism. The default worldview of American intellectuals and officials is that some combination of liberal capitalist economics and liberal political values is carrying the world swiftly and smoothly toward the triumph of Anglo-American values. Americans believed they were living through the end of history long before Francis Fukuyama wrote his book; that free markets and free government will bring the world right is one of the deepest convictions of the American mind. Ask Woodrow Wilson.
> 
> Moralists and legalists were both very comfortable in the post Cold War world in which American hegemony seemed to have created a flat, global reality in which moral and legal questions trumped geopolitical ones. In a world without serious geopolitical issues, one can debate policy toward, say, Burma or Egypt based on one’s analysis of whether a given American policy supported ‘transitions to democracy’ in those countries without thinking too much about such depressing realities as the balance of power. Libya could be treated as a humanitarian and a legal issue rather than a strategic one. Similarly, in looking at Iran many people inside and outside the Obama administration see either a challenge to the legal norms of the non-proliferation system or a moral challenge to human rights as understood in much of the world.
> 
> This mindset makes possible what would otherwise seem patently absurd: a negotiation over Iran’s nuclear proliferation that proceeds without regard to the destabilizing consequences of Iran’s growing geopolitical reach—and the effect that that reach has on the policies and perceptions of both allies and adversaries around the world.
> 
> The “end of history” that many American analysts unconsciously identified with an era of largely effortless and uncontested American global hegemony is an era in which no one has to connect the dots. Because there are few or no serious strategic consequences to anything that happens, every issue can be addressed in isolation and policy can become the progressive application of legal and moral norms grounded in American hegemony to various refractory countries and problem regimes around the world.
> 
> In such a world the lawyers and the moralists are free to address each question in isolation; the toe-bone isn’t connected to the foot-bone, and the foot-bone isn’t connected to anything. We can “work to solidify legal norms” without asking whether the whole structure is in danger of coming down; we can indulge our propensity to give human rights lectures without concern for the consequences.  We can push Mubarak to the exit without thinking much about what comes next; we can spend a year trying to support an imaginary transition to democracy in Egypt; we can prevent a hypothetical bloodbath in the strategic dead end of Libya while ignoring a much larger actual bloodbath in strategically vital Syria and it is all about us and our values. If we do something smart and succeed, we feel good about ourselves; if things go badly we feel bad and try to change the subject. But the consequences are abstractions: the strengthening or weakening of international norms, the value of our example, the “legacy” of agreements and achievements an administration leaves behind.
> 
> For a full generation we have not had to think too much about whether something done or undone in foreign policy promotes or endangers our vital interests and the security and prosperity of the American people. We have gotten out of the habit of making foreign policy under the gun and as a result we are not as a people very good at understanding what matters and why.
> 
> Finally, optimism is so ineradicably grounded in American intellectual culture that even our great power realists are instinctively hopeful. Troubled by the costs and the risks associated with two unsatisfactory foreign wars and longing to redirect resources from the defense budget to domestic priorities, a significant number of foreign policy analysts inside and outside the current administration have developed a theory of benign realism. This theory holds that the United States can safely withdraw from virtually all European and all but a handful of Middle Eastern issues and that as an ‘offshore balancer’ the United States will be able to safeguard its essential interests at low cost.
> 
> This view, which seems to guide both the administration and some of the neo-isolationist thinking on the right, assumes that a reasonably benign post-American balance of power is latent in the structure of international life and will emerge if we will just get out of the way. Such a view is not very historical: Britain was an offshore balancer in Europe in the 18th century and was involved in almost continuous wars with France from 1689 to 1815. What is missing from the ‘peaceful withdrawal’ scenarios is an understanding that there are hostile and, from our point of view, destructive powers in the world who will actively seize on any leverage we give them and will seek to use their new power and resources to remake the world in ways we find fundamentally objectionable and unsafe.
> 
> Iran, Russia and China won’t, one increasingly suspects, see American withdrawal as a call to moderate their ambitions or revise their revisionist opposition to the current world order. The appetite for power grows as one feeds, and political cultures deeply wedded to the concept of zero-sum outcomes in international affairs are unlikely to be ‘led by our example’ to embrace the idea of ‘win-win’ at just the moment they are intoxicated by the enchanting vision of winning it all as we fade away.
> 
> As the End of History Ends, Strategy Must Return
> 
> It’s often said that statesmen in office live on intellectual capital, and work with the ideas and perceptions they brought to power. The crush of events gives them little choice. It will, therefore, be difficult for the White House to change direction quickly even as evidence of a wrong turn piles up.
> If the Central Powers continue to work together and to make joint progress across Eurasia, however, either this administration or its successor is going to have to take another look at world politics. For the first time since the Cold War, the United States is going to have to adopt a coherent Eurasian strategy that integrates European, Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian policy into a comprehensive design. We shall have to think about “issues” like non-proliferation and democracy promotion in a geopolitical context and we shall have to prioritize the repair and defense of alliances in ways that no post Cold War presidents have done.
> 
> The sooner we make this shift, the better off we shall be. The Central Powers have been punching above their weight, largely as a result of the absence of a serious counter-policy by the United Staes. But the more time we waste and the more opportunities we squander, the more momentum and power the revisionists gain, and the less effective our alliances become.
> 
> Clear thinking and prudent action now can probably reverse the negative geopolitical trends in Eurasia at a low cost. But the longer we wait, the harder and more urgent our task will become.


----------



## Edward Campbell

One thing Mead _et al_ need to remember is that China detests Russia (and Iran) *more* than it finds the _maritime alliance_ a hindrance.

There is, amongst the Chinese, an ancient prejudice against Russia and Persia - they displaced the Asiatic horsemen from the Northern plains as the archetypal _barbarians_ back about 700 years ago, when the Chinese _absorbed_ the Mongols and _Sinified_ the Mongol empire. Despite all the atrocities the Mongols had visited upon fat, settled, agrarian China over the centuries the acts of the Persians and Russians crossed some sort of moral lines. (See the massacre at Otrar and the subsequent Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia in the early 13th century.)

Right now "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" prevails, more or less; but, for the Chinese, as I see it, the _maritime alliance_ is NOT an enemy, it is an obstacle to Chinese ambitions. The difference is that Russia and Iran cannot be China's friends, due to long held cultural prejudices, but America, and the American led West, can, under the right (for the Chinese) circumstances.


----------



## a_majoor

So perhaps the long term goal for America and the West should be to either bring China on board with the Maritime alliance (which would also satisfy the neo Mackinder American "Grand Strategy" that there shall be no singular hegemon in Eurasia), or as an alternative, sow seeds of distrust and dissent between the "Axis of Weevils" through knocking out the energy card from Russia and Iran through use of shale oil and other unconventional plays and differential diplomacy throughout the world (bolstering India and supporting her regional ambitions and access to African resources, for example). 

If that is not enough, there are even bigger cards to play: imagine providing enough support below the radar to effectively empower the Shia side in the current Islamic civil wars: they will press the Sunnis in Iran, the Russians in the "Near Beyond", and potentially the Chinese in the Xinjiang region.

Certainly using the carrot for China would be the preferred option.


----------



## a_majoor

An interesting definitional look at the idea of Grand Strategy Long article, 2 parts:

Part 1

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/162886



> *The Cost of Foreign Intervention*
> by Abraham D. Sofaer (George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs; member, Task Force on Energy Policy; member, arctic security initiative; and member, foreign policy working group)
> 
> What is the future of American grand strategy?
> 
> Any grand strategy has essentially two elements: ends and means. As Stephen Krasner explains, a grand strategy envisions "how [the world] ought to be, and specifies a set of policies that can achieve that ordering." John Lewis Gaddis says: “Grand strategy is the calculated relationship of means to large ends.” These elements—ends and means—are intimately related: a state cannot maintain a strategy that seeks ends that are beyond the means it is able and prepared to devote to those ends. Every grand strategy should at some point, therefore, address the feasibility of the ends it proposes.
> 
> Grand strategies for the US depend upon a wide array of means, including diplomacy, alliances, economic activity, partnerships, and in particular fiscal capacity and a willingness to support the requisite military infrastructure. Some critics of US strategic objectives assume that the US, though “war weary” and under significant economic pressure, remains the dominant military and economic power with sufficient means to implement a grand strategy with ambitious ends. The problem they have with US grand strategy is its aims.
> 
> 
> Photo credit: falco500
> Fareed Zakaria concludes, for example, that the problem facing the US is not any lack of power and resources, but its inability to respond effectively to the rising power and influence of the rest of the world. (“The Post-American World.”) This brings to mind Barry R. Posen’s point that the US propensity to seek “more control” in responding to “the negative energies and possibilities engendered by globalization” itself “injects negative energy into global politics as quickly as it finds enemies to vanquish.” (“The Case for Restraint,” The American Interest, Nov/Dec 2007). Francis Fukuyama blames “state weakness” rather than strength for the diminished significance of US conventional military power, but he too reaches the conclusion that US strategies have failed because of the ends they seek, not any lack of means: “even if the United States had significantly larger military forces, it would still be unable to use them effectively to achieve the political goals it sets for itself.”
> 
> This essay makes no effort to address criticisms of US strategies based on their quest for ends “that cannot be realized,” as Krasner puts it; indeed, I agree with some of those criticisms. Rather, this essay is focused on means. The US (as Posen and others unhappily predicted) continues to advance strategic plans far more ambitious than Posen and others would prefer to see, so the capacity and willingness of the US to fund a national security infrastructure capable of implementing those plans is an essential consideration in testing their viability. In that regard, clearly both the capacity and willingness of the US to fund its national security infrastructure has diminished.
> 
> Strategic thinkers generally agree the US public is “war weary” and reluctant to support foreign interventions, especially those that could prove costly in terms of funds and casualties; and US deficit spending far in excess of historical levels has resulted in mandated across-the-board reductions in defense-related expenditures, which is reducing US military capacities. US government strategic assessments take these realities into account (as do similar proposals by non-government experts), but they nonetheless advocate robust objectives. They do this by presuming or explicitly contending that the robust objectives sought can be achieved, despite the reduction in available resources, by utilizing US advantages in technology and planning to deal effectively with asymmetric threats and other current national security challenges but at reduced costs.
> 
> That the US remains committed to robust strategic aims is evident in the Obama Administration’s formal strategic pronouncements and conduct. The 2010 National Security Strategy relies less on preemptive force and unilateral action than the Strategy issued under President George W. Bush (the significance of which is lessened by President Obama’s commitment to using preventive force against Iran and his repeated, unilateral actions in striking Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders). It states explicitly, however, that "there should be no doubt" the US "will continue to underwrite global security—through our commitments to allies, partners and institutions; our focus on defeating Al Qa’ida and its affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe; and our determination to deter aggression and prevent the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons"; and it reserves “the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests . . .” The Strategy acknowledges that no single nation can guaranty peace alone, but it takes on specific, highly ambitious tasks and does not condition its commitments on the availability of partners. The promise to "renew American leadership" is intended to convey the desire to restore international confidence so as to enhance US influence, not to indicate any intention to stop leading.
> 
> To achieve its ambitious objectives the Strategy calls for integrating "all elements of American power" and "updating" national security capacities. This translates into maintaining "our military's conventional superiority [not necessarily its former strength] while enhancing its capacity to defeat asymmetric threats." "We are strengthening our military to . . . excel at counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stability operations, and meeting increasingly sophisticated security threats, while ensuring our force is ready to address the full range of military operations." Minimizing the need to use force “means credibly underwriting U.S. defense commitments with tailored approaches to deterrence and ensuring the U.S. military continues to have the necessary capabilities across all domains—land, air, sea, space, and cyber.”
> 
> Strategic guidance issued by the US Department of Defense in January 2012 reaffirmed US ambitions, and provided greater detail as to how the US government plans to fund the capacities needed to achieve its objectives. “We are shaping a Joint Force for the future,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wrote in releasing the guidance, “that will be smaller and leaner, but will be agile, flexible, ready, and technologically advanced. It will have cutting edge capabilities, exploiting our technological, joint, and networked advantage.” The Joint Force contemplated through 2020 will be tasked with the full range of “Primary Missions” in the 2010 Strategy, but in “this resource-constrained era” the US will “reduce the ‘cost of doing business’” through manpower, overhead and acquisition reforms, “retain and build on key advancements in networked warfare,” and “whenever possible, . . . develop innovative, low-cost, and small-footprint approaches to achieve our security objectives . . .” The plan also expressly provides that, while US forces will be “ready to conduct limited counterinsurgency and other stability operations if required, . . . [they] will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.” While the US will continue to pursue the full range of its traditional missions, including humanitarian intervention in response to natural disasters and mass atrocities, the “overall capacity of U.S. forces . . . will be based on requirements” demanded by a more limited “subset of missions,” specifically countering terrorism and aggression, maintaining an effective nuclear deterrent, and defending the homeland.
> 
> A recent Brookings report written by Adm. (ret) Gary Roughead and Kori Schake, "National Defense in a Time of Change,” makes specific recommendations on military spending designed to meet the reductions mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 without damaging US capacities needed to deal with "the threats we are likely to face." While recognizing that the US is "war weary" and that cuts in defense spending are certain, the authors assume that, regardless of size, the US “will continue to be the major security provider in the international order, counted on to use political heft and military force to protect our security and our allies, and to project ideas that are important to us."


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/162886



> To find the means to do these things the report recommends manpower, acquisition reforms, and continued reliance on the "diverse tools" that have helped the US cope with the challenges of Afghanistan, including "increased surveillance and more precise and timely intelligence." We should expect restricted access to countries where threats are developing but be prepared to overcome them by designing forces capable of dealing with them from "offshore" through the ability to utilize "unmanned platforms," as well as by learning to "fight" in cyberspace. They believe that the new threats can be defended against effectively through these measures even in the context of reduced expenditures.
> 
> These proposed strategies reflect the consensus among US leaders of both parties that the US should continue to commit to objectives that are robust, albeit with qualifications. They all rely on the premise that the US will be able to accomplish much of what it has traditionally sought to achieve with fewer resources, and despite the public’s war weariness, by (1) obtaining and using better intelligence and controlling cyber space; (2) using methods of physical attack, especially drones and tactical missiles, that avoid or greatly reduce US costs and casualties; (3) limiting the duration and objectives of interventions requiring on-the-ground US forces.
> 
> One would think that US strategic planners should be free to rely on modern technologies and other means and practices they believe would reduce the costs of achieving robust ends, rather than being forced to give up attempting to achieve ends they regard as essential to US interests. The trend in current strategic planning for fitting limited means to robust ends have thus far treated such options for reducing the costs of military interventions as both lawful and legitimate. Increasingly, though, legal and ethical arguments are being advanced that seem likely to affect the ability of the US to resort to these options, in addition to questions about their utility, and so may demand more careful consideration of their actual availability.
> 
> 1. Better Intelligence and Control of Cyber Space. The US unquestionably has superior abilities in the collection and analysis of intelligence. Experience indicates, however, that it is far from clear these abilities will consistently be used in optimal ways. Battlefield intelligence does convey significant advantages to US forces, but cannot as readily be shown as to general collection and analytic abilities. Furthermore, metadata collection and other NSA programs are being challenged as illegal and as ethically inappropriate violations of privacy. Even if these programs prove able to reduce defense costs in significant amounts (beyond their own cost), public resistance to them is increasing within the US and abroad, including among allies, which could eventually be translated into legislative restrictions.
> 
> The US may have superior abilities in cyber space, but they are likely to relate to forms of attack that the US could use during armed conflict, or when the identity of the attackers can be reliably determined. The Cyber Command will develop effective defensive and offensive capabilities, but these cannot prevent the major and growing expenditure now required by all sectors of US society to defend against cyber intrusions and attacks from both private and public sources. Cyber-space challenges are in fact likely to increase rather than reduce national security challenges and costs.
> 
> 2. Reliance on “Offshore” Methods of Intervention. The US has relied in recent years on interventions from outside the borders of target states to avoid putting US military personnel into hostilities. President Clinton's high-altitude bombing of Serbia as part of a NATO operation in order to stop the Serbs from driving Muslims out of Kosovo is an example, as is the offshore destruction by several NATO powers of Colonel Gaddafi’s military assets in Libya. A substantial increase under President Obama in the use of drones to conduct military strikes in foreign countries has enabled the US to disrupt and kill terrorists and Taliban leaders without exposing US forces to physical risk. The US government and other strategic planners believe these types of interventions, and ultimately the use of robots in other contexts, will allow the US to achieve important security objectives at lower fiscal and political cost.
> 
> The propriety of using such methods is increasingly being challenged, however. Serbia accused NATO of illegally bombing its civilian infrastructure, arguing that NATO’s planes flew too high to be able to target accurately in their effort to avoid anti-aircraft weapons. The ICTY Prosecutor declined to press charges against NATO, but went so far as to examine most of the individual sorties to determine whether they disproportionately harmed non-combatants. Would the Prosecutor have been as accommodating if the US had acted unilaterally?
> 
> The use of drones to kill individuals who are believed to have attacked US targets or to be planning such attacks has been investigated and condemned as violating international law on several grounds. The UN Special Rapporteur has concluded that attacks in Pakistan are illegal without Pakistan’s permission. Others condemn using drones to attack individuals in a foreign state even with its government’s permission on the ground that individuals targeted are being “executed” without due process, and based on claims that the attacks are causing unacceptable levels of collateral damage. As reliance on robotics in the conduct of military operations grows, moreover, opposition based on legal and ethical grounds increases; UN reports and conferences are calling for a moratorium on the use of “lethal autonomous” robots in armed conflict, arguing that such weapons violate the basic principle that warriors, not weapons, must be responsible for complying with the laws of war. A growing literature by both civilian and military analysts challenges the value expected from the “revolution in military affairs” inspired by technological innovations.
> 
> 3. Limiting the Duration and Aims of On-the-Ground Interventions. Recent US strategic doctrine indicates a major shift in the means that will be available toward the ends of “stability and counterinsurgency operations.” According to the Department of Defense’s 2012 Strategic Guidance, the US does not plan to fund a military capable of undertaking “large-scale, prolonged stability operations,” a limitation presumably applicable to most missions contemplated for the Joint Force, including counter-terrorism and humanitarian actions. Here, again, the strategic planners who crafted this practical limitation on the types of interventions now widely viewed as likely to be both unaffordable and futile, have assumed the US could, when it chooses, intervene to conduct a stability or counterinsurgency operation, and then leave if it becomes either large-scale or prolonged.
> 
> Here, too, however, arguments are being advanced based on various formulations to the effect that every intervention carries with it responsibilities that effectively prevent them from being deliberately limited in cost or time. The most commonly expressed formulation is the idea that, in the words of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, "if you break it you own it." The implication is that, if the US intervened in Iraq, it would "own" at least some of the vast and expensive problems created by such an intervention.
> 
> Another way this sort of limitation has been expressed is that the intervening state, much like a “trustee,” "owes" the state and/or population into which it has intervened (even in self-defense) the assistance necessary to enable a legitimately elected government to maintain order and govern effectively. This position, advanced by such writers as Noah Feldman in What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building, is being shaped by scholars into a “law of post-intervention duties” (“Jus Post Bellum”) that goes beyond and is inconsistent with the conservationist principle underlying the existing Law of Occupation based on applicable Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law (IHL). One scholar, K. E. Boon, explains this effort as follows:
> 
> [J]us post bellum should be based on the emerging norms of accountability, stewardship, good economic governance, and proportionality. Jus post bellum triggers principles in play in periods after armed conflict, moving away from war (ab bello) towards justice (ad jusitiam) and peace (ad pacem). Jus post bellum expands the traditional binary rules of international law into a tripartite system, which will bring the law into closer conformity with the challenges presented by the peace-making, peace-building, and post-conflict practices of today.
> 
> Another scholar, Carsten Stahn, has explained why and how the moral concepts underlying just war theory are changing into legal rules:
> 
> Certain adjustments must be made, if the idea of ‘jus post bellum’ is translated from a moral principle into a legal notion. . . . [T]he applicability of principles of post-conflict peace can no longer depend exclusively on moral considerations, such as righteousness of waging war. The concept of a fair and just peace must be framed by reference to certain objective rules and standards that regulate guidelines for peace-making in the interest of people and individuals affected by conflict. . . . [P]eace-making is not strictly aimed at a preservation or return to the legal status quo ante, but must take into account the idea of transforming the institutional and socio-economic conditions of polities under transition. In this sense, peace-making differs from the classical rationale of the law of occupation. The ultimate purpose of fair and just peace-making is to remove the causes of violence. This may require positive transformations of the domestic order of a society. In many cases, a fair and just peace settlement will ideally endeavour to achieve a higher level of human rights protection, accountability and good governance than in the period before the resort to armed force.
> 
> These ideas are far from having been established as binding law. While their proponents rely on humanitarian principles such as the concept of the Responsibility to Protect, this doctrine, if accepted, would deter interventions aimed at protecting groups from genocide and other serious violations of humanitarian law.
> 
> Conclusion
> 
> Efforts to limit the flexibility available to the US to develop a grand strategy based on advanced technologies, relatively inexpensive methods, and selective engagements may ultimately fail, but should be taken seriously. A strong tendency exists that disfavors relatively inexpensive interventions. That requires political and military planners to take into account that grand strategies based on the view that the US will be able to take full advantage of its claimed technological superiority, and limit its interventions as it sees fit, may be mistaken.
> 
> To the extent this turns out to be so, military interventions are likely to be more expensive than might be feasible due to legal or ethical limitations. The US remains free to argue that its “inherent” right of self-defense, or to exercise collective self-defense, cannot be limited by legal or ethical arguments that have not been universally accepted. But grand strategists should more carefully consider the potential impact of such arguments to ensure they are making realistic assumptions as to the means required for the objectives sought.
> 
> Abraham D. Sofaer, who served as legal adviser to the US Department of State from 1985 to 1990, was appointed the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 1994. Sofaer's work focuses on the power over war within the US government and on issues related to international law, terrorism, diplomacy, and national security. His most recent books are Taking on Iran: Strength, Diplomacy, and the Iranian Threat (Hoover Institution Press, 2013) and The Best Defense?: Legitimacy and Preventive Force (Hoover Institution Press, 2010).
> 
> His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I have a couple of quibbles with Judge Sofaer's paper, with which, in general, I am in broad agreement:

     1. I am not sure the US intelligence and _cyber_ "powers" are either as advantageous as even Judge Sofsaer thinks or, in the case of intelligence, even effective;

     2. While I agree that direct military intervention in the affairs of another sovereign state does ignite a requirement for _jus post bellum_ I suggest that this is, usually, (leave aside e.g. Grenada and Panama) an international responsibility; and

     3. Technology provides, always, a temporary advantage. But a really powerful country, and the USA is that, can continuously innovate and develop newer and newer technological advantages ~ each has a "best before" date but each does provide a real, useful advantage.


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## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> So perhaps the long term goal for America and the West should be to either bring China on board with the Maritime alliance ... Certainly using the carrot for China would be the preferred option.



Agreed. The question is, does the necessary diplomatic art and wit still exist in the US (in either party...) or will it get  dissipated by factional slanging: the Bloodthirsty Warmongers screaming at the Gutless Appeasers? 

Could China and the US create a new trans-Pacific "Special Relationship"?

I see an all-out war with China as an extremely undesirable option: nobody knows what second and third-order forces it might unleash. Easy enough to start wars: rather a harder thing to end them.


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## a_majoor

In several threads I have presented the idea that one of the reasons for partisan deadlock and bickering, and the resultant lack of direction in both foreign and domestic policy is that political parties and the verious institutions that exist in modern societies are no longer relevant to today's international, economic and demographic environments. Current parties and political philosophies struggle to define the problems, much less articulate solutions, and the various bureaucratic organs and institutions are equally hapless in the face of change.

Of course the larger problem while new models and institutions evolve is that the people who benefit from the old models are digging in and are willing to fight to the last taxpayer to protect the power and perques that the current system offers them. WRM offers an analysis of the curreent situation and the post progressive model that will emerge (hopefully sooner than later):

http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/12/16/productivity-up-future-uncertain/



> *The End of Peak Blue*
> Productivity Up, Future Uncertain
> 
> Productivity increases are almost always a good thing, but this time, rising productivity hasn’t translated into more jobs or higher wages. This has happened before, but it wasn’t easy. Can we transition again?
> 
> Unemployment is high, wages are stagnant, inequality is higher than its been in years, yet America is as productive as ever. Total productivity—essentially measured by how much a worker can produce in one hour—has risen substantially over the past quarter, growing faster than it has since 2009, according to a new Labor Department report.
> 
> This is both good news and a sign of the trouble we are in. Basically, it is always good when productivity goes up. Rising productivity means that capitalism is working: some combination of technology, management and competitive drive is enabling Americans to get more done—more widgets made, more meals cooked, more diseases cured—in less time. If absolute poverty is going to be defeated, if more people are going to be freed from repetitive, meaningless work, if humanity is going to have more time for art and culture because it spends less time in drudgery and toil, productivity must continue to rise.
> 
> But in times like ours, the link between productivity and wages looks broken. Back in Peak Blue, when the post-WWII model of mass production and mass consumption was working at its best, rising productivity translated very quickly into rising wages for most workers. Unions used those productivity figures to bargain for raises, and competitive pressures in a tight labor market forced employers to offer rising wages along with the trend in rising productivity. There was a close connection between the productivity level and the wage level.
> 
> That isn’t true today, and it hasn’t been true for the last thirty years. Lots of factors are at work, but the core issue has been the decline in manufacturing jobs. While the US is more productive than ever in manufacturing, fewer people have jobs in the field than in 1973. Add that shift to the mass entry of women into the workforce, throw in high levels of immigration (legal and illegal), and it is not surprising that wages have stagnated even though productivity has grown. And there’s another factor; productivity in some service sector jobs is harder to raise than in manufacturing. It is harder to increase the number of bedpans per hour that a hospital worker can change than to increase the number of widgets per hour a manufacturing worker can process.
> 
> So does that mean that the link between capitalism and rising living standards has broken down for good? There are lots of people who seem to think so, but history suggests they are wrong. The early Industrial Revolution, for example, was another period when productivity was rising fast but wages and living standards for many people were stagnant or falling. (They didn’t keep the same kind of statistics then that we do today, so direct comparisons are impossible, but the overall picture seems pretty clear.) In those days, agriculture was shedding jobs as British landlords shifted from renting small plots at low rents to subsistence farmers to more profitable but less labor intensive methods of agriculture like raising sheep. The combination of peasants flocking to the cities and skilled workers losing their jobs to new automated techniques meant that more people were looking for fewer jobs. Living standards for many workers fell sharply, and Britain was convulsed by waves of social unrest.
> 
> Making things worse, huge new fortunes were made both by the landlords getting rid of ‘excess’ peasants and the factory owners hiring workers (including children) for pennies. It was not a happy time, and many people looking at England in that era, including Karl Marx, believed that a social revolution was inevitable.
> 
> In the end, the industrial revolution made pretty much everyone better off in most ways (though arguably jobs in steel factories and coal mines were neither as healthy nor as fulfilling as the traditional jobs on the land).
> 
> The information revolution seems to be following a very similar pattern. Old jobs are disappearing faster than new ones can be created, and rising inequality combined with stagnant living standards is making people rightly unhappy. Irritating fortunes are being made while millions of people struggle. Yet the underlying productivity of society as a whole is going up.
> 
> Instead of fighting a process that offers us and the rest of suffering humanity its best hope of better living in the medium to long term (and people should never forget that an information economy is going to be better for the environment than an industrial one), we should be thinking about how to manage the change as best we can, and how to accelerate the creation of new jobs in new fields as the old ones fade away. The key to restoring the link between productivity and wages so that the rising tide lifts more boats is to increase the demand for labor. As that happens, wages will rise, competitive pressures to attract good employees will rise, and workers everywhere will have more bargaining power when they negotiate with employers, whether through unions or as individuals.
> 
> Enabling more self employment, promoting small business formation and development, lightening the tax and regulatory burden on job creation and shifting some of the government’s research focus and capacity from research into agricultural and manufacturing based fields toward research that benefits the rise of a job-rich information economy are all things that we can and should be doing. They don’t even have to cost much money.
> 
> Rebuilding society in the aftermath of a broken social model is a big job, and creating an advanced information society will require even more social, economic, ideological and cultural change and development than it took to get from the Dickensian world of the early industrial revolution to the advanced industrial democracies of the age of Peak Blue. That’s the job that the Millennials face; they are one of the special generations in human history that must build a new world. It’s a high fate and in some ways a hard one, but it also gives a full scope to their powers of creativity and originality.



One thing which Mead does not touch on is the demographic bust will actually make things better for our children: there will be fewer people to do what jobs that do exist, so the demand for labour and thus wages will rise in the post 2020 period. The potential downside is the legions of retired boomers will be selling their assets, cashing RRSPs and otherwise flooding the economy with cash, leading to an inflationary period (while also depressing the prices of houses and financial assets like stocks). This will be a rocky period to navigate.


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## pbi

> One thing which Mead does not touch on is the demographic bust will actually make things better for our children: there will be fewer people to do what jobs that do exist, so the demand for labour and thus wages will rise in the post 2020 period.



This makes me wonder about something. 

The "age wave" or "boomer wave", or whatever you want to call that alleged tsunami of old people that is supposed to trash our economy/social system/healthcare: what does it look like if it's depicted graphically?

Is it a single "wave" or "spike" that, once it has passed, reveals low water behind it? Or, is it the leading edge of a dense mass that extend far back out into the sea?

My guess is that its the former, and that once the wave has passed, a whole bunch of things will change.

For one, there will be a glut of retirement homes/extended care facilities going on the market. And sales of yellow pants with blue belts, or black knee socks matched with white shorts, will almost certainly decline. Denny's will probably go out of business, too.


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## Jed

pbi said:
			
		

> This makes me wonder about something.
> 
> The "age wave" or "boomer wave", or whatever you want to call that alleged tsunami of old people that is supposed to trash our economy/social system/healthcare: what does it look like if it's depicted graphically?
> 
> Is it a single "wave" or "spike" that, once it has passed, reveals low water behind it? Or, is it the leading edge of a dense mass that extend far back out into the sea?
> 
> My guess is that its the former, and that once the wave has passed, a whole bunch of things will change.
> 
> For one, there will be a glut of retirement homes/extended care facilities going on the market. And sales of yellow pants with blue belts, or black knee socks matched with white shorts, will almost certainly decline. Denny's will probably go out of business, too.



And complaints about the government, full time, will probably go down too.  8)


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## pbi

Jed said:
			
		

> And complaints about the government, full time, will probably go down too.  8)



In Canada?

Never!!


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## Jed

pbi said:
			
		

> In Canada?
> 
> Never!!



Pity


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## a_majoor

Leaving the important issue of dress aside for the moment  

The demographic wave looks a bit like a turnip, with a broad bulge in the middle but tapering down to Gen X and the Millennials. This is a boon for them since the job market will be wide open and demand for workers will be high. The will also have low house prices, since there will be a glut of properties on the market as the boomers try to sell their assets for cash to live.

The down side of this is the various "stores of value" that people have relied on for generations will have crashed as well. Stocks and other investments will also be on the market as boomers cash in RRSP's and other savings vehicles; the stock market and various other financial markets will be flat at best, or heavily depressed at worst as sellers outnumber buyers by a large margin. Huge amounts of cash will be in circulation, leading to a high inflation environment (and if steps are not taken right now to soak up the vast oversupply of cash QE and other Keynesian voodo has pumped into the economy, then we may be looking at hyper inflation of the sort Argentina has suffered on and off over the years).

I have not figures out the ways and means to deal with that (which probably explains why I work where I do), but knowing and articulating the problem is a good step to look for solutions.


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## a_majoor

A very thought provokig piece. Are we really in the situation suggested here? While it is certainly not "August 1914" (or 2014, for that matter), are the alignments of the various nations and _really_ similar to the interlocking pieces of the two great alliances of pre Great War Europe? And the stressors between the nations are much different today in my mind; rather than mercantilist competition to get all the gold in a zero sum game we are facing a massive global deleveraging crisis, and external threats eminating from different "civilizations" in the Huntington sense of the word.

I have only just started "The War that Ended PEace" (early Christmas gift  :christmas happy, so I don't know all the arguments Margaret MacMillan will bring to bear. I will agree that the US, the Anglosphere and indeed the various nations and groupings around the planet will have to "relearn" geopolitics, and the future will be quite different from what people looking at linear extrapolations will expect.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2013/12/20/world-war-three/

[/quote]
*World War Three?*

Are we re-living the lead-up to World War One? Margaret MacMillan—author of the excellent Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World and more recently of The War That Ended Peace—has penned the latest Brookings Essay on the similarities between our time and the years leading up to the First World War. The piece describes these similarities—including widespread belief in the peaceful powers of globalization mixed with ineffective leaders, geopolitical grappling, rising nationalism, and instability in smaller countries that are “clients” of larger powers—and argues that a another war of global proportions could be possible if we don’t learn the lessons of 1914.

It may take a moment of real danger to force the major powers of this new world order to come together in coalitions able and willing to act. Action, if it does come, may be too little and too late, and the price we all pay for that delay may well be high. Instead of muddling along from one crisis to another, now is the time to think again about those dreadful lessons of a century ago in the hope that our leaders, with our encouragement, will think about how they can work together to build a stable international order.

This piece dovetails nicely with one of WRM’s latest essays, “The End of History Ends,” in which he argues that the US needs to realize the time for responding to discrete “issues” is over. Geopolitics is back, and we need to re-learn how to think strategically about engaging whole nations in a global power struggle. War isn’t likely to break out tomorrow, but the US’ role in keeping international peace and stability is more crucial than ever. Wishing it was different is no substitute for a considered grand strategy.
[/quote]


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## Edward Campbell

The _American Enterprise Institute_, a _classically liberal_, which is to say right of centre, think tank has published a chart which shows why it is dangerous to think that America is "down and out." In fact it is neither ~ not down and certainly not out.








What America did, starting over 200 years ago, was to _unlock_ and unleash capital. (Now, it did a lot of other things, too, like depriving the native Americans (First nations) of their property and rights, and so on, but that really is secondary.) Capital remains "locked" in many parts of the world, including in _illiberal_ Europe (think France, Italy, Spain, etc) and in _conservative_ China. Where capital has been unlocked (Australia, Britain, Canada, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Singapore, to name just 10) we find, generally, peace, prosperity and freedom. Where it remains locked, usually because governments will not allow people to use or, sometimes, even own their land and homes as e.g. collateral for loans, (most Africa, some of Asia, almost all of the _Islamic Crescent_ and most of Latin America) we find wars, poverty and dictatorships.

I appreciate that I'm oversimplifying, but not by too much. Socialism, in all its guises, and _statism_ (think of France and Québec) are the main ways that retarded states "lock" capital away from the people and condemn them to wars, poverty, etc.


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## a_majoor

AS noted, while America seems self absorbed and not believing that they are contesting ideology with anyone, the rest of the world does not see things the same way. Perhaps if the US State department divested itself from "Smart Diplomacytm and went back to observing the world as it really is and impacts on American and Western interests, things might be different:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/anne-applebaum-china-and-russia-bring-back-cold-war-tactics/2013/12/25/f65939d6-6bef-11e3-aecc-85cb037b7236_story.html



> *China and Russie bring back Cold War tactics*
> 
> By Anne Applebaum, Published: December 25 E-mail the writer
> “Is this a new Cold War?”
> 
> Every time I say anything to anyone anywhere about Russia nowadays, that’s what I’m asked. And there is a clear answer: No. This is not a new Cold War. Neither the United States nor Europe is locked in a deadly, apocalyptic competition with Russia, China or anyone else. We are not fighting proxy wars. The world has not been divided into two Orwellian halves, democrats vs. communists.
> 
> But although we are not fighting a new Cold War, the tactics of the old Cold War are now, at the dawn of 2014, suddenly being deployed in a manner not seen since the early 1980s. We in the United States may not believe that we are engaged in an ideological struggle with anybody, but other people are engaged in an ideological struggle with us. We in the United States may not believe that there is any real threat to our longtime alliance structures in Europe and Asia, but other people think those alliances are vulnerable and have set out to undermine them.
> 
> Sometimes these gestures are quite open. China’s recent, unilateral declaration of a new air defense zone in the East China Sea was a clear attempt to warn its neighbors that its navy is preparing to compete with the U.S. fleet. The Chinese naval ship that recently cut in front of a U.S. destroyer, forcing it to change course, sent a similar message. Neither of these incidents signals the start of a cold, hot or any other kind of war. But they do mean that China intends to chip away at the status quo, to undermine the faith of U.S. allies — Japan, South Korea, the Philippines — in American power and force them to think twice, at the very least, about their old economic, military and trade agreements.
> 
> Over the past year, Russia has been playing the same kind of games with NATO: no open threats, just hints. Last spring, the Russian air force staged a mock attack on Sweden, came perilously close to Swedish air space and buzzed Gotland Island. The Swedish air force failed to react — it was after midnight on Good Friday — though eventually two Danish planes scrambled to follow the Russian planes back across the Baltic. Russian officials have also made veiled (and not so veiled) threats to Finland, selectively boycotted industries in the Baltic states and dropped hints that Russia intends to put, or might already have put, longer-range missiles on its Western border — missiles designed to hit Germany.
> 
> I repeat: Russia does not intend to start a war. Russia, rather, intends in the short term to undermine regional confidence in NATO, in U.S. military guarantees, in West European solidarity. In the longer term, Russia wants Scandinavia, the Baltic states and eventually all of Europe to accept Russian policies in other spheres.
> 
> Russia and China do not coordinate these actions, and there isn’t much love lost between them, either. But the elites of both of these countries do have one thing in common: They dislike the institutions of liberal democracy as practiced in Europe, the United States, Japan and elsewhere, and they are determined to prevent them from spreading to Moscow or Beijing. These same elites believe that Western media, Western ideas and especially Western capitalism — as opposed to state capitalism — pose a threat to their personal domination of their economies. They want the world to remain safe for their particular form of authoritarian oligarchy, and they are increasingly prepared to pay a high price for it.
> 
> Last week, the Russian president effectively bought the goodwill of the Ukrainian president, offering him some $15 billion to prop up his budget in exchange for not signing a free-trade agreement with the European Union. That agreement would eventually have made Ukraine better governed, more prosperous — and less accessible to corrupt Russian businesses. China has also made clear that Western journalists who write about Chinese corruption are no longer welcome in the country. Good Sino-American relations are important to Beijing, but not as important as blocking Western investigative reporters who might pose a threat to China’s ruling families.
> 
> It would be silly to take any one of these incidents too seriously. But it would be equally silly to ignore them. We spent the 1990s enjoying the fruits of post-Cold War prosperity, the early 2000s fighting the war on terrorism. We are intellectually, economically and militarily unprepared to contemplate Great Power conflict, let alone engage in the hard work of renewing alliances and sharpening strategy. But History is back, whether we want it to be or not. Happy New Year.


----------



## a_majoor

This could also go in "The Education Bubble" or "US Economy" threads as well, but it is complimentary to Edward Campbell's post just upthread regarding the unleashing of Capital and the growth of wealthy, peaceful societies because of that. Even though the current education system is quite dreadful (Ronald Reagan quipped that if the US education system had been devised by a foreign power, it would be considered an act of war), it seems that the impact of free markets and the "real world" still has the ability to get the best out of people:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/americas-market-sector-develops-skills-our-education-system-leaves-untapped/article/2541266



> *America's market sector develops skills our education system leaves untapped*
> BY MICHAEL BARONE | DECEMBER 27, 2013 AT 5:33 PM
> TOPICS: BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL EDUCATION
> 
> The education sector needs to be opened up to more competition, Michael Barone writes.
> 
> In a post-Christmas blog post my indefatigable American Enterprise Institute colleague Jim Pethokoukis points to a study that shows that no economy in the world rewards smart, skilled workers more than the United States. the study, by economists Eric Hanushek, Guido Schwerdt, Simon Wiederhold and Ludger Woessmann, and published by the National Bureau for Economic Research, quantifies the return on numeracy skills for the U.S. at 28 percent, significantly ahead of Ireland, Germany, Spain and the U.K., which range between 21 percent and 23 percent. Korea, Canada, Poland and Japan hover below 20 percent.
> 
> Pethokoukis argues that the higher returns come in “economies with more open, private-sector-based labor markets.” He goes on to ask, “Wouldn’t this seem to argue that higher U.S. inequality — based on pre-tax, pre-transfer market incomes — reflects 21st century market forces rewarding ability rather than some sort of breakdown in social norms.”
> 
> To this (seemingly rhetorical) question I would answer "yes," and would go on to say that it tends to confirm the thesis of my 2004 book Hard America, Soft America. In it, I contrasted Hard America -- the parts of American society in which there is competition and accountability, and Soft America, the parts of American society in which there isn't. K-12 education, in my view, is part of Soft America; the competitive market economy is part of Hard America.
> 
> When Americans emerge from Soft America at age 18 (or at age 22 or so, when they emerge from college, which Geoffrey Collier's piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal says is pretty Soft too), they don't measure up well next to similarly aged people in many other advanced countries. But when they get into Hard America, where skills and smarts are well rewarded, they shoot ahead.
> 
> We don’t want every part of our society to be Hard, I argued in the book; kindergartners shouldn’t be subjected to Marine Corps boot training. But we would do well to Harden some parts of Soft America — like our K-12 schools and, it seems, our colleges and universities as well.


----------



## a_majoor

This seems like a good place to put this opinion piece. My own prediction for a confident new century would be that the Internet and associated technologies like 3D printing, crypto currency and other "bypass tools" that allow ordinary people to become empowered and evade or bypass the current "Gatekeeper institutionss" finally achieve the critical mass to realize the development of the new social institutions needed to create a Post Progressive society. Since the Progressive project is collapsing due to fiscal, legal and moral bankruptcy, a means of doing a controlled drawdown and rebuilding of society on new principles is needed:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-31/what-if-the-21st-century-begins-in-2014-.html



> *What If the 21st Century Begins in 2014?*
> By David Brin  Dec 31, 2013 6:00 PM ET
> 
> As if you didn’t already have enough to be nervous about, here’s something creepy to ponder as the new year opens.
> 
> This what-if isn’t technological, social, political or even science-fictional. Rather, it’s a bit of wholly unscientific, superstitious pattern-recognition. The last two centuries (and possibly more) didn’t “start” at their official point, the turning of a calendar from 00 to 01. That wasn’t when they began in essence, nor when they first bent the arc of history.
> 
> No. Each century effectively began in its 14th year.
> 
> Think about it. The first decade of the 20th century was filled with hope and a kind of can-do optimism that was never seen again -- not after the horrific events of 1914 shattered any vision that a new and better age would arrive without pain. Yet until almost the start of World War I, 19th-century progress seemed unstoppable and ever-accelerating.
> 
> Consider the world of 1913, when regular middle-class folks in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and so on were acquiring unexpected wonders: clothes-washing machines, gas stoves, gas and then electric lighting, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, vaccinations, telephones, radios, motor cars. Stepping outside you would see and hear human beings flying through the sky -- with a looming confidence that soon you would get a chance to join them.
> 
> Science was pouring forth what seemed unalloyed goodness. New dyes and industrial textile methods doubled a working family’s access to fresh and beautiful clothes. Cheap iron bedsteads kept cheap spring mattresses clean, making sleep both healthier and far more comfortable. Nations were banning child labor and providing free schooling. Astronomers discovered what galaxies were. Physicists were pushing their pure and harmless science to fantastic frontiers. And the Haber-Bosch process brought cheap fertilizers that tripled crops, as chemistry proved itself to be everybody’s friend.
> 
> Think our era is similarly fast-changing? Just compare the kitchen of today with a kitchen of 1950. Sure, everything nowadays is shinier, smarter. Still, a person from 1950 could use our apparatus with fluid familiarity. But the drudgery-saddled housewife of 1880 would blink in bedazzlement at what her daughter used in 1913. Life itself was changing at a pace never-before seen, and mostly for the better.
> 
> Yes, all of those techno-advances continued after World War I. Social changes such as women getting the vote were harbingers of more to come. But after 1914, the naivete was gone. People realized that the 20th century would be one of harsh struggle accompanying every step of advancement. And along the way to hard-won better times, the age would spiral downward first, into the deepest pit that humanity ever knew, before our parents (or grandparents) clawed their way out of the nadir of 1944 -- the focal year of a century that truly began in 1914.
> 
> All right, that’s just one data point. Is there another? Well, look at 1814, the beginning of the Congress of Vienna and the so-called Concert of Europe that made possible the continent’s longest extended period of overall peace, as the great powers turned from fighting bloody wars to perfecting their colonial empires. Those two years -- 1814 and 1914 –- each marked a dramatic shift in tone and theme (in the West, that is), so much so that they represented the real beginnings of the 19th and 20th centuries.
> 
> Suppose the pattern holds -- and remember this is just a thought experiment -- what might it mean about the true 21st century? What theme will typify or represent its arc?
> 
> First, let’s dismiss one parochial notion -- that the terrorist attacks of September 2001 were the major break point between centuries. Nonsense. We were engaged in the same struggle before and after. The U.S. shrugged off more damage during any month of World War II. Indeed, nothing could be more “twen-cen” or 20th century than the overwrought focus that some (not all) Americans apply to Sept. 11. Much of the world assigns no particular relevance to that date.
> 
> Oh, we are still in the 20th. Consider the pervading doom and gloom we see around us, right now. Post-apocalyptic tales and dystopias fill our fiction, films and politics, especially the Young Adult genre where today’s teens seem terminally allergic to stories containing hope. How very ’60s. And ’70s. And so on.
> 
> There was a similar sense of apocalypse in 1813 Europe, but at least there were good reasons, after decades of ferocious struggle that seemed poised to last forever. What excuse do we have, in a time when per capita violence has been plummeting for decades? When the fraction of kids -- worldwide -- who are well-fed and in school is higher than ever? Sure, the planet faces dire problems. But the things keeping us from addressing pollution, oppression, climate change and all of that are political inanities. The War on Science that has hobbled innovation, for example, can be won if we do one thing -- tell the gloomcasters of both left and right to get out of our way and let us get back to problem-solving.
> 
> Indeed, the only real obstruction we seem to face is a dullard-sickness of attitude, dismally ignoring every staggering accomplishment since 1945. Hence the question: Is it possible that a new theme for our 21st century requires only that we snap out of our present funk?
> 
> If only. That would truly be the Dawning of an Age of Aquarius, forecast by hippies long before the old 20th was anywhere near done with us, but arriving at last. You shake your heads, but it could happen.
> 
> We can still choose our own fate. Next year, we might decide to cheer up and rediscover the can-do optimism that was crushed by the czar and kaiser and a small group of insipid, inbred aristocrats, exactly 100 years ago. We could choose to become problem-solvers, in part, because (let’s imagine) someone in 2014 discovers a simple, cheap and safe IQ-boosting pill. Or politicians decide to get over their self-serving snits and resume the adult craft of negotiation. Or some cable news owner decides to rediscover citizenship. Or some brave director releases an inspiring film that astounds people with an unexpected idea called hope.
> 
> Or else go ahead and wallow in the obvious notion that 2014 will see a violent ruction of its own. A phase transition into a century whose theme we’ll all regret. Or we’ll see a continuing retreat from confident civilization, a turning away from the Enlightenment Dream, relapsing into fearful obeisance to a leader, or New Lords, or some simplistic ideal.
> 
> That, too, could take place. In which case, please don’t give me any prediction points. All I did was spot a pattern. I don’t want respect from a people who would allow something like that to happen.
> 
> (David Brin is a scientist, futurist and author whose novels include “The Postman,” “Earth” and, most recently, “Existence.” His nonfiction book about the information age, “The Transparent Society,” won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association.)


----------



## Edward Campbell

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Al Jazeera_ is a contrarian opinion about America's leadership in the world:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/new-american-idol-should-us-rule-world-201411852842910837.html


> The new American Idol: Should the US rule the world?
> *A new article makes the case for the US as the world's de facto government.*
> 
> Richard Falk
> 
> Last updated: 18 Jan 2014
> 
> It might not have seemed necessary in the 21st century to ask or answer such a ridiculous question. After all, European colonialism, in the last half of the prior century, collapsed politically, morally, and even legally. Its pretensions were thoroughly exposed and totally discredited. As well, the Soviet empire fell apart.
> 
> And yet there are those who muster the temerity to insist that - even now - it is the US' global governing authority that enables the degree of security and prosperity in the world today. Not surprisingly, the proponents of this conception of world order as dependent on US military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological capabilities are themselves American. It is even less surprising that the most articulate celebrants of this new variant of a self-serving and totalising imperial approach to security and prosperity are situated either in US academic institutions or in its principal media outlets.
> 
> I consider Michael Mandelbaum to be the most unabashed and articulate advocate of this American "global domination project" that he felicitously calls "the world's de facto government". He champions this role for his country in book after book. Recently Mandelbaum has restated his argument in a short essay, "Can America Keep Its Global Role?" that appears in the January 2014 issue of Current History. His thesis is straightforward: "[The US] provides to the whole world, not only its allies, many of the services that governments furnish to the countries they govern." Or more simply, "...the US stands alone as the world's de facto government."
> 
> *Unappreciative masses?*
> 
> It is crucial to take note of the claim that, unlike past empires and hegemonic states, the US alone has undertaken a systemic or structural role, and is not to be understood as serving only those states that are allied by friendship, values, and binding arrangements. In this respect this novel form of world government, although administered from its statist headquarters in Washington, claims to be meta-political, and should be appreciated by all as promoting the betterment of humanity. It is a cause of some wonderment, then, to account for polling results from around the world that indicate, time and again, that the US is viewed as the most dangerous country from the perspectives of peace and justice.  It would seem from the Mandelbaum worldview that "They just don't know how lucky they are!"
> 
> What makes Mandelbaum so cocky about the beneficence of the US' global role? It is essentially the conviction that it is US military power underwriting the established order that avoids wars and protects countries against aggressive behaviour by states with revisionist foreign policy goals. More concretely, Europe can rest easy because of the US military presence, while Russia as well, can be assured that Germany will not again seek to conquer its territory as it tried to do twice in the last century. Similarly in the East Asian setting, China is deterred from imposing its will regionally to resolve island and territorial disputes, while at the same time being reassured that Japan will not again unleash an attack upon the Chinese mainland.
> 
> There is some plausibility to such speculation, but it seems more like the dividend of alliance relationship in a historical setting when recourse to war as a solvent for international conflicts seems more and more dysfunctional. And it doesn't pretend to work with a rogue ally such as Israel, which seems willing to attack Iran whether or not the White House signals approval.
> 
> The complementary claim about providing a template for global economic prosperity is also misleading at best, and likely flawed. The US presides over a neoliberal world order that has achieved economic growth but at the price of persisting mass poverty, gross and widening inequalities, unsustainable consumerism, cyclical instability, and a rate of greenhouse gas emissions that imperils the human future.
> 
> Beyond this, the US' role is praised for using its capabilities "to counteract the most dangerous trend in twenty-first century security affairs: the spread of nuclear weapons to countries and non-state actors that do not have them and would threaten the international order if they did". What is not mentioned by Mandelbaum, and suggests strongly the absence of anything resembling "world government" is the inability of existing global policy mechanisms, whether under US or other auspices, to solve pressing collective goods problems.
> 
> I would mention several: poverty, nuclear weaponry, fair trade, and climate change. Neither imperial guidance nor the actions of state-centric policymaking initiatives have been able to serve the human or global interest. This would demand, at the very least, nuclear disarmament, enforceable restraints on carbon emissions, and the end of agricultural subsidies in North America and Europe.
> 
> *Myopic vision of the world*
> 
> Mandelbaum, and similar outlooks that conflate national and global interests, seem blind to the tensions between what is good for the US and its friends and what is good for the world and its peoples. And no more serious blindness, or is it merely acute myopia, exists than does the Mandlebaum contention that the greatest danger from nuclear weapons arises from those political actors that do not possess them rather than from those that have used such weaponry in the past, and continue to deploy nuclear weapons in contexts of strategic concern. One can only wonder about the absence of the word "drone" in Mandelbaum's account of why the world should be grateful for the way the US globally projects its power!
> 
> There are additional difficulties with Mandelbaum's global vision, including a glaring internal contradiction. He praises the US for exerting a pro-democracy influence throughout the world. While this praise is partially deserved, it, however, fails to note either the inconsistencies in its application or the complete failure to consider the consent of the peoples and other governments in relation to US de facto world government.
> 
> I doubt that there would be many supporters of the Mandelbaum prescriptions for governing the world in Moscow and Beijing despite the benefits that are supposedly bestowed upon Russia and China. Somehow, the politics of self-determination and procedural democracy are fine for state/society relations, but when it comes to governing the world democracy, it is quite okay to base the system on global authoritarianism.
> 
> In depicting the future, Mandelbaum calls our attention to three scenarios that bear on his thesis. In what he calls "the most favourable of these", those that have most to gain, namely, Europe and Japan would assist the US, and lighten the burdens of world government. Such a prospect is really thinly disguised alliance-oriented, although in a presumably less conflictual global setting. He does not view this future as the most likely one. The least favourable would be a challenge from China that would induce a return to balance of power world order in which countervailing alliances would produce a security system that resembled international relations during the Cold War.
> 
> *Status quo*
> 
> Mandelbaum, nonetheless, assumes that the Chinese are too wily to opt for such a risky future. What he views, as most likely, is a continuation of the present arrangements without great help from allies or much hindrance from adversaries. The unknown, that he does acknowledge, is whether the American public will continue to finance such a system of world government given its setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as growing domestic pressures to cut public spending and reduce taxes in response to the burdens of a rapidly ageing population.
> 
> It is well to appreciate that this new discourse of imperial duty and prerogative is framed as a matter of global scope. This is genuinely new. Yet it is quite old. Throughout the evolution of modernity, the West has always cast itself in the role of being the saviour of the whole of humanity. In the colonial era this gift to humanity was described as the "white man's burden" or proclaimed to be the "civilising mission" of the West. As those living in the global south are well aware, this lofty language provided the rationale a variety of forms of violent exploitation of the non-West. For Mandelbaum is offering the world a new rationale for Western dominance under the heading of "de facto world government". It purports to be a service institution for the world. It is nowhere acknowledged that a disproportionate amount of the violence, militarism, and appropriation of resources and wealth emanates from the US.
> 
> If persuaded by Mandelbaum's argument, the peoples of the world and their leaders should be grateful that the US is shouldering the responsibilities of governing the world. I would expect that the more likely emotion of non-American readers is to be dismissive, and to wonder how such arrogance can withstand the facts that this pretence of US guardianship of global interests has so little positive to show for itself in recent decades.
> 
> _Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights._
> 
> The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.




Prof Falk offers, I think, the _liberal_-left view of America as the shambling, uncoordinated, even unthinking giant.

I am, philosophically more inclined towards Prof Mendelbaum's views which have, as the economic crisis deepened, been "moderating," as seen in his recent books, _The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era_ and _That Used to be Us_, illustrate.

Despite what Prof Falk suggests, America does act, in many respects, as a mix of global "government agencies." It does so for its own purposes, of course, but they are, very often, quite unselfish purposes ... but Prof Falk would not agree with the last bit.


----------



## a_majoor

An interesting discussion on Secretary Gates new book, and the sorts of positions and ideals that drove him while serving:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2014/01/08/a-different-kind-of-public-servant/



> *A Different Kind of Public Servant*
> 
> Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new memoir provides an inside look at foreign policy in the Bush and Obama eras, but it is far more than a set of partisan talking points.
> 
> Dueling reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post and lots of competing snippets on Twitter are trying to spin the new memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates into a set of political talking points. That’s understandable, but it’s not the best way to understand what Gates is getting at. This is a complicated book by a complicated man, and trying to condense its message to pro- or anti-Obama talking points won’t get readers all that far.
> 
> So far as I can make out, Gates’s views about the two Administrations in which he served are fairly straightforward. He thinks that George W. Bush, under the influence of Cheney and Rumsfeld, made some significant blunders in his first term, but found his feet in the second and grew in office. He thinks that Barack Obama made some good decisions in the early years of his first term, but gradually came under the influence of some less than adequate advisors (Biden and various members of the White House staff) as his Administration went on. On top of that, he thinks that too many Pentagon bureaucrats are time-serving weasels who would rather fight petty bureaucratic games than save soldiers’ lives, and he thinks that elected officials in general and members of the legislative branch in particular are often contemptibly selfish, lazy, parochial and short-sighted.
> 
> While disagreeing at the time with friends and associates like Brent Scowcroft, who opposed the Iraq War in public at a time that Gates, then out of government, supported it, Gates nevertheless belongs to the tradition of moderate Republican realism that Scowcroft represents. These people rarely run for public office and often find career politicians distasteful, but they believe, deeply, in public service, and are mostly found in appointive offices in the executive branch. Though the breed shows a tendency to degenerate over time, by and large they cling more closely to the personal and ethical standards of earlier WASP generations influenced by high New England ethics in a way that our current political culture does its best to escape.
> 
> In Gates’s view, he was able to work with both Bush and Obama because at the time they appointed him both men were committed for the most part to the kind of foreign policy he supports. In Special Providence, I called this strain of thinking Hamiltonianism and American Realism. It is less zero-sum than the continental realism that sees history condemned to endless and amoral struggle between powers, but it does not embrace liberal ideas about the perfectibility of human nature or the imminent dawn of universal goodwill. It is frank in valuing the importance of American state power, but also understands and respects the need for that power to be exercised as far as possible in some kind of cooperation with others. Without swallowing liberal Kool-Aid about the chances for some kind of world government, this school of thought values international institutions and respects the tissue of diplomacy and custom as ways, though imperfect, of advancing distinctive American interests. It would not be trammeled by those institutions on vital matters or bamboozled by their pretensions, but neither would it flaunt its contempt for them.
> 
> Bush’s deviations from this approach were concentrated in his first term, when his response to 9/11, and especially his concerns about Iraq, led him into both policies and rhetoric that many old school Republicans deplored. But with experience, and with the break-up of the Cheney-Rumsfeld alliance that drove a lot of first term Bush foreign policy, Bush moved closer to what Gates would consider the mainstream of American thinking. In helping Bush deal with the legacy of his first term, principally a war in Iraq that was going poorly, Gates felt he was taking on an important and valuable mission at a time of great public need, and that, whatever problems might have existed in the first term, President Bush was trying to get himself and the country out of the ditch in his second. Gates was able to offer President Bush full support in that task and he had the satisfaction of seeing the President follow his counsel more often than not.
> 
> Given all this, it is not surprising that Gates downplays any critique of first term Bush policy and centers his mild and respectful criticism of it on secondary figures—the king’s advisors, not the king. Left unstated is the obvious point that kings choose their counselors and choose which ones to heed.
> 
> Gates was able to accept an appointment from President Obama and offer loyal service to him for two reasons. First, Gates’s tradition of public service values putting patriotism ahead of partisanship in that quaint, old fashioned way, especially in time of great need and, above all, in war. With the country still involved in two wars, and with Gates as the man on the job in the Defense Department better placed than anyone else in the country to manage our behemoth of a Pentagon at war, Gates felt that President-elect Obama’s request that he serve was one he could not ignore.
> 
> Second, in his conversations with President Obama, Gates came to believe that, whether through conviction or expediency, President Obama was committed by and large to a Hamiltonian approach to America’s foreign engagements. He would robustly defend the country’s vital interests and on the whole stick to a middle course between the Scylla of rugged Jacksonian unilateralism and the Charybdis of Wilsonion unicorn hunts. Over time, his confidence in President Obama’s commitment to this approach appears to have waned. Perhaps more accurately, he came to feel that it was expediency rather than conviction that made Obama a Hamiltonian, and that as the political situation changed, the President began to move away from what Gates sees as the vital center of American foreign policy.
> 
> Again, being a gentleman, Gates does not rail at the President like a fishwife or a blogger. Scheming, micro-managing, disingenuous, over-reaching and strategically incompetent White House staff members are the enemy, rather than the President who appointed them and, over time, heeded their counsel. An imperial Vice President without wisdom or judgment darkened counsel. Over time, the atmosphere became less and less congenial to Gates. In their face-to-face meetings the President makes commitments; the staff breaks those commitments and the President doesn’t respond.In their face-to-face meetings the President makes commitments; the staff breaks those commitments and the President doesn’t respond.
> 
> Gates’s harshest observation of both Secretary Clinton (whom in general he seems to have found quite congenial and who sided with him on most policy issues) and President Obama is that at times they confessed, or by their actions revealed, that their decisions and public positions on matters of national security were shaped by political rather than policy considerations. In particular, Gates reports both the Secretary and the President as having said that their public opposition to the surge in Iraq (a deeply unpopular policy, one must not forget, that Secretary Gates supported and helped to push through despite the cynical opposition of tub thumping politicians) was motivated by concern for their political fortunes.
> 
> Beyond that, Gates’s dawning suspicion that President Obama chose his Afghanistan surge (a position, again, that Gates backed, including President Obama’s controversial decision to issue a time limit on the surge’s duration) for political rather than policy reasons, and that he either never believed it would work or soon lost confidence in it, was a bitter blow. For someone from Gates’s world of high public service, and entrusted as he was with responsibility for the well-being of the troops sent into harm’s way on presidential orders, the suspicion that President Obama was sending troops to Afghanistan for political rather than policy reasons must have felt like a profound betrayal. Gates does not say much about his feelings about the President, but he is surprisingly candid about his intense feelings for the young men and women sent in harm’s way by a President who, apparently, didn’t think their sacrifices would achieve the military task to which they were assigned. Over time, that feeling became more intense, as Gates came to believe that the man ultimately responsible for their orders didn’t believe in the orders he gave.
> 
> The anger and sense of betrayal seem to have driven Gates both to write his memoir and to release it when the President and his former colleagues are still in office. It is not something George Marshall would have done.
> 
> Gates’s dedication to ideals of loyalty, public service, and non-partisan pursuit of the national interest speak for themselves, and if modern Americans in some ways have moved far from their ancestral values, the indictment of President Obama’s war policy in this book will resonate among many.
> 
> Yet those judgments need to be hedged. Machiavelli lives. Politicians must sometimes make decisions that Puritans deplore. That is not only true in international affairs, where Gates himself would well understand the need for occasional deviations from the straight and narrow in the Game of Thrones, but in domestic politics as well. Machiavelli spent as much time advising his Prince how to seize and hold power at home as he did advising him on dealing with powers abroad, and someone trying to make a political as opposed to a policy career in the service of the United States has to read the whole book. Machiavelli wrote a manual for the Prince, not for the Public Servant, and all of us must decide whom we want to be in this life. Yes, in a perfect world no President would send troops on a political mission, but politics and war cannot be separated. Sometimes, Private Ryan needs to be saved (or lost) for the greater good. Abraham Lincoln never lost sight of the political character of the war he was fighting; Clausewitz would say that no political leader ever should.
> 
> Of course, this can led to some very dangerous ideas. Assuming that Secretary Gates is right about President Obama and the Afghan surge (and he is making inferences, not reprinting memos), it is still possible to construct a defense. Suppose some President believed that a war was unwinnable but that public opinion wasn’t ready yet for the war to be lost. Fearful that a premature retreat would lead to a defeat at the polls and that this would put people in office who would make the international situation worse and lose even more U.S. lives to no purpose, a President could do something as mean and low as knowingly sending young people to die on a lost mission with the public interest at heart. A person could oppose a winning surge from the “bad party’s President” to advance his political career and then turn around and order a losing surge to protect his career without crossing a moral Rubicon—if said person believed that the value to the nation of installing and keeping him in the White House was astronomically high.
> 
> It may be that it was not so much what he saw as the moral tackiness and cheap opportunism of the White House that led Gates both to leave Washington and do something so uncharacteristic as to write a quick memoir. Gates may have come to feel that this President sincerely believes that the glorious omelette of his incumbency is well worth the loss of a few miscellaneous eggs. We may be reading a protest against grandiosity and messianism rather than one against hucksterism. The two are often not all that far apart.
> 
> Gates’s harshest criticisms are of Congress and of the petty bureaucracy of the Pentagon. In both cases he sees parochial interests triumphing over national security considerations and even the well-being of our forces in the field. Here again he taps into a very deep well of American sentiment. Contempt for Congress, though recently plumbing new depths, has been one of our favored national pastimes for more than two hundred years.
> 
> But however accurate Gates is in his portrayals of some politicians and some transactions, is this really the last word? Electoral politics, including the ancient and venerable science of barreling pork, is as crucial to the functioning of the American system of government as petty bureaucratic interests and routine are necessary to the functioning of any institution. Aesthetically, one cannot help but share Gates’s distaste for the sausage-making process; thinking politically, as long as Plato’s philosopher kings remain in occultation it is hard to see the country’s business, or even the Pentagon’s, being transacted in any other way.
> 
> Gates’s indictment of contemporary Washington (and both parties in his view contribute to the malaise) is weakest when he seems to be protesting against the natural and necessary conditions of democratic governance in a mass society. His indictment gains force, however, when he points to ways in which the short-termism and selfishness of retail politics and personal advancement has overwhelmed the pursuit of a larger national interest. It is one thing when a President sinks to indecorous political maneuvering for the sake of a larger project. If giving Congressman Blowhard a dam in his district will secure his support for the Marshall Plan, so be it. But what if the ends of policy are subordinated to the means? What if the goal of American foreign policy is to keep the President in power? What if the President makes a major foreign policy decision involving the lives of American forces in order to hold onto the power to give Congressman Blowhard and all his colleagues more dams?
> 
> In the end, it was what Gates saw as a drift toward strategic incoherence that seems to have made release from government service feel like such a relief. This is more than a matter of disagreement with the White House’s evolving policies on defense spending and the Afghan War. It is more than what seems to have been his shock and horror over what he (and many others) see as a profoundly misguided intervention in Libya. He was as appalled by sequestration and its impact on the country’s military strength and the well-being of those in the armed forces as he was by political opportunism on both sides of Congress. Millennial Washington looked to Gates very much like the city portrayed in Mark Leibovich’s This Town, and as the man charged with sending young people off to die in wars calculated to advance Washington careers, Robert Gates came to the point where he could not go on.
> 
> Despite his share of canny political skills and administrative ability, Secretary Gates was ultimately a fish out of water in Washington. He was a Hamiltonian and a moderate Republican in a time of populism. He was uncomfortable in a city of narcissistic strivers. He was a strategist in a roomful of opportunists. The disappointments of the first George W. Bush term created a space for Gates in the President’s second; the uncertainties of President Obama’s first term created a space for him there. One can’t help but wish the Secretary well in private life; he did his duty as he saw it, and his country cannot ask for more.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Foreign policy is one of the primary expressions of a nation's _Grand Strategy_ and two analysts* suggest that America's foreign policy is badly broken, further suggesting, to me, that even if there is a coherent _grand strategy_, which I doubt, it can neither *a)* be expressed effectively nor *b)* survive this administration. Their article is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Huffington Post_:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andras-simonyi/america-is-not-in-decline_b_4643740.html


> America Is Not in Decline, Its Foreign Policy Is... But It Can (Still) Surprise the World
> 
> András Simonyi and Erik Brattberg
> 
> Posted: 01/22/2014
> 
> These days the talk of the town is Bob Gate's gripping memoir _Duty_ about his time serving as Secretary of Defense under two presidents: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bob Gates was respected by America's friends, allies and it's enemies alike. To be on the safe side, we must start with a confession: the authors are fans of the former secretary. Unlike us, most Europeans had no idea whether Bob Gates was a Republican or a Democrat. And frankly it did not and does not matter. Most commentaries focus on what Mr. Gates had to tell about Obama and Biden and other U.S. leaders, including former Secretary of State Clinton. All juicy stuff, fun reading, but with little long-term, lasting significance.
> 
> In contrast, the most important parts of the book are the ones explaining the polarized nature of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and how and why this makes America weaker. This has a strong message for the future, beyond America. What Bob Gates is talking about is exactly what worries America's allies and friends right now. It should worry Americans too.
> 
> As Gates makes vividly clear, page after page, Washington's foreign policy process is broken and dysfunctional, big time. Contrary to the often extreme and divisive positions on Fox News or MSNBC (clearly part of the problem, except for _Morning Joe_: we kind of like that show!), according to Gates, the current paralysis is not the fault of one party or the other. America's foreign and security policy used to be bipartisan. Today, only the blame is bipartisan.
> 
> It used to be that "politics stopped at the waters edge" -- when it came to foreign policy. It used to be that Washington's foreign policy elite could famously simply gather in cigar-smoke filled clubrooms to sketch out a bipartisan foreign policy. It used to be that Tom Lantos, a leading democrat, and Bob Dole, a leading conservative, would travel the world together as best friends. They would explain to their counterparts how different their views were on most things, except for one: no one should count on their differences when it came to America's overall foreign policy objectives.
> 
> After World War II, leaders from both political families came together around a hugely ambitious plan to offer security and economic prosperity to war-ridden Western European countries, better known as NATO and the Marshall Plan. Throughout the Cold War, there was little doubt where Democrats and Republicans stood on the issue of the liberation of Eastern Europe. These were great moments of America's leadership of the free world. It was possible because of visionary leaders, and broad political support at home. And most importantly, it was possible because of a broad consensus among Democrats and Republicans.
> 
> Whether a bipartisan consensus of such mythical proportions ever existed in reality or not is beside the point. That was the world's perception and it made America stronger. Respected and emulated, at times loathed and even despised, but never considered hesitant on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy, because there used to be one America. It is different today.
> 
> Here is why all this is really important, and why we worry.
> 
> In a rapidly changing world where China will soon surpass the United States as the world's largest economy, with authoritarian regimes such as Russia on the rise and when the West seems to have lost its way, U.S. global leadership is once again called for. When America fails to lead, the world becomes messy, at times even dangerous. Washington therefore needs a broader, more strategic, more determined and clearly more courageous vision of its global role. It needs to send a strong message to the rest of the world. This will only be possible when true bipartisanship, a willingness to work together in the best American tradition, is back.
> 
> After a decade of fighting unwinnable wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, Americans have become war weary. But they must see that it is in their own best interest that America remains engaged globally. Make no mistake: American "declinism" is a myth -- surely one should not fall for the silly comparison between America and the Roman Empire. However, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is up to Americans, its leaders, its president and Congress to decide whether the 21st century will be another "American century" or whether it will be dominated by others; nations who do not share our deep beliefs in human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
> 
> We do understand the tectonic social (generational and ethnic) changes that have taken place in America, the enormous impact of technology, and the role of social media. All this should make America more courageous, not less -- more determined to lead, not less. But only if Democrats and Republicans will all come together in that weathered, battered, but still so important consensus. While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on the specifics, the broad objectives of foreign policy must be equally shared and equally tirelessly pursued no matter what.
> 
> America can still surprise the world. You can do it! Just take the lead from your Duty, á la Bob Gates.




Messers Simonyi and Brattenberg are right that the _consensus_ that seems to have prevailed for decades (from 1945 to, say, 1985 or even 1995) was _mythical_ in its proportions ... but there was one on the broad, general principles: _contain_ communism (not just the USSR); reward capitalist democracies; and promote American hegemony. The differences, and there were real ones, usually centred on the second matter ~ many Americans were less interested in rewarding capitalism and democracy than in supporting any tinpot, kleptocratic dictator who was an anti-communist.

I agree with them that America is not in any sort of serious "decline" ... no more than Rome was in 115 AD or Britain in 1835. But, by those dates, Rome and Britain had each reached a zenith in their power and influence; each remained powerful but always less and less so in relation to other, emerging powers.

I doubt that Democrats and Republicans can, even if they want to, "come together" any time soon. The culture wars that are shredding America's socio-political fabric are already weakening its _strategic_ ways and means. The rise of China, which ought to be a cause for socio-economic renewal (as the coincident rises of Germany and America were not for a complacent and often distracted (by Ireland) Britain), poses a real threat of leading America into a _strategic_ blunder which can do real, serious harm to America's power in the world.


_____
* Ambassador András Simonyi (60) is the Managing Director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR) at The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Washington D.C. He is an economist by training, has a long career in the diplomatic service where he has gained experience in both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. He has built an extensive network in the Euroatlantic community. His ambassadorial assignments include NATO and Washington. He has spent time in the private sector.

Erik Brattberg is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. He is also a Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. He has published widely on various European and transatlantic political and economic issues. Originally from Sweden, Mr. Brattberg holds a Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.


----------



## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> An interesting discussion on Secretary Gates new book, and the sorts of positions and ideals that drove him while serving:



Excellent piece. Some random thoughts:



> He thinks that George W. Bush, under the influence of Cheney and Rumsfeld, made some significant blunders in his first term,



I was very surprised to discover, both during my time with the US HQ in Afghanistan and during a visit to CENTCOM, the utter hatred many senior officers had toward Rumsfeld. I don't think he was missed by too many people.



> and he thinks that elected officials in general and members of the legislative branch in particular are often contemptibly selfish, lazy, parochial and short-sighted.



Totally unlike their fine Canadian counterparts....



> Gates nevertheless belongs to the tradition of moderate Republican realism that Scowcroft represents. These people rarely run for public office and often find career politicians distasteful, but they believe, deeply, in public service, and are mostly found in appointive offices in the executive branch. Though the breed shows a tendency to degenerate over time, by and large they cling more closely to the personal and ethical standards of earlier WASP generations influenced by high New England ethics in a way that our current political culture does its best to escape.



Well said. Were the Republican Party ever to restore itself to that calibre, and deep-six marginal rubbish like the Tea Party, religious fanatics, Sarah Palin and the other members of the Proudly Ignorant, etc. I could imagine a great day in American politics. I would probably vote for them if I was an American.



> First, Gates’s tradition of public service values putting patriotism ahead of partisanship in that quaint, old fashioned way, especially in time of great need and, above all, in war



It's not just the US that sorely needs ideals of service and statesmanship amongst its leaders, instead of ideologically driven wedge- and special interest attack politics...



> ates’s harshest observation of both Secretary Clinton (whom in general he seems to have found quite congenial and who sided with him on most policy issues) and President Obama is that at times they confessed, or by their actions revealed, that their decisions and public positions on matters of national security were shaped by political rather than policy considerations. In particular, Gates reports both the Secretary and the President as having said that their public opposition to the surge in Iraq (a deeply unpopular policy, one must not forget, that Secretary Gates supported and helped to push through despite the cynical opposition of tub thumping politicians) was motivated by concern for their political fortunes.



Sadly, not really a new thing in democracies, especially the US. Harry Truman once commented to the effect that foreign policy is nothing more than domestic politics "with its hat on".


----------



## tomahawk6

The US military to make a generalization,is a pretty conservative group.It must be the nature of the business.I am fine with the Tea Party and Palin.Not so much with the progressives currently running the gong show in Washington.The democrats used to have a conservative wing,but gradually since Vietnam they either became Republicans or independents.What I find shocking is that the Communist Party USA seems sympatico with the democrats and vice versa.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The US military to make a generalization,is a pretty conservative group.



Yes, I would agree with you, and not based solely on my contact with US officers over the years. I read a study done a few years ago that compared the social, political and religious views of US and Canadian senior officers (0-6 and above). The differences were quite significant. By and large, US officers tended to be much more conservative, on every issue, than their Canadian counterparts. This probably accounts for the overwhelmingly Republican nature of the US officer corps, and the rather strong predilection for conservative religious views.

In my experience, a Canadian  officers' political, religious or social views have never been of much importance to the chain of command  (as long as he obeyed the law, was a good officer, and was not seditious). Our last Commander of  the Army went off to be an advisor to the Liberal Party of Canada: hard to imagine the former COS of the US Army lining himself up with the Democrats. Having sat on a few merit boards during my time in uniform, it would be unthinkable for any of  these issues ever to come up when considering an officer for promotion or selection to a position, even in the most casual way.

This is not to say that character isn't considered in our system: it definitely can be, and IMHO should always be. It's just that we don't see religion, politics or social views as being essential parts of an officer's character.

By contrast, I once had a US Army O-6 say to me that "No American officer would ever be caught dead listening to National Public Radio". I can't imagine during my time in uniform my superior ever telling me what media I should/should not listen to, or even caring about it. When I was at Quantico, I was surprised to discover that at parties, receptions, etc. the first question many US officers asked was "what Church are you attending?". To most Canadian officers this would be an extremely unlikely question to ask anybody unless you knew them very well.

As officers we are of course expected to serve the nation and to uphold the Government of the day, to avoid direct partisan political activity (Reserve officers excepted), and not to publicly make disloyal comments. Beyond that, in my experience, nobody much cares, nor should they.


----------



## a_majoor

I see that as more of a distillation of the American national "Culture" more than anything else. Most Americans self identify as being religious, and church goers (even urban blacks, who are most likely to support "Progressive" political candidates and programs), and the demographics that the US Military draws most heavily from _is_ conservative and religious, so the process is self reinforcing inside the uniformed culture. I have even worked with an American officer from southern California (epicenter of hippiedom) who was pretty much as you described in terms of attitudes and beliefs. If that individual had been a "granola eater" in civilian life, it was certainly ironed out while in uniform....

I don't know that such a generalization can be made here, but then again, being inside the bubble makes it hard to see the true scale and scope of the culture. Canadian "culture" is fairly amorphous anyway, so it is difficult to think of what sorts of "national" traits would be reinforced inside the uniformed service. Regimental "culture" is much stronger, hence the various cartoon versions of the RCR, PPCLI and Van Doos we love to toss about.


----------



## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> ..I don't know that such a generalization can be made here, but then again, being inside the bubble makes it hard to see the true scale and scope of the culture. Canadian "culture" is fairly amorphous anyway, so it is difficult to think of what sorts of "national" traits would be reinforced inside the uniformed service. Regimental "culture" is much stronger, hence the various cartoon versions of the RCR, PPCLI and Van Doos we love to toss about.



You raise a very interesting question here. We have always heard (ad nauseam) that the CAF must reflect the society it comes from. While I have never fully accepted this (there are behaviours and norms that, IMHO, are not transferable in either direction and probably couldn't be), on reflection our representativeness might only become clear when we compare ourselves to the military of another nation.

For example, I might offer that the strain of egalitarianism that runs in Canadian society (sometimes known sarcastically as the "Crabs in The Bucket" syndrome) is also reflected in our military (but in a more positive way). Our relationship between officers, NCOs and soldiers is much more egalitarian than a number of the armies I've witnessed.  We are overwhelmingly a middle class force: there are graduations of exactly _where_ in the middle class people come from, but this lack of any "real" social difference is, I think reflected in our Army society.

Maybe we are more representative than we think.


----------



## Old Sweat

pbi said:
			
		

> You raise a very interesting question here. We have always heard (ad nauseam) that the CAF must reflect the society it comes from. While I have never fully accepted this (there are behaviours and norms that, IMHO, are not transferable in either direction and probably couldn't be), on reflection our representativeness might only become clear when we compare ourselves to the military of another nation.
> 
> For example, I might offer that the strain of egalitarianism that runs in Canadian society (sometimes known sarcastically as the "Crabs in The Bucket" syndrome) is also reflected in our military (but in a more positive way). Our relationship between officers, NCOs and soldiers is much more egalitarian than a number of the armies I've witnessed.  We are overwhelmingly a middle class force: there are graduations of exactly _where_ in the middle class people come from, but this lack of any "real" social difference is, I think reflected in our Army society.
> 
> Maybe we are more representative than we think.



Excellent points, PBI.

I came from at best a not very well off (in fact we were pretty poor) lower middle class small town Ontario background, but managed to progress quite well in an army that was much more class conscious than we are today. Ten years ago I was a guest at the changeover of a friend from CLS to an officer who will go nameless, but his first name is Rick. Mike J - now that let it all out - said with considerable emotion how grateful he was that his family had emigrated to Canada shortly after the war. His dad had been an OR in the RA during the war and in the social climate in the UK during the sixties Mike never would have been able to go from apprentice soldier to officer cadet. In my book on Normandy I addressed officer production in the wartime Canadian Army and roughly half of the officers came from the ranks. It may be a national characteristic, but we are probably as close as one could come to an egalitarian meritocracy. It ain't perfect by any means, but it is more than reasonably fair.

One last thought, once we got over the characteristic wailing, look how well the acceptance, and that word isn't quite strong enough, of female members worked.


----------



## pbi

Old Sweat said:
			
		

> Excellent points, PBI.
> 
> .. It may be a national characteristic, but we are probably as close as one could come to an egalitarian meritocracy. It ain't perfect by any means, but it is more than reasonably fair....



The number of senior Army officers over the years (LCol and above) who started in the ranks is indicative of this. Note also that, compared to GOs in other militaries, ours have very few of the "perks" that are seen elsewhere. "Official residences", servants, batmen, permanently assigned drivers, etc are not necessarily a "gimme" for GOs in our military.




> One last thought, once we got over the characteristic wailing, look how well the acceptance, and that word isn't quite strong enough, of female members worked.



When I was a rifle coy OC in 1 PP I had the experience of receiving one of the first female 031 to graduate from the PPCLI Battle School. She was met by quite a bit of scepticism (and other things, I'm fairly sure...) but she proved herself quite well and the troops (and my CSM!!!) came to accept her. I was sorry when she took a release for unrelated personal reasons. A couple of years ago I met the first female RegF 23A Inf coy OC. It is a dificult go for females (I've seen the crash and burn episodes, too...) but those that prove themselves do well. And now we have lost our first women in combat, so it's sealed in blood.


----------



## tomahawk6

With regard to advancement in the CF is it knowing the right officers that determine promotion ? The US Army uses a board system and the members review files in the zone of consideration.It does help if you know the President of the Board.Its a fair system.My big gripe with the system is the treatment of officers with low efficiency reports.A negative OER can be a career ender.It needs to be viewed in context.I always believed in learning by making a mistake.Sadly our system lost that object many years ago.


----------



## Journeyman

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> It does help if you know the President of the Board. It's a fair system.


 Do you not see a contradiction between these two sentences? It seems unfair to anyone not knowing the Board President.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Going further  ff topic:

Some years ago an officer who would, soon, become CDS proposed, only half in jest, that the CF stop wasting money on the performance review process. Annual reports, he suggested, were fine but the _system_ needed to be changed, every four or five years, to prevent rank inflation. There are, he suggested, 25 or 30 "attributes" that almost all of us agree can be and should be measured. Any given report ought to include 15 to 20 of them, he said, graded from 1 to 7 or 1 to 8 or 9 or 10 ~ both the attributes reported upon and the number of "grades" for each one could change every four or five years.

I think he was probably right. I'm guessing we spend millions of dollars and dozens of person-years, every year, thinking about a system that works well enough and would work just as well if totally arbitrary changes were made by, say, a sergeant clerk, on a periodic but irregular basis.


----------



## tomahawk6

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Do you not see a contradiction between these two sentences? It seems unfair to anyone not knowing the Board President.



Yet officers are selected despite not knowing anyone on the board.During the GWOT we had very high promotion rates:

"In a recent memo to senior leaders, Odierno said the Army is preparing to return to the selection opportunity levels that were in place before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were 90 percent selection opportunity for promotion to captain, 80 percent for major, 70 percent for lieutenant colonel and 50 percent for colonel."


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Yet officers are selected despite not knowing anyone on the board.During the GWOT we had very high promotion rates:
> 
> "In a recent memo to senior leaders, Odierno said the Army is preparing to return to the selection opportunity levels that were in place before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those were 90 percent selection opportunity for promotion to captain, 80 percent for major, 70 percent for lieutenant colonel and 50 percent for colonel."



Tomahawk: to answer your earlier question, yes: in our system it does help if you are known by board members, because then people are better able to make accurate judgements about you. Since in the Infantry our boards are done regimentally, the chances of being known are quite high unless you have been stuck off in some forgotten dead-end job somewhere away from where anybody can see how you did. The chances go down a bit in the Branch boards such as Artillery, Armour and Combat Engineers, but as they are small branches it is still possible. It is in the larger "purple" branches such as Logistics that people can get lost. In hte end, the human factor will always have some effect on the selection and promotion system, and IMHO that is as it should be, as long as things are fair, open and above board.

Ref the high US promotions rates during GWOT: when I was attached to USCJTF 76, I was chatting with the CHOps one day (an Inf LTC) who mentioned that on the last board 75% of Inf MAJ were promoted to LTC. 75%!!!! An astronomical figure like this this would be unheard of for us, except possibly at Lt to Capt. A Infantry regiment (three battalions and those officers "Extra-Regimentally Employed" (schools, staffs, recruiting, foreign exchange, etc) usually counts promotions to LCol at a fraction of that. Either you have officers of amazingly high quality (which is quite possible...) or your OER system is not picking up the weak ones who shouldn't be getting through.  Which do you think it is?


----------



## tomahawk6

> or your OER system is not picking up the weak ones who shouldn't be getting through.  Which do you think it is?



The latter.


----------



## a_majoor

The disastrous American Foreign policy of this Administration (Smart Diplomacytm) will certainly leave the new Administration in 2016 with some very difficult rebalancing work to do. Since I am reading Walter Russel Mead's "God and Gold" right now, I take some solace that the "Maritime" system built by the British and Americans over the last 300 years is actually quite flexible and robust, and even nations at odds with America or the greater Anglosphere (which corresponds quite closely to all the nations that created, contribute or are tied directly into the "Maritime System") are heavily tied into global institutions which protect and support the greater goals of the Maritime System. Since the Maritime System has survived even armed assaults by some of the greatest and most formidable collations of nations and military power ever assembled (going back to the Spanish Armada), We will have a rough ride, but should be able to weather this storm as well:

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/02/07/the-emperor-has-no-clothes/?singlepage=true



> *The Emperor Has No Clothes*
> 
> February 7th, 2014 - 1:52 am
> 
> In late January, four former U.S. ambassadors to the Ukraine penned an open letter in the New York Times. In it they asked the leaders of the West to stop Ukrainian president Yanukovych while restraining immoderate actions from the opposition. They wrote:
> 
> Ukraine is on the verge of spinning out of control. A pro-European protest that began more than two months ago in Kiev’s central square has flared into broad, angry opposition to the authoritarian policies of President Viktor F. Yanukovych. If the United States and European Union wish to encourage a peaceful resolution, they must use their leverage now. Otherwise the situation could degenerate further, to the point where the West will be no more than a spectator.
> 
> 
> The first days of February saw John Kerry meeting with Ukranian oppositionists to express their support. At about the same time the Obama administration began to negotiate with Congress on the possibility of imposing sanctions on the Ukraine in order to pressure that government “in response to the bloodshed touched off by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to rebuff a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union.”
> 
> Two days ago the US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, announced his resignation. His departure was widely regarded as signalling the failure of the “reset” policy which he advocated. The Post wrote:
> 
> McFaul never wavered in his defense of the “reset” despite the increasingly rocky trail of U.S.-Russian relations in recent years. In a blog post titled “It’s Time, My Friend, It’s Time,” written in Russian and English, which he said would be his last as ambassador, he listed what he argued were the reset’s accomplishments.
> 
> Among them were the New START accord limiting nuclear arms, the opening of the Northern Distribution Network allowing the United States to send supplies to its troops in Afghanistan by way of Russia, cooperation on Iran and North Korea, and Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization — which Washington wanted on the grounds that it requires Russia to commit to international trade rules.
> 
> The situation had been worsening unnoticed, masked by the cascade of other failures and the earnest efforts of the media to spare the administration from embarasment. But the lid is off. Today Russia denounced alleged interference by the U.S. in what they termed the internal affairs of the Ukraine. The Russians leaked the recording of a telephone call from Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine, as part of a campaign to persuade the international public that Washington was engaged in adventurism. The Boston Globe describes the background and the tape.
> 
> The tit-for-tat has been going on since November, when Yanukovych spurned a trade deal with Europe and accepted a $15 billion loan from Moscow. Months of street protests have threatened his government, and US officials are now trying to broker a settlement — an effort the Kremlin seems determined to block.
> 
> The posting of the audiotape represented a striking turn in the situation. It was posted anonymously on YouTube on Tuesday under a Russian headline, “Puppets of Maidan,” a reference to the square in Kiev occupied by protesters, and then tweeted Thursday by a Russian government official who called it “controversial.”
> 
> The tape captured a four-minute telephone call on Jan. 25 between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the ambassador to Ukraine, trading their views of the crisis, their assessments of various opposition leaders, and their frustrations with their European counterparts. At one point, Nuland used an expletive to describe what should happen to the EU.
> 
> The two were discussing Yanukovych’s offer to bring two opposition leaders, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko, into the government as prime minister and deputy prime minister. The two Americans favored Yatsenyuk, a former economics minister, and Nuland said Klitschko, a former world heavyweight boxing champion, should not go into government.
> 
> The tape was calculated to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies. SFGate reports it as: “‘F–k the EU,’ Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said in a private phone call, expressing frustration with European Union efforts to resolve Ukraine’s political turmoil.” The National Interest notes some inflammatory language from the Russians as well.
> 
> Meanwhile, tempers are running hotter than ever in Moscow, where Kremlin adviser Sergei Glazyev is saying that Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych should just get it over with and crush the “putschists.”
> 
> USA Today has got more incendiary language to throw into the pile: “Russian adviser threatens Ukraine with military force”:
> 
> KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian protesters said Thursday they have no doubt Russia will intervene militarily in the unrest here if the Moscow-aligned president gives in to demands for more freedoms and stronger ties to the West.
> 
> “Everyone knows that Russia is going to send troops to Ukraine – we have known it for a long time now,” said Kateryna Chorna of Kiev who has regularly taken part in the anti-government protests that started in November.
> 
> “And everyone knows that some of (the Russian troops) are already here…
> 
> Sergei Glazyev accused the United States on Thursday of funding the Ukrainian “rebels” by as much as $20 million a day for weapons and other supplies. He urged the Ukrainian government to put down the “attempted coup,” or Russia may have to intervene under the terms of a 1994 agreement between the United States and Russia, according to the Ukraine edition of the Russian daily Kommersant.
> 
> Glazyev was alluding to the Budapest Memorandum, a treaty in which Ukraine agreed to turn over a nuclear arsenal on its soil left over after the fall of the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was a part until it dissolved in 1991.
> 
> In return, the United States, United Kingdom and Russia, nuclear powers all, guaranteed to respect the independence and the borders of Ukraine and reaffirmed their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action should Ukraine become a victim of an act of aggression.
> 
> The memorandum, which is not binding, refers only to “nuclear aggression” and it requires the signatories to consult each other if other unspecified aggression arises.
> 
> Glazyev said the agreement binds Russia and the United States “to intervene when conflicts of this kind arise. And what the Americans are doing now, unilaterally and crudely interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine, is a clear breach of that treaty.”
> 
> With any luck these utterances are simply bluff words employed in a game of diplomatic brinksmanship. But taken at face value the fireworks represent an emergent crisis of very serious proportions, made more shocking by its suddenness; a bolt out of the blue; a dark, threatening thundercloud intruding on the happy-talk diplomacy of the Obama administration. The problems over the Ukraine come almost as a caboose to a long train of disasters, with a disconsolate State Department pulling along a whole string of derelicts — Libya, Syria, Iran, the Arab Spring and growing tension in the Western Pacific — so that the troubles with Russia pass almost unnoticed as the last car in the series.
> 
> It’s easy to forget the other points of friction with Russia: Syria, the northern supply route to troops in Afghanistan, Iran, Snowden. Lawmakers who listened to a classified briefing on Snowden’s disclosures were shocked at the extent of the damage he caused.
> 
> Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) read his statement rather than making comments on the fly “because of the seriousness of this issue and the sensitivity” of the information they’d just heard.
> 
> “Ed Snowden isn’t a whistleblower; he’s a traitor,” McKeon said.
> 
> No matter what opinion people hold of the data collection programs, he added, people should be “shocked and outraged to find that a substantial amount of the information has nothing to do with the NSA.”
> 
> “He’s given our enemies an edge and put American lives at risk,” said the chairman.
> 
> Only a few days ago Russia threatened to quit the START talks as the U.S. deployed an Aegis anti-ballistic missile ship to Spain. All on the back pages, yet taken together one can adventure the thought that a comprehensive failure has overtaken the foreign policy of Barack Obama. The irony is that Obama campaigned on the platform of “smart diplomacy.” But as things have turned out, he was smart only in his own mind.
> 
> Under his watch the 70-year-old Pax Americana has fallen apart. Al-Qaeda has flourished. President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines caught the tone of rising concern when he warned, in an interview with the New York Times, that China was doing to Southeast Asia what Nazi Germany did to Central Europe in the late 1930s. “At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”
> 
> But you wouldn’t know it for the panegyrics still being sung by the mainstream media.  To read some papers you would think the world’s biggest problem was gay rights at the Sochi Olympics.
> 
> The Sudetenland? Things are not as bad as that yet. But the operative word is “yet.” Someone — perhaps the elders of the Democratic Party — have got to put some competence back in the White House. Someone needs to stop the rot. An administration too inept to roll out a website; too obtuse to do much more than watch a US consulate burned by — dare we say it? — video protesters — such an administration may be overmatched in a contest of brinksmanship with a rival nuclear power.
> 
> Barack Obama is in trouble and so are we all. It’s time to stop the Happy Talk and for Republicans and Democrats to face the facts. The emperor has no clothes.


----------



## pbi

What happens to the Maritime System when the slate of payers is re-arranged to include three nations with large (or massive)  populations, growing economies and access to resources? I'm proposing China, Brazil and India, none of whom were ever serious players in the Maritime System before.  All of these countries, in the approximate order I've listed, are at least regional naval powers and have aspirations to increase their maritime reach. 

Isn't there a danger inherent in this theory, that it argues from what has been to what will be? 
Doesn't that presuppose no significant change of conditions?


----------



## a_majoor

That is a very good question, but WRM argues that the Maritime system is a cultural system as well as a political and trading system. As he describes it, the three legs are self reinforcing, but the all important cultural leg needs to be there first. After all, Spain had a very powerful maritime Empire with a vast population and access to a literal mountain of silver ore in the New World when embarking on its series of wars against the Low Countries, England and the Ottoman Empire. By any objective accounting, the European wars against England and the United Provinces should have been a quick one-two knockout followed by the "main event" against the Ottomans.

Instead, the United Provinces and England had cultures which provided superior ability to identify and utilize all resources (especially the all important human resources), and Spain was locked into a grinding series of wars which eventually sapped huge amounts of time and resources, destabilized the Imperial structure and sent Spain into a terminal decline.

This is true even before the establishment of the modern Maritime system; Ancient Athens had a sort of "maritime system" in place during the Peloponnesian Wars, and despite a huge imbalance in power between the Delian League and Sparta and Her Allies (backed by the financial resources of the Persian Empire), especially after the disaster in Sicily, the Athenians were still able to marshal the manpower and resources to carry on the fight for almost a decade after losing the flower of her army and fleet, and most of her allies as well. The _Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta_ was similarly unbalanced against the Ottoman Empire (and various unfriendly city states in Italy proper), yet still remained competitive for 200 years, and in the modern age, the "Tiger" economies stack up quite well against China despite a vast disparity in population and access to resources.

India I will propose is a special case. It is part of the Anglosphere (if only as an associate member) and has many of the characteristics of the other modern nations in the Maritime system. So long as her culture continues to follow the British inheritance, India can become a much larger player in the Maritime system. Even if India becomes "less" British in her institutions and culture, she still will be tied to the Maritime system by trade and institutional bonds, since they are of more benefit to members than trying to establish separate institutional regimes (as Napoleon how the Continental System worked out).

China and Brazil do not have the cultural background of the Maritime nations (and China does not really have clear access to the oceans either), which will hamper their ability to marshal resources. As well, even if they did have the resources and ability to marshal resources against the Maritime system, being members of the institutional structures of the Maritime system provide far more benefits than trying to go it alone.


----------



## Edward Campbell

One of the most important things that the Dutch and the English _mobilized_, and something which the Spanish failed even to comprehend, was: *capital*.

The Dutch figured out *public debt* and used it to offset some of the HUGE Spanish advantages. Both England and Holland used their immensely superior financial _systems_ to counter all of their Catholic enemies, and a few others, too.


----------



## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> ... After all, Spain had a very powerful maritime Empire with a vast population and access to a literal mountain of silver ore in the New World when embarking on its series of wars against the Low Countries, England and the Ottoman Empire. By any objective accounting, the European wars against England and the United Provinces should have been a quick one-two knockout followed by the "main event" against the Ottomans.
> 
> Instead, the United Provinces and England had cultures which provided superior ability to identify and utilize all resources (especially the all important human resources), and Spain was locked into a grinding series of wars which eventually sapped huge amounts of time and resources, destabilized the Imperial structure and sent Spain into a terminal decline...






			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> One of the most important things that the Dutch and the English _mobilized_, and something which the Spanish failed even to comprehend, was: *capital*.
> 
> The Dutch figured out *public debt* and used it to offset some of the HUGE Spanish advantages. Both England and Holland used their immensely superior financial _systems_ to counter all of their Catholic enemies, and a few others, too.



Just reading Churchill's "Marlborough-His Life and Times", which reinforces over and over again the points raised by Thucydides and ERC above. Marlborough, that great 18th century soldier, fought against both France and Spain. Spain, by the time of the War of the Spanish Succession, was already having difficulties. France, although somewhat better off and with a reasonably more efficient administration, still lacked the dynamism and focused energy of either England or the United Provinces.

Dutch finances, combined with English finance and growing manufacturing power, enabled the creation and sustainment of sea and land forces that challenged the "Catholic Powers" at every turn.

So, maybe culture and internal politics really do have something to do with it. But, things can change. At the time of the Franco-Prussian War, nobody would have seriously predicted that Germany would make a serious bid (twice, actually) to sweep the Royal Navy off the seas.


----------



## Edward Campbell

pbi said:
			
		

> Just reading Churchill's "Marlborough-His Life and Times", which reinforces over and over again the points raised by Thucydides and ERC above. Marlborough, that great 18th century soldier, fought against both France and Spain. Spain, by the time of the War of the Spanish Succession, was already having difficulties. France, although somewhat better off and with a reasonably more efficient administration, still lacked the dynamism and focused energy of either England or the United Provinces.
> 
> Dutch finances, combined with English finance and growing manufacturing power, enabled the creation and sustainment of sea and land forces that challenged the "Catholic Powers" at every turn.
> 
> So, maybe culture and internal politics really do have something to do with it. But, things can change. At the time of the Franco-Prussian War, nobody would have seriously predicted that Germany would make a serious bid (twice, actually) to sweep the Royal Navy off the seas.




But I'm not sure that 19th/early 20th century Germany ever wanted, much less planned, to "sweep the Royal Navy off the seas."

They wanted, I think, to be able to counter any threatened British blockade of Germany or its overseas possessions. There is, I think, an analog with China vs the USA today. I doubt the Germans thought, even in 1916, that they could defeat the Royal Navy globally - at Jutland, in one place, at one time, yes, they could win or, at least not lose a great naval battle, but a global victory was always beyond both their reach and, in my opinion, even their wishes. Ditto China, today, I believe: it wants to be able to confront the USN in the China Seas (Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea) and stalemate it there, but it does not even dream of sweeping the USN off the seas.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> But I'm not sure that 19th/early 20th century Germany ever wanted, much less planned, to "sweep the Royal Navy off the seas."...Ditto China, today, I believe: it wants to be able to confront the USN in the China Seas (Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea) and stalemate it there, but it does not even dream of sweeping the USN off the seas.




 A turn of phrase perhaps, but I'd suggest that once you get into a serious naval arms race and a struggle for control of the sea, if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.

I do tend to agree, though, that China may not be as expansionist as some people seem to fear. At, least not beyond its own immediate region, which is pretty much what any major power reserves the right to do if it sees fit. 

China, while having had historic struggles with all its contiguous neighbours and Japan, hasn't really been an expansionist power the way that, say, Japan, Germany or the USSR have been. I may be torpedoing myself by arguing from what has been to what will be, but I think a realpolitik-based _modus vivendi _ between the US and China, probably at the expense of some lesser powers, may be the most pragmatic solution.

(Stop calling me Neville Chamberlain....)


----------



## a_majoor

Perhaps the hope is simply that the more robust and resilient culture of Liberal Democracy and free markets will  stumble to the finish, while the brittle authoritarian regimes will collapse under their own weight: our true Grand Strategy is to do nothing at all.....

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2014/02/21/what-if-we-were-winning-but-nobody-noticed/?singlepage=true



> *What If We Were Winning But Nobody Noticed?*
> 
> February 21st, 2014 - 7:17 am
> 
> It’s all about winning and losing, but the best man doesn’t always win, and outcomes frequently have more to do with luck than with merit.  Brilliant strategies fail, and fools stumble into glorious victories.  Napoleon preferred a lucky general to a brilliant one.
> 
> Which brings us to today.  The headlines are grim, the pictures from Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are blood-chilling, executions and demonstrations are mounting in Iran, and Obama doesn’t know what to do about anything.  So he doesn’t do anything; he and his strategists just dither.  And yet…
> 
> And yet, our enemies may be on the verge of losing.  Big time.
> 
> Maybe the elimination of the Russian Olympic hockey team was an augury, foreshadowing a shift in Putin’s destiny.  Up until quite recently, he waved his mailed fist and barked out commands that were obeyed from Georgia to Syria.  He, along with the Syrian, Iranian, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Bolivian dictators and would-be dictators, was forging a global alliance aimed against the West, and nobody in the West seemed to notice, let alone take steps to combat it.  The global alliance consists primarily of jihadis and radical leftists, the two principal forces committed to the destruction of what is sometimes known as the Western world.
> 
> That alliance is cracking, because many millions of people are fighting the anti-Western tyrants.  They aren’t pundits, and they haven’t calculated the odds on success.  They just fight.  Almost none of the major events of the past few years was foreseen by the deep thinkers, most all of whom thought that Egypt was lost to the jihadists, Assad was firmly in control of Syria, and Chavismo was destined to rule in Venezuela for years to come.
> 
> But in Egypt, where the Muslim Brothers took over the most important country in the Muslim Middle East, they lost it within a year.  They were brought down by what the BBC called “the largest demonstration in human history.”  In Tunisia, the birthplace of the “Arab Spring,” the radical jihadists were briefly in control, and then lost to more moderate forces, including secular leaders.  The fighting in Syria began when members of the nation’s armed forces–neither religiously nor ideologically radical–rebelled against the Assad tyranny.  I don’t know more than a couple of people who thought the opposition would endure…until they did an about-face and told us the opposition was unbeatable and Assad was about to fall.  In Ukraine, the people have risen against a government that was clearly a marionette of Moscow.  And in Venezuela, the streets of the major cities are filled with people fighting against a failed Cuban-style dictatorship.
> 
> The Ukrainian government is now technically a minority in Parliament (some of its members having defected), and there are reports that the rats are scampering away, loading expensive automobiles and containers full of cash onto airplanes at the Kiev airport (like you, I want to know where those planes are going to land.  We’ll know shortly, I have no doubt).
> 
> The Venezuelan demonstrations don’t seem to be getting any smaller, and when the Maduro regime arrested the opposition leader, it backfired, as even more people took to the streets.
> 
> For those keeping score: the enemy alliance has lost in Egypt and Tunisia, is losing Ukraine, is in great peril in Venezuela, is losing men and money in significant quantities in Syria, and faces determined opposition inside Iran.
> 
> To be sure, there’s bad news too, as you’ll see on the next page.
> Lebanon and Iraq are increasingly under Iranian domination, but then again Hezbollah, the main Iranian instrument in Lebanon, and, along with the Revolutionary Guards the Iranian expeditionary force in Syria, is taking casualties, and the body bags are smuggled home in secret.  There’s lots of popular anger at the regime for its Syrian adventure.  Some of the anger comes from with the Guards themselves, who see themselves used as cannon fodder by a regime that keeps raising the stakes.
> 
> It’s like the case of the bumblebee, which, the engineers patiently explained to us, cannot fly (wrong ratio of wingspan to body mass, etcetera).  But the bumblebees don’t know that, and so they fly.  And even make some honey.  The geopolitical pundits did not expect the Syrian opposition to last, any more than they foresaw the Iranian uprising of 2009-2010, or the mass demonstrations in Venezuela, or the revolt against the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, or…
> 
> Life is full of surprises.  It’s better to admit we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  But there are some basic rules, usually ignored by the strategists and intellectuals, of which the most important has a place of honor in Machiavelli’s writings:  tyranny is the most unstable form of government.  Intellectuals have self-interested reasons for rather liking tyrants (especially when ideologically congenial–leftist intellectuals like leftist tyrants, rightist intellectuals admire ideologically like-minded rulers), but the air can go out of tyrannical balloons with amazing speed.
> 
> The flip side of that coin is that democracies and republics are far more durable, even though (maybe even because) they are fractious, sloppy, inefficient and, especially in foreign policy, typically indecisive.
> 
> Rule number two is that the world is slow to change.  Except when the world is seized by convulsions and rapid change is the order of the day.  We’re currently in a period of profound change, from the bipolar Cold War world to…we know not what.  But all those who advocate “stability” have failed to understand this moment.
> 
> Rule three is that this world is tailor-made for the American mission, which is to support freedom.  Our current leaders can’t understand this, because they view America-in-the-world as a bad thing, as the root cause of most of the world’s problems, and they have been in cahoots with the anti-Americans.  You know the litany by now:  appease or embrace Iran and Putin and the Chavistas and the Brothers and the Castros. They are failing.  See Rule One.
> 
> So maybe it’s a race for the booby prize, a mad dash to see who can lose first.
> 
> Except (let’s hope) the freedom fighters.  You never know.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Fareed Zakaria, a pretty smart fellow with, broadly, _centrist_ views, takes issues with the anti-Obama narratives that are front and centre in the US media and here in Army.ca in this column which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Washington Post_:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-america-plays-its-role-in-a-changing-world-right/2014/02/27/b1bb0c40-9fee-11e3-b8d8-94577ff66b28_story.html


> America plays its role in a changing world right
> 
> By Fareed Zakaria,
> 
> Published: February 27
> 
> As America navigates a changing world, the people who seem to be having the greatest difficulty with the adjustment are the country’s pundits. Over the past few weeks, a new conventional wisdom has congealed on the op-ed pages: The United States is in retreat, and this is having terrible consequences around the world.
> 
> This week, The Post’s Richard Cohen presented the usual parade of horrible things happening around the world — chiefly Syria — for which President Obama is to blame, and he added a few new ones for good measure, such as Scotland’s and Catalonia’s possible moves toward secession. In the face of all these challenges, Cohen asserted, Obama refuses to be the world’s policeman or even its “hall monitor.” Yes, if only the president would blow a whistle, the Scots and Catalans would end their centuries-old quest for independence!
> 
> Forget the Federal Reserve’s “taper,” Niall Ferguson tells us in the Wall Street Journal, the much greater danger is Washington’s “geopolitical taper.” He presents as evidence of Obama’s disastrous policies the fact that more people have died in the “Greater Middle East” under Obama than under George W. Bush. But there is a huge difference in the two cases. In the Bush years, the numbers were high because of the war in Iraq, a conflict initiated by the Bush administration. In the Obama years, the numbers are high because of the war in Syria, a conflict that the Obama administration has stayed out of. If this logic were to be followed, Bush is responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths in Sudan and Congo during his presidency.
> 
> Most of the critiques were written before the fall of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanu­kovych, so they tend to view Ukraine as another example of the weak and feckless Obama administration. Events in Ukraine actually illustrate how the world has changed and how U.S. leadership is better exercised in this new era.
> 
> First, the United States was not the most important player in the crisis. Ukraine wants to be part of the European Union, and it is the European Union that will make the crucial set of decisions that will affect the fate of Kiev. (That’s why Washington was understandably frustrated with the union’s slow and fitful diplomacy, as evidenced in Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s profane phone criticism.) By staying relatively quiet and working behind the scenes, the Obama administration ensured that the story was not about America’s plans to steal Ukraine from Russia but rather about the Ukrainian people’s desire to move West. (Nationalism, that crucial force, is not working against U.S. interests for a change.) Now the United States can play a key role in helping to deter Russia from derailing Ukraine’s aspirations. That will require some firmness but also careful negotiations, not bluster.
> 
> The world is not in great disorder. It is mostly at peace with one zone of instability, the greater Middle East, an area that has been unstable for four decades at least — think of the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Lebanese civil war, the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War, the Iraq war, the Sudanese civil war, the Afghan wars and now the Syrian civil war. The Obama administration has not magically stopped this trail of tumult.
> 
> It is ironic that Ferguson, a distinguished economic historian, does not even mention the Obama administration’s ambitious trade projects in Asia and Europe — certainly the most important trade initiative to come out of Washington in two decades and one that could have a powerful stabilizing effect in Asia. But in this respect, he reflects the views of most commentators who believe that U.S. leadership consists of muscular rhetoric and military action; if only Obama would bomb someone somewhere, the world would settle down and stop changing.
> 
> The fact that people can make these pleas for more intervention right after a decade of aggressive (and costly) American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is surprising. On the other hand, think back to the 1950s. A few years after the long, bloody stalemate in Korea, cries for U.S. intervention popped up everywhere. The French pleaded for support in Vietnam; the French and the British begged for intervention during the Suez crisis; Washington’s staunch allies the Taiwanese twice requested U.S. support as tensions rose in the Taiwan Strait. In all these crises, senior military leaders wanted to intervene, even, by some accounts in the Taiwanese case, using nuclear missiles. Commentators warned that the danger of U.S. inaction would be chaos, communist advances and freedom’s retreat.
> 
> President Dwight Eisenhower turned down every plea, refusing to inject U.S. troops into complex conflicts without clear missions and paths to victory. Imagine if a different president, less able to exercise courage, wisdom and restraint, had listened to the armchair interventionists and the United States had jumped into all those conflicts. Imagine the disorder abroad and the erosion of American power at home.




I agree broadly with Mr Zakaria: despite my serious disagreements with president Obama on a wide range of policy issues, I think his foreign and defence policies have been, at the very least, harmless.


----------



## tomahawk6

I don't take Zakaria seriously as he is another liberal posing as a journalist.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I don't take Zakaria seriously as he is another liberal posing as a journalist.



Are the two things exclusive?


----------



## Hisoyaki

It seem to me that the main difference between Eisenhower and Obama is that the former's threats were actually credible. 

Electing a 5 star general was interpreted by the Kremlin as a warlike attitude from the American people.  When he threatened the use of nuclear weapons in Korea, the communists quickly sought an armistice.

 Unlike Obama, Eisenhower had absolutely no qualms about supporting autocratic regimes when it fit American national interest and sometimes he was aggressively doing so. He supported the government of South Vietnam and he basically overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala for having a pro-Soviet line. 

The french pleaded for support and got support from Eisenhower at the tune of 400 millions (in 1950s) $. As parting advice to young Kennedy, he counseled that Laos was the key to Indochina and to consider the sending of ground forces if it were about to fall to the communists.By the time he was done, Eisenhower had sent advisers to South Vietnam.

By contrast, Obama has suspended military aid to the Egyptian military when it rose against Morsi (military aid which was already in place). He also spearheaded the withdrawal of american forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Instead of Eisenhower, a more apt comparison for Obama would be Jimmy Carter. Obama lacks a clear foreign policy --- As does the rest of America. The American people have Wilsonian ideals but not the political will to promote them.


----------



## Brad Sallows

The problem with Obama's foreign and defence policies is that he doesn't seem to have any consistent policies except to ignore foreign and defence matters and, when pressed, to do whatever is best for his own reputation (ie. political interests always supercede national interests).

The problem isn't that he encourages anything.  The problem is that he discourages nothing - he has become irrelevant.  I suppose that in the estimate process of foreign leaders, they come to the factor labelled "US/Obama", ask "So what?", find nothing to deduce that affects the aim, and move on.  For the US to be irrelevant or near irrelevant in the calculations of major foreign players is enough of a disaster.  For some foreign leaders to believe they can actively neutralize the US/Obama and/or play for PR advantage (eg. as was done in Syria) is beyond disaster.


----------



## a_majoor

Even some Liberal press organs are starting to wake up to the foreign policy disaster. As I suggested upthread, there is always the possibility that the less flexible and robust autocracies will overreach and collapse, while the more resiliant Liberal, democratic and Maritime powers will be able to weather the storm. Time will tell:

http://thediplomad.blogspot.ca/2014/03/the-washington-post-on-obamas-fantasy.html



> *The Washington Post on Obama's Fantasy Foreign Policy: The Progressive Civil War Begins?*
> 
> An interesting development on Progressive Planet.
> 
> The Washington Post editorial board, that decades-long stalwart purveyor of standard American progressive "thought," has had a revelation; it is not exactly equivalent to Saul on the road to Damascus, but it might be akin to Jimmy Carter on the road to political oblivion. I refer to that moment in January 1980, following the prior month's Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Jimmy Carter--silver medalist in the Worst President Ever category--angrily announced, "Brezhnev lied to me!"
> 
> Poor dear deluded Carter realized at that moment--he seems to have forgotten this since--that the sun did not rise and set at his command; the world did not spin to please him; the solar system did not revolve around Plains, Georgia. He dimly realized that at times foreign leaders do what they think is in the best interest of their countries, and do not comply with the laws of the universe imagined by Washington DC bureaucrats, and "progressive" journalists and academics.
> 
> Yes, the Washington Post has SUDDENLY discovered that when it comes to foreign policy, the leaders of Planet Obama might, might just be from Bizarro World. The editorial for March 2 titled, "President Obama’s Foreign Policy is Based on Fantasy" states,
> 
> FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”
> 
> Has the WP been reading The Diplomad? It goes on to state,
> 
> _Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people, sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with maintaining their holds on power._
> 
> And even,
> 
> _The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want American “boots on the ground” all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of Iraq. So let’s stipulate: We don’t want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don’t want U.S. troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters, so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple.
> 
> But it’s also true that, as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as 19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that’s harmful to U.S. national security, too._
> 
> Well good for the Post! A little bit of the light of realism has broken through the progressive fog. That said, and at the risk of being uncharitable, we must note that it is now March 2014, and Mr. Obama, whom the Post backed in two elections, has been President since January 2009. That's over five years. Ukraine is not the first disaster for this President. Those have been coming fast and furious (ahem!) for those five-plus years, and the Post hasn't said much of anything about them. It, in fact, joined in with fellow progressives to deride Palin and later Romney's warnings about Russia. The same editorial board has stayed silent about the IRS targeting of the Tea Party, the abuse of EPA authority to shutdown businesses not friends of the Democrat party, Obama's arming of drug cartels, and the Benghazi massacre. The Post has long supported the global warming nonsense, and, of course, Obamacare and the fantasy world on which that is built, to wit, that there are millions of uninsured or poor Americans out there just dying to get enrolled in some big government sponsored health scheme.
> 
> The Post has an infamous history of its own as an active purveyor of progressive fantasy. Its most famous being the Janet Cooke hoax. Cooke, as you remember, was a black reporter for the Post who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning series of reports titled "Jimmy's World" which featured a poor little eight-year-old black boy in the ghetto, so lonely and so desperate that he would shoot up his mom's heroin. The progs loved this story! It confirmed everything they "knew" about life in Amerika! It, of course, turned out to be a total fake, an invention by a black reporter who knew what her white progressive bosses wanted from her. As I have written before, progressives see what they believe. It is thus at home and abroad.
> 
> You fight one battle at a time, I guess. So we should be grateful that the Post has gotten a bit of wisdom. One can only hope that this is contagious.



AS forfears of a financial war, given the huge foreign holdings of US treasuries, it may be a two edged sword, according to one commenter:



> AnonymousMarch 5, 2014 at 10:34 AM
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by 'calling in' the US Treasury bonds owned by Russia and China. There are no 'call' provisions in US Treasuries. If Russia or China showed up on the Treasury doorstep with their US bonds and demanded repayment, the Treasury would (correctly) tell them to take a hike. The Treasury will redeem those bonds on their maturity date (which ranges from next year to 30 years from now), and not a day before. If they don't like that, they can sell their bonds in the open market.
> 
> Now, what would happen if Russia and China did that? With a huge increase in the supply of Treasuries on the market, a likely short-term outcome would be a deep decline in both the interest rate the Treasury would have to pay on new issues and the value of currently existing bonds. A decline in the interest rate would be a benefit to the Treasury, and a decline in current value would be disastrous for current bond holders (including pension plans and insurance companies). But the biggest losers would be Russia and China, who would take an immediate and absolutely massive hit to their balance sheets. And who would likely buy those bonds sold by Russia and China? It takes no great foresight to predict that the Fed (with its unlimited printing press) would simply print the money necessary to buy those bonds, thus restoring value to the Treasuries (and financial health to the pension plans and insurance companies), improving the quality of its own balance sheet, and locking in the losses sustained by Russia and China. Will it happen? I doubt it, as Russia and China are not stupid. But if that's what they want to do, bring it on!


----------



## Hisoyaki

If they play their cards right, China alone can and will send the market into a panic. I find anonymous' comments to be cavalier to say the least and I have to question his grasp on economics. 

The Fed does not have unlimited printing power --- not if it wants the USD to be worth anything at the end of the day. The commenter has conveniently forgotten about the political in-fighting in the US congress and the credit downgrades our southern neighbors have suffered recently (partly due to  and to quantitive easings --- or printing money). 

It makes no sense to say that interest rates the Fed would have to pay would lower if there was a huge sell-off tomorrow. When bond supplies go up (and price drops), so does their yields. The Fed will need to match the market/interest rates on new issues. 

And it's not like it has much of a choice, the US government needs to constantly re-issue new bonds to finance itself. Higher interest rates would basically force austerity down the throats of socialists in Washington ( with optional hyperinflation if there is too much screwing around). 

No doubt, China and Russia would also be big losers if they sold all at once, but that is why China at least have been slowly divesting itself from US treasuries.

The threat of bond selloff has already been pulled in diplomacy. Ironically, by the US themselves vis-a-vis Britain during the Suez crisis:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=bSbgh4YN4dgC&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=If+there+is+any+single+event+that+marked+the+end+of+Britain+as+an+imperial+power+of+global+reach,+it%E2%80%99s+the+Suez+Crisis+of+1956.+Egypt+nationalized+the&source=bl&ots=8aqg0vv0Xk&sig=9YhxQHfykxAnKI9q8trt4R3QBXg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IrgXU5XGDYzM0gGmjYDoCA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=If%20there%20is%20any%20single%20event%20that%20marked%20the%20end%20of%20Britain%20as%20an%20imperial%20power%20of%20global%20reach%2C%20it%E2%80%99s%20the%20Suez%20Crisis%20of%201956.%20Egypt%20nationalized%20the&f=false


----------



## a_majoor

The Fed has and does use "unlimited" printing power; one only has to look at the recent history of "QE" to see that. The Washington and political elites might not even mind a round of hyperinflation, since that would set the stage for even more meddling in the domestic economy and advance a domestic agenda (which seems to have been the point of Obamacare as well. When you look at the mechanics of that it is a giant wealth transfer program, which is currently being hamstrung in two places: the inability of the "exchanges" to actually work for people who did sign up, and the passive resistance of the millions of young and healthy people who are needed to sign up in order for the program to actually work. The number that was presented during the rollout was 7 million, currently something like 2.5 million are "enrolled" but it is unknown how many of the enrolees are young and healthy, or how many are actually registered and paying premiums at this time).

Since we are not Americans, I think most of us fail to fully understand just how much of this process is being driven by partisan political concerns and the unique structures built into American politics. What seems like sensible and statesmanship like actions to us may be the kiss of death for some career politician or devalue the position of a career bureaucrat in Washington, hence to be avoided, deflected or defeated at all costs.


----------



## muskrat89

http://www.steynonline.com/6179/beyond-europe

A snippet:



> America is not who it thinks it is. John Hawkins has an excellent post today on the five structural problems that are destroying the nation, and he marshals some evidence of his own:
> 
> America doesn't have the highest taxes in the Western world, but it does have the most progressive tax system in the Western world. As a practical matter, what this means is that we have large numbers of Americans voting on whether others should pay more taxes in order to give them things.
> 
> Every time the Democrats call for "the richest one per cent" to pay their "fair share", Republicans ought to point out that we have a more progressive - ie, redistributive - tax system than Canada, Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands... In other words, America's rich already pay more than Sweden's rich or Norway's rich. If it's fair enough for the Continentals, why isn't it fair for Americans?
> 
> What about corporate tax? Federal corporate tax in the US: 35 per cent; in Canada: 11-15 per cent. Total (national, local, the lot) corporate tax burden: Ireland 12.5 per cent, Sweden 22 per cent, Denmark 24 per cent, Netherlands 25 per cent, Germany 29 per cent, Italy 31 per cent, Belgium 33 per cent, United States 40 per cent.
> 
> So America is more Euro-socialist than most Euro-socialists.


----------



## a_majoor

While perhaps not as apocalyptic as Michael Leeden, I do find elements of his thesis to be plausible. The various "Continental" powers are rising and uniting again against the "Maritime" powers in order to secure their own power and extend their reach. Iran's ambitions to be a regional hegemon are certainly furthered under this sort of scenario. My two questions are how long this sort of mutual backscratching will go on given the disparate aims and goals of the various participants listed, and do they even have the resources to reach as far as they have and maintain their gains in the medium and long term?

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2014/03/18/the-big-story-the-global-war-goes-mostly-unreported/?singlepage=true



> *The Big Story–the Global War–Goes Mostly Unreported*
> 
> March 18th, 2014 - 2:03 pm
> 
> The “news” is resolutely out of context.  A subject about which virtually nothing is known–the mystery of the missing airplane–gets saturation “coverage,” while events of potentially earth-shaking importance are largely unreported. Twitter is full of tweets, photos and videos from the streets of Venezuela, but the Maduro tyranny expelled CNN, and Wolf Blitzer crams his airtime with heads talking about the Malaysian passenger jet.  Any self-respecting “news network” would relentlessly run stories about the ongoing demonstrations from Caracas to Maracaibo–demonstrations surely the equal of those from Maidan Square in Kiev–but no.
> 
> The Venezuelan uprising may turn out to be the biggest story of all, because it is part of a world-wide battle that pits anti-Western tyrannies against their own people, and against their neighbors.  It is of a piece with Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and Russia itself, where, just a few days ago, fifty thousand Muscovites demonstrated against Putin’s imperialist moves in Ukraine.
> 
> I’ve been saying for years that we’re the target of a global war, that the Pyongyang-Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Damascus-Havana-Caracas etc Axis of Evil is hell-bent to dominate and destroy us.  Now the evidence is so clear that only a willfully blind man could fail to see it.  When the pundits were saying that Assad’s doom was imminent, I warned that he had the full support of Russia and Iran, and they would not go quietly.  He didn’t, but the pundits are still trying to unscrew the inscrutable jihadi networks and alliances, invoking the tired chant of Sunni vs Shi’ite, and refusing to see the battle of Syria in the context of the real war.
> 
> Today, the repression of the Venezuelan people is under the command of Cubans and aided by Hezbollahis, which is part of the same picture that has Russian troops-in-mufti operating in Ukraine, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah killers operating in Syria, Iranian-guided terrorists fighting in Yemen, Iranian-trained Taliban killing Afghans and Americans, and on and on.  That picture has been clarified by the announcement that Russia is opening naval bases in Latin America.
> 
> Just as the fall of Assad would be a devastating blow to Russia and Iran, the Axis must defend the Venezuelan dictatorship, because its fall would seriously challenge the anti-Western alliance.  Venezuela is a lynchpin in the Axis.  Caracas launders money, transships weapons (as between Russia, Syria and Iran, for example) and drugs, and provides safe havens and training facilities for jihadis, from which they can move toward our poorly defended southern border.  Thus Cubans fight Venezuelans in the streets.  Thus Russian warships are headed for the Caribbean and the southern oceans.
> 
> Putin and Khamenei openly ridicule Obama for his lack of effective action;  they are not worried about an American response to their imperialist campaigns. Their fear is like Sauron’s as Sam and Frodo approached Mount Doom: they are afraid of their own people.  This is demonstrated by the intensification of the domestic crackdown in Iran and Russia. Putin cannot even permit Pussy Riot to be free, and Khamenei/Rouhani are killing at a record rate. The outcome of these internal battles is not foreordained.  Indeed, if we had a pro-American government in Washington, the odds would be against the tyrants.  Even so, the Maidan Revolution sent a great glob of spittle into Putin’s face.
> 
> As we head toward the November elections, we badly need revolutionary leaders, men and women who understand the gravity of the global crisis, and who embrace the support of democratic revolution in the heartlands of our enemies.  This president and his executive branch are not going to do that, and the feckless “reporters” of the drive-by media are not going to report it in context, so it’s going to have to come from Congress.
> 
> Or it’s going to end up as a big shooting war. And Obama is doing his damnedest to make sure we don’t have enough military power to win it without terrible cost.
> 
> Faster, please.



Of course history also seems to be on "our" side; the Athenians, Elizabethan England, and the _Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta_ could compete on an equal basis with Sparta and her Allies (backed with Persian money), Imperial Spain and the Ottoman Empire despite being vastly outnumbered and having far fewer resources. The modern West is anchored by the United States, a Continental power in its own right with vast reserves of manpower and resources, and including the wealthy and advanced nations of the Anglosphere as the senior parners in the alliance, hardly a pushover combination if well led and organized (even ill led and disorganized maritime polities can still be formidable opponents, see Athens during the last decade of the Pelopenessian war).

I think (and hope) that the long game favours us still.


----------



## Journeyman

I'm sorry, I stopped reading at "Havana....hell-bent to dominate and destroy us."


----------



## a_majoor

Cultural change that may signal the true end of the United States as a dominant power. As referenced in this article, one of the key differences between the United States and previous dominant powers was the rather unique social structure of the United States, communities bound by mutual trust and able to create spontaneous order (the "Little Platoons" of daily life, or as de Tocqueville said "a nation of associations"). IF the coming generation can reestablish this sort of social order, then things should work out. On the other hand...

http://nypost.com/2014/04/04/millennials-path-of-least-resistance/



> *Millennials’ path of least resistance*
> By Michael Barone
> April 4, 2014 | 8:39pm
> 
> When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1830, he was struck by how many Americans were participating in voluntary associations. It was quite a contrast with his native France, where power was centralized in Paris and people didn’t trust each other enough to join in voluntary groups.
> Tocqueville might have a different impression should he time-travel to the America of 2030. Or so I conclude from the recent Pew Research Center report on the attitudes and behavior of America’s Millennial generation.
> 
> By 2030, the Millennials, people born after 1980, will be closing in on age 50 and will be the dominant segment of the working-age population.
> Today the Millennials, write the Pew analysts, are “relatively unattached to organized politics and religion,” and significantly more unattached than the age cohorts (Generation Xers, Baby Boomers, Silent Generation) that came before.
> 
> Politically, 50 percent of Milennials classify themselves as Independents rather than Democrats or Republicans, compared to about 36 percent of their elders.
> 
> Millennials largely voted for Barack Obama — 66 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2012. But only 49 percent approve of his performance now, just a bit more than among Xers and Boomers. Only 34 percent of white Millennials rate Obama’s performance positively.
> 
> Most Millennials say they believe in God, but it’s a smaller majority than among older age groups, and only 36 percent say they see themselves as “a religious person,” versus nearly 60 percent of their elders. Some 29 percent of Millennials are religiously unaffiliated. They’re evidently moving away from their parents’ religion but not moving toward one of their own.
> 
> One reason may be that people tend to join churches when they marry and have children — and Millennials, so far, aren’t doing much of either. Only 26 percent of Millennials age 18 to 32 are married, far lower than other generations were at their age (Xers 36 percent, Boomers 48 percent, Silents 65 percent).
> 
> Millennials aren’t entirely rejecting parenthood, but 47 percent of births to Millennial women are outside of marriage. Even so, about 60 percent of Millennials, like their elders, say that having more children raised by a single parent is bad for society.
> 
> Unlike Tocqueville’s Americans, and unlike the generations just before them, Millennials seem to be avoiding marriage, church and political affiliation, and to lack a sense of social trust. Only 19 percent say that generally speaking most people can be trusted, compared to 31 percent to 40 percent among older generations.
> 
> This is in line with Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s thesis that social trust is declining in America. The Pew analysts speculate that this may result, as Putnam has uncomfortably concluded, from increasing racial diversity.
> 
> Nearly half, 43 percent, of Millennials are non-white — about 20 percent Hispanic, 15 percent black, 8 percent Asian and other. Non-white percentages are much lower among the more trusting Boomers (28 percent) and Silents (21 percent).
> 
> Racial divisions are mirrored in political attitudes, with white Millennials souring on Obama and his party, Hispanics doing so to some extent (according to other surveys), but blacks remaining loyal.
> 
> So who do Millennials trust? Their friends, those they’re connected to via social media. Some 81 percent of Millennials are on Facebook, with a median 250 friend count, and 55 percent have shared a selfie.
> 
> The picture we get from Pew is of a largely disconnected generation, in touch with self-selected peers and distrustful of others. They’re more likely to be college-educated but also to be hobbled by college-loan debt. They’re not doing as well economically as their elders were at their age, but they’re eerily optimistic about their economic future (only 14 percent think they won’t earn enough to lead the life they want).
> 
> A Tocqueville arriving in 2030 will see whether these optimistic expectations are met, and whether the Millennials’ connections to marriage and parenthood, religion and political party were just delayed or never widely established.
> 
> He’ll see whether the absence of a universal popular culture, aimed at everyone, like America had from the 1920s to the 1980s, has caused atrophying social disconnectedness and trust, or whether the Millennials have managed somehow to turn current trends around. Good luck.


----------



## a_majoor

Not too sure about this one. I suspect that many of the comments are correct in saying the American public won't be interested in foreign policy until it rises up and bites them in the a**, at which point the Jacksonian "terrible swift sword" comes out of the scabbard. Still, recognizing that foreign policy errors and inattention makes the world more dangerous and difficult is an important first step:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/04/08/is-the-neo-isolationist-moment-already-over/



> *Is the Neo-Isolationist Moment Already Over?*
> 
> In the 2012 presidential election campaign, the debate between Governor Romney and President Obama on foreign policy was widely considered the least important of the three debates. But because of the Ukraine crisis, foreign policy is back at the center of our national conversation, and the WSJ’s Washington Bureau Chief Gerald Seib thinks it will stay there. The world is getting nastier, Seib argues, and domestic issues won’t be able to elbow out foreign policy anymore:
> 
> 
> Syria is turning into an ungovernable mess, and a breeding ground for all manner of extremist groups. President Bashar al-Assad isn’t going away, thanks to an influx of help from his friends in Iran and Russia, but he isn’t reasserting control of his country, either.
> 
> [...] If tensions in the Middle East are rising because of weak governments there, they’re rising in Asia because rival governments are growing stronger. China’s arrival as an economic power and as an emerging military power has led to tensions with a newly assertive Japan in the East China Sea, and with a handful of American allies in the South China Sea. At a minimum, the tensions require attention and deployment of naval assets to reassure friends.
> 
> Iran’s nuclear program isn’t going away as an issue, regardless of the outcome of current international negotiations designed to rein it in.
> 
> As the domestic political debate over these crises heats up, we are seeing a classic American pattern in action. America’s success abroad breeds stupidity and hubris in U.S. foreign policy. This hubris and stupidity leads to bad choices and magical thinking. We begin to believe, for example, that the world can become safer and more democratic even as we scale back our involvement. These bad choices and bad ideas then lead to huge global challenges. Those challenges ultimately spark smarter, more purposeful American engagement, usually after we’ve tried a few unsuccessful gambits first. That engagement finally leads to American success, which leads back again to American stupidity and hubris. And so on.
> 
> Contrary to Jeffersonian legends, what drove increasing American engagement over the 20th century wasn’t the missionary itch of the Wilsonians, or corporatist, Hamiltonian plots to build spooky New World Orders to Bilderberger specifications. It was the reality that when Americans got foreign policy wrong or ignored the outside world, the consequences were so severe that we were continually forced back into the “game” of world politics. What Seib is gesturing to is the reappearance of this reality. A mix of poor foreign policy choices—under President Bush as well as President Obama—added to the consequences of a tentative American pivot away from global engagement have led to a sharp deterioration in the world situation. Accordingly there will be more momentum behind broader U.S. international involvement as global security continues to get worse.
> 
> Recently, those who support smaller U.S. presence abroad have had a moment. Provoked by exhaustion over our adventures in the Middle East, American discourse has shown some sympathy for politicians like Rand Paul who want to reduce our overseas commitments. But Seib’s piece suggests that the inchoate neo-isolationist moment may already be coming to an end. A newly attentive American public will pay closer attention to foreign policy during the next presidential election cycle than it did in the last one, and will be less likely now to give a pass to politicians who want to withdraw within U.S. borders.


----------



## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Cultural change that may signal the true end of the United States as a dominant power. As referenced in this article, one of the key differences between the United States and previous dominant powers was the rather unique social structure of the United States, communities bound by mutual trust and able to create spontaneous order (the "Little Platoons" of daily life, or as de Tocqueville said "a nation of associations"). IF the coming generation can reestablish this sort of social order, then things should work out. On the other hand...
> 
> http://nypost.com/2014/04/04/millennials-path-of-least-resistance/



I'm not clear how the cultural changes described here would contribute to the decline of the US as world power. If isolationism is reasserting itself, then that is really just a cyclical thing in US political culture.

What I see is younger people rejecting two largely ossified political parties which, these days, seem unable to come up with much in the way of pragmatic, bipartisan solutions to anything important. If that leads to a reform of US political culture, so be it. I also see that while millennials may have  spritual faith (which is fin and generally, IMHO, good), they are rejecting the religiosity and book-burning fundamentalism that is far too salient a feature of US political discourse.

As for the disconnection from society, that I do agree is a matter for concern. Civil society is everything, and if people turn away from it, nothing good will come. But, are they actually turning away from it, or turning away from what their parents thought it was supposed to be? Could civil engagement be revived?

I think some of these questions could be equally well asked in our country.


----------



## Journeyman

pbi said:
			
		

> What I see is younger people rejecting two largely ossified political parties which, these days, seem unable to come up with much in the way of pragmatic, bipartisan solutions to anything important.


I see room (notwithstanding the uphill battle inherent in the current US political structure) for the birth of a centrist party; as long as both major parties feel a need to cater to their more bizarre (vocal?) fringe elements, there will more people drawn to such a central "Common Sense Party."TM



> I think some of these questions could be equally well asked in our country.


I see us as a minor reflection of several of their same issues.  I don't think we're quite as far 'out there' as the US political parties are, but there's certainly room for pondering.


----------



## Edward Campbell

It may be equally likely that the two mainstream parties will be 'saved' by their lunatic fringes. The _hard_ right in the USA is already divided between what I would call _Constitutional fundamentalists_ and the _religious right_ and the hard core _private property party_. The Democrats have a _hard left_ wing, real _socialists_, who are always excluded from real power. I suspect the Republican are closer to a real split. I think the Ron Paul/Libertarian wing is almost ready to 'give up' on the mainstream ... but they understand, deep in their political souls, that they are _marginal_, like the hard left.

The splits here are just as real but not as deep. The _Manley Liberals_ are not Conservatives in a hurry and more than the NDP (the CCF, actually) were just "Liberals in a hurry" back in the 1940s. The left wing of the Liberal Party, which is still, essentially, in favour of capitalism but which wants to redistribute the fruits of others' labours, is alive and well, but the _centrist_ Liberals are, very often _silk stocking socialists_ or _limousine liberals_ whereas the _centrist_ Conservatives are reluctant allies of both the 'law and order Conservatives' and the 'social conservative' wings. I understand why Scott Brison left the CPC and I also understand why a union of Manley Liberals and _Progressive_ Conservatives is unlikely. Both _centrist_ 'mainstreams' need their fringes here in Canada and they can _tolerate_ their fringes because, in the case of the left, the NDP provides an _outlet_ and there are, equally, small _fringe_ parties on the right to allow the 'SoCons' and so on to let off steam.


----------



## tomahawk6

The Democrat hard left IS in power today with the Obama Administration.I can only hope with the mid term in Nov. that we see more Republicans elected to take control of the Senate.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Democrat hard left IS in power today with the Obama Administration.I can only hope with the mid term in Nov. that we see more Republicans elected to take control of the Senate.




Oh, wow! I think there are a whole lot of active, politically _engaged_ Democrats who are far to the _left_ of e.g. Jacob Lew or Penny Pritzker or even Barack Obama, himself. And I think Hillary Clinton is listening to them ...


----------



## tomahawk6

The Democrat Party today is not the same as under Kennedy or LBJ.There are no conservatives left because they became Republicans or at least vote that way.The south used to be a solid Democrat voting block.Now its almost solid Republican.Only the left coast and northeast remain Democrat bastions.


----------



## Edward Campbell

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Democrat Party today is not the same as under Kennedy or LBJ.There are no conservatives left because they became Republicans or at least vote that way.The south used to be a solid Democrat voting block.Now its almost solid Republican.Only the left coast and northeast remain Democrat bastions.




I agree with all that, but the Democratic/liberal states are big ... California, New York, Florida, etc. Those three have 113 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

But my main point is about the growing influence of the _left_ and it has to do with two essentials: fund raising and getting out the vote.

The GOP has advantages in both. It has far "deeper pockets" and the GOP vote is more committed ... not more votes, just easier to get to the polls.

The Democrats will need to 'reach out' to the political left for both money and, especially, for votes. And the left will respond and, my guess (if an election were held today) is that Clinton will win. The left will demand repayment ~ of course they won't get Treasury or Commerce or even Defence, but I'll wager, now, that Clinton's Secretary of State will be someone with a noted antipathy towards Israel and the next head of the NSA will not be a recent security/intelligence executive, she (we'll see a lot of _shes_ in a Clinton administration) will be a noted civil liberties advocate, maybe a law professor ... the _community organizers_ will have key roles in lots of departments and, in Clinton's second term many of them will be promoted to full cabinet secretary rank.


----------



## Kirkhill

Might I suggest the Department of Commerce as a bellwether.  I had some dealings with their agencies in the past.

When Democrats (Clinton) were in power the role of the Department was to restrain Commerce (become a second Department of the Environment).  Under the Republicans the role was to, if not promote, at least not hinder Commerce.


----------



## Edward Campbell

When we talk about America it might help to have a focus on what (demographically) America is and what it will be in the near future.

The Pew Resaerch Centre has produced a useful report, a synopsis of their new book a actually, which looks at the numbers and assesses the likely impacts across a wide range of issues.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Democrat Party today is not the same as under Kennedy or LBJ.There are no conservatives left because they became Republicans or at least vote that way.The south used to be a solid Democrat voting block.Now its almost solid Republican.Only the left coast and northeast remain Democrat bastions.



Any more than today's GOP is the party of Eisenhower or even, dare I say it, Nixon.


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> When we talk about America it might help to have a focus on what (demographically) America is and what it will be in the near future.
> 
> The Pew Research Centre has produced a useful report, a synopsis of their new book a actually, which looks at the numbers and assesses the likely impacts across a wide range of issues.



Wow. Fascinating stuff. I had heard bits and pieces of this sort of prediction in various places, but never as coherently as this. This must be disturbing and even frightening for some Americans. No wonder the Religious Right is so strident: if these figures are true, they may be headed for utter marginalization. Which, in my books, would be just fine.

Or, are they...? 

One thing I didn't see discussed (but which is discussed in the very similar Canadian work _The Big Shift_), is the theory that many new immigrants hold strong religious beliefs and are socially quite conservative. Hispanics and Asians, the two groups headlined in the Pew study, are anecdotally social and religious conservatives. In Canada we see a similar theory around South Asian immigrants. The theory holds that, for example, issues of women's rights, gay rights, a secular society, etc don't necessarily resonate the same with these folks as they do in middle class, liberal European-background society. 

The interesting thing on the religious front is that the vanguard of religious and social conservatism might pass from white, old stock middle class and largely rural Protestants to middle and lower middle class immigrants in large urban centres.

Could the Republican Party (or its successor) become a party of younger non-white immigrants, while the Democrats become a shrinking faction of  aging white, liberal, middle and upper class  folks?


----------



## GnyHwy

This thread could be a U course! Lots of words.  Holy Frack!!!


----------



## a_majoor

pbi said:
			
		

> Wow. Fascinating stuff. I had heard bits and pieces of this sort of prediction in various places, but never as coherently as this. This must be disturbing and even frightening for some Americans. No wonder the Religious Right is so strident: if these figures are true, they may be headed for utter marginalization. Which, in my books, would be just fine.
> 
> Or, are they...?
> 
> One thing I didn't see discussed (but which is discussed in the very similar Canadian work _The Big Shift_), is the theory that many new immigrants hold strong religious beliefs and are socially quite conservative. Hispanics and Asians, the two groups headlined in the Pew study, are anecdotally social and religious conservatives. In Canada we see a similar theory around South Asian immigrants. The theory holds that, for example, issues of women's rights, gay rights, a secular society, etc don't necessarily resonate the same with these folks as they do in middle class, liberal European-background society.
> 
> The interesting thing on the religious front is that the vanguard of religious and social conservatism might pass from white, old stock middle class and largely rural Protestants to middle and lower middle class immigrants in large urban centres.
> 
> Could the Republican Party (or its successor) become a party of younger non-white immigrants, while the Democrats become a shrinking faction of  aging white, liberal, middle and upper class  folks?



Oddly this is also the topic of Samual Huntington's last book "Who are We?", which speaks directly about the role of large numbers of "settlers" (as opposed to colonists) in bringing and transplanting a unified "world view" with them. The America of the Enlightenment era was that way because most American settlers came from particular places in England and carried with them the spirit and practice of Protestant dissenters, building the cultural and political foundations of the American State. Huntington was also wary of the flood of Hispanic Settlers in the American southwest, seeing them as bringing a cultural world view which was at odds with the American one, and which (he feared) would dilute or weaken it.

The Big Shift translates this argument into Canadian terms, and the success of the CPC in courting the immigrant vote is a reflection of this process described by Huntington at work (in this case, the Settlers are being courted by the CPC since their world view is aligned with that of the Party). Tappnig into preexisting cultural memes that align with your own is probably much faster and easier than trying to homogenize entirely new and cohesive groups into the existing polity.


----------



## pbi

Wouldn't it be odd, if the "liberals" in Canada were to abandon their traditionally "pro-immigrant" stance, because they perceived immigrants to be a source of social and political views antithetical to their own? And, concurrently (maybe it's happening now, if you believe _The Big Shift_), the "conservatives" came to embrace that same group of immigrants as new lifeblood to their side?

We might hear otherwise "liberal" Canadians (what _The Big Shift_ calls the "Laurentian Consensus" types) talk about "those damned immigrants" in much the same way "conservatives" have typically been thought to do.

I'm probably quite a bit more of a "liberal" than many of the folks on this site, but I think this scenario is plausible. Strange, but plausible.


----------



## a_majoor

Frankly, except for some tokenism, the Liberals did very little for immigrants except make it easy to come to Canada. Certainly much Liberal social engineering was based on "Progressive" ideas and was completely at odds to the world views of may immigrant groups in Canada. Since the various flavours of Conservatives pre the merger of the PC's and Reform did little to court these groups and were passive in the face of hostile PSYOPS that characterized them as bigoted etc., the Liberals got a free ride.

Now that the Conservatives are actively courting these groups, and are able to demonstrate that their party is aligned with the traditional values of the immigrant groups (one of the benefits of being a transformative party is you actually have ideas and ideals to point towards, no matter how poorly you execute them), the Liberals have lost a voting block they had taken for granted. Since the Young Dauphin has nothing to point towards as a reason to vote for the Liberals, getting the vote back will be a long, uphill struggle.

In the United States, the political dynamics are different, but I think the end results could end up being very similar. The establishment parties are busy trying to gain voters by the time honoured method of bribing people, but the actual means and resources to do so are running out, as well as pitting various client groups against each other. The TEA Party movement's basic platform af a smaller, more responsible government could work if they can tie it to a culture of hard work, thrift and saving for the future. Many immigrants to the United States do fall into this cultural meme (stories of how Africans coming to America succeed are just the most recent version of this truth), and I have the feeling this could be a better sell to the Hispanic community than "amnesty". Looking at the recent scuffle in California as Asian-Americans rise up against racial preferences in education shows another potential fracture point that could be exploited.

So, as you suggest, a resurgent Republican party might well become a party of immigrants, while the Dems become a shrinking party of aging white baby boomers with a few clients along for whatever freebies get thrown their way.


----------



## tomahawk6

Cut to the chase and see Canada and the US combine to form the United States of North America.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Not a good idea ... we cannot afford one another.

But: let us, _de facto_, "erase the border," as the 1988 Canadian election ad threatened, by having a real free trade agreement that includes the free movement of all goods, services and people - at least of people who are citizens or landed immigrants/_green card_ holders. That will require a bunch of technical people, trade and commerce and immigration and border security folks, to work hard, together, for a year or two, but it is an achievable goal.


----------



## dimsum

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Not a good idea ... we cannot afford one another.
> 
> But: let us, _de facto_, "erase the border," as the 1988 Canadian election ad threatened, by having a real free trade agreement that includes the free movement of all goods, services and people - at least of people who are citizens or landed immigrants/_green card_ holders. That will require a bunch of technical people, trade and commerce and immigration and border security folks, to work hard, together, for a year or two, but it is an achievable goal.



Like the EU?


----------



## Kirkhill

Dimsum said:
			
		

> Like the EU?



No..... Like EFTA and the EEA.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Cut to the chase and see Canada and the US combine to form the United States of North America.



Do you really want 34 million people who are left of the Democrats? >


----------



## Journeyman

pbi said:
			
		

> Do you really want 34 million people who are left of the Democrats? > .....of dubious employability and literacy, _entitled_ to a hand-out?


   > 2


----------



## cupper

pbi said:
			
		

> Do you really want 34 million people who are left of the Democrats? >



Don't you mean Does Canada want 350 million people who speak a strange language and are so socially conservative that almost all channels on the TV would have to be heavily censored (don't even think about what they would do to the french channels after midnight).

And we'd be watching hockey with red and blue dots again.

Oh, and we'd still have Ted Cruz.


----------



## pbi

cupper said:
			
		

> Don't you mean Does Canada want 350 million people who speak a strange language and are so socially conservative that almost all channels on the TV would have to be heavily censored (don't even think about what they would do to the french channels after midnight).
> 
> And we'd be watching hockey with red and blue dots again.
> 
> Oh, and we'd still have Ted Cruz.



Ohhhh, right. Forgot about that.

Reminds  me of  Ellen Degeneris interviewing a Canadian guest: she was studiously avoiding pronouncing "Regina" properly, apparently because it sounded too much like "vagina". There is a sort of latent Puritanism, isn't there.

Ahhh...but then there's New York City...


----------



## Journeyman

pbi said:
			
		

> Reminds  me of  Ellen Degeneris interviewing a Canadian guest: she was studiously avoiding pronouncing "Regina" properly, apparently because it sounded too much like "vagina". There is a sort of latent Puritanism isn't there.


I don't think it was Puritanism causing Ellen to avoid saying vagina-like words -- you know, distractions and all.   ;D


----------



## pbi

Journeyman said:
			
		

> I don't think it was Puritanism causing Ellen to avoid saying vagina-like words -- you know, distractions and all.   ;D



Ohhhh.....I didn't think of THAT, either....

But, as a devil's advocate point, if the USA is so socially conservative, why is Ellen apparently so popular with mainstream audiences? And Rosie O'Donnell before her?


----------



## Journeyman

:dunno:  A good chunk of my family is from/lives on _that_ side of the border; I've long since given up trying to figure out how they think.


----------



## jpjohnsn

pbi said:
			
		

> But, as a devil's advocate point, if the USA is so socially conservative, why is Ellen apparently so popular with mainstream audiences? And Rosie O'Donnell before her?


Interesting points but consider both their careers.  Ellen was a very successful stand-up comedian and had her own prime-time show before she came out (during an episode of her sit-com no less).  Once she did, her career stalled for a good number of years and has only recovered fairly recently.   Though I think she is a talented comedian, I think her popularity is due to her being that non-threatening, almost asexual, (i.e. token) lesbian it is okay for the mainstream to like.  

Rosie did not come out of the closet until well after her political views and other issues caused her career to crash and burn and it has never really recovered.  She's a truther, whack-job, bully who can't keep a job any more.


----------



## pbi

> She's a truther, whack-job, bully



So how come she doesn't join the Tea Party?


----------



## Griffon

pbi said:
			
		

> So how come she doesn't join the Tea Party?



Oh, I almost bit at that!


----------



## cupper

It may not be widely covered in the MSM but the right wing media has been making hay on one particular story of late.

The right wing media is promoting it as a David and Goliath match over Federal Government exceeding it's authority and trampling the rights of the individual. Also mixed into the argument is a completely discredited States Rights dispute.

But even the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and other right leaning groups are distancing themselves from the protest. Only the extreme right seems to want to get involved.

*Everything you need to know about the long fight between Cliven Bundy and the federal government*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-long-fight-between-cliven-bundy-and-the-federal-government/?hpid=z4



> The case of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy burst into the national news cycle over the past week, captivating conservative media outlets with its protagonist, a firm believer of states' right with an armed group of supporters backing him. The stand-off between Nevada rancher and federal government officials trying to push cattle off of protected federal land has paused for now, but officials plan to renew their efforts soon.
> 
> This most-recent skirmish is only the latest in a decades-long fight between the federal government and Cliven Bundy, however.  Here's a timeline that proves just how complicated this case is — as well as the power that the media still retains to elevate a local political issue into a national one.
> Eric Parker from central Idaho aims his weapon from a bridge as protesters gather by the Bureau of Land Management's base camp, where cattle that were seized from rancher Cliven Bundy are being held, near Bunkerville, Nevada April 12, 2014. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Saturday said it had called off an effort to round up Bundy's herd of cattle that it had said were being illegally grazed in southern Nevada, citing concerns about safety. The conflict between Bundy and U.S. land managers had brought a team of armed federal rangers to Nevada to seize the 1,000 head of cattle.
> 
> 1989: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the desert tortoise as an endangered species. A year later, its designation was changed to "threatened."
> March 1993: The Washington Post publishes a story about the federal government's efforts to protect the desert tortoise in Nevada. Near Las Vegas, the Bureau of Land Management designated hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land for strict conservation efforts. "Among the conservation measures required," according to the Post's coverage, "are the elimination of livestock grazing and strict limits on off-road vehicle use in the protected tortoise habitat. Two weeks ago, the managers of the plan completed the task of purchasing grazing privileges from cattle ranchers who formerly used BLM land."
> 
> Many people were not impressed by the new conservation plan. "Cliven Bundy, whose family homesteaded his ranch in 1877 and who accuses the government of a 'land grab,' are digging in for a fight and say they will not willingly sell their grazing privileges to create another preserve." People who use the desert to prospect for minerals and to race motorcycles and jeeps also feel shortchanged. "'It was shoved down our throat,' said Mark Trinko, who represents off-road vehicle users on the committee that oversees the plan."
> Bundy has repeatedly been fined for grazing his cattle on the protected land, fines he has not paid since 1993. The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees about 800 grazing areas in Nevada, responded by revoking his permit. Bundy has not applied for a new one.
> 
> April 1995: The fight between the Bureau of Land Management and the ranchers who want to use the federal land without fees or oversight is growing more tense, according to a story published in USA Today.
> 
> Thursday evening, a small bomb went off in the U.S. Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev.
> 
> Though no one has taken responsibility -- and no one was injured -- it has sent chills through government agencies involved in Western land management.
> 
> "If it was sent as a message," says Forest Service spokeswoman Erin O'Connor, "we got it."
> 
> Ultimately the issue will be settled by the courts, but ranchers who say they can't afford to raise livestock without greater access to public land are taking matters into their own hands -- setting up what some officials fear is an inevitable and dangerous confrontation.
> 
> The situation is becoming so tense that federal workers now travel mostly in pairs and are in constant radio contact with district offices.
> "I'm concerned about the safety of my employees," says Jim Nelson, Forest Service district manager for Nevada. "They can't go to church in these communities without having someone say something. Their kids are harassed in school. Stores and restaurants are not serving them."
> 
> Nelson, who oversees 7 million acres in Nevada, says his agency is just doing its job, which is to ensure that land remains healthy and viable for ranchers and any others who wish to use it.
> 
> That goal, he says, is hindered by unattended, free-ranging cows that degrade the state's precious springs and stream banks.
> The battle is being called Sagebrush II, a sequel to a 1970s movement that sought a state takeover of federal public lands. Today, many ranchers, miners and loggers argue the federal government never had a legitimate claim to the land.
> 
> The reason that things were ramping up? Counties were starting to challenge federal ownership of land. In 1991, Catron County in New Mexico passed an ordinance that claimed state ownership and local management of public land in the state. Thirty five counties followed suit. Nye County, Nevada, became the first to act on its legislated threat. The county commissioner bulldozed his way down a closed national forest road. Forest rangers soon followed, who the county commissioner threatened to arrest if they interfered.
> 
> At this point, Cliven Bundy had racked up $31,000 in fees for grazing on federal land without a permit. Helicopters often hover over his herd, counting up the cows so he can be fined appropriately. "They've taken their authority and abused it," Bundy said. "I'm not being regulated to death anymore."
> Bundy's neighbors were also angry.
> 
> "The federal government just wants control of us. But I'm not going to be controlled," Keith Nay says.
> 
> But those seeking greater access to federal land deny they are looking for an old-West shoot-out.
> 
> "Do you want to see my weapons?" asks Norm Tom, a Paiute Indian and Nay's son-in-law, who runs about 100 cows on range adjoining Bundy's. He pulls out two copies of the Constitution, one pocket-sized, one full sized.
> 
> March 18, 1996: The federal government, which owns 87 percent of the land in Nevada,  is still worried about potential violence if they try to remove illegally grazing cattle from protected land. Two more pipebombs had exploded in Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management offices in the past two years. The Justice Department has 12 lawsuits pending against Nevada cattle ranchers. A federal court in the state struck down the Nye County ordinance that caused trouble the year before. Not that ranchers took that as reason to stand down, however. One local resident told USA Today,"A single district court decision in one district doesn't settle it. It's just a single day in the year of a revolutionary war. We're going to continue on with the fight." Bundy is also continuing to graze on federal lands. "I'm still saying the state of Nevada owns that land, and the federal government has been an encroacher. I'm not moving my cattle. We have ... rights."
> 
> Bundy states that his rights derive from the fact his Mormon ancestors were using the land far before the federal government claimed authority over it. One Elko County rancher, Cliff Gardner, has decided to take his case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that states' rights mean the federal government has no authority over the land where his cattle graze.
> 
> 1998: A federal judge issues a permanent injunction against Bundy, ordering him to remove his cattle from the federal lands. He lost an appeal to the San Francisco 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He represented himself.
> 
> March 2002: Cliff Gardner is sentenced to a month in a Reno halfway house, along with a $5,000 fine and a year of probation. He has been under house arrest for the three previous months for not taking his cattle off of federal land. When his sentence — which affirmed the U.S. Forest Service's authority over the disputed land — was announced, more than 50 states' rights protesters were in the courtroom with him.
> 
> Three were dressed in white wigs as American Revolutionary War patriots and another wearing a wig and red coat said he was England's King George. "Has the West been won, or has the fight just begun?" read a banner at a rally outside the courthouse where 15 protesters on horseback carried signs while children waved the Nevada state flag. "This court has tried to intimidate the citizens of Nevada by attempting to make an example of Cliff Gardner," said Cliven Bundy, a Clark County rancher.
> 
> July 2009: The federal government is still fighting with local ranchers. They have signs posted all over the public land, stating that it is off-limits for grazing.
> 
> Some signs have been chain-sawed down; others have been filled with bullet holes. “There haven't been any confrontations out there, but we have to be careful,” says Gail Marrs-Smith, who manages the area for the BLM. “We travel in pairs.” Cliven Bundy,  a local organic melon farmer, is one of those who resent the changes. To protect an endangered tortoise, Clark County has set aside habitat by buying and retiring all of the government grazing leases in Gold Butte. But Bundy still runs his cows through here, even though since 1993 he has been ordered to desist because he has no permit. Bundy says that his family has grazed here since the nineteenth century and that he doesn't recognize the authority of the federal government. He has threatened resistance if anyone enforces the court order to remove his cattle from the wilderness. “It's so blatant,” says Rob Mrowka, a conservationist who works for the Center for Biological Diversity, in Las Vegas. “Anyone can go out there anytime of the year and see cattle. BLM employees trying to protect sensitive plants and animals are very frustrated. It's a problem that's been going on and on.”
> 
> April 2012: The BLM plans to round up Bundy's cattle. After several threats, these plans are abandoned. The Center for Biological Diversity files an intent to sue against the BLM for canceling their plans.
> 
> May 2012: BLM files a complain in a federal Las Vegas court seeking an injunction against Bundy.
> 
> February 2013: After endless complaints from ranchers and hunters, Nevada Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval demands the resignation of Kenneth Mayer, director of the Nevada Department of Wildlife. One of Mayer's biggest projects was deciding whether to add another Nevada animal to the endangered species list, the sage grouse. He had mapped the best places to mark as protected sage grouse habitats in the state, and the best places to encourage environmentally safe economic development.
> 
> Ranchers thought his conservation efforts were misplaced. The president of Hunters Alert told the New York Times, “What did Ken Mayer do? Nothing. Just habitat, habitat, habitat, which is a terrible thing for a person in his position to do. You get instant results when you poison a raven or shoot a coyote.” Hunters also prefer predator killing because of its effects on the deer population. Scientists counter that ecosystem preservation is a far better way to stop extinction than predator management. Gerald Lent, a former chairman of the Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners called these findings, backed up by extensive research, “voodoo science.”
> 
> Cliff Gardner reappeared during this fight, writing frequent letters to the editor to the Elko Daily Free Press about Mayer's eventual replacement. “I’m sure most of the people being considered for his job graduated from a college. These people are the cause of the destruction of wildlife.”
> 
> August 2013: A court order says Bundy has 45 days to remove his cattle from federal land.
> 
> October 2013: A federal district judge court tells Bundy not to “physically interfere with any seizure or impoundment operation.”
> 
> March 15, 2014: After nearly 20 years, the Bureau of Land Management sends Bundy a letter informing him that they plan to impound his "trespass cattle," which have been roaming on 90 miles of federal land. BLM averages four livestock impoundments a year, usually involving a few dozen animals.
> 
> March 27, 2014: The BLM has closed off 322,000 acres of public land, and is preparing to collect Bundy's cattle. Bundy files a notice with the county sheriff department, titled “Range War Emergency Notice and Demand for Protection." Bundy also says he has a virtual army of supporters from all over the country ready to protect him. He also has Gardner. “I think Cliven is taking a stand not only for family ranchers, but also for every freedom-loving American, for everyone," Gardner said. "I’ve been trying to resolve these same types of issues since 1984. Perhaps it’s difficult for the average American to understand, but protecting the individual was a underlying factor of our government. ... My support is that I am determined to stand by the Bundy family in any fashion it takes regardless of the threat of life or limb."
> 
> Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins also supports Bundy. “The U.S. government has perpetrated a bigger fraud on people over those tortoises than Al Capone did selling swampland in Miami."
> 
> April 1, 2014: Bundy's 14 children and 52 grandchildren are all bunkered down at his house waiting for the BLM to arrive. Bundy is giving constant interviews and making constant calls to local and state officials. BLM has set up two "First Amendment areas" in nearby Bunkerville.
> April 2, 2014: Around 30 protesters line up outside the Livestock auction house to protest the sale of Bundy's cattle. If Bundy doesn't pay the fees he's accumulated, his cows could be sold to another buyer.
> 
> A group of local conservationists sent a letter to local officials demanding that they support BLM's actions. One of those people was Bundy's cousin, Terri Robertson. They've only met a few times, and only at meetings about the federal lands. “He’s just in a world of his own. I don’t think he’s working on all four cylinders,” Robertson said. Bundy retorts that his city slicker cousin doesn't know what she is talking about.  “My cattle are the kind of cattle people look for at Whole Foods.”
> 
> April 5, 2014: After decades of trepidation, federal officials and cowboys start rounding up what they think are Cliven Bundy's hundreds of cows. The operation was going to cost $1 million, and reportedly last until May. BLM contends that Bundy owes $1 million in fees, and will also have to pay the round-up expenses. Bundy — who retorts that he only owes $300,000 in fees — says the city folk are only hurting themselves by taking his cows. He told a reporter from the Las Vegas Review Journal that there would be 500,000 fewer hamburgers per year after his cows were towed away; “But nobody is thinking about that. Why would they? They’re all thinking about the desert tortoise. Hey, the tortoise is a fine creature. I like him. I have no problem with him. But taking another man’s cattle? It just doesn’t seem right.”
> 
> He also thinks the co-habitating cows and tortoises could have a beautiful, symbiotic relationship if the government would let them. “The tortoises eat the cow manure, too. It’s filled with protein.”
> 
> April 6, 2014: Cliven Bundy's 37-year-old son is arrested for "refusing to disperse" and resisting arrest. He was released the following day. His face is covered with scratches from fighting the feds. Before he left the detention center, authorities gave him a tuna fish sandwich. "It wasn’t poison," he said. "I just ate it.”
> 
> The Nevada Cattlemen’s Association distances itself from protests over Bundy's cattle. “Nevada Cattlemen’s Association does not feel it is in our best interest to interfere in the process of adjudication in this matter."
> 
> April 9, 2014: Two of Bundy's family members are injured in a confrontation with federal officials. One of them was Bundy's son, tasered after he kicked a police dog. "I'm almost getting mad enough to swear," Bundy says. "The one thing we're going to do is stay cool and we're gonna fight."
> 
> April 10, 2014: A protest camp has formed. There is a sign at the entrance that reads, "MILITA SIGHN IN."
> Traveling from as close as St. George — and as far as Montana — a mix of characters waved picket signs at an encampment just before a bridge over the Virgin River, protesting the BLM’s campaign.
> 
> “This is a better education than being in school! I’m glad I brought you. I’m a good mom,” said Ilona Ence, a 49-year-old mother from St. George and Bundy relative who brought her four teenage kids to the ranch. “They’re learning about the Constitution.”
> ... Jack Faught, Bundy’s first cousin, drove his forest green 1929 Chevy truck from Mesquite loaded with water and Gatorade.
> “It’s not about the cows,” he said. “It’s about the freedom to make our own choices close to home.”
> 
> Polo Parra, a 27-year-old tattoo artist from Las Vegas, even showed up with two of his friends to support the rancher. Dressed in baggy clothes and covered in tattoos, the group carried signs that read “TYRANNY IS ALIVE” and “WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?” in red spray-painted letters.
> One of Parra’s friends, who would not share his name, had a pistol tucked in his waistband.
> 
> “I think it’s bull, and it really made me mad,” said Parra, who decided to make the trip when he heard about the violence that broke out on the ranch. “This isn’t about no turtles or cows.”
> 
> One protester, a former Arizona sheriff named Richard Mack, told Fox News about the militia's plans if violence broke out in Bunkerville. “We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front. If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.”
> 
> April 12, 2014: BLM decides not to enforce their court order: "Based on information about conditions on the ground, and in consultation with law enforcement, we have made a decision to conclude the cattle gather because of our serious concern about the safety of employees and members of the public."
> 
> The Bundy son who was tasered said, "We won the battle." He told another outlet, “The people have the power when they unite. The war has just begun.”
> 
> April 14, 2014: BLM also pledges that this isn't done. A spokesperson for the bureau said this Sunday, "The door isn't closed. We'll figure out how to move forward with this."
> 
> Some of Bundy's neighbors aren't impressed by his actions. "I feel that the rule of law supersedes armed militias coming in from all over the country to stand with a law-breaking rancher, which is what he is," one person told a local TV station.
> 
> Wild horse advocates are getting angrier, saying that the roaming cattle are ruining their habitats. Other scientists argue that the wild horses and cows alike are ruining habitats for other animals.
> 
> Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tells a local news outlet, "It's not over. We can't have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it's not over."


----------



## a_majoor

The rights of the various States, and the Citizens of the Unites States is hardly "discredited", especially since it is enshrined in the Bill of Rights under the 10th Amendment to the Consitiution of the United States:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Cliven Bundy case has nothing to do with States rights, but has quite a bit to do with Crony Capitalism, particularly taking the land for a solar farm to be built by a Chinese company. A list of the cast of characters involved is illustrative:

The new head of the Bureau of Land Management recently served as senior policy adviser to Nevada’s Democratic Sen. Harry Reid.
Neil Kornze, 35, left Reid’s office (where he managed public land issues) in 2011 to join the Bureau of Land Management as senior adviser to the director. He later became the deputy director for policy and programs in 2013.

Reid and his son, Rory, were both deeply involved in a deal with the Chinese-owned ENN Energy Group to build a $5 billion solar farm in Laughlin, Nevada.

Now while the rancher is in the wrong for not paying grazing fees, he has not been paying them since the 1990's, with little activity on the government side. Indeed, under _common law_, you could claim he has "squatters rights", having had unmolested and apparently uncontested use of the land for more than seven years, although I understand that US law is different in this regard.

The timing and heavy handed response of the Federal government should be raising questions (including why the BLM has snipers, as reported in another news article about the standoff). Oddly, when I see things about the standoff in "right wing" blogs, most do point out that Bundy has not been paying the grazing fees, and most concede that he does not have a strong legal case. From what I gather from these readings their issue is due process and proportionate response.


----------



## cupper

Thucydides said:
			
		

> The rights of the various States, and the Citizens of the Unites States is hardly "discredited", especially since it is enshrined in the Bill of Rights under the 10th Amendment to the Consitiution of the United States:



I understand and agree with you on this point, however what I meant was that Bundy's argument, and more so the right wing media's attempt to make this a states rights issue has been discredited though out the span of time this has been going on.

This is simply a man who refuses to obey court order after court order to pay his fines, and remove his cattle from federal land to which he has no claim.

The fact that the government has been dragging it's heels is relevant only due to the fact that we are now at a position where they are being forced to back away because of the over heated political environment that currently exists.

Even the Anti-Big Government Tea Party elements of the GOP have passed on this, knowing this is not a good hill to die on.


----------



## RangerRay

More on this @$$hat...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/opinion/egan-deadbeat-on-the-range.html?_r=0



> Deadbeat on the Range
> 
> APRIL 17, 2014
> 
> Imagine a vendor on the National Mall, selling burgers and dogs, who hasn’t paid his rent in 20 years. He refuses to recognize his landlord, the National Park Service, as a legitimate authority. Every court has ruled against him, and fines have piled up. What’s more, the effluents from his food cart are having a detrimental effect on the spring grass in the capital.
> 
> Would an armed posse come to his defense, aiming their guns at the park police? Would the lawbreaker get prime airtime on Fox News, breathless updates in the Drudge Report, a sympathetic ear from Tea Party Republicans? No, of course not.
> 
> So what’s the difference between the fictional loser and Cliven Bundy, the rancher in Nevada who owes the government about $1 million and has been grazing his cattle on public land for more than 20 years? Near as I can tell, one wears a cowboy hat. Easterners, especially clueless ones in politics and the press, have always had a soft spot for a defiant white dude in a Stetson.
> 
> This phony event has brought out the worst of the gun-waving far right, and the national politicians who are barely one degree of separation from them. Hundreds of heavily armed, camouflaged supporters of the scofflaw turned out Saturday in Nevada, training their rifles on public employees who were trying to do their job. The outsiders looked like snipers ready to shoot the police. If you changed that picture to Black Panthers surrounding a lawful eviction in the inner city, do you think right-wing media would be there cheering the outlaws?
> 
> With their assault rifles and threats, the thugs in the desert forced federal officials with the Bureau of Land Management to back down from a court-ordered confiscation of Bundy’s cattle. One of the rancher’s supporters, Richard Mack, a Tea Party leader who is in the National Rifle Association’s Hall of Fame, said he planned to use women as human shields in a violent showdown with law enforcement.
> 
> “We were actually strategizing to put all the women up front,” Mack said in a radio interview. “If they were going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot.”
> 
> That’s who Fox and friends are playing with these days — militia extremists who would sacrifice their wives to make some larger point about a runaway federal government. And what’s more, the Fox host Sean Hannity has all but encouraged a violent confrontation.
> 
> At the center of the dispute is the 68-year-old rancher Bundy, who said in a radio interview, “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.” A real patriot, this guy. You would think that kind of anarchist would draw a raised eyebrow from the Tea Party establishment that provides Bundy his media oxygen. After all, wasn’t the Tea Party born in a rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC about deadbeat homeowners? He complained about taxpayers’ subsidizing “losers’ mortgages” and he said we should “reward people that can carry the water instead of drinking the water.” Believe me, Bundy’s cattle are drinking an awful lot of our water, and not paying for it.
> 
> 
> But instead, people like Ron Paul have only fanned the flames, warning of a Waco-style assault. Paul and his son, Senator Rand Paul, further showed themselves to be stunningly ignorant of the public lands legacy created by forward-thinking Republicans a century ago.  “They had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it,” Ron Paul said on Fox, referring to the Bundy clan. “You need the government out of it, and I think that’s the important point.”
> 
> No, the renegade rancher has no more right to 96,000 acres of Nevada public range than a hot dog vendor has to perpetual space on the Mall. Both places belong to the American people. Bundy runs his cattle on our land — that is, turf owned by every citizen. The agency that oversees the range, the Bureau of Land Management, allows 18,000 grazing permits on 157 million acres. Many of those permit holders get a sweet deal, subsidized in a way they could never find on private land.
> 
> What’s more, the land is supposed to be managed for stewardship and other users. Wild-horse advocates would like a piece of the same range. The poor desert tortoise, which has been in Nevada a lot longer than Bundy’s Mormon pioneer stock, is disappearing because of abusive grazing on that same 96,000 acres.
> 
> Ranching is hard work. Drought and market swings make it a tough go in many years. That’s all the more reason to praise the 18,000 or so ranchers who pay their grazing fees on time and don’t go whining to Fox or summoning a herd of armed thugs when they renege on their contract. You can understand why the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association wants no part of Bundy.
> 
> These kinds of showdowns are rare because most ranchers play by the rules, and quietly go about their business. They are heroes, in one sense, preserving a way of life that has an honorable place in American history. The good ones would never wave a gun in the face of a public servant, and likely never draw a camera from Fox.
> 
> 
> Correction: April 18, 2014
> 
> An earlier version of this article misidentified the person who said on Fox, “They had virtual ownership of that land because they had been using it.” It was Ron Paul, not Rand Paul.



I am shocked that this clown is getting any mainstream support.  When my family was involved in ranching years ago, we knew that our cattle grazed there at the pleasure of the BC Forest Service, even if a buddy of the minister wanted the land to build a private golf course.  While the Crown (i.e. the Province) would probably consult and/or compensate, they had no legal obligation to do so.  Thems the breaks when using public resources.


----------



## Rifleman62

Over 200 BLM and Park Rangers, armed to the teeth, in 100 vehicles turned up to enforce the court order. Over reaction?

The BLM hired a a Utah wrangler at $977,000 to remove the 500 cattle.

Senate Majority Leader called Cliven Bundy and his supporters "Domestic Terrorists". The last person labeled by the Obama Administration as Domestic Terrorists was ex Maj Hasen.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0419/Harry-Reid-Cliven-Bundy-s-armed-supporters-are-domestic-terrorists-video

Yes Bundy broke the law.

If it was Mexican cattle, the Obama Administration would do nothing other than give them a voting card, after all voter ID is Racist.


----------



## Brad Sallows

There are two stories to tell here.

One is about the scofflaw rancher, and it's almost a non-story which doesn't merit much more than local coverage.

The other is the insane allocation of resources and ongoing paramilitarization of law enforcement (and related) agencies in the US.


----------



## pbi

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> There are two stories to tell here.
> 
> One is about the scofflaw rancher, and it's almost a non-story which doesn't merit much more than local coverage.
> 
> The other is the insane allocation of resources and ongoing paramilitarization of law enforcement (and related) agencies in the US.



When I lived in VA, our area was policed by:

-the Town of Dumfries police;

-Prince William County Police;

-Prince William County Sherrif's Dept; and

-VA State Police.

During a USMC C&SC "Foreign Guy" trip to the City of Fredericksburgh VA in 1997, I asked the chief of police why there were so many different armed organizations that could arrest Americans. He became somewhat offended and went off on a tangent that the US would never tolerate a single "national police force" because (I think...) that would be a totalitarian infringement of the rights of Americans. This wasn't what I was asking about, nor suggesting.

So instead they get lethal clown-acts like Waco with different LEAs and agencies acting in an LEA role literally stumbling over each other. It's bad enough here in Canada: it must be brutal there.


----------



## Edward Campbell

There are two useful articles in this weeks _Economist_ newspaper. Both are reproduced below, one links to the other. The key question is: "for *what will America fight*? The answer matters to Canada. We, like Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and many, many other countries, large and small, have ignored our own _vital_ national security tools (primarily the military) because we have assumed, since the 1950s that American will underwrite and guarantee our security. We spent our money on things we _wanted_, social programmes, mainly, but also economic/industrial and even cultural programmes because we didn't have to spend on our own defences. America was always there ... was. Is it still?


----------



## Edward Campbell

The first of two articles, the second is linked to this one, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21601538-america-no-longer-alarming-its-foes-or-reassuring-its-friends-decline


> The decline of deterrence
> *America is no longer as alarming to its foes or reassuring to its friends*
> 
> May 3rd 2014
> 
> BRUSSELS, CAIRO, SINGAPORE AND WASHINGTON, DC
> 
> From the print edition
> 
> AMERICA’S allies are nervous. With Russia grabbing territory, China bullying its neighbours and Syria murdering its people, many are asking: where is Globocop? Under what circumstances will America act to deter troublemakers? What, ultimately, would America fight for?
> 
> The answer to this question matters. Rogue states will behave more roguishly if they doubt America’s will to stop them. As a former head of Saudi intelligence recently said of Vladimir Putin’s land grab in Ukraine: “While the wolf is eating the sheep, there is no shepherd to come to the rescue.” Small wonder that Barack Obama was asked, at every stop during his just-completed four-country swing through Asia, how exactly he plans to wield American power. How would the president respond if China sought to expand its maritime borders by force? How might he curb North Korea’s nuclear provocations? At every press conference he was also quizzed about Ukraine, for world news follows an American president everywhere.
> 
> When it came to formal pledges of reassurance, Mr Obama did not stint. In Tokyo he offered fresh guarantees that the defence treaty between Japan and America covers all Japanese-administered territory, including the Senkaku islands, which China also claims. While visiting some of the 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea, he vowed that his government would not hesitate to use “military might to defend our allies”. In the Philippines Mr Obama signed a new, ten-year agreement to give American forces greater access to local bases.
> 
> 
> While Mr Obama was in Asia on April 28th American officials unveiled new sanctions against Russia: visa bans and asset freezes for Putin cronies such as Igor Sechin, the boss of Rosneft, a big state oil firm. On the same day a final detachment of American paratroopers arrived in Estonia, bringing to about 600 the number of American soldiers now on exercises in Poland and the three Baltic countries (all of which fear Russia). Whereas Russia tried to mask its deeds in Ukraine by deploying troops with no insignia, the whole point of America’s action was to show off the Stars and Stripes on the uniforms.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Philosopher-in-chief*
> 
> Yet even as he did his duties as planetary peacekeeper, Mr Obama could not help pondering the limits of American power, out loud. There are “no guarantees” that sanctions will change Mr Putin’s thinking over Ukraine, he mused on April 25th. He said it would be in Mr Putin’s interests to behave better, but he might not.
> 
> In recent years, Mr Obama went on, people have taken to thinking that hard foreign-policy problems may actually have a definitive answer, typically involving the use of force. Mr Obama disagrees. “Very rarely have I seen the exercise of military power providing a definitive answer,” he told an audience in Seoul.
> 
> In the Philippines he was asked whether his handling of crises from Ukraine to Syria might have emboldened America’s enemies. He retorted that his tactics “may not always be sexy”, but have strengthened America’s global position. Many of his hawkish critics, he said, were the same people who supported the “disastrous” war in Iraq and who “haven’t really learned the lesson of the last decade.”
> 
> Such sentiments may appeal to war-weary voters back home. Most Americans say that defending the security of allies is “very important”, but just 6% would use force over Ukraine, says a Pew poll, and huge majorities oppose action in Syria. For countries that rely on American protection, this is troubling. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, for example, feel exposed (see Charlemagne). Like Ukraine, they were once part of the Soviet Union, have Russophone minorities and doubt that Mr Putin respects their borders.
> 
> For Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, the legal order preserving Europe’s borders changed utterly when Russia invaded Crimea. The European Union’s meek response has made it a laughing stock. “There is nothing left to hold on to,” declares Mr Ilves.
> 
> Except NATO. Unlike Ukraine, the Balts are members of the NATO military alliance, under whose founding treaty an armed attack on any member is considered an attack on all. This means America is committed to protecting its European allies. And for now, they believe it will. “I do believe that the borders of NATO are a red line. I have faith in that,” declares President Ilves. If any NATO ally tried to block a response to an armed attack, NATO would, in effect, cease to exist, he says.
> 
> In recent years, Mr Obama has scaled back plans for missile defence in Europe and reduced America’s military presence there to two brigade combat teams. But Russia’s aggression has had the unintended consequence of giving NATO a renewed sense of purpose: hence those American paratroopers in Poland.
> 
> François Heisbourg, of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in Paris, reckons America would still fight to defend the Baltic states: “The moment a Russian tank crosses the bridge at Narva [on Estonia’s border with Russia] it will be zapped.” But America’s commitment to defend Europe is undermined by the Europeans’ tendency to freeload, which American taxpayers resent. Few allies except Britain meet the NATO target to maintain military spending at 2% of GDP.
> 
> In the short term there are two military concerns. One is that the Baltic states are difficult to defend. Their airspace is entirely covered by Russian missiles. A greater worry is that Russia’s aggression might be stealthy, as in Ukraine. “Mr Putin does not do frontal attack; he does judo,” says Mr Heisbourg. What would America and NATO do if Russia starts to undermine the Balts by stirring unrest among ethnic Russians there and deploying mysterious armed men? NATO was not designed for such contingencies.
> 
> *Middle Eastern gloom*
> 
> Nowhere is the perception of growing American timidity so strong as in the Middle East. Eleven years ago America conquered Iraq in a matter of weeks. Yet when Mr Obama pulled America’s last troops out in 2011, there was little to show for all the lives lost and billions spent. The regime America has left behind in Baghdad is barely friendly.
> 
> In the rest of the region the story is not much cheerier. The new government in Egypt ignores American finger-wagging about human rights and buys lots of Russian weapons. In Syria President Bashar Assad was caught red-handed last year gassing his own people, an act that Mr Obama had specifically warned would trigger American punishment. Yet this “red line” was crossed almost with impunity.
> 
> There were sound arguments for all these apparent American retreats. Yet the widespread impression in the Middle East is that the lion has turned into a pussycat. Its foes rejoice; its allies bewail their perceived abandonment.
> 
> Iraq’s leader, Nuri al-Maliki, is chummier with Iran than America. Iran jauntily backs militias and political parties in Iraq. It sends bullets and “advisers” to Syria via Iraqi airspace. It sponsors Iraqi Shia volunteers to fight American-supplied Sunni rebels in Syria.
> 
> Of late, America has sometimes taken a back seat to other countries, as with France’s intervention in Mali and NATO’s in Libya. Or it has simply shied from doing anything much, as in Syria.
> 
> Yet reports of the death of American influence in the Middle East are exaggerated. Mr Obama can claim some successes: oil prices are stable, Israel has never been so prosperous or secure and Iran has agreed (under intense pressure) to curb its nuclear ambitions somewhat. Terrorism now poses far more danger within the Middle East than to the rest of the world.
> 
> America’s regional military bootprint has shrunk, but only from the inflated dimensions of the Bush-era “surge” in Iraq. A constellation of American military bases dots the region, from the 5th Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain to Central Command’s massive base in Qatar, to secret airstrips sending drones into the skies of Yemen. No outside power can plausibly replace America there. The Gulf monarchies still rely on American protection, as do Jordan and (to a lesser extent than before) Israel.
> 
> The perception of American timidity has yet to do serious damage to American interests in the Middle East. It has, however, spurred allies to look out for themselves. Israel has cultivated military and economic ties with China and India. Gulf states are arming themselves: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE have all recently ordered huge arsenals.
> 
> *Facing China*
> 
> Moving to Asia, America has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than a decade now. This year Mr Obama plans to bring home almost all of the more than 30,000 American troops there. It may yet be all of them. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has refused to sign an agreement that would allow 5,000-10,000 or so to stay on in non-combat roles. But both candidates in the run-off election to succeed him are supporters of the agreement. So American boots will still be on the ground, providing targets for insurgents. Even if a broader civil war is avoided, America may find itself an unwilling party to bloodshed. If the American-backed government in Kabul finds itself unable to control swathes of the country, al-Qaeda or other groups with global terrorist ambitions might regroup there, as they might in the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan. Should they succeed in staging an attack on mainland America, the cycle might start again: experience shows that to avenge the victims of murder at home, America will fight.
> 
> It seems far-fetched to think that America would go to war over the islands known to Japan as the Senkakus and to China as the Diaoyus. Nestling in the East China Sea between the two countries, they are tiny, barren and uninhabited save for hundreds of goats and the elusive “Senkaku mole” (a critter, not a double agent). When America administered the islands from 1945-72, it used them for bombing practice.
> 
> Yet Mr Obama has put American military credibility on the line over the Senkakus (even if he did not explicitly promise that the 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan would help fight for them). For more than two years now China has been buzzing the islands by air and sea to challenge Japan’s claim of control, and last November included them in an “Air Defence Identification Zone”. There is a real risk that an accidental clash might escalate. So these desolate rocks may pose the most immediate test of Mr Obama’s “pivot” towards Asia.
> 
> The South China Sea sets others. Five countries have claims there that overlap with China’s. The Philippines’ dispute is the most active. In 1995 China evicted it from one reef, and two years ago from another. America takes no position on sovereignty, but backs Manila’s efforts to contest Beijing’s claims under international law.
> 
> In South Korea 28,000 American troops sit near the border to deter the North Korean regime. Few expect that regime to last for ever (see Banyan). Should it collapse, China, fearing the abrupt arrival of a unified Korea on its borders that is America’s ally and stuffed with American armour, might intervene. Loth to upset its erratic ally, China refuses to co-ordinate contingency plans for a North Korean implosion with America.
> 
> Both big powers hope that Taiwan’s deepening economic ties with mainland China will dampen the island’s enthusiasm for formal independence. But as Yan Xuetong, a Chinese scholar, has noted, at least 70% of people on Taiwan still see themselves as “Taiwanese” first, “Chinese” second. One day Beijing’s impatience at Taiwan’s failure to submit may force America into very difficult choices. A 1979 law binds America’s government to deem any attempt at forcible reunification “as a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific Area and of grave concern to the United States”.
> 
> Would America really go to war with China? China plainly seeks to become the dominant power in Asia. Many Asians doubt that America is reconciled to being number two. That said, many Asians also doubt that America would risk a shooting war with a nuclear power. They point to American silence when China seized the Scarborough shoal from the Philippines in 2012; and to its advice to American airlines late last year to comply with China’s air-defence zone over the Senkakus. In Asia, as elsewhere, America’s allies are boosting their armed forces. Some suspect that America’s security umbrella has holes in it. Sotto voce, a Japanese diplomat says Japan has never relied on it—though what he perhaps means is that it no longer does.
> 
> Under its pacifist constitution, imposed by America after the second world war, Japan is barred from “collective self-defence”, even if it means shooting down a North Korean missile on its way to Hawaii. Its current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, wants to change this. The aim, as one scholar puts it, is to become a “normal” ally, like a NATO member, partly to encourage America to keep defending it, and partly because it is not sure it will.
> 
> *The trigger-point*
> 
> Mr Obama’s hands-off approach dismays the foreign-policy establishment back home. Democrats and Republicans alike chide him for leaving a security vacuum for enemies to fill. Yet others note that he does not want to be the American president who failed to honour a treaty. He chose to deploy ground forces to the Baltics and Poland, when he could have sent only a few ships or planes.
> 
> A defender of the president, Ivo Daalder, American ambassador to NATO from 2009-13, suggests that if NATO allies suffered provocations short of an invasion (eg, Russian passports being distributed to Russian-speakers, challenges to Baltic frontiers) more troops, ships and warplanes would be deployed, making America’s commitment to collective security ever-more visible. It was also under Mr Obama that NATO finally drew up contingency plans to cover threats to all members.
> 
> Kurt Volker, George W. Bush’s final NATO ambassador and Mr Obama’s first, suggests that—despite Mr Obama’s distrust of military force—he would still act if there were a loud enough “domestic outcry”. An outright invasion of a NATO ally would trigger such an outcry, Mr Volker says, as would a serious attack on Israel. But short of that, Mr Volker worries that other countries see within Team Obama “a creeping willingness to let things go”.
> 
> A senior former defence official says that Mr Obama acted slowly in sending reinforcements to NATO members, and would do so again. “I think Mr Putin is going to keep coming until someone stands up to him,” says this source. In the case of Russian adventurism inside NATO’s borders, he predicts that Team Obama would respond: “I would worry that it would be late. Not too late, but late, and that would send a message around the world.”
> 
> America’s obligations in Asia are “nuanced”, says another senior figure. Where American troops are stationed in large numbers—in South Korea, or on the main islands of Japan—the security commitment is “absolute”. Under Mr Obama, American forces have pushed back (somewhat) against Chinese sabre-rattling in disputed seas. Should China threaten Taiwan, America would feel a “moral obligation” to send ships or planes to serve as a referee. Yet during previous crises, as in 1996, when China tested missiles before a Taiwanese election and America sent warships to the area, even hawkishly pro-Taiwan members of Congress privately told officials “you’d sure as hell better not get us into a war with the Chinese”, this source recalls.
> 
> A skirmish over the Senkakus would trigger help of some sort, says another veteran of many crises: perhaps early-warning planes to patrol the skies for Japan, and warships to show the American flag. But the American public “would not be excited to go to war over a bunch of rocks”.
> 
> So much for America’s formal commitments. When it comes to other countries and regions, insiders worry that Mr Obama sees the world as a jungle full of thugs, forever causing crises that America cannot fix. His failure to enforce his own “red line” over chemical weapons in Syria gravely damaged his credibility.
> 
> Team Obama is divided, with an unhappy State Department under John Kerry desperate to see more help for anti-Assad forces in Syria, while the Pentagon has spent months explaining why extra weapons shipments cannot work. Meanwhile, Mr Obama is described as analysing every option to exhaustion before concluding that inaction is the prudent course.
> 
> In a few areas, a toughening of current policies is possible. Mr Obama’s guiding principle is to avoid new wars. Because a nuclear-armed Iran might start a war which drags in America, he treats Iranian talks with great seriousness.
> 
> There are few overt hawks in Congress: the Republican Party of the Bush era, with its dreams of creating democracies across the world, is a distant memory. But some senators are pushing Mr Obama to take tougher, faster action against Russia. On a visit to Ukraine on April 25th Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called for harsher sanctions on Russian banks and energy interests. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, grumbles that the Russian stockmarket actually rose after the latest American sanctions were announced, suggesting those sanctions are weaker than the world expected. Mr Corker says several senators want the government to examine the pros and cons of permanently stationing American NATO forces in such countries as the Baltic republics. Russia maintains that any such move would breach understandings reached with NATO in the 1990s. But Mr Obama will be under pressure to declare that the world has changed, and ignore Russian complaints.
> 
> Some will celebrate the decline of America’s ability to deter. But wherever they live, they may find that whatever replaces the old order is much worse. American power is not half as scary as its absence would be.


----------



## Edward Campbell

The second of the two articles, the 'lead' in the newspaper, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21601508-nagging-doubt-eating-away-world-orderand-superpower-largely-ignoring-it-what


> What would America fight for?
> *A nagging doubt is eating away at the world order—and the superpower is largely ignoring it*
> 
> May 3rd 2014 | From the print edition
> 
> “WHY is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” America’s cerebral president betrayed a rare flash of frustration on April 28th when dealing with a question in Asia about his country’s “weakness”. Barack Obama said his administration was making steady, if unspectacular, progress. By blundering into wars, his critics would only harm America.
> 
> Mr Obama was channelling the mood of his people, worn out by the blood and treasure squandered in Iraq and Afghanistan. A survey last autumn by the Pew Research Centre suggests that 52% want the United States to “mind its own business internationally”, the highest figure in five decades of polling. But when America’s president speaks of due caution, the world hears reluctance—especially when it comes to the most basic issue for any superpower, its willingness to fight.
> 
> For America’s most exposed allies that is now in doubt (see article). For decades, America’s security guarantee used to underpin Japan’s foreign policy; now, on his Asian tour, Mr Obama has had to reassure Japan that it can count on America if China seizes the disputed Senkaku islands (which China calls the Diaoyus). After his tepid backing for intervention in Libya and Mali and his Syrian climbdown, Israel, Saudi Arabia and a string of Gulf emirates wonder whether America will police the Middle East. As Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, disrupts Ukraine, eastern Europeans fret that they are next.
> 
> Each situation is different, but in the echo-chamber of global politics they reinforce each other. The Asians note that in 1994, in exchange for surrendering nuclear weapons, Ukraine received a guarantee from Russia, America and Britain that its borders were safe. The Baltic countries remember the red lines crossed in Syria. Arab princes and Chinese ambassadors count the Republican senators embracing isolationism. Together, these retreats plant a nagging suspicion among friends and foes that on the big day America simply might not turn up.
> 
> *A poisonous root*
> 
> Admittedly, deterrence always has some element of doubt. Between the certainty that any president will defend America’s own territory and the strong belief that America would not fight Russia over Ukraine lies an infinite combination of possibilities. A lot depends on how each incident unfolds. But doubt has spread quickly in that middle ground—and it risks making the world a more dangerous, nastier place.
> 
> Already, regional powers are keener to dominate their neighbours. China is pressing its territorial claims more aggressively, Russia interfering more brazenly. In 2013 Asia outspent Europe on arms for the first time—a sign that countries calculate they will have to stand up for themselves. If Mr Obama cannot forge a deal with Iran, the nightmare of nuclear proliferation awaits the Middle East. Crucially, doubt feeds on itself. If next door is arming and the superpower may not send gunboats, then you had better arm, too. For every leader deploring Mr Putin’s tactics, another is studying how to copy them.
> 
> Such mind games in the badlands of eastern Ukraine and the South China Sea may feel far away from Toledo or Turin. But the West will also end up paying dearly for the fraying of the global order. International norms, such as freedom of navigation, will be weakened. Majorities will feel freer to abuse minorities, who in turn may flee. Global public goods, such as free trade and lower cross-border pollution, will be harder to sustain. Global institutions will be less pliable. Americans understandably chafe at the ingratitude of a world that freeloads on the economic, diplomatic and military might of the United States. But Americans themselves also enjoy the exorbitant privilege of operating in a system that, broadly, suits them.
> 
> *A hegemon’s headaches*
> 
> The critics who pin all the blame on Mr Obama are wrong. It was not he who sent troops into the credibility-sapping streets of Baghdad. More important, America could never sustain the extraordinary heights of global dominance it attained with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As China grew into a giant, it was bound to want a greater say. And the president has often made the right call: nobody thinks he should have sent troops to Crimea, despite the breaking of the 1994 agreement.
> 
> Yet Mr Obama has still made a difficult situation worse in two ways. First, he has broken the cardinal rule of superpower deterrence: you must keep your word. In Syria he drew “a red line”: he would punish Bashar Assad if he used chemical weapons. The Syrian dictator did, and Mr Obama did nothing. In response to Russia’s aggression, he threatened fierce sanctions, only to unveil underwhelming ones. He had his reasons: Britain let him down on Syria, Europe needs Russian gas, Congress is nervous. But the cumulative message is weakness.
> 
> Second, Mr Obama has been an inattentive friend. He has put his faith in diplomatic coalitions of willing, like-minded democracies to police the international system. That makes sense, but he has failed to build the coalitions. And using diplomacy to deal with the awkward squad, such as Iran and Russia, leads to concessions that worry America’s allies. Credibility is about reassurance as well as the use of force.
> 
> Credibility is also easily lost and hard to rebuild. On the plus side, the weakened West, as we dubbed it after the Syrian debacle, is still stronger than it thinks. America towers above all others in military spending and experience (see article). Unlike China and Russia, it has an unrivalled—and growing—network of alliances. In the past few years Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Philippines have all moved towards it, seeking protection from China. And events can sway perceptions. Back in 1991 George Bush senior’s pounding of Saddam Hussein vanquished talk of America’s “Vietnam syndrome”.
> 
> But there will be no vanquishing as long as the West is so careless of what it is losing. Europeans think they can enjoy American security without paying for it. Emerging-world democracies like India and Brazil do even less to buttress the system that they depend on. America is preoccupied with avoiding foreign entanglements. Mr Obama began his presidency with the world wondering how to tame America. Both he and his country need to realise that the question has changed.


----------



## Edward Campbell

President Obama *has* a "grand strategy," and I think it is *politically* defensible. I believe and President Obama understands that America is, broadly, willing to go to war for Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France the Netherlands, Norway and even Germany and Japan, who were biter enemies during my lifetime. But I doubt that many Americans are willing to go to war for Estonia or Romania or even Poland, and they are certainly not willing to fight for Ukraine. I equally doubt that Americans want to risk a war with China over the _Senkaku_ (or _Diaoyus_ as the Chinese call them) islands - I think President Obama has overreached there. 

My guess is that Japan and Philippines understand this better than do the Europeans. 

The left-wing Chicago _community organizer_ turned 'leader' of the West may have finally showed Canada and Britain and Denmark and all the others that we, not the _"friendly giant,"_ must look after our own vital interests.

For Canada, in my opinion, that (America's new 'grand strategy') means we need to start ramping up defence spending until it reached at least 2% of GDP.


----------



## Brad Sallows

France and Britain were unwilling to go to war over Czechoslovakia, but apparently were willing to do so over Poland.  The US was willing to go to war over Balkan intrigues.  Other NATO member nations should contribute more muscle to the means of collective defence and deterrence, but victories over totalitarianism should not lightly be allowed to lapse - especially in spite.


----------



## Edward Campbell

My _suspicion_ is that America's new 'grand strategy' would not change dramatically under Hillary Clinton, nor under any leading Democrat. It _would_, I think change in _tone_ in a GOP administration but it will take time to bring American public opinion around, after Iraq and Afghanistan, to favour an _active_, _engaged_ foreign policy.


----------



## tomahawk6

Its safe to say that no matter the Republican administration there will not be support for the Muslim Brotherhood,as there has been in this administration.


----------



## pbi

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Its safe to say that no matter the Republican administration there will not be support for the Muslim Brotherhood,as there has been in this administration.



I think that every US administration will probably do what every US administration has always done: support whoever they believe best looks after their interests, and either don't support or try to undermine the regimes that don't serve that aim (or cease to serve it)  Saddam Hussein comes to mind.


----------



## Kirkhill

From the Economist



> The weakened West
> What would America fight for?
> 
> A nagging doubt is eating away at the world order—and the superpower is largely ignoring it
> 
> May 3rd 2014
> 
> “WHY is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” America’s cerebral president betrayed a rare flash of frustration on April 28th when dealing with a question in Asia about his country’s “weakness”.



Community Organizer meets RealPolitik and is found wanting - and he doesn't have a clue why.


----------



## Edward Campbell

One thing has, finally, changed ... the US economy has, no thanks to governments, recovered from the 2007 _great recession_:







The recovery has been very, *very, very* long and painful and America's _strategic_ capacity has been reduced, in measurable ways, by economic uncertainty.


----------



## Brad Sallows

It has not.  That chart is based on absolute job numbers, rather than the number of jobs relative to the size of the workforce.

If that number stayed at zero (the "recovery" line) year after year, you could always claim that the economy has neither "recovered" nor "improved".  But in reality, the real employment rate would be falling, which would not be an improvement.

All that chart does is provide a rough illustration of one measure of how a recovery is proceeding relative to other recoveries.

Since the US apparently just had a quarter of negative GDP growth, and the administration recently announced more energy-unfriendly policies, I expect another US recession imminently.

If the US experiences another recession - or merely flat-lines - then Canadian provincial governments expecting to simply "grow" their way back to fiscal solvency will be SOL.


----------



## a_majoor

As has been [pointed out in many other threads, one of the aims of America's enemies is to knock the US dollar out of its position as the global reserve currency. This has all kinds of implications (most of them bad), but I don't think that anyone has actually thought the entire thing through (especially second and third order consequences):

http://www.dailypundit.com/?p=87704



> *Question For Nemo, Kenny, and the Rest of the Gang – After the Collapse, What? Bill Quick*
> Posted on June 15, 2014 7:30 am by Bill Quick
> PJ Media » Future Fear
> 
> Lending greater credence to the threat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has advocated the replacement of the U.S. dollar with Special Drawing Rights (SDRs); these would allow for certain assets traded in dollars to be priced using SDRs, a strategy that would reduce the dependence of central banks on U.S. Treasury bonds. “The dollar’s days as reserve currency are numbered,” blazons the Financial Times. Should an event of this magnitude come to pass, America will find itself virtually bankrupt. Every indicator — the unlimited expansion of the monetary base, the impact of prospective rising interest rates on servicing the debt, a paper-thin currency, the international threat of abandoning the U.S.-based financial system as a result of a federal Treasury suffering from prolonged dollarrhea — will have ominous consequences. Even as we speak, the Chinese devaluation of the yuan against the dollar spells further damage to the U.S. export market leading to greater unemployment (real unemployment is at least twice the official figure) — the outcome of a failed or adversarial leadership.
> 
> The currency shift has already started to happen. According to the ITAR-Tass news agency, Russia’s Gazprom Neft has “signed additional agreements with consumers on a possible switch from dollars to euros for payments under contracts.” The oil company’s head, Alexander Dyukov, told a press conference that “with Belarus, payments in roubles are agreed on [and] nine of ten consumers had agreed to switch to euros.” Dyukov is a leading proponent of the move toward ditching the dollar. In the same vein, Russia Today reports:
> 
> Over the last few weeks there has been a significant interest in the market from large Russian corporations to start using various products in renminbi and other Asian currencies, and to set up accounts in Asian locations,” Pavel Teplukhin, head of Deutsche Bank in Russia, told the Financial Times.
> 
> Such foreign currency manipulations, however, are a mere handsel prefiguring the chaos that eventual reserve-deprivation will unleash. Ultimately, one should not forget Friedman’s resonant dictum in Money Mischief: “The fate of a country is inseparable from the fate of its currency.”
> 
> Nemo chuckles at the notion that the US dollar might lose reserve currency status, and cites several factors not often mentioned, including the vast amounts of capital owned or controlled by the federal government in the form of land, minerals and mineral rights, and so on, as well as the massive power of the US military.
> 
> Unfortunately, I’ve come to doubt that analysis.  Obama has drastically weakened the US military, and seems bent on weakening it even more.  Meanwhile, he’s borrowing and spending (with the enthusiastic help of the “opposition” party) at the rate of trillions of dollars a year.  On top of that, does anybody believe that as long as we have any military at all, we’ll either let the furriners repossess the Bakken Oil Fields, or regard them as good collateral for further multi-trillion dollar loans/bailouts?
> 
> On top of that, Obama seems to be waging war on most of the other pillars that underly a sound economy.  Take productivity, for instance:  Generally, countries goose national productivity by putting more people to work.  Here in America, we are driving millions out of the work force entirely – and permanently.  With government help, the American edu system is a disaster from top to bottom.  Even our best universities are racked with the twin cancers of affirmative action and grade inflation, and in our primary education system, it sometimes seems a miracle if you find a sixth grader who can read at all.
> 
> The new generation, those Millennials we’re counting on to tote that barge and carry that bale of debt and spending into the future, are coming into adulthood badly educated, ignorant of basic economics, history, and the world at at large, buried under student loan debt, barred from buying homes or saving for the future, and less likely to marry and bear children than any generation in our history
> 
> And we’re going to fix all this by pretending that 20 million illegal aliens are going to make wonderful, productive citizens?
> 
> I’m just not as sanguine as nemo is.
> 
> So here’s a question for those of you who think about these things, and have some knowledge of history, economics, and the like:  If we do undergo a financial collapse caused by the dollar losing its reserve currency status, what is out best strategy for recovery after that event?


----------



## Edward Campbell

Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Harry Dexter White must be spinning in their graves.

The status of the US dollar as *the* global reserve currency was the centre piece of _Breton Woods_. The only other contender was gold. (Keynes offered some sort of silly idea of a gold based 'world' currency, but the two choices were: $(US) (then backed by gold) or gold, real, physical gold.) Richard Nixon finally knocked gold out of the equation and left the $(US) alone on the top of the heap.

There are two HUGE problems with SDRs:

     1. The IMF is not a sovereign nation, it has nothing of its own: no land, no gold, no oil, no people, no money - it's SDRs are, essentially, a myth, an accounting tool;

     2. The 'value' of SDRs is derived (yes, derived, just like the "derivatives" that damn near crashed the global economy) from the currencies on which it is based, and the $(US) is the largest component of that base.

To make SDRs useful they must, in my _opinion_, be both "guaranteed" by more than just vague promises (gold?) and much more broadly based (say by 20 countries, even by all of the OECD plus China and India, with none counting for more than, say, 15% or even 10% of the value of the SDR).


----------



## a_majoor

Well the current "Grand Strategy" is collapsing all over the globe. Whatever Administration takes power in 2016 will have a colossal task ahead of them:

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/18/the-collapsing-obama-doctrine/



> *The Collapsing Obama Doctrine*
> 
> June 18th, 2014 - 1:50 pm
> 
> “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” Dick and Liz Cheney write in the Wall Street Journal:
> 
> Iraq is at risk of falling to a radical Islamic terror group and Mr. Obama is talking climate change. Terrorists take control of more territory and resources than ever before in history, and he goes golfing. He seems blithely unaware, or indifferent to the fact, that a resurgent al Qaeda presents a clear and present danger to the United States of America.
> 
> When Mr. Obama and his team came into office in 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely defeated, thanks primarily to the heroic efforts of U.S. armed forces during the surge. Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace. Instead, he abandoned Iraq and we are watching American defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
> 
> The tragedy unfolding in Iraq today is only part of the story. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resurgent across the globe. According to a recent Rand study, between 2010 and 2013, there was a 58% increase in the number of Salafi-jihadist terror groups around the world. During that same period, the number of terrorists doubled.
> 
> In the face of this threat, Mr. Obama is busy ushering America’s adversaries into positions of power in the Middle East. First it was the Russians in Syria. Now, in a move that defies credulity, he toys with the idea of ushering Iran into Iraq. Only a fool would believe American policy in Iraq should be ceded to Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror.
> 
> This president is willfully blind to the impact of his policies. Despite the threat to America unfolding across the Middle East, aided by his abandonment of Iraq, he has announced he intends to follow the same policy in Afghanistan.
> 
> Despite clear evidence of the dire need for American leadership around the world, the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies, President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch. Indeed, the speed of the terrorists’ takeover of territory in Iraq has been matched only by the speed of American decline on his watch.
> 
> Well yes, Mr. Obama’s entire life has been dedicated to taking America down a notch or ten. Regarding the Cheney’s observation that “Mr. Obama had only to negotiate an agreement to leave behind some residual American forces, training and intelligence capabilities to help secure the peace,” this tragically prescient October 2011 Max Boot article, also in the Journal, reflects on why we (read: the Obama administration) abandoned Iraq to its fate:
> 
> The popular explanation is that the Iraqis refused to provide legal immunity for U.S. troops if they are accused of breaking Iraq’s laws. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself said: “When the Americans asked for immunity, the Iraqi side answered that it was not possible. The discussions over the number of trainers and the place of training stopped. Now that the issue of immunity was decided and that no immunity to be given, the withdrawal has started.”
> 
> But Mr. Maliki and other Iraqi political figures expressed exactly the same reservations about immunity in 2008 during the negotiation of the last Status of Forces Agreement. Indeed those concerns were more acute at the time because there were so many more U.S. personnel in Iraq—nearly 150,000, compared with fewer than 50,000 today. So why was it possible for the Bush administration to reach a deal with the Iraqis but not for the Obama administration?
> 
> Quite simply it was a matter of will: President Bush really wanted to get a deal done, whereas Mr. Obama did not. Mr. Bush spoke weekly with Mr. Maliki by video teleconference. Mr. Obama had not spoken with Mr. Maliki for months before calling him in late October to announce the end of negotiations. Mr. Obama and his senior aides did not even bother to meet with Iraqi officials at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
> 
> The administration didn’t even open talks on renewing the Status of Forces Agreement until this summer, a few months before U.S. troops would have to start shuttering their remaining bases to pull out by Dec. 31. The previous agreement, in 2008, took a year to negotiate.
> 
> The recent negotiations were jinxed from the start by the insistence of State Department and Pentagon lawyers that any immunity provisions be ratified by the Iraqi parliament—something that the U.S. hadn’t insisted on in 2008 and that would be almost impossible to get today. In many other countries, including throughout the Arab world, U.S. personnel operate under a Memorandum of Understanding that doesn’t require parliamentary ratification. Why not in Iraq? Mr. Obama could have chosen to override the lawyers’ excessive demands, but he didn’t.
> 
> As Glenn Reynolds noted late last year, “Ideology required that the Iraq War be a failure, even if it needed a _nunc pro tunc_ effort to make it so.”
> 
> Naturally, Harry Reid is punching back in his usual reactionary style to the Cheneys’ remarks:
> 
> 
> But to combine posts today by Jim Treacher and Moe Lane, where does Reid disagree with Cheney? On gay marriage, or on Iraq?
> 
> As the IRS scandal transforms Mr. Obama into what Glenn describes as “President Double-Asterisk” in his latest USA Today column, and as Obama’s poll numbers crater, no wonder once and future O-Bot Chuck Todd has temporarily turned on the Most Trusted Man at MSNBC:
> 
> “This poll is a disaster for the president,” Todd said. “You look at the presidency here: Lowest job rating, tied for the lowest; lowest on foreign policy. His administration is seen as less competent than the Bush administration, post-Katrina.”
> 
> “On the issue of do you believe he can still lead? A majority believe no. Essentially the public is saying your presidency is over,” Todd added.
> 
> “Unfortunately for America, though, it’s not,” Ace adds:
> 
> While most Presidents would feel the evaporation of support and scale back their program appropriately, Obama has all but explicitly declared that he holds the American people in absolute contempt.
> 
> He does not need public support to enact his agenda by executive tyrannical fiat, just as he does not need Congress.
> 
> So we’re in a difficult period: The president has lost the support of the American people, and so by rights has no mandate to do much of anything except play golf, and yet the president doesn’t care at all what the people think.
> 
> Though he will of course continue playing golf.
> 
> Which brings us back full circle with the Cheneys’ remarks at the start of this post.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Well the current "Grand Strategy" is collapsing all over the globe. Whatever Administration takes power in 2016 will have a colossal task ahead of them:
> 
> http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/06/18/the-collapsing-obama-doctrine/
> 
> 
> 
> The Collapsing Obama Doctrine
> 
> June 18th, 2014 - 1:50 pm
> 
> “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” Dick and Liz Cheney write in the Wall Street Journal
Click to expand...



But some might argue that (with a _partial_ exception being awarded to Ronald Reagan for doing as Mrs Thatcher advised) pretty much every US president since Dwight D Eisenhower has been wrong, not always 100% wrong ... but never, not even with Reagan, more right than wrong.


----------



## a_majoor

A bit more on the evolving political culture of the United States. As technology, demographics and economics change, current political parities and institutions are becoming less and less relevant to the issues of the day. In the past, the Americans saw the dissolution of the Federalist and Whig parties; with the Democrats and the Republicans replacing them respectively. The TEA Party movement is one manifestation of this trend in the modern era, with TEA Partiers generally proponents of Classical Liberalism. Now, we are seeing a similar movement developing on the other side of the divide; candidates challenging Democrats for not being "Progressive" enough. I'm not sure what you could call this movement, but there is a lot of money behind the Progressives and a lot of organizations dedicated to increasing the breadth and depth of the Progressive movement (especially Government employee unions, but also many other organizations and individuals who feed off of or otherwise use the power of the State). Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds interviews a challenger to NY Governor Cuomo:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/07/14/zephyr-teachout-tea-party-new-york-cuomo-election-column/12596343/



> *Five questions with Zephyr Teachout: Column*
> Glenn Harlan Reynolds 12:17 p.m. EDT July 14, 2014
> Zephyr Teachout will challenge New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the upcoming primary election.
> 
> AP_WORKING_FAMILIES_PARTY_64675362
> (Photo: Hans Pennink, AP)
> 
> The Tea Party movement has been busy challenging establishment politicians like Eric Cantor and Thad Cochran, but the challenge to the establishment is also happening on the left. In particular, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing a primary challenge from two law professors, Zephyr Teachout of Fordham, and Tim Wu of Columbia, essentially for not being liberal enough. Is this a New York one-off, or does it portend a national trend? I caught up with Teachout last week and asked her a few questions:
> 
> Q. It's unusual for a sitting governor to face a primary challenge. Lots of Democrats think that Andrew Cuomo has a future in national politics. Why did you choose to challenge him?
> 
> A: I supported candidate Andrew Cuomo four years ago; I believed, as many New Yorkers did, that he would take on Albany corruption and fight for a Democratic Senate. But he has become part of the broken system he once promised to fix, and people in the state are hurting because of it. He has taken over $6 million from LLCs (a kind of corporation that can give many times as much to campaigns as a regular corporation) through a loophole he once promised to fix. Instead of funding public schools — where class sizes are ballooning — he transferred money to tax breaks for banks and millionaires. He has abandoned his initial promises and abandoned the state.
> 
> Q. Would it be simplistic to say that your platform is more friendly to public-employee unions? What's a better way to describe it?
> 
> A: The core of my platform is to change the role of money in politics, support public education and break up monopoly power. All of these are fundamental prerequisites to a responsive democracy. The piece that is new — and old — about my platform is dealing with monopoly power. People are out of power now, not just in their politics where they feel that their voices don't matter, but in their workplace and in the marketplace. I want to revive the old American belief -- exemplified by Jefferson (who wanted an anti-monopoly clause in the Constitution), Teddy Roosevelt and FDR -- that concentrated private power threatens democratic institutions. For instance, I think New York should take the lead and stop the Comcast-Time Warner merger. The job of government should be to support an open, competitive marketplace and an open, competitive democracy.
> 
> Q. You've noted that despite Gov. Cuomo's pledge to crack down on corruption in Albany, things appear to have gotten worse. What would you do differently?
> 
> A: Most of the corruption in Albany is legal corruption, not illegal bribery. It comes from campaigns being funded by millionaires and corporations. To fix it, I would ensure that we created a system that allowed people to run for office who don't have rich friends, aren't independently wealthy or don't have to make promises to the wealthiest Americans. Our current system doesn't make it possible to run for office if you are a thoughtful middle-class community leader, unless you find a few extremely wealthy sponsors, who might expect certain things of you. That doesn't make any sense. New York should follow the lead of New York City and Connecticut and pass a system — commonly called "Fair Elections" — which gives candidates for office the support they need to get heard, if they show strong grassroots support.
> 
> Q. What's your position on Gov. Cuomo's Startup New York initiative, which offers steep tax breaks for businesses that locate or expand in New York?
> 
> A: Gov. Cuomo's economic development policy boils down to favors — tax breaks. Startup New York, his marquee project, is effectively just a 10-year corporate giveaway. What this means is that the program is cutting deals, not forming substantive policy. Pitting states and even areas within New York against one another just to shift around jobs and economic activity does nothing to promote sustainable business and job creation, nor guarantee it'll stick around once the giveaways expire. A real economic development policy would address the root issues hampering business growth, like access to credit and marketplaces so dominated by giant companies that it is impossible to compete. Swaths of New York lack the fast and reliable Internet you need to compete in a 21st century economy. So a real innovation policy would push cable companies to compete and build out and improve service.
> 
> Q: You're opposed to the Comcast/Time-Warner merger. Why?
> 
> A: The public should have access to unfettered communication and commerce, and the Internet is increasingly the medium where that takes place. A merger of two monopolist Internet providers that already provide bad and overpriced service is not good for New York. Both of these carrier companies have vertically integrated into direct ownership of content, including one of America's most important news networks. The merger will lead to higher prices for New Yorkers. The merger will make it easier for Comcast to subject New York businesses to tolls, under the threat of being shunted over to special slow lanes. Any of New York's small and medium-sized businesses that can't afford the new tolls will have to try to compete from the slow lane. The merger will allow Comcast to cable-ize the Internet, by making it nearly impossible for New York citizens to cut the cord and take control of the content they watch. Comcast will control New York sports programming and could prevent companies like Netflix and start-up programming providers from offering content that is competitive with cable.
> 
> How will Teachout and Wu do? If they do well enough, it may be a sign that the Democratic Party is ready to move left. Stay tuned.
> 
> Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.
> 
> (This interview was edited for length and clarity by USA TODAY.)



I suppose that Zypher Teachout does not recognize the irony of increasing the monopoly power of the State in order to select the "winners" and "losers" under her economic model. The Fascist Corporate State was another example of that kind of thinking, and we should know how that turned out...


----------



## a_majoor

This is just another example of how current institutions and structures are failing to keep up with changes in economics, demographics and technology. The question is: "What will come to replace the current institutions and structures?" History is not kind, the most common answer is "The Man of the White Horse", who is no friend to liberal or conservative regimes or political thought. Still, it is always intstrutive to think about the problem, perhaps there is a solution, although I confess I certainly don't see what it is yet:

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/15/looking-for-the-attractor/



> *Looking for the Attractor*
> Posted By Richard Fernandez On August 15, 2014 @ 3:55 pm In Uncategorized | 96 Comments
> 
> There’s a crisis in punditry. Disasters have become altogether too predictable. Almost everyone saw the costs of instability in Eastern Europe coming. The bill is now due, as Ukrainian artillery destroyed a “significant” part of a Russian armored column [1] alleged to have entered Ukraine. Russia denied this occurred, but the tumbril of disaster jolts along yet another rut and the State Department [2] has accused the Russians of violating an arms control agreement, too late to make a difference. Just another opportunity missed.
> 
> “Vladimir Putin does not take his obligations seriously, whether they be arms control or respect for the integrity of Ukraine and Georgia,” [Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces] Rogers said in a statement announcing the legislation
> 
> “He doesn’t believe he has anything to fear from President Obama,” he added.
> 
> True Mike, but tell us something we don’t know. The West African Ebola outbreak continues to spread as WHO [3] admits the “the magnitude of the Ebola outbreak had been ‘vastly’ underestimated.” “WHO officials also said in a Thursday statement that they share concerns that current numbers do not reflect the true gravity of the situation.”
> 
> Ebola treatment centers are filling fast as they are opened. “The World Health Organization says beds in Ebola treatment centers in West Africa are filling up faster than they can be provided.”  Reality is overcoming the narrative. Ebola, 2,000+: Spin doctors, 0.
> 
> Spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva Friday that the flood of patients to newly opened treatment centers shows that the outbreak’s size is far larger than official counts show. WHO said Thursday that recorded death and case tolls may “vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”
> 
> Hartl said that an 80-bed treatment center opened in Liberia’s capital in recent days filled up immediately. The next day, dozens more people showed up to be treated.
> 
> And the administration is being sucked back into the Middle East [4] by strategic considerations they chose to ignore, but found they could not.  It would be altogether too tiresome to recapitulate the observations that this would happen. Nobody read the map, except ISIS and the map, like Ebola, won.
> 
> Speaking of narratives, what happened to the post-racial America or the post-fascist America Obama was supposed to herald? Gone already. Perhaps the most striking thing about the reaction to the race riots in Ferguson, Missouri is that the public can’t make up their minds who to dislike more, the looters or the paramilitary police.
> 
> Recent polls [5] show that most people are aware we are not in the promised era of Hope and Change.  They know they are in the Epoch of Hopelessness and Stasis..
> 
> “With an ‘everything is terrible’ mindset, I’m mostly thinking about how after several years of cantankerous and unproductive lawmaking in Washington, there are very few political figures or institutions who the public trusts anymore,” the Washington Post’s polling analyst Scott Clement told Politico.
> 
> The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows President Barack Obama’s approval ratings are at a record low. A new Gallup Poll shows confidence in the economy is dropping. And overall, poll ratings for Republicans and Democrats are down, according to a CBS Poll.
> 
> Nobody really believes that the leaders of the nation or the West in general can find their way out of the mess they’ve created. Not after all that huffing and puffing about climate change, transgender initiatives, Obamaphones, “getting engaged with your disease” and other varieties of trivial pursuit.
> 
> The Big Ticket problems they’ve pooh-poohed for so long are here. Food, energy, security and demography.  In a short, the world of things. Boo. Your design margin has been canceled. Politicians are running for cover. New York Magazine [6] acidly mocked the failure of Hillary and Barack to publicly “hug it out” over foreign policy differences, accompanying the story with a picture that looked more like two pickpockets trying to palm off the evidence on each other.
> 
> Did she plant the evidence in my pocket? [7]
> 
> Two has-been boxers hanging on to the ropes. Stayin’ alive. Stayin’ alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.
> 
> But all of these developments were too predictable. They are hardly worth a post. President Obama’s political fortunes look as broke as Robin Williams after two alimony settlements and he seems just as depressed as the late comedian. Peter Wehner, writing in Commentary [8], quotes Joe Scarborough as saying that president Obama “has checked out… He wants to be the next, I hear it time and time again from his close political allies. This man wants to be an ex-president.”  Being a leader when everything you’ve touched has turned to dust is no fun.  He’s not coming out of this one with his likeness carved on Mount Rushmore. But you knew that already.
> 
> That the current system is in flux is no longer in doubt. What everyone wants to know is where the attractor [9] is. “In dynamical systems, an attractor is a set of physical properties toward which a system tends to evolve.”  Where is the world going? Who is going to lead it? The conventional wisdom is that it was Barack or Hillary who would do the leading.  But it looks more like _no mas!_
> 
> What punditry needs now is not someone who can interpret the past — that’s easy — but someone who can glimpse the further future.  But even the greatest minds have no crystal ball. The mists of uncertainty shroud all. One can only repeat what Winston Churchill said: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
> 
> Article printed from Belmont Club: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez
> 
> URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/08/15/looking-for-the-attractor/
> 
> URLs in this post:
> 
> [1] destroyed a “significant” part of a Russian armored column: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11037397/Ukraine-artillery-destroys-part-of-Russian-armoured-column-says-Poroshenko.html
> [2] State Department: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/destabilizing-threat/
> [3] WHO: http://www.voanews.com/content/who-ebola-outbreak-vastly-underestimated/2415134.html
> [4] being sucked back into the Middle East: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iraq-maliki-20140814-story.html#page=1
> [5] polls: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/pollsters-americans-angry-surly/2014/08/10/id/587879/
> [6] New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/08/meaning-of-hillarys-promise-to-hug-it-out.html
> [7] Image: http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/files/2014/08/barack_hillary.gif
> [8] Peter Wehner, writing in Commentary: http://dc-web2.commentarymagazine.com/2014/08/15/the-presidency-is-breaking-obama-even-as-obama-has-broken-the-nation
> [9] attractor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor


----------



## a_majoor

A pretty good summary from Instapundit today on what has happened and what *we* will have to be willing to do to return to something like stability in our time:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/194199/#respond



> AUGUST 31, 2014
> *A FACEBOOK FRIEND WHO’S TOO MODEST TO WANT CREDIT HERE POSTED THIS:*
> 
> Let’s accept, arguendo, that the outgoing DIA chief is right, and that we are now in an era of danger similar to the mid-1930s. How did we get here? It’s worth looking back into the mists of time — an entire year, to Labor Day weekend 2013. What had not happened then? It’s quite a list, actually: the Chinese ADIZ, the Russian annexation of Crimea, the rise of ISIS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fall of Mosul, the end of Hungarian liberal democracy, the Central American refugee crisis, the Egyptian-UAE attacks on Libya, the extermination of Iraqi Christians, the Yazidi genocide, the scramble to revise NATO’s eastern-frontier defenses, the Kristallnacht-style pogroms in European cities, the reemergence of mainstream anti-Semitism, the third (or fourth, perhaps) American war in Iraq, racial riots in middle America, et cetera and ad nauseam.
> 
> All that was in the future just one year ago.
> 
> What is happening now is basically America’s version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The President of the United States — supported to an exceptional extent by an electorate both uncomprehending and untrusting of the outside world — is Clarence the Angel, and he’s showing us what the world would be like if we’d never been born, Unsurprisingly, Bedford Falls is now Pottersville, and it’s a terrible place. Unfortunately we do not get to revert to the tolerable if modest status quo at the end of the lesson: George Bailey will eventually have to shell the town and retake it street by street from Old Man Potter’s Spetsnaz.
> 
> But the larger point here is not what’s happening, because what’s happening is obvious. Things are falling apart. The point is how fast it’s come. It takes the blood and labor of generations to build a general peace, and that peace is sustained by two pillars: a common moral vision, and force majeure. We spent a quarter-century chipping away at the latter, and finally discarded the former, and now that peace is gone. All this was the work of decades.
> 
> Look back, again, to Labor Day weekend 2013, and understand one thing: its undoing was the work of mere months.
> 
> You know, I was going to do a column with a John Birmingham reference in place of It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s the same point, isn’t it? (Bumped).


----------



## Kirkhill

From "The Federalist"

http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/11/americas-consistent-and-coherent-foreign-policy/

I believe this fellow is saying what our ERC has been saying for a while now: Americans are Jacksonians and the fringes (elites) drive debates that make them ever more irrelevant.



> a convenient target. One of the more persistent biases of America’s foreign policy elites is that the American public is schizophrenic and incoherent in their foreign policy views – that they want to have their cake and eat it too, or have peace without the necessary steps to sustain it.
> 
> Despite the opinion of elites on either extreme – whether motivated by humanitarian or democracy project aims – the fact is that, 13 years after 9/11, it’s remarkable how coherent and consistent the views of Americans really are. It’s the Obama view that is incoherent, bouncing between the sentiments of elites and uncomfortable in a position of leadership. Americans, for most of the 20th and 21st centuries, have been remarkably consistent in their views.
> 
> The American people are innately Jacksonian. They rejected the elite pushes on Syria and Libya for the same reason they now want to destroy ISIS – because they believe the purpose of the American military shouldn’t be to nation build or police countries, but to kill and destroy evildoers who threaten us and our interests. That’s why the humanitarian agenda and the democracy agenda couldn’t take hold in Syria – Assad was smart enough not to chop heads off Americans (that doesn’t make for good Vogue profile material, after all).
> 
> The media has trumpeted various polls over the past few years regarding the shifting opinions of Americans. But if you reconsider the elections of the past few years as the expression of American beliefs about foreign policy, a different picture emerges. Americans want a military that is strong but rarely deployed, and then deployed only to kill and destroy those who are clearly enemies of the nation and our interests. They want a state that maintains security without mass violations of privacy. They dislike permanent prisons and reject the droning of American citizens, but have less objections to the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners (Hollywood has convinced Americans of two things over the past decade: gay marriage is great, and torture works).
> 
> Presidential candidates have responded to this consistency. The George W. Bush of 2000 rejected nation-building explicitly. The Barack Obama of 2008 emphasized a rollback of privacy and prisoner overreach while doubling down on the need to kill Osama Bin Laden and eradicate threats in Afghanistan. The thread that runs through the language of both candidates is entirely Jacksonian – a belief that those who hit us should not escape our reach, and that we ought to follow to the ends of the earth those who did us harm.
> 
> This is why Americans who balked at military action against Assad and Qhaddafi now endorse it when it comes to ISIS. It is not a shift of opinion on their part. It is consistent and coherent – a belief that there will always be dictators, and they will do awful things, but that the actions of evil men do not become our concern until the point when they take up arms against us and murder our fellow Americans. When that happens, no matter how slow to anger we are as a people, we make our wrath into a policy that will echo on the other side of the world.
> 
> Let the humanitarian interventionists or Code Pink isolationists talk of incoherence or inconsistency. The reality of America’s innately understood foreign policy doctrine is very simple and straightforward: Don’t tread on me.



I would summarize the thought this way: Americans don't want a constabulary of infanteers.  They want a destructive force of gunners. 

They have no interest in engaging the rest of the world.  They just want to be left alone .... and want to beat bloody anybody that doesn't leave them in peace.


----------



## a_majoor

And today is the 13th anniversery of 9/11. A quote from Civilization and its Enemies is in order:



> Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy.
> "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct....
> 
> "Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours."


----------



## a_majoor

Amateurs indeed. I look forward to next week's follow up:

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/09/11/lawrence-solomon-western-intervention-gone-wrong/?__federated=1



> *Lawrence Solomon: Western intervention, gone wrong*
> 
> Lawrence Solomon | September 11, 2014 | Last Updated: Sep 12 7:43 AM ET
> More from Lawrence Solomon | @LSolomonTweets
> U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a prime time address from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday in Washington, DC.  Vowing to target the Islamic State with air strikes "wherever they exist", Obama pledged to lead a broad coalition to fight IS and work with "partner forces" on the ground in Syria and Iraq.
> 
> From the Middle East to Ukraine, blunders by the U.S. and its allies have done incalculable harm to the West’s interests
> 
> “We will degrade and destroy” ISIS, President Obama said this week, in reversing course by resuming an old war in Iraq and starting a new one in Syria. ISIS needs to be destroyed and it is fitting that the U.S., Western allies in tow, is taking on the responsibility for the job. The U.S. and its allies, after all, created the ISIS monster, and much more, too. They created most of the instability that the West today confronts elsewhere in the Middle East, in North Africa, and beyond, in Ukraine.
> 
> ISIS (which has also been known as al Qaida in Iraq (AQI), ISI, ISIL and the Islamic State) is a product of the Arab Spring, the West-inspired uprising against secular Arab strongmen that empowered Islamists. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power after President Obama helped it depose President Mubarak. In Libya, Islamist factions carved up the country through civil war after France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and England’s Prime Minister David Cameron (with Obama leading from behind) decided to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi’s vast arsenals of advanced military hardware were then black marketed throughout the Middle East to enable Islamists, most notably ISIS in Syria.
> 
> Related
> Saudi Arabia could fight ISIS with oil — if it can bear the price
> U.S., Arab allies agree to join in fight to ‘destroy’ ISIS extremists in Iraq and Syria
> Kelly McParland: Obama, at war, establishes himself as America’s most reluctant warrior
> 
> To date, Islamist groups and Western-backed rebels have failed to topple Syrian strongman Bashar Assad but they have succeeded in weakening him through civil war, leading to six million forced to feel their homes and some 200,000 deaths. The big winner among those Islamist groups has been ISIS, previously a loser in Iraq, from which it retreated following George Bush’s successful surge. Brought back from the dead in the killing grounds of a weakened Syria, ISIS remerged as a powerhouse able to also roar back in Iraq and establish beachheads in Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian territories.
> 
> The West is weaker for undermining Assad, a strongman who protected the country’s many Christians while successfully suppressing Islamists: There would be no ISIS threat if Assad had remained firmly in power. The West is also weaker for toppling Mubarak, a pro-Western leader who protected Egypt’s Christian minorities while successfully suppressing Islamists: Egypt is no longer solidly in the Western camp and Islamists hold sway in much of its Sinai Peninsula. And the West is weaker for toppling Gaddafi: He had abandoned his nuclear weapons program, had become an ally of the West against al Qaida, and also successfully suppressed Islamists. These Arab strongmen had kept Islamists at bay. In destroying their rule, the West has empowered the Islamists who seek to destroy us.
> 
> There would be no ISIS threat if Assad had remained firmly in power
> The West’s blunderbuss interventions apply as well to Ukraine, a camel of a country with split identities, its industrialized east oriented to Russia, its agricultural west aspiring to becoming European. This economic basket case — per capita GDP of $3,900 — has little value to either Russia or the West, except as a pawn in geo-political games. The stakes in this game involve the expansion of NATO into Ukraine, which would allow the West to place its missiles literally on Russia’s border.
> 
> The bad moves in the Ukraine game were mostly the West’s. Rather than leaving well enough alone, the U.S. spent $5-billion trying to turn Ukraine into a Western-style democracy, culminating in the orchestration of months of violent demonstrations in Kiev’s Independence Square. The European Union, for its part, tried to lure Ukraine westward with offers of membership. When Ukraine’s corrupt pro-Russian president said “nyet” — Ukrainians vacillate between electing corrupt pro-Russian and corrupt pro-Western leaders — the U.S. gave the go-ahead for a coup that saw the president flee for his life.
> 
> Many of these machinations were on display in a phone conversation — believed leaked by the Russians — showing the involvement of the U.S. State Department, Vice President Biden (his role was to seal the deal by confirming to the insurrectionists that the U.S. had their backs) and the U.N. This is the phone conversation that included the now-notorious order from Victoria Nuland, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, to “F**k the E.U.,” a reference to the American decision to proceed despite the E.U.’s misgivings at overthrowing a democratically elected government.
> 
> The Ukrainian Civil War continues, the toll to date including some 2500 dead, including the 300 passengers on Malaysian Flight 17. Russia, much the better chess player, has acquired Crimea. The West, so far, has accomplished nothing meritorious; with winter approaching, the E.U. now worries that Russia’s next move will be a cutback in its energy shipments, to underline who’s in control.
> 
> In describing the carnage and lesser consequences that a clueless West has caused through its recent diplomatic and military involvements abroad, I am not making an isolationist’s case against interventionism. I am making a case against amateurism. My case for interventionism comes in the sequel to this column, next week.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 2

Two American scholars, Andrew Erickson[/u] and [url=http://scholar.princeton.edu/apl/home]Adam Liff are concerned that America is just following along with a new Chinese _narrative_ and they are in danger of falling into the so called _Thucydides Trap_ wherein a great power commits strategic suicide in trying to defeat a weaker one by allow it, the weaker antagonist, to define the battles. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_ is their argument:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142178/andrew-s-erickson-and-adam-p-liff/not-so-empty-talk


> *The Danger of China's “New Type of Great-Power Relations” Slogan*
> 
> By Andrew S. Erickson and Adam P. Liff
> 
> OCTOBER 9, 2014
> 
> Ever since his February 2012 visit to Washington, Chinese President Xi Jinping has championed his vision for a “new type of great-power relations” between China and the United States. The Obama administration, in an apparent desire to avoid conflict with a rising China, seems to have embraced Xi’s formulation. In a major speech last November, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice called on both sides to “operationalize” the concept. And during a March 2014 summit with Xi, U.S. President Barack Obama declared his commitment to “continuing to strengthen and build a new model of relations.”
> 
> In uncritically signing on to the “new type of great-power relations” slogan at the Obama-Xi Sunnylands summit in June 2013, the Obama administration fell into a trap. It has what is most likely its last major chance to dig itself out when Obama visits Beijing next month for a follow-up summit. And he should make use of the opportunity. Although some U.S. officials dismiss rhetoric as insignificant and see this particular formulation as innocuous, Beijing understands things very differently. At best, U.S. acceptance of the “new type of great-power relations” concept offers ammunition for those in Beijing and beyond who promote a false narrative of the United States’ weakness and China’s inevitable rise. After all, the phrasing grants China great-power status without placing any conditions on its behavior -- behavior that has unnerved U.S. security allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific. At worst, the formulation risks setting U.S.-Chinese relations on a dangerous course: implicitly committing Washington to unilateral concessions that are anathema to vital and bipartisan U.S. foreign policy values, principles, and interests.
> 
> Already troubling, each additional invocation of a “new type of great-power relations” grows more costly. Instead of reactively parroting this Chinese formulation, Washington must proactively shape the narrative. It should explicitly articulate and champion its own positive vision for U.S.-Chinese relations, which should accord China international status conditionally -- in return for Beijing abiding by twenty-first-century international norms, behaving responsibly toward its neighbors, and contributing positively to the very international order that has enabled China’s meteoric rise.
> 
> [size=12pt]*THUCYDIDES TRAP*
> 
> The “new type of great-power relations” concept is appealing to so many policymakers and scholars in both countries because of a misplaced belief in the Thucydides Trap. This is a dangerous misconception that the rise of a new power inescapably leads to conflict with the established one.
> 
> The Chinese side has exploited this oversimplified narrative to great effect: Xi himself has warned of such confrontation as “inevitable,” and leading Chinese international relations scholars claim that it is an “iron law of power transition.” Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state, echoed the sentiment at the 2012 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue when she said that the United States and China’s efforts to avoid a catastrophic war are “historically unprecedented” and that both sides need to “write a new answer to the age-old question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet.” A year later, at the Sunnylands summit, Tom Donilon, then the U.S. national security adviser, explained that efforts to reformulate the U.S.-Chinese relationship are “rooted in the observation … that a rising power and an existing power are in some manner destined for conflict.”
> 
> Such sentiments are puzzling, especially coming from Americans. They deny human agency (and responsibility) for past -- and possibly future -- disasters. And they reject progress. Further, they are based on a selective reading of modern history, one that overlooks the powerful ways in which the norms that great powers have promoted through their own rhetoric and example have shaped the choices of contemporaneous rising powers, for better or for worse. Most problematic, the narrative of needing a “new model” to avoid otherwise inevitable conflict is a negative foundation, a dangerous platform on which to build the future of U.S.-Chinese relations.
> 
> To be sure, Clinton, Donilon, and their successors might understand all this but are prepared to dismiss rhetoric and focus instead on action. This is surely what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had in mind at the 2014 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue when he noted that “a new model is not defined in words. It is defined in actions.”
> 
> Even so, flirting with the Chinese-proposed slogan for bilateral relations, as the administration has done, while dismissing it in private is dangerous. Chinese leaders take such formulations extremely seriously: the phrase “new type of great-power relations” appears repeatedly in their speeches, and permeates Chinese media and public discourse on U.S.-Chinese relations. Uncritical embrace creates an unsustainable situation wherein each side mistakenly expects unrealistic things of the other, worsening the consequences when those expectations are ultimately dashed.
> 
> Even worse: There doesn’t even seem to be a clear consensus within Washington about what exactly “new type of great-power relations” actually means. Interviews suggest that the administration’s definition hinges on two prongs: cooperation in areas where U.S. and Chinese interests overlap and constructive management of differences where they don’t.
> 
> But Beijing could intend any number of things. A theoretically benign interpretation is reflected in former State Councilor Dai Bingguo’s remarks at the fourth U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue: “respect each other and treat each other as equals politically; carry out comprehensive, mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation economically; build up mutual trust and tolerance and share responsibilities in security matters; learn from and promote each other culturally; and seek common ground while reserving differences and live side by side in peace with each other ideologically.”
> 
> For others, the dirty secret is that “new type of great-power relations” isn’t that new. It is disturbingly redolent of a very old type of values and order, in which spheres of interest, zero-sum gains, and great-power exceptionalism ruled the day. Indeed, Shi Yinhong, a leading Chinese IR scholar and counselor to China’s State Council, has characterized it as a call for America and China to “respect each other’s interests and dignity” as both a “nation-state in the traditional sense” and a “rare and special” great power.
> 
> An even more cynical interpretation -- and one supported by interviews with current and former U.S. officials -- is that, under the new formulation, Xi expects the United States to make certain accommodations concerning China’s “core interests.” Indeed, in the February, 2012, speech in which Xi first introduced the concept, he explicitly identified “respect for each other’s core interests” as one of four areas constituting a “new type of great-power relations.” But no U.S. administration is likely interested in making such accommodations. And there is no evidence that Beijing would be willing to make meaningful concessions of its own; in a July 2012 paper, Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, claimed that “China has never done anything to undermine the US core interests” and that, even in its own neighborhood, China is merely a “victim on which harm has been imposed.”
> 
> Whatever Chinese leaders’ intentions in promoting the concept actually are, in other words, they don’t look good.
> 
> *TROUBLING TERMINOLOGY*
> 
> The Obama administration’s continued flirtation with the “new type of great-power relations” concept appears to have been misunderstood in Beijing and beyond, and risks being misperceived as a precipitous change in U.S. power and policy.
> 
> First, the terminology paints an absurd picture of a United States too feeble to articulate, much less defend, its own vision for promoting peace, stability, and prosperity in Asia -- only furthering perceptions of U.S. decline in China and its neighbors. The Obama administration’s rhetoric, however well intentioned, sometimes exacerbates this misperception. A case in point: Kerry’s statement to his Chinese counterparts at the 2014 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue that “there is no U.S. strategy to try to push back against or be in conflict with China.” The Obama administration is certainly right to try to allay concerns -- unfounded but extremely prevalent in China -- that the United States is attempting to “contain” China. But it is ill advised to do so in a manner so easily heard as an apology.
> 
> Second, Beijing’s interpretation of “new type of great-power relations” appears to be linked to an assumption that China’s growing material power has made a power transition inevitable, compelling Washington to accommodate Beijing’s claims in the South and East China Seas now. Such arguments reveal ignorance, first, of fundamental changes to the international order since the days of might makes right and, second, of the manifold sources of U.S. power and preeminence. By allowing the terms “great-power relations” and “equality” to permeate official discourse on bilateral relations, Washington risks tacitly condoning such anachronistic views of international politics.
> 
> Third, China’s economic growth is slowing, and the country’s future is ever more uncertain as various societal and other domestic headwinds strengthen. Decades of extraordinary economic and military growth make many Chinese assume that the rapid increases in material power will continue indefinitely. That is unlikely, but the consequences of such bullishness are real and unsettling: growing expectations within China for U.S. concessions and anachronistic calls for “equal” treatment and “space.”
> 
> If that weren’t enough, the “new type of great-power relations” concept is also unnerving to U.S. allies and partners in the region. If fears of abandonment grow, some may seek other -- potentially more destabilizing -- options for deterring China.
> 
> Such concerns are particularly intense in Japan -- arguably Washington’s closest ally and the best situated to stand up to China independently, if necessary. Xi has already attempted to exploit the Obama administration’s embrace of the “new type of great-power relations” concept to score a victory in the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands dispute. During a September 2012 meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Xi invoked the “important consensus” he claimed that the two had reached in defining their relationship and then pivoted immediately to the most critical flashpoint in Chinese-Japanese relations: “We hope that the U.S., from the point of view of regional peace and stability, will be cautious, will not get involved in the Diaoyu Islands sovereignty dispute, and will not do anything that might intensify contradictions and make the situation more complicated.” The record of China’s Japan policy during the past two years suggests the Xi administration is intent on isolating Japan -- bypassing Tokyo while engaging Washington -- and keeping the country relegated to a status inferior to China and the United States. Indeed, as Australian scholar Amy King argues, China’s conception of a “new type of great-power relations” leaves little room for Japan.



End of part 1


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 2



> *A POSITIVE ASIA-PACIFIC VISION *
> 
> The U.S.-Chinese relationship is too important to leave up to a vague slogan rooted in a cynical nineteenth-century premise: that the two countries must do something historically unprecedented to avoid war. In the twenty-first century, an effective international order hinges on powerful states supporting an inclusive, equitable, win-win system that has the same rules for the strong and the weak. Might can no longer make right.
> 
> That is why the Obama administration should immediately replace the “new type of great-power relations” formulation with a specific, reciprocal, results-oriented, and positive vision -- one that accords China international status in proportion to its active support for the international order that has greatly benefited China over the past four decades. There is precedent for such a framework, most notably the Bush administration’s 2005 call for China to be a “responsible stakeholder.” Such an approach not only welcomes China’s peaceful rise but also explicitly charts a pathway to its coveted status as a great power.
> 
> Starting now, U.S. policy and rhetoric should build on China’s desire for membership in the great-power club by setting goals for increased contributions to the international system and greater provision of public goods. Washington must also disabuse Beijing of the notion that it can negotiate with the United States over the heads of China’s less “great” neighbors and emphasize that, to be a true twenty-first-century great power, Beijing must follow its own Golden Rule and treat other countries as it wants to be treated. Disputes with smaller neighbors are an excellent opportunity for Chinese leaders to show the world what their self-professed vision of “democracy in international relations” actually means in practice.
> 
> Above all, the United States must not give tacit approval to a Chinese shortcut to great-power status out of exaggerated fear of inevitable conflict. It must approach Beijing from a position of strength. Like Washington, Beijing has powerful incentives to avoid a military clash. It enjoys tremendous benefits from trading partners across the Asia-Pacific -- in particular, the United States and Japan -- and relies on exports to sustain its national development and domestic stability. Washington need not accept disproportionate responsibility for avoiding conflict.
> 
> To be sure, explicit rejection of a major foreign policy formulation crafted by China’s preeminent ruler may have costs. But the costs of continued acceptance will only be higher. At a minimum, to avoid validating “new type of great-power relations” Washington should immediately cease using the phrase. If the U.S. government does use the term, it must always follow with a forceful, explicit definition of what “new type of great-power relations” is and what it is not. Washington should also call out aspects of China’s current behavior -- namely its coercion of its neighbors and apparent efforts to undermine U.S. alliances and key international norms -- as antithetical to both U.S. interests and Beijing’s coveted recognition as a great power. That should convince Beijing that even considering division of the Asia-Pacific into spheres of interests is a nonstarter.
> 
> Given its political system, history, and deep realpolitik traditions, Beijing’s resistance to Washington’s socialization efforts is hardly surprising. China will not do everything the United States wants, and some Chinese observers will cynically interpret U.S. attempts to reformulate the relationship as a ploy to burden China and contain its rise. And that is why Washington must be patient as it provides a consistent focal point for Chinese leaders’ pursuit of great-power status, strengthening the hand of moderates and internationalists in domestic policy debates. China’s growing (and U.S.-encouraged) contributions to peacekeeping and antipiracy have been rightly lauded. Greater contributions in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and sea-lane security should be as well.
> 
> *LAST CHANCE*
> 
> To its credit, in recent months, the Obama administration has gotten tougher with Beijing. Finally realizing that China was controlling the narrative, the administration has publicly opposed Beijing’s destabilizing policies, restated unambiguously Washington’s support for Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, criticized the mishandled November 2013 rollout of China’s East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone, and publicly questioned the basis for China’s overexpansive, vague South China Sea claims.
> 
> This increasingly firm rhetoric is laudable but insufficient. Without more attention and support from key administration principals, the rebalance risks being seen in the region as more words than action -- ironic, given the similar criticism that U.S. officials have leveled at the “new type of great-power relations” formulation. Since the Asia-Pacific Rebalance is a major component of Obama’s foreign policy legacy, it is especially puzzling that the administration has not articulated a formal strategy for the region. As a first step, the administration should promptly communicate a positive, concrete vision for the Asia-Pacific’s future and China’s role in it. To guide further U.S. action and signal resolve, this should then be codified in a formal policy document, released in conjunction with a major speech by Kerry or by Obama himself.
> 
> None of this is to deny the role of material power in shaping China’s trajectory. As China expert Thomas Christensen has argued, the United States’ military presence in the Asia-Pacific and its focus on solidifying ties with regional allies and partners are not only hedges against possible Chinese provocations but also important means for influencing Beijing’s foreign policy decision-making. Indeed, the story of China’s rise remains incomplete. No doubt, we’re in a rough patch today. But despite widespread claims to the contrary, nothing about China’s future course -- and certainly not military conflict -- is predetermined. How things play out will depend on the choices made by leaders in many countries, but especially in Beijing and Washington.
> 
> The so-called Thucydides Trap to the contrary, history tells us that the trajectories of rising powers can be shaped in powerful ways by the leading power’s behavior and rhetoric. And on those terms, “new type of great-power relations” is a deeply flawed concept. The United States must jettison it and replace it with one that charts a clear pathway for the type of twenty-first-century great power that the United States wants China to become. A more effective vision for U.S.-Chinese relations should be positive and aspirational, designed to shape Beijing’s decision-making by tying China’s eventual attainment of great-power status to behaving like a twenty-first-century great power, including by making positive contributions to international peace, stability, prosperity, and especially by behaving responsibly toward its neighbors. That would in effect be a truly new type of great-power relations -- and Washington must consistently lead by example. For many, U.S. Asia policy is directly linked to Obama’s legacy. Yet his administration is increasingly focused elsewhere, with real-world consequences. For the Obama administration’s China policy, it’s time for proactive leadership.




I share their concern. I see no indication that this administration/the Democratic Party or the potential next ones, including both the Republicans and the Tea Party, have any notions about what China is trying to do. China wants to "win," by their definition, without fighting, in any meaningful way, and they plan to do that, in large part, by controlling the _narrative_ which the whole world understands: China's rise in inexorable and a 'good thing' and America's decline is concomitant and also 'good.'


----------



## a_majoor

While an active, informed and engaged Administration could take much action to exploit this opportunity, the convergence of interests between Saudi Arabia and the West _in this instance_ indeed works to our benefit. Of course, we should always keep in mind that the Saudis are not our friends or allies (except as allies of convenience for now...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/opinion/thomas-friedman-a-pump-war.html?_r=1



> *A Pump War?*
> OCT. 14, 2014
> Thomas L. Friedman
> 
> Is it just my imagination or is there a global oil war underway pitting the United States and Saudi Arabia on one side against Russia and Iran on the other? One can’t say for sure whether the American-Saudi oil alliance is deliberate or a coincidence of interests, but, if it is explicit, then clearly we’re trying to do to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exactly what the Americans and Saudis did to the last leaders of the Soviet Union: pump them to death — bankrupt them by bringing down the price of oil to levels below what both Moscow and Tehran need to finance their budgets.
> 
> Think about this: four oil producers — Libya, Iraq, Nigeria and Syria — are in turmoil today, and Iran is hobbled by sanctions. Ten years ago, such news would have sent oil prices soaring. But today, the opposite is happening. Global crude oil prices have been falling for weeks, now resting around $88 — after a long stretch at $105 to $110 a barrel.
> 
> The price drop is the result of economic slowdowns in Europe and China, combined with the United States becoming one of the world’s biggest oil producers — thanks to new technologies enabling the extraction of large amounts of “tight oil” from shale — combined with America starting to make exceptions and allowing some of its newfound oil products to be exported, combined with Saudi Arabia refusing to cut back its production to keep prices higher, but choosing instead to maintain its market share against other OPEC producers. The net result has been to make life difficult for Russia and Iran, at a time when Saudi Arabia and America are confronting both of them in a proxy war in Syria. This is business, but it also has the feel of war by other means: oil.
> 
> The Russians have noticed. How could they not? They’ve seen this play before. The Russian newspaper Pravda published an article on April 3 with the headline, “Obama Wants Saudi Arabia to Destroy Russian Economy.” It said: “There is a precedent [for] such joint action that caused the collapse of the U.S.S.R. In 1985, the Kingdom dramatically increased oil production from 2 million to 10 million barrels per day, dropping the price from $32 to $10 per barrel. [The] U.S.S.R. began selling some batches at an even lower price, about $6 per barrel. Saudi Arabia [did not lose] anything, because when prices fell by 3.5 times [Saudi] production increased fivefold. The planned economy of the Soviet Union was not able to cope with falling export revenues, and this was one of the reasons for the collapse of the U.S.S.R.”
> 
> Indeed, the late Yegor Gaidar, who between 1991 and 1994 was Russia’s acting prime minister, observed in a Nov. 13, 2006, speech that: “The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to Sept. 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices. ... During the next six months, oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed. ... The Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive.”
> 
> Neither Moscow nor Tehran will collapse tomorrow. And if oil prices fall below $70 you will see a drop in U.S. production, as some exploration won’t be cost effective, and prices could firm up. But have no doubt, this price falloff serves U.S. and Saudi strategic interests and it harms Russia and Iran. Oil export revenues account for about 60 percent of Iran’s government revenues and more than half of Russia’s.
> 
> The price decline is no accident. In an Oct. 3 article in The Times, Stanley Reed noted that the sharp drop in oil prices “was seen as a response to Saudi Arabia’s signaling ... to the markets that it was more interested in maintaining market share than in defending prices. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, stunned markets by announcing that it was cutting prices by about $1 a barrel to Asia, the crucial growth market for the Persian Gulf producers, as well as by 40 cents a barrel to the United States.” The Times also noted that with America now producing so much more oil and gas, “net oil imports to the United States have fallen since 2007 by 8.7 million barrels a day, ‘roughly equivalent to total Saudi and Nigerian exports,’ according to a recent Citigroup report.”
> 
> This resource abundance comes at a time when we’ve also hit a “gusher” of energy technology in Silicon Valley, which is supplying us with unprecedented gains in energy efficiency and productivity, savings that may become as impactful as shale in determining our energy security and global strength. Google, through Nest, and Apple through coding in the iPhone software, are making it easier for average Americans to manage and save energy at home or work.
> 
> Bottom line: The trend line for petro-dictators is not so good. America today has a growing advantage in what the former Assistant Energy Secretary Andy Karsner calls “the three big C’s: code, crude and capital.” If only we could do tax reform, and replace payroll and corporate taxes with a carbon tax, we’d have a formula for resiliency and success far better than any of our adversaries.
> 
> A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 15, 2014, on page A35 of the New York edition with the headline: A Pump War?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe


----------



## a_majoor

Like I said upthread: an active engaged and intelligent Administration would be able to react to this and reap the benefits. Discomforting Iran, Russia and even Venezuela are all positive outcomes for the *West*. However, it seems the Saudis are not _just_ after collapsing the oil prices to the detriment of Iran and Russia; America and Canada (the oil sands) are also in their sights:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/10/16/saudi-plays-chicken-with-u-s-shale/



> *Saudi Plays Chicken with U.S. Shale*
> 
> The benchmark for American crude, called the West Texas Intermediate (WTI), fell below $80 per barrel for the first time in more than two years in trading today before staging a small rally. Similarly, Brent crude, Europe’s benchmark, traded below $83 per barrel, a four-year low, before seeing a slight rebound on what Reuters explains to be “technical buying ahead of options expiry for U.S. crude oil and contract expiry for Brent crude.”
> 
> But temporary rebound notwithstanding, there’s no denying that this is a bear market for crude oil. Brent prices have dropped by more than 28 percent since June, while WTI has tumbled nearly 25 percent in that same time period. Weak demand has collided with an oversupplied market, partly due to Libyan supplies coming back online after protracted disruptions, and, of course, in part due to booming supplies out of the suddenly shale-rich America.
> 
> The question on everyone’s minds is, where is OPEC? The cartel of petrostates has colluded in the past to cut production to keep prices artificially high, yet the organization’s largest producer and, historically, the one most likely to take the lead on these cuts—Saudi Arabia—has cut prices, not production, in recent weeks.
> 
> The Saudis have actually offered discounts to customers, especially in Asia, in a bid to gain market share in the midst of this price rout. Kuwait wasted little time in following suit, and, somewhat surprisingly, Iran even joined in, saying it could live with lower oil prices. With the exception of Iran, the countries seemingly most content with declining prices are also the ones with relatively low breakeven prices—that is, the price at which these petrostates need to sell their oil in order to balance their budgets.
> 
> Venezuela, a country teetering on the brink of default, needs to sell its black gold at $121 per barrel just to stay in the black. Caracas has been outspoken about its calls for an emergency meeting of the cartel, too impatient to wait for OPEC’s already scheduled meeting in late November. Those calls have fallen on deaf ears, and, as the WSJ reports, many analysts think OPEC won’t choose to cut production when it meets next month:
> 
> Continued opposition by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the U.A.E., however, now makes any cut highly unlikely. Gulf nations worry any reduction in the limit on OPEC production would lead to them losing share in global oil markets, the people familiar with the matter said, even if that means oil prices keep dropping.
> 
> “Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf countries have no intention whatsoever to accept the idea of a cut at the November meeting,” one Gulf OPEC official said. “If we are going to end up with lower market share and prices will fall anyway, let’s stick to market share.”
> 
> There has been some speculation that the Saudis may be looking to abdicate their role as OPEC’s (and therefore the world’s) de facto swing supplier, banking on the fact that U.S. shale producers, the new kids on the block, will soon have to cut production because fracking will cease to be profitable. America’s unconventional oil drilling tends to be more expensive; the IEA recently announced that at $80 per barrel, 96 percent of shale drilling would still be profitable, but if WTI prices were to dip much lower, the shale boom would hit a considerable hurdle.
> 
> We’re not there yet, and in fact the price of oil today exists in a kind of sweet spot: high enough to continue to incentivize U.S. fracking, but low enough to benefit American consumers (average gas prices in the U.S. are at their lowest level since 2011) and stymie some of America’s geopolitical opponents. Russia, for example, needs oil to trade above $100 per barrel to balance its budget.
> 
> The Saudi strategy isn’t unlike a game of chicken. The Saudi breakeven price hovers around $93 per barrel, and while it can afford to operate in the red to gain market share for now, it may not be able to do so in the long term. Banking on American shale production cuts may be a bigger gamble than the Saudis expect, too: it will take some time for the market to shift and fracking to draw down, even if prices continue to plunge.
> 
> And U.S. shale has a final trump card: innovation. Though fracked wells have steep decline rates, drillers continue to optimize rigs and maximize output while minimizing costs. Bloomberg reports that shale firms have driven costs down by as much as $30 per barrel since 2012, and one analyst surmised that “[t]he profit margin on most commercial unconventional oil plays will support prices as low as $50, many below that even.”
> 
> It’s difficult to predict what happens next, but for now, the United States seems to be sitting pretty while many of the world’s petrostates—including a number of America’s geopolitical adversaries—are feeling the pinch. We’ll be watching


----------



## a_majoor

The interesting thing is that this is happening in spite of the USG, not because of this. While the current Administration is indirectly reaping some benefits, they are not acting in a coordinated manner to capitalize on their good fortune. This can be corrected by afuture Administration. For Canada, this *helps* in the larger alliance picture because it hurts various actors like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and so on, even though it *hurts* Canada's oil sector in the short and medium term:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/10/22/fracking-innovation-defying-oil-price-dangers/



> *Fracking Innovation Defying Oil Price Dangers*
> 
> The price of developing shale wells is falling fast, which could mean that lower oil prices will have less effect on production than many think, including the Saudis. Demand for crude is weak due to sluggish economic growth in Europe and Asia, and supply is plentiful, thanks to North America’s boom and a resumption of Libyan supplies. That has sent oil prices plunging in recent weeks, and some are worried about the potential effect on the U.S. shale boom, which has needed a relatively high price of oil to incentivize producers to keep fracking. But as the FT reports, even before this bearish market the American shale drilling industry has been busy looking for ways to increase production while reducing costs:
> 
> 
> [C]osts have already fallen sharply, and could fall further. The median North American shale development needs a US crude price of $57 a barrel to break even today, compared with $70 a barrel in the summer of last year, according to IHS, the research company. [...]
> 
> Accenture believes the average cost of a US shale well could be cut by up to 40 per cent by better management of factors such as planning, logistics, and relationships with suppliers. [...]
> 
> The effort companies are putting into each well is rising. ConocoPhillips and others have been using much more proppant – the sand or similar material used in fracking to hold open cracks in the rock so the oil can flow out – to increase production. Companies are also fracking wells in more stages: up from an average of 18 sections per horizontal well in 2012 to an expected 23 per well next year, according to Pac West, another consultancy.
> 
> Here’s the important point in all of this: The rapid fall in the price of developing new wells suggests that much more tight oil may be recoverable than people think. The fall in the breakeven prices for fracking means that the technology is capable of enormous improvements. Moreover, new breakthroughs could make previously inaccessible deposits of oil and gas both technically recoverable and economically profitable.
> 
> It also means that U.S. companies are extending their technological lead in the field. As they discover faster, cheaper ways to extract oil, they’ll be developing techniques and tools that the rest of the world will need, badly.
> 
> There are limits to all forms of natural bounty, but the shale revolution so far has consistently beaten expectations.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Given the nature of our American neighbours this is very likely to do much more to shape public opinion than, say, this.

Now I know that Geraldo Rivera is a turd circling the toilet bowl of (subhuman) life, but he is popular; many, many people, incredibly stupid people, to be sure, but voters, all the same, believe him; they _think_ the he thinks ... he doesn't, but he's crafty and a showman in the tradition of carnival snake oil salesman, and he's popular and rich.

Edit to add:

It's been brought to my attention that calling Geraldo Rivera a subhuman turd is a breach of our Site Guidelines; it's offensive, vulgar, abusive and, potentially defamatory. Even more, it is hateful towards a minority.

Therefore, I apologize to Mike Bobbitt and to all _*turds*_ who are offended because I compared them to Geraldo Rivera; I'm truly sorry.

I wonder, will the POS be equally offended if I call him that, instead?
.
.
.
Further edit to add:

And just in case you think it's _only_ Geraldo Rivera, check this out. The author claims he was writing satire ... maybe, but:

     1. If that was his intent, he failed to make it clear; and

     2. A significant minority, maybe a majority of American readers will take it seriously.


----------



## Retired AF Guy

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Now I know that Geraldo Rivera is a turd circling the toilet bowl of (subhuman) life, but he is popular; many, many people, incredibly stupid people, to be sure, but voters, all the same, believe him; they _think_ the he thinks ... he doesn't, but he's crafty and a showman in the tradition of carnival snake oil salesman, and he's popular and rich.



Cripes, he's still around!!  And while the people in the comments section all thought Geraldo is a nut case I think you right. I listened to the radio last week (either CBC or NPR) a week ago and they had a report about some senator/congressman saying that a Canada was a threat because of the terrorist residing here. And he specifically mentioned Quebec as being the home of many radical Muslims. 

Now we have two attacks in three days and both attackers were from Quebec. So, expect longer checks at the border.


----------



## cupper

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Further edit to add:
> 
> And just in case you think it's _only_ Geraldo Rivera, check this out. The author claims he was writing satire ... maybe, but:
> 
> 1. If that was his intent, he failed to make it clear; and
> 
> 2. A significant minority, maybe a majority of American readers will take it seriously.



I read the Politico article when it was first published on their website, and considered posting a link here, but didn't because server issues  kept popping up, and I forgot about it.

I didn't think that is was satire so much as an attempt to debunk the rhetoric from the GOP right wing of late to try and instill fear over the "porous southern border". You may not have a full feel for just how bad the BS is in the run up to the midterm elections in two week, but the disinformation being put out by the GOP campaigns would give the old Soviet Union's Dezinformatsia machine a run for it's rubles.

The author makes very pertinent points about the problems with internal issues that no border fix will cure, and essentially they want to throw money at a problem that isn't there.

I agree that as a Canadian it does cast us in a bad light, but not as much as when you hear government officials continually drone on about how the 9/11 hijackers entered through Canada. I was near apoplectic when DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano made that statement in a congressional hearing.

The author could have done a better job at making his point, but to classify him at the same level as the moustache that talks like an idiot is a little harsh (holding fingertips just far enough apart to see daylight.

PS: I think a significant part of the US population would be hard pressed to tell you what country is to the north.

PPS: I can't wait until Nov. 5th so we can move on to the 2016 campaign BS.  :


----------



## cupper

New WSJ / NBC Polls have an interesting picture of why the senate races in key states are so close.

http://player.theplatform.com/p/2E2eJC/nbcNewsOffsite?guid=mtp_chuck_screen_141026


----------



## a_majoor

This piece by WRM tracks with the idea I have that current institutions and policies simply do not reflect the changing economic, technologic and demographic changes at work in the United States and the World. The American electorate is seeking a new equilibrium, but their political class is lacking the ideas and desire for change (the incentives for the political and bureaucratic classes are biased towards the status quo, and they will fight to the last taxpayer to retain their power and privilage, even if they are resorting to more and more unattractive means to do so. See the unearthed videos of Obamacare's architect openly boasting about how the law was written to confuse and obfusticate what was really happening, or the "John Doe" investigations and Lawfare unleashed against Governor Scott Walker).

As WRM points out as well, many of the ideas that *could* lead us to the future are in their infancy, and require a lot of evolution and tweaking before they are fully effective and understood:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/11/08/blue-twilight-and-red-dawn/



> *Blue Twilight and Red Dawn?Walter Russell Mead*
> 
> Elections can’t and don’t tell us who will win the next one, no matter how much pundits like to claim otherwise. But elections can be very informative about the state of the nation, and about where the country wants to go.
> 
> Elections tell us less both less and more about the future than we think. Nothing, for examine, is more common in punditry than to overestimate the effect of a bad midterm on a president’s political relevance. In 1946 pundits wrote off Harry Truman after the record setting Republican wave of that year, but almost all of Truman’s historic foreign policy accomplishments came after that shellacking. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t fade away after his midterm losses in 1954 and 1958; Bill Clinton came back from 1994 and so it goes. President Obama may or may not fade into premature lame duckhood, but history strongly suggests that the political obituaries we have been reading lately are at best premature.
> 
> Presidents have constitutional powers; midterm elections don’t take those away. Pundits keep forgetting this; they shouldn’t. President Obama’s political relevance will be shaped less by this (crushing) midterm defeat than by the interplay of uncontrollable outside factors, his political skills, the political skills and ambitions of his legislative opponents and the blind luck or fate that often plays a controlling role in human events. It is all very much in play, and at this point it remains the case that only Obama can make Obama irrelevant.
> 
> Elections don’t even tell us all that much about the future of elections. Pundits and political analysts, who play a similar role in American culture to that of the Roman priests who checked the behavior of sacred chickens and the entrails of sacrificed animals to predict future events, are busy inspecting the entrails of the 2014 election results to predict 2016. It is a harmless pastime but when it comes to party politics, even blowouts don’t tell us much about the future. The Democrats got a thumpin’ in the 2014 midterms, but they got another one in 2010, and President Obama sailed to re-election. 2016 won’t depend much on the midterm just past; it will depend on the skills of the two parties, the attractiveness of the candidates they select, and the hand of God as revealed in the unpredictable events that will shape public perceptions two years from now.
> 
> Misreading election returns is as American as apple pie. In 1964, pundits proclaimed the permanent collapse of the Republican Party as Barry Goldwater went down to a landslide defeat. Four years later Richard Nixon (an irrelevant has-been in 1964) was elected and inaugurated a period from 1968 until 1988 when Republicans won five out of six presidential contests. People used to talk about the permanent GOP presidential majority, featuring a Republican lock on the arch-red state of California.  Then came 2008 and the pundits quickly hailed the inexorable rise of a permanent new Democratic coalition. We shall see.
> 
> Election results are so often misleading in part because many young and emerging American political writers are brash, ambitious and over excitable people with short historical memories (I was one once, and know whereof I speak); more importantly, they are misleading because American politics is a dynamic and competitive arena. Things change in American life, and the two parties hustle to change with them. The GOP got killed among Hispanic and Asian voters in 2012; this time, GOP candidates and campaigners made significant gains. Expect those efforts to continue as these two groups grow in importance.
> 
> But if one election won’t tell us who will win the next one, elections can be very informative about the state of the nation, and about where the country wants to go.  This election in particular, in which Republicans did exceptionally well at the state level suggests that while the Democratic Party may well innovate and adjust, the core tenets of the blue model as a basic governing philosophy are in much deeper trouble than many of the operatives and thinkers of the Democratic Party are prepared to admit.
> 
> The survival of Sam Brownback in Kansas and Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and the equally striking election of Tom Tiflis in North Carolina tell us that in some states at least relatively radical “Red Dawn” governance, even when it runs into serious policy and political trouble, doesn’t necessarily translate into political defeat. At the same time, the stunning losses of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in states like Massachusetts, Illinois and Maryland tells us that blue model governance as usual is no longer good enough to keep voters loyal.
> 
> Election results in New York underline this point. In one of the bluest states in the country, Republicans gained control of the state Senate, a clear message that even New Yorkers don’t want to give leftie Democrats the keys to the car. New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, a self-avowed ‘progressive’ who rejects what he considers the soulless centrism of Democrats like (re-elected) Andrew Cuomo is not the wave of the future in New York State politics.
> 
> The United States overall remains in its unhappy equilibrium. Voters like and even pine for the stability and general prosperity of the far away times when the blue model worked. But they are increasingly losing confidence that it still works, and the economic decline of states like Illinois, the decline of the middle class in states like New York and California, and the inability of blue model economies to generate the revenue that blue model government requires continue to erode voter faith.
> 
> Yet, as the mixed results of GOP governance experiments in “Red Dawn” states like Kansas and North Carolina illustrates, we still don’t know what “new model” governance and economics will look like. Tax cuts alone aren’t the answer, and while initiatives like school choice offer promise, Republicans aren’t yet in the business of selling a social model that obviously works and that people like.
> 
> What people want is isn’t the blue model in its current decadent state or the inchoate mix of policies that “red dawn” states like Kansas and North Carolina have unevenly introduced. What they—we—want is a set of policies and ideas that harness the wealth creating productivity enhancements of the information revolution in ways that reduce the cost and enhance the quality of essential services (health, education, governance) while providing economic opportunity, middle class living standards and rising living standards to the American middle class. This ought to be possible and one day it will be, but at the moment we are still stumbling around in the early stages of one of the most disruptive changes the human race has ever known.
> 
> In the meantime, American politics feels stuck. We try the right for a while, and turn to the left in disgust—until the left fails as well and we turn wearily back toward the right. There’s a tendency to blame this on the caliber of our politicians, the influence of money in politics or on a whole host of other scapegoats. There are certainly issues there, and in particular nobody is going to remember the present era as a time of towering intellects and stunning probity in American politics, but the real causes of our problems are outside politics. We instinctively understand that the higher productivity of the information revolution ought to transform the daily lives of ordinary people in a host of beneficial ways, and that a richer and more productive society ought to mean wealthier and more secure middle class families, but we don’t yet understand the mix of political policies, economic techniques, social values and individual habits and choices that can make the revolution pay off. We see an explosive rise in great fortunes, and we see glittering towers of corporate and individual success, but we don’t see that prosperity spreading out the way we’d like it to. In the meantime, the insidious consequences of the rise of super-empowered fortunes and individuals with hundreds of millions to throw into political and social campaigns make us uneasy, and rightly so.
> 
> The Obamacare debate is an example of the way that our inability to master the new potential of the tech revolution leads to frustration and a dysfunctional political debate. Obamacare proponents were and are right to say that the old system was increasingly dysfunctional. Premiums were rising for the insured at a rate that ate up the country’s wage gains. The uninsured faced increasingly ruinous bills for the simplest medical procedures. The system was out of control, and skyrocketing costs made its problems more serious every year. In all this, the Democratic supporters of Obamacare were absolutely correct; something had to be done.
> 
> Yet the something that they did was well short of the kind of successful reform that we need. America’s health care system is too big and too complicated for anybody expect perhaps a small handful of super dedicated wonks to fully understand; the interest groups who have entrenched themselves in it are too powerful for a sweeping congressional reform effort to address many of the system’s most serious problems.
> 
> We need health care reform but we don’t seem able to do it very well: this is the kind of governance problem that helps turn our politics so sour. Republicans have some good ideas on health care, but they are well short of a serious approach that, in a reasonable timeframe, could make healthcare cheaper, better and more accessible.
> 
> This won’t always be true. 50 years from now the country’s health care system won’t look very much like Obamacare, and it won’t look very much like the system we had pre-Obamacare. It will be significantly cheaper as a percentage of GDP and the outcomes will be measurably better than the ones we know get. Not only will there be new treatments and new drugs; there will be new ways of delivering health care services that will be radical improvements over the systems we know today. Our need for this kind of system gets more urgent every year, but we are groping our way towards it. For what it’s worth, I think that some of the market based and experimental approaches suggested among ‘reform conservatives’ are the most useful suggestions around today, but it’s going to take a lot of trial and error to get this right.
> 
> In the meantime, we are stuck with frustrated voters choosing between unsatisfactory political alternatives: Democrats too wedded to preserving an old and increasingly broken system, and Republicans more confident that they don’t like the status quo than knowledgeable about what to do next. Under the circumstances, the public preference for divided government, and the frequent switches we see between left leaning and right leaning election outcomes seems rational rather than dysfunctional. The American people by and large understand where things stand and while they will invest some hope in a charismatic, friendly politician who talks about hope and change, they will see through the hype soon enough.
> 
> Over time, we are going to make our way through this. American society’s supreme competitive edge is its ability to innovate and adjust. We figured out the industrial revolution and we will get the information revolution right as well. The “new model” when it comes won’t be blue–but it won’t be totally red either. Many of the values that blue model partisans are trying to defend, including the economic dignity and well being of those at the low end of the labor market, will ultimately be better secured in the new model than they are now. That is what progress is all about; as society reaches higher levels of economic and social development, we are able to do more for the needy at a diminishing burden to the rest of the country. When health care is both better and cheaper than it is today, providing some form of universal health care will be cheaper, easier and less bureaucratic than taking on such a task is today.
> 
> We are not there today, but the race for answers is on. Democrats and Republicans are in a competition to come up with the ideas and the policies that can make the information revolution work better for more people. Over the long run, success in policy innovation is going to drive politics more than demographic trends and opinion polls. If the latest midterm tells us anything at all, it is that the American future is still up for grabs. Neither party has a lock on the ideas that will shape the next generation, and an increasingly impatient public is looking for answers.


----------



## cupper

I think the problem is that the lawmakers have lost perspective and focus. You have a system which requires members of congress to be constantly campaigning for reelection. So you become risk adverse. You play it safe by not supporting anything that would cause you to not be reelected. It was a huge driving factor for the GOP in the spring, with threats of being primaried. The Dems refused to bring legislation forward in the senate for fear of Dems in Red States having to explain controversial votes.

Add to that the need to be constantly raising money for the next campaign. The majority of their time seems to be spent on the phones looking to meet quotas for campaign fundraising. And with the somewhat misguided Supreme Court decision that deemed campaign donations are equivalent to free speech, and that corporations are considered people and have the right of free speech, which cannot be limited, and thus corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to further a political cause.

So as a result of the risk adverse nature of politicians not wanting to lose constituent support, and big money donations, become locked into the status quo. No one is willing to make the bold moves and initiatives that are hard to swallow, but are necessary to put the country back onto a positive track and bring to reality the concept of "American Exceptionalism".

I think the first step for a grand strategy is to get money out of the political system. Record sums of money were spent in each of the past two national races that have taken place since the Supreme Court decision. And what did the electorate get for that. More of the same. Partisan gridlock, ineffectual legislative and executive branches, and nothing done to haul the country out of a hole that had been dug so deep that it was difficult to see a way out.

Amend the election laws to eliminate non federal funding for election campaigns. Amend the election laws at all levels to make the election commissions independent of the political parties. Create more evenly distributed districts, so that the politicians actually have to work for votes, rather than the gerrymandered traveshamockery that now exists to ensure every district is now safe for the incumbent and the favoring the party in power. Require networks to provide commercial air time free or at minimal cost, during certain hours of the day, ensuring that people other than monied individuals can afford to get involved in the political process. Install term limits for all elected legislative positions, that allow new blood to come in, yet still allow for some institutional memory to continue.

Maybe if the elected spent more time governing rather than raising money and tying to get reelected, things would get done, and America would be exceptional (in a good way).


----------



## Brad Sallows

Incumbency advantage is a significant problem in the US.

How is government campaign funding to be distributed fairly - meaning to not give advantage to any candidate?

How are "independent" election commissions to become any more free of partisan meddling than, say, the IRS or the JD?

What happens when rigorous counter-gerrymandering has adverse "disparate impact" on certain racial/cultural sub-groups?

How are term limits which result in lame ducks who are either neutered placeholders or people with nothing to lose an improvement?

The problem - the vital ground - is that there is too much political power at stake.  Diminish the value of controlling the offices, and much of the partisanship and brinksmanship goes away.


----------



## cupper

> Incumbency advantage is a significant problem in the US.



This is always the case and really cannot be corrected, or should it. Incumbents always have an advantage over challengers, unless they have pissed off the voters enough to get themselves turfed out. To quote Edwin Edwards, former Democratic Governor of Louisiana "There only way I can lose this election, is if they find me in bed with a dead girl, or a live boy." 



> How is government campaign funding to be distributed fairly - meaning to not give advantage to any candidate?



Institute limits on total spending by individual campaigns. And close the loopholes that have been exploited under the tax laws that allow political action committees to call themselves social welfare organizations and fall outside the regulations.   



> How are "independent" election commissions to become any more free of partisan meddling than, say, the IRS or the JD?



First off, they need to be truly independent, and outside the influence of the political system, like the model of Elections Canada. But almost anything would be better than the current systems that are used in the states to direct how elections are run. Namely, the party in power usually controls the oversight bodies. When a member of the party in power has final authority in how laws are applied, adjudicates disputes, and determines electoral boundaries, you have a system that rivals third world dictatorships for the ability to be corrupted.




> What happens when rigorous counter-gerrymandering has adverse "disparate impact" on certain racial/cultural sub-groups?



By having an independent commission drawing the lines, no side will be intentionally favored or advantaged. Therefore the counter gerrymandering would not come into play. Boundaries can be drawn to take racial or cultural groups into account, without providing an advantage to any individual party. And the gerrymandering can work both ways. Either pack a specific racial or cultural group in one district to create one seat that will be sacrificial, while at the same time creating several new districts that are devoid of that group which will now be firmly on your side of the legislature. Or the opposite can occur, by diluting one groups voting record by splitting them up over several districts where they lose their influence on the final outcome. Austin, Texas is a prime example of this. A liberal Democratic stronghold was split into 4 conservative GOP districts extending up to 300 miles away from Austin, ensuring that there was no chance for a Democrat to win in. The state of Maryland would be the Democratic equivalent.




> How are term limits which result in lame ducks who are either neutered placeholders or people with nothing to lose an improvement?



Term limits do not create lame duck situations. Ineffective politicians do. You simply are reiterating the point I was making, that the current system essentially favors the status quo, and no one wants to take a risk of not getting reelected by making bold policies. Because a politician is facing a term limit and having nothing to lose takes that fear away, and perhaps free them up to make the bold moves that may be necessary to get things done, and the hard choices made. Beats what we have now where they either play an ongoing game of brinksmanship, or continue to kick the can down the road.



> The problem - the vital ground - is that there is too much political power at stake.  Diminish the value of controlling the offices, and much of the partisanship and brinksmanship goes away.



And you don't think that term limits would be a step to resolving that? Or pulling out the influence of outside money from vested interests?

Again, the point is that the politicians have lost sight of what they are supposed to be doing, which is governing, not pandering to get reelected.


----------



## Brad Sallows

My main point is that gutting the concentration of power is the key to reducing the involvement of money and shenanigans and allowing people to get on with governance rather than manoeuvring for power.  Going after the money and misbehaviour and electioneering is cart before horse.


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## Kirkhill

cupper said:
			
		

> ....
> 
> First off, they need to be truly independent, and outside the influence of the political system, like the model of Elections Canada. But almost anything would be better than the current systems that are used in the states to direct how elections are run. Namely, the party in power usually controls the oversight bodies. When a member of the party in power has final authority in how laws are applied, adjudicates disputes, and determines electoral boundaries, you have a system that rivals third world dictatorships for the ability to be corrupted.
> 
> 
> .....



There is no such thing as truly independent .... unless you bring in a Martian.

Everybody goes to the same bars, the same clubs, the same gyms, joins the same charities, goes to the same schools, believes the same things and ultimately believes themselves to be the epitome of moderation. I venture to say that is equally true for you and Brad.  

Elections Canada is not an independent entity anymore than the Bank of Canada and the Civil Service are.  They are of a view. Not the right view.  The right view is my view and the rest of you are entitled to be wrong.

Even the Martian solution is not without its faults.  Samuel Champlain took about a day and a half to choose up sides and start slaughtering the other.  The Brits in India were successful in getting all sides to detest them equally.

Back to my 1516  :cheers:


----------



## Edward Campbell

I'm not sure that the political problem in America is as much _political_, about politicians, as it is _social_, about Americans, themselves.

My _sense_ of the situation, which may well be inadequately informed, is that, unlike Canada, America has _evolved_, socially, so that the "moderate middle," the former _independents_ and moderates in both the Democratic and Republican parties has shrunk.

In the 1950s and into the '60s both America and Canada looked the same:

hard left --- left --- ------- moderate middle ------- --- right --- hard right
              15%                               70%                                 15%

Now, I think Canada has changed, too, and the 70% in the "moderate middle" has shrunk to, at a _guess_, 40% and the _extremes_ have doubled in size.

But, in America I think we see something more like this:

hard left --- left --- ------- moderate middle ------- --- right --- hard right
    5%           35%                         20%                         35%           5%

But I think that problem, the _polarization_ of socio-political _attitudes_, is exacerbated by the fact, and I _believe_ it is a fact, that the "moderates" vote in very, very low numbers while the _left_ and _right_ vote in very high numbers because each _wing_ is voting *FOR* something in which they really believe. (I suspect that neither the hard left nor the hard right vote all that much, being disenchanted with democracy in both cases.) In other words, we have, in voting, an inverse bell curve:







As William Butler Yeats said,

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

I have some, largely unformed and certainly untested ideas about why America has changed and why Canada _seems_ to have changed less. I think the _polarization_ began in the mid 1960s, mostly on US college campuses and mostly in reaction to the Vietnam War which was, strangely enough, _escalated_ by John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and their cohort against the advice of e.g. "old Democrats" like Dean Acheson and Republicans like former President Eisenhower. The Kennedy regime thought it knew better and, as David Halberstam suggested in _'The Best and The Brightest'_, the Kennedys were fascinated by the exercise of power, and nothing _exercises_ power like a war. Anyway, the US government never "sold" the war to the USA. In fact the anti-war movement - students, the arts, blacks, women, the clergy - formed an anti-war and anti-government majority. That put many, many Americans on a left of centre trajectory which, consequently, led to a _conservative_ revival that _balanced_ the _polarization_ of America.

Going back to the theme of the thread: I _think_ America is deeply divided and I see nothiong anf no one likely to heal those divisions.


----------



## cupper

So, ERC, if I read what you are saying correctly, the only real solution is to make the United States the 4th Canadian territory, and if the comport themselves properly over the next half century or so, we can consider giving them full provincial status.

I would agree, but not before we do the same for the Turks and Cacos. ;D


----------



## Brad Sallows

>I'm not sure that the political problem in America is as much political, about politicians, as it is social, about Americans, themselves.

A short while back an animated chart popped up based on some long-term polling of American political attitudes.  (I think the data were from Pew, but my confidence in that recollection is low.)  It was useful in that it illustrated clearly how there was a period in the recent past where median attitudes of identified Democrats and Republicans were both moving leftward (politically), but then they (medians) began to diverge as the Republican median move rightward back to its original position and the Democratic one continued moving leftward.

I suspect the widespread belief that Republicans have become more extreme is an artifact of those shifts.  Their absolute position is more or less back where it was, but the relative distance between the median positions is greater because of the absolute Democratic shift away from the initial centre point.

The larger the gap, the less common ground or flexibility to compromise.


----------



## a_majoor

A long but interesting article from "The American Interest". The question of "How" to restore Western and American credibility will be very complex, given the huge financial restraints caused by the debt crisis and the various cultural issues people in the West have when trying to promote or defend traditional Western values and concepts like free markets, equality before the law, property rights and individual freedom:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/11/18/salami-slicing-and-deterrence/



> The Revisionists
> “Salami Slicing” and DeterrenceA. Wess Mitchell & Jakub Grygiel
> 
> The question for NATO leaders is not only how to shore up the deterrence that remains, but how to restore the deterrence that has been lost.
> 
> 
> Deterrence can fail in two ways. The first is catastrophic: a large eruption of violence that shakes the existing geopolitical order. The status quo, which existed because of the effectiveness of deterrence, is challenged in a dramatic and violent way, but the outcome of the conflict is always in doubt. War is not a mathematically determined reality—a neat correlation of forces in which the side with more shells, planes, and men wins. It is the realm of chance and imponderable forces often defined as “will.” Because of this, it is rare that a strategic actor willfully seeks a dramatic end to a relationship of deterrence, even if it is has revisionist aspirations and a deep-seated hostility toward its rival. Rather, the catastrophic failure of deterrence is the result of miscalculations, unforeseen escalations, and sometimes even accidents. It is not willed; it is surprising to all parties involved. A case in point is World War I, when great power competition, particularly between Great Britain and Germany, turned violent through a series of unexpected turns of event.
> 
> The second way deterrence can fail is gradual, through a chipping-away at the credibility of the leading power in the system. This is not mutually exclusive of catastrophic failure, in that gradual collapse can degenerate into a large-scale war, with the unforeseeable outcomes such a conflict brings. The difference lies in the fact that one of the parties is intentionally seeking to readjust the status quo undergirded by deterrence by means of a gradual alteration of expectations and credibility. The revisionist side wants to engender a gradual failure of deterrence because it considers the existing geopolitical order not to be attuned to its interests or prestige. But it also does not want to jump into a large conflict with the power or powers that underwrite the status quo because it may be the weaker side, or simply because war is dangerous business. The objective is to alter in a steady and almost stealthy way the expectations of future behavior that keep deterrence alive. That is, the revisionist power wants to make all parties involved—the rival as well as his allies—believe present promises of behavior will not be honored in the future. Once such a belief sets in, the options for the targeted powers are limited to accepting the new geopolitical reality or restoring the status quo ante. In either case, deterrence has failed—not violently, but in the realm of perceptions and expectations.
> 
> America’s international rivals today are seeking to cause the failure of U.S. extended deterrence using this latter method. Aware of their weaknesses against the United States and its allies and cognizant of the incalculability of engaging in direct confrontation with the world’s most powerful nation, they are engaged instead in a cautious game of “salami-slicing.” Their strategy is to break deterrence bit by bit, through repeated demonstrations of its insolvency in small, hard-to-counter crises. As Bernard Brodie wrote, “Governments, like men generally, usually have been aware of the hazards involved in provoking powerful neighbors, and have governed themselves accordingly.”1 America’s rivals are aware of the dangers of provoking the world’s most powerful nation. But this doesn’t mean that they have reconciled themselves to the U.S.-led system in the 21st century; rather, they are challenging it subtly, at the regional level, in ways that avoid an outright war but subject the foundations of the system to recurrent and ultimately cumulative stress tests.
> 
> Russia’s recent actions should be seen in this light: as small steps aimed at revising the geopolitical reality in its region—a reality that had been supported by a certain set of expectations of behavior (for example, no violent territorial adjustments). These expectations were created by U.S. extended deterrence: respect the status quo or there will be punishments. By altering some of these expectations, Russia has whittled away portions of deterrence. The danger of such a gradual breakdown of deterrence is that it is easy not to perceive it as being diminished. After all, it is clear to all parties that NATO and the United States behind it continue to maintain a vigorous deterrent against a full-scale attack, ranging from conventional to nuclear, on any of its members. But it is less clear what has been lost, because that loss has occurred only at the geographic and conceptual edges of deterrence. The geographic edges are evident in that Ukraine is not part of NATO or the EU, but some sort of guarantees were extended to it through the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The maintenance of a politically independent and territorially intact Ukraine was part of the late 20th-century geopolitical order. Moreover, Russia’s modus operandi—a limited war operation conducted by “little green men,” offering deniability and falling below the threshold of a full-out conflict—is aimed at that zone of conceptual uncertainty where it is unclear whether a tripwire has been crossed or not. In any case, there is no 21st-century Great War in Europe, which would have been a clear sign of a catastrophic failure of deterrence. But a slice of deterrence—perhaps small, perhaps insignificant on its own—has undeniably been carved away.
> 
> The question for U.S. and allied leaders to ponder in the face of salami-slicing tactics is not only how to shore up existing deterrence, but how to restore the deterrence that has been lost. The former task has received the most attention, and is generally held to involve restating with greater vigor security commitments tying the United States to its allies, repositioning troops and military assets to troubled frontier states like Poland, rewriting contingency plans, and enhancing military training and joint exercises. All of this is done to convey clearly and forcefully that, if the revisionist power (in this case Russia, though similar steps have been made with China) were to decide to take the next big step in challenging deterrence (a move against a NATO state), the retaliatory response would be immediate and effective.
> 
> But this is not enough. The focus on shoring up deterrence, important as this may be, overlooks the fact that a good deal of deterrence has already been lost. The expectations of behavior that undergirded the pre-Ukraine war status quo have already been altered: Russia has demonstrated its will and capability to use force to redraw the map of the region. The credibility of the West has also been altered and, to be precise, diminished: It has clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to meet force with force, even if by Ukrainian proxy. Europe at the end of 2014 is not the Europe of 2013, exactly because the geopolitical order has been challenged and altered by Russia—because, in other words, the deterrence that sustained the previous order has been weakened by Moscow’s actions.
> 
> To keep the deterrence that is left is certainly easier than to restore the slice of it that has been lost. Once the original set of expectations underlying deterrence has been invalidated by the violent behavior of one side, how does one restore it? This is really two separate questions: Can one restore lost deterrence at all and, if so, is the West willing to take the steps necessary to do so?
> 
> The answer to the first question is yes: a gradual salami-slicing of deterrence can be arrested and reversed, at least in theory. To restore lost deterrence, visible pain needs to be imposed on the aggressor. One way to do so, much discussed but not attempted, would be to arm Ukraine so as to deny Russia its objective of territorial adjustment by military means. By turning what Moscow had hoped would be a quick limited war into a prolonged war of attrition, it would be clear that revising the existing order by force is not cost-effective. The salami-slicing, so to speak, would be halted and the hand holding the knife rapped across the knuckles.
> 
> But the ultimate way to restore lost deterrence would be to take actions that inflict an injury on the attacker that is somehow proportionate to the assault. Sanctions, whether they succeed or not (and despite the falling ruble and fleeing investments, it does not appear that Russia’s attack on Ukraine can be reverted), are not proportionate: It’s like leaving a burglar in a home invasion in possession of the victim’s bedroom. Proportionality would be something that established our ability to do to Russia what it has done to the third party. It would be an old-fashioned lex talionis imposing a penalty commensurate to the crime. In no-holds-barred geopolitics, NATO could establish proportionality through, for instance, working to foment internal problems in Russia’s more troublesome regions. The guiding principle that Putin has used against Ukraine—promoting an ethnic minority within a larger politic for power reasons—could be used as an offensive tool against Russia. The Achilles’ heel of Russia its multi-ethnic composition. While it’s not as pronounced as it was in the larger Soviet Empire, it isn’t insignificant and is certainly a continuing source of preoccupation for the Kremlin. This is just a single example; one can think of several other cost-imposing strategies to exploit Moscow’s weaknesses and fears.
> 
> The challenge isn’t to come up with such an attack but to implement it. And here there are two self-reinforcing problems. First, the general challenge of restoring deterrence: Once it has failed, even if only partially, it is not easy to rebuild. It’s not like refilling a glass that has been emptied; rather, the glass has been cracked or broken and requires greater skill and effort to hold together, even if refilled. It requires retaliation to restore a status quo ante, and the more time that passes without retaliation, the more difficult it becomes. That is why, after a failure of deterrence, the new order is rarely ever the same again.
> 
> The second difficulty is more peculiar to the current case. The Western alliance does not appear to have the will to escalate the relationship with Russia. In part, this is because of the nature of the Russian challenge: the geographically peripheral target (distant and eastern) and conceptually “gray” methods (limited war, “hybrid” threat) do not create a sense of immediate threat uniformly shared by the allies. But in part the Western reluctance to rebuild lost deterrence seems to stem from a worldview that sees forceful challenges to the regional and global order based on norms of non-violence and rules of commercial interdependence as inherently self-defeating, thereby not requiring immediate policy adjustments and responses.
> 
> In brief, a portion of the relationship of deterrence that characterized Russia and Europe is lost and is unlikely to be restored. Whether Russia will continue to seek a gradual failure of deterrence in order to reassert its own influence over parts of Europe remains to be seen, but it is to be expected—if only because its success so far may increase its desire to challenge the existing order. Putin may leave Brisbane early, but he isn’t leaving eastern Ukraine anytime soon.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Some thoughts on America's strategy, or lack of same, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Times Literary Supplement_:

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1488107.ece


> K of the Castle
> Henry Kissinger
> WORLD ORDER
> 432pp. Allen Lane. £25.
> 978 0 241 00426 5
> 
> NIALL FERGUSON
> 
> Published: 26 November 2014
> 
> Thirteen years ago, just three months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Henry Kissinger published a book with the provocative title Does America Need a Foreign Policy? His new book, World Order, might justly have been subtitled: “Does America have a foreign policy?” It is no longer controversial (as it once was) to point out that President Barack Obama is no master strategist. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just eight months after his inauguration as President, he has been responsible for a succession of foreign policy debacles, including the “reset” of relations with Russia and the “pivot” from the Middle East to East Asia. Then there is the woeful incoherence of his administration’s policy towards Egypt, lending support first to a revolution against its ally Hosni Mubarak, then to a Muslim Brotherhood government, and finally to the bloody military coup that overthrew that government. Consider, too, the President’s abject failure to enforce his own “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, justified with the declaration in September last year: “America is not the world’s policeman”. Or reflect on the hubris of his breathtaking statement in an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick last January: “I don’t really even need George Kennan right now”. Nemesis struck just two months later, in the form of the Russian annexation of Crimea.
> 
> The nadir has been the President’s U-turn over Iraq and Syria in response to the atrocities perpetrated by the self-styled “Islamic State” (IS), notably the beheadings of American and British hostages. Having won election in 2008 as the man who had not supported the invasion of Iraq, and having pledged to end the American occupation there and in Afghanistan as quickly as possible, Obama now finds himself using American air power against a Sunni organization that had previously been fighting against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad – whose downfall he himself has repeatedly advocated. The American and European Left heaped opprobrium on George W. Bush for his invasion of Iraq. But at least Bush had a strategy. President Obama told reporters on September 4 that “We don’t have a strategy yet” , referring to the specific challenge posed by IS. Those words may yet prove to be the epitaph of his presidency.
> 
> Henry Kissinger does not dwell in detail on Obama’s record of strategic incoherence in this magisterial meditation on the international system. Yet it is not too difficult to read between the lines that this book has been inspired at least partly by dismay at the amateurism of the past six years and dread of the risks inherent in the strategy-less approach. In an arresting passage, Kissinger asks: “Where, in a world of ubiquitous social networks, does the individual find the space to develop the fortitude to make decisions that, by definition, cannot be based on a consensus?” With “presidential campaigns . . . on the verge of turning into media contests between master operators of the Internet”, he writes, there is a danger that “the candidates’ main role may become fund-raising rather than the elaboration of issues. Is the marketing effort designed to convey the candidate’s convictions, or are the convictions expressed by the candidate the reflections of a ‘big data’ research effort into individuals’ likely preferences and prejudices?” It is unlikely that these two questions were prompted by the campaigns of either John McCain or Mitt Romney, presidential candidates who took foreign policy positions with scant regard for focus groups. In their 2012 debate on foreign policy, Obama mocked Romney with the carefully crafted line: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back”. The foreign policy of the 1980s might, for one thing, offer rather more effective ways of dealing with Vladimir Putin.
> 
> Kissinger’s starting point is that we are living through the end of an American world order that reached its zenith in that decade – “an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance”. Not only have Americans lost their faith (or interest) in such a definition of world order. Three other ideal types are now competing with it: a post-Westphalian European order (the allusion here is to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia), which Kissinger defines as “a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power”; an Islamic order based on the ideal of “one empire, one faith, and one sovereignty in the world” (in the words of the fifteenth-century Sultan Mehmed II); and a Chinese order with its roots in the imperial tradition of “harmony under heaven”.
> 
> Or, rather, these were once alternative concepts of world order. The real trouble is that the Europeans, the Muslims and the Chinese of today, like their American counterparts, have embraced corrupted versions of their own traditions. Whereas Americans are almost paralysed by a false dichotomy between “idealism” and “realism” – a “congenital ambivalence”, in Kissinger’s striking phrase – Europeans have “set out to depart from the [Westphalian] state system . . . and to transcend it through a concept of pooled sovereignty . . . [while] consciously and severely limit[ing] the element of power in [their] new institutions”, thereby mistakenly “identifying its internal construction with its ultimate geopolitical purpose”. At the same time, “jihadists on both sides of the Sunni–Shia divide tear at societies and dismantle states in quest of visions of global revolution based on the fundamentalist version of their religion”. As for the Chinese – and East Asians generally – they have jettisoned earlier conceptions (the Middle Kingdom and its tributaries) in favour of a kind of hyper-Westphalian system of aggressively competing nation states, a model Kissinger regards as fundamentally inapplicable to Asia.
> 
> This is not a benign conjuncture. It would have been challenging enough if, as a result of the demographic and economic advance of the non-Western world, the four competing ideals of world order had collided in their pristine forms. The fact that all four are in various states of degeneration increases the likelihood of conflict between them. An alternative and perhaps more accurate title for this book would have been “World Disorder”.
> 
> Kissinger the statesman – the man who served two successive Republican presidents as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State – will always have his critics. Here, however, we have Kissinger the academic: the theorist of international relations or, perhaps more accurately, the grand old man of applied history, who would still be worth reading even if he had never set foot inside the White House. For World Order provides a compelling reminder of what it is that distinguishes Kissinger from all his contemporaries and successors in the field of foreign affairs. He may have spent his entire Harvard career, from undergraduate to tenured professor, in the Government Department. But he is and always has been, first and foremost, a historical thinker.
> 
> Kissinger poses a fundamental question: “Is there a single concept and mechanism logically uniting all things, in a way that can be discovered and explicated . . . or is the world too complicated and humanity too diverse to approach these questions through logic alone, requiring a kind of intuition and an almost esoteric element of statecraft?” Here, as throughout his career, he favours the second view. In his eyes, the more abstract models of the international system are of next to no value because they cannot account for the crucial fact that each player in the great game of foreign policy takes decisions on the basis of a historical self-understanding that can be understood only through deep study of the past. In Kissinger’s phrase, “For nations, history plays the role that character confers on human beings”. Regression analysis can never capture this.
> 
> Many of the historical themes of World Order have their origins in Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation, published in 1957 as A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich, and the restoration of peace, 1812–1822. Indeed, the first two chapters at times read like a recapitulation of arguments Kissinger made more than half a century ago. “The Westphalian concept”, he writes, “took multiplicity as its starting point and drew a variety of societies, each accepted as a reality, into a common search for order . . . . Until the outbreak of World War I, England acted as the balancer of the equilibrium.” He remains as fascinated today as he was as a graduate student by the European order that emerged after the defeat of France in 1815, contrasting as it did with the disorder that followed the defeat of Germany in 1918. The following passage is from his new book; it might equally well be a quotation from his PhD:
> 
> “The vitality of an international order is reflected in the balance it strikes between legitimacy and power and the relative emphasis given to each. Neither aspect is intended to arrest change; rather, in combination they seek to ensure that it occurs as a matter of evolution, not a raw contest of wills. If the balance between power and legitimacy is properly managed, actions will acquire a degree of spontaneity. Demonstrations of power will be peripheral and largely symbolic; because the configuration of forces will be generally understood, no side will feel the need to call forth its full reserves. When that balance is destroyed, restraints disappear, and the field is open to the most expansive claims and the most implacable actors; chaos follows until a new system of order is established.”
> 
> Kissinger originally intended to write two sequels to A World Restored: one covering the era of Bismarck, and one on the origins of the First World War. These volumes never materialized, but he has often sketched the argument they would have contained. Here, again, we see how the order established at the Congress of Vienna broke down in the wake of German Unification, because “with Germany unified and France a fixed adversary, the system lost its flexibility”. This more rigid pentarchy (to use Leopold von Ranke’s term), of Britain, France, Russia and Austria-Hungary, depended on the virtuoso diplomat Bismarck to keep it in equilibrium. After he had gone, the system “aggravated” rather than “buffered” disputes. Over time, “political leaders lost control over their own tactics . . . . In the end, the military planning ran away with diplomacy”.
> 
> From his historical analysis, working in a way that the great Oxford philosopher of history R. G. Collingwood would have admired, Kissinger proceeds to arguments by analogy about the present and possible futures. “Is the world moving toward regional blocs that perform the role of states in the Westphalian system?” he asks. “If so, will balance follow, or will this reduce the number of key players to so few that rigidity becomes inevitable and the perils of the early twentieth century return, with inflexibly constructed blocs attempting to face one another down?” This is one of many hints in his recent work (compare, for example, the concluding section of On China, 2011) that Kissinger fears another 1914. Citing Graham Allison’s recent work on “the Thucydides Trap”, he notes darkly that, in a clear majority of all the historical cases when a rising power encountered an established power, the result was war.
> 
> There is much here, then, that is familiar to those who know Kissinger’s previous writings; but there is also much that is new. There is a chapter on nuclear proliferation, cyber warfare and the role of electronic networks that reminds the reader of the ease with which the young Kissinger got to grips with the technicalities of the nuclear arms race. (His first bestseller was not A World Restored, but Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 1957.) Not surprisingly, he does not regard the technological innovations of our own time as increasing international stability.
> 
> The chapter in World Order on Islam also represents a new departure. Never previously has Kissinger engaged so deeply with the problem that, from its very inception, Islam has been “at once a religion, a multiethnic superstate, and a new world order”. Never has he so explicitly criticized both Obama and his predecessor for, in their different ways, naively equating the democratization of the Middle East with its pacification. And never, to my knowledge, has he been so publicly critical of the Saudi Arabian government. “Is every demonstration democratic by definition?” Kissinger asks, with the fate of Egypt clearly in mind. “Is Saudi Arabia an ally only until public demonstrations develop on its territory?” Yet he also acknowledges that “the great strategic error of the Saudi dynasty” has been:
> 
> “to suppose . . . that it could support and even manipulate radical Islamism abroad without threatening its own position at home . . . . By financing madrassas . . . preaching the austere Wahhabist creed throughout the world, the Saudis have . . . taken a defensive measure by making its advocates act as missionaries abroad rather than within the kingdom. The project has had the unintended consequence of nurturing a jihadist fervor that would eventually menace the Saudi state itself and its allies.”
> 
> As Kissinger makes clear, the most pressing threat to world order today is the descent of the Middle East into a region-wide sectarian conflict. Even as the Sunni monarchies struggle to defend themselves against a rapidly metastasizing jihadist “cancer” that is in large measure their own creation, Shia Iran edges steadily closer to being a nuclear-armed power.
> 
> In his interview with the _New Yorker_, President Obama offered an almost embarrassingly ingenuous analysis. “It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other”, he explained. “And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion . . . you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran . . .”. Moreover, he continued, if only the “the Palestinian issue” could be “unwound”, then another “new equilibrium” could be created, allowing Israel to “enter into even an informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations” with the Sunni states. The trouble with his analysis is that it does not explain why any of the interested parties should sign up for such a balancing act when regional hegemony might be attainable for any one of them. As Kissinger explains (in a passage surely directed at the White House):
> 
> “Even were such a constellation to come to pass, it could only be sustained by an active American foreign policy. For the balance of power is never static; its components are in constant flux. The United States would be needed as a balancer for the foreseeable future. The role of balancer is best carried out if America is closer to each of the contending forces than they are to each other . . . . America can fulfill that role only on the basis of involvement, not of withdrawal.”
> 
> Kissinger makes a similar argument about Asia. “Under contemporary conditions”, he argues, “essentially two balances of power are emerging: one in South Asia, the other in East Asia. Neither possesses the characteristic integral to the European balance of power: a balancer, a country capable of establishing an equilibrium by shifting its weight to the weaker side.” Superficially, no doubt, there appears to be a way to balance the rise of China. Presumably that was why President Obama’s “Asia Trip” last April took him to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, but conspicuously not to China. Yet Kissinger has long doubted that a strategy of containment – of the sort Kennan recommended for dealing with the Soviet Union at the outset of the Cold War – could work as a response to the rise of China in our time.



End of Part 1


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 2



> So what is the correct strategy for the United States in East Asia? The answer Kissinger gave in On China was noticeably imprecise: “co-evolution”, not containment. Here, he clarifies the point with another historical analogy. As he notes, “the United States is an ally of Japan and a proclaimed partner of China – a situation comparable to Bismarck’s when he made an alliance with Austria balanced by a treaty with Russia”. Only those well versed in nineteenth-century diplomatic history will get the allusion to the Secret Reinsurance Treaty that Bismarck signed with the Russian Foreign Minister, Nikolay Girs, in June 1887. Under its terms, Germany and Russia agreed to observe neutrality should the other be involved in a war with a third country, unless Germany attacked France or Russia attacked Austria-Hungary. This committed Germany to neutrality if Russia sought to assert control over the Black Sea Straits. But the real point was to discourage the Russians from seeking a mutual defence treaty with France, which was exactly what happened after Bismarck’s fall from power led to the non-renewal of the Secret Reinsurance Treaty. “Paradoxically”, writes Kissinger, “it was precisely that ambiguity which preserved the flexibility of the European equilibrium. And its abandonment – in the name of transparency – started a sequence of increasing confrontations, culminating in World War I.”
> 
> Is it conceivable that the United States could enter into such a secret treaty with China, allowing it to minimize the causes for conflict between Washington and Beijing, without negating the former’s long-standing commitment to the defence of Japan? The answer to that question depends, in Kissinger’s account, on how far the US can free itself from the pernicious legacy of Woodrow Wilson, who bequeathed to Americans “an elevated foreign policy doctrine unmoored from a sense of history or geopolitics”. It was Wilson who, with his idea of collective security, encouraged Americans to believe they could continue to steer clear of binding overseas commitments. And yet:
> 
> “Collective security . . . is a legal construct addressed to no specific contingency. It defines no particular obligations except joint action of some kind when the rules of peaceful international order are violated. In practice, action must be negotiated from case to case . . . . The idea that in such situations countries will identify violations of peace identically and be prepared to act in common against them is belied by the experience of history . . . . An alliance [by contrast] comes about as an agreement on specific facts or expectations. It creates a formal obligation to act in a precise way in defined contingencies. It brings about a strategic obligation fulfillable in an agreed manner. It arises out of a consciousness of shared interests, and the more parallel those interests are, the more cohesive the alliance will be.”
> 
> To Kissinger, it always seemed strange that Richard Nixon insisted on hanging a portrait of Wilson in his office, when in so many respects Nixon was the most consistent believer in the balance of power to occupy the White House since Theodore Roosevelt, presented here as Wilson’s antithesis. Or was it?
> 
> In her review of World Order for the Washington Post, another former Secretary of State – Hillary Clinton – observed that “the famous realist sounds surprisingly idealistic”. This should not be so surprising. From his earliest engagement as an undergraduate with Immanuel Kant’s essay, “Perpetual Peace”, Kissinger has been philosophically much more of an idealist in the sense Kant meant in this context than a realist in the sense of Machiavelli. Those who have not read A World Restored or the essay on Bismarck in 1968 make the mistake of thinking that Kissinger admired and later sought to imitate Metternich and Bismarck. On the contrary: he found fault with both of them. A recurrent theme of Kissinger’s entire oeuvre is that mere realpolitik rarely suffices. The statesman requires something more than pragmatism to guide his decision-making under the normal conditions of extreme uncertainty (another old theme is “the conjectural element of foreign policy – the need to gear actions to an assessment that cannot be proved when it is made”).
> 
> “The American . . . debate”, Kissinger writes, “is frequently described as a contest between idealism and realism. It may turn out . . . that if America cannot act in both modes, it will not be able to fulfill either . . . . As a general rule, the most sustainable course will involve a blend of the realism and idealism too often held out in the American debate as incompatible opposites.” This, he argues, is the real lesson of US foreign policy since 1945. It was only when presidents achieved “an amalgam of American idealism and traditional concepts of balance of power” that there was anything resembling world order:
> 
> “Calculations of power without a moral dimension will turn every disagreement into a test of strength; ambition will know no resting place; countries will be propelled into unsustainable tours de force of elusive calculations regarding the shifting configuration of power. Moral proscriptions without concern for equilibrium, on the other hand, tend toward either crusades or an impotent policy tempting challenges; either extreme risks endangering the coherence of the international order itself [my italics].”
> 
> The bloodiest failures of the “pax Americana” – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – arose primarily from elevating the moral dimension above the balance of power; the domestic backlash, in each case, came after the strategic error. But a narrow realpolitik might have been no better.
> 
> The idea of a Secret Reinsurance Treaty with China is only one of several concrete proposals derived from the author’s trove of historical analogies. He suggests, for example, that Afghanistan cannot be stabilized merely by the United States, whether through counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism. What is needed is something more like the Treaty of 1839 that guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. A comparable agreement today would commit all of Afghanistan’s neighbours to preserving it from again falling under the control of the jihadists.
> 
> But these are operational proposals that only make sense in the context of a broader strategy that is both realistic, in the sense that a balance of power is aimed at, and idealistic, in the sense that the avoidance of a third world war remains a moral imperative as noble as (and perhaps more urgent than) the avoidance of climate change. While Kissinger’s dream remains “a modernization of the Westphalian system informed by contemporary realities”, his fundamental question for the next American President is: “What is the nature of the values that we seek to advance?” In his conclusion, Kissinger poses four other questions, to be sure:
> 
> “1. What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary alone?
> 2. What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by any multilateral effort?
> 3. What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance?
> 4. What should we not engage in, even if urged by a multilateral group or an alliance?”
> 
> But these are once again operational questions. Strange though it may seem to his critics, it is the question of values that is definitive. Until there is a clear answer to that question – as there generally was for much of the Cold War – the United States will continue to lack a coherent foreign policy, and the chances of a peaceful world order will dwindle towards zero.




We should pay attention to both Henry Kissinger and Niall Ferguson's analysis of what he says.

I think we cannot doubt that:

     1. America is _strategically_ adrift;

     2. A simple change of party in the White House is unlikely to help because the _drift_ is now part of the political process; and

     3. The solution to America's problems is in the hands, exclusively, of the American people ... and some might wonder if they are, in the 21st century, up to the task any more.


----------



## GAP

> The solution to America's problems is in the hands, exclusively, of the American people ... and some might wonder if they are, in the 21st century, up to the task any more.



I think you are exactly right, and no, I don't think the American People are up to the task any more, as they have bought into the rhetoric as much as the politicians have.....


----------



## a_majoor

perhaps the pendulum has swung all the way over, and as it comes back towards the centre, we can see effective action by the American people and their public and private institutions again:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/19/next-up-in-america-the-liberal-retreat/



> *Next Up in America: The Liberal Retreat*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> 
> The Obama administration may represent “Peak Left” in American politics. As a result, what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets.
> 
> As the United States staggers toward the seventh year of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House, a growing disquiet permeates the ranks of the American left. After six years of the most liberal President since Jimmy Carter, the nation doesn’t seem to be asking for a second helping. Even though the multiyear rollout of Obamacare was carefully crafted to put all the popular features up front, delaying less popular changes into the far future, the program remains unpopular. Trust in the fairness and competence of government is pushing toward new lows in the polls, even though the government is now in the hands of forward-looking, progressive Democrats rather than antediluvian Gopers.
> 
> For liberals, these are bleak times of hollow victories (Obamacare) and tipping points that don’t tip. For examples of the latter, think of Sandy Hook, the horrific massacre in Connecticut that Democrats and liberals everywhere believed would finally push the American public toward gun control. Two years later, polls show more Americans than ever before think it’s more important to protect gun access than to promote gun control.
> 
> Sandy Hook isn’t the only example. There was the latest 2014 IPCC report on climate change that was going to end the debate once and for all. The chances for legislative action on climate change in the new Congress: zero or less. There was Ferguson and the Garner videotape showing the fatal chokehold, both of which set off a wave of protests but seem unlikely to change public attitudes about the police. There was the Senate Intelligence Committee “torture report” that was going to settle the issue of treatment of detainees. Again, the polls are rolling in suggesting that the public remains exactly where it was: supportive of “torture” under certain circumstances. And of course there was the blockbuster Rolling Stone article on campus rape at UVA, the story that, before it abruptly collapsed, was going to cement public support for the Obama administration’s aggressive attempt to federalize the treatment of sexual harassment on campuses around the country.
> 
> In all of these cases, liberals got what, from a liberal perspective, appeared to be conclusive evidence that long cherished liberal policy ideas were as correct as liberals have always thought they were. In all of these cases the establishment media conformed to the liberal narrative, inundating the airwaves and flooding the cyberverse with the liberal line. Some of the stories, like the UVA rape story, collapsed. Some, like the Ferguson story, became so complex and nuanced that some of their initial political salience diminished. But even when, as with Ferguson, other follow-up stories seem to reinforce the initial liberal take (the Garner case, for example), the public still doesn’t seem to accept the liberal line or draw the inferences that liberals want it to draw. It’s becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that many Americans will continue to disagree with many liberal policy prescriptions no matter what.
> 
> Shell-shocked liberals are beginning to grasp some inconvenient truths. No gun massacre is horrible enough to change Americans’ ideas about gun control. No UN Climate Report will get a climate treaty through the U.S. Senate. No combination of anecdotal and statistical evidence will persuade Americans to end their longtime practice of giving police officers extremely wide discretion in the use of force. No “name and shame” report, however graphic, from the Senate Intelligence Committee staff will change the minds of the consistent majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they believe that torture is justifiable under at least some circumstances. No feminist campaign will convince enough voters that the presumption of innocence should not apply to those accused of rape.
> 
> These are not the only issues in which, from a left Democratic point of view, the country is overrun with zombies and vampires: policy ideas that Democrats thought had been killed but still restlessly roam the earth. The finale of the George W. Bush presidency was, for many Democrats, conclusive evidence that conservative ideas just don’t work. The post 9/11 Bush foreign policy led to two long and unhappy wars. America had lost the trust of its allies without defeating its enemies. At home, the Bush tax cuts led to an exploding deficit, and the orgy of deregulation (admittedly, much of it dating from the Clinton years) led to the greatest financial crash since World War II and the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression.
> 
> “Could a set of political ideas be more discredited?” liberals ask. The foreign policy failures of the Bush years, they believe, should have killed conservative ideology about America’s role in the world, and the financial crisis, they are certain, should have driven a stake through the heart of conservative economic doctrine. Yet: Here we are, six years into the Age of Obama, and the Tea Party is alive and Occupy is dead.  The Republicans swept the midterm elections both nationally and at the state level—and Hillary Clinton appears more interested in conciliating Wall Street than in fighting it, and more interested in building bridges to conservative foreign policy thinkers than in continuing the Obama foreign policy. (And with even Jimmy Carter lambasting Obama’s Middle East policy as too weak, and the President committing to new troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not clear that even President Obama wants to stay the course.)
> 
> The liberal rout at the level of state and local politics is even more alarming. A wave of Republican Governors in blue Midwestern states (Walker in Wisconsin, Snyder in Michigan, plus the Dem-crushing Kasich in purple Ohio) and large GOP gains in state legislatures across the country point to a widespread reaction against liberal ideas, and lend credence to the idea that, even accounting for the GOP-skewed electorate in off-year elections, the country as a whole is drifting to the right.
> 
> For some, the response is to turn on Obama. He’s not a real liberal at all, some disillusioned liberals say: he’s a technocrat, a trimmer, an elitist, and an inept politician. Some of that is true; President Obama is a limousine liberal, not a lunch-bucket populist. And, despite all those comparisons to Lincoln that swooning liberals made back in 2008, he’s neither a particularly persuasive speaker nor an effective political operative. He is more professor than politician, and more of a natural legislator than a gifted executive.
> 
> But to blame Obama for the crisis of the liberal left is unpersuasive. It was the liberal left who fell hardest for him, who praised him to the skies and who stuck with him longer than anybody else. Even today, Obama’s strongest backing comes from two of the most liberal ingredients in the American melting pot: blacks and Jews. And, from a practical point of view, it is almost inconceivable, despite the cries of “Run, Elizabeth, Run!” emanating from the gentry left, that someone more liberal than President Obama will be sent to the Oval Office anytime soon. It took the unique circumstances of two wars and a financial crash to open a path to the White House for Barack Obama; absent similar circumstances, successful candidates are likely to come from his right for the foreseeable future.
> 
> In that sense the Obama administration may represent “Peak Left” in American politics, and what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets. America is unlikely to go farther to the left than it went in the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crash, and while that wasn’t anywhere near enough of a shift for left-leaning Democrats, the country has already moved on.


----------



## a_majoor

More from WRM on the idea that the "Progressives" have peaked. Indeed the idea of the Progressives being trapped inside their own cocoon and having less and less influence in the outer world has a counterpart in Canada: the split between "Old Canada" east of the Ottawa river and the "New Canada" that encompasses the western part of our nation. The book "The Big Shift" covers the slipping of power from the hands of the "Laurentian Elite" in more detail.

This also fits into my thesis that the old institutions which are the bastions of Progressive power and privilege as described by Mead have been left behind by demographic, economic and social changes. They are unable to grasp the environment outside their doors anymore and so have no relevant solutions to today's problems.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/21/living-large-in-a-shrinking-cocoon/



> *Living Large in a Shrinking Cocoon*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> Never have liberal ideas been so firmly entrenched within America’s core elite institutions. Never have those institutions been so weak and uninfluential.
> 
> These are frustrating times for the American left. Legislative power has slipped from its hands; the states are more Republican than at just about any time in living memory, and as President Obama nears the end of his term, it seems far more likely than otherwise that, Republican or Democrat, his successor will stand well to the right of the incumbent. As I noted in the first essay in the series, the foreign policy disasters and the financial crash of the George W. Bush administration opened a path to the White House for the most liberal President in history and gave Democrats overwhelming majorities in the Senate and the House back in 2008. Jubilant liberals believed that a new era had dawned, and when they weren’t comparing Obama to Lincoln, they were calling him the “Democratic Reagan” who would reset politics for the left just as Reagan once did for the right.
> 
> Six years later, the dream is looking shopworn. President Obama is deeply unpopular, the Democratic majorities are gone with the wind, and poll after poll after poll demonstrates that Obamacare, the Democrats’ signature legislative accomplishment in the Age of Obama, is more of an albatross around the party’s neck than a star in its crown.
> 
> Some of this could change. The slow but persistent improvement in economic conditions has finally begun to register with voters; consumer confidence is up and, if the economy continues to improve through 2016, President Obama’s poll numbers should strengthen. The racial polarization that so tragically spiked in the last three months could gradually fade away. And the concatenation of foreign policy and security disasters from the Libyan anarchy to the series of Syria and Iraq fiascoes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine could look less frightening and less like an implosion of America’s world position in two year’s time. The lame duck could still swagger off the stage in the end.
> 
> But right now that doesn’t look probable, even to liberals. Eric Alterman, one of the left’s most articulate advocates, summarizes the situation with his customary frankness in the Nation:
> 
> The Obama presidency has been a devil’s bargain for Democrats. Despite the considerable policy accomplishments to its credit, the administration’s political impact has been virtually catastrophic. Since Obama’s victory in 2008, Democrats are down seventy seats in the House and fifteen in the Senate, giving an increasingly reactionary Republican Party the power to stymie most if not all of the Democrats’ agenda. But this actually understates the damage. Democrats are now the minority in over two-thirds of the nation’s partisan state legislative chambers, their worst showing in history. In twenty-three of these, Republicans will control the governor’s office, too. (The corresponding number for Democrats is just seven.)
> 
> Alterman cites two core reasons for the disaster. On the one hand, Democrats haven’t recognized that many of the policies they like on “good government” grounds are political poison. In particular, Obamacare and the immigration amnesty are alienating voters:
> 
> The Affordable Care Act and the executive order expanding the rights of undocumented immigrants were certainly the right thing to do from the perspective of Democratic values, but both are politically poisonous at present. Obamacare undermines a key Democratic constituency badly in need of help: labor unions. The immigration order fires up anti-immigrant passion among working-class voters while benefiting an ethnic group—Latinos—whose voter-participation levels remain anemic, even allowing for the restrictive election laws passed by Republicans.
> 
> Beyond that, Alterman argues, the Democrats’ turn to social rather than economic issues (gentry liberalism vs. populism) hasn’t been helpful. Focusing on “immigration, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, gun control, etc.” at a time when real wages are stagnant or declining for most Americans is a recipe for political failure.
> 
> But this analysis, cogent as it is, raises another question: why were liberals so feckless in power? Why did they blow the historic opportunity that the Bush implosion gave them?
> 
> What liberals are struggling to come to grips with today is the enormous gap between the dominant ideas and discourse in the liberal worlds of journalism, the foundations, and the academy on the one hand, and the wider realities of American life on the other. Within the magic circle, liberal ideas have never been more firmly entrenched and less contested. Increasingly, liberals live in a world in which certain ideas are becoming ever more axiomatic and unquestioned even if, outside the walls, those same ideas often seem outlandish.
> 
> Modern American liberalism does its best to suppress dissent and critique (except from the left) at the institutions and milieus that it controls. Dissent is not only misguided; it is morally wrong. Bad thoughts create bad actions, and so the heretics must be silenced or expelled. “Hurtful” speech is not allowed, and so the eccentricities of conventional liberal piety pile up into ever more improbable, ever more unsustainable forms.
> 
> To openly support “torture”, for example, is close to unthinkable in the academy or in the world of serious journalism. For a university professor or a New Yorker writer to say that torture is acceptable under any circumstances is to court marginalization. A great many liberals don’t know anybody who openly supports torture, and a great many liberals are convinced that the concept of torture is so heinous that simply to name and document incidents will lead an aroused public to rally against the practice—and against the political party that allowed it.
> 
> Thus a group of journalists, human rights activists, and others relentlessly pursued allegations of CIA use of torture, not only as an important moral duty but also as an effective political strategy. It flopped. As we’ve seen, the revelations about CIA methods left most Americans still telling pollsters that they favor torture when national security is in question. “Torture” may be unthinkable to well meaning academics and human rights activists, but the argument hasn’t been won—hasn’t really even been engaged—among the broader public. The left silenced and banished critics; it didn’t convert or refute them. The net result of the liberal campaign to “hold the CIA accountable” wasn’t to discredit the Bush administration; the campaign simply undercut claims by liberals that the left can safely be entrusted with security policy. A group of liberal journalists and politicos worked very hard to make Dick Cheney’s day.
> 
> Similarly, the liberal hothouses that so many university campuses are today encourage students to adopt approaches to real life problems that, to say the least, are counterproductive. Take, for example, the recent attempts by law students at Harvard, Georgetown, and Columbia to have their exams postponed due to the stress they suffered as a result of the Ferguson controversy. “This is more than a personal emergency. This is a national emergency,” said the anguished Harvardians asking for an extension. Said the fragile and delicate souls from Georgetown,“We, students of color, cannot breathe…. We charge you to acknowledge that Black Lives Matter.”
> 
> One thinks of the school beneath the sea in Alice in Wonderland, where students were taught “reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils.”
> 
> Fortunately for us all, liberalism didn’t use to be such a pallid and shrinking thing. People like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King were, thank goodness, made of sterner stuff than the frail flowers of the contemporary Ivy League. The people who actually helped black people in American history down through the centuries faced more injustice, brutality, and casual public racism than our delicately and tenderly raised hothouse elites could imagine in their wildest dreams. *Serious people understand that the existence of injustice is a reason to get tougher and work harder, not a reason to whine to the dean about your emotional turmoil.* Truth, Douglass, Marshall, King, and tens of thousands of others knew that the people who want to change the world need to be tougher, smarter, harder working, and stronger than the people who don’t care. This may not be fair, but having emotional meltdowns over it won’t help you or anybody else.
> 
> Are these shrinking violets and sensitive souls really preparing for careers in the law? If you are a lawyer and a grand jury returns an unjust indictment against your client, are you going to come down with a disabling attack of the vapors that keeps you from concentrating on your legal work as you struggle with the unfairness of it all? If so, the legal profession is not for you. You need another and less challenging profession, perhaps involving the preparation of fair trade herbal teas for elderly Quakers in a quiet suburb somewhere.
> 
> But liberals today face more problems than cocooning. They face the problem that, even as the ideas in liberal institutions become ever more elaborate, intricate, and unsuited to the actual political world, liberal institutions are losing more of their power to shape public opinion and national debate. Forty years ago, the key liberal institutions were both less distanced from the rest of American society and significantly more able to drive the national agenda. The essentially likeminded, mainstream liberals who wrote and produced the major network news shows more or less controlled the outlets from which a majority of Americans got the news. There was no Drudge Report or Fox News in those days, much less an army of pesky fact checkers on the internet. When liberal media types decided that something was news, it was news.
> 
> If the Sandy Hook massacre had taken place in 1975, it’s likely that the liberal take on gun violence would not have been challenged. But these days, an army of bloggers and a counter-establishment of policy wonks in right leaning think tanks are ready to respond to extreme events like Sandy Hook. After the 2014 midterm, Gaffy Gifford’s old congressional seat will be filled by a pro-gun rights Republican, and polls show support for “gun rights” at historic highs. Liberal strategies don’t work anymore in part because liberal institutions are losing their power.
> 
> Meanwhile, many liberals are in a tough emotional spot. They live in liberal cocoons, read cocooning news sources, and work in professions and milieus where liberal ideas are as prevalent and as uncontroversial as oxygen. They are certain that these ideas are necessary, important and just—and they can’t imagine that people have solid reasons for disagreeing with them. Yet these ideas are much less well accepted outside the bubble—and the bubbles seem to be shrinking. After the horrors of the George W. Bush administration, liberals believed that the nightmare of conservative governance had vanished, never to return. Aided by the immigration amnesty, an irresistible army of minority voters would enshrine liberal ideas into law and give Democrats a permanent lock on the machinery of an ever more powerful state.
> 
> That no longer looks likely; we can all look forward to eloquent laments, wringing of hands, impassioned statements of faith as the realization sinks in. There will be reeling, there will be writhing, and there will be fainting in coils. In the end, we can hope that liberalism will purge itself of the excesses and indulgences that come from life in the cocoon. The country needs a forward looking and level headed left; right now what we have is a mess.


----------



## a_majoor

A long article from the American Interest, which goes a long way to explaining "why" Americans seem so stupid in their strategic choices; they simply fail to understand who they are dealing with. In many cases this really makes no difference, since the United States simply dwarfs the vast majority of other nations in economic, military and social (soft) power, but once we rise to the level of "civilizations" in the Samuel Huntington sense, then the mismatch isn't nearly as great, and *we* are now dealing with entities that take generations or more to change. Ancient history tells us that things really don't change that much: 
Part 1

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/23/know-thy-enemy/



> *ANCIENT WISDOM
> Know Thy Enemy*
> JAKUB GRYGIEL
> The modern Western penchant for trusting in the equal rationality of all is strategic folly. Aeschylus understood this well.
> 
> Good strategy requires a sound understanding of one’s rivals. A rival in any walk of life is, in a sense, an interlocutor. To engage him effectively in debate one must understand his speech and reasoning patterns. Without that knowledge, conversation is at best pointless, at worst self-defeating. So it is in strategy. It is futile to engage in competition with a rival power without having at least an inkling about his thoughts, fears, and desires.
> 
> The modern Western penchant for trusting in the equal rationality of all suggests otherwise. According to this conceit, there is no reason to plumb the nature of an enemy’s thinking because it is no different in essence from one’s own. But this is wrong. A rival’s response to one’s strategy is not predictable as a simply rational and universal reaction that can be generalized and grasped with relative ease. Rival states or groups respond to similar actions in different ways based on their culture, worldview, history, and the proclivities of their leaders. Good strategy, as Bernard Brodie once put it, “presupposes good anthropology and good sociology.”
> 
> One of the earliest examples we have of “good anthropology”—or rather, of being able to put oneself in the mind of the enemy—is in a 5th-century BCE Greek tragedy, The Persians, written by Aeschylus. (The translation used here is from the 2008 Loeb edition.) This drama recounts the moment when the Persian court and queen learn of Emperor Xerxes’s defeat by the Greeks in the 480 BCE naval battle near Salamis. (For an excellent description and analysis of the battle, see Barry Strauss’s The Battle of Salamis.) It ends with the arrival of the Persian king himself, in rags and with few men left, lamenting his enormous loss “in triple banks of oars”—a reference to the fearsome Greek triremes. The genius of the tragedy resides in part from the fact that it is told from the Persian perspective, with no Greek characters present. It thus stands as a Greek assessment of the Persian enemy’s mindset and political regime, and a brilliant one at that.
> 
> The Greeks defeated the Persians because of Aeschylus. I do not mean, of course, that Aeschylus alone clobbered the “barbarians” coming from the east. But he was certainly an active participant in the wars that pitted the vast and wealthy Persian empire against a collection of motley Greek city-states. He fought at Marathon in 490 BCE as a foot soldier opposing the armies of Darius I. The battle stopped the Persian onslaught in a lopsided victory for the Athenians (according to Herodotus, about 200 Athenians, among then Aeschylus’ brother, were killed while more than 6,000 Persians perished). As a middle aged and by then famous poet, Aeschylus is also likely to have fought at Salamis, probably waiting on shore to finish off Persian sailors seeking safety from their sunken ships.
> 
> Aeschylus’s material contributions to the war effort were likely on par with those of thousands of other Greeks. But his real martial input was different. In The Persians he shows a unique ability to put himself inside the Persian court, describing the wishes and fears of those powerful eastern “barbarians”, as well as sensing the dangers that arose for them from their defeat in Greece. Besides the haunting beauty of the tragedy, The Persians is an exercise in playing “red team”, assessing the enemy from one’s own perspective and surmising what is impossible to know for certain even with the best intelligence: the fears and dreams, the despair and hope, of the rival.
> 
> After all, an appraisal of material capabilities can only quantify the tangible assets of an enemy, but not his mind. No high-level spy or communication intercept can figure out an enemy’s thinking either; “signals intelligence” is always vulnerable to distortion and manipulation. Even when trustworthy it requires proper interpretation and analysis. It is not surprising, therefore, that we often fall back on measuring the enemy’s armies, economies, and populations as indicators of what he may achieve. In such an assessment of material variables, the implicit logic is: If the enemy can, he will; and if he cannot, he won’t. In modern academic parlance, we use capabilities as proxies of intentions.
> 
> This is a weak foundation to rest upon nowadays, as it was 2,500 years ago. The Persians did exactly that with the Greeks, and they lost. As the messenger bringing the bad news of the defeat to the Persian court puts it, “so far as numbers are concerned, the fleet of the barbarians would have prevailed.” As we know, despite their calculations, the barbarians did not prevail. On the other hand, Aeschylus indicates that the Greeks, or at least some Greeks such as the Athenian leader Themistocles, evaluated their enemies according to different metrics and, above all, were capable of understanding the Persian mindset. The Greek advantage was not material but intellectual.
> 
> The proof that the Greeks had assessed the Persians better than the other way around was the Battle of Salamis itself. Obviously, the outcome was a stunning Greek success, but a martial victory can be attributed to a whole host of reasons, including luck, rather than exclusively to a better anthropological understanding of the enemy. It is the Greeks’ deception of Xerxes before the battle that shows their intellectual advantage over him. As Aeschylus recounts through the words of the Persian messenger who arrived at court, the night before the battle a Greek from the Athenian fleet came to the Persian camp and said that the Greeks would try to escape with their ships before dawn. Both Herodotus and later on Plutarch recount a similar story. Herodotus adds that the Greek messenger was Sicinnus, a slave of the Athenian leader Themistocles, sent to deceive the Persians but also, by encouraging the Persian fleet to surround the Greek ships, to commit the multilateral and perhaps fraying alliance of the Greeks to battle.
> 
> In any case, the Greek deception of their enemy succeeded because Xerxes, and perhaps the Persians in general, thought that an alliance of semi-equals, such as the one the Greek city states put together, had little chance of maintaining unity in the face of Persian might. The Persians ruled over their subordinate groups, while the Greeks had to negotiate with each other. Xerxes naturally thought that his way of diplomatic management, based on autocratic rule, was superior, and so he was easily convinced by Sicinnus that the Greeks were a motley rabble of competing cities, eager to save their own skin at the expense of their neighbors. After all, he knew that without the iron fist of Persian power the Egyptian, Ionian, and Phoenician contingents would perhaps have withdrawn to their own lands. The Ionians had revolted a few years before, supported in part by Greek cities. Xerxes, projecting these thoughts to the other side, thought a similar dynamic must have been at work in the Greek coalition, which lacked the god-like rule of an emperor. Autocrats typically doubt that unity is possible without the fear of imperial command.
> 
> Confident that the Greeks were indeed trying to escape, Xerxes ordered his fleet to enter the straits near Salamis. The Persians spent the night awake and alert, eager to attack those among the Greeks who were expected to try to run away under cover of night. Dawn found the Persians tired and shocked at the sight of the Greeks ready to fight them in an environment that minimized the numerical advantage of the barbarian fleet. The Persians had been fooled and suffered a massive naval defeat.
> 
> No wonder that in The Persians Aeschylus has a poor opinion of Xerxes. Themistocles was able to deceive Xerxes because the latter massively misjudged the Greeks. Themistocles instead understood perfectly the mentality of the Persian, and put it to good use. The Persian emperor was guilty of having committed both a strategic and a tactical mistake that cost him dearly – and both mistakes stemmed from his poor assessment of the enemy. The strategic mistake was to invade Greece in the first place. To make that point, the Greek poet evokes the ghost of Darius I, Xerxes’s father. Darius had suffered his share of defeats, notably in the plain of Marathon. From that disaster he learned that the Greeks appeared divided, weak, and poor but when pushed to the brink were capable of great feats of military valor and political acumen. It was better to let them be. Moreover, when invaded by a large army, Greece fought back “by starving to death a multitude that is too vastly numerous.” Living off the land was not feasible for an enormous army in a relatively confined space of the Greek peninsula. Xerxes, however, was too arrogant to understand this and was eager to demonstrate that he was more than a “stay-at-home warrior” (in the words of his mother, the queen).


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/01/23/know-thy-enemy/



> This larger mistake was compounded by the tactical error, a result of Greek deception, to fight a battle at sea under conditions that favored the well-trained Athenian fleet. As the Chorus of the Persian court puts it, “Xerxes handled everything unwisely, he and his sea-boats.”
> 
> Aeschylus possessed two additional insights into the Persian mindset. First, he suggests that an autocratic regime, such as the one headed by Xerxes, has limited accountability. This influences its strategy. As the queen mother argues while waiting for news, were her son Xerxes to succeed, “he would be a very much admired man, but were he to fail—well, he is not accountable to the community, and if he comes home safe he remains ruler of this land.” An emperor is the author of victories, but not of defeats, attributed to the meddling of antagonistic gods or the poor performance of incompetent subordinates. Of course, once the news of the rout arrives, neither she nor the ghost of her husband Darius can fully exonerate Xerxes. But Aeschylus has already made the point: Autocrats and despots take risks that leaders accountable to their populations, or even to an elite class, would not. Despots are dangerous because they are unmoored from political constraints, and their advisers are often sycophantic courtiers rather than wise counselors. Perhaps more importantly, the costs of defeat are borne by imperial subjects, as the long list of Persian names presented by Aeschylus (49 in total) shows, not the emperor himself.
> 
> The defeated autocrat will, of course, be distraught. The ending of The Persians is a powerful and quick back-and-forth between Xerxes and the Chorus, full of wailing and despairing. But there is little self-examination. The more levelheaded analysis is rather done by Darius’s ghost, who returns to the underground before the arrival of the bedraggled Xerxes. Xerxes can only muster despondency in the face of the fact that he has lost so many of his “defenders” and “escorts.” (The Chorus adds that they were also “friends”, but Xerxes may have understood better that emperors have few friends!) Despair is an act of emoting, not of analysis; nor does it admit of unfulfilled responsibility.
> 
> The second insight of Aeschylus concerns the nature of imperial fears. The Persian Empire did not collapse after Salamis; indeed, it outlived Athenian democracy and the relatively brief harmony that the Greeks managed to achieve in facing the barbarian onslaught. But Aeschylus points out that the power of Persia, or for that matter of any empire, was as much in its image of power as in its material capabilities—and that image had been damaged at Salamis. The Chorus observes that after the defeat one ought to expect a fraying of imperial ties.
> 
> Not long now will those in the land of Asia
> remain under Persian rule,
> nor continue to pay tribute
> under the compulsion of their lords,
> nor fall on their faces to the ground
> in awed obeisance; for the strength of the monarchy
> has utterly vanished.
> 
> The weak spot of a despotic regime or an empire is that it is held together by whatever reservoir of fear it can muster. That fear is a mindset generated by an expectation of retribution rather than by the constant application of power against rebellious subjects. Such an expectation will understandably decrease when imperial forces have taken a hit in some corner of the empire, however distant. That is why the Persian Chorus can claim that the island of Salamis “holds the power of Persia in its blood-soaked soil.”
> 
> Aeschylus’s prediction—or, more precisely, the despair of the Persian Chorus—that Persia would fall apart did not come true, even though various regions under Persian rule did rebel. On the contrary, it was Greece that became more divided after the Persian Wars, particularly in the form of a long and bloody war between Athens and Sparta. But Aeschylus was not forecasting history; he was describing the worries of the imperial court and the fears of the Persian enemy. Whether those fears came to be exactly as imagined or not is in many ways irrelevant because people often act on the basis of such fears. Understanding their fears is therefore more important than figuring out whether they are justified. In this case, Aeschylus suggests that a despotic regime is always attuned to its survival and, when defeated, is likely to focus inward to assuage that fear. This may be also a veiled justification for why the Greeks chose not to purse the defeated armies of Xerxes, lest the Persians turned back in a moment of courage out of despair. Pushed too hard, their fear of internal collapse resulting from the loss of reputation may have forced the Persians to remain in Greece.
> 
> But it also suggests that the best way to keep the Persians in check was to stoke rebellion within their empire, as the Greeks had done to a degree with the Ionians and later on would do with the Egyptians. The strategic advice implied by Aeschylus was that, unless forced by a hostile army invading their lands, the Greek cities were better off not seeking a direct confrontation with a powerful empire like Persia, but should stoke Persia’s fears that its imperial subordinates may “no longer keep their tongue under guard.”
> 
> Aeschylus is not a triumphalist. He does not shy from celebrating, albeit briefly, the Greeks who were eager to fight because their freedom was at stake. They were, after all, “not called slaves or subjects to any man” as the Persians admit. And the Greeks at Salamis fought as one, defending together their liberty from barbarian oppression. (Interestingly, Aeschylus names no individual Greeks, suggesting perhaps that naval victories were products of a well-ordered fleet rather than of individual exploits. A naval defeat results in many individuals dead, with a list of Persians killed, but a naval victory has no hero, with no Greek celebrated.) But, despite this recognition of martial and political superiority, there is little triumphalism in the tragedy.
> 
> What is surprising is that, with poetic license but sine ira et studio, he generates enormous sympathy for the Persians. Aeschylus, a member of the victorious army, can summon an astounding capacity to pity the defeated enemy—an enemy that also almost two decades before the production of the tragedy caused the death of his own brother in the fields of Marathon. That capacity to put himself on the Persian side, to imagine and intuit rather than to touch and calculate the deepest emotions of the enemy, is not a symptom of relativism. Nor, as modern academics so often do, is it something to be criticized as a denigration of the “Oriental Other”, full of stereotypes and negative traits ascribed to the “barbarians.” Aeschylus with his Persians is an exemplar of the Greek intellectual capacity to understand their enemy in ways that transcended a simple calculation of the “correlation of forces.” That is what gave the Greeks an advantage. They won because of Aeschylus; that is, they won because of their ability to understand the Persian court and emperor. They beat their enemy’s mind before they engaged his forces.
> 
> Another way to put this is that a great power risks defeat when it lacks figures like Aeschylus, poets who can feel the enemy before they face him in battle. Competition and war are not driven by mathematical equations but are a clash of minds and wills, fears and desires, often only loosely connected to the material capabilities at hand. In the geopolitical competitions that we are facing and are likely to face in the future, do we have our own Aeschyluses?
> 
> Jakub Grygiel is the George H.W. Bush Senior Associate Professor of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.


----------



## Brad Sallows

Another explanation is that America seems stupid in its strategic choices because it is divided.  At least two ways in which this could happen: divided (paralyzed) legislative branch unable to make coherent policy (if the legislative branch is in control); or an imprudent executive branch going its own way without the real consent of much of the nation (if the executive branch is in control).

Going over some de Tocqueville, I compare what he observed (or thought he observed) with what is the case today and conclude that the balance of legislative and executive power in the US has shifted so that the executive is more like the monarchy of his time (powerful).  The legislative branch is divided, but is not the root of policy problems because it is not exercising power (division prevents it from doing so, which effectively leaves the executive branch in charge).  The executive exercises power; factionalism deters the legislative branch from exerting sufficient unified resolve to reassert its constitutional prerogatives.  If the executive channeled the general sense of the nation it might be effective; an executive channeling even what common ground can be found in a divided nation might be effective.  An executive branch charting its own course is unlikely to judge well, is likely to make mistakes born of ideological stubbornness, and is likely to lack more than a minority of real popular support.

Uncharitable summary: the US is f*<ked because the legislative branch is often paralyzed and an uninspired man who takes criticism poorly and can not compromise is in charge doing his own thing.  The first strategy for a divided America should either be to find an outstanding executive leader, or for the legislative branch to reassert itself.  The latter is more likely to find and serve the common interests of the nation; the former is a crap shoot.


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## tomahawk6

The founding fathers were wise beyond measure.They had lived their lives under the tyranny of the Crown and did not want that for the new country.Throw off one tyrant for another.The division of powers was pure genius that has stood the test of time.Ulimately the power to elect their represenatives has placed the citizenry in ultimate control of the nation.Obama was elected by a margin of 51% twice.Yet from the outset we had a Republican House and a Democrat Senate which has put a brake on Obama's plan to remake America.An uneasy citizenry has now put the Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress.If Obama wants to accomplish anything then he will have to compromise or not.The final two years should be interesting.


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## a_majoor

While it is difficult to argue Brad's point, I think this is the result of a number of trends:

1. While most elected legislators in the early years were "self made" men who saw a turn in politics as a sort of public service or a way of rounding out their credentials, over the years they have been replaced by a class of "professional" politicians, who often have had no "real world" experience to speak of.

2. The exercise of power is corrupting, and politicians (especially long term ones) know all the various levers to pull (or create their own) to feather their nests. This leads to a political class which is quite oblivious or even at odds to the stated wishes of the electorate (hence the low regard that politicians have).

3. The current political parties and ideologies are less and less relevant to todays issues, and social institutions, demographics, technologies and economies have changed to such an extent that the current parties literally have no relevant answers to today's issues. Much like the Federalist and Whig parties in the United States (or the Unionist and Liberal parties in the UK, or the Progressive and Social Credit parties in Canada), the current Democrat and Republican parties may simply disappear (something which was breathtakingly fast in the US; especially see how quickly the Whigs were eclipsed).

So how to proceed? The answer isn't obvious. New political movements like "Occupy" and the TEA Party movement exist on a scale large enough to notice but not yet large enough to actually eclipse the old guard, and suites of technological and social tools which allow people to become disconnected from the older "grids" of power and influence and hook up in new "grids" of their own making to bypass the conventional gatekeepers (Libertarianism as a Social Movement) are reshaping society in ways that are quite unfamiliar to the current ruling elites and the institutions that support them, but have not reached their full fruition yet.


----------



## CougarKing

Thoughts, Thucydides? Perhaps Obama is hoping for too much for his legacy to be viewed this way?

Yahoo News



> *How Barack Obama wants to be the Ronald Reagan of the left
> Obama hoping to use economic recovery to reshape the political debate for decades
> *
> (...SNIPPED)
> 
> Instead, Obama defeated Romney to win reelection, and in 2015, the White House has moved increasingly aggressively to take credit for the recovery. Unemployment is at 5.7 percent, the lowest since June 2008. Real GDP grew at 5 percent in the third quarter of 2014 (although it went back down to 2.6 percent in the fourth). Even the federal budget deficit — once nearing 10 percent of the economy — has been slashed to less than 3 percent, though it is projected to begin growing again in 2018. The nation’s economic rebound from the worst crisis since the Great Depression was a long time in coming, and as evidenced by Romney’s speech in 2012, many knew it was in some respects inevitable.
> 
> But it happened on Obama’s watch, and — as the administration sees it — the president now has an opportunity to recast the way that liberal economic policies are thought of for a generation.
> 
> *“Because the economy did well under Reagan — even though some of the work was done before Reagan got there — we believed in this country for a long time that it was less government, less taxes is good for economic growth,” Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said recently. “And we have been battling that conception, and Democrats were forced to play on that field for a very long time.
> 
> “We want to change the field,” Pfeiffer said.*
> 
> Obama in 2012, like Romney, was looking forward to a post-election economic rebound, Pfeiffer said in an interview with The Huffington Post just before Christmas. Before Obama defeated Romney, the president had been nervous about Romney getting credit for the economic growth that the White House could see coming on the horizon.
> 
> "That would be super-annoying," Pfeiffer said. “The thing that worried [Obama] most about losing was the idea that he would lose, Romney would come in, the economy would now do what it’s doing, because it’s on a trajectory."
> 
> Obama has often talked in glowing terms about Reagan, the 40th president and a conservative icon. Obama has expressed admiration for Reagan’s iconic status — for the change he represented and the symbolic figure he became.
> 
> “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Obama said during the heat of his 2008 Democratic primary showdown with Hillary Clinton.
> 
> This may be his most Reaganesque play of all: riding the coattails of an economy that came out of crisis, and using it to bolster liberal ideas about economics and governance, as well as his own legacy.
> 
> *****
> 
> The 30,000-foot view of the Obama years that he hopes is taking shape — despite the fact that the recovery has been sluggish, and despite criticism from the right that Obama’s policies have slowed it down — is that he came into office with the economy in a huge hole, and that while he was president, it came back to life. The debate will rage for decades over whether the recovery was because of or in spite of Obama’s policies. But it’s quite possible that many people won’t care about what the economists decide, and will look only at the topline indicators, GDP growth and unemployment. The first line has gone up. The second has gone down.
> 
> *But what really caused the recovery, and how much credit should Obama’s policies get for the nation’s brightened economic mood?
> 
> First off, there are the “normal forces of cyclical recovery,” sparked as “you work off the normal forces that led to the recession in the first place,” according to Joel Prakken, a senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based independent research firm that sells economic forecasts to a broad range of customers, including the Obama White House.*
> 
> The excess supply in the housing market and major “imbalances in household balance sheets” had to go through a natural deleveraging process. In other words, people who had taken out too many loans on their mortgage or bought houses or other assets they couldn’t afford were going to have to tighten their belts and take some losses.
> 
> “The further that stuff is in the rearview mirror, the more buoyant the economy is,” Prakken said.
> 
> The government could soften the blow for some, but that was about it. And in fact, Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — to help people avoid foreclosure — reached many fewer homeowners than the White House hoped to and saw a large number of mortgages that were renegotiated go into foreclosure anyway.
> 
> *Second, there are phenomena that have little to do with government policy, such as the domestic energy boom, which was taking off in 2012 when Romney made his remarks in St. Louis. At that time, the shale and natural gas revolution had been ongoing for a few years, but was not widely recognized.*
> 
> Oil was around $100 a barrel all year in 2012. The price has dropped in half since then. That’s in part because over the last six years, domestic oil production in the United States has nearly doubled. Rising fuel- efficiency standards have reduced demand, particularly in Europe. OPEC nations, as a result, have had to look to Asian markets — where prices are lower — to pick up the slack. OPEC has also declined to prop up prices by decreasing supply, hoping to squeeze U.S. producers into reducing their production.
> 
> Oil prices can be expected to rebound as production slows due to falling prices, but in 2015, American consumers could see average savings of about $750 due to lower energy costs, according to a U.S. government estimate. Along with the quickened GDP and lowered unemployment, that’s a big reason why there is more optimism around the economy than there has been in a while.
> 
> And the economic impact of the fracking revolution in the U.S. is much broader than simply what American drivers feel at the pump.
> 
> “The increase in domestic production has reduced imports by more than $100 billion a year,” said Prakken. “That’s like a $100 billion tax cut to the U.S. economy, and it’s more or less permanent.”
> 
> The lower cost of energy is also increasing manufacturing in the U.S. and creating new jobs, although some of those jobs are already being offset by layoffs in the energy sector because of the cratering price of oil.
> 
> Without the energy explosion, Prakken said, “It would have been a much deeper recession [after the 2008 crisis], a bigger drop in GDP, and you would have had slower GDP growth in the recovery.”
> 
> *Third, there is the role that government action has played.*
> 
> Jared Bernstein, the top economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2011, is one of the most prominent voices to argue that the Obama White House did a lot to help the economy.
> 
> “Today’s economic revival was, in the end, a victory of the technocrats,” Bernstein wrote in The Washington Post a few days after Obama’s State of the Union address.
> 
> “The lesson of the recovery is this: In crucial areas of the economy, we have the historical knowledge to diagnose what went wrong, and when we undertake the prescribed policy responses, they work like they’re supposed to. Conversely, when we fail to apply what we know, we hurt the economy,” Bernstein wrote. “The Recovery Act, the financial and auto bailouts, Federal Reserve policy, and Obamacare are examples of applying the known hydraulics to achieve the intended effects.”
> 
> Certainly, the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy — keeping interest rates low and monetizing the big banks — has led to stock market growth and has been great for the wealthy. Of course, it has also arguably increased income inequality. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own 61.9 percent of all publicly traded stocks.
> 
> *****
> 
> (...SNIPPED)


----------



## cupper

I think it was a case that the economic recovery was more due to cyclical forces than anything else. Regardless of your political bent, I believe that the recovery came about in spite of the efforts, or lack there of, of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government.

Which makes you wonder just how much faster, and how much further along the US would be had there been any amount of cooperation between the two branches. 

And all this in spite of the economic downs and doldrums of the rest of the world.


----------



## tomahawk6

As yet there is no recovery which is why the labor numbers have been skewed.It should be a huge campaign issue.Another will be foreign policy.I look forward to a Republican President.


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## cupper

Ah, the silly season is starting to warm up. Looking forward it all once again. It's been far too long. :nod:


----------



## a_majoor

The American Interest talks about how *we* in the west have a massive edge in economic, political, social (soft) and military (hard) power; but have generally failed to harness it. There are various opportunities for an engaged Western Alliance to literally "change the world" without a great deal of blood and treasure (mostly enough blood and treasure to keep the competition from spilling over their borders and inflicting their brands of mayhem on the rest of the world, while they are contained, their own internal contradictions will eat away at them while Western soft power applies its seductive appeal to the rest of the world; a combination that will break brittle authoritarian regimes if done right). Of course, this requires real leadership and vision, something lacking across a broad swath of Western "elites", while alternative social, political and economic structures within the West itself are still developing and maturing:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/02/14/the-open-ukrainian-society-and-its-enemies/

(Part 1)


> *The Open Ukrainian Society and Its Enemies*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> Before the West can develop a Ukraine policy, it must have a Ukraine strategy. Achieving what we want and need in Ukraine, thwarting Russia’s revisionist program and resuming progress toward a safer and more democratic world system, will take not just a concerted effort, but also a smart one.
> 
> The American debate on Ukraine these days is dominated by the question of whether or not we should be arming the embattled republic. The usual hawks are saying we must send weaponry and trainers ASAP; the usual doves  caution that doing so may lead to escalation. This is the wrong debate to be having; the West’s biggest problem with Russia isn’t a lack of weaponry in the Donbas. It’s the lack of a sound strategy for dealing with the threat that Putin poses not only to Ukraine but to the coherence of the European Union and to the broader allied project of building a liberal world order.
> 
> The West has been caught off guard by Putin because it underestimated the Russian capacity and will for mischief and overestimated its own strength and coherence. This is still to some degree a problem: We are still underestimating the damage that Russia can do to us. The EU is much more vulnerable than many people grasp. The euro project has divided Europe’s north from its south, and the still-evolving euro crisis has the potential both to paralyze European policymaking for years to come and to shake the foundations of the European order. Most NATO members are not fulfilling their obligations on military spending, and Germany’s political appetite for taking on expensive projects on behalf of foreign states is diminished, to say the least.
> 
> The West’s distractions and divisions created an opportunity for Russia, a weak and declining power with very poor longterm prospects, to catch the stronger West off guard and pose a significant challenge to the liberal order that the West wants to build. But Putin’s ugly and brutal invasion of a peaceful neighboring state isn’t just a problem for the West. It is also a historic opportunity. The future of Putin’s Russia is as much at stake here as the future of Ukraine, and Putin has quite unintentionally given the West a second chance to promote the construction of a genuinely democratic and prosperous Russia.
> 
> Despite its problems, the West is much richer, much bigger and enormously more powerful than Vlad the Invader and the ramshackle state he has built. Putin has rashly challenged us to a contest in which the odds are heavily against him. Our job isn’t to respond to his military probes in the Donbas as much as it is to grasp the nature of our advantages and to bring the immense advantages of the West into play in ways that demonstrate to Russia that the path Putin has chosen is a historical dead end. We didn’t beat the Soviet Union on the battlefield; we beat it by forcing the Soviets leadership to realize their utter inability to compete economically, technologically and ultimately militarily against the kind of open and dynamic society the western world built after World War Two. Putin, from a much weaker position and with a much less coherent set of ideas and institutions, has challenged us to another round of Tear Down That Wall. Dealing with his challenge will be a much less all-consuming and dangerous enterprise than dealing with the empire that Stalin built, but deal with it we must.
> 
> Our goal here is, especially by the standards of the Cold War, a simple and attainable one. If a united West can help Ukraine become a stable, prosperous and democratic country, then not only will Putin’s challenge to Ukraine ultimately fail, but he will be very hard put to hold onto power in Russia.
> 
> Helping Ukraine to follow Poland’s trajectory toward stable prosperity is not a trivial task, but it will not be as forbidding (or as expensive) as many fear. For different reasons, both the EU and the United States are in something of a funk. The morale and self confidence of the EU has been undermined by the euro catastrophe, and by the increasing difficulties of bringing the Balkans into the EU. Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania: these are not names that fill European politicians and officials with a sense of joy and accomplishment. And in the United States we have our own scars: words like Iraq and Afghanistan don’t fill Americans with a longing to go out and build democracies abroad.
> 
> Many people look at the situation in Ukraine and draw the despairing conclusion that even without Russian meddling there is not much the West can do to help. The 25 years since 1990 have been characterized by a continuing failure to build a competent state or strong economy. Anyway, say the pessimists, nation building by well-intentioned outsiders is a fool’s game. The oligarchs who have looted Ukraine since 1990 will divert any Western aid and investment to Ukraine to Switzerland and the other black holes of international finance where pinstriped bankers help kleptocrats and narco-traffickers hide their ill-gotten gains.
> 
> Pessimists look at nation-building in Ukraine and remember the old joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. (Answer: Just one, but the light bulb has to want to change.)
> 
> Fair enough, but this time the light bulb wants to change. There is a new Ukraine. Millions of ordinary Ukrainians see in Putin’s brutality and lies the threat of a return to Soviet living, and they don’t want to go back. The refugees fleeing the Donbas and Crimea, and the daily news of attacks by fascist thugs and criminal gangs in the east have had a powerful and even transformative effect on Ukrainian society.
> 
> The new Ukraine has a kind of leadership that Ukraine has never had before. A new generation of well trained, well educated Ukrainians, many with experience in the West, are ready, willing and able to rebuild Ukraine. Ukrainians are willing to do the nation building themselves. What the West needs to do is to help Ukraine do what a critical mass of Ukrainians already really want to do for themselves: they want to take the Polish road rather than the Putinist one.
> 
> Good strategy is about using the resources you have to achieve your goals and about orchestrating your policies to achieve the largest possible gains with the lowest risks and costs. From this point of view, helping the New Ukraine beat back the Russian challenge offers the West some unique opportunities: We can not only frustrate and weaken our enemies (Putin and the fascists and mafiosos most closely linked to him have made it abundantly clear that they hate us and seek to do us ill) and help our Ukrainian friends: we can strengthen the West as a whole. We can help the EU overcome some of its internal problems, renew a common sense of purpose among the members of the Atlantic Alliance and advance our core values and interests worldwide.
> 
> The cost isn’t zero, but, wisely done, the cost of an effective Ukraine strategy is reasonable in its own right—and a lot cheaper than coping with the kind of Russia and Europe that we would face if Putin gets what he wants. Here are some the main things to keep in mind:
> 
> First, as Dan Drezner writes in the Washington Post, one of Putin’s goals is to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe. We can and should make clear to him that this isn’t going to happen. In fact, we can go farther. The United States was losing interest in Europe before Putin’s attack. Whether we were pivoting to Asia, waging the terror wars in the Middle East, or daydreaming about a return to isolationist peace and quiet, Americans left, right and center were united in the belief that Europe’s problems were not a priority for the United States. Thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Americans are taking another look at Europe and we are disturbed by what we see. Between the euro implosion, the Russian threat and the rise of murdering religious fanatics across the EU, it’s clear that Americans need to re-engage. Putin and his cronies need to understand that their own foolish actions have revived the transatlantic alliance and activism that stymied Moscow in the Cold War. Americans and Europeans, including valuable new allies like Poland and the Baltic states who understand the Russians very well, need to think about and work on Ukraine together. The stronger our alliance becomes, the more isolated Russia is, and the more of a failure Putin and his allies will know themselves to be.
> 
> And how should a reviving Atlantic Alliance help the New Ukraine emerge? While we should not rule out military aid from training to arms deliveries, that’s not where we should start. Military measures strain the western alliance and to some degree play into the kind of scenario Putin likes. Our mission is to hold the alliance together and take the battle to terrain where Putin is weak and the West is at its best. We don’t want to say or do anything that would suggest to Putin that he doesn’t have to worry about Ukrainian forces gaining new capacities and weapons, and there could well come a time when weapons deliveries could play a vital role in a coherent western strategy for Ukraine, but neither arms nor debates about arms belong at the center of Western policy right now.
> 
> The first big part of the strategy of helping the New Ukraine flourish is financial aid. Some of this is already happening; between the IMF and some European and American loan guarantees and aid packages, up go $40 billion has been pledged to Kiev over the next four years. This is a good start, and is evidence that western institutions are more robust than many of our enemies want to believe. More, Ukraine’s new government and a civil society movement that knows it will have to fight hard and sacrifice are embracing proposed IMF reforms rather than fighting them. But there is much more to do, and much of this can be done by using international and European institutions creatively—and in ways that help crisis hit European economies that are suffering not only because of the euro crisis but also because of the Russia sanctions. One approach would be to create a mutually beneficial system of credits that Ukraine could use to purchase needed goods from Eurozone countries—stimulating their economies and creating jobs where Europe badly needs help, but also helping Ukraine get a leg up. Again, this unifies the West rather than divides it. The snake-bitten economies of southern Europe are desperate for some economic stimulus—and Ukraine is desperate for access to western goods and services. Put France, Italy and Spain in a position to benefit from Western aid to Ukraine, and give companies across Europe and North America the chance to replace business lost to Russia sanctions, and the politics of aiding Ukraine begin to get easier. Crafted intelligently, relatively modest American contributions could help open up a very substantial channel of effective aid while promoting EU cooperation and easing tensions among some of our most important and valued allies.
> 
> Meanwhile, as part of an effort to strengthen our alliances and the European Union, the United States should be engaging with Italy, France, Portugal and Spain to think about ways we can offer some constructive help to these old friends and partners now trapped in a difficult situation. Stepping up to the plate for your friends when they really need you is the kind of thing a responsible and forward looking country ought to do, and some of our best friends in the world badly need us right now. Could we offer temporary work visas for qualified college grads in countries where talented young people can’t get work? Can we find ways to sweeten the proposed EU-US free trade agreement in ways that would help these countries rebuild? A cohesive, confident and outward looking Europe is extremely important to the United States; even as we address the Russian challenge we need to be strengthening and renewing the transatlantic relationships that have made the Atlantic community an unparalleled force for prosperity and peace in the post World War Two world.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2:



> Putin has invaded Ukraine in the hopes of weakening Europe and the Atlantic Community; the best riposte is for the West to work collaboratively to strengthen them.
> 
> The next big element of the strategy has to do with making the Ukrainian state effective. Putin hates and fears the idea of a strong and well functioning Ukrainian state; ironically, it is his own folly that has created the best opportunity in 100 years for Ukrainians to build the kind of state that can safeguard their independence. There is already a critical mass of New Ukrainians, people who are ready, willing and able to break with the past. These veterans of Maidan and more than a year of intense domestic political struggle and foreign war do not want to see another opportunity lost. These are people who hate the old, corrupt way of doing things, people who are willing to do what it takes to move towards a more Western way of life, people who want to see their country do what its most successful neighbors have done. Our core mission in Ukraine is to ally with these people and give them the tools to make their country work.
> 
> They need our help. The Ukrainian state today looks a lot like some of the other bureaucratic disasters left on the beach by the receding tide of communism. The bureaucracies, the police force, the law courts, the schools, hospitals and universities are still filled with people trained and socialized under the old system. 25 years of oligarchical corruption and misrule on top of 90 years of sometimes savage Soviet governance have left Ukraine cursed by one of Europe’s least capable and most sprawling states.
> 
> The New Ukrainians want this to change, and there are lots of people in the old institutions who would be willing and even eager to join them. The old system made corruption mandatory: police, teachers, bureaucrats and even judges were paid so little that corruption was for many the only way to survive. The value of a government job wasn’t the salary you got for it; it was the power it gave you to extort bribes from the public. The oligarchs liked things that way; a state without morals or morale was easy for shady rich people to control.
> 
> This is where some of the money will have to be spent, and while the current IMF program is part of the answer, more still needs to be done. The conventional austerity and reform agendas that the IMF and its partners often propose may not work in Ukraine. Salaries for government employees (which includes health and education professionals as well as the civil service and law enforcement) have to go up to realistic levels. (They will still be low by western standards, but will allow government employees to live decently on their pay.) In some cases, government bureaucracies will need to shrink, and some people behaved so badly under the old system that they will have to be fired. For our part, though, we need to remember that threatening tens of thousands of people with losing their jobs is not the smartest policy for a government facing both foreign invasion and civil war. That is especially true when many of them, as in the case of local police forces, are both organized and armed. Putin hopes that a coalition of the unwilling inside Ukraine will support his disruption in the east because they fear reform. The West can knock that weapon from his hands at a very reasonable cost by providing Ukraine with the temporary budget support it will need to smooth the path of transition.
> 
> The West has another, priceless asset we can offer the New Ukraine. Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and a number of other successfully transitioning countries have a lot of experience cleaning up the ugly mess that communism leaves behind. European and American support can ensure that the New Ukraine gets the benefits of the experience of neighboring countries who are extremely interested in helping Ukraine establish itself as a strong and truly independent state. The context of general state-building and reform is the context in which military training and aid should be seen. Ukraine’s armed forces suffer from many of the same problems as the civilian bureaucracies; reform, redesign and retraining can make a big difference here.
> 
> Next up in this strategy is investment assistance and promotion: prosperity is the silver bullet that beat communism in the Cold War and it can defeat Putin now. What will really help Ukraine will be a surge of foreign investment. Putin knows this, and he is trying to block that by creating military uncertainty in the east. This is not without an effect, but Europe and the US can work together to offset this with, for example, programs that insure foreign investors against political risks associated with Russian action.
> 
> Ukraine is anything but bereft of attractive investment opportunities. Take the Ukrainian energy system. Ukraine’s primarily Soviet-era energy infrastructure is outmoded, and a huge amount of gas is wasted through leaks and other inefficiencies. Privatization of the energy monopoly in Ukraine would go a long way, helping to keep corrupt hands off of Naftogaz’s money, opening up a key channel for private foreign investment, and also incentivizing the new stakeholders to pay to update the crumbling, leaking infrastructure that costs the Ukrainian economy as a whole so much. Fixing Ukraine’s own energy system will reduce the country’s dependence on Russia, strengthen the economy, and reduce Russia’s leverage over Europe as a whole. If western governments work with Ukraine and Naftogaz, a framework can be created that allows private foreign investment to make a massive difference in Ukraine’s situation.
> 
> From a military point of view, Putin has made some gains in Ukraine. He has conquered Crimea and Russia won’t abandon that beautiful and strategically significant peninsula very easily. He has also occupied some of Ukraine’s most heavily industrialized territory in the Donbas, and despite all of its bravery and sacrifice, Ukraine’s army has no realistic prospect of driving Putin out. But Putin is wrong to think that his victory is assured. Joe Stalin occupied East Germany, and his successors (aided by the young Putin) tried to turn East Germany into a reliable ally and prop of Soviet power. The trouble, of course, was that compared to West Germany, East Germany was an ugly, poor police state and could only hold its people by literally building a wall across the frontier and shooting anybody who tried to escape.
> 
> Now Putin has inadvertently trapped himself into a similar contest farther east. Our job is to make sure that West Ukraine becomes a beacon of freedom and prosperity. If we succeed, and we will if we make a serious effort, it won’t just be Putin’s hold over the Crimea and the Donbas that will be challenged. What works in Ukraine can work in Russia, and the Russian people and elites know that. Working with our Ukrainian friends and European partners to build a free and fair Ukraine is how we can learn to someday work with Russian friends and allies to build a genuinely New Russia.
> 
> Putin has challenged us to a contest to see whether the ideas and values of the West work better in the old Slavic heartlands of the Soviet Union than the mix of mafioso thuggery and nationalist hysteria emanating from the Kremlin these days. This is a challenge we should welcome; by taking him up on it, we will advance our values, enhance our security, strengthen our alliances and build a better world.


----------



## a_majoor

General Jim Mattis outlines what he sees as a new American Grand Strategy.

http://www.hoover.org/research/new-american-grand-strategy



> *A New American Grand Strategy*
> by General Jim Mattis
> 
> The world is awash in change. The international order, so painstakingly put together by the greatest generation coming home from mankind’s bloodiest conflict, is under increasing stress. It was created with elements we take for granted: the United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods and more. The constructed order reflected the wisdom of those who recognized no nation lived as an island and we needed new ways to deal with challenges that for better or worse impacted all nations. Like it or not, today we are part of this larger world and must carry out our part. We cannot wait for problems to arrive here or it will be too late; rather we must remain strongly engaged in this complex world.
> 
> The international order built on the state system is not self-sustaining. It demands tending by an America that leads wisely, standing unapologetically for the freedoms each of us in this room have enjoyed. The hearing today addresses the need for America to adapt to changing circumstances, to come out now from its reactive crouch and to take a firm strategic stance in defense of our values.
> 
> While we recognize that we owe future generations the same freedoms we enjoy, the challenge lies in how to carry out our responsibility. We have lived too long now in a strategy-free mode.
> 
> To do so America needs a refreshed national strategy. The Congress can play a key role in crafting a coherent strategy with bipartisan support. Doing so requires us to look beyond events currently consuming the executive branch.
> 
> There is an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second order effects and more problems for us. I suggest that the best way to cut to the essence of these issues and to help you in crafting America’s response to a rapidly changing security environment is to ask the right questions.
> 
> These are some that we should ask:
> 
> What are the key threats to our vital interests?
> 
> The intelligence community should delineate and provide an initial prioritization of those threats for your consideration. By rigorously defining the problems we face you will enable a more intelligent and focused use of the resources allocated for national defense.
> 
> Is our intelligence community fit for its expanding purpose?
> 
> Today we have less of a military shock absorber to take surprise in stride, and fewer forward-deployed military forces overseas to act as sentinels. Accordingly we need more early warning. Congress should question if we are adequately funding the intelligence agencies to reduce the chance of our defenses being caught flat-footed.
> 
> We know that the “foreseeable future” is not foreseeable; our review must incorporate unpredictability, recognizing risk while avoiding gambling with our nation’s security.Incorporating the broadest issues in its assessments, Congress should consider what we must do if the national debt is assessed to be the biggest national security threat we face.
> 
> As President Eisenhower noted, the foundation of military strength is our economic strength. In a few short years paying interest on our debt will be a bigger bill than what we pay for defense. Much of that interest money is destined to leave America for overseas. If we refuse to reduce our debt or pay down our deficit, what is the impact on national security for future generations who will inherit this irresponsible debt and the taxes to service it? No nation in history has maintained its military power while failing to keep its fiscal house in order.
> 
> How do we urgently halt the damage caused by sequestration?
> 
> No foe in the field can wreck such havoc on our security that mindless sequestration is achieving. Congress passed it because it was viewed as so injurious that it would force wise choices. It has failed and today we use arithmetic vice sound thinking to run our government, despite emerging enemy threats. The Senate Armed Services Committee should lead the effort to repeal the sequestration that is costing military readiness and long term capability while sapping troop morale.
> 
> Without predictability in budget matters no strategy can be implemented by your military leaders. Your immediate leadership is needed to avert further damage. In our approach to the world, we must be willing to ask strategic questions. In the Middle East, where our influence is at its lowest point in four decades, we see a region erupting in crises.
> 
> We need a new security architecture for the Middle East built on sound policy, one that permits us to take our own side in this fight.  Crafting such a policy starts with asking a fundamental question and then others: Is political Islam in our best interest? If not what is our policy to support the countervailing forces? Violent terrorists cannot be permitted to take refuge behind false religious garb and leave us unwilling to define this threat with the clarity it deserves. We have potential allies around the world and in the Middle East who will rally to us but we have not been clear about where we stand in defining or dealing with the growing violent jihadist terrorist threat.
> 
> Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise. I believe that you should question the value of Congress adding new sanctions while international negotiations are ongoing, while having them ready should the negotiations for preventing their nuclear weapons capability and stringent monitoring break down.
> 
> Further, we should question if we have the right policies in place when Iran creates more mischief in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region. We should recognize that regional counterweights like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council can reinforce us if they understand our policies and if we clarify our foreign policy goals beyond Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
> 
> In Afghanistan we need to consider if we’re asking for the same outcome there as we saw last summer in Iraq if we pull out all our troops on the Administration’s proposed timeline. Echoing the military advice given on the same issue in Iraq, gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible. We should recognize that we may not want this fight but the barbarity of an enemy that kills women and children and has refused to break with Al Qaeda needs to be fought.
> 
> More broadly, is the U.S. military being developed to fight across the spectrum of combat?
> 
> Knowing that enemies always move against perceived weakness, our forces must be capable of missions from nuclear deterrence to counter-insurgency and everything in between, now including the pervasive cyber domain. While surprise is always a factor, Congress can ensure that we have the fewest big regrets when the next surprise occurs. We don’t want or need a military that is at the same time dominant and irrelevant, so we must sort this out and deny funding for bases or capabilities no longer needed.
> 
> The nuclear stockpile must be tended to and fundamental questions must be asked and answered: We must clearly establish the role of our nuclear weapons: do they serve solely to deter nuclear war? If so, we should say so, and the resulting clarity will help to determine the number we need. Is it time to reduce the Triad to a Diad, removing the land-based missiles? This would reduce the false alarm danger. Could we reenergize the arms control effort by only counting warheads vice launchers? Was the Russian test violating the INF treaty simply a blunder or a change in policy, and what is our appropriate response?
> 
> The reduced size of our military drives the need to ask other questions: Our military is uniquely capable and the envy of the world, but are we resourcing it to ensure we have the highest quality troops, the best equipment and the toughest training?
> 
> With a smaller military comes the need for troops kept at the top of their game. When we next put them in harm’s way it must be the enemy’s longest day and worst day. Tiered readiness with a smaller force must be closely scrutinized to ensure we aren’t merely hollowing out the force. While sequestration is the nearest threat to this national treasure that is the U.S. military, sustaining it as the world’s best when smaller will need your critical oversight. Are the Navy and our expeditionary forces receiving the support they need in a world where America’s naval role is more pronounced because we have fewer forces posted overseas?
> 
> With the cutbacks to the Army and Air Force and fewer forces around the world, military aspects of our strategy will inevitably become more naval in character. This will provide decision time for political leaders considering employment of additional forms of military power. Congress’ resourcing of our naval and expeditionary forces will need to take this development into account. Because we will need to swiftly move ready forces to act against nascent threats, nipping them in the bud, the agility to reassure friends and temper adversary activities will be critical to America’s effectiveness for keeping a stable and prosperous world. I question if our shipbuilding budget is sufficient, especially in light of the situation in the South China Sea.
> 
> While our efforts in the Pacific to keep positive relations with China are well and good, these efforts must be paralleled by a policy to build the counterbalance if China continues to expand its bullying role in the South China Sea and elsewhere. That counterbalance must deny China veto power over territorial, security and economic conditions in the Pacific, building support for our diplomatic efforts to maintain stability and economic prosperity so critical to our economy.
> 
> In light of worldwide challenges to the international order we are nonetheless shrinking our military. Are we adjusting our strategy and taking into account a reduced role for that shrunken military?
> 
> Strategy connects ends, ways and means. With less military available, we must reduce our appetite for using it. Absent growing our military, there must come a time when moral outrage, serious humanitarian plight, or lesser threats cannot be militarily addressed.  Prioritization is needed if we are to remain capable of the most critical mission for which we have a military: to fight on short notice and defend the country. In this regard we must recognize we should not and need not carry this military burden solely on our own.
> 
> Does our strategy and associated military planning take into account our nation’s increased need for allies?
> 
> The need for stronger alliances comes more sharply into focus as we shrink the military. No nation can do on its own all that is necessary for its security. Further, history reminds us that countries with allies generally defeat those without. A capable U.S. military, reinforcing our political will to lead from the front, is the bedrock on which we draw together those nations that stand with us against threats to the international order.
> 
> Our strategy must adapt to and accommodate this reality. As Churchill intimated, the only thing harder than fighting with allies is fighting without them. Congress, through the Armed Services Committee, should track closely an increased military capability to work with allies, the NATO alliance being foremost but not our sole focus. We must also enlist non-traditional partners where we have common foes or common interests.
> 
> In reference to NATO and in light of the Russian violations of international borders, we must ask if the Alliance’s efforts have adjusted to the unfortunate and dangerous mode the Russian leadership has slipped into?
> 
> With regard to tightening the bond between our smaller military and those we may need at our side in future fights, the convoluted foreign military sales system needs a challenge. Hopefully it can be put in order before we drive more potential partners to equip themselves with foreign equipment, a move that makes it harder to achieve needed inter-operability with our allies and undercuts America’s industrial base. Currently the system fails to reach its potential to support our foreign policy.
> 
> As we attempt to restore stability to the state system and international order, a critical question will be: Is America good for its word?
> 
> When we make clear our position or give our word about something, our friends (and even our foes) must recognize that we are good for it. Otherwise dangerous miscalculations can occur. This means that the military instrument must be fit for purpose and that once a political position is taken, our position is backed up by a capable military making clear that we will stand on our word.
> 
> When the decision is made to employ our forces in combat, Congress should ask if the military is being employed with the proper authority. I believe it should examine answers to fundamental questions like the following:
> 
> Are the political objectives clearly defined and achievable? Murky or quixotic political end states can condemn us to entering wars we don’t know how to end. Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided. Such announcements do not take the place of mature, well‐defined end‐states, nor do they contribute to ending wars as rapidly as possible on favorable terms.
> 
> Is the theater of war itself sufficient for effective prosecution? We have witnessed safe havens prolonging war. If the defined theater of war is insufficient, the plan itself needs to be challenged to determine feasibility of its success or the need for its modification.
> 
> Is the authority for detaining prisoners of war appropriate for the enemy and type war that we are fighting? We have observed the perplexing lack of detainee policy that has resulted in the return of released prisoners to the battlefield. We should not engage in another fight without resolving this issue up front, treating hostile forces, in fact, as hostile.
> 
> Are America’s diplomatic, economic, and other assets aligned to the war aims, with the intent of ending the conflict as rapidly as possible? We have experienced the military alone trying achieve tasks outside its expertise. When we take the serious decision to fight, we must bring to bear all our nation’s resources. You should question how the diplomatic and development efforts will be employed to build momentum for victory and our nation’s strategy demands that integration.
> 
> Finally the culture of our military and its rules are designed to bring about battlefield success in the most atavistic environment on earth. No matter how laudable in terms of a progressive country’s instincts, Congress needs to consider carefully any proposed changes to military rules, traditions and standards that bring non‐combat emphasis to combat units. There is a great difference between military service in dangerous circumstances and serving in a combat unit whose role is to search out and kill the enemy at close quarters. Congress has a responsibility for imposing reason over impulse when proposed changes could reduce the combat capability of our forces at the point of contact with the enemy.
> 
> Ultimately we need the foresight of the Armed Services Committee, acting in its sentinel and oversight role, to draw us out of the reactive stance we’ve fallen into and chart a strategic way ahead. Our national security strategy needs bipartisan direction. In some cases, Congress may need to change our processes for developing an integrated national strategy, because mixing capable people and their good ideas with bad processes results in the bad processes defeating good peoples’ ideas nine times out of ten. This is an urgent matter, because in an interconnected age when opportunistic adversaries can work in tandem to destroy stability and prosperity, our country needs to regain its strategic footing.
> 
> We need to bring clarity to our efforts before we lose the confidence of the American people and the support of our potential allies.
> 
> This essay was adapted from statements made by the author before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 27, 2015.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Sorry, and with all respect, but i find Gen (ret'd) Mattis' "Grand Strategy" neither very grand nor very strategic.

It is, at best, a _cri de coeur_, for a return to the destructive path that America was on, arguably still is on, pre-sequestration.

A true _Grand Strategy_ begins with a clear, political, statement of "What it is we want to accomplish in the world for ourselves."

A true grand strategy then says "in order to accomplish our aims we need ... _< a big, long laundry list of economic, social, political, diplomatic, intelligence, security and military resources >_  

A true grand strategy then describes how the country can get from its current resource base to the one it needs .... think Pitt the Younger in 1804-06, Roosevelt in 1939-40 and Truman in 1946-49: they were _grand strategists_. Gen Mattis is, to be charitable, a pygmy in their company and his "grand strategy" is a bit of a bad, sad joke ... but it is, _I guess_, what passes for strategic thought in America, which may be why so many analysts suggest that America is failing.  

Consider, please: *The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State* by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge, (Penguin, 2014). It describes one key aspect of _grand strategy_, one which _I suspect_ eludes both Gen Mattis and President Obama.


----------



## a_majoor

Not sure if this is the correct thread for this article, but the Economist outlines what appears to be a "Second Nuclear Age", which will certainly be a huge factor in American (and indeed anyone's) Grand Strategy. The Economist is sadly stuck in default mode WRT solutions (negotiations and diplomacy were notably ineffective in preventing the various second wave nuclear powers like Israel, Pakistan, India or the DPRK from becoming nuclear powers, and in contradiction to what the Economist hopes, Iran has been using negotiations and diplomacy to stall for time so they can achieve their goal of nuclear weaponry), so we have a defined problem, but as yet no practical solution:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21645729-quarter-century-after-end-cold-war-world-faces-growing-threat-nuclear?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fpe%2Fed%2Fthenewnuclearage



> *The new nuclear age*
> A quarter of a century after the end of the cold war, the world faces a growing threat of nuclear conflict
> Mar 7th 2015 | From the print edition
> 
> WITHIN the next few weeks, after years of stalling and evasion, Iran may at last agree to curb its nuclear programme. In exchange for relief from sanctions it will accept, in principle, that it should allow intrusive inspections and limit how much uranium will cascade through its centrifuges. After 2025 Iran will gradually be allowed to expand its efforts. It insists these are peaceful, but the world is convinced they are designed to produce a nuclear weapon.
> 
> In a barnstorming speech to America’s Congress on March 3rd, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, fulminated against the prospect of such a deal (see article). Because it is temporary and leaves much of the Iranian programme intact, he said, it merely “paves Iran’s path to the bomb”. Determined and malevolent, a nuclear Iran would put the world under the shadow of nuclear war.
> 
> Mr Netanyahu is wrong about the deal. It is the best on offer and much better than no deal at all, which would lead to stalemate, cheating and, eventually, the dash to the very bomb he fears. But he is right to worry about nuclear war—and not just because of Iran. Twenty-five years after the Soviet collapse, the world is entering a new nuclear age. Nuclear strategy has become a cockpit of rogue regimes and regional foes jostling with the five original nuclear-weapons powers (America, Britain, France, China and Russia), whose own dealings are infected by suspicion and rivalry.
> 
> Thanks in part to Mr Netanyahu’s efforts, Iran commands worldwide attention. Unfortunately, the rest of the nuclear-weapons agenda is bedevilled by complacency and neglect.
> 
> The fallout from Prague
> 
> After the end of the cold war the world clutched at the idea that nuclear annihilation was off the table. When Barack Obama, speaking in Prague in 2009, backed the aim to rid the world of nuclear weapons, he was treated not as a peacenik but as a statesman. Today his ambition seems a fantasy. Although the world continues to comfort itself with the thought that mutually assured destruction is unlikely, the risk that somebody somewhere will use a nuclear weapon is growing apace.
> 
> Every nuclear power is spending lavishly to upgrade its atomic arsenal (see article). Russia’s defence budget has grown by over 50% since 2007, and fully a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons: twice the share of, say, France. China, long a nuclear minnow, is adding to its stocks and investing heavily in submarines and mobile missile batteries. Pakistan is amassing dozens of battlefield nukes to make up for its inferiority to India in conventional forces. North Korea is thought to be capable of adding a warhead a year to its stock of around ten, and is working on missiles that can strike the west coast of the United States. Even the Nobel peace laureate in the White House has asked Congress for almost $350 billion to undertake a decade-long programme of modernisation of America’s arsenal.
> 
> New actors with more versatile weapons have turned nuclear doctrine into guesswork. Even during the cold war, despite all that game theory and brainpower, the Soviet Union and America frequently misread what the other was up to. India and Pakistan, with little experience and less contact, have virtually nothing to guide them in a crisis but mistrust and paranoia. If weapons proliferate in the Middle East, as Iran and then Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt join Israel in the ranks of nuclear powers, each will have to manage a bewildering four-dimensional stand-off.
> 
> Worst of all is the instability. During much of the cold war the two superpowers, anxious to avoid Armageddon, were willing to tolerate the status quo. Today the ground is shifting under everyone’s feet.
> 
> Some countries want nuclear weapons to prop up a tottering state. Pakistan insists its weapons are safe, but the outside world cannot shake the fear that they may fall into the hands of Islamist terrorists, or even religious zealots within its own armed forces. When history catches up with North Korea’s Kim dynasty, as sooner or later it must, nobody knows what will happen to its nukes—whether they might be inherited, sold, eliminated or, in a last futile gesture, detonated.
> 
> Others want nuclear weapons not to freeze the status quo, but to change it. Russia has started to wield nuclear threats as an offensive weapon in its strategy of intimidation. Its military exercises routinely stage dummy nuclear attacks on such capitals as Warsaw and Stockholm. Mr Putin’s speeches contain veiled nuclear threats. Dmitry Kiselev, one of the Kremlin’s mouthpieces, has declared with relish that Russian nuclear forces could turn America into “radioactive ash”.
> 
> Just rhetoric, you may say. But the murder of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, on the Kremlin’s doorstep on February 27th was only the latest sign that Mr Putin’s Russia is heading into the geopolitical badlands (see article). Resentful, nationalistic and violent, it wants to rewrite the Western norms that underpin the status quo. First in Georgia and now in Ukraine, Russia has shown it will escalate to extremes to assert its hold over its neighbours and convince the West that intervention is pointless. Even if Mr Putin is bluffing about nuclear weapons (and there is no reason to think he is), any nationalist leader who comes after him could be even more dangerous.
> 
> Towards midnight
> 
> China poses a more distant threat, but an unignorable one. Although Sino-American relations hardly look like the cold war, China seems destined to challenge the United States for supremacy in large parts of Asia; its military spending is growing by 10% or more a year. Nuclear expansion is designed to give China a chance to retaliate using a “second strike”, should America attempt to destroy its arsenal. Yet the two barely talk about nuclear contingencies—and a crisis over, say, Taiwan could escalate alarmingly. In addition Japan, seeing China’s conventional military strength, may feel it can no longer rely on America for protection. If so, Japan and South Korea could go for the bomb—creating, with North Korea, another petrifying regional stand-off.
> 
> What to do? The most urgent need is to revitalise nuclear diplomacy. One priority is to defend the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which slows the spread of weapons by reassuring countries that their neighbours are not developing nukes. It was essential that Iran stayed in the treaty (unlike North Korea, which left). The danger is that, like Iran, signatories will see enrichment and reprocessing as preparation for a bomb of their own—leading their neighbours to enrich in turn. That calls for a collective effort to discourage enrichment and reprocessing, and for America to shore up its allies’ confidence.
> 
> You don’t have to like the other side to get things done. Arms control became a vital part of Soviet-American relations. So it could between China and America, and between America and Putin’s Russia. Foes such as India and Pakistan can foster stability simply by talking. The worst time to get to know your adversary is during a stand-off.
> 
> In 1960 Albert Wohlstetter, an American nuclear strategist, wrote that, “We must contemplate some extremely unpleasant possibilities, just because we want to avoid them.” So too today, the essential first step in confronting the growing nuclear threat is to stare it full in the face.


----------



## a_majoor

And of course any Grand Strategy needs to be able to accomodate changing facts on the ground. The Israeli elections and the general chaos in the ME today suggest any new Administration is going to have to revamp whatever assumptions they were making for American Grand Strategy overall, and in the region in particular. I think one of the sacred cows that Americans will ahve to barbecue is the "Two State" solution; conditions for that are so far away that wasting time and resources distracts from more pressing issues:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/18/bibi-is-back-the-consequences-for-u-s-israeli-relations/



> *Bibi Is Back: The Consequences for U.S.-Israeli Relations*
> Walter Russell Mead
> 
> It is, of course, Netanyahu’s right to reject the two-state solution. But given how Americans tend to see the world, doing so will have consequences for the bilateral relationship.
> 
> 
> With all votes in, it looks virtually certain that Bibi Netanyahu will remain on the job as Prime Minister of Israel. That will be a big disappointment for some people, including the residents of the White House and a large sector of the American Jewish community who are pro-Israel but anti-Likud. It is also going to cause some pain for plenty of journalists who cover Israel in the American media, many of whom were ready to write Bibi’s political obituary just two days ago.
> 
> Bibi’s win is another in a long string of Middle East failures by President Obama and will add to the belief by both our friends and our enemies in the region that the costs of being Obama’s friend can outweigh the costs of his enmity. Egypt’s President Mubarak thought he was Obama’s friend; so did his successor President Morsi. The Syrian moderate rebels expected their friend in the White House to back them. The Zionist Union thought that promising to work more closely with Obama was the ticket to an electoral win in Israel. Meanwhile, as Bibi can now testify, those who defy this White House don’t seem to pay much of a price: just ask Syria’s Assad or, for that matter, his patrons in Iran. ISIS has more visibility and power in the Middle East than al-Qaeda ever did, while the Sunni Arab tribes of Iraq who saved America’s bacon during the surge and who counted on American influence to protect their interests in postwar Iraq are being overrun by Shi’a militias.
> 
> Here at TAI, we mostly avoid taking sides in other people’s elections, and we think our readers come to us more for analysis than for guidance about who to root for in political contests around the world. However, there is no denying that, while Bibi won the election convincingly, with the Likud Party winning significantly more Knesset seats than the polls or the pundits predicted, he didn’t win prettily. In particular, Americans are going to focus on his assertion that he will not support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem during his new term.
> 
> This is, of course, his right, but if this proves to be the long term position of the Israeli government, as opposed to a temporary pause in the peace process, it will have a chilling effect on U.S.-Israel relations that will outlast President Obama’s time in the White House. It will also deepen Israel’s international isolation and put useful weapons into the eager hands of Israel’s enemies in Europe and elsewhere.
> 
> The two-state solution has a long and hallowed history in American foreign policyThe two-state solution has a long and hallowed history in American foreign policy. Harry Truman, the American President who recognized Israel’s independence, was a strong proponent of the two-state solution in the 1940s. The willingness of the Jews of British Palestine to accept the UN-sponsored partition plan, contrasted with the refusal of the Arabs of the country, helped give Israel the moral high ground in American politics for many years. Since Yasser Arafat renounced violence (however insincerely) and recognized (with whatever mental reservations) Israel’s right to exit, promoting a two-state solution has been the linchpin of American policy under Presidents of both parties, with George W. Bush very much included.
> 
> Not all American diplomacy in support of the two-state solution has been wise; much of it has been ineffective. More than one American President has made matters in the Middle East significantly worse by pressing the peace process too hard, too fast for an agreement that remains frustratingly out of reach. Few American administrations, much less the well-intentioned but often befuddled wannabe peacemakers in Europe who periodically traipse through the region, really understand just how difficult it will actually be to get what, superficially considered, seems like an agreement that would greatly benefit all sides. Fewer still really understand that, despite Israeli intransigence on various points, the most difficult task is to build the genuinely deep and long-lasting Palestinian national consensus needed for an agreement to stick.
> 
> There is a tendency among some hard-headed, hard nosed Israelis to look at the fecklessness of so many wannabe peacemakers and to measure the depth of America’s commitment to the two-state solution by the ineffectual nature of the strategies chosen to advance it. That would be a mistake. The belief that every people on Planet Earth has the right of self-determination is deeply engrained in American political and moral culture. Historically, supporters of Israel benefitted from this widespread American belief. That conviction cannot be turned on and off; support for the goal of a Palestinian state is a permanent feature of American politics. Americans are, I think, prepared to show some understanding both for the difficulties of Israel’s position and the problems caused by the deep structural issues within the Palestinian movement, but it would be extremely difficult to build a long term U.S.-Israeli relationship on the basis of the rejection of Palestinian national rights.
> 
> There is a minority of Americans, perhaps on the order of a quarter, whose support for Israel is strong enough (or theologically grounded in certain evangelical readings of Scripture) to embrace an Israel that sets itself openly against the goal of a Palestinian state. Other Americans are so worried about terrorism and radical Islam that they are willing to support Israel no matter what stand the Jewish state takes or doesn’t take on the Palestinian question. But there are enough Americans (and, additionally, enough American Jews) whose support for Jewish self-determination in Israel is linked to support for Palestinian self-determination in a Palestinian state that U.S.-Israeli relations will be significantly and progressively harmed if Israel’s leaders choose to close the door on Palestinian statehood.
> 
> This does not, Israelis need to understand, primarily come out of some pandering need to pacify Arabs by covering the American-Israeli relationship with a “peace process” fig leaf. Nor does it primarily proceed from sentimental philanthropy divorced from any understanding of the problems of the real world. It proceeds from the complex of ideas and beliefs about the world that have led so many Americans for so long to support Israel in the face of almost universal global condemnation. It will not go away, and over time its influence is likely to grow rather than to recede.
> 
> Achieving a Palestinian state will be difficult—much more difficult than successive American negotiators have ever really understood. Those difficulties are growing, and the problem is less about Israeli settlements (though these are a problem) than about the deepening divisions and dysfunctions in Palestinian society and politics. America will, I hope, over time become a wiser and more patient advocate of a Palestinian state than we have often been in the past. One can understand and even sympathize with the weariness and cynicism of Israeli officials who have watched us dance narcissistic and delusional peace process dances, with Presidents more focused on burnishing their “legacies” and winning a Nobel Prize than on the hard, slow work that can actually make progress. The Obama administration does not have the credibility with Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, or Saudis to play much of a constructive role at this point, and this incapacity has much more to do with White House errors than with Israeli opposition. Whatever Bibi does or doesn’t do, White House fumbling and Foggy Bottom overreach, combined with the diminishing authority of an administration moving into its lame duck phase, pretty much ensure that the next couple of years will not see much progress on the peace front.
> 
> But with all this said and acknowledged, Israelis need to understand that support for a two-state solution is not some left-wing fad or passing fancy in the United States. It represents the natural attitude of the American mind to this kind of problem, and both liberal and conservative, Republican and Democratic administrations will keep coming back to it. Abandoning the goal of a two-state solution and failing to develop ideas about how progress can be made in this direction, however tentatively, will continue to carry a significant and growing cost for Israel in American politics.
> 
> Rethinking and re-imagining the road to Palestinian statehood: yes. Taking a more sober approach to a problem that is much thornier than many outside the region have grasped: yes. Proceeding with caution when the whole Middle East is in flames: definitely. Thinking comprehensively about the problems of the Palestinian people as a whole rather than just those in the West Bank and Gaza: absolutely, especially now that so many Palestinians in Syria have been made refugees once again. Insisting that the vagaries of American political cycles and presidential legacy hunts no longer drive the pace and timing of Middle East negotiations: please.
> 
> If Bibi’s election message is that the peace process as we have known it needs fundamental change and reshaping, he is right. But if his intention is to kill it, or even to proclaim a moratorium during which Israel will create so many new facts on the ground that the concept of a Palestinian state no longer looks viable, then U.S.-Israeli relations will continue to cool.
> 
> Zionist history is in part the story of a rivalry within Zionism between Jewish leaders who believed that the movement’s best chances came from cooperation with English-speaking leaders and those who believed that the way to deal with both the Brits and the Americans was to confront them. Chaim Weizmann, who extracted the Balfour Declaration from the British and got a promise from Harry Truman that he would recognize an independent Israel, was an example of the former. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism who planned a war with Britain when that country moved away from its support for the Balfour Declaration, represents the latter. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s roots, despite his own fluent English and his deep understanding of American culture, lie in the more confrontational camp, and Bibi has often drawn on his inner Jabotinsky in confrontations with Obama.
> 
> Israelis will have to decide for themselves where their interests lie in these critical times. Let’s hope they find a way forward that keeps the doors of peace open and safeguards the foundations of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
> 
> Meanwhile, the Obama administration needs to take a long hard look at the Middle East and ask itself why it keeps getting wrong-footed in this difficult region. Neither loved nor feared, the current White House has lost influence over old friends without replacing them with new ones. Just possibly, this is a time for American officials to think about their own policy problems rather than aggressively criticizing the choices that other people are making in an environment that our own missteps (by past administrations as well as by this one) have helped make more challenging than ever.


----------



## Rifleman62

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8300

*At the White House, There’s Nobody Home*

The absence of true leadership has created chaos at home and abroad.

by Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online -19 Mar 15

What has gone wrong with the U.S. government in the past month? Just about everything, from the fundamental to the ridiculous.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States to warn Congress about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. He spoke without the invitation of an irritated President Obama, who claimed that he did not even watch the address on television.

Obama declined to even meet with the Israeli prime minister, announcing that it would have been improper for him to have such a meeting so close to Netanyahu’s re-election bid.

But if Obama was so concerned about not influencing the Israeli elections, why, according to some news accounts, is a Senate panel launching an investigation into whether Obama’s State Department gave grant money to a nonprofit organization, the OneVoice Movement, that sought to unseat Netanyahu with the help of several former Obama campaign operatives?

Then, 47 Republican senators signed an unusual letter to the Iranian theocracy, reminding it that any agreement on Iran’s nuclear program negotiated with the Obama administration would have to first clear Congress.

Obama shot back that the senators’ letter was undue interference that aided the Iranians. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton agreed that the senators were either empowering Iranian hardliners or sabotaging the diplomatic efforts of their own president. Secretary of State John Kerry concurred.

Nonetheless, the Senate may well pass new sanctions against Iran, if it feels Obama has been too lax in its negotiations or usurped senatorial oversight of treaties.

Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) bucked the Obama administration and expressed doubt about administration concessions to the Iranians. Other Democrats could join him.

But almost immediately after weighing in on Iran, Menendez found himself the target of a federal investigation into purported corruption. And as far as the claim of improper interference in foreign affairs goes, the Obama administration and British prime minister David Cameron jointly lobbied U.S. senators not to pass tougher sanctions on Iran.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Hillary Clinton is bogged down in another trademark Clinton scandal. Clinton never used a standard government e-mail account while secretary. And rather than submitting her actual e-mails to the State Department back in December, Clinton submitted 55,000 printed pages of e-mails — making it much harder for those e-mails to be searched.

Apparently, Clinton also wished to decide which of her private-server communications to release to the government — but only when demanded by congressional investigators and watchdog groups well after her tenure ended.

Clinton’s implausible press conference last week only made things worse. She proved unable to explain her unusual behavior and seemed ignorant about how government e-mail works and is secured.

Abroad, Syria, Iran, and the Islamic State are battling for what is left of the Syrian-Iraqi borderlands after the United States abruptly pulled out all its peacekeepers from Iraq. All are enemies of the U.S. But as they fight each other, the Obama administration is negotiating with Iran over its efforts against the Islamic State. The administration has also expressed a willingness to meet with Syrian president Bashar Assad, after not long ago declaring Assad an illegitimate leader who should step down. Obama had issued red-line threats to Assad over the gassing of his own people.

Back home, two apparently inebriated Secret Service agents crashed their government car into a security barrier near the White House — in the midst of an active bomb investigation. Indeed, the reckless agents may have crashed right through the crime scene. This is after the Department of Homeland Security launched an investigation into the culture of the Secret Service following a 2012 scandal in which a dozen agents hired prostitutes during an alcohol-fueled night in Colombia.

Meanwhile, in the midst of nightly demonstrations at Ferguson, Mo., a young demonstrator on parole allegedly shot two police officers. “Whoever fired those shots shouldn’t detract from the issue,” the president editorialized.

But trying to gun down a policeman should amount to something more than a “detraction.”

Obama’s own Department of Justice recently issued a report indicating that the Ferguson Police Department routinely violates the rights of black citizens. But the DOJ also found Officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of a charging Michael Brown justifiable. That shooting was the incident that began the Ferguson “issue” in the first place.

Was Obama worried about the wounded policemen “detracting” from the protestors’ “hands up, don’t shoot” allegations, which Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigators, along with a grand jury, had already debunked?

All this chaos has taken amid ongoing IRS and VA investigations, the Supreme Court’s impending decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare, and Saudi Arabia arranging to buy from South Korea nuclear expertise to counter Iran.

The common thread in all this chaos?

More than the usual partisanship at home and barbarism abroad.

No one seems to be in charge at the White House. And that has terrified America’s supporters and emboldened its enemies — with another two years to go


----------



## Edward Campbell

The problem with defining a useful and broadly acceptable _grand strategy_ for America is ... Americans.

American are, broadly, very deeply divided on several key issues including on what it is they want their country to "be" in the world ... there always has been a strong _isolationist_ element in the American body politic ~ isolationism should not be confused with either _unilateralism_ or _non-interventionism_. The latter is close to _isolationism_ but not quite the same. Unilateralism is almost the polar opposite of non-interventionism. Traditional American _isolationism_ (no entangling alliances, etc) is not the same as 19th century British "splendid isolation" which was, by careful inaction, a form of intervention. The other _trend_ in America ... more modern and still powerful, is _engagement_: the Truman doctrine and all that. But, _in my opinion_, both trends isolationism/non-interventionism and engagement/multilateralism are bookends for a very broad base of public indifference ...

_*I'm alright, Jack*_​
... which is not surprising, neither is it abnormal ... I think the same thing applies in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark and so on, too. (There's a reason elections are rarely decided on foreign policy issues.)

Another problem ... an equally or even more deep division is _economic_. About  ¼ of Americans understand that they are dangerously overspending while another ¼ believe, sincerely, that more and more and more social spending is necessary for America. The majority in the middle think they are spending too much ... but not on either defence or social programmes!

One essential attribute of any useful, successful _grand strategy_ is that it must be affordable.

Many _isolationists_ (and others) argues _circa_ 1940 that American couldn't afford a war against Germany. FDR argued that what really couldn't be afforded was for Germany to win. In the 1950s President Eisenhower (who was a famously good poker payer) bluffed the Russians into believing that he was overspending on defence when, in fact, he was slashing the defence budget and building roads instead. President Reagan did an imitation in his time with "Star Wars." The fact - and _I assert it is a fact_ - is that America cannot afford the military role it has taken for itself. It _could_ be afforded by an America that had its fiscal house in order, but the America that exists doesn't.

Another attribute for a _grand strategy_ for a *great* power is,_ in my opinion_, is a national ethos. America had one in 1900, in 1910 and 1940, it still had it in 1950 and in 1960, too ... but it eroded, just as Britain's did after 1900.


----------



## Kirkhill

Perhaps another trend contributing to the isolationist tendency in America is the continuing influx of immigrants?

Despite the maladjusted second generation effect - people wanting to slit American throats etc - I believe it is reasonable to suppose that many immigrants go to America because it is perceived as a safe haven where they can get rich and live the American dream.  They have no desire to get involved in other peoples' wars nor give up their wealth to the government to prosecute them.

With respect to paying the cost - I agree. I don't think the US is in a position to fund an interventionist policy.  They may be closer to Restoration financing - robbing the jewelers to pay the jewelers - than Glorious Revolution financing with the Bank of England underwritten by thousands of rich Huguenot refugees from France, Switzerland, the Rhineland and the Netherlands.  Those that weren't rich were skilled and industrious and built the Industrial Revolution in Britain as well as the Army, Navy and Empire.


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## Edward Campbell

I think you're on to something, brother Kirkhill, with your comparison to 17th century Britain. That century, the time of _"England's Troubles"_, was, largely, a result of the Stuarts' (evident? just apparent?) inability to learn from their own mistakes ... just like the 'bases' of the increasingly hardline Democrats and the GOP. I don't think there will be a bloody civil war, à la the 1640s ... instead _my guess_ is that it's already started and is being fought in town halls and state legislatures and in union halls and corporate offices as well as on Wall Street and Main Street and on Avenue K in Washington and it is about the "American ethos."

In 1900 Britain was already in fairly steep decline; Germany, Japan and, above all, America were ascending ... Britain made several poor and one dreadful _strategic_ choices after about 1870 (there were several but the big one to: maintain "splendid isolation" or, at least, a patient, pragmatic approach to Britain's historic vital interests (probably the best choice, but it would require the sort of focus and fortitude that neither Arthur Balfour nor Henry Campbell-Bannerman possessed); align with Germany (perhaps the second best choice, maybe even a more _natural_ choice); or align with France (1904) and Russia (1907) (the worst choice and the one Britain took). America has, _it seems to me_, made more poor strategic choices, since about 1960, than it has good ones.


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## a_majoor

An interesting look at a political action which involved a coalition effort by people on both sides of the political divide. WRM shows how results can be achieved even if people are coming at things from different starting points, but also makes the interesting point that the current political divide is nothing new, but indeed represents two strains of American thought and culture dating back to colonial (pre-Revolutionary) times:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/03/30/a-reform-that-works/



> *A Reform That Works*
> 
> On April 1, hundreds of thousands of Americans will be paying more money for flood insurance as a congressional act revising federal insurance premiums takes effect. And that is a good thing. Good in itself, because below-cost federal flood insurance has turned into a massive subsidy of development and waterfront property. Why taxpayers who can’t afford beach houses and river and lake front property should subsidize the insurance bills of those who do is one of the many mysteries of Blue Model America. And good because it points the way forward for meaningful reform in the country.
> 
> Reforming this monstrosity—the cost to taxpayers is something on the order of $24 billion in debt that FEMA cannot repay the treasury—is long overdue. The coalition—of crony capitalism-hating GOP fiscal hawks and global warming averse Democrats—demonstrates how even with today’s polarized politics, Left and Right can sometimes come together behind an idea that makes sense.
> 
> To global warming activists, rising sea levels due to glacial melt as the planet warms are one of the major costs of climate change. As part of the adjustment process, moving development away from low lying coastal areas is an important part of the response to climate change many greens want to see. By linking this concern with the anger of fiscal hawks who see the flood insurance program as a massive unearned subsidy in which some Americans are unfairly taxed to lower costs for other, often less-needy people, the flood insurance program is exactly the kind of wasteful nonsense that good policy needs to kill. Put the two groups together, and you get a constructive reform.
> 
> *Liberals and conservatives need to realize that neither group is going away. America is a big and diverse country, and the sources of our ideological diversity lie deep in American history. Both Obama-loving liberals and Tea Party conservatives speak for values and ideas that go back to colonial times. The New England Puritans, while their views on sex and God don’t necessarily resonate with those of contemporary liberals, believed passionately in the need for a strong state that enforced moral mandates on the population at large. John Winthrop and Cotton Mather didn’t know the phrases “nanny state” and “political correctness” but the moral logic behind these ideas was one of the founding principles of Puritan New England. At the same time, the ornery suspicion of central authority, love of firearms and general hawkishness that one finds among many Tea Partiers today has been part of American political and moral culture since the 1600s.*
> 
> Given our federal system, which ensures that the political diversity of the American people is reflected in the makeup of Congress, both liberals and conservatives in all their variety are going to remain part of the national political picture for a long time to come. For people interested in governing America and hammering out the policies that can help us make a successful transition from a society based in the late stages of the industrial revolution to one capable of handling the information revolution that is now reshaping our world, it’s a reality that the new policies and laws we need will have to reflect and incorporate more than one color in the American rainbow. Red America, Blue America, Green America and a number of other Americas are going to persist far into the future, and the leaders we need are people who can somehow weave all these different strands of thought and opinion together.
> 
> That’s why the flood insurance reform, though a small step, is heartening. Many Tea Party activists are climate skeptics; many environmentalists are often big fans of wasteful federal subsidies and expansive government programs. Yet they were able to find common ground on this idea and together they defeated the entrenched lobbies who profit from the flood insurance subsidies.
> 
> This is a climate bill that climate change skeptics can love, and it is a blow against big government that true blue liberals _(I think he means Classical Liberals)_ can support. Think tanks and policy institutes should take heed: this is one of the most important ways to make progress in the American political system. This is what a truly creative compromise looks like, and the more of these we can develop, the better.


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## cupper

The only problem with this is that all of those waterfront homeowners vote. And they cross the entire political spectrum. And politicians pander. Oh how they pander.

As far as I am concerned, if you build in a flood plane, you should learn to tread water.

Now there are certain cases where the landowner through no fault of their own suffers damages which need to be covered. But those cases are due to poor stormwater management, rerouting water courses, destroying wetlands or other poorly thought out government policies. These people should be compensated or expect litigation.


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## Edward Campbell

One vital aspect of any _grand strategy_ is the "ways and means" to execute it. That is, largely, an economic issue, and Larry Summers, a pretty respectable economist points out, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Financial Times_, that a "divided America" has botched its previous role as the _manager_ of the global economy:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a0a01306-d887-11e4-ba53-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3WWRMsImr


> Time US leadership woke up to new economic era
> 
> Larry Summers
> 
> April 5th, 2015
> 
> High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a0a01306-d887-11e4-ba53-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3WXDpv4Pc
> 
> This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. True, there have been any number of periods of frustration for the US before, and times when American behaviour was hardly multilateralist, such as the 1971 Nixon shock, ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. But I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it.
> This failure of strategy and tactics was a long time coming, and it should lead to a comprehensive review of the US approach to global economics. With China’s economic size rivalling America’s and emerging markets accounting for at least half of world output, the global economic architecture needs substantial adjustment. Political pressures from all sides in the US have rendered it increasingly dysfunctional.
> High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a0a01306-d887-11e4-ba53-00144feab7de.html#ixzz3WXDwddyX
> 
> Largely because of resistance from the right, the US stands alone in the world in failing to approve the International Monetary Fund governance reforms that Washington itself pushed for in 2009. By supplementing IMF resources, this change would have bolstered confidence in the global economy. More important, it would come closer to giving countries such as China and India a share of IMF votes commensurate with their new economic heft.
> 
> Meanwhile, pressures from the left have led to pervasive restrictions on infrastructure projects financed through existing development banks, which consequently have receded as funders, even as many developing countries now see infrastructure finance as their principle external funding need.
> 
> With US commitments unhonoured and US-backed policies blocking the kinds of finance other countries want to provide or receive through the existing institutions, the way was clear for China to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. There is room for argument about the tactical approach that should have been taken once the initiative was put forward. But the larger question now is one of strategy. Here are three precepts that US leaders should keep in mind.
> 
> First, American leadership must have a bipartisan foundation at home, be free from gross hypocrisy and be restrained in the pursuit of self-interest. As long as one of our major parties is opposed to essentially all trade agreements, and the other is resistant to funding international organisations, the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system.
> Other countries are legitimately frustrated when US officials ask them to adjust their policies — then insist that American state regulators, independent agencies and far-reaching judicial actions are beyond their control. This is especially true when many foreign businesses assert that US actions raise real rule of law problems.
> 
> The legitimacy of US leadership depends on our resisting the temptation to abuse it in pursuit of parochial interest, even when that interest appears compelling. We cannot expect to maintain the dollar’s primary role in the international system if we are too aggressive about limiting its use in pursuit of particular security objectives.
> 
> Second, in global as well as domestic politics, the middle class counts the most. It sometimes seems that the prevailing global agenda combines elite concerns about matters such as intellectual property, investment protection and regulatory harmonisation with moral concerns about global poverty and posterity, while offering little to those in the middle. Approaches that do not serve the working class in industrial countries (and rising urban populations in developing ones) are unlikely to work out well in the long run.
> 
> Third, we may be headed into a world where capital is abundant and deflationary pressures are substantial. Demand could be in short supply for some time. In no big industrialised country do markets expect real interest rates to be much above zero in 2020 or inflation targets to be achieved. In the future, the priority must be promoting investment, not imposing austerity. The present system places the onus of adjustment on “borrowing” countries. The world now requires a symmetric system, with pressure also placed on “surplus” countries.
> 
> These precepts are just a beginning, and many questions remain. There are questions about global public goods, about acting with the speed and clarity that the current era requires, about co-operation between governmental and non-governmental actors, and much more. What is crucial is that the events of the past month will be seen by future historians not as the end of an era, but as a salutary wake up call.
> 
> _The writer is Charles W Eliot university professor at Harvard and a former US Treasury secretary_



I agree with his three part prescription:

     _A return to bipartisan policy making_ ~ but I don't think the _culture wars_ are going to end any time soon;

     _A focus on the real middle class_ ~ actually should be fairly easy to accomplish, but, yet again, the _culture wars_ will, likely, get in the way;

     _Investment to rise, even at the expense of balanced budgets_ ~ but, and it's a HUGE *BUT*, this Keynesian prescription must not include even a penny of social spending. Keynes was right but he demanded that
     _stimulus_ spending be turned off when a recession (even the current stagnation) ended. We know that turning off social spending is too hard for politicians to manage. keynes is good IF people actually read the whole book.


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## tomahawk6

The Administration's policies have 5m Americans out of work.That wont change until there is a new occupant in the White House.


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## Kirkhill

How much "bipartisan" policy was a function of "patrician" leadership?  Nobody could accuse FDR of being a "man of the people", nor Eleanor for that matter - no matter how much they empathized.

And the Kennedies, johnny-come-latelies as they were, got where they did by bulling their way into the patrician clubs.

I don't think there is much appetite anywhere for trusting "patrician" these days.  For good or ill policy is going to have to take into account whether or not the mass of people will follow the prescriptive lead - or will they just studiously ignore the politicos and do whatever they want in any event?


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## tomahawk6

I am a conservative on most issues,but I am increasingly unhappy with the GOP.Others seem to share my concern and perhaps a third party might arise.If that should occur the democrats neednt worry about losing power because two parties would dilute their strength.


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## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I am a conservative on most issues,but I am increasingly unhappy with the GOP.Others seem to share my concern and perhaps a third party might arise.If that should occur the democrats neednt worry about losing power because two parties would dilute their strength.



It depends on where in the spectrum that 3rd party falls. If it is a centrist party, that panders to neither end of the spectrum, I think that both parties will be in trouble.

However the big pitfall is the legacy voter that votes for party, because my pappy did, and his pappy and his pappy's pappy did too. This would result in a minority government which would need some form of cooperative support from the other two. And I really couldn't see how that would work with the way the US system is set up, should they lose support.

Although it could herald a new era of getting things accomplished.


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## a_majoor

Instead of a "third party" (or even a fourth one), I think what we will see is a continuing erosion of the institutional hierarchies in the two current parties. The GOP is being consumed at the lower (precinct, roughly equivalent to the riding association in Canada) level by the TEA Party movement. This is pretty smart, since they are getting the recognized brand name and will eventually access money and organizational resources of the Republicans. This may also be a slow process, as the "establishment" Republicans are firmly entrenched and the biggest lever the TEA Partiers have is to withhold money and volunteers from establishment candidates (it will take several years for newly elected TEA Party candidates to be able to effectively organize and fight battles inside the Congress and Senate).

The Democrats have been taken over by very Left wing "Progressive" elements, which has some appeal to demographics like "Occupy", as well as government unions, immigrant demographics and so on, but this coalition is not as stable as they might wish (Hispanics and Blacks, for example, have very different priorities, which are largely at odds with the "Limosine Liberals" or the so called _Clerisy_ of academics, liberal media and administrative types). The financial stresses that the "Blue model" of governance creates will cause even more stress as the Progressive movement overall runs out of "other people's money" and the various members of the coalition fight each other for a shrinking pie. OTOH, since they have a very firm grip on "deep government" they have a lock on many of the levers of power, and are fighting to the last taxpayer to retain their positions of privilege and power.

This isn't quite as strange as it seems, my reading of American history shows that while the Whig party collapsed, much of the younger generation of Whigs simply moved over to create and run the Republican Party (including Abraham Lincoln).


----------



## cupper

While I was driving back to Nova Scotia over the Easter weekend, I was listening to an interesting NPR interview with the retiring US Senate Historian. He was asked about the differences between the Senate today and when he started in the mid 70's. He said that back then, everything passed with bipartisan support. There was still a conservative / liberal divide within Congress, but legislation passed because each party had its liberal wing and it's conservative wing. And legislative battles usually came down to fights between the liberals and conservatives. 

Today the two parties have lost their balancing wings, and are polarized one conservative, the other liberal, with the centrists left wondering what the hell happened.


----------



## Brad Sallows

The explanation is simple and is in three parts.

1. Neither side is willing to trade off anything of consequence in exchange for what they want.

2. Mandatory spending is on auto-pilot and discretionary spending very nearly so (continuing resolutions), and the "baseline" got a hefty shot in the arm when war spending was moved from "off-budget" to "on-budget".  It means Democrats get what they want "for free" (to borrow a famous negotiator's phrase).

3. The president can do whatever he wants if his party is willing and able to block a veto override or a vote to convict on articles of impeachment.  Congress doesn't need to do anything.


----------



## a_majoor

An article in the WSJ that expands on my thesis that continuing technological (as well as demographic and economic) change is making current political institutions and solutions increasingly irrelevant. The real battle is the current keepers of the status quo are not willing to give up their positions of power and privilege, and will fight to the last taxpayer to stay on top. The real battlefields will be fought out as the political establishment and their enablers begging flailing about trying to squash every Uber, AirBnB, BitCoin and other bottom up initiative which will rise in ever increasing numbers as people see new ways of doing things and bypass the traditional "gatekeepers".

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-promise-at-technologys-powerful-heart-1429310535

Note, the full article is available to subscribers only. Excerpt here:


> Moore’s Law is creative destruction on steroids. It regularly fosters the next wave of entrepreneurial opportunities made possible by the latest jump in chip performance. It can be blamed for much of the 90% mortality rate of electronics startups.
> 
> But because the usual graphic presentation of the law is tamed by the format into a nice shallow line, we don’t get to see the awesome power of the raw curve—which, like all exponential lines stays shallow seemingly for a long time, then suddenly curves almost straight upward in a vertiginous climb. It is the curve of a rocket’s acceleration, of a pandemic, of the cells born from a fertilized egg.
> 
> The great turning took place a decade ago, while we were all distracted by social networking, smartphones and the emerging banking crisis. Its breathtaking climb since tells us that everything of the previous 40 years—that is, the multi-trillion-dollar revolution in semiconductors, computers, communications and the Internet—was likely nothing but a prelude, a warm-up, for what is to come. It will be upon this wall that millennials will climb their careers against almost-unimaginably quick, complex and ever-changing competition.
> 
> Crowd-sharing, crowdfunding, bitcoin, micro-venture funding, cloud computing, Big Data—all have been early attempts, of varying success, to cope with the next phase of Moore’s Law. Expect many more to come. Meanwhile, as always, this new pace will become the metronome of the larger culture.
> 
> Moore’s Law has always induced de-massification: giant mainframe computers become smartwatches, giant vertically-integrated organizations are defeated by what Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds has dubbed an “Army of Davids.”
> 
> Rigid command-and-control structures in every walk of life, from corporations to governments to education, become vulnerable to competition by adaptive and short-lived alliances and confederacies. Now that process is going to attack every corner of society.


----------



## cupper

Interesting premise.

*How Corporate America Invented Christian America*
Inside one reverend’s big business-backed 1940s crusade to make the country conservative again.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030.html?hp=m4#.VTWNZUuRtM8



> In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.
> 
> Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”
> 
> It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.
> They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.
> 
> Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”
> 
> It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.
> 
> Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. But in Fifield’s vision, it now cast a long and ominous shadow.He and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.
> 
> ...
> 
> Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in 1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.
> 
> As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.



More at the link


----------



## Kirkhill

Interesting article.

Quibbling on the "spin".

Did "Corporate America invent Christian America" or did Christian America, in the form of the Reverend Fifield, co-opt Corporate America?

When everybody around you is Christian it hardly seems necessary to state that you too are Christian: Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian and even Catholic perhaps.  But not Christian.  It is only when Christian is no longer "assumable" that it becomes necessary to describe Christianity (or perhaps Christendom).  And by 1940 atheism, socialism and non-Christians, like the Jews, were challenging Christians for voice in the public square.

I suggest that that is what may have prompted the Reverend Fifield to go proselytizing the deep pockets.

After all, in the Anglosphere of the 1930s, even Catholics were only nominal Christians.... and in America they were staging a comeback through the aegis of Bishop Sheen - the Radio Priest.

America, the Protestant bastion that had led the Huguenots out of the Gallican wilderness in the French and Indian Wars, was under threat:  in the view of the Protestant majority.

Edit (forgot to add another uncomfortable dimension of the debate - the association, in the Protestant mind, of Catholicism with the Fascism of Mussolini, Salazar, Franco, some would say de Valera, and by extension, Schickelgruber).


----------



## cupper

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> Interesting article.
> 
> Quibbling on the "spin".
> 
> Did "Corporate America invent Christian America" or did Christian America, in the form of the Reverend Fifield, co-opt Corporate America?



I think it was a marriage of convenience for both parties. Both were looking for their own interests to be furthered. Business wanted a more fiscal conservative, small government bent in the political movements, and religious conservatives wanted to return to a more morally responsible era. Whether one co-opted the other is up for debate.


----------



## a_majoor

Is the Special relationship coming to an end? The American Interest suggests economic, demographic, social and cultural changes in the UK might be pulling the Trans Atlantic alliance adrift or apart. This article could also be posted in the Anglosphere thread, since the UK, while it may not be a major world player anymore, is still the fountainhead of where many of *our* values and cultures spring. Long article:
Part 1

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/04/09/pax-anglo-saxonica/



> Appeared in: Volume 10, Number 5
> Published on: April 9, 2015
> 
> Understanding Ourselves
> Pax Anglo-Saxonica
> John Bew
> 
> There is a distinctive Anglo-American way of conceptualizing global strategic reality, and it goes far deeper than the abstractions of liberalism.
> 
> 
> On the way to work at the Library of Congress during the year just past, I was stopped on more than one occasion by activists from the Lyndon LaRouche movement. Among the many interesting theories they regaled me with one sunny Spring morning, one stuck out: Queen Elizabeth II, through dastardly means, exerted a secret and nefarious influence on American foreign policy, manipulating it to serve British imperial interests. This, they said, explained America’s recent wars in the Middle East. Informing these activists that I was British and therefore delighted to hear this news, I added that to have such influence over the world’s most powerful state must be a testament to the hidden genius of British foreign policy. After all, I reminded them, it was only 200 years ago—August 24, 1814, to be precise—that British troops had burned this town down, marking the only time that a foreign power had captured and occupied the U.S. capital. I then continued merrily on my way.
> 
> The reality is, of course, more disheartening. The United Kingdom’s stock in Washington, DC, is diminishing. Foot-dragging and defense-cutting Britain is not the ally to America it once was. It is not even the ally it was earlier in this young century when it stood staunchly beside the United States after September 11, 2001, and in the two wars that followed. The United Kingdom is now handwringing about its role in the world in a way not witnessed for many decades. Caught in a peculiar posture of fealty to feckless UN resolutions and deferring dangerously to ponderous parliamentary prerogatives, Britain risks corroding its “special relationship” with the United States—something that, in various incarnations (and under different appellations), has been a pillar of British foreign policy for the past century.
> 
> Some of Britain’s recent behavior during this crisis of confidence can be explained by domestic woes. The fact that there was a serious prospect of Scotland going independent last year—a prospect that may raise its head again after the general election in May—has put the handbrake on any discussions of grand strategy, even as the United Kingdom prepares its first Strategic Defence and Security Review since 2010. But we have also seen the return of some familiar idiosyncrasies. It has long been part of the British condition to see itself as a moral arbiter on the world stage. This has not always come with an accurate sense of Britain’s actual leverage. Lord Macauley said a long time ago that “there is nothing so ridiculous as the British public in a periodic fit of morality.” Yet, despite massive cuts in defense spending, Britons still like to have their say on world affairs whenever the opportunity arises—and to feel that their voice matters. On March 10, the House of Lords held a four-hour debate on “soft power.” The gap between Britain’s sense of itself and the reality of the world in which it engages is in danger of becoming a chasm. This has echoes of the interwar years, when the country styled itself as peacemaker-in-chief and was extremely slow to read the runes as the world around it caught fire.
> 
> The British condition has not gone unnoticed in Washington, where even the most Anglophilic voices have expressed disquiet about recent developments. Yet even that disquiet, however well intentioned, usually rests on a rather shallow and hence unstable basis of understanding. It thus risks causing anxiety over the wrong things. The “special relationship” may or may not be in jeopardy, but one needs to take a step back from this debate to see the bigger picture. Of greater significance are shifts in the underlying worldviews that have bound Anglo-Saxon political cultures together for a very long time indeed. If you’re in a fretting mood, here is a subject truly worthy of your energy. Indeed, if you’re concerned about “world order”, you have to remember that this very notion is an inherently Anglo-American one.
> 
> The “special relationship”—a Churchillian creation at the conclusion of World War II—and the Anglo-American worldview on which it is founded are often conflated. The former presupposes a unique or privileged alliance. Much more important are the shared experiences and presuppositions that antedate this partnership, which are more durable than the state of diplomatic relations between the two countries at any given time. They relate not simply to language and a shared heritage, but to the strategic culture of both nations—what Nathan Leites might have called their “operational codes.” The British Empire may still provoke controversy in the United States among historians and the historically minded, but it is nonetheless more relevant to contemporary American conceptions of global leadership than any other classical precedent. Hence, the most relevant historical lessons for today lie not in the details of countless summits between Presidents and Prime Ministers, or even in shared experiences during two World Wars, the Cold War, or through the post-September era. They reside in two interrelated phenomena: the shared assumptions about “grand strategy” that determine how both nations have conducted themselves on the global stage, and the recurrent patterns of behavior that still characterize the conduct of both. These constitute a special relationship of a deeper kind: one stretched between necessity and hope, but that points the way to what may be called a “higher realism.”
> 
> Two fairly recent anniversaries—a bicentenary and a centenary—invite reflection on the origins of the Anglo-American worldview, or at least its shaping and gestation. The bicentenary was of the Treaty of Ghent of December 1814, which marked the conclusion of the War of 1812. The ending of that war is significant because it helped delineate separate spheres of influence, and also indicated how both nations were to pursue their interests thereafter. The outcome was an odd synergy born of mutual necessity that few would have predicted at the time.
> 
> The second significant anniversary was the outbreak of the World War a hundred years later. The United States did not join Britain at the outset of that war, of course. When it did enter the theater in 1917, however, it did so in a way that laid the foundation for unprecedented cooperation during the century that followed. Although it was vague, a shared Anglo-American conception of global governance emerged from the war that hoped to set international affairs on a new footing. Supra-nationalism in the Wilsonian image failed, but the Anglo-American commitment to a liberal international order outlasted it and was reconstituted at later points. This commitment has prevented a slide into the full excesses of a Hobbesian dystopia in the international arena on more than one occasion, and it may yet do so again.
> 
> At the time of the burning of the White House and the Capitol in 1814, America was very much a second-tier priority for Britain, which had been at war with France for more than twenty years. Britain had nearly all its financial, military, and diplomatic resources geared toward the prosecution of the European war, which had finally pushed Napoleon to the brink of defeat. When American diplomats met with their British counterparts in Ghent in 1814, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, was engaged elsewhere, trying to cajole the rest of Europe into staying together long enough to take Paris.
> 
> Castlereagh, a hero of Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored (1954) and Philip Bobbitt’s The Shield of Achilles (2003), is often feted for his skill on the European stage, thanks to his emphasis on concert diplomacy and the balance of power, and for his suspicion of abstractions and idealism in the international sphere. As his biographer, I believe he has been given less credit than he deserves for being the first British Foreign Secretary to emphasize the community of interests that might emerge between Britain and America, “always holding in mind”, he wrote, “that there are no two states whose friendly relations are of more practical benefit to each other, or whose hostility so inevitably and immediately entails upon both most serious mischief.” In February 1816, after his return from the Continent, Castlereagh told the House of Commons that it was his “most earnest wish” to discountenance jealousy between two countries “whose interests were more naturally and closely connected.” He hoped that the course the government of each country was pursuing “was such as would consolidate the subsisting peace, and promote harmony between the nations, so as to prevent on either side the recurrence of any acts of animosity.”
> 
> Richard Rush, the American Ambassador in England at this time, detested the smog that descended on London so thickly that the locals lit the streetlights at noon. “I could not see people in the street from my windows. I am tempted to ask, how the English became great with so little day-light?” He found illumination in his partnership with Castlereagh—who hailed from an Irish family that had supported the American Revolution. “His whole reception to me was very conciliatory”, Rush enthused after their first meeting, at which Castlereagh revealed that he had known President James Monroe during his time in England. Castlereagh, Rush recorded, “spoke of the prosperity of the United States, which he said he heard of with pleasure: remarking that the prosperity of one commercial nation contributed to that of others.”
> 
> Tensions between the two countries were not quite so easy to eradicate, however, despite these warm and evidently sincere mutual sentiments. At the end of 1914, the historian William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University produced The British Empire and the United States: A Review of Their Relations During the Century of Peace Following the Treaty of Ghent. The book contained an introduction by Viscount James Bryce, the Liberal politician, jurist, and recently retired Ambassador to the United States. Looking back at the then-past century, Bryce took the line that Anglo-American relations proved that two nations with clashing interests could keep a peace, if they worked conscientiously for it.
> 
> While there had been no outright rupture in these one hundred years, Dunning explained, many quarrels had tested the relationship. The disarmament of the Great Lakes and the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine had helped diffuse some tensions after 1814. But then came the “roaring forties”, the expansion of America westward and southward, which touched off a series of new boundary disputes with Canada, quarrels over Mexico and Central America, and controversy over British liberties taken with American ships in the name of extinguishing the slave trade. Tensions peaked under President Polk and Prime Minister Palmerston, but diplomats worked quietly behind the scenes to prevent the outbreak of hostilities. Then the American Civil War presented Britain with the opportunity to encourage the country to fracture in a way that suited its own commercial and strategic interests. Yet, as Bryce pointed out, English liberals like John Bright and Goldwin Smith resisted the temptation to support the South and regarded the Union’s prospective abolition of slavery as sufficient reason to stay out of the fight.
> 
> In 1912, that caricature of Prussian militarism, General Friedrich von Bernhardi, whose books had recently been translated into English, mocked Britain’s failure to support the Confederates and dismember a rival; he took it as evidence of the typical Anglo-Saxon sentimental moralism that would ultimately be its downfall. Reviewing Dunning’s book for the Times Literary Supplement in the dark days of 1914, Sir Sidney Low, colonial historian at King’s College London, wrote,
> 
> 
> Fortunately this conception of Realpolitik has not been accepted by English statesmen. . . . . For behind the image of the Great War there gleams faintly the image of a Greater Peace, and those who have time to turn from the overwhelming anxieties of the moment are pondering as to the methods by which, if it be possible, humanity may be preserved from similar disasters in the future.
> 
> The shared desire to make something better out of the Great War—to set international affairs on a new footing—was the basis on which both Britain and America claimed to be fighting. Official British propaganda, in which cabinet ministers combined efforts with academics, peddled this line time and time again, but a receptacle for it already existed in the public psyche. There was massive popular and intellectual investment in the notion that international affairs could be cured of the scourge of war, and that Anglo-American cooperation and avoidance of war despite clashing interests could provide a model for others to follow. (Had Macauley not died in 1859, we no doubt would have gotten another famous quip from him at the time.) It was no coincidence that the very notion of a science of “international relations” was born in this era, and had its first home in Anglo-American political discourse.
> 
> In addition to this burgeoning intellectual endeavor, a more important change was taking place in the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world: an awakening to geopolitical consciousness in which Theodore Roosevelt played the leading part. This is why Roosevelt is the hero of Henry Kissinger’s latest book, World Order. Roosevelt began his career with The Naval War of 1812, a book published when he was just 23 years old. Yet this did not leave him with any lasting enmity toward Britain. Indeed, as Kissinger describes, “Rooseveltian grand strategy” took shape in his dialogue with his English counterparts, such as the British diplomat Cecil Spring Rice, a close friend who had been the best man at his wedding. In a 1907 letter that is eminently applicable to the 21st century, Roosevelt bemoaned the “melancholy fact that the countries which are most humanitarian, which are most interested in internal improvement, tend to grow weaker compared with other countries which possess a less altruistic civilization.” Looking to both London and Washington, he denounced “that pseudo-humanitarianism which treats advance of civilization as necessarily and rightfully implying a weakening of the fighting spirit and which therefore invites destruction of the advanced civilization by some less advanced type.”


----------



## a_majoor

Pqrt 2:



> America, which had traditionally seen itself as free from the vices of European colonialism, was waking up to the realities of great power politics. It was another naval strategist and historian—another man well versed in the precedent of British power in the 19th century—who put most of the meat on the bones: Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had read Roosevelt’s work on 1812. Mahan was courted by naval strategists in imperial Germany, but his writing had more discernible impact in England. As another indication of the cross-fertilization of strategic thinking, Mahan featured prominently in Eyre Crowe’s famous “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany” of January 1, 1907. This memorandum was directed to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and is regarded as the most important cornerstone of the strategy that led Britain to war against Germany in 1914.
> 
> Crowe, a senior Foreign Ministry official, warned his countrymen that the nature of British power—based on “vast overseas colonies and dependencies” and a naval force that made Britain “the neighbour of every country accessible by sea”—would inevitably cause jealousy and resistance. For that reason, it was in Britain’s self-interest to “harmonize with the general desires and ideals common to all mankind”, and to ensure that it was “closely identified with the primary and vital interests of a majority, or as many as possible, of the other nations.” It followed, therefore, that Britain had “a direct and positive interest in the maintenance of the independence of nations, and therefore must be the natural enemy of any country threatening the independence of others, and the natural protector of the weaker communities.” Any nation seeking to dominate or subjugate the others, then—any nation threatening to upset the “balance of power”—need be resisted. This amounted to a self-interested argument for Britain’s active support for a rules-based international order—a seed of the higher realism.
> 
> In his book The Pity of War (1999), Niall Ferguson critiqued Crowe’s assessment for misreading German intentions and encouraging the policy that led to World War I, something Ferguson regards as a great strategic error in British foreign policy. Without getting into that debate, the point here is that the foundations of a shared Anglo-American worldview were crystallizing in the years before 1914. Those who encouraged a reluctant Woodrow Wilson to enter the theater of war made similar geostrategic arguments, utilizing Mahan’s work but combined with reflections on the 19th-century British global system, as Eyre Crowe himself had done. As Robert E. Osgood described in his seminal book, Ideals and Self-Interest in America’s Foreign Relations (1953), “There existed during the long prelude to intervention a significant challenge to America’s traditional attitude toward national security.”
> 
> The key intellectual protagonists of this “new realism” were three editors at the New Republic, all of them Anglophiles who had travelled in Europe at the outset of the war: Walter Weyl, Herbert Croly, and Walter Lippmann. Lippmann led the way with the publication of Stakes of Diplomacy (1915), which he began by invoking Mahan. What was most interesting about the book was that it offered the first sustained discussion of realpolitik, a German word generally used in pejorative terms by the English. Lippmann (the scion of an aristocratic American German-Jewish family and fluent in German) believed that his countrymen could do with a dose of realpolitik. Like Roosevelt, he derided pacifism and “peace-at-any-price propaganda”, not because they entailed the abandonment of force, but because they would benefit the least democratic countries at the expense of the most vulnerable ones. He also evoked the prospect of “some coalition of the West” to secure world order in future years. Western security and commerce were also to be tied to the stabilization of “backward countries” and the spread of “progressive government.”
> 
> American realpolitik, in other words, should be predicated on the importance of maintaining a liberal world order. America’s “only choice” was “between being the passive victim of international disorder and resolving to be an active leader in ending it.”America’s “only choice” was “between being the passive victim of international disorder and resolving to be an active leader in ending it.” Variations on this theme—that American realism began on a front-footed commitment to maintaining a liberal international equilibrium—appear in Kissinger’s World Order and in the work of Robert Kagan (both his book Dangerous Nation and his much-debated May 2014 New Republic essay “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire”). It points to a lesson sometimes forgotten, because America’s entrance onto the global stage is often viewed through the prism of Woodrow Wilson’s unmoored, utopian, and ultimately calamitous internationalism.
> 
> The misleading nature of this narrative is unpicked in a recent book by Adam Tooze, formerly of Yale University’s grand strategy project: The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order (2014). The failure of Wilsonianism, the collapse of the peace movement, and the weakness of the League of Nations in the interwar years are usually presented as evidence of the utter impracticability of a liberal world order. For Tooze, this misses the point. Such efforts were indeed deeply flawed, not least because of Wilson’s own uncertainty about America’s superpower status. But the outbreak of World War II proved not that liberal international order was impractical but that it was absolutely necessary, albeit in a more realistic form. As Tooze puts it, “The restless search for a new way of securing order and peace was the expression not of deluded idealism, but of a higher form of realism.”
> 
> From outside the Anglo-American world, sharp observers were quick to identify the potential of what England and America had in their grasp after 1918. Friedrich Meinecke, the foremost German historian of raison d’état, addressed these questions in his classic text Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison D’État and Its Place in Modern History (1924). In the 1910s, Meinecke, a cheerleader for German militarism, had been one of those who condemned the hypocrisy of the Anglo-Saxon world. The English in particular, he complained, went around moralizing about the independence of small nations when, in truth of deed, they owed their position to the bullying tactics of the Royal Navy and boasted the biggest empire of all. In a brilliant dissection of British power projection he described how, having gained predominance through brute force, the English suddenly changed the script: They “showed an increasing tendency to change the sword of the naked power-policy, which the English always pursued, into the sword of the executor of the law—whether summoned to the task by God or by justice and morality.” Thus they talked of the need to preserve international treaties and maritime laws, while failing to mention that those laws had been crafted in their image and in their interests.
> 
> In 1914, frustrated German nationalists had predicted that such a system, based as it was on a form of historical amnesia, was doomed to collapse. But German defeat in the World War caused Meinecke to think again. The Anglo-Saxons were indeed hypocritical, but were far less naive than he had assumed. Hypocrisy, perhaps, was a useful tool in international affairs. What they practiced was, in his reformed view, “the most effective kind of Machiavellianism, which could be brought by the national Will of power-policy to become unconscious of itself, and to appear (not only to others, but also to itself) as being pure humanity, candour and religion.”
> 
> Meinecke refused to believe that a true League of Nations could ever be realized. Instead of the League, however, he believed that the shared strategic culture of America and Britain might point to a different type of international order. It may “perhaps occur that the era of . . . international conflict . . . may be brought to an end not by a genuine League of Nations, but by the world-hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers, in whose hands the strongest physical powers of the globe are already concentrated.” Such “a pax anglo-saxonica would not be by any means ‘ideal’”, Meinecke wrote, but its hidden genius was that it would “be more endurable for the individual life of . . . [other] nations” than dominance by other powers.
> 
> E.H. Carr relied heavily on Meinecke in his book The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939). He noted that the British had long been “eloquent supporters of the notion that the maintenance of British supremacy is the performance of a duty to mankind” and that America was adopting much the same line. But Carr, a totemic figure in modern-day “realism”, could never quite reconcile himself to the hypocrisy and cant he saw in Anglo-American political culture.
> 
> Carr denounced both Roosevelt’s foreign policy and Eyre Crowe’s memorandum of 1907. Theories about international morality were “always the product of a dominant group which identifies itself with the community as a whole, and which possesses facilities denied to subordinate groups.” He criticized Winston Churchill’s statement that “the fortunes of the British Empire and its glory are inseparably interwoven with the fortunes of the world”, juxtaposing it with a statement by German historian Wilhelm Dibelius that England was “the solitary Power with a national programme which, while egotistic through and through, at the same time promises to the world something which the world passionately desires: order, progress, and eternal peace.” The idea of a “pax Germanica or a pax Japanica . . . was a priori no more absurd than the conception of pax Britannica would have seemed in the reign of Elizabeth or of a pax Americana in the days of Washington and Madison.”
> 
> Yet, once again, these notions lasted through another World War. While Carr railed against such illusions, he did not appreciate just how durable they were. George Orwell understood. In his 1941 essay “The Lion and the Unicorn” Orwell wrote that hypocrisy was a necessary part of the “higher realism” that kept the West on an even keel:
> 
> 
> [H]ypocrisy is a powerful safeguard . . . a symbol of the strange mix of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in familiar shape.
> 
> Britain was swift to reconcile itself to the fact that the United States had inherited its role as the strongest nation on earth. In 1928, a diplomat at the British Foreign Office described how, in the form of the United States, Britain was faced
> 
> 
> with a phenomenon for which there is no parallel in our modern history—a state twenty-five times as large, five times as wealthy, three times as populous, twice as ambitious, almost invulnerable, and at least our equal in prosperity, vital energy, technical equipment and industrial strength.
> 
> The problem, which modern British diplomats could do well to note, was that “in almost every field, the advantages to be derived from mutual co-operation are greater for us than for them.”
> 
> The recurrent challenge for Britain, much diminished by the war, was to keep America fully engaged on the international stage. Churchill understood better than anyone the importance of a Pax Anglo-Saxonica, and Britain’s selfish strategic interest in preserving it. This, above anything else, was his legacy to British and American foreign policy, both in theory and practice.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 3



> The appeal of such an arrangement was, of course, more immediately obvious in Britain, as the smaller and weaker of the two. For that reason, Britain’s first socialist Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, was as staunch an advocate of an Anglo-American alliance as any. Leon Trotsky bitterly described how MacDonald pointed “with pride to this dog collar, calling it the best instrument of peace.” Clement Attlee, the first Prime Minister of the majority-Labour government that defeated Churchill in 1945, also recognized the importance of staying as close as possible to the United States and keeping it engaged on the international stage. Thus Britain led the way on the formation of NATO, which formally tied American power to the canvas of contending European political expressions. To an extent that is often forgotten, even the British Left conceived the struggles against both Nazism and Communism in remarkably Manichean terms, as a struggle between totalitarian forms of governance and “Western” values of freedom and the Enlightenment. This thread runs through the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and all the way to David Cameron, though his countrymen seem unable to grasp the point.
> 
> As Tooze explains in The Deluge, one of the main reasons for the collapse of the interwar liberal order was the revanchism of those nations that resented their place in the “chain gang” that marched behind the noble Anglo-American vanguard: Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. More important was the unwillingness of the liberal nations to do what was necessary to preserve it. It took the tragedy of a second World War to demonstrate the dangers of American aloofness and detachment from foreign squabbles.It took the tragedy of a second World War to demonstrate the dangers of American aloofness and detachment from foreign squabbles. The Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, like the German U-boat attacks in World War I, seemed to confirm Lippmann’s fundamental argument: Americans could not enjoy the benefits of an inherited Anglo-Saxon world order without provoking the rage of others, or avoid suffering the consequences when it began to unravel due to neglect.
> 
> It was Meinecke’s student, the German-Jewish émigré historian Felix Gilbert, who best encapsulated the new intellectual consensus that underpinned America’s entry into another World War. As he explained, it was “considered highly desirable to emphasize that, if the United States should enter the war, this should happen not for Wilsonian idealistic reasons, but for reasons of Realpolitik, i.e. reasons of national security.”
> 
> In 1956, Arnold Wolfers, a Swiss-born scholar of geopolitics who established Yale University’s Institute of International Studies in 1935, joined with Laurence W. Martin to produce The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign Affairs (1956), an edited collection that began with excerpts from Sir Thomas More and Thomas Hobbes and ended with Woodrow Wilson. The aim was to “explain some of the peculiarities of the contemporary British and American approach to world affairs, which often puzzle the foreign observer and lead him either to praise the special virtues of Anglo-Saxon policy or condemn what he considers its hypocritical wrappings.” Wolfers argued that the distinguishing characteristic of Continental theorists was that they operated in the face of constant external threats to their national existence. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Americans had the advantage of relative security from foreign invasion; they were both islands of sorts. Theirs “was a philosophy of choice, then, which was bound to be ethical, over against a philosophy of necessity, in which forces beyond moral control were believed to prevail.”
> 
> On occasion, a philosophy of choice could lend itself to excessive moralism and self-righteousness. But the Anglo-American worldview had a self-correcting mechanism within it. Referring to Meinecke again, Wolfers noted, crucially, that there was “room for hypocrisy” in such a position. It began with a belief that justice and reason could guide national behavior overseas. But moral conduct need not be absolute, and prudence cautioned against taking unnecessary risks. In such a world, similarly minded nations (which took to the seas for trade rather than invasion, and acted out of choice rather than in the name of necessity) were to be welcomed as partners, just as Britain had reconciled itself to the rise of America after 1814.
> 
> In inheriting Britain’s position of global dominance, the United States also unconsciously adopted many of its traits. Two myths, one British and one American, have sometimes obscured the extent of the similarities between the two.
> 
> The British myth is that the United Kingdom wielded a softer, more subtle form of power, replete with a more sophisticated diplomatic armory; that Britain was to America, in that too famous and nauseating phrase, what the Greeks were to the Romans. As Meinecke noted, this misconception comes from a convenient amnesia. Acts of belligerence and preemption were a recurrent feature of British behavior on the international stage. Britain was hyperactive and ferocious in defense of its interests and frequently engaged in renegade episodes of piracy, coercion, blockading, and bombardment—a formula applied across the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and farther afield as well. One might even say that Britain was the original “dangerous nation.”
> 
> The American myth is that the British Empire of the 19th century represented something immeasurably different from the American Century that followed it. The truth is that Britain similarly had been wary of conquering large portions of foreign land and garrisoning whole nations in the manner of the Romans. Compared to European counterparts, its standing army remained small. Maintaining access to ports and waterways, preserving trade routes, and preventing other great powers from invading its sphere of influence were its guiding foreign policy principles. It always preferred that its colonies govern themselves, though not at the risk of instability, which seemed always to put off the day of genuine self-governance. For Britain, too, non-intervention was always the preferred position, though—in a pattern that President Obama might recognize at least dimly from his Libya decisions—it was often the staunchest anti-interventionists and anti-imperialists who ended up embarking on the costliest interventions (as William Gladstone did in Egypt). America’s own creep into Central and South America in the name of commerce, stability, and good governance was justified with a similarly convoluted liberal-imperial rationale.
> 
> Both, moreover, have striven to achieve a “balance of power” in the international system. As President Nixon said of his foreign policy, the aim was to assume the “position the British were in in the 19th century, when among the great powers of Europe they’d always play the weaker against the stronger.” At a speech given at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London in 1982, Kissinger noted how, at the end of World War II, many American leaders condemned Churchill as
> 
> 
> needlessly obsessed with power politics, too rigidly anti-Soviet, too colonialist in his attitude to what is now called the Third World, and too little interested in building the fundamentally new international order towards which American idealism has always tended.
> 
> At that time the British, meanwhile, saw the Americans as “naive, moralistic, and evading responsibility for helping secure the global equilibrium.” Ultimately, however, Kissinger argued, “Britain had a decisive influence over America’s rapid awakening to maturity” in the second half of the 20th century. Since that time, he added rather ruefully, “a rather ironic reversal of positions took place”: The United States was now “accused of being obsessed with the balance of power, and it is our European allies who are charged by us with moralistic escapism.”
> 
> Certain things were not lost in translation, however. Above all, Britain bequeathed to America “a convenient form of ethical egoism”, as Kissinger called it, which held that “what was good for Britain was best for the rest.” The “special relationship” may be creaking, but the world today could still benefit from a Leviathan with a skin thick enough to bear the allegation of hypocrisy, all in the name of a higher realism. Alas, for that to work the Leviathan must believe in its own benign nature, however self-serving that may be. Too much humility and not enough ethical egoism, it turns out, is not good for international security. That is the precondition of a higher realism that we misunderstand at our peril—and not only ours.
> 
> John Bew is reader at the War Studies Department at King’s College London and was the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress in 2013–14. He is working on a long-term project on Transatlantic security with the Clements Center for History, Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Texas.


----------



## Edward Campbell

This, by Mark Weiberger, the Global Chairman & CEO of EY (formerly Ernst & Young) one of the world's largest management/financial consulting firms, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from his _Linkedin_ page, addresses some of the factors that prevent America from performing up to its full potential: 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ive-seen-americas-biggest-economic-challenge-isus-mark-weinberger?trk=hp-feed-article-title


> I've Seen America’s Biggest Economic Challenge — and It Is... Us
> 
> Mark Weinberger
> 
> Apr 29, 2015
> 
> When we look around the world today, the U.S. economy is doing pretty well. China is logging its slowest growth in 24 years. Russia has been downgraded to junk bond status. The EU teeters on the brink of an uncertain future. Meanwhile, the United States is growing steadily – and racking up its longest sustained period of job growth in history.
> 
> This is only part of the story, however. The U.S. economy may be growing, but not nearly fast enough. We have strengths we aren’t using – and potential unfulfilled. And as we work to reach that potential, the biggest obstacle standing in the way might be… us.
> 
> As the world economy has evolved in recent years, the U.S hasn’t always kept up. Too often, we’ve allowed politics to paralyze us. But now it’s time to put aside politics and focus on policies that position our economy to grow, compete, and succeed on the global stage.
> 
> This is critical because, right now, 95% of consumers and 80% of the world’s purchasing power is outside of the United States. Asia’s middle class is almost twice the size of our entire country. U.S. companies earn more than half their income abroad today. Thirty years ago, it was closer to a third.
> 
> These global realities present real opportunities and challenges for America’s future. That’s something we talked about this week at the Milken Global Conference in Santa Monica – where leaders in business, politics, and academics gather every year. On the panel I joined, three issues in particular stood out – and getting them right will be critical to keeping our economy moving forward.
> 
> If we want growth and jobs at home, we need a trade policy that empowers American businesses to compete and win worldwide. Unfortunately, we’ve often missed that opportunity in recent years. Around the world, countries are striking regional deals to liberalize trade and remove barriers to business. But in many of these cases, the U.S. is not at the table.
> 
> From 2000 to 2010, for instance, Asian nations entered into 48 trade agreements. Of those agreements, the US was part of only two – and our exports to that region dropped by over 40% in the same timeframe.
> 
> We can’t afford to stand on the sidelines like this – especially in critical emerging regions like Asia. As President Obama has said: “If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules in that region…We will be shut out…That will mean a loss of U.S. jobs.”
> 
> Fortunately, the U.S. is negotiating two ambitious free trade agreements right now: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Asia and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. Combined, they span economies that make up two-thirds of the world’s GDP – and they’re projected to create up to two million new jobs in the United States.
> 
> Our markets are already open to these other countries. These deals will open their markets to us. And they won’t just lower tariffs. They’ll also improve global regulations, raise governance standards, and implement environmental and worker protections. They are, in almost every sense, the kind of 21st century trade deals we need.
> 
> This is a rare issue that spans party lines, from President Obama to Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan. It’s not often that you see those two on the same side – and we should seize the opportunity for progress.
> 
> Tax Reform: The key to keeping our competitive edge
> 
> If our country is going to compete in the global economy, we need to compete with our tax code. But we’re not doing that today.
> 
> Thirty years ago, the U.S. had one of the lowest business tax rates in the world. Some even considered our country a tax haven. But a lot has changed since then. In recent years, 90% of OECD countries have lowered taxes to attract businesses – and we’ve been left behind. Today, the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate among OECD countries. We are the only country on Earth that taxes worldwide income along with a rate above 30%.
> 
> Thanks to this uncompetitive tax regime, our businesses are at an international disadvantage. Consider the M&A market, where foreign buyers were able to acquire over $200 billion of U.S. companies and business assets between 2003 and 2013. If our tax rate had been more competitive at the time – even the OECD average of 25% – that decade could have been very different. U.S. firms would have actually acquired  $590 billion in assets – and 1,300 American companies would not have been purchased by foreign organizations.
> 
> It’s time to catch up to the rest of the world. The Business Roundtable and Rice University have estimated that tax reform would increase America’s GDP by 0.9% in 2 years, and 3.1% in 10 years. It would also drive higher incomes on average. This is a reform that’s long past due – and the rest of the world isn’t waiting around.
> 
> Immigration: Keeping the best talent in America
> 
> Right now, our immigration system is inefficient, outdated and ready for change. EY regularly recruits on university campuses, and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to turn away some of our best applicants because we know they can’t get the visas they need to stay in the US.
> 
> Even worse, our immigration system isn’t just turning away promising young people – it’s turning away future leaders. All you have to do is look at the list of Fortune 500 founders to see that. Of these entrepreneurs, 40% of them are either immigrants, or children of immigrants.
> 
> If we want to maintain a competitive edge in the global economy, we should be fighting to keep that kind of top talent here – not sending it away.
> 
> When you consider that kind of potential, it’s clear that immigration reform isn’t just a nice thing to do. It’s the smart path to drive economic growth in a big way. One study found that immigration reform would increase America’s GDP by almost 5%, increase average wages, and cut the deficit by over a trillion dollars over 20 years.
> 
> As we position our country for the future, let’s not lose sight of these drivers of growth. The opportunities and obstacles are clear – and now it’s up to us to decide what to do with them. In a very real way, the only thing standing in the way of America’s economic potential is… us.




So, three tracks:

     1. Free trade ~ which must be a two way street. If America wants to trade in the world it must learn to trade freely, also .... that means fiscal idiocy like the _Buy America_ Act (and Canada's protectionist dairy policies)
         must go. Those who follow my ramblings know that I am a committed free trader; tariffs are silly; they don't work; _I know_ "the people" love them, they think they keep jobs at home; _I also know_ that the people are
         piss poor at making sound fiscal policies; listening to the people is madness;

     2. Tax reform ~ especially reducing taxes on business. I have banged this drum for a long time. "Corporate taxes," are just a version of a value added tax that we, the consumers, eventually pay. Corporate taxes are nothing
         more, nor less, than a very, very inefficient and expensive HST; and

     3. Immigration reform ~ this ought not to be necessary as a really high priority except for the fact that the American (and Canadian) education systems are FUBAR. We have to import smart people because we have "dumbed down" our children.

America cannot have a useful _grand strategy_ until it gets its fiscal house in order (see Richard Hass' _"Foreign Policy begins at Home"_ and then uses it's _powers_ (hard and soft) to address its *vital interests*.


----------



## tomahawk6

I think immigration historically has helped mold the country into what it is today.With Democrat's though they dont want to attract well educated people,just uneducated people who will be a drain on the welfare system.


----------



## Edward Campbell

The left/right split in American politics was highlighted again as all 44 Democratic senators voted against President Obama's request for "fast track" authority for the TPP negotiations.

An article in the _Globe and Mail_, headlined "Obama gets stinging rebuke from own party over Trans-Pacific trade deal" says, in part, "Open warfare has broken out between the White House and left-leaning Democrats in Congress, whose consciences Ms. Clinton needs to soothe to avoid any snags en route to the 2016 nomination. True to form, Ms. Clinton is impossible to pin down on TPP ..."

More on the TPP, here.


Edited to add:

This is from an article in the _Financial Times_: 

     "Many Democrats, particularly on the party’s left, have a longstanding aversion to trade agreements. Mr Obama has, as a result, been waging an increasingly ugly and public fight on trade
     with figures such as Elizabeth Warren, the de facto leader of the Democratic left, that amounts to a battle for the party’s economic soul."

In short, just when America needs _consensus_ to develop a _grand strategy_, the left is moving even farther towards the terminally stupid left, and the right, although _right_ on free trade, remains in its own cloud-cuckoo land.


----------



## a_majoor

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> I think immigration historically has helped mold the country into what it is today.With Democrat's though they dont want to attract well educated people,just uneducated people who will be a drain on the welfare system.



Not even just educated people, but people educated and aculturated in a certain way. I always refer back to this, but Samuel Huntington's book "Who Are We?" makes a very strong claim that American political, educatinal and cultural structures come from very specific roots based on the wave of Protestant dissenters who emmigrated to the United States in the late 1600's and early 1700's, which laid the foundation for where we are today.

Even turning off emmigration from Guatemala and importing millions of English people today would not do anything to change the trajectory back to the "American exceptionalism" ideal; modern England does not supply the ideas and people educated and aculturated in the same way as the people of the 1700's.

Other examples of how history and culture are so important can be found in Fukyama's book Trust, which also looks at how even small differences in culture can make hjuge changes in politics and economics.


----------



## Edward Campbell

From Ian Bemmer on _Linkedin_:

   On Morning Joe, I said key challenge to US: China the only country with a global strategy. Former Sec Defense Bob Gates: "Agree."

You will not be surprised to hear that _I agree_ with Dr Bremmer and Secretary Gates. America, in 1995 to 2015, reminds me of Britain in 1885 to 1905: _adrift_ and unable to "see" the useful _strategic_/policy choices.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 2

Here, reproduced, in two parts, under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Business Insider_, is Ian Bremmer, again, being interviewed about his new book, _Superpower_:

http://www.businessinsider.com/ian-bremmer-superpower-foreign-policy-2015-5


> SUPERPOWER: Ian Bremmer explains America's choices in the 'period of geopolitical creative destruction'
> 
> ELENA HOLODNY
> 
> May 19, 2015
> 
> Washington hasn't had a defined foreign policy strategy for the last quarter-century, but now it's time for America to take a look at the options and make a choice, argues Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer in his new book, "Superpower."
> 
> During the Cold War, America had a defined policy — and everybody knew what it was. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was still safe enough for Washington to get away with not having a clear strategy.
> 
> However, in today's increasingly dangerous and unstable geopolitical environment, that's no longer an option.
> 
> "America has not had a [post-Soviet] foreign policy strategy," Bremmer told Business Insider in a sit-down interview. "We've chosen to be risk averse and reactive. You look at the Gulf Summit with the leaders not coming. You look at Netanyahu. You look at the Russians. The Chinese have the AIIB. All of this.
> 
> "And now the point is: How is America going to react to all of this?"
> 
> There are three specific foreign policy options for the US, according to him:
> 
> Indispensable America — US exceptionalism on a global scale. Indispensable America is the idea that Americans care about and actively work to make the world safer — especially because this ensures the safety of the American people.
> Furthermore, if America won't play the role of the world's policeman, then no one will — and that could lead to a much more dangerous world.
> 
> Moneyball America — running America like a company. Moneyball America takes a calculated look at what America is spending money on, how to minimize costs, and how to maximize the benefits.
> 
> Independent America — American values do matter, but the way to promote them is by investing in and focusing on the US rather than policing the world around. Once you build up and improve America, you will inevitably project American values across the world.
> 
> Basically, "'Indispensable' is going with your heart, 'Moneyball' is going with your wallet, and 'Independent' is going with your head," according to Bremmer.
> 
> Business Insider and Ian Bremmer discussed America's current role in the world, how the geopolitical environment has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union, and how that affects the choices America has in the future.
> 
> _This interview has been lightly edited and rearranged for clarity._
> 
> *Business Insider: You write that America has three choices. However, as you trace through Bill Clinton's, George W. Bush's, and then Obama's foreign policies, it seemed as though many of their policies were a product of the world that they were leading in. To what degree would you say that it's external factors that actually shape US foreign policy? To what degree do we have a choice?*
> 
> Ian Bremmer: Well, it's funny because all of my previous books were about big global structural countries. I'm not someone who likes to talk about just blaming Obama. Because you also ask, what about Congress? What about the American public? China? Russia? Europe? There are lots of reasons why we're in the thicket geopolitically that we are.
> 
> But, the fact of the matter is, the US president has a lot of flexibility on foreign policy. As much as Congress may say that they want to play more of a role, they really can’t. I mean if we do or don’t do an Iran deal, that’ll be largely on the basis of Obama. The reaction that we’ve had on Russia/Ukraine has been influenced very significantly by Obama.
> 
> I happen to believe that we are entering into this period of geopolitical creative destruction. The last time we’ve seen something like that was after WWII. I believe that this is a G-Zero environment. I believe that despite the fact that the United States is the world’s only superpower. I do not believe that this will be an American century, nor do I believe it will be a Chinese century. I think we’re done with centuries.
> There’s just too much volatility.
> 
> But I absolutely believe that in an environment where there’s much more volatility, where there’s much more geopolitical conflict — that’s one where the decisions made by the American president happen to be one of the most significant factors that you can control. And the most significant one that we can control.
> 
> It’s been obvious that for the last 25 years we’ve abdicated. We’ve not had a foreign policy strategy. We’ve chosen to be risk averse and reactive. And when the Soviet Union first collapsed, that was fine, because we’re the only game out there.
> 
> But we’re sitting here in 2015 and the American economy is rebounding, and unemployment’s down, and Obama's approval ratings on foreign policy are in the toilet, and the international reaction to this has been bad.
> 
> You look at the Gulf Summit with the leaders not coming. You look at Netanyahu. You look at the Russians. The Chinese have the AIIB. All of this stuff. And the point is: how is America going to react to all of this.
> 
> I did not write this book as a pure exercise. I actually believe that the Americans have choices. And those choices will not necessarily shape the entire world in our image, but those choices will absolutely affect the trajectory of the United States in a global environment that is much more geopolitically uncertain. And I think that it behooves our president to do that.
> 
> It’s not that I fear that we’re not going to do anything — it’s not that I fear another eight years of incoherent “Question Mark America." What I fear is another two, or four, or six years of "incoherent America" and then there’s a crisis. Then there’s a — God forbid — another 9/11, or there’s a massive cyber attack, or Europe implodes, or China does something really assertive — whatever it is.
> 
> What worries me then is Americans, absent a strategy, are going to overreact — just like we did with Ebola, just like we did with 9/11, just like we do with everything — we overreact. And we would be overreacting without a strategy, in an environment _not_ like 9/11 (where America is on top of the world), but where actually the world is blowing up.
> 
> *BI: If we look at the major world leaders Obama, China's Xi Jinping, and Russia's Vladimir Putin — they all have very different strategies in their foreign policies. Obama, as you write in your book, defines a lot of his policies in negative terms ("we're not going to put troops on the ground, for example). Xi tends to keep a blank face. And then you have Putin, who's always in the public eye and very aggressive. How do you think these strategies have played out and how do you think they will continue to play out?*
> 
> Bremmer: So I think that the only country in the world with a global strategy right now is China — and I think that that should unnerve us. I think that China has decided that militarily they cannot compete with the United States over the medium term, maybe even in the long term. Outside of Asia they can’t. I think [former Australian Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd understands this very clearly and I agree with him.
> 
> But the Chinese do want to compete with us economically globally. They want to compete with our standards, they want to compete with our influence, they want to compete with our architecture that we’ve created, and they’re doing that through the BRICS Bank, and the AIIB, and through the Silk Road Initiatives — you name it. Over a trillion dollars being spent. No one else comes close. And it’s a real strategy. It will certainly be overreach in some places, but overall, I suspect it will work.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Russia is in decline. Their president is extremely upset about that. He has hit upon a policy of aggressiveness that works very well domestically, and he wants to project power. And he wants to particularly do it militarily in a way that the Chinese would never do. Or certainly, would find very counter productive today.
> 
> So the Russians are the ones who want make sure that we know that their navy can be right in Latin America, and that’s just fine by them. Their fighter pilots, their bombers will have their nukes right on there. And they don’t care if they find sort of with just line of sight. No radar at all, that sort of stuff.
> 
> And obviously the Russians are much more willing to take risks and to make mistakes as a consequence of that. Putin personally is playing a very different game.
> 
> *Do you think it's that the Russians are willing to take risks, or rather that they aren't great at strategizing? *
> 
> Bremmer: No, I think they’re willing to. Putin is thinking much more tactically than he is thinking strategically. But I think that to the extent that he’s think strategically, he’s more willing to accept risks because he sees that a more risk averse posture over the last twenty years has led to incremental gains from the United States and allies that don’t really respect the Russians very much — in a way that they respect China quite a bit.
> 
> So you look at anything from sending an ambassador over to Russia who meets with the opposition on the first day — we’d never do that, the American ambassador to China wouldn’t do that because we think that China’s too important. NATO enlargement, missile defense, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, energy exploitation from the Caspian to the West, and now Ukraine.
> 
> A lot of this is just — it’s not that we want Russia to decline, it’s just that we don’t care. It’s not really important.
> 
> Putin is tactical and risk accepting. Obama is tactical and risk averse, which you see in Syria. He makes the misstep on the red line, and then he does everything possible, ties himself in knot contortions, that clearly hurt him strategically, to avoid getting sucked into Syria. And he’s done this in Iraq, and he’s done this with the Iran deal, and he’s done this in lots of different ways — even in Russia. Some of those policies have been okay, like Iran — so far. But some have been disastrous — like Syria, and like Russia.
> 
> Risk aversion in a world that’s becoming much more dangerous, and you’re the largest power out there, is not a recipe for success. Because again the problem is that not just that Americans think that Obama’s doing the worst on foreign policy of all other issues. It’s also, when I talk to foreign ministers from every country around the world, every one of our allies — they’ll all tell you privately: “My God. What does America stand for? Like, what do you guys want?” And they all want to hedge as a consequence of that.



End of Part 1 of 2


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 2



> *BI: So you present three choices for Americans and the next American president. How can each one go horribly wrong? *
> 
> Bremmer: Indispensable can go horribly wrong if we get radically over extended. If we end up just spending ourselves into oblivion on things that really don’t work, causing more problems than we solved at the same time, and undermining everything that America stands for internationally.
> 
> We’ve already seen a bit of this at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so imagine that times five because we won’t have the same level of support from allies that we had in those. And the challenges that we’re getting are much bigger. And our standing the world is more problematic, which means it's unlike after 9/11 when we were in great shape. If we have a problem like that again, you know, we’re going to come out of it much worse. That’s how Indispensable goes wrong. It’s really easy to see that.
> 
> Moneyball can go horribly wrong because you’re talking about running the country like a company. Now, how does it go wrong when you run a company? You make bad bets and they go bankrupt, right? And the thing about Moneyball is you’re basically saying we’re going to make big bets in a few small places while the world is very volatile. And what happens if the big bets you make end up being the wrong bets? So what happens if you do the "Pivot to Asia," and you’re all in Asia, and, actually, those bets are misplaced. And then the Europeans say, screw this, and they leave you, and they become much stronger — or they fall apart.
> 
> In short, what happens if you just make the wrong bets with Moneyball in a world that moves so quickly? What happens if you’re spending all of your money on cyber and and it turns out that actually cyber goes away because quantum computing — within five years tops — means that you don’t have any privacy on anything and no one can hack because everyone gets everything. And suddenly, we just wasted like an enormous amount, and we’re completely not focused on other things that are becoming much bigger.
> 
> You can run a portfolio of companies really well with the Moneyball strategy because if one goes bankrupt, you're fine — because on average you’re doing really well. Well, you don’t have a whole bunch of countries that you can try this with. We’re not trying this out on the whole Caribbean — it’s America! It’s the worlds largest economy, the world’s largest superpower, and you’re going to suddenly take bets? I don’t think it’s a good idea.
> 
> Finally, the downside with Independent is that the rest of the world gets so much worse when we pull back. And that other countries either do not engage, even though they should. Even though its in their interest, everybody takes free rides, and it becomes much more anarchic. Or they do engage, but they fight each other. So you will see that much more of the world ends up looking like the Middle East than looks like Europe
> 
> There is real downside with each of these three. Now, of course what’s interesting is that the downside differs for the United States.
> 
> *BI: What is the most dangerous about the narrative of American exceptionalism that comes with these strategies, and specifically, comes with "Indispensable" America? *
> 
> The most dangerous thing is that we believe it. And therefore, we actually believe that our values are truly better than other countries, and so we refuse to actually look at the world through their lenses. That’s the most dangerous thing.
> 
> The fact is, our view on human rights is clearly on balance better than the Chinese — it’s not even close. But that’s not necessarily true all the time of our view on corruption or special interests or free markets, capture of the regulatory process.
> 
> It’s one thing when we’re the biggest economy out there, and no one can hurt us, or they don’t like our way, even if we may be wrong, you have to live with it, right? But its another thing if these countries have the ability to say no and damage you.
> 
> So with a country like China, it really behooves us to try to understand the fact that the Chinese don’t want a free market economy, they don’t want a liberal democracy.
> 
> And we need to understand why that is. And the more that we’re exceptionalists, the more that we believe that the Chinese really do want to be like Americans, that they just want to be liberal Democrats like us, that they just need to get there, and we just need to help them do that — when I really don’t think that’s true.
> 
> And even if Russians did want to get there, Putin is running Russia. And Putin’s ability to hurt us by promoting that is actually significant — and that’s the most powerful human being on the planet. So, the bottom line is, I think the biggest problem with exceptionalism is that we believe it.
> 
> *BI: There are two sides to US foreign policy: protecting the American people versus protecting American values. And they kind of seem to me...*
> 
> IB: Completely at odds with each other — with surveillance, for example.
> 
> *BI: Yes. How do you think that these two sides should fall into the three choices America has? How should they be addressed? And is one more important than the other?*
> 
> Indispensable, as much as it likes to talk about protecting American values globally, it tends to align itself with the people in the US above all. And not necessarily with issues of privacy. Whereas Independent kind of leans kind of opposite direction. And Moneyball doesn’t really want to talk about values at all.
> 
> So the question is: do you really want to promote American values globally? What does that mean? Do you want to focus on American values at home? Do you want to demand respect, or do you want to command respect? Indispensable is about demanding respect, and Independent is about commanding respect, and Moneyball is about, look, we’re not in the respect game, that’s not what we’re doing, we’re really just trying to win.
> 
> I did not know which of these I supported when I wrote this book. I did not know which of these I supported even when I finished this book. This is hard. I think that all three of these are workable. And I’m someone who grew up — I’m not a millennial — I grew up with the Cold War. And I went to the Soviet Union when it was really the Soviet Union — the first time in 1986 — and I saw what it meant to be up against a regime with nuclear missiles pointed at you, that really saw you as your antagonist all over the world.
> 
> And how much it meant for America to be standing up with our friends in Eastern Europe, and Radio Free Europe, and Voice of America, and Captive Nations Parade. All those things that ultimately won the day for the Americans because they believed in something. That we were prepared to support, and support aggressively, over the world.
> 
> But I also see how much the world has changed in the last 30 years since I’ve been aware of international affairs. I’ve seen this country go through an extraordinary transition from days of fighting the Soviets in the Cold War to the new world order that we were in charge of to 9/11, and we’re going to fight the global war of terror and the “Axis of Evil,” now to complete incoherence, and not knowing what we stand for anymore.
> 
> And it really pains me to watch that process. And I felt like I had to write a book that was going to stand up and give the Americans more than just “this is the only way forward.” I had to be brutally honest and give the best possible argument, and I know that there are people out there in America that support these three. And if you read the quiz at the beginning of the book — I mean, these are hard questions. It’s not easy to say which of those Americas do you really support or want the most.
> 
> These are conversations that I think are happening around dinner tables in the country today, the problem is, they’re happening around dinner tables, but then when you turn on the television, they stop it — because you’re not having that discussion anymore.
> 
> Because the people on television, and the people on the radio, and the people writing newspapers, and the blog-spots, and people you’re following on Facebook — those public voices are not talking to each other, they’re talking past each other. They’re telling you that there’s only one way, and everyone else is an idiot. And we hate that. We believe in more than that. We want authenticity, and authenticity means that there isn’t only one way.
> 
> And so I don’t know how well this [book] is going to do. But if it does anything, what I really want it to do is inform. I put it out now when we don’t even have all the candidates yet, when I don’t even know which one I would vote for, when most of them don’t have a coherent foreign policy — because I want it to help structure and inform the debate. It killed me in 2012 when Romney versus Obama spent 90 minutes on foreign policy that we will never get back.
> 
> Those 90 minutes are gone. And it was useless. And the only thing they debated seriously was Benghazi, which was largely a partisan and made-up issue.
> 
> And all of the big issues that really face the Americans where just no where, and it feels quaint that you can have a foreign policy debate that feels so incredibly irrelevant four years ago. And I don’t want that to happen again.
> 
> This time around I want people to force these candidates to actually not just say “we stand for America,” but say what you're going to do to stand for America, what you’re going to spend to stand for America, where are you going to cut it loose.
> 
> We have to hear from the people we’re gonna vote for — that’ll be our president probably for the next 8 years. We gotta hear it.




Dr Bremmer asks a key (rhetorical) question fairly early on in the interview: "How will America react?" he says. It's sad that the question even needs to be asked. A real "superpower," America in, say, the 1950s, doesn't have to _react_, it would have led the world towards the sort of situation it desired. Later Dr Bremmer answers his own question: it will overreact, he suggests, and I agree.

The problem facing America is leadership: _political leadership_, intellectual leadership and _military leadership_. In my view the first and last are almost totally missing and I see nothing to suggest that Americans will elect real, effective leaders, from any party or movement, in 2016. I believe the US political system is broken; that _breakdown_ has the potential to seriously weaken America, perhaps to actually destroy it. There is, still, plenty of intellectual leadership but it refuses to enter politics ~ who can blame intellectuals for not wanting to subject themselves to the ritual humiliation by the stupid that is the nature of the US political system? The same intellectuals eschew the military ... perhaps for reasons suggested in other threads about the self destructive _careerism_ that infects the US military officer corps, top to bottom, and is spreading to allied armed forces, too. 

The solution is difficult and complex but it does _*not*_ involve "American exceptionalism." America is not exceptional, no more than was Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries, Spain in the 16th century, Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries or China in the 21st. Empires, including the current American empire, come and go ... Percy Bysshe Shelly said it all, almost 200 years ago.


----------



## Edward Campbell

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, might, just as easily have gone in the China "super-thread," but it's about American _strategy_, or lack of same, _in my opinion_, so it belongs here:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-05-20/beware-chinas-grand-strategy


> Beware China's Grand Strategy
> *How Obama Can Set the Right Red Lines*
> 
> By Jeff M. Smith
> 
> May 20, 2015
> 
> Last month 57 nations applied to become founding members of China’s newest creation: the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Ostensibly designed to help finance projects that sate Asia’s expanding appetite for infrastructure, the AIIB has left Washington struggling over how to respond. Some applaud China for assuming greater international responsibility and wielding soft power to aid Asia’s growth. Some oppose the move as undermining the U.S.-led economic order and using aid as a tool to advance China’s strategic agenda.
> 
> In an article for _Foreign Affairs_, “Who’s Afraid of the AIIB?” Phillip Lipscy makes a detailed case for the former. He argues that the United States’ principal concern—that the AIIB will undermine existing international lenders and their standards—is misplaced. China, he argues, is more of a status quo power when it comes to international institutions than many think. Further, development aid is a “highly competitive and fragmented policy area” and donors, he believes, are unlikely to devote resources to any institution that narrowly pursues its own interests and is unaccountable to its stakeholders. In any event, he writes, China is already able to “undercut the quality and conditions of existing aid agencies…more expediently through bilateral aid and overseas activities of its state-owned enterprises.” Washington, Lipscy concludes, should embrace the AIIB and even join the institution to shape its policies and practices from the inside.
> 
> Lipscy admirably addresses the question of U.S. participation in the AIIB and its impact on international lending standards, but security strategist see such issues as tactical questions that pale in comparison to the broader strategic ones. China is now operating beyond the reach of a U.S. veto, capable of reshaping the international order unilaterally. The AIIB will grant China a virtuous cycle of benefits, expanding its political and economic leverage across Asia and aiding its efforts to elevate the yuan as an international reserve currency. And it is China’s own companies, with unrivaled experience building affordable infrastructure, that will be uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of the AIIB’s initial capitalization of $100 billion.
> 
> _Those in the security community are concerned with whether the multilateral development bank could help free up capital for the next aircraft carrier, curry enough favor to win the carrier berthing rights in a foreign port,
> or finance enough oil and gas pipelines to shield that carrier from a fuel embargo._
> 
> Such a zero-sum construct may seem unnecessarily Machiavellian: Must Washington view every Chinese advance with hostility and believe that it comes at the United States’ expense? The answer to that question, and to how Washington should ultimately view AIIB, is dependent on China and the objectives of its grand strategy.
> 
> AGENDA ITEMS
> 
> Ask ten China scholars to define Chinese grand strategy and you will get ten answers. In a formal sense, it does not exist. Yet observers can discern coherent strategic priorities that, in aggregate, resemble the elements of a grand strategy. Today, the first priority is arguably driven by the Communist Party’s preoccupation with mitigating key vulnerabilities in pursuit of stability and growth.
> 
> Rapid economic growth long ago replaced ideology as the principal binding agent of the Chinese system. At a time when Beijing needs that growth more than ever to ease the frictions in its system (rampant corruption, elite infighting, social and political unrest, environmental degradation, and massive demographic challenges), Chinese GDP growth has dipped to its lowest level in a quarter century.
> 
> Externally, Beijing is keenly sensitive regarding the vulnerability of the energy imports that sustain China’s economy, the bulk of which must traverse thousands of miles of open sea patrolled by the U.S. Navy and through the narrow naval chokepoint at the Strait of Malacca. The naked vulnerability of these imports (particularly in war time) is intolerable to Chinese strategists.
> The goals of Chinese grand strategy can therefore be assumed to be attaining diverse and defensible sources of energy and rapid economic growth bolstered by a healthy supply of export markets in an increasingly connected Asia.
> 
> The AIIB has the virtue of advancing both agendas, but it represents just one finger in a Chinese hand grasping Asia in an ever-tighter embrace. China’s “String of Pearls” investments in port facilities along the Indian Ocean rim represent another. Just this past February, a Chinese state-owned enterprise assumed control of the “crown pearl,” Pakistan’s Gwadar Port. Another finger is the web of new oil and gas pipelines from Myanmar (also called Burma) to Kazakhstan, and new industrial and commercial rail links spanning from Western China to Europe. Last year a Chinese cargo train made the longest continuous train ride in history, a 21-day, 8,000-mile round trip from China’s Zheijang province to Spain and back. Meanwhile, Russia and China are currently negotiating the details of a largest-ever gas pipeline and supply contract worth up to $40 billion. Finally, Beijing is still unveiling the details of a “One Belt, One Road” New Silk Road Initiative, an ambitious vision for an interconnected Asia with each spoke linking back to the hub of the Chinese economy.
> 
> NATIONALIST RISE
> 
> There are sound economic rationales behind each Chinese initiative. And, in isolation, they would offer little cause for alarm. However, the initiatives undoubtedly strengthen China’s strategic position, which becomes more troubling when paired with a second theme emerging in Chinese foreign policy. It’s driven by a tide of nationalism that China’s leaders are attempting to wield as a political tool, but that threatens to expand beyond their control. China’s leaders appear (at least temporarily) preoccupied with stability and growth, but there are more neo-imperial ambitions lurking in the shadows.
> 
> In the extreme nationalist worldview, the U.S. military has effectively “boxed in” China along the “first island chain” stretching from South Korea to Indonesia. And they believe the United States is secretly encouraging tensions between China and its neighbors in a further attempt to contain China’s rise. This group supports more aggressive opposition to the U.S. military presence in the region, promoting tactics such as harassing U.S. surveillance vessels in China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
> Nationalists are even more eager to punish neighbors such as Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines—and even India—who they believe capitalized on a period of relative Chinese weakness to assume control of disputed islands in the South and East China Seas and territory along China’s land border. They seek a favorable resolution to these territorial disputes, by force if necessary. Longer-term, many aspire to a loose recreation of the tributary system, where regional powers are so dependent on Beijing or intimidated by it that they’re rendered submissive.
> 
> It is unclear how committed China’s leaders are to pursuing these outcomes, and over what timeframe, but since 2008, the ambitions have been reflected in Chinese policy with greater clarity and intensity. That year, Beijing made a paradigm-shifting miscalculation: It interpreted the global financial crisis as a symbol of terminal U.S. decline and the dawn of America’s strategic retreat from Asia. As a result, in subsequent years the world witnessed alarming growth in unilateral provocations in the South and East China Seas, a rising chorus of nationalist rhetoric, military expenditures untethered from GDP growth, confrontations along the disputed Sino-Indian border, an uptick in confrontations with U.S. naval vessels in China’s EEZ, and unprecedented “land reclamation” activities in the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands.
> 
> _In 2008, Beijing made a paradigm-shifting miscalculation: It interpreted the global financial crisis as a symbol of terminal U.S. decline and the dawn of America’s strategic retreat from Asia._
> 
> Although it began before his tenure, Xi Jinping, China’s avowedly nationalist president has largely embraced the more aggressive posture. Xi’s China has outwardly abandoned the Deng Xiaoping-era adage of “hide your strength, bide your time” in favor of the confident pursuit of the “Chinese dream.” And his promotion of a new “Asia for the Asians” slogan constitutes an unsubtle effort to de-legitimize America’s presence in the region.
> 
> RED LINES
> 
> Since the turn of the century, Washington has adopted a relatively cautious and consultative approach toward China. Concerns over human rights and political freedoms, discriminatory trade policy, and growing militarization have mostly been subdued in service to a grander vision: peacefully integrating China into the Western-led international order.
> 
> This approach was largely successful in managing ties under President George W. Bush. It has been less kind to President Barack Obama. The president bears some responsibility for this, but it is also the result of a more confident and assertive China post-2008. Since then, Washington’s measured responses to incremental changes to the status quo have only invited further boundary testing from Beijing.
> 
> Consequently, there is a growing chorus in Washington urging a change in approach to Asia’s giant. A recent report by Ashley Tellis, from the Carnegie Council, and Robert Blackwill, from the Council on Foreign Relations, advocates a bold new strategy that “deliberately incorporates elements that limit China’s capacity to misuse its growing power” and “centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendency.”
> The report cautions against a Cold War­­­–style “containment” policy, but implores Washington to abandon diplomatic idealism and wield a more robust arsenal of inducements including: preferential trade agreements that “consciously exclude China;” a technology-control regime that prevents China from obtaining military hardware capable of “high-level strategic harm” to the United States; and further capacity building for the United States and allied militaries.
> 
> The report may prove overly pessimistic in its conviction that there is “no real prospect” of ever building “peaceful coexistence” or “mutual understanding” with China. There are conditions under which the two can reach an accommodation that respects the sanctity of both countries’ vital national interests and those of China’s neighbors. But that outcome is largely dependent on Chinese behavior and may, ironically, be hurried by a more muscular U.S. approach. What’s arguably missing, however, is a critical interim step: In a security sphere pregnant with ambiguity, the United States must establish more clearly defined red lines for China.
> 
> Defining these red lines will present considerable challenges. Set them too liberally and the United States risks establishing rules that cannot be enforced or, worse, needlessly provoke Beijing and contribute to its nationalists’ siege mentality. Set them too conservatively, however, and they further encourage Chinese adventurism and continued attempts to alter the status quo in its favor.
> 
> Projects such as the AIIB, inherently non-threatening but strategically advantageous to China, will evade such red lines altogether. There’s little merit in the United States opposing such initiatives, as was apparent when American partners rushed to join the new bank over Washington’s objections. Nor should it be forgotten that the AIIB and the New Silk Road Initiative could ultimately raise the living standards of millions of people in underdeveloped corners of Eurasia. Yet, rather than viewing them in isolation, Washington must observe these initiatives in the context of a Chinese grand strategy and acknowledge the dangers and opportunities they present should that strategy assume a more nationalist trajectory.
> 
> Despite these challenges, defining new red lines is critical as any attempt to adopt a tougher approach toward China will hinge on the United States’ ability to form a broad coalition of partners. On one hand, never has the Indo-Pacific been more apprehensive over China’s rise and more solicitous of an increased U.S. presence. At the same time, Beijing’s growing power and influence will make achieving alignment on a firmer approach to China exceedingly difficult. The clearer the rules of the road, the more palatable and legitimate a tough new approach will be to the United States’ partners, and the less abrasive it will be to Beijing. Washington must be seen less as a subjective arbiter than a guarantor of a fair and consistent rules-based order.




JEFF M. SMITH is the Director of Asia Security Programs and the Kraemer Strategy Fellow at the _American Foreign Policy Council_ (AFPC).

Red lines can be wonderful things ... if they work; the Pentagon loves them because they require a robust military capability,* President Obama also loves them, but he_ appears to believe_ that they are infinitely flexible and need never be firm ...









... but for a red line to work the other side has to _believe_ it means something. Hands up all those who think China believes that President Obama, or his successor in 2017, really means anything at all.  What's that? No one believes? Hmmm ...

What's going to happen when a US _Poseidon_ aircraft (currently patrolling near China's island building sites in the South China Sea) and a Chines fighter collide (accidentally, of course)? How will America respond? What are the stakes? What is the risk:reward calculus? 

_____
* And _I suspect _that China likes them, too, because the bloated US defence budget actually _weakens_ America by wasting scarce resources that it needs to rebuild itself into a real global superpower, as it was in the 1950s: militarily powerful enough to face down Russia, but overwhelmingly powerful in _soft power_ which, as it transpired, was (still is _I think_) more efficient and effective than hard power. While America maintained _sufficient_ hard power and overwhelming soft power it was (financially) able to rebuild itself after the cost and disruptions of World War II.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I often cite or quote Prof John Mearsheimer, who can, _I suppose_, be classified as an American centred realist. I this lecture (45 minutes) he offers four _options_ or models for America's grand strategy: Isolationism, Selective engagement, Offshore balancing and Global domination. He, as he explains, is an _"offshore balancer"_ and you need to listen to him with that fact in mind.

          
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





It's a good listen, and I recommend it, especially for those who believe in American exceptionalism/Global domination/Liberal imperialism.


----------



## a_majoor

The current collapse of the Ammerican political system as demographics, economics and technology changes can be described by the changes in many metrics. This article in "The American Interest" points to the "Libertarianism as a Social Movement" idea that I think is valid, but points to another development which may have further unexpected second and third order effects; another religious revival (Great Awakening) in the United States.

This should not be entirely unexpected, since the future belongs to those who come there, and religious families in the United States (and indeed most parts of the world) tend to have larger, above replacement level families, while the secular/progressives have sub replacement size families or none at all:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/05/27/peak-left-and-the-valley-ahead/



> *Peak Left—and the Valley Ahead*
> 
> Gallup has the story on a major statistical event in U.S. history: for the first time since data on the topic has been collected, the percentage of Americans identifying as socially liberal equals the percentage of Americans identifying as socially conservative. Both groups now stand at 31 percent.
> 
> On the one hand, while this is big news, it’s not exactly surprising. The percentage of actively religious Americans continues to decline, while gay marriage and marijuana legalization continue to score victories in state legislatures across the U.S. It is tempting to revert to Michael Lind’s hypothesis on the extinction of social conservatism and the triumph of various forms of blue-model liberalism.
> 
> But another statistic reported by Gallup should dampen the Left’s glee when it comes to American attitudes on social issues: twice as many Americans identify as economic conservatives as they do economic liberals. After six years of President Obama’s Blue Model agenda, 39 percent of Americans demand redder meat (versus 19 percent who describe themselves as economic liberals).
> 
> In a series of essays this past winter Walter Russell Mead identified three problems for the left.
> 
> First, heartfelt appeals by the liberal intelligentsia to the consciences of middle- and working-class Americans will fail to change their instincts toward economic individualism and individual responsibility.
> 
> Second, the liberal elites in journalism, academia, and the policy world inhabit a media cocoon that protects them from exposure to the economic and cultural realities of average Americans.
> 
> Finally, American demographic realities are not moving in the Left’s favor. As ethnic immigrant groups establish themselves, and as younger generations grow older, they tend to grow more conservative. No less a progressive thinker than John Judis has admitted this trend.
> 
> The Gallup results shed some light on the trends discussed in these three essays. Though America is indeed growing more secular and tolerant, the elite left is still too leftist for most Americans. What seems to be happening instead is that Americans are becoming more ‘live and let live’ libertarian. Social conservatives recoil in horror from the trend to permissiveness on issues ranging from gay marriage to pot; economic lefties shudder and gasp at the lack of enthusiasm for nanny state economic intervention.
> 
> Far from being something new, the creeping libertarianization of American life is one of the most deeply grounded aspects of American culture and life—easily traceable back into the 17th-century colonial era. World War II briefly altered that dynamic, creating a Greatest Generation that was less individualistic than, say, the Americans of the Jazz Age had been. But now we are back to the American norm: favoring individual rights of expression and action over law-based conformity and solidarity.
> 
> What has made that work, historically, has been the presence of two great counterweights, both well described by Alexis de Tocqueville almost two centuries ago. One has been the strong presence of Christian faith in the country, impressing all those otherwise atomized individuals in mind of their obligations to their fellow human beings, and leading them to form voluntary social organizations that make up at least partially for the weakness of the American state and the absence of class and group rights. The other has been the tyranny of opinion; Americans, noted de Tocqueville, are formally more free than other peoples, but in fact are ruled by the moral consensus of the majority, perhaps more than the Europeans of his day.
> 
> We’ve still got the conformity and the browbeating (just visit any college campus and see how dissenters from the Authorized Social Morality of the moment fare); the big question is whether American Christianity has a 21st-century revival ahead.


----------



## Kirkhill

> We’ve still got the conformity and the browbeating (just visit any college campus and see how dissenters from the Authorized Social Morality of the moment fare); the big question is whether American Christianity has a 21st-century revival ahead.



Christian America may becoming more "godless" but they haven't lost religion, their love of church or a hellfire and damnation preacher.  They just get their sermons delivered by television during the evening news hour.  In Canada, T.C. Douglas's followers no longer go to his baptist church.  They listen to Peter Mansbridge and Lisa LaFlamme (and what was her real name and her previous profession anyway?).


----------



## a_majoor

Justice Clarence Thomas gave a commencement address which stresses many of the values that used to define America and Americans. Much of what Justice Thomas has to say should not be surprising, the values of community which he extols are the same as the ones that were outlined by Alexis de Tocqueville in _De la démocratie en Amérique_. Much of the "Culture Wars" have been about uprooting and transforming that sense of communities ("America is a nation of associations", according to de Tocqueville) into something else entirely:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/05/life-lessons-from-justice-thomas.php



> *LIFE LESSONS FROM JUSTICE THOMAS*
> 
> Remembering This is the season of left-wing and formulaic commencement speeches. Contributing to the cause of true “diversity” — diversity in the life of the mind — Zev Chafets has edited a volume of heterodox commencement speeches under the title Remembering Who We Are: A Treasury of Conservative Commencement Addresses.
> 
> There are several speeches that I find inspirational and/or moving and/or thought-provoking in the book. One that is all of the above, and that I think is my favorite (if I had to choose one, which for this purpose I do), is Justice Clarence Thomas’s, published under the title “Do Your Best To Be Your Best.” Through the courtesies of the publisher, we are posting the text of Justice Thomas’s 2008 commencement speech at the University of Georgia below as edited for publication in the book. I’m not given to predictions, but in this case I want to make an exception. I predict you will enjoy this:
> 
> One of the sobering realizations that I came to while thinking about and preparing to be here today is that most of the graduates from the undergraduate program had not started the first grade when I went onto the Court. Life comes at you fast, and passes even faster.
> 
> In 1971, when I sat where you all are now sitting as graduates, I was just glad to be done with college. I was both scared and anxious about the rest of my life. My grandmother and mother were both there in the stadium bleachers to support me and to be there for my wedding the next day. Absent was the one person I wanted and needed there—my grandfather. Mired in a distracting mixture of fear, apprehension, and sadness, I wondered just what would happen next. How would I repay my student loans? Where would I live?
> 
> Somewhere through this fog of self-absorbed confusion, I barely noticed the graduation speaker. His name was Michael Harrington, the author of the then-popular book The Other America: Poverty in the United States, and himself a Holy Cross graduate. He seemed to be exhorting us on to solve the problems of poverty and injustice. As important as those are, I, like most people sitting there that day, was more focused on whether I would be able to solve my own problems, so that I would not become a problem for, or a burden to, others.
> 
> So having sat where you are sitting today, I have no illusion that I am at the center of your attention, nor do I think that what I have to say will be long remembered. But I do humbly request a few moments of your attention, recognizing that there is much going on in your lives. I promise that I will not clutter up your special day with my own ruminations about jurisprudence, although I do have an interest in discussing, at some point, my views on the Dormant Commerce Clause. [laughter] I take that as a lack of interest.
> 
> I will say in passing, however, that even today, after almost seventeen years on the Court, many of the lessons that I learned about life and academics still serve me well on the Court and in life. Believe me, what you have learned thus far really matters and matters greatly.
> 
> I will also not bore you with another litany of complaints or grievances, or exhortations to solve the problems that none of us of advanced years have been able to solve, or in some cases, even understand. It seems to be standard fare these days to charge young people to go out and do great things. Often what is meant is that they do something “out there” as opposed to their personal lives. Many years ago, when I read Dickens’s novel Bleak House, I was fascinated by Mrs. Jellyby’s obsession with her telescopic philanthropy—her great projects in Africa—while at the same time her task at hand went undone.
> 
> Realistically, the great battles for most of us involve conquering ourselves and discharging our duties at hand. These are the building blocks for the great things.
> 
> When I take stock of the nearly six decades of my life, the great people are mostly the people of my youth—my grandparents, my relatives, my neighbors, my teachers. One of the things they all had in common was the way they discharged their daily duties and their daily responsibilities—conscientiously and without complaint or grievance. I think of relatives like Cousin Hattie, who cleaned rooms at the Midway Hotel in Liberty County; her husband, Cousin Robert, who cut grass and farmed; and Miss Gertrude, who labored as a maid.
> 
> They went about their lives, doing their best with what they had, knowing all the while that this was not necessarily fair. They played the hand they were dealt. And, through it all, they were unfailingly good, kind, and decent people whose unrequited love for our great country and hope for our future were shining examples for us to emulate in our own struggles.
> 
> Whether in the merciless summer heat of Liberty County or the sudden downpours at the bus stop at Henry and East Broad streets in Savannah, they taught us how to live with personal dignity and respect for one another. To this day, the people who do their jobs, raise their families, and sacrifice so that we can gather here in peace are my heroes, from whom I draw great inspiration.
> 
> Quite a lot has happened in my lifetime, as I alluded to earlier. Monumental events involving constitutional and civil rights have made it possible for me to stand here today, when I could not sit there years ago as a college graduate. There are also the technological advances: from the scrub board to the automatic washing machine; the dishwasher (that is one of my personal favorites); the television; the computer; the iPod; and of course the now omnipresent cell phone.
> 
> My wife, who is my best friend in the world, often comments on the range of my life. I have been blessed to know and befriend the best and the least educated, the wealthiest and the poorest, the healthy and the physically challenged. I have seen a lot in my journey from the black soil of South Georgia to the white marble of the Supreme Court. It has been a longer journey than the miles from there to Washington could ever suggest. Along the way, I have learned many lessons. There is a saying that if you want to know what is down the road, ask the person who is coming back.
> 
> Today I am coming back down the dusty and difficult road of my life to meet at the commencement of your journey, the beginning of your journey, through the rest of your lives. I would just like to take a few more minutes of your precious time here at the side of this road between the hedges. I have just a few modest suggestions; I promise I will not hold you up very long.
> 
> First, show gratitude and appreciation. None of you, not one of you, made it here entirely on your own. There are people in your lives who gave you birth, who raised you and loved you, even when you were not so lovable. Thank the people who put up with your antics and loved you through it all. Thank the people who paid your tuition and your expenses. There are those who helped and counseled you through difficult times or when you made hard decisions. There are those who were compassionate enough to tell you what you needed to hear, not what you wanted to hear. Take some time today to thank them.
> 
> Don’t put it off; some of us did.
> 
> I never took the time to properly thank my grandparents, the two people who saved my life and made it possible for me to stand here today. Deep down, I know they understand, as they always did and as parents always seem to find a way to understand. But it is still a burden that I will carry to my grave. Take some time to thank those who helped you.
> 
> A simple thank-you will do wonders. You may never know how much that expression of gratitude will mean. Twenty-five years ago, I went to visit my eighth-grade teacher, Sister Mary Virgilius, for the first time since high school. I thanked her for all she had done for me and for being compassionate enough to tell me about my deficiencies when I was in the eighth grade. I told her that I assumed that after more than forty years of teaching, I was among a long list of students who had come back to thank her. She said, “No, you’re the first.”
> 
> One additional word about her. On one of my recent visits to her at the retirement convent in New Jersey, she showed a friend and me her tiny room. It had a small bed, a bureau, and a chair. While telling us about her room, she listed the items to be given away after her death. She’s almost ninety-five years old now. A rosary to her niece; a prayer book to the Franciscan sisters. There was a large photo of her and me on her bureau. Lovingly embracing it, she said, “This goes in my coffin with me.”
> 
> Take a few minutes today to say thank you to anyone who helped you get here. Then try to live your lives as if you really appreciate their help and the good it has done in your lives. Earn the right to have been helped by the way you live your lives.
> 
> Next, remember that life is not easy for any of us. It will probably not be fair, and it certainly is not all about you. The gray hair and wrinkles you see on older people have been earned the hard way, by living and dealing with the challenges of life. When I was a young adult and labored under the delusion of my own omniscience, I thought I knew more than I actually did. That is a function of youth.
> 
> With the wisdom that only comes with the passage of years, the older folks warned me presciently and ominously, “Son, you just live long enough and you’ll see.” They were right; oh, so right. Life is humbling and can be hard, very hard. It is a series of decisions, some harder than others, some good and, unfortunately, too many of them bad. It will be up to each of you to make as many good decisions as possible and to limit the bad ones, then to learn from all of them. But I will urge you to resist when those around you insist on making the bad decisions. Being accepted or popular with those doing wrong is an awful Faustian bargain and, as with all Faustian bargains, not worth it. It is never wrong to do the right thing. It may be hard, but never wrong.
> 
> Each of you is about to begin a new journey. Whatever that may be, do it well. If you are going to a new job or the military or to graduate school, do it to the best of your abilities. Each year at the Court I hire four new law clerks. They are the best of the best. The major difference between them and most of their classmates is self-discipline. By self-discipline, I mean doing what you are supposed to do and not doing what you aren’t supposed to do.
> 
> Though there are many enticements and distractions, it is up to each of you to take care of your respective business. Remember, the rewards of self-indulgence are not nearly as great as the rewards of self-discipline.
> 
> But even as you take care of business, there are a few other necessities for the journey. At the very top of the list are the three F’s—faith, family, and friends. When all else fails and we feel like prodigal sons and daughters, they will always be there, even if we don’t deserve them. Having needed them, I know they will always be your saving grace.
> 
> Trustworthiness and honesty are next. If you can’t be trusted with small matters, how can you be trusted with important ones? It may be hard to be honest, but it is never wrong. For my part, I can only work with honest people. I need to be able to trust them, and so will you.
> 
> Conscientiousness and timeliness are invaluable habits and character traits. As I tell my law clerks, I want my work done right and I want it on time. No matter what you do, do it right and do it on time. My brother used to say that he hurried up to be early so he could wait. Not a bad idea.
> 
> Stay positive. There will be many around you who are cynical and negative. These cause cancers of the spirit and they add nothing worthwhile. Don’t inhale their secondhand cynicism and negativism. Some, even those with the most opportunities in this, the greatest country, will complain and grieve ceaselessly, ad infinitum and ad absurdum. It may be fair to ask them, as they complain about the lack of perfection in others and our imperfect institutions, just what they themselves are perfect at.
> 
> Look, many have been angry at me because I refuse to be angry, bitter, or full of grievances, and some will be angry at you for not becoming agents in their most recent cynical causes. Don’t worry about it. No monuments are ever built to cynics. Associate with people who add to your lives, not subtract; people you are comfortable introducing to the best people in your lives—your parents, your family, your friends, your mentors, your ministers.
> 
> Always have good manners. This is a time-honored tradition and trait; it is not old-fashioned. Good manners will open doors that nothing else will. And given the choice between two competent persons, most of us will opt to hire the one with good manners. For example, no matter what older adults say about calling them by their first names, don’t. Believe me, they remember, and not as kindly as you might think. I thank God my grandparents made me put a handle on grown folks’ names and taught me to say “please” and “thank you.”
> 
> Finally, the Golden Rule that is virtually universal—treat others the way you want to be treated. Indeed, when others hurt you, you may well be required to treat them far better than they treated you and far better than human nature would suggest they deserve. Be better than they are.
> 
> Help others as you wanted and needed to be helped. If you want to receive kindness, respect, and compassion, you must first give them. But to do that, you must first have them your- selves to give. Almost thirty years ago, a janitor in the U.S. Senate with whom I often spoke pulled me aside. I must have looked like the weight of the world was on my shoulders; at the very least, I must have looked despondent, not an uncommon look for a young man with common difficulties and hoping to make some difference in the lives of others. In sober, measured, and nearly toothless diction, he counseled me, “Son, you cannot give what you do not have.” He was right, and merely echoed what I had heard throughout my youth in South Georgia.
> 
> My grandfather would look at the fields late in the summer and make the point that we could not give to others if we had not worked all summer to plant, till, and harvest. As a child, that meant little; as a man, I know he was right.
> 
> There are no guarantees in life, but even with all its uncertainties and challenges it is worth living the right way. As you commence the next chapter in your young lives, I urge you to do your best to be your best. Each of you is a precious building block for your families, your university, your communities, and our great country. It is truly up to each of you to decide exactly what kind of building blocks you will be.


----------



## Edward Campbell

It really doesn't matter which dunderhead the Americans elect to be "the most powerful person in the world," (s)he will be a f'ing eunuch because Americans have spent themselves into a HUGE crisis and they can do SFA until they grow up and fix their budget problems. _Grand strategy_ is a meaningless idea when you are broke and a deadbeat.

See this blog post and this video for at least one idea about what must happen if America, in 2045, is not to look like Britain in 1945: poor, weak and dependent on the _*charity*_ of friends.


----------



## pbi

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Justice Clarence Thomas gave a commencement address which stresses many of the values that used to define America and Americans. Much of what Justice Thomas has to say should not be surprising, the values of community which he extols are the same as the ones that were outlined by Alexis de Tocqueville in _De la démocratie en Amérique_. Much of the "Culture Wars" have been about uprooting and transforming that sense of communities ("America is a nation of associations", according to de Tocqueville) into something else entirely:
> 
> http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/05/life-lessons-from-justice-thomas.php



Thucydides: thanks for posting a truly excellent speech. These are words of advice we should all follow: I'm quite certain that if more people heeded the Justice's words, more problems would be solved, or perhaps prevented altogether. His words have added value as they come from a person who knows what it is to struggle.

That said, I don't see how that the Justice's message "belongs" to the social conservatives, or to any other faction or "ism" for that matter. I would be willing to bet that many Canadians of all political stripes would agree with the Justice, and would say that they try to lead their lives in this way. Concern for family, community and character are most definitely not the premise of the social or political right: they are common sense values held by anybody who has lived enough of life to get knocked around, and wants to bring up their families in a decent society.

Take me, for example: I guess that by comparison to a lot of folks on this site, I hold some pretty left of centre views, maybe even "progressive" (_thunder, scary organ music_). I suspect that you and I would probably not agree on much otherwise, but I am 100% in support of all that the Justice says. I also agree that academia is (and has, and always will be...) sometimes the source of utter, smarmy BS. 

The destruction of societies and communities is constant, and horrifying. I do a bit of volunteer work in our city, and I see some of the results. But I can assure you that some of the things that destroy communities are not the sole premise of the left, nor of "progressives", by any means. Rampant, unchecked consumerism, disrespect or outright rejection of education and science, attacking and undermining of public education, and predatory capitalism can all be toxic to communities, but we are disingenuous if we try to blame all of those things on "lefties" alone.

So, great post, and thanks again for it. But don't assume the Right has the corner on wisdom, common sense, or care for community. It doesn't.


----------



## Kirkhill

pbi:

As is often the case I find you and I agreement even though you define yourself left of centre and I define myself right of centre. (Maybe that says as much about how we define centre as anything else).

But.

You and I grew up in the same era.  You must remember how our parents norms were derided by our peers and older siblings, how our parents "civility" was rejected as hypocrisy, how we were encouraged to "let it all hang out" and "express yourselves".  The rationale, if that is the right word for people who identified themselves by their feelings, was to uncover all those latent "isms" at which point they, like MacArthur and the old soldiers, just fade away.

Justice Thomas's article is a simple restatement of the ancient code of hypocritical civility: a code based on the premise that a person's feelings  and beliefs are their own and that, in the interests of a functioning society people should be judged on their deeds and nothing else.  They can control their deeds.  They can't control their feelings and thoughts.  And just to make my position clear: they are responsible for not just the actions of their fists and their feet but also for the words that they speak or put to paper.

It shouldn't matter if a person believes in Jesus, Mohammed, Hitler or Marx, or none of the above, so long as they conduct themselves in a civil manner.  But that would be hypocritical....

Civil -  "Latin civilis "relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen," hence by extension "popular, affable, courteous;" alternative adjectival derivation of civis "townsman" "

Dictionary.com, "civil," in Online Etymology Dictionary. Source location: Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/civil. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: May 31, 2015.


----------



## Edward Campbell

This article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Telegraph_ is about the impact of America's _strategic_ choices on Britain bit it also could be applicable in The Chinese Military, Political and Social Superthread, because there is a lot of focus on Sino-American relations, and even in Making Canada Relevant Again - The Economic Super-Thread, because the choicers which American _straegy_ offers/forces on Britain will be similar to some that those American _strategic_ choices offer or force on Canada:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11640302/Exclusive-interview-Ian-Bremmer-says-America-is-no-longer-indispensible-and-thats-bad-news-for-Britain.html


> Exclusive interview: Ian Bremmer says America is no longer 'indispensable', and that's bad news for Britain
> *The foreign policy guru and author of "Superpower" speaks with Peter Foster about American retrenchment, the rise of China and what it means for Britain's future*
> 
> By Peter Foster, Washington
> 
> 30 May 2015
> 
> After six decades serving as the global policeman, the United States is now signalling its retreat from the world.
> 
> With the Middle East engulfed by the flames of sectarian conflict, Europe’s borders menaced by the threat of war and China starting to flex its muscles in Asia-Pacific, it is clear the world has entered a new period of volatility.
> 
> That uncertainty begs tough questions for Britain: how should we respond to this new American pragmatism? And as our traditional ally turns inward, what should that mean for British foreign policy?
> 
> Ian Bremmer, the American foreign policy guru who coined the phrase “G-Zero” to describe this new and unstable world, is the author of ‘Superpower’, a best-selling new book that explores America’s options as a superpower in the 21st century.
> 
> Here he talks exclusively to Peter Foster about the strategic choices now facing America - and what they could mean for Britain in the decades to come.
> 
> PF: In ‘Superpower’ you outline three possible courses for American foreign policy: 1) keeping faith with the old “Indispensable” America that underwrites global stability 2) adopting a “moneyball” approach where the US pursues its narrow economic
> and security interests, or 3) an “Independent” America where the US gives up trying to solve the world’s problems, but seeks instead to lead by example by investing in America’s security and prosperity at home. While you invite readers to choose
> for themselves, you personally plumped for the “Independent” strategy – why?
> 
> IB: “I went for ‘Independent’ because America needs a strategy that doesn't just last for three months or a year, but for a generation. And the world is moving in a direction where the promises of an ‘indispensable’ America are going to be increasingly hard to fulfil. We see that in terms of how much leadership there isn't in Europe, the challenge posed by a rising China, the implosion of the Middle East, the rise of terrorist organisations and even things like quantum computing which are going to undermine the power of nation states. So for all these reasons I think ‘indispensable’ is deeply problematic.
> 
> “But the problem with the hard-nosed ‘moneyball’ approach, is that ultimately America is not a corporation. ‘Moneyball’ may well get the most return on investment for Americans, but the difference between a corporation and the United States is if you're a corporation and you make a bunch of bets and one doesn't work, you go bankrupt. The United States can't afford to go bankrupt. I also think we cannot just jettison the idea of the exceptionalism of the United States. Maybe this is my American bias coming out, but I really do believe that America stands for a lot more than, ‘we're going to be like any other country’. I believe the values that the United States was created with actually do matter.
> 
> “Which is why I argue that if the ‘independent’ America approach is done right, then the United States will become the ultimate ‘too big to fail’. And the way that you get the Chinese to align with America is not by containing them. It’s by creating the most robust American economy and democracy you possibly can that the Chinese will really want to invest in - because ultimately that's what's going to make them want to change their system in a way that is more aligned with the United States.”
> 
> PF: Isn’t it naïve to think that China will decide to remake itself in America’s image, just because – as you say in the book – America builds “better schools in Ohio and better hospitals in Arkansas”?
> 
> IB: "I don’t think so: the largest number of immigrants into the United States no longer comes from Mexico - as of 2014, it comes from China. And that means we are educating an entire generation of Chinese elites to understand that there is actually a very different kind of system out there. We ultimately defeated the Soviets, in my view, not through an arms race. We ultimately defeated the Soviets through the power of things like Radio Free Europe, through the ideas that America were standing by.
> 
> “I completely agree with you, in the next 5-10 years [the Chinese president] Xi Jinping and his cohort are not suddenly going to change stripes over this policy. But I don't think there's an answer for the next 5-10 years. I think we are headed into a period of profound and long-term creative destruction geo-politically. So this is really not about the next five years, this is about setting us up for the next generation. And there, I think China could change an awful lot."
> 
> PF: As we enter this period of post-Cold War instability, is the current US disengagement good or bad for what comes next?
> 
> IB: "It's not good, but let's be clear- engagement cannot be half-assed. Engaging doesn't mean telling people you're going to engage and then screwing them over. It means really engaging. It doesn't mean setting a red line, and then backing off. And if you asked me if I believe it is credible right now to take big bets and tell the Europeans ‘we're really there for you', and the Japanese, 'we're really there for you', and the Gulf States 'we're really there for you', then the answer is ‘no’.
> 
> Are we going to get presidents that are going to consistently get behind that and really support an American-led world order? It's possible, but I doubt it.”
> 
> PF: So is playing the ‘indispensable’ Superpower role essentially beyond the capacity of America now? Fiscally, militarily?
> 
> IB: “No, there are absolutely things we could be doing that would be ‘indispensable’. America has money, interest rates are low, and if we want to print money, we can. If we want to support allies, we can. But indispensable doesn't just mean, 'oh we're going to do drone strikes against Isis'. It means actually going to develop the kind of support that would, over the long-term, build economic opportunities for all these disenfranchised people across the Middle East.
> 
> “We're the only country in the world that could put the resources on the ground that could actually fix the Middle East. We're the only country in the world that can create global architecture, global alliances. We're the ones that created Nato. Even if our allies like the Brits say ‘we don't want to spend as much’, we still have to stick with it - because the absence of that is chaos. That’s what the ‘indispensables’ would argue."
> 
> PF: But right now the American public won’t buy into that?
> 
> IB: “I don’t think so. ‘Indispensable’ America is now an increasingly extreme sell, domestically, for any American president.
> 
> “Americans have gotten disillusioned with the inauthenticity of their own leaders, and the politics and politicians in Washington. After living through the 2008 financial crisis, Bush vs Gore, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - all of this stuff – and now we’re facing a $5 billion dollar election campaign where the most recognisable names are another Bush and another Clinton - you can't ignore the disillusion.”
> 
> PF: So what does a retreating America mean for Britain? We’ve long ridden on America’s coat-tails, but it seems clear now that those strategic coat-tails are shrinking fast.
> 
> IB: “America's coat-tails are shrinking, you’re right, but Britain's arms are shrinking even faster. People got mad at me recently for saying that Britain's greatest global influence today has basically fallen to what The Economist manages to write every week. I love The Economist, but we've come to expect more from Britain historically.
> 
> “The post-war world order was built on the back of an incredibly strong transatlantic relationship. That relationship is now at the weakest point we've seen in well over a generation."
> 
> PF: So is it time Britain faced facts and accepted a new reality as a middle-ranking power on Europe’s northern fringes. Aspire to be Norway, say, or the Netherlands?
> 
> IB: “In part it depends on what America chooses. If America really does ‘indispensable’ then the Brits want to have your referendum on the EU as soon as possible. You want to win it for Europe. And you want the Brits and the Germans, hopefully with a new French government as well, to become true leaders of a stronger Europe. You want to move the TTIP transatlantic trade deal. You want to reinvigorate the transatlantic alliance, and you want to actually take back some leadership.
> 
> But if US foreign policy continues to be incoherent - as appears likely - then the Brits need to hedge like crazy. They need to say, 'we're not really going to be a part of Europe, we're not part of the United States, so we're a really interesting global player with a pretty good economy and a lot of people who want to be here with our inviting tax rules. Let's take advantage of that. Let's not stick with the United States on Russia. That's stupid - we don't want to be a place where the Russians can't continue to come and do business. We want to bank them, we want to house them. Same thing with the Middle East."
> 
> PF: So in that world, with America stepping back, Britain takes a ‘moneyball’ approach?
> 
> IB: “Invest in relations with America, but not at the expense of relations with China, India, Germany, the Saudis and other emerging players. Embrace your relationship with the Saudis because they're wealthy and they don't have any friends. What else can you do to differentiate yourself? Stop doing geopolitics. You're not building your military, you're not going to project force any more. Be much more like the Germans.
> Say, 'we're not going to talk about the Dalai Lama, let's have a special relationship with the Chinese so we can focus on where our industrial and commercial relations can be more aligned’. Do the same thing with the Indians while you're at it. That's a very different choice for the Brits. But given what we are seeing right now in the United States I think it's a smart play.”
> 
> PF: In the book you criticise the Obama administration, above all else, for failing to take a long-term, strategic approach. What does that mean for China as it emerges as a rival superpower?
> 
> IB: "In the past 35 years there's only been one geopolitical constant in the entire world. Only one. And that's the rise of China. What's really dangerous is that China is the only country of size right now that has a global strategy. We should not pretend that that's not true. They have money, they're spending it. They're building architecture and infrastructure. They're trying to align countries more with their long term strategic and economic interests as they see them. The fact is the Americans, by far a greater power than China in every aspect, have nothing to respond to that with. That's ludicrous.
> 
> “I think we massively underestimate the Chinese. We spend virtually no time thinking about them. There's no question that China has very real problems, and those problems are going to affect them a great deal over the long term. But they understand what they need to do to resolve them; they are taking very significant steps both domestically and internationally. And we're not. It's one thing to cede space to the Chinese out of a strategy. We're ceding them space that we haven't even considered.”
> 
> PF: Britain is to have its promised referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017. You have said that the Euro crisis is the top global political risk for 2015. So, should we be in, or out?
> 
> IB: "To be a part of the EU on balance is advantageous for Britain because of the uncertainty over what happens with Scotland if the Brits go out, as well as the uncertainty for London as a global financial centre if the Brits leave. Having said that there's really no need for Britain to take a leadership role within Europe the way the world is going, and there's certainly no reason for Britain to argue for more integration with Europe.
> 
> "It would also be good for Britain to have certainty around the Eurozone one way or the other. Britain should aim to continue to be an attractive financial destination and support its own strategic industries, whether it's pharmaceutical, finance or aviation and arms technology. There are still a few areas that the Brits still do very well in from a global competitive perspective. They should continue to do well in those not just with Europeans but with everybody."
> 
> PF: In so many areas, the geopolitical outlook seems bleak. The US has a general election coming up in 2016, is it too late already to make a difference?
> 
> IB: “No. As the world's only superpower, with the world's reserve currency, with all the advantages America has and with the power that a US president has over foreign policy, if an American president really decided they wanted to go with ‘indispensable’ they could. So there's actually a moment here where there's a real debate. Where a Rand Paul vs a Marco Rubio vs a Hillary Clinton vs a Jeb Bush actually matters.
> 
> “Ultimately, the real danger is not that US foreign policy will continue to be incoherent, but something much more dangerous than that: that it will continue to be incoherent until the next 9/11, and then the US will respond massively without a strategy in a world where the US is much weaker in terms of its influence.
> 
> “The September 11 attacks came when US was at the peak of its international power. So even if the United States massively screwed things up it still had all sorts of ability to align the rest of the world behind it.
> But if you have that kind of reaction in five or ten years when China is the world's biggest economy, that could be a hit that America doesn't come back from. That could really change the world order in a dangerous way. I don't think anyone is thinking about that - and that worries me.”




Now, I need to reiterate my well established (_I hope_) positions:

     1. America cannot afford the _Indispensable America_ option; and

     2. There is no such thing as "American exceptionalism," so even if America decided to "go for broke" and try to be _indispensable_ there is a very, very good chance that it would fail.

That leaves America with two rational and one irrational choices:

     1. _Moneyball America_, which would be, immediately and directly, bad for Canada but would force us to take advantage of other trade opportunities that might (_in my opinion_, would) be good in the mid to long term; (rational choice)

     2. _Independent_ (Isolationist) _America_, which would have somewhat less economic impavct on Canada, because America would, likely want to maintain very close economic ties, but might, actually, threaten our sovereignty because the
         United States _might _decide that it needs a continental socio-economic base to prosper; (rational choice) or

     3. _Incoherent America_ (what Dr Bremmer and I agree we have now) which means that we need to seek new socio-economic 'partners' in the world. irrational choice

_My bet_ is on 3, 1 and 2, in that order, for the near to mid term, and then 1, for a while, followed by 2, in the mid to long term.

_I believe _that America has been adrift, _strategically_, since about 1960. I'm not blaming any one president (not even Kennedy who _I think_ was vacillating and foolish) nor one group (not even the baby boomers) nor even one attitude (not even the deeply flawed _belief _in _American exceptionalism_) for America's problems, but the combination of a half century of weak, foolish leadership and flawed (_statist_) socio-cultural structures has,_ I fear_, fatally weakened our best friend, good neighbour and protector.


----------



## pbi

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> pbi:
> As is often the case I find you and I agreement even though you define yourself left of centre and I define myself right of centre. (Maybe that says as much about how we define centre as anything else).



Kirkhill: I actually try not to define myself as anything, but perhaps "Red Tory" possibly comes closest. I am left of centre on some issues, but probably quite over on the right on some others (such as capital punishment, a capable military and the importance of individual responsibility). I think that one should reason out what one thinks about something, rather than say "I am an "X" therefore I think "Y". That, in my opinion, is dogma rather than thinking.

However, I'm not sure I understand what you mean here:


> Justice Thomas's article is a simple restatement of the ancient code of hypocritical civility: a code based on the premise that a person's feelings  and beliefs are their own and that, in the interests of a functioning society people should be judged on their deeds and nothing else.



Why is that kind of civility hypocritical?

But I am fully with you here (except, again, the hypocritical bit):


> It shouldn't matter if a person believes in Jesus, Mohammed, Hitler or Marx, or none of the above, so long as they conduct themselves in a civil manner.  But that would be hypocritical....



and here:


> Civil -  "Latin civilis "relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen," hence by extension "popular, affable, courteous;" alternative adjectival derivation of civis "townsman" "



Which is to a great extent what I have in mind when I think of a "civil" or "decent" society.


----------



## Kirkhill

pbi: the hypocritical bit comes from my peers in the 60s and 70s.  They were of the opinion that if you disliked someone you should tell them in no uncertain terms your feelings towards them.  They felt that being polite, shaking their hand, carrying on a civil conversation was being hypocritical.

I guess I could understand their rationale so I came to accept that being civil demanded a degree of hypocrisy.  But for me, the importance of civility always outweighed that concern.

I prefer the "hypocrisy" of Harper shaking Putin's hand while politely telling him what he thinks of him, as compared to a mob yelling at a recently elected British MP "Tory Scum!"


----------



## pbi

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ...Now, I need to reiterate my well established (_I hope_) positions:...
> 
> 2. There is no such thing as "American exceptionalism," so even if America decided to "go for broke" and try to be _indispensable_ there is a very, very good chance that it would fail....



This idea would be a very hard sell with many of the Americans I've met. I think that this is almost an article of their national faith, and certainly a very big part of how they see the world. You may make the logical case that the US can't "exempt" itself from the realities and entanglements of the world, but I doubt very much that many Americans would agree.  There is no saying that the political culture of a nation has to be driven by logic, or even facts. Instead, I think, it tends to reflect how people at home perceive things.



> My bet is on 3, 1 and 2, in that order, for the near to mid term, and then 1, for a while, followed by 2, in the mid to long term.



You are probably right, but I don't see much useful progress on anything until American political culture can reach some firmer, more moderate ground that produces useful discourse and compromise (both hallmarks of American political history, as I understand it), instead of dogmatic shrieking and "culture wars". As Abraham Lincoln observed, "a house divided against itself cannot stand".

I do agree, ultimately, with this view of America, whether I like it or not:



> but the combination of a half century of weak, foolish leadership and flawed (statist) socio-cultural structures has, I fear, fatally weakened our best friend, good neighbour and protector.



I am not a huge fan of everything the US has ever said or done, but they are all we have, and in the long run we have not done badly by them.  I would much, much rather have America on its worst day, than China or Russia or some other bunch of totalitarian nasties on their best day.


----------



## pbi

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> ...I guess I could understand their rationale so I came to accept that being civil demanded a degree of hypocrisy.  But for me, the importance of civility always outweighed that concern.
> 
> I prefer the "hypocrisy" of Harper shaking Putin's hand while politely telling him what he thinks of him, as compared to a mob yelling at a recently elected British MP "Tory Scum!"



And I do too. I think that more gets done that way. I don't know about you, but I don't do my best work with people screaming insults at me.

Unless, of course, I'm on the parade square. (Which is, fortunately, a part of my life behind me now)


----------



## Brad Sallows

Civility implies a degree of hypocrisy.  We wouldn't need to emphasize its practice if it was simply a matter of course, just as freedom of speech / expression isn't a principle intended to protect that with which nearly everyone already agrees.


----------



## a_majoor

This could have been posted in many palces (the Russia, China and ISIS threads are pretty obvious), but the real question shoudl be how the American led West is going to respond?

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/06/05/the-war-of-the-green-men/?print=1



> *The War of the Green Men*
> Posted By Richard Fernandez On June 5, 2015 @ 9:33 pm In cyberwarefare,Russia,War | 120 Comments
> What if the world were at war and didn’t know it?
> 
> Such an idea seems preposterous.  Shouldn’t we know if we were in one? But the last major war in human memory was World War 2, which, as this visualization shows [1],  was so obviously devastating it actually constituted one of the “peak” catastrophes of  the human species. It’s an outlier. To use The Big One as the semantic threshold would be to filter out the majority of conflict in history.
> 
> Since the ability to attack without actually triggering a response confers a distinct advantage, Russia has actually designed a form of warfare to evade the threshold of cultural psychology and avoid the detection of legalistic minds like President Obama’s.  The approach is called hybrid warfare [2]. * ”Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare. … By combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, the aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution.”*
> 
> The Kremlin has already employed this mode of conflict in the Ukraine. Recently, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite [3] warned the West to be on the lookout for “little green men”.  He needs to say this or Washington might not notice.
> 
> 
> Lithuania held a simulation in May of separatist groups attacking installations near Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad, a base of Moscow’s Baltic fleet which is connected to the rest of Russia by a train line through Lithuania.
> 
> The exercise was modeled on last year’s capture of Crimea by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms, who came to be known as the “little green men” when Moscow denied their identity until the takeover was complete.
> 
> “We need to learn lessons which we learned in Crimea, which we partly see in the east of Ukraine. Any possible attack, in any form, needs to be taken seriously,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told Reuters in May. “What makes sense for us is to be prepared for anything.”
> 
> Once the World War 2 high pass filter is removed, a plethora of events will readily jump out at the observer. Chinese government hackers [4], for example, have stolen the personal details of 4 million current and former federal employees, possibly in order to identify individuals who can be corrupted, blackmailed or pressured into working for Beijing.  The problem of classifying this event is vexing the administration right now.  Chances are that since they can’t categorize the hack, they’ll throw the fact away.
> 
> 
> It was the second major intrusion of the same agency by China in less than a year and the second significant foreign breach into U.S. government networks in recent months.Last year, Russia compromised White House and State Department e-mail systems in a campaign of cyber­espionage.
> 
> CNN [5] wrote “the massive hack that may have stolen the personal information of four million federal employees appears designed to build a vast database in what could be preparation for future attacks by China against the U.S., cybersecurity experts advising the government told CNN Friday afternoon.”  Attack is not a word in the administration’s dictionary unless it comes on December 7, 1941.  And even then, maybe not.  China [6] casually announced “that Beijing could set up an air defense zone above disputed areas of the South China Sea if it thought it was facing a large enough threat, according to Chinese news media.”
> 
> In November 2013, to the dismay of Japan and the United States, China declared an air defense identification zone over disputed waters in the East China Sea. Chinese military aircraft began requiring all other aircraft flying through the zone to identify themselves, and commercial airliners complied, though the United States sent B-52 bombers through the zone without advance warning to challenge Beijing.
> 
> In late May, Chinese officials told the United States to stop sending surveillance flights near land formations that China claims as its territory. American officials say the flights have been over international waters.
> 
> What they’ll do beyond observing the fact is problematic. Iran, with whom the administration is in negotiations, undertook to “freeze” its nuclear stockpile and then promptly increased it by 20% [7]. “With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been ‘frozen’ during that period.”
> 
> They will probably continue the negotiations notwithstanding because “a bad agreement is better than no agreement.” The Associated Press [8] describes the president’s touching faith in pieces of paper:
> 
> 
> JERUSALEM — U.S President Barack Obama reached out to a skeptical Israeli public in an interview aired Monday saying that only an agreement, not military action, can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. …
> 
> “A military solution will not fix it. Even if the United States participates, it would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program but it will not eliminate it,” he said in excerpts from his interview with Israeli Channel 2 TV’s investigative program “Uvda.”
> 
> The architects of hybrid warfare knew paper would be their friend.  They understood that the liberal West was controlled by lawyers operating under the concept of a “rules-based international order” [9]. This legalistic system could only “see” certain facts and was blind to the others. In May 2013, President Obama [10]  demonstrated this selective vision by claiming victory in the “war on terror” (which he soon declared at an end) based on the belief he had degraded “core al-Qaeda”.
> 
> He said, “their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.”  Asked about other terror groups, he took shelter in definitions.  But as Marc Thiessen at the Washington Post [10] wrote, Obama’s claim was a distinction without a difference. And indeed, within a few months, the “less capable” al-Qaeda affiliates — the “jayvee team” as Obama called them — had eclipsed the original and taken over large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
> 
> An unbroken sequence of evacuations, alliance collapses and the capture of equipment including the abandonment of whole countries like Yemen were described as mere “setbacks” in an overall record of stunning success.  It was as if the administration could not see certain things at all.  The Washington Post’s Liz Sly [11] wrote that “while nobody was looking, the Islamic State launched a new, deadly offensive” against the remaining US backed rebels in Syria. Many US backed rebels are throwing in the towel [12] in dismay.
> 
> But it wasn’t that “nobody was looking.” The raw intelligence data [13] was probably there and the military could “see” the raw facts, but their superiors couldn’t recognize its significance.  They stuck in the high pass filter and voila, no signal.
> 
> 
> Gen. Hawk Carlisle, the head of Air Combat Command said … F-22 flew surveillance missions tracking fighters on the ground, used its advanced sensors to redirect other aircraft and call for additional strikes, passed along data on its missions and escorted bombers to their targets.  …
> 
> Since August, coalition forces have conducted about 4, 200 strikes and dropped 14,000 weapons, Carlisle said. About 13,000 enemy fighters have been killed, and about 25 percent of territory has been retaken. Carlisle’s optimistic statements come, however, as Islamic State fighters have been able to retake other ground, like the Iraqi city of Ramadi, and is still able to heavily recruit to their ranks, both locally and internationally.
> 
> The narrowness of the body-count like metrics speaks to the insularity of the administration’s thinking. They can only detect objects within a limited range of frequencies. Everything else is discarded. Foreign Policy [14] noted this on display at a recent summit of Gulf allies.  The adminstration vow that “the security and sovereignty of the GCC states constitutes a red line for the United States” was almost completely obviated by what he said next. FP wrote:
> 
> And short of an outright attack? Well, that’s where things got a bit more interesting. Truth be told, the odds of Iran launching a conventional assault across the Gulf are low, all things considered. Why risk triggering a direct confrontation with a vastly more powerful U.S. military, after all? The far more likely scenario: covert penetration and interference, subversion, sabotage, terrorist attacks, and local proxies instigating destabilizing acts of civil unrest and low-level violence. Those are Iran’s preferred tools. Where possible, its modus operandi has generally been to keep its hand hidden, its role plausibly deniable.
> 
> So what will the U.S. do when the Shiite-majority cities and towns of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province — i.e., where all the oil is — erupt in wide-scale protests against the royal family, with Iranian media, politicians, and clerics agitating them on? While the issue was certainly not addressed directly at the summit, in his introductory presentation Obama made an unsolicited point that caught his guests by surprise and left them somewhat bemused. He told them fairly bluntly that the United States would find it very hard to intervene on behalf of their regimes should they one day wake up and find themselves in a showdown with large masses of their own people. The message: Absent a smoking gun of Iranian interference, the Gulf monarchies will be on their own in the face of any domestic uprising that threatens their rule.
> 
> The administration’s visual limits are painfully obvious: it can only “see” conventional war. When al-Arabiya asked President Obama [15] why he has been so passive in preventing the Syrian civil war, Obama answered like a lawyer. To act would have been in violation of “international law”.
> 
> 
> Q So forgive me, Mr. President, when people rise and they demand their rights, they look up to the United States.
> 
> THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
> 
> Q They don’t look to any other country. And especially after President Assad used chemical weapons, people felt they’ve been let down. The civil war did not start from day one. They felt that you could have done something in the beginning and you didn’t.
> 
> THE PRESIDENT: But if you look at the history of the process, essentially what they’re arguing is that we should have invaded Syria and overthrown the Syrian regime — which, by the way, would be a violation of international law, and undoubtedly we would then be criticized for that, as well.
> 
> None of this has escaped Russian, Chinese or radical Islamic notice.  They have got the president’s obvious limits down pat. Obama’s approach to aggression is to give proxies a bunch of weapons and training at arms length, then “run out the clock” [16]. The administration’s preferences were exemplified by Bill Gertz’s recent story on the secret Presidential Study Directive-11 [17], which apparently believes Islamic extremism can be headed off by throwing US support behind the Muslim Brotherhood.
> 
> 
> President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
> 
> The policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive-11, or PSD-11. The directive was produced in 2011 and outlines administration support for political reform in the Middle East and North Africa, according to officials familiar with the classified study.
> 
> Efforts to force the administration to release the directive or portions of it under the Freedom of Information Act have been unsuccessful.
> 
> That’s why ISIS is now exterminating Obama’s Syrian rebels.  Once they chop off his timid little tentacles, they are home free. The administration’s inability to perceive hybrid warfare coupled with its penchant for secrecy has created an extraordinarily impotent foreign policy. The world stands, according to security pundit Bruce Schneier [18], on the brink of a global cyber-war, of which China’s attacks are but the opening salvos. But so what?
> 
> In the meantime, Putin’s “little green men” are poised to go on the offensive for a second straight year. Michael Weiss [19] asks, “can anyone stop Putin’s new Blitz? A shaky cease-fire in Ukraine was shattered Wednesday morning with a new offensive by Russian-backed troops. How will the White House respond?”
> 
> How will they respond? Simple. By doing nothing. By giving a speech. By increasing domestic surveillance. By denying there’s anything to respond to, that’s what. Beware the combo of little green men from the Kremlin and the small-minded men from Chicago.  It’s the perfect storm.


----------



## a_majoor

More on the idea that current political structures and institutions are increasingly irrelevant in today's social, economic and demographic climates. Current political parties are "doubling down" with current plans and programs because they truly do nnot understand the new environment and why their programs are not working (WRM has done a similar job talking about the death of the "Blue model" in "The American Interest). The problem is that the change isn't going to be a graceful drawdown, but more like an implosion (Imagine Detroit happening across the 20 "Blue" States as their unsustainable pension liabilities come due), and the people who benefit from the current system are determined to fight to the last taxpayer to keep it running:

http://pointsandfigures.com/2015/07/11/want-to-know-how-to-stop-a-centralized-bureaucracy-math/



> *Want to Know How to Stop a Centralized Bureaucracy? Math.*
> Posted by Jeff Carter on July 11th, 2015
> 
> My friend Mark Glennon runs Wirepoints. He was on a radio show recently talking about public pensions.
> 
> Public pensions have bankrupted the state of Illinois, counties, and virtually all municipalities in Illinois. Bill Gurtin of Gurtin Fixed Income has said he would decline buying the public debt of two places: Puerto Rico and anywhere in Illinois.
> 
> Often, we think of the monolithic corporation as being a danger to freedom in America. It’s a pretty easy seed to plant with people that have to deal with companies like Comcast and ATT everyday. But, behind that monolithic corporate giant is an out of control larger monolith. The government. The government regulates corporations, but who regulates the government?
> 
> It’s easy to say, “the voters”. But, in states like Illinois every district over every geographic square inch has been gerrymandered to death. Kingmakers have cut up voters to make sure certain things happen. Tammy Duckworth has decided to run for Senate in Illinois. Democrats aren’t worried about her House seat-the election won’t be competitive. A Democrat is virtually guaranteed to replace her.   Last week, there was a primary to replace Aaron Schock in Peoria.  Republicans aren’t too concerned since the district has been drawn to guarantee Republican domination.  In certain parts of the state, there are severe social consequences to going against the local Machine. In the city of Chicago, it’s tougher to be an out of the closet Republican than it is to be gay!
> 
> At least corporations have competition that keeps them honest.  Even Comcast has a couple of competitors in the regulated oligarchy they have helped their government pals set up.  Innovation is creating new competitors that weren’t envisioned when they set up their oligarchy.  The real danger to the free, open, capitalistic society the Founding Fathers set up isn’t the mega corporation.  It’s the mega government that enables the mega corporation.
> 
> *The only thing that will upend the carefully crafted apple cart the political bosses have set up is math.  The math that Mark talks about in the Soundcloud clip I posted is rapidly becoming a reality in states like Illinois.  The answer from Democratic politicians has been to look for ways to increase taxes and fees to keep the shell game going.  None of them have cut the size and scope of government.  None of them have deregulated anything to allow more choice and freedom for people.  Interestingly, the United States federal budget allocates 62% of all spending to entitlements, and the number will rise dramatically with Obamacare.  It’s totally unsustainable but the crony capitalists in Washington don’t care about it.  They’ll be fine*.
> 
> Or society is transitioning from the old centralized industrial model to a network model of infrastructure.  It’s time to rethink the way we govern.  America 3.0.  It’s time to rethink entitlement spending and create the climate where private networked models can efficiently produce goods and services for people instead of government.  Network models push choice to consumers and make them free.  They set up, disband, flow and change to suit the needs of the people in the network.   Networks work better for individuals and end users most of the time.  What’s a bigger threat to a company like Uber?  Competition from similar companies or government?
> 
> Companies like Streamlink Software can provide transparency and accountability to governments.  They can also help governments lower costs dramatically.  Did you know it costs the US federal government $200 billion to manage $500 billion in grant money?  What a money suck.
> 
> When the math tells governments their time is up, they are forced to make some really tough decisions.  Society can break down.  Look at Detroit.  Look at Venezuela.  Look at Argentina.  Look at Greece.  At least if you live in a state like Illinois, or a city like Chicago, you can move away and avoid the math.  But what happens when it’s the United States?


----------



## a_majoor

Looking at the "Blue" side of the divide. The resistance to change even under the enormous debt pressure sounds familier, but as Instapundit often says "Things that can't go on, won't":

http://city-journal.org/2015/eon0712ar.html



> *Chicago’s Financial Fire*
> The city faces trouble from every direction.
> 12 July 2015
> 
> After years of warnings, financial reality is hitting home in Chicago, clouding Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hope for a transformational legacy. In March, Moody’s downgraded the city’s credit rating to junk, but Chicago’s financial hole long predates its ratings slide. The trouble began emerging at least as far back as 2003, albeit under the radar. Then, as the Great Recession pummeled municipal budgets around the country, former Mayor Richard M. Daley engaged in dubious deals, such as the city’s parking-meter lease. In 2010, as Daley’s tenure neared its close, Crain’s Chicago Business published an exposé on the troubling levels of debt that the mayor’s administration had accumulated. In 2013, after Daley had left office, the Chicago Tribune ran a series further detailing the city’s questionable debt practices, such as “*scoop and toss*”—that is, rolling over debt at higher cost as it came due, rather than paying it off. Chicago’s pension woes, along with Illinois’, started attracting media coverage—as did financial can-kicking by agencies like the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), *which drained its reserves in 2012 and created a 2015 budget showing 14 months of revenue* (“loopy,” said the Tribune). So for several years now, the media have been telling Chicagoans that there’s a financial crisis. But it hasn’t really felt like one, at least not in the booming Loop and on the North Side.
> 
> The Moody’s downgrade triggered termination clauses in swaps contracts that the city and CPS had been using as part of their financial juggling act, creating a liquidity crisis. To deal with the downgrade fallout, the city plans to issue $1.1 billion in long-term bonds. While some sort of refinancing may be required, the proposed debt issue contains maneuvers similar to those that helped get Chicago into trouble in the first place—including more scoop and toss deferrals, $75 million for police back pay, $62 million to pay a judgment related to the city’s lakefront parking-garage lease, and $35 million to pay debt on the acquisition of the former Michael Reese Hospital site (an architecturally significant complex Daley acquired and razed for an ill-fated Olympic bid). The debt-issue proposal also includes $170 million in so-called “capitalized interest” for the first two years. That is, Chicago is actually borrowing the money to pay the first two years of interest payments on these bonds. In true Chicago style, the proposal passed the city council on a 45-3 vote. Hey, at least the city is getting out of the swaps business.
> 
> Even with no further gimmicks, Emanuel will be six years into his mayoralty before the city can stop borrowing just to pay the interest on its debt. And without accounting for pensions, it will take the full eight years of both his terms to get the city to a balanced budget, where it can pay for the regular debt it has already accumulated.
> 
> Then there’s the crisis engulfing the city’s schools, which are facing 1,000 layoffs and numerous other cuts to avoid running out of cash. Forced by a state mandate to start paying its pensions, CPS coughed up $634 million as required last week. A recent Ernst & Young report said that even if CPS got another five-year pension-contribution holiday, it would still rack up an additional $2.4 billion in accumulated deficits by 2020. Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union, hostile to any reform that would affect teacher salaries and benefits, says that the district is “broke on purpose.” And CPS has no permanent CEO in place after Barbara Byrd-Bennett resigned last month amid a federal investigation into no-bid contracts.
> 
> Emanuel wants Springfield to pay for Chicago’s teacher pensions going forward, as it does for every other school district. He has a legitimate gripe here, but the state is in a deep financial hole of its own, with its teacher-pension fund in even worse shape than the city’s—and a government shutdown looming over the failure to pass a budget.
> 
> It’s not just the teachers’ pensions that are in trouble in Chicago; pensions for all municipal workers are woefully underfunded. (Separately, Cook County plans to raise its sales tax by one percentage point to start dealing with its own yawning pension gap.) Emanuel is willing to raise taxes by instituting a $175 million annual pension levy for the schools, but even his best-case scenario for pensions leaves a structural deficit in the CPS operating budget. And an Illinois Supreme Court ruling puts the previously negotiated city reforms in jeopardy. The court struck down state-level pension reform, saying that even future pension accruals for public employees can’t be reduced—a ruling that triggered the Moody’s downgrade. Emanuel denounced the Moody’s decision while strongly defending the legality of his reform. He makes good arguments, but he’s up against an extremely pro-union court. Perhaps recognizing this, he isn’t even trying to reform the police and fire pension funds. Instead, he proposes simply to defer and extend payments. If adopted, it would mean that the city wouldn’t be on track to funding its pensions until 2021—a decade after Emanuel was first elected. Even so, Crain’s projects that this would raise the city’s slice of property taxes next year by 31 percent—and by more than 50 percent if the deferrals aren’t approved.
> 
> Add it up and Chicago residents face another five to six years of pain just to get into a position where they might begin climbing out of the hole. This surely isn’t where Rahm Emanuel envisioned himself back in 2011. One wonders whether he fully understood the true financial condition of Chicago when he decided to pursue the mayor’s office—or grasped the lack of power even the most autocratic mayors have compared with the president or a governor.
> 
> Even if all of Emanuel’s reforms go through, the best that he could hope for is that after nearly a decade in office, he will have put out Chicago’s financial fire. There is one thing he can do, however, truly to change the trajectory: partner with Illinois governor Bruce Rauner to get legislation passed requiring that all future local-government employees get 401k-style defined-contribution pensions. This would make it much harder for future administrations to create another pension disaster.
> 
> Of course, getting such a law passed wouldn’t be easy, which is precisely why a tough guy like Emanuel should take a shot at it. If he succeeded, he could yet leave a legacy that future generations of Chicagoans would look back on with gratitude.
> 
> Aaron M. Renn is a City Journal contributing editor and a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.


----------



## a_majoor

America's "Greece". Many other "Blue" jurisdictions are facing similar pressure, or indeed have already gone under into bankruptcy (Detroit is perhaps the largest city, but multiple cities in California have gone this route in the past) and the looming unfunded liability crisis with government pensions in most of the "Blue" states is also on the near horizon (Unfunded public pension liabilities are estimated to be between 2 and 4 _trillion_ dollars at the Municipal and State level).

Just like in Greece and th EUZone, Americans are going to have to make some pretty hard choices in the future as unsustainable financial liabilities come home to roost. Massive bond "haircuts", restructuring of government contracts and rethinking the scale and scope of the role of government will all have to be on the menu soon; at some point you can no longer kick the can down the road:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/03/puerto-rico-has-defaulted/



> *Puerto Rico Has Defaulted*
> 
> It’s all over the wires: Puerto Rico has defaulted on its $58 million payment to creditors of its Public Finance Corporation, which was due by the end of day. San Juan’s treasury only managed to scrape together some $628,000 towards the total. The government had tried to argue that the PFC bonds were of a different category—and had a different legal status—than general obligation debt. Credit rating agencies rejected the argument. “Moody’s views this event as a default”, Moody’s analyst Emily Raimes said in a statement, according to Reuters. “This is a first in what we believe will be broad defaults on commonwealth debt.”
> 
> What now? A whole lot of mess, more than likely. WRM wrote at length on Friday about what needs to happen next, in case you missed it. The kicker from his piece:
> 
> The United States faces some serious issues as the 2016 election cycle begins; the blue model meltdown is bigger and in its way more toxic than anything that happened at Chernobyl. Reporters and voters should be asking candidates what they plan to do about it.
> 
> The Republican debates start this week. We hope the fourth estate will be rising to the occasion.


----------



## tomahawk6

Puerto Rico's democrats have brought this on themselves.Now the US tax payer will have to step in.


----------



## Edward Campbell

This article, which is reproduced under thew Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, is a few days old but, since Sen Rubio is a viable candidate for president of the USA _I think_ it deserves a look:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-08-04/restoring-america-s-strength


> Restoring America’s Strength
> *My Vision for U.S. Foreign Policy*
> 
> By Marco Rubio
> 
> August 4, 2015
> 
> America’s status as the greatest and most influential nation on earth comes with certain inescapable realities. Among these are an abundance of enemies wishing to undermine us, numerous allies dependent on our strength and constancy, and the burden of knowing that every choice we make in exercising our power—even when we choose not to exercise it at all—has tremendous human and geopolitical consequences.
> 
> This has been true for at least 70 years, but never more so than today. As the world has grown more interconnected, American leadership has grown more critical to maintaining global order and defending our people’s interests, and as our economy has turned from national to international, domestic policy and foreign policy have become inseparable.
> 
> President Barack Obama has failed to recognize this. He entered office believing the United States was too engaged in too many places and that globalization had diminished the need for American power. He set to work peeling back the protective cover of American influence, stranding our allies, and deferring to the whims of nefarious regional powers. He has vacillated between leading recklessly and not leading at all, which has left the world more dangerous and America’s interests less secure.
> It will take years for our next president to confront the residual effects of President Obama’s foreign and defense policies. Countering the spread of the self-declared Islamic State, for example, will require a broadened coalition of regional partners, increased U.S. involvement in the fight, and steady action to prevent the group’s expansion to other failed and failing states. Halting Iran’s regional expansionism and preventing its acquisition of a nuclear weapon will demand equal urgency and care.
> 
> The Middle East, however, is far from the only region with crises. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s attempts to dominate the South China Sea, resurgent despotism in South America, and the rise of new threats—from devastating cyberattacks to challenges in space—will all require the careful attention of America’s next president.
> 
> Each challenge will be made more difficult by President Obama’s slashing of hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget, which has left the U.S. Army on track to be at pre–World War II levels, the U.S. Navy at pre–World War I levels, and the U.S. Air Force with the smallest and oldest combat force in its history. Our next president must act immediately on entering office to begin rebuilding these capabilities.
> 
> Physical strength and an active foreign policy to back it up are a means of preserving peace, not promoting conflict. Foreign involvement has never been a binary choice between perpetual war and passive indifference. The president has many tools to advance U.S. interests, and when used in proper balance, they will make it less likely that force will ever be required and will thus save lives rather than cost them.
> 
> My foreign policy would restore the post-1945 bipartisan presidential tradition of a strong and engaged America while adjusting it to meet the new realities of a globalized world. The foreign policy I propose has three pillars. Each can be best described through an example of a challenge we face in this new century, but they all reveal the need for all elements of American power—for a dynamic foreign policy that restores strength, promotes prosperity, and steers the world toward freedom.
> 
> A STRATEGY OF STRENGTH
> 
> The first and most important pillar of my foreign policy will be a renewal of American strength. This is an idea based on a simple truth: the world is at its safest when America is at its strongest. When America’s armed forces and intelligence professionals, aided by our civilian diplomatic and foreign assistance programs, are able to send a forceful message without firing a shot, the result is more peace, not more conflict. Yet when the United States fails to build or display such strength, it weakens our global hand by casting doubt on our ability and willingness to act. This doubt only encourages our adversaries to test us.
> 
> The Obama administration’s handling of Iran has demonstrated this with alarming clarity. Tehran exploited the president’s lack of strength throughout the negotiations over its nuclear program by wringing a series of dangerous concessions from the United States and its partners, including the ability to enrich uranium, keep the Arak and Fordow nuclear facilities open, avoid admitting its past transgressions, and ensure a limited timeline for the agreement.
> 
> How did a nation with as little intrinsic leverage as Iran win so many concessions? Part of the answer is that President Obama took off the table the largest advantage our nation had entering into the negotiations: military strength. Although the president frequently said that “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran, his administration consistently signaled otherwise. Several senior officials openly criticized the notion of a military strike, and the president himself publicly said that there could be no military solution to the Iranian nuclear program. This was underscored by a historic reluctance to engage throughout the Middle East, from pulling troops out of Iraq at all costs to retreating from the stated redline on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
> 
> President Obama became so publicly opposed to military action that he sacrificed any option that could have conceivably raised the stakes and forced the mullahs into making major concessions. Iran recognized that it could push for greater compromise without fear that the United States would break off the talks. The president’s drive for a deal caused him to forsake a basic principle of diplomacy with rogue regimes: it must be backed by the threat of force. As president, I would have altered the basic environment of the talks. I would have maneuvered forces in the region to signal readiness; linked the nuclear talks to Iran’s broader conduct, from its human rights abuses to its support for terrorism and its existential threats against Israel; and pressured Tehran on all fronts, from Syria to Yemen.
> 
> It is true that Iran, in response to these displays of strength, may have broken off negotiations or even lashed out in the region. History, however, suggests that even if Iran had created more trouble in the near term, increased pressure would have eventually forced it to back down. That is exactly what happened in 1988, when Iran ended its war with Iraq and its attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf after the Reagan administration sent in the U.S. Navy. More recently, after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran halted a key component of its nuclear program.
> 
> It’s not too late to mitigate the damage of the administration’s mishandling of Iran. By rescinding the flawed deal concluded by President Obama and reasserting our presence in the Middle East, we can reverse Iran’s malign influence in this vitally important region and prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The security of the region, the safety of Israel, and the interests of the entire world require an American approach toward Tehran marked by strength and leadership rather than weakness and concession.
> 
> OPEN FOR BUSINESS
> 
> The second pillar of my foreign policy is the protection of an open international economy in an increasingly globalized world. Millions of the best jobs in this century will depend on international trade that will be possible only when global sea-lanes are open and sovereign nations are protected from the aggression of larger neighbors. Thus, the prosperity of American families is tied to the safety and stability of regions on the other side of the world, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe.
> 
> That is why Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty is much more than a question of where lines are drawn on the maps of eastern Europe. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and efforts to sow instability in eastern Ukraine were sparked, in no small part, by the decision of a sovereign Ukrainian government to seek closer political and economic ties with the European Union and the West.
> 
> Russia’s actions are a historic affront to the post–World War II global order on which the global economy depends, and they set a disturbing precedent in a world of rising powers with surging ambitions. Our halting and meager response sends a message to other countries that borders can be violated and countries invaded without serious consequences. The threat of this precedent is profound. America should never have to ask permission from a regional power to conduct commerce with any nation. We cannot allow the world to become a place where countries become off-limits to us as markets and trading partners because of violence, uncertainty, or the blustering threats of an autocratic ruler.
> 
> Russia’s actions are emblematic of a larger global trend. From the Strait of Hormuz to the South China Sea, authoritarian states increasingly threaten recognized borders and international waters, airspace, cyberspace, and outer space as a means of gaining leverage over their neighbors and over the United States. Since the end of World War II, the United States has prospered in part because it guarded those critical pathways, and U.S. engagement has a distinguished record of increasing the well-being of other countries, from Germany and Japan to South Korea and Colombia. By failing to maintain this devotion to protecting the lanes of commerce, the Obama administration has exposed international markets to exploitation and chaos.
> 
> I will also isolate Russia diplomatically, expanding visa bans and asset freezes on high-level Russian officials and pausing cooperation with Moscow on global strategic challenges. The United States should also station U.S. combat troops in eastern Europe to make clear that we will honor our commitments to our NATO allies and to discourage further Russian aggression.
> 
> If that support is coupled with more robust support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a willingness to leverage America’s newly gained status as a leader in oil and natural gas by lifting the ban on U.S. exports, we can help guard our European allies from Russia’s attempts to use trade and energy dependence as a weapon. This will also assist our efforts to help Ukraine’s leaders modernize and reform their economy and ultimately consolidate their independence from Moscow.
> 
> By preserving Ukraine’s freedom and demonstrating that the United States will not tolerate such threats to the global economy, the United States can begin to deter other potential aggressors from bullying their neighbors, including an increasingly ambitious China.
> 
> DEFENDING FREEDOM
> 
> Our approach to China in this century relates to the last pillar of my foreign policy: the need for moral clarity regarding America’s core values. Our devotion to the spread of human rights and liberal democratic principles has been a part of the fabric of our country since its founding and a beacon of hope for so many oppressed peoples around the globe. It is also a strategic imperative that requires pragmatism and idealism in equal measure.
> 
> Members of the Obama administration have signaled a disturbing willingness to ignore human rights violations in the hope of appeasing the Chinese leadership. In the administration’s early days in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that human rights “can’t interfere” with other ostensibly more important bilateral issues, and in the months before Xi Jinping ascended to China’s top leadership post in 2012, Vice President Joe Biden told him that U.S. support for human rights was merely a matter of domestic political posturing.
> 
> As we have fallen silent about the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government has stymied democratic efforts in Hong Kong, raided the offices of human rights organizations, arrested scores of activists, redoubled its efforts to monitor and control the Internet, and continued repressive policies in Tibet and other Chinese regions, all while rapidly expanding its military, threatening its neighbors, establishing military installations on disputed islands, and carrying out unprecedented cyberattacks against America. China’s actions reveal a basic truth: the manner in which governments treat their own citizens is indicative of the manner in which they will treat other nations. Beijing’s repression at home and its aggressiveness abroad are two branches of the same tree. If the United States hopes to restore stability in East Asia, it has to speak with clarity and strength regarding the universal rights and values that America represents.
> 
> The best way for the United States to counter China’s expansion in East Asia is through support for liberty. The “rebalance” to Asia needs to be about more than just physical posturing. We must stand for the principles that have allowed Asian economies to grow so rapidly and for democracy to take root in the region. Only American leadership can show the Chinese government that its increasingly aggressive regional expansionism will be countered by a reinforcement of cooperation among like-minded nations in the region.
> 
> As president, I will strengthen ties with Asia’s democracies, from India to Taiwan. Bolstering liberty on China’s periphery can galvanize the region against Beijing’s hostility and change China’s political future. I will also back the Chinese people’s demands for unrestricted Internet access and their appeals for the basic human right of free speech. I will engage with dissidents, reformers, and religious rights activists, and I will reject Beijing’s attempts to block our contacts with these champions of freedom. I will also redouble U.S. support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and ensure that, once the trade deal is concluded, additional countries are able to join, expanding the creation of what will be millions of jobs here at home as well as abroad.
> 
> China will likely resist these efforts, but it is dependent on its economic relationship with the United States and, despite angry outbursts, will have no choice but to preserve it. President Ronald Reagan proved through his diplomacy with the Soviet Union that having a productive relationship with a great power and insisting on that power’s improvement of human rights are not conflicting aims. If the United States can pursue this agenda with China even as it continues its economic engagement, it will demonstrate that America remains committed to the cause of freedom in our time. I believe that when true freedom for the 1.3 billion people of China is finally attained, the impact will fundamentally change the course of human history.
> 
> FROM DISENGAGEMENT TO LEADERSHIP
> 
> These are only three examples of the challenges the United States will face in this century. They are all examples of problems that will require deft, multifaceted leadership. In addition to existing and emerging threats, we undoubtedly will be confronted with unexpected crises in the years ahead. These unknowns highlight the importance of establishing a fixed set of principles and objectives to guide American leadership. After years of strategic disengagement, this is the only way to restore global certainty regarding American commitments.
> 
> By making retrenchment his primary objective, President Obama has put the international system at the mercy of the most ruthless aggressors. They are constantly seeking to undermine the basic principles of the post-1945 world by challenging American military primacy, threatening the global commons, and undermining liberal values. That Iran, Russia, and China are each challenging the United States in these spheres at the same time demonstrates their mutual desire for a departure from the postwar order.
> Related Tweets
> 
> 
> The authoritarian rulers of these nations find an open international system deeply threatening to their exclusive grip on domestic political power. They cannot simply be reassured or persuaded, and they will push their agendas with whatever tools we give them the latitude to use. We cannot assume that these states will negotiate in good faith or see it in their interest to come to an agreement. If we allow the continued erosion of our military, economic, and moral strength, we will see a further breakdown in global order cast a lengthening shadow across our domestic prosperity and safety.
> 
> Retrenchment and retreat are not our destiny. The United States, by its presence alone, has the ability to alter balances, realign regional powers, promote stability, and enhance liberty. Only we can form coalitions based on mutual investment and mutual sacrifice. Our sole goal has never been to remain the world’s preeminent power. We will encourage and assist the rise of more powers when their rise is benign or noble. We wish to be a fraternal force rather than a paternal one.
> 
> This principle has marked the bipartisan tradition of U.S. foreign policy for the last 70 years. Our recent departure from this tradition has brought only violence, chaos, and discord. By advancing the three pillars of my foreign policy, I intend to restore American leadership to a world badly in need of it and defend our interests in what I’m confident will be another American century.




The first pillar of Sen Rubio's proposed foreign policy is the restoration of American military strength ... fair enough, but he doesn't say how he (or America) can and will provide the financial means necessary. On that issue, alone, Sen Rubio must be measured as a policy lightweight.


----------



## Edward Campbell

In this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_, that newspaper takes a critical look at the state of America's _Asian Pivot_:

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21660552-america-struggles-maintain-its-credibility-dominant-power-asia-pacific-70-year?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/The70yearitch


> The 70-year itch
> *America struggles to maintain its credibility as the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific*
> 
> Aug 8th 2015 | From the print edition
> 
> STILL on crutches after a cycling accident, and with less good news to report than he must have hoped when his speech to a university in Singapore was scheduled, John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, was this week a study in embattled optimism. Ministers from the 12 countries, including his own and Singapore, which are negotiating a much-vaunted trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), had just failed to clinch an expected deal. And China was refusing even to discuss its controversial island-building in the South China Sea at a regional summit in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. Mr Kerry’s speech was defiantly upbeat. But America’s prestige in the Asia-Pacific has been dented of late. On the 70th anniversary on August 15th of Japan’s surrender and the end of the second world war, the American-led order in place since then looks rather brittle.
> 
> America itself has turned the TPP into the gauge by which its leadership in the region is measured. Officials and politicians from President Barack Obama down have portrayed it as the most important aspect of America’s “pivot” or “rebalancing” to the Asia-Pacific, and of its determination to help set the rules there rather than let China write them. Mr Kerry spoke positively of the progress made at the TPP talks in Hawaii, conceding only that “there remain details to be hashed out.” Ministers at the talks claimed that the deal was “98%” done. But the devil is in those details, and in any complex negotiation, the last bit is the hardest.
> 
> What appear to be the main remaining bones of contention are varied and tricky. Canada, where an election has just been called for October, does not want to open up its market for dairy products—a priority for New Zealand, one of TPP’s originators a decade ago. Liberalising Japan’s agricultural market, notably for rice, remains acutely sensitive politically. Mexico objects to the amount of content from countries not in the TPP that Japan wants allowed into its exports of lorries. America protects its sugar producers. And it wants its pharmaceutical firms to enjoy 12 years of patent protection on new biologic drugs, which most of the other 11 countries find several years too long.
> 
> Yet hopes had been high that the Hawaii talks might bring this marathon negotiation to the finishing line. They were the first between ministers since the American Congress narrowly voted to give the president “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), meaning that Congress could no longer unpick a trade agreement clause by clause, having to approve or reject it as a whole. Without TPA, other countries had been unwilling to make their best offers. Now, however, some speculate that, in the intense haggling to secure passage of TPA through Congress, the administration made promises that have hamstrung its negotiators. Another reason for believing the Hawaii round might be crucial was the pressure of the American political calendar. The administration has to give Congress at least 90 days’ notice before signing a trade agreement. So time is already running out if TPP is to be sealed before becoming embroiled in next year’s presidential election campaign. Even some of the most optimistic TPP supporters think a deal may now not happen until 2017 at the earliest.
> 
> After losing one battle in economic diplomacy to China by failing to persuade some close allies to reject China’s invitation to join a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, America needs the TPP. Without an economic leg, other aspects of America’s rebalancing towards Asia, such as its military role, would become even more important. Many countries in the region are alarmed by what they see as an assertive, bullying China. They welcome America’s military might, and its willingness to project it across Asia. But China’s frenzied construction spree in the South China Sea presents America with a dilemma, even if, as China’s foreign minister said this week, the reclamation has now ended. America says it takes no position on the many overlapping territorial disputes there, the most active of which pit China against the Philippines and Vietnam; and it insists on asserting the “freedom of navigation” including of its navy and air force. Under the law of the sea, the artificial islands China has built on rocks and reefs that are submerged at high tide have no territorial waters.
> 
> Yet China is behaving as if they do—and so, perversely, is America. China insists the series of bilateral disputes in the South China Sea is none of America’s business and is not a topic for discussion at regional forums such as a 27-country one just hosted by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur. America, of course, disagrees, and has the backing of much of ASEAN for that. But it knows that if it does start testing Chinese resolve by sailing into or flying over China’s notional territorial waters, it could soon be seen as reckless and provocative, and find its regional support evaporate. So America’s inaction makes China’s new facts in the water look even more permanent and fosters the notion of relative American decline.
> 
> _*A TiP-ping point*_
> 
> That impression is heightened by the sense that America is less strident than it was in upholding its values of human rights, freedom and democracy. Cynics have always suspected that these ideals were subject to political exigencies. Last month they pointed to new evidence of this when the State Department promoted Malaysia from the bottom tier of countries listed in its annual Trafficking in Persons (TiP) report. It insisted this was because Malaysia was indeed cracking down on traffickers. Most Malaysians (and Thais, whose country was denied a similar upgrade) saw it as political: under American law a bottom-tier ranking would have meant that Malaysia would have to be excluded from TPP. The perception that TPP is so important to America to lead it to such distortions is damaging. It makes it look as if “the stable, transparent and rules-based” order Mr Kerry said America was promoting 70 years on from the war is one where America not only sets the rules, but twists them when they get in the way.




Much as I remain convinced that both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are _weak_, vacillating straws in the wind, _I believe_ that they have (accidentally, no doubt) stumbled upon the right _strategy_ for America at this time:

     First, pursue America's financial best interests with skill and vigour. Nothing much else of _strategic_ importance can happen until America's fiscal house in put in order. Republicans can dream all they want about "restoring America's
     strength," they are talking about doing it with money borrowed from China; and

     Second, bluster at China, they don't mind ~ in fact they actually welcome it, they can use America-Japanese-Vietnamese blkuster for their own internal propaganda ~ but stay well clear of direct, physical confrontations.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 2



			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> This article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Telegraph_ is about the impact of America's _strategic_ choices on Britain bit it also could be applicable in The Chinese Military, Political and Social Superthread, because there is a lot of focus on Sino-American relations, and even in Making Canada Relevant Again - The Economic Super-Thread, because the choicers which American _straegy_ offers/forces on Britain will be similar to some that those American _strategic_ choices offer or force on Canada:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11640302/Exclusive-interview-Ian-Bremmer-says-America-is-no-longer-indispensible-and-thats-bad-news-for-Britain.html
> 
> Now, I need to reiterate my well established (_I hope_) positions:
> 
> 1. America cannot afford the _Indispensable America_ option; and
> 
> 2. There is no such thing as "American exceptionalism," so even if America decided to "go for broke" and try to be _indispensable_ there is a very, very good chance that it would fail.
> 
> That leaves America with two rational and one irrational choices:
> 
> 1. _Moneyball America_, which would be, immediately and directly, bad for Canada but would force us to take advantage of other trade opportunities that might (_in my opinion_, would) be good in the mid to long term; (rational choice)
> 
> 2. _Independent_ (Isolationist) _America_, which would have somewhat less economic impavct on Canada, because America would, likely want to maintain very close economic ties, but might, actually, threaten our sovereignty because the
> United States _might _decide that it needs a continental socio-economic base to prosper; (rational choice) or
> 
> 3. _Incoherent America_ (what Dr Bremmer and I agree we have now) which means that we need to seek new socio-economic 'partners' in the world. irrational choice
> 
> _My bet_ is on 3, 1 and 2, in that order, for the near to mid term, and then 1, for a while, followed by 2, in the mid to long term.
> 
> _I believe _that America has been adrift, _strategically_, since about 1960. I'm not blaming any one president (not even Kennedy who _I think_ was vacillating and foolish) nor one group (not even the baby boomers) nor even one attitude (not even the deeply flawed _belief _in _American exceptionalism_) for America's problems, but the combination of a half century of weak, foolish leadership and flawed (_statist_) socio-cultural structures has,_ I fear_, fatally weakened our best friend, good neighbour and protector.




Not everyone agrees with Ian Bremmer, including Thomas Wright of the _Brookings Institution_, as he explains in this article which is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The American Interest_:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/08/14/should-america-power-down/


> Should America Power Down?
> 
> THOMAS WRIGHT
> 
> _Ian Bremmer argues that America should tender its resignation as the world’s superpower. But becoming Clark Kent, permanently, is not sound strategy._
> 
> In 1912, many people predicted that the United States would be one of the most powerful states in the 20th century. Its economy was strong and its potential seemingly limitless. But it would have been ludicrous to suggest that within a half-century it would be the dominant resident power in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East or that in less than a century it would be a unipolar power. After all, on the eve of World War I, German power was ascendant, Britain bestrode the world wearily but still as a Titan, and the United States had little appetite to venture outside its hemisphere.
> 
> Of course, the inconceivable happened. The United States became the world’s only superpower because it made better strategic decisions, and far fewer mistakes, than its competitors. Germany destroyed itself twice. Russia imploded and rose again under an ideology that contained the seeds of its future destruction. Britain was pulled into two world wars that sapped its power and forced it into retirement.
> 
> The lesson of the 20th century is that strategic choice matters. It is what great powers do geopolitically that makes history, not how much or how fast their economies grow. The contemporary debate on American power has mostly lost sight of this fact. Relying on a couple of crude metrics, like GDP and military spending, experts say with certainty whether this century will be Chinese, American, European, or run by no one at all. It is a little like declaring baseball season over before it begins and awarding the World Series to the team with the largest payroll or highest batting average.
> 
> The importance of strategic choice is the starting point for Ian Bremmer’s new book, Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World. Bremmer, a political scientist and the founder and CEO of the Eurasia Group, argues that the United States will remain a superpower for many years to come. The only question that matters is how it will use its power. Bremmer lays out three options for the United States and makes the best case he can for each. Only at the end does he tell us his preference. The book is written as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” with a gimmicky quiz to boot. But it is actually a manifesto in disguise.
> 
> Bremmer’s favored strategy is what he calls “Independent America,” whereby the United States would dramatically reduce its international commitments and pivot to the home front. Defense spending would be slashed and directed to homeland security, and Russia and China would each be allowed a sphere of influence. The United States would stop being the security guarantor of last resort for NATO and Japan, and would withdraw from the Middle East entirely.
> 
> Bremmer writes, “It’s time for a new declaration of independence—a proclamation of emancipation from the responsibility to solve everyone else’s problems.” He is exhausted by alliance commitments to defend those who won’t look out for themselves: “Why should Americans lead a fight to defend Latvia or Estonia if Germany, now one of the world’s wealthiest nations, won’t share more of the cost?” “America will be better off,” he says, “if we mind our own business and let other countries get along the best they can.” The United States should not get involved in wars or crises, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and Ukraine, where the others “care more about the outcome than you do.” The superpower must explicitly tender its resignation: “Only a crystal clear signal from Washington that America will now lead mainly by example will force our traditional partners to stand on their own.”
> 
> Above all, Bremmer longs for what the United States could do without its heavy burden. “Imagine what might become possible,” he writes, “if we redirected the attention, energy, and resources that we now squander on a failed superhero foreign policy toward building the America we imagine, one that empowers all its people to realize their human potential.” He would slash military spending and shift what’s left away from aircraft carriers and toward intelligence, homeland security, and cybersecurity. With the money saved, he would increase spending on infrastructure, education, veterans’ benefits, and tax cuts. The only time he breaks with the pure version of Independent America, as detailed in an early chapter, is in his support for free trade.
> 
> The two strategies that Bremmer rejects, after laying them out in full, are Moneyball America and Indispensable America. The former is, of course, an allusion to Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball, about Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s. Beane succeeded by jettisoning common baseball practice and using data and statistics to invest in players undervalued by the market. Under this option, Bremmer says, the President should invest in the value of America by making several calculated bets designed to deliver a significant return. However, he believes this will not work; America is not a corporation and cannot behave as if it is one. The U.S. government is simply too big and too complicated to achieve the nimbleness required for moneyball. And corporations make bad bets all the time. In the economy, failure is part of the process of creative destruction. But we can afford less risk when it comes to the nuclear codes.
> 
> Indispensable America is the latest iteration of traditional U.S. grand strategy dating back to the late 1940s. Here, the United States will continue to underwrite the liberal international order through alliances, military intervention, the provision of public goods, and an outsized leadership role. But Bremmer believes the U.S. doesn’t have the influence it needs to play this role any more. Even more importantly, he says, the American public is not prepared to play that role, especially if it means going to war with China over some rocks in the South China Sea or fighting Russia over the Baltics. “Indispensable America,” he writes, “was the right strategy at the end of World War II…But we can’t ignore the ways the world has changed.”
> 
> Bremmer’s choice, an Independent America, is not isolationist. Indeed, even the isolationism of the 1930s was not truly isolationist, since it allowed for commercial, political, and cultural engagement with the rest of the world. Independent America is, however, strictly non-interventionist. It is the product of what my colleague Robert Kagan has termed a desire to return to normalcy—that notion that the United States does too much as a superpower and should become a normal nation with normal interests.
> 
> The idea that the United States must retrench and reduce its international commitments has been percolating in academic circles over the past decade. The most advanced and sophisticated case is Restraint, a 2014 book by Barry Posen, a professor at MIT and perhaps America’s top academic defense expert. Restraint explains in detail why and how the United States should divest itself of its international security commitments and give up the liberal international order. Posen is not an outlier. Retrenchment is the preferred strategy of the majority of security studies scholars, especially in the younger generation of professors. It is the internationalists—William Wohlforth and Stephen Brooks of MIT and John Ikenberry of Princeton University—who are in the minority.



End of Part 1 of 2


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 2



> Despite its success in academic circles, retrenchment has failed to gain much traction in the policy community, except at the Cato Institute. Others, including Richard Haass in his book Foreign Policy Begins at Home, have flirted around the edges of a greater domestic focus but none have called for an unwinding of the alliance system or a dramatic change in America’s global role. Bremmer makes the argument that U.S. strategy is terribly wrongheaded and has been for some time (for instance, he sees the expansion of NATO as a historic error). The entire global order is unsound and the United States needs to act unilaterally and pull the entire edifice down.
> 
> It is for this reason that Bremmer’s work is important. It marks the crossover point between academic critiques of U.S. grand strategy and the policy mainstream. It may be the beginning of a debate that the United States has not had since the mid-1940s—should it look out for itself or should it underwrite a liberal international order?
> 
> The first big question that retrenchers have to answer is this: what problem does retrenchment solve? For better or worse, American leadership is the status quo. For over sixty years, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East have been organized around U.S. security guarantees. The abandonment of that leadership, especially in security, will radically change world politics and the international order. To make a case for such a change, one must first convincingly argue that the status quo is untenable. You wouldn’t blow the existing order up and replace it with something else just on a whim or to save some money. There must be a pressing need.
> 
> Bremmer suggested in an earlier book, G-Zero, that America’s economic problems were such that it would be unable to continue to play the role of world leader. But in Superpower, he is more optimistic about U.S. capacity. America can be a leader if it wants to, but it should choose not to, he says.
> 
> Instead, the problem is that the United States is currently adrift, and the uncertainty about its future role is destabilizing the international system. No one knows what the United States will do next. It is clear, he says, that the public wants to do less. America’s influence is also decreasing as other powers rise. Allies know all this and can’t trust the President. Adversaries know it too and do not fear U.S. power. America’s indecision is contributing to a heightened sense of geopolitical risk. Exhibit A is the red line debacle in Syria when President Obama reversed himself on airstrikes while the planes were fueling up on the runway.
> But Syria is only a symptom of a much greater problem—America’s inability to make good on its commitments. The epicenter of this coming earthquake is America’s alliance system—those commitments that the United States is treaty-bound to uphold and where reneging on a red line is impossible without incurring a terribly high cost. Bremmer wants to effectively disband these alliances so the United States is no longer on the hook to protect others. He believes that the American public no longer supports the U.S. commitment to its allies, the allies themselves are not doing enough, and there is a risk that the United States will get dragged into conflicts that are not in its interests.
> 
> Take NATO, for example—one of Bremmer’s favorite targets. NATO, he says, made a historic error by expanding to include new members after the Cold War. The expansion aggravated Russia and bound America to protect states that are not strategically important. Now that the Russia threat is back, this is a big problem. The United States is not ready or willing to defend its new member states. The American public can’t locate Latvia or Estonia on a map and the Obama Administration has been ambiguous about its commitment, all of which makes it more likely Russia will do something to test its resolve. Bremmer writes,
> 
> _“If Russian troops one day cross the border into Latvia, whatever the pretext, will the president of the United States declare war on Russia? President Obama has suggested that he would be he hasn’t said it._
> 
> Europe needs to know. America’s men and women in uniform, their families, and America’s taxpayers need to know. Leave it ambiguous and Moscow might one day decide to find out what it can get away with.”
> 
> It’s a powerful charge, if true. But here his specific claim and broader case about a crisis begins to fall part. The footnote reveals that Bremmer is referring to President Obama’s speech in Estonia in September 2014. Yet in that speech the President said this:
> 
> _“We will defend our NATO allies, and that means every ally. In this alliance, there are no old members or new members, no junior partners or senior partners—there are just allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity
> of every single ally. Today, more NATO aircraft patrol the skies of the Baltics. More American forces are on the ground training and rotating through each of the Baltic states. More NATO ships patrol the Black Sea. Tonight, I depart for the
> NATO Summit in Wales, and I believe our Alliance should extend these defensive measures for as long as necessary. Because the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London.”_
> 
> Now, one can believe that more must be done to protect the Baltics, but it’s hard to see how this speech supports the notion that the United States is unclear on whether it will fight Russia to defend them.
> Certainly, the United States has been leading the charge to bolster Article V in the face of the Russian threat. There is also no reason to believe that Russia doubts America’s assurances about Article V because of Syria or anything else.
> 
> Indeed, there is a cottage industry in political science on the topic of credibility. Its primary finding is that credibility of commitments depends on the interests of the countries in each case and not on what they do elsewhere. In other words, the Syria red line debacle is unlikely to have any impact on Russian assessments of U.S. credibility in the Baltics or in Asia. Bremmer actually acknowledges this when he praises
> Ronald Reagan for having the courage to renege on his own red line—when he withdrew U.S. forces from Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 Americans.
> 
> There is also no evidence to suggest that America’s alliances make war more likely. In fact, the opposite is true. Michael Beckley, an assistant professor at Tufts University, conducted a study of all of America’s alliance commitments since 1945 and found that entanglement almost never happens. It is much more common for alliances to restrain the United States or for the United States to restrain its allies.
> 
> Yet what of public opinion? Is Bremmer right that even if the political leadership wants to continue to play the role of the indispensable power, the public does not? He cites opinion polls that show only 56 percent of the American people would come to the aid of Britain if attacked. However, the political science literature finds that public opinion exerts little influence on U.S. foreign policy. There is no reason to think that the answer to a very general question about minding your own business is any indicator as to what the United States would or would not do if a sovereign allied state were invaded. In fact, the United States has previously gone to war to defend non-allied states that it had indicated it would not help (South Korea and Kuwait).
> 
> The question Bremmer can’t answer is if the American public is so dissatisfied with foreign policy activism, why does it keep voting for candidates who support it? Why is Rand Paul reversing his previous pro-retrenchment positions as he runs for president?
> 
> There is an alternative explanation for where the United States is right now. America’s default strategy is Indispensable America. President Obama has, in a very disciplined way, been trying to shift to a Moneyball America strategy. In fact, the chapter on Moneyball reads remarkably like the Administration’s current approach. The next president is likely to move back to a more ambitious foreign policy. But under either approach, America’s alliances are sound. There are foreign policy challenges, but the foundation of world order—America’s system of alliances—is not falling apart and much of the world relies on it.
> Even if there is no pressing need to change strategies, what would happen if we gave retrenchment a try? Isn’t it possible that it would improve America’s position by reducing foreign commitments and freeing up resources at home? No, not even close. The reason is simple: it will inject unprecedented risk and uncertainty into world politics.
> 
> Retrenchment is a revolutionary strategy. The day after the President of the United States gives the Independent America speech will be the day that every defense planner and diplomat the world over scrambles to understand how to survive in the post-American world. Alliances will be worthless. The glue that held everything together will no longer stick. The United States would have created the mother of all vacuums.
> Japan would likely rearm, and may even go nuclear, to defend itself against China. China would see a window of opportunity to establish its dominance over East Asia. In Europe, Russia would likely move on the Baltics to put the final nail in NATO’s coffin and would establish full control over Ukraine. Some western European countries would rearm, but the overwhelming impulse would be to seek a balance of power. It is unlikely that globalization would survive the return to full-throated rivalry.
> 
> This is not some far-fetched scenario. Bremmer himself writes:
> 
> _“A drive to refocus Washington on domestic priorities will inflict significant damage on relations with allies like Japan, Israel, and Britain. We will forfeit some of the already limited influence we have with China’s leaders as they make critical decisions.”_
> 
> Other advocates of retrenchment like Barry Posen recognize that the world will become a much more dangerous place. They just believe that these regional conflicts will not affect the United States. America can protect itself behind its oceans and nuclear deterrent. The United States only has to worry about other regions if one rival power is poised to dominate East Asia, Europe, or the Middle East. The sheer physics of balancing mean this is very unlikely to happen but if it did there would be enough time to intervene and tip the balance against the rival. They even argue that the United States could manipulate regional tensions to its benefit.
> 
> This belief could not be further from the U.S. post-war tradition. For over seven decades, the United States has sought to quell and reduce regional security competition in Western Europe and East Asia. Yes, the alliances were intended to contain the Soviet Union. But they were also intended to create a community of nations that did not fear each other. And they were designed so that the United States could influence its allies to exercise restraint. Thus, the United States provides for much of Japan’s security so it will not build capabilities that worry South Korea or others. It is also the reason why, even after the Soviet threat disappeared, the United States has gone to extraordinary lengths to promote regional integration and cooperation in Asia and Europe. EU and NATO expansion helped to consolidate democracy in Eastern Europe and reduce the potential for rivalries and territorial disputes.
> 
> It is worth pondering how much more dangerous Eastern Europe would be if Bremmer had his wish and NATO expansion never happened. It’s possible that in such a world Russia would not be revisionist because it would not be insecure, but Russian history suggests otherwise. More likely is the possibility that Russia would try to move on the Baltics and parts of Eastern Europe. NATO expansion took those countries of the chessboard.
> 
> The United States has also intervened militarily to prevent regional rivalries from rising. U.S. military actions in the first Gulf War, Bosnia, and Kosovo were not in response to a direct threat to a U.S. vital interest. Instead, they were wrapped up in broader notions of what constitutes security. This is not to say that all interventions are good—the Iraq War being the obvious example. In that war, however, the U.S. did not intervene to preserve regional stability but rather to attempt to impose it. It was a break from tradition, not a continuation of it.
> 
> Bremmer will no doubt argue that retrenchment must be done in a sensible and prudent way. The United States should not abandon its alliances overnight but rather give fair warning and a timetable—Posen has suggested a decade—after which those alliances would no longer be operative. The American president should deepen diplomacy with Russia and China to dissuade them from destabilizing actions that would hurt everyone involved. Additionally, the United States should redouble its efforts to increase cooperation and burden-sharing to tackle common threats and challenges.
> 
> It sounds lovely, but it is awfully hubristic to believe that a president or strategist is capable of undertaking such an awesome task and preventing it from getting out of control. A superpower retreat of this magnitude would be without parallel. And there are too many actors to manage. But surely, some might say, the difficulty of retrenchment is more manageable that being the world’s policeman? Perhaps, yet that is a comparison between the known and the unknown. America is an imperfect leader, but its track record over seventy-odd years is well known. Iraq may be a mess, but Western and Eastern Europe are in pretty good shape, as are U.S. alliances in East Asia.
> 
> By voluntarily liquidating its own order, the United States would be placing the mother of all bets that it would be significantly safer in a much more dangerous world. This is the reason why any president, even Rand Paul, would be reluctant to run the experiment. Ultimately, America’s expansive security commitments are not a favor to the allies, even though they work to their benefit. They were created and supported because the United States believes that reducing rivalry through forward-deployed forces is in America’s long-term interest. There is little reason to think anything has changed. Indeed, if the big bet on retrenchment does not work out and a combination of nuclear weapons and two oceans is not enough, the United States will find itself having to deal with severe threats without its alliances and forward-deployed forces. These could prove impossible to put back together.
> 
> One is left puzzled that an expert on geopolitical risk, like Bremmer, would opt for the strategy that seems most likely to turn the world upside down. In an earlier book, Bremmer coined the term “G-Zero world” to describe the lack of international leadership after the financial crisis. At the time, this seemed like a call for more leadership to fill the vacuum and reduce geopolitical risk. But Superpower does the opposite. The inescapable reality is there is no way to reverse the G-Zero dynamic unless America does more in the world. Yes, others should step up to the plate, but no one expects that they will. Thus, G-Zero has gone from a diagnosis to a recommendation.
> 
> Bremmer doesn’t clearly state why he changed his mind, but he does hint at it. He says that greater uncertainty is increasing volatility in world politics. The outcome of that volatility will depend on whether China becomes revisionist or not, whether Japan pushes back or not, whether Russia keeps Putinism or not, and so on. The United States will have very little influence over these decisions, so the better course of action is to stand aloof from them and find another purpose for American energy and values. He has come to terms with what he feared.
> 
> One gets the impression, however, that Americans, and America’s allies, still believe in the notion of an international order, even if they disagree about how to sustain it. If the United States has a conversation about strategic choice at the next election, one hopes that it will dwell, at least for a few moments, on the rationale behind underwriting an order that transcends narrow national interests and dollars-and-cents accounting. Some may also recall that the United States tried all three strategies in the 20th century. When World War I broke out, Wilson pursued an Indispensable America. In the 1920s, the United States switched to a Moneyball approach, but this fell apart after 1929 and led to an Independent America, despite Roosevelt’s best efforts. After that collapsed in ruins, Roosevelt put together the post-war Indispensable America grand strategy that has been largely with us since.
> 
> Ultimately, choice is relative. By reminding people of the alternatives, Bremmer may have done more to help Indispensable America than he intended.
> 
> _Thomas Wright is a fellow and director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution._


----------



## Edward Campbell

This month's edition of _Foreign Affairs_ takes a long, critical look at American _grand strategy_ over, mainly, the past decade.

                
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




The articles are too numerous and too long (even by my standards) to post, but here are some links (_Foreign Affairs_ link titles are self explanatory) some, at least should be free to non-subscribers:

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/what-obama-gets-right

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/what-obama-gets-wrong

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/obama-and-middle-east

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/obama-and-asia

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/obama-and-europe

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/obama-and-latin-america

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/africa/obama-and-africa

     https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/obama-and-terrorism

The focus is on President Obama, of course (see the cover), but most articles delve deeper and offer some prescriptive thoughts, too.

_Foreign Affairs_ should be available in most school, public and base libraries ~ if it's not complain, loudly. Sometimes you can buy individual copies in bookstores.

My, personal judgement is that President Obama came into office with a strong _domestic_ agenda which, perforce, required a _liberal-isolationist_ foreign policy (disengagement from the _Bush Wars_ and then retrenchment) but _"force majeure"_ and all that, or, as the late Prime Minister Harold MacMillan _may_ have said, "events, dear boy, events" transpired and he has found himself, unwillingly, _engaged_ in battles he would rather not fight, at home and abroad. he is, _I think_, looking for the _least bad_ way out of the Arab<->Persian<->Israeli<->Arab quagmire in the Middle East and he is trying to back away from a military confrontation with China. But "events" and an aggressive China strategy aimed at keeping him 'engaged' in (_strategically_) counter-productive or unproductive activities makes his life more difficult: add in Putin and the GOP and the budget and race and, and, and ... why, I wonder, do I keep thinking about Joel Chandler Harris "Uncle Remus" stories (published in 1881 but still popular (and taught in our schools, in Canada, anyway) until the 1950s)?


----------



## a_majoor

Donald Trump may be a case of the symptom that defines what is wrong with America and the body politic. The key is the note by Instapundit at the end: this is the worst political class in American history and the American people are waking up to the fact that the very institutions that are supposed to govern and protect them have become rigged agains them instead, and are willing to listen to whoever is going to talk about the problem. (If Trump somehow becomes President, would he be able to do anything about it? That is an interesting question for another day)

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213357



> *PEGGY NOONAN ON DONALD TRUMP:*
> 
> You know the latest numbers. Quinnipiac University’s poll this week has Mr. Trump at a hefty 28% nationally, up from 20% in July. Public Policy Polling has Mr. Trump leading all Republicans in New Hampshire with 35%. A Monmouth University poll has him at 30% in South Carolina, followed 15 points later by Ben Carson.
> 
> Here are some things I think are happening.
> 
> One is the deepening estrangement between the elites and the non-elites in America. This is the area in which Trumpism flourishes. We’ll talk about that deeper in.
> 
> Second, Mr. Trump’s support is not limited to Republicans, not by any means.
> 
> Third, the traditional mediating or guiding institutions within the Republican universe—its establishment, respected voices in conservative media, sober-minded state party officials—have little to no impact on Mr. Trump’s rise. Some say voices of authority should stand up to oppose him, which will lower his standing. But Republican powers don’t have that kind of juice anymore. Mr. Trump’s supporters aren’t just bucking a party, they’re bucking everything around, within and connected to it.
> 
> Since Mr. Trump announced I’ve worked or traveled in, among other places, Southern California, Connecticut, Georgia, Virginia, New Jersey and New York’s Long Island. In all places I just talked to people. My biggest sense is that political professionals are going to have to rethink “the base,” reimagine it when they see it in their minds.
> 
> I’ve written before about an acquaintance—late 60s, northern Georgia, lives on Social Security, voted Obama in ’08, not partisan, watches Fox News, hates Wall Street and “the GOP establishment.” She continues to be so ardent for Mr. Trump that she not only watched his speech in Mobile, Ala., on live TV, she watched while excitedly texting with family members—middle-class, white, independent-minded—who were in the audience cheering. Is that “the Republican base”? I guess maybe it is, because she texted me Wednesday to say she’d just registered Republican. I asked if she’d ever been one before. Reply: “No, never!!!”
> 
> Something is going on, some tectonic plates are moving in interesting ways. My friend Cesar works the deli counter at my neighborhood grocery store. He is Dominican, an immigrant, early 50s, and listens most mornings to a local Hispanic radio station, La Mega, on 97.9 FM. Their morning show is the popular “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” and after the first GOP debate, Cesar told me, they opened the lines to call-ins, asking listeners (mostly Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican) for their impressions. More than half called in to say they were for Mr. Trump. Their praise, Cesar told me a few weeks ago, dumbfounded the hosts. I later spoke to one of them, who identified himself as D.J. New Era. He backed Cesar’s story. “We were very surprised,” at the Trump support, he said. Why? “It’s a Latin-based market!”
> 
> “He’s the man,” Cesar said of Mr. Trump. This week I went by and Cesar told me that after Mr. Trump threw Univision’s well-known anchor and immigration activist, Jorge Ramos, out of an Iowa news conference on Tuesday evening, the “El Vacilón” hosts again threw open the phone lines the following morning and were again surprised that the majority of callers backed not Mr. Ramos but Mr. Trump. Cesar, who I should probably note sees me, I sense, as a very nice establishment person who needs to get with the new reality, was delighted.
> 
> Well, Peggy, he’s got you pretty well figured out. And yes, America has the worst political class in its history, average people are figuring it out, and — finally — the political class is beginning to figure out that average people are figuring it out.
> 
> Does this mean that Trump should be President? No, but it means someone capable of absorbing, and putting into practice, the things that Trump is making clear should be.


----------



## cupper

Very interesting discussion on how the push by the religious right (specifically the Christian Right) for protection of religious freedoms may backfire and ultimately become a self defeating shot in the foot. But it also speaks (in my opinion) to the larger divide that I see existing in the US today, with social and religious conservative views clashing with the more liberal and progressive social population.

*How the GOP’s Religious Freedom Rhetoric Could Undermine the Party*
If conservatives want to insist on the priority of rights, they shouldn't be surprised when they see their other goals slipping away.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/republicans-religious-freedom-backfire-213130



> Has anyone noticed that the further right Republican conservatives move, the further left their rhetoric becomes?
> Consider the way current Republican contenders for president have reacted to the case of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who spent Labor Day weekend in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. “This,” Mike Huckabee told ABC’s “This Week,” “is what [President Thomas] Jefferson warned us about. That’s judicial tyranny.”
> 
> Huckabee is not the only Republican presidential candidate who invokes the language of the radical left to defend the positions of the radical right. “I’ll tell you, I stand with Kim Davis unequivocally,” echoed fellow candidate Ted Cruz. “I stand with her or anyone else the government is trying to persecute for standing up for their faith.”
> 
> “She’s not going to resign,” one of her lawyers, Mat Staver, declared. “She’s not going to sacrifice her conscience, so she’s doing what Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which is to pay the consequences for her decision.”
> 
> Not too long ago, religious conservatives were happy to be the moral majority, wielding government power against people too extreme in their demands and too outlandish in their lifestyle to be accepted as normal. But with gay marriage now legal everywhere in the United States except American Samoa, and with the majority of Americans now in favor of it, right-wing politicians are increasingly falling back on the language of rights—transforming from a moral majority to an aggrieved minority. Liberal elites, they insist, constitute an establishment persecuting the godly the way the Romans crucified Christ. The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of gay marriage, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told his followers after the decision, “will pave the way for an all out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians. … This ruling must not be used as pretext by Washington to erode our right to religious liberty.”
> 
> Freedom, liberty, rights, resistance to tyranny—these words are quintessentially American. What conservatives seem to forget, however, is that they usually constitute the rallying cry of those seeking greater social justice, enhanced equality and toleration of difference. If conservatives want to insist on the priority of rights, God bless them. But they should not be surprised when the other goals they seek—limited government, opposition to affirmative action, the importance of moral obligation, and the defense of hierarchy and authority—all become more difficult to achieve.
> 
> Rights, for one thing, while offering protection against an intrusive state, cannot be enforced without the help of the state. To be sure, there exists something called negative liberty, or the freedom to be left alone. But neither Jindal nor Huckabee resembles Henry David Thoreau, an earlier signatory to a Grover Norquist-like no-tax pledge. Thoreau was an abolitionist who retreated as far from politics as possible, not a presidential candidate relying on votes from white southerners.
> 
> Today’s conservatives, rather, seek a form of positive liberty: not just the right to have a belief, but the accumulation of the resources necessary to turn that belief into reality. Everyone’s favorite example of what is at stake here, at least until Kim Davis came along, illustrates the point. Both liberals and conservatives would agree that a Christian baker has the right to regard homosexuality, in her heart of hearts, as a sin; freedom of private conscience is widely accepted in the United States. The real test, however, is whether that same baker can refuse to provide a public service to a gay couple that she willingly provides to everyone else—a clear act, whether one supports it or not, of discrimination. Conservatives believe she should have such freedom. The problem is that this can only happen when government establishes an exception to a general law and backs that up exception with its enforcement powers. *As we have seen, abolishing discrimination requires an active government. What Republicans tend to forget is: So does permitting it.*
> 
> Here’s another reason why Republicans may come to regret their hasty support for religious rights. Calls for positive liberty nearly always come to support one version or another of affirmative action. It is not difficult to imagine conservative Christians demanding something similar; indeed as they talk about their exclusion from universities and the media, let alone the war directed against them every Christmas, it seems we are already halfway there. Once groups start viewing themselves as helpless victims against unjust tyranny, their burning sense of injustice will know few bounds. No one in America likes affirmative action—except when he benefits from it. Let their anger at perceived victimization fester, and conservative Christians will find the language of diversity perfectly compatible with, as well as a proposed remedy for, their sense of exclusion from top-fight colleges, the senior ranks of the military and major corporations.
> 
> The irony in all of this is that conservatives not long ago opposed gay claims by arguing against “special” rights. It was never clear what conservatives meant by that term, but it seemed to imply that gays were demanding rights held by no one else, such as immunity from criticism or rendering “conversion therapy,” efforts by conservatives to “cure” homosexuality, illegal. As recently as this past April, Gov. Bobby Jindal, as if failing to recognize that the conservative script was undergoing serious revision, spoke about gay-friendly New Orleans on “Meet the Press”: “My concern about creating special legal protection is [that] historically in our country, we have only done that in extraordinary circumstances,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to me we are in one of those moments today.”
> 
> Jindal should have cleared his remarks with Huckabee, easily the most radical of all the conservative Christians running for president. Unlike Jindal, Huckabee believes that we face extraordinary, indeed momentous, circumstances. The right to marry, in his view, is not some ordinary privilege like opening a business or even worshipping in church. Only God, he believes, not some random collection of judges, can redefine marriage. Talk about special rights! Women seeking an abortion only want a state-recognized right, not a God-given one, as do gays seeking to marry. But in Huckabee’s world, conservative Christians would be granted a right possessed by no one else—and it would be enforced by an authority greater than that of the state. No wonder Kim Davis concluded that the law did not apply to her; God was clearly on her side.
> 
> As if support for special rights and positive government were not enough, conservative Christians also want to expand the list of those eligible for rights. The concept of rights, as developed by thinkers such as John Stuart Mill in his brilliant and still relevant On Liberty, was reserved for human beings, creatures who singularly possess the capacity to plan their own course of life. Unless people can think and decide for themselves, Mill argued convincingly, rights are superfluous.
> 
> In the Hobby Lobby case decided last year, the five conservative U. S. Supreme Court justices disagreed. In his controlling opinion, Justice Samuel Alito held that requiring employers to include coverage for birth control methods in health insurance plans violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because closely held business corporations can be considered persons whose religious liberties must be respected. “A tremendous victory, not only for Hobby Lobby, but for all those being forced violate their deeply held convictions as a result of this Administration’s assault on religious liberty,” wrote Cruz. Christian colleges, the Catholic Church, non-profits—all now can share the status of religious dissenters such as Roger Williams or Anne Hutchinson, determined to practice their faith in spite of governmental efforts stop then. In this, conservatives have gone further in their quest for rights than liberals ever have: Liberals believe in expanding rights, but, other than those who back them for animals, they never expanded them as far as conservative politicians and judges have in the past year.
> 
> But Republicans might find that this victory ends up undermining a key tenet of their platform. As Boston College law professor Kent Greenfield has pointed out, corporations routinely insist that they are responsible only to their share-holders. This mantra is at the heart of the idea of “free enterprise.” But what if corporations are persons? Would that mean they have they have other obligations, in the way that people do? Firms that harm the environment, for example, may be under an obligation to improve the land. Greenfield believes that the left should welcome the move toward corporate personhood because it would give corporations (or closely held ones at least) more public responsibility.
> 
> *Indeed, every right gained comes with corresponding obligations.* _[Too many people forget this in my opinion :nod: ]_ In the 1960s, that most left-wing of decades, extreme leftists and counter-cultural drop-outs approached lawless anarchy in the way they talked about rights: The whole point of having them was to be free of arbitrary restraint. Much like private corporations claiming the right to do as they wish, leftists of that era believed in conceptions of freedom that were extreme in their refusal to take the needs of others into account. My right to abortion ought to be fundamental and unrestricted, some claimed, while others argued that the substances they ingested mattered only to themselves.
> 
> Thankfully, this is no longer the case. The right to an abortion, a majority of now women recognize, cannot be allowed to become just a form of birth control; it must be treated as a serious decision with deep moral consequences for others. A number of determined protestors of the Vietnam War, myself included, later came to recognize that there are situations, such as the genocide in Rwanda, where rich nations do have a moral obligation to intervene abroad in the name of justice. The symbol of the gay rights movement was once the bathhouse, a place in which, sexually speaking, anything went—including HIV-AIDS. Now the symbol of gay rights in the wedding ring, as those who once sought liberation now seek considered legal and moral commitment.
> 
> If there is any place where the anarchism of the radical left in this country is kept alive, it is with those Christian conservatives for whom compromise is evil, politics useless and reason oblivious. Unlike freedom of speech or assembly, claims to freedom based on the will of God tend to be absolute: One does not disobey the Lord’s truth or carry out the designs of Satan. *But here’s the rub: If you invoke a right to religion, you must also recognize that a society like ours has many religions, and therefore many truths.* Huckabee, Jindal and the others are only at the first stage of rights assertion. They need to move to the second: the willingness to give in on some of their rights so that they can live together with others. Mormons did that when they abandoned plural marriage. Conservative Christians can do the same thing.
> 
> There is, in spite of all this, reason to cheer conservative Christians on in their quest for religion rights. For all their claims to be victims—and this in a society as religious and as Christian as any advanced liberal democracy in the world—Christians seeking rights will always be better than Christians bent on persecuting others, unless, of course, claims to rights become a form of persecution. (The right to broadcast Christian prayers at a Texas high school football game, for example, violates the rights of non-Christians and non-believers in the audience, as the court ruled in in 2000 in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe.) This country could benefit from a national conversation about rights: having them, asserting them and realizing them are what makes America great.
> 
> The trouble seems to be that in their quest for rights, conservative Republican politicians have lost all sense of the invisible ties that keep Americans of all faiths, or of no faith at all, united. The society they envision is one that caters only to their needs. If they had their way, we could all pick and choose only those truths that please us, those traditions that enrich us, those authorities that govern us and those ideals that move us. But that is anarchy—just by another name.
> 
> More than ever, Americans need visions that appeal to us all. In the past few years, we have begun to witness the emergence a younger generation more willing to question authority, develop innovative career paths, experiment with new ways of living together and willing to take their future financial security into their own hands. Let someone from the older generation, even perhaps myself, preach to them that they are going too far in their rejection of the tried-and-true, and they can reply that these days everyone wants to decide for themselves the best way to live, Christian conservatives definitely included. Where, one wonders, are conservatives when we need them?


----------



## tomahawk6

The US is by and large a conservative country.If you doubt that just see the results of the last Congressional elections where the GOP won control of both houses.Trump has tapped into the dissatisfaction in the country with the GOP congressional leadership which has been blocking things like defunding Planned parenthood and the very bad Iran nuclear deal.


----------



## a_majoor

American power still exists, and it is interesting to contemplate just how different things would be if there were a steady and competent hand weilding this power. The US Federal Reserve could be used to collapse the economies of American rivals like Russia through the simple act of raising interest rates, for example, and holding that threat over Putin would probably bring him to heel in double quick time. While there are many arguments _not_ to do so, the real point here is there are lots of tools the American political and economic establishments have access to which could be used to make major changes, but have refrained from using to date:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/09/18/decline-that-never-quite-becomes-a-fall/



> *Decline that Never Quite Becomes a Fall*
> 
> One big reason the Federal Reserve decided against raising rates had nothing to do with the state of the domestic economy, The Financial Times reports:
> 
> The Federal Reserve held interest rates at historic lows as concerns about an increasingly brittle global economy overshadowed evidence of a resilient US recovery.
> 
> The US central bank maintained its 0 to 0.25 per cent target range for the federal funds rate, ending weeks of feverish speculation over whether it would raise rates for the first time since before the financial crisis.
> 
> For years, we’ve been hearing  about the ongoing American decline. We’ve been told that emerging markets and particularly the BRICS are transforming the world and that the old rules no longer apply. We created the G-20 because of the widespread belief that the U.S., even with the other G-7 countries, was no longer strong enough economically to set the agenda.
> 
> Yet here we have the G-1 holding the switch on which that the global economy depends. The vaunted BRICS have to be protected from the economic disaster that a Fed rate rise would be for them. The Federal Reserve System of the United States is the world’s de facto central bank.
> 
> That doesn’t mean that the world economy is in a good place; clearly when interest rates can’t be raised from their present derisory level something is seriously wrong. One suspects that several factors are at work: the over-saving of Asian and oil economies accumulating huge reserves; rapid falls in prices not fully captured by economic statistics so that real interest rates (interest rates minus the rate of inflation or plus the rate of deflation) may be higher than the numbers we are looking at; the gradual deflation of a vast global bubble in excess manufacturing capacity and the consequences of government efforts to enable a soft landing; under-reporting of the shadow economy of, for example, oligarchs in Russia and princelings in China. To say nothing of vast off-the-books liabilities for pensions and other entitlement type spending in the advanced world. Central bankers have their work cut out for them these days.
> 
> The United States, especially to those of us looking from up close, often seems to be a stumblebum lurching from one folly to the next. And that’s often true. But what we forget is that, erratic as our national performance might be, the other big economic and political groupings—Europe, China, Japan, India, Brazil and so on—have problems of their own. Even with all its flaws, the U.S. still looks like the fastest runner in a slow field.


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## cupper

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The US is by and large a conservative country.If you doubt that just see the results of the last Congressional elections where the GOP won control of both houses Managed to achieve the status quo, while winning a majority of seats in the Senate .Trump has tapped into the dissatisfaction in the country with the GOP congressional leadership which has been blocking things like defunding Planned parenthood and the very bad Iran nuclear deal.



I agree with your basic premise, but don't really think that the GOP won control of anything. All the 2014 midterm's achieved was to switch majority and minority positions in the Senate, and a more fractured House. In fact you could argue that they actually lost control of the Senate by becoming the majority and putting the Dems in the position of dictating what gets through and what doesn't, providing more cover for the President by not having to carry out a veto.


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## Edward Campbell

Part 1 of 3

Prof Graham Allison, the director of the _Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs_ at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and author of _Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe_ and co-author of _Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World_, suggests, in this (long) article which is reproduced, in three parts, under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Atlantic_, that history teaches us that "man’s capacity for folly" is, apparently, boundless and he suggests that a war between China and the USA is not just possible, it is likely:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/united-states-china-war-thucydides-trap/406756/
_(There are many very useful hyperlinks in the original article which I have not included. Those with a deeper interest shoudl go to the source article.)_


> The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?
> *In 12 of 16 past cases in which a rising power has confronted a ruling power, the result has been bloodshed.*
> 
> GRAHAM ALLISON  SEP 24, 2015
> 
> When Barack Obama meets this week with Xi Jinping during the Chinese president’s first state visit to America, one item probably won’t be on their agenda: the possibility that the United States and China could find themselves at war in the next decade. In policy circles, this appears as unlikely as it would be unwise.
> 
> And yet 100 years on, World War I offers a sobering reminder of man’s capacity for folly. When we say that war is “inconceivable,” is this a statement about what is possible in the world—or only about what our limited minds can conceive? In 1914, few could imagine slaughter on a scale that demanded a new category: world war. When war ended four years later, Europe lay in ruins: the kaiser gone, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the Russian tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which Europe had been the political center of the world came to a crashing halt.
> 
> The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.
> 
> Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not. Moreover, current underestimations and misapprehensions of the hazards inherent in the U.S.-China relationship contribute greatly to those hazards. A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual—not just an unexpected, extraordinary event—can trigger large-scale conflict. When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.
> 
> War, however, is not inevitable. Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed. Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today’s world leaders. Escaping the Trap requires tremendous effort. As Xi Jinping himself said during a visit to Seattle on Tuesday, “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> More than 2,400 years ago, the Athenian historian Thucydides offered a powerful insight: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.” Others identified an array of contributing causes of the Peloponnesian War. But Thucydides went to the heart of the matter, focusing on the inexorable, structural stress caused by a rapid shift in the balance of power between two rivals. Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers of this dynamic: the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.
> 
> In the case about which he wrote in the fifth century B.C., Athens had emerged over a half century as a steeple of civilization, yielding advances in philosophy, history, drama, architecture, democracy, and naval prowess. This shocked Sparta, which for a century had been the leading land power on the Peloponnese peninsula. As Thucydides saw it, Athens’s position was understandable. As its clout grew, so too did its self-confidence, its consciousness of past injustices, its sensitivity to instances of disrespect, and its insistence that previous arrangements be revised to reflect new realities of power. It was also natural, Thucydides explained, that Sparta interpreted the Athenian posture as unreasonable, ungrateful, and threatening to the system it had established—and within which Athens had flourished.
> 
> _War between the U.S. and China is more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not._
> 
> Thucydides chronicled objective changes in relative power, but he also focused on perceptions of change among the leaders of Athens and Sparta—and how this led each to strengthen alliances with other states in the hopes of counterbalancing the other. But entanglement runs both ways. (It was for this reason that George Washington famously cautioned America to beware of “entangling alliances.”) When conflict broke out between the second-tier city-states of Corinth and Corcyra (now Corfu), Sparta felt it necessary to come to Corinth’s defense, which left Athens little choice but to back its ally. The Peloponnesian War followed. When it ended 30 years later, Sparta was the nominal victor. But both states lay in ruin, leaving Greece vulnerable to the Persians.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Eight years before the outbreak of world war in Europe, Britain’s King Edward VII asked his prime minister why the British government was becoming so unfriendly to his nephew Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany, rather than keeping its eye on America, which he saw as the greater challenge. The prime minister instructed the Foreign Office’s chief Germany watcher, Eyre Crowe, to write a memo answering the king’s question. Crowe delivered his memorandum on New Year’s Day, 1907. The document is a gem in the annals of diplomacy.
> 
> The logic of Crowe’s analysis echoed Thucydides’s insight. And his central question, as paraphrased by Henry Kissinger in On China, was the following: Did increasing hostility between Britain and Germany stem more from German capabilities or German conduct? Crowe put it a bit differently: Did Germany’s pursuit of “political hegemony and maritime ascendancy” pose an existential threat to “the independence of her neighbours and ultimately the existence of England?”
> 
> Crowe’s answer was unambiguous: Capability was key. As Germany’s economy surpassed Britain’s, Germany would not only develop the strongest army on the continent. It would soon also “build as powerful a navy as she can afford.” In other words, Kissinger writes, “once Germany achieved naval supremacy … this in itself—regardless of German intentions—would be an objective threat to Britain, and incompatible with the existence of the British Empire.”
> 
> Three years after reading that memo, Edward VII died. Attendees at his funeral included two “chief mourners”—Edward’s successor, George V, and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm—along with Theodore Roosevelt representing the United States. At one point, Roosevelt (an avid student of naval power and leading champion of the buildup of the U.S. Navy) asked Wilhelm whether he would consider a moratorium in the German-British naval arms race. The kaiser replied that Germany was unalterably committed to having a powerful navy. But as he went on to explain, war between Germany and Britain was simply unthinkable, because “I was brought up in England, very largely; I feel myself partly an Englishman. Next to Germany I care more for England than for any other country.” And then with emphasis: “I ADORE ENGLAND!”
> 
> However unimaginable conflict seems, however catastrophic the potential consequences for all actors, however deep the cultural empathy among leaders, even blood relatives, and however economically interdependent states may be—none of these factors is sufficient to prevent war, in 1914 or today.
> 
> In fact, in 12 of 16 cases over the last 500 years in which there was a rapid shift in the relative power of a rising nation that threatened to displace a ruling state, the result was war. As the table below suggests, the struggle for mastery in Europe and Asia over the past half millennium offers a succession of variations on a common storyline.
> 
> Thucydides Case Studies
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (For summaries of these 16 cases and the methodology for selecting them, and for a forum to register additions, subtractions, revisions, and disagreements with the cases, please visit the Harvard Belfer Center’s Thucydides Trap Case File. For this first phase of the project, we at the Belfer Center identified “ruling” and “rising” powers by following the judgments of leading historical accounts, resisting the temptation to offer original or idiosyncratic interpretations of events. These histories use “rise” and “rule” according to their conventional definitions, generally emphasizing rapid shifts in relative GDP and military strength. Most of the cases in this initial round of analysis come from post-Westphalian Europe.)
> 
> When a rising, revolutionary France challenged Britain’s dominance of the oceans and the balance of power on the European continent, Britain destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte’s fleet in 1805 and later sent troops to the continent to defeat his armies in Spain and at Waterloo. As Otto von Bismarck sought to unify a quarrelsome assortment of rising German states, war with their common adversary, France, proved an effective instrument to mobilize popular support for his mission. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, a rapidly modernizing Japanese economy and military establishment challenged Chinese and Russian dominance of East Asia, resulting in wars with both from which Japan emerged as the leading power in the region.



End of Part 1 of 3


----------



## Edward Campbell

Part 2 of 3



> _The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact of China’s ascendance._
> 
> Each case is, of course, unique. Ongoing debate about the causes of the First World War reminds us that each is subject to competing interpretations. The great international historian, Harvard’s Ernest May, taught that when attempting to reason from history, we should be as sensitive to the differences as to the similarities among cases we compare. (Indeed, in his Historical Reasoning 101 class, May would take a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle of the page, label one column “Similar” and the other “Different,” and fill in the sheet with at least a half dozen of each.) Nonetheless, acknowledging many differences, Thucydides directs us to a powerful commonality.
> 
> * * *
> 
> The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.” Everyone knows about the rise of China. Few of us realize its magnitude. Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast, on so many dimensions of power. To paraphrase former Czech President Vaclav Havel, all this has happened so rapidly that we have not yet had time to be astonished.
> 
> My lecture on this topic at Harvard begins with a quiz that asks students to compare China and the United States in 1980 with their rankings today. The reader is invited to fill in the blanks.
> 
> Quiz: Fill in the Blanks
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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> 
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> 
> 
> The answers for the first column: In 1980, China had 10 percent of America’s GDP as measured by purchasing power parity; 7 percent of its GDP at current U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 6 percent of its exports. The foreign currency held by China, meanwhile, was just one-sixth the size of America’s reserves. The answers for the second column: By 2014, those figures were 101 percent of GDP; 60 percent at U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 106 percent of exports. China’s reserves today are 28 times larger than America’s.
> 
> In a single generation, a nation that did not appear on any of the international league tables has vaulted into the top ranks. In 1980, China’s economy was smaller than that of the Netherlands. Last year, the increment of growth in China’s GDP was roughly equal to the entire Dutch economy.
> 
> The second question in my quiz asks students: Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?
> 
> Could China Become #1?
> 
> Manufacturer:
> Exporter:
> Trading nation:
> Saver:
> Holder of U.S. debt:
> Foreign-direct-investment destination:
> Energy consumer:
> Oil importer:
> Carbon emitter:
> Steel producer:
> Auto market:
> Smartphone market:
> E-commerce market:
> Luxury-goods market:
> Internet user:
> Fastest supercomputer:
> Holder of foreign reserves:
> Source of initial public offerings:
> Primary engine of global growth:
> Economy:
> 
> Most are stunned to learn that on each of these 20 indicators, China has already surpassed the U.S.
> 
> Will China be able to sustain economic-growth rates several times those of the United States for another decade and beyond? If and as it does, are its current leaders serious about displacing the U.S. as the predominant power in Asia? Will China follow the path of Japan and Germany, and take its place as a responsible stakeholder in the international order that America has built over the past seven decades? The answer to these questions is obviously that no one knows.
> 
> But if anyone’s forecasts are worth heeding, it’s those of Lee Kuan Yew, the world’s premier China watcher and a mentor to Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping. Before his death in March, the founder of Singapore put the odds of China continuing to grow at several times U.S. rates for the next decade and beyond as “four chances in five.” On whether China’s leaders are serious about displacing the United States as the top power in Asia in the foreseeable future, Lee answered directly: “Of course. Why not … how could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?” And about accepting its place in an international order designed and led by America, he said absolutely not: “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> Americans have a tendency to lecture others about why they should be “more like us.” In urging China to follow the lead of the United States, should we Americans be careful what we wish for?
> 
> As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable.
> 
> For example, in 1902, when British and German ships attempted to impose a naval blockade to force Venezuela to pay its debts to them, Roosevelt warned both countries that he would “be obliged to interfere by force if necessary” if they did not withdraw their ships. The British and Germans were persuaded to retreat and to resolve their dispute in terms satisfactory to the U.S. at The Hague. The following year, when Colombia refused to lease the Panama Canal Zone to the United States, America sponsored Panamanian secessionists, recognized the new Panamanian government within hours of its declaration of independence, and sent the Marines to defend the new country. Roosevelt defended the U.S. intervention on the grounds that it was “justified in morals and therefore justified in law.” Shortly thereafter, Panama granted the United States rights to the Canal Zone “in perpetuity.”
> 
> * * *



End of Part 2 of 2


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## Edward Campbell

Part 3 of 3



> When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market in 1978, he announced a policy known as “hide and bide.” What China needed most abroad was stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus “bide our time and hide our capabilities,” which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even.
> 
> With the arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of “hide and bide” is over. Nearly three years into his 10-year term, Xi has stunned colleagues at home and China watchers abroad with the speed at which he has moved and the audacity of his ambitions. Domestically, he has bypassed rule by a seven-man standing committee and instead consolidated power in his own hands; ended flirtations with democratization by reasserting the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power; and attempted to transform China’s engine of growth from an export-focused economy to one driven by domestic consumption. Overseas, he has pursued a more active Chinese foreign policy that is increasingly assertive in advancing the country’s interests.
> 
> _Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast. In 1980, China’s economy was smaller than the Netherlands’. Last year, the increment of growth in China’s GDP was equal to the Dutch economy._
> 
> While the Western press is seized by the storyline of “China’s economic slowdown,” few pause to note that China’s lower growth rate remains more than three times that of the United States. Many observers outside China have missed the great divergence between China’s economic performance and that of its competitors over the seven years since the financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession. That shock caused virtually all other major economies to falter and decline. China never missed a year of growth, sustaining an average growth rate exceeding 8 percent. Indeed, since the financial crisis, nearly 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in just one country: China. The chart below illustrates China’s growth compared to growth among its peers in the BRICS group of emerging economies, advanced economies, and the world. From a common index of 100 in 2007, the divergence is dramatic.
> 
> GDP, 2007 — 2015
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> Today, China has displaced the United States as the world’s largest economy measured in terms of the amount of goods and services a citizen can buy in his own country (purchasing power parity).
> 
> What Xi Jinping calls the “China Dream” expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe. In the oft-repeated narrative, a century of Chinese weakness led to exploitation and national humiliation by Western colonialists and Japan. In Beijing’s view, China is now being restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests.
> 
> Last November, in a seminal meeting of the entire Chinese political and foreign-policy establishment, including the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi provided a comprehensive overview of his vision of China’s role in the world. The display of self-confidence bordered on hubris. Xi began by offering an essentially Hegelian conception of the major historical trends toward multipolarity (i.e. not U.S. unipolarity) and the transformation of the international system (i.e. not the current U.S.-led system). In his words, a rejuvenated Chinese nation will build a “new type of international relations” through a “protracted” struggle over the nature of the international order. In the end, he assured his audience that “the growing trend toward a multipolar world will not change.”
> 
> Given objective trends, realists see an irresistible force approaching an immovable object. They ask which is less likely: China demanding a lesser role in the East and South China Seas than the United States did in the Caribbean or Atlantic in the early 20th century, or the U.S. sharing with China the predominance in the Western Pacific that America has enjoyed since World War II?
> 
> And yet in four of the 16 cases that the Belfer Center team analyzed, similar rivalries did not end in war. If leaders in the United States and China let structural factors drive these two great nations to war, they will not be able to hide behind a cloak of inevitability. Those who don’t learn from past successes and failures to find a better way forward will have no one to blame but themselves.
> 
> At this point, the established script for discussion of policy challenges calls for a pivot to a new strategy (or at least slogan), with a short to-do list that promises peaceful and prosperous relations with China. Shoehorning this challenge into that template would demonstrate only one thing: a failure to understand the central point I’m trying to make. What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914.
> 
> The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation. Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.



First: I agree with Prof Allison's historical analysis: war between a _rising_ power and the _established_ great power is more likely than not.

Second: I am one of those who falls, too easily, into the "inconceivable" trap he describes in the second paragraph. I have said, and _I remain convinced_, that neither China nor the USA can win such a war. Our own Thucydides has explained the _dragon_ vs the _shark_ conundrum: each is paramount in its own environment, China as a great land power and the USA as the world greatest naval power, but the two cannot have a real war ... not without going nuclear and China can and would survive that.

Third: I agree, therefore, with Prof Allison's last two paragraphs. I hope US policymakers read this article, especially the conclusion ... but I doubt enough will.


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## Edward Campbell

Well, Hillary Clinton is against the TPP trade pact proving that (too) many of the people who are putting themselves forward as "leaders of the free world," Democrats and Republicans alike, are either charlatans, more interested in securing their own political goals than in the future of their country, or idiots.


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## GAP

Under NAFTA the US was the the big fish in a little pond......the pond just got larger, much larger.

The US is/has been so protective as to strangle it's own trade, the world is moving on....

Oh there still is a place for the US, and a good one, but not as Top Dog......


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## tomahawk6

There are aspiring top dogs.Perhaps you would prefer China to the US.I will take a democratic state over a totalitarian any day.


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## Edward Campbell

It isn't a _top dog_ issue. The US remains, by any and every sensible metric, the _top dog_.

But: the US is starting to stagnate, and part of that is because it has turned protectionist (think Britain in the 1870s); and China, which is, relatively, a fre_er_ trader is growing in strength. The US is not in absolute decline: the pot is getting bigger and China's share is bigger still. It's all relative.


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## tomahawk6

You overlook China's current economic malaise which is of concern to the CCP.


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## Edward Campbell

America and Europe both recovered from the "economic malaise" of 2007-09. Business cycles and economic cycles (booms and busts) are normal ... China will have to find ways to adapt. Others have, China can. It _might not_ and that would be interesting ... as the Chinese say in a curse.


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## a_majoor

Niall Ferguson goes to the real roots of America's foreign policy problems. While the Obama Administration has ramped the problem up to "11", the underlying factors will bedevil not only the next Administration, but others to come unless there is a rather drastic change to American political culture or society:

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-real-obama-doctrine-1444429036-lMyQjAxMTI1MjEwMDgxMTA1Wj



> *The Real Obama Doctrine*
> Henry Kissinger long ago recognized the problem: a talented vote-getter, surrounded by lawyers, who is overly risk-averse.
> By NIALL FERGUSON
> Oct. 9, 2015 6:17 p.m. ET
> 
> Even before becoming Richard Nixon ’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger understood how hard it was to make foreign policy in Washington. There “is no such thing as an American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in 1968. There is only “a series of moves that have produced a certain result” that they “may not have been planned to produce.” It is “research and intelligence organizations,” he added, that “attempt to give a rationality and consistency” which “it simply does not have.”
> 
> Two distinctively American pathologies explained the fundamental absence of coherent strategic thinking. First, the person at the top was selected for other skills. “The typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society,” noted Mr. Kissinger, “is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to do when he gets into office.”
> 
> Second, the government was full of people trained as lawyers. In making foreign policy, Mr. Kissinger once remarked, “you have to know what history is relevant.” But lawyers were “the single most important group in Government,” he said, and their principal drawback was “a deficiency in history.” This was a long-standing prejudice of his. “The clever lawyers who run our government,” he thundered in a 1956 letter to a friend, have weakened the nation by instilling a “quest for minimum risk which is our most outstanding characteristic.”
> 
> Let’s see, now. A great campaigner. A bunch of lawyers. And a “quest for minimum risk.” What is it about this combination that sounds familiar?
> 
> I have spent much of the past seven years trying to work out what Barack Obama ’s strategy for the United States truly is. For much of his presidency, as a distinguished general once remarked to me about the commander in chief’s strategy, “we had to infer it from speeches.”
> 
> At first, I assumed that the strategy was simply not to be like his predecessor—an approach that was not altogether unreasonable, given the errors of the Bush administration in Iraq and the resulting public disillusionment. I read Mr. Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech—with its Quran quotes and its promise of “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world”—as simply the manifesto of the Anti-Bush.
> 
> But what that meant in practice was not entirely clear. Precipitate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq, but a time-limited surge in Afghanistan. A “reset” with Russia, but seeming indifference to Europe. A “pivot” to Asia, but mixed signals to China. And then, in response to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya, complete confusion, the nadir of which was the September 2013 redline fiasco regarding the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria and Mr. Obama’s declaration that “America is not the global policeman.”
> 
> An approximation of an Obama strategy was revealed in April last year, at the end of a presidential trip to Asia, when White House aides told reporters that the Obama doctrine was “Don’t do stupid sh--.”
> 
> I now see, however, that there is more to it than that.
> 
> The president always intended to repudiate more than George W. Bush’s foreign policy. In a 2012 presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama made clear that he was turning away from Ronald Reagan, too. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” he jeered, “because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.” Mr. Romney’s reference to Russia as “our number one geopolitical foe” now looks prescient, whereas the president’s boast, in a January 2014 New Yorker magazine interview, that he didn’t “really even need George Kennan right now” looks like hubristic rejection of foreign-policy experience itself. Two months later, Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea.
> 
> Mr. Obama also had his own plan for the Middle East. “It would be profoundly in the interest” of the region’s citizens “if Sunnis and Shias weren’t intent on killing each other,” Mr. Obama said in that same interview. “If we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion—not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon—you could see an equilibrium developing between . . . predominantly Sunni Gulf states and Iran.”
> 
> Now I see that this was the strategy—a strategy aimed at creating a new balance of power in the Middle East. The deal on Iran’s nuclear-arms program was part of Mr. Obama’s aim (as he put it to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in May) “to find effective partners—not just in Iraq, but in Syria, and in Yemen, and in Libya.” Mr. Obama said he wanted “to create the international coalition and atmosphere in which people across sectarian lines are willing to compromise and are willing to work together in order to provide the next generation a fighting chance for a better future.”
> 
> The same fuzzy thinking informed Mr. Obama’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly last week, in which he first said he wanted to “work with other nations under the mantle of international norms and principles and law,” but then added that, to sort out Syria, he was willing to work with Russia and Iran—neither famed for spending time under that particular mantle—so long as they accepted the ousting of yet another Middle Eastern dictator.
> 
> A fighting chance for a better future in the Middle East? Make that a better chance for a fighting future.
> 
> It is clear that the president’s strategy is failing disastrously. Since 2010, total fatalities from armed conflict in the world have increased by a factor of close to four, according to data from the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Total fatalities due to terrorism have risen nearly sixfold, based on the University of Maryland’s Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism database. Nearly all this violence is concentrated in a swath of territory stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And there is every reason to expect the violence to escalate as the Sunni powers of the region seek to prevent Iran from establishing itself as the post-American hegemon.
> 
> Today the U.S. faces three strategic challenges: the maelstrom in the Muslim world, the machinations of a weak but ruthless Russia, and the ambition of a still-growing China. The president’s responses to all three look woefully inadequate.
> 
> Those who know the Obama White House’s inner workings wonder why this president, who came into office with next to no experience of foreign policy, has made so little effort to hire strategic expertise. In fairness, Denis McDonoug h (now White House chief of staff) has some real knowledge of Latin America. While at Oxford, National Security Adviser Susan Rice wrote a doctoral dissertation on Zimbabwe. And Samantha Power, ambassador to the U.N., has published two substantial books (one of which—“A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide”—she will need to update when she returns to academic life).
> 
> But other key players are the sort of people Henry Kissinger complained about more than half a century ago: Michael Froman, the trade representative, was one of Mr. Obama’s classmates at Harvard Law School; Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken is a Columbia J.D.; éminence grise Valerie Jarrett got hers from the University of Michigan. What about Secretary of State John Kerry ? Boston College Law School, ’76. Not one of the people who advise the president could claim to have made contributions to strategic doctrine comparable with those made by Mr. Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski before they went to Washington.
> 
> Some things you can learn on the job, like tending bar or being a community organizer. National-security strategy is different. “High office teaches decision making, not substance,” Mr. Kissinger once wrote. “It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.” The next president may have cause to regret that Barack Obama didn’t heed those words. In making up his strategy as he has gone along, this president has sown the wind. His successor will reap the whirlwind. He or she had better bring some serious intellectual capital to the White House.
> 
> Mr. Ferguson’s first volume of his Henry Kissinger biography has just been published by Penguin.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Niall Ferguson goes to the real roots of America's foreign policy problems. While the Obama Administration has ramped the problem up to "11", the underlying factors will bedevil not only the next Administration, but others to come unless there is a rather drastic change to American political culture or society:
> 
> http://www.wsj.com/article_email/the-real-obama-doctrine-1444429036-lMyQjAxMTI1MjEwMDgxMTA1Wj
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...
> But what that meant in practice was not entirely clear. Precipitate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq, but a time-limited surge in Afghanistan. A “reset” with Russia, but seeming indifference to Europe. [size=13pt]_A “pivot” to Asia, but mixed signals to China._ And then, in response to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya, complete confusion, the nadir of which was the September 2013 redline fiasco regarding the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria and Mr. Obama’s declaration that “America is not the global policeman.”[/size]
> ...
Click to expand...



And those "mixed signals" are not just to China. The whole of Asia is receiving "mixed signals" from Washington, from the White House, from _Foggy Bottom_ (State Department) and from the Congress. Who, then, can blame Philippines for looking to Japan, rather than America, for military aid and, even (much) more important, who can blame the Republic of Korea (South Korea) for looking towards China as this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _Foreign Affairs_, suggests it is doing?

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-10-08/path-less-chosun


> A Path Less Chosun
> *South Korea's New Trilateral Diplomacy*
> 
> By Victor Cha
> 
> SNAPSHOT, October 8, 2015
> 
> There was much handwringing in Washington at the sight of South Korean President Park Geun-hye standing with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing at the Victory Day celebrations on September 3, 2015. Park was the only head of state from a major Asian democracy that attended the military parade, which was aimed at showcasing the latest Chinese weaponry designed to counter U.S. power in the Pacific. In a calculated move, Park made sure to wear a pair of dark sunglasses to signal passive engagement in photos, but the pictures from the Chinese capital were worth a thousand words.
> 
> Several U.S. pundits opined about a Korea that was slowly but surely gravitating into the Chinese orbit and away from the United States and Japan. Others countered that Washington is missing the real picture—that Park was on the viewing stand rubbing shoulders with Xi in the spot traditionally occupied by the North Korean leader (whose representative was relegated to the cheap seats). Put another way, Park is not distancing South Korea from the United States; she is bringing Beijing closer to Seoul while distancing it from Pyongyang.
> 
> Both outlooks are shortsighted. There is no denying that each has its own logical coherence, but both represent the type of two-dimensional, zero-sum thinking that typified U.S. strategy during the Cold War era. What we are actually seeing is Diplomacy 2.0 on the Korean peninsula: a nuanced, three-dimensional foreign policy strategy designed to alter Chinese strategic thinking, engage U.S. interests, and ultimately build Northeast Asian cooperation where there was little in the past.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _South Korean President Park Geun-Hye (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping inspect Chinese honour guards during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing June 27, 2013._
> 
> UPGRADING THE SYSTEM
> 
> In Northeast Asia, Diplomacy 1.0 meant choosing the least controversial path on the international stage. Under this logic, the safe play would have been for Park to attend the Beijing celebrations and politely excuse herself before the parade of missiles began to roll. But if Park wished to send credible messages about positive atmospherics in South Korean–Chinese relations, and her wish to take their relations to the next level, that wouldn’t do. In this case, Park was willing to take a hit to her reputation in Washington. She has a larger three-dimensional game in mind, of which spoiling the party for North Korea is only a small part.
> 
> Seoul signed a free trade agreement with Beijing in June 2015, in addition to opening a dialogue between each nation’s national security council in November 2013. Earlier that year, Park had visited Tsinghua University in Beijing and, speaking in Mandarin Chinese, gave an address on the future of relations between China and the Republic of Korea. All these efforts were meant to alter Beijing’s assessment of its importance on both ends of the Korean peninsula. By any metric, China’s future is brighter if it is pegged to an economically vibrant, technologically savvy, and globally relevant South Korea rather than an aid-devouring black hole to the North. Many Chinese officials and scholars believe that North Korea’s regime belongs in a museum, but such clearheaded thinking is often obscured by two generations of “sealed in blood” policy embedded in Chinese bureaucracy and strategic culture. This is what Park is up against.
> 
> In this regard, few noticed Seoul’s casual reference to unification within its statement on Park’s meetings in China. The document states that “the two sides also had in-depth discussions on the issue of unification. The Korean side stressed that with the Korean Peninsula in its 70th year of division, peaceful unification was a pressing aim, the realization of which would also contribute to promoting peace and prosperity in the region. The Chinese side said that it supported "the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula by the Korean people.” This was, however, the first time that China has ever mentioned unification in a statement with South Korea, signaling that bilateral discussions between Seoul and Beijing on unification have entered new territory. Of course, gaining Chinese support for South Korean positions in a unification scenario is not all that Park is after: she is also looking to build a trilateral dialogue among China, South Korea, and her key ally the United States about the peninsula’s future.
> 
> Indeed, Park’s attendance at Beijing’s V-Day celebrations is but a part of her larger use of geometry diplomacy to bring Beijing, Seoul, and Washington together. And this fall appears to be the appropriate moment for her plan to come together: Park met with Xi in Beijing on September 2, Xi met with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on September 25, and Obama and Park plan to meet in Washington on October 16. Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean leaders are scheduled to hold a trilateral meeting in Seoul at the end of October or beginning of November. These meetings provide the building blocks for what Seoul hopes will be the first ever three-way discussion among China, South Korea, and the United States later this year or early next year. Although no formal date has been announced, a trilateral meeting could be held on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Turkey in November, the 2015 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December, or the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington next March. If such a meeting were to occur, its agenda could be used to coordinate priorities, establish a division of labor to tackle these tasks (for example, to secure nuclear weapons, stem refugee flows, and stabilize the situation on the ground), increase transparency between actors, and reduce the potential for miscalculation along the way.
> 
> Admittedly, these are lofty strategic goals. The state of U.S.-Chinese relations today is challenging. But even broaching a discussion on formerly taboo topics, however, might be significant. Such a dialogue ties into the broader vision for Northeast Asian cooperation that Park officials have called the Northeast Asian Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI). The region’s unparalleled levels of economic growth and prosperity have not translated into the sort of political cooperation and institution building that the liberal paradigm upholds. To fix this, the NAPCI framework suggests the construction of incremental cooperation that is pragmatic, functional, and devoid of both history and ideology. Such cooperation could take form on issues such as nuclear safety, cybersecurity, climate change, health pandemics, and disaster response, where each party has an interest in sharing information and pooling resources. But as U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said during the recent gathering at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the region’s primary threat to prosperity and stability is North Korea.
> 
> The North Korean regime under Kim Jong-un grows more reclusive by the day, focusing solely on its burgeoning weapons of mass destruction programs at the expense of the well-being of North Koreans. Kim’s continued purge of high-level officials during the first four years of his transition into power has signaled that all is not well in Pyongyang. Although the country continues to lack food and energy, the leadership spends its resources on building amusement parks, ski resorts, and hosting Dennis Rodman, which is an embarrassment to Beijing. The Chinese president has refused to meet with the young, rambunctious Kim, while he has met several times already with Park. Chinese scholars and officials, as a result of past North Korean missile and nuclear tests, are now at liberty to express their frustration with Pyongyang and the lack of a way out. The nightmare scenario for the region is a North Korea in collapse, with loose nuclear weapons that heighten tensions and military competition between the United States and Japan and with China.
> 
> New ideas will always meet resistance because they are foreign and unfamiliar, and Park’s Diplomacy 2.0 is no different. This new form of diplomacy cuts against the grain in Asian diplomacy, where uncontroversial and one-dimensional thinking predominates. It is also not without its challenges. First, South Korea’s vision for Northeast Asian cooperation cannot happen without an improvement in Seoul’s bilateral relations with Tokyo. The estranged ties between Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appear to be on the mend, but should they deteriorate instead, Park’s plans will be almost moot. The second challenge is a North Korean provocation. The honeymoon in the Park-Xi relationship has not been tested by Kim’s misbehavior, as it was during the 2010 sinking of the Cheonan. Beijing’s silence following North Korea’s actions, which killed 46 South Korean sailors, soured Chinese–South Korean relations. Seoul will expect much from China in the event of a North Korean missile or nuclear test. But if China rises to meet these demands, then the region might be entering a new phase of diplomacy after all.




"New ideas" from e.g. South Korea are necessary because there are no ideas, none at all, from the USA: none from a tired, uninspired White House, none from a beaten down, defeated State Department and none from a Congress that is intellectually inferior,_ in my opinion_, to any in American history.

America remains a great power ~ economically, militarily and, above all, socially. But the American people, great and powerful though they may be, have given up on their political processes. Maybe it's still OK at some local, school board and city hall, levels, but it looks broken, to me, at the state and national levels. There are still people, many, many people, in America of the like of Henry Stimson, George Marshall, Charles Bohlen, Dean Acheson, Dwight Eisenhower, John McCloy, George Kennan, and Averell Harriman (and many others) but they no longer choose to enter the public service, either in uniform or as "gifted amateurs" and seasoned professionals in government. Running America and, _de facto_, running the world no longer challenges Americans.  Instead we are left to ponder a world led by the likes of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. :dunno:

That's why Asia is "pivoting" away from America.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Further to the above, this article, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from _The Economist_, examines the challenges to America's global _strategic_ position:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21674699-american-dominance-being-challenged-new-game?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/thenewgame


> The new game
> *American dominance is being challenged*
> 
> Oct 17th 2015 | From the print edition
> 
> A CONTINENT separates the blood-soaked battlefields of Syria from the reefs and shoals that litter the South China Sea. In their different ways, however, both places are witnessing the most significant shift in great-power relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
> 
> In Syria, for the first time since the cold war, Russia has deployed its forces far from home to quell a revolution and support a client regime. In the waters between Vietnam and the Philippines, America will soon signal that it does not recognise China’s territorial claims over a host of outcrops and reefs by exercising its right to sail within the 12-mile maritime limit that a sovereign state controls.
> 
> For the past 25 years America has utterly dominated great-power politics. Increasingly, it lives in a contested world. The new game with Russia and China that is unfolding in Syria and the South China Sea is a taste of the struggle ahead.
> 
> Facts on the ground
> 
> As ever, that struggle is being fought partly in terms of raw power. Vladimir Putin has intervened in Syria to tamp down jihadism and to bolster his own standing at home. But he also means to show that, unlike America, Russia can be trusted to get things done in the Middle East and win friends by, for example, offering Iraq an alternative to the United States (see article). Lest anyone presume with John McCain, an American senator, that Russia is just “a gas station masquerading as a country”, Mr Putin intends to prove that Russia possesses resolve, as well as crack troops and cruise missiles.
> 
> The struggle is also over legitimacy. Mr Putin wants to discredit America’s stewardship of the international order. America argues that popular discontent and the Syrian regime’s abuses of human rights disqualify the president, Bashar al-Assad, from power. Mr Putin wants to play down human rights, which he sees as a licence for the West to interfere in sovereign countries—including, if he ever had to impose a brutal crackdown, in Russia itself.
> 
> Power and legitimacy are no less at play in the South China Sea, a thoroughfare for much of the world’s seaborne trade. Many of its islands, reefs and sandbanks are subject to overlapping claims. Yet China insists that its case should prevail, and is imposing its own claim by using landfill and by putting down airstrips and garrisons.
> 
> This is partly an assertion of rapidly growing naval might: China is creating islands because it can. Occupying them fits into its strategy of dominating the seas well beyond its coast. Twenty years ago American warships sailed there with impunity; today they find themselves in potentially hostile waters (see article). But a principle is at stake, too. America does not take a view on who owns the islands, but it does insist that China should establish its claims through negotiation or international arbitration. China is asserting that in its region, for the island disputes as in other things, it now sets the rules.
> 
> Nobody should wonder that America’s pre-eminence is being contested. After the Soviet collapse the absolute global supremacy of the United States sometimes began to seem normal. In fact, its dominance reached such heights only because Russia was reeling and China was still emerging from the chaos and depredations that had so diminished it in the 20th century. Even today, America remains the only country able to project power right across the globe. (As we have recently argued, its sway over the financial system is still growing.)
> 
> There is nevertheless reason to worry. The reassertion of Russian power spells trouble. It has already led to the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine—both breaches of the very same international law that Mr Putin says he upholds in Syria (see article). Barack Obama, America’s president, takes comfort from Russia’s weak economy and the emigration of some of its best people. But a declining nuclear-armed former superpower can cause a lot of harm.
> 
> Relations between China and America are more important—and even harder to manage. For the sake of peace and prosperity, the two must be able to work together. And yet their dealings are inevitably plagued by rivalry and mistrust. Because every transaction risks becoming a test of which one calls the shots, antagonism is never far below the surface.
> 
> American foreign policy has not yet adjusted to this contested world. For the past three presidents, policy has chiefly involved the export of American values—although, to the countries on the receiving end, that sometimes felt like an imposition. The idea was that countries would inevitably gravitate towards democracy, markets and human rights. Optimists thought that even China was heading in that direction.
> 
> Still worth it
> 
> That notion has suffered, first in Iraq and Afghanistan and now the wider Middle East. Liberation has not brought stability. Democracy has not taken root. Mr Obama has seemed to conclude that America should pull back. In Libya he led from behind; in Syria he has held off. As a result, he has ceded Russia the initiative in the Middle East for the first time since the 1970s.
> 
> All those, like this newspaper, who still see democracy and markets as the route to peace and prosperity hope that America will be more willing to lead. Mr Obama’s wish that other countries should share responsibility for the system of international law and human rights will work only if his country sets the agenda and takes the initiative—as it did with Iran’s nuclear programme. The new game will involve tough diplomacy and the occasional judicious application of force.
> 
> America still has resources other powers lack. Foremost is its web of alliances, including NATO. Whereas Mr Obama sometimes behaves as if alliances are transactional, they need solid foundations. America’s military power is unmatched, but it is hindered by pork-barrel politics and automatic cuts mandated by Congress. These spring from the biggest brake on American leadership: dysfunctional politics in Washington. That is not just a poor advertisement for democracy; it also stymies America’s interest. In the new game it is something that the United States—and the world—can ill afford.




The Economist has hit it squarely on the head: the problem ~ and I assert that there _is _a problem ~ is with "dysfunctional politics in Washington" and that problem is created because the American people have lost interest in their country and the world. If the Americans, themselves, don't want to be bothered _mattering_ then, sooner rather than later, they will not _matter_. America doesn't have to _matter_: China can fill the void if Americans don't want to be bothered.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Thucydides said:
			
		

> Considering Obama's constant snubs against the UK, I'm not surprised HM's government is choosing to go their own course without too much reference to the Administration. Of course, a great deal of the world is no longer paying attention to official Washington any more (historians will probably mark the "Red Line" pronouncement against Syria as the official "best before" date).
> 
> The unravelling of the Liberal world order (Individual freedom, unfettered use of property, Rule of Law; initially created by the British Empire and handed off the the United States in the aftermath of WWII) may well be looked at as one of history's great tragedies.




Washington, official and unofficial, _*will*_ get its stuff together ... the questions are: how long will we all have to wait? and who else will have "risen" while we're waiting?

But we're going to have to wait until America rids itself of rubbish like ...















                                   This                                  and                                 This                               and                           This                  and                                  This bozo, too


----------



## a_majoor

This could fall under any number of categories, but since it is talking about leadership and this thread is bemoaning the lack of leadership in the current American political class, here are the things any real leader will need to pick up and carry:

https://ricochet.com/geopolitical-predictions-place-your-bets/



> *Geopolitical Predictions: Place Your Bets *
> Claire Berlinski, Ed.
> November 8, 2015
> 
> The historian is a prophet looking backwards. ― Friedrich von Schlegel, Philosophical Fragments
> So where is it all going, folks? Does anyone have an instinct?
> 
> When I wrote about why Margaret Thatcher mattered, I concluded "that the political figures who matter have two rare gifts."
> 
> First, they are able to perceive the gathering of historical forces in a way their contemporaries were unable to do. What do I mean by "the gathering of historical forces?" I mean, they are able to sense the big picture. Lenin was able to discern a convergence of trends in Czarist Russia -- the migration of the peasants, the rise of revolutionary consciousness, the weakness of the Czarist government, the debilitation inflicted upon Russia by the First World War -- and to recognize what this convergence implied: The old order could now be toppled -- not merely reformed, but destroyed. Czar Nicholas II could not perceive this. It is thus that Lenin now matters and Nicholas II does not.
> 
> Second, when promoted to power, those who matter are able to master those historical forces. Chiang understood perfectly that China was vulnerable to communism and understood as well what communism in China would mean. But he was unable, for all his energy and efforts, to master them. And so, tragically, he does not matter.
> 
> Churchill perceived the forces of history and then mastered them. In 1933, Hitler was widely regarded outside of Germany as no more than a buffoon. Churchill knew better. His assessment of Hitler was at the time astonishingly prescient and singular. He perceived the unique danger of Nazism when others could not see it or refused to believe it. He was steadfast in his warnings. When at last Churchill acquired power, he discharged his responsibilities in a fashion as to gain him immortality.
> 
> When politicians matter, they matter because of these gifts.
> 
> Thatcher had these gifts. She perceived -- as did many of her contemporaries -- that Britain was in decline. She perceived that the effects of Marxist doctrine upon Britain had been pernicious. But unlike her contemporaries, she perceived that Britain's decline was not inevitable. And she perceived too that socialism was not -- as widely believed -- irreversible.
> 
> Simultaneously, she sensed a wider and related tide in history that no other leader, apart from Reagan, sensed at all. She understood that the Soviet Union was far from the invulnerable colossus it was imagined to be. She sensed, in fact, that it was unable to satisfy the basic needs of its population. It was corrupt, moribund, and doomed.
> 
> Having perceived the gathering of historical forces, she mastered them. She reversed the advance of socialism in Britain, proving both that a country can be ripped from a seemingly overdetermined trajectory and that it takes only a single figure with an exceptionally strong will to do so. She did not single-handedly cause the Soviet empire to crumble, but she landed some of the most devastating punches of the Cold War, and extraordinarily, emerged unblooded from the fight.
> 
> I wrote those words in 2007, and as you can see immediately, my own ability to perceive the gathering of historical forces will not leave me numbered among the immortals. Shortly after I wrote that conclusion, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The world's confidence in capitalism was shaken by the subsequent events nearly as greatly as its confidence in communism after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
> 
> If you had told me then that in 2015, the better part of the Islamic world would be consumed in anarchy and savagery; that hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees would be streaming across Europe's borders, threatening its unity and stability; that Russia would determine to re-prosecute the Cold War; that China would surpass America as the world's largest economy and expand its military influence beyond its own shores; that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would be in shreds, that the United States would begin a long, slow, melancholy retreat from the world stage -- or even that Jeremy Corbyn would be the leader of a Labour Party whose own former director of media relations said, in 2002, "We are all Thatcherites now" -- I suppose I wouldn't have published that book.
> 
> So I don't have the gift. I did grasp that Turkey was by no means a model democracy, and I said so before it was a truism. I saw exactly how serious the events in Syria were, and what their implications would be. But I have no strategy now for mastering these disasters, and I'm not sure at this point what one might even look like, or how I would recognize it.
> 
> So let's hear from you. What will the world be like in six months, next year, in five years, in twenty? What are the most important gathering historical forces? What is the big picture? Which political figure, if any, has shown a sign that he -- or she -- has the ability to master them? If none of them do, and if the task by some accident fell to you, how would you approach it?


----------



## a_majoor

While a lot of this piece smacks of conspiracy theory, I think the underlying premise (a mismatch between resources and goals) is fairly clear, and the answer si to somehow reform the system so that resources and goals are more closely aligned. That the US elites have been thinking in a very insular manner is hardly a revelation, but then again, so is everyone else. The author's thesis is flawed in one major area, however, since even the BRIC's have nowhere near the resource base needed of a successful "transfer of power" that is being suggested (and in any case, much of their potential is not being harnessed in productive activities).

How exactly this can be resolved isn't clear; certainly those in power are willing to scarifies the last taxpayer to maintain their positions of power and privilege, and the "revolution" scenario generally leads to chaos and the arrival of"The man on the white horse", with all that entails. decentralization and devolution so that there can be multiple centres to pick up the pieces when the centre fails is probably the best we can do, unless someone has an even better idea?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-14/time-running-out-pax-americana



> *Time Is Running Out For Pax Americana*
> Tyler Durden's pictureSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 11/14/2015 22:00 -0500
> Submitted by Rostislav Ischenko via The Oriental Review,
> 
> The paradox of the current global crisis is that for the last five years, all relatively responsible and independent nations have made tremendous efforts to save the United States from the financial, economic, military, and political disaster that looms ahead. And this is all despite Washington’s equally systematic moves to destabilize the world order, rightly known as the Pax Americana.
> 
> Since policy is not a zero-sum game, i.e., one participant’s loss does not necessarily entail a gain for another, this paradox has a logical explanation. A crisis erupts within any system when there is a discrepancy between its internal structure and the sum total of available resources (that is, those resources will eventually prove inadequate for the system to function normally and in the usual way).
> 
> There are at least three basic options for addressing this situation:
> 
> Through reform, in which the system’s internal structure evolves in such a way as to better correspond to the available resources.
> Through the system’s collapse, in which the same result is achieved via revolution.
> Through preservation, in which the inputs threatening the system are eliminated by force, and the relationships within the system are carefully preserved on an inequitable relationship basis (whether between classes, social strata, castes, or nations).
> 
> The preservation method was attempted by the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, as well as the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. It was utilized successfully (in the 19th century) prior to the era of capitalist globalization. But neither of those Eastern civilizations (although fairly robust internally) survived their collision with the technologically more advanced (and hence more militarily and politically powerful) European civilization. Japan found its answer on the path of modernization (reform) back in the second half of the 19th century, China spent a century immersed in the quagmire of semi-colonial dependence and bloody civil wars, until the new leadership of Deng Xiaoping was able to articulate its own vision of modernizing reforms.
> 
> This point leads us to the conclusion that a system can be preserved only if it is safeguarded from any unwanted external influences, i.e., if it controls the globalized world.
> 
> The contradiction between the concept of escaping the crisis, which has been adopted the US elite, and the alternative concept – proposed by Russia and backed by China, then by the BRICS nations and now a large part of the world – lay in the fact that the politicians in Washington were working from the premise that they are able to fully control the globalized world and guide its development in the direction they wish. Therefore, faced with dwindling resources to sustain the mechanisms that perpetuate their global hegemony, they tried to resolve the problem by forcefully suppressing potential opponents in order to reallocate global resources in their favor.
> 
> If successful, the United States would be able to reenact the events of the late 1980s – early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the global socialist system under its control allowed the West to escape its crisis. At this new stage, it has become a question of no longer simply reallocating resources in favor of the West as a collective whole, but solely in favor of the United States. This move offered the system a respite that could be used to create a regime for preserving inequitable relationships, during which the American elite’s definitive control over the resources of power, raw materials, finance, and industrial resources safeguarded them from the danger of the system’s internal implosion, while the elimination of alternative power centers shielded the system from external breaches, rendering it eternal (at least for a historically foreseeable period of time).
> 
> The alternative approach postulated that the system’s total resources might be depleted before the United States can manage to generate the mechanisms to perpetuate its global hegemony. In turn, this will lead to strain (and overstrain) on the forces that ensure the imperial suppression of those nations existing on the global periphery, all in the interests of the Washington-based center, which will later bring about the inevitable collapse of the system.
> 
> Two hundred, or even one hundred years ago, politicians would have acted on the principle of “what is falling, that one should also push” and prepared to divvy up the legacy of yet another crumbling empire. However, the globalization of not only the world’s industry and trade (that was achieved by the end of the 19th century), but also global finance, caused the collapse of the American empire through a policy that was extremely dangerous and costly for the whole world. To put it bluntly, the United States could bury civilization under its own wreckage.
> 
> Consequently, the Russian-Chinese approach has made a point of offering Washington a compromise option that endorses the gradual, evolutionary erosion of American hegemony, plus the incremental reform of international financial, economic, military, and political relations on the basis of the existing system of international law.
> 
> America’s elite have been offered a “soft landing” that would preserve much of their influence and assets, while gradually adapting the system to better correspond to the present facts of life (bringing it into line with the available reserve of resources), taking into account the interests of humanity, and not only of its “top echelon” as exemplified by the “300 families” who are actually dwindling to no more than thirty.
> 
> In the end, it is always better to negotiate than to build a new world upon the ashes of the old. Especially since there has been a global precedent for similar agreements.
> 
> Up until 2015, America’s elite (or at least the ones who determine US policy) had been assured that they possessed sufficient financial, economic, military, and political strength to cripple the rest of the world, while still preserving Washington’s hegemony by depriving everyone, including (at the final stage) even the American people of any real political sovereignty or economic rights. European bureaucrats were important allies for that elite – i.e., the cosmopolitan, comprador-bourgeoisie sector of the EU elite, whose welfare hinged on the further integration of transatlantic (i.e., under US control) EU entities (in which the premise of Atlantic solidarity has become geopolitical dogma) and NATO, although this is in conflict with the interests of the EU member states.
> 
> However, the crisis in Ukraine, which has dragged on much longer than originally planned, Russia’s impressive surge of military and political energy as it moved to resolve the Syrian crisis (something for which the US did not have an appropriate response) and, most important, the progressive creation of alternative financial and economic entities that call into question the dollar’s position as the de facto world currency, have forced a sector of America’s elite that is amenable to compromise to rouse itself (over the last 15 years that elite has been effectively excluded from participation in any strategic decisions).
> 
> The latest statements by Kerry  and Obama which seesaw from a willingness to consider a mutually acceptable compromise on all contentious issues (even Kiev was given instructions “to implement Minsk “) to a determination to continue the policy of confrontation – are evidence of the escalating battle being fought within the Washington establishment.
> 
> It is impossible to predict the outcome of this struggle – too many high-status politicians and influential families have tied their futures to an agenda that preserves imperial domination for that to be renounced painlessly. In reality, multibillion-dollar positions and entire political dynasties are at stake.
> 
> However, we can say with absolute certainty that there is a certain window of opportunity during which any decision can be made. And a window of opportunity is closing that would allow the US to make a soft landing with a few trade-offs. The Washington elite cannot escape the fact that they are up against far more serious problems than those of 10-15 years ago. Right now the big question is about how they are going to land, and although that landing will already be harder than it would have been and will come with costs, the situation is not yet a disaster.
> 
> But the US needs to think fast. Their resources are shrinking much faster than the authors of the plan for imperial preservation had expected. To their loss of control over the BRICS countries can be added the incipient, but still fairly rapid loss of control over EU policy as well as the onset of geopolitical maneuvering among the monarchies of the Middle East. The financial and economic entities created and set in motion by the BRICS nations are developing in accordance with their own logic, and Moscow and Beijing are not able to delay their development overlong while waiting for the US to suddenly discover a capacity to negotiate.
> 
> The point of no return will pass once and for all sometime in 2016, and America’s elite will no longer be able to choose between the provisions of compromise and collapse. The only thing that they will then be able to do is to slam the door loudly, trying to drag the rest of the world after them into the abyss.


----------



## Edward Campbell

I was going to post this in _Radio Chatter_ but, on reflection, I think it's serious:

          
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Our best friend, most important trading partner, indispensable ally, guarantor of our sovereignty and security, and, and, and ... is in deep trouble. The American people are being offered, thus far, a horrible list of candidates ~ with one or two notable exceptions ~ for the highest office in their land and, _de facto_, leader of the free world.

If you are one of those who prays, now is not a bad time to start ... pray for some good sense and a couple of half decent late entrants to join the one or two half decent ones already in the race.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Ellen Laipson, president emeritus of the _Stimson Center_ utters a profound truth in  a column in WPR:

    "... the yearning for a more robust, decisive use of American power came across as nostalgia for the past, one that fails to recognize some very basic and profound new realities. Nondemocratic states and nonstate actors have
     acquired forms of power and are asserting their national or transnational interests. The club of democracies cannot assume that the tools of the past and the primacy of the West—and its values—will be sufficient to find peace
     and security in this uncertain world."


Edit: format


----------



## cupper

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> I was going to post this in _Radio Chatter_ but, on reflection, I think it's serious:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Our best friend, most important trading partner, indispensable ally, guarantor of our sovereignty and security, and, and, and ... is in deep trouble. The American people are being offered, thus far, a horrible list of candidates ~ with one or two notable exceptions ~ for the highest office in their land and, _de facto_, leader of the free world.
> 
> If you are one of those who prays, now is not a bad time to start ... pray for some good sense and a couple of half decent late entrants to join the one or two half decent ones already in the race.



I'm not entirely sure that getting a decent candidate for either party will solve the problem. I think that the gridlock in Congress is a bigger problem overall. Until that gets resolved, not much is going to go forward. The GOP has to either dump or reign in the vocal far right wing minority that is holding it hostage. Ditching the Hastert Rule would be a good start. The Dems have their own issues with the far right as Bernie Sanders is showing. Getting back to a Congress that works across partisan lines will be the only way that the US will move from stagnation back towards its so-called exceptionalism.


----------



## Edward Campbell

As I and others have mentioned elsewhere, here in Army.ca, I think the problem is with the very peculiarly American idea of partisanship in politics. Our American friends seems to have concluded that politics is a zero sum game and one must win all or nothing.

I don't think Canada is there yet, but we are always very much influenced by what our good friends and neighbours do and think,)

I think political opinions remain on the bell curve ...

               
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




                    ... about ⅔ of us are, quite firmly, inn the "mushy middle." About 15% of us are left of centre, centre left, centre right and right of centre while about 10% of us are absolutely, squarely, in the centre.

But the "activists' who, increasingly (absolutely in America) control the parties at the so called "grass-roots" level are anything but _centrists_ they are the 7% or so on the left and right who still believe in the political process but who reject bi-partisan compromise ... they want it all, in fact they want more than just "all" of their platform, they want the other party's platform to be destroyed.

So it is all of them: the contenders for the highest offices, the senators and representatives, the state and local politicians, some (actually many) of the judges, and, above all, the "activists" who are the problem.


----------



## a_majoor

This is going to be a dragging issue for the United States for decades to come unless steps are taken today. The unfunded liabilities of the United States could exceed $100 trillion dollars when social security, pensions and medicare/medicade are added together until the majority of the boomers die in the 2060's. Or the issue could lead to an implosion as taxpayers decide what, exactly the are willing to pay for (and I suspect they are not going to make the choice of public service pensions and benefits at the expense of current services like police and EMS):

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/12/24/oregon-wrestles-with-public-pension-costs/



> *Oregon Wrestles with Public Pension Costs*
> 
> Conflict between public employees on the one hand and schools and business groups on the other is setting up a political clash in Oregon. The Portland Tribune:
> 
> Oregon’s major business groups want lawmakers to start dealing with rising public pension costs as early as the session that opens Feb. 1.
> 
> Although those costs start to kick in with the 2017-19 budget cycle — 18 months away — advocates say it’s not too early to whittle down an unfunded liability projected at $18 billion over the next few decades.
> 
> “If we do nothing, 100 percent of the burden falls on taxpayers, government services and their ability to undertake reinvestment in budgets going forward,” says Tim Nesbitt, currently a consultant for the Oregon Business Plan. […]
> 
> Cheri Helt, co-chair of the Bend-La Pine School Board, says pension costs will jump from the current 16 percent of payroll to 20 percent in 2017-19, and to 25 percent in the cycle afterward.
> 
> The question of how America’s state and local governments dig themselves out of their massive pension hole will be one of the great (and underrated) fiscal and political questions of the next generation. As the article implies, the process of divvying up resources to fund the pensions will not be pretty, pitting key Democratic constituencies—public employees (producers of services) and citizens who consume public services—against one another in a blue civil war. The reckoning can only be put off for so long.


----------



## a_majoor

This could go in many different threads, such as Libertarians (this is the root of the Libertarianism as a Social Movement meme) or US Election 2016 (Trump's popularity isn't just because he says things other candidates don't dare, but also acknowledges issues that the political establishment would prefer to ignore, issues which voters are fully aware of). Since this is more of an examination of the meta issue of current institutions, structures and practices becoming obsolete because they no longer address the issues of the day without any replacements in sight, I chose to put it here:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-28/democracy-s-destabilizer-tmi



> *Democracy's Destabilizer: TMI*
> 17 DEC 28, 2015 10:00 AM EST
> By Virginia Postrel
> 
> For most of Martin Gurri’s 29 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency’s open-media group (now the Open Source Center), the world was very different from the one we now inhabit. “When I started out in government,” Gurri recalls in an interview, “it was a perfectly reasonable expectation that an analyst could absorb all the meaningful political information coming out in a day from even a very developed country like Britain or France. And, of course, now if you tried to do that your head would explode.”
> 
> Information used to be scarce. Now it’s overwhelming. In his book “The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium,” Gurri considers the political implications of this change. He argues that the shift from information scarcity to abundance has destroyed the public’s established trust in institutional authorities, including media, science, religion, and government.
> 
> “Once the monopoly on information is lost, so too is our trust,” Gurri writes. Someone somewhere will expose every error, every falsehood, every biased assessment, every overstated certainty, every prejudice, every omission -- and likely offer a contrary and equally refutable version of their own.
> 
> The result is the pervasive distrust that the columnist Anne Applebaum recently decried as “the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media to democratic debate and civilized discussion all over the world.” Gurri is less nostalgic for the past. Although he describes himself as an “uncomplicated defender of our system of government,” his experience makes him acutely aware of officials’ mutual protection practices, unwillingness to acknowledge uncertainty and rewards for failure. The CIA, he pointedly notes, “demanded and received a bigger budget after 9/11.”
> 
> Over history, Gurri argues, information has grown “in great pulses or waves” as technologies have changed -- from writing to the alphabet to the printing press to mass media to today’s digital networks. Each of these great waves has brought with it new institutions and sometimes great political and social upheavals, most notably in the case of the printing press.
> 
> We are in the very early days of what he calls the Fifth Wave. Institutions that developed in the age of industrialized, top-down mass media are losing legitimacy while new arrangements have yet to evolve. The challenge is to manage the hazardous transition to a new stage without falling into nihilistic chaos and destruction.
> 
> Neither celebrating nor denouncing the collapse of authority, Gurri seeks to understand its implications. He offers a disturbingly convincing model uniting such disparate phenomena as the Arab Spring, the 2011 protests in Spain and Israel, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, and, although he doesn’t discuss them, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter and Islamic State.
> 
> As information becomes abundant, he writes, “the regime accumulates pain points." By this he means that problems like police brutality, economic mismanagement, foreign policy failures and botched responses to disasters "can no longer be concealed or explained away." Instead, "they are seized on by the newly empowered public, and placed front and center in open discussions. In essence, government failure now sets the agenda.”
> 
> Yet the public’s expectations for government are at least as great as before. And those high expectations -- not merely for justice or prosperity but for happiness and meaning--engender even greater anger.
> 
> “The public now takes it for granted that government could solve any problem, change any undesirable condition, if only it tried,” he writes. “The late modernist urge to intervene, with its aimless meandering, has been interpreted by the public as either tyranny or corruption -- never, somehow, as the ineffectual pose of a kindly uncle.” In short, “The public has judged government on government’s own terms, but added bad intentions.” The result is a crisis of legitimacy.
> 
> Central to Gurri’s analysis is the contrast between the once-authoritative “center” and increasingly vocal “border sects,” a dichotomy he adapts from the 1983 book “Risk and Culture” by the cultural theorists Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky. Sects coalesce in opposition to the center; they are, Douglas and Wildavsky wrote, “essentially critical of some defined other part of human society where power resides.” A sect’s message is one of negation.
> 
> In Gurri’s view, digital communities form sectarian publics whose only shared agenda is opposition to the status quo. Negation holds their coalitions together. If the Tahrir Square “protesters had sought to replace the regime with a specific set of people, programs, and principles, the weak bonds of the digital world would have been insufficient,” he writes. “But that’s not what brought out the variegated Egyptian public to the streets. They just wanted to get rid of Hosni Mubarak.” Once they succeeded, they couldn’t govern.
> 
> Lacking a clear positive agenda, a sectarian triumph creates a vacuum. The coalition breaks down or, standing outside the give-and-take of politics, simply loses interest.
> 
> Something like that happened to Barack Obama, Gurri argues. Obama ran against the status quo not only in 2008, when he was the insurgent, but in 2012 when he was the incumbent. Positioning himself as “a denouncer rather than a fixer of problems,” he identified with the public’s discontent and distanced himself from the workings of the federal government, eschewing responsibility for its mistakes and misdeeds and abandoning the give-and-take of political negotiation.
> 
> Obama, Gurri suggests, “represented a new and disconcerting development in democratic politics: the conquest of the Center by the Border, and the rise of the sectarian temper to the highest positions of power.” It’s easy to imagine a President Ted Cruz, representing a different brand of border sectarian, pursuing a similar approach.
> 
> Then there’s Donald Trump. By stoking magical thinking about what government can do, elite distrust of what the public wants, and sectarian rage at government failures, Trump feeds the nihilism that makes this period of transition so perilous. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
> 
> This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
> 
> To contact the author of this story:
> Virginia Postrel at vpostrel@bloomberg.net


----------



## a_majoor

I felt this was a good place for the article, since much of the problem is the gradual disintegration of the civic body of the United States. If more people are trained to think for themselves and become self sufficient, then at least some of the issues can be addressed in a sensible manner, and indeed some issues might essentially "solve themselves" as people take the initiative and find solutions rather than wait for the government or bureaucracy. A self reliant mindset is really the beginning for everything else.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/01/28/schools-arent-preparing-students-for-a-post-blue-world/



> *Schools Aren’t Preparing Students for a Post-Blue World*
> 
> Blue model education systems were built on the assumption that most middle-class Americans didn’t have to be especially proactive about their retirement planning. In the blue heyday, it was often the norm for Americans to work at the same company for their entire careers and retire with a defined-benefit pension. But in today’s economy, where most people switch employers every few years and depend on 401(k)s for retirement security, it’s increasingly important that public education systems equip students to take charge of their own financial fate. Unfortunately, according to a recent report, schools don’t appear to be making much progress on this front. CNBC reports:
> 
> The number of states that require high school students to complete a course in economics has dropped over the last two years, and mandates for personal finance education in the upper grades remain stagnant, a new survey shows.
> 
> The biennial Survey of the States by the Council for Economic Education, released exclusively to CNBC.com, found 20 states currently mandate that high school students take economics — two fewer than in 2014.
> 
> … At the same time, the Council for Economic Education survey found the number of states that require high school students to take a course in personal finance has remained unchanged at 17 since 2014.
> 
> America is currently in the midst of a transition from an employer-driven retirement model to a self-driven retirement model. This transition must be managed in part by individual workers, who will need to become more proactive in their financial planning, and in part by corporations, many of which should auto-enroll more workers in retirement plans (as some already are), matching employee contributions more generously. But there’s also a role for the government: Financial services firms that deal with 401(k)-type accounts will need to be regulated and overseen with these broader social trends in mind. And even more critically, schools must prepare students for the economic landscape that awaits them. Policymakers who are interested in facilitating the post-blue economic transition should make beefing up financial education a priority.


----------



## a_majoor

What the next President will not have is time:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/09/the-simultaneity-trap/



> *The Simultaneity Trap*
> Eliot A. Cohen
> 
> The next President can’t help walking into four distinct strategy traps. The first one: The sheer scarcity of time.
> 
> There are the traps you suspect are out there and try to avoid, and then there are the traps that you have no choice but to walk into. So it will be with the next President, no matter who he or she may be. He or she will confront not just specific strategic problems such as what to do next in Syria, but a more generic set of challenges. These four strategy traps are inevitable. They can be managed but not avoided.
> The first of these is the simultaneity trap, and it goes like this. In any government, be it in Luxembourg, Angola, the People’s Republic of China, or the United States, and on any given large national security issue, somewhere between five and fifty people really count. The number is usually closer to five than to fifty. We have one President, one Secretary of State, one Secretary of Defense, one Director of Central Intelligence, and one Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
> 
> But the United States is not Angola. More than any other power in history—even the British Empire at its height—the U.S. government has global concerns and global interests. Even a decision not to act requires a conscious effort of will, in the awareness that real consequences flow from U.S. inaction as well as action. The daily briefings and meetings with top aides of a Cabinet Secretary are a dizzying tour of the world, and even after a large and intelligent bureaucracy (which the United States actually has) digests the issues, the principal still has to decide. If it’s a serious effort, the Cabinet Secretaries and some other senior officials will spend time meeting in the Situation Room, and then engaging the President. As Peter Drucker once pointed out, the only inelastic commodity in any organization is executive time—and the time (and energy levels) of the big players in government is no greater than that of kindergarten teachers.
> 
> The range of their international responsibilities would overwhelm any President and his or her subordinates. As the ultimate decider, the President bears the greatest burden, on top of all the pressing domestic issues that come his way. But it is not much easier for his key subordinates. As the country’s chief diplomat, the Secretary of State travels incessantly; indeed, recent Secretaries have engaged in an unhealthy competition with their predecessors to see who can spend the most time abroad in inconclusive talks with foreign leaders, all the while courting deep vein thrombosis from endless hours on official airplanes. The Secretary of Defense has to manage the government’s most complicated bureaucracy. The National Security Adviser has to be on top of everything, and keep the President staffed in a way no other official in the world has to be—all the while thinking months if not years ahead, monitoring the implementation of decisions, and being ready to manage a sudden crisis.
> 
> The problem of simultaneity is worsened by the four geopolitical challenges we face. The first is the rise of China, a great power whose economy is, or will be, roughly the size of ours. The chronic war with jihadis throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond—including at home—is the second; hostile states like Russia and Iran with regional ambitions and the willingness to use force to achieve them are a third. Lastly, ungoverned space, including some in our own hemisphere, poses a different kind of threat, one that can also exacerbate the other three.
> 
> These four different threats require different weapons, different organizations, different time horizons, and different strategic approaches. But the same small group of decision-makers has to decide them all, individually and collectively. The upshot is a more complex, if not always a more dangerous, set of international conditions than any during the Cold War, when we faced one main enemy and other lesser foes aligned with it.
> 
> How to cope with so much to do and so little time?
> 
> The simultaneity trap cannot be avoided, because ultimately the hard choices get bounced to the top. It can only be managed. When the Republican and Democratic transition-planning teams begin to assemble late this spring or early this summer, one hopes the candidates will direct them to spend as much time thinking about the processes and staffing of a new administration as about the substantive problems it will face.
> 
> There is nothing particularly exciting about making the trains run on time: having regular meetings; keeping them on topic and on schedule (meetings longer than two hours can be assumed to be a waste of effort); preparing conclusions and directives; monitoring bureaucratic implementation; and ensuring that the President and his or her advisers get enough of the details to make decisions, but not so much that they are overwhelmed. In practice, however, orderly administration is very hard. The White House Chief of Staff may usurp the authority of a National Security Advisor; meetings may be long, inconclusive, and repetitive; the NSC staff may either overstep their role and begin acting as a mini-State Department or Office of the Secretary of Defense, or, conversely, fail to do their proper job of highlighting departmental differences for the President; an intemperate, egotistical, or servile National Security Advisor can prevent real differences of opinion from being aired and debated.
> 
> It is all humdrum stuff, conducted (one hopes) by people with level tempers, checked egos, a collegial spirit, a distaste for publicity, and an awareness that campaigning is one thing, governing another. It has on occasion been done very well, as under Brent Scowcroft in the George H. W. Bush Administration. Most of the time, however, it is not, and the simultaneity trap begins to yield foreign policy disasters of exponentially increasing severity.
> 
> None of this matters just yet. For the next nine months foreign and defense policy will be subjects of the broadest possible debate. No voter will make a decision based on whether they think a candidate will realize that an NSC staff of 500 is too large to be effective, or order issues to get sorted out in interagency meetings below the level of the Deputies Committee. But before too long it will matter. The next President will face the most difficult international environment in more than half a century, but without the economic and military edge that we can see—only in retrospect, admittedly—Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy could take for granted. He or she will need a machine that works.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Except that the world in 1950 and, still, in 1955, was at least as complex and perhaps, I would argue, even more complex and dangerous, but these guys managed ...

     
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	










     
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	










          ... from both the "corridors of power" and from the sidelines.

Maybe it's not complexity, danger or even time that is the problem, maybe it is the *character* of the people that push themselves forward for election or appointment as "leaders." Maybe the key question is: where are the Achesons, Eisenhowers, Kennans and Marshalls and why are they unwilling to contest for the highest office?

It's not that very good, even great people, are lacking ...












... but they all seem to have migrated away from the foreign and defence policy (strategic) domains and into the world of business, banking and finance. Maybe that's a reflection on our values, those of the US led West.


----------



## Halifax Tar

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ... but they all seem to have migrated away from the foreign and defence policy (strategic) domains and into the world of business, banking and finance. Maybe that's a reflection on our values, those of the US led West.



BINGO


----------



## cupper

It will be interesting to see how today's death of Justice Antonin Scalia plays out over the next few months.

I would not be surprised that the GOP lead Senate drags out the nomination process until after the November election to see how the 2016 presidential campaign turns out.


----------



## tomahawk6

I am very saddened by the passing of Justice Scalia he was a great jurist.As for filling the seat,it may be an advantage to the liberal wing to not fill the seat.


----------



## cupper

*Replacing Antonin Scalia Will Be No Simple Task*

http://www.npr.org/2016/02/13/466686993/replacing-antonin-scalia-will-be-no-simple-task?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160213



> The sudden and shocking death of Supreme Court icon Antonin Scalia this weekend will have enormous repercussions for the U.S. legal system and political process, both in the immediate term and for many years to come.
> 
> Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court in 2012.
> REMEMBRANCES
> Justice Antonin Scalia, Known For Biting Dissents, Dies At 79
> Although Scalia's death at 79 had scarcely been confirmed Saturday, senators and presidential candidates were already speaking publicly about what his demise will mean. And while the Court itself and the White House respectfully declined to discuss such matters, the fallout was Topic A from the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina to the cable news shows to social media and radio call-in shows everywhere.
> 
> The two big questions for everyone right from the start are Scalia's replacement and the functioning of the court with just eight members.
> 
> President Obama will, of course, be entitled to name a successor on the High Court. But the Senate is also required to confirm. That process is always a political challenge, and it is especially difficult when the opposition party controls the Senate (as Republicans do now, 54-46). In times of greater partisan harmony, bipartisan coalitions of approved the nominees of presidents whose party is not in Senate control. Scalia himself was confirmed 98-0 in 1986.
> 
> But these are scarcely such times.
> 
> Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, arguably the two senators most implacably opposed to President Obama and all his works, immediately sent social media messages saying no Obama nominee should be confirmed. The next president, both said, should name Scalia's successor.
> 
> Before an hour had passed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had said the successor should be named by "the next president," and not Barack Obama.
> 
> Cruz, of course, hopes that next president will be himself. He is one of six major candidates still in the race for the Republican nomination.
> 
> In truth, even a nominee Republicans did not immediately reject would need to get all 46 Democrats (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats) and 14 Republicans to vote to confirm. Even under ideal circumstances, this would be hard to imagine.
> 
> The last justice appointed to the Supreme Court to be confirmed by a Senate controlled by the opposition was Clarence Thomas. Nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, Thomas was confirmed when several of the majority Democrats crossed the aisle to vote for him.
> 
> If no Obama nominee is confirmed this year, two things happen. First, the current court concludes its current term with just eight justices. Second, it begins (and probably concludes its) next term (beginning in October 2016) with no more than eight. If any other of the justices should leave for any reason, the court would be down to seven.
> 
> But what happens when the court is short-handed by one? Given the 5-4 votes by which the closely divided Court now typically rules, Scalia's reliable vote on the conservative side will probably mean at least a few cases ending in a 4-4 vote — perhaps many.
> 
> These could include the crucial matters of abortion access, affirmative action in college admissions and the executive actions of the president on immigration and greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. In such a case, there is no majority for a decision and the court is simply not able to rule. That means the lower court's ruling will stand, and it will be as if the case had never come to the Court or the Court had declined to hear the case.
> 
> A corollary question involves the fate of cases already argued in the current term that have not yet been decided? According to Thomas Goldstein, publisher of the authoritative SCOTUSblog and a member of the Supreme Court bar, any case where the justices have taken an internal vote but not publicly decided the case will be void.
> 
> "Of course," adds Goldstein, "if Justice Scalia's vote was not necessary to the outcome, for example if he was in dissent or if the majority included more than five justices, then the case will still be decided, only by an eight-member court."
> 
> In other words, if the court decides something 5-3 or 6-2 or 7-1 or unanimously, being short-handed does not matter. But in all cases of a tie, the absence of a deciding vote will matter a great deal.


----------



## a_majoor

America will face increasing challenges from predatory powers seeking to realign the world to their benefit against the American led West:
(part 1)
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/12/predators-on-the-frontier/



> *Predators on the Frontier*
> A. WESS MITCHELL & JAKUB GRYGIEL
> America’s rivals are probing U.S. defenses across the globe.
> 
> Revisionist powers are on the move. ‎From eastern Ukraine and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea, large rivals of the United States are modernizing their military forces, grabbing strategic real estate, and threatening vulnerable U.S. allies. Their goal is not just to assert hegemony over their neighborhoods but to rearrange the global security order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War.
> 
> We first wrote about these emerging dynamics in 2010, and then in TAI in 2011. We argued three things. First, that revisionist powers were using a strategy of “probing”: a combination of assertive diplomacy and small but bold military actions to test the outer reaches of American power and in particular the resilience of frontier allies. Second, we argued that the small, exposed allies who were the targets of these probes were likely to respond by developing back-up options to U.S. security guarantees, whether through military self-help or accommodation. And third, we argued that that China and Russia were learning from one another’s probes in their respective regions, and that allies themselves were drawing conclusions about U.S. deterrence in their own neighborhood from how America handled similarly situated allies elsewhere.
> 
> Five years later, as we argue in a new book released this month, these dynamics have intensified dramatically. Revisionist powers are indeed probing the United States, but their methods have become bolder, more violent—and successful. Allies have grown more alert to this pressure, amid the steady whittling away of neighboring buffer zones, and have begun to pursue an array of self-help schemes ranging from arms build-ups to flirtations with the nearby revisionist power. It has become harder for the United States to isolate security crises to one region: Russia’s land-grabs in Eastern Europe provide both a model and distraction effect for China to accelerate its maritime claims in the South China Sea; Poland’s quest for U.S. strategic reassurance unnerves and spurs allies in the Persian Gulf and Western Pacific.
> 
> By degrees, the world is entering the path to war.By degrees, the world is entering the path to war. Not since the 1980s have the conditions been riper for a major international military crisis. Not since the 1930s has the world witnessed the emergence of multiple large, predatory states determined to revise the global order to their advantage—if necessary by force. At a minimum, the United States in coming years could face the pressure of managing several deteriorating regional security spirals; at a maximum, it could be confronted with a Great Power war against one, and possibly two or even three, nuclear-armed peer competitors. In either case, the U.S. military could face these scenarios without either the presumption of technological overmatch or favorable force ratios that it has enjoyed against its rivals for the past several decades.
> 
> How should the United States respond to these dynamics? As our rivals grow more aggressive and our military edge narrows, we must look to other methods for waging and winning geopolitical competitions in the 21st century.
> The most readily available but underutilized tool at our disposal is alliances. America’s frontline allies offer a mechanism by which it can contain rivals—indeed, this was the original purpose for cultivating security linkages with small states in the world’s rimland regions to begin with. In coming years, the value of strategically placed allies near Eurasia’s large land powers will grow as our relative technological or numerical military strength shrinks. The time has come for the United States to develop a grand strategy for containing peer competitors centered on the creative use of frontline allies. It must do so now, before geopolitical competition intensifies.
> 
> Predatory Peers
> 
> Probing has been the strategy of choice for America’s modern rivals to challenge the existing order. Over the past few years, Russia, China, and, to a degree, Iran have sensed that the United States is retreating in their respective regions—whether out of choice, fatigue, weakness, or all three combined. But they are unsure of how much remaining strength the United States has, or of the solidity of its commitments to allies. Rather than risking direct war, they have employed low-intensity crises to test U.S. power in these regions. Like past revisionists, they have focused their probes on seemingly secondary interests of the leading power, either by humbling its weakest allies or seizing gray zones over which the United States is unlikely to fight. These probes test the United States on the outer rim of its influence, where the revisionist’s own interests are strongest while the U.S. is at its furthest commitments and therefore most vulnerable to defeat. Russia has launched a steady sequence of threatening military moves against vulnerable NATO allies and conducted limited offensives against former Soviet satellite states. China has sought out low-intensity diplomatic confrontations with small U.S. security clients, erected military no-go zones, and asserted claims over strategic waterways.
> 
> When we wrote about this behavior in The American Interest in 2011, it was composed mainly of aggressive diplomacy or threatening but small military moves. But the probes of U.S. rivals are becoming bolder. Sensing a window of opportunity, in 2014 Russia upped the ante by invading Ukraine—the largest country in Eastern Europe—in a war that has so far cost 7,000 lives and brought 52,000 square kilometers of territory into the Russian sphere of influence. After years of using unmarked fishing trawlers to harass U.S. or allied naval vessels, China has begun to militarize its probes in the South China Sea, constructing seven artificial islands and claiming (and threatening to fight over) 1.8 million square kilometers of ocean. Iran has recently humiliated the United States by holding American naval vessels and broadcasting photos of surrendering U.S. sailors. In all cases, revisionist powers increased the stakes because they perceived their initial probes to have succeeded. Having achieved modest gains, they increased the intensity of their probes.
> 
> The strategic significance of these latest probes for the United States is twofold. First, they have substantially increased the military pressure on frontline allies. The presence of a buffer zone of some sort, whether land or sea, between allies like Poland or Japan and neighboring revisionist powers, helped to reduce the odds of sustained contact and confrontation between allied and rival militaries. By successfully encroaching on or invading these middle spaces, revisionists have advanced the zone of contest closer to the territory of U.S. allies, increasing the potential for a deliberate or accidental military clash.
> 
> Second, the latest probes have significantly raised the overall pressure on the United States. As long as Russia’s military adventures were restricted to its own southern periphery, America could afford to shift resources to the Pacific without worrying much about the consequences in Europe—an important consideration given the Pentagon’s jettisoning of the goal to be able to fight a two-front war. With both Ukraine and the South China Sea at play (and with a chaotic Middle East, where another rival, Iran, advances its reach and influence), the United States no longer has the luxury of prioritizing one region over another; with two re-militarized frontiers at opposite ends of the globe, it must continually weigh trade-offs in scarce military resources between geographic theaters. This disadvantage is not lost on America’s rivals, or its most exposed friends.
> 
> Frontier Frenzy
> 
> The intensification of probing has reverberated through the ranks of America’s frontline allies. In both Europe and Asia, the edges of the Western order are inhabited by historically vulnerable small or mid-sized states that over the past seven decades have relied on the United States for their existence. The similarities in the geopolitical position and strategic options of states like Estonia and Taiwan, or Poland and South Korea, are striking. For all of these states, survival depends above all on the sustainability of U.S. extended deterrence, in both its nuclear and conventional forms. This in turn rests on two foundations: the assumption among rivals and allies alike that the United States is physically able to fulfill its security obligations to even the smallest ally, and the assumption that it is politically willing to do so.
> Doubts about both have been growing for many years. Reductions in American defense spending are weakening the U.S. military capability to protect allies. Due to cuts introduced by the 2009 Budget Control Act, the U.S. Navy is smaller than at any point since before the First World War, the U.S. Army is smaller than at any point since before the Second World War and the U.S. Air Force has the lowest number of operational warplanes in its history. Nuclear force levels are static or declining, and the U.S. technological edge over rivals in important weapons types has diminished. The Pentagon in 2009 announced that for the first time since the Second World War it would jettison the goal of being able to conduct a two-front global war.
> 
> At the same time that U.S. capabilities are decreasing, those of our rivals are increasing. Both Russia and China have undertaken large, multiyear military expansion and modernization programs and the technological gap between them and the United States is narrowing, particularly in key areas such as short-range missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, and fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
> Recent American statecraft has compounded the problem by weakening the belief in U.S. political will to defend allies. The early Obama Administration’s public questioning of the value of traditional alliances as “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” shook allied confidence at the same time that its high-profile engagement with large rivals indicated a preference for big-power bargaining over the heads of small states. The U.S.-Russia “reset” seemed to many allies both transactional and freewheeling, and left a lasting impression of the suddenness with which U.S. priorities could shift from one Administration to the next. This undermined the predictability of patronage that is the sine qua non of effective deterrence for any Great Power.
> 
> As the revisionists’ probes have become more assertive and U.S. credibility less firm, America’s frontier allies have started to reconsider their national security options. Five years ago, many frontline states expressed security concerns, began to seek greater military capabilities, or looked to offset risk by engaging diplomatically with revisionists. But for the most part, such behavior was muted and well within the bounds of existing alliance commitments. However, as probing has picked up pace, allied coping behavior has become more frantic. In Europe, Poland, the Baltic States, and Romania have initiated military spending increases. In Asia, littoral U.S. allies are engaged in a worrisome regional arms race. In both regions, the largest allies are considering offensive capabilities to create conventional deterrence. Their willingness to build up their indigenous military capabilities is overall a positive development, but it carries risks, too, spurring dynamics that were absent over the past decades. The danger is that, absent a consistent and credible U.S. overwatch, rearming allies engage in a chaotic acquisition strategy, poorly anchored in the larger alliance. Fearing abandonment, such states may end up detaching themselves from the alliance simply by pursuing independent security policies.
> 
> There is also danger on the other side of the spectrum of possible responses by frontline allies. Contrary to the hopeful assumptions of offshore balancers, not all frontline allies are resisting. Some are choosing strategies of accommodation. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia in Europe and Thailand and Malaysia in Asia are all examples of nominal U.S. allies that are trying to avoid antagonizing the stronger predator. Worsening regional security dynamics create domestic political pressures to avoid confrontation with the nearby revisionist power. Full-fledged bandwagoning in the form of the establishment of new alliances is not yet visible, but hedging is.
> 
> Seeds of Disorder
> 
> The combination of intensifying probes and fragmenting alliances threatens to unravel important components of the stability of major regions and the wider international order. Allowed to continue on their current path, security dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific could lead to negative or even catastrophic outcomes for U.S. national security. One increasingly likely near-term scenario is a simmering, simultaneous security competition in major regions. In such a scenario, rivals continue probing allies and grabbing middle-zone territory while steering clear of war with the United States or its proxies; allies continue making half-measure preparations without becoming fully capable of managing their own security; and the United States continues feeding greater and greater resources into frontline regions without achieving reassurance, doggedly tested and put in doubt by the revisionists. Through a continued series of probes, the revisionist powers maintain the initiative while the United States and its allies play catch up. The result might be a gradual hardening of the U.S. security perimeter that never culminates in a Great Power war but generates many of the negative features of sustained security competition—arms races, proxy wars, and cyber and hybrid conflicts—that erode the bases of global economic growth.
> 
> A second, graver possibility is war. Historically, a lengthy series of successful probes has often culminated in a military confrontation. One dangerous characteristic of today’s international landscape is that not one but two revisionists have now completed protracted sequences of probes that, from their perspective, have been successful. If the purpose of probing is to assess the top power’s strength, today’s probes could eventually convince either Russia, China, or both that the time is ripe for a more definitive contest. It is uncertain what the outcome would be. Force ratios in today’s two hotspots, the Baltic Sea and South China Sea, do not favor the United States. Both Russia and China possess significant anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities, with a ten-to-one Russian troop advantage in the Baltic and massive Chinese preponderance of coastal short-range missiles in the South China Sea. Moreover, both powers possess nuclear weapons and, in Russia’s case, a doctrine favoring their escalatory use for strategic effect. And even if the United States can maintain overwhelming military superiority in a dyadic contest, war is always the realm of chance and a source of destruction that threatens the stability of the existing international order. Having failed a series of probes, the United States could face the prospect of either a short, sharp war that culminates in nuclear attack or an economically costly protracted two-front conflict. Either outcome would definitely alter the U.S.-led international system as we know it.
> 
> A third, long-term possibility is a gradual eviction of the United States from the rimland regions. This could occur either through a military defeat, as described above, or through the gradual hollowing out of U.S. regional alliances due to the erosion of deterrence and alliance defection—and therefore this scenario is not mutually exclusive of the previous two. For the United States, this would be geopolitically disastrous, involving a loss of position in the places where America must be present to prevent the risk of hemispheric isolation. Gaining a foothold in the Eurasian rimlands has been a major, if not the most important, goal of U.S. grand strategy for a century. It is through this presence that the United States is able to shape global politics and avoid the emergence of mortal threats to itself. Without such a presence, America’s largest rivals would be able to steadily aggrandize, building up enlarged spheres of influence, territory, and resources that would render them capable of sustained competition for global primacy. Unlike in the 20th century, current A2AD and nuclear technology would make a military reentry into these regions difficult if not impossible.


----------



## a_majoor

(part 2)


> Averting Course
> 
> Avoiding these scenarios should be a high priority for the United States. In all three cases—a simmering competition along Eurasian rimlands, a great power war, and a forced U.S. retreat to hemispheric defense—it is likely to be more cost-effective for the United States to prevent negative outcomes than to undo them once they have occurred. The current moment therefore represents an important and likely perishable opportunity in which to take strategic action for shaping emerging security dynamics to our advantage. Unlike the past geopolitical contests in which it has participated, the United States will not have inexhaustible resources with which to wage the emerging battle of the 21st century. Unlike in the Second World War, it cannot simply out-produce its rivals; unlike in the Cold War, it cannot outspend them and ultimately rely on better technology. Both China and Russia, despite the latter’s relative economic weakness, have been able to use the slippage in U.S. defense spending to significantly close both the qualitative and quantitative gaps with U.S. forces. Militarily, the
> United States will face a more leveled playing field than it has against any other rival for many decades.
> 
> The United States should avoid the error of thinking that the contest can be industrial or technological. It is first and foremost a strategic rivalry for alliances: the revisionist powers aim to weaken the rings of allies the United States has constructed over the past century, while the U.S. wants to maintain and improve them. This—namely, the system of alliances and the inherently conservative nature of America’s grand strategy—is also where the United States has a comparative advantage.
> 
> A global network of alliances is particularly important now in the age of contested primacy. In the bipolar and nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union U.S. alliances added few material advantages, and arguably in the immediate post-Cold War period they were disposable if not for the diplomatic benefit of having multi-national forces fighting alongside American ones. Now, alliances represent a critical margin of advantage for the United States over its peer competitors.
> 
> For the United States, the contemporary advantage of alliances goes back to their original purpose of containing distant rivals arising across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and menacing the political plurality of Eurasia. Allies, in particular those located on the expansionistic path of the regional predators, are most valuable because they are the most effective mechanisms to maintain the geopolitical status quo. Frontline allies have the most to lose from a dramatic change in the existing order, and thus are the most motivated to sustain it. They are the first targets of revisionists, and thus are the place where the contest is occurring and will be decided. They can also benefit from the modern technological regime that allows small states to be more lethal than in previous decades, and thus can potentially turn into defensive strongholds on their own. They want to be and can be key defenders of the Western order.
> 
> The objective of U.S. grand strategy coincides with that of its frontline allies: the maintenance of the status quo. America’s geopolitical project is conservative in nature because it aims to uphold the current geopolitical order. This goal translates most immediately into holding the existing regional limes as they are, a clear benefit to our frontline allies. Additionally, relying more on these frontline allies will allow the United States to manage the security threats in multiple regions, spanning the length of the 21st century “arc of instability” from the Baltic through the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, and East Asia. The United States cannot thwart these challenges alone and needs to refocus its grand strategy on frontline alliances.
> 
> The purpose of such a grand strategy is to strengthen the current posture of deterrence to prevent further probes by the revisionist powers. As these probes are slowly rewriting the rules of the regional orders and are redrawing the physical lines of influence on the maps, U.S. strategy must hinder this gradual but increasingly more assertive revisionism. The role of the most vulnerable allies is crucial in the success of this strategy. The underlying assumption is that, without the active American involvement in these regions, the allies will not resist the revisionist thrusts of Russia and China, either because they cannot do it effectively alone or because they will choose to accommodate the local rival. There is nothing automatic in the survival of the current international order and the resulting security of the United States.
> 
> A strategy centered on frontline alliances will be informed by three principles.
> 
> First, the United States should organize allies. Without America’s stabilizing political leadership and reassuring military presence, the various frontier regions—U.S. allies in the most exposed rimlands—are unlikely to be able to create new regional diplomatic arrangements that can serve as the immediate bulwarks to the revisionist powers. Current alliance structures are functioning but are not well suited to the nature of the challenge. In Europe, NATO, perhaps the most successful alliance in history, incorporates states with such a fundamentally different threat assessment that its cornerstone, Article 5, suggesting that an attack against one is an attack against all, is increasingly seen as just that—a suggestion. Under the NATO umbrella, there are incipient new formations, most notably of states around the Baltic Sea (Baltics, Poland, Norway, Sweden—the latter not a NATO member). A further sub-alliance can link the Baltic region with the Black Sea, by strengthening military cooperation between the two states most interested in defending the status quo: Poland and Romania. In Asia, the alliance structure inherited from the 20th century is very different, built along bilateral relationships between individual states and the United States. But several states located on China’s seaward projection of power—for example, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and, farther out, Australia—share parallel concerns and fears that were not present a few decades ago. This opens up the possibility of security cooperation and planning, building a new set of regional alliances. Historical grievances continue to be an obstacle but this is why U.S. leadership and presence continues to be crucial. Without it, these frontline states will maintain a posture that only timidly considers other states in their region as solid partners in the competition with China. In brief, old alliances are not to be jettisoned but should serve as foundations for new configurations that will strengthen the frontlines.
> 
> Second, the United States should arm frontline allies. Not all, but some (e.g., Poland and Japan) are openly pursuing programs of defense modernization and seeking to acquire new weapons. The United States should encourage this by speeding the process of acquiring U.S.-made platforms and by helping these countries to think through their role in the larger strategy of anti-revisionism. Frontline states should be enabled to deter their nearby revisionists, mostly by denial. Deterrence by denial involves the development of capabilities that hinder the enemy’s military advance by increasing the costs of territorial expansion and control. Relatively cheap weapons for this purpose are widely available: anti-tank missiles, precision-guided artillery, small arms, anti-air missiles. This is also politically appealing because it is clearly an effort to shore up territorial defense, creating a difficult environment for the aggressor. But there are also other capabilities that the United States should proliferate to select allies: medium to long-range missiles, drones, and, on the higher end of the spectrum, stealth planes are examples of weapons that have a longer reach and can strike within the enemy’s territory. More offensive in nature, they still serve a defensive purpose by enhancing the ability to deter by denial. The capability to strike beyond the immediate frontline inflicts costs on the aggressor and creates problems for his logistics. By targeting command and control centers and radar installations, it also can serve to blind the enemy, easing the projection of allied reinforcements toward the attacked state. U.S. frontline allies are no longer in a permissive environment in which American forces can function unopposed. These allies therefore have the greatest incentive to keep their own air, sea, and land routes open so that the United States and other states can join them in the conflict.
> 
> Well-armed allies on a frontier under assault are a strategic blessing for the United States. They can stymie the expansion of revisionist states by becoming hardened obstacles. And the current technological regime characterized by wide availability, ease of use, and relative cheapness of many lethal platforms favors such a strategy centered on arming small states. We live in the age of small states, and even non-state actors, that are capable of inflicting serious destruction and of being strategic actors on their own. Usually in U.S. policy circles the spread of lethal capabilities is seen as a source of instability, presenting a challenge to the maintenance of international order and regional security. The plethora of hostile groups and reprobate states that can destabilize their respective regions through their capacity to wield violence is undoubtedly a problem, but the trend that makes this possible has also positive connotations. U.S. small and medium-sized allies can in fact be sources of regional stability thanks to the same technological developments that are allowing challengers to be more disruptive. The United States should harness these developments to its own advantage by doing a targeted proliferation—by arming its frontline allies.
> 
> Third, the two main revisionists, Russia and China, are nuclear powers—and the smaller third, Iran, is likely to be one in the future. Their probes are occurring therefore in the shadow of nuclear weapons. Even more disturbingly, Russia has exacerbated tensions with Europe and the United States by recurrent nuclear saber rattling in the form of provocative flights of nuclear-capable bombers, large conventional military exercises ending in a virtual nuclear attack against a NATO member, and public statements threatening nuclear use. Nuclear weapons are not decreasing in importance; on the contrary, they play a greater role now than they did fifty years ago. Any U.S. strategy dealing with its frontline allies must have a nuclear component because it needs to figure out how to deter a small conventional attack (a militarized probe) under the threat of potentially rapid nuclear escalation.
> 
> The United States should therefore enhance its nuclear arsenal by maintaining and modernizing it. It needs to sustain a credible nuclear extended deterrent at a time when revisionist states are gradually pushing their spheres of influence and control closer to, if not against, U.S. allies. Moreover, it should use the limited tactical nuclear weapons at its disposal and seed them in a few of the most vulnerable and capable frontline states (Poland and Japan, for instance) under “nuclear sharing” agreements.
> 
> By organizing and arming its most exposed allies, the United States can shore up the frontier of its influence and security. The stability of these regions cannot depend exclusively on the capability and credibility of the United States—that is, on America’s extended deterrent—but has to be built on the strength and resilience of the local allies. America’s frontline on Eurasia’s rimlands requires local defense: a well-armed and well-organized limes of allies. Only by building up such allies will the United States be capable of enduring the persistent challenge of multiple rivals that are eager to impose their own orders in their respective regions.


----------



## a_majoor

This could go in the US election thread, since the issue of immigration is driving a lot of voter anger (Rubio was probably knocked out because of his membership in the "gang of eight"). It could also go into the Migrant threat to Europe thread, since while the cast of characters are different, the effect is quite similar. It also bodes ill for the long term survival of the United States as a singular political unit, fracturing and splintering could become common as the social, cultural and financial foundations unravel:

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2016/03/21/core-education/?singlepage=true



> *Core Education*
> BY STEPHEN GREEN MARCH 21, 2016
> 
> What holds a nation together — and for how long?
> 
> You've probably already seen the lead story on Drudge this morning, but despite the Drudge-size hype, this story of a small diplomatic maneuver has far-reaching implications.
> 
> Mexico is mounting an unprecedented effort to turn its permanent residents in the U.S. into citizens, a status that would enable them to vote -- presumably against Donald Trump.
> 
> Officially, Mexico says it respects U.S. sovereignty and has no strategy to influence the result of the presidential race. Yet Mexican diplomats are mobilizing for the first time to assist immigrants in gaining U.S. citizenship, hosting free workshops on naturalization.
> 
> Curious, yes -- but this might not be about a single election, even though Mexico almost certainly doesn't have anything more daring in mind than that.
> 
> To explain why, I need to go on one of those odd detours I used to call "Late Night Rambling," back when I had no children and would stay up through the wee dark hours with a brandy and my keyboard. So please come along with me as we take a detour through the strange world(s) of historical computer gaming.
> 
> Probably the most difficult path for real-world strategy game developers to tread is the one between playability and realism. That is, players' actions still need to matter, they need to be able to change the map, to fight their own wars. But there have to be game mechanisms to keep things from getting too far away from the historical mean.
> 
> One game which accomplishes this tricky balance quite well is Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis IV. Players can choose to lead any nation on the earth, during the three-and-a-half centuries between the fall of Constantinople, through the end of the Napoleonic Era. EUIV is well enough balanced that it should be possible for a skilled and patient player to do "better" than history, but not too much better. For example, I finished a game as France, in which Paris owned all the historically French provinces, plus Catalonia and all the German & Dutch territories west of the Rhine.
> 
> In a well-balanced game like EUIV, it should not be possible, say, for even the most skilled player to take Luxembourg and conquer all of Europe, colonize the New World, and convert the Middle East to Christianity. Sure, it might be fun to do all that (and you can if you have the cheats enabled!) -- but that result wouldn’t pass muster in a comic book, much less for serious players of difficult strategy games.
> 
> One of those mechanics is the key concept from the real world which we need to talk about today: Core provinces.
> 
> A core province is one which rightfully belongs to a country -- whether or not that country actually holds it. An example. Let's say a French-speaking province, a core of France, is conquered by one of the German states. In an "unbalanced" strategy game, that's the end of it — players own, a la Risk, whatever provinces they conquer. But in EUIV, as a core province, the simulated people in the conquered province will look continue to think of themselves as Frenchmen, and will agitate for independence or for reunion with France.
> 
> The game makes it possible to add a core to a conquered province, but the process is expensive and time-consuming. And unless you go through the additional time and expense of teaching all those nasty Frenchmen to speak proper German, France will never lose their core on that conquered province, even after you add your core to it. And whenever your country holds another country's core, they have a cassus belli on you so strong that the rest of the world will shrug -- or even ally with them -- when they go to war to take back their core.
> 
> And so French provinces tend to stay French, and German provinces tend to stay German, and the Supreme and High Holy Global Empire of Luxembourg never comes into being.
> 
> In the real world, the United States has enjoyed an ingenious method for gaining cores.
> 
> Remember that this nation started out as a few million farmers and merchants hugging the Atlantic coast, and yet not much more than a century later, the United States stretched from "sea to shining sea." And the key point here is that nobody seriously questioned our ownership of all those new lands -- we had "cored" a continent.
> 
> Our coring process is almost certainly unique in human history. Congress might organize a Territory, or the Army might conquer new lands, but that's not what earned us our cores. American people would move into a new Territory, the people there would establish their own government, and the people there would eventually petition Congress for statehood. Once accepted into the Union, each new state earned the same powers and responsibilities as all the others. At every step of the way, legitimacy was conferred upon a core province -- er, upon a state -- by the express will of the people.
> 
> Through this process, California very quickly went from "Of course it's part of Mexico!" to "Of course it's part of the United States!"
> 
> Thanks to two other key concepts, language and legitimacy, Mexico lost a core and we gained one — practically overnight.
> 
> A short story from the Austrian Empire:
> 
> It was the Emperor Francis II who first used the term "A Patriot For Me". One day, when a distinguished servant of the Empire was recommended to him for special notice, his sponsor remarked that he was a staunch and loyal patriot. The old Emperor looked up sharply: "Ah! But is he a patriot for me?" the Habsburgs had created, largely through marriage and treaty, rarely through conquest, this vast amalgam of areas in Europe torn by hereditary jealousies and rivalries.
> 
> The Habsburg system worked just fine -- right up until Czechs stopped thinking of themselves as loyal members of the Empire, and started thinking of themselves as Czechs. The story repeated throughout the Imperial realms among the Hungarians, the Croatians, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Slovenians, and most especially the Serbs. It was a Serbian nationalist who assassinated Austria-Hungary's heir apparent, inadvertently starting the war which would destroy the Habsburg Empire.*
> 
> Contrast old Austria's troubles with our particularly American genius for making Americans out of, well, pretty much anybody and everybody. Come here from wherever, and if you couldn't speak English we'd make damn sure your kids did. And we eventually brought everybody into the political system, too, extending our (mostly) free and fair elections to anybody willing to make the modest effort to register and show up on election day.
> 
> Language and legitimacy are powerful forces, perhaps the only two which can hold together a polyglot nation like our own.
> 
> A few years ago, my PJM colleague Victor Davis Hanson wrote Mexifornia: A State of Becoming. In his book, VDH argued that
> 
> a loss of confidence in the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans, is changing the very nature of state. Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to integrate the new alien population into our mainstream.
> 
> The "state of becoming" reaches even further than it did when Hanson wrote those words a decade ago. California's government can no longer be said to legitimately represent the interests of the people. When semi-clownish geriatrics like Jerry Brown can ignore his state's real needs — water, jobs, safety — while wasting billions enriching single-party insiders building high-speed trains to nowhere, then it's safe to say that the polyglot peoples of California no longer live under a legitimate government.
> 
> And now if that Bloomberg story I quoted at the top of this article is correct, it would seem that a foreign government may be using citizenship as a weapon to further its own interests via our election.
> 
> Under these conditions, how long will the people of California, or at least the southern half of it, continue to look to Washington? How long will they continue to think, "Of course we're a part of the United States!"
> 
> How long can they remain a core?
> 
> ---
> 
> *It is one of history's sublime ironies that the war which destroyed Austria-Hungary's doomed polyglot empire gave Serbia a doomed polyglot empire of its own.


----------



## a_majoor

How America's political elites are paving the way for a potential fguture disaster:

http://20committee.com/2015/03/02/yugoslavias-warning-to-america/



> *Yugoslavia’s Warning to America*
> March 2, 2015
> 
> That America is in trouble, and headed for more of it, is becoming received wisdom across the political aisle. For many on the Right, the Obama presidency heralds a new political age which they don’t like, just as many on the Left believed that the presidency of George W. Bush indicated that the end of the American experiment was nigh.
> 
> While the right-wing media regularly includes warnings that Obama has ushered in politico-economic trends that bode ill for America’s future, their counterparts on the Left are beginning to admit their doubts about our whole enterprise. Today, over at Vox, Matt Yglesias confesses that American democracy may well be doomed after all.
> 
> Yglesias is hardly a fringe character, rather an embodiment of Millennial liberalism. Once a mover and shaker over at the influential (and notorious to conservatives) JournoList, Yglesias has undeniable cachet among Beltway influencers, so when he says the country is pretty much cooked, it matters.
> 
> As usual over at Vox, his argument has a lot of flashcard-friendly facts and figures to back it up, and his conclusion — that political paralysis rooted in deep partisanship is only getting worse and threatens America’s constitutional democracy — is difficult to refute entirely. That said, Yglesias’ prognostications about America’s future course, including that the United States may turn into a gigantic, nuclear-armed Honduras, seem far-fetched, notwithstanding the apparent desire of Vox writers and readers to invite all of Central America to live in this country.
> 
> Yglesias gives short shrift to notions of a military coup or even a second American Civil War, and I don’t think he’s correct here. While it is difficult for anybody who knows the Pentagon well to imagine American generals and admirals getting together to overthrow the civilian government — that would require obscene amounts of PowerPoint and might endanger top brass golden parachutes with Beltway Bandits — the notion of a Civil War 2.0, however terrifying it may be, needs to be faced squarely, if we wish to avoid that awful fate.
> 
> America in the 21st century runs little risk of becoming Honduras Grande, but if current politico-economic trends continue much longer, we might well wind up a lot like Yugoslavia. That statement is sure to be controversial, since few Americans, citizens of the global hegemon and to many of them a most exceptional country, like to be compared with a relatively small Balkan federation that collapsed into wars and genocide a generation ago.
> 
> Yet the collapse of Yugoslavia offers several cautionary tales to Americans today, and if they are wise they will heed them and set the United States on a correction course before it is too late. As one who witnessed the dreadful collapse of Yugoslavia and its terrible aftermaths — including the seemingly permanent impoverishment of Southeastern Europe, mired in crime, corruption, and extremism — I would very much like America to discover a far happier fate.
> 
> However, some of the parallels are eerie and troubling. The differences must be explained up-front. Yugoslavia at its collapse had less than one-tenth of America’s population now, and its system of government was a socialist dictatorship, albeit one of a relatively enlightened kind. Notwithstanding a very nasty secret police force, Yugoslavia as nurtured under the charismatic Tito was a good deal more pleasant place to live than anywhere in the Soviet Bloc. Yugoslavs were free to travel abroad and, after the early 1950s, the repressive state apparatus didn’t have to throw many dissidents in prison, as public shaming, including threats of unemployment and loss of housing, cowed most would-be complainers into towing the party line, at least in public.
> 
> The root of Yugoslavia’s collapse was economic, particularly its parlous state finances. During the Cold War, Tito, who broke with Stalin in 1948 and thereby shattered Communist unity in Eastern Europe, was able to get big Western loans, since NATO viewed Yugoslavia as a necessary anti-Soviet bulwark in Europe, and with these billions of dollars, at low interest rates, the country developed a wide array of industries under its unique market socialist model.
> 
> Unfortunately, the oil shocks of 1973 ultimately undid this Balkan ponzi scheme, and as the cost of borrowing foreign money became prohibitive, Yugoslavia’s economy began to creak. At root, the country’s current operations, including funding the bloated state sector, depended on borrowed foreign money that Yugoslavia could no longer afford.
> 
> After Tito’s death in 1980, amid Western fears that Yugoslavia might implode to Moscow’s benefit, NATO signaled to Belgrade that, if they got their fiscal house in order, the money might keep flowing. In response, the Communist Party ordered Sergej Krajgher, a party stalwart from Slovenia, to see what had to be done to repair the country’s mounting socio-economic mess.
> 
> After two years of study, Krajgher’s commission in 1983 released its report, which correctly assessed that Yugoslavia needed to get its economic house in order to avoid financial, and then political, collapse. Specifically, Krajgher recommended the sell-off of unprofitable state enterprises, allowing more market forces to work, and above all comprehensive fiscal reform to get Yugoslavia off the drug of foreign loans. This was all excellent advice.
> 
> Its effect, however, was zero. The report was ignored, and Communist officials never made any effort to seriously implement any of Krajgher’s solid recommendations. It was too politically painful to make cuts, so the government pretended there was no problem. Until it was too late.
> 
> Comparisons to Obama are unavoidable. Early in his first term, he empowered a bi-partisan board, known colloquially as the Simpson-Bowles commission, to investigate improving the long-term condition of America’s state finances. The commission’s findings were thorough and persuasive, and they offered a way out of the country’s fiscal morass. At a minimum, Simpson-Bowles set the terms for a necessary debate. But Obama inexplicably pretended that his own commission ever existed. No debate ensued, since discussing cuts of government benefits to voters is electorally toxic — Republicans are no more eager to talk about this pain than Democrats — and nothing happened.
> 
> America, possessing the global reserve currency, has a margin for fiscal error enjoyed by no other country, but at some point the game of borrowing vast amounts of foreign money to fund our government will end, and end badly. The U.S. national debt now exceeds $18 trillion, which given the fact that only a little more than 120 million Americans actually pay federal taxes, amounts to almost $150,000 of debt per taxpayer. To say nothing of ballooning state and local government indebtedness. Rhode Island, where I lived for many years, witnessing its love of other people’s money to pay for an unsustainable welfare state, is so deeply in debt that it’s as bad off as Greece, as even the mainstream media admits.
> 
> There is no reason to think this will end pleasantly, given the track record of every other country that has gotten itself deeply into long-term debt and dependency on borrowed foreign money to pay for current liabilities. Once doubts of any sort emerge about the U.S. dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, the rot will emerge rapidly and America’s fiscal nightmare will be here, with a vengeance. That reckoning can be delayed for years, even decades, but when it comes, as it eventually will, it will come suddenly, at which point there will be no palatable remedy.
> 
> Possessing only the weak dinar, Yugoslavia had no such margin for error or avoidance, and the party’s punting on economic reform meant that the fiscal collapse would come sooner than later. By the late 1980s, interest rates and unemployment were both sky-high and Belgrade was running out of hard (i.e. real) money. Repeated devaluations of the dinar did little good, and even a belated IMF effort in 1988 to float Yugoslavia a bit longer, in exchange for promises of real market reforms, could not stave off disaster. It was too late. Political dysfunction had become fatal, making economic reform impossible.
> 
> Worse, economic problems, including unemployment and inflation that impoverished Yugoslavs rapidly — by the time the country went over the cliff in 1991, real incomes were half what they had been a generation before — exacerbated the country’s serious ethnic grievances. When combined with economic emergency, Yugoslavia’s ethnic politics proved a lethal combination that led directly to wars and genocide.
> 
> Yugoslavia was a very diverse country, ethnically and religiously, and the divisions between groups were real and serious. Unlike 21st century Americans, Yugoslavs were under no illusions that “diversity is our greatest strength” — they knew the opposite was the truth — and the Communists went to great lengths to keep ethnic peace by banning what we would term “hate speech” while mandating that the official doctrine that Yugoslavia’s diverse peoples really loved each other deeply be placed at the level of quasi-religious dogma.
> 
> Rewriting history, to show certain ethnic groups as victims and others as perpetrators of race-based crimes, took its toll, since Yugoslavs knew this was too simple, and was being used as a political weapon by the authorities. Aggressive “affirmative action” in education and employment — Belgrade termed it the “ethnic key” — was another perennial sore-spot for many citizens, since ethnic status and ties often mattered more than competence. Needless to add, this hardly helped the economy either.
> 
> Perhaps worst of all, by preventing any honest discussion of ethnic matters, the Communists had a perverse knack of making each of Yugoslavia’s many ethnic groups feel that it was uniquely aggrieved. Thus any Serb or Croat or Albanian or Bosnian Muslim, could look at similar events and quietly determine that his group was really the persecuted one in the Communist-mandated racial games that were enforced by the authorities.
> 
> When the Communist monopoly on power began to wane in the mid-1980s, as across Eastern Europe, and the Yugoslav media began taking on taboo topics, nothing was more discussed than ethnic politics and their messy history. It quickly became a firestorm. To cite the most damaging example, around 1985 the Serbian media began reporting violent crimes committed against Serbs by Albanians in Kosovo, which was a majority-Albanian province that enjoyed self-government under Tito’s system.
> 
> While Albanians did commit crimes against Serbs, the opposite was also true, yet the Belgrade media focused on the former while ignoring the latter. Accounts of rapes of Serbian women — some real, many imagined  — served to whip up nationalist fervor. The press, with Serbia’s Communist Party increasingly behind them, since they realized that nationalism was a powerful motivator for potential voters, indulged in regular accounts of lurid Albanian crimes against Serbs.
> 
> A classic case was that of Djordje Martinović, a Serb in Kosovo who in 1986 claimed he had been brutalized by Albanian thugs, including being anally raped with a bottle, in a horrible hate crime. The Serbian media went wild with the story, which inflamed rising nationalist passions. Albanian protests that the media was wrong made no headway with Serbs, who preferred what I have elsewhere termed The Narrative over facts. The subsequent revelation that Martinović had faked his attack, having injured himself in an act of self-pleasuring gone seriously wrong, got a lot less media attention than the initial story.
> 
> By then the damage was done, as anybody familiar with Yugoslavia’s tragic demise knows. A colorless Communist functionary on the make, Slobodan Milošević, realized that nationalism was the ticket to political success as Communism waned. He made the fate of Serbs in Kosovo, real and imagined, his major plank, and he exploited this toxic environment created by the media to whip up a frenzy that he could exploit, and he did.
> 
> By 1989, Milošević was the master of Serbia, and he promptly cancelled Kosovo’s autonomy, reducing the Albanians there to second-class status under the Serbs. This was payback for all the crimes perpetrated by Albanians against innocent Serbs. Of course, radicalization inevitably begets counter-radicalization, and before long Croats, Albanians, and all the non-Serbian groups in Yugoslavia were digging up their own nationalist grievances and skewed history to counter the Serbs. War and genocide were soon to follow, in a tragedy that was especially poignant because it was eminently avoidable.
> 
> Playing political games with race and ethnicity in any multinational society is a dangerous thing. Obama, by promising that he wanted to be president of all Americans, then governing as a highly partisan Democrat, has laid the groundwork for a hazardous future for the United States, hardly helped by his public indulging of black nationalism, particularly his incautious discussion of crimes both real and imagined against African Americans. However verboten discussion of white nationalism is at present among polite Americans, it is unavoidable that this will become an issue in the future, with potentially explosive consequences — to say nothing of the rise of Hispanic and Asian nationalisms too, as the United States becomes even more diverse than Yugoslavia was.
> 
> Managing this increasingly fissiparous country as economic prospects diminish will challenge the most gifted politicians. Indulging in ethnic resentments as a substitute for solutions to vexing politico-economic problems only makes things go from bad to worse, sometimes rapidly and painfully. With both our parties increasingly beholden to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, average Americans of all backgrounds will not be happy that they are bequeathing a life of less affluence and opportunity to their children. In such a time of troubles, playing ethno-racial political games as a substitute for reform is deeply irresponsible.
> 
> It would be nice if Democrats and Republicans played better together, particularly on the budget and borrowing money. It would be especially nice if they seriously addressed issues of rising economic inequality and diminishing opportunities for average Americans.  But it is imperative that they not fan the flames of ethnic and racial resentments if they wish to avoid a terrible outcome for our country.
> 
> The fate of Yugoslavia was anything but preordained. The United States, whatever its problems, is a far richer and better-run state than anything created by Tito. But the same threats lurk, particularly those of economic degradation caused by debt and made impossible to fix thanks to toxic racial politics. America need not become a vast Balkan horror show — I think it’s more likely in coming decades to become a huge nuclear-armed Brazil, with entrenched economic inequality, often among racial lines, that I find noxious and unworthy of our country — but the fate of Yugoslavia must be avoided at all costs. Our next Civil War would be much more vicious and protracted than the last one, have no illusions.


----------



## a_majoor

Although this article is specifically about the election, it raises a point that America has a longstanding problem negotiating deals with other cultures and nations (for the reasons listed). If the US were to adopt some of the posture that Donald Trump is advocating, then perhaps it would be less likely to end up with bad deals like the ones negotiated with the DPRK and Iran:

https://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/04/21/is-trump-right-on-trade/?singlepage=true



> *Is Trump Right on Trade?
> *By Roger L Simon April 21, 2016
> 
> One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's presidential campaign is his insistence that the United States made terrible trade deals with foreign countries, resulting in significant domestic job losses, and that he -- or his fabulous friends (hello, Carl Icahn!) -- would fix those deals and make better, indeed "great," ones.  Trump also opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as written and maybe altogether.
> 
> As a reflexive free trader, when I first heard this, I dismissed it as so much campaign blather. Okay, we've lost jobs, but in the modern, increasingly high-tech world some will gain and others lose. Capitalism is about creative destruction. Trump of all people should know that -- his real estate properties have often done well, his personally branded vodka not so much. And there's the argument that outsourcing to low-wage countries keeps American prices down, so even welfare recipients can afford the new iPhone 5e, if they're dissatisfied with their Obamaphone.
> 
> And yet, two factors lead me to think Trump has a point:
> 
> One, we're horrible negotiators in general, not just the current abysmal administration, but all the way back to Clinton and Bush. This is particularly true in foreign affairs, an area many of us pay attention to, especially the nuclear deals with North Korea and Iran. Those negotiations involved our national security and the safety of the world and it's hard to find anyone these days, other than John Kerry and he's beginning to sound ambivalent, who thinks they were or are even remotely successful. They're pretty close to farce. North Korea continues apace with its nuclear program and Iran is on its way to becoming, thanks to us, the richest terror state in history, a veritable Middle East hegemon, with nuclear arms only years away.
> 
> That being the case, since we can't handle anything as crucial (and publicly discussed) as nuclear negotiations, is there any reason to believe we did a good or even decent job with the obscure intricacies of trade? These are agreements almost no one, other than those in some immediate industry usually with a direct corporate interest, even knows are being negotiated. I know I'm not alone in not reading the TPP deal, which is thirty chapters long and involves some 18,000 individual tariff negotiations. Which leads me to question two....
> 
> Who negotiates? For us, I would imagine, largely unsupervised government bureaucrats, some of whom may have business experience of some sort. Meanwhile, these trade deals are often negotiated on the other side by representatives of cultures very different from our own. Australia and New Zealand are part of TPP, but so are Mexico and Malaysia. Mexico's history of monumental corruption was well known long before the world's biggest drug dealer, El Chapo, built a mile-long tunnel and made his dramatic prison break, impossible without government help.  Malaysian corruption merits its own Wikipedia entry. China, not part of TPP but our biggest trading partner after the EU and Canada, is an elaborate corrupt communist-corporate-cronyist mega-state that would make the Soviet nomenklatura blush. No one, certainly no one on the outside, has real knowledge of the details of China's finances.
> 
> I'm not suggesting we stop trading because of this. That's a recipe for global meltdown. But what this does mean is that when we do negotiate trade deals with countries like these we should keep in mind we are essentially negotiating with the Mafia. Virtually no firewall exists for them between business and government and they have little or no oversight, no Sarbanes-Oxley or Dodd-Frank in Beijing (we probably shouldn't have them either). Many, perhaps most, of these countries are kleptocracies of various levels. Would you trust our government's bureaucrats to do the negotiating with people like that or would you prefer experienced business professionals from the private sector?
> 
> Trump clearly wants  to bring in that private sector, notably Icahn. Donald even finally mentioned a few other names at his New York victory party, but I missed them. I don't know if this approach would work necessarily, but there's something sensible in it and worth trying beneath all his often juvenile hodgepodge of insults.
> 
> It's important to remember Trump is primarily a negotiator, as he tells us repeatedly. He doesn't have many policies per se like the traditional politician, at least not yet; instead he has starting points for deal-making, negotiating positions. It's what he has always done, how he undoubtedly buys property before putting up an apartment complex or hotel. This approach accounts for the seemingly extreme statements on Mexicans and Muslims that are, in a sense, positions meant to be pulled back to a compromise point even as the assertion is made. The same goes for his NATO proposals. Everything is up for negotiation and intended to be.
> 
> Trump's technique of putting business negotiation first may seem unique to our politics, but it does have precedents of sorts in our history.  Calvin Coolidge -- revered by many conservatives -- did say the "business of America is business," which would make Trump a kind of a reality-show Coolidge. How this will play out, whether it will bring jobs home and make America even a little bit greater again, we will see in the days to come.


----------



## a_majoor

A point to remember from a rather underrated President.

Happy 4th of July!



> About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.



Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926.


----------



## a_majoor

As the general says, many people understand the problem, but very few seem to have the will to do anything about it:

http://nypost.com/2016/07/09/the-military-fired-me-for-calling-our-enemies-radical-jihadis/



> *The military fired me for calling our enemies radical jihadis*
> By Michael Flynn July 9, 2016 | 11:26pm
> 
> Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is reportedly being vetted by Donald Trump as a potential running mate, was fired as head of the ­Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the winter of 2014 after three decades in the military. Here he tells the real story of his departure from his post and why America is not getting any closer to winning the war on terror.
> 
> Two years ago, I was called into a meeting with the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and the director of national intelligence, and after some “niceties,” I was told by the USDI that I was being let go from DIA. It was definitely an uncomfortable moment (I suspect more for them than me).
> 
> I asked the DNI (Gen. James Clapper) if my leadership of the agency was in question and he said it was not; had it been, he said, they would have relieved me on the spot.
> 
> I knew then it had more to do with the stand I took on radical Islamism and the expansion of al Qaeda and its associated movements. I felt the intel system was way too politicized, especially in the Defense Department. After being fired, I left the meeting thinking, “Here we are in the middle of a war, I had a significant amount of combat experience (nearly five years) against this determined enemy on the battlefield and served at senior levels, and here it was, the bureaucracy was letting me go.” Amazing.
> 
> At the time, I was working very hard to change the culture of DIA from one overly focused on Washington, DC, to a culture that focused on our forward-based war fighters and commanders. It was not an easy shift, but it was necessary and exactly the reason I was put into the job in the first place.
> 
> In the end, I was pissed but knew that I had maintained my integrity and was determined in the few months I had left to continue the changes I was instituting and to keep beating the drum about the vicious enemy we were facing (still are).
> 
> I would not change a lick how I operate. Our country has too much at stake.
> 
> We’re in a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela. Along the way, the alliance picks up radical Muslim countries and organizations such as Iran, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State.
> 
> That’s a formidable coalition, and nobody should be shocked to discover that we are losing the war.
> 
> If our leaders were interested in winning, they would have to design a strategy to destroy this global enemy. But they don’t see the global war. Instead, they timidly nibble around the edges of the battlefields from Africa to the Middle East, and act as if each fight, whether in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya or Afghanistan, can be peacefully resolved by diplomatic effort.
> 
> This approach is doomed. We have real enemies, dedicated to dominating and eventually destroying us, and they are not going to be talked out of their hatred. Iran, for example, declared war on the United States in 1979 — that’s 37 years ago — and has been killing Americans ever since. Every year, the State Department declares Iran to be the world’s primary supporter of terror. Do you think we’ll nicely and politely convince them to be good citizens and even (as President Obama desires) a responsible ally supporting peace? Do you think ISIS or the Taliban wants to embrace us?
> 
> No, we’re not going to talk our way out of this war, nor can we escape its horrors. Ask the people in San Bernardino or South Florida, or the relatives of the thousands killed on 9/11. We’re either going to win or lose. There is no other “solution.”
> 
> I believe we can and must win. This war must be waged both militarily and politically; we have to destroy the enemy armies and combat enemy doctrines. Both are doable. On military battlefields, we have defeated radical Islamic forces every time we have seriously gone after them, from Iraq to Afghanistan. Their current strength is not a reflection of their ability to overwhelm our armed forces, but rather the consequence of our mistaken and untimely withdrawal after demolishing them.
> 
> We have failed to challenge their jihadist doctrines, even though their true believers only number a small fraction of the Muslim world, and even though everybody, above all most living Muslims, knows that the Islamic world is an epic failure, desperately needing economic, cultural and educational reform of the sort that has led to the superiority of the West.
> 
> So first of all, we need to demolish the terror armies, above all in the Middle East and Libya. We have the wherewithal, but lack the will. That has to change. It’s hard to imagine it happening with our current leaders, but the next president will have to do it.
> 
> As we defeat them on the ground, we must clearly and forcefully attack their crazy doctrines. Defeat on battlefields does great damage to their claim to be acting as agents of divine will. After defeating al Qaeda in Iraq, we should have challenged the Islamic world and asked: “How did we win? Did Allah change sides?”
> 
> We need to denounce them as false prophets, as we insist on the superiority of our own political vision. This applies in equal measure to the radical secular elements of the enemy coalition. Is North Korea some sort of success story? Does anyone this side of a university seminar think the Cuban people prefer the Castros’ tyranny to real freedom? Is Vladimir Putin a model leader for the 21st-century world?
> 
> Just as the Muslim world has failed, so the secular tyrants have wrecked their own countries. They hate us in part because they know their own peoples would prefer to live as we do. They hope to destroy us before they have to face the consequences of their many failures.
> 
> Remember that Machiavelli insisted that tyranny is the most unstable form of government.
> 
> It infuriates me when our president bans criticism of our enemies, and I am certain that we cannot win this war unless we are free to call our enemies by their proper names: radical jihadis, failed tyrants, and so forth.
> 
> With good leadership, we should win. But we desperately need good leaders to reverse our enemies’ successes.
> 
> Flynn is the author of the new book, “The Field of Flight,” (St. Martin’s Press), out Tuesday.


----------



## a_majoor

The starting point for the next administration is going to be a pretty terrible one, regardless of who it is. *We* in the West have "lost the peace", and reestablishing a peaceful and prosperous new order in the world will be a very difficult task:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/28/the-world-is-at-war-and-the-peace-has-been-lost/



> AFTER OBAMA
> *The World Is at War and the Peace Has Been Lost*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> 
> From the quiet country churches of Normandy through the civil wars of Africa, the killing fields of Syria, Putin’s war against the modern European order and China’s lawless surge into the waters beyond its shores, the dark storm clouds gather.
> 
> Pope Francis has noticed:
> 
> Pope Francis compared recent terrorist attacks to last century’s world wars, saying that “the world is at war because it has lost the peace.”
> 
> In remarks during a Wednesday flight to Poland, where he began a five-day visit, the pope also decried the slaying of a French priest by attackers who claimed allegiance to Islamic State and tied it to the killing of Christians by terrorists in other regions of the world.
> 
> Francis is not always the world’s clearest thinker on matters of politics and policy, but he hit the nail right on the head here: we have lost the peace. It is an interesting counterpoint to the Democratic establishment’s celebration of itself and its wisdom last night. And the Pope’s point suggests what is likely to be the starting point of historians’ analysis of Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy: not how he succeeded, but how and why was the peace lost on his watch?
> 
> Hillary Clinton is pursuing a job that will be much harder than the job her husband faced, and she will need to do something that many of her most ardent supporters hope she won’t have to do: when the world is at war because it has lost the peace, you have to think outside the box and go well beyond the world of stale liberal truisms of the Boomer Progressive Synthesis.
> 
> That she is more suited by intellect and experience to the Presidency than her principal opponent is not in question. Neither is there any doubt that the Democratic Party today is in better shape to provide the country with coherent leadership than the squabbling remnants and angry factions fighting over what used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln.
> 
> But what is very much in question is whether she and her party have what it takes to lead the nation through what is likely to be a very stormy and difficult time, a time that is likely to test many of the comfortable ideas and compromises that hold the party together well past their design strength.


----------



## a_majoor

A look at the voter breakdown. If this election breaks the deadlock in American politics, then perhaps the United States can move in a new direction and the uncertainty gripping the West can dissipate:
(part 1)

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-coming-electoral-crack-up/



> *The coming electoral crack-up?*
> Will voter discontent shatter the partisan deadlock in U.S. politics this November?
> 
> Heading into the 2016 presidential election cycle, the most influential guide for political journalists was a 2008 book called The Party Decides. Written by four eminent political scientists, it explained that for several decades presidential nominees have effectively been chosen by unelected political insiders, as candidates fight in “invisible primaries” for endorsements by prominent politicians and interest groups. The voters, it argued, tended to ratify these choices and rally around candidates with widespread and prestigious support.
> 
> But like John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1967 book The New Industrial State, which argued that big corporations, tempered by big government and big labor unions, determined the course of the economy, The Party Decides turned out to be a better description of the recent past than an accurate forecast of the near-term future. Political science, despite its name, is not a science, and generalizations about presidential elections are risky because there have been so few of them—only 46 since something like the current two-party system sprang into existence in 1832 and only 11 since primaries started dominating the selection of party nominees in 1972. When I was in the political polling business, I was told not to base conclusions on the responses of subgroups comprised of fewer than fifty respondents. Scholars of presidential elections, even if they go back to the days when Andrew Jackson faced off against Henry Clay, have less data to work with than that.
> 
> Certainly few analysts in May 2015, just 14 months before the national conventions, predicted that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders would be serious competitors for the Republican and Democratic nominations. Neither the New York real-estate billionaire nor the Vermont socialist had significant support from his party’s elected officeholders or party officials. Indeed, each had received endorsements from only a handful of party insiders up through the conclusion of the primary season 13 months later. Yet Trump won 42 percent of the votes cast in Republican primaries and caucuses up through the Indiana primary on May 3, 2016, after which his remaining two opponents withdrew. By the last contest on June 7, he had won 44 percent. Sanders had won 43 percent of votes cast in Democratic primaries and caucuses, but that was not enough to defeat Hillary Clinton in what was effectively a two-candidate contest. But Trump’s vote totals were enough to secure a delegate majority in a race that had started off with 17 serious candidates. “The party” got the Democratic nominee of its choice, but only after a longer struggle and by a narrower margin than it surely imagined, while “the party” was utterly foiled in the Republican contest despite an impressive array of attractive and competent candidates.
> 
> So why has this presidential campaign cycle been different from all other presidential campaign cycles? And is the general-election campaign likely to be as different from other general-election campaigns as the primary contests were different from their predecessors?
> 
> “One way to look at this election is as a collision of an irresistible force with an immovable object. This irresistible force is the widespread discontent with the direction of the nation today. The immoveble object is the persistent partisan divisions that have prevailed and intensified in presidential, congressional, and state elections over the past twenty years.”
> 
> One way to look at this election is as a collision of an irresistible force with an immovable object. This irresistible force is the widespread discontent with the direction of the nation today. The immoveble object is the persistent partisan divisions that have prevailed and intensified in presidential, congressional, and state elections over the past twenty years.
> 
> The sources of the irresistible force of discontent are not hard to discern. After resurgent growth and victory in the Cold War in the 1980s, and continuing economic growth in the 1990s, the 21st century brought Americans 15 years of mostly sluggish growth and a series of mostly unsuccessful, or at least inconclusive, foreign military interventions. Major legislation passed by one-party votes, notably the 2009 stimulus package and the 2010 Affordable Care Act, have proved to be far less popular than their sponsors expected. Major bipartisan legislation, frequent in Bill Clinton’s presidency and the first term of George W. Bush’s, has become rare if not extinct, with a President lacking the inclination and skill to negotiate and a Republican House majority often unwilling to trust its leadership.
> 
> This discontent found an outlet in the disruptive candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Each attracted constituencies different from those in his party’s recent nomination contests. Republicans in 2008 and 2012 were divided between countryside and suburbs, between white Evangelical Christians and less intensely religious groups. The divisions can be seen in the critical contests between John McCain and Mike Huckabee in 2008 and between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in 2012. In both cases the eventual nominee piled up big majorities in the relatively affluent and somewhat less Evangelical suburbs, while his opponent carried rural areas and small towns, but not by enough votes to prevail.
> 
> In 2016 the divisions were different. White evangelicals did not vote solidly for any candidate, but split their votes between Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. Large suburban counties in many states gave Trump pluralities or even majorities. One clear pattern is that Trump ran better among voters without college degrees (“I love the poorly educated!” he exclaimed after winning the Nevada caucuses) than college graduates, but he got sizeable numbers of votes from graduates as well. Certain demographic groups resisted Trump’s appeal: Mormons, Dutch-Americans in northwest and central Iowa and western Michigan, German- and Scandinavian-Americans in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest states. Other ethnic groups tilted toward Trump. A majority of Italian-Americans live within a hundred miles of New York City, and in that arc Trump won more than 50 percent of the votes, including 81 percent in heavily Italian-American Staten Island. In addition, he ran strongest not in Florida’s Southern-accented congressional districts, but in those with the largest number of migrants from New York and the Northeast. Examining the returns, I argued that Trump fared poorly with those groups with large degrees of what scholars Charles Murray and Robert Putnam have called social connectedness or social capital, and did very well with groups with low social connectedness. His percentages in Appalachia—from southwest Pennsylvania through Tennessee, northern Alabama, and Mississippi—were especially large.
> 
> The Democratic primaries saw some reversals of the Party’s trends in 2008. That year, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton among black voters by wide margins. In 2016 Clinton won black voters over Bernie Sanders by similarly large margins in the South and somewhat smaller margins in the North. However, in 2008 Clinton dominated Appalachia; in 2016 it voted for Sanders. In both elections Clinton tended to carry Hispanic voters, but in 2016 she did significantly less well among white voters without college degrees, and Sanders tended to carry small towns and rural counties not only in his home area of New England but across the Midwest and in white-majority regions in the South.
> 
> Both nominees owed their victories to large majorities cast by their parties’ most downscale constituencies—blacks, especially Southern blacks, in the Democratic Party, whites without college degrees in the Republican Party. For the Democrats, the result conformed to the thesis of The Party Decides. Hillary Clinton had the lion’s share of endorsements from party officials and office-holders, but she won because of big margins from black voters; exit polls suggest she did no better than break even among white Democratic voters. For the Republicans, the result was directly contrary to the wishes of almost all party insiders. Trump benefited greatly from his celebrity, gained as a publicity-hungry real estate mogul even before he became a reality-television host, and he dominated news coverage of the Republican race—getting more airtime on cable and broadcast news than the 16 other candidates combined from the day in June 2015 when he rode the escalator down to the Trump Tower lobby to announce his candidacy.
> 
> Trump benefited as well from the dynamic of a multi-candidate race, in which it is not in the interest of one candidate to attack another: an attack by candidate A on candidate B may hurt B, but it is likely to hurt A as well and help C or D or E. That is exactly what happened when Chris Christie launched an attack on Marco Rubio in the debate days before the New Hampshire primary. Rubio lost his chance for a second-place finish that might have propelled him to a one-on-one contest with Trump, while Christie ran poorly and left the race the day after the primary. The New Hampshire results encouraged Jeb Bush to stay in the race through the South Carolina primary, where his percentage added to Rubio’s was just 2 percent lower than Trump’s, and it gave life to the candidacy of John Kasich—who, unlike Rubio, carried his home state on March 15 and remained in the race until May, though he only carried seven counties outside Ohio. Trump’s best-organized rival, Ted Cruz, did win the Iowa caucuses, but lost by agonizingly narrow margins in multi-candidate races in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri. He won a solid victory over Trump in heavily German-American and high-social capital Wisconsin on April 5, but lost in demographically diverse Indiana on May 3 and exited the race.
> 
> “Trump’s victory was not inevitable, but it was perhaps overdetermined. He was an outsider candidate, defying political correctness, in a year when discontent was an irresistible force.”


----------



## a_majoor

(part 2)



> Trump’s victory was not inevitable, but it was perhaps overdetermined. He was an outsider candidate, defying political correctness, in a year when discontent was an irresistible force. Not considered a standard politician, he announced his candidacy when the Republicans’ leading contender was the son and brother of two former Presidents and the Democrats’ was the wife of another. He criticized both parties while wooing a Republican electorate not only harshly critical of Barack Obama, but also of many of the programs of George W. Bush and of the current Republican congressional leadership.
> 
> So the irresistible force of discontent prevailed in the race for the Republican nomination and came closer to prevailing than almost anyone expected in the race for the Democratic nomination.
> 
> But how will it fare against the immovable object of persistent strong partisan attachments in the general election? The most downscale constituencies of each party have produced two nominees who are unpopular with a majority of general-election voters—how will it play out in November?
> 
> The partisan deadlock has been as protracted any in our history. Democrats have won four of the last six presidential elections, and a plurality of the popular vote in a fifth, while Republicans have won majorities in the House of Representatives in nine of the last 11 congressional elections. But neither side has won by big margins. No major-party nominee has won less than 46 percent of the popular vote or more than 53 percent over the past 16 years, or the past 24 years if you allocate Ross Perot voters in 1992 and 1996 to their second-choice candidates. This is in vivid contrast to the four decades after World War II, in which incumbent Presidents of both parties in times of perceived peace and prosperity won re-election by landslide margins in 1956, 1964, 1972, and 1984. In those years most voters remembered the horrors of the Depression and World War II and were glad to cross party lines for Presidents who seemed to produce better times.
> 
> Today most voters remember what seemed to be the more peaceful and prosperous decades of the 1980s and 1990s, a time in which party preferences were shaped increasingly by cultural issues. In the 1990s the demographic variable most highly correlated with voting behavior was religion, or degree of religiosity, with the most observant in each sectarian group veering Republican and the less observant or secular veering Democratic. As a result, suburban voters in major metropolitan areas outside the South moved toward the Democratic Party, while there was a countervailing but quantitatively smaller shift toward the Republican Party outside major metropolitan areas. At the same time, partisan preference in presidential and congressional elections converged. From 1968 to 1988 Republicans won five of six presidential elections, by an average margin of 10 percent of the popular vote, while Democrats won majorities with at least 243 seats in the House. Starting in 1992 Democrats have won most presidential elections, but by an average margin of only 4 percent of the popular vote, and Republicans have won most congressional elections but failed to hold more than 242 House seats until they won 247 in 2014.
> 
> This partisan deadlock has resulted in an unusually stable electoral map by historical standards. Only three states changed their electoral-college votes between 2000 and 2004; only two did so between 2008 and 2012. The list of 11 target states has become familiar even to those who are not political junkies, and campaigns have concentrated most of their organizational and advertising efforts there. Voters have responded accordingly. Total voter turnout sagged between 2008 and 2012, but it was up 0.8 percent in the 11 target states, while it fell 2.7 percent in the rest of the nation. It has become easy to predict how three-quarters or more of the states will vote in presidential elections, even as it has remained difficult to predict which candidate will win.
> 
> This immovable object may prove movable in November 2016, though probably not as movable as suggested by the predictions in some quarters that Donald Trump would lose by a wide margin, with something like the 38 percent won by Barry Goldwater and George McGovern in the postwar elections of 1964 and 1972. Pre-national convention polling indicates that, despite the turmoil of the primary campaign season, solid majorities of self-identified Republicans and Democrats are prepared to vote for their parties’ nominees. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has received 50 percent in just about any national poll, and polls in the 2012 target states—which are less frequent and perhaps less reliable—have seldom shown either with overwhelming leads.
> 
> But there are some discernible differences from previous electoral cycles. Trump is polling as well as or better than Mitt Romney did in 2012 among whites without college degrees but is running perceptibly weaker among white graduates—results in line with the divisions in the Republican primaries. Clinton is running far ahead among blacks and Hispanics. But it’s unlikely that she will be able to equal the turnout or Democratic percentages among blacks achieved by the first black President. And Trump’s poll numbers among Hispanics—a more varied group, with quite different partisan leanings in different states—are roughly similar to what Romney was polling four years before. Young voters seem highly hostile to Trump, but young women as well as young men voted heavily for Sanders and against Clinton in the Democratic primaries, and their support for Clinton over Trump seems less than enthusiastic.
> 
> This suggests that Trump may be highly competitive in target states with older and less-educated populations, such as Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Together they have 67 electoral votes, without which Barack Obama would not have been re-elected in 2012. It also suggests that Trump’s prospects are significantly less favorable in target states with younger and more-educated populations, like Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. These have 37 electoral votes, with North Carolina’s 15 going to Mitt Romney in 2012.
> 
> And the list of target states could conceivably be expanded. Pre-election polling has shown Trump weaker than previous Republican nominees in heavily Republican states and Clinton somewhat weaker than previous Democrats in some heavily Democratic states. Democrats’ hopes of carrying Arizona and Georgia, with their large Hispanic and black populations, could be realized if Trump fails to match previous nominees’ large share of white votes. Polls have even shown a close race in Utah, Romney’s strongest state, whose Mormon majority has shown a clear distaste for Trump. Some supporters of Trump have claimed, unconvincingly, that he could win heavily Democratic New York and New Jersey and, more convincingly, that his anti-free-trade positions could enable him to carry Michigan and Minnesota. Both have been absent from previous target-state lists, but voted only 54 and 53 percent for Obama in 2012.
> 
> Moreover, there appear to be more undecided voters than in recent elections. At this stage in 2008 and 2012, fewer than 10 percent of respondents to most polls said they were not voting for either major-party candidate. In 2016 pre-convention polling that percentage has been higher, around 15 percent. When respondents are given a choice of voting for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the number who choose neither major-party candidate rises to about 23 percent. Polls giving respondents a choice of third- and fourth-party candidates probably overstate respondents’ actual support for these candidates, which has typically decreased or evaporated when it comes time to actually vote. With sizeable majorities of voters expressing unfavorable feelings toward both Clinton and Trump, it’s plausible that larger than usual percentages are unwilling to commit to either and could change their minds during the course of the campaign.
> 
> “In a nation closely divided between two partisan blocs, differences in turnout can produce differences in results.”
> 
> And it’s plausible as well that many of these people will simply not vote. Voter turnout surged enormously during the Bush presidency, from 105 million in 2000 to 131 million in 2008. But contrary to popular impression, it has sagged perceptibly during the Obama presidency, in both the 2012 presidential election (from 131 million to 129 million) and the 2014 House contests (from 86 million in 2010 to 79 million). In a nation closely divided between two partisan blocs, differences in turnout can produce differences in results. Democrats hope that voters antagonized by Trump will turn out in large numbers, but there is little history in presidential elections of high turnout motivated by negative feelings toward a candidate. Trump backers hope that voters energized by Trump’s unorthodox messages will turn out in great numbers, noting that Republican primary turnout in 2016 surged far ahead of 2008 and 2012 levels while Democratic primary turnout lagged behind that of 2008. But the evidence suggests that Trump’s specific appeal was responsible for less than half the increased primary turnout.
> 
> Both parties face difficulty in maximizing turnout for their sides. Trump won the Republican nomination without any large organization and in the weeks running up to the national conventions did little to assemble one, apparently intending to rely on Republican National Committee efforts. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party appeared to have a much more effective turnout apparatus, and one that delivered victory in 2012. But even then Barack Obama received 3.5 million fewer votes than he had four years before.
> 
> The Clinton camp is likely to have difficulty matching the 2008 Obama campaign’s success in mobilizing support from young voters. The exit poll that year showed Obama leading John McCain by 66 to 32 percent among those under thirty; his popular-vote margin among that age group amounted to 7 percent of the total electorate, identical to his overall popular-vote margin. In the 2014 House election, in contrast, the Democratic margin among young voters was 54 to 43 percent and, with lower turnout, amounted to only 1.5 percent of the total electorate. Young people tend to move frequently, have few community ties, and be less interested in politics and government than older people. Clinton’s weak showing among young voters in the primaries suggests they lack enthusiasm for her despite their evident distaste for Trump.
> 
> The Trump camp is likely to have difficulty maximizing turnout as well. His strongest support in primaries came from those with low social connectedness, who are presumably hard to contact and mobilize. For all his success in the primaries, he had won just 42 percent of Republican primary and caucus voters when he clinched the nomination in the Indiana primary on May 3.
> 
> So it remains an open question how the seemingly irresistible force of public discontent will shift the seemingly immovable object of partisan deadlock. There have been many surprises in the 2016 presidential election cycle so far. There may be many more ahead. The days of party decisions may be over. But it’s not clear who will be deciding now.
> 
> The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization and does not take institutional positions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the author.


----------



## a_majoor

This is the starting point for any discussion of her American and indeed Western society is going to change post November. The foundations have shifted and new alignments and possibilities will emerge. Of course we won't like a lot of what is going to happen....

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/08/08/a-wake-up-call-for-western-elites/



> *OF PEASANTS AND PITCHFORKS*
> A Wake Up Call for Western Elites
> ANDREW A. MICHTA
> Rebellion is stirring in the West, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.
> 
> It is easy to get caught in the tidal wave of pessimism that has gripped the West’s chattering classes and op-ed writers. The list of real problems confronting Europe and the United States is long, and getting longer still: slow growth, exploding jihadi terrorism, uncontrolled immigration, the hollowing out of NATO, and the weakening of the European Union. Region by region, the global security equation looks equally menacing, with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on fire amidst a Sunni-Shi‘a civil war, the fragmentation of Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and fighters flocking to the Islamic State intent on brushing aside the remnants of the Sykes-Picot system. The risk of armed conflict is growing in Asia and Europe, with China and Russia pressing their advantage, while Americans, weary of losses in what is now a 15-year War on Terror, look in vain for a viable strategy. Within the West itself events are approaching an inflection point; the liberal, globalist notions of the past two decades have suddenly (if only in hindsight not unexpectedly) run into a rapidly rising wall of popular resistance.
> 
> The forces that are reshaping the erstwhile globalist consensus are not, as critics would have it, simply “populism,” “racism,” or “lower class obscurantism,” but a 21st-century popular rebellion across the democratic West, which—warts and all—is readying itself to imprint the will of the modern demos onto what not so long ago many considered to be a progressively de-nationalized, postmodern consumer society. Steeped in resurgent nationalism, this public wave has crashed into the breach between the notional reality, which maintains that on balance Europe and America are still doing fine, and the perceived reality of high unemployment, high immigration rates, and segmented communities. It is amidst this sense of fragmentation and decline that latter-day peasants on both sides of the ocean are rising up, pitchforks in hand, against an increasingly denationalized aristocracy
> 
> The experience of open borders, mass migration, and top-down regulation has undercut the people’s sense of their own sovereignty in Western societies, leaving many to grapple not only with economic hardship but also, and perhaps even more importantly, with a growing sense of cultural marginalization in their own states. The backlash against immigration has been the key driver of the revolt. This backlash, however, is less against the principle as such; the West has been historically welcoming of immigrants. Rather, opposition has swelled against the speed and manner in which immigrants are brought into the national culture, as well as the official policies that exert little pressure on new arrivals to acculturate. Multiculturalism, with its anti-Western bent, in combination with the ascendency of the liberal left across national media and in culture debates, has convinced more and more people that their communities are being transformed with minimal elite concern for their aspirations and priorities. Today, the latter-day peasants of the collective West are massing outside the gates of the manor out of a sense that their governments have confined their values to the margins. To be sure, while some who demand closed borders are in the grip of prejudice, for the rest it is about the right to live in communities that remain familiar and, though they may evolve gradually over time, do not demand a sudden and wholesale transformation of culture.
> 
> The paradox of modern nationalism has always been its bifurcated nature: on the one hand, nationalism molds a larger community around a deeply internalized sense of reciprocity—what Ernest Gellner called a “special feeling” of community, even if, as Benedict Anderson later argued, these were “imagined communities”; on the other hand, it reaffirms the distinction between who is in and who is out, for kinship and discrimination are often two sides of the same coin. Still, a sense of shared national heritage is central to the cohesion of the state. The idea of a nation as an extension of some of the most rudimentary, if abstracted, ties that bind people to their family has historically created a sense of larger solidarity. Without it, the notions of a shared financial burden and obligation to defend the homeland or the need to sacrifice, if necessary, one’s individual comforts for the nation as a whole would never be possible. It is perhaps for this reason that the perennial talk of a European Union army has always been borderline delusional, for it implied a reciprocity of commitment and sacrifice where the internal ties were merely secondary to the national bond.
> 
> The gathering popular rebellion against the governing and cultural elites has begun to reshape the electoral landscape across the WestThe gathering popular rebellion against the governing and cultural elites has begun to reshape the electoral landscape across the West, as seen in the rise of nationalist parties in Europe and Trump in the United States. Though the process has only begun, the electoral map of Europe is already changing, with nationalist parties having polled in the latest elections 35.1 percent of the vote in Austria, 29 percent in Switzerland, 21 percent in Denmark and 21 percent in Hungary, 18 percent in Finland, 14 percent in France, 13 percent in Sweden, 10 percent in the Netherlands, 8 percent in Slovakia, 7 percent in Greece and 4 percent in Italy. In Germany, where nationalism historically has had a particularly toxic image, the nationalist anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland, which two years ago did not exist, polled 4.7 percent in the last election and now holds seats in half of the state legislatures. In Finland the nationalists came second in last year’s general election. In France’s regional elections in 2015 the National Front got 6.8 million votes—its highest number ever—and did not win in two regions it targeted only because the socialists threw their support behind the conservatives. And finally, in the United States, the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries has shown the strength of anti-immigrant and anti-elite sentiment, forcing the GOP establishment hastily pick sides and realign party loyalties.
> 
> And yet there has been precious little introspection on the part of the intelligentsia on either side of the Atlantic as to what policies and factors of the past three decades have generated this surge of popular anger. The visceral response of our academic and professional classes to this rising tide of popular resistance in Europe and America has been initially to dismiss it as either another familiar populist spasm mixed with the fallout from the 2008 recession or as the inevitable aftershock of our transition to a post-industrial West. It has been called a manifestation of anger from those who lack the skills to adapt to a new economy—sore losers, unwilling or unable to retrain for new jobs, and therefore apt to fall through the cracks in the floor of our global edifice, which is otherwise seen as continuing to support unprecedented prosperity. This of course leaves aside the question of how one transforms a 55-year-old laid off automobile worker into a computer programmer, but such objections rarely figure prominently in academic debates on globalization.
> 
> The nationalist rebellions that are stirring across the West have thus far generated almost uniform elite condemnation on the grounds that such movements and the parties they have spawned are fed and driven by prejudice and intolerance, racism, discrimination, and—to quote one university discussion—a “desperate attempt to preserve white privilege.” And yet the vision of a globalized post-Westphalian, postmodern, and ultimately post-national future, which only a decade ago seemed well on its way to dominating political discourse as the new consensus in classrooms and boardrooms, is today shaky at best. It is being challenged by a new strand of nationalism taking shape across the West, still uncertain of its own language and the patterns in which it manifests itself in different societies, but by now unmistakably resurgent and growing in its appeal to the public.
> 
> Notwithstanding the many volumes written on the alleged arrival of a post-Westphalian era, globalization and the persistence of strong nation-states are in fact not contradictory: The former defines the current stage of capitalist development, while the latter is the territorial political unit that organizes land and population. The past three decades have been marked not only by the opening of national markets but also by fierce competition between nation-states. If anything, strong states ensure the stability that is critical to the smooth functioning of the global market, and perhaps here the globalists and the nationalists could actually find room to compromise. Yet part of the problem is that our elites seem unable to divorce the idea of nationalism from the historical narrative of fascism. Though seemingly counterintuitive, this accounts for their inability to recognize that the current wave could in fact be a positive restorative force reasserting the unity of Western democratic nations, provided we begin to seek a genuine consensus on the importance of common reference points in society. To do so would invalidate the most established and often cherished narratives about the direction of global change that envision and celebrate a world in which nation-states continue to surrender sovereignty to international norm-enforcing institutions and supranational projects. Simply put, the vision of a postmodern Europe in particular, as defined over the past three decades, cannot be reconciled with the experience of 21st-century nationalism, for the former envisions societies where national identities rooted in a shared culture and history are replaced by a generic concept of citizenship bridging between multiethnic and multicultural societal enclaves. A compromise would require some affirmation of a larger national culture, and most importantly a movement away from ethnic group politics in order to arrest the centrifugal forces that have balkanized Western societies for decades.
> 
> The fortunes of great powers wax and wane depending on their relative economic prosperity, the course of their more or less successful wars and foreign policy ventures, and/or the rise and decline of their international competitors. And yet—absent a system-transforming war—all shifts in global power distribution have at their base a set of domestic political factors. Whether a nation is looking ahead with confidence, diffidence, or fear depends on the ability of its elites to speak directly to public anxieties, aspirations, and goals while generating a vision and a sense of common purpose. Great powers do not implode simply because their economies have declined or because their military campaigns failed to produce the intended results. Economics and foreign policy matter greatly, but they require something much less tangible in society: confidence about the future that draws in part from a reaffirmation of the core tenets of the past. The surge of nationalism across Europe and the United States needs to be understood as still an essential ingredient of modern statehood, and engaged through democratic politics in ways that eschew Manichean choices.
> 
> However, thus far the narrative of this surge of public anger aimed at Western elites has been confined to the simple, safe, and ultimately maddeningly imprecise concept of “populism,” with its implicitly negative connotation. After all, populists are by definition unsophisticated rubes who pitch the public simplistic solutions to the increasingly inscrutable complexities of the modern world. But this dismissal does nothing to help us understand what these movements are about. Were it all that simple, we could double down on the narrative of the forces of enlightened progress under assault by those of retrograde parochialism, and in this modern tale of cosmopolitanism betrayed by nativism keep on shaking our heads at the lack of judgement that surprisingly ever larger segments of the general public across Europe and the United States are displaying.
> 
> The reality is quite different. The West is experiencing a nationalist awakening of a magnitude not seen in decades because the policies of those decades have run their course and are no longer accepted. It is time we stopped and took it seriously, instead of dismissing it out of hand as an aberration defying explanation and unworthy of consideration. Like all incipient movements, this new nationalist awakening has its low points, and its spokesmen and spokeswomen can be clumsy, clownish, and downright rude; however, the public sentiment behind it deserves a hearing not because we like it or dislike it, but because it is reshaping our societies. And most of all, the latter-day peasants have shown that they will not stand for being ignored


----------



## a_majoor

While this is about the US election and could also potentially go under the Making Canada Relevant Again economic superthread, global trade is one of the key pillars supporting America's dominant position in the West and in the world, and this WSJ article suggests that Trump may have identified one of the issues which is decimating support for free trade in the Western world. Fix that and *we* can reap the benefits of free trade the way it was promised:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-contribution-to-sound-money-1470868946



> *Trump’s Contribution to Sound Money*
> The source of trade anxiety is a broken global monetary system that distorts price signals with sharp currency moves.
> By JUDY SHELTON
> Aug. 10, 2016 6:42 p.m. ET
> 
> The surest way to become alienated from Donald Trump supporters is to invoke the word “global” with regard to trade or economic interests. Even if you embrace the Trump economic agenda for enhancing U.S. competitiveness by lowering taxes and easing regulation, even if you support an “America First” approach for tackling domestic shortcomings from education to infrastructure—there is still a negative stigma attached to proposing any kind of global economic initiative.
> 
> Yet by insisting that the U.S. Treasury label China a “currency manipulator” and by promoting trade that is both free and “fair,” Mr. Trump may be laying the groundwork for a significant breakthrough in international monetary relations—one that could ultimately validate the rationale for an open global marketplace and restore genuine free trade as a vital component of economic growth.
> 
> The notion that something good might come out of a Trump policy elicits guffaws in certain economic circles. And questioning whether today’s exchange-rate regime serves the cause of beneficial cross-border commerce is tantamount to advocating protectionism. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump’s emphasis on currency manipulation brings into focus the shortcomings of our present international monetary system—volatility, persistent imbalances, currency mismatches—which testify to its dysfunction. Indeed, today’s hodgepodge of exchange-rate mechanisms is routinely described as a “non-system.” Or, as former International Monetary Fund chief Jacques de Larosière termed it at a Vienna conference in February 2014, an “anti-system.”
> 
> If monetary scholars once diligently sought to explain the relative virtues of fixed-versus-flexible exchange rates on global economic performance, they have largely abdicated any responsibility for the escalating political backlash against trade that blames currency manipulation for lost business.
> 
> RELATED ARTICLES
> 
> Monetary Reform or Trade War
> Still Paying the Price of Keynesian Currency
> The Nixon Shock Heard ‘Round the World
> 
> No serious economist would claim today that the “dirty float” intervention tactics practiced by numerous countries would be remotely acceptable within the freely flexible exchange-rate system envisaged by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman. Nor would anyone suggest that any coherent mechanism exists comparable with the fixed-rate system anchored by a gold-convertible dollar that reigned in the decades following World War II.
> 
> Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell has consistently argued for the restoration of a system of formally maintained exchange rates to reduce uncertainty and promote growth. Yet the lack of willingness among the great majority of economists to recognize the imperative for global monetary reform to avoid a breakdown in global trade relations has left policy makers in the lurch. Faced with mounting demands to address currency manipulation through “strong and enforceable provisions”—i.e., tariffs—those who support free trade are being forced to consider the broader implications of a sluggish world economy that has become overly reliant on central banks.
> 
> Is it more egregious when governments deliberately intervene in foreign-exchange markets to manipulate currencies to gain an export advantage—or when central banks seek to accomplish the same thing through monetary policy?
> 
> The point is that today’s free-for-all approach to international monetary relations permits nations to pursue any exchange-rate policy they wish. Relative currency values are thus vulnerable not only to the manipulative tactics of government authorities, but also to the speculative maneuvering of foreign-exchange traders—the most active of which, in a market that averages $4.9 trillion in daily volume, are the world’s largest banks.
> 
> No wonder so many workers employed by U.S. companies that manufacture products requiring substantial capital investment—automobiles and tractors, computer and electronic equipment—have become disenchanted with the supposed long-term benefits of free trade. It is one thing to lose sales to a foreign competitor whose product delivers the best quality for the money; it’s another to lose sales as a consequence of an unforeseen exchange-rate slide that distorts the comparative prices of competing goods.
> 
> To brand trade skeptics as sore losers is to malign them unfairly. To resent being victimized by currency movements is not the same as being opposed to free trade, nor does it signal an eagerness to engage in protectionist retaliation. It’s simply an honest response to incongruity: We need to reconcile global monetary arrangements with global trade aspirations.
> 
> As former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has observed: “Trade flows are affected more by ten minutes of movement in the currency markets than by ten years of (even successful) negotiations.”
> 
> Mr. Trump’s forceful rhetoric may help put an end to the politically correct attitude so prevalent among economists that breezily dismisses what was once accepted as a truism: Stable exchange rates foster long-term prosperity by maximizing the productive use of economic resources and financial capital. Why continue to passively accept the negative economic consequences of global monetary disorder? Why permit legitimately earned profits from business operations and investments in foreign countries to be wiped out by unpredictable currency losses? Why hold global economic growth prospects hostage to antiquated exchange-rate arrangements?
> 
> It’s time to end the intellectual vacuum and focus on serious initiatives for global monetary reform. The goal is to maximize prosperity by harnessing the power of free-market signals across borders. Monetary clarity is the key to reconciling the principles of free trade with the promised benefits of an open global marketplace.
> 
> By focusing on currency manipulation as an unfair trade practice, Mr. Trump has not only identified the crux of the economic dilemma, he has also spotlighted the social and political tensions its consequences have fostered.
> 
> Ms. Shelton, an economist, is author of “Money Meltdown” (Free Press, 1994) and co-director of the Sound Money Project at the Atlas Network, a nonprofit that promotes free markets and economic liberty.


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## a_majoor

While this article from the the Claremont Institute might be considered for the election thread, it is discussing the vast changes in social,cultural and demographics which have changed America almost beyond recognition. Fix these issues and you can fix America, failure to address these issues means failure overall:
Part 1

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/#.V83Jdt4id0g.twitter



> *The Flight 93 Election*
> By: Publius Decius Mus
> September 5, 2016
> 
> 2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
> 
> Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.
> 
> To ordinary conservative ears, this sounds histrionic. The stakes can’t be that high because they are never that high—except perhaps in the pages of Gibbon. Conservative intellectuals will insist that there has been no “end of history” and that all human outcomes are still possible. They will even—as Charles Kesler does—admit that America is in “crisis.” But how great is the crisis? Can things really be so bad if eight years of Obama can be followed by eight more of Hillary, and yet Constitutionalist conservatives can still reasonably hope for a restoration of our cherished ideals? Cruz in 2024!
> 
> Not to pick (too much) on Kesler, who is less unwarrantedly optimistic than most conservatives. And who, at least, poses the right question: Trump or Hillary? Though his answer—“even if [Trump] had chosen his policies at random, they would be sounder than Hillary’s”—is unwarrantedly ungenerous. The truth is that Trump articulated, if incompletely and inconsistently, the right stances on the right issues—immigration, trade, and war—right from the beginning.
> 
> But let us back up. One of the paradoxes—there are so many—of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A disastrously awful educational system that churns out kids who don’t know anything and, at the primary and secondary levels, can’t (or won’t) discipline disruptive punks, and at the higher levels saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. And so on and drearily on. Like that portion of the mass where the priest asks for your private intentions, fill in any dismal fact about American decline that you want and I’ll stipulate it.
> 
> Conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything. And yet these same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo. Oh, sure, they want some things to change. They want their pet ideas adopted—tax deductions for having more babies and the like. Many of them are even good ideas. But are any of them truly fundamental? Do they get to the heart of our problems?
> 
> If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.
> 
> But it’s quite obvious that conservatives don’t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff. A recent article by Matthew Continetti may be taken as representative—indeed, almost written for the purpose of illustrating the point. Continetti inquires into the “condition of America” and finds it wanting. What does Continetti propose to do about it? The usual litany of “conservative” “solutions,” with the obligatory references to decentralization, federalization, “civic renewal,” and—of course!—Burke. Which is to say, conservatism’s typical combination of the useless and inapt with the utopian and unrealizable. Decentralization and federalism are all well and good, and as a conservative, I endorse them both without reservation. But how are they going to save, or even meaningfully improve, the America that Continetti describes? What can they do against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality, and corruption? “Civic renewal” would do a lot of course, but that’s like saying health will save a cancer patient. A step has been skipped in there somewhere. How are we going to achieve “civic renewal”? Wishing for a tautology to enact itself is not a strategy.
> 
> Continetti trips over a more promising approach when he writes of “stress[ing] the ‘national interest abroad and national solidarity at home’ through foreign-policy retrenchment, ‘support to workers buffeted by globalization,’ and setting ‘tax rates and immigration levels’ to foster social cohesion." That sounds a lot like Trumpism. But the phrases that Continetti quotes are taken from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, both of whom, like Continetti, are vociferously—one might even say fanatically—anti-Trump. At least they, unlike Kesler, give Trump credit for having identified the right stance on today’s most salient issues. Yet, paradoxically, they won’t vote for Trump whereas Kesler hints that he will. It’s reasonable, then, to read into Kesler’s esoteric endorsement of Trump an implicit acknowledgment that the crisis is, indeed, pretty dire. I expect a Claremont scholar to be wiser than most other conservative intellectuals, and I am relieved not to be disappointed in this instance.
> 
> Yet we may also reasonably ask: What explains the Pollyanna-ish declinism of so many others? That is, the stance that Things-Are-Really-Bad—But-Not-So-Bad-that-We-Have-to-Consider-Anything-Really-Different! The obvious answer is that they don’t really believe the first half of that formulation. If so, like Chicken Little, they should stick a sock in it. Pecuniary reasons also suggest themselves, but let us foreswear recourse to this explanation until we have disproved all the others.
> 
> Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs—to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society—and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible.
> 
> Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.
> 
> If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal—even though we’ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you’ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn’t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it.
> 
> They will say, in words reminiscent of dorm-room Marxism—but our proposals have not been tried! Here our ideas sit, waiting to be implemented! To which I reply: eh, not really. Many conservative solutions—above all welfare reform and crime control—have been tried, and proved effective, but have nonetheless failed to stem the tide. Crime, for instance, is down from its mid-’70s and early ’90s peak—but way, way up from the historic American norm that ended when liberals took over criminal justice in the mid-’60s. And it’s rising fast today, in the teeth of ineffectual conservative complaints. And what has this temporary crime (or welfare, for that matter) decline done to stem the greater tide? The tsunami of leftism that still engulfs our every—literal and figurative—shore has receded not a bit but indeed has grown. All your (our) victories are short-lived.
> 
> More to the point, what has conservatism achieved lately? In the last 20 years? The answer—which appears to be “nothing”—might seem to lend credence to the plea that “our ideas haven’t been tried.” Except that the same conservatives who generate those ideas are in charge of selling them to the broader public. If their ideas “haven’t been tried,” who is ultimately at fault? The whole enterprise of Conservatism, Inc., reeks of failure. Its sole recent and ongoing success is its own self-preservation. Conservative intellectuals never tire of praising “entrepreneurs” and “creative destruction.” Dare to fail! they exhort businessmen. Let the market decide! Except, um, not with respect to us. Or is their true market not the political arena, but the fundraising circuit?
> 
> Only three questions matter. First, how bad are things really? Second, what do we do right now? Third, what should we do for the long term?
> 
> Conservatism, Inc.’s, “answer” to the first may, at this point, simply be dismissed. If the conservatives wish to have a serious debate, I for one am game—more than game; eager. The problem of “subjective certainty” can only be overcome by going into the agora. But my attempt to do so—the blog that Kesler mentions—was met largely with incredulity. How can they say that?! How can anyone apparently of our caste (conservative intellectuals) not merely support Trump (however lukewarmly) but offer reasons for doing do?
> 
> One of the Journal of American Greatness’s deeper arguments was that only in a corrupt republic, in corrupt times, could a Trump rise. It is therefore puzzling that those most horrified by Trump are the least willing to consider the possibility that the republic is dying. That possibility, apparently, seems to them so preposterous that no refutation is necessary.
> 
> As does, presumably, the argument that the stakes in 2016 are—everything. I should here note that I am a good deal gloomier than my (former) JAG colleagues, and that while we frequently used the royal “we” when discussing things on which we all agreed, I here speak only for myself.
> 
> How have the last two decades worked out for you, personally? If you’re a member or fellow-traveler of the Davos class, chances are: pretty well. If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.
> 
> All of Trump’s 16 Republican competitors would have ensured more of the same—as will the election of Hillary Clinton. That would be bad enough. But at least Republicans are merely reactive when it comes to wholesale cultural and political change. Their “opposition” may be in all cases ineffectual and often indistinguishable from support. But they don’t dream up inanities like 32 “genders,” elective bathrooms, single-payer, Iran sycophancy, “Islamophobia,” and Black Lives Matter. They merely help ratify them.
> 
> A Hillary presidency will be pedal-to-the-metal on the entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined in our darkest moments. Nor is even that the worst. It will be coupled with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most “advanced” Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of Germany and England. We see this already in the censorship practiced by the Davoisie’s social media enablers; in the shameless propaganda tidal wave of the mainstream media; and in the personal destruction campaigns—operated through the former and aided by the latter—of the Social Justice Warriors. We see it in Obama’s flagrant use of the IRS to torment political opponents, the gaslighting denial by the media, and the collective shrug by everyone else.
> 
> It’s absurd to assume that any of this would stop or slow—would do anything other than massively intensify—in a Hillary administration. It’s even more ridiculous to expect that hitherto useless conservative opposition would suddenly become effective. For two generations at least, the Left has been calling everyone to their right Nazis. This trend has accelerated exponentially in the last few years, helped along by some on the Right who really do seem to merit—and even relish—the label. There is nothing the modern conservative fears more than being called “racist,” so alt-right pocket Nazis are manna from heaven for the Left. But also wholly unnecessary: sauce for the goose. The Left was calling us Nazis long before any pro-Trumpers tweeted Holocaust denial memes. And how does one deal with a Nazi—that is, with an enemy one is convinced intends your destruction? You don’t compromise with him or leave him alone. You crush him.
> 
> So what do we have to lose by fighting back? Only our Washington Generals jerseys—and paychecks. But those are going away anyway. Among the many things the “Right” still doesn’t understand is that the Left has concluded that this particular show need no longer go on. They don’t think they need a foil anymore and would rather dispense with the whole bother of staging these phony contests in which each side ostensibly has a shot.
> 
> If you haven’t noticed, our side has been losing consistently since 1988. We can win midterms, but we do nothing with them. Call ours Hannibalic victories. After the Carthaginian’s famous slaughter of a Roman army at Cannae, he failed to march on an undefended Rome, prompting his cavalry commander to complain: “you know how to win a victory, but not how to use one.” And, aside from 2004’s lackluster 50.7%, we can’t win the big ones at all.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/#.V83Jdt4id0g.twitter



> Because the deck is stacked overwhelmingly against us. I will mention but three ways. First, the opinion-making elements—the universities and the media above all—are wholly corrupt and wholly opposed to everything we want, and increasingly even to our existence. (What else are the wars on “cis-genderism”—formerly known as “nature”—and on the supposed “white privilege” of broke hillbillies really about?) If it hadn’t been abundantly clear for the last 50 years, the campaign of 2015-2016 must surely have made it evident to even the meanest capacities that the intelligentsia—including all the organs through which it broadcasts its propaganda—is overwhelmingly partisan and biased. Against this onslaught, “conservative” media is a nullity, barely a whisper. It cannot be heard above the blaring of what has been aptly called “The Megaphone.”
> 
> Second, our Washington Generals self-handicap and self-censor to an absurd degree. Lenin is supposed to have said that “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” But with an opposition like ours, why bother? Our “leaders” and “dissenters” bend over backward to play by the self-sabotaging rules the Left sets for them. Fearful, beaten dogs have more thymos.
> 
> Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.
> 
> It’s also why they treat open borders as the “absolute value,” the one “principle” that—when their “principles” collide—they prioritize above all the others. If that fact is insufficiently clear, consider this. Trump is the most liberal Republican nominee since Thomas Dewey. He departs from conservative orthodoxy in so many ways that National Review still hasn’t stopped counting. But let’s stick to just the core issues animating his campaign. On trade, globalization, and war, Trump is to the left (conventionally understood) not only of his own party, but of his Democratic opponent. And yet the Left and the junta are at one with the house-broken conservatives in their determination—desperation—not merely to defeat Trump but to destroy him. What gives?
> 
> Oh, right—there’s that other issue. The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America’s inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever greater “diversity.” The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance is a form of noblesse oblige. The Republicans and the “conservatives”? Both of course desperately want absolution from the charge of “racism.” For the latter, this at least makes some sense. No Washington General can take the court—much less cash his check—with that epithet dancing over his head like some Satanic Spirit. But for the former, this priestly grace comes at the direct expense of their worldly interests. Do they honestly believe that the right enterprise zone or charter school policy will arouse 50.01% of our newer voters to finally reveal their “natural conservatism” at the ballot box? It hasn’t happened anywhere yet and shows no signs that it ever will. But that doesn’t stop the Republican refrain: more, more, more! No matter how many elections they lose, how many districts tip forever blue, how rarely (if ever) their immigrant vote cracks 40%, the answer is always the same. Just like Angela Merkel after yet another rape, shooting, bombing, or machete attack. More, more, more!
> 
> This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.
> 
> Yes, Trump is worse than imperfect. So what? We can lament until we choke the lack of a great statesman to address the fundamental issues of our time—or, more importantly, to connect them. Since Pat Buchanan’s three failures, occasionally a candidate arose who saw one piece: Dick Gephardt on trade, Ron Paul on war, Tom Tancredo on immigration. Yet, among recent political figures—great statesmen, dangerous demagogues, and mewling gnats alike—only Trump-the-alleged-buffoon not merely saw all three and their essential connectivity, but was able to win on them. The alleged buffoon is thus more prudent—more practically wise—than all of our wise-and-good who so bitterly oppose him. This should embarrass them. That their failures instead embolden them is only further proof of their foolishness and hubris.
> 
> Which they self-laud as “consistency”—adherence to “conservative principle,” defined by the 1980 campaign and the household gods of reigning conservative think-tanks. A higher consistency in the service of the national interest apparently eludes them. When America possessed a vast, empty continent and explosively growing industry, high immigration was arguably good policy. (Arguably: Ben Franklin would disagree.) It hasn’t made sense since World War I. Free trade was unquestionably a great boon to the American worker in the decades after World War II. We long ago passed the point of diminishing returns. The Gulf War of 1991 was a strategic victory for American interests. No conflict since then has been. Conservatives either can’t see this—or, worse, those who can nonetheless treat the only political leader to mount a serious challenge to the status quo (more immigration, more trade, more war) as a unique evil.
> 
> Trump’s vulgarity is in fact a godsend to the conservatives. It allows them to hang their public opposition on his obvious shortcomings and to ignore or downplay his far greater strengths, which should be even more obvious but in corrupt times can be deliberately obscured by constant references to his faults. That the Left would make the campaign all about the latter is to be expected. Why would the Right? Some—a few—are no doubt sincere in their belief that the man is simply unfit for high office. David Frum, who has always been an immigration skeptic and is a convert to the less-war position, is sincere when he says that, even though he agrees with much of Trump’s agenda, he cannot stomach Trump. But for most of the other #NeverTrumpers, is it just a coincidence that they also happen to favor Invade the World, Invite the World?
> 
> Another question JAG raised without provoking any serious attempt at refutation was whether, in corrupt times, it took a … let’s say ... “loudmouth” to rise above the din of The Megaphone. We, or I, speculated: “yes.” Suppose there had arisen some statesman of high character—dignified, articulate, experienced, knowledgeable—the exact opposite of everything the conservatives claim to hate about Trump. Could this hypothetical paragon have won on Trump’s same issues? Would the conservatives have supported him? I would have—even had he been a Democrat.
> 
> Back on planet earth, that flight of fancy at least addresses what to do now. The answer to the subsidiary question—will it work?—is much less clear. By “it” I mean Trumpism, broadly defined as secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy. We Americans have chosen, in our foolishness, to disunite the country through stupid immigration, economic, and foreign policies. The level of unity America enjoyed before the bipartisan junta took over can never be restored.
> 
> But we can probably do better than we are doing now. First, stop digging. No more importing poverty, crime, and alien cultures. We have made institutions, by leftist design, not merely abysmal at assimilation but abhorrent of the concept. We should try to fix that, but given the Left’s iron grip on every school and cultural center, that’s like trying to bring democracy to Russia. A worthy goal, perhaps, but temper your hopes—and don’t invest time and resources unrealistically.
> 
> By contrast, simply building a wall and enforcing immigration law will help enormously, by cutting off the flood of newcomers that perpetuates ethnic separatism and by incentivizing the English language and American norms in the workplace. These policies will have the added benefit of aligning the economic interests of, and (we may hope) fostering solidarity among, the working, lower middle, and middle classes of all races and ethnicities. The same can be said for Trumpian trade policies and anti-globalization instincts. Who cares if productivity numbers tick down, or if our already somnambulant GDP sinks a bit further into its pillow? Nearly all the gains of the last 20 years have accrued to the junta anyway. It would, at this point, be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice—only to ensure that it and eight of the other nine go first to the government and its rentiers, and the rest to the same four industries and 200 families.
> 
> Will this work? Ask a pessimist, get a pessimistic answer. So don’t ask. Ask instead: is it worth trying? Is it better than the alternative? If you can’t say, forthrightly, “yes,” you are either part of the junta, a fool, or a conservative intellectual.
> 
> And if it doesn’t work, what then? We’ve established that most “conservative” anti-Trumpites are in the Orwellian sense objectively pro-Hillary. What about the rest of you? If you recognize the threat she poses, but somehow can’t stomach him, have you thought about the longer term? The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate.
> 
> But for those of you who are sober: can you sketch a more plausible long-term future than the prior four following a Trump defeat? I can’t either.
> 
> The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.


----------



## a_majoor

WRM on the "real world", and how it does not conform to the viewpoint of liberal internationalists. This is a lesson that other Western leaders should take on board as well, since many of their actions seem at variance to the reality on the ground.

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/09/09/its-kim-jong-uns-world-were-just-living-in-it/



> *It’s Kim Jong-un’s World; We’re Just Living In It*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> 
> We don’t live in the world the “liberal internationalists” have imagined exists; we live in a world where, more and more, the law of the jungle applies.
> 
> News that North Korea has detonated another bomb comes as no surprise; few things are as obvious in this crazy world as the fact that this murderous dictatorship is making steady progress on its weapons program. The Norks are getting better and better at making more powerful bombs and longer range missiles to put them on. President Obama, like Presidents Clinton and Bush before him, sputters indignantly and wrings his hands, but the tick-tock tick-tock of North Korean nuclear build-up goes on.
> 
> This tells us many things. It tells us that the security situation is going to continue to deteriorate in East Asia. It tells us that China has resigned itself to an era of confrontation with Japan. It tells us that both South Korea and Japan are losing confidence in America’s will and ability to do anything serious about the scariest security problem they face.
> 
> Beyond that, it’s a harsh reminder that, despite the illusions and the optimism of the liberal internationalists among us, the world still runs much the same way it did one hundred years ago. When hard power fails, all the UN Declarations of Human Rights, all the Security Council resolutions, all the noble speeches about the “international community” are just so much hot air.
> 
> Kim Jong-un is getting away with a nuclear build-up and a murderous dictatorship because he can. In theory, the world’s great powers have the ability to stop him. In practice, they are too divided, too busy knifing each other in the back, to cooperate against even a very small and poor country. China won’t cooperate with the United States to stop North Korea because the government in Beijing doesn’t think it is in its national interest to do so. The United States can’t compel China to change its mind about its Korea policy because we lack the strength.
> Syrian refugees understand what kind of world we live in; so do the starving people of Aleppo. The victims of Boko Haram, now faced with a famine, get it, too. We don’t live in the world the “liberal internationalists” have imagined exists; we live in a world where, more and more, the law of the jungle applies.
> 
> We should not forget that stopping the North Korean nuclear program has been at the center of U.S. foreign policy since the Clinton Administration. Back in the 1990s, everyone praised the Clinton Administration for negotiating a peaceful conclusion to the North Korean nuclear program. The decision not to attack the North but to trust to the healing powers of diplomacy was almost universally applauded. It may still have been the right thing to do, but one can hardly call it a success.
> 
> President Obama has made non-proliferation one of his core goals; what hopes he has of a serious foreign policy legacy rest on the Iran nuclear deal (in many ways a less robust arrangement than Clinton’s deal with the Norks) and the essentially illusory climate agreement that he and Xi hyped in Beijing. That the Norks should mark President Obama’s final departure from the region he placed at the center of his foreign policy career with the largest nuclear blast in their history is, in its way, fitting; it is a useful reminder of how history actually works.
> 
> The problem isn’t that the goals of the liberal internationalists are bad goals. They are excellent goals: no war, the spread of democracy and human rights, limits on weapons of mass destruction, strong institutions. The world they dream of is a much better world than the one we have now. And the liberal internationalists are also right that the world can’t afford to go on in the old way. Given 21st century technology and the vulnerability of our large urban populations to anything that disrupts the intricate networks on which we all depend, old-fashioned great-power politics with its precarious balance of power shored up by recurring wars is a recipe for utter disaster and, maybe, the annihilation of the human race.
> 
> But the difficulty that over and over sinks hopeful efforts by liberal internationalists is this: Liberal internationalist methods won’t achieve liberal internationalist goals. Power, not communiqués, is what makes the world go round.
> 
> We move in the general direction of a liberal world system when a potentially dominant liberal power forms a strong coalition with like-minded allies, and when that liberal power acts wisely, purposefully and at times unilaterally in the service of liberal order. We move in that general direction, but we are very unlikely to get there. Much of the world dislikes liberal order. Sometimes this is for religious reasons, as in much of the Islamic world. Sometimes it is for power-political reasons, in countries like Russia and China that want to topple the United States from its dominant global position, and that see liberal principles as a threat to their social order and power. Sometimes it is because the United States doesn’t always know what it is doing, and while we are more powerful than other countries we aren’t smarter or better than other people. That means that we frequently get it wrong, and in the name of liberal order we do things that other people quite rightly resist.
> 
> The dream of some liberal internationalists, that someday a beautiful world system will arise that will essentially get other countries to follow the U.S. vision of liberal order without U.S. power to back it, is an illusion. Too many people see the world in too many different ways, too many countries have interests that widely diverge, and, at the end of the day, passion and emotions play too great a role in human psychology, and human reason is too weak and too biased an instrument, for a beautiful and self-sustaining world order to rise up like Botticelli’s Venus out of the waves.
> 
> Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has had the power and the alliance networks to move the world toward liberal order. We have sometimes acted wisely and purposefully in the service of that agenda, but even at our best our concepts of liberal order were too crude to work as well as we hoped. Too often, our actions were foolish and misguided.  The last two Presidents in particular, Bush and Obama, were not up to the tasks of world leadership.The last two Presidents in particular, Bush and Obama, were not up to the tasks of world leadership. Both are good men in their way, both sought the good as they saw it, but the wisdom fairy failed to stop by the White House. They were relatively young, they were relatively inexperienced in foreign affairs, they were under the thrall of inadequate ideas and they placed too much faith in their instincts just when they should have been doubting themselves.
> 
> No country, and especially no democracy, is ever going to be guided by an unbroken succession of great leaders. This is one of the reasons we’ll never reach the liberal internationalist goal; neither we nor anybody else is going to throw up a string of leaders with enough genius, wisdom, and will to get us there. There are more Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas than Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts in the gene pool, and most U.S. presidents, like most leaders in other countries, have been mediocre at best.
> 
> However we assign the blame, and there is plenty to go around, it’s been increasingly clear since 2001 that the world’s progress toward a stable and liberal world order began to slow under Bush and has reversed under Obama. The world is less peaceful, less stable and less liberal today than it was when Barack Obama took the oath of office in January, 2009; Kim Jong-un’s latest nuclear test, and the lack of an effective response by the United States, is merely a sign of the times.


----------



## a_majoor

Counterpoint: The election is lost regardless of who sits in the White House; the American experiment with a democratic Republic is ending. What comes after is open to question.

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/after-the-republic/



> *After the Republic*
> By: Angelo M. Codevilla
> September 27, 2016
> 
> Over the past half century, the Reagan years notwithstanding, our ruling class’s changing preferences and habits have transformed public and private life in America. As John Marini shows in his essay, “Donald Trump and the American Crisis,” this has resulted in citizens morphing into either this class’s “stakeholders” or its subjects. And, as Publius Decius Mus argues, “America and the West” now are so firmly “on a trajectory toward something very bad” that it is no longer reasonable to hope that “all human outcomes are still possible,” by which he means restoration of the public and private practices that made the American republic. In fact, the 2016 election is sealing the United States’s transition from that republic to some kind of empire.
> 
> Electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump cannot change that trajectory. Because each candidate represents constituencies hostile to republicanism, each in its own way, these individuals are not what this election is about. This election is about whether the Democratic Party, the ruling class’s enforcer, will impose its tastes more strongly and arbitrarily than ever, or whether constituencies opposed to that rule will get some ill-defined chance to strike back. Regardless of the election’s outcome, the republic established by America’s Founders is probably gone. But since the Democratic Party’s constituencies differ radically from their opponents’, and since the character of imperial governance depends inherently on the emperor, the election’s result will make a big difference in our lives.
> 
> Many Enemies, Few Friends
> 
> The overriding question of 2016 has been how eager the American people are to reject the bipartisan class that has ruled this country contrary to its majority’s convictions. Turned out, eager enough to throw out the baby with the dirty bathwater. The ruling class’s united front in response to the 2008 financial crisis had ignited the Tea Party’s call for adherence to the Constitution, and led to elections that gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican Party. But as Republicans became full partners in the ruling class’s headlong rush in what most considered disastrous directions, Americans lost faith in the Constitution’s power to restrain the wrecking of their way of life.
> 
> From the primary season’s outset, the Democratic Party’s candidates promised even more radical “transformations.” When, rarely, they have been asked what gives them the right to do such things they have acted as if the only answer were Nancy Pelosi’s reply to whether the Constitution allows the government to force us into Obamacare: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?”
> 
> On the Republican side, 17 hopefuls promised much, without dealing with the primordial fact that, in today’s America, those in power basically do what they please. Executive orders, phone calls, and the right judge mean a lot more than laws. They even trump state referenda. Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. As for the Supreme Court, the American people have seen it invent rights where there were none—e.g., abortion—while trammeling ones that had been the republic’s spine, such as the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. The Court taught Americans that the word “public” can mean “private” (Kelo v. City of New London), that “penalty” can mean “tax” (King v. Burwell), and that holding an opinion contrary to its own can only be due to an “irrational animus” (Obergefell v. Hodges).
> 
> What goes by the name “constitutional law” has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose “discrimination” for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it “could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.” California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.
> 
> This arbitrary power, whose rabid guard-dog growls and barks: “Racist! Sexist! Homophobic!” has transformed our lives by removing restraints on government. The American Bar Association’s new professional guidelines expose lawyers to penalties for insufficient political correctness. Performing abortions or at least training to perform them may be imposed as a requirement for licensing doctors, nurses, and hospitals that offer services to the general public.
> 
> Addressing what it would take to reestablish the primacy of fundamental rights would have required Republican candidates to reset the Civil Rights movement on sound constitutional roots. Surprised they didn’t do it?
> 
> No one running for the GOP nomination discussed the greatest violation of popular government’s norms—never mind the Constitution—to have occurred in two hundred years, namely, the practice, agreed upon by mainstream Republicans and Democrats, of rolling all of the government’s expenditures into a single bill. This eliminates elected officials’ responsibility for any of the government’s actions, and reduces them either to approving all that the government does without reservation, or the allegedly revolutionary, disloyal act of “shutting down the government.”
> 
> Rather than talk about how to restrain or shrink government, Republican candidates talked about how to do more with government. The Wall Street Journal called that “having a positive agenda.” Hence, Republicans by and large joined the Democrats in relegating the U.S. Constitution to history’s dustbin.
> 
> Because Republicans largely agree with Democrats that they need not take seriously the founders’ Constitution, today’s American regime is now what Max Weber had called the Tsarist regime on the eve of the Revolution: “fake constitutionalism.” Because such fakery is self-discrediting and removes anyone’s obligation to restrain his passions, it is a harbinger of revolution and of imperial power.
> 
> The ruling class having chosen raw power over law and persuasion, the American people reasonably concluded that raw power is the only way to counter it, and looked for candidates who would do that. Hence, even constitutional scholar Ted Cruz stopped talking about the constitutional implications of President Obama’s actions after polls told him that the public was more interested in what he would do to reverse them, niceties notwithstanding. Had Cruz become the main alternative to the Democratic Party’s dominion, the American people might have been presented with the option of reverting to the rule of law. But that did not happen. Both of the choices before us presuppose force, not law.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2



> A Change of Regimes
> 
> All ruling classes are what Shakespeare called the “makers of manners.” Plato, in The Republic, and Aristotle, in his Politics, teach that polities reflect the persons who rise to prominence within them, whose habits the people imitate, and who set the tone of life in them. Thus a polity can change as thoroughly as a chorus changes from comedy to tragedy depending on the lyrics and music. Obviously, the standards and tone of life that came from Abraham Lincoln’s Oval Office is quite opposite from what came from the same place when Bill Clinton used it. Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm was arguably the world’s most polite society. Under Hitler, it became the most murderous.
> 
> In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class's chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.
> 
> And, because the ruling class blurs the distinction between public and private business, connection to that class has become the principal way of getting rich in America. Not so long ago, the way to make it here was to start a business that satisfied customers’ needs better than before. Nowadays, more businesses die each year than are started. In this century, all net additions in employment have come from the country’s 1,500 largest corporations. Rent-seeking through influence on regulations is the path to wealth. In the professions, competitive exams were the key to entry and advancement not so long ago. Now, you have to make yourself acceptable to your superiors. More important, judicial decisions and administrative practice have divided Americans into “protected classes”—possessed of special privileges and immunities—and everybody else. Equality before the law and equality of opportunity are memories. Co-option is the path to power. Ever wonder why the quality of our leaders has been declining with each successive generation?
> 
> Moreover, since the Kennedy reform of 1965, and with greater speed since 2009, the ruling class’s immigration policy has changed the regime by introducing some 60 million people—roughly a fifth of our population—from countries and traditions different from, if not hostile, to ours. Whereas earlier immigrants earned their way to prosperity, a disproportionate percentage of post-1965 arrivals have been encouraged to become dependents of the state. Equally important, the ruling class chose to reverse America’s historic practice of assimilating immigrants, emphasizing instead what divides them from other Americans. Whereas Lincoln spoke of binding immigrants by “the electric cord” of the founders’ principles, our ruling class treats these principles as hypocrisy. All this without votes or law; just power.
> 
> Foul is Fair and Fair is Foul
> 
> In short, precisely as the classics defined regime change, people and practices that had been at society’s margins have been brought to its center, while people and ideas that had been central have been marginalized.
> 
> Fifty years ago, prayer in the schools was near universal, but no one was punished for not praying. Nowadays, countless people are arrested or fired for praying on school property. West Point’s commanding general reprimanded the football coach for his team’s thanksgiving prayer. Fifty years ago, bringing sexually explicit stuff into schools was treated as a crime, as was “procuring abortion.” Nowadays, schools contract with Planned Parenthood to teach sex, and will not tell parents when they take girls to PP facilities for abortions. Back then, many schools worked with the National Rifle Association to teach gun handling and marksmanship. Now students are arrested and expelled merely for pointing their finger and saying “bang.” In those benighted times, boys who ventured into the girls’ bathroom were expelled as perverts. Now, girls are suspended for objecting to boys coming into the girls’ room under pretense of transgenderism. The mainstreaming of pornography, the invention of abortion as the most inalienable of human rights and, most recently, the designation of opposition to homosexual marriage as a culpable psychosis—none of which is dictated by law enacted by elected officials—is enforced as if it had been. No surprise that America has experienced a drastic drop in the formation of families, with the rise of rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites equal to the rates among blacks that was recognized as disastrous a half-century ago, the near-disappearance of two-parent families among blacks, and the social dislocations attendant to all that.
> 
> Ever since the middle of the 20th century our ruling class, pursuing hazy concepts of world order without declarations of war, has sacrificed American lives first in Korea, then in Vietnam, and now throughout the Muslim world. By denigrating Americans who call for peace, or for wars unto victory over America’s enemies; by excusing or glorifying those who take our enemies’ side or who disrespect the American flag; our rulers have drawn down the American regime’s credit and eroded the people’s patriotism.
> 
> As the ruling class destroyed its own authority, it wrecked the republic’s as well. This is no longer the “land where our fathers died,” nor even the country that won World War II. It would be surprising if any society, its identity altered and its most fundamental institutions diminished, had continued to function as before. Ours sure does not, and it is difficult to imagine how it can do so ever again. We can be sure only that the revolution underway among us, like all others, will run its unpredictable course.
> 
> All we know is the choice that faces us at this stage: either America continues in the same direction, but faster and without restraint, or there’s the hazy possibility of something else.


----------



## a_majoor

Part 3



> Imperial Alternatives
> 
> The consequences of empowering today’s Democratic Party are crystal clear. The Democratic Party—regardless of its standard bearer—would use its victory to drive the transformations that it has already wrought on America to quantitative and qualitative levels that not even its members can imagine. We can be sure of that because what it has done and is doing is rooted in a logic that has animated the ruling class for a century, and because that logic has shaped the minds and hearts of millions of this class’s members, supporters, and wannabes.
> 
> That logic’s essence, expressed variously by Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson, FDR’s brains trust, intellectuals of both the old and the new Left, choked back and blurted out by progressive politicians, is this: America’s constitutional republic had given the American people too much latitude to be who they are, that is: religiously and socially reactionary, ignorant, even pathological, barriers to Progress. Thankfully, an enlightened minority exists with the expertise and the duty to disperse the religious obscurantism, the hypocritical talk of piety, freedom, and equality, which excuses Americans’ racism, sexism, greed, and rape of the environment. As we progressives take up our proper responsibilities, Americans will no longer live politically according to their prejudices; they will be ruled administratively according to scientific knowledge.
> 
> Progressivism’s programs have changed over time. But its disdain for how other Americans live and think has remained fundamental. More than any commitment to principles, programs, or way of life, this is its paramount feature. The media reacted to Hillary Clinton’s remark that “half of Trump’s supporters could be put into a ‘basket of deplorables’” as if these sentiments were novel and peculiar to her. In fact, these are unremarkable restatements of our ruling class’s perennial creed.
> 
> The pseudo-intellectual argument for why these “deplorables” have no right to their opinions is that giving equal consideration to people and positions that stand in the way of Progress is “false equivalence,” as President Obama has put it. But the same idea has been expressed most recently and fully by New York Times CEO Mark Thompson, as well as Times columnists Jim Rutenberg, Timothy Egan, and William Davies. In short, devotion to truth means not reporting on Donald Trump and people like him as if they or anything they say might be of value.
> 
> If trying to persuade irredeemable socio-political inferiors is no more appropriate than arguing with animals, why not just write them off by sticking dismissive names on them? Doing so is less challenging, and makes you feel superior. Why wrestle with the statistical questions implicit in Darwin when you can just dismiss Christians as Bible-thumpers? Why bother arguing for Progressivism’s superiority when you can construct “scientific” studies like Theodor Adorno’s, proving that your opponents suffer from degrees of “fascism” and other pathologies? This is a well-trod path. Why, to take an older example, should General Omar Bradley have bothered trying to refute Douglas MacArthur’s statement that in war there is no substitute for victory when calling MacArthur and his supporters “primitives” did the trick? Why wrestle with our climate’s complexities when you can make up your own “models,” being sure that your class will treat them as truth?
> 
> What priorities will the ruling class’s notion of scientific truth dictate to the next Democratic administration? Because rejecting that true and false, right and wrong are objectively ascertainable is part of this class’s DNA, no corpus of fact or canon of reason restrains it or defines its end-point. Its definition of “science” is neither more nor less than what “scientists say” at any given time. In practice, that means “Science R-Us,” now and always, exclusively. Thus has come to pass what President Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his 1960 Farewell address: “A steadily increasing share [of science] is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.… [T]he free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution…a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Hence, said Ike, “The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded.” The result has been that academics rise through government grants while the government exercises power by claiming to act on science’s behalf. If you don’t bow to the authority of the power that says what is and is not so, you are an obscurantist or worse.
> 
> Under our ruling class, “truth” has morphed from the reflection of objective reality to whatever has “normative pull”—i.e., to what furthers the ruling class’s agenda, whatever that might be at any given time. That is the meaning of the term “political correctness,” as opposed to factual correctness.
> 
> It’s the Contempt, Stupid!
> 
> Who, a generation ago, could have guessed that careers and social standing could be ruined by stating the fact that the paramount influence on the earth’s climate is the sun, that its output of energy varies and with it the climate? Who, a decade ago, could have predicted that stating that marriage is the union of a man and a woman would be treated as a culpable sociopathy, or just yesterday that refusing to let certifiably biological men into women’s bathrooms would disqualify you from mainstream society? Or that saying that the lives of white people “matter” as much as those of blacks is evidence of racism? These strictures came about quite simply because some sectors of the ruling class felt like inflicting them on the rest of America. Insulting presumed inferiors proved to be even more important to the ruling class than the inflictions’ substance.
> 
> How far will our rulers go? Because their network is mutually supporting, they will go as far as they want. Already, there is pressure from ruling class constituencies, as well as academic arguments, for morphing the concept of “hate crime” into the criminalization of “hate speech”—which means whatever these loving folks hate. Of course this is contrary to the First Amendment, and a wholesale negation of freedom. But it is no more so than the negation of freedom of association that is already eclipsing religious freedom in the name anti-discrimination. It is difficult to imagine a Democratic president, Congress, and Supreme Court standing in the way.
> 
> Above all, these inflictions, as well as the ruling class’s acceptance of its own members’ misbehavior, came about because millions of its supporters were happy, or happy enough, to support them in the interest of maintaining their own status in a ruling coalition while discomfiting their socio-political opponents. Consider, for example, how republic-killing an event was the ruling class’s support of President Bill Clinton in the wake of his nationally televised perjury. Subsequently, as constituencies of supporters have effectively condoned officials’ abusive, self-serving, and even outright illegal behavior, they have encouraged more and more of it while inuring themselves to it. That is how republics turn into empires from the roots up.
> 
> But it is also true, as Mao Tse-Tung used to say, “a fish begins to rot at the head.” If you want to understand why any and all future Democratic Party administrations can only be empires dedicated to injuring and insulting their subjects, look first at their intellectual leaders’ rejection of the American republic’s most fundamental principles.
> 
> The Declaration of Independence says that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights—codified in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights—are not civil rights that governments may define. The free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, keeping and bearing arms, freedom from warrantless searches, protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, trial by jury of one’s peers, etc., are natural rights that pertain to human beings as such. Securing them for Americans is what the United States is all about. But today’s U.S. Civil Rights Commission advocates truncating the foremost of these rights because, as it stated in a recent report, “Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon those civil rights.” The report explains why the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights should not be permissible: “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy, or any form of intolerance.”
> 
> Hillary Clinton’s attack on Trump supporters merely matched the ruling class’s current common sense. Why should government workers and all who wield the administrative state’s unaccountable powers not follow their leaders’ judgment, backed by the prestige press, about who are to be treated as citizens and who is to be handled as deplorable refuse? Hillary Clinton underlined once again how the ruling class regards us, and about what it has in store for us.
> 
> Electing Donald Trump would result in an administration far less predictable than any Democratic one. In fact, what Trump would or would not do, could or could not do, pales into insignificance next to the certainty of what any Democrat would do. That is what might elect Trump.
> 
> The character of an eventual Trump Administration is unpredictable because speculating about Trump’s mind is futile. It is equally futile to guess how he might react to the mixture of flattery and threats sure to be leveled against him. The entire ruling class—Democrats and Republicans, the bulk of the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the press—would do everything possible to thwart him; and the constituencies that chose him as their candidate, and that might elect him, are surely not united and are by no means clear about the demands they would press. Moreover, it is anyone’s guess whom he would appoint and how he would balance his constituencies’ pressures against those of the ruling class.
> 
> Never before has such a large percentage of Americans expressed alienation from their leaders, resentment, even fear. Some two-thirds of Americans believe that elected and appointed officials—plus the courts, the justice system, business leaders, educators—are leading the country in the wrong direction: that they are corrupt, do more harm than good, make us poorer, get us into wars and lose them. Because this majority sees no one in the political mainstream who shares their concerns, because it lacks confidence that the system can be fixed, it is eager to empower whoever might flush the system and its denizens with something like an ungentle enema.
> 
> Yet the persons who express such revolutionary sentiments are not a majority ready to support a coherent imperial program to reverse the course of America’s past half-century. Temperamentally conservative, these constituencies had been most attached to the Constitution and been counted as the bedrock of stability. They are not yet wholly convinced that there is little left to conserve. What they want, beyond an end to the ruling class’s outrages, has never been clear. This is not surprising, given that the candidates who appeal to their concerns do so with mere sound bites. Hence they chose as the presidential candidate of the nominal opposition party the man who combined the most provocative anti-establishment sounds with reassurance that it won’t take much to bring back good old America: Donald Trump. But bringing back good old America would take an awful lot. What could he do to satisfy them?
> 
> Trump’s propensity for treating pronouncements on policy as flags to be run up and down the flagpole as he measures the volume of the applause does not deprive them of all significance—especially the ones that confirm his anti-establishment bona fides. These few policy items happen to be the ones by which he gained his anti-establishment reputation in the first place: 1) opposition to illegal immigration, especially the importation of Muslims whom Americans reasonably perceive as hostile to us; 2) law and order: stop excusing rioters and coddling criminals; 3) build a wall, throw out the illegals, let in only people who are vetted and certified as supporters of our way of life (that’s the way it was when I got my immigrant visa in 1955), and keep out anybody we can’t be sure isn’t a terrorist. Trump’s tentative, partial retreat from a bit of the latter nearly caused his political standing to implode, prompting the observation that doing something similar regarding abortion would end his political career. That is noteworthy because, although Trump’s support of the pro-life cause is lukewarm at best, it is the defining commitment for much of his constituency. The point here is that, regardless of his own sentiments, Trump cannot wholly discount his constituencies’ demands for a forceful turn away from the country’s current direction.
> 
> Trump’s slogan—“make America great again”—is the broadest, most unspecific, common denominator of non-ruling-class Americans’ diverse dissatisfaction with what has happened to the country. He talks about reasserting America’s identity, at least by controlling the borders; governing in America’s own interest rather than in pursuit of objectives of which the American people have not approved; stopping the export of jobs and removing barriers to business; and banishing political correctness’s insults and injuries. But all that together does not amount to making America great again. Nor does Trump begin to explain what it was that had made this country great to millions who have known only an America much diminished.
> 
> In fact, the United States of America was great because of a whole bunch of things that now are gone. Yes, the ruling class led the way in personal corruption, cheating on tests, lowering of professional standards, abandoning churches and synagogues for the Playboy Philosophy and lifestyle, disregarding law, basing economic life on gaming the administrative state, basing politics on conflicting identities, and much more. But much of the rest of the country followed. What would it take to make America great again—or indeed to make any of the changes that Trump’s voters demand? Replacing the current ruling class would be only the beginning.
> 
> Because it is difficult to imagine a Trump presidency even thinking about something so monumental as replacing an entire ruling elite, much less leading his constituency to accomplishing it, electing Trump is unlikely to result in a forceful turn away from the country’s current direction. Continuing pretty much on the current trajectory under the same class will further fuel revolutionary sentiments in the land all by itself. Inevitable disappointment with Trump is sure to add to them.
> 
> We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.


----------



## a_majoor

Laying out the root causes of the culture wars. The source is very interesting:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/



> *How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind*
> David Wong ·October 12, 2016·1,741,424 views
> 
> I'm going to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon in three movies. And then some text.
> 
> There's this universal shorthand that epic adventure movies use to tell the good guys from the bad. The good guys are simple folk from the countryside ...
> 
> ... while the bad guys are decadent assholes who live in the city and wear stupid clothes:
> 
> 
> In Star Wars, Luke is a farm boy ...
> 
> ... while the bad guys live in a shiny space station:
> 
> In Braveheart, the main character (Dennis Braveheart) is a simple farmer ...
> 
> ... and the dastardly Prince Shithead lives in a luxurious castle and wears fancy, foppish clothes
> 
> The theme expresses itself in several ways -- primitive vs. advanced, tough vs. delicate, masculine vs. feminine, poor vs. rich, pure vs. decadent, traditional vs. weird. All of it is code for rural vs. urban. That tense divide between the two doesn't exist because of these movies, obviously. These movies used it as shorthand because the divide already existed.
> 
> We country folk are programmed to hate the prissy elites. That brings us to Trump.
> 
> 6 It's Not About Red And Blue States -- It's About The Country Vs. The City
> 
> I was born and raised in Trump country. My family are Trump people. If I hadn't moved away and gotten this ridiculous job, I'd be voting for him. I know I would.
> 
> See, political types talk about "red states" and "blue states" (where red = Republican/conservative and blue = Democrat/progressive), but forget about states. If you want to understand the Trump phenomenon, dig up the much more detailed county map. Here's how the nation voted county by county in the 2012 election -- again, red is Republican:
> 
> Holy cockslaps, that makes it look like Obama's blue party is some kind of fringe political faction that struggles to get 20 percent of the vote. The blue parts, however, are more densely populated -- they're the cities. In the upper left, you see the blue Seattle/Tacoma area, lower down is San Francisco and then L.A. The blue around the dick-shaped Lake Michigan is made of cities like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago. In the northeast is, of course, New York and Boston, leading down into Philadelphia, which leads into a blue band which connects a bunch of southern cities like Charlotte and Atlanta.
> 
> Blue islands in an ocean of red. The cities are less than 4 percent of the land mass, but 62 percent of the population and easily 99 percent of the popular culture. Our movies, shows, songs, and news all radiate out from those blue islands.
> 
> And if you live in the red, that fucking sucks.
> 
> See, I'm from a "blue" state -- Illinois -- but the state isn't blue. Freaking Chicago is blue. I'm from a tiny town in one of the blood-red areas:
> 
> As a kid, visiting Chicago was like, well, Katniss visiting the capital. Or like Zoey visiting the city of the future in this ridiculous book. "Their ways are strange."
> 
> And the whole goddamned world revolves around them.
> 
> Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes -- either wide-eyed, naive fluffballs (Parks And Recreation, and before that, Newhart) or filthy murderous mutants (True Detective, and before that, Deliverance). You could feel the arrogance from hundreds of miles away.
> 
> "Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage.
> 
> But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters.
> 
> To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"
> 
> 5 City People Are From A Different Goddamned Planet
> 
> "But isn't this really about race? Aren't Trump supporters just a bunch of racists? Don't they hate cities because that's where the brown people live?"
> 
> Look, we're going to get actual Nazis in the comment section of this article. Not "calling them Nazis for argument points" Nazis, but actual "Swastikas in their avatars, rooted against Indiana Jones" Nazis. Those people exist.
> 
> But what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine ... as long as they acted exactly like us.
> 
> If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have said the fear and hatred wasn't of people with brown skin, but of that specific tribe they have in Chicago -- you know, the guys with the weird slang, music and clothes, the dope fiends who murder everyone they see. It was all part of the bizarro nature of the cities, as perceived from afar -- a combination of hyper-aggressive savages and frivolous white elites. Their ways are strange. And it wasn't like pop culture was trying to talk me out of it:
> 
> It's not just perception, either -- the stats back up the fact that these are parallel universes. People living in the countryside are twice as likely to own a gun and will probably get married younger. People in the urban "blue" areas talk faster and walk faster. They are more likely to be drug abusers but less likely to be alcoholics. The blues are less likely to own land and, most importantly, they're less likely to be Evangelical Christians.
> 
> A day without hellfire and brimstone is like a day without sunshine.
> 
> In the small towns, this often gets expressed as "They don't share our values!" and my progressive friends love to scoff at that. "What, like illiteracy and homophobia?!?!"
> 
> Nope. Everything.
> 
> 4 Trends Always Start In The Cities -- And Not All Of Them Are Good
> 
> The cities are always living in the future. I remember when our little town got our first Chinese restaurant and, 20 years later, its first fancy coffee shop. All of this stuff had turned up in movies (set in L.A., of course) decades earlier. I remember watching '80s movies and mocking the "Valley Girl" stereotypes -- young girls from, like, California who would, like, say, "like" in between every third word. Twenty years later, you can hear me doing the same in every Cracked podcast. The cancer started in L.A. and spread to the rest of America.
> 
> Well, the perception back then was that those city folks were all turning atheist, abandoning church for their bisexual sex parties. That, we were told, was literally a sign of the Apocalypse. Not just due to the spiritual consequences (which were dire), but the devastation that would come to the culture. I couldn't imagine any rebuttal. In that place, at that time, the church was everything. Don't take my word for it -- listen to the experts:
> 
> Church was where you made friends, met girls, networked for jobs, got social support. The poor could get food and clothes there, couples could get advice on their marriages, addicts could try to get clean. But now we're seeing a startling decline in Christianity among the general population, the godless disease having spread alongside Valley Girl talk. So according to Fox News, what's the result of those decadent, atheist, amoral snobs in the cities having turned their noses up at God?
> 
> Chaos.
> 
> The fabric has broken down, they say, just as predicted. And what rural Americans see on the news today is a sneak peek at their tomorrow.
> 
> The savages are coming.
> 
> Blacks riot, Muslims set bombs, gays spread AIDS, Mexican cartels behead children, atheists tear down Christmas trees. Meanwhile, those liberal Lena Dunhams in their $5,000-a-month apartments sip wine and say, "But those white Christians are the real problem!" Terror victims scream in the street next to their own severed limbs, and the response from the elites is to cry about how men should be allowed to use women's restrooms and how it's cruel to keep chickens in cages.
> 
> Madness. Their heads are so far up their asses that they can't tell up from down. Basic, obvious truths that have gone unquestioned for thousands of years now get laughed at and shouted down -- the fact that hard work is better than dependence on government, that children do better with both parents in the picture, that peace is better than rioting, that a strict moral code is better than blithe hedonism, that humans tend to value things they've earned more than what they get for free, that not getting exploded by a bomb is better than getting exploded by a bomb.
> 
> Or as they say out in the country, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."
> 
> The foundation upon which America was undeniably built -- family, faith, and hard work -- had been deemed unfashionable and small-minded. Those snooty elites up in their ivory tower laughed as they kicked away that foundation, and then wrote 10,000-word thinkpieces blaming the builders for the ensuing collapse.
> 
> 3 The Rural Areas Have Been Beaten To Shit
> 
> Don't message me saying all those things I listed are wrong. I know they're wrong. Or rather, I think they're wrong, because I now live in a blue county and work for a blue industry. I know the Good Old Days of the past were built on slavery and segregation, I know that entire categories of humanity experienced religion only as a boot on their neck. I know that those "traditional families" involved millions of women trapped in kitchens and bad marriages. I know gays lived in fear and abortions were back-alley affairs.
> 
> I know the changes were for the best.
> 
> Try telling that to anybody who lives in Trump country.
> 
> They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed.
> 
> See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business -- a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs -- small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density.
> 
> If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involve moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called "Cost of Living." Let's say you're a smart kid making $8 an hour at Walgreen's and aspire to greater things. Fine, get ready to move yourself and your new baby into a 700-square-foot apartment for $1,200 a month, and to then pay double what you're paying now for utilities, groceries, and babysitters. Unless, of course, you're planning to move to one of "those" neighborhoods (hope you like being set on fire!).
> 
> In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town -- aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.
> 
> I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive.
> 
> And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities.
> 
> 
> 2 Everyone Lashes Out When They Don't Have A Voice
> 
> It really does feel like the worst of both worlds: all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy. "Blacks burn police cars, and those liberal elites say it's not their fault because they're poor. My son gets jailed and fired over a baggie of meth, and those same elites make jokes about his missing teeth!" You're everyone's punching bag, one of society's last remaining safe comedy targets.
> 
> They take it hard. These are people who come from a long line of folks who took pride in looking after themselves. Where I'm from, you weren't a real man unless you could repair a car, patch a roof, hunt your own meat, and defend your home from an intruder. It was a source of shame to be dependent on anyone -- especially the government. You mowed your own lawn and fixed your own pipes when they leaked, you hauled your own firewood in your own pickup truck. (Mine was a 1994 Ford Ranger! The current owner says it still runs!)
> 
> Not like those hipsters in their tiny apartments, or "those people" in their public housing projects, waiting for the landlord any time something breaks, knowing if things get too bad they can just pick up and move. When you don't own anything, it's all somebody else's problem. "They probably don't pay taxes, either! Just treating America itself as a subsidized apartment they can trash!"
> 
> The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse.
> 
> So yes, they vote for the guy promising to put things back the way they were, the guy who'd be a wake-up call to the blue islands. They voted for the brick through the window.
> 
> It was a vote of desperation.
> 
> "But Trump is objectively a piece of shit!" you say. "He insults people, he objectifies women, and cheats whenever possible! And he's not an everyman; he's a smarmy, arrogant billionaire!"
> 
> Wait, are you talking about Donald Trump, or this guy:
> 
> You've never rooted for somebody like that? Someone powerful who gives your enemies the insults they deserve? Somebody with big fun appetites who screws up just enough to make them relatable? Like Dr. House or Walter White? Or any of the several million renegade cop characters who can break all the rules because they get shit done? Who only get shit done because they don't care about the rules?
> 
> "But those are fictional characters!" Okay, what about all those millionaire left-leaning talk show hosts? You think they keep their insults classy? Tune into any bit about Chris Christie and start counting down the seconds until the fat joke. Google David Letterman's sex scandals. But it's okay, because they're on our side, and everybody wants an asshole on their team -- a spiked bat to smash their enemies with. That's all Trump is. The howls of elite outrage are like the sounds of bombs landing on the enemy's fortress. The louder the better.
> 
> Already some of you have gotten angry, feeling this gut-level revulsion at any attempt to excuse or even understand these people. After all, they're hardly people, right? Aren't they just a mass of ignorant, rageful, crude, cursing, spitting subhumans?
> 
> Gee, I hope not. I have to hug a bunch of them at Thanksgiving. And when I do, it will be with the knowledge that if I hadn't moved away, I'd be on the other side of the fence, leaving nasty comments on this article the alternate universe version of me wrote.
> 
> It feels good to dismiss people, to mock them, to write them off as deplorables. But you might as well take time to try to understand them, because I'm telling you, they'll still be around long after Trump is gone.


----------



## a_majoor

So what will happen after the election, when half of the voters simply will not accept the results of the election?

https://medium.com/the-american-singularity/it-cant-happen-here-can-it-3b3030c8223b#.ykjd39p87



> *It Can’t Happen Here (Can It?)*
> Tuesday, October 18th, 2016
> By Reed Galen
> Welcome to the American Singularity.
> 
> This dumpster fire of a campaign has three weeks to go. For a tired nation and a deeply-wounded political process, the end can’t come fast enough. Faced with the prospect of his impending loss, a humiliating one at that, Donald Trump has gone full Buzz Windrip, complete with conspiracy theories, angry rhetoric and a collection of malcontents in search of their own power. Daily, Trump now indicts and impugns the American electoral system with conspiracies enough to float a squadron of black helicopters.
> 
> Faced with an unwillingness or inability to temper his, well temper, or make meaningful progress to grow his share of the vote, Trump has instead chosen to superheat his supporters. Like adding fire to raw ore to remove its impurities, this small molten core has too often shown itself to represent too little of the best of America and too much of an ugly underbelly that is using Trump to bring itself into the mainstream political process.
> 
> “Why, why, America’s the only free nation on Earth! Besides, Country’s too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn’t happen here!”
> 
> Like a clone army of Shad Ledue, Trump supporters forgive him his trespasses because of real and perceived trespasses against them. That he shares their anger, at whatever it might be — the system, the elites, the world, is enough for them. When The Donald first began talking about the “rigged system” many flocked to him because he was willing to say what other politicians weren’t: The government of 2016 (and for sometime) may be by the people, but it is far too often not for the people or of the people. While his words didn’t change, the meaning of Trump’s utterances certainly has.
> 
> According to a Politico/Morning Consult survey out this week, 41% of all voters, 73% of Republicans believe that the election could indeed be stolen from Trump. Trump regularly touts the specter of election irregularities and crooked surveys to claim he is actually winning the election, despite every other known indicator showing otherwise. His words shock the American political soul, are cause for concern and are a pro-active threat to how we conduct ourselves in the public square.
> 
> Hillary Clinton, however, represents the status quo on many different levels. She is the embodiment of what so many Americans (and almost all Republicans) see as a country run by elites who truly care little for their well-being. Clinton’s example is less stout, less noisy and less ugly, but no less insidious, odious or threatening to the Republic. Regardless of how she walked back her “deplorable” comment and many of Trump’s supporters are in fact deplorable, she meant what she said. The urban left has too little respect for suburban and rural America.
> 
> It’s funny that something we now consider old-fashioned, email, has been the root of so many of Hillary’s problems. First it was her own emails. She did it, but thought it was okay. Then it was a lapse in judgement. Then she wished she’d done it differently. Now it appears (shocking, I know) that there were players within the Obama Administration working on her behalf to clean up the mess she’d made with her own paranoia. Those old blackberries haunt her to this day because they make so many people, across the political spectrum, believe she’s really only in it for herself.
> 
> Then Wikileaks, or the Russians, or whomever, hacks the Democratic National Committee and we find out that they were in the tank for Hillary the whole time. Again, this should never have been surprising, but to see the DNC’s efforts to submarine Bernie Sanders so blatantly was shocking even to many people, like me, who do this for a living. Of course we saw Sanders’ supporters rightly outraged at the revelation. While many Berners will vote for Hillary, they’ll do it holding their nose, knowing Trump offers them no real alternative.
> 
> The continuing release of Clinton campaign chairman John Pedesta’s emails show that, after it’s all said and done, Democratic politicians and operatives are as calculating, insulting and tone-deaf as anyone else in the country. They’re further proof that high-level Clinton brass doesn’t apparently like too many of the people they’re so eager to lead into the next four or eight years. Working in politics, it is inevitable that your bright, shiny idealism will be swiftly and mercilessly torn away from you, but Hillary’s crew appears to have taken it a whole new level.
> 
> “Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
> 
> And the Corpos, of course, are fine with all this. Hillary may ding them here and there in her rhetoric and as president may even propose so measures that Wall Street may not care for. But at the end of the day, they know she is a pragmatist, knows where her heart-healthy bread is buttered and will do no real or long-lasting damage to them. The status quo is the best they can hope for. Clinton one day may be immortalized in bronze as the politician, perhaps even more so than her husband, who knows how to work the system.
> 
> If our tottering economy should take another tumble, President Clinton and the next Congress will have their last chance to clean up our kindle-laden political system. Should they again look to save the big guys at the expense of the little, the ensuing wildfire will be more than just an election can hope to head off. Trump may be an outlet for the anger of many Americans, but his defeat will not end their disaffection.
> Only real, sustained reform that begins to address the angst, anger (of both sides of the political spectrum) yawning inequality and stagnant economy we now face will allow us to chart a new path; one back to prosperity and stability. But not stability or security for their own sake — you can get that, as President Dwight Eisenhower said, in a prison cell. It doesn’t mean you’re free.
> 
> Per the same Politico survey mentioned above, 71% of the voters they questioned believe the United States is on the wrong track. As we conclude this tortuous and ugly election season, we must hope, and probably demand, that our elected leaders take a new tack on how they operate, begin putting those that elect them first and try out different ideas that should upset some of the most entrenched interests.
> To do otherwise would be a failure on their part, and a continuation down the path of illegitimacy that has only dark outcomes — or we may one day wish Donald Trump was the worst we could imagine.
> 
> Republics are first and foremost tests of faith. Hundreds of millions of people must believe in the system of government our forebears collectively agreed to; and they must believe the elections are free and fair and that the rule of law applies to all — the lowliest of the low and highest and mightiest. Otherwise, the Constitution is just so many very eloquent words written on really old pieces of paper.


----------



## a_majoor

As Instapundit asked "Who could have seen this coming?". Whoever is elected will have an extraordinary mess on their hands after 8 years of "Smart Diplomacy". A Clinton administration will probably be paralyzed from the get go since any halfway competent intelligence agency has years of American secret information lifted from her server. A Trump Administration is dedicated to rebuilding America, so might well be inclined to draw down American forces and deployments in favour of domestic policy, and any 9/11 type attacks will be met with a massive "punch in the face" by the Marines, followed by an equally rapid withdrawal (no nation building exercises here).

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/10/20/as-obamas-clock-winds-down-revisionist-powers-pounce/



> *As Obama’s Clock Winds Down, Revisionist Powers Pounce*
> WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
> The Philippine pivot to China is just the latest consequence of Obama’s feckless foreign policy.
> 
> Hillary Clinton has swept her debate series with Donald Trump, and voters seem to like Trump less the harder they look at him. But as Clinton surely understands, even as she approaches the White House, the global scene is getting darker.
> 
> This morning, we saw a glimpse of that world, as one of America’s longest-standing allies in Asia turned its back on the United States and embraced China:
> 
> In a state visit aimed at cozying up to Beijing as he pushes away from Washington, the Philippine President announced his military and economic “separation” from the United States.
> 
> “America has lost now. I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow,” he told business leaders in Beijing on Thursday. “And maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.”
> As usual, the Obama administration was caught off guard and flat-footed. John Kirby, the spokesman for the State Department, said the move was “inexplicably at odds” with the U.S.-Philippine relationship. “We are going to be seeking an explanation of exactly what the president meant when he talked about separation from us,” Kirby said. “It’s not clear to us exactly what that means and all its ramifications.”
> 
> Kirby is right that the outlook in the Philippines is murky; lots of Filipino officials are as appalled by their president’s remarks as anybody in Foggy Bottom. But what isn’t murky at all is that President Obama’s faltering foreign policy has taken another serious hit. It is hard to think of another American president whose foreign policy initiatives failed as badly or as widely as Obama’s. The reconciliation with the Sunni world? The reset with Russia? Stabilizing the Middle East by tilting toward Iran? The Libya invasion? The Syria abstention? The ‘pivot to Asia’ was supposed to be the centerpiece of Obama’s global strategy; instead the waning months of the Obama administration have seen an important U.S. ally pivot toward China in the most public and humiliating way possible.
> 
> Duterte clearly thinks that humiliating Obama in this way is a solid career move. He certainly believes that China will support him against the critics at home and abroad who will wring their hands over his shift. He presumably has had some assurances from his Chinese hosts that if he commits his cause to them, they will back him to the hilt.
> 
> This points to a broader problem: Obama’s tortuous efforts to balance a commitment to human rights and the niceties of American liberal ideology with a strong policy in defense of basic American security interests have made the world less safe for both human rights and for American security. As the revisionist powers (Russia, China, and Iran) gain ground, foreign leaders feel less and less need to pay attention to American sermons about human rights and the rule of law. Death squads and extra-judicial executions on a large scale: the Americans will lecture you but China will still be your friend. Barrel bombing hospitals in Aleppo? The Russians won’t just back you; they will help you to do it. Obama’s foreign policy is making the world safer for people who despise and trample on the very values that Obama hoped his presidency would advance. His lack of strategic insight and his inability to grasp the dynamics of world power politics have opened the door to a new generation of authoritarian figures in alliance with hostile great powers. Unintentionally, and with the best of intentions, he has opened the doors to the demons of Hell, and the darkest forces in the human spirit have much greater scope and much more power today than they did when he took the oath of office back in 2009.
> 
> Now in the final days of Obama’s presidency, Russia, Iran, and China are all stepping up their game. Putin has been humiliating and outfoxing Obama at one end of Eurasia; Iran has gone from routing Obama at the bargaining table to enabling its proxies in Yemen to fire on American ships. Xi now has a triumph of his own, with one of America’s oldest Asian allies insulting Obama at official events. Clearly, America’s opponents (and some of our allies) have reached the conclusion that this particular American administration is unable or unwilling to respond forcefully to provocations.
> 
> This isn’t just a painful and embarrassing time for President Obama; it is a dangerous time for world peace. Secretary Clinton is well aware of just how damaging the Filipino defection is in Asia; she helped develop the Obama administration’s Asia strategy and she knows that China’s challenge has just grown much more dangerous. She knows what a wreck the Middle East has become, and she is well aware that Obama will hand her a region that is in much worse shape than it was when Obama took office. She knows how Putin made a patsy and a laughingstock of Obama around the world, and she knows that Obama’s efforts to stabilize the Middle East by conciliating Iran have had just the opposite effect. She knows that even as Donald Trump’s poorly led, poorly conceived electoral campaign weakens, America’s enemies abroad are using every day of Obama’s tenure in office to weaken the foundations of America’s power around the world.
> 
> We do not know what other plans our opponents have to take advantage of Obama’s shortcomings as the clock slowly runs down on his time in the White House. Putin clearly hoped that his interference could muddy the waters of the American presidential race; the Russians believe that Trump is if anything less capable than Obama, and that a Trump presidency would give Russia four more years to work at dismantling American power and the European Union. As Putin now contemplates the likely frustration of those hopes, he is likely to think harder about how he can use the time remaining on Obama’s watch to further weaken the United States and erode its alliance system.
> 
> Should Secretary Clinton make it to the White House, her first and biggest job will be to stop and then reverse the deterioration in America’s global position that her predecessor permitted. She will have to convince both friends and foes that the President of the United States is no longer a punching bag, and that the United States of America is back on the stage. She will need, and she will deserve, the support of patriotic Americans in both political parties as she undertakes this necessary mission. President Obama’s mismanagement of foreign affairs is creating a genuine international emergency; the White House and Congress will have to work together to restore American prestige and stop the slide toward chaos and war.


----------



## Brad Sallows

Foreign powers generally tend to act up when a change of administration is imminent.  The difference this time is that one or more of them may have been reading Clinton's mail.

The useful thing to remember is that regardless whether any particular secrets were compromised, the massive amount of correspondence - the kind of to-and-fro commonly seen in email threads - offers to its readers a window into Clinton's mind.  Imagine the power of an adversary who understands the president's thinking.


----------



## a_majoor

How to guide and manage change. Most of the main article is behind a pay wall, so the excerpt here is from Instapundit:

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/a-new-solarium-wargame-steve-metz-says-a-2017-edition-of-ikes-1953-analytic-game-would-help-re-s/#respond



> A NEW SOLARIUM WARGAME?: Steve Metz says a 2017 edition of Ike’s 1953 analytic game would help “re-set” US global strategy. I wonder if Metz’ Solarium 2017 will be classified or could be kept classified — fair question given Hillary’s record. Ike’s “seminar-type game” was top secret and remained top secret until the mid-1980s. Ike’s Project Solarium analysis produced a Top Secret document, NSC 162/2, which articulated the strategic concepts that guided US Cold War security policy. Note I said guided, not dictated. To use a phrase Metz uses, it provided “conceptual clarity.” As Metz notes, during the Cold War the US could focus on one primary opponent, the USSR. After 1991 the bi-polar world faded and multi-polar conflicts returned. Since then there have scores (if not hundreds) of serious attempts to do what Metz advises, “reassess the fundamental organizing concepts of American security” in a multi-polar world. Some of these attempts have used Solarium-like methods.
> 
> Did these assessments have the president’s focused attention? I doubt they did. It was different in 1953. Ike possessed one of the country’s finest strategic minds. He was a highly experienced Army officer who understood the benefits conducting “structured, participatory thinking exercises” — that’s a phrase I’ve used to describe seminar-type war games. Ike initiated Solarium and made the final assessment of the team reports. We don’t have an Ike in the White House now, and we won’t in 2017.
> 
> Which is actually a good reason to conduct a Solarium 2017. Solarium 2017 would be a valuable training exercise for our new president.


----------



## Journeyman

Thucydides said:
			
		

> We don’t have an Ike in the White House now, and we won’t in 2017.


    Regardless of the vote.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Quote from: Thucydides on Today at 01:13:36
> 
> 
> 
> We don’t have an Ike in the White House now, and we won’t in 2017.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Regardless of the vote.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


And, with all possible respect for those who are partisans of US political parties, there hasn't been one since Ike. From Kennedy right through to Obama it has been a parade of (relatively) weak sisters, some (Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton) perhaps a bit less weak (OK, Nixon was morally weak) than others.

There is a reason no president has held anything like Ex SOLARIUM: none had Ike's breadth of strategic vision nor his depth of knowledge of the strategic resources available and how they all fit together. He didn't have to situate the appreciation and the record suggests he didn't try ... but Kennan's team gave him the answer he was after: one which allowed him to play to America's strengths and NSC 162/2 which served as a guide to _*containing*_ the USSR for successive presidents through to Bill Clinton.


----------



## daftandbarmy

But what about the students?  ;D

http://americanmilitarynews.com/2016/11/colleges-offer-help-to-students-triggered-by-election-day-stress/?utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=alt&utm_source=asmdss


----------



## Kirkhill

> Trump throws the future of NATO into doubt. Europe must step up to defend itself
> JULIET SAMUEL
> Juliet Samuel 10 NOVEMBER 2016 • 6:30AM



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/11/10/trump-throws-the-future-of-nato-into-doubt-europe-must-step-up-t/



> Donald Trump has finally spoken by phone to Theresa May, after first calling the leaders of nine other countries, including Ireland and Australia.
> 
> The US President-elect spoke to Mrs May at 1.45pm after first speaking  to the leaders of nine other countries - Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea within 24 hours of his victory.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/10/what-special-relationship-donald-trump-speaks-to-nine-other-worl/

Brits hyperventilating over not being the first call but there is value, and maybe even merit, in doing things this way.

America's national pastime these days is: Poker.

The most valuable asset any military commander has is: Surprise.

Fundamental rule of campaigning: Time spent in recce is seldom wasted.

The President, like our Prime Minister, is hired as an agent to act on the behalf of his clients - the country he serves.

A key element of deal-making is convincing the other party that you don't want or need the deal.

Based on all of these I suggest that Trump, as a well versed dealmaker and poker player, has done the following through his wilder statements:

He has created a persona of unpredictability, perhaps even instability. - This in turn means that he now holds a new hand.  The deck has been reshuffled and nobody knows how he will play them.  This creates Surprise.  That serves him and his country well.  The rest of the world, including Britain, needs to wait and see.

His isolationist statements serve to remind everyone else that the US can shut up its borders and survive.  The rest of the world be damned.  You want in?  You will have to pay.  He doesn't need the deal. Everyone else does.  They will have to come to him.

If I were going to develop a new market I prefer the Lanchester Strategy.  It found favour among Japanese businesses.  It favours indirect engagement. It favours learning about your situation before confronting it.

So, looking at the list of countries the Donald chose to call before he called Theresa:

Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea

Regroup:

Mexico,

Egypt, Israel, Turkey,

India, Japan, Australia and South Korea

Ireland,


The Mexican call is a no brainer.  He has already had communications with Mexico.  It was a, if not the, leading issue during his campaign.  It is THE Domestic issue that needs to be solved.

Egypt, Israel, Turkey - Topics of conversation there?  Israel? Palestine? Syria? Russia? Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood?

India, Japan, Australia and South Korea - China and Theresa May's recent visits and the prospects of her Free Trade missions.

Finally, Ireland - Nobody knows the Brits better than the Irish and nobody is more in tune with the EU-UK dynamic.


After all that?

Talk to Theresa and invite her over for coffee and conversation at her earliest convenience.


More interesting are the countries not on the list:

China

Russia

The EU 

Any of the founder states of the EU.


My sense is that Trump is focusing on China  (Japan, South Korea, Australia, India)

He is likely to take Russia out of the picture by sidelining Putin through some conciliation - Ukraine isn't getting Crimea back any time soon but Syria will be tidied up as quickly as possible to deny Vladimir his chance to show off his ancient arsenal.

The EU will not be invaded from the east.  But neither will they be playing any serious roles in the near future.

Meanwhile Britain seeks free trade deals with Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and the US.

Canada has a free trade deal but that deal is always, like every other deal, always open for renegotiation.

I expect the following:

XL pipeline
Kinder Morgan pipeline
F35s 
SM6s 

And I would not be surprised if the Northern Gateway were approved through either Kitimat or Prince Rupert.

The Carbon Tax will be bloviated - the Liberals will not back down but neither will it be enforced.

And now I shatter my crystal ball.    [


----------



## Kirkhill

Apparently we need in as well:

We called him - to discuss our willingness to renegotiate NAFTA.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/10/trudeau-happy-to-talk-about-nafta-with-trump.html

Apparently Wynne is concerned.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/11/09/wynne-worried-about-trump-threat-to-ontario-economy.html


----------



## George Wallace

Chris Pook said:
			
		

> Apparently Wynne is concerned.
> 
> https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/11/09/wynne-worried-about-trump-threat-to-ontario-economy.html



I should hope she is concerned.  She has most likely done more to put Ontario's economy in the dumpster than anyone else in its' history.  Speculation of Trump fiddling with NAFTA could seal the Ontario decline in the history books.

[edit to add:]

This about says it:


----------



## Kirkhill

How about this?

DEW Line and Nuclear Bomarcs bought Canada the Autopact.

The North Warning system bought Canada the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement

It seems likely that our NATO/NORAD premiums on NAFTA are due.


----------



## jollyjacktar

Sooooo, F35's?


----------



## Jed

We better sort out our Defense in the North.


----------



## Kirkhill

jollyjacktar said:
			
		

> Sooooo, F35's?



Preferably bought with money earned from selling coal, oil and gas to China.


----------



## QV

I couldn't agree more with your assessment CP.

If our own government can't (won't) kick start our economy and properly fund/equip our military here's hoping a Trump administration compels them to.


----------



## Brad Sallows

Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.

"The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."

"I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"

"And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."


----------



## Kirkhill

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.
> 
> "The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."
> 
> "I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"
> 
> "And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."



To me that suggests supporting the local, the parochial, the national over the hegemon.


----------



## a_majoor

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> Henry Kissinger, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic.
> 
> "The president should ask, “What are we trying to achieve, even if we must pursue it alone?” and “What are we trying to prevent, even if we must combat it alone?” The answers to these questions are the indispensable aspects of our foreign policy, which ought to form the basis of our strategic decisions."
> 
> "I would begin by saying that we have to have faith in ourselves. That is an absolute requirement. We can’t reduce policy to a series of purely tactical decisions or self-recriminations. The fundamental strategic question is: What is it that we will not permit, no matter how it happens, no matter how legitimate it looks?"
> 
> "And a second question is: What are we trying to achieve? We don’t want Asia or Europe to fall under the domination of a single hostile country. Or the Middle East. But if avoiding that is our goal, we have to define hostility. According to my own thinking about Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it is not in our interest that any of them fall under domination."



That is the traditional American Grand Strategy. Of course it has also been the British Grand Strategy, arguably since the time of Elizabeth 1. I could even suggest this is the proper Grand Strategy of _any_ Maritime power, of which the United States is the largest and greatest.

As for Canada and NATO, while the President Elect wants us to do our share (i.e 2% GDP defense spending), I think there will be a series of carrots and sticks. If Canada fails to ante up, the NAFTA dues are certainly one thing on the table, but other bilateral agreements can also be placed on the table as well. And since the US may well start advancing their program on missile defense given the growing and evolving threat, we should not be surprised to discover intercept zones existing over _our_ land mass if we demonstrate we are not serious about sharing the burdens of continental defense.


----------



## a_majoor

A bit of historical background as to where a lot of the problems began. It is interesting the sort of people wo create and support these programs to destroy the United States are nevertheless unwilling to leave the embrace of the largest and most successful free market economy in human history for true Socialist paradises like the DPRK, or perhaps China or Cambodia in the more recent past. Funny, that.

(Part 1)

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7522



> *CLOWARD-PIVEN STRATEGY (CPS)*
> Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis
> 
> See also:  Frances Fox Piven   Saul Alinsky   George Wiley
> ACORN   Motor Voter Law   National Welfare Rights Organization
> 
> First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven (both longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America, where Piven today is an honorary chair), the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
> 
> Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.
> 
> In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.
> 
> The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.
> 
> The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare -- about 8 million, at the time -- probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls."  Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."
> 
> Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all -- working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act.
> 
> This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements -- mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown -- providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.
> 
> Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. The three met in January 1966, at a radical organizers' meeting in Syracuse, New York called the “Poor People's War Council on Poverty.” Wiley listened to the Cloward-Piven plan with interest. That same month, he launched his own activist group, the Poverty Rights Action Center, headquartered in Washington DC. In a calculated show of militancy, he sported dashikis, jeans, battered shoes, and a newly grown Afro. Regarding the Cloward-Piven strategy, Wiley told one audience:
> 
> “[A] a lot of us have been hampered in our thinking about the potential here by our own middle-class backgrounds – and I think most activists basically come out of middle-class backgrounds – and were oriented toward people having to work, and that we have to get as many people as possible off the welfare rolls.... [However] I think that this [Cloward-Piven] strategy is going to catch on and be very important in the time ahead.”
> 
> After a series of mass marches and rallies by welfare recipients in June 1966, Wiley declared “the birth of a movement” – the Welfare Rights Movement.
> 
> Cloward and Piven publicly outlined their strategy at the Second Annual Socialist Scholars Conference, held in September 1966 at New York City's Hotel Commodore. To read an eyewitness account of their presentation, click here.
> 
> In the summer of 1967, Ralph Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently -- bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.
> 
> Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests - and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones."
> 
> These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," wrote Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy."
> 
> The National Welfare Rights Organization pushed for a “guaranteed living income,” as prescribed by Cloward and Piven, which it defined, in 1968, as $5,500 per year for every American family with four children. The following year the NWRO raised its demand to $6,500. Though Wiley never made headway with his demand for a living income, the tens of billions of dollars in welfare entitlements that he and his followers managed to squeeze from state and local governments came very close to sinking the economy, just as Cloward and Piven had predicted.
> 
> In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven had given special attention to New York City, whose masses of urban poor, leftist intelligentsia and free-spending politicians rendered it uniquely vulnerable to the strategy they proposed. At the time, NYC welfare agencies were paying about $20 million per year in “special grants.” Cloward and Piven estimated that they could “multiply these expenditures tenfold or more,” draining an additional $180 million annually from the city coffers.
> 
> New York City's arch-liberal mayor John Lindsay, newly elected in November 1966, capitulated to Wiley's every demand. An appeaser by nature, Lindsay sought to calm racial tensions by taking “walking tours” through Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant, and other troubled areas of the city. This made for good photo-ops, but failed to mollify Wiley's cadres and the masses they mobilized, who wanted cash. “The violence of the [welfare rights] movement was frightening,” recalls Lindsay budget aid Charles Morris. Black militants laid siege to City Hall, bearing signs saying “No Money, No Peace.”
> 
> Lindsay answered these provocations with ever-more-generous programs of appeasement in the form of welfare dollars. New York's welfare rolls had been growing by 12% per year already before Lindsay took office. The rate jumped to 50% annually in 1966. During Lindsay's first term of office, welfare spending in New York City more than doubled, from $400 million to $1 billion annually. Outlays for the poor consumed 28% of the city's budget by 1970. “By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy,” Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal.
> 
> As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.
> 
> Crucial to Wiley's success was the cooperation of radical sympathizers inside the federal government, who supplied Wiley's movement with grants, training, and logistical assistance, channeled through federal War on Poverty programs such as VISTA's.
> 
> The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" -- the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements.
> 
> Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a July 20, 1998 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."


----------



## a_majoor

Part 2



> In a January 2011 article in the Nation magazine, Frances Fox Piven would reflect upon the elements that had helped make the welfare-rights movement successful in the 1960s:
> 
> "*efore people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves 'mothers' instead of 'recipients,'"
> 
> In the same 2011 article, Piven noted that "protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands."
> 
> After the welfare-rights movement had run its course by the mid-1970s, Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.
> 
> In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "Voting Rights Movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Cloward and Piven despised America's electoral system every bit as much as they despised its welfare system, and for much the same reason. They believed that welfare checks and voting rights were mere bones tossed to the poor to keep them docile. The poor did not need welfare checks and ballots, they argued. The poor needed revolution.
> 
> In their 1977 book, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, Cloward and Piven asserted that the “electoral process” actually served the interests of the ruling classes, providing a safety valve to drain away the anger of the poor. The authors wrote that “as long as lower-class groups abided by the norms governing the electoral–representative system, they would have little influence.… t is usually when unrest among the lower classes breaks out of the confines of electoral procedures that the poor may have some influence,” as when poor people engage in “strikes,” “riots,” “crime,” “incendiarism,” “massive school truancy,” “worker absenteeism,” “rent defaults,” and other forms of “mass defiance” and “institutional disruption.”
> 
> In 1981, Cloward and Piven wrote that poor people lose power “when leaders try to turn movements into electoral organizations.” That is because the “capability of the poor” to effect change lies “in the vulnerability of societal institutions to disruption, and not in the susceptibility of these institutions to transformation through the votes of the poor.”
> 
> To advance their radical agenda, Cloward and Piven focused more intently on transforming the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. Because Democrats professed to represent the lower classes, many poor people believed they could get what they wanted by voting Democrat. Thus their energies would be channeled into useless “voter activity,” rather than strikes, riots, “incendiarism” and the like.
> 
> Ten years earlier, when Cloward and Piven determined that the welfare state was acting as a safety valve for the establishment, they resolved to destroy the welfare state. The method of destruction they chose was drawn from the teachings of Saul Alinsky: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” And so they did, challenging the welfare state to pay out every penny to every person theoretically entitled to it. Alinsky called this sort of tactic “mass jujitsu” – using “the strength of the enemy against itself. Now Cloward and Piven concluded that the Democratic Party was also acting as a safety valve for the establishment. Thus they would try to force Democrats to "live up to their own book of rules" -- i.e., if the Democrats say they represent the poor, let them prove it.
> 
> Cloward and Piven presented their plan in a December 1982 article titled, “A Movement Strategy to Transform the Democratic Party,” published in the left-wing journal Social Policy. They sought to do to the voting system what they had previously done to the welfare system. They would flood the polls with millions of new voters, drawn from the angry ranks of the underclass, all belligerent and the demanding their voting rights. The result would be a catastrophic disruption of America's electoral system, the authors predicted.
> 
> Cloward and Piven hoped that the flood of new voters would provoke a backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike, who would join forces to disenfranchise the unruly hordes, using such expedients as purging invalid voters from the rolls, imposing cumbersome registration procedures, stiffening residency requirements, and so forth. This voter-suppression campaign would spark “a political firestorm over democratic rights,” they wrote. Voting-rights activists would descend on America's election boards and polling stations much as George Wiley's welfare warriors had flooded social-services offices. Wrote Cloward and Piven:
> 
> “By staging rallies, demonstrations, and sit-ins … over every new restriction on registration procedures, a protest movement can dramatize the conflict.... Through conflict, the registration movement will convert registering and voting into meaningful acts of collective protest.”
> 
> The expected conflict would also expose the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, which would be “disrupted and transformed,” the authors predicted. A new party would rise from the ashes of the old. Outwardly, it would preserve the forms and symbols of the old Democratic Party, but the new Democrats would be genuine partisans of the poor, dedicated to class struggle. This was the radical vision driving the Voting Rights Movement.
> 
> ACORN spearheaded this "voting rights" movement, which was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Also key to the movement were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.
> 
> All three of these organizations -- ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE -- set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which President Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. At the White House signing ceremony for this bill, both Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were in attendance. The new law eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy for voters to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver's license or to apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. “Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship,” notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. “States had to permit mailing voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election officials. Finally, states were limited in pruning 'deadwood' –people who had died, moved, or been convicted of crimes – from their rolls.
> 
> The Motor-Voter bill did indeed cause the voter rolls to be swamped with invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people -- thus opening the door to the unprecedented  levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections during the 1990s, and culminating in the Florida recount crisis in the 2000 presidential election.  On the eve of the 2000 election, in Indiana alone, state officials discovered that one in five registered voters were duplicates, deceased, or otherwise invalid.
> 
> The cloud of confusion hanging over elections serves leftist agitators well. “President Bush came to office without a clear mandate,” the leftwing billionaire George Soros declared. “He was elected president by a single vote on the Supreme Court.” Once again, the "flood-the-rolls" strategy had done its work. Cloward, Piven, and their disciples had introduced a level of fear, tension, and foreboding to U.S. elections previously encountered mainly in Third World countries.
> 
> In January 2010, journalist John Fund reported that Congressman Barney Frank and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer were preparing to unveil legislation calling for "universal voter registration," whereby any person whose name was on any federal roll at all -- be it a list of welfare recipients, food stamp recipients, unemployment compensation recipients, licensed drivers, convicted felons, property owners, etc. -- would automatically be registered to vote in political elections. Without corresponding identity-verification measures at polling places, such a law would vastly expand the pool of eligible voters, thereby multiplying the opportunities for fraudulent voters to cast ballots under other people's names.
> 
> Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party," through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns to overload, and cause the collapse of, various American institutions. Leftists such as Barack Obama euphemistically refer to this collapse as a "fundamental transformation," on the theory that society can only be improved by destroying the deeply flawed existing order and replacing it with what they view as a better alternative.
> 
> Major Resource: The Shadow Party, by David Horowitz and Richard Poe (Nashville, TN: Nelson Current, 2006), pp, 106-128.
> *


*
*


----------



## Lightguns

There is that Soros name again.......


----------



## a_majoor

This is the thinking behind the new Administration's Grand Strategy:

http://www.hoover.org/research/new-american-grand-strategy



> *A New American Grand Strategy*
> by General Jim Mattis
> Thursday, February 26, 2015
> 
> The world is awash in change. The international order, so painstakingly put together by the greatest generation coming home from mankind’s bloodiest conflict, is under increasing stress. It was created with elements we take for granted: the United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods and more. The constructed order reflected the wisdom of those who recognized no nation lived as an island and we needed new ways to deal with challenges that for better or worse impacted all nations. Like it or not, today we are part of this larger world and must carry out our part. We cannot wait for problems to arrive here or it will be too late; rather we must remain strongly engaged in this complex world.
> 
> The international order built on the state system is not self-sustaining. It demands tending by an America that leads wisely, standing unapologetically for the freedoms each of us in this room have enjoyed. The hearing today addresses the need for America to adapt to changing circumstances, to come out now from its reactive crouch and to take a firm strategic stance in defense of our values.
> 
> While we recognize that we owe future generations the same freedoms we enjoy, the challenge lies in how to carry out our responsibility. We have lived too long now in a strategy-free mode.
> 
> To do so America needs a refreshed national strategy. The Congress can play a key role in crafting a coherent strategy with bipartisan support. Doing so requires us to look beyond events currently consuming the executive branch.
> 
> There is an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second order effects and more problems for us. I suggest that the best way to cut to the essence of these issues and to help you in crafting America’s response to a rapidly changing security environment is to ask the right questions.
> 
> These are some that we should ask:
> 
> What are the key threats to our vital interests?
> 
> The intelligence community should delineate and provide an initial prioritization of those threats for your consideration. By rigorously defining the problems we face you will enable a more intelligent and focused use of the resources allocated for national defense.
> 
> Is our intelligence community fit for its expanding purpose?
> 
> Today we have less of a military shock absorber to take surprise in stride, and fewer forward-deployed military forces overseas to act as sentinels. Accordingly we need more early warning. Congress should question if we are adequately funding the intelligence agencies to reduce the chance of our defenses being caught flat-footed.
> 
> We know that the “foreseeable future” is not foreseeable; our review must incorporate unpredictability, recognizing risk while avoiding gambling with our nation’s security.Incorporating the broadest issues in its assessments, Congress should consider what we must do if the national debt is assessed to be the biggest national security threat we face.
> 
> As President Eisenhower noted, the foundation of military strength is our economic strength. In a few short years paying interest on our debt will be a bigger bill than what we pay for defense. Much of that interest money is destined to leave America for overseas. If we refuse to reduce our debt or pay down our deficit, what is the impact on national security for future generations who will inherit this irresponsible debt and the taxes to service it? No nation in history has maintained its military power while failing to keep its fiscal house in order.
> 
> How do we urgently halt the damage caused by sequestration?
> 
> No foe in the field can wreck such havoc on our security that mindless sequestration is achieving. Congress passed it because it was viewed as so injurious that it would force wise choices. It has failed and today we use arithmetic vice sound thinking to run our government, despite emerging enemy threats. The Senate Armed Services Committee should lead the effort to repeal the sequestration that is costing military readiness and long term capability while sapping troop morale.
> 
> Without predictability in budget matters no strategy can be implemented by your military leaders. Your immediate leadership is needed to avert further damage. In our approach to the world, we must be willing to ask strategic questions. In the Middle East, where our influence is at its lowest point in four decades, we see a region erupting in crises.
> 
> We need a new security architecture for the Middle East built on sound policy, one that permits us to take our own side in this fight.  Crafting such a policy starts with asking a fundamental question and then others: Is political Islam in our best interest? If not what is our policy to support the countervailing forces? Violent terrorists cannot be permitted to take refuge behind false religious garb and leave us unwilling to define this threat with the clarity it deserves. We have potential allies around the world and in the Middle East who will rally to us but we have not been clear about where we stand in defining or dealing with the growing violent jihadist terrorist threat.
> 
> Iran is a special case that must be dealt with as a threat to regional stability, nuclear and otherwise. I believe that you should question the value of Congress adding new sanctions while international negotiations are ongoing, while having them ready should the negotiations for preventing their nuclear weapons capability and stringent monitoring break down.
> 
> Further, we should question if we have the right policies in place when Iran creates more mischief in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the region. We should recognize that regional counterweights like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council can reinforce us if they understand our policies and if we clarify our foreign policy goals beyond Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
> 
> In Afghanistan we need to consider if we’re asking for the same outcome there as we saw last summer in Iraq if we pull out all our troops on the Administration’s proposed timeline. Echoing the military advice given on the same issue in Iraq, gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible. We should recognize that we may not want this fight but the barbarity of an enemy that kills women and children and has refused to break with Al Qaeda needs to be fought.
> 
> More broadly, is the U.S. military being developed to fight across the spectrum of combat?
> 
> Knowing that enemies always move against perceived weakness, our forces must be capable of missions from nuclear deterrence to counter-insurgency and everything in between, now including the pervasive cyber domain. While surprise is always a factor, Congress can ensure that we have the fewest big regrets when the next surprise occurs. We don’t want or need a military that is at the same time dominant and irrelevant, so we must sort this out and deny funding for bases or capabilities no longer needed.
> 
> The nuclear stockpile must be tended to and fundamental questions must be asked and answered: We must clearly establish the role of our nuclear weapons: do they serve solely to deter nuclear war? If so, we should say so, and the resulting clarity will help to determine the number we need. Is it time to reduce the Triad to a Diad, removing the land-based missiles? This would reduce the false alarm danger. Could we reenergize the arms control effort by only counting warheads vice launchers? Was the Russian test violating the INF treaty simply a blunder or a change in policy, and what is our appropriate response?
> 
> The reduced size of our military drives the need to ask other questions: Our military is uniquely capable and the envy of the world, but are we resourcing it to ensure we have the highest quality troops, the best equipment and the toughest training?
> 
> With a smaller military comes the need for troops kept at the top of their game. When we next put them in harm’s way it must be the enemy’s longest day and worst day. Tiered readiness with a smaller force must be closely scrutinized to ensure we aren’t merely hollowing out the force. While sequestration is the nearest threat to this national treasure that is the U.S. military, sustaining it as the world’s best when smaller will need your critical oversight. Are the Navy and our expeditionary forces receiving the support they need in a world where America’s naval role is more pronounced because we have fewer forces posted overseas?
> 
> With the cutbacks to the Army and Air Force and fewer forces around the world, military aspects of our strategy will inevitably become more naval in character. This will provide decision time for political leaders considering employment of additional forms of military power. Congress’ resourcing of our naval and expeditionary forces will need to take this development into account. Because we will need to swiftly move ready forces to act against nascent threats, nipping them in the bud, the agility to reassure friends and temper adversary activities will be critical to America’s effectiveness for keeping a stable and prosperous world. I question if our shipbuilding budget is sufficient, especially in light of the situation in the South China Sea.
> 
> While our efforts in the Pacific to keep positive relations with China are well and good, these efforts must be paralleled by a policy to build the counterbalance if China continues to expand its bullying role in the South China Sea and elsewhere. That counterbalance must deny China veto power over territorial, security and economic conditions in the Pacific, building support for our diplomatic efforts to maintain stability and economic prosperity so critical to our economy.
> 
> In light of worldwide challenges to the international order we are nonetheless shrinking our military. Are we adjusting our strategy and taking into account a reduced role for that shrunken military?
> 
> Strategy connects ends, ways and means. With less military available, we must reduce our appetite for using it. Absent growing our military, there must come a time when moral outrage, serious humanitarian plight, or lesser threats cannot be militarily addressed.  Prioritization is needed if we are to remain capable of the most critical mission for which we have a military: to fight on short notice and defend the country. In this regard we must recognize we should not and need not carry this military burden solely on our own.
> 
> Does our strategy and associated military planning take into account our nation’s increased need for allies?
> 
> The need for stronger alliances comes more sharply into focus as we shrink the military. No nation can do on its own all that is necessary for its security. Further, history reminds us that countries with allies generally defeat those without. A capable U.S. military, reinforcing our political will to lead from the front, is the bedrock on which we draw together those nations that stand with us against threats to the international order.
> 
> Our strategy must adapt to and accommodate this reality. As Churchill intimated, the only thing harder than fighting with allies is fighting without them. Congress, through the Armed Services Committee, should track closely an increased military capability to work with allies, the NATO alliance being foremost but not our sole focus. We must also enlist non-traditional partners where we have common foes or common interests.
> 
> In reference to NATO and in light of the Russian violations of international borders, we must ask if the Alliance’s efforts have adjusted to the unfortunate and dangerous mode the Russian leadership has slipped into?
> 
> With regard to tightening the bond between our smaller military and those we may need at our side in future fights, the convoluted foreign military sales system needs a challenge. Hopefully it can be put in order before we drive more potential partners to equip themselves with foreign equipment, a move that makes it harder to achieve needed inter-operability with our allies and undercuts America’s industrial base. Currently the system fails to reach its potential to support our foreign policy.
> 
> As we attempt to restore stability to the state system and international order, a critical question will be: Is America good for its word?
> 
> When we make clear our position or give our word about something, our friends (and even our foes) must recognize that we are good for it. Otherwise dangerous miscalculations can occur. This means that the military instrument must be fit for purpose and that once a political position is taken, our position is backed up by a capable military making clear that we will stand on our word.
> 
> When the decision is made to employ our forces in combat, Congress should ask if the military is being employed with the proper authority. I believe it should examine answers to fundamental questions like the following:
> 
> Are the political objectives clearly defined and achievable? Murky or quixotic political end states can condemn us to entering wars we don’t know how to end. Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided. Such announcements do not take the place of mature, well‐defined end‐states, nor do they contribute to ending wars as rapidly as possible on favorable terms.
> 
> Is the theater of war itself sufficient for effective prosecution? We have witnessed safe havens prolonging war. If the defined theater of war is insufficient, the plan itself needs to be challenged to determine feasibility of its success or the need for its modification.
> 
> Is the authority for detaining prisoners of war appropriate for the enemy and type war that we are fighting? We have observed the perplexing lack of detainee policy that has resulted in the return of released prisoners to the battlefield. We should not engage in another fight without resolving this issue up front, treating hostile forces, in fact, as hostile.
> 
> Are America’s diplomatic, economic, and other assets aligned to the war aims, with the intent of ending the conflict as rapidly as possible? We have experienced the military alone trying achieve tasks outside its expertise. When we take the serious decision to fight, we must bring to bear all our nation’s resources. You should question how the diplomatic and development efforts will be employed to build momentum for victory and our nation’s strategy demands that integration.
> 
> Finally the culture of our military and its rules are designed to bring about battlefield success in the most atavistic environment on earth. No matter how laudable in terms of a progressive country’s instincts, Congress needs to consider carefully any proposed changes to military rules, traditions and standards that bring non‐combat emphasis to combat units. There is a great difference between military service in dangerous circumstances and serving in a combat unit whose role is to search out and kill the enemy at close quarters. Congress has a responsibility for imposing reason over impulse when proposed changes could reduce the combat capability of our forces at the point of contact with the enemy.
> 
> Ultimately we need the foresight of the Armed Services Committee, acting in its sentinel and oversight role, to draw us out of the reactive stance we’ve fallen into and chart a strategic way ahead. Our national security strategy needs bipartisan direction. In some cases, Congress may need to change our processes for developing an integrated national strategy, because mixing capable people and their good ideas with bad processes results in the bad processes defeating good peoples’ ideas nine times out of ten. This is an urgent matter, because in an interconnected age when opportunistic adversaries can work in tandem to destroy stability and prosperity, our country needs to regain its strategic footing.
> 
> We need to bring clarity to our efforts before we lose the confidence of the American people and the support of our potential allies.
> 
> This essay was adapted from statements made by the author before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 27, 2015.


----------



## a_majoor

The American Interest on how the various "myths" or narratives the we have used as shorthand to understand the world have unravelled. Part of what triggered the Trump phenomena is the realization outside of the coastal corridors that these myths no longer reflected the real world people could see just outside their door, and the understanding that something different was needed. Some similar points were made by Newt Gingrich in a speech eh gave here:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/30/the-great-unraveling/



> AFTER OBAMA
> *The Great Unraveling*
> European policy on Russia is beginning to crumble as the French presidential candidates step away from sanctions. The WSJ:
> 
> The two leading candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen, are both avowed opponents of sanctions meant to punish Moscow for its annexation of part of Ukraine and its support for rebels in the country’s east.
> 
> Russia’s bombing of Syria’s onetime commercial capital of Aleppo—called a war crime by France’s current leaders—hasn’t deterred either politician from urging closer ties between Paris and Moscow.
> 
> The victory of either candidate in the May election threatens to blow a hole in Europe’s sanctions against Moscow, which are a centerpiece of the Continent’s strategy for containing Russia’s military assertiveness.
> 
> In post-Obama world, Germany could end up being isolated on Russia. The harshest, most effective attack on the Russia sanctions comes courtesy of Fillon, who said that it is not so much an actual policy intending to change Russian behavior as a symbolic gesture. Put even less diplomatically, it is a sham—a fake policy that allows Westerners to feel better about themselves while doing nothing serious about Russia’s attack on the post-1990 settlement in Eastern Europe.
> 
> This is a bigger deal than it may look. The past 25 years of world politics have rested on a series of polite fictions, agreed-upon conventions and hypocritical pretenses: That we had a policy to end the North Korean nuclear drive (ditto for Iran); That Europe was becoming a great posthistorical power based on the mighty engine of the euro; That the two-state solution was just a settlement freeze away; That international institutions and civil society were replacing national governments at the center of world politics; That immigration was a no-brainer; That the progress toward free trade was inexorable; That democracy was irresistibly on the march; and so on. Americans and Europeans believed that the world would look more and more like we wanted it to without us doing any heavy lifting.
> 
> Those are all very comforting ideas, but sadly none of them are true. In the next few years we are going to have to face some less pleasant choices based on hard truths rather than comfy illusions. Having the kind of world we really want—safe, prosperous, democratic—is not fully achievable no matter what we do. And having a tolerable world involves working harder, spending more, and putting more skin in the game than we want. A different kind of statesmanship, harder-edged and less sentimental, is going to be needed. Pretending to have a Russia policy will no longer be enough; we will have to choose between the unpalatable alternatives of effectively blocking Russian moves or acquiescing in Russian wins. Brutal clarity rather than liberal pink cloud thinking is the rising force in international affairs.
> In the meantime, expect the old world and the old certainties to continue to crumble and fade.


----------



## a_majoor

This could also go into the Brexit thread, but the divide between the "elites" and the population is an issue throughout the West, and populist backlash is evident across Europe with the rise of Nationalist/populist parties like AfD, Front National or the Party for Freedom, votes like Brexit and the Italian rejection of constitutional reform and suspension of freedom of movement across parts of Europe. The essential mission of the Trump Administration will be to defang the "Deep State" and use populism to restore the balance between political and bureaucratic institutions and the AMerican People:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/02/20/the-real-division-in-american-life-isnt-about-trump/



> *The Real Division in American Life Isn’t About Trump*
> 
> Over at USA Today, Glenn Reynolds argues that America’s credentialed class—currently rending garments over every utterance of Donald Trump—underestimated just how bad things were before the Donald took office:
> 
> To the privileged and well-educated Americans living in their “bicoastal bastions,” things seemed to be going quite well, even as the rest of the country fell farther and farther behind.  But, writes Eberstadt: “It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then — and broke down very badly.” […]
> 
> In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”
> 
> The basic division in American politics today is not over the merits of President Trump. Many of those who voted for him believed that he lacked the moral grounding and gravitas that great Presidents must ultimately draw on. The division is between those who think that, before Trump, things were going just fine and the American elite was doing an excellent job and those who blame the rise of Trump on the failures and blindness of the so-called “meritocratic elite” who, they would argue, have been running the country into the ground.
> 
> In foreign policy, the United States has had two failed presidencies in a row. Our grand strategy of domesticating China into the world order by offering it an unprecedented opportunity to grow rich through low-wage manufacturing exports has hurt American workers without democratizing or reconciling China. Presidents Bush and Obama thought that the democratization of the Middle East would and could solve the terrorism problem—and so did their degreed and esteemed advisers and the commentariat.
> 
> Domestically, our leadership elite has watched passively as infrastructure decays, state and local pension systems accumulate unsustainable debt loads, the national debt inexorably climbs, and the social capital of the nation erodes.
> 
> There was no sign from the Clinton campaign that anybody understood that the nation’s path was unsustainable. The Clinton campaign was about “more of the same.”
> 
> The Trump voters were right that the nation needs change and that the “best and the brightest” are failing the nation the way they did during the Vietnam War; the Clinton voters were right that on the whole the Trump team lacks the skills and the temperament to run the country. Glenn Reynolds is right that this isn’t just another example of partisan gridlock. It is a danger to the stability of the United States political system.


----------



## a_majoor

A rather astounding comparison. While the author is correct in saying there is no way to compare the magnitude of each man's potential impact, the essential idea of doing politics as a pragmatic exercise in allocating resources is the unifying factor here:

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2017/03/09/will-donald-trump-be-the-american-deng-xiaoping/



> *Will Donald Trump Be the American Deng Xiaoping?*
> By Roger L Simon March 9, 2017
> 
> To mention Donald Trump in the same breath with Deng Xiaoping -- the man who led China out of the Dark Ages of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and into the modern world -- sounds ludicrous on its face.  And to a great degree it is.  Deng, after all, is -- not just arguably, but actually -- the man who personally is responsible for improving more human lives than anyone in history, lifting hundreds of  millions of Chinese out of abject poverty and undoubtedly saving untold millions from starvation by upending Maoism. (Historians believe Mao was responsible of 45 million deaths during the four years of the Great Leap Forward alone.)
> 
> Deng, like all of us, was not perfect, but he clearly had a political genius and incredible courage in his ability to battle and ultimately defeat the monolithic power of  Mao Zedong, who had jailed him and had his son pushed out a window (the son has spent the rest of his life as a paraplegic). It's the stuff of great novels. (Yes, I realize Maoism still lingers in China, but, as I mentioned, nothing's perfect.)
> 
> Back in 1961, at the height of Mao's reign and three years before the publication of the Chairman's Little Red Book, Deng slyly and metaphorically attacked the ideological rigidity of communism with one simple statement (dare I call it a tweet?  If so, it was the most potent tweet of all time): "I don't care if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."
> 
> Simple as it is, that bears repeating: "I don't care if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."
> 
> There are minor variations in the various translations but they all have the same pragmatic, anti-ideological import.  The Chinese evidently never forgot it, because, although many still may pretend-profess to be communists, they are in reality Dengists.  This has led to the world's most succesful crony capitalism, but, again as I said, nothing's perfect.  Whatever the case, modern China is a giant improvement with Deng Xiaoping's fingerprints all over it.  The unbelievable Shanghai skyline -- that's Deng.
> 
> Like a Serial Killer, Mao Zedong Manipulated Everyone
> 
> So is Donald a Dengist?  As yet, of course, his impact is extremely minor by comparison and even making such a comparison of someone who was born a peasant in impoverished rural China, became a communist and then lived to subvert communism in the most populace country on the planet with a to-the-manor-born scion of a Queens real estate mogul is, shall we say, a bit of a stretch.
> 
> Nevertheless, the Deng analogy suddenly jumped into my head when I saw a video the other day of a smiling (yes, smiling) Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) -- normally a bitter enemy of anything Republican -- emerging from a White House meeting with the president.  Cummings had been talking with Trump about the high cost of pharmaceuticals and apparently, evidently to Cummings' surprise, there had been another meeting, this time of the minds.  It didn't matter if the cat was black or white (Democrat or Republican -- no racial implication intended here). People were having trouble affording their meds, the one item they needed above all besides food.
> 
> I had a similar reaction when I read the next morning that the president was bowling with a number of members of Congress of various persuasions.  Good for him, I thought.  This is a man who, besides being a people person, wants to get things done.  Lindsey Graham, another longtime opponent, also came out smiling from lunch. (Question: How did Deng survive in an even tougher environment?  Or was it tougher?  The New York Times and Washington Post reporters act as if Trump can't even put his socks on straight, even though they themselves seem to be having some difficulties. The Eurocrats attack him as a pariah as their own societies implode around them. Virtually our entire entertainment industry and academia -- speaking of the Cultural Revolution -- is aligned against him.)
> 
> The current healthcare debate is another example of Trump's Dengism.  Anyone who is even slightly honest and takes a few steps backwards from the current clamor knows that in a society the size of the United States there is no such thing -- from total socialized medicine to the purest of free markets -- as a perfect solution to healthcare.  Someone's ox is always going to get gored.  Yet Trump is keeping the door open to everyone, aiming ultimately to get something done, because, as we all know, Obamacare ain't workin'.
> 
> This all raises the perpetual question of pragmatism versus ideological principles. The Groucho joke aside ("These are my principles.  If you don't like them, I have others."), we all need some basic ideals to rely upon, some way to understand the world.  But there's a difference between liking and loving your ideology. I have my ideological leanings, but I don't love them. They give me a base from which to operate.  Pelosi and Schumer are examples of people who love their ideology.  You almost always know what they are going to say about just about anything -- and, for that reason, what they say usually has little to do with the solution of the problem.  What they have to say also therefore is of very little interest, no more than a Knicks fan telling you the amazing news he roots for the Knicks (duh!).  This is also true of certain people on the right.  And, of course, it was true of Barack Obama who rarely, if ever, even spoke to the other side.  He knew best.
> 
> Ideological rigidity doesn't always end up like Robespierre guillotining his former comrades, but it is almost always a serious impediment to the advancement of society and our own ability to see.  It blinds us and holds us back. (I consider myself some kind of libertarian-conservative, but I'd also like to be free to support government-financed infrastructure if it becomes necessary).  Deng Xiaoping clearly felt the same way, as I suspect does Donald Trump. I also suspect, and hope, that if Trump is able to succeed in what he is doing he will at least partly break this ideological yoke that seems to have brought our country to a standstill. People who complain he is not a "real conservative" annoy me as much as those who insist he is.  I don't care if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.
> 
> 
> P.S.: While surfing around doing research for this article, I was pleased to find I was not the first to recognize this odd similarity.  On July 15, 2016, Frank Li wrote on econintersect.com: "America is 'desperately in need of a great transformational leader like China's Deng' ... Could Donald Trump possibly be that leader?"  You will also find an amusing photo of Deng with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at that link.
> 
> Further, believe it or not, I actually met Deng Xiaoping.  He visited Los Angeles in 1979 and, still a leftist at that time, I was invited to a small reception in a working class neighborhood near downtown.  He came, again believe it or not, no one could make this up, in the company of the Osmonds!  You can read about it here, if you're interested.


----------



## Kirkhill

> Trump Shifting Authority Over Military Operations Back to Pentagon
> 
> By MICHAEL R. GORDONMARCH 19, 2017
> 
> WASHINGTON — *President Trump is shifting more authority over military operations to the Pentagon*, according to White House officials, *reversing* what his aides and some generals say was *a tendency* by the Obama White House* to micromanage* issues better left to military commanders.
> 
> The change is at the heart of a re-engineering of the National Security Council’s role under its new leader, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and reflects *Mr. Trump’s belief that the N.S.C. should focus less on military operations and tactics and more on strategic issues*. A guiding precept for the president and his team is that *the balance of power in the world has shifted against American interests, and that General McMaster should focus on developing foreign and economic policy options in concert with the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies to respond to that challenge.*
> 
> The new approach to managing military operations was evident this month when a Marine artillery battery and a team of Army Rangers — some 400 troops in all — arrived in northern Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed off on the deployments and notified the White House. But General McMaster neither convened a meeting at the White House to discuss whether to send the forces nor presented the Pentagon with questions about where, precisely, the troops would operate or what risks they might confront.
> 
> Though the *streamlined decision-making has been welcomed by many in the military, it could raise questions about whether Mr. Trump,* who has drawn heavily from current and former generals to fill key jobs in his administration, *is exercising sufficient oversight*.
> 
> “For President Trump, it is very early days, but he *appears to be going back to a model of greater delegation of authority,*” said Michèle A. Flournoy, who was the Pentagon’s top policy official under President Barack Obama and is the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based policy group.
> 
> “The benefit is that it allows the military campaign to go forward without undue pauses, interruptions or delays,” Ms. Flournoy added. “That enables it to create more momentum and to be more responsive to changes on the battlefield. But there is a risk if there is inadequate oversight and the president stops paying close attention. It can be detrimental, even dangerous, if a commander in chief does not feel ownership of the campaign or loses touch with how things are evolving on the ground.”



Funny position for an authoritarian - delegation of authority.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/us/trump-shifting-authority-over-military-operations-back-to-pentagon.html?_r=0

Also interesting is the sense that the NSC has other things to worry about other than just military operations.  Which is in line with having Steve Bannon on the NSC.  Bannon:Trump = Bracken:Churchill.  One of Bracken's star employees was a chap name of George Orwell.

One final thought.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Trump's proposed cuts to Foreign Aid and International Development.   Is it reasonable to suggest that Coca Cola, McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut are more effective at selling America than any government programme?  And they create American jobs both at home and overseas.  High School kid as assistant shift supervisor becomes Head of Turkish operations.


----------



## a_majoor

Chris Pook said:
			
		

> Much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Trump's proposed cuts to Foreign Aid and International Development.   Is it reasonable to suggest that Coca Cola, McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut are more effective at selling America than any government programme?  And they create American jobs both at home and overseas.  High School kid as assistant shift supervisor becomes Head of Turkish operations.



For many progressives, the idea that Capitalism and the Free Market represent an effective means of "selling" America abroad is repugnant in the extreme. Only qualified and credentialed "experts" could possibly make the right choices and do the right things to project American values and power abroad. And look at the unbroken string of successes they have run up since.....um....

Sadly, the political and bureaucratic classes in America (and their academic and media allies) are far more interested in expressing solidarity with their political and bureaucratic counterparts abroad rather than representing the interests of the hundreds of millions of Americans for whom Coca-Cola, MacDonald's. KFC and Pizza Hut are familiar symbols of the neighbourhood and even valued employers. The divide isn't even really "Left/Right" as most people traditionally think of politics, but rather a horizontal line dividing "Patricians/Plebeians". And history tells us that that sort of division is much more prone to violent overturning than simple "Left/Right" models (look at the Social Wars in the _Res Publica Roma_ for an early example).


----------



## Kirkhill

The badge and motto of Clan Fleming - Belgian merchants that were invited to Scotland in the 1120's by King David that set up shop in Lanark which became a cradle of both the Covenanters and Presbyterians.

This article by James Carafano makes sense to me.  I don't know that Trump isn't an egotistical, dim-witted, scatter-brained, megalo-maniacal, mysoginistic, homophobic anti-semite.  I just figure that it is foolish to assume that anybody who has reached his age and his position, and who has not only not lost what he inherited but has enlarged upon it, is not capable.

The words and the tweets may mean nothing unless he wants them to mean something.  He may just be creating his own obscuring screen.  He may just be creating the opportunity for surprise.  An opportunity that would diminish over time as his deeds make him more predictable. 

And there again, I may be wrong and he is a slobbering fool.  But I wouldn't bet on it.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/trump-has-foreign-policy-strategy-20284



> Trump Has a Foreign Policy Strategy
> 
> Yes, there is a method to Trump's foreign-policy "madness."
> James Jay Carafano
> April 20, 2017
> 
> For two weeks, the White House has unleashed a foreign-policy blitzkrieg, and Washington’s chattering classes are shocked and, if not awed, at least perplexed.
> CNN calls Trump’s actions a “u-turn.” Bloomberg opts for the more mathematical “180 degree turn,” while the Washington Post goes with “flipflop.” Meanwhile, pundits switched from decrying the president as an isolationist to lambasting him as a tool of the neocons. Amid all the relabeling, explanations of an “emerging Trump Doctrine” have proliferated faster than North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
> 
> Here’s my take on what’s going on:
> • Yes, there is a method to Trump’s “madness.”
> • No, there has been no big change in Trump’s strategy.
> The actions that flustered those who thought they had pigeon-holed Donald Trump simply reflect the impulses that have driven the direction of this presidency since before the convention in Cleveland.
> 
> *At the Center of the Storm*
> 
> Where is the head and heart of the president’s national-security team? Ask that question a year ago, and the answer would have been simple: General Mike Flynn, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator Jeff Sessions.
> 
> Today, Flynn is gone. Giuliani never went in. Sessions is still a crucial voice in the administration, but his duties as Attorney General deal only partially with foreign policy and national-security matters.
> The new team centers round Jim Mattis at the Defense Department, Rex Tillerson at the State Department, John Kelly at the Department of Homeland Security and H. R. McMaster in the West Wing—ably assisted by Nikki Haley at the United Nations. Trump barely knew these people before the election.
> 
> There is little question that the new team’s character and competence affected the White House response to the recent string of high profile events and activities—from presidential meetings with Egypt and China and Tillerson’s tête-à-tête with Putin, to the ominous developments in Syria and North Korea. Though on the job for only about dozen weeks, the new administration handled a lot of action on multiple fronts quite deftly. Much of that can be credited to the maturity and experience of Trump’s senior national-security team.
> 
> But how the administration responded was purely Trumpian—reflecting an impulse that transcends the makeup of his foreign team or other White House advisors.
> 
> *Decoding Trumpian Strategy*
> 
> Since the early days of the campaign, one thing has been clear: trying stitch together an understanding of Trump’s foreign and defense policy based on Trump’s tweets and other off-hand comments is a fool’s errand. That has not changed since the Donald took over the Oval Office.
> 
> That is not to say that none of Trump’s rhetoric matters. He has given some serious speeches and commentary. But pundits err when they give every presidential utterance equal merit. A joint address to Congress ought to carry a lot more weight than a 3 a.m. tweet about the Terminator.
> 
> But especially with this presidency, one needs to focus on White House actions rather than words to gain a clearer understanding of where security and foreign policy is headed. Do that, and one sees emerging a foreign and defense policy more conventional and more consistent than what we got from Bush or Obama. Still, a deeper dive is necessary to get at the root of Trump’s take on the world and how it fits with recent actions like the tomahawk strikes in Syria and the armada steaming toward North Korea.
> 
> I briefed Candidate Trump and his policy advisors during the campaign. I organized workshops for the ambassadorial corps during the Cleveland Convention and worked with the presidential team through the inauguration. Those experiences let me observe how the policies from the future fledgling administration were unfolding. Here are some observations that might be helpful in understanding the Trumpian way.
> 
> At the core of Trump’s view of the world are his views on the global liberal order. Trump is no isolationist. He recognizes that America is a global power with global interests and that it can’t promote and protect those interests by sitting at home on its hands. Freedom of the commons, engaging and cooperating with like-minded nations, working to blunt problems “over there” before they get over here—these are things every modern president has pursued. Trump is no different.
> 
> What distinguishes Trump—and what marks a particularly sharp departure from Obama—is his perception of what enabled post–World War America and the rest of the free world to rise above the chaos of a half century of global depression and open war.
> 
> Obama and his ilk chalked it all up to international infrastructure—the UN, IMF, World Bank, EU, et al. For Trump, it was the sovereign states rather than the global bureaucracies that made things better. The international superstructure has to stand on a firm foundation—and the foundation is the sovereign state. Without strong, vibrant, free and wealthy states, the whole thing collapses like a Ponzi scheme.



More to follow....


----------



## Kirkhill

... See my last 



> Trump is an arch nationalist in the positive sense of the term. America will never be safe in the world if the world doesn’t have an America that is free, safe and prosperous.
> That belief is at the heart of Trump’s policies designed to spark an economic revival, rollback the administrative state and rebuild the military. It lies at the core of his mantra: make America great again.
> 
> Even the strongest America, however, can’t be a global power without the willingness to act globally. And that's where Trump's declaration of “America First” comes in.
> 
> What it means for foreign policy is that the president will put the vital interests of the United States above the maintenance of global institutions. That is not an abandonment of universal values. Every American president deals with the challenge of protecting interests and promoting values. Trump will focus on American interests and American values, and that poses no threat to friends and allies. In many cases, we share the same values. In many cases, what's in America's vital interest is also in their interest—and best achieved through joint partnership.
> 
> Here is how those animating ideas are currently manifesting themselves in Trump's strategy:
> 
> A strategy includes ends (what you are trying to accomplish), means (the capabilities you will use to do that) and ways (how you are going to do it). The ends of Trump’s strategy are pretty clear. In both talk and action in the Trump world, it boils down to three parts of the world: Europe, Asia and the Middle East. That makes sense. Peace and stability in these regions are vital to U.S. interests and are under assault. The United States wants all three parts of the world to settle. It is unrealistic to think all the problems can be made to disappear, but it is not unrealistic to significantly reduce the potential for region-wide conflict.
> 
> The means are more than just a strong military. Trump believes in using all the instruments of power, hard and soft. He has unleashed Nikki Haley on the United Nations. He has ordered Rex Tillerson to revamp the State Department so that it is focused on the core tasks of statecraft and the effective and appropriate use of foreign assistance. He wants an intelligence community that delivers intelligence and doesn’t just cater to what the White House wants to hear. And he has ordered Homeland Security to shift from being politically correct to operationally effective. Further, it’s clear that Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis and Sessions are all trying to pull in the same direction.
> 
> The ways of the Trump strategy are not the engagement and enlargement of Clinton, the rearranging of the world by Bush, or the disengagement of Obama. The world is filled with intractable problems. Trump is less interested in trying to solve all of them in a New-York minute and more concerned about reducing those problems so that they give the United States and its friends and allies less and less trouble.
> 
> Trump is traveling a path between running away and invading. It might be called persistent presence. The United States plans to engage and use its influence in key parts of the world consistently over time to protect our interests. Done consistently, it will not only protect our interests; it will also expand the global safe space by causing bad influences to fade.
> 
> Recent activities in the Middle East are a good example. The bomb strike on Syria was not a prelude to regime change or nation-building in Syria. It was a warning shot to Assad to cut it out and stop interfering in U.S. efforts to finish off ISIS, stabilize refugee populations and keep Iraq from falling apart. Engagement with Egypt was to signal America is back working with partners to stabilize the region and counter the twin threats of Islamist extremism and Iran. Neither is a kick-ass-and-withdraw operation. These are signs of long, serious engagement, shrinking the space in which bad actors can operate.
> 
> The U.S. regional strategies for Europe and Asia are the same, and it seems clear that Chinese and Russian leaders have gotten the message. In the wake of recent meetings, both countries have reacted by treating Trump with the seriousness he has demanded. Others get it too. I’ve talked to many foreign officials who have come through Washington, DC this year and they have all told me that they got the same impression:* this administration is about resolve and persistence.
> *
> Still, no strategy is without risks and pitfalls. This one is no different. Here is how Trump might screw up or be upended by a smarter or luckier enemy:
> 
> Pop goes political will. A strategy of persistent presence can work only if the United States persists. It took past presidents over a decade to screw things up. It is going to take at least eight years of reassuring friends and wearing down adversaries to fix it. Trump will have to get reelected.
> 
> Strength for the fight. Trump has to deliver guns and butter: a rebounding economy at home and a strong face abroad. That means a combination of growth and fiscally responsible federal spending—a challenge that eluded the last two presidents.
> 
> Mission creep. Presence can lapse into ambition, which can become overreach, or certainly taking on more than make sense to handle. There might always be temptation to deal with a North Korea, Syria or Iran once for all.
> 
> Blindsided. There are other parts of the world. An administration can't be indifferent to effective engagement in Latin America and Africa.
> 
> Distractions. Persistence is boring. There is always the temptation to follow the bright foreign-policy object.
> 
> Enemy gets a vote. The United States has to be strong in three theaters at the same time, so there will always be a temptation for its competitors to coordinate efforts or seize opportunities to give the United States multiple problems to solve, straining its capability to persist in each theater.
> 
> Black Swans. Competitors might get tired of the long war and risk throwing in a game changer. For example, rolling the dice on an Electromagnetic Pulse attack. Effective persistence requires a measure of paranoia. Competitors are never inanimate entities to be pushed around. They have agency, and they are always looking for a way to make a bad day for the other guy.
> 
> It remains to be seen if Trump can become a strategic leader capable of steering America past all these obstacles, but certainly he sees the path forward much more clearly than his domestic opponents are willing to recognize or acknowledge.
> 
> A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research program for national security and foreign relations.



I keep hearing that Trump likes to win and how he must be aggravated at how he hasn't won all his battles.  He is coming up on 71.  I am fairly sure that he has lost a battle or two in his life.  He has also spent a lifetime with New York Paparazzi following his every move while he conducted his business. 

I would bet that he long ago decided on how much he would allow the press to influence his activities.

The last thing that I would expect is that he would tell the press what his end game is.


----------



## Kirkhill

One last bit of trivia that I came across:



> On October 31, 1991, 79-year-old Mary Anne Trump (Donald Trump's Mother) was mugged and beaten near her home in Queens, New York. She sustained broken ribs, facial bruises, several fractures, a brain hemorrhage, and permanent damage to her sight and hearing.[5][6] A delivery truck driver named Lawrence Herbert apprehended her 16-year-old assailant, and Donald Trump rewarded Herbert with a check that kept him from losing his home to a foreclosure.[7][4]



She died 9 years later, one year after her husband.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anne_MacLeod_Trump

1991 - 26 years ago, Trump at 45.

I wonder if that had any impact on the way he saw the world, the US and his role?


----------



## a_majoor

Once again, this should be blindingly obvious to the chattering classes. President Trump has been a public figure for more than 30 years, and re reading "The Art of the Deal" was like watching the entire primary season and Presidential election campaign. His M.O. should be well known by now.

The fact the legacy media, chattering classes, professional politicians, bureaucrats and academics have _not_ caught on should be concerning. While the President may be using social media tools for obfuscation, it seems to me that the real issue in the American left is a willful blindness to anything or anyone who does not fit into the "Narrative", and an inability to look outside the bubble to check their assumptions. The "Narrative" has collided with reality, and the resulting train wreak is horrifying to look at, but still compels us to slow down and look anyway.....The battlespace right now seems to be between the current establishment "Narrative" and the counter narratives of MAGA, the Alt-Right, Alt-Tech and others which may be more reflective of reality, or seem to have more predictive power for the user.



> Obfuscation
> 
> Obfuscation is the willful obscuring of the intended meaning of communication, usually by making the message confusing, ambiguous, or difficult to understand. The obfuscation might be unintentional or intentional, and is accomplished with circumlocution, the use of jargon, and the use of an argot of little communicative value to outsiders.


----------



## a_majoor

Henry Kissinger reflects on where we stand today, and the potential challenges we face tomorrow:

https://capx.co/chaos-and-order-in-a-changing-world/



> *Chaos and order in a changing world*
> By Dr Henry Kissinger
> 
> Lady Thatcher was one of the most significant leaders of our period. Decisive, effervescent, courageous, loyal, she was dedicated to shaping the future rather than following the recommendations of focus groups.
> 
> I first met her in the early 1970s, when she was serving as Minister of Education in the Cabinet of Edward Heath. At our first meeting, Mrs Thatcher conveyed her disdain for the then conventional wisdom that political contests were about winning the centre. For her, leadership was the task of moving the political centre towards defined principles rather than the other way around.
> 
> In implementing this philosophy, she generated over a long career a new political direction in her society. She did so by a combination of character and courage: character because the seminal choices demanded by the political process are usually taken in a very narrow passage; and courage to go forward on a road not travelled before.
> 
> Margaret Thatcher displayed these attributes articulately in the Findley address at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the site of Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech 50 years earlier. She put forward challenges which, in their essence, are even more urgent today:
> 
> Should Russia be regarded as a potential threat or a partner?
> Should NATO turn its attention to “out of area” issues?
> Should NATO admit the new democracies of Central Europe with full responsibilities as quickly as prudently possible?
> Should Europe develop its own “defense identity” in NATO?
> 
> Two decades after Lady Thatcher’s prescient address, the transatlantic world faces another set of issues of comparable nature. The world order the West created to end its Thirty Years’ War in 1648 was based on the notion of sovereignty of states secured by a balance of power between a multiplicity of entities. It now confronts concepts of order drawn from different historical and cultural experiences and involving visions of continental or universal religious dimensions. So the long-term issue becomes whether these issues are to be resolved by the maxims of the nation-state or new, more globalised concepts, and with what consequences for the future world order. Let me do so by adapting Lady Thatcher’s challenges to our circumstances.
> 
> Russia
> 
> The Russian challenge—Lady Thatcher’s first question—today focuses on Ukraine and Syria but reflects a deeper alienation. Stretching with eleven time zones from Europe along the borders of Islam to the Pacific, Russia has developed a distinct conception of world order. In its perennial quest for security along vast boundaries with few natural demarcations, Russia has evolved what amounts to a definition of absolute security, which verges on absolute insecurity for some of its neighbours.
> 
> At the same time, Russia’s geo-strategic scale, its almost mystic conception of greatness, and the willingness of its people to endure hardship have helped over the centuries to preserve the global equilibrium against imperial designs by Mongols, Swedes, French, and Germans. The result for Russia has been ambivalence—a desire to be accepted by Europe and to transcend it simultaneously. This special sense of identity helps explain President Putin’s statement that, “The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
> 
> Putin’s view of international politics is often described as a recurrence of 1930s European nationalist authoritarianism. More accurately, it is the heritage of the worldview identified with the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, as exemplified in his 1880 speech at the dedication of a monument to the poet Pushkin. Its passionate call for a new spirit of Russian greatness based on the spiritual qualities of the Russian character was taken up in the late 20th century by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
> 
> Abandoning his exile in Vermont to return to Russia, Solzhenitsyn, in his book On the Russian Question, called for action to save the Russian people who had been “driven out” of Russia. In the same spirit, Putin has railed against what he has interpreted as a 300-year-old Western effort to contain Russia. In 2007 in a Dostoevskyan-like outburst at the Munich Security Conference, he accused the West of having unjustly exploited the troubles of post-Cold War Russia to isolate and condemn it.
> 
> How should the West develop relations with Russia, a country that is a vital element of European security but which, for reasons of history and geography, has a fundamentally different view of what constitutes a mutually satisfactory arrangement in areas adjacent to Russia. Is the wisest course to pressure Russia, and if necessary to punish it, until it accepts Western views of its internal and global order? Or is scope left for a political process that overcomes, or at least mitigates, the mutual alienation in pursuit of an agreed concept of world order?
> 
> Is the Russian border to be treated as a permanent zone of confrontation, or can it be shaped into a zone of potential cooperation, and what are the criteria for such a process? These are the questions of European order that need systematic consideration. Either concept requires a defense capability which removes temptation for Russian military pressure.
> 
> China
> 
> Lady Thatcher’s query regarding out of area issues concerns in our day primarily China and the Middle East. China has launched its “Belt and Road Initiative” as a grand design with political, economic, cultural, and security implications from the East China Sea to the English Channel. It evokes memories of a lecture to the Royal Geographic Society in 1904 by Sir Halford Mackinder, who described the Eurasian Heartland as the geo-strategic pivot of the globe.
> 
> By seeking to connect China to Central Asia and eventually to Europe, the new Silk Road will in effect shift the world’s centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Eurasian landmass. The road traverses an immense diversity of human cultures, nations, beliefs, institutions, and sovereign states. On it lie other great cultures—Russia, India, Iran, and Turkey—and at its extremity the nations of Western Europe, each of whom will have to decide if they will join it, cooperate with it, or oppose it, and in what forms. The complexities for international politics are as staggering as they are compelling.
> 
> The “Belt and Road Initiative” is being put forward in an international strategic environment that has been Westphalian, defined by the West’s philosophy of order. But China is unique, transcending the dimension of the Westphalian state: it is at once an ancient civilisation, a state, an empire, and a globalised economy. Inevitably, China will seek adaptation of international order compatible with its historical experience, growing power, and strategic vision.
> 
> This evolution will mark the third transformation of China in the last half-century. Mao’s brought unity, Deng’s brought reform, and now, President Xi Jinping is seeking to fulfil what he calls “the Chinese dream”, going back to the late Qing reformers, by realising “the two 100s”. When the People’s Republic of China enters its second hundred years in 2049, it will in Xi’s definition be as powerful as, if not more powerful than, any other society in the world and have the per capita GDP of fully developed countries.
> 
> In the process, the United States and China will become the world’s two most consequential countries both economically and geopolitically, obliged to undertake unprecedented adaptations in their traditional thinking. Not since it became a global power after World War II has the United States had to contend with a geopolitical equal. And never in China’s millennia-long history has it conceived of a foreign nation as more than a tributary to it, the Central or “Middle” Kingdom.
> 
> Both countries think of themselves as exceptional, albeit in fundamentally different ways: America sees spreading its values and system to other countries as part of its mission; China historically acted on the premise that the majesty of its performance would motivate other countries into a hierarchy based on respect.
> 
> In both countries, there exists many opinions about how to reconcile these differences of perspective —whether by the maxims of the nation-state or by new, more globalised concepts, some of which President Xi’s “Chinese dream” exemplify. For both societies — and the rest of the world — their co-evolution is a defining experience of the period.
> 
> What will the role of Europe be in such a world? As part of the Atlantic world or as an entity redefining itself and autonomously adjusting to the fluctuations surrounding it? As a component of a transatlantic arrangement? Or as a differential entity whose elements participate in a historic balance of power model? What kind of world order will depend on how transatlantic and “Road and Belt Initiative” concepts are synchronised?
> 
> The Middle East
> 
> In Eurasia and along Russia’s borders, world order is challenged by the consequences of consolidation. Around the periphery of the Middle East, it is threatened by the turmoil of dissolution. The Westphalian-based system of order that emerged in the Middle East at the end of the First World War is now in a shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen have become battlegrounds for factions seeking to impose their rule.
> 
> Across large areas of Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army, Isis, has declared itself a relentless foe of modern civilisation, seeking violently to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a single Islamic empire governed by Sharia law. In these circumstances, the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be regarded as your friend no longer applies. In the contemporary Middle East, the enemy of your enemy may also be your enemy. The Middle East affects the world by the volatility of its ideologies as much as by its specific actions.
> 
> The outside world’s war with Isis can serve as an illustration. Most non-Isis powers—including Shia Iran and the leading Sunni states—agree on the need to destroy it. But which entity is supposed to inherit its territory? A coalition of Sunnis? Or a sphere of influence dominated by Iran? The answer is elusive because Russia and the Nato countries support opposing factions. If the Isis territory is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Shia forces trained and directed by it, the result could be a territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut, which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire.
> 
> The Western calculus has been complicated by the emerging transformation of Turkey, once a key moderating influence, from a secular state into an ideologically Islamic version. At once affecting Europe by its control over the flow of migrants from the Middle East and frustrating Washington by the movement of oil and other goods across its southern border, Turkey’s support of the Sunni cause occurs side by side with its efforts to weaken the autonomy of the Kurds, the majority of whose factions the West has supported heretofore.
> 
> The new role of Russia will affect the kind of order that will emerge. Is its goal to assist in the defeat of ISIS and the prevention of comparable entities? Or is it driven by nostalgia for historic quests for strategic domination? If the former, a cooperative policy of the West with Russia could be constructive. If the latter, a recurrence of Cold War patterns is likely. Russia’s attitude towards the control of current Isis territory, sketched above, will be a key test.
> 
> The same choice faces the West. It must decide what outcome is compatible with an emerging world order and how it defines it. It cannot commit to a choice based on religious groupings in the abstract since they are themselves divided. Its support must aim for stability and against whatever grouping most threatens stability. And the calculation should include the long term and not be driven by the tactics of the moment.
> 
> If the West stays engaged without a geo-strategic plan, chaos will grow. If it withdraws in concept or in fact—as has been the temptation over the past decade—great powers like China and India, which cannot afford chaos along their borders or turmoil within them, will gradually step into the West’s place together with Russia. The pattern of world politics of recent centuries will be overthrown.
> 
> These trends involve two implications for the Atlantic Alliance. Insofar as the upheavals on the continents threaten the balance of power, they represent a threat to security. But they also challenge the West to contribute to the building of a new world order. Article V of the Nato Charter defines what must be preserved; it cannot be the end product of Atlantic policy.
> 
> NATO was formed in 1949 to protect its members against direct assault by the Soviet Union. It has evolved since into a network of nations combining in various dimensions to react to internationally destabilising situations. But Nato has been more precise in its original objective than in its evolution; it is clearer about its defensive commitments than its role in contributing to world order.
> 
> Conceived as a deterrent to a threatening Soviet Union in the process of increasing its arsenal of nuclear weapons to supplement its numerically superior land forces, Nato has been both a legal obligation and an expression of the joint determination of the free nations of the West to enhance their values.
> 
> A tradition of American leadership resulted because the American nuclear arsenal has been the ultimate counterweight to Soviet military power. As the decades went by, the Alliance turned increasingly into a unilateral American guarantee rather than an agreed strategic concept relevant to the evolving world.
> 
> Lady Thatcher’s concept of the Atlantic Alliance was very different from current realities. She described it as in essence comprised of “America as the dominant power surrounded by allies which generally follow her lead”. This is no longer fully the case. The United States is not leading in the Thatcher mode, and the mindset of too many Europeans is to explore alternatives.
> 
> The realities of population, resources, technology, and capital assure a decisive global role for an involved America and a militarily engaged Europe. It will not, however, come about without an agreed strategic and political concept
> 
> In today’s rapidly changing world, Nato must engage in a permanent reexamination of its goals and capabilities. The shift in the structures that comprise the contemporary world order should impel Nato and its members to ask themselves: What changes other than the control of the territory of its members will it seek to prevent, and by what means? What are the political goals, and what means is it prepared to assemble?
> 
> So let me conclude by repeating the challenge Margaret Thatcher laid down in the Findley Lecture two decades ago:
> 
> “What is to be done? I believe that what is now required is a new and imaginative Atlantic initiative. Its purpose must be to redefine Atlanticism in the light of the challenges I have been describing. There are rare moments when history is open and its course changed by means such as these. We may be at just such a moment now.”
> 
> Lady Thatcher’s quote reflected, above all, an exhortation and the definition of a task. We are at an even more fraught juncture today.
> 
> This is an expanded version of remarks delivered by Dr Kissinger to the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Security, 2017 in June, as prepared for delivery


----------



## a_majoor

The perils of underfunding or overstretching you forces. While America does have allies to do some of the heavy lifting, how much additional horsepower do we realistically add to the equation? Japan and the ROK certainly add some value (particularly in the Western Pacific), but how about the EU in the Baltic States or the Middle East? How much value added do the Sunni Kingdoms and Israel add? These are very important long term questions, and lead back to President Trumps often expressed opinions that nations need to pick up after themselves and be prepared to do more about defense and security.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/us-navy-is-overworked-so-russia-and-china-ramped-up-activity-to-exploit-the-weakness.html#more-139561



> *US Navy, Air Force are overworked so Russia and China ramped up activity to exploit the weakness*
> brian wang | November 26, 2017 |
> 
> The US Navy was taking risks by scaling back crew size and piling work onto remaining sailors, who sometimes work more than 100 hours a week while deployed.
> 
> The US Navy has been flexing its muscle through frequent exercises like those conducted near Korea. The US must address the fleet’s “diminishing surge capacity” as a potential conflict will likely require a response by more than three carriers to carry out the operations plan. To ensure its carrier strike groups are able to respond to an emerging conflict, the US must launch a course to “rebuild the Navy.
> 
> The US Pacific fleet is the world’s largest, with approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors and civilians. However, this is not enough for the level of operational activity.
> 
> The 7th Fleet’s area of operation spans more than 124 million square kilometers, stretching from the International Date Line to the India-Pakistan border; and from the Kuril Islands in the North to Antarctica in the south.
> 
> The US Navy Pacific fleet has to
> * monitor and react to North Korea
> * perform joint operations with India, Japan, South Korea and other allies
> * respond to China in the South China Sea
> 
> In 2017, Russian naval activity in Europe exceeded levels seen during the Cold War.
> 
> US Air Force has pilot shortage
> 
> In 2017, Sen. John McCain called the US Air Force pilot shortage a “full-blown crisis” that could eventually “call into question the Air Force’s ability to accomplish its mission.” And this week, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson revealed the deficit climbed to 2,000 pilots, as current operations “are stretching the force to the limit, and we need to start turning the corner on readiness.”
> 
> Last month, to fight the shortage, President Trump signed an executive order allowing the Air Force to voluntarily recall up to 1,000 retired pilots to active duty for up to three years. It was an addendum of the Voluntary Retired Return to Active Duty (VRRAD) program, instituted by the service in July and originally limited to 25 active-duty staff positions. Pilots have not instantly shown up. In fact, only three retirees signed up.
> 
> Training gets sacrificed
> 
> Overworking crews mean longer deployments of US ships. US ships based in Japan — as both the Fitzgerald and McCain had been at the time of their collisions — result in key training requirements being neglected due to the demands of operational duties, something the report describes as a “problem.”
> 
> Without training time, “perishable skills atrophy,” said Carl Schuster, a Hawaii Pacific University professor who spent 10 years “driving” US warships.
> 
> “Military commands are like a football team, you constantly have to practice,” added Schuster.
> 
> Many overworked crews do not sign up for another tour of duty
> 
> Overworked sailors often do not continue their naval career. They do not sign up for another tour of duty. This makes the training problem worse as experienced people quit.
> 
> 19 year maintenance backlog
> 
> A September report from the Government Accountability Office found that the Navy’s shipyard facilities and equipment in poor condition with a backlog of restoration and maintenance that will take at least 19 years to clear.
> 
> China and Russia are using the overworked issue against the US
> 
> China has recognized the problem the US Navy is having. It is easier for China’s navy to do more in its local waters than it is for the US to cover that activity. China can then make the US Navy work even harder by increasing the pace of its local naval activity.
> 
> Russia also has increased air force and navy activity in Europe and around the world.


----------



## a_majoor

President Trump outlines _his_ Grand Strategy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj4zJiWX70o


----------



## Rifleman62

IMHO these extracts are the exact opposite of the Trudeau government position.

Extracts: 1. "They (our leaders) undercut and shortchanged our men and women in uniform with inadequate resources, unstable funding, and unclear missions. They failed to insist that our often very wealthy allies pay their fair share for defence, putting a massive and unfair burden on the US taxpayer and our great US military".

              2. "We are once again investing in our defence - almost $700B, a record, this coming year. We are demanding extraordinary strength, which will hopefully lead to long and extraordinary peace. We are giving our courageous military men and women the support they need and so dearly deserve".

              3. "A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war".

              4. "The third pillar of our strategy is to preserve peace through strength. We recognize that weakness is the surest path to conflict, and unrivalled power is the most certain means of defence. For this reason, our strategy breaks from the damaging defence sequester. We're going to get rid of that".  

"It calls for a total modernization of our military, and reversing previous decisions to shrink our armed forces - even as threats to national security grew. It calls for streamlining acquisition, eliminating bloated bureaucracy, and massively building up our military, which has the fundamental side benefit of creating millions and millions of jobs".


----------



## QV

But “Canada’s back!”

Some say the US’s influence in the world is dropping.... I suggest it is Canada’s.


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

Rifleman62 said:
			
		

> IMHO these extracts are the exact opposite of the Trudeau government position.
> 
> 3. "A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war".




Hmmmmmmm! Where have I seen this before???

Oh yes! That's been around for about 1600 years: Flavus Vegetius Renatus' famous quote from his _De re Militari_:

_*"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum"*_ (Therefore, whoever desires peace, let them prepare for war)

which of course has been bastardized through the years into the adage: Si vis pacem, para bellum. 

Such depth of knowledge in that president.  ;D


----------



## MarkOttawa

Someone tweeted about this piece:  



> Just needs a Thucydides reference for good measure
> https://twitter.com/joshjonsmith/status/980641684559085568



The start:



> Strategies of Attainment
> C. Lee Shea
> April 1, 2018
> 
> In this era of disruption, the accelerating pace of change is propelling the world towards a historic inflection point. The liberal international order is in crisis, as geopolitics has returned with a vengeance. Not since the end of the Cold War have we faced a more complex and daunting set of foreign policy challenges — including the resurgence of great power competition with Russia and China, a 30 Years War engulfing the Middle East, the rise of populist movements across the West, the persistence of the terrorist threat, and the economic and social challenges created by inequality and the uncertain future of globalization.
> 
> Alarmingly, the United States today fundamentally lacks a comprehensive strategy to deal with the transformative forces surging across the globe. The approach taken across multiple administrations has been largely tactical and reactive, and focused on the urgent rather than the important. Simply put, our leaders can’t see the forest for the trees. What is needed is a new, whole of government approach that bridges our partisan political divide and responds to the challenges of the moment. To do this, however, it is vital for America to draw from its own best traditions and rediscover the lost art of statecraft.
> 
> Such an approach must begin with a critical appraisal both of today’s global environment and the American response to it. Though the strategic imperative could scarcely be more pressing, too often the tyranny of the inbox crowds out the mindshare necessary for truly innovative thinking. Policymakers must change course. As a first step, we can begin by stepping back and asking ourselves: What problem are we trying to solve?
> 
> The Middle East is a case in point. Still absorbing the reverberations from the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the arbitrary Sykes-Picot borders are proving untenable in numerous corners of the region. While the full significance of the upheaval now taking place will take decades to be understood, some things are apparent. For starters, American leaders need to recognize that our power to dictate the internal evolution of foreign societies is limited. The truth is that democracy is about more than elections, and liberal institutions do not emerge overnight. At the same time, history teaches us that American inaction can have consequences that are as grave as U.S. action. In the meantime, the lack of a comprehensive strategy for the broader region that links means to ends is apparent from the deserts of Libya to the mountains of Afghanistan. While there is no military solution to the conflicts roiling this region and we must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of the past, it is past time for Washington to redouble our efforts to stabilize the Middle East. This, in turn, requires that we set priorities. All too often in this part of the world, it seems, we are playing checkers while our adversaries are playing chess.
> 
> The same is true for Russia...
> 
> _C. Lee Shea served in senior strategic planning roles at the State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon, and is president of the Center for Advanced Strategic Policy Initiatives._
> https://warontherocks.com/2018/04/strategies-of-attainment/





Mark
Ottawa


----------



## Journeyman

MarkOttawa said:
			
		

> Strategies of Attainment
> C. Lee Shea



I would have provided the article's conclusion with the portion that you quoted.  After highlighting the requirements -- a steady hand... visionary... bipartisan... strategic -- sorely needed today, concluding "that is why there is simply no substitute for American leadership."

Well, not only has American leadership been withdrawn, it has gone past mere inaction to demonstrating actively failing strategic leadership. The 'shining city on a hill' is globally shunned, mocked, ignored... while appealing only to "the base" -- a fitting but sadly ironic term.


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

MarkOttawa said:
			
		

> Someone tweeted about this piece:
> 
> The start:
> 
> 
> 
> Mark
> Ottawa



Read the article - twice because it is pure bumf. It's been a long time since I have seen so many clichés and buzzwords wrapped together into an load of incomprehensible drivel using pseudo-intellectual prose.    Then I noticed the date of the article and couldn't help but wonder ....  

BTW, for those who would like the short version, in plain language, the whole article can be resumed as follows: "We are screwing up international relations. We have to put our house in order, do our homework and do better."


----------



## a_majoor

More and more American millennials have expressed open admiration and desire to embrace Socialism (despite the very clear examples of the results of Socialism in Fascist Italy, National Socialist Germany, Communist Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Venezuela....). Here is what they can look forward to:

https://nypost.com/2018/04/11/science-proves-communism-makes-nations-poorer-and-less-healthy/?utm_source=facebook_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons



> Science proves communism makes nations poorer and less healthy
> By Alain Tolhurst, The Sun April 11, 2018 | 11:54am | Updated
> 
> Living under communism makes countries poorer and less healthy for decades, according to a landmark new study.
> 
> Researchers testing historical connections between cultures found that whether a country had been under communism was the biggest factor for those with lower health, income and educational levels.
> 
> In the first undertaking of its kind, they analyzed the fortunes of 44 countries across Europe and Asia and looked at geography, religion, systems of government and a more intangible quality called “deep cultural ancestry.”
> 
> Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, they matched these factors against where they ranked on the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures per-capita income, life expectancy at birth and the number of years its citizens spend in education.
> 
> Most of the issues they looked at appeared to have little or no effect on the disparities between the countries, except for Islamic countries scoring a little worse on education.
> 
> Instead, the single strongest predictor for a country’s health, and the second-strongest for its wealth, turned out to be whether its rulers had embraced communism.
> 
> The study said that after World War II, economic growth in Communist Eastern Europe was slower than in the West, but despite the Soviet Union’s collapse almost 30 years ago, the effects are still being felt.
> 
> The study says that communism was also behind the stagnation of life expectancy behind the Iron Curtain during the 1970s and 1980s, which has set those countries back even today.
> 
> The researchers say: “The proximate causes for this low life expectancy are complex, but high alcohol consumption, smoking and poor workplace safety, as well as low-quality diet and living conditions associated with lower income levels are implicated.”



Instapundit notes that the true cause of the damage is the destruction of social capital and trust:



> Communism destroys social trust — communist governments do this by design — and that does longterm damage.



While not stating Communism is the cause, Francis Fukuyama's book "Trust" also examines the differences between "high trust" and "low trust" societies.

If America is to survive as a country, much less a world leader, then the erosion of social capital needs to be reversed and the sorts of values which lead to a high trust society need to be championed again (Interestingly enough, Samuel Huntington's last book "Who Are We?" deals with that very subject)


----------



## AbdullahD

A youtuber I follow (right winger if that matters), had a discussion about the issue found in this interview... basically how if you do not agree with everything someone believes they must be a "right winger" or a "leftist" or what have you. Instead of realizing you can lean in similar directions on most subjects and still disagree..

Basically the fact we are not realizing the world is not black and white in public or private dialogue. Something I at times am guilty of too.

Neat interview. Ben has made some good arguments on some subjects in the past, but in this interview he does not look very well. 

https://youtu.be/e82PJiY8RIY

Very interesting due to the following he has etc.
Abdullah


----------



## mariomike

AbdullahD said:
			
		

> Instead of realizing you can lean in similar directions on most subjects and still disagree..



They certainly lean in different directions in terms of race, age and religion.

In their Midterm election six months ago,

9% of Blacks voted Republican

29% of Hispanics voted Republican

23% of Asians voted Republican

Age,

32% of ages 18-29 voted Republican

and Religion,

17% of Jewish voters voted Republican

while 75% of white born again / evangelical Christians voted Republican.


----------



## Journeyman

Well, if JFK said anything to worth considering ....

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past - let us accept our own responsibility for the future."
(Loyola College Alumni Banquet, Baltimore, Maryland, 18 February, 1958)

Of course, he also said "... we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient - that we are only six percent of the world's population - that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind - that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity"... so what did he know.
(Address in Seattle at the University of Washington's 100th Anniversary Program (473)," November 16, 1961)

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum


----------



## tomahawk6

"It is better to be alone than in bad company.” ― George Washington.

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” 
― George Washington


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

So this is going to be a Presidential quotes thread now? Alright then:

"We begin bombing in five minutes" - Ronald Reagan


----------



## tomahawk6

Reagan has a number of good quotes. But maybe you would prefer a Canadian ? 

I don't read the newspapers, I don't watch the news. I figure, if something important happens, someone will tell me. Justin Trudeau  ;D


----------



## AbdullahD

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Reagan has a number of good quotes. But maybe you would prefer a Canadian ?
> 
> I don't read the newspapers, I don't watch the news. I figure, if something important happens, someone will tell me. Justin Trudeau  ;D



Ah Uh um - Justin Trudeau

^^ i deserve to have this post deleted lol


----------



## RocketRichard

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Reagan has a number of good quotes. But maybe you would prefer a Canadian ?
> 
> I don't read the newspapers, I don't watch the news. I figure, if something important happens, someone will tell me. Justin Trudeau  ;D


He was 29 yo when he said that in 2001. Very typical comment of someone from that generation at that time. Probably even more so now. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## Journeyman

For anyone interested, it may be worth going back to page 1 of this thread and reading the article that started this discussion a dozen years ago:  Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, "Grand Strategy for a Divided America," _Foreign Affairs_,  July/August 2007.

I would argue that our discussion here has devolved just as much as America's "Grand Strategy" in the intervening years  -- old Presidential quotes (regardless of relevance... or even making reference to America) seem fitting in a time of 'strategy' reduced to 140 characters, and a long-range vision that barely reaches out to the next news cycle or Op Ed article. 


An interesting view included in that post, however:


			
				E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> ….as Prof Pan Wei of Peking University wrote (Harvard International Review), _Under this poor leadership_  [provided by President Bush]_, a previously “benign hegemon” is becoming an oppressive tyrant that suffers opposition almost everywhere in the world._  Prof. Pan worried that _vis à vis_ China President Bush’s foreign policy _” will ultimately cause the decline of US power, and it may not succeed in precluding China’s emergence from a new decade of political reform. Instead, belligerent confrontation will only lead to an escalation of tensions.”_  It is, in my view, likely to do the same with India, Europe and much of the rest of the world, too.


..... suggests that President Bush's tenure, circa 2007, were 'the good old days.'


----------



## Oldgateboatdriver

I, for one, did not mean to quote president Reagan with a negative purpose. To my generation, he will always be the president who finished off the Soviets. And contrary to a certain current president who shall remain nameless, Reagan was NOT "all speech (140 characters of it at a time ;D) - no action".

Reagan backed up his rhetoric against the "evil empire" with deeds: From actually funding "Star Wars", rebuilding the USAF, calling for and actually financing and building the "600 ship Navy", together with the Secretary of the Navy "I cannot envisage a situation with the Soviets where we would not put at least two carrier battle groups in the North Sea".

Today's People may not remember this but the US, by the end of the Reagan mandates, had fifteen active aircraft carrier battle groups.

The current president is all puffery on twitter and claims to have solved all sorts of problems (North Korea nukes, Iran, etc.) but in practice, flusters, then forgets about doing anything as soon as the news cycle is over, while in reality nothing has changed and the threats are still fully there.


----------



## tomahawk6

America is divided because on the one hand we have progressives/socialists, then we have older more conservative folks. There is very little middle ground. The Democrats use a playbook that could have been used by either the communist party or communists. They are not the same party as JFK or LBJ. I could support that.


----------



## Underway

America is divided because like in the 30's the electorate is re-aligning itself. Happens every so often 70-90 years or so.  Before that was the civil war.

For example Republican's are not normally the party against trade or pro union, but they captured the anti-trade and pro-union vote last time.  Also apparently Hispanics that are legally in the US are just as pro wall as others.  Many pro trade Republicans voted Democrat last election.   Its exacerbated by the new media.  I give it about 15 years and then the new alignments will be stabilized.  Might take a major issue to crystalize the alignments though.


----------



## RocketRichard

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> America is divided because on the one hand we have progressives/socialists, then we have older more conservative folks. There is very little middle ground. The Democrats use a playbook that could have been used by either the communist party or communists. They are not the same party as JFK or LBJ. I could support that.


So it’s the Democrats fault? It takes two sides to tango...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## Underway

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> America is divided because on the one hand we have progressives/socialists, then we have older more conservative folks. There is very little middle ground. The Democrats use a playbook that could have been used by either the communist party or communists.



No true to both comments given the data at hand.  Perhaps you could point out the exact communist playbook you are talking about?


----------



## mariomike

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> To my generation, he will always be the president who finished off the Soviets. And contrary to a certain current president who shall remain nameless, Reagan was NOT "all speech (140 characters of it at a time ;D) - no action".



To me, and I am sure many others of our generation, President Reagan appealed to our best hopes. Not our worst fears.



			
				tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Democrats use a playbook that could have been used by either the communist party or communists.





			
				Underway said:
			
		

> Perhaps you could point out the exact communist playbook you are talking about?



Yes. Please do.


----------



## Edward Campbell

Oldgateboatdriver said:
			
		

> I, for one, did not mean to quote president Reagan with a negative purpose. *To my generation, he will always be the president who finished off the Soviets. *And contrary to a certain current president who shall remain nameless, Reagan was NOT "all speech (140 characters of it at a time ;D) - no action".
> 
> Reagan backed up his rhetoric against the "evil empire" with deeds: From actually funding "Star Wars", rebuilding the USAF, calling for and actually financing and building the "600 ship Navy", together with the Secretary of the Navy "I cannot envisage a situation with the Soviets where we would not put at least two carrier battle groups in the North Sea".
> 
> Today's People may not remember this but the US, by the end of the Reagan mandates, had fifteen active aircraft carrier battle groups.
> 
> The current president is all puffery on twitter and claims to have solved all sorts of problems (North Korea nukes, Iran, etc.) but in practice, flusters, then forgets about doing anything as soon as the news cycle is over, while in reality nothing has changed and the threats are still fully there.




Interesting ... in my mind it was President Harry S Truman, acting on George Kennan's "long telegram" who put the Soviet Union on the path to failure. He saw, quite clearly, that the US-led West would "win" by not fighting but, rather, by *containing* the USSR. The resulting Cold War was long but, again in my idiosyncratic opinion, it was "won" in 1959 ... at a trade fair in Moscow when then Vice-President Nixon confronted Nikita Kruschov at a display featuring a fairly typical middle-class US kitchen ... thousands of Russians saw that and they told millions that Eisenhower's adaptation of the Truman doctrine which said butter, not guns, was working for the American working class. The rest was just ~ in my opinion ~ the icing on the cake.


----------



## Jarnhamar

[quote author=Oldgateboatdriver]

The current president is all puffery on twitter and claims to have solved all sorts of problems (North Korea nukes, Iran, etc.) *but in practice, flusters, then forgets about doing anything as soon as the news cycle is over,* while in reality nothing has changed and the threats are still fully there.
[/quote]

Is this not a reflection of the American society at large?


----------



## mariomike

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Interesting ... in my mind it was President Harry S Truman, acting on George Kennan's "long telegram" who put the Soviet Union on the path to failure. He saw, quite clearly, that the US-led West would "win" by not fighting but, rather, by *containing* the USSR. The resulting Cold War was long but, again in my idiosyncratic opinion, it was "won" in 1959 ... at a trade fair in Moscow when then Vice-President Nixon confronted Nikita Kruschov at a display featuring a fairly typical middle-class US kitchen ... thousands of Russians saw that and they told millions that Eisenhower's adaptation of the Truman doctrine which said butter, not guns, was working for the American working class. The rest was just ~ in my opinion ~ the icing on the cake.



True. But, the thing with Reagan, in my opinion, was his likability. I believe the "likability factor" can not be overestimated.


----------



## Blackadder1916

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Interesting ... in my mind it was President Harry S Truman, acting on George Kennan's "long telegram" who put the Soviet Union on the path to failure. He saw, quite clearly, that the US-led West would "win" by not fighting but, rather, by *containing* the USSR. The resulting Cold War was long but, again in my idiosyncratic opinion, it was "won" in 1959 ... at a trade fair in Moscow when then Vice-President Nixon confronted Nikita Kruschov at a display featuring a fairly typical middle-class US kitchen ... thousands of Russians saw that and they told millions that Eisenhower's adaptation of the Truman doctrine which said butter, not guns, was working for the American working class. The rest was just ~ in my opinion ~ the icing on the cake.



An interesting premise.  Granted, President Truman is probably given less credit than he is due for the long fight against the Soviet Union, but if we are assigning arbitrary dates to when the Cold War was "won", let's try February 1963 (think about it for a few minutes and see if you can guess the chain of events that I'm thinking about).

I had never thought of the "Kitchen Debates" as having that effect on the Soviet people, probably because I began with the notion that very little of the American exhibition was presented by the Soviet media and while Voice of America (and similar Western radio networks) boomed loud into the Eastern Bloc, TV images of everyday luxuries were not quite that available.  But the Kitchen Debates did provide a demonstration of Nixon's foreign relations expertise and may have cemented his nominations in his failed 1960 presidential run and his subsequent 1968 successful bid for the office.  Without Nixon and the aftermath of his time in office there might not have been a Reagan presidency.  So maybe there is a connection between the Kitchen Debates and the end of the Cold War.

February 1963.  What happened that eventually resonated back in the USSR?  The Beatles.  More specifically it was the start of their first US tour and appearance on the Ed Sullivan Shoe that moved them from a very successful UK group to world wide pop icon status.  And that icon status combined with an official Soviet effort to deny Russian youth the same access to fun as western youth was probably a factor in the disaffection of the population that led to the fall of the system in the 1990s.  The parents of the 1950s/60s may have longed for a nicer kitchen (or even an apartment that had a kitchen) but their memory of the Great Patriotic War was personal and they knew firsthand that their lives were paid for with privation and so there was acceptance of a long difficult struggle.  Their children, just like the children in the West, wanted more and wanted it quicker.


----------



## tomahawk6

The end was when the Berlin Wall came down and one by one the Warsaw Pact collapsed.


----------



## Journeyman

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Interesting ... in my mind it was President Harry S Truman, acting on George Kennan's "long telegram" who put the Soviet Union on the path to failure. He saw, quite clearly, that the US-led West would "win" by not fighting but, rather, by *containing* the USSR. The resulting Cold War was long but, again in my idiosyncratic opinion, it was "won" in 1959 ... at a trade fair in Moscow when then Vice-President Nixon confronted Nikita Kruschov at a display featuring a fairly typical middle-class US kitchen ... thousands of Russians saw that and they told millions that Eisenhower's adaptation of the Truman doctrine which said butter, not guns, was working for the American working class. The rest was just ~ in my opinion ~ the icing on the cake.


I've been mulling this over.  Where the Soviet Union was brought down through externally imposed containment, it appears increasingly that the US is self-containing... possibly with similar results.

The equivalent of the 'US kitchen' as a desirable role model is the world now looking at current US behaviour and turning away -- there are a growing number of trade and security arrangements being developed that actively exclude the US.  While the American economy remains sufficiently strong that they can't be simply ignored, fewer people want to have to deal with the current administration;  the cover story of _The Economist_  (June 8-14) is "Weapons of Mass Disruption: tariffs, tech blacklists, financial isolation, sanctions,"  with a picture of Trump as a bomb.  Unfortunately, the country is now so divided that the polarization and mindless finger-pointing (by both extremes) is unlikely to be fixable in the near to intermediate term.


An excerpt from Fareed Zakaria, "The Self-Destruction of American Power:  Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment," 
_Foreign Affairs _,  July/August 2019.


> The Trump administration has hollowed out U.S. foreign policy even further.  Trump’s instincts are Jacksonian, in that he is largely uninterested in the world except insofar as he believes that most countries are screwing the United States.  He is a nationalist, a protectionist, and a populist, determined to put “America first.”  But truthfully, more than anything else, he has abandoned the field.  Under Trump, the United States has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and from engaging with Asia more generally.  It is uncoupling itself from its 70-year partnership with Europe.  It has dealt with Latin America through the prism of either keeping immigrants out or winning votes in Florida.  It has even managed to alienate Canadians (no mean feat).  And it has subcontracted Middle East policy to Israel and Saudi Arabia.  With a few impulsive exceptions—such as the narcissistic desire to win a Nobel Prize by trying to make peace with North Korea—what is most notable about Trump’s foreign policy is its absence.


----------



## Brad Sallows

In the free market of foreign relationships, the US was a good deal - relatively open and wealthy markets others could readily access; relatively little reaction to protectionist policies running back the other way; willingness to bear a substantial chunk of the cost of various mutual and other defence arrangements.  The Trump administration has increased the prices, which effectively makes other nations more competitive.

For those who believe increasing trade entanglements and increasing regional foreign affairs arrangements tend to decrease the likelihood of wars breaking out, this should be a huge net positive.

For Latin America, the US is a safety valve as long as talk of border enforcement remains only talk; the Democrats and associated activists have successfully out-manoeuvred the administration.  The status quo is a huge contribution to political stabilization and peace, and US taxpayers are the ones paying for it, not Europeans or Asians or South Americans.


----------



## tomahawk6

Yet the economy is the best in many years with full employment. Historically people vote their pocketbook. If the economy remains strong into 2020 Trump should be re-elected.


----------



## Humphrey Bogart

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Yet the economy is the best in many years with full employment. Historically people vote their pocketbook. If the economy remains strong into 2020 Trump should be re-elected.



Is the economy strong?  Growth has basically plateaued since the beginning of 2018.  The market has hit three successive walls that it has been unable to break through.

I would say if trade wars and tariffs continue to be in play, the US economy will be in a recession within a year or two.


----------



## a_majoor

Potential bad news for the US, and thus by extention the global economy. Essentially, the banking industry learned nothing from the 2008 market meltdown, and are now investing heavily in similar investment vehicles backed by low rated corporate debt instead of mortgages. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/

The Looming Bank Collapse
The U.S. financial system could be on the cusp of calamity. This time, we might not be able to save it.
Story by Frank Partnoy



> After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic. Imagine if, in addition to all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, you woke up one morning to find that the financial sector had collapsed.
> 
> You may think that such a crisis is unlikely, with memories of the 2008 crash still so fresh. But banks learned few lessons from that calamity, and new laws intended to keep them from taking on too much risk have failed to do so. As a result, we could be on the precipice of another crash, one different from 2008 less in kind than in degree. This one could be worse.
> 
> The financial crisis of 2008 was about home mortgages. Hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to home buyers were repackaged into securities called collateralized debt obligations, known as CDOs. In theory, CDOs were intended to shift risk away from banks, which lend money to home buyers. In practice, the same banks that issued home loans also bet heavily on CDOs, often using complex techniques hidden from investors and regulators. When the housing market took a hit, these banks were doubly affected. In late 2007, banks began disclosing tens of billions of dollars of subprime-CDO losses. The next year, Lehman Brothers went under, taking the economy with it.
> 
> The federal government stepped in to rescue the other big banks and forestall a panic. The intervention worked—though its success did not seem assured at the time—and the system righted itself. Of course, many Americans suffered as a result of the crash, losing homes, jobs, and wealth. An already troubling gap between America’s haves and have-nots grew wider still. Yet by March 2009, the economy was on the upswing, and the longest bull market in history had begun.
> 
> To prevent the next crisis, Congress in 2010 passed the Dodd-Frank Act. Under the new rules, banks were supposed to borrow less, make fewer long-shot bets, and be more transparent about their holdings. The Federal Reserve began conducting “stress tests” to keep the banks in line. Congress also tried to reform the credit-rating agencies, which were widely blamed for enabling the meltdown by giving high marks to dubious CDOs, many of which were larded with subprime loans given to unqualified borrowers. Over the course of the crisis, more than 13,000 CDO investments that were rated AAA—the highest possible rating—defaulted.
> 
> The reforms were well intentioned, but, as we’ll see, they haven’t kept the banks from falling back into old, bad habits. After the housing crisis, subprime CDOs naturally fell out of favor. Demand shifted to a similar—and similarly risky—instrument, one that even has a similar name: the CLO, or collateralized loan obligation. A CLO walks and talks like a CDO, but in place of loans made to home buyers are loans made to businesses—specifically, troubled businesses. CLOs bundle together so-called leveraged loans, the subprime mortgages of the corporate world. These are loans made to companies that have maxed out their borrowing and can no longer sell bonds directly to investors or qualify for a traditional bank loan. There are more than $1 trillion worth of leveraged loans currently outstanding. The majority are held in CLOs.



The rest of the article goes into more depth about what these are, how they work and how banks and financial institutions are resorting to many fo the same accounting tricks to put these assets "off the books" (although this didn't help anyone the last time).

So among the multiplicity of challenges that the United States will have to face in the coming decades, another banking implosion, or finding a way to unwind this potential threat and deter banks from going down this route again is going to be a high priority.


----------



## CBH99

Scary stuff.


Maybe I'm just being a conspiracy theorist, but I have a 'hunch' that national debt isn't something most countries are worried about paying back.

We often hear arguments - extremely valid ones - about the national debt, whether it is us or other countries.  We spend more than we take in, we borrow more than we can safely finance, and future generations won't benefit from government help the way we do, because the government simply won't have any money.

And all of this may very well be true.  Indeed, the math and simple logic would support this...and there's a very good chance this is how it may pan out.



The conspiracy theorist in me, for some reason, has the hunch that all this national debt won't mean anything in another generation or two.  No country on earth can afford to pay back what it owes - China, the US, Canada, etc etc - none of us can afford to pay back what we owe, and ever have a true surplus of 'our own money'.  Heck, the US alone now has a deficit of almost a Trillion dollars a year.

I imagine some catastrophic event will happen - whether it is financial, military, global change (devastating meteor, global plague/pandemic, war, alien contact, etc etc) - that will cause the entire world to rethink the way the global economy works.  

After all, money is a man-made creation, as is the concept of currency.  Borrowing from the World Bank, countries lending each other money, etc etc - all of this is 'human created' stuff, and thus, may be drastically modified in the future to accommodate an entire globe that can't afford to pay each other back.  


 :2c: :dunno:


----------



## Halifax Tar

Americans Increasingly Believe Violence is Justified if the Other Side Wins

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-violence-424157?fbclid=IwAR3bGWGi9Ag9PGRk1wquOhAwiI6IF3vDvhS4ibyNe7C-uuP8YGWdihPjVog

At the presidential debate this week, the Republican candidate voiced his concern about political violence—left-wing political violence. And the Democratic candidate likewise voiced concern about political violence—right-wing political violence.

They were both right.

________________________

That article is terrifying.


----------



## Journeyman

Halifax Tar said:
			
		

> Americans Increasingly Believe Violence is Justified if the Other Side Wins
> 
> That article is terrifying.



Yep, and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (amongst several interested observers) strongly concurs.  Their just-published "2020-2021 Supplemental Threat Assessment" is available at LINK


----------



## Halifax Tar

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Yep, and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (amongst several interested observers) strongly concurs.  Their just-published "2020-2021 Supplemental Threat Assessment" is available at LINK



Balkan North American powder keg ?


----------



## tomahawk6

Is this the same state like New York that put covid patients in nursing homes ? Pot calling the kettle black.  8)


----------



## Journeyman

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> Is this the same state like New York that put covid patients in nursing homes ? Pot calling the kettle black.  8)


Did you actually read the report?   Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question.


----------



## Cloud Cover

Journeyman said:
			
		

> Yep, and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (amongst several interested observers) strongly concurs.  Their just-published "2020-2021 Supplemental Threat Assessment" is available at LINK



Notable slide at page 11, US Presidential Election-  Wildcard Variables.

Arguably 2 and possibly 3 of the 4 wildcards have occurred:
Supreme Court Justice dies 
Deep Fake (underway)
COVID disruption (President infected)

The US is experiencing record firearms sales, ammunition being purchased far out of proportion, firearms appearing and being used at civil unrest events.  In scenarios 2 and 3 there is indeed a Powder Keg of epic proportions.


----------



## Brad Sallows

The underlying problem might just be that people who are politically engaged are too deeply engaged, coupled with the proposition that the unhappiness gap from losing is greater than the happiness gap from winning.

Political Ignorance Is Bliss, at reason.com.


----------



## MarkOttawa

If under Pres. Biden the US becomes the global taxman, how much more will any Canadian government be willing be pay? Note Canada is not mentioned in this post by Julian Lindley-French (Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC https://www.blogger.com/profile/01634606743670025071 )--excerpts:



> Does America (Still) Want to Lead the Free World?
> 
> “We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it”.
> 
> Thomas Jefferson
> 
> *Checks and balances*
> 
> November 5th, 2020. So, that was that! The Great Arsenal of Democracy has spoken…sort of. As I write the US is heading for a Biden presidency. However, the Democrats are likely to see their majority in the House of Representatives reduced and, crucially, fail to gain control of the US Senate.  If confirmed the real ‘winner’ is the US Constitution. The checks and balances it enshrines will ensure that a Biden White House will be an essentially centrist administration.  What does the last forty-eight hours suggest about the next four years for Europe and America’s leadership of the free world?
> 
> Many Europeans will be quietly celebrating this morning amidst the economic wreckage of COVID-19. At least the transatlantic relationship will return to some form of ‘business as usual’, some will suggest.  Wrong! It cannot and will not.  There are few concepts I can lay claim to but I was the first to suggest the foreign and security policy of the Trump presidency would be transactional. At the time I called upon Europeans to look beyond the politics of Trump at the structural challenges the Americans are facing, foreign and domestic. They did not.  Instead, Europeans have used President Trump as an alibi to avoid facing the hard security and defence choices they must now make. This is something, I fear, COVID-19 is about to make a whole lot worse.
> 
> *The world is changing…*
> 
> Some months ago I also asked a question: who will win COVID-19?  It will certainly not be Europe, but nor will it be the US.  The terrible twin titans of the post COVID-19 international system are geopolitics and geo-economics, neither of which are trending in the West’s favour.  The world is witnessing a profound shift in the balance of coercive power away from the democracies towards China, and by extension its piggy back partner, Russia. The economic and military rise of China also seems to be accelerating as a consequence of COVID-19 with profound implications for European defence and the transatlantic relationship.
> 
> The defence strategic consequences?  In spite of the still awesome military power projection the US Armed Forces are still capable of even the mighty US Armed Forces cannot be present in strength in all places all of the time across the full spectrum of twenty-first century conflict.  Power is relative and for a state to exert such influence it would need to be uniquely strong in relation to all other possible peer competitors. There may have been a moment back in the early 2000s when some Americans thought the US enjoyed such power and could act as the Global Policeman (even if many Americans denied such ambitions), but 911, Afghanistan and Iraq quickly proved such pretention to be illusory, if not delusional. The coming years will thus likely see a kind of information-digital-hypersonic arms race in which the autocracies systematically seek to ‘short-of-war’ exploit the many vulnerabilities that are also the very essence of democracy.
> 
> *…but so is America*
> 
> Then there is the changing nature of America itself. A lot of Europeans still tend to view America through the prism of ‘the Greatest Generation’, which in tandem with Churchill’s Britain and Stalin’s Russia won World War Two. They forget the isolationist Vandenberg America of the 1930s and ignore the extent to which the US is again fast changing…
> 
> *Lessons from history?*
> 
> In some important (although not all) respects contemporary America is not unlike late imperial Britain in the 1920s.  On the face of it, 1920 saw British power and influence at its zenith. Britain emerged from World War One victorious and in 1920 still possessed by far the largest navy in the world, the true measure of global power at the time. However, Britain was also mired in debt, not unlike the US today which faces a budget deficit of some 16% GDP, the largest since 1945, and a national debt fast approaching $28 trillion.
> 
> Britain was also deeply divided…
> 
> *Downton Abbey America?*
> 
> The shift in the Britain of the 1920s away from Imperialism and towards Disarmament was not just a consequence of the sacrifice of World War One. With the seizure of power by the political leaders of the bourgeois and working classes a British world view began to emerge that was very different from that of the Patrician order of old. That is the implicit story of _Downton Abbey_ which any fan will recognise. In what was perhaps the first great struggle between imperial globalists and social nationalists the Great Depression then further accelerated change in the global, political and social order, just like COVID economics seems to be doing today. The change showed itself most clearly over the question of Britain’s role in the world, in particular what was then termed Indian Home Rule.  Gandhi, Nehru and others were successful (eventually) in agitating for Indian independence, but what is not often recalled is the support for such independence in Britain itself.
> 
> Masked by Britain’s subsequent role in World War Two it is often overlooked that much of 1930s Britain no longer had the political appetite to be an imperial power…
> 
> …immense domestic pressures the new Administration will face also begs two further questions of Americans. First, do Americans still want to lead the free world?  Second, if Americans do, how? Britain’s past may again prove illuminating.  The Naval Defence Act of May 31st, 1889 formally adopted the so-called Two Power Standard. This committed the Royal Navy to maintain twice the strength of the next two most powerful navies combined. On the face of it the Standard was a statement of British Imperial power. In fact, it was recognition that the French and Russian navies enjoyed the luxury of being able to make life exceedingly difficult for an over-stretched Royal Navy by choosing when, where and how to apply pressure the world over.  This is much the same dilemma the US faces today with the rise of China as a hybrid, cyber and potentially hyper war power, and Russia’s assertive coercion in and around much of Europe. _In other words, for America to still lead the free world and defend Europe it will need to impose some form of ‘tax’ on the Allies to do it_ [emphasis added].
> 
> …America is not Britain and its power fundamentals are far stronger than Britain’s ever was.  Therefore, if the US still has the will and political cohesion to lead the free world it can do so, but only in concert with committed and capable allies. In the Indo-Pacific that will mean deeper ties with Australia, South Korea and, of course, Japan. India? As for Europe, _the Americans need NATO, but only if NATO can be transformed into a group of capable allies that can and will properly share risks, costs and burdens.  However, if such a new NATO is to be realised THIS America must want to lead and be willing to continue to bear the costs of such leadership, which will remain substantial_ [emphasis added].  Washington will also need to demonstrate the strategic patience needed to rebuild and maintain the alliances Washington increasingly needs. The alternative?  Look at Britain. A century ago London’s writ ran the length and breadth of the world. Today, London’s writ does not even run the length and breadth of Britain.
> 
> The difference between a President Biden and President Trump? They will be manifold, particularly in matters of style.  President Trump also saw American power as transactional because he for him international relations is little more than a protracted big business negotiation over global real estate. The transactionalism would be driven by a simple truth: the US has no alternative. Yes, there are many Americans who no longer confide in US strength and not a few who increasingly fear the power of the other, but the free world still needs American leadership and that leadership must both empower its people domestically and its allies globally.
> http://lindleyfrench.blogspot.com/2020/11/does-america-still-want-to-lead-free.html



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## a_majoor

Secretary Mike Pompeo outlines a new American strategy focusing on fragility. This is a very "bottom up" and 4GW sort of thinking about defence and security issues:






						Austin Bay's On PointThe Enemy Is Fragility: Pompeo's New Strategy
					






					strategypage.com
				






> On Point: The Enemy Is Fragility: Pompeo's New Strategy​by Austin Bay
> December 22, 2020
> 
> Planet Earth, for worse and occasionally better, is a world of neighborhood existence -- many neighborhoods at peace, many (most?) neighborhoods uneasy and facing tenuous circumstances, too many neighborhoods experiencing outright anarchy and war.
> 
> Blame the level of perception, of easy aggregation, for missing this truth. I'll illustrate with an anecdote. Six years ago, an obstreperous type saw me at a private reception. From across the room, he bellowed: "Austin Bay! Is there any hope for Africa?"
> 
> My reply to the bellower -- and the 15 or 20 so others present, who were surprised by the bellowing and puzzled by the question: "Which Africa? There are 6,000 Africas. Some Africas are doing quite well."
> 
> The bellower blinked -- an encouraging response. By George, he got it.
> 
> The 6,000 figure was meant to indicate I thought he had framed his question rater poorly. I could have replied 30,000 Africas and, given airtime and footnotes, defended the figure. Understand I could say the same thing about the Americas, Europe and Asia. Antarctica is an exception, maybe. Australia isn't.
> 
> Self-serving power brokers, corrupt leaders, nepotism, sham elections, violent intimidation and calculated propaganda spewed by crooked political and tribal organizations designed to divide communities and incite hate -- these destructive actors and actions threaten human life globally. They strangle human creativity and, in so doing, deny or steal prosperity.
> 
> If "propaganda" sounds too fancy a term for some neighborhoods, substitute "malign gossip concocted to manipulate people using shock, fright and anger." Whether delivered vocally or digitally, the abusive purveyors utilize the tactic of falsehood.
> 
> ​2020 provides numerous USA examples: Minneapolis. Chicago. New York. Seattle. El Paso. Stability and safety anywhere on planet Earth are not givens.
> 
> To the bellower's credit, he approached me as I was leaving. He had recently read an article about central African instability and recalled reading a column I had written about the Democratic Republic of Congo's anarchic eastern provinces. He regretted shouting. But the rampant violence appalled him.
> 
> I assured him it appalled me as well, but how we feel has zilch effect on the horror.
> 
> We didn't discuss formulating, much less executing policies -- fancy terms for trying to do something to protect lives. In retrospect, I should have asked him whether he supported funding the police in Austin, Texas. Since the 2020 city council supports defunding, let's revise his bellow. "Austin, Texas! Is there any hope?"
> 
> ​The term "failed state" had its day in D.C. Beltway discourse. It translated -- roughly -- as a region that could not or did not protect humans living within its political boundaries. On the ground, it meant scores, if not hundreds, of neighborhoods convulsed by violence.
> 
> This is why the U.S. State Department's new document "U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability" is worth reading and implementing.
> 
> The new strategy identifies fragility as the key strategic issue, not failure. "Failed state" implies static rubble that requires centralized rebuilding.
> 
> Fragility frames the problem as a dynamic where small changes -- neighborhood by neighborhood -- can ultimately produce systemic improvement.
> 
> ​Here's the American interest: "Fragility can enable authoritarianism, external exploitation, and increase the influence of the United States' competitors in both physical and digital realms. Weak states are much more susceptible to Russian and Chinese coercion."
> 
> The new strategy "seeks to break the costly cycle of fragility and promote peaceful, self-reliant nations that become U.S. economic and security partners. The United States will pursue a new approach that addresses the political drivers of fragility and supports locally driven solutions."
> 
> Amen. The core problems are local.


----------



## Kirkhill

> "That grand strategy, of course, had two main elements: upholding and defending the liberal international order (ends) and maintaining American primacy (means).



I think they err.   Maintaining American Primacy is the ends.  Defending and upholding the liberal international order is the moral justification for American primacy (means).

No slight against the Americans.   Every reasonable nation puts its own survival first.   Suicide isn't a viable life choice.

Britain policed the abolition of the slave trade while guaranteeing their primacy at sea.









						The U.S. Grand Strategy of Liberal Internationalism Is Dead
					

That great power competition has returned is no longer in doubt. Just as the era of Cold War bipolarity gave way to the post-Cold War era of unipolarity, that era in turn has now given way to one of multipolarity. And with the advent of a more multipolar order, the factory settings of the modern […]




					www.19fortyfive.com


----------



## Kirkhill

Jacksonianism redivivus









						Jacksonian America:  The Sleeping Giant Awakened by 9/11
					

In a previous life, I was the foreign-affairs columnist for the local paper in my adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia. The month after 9/11 the family and I motored over to the Stone Mountain Highland




					www.realcleardefense.com
				






> In foreign affairs, says Mead, Jacksonians hew to bareknuckles realism. They hold that “international life is and will remain both anarchic and violent,” and thus that “the United States must be vigilant and strongly armed. Our diplomacy must be cunning, forceful and no more scrupulous than anybody else’s. At times, we must fight preemptive wars.” And Jacksonian sentiment perseveres over time when the community is convinced vital national interests are at stake, as in World War II, the Cold War, and Desert Storm.
> 
> As a corollary, though, Jacksonians evince little interest in foreign enterprises undertaken for reasons not directly related to defending the national interest. Humanitarian intervention is one venture that leaves them cold. Or—in the case of Afghanistan after twenty years of warfare—they may lose interest in enterprises that once seemed worthwhile by realist standards but no longer do.
> 
> Jacksonians also harbor strong views about how wars should be fought. Unless a vital national interest is in peril, they insist America ought to mind its own business. If a compelling interest is at stake, the United States ought to use all martial means at its disposal and refuse to stop short of complete victory—preferably manifest in the foe’s unconditional surrender. Yet Jacksonians welcome a magnanimous peace once victory is in hand—witness the clement treatment afforded the erstwhile Confederacy, imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany.


----------



## Kirkhill

What does a guy have to do to get fired?

Dissing his boss.

Colluding with the opposition.

Screwing up the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Telling the Chinese not to worry about the Boss because the Joint Chiefs won't allow him to fire the missiles and they'll give you a heads up if anything real is going to happen.










						Book: Top U.S. officer feared Trump could order China strike - Williams Lake Tribune
					

Account says Milley promised Chinese counterpart he would warn him in the event of a U.S. attack




					www.wltribune.com
				






> Fearful of Donald Trump’s actions in his final weeks as president, the United States’ top military officer twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the two nations would not suddenly go to war, a senior defense official said Tuesday after the conversations were described in excerpts from a forthcoming book.
> 
> Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that the United States would not strike. One call took place on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the election that defeated Trump. The second call was on Jan. 8, 2021, just two days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the outgoing chief executive.
> 
> Milley went so far as to promise Li that he would warn his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, according to the book “Peril,” written by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book. Details from the book, which is set to be released next week, were first reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday.








						Rubio to Biden: Fire General Milley Now
					

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Joe Biden calling on him to immediately fire Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.  “I write with grave concern regarding recent reporting that General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of...



					www.rubio.senate.gov


----------



## FJAG

Milley's oath is to the Constitution and not to the President.

I've ordered the book in and will wait 'til I've read it. So far I'll back Milley.

🍻


----------



## Weinie

FJAG said:


> Milley's oath is to the Constitution and not to the President.
> 
> I've ordered the book in and will wait 'til I've read it. So far I'll back Milley.
> 
> 🍻


Yeah but, if this is true, any modern interpretation of the Constitution doesn't say call the nemesis and say "we are good." This could get very ugly.


----------



## FJAG

Weinie said:


> Yeah but, if this is true, any modern interpretation of the Constitution doesn't say call the nemesis and say "we are good." This could get very ugly.


You mean it hasn't been for some time now?

Neither you nor I know how that conversation went and I doubt the book will tell us either. The reason opposing countries have had these communication links ever since the nuclear age is to provide a chance for stable communications and to produce calm when tensions are high and unstable situations exist. Milley had one great advantage neither you nor I have; he was in the room with Trump and the rest of his cabinet and could properly assess the situation.

And, I've promised myself to stop getting involved in discussions about the last administration. My bad. I'm outta here.

🍻


----------



## kkwd

From a CNN piece. This excerpt from the book shows Milley seems to think he has authority to require an oath to him personally.
As for talking to foreign military leaders I believe he has no authority to do so. If anybody can correct me I would appreciate it.
Woodward/Costa


> "You never know what a president's trigger point is," Milley told his senior staff, according to the book.
> 
> In response, Milley took extraordinary action, and called a secret meeting in his Pentagon office on January 8 to review the process for military action, including launching nuclear weapons. Speaking to senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's war room, Milley instructed them not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved.
> "No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I'm part of that procedure," Milley told the officers, according to the book. He then went around the room, looked each officer in the eye, and asked them to verbally confirm they understood.
> "Got it?" Milley asked, according to the book.
> "Yes, sir."
> *'Milley considered it an oath,' the authors write.*


----------



## brihard

It’s been ugly for a while. I find it telling that not just Milley, but obviously a number of very senior military personnel were so legitimately scared of the possibilities of Trump going rogue after he lost the election that they felt these various things were both necessary and appropriate. After all we’re not talking partisan appointees or political hacks, but soldiers who’ve risen to or near the pinnacle of their profession, and who have been defending their nation and its interests for their entire adult lives.

Note that with regards to nukes and the use of military force, Milley is reported as making extremely sure that everyone was very familiar with, and would follow, _lawful process_. There’s no wrong in that.

His reach out to a counterpart in China is obviously deserving of scrutiny, but there is something to be said for reassuring an _adversary_ that temporary internal disruptions will not be allowed to spark events that could powderkeg them into an _enemy_.

There is no fealty owed to a president; military officers swear an oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Taking what Woodward reports at face value, I don’t at present have any reason to doubt the loyalty of Milley or any of the other officers involved, nor that they were acting in good faith in the best interests of America.


----------



## kkwd

brihard said:


> His reach out to a counterpart in China is obviously deserving of scrutiny, but there is something to be said for reassuring an _adversary_ that temporary internal disruptions will not be allowed to spark events that could powderkeg them into an _enemy_.


Absolutely no. He has no idea about the current diplomatic talks between the 2 countries. He could derail very important talks. His sole role is advisor to the president, he has no command authority whatsoever. He can't conduct talks with a foreign country no matter what.



> Taking what Woodward reports at face value, I don’t at present have any reason to doubt the loyalty of Milley or any of the other officers involved, nor that they were acting in good faith in the best interests of America.


Is this common for military officers to go around the authority of the commander in chief and make decisions that could affect foreign relations? If he says the wrong thing to his Chinese counterpart it could really be catastrophic. He is not a diplomat he is a soldier.


----------



## brihard

kkwd said:


> Absolutely no. He has no idea about the current diplomatic talks between the 2 countries. He could derail very important talks. His sole role is advisor to the president, he has no command authority whatsoever. He can't conduct talks with a foreign country no matter what.
> 
> 
> Is this common for military officers to go around the authority of the commander in chief and make decisions that could affect foreign relations? If he says the wrong thing to his Chinese counterpart it could really be catastrophic. He is not a diplomat he is a soldier.


You have interesting beliefs about the level of knowledge the chairman of the JCS would have access to. He wasn’t ‘conducting talks’ with a foreign government, he was reported to be reassuring them that, essentially, a temporary internal crisis would remain, well, temporary and internal. I’m curious why you think that on his way out the door Trump would have been engaged in some major diplomacy with China.

Of course this is not a usual thing, but neither were they usual circumstances. There was a lame duck president on the way out the door who by many reports was pretty desperate to pull any strings or levers he could to reverse the outcome of the election and to stay in power. That’s not a usual or particularly safe set of circumstances for the most powerful nation in the world.


----------



## kkwd

brihard said:


> You have interesting beliefs about the level of knowledge the chairman of the JCS would have access to. He wasn’t ‘conducting talks’ with a foreign government, he was reported to be reassuring them that, essentially, a temporary internal crisis would remain, well, temporary and internal. I’m curious why you think that on his way out the door Trump would have been engaged in some major diplomacy with China.


The JCS is in on diplomatic talks? Maybe they run things that way in certain countries but not in the USA. Again I will say, he has no clue about high level talks, which go on constantly, unless you can say otherwise and prove that is incorrect.


----------



## QV

People will defend this because orange man bad. In any other situation this would be grossly unacceptable.

Imagine the CDS, going behind an unpopular PM (say with only 33% pop support) and doing something similar? Let’s extrapolate the scenario, what if it was trade related and involved senior public servants, would that be ok?


----------



## kkwd

QV said:


> People will defend this because orange man bad. In any other situation this would be grossly unacceptable.
> 
> Imagine the CDS, going behind an unpopular PM (say with only 33% pop support) and doing something similar? Let’s extrapolate the scenario, what if it was trade related and involved senior public servants, would that be ok?


Do you suppose he is talking to General Sir Nicholas Carter about Biden? Don't worry Nick, we got your back no matter what.


----------



## Good2Golf

kkwd said:


> The JCS is in on diplomatic talks? Maybe they run things that way in certain countries but not in the USA. Again I will say, he has no clue about high level talks, which go on constantly, unless you can say otherwise and prove that is incorrect.


By “high-level”, do you mean discussions involving National Instruments of Power?

You know, the four pillars of national US power: Dimplomatic; Informational; Military; Economic (DIME).

In America, the military IS one of the high-level instruments of power, so it stands to reason that the senior military advisor to the President might in fact have ‘some clue’ as to how the military instrument of American power fits with the other three.


----------



## kkwd

Good2Golf said:


> By “high-level”, do you mean discussions involving National Instruments of Power?
> 
> You know, the four pillars of national US power: Dimplomatic; Informational; Military; Economic (DIME).
> 
> In America, the military IS one of the high-level instruments of power, so it stands to reason that the senior military advisor to the President might in fact have ‘some clue’ as to how the military instrument of American power fits with the other three.


Unauthorized communications with foreign leaders are wrong.


----------



## Good2Golf

kkwd said:


> Unauthorized communications with foreign leaders are wrong.


Was he unauthorized?  Could he also not talk to Vance? Other CHoDs?


----------



## daftandbarmy

kkwd said:


> Unauthorized communications with foreign leaders are wrong.



There's a precedent, I think:


Nuclear Close Calls: The Cuban Missile Crisis​
The crisis also prompted the creation of the Moscow-Washington hotline, a direct telephone link between the Kremlin and the White House designed to prevent future escalations. Kennedy also ordered the creation of the nuclear “football” which would give him and future presidents the means to order a nuclear strike within minutes.









						Nuclear Close Calls: The Cuban Missile Crisis - Nuclear Museum
					

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were largely prevented from engaging in direct combat with each other due to the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD). In 1962, however, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world perilously close to nuclear war.




					www.atomicheritage.org


----------



## kkwd

Good2Golf said:


> Was he unauthorized?  Could he also not talk to Vance? Other CHoDs?


From 10 USC Ch. 5: JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF


> §153. Chairman: functions​(a) Planning; Advice; Policy Formulation.—Subject to the authority, direction, and control of the President and the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall be responsible for the following:


Allied forces are a world apart from adversaries. The position is not for a free-lancer.


----------



## kkwd

Here is a Tweet from a person some may recognize from previous events, Alexander S. Vindman.
Vindman Tweet


> ​
> 
> 
> https://twitter.com/AVindman
> Alexander S. Vindman
> @AVindman
> 
> If this is true GEN Milley must resign. He usurped civilian authority, broke Chain of Command, and violated the sacrosanct principle of civilian control over the military. It’s an extremely dangerous precedent. You can’t simply walk away from that. #dotherightthingintherightway


----------



## Brad Sallows

> There is no fealty owed to a president



True.



> military officers swear an oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.



So, what was the constitutional thing that would be defended?

For those who may be interpreting what happened as a conversation about only nuclear strikes, it was not.  From WaPo:

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
In the book’s account, Milley went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

Odd how situationally malleable the principle of military-subordinate-to-civilian has become lately.

Common mistake a lot of people are making: forgetting that the staff's knickers in a knot could just mean the staff are the ones who are unstable or otherwise unsuited to their responsibility.


----------



## Kirkhill

Perhaps someone can remind me.

What was General Flynn's crime?


----------



## Edward Campbell

kkwd said:


> Absolutely no. _He has no idea about the current diplomatic talks between the 2 countries._ He could derail very important talks. His sole role is advisor to the president, he has no command authority whatsoever. He can't conduct talks with a foreign country no matter what.
> 
> 
> Is this common for military officers to go around the authority of the commander in chief and make decisions that could affect foreign relations? If he says the wrong thing to his Chinese counterpart it could really be catastrophic. He is not a diplomat he is a soldier.



I would argue that in a modern state the reverse is true. Service chiefs and very senior foreign affairs officials talk, candidly, on a regular basis. The military, in peace, is a big part of a country's diplomatic action. When and where things go wrong is when/where the military and the foreign policy bureaucracy are NOT woking hand-in-glove.


----------



## brihard

Kirkhill said:


> Perhaps someone can remind me.
> 
> What was General Flynn's crime?


Flynn’s crime - the one he pled guilty to, was convicted of, and was subsequently pardoned for by Trump - was a felony count of knowingly and wilfully making false statements to investigators. He was not convicted for talking to the Ukrainians.

Back to Milley: Direct military to military comms happens frequently. You think there isn’t some communication when things get heated during, say, a freedom of navigation exercise when things get twitchy? America has come close to the brink several times- Cuba, Able Archer ‘83, probably others. The most powerful nation in the world teetering on a political edge, however briefly, is a dangerous and frightening prospect. A lot of people had to take unusual actions in the late part of 2020 and the early pet of 2021. The same reporting indicates that Pence spoke with former VP Dan Quayle, who helped convince him to fulfil his constitutional duty in the certification of the electoral college votes, against Trump’s urging. I think it’s also unprecedented for a sitting president to try to convince the VP to somehow overturn the lawful election results. I don’t think it’s irresponsible for senior military leadership to do what they can to reduce the chances of military confrontation due to domestic turmoil.

So yeah, lots of scary things happened around that time, and so things took place that in anything other than total shit circumstances should never have to happen. I believe Milley and others made the best decisions they could with the time and information they had, in order to keep America safe. It seems to have worked, as ‘the Storm’ came and America weathered it.


----------



## OldSolduer

Kirkhill said:


> What was General Flynn's crime?


I listened to this guy on a podcast about Bowe Bergdahl.  IMO he came off as a nut bar despite his high rank at the time.


----------



## mariomike

kkwd said:


> Here is a Tweet from a person some may recognize from previous events, Alexander S. Vindman.
> Vindman Tweet


He also retweeted this to go along with it, 

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1437852003506348034


----------



## brihard

Of interest, here’s a press release on the US - China Joint Staff Dialogue Mechanism signed in 2017.









						U.S., Chinese Military Leaders Sign Agreement to Increase Communication
					

The top military leaders of the United States and China signed an agreement in Beijing that they said will improve communication between their militaries and reduce the chances of miscalculations.



					www.defense.gov
				






> The agreement is intended for crisis mitigation, U.S. Joint Staff officials said, noting that direct communication at the three-star level in the Pentagon and the Ba Yi will "enable us to communicate to reduce the risk of miscalculation." Army Lt. Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the Joint Staff's director for strategic plans and policy, will lead the effort for the American military. The first meeting to set up the framework is set for November.



So it appears that Milley’s actions may have been directly in accordance with the intent of an agreement entered into with China by the Trump administration. Food for thought. It certainly puts a pin in the notion that military to military comms are _necessarily_ inappropriate in a crisis. They could still be- but not by default.


----------



## QV

Curious, I wonder if Milley is having the same conversation with adversaries of the US about dementia Joe.

_"Don't worry, though he appears lost, everything is under control by the appropriate people. I will let you know if my elected civilian superiors are considering waging war (or trade sanctions, or...)"_

Milley set one hell of a precedent, if not dealt with.


----------



## Brad Sallows

> If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time.



Must be very reassuring for the people on the pointy end of the first operations.


----------



## lenaitch

I am certain senior military-to-military contact between non-allies happens.  No doubt the US, or any other western democracy, would appreciate a heads-up from a senior saner head when their particular nation is having an internal domestic.  It's the ones that don't have any saner heads that can take the initiative without fearing for their life that would concern me.

Was the Constitution or his oath violated?  Was his action in direct defiance of his commander-in-chief?  He may ultimately pay a price, but I'm not convinced he should.


----------



## mariomike

QV said:


> Curious, I wonder if Milley is having the same conversation with adversaries of the US about dementia Joe.




It would not be the first time others have suggested GEN Milley served a president with dementia.


			trump dementia - Google Search


----------



## Brad Sallows

The suggestion Trump suffers, or suffered, from dementia is ridiculous.  Try not to troll.


----------



## OldSolduer

Brad Sallows said:


> The suggestion Trump suffers, or suffered, from dementia is ridiculous.  Try not to troll.


Here's my legit question though:

Is the current POTUS suffering from dementia or some kind of debilitating cognitive function? 

No one has officially said so - but a lot of "experts" think so.


----------



## mariomike

Brad Sallows said:


> The suggestion Trump suffers, or suffered, from dementia is ridiculous.  Try not to troll.


I did not suggest anyone has dementia. I knew it would be stepping on a political landmine to do so.

My reply was in response to QV ( Reply #718 ) "dementia Joe" post. 

I was careful to reply "others have suggested".

I'm not a brain spesicialist. I don't think you are either.

All I know is what "others have suggested" about the two presidents GEN Milley has served under.

"Trump dementia" About 54,200,000 results

"Biden dementia"  About 10,600,000 results


----------



## Brad Sallows

Could be dementia.  Could be something else.  Could be normal age-related decline (tires easily, a little bit forgetful, irritable - all common without being part of some exceptional underlying problem).

The charitable and most likely explanation, absent the opinion of someone knowledgeable who directly examines him, is just old age.

It's absurd how quickly people reach for the zebras whenever a president gets a little tongue-tied (particularly a Republican).  At least in Biden's case there are a few more signs (keeping in mind he has an inveterate reputation for gaffes, irritability, and humbuggery).


----------



## Brad Sallows

> I did not suggest anyone has dementia.



No, you just did your usual shtick of "I only know what I read in the news and here's another Google search" to stir the pot.


----------



## QV

OldSolduer said:


> Here's my legit question though:
> 
> Is the current POTUS suffering from dementia or some kind of debilitating cognitive function?
> 
> No one has officially said so - but a lot of "experts" think so.



Surely Milley, out of his ongoing concern for the cognitive function of the incumbent POTUS, has again taken it upon himself to reach out to all US adversaries and assure they will be warned in advance of any attack ordered by the democratically elected POTUS. Curious, does this include terrorist organizations or just China?

If not, than as Brad S put it: "Odd how situationally malleable the principle of military-subordinate-to-civilian has become lately."


----------



## Remius

No, you just did your usual shtick of "I only know what I read in the news and here's another Google search" to stir the pot.
So QVs dementia comment was fair game?  But you chose to single out Mariomike’s response?


----------



## mariomike

Brad Sallows said:


> No, you just did your usual shtick of "I only know what I read in the news and here's another Google search" to stir the pot.


My reply was to QV calling President Biden "dementia Joe".

From what I have read in this thread, GEN Milley questioned the former guy's state of mind.

The General knows the former guy and the present guy better than you, me, or QV.



Remius said:


> So QVs dementia comment was fair game?



Apparently so.

OldSolduer said:


> Is the current POTUS suffering from dementia or some kind of debilitating cognitive function?





> More Americans say former Vice President Joe Biden has the mental clarity to be president versus Donald Trump, according to the latest Fox News poll released Sunday.



FOX News put it this way,








						Fox News Poll Shows Americans Saying Biden More Mentally Sound Than Trump
					

A larger percentage of U.S. adults say they believe the Democratic presidential candidate has the traits best suited for the job.




					www.newsweek.com
				




Apparently, if a POTUS can say, "Person, woman, man, camera, TV", he is good to go.


----------



## Brad Sallows

> So QVs dementia comment was fair game?



No.  As I do with many tendentious comments here, I would have let it slide.



> But you chose to single out Mariomike’s response?



Yes, because I don't know what got up his nose so far about Trump, but he's having a hard time letting go of it and it's getting tiresome.  It'd be OK to just let criticisms of a Democrat stand once in a while.


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## Remius

Brad Sallows said:


> No.  As I do with many tendentious comments here, I would have let it slide.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, because I don't know what got up his nose so far about Trump, but he's having a hard time letting go of it and it's getting tiresome.  It'd be OK to just let criticisms of a Democrat stand once in a while.


Sounds more like you ignore one troll that fits your side over another that doesn’t.  The way I read it is that attributing dementia to Trump is ridiculous but it’s ok to do the same to Biden.  I have no issues with either.  They are both old men who say crazy and rambling things.  But it’s disengenous to call one a troll over another especially when the one you called a troll didn’t even bring up dementia in the first place. 

For me, I’m just glad that Milley kept a toddler from playing with power tools.  I hope he’s doing the same for the current one as well if warranted.


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## TheHead

Speaking of toddlers.


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## Weinie

Remius said:


> Sounds more like you ignore one troll that fits your side over another that doesn’t.  The way I read it is that attributing dementia to Trump is ridiculous but it’s ok to do the same to Biden.  I have no issues with either.  They are both old men who say crazy and rambling things.  But it’s disengenous to call one a troll over another especially when the one you called a troll didn’t even bring up dementia in the first place.
> 
> *For me, I’m just glad that Milley kept a toddler from playing with power tools. * I hope he’s doing the same for the current one as well if warranted.


Except that Mark Milley doesn't control the power tools. And to suggest that his actions somehow prevented WWIII because of the state of mind of the Orange man, veers well away from the prudent to the moronic. If, what is stated in the book is true, he should be replaced.


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## Brad Sallows

> Sounds more like you ignore one troll that fits your side over another that doesn’t.



Not at all.  For example, if someone were to state that Michael Flynn pled guilty and was convicted, it would be strictly true but ignores a lot of context with respect to how the investigation was conducted and where pressure was applied in ways that not only disregarded customary practices and good sense but were sometimes unethical.  And I would probably let that pass, having already made my point repeatedly (and now, again).  And that would be ignoring a troll that doesn't "fit my side".



> The way I read it is that attributing dementia to Trump is ridiculous but it’s ok to do the same to Biden.



Assuredly yes in Trump's case, because there is scant evidence - a trillion trillion search results because people write about it online because they wish it to be true doesn't mean a damn thing.  Biden is less easily defended because the deterioration is so marked - the perpetual "calling a lid", the inattentiveness, the infrequent public appearances, the highly scripted press exposures, the easily-provoked outbursts of temper.  I go with "age", but when people "on his side" talk and write about dementia, it becomes more credible than if it's just the "Don't Tread On Me" fringe.

Trump is the least warlike president in my lifetime.  If Milley does know the man well, Milley knows this.  There's no excuse for coming over all Chicken Little on his part, and no reason except playing to an audience and sending virtue signals.


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## QV

Brad Sallows said:


> Not at all.  For example, if someone were to state that Michael Flynn pled guilty and was convicted, it would be strictly true but ignores a lot of context with respect to how the investigation was conducted and where pressure was applied in ways that not only disregarded customary practices and good sense but were sometimes unethical.  And I would probably let that pass, having already made my point repeatedly (and now, again).  And that would be ignoring a troll that doesn't "fit my side".
> 
> 
> 
> Assuredly yes in Trump's case, because there is scant evidence - a trillion trillion search results because people write about it online because they wish it to be true doesn't mean a damn thing.  Biden is less easily defended because the deterioration is so marked - the perpetual "calling a lid", the inattentiveness, the infrequent public appearances, the highly scripted press exposures, the easily-provoked outbursts of temper.  I go with "age", but when people "on his side" talk and write about dementia, it becomes more credible than if it's just the "Don't Tread On Me" fringe.
> 
> Trump is the least warlike president in my lifetime.  If Milley does know the man well, Milley knows this.  There's no excuse for coming over all Chicken Little on his part, and no reason except playing to an audience and sending virtue signals.



This is a very sensible analysis and post. I learn a lot from posts like this. Unfortunately I ate too many crayons as a child to measure up to this.


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## brihard

Brad Sallows said:


> Not at all.  For example, if someone were to state that Michael Flynn pled guilty and was convicted, it would be strictly true but ignores a lot of context with respect to how the investigation was conducted and where pressure was applied in ways that not only disregarded customary practices and good sense but were sometimes unethical.  And I would probably let that pass, having already made my point repeatedly (and now, again).  And that would be ignoring a troll that doesn't "fit my side".


Yeah, no. Another poster asked explicitly “what was Flynn’s crime?” I answered that accurately and precisely. That’s not a troll. It was correct, relevant, and replying to a direct question. You as a third party not liking it does not make me, or my reply , “a troll”. “I dislike” =/= “the other guy is trolling”.


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## Brad Sallows

> I answered that accurately and precisely.



Not really.  You often omit the details of the Flynn investigation and prosecution, leaving out entirely the nature of the crime(s) being investigated in the first place and how a combination of incompetence, undue influence, and partisanship led to a conviction on a process crime that *wasn't even considered such by the first-hand interrogation team*. Any tendentious statement is a kind of troll, and your statement - in view of all that is public knowledge about the matter - was tendentious.


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## brihard

Brad Sallows said:


> Not really.  You often omit the details of the Flynn investigation and prosecution, leaving out entirely the nature of the crime(s) being investigated in the first place and how a combination of incompetence, undue influence, and partisanship led to a conviction on a process crime that *wasn't even considered such by the first-hand interrogation team*. Any tendentious statement is a kind of troll, and your statement - in view of all that is public knowledge about the matter - was tendentious.


It was accurate, and the question asked wasn’t about those details. He was charged with a felony. He pled guilty and a conviction was entered, remaining until it was pardoned by the president he demonstrated very partisan loyalty to. A pardon doesn’t mean no crime was committed nor that a person wasn’t guilty of it. It’s simply the President, under the powers he has, deciding it’s all good and it can go away.

In America the courts are the arbiters of whether a crime has been committed, and through those processes he was found to have. His conviction was not vacated by appeal. He didn’t have to plead guilty, he chose to, despite being a favoured member of the president’s circle.

As I said: a question was directly asked by someone, and I answered it. You don’t like the answer but that makes it neither false nor trolling.


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## Brad Sallows

> the question asked wasn’t about those details.



Why are you certain of that?  The question: "What was General Flynn's crime?" leaves unstated whether the questioner is interested in the crime for which he was investigated, or the crime for which he was convicted.  More information is useful.  Obviously you're not opposed to more information, since you've volunteered some about pardons.


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## Kirkhill

At risk of being defined as a troll  

My Flynn question, poorly qualified, was to suggest that Flynn was originally taken to task for, and investigated for, the action of, before his boss took over executive authority, contacting a foreign power, to wit Russia, and informing Russia of the incoming government's position.  Personally I think that was sensible.  Equally I have no trouble with Milley openly declaring himself a partisan agent of the incoming administration to tell other nations of the incoming administration's intent.

But I don't believe that Milley so identified himself.  Nor did he act as an agent.  When he acted he was purportedly acting as an advisor to the executive authority he was disavowing to a potential enemy.  Equally he acted, in communication with the potential incoming Speaker Pelosi, in such a manner as, again, to disavow his Commander in Chief.  The man set as his executive authority by the US constitution.

The General owes the man nothing.  However he is still required to salute the rank.


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