Breaking the Belt? Leaving the Road?

Andy is one of the few regulars here that keeps reminding us of this, but the current pandemic has brought the problematic relationship between the United States (and much of the "developed world", I should note...) and the People's Republic of China into a harsh light. Fred Kaplan at Slate posted a worthwhile conversation starter here:

"David Livingston, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, notes in an email that while China is not a rich source of raw materials or finished products, it is “a behemoth in the middle of supply chains.” It is in fact the world’s largest exporter of intermediary goods, providing one-third of the “intermediate goods” that help turn raw materials into finished products.

According to a recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute, China supplies the critical components in 70 to 85 percent of the world’s solar panels, 75 to 90 percent of high-speed rail systems, 60 to 80 percent of agricultural machinery, and 40 to 50 percent of cargo ships.

COVID-19 has drawn attention to this grip on the middle of supply chains for health and medical products—a grip that’s tighter than commonly realized. As Bradley Thayer and Lianchao Han note in the National Interest, China produces “key ingredients to medicines in almost every area,” including drugs for Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, antidepressants, HIV/AIDS, and cancer treatments, as well as statins, birth-control pills, antacids, and vitamins. If China stopped exporting these ingredients, they write, “America’s—and the world’s—hospitals would be in free fall.”

It's very obviously not in the national interests of a supposedly-developed, supposed-republic like the United States to be at the mercy of a one-party dictatorship. Especially a dictatorship that sees itself as a global rival. Especially a dictatorship that is moving aggressively to gain influence beyond its borders in a way that no previous Chinese governments have ever attempted since the days of the Yuan Dynasty.

The difficulty - as the piece points out - is finding some less fraught middle ground without pushing either nation closer to an open Cold War.

It's tempting to read the problem as an artifact of the sort of bog-standard-fatheaded-Trumpian-"diplomacy" that has produced idiocy like the ridiculous "Love Letters from Pyongyang" Kim-Trump bromance. I think that's heaping too much of the problems on the current Administration; this is a tangle produced by generations-long economic and political miscalculations from the West in general and the US in particular, as well as a false hope that the fall of the Soviet Union (once described to me as "because nobody wanted to wear East German jeans and listen to Bulgarian disco music") could be duplicated by showing the PRC the attraction of Western goodies. Far too long the US has been coasting on the Nixonian engagement policies begun back in the Seventies. The PR has been more than willing to open the doors. It's just not going to let anything in it dislikes - like the idea of a China not run by the current dictatorship.

It's also tempting to look at it as purely a governmental and diplomatic issue without considering the massive role played by domestic US financial and tax policies that encouraged private US corporations to move much of their production to the low-wage nations of East Asia. If corporations are people those people are sociopaths; they typically have no interest in anything other their bottom line. Making the West hostage to Chinese mercantilism? Hey, not my problem! Gotta make the price point on those inhalers and the cheap plastic Walmart crap!

The duplicity - and let's not kid ourselves, regardless of whatever else the PRC did in this pandemic, their initial reaction was horrifyingly similar to that forecast in Max Brooks' World War Z PRC's response to the zombie apocalypse; they tried to hide the outbreak and downplay the severity because that's overwhelmingly often what dictatorships do - of the PRC's government simply points out that as currently constituted the government of mainland China is not anything similar to the sort of state presumed to be a part of the "Western group" of nations.

The fact that the United States is increasingly neither one of those states is neither here nor there in affecting how the rest of the developed world decides to deal with the PRC.

But I think the problem at the heart of the Kaplan piece remains; how? His conclusion is that "...we need to diversify our supply chains, we need a more clever, alliance-driven style of diplomacy, and we need a new president."

Which is all well and good, but...those supply chains are largely in private hands, which will move them only as far as the fattest profit.

And the diplomacy is largely in the hands of that president, who was recently quoted recommending that Americans threatened by a pathogen inject themselves with bleach and swallow UV lights and yet remains the god of nearly 4/10ths of the American public. There is at least an even chance that there will be no "new President" for another four years and change.

So...what?

Update 4/26: Dan Drezner at Reason has a thoughtful piece that goes into the US-PRC relationship in more detail. In particular it does good work examining the starry-eyed narrative that too many US officials believed would link economic growth and political freedom, as well as the clumsy mess that the Tariff Man has got the relationship into.

However, when he comes to his proposals for solving the mess, Drezner doesn't seem to have all that much more than Kaplan:

"There are areas in which the prospect of weaponized interdependence means that some negotiated decoupling will be necessary. In those arenas, however, the United States will need the cooperation of its allies—because otherwise, China is likely to be the one setting global standards in 5G and other technical areas. The U.S.-China Trade Policy Working Group, a collection of economists and lawyers from both sides of the Pacific, has put forward a framework for managing the relationship. As for coping with predatory liberalism, Adam Silver's change of tune in the face of a media firestorm shows that negative press attention is the best way to get U.S. firms to stop kowtowing to Chinese authorities."

The notion that the Trumpkins will sudden drop their "America First" mania and begin cooperating with allies is risible, while "negative press" seems a weak reed for a world that has gotten used to reading the press equivocating on whether drinking bleach is a bad idea.

So I think we're still very much in the same place. We know there are some things that need to be done about the US-PRC relationship. But what things, and whether the US in its existing condition can or will do them?

That seems very much not so much undecided as largely unexplored.

Update 4/29: It's worth noting that this really is a transnational problem; the Trumpkins' "America First" xenophobia isn't the only source of trouble here. There's much to ponder in this essay (An Old Anxiety in a New Era 1900 & 2020 庚子年的優思 by Zi Zhongyun) regarding the turn to aggressive nationalism on the PRC. It appears that the Xi regime has largely abandoned the pretense of socialist internationalism inherited from the original revolutionaries. In its place - at least, per Zi - is a sort of purblind xenophobia and nationalist rage that would make any MAGA rally look like a kid's playdate.

(The banner above the restaurant door reads "Enthusiastically Celebrate the Coronavirus in America; Wishing the Virus a Long and Successful Journey in Japan". Yike.)

"This deplorable situation is only getting worse and, given the kind of unwarranted self-congratulation encouraged by the recent Amazing-China-boosterism [inspired by a swaggering and sensationally popular 2018 propaganda-documentary, ‘Amazing China, My Country’ 厲害了, 我的國], it is hardly surprising that we are now subjected to fabricated stories about how neighbouring countries are supposedly pleading with Beijing to be allowed to merge with the ‘Chinese Motherlands’. [Note: in mid April 2020, articles appeared on the Chinese Internet claiming that Kazakhstan was applying to become part of China. In response, the Kazakh foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador in Almaty to issue a formal protest]. On the global stage stories like this feed an existing anxiety that China is secretly harbouring plans to invade and absorb other nations."

I've heard it said that a diplomatic catastrophe often requires the hard work of the parties on both sides. It would seem that we have just such a situation at hand.

Update 4/30: This...

...on the other hand, is NOT good.

Nationally Interesting

Poked my head in a little while ago to see what was going on and noted that the bulk of the commentatorship appears to be feeding one of the usual "OMFG taxation is theft!!!" trolls, which in my biased opinion is like try to teach German irregular verbs to a cat. The effort is infuriating and the cat has no intention of doing anything but licking its ass.

If you think that your government is "wasting" your tax dollars you seriously need to spend a year or two working for a national corporation. Fraud, waste, and abuse? Those people pretty much invented the notion. Not to mention greed, vanity, short-sightedness, venality, nepotism, and credulous stupidity.

Just sayin'.

Anyway, I wanted to offer up another topic for discussion. Specifically:

"If the United States had some concrete "national interests", what would you consider them to be?"

For example, in the previous post, jim asks several questions along the lines of:

"Do U.S. and Saudi interests intersect? Did they ever?", "Has Saudi Arabia split off from U.S. policy by supporting an invasion army in Iraq? If so, how does this differ from previous U.S. actions which sought to create buffer zones a la the Monroe Doctrine?", and "Why does the U.S. need allies like S.A., Pakistan and all the rest of the jokers we call "NATO allies"?

All worthwhile questions, IMO, but still short of the larger question which would be;

"What are these 'national interests' of the United States, and how would acting towards them look (fill in the blank; in the U.S., in Eastern Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East)?"

Let me offer up just one example of something I think falls under this question.

One of the most salient features of the United States that I grew up in - that is, the U.S. of the Sixties and Seventies - was the widespread availability of semi-middle class/living-wage jobs that didn't require 1) an advanced degree or similar specialized training, or 2) some sort of personal "pull" or nepotism. This had the effect of producing a fairly broad swathe of Americans that lived as, thought of themselves as, and voted as "middle class". A shit-ton of government programs like the GI Bill and similar educational loans, and the mortgage-interest deduction helped that happen, too.

And, I should add, so did some fairly hefty tariffs. For most of U.S. history tariff rates have averaged in the teens, with highs as much as 44% (1870) and lows in the high single digits (about 8% in 1917 and 1946). Since 1970 tariffs on imported goods have fallen off the table - the average tariff rate in 2010 was 1.3%.

Now...in my unscientific, openly biased opinion it is in the U.S.'s best interest to have widespread economic "comfort"; that is, that the bulk of the citizenry should be neither so massively wealthy so as to become in essence a nation in themselves nor so poor as to be economically and socially fraught 24/7. IMO the political system set up in the late 18th Century doesn't work well with a small elite and a vast peasantry.

So it would seem to me that this, in turn would dictate some fairly obvious economic and social policies for the U.S. to further this "interest". Limit capital mobility so that corporations cannot flee overseas. Ameliorate techological change so as to find work for people unemployed when buggy whips become obsolescent. Provide tax and tariff incentives to prevent the destruction of domestic industries.

And that, in turn, leads to some - to me, at least - foreign policy imperatives. Don't provide incentives for foreign trade partners to undercut U.S. business. Don't subsidize subsidized foreign industries (i.e. China's...). Don't blunder around knocking over foreign governments and destabilizing other parts of the world, creating refugees (who become cheap labor pools for foreign competition) and impoverishing those who remain behind (ditto).

And that's just me, and that's just one issue.

So; here's the question for the readership.

What, in your opinion, should are U.S.' (or the EU, or whatever your polity of choice is - mine's the U.S. just because I live here...) "national interests"? And, given them (or the one you choose) what sorts of actual national behaviors, economic, political, and social acts should that polity take to address them.

Remember; we're talking purely about broad interests here, not those of any particular group. And we're also talking interests and not fantasies, interests and not dogmas; the teahadis may not believe in "anthropogenic global warming" or that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization" but that's beside the point - I don't believe in "arena football" and, yet, there it is.

So; let's talk about "national interests". What are they? What sorts of things could or should nations do to further those interests? Are there some that conflict with others? Which are "big" interests central to a people's welfare and which can be negotiated or compromised or amended?

Have at it, ladies and gentlemen.

Terrorism Abroad

In case you were taking a break from domestic news and wondering who's killing innocent people overseas, well, in Bangladesh it's mostly the people working for Bennetton, the Gap, and J.C. Penney;

"The plan would ditch government inspections, which are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and establish an independent inspectorate to oversee all factories in Bangladesh, with powers to shut down unsafe facilities as part of a legally binding contract signed by suppliers, customers and unions. The inspections would be funded by contributions from the companies of up to $500,000 per year.

The proposal was presented at a 2011 meeting in Dhaka attended by more than a dozen of the world's largest clothing brands and retailers — including Wal-Mart, Gap and Swedish clothing giant H&M — but was rejected by the companies because it would be legally binding and costly.

At the time, Wal-Mart's representative told the meeting it was "not financially feasible ... to make such investments," according to minutes of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press."

Well, I, for one, am glad that our corporate "citizens" are not knuckling under to the tyranny of those irresponsible Bengalis who seem to hold the misguided belief that things like workplaces that don't collapse or catch fire are some sort of "right" rather than a privilege of being in a Free Market.

I'd have more to say but there's a terrific sale today down at Wal-Mart, and I have got to pick up a pair of Levis; always low prices there, y'know?



Always.

End of the American Century

Professor Andrew Bacevich has a new book out, a collection of essays entitled The Short American Century. Bacevich is well known by the barkeeps here and to our readers as well I assume. His is one of the few voices of reason heard in contemporary America today, which says a lot.

On this post I would like to introduce Bacevich's new book as well as point out two other articles one from November 2011 and the other published this month. The book provides necessary context while the two articles provide an analysis of our current situation. I'll start with the older article, then proceed to the newer article and finish with an extract from the book which ties the two together.

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The first article, from 2011, entitled Big Change Whether We Like It or Not provides a thoughtful analysis of America going into the current year. Perhaps the worst aspect of the situation is not the overwhelming change we are facing, but the attitude of the current political/economic elite:

In Washington, meanwhile, a hidebound governing class pretends that none of this is happening, stubbornly insisting that it’s still 1945 with the so-called American Century destined to continue for several centuries more (reflecting, of course, God’s express intentions).

Here lies the most disturbing aspect of contemporary American politics, worse even than rampant dysfunction borne of petty partisanship or corruption expressed in the buying and selling of influence. Confronted with evidence of a radically changing environment, those holding (or aspiring to) positions of influence simply turn a blind eye, refusing even to begin to adjust to a new reality.

With the onrush of political, economic, environmental, even military changes happening now, our national leadership prefers to pass off bromides, sound bits of past glories and worn-out boilerplate from chicken dinner speeches to the people as if they offered some sort of proper response.

Bacevich lists "four converging vectors involved" although he admits there may be more. They are:

First the Collapse of the Freedom Agenda which was Washington's response to 9/11 in the form of Bush's invasion of Iraq:

Intent on accomplishing across the Islamic world what he believed the United States had accomplished in Europe and the Pacific between 1941 and 1945, Bush sought to erect a new order conducive to U.S. interests -- one that would permit unhindered access to oil and other resources, dry up the sources of violent Islamic radicalism, and (not incidentally) allow Israel a free hand in the region. Key to the success of this effort would be the U.S. military, which President Bush (and many ordinary Americans) believed to be unstoppable and invincible -- able to beat anyone anywhere under any conditions.

Alas, once implemented, the Freedom Agenda almost immediately foundered in Iraq. The Bush administration had expected Operation Iraqi Freedom to be a short, tidy war with a decisively triumphant outcome. In the event, it turned out to be a long, dirty (and very costly) war yielding, at best, exceedingly ambiguous results.

In retrospect it seems amazing that there was so little resistance to this "policy" which was more the nature of corruption mixed with systemic failure at a whole variety of levels. None of the elite come out looking even halfway competent or even trustworthy here which is why they would just a soon sweep it all under the rug. "Next war please!" As it is "history's actors" got bitch slapped by reality, as if it could have turned out any other way . . .

Second, the Great Recession:

Instead of being a transitory phenomenon, it seemingly signifies something transformational. The Great Recession may well have inaugurated a new era -- its length indeterminate but likely to stretch for many years -- of low growth, high unemployment, and shrinking opportunity. As incomes stagnate and more and more youngsters complete their education only to find no jobs waiting, members of the middle class are beginning to realize that the myth of America as a classless society is just that. In truth, the game is rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many -- and in recent years, the fixing has become ever more shamelessly blatant.

This realization is rattling American politics. In just a handful of years, confidence in the Washington establishment has declined precipitously. Congress has become a laughingstock. The high hopes raised by President Obama’s election have long since dissipated, leaving disappointment and cynicism in their wake.

This vector is probably the most difficult to deal with since it affects our every day existence. An economic system and money itself rests on trust, trust that bills will be paid and that the money used as payment will be accepted as payment. So if more and more people think they are being scammed and that there are powerful interests who are making fortunes off this crisis/their misfortune, then what do you do?

The American view of history up to now (with a short hiatus during the Great Depression) was that if you work hard you can get ahead and that if you provide for your family, getting them for instance a good education, they will be better off economically than you were. That used to work in enough cases where it was believable, but now? Tell a young family that now and see their reaction. This type of social economy has been on the way out for a long time, but the current crisis has lifted the veil for a lot of people which explains the current Populist response. Today we have the economy as casino and our political "representatives" have stood back or actively supported this change before our very eyes. To get an idea of the change I'm talking about we have to think of the economy not as money but as a value system. Consider the closing scene from Executive Suite of 1954 which adequately describes the clash between two perspectives. I would add to this the thought of the novelist Ayn Rand who remains widely (or "wildly") popular today.

In effect a new faith has taken over, "the Market" (portrayed as a synthesis of accounting principles/financial management and Ayn Rand), but that faith is breaking apart against the rocks of an ever more brutal reality. While those in power profit from the current situation, how much longer will it be taken as fact by the American public?

Third is the Arab Spring:

Although Washington abjured the overt colonialism once practiced in London, its policies did not differ materially from those that Europeans had pursued. The idea was to keep a lid on, exclude mischief-makers, and at the same time extract from the Middle East whatever it had on offer. The preferred American MO was to align with authoritarian regimes, offering arms, security guarantees, and other blandishments in return for promises of behavior consistent with Washington’s preferences. Concern for the wellbeing of peoples living in the region (Israelis excepted) never figured as more than an afterthought.

What events of the past year have made evident is this: that lid is now off and there is little the United States (or anyone else) can do to reinstall it. A great exercise in Arab self-determination has begun. Arabs (and, arguably, non-Arabs in the broader Muslim world as well) will decide their own future in their own way. What they decide may be wise or foolish. Regardless, the United States and other Western nations will have little alternative but to accept the outcome and deal with the consequences, whatever they happen to be.

This is only the most recent manifestation of what Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the Global Political Awakening. This is a "worldwide yearning for human dignity" that has been ongoing since at least the French Revolution. What it triggers is populist activism which can be channeled in different ways to quite different effects. Dictators can rise by popular acclaim, even be voted into office . . . What we have here is not the decline of the state, but the overthrow of the last vestiges of Western imperialism in the Arab world, which will usher in new political forms and thus new state apparatuses. The state is simply the apparatus of political control, how the leadership in fact rules, is not something that can simply disappear. Our influence in regards the Arab Spring is limited, even negligible, or counter-productive to our interests, and for that reason our responses have to be considered in that light.

But then what are the chances of that? We see that our attitudes in regards to the first two vectors actually preclude it, and along with our still intact assumptions as to the infinite application of military force actually determine our seemingly self-defeating response.

The Fourth and last Vector that Bacevich lists is Europe:

Today, Europe has once again screwed up, although fortunately this time there is no need for foreign armies to sort out the mess. The crisis of the moment is an economic one, due entirely to European recklessness and irresponsibility (not qualitatively different from the behavior underlying the American economic crisis).

Will Uncle Sam once again ride to the rescue? Not a chance. Beset with the problems that come with old age, Uncle Sam can’t even mount up. To whom, then, can Europe turn for assistance? Recent headlines tell the story:

“Cash-Strapped Europe Looks to China For Help”
“Europe Begs China for Bailout”
“EU takes begging bowl to Beijing”
“Is China the Bailout Saviour in the European Debt Crisis?”

The crucial issue here isn’t whether Beijing will actually pull Europe’s bacon out of the fire. Rather it’s the shifting expectations underlying the moment. After all, hasn’t the role of European savior already been assigned? Isn’t it supposed to be Washington’s in perpetuity? Apparently not.

Shifting expectations is again the point here. Since all these assumptions are based on US dominance, we see that this dominance in fact no longer exists, as if we needed yet another example to prove that.

I think Bacevich overstates the case and misses the real turnaround. How much of the current crisis was the result of Europe "screwing up" and how much was a direct result of the economic "heresy"/scams coming out of the US? Would this current crisis have happened at this time without the Wall Street implosion? The view I see as gaining ground in Portugal is that the Wall Street "vandals" sucked what they could out of the US and then came to Europe to do the same . . . this accepting that plenty of mistakes had been made on this side of the Atlantic. It was the gaming of the crisis which has destroyed a lot of European faith in US business methods and economics. Add to this, the profound disappointment in Barack Obama and how he utterly failed to deal with the financial crisis, essentially co-opting to the banks. The "US", although few will say this openly, is now seen by many Europeans as akin to a highway robber, operating outside the "rule of law".

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The second and more recent article, From Liberation to Assassination, Scoring the Global War on Terror describes how the Global War on Terror has evolved. From the Shock and Awe of the Rumsfeld Era we proceeded to the COIN of the Petraeus Era and are now in what Bacevich calls the turn to assassination by RPA/Special Operations Forces. Instead of a high-profile official like Rumsfeld or Petraeus, the "emblematic figure of the war formerly known as the Global War on Terror (WFKATGWOT)" is a relatively unknown figure by the name of Michael Vickers.

Bacevich concludes this article:

How round three will end is difficult to forecast. The best we can say is that it’s unlikely to end anytime soon or particularly well. As Israel has discovered, once targeted assassination becomes your policy, the list of targets has a way of growing ever longer.

So what tentative judgments can we offer regarding the ongoing WFKATGWOT? Operationally, a war launched by the conventionally minded has progressively fallen under the purview of those who inhabit what Dick Cheney once called “the dark side,” with implications that few seem willing to explore. Strategically, a war informed at the outset by utopian expectations continues today with no concretely stated expectations whatsoever, the forward momentum of events displacing serious consideration of purpose. Politically, a war that once occupied center stage in national politics has now slipped to the periphery, the American people moving on to other concerns and entertainments, with legal and moral questions raised by the war left dangling in midair.

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In other words chronic strategic confusion as a result of possibly terminal political dysfunction. At least that is how I would read it.

The glowing Washington Post piece I linked above had this to say:

Today, as the top Pentagon adviser on counterterrorism strategy, Vickers exudes the same assurance about defeating terrorist groups as he did as a 31-year-old CIA paramilitary officer assigned to Afghanistan, where he convinced superiors that with the right strategy and weapons, the ragtag Afghan insurgents could win. "I am just as confident or more confident we can prevail in the war on terror," Vickers, 54, said in a recent interview, looking cerebral behind thick glasses but with an energy and build reminiscent of the high school quarterback he once was. "Not a lot of people thought we could drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan."

Vickers joined the Pentagon in July to oversee the 54,000-strong Special Operations Command (Socom), based in Tampa, which is growing faster than any other part of the U.S. military. Socom's budget has doubled in recent years, to $6 billion for 2008, and the command is to add 13,000 troops to its ranks by 2011.

Senior Pentagon and military officials regard Vickers as a rarity -- a skilled strategist who is both creative and pragmatic. "He tends to think like a gangster," said Jim Thomas, a former senior defense planner who worked with Vickers. "He can understand trends then change the rules of the game so they are advantageous for your side."

Emphasis mine. The first highlighted item could as well be said of us, but I doubt if the irony was as potentially obvious in 2007 when the article was written. Also notice the term "strategist" linked with "gangster".

Have we ever really had a coherent strategy at all? That is if we consider strategy as using military means to achieve a military aim in support of a political purpose. Our goal all along has seemingly been simply to impose and maintain dominance. The secondary goal of achieving permanent and complete security (essentially the 1% Doctrine) is not really an achievable goal since total security is never possible.

So why does the GWOT go on? Is it because it has gained a constituency with a personal interest in its further continuance no matter how much it costs or how many foreigners it kills or lives it destroys? Especially under the new version it could go on for some time irregardless of the backlash it is building against us . . . Perhaps the answer is in the four vectors discussed in the first article.

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The last Bacevich piece I will include here is a short essay from the new book, The American Century Is Over - Good Riddance. In it besides proclaiming the obvious end of American dominance we also see the end of the American claim to global leadership, what Henry Luce referred to in 1941 as the great mission of the US. That mission has now come to an end.

For me the money paragraphs were these two:

But I suspect that's not going to happen. The would-be masters of the universe orbiting around the likes of Romney and Obama won't be content to play such a modest role. With the likes of Robert Kagan as their guide—"It's a wonderful world order," he writes in his new book, The World America Made (Knopf)—they will continue to peddle the fiction that with the right cast of characters running Washington, history will once again march to America's drumbeat. Evidence to support such expectations is exceedingly scarce—taken a look at Iraq lately?—but no matter. Insiders and would-be insiders will insist that, right in their hip pocket, they've got the necessary strategy.

Strategy is a quintessential American Century word, ostensibly connoting knowingness and sophistication. Whether working in the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon, strategists promote the notion that they can anticipate the future and manage its course. Yet the actual events of the American Century belie any such claim. Remember when Afghanistan signified victory over the Soviet empire? Today, the genius of empowering the mujahedin seems less than self-evident.

Strategy is actually a fraud perpetrated by those who covet power and are intent on concealing from the plain folk the fact that the people in charge are flying blind. With only occasional exceptions, the craft of strategy was a blight on the American Century.

So "strategy" as scam, con game for the suckers who are only expected to foot the bill.

Strategy as marketing. But the marketing of dominance through domestic propaganda. Next new product out . . . war with Iran . . .

Postscript-

"Gloomy". That's what this perspective is called: not by those here, us barkeeps or the readers, not imo. The ones who refer to us as "gloomy" post on their own Neocon or Robbish doctrinal speculation blogs. They then comfort themselves with the self-serving notion that we don't really understand how tough it could get . . . the "warriors" know far better than we lesser mortals could ever . . .

The "warriors" don't listen to Bacevich either, which puts us in good company. It also indicates what we all have in common . . . the simple understanding that any reform/change will require acknowledgment of the problems and suitable solutions. Avoiding the painfully obvious with faith in "balance" or Randian "objectivity" is a decedent even nihilistic response.

We, the opposition to the "warriors", simply keep chipping away, like Andrew Bacevich does . . .

Like Publius does, like Al does, like FDChief does, like jim does, and everyone else reading who understands and agrees with my words.

The Inflection Point

FDChief's last thread introduced the latest Obama national strategy document to this blog, that being Sustaining US Global Leadership. The first paragraph of the introduction sets the tone for what is to follow:

The United States has played a leading role in transforming the international system over the past sixty-five years. Working with like-minded nations, the United States has created a safer, more stable, and more prosperous world for the American people, our allies, and our partners around the globe than existed prior to World War II. Over the last decade, we have undertaken extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring stability to those countries and secure our interests. As we responsibly draw down from these two operations, take steps to protect our nation’’s economic vitality, and protect our interests in a world of accelerating change, we face an inflection point. This merited an assessment of the U.S. defense strategy in light of the changing geopolitical environment and our changing fiscal circumstances. This assessment reflects the President’’s strategic direction to the Department and was deeply informed by the Department’’s civilian and military leadership, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretaries of the Military Departments, and the Combatant Commanders. Out of the assessment we developed a defense strategy that transitions our Defense enterprise from an emphasis on today’’s wars to preparing for future challenges, protects the broad range of U.S. national security interests, advances the Department’’s efforts to rebalance and reform, and supports the national security imperative of deficit reduction through a lower level of defense spending.

Emphasis is mine.

The first sentence is true, but incomplete. Actually we have again transformed the international system since 2001, advocating pre-emptive war as a coherent strategy (as long as the US is the only country that practices it). Also the financial/economic system established by the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 has been replaced by what we could refer to as our own made in the USA version of crony capitalism/global market as rigged casino that had been coming together since the mid 1990s, but has become glaringly obvious after the economic crash of 2008.

The "like-minded nations" at this point in time comes down to Israel, although they have their own goals which are not necessarily in the US interest of being achieved. One could argue that France may be a "like-minded nation", but given US "confusion" during the Libyan campaign I think that unlikely. The extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were the results of two strategically incoherent wars and both amounting to US defeats. In fact there is much the propaganda feel to the whole document and the disjunct with our recent history is so blatant at times it is difficult to take this document seriously, at least in terms of strategic coherence based on an accurate assessment of our recent history. Still I think it worthy of study in not so much what it says, but in the assumptions behind it, what it avoids and its intended audience.

Let's start with the assumptions. The first is what I bolded in the first paragraph and is the title of this post. Inflection point can be defined as:

An event that results in a significant change in the progress of a company, industry, sector, economy or geopolitical situation. An inflection point can be considered a turning point after which a dramatic change, with either positive or negative results, is expected to result. . . .

. . . Politically, an inflection point can be illustrated by the fall of the Berlin Wall or the fall of Communism in Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries.

Difficult to see what exactly the "inflection point" is today, although I would agree that 1992 was indeed one and that our strategic coherence has been going south, along with the effectiveness of our military actions, ever since that point in time. In other words there was a turning or inflection point after 1989-1992 and the result has been negative. Nothing I have read in this document shows either awareness of that basic fact, awareness of the self-defeating quality of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, nor any inclination to correct the situation to reflect the actual interests of the people of the United States. Instead what it shows is a lock-step determinism to continue with the failed policies/attitude of the past.

The second assumption is that the Al Qaida boogyman remains the main national security threat and counter-terrorism remains the first primary mission of the US Armed Forces:

The demise of Osama bin Laden and the capturing or killing of many other senior al-Qa’’ida leaders have rendered the group far less capable. However, al-Qa’’ida and its affiliates remain active in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. More broadly, violent extremists will continue to threaten U.S. interests, allies, partners, and the homeland. The primary loci of these threats are South Asia and the Middle East. With the diffusion of destructive technology, these extremists have the potential to pose catastrophic threats that could directly affect our security and prosperity. For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring the activities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establish control over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.

Interesting mix of messages associated with this assumption. First, there is the not so subtle reminder of OBL "being brought to justice". Then the extensive nature of this nebulous threat which is portrayed as being essentially existential (violent extremists . . . pose catastrophic threats that could directly affect our security and prosperity), what in strategic theory is known as an "absolute enemy". Absolute enemies are not recognized as such in Clausewitzian thought and it is rather a Leninist concept. That is the concept that the administration is using here is a totalitarian concept which has been used in the past to justify war crimes and mass murder. The last sentence refers to the use of drones or RPAs, which I have addressed in the past. The existential and absolute nature of the threat justifying not only the use of this destabilizing weapon system, but the extensive and unending dedication of resources to combat this type of threat. In fact even questioning this policy can be see as treason, since "the absolute enemy" requires by definition an "absolute" response.

There is no mention of any state connection to Al Qaida, which is interesting given what we now know about OBL's last years. This would add necessary ambiguity to understanding the actual nature of Al Qaida and the situation as a whole, and that is clearly not the intention of the present administration any more than it was that of the last.

The third assumption has to do with what we actually achieve with our current force structure/level:

U.S. economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, while the U.S. military will continue to contribute to security globally, we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. Our relationships with Asian allies and key partners are critical to the future stability and growth of the region. . .

The maintenance of peace, stability, the free flow of commerce, and of U.S. influence in this dynamic region will depend in part on an underlying balance of military capability and presence.

Is it true that our presence keeps the peace, or would we have an acceptable level of stability if the US Navy only had three carrier battle groups? Is it the US that keeps the free flow of commerce going, or would it be operating pretty much the same without us? Who exactly would be the source of all this disorder if we weren't there to police this huge area? What would be their possible motivation to disrupt things? Do they even possess the resources to achieve this disruption?

A clue to the answer to these questions imo is the title of this document, which is "Sustaining US Global Leadership", but it isn't really "Leadership" that we are interested in sustaining, but "Dominance". "Defense" is a reaction to a threat or actual aggression, whereas "Dominance" is a state or condition of existence. Almost all acts of aggression committed by states since 1992 have been either committed by us, like-minded Israel, or by states that we supported. We're not in the peace and stability business, we're in the coercion and war-making business and our current goal is to maintain the state of dominance which allows for that, no matter what.

The fourth assumption has to do with the Arab Spring:

n the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges. Regime changes, as well as tensions within and among states under pressure to reform, introduce uncertainty for the future. But they also may result in governments that, over the long term, are more responsive to the legitimate aspirations of their people, and are more stable and reliable partners of the United States.

Emphasis mine. I don't see how being more responsive to the legitimate aspirations of their people can be equated with being more stable and reliable partners of the United States, but then if we get to decide what their legitimate aspirations are (wink,wink, nod, nod), then I guess it works. This of course brings us back to the same situation we had prior to the Arab Spring itself . . .

The fifth and last assumption I'll list has to do with NATO, but is not limited to that since the quote brings up other interesting points as well:

The United States has enduring interests in supporting peace and prosperity in Europe as well as bolstering the strength and vitality of NATO, which is critical to the security of Europe and beyond. Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it. Combined with the drawdown in Iraq and Afghanistan, this has created a strategic opportunity to rebalance the U.S. military investment in Europe, moving from a focus on current conflicts toward a focus on future capabilities.

The first sentence contains an array of conflicting statements adding together to a very dubious assumption. By bolstering the strength and vitality of NATOpeace and prosperity in Europe? One could argue the opposite, that by not only maintaining and expanding NATO, not to mention a US missile shield for Europe, we are needlessly antagonizing Russia.

Europe doesn't need NATO, the US does, since without it what would be our rationale or legal basis for stationing troops, nuclear weapons and equipment in Europe? Without those bases (and Lajes as well in the Azores) we would be very hard pressed to sustain our dominance, in fact the whole war on terror would have been probably impossible, which would have been a good thing not only for Europe (would there have been the London and Madrid attacks without GWB's wars?), but for the US as well, or rather for the people of the United States.

Europe has gained nothing from NATO post 1992. The commitment of non-US NATO countries to both Iraq and Afghanistan argues for the immediate discontinuation of NATO in fact.

The final point I would like to make associated with this assumption, but actually a separate one, is that security is seen by the US government today as a commodity. The document speaks of our "Defense enterprise" and mentions European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it.

On the individual level, we purchase "security" as a commodity all the time: a new/improved lock for the front door, a can of pepper spray, a guard dog, an H&K automatic for your "personal protection" . . . Insurance also provides a form of "security". At the individual level though, "security" is a mindset buttressed by commodities, but not necessarily so. A person who trusts his or her neighbors does not feel insecure and probably will see little need for security in terms of commodities.

But we are not talking about that at the level of states. At this level, "security" is more a collective result of a whole series of material, institutional and moral/value decisions. Security = internal social stability/a durable external balance of power. Dominance could be seen as providing security, but that requires the consensus of the international community. Should the power in a state of dominance start acting erratically, or against the interests of powerful states or coalitions, then the presence of the dominance itself becomes source of instability. Also should the hegemon define its "security" has having its own way by coercing others and perceiving their ability/intention to resist as "undermining" its own security, then the hegemony is approaching delusional behavior or even systemic collapse.

By discussing these assumptions, I think both the mindset of the Nation's leadership and what they are leaving out of the equation becomes clear. My final statement on this post will be in regards to the intended audience . . .

To answer that question, let's first start with a quote:

Here we come face-to-face with the essential dilemma with which the United States has unsuccessfully wrestled since the Soviets deprived us of a stabilizing adversary - a dilemma that the events of 9/11 only served to intensify. The political elite that ought to bear the chief responsibility for crafting grand strategy instead nurses fantasies of either achieving permanent global hegemony or remaking the world in America's image. Meanwhile, the military elite that could puncture those fantasies and help restore a modicum of realism to US policy fixates on campaigns and battles, with generalship largely a business of organizing and coordinating material . . .

Reasserting a professional monopoly over the conduct of warfare requires drawing the brightest possible line between politics and war, thereby preventing civilian and military considerations from becoming entangled. Hence, the senior commander who experiences combat vicariously in the comfort of an air-conditioned headquarters nonetheless insists on styling himself a "warfighter". He does so for more than merely symbolic reasons. Assuming that identity permits him to assert prerogatives to which the officer corps now adamantly lays absolute claim.

As if by default, getting to Baghdad (or Kabul) becomes war's primary - almost its sole - purpose. The result is war undertaken in an atmosphere of astonishing strategic naiveté, leading soldiers like Franks and civilians like Feith to assume that, with a couple of quick battlefield victories, everything else will simply fall into place.

Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power, pp 187-8.

I think this quote makes it clear who the intended audience of this document is. It's our own military elite. This assures them that the political side will retain the same old goal of dominance, which we have pursued since 1992. The military will be left alone to organizing and coordinating the various operations, but there will be no actual connection between policy and military means/aim. Policy will continue as before to exist behind a curtain of propaganda and window dressing, while the military plans campaigns of destruction, but with the new promise of no actual US boots on the ground (However, US forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations), outside of special operations forces I assume. This is what Obama's "inflection point" comes down to. As others have mentioned we experienced this same sort of drawdown in the 1990s after the "Defense Panning Guidance" of 1992 had been put into effect.

Die erste achtundvierzig Stunden...

Occupy Portland is over.An ad-hoc force of police from several places including Portland Bureau today cleared the two downtown parks that Occupy had occupied. The protesters have regathered in several other downtown sites to "discuss" their next move, but in my opinion this is the end for Occupy.

For more than a week the local pols, newspapers, and television outlets have been voicing increasing impatience with Occupy and, truthfully, it seems hard to imagine how the "protests" would have done anything more than they have which beyond generating a sort of unfocused unease amongst the chattering classes has been no more than an irritant under the silken drawers of the rich and powerful.

It's been more than forty years since the mild insurrections of the U.S. Civil Rights era, half a century since the "nonviolent" protests of the Indian National Congress forced Britain's release of her Indian colony, a full century since the end of the violent strikes and near-rebellions that empowered the American labor unions.In the interim we have forgotten that "peaceful" protest is exactly as effective as "peacefully" resisting a savage beating unless you have your "peaceful" beating carefully planned to maximize your PR value - and it helps if your opponents are frigging morons, or politically and financially exhausted.

The civil rights marchers won because the Southern bigots were stupid enough to physically attack well-dressed men and women on national TV and newspapers. The Indian factions won partially because BG Dyer was a fucking bloodyminded idiot and partially because the Empire exhausted itself fighting two world wars. You could argue that the labor unions didn't actually win, but rather reached a sort of armed truce that lasted until the plutocrats shat the bed in 1929 and helped elect a labor-friendly administration.

Occupy had none of these to help it. Instead, it faced a massively corrupted and paid-for military-industrial-congressional-financial complex that is doing quite well under the present system. Any hopes of an FDR moment disappeared early in 2009 when it became obvious at least to me that the current Democratic administration had no interest in even trying cocking a snook at the banksters. The New New Deal this wasn't.

And the Occupiers forgot the other lesson of those earlier protest movements; that the public could give a shit about your politeness. The relative discipline of the Occupiers ended up looking like meekness, and regardless of what the Good Book says the meek won't inherit jack shit without a pair of brass balls, friendly press, and a sackful of bricks and cobblestones hidden away in case all the politeness doesn't work. And Occupy Portland had none of those things.

And ask the Paris Communards how even WITH those things, if the government is willing to ignore you when you're weak - and kill or arrest when you're strong - you will lose.So the banksters have proved that a camel can leap laughingly through the eye of a needle. They have bought all the government they need, they or their lickspittle brownnosers own the media conglomerates, and the U.S. public is about evenly divided into thirds, and while one third is ignorant and indifferent one of the other two-thirds is actively hostile, either hoping to curry favor with the plutocracy or, tragically, mistaking the random helium in their guts for wings; by the time they fart away their good luck they will be plummeting too rapidly to have the time for regrets.

Occupy might have had more hope if the public was more intelligent and their enemies less powerful. In the first couple of days, or weeks...

But no matter. That hope is gone forever.

In March, 1935 the tiny German Army marched into the Rhineland, the first of Hitler's Thirties gambles. And it was more than a gamble; Hitler and his commanders knew how tiny their little force was. As hapless as the French Army of the Thirties was, and it was a fairly ginormous clusterfuck, a whiff of grapeshot in the old Napoleonic style would have seen the Heer packing across the Rhine and, probably, the end of the Hitler Era two years after it began.

But the French were too meek to make that move, and Hitler's success propelled him all the way to the wreck of the European world ten years later.

And here again, the first couple of days - "Die erste achtundvierzig Stunden" is how Hitler phrased it - were key.Once the larger public failed to rise in the first couple of days the Occupiers proved to have no strategy to force the issue or force their enemies to submit and their attempt to tame the bulls and bears is done.

Update 11/14: Upon further review, I had a couple of thoughts.

The antiwar protests of the Sixties have something a answer for in what they've done to the U.S. left. The protests were far less effective at "ending" the war than they seemed at the time (and have been mythologized since) - Nixon's concerns for the economy and the public's indifference to the Vietnamese were more crucial. But the result is that somehow the notion that merely marching around and sitting-in would be enough to effect political change and the record of those actions since then have proved this to be the nonsense it is.

The civil rights protestors, the INC activists, the labor movement radicals all had a collection of things that the post-'72 U.S. protests haven't:

1. An actual strategy that involved an entire range of acts, from pure theatre to violent protest, and some notion of how and where these would be applied. If OWS had anything other than "be there" I haven't seen it (mind you, the combination of vast public indifference and active media ignorance/hostility made it difficult to see how they could have done anything else effectively). And to orchestrate this these groups also had

2. An actual structured leadership - often fractious, even infighting, but the leaders were there actively planning the attacks on their opponents. The OWS seems to suffer from the goofy fuzzy-logic cloud-leadership that is to my mind the very WORST hangover of the Sixties protests. People like Lewis and Nehru and MLK were in many ways very unlikeable, manipulative, cunning sons-of-bitches. The OWS people seem to have absorbed the wrong lesson, which is that to get to a beneficent end you need to be a beneficent person. Couldn't be wronger. Many, perhaps most, of the people who have done "good" things for the mass of humanity have themselves been real bastards. You have to break a lot of eggs sometimes to make a good omlette...

Sorry that I'm such a little ray of sunshine today. But, as Matt Taibbi points out, the things that OWS is pointing fingers at aren't minor issues - they go to the very heart of the corruption of the crony-capitalist scam that has been driving the U.S. (and much of the Euro nations) back towards the Gilded Age. I'd have liked to see the U.S. and other western publics "get" that. But this doesn't seem to have happened, and at this point I have to conclude that it ISN'T going to happen. And for someone like me, who is and whose kids will be, part of the 99%, that looks like a bad thing for the future.

The Red Flag

The recent failure of the U.S. governing class to understand that the immediate (i.e. next decade's) problems are not those of debts and deficits but of jobs and joblessness make the recent news from London something of a nasty reminder of what happens when a substantial portion of your working-age population ends up jobless for long periods of time.I think we need to remember that we are not Japan. Young American men (and women) without a job are not going to behave well for long. Why bother? What is there to lose? In the U.S. you ARE your job. And if you have no job, how much do you have? Freedom? You have the freedom to lay about, eat junk food, and do squat. As much as that might have appealed to me at age 14 for about three weeks, spending the bulk of my twenties or thirties...or fifties...doing that?

I'd probably go out and loot a 7-11, too.No question that we will have to grapple with the question of how much the U.S. governments need to take in and how much they need to spend. But before we do that we need to get through the next stage of the Great Recession (can we start calling it a Depression yet?) without finding a sizeable chunk of our population out of work and on the dole. Because that's not a good thing for them, it's not a good thing for us, and it's not a good thing for the country.There's a reason that that crafty old patrician FDR and his New Deal pals didn't just push through stuff like Social Security and unemployment insurance but created a bunch of make-work agencies; things like the CCC and WPA and the big government construction projects were a smart reaction from people who were watching what the Soviets and Italian Fascists were doing with their young people - stuffing them into armies and "labor corps" and other make-work jobs. Things like the Bonneville Dam and the CCC kept idle hands from becoming devils' playgrounds...and idle brains from getting stuffed with fascist or communist ideas. Those New Deal guys knew that having a bunch of working - i.e. military - age guys just hanging around with nothing to do was a hell of a good way to start trouble.

I'm not sure if we need a new CCC. But I'm hella sure that we don't need a bunch of stuffed hairbags in DC gassing on about the Terror of Deficits when 10% and probably more of the U.S. public is out of work and stands to be for a long, long time, at this rate.

Because despite what they tell you on TV; were not that much smarter, or better behaved, than we were in 1932. And now, as then, as the London Council is finding out...if we don't figure out how to get those guys back to work or find something for them to do, they'll find it themselves, and the rest of us might not like it."I'm out of work and on the dole,
You can stuff the red flag up your hole."

Befehlstaktik

As an afterhought to jim's posts about the lack of strategic thinking in our civil government (i.e. the fairly clear evidence that if our political "leaders" were to be drafted less than a handful of them would have the mental horsepower to make a corporal competent enough to lead four privates to a whorehouse and issue instructions on the tasks, conditions, and standards expected of them once they got there) I thought I'd point you towards this interesting essay from John Robb. Here's his money graf:

"...an extreme concentration of wealth at the center of our market economy has led to a form of central planning. The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy. As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces. A few thousand extremely wealthy people making decisions on the allocation of our collective wealth. The result was inevitable: gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy."

Gosplan, Comrade Koch?I don't always agree with Robb, but he may be on to something here. Certainly the mess we're making in our response to the Great Recession - with the experience of the original Great Depression right before out faces - suggests more than just incompetence. You'd almost have to suspect deliberate ignorance, arrogance, and ideological purity as culprits.

Although perhaps we really ARE that stupid. It's SO hard to tell...

Horsefeathers

Since we're piling on the "United States - Where Dysfunctional is the New Black!" I thought I'd add another log to the fire with some observations about the U.S. higher education system.

Conventional wisdom has gone all in for the "It's All About The Degree!" meme in the past two decades or so. Supposedly the fact that we have put in place tax, tariff, and economic policies that encourage "job producers" to produce jobs overseas is offset by the new excitement among Americans for going to college, getting degrees and thus moving into the Exciting World of the Real Middle Class. As opposed to those yobbo rivetheads who just ACTED middle class because their union jobs paid them so well.

Well, Ed over at Gin and Tacos has a nice little rant on the effect that this explosion of student bodies has had on the Grove of Acadame:

"The cost of higher education, either for students or state legislatures, isn't going to go down until they stop putting politically expedient Band-Aids on their problems (furloughs, larger classes, pay/hiring freezes, more temp labor in the classroom) and decide to focus on what is supposedly their core mission: educating people. The new $100 million MultiTainment Complex and the Orrin Hatch Learning and Instructional Center are expensive frills. Athletic programs are money-losing albatrosses. Administrators exist mostly to perpetuate the need for administrators. Teaching and research should be 99% of what we do. But mention that on the Campus Tour and watch the eyes start to glaze over…"

My experience teaching at community college mirrors his only without the research. My observation is that many, many of the students there were thoroughly unprepared for their junior college entry, that the community college did nothing, or next to nothing, to try and make things go better for the poor Powerpoint Fodder - in particular, most CCs and JCs are staffed with overwhelmed, overmatched adjunct faculty because the administrations know perfectly well that there are waaaaayyyyy more people out there with advanced degrees than there are teaching jobs for them - and their primary job seems to be to act as a revenue generator through monstrous tuition increases.

But on of Ed's commentors makes what I consider to be the most trenchant observation about this entire fucking mess; it's the credit, stupid.

"Comrade Luke has it right,"

he says,

"the root of the matter is the guaranteed student loan system that allow 18 year olds to amass debt beyond their comprehension that they will not be able to discharge even in bankruptcy.

If there aver were an argument for the free market it would be this. You can't charge more than your customers are willing to pay. The ready access to limitless credit to people who would never qualify for a loan of any kind is what has driven tuitions to the ludicrous levels they are today.

Perhaps someday when we acknowledge our third world status it will change but until then let's all celebrate the future of online education that costs just as much but without bothering with such things as classrooms, professors or even dorm rooms.

Bring on the future."

I know a young woman who is a tremendously bright, motivated person. Right now she is out of work, her unemployment is running out (she got temporary employment with the Census but that is going away, obviously) and she is crushed, completely buried under the student loans. Part of her problem is that she majored in a humanity that offers her little in the way of employment except in truly lush economic times.

But the other part is that she should never have been accorded the sort of credit it took for her to spend two years at UVA. It starts her off with a huge rock on her shoulders that will perforce warp her life as she struggles to carry it and has to find ways to pay it down.

Perhaps it's the curmudgeon in me. But it seems as I grow older that we have either found more perfect ways to do simple things wrong...or those ways were always there and it just took me that long to recognize them. Either way, it's like hitting oneself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop

3/25/11

On the 100th year afterwards, some reflections on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,1911, and the state of labor and capital in the United States, 2011.

What is an Economy?

Taking another look at fDChief's thread Arc of a Diver, I think that something basic is missing that has come up at the end of that thread, especially in comments by Publius, jim and Al.

Exactly what the economy is hasn't been defined. Chief talks about "securing needs" at the beginning of his post, but that's more human focus and motivation than economy. If I'm dying of thirst, I'm not going to be looking for entertainment, but water, which doesn't necessarily require an economy at all, let alone $$$.

So how do we define "economy"? The distribution of goods and services within and between communities? But it's more than that imo, it also involves providing "gainful" and "meaningful" employment/activity for the members of said community. This would not require commerce at all, could be based instead on reciprocity, which would also not require money. These of course would be relatively limited and not very complex communities, but the basic tie in with economy still holds imo since we still have the same basic requirements which the economy is expected to meet.

Where does "money" come in? Notice I say money and not property which are two different things, although today we see them as one in the same. Money is an abstract concept based on shared assumptions and trust. I assume that my $100 note will be accepted by the check-out counter attendant because it is "legal tender". The attendant assumes that my note is genuine, but the note has no actual value in and of itself, unlike property. Money acts as more the lubricant for the economy, the easing of commercial transaction than as the focus and/or purpose of the economy. The more lubricant the better the system functions, but also the lubricant acts as a measure as to how successful certain parts of the apparatus are operating. Still, the purpose of the overall system is actually much broader and all encompassing than what the money would indicate, and in order to be adequate requires a certain amount of social/communal stability.

Now what happens when we radically redefine "economy" to "making a profit" or more simply as "cashing in"? Instead of a market/sharing of trade and reciprocal/meaningful action we have a gambling table where only the richest can play. The majority are simply pawns in the much larger game of high stakes bets, wagers, and swindles, in fact deception is considered a necessary and highly-valued skill. There is no thought of meaning or distribution, rather of "winner take all" and the loser gets perhaps another chance as long as his money holds up.

But even this doesn't quite capture the reality of the great transformation we have experienced imo. Soooo consider this fable:

There were once two river steamboats. One was new and gleaming, state of the art for the time, well-managed and prosperous. Being steamboats, we of course have riverboat gambling. The other was old and dilapidated, patched up with old worn-out parts and wired together with baling wire, but still functioning more or less. The two steamboat captains decided to have a race. As long as there was no race the inherent weaknesses/strengths of both boats were not apparent.

So on the first boat we have the machinery working well, the crew operating as expected, the gaming tables operating in the best interests of the boat, raking in big profits from the gamblers on board.

On the second we have the machinery barely holding together, the crew semi-mutinous or drunk and disinterested. The gamblers have bought off all the dealers who allow them to win big at the cost of the house, while the uninitiated are fleeced mercilessly. The captain (not the president) is drunk on the bridge but with great delusions of grandeur and considers his boat simply "too big to fail" and orders yet more steam as the first boat is lengthening its lead. The smokestacks are glowing redhot by this point and everyone paying any attention to the reality of the situation knows the boiler is about to go which will blow the whole thing sky high, but the gamblers at the tables are totally focused on their crooked game and ignore the rumbling until it is too late . . .

Comments?

Postscript:

One of the constitutive components of the modern capitalist spirit and, moreover, generally of modern capitalism, was the rational organization of the life on the basis of the idea of a calling. It was born out of the spirit of Christian asceticism. Our analysis should have demonstrated this point. If we read again the passage from Benjamin Franklin cited at the beginning of this essay, we will see that the essential elements of the frame of mind he described as the "spirit of capitalism" are just that we have conveyed above as the content of Puritan vocational asceticism. In Franklin, however, this 'spirit' exists without the religious foundation, which had already died out.

The idea that modern work in a vocational calling supposedly carries with it an ascetic imprint is, of course, also not new. The limitation of the Faustian multi-dimensionality of the human species, is in our world today the precondition for doing anything of value at all. This is a lesson that already Goethe, at the peak of his wisdom in his Wilhelm Meister's Years of Travel [1829] and in his depiction of the final stage of life thought his most famous character Faust [1808], wished to teach us. He instructs us tht this basic component of asceticism in the middle-class style of life - if it wishes to be a style at all - involves today an inescapable interaction in which the conduct of 'specialized activity', on the one hand, and 'renunciation', on the other, mutually condition each other. For Goethe this acknowledgment implied a farewell to an era of full and beautiful humanity - and a renunciation of it. For such an era will repeat itself, in the course of our civilizational development, with as little likelihood as a reappearance of the epoch in which Athens bloomed.

The Puritan wanted to be a person with a vocational calling; today we are forced to be. For to the extend that asceticism moved out of the monastic cell, was transferred to the life of work in a vocational calling, and then commenced to rule over this - worldly morality, it helped to construct the powerful cosmos of the modern economic order. Tied to the technical and economic conditions at the foundation of mechanical and machine production, this cosmos today determines the style of life of all individuals born into it, not only those directly engaged in earning a living. This pulsating mechanism does so with overwhelming force. Perhaps it will continue to do so until the last ton of fossil fuel has burnt to ashes. According to Baxter, the concern for material goods should lie upon the shoulders of this saints like "a lightweight cloak that could be thrown away at any time". Yet fate allowed a steel-hard casing (stahlhartes Gehäüse) to be forged from this cloak. To the extent that asceticism attempted to transform and influence the world, the world's material goods acquired an increasing and, in the end, inescapable power over people - as never before in history.

Today the spirit of asceticism has fled from this casing, whether with finality, who knows? Victorious capitalism, in any case, ever since it came to rest on a mechanical foundation, no longer needs asceticism as a supporting pillar. Even the rosy temperament of asceticism's joyful heir, the Enlightenment, appears finally to be fading. And the idea of an 'obligation to search for and then accept a vocational calling' now wanders around in our lives as the ghost of beliefs no longer anchored in the substance of religion. Whenever the conduct of a vocation cannot be explicitly connected to the highest cultural values of a spiritual nature, or wherever conversely, individuals are not forced to experience it simply as economic coercion - in both situations persons today usually abandon any attempt to make sense of the notion of a vocational calling altogether. The pursuit of gain, in the region where it has become most completely unchained and stripped of its religous-ethical meaning, the United States, tends to be associated with purely competitive passions. Not infrequently, these passions directly imprint this pursuit with the character of a sporting contest.

No one any longer knows who will live in this steel-hard casing and whether entirely new prophets or a mighty rebirth of ancient ideas and ideals will stand at the end of this prodigious development. Or, however, if neither, whether a mechanized ossification, embellished with a sort of rigidly compelled sense of self-importance, will arise. Then, indeed, if ossification appears, the say might be true for the 'last humans' in this long civilizational development:

-Narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without heart; in its conceit, this nothingness imagines it has climbed to a level of humanity never before attained.-

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1920

Arc of a Diver

Bear with me, because I'm really thinking out loud here; I don't pretend to be parading out expert opinions or fully-formed ideas. There are just some issues I'm seeing in the U.S. that concern me and I wanted to lay them out and let you all kick them around.

Let's start with some of the elements that have been elemental to human life since Sumer, and some others that appear to have become more essential to life in the United States in the early part of the 21st Century.

First, let's begin with the proposition that human well-being comes from a variety of sources, but that the basic principles of Maslow remain sound. Physical needs like adequate food, shelter, and safety come first. If you are starving under a bridge in the February rains it doesn't really make much difference whether you are in a terrific love match. You will be dead soon of exposure, leaving your amorata bereft and looking for a new place to sleep.So securing those fundamental needs is the primary concern of humans everywhere.

For most of us in 21st Century America this means a job; gainful work, work that pays enough to secure that rented flat, food enough to live on, clothing, and the small fripperies that differentiate living from existing.

Let us further assume that political ideals and concerns will always come second to the primary need for security and well-being. Mark Twain called this "cornpone opinions"; tell me where a man gets his cornpone, said Twain, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.

To put it another way, a person fearful of want and hardship, of losing his job, that she will fall into desperate straits, is unlikely to worry much about the abstracts and deeper implications of policies and politics. As hard cases make bad law, frightened people make bad politics. While it would be nice to think that humans respond to desperate times with calculated courage, my experience is that the pressure of fear and want make fools of the hardiest of us. The usual reaction to pressure is panic. The main reason that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution wanted to limit the franchise to men of property is that they feared the "passions of the mob" - by that they meant the impact of the landless and moneyless being led, or driven, by their need to truckle to those whose patronage employed or supported them.And that brings us to the moment, the second Winter of our economic Discontent.

We the People have been assured, reassured, re-reassured that the key to economic strength is through the unshackling of the creative engine of capitalism. That the Market would bring us all prosperity, and that the best way to spread that prosperity was to lift the bonds of taxation and regulation on the Masters of the Universe, the financiers and entrepreneurs and captains of industry.

The rising tide that their flood of wealth creation would break loose would raise all our little boats alongside their yachts. We would lave ourselves in the streams of lucre they would bring forth, like Moses bringing forth water from the rock.

So we helped them, we cut their taxes - lower than anytime since their grandfathers smashed the Republic on the rocks of the Depression - and we waited. We, many of us, demanded the end of public unions, the crushing of deficits, the end of public spending, just as the powerful and wealthy told us would help - and we waited.

And certainly their tide has risen. The stock market is rising, many of the largest companies and corporations are awash with profit.

But for many of us the water is still at low ebb.Employment is still around 10 percent. Worse, many more of us have just stopped looking for work, or are working at menial or part-time jobs that pay little of what we earned before and not enough to live on above the meager minimum.

And here is the worst part of my fears.

I think that this Great Recession may be the harbinger, the slow drawback of the sea that fortells the arrival of the tsunami.

I think we are seeing a great convergence of political, economic, and social changes that spells trouble for those of us ordinary citizens of the Republic.

I think we will find that many of the lost jobs may never return. And I think that this may portend the end of the great "Middle Class Era" of the U.S.

When you think about it, wealth for the ordinary American went through two great periods of expansion. In the late 18th and early 19th Centuries that expansion was literal, physical; the nation prospered as it grew larger, incorporating huge territories into itself. If an American needed or wanted to try and prosper, he or she could move physically to a richer or newer part of the land.

By the end of the 19th and into the 20th Century, the expansion was technological and industrial; people left off farming and started making things, and the things we made became ever more complex and valuable.

But this depended on two things;

First, it depended on resources, and, more importantly, on domestic resources. The iron and coal were mined here, the petroleum drilled and refined here, the cotton grown here and the fabrics woven here. Americans largely used American resources to make American products. That economic power enabled us to purchase resources we couldn't find in North America and still have wealth to spare; our manufactured goods were as much in demand overseas as the resource materials were here.

Second, it depended on tariffs. For much of our nation's history we protected our industries with tariff barriers that made trade within the nation more economical than trade without, despite the relatively high wages we payed each other.In some cases we protected our industries absolutely; in the early 19th Century importing German or British steel would have been cheaper than using steel from Pittsburgh or Cleveland, even though the German and British steelworkers made no less (tho probably little more, and that little enough) than our own. But high tariffs forced Americans to trade with each other.

Well, the resources - especially petroleum - are gone and will not return. And we have chosen to lower the tariffs in the name of free trade and the acquisition of volumes of Cheap Plastic Crap. That has been good in the short run, and for the manufacturers of CPC. Now I think the bill is going to come due.

Because corporations have realized, and, soon, I think the American people are going to find, that many, many formerly living-wage jobs can and will be done by people in places like Brazil, Rangoon, Calcutta, and Guangzhou.These jobs don't take a vast amount of mental acuity, and, what's more, the education the people in Calcutta and Guangzhou is becoming no worse than our own. And their costs are much less than ours. We simply cannot compete with engineers in Mumbai who can design as well as engineers in San Francisco and for a fraction of the price. I think that we will be surprised, and dismayed, by the number and type of jobs that can and will be offshored.

I think that we are going to find ourselves with an indigestible 10 to 20 percent of the population that is going to become "long-term un/under-employed". I think this will have a disastrous effect on U.S. politics.

It's easy to forget that prior to the War on Poverty that roughly a quarter of the U.S. population was poor. Really poor.Shotgun shack, barefoot-hookworm-and-pellagra, bad teeth and rickets poor. What saved us, to a great extent, is that most of those poor were either immigrants living in city slums or the rural poor. The first were too cowed and frightened to be much trouble, the latter were always able to eke out some sort of living, even in bad times.

But the rural poor are pretty much gone; what's left are agribusinesses feeding crap to the poor and lower middle class and the craft farmers feeding slow food to the upper middle class and wealthy. The bulk of the urban poor and suburban poor have lost the skills to farm; the countryside has lost the ability to insulate us from culture shocks. And the likelihood of as much as 20-30 percent of the U.S. becoming poor again, really poor - especially if the recent Republican fervor for dismantling the social safety net takes effect - is likely to remove much of the fear from the urban slums.

In revolution the real devastation begins with the thought "What the hell do I have to lose?"

And the gulf between the rich and the poor is widening again, to an extent unseen since, again, the Depression.It's worth remembering that FDR wasn't some sort of aristocratic Santa Claus. Yes, he had concern for and interest in those suffering from the worst of the Depression. But he was also a cunning politician, a frighteningly bright guy, and an old New York patroon. He could see what was happening as hard times made desperate people make mad and bad choices; the wealthy and then the middle class dead and imprisoned in Russia, fascists springing up in Germany and Italy, class war in Spain, and he didn't want to see it here. His opportunity came when the banksters and the free-marketeers shit the bed in 1929, and he rammed through some arguably unconstitutional measures that bought social peace for the succeeding fifty years.But I think that deal, that New Deal, is falling apart.I honestly have no idea what can be done. I can't see hopes for reviving the U.S. middle class the way it was created after the Depression; by raising the working class into the "middle" by paying them a wage that brought with it middle class expectations, manners, and mores. The competition from foreign workers is just inescapable.

I can't really see the creation of "new industries"; we're at the tag end of a technological cycle.

For example, look at the pace of technological progress, say, between 1910 and 1940 - practically the entire industrialized world changed! An American of 1910 would have had a hard time recognizing the world of 1940.

Another thirty years - from 1940 to 1970 - saw great changes as well. But not was great as the preceding thirty.

Between 1970 and 2000, still more changes. But changes in scale, or type, rather than in method. We went from landlines to "bricks" to cellphones to iPods - but a phone is a phone. We went from mainframes to laptops - but a computer is a computer. The next great technological leap may well be out there...but it seems increasingly like a "black swan". The arc of the present technologies seems predictable and increasingly incremental.

So the U.S. seems presented with the prospect of an increasingly divided society, with a small group of very wealthy at the top, a sullen lump of intractably poor and unemployable at the bottom, divided by a frightened and dependent remnant of the middle class between.Unwilling to tax themselves, the wealthy retreat to their gated enclaves. Unable to pay for themselves, the poor are lost, increasingly nothing more than a mob of votes to be bought and sold. Resented by the proles and ignored by the aristos, the rump of the middle finds themselves chained to the rock of their stagnant mortgage values with the vultures of the rich and poor rending their livers as they dread the day their job is finally outsourced or offshored.Now - don't get me wrong. I don't think that we're crash-diving into some Mad Max apocalypse, or that the U.S. is going to become Afghanistan tomorrow.

This country has always been tremendously resiliant. We have great reserves of human energy and creativity, and there are always events that can break favorably, unlike the gloomy scenario I've painted.

But combine everything we've talked about with a world that wants, and is getting to the point of being able to demand, what we have kept to ourselves for fifty years; with the increasing possibility that we are producing and consuming petroleum orders of magnitude faster than it can be formed from biomass; with the collapse of the post-WW2 political center into the repolarized politics of the Oughts and Teens...

I wondre if we have the wherewithal - political, social, economic - to reverse this trend and reestablish a broad middle class of the sort that had such a large effect in stabilizing the nation between 1945 and 1980; that is, the nation that most of us grew up in and take for granted.Is it?

One solution could be to "lighten" or "open" the U.S. economy. Until now we've rested like a massive stone wall on agriculture, resource extraction, and manufacturing. Above that foundation are the wood floors, the service industries, from the architects, engineers, and designers to the attorneys and the doctors. Above that are the gingerbready attics; the caterers, beauticians, the financial gamblers, the writers, the graphic artists, and the people who sell kitschy knick-knacks in twee little shops.

Agriculture and mining long ago lost their mass employment potential; most of us now work in the service industries. But there has to be a foundation, and that foundation is increasingly looking rather seedy. But do we need "mass employment"? Can we design a society that uses technology to replace human bodies, relies on creativity and a "nimble" exchange of good and services? One that is based on fewer people, but those people capable of more complex tasks? Could the way out of the dilemma of the un/under-employed be to simply have fewer people to BE unemployed?Or perhaps that next wave discovery occurs and revitalizes the U.S.

Or...or something.

I hope.

Because if not I am worried about my children and the nation that they will grow up in. If not I am worried because of what I see as the political and social state of the nation; I'm not convinced that we are prepared to deal sensibly and effectively with the sort of problems I've discussed.

If not I am worried that my children's lives will be more difficult than mine was, and that is every parent's worry.