Richard Clarke worked for thirty years in the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and the National Security Council, serving under three presidents. He has seen the transformation of the military from the inside, from the post-Vietnam reactions to the Iraqi invasions. He is dismayed, even outraged, at what the civilian leadership has done to the military, and at the failure of some senior military leaders to speak up and oppose the naïve and misguided directions of civilian leaders, and he has detailed his arguments in a new book Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters. (see booklist on sidebar for details).
In 1984 Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger put forth a list of six eminently reasonable guidelines for the use of American force, evolved as a consequence of the Vietnam War:
• U.S. vital interests must be at stake
• We must be committed to winning decisively
• The political and military objectives must be clear and obtainable
• The forces necessary to win decisively and achieve the goals should be made available and the appropriate force size should be regularly reviewed
• There should be reasonable grounds to suppose that the American people would support the operation
• Force should only be used as a last resort, after all other alternatives are exhausted or proven unworkable
Subsequently, General Colin Powell added four more principles:
• Have all the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
• Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entailment?
• Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
• Do we have genuine and broad international support?
These guidelines were all available to President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and the U.S. military leaders while they considered the Iraq invasion, and hardly any of the guidelines were met, or apparently even considered by the politicians. Generals who protested that the guidelines hadn’t been considered were reassigned, and replaced with more compliant generals. The result has been soldiers killed because of inadequate equipment, a loss of American support throughout the world, and a messy and expensive insurgency for which our armed forces were not prepared.
Warning: this book will make your blood boil!!
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
But who will buy.....??
The Detroit auto makers were before Congress today asking for about $25 billion in loans to tide them over for the next few months. Suppose they get those loans and manage to build more cars --- who is going to buy them in this economy? Fixing the car maker's immediate cash problems does nothing if Americans can't afford to buy their products. Perhaps Congress ought to give every American family $25,000 to be spent only on buying a new American car, so that there will be a market for all those cars they want to continue to build.
Seriously, though, I don't get the feeling that anyone in Washington has really thought this all through. Printing money and handing it around to big companies doesn't seem to me to do anything toward solving the underlying problems; it just serves as short-term life support. And the astronomical debt this approach is accumulating will certainly create some severe long-term problems for all of us.
I expect that what should happen is that these companies should go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, get reorganized to offload some of their unsupportable debt and obligations, and clean out their incompetent management, and then perhaps re-emerge lean enough to compete successfully in the market again. That will be painful for shareholders and workers, but it will eliminate the inefficient producers and divert capital to more productive uses. This business of trying to keep inefficient producers in business just to save jobs is a dead-end street, as a good many other countries have already proven.
Seriously, though, I don't get the feeling that anyone in Washington has really thought this all through. Printing money and handing it around to big companies doesn't seem to me to do anything toward solving the underlying problems; it just serves as short-term life support. And the astronomical debt this approach is accumulating will certainly create some severe long-term problems for all of us.
I expect that what should happen is that these companies should go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, get reorganized to offload some of their unsupportable debt and obligations, and clean out their incompetent management, and then perhaps re-emerge lean enough to compete successfully in the market again. That will be painful for shareholders and workers, but it will eliminate the inefficient producers and divert capital to more productive uses. This business of trying to keep inefficient producers in business just to save jobs is a dead-end street, as a good many other countries have already proven.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Recommended: Bailout to Nowhere
I recommend David Brook's November 14 New York Times Op Ed column, Bailout to Nowhere. It is indeed sorely tempting to politicians of both parties to try to save all those Detroit jobs (and votes), but in fact the government should not be in the business of saving inefficient and uncompetitive companies. The Detroit Big Three were in trouble long before the current recession pushed them to the wall, as their declining market share over the past decade proved. Pouring taxpayer money into them isn't going to solve their fundamental problems; it's just going to keep them on life-support longer.
Still, now that Congress has found that it can print money at will (eg: the first $700 billion bailout), I suppose they will be eager to buy votes everywhere they can, and no doubt the line of CEO's applying for Congressional welfare for their uncompetative companies will get quite long.
Still, now that Congress has found that it can print money at will (eg: the first $700 billion bailout), I suppose they will be eager to buy votes everywhere they can, and no doubt the line of CEO's applying for Congressional welfare for their uncompetative companies will get quite long.
Does this really make sense?
Our “home theater” amplifier died recently, and I had to go buy a new one to replace it. There was nothing to do with the old one but throw it in the trash, from where it will eventually go into a landfill and no doubt delight some archaeologists in another thousand years.
Once upon a time, when a high fidelity amplifier died, we could take it to a nearby radio/TV repair shop and get it fixed and get another ten years of life out of it. I tried to do that with this amplifier. But I find that no one repairs amplifiers anymore, and in fact even e-bay has trouble finding replacement circuit boards. And in fact, if there were a repair shop, the labor and parts cost to troubleshoot it and repair it would exceed the price of a new amplifier (about $200 in this case), which is exactly why such shops no longer exist.
So I threw it out and bought a new one. But before I did that I took the cover off and satisfied my curiosity to see what was inside. What was inside, of course, was a series of circuit boards with innumerable tiny but very sophisticated circuit chips and microprocessors that would have amazed the scientists and engineers of twenty years ago. Yet they were all headed to the trash heap.
We buy all kinds of marvelous gadgets – MP3 players and flat-screen TVs and radios and home computers and IPods and boom-boxes and high tech automobiles with dozens of embedded computers – and five or ten years later when they quite working we just throw them away. I understand the economics of this, but somehow it just doesn’t seem right. Can a society survive for eons if it throws away as much as we throw away?
Friday, November 7, 2008
A primer on foreign policy
There are essentially three ”schools” of foreign policy in America, the realists, the isolationists and the liberal internationalists. Of course there are an infinite number of shadings between and within these positions, but in their purest forms these are the three main foreign policy positions in our nation today.
Realists see the world as a jumble of nations and groups each pursuing their own self-interests, each with their own differing agendas and cultural world views. Realists see the task of American foreign policy to be the advancement of American self-interest in this global competition by whatever pragmatic means are effective, even if it occasionally means working with or supporting unsavory regimes. Although this sounds heartless and Machiavellian, realists would argue that unrealistic idealism endangers our nation.
To see how foreign policy realists think, read the recent book American and the World by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, or Henry Kissinger’s Does America Need a Foreign Policy: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century or Kissinger’s seminal 1994 book Diplomacy. Han’s Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1974) is also a good introduction to this view.
Isolationists, sometimes called Jacksonians because they espouse principles enunciated by Andrew Jackson, believe that American should tend to its own business and not involve itself more than the minimum necessary with the affairs of other nations. George Washington’s admonition for the new United States to avoid “entangling alliances” fits this view. Isolationists are not in favor of American intervention abroad for any reason – humanitarian or political -- and pure isolationist tend to believe in protectionist trade policies – keeping jobs at home. Isolationists also tend to be suspicious of global institutions like the UN, and of any arrangement that involves America giving up any national sovereignty. The “America First” movement at the start of World War II was an expression of relatively pure isolationism, and many of the subsequent pacifist and anti-war movements are essentially isolationist in their outlook.
There probably aren’t too many pure isolationists, but there is a strong isolationist vein running through the American electorate, which showed itself in America’s reluctance to enter World War I, and then World War II until we ourselves were attacked, and has reappeared loudly every time America has contemplated a serious international intervention, from Korea to Iraq.
I have never found a book that gives a good argument for a pure isolationist foreign policy in today’s world, but some insight into the position can be gained from The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction, by Selig Adler.
Liberal internationalists, sometimes called “Wilsonians” because they follow principles enunciated by Woodrow Wilson, believe that America has a moral obligation to actively spread liberal ideas, including democracy, to other nations around the globe. There are significant shadings between those at one end content to just lecture and scold non-liberal governments, and even perhaps impose sanctions, and those at the other end prepared to intervene militarily to overthrow non-liberal governments and forcibly replace them with democracies, but all feel obligated to evangelize for American liberal values. Liberal internationalists tend to place faith in the establishment of global institutions like the UN to promote liberal democracy and keep the peace, and tend often to be highly critical of cooperation with ”unsavory regimes”.
To see how current liberal internationalists think, read the recent book Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up Democrats by Matt Yglesias, or The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, by Peter Beinart. Also important would be Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s 1949 book The Vital Center. The historical roots of liberal internationalism can be found, among other places, in the works of Emmanuel Kant and John Stuart Mills.
At one time isolationism was a dominant feature of conservative Republicans, while liberal internationalism was associated primarily with liberal Democrats. However, in recent years these division have blurred beyond recognition, so that in fact the neoconservative Republican Bush administration has adopted the most extreme form of liberal internationalism as a fervent obligation, while some Democrats have argued fiercely for what is almost an isolationist view. These days all three schools can be found within both political parties, and among both liberals and conservatives, and in fact many people espouse a combination of two or even all three of these views simultaneously.
There are valid arguments for all three foreign policy schools. Back when I was a teacher (in another life), at this point students would demand to know which view was “right”, and were always frustrated when I told them that all were right, and all were wrong. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and each might be appropriate in one situation and not another. But I personally lean toward the realist view.
George Washington’s isolationist admonition was probably appropriate for a newly-formed, still weak and largely self-sufficient nation protected by oceans from Europe, but it hardly fits today’s world where America depends upon resources and markets around the globe and can be struck by long-range missiles from thousands of miles away.
Liberal internationalism, it seems to me, is in general based on a narrow and parochial view of the world that assumes that everyone wants (a) peace and (b) democracy. There is nothing in my reading of world history or cross-cultural studies that supports those beliefs. In fact, it seems to me that history teaches that people are far more interested in (a) power, (b) stability, and (c) status, even dominance, for their own tribe, clan, ethnic group, nationality and/or religion. In this respect I think well-off American political elites, living in safe, isolated upper-class communities, are far more naive about human nature than the urban poor who witness the Hobbsian world of gang wars, crime, unequal distribution of wealth and urban violence every day, a world much more like the violent chaos of Africa or the Middle East these days.
Realist policies cannot be perfect because the world is an extremely complex place, and it is not always obvious what course will best advance our cause, or what unintended consequences will emerge. But on balance, it seems to me that the realist approach, not blinded or constrained by religious, political or philosophical ideologies, is more adaptable, quicker to recognize errors and correct them, quicker to adopt promising new ideas, and better grounded in real human nature.
That does not mean that realists have no interest at all in spreading liberal ideas. On the contrary, the wider our liberal democratic views are spread and the rule of law accepted, the safer America becomes, and so spreading liberal ideas where possible is a valid part of realist diplomacy, but for pragmatic reasons, not ideological or moral reasons.
Realists see the world as a jumble of nations and groups each pursuing their own self-interests, each with their own differing agendas and cultural world views. Realists see the task of American foreign policy to be the advancement of American self-interest in this global competition by whatever pragmatic means are effective, even if it occasionally means working with or supporting unsavory regimes. Although this sounds heartless and Machiavellian, realists would argue that unrealistic idealism endangers our nation.
To see how foreign policy realists think, read the recent book American and the World by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, or Henry Kissinger’s Does America Need a Foreign Policy: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century or Kissinger’s seminal 1994 book Diplomacy. Han’s Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (1974) is also a good introduction to this view.
Isolationists, sometimes called Jacksonians because they espouse principles enunciated by Andrew Jackson, believe that American should tend to its own business and not involve itself more than the minimum necessary with the affairs of other nations. George Washington’s admonition for the new United States to avoid “entangling alliances” fits this view. Isolationists are not in favor of American intervention abroad for any reason – humanitarian or political -- and pure isolationist tend to believe in protectionist trade policies – keeping jobs at home. Isolationists also tend to be suspicious of global institutions like the UN, and of any arrangement that involves America giving up any national sovereignty. The “America First” movement at the start of World War II was an expression of relatively pure isolationism, and many of the subsequent pacifist and anti-war movements are essentially isolationist in their outlook.
There probably aren’t too many pure isolationists, but there is a strong isolationist vein running through the American electorate, which showed itself in America’s reluctance to enter World War I, and then World War II until we ourselves were attacked, and has reappeared loudly every time America has contemplated a serious international intervention, from Korea to Iraq.
I have never found a book that gives a good argument for a pure isolationist foreign policy in today’s world, but some insight into the position can be gained from The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth Century Reaction, by Selig Adler.
Liberal internationalists, sometimes called “Wilsonians” because they follow principles enunciated by Woodrow Wilson, believe that America has a moral obligation to actively spread liberal ideas, including democracy, to other nations around the globe. There are significant shadings between those at one end content to just lecture and scold non-liberal governments, and even perhaps impose sanctions, and those at the other end prepared to intervene militarily to overthrow non-liberal governments and forcibly replace them with democracies, but all feel obligated to evangelize for American liberal values. Liberal internationalists tend to place faith in the establishment of global institutions like the UN to promote liberal democracy and keep the peace, and tend often to be highly critical of cooperation with ”unsavory regimes”.
To see how current liberal internationalists think, read the recent book Heads in the Sand: How Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up Democrats by Matt Yglesias, or The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, by Peter Beinart. Also important would be Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s 1949 book The Vital Center. The historical roots of liberal internationalism can be found, among other places, in the works of Emmanuel Kant and John Stuart Mills.
At one time isolationism was a dominant feature of conservative Republicans, while liberal internationalism was associated primarily with liberal Democrats. However, in recent years these division have blurred beyond recognition, so that in fact the neoconservative Republican Bush administration has adopted the most extreme form of liberal internationalism as a fervent obligation, while some Democrats have argued fiercely for what is almost an isolationist view. These days all three schools can be found within both political parties, and among both liberals and conservatives, and in fact many people espouse a combination of two or even all three of these views simultaneously.
There are valid arguments for all three foreign policy schools. Back when I was a teacher (in another life), at this point students would demand to know which view was “right”, and were always frustrated when I told them that all were right, and all were wrong. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, and each might be appropriate in one situation and not another. But I personally lean toward the realist view.
George Washington’s isolationist admonition was probably appropriate for a newly-formed, still weak and largely self-sufficient nation protected by oceans from Europe, but it hardly fits today’s world where America depends upon resources and markets around the globe and can be struck by long-range missiles from thousands of miles away.
Liberal internationalism, it seems to me, is in general based on a narrow and parochial view of the world that assumes that everyone wants (a) peace and (b) democracy. There is nothing in my reading of world history or cross-cultural studies that supports those beliefs. In fact, it seems to me that history teaches that people are far more interested in (a) power, (b) stability, and (c) status, even dominance, for their own tribe, clan, ethnic group, nationality and/or religion. In this respect I think well-off American political elites, living in safe, isolated upper-class communities, are far more naive about human nature than the urban poor who witness the Hobbsian world of gang wars, crime, unequal distribution of wealth and urban violence every day, a world much more like the violent chaos of Africa or the Middle East these days.
Realist policies cannot be perfect because the world is an extremely complex place, and it is not always obvious what course will best advance our cause, or what unintended consequences will emerge. But on balance, it seems to me that the realist approach, not blinded or constrained by religious, political or philosophical ideologies, is more adaptable, quicker to recognize errors and correct them, quicker to adopt promising new ideas, and better grounded in real human nature.
That does not mean that realists have no interest at all in spreading liberal ideas. On the contrary, the wider our liberal democratic views are spread and the rule of law accepted, the safer America becomes, and so spreading liberal ideas where possible is a valid part of realist diplomacy, but for pragmatic reasons, not ideological or moral reasons.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
It's pretty clear......
It’s pretty clear by now that a liberal resurgence has occurred in this election. I’m grateful for that, because America is healthiest when both parties are strong and vital, and the Democratic party has, until this election, appeared moribund for a couple of decades now (the Clinton years hardly count, because he was one of the best Republican presidents that the Democrats ever elected).
Perhaps the Republicans will be smart enough to go back to the drawing board and recover the original conservative Republican principles (smaller government, balanced budgets, pragmatic foreign policy) and dump the nutty right-wing religious and ideological baggage that has driven so many traditional Republicans from the party.
Of course, the Democrats have to show us something if they are to keep power – the Democratic-controlled Congress hasn’t been impressive over the past two years, and in fact has an even lower approval rating than President Bush. So President Obama needs to demonstrate that he can govern as eloquently as he speaks.
Perhaps the Republicans will be smart enough to go back to the drawing board and recover the original conservative Republican principles (smaller government, balanced budgets, pragmatic foreign policy) and dump the nutty right-wing religious and ideological baggage that has driven so many traditional Republicans from the party.
Of course, the Democrats have to show us something if they are to keep power – the Democratic-controlled Congress hasn’t been impressive over the past two years, and in fact has an even lower approval rating than President Bush. So President Obama needs to demonstrate that he can govern as eloquently as he speaks.
Recommended: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Now that we have (finally) reached election day, I recommend the recent New York Times Op Ed piece Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. The discussion of the liberal press' own racist biases is interesting.
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