Paul Krugman is right in that national debt isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. It isn’t good, but it doesn’t have to be terrible, especially when, as he says, the money is owed internally. Cutting government spending is useful, but spending more in some areas can also be useful. That’s why I suggest cutting military spending, but increasing spending on worker training.
It more important to spend on the right things than to not spend at all.
The Department of Defense has issued a new Defense Strategic Guidance statement, coincidentally just a few days after I sent the White House my suggestions for cutting the budget. I’ve read the document and, rather to my surprise, it makes a great deal of sense. It appears–and much depends on how it is actually implemented–to return the US to the sort of strategic planning that prevailed through most of the 20th century.
First, a bit of background. Throughout the 20th century, it was a strategic goal of the United States to have a continental ally in any major military involvement, and let them do most of the dying. Whether it was France in WWI, the Soviet Union in the European theater in WWII (and China in the Pacific), or South Korea and South Vietnam, the goal was the same; let someone else provide the mass of infantry that was going to take most of the casualties, while the US provided air, naval, and armored support. Even when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, a major goal of US policy was to involve troops from local allies. Syria and Egypt, as well as other local powers, contributed significant forces. This was not merely a political gesture, to show that the United States was not acting alone, but a continuation of sound US strategic policy. Even in Afghanistan in 2001, the US initially provided leadership and firepower (and large amounts of cash), while local allies did most of the fighting.
The lack of a local ally for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a major failure of US diplomacy and planning. (Turkey was the obvious candidate, but could not be induced to even cooperate, much less participate in the invasion.) As a result, US forces had to provide most of the manpower (and relatively significant casualties) for most of the war. Perhaps the fallback plan was to use a reconstituted Iraqi army in the allied role, but if so that too was bungled and only in 2008, five years after the start of the war, was the new Iraqi army ready to take over significant operations.
The new Strategic Guidance statement talks a very great deal about allies. I think the DoD has learned a valuable lesson about the costs of going it alone. (I mean no disrespect to the British and other allies who contributed troops, and suffered losses, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but their roles were comparatively minor.) There are numerous sentences like “U.S. forces will plan to operate whenever possible with allied and coalition forces.” This is good strategic sense. In particular, India is emphasized as a key ally. I have been saying for at least twelve years that securing India as an ally should be a key goal of US strategy and diplomacy, so it is pleasing to see this finally recognized at the highest levels.
The new strategy, boiled down to its essentials, is this:
‘We can’t afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing, so we’re going to concentrate on the areas that really need our attention, and make sure we have local allies to help us out.’
This is a perfectly reasonable plan. Naturally, many people object to it, ostensibly because it means abandoning certain features of recent strategic doctrine, but more realistically because lower military spending means some corporations will make less money.
For example, a stated goal of recent US strategic planning was the ability to fight and win two wars at the same time. The new goal is, if it is necessary to fight two wars at the same time, to fight one as a delaying action while winning the other, then concentrate resources on the other to win that as well. This seems like a significant change, but it really is not. The ‘win two wars at once’ capacity, you see, never actually existed. The doctrine fell apart when it was put to the test. To fight the war in Iraq, it was necessary to put the war in Afghanistan on hold, and it could only be resumed in a serious way as US forces were withdrawn from the Iraq war. The new doctrine is not a change; it simply recognizes circumstances as they actually exist.
A couple of other points are worth mentioning. The new statement includes this statement:
“Likewise, DoD will manage the force in ways that protect its ability to regenerate capabilities that might be needed to meet future, unforeseen demands, maintaining intellectual capital and rank structure that could be called upon to expand key elements of the force.”
This is interesting on two levels. First, it recognizes that the DoD would need to expand to fight a major war and intends to keep the capacity to do so. This is nothing new; WWI and WWII were both fought mostly with men who had been civilians a few years before. It also means that as manpower is reduced a greater proportion of officers will be retained. Officers, in other words, are less likely to lose their jobs than enlisted men and women. That is important not only for its implications on future mobilizations, but on current careers and politics within the DoD.
“We will resist the temptation to sacrifice readiness in order to retain force structure, and will in fact rebuild readiness in areas that, by necessity, were deemphasized over the past decade.”
This means that the DoD will not try to maintain troop levels if it doesn’t have the funds to arm, equip, and train them properly. Quality is more important than quantity and the most important feature of a military organization is its firepower and combat capacity, not sheer manpower. The number of people in uniform is a convenient benchmark for politicians to pick up and try to score points with, but it matters relatively little if the troops have to be used.
Overall, I am pleased with the new strategic doctrine and matching cuts in DoD spending. The strategy is solid and the cuts, while they don’t go nearly as far as they could (and, I believe, should), are a good start. It recognizes both the strategic realities of the world as well as the necessity of a strong economy to maintain a strong military. Well done.
I’ll be brief. PIPA/SOPA isn’t about ‘protecting intellectual property rights.’ It’s about censorship, and giving big media companies (through the efforts of their paid mouthpieces in Congress), the ability to control what people see on the wild Internet.
So, you know, fuck them.
Just came across this post about Authenticity in politics. Potter makes some good points, but I think there’s something he’s missing.
“Authenticity” is one of those political buzzwords; it doesn’t actually mean anything. Voters don’t want a politician who is ‘authentic’ (whatever that means). What the voters want, what I think some people are trying to get at when they say ‘authentic,’ is someone whose concept of what the job is is at least similar to the voter’s.
That’s it. Not someone who is ‘honest’ or ‘authentic’ or ‘true to himself.’ Just someone whose view of what the office holder should be doing is similar to what the voter thinks the office holder should be doing.
Let’s assume most voters have some idea of what problems they would try to fix if they somehow found themselves holding high elected office. The details will vary depending on the particular voter, but let’s say our hypothetical voter has this mental ‘to-do’ list of what they would do if they had the power:
1. Create jobs.
2. Get ‘us’ out of [whatever war happens to be going on at the moment].
3. Reduce healthcare costs.
Etc. Basically, the voter may not have much idea how to go about actually fixing these problems, or achieving these goals, but pretty much every voter has some idea of what problems they think need solving.
This is where the disconnect comes in. Right or wrong, most voters think that most politicians’ to-do list after taking office looks more like this:
1. Pay off favors to corporate paymasters.
2. Pay off favors to special interest groups that donated a lot of money to my campaign.
3. Secure funds for next election.
4. Bang a few interns.
You may notice that there is little overlap between these two lists. That’s the problem. Voters don’t give a shit about ‘authentic.’ They just want someone who they think will actually try to solve the problems they see.
A politician who sees the job as being about solving problems, not about just getting elected.
You mean there are people who did believe the official statements?
Politicians–especially, though certainly not exclusively, Republicans–are focused more and more on serving the interests of corporations and the very rich. They have to be; it requires corporate sponsorship to get elected, and those favors have to be paid off.
As the focus on serving the rich, though, they are focusing on an ever smaller portion of the electorate. Right now, I’d say about 10%. Eventually, the other 90% are going to realize that they’re being screwed. When that happens, corporate-sponsored politicians will no longer be able to win an honest popular election.
What happens then?
My own take is that they’ll try and drive voter participation in the unserved portion of the electorate down to such a low level that they can win with just a few percent of the population. When that fails, the elections will become even less honest than they already are. When the rich and powerful can no longer take control of the seats of power by honest means, they’ll do it dishonestly. Bet on it.
The Guardian asks, “Did Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?
Duh. It’s not like they’re going to lose their houses or jobs. Why should the political leadership care how bad the economy is when they’re not going to take the blame? Winning is much more important.
A little follow up to my last post.
Jason Alexander was kind enough to retweet a link to that post, and I’ve gotten an amazing amount of feedback on it, from a number of very nice people. Many of those people think I’m crazy or full of shit, of course, but they were very nice about it. It’s humbling to have so many people have kind things to say about a little piece I knocked out in an hour or so before bed.
I had been keeping mostly silent on the issue of gun control, because it seemed like a dick move to be talking against gun control while people were still mourning their loved ones. Jason Alexander’s post made me realize that that wasn’t stopping the dicks. If reasonable people (and I do try) stay silent, that leaves the extremists to define the debate, and that doesn’t do anyone any good, so I decided to speak up. I’m glad I did.
A few more thoughts.
With the system we have now in the US, everyone has to pass a background check before buying a gun. The check is supposed to prevent convicted felons and people with a history of mental illness from buying guns. That’s a good thing. It can’t stop every nutcase–there are too many who don’t yet have any kind of record–but it’s a good start.
The problem with it is that too many of the relevant agencies don’t submit mental health data to that database. Fixing that seems to be a much simpler, less contentious, and more effective preventative than banning a single type of gun. Just get these agencies to follow the law and submit their data to the national background check database.
Combine that with the purchase flagging system I described last night and I think we could have something that’s pretty effective. (Implementation detail; when a person is flagged for questionable purchase patterns, it doesn’t just tap an investigator. It would also flag that person in the background check database, stopping any further purchases until they’ve been checked out.)
The purchase-flagging database and investigation idea isn’t perfect, of course. It wouldn’t catch everyone. There would have to be controls to keep it from being abused. But it would catch a lot of people. It probably would have caught James Holmes. He was crazy enough that just his voicemail message made a gun club think he was too unstable to be a member.
Whatever we do won’t be perfect. We can’t stop every bad person from doing bad things. But the ones we can stop, we should.
I believe very strongly that people have a right to own the means of self-defense. But I also believe that people have a right to not be shot by some nutcase while they’re just trying to watch a movie. Reconciling those positions is not easy, and anyone who claims it is is either lying or foolish. Or both.
We should also try to live up to the example of the Norwegians; a year after their own tragic massacre they haven’t changed their laws at all. They haven’t panicked.
“The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation.” –Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg
These are tough issues that reasonable people can disagree on, but only by disagreeing reasonably do we have some chance of finding common ground, and a solution.