Month: April 2018

The Pax Americana is the acceptance by the American government, and to a lesser extent by the rest of the world, that it is ultimately responsible for the enforcement of a rules-based international system which prohibits, among other things, genocide and the changing of national boundaries by force.

The Pax Americana is unprecedented in its geographic scope.  The Greek, Roman, and Chinese Empires obviously didn’t take responsibility for the well-being of the entire world.  The Pax Britannica wasn’t consistently viewed at home as an effort to bring peace and stability to the rest of the world, and the British government didn’t have the power to win wars in Europe by itself. Even the US had no ability to impose its will on a global basis throughout the Cold War.  The idea of the Pax Americana, therefore, only originated around 1990.

The Pax Americana is under threat, both at home and abroad.  What are the options, and what is the prognosis?  I will be discussing these throughout the week.

Imagine that you are Donald Trump, which is to say that you hate Iran, you love dramatic displays of American (and by extension, your) power, and you have the attention span of a smaller-than-average gnat.   Your best friends in the Middle East, Bibi and MBS, tell you constantly that regime change in Iran is essential.  Bolton agrees with them, and Mattis isn’t going to stand in the way.

Regime change it must be, then.  But how?  Here are your options:

1.  Simply launching “cut the grass” strikes on nuclear and missile facilities obviously isn’t going to get it done.
2.  Providing aid to opponents of the regime has little chance of success, particularly since the nation will rally around the government during wartime.
3.  You could launch a massive ground war and occupy Iran, but that would look like Iraq, and you have no patience for that.
4.  You could try to decapitate the regime through the use of smart weapons, but how long would that take?  Your intelligence is uncertain, and it took years to get Osama.
5.  A shock-and-awe conventional bombing campaign is no sure thing, either.

There is only one approach that is a sure winner–a nuclear attack.  Admittedly, you would go down in history as a mass murderer, but what do you care?  You would have shown everyone on the planet that you’re the baddest man alive, and they would put up statues of you in Israel and Saudi Arabia.  You might even get a parade with tanks and fighters at home.

And so, Delenda est Iran.

John Bolton wants diplomacy to fail, so we can have a war with North Korea.  We know that, because he told us in so many words.  That, however, was before he went to work for Donald Trump.

Bolton’s hawkishness is about to collide with Trump’s egotism.  Trump wants a deal to:  prove he truly is the supreme dealmaker; put his domestic opponents on the wrong foot; give him increased flexibility in dealing with China, South Korea, and Japan, all of which have big trade surpluses with the US; and clear the decks for a war with Iran.  He might even get a statue and a Nobel Peace Prize out of it.  All he has to do is accept a bad deal, and that surely won’t be hard.

How will Bolton respond?  Will he fight back?  Will he resign?

Don’t hold your breath.  Bolton has the reputation of “kissing up and kicking down.”  He’ll accept the situation in a passive-aggressive way, defend the deal in public while doing his best behind the scenes to make the implementation impossible, and turn his attention to bombing Iran.

No member of my family has ever been on welfare.  My parents didn’t have much, but they worked hard and made sure we always had enough to eat.  Their grandparents were immigrants who believed in the American dream.  They learned English, never asked the government for anything, and thanked God for their opportunities and their freedom.  People like them made America great.

I was raised to work hard and respect God and authority.  I was taught that life would get better for myself and my kids if we did that.  Lately, however, I’ve started to think that I was just a sucker.  It’s all about money and power.  People who have it get cuts in line.  Foolish people like me with no clout pay for it all.

Everything I believe in is under attack.  The government is controlled by rich people who don’t give a damn about me.  They get bailouts when they screw up.  Where’s my bailout?  And nobody respects God anymore.

Immigrants and minorities and Muslims and gay people are always out there with their hands out to the government crying how they should get this or that because they’re “victims.”  That’s bad enough, but when I complain, the big media people call me a racist and a bigot and “privileged” and all that other political correctness crap.  That really pisses me off.  I’m not a racist; I just want those people to play by the same rules I do and stop picking my pocket.  I’m the real victim here, not them.

Damn right I voted for Trump.  I’d do it again.  He may not be perfect, and I don’t agree with him about everything, but unlike everyone before him, he’s on my side.  That’s what matters.  He knows who the bad guys are, and he’s not afraid to say so.  The left-wing media may say he’s incompetent and corrupt, but I see a guy who’s trying to shake things up, and that’s good.  If he breaks some china in the process, so what?  It needs to be broken.

We’re taking back our country and making America great again!

I’ve never interviewed Mattis, and I probably never will.   If I did, however, it would go something like this:

I enter Mattis’ relatively spartan office in the Pentagon.

C:  Thank you for agreeing to see me.

M:  No problem.  It’s part of the job.

C:  I’m going to ask you some general questions about the job, the state of America’s military, and our role in the world, and then move to specific areas of potential conflict.

M:  OK.

C:  To start, I’m not going to ask you a lot of questions about working for Trump, because I doubt it will get us anywhere, but there’s one question that I have to ask.  Practically everyone else in this administration has had his reputation ruined by the association with Trump, but your reputation, if anything, has actually been enhanced.  How do you do it?

M:  Chuckles slightly.  It’s not easy.  I think being a fairly straightforward military man helps.  Part of it is doing my business here in the Pentagon and staying out of politics.  Part of it is staying away from the media.

C:  But you’re here talking to me.

M:  You don’t have a big enough following to qualify as “media.”

C:  Fair enough.  One issue I’ve raised in my blog is whether the number of military men in the current administration creates a public tie between the military and the GOP that could ultimately present a problem for both the military and the country.  Do you agree that is a potential problem?

M:  Yes.  I’ve made a concerted effort to make the military look like America.  I think that’s important.  There are already issues of understanding between the military and the public at large; we don’t want to make them worse.

C:  Sarah Sanders made some notorious remarks several months ago which suggested that the military is above criticism.   Do you agree with that?

M:  No.  Civilian control of the military is an extremely important element of our political system.  The worst thing we can do is draw lines between the military and the public.  If that means we get some unjustified criticism, so be it.

C:  The prevailing doctrine is that we need to be prepared to fight two major wars at once.  Can we do that today?

M:  Yes, but barely.  We’re stretched to the limit.  The increase in funding in the new budget will help.

C:  You’re aware that critics of the defense budget say that the budget is equal to the six or eight other largest defense budgets in the world, combined?

M:  That’s misleading.  The Chinese don’t have to spend as much money on personnel as we do.  Health care costs in particular are killing us.

C:  What are you doing on health care costs?

M:  We’re working on it.  It’s complicated.

C:  There was a column in the NYT a few days ago to the effect that America’s role in policing the world has to diminish simply because our share of world GDP is declining.  What’s your reaction to that?

M:  Over time, that may happen.  As for today, there’s no one available to take our place.  Is the world going to depend on China to stop massacres in Africa?  The world will be an ugly place if we’re not there to step in.

C:  Let’s talk about a few hot spots, starting with North Korea.

M:  Not surprising.

C:  Do you think a limited war is a realistic option?

M:  I’m not foreclosing anything, but a limited war would be very, very risky.  You never know how the regime would react.

C:  Is a nuclear conflict a possibility?

M:  Yes, but only as a absolute last option.

C:  I’ve read suggestions that you have some new superweapons that could be used against North Korea.  Can you tell us anything about that?

M:  No.

C:  Let’s talk about the South China Sea.  What are America’s objectives there, and what do you think the Chinese are trying to accomplish with the fill islands?

M:  I think the Chinese are determined to have complete control of their coastline and the near abroad.  That means creating issues with free navigation for Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines.  We don’t have problems with China exerting itself as such, but it doesn’t have the right to threaten its neighbors.  We can’t permit that.

C:  Can America win a war in the South China Sea, given that it would be a home game for the Chinese?

M:  Today, yes, but I’m not sure that time is on our side.  We need to be ramping up our diplomatic efforts to make sure it doesn’t happen.

C:  Would the TPP help?

M:  Sure, but that’s not my call.

C:  It’s been reported that you have a strong animus towards Iran as a result of American losses to terrorism in the Iraq War.  Would you care to comment on that?

M:  When you see brave soldiers killed and maimed by IEDs, it’s hard to forget.

C:  You clearly had issues with the Obama Administration on Iran.  What were they, and how is that being played out today?

M:  Obama thought you could make deals with Iran.  I have more doubts.   Their government hates us, and Israel.  Their efforts to project power have to be stopped.  We’re going to do that.

C:  How?

M:  Just wait and see.

C:  One last question–I know you hate being called “Mad Dog” and being portrayed as a warrior monk.  How do you want people to think of you?

M:  As a man who loves his country and did his absolute best to protect it.

C:  Thank you for your time.

The Jackson nomination gave Trump the opportunity to put many of his worst traits on display, including the following:

1.  Pick a guy that you know and like, even if he’s not qualified (cronyism);
2.  Don’t bother to vet him.  After all, it’s loyalty that matters, not competence, and vetting takes work (laziness);
3.  Stand firm when he’s opposed.  Giving in, regardless of the circumstances, only makes you look weak (stubbornness); and
4.  If a painful decision needs to be made, make someone else do it (irresponsibility).

Who’s next?  His chauffeur?  His barber?  The guy who maintains his golf courses?

Job guarantee legislation is a brilliant idea, from a purely political perspective, for the Democrats.  It is essentially a left-wing version of tariffs:  a program of wealth redistribution that is tied to work and so is immune to the usual Victorian objections about giving benefits to the undeserving poor.  It is designed to unite the interests of white and minority workers, thereby drawing Reactionary voters away from the GOP, and to provide inspiration to activists.  It will undoubtedly be taken seriously during the 2020 campaign.

From a policy perspective, however, it raises lots of serious issues, including the following:

1.  What kind of jobs would these people be doing?  This isn’t the Great Depression, when you could mobilize millions of unskilled workers to do manual labor.  The unfilled jobs of today are in health care, senior care, and teaching.  Do you want to trust your parents and kids to poorly-trained volunteers?  Even infrastructure maintenance requires more skill now than it did in the 1930’s.

2.  Who pays for this, and how much?  This would be a hugely expensive program.  The rich can’t pay for everything, and the deficit is already enormous.

3.  Who actually runs the program?  State and local bureaucracies would have to swell to accommodate the needs of the program.  There would be lots of opposition to that.

4.  How would the Fed react?  Increasing wages and the size of the deficit would lead to much higher interest rates, and slow down the economy, thereby increasing the cost of the program.

5.  Why now?  Unemployment is not really an issue today.

You can just imagine GOP commercials filled with images of people milling around and doing nothing meaningful, while being paid $15 per hour by the taxpayers.  There would be some justice to that.  I can’t see this happening.

Pure single-payer, regardless of its policy merits, is a political disaster waiting to happen.  Government-hating Republicans will hate the idea of increasing the size of the state, the insurance companies and health care providers will fight it tooth and nail for reasons of self-interest, and tens of millions of Americans who get their insurance from their employers will be forced to exchange it, and pay higher taxes, for an uncertain promise of higher wages and a new, but better, benefit package.  Skepticism will abound, and not without reason.  I just don’t see any way that opposition can be overcome in the foreseeable future.

Permitting people to buy into Medicare, on the other hand, makes perfect sense from both a policy and a political perspective.  You can’t plausibly call it a government takeover of health care, because it would be purely voluntary.  You can’t say it would drive up taxes or balloon the deficit, because the individual purchasers would be required to pay full price.  You can’t complain with a straight face that it is an attack on Medicare or a scary new government program, because it would be an extension of an existing system that enjoys the support of the public.

In short, it would expand coverage at a more acceptable price and have a reasonable chance of getting through Congress, even though it would be opposed by some Republicans and providers and by the insurance companies. I expect it to be included in the Democratic platform in 2020.

In the US, Netanyahu is generally viewed as a sort of Churchillian figure:  a great bulldozer of a man fighting doggedly to protect his island from a horde of Arab savages.  In Israel, the perception is completely different;  he’s a slippery, and somewhat corrupt, figure who poses as the indispensable conflict manager between a right that wants to bite off more than it can chew and a hopelessly naive left.  He doesn’t have any great vision for the future, but he believes in slowly changing facts on the ground in Israel’s favor while doing just enough to keep the right, the left, and the rest of the world at bay.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I can’t stand the man, because, as an American, I despise his identification with the Trumpist right and his apparent feeling of moral entitlement to dictate our country’s foreign policy, even while he is taking billions of dollars of our money.  If I were an Israeli, however, I admit that I might feel differently.  There is no denying that Israel’s strategic position has improved in some respects during his tenure as PM, and that any visionary alternative to “conflict management” would carry serious risks.  The real question for Israel is whether kicking the can on issues involving Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and the country’s Arab minority is sustainable in the long run.

I don’t think it is, but if you’re an Israeli voter, it’s the path of least resistance.

Regardless of the military outcome, it won’t be us.  Our vital interests in the Middle East are limited to preventing terrorism within our borders and maintaining the flow of oil.   Defeating Iran will accomplish neither.

It won’t be China, which still depends on Middle East oil.  Expect the Chinese to engage in frantic efforts to mediate the conflict.

It probably won’t be Iran, which lacks the resources and expertise to win the war.  The best they can hope for is a political/strategic victory.

It could be the Israelis and Saudis, but that depends on our willingness to impose regime change on Iran.  Merely engaging in a “cut the grass” effort with regard to Iranian nuclear and missile facilities won’t satisfy them, because it won’t stop Iran’s efforts to control Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

No, the real and unquestioned winner will be Vladimir Putin, because: (a) the war makes Russia’s oil more valuable; (b) America will be further estranged from its allies, who won’t support the war; and (c) he may well be able to exact a price in exchange for his neutrality.

Has Trump considered that?  Almost certainly not.

Life in the time of Trump

He’ll meet with Kim Jong-un.

They’ll talk of Dennis Rodman

And make nice when it’s done.

My guess is that they’ll make a deal.

Trump doesn’t hate the man.

He’ll claim a Nobel Peace Prize

And prepare to fight Iran.

It’s hard to find issues of bipartisan agreement these days, but both parties would agree that Kim, like his predecessors, is a brutal dictator with no respect for human rights who should not be trusted with nuclear weapons.  As a result, every effort short of war should be made to force him to give up those weapons.  To the extent that there is a dispute, it is only about whether war is necessary if all else fails.

Donald Trump operates outside of this consensus.  It appears that he kind of likes Kim, who is, of course, a fellow strong man and thus a kindred spirit.  He clearly has no interest or concern about Kim’s treatment of the North Korean people.  Finally, North Korea doesn’t run a trade surplus with the US.  To Trump, China, Japan, and South Korea, which do run large surpluses, are the real enemies in Asia.

Kim undoubtedly sees the negotiations as an opportunity to play the US card against China.  You can imagine Trump dreaming of a deal which:  (a) confounds his political foes; (b) makes him look strong and unpredictable; (c) reduces American defense costs; and (d) frees him to start taking firm action against America’s trade adversaries.

If it were someone else, the Reactionaries would scream about a deal of this nature.  If Trump makes the deal, they will just accept it.  After all, if Trump can normalize Putin, why not Kim?

The T Magazine in yesterday’s NYT contained a series of articles about the dramatic changes that took place in New York in the early 1980’s.  While I rarely spend much time reading T Magazine, which tends to be dominated by ads for strange-looking, expensive clothing and dull minimalistic furniture, I found this genuinely interesting.

There is a natural human temptation to treat the present as if it were inevitable, and will never change.  Studying the past tells us that isn’t true.  Change is happening constantly, every day, often in ways we don’t recognize at the time. What appears to be important today is frequently just a footnote to what really matters in the long run.  And virtually nothing is written in stone; history is the product of an infinite series of human choices and some events that are unpredictable and beyond our control.

And so, for example, the war with Iran is not inevitable; if and when it comes (much more likely the latter), it will happen because Trump, Netanyahu, and MBS want it, not because it couldn’t be avoided.

The Democratic Party, since the Civil War, has always been a coalition of victims struggling against an establishment of businessmen and white Protestants.  For about a hundred years after the war, the coalition consisted of workers (largely immigrant and Catholic), struggling small farmers, and southern whites.  While the last group actually enjoyed a monopoly of power in their region, they felt like victims because they had lost the war and seen their “country” occupied.  The defense of slavery and the rights of African-Americans did not, of course, enter into this narrative at all; to southern whites, the war was a noble defense of a traditional way of life, dominated by agriculture, against soulless, imperialistic Yankee industrialists.

The Democratic Party slowly came to embrace the claims of African-Americans from the late 1940s through the 1960’s.  They had a much better claim to “victimhood” than the southern whites, who consequently changed parties and became Republicans. As a result, both parties are largely controlled by groups who claim to be victims today.  That is the principal reason our politics have become so vitriolic.

When the news that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Hillary Clinton prior to the election without telling Congress or the public leaked, the GOP predictably went berserk.  Trump and all of the talking heads on Fox News argued daily,  even hourly that Clinton was not a legitimate president and should be driven out of office by all means necessary–not completely excluding violence.

Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan saw an opportunity and agreed.  In spite of Clinton’s genuine efforts to work with them, they essentially shut down Congress, other than to conduct bogus investigations and hold hearings on impeachment. No Clinton nominees were confirmed.  The government shut down.  Finally, Congress refused to lift the debt ceiling, the government defaulted, and interest rates skyrocketed.  When Clinton fought back by trying to conduct business as usual, litigation ensued.  Violent demonstrations were taking place all over the country.  It was the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War.

All of this could easily have happened if Comey had gone by the book and kept his mouth shut.  It’s easy now to criticize him for failing to be even-handed, but it is a mistake to downplay or disregard his concerns for the health of the system, because they were completely legitimate, given the character of the leaders of the GOP, the demands of Fox News, and the attitudes of the Reactionaries.