Cromwell

The latest issue of The Economist contains an article about Erdogan and his massive investments in Turkish infrastructure.  That’s what a proper strong man does.  Infrastructure spending strengthens the state, pumps up the economy, generates positive publicity, and makes both business and labor more dependent on the man at the top.  If you don’t believe it, just remember that the guy with the funny mustache built most of the autobahns, to say nothing of tanks, bombers, etc.

Given his limited connection to the GOP establishment and his fondness for building monuments to himself, you would have thought that a huge bipartisan infrastructure plan would be the keystone of Trump’s administration.  It would have been practically useful and wildly popular.  Instead, he was so unprepared to be president that he outsourced fiscal policy to the GOP leadership, which, as usual, emphasized tax cuts for the wealthy and reducing the size of the state over public investment.  As a result, there is no money for Trump bridges, tunnels, and airports, and he is just a man on golf cart.

Does Donald Trump believe in the Pax Americana?  If you just look at his statements during the campaign, the answer would be an unequivocal no.  In his view, Uncle Sap has been taken for a ride by the rest of the world.  We can’t afford to protect human rights and maintain order outside our borders.  The international rule of law is just a fig leaf for power relationships.  It’s all about ridding ourselves of  expensive external commitments, reducing trade deficits, refusing to engage in “nation-building,”  renegotiating treaties on a bilateral basis, and investing at home.  That’s how we make America great again.

Trump as President has been much less consistent, largely because he loves the display of military power, and he can’t stand the idea of losing wars.  His Syria policy changes from day to day.  He complained about the futility of the war in Afghanistan, was reluctantly persuaded to make a larger and open-ended commitment to it, and then apparently told Rand Paul that we should get out.  He supports Taiwan, but threatens to sell them out for concessions on trade or North Korea.  He revels in his own unpredictability, while the rest of the world gasps and wonders what fresh hell is coming next.

Where is he going with this?  My guess is that his foreign policy will get more isolationist with time, as he gains more confidence in his ability to make decisions without the help of his advisers, all of whom support the Pax Americana in one way or another.  However, his ego and militarism will continue to prohibit him from being completely consistent.  We will stagger on aimlessly as before.

The comedian known as Michelle.

Her jokes didn’t go down too well.

Her performance onstage

Led to howls of outrage.

If the dinner dies, it’s just as well.

Barack Obama believed in the Pax Americana, but, after the experience of the Iraq War, he wanted to do it on the cheap.  Like the lawyer that he is, he preferred to solve problems in the fastest, least risky, and least expensive way possible.  And so, he developed a style of building and assisting coalitions that came to be called (not completely accurately) “leading from behind.”

The results were mixed.  He succeeded in negotiating the TPP and the Iran nuclear deal, but Trump is in the process of destroying both of them.  The “pivot to Asia” may have moderated, but did not stop, Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.  In Syria, one can reasonably doubt, based on precedent, that an approach similar to Iraq (direct military intervention) or Libya (extensive support for local surrogates) would have led to a better result, but we do know for sure that what actually occurred had seriously negative impacts on the US, Europe, and the Syrians themselves.

In contrast to Obama’s cool rationality, we are now in an era in which brute force and bluster are valued over alliances, diplomacy, and rules-based systems.  The Pax Americana itself is under threat, both at home and abroad.  How long will this phase continue?  More on that later.

We now have data for the first quarter of 2018, and guess what?  There is no sign of the corporate investment boom that was promised as a result of the Trump tax cut.  The money is being used predominantly for share buybacks.

Who could have predicted it?  Well, everyone except Kevin Hassett.

The rationale for the tax cut is now mutating into an argument that, even if corporations don’t invest, their wealthy owners will.  Sure–they will drive up the cost of assets and buy government bonds.

And so, the final outcome of the tax cut is. . . the government gives money to rich people, who then invest in the securities the government sells to finance the deficit created by the tax cut.

Who says Republicans hate recycling?

Reasonable people can disagree about this, but I would maintain that there are two strains of neoconservative thought.  The first is that American security ultimately depends on the continuing existence of like-minded democratic regimes throughout the world, so we should be prepared to impose liberal democracy on other countries by force, if necessary.  That approach, unsurprisingly, failed miserably in Iraq, and thus is rarely heard today.

The second requires us to be the world’s policeman–not its savior.  Its proponents argue that, in a world that has become effectively much smaller as the result of technological change, small brush fires can become infernos endangering our security almost overnight.  Minor civil wars in faraway lands of which we know little, for example, can result in waves of refugees and terrorism affecting the entire world.  It’s ultimately cheaper and less risky to deal with these problems at their source than at home.  The US is the only power strong enough to do that.  If the rest of the world benefits from that level of American engagement, so be it.

#2 makes sense, but is it sustainable if we are going into a period of relative decline?  More on that later in the week.

Senator Marco Rubio threw his support to Adolf Hitler today.  While he acknowledged his differences with Hitler, he indicated that he “agreed with Hitler on some things, but he disagreed with Hillary Clinton on everything.”

Rubio conceded that he had concerns about some of Hitler’s unconventional  rhetoric, particularly about Jews, but said that Hitler’s statements should be taken “seriously, but not literally.”  He further suggested that he would have more influence with Hitler from the inside than the outside, and expressed confidence that the country’s institutions were strong enough to keep Hitler from making good on his more extreme promises.

Just to make this crystal clear, I am not saying that Trump is Hitler, or that Rubio is any worse than any of Trump’s other enablers.  I am merely pointing out that the arguments made by members of the right in favor of enabling sound a lot like the positions taken by members of the moderate German right in 1933, and that didn’t turn out too well.  The only appropriate response to Trump’s outrages is resistance–period.

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.