Good news about the 21st century, a counterbalance to the doomsters

As a breath of fresh air after the previous post, I recommend reading this aritcle.  I strongly recommend reading this article.  A brief excerpt gives the flavor of the contents.

“In the Air - Who says big ideas are rare?“, Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker  (12 May 2008)

Nathan Myhrvold met Jack Horner on the set of the “Jurassic Park” sequel in 1996. Horner is an eminent paleontologist, and was a consultant on the movie. Myhrvold was there because he really likes dinosaurs. Between takes, the two men got to talking, and Horner asked Myhrvold if he was interested in funding dinosaur expeditions.

… In Montana, which is prime dinosaur country, people had been hiking around and looking for bones for at least a hundred years. But Horner wanted to keep trying. So he and Myhrvold put together a number of teams, totalling as many as fifty people. They crossed the Fort Peck reservoir in boats, and began to explore the Montana badlands in earnest. They went out for weeks at a time, several times a year. They flew equipment in on helicopters. They mapped the full dinosaur ecology-bringing in specialists from other disciplines. And they found dinosaur bones by the truckload.

… People weren’t finding dinosaur bones, and they assumed that it was because they were rare. But-and almost everything that Myhrvold has been up to during the past half decade follows from this fact-it was our fault. We didn’t look hard enough. … “Our expeditions have found more T. rex than anyone else in the world,” Myhrvold said. “From 1909 to 1999, the world found eighteen T. rex specimens. From 1999 until now, we’ve found nine more.”

Only our amnesia makes reading the newspapers bearable

Tom Englehardt’s TomDispatch always goes to the top of my reading pile.  Tom publishes long, complex articles which compare to the average blog post like the Lincoln-Douglas debates to our Presidential pretend-jousts.  Today he pens another classic:   ”Petraeus, Falling Upwards — The Petraeus Story“.  Excerpt:

You simply can’t pile up enough adjectives when it comes to the general, who, at a relatively young age, was already a runner-up for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2007. His record is stellar. His tactical sense extraordinary. His strategic ability, when it comes to mounting a campaign, beyond compare.

I’m speaking, of course, of General David Petraeus, the President’s surge commander in Iraq and, as of last week, the newly nominated head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) for all of the Middle East and beyond… And the campaign I have in mind has been his years’ long wooing and winning of the American media, in the process of which he sold himself as a true American hero, a Caesar of celebrity.

… This, after all, is the man who, in the summer of 2004, as a mere three-star general being sent back to Baghdad to train the Iraqi army, made Newsweek’s cover under the caption, “Can This Man Save Iraq?” (The article’s subtitle — with the “yes” practically etched into it — read: “Mission Impossible? David Petraeus Is Tasked with Rebuilding Iraq’s Security Forces. An Up-close Look at the Only Real Exit Plan the United States Has — the Man Himself”).

It gets better, and is worth reading in full.  The over the top gushing about General Petraeus mocks the journalism profession’s ideals – especially in light of increasing evidence of the mainstream media’s cooperation with our government’s information operations against the American people.  (some links appear below).  Note:  this post discusses the media, not the General.

America needs a Foreign Legion

Michael O’Hanlon advocates recruiting foreigners into the US military in this Bookings Institute video:  “The Future of the Military“.  He wrote two articles with Max Boot advocating this. 

• “Create a U.S. foreign legion“, Armed Forces Journal (March 2007).
• “A Military Path to Citizenship“, Washington Post (19 October 2006).

These articles have attracted much consideration, even mockery, but the idea is sound.  Recruiting a Foreign Legion as a secondary force is neither a crazy nor unproven idea. France and Britain have used them for centuries, without apparent ill effects. Like everything else in life, recruiting foreigners for one’s armed forces has dangers and can be used to excess.

I presented such a proposal in “Lessons Learned from the American Expedition to Iraq” (29 December 2005).

Excerpt:  A Foreign legion for America

Congress shows us how our new government works

History shows that the superficial forms of government remain long after the essentials have changed. For example, the Roman Empire retained the forms of the Republic long after the Republic’s death. Public policy experts, being so close to the object of their study, can be the last to see that a new regime has been born.

So it is with Winslow T. Wheeler. An expert on defense issues after 3 decades working with senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office. Author of The Wastrels of Defense, he now directs the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

The US government that he knows has changed, right before his eyes. He sees the new order but does not recognize it. Just like us. His review of the The Petraeus / Crocker Hearings (Counterpunch, 8 April 2008) makes this evident.

It had all the panoply of a modern congressional hearing and what we have come to expect from senators confronting important witnesses. We saw:

One telling similarity between the the Wehrmacht and the US Military

“Center of Gravity versus Lines of Effort in COIN“, Herschel Smith, at the Captain’s Journal (3 March 2008) — An article well worth reading.  Thoroughly researched, Smith provides several powerful insights and provides an excellent operational and tactical perspective.

From a larger perspective this article shows how the 21st century US military is locked into a historically common trap.  No matter how good, it remains harnessed to US elites’ geopolitical thinking — poorly reasoned, emotional (ruled by hubris and fear).  Our military apparatus consistently provides professional, smooth execution of bad strategy.   We do the wrong thing, but brilliantly.  In this we have become like the WWI and WWII German military (aka loosely as the Wehrmacht), attempting to overcome foolish strategy with operational excellence.  In the seventh article of William Lind’s ”On War” series (12 March 2003), he presented on of his most incisive observations:

Between 1809 and 1945, the Prussian and, later, German armies developed what is often called maneuver warfare of Third Generation warfare. For the past quarter century, the U.S. military has been trying to adopt this German way of war, and failing.

A must-read book for any American interested in geopolitics

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner

While by no means the definitive history of the CIA (which cannot yet be written), or even an objective look at the Agency (probably not yet possible), it is one of the best and most timely accounts of one of the prime instruments in the War on Terror — now the primary strategic concern of the US defense apparatus (see this for evidence).

One contributing factor to the debacle of the Vietnam War was the collapse of the State Department during the commie hunts of the 1950’s (a sub-text found in many accounts of that era, such as David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest).  In this sense, the long and expensive futility of the Iraq War results from the long decay of our intelligence apparatus — which Legacy chronicles.  That leaves a future historian the task of recording the collapse of our military agencies, the only leg so far standing in our geopolitical tripod.

There is no need to review this thoroughly researched and footnoted work.  It can speak for itself, as any excerpt shows its quality.  Here is one such, giving concrete illustrations of the post-9/11 militarization of intelligence and the hollowing-out effect of privatization on our intel agencies.

ABCDs for today: About Blitzkrieg, COIN, and Diplomacy

Here and here I discussed our tactical retreat in Anbar Province of Iraq.  Dan Tdaxp raises an interesting and valuable question (here) about this:  what does “retreat” mean in 4GW?

The previous generations of war occured in physical space.  We plot their course on maps, using lines and arrows.  A  3GW “retreat” means movement away from geographic objectives. 

Can we show the course of the Iraq War on a map?  Not easily, as 4GW occurs in social space (aka human terrain).  For example, we speak of the “moral high ground”.  Also note the growing role of anthropologists (e.g. Kilcullen) and the social sciences (e.g., in FM 3-24) in counter-insurgency (COIN) theory and practice.  Update:  Ralph Peter’s article “The Human Terrain of Urban Operations” (Parameters, Spring 2000), esp. his challenge at the end, is a poorly-recognised milestone of 4GW analysis –reintroducing the social sciences to the art of 4GW. 

In 4GW “retreat” means movement away from objectives expressed in people terms:  building institutions, changing loyalties, motivating friends and de-motivating opponents.  Traditionally these are strategic considerations — diplomatic maneuvers, the decisive factors in many wars.  Our alliance with France made victory possible for the American Revolution.  Gaining support in Britan led to the rapid collapse of Britain’s will to fight after Yorktown and their generous terms in the Treaty of Paris (1783).  The Union inflamed Britain’s hatred of slavery to keep the UK out of the Civil War, a necessary ingredient for victory.

A happy ending to the current economic recession

History shows the difficulty of predicting the short-term path of economic or political events.  However, we can often see the medium-term with greater clarity.  In January 1942 none could forecast the events of the next 44 months, but it did not take an expert to see that the US would defeat Japan.  So it is with the current economic down cycle in America.

This series describes (see the list at the end) how we have begun to reduce the massive debts accumulated over the past two generations.  As I said here, there are only four ways to get rid of one’s excess debt (that, debt that cannot be repaid):

1.  Growth:  given time and rapid wage growth, the debt burden becomes manageable.  We pay it off ever more easily as incomes grow.  That was the dream solution to America’s high levels of household debt and large long-term government obligations.  It burst in 2000, and will not return in time to help us.

2.  Inflation, reducing the real weight of our debt.  This requires two things.  First, real growth in wages (no signs of this).  Second, either the cooperation or blindness of bond investors — they must either accept negative real after-tax yields, or remain oblivious to rising inflation.  The consequences are severe if our creditors (domestic and foreign) rebel.

3.  Debt can burn off the hard way as debtors default on their loans.  Both recessions and declining home prices drive defaults (involuntary and voluntary, respectively).  This is equivalent of surgery without anesthesia, resulting in bankruptcies, homelessness, decaying neighborhoods, and bank failures.

4.  Socialization of the debt.  The government can spread the burden of debt, in many different ways (that so many of our creditors are foreigners makes this more attractive).

• They can legislate to change contracts (e.g., mortgages):  reducing interest rates and payment terms, preventing or slowing foreclosures.  This spreads the debt burden from debtors to creditors.
• They can change the rules of the bankruptcy courts, with the same result as above – spreading the debt burden from debtors to creditors.
• They can directly intervene in the markets, extending loans (absorbing the resulting losses) or buying property from debtors or creditors (e.g., as the Resolution Trust Company did after the commercial real estate bust in the early 1990’s.)

Socialization is the seemingly easy path.  Done well, we have reforms like those Solon instituted for Athens — laying the foundation for its future greatness.  Done poorly, we have increased moral hazard leading to another cycle of rising debt and speculation – except that the next crash will imperil a larger part of the society, or even all of it. 

It’s all about choice.  Every downturn gives us the opportunity to determine what America will become.  We weigh our fidelity to our principles, our history, our forefathers — vs. our ability to collectively withstand pain (financial, social, political).  These are collective decisions, because all large-scale economic events have a decisive political component. 

Speculation about the future

Inflation is impractical (for reasons too complex to discuss in this post).  Large-scale defaults would likely lead to a deflationary collapse of our financial system.  The government will not allow that to happen as the consequences would be apocalyptic.  I believe that instead we will socialize the debt, the least-painful and most operationally feasible alternative.

Let us light a candle while we walk, lest we fear what lies ahead

Innovation of new forms of society and technology. It is the key to our progress. It has allowed us to evolve from naked hunter-gatherers to the dominant species on this planet. This process is slow, normally taking hundreds or even thousands of years. But occasionally evolution leaps forward. **

Many people look to the future with fear. We see this fear throughout the web. Right-wing sites describe the imminent end of America: overrun by foreigners, victim of cultural and financial collapse. Left-wing sites describe “die-off” scenarios due to Peak Oil, climate change, and ecological collapse - as the American dream dies from takeover by theocrats and fascists.

Most of this is nonsense, but not the prospect of massive changes in our world. But need we fear the future?

The past should give us confidence when we look ahead. Consider Dodge City in 1877. Bat Masterson is sheriff, maintaining some semblance of law in the Wild West. Life in Dodge is materially only slightly better from that in an English village of a century before. But social and technological evolution has accelerated to a dizzying pace, and Bat cannot imagine what lies ahead.

How the Iraq and Vietnam wars are mirror images of each other

Chet Richards (Colonel, USAF, retired) noted the strong parallels between our tactics in Vietnam then and Iraq now.  Now let’s look through the other end of the telescope.  How does our experience in Vietnam differ from that in Iraq?  I believe that in one key aspect of the war our actions in Iraq are a mirror image of those in Vietnam.

In Vietnam we sought to maintain a friendly government in South Vietnam, preventing its overthrow by insurgents or conquest by the Army of North Vietnam.  Simple, clear goals - allowing relatively easy definition of progress.  Our enemy, having read Sun Tzu, defeated us by attacking our weakest point.  Not our invincible military apparatus — undefeated on the battlefield – but the American people’s commitment to this foreign war. 

In 1964 Johnson campaigned as the peace candidate against the warmonger Goldwater – while his officials prepared to massively escalate the war in 1965.  His election victory was great, winning 44 states and 486 to 52 in the Electoral College.  But his mandate did not include a Southeast Asian war, especially a war whose connection with our national security was vague, despite the war’s great cost in money and lives.  After four years of war his Administration collapsed amidst the fires of the Tet Offensive. 

As it turned out, these concerns about the irrelevance of the war were correct, as our defeat in Vietnam had few long-term consequences.  (As this Wall Street Journal op-ed shows, three decades later some remain unable to see this simple story, still re-fighting the war like Confederate vets bemoaning Pickett’s Charge.)

Bush avoided Johnson’s error in the 2004 election by clearly promising a long, difficult war in Iraq.  The Administration and Congress have clearly stated our objectives (see here for a full list of our goals and benchmarks).  This is textbook perfect strategy. 

But - unlike Vietnam — our actions in Iraq seem disconnected from our goals.  Hence the long, confused debate about “winning.”  Are we winning or losing?  How will we know when we have won?  Here we repeat — in a different way – the fatal error that doomed our efforts in Vietnam.  Confusion must result when tactics and strategy clash, weakening public support for the war. 

Lest we forget, “Black Hawk Down”

During 3 - 4 October 1993 American Rangers and Delta Force fought The Battle of Mogadishu– the largest firefight in the three decades between the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars.  Black Hawk Down, the book by Mark Bowden and the movie based on it, tell powerful stories of American skill and valor under fire. The discussions about these events usually examines events before and during the battle, debates about “what if” and “should have”. However the most poignant and valuable passages are, I believe, at the end of the book — describing the worst failure of this battle.

Even inside the military, where one might expect to find strong professional interest in the biggest firefight involving American soldiers since Vietnam, there appears to have been little in the way of a detailed post-mortem.

… Since I was starting my work three years after the battle, I expected the historical portion of the work had already been done.  Surely somewhere in the Pentagon or White House there was a thick volume of after-action reports and exhibits detailing the fight and critiquing our military performance.  I was wrong.  No such thick volume exists. While the Battle of the Black Sea may well be the most thoroughly documented incident in American military history, to my surprise no one had even begun to collect all that raw information into a definitive account.

… I have spoken to hundreds of active US military officers … who contacted me seeking copies of {my} newspaper series or more detailed information about certain aspects of the fight.  Among that number have been teachers at the military academies and the Army War College, the National Defense Analysis Institute, the Military Operations Research Society, the USMC training base at Paris island, the Security Studies Program at MIT, and even the US Central Command.

I was flattered, but uneasy with the idea that our armed forces would rely on a journalist with no military background to inform them about a battle fought by many men who are still on active duty. As one of the former Delta team leaders remarked after hearing of yet another invitation I’d received, “Why aren’t they talking to us?”

“Lessons learned” are among the most valuable fruits of battle, but they must first be harvested. It is disturbing that NFL teams routinely spend more effort reviewing films of their games than the US Army appears to have done reviewing the the Battle of Mogadishu (until Bowden published his book).

Geopolitical implications of the current economic downturn

There are several schools of economic thinking about the current down cycle of the US economy.

• The mainstream consensus of neo-Keynesian economics:  this is just another business cycle, to be treated with the usual tools.  To see this analysis, read today’s op-ed in the New York Times by Joseph E. Stiglitz.
• There are a few heretics, even some apostates.  The first question if the standard remedies of fiscal and monetary policy, plus devaluing the currency, will work this time.  The latter question the Keynesian paradigm itself.  Does it adequately consider the effect of rising debt levels?  Might the insights of Hyman Minsky show the limts to the operating boundaries of Keynesian theories?  Perhaps we need a fusion of Keynesian and Austrian economics?
• The members of the small Austrian school of economists, vocal but powerless to affect public policy.

What if the heretics and apostates — perhaps even the Austrians — are right, and this cycle is different?  Let us explore this scenario and see what it says about America’s geopolitical (esp. military) strength…

• The current economic downturn takes us beyond the envelope in which mainstream economic theory works.
• This marks the end of the post-WWII economic regime, during the last 25 years of which American public policy allowed massive growth of debt — to both foreign and domestic creditors — and deterioration of the competitiveness of US goods and services on world markets (i.e., decreased ability to pay our foreign debtors).

The key source of disharmony in the global economy is our foreign borrowing and weakening competitiveness.  Either would be bad; having both is deadly.

Is America’s decline inevitable? No.

Comment on a thread at the DNI blog:

“IMHO, the United States is so far down this path that - absent some deus ex machina - its political / economic decline seems to be inevitable and irreversible.  Under these circumstances, our efforts should not be to seek to stem or to reverse this process but rather to seek means to carve out islands of civility and/or excellence notwithstanding general political decay.  Eg. the Spain of Philip IV, with its imperial decline, was nevertheless also the Spain of Velasquez.”

These sentiments are widespread already.  As times darken such views will become more so.  They raise two important issues.  First, why be an American if one has no faith in the American people?  How can you believe in democracy without that faith?  The second concerns the gravity of the threats we face. 

Perhaps as a result of the long summer of America, the post-WWII era of prosperity and peace (relatively speaking), many folks see any serious threat as Armageddon.  But consider our problems vs. those of our European ancestors.  Did they surrender?

Framing current events about the global economic and geopolitical system

The daily newspapers display events as string of beads.  Discrete, unrelated.  That masks the key to understanding what is happening:  the systemic drivers at work.  This is in my opinion not a series of isolated events or even a cyclical downturn.  We are experiencing a change in the fundamental structure of the global economic regime.

You might find this series of articles of value to properly “frame” these events, listed from old to recent.  Please share your comments (brief and relevant, please), or email me at (spam-protected spelling) fabmaximus at hotmail dot com.

A brief note on the US Dollar. Is this like August 1914?  — How the current situation is as unstable financially as was Europe geopolitically in early 1914.

The post-WWII geopolitical regime is dying. Chapter One  – Why the current geopolitical order is unstable, describing the policy choices that brought us here.

We have been warned. Death of the post-WWII geopolitical regime, Chapter II – A long list of the warnings we have ignored, from individual experts and major financial institutions (links included).

Power shifts from West to East: the end of the post-WWII regime in the news – We are seeing another western industry ceding dominance to eastern competitors, one more step in a larger process.

Death of the post-WWII geopolitical regime, III — death by debt – Origins of the long economic expansion from 1982 to 2006; why the down cycle will be so severe.

A recommendation to read these bulletins from the front! – A brief note on today’s articles in the NY Times and Financial Times, with Brad Setser’s explanation of why they are important.

Diagnosing the eagle, chapter IV - Alienation

I am often asked my opinion about the causes of America’s current geopolitical ills.  Why do we face so many serious problems at the same time?  The previous note in this series describes how we have changed, perhaps in ways so that the Constitution no long fits.

Another possible reason is our alienation from each other, a failure to see ourselves as fellows in a great joint venture.   Just as unit cohesion makes possible survival on the battlefield, strong social cohesion allows — makes possible if not certain – a society to survive what would otherwise be overwhelming threats.  Solon’s reforms gave Athens such social cohesion to achieve such greatness that they remain a beacon for us millenia later.  Alienation of individuals from the group disrupts cohesion, and can prove fatal to the group in times of great stress.

 This might explain the splintering of the American polity, our inability — as we have done so well in the past — to respond collectively to serious threats.

What is alienation?

Here is the Wikipedia entry on alienation (lightly edited, all links removed):

In sociology and critical social theory, alienation refers to an individual’s estrangement from traditional community and others in general.  … the atomism of modern societymeans that individuals have shallower relations with other people than they would normally.  This, it is argued, leads to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other’s uniqueness (see normlessness).  …Many sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th century were concerned about alienating effects of modernization.  German sociologists Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies have written rather critical works on individualization and urbanization.  Simmel’s “Philosophy of Money” describes how relationships become more and more mediated through money.  Tönnies’ “Community and Society” is about the loss of primary relationships such as family bonds in favour of goal oriented secondary relationships.  The American sociologist C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with “White Collar” (1951) describing how modern consumption-capitalism have shaped a society where you have to sell your personality in addition to your work.

For a more poetic description of alienation…

The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant.  The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line.  The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history.  Nothing follows from what has gone before.  He is constantly surprised.  He cannot predict his own reaction to events.  He is constantly being overtaken by events.  A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. ” 

This is a summary of Georges Poulet’s analysis in The Interior Distance (1959) of the French playwright Marivaux, written by one of the first and best writers of postmodern fiction, Donald Barthelme, from his short story “Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning” (1968).

For a deep understanding of our situation I suggest reading Allan Bloom (see chapter III) and Christopher Lasch.  Lasch discusses alienation in a clear and understandable way in his book The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations  (1991).  Men of action will find this uninteresting.  Unfortunately this analysis, like that of Bloom is diagnostic but not prescriptive.  We will have to find our own solution to these maladies of our collective psyche; analysis probably helps little in such matters.

Here are a few excerpts that give the flavor of his analysis…