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:

The Constitution: wonderful, if we can keep it

Many reviews of books about public policy give the impression that the reviewer went directly to the last chapter, which describes the author’s recommendations.  Going to the good stuff works when reading Penthouse, but not Shakespeare (Hamlet:  everyone dies, so it is a tragedy).  The path to understanding the recommendations is a book’s content.  The destination may be wonderful, but is the path like a Roman road, or just two ruts in the dirt?

Chet Richard’s new book If We Can We Can Keep It recommends a new geopolitical strategy for America.  It is a heavy work.  Not in length (if a Nobel Prize is awarded to the book in 2008 with the greatest content/length ratio, Richards should start writing his acceptance speech).  It is heavy with detailed, clear, and innovative reasoning.

It deserves a review (I’ll do one eventually).  First, however, we should see the context - which tells us if the book is important.  Where is his book in the larger flow of thought about 4GW?

The art of war advances, like science, in two ways.  First and most common, are tool-driven revolutions.  Most of the progress in science has been from development of new tools:  from the telescope and microscope to X-ray diffraction (which revealed the DNA helix).  The same is obviously true of war:  iron, steel, breeding larger horses, the stirrup, gunpowder, internal combustion engines … and atomic weapons.

Second, there are concept-driven revolutions — famously described by Thomas Kuhn in his great book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (a must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern military theory and practice).  In science they are often personalized, as in the revolutions of Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Freud.  (Some, like quantum-mechanics, are associated with no one man.) ***

So it is with the military arts.  New concepts of warfare can be revolutionary (in several senses).  The feudal knight was supreme in Europe until the rediscovery that a body of men on foot could stand against cavalry.  Napoleon’s armies had the same technology as their foes, which Napoleon repeatedly crushed until they adopted his new ideas of organization and deployment.  Sometimes new ideas require new technology, such as the combination of German infiltration tactics and the internal combustion engine to yield blitzkrieg.

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?

Diagnosing the Eagle, Chapter III — reclaiming the Constitution

Chapter II began with a question about America’s strengths by Chet Richards, which he concluded with this assertion (Chet runs the Defense and the National Interest website, now a blog, and writes at his personal blog Certain to Win):

So my hypothesis is that as long as we tend to the health of our constitutional free enterprise system, our future as a prosperous nation is assured. 

A comforting thought, but perhaps operationally impossible.  In July 2006 I wrote Forecast: Death of the American Constitution, showing that the Constitution is dying and explaining why we do not notice.  In brief:  once we no longer revere the Constitution, or even know what it says, the Constitutional political order in America has ended.  For the past few generations we have slowly drifted towards a different and historically less radical political regime, one of passive subjects (i.e., consumers) and ruling elites.

Although our political mechanisms as yet appear unchanged, our move away from a free enterprise system is more obvious.  To mention just two symptoms…

Government regulation benefiting large and politically-powerful enterprises over smaller ones. 

Adoption of a “heads we win - tails you lose” financial system.  That is, our elites invest under a system of privatized profits, socialized losses.

As a result of these and other changes, wealth and income concentrates in few hands over time.  The middle class has survived the past few decades by borrowing, and their day of reckoning now approaches.

So I will re-phrase Chet’s question:  can we re-embrace the Constitution?  This post attempts to answer Chet using excerpts from a book I strongly recommend reading, and consider one of the best I have ever read:  The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987).  America is an experiment in applied philosophy, and our mistakes have their roots in these theories about the nature of men and the best regime.  The first half of Closing is easy and fun to read, with observations that will strike most readers strongly.  The second is more difficult — and more rewarding for those seeking understanding of our society.  After reading it you might see many things differently, and find evidence of its accuracy in the daily news. 

The next chapters in this series provide different perspectives on our situation.

A Summary of my argument

A time-saving tip when reading the daily news

Reading the classic literature helps in many ways.  Such as saving time when following current events.  The same patterns repeat themselves over and over, facilitating recognition and understanding.  For instance, consider the current financial crisis.  Speculators of all kinds, from banks to hedge funds, have made bad bets and lost money.  Accordingly, we are told, they must be bailed out for the sake of the nation. 

Today’s reading is from “Major Barbara” by George Bernard Shaw (1906), Act III.  The speaker is Andrew Undershaft, co-owner of the vast munitions company Undershaft and Lazarus.

The government of your country!  I am the government of your country; I, and Lazarus.  Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? 

No, my friend; you will do what pays us.  You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it does not.  You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. 

When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need.  When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military.

And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman.

Government of your country!  Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys.  I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.

I hope you have found this helpful.  Our regular geo-political analysis will resume this evening, again grappling with Chet Richards’ question:  can the America re-embrace the Constitution?

Diagnosing the Eagle, Chapter II — book recommendations for 2008

The following note by Chet Richards was extracted from the comments on An important thing to remember as we start a New Year (Chet is Editor of Defense and the National Interest and writes at his blog):

Could you comment on what it is that gives the United States its enormous competitive strength? 

Let me throw out an hypothesis:  The competitive strength of any organization depends primarily upon its ability to inspire and then harmonize the creativity and initiative of its people in order to accomplish their common goals.

In the United States, the highest-level expression of our common goals is the Constitution.  In the United States, the free enterprise system is our mechanism for stoking and harmonizing creativity and initiative.  In addition to our legal system, other infrastructure, local market size, and access to capital, the US remains the easiest country in the developed world to start (or stop) a business.

So my hypothesis is that as long as we tend to the health of our constitutional free enterprise system, our future as a prosperous nation is assured. 

I agree with this, but the Constitution is not a complete answer to Chet’s question.  If the Iraq people voted to adopt the Constitution, would Iraq be on the road to success?  Also, we still have the Constitution — so our current ills must have other roots.

An important thing to remember as we start a New Year

Believe me when I say that we have a difficult time ahead of us.
But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it.
I stand before you now, truthfully, unafraid.
Because I believe something you do not?
No!
I stand here because I remember.
I remember that I am here not because the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.

Morpheus speaking to the people of Zion, from the film The Matrix Reloaded

As we start a New Year I find it useful to review my core beliefs. It is easy to lose sight of those amidst the clatter of daily events. Here is my list:

1. We are a people with a great past.
2. The challenges ahead are no greater than those behind us.
3. The American people can surmount these challenges if we work together.
4. We will be what we wish to be, if we but make the necessary effort.

Articles explaining about the perils before us

• Forecast: Death of the American Constitution
• The post-WWII geopolitical regime is dying: Chapter One.
• The post-WWII geopolitical regime is dying: Chapter Two
• Diagnosing the eagle, chapter I — the housing bust

Articles explaining why we need not be afraid

• A crisis at the beginning of the American experiment
• Washington’s Gift
• Good news: The Singularity is coming (again)
• Some good news (one of the more important posts on this blog)
• Arrows in the Eagle’s claw — solutions to 4GW, chapter I.

Some good news (one of the more important posts on this blog)

This blog discusses geo-politics, from an American’s perspective.  Today that means discussing threats and dangers, resulting largely from years of mismanaged public policy.  I do not believe we need fear the future, despite the tough times coming soon.  This remains a great nation, not because of our past but because of us and our polity.  We differ from almost every other nation.  The difference consists of our commitment to our political order, of which our Constitution is the foundation.  In this we are like Athens more than our neighbors, as explained in this excerpt from Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind (the book I most strongly recommend reading):

For the ancients the soul of the city was the regime, the arrangements of and participation in offices, deliberation about the just and the common good, choices about war and peace, the making of laws.  Rational choice on the part of citizens who were statesmen was understood to be the center of its regime.  … Pericles {in his Funeral Oration, as given by Thucydides} says nothing about the gods, or the poetry, history, sculpture or philosophy of which we think.  He praises Athens’ regime and finds beauty in its political achievement…

This is even more true of America, unlike Athens not famous for its philosophy, art, or culture.  The Americans who sat through the long hours of the Lincoln-Douglas debates would, I believe, have understood this.  When this is again true of America we will, I believe, find that the many threats we face no longer seem so dangerous.

It seems we have abandoned this tradition.  To see where this leads, read Christian Meier’s biography Caesar.  He describes how the Roman people grew tired of governing themselves, perhaps finding the burden too great to bear.  Inevitably, strong men came forward to take this load from the people’s backs.  People who will not govern themselves have no right to complain about the decisions of the elites who rule them.

I urge everyone to take action now.  Work for candidates — local, state, national, it does not matter.  All are important.  If you can afford to do so, contribute to a candidate’s election fund.  Write to your local newspapers or on the Internet.  History is being made today.  If we do not make it, others will do so for us.

 There is another element to America’s strength:  our ability to work together.  To see this in action visit your local chapter of the Blue Star Mothers.  They collect money and goods to support our troops, with great success.  At their work days you will see a wide range of people side by side.  Different races and creeds.  Moms and Dads.  Liberals and Conservatives.  Old and young.  Boy Scouts and Hells Angels.  This is America at its best, a nation well able to weather the storms that lie ahead.

For more on this subject

• Forecast: Death of the American Constitution
• The Future of America (skip to forecasts #4 and #5)

Forecast: Death of the American Constitution

The world changes but America seems unable to see this and adapt as the post-WWII global order collapses around us.  The post-WWII era was defined by:

1. America as a model state: a capitalistic democratic republic which values its citizens’ liberty.
2. American as a superpower, or even the sole superpower.
3. The American dollar as reserve currency; “good as gold” for holding the world’s savings
4. 3rd generation warfare as the dominant mode of military force.
5. Growing American wealth through the “debt supercycle”, continuously expanding debt of both Government and households.
6. Cheap energy, largely from coal, oil, and natural gas.

Today we see all these things slowly fading away.  The daily newspapers record its passing, although most journalists are unaware of the larger significance of what they report. We are suffering from “change blindness,” a flaw in our mental processing in which we fail to recognize large changes which should be clearly visible.

Change blindness must be experienced to believe it.  Take the test at this website.  Read the instructions!  Right click on the picture to move to the next one.  If you cannot see the change and give up, reduce the “gap” to zero.

A brief check on the health of the American nation-state.

Aristotle said that the political regime of a state dominated other aspects of its society.  Let’s have a quick test about the health of the American Nation-State.  Following Aristotle’s view, it looks at the foundations of our polity.  The correct answers are given directly after the list of questions.

1. Describe the major features of the Code of Hammurabi.
2. List a simple majority of the Ten Commandments (either version, that of Exodus or Deuteronomy).
3. List any three rights guaranteed under Magna Carta, the Great Charter of Freedoms - one of the foundational documents for our system of laws.

The correct answers, unless you’re are a student or teacher, are all “so what.”  Who cares?  These are all dead documents, with no current effect on our lives.

Let’s be relevant, and test our knowledge of the American Constitution.  The questions are conveniently segmented for each age group.