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Quote of the Day: War and Taxes Edition
Cutting defense spending is the only reliable way to stifle Washington's impulse to send U.S. troops on ill-considered missions around the globe.
Woah, really? That's the only reliable way? What about raising taxes to pay for those ill-considered missions? Would that not have a similar effect? It seems like we have a lot of literature on the subject of war and taxation, and a long history of imposing special taxes to fund conflicts. I'm not locked into one option over the other, but I would be interested in hearing from Chris or one of his policy ninjas at Cato why raising taxes doesn't have the same effect on the U.S. appetite for overseas engagements as cutting spending.
Update: I would have been more interested in making a bag of popcorn and watching Chris's head explode when he read this. Because deploying military force into a landlocked African country to pursue a guerrilla organization's leadership sounds like one of those things that could not possibly go wrong. I mean, that's basically one of those in-and-out kind of things, right? I have much respect for Kenneth Roth and his great organization, but he is literally suggesting the United States be the world's policeman here, dropping into African jungles and arresting people wanted by the ICC. Goodness gracious, this is the worst I idea I have read in some time. #AQ3
Update II: Chris writes in:
Suffice it to say, I don't want to starve the military of funds just to make a point. And I always say, always, that cutting force structure without cutting missions is the worst possible solution, because that would impose horrible (additional) burdens on the troops.
But... giving the Pentagon whatever it asks for (plus 2 pct, thanks Congress) hasn't produced security. It has enabled Washington policymakers to muck around in places that would best be avoided. Recall Albright to Powell: "What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always taking about if we can’t use it?"
I'll make you a deal. Let's cut back to where we were at 9/11 (once the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, of course), and then let's see if the politicians can resist their interventionist impulses. If they do, we can cut more.
If you have more "stuff"
If you have more "stuff" then you can do more. If you have less "stuff" then you can do less (Unless, of course, you are a Ranger). If you lower funding, then you lower the amount of stuff you have to fight wars and manpower with which to fight them. If you have an inexhaustible supply of stuff and people, the value of individuals and items is proportionately lower. If you have a finite supply, then the value increase in proportion. Lowering spending increases the value of the people and stuff because you will simply have less of it. People are more reluctant to expend that which they value over that which they don't.
I took your point, that adequate tax revenue addresses funding shortfalls, but that was not Chris's point. He was not addressing the budget as a concern, but rather a means to an end (less wars).
v/r,
If you have more "stuff"
If you have more "stuff" then you can do more. If you have less "stuff" then you can do less (Unless, of course, you are a Ranger). If you lower funding, then you lower the amount of stuff you have to fight wars and manpower with which to fight them. If you have an inexhaustible supply of stuff and people, the value of individuals and items is proportionately lower. If you have a finite supply, then the value increase in proportion. Lowering spending increases the value of the people and stuff because you will simply have less of it. People are more reluctant to expend that which they value over that which they don't.
I took your point, that adequate tax revenue addresses funding shortfalls, but that was not Chris's point. He was not addressing the budget as a concern, but rather a means to an end (less wars).
v/r,
I think he means that if you
I think he means that if you don't have them, you can't launch them.
Closing down CNAS would be a
Closing down CNAS would be a great start!
This was not quite Abu
This was not quite Abu Muqama-worthy material.
If you decide to raise taxes so as to pay for a huge, global deployment-ready army, then you've got the option, and may well be tempted, to actually deploy it.
If, on the other hand, you lower taxes and scale down your armed forces until they're NOT able to deploy anywhere, anytime, then ... well, you get this.
Oh and about the Kenneth
Oh and about the Kenneth Roth update: case in point.
If US policy-makers weren't under the impression that they can solve any conflict at the flick of a switch, using their huge army, Kenneth Roth's suggestions for kamikaze warfare in the name of human rights wouldn't be part of the debate. And neither, I may add, would the Iraq disaster have occurred.
Well, president Clinton cut
Well, president Clinton cut the Army from 20 divisions to 10.
President Bush committed a 10 division Army to occupations that would have required 20 divisions to not make a hash of things.
Preble's idea doesn't seem to work in the real world.
Sudan looks ready to
Sudan looks ready to explode...
First rule: the military is an agent of destabilization when it takes action; it can only stabilize by being present and not acting. However, destabilizing an aggressive military campaign via direct intervention - that's what our military is really good at it.
Now, one place that Obama might have the U.S. military, AFRICOM and the US Navy consider intervening, either passively or actively, is along the southern Sudan / northern Sudan zone, specifically locating and targeting all the armored personnel carriers and tanks that the Khartoum regime is lining up on the border as the southern Sudan independence referendum proceeds. Doing this with Chinese support would be even better, but they would need assurances about continued access to southern Sudanese oil, wouldn't they?
That would leave Khartoum out in the cold and more desperate than ever to control the oil resources of western Sudan / Darfur, which butts up against the terminus of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline - and yes, it's likely that some eager oil executive had a hand in the 2003 SLA attacks in Darfur which then lead to the genocidal reprisal killings by Khartoum. What a mess...
In any case, there may be a way out for northern Sudan if it agrees to quit slaughtering people and give up on oil resource development (which creates a toxic mess, anyway):
The Asian Development Bank launched a $9 billion solar power initiative to develop projects generating 3,000 megawatts by 2012.
The announcement, which came at the regional lending agency’s annual meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, said that Central Asian countries would be prime.
So, China has a hand in that - but why not do the same for northern Sudan? This would prevent the upcoming slaughter of several hundred thousand people in southern Sudan, and would be a win-win solution. Egypt has a huge power demand, and where better than the northern Sudan desert for large solar arrays?
However, the other option, sending in jets and possibly even troops to take out the northern Sudanese military columns if they try to sweep across the region - that should be kept on the table - or put on the table, rather.
I have no joke, I just like
I have no joke, I just like saying "Katanga."
No, there's really nothing new here. Who knows that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in 1965, drafted a detailed military plan for a joint US-Soviet invasion of South Africa? Apparently freedom is slavery, love is hate, and... peace is war. It was always this way. It wasn't always this hilarious and pathetic, however.
As Kruger said to Milner, "what you want is my country." And a century after the Boer War, we finally have it. Without any Soviet cavalry brigades in Durban, either. Props to us! We r00l d00d. It's still not quite clear what the Carnegie Endowment will do with South Africa, but at least we have it. And that ain't nothin'.
Hitler had a plan for world peace, too. His plan: everyone submits to Hitler! And it surely would have worked. Did Vichy France go to war with the Italian Social Republic? I think not. But for better or for worse, Hitler's plans never got anywhere near far as ours. All we can say is: it certainly would have been different.
Still, wearing the Ring is like being a drug addict. While respiration continues, it is never too late to step off the bandwagon. Toward the end, quitting may even be fatal in itself - at least, for one's career. So what? Why not die sober, like Darth Vader? Either way, a great come-to-Jesus moment rolls inexorably toward Foggy Bottom...
Seems it is more a function
Seems it is more a function of who is flipping the so called switch.
As in we get the government we vote for in the US. Realizing this is a non starter (as is cuting taxes for goodness sake) a far simpler solution for having less wars would be to have voters and by extension representatives people who have a vested interest in how all that blood and treasure is spent?
Do all US voters have that vested interest and by vested I mean pay into society in some way. Nope far too many of the electorate and by extension the elected are living off the fat of Uncle Sam (Tax Payer) in one way or another.
Simpy put more responsibility less war and allot of other lesses but that would be a nice start.
S/F
JTG
Egypt has a huge power
Egypt has a huge power demand, and where better than the northern Sudan desert for large solar arrays?
And they say Hitler was a crackpot.
Actually, Hitler was a crackpot. If you read his Table Talk - highly recommended - there are dozens of ideas like this. Where better than the northern Sudan desert, for large solar arrays? Who needs the oil fields of Rumania, when we could grow hectares of Jatropha beans in the Black Forest? Etc, etc, etc. Basically, Germany lost the war because its field marshals put all their energy into talking the Fuehrer down off these wild space trips.
However, the other option, sending in jets and possibly even troops to take out the northern Sudanese military columns if they try to sweep across the region - that should be kept on the table - or put on the table, rather.
Of course! The Afrika Korps is always on the table. Or perhaps the Legion Etrangere. When solar power fails, Beau Geste swoops in to save the day...
I wouldn't bother satirizing this stuff if it didn't represent the way official Washington really thinks. Its inner 15-year-old is not at all hard to perceive, and emerges most strongly at moments of stress. Sometimes I suspect the world is really run from a secret clubhouse under the Truman Building, by the Protocols of the Sophomores of Zion.
Hitlerian crackpot scheme,
Hitlerian crackpot scheme, Moldberg? It's not 1943 any longer, you know:
Desertec looks to secure route to African solar farms, 6 Oct 2010
The high profile Desertec solar project has moved a step closer towards delivering on its ambitious plans for solar thermal power plants across the North African desert that could one day supply Europe with energy.
Italian transmission and system operator Terna confirmed last week that it has joined the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) as a shareholder and will provide expertise on how to integrate solar energy projects into the European grid.
Meanwhile, Steg Renouvelables, a subsidiary of Tunisian utility company Steg, also said it will sign up to the DII, providing the project with a major ally in the North African energy sector.
This is not the reason that Hitler sent Rommel down into North Africa he was not after new land for solar arrays. Rather, it was part of his three-pronged effort to create a fuel base for his thousand-year Reich (the other routes were along the Baghdad-Berlin rail route, and into southern Russian/Central Asian oil & gas reserves). After those efforts were shut down, he was stuck with coal gasoline produced in Germany.
Funny story there - Speer said, after the war, that if Standard Oil had not assisted with airplane fuel production, the invasion of Poland would have been far more difficult... and he also said that if Allied forces had simply focused on bombing German coal-fuel factories, then the war would have ended in 6-8 weeks - since blitzkrieg tactics were highly fuel-dependent.
This of course was the plan revived by the ossified old dinosaurs on the Project for A New American Century - secure control of Middle Eastern & Central Asian oil, and all is gravy. That worked well, didn't it?
It's reminiscent of the old coal barons of England, who thought that their control of coaling contracts at the end of the 19th century would keep them well for another 100 years - and then Churchill took the British Navy onto oil, a superior fuel, leaving them whining mightily.
P.S. I bet you think this is another "Hitlerian crackpot scheme", Mencius:
Solazyme Delivers Algae Jet Fuel to US Navy, July 19, 2010
California, United States -- Solazyme Inc. has delivered 1,500 gallons of 100% algae-based jet fuel for the U.S. Navy's testing and certification program. The U.S. Navy has previously announced the objective to operate at least 50% of its fleet on clean, renewable fuel by 2020. The delivery fulfills a contract awarded to Solazyme by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in September 2009.
The Age of Fossil Fuels is drawing to a close - and control of what fossil fuel reserves remain isn't the sure-fire route to wealth and power that it used to be.
California, United States --
California, United States -- Solazyme Inc. has delivered 1,500 gallons of 100% algae-based jet fuel for the U.S. Navy's testing and certification program. The U.S. Navy has previously announced the objective to operate at least 50% of its fleet on clean, renewable fuel by 2020.
Naw. Even Hitler wasn't that stupid. 2020? I'm bending over laughing. Wake me up in 2050.
As it happens, my own mother used to work at EERE in DOE - ie, Joe Romm's shop. Even by Beltway Bandit standards, renewable energy (dating to the Carter administration) stands out as unusually sordid. At least their 50 barrels of Ersatz gas are made out of algae, though, and not Jews. This could change, though...
From Adam Smith...... "The
From Adam Smith......
"The ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted.
The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money.
In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."
Steve
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