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Existential Threats and Policy Pt III: Welcome to the Thunderdome
I'll conclude my (unplanned) three-part series on existential threats, existential risks, and policy with a some concluding observations.
- It is useful to understand the concepts of existential threat and existential risk, but not if the lesson is overlearned. Beyond the (crucially important) task of batting down fearmongering about new threats, consideration of existential threat for the US are at present is not particularly relevant. It is a major problem if policymakers and the public believe that the world is more dangerous today than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but beyond counter-messaging the topic of existential threats have really little to tell us about international security today.
- For a state like the US, the overwhelmingly majority of threats will be non-existential. Still, the state not only has responsibility to protect its citizens but a universally acknowledged legal right to self-defense. Now, that right can be endlessly defined, interpreted, and quibbled with, but it exists. Second, DIME tools are also useful in and of themselves for creating freedom of maneuver in the international sphere. The ability to employ military force or coerceive diplomatic, economic, or covert tools gives states options.
- Military force is also "fungible"--even outside war, the use of military force as a shaping tool can create political and economic benefits. As Robert Art argues, the military relationship the United States had with Europe and Japan during the Cold War allowed it to define the nature of the economic and political systems it wanted in those states. The US not only protected those states from the Soviets but also created assurances that Germany and Japan would not re-arm.
- Arms, as per Tom Schelling, also enable psychological and political signaling. One of the major reasons why carriers endure, despite concerns about their battlefield utility against high-end Chinese weapons, is the fact that sending an carrrier off the coast of a country still sends a message in most of the world. Whether or not the message is heeded or even interpreted correctly is a matter of context.
The point of these observations is not to take a position on sequestration but to observe that the discussion around existential threats, while valuable, should not be taken too far. One need only look at Maoist China during the 1960s as a consequence of why. China's military forces were good for defeating an conventional land invasion, but little else. As the country's international ambitions changed, its defense strategy shifted from the concept of "luring the enemy into the deep" into an evolutionary consideration of ever more flexible potential uses of military force. And in turn, efforts were mounted (and are still ongoing) to turn a large ground army with little power projection capabilities into a mobile, network-enabled force with the capability for local wars. China's economic success and population gives it a seat at the table, for sure, but regionally its potential ability to turn those resources into military power forces its neighbors, at a minimum, to pay attention.
As Dan has observed, the Founders of our own country clearly wanted a Navy that would be capable of exerting American influence abroad, a dream that reached maturity with Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet. That has some major consequences--200 years of discretionary wars being a prominent one. But those wars have not had the human and material consequences, of say, the wars of Louis the XIV because they have rarely threatened major powers or depleted the American treasury. That is the difference between a continental power that constantly wages discretionary land wars with major powers and a naval/air/cyber one that targets middle and small states and violent non-state actors.
Population-centric counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, in light of the current fiscal situation, is an exception to the general rule because supporting and protecting large amounts of military and civilian manpower on the ground is fiscally wasteful and opens up those forces to attacks when they use local transportation infrastructure (or lack theorof). But this doesn't mean that discretionary wars will stop. And, as we have both written, drones have extremely little to do with it.
How much military forces are necessary today? That depends on how one calculates American security, economic, and legal interests and the ability of military forces to achieve them, a debate that is also larger than one blog post can wade into. The point of this series has been to hammer out a baseline for discussion.
Abu Elkus I suspect ends
Abu Elkus
I suspect ends determine means. I perceive these as starting points.
What does the US want military or DIME power to accomplish?
What is realistic for military or DIME power to accomplish?
Is the goal merely to ensure survival, or to maximize power and wealth?
ADTS
Elkus, I am not ready to give
Elkus, I am not ready to give China the status that you have given them. They are expanding at the expense of the economies that they complete with on labor costs. China labor is still mostly manual and wages are low. Great many of the Chinese are still agricultural without the purchase power found in their urban areas. Without foreign markets China cannot sustain the manufacturing power it is leveraging off of to push itself into commercial enterprise. China is still dependent on the West for education and partnership their technology road map extends to 2020. US taxpayers are subsidizing Chinese education through US State Universities opening up off shore Universities. Western economies are mature and the balance between manufacture and consumption is sustainable, growth is the question. China is still years away from reaching critical mass in its native purchase power. If the world stopped importing from China today, China would collapse to an agricultural society. That is the Grand Dragon's weakness and aircraft carriers, Marine bases in Australia, and arguments over territorial waters are not needed in that equation. US and Euro Corporate expansion is China's only current strength. The West is stupid to hand the status of "World Power" to a communist government that cannot project itself without the trade of export. If China is not ready to discuss human rights issues than why is the West handing them the power to support their way of life?
ADTS did not take the discussion far enough. What are the boundaries of the United States of America and what does the USA want from the world without developing an empire?
Beyond CONUS borders our relationship with other countries is really about trade. The protection of sea-lanes is not solely the responsibility of the US Navy budget. The comment about providing security to foreign countries allows the US to get into their business; the behavior creates dependence that is a long-term burden to the US economy. That burden is a security risk to the US because it requires long-term GDP growth to sustain. The DOD budget spirals upward as a result and is an existential threat to a balanced healthy US economy. US Corporations have taken DOD protection off of their spread sheets by off shoring taxes through loopholes and shelters, they demand lower rates that they would normally pay (not the higher 30% but the 20% after deductions in existing tax code) on repatriated profits. The repatriated funds do not produce more US jobs like in the 80's. Trickle down is now trickle out government infrastructure spending on energy and road turns into wind farm generators from a China that does not share rare earths in production of the magnets in those generators and bridge contracts in California that uses Chinese steel and labor. EPA and government regulations has all but shut down rare earth mining and steel production in the US.
The above paragraph has linkage to the Politics in the USA. Find it interesting that Democrats like their diversity while thirsting for centralized power. This administration’s Foreign Policy is the Great Society on steroids with R2P, Humanitarian War, LOST treaties, global warming, and Human Security. Hillary Clinton resides over the multi-ring circus. The irony is a World Order is the death of diversity because State sovereignty is suppressed. State sovereignty IS the reason for diversity. Illegal immigrants in the US have children that have no concept of their own nationality, which gives the Democrat the argument for the Dream Act. Diversity is normalized as a result. Republicans really do not have a better agenda their vision is to chase the lowest tax and wages with disregard to what protects that interest. All of this is enabled by technology. Is the world more dangerous than it was 20 years ago? If technology amplifies the human weakness feared by the Founding Fathers of the US, then I say yes. If technology causes social change to move faster than we can internalize the structural changes, then I say yes. We have forgotten our disinterestedness, we argue personal agendas, and become sectarian. US Industry, which represents all political thought, has given the American work force a frontal lobotomy by skipping a generation of on-the-job-training. Germany’s apprentice system makes sense. US Unions and Government Employees have an apprentice system but they got greedy with wages and benefits, bankers are not the only people that demand returns.
Is parking a carrier off a foreign shore meaningful? Not when our own US DOD battle stimulations can validate swarming of inexpensive watercraft to be a threat. The US does not have that many carriers to waste. Standing off consumes aircraft range; strike capabilities, and limits the geographic operational areas.
In the past seventy years of America’s experience our leaders have used fear to motivate. Existential threat and existential risk has been metabolized as technology advancement, government expansion, and employment. Wrapped around that development is the private sector that has grown exponentially an example of this expansion is the size of the recent Facebook IPO. The projection of American boarders has expanded the US economy with the risk of sustainable growth. The Great Recession and our structural problems from that growth expansion are a result of mismanagement of our human weaknesses and method of risk mitigation (financial derivatives to equalize currency transfer risk for globalization)
The US lost its way after the cold war. Cost of finish product through labor wage reduction realized by off shoring was a temporary revenue center and the global expansion that it was to produce has yet to materialize fully. The WOT has produced expansion and employment at the cost of exhausting Government debt resulting in a Homeland Security structure that is monolithic in scale and is a threat to individual privacy.
Building China into a new enemy to fear is not the best business practice when your heavy industry that produces the steel and alloys for your force projection is offshore. US Industry is transferring the complete knowledge of US government financed technology growth in the past 50 years (GE jet engines, Aloha Aluminum Alloys, Boeing airplane technology, Rockwell/GE/Honeywell Avionics, Composite Design via the French, and the list goes on) to China First’s demanded corporate partnerships.
To move forward, we need to understand our past and repair our structural issues.
That takes us to the Clinton Administration in the 1990’s. Hillary was the legal council of Wal-Mart, which developed one of the first off shored business models of a major US retailer. That Wal-Mart business model has made consumer product (washer, dryers, TV’s, textiles, etc) domestic US production extinct through constant pricing pressures at yearly volume negotiations in Bentonville, AR. The scale of Wal-Mart breaks and makes companies. Private Equity only realized the profits to be made by taking American companies damaged by cost pressures on their finished products and changing their structure to make them profitable by off shoring and striping them of benefit commitments. PE’s profits were taken at IPO by leveraging from globalization of America worker’s employment. Private Equity leveraged off of the huge pension funds of University and State employees, the 40-60% returns that PE offered is how government made up for pension account under funding. Pension funds are still projecting 8% returns while off shored workers get 0.1% on their FDIC insured accounts! The State worker’s pension funds effectively screwed the pouch on their own source of sustainable revenue by killing off the taxes collected on the off shored private sector jobs. I am not saying the Hillary Clinton was the source, we all enjoyed the ride, and she was at ground zero and cannot claim ignorance of action. The low rate of return on bank accounts, the false economy being created by Federal Reserve TWIST policy is subsidizing low commercial paper rates for an Industry that will not hire the people that are paying for its global growth.
If that is not a bitched up system, I do not know what is.
The structural mismatch of globalization has come home to the US as deficit spending, which has to be realized in your baseline to start discussions of future planning.
It is the best argument for bipartisanship that I can think of, I just hope that Twitter enables it rather than lets us continue our social discussion of our human weakness.
From my above post. The State
From my above post.
The State worker’s pension funds effectively screwed the pouch on their own source of sustainable revenue by killing off the taxes collected on the off shored private sector jobs.
That should be pooch. Think you got the idea in the context use.
Exum??? from Twitter. Time
Exum??? from Twitter.
Time for U.S. diplomats to earn their paychecks. "Mohamed, this is my friend Bibi. Bibi, let me introduce my new friend Mohamed."
How about this paradigm shift.
Yo Mohamed and Bibi, when you get done with your tribal wars the US will be around come talk to us about food and material to rebuild.
It might be time for the US off shore diplomats to trade jobs with some US State Governors and give an intro to US Domestic issues.
Abu Elkus Also, just as a
Abu Elkus
Also, just as a factual point of clarification, is two MRCs plus still codified in semi-official doctrine (e.g., National Security Strategy)?
Thanks
ADTS
ADTS... you mean like this
ADTS... you mean like this two MRC's?
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/01/04/the-two-mrc-strategy-major-r...
Depends on how major.
DEA has its own "M"..... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/world/americas/dea-agents-kills-suspec...
CIA has another "M"..... http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NF16Dj03.html
DOD is doing Afghanistan, plus a few other things in Africa.
Gets a little confusing to talk about budgets, cuts, and MRC's, it is all shell game anymore. Everyone is its own military. Have not even talked about the contractors.
Is Homeland Security militarized? Bet they are.
Visitor June 24, 2012, 5:30
Visitor June 24, 2012, 5:30 PM
Thanks - good links all - I need to start reading "Battleland," I think.
ADTS
"....screwed the pouch.." No
"....screwed the pouch.."
No actually that's a brilliant term for American governance of public monies.
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