RE: [Futurework] Re: Bacevich's new book

[Harry Pollard]

Ed,   They got rid of Carter because he (and the US) had looked foolish in their failed attempt to recover American hostages from Iran.   Plus an out of control monetary inflation that had Interest and Mortgage rates more than  20%. Then there was the Carter Doctrine.   Carter was a nice guy, but a lousy President.   I doubt Americans even listened to Carter on fuel economy.   Harry   ******************************* Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655  Tujunga  CA 91042 818 352-4141 *******************************     From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 6:47 AM To: Ken Davies Cc: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: [Futurework] Re: Bacevich's new book   Ken, you make a good point.  Many people are now arguing that the US has stretched itself beyond its limits and no longer makes the kinds of things that built up a very strong economy, having forfeited much of that to China.  It's in a terrible fiscal position, having to borrow huge amounts just to keep its government, including its military, going.  And guess who holds about twenty to thirty percent of that debt.  Why, China of course, and China could probably pull out that prop if it felt it to be strategically necessary.    The big question is how the US allowed itself to get that way.  Bacevich says that Carter tried very hard to persuade Americans that they had to reduce their dependence on foreign oil and on oil in general.  The public and the politicians simply wouldn't buy it.  The message was too negative for a people that had always seen themselves as living in the land of plenty.  They got rid of Carter and brought in Reagan who had a much happier "land of plenty and infinite opportunity" message for them.  They really liked that!   Since then, however, the history of the US has been one of drift.  Americans continued to see themselves as the most powerful economy and military on earth, but the truth of the matter was that they were slipping.  Their economic power was being eroded by China and others and their military performances were shoddy at best.  Bacevich has nothing good to say about performances like Somalia and the Balkans and not very much that is good to say about the first Iraq war in which the Americans essentially let huge numbers of Saddam's soldiers get away.  He argues that the war against the Taliban may have been the right thing to do because Osama was based there, but Iraq was a mistake.  I don't entirely buy his argument about Iraq and I don't think he himself does.  Elsewhere in the book he fully supports the  concept that Iraq was about oil, and that the Americans needed a base in the middle of the Middle East to make sure they got the oil, but that, blinded by the myth of their righteousness and superior power, the Americans had no idea of the chaos they were creating by going into Iraq.  Going in may, from their standpoint, have been the right thing to do, but going in stupid was not.   I should point out that, in criticizing the American military performance, Bacevich is not criticizing the soldiers and military leaders.  He was a soldier himself, one who suffered the humiliation of Vietnam.  It's the political leaders that he is faulting.   That the Americans went into Iraq stupid is perhaps the most important point and the most frightening.  A huge network of people who do not like the Americans and their allies has built up over the years.  It's secretive and cellular and not the kind of thing you can destroy by displays of shock and awe.  Those involved know that Americans can be stupid and vulnerable and are willing to take full advantage of that.   Ed   P.S.  I'm going to send this to the Futurework list and to my undisclosed group.  Hope that's OK with you.   ----- Original Message ----- From: Ken Davies To: 'Ed Weick' Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 5:50 PM Subject: RE: Bacevich's new book   Just thinking out loud here....   Militarization is just another way of defining power.  To my mind, power seems to flow to the country with the largest manufacturing base, not the largest or most powerful army.  ie: the country that can produce the products the cheapest gets the power.   England boot-started the process with the industrial revolution (cheaper goods), but lost the power to the United States.   America continued the process with an incredible burst of productivity over the last 200 years  (ie: cheaper goods).  US had the natural advantage of abundant land and resources, coupled with an attitude of innovation and ruthless competition.  The results were marvels of technology  - the last greatest invention being the Internet, but included cars, machinery, computers, mechanized farming, assembly line manufacturing, etc.   Japan built its economic base as a manufacturer,  a process that has been copied by the other Asian countries.  Japan's growth has been limited in that it does not own it's own raw resources, and thus needed to import in order to export.   And finally we get to China.  My understanding is that China is now at 50% the economic size of the US, with the prediction that they will match the US economy's size within 20 years.    For example, 50% of all Intel processors that are manufactured are now sold in Asia.  Wall Mart has built its business by being the lowest cost provider of imported goods manufactured in China.  Bottom line is that China currently produces cheaper goods than anywhere else in the world.   If I were to point to one shining example of the mess the US is about to find itself in, I'd say that it's the loss of the manufacturing sector - the ability to produce the cheapest goods - which if my theory is correct will ultimately lead to a loss of power.  The US currently imports way more than it exports.  With the US dependent on imported energy, the problem is likely to get worse, not better.  Not sure how long this can continue without a major correction.    What I can't understand is why the US is so willing to continue buying imported oil (a scarce resource) and not invest in alternate sources of energy.  For example, not a single reactor has been built in the last 20 years. Cheap abundand energy would mean cheaper manufactured goods, cheaper goods means a stronger economy, and a stronger economy means continued American domination.   ... then again, a weaker America may not be that bad a thing.    Only problem is that the universe abhors a vacuum.  What sorts of bizarre behavior can we expect when China starts to flex its muscle?  First signs of things to come is China buying up resource companies on the cheap (and thus reducing global supply of resources).  Next will be the problems of securing a stable source of oil in a world market of reduced supply.  Can see the day where China will start exporting it's own corporate culture into the world, with their own set of corporate agendas.    ... may we live in interesting times.   Got to get back to work.     -----Original Message----- From: Ed Weick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 1:27 PM To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: Bacevich's new book I've just finished reading Andrew Bacevich's latest book, "The New American Militarism" (well, mostly finished.  I skipped quite a bit of it.)  Bacevich is professor of international relations at Boston University.  He's a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy and has a Ph. D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University.  He is a veteran of the Vietnam war.   I'm not going to go into the book in detail at this point, but I would suggest that it is well worth reading.  One of Bacevich's strongest and most compelling points is that the "War on Terror" isn't really that at all, it's "World War IV", IV because WWIII was the Cold War that ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.  Moreover, he argues, WWIV did not begin with 9/11 but in 1980 with the Carter Doctrine, in which President Carter in essence stated that an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region would be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the US, and would be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.  Bacevich argues that from then to the present day, this doctrine has remained sacrosanct.  Why was it promulgated?  Carter had previously valiantly tried to persuade the US to cut back on the consumption of its vital energy resources and rely less on the importation of oil from the Middle East, but to no avail.  Not even the oil shocks of the 1970s had much of an impact.  The Middle East would remain a primary source, so Americans had better make sure that it continued to serve their needs.   Since the Carter Doctrine, there has been a lot of positioning of American troops and interests in and around the Middle East.  The people of the Middle East have not been happy about this, nor about the way their leaders, the Saudis for example and Saddam for a time, played ball with the Americans.  Out of this came people like Bin Laden, the bombing of barracks and embassies and ultimately 9/11.  Allies of the US, Australians in Bali and most recently Londoners, have also suffered from the long, ongoing game of murderous tit-for-tat.  That it will not end as easily as the Americans, with their sense of superiority and overwhelming fire-power, thought, is evident from the continuing and deepening quagmire in Iraq.   Much of Bacevich's book is taken up with how various interests contributed to the moulding of the US into a modern military state.  The military had been thoroughly humiliated in Vietnam.  It had not had the support it needed to win decisive victories, and what it might have accomplished was overruled by civilians in Washington who knew very little about the situation in the field.  It felt that it had to pull itself out from under civilian control and build up its resources and know-how.  Another major player, the evangelical religious right saw the America of the sixties and seventies as being in a state of moral decay and saw something very positive in military order.  Evangelicals believed that God favoured the US and had in fact created the US to show the world the way.  Many believed that Armageddon was coming, and did whatever they could to hasten the final conflict and the return of Christ.  Another group, boffins in think-tanks, played important roles in advising the US government on military strategy and weaponry.  "Shock and Awe" came out of this.   One thing Bacevich does well is help us to understand the role of a group we talk about, write about, think about, but really know very little about - the "neocons".  He gives them a Chapter in which he not only names them but, point by point, tells us what they have been promoting and what influence on policy and the public mind they've had.  Their ideas are essentially uncompromising.  America, with its goodness and wealth, is a nation under perpetual siege.  There is no point to negotiating with the enemy, as liberals are wont to do.  The enemy must be stared down or knocked down.  It's all rather scary total us versus them stuff, with no shades of grey between.  What is even scarier is that their influence has been, and continues, to be huge.    I won't go on.  Read the book.  As in any book of its kind, some parts are much more interesting than others.  The final chapter is a true dud!  In it, Bacevich argues that Americans can get out of the mess they're in by following their Constitution step by step.  Would that it were that easy!  My guess is that, having written a lot of very good chapters, Bacevich didn't know how to pull it all together at the end.  Besides, he was probably tired.   Ed

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