Category Archives: American Politics

The James Comey Show.

Posted on by
1

The F.B.I. has rules against interfering in politics and rules against being interfered with by politicians.  Recent events have shown how difficult it has become to maintain that rule when some politicians have wandered far from normal behavior.  Back in Fall 2016, President Barack Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, had to investigate the handling of e-mail messages by former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.[1]  Then AG Lynch got into the glue for having had a private meeting with former President Bill Clinton.  She announced that F.B.I. director James Comey would have a free hand to run the Clinton investigation.  In July 2016, at the end of the investigation, Comey held a press conference to announce that Clinton would not be prosecuted, although he condemned her careless handling of sensitive e-mails.  Democrats roundly abused Comey for making his less-than-positive remarks while an election loomed.  Then, in October 2016, Comey announced that the investigation had been re-opened when a bunch of Clinton e-mails were discovered on the lap-top that Clinton aide Huma Abedin shared with her husband.[2]

Shortly before the election, Rudy Giuliani, a Trump supporter, announced that a “pretty big surprise” was coming.  Later Giuliani said that his sources were former, not currently serving, FBI agents.[3]  Several days later, Comey announced that the newly-discovered e-mails were just duplicates of previously examined e-mails.  Again, Democrats roundly condemned Comey for meddling in an election.  Bitter partisan strife followed.

In late January 2017, at the request of Democrats in Congress, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice opened an investigation of how Comey had managed the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s sloppy handling of her e-mail while Secretary of State.[4]  The scope of the investigation included both Comey’s original press conference and his decision to announce the re-opening of the investigation less than two weeks before Election Day.

Early in March 2017, reports circulated of an F.B.I. investigation into allegations of contacts between members of the Trump entourage and various Russians.  White House chief-of-staff Reince Priebus asked Comey to tell the press that no such investigation existed.  The White House also solicited Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House committee investigating the Russian involvement in the election, to tell reporters that the story was bunk.  Comey refused because a) there was an investigation going on and b) politicians—like Priebus—weren’t supposed to interfere.  Apparently, intelligence sources leaked word of the spat to the press.[5]

Three weeks after having refused to deny that there was an investigation, Comey said that “in unusual circumstances, it may be appropriate” for the F.B.I. to comment on an on-going investigation.  Then he confirmed, during public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, that the F.B.I. is investigating contacts between the Russians and the Trump entourage.[6]  Democrats condemned Comey for having thrown Clinton “under the bus” in Fall 2016.

James Comey has been—repeatedly—thrown into an uncomfortable position by the actions of other people.  So far, none of the complaining gets us closer to the truth(es).

[1] See: “The Hacked Election.”  https://waroftheworldblog.com/2016/12/13/the-hacked-election/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true

[2] Habitually described as the “disgraced… Anthony Weiner.”

[3] So, do current FBI agents meet up with still serving colleagues at various Washington, DC watering-holes to talk about old times and…?

[4] “FBI’s Comey investigated over election conduct,” The Week, 27 January 2017, p. 5.

[5] “Russia investigation: A special prosecutor?” The Week, 10 March 2017, p. 16.

[6] “Comey reveals Trump-Russia probe,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 5.

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 11.

Posted on by
Reply

This is out of sequence for reasons beyond my control.  I apologize to both my readers.

Wanting a swift and emphatic break with President Barack Obama’s administration, the Republicans introduced the American Health Care Act.[1]  One much noticed difference between the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its proposed replacement (AHCA) came in the financial assistance offered by the government.  The ACA offered open-ended subsidies of premiums linked to income.  The AHCA offered tax-credits of $2,000-$4,000 a year linked to age.  The income ceiling for people to receive the tax credits would be $75,000 for an individual and $150,000 for couples.  The AHCA also would substantially reduce Medicaid spending after 2020.  The ACA barred insurance companies from charging older, sicker clients more than three times as much as they charged younger, healthier clients.  The AHCA would have allowed insurance companies to raise deductibles.  The ACA paid for the new entitlement for poor people by heavily taxing people who make more than $250,000 a year.[2]  To the tune of $600 billion.

Are there flaws in the ACA that would have been changed by the AHCA?  Well, premiums began to rise sharply in the last year of the Obama administration, while some major insurance companies fled the markets.  Rising premiums would mean rising subsidies to freight the budget.  Shifting from subsidies to fixed sums could help contain this problem.  Then, the AHCA allowed insurance companies to charge older, sicker clients up to five times as much as they charged younger, healthier clients.  This more closely resembles the real cost to insurance companies.

Is the cure worse than the disease?  The media were full of adverse results.  Millions could be tossed off Medicaid; diluting or removing some of the services deemed “essential” by the ACA could harm a lot of vulnerable people; and the out-of-pocket costs could go through the roof, leaving millions no choice but to do without insurance at all.

You don’t have to take the Mainstream Media’s (MSM) word for it.[3]  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that by 2026, premiums would fall by 10 percent.  The budget deficit would be reduced by $337 billion over a decade.  Ending the mandate would allow 14 million unwillingly-insured people to escape the clutches of the ACA.  After the limits on Medicaid spending cut in during 2020, another ten million would eventually drift—or be pushed–off the system.  Allowing insurance companies to charge older, sicker clients more would lead to those clients paying “substantially more” for health care.

The AHCA brought Republican factionalism into high relief.  The 20 members of the conservative House “Freedom Caucus” opposed the bill because it didn’t go far enough in liquidating the ACA.  A bunch of moderate Republican Senators opposed the bill because it went too far in liquidating the ACA.  Their differences appeared unlikely to be composed.  Then, Donald Trump won the nomination as spokesman for many discontented lower income voters.  These are just the people projected as the losers from the AHCA.  His support for the bill puzzled.

[1] “Ryancare: Who wins, who loses,” The Week, 24 March 2017, p. 16.

[2] This reality makes a mockery of the Democratic argument that the mandate is necessary because younger, healthier people have to be included in the “insurance market” so that their premiums can off-set the high costs of older, sicker Americans.  That is the same as arguing that low income, little property people have to subsidize higher income, more property people.  The reality looks like a few rich people have to subsidize many low income people.  The “$660 billion tax-cut” for the wealthy which the NYT decried is the flip side of a $600 billion tax increase imposed by the ACA.  That’s fine as social policy, but it should surprise no one that rich people fought back.

[3] “CBO report roils Ryancare debate,” The Week, 24 March 2017, p. 4.

Poor Lo.

Posted on by
Reply

“Work is the least disappointing relationship you can have.”[1]  Unless work dumps you for some rough-hewn Latino from South of the border, down Mexico way.  Off-shoring and automation have destroyed many American jobs over the last several decades.[2]  This has left the people who used to do those jobs on the beach (and not in a Micheneresque idyllic way either).

Here’s an ugly fact: men and women have responded differently to the job-losses.  More women have been displaced by the changes than have men, but women responded by going back to school to up-grade their skills.  Then they migrated into higher-skill jobs than they had before.  This has been the traditional story of disruptive technological innovation in America.

Except that this time, men have not behaved in the traditional fashion.  Instead of up-skilling, they’ve down-skilled into fast-food servers, low-end retail jobs, and long-term unemployment.  They also have migrated out of rural areas and small towns to cities in search of opportunity.  Women seem to have been more likely to stay behind, take some classes at the local community college, and find work.  What they don’t have is a reliable man in their lives.[3]

These trends have become a social fact.  Women now account for 56 percent of undergraduate college enrollment; men account for 44 percent.  Divorce is common (51 percent) for men who don’t go to college—and for the now more educated women they married.  Not all of this is recent.[4]

It seems to be agreed that these men are abusing drugs and alcohol along the roads to and from the divorce court.  Liberal and conservative commentators alike—almost all drawn from the prissy, unworldly modern American “intelligentsia” which has the moral views of a Nineteenth Century Academy for Young Ladies–sound almost delighted.  The economic losers can be morally condemned.  The “Gilded Age” rides again.

Interpretations of these recently-discovered trends come in a bitter period of political strife.  Hence, people may suspect that they have been “weaponized.”  The “outlandishly male Donald Trump” resonated with voters amidst “a great spasm of cultural anxiety about masculine decline,” wrote one conservative.[5]  Similarly, one liberal writer opined that the administration’s new defense budget was a “Viagra budget” for Trump’s “insecure fanboys.”[6]  Andrew Sullivan[7] lifts a lonely voice to compare the agony of the disrupted small city and town/rural working class with the victims of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.[8]

Off-shoring and automation are going to destroy even more jobs.  One prediction says that a third of all men under 54 could be unemployed by 2050.  (So, those born from 1996 onward; so. today’s 21 year-olds.)  Does this mean that Donald Trump’s “America First” could become the brand of the 21st Century?

[1] Betty Davis, quoted in The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 17.

[2] “Social change: The decline of men,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 16.

[3] Although they may well have children.  There’s a whole genre of movies in this.  I can’t say that I’ve heard of any yet.

[4] Since 1981 single women have been buying houses at a faster clip than single men.   “The bottom line,” The Week, 10 February 2017, p. 32.

[5] It doesn’t invalidate this argument to point out that over half of women voters preferred Donald Trump (and “a special place in Hell”) to Hillary Clinton.  These women may also want traditional males back.

[6] “Trump budget: Hard power, not soft,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 16.  I suppose you can add this term to the lexicon of liberal vitriol, along with “Deplorables.”

[7] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan

[8] “The invisible plague of rural America,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 12.

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 12.

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump’s administration came into office determined to break with the policies of President Barack Obama’s administration wherever possible.  Last week witnessed more instances of this commitment.

First came the proposed budget.  The big drivers of government spending are defense, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid.  The Obama (old) and Trump (new) budget plans both came in at around $4 trillion of spending; both anticipated a deficit of $559 billion.

President Trump’s proposed budget moves the deck furniture around in ways that please some Republicans and enrages most Democrats.  It increases defense spending by 9 percent ($54 billion) and cuts spending in other areas (the Environmental Protection Agency, the State Department, a bunch of social and scientific programs).  National Public Radio, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for the Arts—essentially Meals-on-Wheels for the coastal elites—would be entirely eliminated.[1]

How sensible is the shift of resources from the State Department to the Defense Department?  Most of the cuts appear to come out of the foreign aid budget.  Some of that aid goes for humanitarian causes, essentially spending American money to take some of the rough edges off human catastrophes not directly of American causing.  Some of that aid goes to governments fighting one head or another of the Islamist world-hydra: Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, the Sahel countries fighting Boko Haram, and the East African states fighting al-Shabab.  One writer derided it as a “Viagra budget” for Trump’s “insecure fanboys.”[2]

From 2010 to 2016, the number of restrictions on trade (tariffs, subsidies to domestic industry) world-wide quadrupled.[3]  The Group of Twenty issued ritualistic denunciations of the rising barriers, but did nothing to reduce them.  So, following the path scouted by other nations, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told other finance ministers at the annual G-20 meeting that many existing trade agreements were unfair to the United States and he raised the prospect of renegotiating them.  The U.S. also refused to accept a joint statement opposing protectionism.[4]

In 2012, the Obama administration issued regulations on future fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles.[5]  The standards required manufacturers to almost double fuel-efficiency to reach an average of 54.5 miles/gallon by 2025.  Under the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency calculated that the costs for the auto industry would be $200 billion between 2012 and 2025, while the savings on gas costs to drivers would save $1.7 trillion.  Laudable as these goals may be from a climate change perspective, two points are worth making.  First, gasoline prices have fallen since 2012, so the savings by drivers will be less without the costs to manufacturers being reduced.  Since those costs would be passed on to drivers in car prices, the Common Man might take issue with the regulations.  Second, “average” fuel economy meant that less-efficient SUVs and pick-up trucks could be off-set by more-efficient mini-cars.  In short, car-makers would have to produce vehicles that nobody wants in exchange for making cars that people do want.  Put this way, some of the business hostility to government regulations is easy to understand.

[1] “Trump’s budget: Fulfilling his promises?” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 6.

[2] “Trump budget: Hard power, not soft,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 16.  I suppose you can add this term to the lexicon of liberal vitriol, along with “Deplorables.”

[3] The timing suggests that these were responses to the financial crisis and slow-down in trade.

[4] “Trade: U.S. takes a hard line at G-20 meeting,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 32.

[5] “Issue of the week: Putting the brakes on fuel standards,” The Week, 31 March 2017, p. 34.

The Deep State Strikes Back.

Posted on by
1

In a classic essay, George Orwell warned of the distortions of language that come with politicization.[1]  To the rage of their opponents, President Donald Trump or some of his followers have appropriated the terms “fake news” and “deep state” as charges hurled at those opponents.  The term “fake news” began to circulate late in the presidential campaign to describe the largely anti-Hillary Clinton rumors produced by many web-sites in Eastern Europe.  Now Trump slings the term around to answer media criticism.  In his view, the heavy reliance upon anonymous sources by the New York Times[2] means that editors assign reporters to write stories that conform to the paper’s ideological position and to claim that anonymous sources provided the “facts” cited in the stories.   The term “deep state” is a Western academic term[3] itself appropriated from popular usage in Middle Eastern countries.[4]

The current ugly controversy high-lights the reality that civil servants and scholars are not apolitical technical experts serving merely as instruments of a democratic government.  They have policy agendas of their own.  These can reflect belief, settled tradition, or bureaucratic interest.[5]   President Trump is the preferred candidate neither of the Democrats, nor of mainstream Republicans.  These are the groups from which most public servants are recruited.  President Trump’s clownish personal behavior[6] and lack of preparation make him widely disliked in the bureaucracy.  That animus extends to his more outlandish cabinet appointments.

President Trump’s criticism of federal agencies and his lack of a tame clientele with which to fill administrative positions “has put institutions under enormous stress.”  This, in turn, “has forced civil servants into an impossible dilemma.”  They can either defend their institutions against his assault or they can surrender to his demands to do things in a new way.   Either course will weaken the credibility of the institutions they represent.   So far, Trump has lashed out at the courts, the intelligence community, and the mainstream media (MSM).  The current “tribal” polarization of American politics shrinks the role for reason on both sides, regardless of which side has the “facts” on its side.[7]

Critics argue that Trump could be much more effective by working through the bureaucracy and with the press, rather than attacking these institutions.  He should, in short, accept the existence of the “fourth branch” of government.  In this view, the bureaucracy and the press operate as important checks on presidential power, hence as guarantees of American democracy.  The development of a powerful bureaucracy with policy positions of its own is one of the issues not much discussed in the Federalist papers.  Its power has only grown as partisan gridlock in the legislature has led presidents to act through executive branch writing of rules and regulations.  This seems to be what Steve Bannon has in mind when he calls for the dismantling of the “administrative state.”  In this sense, the criticism of Trump’s actions misses a point.

[1] George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.”

[2] See: https://www.google.com/search?q=New+York+Times+public+editor+on+anonymous+sources&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8  Much of the concern has come from a series of a Public Editors.  On the origins of the Public Editors, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell_Raines

[3] Academia leans left in the same way that professional military officer corps lean right.

[4] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2017/03/10/the-deep-state/  The term is now being re-appropriated by Trump foes.

[5] Most scientists believe in androgenic climate change and believe government should act to counter it.  Most military officers believe that the military needs bigger budgets and more generals and admirals.

[6] It should be remembered that most young children don’t like clowns.  They find them frightening and offensive.

[7] That is, Democrats would believe the charges even if they weren’t true.

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 10.

Posted on by
Reply

Jonathan Chait has argued that Donald Trump and a coterie of advisers “cooperated with the undermining of American democracy by a hostile foreign power [Russia].”  James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence and no fan of President Trump, has said that “there is no evidence” of “collusion between members of the Trump administration and the Russians.”[1]  So which is it?  Chait is a partisan Democratic journalist at a time of considerable distress for the party.  Clapper is an experienced professional who had access to all they key intelligence before he left office.  All things considered, Clapper’s seems the more credible voice.

Even so, that leaves the problem of all the false denials of contacts between some Trump followers and various Russians.  Michael Flynn has been the most egregious case of this so far, but Jeff Sessions may still end up in serious trouble over his terminological inexactitude.

The Russians undoubtedly “intervened” in the election by hacking into the computers of various Democratic figures and institutions, then releasing the fruits through Wikileaks.   The results came in the revelation of information that the Clinton campaign would have preferred to keep secret because it likely would alienate many voters in a tight race.  First, how did that “undermine democracy”?  Second, would the revelation of this information by American investigative journalists not have undermined democracy?  As for the lying, part of the explanation may be the firestorm of criticism heaped on Republicans by Democrats after the election.  Another part of the explanation may be sheer stupidity.   As Jonathan Tobin has pointed out, the Benghazi witch-hunt didn’t help Republicans.

There seems to be a lot of that going around.  Recently, Breitbart News claimed that a story in the New York Times had reported that federal officials had “intercepted communications and financial transactions” between Russians and members of the Trump posse.[2]  Almost immediately, President Trump walked—stormed, really—into a door by claiming that “Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.”  This charge elicited a hostile reaction from all across the spectrum.

Under these circumstances, many observers may be having a sigh of relief that actual legislation on important issues has begun to move forward.  Republicans launched their campaign to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with the American Health Care Act (AHCA).[3]  In some ways, the AHCA really is “Obamacare lite.”[4]

What gets lost in the criticism of the bill is that Americans pay a lot more for not-as-good health care than do people in Western Europe and Japan.   The ACA did little to address this problem.  Arguably, it is a more important problem than the issue of people without insurance.  (They always had “catastrophic care” through emergency rooms.  I know it’s cold to say that.)  Both Medicaid and a lot of employer-provided health insurance are in effect open-ended when it comes to spending.   The fundamental dispute between Republican and Democrats is the likely effect of limiting spending.  Will insurers hold down their premiums in a less-regulated market in order to gain customers, then find ways to cram-down costs?  This is the Republican wager.  Or will insurers shred insurance for the poor in order to keep targeting the easy money?  This is the Democratic wager.  Whoever “wins,” the stakes are high.

[1] Both are quoted in “Trump and Russia: What do we really know?” The Week, 17 March 2017, p. 6.  On Chait, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Chait

[2] “Trump accuses Obama of illegal wiretap,” The Week, 17 March 2017, p. 4.  The story in the NYT ran on 19 January 2017.  See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html?_r=0

[3] “Republicans face a revolt over health bill,” The Week, 17 March 2017, p. 5.

[4] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2017/03/05/memoirs-of-the-addams-administration-9/

The Economy Stupid.

Posted on by
Reply

Since the 1970s, the fates of working Americans have become uncoupled.[1]  Those with a college education have prospered, while those without a college education have seen their incomes stagnate.  Then, the “Obama recovery” since the financial crisis has not been a very satisfactory recovery by historical standards.  The rate of growth has been slow.

First, it is worth asking why the recovery was so unimpressive   On the one hand, demography exerted a choke-hold.  Baby Boomers have begun to retire, while the share of women in the paid labor force seems to have plateaued.   This could be off-set by rising productivity of the labor we do have.  On the other hand, however, a long-running decline in productivity growth has continued to drag on the recovery.  There are various theories about why this has happened, but no consensus, let alone a solution.  On yet another hand, economists point to “skill-biased technological change.”  That is, employers constantly introduce new technology that replaces many low-skill employees while creating a demand for a smaller number of higher-skilled workers.   Those higher skills are acquired through some form of education (although it doesn’t have to be college).

Second, the economic problems have had social effects, and those social effects now have had political consequences.  Donald Trump won the votes of those without a college education by an eight percent margin; Hillary Clinton won the votes of those with a college degree by a nine percent margin.  Even this disguises the reality of President Trump’s electoral base.  The core of voters who actually propelled Trump to the Republican nomination was much more distinctly those without a college education.  Most Republicans—many of them with college degrees—merely voted for Trump because they were supporting the Republican candidate.

What kind of shape is the economy in as Donald Trump takes the helm?  Unemployment is down to 5 percent, what economists regard as “full-employment” given the constant churning in the economy.  Inflation is finally up around 2 percent, the target long-pursued by the Federal Reserve Bank.  The Fed appears poised to raise interest rates this month to keep inflation from accelerating beyond this target point.

To what extent can President Trump deliver on his commitments to the voters who gave him the nomination?  The same forces that have dragged on the economy for a while now are likely to hamper some of his plans, while some of his plans will likely further drag on the economy.

For one thing, tax cuts combined with a big infrastructure plan will expand the deficit and increase inflationary pressures.  The Fed will raise interest rates in response, dragging back on the economic growth that the president wants to encourage.   The anti-immigrant stance will only worsen the labor supply bottleneck is in the years ahead.  Thus, there is some reason to expect that the Trump administration will disappoint its core constituency.

Democrats might want to hesitate before shifting from protesting in the streets to dancing in the streets.  First, no one doubts that America needs a massive overhaul of its infrastructure.  How to pay for it and how to burst through the resistance of opponents[2] are problems for any successor to the Trump administration.  Second, in a labor-short economy, a big chunk of workers (those without college degrees) are being left behind.  Somebody needs to think of a constructive solution, rather than just viewing them with contempt.

[1] Gregory Mankiw, “Advice for Trump: Ask an Economist,” NYT, 12 March 2017.

[2] For example, both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are infrastructure projects.

The Deep State.

Posted on by
1

Anyone who paid attention to the Egyptian coup that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, or to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s battering of the Turkish military, civil bureaucracy, and intellectuals after a failed coup will have encountered the term “deep state.”  It refers to networks of officers, bureaucrats, journalists, and businessmen who actually control government by concerted actions behind the scenes.[1]  The “deep state” endures across generations, rather than being a momentary conspiracy; it recruits its members by invitation, rather than by public competition; and it is inherently un-democratic, both in its means of operation and its ability to manipulate the course of elected governments.  However, Middle Eastern societies seem particularly vulnerable to conspiracy theories.

Now the term has surfaced in American politics.   Breitbart News, other right-wing web-sites, and the social media feeds of many Trump supporters have been using the term for a while now.  When President Trump’s supposed “grey eminence,” Steve Bannon, used the term “administrative state” in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times construed his words to refer to the “deep state.”[2]  Newt Gingrich seemed to be playing Charlie McCarthy to Bannon’s Edgar Bergen when he said that “We’re up against a permanent bureaucratic structure defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so.”  Their aim is to undermine the Trump presidency.   Some even see this conspiracy as being directed by former President Barack Obama, who announced his willingness to break the traditional silence of former presidents when the new administration threatened “our core values.”[3]  (This view ignores the roll-out of HealthCare.gov.)

Former Obama administration government officials rushed to denounce the charge, albeit in circumspect language.  One said that “deep state” is “a phrase we’ve used for Turkey and other countries like that, but not for the American republic.”[4]  Another expressed surprise that a president would suggest that civil servants would try to undermine the government.  So, that’s settled.[5]   The NYT sought to normalize this as habitual Republican back-biting.

What gets lost in this unseemly mud-slinging is the pedigree of the issue.  In his 1959 farewell address Dwight Eisenhower warned of a “military-industrial complex.”  In the 1960s and again in the last few years, well-informed people have analyzed the power of the national security bureaucracy.  Sandwiched in between these Jeremiads, the journalist-turned-open-novelist Fletcher Knebel hit the best-seller lists with “Seven Days in May” (1962), about a military coup, and “The Night of Camp David” (1965), about a crazy president.  More recently, Chalmers Johnson published three books on the costs of “empire.”  Democracy was chief among them.[6]  Well-informed people haven’t taken the issue as a joke.  Even if everyone else does.

Is there a “deep state” in America?  Of course not.  What seems more likely, and disturbing, is that there is a momentary open quarrel between a president and the national security professionals.   Would such a quarrel precipitate the formation of a “deep state”?

[1] If this is true, then the common public discourse and action beloved of academics has little real meaning.  Instead, the books on the shelves of junior army officers and school principals, and conferences on the middle floors of government ministries or dinner meetings in private homes hold the key to understanding events.

[2] Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “’Deep State’?  Until Now It Was a Foreign Concept,” NYT, 7 March 2017.

[3] It is worth comparing these remarks with the boom in sales of dystopian novels to alarmed Democrats.

[4] OK, so what’s the American term?  The NYT reporter did not ask.

[5] Although it doesn’t seem to have been the Russkies who leaked to the press news compromising National Security Adviser-for-a-Day Michael Flynn.

[6] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/02/13/cinay-sayers/;and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_Johnson

My Weekly Reader 1 March 2017.

Posted on by
Reply

In recent years, I have noticed–and lost track of–how many times a head-line in the New York Times describes something as “risky.”[1]  The word is meant to deprecate, rather than to laud the thing being described.  Clearly, both the editors and the typical Times reader are risk averse.  OK, so what?  So this.

Tyler Cowen, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (2017), argues that risk-taking and an openness to change “made America the world’s most productive an innovative economy.”  Now, however, the American economy appears much less innovative and aspirational.[2]  Start-ups as a share of American companies have fallen from 12-13 percent in the 1980s to 7-8 percent today; over the last eight years productivity growth has increased at about half the average rate for the period since 1945.  The former may be taken as a rough measure of entrepreneurialism; the latter may be taken as a rough measure of technological innovation.  Then there is the widespread prescription of mood-leveling anti-depressants.  Perhaps these blunt enthusiasm and engagement (as well as the impulse to drive your car into a telephone pole)?  Even Americans’ recreational drugs-of-choice disappoint.  We’ve gone from dropping acid and snorting coke to drifting away on an opioid cloud.

Cowen believes that Americans have shifted from “building a new and freer world” to “rearranging the pieces in the world we already have.”  To steal a metaphor from demography, Americans are becoming increasingly “endogamous” (marrying people inside the familiar social group) and decreasingly “exogamous” (marrying people outside the familiar social group).  That is, people are increasingly “matching” with others who share their own identity, whether it is politics, or residential location, or interior design.[3]  One way or another, risk-aversion and a fear of change have seized hold of the hearts of a broad swathe of Americans.

While Cowen offers some cautious suggestions about the future, the book may incite a closer examination of the past.  If Cowen is correct, then how did this risk-aversion come about?  In a sense, “morning in America” or no, the last forty years have been trying times.[4]  The oil shocks of the Seventies announced a long era of the disruption of the settled economy of the post-war period.  A whole set of important social relationships and institutional arrangements rested upon the prosperity yielded by that settled economy.

A whole string of unforeseen disasters revealed errors in human judgement.  Take a few recent examples.  The invasion of Iraq in 2003 seemed like a good idea to some people and a bad idea to other people, but no one anticipated that the Pentagon would mess-up the subsequent occupation.  In the first decade of the 21st Century, a housing bubble existed and banks were badly compromised, but only a few people perceived the danger and government regulators were not among them.  The “Deepwater Horizon” blow-out left some people agape at the realization that no one in the oil industry had ever asked what would happen if the blow-out preventer failed, as technology does with surprising frequency.[5]

Seen in this light, it is possible to understand why many people have come to adopt a stance of “first do no harm.”  However, it may be that such a stance does a different kind of harm.

[1] For a sampling, see: https://www.google.com/search?q=New+York+times+%22risky%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

[2] Matthew Rees, “Lazy Does It,” WSJ, 1 March 2017, p. A15.

[3] For another take on this issue, see: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2017/02/08/pret-a-penser/

[4] “Make America Great Again” is a frank acknowledgement of a feeling shared by many Americans.

[5] For example, Samsung phones catching fire or Takata air-bags deploying when there weren’t supposed to.

Small wars and demolition.

Posted on by
Reply

North Korea has developed nuclear weapons.  Not really a problem.  FedEx doesn’t pick up in North Korea and the North Koreans don’t have a delivery system (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, ICBM).  Oh, wait, they just tested an intermediate range missile.  Well, that couldn’t reach the United States.  So, not really a problem, yet.  It could reach South Korea or Japan, however, and both are American allies.[1]  So, that’s a problem.

North Korea has been “carpet sanctioned” by the United Nations (U.N.) for its nuclear program and other things.[2]  Chinese support is North Korea’s only lifeline.  It seems to be widely agreed that Chinese pressure could bring an end to the regime.  According to President Trump, “China has control, absolute control, over North Korea.”  So, why doesn’t China topple the North Korean psychocracy?  It could be that North Korea isn’t any more trusting of China than it is of anyone else.  Perhaps lots of Chinese agents of influence and spies within the North Korean government keep ending up dead?  That could cut down the scope for action short of war.

Or, perhaps China sees North Korea as a desirable destabilizing force in the region.  China, The Peoples Republic, of has been intruding aggressively into the non-state waters of the South China Sea.  This program of reef-claiming, reef-enhancing, and reef-arming has put China at odds with Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.  In these alarming circumstances, North Korean aggression and the perception that China has a leash on North Korea may work to enhance China’s bargaining power.  In this context, China’s Foreigners Ministry has argued that the Americans should deal directly with North Korea.[3]

Meanwhile, the United States is at war with radical Islam.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban use safe-havens in Pakistan from which to wage war in their own country.  According to the local American military commander, the war is a “stalemate.”  A mere 8,400 American soldiers are trying to brace-up and train the Afghan army and police.  The Taliban seem able to learn how to fight a war without such trainers.

In Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has been battered into fragments.  Again, a small number of American troops are serving as trainers and advisers for Syrian and Iraqi troops, and as spotters for air strikes.  Still, several political problems remain on front-burners.  First, ISIS will not long survive as an organized military force or a political community.  What will become of the survivors as they flee the cauldron?  Will they attempt to return home, there to continue the struggle?[4]  Then, the defeat of ISIS is a long way from the defeat of radical Islam.  What new insurgency will pop up, either immediately or in the future?

Second, much of the heavy lifting in both Syria and Iraq has been done by Kurds.  Over the long-term, American support for the Kurds challenges the national integrity of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.  The Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria may be in no position—or no mood—to carry the fight to ISIS.  An Iraq riven by sectarian conflicts may find itself in the same boat.  That would leave Turkey—a NATO ally of the United States—as the chief opponent of Kurdish nationalism.  That, in turn, will create a dilemma for American diplomacy.  Will America back the Kurds[5] or the Turks?  In either case, the Russians will find an opening.

[1] “America’s Military Challenges,” The Week, 3 March 2017, p. 11.

[2] That doesn’t seem to have done the trick.

[3] The sloppy murder of the half-brother of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un in a Kuala Lumpur airport and the subsequent hasty execution of five North Korean intelligence officers may complicate matters for China.

[4] Or, alternatively, take up the rocker and thrill younger generations with their tales of daring-do?

[5] “Gratitude has a short half-life”—Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs.