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Why Does the U.S. Get All the Tornadoes?
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 - 12:38 PM
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Earlier this summer I mentioned that I was reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and I promised to sum up the insights that I had gleaned from it. The book is well-worth reading -- if not quite on a par with his earlier Guns, Germs, and Steel -- and you'll learn an enormous amount about a diverse set of past societies and the range of scientific knowledge (geology, botany, forensic archaeology, etc.) that is enabling us to understand why they prospered and/or declined.
The core of the book is a series of detailed case studies of societies that collapsed and disappeared because they were unable to adapt to demanding and/or deteriorating environmental, economic, or political conditions. He examines the fate of the Easter Islanders, the Mayans, the Anasazi of the Pacific Southwest, the Norse colonies in Western Greenland (among others), and contrasts them with other societies (e.g., the New Guinea highlanders) who managed to develop enduring modes of life in demanding circumstances. He also considers modern phenomenon such as the Rwandan genocide and China and Australia's environmental problems in light of these earlier examples.
I read the book because I am working on a project exploring why states (and groups and individuals) often find it difficult to "cut their losses" and abandon policies that are clearly not working. This topic is a subset of the larger (and to me, endlessly fascinating) question of why smart and well-educated people can nonetheless make disastrous (and with hindsight, obviously boneheaded) decisions. Diamond's work is also potentially relevant to the perennial debate on American decline: Is it occurring, is it inevitable, and how should we respond?
So what lessons does Diamond draw from his case studies, and what insights might we glean for the conduct of foreign policy? Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me as I finished the book.
First, he argues that sometimes societies fail to anticipate an emerging problem because they lack adequate knowledge or prior experience with the phenomenon at hand. Primitive societies may not have recognized the danger of soil depletion, for example, because they lacked an adequate understanding of basic soil chemistry. A society may also fail to spot trouble if the main problem it is facing recurs only infrequently, because the knowledge of how to detect or deal with the problem may have been forgotten. As he emphasizes, this is especially problematic for primitive societies that lack written records, but historical amnesia can also occur even in highly literate societies like our own.
By analogy, one could argue that some recent failures in U.S. foreign policy were of this sort. Hardly anybody anticipated that U.S. support for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in Afghanistan would eventually lead to the formation of virulent anti-American terrorist groups, in part because the U.S. leaders didn't know very much about that part of the world and because public discourse about U.S. policy in the Middle East is filled with gaping holes. Similarly, the people who led us into Iraq in 2003 were remarkably ignorant about the history and basic character of Iraqi society (as well as the actual nature of Saddam's regime). To make matters worse, the U.S. military had forgotten many of the lessons of Vietnam and had to try to relearn them all over again, with only partial success.
Second, societies may fail to detect a growing problem if their leaders are too far removed from the source of the trouble. Diamond refers to this as the problem of "distant managers," and it may explain why U.S. policymakers often make decisions that seem foolish in hindsight. As I've noted here before, one problem facing U.S. foreign policymakers is the sheer number and scope of the problems they are trying to address, which inevitably forces them to rely on reports from distant subordinates and to address issues that they cannot be expected to understand very well. Barack Obama doesn't get to spend the next few years learning Pashto and immersing himself in the details of Afghan history and culture; instead, he has to make decisions based on what he is being told by people on the ground (who may or may not know more than he does). Unfortunately, the latter have obvious reasons to tell an upbeat story, if only to make their own efforts look good. If things are going badly, therefore, the people at the top back in Washington may be the last to know.
Third, serious problems may go undetected when a long-term negative trend is masked by large short-term fluctuations. Climate change is the classic illustration here: there are lots of short-term fluctuations in atmospheric temperature (daily, seasonally, annually and over eons), which allows climate change skeptics to seize upon any unusual cold snap as "evidence" that greenhouse gases are of no concern.
Similarly, it's easy to find short-term signs of American primacy that may be masking adverse long-term trends. Optimists can point to U.S. military predominance and the fact that the American economy is still the world's largest, or to the number of patents and Nobel Prizes that U.S. scientists continue to win. But just as the British Empire reached its greatest territorial expanse after World War I (when its actual power was decidedly on the wane), these positive features may be largely a product of past investments (and good fortune) and focusing on them could lead us to miss the eroding foundations of American power.
A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that are in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. The "tragedy of the commons" is a classic illustration of this problem, but one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group's preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest. Tariffs to protect particular industries or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.
Ironically, these problems may be especially acute in today's market-oriented democracies. We like to think that open societies foster a well-functioning "marketplace of ideas," and that the clash of different views will weed out foolish notions and ensure that problems get identified and addressed in a timely fashion. Sometimes that's probably true, but when well-funded special interests can readily pollute the national mind, intellectual market failure is the more likely result. After all, it is often easier and cheaper to invent self-serving lies and distortions than it is to ferret out the truth, and there are plenty of people (and organizations) for whom truth-telling is anathema and self-serving political propaganda is the norm. When professional falsifiers are more numerous, better-funded, and louder than truth-tellers, society will get dumber over time and will end up repeating the same blunders.
Fifth, even when a state or society recognizes that it is in trouble, Diamond identifies a number of pathologies that make it harder for them to adapt and survive. Political divisions may make it impossible to take timely action even when everyone realizes that something ought to be done (think gridlock in Congress), and key leaders may be prone to either "groupthink" or various forms of psychological denial. And the bad news here is that no one has ever devised an effective and universally reliable antidote to these problems.
Moreover, if a group's identity is based on certain cherished values or beliefs, it may be hard to abandon them even when survival is at stake. Diamond suggests that the Norse colonies in Greenland may have disappeared because the Norse were unwilling to abandon certain traditional practices and imitate the local Inuits (e.g., by adopting seal hunting via kayaks), and it is easy to think of contemporary analogues to this sort of cultural rigidity. Military organizations often find it hard to abandon familiar doctrines and procedures, and states that are strongly committed to particular territorial objectives often find it nearly impossible to rethink these commitments. Look how long it took the French to leave Algeria, or consider the attachment to Kosovo that is central to Serbian nationalist thinking, and how it led them into a costly (and probably unnecessary) war in 1999.
To sum up (in Diamond's words):
Human societies and smaller groups make disastrous decisions for a whole sequence of reasons: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive it once it has arisen, failure to attempt to solve it after it has been perceived, and failure to succeed in attempts to solve it."
That last point is worth highlighting too. Even when states do figure out that they're in trouble and get serious about trying to address the problem, they may still fail because a ready and affordable fix is not available. Given their remarkably fortunate history, Americans tend to think that any problem can be fixed if we just try hard enough. That was never true in the past and it isn't true today, and the real challenge remains learning how to distinguish between those situations where extra effort is likely to pay off and those where cutting one's losses makes a lot more sense.
TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images
The most inspiring part of Collapse is the account of how the people of Tikopia achieved a consensus that they had to slaughter all their pigs if they were to preserve agriculture on their small Pacific island. Preliterate, stone age, sorely lacking in PhD-staffed thinktanks, they undersood their situation, they acted, and they survived.
They had no George F Will to lie in service of the pig lobby.
What a nasty thing to say about George F Will. I love it.
The really sad thing is that he is one of the smart conservatives; he is no Beck or Palin. So how can he fail so badly to understand global warming and any other ecological issue? I think the subconscious reasoning in his head goes like this:
1. Government regulation is always and everywhere bad. The free market always regulates itself better than government can.
2. If global warming is happening, then there must be governmental action to meet the problem.
3. Therefore global warming cannot be happening.
Will is too smart to think such a thing consciously, but it is in the back of his mind governing his thinking. Worse for us, most of the GOP are not so smart and pretty much say this all the time. Somehow since Nixon said famously "We are all Keynesians now." the GOP and a certain percentage of voters have come to believe that government action is always bad and that the only good thing that government can do is cut taxes. That is the cure for everything.
Unfortunately for us, Obama never had "100 days" like FDR in which to pass badly needed legislation. The result was a too-small stimulus and a year's agonizing fight over health care, high unemployment and other continuing problems. If our country is unable to respond adequately to problems that face us, it is because too many people believe that the free market will solve everything and all we have to do is ignore problems until they go away.
The points above is only relevant to existential/crippling threats. What existential/crippling threats does the US face?
1) A negative economic trend. Increasing debt together with congressional gridlock could eventually cause the US to default on its debts. Doing this would destroy the dollar as the world currency and move the US away from the center of the world economy. I'd say this falls under point 4.
2) Polarizing politics. The increased hatred in American politics, if it goes on unchecked, might eventually lead to the dissolution of the union/civil war. I'd say this falls under 5.
Both my 1 & 2 seems far of in my opinion. I deliberately did not list climate change since I think that it might actually work for the US rather than against it, at least in terms of the US continuing to be the hyperpower. The US will be so much more capable to handle the problems than India and China that it will benefit.
My conclusion is that Walt's 1-3 does not apply to the US (in context).
Zorro, The US defaulting on its federal debt is near a near zero
event.
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The US can do what other governments can in case of outstanding debt, print more money. Unlike individuals, corporations, or even states, the Federal Government has the authority to create as much lucre as it wants. Granted the flip side of this is inflation, sometimes devestatingly so (see Germany in the 1930's and Argentina in the 1980's), but in terms of debt holders, inflation reduces the value of their outstanding holdings, meaning that the old $10 trillion in federal debt becomes worth less, if not outright worthless. Default? Not likely. This is not a case of Greece, which as a member of the EU has its debt printed in Euros.
By printing money and creating hyper inflation it is the same as defaulting. We won't be able to borrow money, after all the return on those T-bills would have to astronomical. The upshot of default or hyper inflation is that we will have to balance our budget post haste.
We've got 2-4 years to do this, or make significant inroads toward that end. Again, the question is, what do we cut, entitlements, or the Pentagon. I know what the Israeli lobby wants to see cut, the want to see us cut our entitlements so we can subsidize their military and allow them to keep their socialist state subsidies.
No Steve, we're not going bust.
Second, the reality is this, because the US’ debt is denominated in dollars, a devaluation of our currency, which is what would occur in the event of an increase in the US money supply, would not mean that we wouldn’t be able to borrow money. Yes, the cost of borrowings would increase, but again, there are many, many steps involved before reaching an absolute breaking point. Zorro is talking in absolutes, so are you. The financial markets though, don’t deal in absolutes but quite often, relativity in terms of valuation.
Also your timeline is as apocalyptic as Walt’s. Two to four years is a blip in the financial world, and if there was a risk that the US would default on its loans in that brief amount of time, rates on US debt would already be skyrocketing. As it is though, the interest rate on the 30-year US Treasury notes are in the 2.5% range, a multi-decade low.
Your “Israel lobby” forecasting appears as accurate as your financial acumen. The reality is entitlement spending needs to be cut regardless of any so-called “lobby’s” wishes. Out of a planned $3.69 TRILLION budget planned for fiscal 2011, Military spending accounts for $738.0 Billion, matched by $738.0 billion in spending for Social Security. Throw in another $488.0 billion in Medicare spending too. The combined spending of these three segments alone reaches $1.96 Trillion or 53% of total Federal spending.
For objectivities sake, let’s examine the aid the US sends to Israel, roughly $3.0 billion. If the US were to eliminate the entire aid package, it would reduce spending by 0.08%.
The reality is the $3.00 billion is cheap to help secure an ally in the face of daily threats for 60 years. Israel haters like to try to make this money out to be some sort of gift, or worse, some shakedown by the Jews. This is false. The United States spends billion of dollars supporting its allies around the globe, and this doesn’t even count the lives on the line. Think $3.00 billion is expensive? Try funding 20,000 troops sitting on the border between North and South Korea for 50 years; same thing with our annual spending to support NATO.
Of course the fact that Israel is hardly a socialist state should not be a surprise to you, but apparently it is. Your ideology is getting in the way of rational thought.
It's life Jim, but not as we know it.
Ah Arvay, so nice to see what the Jew haters think of us. We’re less than human, “Parisites”. Nice. At least your comments show us the direction you are coming from.
You're making an elementary mistake, one mentioned in the article. Our debt burden on existing notes WILL be diminished. But, if our debt obligation is $60T then our debt that is set at fixed rates is only a 1/4th of our debt. Fully 3/4ths of it is not only pegged to inflation, but will exceed inflation.
This 3/4ths is our entitlements promises. Social Security payouts rise with inflation, and Medicare/Medicaid will also rise with inflation, and if history is any indication will exceed the rate of inflation. Sharper minds than yours miss this. But, it's unavoidable. Solutions from the past may not work in the future.
We spend over a Trillion dollars on war and security. Your figure ignores our nuclear reserve (dept of Energy), intelligence operations, veterans affairs, and supplemental funding of wars.
Israel gets $3b in direct aid, plus $2.5b to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon (all for Israel) this doesn't include gifts of weapons systems.
As to Israel being socialist, you should consider those industries that serve the GOI, that would included medical spending, your vaunted military/intelligence spending, telecommunications, support for settlers are all command economy programs. Refer to the 3 markets theory--Israel's utilities/monopoly sector is huge. When the government is the customer, that's socialism.
Actually, in America this is a growing proportion of our own economy. There is hardly any growth in the private sector. Adding to the problem, we count many private gov't contractors as "private sector jobs"
You may think America needs to cut it's entitlement promises, but that is not for Israel to decide. I don't think Zionists want to be seen making this argument while holding it's hand out. Remember, (I won't let you forget) support for Israel is plummeting. As belts tighten, the old American Isolationism will become more popular.
$60.0 Trillion Scott? Please this is not a math class on
imaginary numbers. Accounting deals only with real numbers.
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Declaring that a potential future "obligation" is a set in stone cost that is a balance sheet debt is foolish.
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There is no obligation for the US to pay social security benefits at the rate it is doing now, and we haven't. The "retirement age" has been creeping up steadily over the past 20 years to the point where "full" social security benefits are received at age 67.
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The obvious way to reduce this obligation is to reduce the obligation. Raise the retirement age to 70, or 72 or even 75 for that matter. Realize that when Social Security came into existence the average lifespan of Americans was somewhere around 70 to beginwith. Now, we're pushing "on average" to 79.4 years, and women reaching 83 years.
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So you cut the duration of the benefit payments and that supposed $60 trillion goes way down. Same thing with Medicare. Given that I still have several decades to pay into the system for lower expected benefits sucks personally, but you can't have an unfunded benefits system that goes on ad infinitum.
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You're going to see a similar shift with state pension plans too. People are going to receive less. The economy, and thus the taxpayers and voters, aren't going to stand for it.
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But please, as my Yogi always told me "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Don't start throwing around expected future variable costs as if they were debt already owed paid for with money already borrowed.
For Scott, where the money goes
It’s not my figure Scott and I may be off. I took the budget numbers from the New York Times. Here’s the link. It’s an interesting interactive chart that the paper published back in February.
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html?scp=1&sq=us%20federal%20budget&st=cse
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As a heads up, military retirement costs and veteran affairs fall under three separate categories “Income security (Military retirement $51.00 billion) and DoD healthcare ($8.6 billion), and veteran benefits of $122.0 million. So yeah, chalk it up to approximately $1.00 Trillion.
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Yes, Israel gets $3.0 billion in aid. This translates into the 0.08% of the total budget. I doubled the figure for Jordan and Egypt which gets you to the 0.16%.
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When the government is the customer that’s socialism? That’s an idiotic claim unless you’re prepared to make the same charge to the US. Ever hear of Boeing? General Dynamics? Halliburton? US utilities are certainly considered local and regional monopolies that are based on a cost+ system of payments. When the government is in control is communism, when people receive generous cradle to grave benefits, as is done in Western Europe to date, that’s socialism.
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Yes, near-term growth has come from Government employment. But that’s a short historical part of the business cycle. We’re trying to climb out of a recession that has been coupled to a credit crisis that comes in the aftermath of a over-investment cycle in real estate. That’s going to take time to work through. But the idea that this is a structural shift in the US economy towards socialism or government control is off the mark.
As for your last point about America cutting its entitlement promises, I make this argument as a tax-paying and voting American citizen. Personally, I’m still scratching my head about the $20.00 billion annually spent on farm subsidies, a figure more than 3x what you’re claiming Israel is siphoning from the US economy. That said, the US aid for Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, are to advance US interests, not Israeli. Same thing for the more than $18 billion in aid we have sent Pakistan's way during the past decade. The idea that all foreign aid in the Middle East is due to Israel is false and foolish.
Mr Blues, please feel obliged to stay serious will you.
The cost of 3 billion is grossly underestimated: What about the negative externality we suffer because of our support of Israel? After all, America has an entire region's hearts and minds against her, over what? A throwback from the cold war? The truth is that Israel is a thorn in the side of the world today; with her warmongering 5th column in the United states; her aggression against her neighbours; or her posturing against Iran, which if turned into aggression, will have sever consequences for the supply of oil and its price at market. Rest assured the world will put Israel in a coffin and nail it shut if the straight of Hormuz fails to spit out is oil because of her.
You probably will try to reach for one of those Kosher comments: they hate us because of our values, it has nothing to do with Israel. Whereas those who think much of common sense will look into the mouths of the grieved, and the facts on the ground.
Jake, (I think, the "REPLY" doesn't show your comment)
"That’s an idiotic claim unless you’re prepared to make the same charge to the US. Ever hear of Boeing? General Dynamics? Halliburton? US utilities are certainly considered local and regional monopolies that are based on a cost+ system of payments"
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I'M SAYING THOSE COMPANIES ARE PRIVATIZED SOCIALISM, cost + is a perversion of economics. As are our Farm Subsidies. That's an example of creating a monopoly in what should be a free and competitive market. Whereas food stamps, subsidize without perverting the market or supply and demand.
This is a vital analysis for getting out of our current troubles. Sadly ITEM #4 tragedy of the commons prevents us from addressing this. I'm not picking on Israel, though I'd bet that (historically at least) they were more guilty of this than us. I think we're becoming increasingly alike here. Israel is smaller which may make this more tenable as well as the fact that they get USG business too.
No Darod, the $3.00 billion is the real cost. If you’re going to play around with “negative externalities”, then you need to put the cost of this in the accounts of the Arab and Muslim states that have rejected, and continue to reject Israel’s existence. It is their hatred that is keeping the cost so high. The idea that Israel’s survival is a negative cost, would be akin to the US judging the aid to The UK during WWII to be a “negative externality. It would have been much easier to let Hitler conquer the continent. Same thing with Western Europe vs. the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.
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As for the “entire region”, there has been, and continues to be enough intra-Arab and intra-Muslim conflict that we have stepped into, merely as a result of our place in the world order, that we would have such anger. As for the so-called “thorn in the side”, sorry, but Israel has a right to exist. It’s actions, including its thorniness, include making peace with the only two neighbors that have stepped up to the plate. So the idea that this is a “war-mongering” country, falls flat. Especially, when on the other side of the coin you have violent extremist groups like HAMAS and Hizballah, which cling to their rejectionist ideals that call for the genocide of Israel’s Jewish population.
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Does Israel run the risk of international condemnation if Iran tries to cut off oil exports? Of course. We only need go back as far as 1976 to see Israel condemned for its raid on Entebbe, which earned the nation one of its infamous UN resolutions condemning the violence used by the IDF to rescue the Jewish hostages from the PLO and Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin.
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I wouldn’t dream of using “kosher” arguments on this site for anything but a discussion of Kashrus, and truth be told, I don’t have to. It’s not an issue of Israel’s values that are at question here.
"you need to put the cost of this in the accounts of the Arab and Muslim states that have rejected, and continue to reject Israel’s existence."
I love how you ignore the Arab League's standing offer--where as Israel's offers for peace come with the "you snooze, you lose." So, the whole premise of this comment is based on a shibboleth. Hamas also has a standing offer, recognize the Palestinians' right to human, civil and property rights and we can talk. It is Israel that is rejectionist. How you ignore this with Bibi "I scuttled the peace process" Netanyahu in office is amazing. (Or his predecessor, Ehud "If I were a Palestinian I'd reject our offers" Barak; or, Itsak "I was murdered for making a niggardly offer" Rabin.
You LIE.
I would read the Arab-League's proposal Scott
The so-called Arab plan is little more than a rehash of Arab maximalist demands coupled with an iffysortakindof thought towards peace. If you recall, back during the Beruit meeting of the A/L, the organization watered down and requirement on behalf of its members for honoring "peace" and "normalization" leaving it up to individual members to decide how much of any they were going to really offer, and providing a number of loopholes where the Arab states could back out of such situations.
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At the same time, when the offer was originally proposed, then Israeli PM Sharon offered to fly to Saudi Arabia and discuss the proposal with King Abdullah. That move was outright rejected and the Saudis refused to meet with Sharon to discuss the offer.
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That's not a plan for peace, that's a thinly veiled mafioso demand that "cannot be refused".
Another point that could be made
The US continues to make really dumb decisions. Many of us see this at the time and I suspect that the major players are also aware. The wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind. What Vietnam taught us, I am afraid, is that we can make colossally stupid decisions, but are so rich that it doesn't make any difference (the 50,000 dead can be explained away as they died so we could be free sort of pablum). Today we seem to be in a similar mindset. True the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a mistake but correcting that mistake is politically unacceptable, and anyway we are the richest nation on earth and the price is tolerable. Again, the dead soldiers can be explained that they died so we could remain free.
This error of judgment can only be rectified by national bankruptcy -- that is probably the proof that is required for those who rule.
Grab your towels and "Don't Panic" buttons! The sky is fall...
too late.
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We're dead, vaporized atoms that will now make way for a Vogon hyperspace bypass. Too bad we missed the signs.
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Walt's Chicken Little "The sky is falling" routine holds little water for the US today. Important to note is that 75% of his examples include fringe settlements at the edge of environmental and economic survivability. Easter Island, the South Seas Islanders ,and Greenlanders, were all fringe populaitons, either settlements or explorers. You might as well throw in the cliff dwellers of Chaco Canyon and Jamestown colony for this sort of exercise.
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Let's think about the word that Walt is arguing "collapse". We're not talking downturn, we're not talking depression, or reduction in power, we're talking demise, dead and gone. Given that the US is the pre-eminent economy and military power in the world, examining Easter Island is a false comparison. If you want to see vaporized empires, look at other empires that collapsed and dissapeared. Rome, Ottoman, Babylonian, Persian, Chinese, British, Soviet, Japanese. Pick one or more.
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Of course the reality is, while empires rise and fall, the core nations remain. Great Britan, despite Walt's claim that it's "Empire" has collaspsed, remains in existence, and remains quite powerful, with a $2.7 trillion economy, and military that is in the top five of power and projection. China, despite several hundred years of fading power, hardly collapsed, and is now again a growing power, with the second largest economy.
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Walt's arguments sound like someone should pick up the body of work by Peter Drucker to learn and build better management and leadership skills.
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But the idea that "Societal Collapse", rests with a few select elites doesn't hold water, especially in what is supposed to be a dynamic capitalist society.
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At the end of the day, Paul Kennedy's work "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" provides a more stable argument, you need to have a sufficiently profitable economy to fund any projection of power in the international arena. No money, no ability to pay the troops, no ability to project force or will. Sun Tzu made a similar argument several thousand years ago.
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But power, like the stock market, is not a pure upward path. There are ups and downs in any long-lived society. But downturns, even serious ones, don't forshadow "collapse".
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Of course, Walt can't just discuss business cycles or fiscal prudence. If he's going to stake his flag in the sand, it must be over a "CATACLYSMIC" problem, which of course, can only be saved by such elites as himself. Since Walt already pointed out his reason for going into this field is to wave his messianic banner of salvation, we see now that to do so requires him donning his cape with a big red "S" to swoop in and save the day.
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Of course, all super heros need a villan, and Walt, though more circumspect in this piece, has already placed forth his evil nemisis, everybody's favorite scapegoat, the Jews.
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Of course, this all flies in the face of reality. The US economy needs to work through the debt buildup, and that will take time as individuals put more of their money in the bank to actually save, while also paying down the enormous credit card bills they built up over the past decade plus. Similar belt tightening is taking place in Europe and will take place at the state and federal level, most likely with both social entitlements and military spending, which accounts for over 2/3's of the Federal budget, will be reduced. Meanwhile, investors and inventors, if given space, will continue to innovate and provide new ideas to help drive profitable growth.
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Monitoring the US food supply will take on additional importance, but Walt seems to miss the fact that we are now producing roughly 3,800 calories per-capital daily, vs. a need of only 2,300. What this means is that should the environment reduce US food production by up to 40% of its capacity, we will achieve production parity with a healthy level of consumption.
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Tune in next week when Stephen Walt says "Holy Conspiracy Theories...Listen to Me!!!"
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Same Batty Time; Same Batty Channel.
Jacob, I enjoyed this about three times as much
as reading Walt's take. I am a fan of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" but it is quite irrelevant to American society today. And I also take issue with Steve's incessant scapegoating of his poorly-defined Israel lobby and find it offensive (and I can go through any Sarah Silverman, Goerge Carlin, etc... so i'm not easily offended). I've been thinking about it for a while, and realized that there is no use trying to stop him, or argue him down from this elite tree in which he perches and refuses to climb off of. The fact of the matter is that our intelligence is pretty much predetermined at birth. Of course, if we nurture it, it will flower and if we don't, it wouldn't necessarily, but the deal here is that the truly intelligent and informed people will know better than Walt's Israel Lobby drivel. This is an arrogant argument (he's not only saying that congressmen and women are slave to the Lobby's wishes, but also that they submit due to money, which is not only a Jewish blood libel but also an affront to the integrity of many politicans that aren't necessarily that crooked), that only holds water amongst Jew baiters and the like - you just won't find one intelligent thinker who agrees with him. I have known a fair share of brilliant International Relations professors from around the world, and Walt does not even make the list.
Err, somebody, what is the relevance
of your comments to Walt's current essay. If you didn't notice this was not a Lobby essay nor even an Israeli one. It was about decision making during periods of stress. You and Jacob didn't understand a thing. He was not predicting any imminent fall of the US but is pointing out that the US is under stress and that we have been making decisions that often make matters worse. Perhaps you guys have education levels too low to understand a sophisticated thinker.
Despite your alleged familiarity with the world's most "brilliant" IR scholars, and your additional claim that Walt "does not make the list," you must not be familiar with the actual "list" on this topic--William & Mary's survey of IR scholars.
In fact, W&M's survey of over 2700 IR scholars from around the globe routinely ranks Walt as one of the 20 most influential IR scholars in the world.
Additionally, your claim that "you won't find one intelligent thinker" who agrees with Walt's writings on the Israel Lobby is quite obviously false. To begin with, you may recall that Walt had a co-author named Mearsheimer who, by the way, also routinely makes the W&M list. In fact, Mearsheimer usually ranks among the top 5 most influential IR scholars in the world.
Moreover, you may have heard of an IR scholar--and practitioner--named Brzezinski who, on these very pages of FP, also endorsed Walt's writings regarding the negative influence of pro-Israel groups on U.S. foreign policy.
Presumably, you're an Israel supporter yourself, which would understandably explain your hostiliy towards Walt. This hostility, however, appears to have interfered with your ability to think clearly on the matter, which is ironic given your charges against Walt.
You really foster your cred with your impeccable research
"What I Learned from Jared Diamond"
"all hasbra agents. They are probably all the same person! Only steve walt and I are not hasbra. Khan is ok."
Translation: nutcase
SYVANEN, Go read the lead in comment on FP's home page
5 reasons the US is collapsing. It is similar to the headline used yesterday.
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As for my argument about Steve going after the Jews, here is what he writes above:
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"A fourth source of foolish decisions is the well-known tendency for individuals to act in ways that in their own selfish interest but not in the interest of the society as a whole. ...one sees the same basic dynamic whenever a narrow interest group's preferences are allowed to trump the broader national interest....or foreign policies designed to appease a particular domestic constituency are obvious cases in point.
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The hidden "particular domestic consitutuancy" that Steve likes to wave about, Jews.
Which domestic interest groups does Walt worry about?
The "reply" button seems to link me to the wrong Blues comment but ...
He reads Walt's indeterminate reference to domestic interest groups as the Israel lobby.
I read it as big oil, finance, and the general oligopoly making 100 times the median salary, determined to protect their position at the top of the social order.
Perhaps that says more about what preoccupies us than it does about what Walt meant?
For all that the problem of Israel is a major factor in the Middle East, the Middle East by itself is not a large enough factor to bring the decline of the American post-empire. After all, repeating the old nostrum, great powers are defeated from within before they're defeated from without.
Thank you for this, Steve. I have read *Guns, Germs, and Steel* and think it is brilliant. I will now put this newer book on my "must read" list.
I look forward to anything you choose to write on the decline of the American empire. As a Canadian, whose present prime minister is one of Washington's "useful idiots," I have an interest in seeing that the U.S. somehow manages a soft landing. Because if the US goes down, we go with it.
And as a "pro-US-nation, anti-US-state" type person, my fingers are permanently crossed.
It stands to gain from global warming locally, with warmer weather and increased accessibility to previously iced-over trade routes and undersea resources. Pretty soon, Americans will be saying how evil Canadian foreign policy is and how we are "pro-Canadian-nation, anti-Canadian-state."
Let's Logan's Run the Baby Boomers
I think the 5 points are useful, but I agree with Zorro, 4 and 5 are the most relevant to us today. Of course 1-3 assume earnest interest in fixing the problem, 4 corrupts everything.
That said, I don't see us correcting our course. We're a big ship, steaming toward the rocks, and we haven't agreed on the problem, or which way we should turn. Once we decide, it will take time to take effect.
Of course there will be life after we hit the rocks. We're facing 10 yrs of reckoning once we correct our course. That is stagflation. However, I think it will take 2-4 years for us to hit the rocks. That's 12-15 yrs of stagflation.
But, this is a foreign policy blog. Which brings me to the TS Eliot dilemma--will we go out with a bang, or a whimper? And, how will Israel, our pet mongrel react. If past is prologue, Masada and Samson capture the TS Eliot dilemma well.
The historians hated the fall of Rome, I don't know that the Byzantium people experienced the same dissonance those historians and apologists for the state did. We've seen vilification of Muslims and Mexicans, and as entitlements squeeze us perhaps we'll get back to resenting blacks too.
Old people, the baby boomers are the real problem. They don't like to talk about this stuff, it's inappropriate, they say. I've had baby boomers my whole life telling me how SS was a chimera. Now, they're hoping against hope the fabric of America, ragged as it his holds out for them; damn posterity.
Both parties pander to them, in fact the GOP's critique of "Obamacare" is that it cut's Medicare benefits. And, the Dems are pro-Pentagon. Where do the cuts come from?
3000 yr old culture? Are you saying warmongering neo-cons and Judaism are synonymous? I thought you just argued differently 30 minutes ago? Hmmm, I'm confused, or....., maybe, you're making sophistic arguments. I'm with Glenn Greenwald, Jim Lobe, Daniel Luban, not Bill Kristol, the Kagans, and Goldberg.
First, do you know or have an idea where the project you mention in the beginning is likely to head (i.e. are you hoping to make it an article, book, or something else)
Also, what I find most frustrating today is many of the problems we face are identifiable and we have a pretty good idea of how to fix them but continue to not do so. Ones that come to mind are our national debt and dependence on oil. Not that we know exactly how to fix these but we can easily see that we need to start living within our means and start investing in alternative energy sources (regardless of climate change) because our dependence already gets us into trouble and is likely to be a high source of tension with rising powers (China, India) who will need increasing amounts of oil and will be less likely to bow to U.S. demands as their power grows relative to ours.
Other areas like infrastructure offer not only obvious problems but also great opportunities. There can be little doubt that building a nationwide high speed rail system would be a great boom to our economy for years to come yet, according to a recent Time article, this is being resisted (among other reasons) because some argue it threatens rural lifestyles. Similarly, if we were to devote a large effort to creating new energy sources (and especially if we had started when in 1973 it became obvious to everyone that foreign oil was a problem) we could use these to increase our outputs. In sum, I'm not sure if these fit neatly into any of the categories above, but I find it most troublesome when problems and opportunities are easily discernible and very fixable but still continue to go unaddressed.
The high-speed rail, while likely a huge boon to the US, is running into combined problems of democracy coupled with NIMBYism. Go do a quick search in the NY Times (Sunday Magazine) for a story they did on California's plan to build a high-speed rail running through the state. Interesting issues and challenges that make such a project a long-term investment.
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Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one's view, the US is not like China, which can rip hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and take their property assets to build massive infrastucture projects.
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The last person to do that was Robert Moses. Go read his biography "The Power Broker" to see what that was like, and that was almost 100 years ago when the US was much less populated.
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The problem with the energy issue is that right after the 1970's high oil prices came the 1980's, when the price of oil plummetted, due largely in part to the technology improvements that helped raise the efficency of energy usage. Green-tech energy is cost competitive with oil at $70 a barrel and up. It's not so in the $30 range, not without major subsidies.
Green-tech energy is cost competitive with oil at $70 a barrel and up. It's not so in the $30 range, not without major subsidies.
That may be generous, likely more like $100. Of course not all green projects are equally cost effective, and cost effectiveness and political viability are not necessarily linked.
I am not sure historical parallels are too helpful here, something quite new is happening. As the area of geopolitical activity grows larger, populations become more dense and the bigger players draw closer, the power of each player grows less until it ceases any longer to be a question of succeeding or failing simply on the basis of decisions pursued with vigour, but rather success or failure increasingly depends on the capacity to respond to external events; the difference in attitude between doing and dealing with and that is a big switch to have to make.
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The United States Will Live Forever And Will Not Go to Collapse
The United States of America is defeating all its enemies and will defeat the every hostile elements. The Amerians must support and lovetheir America .
We're already at the point where there are no good choices. The CBO came out with a study a week-10 days ago that suggested that stimulus might help over the next few years, but the debt would bite us over the 5-10 year span.
Again the big 3 expenditures of the gov't are entitlements, the pentagon and interest on the debt. Which do we cut?
So, those of you so offended by my comments regarding Israel, I've said it before, once we cut aid, I don't care what you do. I'd rather cut the pentagon budget over the others. What substantial Israeli politician is willing to tell us, no, we don't need your military subsidies?
We're at a point where we are facing tough choices, yet our aid to Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan are all largely to secure Israel. Our aid to Israel is to aid Israel. Israel has a far more generous social safety net than we do, so, are you suggesting we cut entitlements to allow Israel to keep funding their entitlements? I think that asks too much.
I know you're getting desperate. The American people are looking critically at all our superfluous expenditures. Our cities have long sense cut out the fat, they've cut muscle and are talking about amputation. But, to consider cutting aid to Israel is bigoted and anti-semitic? Sounds like you're suffering separation anxiety?
Go on, find another benefactor. We'll see whether the tail wags the dog or vice versa. Thou doth protest too much, you're really ingrates.
Scott, please, go get your self a $1.99 calculator
Really, even if you include the Aid to Egypt and Jordan, you're talking 0.16% of the Entire US budget. Please, if you're going to Cut, try something that will have a material impact on dollars.
US Foreign Aid is three USD per African and 77 USD per Israeli
Total US foreign aid represents less than one percent of the US budget. In population terms, that amounts to about 77 USDollars per Israeli and about 3 USDollars per someone who lives in Africa. It's not hard to see who's feeding at the trough.
Whistling past the graveyard...
Dick Cheney once said 'Deficits don't matter.' Actually, it's Dick Cheney that doesn't matter...he's been wrong on just about every count. Deficits do matter because they can, if allowed to grow indefinitely, erode confidence in the value of the debtor to pay, which means borrowing costs more. When borrowing costs more, while the strength (real value) of your currency declines, the ability to service the debt becomes strained, often to the point of collapse, revaluation, etc. I don't see how the US is immune to this.
The US consumer is maxed out, and for a consumer demand-driven economy, that can't be good news. All politics aside, the US needs to do some deep, deep soul searching...you can't be perfect forever, if at all. And if you can't face your shortcomings, something will have to give.
There's only one place for the US to start, and that's purge all the special interest money out of its political system. The US maintains some 800+ bases, depots and listening posts world wide, as well as 1200 separate intelligence agencies. That's one heck of a lot of bureaucratic duplicity and overlap, yet neither party would dare touch it because it threatens their political survival. Is that good for the US, in the long-term?
And, I've listed this BEFORE I ever mentioned Israel. Israel is part and parcel of this larger thrust. And, I agree that this all seems politically untenable.
I would be interested to read Prof Walt's take on "Rubicon" by Tom Holland. He charts, in great detail, the history of how the super rich took over and ultimately destroyed the Roman Republic. The way in which wealthy interest groups can buy influence in modern democracies seems to be driving us inexorably in this direction. Once the wealthy control the means of communication, it is relatively simple to get the plebs to vote against their own best interests.
An interesting counter example to "Collapse" is the way in which the United Kingdom divested itself of its empire. The process from the 1940s to the 1960s was relatively smooth and quick and left the UK as a reasonably prosperous middle ranking European nation. That is actually quite an unusual process.
On that note, PLEASE CHECK OUT JANE MAYER"S article on THE KOCH BROS. Perfectly illustrates that co-opting democracy by the rich.
You may be interested in The Roman Predicament, Harold James, which makes the same argument, building it explicitly on Gibbons account. Gibbons argued that the pursuit of luxury undermined the old virtues of the Republic and fostered a transfer of the burdens of empire to the shoulders of the middle class as the elites won remission of taxes.
I'll have to look up Holland.
Scott, 1) that piece has nothing to do with what Walt is talking about, and 2) its not saying what you claim its saying. Its saying that people should think the Kochs are 'scary' because they fund some advocacy groups. Explain how that is any different than Soros or any other left-leaning activists? Its not. Its just more partisan hoo-haa.
Renew America by Restoring White Dominance
The United States by Grand Design (White and Christian)
President Teddy Roosevelt said, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
(read more ...)
Renew America by Restoring White Dominance
We must renew America by restoring the racial dominance of people of white color as our former immigration policy insured (that the treacherous drunk and murderer Senator Ted Kennedy perverted in 1965).
(read more ...)
http://www.davidbenariel.org/
I don't go for that racist, chosen people stuff. (White Christians talk about the "scepter" passing from Israel and the Hebrews to White Anglos. Woodrow Wilson believed the same stuff as Hitler, it was common throughout the Anglo world. They actually believed that White people were infected with a Teutonic gene that made them uniquely suited to self governance. This was the justification of slaughtering the Jews. But, if you're into that David, you keep promulgating it.
On a related note, anyone know what an agent provocateur is? We've got a few on here I think.
My fellow Americans are bewildered children
The American people brought this on ourselves by trusting the media and the leaders, much like children trust their parents, through abuse, deception, fairy tales and forcefulness. Christians determine who will lead this country, and they always have. Falwell's Moral Majority elected Reagan. The Christsian Right made it close enough for Bush Jr. to steal-twice. To base one's life on premises which defy logic is to invite disaster, and disaster is at hand. But that is OK to many bible thumpers because it is a sign that Armageddon is near, just as they thought. To begin with, how does one put Christianity alongside Capitalism? Huh? That takes some mind bending of which I am not capable. Poor people vote Republican out of fear. Fear of gays, fear of someone taking their guns, fear someone will have an abortion, fear someone will threaten their little world by injecting logic. Logic is not a sexy mechanism and is not easy to attain. Much easier to join a group of like-minded people and socialize with them, such as going to church. One who questions our leaders and media is a person who in their minds should move to, say, a socialist or communist country, if one has questions about this country. If you believe our leaders wanted to prevent illegal immigration all these years, then you don't know how important it is for businesses to have a ready supply of workers who will work hard and not ask questions. The US started with slavery and corporations are flourishing now through outsourcing and using Mexican labor. Don't think so? Watch who does the labor putting a new roof on your house, etc., etc. The media have turned into vaudeville acts, investigative journalism is found in books. The vast majority to not buy or read any of these books, but they do believe the propaganda foisted upon them which pushes emotional buttons, where the real voting motivation comes from.
I don't disagree with you at all. Though there is a force these people also worship, Authority. Authoritarianism runs deep in these people. That's one thing the Baptist and Catholics ideally have in common. Of course all these generalizations are not absolute, but this IS a critical part of their faith.
Another example of this is the Trinity. One could argue that the New Testament is an argument for the Trinity. The prologue would be the Jews would never, ever consider the Trinity as anything but blasphemy, a violation of the First Commandment. So, what evidence is there? Jesus never asks anyone to worship him, never claims to be God, at least not forcefully enough to clear the blasphemy hurdle. Would a loving God leave this "essential syllogism" to the imagination? The only way one could arrive with the conclusion that the Trinity is Biblically supported is that some authority worshiper had a minister/priest whispering "Trinity, Trinity Trinity" in their ear all their life.
Come on Jews, you got to give me some props for recognizing that truth. I actually considered converting to Judaism, but that is not necessarily an orthodox move. That did lead me to consider and study Islam, which ironically is the only way Christianity and Judaism can be resolved. It's important to tolerant me, that Islam recognizes the validity and legitimacy of the Three Abrahamic Faiths. Islam is the only faith that is so tolerant, it's a pity that ignoramuses slander the one avenue of resolution for the three traditions. Islam also is the least magical of the three traditions. (Again, the Torah suffers from being crafted ante-Grecian philosophy. Even Jews would reject the notion that God would come as a house guest, or incarnate what so ever. Though I know that is the description of the Elohim, I've forgotten the order of the various takes on the Godhead, but I trust you get me.)
I try to see these arguments in their best light--though if someone wants to get into petty nit-picking then I am happy to turn the tables. The Quran is the best aligned with our modern sensibilities. I chalk that up to it being the most current edition. The ONLY thing that we can cleave to is the Golden Rule. The Old Testament isn't terribly self reflective, but as Van Morrison said, "meet them halfway, with love peace and persuasion, and expect them to rise to the occasion."
Does anyone here ever actually read the posts and 'reply'?
Or does everyone turn this into a big personal pet-peeve fest, be it classism, racism, religion, hating on Obama/Bush, whatever? Does NO ONE actually care about what Walt is saying? Looks like it. Its almost a case study in what he's saying: an incapability to escape your own preconceived 'mythologies' and deal with things directly...
But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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