http://www.motherjones.com/special-r...hock-and-audit why would we want to make the military smaller when we're finally closing in on our goal of $1 trillion per year?
why are cons against make-work programs but they LOVE the military? oh yeah, it's because they're retarded ideologues.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...a-roundup.html hey, let's bash sara palin!

Quoting I'm SO awesome!: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...a-roundup.html

hey, let's bash sara palin!

Do not sully the Heather Hurlburt thread. ;^)

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/210...0:56&out=31:01 It's Ok, Chris, nobody's perfect. Great diavlog!!

When I find myself agreeing as much with a speaker from the Cato Institute as with Heather, am I losing my mind? Much of what Chris Preble said should be common sense, but the "national security state" mentality has been the default position in American politics for so long that his thesis must sound paradoxical to a certain kind of American conservative. The mindset of many Americans was frozen by the Cold War into a state of permanent fear, exacerbated by wild exaggerations of the Soviet threat. And the Pentagon is always ready to drum up new terrors to justify one of its many boondoggles. Heather may be right though: the American economy may derive too many benefits from defense spending to be able to give it up.
A propos the EU defense force: it used to be strongly supported by the French, but America's ever loyal ally Britain was lukewarm about it while the Germans are always happy to hide behind this perennial little rivalry between France and Britain. In any case, Chris and Heather are right: what exactly do the Europeans have to fear militarily? The only power

Franco-Am: Chris gives me that reaction as well, so you're definitely not crazy. It's a mark of how smart Chris is and also how badly the "mainstream" of american foreign policy has drifted -- that the libertarians sound eminently reasonable. BJ - thanks for the love.

Quoting Francoamerican: When I find myself agreeing as much with a speaker from the Cato Institute as with Heather, am I losing my mind?

Heh. Although between Chris, Will Wilkinson, and Brink Lindsey, I have to say, Bh.tv has made me revise my view of the CI considerably.

Much of what Chris Preble said should be common sense, but the "national security state" mentality has been the default position in American politics for so long that his thesis must sound paradoxical to a certain kind of American conservative. The mindset of many Americans was frozen by the Cold War into a state of permanent fear, exacerbated by wild exaggerations of the Soviet threat. And the Pentagon is always ready to drum up new terrors to justify one of its many boondoggles. Heather may be right though: the American economy may derive too many benefits from defense spending to be able to give it up.

I don't think of the Pentagon as fearmongers, generally. Individual exceptions aside, I think that it, like any other bureaucracy, has an instinct for self-perpetuation. In a more positive light, one could also say that people who work at the Pentagon want to do their job as

As is often the case, democrat policy positions make little sense when scrutinized ( commiting to spend money next year is a better stimulus to today's economy than immediate tax cuts ). Democrats say intercontinental missile defense does not work. If so, why would the deployment of a system that does not work be destabilizing to the nuclear weapons balance of power? Democrats contend that wasteful spending will stimulate the economy. If we triple spending on missile defense research, that would have the positive effect of boosting the high tech industry, no?

Quoting bjkeefe: (And even here, sometimes they show the right instincts -- I can think of a couple of weapons systems to which they have strenuously said, "No. We don't need or want that.")

The most recent example might be the F-22. When you've got people from inside the Pentagon leaking this sort of news, that indicates to me that their hearts are in the right place at least some of the time. Also, good for President Obama and Secretary Gates for sticking to their guns on this one. Granted, they want to spend the money in other ways, but at least spending smarter is a good first step until such time as we can imagine politicians actually calling for cuts in military spending overall.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: If we triple spending on missile defense research, that would have the positive effect of boosting the high tech industry, no?

Maybe. But I can imagine spending the same amount of money in more stimulative ways, and more importantly, in more useful ways; i.e., where we'd actually be able to use the end product.

Quoting bjkeefe: Could you expand upon this, and square it with the willingness with which the Brits supported the invasion of Iraq?

British Petroleum.

Quoting bjkeefe: Maybe. But I can imagine spending the same amount of money in more stimulative ways, and more importantly, in more useful ways; i.e., where we'd actually be able to use the end product.

that 2nd point I made was intended to spoof the faulty democrat idea that you benefit the economy when government borrows money and spends it on stuff there is no actual demand for. What I continue to not understand is why democrats think the deployment of a missile defense system that does not work would be destabilizing.

So the dynamic of military overspending in the US, the good old military-industrial-complex, is something we all understand and mostly agree on. The big question is if the US lowers its spending to a moderate level, will Europe, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere replace their too-low (in Preble's estimation) levels of military spending with only moderate spending? Or will new MICs spring up in those countries? Would snowballing MIC spending in those countries be more or less destabilizing than the current US hegemony? Could the international system develop an effective arms control regime to prevent a conventional arms race? You could easily get a good hour-long diavlog out of that question. I wonder what Heather would have to say about that.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: that 2nd point I made was intended to spoof the faulty democrat idea that you benefit the economy when government borrows money and spends it on stuff there is no actual demand for.

I am glad we are agreed that there is no need for a giant missile defense system.

What I continue to not understand is why democrats think the deployment of a missile defense system that does not work would be destabilizing.

We have had this discussion many times before and I'm not interested in having it at length again. The short answer is that it doesn't matter whether I and others ("democrats") are convinced that the system won't work; people in other countries who worry about the US will worry that it might work, and that it would augment the US's existing nuclear arsenal. Also, the positioning of a missile defense system means, itself, placing missiles somewhere. Especially in the case where these are near to themselves, another country is unlikely to be comforted when we say, "Don't worry! These missiles here? Pointed at you? Only for defensive purposes! Trust us!" And even if you imagine that other countries' leaders are more

Quoting claymisher: So the dynamic of military overspending in the US, the good old military-industrial-complex, is something we all understand and mostly agree on. The big question is if the US lowers its spending to a moderate level, will Europe, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere replace their too-low (in Preble's estimation) levels of military spending with only moderate spending? Or will new MICs spring up in those countries? Would snowballing MIC spending in those countries be more or less destabilizing than the current US hegemony? Could the international system develop an effective arms control regime to prevent a conventional arms race?

You could easily get a good hour-long diavlog out of that question. I wonder what Heather would have to say about that.

I'd like to hear that, too. I sometimes think that for all of its warts, Pax Americana might be less bad than the alternatives.

Chris was very impressive. You guys had a great rapport and both seemed to take the time to consider what the other was saying rather than simply trying to score debate points. That, more than fireworks, is what makes a great diavlog, IMO. Can't wait for round 2. PS love the colorful, summer dress!!

Chris Preble mentioned Europe's lack of a sense of any external threat to its security. But this overlooks the problem of instability in the Middle East and the attendant threat of disruption of Europe's energy supplies. If Europe only spends half of what the US does on the military, perhaps they should consider spending the other half -- a couple of hundred billion dollars a year -- compensating the Palestinian people for the damages they have suffered as an indirect result of European anti-Semitism and Europe's decision to solve its "Jewish problem" by giving someone else's land away. Of course compensating the Palestinians is only one piece of the puzzle of peace in the Middle East. Still it is an important piece and one that has been neglected til now. As to who should do the shaming, I suggest Germany. Only Germany has owned up to its anti-Semitic past and hence only Germany has the moral standing to shame its neighbors on this very important issue.

Quoting bjkeefe: Heh. Although between Chris, Will Wilkinson, and Brink Lindsey, I have to say, Bh.tv has made me revise my view of the CI considerably..

Liberals and libertarians of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains...well, maybe liberals would like to keep on just a few chains.

Quoting bjkeefe: I don't think of the Pentagon as fearmongers, generally. Individual exceptions aside, I think that it, like any other bureaucracy, has an instinct for self-perpetuation. In a more positive light, one could also say that people who work at the Pentagon want to do their job as best as they can, and part of that involves asking for all the resources they can imagine needing. (And even here, sometimes they show the right instincts -- I can think of a couple of weapons systems to which they have strenuously said, "No. We don't need or want that.").

The real fearmongers, generally, have been politicians and pundits, and probably the defense contractors. There is also a lot of blame due to the Democrats, who for decades have quailed at every hint that they are "soft" or "weak.".

You're no doubt right.....for the present generation. However, there was a period in American history (post 1945 to 1975 ??) when there were some

Quoting Francoamerican: Liberals and libertarians of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains...well, maybe liberals would like to keep on just a few chains.

As any Real Conservative™ will hasten tell you, liberal deviancies of course include a fetish for bondage!

You're no doubt right.....for the present generation. However, there was a period in American history (post 1945 to 1975 ??) when there were some genuine nutcases in the military hierarchy. The recent unlamented death of McNamara reminded me that he was actually one of the voices of moderation in the Johnson administration. I read once that during the Cuban Missile crisis he had to talk down some of the lunatic top brass....who were gleefully contemplating nuclear war.

Oh, no doubt, which is why I said "Individual exceptions aside, ..." last post. But even during the first thirty years of the Cold War, my impression from reading history tells me that the political motivations were ever-present in keeping the hysteria amped up. Let us not forget, to name but two examples, that Kennedy made a big deal about "the missile gap" while running for president, probably knowing he was lying, and that the Vietnam War was

I wonder if the recent deployment of missile defense assets to Hawaii is not really more telling about what the Democrats really think as opposed to all their rhetoric to appease the left wing of their party? Perhaps it was just a ruse to fool the North Koreans.

Quoting piscivorous: I wonder if the recent deployment of missile defense assets to Hawaii is not really more telling about what the Democrats really think as opposed to all their rhetoric to appease the left wing of their party? Perhaps it was just a ruse to fool the North Koreans.

Or perhaps it's just a pacifier to the wingnuts wetting their beds, since:

Most experts doubt a North Korean missile could reach Hawai'i, roughly 4,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula and just out of reach of even an upgraded Taepodong-2, which has an estimated range of 4,000 miles.

So far, the missile has proven inaccurate and has failed to reach a third stage, a critical leap to be able to hit the United States.

A 2006 missile launch failed seconds after liftoff and fell into the ocean. In April, a Taepodong-2 rocket flew for about 13 minutes before plunging into the ocean 790 miles east of Japan as the second of its three stages was firing.

Second source (another liberal rag working for the government media, of course):

... many U.S. defense officials are highly skeptical that North Korea has a missile capable of reaching Hawaii, which is

So if it doesn't work why give credence to it's viability by making a high profile move when there is, as you so readily documented, no real viable threat?

Quoting piscivorous: So if it doesn't work why give credence to it's viability by making a high profile move when there is, as you so readily documented, no real viable threat?

Here's the data on GMD testing, which I think is a good representation of the state of the art. Note the lack of any realistic testing at all. We've been at this for decades, and we still can't show anything to establish any confidence in the real-world efficacy of the system. It's still just Reagan's wet dream.

Quoting piscivorous: So if it doesn't work why give credence to it's viability by making a high profile move when there is, as you so readily documented, no real viable threat?

Because, as I said (somewhat snidely):

Quoting bjkeefe: ... perhaps it's just a pacifier to the wingnuts wetting their beds ...

More politely -- an indication that Something Is Being Done. A bone to toss, same as (like I said before) giving Patriot batteries to Israel at the beginning of Gulf War I. Also, it can be seen as rattling our saber in response to North Korea rattling its saber. Jeez, pisc, this is not something new. You know military history. The Cold War was filled with this sort of posturing -- one side moves an asset here, the other side deploys an asset there in response, and no one on either side really thinks they're going to be used. For some reason, it is required to put up a paper shield against a paper sword, or else face is lost. It's irrational, but that seems to be how the game is played.

Did anyone else notice they endorsed the claymisher solution for North Korea? Reunification it is!

Hulburt in essence says: "George Bush did a good thing on AIDS spending. But let's not give him credit for doing so because he might have actually seen AIDS as a human tragedy worth the government's attention, but because it allowed others to say, 'If even a total right-wing jerk like GWB can spend more on AIDS, then shouldn't you, lovely liberal that you are, match him?'" This is a perfect example of the arrogant moralism of lefties that drives me to distraction! Whoo, I feel better now.

Quoting rfrobison: Hulburt in essence says: "George Bush did a good thing on AIDS spending. But let's not give him credit for doing so because he might have actually seen AIDS as a human tragedy worth the government's attention, but because it allowed others to say, 'If even a total right-wing jerk like GWB can spend more on AIDS, than shouldn't you, lovely liberal that you are, match him?'"

This is a perfect example of the arrogant moralism of lefties that drives me to distraction!

Whoo, I feel better now.

Come on dude, she did give credit to GWB. If there's a perfect example of anything here it's you with a persecution complex.

Quoting AemJeff: Here's the data on GMD testing, which I think is a good representation of the state of the art.

Note the lack of any realistic testing at all. We've been at this for decades, and we still can't show anything to establish any confidence in the real-world efficacy of the system. It's still just Reagan's wet dream.

Quoting bjkeefe: Because, as I said (somewhat snidely):
More politely -- an indication that Something Is Being Done. A bone to toss, same as (like I said before) giving Patriot batteries to Israel at the beginning of Gulf War I.

Also, it can be seen as rattling our saber in response to North Korea rattling its saber. Jeez, pisc, this is not something new. You know military history. The Cold War was filled with this sort of posturing -- one side moves an asset here, the other side deploys an asset there in response, and no one on either side really thinks they're going to be used. For some reason, it is required to put up a paper shield against a paper sword, or else face is lost. It's irrational, but that seems to be how the game is played.

Let me connect the dots for both you

Quoting Francoamerican: A propos the EU defense force: it used to be strongly supported by the French, but America's ever loyal ally Britain was lukewarm about it while the Germans are always happy to hide behind this perennial little rivalry between France and Britain. In any case, Chris and Heather are right: what exactly do the Europeans have to fear militarily? The only power that could easily crush the rest of the world is located..... on the banks of the Potomac.

Judging from the last two thousand years of history I think Europeans are wise to focus on preventing intra-European conflict. They deserve our praise. There is a nascent joint European fighting capability: Battlegroup of the European Union and the older Eurocorps. You can't fight a war with graphic design, but they ain't doing too bad in that department:

Quoting claymisher: Come on dude, she did give credit to GWB. If there's a perfect example of anything here it's you with a persecution complex.

She most certainly did not. She implied clearly that George Bush helped shame people into doing more because George Bush did a good thing and if even HE can do that, you should too. Fine, she says George Bush did a good thing. But note the unwillingness to take it at face value. Mussolini gets credit for making the trains run on time, whether or not he actually did. As for my persecution complex, I guess I'll respond with Kissinger's quip: "Even paranoids have enemies." And no, I don't consider you or anyone else here an enemy. Just find being in the minority taxing sometimes.

Quoting Francoamerican: The mindset of many Americans was frozen by the Cold War into a state of permanent fear, exacerbated by wild exaggerations of the Soviet threat. And the Pentagon is always ready to drum up new terrors to justify one of its many boondoggles. Heather may be right though: the American economy may derive too many benefits from defense spending to be able to give it up.

Franco, forgive me for saying this, but it appears to me you've got things precisely backward in this instance. The Soviet threat was very, very real. Ask any of your cousins in Eastern Europe how "exaggerated" it was. That the Soviet collapse appears inevitable now, in hindsight, to Western Europeans luxuriating under the American nuclear umbrella doesn't do much to convince me that things would have turned out so much better had the Americans simply packed up and gone home once it was "over, over there," as the song says. We tried that after WWI and things didn't work out so well. On your second point, that the U.S. "derives too many economic benefits" from its military-industrial complex for it to be significantly scaled back, I'd say

To me, Heather Hurlburt is the archetypal intelligent liberal. She's against Bush's wars and fears the military industrial complex, but likes the idea of other people being forced to pay for her family's salaries and health care, even if it's through the pathway of the MIC. But this nearly autonomic blaming of the free market for the mortgage meltdown is the worst part and her ilk do it all the time. The most consistent proponents of the actual free market (actual libertarians) warned about steps taken by our government which were leading to crisis, but she and her kind can't blame the right people and (thanks to their insistence on only really paying attention to Krugman and his compatriots) won't even listen to outsider economists, even when they are showing Krugman intentionally lying about their arguments. Well, thanks to the MIC her family will still have a consistent income source. Minor aside: Huffington Post regularly links to stories about economists who predicted the crash like Roubini and (of course) Krugman but never to libertarians who predicted it in mind-numbing detail years in advance.

Quoting AemJeff: Here's the data on GMD testing, which I think is a good representation of the state of the art.

Note the lack of any realistic testing at all. We've been at this for decades, and we still can't show anything to establish any confidence in the real-world efficacy of the system. It's still just Reagan's wet dream.

how were FTG-03A and FTG-05 not a realistic test? They intercepted a threat representative mock warhead. Note that now that the democrats are in control no more tests are scheduled. Another good reason for why states should secede from the union. To be able to deploy a missile defense system.

When I am asked, "When did you first realize DenvilleSteve was a liberal agent, posing, merely to make the movement conservatives look bad?", I will link to this:

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Another good reason for why states should secede from the union. To be able to deploy a missile defense system.

The jig is up, John M. You can come out now.

Quoting piscivorous: Let me connect the dots for both you and AmJeff. The data is irrelevant to the propaganda value of:

NK threatens missile launch towards Hawaii.
Missile defense assets deployed to Hawaii.
NK doesn't launch missile towards Hawaii.

That's pretty much exactly what I just said. Except that I maintain NK never was going to launch on Hawaii, they knew it, we knew it, they knew we knew it, we knew they knew we knew it, etc. The same thing could have been accomplished by President Obama saying, "If one of your missiles even gets close to Hawaii, South Korea is going to have a 500-mile wide crater for a new neighbor." This way was a little more understated, that's all.

Quoting rfrobison: She most certainly did not. She implied clearly that George Bush helped shame people into doing more because George Bush did a good thing and if even HE can do that, you should too.

Fine, she says George Bush did a good thing. But note the unwillingness to take it at face value. Mussolini gets credit for making the trains run on time, whether or not he actually did.

As for my persecution complex, I guess I'll respond with Kissinger's quup: "Even paranoids have enemies."

And no, I don't consider you or anyone else here an enemy. Just find being in the minority taxing sometimes.

Come man, that's what dingalinks are for! Just do it! I'll give it to you, it ain't easy be a conservative (or whatever it was you called yourself, I don't remember). Your allies around here aren't exactly helping you out much either. So if the board bums you out maybe you'd get more traction if you skipped the generalization ("the arrogant moralism of lefties." Yikes) and stuck with posts like your reply to FA (which I'm about to reply to myself). Maybe it's not fair being outnumbered, but I guess that's how it goes for the

Quoting rfrobison: She most certainly did not. She implied clearly that George Bush helped shame people into doing more because George Bush did a good thing and if even HE can do that, you should too.

Nope. I agree with clay. The way you paraphrased her in your previous comment was a gross misrepresentation. (You should have done a Shorter!) She did say something along the lines of what you next indicated (quoted above), but characterized it as a fringe benefit. Also, what Bush did with this program was not an unalloyed good thing (as Heather also noted, without going into specifics). There was a big push for abstinence-only programs, and a loathing for condoms, IIRC, and it took no small amount of battle to get that initial fundie position toned down.

Quoting rfrobison: Franco, forgive me for saying this, but it appears to me you've got things precisely backward in this instance. The Soviet threat was very, very real. Ask any of your cousins in Eastern Europe how "exaggerated" it was. That the Soviet collapse appears inevitable now, in hindsight, to Western Europeans luxuriating under the American nuclear umbrella doesn't do much to convince me that things would have turned out so much better had the Americans simply packed up and gone home once it was "over, over there," as the song says. We tried that after WWI and things didn't work out so well.

Hey, France and the UK had nukes too.

Quoting rfrobison: [ADDED: Preble, on the other hand, seems to imply that because we understand so much more about how international trade works nowadays, the U.S. can drastically downsize its military and our friends around the world will simply step in to fill the vacuum, and that the physical security that the U.S. military provides is not really that important in undergirding commerce anyway. We all no about comparative advantage these days! No need for expensive, blood-soaked empires.]

But that assumes that everyone is as liberal-minded and "win-win" minded as he is. In the absence of a hegemonic power is there really any cause to assume that things will simply go on their merry way? If there were another Earth we could run that experiment on, I'd be happy to try it. I'm less eager to try it on my own.

The fact that both speakers agree the U.S. military is "too large" took something away from the debate. Hulburt tips her hat, briefly, to the

Quoting DenvilleSteve: how were FTG-03A and FTG-05 not a realistic test? They intercepted a threat representative mock warhead. Note that now that the democrats are in control no more tests are scheduled. Another good reason for why states should secede from the union. To be able to deploy a missile defense system.

Shooting fish in a barrel. No decoys, no noise in the signal. That's not a credible demonstration of a defense system. "Hitting a bullet with a bullet" is the beginning, not the end point of this process.

The best thing I know of that Bush did was improve homeless policy. There's a good Malcolm Gladwell article about it: http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html

... It's a matter of a few hard cases, and that's good news, because when a problem is that concentrated you can wrap your arms around it and think about solving it. The bad news is that those few hard cases are hard. They are falling-down drunks with liver disease and complex infections and mental illness. They need time and attention and lots of money. But enormous sums of money are already being spent on the chronically homeless, and Culhane saw that the kind of money it would take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it. Murray Barr used more health-care dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state of Nevada. It would probably have been cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment.

The leading exponent for the power-law theory of homelessness is Philip Mangano, who, since he was appointed by President Bush in 2002, has been the executive director of

Well, dunno, you could be right. I am also willing to admit I'm hypersensitive to the moralism thing. I seem to have this need to shout: "Conservatives can be nice people, too, you know?! "You know?!" A character flaw maybe you and Clay can help me work on...

Quoting AemJeff: Shooting fish in a barrel. No decoys, no noise in the signal. That's not a credible demonstration of a defense system. "Hitting a bullet with a bullet" is the beginning, not the end point of this process.

Don't believe that NK has the ability to use decoys or add noise to the system so in this instance the reality would agree with the test conditions. .

Quoting rfrobison: Well, dunno, you could be right. I am also willing to admit I'm hypersensitive to the moralism thing. I seem to have this need to shout: "Conservatives can be nice people, too, you know?!

I don't know if it'll help, but I will tell you that I would be the last person to deny this.

Quoting piscivorous: Don't believe that NK has the ability to use decoys or add noise to the system so in this instance the reality would agree with the test conditions. .

If you want to be that way, then why not just take the next step, and admit they can't hit us with a missile in the first place? Otherwise, if you're going to insist that the system is more general-purpose than just shooting Kim's missiles as they are now, you have to be honest about what the imagined future attacker's capabilities would be. As I understand it, adding decoys is hardly the hardest part of the problem to solve.

Quoting breadcrust: To me, Heather Hurlburt is the archetypal intelligent liberal. She's against Bush's wars and fears the military industrial complex, but likes the idea of other people being forced to pay for her family's salaries and health care, even if it's through the pathway of the MIC. But this nearly autonomic blaming of the free market for the mortgage meltdown is the worst part and her ilk do it all the time. The most consistent proponents of the actual free market (actual libertarians) warned about steps taken by our government which were leading to crisis, but she and her kind can't blame the right people and (thanks to their insistence on only really paying attention to Krugman and his compatriots) won't even listen to outsider economists, even when they are showing Krugman intentionally lying about their arguments. Well, thanks to the MIC her family will still have a consistent income source.

Minor aside: Huffington Post regularly links to stories about economists who predicted the crash like Roubini and (of course) Krugman but never to libertarians who predicted it in mind-numbing detail years in advance.

Oh boo, even a broken

Actually they have the range to hit part of Alaska but not Hawaii as it appears that they are a bout 500 miles short; but like all guesstimates, and that is what we have here, it behooves oneself to be prepared for the possibility that the intelligence might be slightly wrong. 500 miles is not a large distance when you talk about intercontinental ballistics. I just find it funny that after all the derision the administration deployed the system and made hay of it to counter the threat. If you can't see the disconnect between the derision, of the system, and then the deployment I have to wonder what color are those rose colored glasses you are looking through.

Quoting rfrobison: Well, dunno, you could be right. I am also willing to admit I'm hypersensitive to the moralism thing. I seem to have this need to shout: "Conservatives can be nice people, too, you know?!

"You know?!"

A character flaw maybe you and Clay can help me work on...

You know, I was trying hard not to sound patronizing, but it was taking too long to reply so I gave up.

Quoting piscivorous: Actually they have the range to hit part of Alaska but not Hawaii as it appears that they are a bout 500 miles short; but like all guesstimates, and that is what we have here, it behooves oneself to be prepared for the possibility that the intelligence might be slightly wrong. 500 miles is not a large distance when you talk about intercontinental ballistics. I just find it funny that after all the derision the administration deployed the system and made hay of it to counter the threat. If you can't see the disconnect between the derision, of the system, and then the deployment I have to wonder what color are those rose colored glasses you are looking through.

Generally, the color of rose-colored glasses is rose. Does that clear up some of what you're wondering about? No, no. Don't thank me. I'm here to help! And what do I have to wonder? I have to wonder why your blinders are so tight. Hard as this may be for you to believe, Obama is not all-powerful, and he is not capable of waving a magic wands and causing all of his campaign promises to be fulfilled

Quoting claymisher: You're probably too smart to be defined by what you hate anyway.

I'd like to think so, anyway. Too clever by half...and not nearly smart enough. Oh, well. BTW, whassa dingalink?

Quoting piscivorous: Don't believe that NK has the ability to use decoys or add noise to the system so in this instance the reality would agree with the test conditions. .

I'd love to know where you get your intelligence about the Norks' capabilities, and how you determine your confidence level in that data.

Quoting bjkeefe: I'd like to hear that, too. I sometimes think that for all of its warts, Pax Americana might be less bad than the alternatives.

Yeah, I've been mulling over "would everybody else get runaway MICs if we curbed ours?" and it's a puzzler. It turns into 49-dimensional chess right away. I still think we should curb our MIC, but if we were smart we'd be thinking a few steps ahead to prevent a new dumbass arms race. I really would love to hear a sequel to this one take that up. BTW, who was on last year talking about how for most problems you don't need the UN, you just need the 3-5 major players (US, China, India, Russia, however you want to count Europe)? It was in the context of the wacky "League of Democracy" thing neocons were pushing.

Quoting rfrobison:
BTW, whassa dingalink?

239 posts and you don't know what a dingalink is?! This is a scandal! Don't blame yourself, the system let you down: it's a failure of user interface design. See this circled part:

With that you can link to the middle of a diavlog. That's what a dingalink is.

Oh boo, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Peter Schiff ain't special. He was wrong for a lot longer than he was right

Peter Schiff directly contradicted leading economists from 2005 to 2007 on video while they insisted that he was a fool. In 2005 and 2006 he spent several hours telling conventions of realtors exactly where things were headed. You can watch the 2006 one on youtube. So, what do you mean by "he was wrong for a lot longer than he was right?" I really want to know, because I've never heard that. If you watch the video I linked to, you'll see why he didn't get burned in the dot-com bubble and how his ideas can be extended forward to a pure dollar bubble.

... and I'd be he's got plenty more wrong left in him. Heck, there were plenty of Marxists who predicted the crash too.

Sure. But the Austrians predicted it as a group and some were talking about a housing bubble in 2003. If you look at the Ron Paul link, you'll see that he was warning about the effects of some legislation back in 2002. It's short.

Even noted

Quoting bjkeefe: I'd like to hear that, too. I sometimes think that for all of its warts, Pax Americana might be less bad than the alternatives.

Funny, I always think it is less bad. But if you and Ms. Hulburt and Mr. Preble... [That name just brings a smirk to my face. C'mon. Say it: "Preble." Notice how the "Preb" and the "Bul" sort of rub up against each other in a titillating fashion--Uh, sorry, got distracted there for a minute.] ...want to devise a program whereby all our friends in the world truly carry their own weight in terms of defense, while simultaneously preventing age-old rivalries from reasserting themselves and touching off a World War I rerun with 21st-century weapons, you'll have my support--once you can demonstrate it works better than the good ol' Pax Am.

Ah, ha. Never used one of those yet. I'm kinda afraid of newfangled technology. I'm like the Pointy-Haired Boss in "Dilbert" who asks everybody to print out their e-mails and hand 'em over.

From the same field of straw on which you draw your argument.

Quoting piscivorous: From the same field of straw on which you draw your argument.

Jesus, Pisc. Don't you have anything?

Quoting breadcrust: Peter Schiff directly contradicted leading economists from 2005 to 2007 on video while they insisted that he was a fool. In 2005 and 2006 he spent several hours telling conventions of realtors exactly where things were headed. You can watch the 2006 one on youtube. So, what do you mean by "he was wrong for a lot longer than he was right?" I really want to know, because I've never heard that. If you watch the video I linked to, you'll see why he didn't get burned in the dot-com bubble and how his ideas can be extended forward to a pure dollar bubble.

Look, I'll I'm saying is that just because he got that right doesn't mean he's right about everything. I don't care for the neoclassicals either, but there are plenty of other schools that address booms-and-busts (complexity economics, Post Keynesians, Shiller and Akerlof) and plenty of garden variety liberals (Dean Baker, Duncan Black) who were in front of the bubble but have moved on from the 1920s and aren't held back by the paleoconservatism of the Austrians. If your ardor for economic nostalgia ever subsides you might want to check out some critiques

Quoting rfrobison: Funny, I always think it is less bad.

But if you and Ms. Hulburt and Mr. Preble...

[That name just brings a smirk to my face. C'mon. Say it: "Preble." Notice how the "Preb" and the "Bul" sort of rub up against each other in a titillating fashion--Uh, sorry, got distracted there for a minute.]

...want to devise a program whereby all our friends in the world truly carry their own weight in terms of defense, while simultaneously preventing age-old rivalries from reasserting themselves and touching off a World War I rerun with 21st-century weapons, you'll have my support--once you can demonstrate it works better than the good ol' Pax Am.

Well, sure, that's where my "sometimes" comes from. On the other hand, as I think clay said somewhere else in this thread, we're now at a point where it just doesn't makes sense for advanced nations to do battle, so I think a lot of the "age-old rivalries" can be written off to the ages. I just can't see Germany and the UK going at it again, for example. There's always the possibility of something crazy happening, of course, but that possibility exists now, too. Meanwhile, it's not at all clear to me that the US being the proverbial sole superpower doesn't cause (nearly?) as many problems as it solves. It provokes resentment when we throw our weight around, it gives disgruntled people a common symbol to unite against, it's a drag on

Quoting AemJeff: Shooting fish in a barrel. No decoys, no noise in the signal. That's not a credible demonstration of a defense system. "Hitting a bullet with a bullet" is the beginning, not the end point of this process.

I would like to know more. The missile is traveling at mach 50. What kind of decoy can move that fast. Might as well just put a warhead on the decoy also. What is the noise in the signal? The missile defense radar system tracks the incoming missile. How does the noise interfere with it being tracked? The fact that the republicans can hit a bullet with a bullet is a great accomplishment. Fag democrats, along for the ride, have to admit that.

Quoting bjkeefe: Well, sure, that's where my "sometimes" comes from.

On the other hand, as I think clay said somewhere else in this thread, we're now at a point where it just doesn't makes sense for advanced nations to do battle, so I think a lot of the "age-old rivalries" can be written off to the ages. I just can't see Germany and the UK going at it again, for example. There's always the possibility of something crazy happening, of course, but that possibility exists now, too.

Yeah, I get your point. I guess I was referring to other rivalries, say, India-Pakistan, Japan-South Korea, maybe Brazil-Argentina, that sort of thing. I agree it's pretty inconceivable that the countries of Western Europe would ever fight another war amongst themselves. And all that leaves aside countries that the U.S. cannot really call friends in any strategic sense (e.g, China, Russia, various Middle Eastern countries). One can always argue that the U.S. would maintain sufficient military strength to deter these countries, but I wonder for how long--and countries' strategic priorities change. I've heard serious security types argue that it's questionable whether the U.S. really has the wherewithal to repel a Chinese assault on Taiwan, for example, even as things stand now. And that's only likely to get worse. That of course brings

Quoting DenvilleSteve: I would like to know more. The missile is traveling at mach 50. What kind of decoy can move that fast. Might as well just put a warhead on the decoy also. What is the noise in the signal? The missile defense radar system tracks the incoming missile. How does the noise interfere with it being tracked? The fact that the republicans can hit a bullet with a bullet is a great accomplishment. Fag democrats, along for the ride, have to admit that.

"Fag Democrats?" I'd stay away from comedy, dude. It's not your strong suit. You might want to read up on the stuff you want to post about. Steve. Here a quick bit about countermeasures from the Wiki article on SDI.

Countermeasures

In war-fighting, countermeasures can have a variety of meanings:

1. The immediate tactical action to reduce vulnerability, such as chaff, decoys, and maneuvering.
2. Counter strategies which exploit a weakness of an opposing system, such as adding more MIRV warheads which are less expensive than the interceptors fired against them.
3. Defense suppression. That is, attacking elements of the defensive system.

Countermeasures of various types have long been a key part of warfighting strategy. However, with SDI they attained a special prominence due to

Quoting rfrobison: Yeah, I get your point. I guess I was referring to other rivalries, say, India-Pakistan, Japan-South Korea, maybe Brazil-Argentina, that sort of thing. I agree it's pretty inconceivable that the countries of Western Europe would ever fight another war amongst themselves. And all that leaves aside countries that the U.S. cannot really call friends in any strategic sense (e.g, China, Russia, various Middle Eastern countries).

If we are not friends with these countries, we at least have strong interconnected interests with most of them. To take one example, I don't think China wants to look at the US paper it's holding and think, "Wouldn't it be great if we really pissed off the US and they decided not to make good on this?" I also don't think the Chinese have much interest in stopping their own economic growth, which means not only maintaining good relations with the US and other countries to whom it sells its manufactured goods, but also not pissing off their own citizens who have some hopes about their lives getting better. Possibly another factor -- I know almost nothing about this, but the recent Uighur problem makes me wonder if all of the minority groups that China is currently keeping

Quoting AemJeff: It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to fog the target area with ambiguity and misdirection than it is to penetrate that fog. That's a basic fact about warfare that I would expect a manly conservative like yourself to understand.

I am reading what you are posting, but I still dont see the insurmountable defect that democrats do. To fog the target area the decoys have to be travelling as fast as the actual incoming missiles, right? That would make for a very expensive decoy. The only effective way I saw in your link was to overwhelm the defense system with a lot of incoming missiles. My guess is the attacking missile has to be larger than the defending one because it has a lot further to travel. Meaning it is cheaper to build the anti missile than the attacking missile. Advantage the defensive system the republicans are planning to build as soon as they are unencumbered.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Fag democrats, along for the ride, have to admit that.

I guess that makes the Republicans, what, bottoms?

Quoting rfrobison: Yeah, I get your point. I guess I was referring to other rivalries, say, India-Pakistan, Japan-South Korea, maybe Brazil-Argentina, that sort of thing. I agree it's pretty inconceivable that the countries of Western Europe would ever fight another war amongst themselves. And all that leaves aside countries that the U.S. cannot really call friends in any strategic sense (e.g, China, Russia, various Middle Eastern countries).

Fun fact: Brazil last fought against another country in 1870, and last fought Argentina in 1828. (I learned about Brazil's nonaggression from a Brazilian on the radio arguing for Brazil to be added to the permanent UN Security Council). France and Britain have nukes. Nobody is going to attack them. They can defend themselves. They aren't as good at projecting force, but that just means they can't unilaterally invade anything much bigger than Sierra Leone. Hey, maybe that ought to be a rule for the post-unipolar world: nobody can have an army large enough to invade a medium-sized country without getting at least two other major powers to help.

Come on people, just add DS to your ignore list. I did it and it works great. I'm getting tired of seeing his bullshit in your replies. He's already made such of a fool of himself that there's nothing more to be said about him.

Quoting claymisher: Fun fact: Brazil last fought against another country in 1870, and last fought Argentina in 1828. (I learned about Brazil's nonaggression from a Brazilian on the radio arguing for Brazil to be added to the permanent UN Security Council).

France and Britain have nukes. Nobody is going to attack them. They can defend themselves. They aren't as good at projecting force, but that just means they can't unilaterally invade anything much bigger than Sierra Leone. Hey, maybe that ought to be a rule for the post-unipolar world: nobody can have an army large enough to invade a medium-sized country without getting at least two other major powers to help.

Intriguing. Both your suggestion for a "rule about armies in the post-unipolar world," and your "fun fact" re: Brazil. Maybe I'm getting my soccer rivalries mixed up with my strategic ones. I was just throwing out countries in close proximity to one another that might conceivably come to blows. And in point of fact, I'm not sure how many of those potential fights we could prevent, even today. [ADDED: As attractive as it sounds, your army size rule is probably doomed to suffer the same fate as London Naval Treaty of 1930.] Anyway, coming up with doomsday scenarios makes for a fun parlor game for gloomy sorts like me, but I'm also

Quoting rfrobison: Maybe I'm getting my soccer rivalries mixed up with my strategic ones.

Maybe you were thinking of the Football War!

I agree with some of Preble's arguments. But, pax americana did end large-scale war and, although the tension exists, nuclear war has not recurred. Also, if you consider the UN as a piece of post-WW2 reforms, small-scale wars rarely become medium-scale wars like the Gulf and Vietnam wars. What's left is medium scale conflicts. Also, although balance of power is possible both with equilibrium or with a hegemon - a loophole in realist theory - moving from hegemony or equilibrium to the other is destabilizing and has historically resulted in large scale war.

The Soviet threat was very, very real. Ask any of your cousins in Eastern Europe how "exaggerated" it was.

The Soviet threat to the European countries it wasn't occupying? I know everyone thought it really existed during the Cold War, but I really have a hard time believing the USSR was going to start messing with European countries after Stalin kicked the bucket. The Commies were no more interested in invading NATO members or neutral European countries than we were in invading Hungary in 1956. And even less capable. The only country that the Red Army didn't occupy after WWII that went Communist was Yugoslavia, and how long did that country spend in the Soviet sphere before Tito broke with Stalin? Three years, I think. The biggest threat was Europe getting caught in the middle of a war between the US and the USSR (and, as far as I know, is what Europeans spent most of the cold war worrying about), which fortunately didn't happen, no thanks to people who went around screaming about the Soviet threat. I'm not saying that NATO shouldn't have been formed or anything like that, but I do think it's important to remember that (with

If only this were true, Heather.

Quoting kezboard: If only this were true, Heather.

Yup. That showed a bit of a hole in her knowledge of current events, didn't it?

I thought it showed an adorable naivete! Some people are like that, they just go about assuming that everyone is sensible and not crazy, and then when they finally meet someone whose insanity can't be ignored, they just stand there gaping.

Quoting kezboard: The Soviet threat to the European countries it wasn't occupying? I know everyone thought it really existed during the Cold War, but I really have a hard time believing the USSR was going to start messing with European countries after Stalin kicked the bucket. The Commies were no more interested in invading NATO members or neutral European countries than we were in invading Hungary in 1956. And even less capable. The only country that the Red Army didn't occupy after WWII that went Communist was Yugoslavia, and how long did that country spend in the Soviet sphere before Tito broke with Stalin? Three years, I think.

The biggest threat was Europe getting caught in the middle of a war between the US and the USSR (and, as far as I know, is what Europeans spent most of the cold war worrying about), which fortunately didn't happen, no thanks to people who went around screaming about the Soviet threat.

I'm not saying that NATO shouldn't have been formed or anything like that, but I do think it's important to remember that (with the exception of the Baltic countries and eastern Poland) the USSR didn't end up controlling the Warsaw

Quoting rfrobison: Franco, forgive me for saying this, but it appears to me you've got things precisely backward in this instance. The Soviet threat was very, very real. Ask any of your cousins in Eastern Europe how "exaggerated" it was. That the Soviet collapse appears inevitable now, in hindsight, to Western Europeans luxuriating under the American nuclear umbrella doesn't do much to convince me that things would have turned out so much better had the Americans simply packed up and gone home once it was "over, over there," as the song says. We tried that after WWI and things didn't work out so well..

See my reply to kezboard below. The jury on American foreign policy during the cold war is still out....and it would involve looking at many areas of the world besides Europe. I believe it was Mao who said that the jury on the French Revolution was still out. In any case it is unfair to say of the French and the British that they "luxuriated" under the American nuclear umbrella. Both countries maintained a fairly high level of military spending during the Cold War and they both had the BOMB.

Quoting kezboard: The biggest threat was Europe getting caught in the middle of a war between the US and the USSR (and, as far as I know, is what Europeans spent most of the cold war worrying about), which fortunately didn't happen, no thanks to people who went around screaming about the Soviet threat..

That was always my impression when I was living on and off in Europe during the 80s. The military threat of the USSR was never felt as intensely in Europe as it was in the US. And let's not forget, as Claymisher points out, both France and Britain had (have) nuclear weapons. What they feared most was that the US would retaliate against a conventional military attack of the Soviet Union with full-out nuclear war. Few Europeans believed, and I in the light of American strategic doctrines at the time I think they were correct, that the US would risk ten of thousands of Americans lives to repel an invasion. BUT THAT WAS NEVER IN THE CARDS.

Seeing all this positive feedback, I hope it won't take bhtv another nine months to call Chris back.

Quoting Francoamerican: See my reply to kezboard below. The jury on American foreign policy during the cold war is still out....and it would involve looking at many areas of the world besides Europe. I believe it was Mao who said that the jury on the French Revolution was still out. In any case it is unfair to say of the French and the British that they "luxuriated" under the American nuclear umbrella. Both countries maintained a fairly high level of military spending during the Cold War and they both had the BOMB.

Yeah, both you and Clay mentioned that part about the Force de Frappe--but only I used the proper name! and the British bomb. That's not something I had really considered when I posted my response to you. It's a good point, but I wonder if you would concede what I've always taken for the conventional wisdom: that Western European defense budgets were and are much lower than they would otherwise have to be if they did not feel at least somewhat protected by American forces. As to the argument that Americans were unlikely to risk thousands of casualties

Quoting rfrobison: One can always argue that the U.S. would maintain sufficient military strength to deter these countries, but I wonder for how long--and countries' strategic priorities change. I've heard serious security types argue that it's questionable whether the U.S. really has the wherewithal to repel a Chinese assault on Taiwan, for example, even as things stand now. And that's only likely to get worse.

That of course brings us back to Preble's (implied?) position: If our friends are unwilling to defend themselves, why should we defend them? I don't have a good answer to that other than to say it is generally cheaper and better to deter wars than to fight them--after ramping up the war machine first.."

Pardon my bluntness rfrobison, but I think you are floating free of reality when you talk like this. On this point I am completely in agreement with the "realist" school of international relations. The unstated assumption, a quite unwarranted one, is that the US could "deter" the kinds of conflicts you mention without taking sides---as if the US were nothing but a benevolent policeman who always knew exactly what is in the the best interests of all parties, indeed of the

Quoting rfrobison: And I'm not positive about which Chinese leader said it was too soon to draw conclusions about the French Revolution, but I think I read it was Jiao Enlai.

Thanks. Point taken. We're just not going to agree on this one. I am afraid that I simple don't agree that the so-called Pax Americana was an undiluted success. In any case, it is over.

It was not the GMD system that was deployed to Hawaii.

Quoting Francoamerican: Thanks.

Point taken. We're just not going to agree on this one. I am afraid that I simple don't agree that the so-called Pax Americana was an undiluted success. In any case, it is over.

I guess not, because, firstly, I'm not really sure I would say it was an "undiluted success." If it were, we should not have found ourselves in so many bloody, costly hot wars, along with a costly, scary Cold one. Nor do I think the Pax Americana is necessarily over, though it may have to mutate into a Pax Occidentalis* if it is to last much longer. But that's OK with me, Franco, because you always bring a unique perspective to these discussions....And you helped me out in my "God talk" way back when I first discovered Bhtv. I haven't forgotten that! ;-) N.B. Please forgive me if I butchered the Latin above. I'm afraid I never had time to work it into my studies at school.

Quoting Francoamerican: Pardon my bluntness rfrobison, but I think you are floating free of reality when you talk like this.

That's me: low-cal and reality-free! No offense taken. (And you can call me "Rob" or "rf" if you like. I was pretty unimaginative when I chose rfrobison as my ID for this site.)

On this point I am completely in agreement with the "realist" school of international relations. The unstated assumption, a quite unwarranted one, is that the US could "deter" the kinds of conflicts you mention without taking sides---as if the US were nothing but a benevolent policeman who always knew exactly what is in the the best interests of all parties, indeed of the entire world. The two hotspots you mention do not by any means lend themselves to a simple good guy/bad guy dichotomy.

Here again I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. With respect to Asia, the Chinese are on record as favoring the U.S. military presence in Asia because it obviates a large and powerful Japanese military. I'm pretty sure you would get the same thing from the Koreans, at least privately. An American withdrawal would leave the region extremely unstable, from a strategic point of view. It

America's view of reality is skewed by it's media-induced self-image. The thinking that the world knows one set of priorities - America's, of course - and that all the world - with the exception of America, of course - is too lazy to do anything about them is a throwback to Old White America. If anything is going to get done properly, America's got to do it herself. *huff* (Because good help is hard to find, you see.) The notion that the world "looks to America" for support, or that America is [eternally] victimized by lazy cling-ons who rely on her for "hand-outs" is an extension of an already irritating ignorance which has, regrettably, begun to destroy America's face abroad. The fact is: America is treading on thin ice. Razor thin. As a nation, America hasn't won a war on its own since the Civil War (that is, the AMERICAN Civil War *smirk*). Most of the wars we've lost we've waged against poorer, smaller nations. Yet STILL we walk the streets of this global village with a bat over one shoulder and a lot of trash talk on our lips. Our leaders have been con men, our brand of capitalism has been

the south koreans, just like some americans, know how to game the system with out paying for their just share. south korea is an industrialized country and can well spend the cost of its national security with out depending on the USA. but as i've had said, they know how to game the american system. so instead of spending for their defense, they just spend it on their economy so that their standard of living keeps getting higher at the expense of the american taxpayer. and to return the favor, they dont even allow beef imports from the USA. can you imagine that? they know how to protect their farmers as if these farmers will ever exist if the brethren from the north nuke them. and for the american government, if they want to employ many americans, the best way to start is to leave south korea, japan, etc and let them spend for their defense. for sure, these governments want to protect themselves by buying firepower which America has in abundance. i think that make sense

The only thing that has to make it to the target is the war head. with the use of MIRVs it would be fairly easy to "flood" the system. But since current design is to stop a rouge attack , or an attack by the nuclear neophytes, not likely to have MIRVs, nor a large number of missiles, the argument of "flooding" is essentially a strawman argument. Were we designing a system to deal with Russia, or China in the near future, flooding considerations would contain some validity.

Quoting rfrobison: Here again I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. With respect to Asia, the Chinese are on record as favoring the U.S. military presence in Asia because it obviates the need for Japan to have a large and powerful military. I'm pretty sure you would get the same thing from the Koreans, at least privately.

An American withdrawal would leave the region extremely unstable, from a strategic point of view. It might work out fine. Then again, it might not. Politicians in Japan have already broken an important taboo by musing out loud about the need for nuclear weapons to deter a North Korean missile strike..

If this is all you mean by "deter", then as a leftbank sometime believer in realpolitik, I would have to agree. It is really just traditional "balance of power" politics, as it came to be understood in Europe. It works as long as it works, and then, as history has repeatedly shown, it doesn't. In a conflict between Japan and China, or between South Korea and China (provoked by North Korea), or between Taiwan and China or India and China or India and Pakistan, the US would be forced to

Quoting Francoamerican: If this is all you mean by "deter", then as a leftbank sometime believer in realpolitik, I would have to agree. It is really just traditional "balance of power" politics, as it came to be understood in Europe. It works as long as it works, and then, as history has repeatedly shown, it doesn't. In a conflict between Japan and China, or between South Korea and China (provoked by North Korea), or between Taiwan and China or India and China or India and Pakistan, the US would be forced to take sides and then it would no longer be a question of deterence, but of throwing its military might into the equation.....say, as it did in 1917 when, after prolonged neutrality, the US finally decided that Germany had to be halted by direct military intervention.

Yes, that is largely what I meant by "deter."

It may seem obvious to you that the US could be an "honest broker," a neutral peacemaker, in any of the possible conflicts that could arise in Asia. In my opinion this is a flattering self-illusion, created in great part by the Cold War, in which the US saw itself as a global policeman acting in the interest

On that note shall we declare PAX? I think I can accept--- with a few mental reservations--- most of what you say, with the exception of:

Quoting rfrobison: I would say the U.S. has tried, with varying degrees of success, to play the role of honest broker in a number of conflicts around the world. Some may resent the fact that it does so, feeling it has no "divine dispensation to do good," as you put it. On the other hand, look, for example, at the clamor for U.S. engagement in the Middle East conflict and I think you'll agree American interventions are not always unwelcome.

Most of the clamor is coming from people who think precisely that the US has NOT been an honest, neutral broker in this conflict. If any conflict illustrates the difficulty of pretending to be "above the fray" while acting in the interests of one of the parties, it is the Israel/Palestinian conflict.

Pax be with you... And also with me. á la prochaine...

Quoting bjkeefe: [...] I sometimes think that for all of its warts, Pax Americana might be less bad than the alternatives.

On a related note, in case you missed it.

Quoting bjkeefe: On a related note, in case you missed it.

Interesting. Thanks. There's a French historian/demographer/commentator who has been making similar arguments for years: Emmanuel Todd. Specifically: To what extent is American wealth dependent on its (military) empire? The American trade deficit with the rest of the world has been growing steadily since the early 1970s. For most economies this would be disastrous, but not for the US. The rest of world is quite happy to invest its surplus cash in the US (purchasing treasuries and through investment, direct and indirect), keeping interest rates low and allowing Americans to consume more than they produce. Hence the bubble and its aftermath. So the question arises: Why does the rest of the world finance American overconsumption and financial profligacy? I am unable to answer that question. But I think one could answer the question of why Americans, especially foreign policy experts and the proponents of the Washington consensus, think that this strange state of affairs should last indefinitely: because in their eyes the US military provides "security" for the rest of the world. America is the "indispensable nation" (dixit Madeleine Albright). Will this state of affairs last if the US begins to appear as

Quoting Francoamerican: There's a French historian/demographer/commentator who has been making similar arguments for years: Emmanuel Todd. Specifically: To what extent is American wealth dependent on its (military) empire? The American trade deficit with the rest of the world has been growing steadily since the early 1970s. For most economies this would be disastrous, but not for the US. The rest of world is quite happy to invest its surplus cash in the US (purchasing treasuries and through investment, direct and indirect), keeping interest rates low and allowing Americans to consume more than they produce.

And how does Emmanuel Todd, or anybody else, link the phenomenon to American military hegemony, rather than to more obvious cause, pointed by others - the stability of American political system, trust in its financial system and robustness of American economy, until recently made it rational for foreigners to invest in US?

Quoting piscivorous: The only thing that has to make it to the target is the war head. with the use of MIRVs it would be fairly easy to "flood" the system. But since current design is to stop a rouge attack , or an attack by the nuclear neophytes, not likely to have MIRVs, nor a large number of missiles, the argument of "flooding" is essentially a strawman argument. Were we designing a system to deal with Russia, or China in the near future, flooding considerations would contain some validity.

With a credible missile defense system the attacker has to include decoys in the payload of the missile or MIRV the missile to include multiple warheads. If decoys are used, there is less room on the missile for actual nukes. With missile defense in place, right from the start, the defender will have fewer warheads coming their way than otherwise. I suspect that the more warheads there are in a missile, the dumber each warhead is in terms of accuracy and the ability to evade missile defense. ( each capability added to a warhead, the more weight and space needed, more to go wrong, more to maintain ). Which

Quoting JoeK: And how does Emmanuel Todd, or anybody else, link the phenomenon to American military hegemony, rather than to more obvious cause, pointed by others - the stability of American political system, trust in its financial system and robustness of American economy, until recently made it rational for foreigners to invest in US?

It was rational for foreigners to invest in the US and to buy treasury bonds as long as they could make a profit, however small, in comparison to the profits they could make by investing elsewhere. But now? Foreign investors have lost their shirts twice in the past decade. And most of them understand why: they were the ones who helped inflate the bubble by paying too much for overvalued assets, from which many large and small American investors benefited, and they are now the ones who are paying for their folly (I realize that some of them also profited). There is no direct link of causality between American military hegemony and the extraction of rent from the world's wealthiest, but it sure looks as if American capitalism has found a way to exploit the rich!

Quoting Francoamerican: Interesting. Thanks.

There's a French historian/demographer/commentator who has been making similar arguments for years: Emmanuel Todd. Specifically: To what extent is American wealth dependent on its (military) empire? The American trade deficit with the rest of the world has been growing steadily since the early 1970s. For most economies this would be disastrous, but not for the US. The rest of world is quite happy to invest its surplus cash in the US (purchasing treasuries and through investment, direct and indirect), keeping interest rates low and allowing Americans to consume more than they produce. Hence the bubble and its aftermath.

So the question arises: Why does the rest of the world finance American overconsumption and financial profligacy? I am unable to answer that question.

I don't think America's military might has much to do with it. Sure, if America had no military or nukes we would risk being invaded by Belize or something and maybe investors wouldn't trust the dollar. This all comes back to the peculiar nature of money itself. It's not so much that America is profligate as it is that investors in other countries want to hold dollars because of the

Quoting Francoamerican: It was rational for foreigners to invest in the US and to buy treasury bonds as long as they could make a profit, however small, in comparison to the profits they could make by investing elsewhere. But now? Foreign investors have lost their shirts twice in the past decade. And most of them understand why: they were the ones who helped inflate the bubble by paying too much for overvalued assets, from which many large and small American investors benefited, and they are now the ones who are paying for their folly (I realize that some of them also profited).

There is no direct link of causality between American military hegemony and the extraction of rent from the world's wealthiest, but it sure looks as if American capitalism has found a way to exploit the rich!

Heh. It's funny because it's true.