Oookay.

Maybe Mullen’s angling for retirement. Or there are some serious disagreements between Obama and the military. I think more of the former, at least in this case, but I wouldn’t rule out the latter.

So.
First Mullen criticizes Obama’s budget.
Then he says Iran has enough fuel to build a nuclear weapon.
Then Robert Gates refutes this.

The military does tend to be a more conservative institution than the rest of the country, particularly at the upper levels. And I’ve spent enough time around ROTC students and military-intel trainees passing through the Russian program here at UM to know that it’s largely true. I’ve heard ROTC officers use slurs for homosexuals that I didn’t even know existed.

I think Admiral Mullen might be looking for a job in a week or two. But this sort of thing could be worth keeping an eye on in the future. Some among the military’s upper leadership are probably less than happy when they think about another four years of an Obama presidency. They may be concerned about a return to the “underfunding” of the Clinton administration, but I don’t think that’s what’s really on their minds. If that issue comes up, it’ll become a symbol, a token battle for the natural reduction in media stature and public importance that will take place with the Iraq withdrawal. Basically, David Petraeus et al won’t be on Meet the Press every other Sunday anymore. And some people might not like that.

An addendum: Jack Daniel’s has another devoted customer.

Georgia (and Russia, and China) on my mind

I decided to step back from my earlier ill-advised clusterfuck of a post and reflect a bit on the situation. Of course, that doesn’t mean my conclusions have changed.

1. The United States is in a tough spot. It is dependent on potentially hostile foreign nations for both capital (China) and energy (Russia, Iran, Venezuela). A capitalist economy needs these things like humans need water and air. (But I don’t need to tell you that now, do I?)

2. Politicians will be inclined to upgrade the military in order to face a more hostile foreign environment. Of course, this costs money. Military spending may provide a degree of Keynesian economic stimulus, but it isn’t a lasting investment like other things could be. This country really needs infrastructure. Roads. Bridges. High-speed rail. Education. Renewable energy. (As an aside, this probably includes nuclear, as distasteful as it is.)

3. The trainwreck that is the current US budget means that the country will have to choose between guns and butter. Either way, you’re looking at some fiscal sacrifices, probably tax increases.

The latter is probably better over the long term, but it will mean some sacrifices overseas. Get out of Iraq. Get out of Afghanistan. Keep the Strait of Hormuz open and don’t bother with shit else. Use diplomacy, but don’t commit yourself. This will probably look a bit like the 1930s, when the US spent big on infrastructure to try and stave off the Great Depression (the New Deal) while adopting an isolationist foreign policy. Granted, this isn’t the 1930s: ‘isolationism’ really isn’t an appropriate comparison. On the foreign-policy end it’d probably be closer to the period roughly between 1974 and 1981, when the United States pulled out of Vietnam and tried to avoid further involvements.

4. This course – ending foreign involvement while pouring money into infrastructure – has a pretty glaring political flaw. There’s an obvious national-pride issue. You can see it in the current election: Obama wants to get out of Iraq ASAP, while McCain wants to win first. Peace with honor, and all that bullshit. You’ll note, however, that Obama wants to recommit in Afghanistan while pulling out of Iraq. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, at least from a realpolitik standpoint. It might be an oversimplification, but I see Afghanistan as having the same level of ethnic strife as Iraq sans the valuable natural resources. (That is, unless the Chinese are going to start buying opium from Western superpowers again.) I think we’re going to start seeing wars over resources again. It’s no mistake that two oil pipelines run through Georgia.

However, I think it’d be best for the US to pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, petroleum reserves be damned. A bit of pain would be good for the United States, forcing it to adopt renewable sources of energy while dramatically scaling back overall consumption. Yes, it would cause economic hardship. It won’t be pretty, or easy. You might not be able to sell that Ford Excursion for book value, but you probably never needed it in the first place. (My boss referred to his five-thousand-pound Dodge Ram as sporty today.) Is that harsh? Yeah. Buy a fucking Dodge Caliber (the seats do fold down!) and rent a truck if and when you need to tow something. We don’t immediately need to reconfigure our lifestyles, as those who saw too many episodes of Captain fucking Planet like to delicately refer to it on Hardball. People will start living closer together eventually, but you can’t force them to.

But I digress. This country will have to make some major changes in how it spends its money, sooner rather than later. More will need to be spent at home, and less overseas. This isn’t patriotic, or fun, or exciting, or any of it. The talking heads at CNN don’t cream their pants when a crew of construction workers finish a rail bridge in Indiana. But those guys are getting paid without getting shot at, and that bridge is infrastructure. It’s a long-term investment back into the country, as is education and renewable energy. You can spend billions to prop up oil-rich client states, and you might be able to succeed. But oil is finite. Rather than pour cash into another nation’s economy in exchange for a resource that will run out someday, why not put it to work for yourself?

We’re entering a new era of nationalist competition for resources. Rather than join in the action, why not bypass it altogether?

5. The US is in a far weaker position than it was during the Cold War. NATO and the Western powers cannot be expected to hold together in a crisis. Russia has Western Europe by the balls via energy. China is a rough economic match for the United States, even its government can’t always collect taxes in Xinjiang. Therefore, the US will have to the best it can with the cards it has been dealt. This means diplomacy and employing the art of playing countries off one another. Tear-assing around the world isn’t possible anymore. It’s probably a good thing that Georgia wasn’t a NATO member; the Russians may have invaded anyway, and the Western powers were in no practical position to intervene. NATO will collapse if it ever fails to come to the aid of one of its member states.

Some serious changes will need to be made. The 1990s idyll of cheap oil and fat wallets probably won’t be back for a while. The whole world is not going to march along some quasi-Marxist “natural path” to capitalism and democracy. The UN will need to be reformed at some point to reflect the world as it is now, as opposed to how it was sixty years ago. Most importantly, US politics will have to adjust its perspective. America isn’t always the big dog these days. And Russia’s invasion of Georgia is a real harbinger of this – a time when we’ll have to play along, or risk playing with fire.