PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH?

Aristotle said that "We make war that we may live in peace." This concept is as familiar to modern men as it was to the ancients and I believe that it has been driving much of our foreign policy and military spending since World War II. It's sort of the "Peace Through Strength Doctrine" and it just seems to make sense but the questions I'd like to ask are "Does it work and if not, Why doesn't it work?" Are powerful nations at peace more of the time than weaker less militaristic ones? Is our "Peace Through Strength Doctrine" really just another form of winning through intimidation, call it "Peace Through Intimidation?"

To explore the first question I think we should begin by examining Israel, the Mighty Mouse of modern nation states. Don't let it's small size fool you, man for man it may have the most capable army and air force in the world. It also has nuclear weapons and an intelligence service that is second to none. It has, on more than one occasion, defeated the armies of all of it's neighbors at the same time. No country in their right mind would pick a fight with Israel, yet for all it's power it has no peace. You might, rightly respond that Israel's situation and history are much too complicated to be reduced to such a simplistic discussion and that would be my point exactly. How nations live with their neighbors is complicated and can change over time. Simply building a big military may in one situation help a nation to establish a stable peaceful relationship with it's neighboring countries but in another situation or at another time the same military build up could provoke war. 

Having brought the basic concept of "Peace Through Strength" into question I'd like to propose a four reasons why I think it does not work:

Provocation - Nations like people have personalities. Some are secure, some are not. If your country is close to a nation that is worried or perhaps a little paranoid about it's survival then a military build up on your part may provoke attack. Think of how the Israelis have moved so aggressively to destroy the nuclear programs of both Iraq and Syria. They are now threatening to do the same thing to Iran. 

Temptation - The leaders of a nation are human and can succumb to the temptation to use military power when a wiser course of action is available.  Lets say that a difficult confrontation occurs between two nations. When one nation knows that it is so strong that it can easily win a military conflict with the other then there is a big temptation for the stronger nation to through it's weight around, and there is no finer example of this than the United States of America. I'm 61 years old and I can't remember all of the coups, policing actions, invasions, interventions and air strikes that we've carried out worldwide over the years, not to mention our full blown wars. It's my personal belief that our second Iraq War fits into this category. It's kind of a case of excessive strength leading to a form of bullying.

Human Resistance - War is won in the will. Since our "Peace through Strength Doctrine" often boils down to a game of intimidation then it is wise to remember that attempts to intimidate people or nations can backfire.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was clearly an attempt to cower the United States that didn't work out so well. We've all seen the kid who stands up to the schoolyard bully even though he knows he's going to take a beating and there are leaders who are so determined that they can not be be intimidated, think of Hitler or Bin Laden.

Financial Exhaustion - Waging war and preparing for war are expensive, very expensive! It is possible to create military forces of such a large size and to use them with such regularity that you bankrupt your own country. Perhaps the best example of this, in recent history, is the former Soviet Union. It built one of the world's  most formidable armies during World War II and then entered into an arms race with the United States, called the "Cold War", that lasted for over forty years. In 1989 it began to collapse, by 1991 it was all over and much of the reason for the fall of the Soviet Union was due to trying to maintain a military that their economy couldn't support. Since 9/11/2001 I think we've been on a similar path.

Teddy Roosevelt said "Walk softly but carry a big stick." Well our stick is the size of a giant redwood tree and we've exhausted ourselves trying to use it to beat Afghanistan and Iraq into ant hills. We were provoked by Bin Laden into starting the war in Afghanistan and tempted by our own strength into starting the war in Iraq. In the last twelve years we've suffered two recessions, one of which was nearly a depression and the world economy is still in trouble, yet our Defense Budget is by far and away the world's largest, dwarfing China's. Since World War II we've seen our concept of "Peace Through Strength" degenerate into a doctrine of "Winning Through Intimidation"  and now we're approaching the point of financial exhaustion. Isn't it time to reexamine this old "Cold War Era" idea that we must be so strong that we can police every conflict and intimidate the entire world? 

UPDATE: Here's the top ten list of big military spenders:
http://247wallst.com/2013/06/27/countries-spending-the-most-on-the-military/

SEQUESTRATION: THE CARPET BOMBING OF OUR ECONOMY!

Do you remember the term "Carpet Bombing"? It comes from World War Two and the Vietnam War when the planes would fly over the battlefield and just lay down a blanket of bombs. There was no precise targeting, they destroyed pretty much everything. Well we are about to experience the economic equivalent of carpet bombing, it's called "Sequestration." I don't know where they came up with that name but it boils down to  1.2 trillion dollars in across the board cuts to all agencies of the Federal Government except for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, food stamps and federal retirement programs. 

Now, if you are of the Tea Party persuasion then this probably sounds pretty sensible but here's the problem, it will cost us about 2.14 million jobs at a time when we have record high unemployment and an economy that is just starting to get it's head above water. Sequestration is also like "carpet bombing" in that it does not make targeted cuts. Every program gets an equal percent cut, good, bad or indifferent, they all will get whacked.

If we are going to fix our long term debt problems we need to do three things and we need to do them in a certain order and a precise way.

Step 1  "Restore Robust Growth" and bring down unemployment drastically. This can be done by spending money on updating and rebuilding our infrastructure, expanding educational opportunities and converting as much of our power grid as we can to renewable energy. If restoring growth is not done first, then we will be taking the path of Greece, Spain and England who all made massive cuts to government spending and promptly slid into recession or in the case of Greece and Spain, depression. Oh, and by the way had their debt problems increased at the same time.

Step 2 "Reform the Programs That Are Really Causing Our Debt Problems." Of all the programs that are at the heart of our debt problems only Defense is included in the Sequestration cuts. I'm no fan of the Defense budget but if we are going to fix the problem we need to work on all programs that are  causing it.

Step 3  "Cuts Must Be Precise And Well Thought Out." All these cuts and reforms effect peoples lives, the stability of our economy and the security of our country we should really think about what we're doing not just use automatic, indiscriminate cuts to slash and burn our way to a balanced budget.

So that brings me back to how the Sequestration cuts are like "Carpet Bombing?" Simply put, they are both automatic, indiscriminate, frighteningly destructive and create a lot of collateral damage. Did I hear someone yell "INCOMING"?

So what do you think? Will Congress act before we carpet bomb our economy back into recession or could that be precisely what the Tea Party Republicans want to do?

THE WINTER OF THE KILLER TORNADOES!

The idea for this cartoon actually came to me in the Winter of 2012 when the Midwest was hit by a large number of powerful winter tornadoes. Like everyone else I was stunned by the power and timing of the out breaks. As amazing as that was, it has been just one manifestation of the wild and crazy weather we've been having in the last decade or so. 

You've seen and felt the impact, the floods, the droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and all manner of abnormal weather. Yet, no one wants to call it by it's real name "Global Warming" or "Climate Change." Is it too scary for our country to face or as Al Gore said just too "inconvenient?" Instead many of us are desperately trying to find someone who can prove the scientists wrong. In fact, many of our computerized climate change models do appear to have been wrong, they may have been too conservative. The data coming in now seems to indicate that climate change maybe occurring faster than scientist originally thought.

There is no comforting scenario that I can give you on this one but it is worth remembering, as we collectively stick our heads in the sand, that there is no place you can hide from the effects of climate change.

So what do you think? Is climate change a hoax or just an "engineering problem" as the CEO of Exxon seems to think? Is it too late to stop climate change?