A Colossal Gamble

What Will War Do To Our Debt?It seems to me that our foreign policy is a colossal gamble. 

I recently shared an article on Facebook from the Economic Collapse blog. The article gave 17 reasons to be concerned about the economy—derivatives, the European crisis, bank runs, and so on. Each of these scenarios is possible, but none of them likely, or likely to be bad enough to cause economic collapse. 

But the article does not mention the biggest risk I see on our horizon, the coming war with Iran. 

The hubris of the ruling class is amazing. It is like an ancient Greek play. In such a play, the character flaws of the characters bring about their fall. Such plays often had a chorus that told the characters of their impending doom. The characters in the play were blind, deaf, and dumb.

Or maybe it is like a modern teen slasher movie. The pretty blonde makes her way toward the door. Her hand reaches for the door. "No!" we shout, "Do not open it!" She opens it. Her body is found later. 

"No, No, Obamney. Do not open that door."

But will Obamney listen? 

Here is one list of the potential landmines in our path to war. 

The United States will be drawn into war with Russia. Russian special forces are already stationed in Syria to guard a Russian navy port in the coastal city of Tartus. Russia is also massing troops along its southern border for deployment to Iran. This means that any U.S. attack on either Syria or Iraq will likely lead to direct engagements with Russian military forces.

The U.S. military will suffer much heavier casualties than anticipated. Syria’s anti-aircraft capability is robust, and Russia is boosting it further. Iran has both Chinese “Silkworm” and Russian made “Sunburn” anti-ship missiles in its arsenal. A single missile can sink a large warship. One war game simulation predicts that Iran will retaliate against any naval attack with massive missile launches against U.S. navy forces and kill up to 20,000 U.S. military personnel in just the first 24 hours of the conflict.

Iran and Syria will escalate proxy wars against the United States and U.S. allies, such as Israel. Count on attacks on Israel from both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and on possible suicide bombings in the United Kingdom and perhaps even the United States.

Iran will deploy tens of thousands of mines to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil supply flows. While there’s little question the United States has the military capability to clear the mines, military experts predict it could take months to do so. In the intervening months, oil prices will skyrocket.

Russia will block natural gas exports to Europe in an effort to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies. About 25% of Europe’s natural gas supplies come from Russia. Coming on top of the euro crisis, a cutoff in Russian gas supplies could tip Europe into a depression. 

Is it worth the risk? 

US Arming Rebels

Russian M-35There was a somewhat humorous diplomatic incident last month. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the Russian Federation was supplying Syria with new attack helicopters. Not exactly what one would expect an America official to say that was trying to "reset" the United States relationship with Russia—especially as a State Department spokesman admitted that it was inaccurate. 

What Russia was doing, as the United States also does for its client states, was to have a program of repair and refurbishment for arms they had previously sold. There were no new arms being sold.

Of course Hillary Clinton is making a good argument that supplying Syria should not have been done as Syria, as any nation state will do, will use its military against its own citizens if those citizens are in armed rebellion. 

What is it I find humorous about this situation? After all, death from the sky is not funny. 

It seems that the United States is buying these same helicopters from Russia for use by the Afghan government against its own citizens who are also in revolt against their government. 

In addition, the NY Times reports that the United States government is supplying arms to the Syrian Opposition. So it is wrong for Russia to supply their allies, but right for the United States to do the same? While the article points out that the CIA is trying to keep arms from Al Qaida, they are arming the Moslem brotherhood. 

So we fight Moslem extremists in Afghanistan, but give them weapons in Syria. 

Only in America. 

Russian Motivation Part 3

I was reading an article by Paul Craig Roberts, who was an under-secretary of the treasury during the Reagan regime. (Note that this is a joke, I admired President Reagan. But if we are going to label other countries’ leaders with this epithet it seems only fair to use it for the United States as well.)  Roberts reminded me of another reason that Russia feels threatened by the current geopolitical situation. They feel that the policy of the United States is to encircle the Russian Federation with enemies. Surely that cannot be the policy of the United States? 

At the end of the Soviet Union the United States and Russia had an agreement:

When President Reagan nominated me as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, he told me that we had to restore the US economy, to rescue it from stagflation, in order to bring the full weight of a powerful economy to bear on the Soviet leadership, in order to convince them to negotiate the end of the cold war. Reagan said that there was no reason to live any longer under the threat of nuclear war.

The Reagan administration achieved both goals, only to see these accomplishments discarded by successor administrations. It was Reagan’s own vice president and successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, who first violated the Reagan-Gorbachev understandings by incorporating former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire into NATO and taking Western military bases to the Russian frontier.

The process of surrounding Russia with military bases continued unabated through successor US administrations with various “color revolutions” financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy, regarded by many as a front for the CIA. Washington even attempted to install a Washington-controlled government in Ukraine and did succeed in this effort in former Soviet Georgia, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

Put yourself in Putin's place. Putin knows that any agreement he makes with the current president could be overturned by the next. The encirclement of Russia with enemies is a prime example of this. The United States gave its word that NATO would not be expanded into the former Soviet Union or its former satellites. The United States’ word was broken. 

Serbia and Russia were promised that Serbian minorities in Kosovo would be respected and that Kosovo would not become independent. The Serbian minority was expelled by the Moslems and Kosovo is independent in every way that matters, except in name only, and that is just a matter of time. 

Our foreign policy seems to be “Let’s threaten the two countries with the most nuclear weapons and lead us into war.” Yet the stupidity of this policy is seldom mentioned in polite company—certainly not by Faux News and PMSNBC. 

What Russia is doing in the Middle East is exactly what the United States is doing, protecting their allies. Why would we expect anything else from any nation state?  

Voting?

Our Replicant Politicians

While I could change my mind, I just moved from the “probably will not vote” category to the “will not vote category.” In particular I will not vote for president for the first time ever. It looks more and more like an exercise in futility. I may still vote in the general election as there are some tax increases on the ballot in California.

There are three issues on my mind.

The first is the economy. I have no doubt that Romney would be a better economic fuhrer than Obama, but only by a hair—by 1% to be exact. The difference between Obama’s budget and the probable Romney budget currently proposed by Ryan is 1%. Ryan is proposing to increase spending by 4% a year while Obama is proposing to grow spending by 5% a year. Hurrah. I blogged about the awfulness that is the Ryan budget here—and here. One point for Romney.

I have been talking recently about American Foreign Policy and the crisis in Syria and the potential for a crisis in Iran and the crisis that is coming with Russia. As bad as Obama’s foreign policy is, Romney’s will be worse. The bellicose statements he has been making toward both Iran and Russia are appalling. Someone must have given his secret underwear a wedgie. One point for Obama.

Finally there are judicial nominees. This is surely a point for Romney. Isn’t it? Consider that Bush appointed Roberts, who was the deciding vote in the obviously flawed ObamaCare Supreme Court decision. How are replicant (ha ha this was an autocorrect error for republican that I decided to leave) nominees for the Supreme Court working out?

So we can vote for Obama with his bad foreign policy and appalling economic policy, or vote for Romney with his bad economic policy and appalling foreign policy.

As Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe said at the siege of Bastogne, “Nuts.”

Left Versus Right?

The assumption I often hear is that I am on the far right. Maybe. But I have found more in common with my very left leaning nephew than with mainstream Republicans. I could give a long winded explaination as to why I think this is true. Instead I offer these cartoons to explain.