No one takes on the Kaplan University-subsidized neocons better than Daniel Larison. Here he counters their criticism of the lack of foreign policy in last night’s SOTU:
As I said yesterday, this wasn’t a State of the Empire speech, and it wouldn’t have made any sense for Obama to spend time on most of these topics. My guesses on what he would mention proved to be mostly right, because I assumed that the focus of the address would be elsewhere. As it happens, Obama did mention the Panamanian and Colombian FTAs, but we can be fairly sure that at least one of those isn’t going anywhere (and for good reason).
Obama and his advisors must have judged that the public isn’t interested in and doesn’t care about foreign affairs very much, and the public is interested in such things only insofar as these matters relate to American security as the public understands it, and they are right. Let me suggest that the Russian military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia isn’t one of the first one hundred things in the world that relate to American security. Actually, it doesn’t relate to American security at all, but accepting this is a bit of reach for people who think that everything in the world is properly the business of the United States government. The official administration line is that it opposes the Russian “occupation” of these territories, and that’s much more than I would like and it is as much as anyone can expect them to say about it.
I have nothing to add.
Ash Can
Butbutbut Iran’s NEVER going to get bombed at this rate!
New Yorker
Exactly. Who gives a rats ass? Also, why is the neocon right so obsessed with Hugo Chavez? Does he have nuclear missiles pointed at us? Is his navy parked in the Chesapeake Bay? Is he funding Osama bin Laden? No? Then who gives a flying fuck if he’s constantly bloviating on the evils of the US?
This kind of stuff makes you realize that Jennifer Rubin and her ilk consider the entire planet the property of the US and can’t allow Russia or Venezula to do their own thing on principle.
MattF
One other good point that Larison makes is that the last notable intrusion of foreign affairs into a SOTA was Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’. Given that, there’s reason to believe that mention of foreign affairs in the SOTA is not merely unnecessary and inappropriate– it would be a bad thing.
Benjamin Cisco
Damn, that almost sounded…sarcastic. Interesting.
Roger Moore
@New Yorker:
Because he thumbs his nose at us. The neocons want everyone in the world shitting their pants at the mere thought of getting the USA mad. That a country in our back yard is doing stuff that annoys us and we’re not bombing them back into the stone age is a direct threat to the neocon program.
MikeJ
@Benjamin Cisco: Larison is shrill.
joel hanes
If the Republican party was dominated by thoughtful conservatives such as Daniel Larison instead of by ignorant demagogues such as Broun, Foxx, DeMint, Pence, Bachmann, Steve King and evil asshats such as Issa and Rohrabacher and Phil Gramm and Tom DeLay, it would be a better world for persons of all nations and Americans of all parties.
Larison really is the guy that George Will and David Brooks and Ross Douthat pretend to be, and that William F. Buckley thought he was, but wasn’t.
Captain Haddock
I was more than a little disappointed that Obama appears to haven taken his eyes off the Manimal threat, one that Bush warned us so earnestly about. And steroids, lets not forget the steroids.
joe from Lowell
Venezuela is the world’s 13th largest oil producer.
Mark S.
Serious people like John McCain believe in risking nuclear war over South Ossetia.
Serious people also think a heavy hand in Iran would bring reform, because Iranians love it when America does that.
joe from Lowell
I thought you, of all people, would be relieved, Captain.
de stijl
Black gold, Texas tea.
Chavez is PetroFidel.
The Dangerman
@New Yorker:
Two reasons: Oil and hating on Fidel Castro is so yesterday (unless you are in Florida).
Bob Loblaw
To take this in a different direction, it is kind of weird how little play the war/nation building in Afghanistan and Pakistan get. Does anybody really even give a shit about that anymore? It seems like it’ll just resolve itself some time or another, and people will look up for a moment and ask “We were still doing that? When did this happen? Did we win?”
The US has a long and storied history of running underpublicized war efforts in far flung shitholes, so this isn’t a surprise, but then again few of our wars were responsible for hundreds and hundreds of American lives lost on an annual basis.
Also, neocons suck.
de stijl
joe from Lowell beat me to the 800 pound oily gorilla, but failed to note that Mansquito is the real threat.
Human-fish and human-mammal hybrids are red manherrings.
Roger Moore
@joel hanes:
Larison is more thoughtful than most right wingers, but don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s actually sane. He’s a lost causer and member of the League of the South. It’s just that he’s a good writer and focuses more on foreign policy than domestic. In terms of his views, though, he’s probably closer to an Eastern Orthodox version of Pat Buchanan than anything else.
PeakVT
Actually, it doesn’t relate to American security at all, but accepting this is a bit of reach for people who think that everything in the world is properly the business of the United States government.
I think that the US has an interest in stability and democracy everywhere. It’s just that in a great many places, the lack of either or both will affect America so little that the situation in those places doesn’t merit more than a bit of jawboning.
The Grand Panjandrum
The Empire Strikes Out. For now.
Calouste
@PeakVT:
When given the option the US has almost always picked stability over democracy in other countries. When the US talked about democracy in other countries it mostly meant “do what the US wants you to do”.
Southern Beale
Of course people are going to criticize POTUS that is what the opposition is there to do but honestly I really don’t give a crap what they think or what they have to say. I just don’t. I’ve already made my mind up: I am never, ever going to agree with them. Ever.
Never.
So no I’m not going to watch Ryan or Bachmann and I’m not going to read the constant criticism of POTUS from Neocons because I know they are dead wrong. And shit, these are the same people who felt the need to criticize the president’s Tucson speech, so that just tells me they’re into flicking spitballs for shits and giggles. Really.
Maybe I’m part of the problem. Maybe I’m not “serious.” I daresay there are few Teanuts who care what I have to say, either. The nation is divided, we’ve made our minds up. And that’s that.
I really don’t see a way out of this mess, save to wait until the last of the baby boomers die off in their nursing homes or are too addled from Alzheimer’s to bother anyone anymore.
I guess I’m saying I just fucking give up.
joe from Lowell
@de stijl: Have you forgotten already the gatormenschen?
Southern Beale
In other news, Dow just topped 1,200 …
MikeJ
What happened to the Politico-Fox mud fight post?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
Everyone knows the cat people will take over the world, just as soon as they’re done playing with this piece of string.
slag
@MikeJ: A dingo ate it.
joel hanes
@Roger Moore:
Oh, I know that Larison and I have fundamental disagreements about values, about history, and about reality. I wouldn’t vote for a Republican Party dominated by Larisons; I just wish for one. And a pony, of course.
The important difference I see between Larison and the others I named is not the quality of his writing, but rather his intellectual honesty, a trait conspicuous by its absence in virtually all other Republicans (including several in my immediate family). I used to be able to cite Jim Leach, and I still have considerable respect for Richard Lugar, but below them it’s liars and asshats all the way down.
de stijl
@joe from Lowell:
Saturday SyFy movie night this week is Mega Python vs. Gatoroid starring both Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. And yes, there will be a catfight.
I’m assuming that Mega Pyton and Gatoroid will mix it up too.
tim serbo
@Southern Beale: you’re missing a zero.
PS
@joe from Lowell: Venezuela is 13th in production by wikipedia/CIA, but 10th in some other lists (maybe 6th by reserves), and anyway numbers 7-13 are all in the same general production ballpark. But this is only part of the answer. Venezuela is also a nearby oil producer, not to mention being subject to the Monroe Doctrine. In practice, that bumps it up league table of concern from 13th to, I don’t know, top 3 maybe.
Also Chavez has cooties and is mean and rude.
de stijl
@Southern Beale:
Southern Beale, have you caught a case of McArdlitis?
joe from Lowell
@Roger Moore: Don’t worry. The DHS has strategically placed empty cardboard boxes around major ports, airline terminals, and government buildings.
El Cid
@Roger Moore: They were just as obsessed when Nicaragua had a soshullist government. And they didn’t have oil.
Chavez is not only in charge of a major US oil supplier, he’s the only one really governing as a revolutionary leftist. Nationalizing industries, organizing peasants, etc.
They can’t stand Ecuador’s Correa or Bolivia’s Morales, and would be more than happy for (and I think supportive of) the separatist moves in Bolivia’s wealthy ‘crescent’ not liking some of Evo’s Indio-soshullist moves and reforms.
But Chavez is a major challenge.
And they are really pissed off that the ‘good’ liberal-left pro-poor reformist governments like Brazil end up standing with Chavez from US pressures — even though they aren’t that crazy about him, especially his weirder outbursts.
US foreign policy establishment types have had a harder time doing this bullshit of accusing Venezuela of not doing enough against narco-traffickers coming from Colombia.
Because the new Colombian government of conservative former defense minister and Uribe then-ally Santos is really trying to work with Venezuela and praising their cooperation on drug fighting.
jwest
What do you people have against kick-ass imperialism?
We’ve got a military second to none and a need for oil and cash. As Vito Corleone would say, “Nice country you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
fasteddie9318
@Mark S.:
The double whammy is that the Ossetians wanted Russian aid against what they perceive as an oppressive occupier in Georgia. So Grampy wants to break the world to back a country that was probably just as much to blame for what happened as Russia was.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
Oh, great, they’re giving our enemy strategically placed hideouts. That’s just like DHS.
fasteddie9318
If he would have spent 30 minutes or so railing about Commie Muslims trying to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, would they have been satisfied then?
SiubhanDuinne
@The Grand Panjandrum:
EVERYTHING is striking out in the previous thread, starting at #20.
PeakVT
@Calouste: This is true, and frequently it has been a long-term mistake to value stability more, or almost exclusively.
The Moar You Know
@jwest: Embrace your inner mobster, America! It’s one of the few things we’re really good at.
Honestly, if you libtards would just embrace your inner playground bully and start beating people up for their
oillunch money, we could forget about all this partisan shit and just get along for a change.PS
@El Cid: The Nicaragua comparison may be instructive. Both the Sandinistas and the Chavez Bolivarians subvert the Monroe paradigm, but with Venezuela essentially the only serious move against them involved an attempted internal coup rather than an invasion by clients. I suggest this is largely because of the relative wealth of Venezuela, which brings us right back to oil, just from a different perspective.
Also, Chavez, in his unabashed rhetoric, clearly did strike a nerve with others around the continent, and did so at a time when the Bush administration was distracted by the Middle East. My serious fear has been, and is, that a militaristic right-wing administration in the U.S. would let the Middle East go and focus on reviving the Monroe Doctrine before Brazil et al. get so strong that this is no longer feasible. Assuming that the Obama/Clinton regime does not do that, Chavez, Lula et al. may just have bought enough time to make it.
Tony J
I notice that on the American Conservative site where Larison writes, his comment sections are usually empty. The type of utterly insane freaknut that goes there to agree with Pat Buchanan and Jack Hunter (most of them) seem afraid to even look in his direction. If anything his commentariat seems to consist of left-wingers wanting to say how pleasantly surprised they are to agree with a conservative on foreign policy.
cermet
Why Chavez and Venezuela’s oil? Read PEAK OIL. Those in the know see the writing on the wall and baby, it sucks.
El Cid
@PS: After the initial support of the coup, yes, the major intervention has been to overtly and presumably covertly support the ultra-rightist opposition.
No, no one’s going to invade Venezuela. Colombia yelled every now and then about having a war. It’s not just about Venezuela’s wealthy, but that there just isn’t popular support for some foreign invasion to throw out the government they’ve repeatedly elected and re-elected and done so with complete OK by international observers.
Chavez indeed is a bonehead who spouts off all sorts of bombastic shit, unwisely and like I said to a degree the rest of the region’s leaders can’t stand it, and as I said often show solidarity with Venezuela on certain topics but aren’t hanging out like they’re best buddies.
Good luck on any of the right trying to shut off Brazil. If they want to show how quickly military bombast can fail and then get their failed asses thrown out, let ’em do that.
South America has developed independence from the US for the first time in history. Except for the lunatic right in Venezuela (had they had a sane opposition, they’d have had much more of a chance, instead of the Cuban-exile style loonies), even the national business classes have realized that they get more from an actual developing domestic economy than prostitute the nation to Western investors to be bled dry and cause the kinds of social instability that endanger them.
Right wing Sebastian Pinera in Chile isn’t even suggesting rolling back the reforms of the last two soshullist governments.
The US is no longer dealing with a region run entirely by US proxies and when national militaries are bought off ever two weeks to overthrow the government. Except in Honduras.
It’s a different continent. It isn’t just the US backyard playground anymore. The right can scream all it wants about the Monroe Doctrine, and what it will learn is that the US doesn’t snap its fingers for the rest of the world to shit itself anymore.
jwest
Moar,
Naturally we would make it politically correct by calling the shakedown something like “The International Peace Initiative”. It would be explained as a way that peaceful nations could reduce their defense expenditures by relying on the U.S. for security.
Every month, each “voluntary participant country” would pay a fee. In order to be fair, we would need to insist that the payments are prompt, so that no country is getting a free ride at the expense of the others. Having a famine? Fuck you, pay me. Capital destroyed by earthquake? Fuck you, pay up.
If you want to support Obama in his quest to lower taxes and raise spending, this is the only viable plan.
DougJ DougJson
@MikeJ:
I posted that by accident. John already wrote about it.
El Cid
Which is not to say you couldn’t get rid of the Chavez regime. You could. Governments always get weak. Oppositions are easy to bolster.
Just not of the direct, invasion or death-squad / military-hiring type. There aren’t really signs of such things being possible now.
New Yorker
@PS:
The difference between Venezuela now and Nicaragua in the 1980s is that the Soviet Union still existed then, and, rightly or wrongly, Nicaragua was seen (as was Cuba) as a Soviet client state uncomfortably close to the US.
There is no Soviet Union backing up Venezuela these days. Venezuela is pretty much on its own, so it poses no threat to the US. Also, anyone who thinks Chavez is going to shut the oil spigots off on the international market is out of his/her mind. That’s the only thing keeping the Venezuelan economy going right now. Chavez can’t subsidize his Bolivarian revolution without oil revenues. They need the US to buy as much oil as possible.
Punchy
State of the empire? Try reading this.
Too funneh:
Aren’t politicians supposed to have even a small grasp of actual history, especially when that history is supposed to be underpinning your statute?
New Yorker
Also too, there’s a big difference between the left-wing governments of Brazil or Argentina (or Chile under Bachelet) and Chavez and the neocons know it. I don’t think even David Horowitz is crazy enough to think the Brazilian government represents some sort of threat to the US because it’s left-wing. Yet he’s wetting his pants over Chavez and the fact that he’s chummy with….Nicaragua and Bolivia? Two of the poorest countries in the hemisphere?
It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.
jwest
Punchy,
“Aren’t politicians supposed to have even a small grasp of actual history….”
Not only politicians, but reporters, news anchors, bloggers and pundits. That’s what made it so funny when Sarah Palin said she was “Partying like it was 1773”, and none of the liberals knew she was referring to the Tea Party.
georgia pig
I can’t put my finger on it, but I had this weird feeling that we may be out of Afghanistan sooner than later, albeit slowly and with no fanfare. You have the general lack of war talk to begin with and, when Obama did talk about Afghanistan, he almost declared victory and everyone basically ignored it. It was like, “yeah, we know Afghanistan is a fucking basket case, but we’ll go along with you because we’re all tired of it.” Maybe the generals are sick of it,too, after all there’s no chance for career advancement and the operational costs are cutting into budgets for high-tech goodies. Even the neocons seemed to have missed it, as they’re preoccuppied with all the shit Obama didn’t say about their new wet dreams, not what he actually said about their old ones. Maybe that was the real genius of doing healthcare. He got the republicans to focus on domestic issues and took the air out of foreign policy. They can demagogue the shit out of healthcare but, in the end, they’re on far shakier ground trying to scare people about the insidious dangers of mandated health insurance or nonexistent death panels than when they’re trying to scare people about mad Islamic bombers.
liberal
@joel hanes:
But see Gramm–Leach–Bliley.
Nutella
@El Cid:
Yes and their GDP growth rates are higher than ours, too. Not as high as China and India, though. We are heading toward a world with more centers of economic power.
We can be proud that we’re still WAY ahead of the rest of the world in military expenditures, health care expenditures (but not results), and incarceration rates.
joe from Lowell
@El Cid:
With the end of the Cold War, the pretext for such heavy-handedness that allowed a succession of presidents to do such things with something like the approval of the American public has disappeared.
Ash Can
@New Yorker: I guess some people just can’t let go of the Domino Theory.
Steeplejack
@joe from Lowell:
The Gatormenschen? I saw them at South by Southwest a couple of years ago. Awesome set. Their 49-minute version of “Whipping Post” was spectacular.
agrippa
It is called ‘triage’; or, setting priorities.
There are many ‘hot spots’ in this world; few are the business of the US Government. Call it ‘non interference’.
It is quite reasonable for the USA to have diplomatically correct or decent relationships with all sorts of governments, including Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, etc, etc. In fact, I expect the US government to do just that.
joel hanes
@liberal:
Yes. Jim Leach was horribly, horribly wrong about that one.
Honestly so, I think (I originally hail from Iowa, and followed Leach’s career for decades. Did you know that he was from the most liberal district in the state? but kept winning because he was so doggone earnest and straightforward, and demonstrably not corrupt. Once upon a time the Iowa GOP had a big streak of that in its character — we look backward to H.R. Gross with affection — but all such reasonable folks have been driven out by the fundagelicals and the Tea Partiers, so last year Grassley had to scramble rightward as fast as possible to secure re-nomination for his seat)
Why anyone ever trusted Phil (or Wendy) Gramm concerning anything more valuable than a popsicle stick surpasses comprehension. Molly Ivins quoted someone else to the effect that even Gramm’s friends don’t like him.
Cris
I hate to get all “kids these days” (and I make no presumption about the age of “PS” or any other commenters here, aside from my knowledge that many of us are 40+), but I do often wonder if people born after 1985 really appreciate how much the Cold War dominated our national mood. In retrospect, it probably seems insane that we would let something as abstract as a “Soviet client state” influence our national affairs. (It seemed insane to many at the time anyway.) But there were a couple of generations of policymakers in the grips of a real, existential panic that makes the reaction to 9/11 seem tame.
liberal
@joel hanes:
Me, too. I haven’t followed Iowa politics that closely (though I take greater note of stuff in the news like that effort to unseat those judges).
In Leach’s favor, IIRC he voted “no” on the Oct 2002 AUMF re Iraq.
sven
It appears that the UK is about to repeal some post-9/11 terror laws.
Aren’t British pols afraid of looking ‘soft on terror’?
joe from Lowell
@Cris:
A couple generations whose understanding of the conflict between the Eastern Bloc and the West was World War II.
To the leaders of that era, having “a Soviet client state” nearby was the equivalent of having a Nazi client state nearby in the early 1940s.
It’s obvious to us now that the Soviet Bloc in the 1980s was nothing like the Nazis in 1941, but consider: for people living in 1981, Joseph Stalin’s rule was more recent Ronald Reagan’s is to us today. The similarities between Hitler and Stalin, in terms of their expansionism, their internal brutality, and their hostility towards the United States, were undeniable, so if you were still thinking of the USSR in terms of Stalin, then a pro-Moscow Nicaragua could be pretty worrisome.
liberal
@New Yorker:
In a realistic nomenclature (unlike ours, where Ghengis Khan is a centrist), wouldn’t Brazil be considered a center-left country, not “left”?
PS
@Cris: Yes and No, he temporized. The Cold War was indeed a huge influence, but just about the minute it ended Bush the Elder sent half a million troops to the Gulf, and ever since we have had active military engagement in the Gulf region. I think you can make a better case that the U.S. has been operating on the military-threat theory of existence continuously (aka scaremongering) for 70 years.
Where this ties back to South America is that we do not have the resources to project our force everywhere, though the Neocons do tend to pretend we can. I think our military involvement in the Gulf is a far more significant constraint than public opinion (pace Joe). If Obama gets a large chunk of our troops out, then the constraint will (hopefully) be the strength of the South American economies, rather than the U.S. public.
liberal
@joe from Lowell:
Stalin and Hitler were not at all similar in terms of their expansionism.
joe from Lowell
@PS: I don’t buy it. The military reductions of the 1990s – begun by GHW Bush and continued under the Gingrich Congress – would seem to refute the notion that we remained on the same “permanent war footing” in the decade between the Cold War and 9/11 that we were in from 1940-1991, and have been in since 2001.
Sure, we had wars during that period, but we had wars between the Civil War and World War 1, without the country being on a Cold War/WWII-type war footing.
ruemara
@de stijl:
This movie is all I am waiting for in life.
Ok, plus a fat free, sugar free, carb free Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food with a side of ff, sf, cf doughnuts.
joe from Lowell
@liberal:
Tell it to the Czechs, the Poles, and a whole lot of people in the Caucuses.
Stalin may have dreamed of a smaller near-abroad empire than Hitler, but then, Hitler wasn’t working to install a network of client states all across the globe.
numbskull
@joe from Lowell:
And since we’re working hard to piss off the first 12, including ourselves…
de stijl
@ruemara:
It’s a real movie. It’s going to be on SyFy Saturday night.
Cris
@de stijl: Is it a sequel to MegaShark vs Giant Octopus, also starring Tiffany? I can’t look on Google or IMDB, that’s what I have you for.
ruemara
@de stijl:
Oh I know. I’ve watched the prior.
@Cris:
And yes, yes it is. Cheezy goodness, ftw!
New Yorker
@Cris:
Guilty as charged. I was born in 1980. I was in the 4th grade when the Berlin Wall came down, and that was one of my earliest “world-changing event” memories. I have virtually no memories of the Soviet Union, and those I do are embarrassments like the war in Afghanistan (sigh…..) and Chernobyl.
@liberal:
That’s kind of the point I was trying to make. Brazil’s government is center-left. Venezuela’s is hard left. I’m just saying that a deranged right that sees the ultimate centrist in Obama as some sort of Maoist revolutionary might also think of Brazil’s government as some sort of new Khmer Rouge. The fact that they don’t shows how full of shit they are when talking about Obama.
PS
@joe from LowellSure, we’re not spending as we did in WWII, and there has been some rationalization. But the whole point of the late unlamented PNAC was that we needed to increase defense spending, and the Cheney regime largely bought into it. That was and is absurd, and the only excuse was to maintain/assert hegemony. But even with by far the largest military in the world (by some estimates 40% of all global spending), the hawks’ concern was that we did not and do not have enough force to fight in multiple areas.
The PR corollary is the ritualized talk about “our brave men and women in uniform” which still pervades the discourse. It ain’t over, and if they have convinced you that it is, well, score one for them.
joe from Lowell
@PS: I don’t disagree at all with your characterization of the Cheney-ites’ desire to maintain a permanent war footing, nor with the idea that we have been spending and operating according to an “emergency situation” since 9/11.
I was just taking exception to your point about the 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath indicating that we were operating under such a system between 1991 and 2001 – your ’70 years’ point.
I say, we had a decade there when we’d left that behind, and only climbed back aboard after 9/11.
Pococurante
Larison and Carter are much the same.
One says we should accommodate dictators because they bring stability. The other says we should accommodate dictators because the people need stability and we’ll worry about the oppression later.
Same coin.
Only real difference is Carter has a larger sense of what religious freedom should mean. Neither believes in secular freedom except for America. And even then, fait accompli.
Larison believes in bishops and popes. Carter believes in bishops and preachers, except where preachers should overrule bishops. And even then Carter is not certain.
It’s a very fine distinction. Carter is dangerous because he gives cover to tyrants. Larison simply gives cover to bloggers. Larison can propagandize “apartheid” and no one cares. Carter can publish a book with the same name and be taken seriously by Glen Beck.
Neither deserves real appreciation except that at least Carter’s involvement in Habitat for Humanity has real value.
Larison gives no real world value.
Unless one is a blogger needing cover.
PS
@joe from Lowell: We are not far from agreement, I think. However, the continuing relatively low-level engagement of Iraq through the Clinton years provides a thread of continuity. Remember Madeleine Albright and the “worth it” quote about 500,000 dying through sanctions? Yeah, that process was cheaper (except that it had a lot to do with later events). But the drumbeat kept on … I never believed in the “Wag the Dog” theory about Clinton; I basically thought his policy (somewhat like Obama’s) was a slightly less bellicose continuation of the previous administration. So, I stress the continuity and you stress the change. Largely two sides of the same coin, I suspect.
DougJ DougJson
@Pococurante:
Cover for what? I’m not an isolationist, I just agree with him about this.
joe from Lowell
@PS: I don’t think you can look at 1985 and 1997 and claim continuity. I don’t think you can look at 1997 and 2001 and claim continuity.
A country can still get into scrapes without being on a permanent war footing. That we invaded Iraq, maintained the no-fly zone, and fought the Serbs doesn’t mean the situation was the equivalent of the WW2/Cold War/War on Terror situation.
BTW, Albright has stated that she meant to say that the costs imposed on Iraq were worth it, not to agree that 500,000 deaths had occurred because of the sanctions. She explicitly disputed the claim that that many deaths had occurred, despite her answer in that one interview being confusing.
Roger Moore
@Pococurante:
Larison doesn’t say anything about accommodating dictators. He’s more of an isolationist* who doesn’t think that we should be involved in other countries’ internal affairs any more than they should be involved in our internal affairs. Saying that we should as a matter of principle let other countries deal with their own dictators rather than step in and do something about them is far from saying we should accommodate them in the interests of stability.
*He would dispute the “isolationist” tag and call himself a non-interventionist instead. IOW, he believes we should still interact with the rest of the world, but that we shouldn’t meddle in other countries’ affairs. I think this is a valid point, but that “isolationist” captures the general tenor of his ideas in one word rather than requiring a sentence or two of explanation.
Cris
@joe from Lowell: I don’t think you can look at 1985 and 1997 and claim continuity. I don’t think you can look at 1997 and 2001 and claim continuity.I think the “continuity” PS is identifying is the governing culture that remained beholden to the military-industrial complex. The 10 years between the dissolution of the USSR and the fall of the WTC was, for the MIC, a longing search for a worthy nail to hammer.
Cris
what the buggerfuck happened to my blockquote
joe from Lowell
@Cris: I would reply that the size of the military budget demonstrates pretty irrefutably that that “MIC” saw a significant decline in its influence, to the point that they were driving to search for that hammer, and that this decline (and its reversal after 9/11) represent a meaningful development.
Cris
Hm, now that’s interesting. I’m not sure whether to see a big dip after Vietnam, or a big jump under Reagan. probably both. But definitely a downward trend after the end of the Cold War. (Too bad the data stops at 2003.)
joe from Lowell
@Cris: I’d say that the chart above that one, % GDP, is more useful. That there was a jump in domestic spending in the mid-70s doesn’t tell us much about military spending.
There have been 9 years since the beginning of World War 2 when US military spending was 4% of GDP or less. (The years 2002 on that chart don’t include Iraq and Afghanistan spending, which pushes them up over 4%).
One of those years was 1946.
The other eight were 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.
I say, that demonstrates that there was something significantly different going on during that period than during the five decades before it, or the years after it.
PS
@joe from Lowell: The chart would be more useful if corrected for the decrease in military expenditure by the rest of the world, notably the former Soviet Union. I am trying to work (hence erratic response times) but I think you will find that US military expenditure as a proportion of global expenditure actually increased over that period, although in constant dollars it did decline. I’ve been pootling around at http://milexdata.sipri.org/result.php4 but I don’t have time to do the detail work right now.
But I am indeed focusing on the governing culture. Clinton trimmed the budget, but he did not change the aspirationally hegemonistic mindset. (How’s that for a phrase?)
Pococurante
@DougJ DougJson: I occasionally agree with him too. I occasionally agree with Marty Peretz. I’m not inclined to look to either as a moral compass though. :-)
@Roger Moore: I understand your point but they are thin distinctions. By his light we’d have never intervened in the Balkans for example.
I’m no neocon but I do believe there are times when moral intervention is necessary. I believe McArthur was right when he wanted to keep rolling up North. I believe Bush I also should have kept rolling North.
Larison is not an isolationist across the board of course. But he would tolerate a lot of “minor” problems becoming very bad ones, essentially non-stop repeats of 1986 Afghanistan.
Unfortunately the US has a lot less credibility for moral intervention than we once had.