If the United States is growing less willing to act as “the patsy†(Martin Wolf’s term), offering unreciprocated access to its markets for the goods of mercantilist states at the expense of its own producers, and if no other major nation or bloc is willing to be a similar “patsy,†then the kind of parasitic export-oriented strategy pursued by Japan, the Little Tigers, China, and Germany cannot succeed. At the same time, classic import substitution strategies, like the radical renationalization strategy discussed above, are also rejected by the major economic powers, because they seek markets for goods and services beyond their borders to reap the benefits of scale in increasing-returns industries. By default, then, the economic system in a world of multiple great-power blocs is likely to resemble that of the European colonial empires.
If he’s right Metropolis will look increasingly like current events over the coming years. The residents of the Eternal Gardens much more closely resemble Burnham’s “managers” than they do Marx’s “capitalists”.
What I believe the members of this managerial elite who, presumably, think of themselves as the “creative class” fail to take into account human nature. In the fullness of time they will want their children to inherit everything they have despite their children not being nearly as creative and productive as they. Additionally, maintaining their lifestyles will require incomes far beyond what can be sustained which will withdraw ever-farther into the realms of fantasy.
Americans have reason to be pessimistic, if not despairing, about the war in Afghanistan. After eight years of fighting, more than 800 American lives lost and more than 200 billion taxpayer dollars spent, the Afghan government is barely legitimate and barely hanging on in the face of an increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency.
In his speech Tuesday night, President Obama showed considerable political courage by addressing that pessimism and despair head-on. He explained why the United States cannot walk away from the war and outlined an ambitious and high-risk strategy for driving back the Taliban and bolstering the Afghan government so American troops can eventually go home.
For far too long — mostly, but not only, under President George W. Bush — Afghanistan policy has had little direction and no accountability. Mr. Obama started to address those problems at West Point, although the country needs to hear more about how he intends to pay for the war and how he will decide when Afghanistan will be able to stand on its own.
There are now about 8,400 American troops in Afghanistan. Military commanders have asked for reinforcements of up to 5,000 more. Just a modest increase, they argue, a “mini†surge of troops. But 5,000 troops would boost the American commitment by roughly 60 percent, a sizable reinvestment in a conflict that President Barack Obama had promised was drawing to a close.
It is not unusual for American military commanders to ask for more troops and weapons in pursuit of victory. But can they make a decisive difference? How can 3,000 or even 5,000 more American troops ensure victory when the United States at one point had a force of nearly 100,000 in Afghanistan and was unable to defeat the Taliban and stabilize the country? And what would victory look like anyway?
What has changed their minds? The prospects for victory in Afghanistan are no greater than they were eight years ago. Is the the additional 1,200 American lives lost? Is it the additional $600 billion spent? Is it that they’ve learned by experience?
The workdays were long, 12 hours on and 12 hours off, and the work was a constant challenge in terms of the sheer volume of cases and in the complexity and variety of wounds. Out of necessity, we often operated solo, with the assistance of a nurse or medical technician.
The wounds could be horrific. A common injury was the result of an anti-personnel mine known as the “Bouncing Betty.” When tripped, it fired straight up about three feet before it exploded — usually disemboweling or maiming those unfortunate enough to be within range. It was a horrible weapon. A lot of the surgery we did was on the lower extremity, doing our best to repair eviscerated abdomens and slaughtered lower limbs.
The work was also emotionally challenging. I remember one particular case where a young soldier had been badly injured. Myself, Ray (Capt. Ray Crissy) and Mert (Maj. Merton White) worked on him for hours. We had opened his chest when his heart just stopped beating. We did everything we could to keep him alive, including injecting blood directly into his aorta and massaging his heart.
I still remember the feeling of holding his heart in my hand. We were able to bring him back and I remember joking with him a few days later. He seemed to be doing well and I really thought he was going to make it. But his kidneys ultimately failed and we lost him. Like so many of the GIs, he was nice kid whose life ended way too early.
Read the whole thing. As usual truth is more interesting than fiction.
Today is Memorial Day. In our headlong rush towards long weekends many Americans have forgotten that today is the day on which we recall those who have died in war, particularly those who died in the American Civil War and among those particularly the Union dead. The holiday has its origins in the decoration of the graves of Union soldiers in the years following the war, hence its original name: Decoration Day.
More Americans died in the American Civil War than in all of our other wars combined and that bears remembering.
I wish that the movie channels would show All Quiet on the Western Front, La Grande Illusion, or Platoon rather than D-Day or The Dirty Dozen.
I’ve told the story before but it bears repeating. My wife and I saw Saving Private Ryan in the theater in a matinee during the week. We were the youngest by far in the small audience—most of the people there were in their 70s and 80s. I will never forget that after the picture had ended you could still hear the quiet weeping of the World War II veterans and their wives in attendance. They remembered.
The city’s overall black population has plunged since 2000. At the start of this century it was just over 1 million. Fifteen years later it was 840,188.
The white population also decreased in that time period, though not nearly as dramatically, falling from 907,166 to 874,876.
As a whole, the city went from about 2.9 million residents to 2.7 million in that time, data show.
Blacks fled crime and poverty on the city’s South and West sides. Many moved to nearby suburbs but some, like the white population of the Midwest, have moved south to Georgia, Texas, and Florida.
The city isn’t hollowed out yet but it’s working on it. Chicago’s test will be how it copes with a declining population and tax base while its expenses, many of them incurred when the city was larger, grow or remain the same. So far it has botched the test.
Political scientist Henry Farrell remarks on the changes that may result from President Trump’s meetings with our NATO allies in the Washington Post:
While the public is more familiar with the “special relationship†between Britain and the United States, the German-U.S. relationship has arguably been more important. One of the key purposes of NATO was to embed Germany in an international framework that would prevent it from becoming a threat to European peace as it had been in World War I and World War II. In the words of NATO’s first secretary general, NATO was supposed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.†Now, Merkel is suggesting that the Americans aren’t really in, and, by extension, Germany and Europe are likely to take on a much more substantial and independent role than they have in the past 70 years.
I’m glad he brought that up. It may be the case that the U. S. is no longer in; it is unquestionably true that Germany is no longer down.
This portion of his op-ed caught my eye:
If the current U.S. administration has decided that it no longer needs to rely on allies as much as in the past, those allies are deciding that they cannot rely on the U.S. anymore and are starting to forge their own arrangements, which will diminish the U.S. ability to influence their actions and decisions.
I wish the professor had cited an instance of the last time that the U. S. influenced Germany’s actions and decisions. I can think of any number of times that our European allies influenced our actions and decisions, cf. our 2011 military intervention in Libya. Has NATO expansion been the U. S. policy or Germany’s? Helmut Kohl, Angela Merkel’s predecessor as German Chancellor, simultaneously communicated to the Russians that NATO would not be expanded and to the Central and Eastern Europeans that it would, so I would say that at best Germany’s role has been complex and at worst mischievous.
Yesterday I mentioned my niece, Tatiana, so I thought I might put a little context into things. Do you recall the family wedding I mentioned a month or so ago? The picture above was taken there. These are my nieces and nephews.
Tatiana is in red in the picture above. Her husband, Neal, my sibling’s second child, is standing behind her.
You might be interested in this interview at Science about deradicalization programs, programs that attempt to convince people to abandon extremist mindsets. Here’s a telling quote:
We know that in the vast majority of “lone wolf†cases, family and friends knew about the radicalization process or attack plan. Just look at the recent Manchester concert bombing case, where the attacker’s friends and community members made multiple attempts to alert the authorities. What deradicalization provides is a program in the middle acting as some sort of communicative bridge between security officials, family members, and communities. But the basic mechanism is the same across all groups: You need to have access to the radicalized person, identify the factors driving their ideology, design an intervention plan, and then track its impact.
That the record of deradicalization programs is spotty seems to me to be a reasonable criticism. Isn’t the lack of proven efficacy an equally valid criticism of bombing people and removing their governments?
As if we needed it, the evidence that human brains don’t mature until our early 20s continues to mount as reported by NPR:
Impulsive children become thoughtful adults only after years of improvements to the brain’s information highways, a team reports in Current Biology.
A study of nearly 900 young people ages 8 to 22 found that the ability to control impulses, stay on task and make good decisions increased steadily over that span as the brain remodeled its information pathways to become more efficient.
The finding helps explain why these abilities, known collectively as executive function, take so long to develop fully, says Danielle Bassett, an author of the study and an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
“A child’s ability to run or to see is very well developed by the time they’re 8,” she says. “However, their ability to inhibit inappropriate responses is not something that’s well developed until well into the 20s.”
As the United States continues to lumber after its mutually contradictory objectives in Afghanistan, American analysts continue to struggle to justify our cognitive dissonance. Among the latest attempts is this fine summary of the situation in Afghanistan from Ehsan M. Ahrari at Small Wars Journal. Although I recommend that you read it in full, the section I want to point out is this tidbit on the role of Pakistan:
Pakistan is the only regional power that holds a few cards, in the context of pushing for negotiations between the Taliban and the government of President Ashraf Ghani. However, it also brings a lot of baggage with it. It is disliked by the Afghan government for its perceived hegemonic aspirations toward that country, and the Taliban do not place a lot of trust in Pakistan in its role as an honest broker. However, Pakistan remains important because it is willing to provide security havens for the Taliban and is a source for their arms.
Pakistan is the epitome of those mutually contradictory objectives. Pakistan is not our ally, probably plays host to more Al Qaeda members than any other country in the world, and is the implacable enemy of India, whom we should want to be an ally. As long as the Taliban can flee across the border into Pakistan with impunity we will never root them out. Pakistan remains the fourth largest recipient of U. S. aid.
There’s a simple reason for that. We need Pakistan’s cooperation to continue to prosecute our war in Afghanistan. It’s far cheaper to move fuel and war materiel through Pakistan than to get it into Afghanistan any other way.
