Picking a fight

Elizabeth is concerned that voters don’t link defense spending (or more specifically the cost of the war in Afghanistan) with the large budget deficits the US government is currently running. Elizabeth believes that if voters understood the link better, there would be more pressure to cut defense spending as a way to reduce the budget deficit.

I don’t disagree with Elizabeth’s logic. I  disagree with her premise that the budget deficit is a bad thing at the moment. Rather, I think this is a good thing because the only way out of our slump at the moment is through government spending. The logic is straightforward. Consumers aren’t going to start spending more until they have paid down their debts. As a result, private sector demand – and hence employment – is stagnant. One way to create jobs and thus help consumers to pay down their debts is through government spending. As a result, budget deficits are a good thing given the current state of the economy. (For the wonks who care about rising debt levels, what would be worse is for the government to do nothing. This would cause deflation and hence rising debts in real terms. Within reasonable limits, more government spending would not make us worse off compared to allowing deflation.)

Now my preference would be for the government to spend on infrastructure, education, and innovation, but Congress doesn’t want to do that. Thus, we need to find spending that Congress would support. I’ve been thinking about that and I’ve come up with an answer: war. I’m not advocating that we invade anyone new, but I think that the Obama administration could wage a PR campaign that says DoD needs more money. To those who would fight the administration on more defense spending, the response is simple: Don’t you support the troops? Why do you hate America?

Big surprise…

…not!

Over the weekend, the Times reported that the war in Afghanistan is nearly nonexistent on voters’ radars for the upcoming midterm elections. The dismal economy, healthcare, and jobs obviously take precedence. Not a big shock. The thing is, the war and the economy are inextricably linked. I wonder what the people polled for this report would say if they knew that U.S. defense spending comes out to be about $700 billion every year, with the FY 2011 DoD budget request tallying up to a $708.3B. That accounts for about half of security spending worldwide. So if the economy is on voters’ minds this November, the war should be as well because it’s costing taxpayers way more than they might realize.

Ample Congressional hearings and testimonies have demonstrated that the economy is in itself a matter of national security because the more the American dollar devalues and the economy stays stuck in the mud, the less traction we have worldwide. It’s not rocket science. Similarly, continuing to spend, spend, and spend on defense does not do the economy any favors. It’s a tricky situation, to be fair–DoD is the largest single employer the U.S.  and I get that. But it concerns me that the narrative in our country seems to divorce these two interrelated things from one another. In my ideal world (in which The West Wing never ended, but that’s another story) we would realize that we’re basically hemorrhaging money in Afghanistan. I’m not an economist, but that’s probably not good for, well, the economy–so perhaps the war ought to rank a little higher on voters’ tunnel-visioned priority list of issues that matter at the ballot box. Just saying.

A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan?

In reading some of the recent thought of Paul Miller at Foreign Policy I couldn’t resist the urge to comment even if the articles I found most interesting weren’t published yesterday.  Generally I find Mr. Miller’s policy opinions intriguing, informative and a reasonable contrast with some of my own.  His September article presenting “a realist case for nation building” struck close to home as I’ve certainly made much the same argument to friends in recent days.

There’s definite value in being able to express the importance of nation building through a lens that isn’t strictly humanitarian.  Some simply aren’t interested in humanitarian efforts abroad or see the process as not worth the cost to the US populace in time or capital.  Typically when dealing with people of this mindset, I find the realist and structural realist arguments of security, economic interests and stability an effective alternative.  Yet as I read Mr. Miller’s article I grew increasingly skeptical and concerned with the approach taken and some of the conclusions drawn. Continue reading »

Choices

Peace, justice, and reconciliation are all worthwhile goals, but sometimes you can’t have all three. Its a gut-wrenching choice we are going to have to make on Afghanistan.

Foxes guarding the henhouse

Surprise, surprise. More bad news from Afghanistan:

The U.S. military has only minimal knowledge of – and exercises virtually no control over – the thousands of Afghans it indirectly pays to guard its installations, including “warlords and strongmen linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery” and to the Taliban…

The Captain sums this up better than I can:

You know there aren’t enough troops when you hire foreign spies to perform your force protection.