Hillary’s Stance on War A Plus

[Ted]

There were time when I wanted her to excoriated the Administration, but she didn’t. She realized that her critics would have painted her dovish and too weak to be commander in chief.
So she supported Bush in the beginning... She demonstrated that she could appropriate funds for war
That’s a good thing for people who’d like to see Bill Clinton on Madam President’s arm

[Barry]

She's been better than most of her fellow Democrats, but that's not saying a whole lot.
She's admittedly walking a fine line between not completely alienating the liberals in her party's base and having a shot of winning the general election.

[Reed]

So, in other words, she has no beliefs, or one can't discern what they are, as she tailors her statements to what will get her ahead in a given situation.

This is the same thing I said about Mitt Romney, and the reason I could never vote for either one.

[Ted]

Reed Wrote:

So, in other words, she has no beliefs, or one can't discern what they are,

In contrast to the current President’s belief that the earth is 6000 years old and “The Evil Doers Hate Us For Our Freedom” Hillary sound like the smartest woman in the world

[Barry]

::::Wondering if Ted will figure out that Hillary's opponent will be someone other than W by 11/08::::

[Ted]

BZ Wrote:

::::Wondering if Ted will figure out that Hillary's opponent will be someone other than W by 11/08::::

BTW Barry
McCain, while not the oaf W is, is right up there in ineptitude as far as Republican candidates go

[Barry]

For the sake of the country, I hope he gets to proove you wrong and me right, Ted. We need his strong leadership. I think he's the best there is out there at this point. He's got Bush's backbone with a brain to boot.

I'll also take comfort in the fact that you probably thought the same thing about Reagan in '80. Although of course, you still won't admit you were wrong on that one.

[MegaKitsune]

Hillary Clinton looks to be a fine presidential candidate...


...through the scope of an M90.

[keaggy220]

For the sake of the country, I hope he gets to proove you wrong and me right, Ted. We need his strong leadership. I think he's the best there is out there at this point. He's got Bush's backbone with a brain to boot.

I'll also take comfort in the fact that you probably thought the same thing about Reagan in '80. Although of course, you still won't admit you were wrong on that one.

McCain bothers me because he is weak on border patrol, he was part of one of the biggest spending Congress of all-time and the McCain-Feingold law is pathetic and fixes nothing. I do like that he is demanding more troops to go to Iraq. He knows this is unpopular and still is in favor - highly unusual for a Presidential candidate.

I want a President that is serious about killing terrorists, border patrol, reducing the cost of the government, real education reform - not just throwing more money at education and many other things... I want a President that will inspire Americans and be able reduce the all too predictable left and right wing banter about stolen elections and conspiracies.

I'm sure there will be no one running that meets the above standard.

[MegaKitsune]

OBAMA 2K8!

[Barry]

For the sake of the country, I hope he gets to proove you wrong and me right, Ted. We need his strong leadership. I think he's the best there is out there at this point. He's got Bush's backbone with a brain to boot.

I'll also take comfort in the fact that you probably thought the same thing about Reagan in '80. Although of course, you still won't admit you were wrong on that one.

McCain bothers me because he is weak on border patrol, he was part of one of the biggest spending Congress of all-time and the McCain-Feingold law is pathetic and fixes nothing. I do like that he is demanding more troops to go to Iraq. He knows this is unpopular and still is in favor - highly unusual for a Presidential candidate.

I want a President that is serious about killing terrorists, border patrol, reducing the cost of the government, real education reform - not just throwing more money at education and many other things... I want a President that will inspire Americans and be able reduce the all too predictable left and right wing banter about stolen elections and conspiracies.

I'm sure there will be no one running that meets the above standard.

There are some domestic issues I don't like McCain on as well. I'm more liberal on social issues. But based on what I've heard from him, I think he'd offer the best wartime leadership under the current circumstances, and I believe that trumps all other issues at this point in time.

[Corlyss_D]

In contrast to the current President’s belief that the earth is 6000 years old and “The Evil Doers Hate Us For Our Freedom” Hillary sound like the smartest woman in the world

I don't care how old Bush thinks the world is, or whether Hillary can explain string theory. He knows where and when to send the 82nd Airborne, and she never will figure it out in her life-time. Neither would any other Democrat in the White House. Like some of the folks on this board, none of the Democrats running or in the leadership have progressed beyond the misguided juvenile left-wing ideologies of the 60s. I'd feel better if they all went back to the drugs they "didn't inhale" and left politics and national security to the grown-ups.

[Ted]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

[anasazi]

Hillary Clinton's stance on the war is not a plus for me. I'm pretty much open to any Presidential candidate who will work to get us out of Iraq. It is still two years until the election, so I can wait. I wish our troops could.

[keaggy220]

Hillary Clinton's stance on the war is not a plus for me. I'm pretty much open to any Presidential candidate who will work to get us out of Iraq. It is still two years until the election, so I can wait. I wish our troops could.

This is the question... If it's not Iraq, what location for fighting is better? Before Bush the US tried combating terrorists through non-military means... Of course we started by ignoring the issue for years - hoping it would go away and when the problem got worse we tried espionage, diplomacy, undermining governments, forming alliances with nations to share intelligence...that got us to the 1990's. The 1990's were a disaster for the US with terrorism - so Bill Clinton did all of the above and threw in small tactical strikes for good measure. I'm not blaming Clinton for this escalation, he was simply continuing the same policies that have been failing us for years. Finally these policies got us to 9/11/01. So now we are in a situation were it is a mess, but the mess is mostly in Iraq because Iraq is were most terrorists have decided to direct their hatred. If we leave Iraq the hatred will still be there. The question is where will the terrorist direct that hatred if not in Iraq? I guess they will decide, not us...

Now, we can get into regurgitating past policies that were bad or good and speculate on how those policies effected this or that... This fact remains - extremists terrorists hate non-Muslims and they are convinced non-Muslims need to convert or be destroyed.

The one thing you can be sure of is that the hatred will not go away - in fact it will grow and the enemy will become more and more powerful.

[Ted]

The one thing you can be sure of is that the hatred will not go away - in fact it will grow and the enemy will become more and more powerful.

So what’s your solution? To kill virtually every Muslim on earth—For you can bet that with each passing day the number of those who hate us grows exponentially

[Corlyss_D]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

So what’s your solution? To kill virtually every Muslim on earth—For you can bet that with each passing day the number of those who hate us grows exponentially

Let's try to keep the options realistic. Nobody is contemplating killing all the Muslims. Indeed, the problem IMO is not Muslims but PetroArabs.

What most of us are contemplating is "for every one of yours they put in the hospital, you put five of theirs in the morgue." You know as well as anyone on this board that our apparent incapacity to sustain casualties, any casualties however modest, in anything even remotely resembling a military engagement since Viet Nam has signalled to the world that, like the UN bluehats, if you kill a small number of us, we will flee.

It's a troubling message: we have no interest worth dying for, so we will not fight for any. We cannot allow the bastards to run us out of the middle east or anywhere else in the world because the Democratic party thinks the military is for show, not use. We have global interests that must be defended, sometimes by the military, sometimes by other means. But we have to be able to use military force. The arguments you and others, including what passes for leadership in the Democratic party, have put forward make it clear to our friends as well as our enemies that whatever we might say, use of hard power is not a viable option for America.

[Don Satz]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

So what’s your solution? To kill virtually every Muslim on earth—For you can bet that with each passing day the number of those who hate us grows exponentially

Let's try to keep the options realistic. Nobody is contemplating killing all the Muslims. Indeed, the problem IMO is not Muslims but PetroArabs.

What most of us are contemplating is "for every one of yours they put in the hospital, you put five of theirs in the morgue." You know as well as anyone on this board that our apparent incapacity to sustain casualties, any casualties however modest, in anything even remotely resembling a military engagement since Viet Nam has signalled to the world that, like the UN bluehats, if you kill a small number of us, we will flee.

It's a troubling message: we have no interest worth dying for, so we will not fight for any. We cannot allow the bastards to run us out of the middle east or anywhere else in the world because the Democratic party thinks the military is for show, not use.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

[Corlyss_D]

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

Yes. However, I'm a 60 year old woman and the Recruitment Center sent me home.

Please don't tell me you are one of those who thinks there is some relevance between the average citizen's willingness to die and the necessity for someone to die to defend American interests. The incredible fatuousness of that argument simply beggars the imagination. It ranks right up there with the equally assinine argument that has achieved some currency that unless you were a veteran you have no right to an opinion.

Hey, do you know RebLem?

[Don Satz]

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

Yes. However, I'm a 60 year old woman and the Recruitment Center sent me home.

Please don't tell me you are one of those who thinks there is some relevance between the average citizen's willingness to die and the necessity for someone to die to defend American interests.
Hey, do you know RebLem?

It's just that you used "we", when you are going to be safe no matter what policies you advocate. It always amazes me how quickly some gung-ho folks promote policies that will result in the death of many American soldiers but will have no negative impact on their own bodies.

Take our current President (please). He'll be in fine physical shape and have many rewarding years of retirement no matter what ridiculous policies he mandates that kill American soldiers. No, I don't believe this consideration is everything, but for Bush it means nothing.

There are only two things I know about RebLem:

1. He lives in the same city as I do.
2. His ratings of recordings is generally too high.

[karlhenning]

There are only two things I know about RebLem:

1. He lives in the same city as I do.
2. His ratings of recordings is generally too high.

Oh, I thought he was just passing on the inflated ClassicsToday.com ratings . . . .

[Barry]

It's just that you used "we", when you are going to be safe no matter what policies you advocate. It always amazes me how quickly some gung-ho folks promote policies that will result in the death of many American soldiers but will have no negative impact on their own bodies.

Some of the United States' greatest wartime leaders never saw battle themselves. It's nice to say someone knows what it's like to have experienced combat, but history shows that it's not an indicator of how well a President will do as Commander-in-Chief.

[Ted]

Here’s the thing Corlyss….You are the last of your kind….(for a while)
We all know about political ebb and flow –about the whirl and rush of power—We had 8 years of Regan ,8 Years of Clinton and an abysmal 6 years of W—So yes, you can (and I know you will) hang onto to your conservative/libertarian ideology, harangue me and my kind for resisting preemptive military excursions into Iran (Pat Buchanan said last night that we should tell Iran we’ll build the nuclear reactors for them)
but for your own serenity and sanity I urge you to accept the fact that you’ve got two more years— make the most of them-- then we get take over for a while

[keaggy220]

The one thing you can be sure of is that the hatred will not go away - in fact it will grow and the enemy will become more and more powerful.

So what’s your solution? To kill virtually every Muslim on earth—For you can bet that with each passing day the number of those who hate us grows exponentially

I don't think every Muslim is extreme so we don't have to kill them all...

Also, I don't have to bet that they will hate us more everyday - as my original post makes clear - extremist Muslims hatred has been escalating for many years, culminating in 2001 killing of thousands of Americans.

The solution? I don't know, but the Bush plan does one thing that all previous strategies failed to do - kill the bad guys. I don't think this will end the extemism, but at least it eliminates some of the evil doers....

[keaggy220]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

So what’s your solution? To kill virtually every Muslim on earth—For you can bet that with each passing day the number of those who hate us grows exponentially

Let's try to keep the options realistic. Nobody is contemplating killing all the Muslims. Indeed, the problem IMO is not Muslims but PetroArabs.

What most of us are contemplating is "for every one of yours they put in the hospital, you put five of theirs in the morgue." You know as well as anyone on this board that our apparent incapacity to sustain casualties, any casualties however modest, in anything even remotely resembling a military engagement since Viet Nam has signalled to the world that, like the UN bluehats, if you kill a small number of us, we will flee.

It's a troubling message: we have no interest worth dying for, so we will not fight for any. We cannot allow the bastards to run us out of the middle east or anywhere else in the world because the Democratic party thinks the military is for show, not use.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

We currently have a volunteer military so this question has aleady been answered by those serving so bravely for our national interests. The answer is a resounding yes and the sacrifices they've made perplex and even anger the students of Postmodern relativism - which happens to be a large part of the Democratic party.

[burnitdown]

That’s a good thing for people who’d like to see Bill Clinton on Madam President’s arm

He should hang for Waco.

[Don Satz]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

We currently have a volunteer military so this question has aleady been answered by those serving so bravely for our national interests. The answer is a resounding yes and the sacrifices they've made perplex and even anger the students of Postmodern relativism - which happens to be a large part of the Democratic party.

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

[Don Satz]

That’s a good thing for people who’d like to see Bill Clinton on Madam President’s arm

He should hang for Waco.

So get to it and accomplish the mission.

[keaggy220]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

We currently have a volunteer military so this question has aleady been answered by those serving so bravely for our national interests. The answer is a resounding yes and the sacrifices they've made perplex and even anger the students of Postmodern relativism - which happens to be a large part of the Democratic party.

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

I'm not sure how that is relevant.

[Don Satz]

Aw Shucks (((((CD))))
And a big Smooch as well!

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

We currently have a volunteer military so this question has aleady been answered by those serving so bravely for our national interests. The answer is a resounding yes and the sacrifices they've made perplex and even anger the students of Postmodern relativism - which happens to be a large part of the Democratic party.

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

I'm not sure how that is relevant.

It's a matter of having others doing the dirty work that you advocate.

[keaggy220]

And a big smoooooch backattcha, Ted.

Are you willing to die to protect our interests?

We currently have a volunteer military so this question has aleady been answered by those serving so bravely for our national interests. The answer is a resounding yes and the sacrifices they've made perplex and even anger the students of Postmodern relativism - which happens to be a large part of the Democratic party.

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

I'm not sure how that is relevant.

It's a matter of having others doing the dirty work that you advocate.

So, if I have no interest in fighting a war, I shouldn't advocate the work of those who have volunteered to fight?

I don't want to be a firefighter or a police officer or an undercover agent for the CIA - should I not advocate their work?

[anasazi]

Hillary Clinton's stance on the war is not a plus for me. I'm pretty much open to any Presidential candidate who will work to get us out of Iraq. It is still two years until the election, so I can wait. I wish our troops could.

This is the question... If it's not Iraq, what location for fighting is better? Before Bush the US tried combating terrorists through non-military means... Of course we started by ignoring the issue for years - hoping it would go away and when the problem got worse we tried espionage, diplomacy, undermining governments, forming alliances with nations to share intelligence...that got us to the 1990's. The 1990's were a disaster for the US with terrorism - so Bill Clinton did all of the above and threw in small tactical strikes for good measure. I'm not blaming Clinton for this escalation, he was simply continuing the same policies that have been failing us for years. Finally these policies got us to 9/11/01. So now we are in a situation were it is a mess, but the mess is mostly in Iraq because Iraq is were most terrorists have decided to direct their hatred. If we leave Iraq the hatred will still be there. The question is where will the terrorist direct that hatred if not in Iraq? I guess they will decide, not us...

Now, we can get into regurgitating past policies that were bad or good and speculate on how those policies effected this or that... This fact remains - extremists terrorists hate non-Muslims and they are convinced non-Muslims need to convert or be destroyed.

The one thing you can be sure of is that the hatred will not go away - in fact it will grow and the enemy will become more and more powerful.

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything. Where do I make a stand? Cutting off our addiction to foreign oil. With all of the trillions we are spending to build a better Al Qaida in Iraq, we could have been working on building our own self-sufficient energy (and combatting global warming at the same time).

[Don Satz]

I'm sticking to the topic at hand - Iraq. Do you favor spreading democracy to Iraq? Our President does. If you are sympatico with him, why don't you travel to Iraq and help promote democracy? Other American civilians have done so, thereby following through on their beliefs.

[keaggy220]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

Hitler would disagree.

[Barry]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

Hitler would disagree.

You beat me to it. I saw a little sign in someone's window over the weekend that reads "War is never the answer."

My first thoughts were of the American Revolution, as if the British would have voluntarily given us independence; World War II, as if Hitler and the Japanese were open to rational discussion on coming to acceptible terms peacefully; and the American Civil War. Regardless of whether the soldiers on both sides were consciously fighting to end or defend slavery, it wasn't going to end any time in the near future without a war.

[keaggy220]

I'm sticking to the topic at hand - Iraq. Do you favor spreading democracy to Iraq? Our President does. If you are sympatico with him, why don't you travel to Iraq and help promote democracy? Other American civilians have done so, thereby following through on their beliefs.

I'm in favor of democracy everywhere - I mean, can you imagine living just a few miles north of South Korea? Those people have got to be shaking their fists at God....

Anyway, I still can't grasp the logic of your argument - I think you are saying that if one does not want to fight in a war (this could mean many things), then it is disingenuous to support the war even though those who are fighting have volunteered to fight the war? Is this right?

I sell high-end super computers to the AF and I just heard a General speak last week and what he said was very interesting because the idea of fighting a war is being turned on its head. He said that there are people under his command that eat breakfast with their kids in the morning and then go into work and proceed to kill people remotely using flying drones and then they leave work to go home and have dinner with the family. He also said that in the next 20 years a good deal of warfare will be suborbital through the use of many, many armed satellites that will be used, of course, remotely.

[Corlyss_D]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking

An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for accommodation to become more attractive than further combat.

Since the establishment of the United Nations and the enshrinement of great–power politics in its Security Council, however, wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease–fires and armistices have frequently been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting. NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo crisis follows this pattern.

But a cease–fire tends to arrest war–induced exhaustion and lets belligerents reconstitute and rearm their forces. It intensifies and prolongs the struggle once the cease–fire ends—and it does usually end. This was true of the Arab–Israeli war of 1948–49, which might have come to closure in a matter of weeks if two cease–fires ordained by the Security Council had not let the combatants recuperate. It has recently been true in the Balkans. Imposed cease–fires frequently interrupted the fighting between Serbs and Croats in Krajina, between the forces of the rump Yugoslav federation and the Croat army, and between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Each time, the opponents used the pause to recruit, train, and equip additional forces for further combat, prolonging the war and widening the scope of its killing and destruction. Imposed armistices, meanwhile—again, unless followed by negotiated peace accords—artificially freeze conflict and perpetuate a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace.

The Cold War provided compelling justification for such behavior by the two superpowers, which sometimes collaborated in coercing less–powerful belligerents to avoid being drawn into their conflicts and clashing directly. Although imposed cease–fires ultimately did increase the total quantity of warfare among the lesser powers, and armistices did perpetuate states of war, both outcomes were clearly lesser evils (from a global point of view) than the possibility of nuclear war. But today, neither Americans nor Russians are inclined to intervene competitively in the wars of lesser powers, so the unfortunate consequences of interrupting war persist while no greater danger is averted. It might be best for all parties to let minor wars burn themselves out.

The Problems of Peacekeepers

Today cease–fires and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral agreement—not to avoid great–power competition but for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous motives, such as television audiences’ revulsion at harrowing scenes of war. But this, perversely, can systematically prevent the transformation of war into peace. The Dayton accords are typical of the genre: they have condemned Bosnia to remain divided into three rival armed camps, with combat suspended momentarily but a state of hostility prolonged indefinitely. Since no side is threatened by defeat and loss, none has a sufficient incentive to negotiate a lasting settlement; because no path to peace is even visible, the dominant priority is to prepare for future war rather than to reconstruct devastated economies and ravaged societies. Uninterrupted war would certainly have caused further suffering and led to an unjust outcome from one perspective or another, but it would also have led to a more stable situation that would have let the postwar era truly begin. Peace takes hold only when war is truly over.

A variety of multilateral organizations now make it their business to intervene in other peoples’ wars. The defining characteristic of these entities is that they insert themselves in war situations while refusing to engage in combat. In the long run this only adds to the damage. If the United Nations helped the strong defeat the weak faster and more decisively, it would actually enhance the peacemaking potential of war. But the first priority of U.N. peacekeeping contingents is to avoid casualties among their own personnel. Unit commanders therefore habitually appease the locally stronger force, accepting its dictates and tolerating its abuses. This appeasement is not strategically purposeful, as siding with the stronger power overall would be; rather, it merely reflects the determination of each U.N. unit to avoid confrontation. The final result is to prevent the emergence of a coherent outcome, which requires an imbalance of strength sufficient to end the fighting.

Peacekeepers chary of violence are also unable to effectively protect civilians who are caught up in the fighting or deliberately attacked. At best, U.N. peacekeeping forces have been passive spectators to outrages and massacres, as in Bosnia and Rwanda; at worst, they collaborate with it, as Dutch U.N. troops did in the fall of Srebenica by helping the Bosnian Serbs separate the men of military age from the rest of the population.

The very presence of U.N. forces, meanwhile, inhibits the normal remedy of endangered civilians, which is to escape from the combat zone. Deluded into thinking that they will be protected, civilians in danger remain in place until it is too late to flee. During the 1992–94 siege of Sarajevo, appeasement interacted with the pretense of protection in an especially perverse manner: U.N. personnel inspected outgoing flights to prevent the escape of Sarajevo civilians in obedience to a cease–fire agreement negotiated with the locally dominant Bosnian Serbs—who habitually violated that deal. The more sensible, realistic response to a raging war would have been for the Muslims to either flee the city or drive the Serbs out.

Institutions such as the European Union, the Western European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe lack even the U.N.’s rudimentary command structure and personnel, yet they too now seek to intervene in warlike situations, with predictable consequences. Bereft of forces even theoretically capable of combat, they satisfy the interventionist urges of member states (or their own institutional ambitions) by sending unarmed or lightly armed “observer” missions, which have the same problems as U.N. peacekeeping missions, only more so.

Military organizations such as NATO or the West African Peacekeeping Force (ECOMOG, recently at work in Sierra Leone) are capable of stopping warfare. Their interventions still have the destructive consequence of prolonging the state of war, but they can at least protect civilians from its consequences. Even that often fails to happen, however, because multinational military commands engaged in disinterested interventions tend to avoid any risk of combat, thereby limiting their effectiveness. U.S. troops in Bosnia, for example, repeatedly failed to arrest known war criminals passing through their checkpoints lest this provoke confrontation.

Multinational commands, moreover, find it difficult to control the quality and conduct of member states’ troops, which can reduce the performance of all forces involved to the lowest common denominator. This was true of otherwise fine British troops in Bosnia and of the Nigerian marines in Sierra Leone. The phenomenon of troop degradation can rarely be detected by external observers, although its consequences are abundantly visible in the litter of dead, mutilated, raped, and tortured victims that attends such interventions. The true state of affairs is illuminated by the rare exception, such as the vigorous Danish tank battalion in Bosnia that replied to any attack on it by firing back in full force, quickly stopping the fighting.



The First “Post–Heroic” War

All prior examples of disinterested warfare and its crippling limitations, however, have been cast into shadow by NATO’s current intervention against Serbia for the sake of Kosovo. The alliance has relied on airpower alone to minimize the risk of NATO casualties, bombing targets in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo for weeks without losing a single pilot. This seemingly miraculous immunity from Yugoslav anti–aircraft guns and missiles was achieved by multiple layers of precautions. First, for all the noise and imagery suggestive of a massive operation, very few strike sorties were actually flown during the first few weeks. That reduced the risks to pilots and aircraft but of course also limited the scope of the bombing to a mere fraction of NATO’s potential. Second, the air campaign targeted air–defense systems first and foremost, minimizing present and future allied casualties, though at the price of very limited destruction and the loss of any shock effect. Third, NATO avoided most anti–aircraft weapons by releasing munitions not from optimal altitudes but from an ultra–safe 15,000 feet or more. Fourth, the alliance greatly restricted its operations in less–than–perfect weather conditions. NATO officials complained that dense clouds were impeding the bombing campaign, often limiting nightly operations to a few cruise–missile strikes against fixed targets of known location. In truth, what the cloud ceiling prohibited was not all bombing—low–altitude attacks could easily have taken place—but rather perfectly safe bombing.

On the ground far beneath the high–flying planes, small groups of Serb soldiers and police in armored vehicles were terrorizing hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars. NATO has a panoply of aircraft designed for finding and destroying such vehicles. All its major powers have anti–tank helicopters, some equipped to operate without base support. But no country offered to send them into Kosovo when the ethnic cleansing began—after all, they might have been shot down. When U.S. Apache helicopters based in Germany were finally ordered to Albania, in spite of the vast expenditure devoted to their instantaneous “readiness” over the years, they required more than three weeks of “predeployment preparations” to make the journey. Six weeks into the war, the Apaches had yet to fly their first mission, although two had already crashed during training. More than mere bureaucratic foot–dragging was responsible for this inordinate delay: the U.S. Army insisted that the Apaches could not operate on their own, but would need the support of heavy rocket barrages to suppress Serb anti–aircraft weapons. This created a much larger logistical load than the Apaches alone, and an additional, evidently welcome delay.

Even before the Apache saga began, NATO already had aircraft deployed on Italian bases that could have done the job just as well: U.S. a–10 “Warthogs” built around their powerful 30 mm antitank guns and British Royal Air Force Harriers ideal for low–altitude bombing at close range. Neither was employed, again because it could not be done in perfect safety. In the calculus of the NATO democracies, the immediate possibility of saving thousands of Albanians from massacre and hundreds of thousands from deportation was obviously not worth the lives of a few pilots. That may reflect unavoidable political reality, but it demonstrates how even a large–scale disinterested intervention can fail to achieve its ostensibly humanitarian aim. It is worth wondering whether the Kosovars would have been better off had NATO simply done nothing.

Refugee Nations

The most disinterested of all interventions in war—and the most destructive—are humanitarian relief activities. The largest and most protracted is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It was built on the model of its predecessor, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), which operated displaced–persons’ camps in Europe immediately after World War II. The UNRWA was established immediately after the 1948–49 Arab–Israeli war to feed, shelter, educate, and provide health services for Arab refugees who had fled Israeli zones in the former territory of Palestine.

By keeping refugees alive in spartan conditions that encouraged their rapid emigration or local resettlement, the UNRRA’s camps in Europe had assuaged postwar resentments and helped disperse revanchist concentrations of national groups. But UNRWA camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip provided on the whole a higher standard of living than most Arab villagers had previously enjoyed, with a more varied diet, organized schooling, superior medical care, and no backbreaking labor in stony fields. They had, therefore, the opposite effect, becoming desirable homes rather than eagerly abandoned transit camps. With the encouragement of several Arab countries, the UNRWA turned escaping civilians into lifelong refugees who gave birth to refugee children, who have in turn had refugee children of their own.

During its half–century of operation, the UNRWA has thus perpetuated a Palestinian refugee nation, preserving its resentments in as fresh a condition as they were in 1948 and keeping the first bloom of revanchist emotion intact. By its very existence, the UNRWA dissuades integration into local society and inhibits emigration. The concentration of Palestinians in the camps, moreover, has facilitated the voluntary or forced enlistment of refugee youths by armed organizations that fight both Israel and each other. The UNRWA has contributed to a half–century of Arab–Israeli violence and still retards the advent of peace.

If each European war had been attended by its own postwar unRwa, today’s Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of uprooted Gallo–Romans, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced Visigoths—not to speak of more recent refugee nations such as post–1945 Sudeten Germans (three million of whom were expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945). Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes, undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps. It might have assuaged consciences to help each one at each remove, but it would have led to permanent instability and violence.

The UNRWA has counterparts elsewhere, such as the Cambodian camps along the Thai border, which incidentally provided safe havens for the mass–murdering Khmer Rouge. But because the United Nations is limited by stingy national contributions, these camps’ sabotage of peace is at least localized.

That is not true of the proliferating, feverishly competitive nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that now aid war refugees. Like any other institution, these NGOs are interested in perpetuating themselves, which means that their first priority is to attract charitable contributions by being seen to be active in high–visibility situations. Only the most dramatic natural disasters attract any significant mass–media attention, and then only briefly; soon after an earthquake or flood, the cameras depart. War refugees, by contrast, can win sustained press coverage if kept concentrated in reasonably accessible camps. Regular warfare among well–developed countries is rare and offers few opportunities for such NGOs, so they focus their efforts on aiding refugees in the poorest parts of the world. This ensures that the food, shelter, and health care offered—although abysmal by Western standards—exceeds what is locally available to non–refugees. The consequences are entirely predictable. Among many examples, the huge refugee camps along the Democratic Republic of Congo’s border with Rwanda stand out. They sustain a Hutu nation that would otherwise have been dispersed, making the consolidation of Rwanda impossible and providing a base for radicals to launch more Tutsi–killing raids across the border. Humanitarian intervention has worsened the chances of a stable, long–term resolution of the tensions in Rwanda.

To keep refugee nations intact and preserve their resentments forever is bad enough, but inserting material aid into ongoing conflicts is even worse. Many NGOs that operate in an odor of sanctity routinely supply active combatants. Defenseless, they cannot exclude armed warriors from their feeding stations, clinics, and shelters. Since refugees are presumptively on the losing side, the warriors among them are usually in retreat. By intervening to help, NGOs systematically impede the progress of their enemies toward a decisive victory that could end the war. Sometimes NGOs, impartial to a fault, even help both sides, thus preventing mutual exhaustion and a resulting settlement. And in some extreme cases, such as Somalia, NGOs even pay protection money to local war bands, which use those funds to buy arms. Those NGOs are therefore helping prolong the warfare whose consequences they ostensibly seek to mitigate.



Make War to Make Peace

Too many wars nowadays become endemic conflicts that never end because the transformative effects of both decisive victory and exhaustion are blocked by outside intervention. Unlike the ancient problem of war, however, the compounding of its evils by disinterested interventions is a new malpractice that could be curtailed. Policy elites should actively resist the emotional impulse to intervene in other peoples’ wars—not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it and want to facilitate the advent of peace. The United States should dissuade multilateral interventions instead of leading them. New rules should be established for U.N. refugee relief activities to ensure that immediate succor is swiftly followed by repatriation, local absorption, or emigration, ruling out the establishment of permanent refugee camps. And although it may not be possible to constrain interventionist NGOs, they should at least be neither officially encouraged nor funded. Underlying these seemingly perverse measures would be a true appreciation of war’s paradoxical logic and a commitment to let it serve its sole useful function: to bring peace.

Edward N. Luttwak is Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

[Corlyss_D]

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

I'm not sure how that is relevant.

It isn't relevant, but it is the trendy argument from the pacifists. It's as logical as their other argument that unless you are in the service or are a veteran, you have no right to an opinion. I'd like for people to be more informed on policy issues before they are allowed to vote, but unfortunately we don't even have a property requirement to vote any more. There is no willingness-to-die-for-your-country test for the right to have an opinion or to vote. The argument is just an idiotic stunt to induce guilt and shut people up. I, and you, and Don hire the military to go die for this country when the president determines its in our national interest to do so. The fact the approximately 299 million people don't join them is of no consequence.

[Corlyss_D]

Do you favor spreading democracy to Iraq?

People conveniently forget that there were 22 reasons for going to war in Iraq; establishing democracy was simply one. I am in favor of democracy everywhere, because as a general law of nature, democracies are more peaceful and afford their people the maximum opportunity to realize their potentials. Anyone who doesn't understand that law of nature is simply ignorant of the history of the spread of democracy. I support the establishment of democracies everywhere by educating myself on the issues and by voting for legislators who encourage free trade, are not afraid to use hard power to back up soft power, promote freedom, globalization, transparency in government, respect for minority rights, respect for women's rights, freedom of religion, and resistance to tyrannies. Granted, democracy in a state where civic trust had been destroyed by 30 years of Nazi- and Stalinist-trained butchers was too much to hope for. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is far more important for us to be there than for our presence to be due to any one or all of the 22 reasons the Congress sited in its resolution.

[anasazi]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking

An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace.

Hey, if I were only a senior fellow like this nonsense-spouting crack-pot.

Well, at least I am a senior.

[keaggy220]

No, it hasn't already been answered. I'm well aware that our soldiers are willing to die to protect the nation. But are you willing to?

I'm not sure how that is relevant.

It isn't relevant, but it is the trendy argument from the pacifists. It's as logical as their other argument that unless you are in the service or are a veteran, you have no right to an opinion. I'd like for people to be more informed on policy issues before they are allowed to vote, but unfortunately we don't even have a property requirement to vote any more. There is no willingness-to-die-for-your-country test for the right to have an opinion or to vote. The argument is just an idiotic stunt to induce guilt and shut people up. I, and you, and Don hire the military to go die for this country when the president determines its in our national interest to do so. The fact the approximately 299 million people don't join them is of no consequence.

Well said... If the comment from the original poster about being willing to die was meant to evoke guilt then it failed... The logic of the statement only confused me - maybe I expect too much of people, but I would think that everyone has a basic understanding of our volunteer military/defense and how and why it works.

At one time or another we all let our passions cloud our judgement...

[keaggy220]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking.

About 10 years ago my pastor at the time was speaking on the Beatitudes and he got to the part about blessed are the peacemakers... He said something along the lines of, "Folks this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid confrontation, in fact, delaying confrontation - most of the time, causes less peace for longer periods of time. Peace is tough and that's why those who can establish it and keep it are blessed."

I don't remember a lot of sermons, especially after 10 years, but this one was an eye opener for me because I have always taken the view that peacemakers were the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, but the Cindy Sheehan's are the ones that usually - not always, cause more war and give encouragement to the aggressors.

[Corlyss_D]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking.

About 10 years ago my pastor at the time was speaking on the Beatitudes and he got to the part about blessed are the peacemakers... He said something along the lines of, "Folks this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid confrontation, in fact, delaying confrontation - most of the time, causes less peace for longer periods of time. Peace is tough and that's why those who can establish it and keep it are blessed."

A realistic assessment, surprising coming from a member of a profession that more often than not believes its moral obligation is to stop people from killing each other, no matter what the reasons.

I have always taken the view that peacemakers were the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, but the Cindy Sheehan's are the ones that usually - not always, cause more war and give encouragement to the aggressors.

Their sanctimonious posturing kills people as surely as armies.

[anasazi]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking.

About 10 years ago my pastor at the time was speaking on the Beatitudes and he got to the part about blessed are the peacemakers... He said something along the lines of, "Folks this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid confrontation, in fact, delaying confrontation - most of the time, causes less peace for longer periods of time. Peace is tough and that's why those who can establish it and keep it are blessed."

A realistic assessment, surprising coming from a member of a profession that more often than not believes its moral obligation is to stop people from killing each other, no matter what the reasons.

I have always taken the view that peacemakers were the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, but the Cindy Sheehan's are the ones that usually - not always, cause more war and give encouragement to the aggressors.

Their sanctimonious posturing kills people as surely as armies.

When I read a statement like that, it only reafirms my thought that the so-called Christian churches are hedging and waffling. I suppose this pastor also thinks the book of Genesis should be taken literally? He certainly has no problems putting his own spin on what Jesus Christ said however.

Hey, nobody ever said it was easy.

[keaggy220]

I guess I am not a big believer that war settles much of anything.

What fevered leftist den gave you that silly idea?

Give War a Chance
By Edward N. Luttwak

Premature Peacemaking.

About 10 years ago my pastor at the time was speaking on the Beatitudes and he got to the part about blessed are the peacemakers... He said something along the lines of, "Folks this doesn't give you an excuse to avoid confrontation, in fact, delaying confrontation - most of the time, causes less peace for longer periods of time. Peace is tough and that's why those who can establish it and keep it are blessed."

A realistic assessment, surprising coming from a member of a profession that more often than not believes its moral obligation is to stop people from killing each other, no matter what the reasons.

I have always taken the view that peacemakers were the Cindy Sheehan's of the world, but the Cindy Sheehan's are the ones that usually - not always, cause more war and give encouragement to the aggressors.

Their sanctimonious posturing kills people as surely as armies.

When I read a statement like that, it only reafirms my thought that the so-called Christian churches are hedging and waffling. I suppose this pastor also thinks the book of Genesis should be taken literally? He certainly has no problems putting his own spin on what Jesus Christ said however.

Hey, nobody ever said it was easy.

Actually, if you think about it, my pastors logic regarding confrontation and peacemakers fits perfectly within the context of the life of Jesus as recorded by the gospels. Remember the money changers (Mark 11:15-19, 11:27-33, Matthew 21:12-17, 21:23-27 and Luke 19:45-48, 20:1-8?) Also, remember the whole reason Christ came to earth was for the ultimate confrontation (LUKE 22:39-53) - so I'm confident that peacemakers are people that do not avoid confrontation - it fits perfectly within the context of the New Testament.

[Corlyss_D]

it only reafirms my thought that the so-called Christian churches are hedging and waffling. I suppose this pastor also thinks the book of Genesis should be taken literally? He certainly has no problems putting his own spin on what Jesus Christ said however.

Hey, nobody ever said it was easy.

Well, if you don't survive, it won't be possible, never mind easy. I can't think of any organized religion, living or dead, that ever advocated suicide in response to attacks. To the best of my knowledge, John is the only one who sees submitting to fatal assaults as preferable to fighting back.

[anasazi]

it only reafirms my thought that the so-called Christian churches are hedging and waffling. I suppose this pastor also thinks the book of Genesis should be taken literally? He certainly has no problems putting his own spin on what Jesus Christ said however.

Hey, nobody ever said it was easy.

Well, if you don't survive, it won't be possible, never mind easy. I can't think of any organized religion, living or dead, that ever advocated suicide in response to attacks. To the best of my knowledge, John is the only one who sees submitting to fatal assaults as preferable to fighting back.

Well, I didn't say I was a Christian myself, or not. Nor did I say that I had a problem with responding to an attack. I figure I can do as good a job as our current 'commander-in-chief' who coudn't even figure out what hit us. And I didn't mean to imply that I wouldn't use force, just that I didn't have much use for it.

I do have a problem with spending the lives of our children as well as their financial future, by sending them into 'wars of discretion' where absolutely nothing is in our national interest.

[Corlyss_D]

I do have a problem with spending the lives of our children as well as their financial future, by sending them into 'wars of discretion' where absolutely nothing is in our national interest.

Oh, the war is a mere pittance compared to the economic catastrophe resulting from our thoughtless largess to the elderly.

I'm curious how you would define national interest if the use of force rarely figures in your calculations.

[anasazi]

I do have a problem with spending the lives of our children as well as their financial future, by sending them into 'wars of discretion' where absolutely nothing is in our national interest.

Oh, the war is a mere pittance compared to the economic catastrophe resulting from our thoughtless largess to the elderly.

I'm curious how you would define national interest if the use of force rarely figures in your calculations.

The so-called 'largess to the elderly'. Don't we all pay social security taxes? This is not free stuff. Actually though our government has been raiding this fund for years and now has the gall to complain that there may be a shortage. Well, there are a lot of figures being tossed around by this camp and that camp to be sure. Social Security is still sound, I think, and would be even sounder if the politicians would just leave it alone.

National interest is anything (to me) that protects the lives and or wealth of the United States. I think the money (taxes) I've spent protecting me from the Noriegas and Husseins are petty-anti compared with what should be spent to provide everyone with health care, keep the oceans from taking over Boca Raton and educating our grand children.

The last time, in my view, that the U.S. HAD to use force, was in 1941. That was 55 years ago. I do think the money spent on nuclear deterrence was probably a smart thing, however. Hindsight is great isn't it?

[Corlyss_D]

The so-called 'largess to the elderly'. Don't we all pay social security taxes? This is not free stuff.

Social security isn't the problem. Or it's not as bad a problem as medicare and medicaid. They will eat the budget in the next years. Entitlements (Social security, medicare, medicaid) already amount to 40% of the budget; the rest of the Government's needs are met thru "discretionary spending." All of these gereous welfare programs were originally designed for large numbers of payers and few drawers. Well, it didn't stay that way for a variety of reasons, and Boomer demands are going to destroy the programs.

Actually though our government has been raiding this fund for years and now has the gall to complain that there may be a shortage.

That's political propaganda. There never was a "fund." Current obligations are met from current receipts.


Issue Date: Fall 2003, Posted On: 9/26/2003

Going Critical
By: Niall Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff.
Fall 2003

". . . the interesting subject of the finances of the declining empire."

-Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Book I, ch. xvii

Toppling three tyrannies-that of Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban and now Saddam Hussein-within four years is no mean achievement by the standards of any past global empire. What makes this achievement so remarkable is that it comes little more than a decade after a wave of anxiety about American "overstretch" and decline. In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy warned that the United States was running "the risk . . . of what might roughly be called 'imperial overstretch.'" America, he maintained, was spending too much on its overseas military commitments, to the detriment of the U.S. economy. Under such conditions, "The only answer to the question", as to whether the United States could remain a superpower, was "no."

As John Maynard Keynes once said, when the facts change, one ought to change one's opinion. Writing last September about America's subsequent ascent from superpower to "hyperpower", Kennedy invoked the deus ex machina of the "revolution in military affairs" to explain why his predictions of overstretch had not been fulfilled. All that investment in military research and development of which he had been so disapproving back in the 1980s had paid an unforeseen dividend.1 Not only did the Soviet Union collapse as it strained to match the Reagan-Weinberger arms extravaganza; the United States also went on to collect a triple peace dividend in the 1990s: falling defense spending as a share of GDP, accelerating economic growth and a quantum leap in military capability that left all other states far behind.

The irony is that Kennedy's original thesis of fiscal overstretch is now about to be vindicated-but not as a result of America's overseas military commitments. Today's overstretch is the result of chronically unbalanced domestic finances, primarily the result of a mismatch between earlier social security legislation, some of it dating back to the New Deal, and the changing demographics of American society. In just five years' time, 77 million "baby boomers" will start collecting Social Security benefits. In eight years, they will start collecting Medicare benefits. By the time they are all retired in 2030, the United States will have doubled the number of its elderly population but increased by only 18 percent the number of workers able to pay for their benefits. Over time, a falling birthrate and lengthening life expectancy are indeed a potent combination.

A Menu of Pain

Economists regard the commitment to pay pension and medical benefits to current and future elderly as part of the government's "implicit" liabilities. But these liabilities are no less real than the obligation to pay back the principal plus the interest on government bonds. Politically speaking, it may be easier to default on explicit debt than to stop paying Social Security and Medicare benefits. While no one can say for sure which liability the government would renege on first, one thing is clear: the implicit liabilities dwarf the explicit ones. Indeed, their size is so large as to render the U.S. government effectively bankrupt.

The scale of this implicit insolvency was laid bare this summer in an explosive paper by Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and Kent Smetters, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury and now an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.2 They asked the following question: Suppose the government could, today, get its hands on all the revenue it can expect to collect in the future, but had to use it, today, to pay off all its future expenditure commitments, including debt service. Would the present value (the discounted value today) of the future revenues cover the present value of the future expenditures? The answer was a decided no: according to their calculations, the shortfall amounts to $45 trillion. To put that figure into perspective, it is twelve times larger than the current official debt and roughly four times the size of the country's annual output.

Gokhale and Smetters also asked how much taxes would have to be raised, or expenditures cut, on an immediate and permanent basis to generate, in present value, $45 trillion? Their answer takes the form of a "menu of pain" with four unpalatable dishes to choose from. We could either, starting today, raise income taxes (individual and corporate) by 69 percent; or we could raise payroll taxes by 95 percent; or we could cut Social Security and Medicare benefits by 56 percent; or we could cut federal discretionary spending by more than 100 percent (which, of course, is impossible).

Another way of expressing the problem is to compare our own lifetime tax burden with that of the next generation if the government does not adopt one of the above policies. Hence the term often used to describe calculations like these: generational accounting. What such calculations imply is that anyone who has the bad luck to be born in America today, as opposed to back in the 1940s or 1950s, is going to be saddled throughout his working life with very high tax rates-potentially twice as high as those his parents or grandparents faced. Notwithstanding the Bush Administration's tax cuts, Americans are hardly under-taxed. So the idea of taxing our children at twice the current rates seems ludicrous.

It is not as if people are completely oblivious to the problem. It is common knowledge that we are living longer and that paying for the rising proportion of elderly people in the population is going to be expensive. What people do not yet realize, however, is just how expensive.

One common response is to say that the economists in question have a political axe to grind and have therefore made assumptions calculated to paint the blackest picture possible. But the reality is that the Gokhale-Smetters study was commissioned by then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and was meticulously prepared while Smetters was at the Treasury and Gokhale was on loan to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve. And, far from being a worst-case scenario, the Gokhale and Smetters figures are based on what are arguably optimistic official assumptions about future growth in Medicare costs, as well as about future increases in longevity.

Perhaps predictably, the Treasury now denies that it had anything to do with the Gokhale and Smetters study. It would rather we read the supposedly independent Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) ten-year budget forecasts, which are frequently cited in the press and are one of the principal reasons for the prevailing mood of complacency about fiscal policy. The credibility of the CBO's forecasts is a perfect illustration of the phenomenon known to students of drama as the suspension of disbelief. This also operates in the financial world. How does the CBO get us to suspend disbelief? The same way a good movie director does it-with good special effects.

During the Clinton Administration, the CBO routinely projected that, regardless of inflation or economic growth, the federal government would spend precisely the same number of dollars, year in and year out, on everything apart from Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements. At the same time, the CBO confidently assumed federal taxes would grow at roughly 6 percent each year. As a result, it was able to make dizzying forecasts of budget surpluses stretching as far as the CBO could see. (These phantom surpluses were the money Al Gore promised to spend on voters and George W. Bush promised to return to them during the 2000 election.)

With the election over, the CBO decided that not adjusting projected discretionary spending for inflation was no longer "useful or viable." Making this correction reduced the CBO's projected 2002-11 surplus from $6.8 trillion to $5.6 trillion. But that was nothing compared to the impact of subsequent UNforeseen events. Two years later, after a recession, a huge tax cut, the September 11 attacks and the Iraq war, the projected ten-year surplus has fallen to $20 billion. Nevertheless, the CBO is still able to predict a medium-term decline in the federal debt in public hands from 35.5 percent of GDP to 16.8 percent ten years hence. To generate this result the CBO conveniently assumed that discretionary spending would remain fixed over the next decade even as the economy grows. In fact, these purchases, which include the additional military and security expenditures prompted by September 11, have grown more than twice as fast as the economy over the last three years. As we write, the CBO has done some more correcting. It now predicts a deficit for the coming fiscal year of close to half a trillion dollars. And for the ten-year period 2002-11, it no longer predicts a surplus but a $2.3 trillion deficit. This is $9.1 trillion more in debt than the CBO was predicting before the last election.

Unfortunately, even the CBO's latest projections still grossly understate the true size of the government's liabilities because its "bottom line" is only that part of the federal government's liabilities that takes the form of bonds. Publicly issued and traded debt, however, is simply dwarfed by the gargantuan off-balance-sheet liabilities of the Social Security and Medicare systems.

Conventional wisdom predicts that if investors and traders in government bonds anticipate a growing imbalance in a government's fiscal policy, they will sell that government's bonds. There are good reasons for this. A widening gap between current revenues and expenditures is usually filled in two ways: first, by selling more bonds to the public and, second, by printing money. Either response leads to a decline in bond prices and a rise in interest rates: the incentive people need to purchase bonds. That incentive has to be larger when the real return of principal plus interest on the bond is threatened by default or inflation.

Figures like those produced by Gokhale and Smetters might have been expected to precipitate a sharp drop in bond prices. But at the time their study appeared, the markets barely reacted. Yields on ten-year Treasuries have in fact been heading downward for more than twenty years. At their peak in 1981 they rose above 15 percent. As recently as November 1994, they were above 8 percent. By mid-June 2003-two weeks after the $45 trillion figure had hit the front page of the Financial Times-they stood at 3.1 percent, the lowest they have been since 1958.

Today, however, there are clear signs of a slight upward shift in investors' inflationary expectations. The yield on the ten-year Treasuries has jumped to 4.4 percent in response to the government's admission that its actual deficit for 2003 would be $475 billion-a rather different figure from the surplus of $334 billion that was forecast back in April 2001. The yield curve, which had become more or less flat by the late 1990s, is now sloping more steeply upwards. At the end of 2000, the spread between ninety-day and thirty-year interest rates was slightly negative (minus 42 basis points). By August, it stood at over 400 basis points. Finally, the spread between yields on ten-year bonds and index-linked bonds with the same maturity has widened slightly, from around 140 basis points in October last year to over 230 basis points in late August.

Yet this still seems a relatively modest reaction given the size of the fiscal crisis facing the United States. There are two possible explanations for the relative insouciance of the bond market. One is that investors and traders know of a painless answer to the federal government's coming fiscal crisis, which they are somehow managing to keep secret from the economics profession. The other is simply that they are in denial. Or maybe, to be fair, nobody can quite work out what it implies. We are, after all, in uncharted waters. Previous fiscal crises were not like this because most governments' liabilities took the form of official bonds, not statutory pledges to pay various index-linked benefits to citizens. Bond traders are accustomed to a world in which governments in fiscal difficulties either default or allow inflation to erode the real value of their debts. They look at the United States and find it hard to imagine either scenario.

For reasons quite unrelated to federal fiscal policy, there are strong deflationary pressures operating at home and abroad. Overcapacity generated during the 1990s boom, investor pessimism in the wake of the bust, consumer anxiety about job losses-all these factors mean that virtually the only sector of the U.S. economy still buoyant is housing, for the simple reason that mortgage rates are the lowest in two generations. At this writing, the U.S. unemployment rate has just reached a nine-year high. Meanwhile, the unleashing of China's productive energies is filling the global economy with amazingly cheap consumer goods.

Earlier this summer, one of the lead stories on the Bloomberg website described deflation as the "great bugaboo menacing the markets and the economy in the early 2000s." On May 22, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, acknowledged that there was a "possibility" of deflation in his most recent testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

There is, however, another way of looking at the bond traders' mindset. Compare their predicament with that of their colleagues (now in many cases former colleagues) trading equities just five years ago. At that time, it was privately acknowledged by nearly everyone on Wall Street and publicly acknowledged by most economists that American stocks, especially those in the technology sector, were wildly overvalued. In 1996, Alan Greenspan famously declared that the stock market was suffering from "irrational exuberance." Over the next three years, a succession of economists sought to explain why the future profits of American companies could not possibly be high enough to justify their giddy stock market valuations. Still, the markets rose, and it was not until January 2000 that the bubble burst.

It is now clear that something similar was going on in the bond market this year. Just as investors and traders knew that most Internet companies could never earn enough to justify their 1999 valuations, investors and traders knew that future government revenues cannot remotely cover both the interest on the federal debt and the transfers due on the government's implicit liabilities. But just as participants in the stock market were the mental prisoners of a five-year bull market, so participants in the bond market were the mental prisoners of a twenty-year bond bull market that had seen the price of long-term Treasuries rise by a factor of two-and-a-half in twenty years. In both cases, everyone knew there was going to be a "correction", but nobody wanted to be the first player out of the market, who might then have to sit and watch the bull-run continue for another year.

Between January 2000 and October 2002, the Dow Jones Industrials index declined by almost exactly 38 percent as irrational exuberance gave way to more rational gloom. By April of this year, it was becoming easy to imagine a similar correction to the bond market. Now it seems to have happened. Or has it? Most analysts attribute the recent rise in yield to growing optimism about economic growth and the stock market rather than to fiscal pessimism. This implies that the full magnitude of the government's fiscal plight has not yet sunk in. Much therefore depends on what bond traders and investors expect the government to do about its $45 trillion black hole. When rational gloom sets in, the U.S. economy will likely "go critical."

The Inflation Scenario

The printing press is the time-honored last resort of governments that cannot pay their bills out of current tax revenue or new bond sales. It leads, of course, to inflation and, potentially, hyperinflation. The higher the anticipated rate of inflation, the higher interest rates will rise, because nobody wants to lend money and be paid back in undervalued banknotes. The process whereby current fiscal policy influences expectations about future inflation is a dynamic one with powerful feedback effects. If consumers in financial markets decide a country is broke and is going to inflate, they act in ways that actually catalyze such an outcome. By pushing up interest rates, they raise the cost of financing the government's debt and hence worsen its fiscal position. Higher interest rates may also depress business activity. Firms stop borrowing and start laying off workers. The attendant recession lowers tax receipts and drives the government into a deeper fiscal hole. In desperation, the government starts printing money and lending it, via the banking system, to the private sector. The additional money leads to inflation and the higher inflation rates assumed by the market turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, the private sector and the government find themselves in a game of chicken: If the government can convince the private sector it can pay its bills without printing money, interest rates stay down; if it cannot, interest rates go up, and the government may be forced to print money sooner rather than later.

This suggests one possible scenario. Bondholders will start to sell off as soon as a critical mass of them recognizes that the government's implicit and explicit liabilities are too much for it to handle with conventional fiscal policy, and concludes that the only way the government will be able to pay its bills is by printing money. What commonly triggers such shifts in expectations is an item of financial news. In Germany in May 1921-to give an extreme example-it was the announcement of a staggering postwar reparations burden of 132 billion deutschemarks that convinced investors the government's fiscal position was incompatible with currency stability. The assassination of the liberal foreign minister, Walther Rathenau, in July of the following year delivered the coup de grace, sending both interest rates and exchange rates sky-rocketing.

America today is certainly a long way from being the Weimar Republic. But an item of fiscal news could nevertheless conceivably cause a major shift in inflationary expectations and hence in long-term interest rates. The first pinprick in the bond market bubble came in July from the publication of a government deficit number significantly higher than had been forecast by the CBO. Another hole might be made by Alan Greenspan's retirement at some point in the next two years, though judging by the muted reaction to the 77-year-old's warning earlier this year about the Bush Administration's "lack of fiscal discipline", his power to move the markets is not what it was. And there is always the possibility of another major terrorist attack or a serious deterioration of the situation in postwar Iraq.

The panic may not begin among American investors, however. According to data published in September 2002, foreign investors currently own close to two-fifths of the federal debt held in private hands. The much-vaunted "hyperpower" would quickly find itself humbled if foreigners were to express their anti-Americanism by dumping U.S. Treasuries. Conventional wisdom has it that there is "nowhere else to go" for international investors seeking low-risk securities in the world's reserve currency. However, this overlooks the growing importance of euro-denominated securities in the wake of European Monetary Union (EMU). The volume of euro-denominated government bonds was very large even before the single currency was introduced: the outstanding volume of Eurozone government bonds was roughly half the outstanding volume of U.S. government bonds in 1998. But, as the rapid convergence of Eurozone bond yields clearly shows, monetary union has greatly reduced pre-1999 country risk, so that (in effect) all Eurozone countries' bonds are regarded as being almost as good as the old German bonds. As a result, the European bond market has been significantly boosted by EMU: according to the Bank for International Settlements, about 44 percent of net international bond issuance has been denominated in euros since the first quarter of 1999, compared with 48 percent in dollars. For the equivalent period before the introduction of the euro, the respective shares were 29 percent and 53 percent.

EMU may not have boosted economic growth in the Eurozone, but it has certainly enhanced fiscal and monetary credibility for the member-states. For all its crudeness, the Growth and Stability Pact imposes tight national constraints on the fiscal policies of Eurozone members, though it remains to be seen whether the rule restricting deficits to 3 percent of GDP will be enforced this year. Moreover, unlike the United States, the Eurozone runs a balance of payments surplus. The possibility that investors may come to regard the euro as being as good as the dollar when it comes to denominating low-risk securities cannot be excluded. Indeed, it may already be happening. Since February last year, the dollar has declined against the euro by 27 percent.

A plausible sequence of events might therefore run like this. Long-term interest rates edge up further as investors in Europe and Asia start dumping long-term Treasuries on the market. The IMF formally criticizes U.S. fiscal imbalances (something the IMF's chief economist, Kenneth Rogoff, has already done informally). Long-term interest rates rise further. Inflation picks up due to higher import prices, which is due to the weaker dollar. Long-term interest rates move into double-digits. The Fed starts printing money to lower rates, but this raises long-term rates even further. The economy moves into recession. Deficits now exceed 5 percent of GDP. Inflation hits double digits. Ultimately, the government is forced to raise taxes, depressing the economy further.

This scenario has at least superficial plausibility because it echoes past events. Although few bond traders have history degrees, they recollect that the high bond yields of the early 1980s were in large measure a consequence of the inflationary fiscal and monetary policies of the previous decade. Nor do the 1970s furnish the only historical precedent for inflationary outcomes of fiscal crises. As is well known, printing money helps a government in fiscal difficulties in three ways. First, the government gets to exchange intrinsically worthless pieces of paper for real goods and services. Second, inflation waters down the real value of official debt. (At the end of World War I, all the major European combatants had accumulated public debts in excess of around two years' national income. But, by 1923, the Germans had rid themselves of nearly all their debt by printing so much money that the real value of government bonds fell close to zero.) Third, if the salaries of government workers are paid with a lag or only partially adjusted for inflation, inflation will lower their real incomes. The same holds true for welfare, Social Security and other government transfer payments, provided they are not index-linked. In January 1992, for example, Russian inflation hit its post-Communist peak of 296 percent a month, but increases in government transfer payments (especially pensions and some salaries) lagged far behind.

But a 1970s-style inflation is not the only way America's coming fiscal crisis can unfold, for three reasons. First, only a modest proportion of the federal government's $45 trillion budget gap would actually be reduced through a jump in inflation of the sort described above. Much of the government's tradable debt is of short maturity-indeed, fully a third of it has a maturity of one year or less. This makes it much harder to inflate away debt since any increase in inflationary expectations will force the government to pay much higher interest rates when it seeks to renew these short-dated bonds. Second, Social Security benefits are protected against inflation via an annual inflation adjustment. Medicare benefits are also effectively inflation-proof because the government unquestioningly pays whatever bills it receives.

So, if a rerun of the 1970s would not solve the federal government's fiscal problems, but only compound them, then what are the alternatives? The Bush Administration's approach to the impending federal fiscal crisis appears, surprisingly, to be a variation on Lenin's old slogan: "The worse the better." Faced with the perfect fiscal storm, the President and his men appear to have decided to punch a hole in the boat by pushing through not one but three major tax cuts. Administration spokesmen have often defended such measures as designed to stimulate economic activity, a version of the "voodoo economics" once upon a time derided by the President's father. Sadly, in the real world, cutting taxes raises consumption, which lowers saving and investment, thereby reducing the amount of equipment and other capital per worker. This, in turn, lowers workers' wages and tax payments. This reduction in the tax base reinforces the direct loss in revenues associated with cutting tax rates.

Some proponents of a tax cut as a stimulus argue that reducing certain taxes, like dividend taxes, gives people a greater incentive to save. This is not, however, how people behave, nor how economic theory predicts they should behave. Yes, lower taxes on dividends are an incentive to consume less today in order to consume more tomorrow. But they also provide an incentive to consume more, because tax cuts have income effects as well as substitution (incentive) effects. Even if they did not, the expansion of the tax base from cutting taxes would need to be very large to offset the direct loss of revenues associated with lowering tax rates.

One viable fiscal solution to generational imbalance has already been implemented in Britain: that is, simply to break the link between the state pension and wages. In 1979, the newly elected government of Margaret Thatcher discreetly reformed the long-established basic state pension, which was increased each year in line with the higher of two indices: the retail price index or the average earnings index. In her first budget, Thatcher amended the rule for increasing the basic pension so that it would rise in line with the retail price index only, breaking the link with average earnings. The short-run fiscal saving involved was substantial, since the growth of earnings was much higher than inflation after 1980 (around 180 percent to 1995, compared with a consumer price inflation rate of 120 percent). The long-run saving was greater still: the United Kingdom's unfunded public pension liability today is a great deal smaller than those of most continental governments-as little as 5 percent for the period to 2050, compared with 70 percent for Italy, 105 percent for France and 110 percent for Germany. This and other Thatcher reforms are the reason the United Kingdom is one of the elite developed economies not currently facing a major hole in their generational accounts. (Interestingly, the others are nearly all ex-British colonies: Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. According to international comparisons done in 1998, each of these countries could have achieved generational balance with tax increases of less than 5 percent.)

Could it happen in the United States? In view of the growing political organization and self-consciousness of elderly Americans, it seems unlikely. If you spend some time in Florida, you are bound to see scores of bumper stickers that read: "I'm Spending My Kids' Inheritance." Fifty years ago, such sentiments were seldom uttered, but attitudes and behavior have changed. Economic research shows conclusively that the elderly as a group are indeed consuming with next to no regard for their adult children. The federal government has spent half a century taking ever larger sums from workers and handing them to retirees in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The result has been a doubling of consumption per retiree relative to consumption per worker. Thus, the absence of voluntary transfers of wealth between the old and the young helps explain why Social Security is sometimes referred to as the "third rail": any politician who suggests a cut in benefits will receive a violent political shock from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and related interest groups.

The Return to Fiscal Sanity

So are there any policies an American president can adopt without risking electoral oblivion? The first goal must be to discipline Medicare spending, which is responsible for the lion's share-82 percent-of the $45 trillion budget black hole. Since 1970, the rate of growth of real Medicare benefits per beneficiary has exceeded that of labor productivity by 2.4 percentage points. The $45 trillion figure assumes, optimistically, that in the future the growth rate of Medicare benefits per beneficiary will exceed productivity growth by only 1 percentage point. Just cutting the growth rate of Medicare benefits per beneficiary by half a percentage point per year would shave $15 trillion off the $45 trillion long-term budget gap. There must be a way to cap the program's growth without jeopardizing its ability to deliver critically important health insurance protection to the elderly.

Unfortunately, the President's new policy-which effectively bribes the elderly with a drug benefit to join HMOs-has three flaws. First, the benefit he proposes is fabulously expensive: between $400 billion and $1 trillion over ten years. Second, his scheme retains the traditional and very expensive fee-for-service Medicare system and permits the elderly to switch back to it whenever they like. Unfortunately, they are likely to switch back just when they are becoming expensive to treat. Finally, the HMOs are free to shut down and ship their customers back to the traditional plan whenever their clients become too expensive.

The key, then, to meaningful Medicare reform is to eliminate entirely the traditional fee-for-service option and give all Medicare participants a voucher to purchase private health insurance. But would this not leave them at the mercy of the market, which favors insuring only the healthiest among them? The answer is no, provided the vouchers handed to the elderly are weighted according to their health status. Thus an 80-year-old with pancreatic cancer might get a $100,000 voucher, while an 80-year-old who is in perfect shape might get only a $5,000 voucher. The vouchers would be determined each year in light of the participant's health status at the end of that year. Having set a rigid cap on total Medicare expenditures, the government can readily determine the amount of each voucher. (The major objection to this proposal is the loss of each participant's privacy, since he will have to reveal his medical history to a government-appointed doctor. But this seems a small price to pay to regain some measure of fiscal sanity.)

The second key policy is to privatize Social Security, but in such a way that the current elderly help rather than hinder reform. One way to do this would be to close down the old system at the margin and enact a federal retail sales tax to pay off, through time, its accrued liabilities. What workers would otherwise have paid in payroll taxes would now be invested in special private retirement accounts, to be split fifty-fifty between spouses. The government would make matching contributions for poor workers. And it would contribute fully on behalf of the disabled and the unemployed. Finally, all account balances would be invested in a global, market-weighted index of stocks, bonds and real estate.

Will either of these policies be implemented? We are not optimistic, since each would entail sacrifices by retired Americans, as the AARP would no doubt hasten to point out. Social Security reform appears likely to remain a taboo subject on the presidential campaign trail. And with the enactment of the drug benefit, Medicare has supposedly been dealt with.

There is, however, one other, more drastic possibility. It is usually assumed that outright default on the government's implicit liabilities is unlikely. Is it? Suppose a major change in expectations about America's fiscal future is looming on the horizon. If the bond market does "go critical"-if, in other words, investors suddenly start to fear an inflationary outcome of the federal fiscal crisis-then a president like this one, who is as attracted to reductions in Social Security as he is to reductions in taxation, might seize the moment of national emergency. And it would indeed be a national emergency. A government facing a steep increase in its borrowing costs would confront a large and powerful social group determined to defend their entitlements.

Such a scenario has one obvious historical precedent. In ancien rŽgime France, the biggest burden on royal finances did not take the form of bonds but of salaries due to tens of thousands of officeholders, men who had simply bought a government sinecure and expected in return to be paid a salary for life. All attempts to reduce these implicit liabilities within the existing political system simply failed. It was only after the outbreak of the Revolution, arguably a direct consequence of the monarchy's fiscal crisis, that the offices were abolished. The officeholders were compensated by cash payments in a new currency, the assignats, which were rendered worthless within a few years by the revolutionary printing presses. This parallel has two implications: first, there can be big political consequences when fiscal systems go critical; and second, vested interests that resist necessary fiscal reforms can end up losing much more heavily from a revolutionary solution.

Perhaps, then, Paul Kennedy was not so wrong after all to draw parallels between modern America and pre-revolutionary France. Bourbon France, like America today, had pretensions to imperial grandeur but was ultimately wrecked by a curious kind of overstretch. It was not overseas adventures that did in the Bourbons. Indeed, Louis xvi's last foreign war, in support of the rebellious American colonists, was a huge strategic success. Rather, the overstretch was internal, and at its very heart was a black hole of implicit liabilities.

In the same way, the decline and fall of America's undeclared empire will be due not to terrorists at our gates nor to the rogue regimes that sponsor them, but to a fiscal crisis of the welfare state. The government finds itself between the falling rock of market sentiment and the hard place of vested interests. Political expediency rules out fiscal reform; but if the bond markets foresee a spiral of deficit finance, sooner or later they will mark down the price of U.S Treasuries even further. And rising yields will only increase the cost of rolling over the government's explicit debt.

This fiscal crisis is not, of course, a problem unique to America. It afflicts the world's second and third largest economies even more seriously, since neither Japan nor Germany can compensate for the senescence of their populations with American-style immigration. But neither Japan nor Germany has pretensions to be a global hegemon or hyperpower. Their decline into economic old age has minimal strategic implications. That is not true in the American case.

As we write, the crisis of the American welfare state remains a latent one. Few people, least of all in the government, wish to believe it is real. But the crisis could manifest itself with dramatic suddenness if there is a significant shift in the expectations of financial markets at home or abroad. And when the finances of the United States "go critical", there will inevitably be moves to cut back any federal program that lacks strong popular support. Though relatively inexpensive, and not in themselves a cause of American overstretch, "nation-building" projects in far-away countries will surely be among the first things to be axed.

After all, what could be more "discretionary" than the cost of running Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq? We are already seeing in Afghanistan, and will soon see in Iraq, how little America is actually willing to spend on postwar reconstruction. By May 2003, the United States had disbursed a paltry $5 million to the main Afghan Interim Administration Fund, a tiny fraction of the $20 billion the Afghan government says it needs to achieve economic and political stabilization.3 This is especially astounding given the indisputable fact that it was in the anarchy of post-Cold War Afghanistan that Al-Qaeda took root and flourished.

In short, the colossus that currently bestrides the world has feet of clay. The latent fiscal crisis of the American welfare state implies, at best, an empire run on a shoestring, at worst a retreat from nation-building as swift as the original advance towards it. As Edward Gibbon once wrote, "the finances of the declining empire" do indeed make an interesting subject.

National interest is anything (to me) that protects the lives and or wealth of the United States.

Well, we agree on that much, and your list explains why we don't agree on much else.