Short and Sweet Blog

It is clear to me as I watch the pressures increase on President Obama to somehow become militarily involved in the Libyan “civil war” that at this time in history this is only one in a long line of uniquely American situations. The US is the indispensible nation in every sense. Britain, France and Italy, together or in any forseeable combination with others including China and/or Russia, could not project force into the region in sufficient quantity and quality to impose a “no fly zone” or to deploy and supply land forces to intervene in this part or any part of northern Africa. Hence, the decision as to what to do with Col. Gaddafi is ours and ours alone.

What mounting pressures? First, there are the news stories of the dictator Gadaffi’s airplanes attacking civilians and images of the injured. Second, there is the economic problem of the potential interruption of exports of Libyan crude and natural gas which is causing a spike in oil prices. Third, there is the Hitler problem, i.e. this idea is that leaving a brutal dictator in power is a bad thing, if he can be removed, since the dictator is, by definition, brutal. The fact that leaving him in power may not be the worst thing that could happen is disregarded or never even entertained. Last, there is the political pressure applied by John McCain and others on the President to “do something.” The political benefit of the latter’s course is that after having come out publically for a “no fly zone,” in subsequent days if the President does nothing and anything bad happens in Libya, it can politically be spun as being the “President’s fault.”

As the American public we simply must become less idealistic and more realistic. First, American armed forces are not and should not be used as the policemen of the world. They have been raised and are supported by us to advance the interests of the United States. If the mere fact of their existence creates irresistable political pressure for them to be deployed unwisely and in ways not directly related to the interests of the United States of America, then it might very well be better if they did not exist in the first place. In short, as the father of a soldier, I suggest that it may be better to be France which has no power to do anything so they can simply sit back and criticize and complain which ever way it turns out.

As Strafor’s George Friedman observed recently:

It should also be remembered that the same international community that condemned Saddam Hussein as a brutal dictator quite easily turned to condemn the United States both for deposing him and for the steps its military took in trying to deal with the subsequent insurgency. It is not difficult to imagine a situation where there is extended Libyan resistance to the occupying force followed by international condemnation of the counterinsurgency effort.

As much as I may disagree with President Obama on many things, I do not envy him his job. He has no way to go where he will not be castigated and criticized for what he does or doesn’t do. He simply cannot win. There is no outcome, other than full fledged western-style democracy, which will unambiguously please everyone and that is very unlikely indeed.

It reminds me of discussions I have had with friends and acquaintances about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of them criticize former President Bush for going into these wars, others criticize him for mishandling them but almost no one refrains from criticizing him under the philosophy that “he did his best to do what was right for the US” and leave it at that. They also refuse even to engage in the “hypothetical situations” which I pose. Usually they simply snort and act as if my hypothetical and indeed any such hypothetical is ridiculous. An example, assume that President Bush failed to take aggressive military action against those who attacked us from Afghanistan, what further mischief would those miscreants have been encouraged and enabled to inflict and who would have been blamed? Would Osama Bin Laden have been able to take up the mantle of Salladin, having defeated and humiliated the obviously weak infidel enemies, and been able to earlier and even more thoroughly radicalize south Asian and north African Muslims in their opposition to the West. Would Mubarak have fallen earlier? Where did the Bush go who promised no “nation building” and a humble foreign policy when the crap hit the fan?

Obviously, it is far too complex an exercise for a 10 minute conversation to rerun history with all it’s moving parts possibly moving differently. The problem is, however, that we prefer to act (and vote) as if the one variable that we would like to modify would have been the only change in the entire situation and that if our preferred choice had been made ‘things’ would have obviously turned out better. We like to think only about the opportunity costs of the roads not taken without giving any credit to the beneficial effects of the road actually taken.

This same kind of analysis could be applied to the folks who opposed the Obama stimulus. They don’t like to talk about the probability that without it the US and much of the world could have been plunged into a rather lengthy depression with attendant deflation with far more unemployment for a substantial period of time. They simply assume that the last two years would have been the exactly same (or maybe even better) except we wouldn’t have borrowed 3 trillion dollars. This is a ridiculous assumption. On the other hand, the pro-stimulus group prefers to leave to later the question of the future costs of having borrowed trillions to provide the present liquidity which has kept transactions happening and prices from falling. That this may very well cause a Japan style lost decade or worse is dismissed out of hand by the gogo-stimulus crowd (namely Paul Krugman) as being unthinkable. The opponent in Krugman’s mind is a repeat of the Great Depression and anything is better than that. The only possible problem with borrowing these trillions in Krug-world is that you may not borrow enough to keep everyone happy until the bandwagon starts rolling again.

I guess what I am really saying is that the existence of power–whether to project substantial military force into Libya or the power to borrow and spend trillions of dollars–creates it’s own imperative to use that power and let the future care for the future. It may be better policy in the long run to have our leaders constrained by laws and other circumstances which do not allow them the freedom to engage in the “big thing.” As it stands, our leaders, rather than being subject to a future of being second guessed as to what the world would have looked like if they had used the power they had, they are very likely to be overtempted to simply use it and see what happens.