Jun 22 2006
North Korea: Be Careful What you Wish For
It ain’t easy, but someone’s gotta do it.
That’s the rationale, at least, when you talk to supporters about the U.S. being in the global cop business.
But being global cop is the exact opposite of what the founding fathers had in mind when they founded the nation, talking often of how it would erode liberty, run up deficits and debt - and lead to a host of unintended consequences. Instead, they suggested concepts like a very small, non centralized army (Jefferson actually thought there should be no formal army), and trade with all nations, but alliances with none.
Regarding the former, they noted that standing armies have a knack for being put to use when sitting around. History showed that when domestic troubles arose, foreign enemies were conjured up to distract and galvanize a discontent citizenry. As well, armies often were used to subdue dissent among a nation’s own people.
Regarding the latter, alliances often obligated otherwise neutral nations to wars in which the citizens had no real benefit or interest, although often it benefited the royal families, banking interests and political elites of both nations. The U.S., being a nation of the people, such was outright sacrilege. Instead, trade, it was argued, made you friends with all. The philosophy foreshadowed the (I believe it was) Bismarck observation, that when trade ceases to flow freely across borders, armies soon will.
Yet despite the intent at our liberty minded founding, here we are 225 years later running massive federal deficits, running up a gargantuan federal debt. We have troops in over 100 nations, and have assisted and organized many small wars in the last fifteen years. We have a 50+ year legacy of steering the direction of autonomous foreign nations’ governments and politicians with hundreds of $ billions of targeted aid and interventions, and consequently we have a created legacy of enemies who were opposed to and lost to those allies.
Hence, as noble as those ideals have might have seemed to the experts who dreamt them up, and to the citizens who supported them, we have now a War on Terror and a war in Iraq, the outcome of which are both uncertain on so many levels. The U.S. seems to need to relearn over and again - as Churchill warned - “never believe that war will be smooth or easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
So today we have reservations when we read Ashton Carter and William Perry in today’s Washington Post, rallying for a preventive first strike on North Korea. For those of you sleeping under a rock, N. Korea is finalizing preparations to test a long range missile that analysts suggest is intended to be capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast, implicitly with the purpose of carrying a nuclear payload.
Be that as it may, U.S. citizens should note that while the world looks at North Korea with a cautious eye, they are beginning to look at the U.S. through a new lens. After all, North Korean troops have never landed in the U.S. North Korea didn’t put the U.S. on a hit list of enemies of the State. It hasn’t spent the last decade saber rattling and telling North Korea what it can or can not do.
Instead, it is the U.S. that tells the world what and who is good and bad. It is the U.S. who will strike out for justice without the support of the U.N.
Why should U.S. citizens pay attention to this, vs. the casual, if not conceited indifference to the opinions of other, lesser nations?
Because the U.S. is hat in hand. The U.S. may spend $437 billion annually on the military (the next largest spenders are China at $67 billion and Russia at $50 billion, with the U.S spending more than the next 20 nations combined) but the annual shortfall in the U.S. budget is over $600 billion annually - a figure that grows to $3.5 trillion annually when you consider the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. In order to fund this shortfall, the U.S. ahs grown entirely dependent on borrowing from foreigners — like those in the Mid East and China..
So while a majority of Americans may revel in being top dog while glibly dismissing the objections of foreigners and U.S. dissenters alike, they perhaps ought to consider that the further they go out alone on the limb with each global cop adventure, the closer they come to biting the very hands that currently enable them to drop bombs on Iraq and pay for their big screen TVs via their home equity.
