When People Finally Acknowledge The Obvious

An interesting and long overdue column appeared today in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/upshot/dont-be-so-sure-the-economy-will-return-to-normal.html?mabReward=A4&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

In the article, Tyler Cowen, an Economics professor at George Mason University, describes the many changes in the American economy that may portend permanent reductions in the standard of living for the vast majority of Americans.

I have personally witnessed, since finishing a BA program in political economy at Northwestern University in 1973, the constant shift in political power and economic power from organized labor and its allies to multinational corporate interests and to the global financial center located on Wall Street.  There are many reasons why this shift in political power and in economic power were likely inevitable; e.g. (1) the globalization of labor markets where truly multinational corporations shifted the labor component of their production to emerging market economies, (2) the global computer and communication revolutions that enabled call center workers in India to service business customers in the US and any other country, and (3) the automation of so many business processes and activities that has reduced the labor component required to produce goods and to provide services.

The abrupt reorganization of US corporations in the 1970s and in the 1980s, precipitated by the increasing competition from Japanese and European corporations and by the oil shocks of 1973 and 1978, were just the beginning of what has become an ongoing and pervasive transformation of the American economy in the past forty five years.

The transformation of the American economy in the past forty five years has caused, directly and indirectly, a corresponding transformation in all strata of American society.  It is now a cliche for politicians of all major political parties to express their concern for “the withering Middle Class” in the United States.

The most recent economic shock that has impacted American demographics is the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 and the Great Recession of 2008-2009.  There were approximately ten million full time jobs lost during the Great Recession that paid a median wage of $18.00 per hour.  Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the US economy has only added nine million full time jobs.  The median wage of the jobs created since the end of the Great Recession is approximately $13.00 per hour.  There are now 1.3 million fewer full time jobs in the US than there were in 2007, even though there are now 14 million more workers in the US now than there were in 2007.

The US commercial media has portrayed the reduction in wages and the reduction in the standard of living for American workers since 2007 as a temporary consequence of the Financial Crisis and of the Great Recession.  Only recently have economists like Tyler Cowen, Thomas Piketty, et al been independently studying labor market data and overall US demographic data and coming to the conclusion that the economic trends and demographic trends in the US are reflecting a permanent reduction in the standard of living for the majority of American workers.

Historically, all great civilizations have evolved through a process of emergence, consolidation, expansion, decay and relative decline.  Many historians in the 1970s thought that the US had peaked in political economic power in the decades after WW2.  The Vietnam War, the OPEC oil embargoes, high inflation and general malaise in the 1970s contributed to the impression that the US was in a process of decline.  Reagan’s “New Dawn in America” initiated a remarkable resurgence of American power and American dominance in global affairs in the 1980s and 1990s.

The series of US financial and economic crises in the past fifteen years, combined with the 09.11.2001 terrorist attacks, the multi trillion dollar Afghan invasion – occupation debacle, the multi trillion dollar Iraq invasion – occupation debacle, the 2011 Libyan Gadaffi decapitation debacle, the spread of radical Islam throughout the Islamic world, etc. once again create the impression that the US is in rapid political economic decline vis a vis the other regional powers in the world.

Samuel Huntington, in “The Clash of Civilizations”, written in the years after the end of the Cold War, discusses his perception that Western Civilization is in rapid decline compared to several other emerging regional powers.  Huntington’s perception that Western Civilization is in rapid decline is so strongly felt and articulated in “The Clash of Civilizations” that he dedicates sections of the book to topics on what the “West” must do to save itself.

Perhaps it is actually a positive trend that economists like Tyler Cowen are openly writing about the decline in the standard of living for the majority of Americans.  After all, the first step in responding to a profound issue in American political economy is the need to acknowledge that there is in fact a problem that needs to be studied, analyzed, modeled and remedied.  Kudos also to the New York Times for providing Tyler Cowen a forum for his thoughts and analysis.

 

How Dysfunctional Is The American Political Economic Elite?

Surely there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who read the same domestic and foreign media coverage of global politics and international finance that I read on a daily basis.  Where is the public expression of outrage, disappointment and genuine concern for the future of the United States and Western Civilization that should be precipitated by the multi-trillion dollar tragic US foreign policy debacles that we have all witnessed unfold in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen in the past thirteen years?  The same militant Islamic threats that the US has failed to effectively combat and degrade in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen in the past thirteen years are also growing daily in Nigeria, Niger, Chad , Mali, Algeria and Somalia.

This evening I read the first news article that I have seen published by a major US media outlet that actually discussed the rapid spread of radical Islam from Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya to more than ten countries located in Sub Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia.  The news article that finally detailed how extensively radical Islam has spread throughout the Muslim world appeared today in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/middleeast/islamic-state-sprouting-limbs-beyond-mideast.html?_r=0

As I mentioned in my previous blog post titled “Obama Administration Needs New Story Line”, which I posted one month ago in mid January, the Obama administration and the US media have almost exclusively been focusing on the US bombing and drone strike campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.  In spite of the best efforts of the US air force to degrade and destroy radial Islamic military capabilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the number of radical Islamic fighters has continued to grow and their military capabilities have continued to strengthen.

The US has conducted over 900 air strikes on ISIS, al Qaeda and al Nusra Front targets in Iraq and in Syria in the past six months, killing over 6,000 Islamic militants and destroying many of their heavier weapons in the process.  In spite of the death and destruction the US air force has brought to bear on ISIS’s military capabilities, ISIS and other radical Islamic groups are recruiting new members and capturing additional heavy weapons at an even faster pace than their losses.  In the past few months, ISIS and al Qaeda fighters have captured large government military bases and they have captured large government military arsenals in Libya, Yemen, Syria and in Iraq.  Hundreds of new ISIS and al Qaeda recruits continue to travel from North Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and from the Middle East to Syria every month.  Additionally, several dozen independent radical Islamic militias operating in Sub Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia have pledged allegiance to ISIS in the past few months.

Samuel Huntington in “The Clash of Civilizations” and Henry Kissinger in “World Order” both discuss the fundamental rejection by Islamic theologians of the most basic philosophical concepts that are the underlying foundation of post Medieval Western Civilization.  It is unclear (to me at least) whether the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle-Kagan Neo-Conservative clique that promulgated the militaristic campaign to topple the old Soviet aligned strong man regimes in Libya, Syria and Iraq were motivated by cynical hegemonic ambition or if they actually drank their own liberal capitalistic constitutional democracy kool aid.  Regardless of their true underlying motivations, the removal of the strong man regimes in North Africa and in the Middle East has created a power vacuum that enabled the growth of radical Islam in North Africa and in the Middle East.  Additionally, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the Sunni Baathists from power in Iraq has enabled Shiite Iran to expand its hegemonic influence from eastern Iran to the Lebanese coast and from northern Iran to the southern Yemenese coast.

Radical Islamic militants are now operating in a geographic area larger than Europe and larger than the continental United States.  Both Western Europe and the United States have exhausted themselves financially, militarily, politically and psychologically in the past thirteen years while they have been invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.  After spending trillions of dollars and experiencing tens of thousands of dead and severely wounded soldiers in Afghanistan and in Iraq the past thirteen years, Western Europe and the US could not even degrade and destroy al Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  Clearly, Western Europe and the US need to fundamentally re-think their strategy and their tactics in the global war on Islamic terrorism.

Additionally, Western Europe has recently come directly under attack by small groups of radical Islamists.  Several weeks ago a small group of Islamic militants kept all of Paris under siege for several days.  As I am writing this blog post, a small group of radical Islamists has all of Copenhagen under a state of siege.  There is no reason to think that the United States will remain immune from violent attacks by small groups of radical Islamists.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration and the US media have continued to narrowly focus on the failed US efforts to degrade and destroy radical Islamist militias in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.  There has essentially been no public discussion by the Obama administration and by the US media of how extensively radical Islam has spread throughout the Muslim world and how that spread of radical Islam will force the US to fundamentally rethink its strategy and its tactics in the global war on terror.

 

 

 

Obama Administration Needs New Story Line

There is no question that senior officials in the Obama administration are attempting to design and implement American foreign policy to the best of their abilities in order to protect American interests abroad and in order to protect Americans at home.  For the past several years, however, there has been a disconnect between the focus of American foreign policy in the Islamic world and developments in the Islamic world.

The precipitating event that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan was obviously the horrific al Qaeda perpetrated terrorist attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001.  The wisdom of the US decision to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and begin a thirteen year occupation will be debated for the next one hundred years by historians and foreign policy professionals.  On the surface, the US goal of helping the Afghans create a liberal capitalist constitutional democracy appeared unrealistic to many Realpolitik foreign policy practitioners.

The US plan to invade and occupy Iraq was actually initiated in the months following the first Gulf War in 1991.  US General Wesley Clark, in his famous speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, described a  conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz that occurred in the months after the end of the first Gulf War.   During his conversation with Paul Wolfowitz, Wesley Clark said that Wolfowitz told him that the lesson he learned from the first Gulf War was that the US could use military force to depose former Soviet puppet governments in North Africa and the Middle East and Russia would not react because it was so weakened from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

General Wesley Clark’s speech at the Commonwealth Club can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8

As it turned out, the terrorist attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001 provided a pretext for George Walker Bush and his Neo-Conservative handlers to begin to implement their long cherished goal of using the US military to depose former Soviet puppet governments in North Africa and the Middle East and then replace them with US puppet governments.   During a meeting held at the White House on the evening of 09.11.2001, George Walker Bush met with Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Richard Clarke, US counter terrorism adviser to the White House.  Richard Clarke said that during that meeting Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both pushed George Walker Bush to immediately implement the plans to invade Iraq, depose Saddam Hussein and install a US puppet government.  Only Colin Powell advised against attacking Iraq without any provocation, due to his concerns that the Arab world would react negatively to the US attacking another Arab country without any provocation.

An interview with Richard Clarke elaborates upon the George Walker Bush administration decision to invade Iraq without any justification or provocation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwh8YZkKgSM

(Note: 01.03.2016 … George Tenant, in his recent memoir titled “At The Center of the Storm”, describes passing Richard Perle as Perle was leaving the White House on 09.12.2001.  As Tenant was entering the White House and as Perle was leaving the White House, Tenant said that Perle shouted to Tenant that “Saddam Hussein will pay for what he did to us yesterday.” Tenant said that he was both startled and alarmed at Perle’s assertion, because Tenant felt strongly that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terror attacks that occurred on 09.11.2001.  Clearly, many high level officials and many high level advisers in the G W Bush administration were looking for a viable excuse to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.  BTW, I was very impressed with the down to earth and readable writing style in Tenant’s book.  It was a fascinating read for me.)

Most people would say, “Well, the past is the past.  We need to address the problems that face America today.”  The problem, of course, is that US foreign policy leaders are still attempting to resolve problems from the past that have no resolution.  The trillions of dollars of US taxpayer money spent post 09.11 on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are “sunk costs” that cannot be salvaged or recouped in any form.  US foreign policy leaders in the Obama administration are still attempting to create a constitutional democracy in Afghanistan and in Iraq, when there is no possibility of a self sustaining constitutional democracy emerging in Afghanistan and Iraq within the next several decades.

While the Obama administration is spending approximately $100 billion dollars per year to prevent the complete disintegration of Afghanistan and Iraq (ooops, too late) with the justification that the US needs to prevent radical Islamists from establishing new safe havens in Afghanistan and Iraq from which they can attack Western Europe and the US (ooops, too late), radical Islamists have already established other safe havens in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Chad, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, eastern Lebanon, Syria and northern Pakistan.  Both al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists based in Yemen and in northern Africa were implicated in the recruitment, training and terror attack planning that resulted in the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris last week.

The US attempts to destroy radical Islamic threats to the Western world by dropping tens of thousands of smart bombs and Hellfire missiles on radical Islamists throughout the Islamic world in the past thirteen years have only expanded the number of hard core radical Islamists from several hundred to several hundred thousand.   It is not an exaggeration to state that there are now radical Islamists intent on attacking Western Europe and the US who are living in and operating from nearly every country in the Muslim world, stretching from Morocco to the Philippine Islands.

It is understandable that US political leaders would want to “save face” regarding the complete failure of the multi-trillion dollar debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq by spending tens of billions of dollars every year to prevent the complete and undeniable collapse of the national governments in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  It is disingenuous, however, for US political leaders to justify spending tens of billions of dollars in Afghanistan and in Iraq every year using the rationale that those efforts and those expenditures will help ensure that Western Europe and the US are not attacked by radical Islamists operating from bases located in those countries.  Radical Islamists who are intent on attacking Western Europe and the US are still operating in large safe havens in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in spite of the enormous expenditure of blood and treasure by the US in the post 09.11 era.

There has been a failure in the Obama administration to acknowledge that the global war on terror has entered a new unanticipated phase, now that there are more than ten countries located in Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia where radical Islamists are openly operating from territories that they have captured and dominated within those countries.  The disconnect between dropping a few hundred smart bombs and Hellfire missiles on radical Islamists in Syria, in Iraq and in Afghanistan every month and what is actually going to be required to control and contain the threat to Western Europe and to the US from the proliferation of several hundred thousand radical Islamists operating from more than ten countries in Africa, the Middle East and SW Asia is too great for even the most capable Washington DC spin-meisters to ignore.

End Note (01.18.2015) : There was an article in The Boston Globe today regarding the consequences of the Sykes Picot Accord.  Most Americans do not know that France and England at the end of WW1 secretly negotiated the creation of the nation states in North Africa and in the Middle East that resulted in the arbitrary drawing of national boundaries in North Africa and in the Middle East.  The national boundaries of the new nation states did not take into consideration the ethnic background and religious sect affiliation of the people included in the new nation states.  Apparently there was no limit to the arrogance and ignorance of the European colonial powers at the end of WW1.  The URL of The Boston Globe article is:   http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/01/18/terrorism-paris-sydney-legacy-colonial-blunders/oEY5qPo1uGRIZDC8UfNEyH/story.html

End Note (11.15.2015) : When I wrote this blog post in January 2015, it was already evident that the Obama administration wanted to publicly minimize the threat to Western Europe and the US created by the spread of ISIS affiliated militias and terrorist cells throughout the Islamic world. The Obama administration had hoped to be able to expend its dwindling political capital on domestic issues that it still has not been able to address during the past seven years. Even the best of intentions can be overwhelmed by unforeseeable events. In the aftermath of the recent ISIS attacks in Paris, the Western media has been loudly beating war drums demanding mobilization of Western military forces to initiate an all out war on ISIS. Unfortunately, even the mobilization of Western military forces to wage war on ISIS will be “too little too late”. There are a few simple reasons why the US and Western Europe have already lost the war against Islamic jihad. The first reason is that Western European governments that are members of NATO have demobilized their military forces and they are completely reliant on the US military for defense against Russia and other potential foreign enemies. Remember the NATO campaign to remove Qadaffi from power in Libya? The US had to rush munitions to its NATO allies that were bombing Libyan government targets, because the Western European NATO allies ran out of bombs only four weeks after starting the campaign to oust Qadaffi. Libya is a relatively weak country with fewer than ten million people. If the Western European NATO countries could not militarily defeat a buffoon dictator like Qadaffi without being resupplied by the US, the Western European NATO allies will be of little assistance in a future global war against ISIS. The American people have been exhausted by the multi trillion dollar debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Niger, Chad, Mali, etc. that have unfolded in the post 09.11.2001 era. The US war in Afghanistan is already the longest war in US history. Do American political leaders think that the American people will support, or even have the psychological motivation and physical energy to support, a new multi decade long campaign to defeat ISIS in more than fifteen countries that range from Western Equatorial Africa to Eastern Equatorial Africa, from Morocco to Egypt in North Africa, from Yemen to Turkey in the Arabian peninsula, and from Afghanistan to Pakistan in SW Asia?? If the US spent several trillion dollars in the last fourteen years in the failed attempt to defeat radical Islamist militants in Afghanistan and in Iraq, how much money will need to be spent over the next several decades to defeat ISIS over a geographical area that is literally several times larger than the continental United States?? The US casualties in Afghanistan and in Iraq in the post 09.11 era totaled seven thousand dead soldiers and more than one hundred thousand wounded and permanently disabled soldiers. Does the American government actually think that the American people have the motivation, will and stamina to support a prolonged military conflict against ISIS that will result in hundreds of thousands of additional dead and wounded Americans and and that will require most working Americans to accept a reduction in their standard of living and an increase in their federal income taxes?? Or will most Americans decide that it is more cost effective to build Donald Trump’s wall at the American border?? Even if Mexico does not pay for the wall at the US – Mexican border, most Americans will likely support a Fortress America policy rather than a global American war against radical Islam. … Just my thoughts. What do you think??

Our Brave New World

Most of my Boomer contemporaries are living in a world today that we could not have imagined when we graduated from high school in the late 1960’s.  It was obvious to my peers and to me as we were coming of age that the Norman Rockwell homogenous WASPish world of America in the 1950’s was not an accurate portrayal of what America had historically been and what America was at that time.  The social – political – economic conflicts within American society that were reflected in the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1960’s and that were reflected in the Anti-War Movement in the late 1960’s would precipitate an unforeseeable period of fundamental transformation throughout the fabric of American society.

Quite literally, fast forward forty five years since the end of the 1960’s.   The American WASP male oligarchy of the Nineteenth Century and of the first half of the Twentieth Century has by the early Twenty First Century been largely out competed by a diverse new group of intellectual leaders, business leaders and political leaders.  Appropriately, the new American elite is now more of a reflection of our new emerging global economy and our new emerging global society.

The revolutionary group of technologies associated with the Internet;  i.e. computer technology, the digitization of almost any conceivable stimulus and the current comprehensive global communication infrastructure have together in the past twenty years transformed everyday life for literally several billion people currently living on our planet.  Alvin Toffler could not have possibly imagined the complete reshaping of global human society that has occurred in the past thirty years when he wrote “Future Shock” in the late 1960’s.

This political economy blog is a reflection of the fascination that I have had with international political economy since I was a foreign exchange student living in Cali, Colombia in 1968.  The widespread availability of authoritative information and commentary related to political economy on the Internet has given me an unanticipated opportunity to review and share some of that research and commentary on this blog.  It is still beyond my comprehension that for the price of a basic laptop computer, for the nominal cost of a broadband Internet connection and for the negligible cost of registering an Internet domain, I can publish articles and commentary on the World Wide Web that will be readily accessible to anyone anywhere in the world who has a basic computer or smart phone and an Internet connection.

Welcome to our Brave New World.