A while back Trump was praising himself for the increased spending by NATO countries that has happened during and after his time in office. Just to make sure he got a lot of air time, he threw in a gratuitous comment about how he would not defend and in fact encourage Russia to attack NATO countries that did not pay their fair sure. Predictably, this worked like a charm and all the shrieking Karens went around talking about what a bad man he was and how horribly irresponsible he was.
All they accomplished by all this caterwauling was to further convince the poorer economic classes that Trump was their man. All your working class people heard in all that screeching was a defense of NATO free riding on the poor working class taxpayer. And why should they pay for the defense of those effete snobs when the border is wide open and food prices are sky high?
Contrary to Trump, I think the improvement on this front (slight as it has been) has more to do with Putin then Trump. But this quibbling about small details is not a productive way to counter Trump. Especially when any fair-minded review of recent history will show that while serving as president Trump brought more attention and pressure to bear on this issue than any other President in the post cold-war era. I think he did this mostly because his strategy is the find the weak points in the ruling classes that shun him and hammer them for all they are worth then him having an particular strategic concerns. Nonetheless, the fact remains that he did more on the issue then his contemporaries.
The below video gives a pretty fair overview of the situation including quoting Trump in all his glory….
Regardless of what you think about the above facts, those running around outraged by what Trump has said are doing nothing to improve the national discourse. But those running around being outraged by the ruling class are not doing any better either. All too often their arguments boil down to simply repeating that the ruling class is stupid and corrupt and trying to imply that all the problems with the world would be so much better as long as their messiah was made president. What is missing is people trying to explain the issues and facts involved. What is missing is people arguing about an issue instead of personalities. And that is where Republican Representative Mike Turner has taken steps to improve the situation. Continue reading →
A lot of people like to make the argument that America pays the most for health care and gets the least benefit. And while there is lot to be critical of in the US system, the worst outcomes are almost entirely due to the lifestyles of Americans. The flip side is that our supper expensive and maddening system is still often more responsive then what you will find elsewhere. That said, I think we are following the rest of the world on the downhill slope. US Military Personnel ‘Routinely Denied Access’ to Emergency Care in Japan
I would normally say things like “keep in mind it is not adjusted for inflation” but even allowing for that fact that chart still looks pretty bad. About the best I can say is that we not given much historical context but a more then doubling in price in one year’s time still looks pretty bad.Cocoa prices surge to all-time highs as bad weather hurts West Africa crop yield
The below video is full of good information if you have time to listen to it (even though it is a video, you will not miss much by just listening). But in my opinion, it fails to address the complexity of this topic in a realistic way even though all the background information is good. The bottom line is that it is easy for any redneck to give the right answer to the above question. It is harder for people regardless of their education to understand and articulate the costs of that answer.
The root of the problem is that US economy is deeply intertwined with the world wide economy. When a ship got stuck in the Suez canal, the resulting supply chain disruptions were felt by factories in small town America. And that was true even though the issue was resolved relatively quickly and it was mostly non-US ships that were impacted. By the same token, it don’t matter who owns the ships or what they have on them, if the Houthi are impacting shipping, the US is going to feel the pain same as everyone else.
Moreover, these things don’t happen in a vacuum. Some people on the left thinks that this is only happening because of the Israeli conflict and if that goes away this will go away. But once you let something like this go unchallenged, why should other people who care about other topics or even just want to make money not try the same thing? If the Houthi get away with doing this with very little costs, it will encourage others with different goals and locations to do the same thing. In the end, failing to stop the Houthi will very quickly (over a period of years to be sure but that is quickly in my book) move us to the law of the jungle ruling the sea and resulting high costs for world trade.
But the problem is, America is the only nation in the West that is has any plausible ability to deal with this threat. Other nations could solve this problem if they made it a national priority and built up their forces over a period of years but right here and right now America is the only one who can plausible shut the Houthis down (that fact that America has failed to do that has more to do with America being unwilling to do things like massive bombing of population centers then any lack of ability).
This is one thing that video below fails to address. It is true as the video says that historically American has only protected American shipping. But what the video fails to address is that historically lots of other nations were more then capable of protecting their own shipping but no longer can. Even as recently as the 1980s, other nations had navies that enabled them to project power effectively (see the UK and Falklands although that was on the very edge of what they could handle). But it is no longer the case anymore and has not been the case for at least 20 years. This means that the safety of the Western World’s economic lifelines is almost entirely in US hands. Other nations can contribute a ship or two, but they can’t sustain the projection of power needed to deal with things like the Houthi on their own. And it does not matter if some abstract notion of fairness says that other nations should protect their shipping. The fact is that they can’t and US will pay the price for their inability along with everyone else.
This is what drives the Biden administration towards conflict with the Houthi. I don’t think they really want a war and if they do want a war the they are sure going about it in a half ass way. But almost any president or possible future president you can think of would do the same thing. They might do it more competently. They might do it with more gusto. Or they might be even more reluctant. But in the end, most of them would come to the same place because they know the voters don’t want another war in the Middle East and they know the voters will blame them for any economic problems resulting from trade disruption. So the incentive from the American voters themselves is to try to find some kind of half measure that squares the circle. It is hard for democracies to produce leaders capable of making effective hard choices because a hard choice is one that voters are not going to like either way.
In the long run, it don’t matter. Based on current trajectories of the US debt, American will soon be forced to stop funding a Navy that can handle such threats. Sooner or later the law of jungle will come to the seas. The demographic forces that are leading to the demise of the modern world will ensure that nobody is able to pick up the mantle when the US is forced to give it up. That is why on a practical level I think the redneck answer is right all along. Shipping disruptions are coming no matter what. The US will not be able to support the burden of keeping the world order from collapsing for very much longer no matter what. So we might as well start the adaption process sooner rather then later. The Houthi might be doing us a favor to help ease us along on the adaption process to what is going to come anyway.
But it bugs me nonetheless to see the issue addressed solely in terms of legalese or fairness with out an honest reflection on the real costs involved. It is a lot easier to blame Biden then it is to contemplate the nature of the systems that produce people like Biden and guide them towards the choices they make. It is a lot easier to say that “we should not be fighting the Houthi” then it is to say, “we should not be fighting the Houthi even if it means 10% inflation and the occasional empty shelves in the stores.” So most people go down the road of imagining that their preferred course of action has no real cost associated with it.
