Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates about NATO: “a dim if not dismal future”

IT

Ottawa, Canada

The Warsaw Pact was created in 1955 as a reaction to NATO (created 1949) remilitarizing West German and extending it NATO membership by way of the Paris Pact of 1954.
NATO has basically been a modern Delian League. NATO rapidly became a cover story for an Imperial Power and its relationship with its vassal states. That relationship evolved as the overwhelming economic and military clout of the USA ebbed. Europe was no longer a bombed out ruin and the threat of Soviet expansion began to recede as soon as Stalin died - except of course in the self serving analysis of the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned his fellow citizens about.
At the present time it is reasonable to characterize the US economy as a plutocratic guns and butter (less and less butter) economy - built on debt - uncomfortably wearing democratic clothes inherited from previous generations that seem to fit less and less every day.
What's the score card like ?
Leader in public education start of 20th century - also ran start of 21st century
Spends as much on military, spies, etc. ..., as the rest of the world combined
Only rich western country without universal medical insurance for its population
Incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and runs as brutal a penal and police system as any in the world
On the brink of a sovereign stealth default through inflating its way out of its domestic debts and devaluing its way out of its foreign debts.

AC

Paris, France

And thar she blows, matey, the last gasps of a cold war dinosaur hoisted on his own petard. The US has spent itself into "bankruptcy" and now will sink into isolationism for the next couple of decades, at least, following only a couple of decades later than that other "Evil" empire, and for the same reasons.

What imperious need called for a Bradley fighting machine, a second engine on the F35, and countless more boondoggles if not the patriotic imperative to boost the quarterly results and balance sheets of the military industrial complex, all the while walking American tax payer off the proverbial plank?

It's no wonder the Tea Party appears to lead political debate in the US, as government only means robbing the middle class to give benefits to everyone else. Instead of social welfare keeping the marginal from falling off the edge of society, the desperate choose between pointing a gun at their fellow citizens for a fistful of dollars, or signing up and doing the same to foreign devil for a paycheck.

And this anachronistic cold warrior would have others follow the US lead down the path to oblivion? The pendulum is in full swing back the other way Mr Gates, and you are on the wrong side of history alas, witnessing perhaps all the values you appear to stand for be swept away. Can you seriously look back at your contributions, the hundreds of thousands (maybe more?) victims of US foreign adventures over the past decades, and rejoice?

None of this is cause for schadenfreude on the part of Europeans nor any other human being on the planet aspiring to a better, freer life. Because along with the sickening perversions of American ideals represented by the follies of Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, were efforts that only the US is (was) capable of : Kosovo. Now Libya. Make no mistake history will repeat itself and the US will retire from the world. The question is will it then take another Pearl Harbour to awaken it?

Take a good, hard look at yourself Mr Gates, and reflect on your values and the priorities of the US as a society. Is it health care, education, pensions for its citizens... or endless wars which impoverish the vast majority of your fellow citizens, while making them less secure, only for the benefit of a select few?

I'll even give you a hint at where to start, though I know full well neither you Mr Gates, nor your fellow citizens, is ready to hear it:

Gasoline at $8/gallon.

1. No more budget deficit (what???!!!)
2. No more foreign adventures to secure oil, support despotic regimes (or even democratic ones which enslave others)
3. ...which means reasonable defence spending (the US can remain world leader by leaps and bounds with a $500 billion defense budget)
4. MORE SECURITY (duh!)

You'll import less oil, because you'll be using less, no more soccer moms driving 2+ ton monster automobiles to carry 150lbs of passenger. A myriad other conservation and adjustments will make you stronger, not weaker, for having weened off oil. And before you know it you'll have kicked the habit.

It's called demand and supply, the invisible hand, Adam Smith, remember that? Or does market ideology only count when it lines the pockets of banksters? Guess what, Mr Gates. It's not impossible. The Europeans do it, and do very well from it.

Honesty. Integrity. Balance. Introspection. Clearly these are no longer skills Americans master today. But are they even American ideals anymore? 

annenigma

montana

Oh, I get it. The USA wants to lay the blame for losing all these wars on NATO. How convenient.

The USA won't be happy until it can tax every country in the world to support its War Machine and war profiteers, which are propping up the US economy from complete collapse. Since it can't tax the world (yet), it will settle for shaming or coercing NATO to cough up more money. That's just what Empires do. Before they fall.

Kenan Porobic

Charlotte, NC

Instead of criticizing our European partners, we would be better served if we analyzed our own shortcomings.

We cannot want freedom and democracy more than the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan. They got far more aid, training, money, weaponry and expertise than the Taliban ever got. Having the NATO fight the Taliban is a diminishing role for the NATO because such a conflict lowers its prestige to a level of a rag tag militia. Doing it for a decade makes even less sense.

Taliban never attacked anybody outside Afghanistan. If the Taliban failed to eradicate the Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan before the 9/11, the NATO failed to accomplish the same goal in post-9/11 era with far more superior weaponry, mobility, tactical expertise, intelligence-collecting capabilities, resources and everything else. The Taliban fought the occupying Russian force in Afghanistan long before the Al Qaeda was created so connecting their resistance to the terrorism doesn’t make any rational sense.

However, let’s imagine for the sake of discussion that the Taliban are a danger to the world peace. If that were the case, why should the US taxpayers pay for the wars? Shouldn’t the Chinese and the Indians living in their very vicinity be far more concerned than the Americans isolated from the trouble by three oceans? What amount of the money would the Pentagon demand for the military spending if we were bordering Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia, Burma, Laos, Kirgizstan, Bhutan and Nepal like China does?
Is there any problem in the world that the US government wouldn’t try to put on the tab of the US taxpayers?

Similarly, we cannot want the NATO more than our European partners. If the Europeans are cutting down the contributions to the NATO, Washington DC should do the same to keep the same percentage and ratio between us. If the Europeans don’t need NATO, we need it even less than they do, just look at the geopolitical map of the world. 

nick

Skien,norway

"NATO" is waging many wars of aggression. Read the definition below and stop publishing nonsense.

A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The phrase is distinctly modern and diametrically opposed to the prior legal international standard of "might makes right", under the medieval and pre-historic beliefs of right of conquest. Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law.

Open letter to Mr. Friedman

Doc McCoy

Nantong, China

From: An Old American Ex-pat in China
To: Thomas Friedman

Truly an interesting recitation of facts with an aura of fantasy tossed in for good measure. And, a lack of understanding of the Chinese people, their culture, traditions and history.

The majority of Chinese people are not yearning for the freedom that you envision for them. Ah, they want a corruption free government; and like all peoples around the world, they want their government to be responsive to their needs, wants, demands and desires - quite often to the exclusion of other people's wants, needs and desires. This is human nature.

Every year China sends tens of thousands of students to America and Australia to study. And, they do study, out performing their American counterparts in everything. Each year, tens of thousands of students return to China. They talk about the excesses of America; not the democratic freedoms you cherish so much and believe that they should too. They see that studying in America has given them a chance for a better future for their families, themselves and their country, in that order. By culture and tradition, they are not interested in politics. Instead, they are interested in achieving a good life, and they go about earning it with a passion like Americans used to do before they discovered "entitlements." They look for opportunities and make their own opportunities either here at home, or abroad. They are achievers; not malcontents.

They truly hate America's meddling in their country's affairs. They do not want the American culture which has created a dysfunctional society and government that can do nothing; accomplish little; and has to rely on military force to achieve its vision for the world. They know that if China were to become what you envision it should be, the country will devolve into civil wars and divide their beloved country.

The Chinese government is not afraid to let the people experience America. They are not afraid of former students becoming dissidents upon their return. They realize that those returning students are even more dedicated to China and Chinese culture than before.

Every country has its dissidents. Every country has people calling for the overthrow of the government in one way or another. Throughout history, this has happened time and time again in China. The devastation wrought by the cultural revolution is still vividly remembered by many; those memories having been passed down to the current generation. In time those memories will fade.

China is slowly changing. For change to be for the benefit of all people, it must come slowly. With change comes new and added responsibilities. Until people know what those responsibilities are and entail, change will not be for the benefit of all the people. It is also part of Chinese culture to resist change except for in hedonistic pursuits.

For those in China who desire information, it is available. I have no problem getting all the information I desire.

I see countless conspiracy theories abounding in America these days. I know enough to ignore those theorists. They are tearing America apart. In China over 80% of the people approve of what their government is doing. In America it is about 20%. That makes it very hard for the government to work in the best interests of all the people. Maybe there is too much information available in America - and not enough people able to differentiate between fact and fantasy.

What the Chinese government is doing today seems to be working - for all the people and the country. Maybe you and others need to concentrate on what is going on in your own back yard instead of worrying so much about the Chinese back yard.

Right now, the Chinese students in America are eating the American student's lunches. When you figure out why that is happening, you may then have a better understanding of China and Chinese culture, traditions and history.

The mechanics of readjustment

Sean

Bay Area, California

The only way Americans can compete economically is with a lower cost of living. No industry will thrive in the United States without a lower cost of living. Health insurance for an average employee and family now costs a corporation about $10,000 a year, sometimes more. Home prices are still way too high here. Education is ridiculously high in the United States.

The working class (which in my opinion is any family making less than $200,000 a year) essentially relies on a lifetime of borrowing - mortgages and student loans and car loans and credit cards and this raises the cost of everything here beyond what it ought to cost. Universities in the United States have grown heavy with greedy administrators who outnumber professors and who collect disgustingly fat salaries. Real estate developers and bankers have infiltrated the Regents of the University of California and most universities nationwide and have pressured for extravagant building programs that pay exorbitant fees, use bank loans and build Las Vegas/shopping mall style facilities from lecture halls to dorms. Vile, corrupt school administrators claim that fancy buildings are necessary to make a school "world class" as if it is some sort of a resort. Young Americans look around as they collect their student loan disbursements in exchange for a signature and say, "Yeah, I guess it's worth it. It's really extravagant and that's great." But they wouldn't say that if they were writing a check for it, and they don't say it when the time comes to pay back their student loans.

Now the Obama administration has released the "tough" student loan guidelines where if more than 65% of a college or university's graduates are delinquent on their loans that the school will be cut off from federally backed loans. 65%? Really? Is that what an American getting a bachelor's degree has to look forward to? 65% of the class being delinquent on student loans is an acceptable level?

So you can hire a worker with a master's degree in computer science out of a good university in Beijing or New Delhi for about $20,000 a year TOTAL. In the US, it costs with payroll taxes $20,000 a year to hire a minimum wage worker who dropped out of high school - it costs $20,000 a year to hire an undocumented worker who ceased school at sixth grade onto payroll at a fast food restaurant. If you want to give that worker health insurance, the cost goes up to about $28,000 to $30,000 per year.

The nation is run by bankers and so every solution is billed as "we need to loan the people more money so that they can afford things." The Fed says, "we have to hold down interest rates and give lots of money to the banks in the hopes that they will lend it to people so that they can afford things."

That is insane. It's the horrific dream of a cabal of bankers. And even those bankers offshore most of their operations. All IT, back office, and a lot of operations has all been offshored. The only thing that remains here are bank tellers who have been transformed into commission-based small time con men trying to sell auto deposit savings accounts to every customer because of the Fed's sweeps rule that allows them to loan out your savings account money overnight in Europe and Asia without telling you about this (as soon as the Fed caves to Wells Fargo's pressure and allows sweeps on checking accounts, all of this ridiculous pressure to open savings accounts will immediately cease).

But the short of it is that unless the cost of living is allowed to adjust here without the Fed trying to inflate it, gradually ALL of the jobs will leave except the ones that simply cannot be offshored - so just like now, software engineers will be paid $10 an hour if they have a master's degree, police, fire and lifeguards will get paid $175,000 to $225,000 per year, auto mechanics will bill out at $125 per hour while lawyers and probably accountants will bill out at maybe $20 per hour (because that work can be offshored eventually too).

People like Friedman and his flat world assume that a capitalist economy will automatically adjust and provide the "right" mix of innovation, prices, investment, savings, etc. That simply can't happen when a cabal of bankers is running the country. There can be no adjustment. Home prices weren't allowed to fall. Commercial rents weren't allowed to fall. If these two cost centers fell, it would reduce the cost to business of producing products and services and it ought to increase employment and the production of goods and services. But it would irritate the bankers because they financed the high prices and the higher the prices are, the more people must borrow.

We're not so free here. We'd do well to mind our own anti-democratic demons before commenting on China's. We're free to paint stupid Hitler moustaches on the President's photo and you don't go to jail for that here. But we're also completely powerless to stop the bankers' theft of our whole nation.

The no-surprise FED

When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough
By PETER A. DIAMOND



Lexington, Mass.

LAST October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be?

The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.

In April 2010, President Obama nominated me to be one of the seven governors of the Fed. He renominated me in September, and again in January, after Senate Republicans blocked a floor vote on my confirmation. When the Senate Banking Committee took up my nomination in July and again in November, three Republican senators voted for me each time. But the third time around, the Republicans on the committee voted in lockstep against my appointment, making it extremely unlikely that the opposition to a full Senate vote can be overcome. It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House.

The leading opponent to my appointment, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, has questioned the relevance of my expertise. “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in conducting monetary policy? No,” he said in March. “His academic work has been on pensions and labor market theory.”

But understanding the labor market — and the process by which workers and jobs come together and separate — is critical to devising an effective monetary policy. The financial crisis has led to continuing high unemployment. The Fed has to properly assess the nature of that unemployment to be able to lower it as much as possible while avoiding inflation. If much of the unemployment is related to the business cycle — caused by a lack of adequate demand — the Fed can act to reduce it without touching off inflation. If instead the unemployment is primarily structural — caused by mismatches between the skills that companies need and the skills that workers have — aggressive Fed action to reduce it could be misguided.

In my Nobel acceptance speech in December, I discussed in detail the patterns of hiring in the American economy, and concluded that structural unemployment and issues of mismatch were not important in the slow recovery we have been experiencing, and thus not a reason to stop an accommodative monetary policy — a policy of keeping short-term interest rates exceptionally low and buying Treasury securities to keep long-term rates down. Analysis of the labor market is in fact central to monetary policy.

Senator Shelby also questioned my qualifications, asking: “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in crisis management? No.” In addition to setting monetary policy in light of a proper understanding of unemployment, the Fed is responsible for avoiding banking crises, not just trying to mop up afterward.

Among the issues being debated now is how much we should increase capital requirements for banks. Selecting the proper size of the increase requires a balance between reducing the risk of a future crisis and ensuring the effective functioning of financial firms in ordinary times. My experience analyzing the properties of capital markets and how economic risks are and should be shared is directly relevant for designing policies to reduce the risk of future banking crises.

Instead of going to the Fed, however, I will go about my congenial professional existence as a professor at M.I.T., where I have taught and researched since 1966, and I will take advantage of some of the many opportunities that come to a Nobel laureate. So don’t worry about me.

But we should all worry about how distorted the confirmation process has become, and how little understanding of monetary policy there is among some of those responsible for its Congressional oversight. We need to preserve the independence of the Fed from efforts to politicize monetary policy and to limit the Fed’s ability to regulate financial firms.

Concern about the (seemingly low) current risk of future inflation should not erase concern about the large costs of continuing high unemployment. Concern about the distant risk of a genuine inability to handle our national debt should not erase concern about the risk to the economy from too much short-run fiscal tightening.

To the public, the Washington debate is often about more versus less — in both spending and regulation. There is too little public awareness of the real consequences of some of these decisions. In reality, we need more spending on some programs and less spending on others, and we need more good regulations and fewer bad ones.

Analytical expertise is needed to accomplish this, to make government more effective and efficient. Skilled analytical thinking should not be drowned out by mistaken, ideologically driven views that more is always better or less is always better. I had hoped to bring some of my own expertise and experience to the Fed. Now I hope someone else can.

Peter A. Diamond is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Afghan Key

Ike Solem
CA

...the U.S. economic agenda in the region, one which dates back to the mid-1990s and the rising importance of Central Asian gas and oil to the world's energy markets. That's not even usually mentioned, but the history is illustrative.

The major energy struggle in Central Asia involves control of fossil fuel export routes to Europe as well as ownership of the oil and gas fields themselves. During the 1990s, the era of economic malaise in Russia, western oil firms moved into the old Soviet satellites in an effort to secure control of the oil and gas exports. Their main problem then was devising export routes.

One possibility was to run exports to Europe via Georgia, Turkey & the Balkans. In many respects, the Balkans conflict was linked to a struggle over control of those pipeline routes, as was the summer 2008 conflict in Georgia (see Nabucco pipeline project).

Another was to ship the oil and gas out to the Indian Ocean (and India) from Turkmenistan over Afghanistan and Pakistan to India - the TAPI pipeline, first promoted by Unocal c. 1996. As part of that effort, the State Department got involved. Aid was given to the Taliban - some $143 million by summer 2001 - in an effort to get talks moving. Talks were conducted in summer 2001 in London between Taliban officials and U.S. State Department officials - and then 9/11 put an end to those talks.

(Note that 9/11 planning also took place in Germany, Saudi Arabia, and other states that we have no plans to attack in order to disrupt their terrorist networks).

Now, after years of war in Afghanistan, TAPI has been revived and is being aggressively pushed by the U.S. State Department, a fact hardly reported in the U.S. media. The proponents claim that "such a major undertaking would improve living standards in Afghanistan by bringing desperately-needed jobs to the country as well as enhance stability by providing steady transit revenues for a long time."

As seen elsewhere, this will not help the Afghan people, but will just add to the corruption in Kabul as Karzai's cronies dip their fingers into the cash flow (the standard model for Third World oil deals, see the Chad-Cameroon pipeline across Africa).

This is the real problem with the State Department - they don't design their aid programs to help people, but rather to help the corporate interests they're joined to via the revolving door. This is also true for World Bank/IMF 'assistance programs.' All it is is a con game, being played with U.S. taxpayer dollars - and that well is running dry.



decker
WA

Ike has the truth down pat.

OIL.

Oil routes, from American forays into Georgia to Ukraine to Turkenistan and with the TAPIl,(all sucessfully countered by Putin) that were all being pushed from former Cheney actions in Georgia, et al, and carried over by whomever was ascended to the throne next, and all orchestrated and directed by the Bilderberg/Rothschild/Corporate America/AIPAC cabal that runs the United States and shapes most of the Western world.

Remember as well, that (40) forty years ago the mineral, (with a foray into the oil) wealth of Afghanistan was well known, and especially for the abundant and critical lithium stores, as well as the trillions of dollars worth of other minerals that has the United States Oligarchy frothing from Wall Street to the corrupt banking cabal.

The war there, and for Irag's oil, also fill the demands of the Military/Industrial complex so that the oligarchy/autocracy United States makes billions and, by design, the people get the hindmost.

The troops are not coming home to flood the non-existent job market.

The troops will be sent to North Africa to the new Africa Command for more wars, just as the so-called draw-down in Irag simply shifted the troops to Afghanistan, with 30 thousands more for good measure as the first thing that Obama did to contribute when his handlers pulled his strings. No soldier, in any case, in his right mind now would leave the military to starve to death on the streets of the United States.

Yes, so now a good excuse is offered with the bin Laden death myth that allows a gracefull (without honor) pull-out, with a "presence" left behind, after 10 years of fruitlessness and death, and as well serve as a re-election enhancement.

The whole charade is so transparent and obvious that any intelligent person could have seen through the thing inside of a week.

Yet, the flag-wavers, and most of them not veterans, and the rural red-necks, yelp like dogs being fed fresh meat as every staged dis-information propagation that is released on time.

The United States is dying, and beset by one weather catastrophe after another, adding even more millions to the streets, without any homes left upon which the banking cabal can foreclose.

I see home after home boarded-up, or derelict, and abandoned in one small town in PA, that was once a thriving community with RRs and a large defense plant, and is now a rotting and criminal element-filled place. There are scores of such places all over the Unted States.

I saw no such thing whilst I was driving across Canada from BC to Ottawa.