Cocktail of Crises

I also thought about titling this post; “At least part of the reason I have chosen to leave the US and obtain other citizenship.” I do not want to rush, like many libertarians and apocalyptic Christians to hasty conclusions that the sky is falling. I don’t think we’re even near that in the civilised world. In fact, I would even argue that the whole thing is being exaggerated and perpetuated mostly by the media, politicians and business which seek to profit of people behaving like chickens with their heads cut off and reloading CNN every two minutes, asking for more government handouts/power and looking for sales in guns, oil, water, food, gas, metal, gold, silver and so on to go up.

However, having said that, I suspect that most people are missing the real crisis – the wider crisis. In the determination to focus on something like gas prices or civil liberties in detail, perhaps how these elements combine and mix in the current climate reveals the nature of the “crisis machine” that is being built. In other words, the bail-outs aren’t really a catastrophic problem in and of themselves, but combine them with say, inflation, lost civil liberties and foreign policy – and now you’ve got a little cocktail being mixed that might do some damage.

The essence of this comes from one of my few favourite quotations by one of my favourite men, Henry Hazlitt:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

So, while various plans drawn up to solve one particular problem might stem the specific leak, these will weaken other-areas in a greater and greater ways. If we continue to pay more than what we are getting on the whole, if we borrow more from ourselves than we gain back in any given solution, then we are gaining momentum on the path to bankruptcy.

I don’t think that any one crisis would really damage the United States, but if crises are continually paid-forward with short term fixes at the expense of the aggregate, we’ll have a huge queue of multi-industrial, multi-dimensional problems bursting the seams of law and order that tie them down.

So I want to look at how some of the following areas have or may, in the future, combine to compound a larger crisis for the US:

• Foreign Policy
• The Domestic Economy
• Immigration
• Civil Liberties
• Free Speech
• Nationalism/Patriotism
• Religion

I’m going to do my best now not to try and lose you.

Foreign Policy
Regardless of one’s view on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clear that we are less liked in the Muslim world today than we were on Sept 10, 2001. Terrorist groups (including non-Islamic ones) have seen their numbers swell. America, regardless of why, has a lot of enemies.

Even if we had the perfect military, intelligence and every move we have made and will make to combat this reality were perfect, the cost would be enormous – probably greater than any military effort that was ever unleashed. To stem everything from active terrorism and resistance in the middle east, to peacekeeping for US interest and allies in numerous other places, to protecting resources and trade partners, to preserving and install US-friendly regimes in places like South America and Eastern Europe would make the kind of scarcity, rationing and planning not seen since the forties.

Again, I am presuming that there is no waste, no bad intelligence, no blow-back and other bugling. Just this effort alone, in one area, might be doable if we had the savings and capital to pay for it.

However, we clearly have no capital and savings. America has been in the red for sometime. What is going to happen when all of these troops, assets and protections are pulled back from the fragile order which they are supporting? Those who have supported a planned, orderly decrease in military intervention for the past few years (heck, even the past decades) have been laughed at in favour of the idea that the current level of empire is a linear, sustainable stronghold. But as Ron Paul said as early as 2003, we will be pulling our empire back – either by planned, orderly and strategic organisation or as a  reckless reaction to the bottom line that we no longer can afford it:

Policing the world and nation-building issues are popular campaign targets, yet they are now standard operating procedures. There’s no sign that these programs will be slowed or reversed until either we are stopped by force overseas (which won’t be soon) or we go broke and can no longer afford these grandiose plans for a world empire (which will probably come sooner than later.)

It should now be clear that we are facing this reality. Even those of us who are staunchly anti-war will not deny the fact that there are people out there being held at bay by the military who would otherwise seek to kill Americans. When the military is forced to downsize, we will have left the gates open for these people to come in and sack our country.

The reactionary answer by conservatives (and many democrats) is to rely on the same old argument to beef up the military. But what if there is physically no money to pay for it? We are going to have an increase in terrorism at home and abroad and the accompanying cries by the population for safety in the form of increased government power in exchange for freedom and civil liberties.

Next time: discussion on what the current economic situation reveals, along with the combined problem of immigration and civil liberty erosion.

You may also be interested in:

1. Cocktail of Crises II
2. McCain and Obama both Clueless on Patriotism
3. The Next American Civil War
4. The Reluctant Anarchist and Me
5. Links: Images of Crises