Category Archives: defense policy

Economics

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We’re well aware of the role of economics in our daily affairs and in the aggregated domestic affairs of our country.  The quality of our economy directly relates to our and to our nation’s prosperity.  But what is the role of economics in our foreign and defense policies?  Our economy is no less critical there.

General George Marshall once said

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

A successful economy plays a role in this prevention through a number of pathways.

The role of economics in foreign policy

Included among the paths is the ability to aid our allies, our friends, and those who wish to leave their current orbit and if not align with us, at least to begin to chart their own independent course.  A strong economy makes this possible.  The surplus from that can fund support for those nations struggling to get free of their current restraints—both their own and those from foreign domination.  Our strong economy, through the trade relationships our businesses create, can aid other economies as they struggle through their own recessions—and their resulting stronger economies can, through those same trade relationships, then aid our own in similar circumstance.

Another path is through the capacity to support the economic development (and through that, the social and political development) of less fortunate nations, both those in the developing world and those whose development has been stunted by being trapped under foreign domination—the follow-on condition of those nations just broken free.  Our economic strength here is especially useful in guiding the political and social development of these nations as well as their economic evolution.  By aiding these nations to develop as democracies with free market economies, we not only help them to find their own strength and prosperity, we deny the nations of tyranny the resources they need for their aggression, and we push those tyrannies back from our own shores.  This also is facilitated by our very success at home, which demonstrates the superiority of our economic methods.  As above, this is possible only from our own economic surplus.

A third path is to work with nations that are committed to the principles of free enterprise, and of freedom generally (which collection will overlap greatly, but are not coincident with, the group comprising our friends and allies), to strengthen all of us economically and politically and thereby to build, further, a bulwark against those tyrannies, who otherwise would become tempted to test us in battle, and perhaps win.

A fourth path is as a magnet for immigrants who want to come here share in our success—economically, to be sure—that’s the proximate magnet—but also our success politically and culturally.  These immigrants are a prime source constant renewal for us, in energy and in problem-solving.

The role of economics in defense policy

A strong economy creates the ability to fund, conduct R&D for, and equip our national defense system.  Without a successful national defense system, we very quickly will have no economy to defend, no nation to defend.

A strong economy enables the next step—the ability to fund the actual use of our national defense system, which usage is by its nature destructive of that system and which destruction must be replaced during the conflicts and after them.  Yes, we will be tested in battle, even though the means of testing will evolve, as the events of 11 Sep 2001 and after have demonstrated.

A strong economy gives us the wherewithal to preposition equipment and supplies near flash points.  These are, to be sure, targets, but they’re useful in the power projection phase of conflicts, and they can be useful in delivering quick reaction forces to the flash location(s) when they start to ignite.

A strong economy creates the ability to help other nations develop their own defense capacity: arms support, arms development support, and so on.  Such defense arrangements also can support economic success in the recipient nations: a common constituent of arms sales agreements is the assembly of purchased weapons in the buying nation’s factories, which represents employment for the citizens of those nations.

Related to the above, a strong economy facilitates reciprocal R&D agreements with our allies and friends.  This leads to greater commonality of key supply items, which simplifies the logistic problems inherent in coalition war.

A strong economy facilitates our maintaining a force with the technology and the numbers to enable us to hold open the world’s sea lanes.  This, by itself, creates a virtuous circle: free and easy transport of trade goods over the world’s waterways facilitates free trade, which leads to greater prosperity and stronger economies for all concerned, which leads to increased free trade and an easier time maintaining and improving those forces guarding the sea lanes.

Notice, too, that all of this adds up to a forward defense of our nation so as to minimize the likelihood that the initial, critical blows of a conflict land in our homeland.

In the end, the very success of our economy—our evident prosperity and freedom—serves as an empirical example of the rightness of our way of life.  It becomes a magnet drawing other nations to our methods, or at least to try them, it draws other nations to send their sons and daughters to our universities, where they not only will learn the academics of our institutions (whether economics, or science, or engineering, or philosophy, or…), but simply by being here through much of their formative years, these students also will learn the American way of life through immersion in it.

Moreover, our free market, capitalist economy, founded on individual liberty, individual responsibility, and individual ownership of property—our bodies and our real and our intellectual property—is what gives us the moral strength and the prosperity to constantly grow, to steadfastly maintain our freedom, to aid others, whether our neighbors or those wanting out from under.

Sometimes

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It’s important to note that the last two Americans to die in the terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate weren’t killed until several hours after the attack started.  Gary Bernsten, retired CIA officer, had this on our real-time response to the attack (i.e., while our State Department officials were listening to the attack-in-progress*) and this administration’s decision to take no meaningful response during the several hours it was going in:

You find a way to make this happen.  There isn’t a plan for every single engagement.  Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.  They made zero adjustments; they just stood and they watched, and our people died.

It’s also sometimes necessary to act entirely ad hoc.  But it takes a measure of courage and a willingness to run risks and a willingness to step into the unknown to do these things.

 

*This is from the State Department brief on 9 Oct:

I neglected to mention from the top that that agent from the top of this incident, or the very beginning of this incident, has been on the phone. He had called the quick reaction security team, he had called the Libyan authorities, he had called the Embassy in Tripoli, and he had called Washington. He had them all going to ask for help. And he remained in the TOC.

And from the Chicago Sun-Times:

We now know that the State Department had real-time communications with Benghazi during the attack….

Lies of the Democrats, Part 5

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This is Part 5 of my series on the lies told by Democrats during the present administration’s term in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with the dishonesty while in office.

There’s this from State in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on our Consulate in Benghazi that included the murders of our Ambassador to Libya and three of his staff.  Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice on 16 Sep, five days after the attack:

Putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video….

Yet we know from sworn testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the day prior to the Vice Presidential debate last Thursday that the intel community had concluded that it was a terrorist attack within 24 hours—four days before Rice’s claim.

Next, in that Vice Presidential debate, Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden said in all seriousness that the reason security for the Ambassador, or for the consulate in Benghazi, had not been beefed up was because no such requests for added support had been made.

Yet we know from sworn testimony at that same hearing that repeated requests for additional personnel and equipage had been repeatedly denied.  LtCol Andrew Wood, former head of our Tripoli embassy’s military security, expressed his frustration at not only not getting the additions he’d been requesting but getting the assets he already had materially reduced:

We were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had[.]

Eric Nordstrom, erstwhile head of regional security for State, testified that he asked for a team of 12 diplomatic security agents to replace departing commandos, but he was told “you’re asking for the sun, the moon, and the stars,” and his request was denied.

Now, assume Biden is telling the truth on this, that he wasn’t lying.  What does that say about how isolated from what’s actually happening in—forget the world—Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s own administration that his Vice President can be so uninformed?

Our Computers, Our National Security

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First it was Russia and the People’s Republic of China.  Now it’s…Iran?  How far behind are we falling in cyberspace, the core of a modern society?  Now we’re hearing from The Wall Street Journal that Iran has been conducting an active cyberwar against us for some months.  (Notice that: we didn’t hear about this war voluntarily from our government, but from a newspaper which had to tease it out of our government.)

Iranian hackers with government ties have mounted cyberattacks against American targets in recent months, escalating a low-grade cyberwar[.]

The Iranian effort culminated in a series of recent attacks against US banks as well as electronic assaults this year on energy companies in the Persian Gulf.  The attacks bore “signatures” that allowed US investigators to trace them to the Iranian government, [US government] officials said.

Here are some of the battles waged in this war since the start of the year:

  • January 2012: Potent but smaller-scale denial-of-service attacks against US banks
  • July 2012: Cyberattack at Saudi Arabian Oil Co. unleashes a virus called ‘Shamoon,’ destroying data on 30,000 computers
  • August 2012: Cyberattack at Rasgas, a Qatari natural gas company, disabled websites and email system
  • September 2012: A group called “Qassam Cyber Fighters” announced plans for cyberattacks on US banks.  Powerful denial of service strikes hit Bank of America Corp, JP Morgan Chase & Co., US Bancorp, PNC Financial Services Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co
  • October 2012: The Qassam Cyber Fighters issued announcements, followed by cyber strikes, involving other US banks, slowing or interrupting consumer websites

A “senior defense official” said,

They have been going after everyone—financial services, Wall Street.  Is there a cyberwar going on?  It depends on how you define “war.”

How very Clintonesque of him.

My own speculation is that these relatively small attacks are just probes, both to test us and to test Iran’s developing cybersystems.

How well prepared are we to defeat a serious, concerted cyberattack, and how well prepared are we to go over to the offense and crush our attacker?  Apparently not very well.  Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this:

An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals.
They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.
The most destructive scenarios involve cyber actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at once, in combination with a physical attack on our country.  Attackers could also seek to disable or degrade critical military systems and communications networks.
The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be “cyber Pearl Harbor:” an attack that would cause physical destruction and loss of life, paralyze and shock the nation[.]

Panetta says the US is putting in place systems to defeat such cyberattacks, but I have to ask: how does that work in the face of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s trillion dollar cuts to our defense establishment from the combination of his spending cuts for Defense and his sequestration of further Defense funds scheduled for the turn of the year?

There’s Defense

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…and then there’s defense.

According to Fox News, there was this exchange during and immediately after a day of testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last Wednesday.  At the end of his testimony, wherein he had expressed his frustration at not only not getting the additional security personnel and equipage he’d been requesting for the security of the consulate in Benghazi but getting the assets he already had materially reduced, LtCol Andrew Wood, former head of our Tripoli embassy’s military security, said

We were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had[.]

Eric Nordstrom, erstwhile head of regional security for State, closed his own testimony by recounting a conversation he had had earlier with State about his own request for more security personnel.  That conversation included this Nordstrom frustration remark:

You know what (is) most frustrating about this assignment?  It’s not the hardships, it’s not the gunfire, it’s not the threats.  It’s dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me.

And I added it by saying, “For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

In response, Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick Kennedy, in a post-hearing press conference called for the purpose, emphasized that Wood’s team was in Tripoli, not Benghazi.  He also carefully pointed out that expanding Wood’s team and extending its area of responsibility to include Benghazi would not necessarily have prevented the attack on Benghazi.  After all,

The assault that occurred on the evening of Sep 11…was an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men[.]

Hmm….

Deterrence is not the only means of defense, as Nordstrom and Woods—and anyone with any competence in security—understands.  Sometimes defense involves, well, actual defense.  Actually shooting back.  Actually killing the attackers.  Even those taking part in “an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men.”

Listening to the experts on the ground, rather than putting the political theater of “acting normal” in a still-fluid environment (however hard the Libyan government and people may be trying) ahead of the lives of our embassy staff, would have put more assets into the area, would have beefed up the security at the Benghazi consulate.

Sure, the attack would have gone in, anyway.  As we now know—and as it turns out, State knew at the time—this was a terrorist assault that was going to occur.  Period.  But the plussed-up security might have successfully defended the consulate against those dozens.  Even without that, it might have saved the lives of our Ambassador and those three men who died with him in the terrorist assault.

But it’s more important to maintain the Obama narrative and get him reelected than it is for State—and the Executive Office—to do their jobs and to allow the security personnel they’ve emplaced for actual security to do theirs.