Month: January 2005

Credit Where Credit is Due

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My buddy Kathryn has another interesting post up. She points out that it costs real money to use military units for rescue and aid, money that no one gives us credit for when they start to complain about how stingy the US is when it comes to disaster relief.

So how much money are we talking about here? To figure that out would take a big pile of research, but she has found the daily costs for operating an aircraft carrier.

So we should get some credit for diverting our military in order to save lives. But there’s something else that’s being ignored, and that’s the money we spend to maintain this capability even when we’re not using it. In Europe, for example, they’ve made the choice to allow their military to dry up in order to fund Socialist welfare programs. They say that they’re more moral, more caring, for doing this.

So how come we don’t get credit for paying for assets that are desperately needed when things really go to hell?

Actual Conversation

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I’m taking a class in military history, and this is what my prof said to the class today.

“You can tell alot about a society by what they have their soldiers do to prove their loyalty, and what the culture thinks is important enough to require an oath. Americans in military service swear to defend the Constitution. The British swear loyalty to “the Queen and her ministers”. Canadians swear allegiance to the Queen without bothering with her ministers. But do you know what the French swear to?

“Nothing!!”

Hardly a surprise, that.

Some points on anti-Americanism

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Mitch writes in his post below about Anti-Americanism. Since it would take some books’ worth of material to cover the issue comprehensively, I’ll just list some points here (feel free to add your won in the comments):

-While anti-Americanism is a very real phenomenon, it needs to be pointed out that articles like those Mitch links to constitute published rather than public opinion. The steady barrage of such articles does color the opinion Europeans have of America, but the effect is rather superficial, and does not stand up to substantiated information to the contrary, at least not after the usual period of denial. Once blogs and other alternative media start to gain status in Europe, things should start to improve.

-Anti-Americanism also usually is not as bad as Americans perceive it. Both liberal and conservative media have an incentive to overemphasize its extent; liberals because it seems to affirm their claim that W is bad for America, for his policies allegedly make the country hated all over the world, while conservatives hope that tales of hostility abroad help to close the ranks, i.e. encourage Americans to stand behind their government.

-While anti-Americanism is a quite irrational sentiment, those who propagate it have a rational if not very nice reason to do so: Unlike economic activity, politics is a zero-sum-game. Political influence is very much relative, so that influence for one party or country means less influence for the others. Anything that helps to make the most powerful less popular and influential conversely increases the influence of their competition.

-Many Americans tend to react to anti-Americanism by asserting that they are different than anybody else, in ways that those others won’t even be able to understand. This is self-defeating, for it works into the hands of those want to marginalize American influence in the world. It would be much more productive to ignore the loudmouths and engage the moderate majority which actually is open to honest debate (even if it isn’t an easy thing to do).

-This kind of exaggerated resentment should also be taken as a kind of back-handed compliment, for those who disseminate this kind of nonsense implicitly acknowledge that they regard their target as top-dog.

-Projection also is a major factor. We all remember how our respective countries behaved when they could pretty much do as they wished (I don’t want to go into the gory details here).

-The concrete level of anti-Americanism also depends on circumstances and whoever is President at the time. Bill Clinton did some things that could potentially have led to similar levels of resentment as George W. Bush. The reason why they didn’t was that Clinton has an exuberance and a charm (Republicans may interpret these characteristics differently) which Bush simply is lacking, and because he gave his European counterparts plenty of rhetorical pats on the head. Europeans also can’t really be angry at somebody who is that open a hedonist, while Bush tends to rub most of us the wrong way.

Anti-Americanism

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Some of the recent articles at David’s Medienkritik and No Pasaran are not only depressing in themselves, but even more so in aggregate. Whatever the occasion, there is something the US did wrong. The degree of hatred expressed by the European left is orders of magnitude out of proportion to any wrongs we may have done them, a mindset shared by multitudes in the Middle East. That is, of course, unless they both still resent our role in the implosion of their sponsor, the USSR.

I think that there is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the US in Europe and in much of the rest of the world as well. Fundamentally, we are a regional power that has outgrown its region. With vast oceans east and west, friendly nations north and south, and only weak enemies in our hemisphere, Americans have often felt the rest of world needed a good, brisk leaving-alone. We had a war in 1812 – comparatively a small war in the years of Napoleon’s bloody project – and didn’t appear again on the world’s battlefields until Great Britain helpfully showed us that Germany was trying to get Mexico to enter the war on their side by invading us (the Zimmerman telegram). We avoided the Second World War until it came to us. Until that point, there was sympathy for Great Britain and China, but the war fell into the category of Europeans doing stupid and cruel things to each other, with Japan taking the traditional European role of ravaging China.

The change came when we realized that the USSR was no more kindly disposed toward us than the Nazis had been. Mass graves full of class enemies or of racial enemies were pretty much the same thing to us, if not to the more sophisticated and learned Europeans, and if preventing them meant we couldn’t go home, we didn’t go home. That doesn’t mean we didn’t want to.

From Washington’s farewell address in 1796:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

The Europeans have to understand that this distance from their affairs is more than physical. Frankly, we would be content to never think of them except in terms of trade and vacation destinations. We’re willing to ignore you as long as you do the same for us. You don’t have to like us. You don’t even have to notice us. Just leave us alone.

If only Osama, Mullah Omar, and Saddam had been able to absorb this simple idea.