Russia celebrated a holiday recently with a large scale military parade on Red Square. Just like the bad old days. Putins sock puppet, President Dmitri Medvedev, smiled while Putin stood stern-faced at his side at the annual Parade of Hardware. Insiders claim that Russia’s effort to modernize its military forces is anemic and plagued with corruption. Putin and followers are plainly appealing to that voice in the Russian soul that longs for strongman leadership.
China, on the other hand, is quietly constructing a secret underground nuclear submarine base on Hainan. Hmmm. A secret underground lair. Sounds like Dr. No. I doubt there are miniskirted nubiles with machine guns. Bummer.
Whereas Russia is fighting infrastructural inertia in its return to the platform, China is methodically ramping up its military with an economy flush with cash. With funding from its exports of Wal-Mart inventory and other Cheap Plastic Crap (CPC) marketed through its many outlets in the USA, China is moving closer to a blue water Navy and an SSBN fleet.
In the next 20 years, we are likely to see China flexing its muscle by positioning naval (carrier ?) groups and hints of Chinese submarine fleets prowling the continental shelves of the world. Just like us.
While the USA shadow boxes with multiple terrorist threats around the world, China plods forward minding its own business and funding its own growth.
Four US presidential terms were squandered following the fall of the Soviet Union- 2 x Clinton and 2 x Bush. US efforts to engage Russia in economic cooperation were weak at best. The highlight was perhaps the downgrading of Soviet era nuclear materials. Instead of building friendships and trade cooperation, US presidents were distracted by faulty nation building exercises and dubious foreign adventures. Mikhail Gorbachev himself recently lamented that “… every US president has to have a war…”.
US government needs to spend a 4 year term focused inwards. We must address US infrastructure as eagerly and aggressively as we land troops on the sandy reaches of the earth. The US needs an upgrade in electrical power distribution, bridges, its rail “system”, and its ports.
Collectively, we must find ways to keep factories and businesses in the USA. We need to reconsider the structure of the Code of Federal Regulations. Our regulatory structure is now so complex and extensive that we face the real risk of killing innovation. Our tax code is too complex and too burdensome on citizens and businesses. The government is funding far too many activities.
In short, the USA must get back to basics. The country is in a existential crisis and we need to get grounded again. We need fewer rules in our lives, not more. We need fewer people telling us how to live an authentic life. More of us need to spend a bit more time in the pursuit of happiness.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Very Euro Gauss. A German friend once told me that Europeans “work to live” while Americans “Live to work”. You seem to possess a socialist/nationalistic viewpoint. Your argument rests solely on the assumption that the people on US soil comprehend the concepts of national sovereignty or social improvement. Where does that arrow of improvement point? It’s sad that fixing bridges (which should have been fixed) replaces discussions on the more important areas of social/economic justice. As you’ve noted the global corps are nations in themselves, and care as much about their Chinese factories as a warehouse in Kansas. It’s a pay to play system and the corporations elect and influence the politicians. America is at a transition point in that we will either be heading fascist or socialist in the next ten years. The prosperity which kept the other system alive is gone. The sense that ‘anybody is in charge’ is gone. I can’t for the life of me point to any major improvements in the US way of life in the last ten years.
About a year ago I was in a major metro area and there was a one day fuel shortage. Only about half the fuel deliveries needed were made. As a result there was a mini-chaos with police and lines of cars and a palpable sense of anxiety. Just from one day!
You’ll get change when there are more such incidents and maybe hungry people in the streets. Americans need to suffer like the Europeans/Russians/Chinese/Japanese before they understand what they could have. The fact our government continues to spin damn lies with bogus BLS statistics and overuse of core CPI to measure inflation testifies to the aberration which our government has become.
See coverpage of recent Harper’s for a good article on this-
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2013427/posts
The “Brazil” like apparatchiks in Washington spin doublespeak so as to keep their own hefty bonus structure alive. Since exports are only 12% of US GDP, I doubt a debased dollar can save the show.
Hi Roger, I can’t disagree with anything you’ve said. The whole thing is like the Wack-a-Mole game at the arcade. You hammer one problem and the law of unintended consequences pops another one up elsewhere. The global social/economic/government system is far too complex.
From the business side where I spend my time, I know people a who are part of the problem. It partly rests with business leaders who have managed to decouple the logic of finance and economics from the larger domain of civilization. Business decisionmakers have rationalized the incremental deindustrialization of the USA with seemingly sound business practices. The goal has always been to increase shareholder value and to maximize profit.
Business is like a stomach- it has no brain. It only knows it is hungry.
The singleminded pursuit of profit looks smart and certainly gives the impression of competence. The relentless quarterly examination of the profit scores by the marketplace definitely rewards the rainmakers.
But over time, a “brainless” laissez faire economy evolves large scale structures that shift power and influence to locations that, if one had actually given it consideration, may not have been done on purpose.
Witness the dramatic shift in value-added refinery capacity to the Arabian Peninsula, or the shift of basic manufacturing to Asia. US Gulf coast refinery capacity is about to feel the pressure of new world class refinery capacity that, by 2015, will swing the USA into a net importer of most petrochemical-based goods.
This isn’t just a matter of inevitable global market evolution. It is happening in part because of the business culture in the USA. Myopic American business leaders are living the dream by concentrating on short term gains. And the US government is only too happy to facilitate this behavior.
Instead of trying to develop more efficient means of economical manufacturing, American business leaders took the facile approach of exporting factories off-shore. The US tax structure accelerated this outflow with sheer intertia and faulty policy.
Our collective business / finance / government community has failed us. They have grown a system based on morally agnostic principles that have failed to benefit the common good. Their only limitations are the laws of arithmetic. Our government and business leaders have woven a nest that assures that wealth is funneled where the powerful want it to go, irrespective of the effect on our civilization, under the creed- Greed is good.
What’s funny is that violence through apathy (don’t feed your citizens, undercut your own citizens ability to make a living) isn’t a crime. In fact, I can wipe out millions of American’s homes and take their jobs, dissolve their pensions and be lauded as a financier extrodinaire.
Yet if I were to punch one of these geniuses in the mouth and break his jaw, I’d be thrown in prison for two years.
It makes a mockery of the human thought process. Humans have been successfully programmed to believe that death by paper is ok, while death by direct means is improper.
Spock would see no way to resolve such conflicted reasoning. It is a triumph of something….. but I’m having a hard time locating a Dr. Evil in his volcanoe lair to point a finger at. My guess is that the human brain did not evolve to promote fairness or reason, but to ruthlessly maximize self interest. The paper tigers have harnessed the printing presses to protect themselves.
“My guess is that the human brain did not evolve to promote fairness or reason, but to ruthlessly maximize self interest. ”
That pretty much says it all.
I don’t think there is a Dr Evil out there. I think American culture has evolved into a kind of flaccid, irritable middle age that is happy to thumb through its picture album of past triumphs ad nauseum.
The USA is in desperate need of new archetypes and mteaphors. Our curent response to the evolving world beyond is tragically limited to worn out rules of thumb and flag waving jingoism.
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