Objects in Motion

Effective immediately, I'll be cross-posting stuff at the following address:

http://gravitron5.wordpress.com

...'till I decide whether I like Wordpress better than Blogger (which is starting to irritate me).

Random Links II

Why foreclosures are a good thing:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/111898/output/print

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/09/the_case_agains_1.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123336541474235541.html

http://www.housingwire.com/2009/02/02/former-reo-broker-let-the-foreclosures-roll/

So long as housing remains overvalued, foreclosures serve a valuable social function by bringing house prices down to affordable levels.

Financial Crisis Overview: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4240

There's more to it, of course, but he does hit on many of the high points.

Nascent Warriors: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040802044_pf.html

I wonder how they'd fare in real combat.

Euro Demise?:

Pro: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0421/034_print.html

Con: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/729

Sprawl Done Right: http://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2008/04/chinese-think-they-can-learn-from-us.html

I tend to agree; hence my support for oil tariffs (to raise gas prices) & toll roads, as ways of internalizing commuting externalities.

High food prices vs. biotech taboos: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/21crop.html

Civilizations have the morality & ethics that they can afford.

Postmodern Dating File, Male Hearing Impairment Edition: http://www.physorg.com/news128095723.html

Teller and Classification:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2003/09/091003.html

https://www.llnl.gov/str/Science.html

I'm indebted to David Brin for pointing this out. IIRC, he, too, was surprised to discover this.

Criminalization of Policy Differences: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Barack_on_torture.html

I wonder how the Republic would have fared if Dewey had won in '48, and promptly prosecuted Truman for ordering & condoning war crimes (perhaps employing the Yameshita "command responsibility" doctrine). If a public official is prosecuted for policy decisions that, while perhaps technically illegal, nevertheless enjoy considerable popular support (of a plurality, if not necessarily a majority), then the effect is the same as criminalizing policy differences. There may be instances where it may be prudent to forbear prosecuting certain criminal offenses for the sake of social peace. Post-Civil-War amnesties come to mind.

Fehrenbach on Religion & Assimilation: http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/trfehrenbach/stories/MYSA040608.03O.Fehrenbach.1cf5b37.html

Economic Warfare: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/08spring/chang.htm

Urban Futures: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042302930.html

For whatever "Near Future" scenarios (and science-fiction set therein) tend to catch my interest.

Day care & misbehavior: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/econ-childcare-0502.html

Postmodern Dating File, Friend Zone Edition: http://www.trueu.org/dorms/womenshall/A000000890.cfm

Murray on Education (Again): http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-age-of-educational-romanticism-3835

I would find an IQ-based meritocracy much easier to swallow if it was well understood, at all levels of society, that socioeconomic success did not necessarily make one a better man. I.e., that attainment of such success was the result, not only of (praise-worthy) striving on the part of an individual, but also of how our society & economy is structured.

Random Links

I'm considering a quasi-return to the blogosphere, mainly via posts like this. I.e., largely devoid of content, and consisting mainly of links to interesting articles I stumbled across while trawling then 'Net.

Synopsis of an interesting new book, "Heroes & Cowards":

http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1231548252.shtml

Shifting away from a credit-based economy:

http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1232166069.shtml

Also, some mini-posts further expanding on the above post (hoisted from the comments thread thereof):

http://interfluidity.powerblogs.com/posts/1232166069.shtml#1726

http://interfluidity.powerblogs.com/posts/1232166069.shtml#1727

http://interfluidity.powerblogs.com/posts/1232166069.shtml#1732

http://interfluidity.powerblogs.com/posts/1232166069.shtml#1735

Postmodern Dating file, Infidelity edition:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16410-high-hormone-levels-in-women-linked-to-unfaithfulness.html

Wondering if the economic crisis will implode Latvia's polity:

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afem/demographics/the-long-and-difficult-road-to-wage-cuts-as-an-alternative-to-devaluation/

Subprime Student loans:

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/060_print.html

[Slight caveat: I see stories like this on a regular basis, and find myself wondering how representative they are of student borrowers at large. What I'd really like to see is a study divvying up student borrowers by the starting pay (expected & actual) of their various post-college occupations, and giving the debt load for each subset.]

Current recession compared with the early '80s:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/business/economy/21leonhardt.html

[Maybe we're not yet doomed.]

Living with high IQ:

http://theupsidedownworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/how-being-gifted-means-being-different/

http://theupsidedownworld.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/who-me-gifted/

Criminalization of Political Differences:

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/01/20/endangering_american_democracy_to_go_after_bush

[Interesting to compare with this post...written over two years prior.]

More later. Perhaps.

Economic Crisis: Causes & Solutions

It is helpful to differentiate between the financial crisis, and the impending recession. The two are related, but not entirely the same.


The root cause of our financial crisis is ultimately the bubble in real-estate values, and the various loans & financial instruments collateralized thereby. This had several causes, including:


1. Borrowers who bought into the silly notion of "housing" = "investment"; and who were foolish enough to a) believe that housing prices would perpetually increase, and b) take out mortgages that they didn't understand and/or couldn't afford.

2. Lenders who ignored prudent underwriting standards (e.g., verifying borrowers' income, demanding sufficient downpayments) when originating loans (particularly subprime, but also Alt-A).

3. Investment banks (and, to a lesser extent, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac) that bought up such low-quality, "toxic" loans, and transformed them into securities whose risks, and values, were extremely difficult to predict.

4. Rating agencies that rated the aforementioned securities AAA without considering how said securities might be affected by a non-trivial decline in housing prices.

5. Investors who allowed their greed for ever-greater returns to overcome their caution & common sense, and who therefore bought up these "toxic" securities by the hundreds of billions.

Those toxic securities are now what's gumming up the financial system. Partly because nobody's sure how low housing prices will go (or of the resultant effect on defaults & mortgage losses), and partly owing to sheer complexity, it's really difficult to value such securities. So potential creditors/investors don't trust the solvency of the banks that hold them. Nor do banks trust each other. Hence nobody is willing to lend to the financial sector, and the financial sector isn't willing (or able) to lend to anyone else...and hence we have the credit crunch.

As for the recession...among the contributing factors are:

1. The US financial sector is currently in crisis, and therefore largely incapable of properly allocating credit from investors & creditors to businesses & individuals. This, in turn, imposes a drag on both investment and consumption, and hence upon economic growth.

2. Even if the financial sector were healed overnight, both loans & equity investment by both financial institutions & other sources of capital (e.g., institutional investors) would likely be lower & more costly, since such institutions, having recently endured massive losses, would consequently be overcautious in extending credit/capital to either businesses (to facilitate investment & hence job creation) or individuals (which facilitates consumption). Hence the aforementioned effects of the credit crunch will probably continue for some time to come.

3. The construction sector, formerly a major contributor to growth, is (and will continue to be) moribund for years to come, owing to reduced demand, & financing, for new homes (arising from the massive supply of foreclosures) & commercial properties (owing to overbuilding & general recessionary conditions).

4. US consumers have financed much of their recent consumption via debt (credit cards, HEL(OC)s, mortgages, etc.); their capability to continue doing so appears to be tapped out (given massive overall quantities of debt, as well as debt-to-income ratios). Hence US consumers, will probably be unable to support the same level of consumption seen in recent years; on the contrary, much of the money they would’ve formerly spent on consumption will instead end up going towards paying both principal & interest on past debts. Since consumption accounts for much of US economic growth, a drag on consumer spending equals a drag on economic growth.

5. With the economic slowdown spreading to Europe & Asia, US exports - the one bright spot of the economy up 'till this point - are likely to stagnate (at the very least) or decline (probably more likely). This will have obvious effects on corporate profits & employment (and hence on business & individual spending in the domestic economy).

There are a number of government policies that could've prevented this crisis, but they would likely have been unpopular:

1. Ban all mortgages except 20% down, fixed-rate, 30-year, fully-documented ones. This would've eliminated the subprime mortgages at the center of this mess, and would probably also have prevented (or, at the very least, limited) the housing bubble.

2. Require mortgage-originating institution(s) to finance mortgages not with securitization (GSE or private-label) or depositors' funds, but rather via the issuance of callable, duration-matched, pass-through covered bonds. These would've reduced the agency problems that resulted in so many crap mortgages, while also eliminating the need for Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

3. Increase capital requirements for all types of financial institutions;

4. Lean heavily on the ratings agencies to err on the side of caution (and, again, suffer through the resultant credit rationing);

5. Impose draconian capital controls (e.g., like those China uses) to prevent foreign importation of capital. This would've kept domestic interest rates higher, and reduced the incentives of both investment banks & investors to (respectively) generate & purchase risky securities.

6. Erect a high tariff wall (esp. on oil) to zero out the trade deficit (thus rendering it unnecessary to finance said deficit with foreign borrowing);

7. Raise federal taxes & cut federal spending to zero out the fiscal deficit (since #4 would make it impossible to finance said deficit with foreign borrowing);

8. Liquidate Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.

Most of these would probably still be useful IOT prevent a repeat occurrence.

As for what ought to be done now...some thoughts:

1. Financial Crisis: The financial crisis will not end until all parties can be confident that financial institutions are solvent. To ensure this, I would propose: a) temporary federal guarantees of all bank deposits & money-market fund balances (to prevent runs in the short term); b) FDIC examinations to determine the solvency of each financial institution, with conservative accounting to value "toxic" assets; and c) recapitalization of healthy financial institutions (using debt-for-equity swaps as much as possible, with injection of public funds only as a last resort), and liquidation of those that are beyond help. To remove any lingering doubts about solvency, we could also exchange Treasury bonds for toxic assets (at conservative valuations of the latter, of course), ala TARP.

2. Housing Crash: Housing prices are still above fundamental trends (as measured by ratios of price-to-rent or price-to-income). The housing crash won't end until prices reach those levels. In this regard, proposals to limit foreclosures are actually misguided, since foreclosures are an essential means for deflating housing prices. While homebuyers may be unwilling to sell for more than they bought (even if their purchase price was unrealistically high), banks are eager to unload foreclosed properties at fire-sale prices (which in turn set sale prices for other homes in the area). If anything, we should be expediting the foreclosure process, not hindering it. If we're worried about housing prices overshooting on the downside, the government could offer loan guarantees to encourage lending at housing prices equal to fundamental trends.

3. Economic Stimulus: I'd prefer that this take the form of spending on infrastructure (ala Works Progress Administration), rather than bread-and-circuses tax credits or welfare spending. That way, we'd at least get something useful out of our spending. I'd also prefer that such a stimulus be funded via cutbacks elsewhere. E.g., means-testing of Social Security & Medicare. We could also require that a person take a WPA job as a condition of receiving unemployment insurance.

Israel's Dilemma

Israel needs the West Bank (and perhaps the Golan, but definitely the West Bank) in order to maintain a defensible border. [1] Reasons include...

• Strategic depth: Without the West Bank, central & north-central Israel is astonishingly narrow, and could be rapidly overrun by an invading force.
• Safety from bombardment: Many of Israel's population centers are in rocket range of the West Bank.
• Control of the high ground: Important for both ground & air defense - the former for obvious reasons, the latter via positioning of missiles & radars.
• Geographic Realities: With the West Bank a few thousand feet above sea level, and the Jordan river far below that, geography makes the land surrounding the Jordan River - i.e., between the West Bank & Jordan - a natural defensive barrier.

OTOH, it is difficult for Israel to retain the West Bank and also remain a liberal democracy. The West Bank population doesn't like Israeli control; Israel must therefore rule without consent, using methods that tend to corrupt those who use them. (E.g., dehumanization of the occupied population, military learns to rule without consent, reinforcement of prejudice on the part of both rulers and the ruled, reinforcement of resentment on the part of the ruled population, siege mentality on the part of settlers.) It must, in short, maintain a regime of apartheid vis-à-vis the Palestinians, since keeping the Palestinians subservient and unable to resist Israeli rule is a sine qua non of retaining the West Bank.

From the standpoint of people who care about the application of justice & morality in foreign policy (i.e., people besides myself), such a regime is barely defensible when the Palestinians are a minority in the area between Jordan & the Med. It becomes even less so if the Palestinians become a majority (which demographics makes nearly inevitable in the next couple decades) - at which point, much of Israel's international support (particularly in America) would probably fade, as activists worldwide (and even many fellow Jews) drew unfavorable comparisons to pre-ANC South Africa. E.g., Jews & whites were both dominated by a siege mentality, utilized universal manhood conscription, allowed the franchise only to an ethnically-delineated minority, & kept the majority of a territory's residents subservient in order to maintain control over said territory. [2]

OTOH, Israel could never enfranchise the Palestinians and allow free elections (in a single state comprising both pre-1967 Israel & the West Bank), for fear of "one man, one vote, one time" and "tyranny of the majority" by the Palestinians vis-à-vis the Jewish population.

Nor is a "two-state solution" acceptable, if such a solution requires Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, again because of defensible borders. Perhaps a Palestinian state might start out peaceful, but intentions change, while geography remains constant.

Nor, currently, is it feasible to retain control of the West Bank without continued oppression of the Palestinian population. Granted, control of the Palestinian population is only required because the Palestinians inhabit the West Bank; Israel doesn't really need the Palestinians for manpower, markets, labor, etc. OTOH, the only way to separate control of the West Bank from control of the Palestinians is to expel the latter from the former; and since the latter are unlikely to go willingly, any such "transfer" would likely be forceful. It would probably be politically impossible in peacetime; only in a war of national survival might it be (barely) acceptable.

So Israel faces a dilemma. It needs the West Bank for reasons of security. Rule of the West Bank without ruling the Palestinians (i.e., ethnic cleansing) isn't acceptable. A two-state solution would severely - possibly fatally - compromise its security, via surrender of the West Bank. However, demographics make an equation between continued West Bank occupation and minority rule over a hostile majority (with concomitant invidious analogies to apartheid) increasingly probable in the not-too-distant future. Such an equation would have severe negative consequences for Israel's international legitimacy (particularly in the eyes of its American patron); e.g., as Pournelle puts it, Israel would either cease to be Jewish (if it enfranchised Palestinians) or cease to be a democracy (if it didn't). So the survival of Israel's legitimacy (important to its continued existence) requires that it give up the strategically-important territory of the West Bank (also important to its continued existence, via the maintenance of a defensible border).

It's also worth noting that Israel appears to be tiring of the struggle for survival. E.g., Benny Morris, "We are tired of fighting...we are tired of defeating our enemies." Considering that both a two-state solution and an apartheid solution require maintenance of just the sort of fighting spirit that appears to be fading, this does not bode well for Israel's future.

[1] See here: http://www.defensibleborders.org/amidror.htm for discussion.

[2] See here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200505/schwarz and here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/israel; also here: http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000368.htm.

More Thoughts on the Haditha Incident

A friend of mine offers some thoughts on the prosecutions stemming from the Haditha incident. Although I've addressed this issue before, I suppose I can spare a few words by way of response.

0. A decent overview of what probably happened at Haditha can be found here.

1. Minor quibble WRT ranks: SSgt Wuterich is a staff sergeant. Note that, unlike the Army, in the Marine Corps, propriety demands that enlisted personnel above the rank of E-5 be addressed by their full rank. Informal abbreviations - e.g., "Master Guns" for master gunnery sergeants, "Top" for master sergeants, "Gunny" for gunnery sergeants - may be employed on a case-by-case basis. Calling any Marine above E-5 "sergeant" is an easy way to get an ass-chewing.

2. Prison time for errors in combat is too high a price. I've seen the charges being leveled against SSgt Wuterich. "Voluntary manslaughter", arising from failure to properly identify targets (*). I.e., he shot (or ordered others to shoot) when he shouldn't have. This isn't murder. At worst, this is negligence - entirely understandable negligence, given the generally screwed-up nature of combat. Assume it's true, that SSgt Wuterich really did screw up: So give him an NJP, demote him one grade (or so), give him a reprimand, dock his pay, and force him to ride a desk for the rest of his career. But prison time? For doing the best he could, and unfortunately erring, in his first combat situation? That's excessive. Even forcing him to bear the ruinous expense of defending himself in a criminal proceeding is too much, IMHO.

If the government wants to prosecute SSgt Wuterich in the name of "clearing the air", showing it has nothing to hide, showcasing his innocence, etc., then it should offer to pick up the tab in the event that he's acquitted on any of the charges. If it wants to second-guess the command decisions of Marines in the field - in the name of figuring out what went wrong so that it doesn't happen again - the proper venue is a court of inquiry, not a court-martial.

3. The consequences of Haditha:

"The reason we had so many Marines die was the rules of engagement."

So said one of the Marines in my reserve unit, a few months after returning from an Iraq deployment that post-dated all the public brouhaha regarding Haditha. Granted, when I was over there, we still had rules of engagement. But there was also the (oft-emphasized) caveat: "You ALWAYS have the right to defend yourself." From what my buddy tells me, things have changed.

Now, the emphasis is, "If you shoot the wrong guy, and you failed to follow the rules of engagement to the letter, you will be prosecuted. So don't screw up." The difference here may seem subtle, but in fact it's not. The latter tends to encourage hesitation among trigger-pullers...and in combat, hesitation can be fatal. When you have a truck loaded with explosives speeding towards your position, or your convoy...you don't want your machine-gunners hesitating, even for a second. But from what my buddy tells me, that's what's been happening. Marines have been dying because the Stateside powers-that-be are averse to negative publicity.

In other words, American upper echelons (civilian & military) aren't willing to simply tell people, in response to incidents like Haditha, "War is hell, and in combat, sh*t happens." Instead, averse to negative publicity that accompanies incidents like Haditha, they're trying to make such incidents less likely by tightening up the rules of engagement. Such "tightening", however, has consequences - and, at least in some instances, a blood price.

IMHO, that price is too high.

People occasionally ask me if I'd ever go back to Iraq again. I generally answer in the negative. One reason is because, frankly, Iraq sucks, and I have no desire to go back to that sh*thole. But the other is given above: If I can avoid it, I'd rather not be put in a situation where I have to decide whether it's "better to be judged by twelve, than carried by six".

(*) I'm aware that there are other charges regarding obstruction of justice. Frankly, even if these are true, they still strike me as worthy more of a wrist-slap than serious punishment. It's entirely understandable that a grunt in the field would suspect that a REMF pogue, if presented with an account of what really happened at Haditha, couldn't be trusted not to overreact or start second-guessing absent context.

Surrender Done Right, aka Competent Isolationism

The drumbeat for "withdrawal" or "redeployment" from Iraq - even sans victory - continues apace. Some of us have other terms for such a strategy, of course, e.g., "surrender". But it seems most people aren't interested in using that term. Too realistic, perhaps? Well, I'm not going to go there with this essay. Instead, I'm going to presume that the bandwagon for surrender has grown unstoppable, and that the only question is how we go about doing it. If we're going to surrender the field of battle in Iraq, it's important that we do it right.

Withdrawal-sans-victory would leave us with three major problems:

• The Fury of the Legions: the military may not be too happy about being forced to break faith with their fallen comrades
• Damage to our national honor: friends & foes abroad may conclude America is a paper tiger
• Following us home: Al Qaeda et al, having seen how easily we run from a fight abroad, might decide to launch a renewed wave of terror attacks on the US

Regarding the Fury of the Legions, I still don't have any really good solutions. The easy way would be to keep the army over there until the troops on the sharp end become convinced that the fight is hopeless; at least then, we wouldn't have to worry about the military blaming civilians back home for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Stab in the back, etc. But I'm not sure the aforementioned surrender-bandwagon will have the patience required for this course of action. The other possibility - which I mentioned before, and which I'm still not all to sure will actually work - would be to deflect the blame to the Iraqis. I'm skeptical of this not because it would be scapegoating (I don't much care) or contrary to the facts (it wouldn't be); it's just that I have no idea whether the bulk of the military would actually buy it. We might talk about how the Iraqis screwed the pooch, the military will remember asinine rules of engagement, REMFs decreeing that detainees be treated with kid gloves, etc., and the perpetually-waxing antiwar movement...and they'll wonder whether our Iraq venture was doomed not by the Iraqis, but by an overload of bureaucracy and a lack of will.

[He throws up his hands.]

It is interesting - and extremely unfortunate - that this question doesn't seem to be much discussed among our chattering classes. We've lived for so long with a tame standing army that we've forgotten just how unusual historically-unusual such an institution is (particularly in a republican polity). We allow ourselves to forget this at our peril. The widespread ignorance of military affairs amongst American civilian in general (and our social/economic/political elites in particular) doesn't much help matters.

Wounded Lions

As for the tarnishing of America's national honor, we'll probably be able to repair the damage, but it will take time & effort. At the very least, we'll probably have to suffer through at least one or more terrorist attacks against American civilian and/or military targets, when terrorists make the mistake of assuming that a foreign defeat makes us a pushover forever. At that point, we'll have to spare no effort in finding out who did it, and what (if any) country gave them aid & comfort. Then we demonstrate that even wounded lions are dangerous.

First, we exterminate every single member of the terrorist group in question, perhaps along with their families. To each country that aided the terrorists, we send a punitive military expedition, with the sole mission locating that country's leadership (civilian, military, etc.) and killing them all. If this means destroying their army along the way, or laying waste to large swathes of the country in question, or denuclearizing the country in question (possible against anyone except Russia and perhaps China)...so be it. Then, having ensured that the leadership of the country has suffered in a very personal way for their support of America's enemies...we bring our forces back home, and leave behind this message:

"To the Ruling Classes Everywhere: If you allow your country to be used in any way to aid attacks on us, and those attacks harm us, we will change the regime in your country: you, the ruling class, will not personally survive. To the protest that you cannot prevent such attacks on us, we say 'Resign in favor of someone who can.' To the protest that 'Our successors will be worse' our reply is 'Then we will remove them and they will not survive.'"

Then we repeat as necessary, until the attacks stop.

So if Hamas attacks our territory or citizens, we clean house in Israel's occupied territories...and then leave. If Hezbollah attacks us, we destroy the ruling regimes in Lebanon & Iran...and then leave. If Pakistan falls to Al Qaeda, and thereafter is used as a base from which to attack America, we denuclearize Pakistan & destroy its government...and then leave. And so on.

We wouldn't necessarily have to employ full-scale war; assassinations might be equally useful as a deterrent, in some circumstances (and much cheaper to boot).

I suspect that after a couple of repetitions, the idea would get through, and the world's would-be terrorists & terrorist-sponsors would realize that America, even despite our surrender in Iraq, is still unwilling to take aggression lying down. Note that this strategy would also spare us the trouble of trying to rebuild the societies we had decapitated (ala Iraq), since it would be clear from the start that our desired "end state" was not to remake the country in question in our image, but rather to leave once we'd destroyed the troublesome regime.

Of course, this also means suffering through at least one more terrorist attack, and possibly many more. Whether that is a price worth paying, I leave for the reader's contemplation.

Competent Isolationism

We now come to the final problem, which it the prospect of terrorists "following us home". Those who usually employ this phrase tend to also say, "It's better for us to fight terrorists abroad than here at home." True, and perhaps we have no choice but to do that. I submit, however, that there may be an alternative to perpetual war for perpetual peace. I call it "competent isolationism". The basic idea is: We only have to worry about fighting terrorists on American soil if they actually get to our shores. So let's prevent that from happening."

Step 1: Guarding the Walls: Recall that oceans work both ways. So, we rebuild our Fleet, at least to the size of Reagan's 600-ship Navy, and preferably double that. Nothing excessive: the equivalent [0] of a couple dozen CVBG's, a couple hundred subs (both SSN's, SSBN's, & SSGN's), arsenal ships, battleships, destroyers, cruisers, frigates, enough landing craft to ship a Marine Corps 50% larger than the current one...I think that would be sufficient. Call it a hedge, against the day when some other power - e.g., China, or perhaps an Islamic world seeking vengeance for whatever - decides to challenge America's primacy of the seas. Or call it playing to our strengths: We already rule the seas; why not make our oceanic hegemony truly unassailable, so that no other power even thinks of trying to match us? To the charge that this would be redundant, well, that's kinda the point: Unlike in civilian life, where we're perpetually seeing cost-effectiveness & efficiency, in military affairs it's generally prudent to have plenty of reserves, if only as a hedge against the unexpected. Such as, say, a bolt-from-the-blue attack which annihilates a good portion of our fleet, like at Pearl Harbor. (What, are you implying that history could never repeat itself?)

As a backup plan, we can (as an adjunct to the aforementioned buildup) also copy the old USSR's naval strategy, i.e., naval aviation, antiship missiles, and lots of hunter-killer SSNs & SSGNs. The idea being, even if we are unwilling (or unable) to project power across the seas, we'll at least be able to prevent anyone from reaching our shores without our let or leave.

Step 2: Slamming the Door: We make it difficult for Islamic terrorists to enter our country. First we secure our borders; see this essay - and especially the addendum thereto - for thoughts on how this might be done. Solving our illegal immigration problem would be one helpful side-effect of this. Then we inspect every person and cargo shipment crossing our borders for NBC weapons, and anything else we might want to keep out (e.g., drugs). This might would impose considerable costs upon economic imports, but I see this as a feature, not a bug. See below.

Also, we recognize that the terrorists we're most worried about tend to have certain common characteristics - e.g., religious faith & ethnicity. So we apply this insight and filter the flow of immigrants & visitors for potential terrorists - ruthlessly if need be. Ethnic/racial/religious profiling, loyalty tests, polygraphs, the works. And we err on the side of caution: if we're not sure whether or not someone's a potential threat...we keep them out.

Step 3: Fifth Columns Unwelcome: We make it clear that Muslims who would impose sharia law upon their fellow citizens (or simply kill them) are not welcome upon our soil.

· Public criticism of suspect groups (e.g., I'm thinking here of the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, among others): Sustained & withering criticism from both the media and government. No cooperation with such groups from any level of government (e.g., screening of chaplains for ties to such groups, ostracism of such groups from any government efforts to "reach out" to American Muslims). Make such groups about as welcome in public life as Nazis currently are.

· Demand, as a criterion of respectability, that such groups publish both their funding sources (particularly foreign ones) and their membership rolls

· Target these groups with heavy domestic surveillance (e.g., wiretaps, monitoring of finances, HUMINT/infiltration, etc.) to ensure that they're not breeding terrorists.

This will have two goals: 1) Minimize the ability of these groups to gain converts; 2) reduce their operational freedom, since others will view them with suspicion, and surveillance will hamper their ability to get away with planning (or cooperating with) terrorist actions.

If that doesn't work, then we can think about playing really rough. I.e., we basically treat Islamism, if not necessarily Islam in general, with the same heavy-handedness that was directed against Communism during the Cold War. For example:

· We recall that, in the past half-century, the vast majority of terrorist incidents have been perpetrated by Middle-Eastern Muslims males between the ages of 15 and 40, and using this fact as a basis for allocating scarce law-enforcement resources.

· We resurrect the Emergency Detention Act of 1950, and applying it to the rare American citizen who is foolish enough to collaborate with terrorists.

· We amend the Alien Enemies Act to allow preventive detention and/or deportation of aliens who participate in a terrorist organization, or who provide moral or material support to the same.

· We also resurrect the Internal Security Act of 1950 (which required registration of Communist organizations), and apply it to the aforementioned suspect Islamic organizations. Ditto any American mosques, Islamic centers, etc., that receive significant amounts of foreign funds - e.g., from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. Then we make these guys targets for surveillance, to make sure they don't step out of line.

· We arm federal prosecutors with the Smith Act [2], and use it to hammer the more militant Muslims into the ground. Praising terrorism, advocating terror attacks on the United States, advocating the conquest of America by Islam, etc., would bring not imprisonment, but rather expatriation, deportation, and confiscation of property.

· We screen prison chaplains for militants, Islamists, etc. We also cleanse the prison libraries of Islamist literature. No need to have American prisons breeding a home-grown Al Qaeda.

The idea here isn't to outlaw Islam. Rather, we want to root out true militants like the Muslim Brotherhood, and their various fellow-travellers (e.g., CAIR & ISNA), and send them packing from our shores. Unlike the members of such groups, I have no illusions that Islamists might take over this country; my concern, rather, is that Islamists in the US might serve as a recruiting ground for homegrown Islamic terrorism. (Which admittedly isn't necessarily fatal, merely annoying. See the bombings in London & Spain for how annoying.) We can make such terrorism far less likely by reducing the domestic ranks of those sympathetic to the terrorists' aims & methods. With "fire from the rear" a minor concern, we could focus on the other half of preventing terrorism, i.e., border security.

Another upside to cracking down on Islamists is that it would - hopefully - reduce the fears that many ordinary Americans currently feel towards all Muslims. If Americans could be confident that the American Muslims no longer harbored militant strains of Islam, then I suspect that things like this would be far less controversial. Note also that the vast majority of American Muslims would have nothing to fear from a crackdown on Islamists, since, as I understand it, most harbor no fantasies about waging jihad or imposing sharia.

Step 4: Homeland Security Done Right: We secure the home front. We engraft a pervasive web of surveillance upon public areas (i.e., anywhere outside private domiciles). Cameras on every street corner, and around power plants, airports, refineries, chemical plants, etc. Specialized microphone systems to triangulate gunshots. Sensors for detecting radiation. More sensors for detecting airborne biological or chemical agents. Millimeter-wave imaging to detect concealed weapons. To prevent abuse, take a page from Brin's Transparent Society by publicly disclosing the locations of all of these surveillance devices; making their data feeds publicly available; and recording both the identity of a person accessing the feeds, and what feed(s) he accessed [1]. To prevent "information overload", we recruit a virtual posse comitatus of volunteers from the general public.

There are other things we could do. Mass vaccinations against all known bioweapons agents. IRCM's on all commercial flights. Mandatory use of "Safe Shipping Units" for all container ships bringing goods into American ports. Carbon-fiber torpedo nets around every American port (to stop nuclear-tipped torpedoes). See here and here for some thoughts.

The overall idea here would be to create a homeland security system capable of "failing well". We would accept that, in a free society, preventing all terrorist attacks is impossible, and that the best we can hope to do is to limit both the probability of such attacks and the extent of the damage they can cause. Guarding our borders may prevent future infiltration by militant Muslim sleeper agents, and anti-Islamist measures may suffice to reduce the population already in residence; but we'll never be able to get them all, short of resorting to truly Orwellian measures.

We could also deploy a full-blown strategic defense system, capable of intercepting ICBM's, IRBM's, SLBM's, etc. Nothing elaborate; a few thousand Brilliant Pebbles for first-phrase interception, coupled with a few thousand more ground-based interceptors for terminal defense, would probably do the trick. No, the system wouldn't be foolproof, but this would actually work to our advantage in convincing China, Russia, etc., that American strategic defense poses no first-strike threat. Meanwhile, until one of the Islamic nuclear powers (Pakistan currently, possibly Iran or Saudi Arabia in the future) accumulates a stockpile of several thousand nuclear-tipped ICBM's, the number of interceptors envisioned above would still be sufficient to neutralize any nuclear ballistic missile threat emanating from the Islamic world.

Step 5: Economic Security Done Right: We phase in protective tariffs [3] on all imports of resources, goods, & services entering the United States. It doesn't much help matters if we successfully prevent terrorists from infiltrating America, but continue to depend on overseas sources for economically-essential imports of goods or services. Faced with such a situation, terrorists would simply shift gears: Noting our economic dependence upon foreign nations - start attacking that soft underbelly, trying to cripple our economy by attacking overseas factories & companies located in countries (e.g., India, East Asia) that aren't quite as well-secured as the US. Protective tariffs would reduce the salience of this problem by reducing American dependence upon foreign powers for energy sources (especially Mideast oil!), manufactures (both high & low-tech), and services (e.g., computer services in India). The most obvious effect, of course, would be to discourage purchases of imports in favor of domestically-produced items. Additionally, tariffs would give companies a strong economic incentive to engage in "reverse outsourcing": rather than put up with heavy tariffs (as well as the costs associated with thorough inspection of all cargo shipments, as mentioned above), they'll relocate foreign operations to American soil. Moreover, tariffs would encourage consumers to employ alternatives (e.g., nuclear power) in lieu of goods & services that cannot be produced in sufficient quantities domestically (e.g., oil, natural gas). Although I doubt that tariffs will produce full economic autarchy, they would probably - hopefully - allow domestic industries to survive on a scale sufficient to supply a substantial majority of America's aggregate consumption of resources, goods, & services.

We also take all measures necessary in order to achieve compete energy independence within five years (or less); ten years max. If that means - in addition to heavy tariffs on all non-Canadian imports of oil & natural gas - government subsidization of nuclear power plants & nuclear-powered coal-to-liquids plants, or oil-tariff-financed tax credits for PHEV purchases, or massive R&D into cheap batteries with high energy densities...then so be it. Energy independence is a matter of national security, and (competent) government interference with the free market is eminently justified. The sooner we can tell the Arabs to drink their oil, the better.

Step 6: Seizing the High Frontier: We develop cheap space access, and seize control of the high frontier. We use Brilliant Pebbles & surveillance to ensure that no power launches stuff into space without our let or leave. This probably wouldn't be essential per se to accomplishing the aforementioned strategy, but it would certainly make things easier. Thor would greatly reinforce our Navy's command of the seas. Space resources & solar power satellites would considerably reduce the costs of economic autarchy. A new frontier could help sop up some portion of our annual immigration flow, and also serve as an alternative outlet for those energetic individuals who currently expend their energies on asinine social crusades [4].

Step 7: Reducing Our Exposure: We minimize our presence overseas, and fortify any overseas locations where we do maintain a presence.

For instance, we could pull our forces out of Europe (where we're no longer needed), and redeploy them to the US. Likewise, since the South Koreans & Okinawans increasingly resent our presence, we could redeploy those forces to Guam & the Marianas, and instead use naval port calls to remind China of our interest East Asia. Likewise, we withdraw not only from Iraq, but also from all parts of the Islamic world (i.e., everywhere between Morocco & Pakistan, perhaps excluding Afghanistan); these forces go either to East Asia or the continental US. We fortify all our overseas consulates & embassies, so that they're clones of embassy we're currently building in Baghdad. We likewise fortify all our remaining overseas military bases.

The idea here would be to minimize the number of potential American terrorist targets overseas, and so harden the ones that remain that terrorists are discouraged from attacking them.

Step 8: Caging the Genie: We make it much harder for terrorists to build nukes. The primary sine qua non of nuke-building is possession of fissile material (e.g., HEU or Pu-239); without that, building a nuclear weapon is technically impossible. And right now, the only place where we have large amounts of fissile material under questionable security is Russia. So we buy up all the leftover fissile material in Russia; to sweeten the deal, we pay them double (or triple, or quadruple) the market price in order to convince Russia to go along with this. Then we export all that fissile material to the United States, and we keep it in facilities just as secure as nuclear-weapons depots. Then we gradually burn it off in nuclear reactors, and sell the power we generate to recoup our costs.

This takes care of the short-term problem. The problem of loose fissile material may well recur in the future, however, for two reasons: First, as countries get richer, they tend to develop a scientific & technical base sophisticated enough to master fissile-material production techniques on their own. Virtually any developed country nowadays could turn natural uranium into bomb-quality material if they wanted to. And sometimes you don't even need wealth; see India, Pakistan, Iran, & North Korea, for example. Second, as more countries get richer, they're going to need more energy. With oil running out, and "renewables" still too costly for baseline power, nuclear energy starts to look awfully attractive to any foreign populace lacking the irrational fears of their American counterparts. Now, some countries might be content just to build reactors and import the fuel, but it's not implausible that other countries to desire the same level of energy security that I wish America to have. Of course, in a nuclear context, means the acquisition of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities - the same capabilities that enable a country to produce bomb-grade fissile material.

From where I stand, there's no real way out of this dilemma, short of keeping the rest of the world poor, or the (miraculous, and unlikely) development of cheap renewables. Like it or not, as the world develops economically, more countries will acquire the capability that Japan already possesses - i.e., the ability to become a nuclear power overnight, if they so choose. And not all of these countries will keep good track of their fissile material; to err is human, after all. So what do we do? Well, that goes back to "Step 2" above, i.e., secure our borders, so that even if there are loose nukes running around beyond our walls, at least they won't be able to get in here.

Step 9: Grand Strategy Revised: We do a complete revamp of our foreign policy WRT the Islamic world. Our goal shall be to prevent that area of the world from ever consolidating into a single hegemonic power capable of acting as a peer competitor to the United States. Failing that, our secondary goal shall be to ensure that any such hegemon is incapable of either building a Fleet capable of challenging our own, or of building ballistic missiles capable of attacking either our Navy or our homeland.

How to go about doing this? That's the topic the next essay.

Notes

[0] I'm agnostic about the whole "supercarrier vs. light carrier" debate, mainly 'cuz I don't know enough about it. If it turns out supercarriers (or carriers in general) are obsolete, I have no objection to replacing them with something else, so long as that "something else" is both qualitatively & quantitatively equivalent to a Fleet with a couple dozen CVBG's. E.g., if we decide to replace our supercarriers with medium carriers, and it takes three medium carriers to equal one supercarrier, I'd want to see 60-80 medium carriers in our Fleet, not just 20-30. Navies exist to do three things: 1) prevent an enemy from shipping stuff across the oceans; 2) safely deliver troops & supplies to enemy shores; and 3) bombard enemy landmasses. So long as our Fleet can accomplish these three tasks, I don't really care how it's done.

[1] This will deter many voyeurs, few of whom would want their peeping-tom habits publicly disclosed.

[2] To those who point out that the Smith Act could easily be applied domestically, yes, I acknowledge the slippery slope and the dangers thereof. To those who argue, however, that hammering domestic Islamists with the Smith Act necessarily implies doing the same to other groups (e.g., right-wing militias, Aztlan nutcases) that also advocate what used to be called sedition - this I disagree with. I point out that (thus far) the Oklahoma City bombing was a one-off, as compared with the running tally of Islamist "direct action" over the last thirty years. In view of this record, I humbly submit that Islamists are more likely to engage in terrorism than the other aforementioned groups, and as such, it is prudent for us to allocate the bulk of our scarce law-enforcement resources to dealing with this potential threat, rather than other radical groups that have shown far less propensity for "direct action".

Note also that, even if, despite the above, other domestic radicals still fearful of slippery slopes tone down their rhetoric some, and become far less prone to advocating anything resembling overthrow of the US government, this may well be a feature, not a bug. Our contemporary political rhetoric could use some moderation.

To those who argue that the Smith Act would simply drive Islamists underground, my first reaction is to say, "In a Transparent Society, let them try." Second, while some might indeed go underground, others would find underground living sufficiently costly that it would probably not be worth their while even for the sake of deeply held beliefs. I have no illusions that Smith Act prosecutions and the other measures mentioned above will entirely cleanse this country of Islamists. If we can at least eliminate their public respectability, and dramatically shrink their ranks, that would still be preferable to our current situation.

[3] Although I would prefer protective tariffs that kept out all imports, such a policy would (probably) encourage some degree of inefficiency among American firms. For this reason, we should probably set our tariffs so as to allow at least some imports into the American market. We might also want to consider giving preferential treatment to the Western Hemisphere, e.g., setting tariffs at 15-20% for Latin America, and 50-75% for the rest of the world. In addition to winning us brownie points in the region, such preferential tariff treatment would ensure that, even if outsourcing does occur, the jobs thereby exported would at least stay somewhere within the Western Hemisphere - where geographic proximity would make it easier for us to intervene in defense of our interests (when necessary). The threat to raise tariffs on a given Latin American country to prevailing worldwide levels could also prove a valuable negotiating tool.

Note also that high tariffs would also have the welcome side-effect of significantly slowing China's export-driven economic growth. With a tariff wall - as well as border security inspections - significantly increasing the cost of imports, American consumers will be far less inclined to purchase any imported goods, including those from China. Ditto American corporations, who will also find themselves rethinking the cost-effectiveness of "offshoring" manufacturing, engineering, & other essential corporate functions to China. The upshot of all this would be to significantly reduce foreign investment in China, and to significantly reduce demand for Chinese exports - which in turn will significantly cut the growth rate of China's export-driven economy. Since economic strength is a sine qua non of national power, such a slowdown would likewise set back China's bid for "peer competitor" status (by several years, perhaps even decades). Meanwhile, the broad-based nature of this tariff policy - i.e., it applies to all imports, not just those from China - allows America to say that crashing China's economy is not our primary intent. And indeed, unless we're going for an imperial foreign policy, it doesn't seem prudent to deliberately crash China's economy; however, I see no reason why our trade policy ought to strengthen a potential strategic rival, either.

[4] If cheap space access isn't possible - ever - then we could do the following:

· Strategic Minerals: 1) annex Canada, de jure or de facto; 2) build up massive stockpiles (i.e., a decade's worth of consumption in each) of strategic minerals; 3) develop substitutes for currently-imported strategic minerals (using tariffs for encouragement as necessary); 4) seabed mining; 5) develop means for recovering & recycling strategic minerals from current US waste stream. Note: if we absolutely require such minerals, and substitutes can't be developed, and we can get them from space, chances are somebody will figure out a way to do so, and simply charge incredibly high prices for the minerals thereby recovered.

· Thor Substitute: We could do kinetic-energy weapons in other ways. E.g., air-launched, or ballistic missiles tipped with inert DU warheads. We could also simply use nukes; if China can counter our carriers with nuclear-tipped torpedoes & ballistic missiles, so also can we. With a handful of nukes, we could sweep any surface ship, no matter how heavily armored, from the seas. Then it's just a matter of competent ASW & a large sub fleet (to prevent enemy subs from attacking us).

Whiskey Tango Fox, Over

If you're looking for something weird, go to Google Maps and enter:

37° 37' 41.46" N
116° 50' 54.82" W

Wondering what this might be...current speculations include:

0) A hoax, perpetrated by some Google employee with way too much time on his hands;
1) Getting rid of excess tax dollars;
2) Prototyping basing strategies for the (road-mobile) Midgetman;
3) A really weird geological formation (and perhaps proof of "Intelligent Design");
4) A leftover target site from the R&D phase of Atlas, Thor, Titan, Minuteman, MX, and/or Midgetman;
5) Something used to calibrate spy satellites' instruments
6) Something we built during the Cold War in order to drive KGB analysts crazy;