"What Would Clausewitz Say? II"
The Firepower Industrial Complex gets a boost
and the Empire continues its slow decline...
by Bill Bonner
"The barbarian nation of the Huns, which was in Thrace, became so great that more than a hundred cities were captured and Constantinople almost came into danger and most men fled from it. And there were so many murders and blood-lettings that the dead could not be numbered. Ay, for they took captive the churches and monasteries and slew the monks and maidens in great numbers.
- Callinicus, in his "Life of Saint Hypatius"
Paris, France - "Life goes on. Technology races ahead. But the old homo sapiens sapiens is still the rough knuckle-dragger he was 200,000 years ago. He makes technical progress in great leaps. But as for the rest of life…don’t count on it.
One of the most remarkable features of the hit film ‘Oppenheimer’ is the astounding rate of ‘progress’ in the early 20th century. In 1905 Albert Einstein was wondering about how motion and time were connected. A train trundles through a station…with a man on the platform and another on the train. Lightning strikes both ends of the station. The man standing in the center of the platform will see both flashes at the same time. But the man on the train will see one before the other, inasmuch as he’s moving towards it. Was time distorted by motion, Einstein asked himself?
This set off a burst of work in theoretical physics. Never before had humans made such fast progress. And then, just 40 years later, Harry Truman was killing thousands of civilians – like Attila at Strasbourg and Mainz…but using an A-bomb!
A “Fascinating Trinity”: In science and technology we learn…and then we build on what we’ve learned. In the rest of life, though, we repeat the same errors and imbecilities over and over…one generation learning, the next forgetting…forever and ever, amen.
War, Clausewitz explained, in what he referred to as a “fascinating trinity” was a mixture – one part emotion, one part chance, and one part rational calculation. Barbarians usually leaned heavily on emotion – the lust for fighting…hatred of the enemy…dreams of slaughtering the men and raping the women. Generally, the more ‘rational’ armies – such as those of the Greeks, Romans, and Prussians – were able to defeat them. In the many battles between the Irish and the English, for example, the Irish tended toward the more primitive ‘emotions.’ They were strong on the attack, said English critics, but weak on planning, discipline, and strategy. When the momentum of the charge was broken, they ran helter-skelter for safety and were easily slain.
Clausewitz maintained that though reason was important, you could never entirely dismiss the emotional element…nor chance. In the ‘fog of war,’ stuff happens that can’t be predicted. Or, as heavyweight boxer, Mike Tyson, put it: ‘everybody’s got a plan, until he gets punched in the face.’ But behind all three elements – emotion, chance, and reason – is something more, politics. Clausewitz: "If war is part of policy, policy will determine its character… Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa. "No major proposal required for war can be worked out in ignorance of political factors."
Barbarians at the Gates: In 451, Attila came head to head with Roman forces, heavily supplemented by “barbarian” troops of Franks, Burgundians and Celts in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. The empire managed to turn Attila back, barely. A few years later he mounted yet another campaign against Rome…and died. That was near the end for the Roman Empire too. Only a couple decades later, the ‘barbarian’ allies turned against it and the Empire gave way completely.
‘Reason’ might have suggested a different strategy for both of them. Attila might have retired and enjoyed his wealth. And Rome might have recalled its legions, strengthened its borders, and protected the homeland with its own troops. Instead, once stretched out, the elastic would not snap back. Attila stayed on the warpath. And Rome tried to hold its empire together. Its forces dispersed, it was over-run everywhere.
And once again, reason points the way for America: bring the troops home, balance the budget, tighten up the borders, and throw out the corrupt elites. And yet, no candidate – save the outsider, RFK, Jr. – suggests it.
Why does history seem to run in such an endless loop? There’s ‘The Decline and Fall of the Empire.’ Then, the sequel: ‘Decline and Fall of the Empire II.’ And III…and so on. Athens, Rome, Attila, Bonaparte, Hitler….Spain, Holland, France, Britain…and now the USA…the last champion of European hegemony.
Public policies are determined by the elite. And as elite groups become older, richer and more powerful, their aim is to hold onto what they’ve got – at all costs. They rule the world; they don’t want to let it go. This is the ‘policy’ feature Clausewitz was talking about. It is also what lies behind America’s wars. They are not driven by the need for self-defense…the Houthis pose no threat to America. Nor do we make war overseas in order to gain a commercial or strategic advantage. Instead, we do so to maintain and extend our policymakers’ own power, privileges and wealth. Everything else is subordinate.
You can’t ‘print’ your way to wealth. And you can’t bomb your way to security (with exceptions). Every reasonable person knows these things. But the US elite has discovered that it can bomb its way to wealth…at least for a while.
Firepower On Fire: An example: retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, now calls for “5-7 days of continuous strikes against proxy targets in Syria and Yemen” along with other attacks on Iranian ships and oil installations. He is a partner in the Carlyle [investment] Group; he’s a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and has gotten himself 20 directorship positions with defense-related corporations since he retired from the Pentagon. He’s made war pay – for himself.
It’s paid for a lot of others too. InsideDefense.com: "U.S. foreign military sales increased by 56% in fiscal year 2023 for a record-breaking total of $81 billion, a significant boost above the $52 billion reported in FY-22 and coming at a time when NATO is bolstering its defenses against Russia, according to new data from the State Department. ‘This is the highest annual total of sales and assistance provided to our allies and partners,’ the State Department said in a new fact sheet released today."
And here’s the long term tally. Altogether, the cost of the “warfare state,” as figured by former White House Budget Director David Stockman, was $95 billion in 1970. Now, it is $1.2 trillion. Every penny of that money goes from someone to someone else. It pays for weapons and veterans’ benefits. It is skimmed by corrupt politicians. And it all goes down the Military/Industrial Complex drain that Eisenhower warned us about.
And somewhere…on some windswept wilderness in Eurasia, the ghost of Attila must be proud. “I was not a barbarian,” he assures himself. “I was just human.”
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