Trump is assembling a team to put the country on a war footing, but not to fight a war.

Posted by Casebier 7 years, 3 months ago to Economics
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Trump's team of generals and $1/year CEO's recalls FDR's to fight WWII. But Trump's mission to "win" is a return to American domination of world trade and industry. He looks at urban ghettos as a pitifully untapped and wasted source of manpower to refuel the American industrial machine. Likewise, he sees a return to American energy independence as a necessary ingredient to be able to direct the fight on American terms.


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  • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 3 months ago
    'Si vis pacem para bellum',
    Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, between 384 and 389 CE

    If You Want Peace, Prepare for War.
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    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 3 months ago
      Preparing for war can mean many things. It does not have to mean preparing to invade your neighbors or anyone else you dislike. The famous exhortation of Swiss general Henri Guisan stands out specifically because Switzerland was militarily inferior to Germany in 1940. Switzerland was not "prepared for war." Rather, they were prepared to defend themselves. Those are different.
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      • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 3 months ago
        Yes, defence is not war. Until it is war.

        As a military strategist (I have read Ender's Game) it is a general truth that no defensive strategy works against long term aggression.
        To convince an aggressor to stop it is insufficient to defend. To stop aggression there has to be a penalty.

        Switzerland- there is special geography suited to defence, it can work while an attacker has pre-1960 technology.
        Sweden is another example you could use - their strategy acknowledged that they could resist the Soviets only for six months, they reckoned on not being worth conquering considering the cost of a six month attack. They showed they meant business by, for example, an 'assertive' response to Soviet reconnaissance submarines.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 3 months ago
    The greatest thing to discourage war is a strong military. If you need a guard dog, a German Shepherd is better than a Jack Russell Terrier. You don't get a big dog in order to bite others, but to discourage those who'd bite you.
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  • Posted by term2 7 years, 3 months ago
    Peace through strength worked for Reagan and many other presidents. It works in bars, where the bouncer is typically a muscular bruiser who stops fights before they start, and rarely even needs to get violent because patrons back off. I have two pit bulls protecting my house- they dont need to bite anyone- just seeing them in the yard deters thieves and other bad people. Peace through strength.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 3 months ago
    A "war footing" will lead to war. You might think that the USA and USSR did not go to war during the "Cold" War, but clearly, they did. You might claim that it was not nuclear war, but it was.
    Overview here (just one out of many): http://www.atomcentral.com/the-cold-w...
    And more to the point, the USA and USSR both exploded nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
    It was a proxy war fought right here over the USA and we all who lived through it were the victims. (Not everyone lived through it.
    US military casualties
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
    and here ("Over all, more than 200,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines participated in atmospheric nuclear tests between World War II and the early 1960's. "
    http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/26/hea...

    and here for US civilian casualties
    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015...

    It is better for us to have the "American industrial machine" in China. The goods are cheaper and the pollution is farther away. We are an information and service economy. You are dreaming of having everyone living on farms like the old days, except that you want everyone working in factories. I have worked in factories. Information work is cleaner and pays better.

    Also, in point of fact, the horrible ignorance that caused the collapse of Detroit was caused by "good paying jobs" that did not require an education. Three generations of parents could not help their kids with their homework -- and why do homework when you can goto work in a factory for a "good paying job"?

    Objectivists glorify the industrial revolution - and rightfully so - but it had its time and now it is time to grow new cells in your kitchen, or design and build a new set of knees for yourself, or create a new game, or work for a space launch company... or a million other things that do not involve the same three motions eight hours a day.

    "Energy independence" is another nationalist chimera. Some of the freest and most prosperous places on Earth import most to all of their energy -- and other "natural resources" or "primary products." Look at Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Holland, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands. OTOH, places rich in natural resources, especially "energy" resources remain dirt poor and dependent on subsidies: Siberia, the Congo, Saudi Arabia ...

    I mention Saudi Arabia because except for oil exports, what does it have to offer? Any great artists or writers or scientists? A cinema production capital like Hollywood? Heck, they are not even up to Bollywood. They have nothing to offer, except oil They are dirt poor.

    Ayn Rand identified an intellectual fallacy that she unkindly called "the muscle mystic." She referred to people who implicitly (sometimes explicity) expect that physical objects (factories, oil wells) are the source of wealth and power. They are not. Freedom is.
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 7 years, 3 months ago
      If we become a nation of hedge fund managers and pizza delivery people it will not bode well for our future.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 3 months ago
        A fundamental dislike and distrust of business, enterprise, and capitalism pervades the populist right, perhaps is an essential distinguishing characteristic.

        Pizza aside for a moment, we are a nation of "hedge fund managers" and if you do not see yourself as one of them, then you might step back and take a broader look at your own household finances.

        Keynesians separate businesses, households, and government: producers, consumers, public services (not in the market). But, in fact, of course, government is in the market, too. And, households are businesses. I have said that you should get the same tax breaks for depreciation on your lawn mower and refrigerator that a business would for a capital investment.

        In a previous century, militarists derided "a nation of shopkeepers." (Ascribed to Napoleon, incorrectly, but it stands.)

        ... which brings us to pizza...

        Do you know anyone named "Cook." Like Carpenter, Prentice, Miller, Cartwright, and many others, it is an occupation name from a time when people took the raw food they purchased (or grew) to someone else to cook for them. In part, it was because fires were forbidden in London. But, essentially, the specifics of pizza aside, the entire market from tomatoes and tofu to silicon chips and kidney transplants is just "pizza delivery" - people performing services that they do better than the person who pays them for it.

        Too many conservatives think that military power comes from guns without questioning the origin of guns. Dwight D. Eisenhower had the equivalent of a master's degree from the Army War College for his studies in industrial management. He knew that Germany was doomed.
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    • Posted by Maritimus 7 years, 3 months ago
      Hello, M,
      I think that you have touched on too many subjects in your sort of meandering along. At some points you sounded to me as somehow deeply aggrieved. I am not trying to be critical. Instead, I am trying to serve you as an "Objectivist" mirror.
      One crucial subject that I found missing completely is education. To make it even more complex, even when taken superficially, how about productively handling the huge differences in cognitive ability, inventiveness and emotional balance among individual Americans?
      Best wishes.
      Maritimus
      EDIT: punctuation and superfluous word
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  • Posted by 7 years, 3 months ago
    When I said Trump is putting us on a "war footing" I did not mean a hot war, but an economic war or trade war. Trump is a super competitor who thinks in absolutes of winning and losing in business, and believes our ills are all economically based. He sees things such as 60% unemployment of black youth not as a social ill but as a waste of an American asset. He see energy independence, including fuel from Canada and Mexico, as another economic asset, the same as it was our greatest asset in WWII. In that regard, few people recall that about 40% of our fuel to fight the war came from Mexico, both before they chucked their neutrality in 1942 and after.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 3 months ago
    12 fellow graduates of my USAF pilot training class went to Vietnam...all 12 died...an insane sacrifice...

    do not repeat the errors of Vietnam...the middle east and Afghanistan....

    nuc them and send a message...end the future threat of Iran...they will have the nuclear bomb within 4 years and millions of American men, women, and children will die...
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  • Posted by bassboat 7 years, 3 months ago
    Follow the money trail. Why are wars started? Money or lack of it. Countries go to war because they have a lack of it. Countries that are wealthy don't want to fight. We are trying to go broke with our policies. Eliminate government agencies by 80% or shut them down and return the money to the people. This causes an economic explosion to the upside. Return our military to a large degree and have the best military money can buy. We are not broke yet, just stupid.
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  • Posted by Tbird7553 7 years, 3 months ago
    In order to untap the manpower in urban ghettos we will have to either stop the illicit drug trade or offer employment that offers a exorbitant wage. We have the youths who make a lot of money 'slinging dope' and addicts who are in no shape to work. Why would these dope slingers take a job making a few dollars an hour when they make ten times that slinging dope?
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    • Posted by Dobrien 7 years, 3 months ago
      Good point Tbird, My take is to Legalize Take the scarcity away and the price drops , no big profits. Some people self destruct whether legal or illegal. The DEA has failed , the war on drugs is a black hole. We would be better off if we offered opportunity and a growing economy, put the $ spent to reduce our debt..
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 7 years, 3 months ago
    Mao had it right when he said that a government's exercise of power comes from the point of a gun. Note how much affect anguished protests at the UN have over violent behavior of nations: exactly zero.

    There are degrees of exercise of power when dealing with other national actors: proposing cooperation; negotiating; establishing penalties; economic isolation; but without a perceived ability to defend its national interests, and enforce measures if necessary a country has little hope of respect.
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  • Posted by helmsman5 7 years, 3 months ago
    Hi Mike. I appreciate your thoughtful and articulate comments. We should hope for more than benign neglect and laissez faire.. Perhaps his cabinet selections speak to some skill and perspective for actually turning/steering our Titanic better in increasingly turbulent waters. Regards.
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  • Posted by mminnick 7 years, 3 months ago
    The selections Trump has made could be to set us on a war footing but I think not. I think it is more to put us on solid ground we people wo will make the hard decisions needed to put the country on a real road to recovery and greatness that the progressives have moved us away from.
    Hard choices as to where to spend the dollars and when to spend them.
    the hard choices in education, immigration and trade. There will not be any easy choices if we are to recover from the "Fundamental Change" Obama made in this country. I shudder to think how close he came to the total annihilation of the fundamentals of this country that jerk came.
    +1
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    • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 7 years, 3 months ago
      First of all, it is not their money to spend. More to the point, the laws of economics require that any decision based on power rather than market must be inefficient. Sometimes, we might say that we accept that. We do not have a for-profit military. But we do have for-profit schools, hospitals, streets, roads, parks, wilderness, airports, railroads, universities, and everything else over which the government claims dominion.

      The best that can come from President Trump's cabinet appointments is benign neglect and laissez faire. Making "hard decisions" to spend other people's money (taxes now and debt for the future) is not the road to recovery.

      Also, demonizing President Obama merely glosses over the Bush Administration. The Wall Street bailouts, the war in Afghanistan, and all the rest were Bush policies that the Obama Administration continued. The problem is not "progressives." It is deeper than that.

      All along, these past 100 years or more, and the last 20 in particular, we have had cultural institutions that mitigate the problems. See for instance the work of Moxie Marlinspike, which in fact, only extends previous work by Phil Zimmermann, among many others.

      We never hear about homebrew genetic engineering.
      http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
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  • Posted by coaldigger 7 years, 3 months ago
    Best cabinet since, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox and Edmund Randolph. The last administration reset Russia, maybe Trump will reset the USA.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 3 months ago
    12 fellow graduates of my USAF pilot training class went to Vietnam...all 12 died...an insane sacrifice...

    do not repeat the errors of Vietnam...the middle east and Afghanistan....

    nuc them and send a message...end the future threat of Iran...they will have the nuclear bomb within 4 years and millions of American men, women, and children will die...
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  • Posted by mia767ca 7 years, 3 months ago
    Trump made a decision in 1945 to end the war in pacific with an atomic bomb and save a projected 100,000 American G. I. lives in an attempt to take Japan....thousands of Japanese women and children were killed...my baby boomer generation was born...thank you President Truman

    LBJ decided to send 10,000s of thousands of American G.I.s to their deaths in Vietnam rather than nuc Hanio or Haiphong...sacrificing a generation of unborn u.s. children and American educated G.I.s rather than third world savages...

    Bush and Obama decided to sacrifice two generations of American G.I.s instead of Islamic savages set on destroying Western civilization...

    what has Trump in mind to do???....

    in my opinion, one American G.I. is worth more than all of the middle east or Afganhistan savages...stop the madness...
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