Now if you don’t mind, I would prefer to spend my last few paragraphs not thinking about the current evaporation of our economy and collapse of the United States.  Apparently, if my television can be believed, we are all going to die soon somehow.  And I believe my television.

Instead I would like to talk about something far more important, and much, much happier:  Southern Cal lost last night.  This year’s Pac-10 game that they decided not to show up for was against Oregon State.  Let’s hope it will be the first of many. I am taking great pleasure in this defeat, and not just because it allows me to think about something else while the bank is probably preparing to take away my home.  Sparky Anderson once said that “losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good,” which I think is true for love, war…and college football.  So we can all be quite assured that today, Pete Carroll and the entire Southern Cal community is wallowing in abject misery, their national title hopes dashed by another stunning upset.  This one is going to sting for a long time, maybe even until the coming great depression is over. Southern Cal has assembled the most impressive collection of talent I have ever seen (they were great in high school, at least).  At every position, they have 3 or 4 guys who would start for any other team in the country.  Their fourth string tailback transferred last year…and now he starts for Florida.  They just crushed an Ohio State team that returned 20 starters from a national championship runner-up.  Made them look like a high school team (I revel in the misery in Columbus, too).  On paper, Oregon State had no business being on the same field as Southern Cal…but they were up 21-0 at halftime.

As it turns out, no one believed the hype more than the Trojans themselves.  And their coach, for all the talk about his winning personality and being a “player’s coach,” is evidently no master motivator.

I recommend spending your day reading their fan boards.  It will be a melt-down that we all can enjoy.  The greatest depression.

So as it turns out, not only does losing hurt twice as bad as winning feels good, but also the failure of others can make you feel twice as good as your own successes.  That is, as long as they are evil, like Southern Cal…and you are an asshole, like me.

Thanks again, Jewcy. 

Christopher Fettweis, author of Losing Hurts Twice As Bad, spent the last week guest blogging on Jewcy.  This is his parting post.  Want more?  Check out his book. 

The post The Greatest Depression: A Meltdown All of Us Can Enjoy appeared first on Jewcy.

The inimitable Christopher J. Fettweis guest blogged for Jewcy all this past week, and in that time he shared his opinion that most Americans would rather vote for Yosemite Sam than George Kennan, explained why America should adopt a strategy of restraint, demonstrated that the coming election isn’t necessarily all that important, compared his misuse of a credit card as a college student to America’s problem with debt, and showed us how schadenfreude can ease our distress as the US collapses.  Check out his posts, join the conversation, and pick up a copy of his book.

The post Book Club: Losing Hurts Twice as Bad appeared first on Jewcy.

In a few weeks, the card arrived, and like most of your idiot undergrads, I went right over to my local CD shop and picked up about a half-dozen albums that I seemed to need at the time.  Suddenly I also had money for gas and movie tickets and a new bike.  Before I knew it, the card was maxed out…as it turns out, there were these "limits" that I was not aware of. 

But MBNA was kind enough to raise my credit limit, just in time for spring break.  Luckily I didn’t have to spend actual money on those jello shots and Natural Lights and bail – I had a magic card, you see.  Even when the bills came due, I was happy to see that although I owed thousands, my buddies at MBNA were happy to accept forty or fifty a month.  What great guys!

Since I made minimum payments for years, I figure that those watered-down spring break drinks probably ended up costing me about thirty beans each.

The United States has a magic card, too.  We decided to put a whole war on it, for the first time in our history.  And to think that prior generations actually paid for such things more-or-less up front (chumps)!  So far, we have charged about a cool trillion for Iraq, and add hundreds of billions more every year.

I didn’t want to pick up more hours at my job in college, but I wanted those CDs and jello shots…so I did it the easy and stupid way.  Our leaders didn’t want to ask us to sacrifice anything, but they also wanted to attack Iraq….so they did it the easy and stupid way. 

Like me, they plan to make minimum payments on our debt, which is apparently the American way.  Once the interest accrues and compounds, giving the Iraqis the right to dip their fingers in purple paint and vote for their vicious local tribal leaders will cost us well over three trillion dollars.  And counting.

Keep all this in mind as the Secretary of the Treasury asks us to let him throw another $700 billion on our national magic card.

The bailout is going to cost each of us about $2300.  But really, since our grandkids are already going to be inheriting a debt of at least $50,000 each, what’s a couple of grand more, really?

Nerds like me might point out that massive, unsustainable debt has historically brought great powers to their knees as efficiently as hordes of barbarians from the east.  Countries are creditors as they grow, and debtors as they decline.  But who likes nerds, really, anyway?  Can’t I just shut my trap and suck down the jello shot?

Christopher Fettweis, author of Losing Hurts Twice As Bad, is guest blogging on Jewcy.  Tomorrow he’ll publish his parting post.  Stay tuned. 

The post Wars, Bail-Outs and Jello Shots: Because Unsustainable Debt is the American Way! appeared first on Jewcy.

Every election I can remember has been the most important in my lifetime.  Either presidential selections are getting more and more important with the passage of time, or a great many of us tend to lose perspective every four years. 

All presidential elections are important, of course, and this one is no different.  The next occupant of the White House will determine the direction of our foreign and domestic policy…but they all do that.  He will choose one or two new Supreme Court justices.  But they all do that, too. 

Establishing the unique, crucial importance of this election seems particularly important to the McCain campaign message.  Elect Obama, we are told, and catastrophe will befall the United States.  Al Qaeda will go on a rampage.  Putin and Iran will be unstoppable.  Your children will be in grave danger (if you love them, you’ll vote McCain!). 

McCain appears to think that his only route to victory is making people believe that the fate of the earth lies in the balance.  A skeptic might suggest that scaring the bejeebus out of everyone is hardly presidential…but nobody really likes skeptics anyway.

There is good reason to believe that this election might not be as decisive as our candidates and hyperbolic media would have us believe.  First of all, from the looks of things, the next president is in real danger of being a one-termer.  Rarely do voters look kindly upon presidents who preside over tough economic times (FDR is the lone exception), and all indications are that the next few years will be somewhat grim. The next president is also going to be handed a few very difficult dilemmas by his incompetent predecessor.  The violence has gone into remission in Iraq, but the patient is hardly cured; Afghanistan and Pakistan teeter on the edge of chaos; Dancing with the Stars is one of our most popular TV shows.  Why anyone would want to be president right now, I have no idea.

And second, the threats facing the United States in 2008 are hardly more dangerous than those from years past.  Sure, al Qaeda still exists, and remains a problem.  But through good investigative work and international information sharing, our intelligence services have gained the upper hand in our struggle with Osama and the boys.  Terrorists will always be able to kill people, but they cannot change our society.  Only we can do that.

Both campaigns seem ignorant of one of the most important facts about current world politics:  War seems to be disappearing from the planet.  As a number of political scientists have been proclaiming for years, the incidence and intensity of all kinds of wars – interstate, civil, ethnic conflicts, etc. – are at historically low levels, and still declining.  Entire continents are experiencing their greatest stretch of peaceful relations.  Europe, South America, North America, Australia, and most of Asia are virtually war-free.  Even in Africa conflict levels are lower than at any time in history.  I go into more detail about this in the book.

In such a climate, countries are safe.  The strongest is the safest.

So I am not convinced this election is actually that important.  The truth is that we don’t know how important any election is until the administration is over.  As it turns out, those who told us that Bush vs. Gore was the most important election of our lifetimes were probably right.  At the time, though, who knew?

Christopher Fettweis, author of Losing Hurts Twice As Bad, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

The post Newsflash: The Coming Election Isn’t Necessarily that Important appeared first on Jewcy.

A moment’s consideration of their views might be in order as the next administration considers how best to move the country forward out of the morass of Iraq.

On most matters, the United States worships Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams and their compatriots as passionately as the Romans did Romulus and Remus, and it still seeks their wisdom on a wide variety of subjects, from constitutional questions to political theory to religion.  The hagiography, however, stops at the water’s edge.  The founding fathers had quite clear views about grand strategy, but for some reason their thoughts seem to be all but disregarded by most modern strategists.  When it comes to domestic policy, the word of the founders is gospel; in foreign policy, it is quaint.

In fact, grand strategy was one of the very few issues on which the founding fathers spoke with virtually one voice.  With varying degrees of enthusiasm (and for different reasons), these men felt that the United States ought not squander the blessings of geography.  They consistently and forcefully counseled their new nation to restrain itself.  Washington was the most prominent advocate, arguing in his Farewell Address that "nothing is more essential" for the new nation "than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded."  His "great rule" of strategy was that the United States ought to extend its commercial relations with foreign nations, but have with them "as little political connection as possible."

All of his colleagues, even those who were longstanding rivals on almost everything else, basically agreed with this sentiment.  Alexander Hamilton advised Washington that "America’s predisposition against involvement in Old World affairs" ought to be a "general principle of policy;" Thomas Jefferson was "for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment."  In his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote that although "Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it.  It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions."  John Adams argued that "we should separate ourselves, as far as possible and for as long as possible, from all European politics and wars."  This recommendation was heeded by his son, President John Quincy Adams, who in 1821 issued his famous and eloquent warning against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. 

Today’s neoconservatives tell us that the founders didn’t really mean what they said, and that these men were actually pragmatists who did not counsel a course separate from the rest of the world.  Robert Kagan in particular, who is one of McCain’s major foreign policy advisors, does an admirable job of constructing and then knocking down the straw man of an isolationist United States.  It is however no great insight to argue that the United States always had a foreign policy, which is essentially what he does.  Policymakers have always carried out robust debates over the proper course of action, and intervened in the affairs of other countries whenever it seemed wise to do so.  The United States was never isolationist, and virtually no strategist today thinks it ought to be.

These modern re-interpretations of the history of U.S. foreign policy cannot wash away the obvious fact that for most of its existence, the United States defined threats, interests and opportunities quite narrowly, and maintained appropriately small militaries with which to address them.  The affairs of the Old World in particular held little more than a passing interest to U.S. strategists, who felt that the oceans provided adequate buffer for most of the ills of the world.  It was restraint, not isolationism, that dominated the grand strategy of this country for its first hundred and fifty years.  During that time, the nation experienced steady economic growth and was unmolested by outside forces, eventually rising to become the strongest of the world’s great powers.  Strategic restraint seemed to serve the young nation quite well.  It would likely do so again.

After the Second World War, a series of decisions were made to alter the traditional strategic approach, and the United States has followed an activist, internationalist path since.  Each post-war administration eschewed the advice of the founders, and by the beginning of the twenty-first century internationalism had become imbedded in the national strategic conventional wisdom.  The need for such activism is rarely even examined, much less seriously challenged.   

The wisest grand strategy spends the least in order to gain the most; it minimizes costs and maximizes benefits.  Activism is justified therefore only when there is clear necessity.  America ought not be heavily involved abroad merely because it can, but only when it must (or, to the idealist, when it should).  The default option for our leaders ought to be to not intervene in the affairs of others, and to lead by example, not by imposition. 

We would all be better off if the winner in November followed a strategy of strategic restraint.

One can hope that generalized discontent with the strategy of the current administration will lead to a re-examination of the proper role of the United States in the world.  The public may indeed be a bit more open to restraint, now that they have seen the consequences of its opposite.  Like an alcoholic, sometimes a nation must hit rock bottom before it sees the need to make drastic changes.  To the vast majority of the American people, Iraq looks like rock bottom.

One can hope the debate would start such a conversation. 

One can hope for a lot of things, I suppose.

Christopher Fettweis, author of Losing Hurts Twice As Bad, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

The post Don’t Just Do Something – Stand There: Why America Should Adopt a Strategy of Strategic Restraint appeared first on Jewcy.

Unfortunately, world events always refuse to wait for our elections to be over.  How rude.

Generally speaking, electoral pressures encourage candidates toward the irresponsible.  Fearful of looking weak, candidates struggle to out-macho each other at every turn and prove to the electorate that they are the one most able to keep the country safe.  Wisdom and prudence simply do not garner as do many votes as do belligerence and bombast.  Most Americans, it often seems, would rather vote for Yosemite Sam than George Kennan.

We certainly see this dynamic at work in this election cycle.  Last month, a remote, rather inconsequential conflict in the Caucasus was elevated by both campaigns into a test of Western mettle against the re-arming Russian bear.  Never mind that there are no U.S. interests whatsoever at stake in South Ossetia and Abkhazia; if the presidential candidates are to be believed, the fate of the world lies in the balance.

The same dynamic will unfold this week as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran comes to New York to speak at the United Nations.  His visit has provided a good opportunity for hawks to remind us all of how much danger we are in from the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb.  Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute tells us that Ahmadinejad is in love with death.  A bipartisan group of foreign policy notables reminds us that "everyone needs to worry about Iran."  Sarah Palin may have been the first candidate to jump on board the be-very-afraid bandwagon, arguing that Ahmadinejad "must be stopped," but she will not be the last.

It may prove very difficult for the United States to resist the temptation to elevate the backwards, medieval Iranian regime into our next enemy du jour.  Iran may be the main state sponsor of terrorism in today’s world, and its government certainly continues to espouse a rather extreme form of Islam, but it need not be a threat to the interests of the United States.  The Iranian economy is a basket case; its military, little better.  The Islamic Republic may be able to stave off collapse for as long as petrodollars keep flowing in, but they will not be able to mount anything resembling a serious challenge to U.S. power.  They are important only to the extent that we make them so.  Wise policy, therefore, would ignore them, which we could begin to do once we got out of Iraq.

Instead there will be serious pressures from right-wing circles in the United States in coming months and years for military action to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.  Tehran has been "six months away" from an atom bomb since I was in junior high; nevertheless, today there is reason to believe that they may actually be drawing fairly close.  Cooler heads may suggest that such a move may well be inevitable, and that the United States would do better to try to determine how it will deal with, rather than prevent the emergence of, a nuclear Iran.  Not only are the military options unlikely to work, they are also unnecessary. 

One of the great truths in international politics is that small countries and big countries never really understand one another.  The weak cannot ever fully trust the strong, since one mistake can lead to the destruction of their country; the strong, on the other hand, don’t understand the level of paranoia that their overwhelming power creates in the weak.  It is only by keeping this in mind can we comprehend the dynamics of the relationship between Iran and the United States.

Iran has seen its neighbors to the east and west attacked and quickly conquered.  It has made a series of diplomatic overtures, which were apparently answered with its inclusion on the "axis of evil."  Its economy is in shambles, with most sectors centrally controlled and remarkably inefficient.  About ninety percent of its population receives its income from the state.  Both unemployment and inflation rates are in the double digits.  Iranian military spending rose dramatically following the U.S. attack on Iraq, but it still is only around $10 billion per year.  The United States, by comparison, spends around $750 billion, once the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in.  Any war between the two would last about a half hour, and both sides know it.  Perhaps it is little wonder, then, that Tehran has decided to seek the ultimate equalizer, nuclear weapons.

The United States sees in Iran an expansionist, irrational Islamic fundamentalist state that is actively trying to dominate the Persian Gulf.  Its President is an old-school populist demagogue, fond of denying both the Holocaust and the existence of homosexuals in his country.  They support terrorist groups in Lebanon and Israel, and actively work to undermine Iraqi democracy (and kill U.S. troops).  These kinds of actions are the mark of an enemy, a state certainly not to be trusted with nuclear weapons because unlike rational states, there is no guarantee that Iran can be deterred.

However, as my book explains, those foreign policy analysts who call themselves "realists" see no reason to believe that that the Iranians will prove to be much different from any other state.  The theocrats in Iran have the same main priority as any other ruling group:  self-preservation.  Never before in the history of the world has any country committed suicide.  No leader has ever worked his or her way up the ladder of government to achieve the top position only to kill himself and his countrymen.  Gross miscalculation has of course occurred – Saddam Hussein comes to mind – never but intentional national suicide.  Nuclear weapons tend to concentrate the mind, virtually eliminating the possibility of miscalculation.  Leaders know that if they use these weapons, they will be destroyed in an overwhelming response.  Any Iranian use of nuclear weapons would be suicidal, not accidental.  And entirely unprecedented.

Were they to get a nuclear weapon, the leaders of Iran would not launch it against Israel unless they were prepared to see their rule, and their desire for a Shi’ite power bloc, come to an end.  Giving a bomb to Hezbollah or Hamas would be the functional equivalent of using it, because since nuclear explosions leave radiation "signatures" that can be traced back to the point of their origin.  There would be no possibility, therefore, to deny how these groups got their bombs, and Tehran (or at least the regime) would still face retaliation.  Realism therefore counsels that even theocrats would act rationally with the ultimate weapon, no matter how much bluster emerges from Tehran.  What Iran does is far more important than what their clownish president says.  And overall, Iran – like every country – tends to act in accordance with its national interests.  Destruction of the state is certainly not one of those interests.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.  Iranian nuclear weapons are not inevitable.  In fact, if we were truly interested in seeing their program shut down, we would get our troops out of Iraq post haste.  Our presence in Iraq ironically makes an Iranian bomb more likely.  Defense planners in Iran make the reasonable calculation that the only thing that could prevent them from meeting the same fate as their neighbors is a nuclear deterrent.  It is entirely rational that they would want one, and it would be the goal of any Iranian regime, whether it be a democracy or theocracy, as long as the threat posed by the United States seems to be so high. 

We will probably have to wait until this election is over to have a rational discussion of foreign policy.  Until then, we can hope that the candidates will not feel the need to follow through on their ridiculous campaign statements once they get into office.  The willingness to flip-flop away from irresponsibility is no vice.

Christopher Fettweis, author of Losing Hurts Twice As Bad, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

The post Politics, Strategy and Iran appeared first on Jewcy.