Trump’s National Insecurity Strategy

Trump's national insecurity strategy, by Vincent Cook.

Trump's latest national security strategy,

document has predictably sent foreign policy pundits

of all stripes into a tizzy with globalists,

both of the unilateralist, neo-conservative variety,

and of the multilateralist rules-based

international order variety.

Howling once again about Trump not being one of them,

while net cons celebrate the NSS's assault

on sensorial euro-wokeness, and the NSS's dire warnings

about a stark prospect of civilizational erasure in Europe.

In spite of the euro-bashing orientation of the NSS,

America's militarist imperialist lobby can take heart

in the NSS's endorsement of the Monroe doctrine

coupled to a Trump corollary that sounds very much like

the Roosevelt corollary and the Lodge corollary,

as well as affirming a hodgepodge of other globalist doctrines,

though not explicitly naming them,

like the Carter doctrine of keeping unfriendly powers

out of the Persian Gulf, that is, waging endless wars

in the Middle East, and the Truman doctrine

of containing the spread of communism,

at least in Asia with respect to the Chinese

and North Korean regimes.

In terms of the overall spending commitment,

the bottom line remains the Hague commitment

of increasing Pentagon spending to 5% of GDP.

Of course, massive increases in the demand

for military goods and services will have to be matched

by corresponding increases on the supply side,

if the Hague spending increases are to strengthen the Pentagon's

and its allies ability to enforce the witch's brew

of imperialistic doctrines with which the Pentagon has been tasked.

This raises the thorny economic problem

of how to increase the physical availability

of cutting-edge weapons, munitions,

and manpower at reasonable prices.

A spending increase by itself

doesn't guarantee an increase in military might,

if an anemic, underperforming productive sector

can't respond well to the spending.

Instead, one merely drives up prices

as higher spending confronts in elastic supply curves.

This supply problem is not a mere hypothetical concern.

The Russo-Ukrainian war clearly demonstrates

that modern missile and drone technologies

have negated the kind of mechanized, mobile,

combined arms tactics that characterize the Second World War.

The days of rapid blitzkrieg attacks

and paralyzing shock and awe strikes are over.

Instead, ground combat in Ukraine has largely degenerated

into the brutal static trench warfare

that characterized the First World War

a little over a hundred years ago.

What has been retained from the Second World War playbook,

unfortunately, is the wanton destruction of civilians,

far from the front lines using long-range missiles

and drones.

In this kind of war, combat can drag on for years and years

with little to show for all the dreadful carnage

and destruction as long as each side is able

and willing to keep feeding warm bodies

and vast quantities of basic munitions

like artillery shells into the meat grinder.

However, the economic capacity of America

and its NATO and East Asian allies

to wage such old-fashioned prolonged wars of attrition

successfully is highly doubtful these days.

A temporary halt in munitions and missile deliveries

to Ukraine last July out of fears of stockpile depletions

flashed an ominous danger signal

that Western economies are in no shape

to undertake a major mobilization required

for a conventional meat grinder war.

The NSS does take notice of the munitions aspect

of the supply problem.

The section of the NSS that deals with economic security

embraces the following goals, balanced trade,

securing access to critical supply chains

and minerals, reindustrialization,

reviving our defense industrial base,

preserving and growing America's financial sector

dominance.

One critical problem with these goals

is that they are mutually incompatible with each other,

reducing trade deficits to zero to achieve balance trade,

also means reducing net imports of savings

from foreigners to zero.

When foreigners earn more dollars from sales of their goods

to Americans than they spend on purchases of goods

made in America,

they lend their surplus dollars to Americans.

Cutting off vendor financed imports

means fewer inputs and less financing available

for reindustrialization and for reviving

the defense industrial base.

Balancing of trade is also incompatible

with maximizing access to critical supply chains

and minerals overseas.

If, for example, America has a critical need for cobalt

that is only available in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo DRC.

Why must the US government

petulently insist on the DRC balancing its sales

of cobalt to America

with purchases of American-made goods?

Creating artificial restrictions

on what the Congolese can do with their dollar earnings

only discourages them from selling cobalt

to Americans in the first place.

Intensifying the international dominance

of America's financial sector,

that is artificially propping up foreign demand

for US Treasury securities,

making foreigners pay a portion

of America's inflation tax

and facilitating discretionary confiscations

of the assets of hostile powers.

Does benefit certain predatory American institutions,

both governmental and privileged private sector actors

at the expense of foreigners?

But it also thwarts the goals of reindustrialization

and revival of the defense industrial base.

American industries need more thrift,

that is restraint of present consumption

so that more labor and resources can be devoted

to making more capital goods,

not more federal reserve funny money,

and more boom bust cycles,

spawned by fractional reserve credit.

American financial predators gain

at the expense of productive Americans too.

Apart from the raging contradictions

among the NSS's economic goals,

another critical problem is the NSS's eerie silence,

concerning the manpower issue.

A problem the Russians and Ukrainians know all too well.

If the Pentagon must resort to a meat grinder strategy

to wage more Ukrainian-style wars

in East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America,

and maybe in Europe too, if NATO behaves as Trump wishes,

it is going to need a lot more meat.

With falling birth rates, steeper immigration barriers,

and now even mass deportations,

the prospects of the Pentagon finding enough young Americans

to populate future national cemeteries look rather dim.

Moreover, increasing the Pentagon's manpower requirements

would make it more difficult to find the additional workers

needed for reindustrializing and for reviving

the defense industrial base.

The most critical problem of all is that the NSS

doesn't reverse the growth of welfare status.

Which has been deindustrializing America

and skewing federal spending priorities

away from the Pentagon over the past 60 years.

Figure one in the article offers the long run view

of savings and government spending.

The two dashed lines track different categories

of government spending as a fraction of national income.

The red line represents transfer payments

for benefits like social security and Medicare,

while the black line represents spending on the Pentagon.

Since the late 1960s, the Pentagon has declined

from about 10% of national income to well under 5% today.

Transfer payments, on the other hand,

have soared from a little over 5% in the mid-1960s

to nearly 20% today.

The Department of Defense over the period

has encountered a pair of peer competitors

who pose a greater existential threat to it

than even the Chinese people's liberation army

and the Russian red army do.

The Department of Health and Human Services

and the Social Security Administration.

The two solid lines track net domestic savings

as a fraction of national income.

The green line represents net private savings,

quantifying thrift by private individuals

and businesses as a fraction of national income.

The blue line representing net savings overall

shows how much of the share of national income

devoted to private savings

remains for productive investments

after government deficits have been subtracted

from the green line.

As transfer spending soared and Americans

came to rely increasingly on government promises

of future economic security,

they became less and less inclined to save.

Driving the green line down to about half of its 1960s,

early 1970s values.

Meanwhile, government budgets that were formerly balanced

even at the height of the Vietnam War

and the great society have sunk into chronic massive deficits

pushing the blue line further and further below the green line.

The result is that the blue line is now at zero,

meaning that in aggregate,

Americans are not setting aside any of their income

to grow America's stock of capital goods.

Reindustrialization and revival of defense industries

without massive borrowing from foreigners

and the massive trade deficits that accompany them

has become impossible.

America can just barely maintain its depleted industries

at current levels.

Without massive cuts to social security and Medicare,

there will be neither reindustrialization

nor significant increases in the Pentagon's

conventional military capabilities.

The aggressive combination of doctrines in the NSS

that seek to strategically encircle China and Russia

are probably not viable over the long run in any event,

but welfare state-induced capital consumption

absolutely exposes the NSS's vain pretense of America,

gearing up for conventional meat grinder wars

as sheer nonsense.

There is no credible strategy for security

to be found in this NSS.

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