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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Wonderful way for the Borrow And Spend Republicans to run their huge 
government without laying the cost on our grandchildren and 
great-grandchildren. I am sure Chirac will be eager to pony up France's 
share of U.S. costs of insuring their oil supply. Forget the carrot 
business, though, only a big stick will work.




JONATHAN CHAIT
Hey, It Worked for the Romans
# Listen up, foreign nations: Meet Uncle Sam's demand for tribute or he'll 
pay you a little visit.

                        
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The Bush administration's foreign policy is centered around fighting a 
highly expensive counterinsurgency in Iraq. The administration's 
domestic policy is centered around driving federal tax revenues to 
ever-lower levels.

Some observers say there's an unsolvable contradiction here. I say those 
people just aren't thinking creatively enough. There's a simple, logical 
way to reconcile President Bush's foreign and domestic policies: Start 
demanding tribute from foreign countries.

In the old days, before the rise of fuzzy-minded liberal 
internationalists, it was considered utterly normal for powerful states 
to force their weaker neighbors to hand over money or material goods as 
a price for avoiding military punishment. Although unfair, it was a 
reasonably effective method for preventing wars.

Rather than go through the full invade-kill-burn-plunder cycle, which 
took a lot out of invader and invadee alike, both sides found it easier 
and more humane to simply skip straight ahead to the last stage. It 
worked for the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans and the various 
peoples fortunate enough to share borders with them.

Implementing the policy would be quite simple. We would inform heads of 
militarily vulnerable states that if they did not wish to have their 
regime changed — or, at least, to have large chunks of it blown to 
smithereens — they had better make an annual contribution to the U.S. 
Treasury. I envision receiving sums more than sufficient to cover our 
budget deficit.

Sure, this may strain diplomatic relations. But most of the world hates 
us anyway. How much worse can it get? If we're going to be an 
international pariah, we might as well enjoy some benefit from it.

Some might object that demanding tribute is a hoary, barbaric practice 
long ago repudiated by civilized countries. Well, sure, but so is 
torturing enemy combatants, or those suspected of being enemy 
combatants, or those merely living in the same general vicinity as enemy 
combatants. The administration understands that, if we're going to win 
the war on terror, we can't allow our hands to be tied by the quaint and 
obsolete requirements of the so-called civilized world. The war isn't 
going to pay for itself, you know.

Yes, you say, but shouldn't we American taxpayers have to bear the 
burden of paying for our own wars? That sentiment would seem at first 
blush to have a certain earnest pre-Sept. 11 logic to it. But it has 
proved decisively unable to penetrate the brains of our governing party 
or its intellectual courtiers.

In the last three months, for instance, the conservative Weekly Standard 
has published articles urging the White House to, variously, foment 
regime change in North Korea, bomb nuclear sites in Iran, attack Syria 
and begin confronting China. These demands for a more aggressive 
military posture come at a time when the Pentagon is scrambling to meet 
demands to cut its budget, and when the general in charge of the Army 
Reserve complains in a memo that overuse threatens to turn the Reserve 
into a "broken force."

The Weekly Standard is, of course, the same magazine that endorsed every 
Bush tax cut, and has published novel defenses of the administration's 
high-spending, low-taxing policies. (The publication calls it "big 
government conservatism.") The Standard and other Republican hawks 
betray not even the faintest glimmer of awareness of tension between 
their foreign and domestic policies.

Indeed, all the intellectual energy on the right is directed toward 
deepening the contradiction. When not pushing for new military actions 
around the globe, neoconservatives like Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp have 
urged Bush to pile on additional trillions in debt by diverting tax 
dollars into Social Security private accounts without any offsetting 
benefit cuts.

Reason has failed. It's time to think outside the box. (Or, in this 
case, the century.) Can a return to tribute actually happen? I don't see 
why not. The particular genius of the conservative movement has been to 
make the unthinkable thinkable. A few decades ago, ideas like 
supply-side economics and privatizing Social Security were confined to 
the lunatic fringe. Today they're conventional wisdom within the GOP.

I'm not optimistic enough to believe that the U.S. government can begin 
demanding tribute tomorrow. The idea has to incubate for a while. I 
propose a well-placed Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal, followed 
by a conference at the American Enterprise Institute ("Paying Tribute to 
Tribute"), followed by a resolution in Congress (is Oklahoma Sen. Tom 
Coburn interested?), followed by a talk-radio blitz. Soon enough, we 
will be regarding opponents of tribute as anachronistic, if not vaguely 
anti-American.