Subject: [Homestead] Gas tank empty, get your next door neighbor to keep it full
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 09:20:54 -0500
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.
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.
[Homestead] Gas tank empty, get your next door neighbor to keep it full,
tvoivozhd, 01/07/2005