While writing about Lavrov's October 20 speech--Anybody want me to repeat those posts?--I recalled something former senator Bob Dole once said. I loved Dole. He served and was seriously wounded in the 10th Mountain Division in World War II. My uncle Jack was in the same unit and was killed. What I loved about Dole was, well, one was his temper, two, was his inability to keep his temper always under control ("Stop lying about my record."), three, was his basic decency and soft-heartedness. Finally, and coming around to our point now, he couldn't lie without his face giving him away, he would start blinking his eyes really fast.
So this one time Dole and a couple other senators were being interviewed in a senate hallway. The subject was the "peace dividend." The peace dividend was what Americans were supposed to get from the end of the Cold War. We got war taxes with WWI and WWII especially and peace dividends after. Why not now?
"This is no time to be cutting back on our military spending," Dole said in a knowing, cautioning tone, his eyes fluttering away.
I laughed but we never got any peace dividend. We should have gotten a peace dividend from, inter alia, NATO's disbandment when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Instead we got a peace tax as NATO expanded and our commitments extended.
Why would that have been? I guess because we, that is, America on behalf of Europe and Europe, still feared Russia.
Perhaps too it was the "military-industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. It had gotten so big during World War II, but then we demobilized, all the troops were back home looking for jobs (See G.I. Bill), but then very quickly (and properly) in response to the Iron Curtain that had fallen over Europe, we went to a semi-war footing, the Cold War footing. The War Department didn't just disband, it was transformed into the Defense Department. Wars begin and end but defense is forever, you might say. Anyway, Ike warned the country about "defense is forever."
Perhaps also it was "jobs." That was James Baker's answer, the last of several answers he tried out without much effect, to the question "Why are we liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein?" That is, the military creates jobs. The U.S. didn't get out of the Depression until we declared war and President Truman had a real problem at home with all those returning G.I.'s after Japan surrendered. A real problem. The Cold War didn't provide employment to all those returning G.I.'s, not by a long stretch, but it did provide some jobs and then more and more as the Cold War deepened and the
Defense Department grew and grew and the other defense-related departments, like NSA and God
knows what all were created. The military-industrial complex was a powerfully big employer, both those things, powerful and a big employer. It is difficult to remove or even to cut back an entrenched big, powerful, complex. Damn near impossible when all you have to do to justify it is yell "Defense!" even if your eyes flutter.
Anyway, now that I write this all out, I do think fear of Russia, especially in Europe, was a reason and a legitimate reason for not giving Americans a peace dividend for the end of the Cold War. Initially. But after Yeltsin survived the coup there was no chance of getting the Soviet band back together again, no chance that Eastern Europe was going to be reconquered, no chance that the Berlin
Wall was going to be rebuilt. It would have been reasonable to keep pre-1991 NATO intact for a little while longer but to begin fazing it out. Britain and France at least are nuclear powers, they can take care of themselves.
But to expand NATO? To expand it to the East! Toward Russia? Ever and ever closer? No. That is not reasonable, it cannot be based on any reasonable fear of Russia. What NATO's expansion East did was create the conditions that made NATO's expansion seem like a good idea. Today, now, we have a suspicious, hostile Russia on our hands that may well indeed have fantasies about getting the band back together again. There is no chance of NATO retrenching especially now but I say if NATO hadn't expanded we wouldn't have had an angry Bear on our hands and if NATO did retrench, if we let the former Warsaw Pact members go their own way, I say, if you took away that irritant, you wouldn't have an angry Bear on your hands. But you wouldn't have as many jobs either.
No, I think the more reasonable explanations for the the lack of a post-Cold War peace dividend are the military-industrial complex and "jobs." And I can say that without my eyes fluttering.
So this one time Dole and a couple other senators were being interviewed in a senate hallway. The subject was the "peace dividend." The peace dividend was what Americans were supposed to get from the end of the Cold War. We got war taxes with WWI and WWII especially and peace dividends after. Why not now?
"This is no time to be cutting back on our military spending," Dole said in a knowing, cautioning tone, his eyes fluttering away.
I laughed but we never got any peace dividend. We should have gotten a peace dividend from, inter alia, NATO's disbandment when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Instead we got a peace tax as NATO expanded and our commitments extended.
Why would that have been? I guess because we, that is, America on behalf of Europe and Europe, still feared Russia.
Perhaps too it was the "military-industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. It had gotten so big during World War II, but then we demobilized, all the troops were back home looking for jobs (See G.I. Bill), but then very quickly (and properly) in response to the Iron Curtain that had fallen over Europe, we went to a semi-war footing, the Cold War footing. The War Department didn't just disband, it was transformed into the Defense Department. Wars begin and end but defense is forever, you might say. Anyway, Ike warned the country about "defense is forever."
Perhaps also it was "jobs." That was James Baker's answer, the last of several answers he tried out without much effect, to the question "Why are we liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein?" That is, the military creates jobs. The U.S. didn't get out of the Depression until we declared war and President Truman had a real problem at home with all those returning G.I.'s after Japan surrendered. A real problem. The Cold War didn't provide employment to all those returning G.I.'s, not by a long stretch, but it did provide some jobs and then more and more as the Cold War deepened and the
Defense Department grew and grew and the other defense-related departments, like NSA and God
knows what all were created. The military-industrial complex was a powerfully big employer, both those things, powerful and a big employer. It is difficult to remove or even to cut back an entrenched big, powerful, complex. Damn near impossible when all you have to do to justify it is yell "Defense!" even if your eyes flutter.
Anyway, now that I write this all out, I do think fear of Russia, especially in Europe, was a reason and a legitimate reason for not giving Americans a peace dividend for the end of the Cold War. Initially. But after Yeltsin survived the coup there was no chance of getting the Soviet band back together again, no chance that Eastern Europe was going to be reconquered, no chance that the Berlin
Wall was going to be rebuilt. It would have been reasonable to keep pre-1991 NATO intact for a little while longer but to begin fazing it out. Britain and France at least are nuclear powers, they can take care of themselves.
But to expand NATO? To expand it to the East! Toward Russia? Ever and ever closer? No. That is not reasonable, it cannot be based on any reasonable fear of Russia. What NATO's expansion East did was create the conditions that made NATO's expansion seem like a good idea. Today, now, we have a suspicious, hostile Russia on our hands that may well indeed have fantasies about getting the band back together again. There is no chance of NATO retrenching especially now but I say if NATO hadn't expanded we wouldn't have had an angry Bear on our hands and if NATO did retrench, if we let the former Warsaw Pact members go their own way, I say, if you took away that irritant, you wouldn't have an angry Bear on your hands. But you wouldn't have as many jobs either.
No, I think the more reasonable explanations for the the lack of a post-Cold War peace dividend are the military-industrial complex and "jobs." And I can say that without my eyes fluttering.
