Next President Weakened by Financial Crisis

After the American Century

The world stock markets have been in turmoil, falling drastically and bouncing back on the news that the US Federal Government will take over huge amounts of bad debt built up by irresponsible banks. Many of them, we now know, were lending out immensely more money than they had themselves, and often lending it to people who could not afford to meet the mortgage payments. Woody Guthrie once said that some men rob you with a six-gun, others with a fountain pen. The investment banks have robbed millions of Americans, not once but twice. First, by getting them into mortgages they could not afford, and second by dumping their mistakes on the taxpayer's doorstep. Elsewhere around the world, people and institutions who bought some of this debt were "only" robbed once.

Just how much this will cost taxpayers is unclear, but early estimates suggest $1 trillion. The US does not have a surplus in its coffers, nor does it currently have a tax system that can cover this sudden additional debt. Both McCain and Obama have been talking about reducing taxes on the middle class, but after this week that may not be realistic.

Foreign investment in US government debt has been keeping the country functioning. In July of 2008 Japan and China each owned more than $500 billion in US Treasury bonds, bills, or notes. Investors from oil exporting nations have bought $174 billion. (Click here for a full list.) Why should Chinese, Japanese, and Saudi investors still buy American debt? Why not buy European government debt which has a higher interest rate? Indeed, will there be enough buyers for $1 trillion in new US treasury bills and bonds? Keep in mind that because the dollar has weakened considerably during the Bush years, such investments may not be profitable.

I hope that I am wrong, but in twenty years historians may see that the autumn of 2008 was the moment when the US lost its leadership of the world economy, and argue that it was the time when the hegemony of the American century ended. Of course, it seems that the US government has just stepped in and saved the world's economy, after its reckless bankers almost ruined it. But the nation cannot emerge stronger than its rivals from this crisis. China, Japan, India, Brazil, and the EU likely will gain on the US. Their economies have not suddenly been burdened with $1 trillion extra debt on top of an equally large debt created by the Iraq War. (For more on this, see Niall Ferguson's thoughtful op ed piece in the Washington Post.)

Even before this crisis the US budget was severely out of balance. The sudden increase in debt means that the future president will have less scope in foreign policy. It will be - even more decisively than before - a debtor nation, one which cannot afford to offend its creditors. And should the next president want to start a new war or underwrite a new peace, how is he going to pay for it?

The added $1 trillion debt will also make it harder for the next president to fund social programs, such as extending medical coverage to all Americans. All of a sudden, there is a whole lot less money to work with. Borrow $1 trillion at, say, 4%, and just servicing that debt will cost $40 billion a year. That money will not be available for schools, research, creating a new energy economy, or roads and bridges.

The next president will struggle to move forward dragging a $1 trillion ball and chain. The investment banks have not only robbed the public twice; they have weakened the next president and diminished the US standing in the world.

Was McCain the Bomber Pilot a Hero? Republicans and Vietnam

After the American Century

The Republican Party has never come to terms with the Vietnam War, as the McCain candidacy underscores. For as Ronald Reagan once put it, Vietnam was a "noble cause," to considerable right-wing applause. Standing at the then new Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, he declared, "who can doubt that the cause for which our men fought was just?" I can. What Reagan said was pseudo-patriotic nonsense. Which part of the Vietnam War was noble? Was it noble to pretend that the Vietnamese War was about communism, when it began as a nationalist uprising against the French colonial power? Was it noble to concoct a "domino theory" to justify the war, when area specialists at the time knew that it was not true? (Indeed, once the US lost the war, other nations did not "fall" into communism.) Was it noble to overthrow Diem and then support an unpopular South Vietnamese military regime? Was it noble to spray chemical defoliants, notably Agent Orange over large parts of the nation, poisoning both the habitat and US soldiers on the ground? Was dropping napalm on civilians noble? Was support for a wealthy landowning class against landless peasants a noble democratic aim? Was it noble to round up South Vietnamese into compounds and force them to live there rather than in their ancestral villages? Was it noble to be allied with a regime that at times shot prisoners, that was known to mistreat its prisoners, and even to throw them alive out of airplanes? Was it noble to bomb North Vietnam, attacking not only military targets but cities as well, killing thousands of civilians?

Let us focus on that last question, because the future Republican candidate John McCain was flying over North Vietnam in 1967. What was he doing there when he was shot down? People focus on McCain in a prisoner of war camp, but forget to ask why he was there, or whether the US war in Vietnam made any sense. Yes, he was shot down. Yes, he was mistreated. Yes, he suffered. But the Democrats have been reluctant to ask the real question: What was McCain's role in that unjust war, which was condemned by most European nations? Did he drop agent orange on agricultural lands? Did he drop napalm on villages? Did he bomb women and children? And just as importantly, what does McCain think of the Vietnam War today? Does he agree with Reagan's absurd idea that the war was a noble cause? Does he think that massive strategic bombing was a successful tactic? A morally defensible tactic? A good tactic in future wars? If so, then why did the US lose that war? Why did the US lose the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people? Has McCain, have the Republicans, any new ideas, or will they keep trying the same failed military "solutions"?

What does McCain think of the "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq? Does the United States want a president who jokes about bombing Iran, by intoning a Beach Boys tune as he warbles, "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran?" This might sound like a joke, but the threat of strategic bombing is the essense of McCain's foreign policy. There is nothing heroic or noble about dominating the air space over a nation, whether Vietnam or Iraq or Iran, and carpeting it with deadly bombs. That is why McCain is a dangerous choice for president, just as the Republicans are a dangerous party to entrust with foreign policy.

After eight years of George Bush, where in the world is the US in a sronger foreign policy position than it was in 2000? Not in Europe. Not in the Middle East. Not in China. Not in Latin America. Where is it more popular than in 2000? It is hard to make a case for many places. John McCain has a millitaristic conception of foreign affairs, and he is accompanied by a vice-presidential nominee who thinks the Iraq War is a holy mission.

Vietnam was not a noble cause, but an enormous mistake. McCain and the Republicans have never understood it, and remain prisoners of a distorted sense of history. That is why they are unfit to hold power.

American Sonics

After the American Century

Public space in United States does not sound like Scandinavian public space. Take Logan Airport as an example. The passenger waiting in its international terminal is subjected to a soundscape that is quite unlike that one finds in the airports of Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, or Amsterdam. I name these because I travel frequently enough through them to feel certain that I can generalize. Boston's Logan is all about commerce and cacophony. There are frequent loudspeaker announcements about flights, delays, and the like. There are TV stations hanging from the ceiling that all broadcast CNN the last few times I was there. And there is a third sound, a airport radio station bombarding the trapped passengers with music and advertisements.

They have arrived hours early, as required for security, and for several hours they must negotiate waves of sound. In certain locations they can hear CNN fairly well, but move a few steps and the airport "radio" sets up an interference pattern. The three layers of sound – announcements, radio, and television – further compete with the hundreds of cell phone conversations (often annoying loud), plus there is the tintinnabulation of tiny headsets chipping away at the brain cells of younger travelers. Conversation can then only take place at a higher decibel level, producing a roaring cacophony in the departure zone. After several hours in the maelstrom of sound, the already weary passenger climbs into a plane. By then one may have decided to buy one of those special headphones that cancels out background noise.

The comparison between these American soundscapes and those in Scandinavia and Holland could not be more striking. In Copenhagen or Oslo, where I sit as I write this, all three of the sounds amplified in Logan are absent. I hear only human voices, of people who are nearby. If I close my eyes, I can hear the sound of luggage being wheeled past or the laughter of a woman behind me. I can hear myself think because most people speak softly and apparently think that others have what might be called sonic rights.

Is Logan airport an exception or a typical case? Compare it to an American sports stadium, and it seems rather typical. In the stands one hears continual announcements, organ music, the radios of fans who want to hear the sportscaster tell them more about what they are seeing, and most important of all, there is a giant scoreboard, showing instant replays and producing pyrotechnic displays as needed in response to the game. If a fan goes to buy a hotdog down behind the seats, small televisions are positioned so that the game is still visible.

The American public soundscape is multivocal and competitive. It is commercialized, and the sales pitch is seldom far away. It is loud. It demands concentration. And it forces my fellow Americans to speak loudly. Many develop a vocal range from forte to fortissimo. Meanwhile, Scandinavians are sotto voce. They can spot an American without looking, from their sonic voice print. Yesterday I heard every boring word of a conversation between two American men, who were seated at least 20 meters (yards) away in an Oslo restaurant. They were not boors. But they were loud, having been conditioned by tens of thousands of hours in the American soundscape.

In Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman declared he would sound his "barbaric yawp" over the rooftops of the world. That was in 1855. He knew then that Americans as a tribe did not go quietly about. That was before the loudspeaker or the radio, back when a singer or a speaker needed a room with good acoustics, and just as importantly, the audience had to know how to restrain itself or no one would hear. Whitman's audience also could communicate back to the stage far more easily than one canm today in the electrified soundscape. For as sound was electrified and broadcast, the communication changed. But I begin to digress. If the historical background for American sonics might sound like it needs to be researched more fully, the book is already out. Get hold of a copy of Emily Thompson's The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (MIT Press, 2002). Please do not try to read it in Logan Airport.

The American today is not only a multitasker, but adept at hearing many things simultaneously and filtering out all of it except a single conversational thread. It is also a kind of skill to block out everything entirely, in order to concentrate on a laptop while sitting in a coffee shop. Or, in my case, sitting on a train, as I am now in Denmark. But train has a "quiet car" where talking and cell phone conversations are banned. American concentration, Scandinavian sonics.

Guantanamo To Close?

After the American Century

One of the worst mistakes of the Bush government has been to create the special prison at Guantamo Bay in Cuba. The men held there have not been charged with specific crimes, and could not be kept in detention for more than a few days if on American soil. That is because the Constitution gives all those arrested the right to know what charges are being made against them. The US Courts also have always upheld the right to a legal defense, the right know the evidentiary basis used by the prosecurtion, the right to call witnesses for the defense, and the right to cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution. None of these fundamental rights have been available at Guantanamo, and its mere existence has given the US a credibility problem. How can the US claim to represent democracy, and to want to encourgage other nations to adopt democracy, if it does not play by the rules of democracy?

Putting the detainees off-shore and denying them rights was a serious blot on the US's national reputation. But making matters worse, the Bush Government chose to lock them up on Cuba. That placement reminded the whole world, especially Latin America, of the US seizure of Cuba after the Spanish-American War in 1898. That little war was supposed to lead to independence for Cuba. Something else happened instead, and real independence for Cuba only came with Castro's revolution. In short, putting the illegal prisons on a base in Cuba reminded every Latin American that the US has often been something of a bully in the Caribbean. Teddy Roosevelt was thinking of that region when he declared that his policy was to "speak softly but carry a big stick." Locating the base in Cuba was a gift to the Left all over Latin America. It particularly hurt our credibility in nations such as Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia.

Worst of all, the whole conduct of the Bush Administration with regard to these prisoners has distrcated attention from the serious crimes some of them surely committed. I do not doubt that some - though probably by no means all - of the detainees are terrorists. But the Bush policy made them into victims!

This morning's news carried the story that an impressive FIVE former Secretaries of Sate are now calling for the Guantanamo Prison to be closed down. The bi-partisan group includes Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powel. This is a welcome development, signaling the widespread rejection of much of the Bush-Cheney policy. These are the most experienced people in American foreign policy, and their unusual bi-partisan statement should be enough to close this sorry chapter. In a sense, they are only seeing the hand-writing on the wall, because the electorate has already spoken. John McCain, who himself suffered as a prison of war in Vietnam, would close it. And both Clinton and Obama would close it. The only question is how quickly it can be done.

As a sidelight on this issue, a little story. About two months ago a Danish journalist called me to talk about Guantanamo. As is often the case with Danish journalists covering some aspect of the US, she was by no means a specialist on the United States. I seriously doubt she could pass the exam in my introductory American history course. But she had fixed opinions about the US which were precisely of the sort that the existence of Guantanamo reinforced. I told her for 15 minutes, in as many ways as I could think of, that Guantanamo Bay prisons would not survive very long in the next presidency, that they were an illegal embarrasment, that they no longer even served an intelligible purpose, and that a new leader would hardly want to be saddled with this Bush mistake. But she simply would not listen. She, like millions of others around the world, saw in those orange-clad prisoners, shuffling in chains, the "true" American policy toward the rest of the world. Since I did not agree with her, my interview was not used in her story. That is one of many instances where Danish journalists imposed their oversimplified world view on their readers. Guantanamo was made-to-order for such people, and it will take a generation of far better leadership in Washington to undo the public relations damage.

Unfortunately, there is no way to undo the terrible damage done to those prisoners held illegally without charge who in fact were not guilty. They have lost precious years of their lives, and as long as their relatives remember, the United States will be a bitter name in their mouths. When Guantanamo finally closes, it will live on in memory as another Bush disaster. He has been such a poor president that Richard Nixon begins to look sensible, moderate, and statesmanlike, even if he had to insist he was not a crook. You know things are bad when the most disgraced president in US history begins to look better.