Ever increasing globalization and economic interdependence will not lead to a safer world so long as shortages of goods and services remain. Even so, some modern political theorists believe that the end of the Cold War and recent trends towards globalization - i.e. growing international economic interdependence and reliance on international organizations - will make traditional instruments of power, such as military force, alliances, espionage, propaganda, and economic and diplomatic pressure, less important in international relations. These modern political base this idea on Montesquieu’s original argument that commercial republicanism can be a key tool to overcome expansionistic foreign policies.
While some, like Walzer and Montesquieu thought humankind could somehow end conflict using commercialism and moral behavior and thus stop being reliant on the traditional instruments of power, other political thinkers like Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Kaplan all tended to disagree, saying interdependence and international organizations are not enough to end the threat of conflicts.
For example, Hobbes stated, “...I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”
This referred to Hobbes belief that human happiness was dependent the attempts to gain power to offset future needs and desires. Our own United States Declaration of Independence refers to this idea with the phrase, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Furthermore, if happiness were possible on its own, then the phrase preamble would be meaningless. Therefore, since state leaders are human too, then they too must also have the inclination to pursue happiness through the acquisition of power. Consequently, not having a world government makes no difference. State leaders rely on power politics to pursue their own self-interests.
Machiavelli agreed, claiming in The Prince that most leaders try to gain more power, adding the effort to is not necessarily a moral one. However, in The Prince Machiavelli also argued that once the power was gained, “He who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.”
This meant that vice and cruelty may be necessary to achieve a moral end because strict moral arguments lead to war and civil conflict. In other words, morals have little place in politics. They limit the possible state responses and only states with leaders willing to use anything in its arsenal, including traditional instruments of power, will remain strong enough, and survive long enough, to end up with a moral society.
Kaplan makes a similar argument and points out all foreign policy should be treated as a permanent form of crisis management. Furthermore, he states it is not realistic to expect relations among states to become more harmonic even as technology advances, no matter what technology is available. Instead, while technology can be used in ways to verify what other States are doing, but not explain why they are doing what they are doing. Furthermore, even knowing what other states is doing is no guarantee that a solution to a crisis can be found because Kaplan claims there are often no complete solutions to international problems “only confusion and unsatisfactory choices.”
However, not everyone completely agrees. Walzer, for example goes even further and says states must sometimes behave in immoral ways to end up with a moral outcome. He states while Realists claim that morality does not exist, Walzer says there must be morals. Even in time of war, we discuss and debate morality in the forms of “the rules of war,” and therefore, if there were no rules of war, then discussions and debates about morality would be unnecessary because they simply would not exist. Consequently, morals must exist. Rules and conventions of war prove that morality exists. Furthermore, if morals exist in total war, then they must also exist in times of peace. This idea led Walzer to claim as the world becomes more civilized, and governments become more interdependent, then conflicts will be decided in ever more moral ways.
Montesquieu, advocated a different view. He stated commercial republicanism and commercial interdependence were the keys needed to overcome expansionistic foreign policies. Of course, Hitler’s role in WWII proves otherwise, but Montesquieu would have responded by stating Hitler’s early great successes left him arrogant and ungovernable, leading to his willfully attacking other states, all because his power was left uncheck by the German people.
However, whether you agree or disagree with the great thinkers, as long people and states manage to exploit economic shortages for their own self-interests, the use of alliances, espionage, propaganda, economic and diplomatic pressures, backed by military force to preserve their self-interests will continue unabated. Furthermore, as Machiavelli pointed out, only the meek allow themselves to be dominated. Therefore, to maintain sovereignty, self-preservation demands diligence and the knowledge of what potential enemies are doing. That means so long as economic shortages exist, not even the growing interdependence and trends towards globalization will not be enough to end the reliance of states on traditional instruments of power for use in international relations.
1 Hobbes, Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, (editor Edwin Curley, Hackett Publishing company, Inc, Indianapolis, IN, 1994) XI, Sec 2, p. 58.
2 Preamble, United States Declaration of Independence, July 4,1776.
3 Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Translated by W.K. Marriott, (Project Gutenberg) p. 73.
4 Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics, (Vintage Books, 2002) pp. 12-13.
5 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed (Basic Books, NY, New York, 2006).
6 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, translated and edited by Cohler, Miller, and Stone, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass), 11.4. pg. 154.
"All of the critical components of our modern weapons systems, which include our F-16s and F/A 18s, our M-1 tanks, our military computers - and I could go on and on - come from East Asian industries….Some day, we might view that with concern and rightly so."
ReplyDeleteAdmiral James Lyons
Commander U.S. Pacific Fleet
Responding to Defense Dependency: Policy Ideas and the American Defense Industrial Base, 1996
p. 11
"The Bush Administration was forced to intervene with foreign governments on over thirty occasions to guarantee delivery of critical military parts. As one high-level administration official commented: "If the foreign governments were neutral or were not disposed to help us out, we could have run into some real problems. We were sweating bullets over it and the military was sweating bullets too."
Erik R. Pages
Responding to Defense Dependence, 1996
p. 17
"Foreigners today control the U.S. companies responsible for the heat shield of the D-5 Trident missile and the flight controls of the B-2 bomber, the F-117 Stealth, and the F-22, the backbone of the twenty-first-century air force.
ReplyDeleteOverseas factories are far more vulnerable to espionage, labor problems, sabotage, political dictation - and attack by enemy or terrorist forces. There is no guarantee that U.S. secrets are safe abroad. A clear and present danger exists when corporations with allegiance to no country gain virtual monopolies over items critical to U.S. security. During World War II, Stalin’s spies and our own homegrown traitors looted vital defense secrets, including those related to the atom bomb. Given this experience, for us to allow technology indispensable to our security to be kept outside the United States, vulnerable to theft or denial, is perilous folly."
Pat Buchanan
The Great Betrayal
p. 320-321
In October 2003, Dell Computer was chosen by the Boeing Corporation to serve a five-year contract that will provide Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (one of the world's largest space and defense corporations) with all of its desktop and notebook computers. Dell also holds contracts with West Point Military Academy, the Air Force, Army, and Navy. Michael Dell creates training and simulation programs for the Army, and has pointed out that upwards of 85 percent of military personnel training today is done through computers. His business has done well to supply the military with training programs and the hardware needed to run them.
Barry Lynn, the former Executive Editor of Global Business magazine, examined this growing dependence on foreign-based suppliers in the June, 2002 issue of Harper’s. He reports that a large portion of America’s premier corporations have transformed themselves into little more than "virtual companies" that rely on a complex and far flung network of suppliers spread throughout the world to make the goods they sell. To illustrate this disintegration of the integrated manufacturing process that so long characterized the U.S. economy, Lynn reports on Dell Computer, a leading U.S. computer manufacturer and defense contractor, that in reality is little more than an assembler of foreign made components. While the company assembles its computers in the United States, the 4,500 parts used in one of its finished products come from dozens of suppliers clustered in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Malaysia. And although the lack of a single component can slow or stop the entire manufacturing line, Dell maintains an inventory sufficient for only 4 days production. If a typhoon, fire, revolution, strike, war, or any other event interrupts that long supply line across the Pacific for more than 96 hours, and if alternative parts cannot be located within that period and delivered to Texas, production ceases on the 97th hour.
Pat Choate & Edward Miller
The U.S. Industrial Base and China
A Congressional Report, 2001
p.7
"Another example is the rare earth mineral market. Rare earth magnets are used in missile guidance systems. In 1992, Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping announced the expansion of China’s role in the rare earth market, proclaiming "There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China." Thus, the Chinese government embarked on a detailed strategy to control the rare earth market. As part of this strategy, two Chinese firms acquired a U.S. rare earth magnet producer. In 1995, San Huan New Materials and
ReplyDeleteChina Non-ferrous Materials Corporation partnered with U.S. investors to purchase Indiana-based Magnequench, whose parent company was General Motors. Magnequench manufactures rare
earth magnets and magnet powders, used in computer hard drives, a variety of other consumer electronics, and guidance systems. Due to concerns about the defense applications of the magnets, CFIUS
reviewed the case, yet approved the transaction partially based on a commitment that the Indiana facility would remain in the United States. Eventually the whole facility was moved to China. This deal
and subsequent deals around the globe have allowed China to come closer to cornering the market in rare earth minerals. Of equal concern is the transfer of technology, including patents, allowing
China to control development of next-generation products using rare earth minerals. Additionally, the recent bid for Unocal by the Chinese company CNOOC may have been another piece of this strategy, as Unocal owns Molycorp, a U.S. rare earth mineral mine.
2005 Report To Congress of the U.S.-China Economic And Security Review Commission
p.101
Since 1995, the Commerce Department has done fewer than a dozen defense industrial capability assessments. In 1992, the Commerce Department did one of the first studies of U.S. reliance on foreign suppliers for critical components in weapon systems. In that study, three representative Navy systems were chosen for analysis - the HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile); the Mark-48 ADCAP (advanced capabilities) torpedo; and the Verdin communication system. Almost 12,000 companies participated in this study. What the Commerce Department researchers found is the supply matrix is not pyramid-shaped, but diamond-shaped. This means the Navy had a core of sub-tier suppliers that were unknown and thus "could be bottlenecks during a surge in production". The study identified 115 distinct items where a foreign dependency existed, including high-tech items such as semiconductor ceramic packaging and needle roller bearing wire rod.
ReplyDeleteIn October 2001, the DoD released a "Study on the Impact of Foreign Sourcing of Systems". The DoD collected and evaluated information on eight weapons systems from subcontractors - these responses were all voluntary.
The average response rate for first tier contractors was 58%. For third tier subcontractors it was 39%. The DoD didn't investigate below third tier subcontratcors. Yet, the diamond shaped supply matrix found in the Commerce study exists at those levels - among those who supply low-cost, commodity items. This level of subcontractor depends on commodity technologies, much of which comes from factories in China and the countries that surround it.
In 2001, the U.S. dependence on foreign defense-related goods was as follows:
Resin, synth rubber & fibers..........62%
Pharmaceuticals & medicine..........72%
Chemical products..........66%
Rubber products..........61%
Alumina & alum processing..........61%
Ag & construction mach..........52%
Metalworking mach..........51%
Engines, turbo, power eqpt..........56%
Computer equipment..........70%
Communications equipment..........67%
Audio & video equipment..........70%
Semiconductors & elect..........64%
Navix, measure, med instru..........62%
Magnetic & optical media..........56%
Electrical equipment..........61%
Electrical equip & comp..........61%
Motor vehicle parts..........58%
Med equipment & supplies..........52%
In addition, imports represented 46% of all basic chemicals and 47% of all industrial machinery purchased in the United States.
Pat Choate & Edward Miller
The US Industrial Base and China
A Congressional Report, 2001
"From 1990-97, an incredible 65 million square feet of industrial space in the American defense/aerospace industries, was closed down and the advanced machine-tool reservoir within it, auctioned off. National employment in the aerospace industry fell from 900,000 to 550,000—by 40%—in those few years, and has fallen more slowly but continuously since. We know this from our data; I also know this from talking to the auctioneer companies who sold off the machine tools, who say, “This was a scary time” for the nation.
ReplyDeleteDuring 2004, Internet auctions were held at military bases in California, by which most of the “national defense reserve” of the United States was sold off, as if on E-Bay. This national defense reserve consisted primarily of a reservoir of advanced machine tools “packages” for various lines of industrial production. After World War II, it had been preserved and maintained by act of Congress—the National Industrial Reserve Act of 1948—expanded by the 1973 National Defense Reserve Act of 1973; modernized in Defense Appropriations annual bills. But amendments in 1992—when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary—and then in 2002, focused instead on the Defense Secretary’s responsibility to declare this reserve surplus and sell it off, relying instead on private machine-tool capabilities—which had themselves been auctioned off continuously during the 1990s. Under Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s “military modernization” doctrine, the machine-tool reserve was surplus and was sold off.
The third leg of the United States’ once-pre-eminent machine-tooling capabilities was auto.
Now, in 2006-07, we face the scheduled closing down of at least 65 major auto plants, taking into account closings announced only by General Motors, Ford, and their biggest suppliers Delphi Corp., Visteon Corp., and Tower Automotive Corp. Many of the other major suppliers have been thrown into bankruptcy in the crisis, such as Dana Corp., Collins and Aikman Corp., and Johnson Controls, as well as Delphi and Tower Automotive—but their shutdowns are not shown here......
More major plants are being closed down in two years, 2006-07, than in the previous three decades. Some 75,000 skilled industrial jobs are being eliminated directly, and including the indirect effects on the supplier industries, 300,000 skilled jobs will disappear if this is allowed to proceed, representing a third of the entire auto sector.
The closing plants constitute nearly 80 million square feet of capacity, most of it full of versatile machine tools. This is more than the frightening shutdown of 60 million square feet of aerospace capacity in eight years during the 1990s. And it is the only large, diversified reservoir of machine-tool capability—and matching workforce skills—which remains to this country."
Paul Gallagher
How U.S. Machine Tool Sector Was Destroyed
Executive Intelligence Review, June 30, 2006
p. 40-41
"Ever since the Global War on Terror began in 2001, one of the key weapons in the U.S. arsenal has been the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) - the remarkably accurate high - altitude, guided bomb that allows a precision attack on a specific target with minimum chance of collateral damage.
ReplyDeleteThousands of JDAMs have been used in Afghanistan and Iraq over the course of the last three years. Some of the Special Operations troops who participated in Operation Enduring Freedom maintain that the Taliban might still control Kabul if it weren't for the JDAMs delivered in support of their ground campaign....
Unfortunately, a crucial component of the JDAM was manufactured by a Swiss company, Micro Crystal. Because the Swiss opposed the war in Iraq, the government in Berne ordered the company to stop shipment of any more JDAM elements.
It took several months for the Defense Department to find alternative sources for the critical parts."
U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan
Take This Job And Ship It, 2006
p.245-246
"One of the flagrant offenses of the Clinton administration's treasonous rampage known as "Chinagate" involved the sale of McDonnell-Douglas Plant 85 in Columbus, Ohio, to Communist China. In addition to the 1,000 American workers who lost their jobs at the plant, the U.S. suffered a major blow to national security and military capability. In late 1994, Chinese workers dismantled the entire plant's production machinery and hauled it away in an enormous convoy of over 275 semi trucks. The hi-tech booty was trucked to Long Beach, California, loaded on China's COSCO ships, and taken to China.
ReplyDeleteLater, this incident bacame a major cause celebre for Republican critics of the Clinton administration's many Chinagate scandals that involved transferring critical military technology to Beijing - in exchange for massive, illegal campaign contributions. Clinton critics pointed out that China had been keenly interested in obtaining the plant because of its very sophisticated computer-controlled, five-axis profiling machines, which would allow China to greatly enhance their ability to produce ultra-modern warplanes and missiles. Pentagon security analysts had attempted to block the sale due to these considerations. But the Clinton White House and Commerce Department overrode these objections, claiming the machinery was being sold to China for non-military purposes. Soon it was discovered (surprise, surprise!) that some of the McDonnell-Douglas machines had been diverted to a People's Liberation Army (PLA) company - Nanchang Aircraft Co. - to manufacture Silkworm cruise missiles.
Similar Chinagate scandals erupted, revealing transfers of restricted military-use technologies to China by Clinton corporate cronies, such as Loral, Hughs Electronics Corp., and Boeing Satellite Systems. Another heated battle arose over Clinton's efforts to lease important piers at the Port of Long Beach (California), including the former Long Beach Naval Station, to the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), a branch of the PLA and a critical component of Red China's global military plans."
Chinagate All Over Again
New American,March 10, 2003
"On November 7, 2001, several weeks after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Gary Milhollin, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Law school, testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services. According to Professor Milhollin:
ReplyDeleteAmerican export controls are now weaker than ever before in our history. Today's export controls are but a shadow of what they were in the 1980's, when Saddam Hussein was building his mass destruction war machine and we were still in the cold war. Since 1988, applications to the Commerce Department have dropped by roughly 90%. Cases have fallen from nearly 100,000 in 1989 to roughly 10,000 in fiscal year 2000. The reason is simple: fewer items are controlled so fewer applications are required. When applications do come in, they are almost always approved. In fiscal year 2000, only 398 applications were denied - about four percent of the total received. Perhaps we could put up with this system in a time of peace, but we know that there are terrorist organizations willing to do us harm, and that weapons of mass destruction in their hands would threaten our way of life.
"There is little doubt," says Dr. Milhollin, "that the present system allows American exports to endanger our security." He cited as a recent example American transfers to Huawei Technologies, the Chinese company caught helping Iraq improve its air defenses by outfitting them with fiber optic equipment.
"The history of Huawei shows how American exports to China can wind up threatening our own armed forces," Milhollin testified. "At the time when this company's help - to Iraq was revealed," he pointed out,"Motorola had an export license application pending for permission to teach Huawei how to build high-speed switching and routing equipment - ideal for an air defense network. The equipment allows communications to be shuttled quickly across multiple transmission lines,increasing efficiency and reducing the risk from air attack."
Dr. Milhollin noted that other American firms have also transferred technology to Huawei through joint operations. For instance:
-Lucent Technologies has set up a new joint research laboratory with Huawei "as a window for technical exchange" in microelectronics.
-AT&T signed a series of contracts to "optimize" Huawei's products so that, according to a Huawei vice president, Huawei can "become a serious global player."
-IBM agreed to sell Huawei switches, chips, and processing technology. Milhollin quoted a Huawei spokesman as saying that "collaborating with IBM will enable Huawei to...quickly deliver high-end telecommunications to our customers across the world." Customers like Saddam Hussein.
Chinagate All Over Again
The New American, March 10, 2003
"Indeed, it was long recognized that the six Ordnance manufacturing arsenals could produce, in time of war, only about 4 or 5 per cent of the critical requirements for weapons, ammunition, fire-control instruments, aircraft bombs, and mechanized equipment. Now that we were in the midst of a war of unprecedented magnitude, Industry would have to take over 95 to 96 per cent of the armament manufacturing program.
ReplyDeleteWithout the invaluable assistance of Industry, we of the Ordnance Department would be in the position of General Robert E. Lee when he heard that Stonewall Jackson had lost his left arm. General Lee's message was: "You have lost your left arm, but I have lost my right."
Lt. Gen. Levin H. Campbell, Chief of Ordnance, United States Army, 1942-1946
The Industry-Ordnance Team, 1946
p. 5
I have more Floyd if you want, but you can see this greatly concerns me. - Steve
ReplyDelete