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Frederick (architect of the surge) Kagan in the Wall Street Journal:
As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a "real" problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Americans than Haifa Street.(Via SWJ.)One problem with this emotion is that it ignores the sequel to the Great Depression -- the rise of militaristic Japan marked by the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, both of which resulted in part from economic dislocations spreading outward from the U.S. The inward-focus of the U.S. and the leading Western powers (Great Britain and France) throughout the 1930s allowed these problems to metastasize, ultimately leading to World War II.
Is it possible that American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result? You betcha.
But as evidenced in this next passage Kagan misses what I consider a more disturbing point:
The current economic crisis is extremely grave. It is hurting many Americans today and will hurt many more as it unwinds. It will end, however, as economic crises always do. The question is how long the recovery will take and how bad things will get before it takes hold."It will end, however, as economic crises always do" - I'm not so sure that all economic crises end alike. The Great Depression, for instance, really didn't end until WWII got America's machinery turning again. ("The seeds of that global conflict, unimaginable in 1933 given the relative weakness of Germany and Japan, were planted in the first years of the Roosevelt administration as FDR focused on the American economy.")
And while other "ends" might be preferred, our next president has a ready-and-waiting "goodwar" to turn to if all else fails, and a former president to blame for all the evils of the world. (And if our next president is Barack Obama, a compliant congress and unprecedented level of unquestioning media support. And hey, wars are good for newspaper sales, too...)
