If America is experiencing a government, social, and economic shift that is fueling our divisions and unrest, will our growing budget deficits be resolved by a major shift that decreases the size--and in time perhaps the scope--of our federal government?
America's big-government model of the federal government is unsustainable as it sucks in more resources and is less able to efficiently or effectively use those resources. World War II followed by the Cold War institutionalized this model. The rising national debt may be resolved by a major change in how our government is organized and staffed.
I can see future Republican presidents outsourcing some executive functions because they can't trust the left-leaning federal bureaucracy to do their jobs for a Republican. Is this how the bloated and unaffordable federal bureaucracy is ended in the long run? Now, think tanks function as shadow farm teams for the party out of power. Will there also be a constellation of private companies that get government contracts for carrying out government functions at the federal and state levels?
Or maybe a Democratic president would be desperate enough to maintain social spending to resort to this. Democrats would find that system a more direct--and more efficient--means of funding supporters than the indirect model of the so-called non-partisan civil service bureaucracy that tends to back the people who fund their jobs more enthusiastically.
This new model would extend to foreign policy. George Friedman wrote about these changes:
Consider foreign policy, an area that is the central responsibility of the federal government. As we have seen, the three prior institutional cycles emerged from war. The fourth one is now starting to emerge from both a war and a massive geopolitical shift. The war is the one that began on September 11, 2001. But the critical thing to remember is that since 2001 the United States has been in a constant state of war, even if not on the scale of World War II or the Civil War. But it is a war that has lasted far longer than any other in American history. And the inability of the government to frame the war in such a way that it might be won, the institutions of the United States revealed their fundamental weaknesses. War requires a simplification, an understanding of a desired end, clarity on strategy, and allocation of resources appropriate to both. The government proved incapable of the clarity needed for a war because it could not simplify. The complexity of the government was translated into a complicated plan for the war, and the complexity trapped the warriors in a confusion that undermined their mission. [The geopolitical shift was the collapse of the USSR.] ...
Except for Desert Storm, the United States has failed to win a war since World War II. Successful empires use as little military force as possible, depending on the regional tensions between nations to maintain their interests.
I have problems with his statement on America's failure to win since World War II. But I'll let that go for now.
The key point is the inability of the government to focus on winning wars by mobilizing state assets, and the question of whether the government structure is the problem. I've touched on that as I struggled to see how America can afford to sustain a long struggle against jihadi terrorism:
I have come to more clearly agree with the idea that we need to minimize our effort. I was long against the idea that we could go in massively to Iraq or Afghanistan and expect results before the burden of that large sacrifice wore away our resolve to win. A slow win you can actually achieve is better than futilely trying for a quick win that can't be sustained. And at home I rejected calls for a needless draft or massive tax increases as just a means to get Americans tired of the Long War in order to admit defeat.
In posts here, here, here, and here I've addressed a role that defends America's position in the world affordably without routinely applying massive force in response to threats. Indeed, pre-blog just after 9/11 I wrote about pacing ourselves for a long struggle (longer than I anticipated, I admit).
This is difficult to accept. The Civil War and World War II set the template of massive mobilization efforts to decisively defeat an enemy that threatens our security at home. World War II especially established that "ideal" military response.
The Cold War forced America to operate in an era without the shield of friends that could contain a threat abroad until America could mobilize massively and intervene decisively, if necessary. The collapse of the USSR changed things massively again and we need to adapt.
My posts on the Global Troubles outlook are perhaps the most on point about coping with military threats over long periods without exhausting ourselves with big (and futile) efforts, with the earlier posts addressing the benefits of defending the international system we built and an early guess at the big picture of that system developing.
A need to more affordably achieve foreign policy objectives could force America to further reduce its military and rely on other states as well as non-state actors to be the pointy end of the foreign policy stick. The non-state actors could be contracted for the period of time needed to achieve the result without creating a new bureaucracy that endures beyond its mission. Which is a feature of our dying big government model.
When nation-states no longer have the monopoly on the use of world-altering power and when states cannot control the threats from disease and terrorism that gestate inside their borders, we must not be hobbled by being chained to the capitals of the world.
The Treaty of Wesphalia has taken another and perhaps a decisive hit by our action. Not that national governments are irrelevant. They are still easily the major players. But when small groups can--possibly with the aid of nations--threaten to kill hundreds of thousands of us, national borders can no longer restrain our military or diplomatic actions.
I don't know if the State Department changes I noted lasted. But even a moment in time change could foreshadow eventual lasting change and significance.
Will America's foreign policy implementation follow this model with a greater revival of non-state military and coercive power to supplement a scaled-back American government national security infrastructure?
After reading Thomson's book and really thinking about how recently we ended pirate kingdoms, privateering, armed companies, private mercenary units, and cross-border recruiting of troops and officers on a large scale, the idea of revived private warfare by the West despite our laws and international system seems far more likely to me than it did when I speculated on that possible future. (And I looked to recruiting globally, too.)
There are glimmers of the organization to sustain such a privatized military power and the demand for these services (and here's one that is free).
Will civil war in Russia accelerate that trend?
Does the United Nations last as the stronghold of state dominance in its current form? I was on that long ago (in the pre-Blogger form, so scroll down to "Rules of Engagement" (Posted August 19, 2003):
In essence, the global community's rules of engagement are a crock. We cannot count on the international community to deal with genocidal and dangerous regimes. Did we not try this route with one of the more egregious violators of the world's peace and prosperity when we begged the UN to let us deal with Saddam's defiance of the UN?
We need a new international organization of willing members who will fight with us. It doesn't even need to be a formal organization that explicitly abandons the UN. The UN should not, however, have a political role that limits our ability to defend our people in the absence of international resolve to protect our people. The UN should be restricted to UNESCO and WHO and the like.
We need rules of engagement that let us shoot the SOBs when we recognize them—not when they open fire. We're talking nukes here one day, people. The UN is not nearly enough.
If states are demoted in practice, the basis of the UN is undermined. It can't possibly last in its current bureaucratic bloat form for long under those conditions.
If America is lucky enough, America may be able to go back to the relative safety of broad oceans and overseas allies buying America time to mobilize and gather forces. Add in the ability to use hired temporary allies and we have a new era arising from the unaffordable wreckage of our current national and international systems.
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
