US deaths in Niger (and future deaths) could have been prevented.

Dear (Washington Post) Editor,

The three troubling front page stories (Saturday Nov. 4, 2017) on “Africa/ISIS”, “climate change”, and “migrant” issues were each forecast in President Carter’s 1980 Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  It presaged the consequences of ignoring world hunger and poverty in terms of future “international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental hazards”, “refugees” and other problems.   It stated, ”Calculable or not…this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”  

The report concluded “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”     

Your editorial the same day titled “After Niger, a needed debate” called for “updating the legal authorization for U.S. military action against terrorist groups”, the “AUMF”.  This suggestion ignores the wisdom of most counter-terrorism experts who believe that military force alone cannot defeat this metalizing violent extremist threat.  What could make a difference is the “long-neglected business” of sustainable development.   Appropriating funds to meet the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would be more effective than any “AUMF”.

Carter’s Commission understood this back then: “promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

The SDG’s are our best hope.   This may not be “Constitutional” but it is fundamentally wise.

China overtakes US?

It’s official (according to Time, Nov 13, 2017)!  China’s “state capitalist system is better equipped and perhaps even more sustainable than the American model”. 

It should have been obvious from the start (it was to some) that the US capitalist system's victory over the Soviet’s system would be final.  Theirs was only the first to fail.  And, even if China’s system had not (yet?) surpassed the US system, our debt ridden system was doomed due to multiple structure flaws.  It was a system without fundamental principles like the ‘Laws of nature and Nature's God’.   The same flaws contained in the engineering or our Constitution. 

First, it is not possible for any national economy to perpetually dominate a global capitalist system.  Global economic competition breeds a winner but also many losers in a race to the lowest profit margins.  Any economic system that prioritizes profit over people and governments that lack any enforceable global controls leaves all national contenders at the whims of the lowest denominators; human rights protections such as health care, education, fair wages and environmental costs.

Eventually, no global capitalist system is sustainable environmentally without a global political system that effectively puts the protection of natural resources and human rights (justice) above the power of individual nation states and global corporations.  These institutions follow their own short term self-interests with zero non-violent enforceable restraints.

Yes.  Our system “dominated the international system since the end of WWII”.  But at what price?  Our dependence on foreign oil was the primary driver of US foreign and military policy that enriched and protected repressive oil rich regimes that first yielded Al Qaeda and then ISIS.  Before that it was our policies that prioritized US corporate interests throughout Latin America and Asia.  We minimized walking-our-talk regarding high minded human rights values and prioritized those who benefited most from our economic system (most Americans and particularly the top 1%).  From that same focus we also got the Vietnam War, our ‘war on drugs’, and a combative political culture each continuing to divide, criminalize, disable, and kill Americans.

China remained relatively ‘isolated’ during these decades of US decadence, dominance, and international military adventurism (US military bases remain in well over 100 nations).  Now China is gallivanting around the world making friends in every hamlet and nation (many hostile or ambivalent to US interests) offering development projects and jobs, jobs, jobs -- improvements in lives of millions of impoverished world citizens that will likely endear them and their national government  to the Chinese model - and perhaps China’s future policy choices that will continue to diminish US power and self-interest in our increasingly interdependent world.   China is even adopting the wisdom of investing in renewable energies and environmental protections while US policy changes slide backward.

It didn’t have to be this way.  American’s worship of ‘national sovereignty’ and prioritization of military power over moral power over the past few decades blinded us to this inevitable outcome.  As China grows in both economic, military and global political power it will be increasingly difficult to the US to peacefully negotiate any other alternatives.   Alternatives do exist but they are virtually invisible to most Americans and US policy makers due to our preconceived notions/beliefs about the supremacy of our U.S. Constitution and the flawed systems and structures it maintains. 

You want examples?  Your security, and thus freedoms, would be gravely at risk if you chose to fly in an airplane, cross a bridge, live in a high-rise, use a doctor, or adopt a diet that had not been engineered based on the fundamental principles inherent in ‘laws of nature’.   Americans have increasingly lost their trust in government, not because government is inherently bad.  It’s just increasing clear that it cannot be trusted to protect both our freedoms and our security.  And the primary reason for this is not corrupt or greedy politicians.  It’s because our current government system and it’s structures are based on a flawed concept that ‘we the people’ have codified into all of our laws.  That flawed concept being that unnatural concept of ‘independence’.   In a nutshell, independent nations and independent agencies cannot deal effectively with globally interdependent problems.   The threats we face from WMD proliferation, cyber fueled extremist ideologies, refugees, pandemics, climate change, artificial intelligence, or a global recession are immune to independent actions.  If you monitor C-span and listen to the experts offering the best solutions to these threats you will hear several words repeatedly; “holistic”, “comprehensive”, “whole-of-government”, “collective”, “resilience”.   The first four are in reference to the fundamental need to address each problem as a species.  The last word is used for two reasons.  First, those who are offering the solutions know (consciously or unconsciously) that the first four words will be ignored by all policy makers.  Second, some of the catastrophic threats that cannot be prevented, even with a collective investment of effort and resources, will require a response that will most likely go beyond most of the artificial political borders we have drawn and wrapped our local, state, and national laws around  (earthquakes, super volcanos, asteroids, accidental wars, genocides, and eventually AI).  

It may be possible to produce an even more sustainable, secure and prosperous future system, but it would require our nation finally putting into practice the fundamental principles our founding fathers held to be ‘self-evident’ truths in our Declaration of Independence.  The concept supported by every major world religion, that all people are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.  And finally adopting the list of rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be the best place to start.  Given that codifying these rights in any global system and structures of government, the next best option we have is adequately funding the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030 that were adopted by most of the world’s nations two years ago.

There is an estimated $34 trillion anonymously hidden in off shore accounts by kleptocratic rulers, drug lords, and capitalists avoiding taxes who benefited handsomely from the lawless global capitalist system.  Seizing and freezing a large portion of these assets would mean governments would not need to increase taxes to achieve these vital global goals.   US leadership on this issue before we lose any more global economic leverage would be transformational in investing in the prevention of most of the threats we now face, and better enable us to address the threats even the best governments cannot prevent.

In essence, we need to reform our Constitution.  No new Amendments would be needed but expanding the rights protected under our current Constitution to all people, would be a good start.  This was the promise offered by our Declaration of Independence and pledged by every American who has ever stood before our flag and said the words “Liberty and justice for all” with their hands over their solumn heart.  

The one other term often touted by high minded policy makers to justify the righteousness of their end goal is our belief in the “rule of law”.  It’s a profound idea that is applied nowhere in our foreign policy.  I believe it to be a fundamental principle of any legitimate government ‘of, for, and by the people’.  

Engineering a government should be no different than engineering a bridge.  Words and phrases should mean something specific.  Supreme Court Justice Kennedy was once asked what was needed for the rule of law to be effective.  He said three elements.  First the laws needed to be made and enforced by a democratic process. But democracy by itself is too easily abused. Second, the laws must be enforced equally on all…no one is above the law.  Last, the laws focus must be the protection of human rights. Rights that we have regardless of our skin color, religion, place of birth….  Anyone who argues differently is arguing for an unsustainable government system and structure.   China’s new economic system ignores two of these three elements. 

Perhaps its time we offered the world what we have always said we valued.  A democratic system enforcing liberty and justice for all within the spirit of “Nature’s God”.