You find a lack of balance in my statements?
Allow me to offer my world view with respect to American national interests. I am not asking for your approval. I am simply providing you what I believe to be true after a lifetime of being involved in more than just the periphery of these issues.
We are citizens of a world-wide empire. Unlike Rome, it is based more upon the reach of our trade and influence rather than the boots of our soldiers. Because of size alone, there are no exact historical precedents, but the Byzantine Empire between 500-1000AD or perhaps Venice of the late Middle Ages offer some clues. That commercial empire, and hence the prosperity of our people, depends upon the unhindered access to international markets. Those markets have been made more secure over the last two centuries by agreements, treaties, alliances, and the periodic use of military power.
Generally, the leadership of our country has recognized the fundamental nature of our imperial economy for most of the existence of our nation. After all, the Monroe Doctrine was formed in 1823. While defensive in nature by opposing European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere, it in effect carved out two continents of areas of critical American national interests - at the beginning of the 19th century less than forty years after ratification of our constitution. Our merchant shipping, banking, and vast natural resources coupled with periodic tension with Britain and France, and wars with Mexico and more importantly Spain before the end of that century solidified that international economic foundation.
Since then we have had periodic bouts of isolationism. The current "America First" movement is merely the latest example of imitating an ostrich in a sandbox. During the two previous episodes we were rudely yanked back to reality at great cost in the lives of our people and our treasury. The conclusion of those wars left the empire more powerful and wielding ever more influence. It is both a role and a stage from which we can not exit without doing great harm to the well being of our citizens, and now, a vast number of people in the world who have come to share our values. and economic prosperity.
So how do we maintain this worldwide empire to the benefit of this large slice of physical territory and peoples?
Foremost, we have a worldwide web of mutually beneficial international trade. Because that international exchange of goods it is not exploitive like traditional empires, it has tended to create a web of mutually supportive allies representing all sorts of regimes ranging from Arab potentates, sophisticated Europeans, and Chinese businessmen. Tellingly, they include former enemies who are now prosperous allies.
We have a military with broad international reach capable of physically protecting those trade routes and relationships. Because of our wealth, that military costs only 3% of the nation's GDP (somewhat paltry for such a diabolical, vast, and powerful military industrial complex).
During World War II we finally realized the importance of a formal intelligence gathering capability. The wartime OSS, largely emulating Great Britain's SIS, became the CIA. It remains primarily just that - an intelligence gathering organization. It does that through technical means and through a worldwide network of paid informants called agents who are managed by CIA operatives called case officers. The agency does have the capability for direct action and influence operations, but that is minor compared to is primary mission.
The notion that a president can consistently and effectively influence the course of international events through the agency is largely the creation of novelists and Hollywood. That doesn't mean these operations haven't been attempted periodically, the Bay of Pigs and the fall of the Allende government, are two of the mot notable. The solidification of Castro's rule and the rise of Pinochet serve to illustrate the folly of most such initiatives.
I frankly find the notion that there is or was some way to bribe the Russians into good behavior as laughable.
Putin will claim to have "won" regardless of the outcome of this war. One of the advantages of dictatorships. But militarily, strategically, and politically he has already pretty much lost this war. He has destroyed two and a half decades committed to building a modern Russian military. His modernized mechanized forces are twisted heaps of burnt metal on the Ukrainian Steppe. His troops are resorting to using T54/55 and T62 tanks that their grandfathers used along the Fulda Gap. His air force can't even fly over Ukrainian territory. The Baltic has gone from being a contested Russian outlet to the sea to a NATO lake due to the addition of Finland and pending addition of Sweden. Germany has deployed a full mechanized brigade to the Baltics and Finland is already hosting US aircraft and technical intelligence gathering assets. Kaliningrad has become an enclave in the middle of NATO. He was worried about Ukraine joining NATO, but now, because of Finland he has added over 1300 km of shared NATO border with NATO troops now within marching distance of St. Petersburg. What a strategic genius. And not a single American has fired a round in anger.
This war will indeed end in negotiations. Those will begin in earnest when one side believes the effort is no longer worth the cost in treasure, lives, and strategic position. If NATO stays the course, I remain confident that will be Russia that blinks first. Certainly Ukraine, fighting for its right to exist, has displayed a tenacity that Russian troops will never have.
Finally, for all the reasons I listed above, I find this notion of the existence of some malevolent organized military industrial complex nonsensical. If you want to see organized power affecting our political and budgetary decisions, you need go no farther than the Social Security and Medicare Bureaucracies. Those agencies control nearly 20% of our GDP.
Do presidents make the wrong choices with respect to the use of military force? Absolutely. But that is hardly the fault of the soldiers and materiel manufacturers tasked with trying to carry out those orders. For instance, no governmental entity was more resistant to the invasion of Iraq than was the US Army. Shinseki became a pariah among the Rumsfeld crowd far voicing his doubts in senate testimony (I was sitting directly behind him).
And after competing against Boeing, GD, and Lockheed Martin as a fairly senior appointed officer in Northrop Grumman for more than a decade, I can't tell you how ridiculous it sounds that we would all go into some dark room and plot a war.
