If we can imagine it in "Halo Reach," can we build it now? And if not now, when can we?

Rob Talbert, vlogging for Machinima.com, posts a YouTube review of Bungie Studios' new Xbox game, "Halo Reach."  At about 1:32 on the video, Talbert says that his favorite new features in "HR" include new tools for the avatar warriors, including jet packs, active camo[uflage], armor that repels incoming fire, and a hologram, that lets the player "release a copy of yourself that enemies will shoot at." That is to say, a decoy.

OK, it's a game, but as we know, imagination has to precede creation.  And some of these tech ideas have been floating around for decades, as the website Technovelgy , to name one, lovingly chronicles--or as any gamer knows.

So how close are we to developing such tools in real life--in real combat?  If we could, it would save some lives.

I am sure that the Pentagon's DARPA and JIEDDO  and other agencies have considered all these ideas at one time or another--and maybe it's hard at work on some or all of them--but maybe DARPA, JIEDDO, et al. needs some new funding, or a push.  

The motto of JIEDDO is aut inveniam, aut faciam, words attributed to Hannibal: "I shall either find a way, or make one."

If the US defense establishment had few more Billy Mitchells, Leslie Groves, and Hyman Rickovers--or if it properly empowered those defense visionaries that we might already have on the job--we could surely turn some of these flights of fancy into practical defense systems.

So the question from our troops in the field is, "When?"

"Stinting on Defense"

Max Boot's constructive piece for Commentary magazine.   As he asks:


What’s going on here? Is there an assumption in the administration that highway-building jobs are good but weapon-building jobs are bad? It’s hard to figure out any other explanation for this loopy imbalance — billions more for make-work projects while stinting on defense projects that are actually needed.

"US eyes preemptive cyber strategy" -- a new debate begins

Writing in The Washington Post this morning, Ellen Nakashima reviews the evolving debate over cyber-security: Specifically, is it OK to pre-empt a gathering threat.  Indeed, strategists are going to have to grapple with all the precedents, from the canon of international law to the Cold War to the Iraq War:


The Pentagon has standing rules of engagement for network defense, such as the right of self-defense. But the line between self-defense and offensive action can be difficult to discern.


"This is a big, big problem," said one former intelligence official who noted that it took years to develop nuclear deterrence doctrine. "We are just at the beginning of figuring this out."

"The China Challenge"

Peter Brookes of Heritage, writing in today's New York Post.

Iranian escalation in historical and cultural context

Reuters reports that Iran has unveiled a whole new generation of non-nuclear (at least so far) weapons: 

On a stage in front of military officials, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled a sheet away from the aircraft, called the Karrar, which Iran says is its first long-range drone.  With the United States and Israel saying they do not rule out a military strike to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic has showed off new mini-submarines, a surface-to-surface missile and announced plans to launch high altitude satellites over the next three years.

So what does this mean?   This author claims no special insight into Iranian plans--although I have never believed that Iran is guided by some sort of "death cult."  Yes, there's a strong martyrdom theme running through Shia Islam--written about by the eminent critic Matthew Arnold back in 1871--but if the Iranians, or at least their leaders, all wished to be dead, they could have done that by now.   In history, there have been precious few genuinely suicidal regimes.

Indeed, I recall hearing former CIA director James Woolsey saying, "The Iranians invented chess."  The Persians have had a continuous culture for 3000 years--they have obviously mastered the art of survival, in all its dimensions.   The question now is how far they will go with their skills--and what will they do with them.  

To me, the position of the Iranians today is somewhat like that the Chinese.  They know that in past millennia, their ancestors were at the top of the world "league tables," and they know that something went terribly wrong for them within the past 500 years or so.  So as part of their plan for moving ahead, they are looking to their own roots, as a way of affirming their identity, even as they prepare to take on a new identity of rapidly developing nation.

Thus the Chinese look to Confucianism, while the Iranians to Islam.  (The Shah of Iran made the mistake of trying to go back all the way to the ancient Achaemenids, which was too far back--and seemed to dismiss Islam.  The ayatollahs got the last word.)  

As the Englishman Edmund Burke said, the task of the statesman is to channel the tides of change through the canals of custom.  So while Confucius and Mohammed never heard of electricity, their professed spiritual descendants today are happily explaining to their subjects that they, the leaders, are doing the work that Confucius or Mohammed would want them to.  

The point here is not to get bogged down in a theological or cultural debate--instead the point is to show that the Chinese and the Iranians believe it is perfectly possible to be retro in politics and culture and cutting edge on science and technology.    They don't seem to need, or want, our democracy and pluralism--only our technology.   If they get that, one way or another, or if they invent their own, then we will have to deal with them on a military plane--ideology, theirs and ours, will be subordinated.  

And in fact, there's plenty of science and technology for Muslims to look back to--even if the US doesn't volunteer NASA for the cause of advancing Muslim self-esteem.   The Islam of the 13th century before, when Islam led the world--or at least led Europe--in science and understanding.

So we're on notice--there's no rule that says that Islam has to lag behind the West.   It didn't lag in the past, and it might not lag in the future.  American, and European, and Israeli security, based on military supremacy, is no given.

In fact, we were warned about the possibility of Muslim military catch-up many decades ago.   Hillaire Belloc, a British politician and writer, controversial to this day, had written some doggerel in 1898 about the true source of Western superiority over colonialized peoples in his era: "Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not."  In other words, a century or more ago, we had the power of shock and awe.   We had weapons--the machine gun, the airplane, the steamboat--that made resistance to the West futile.   These words are not repeated to defend colonialism, merely to note that at that time, the West could vanquish any non-Western foe--except, of course, for rapidly modernizing Japan, which blazed the trail on what be called nostalgic modernization, the trail that the Chinese and Iranians seem to be following today.

Yet 40 years later after he wrote about the Maxim Gun, Belloc could see that Muslims would not be so militarily vulnerable and easy to defeat as they had been at Omdurman.  As Belloc observed in 1938:

There is nothing in the Mohammedan civilization itself which is  hostile to the development of scientific knowledge or of mechanical aptitude. I have seen some good artillery work in the hands of Mohammedan students of that arm; I have seen some of the best driving and maintenance of mechanical road transport conducted by Mohammedans. There is nothing inherent to Mohammedanism to make it incapable of modern science and modern war. Indeed the matter is not worth discussing. It should be self-evident to anyone who has seen the Mohammedan culture at work. That culture happens to have fallen back in material applications; there is no  reason whatever why it should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it--whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it.



In other words, Bellow was saying, the Muslims could learn Western wars of war.   With that knowledge, plus, in Belloc's view, their more intense faith, they would be formidable on the battlefield.   One needn't be a fan of Belloc the man--he was an anti-Semite, for example--to still acknowledge that he was on to something here.  

So more than 70 years ago, Belloc--no fan at all of Islam, either--warned the West against "The recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing."  

Well, here we are, and Islam has recrudesced.  Islamic radicalism is emerging in new places, such as Kenya, where  support for Al Shabab is soaring, The Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan reports.  What's our counter to this?  




Perhaps the time has come to admit that our efforts at promoting democracy and pluralism in the Muslim world are showing mixed results, at best.   Democracy and pluralism are wonderful things, but it might be the case, sadly, that our valiant and courageous military efforts notwithstanding, the plan of changing them seems to have either little effect or it provokes an outright backlash.    



For the last decade or so, the dominant view has been that the US can prevail against jihadism by public diplomacy and nation-building--we can call that Plan A.   But as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, it seems that a more pessimistic Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington-type vision is needed for the future, at least as a failsafe.  Maybe they don't hate us because we're free, or because they're not free--they just hate us.   A sobering thought, perhaps, but thinking is always better when it's sober.   

So it seems clear that we need a Plan B, which is unchallengeable military strength--strength that creates a differential equivalent to the Maxim Gun.   

But first we need to take the measure of Iran as a potential military adversary.  Starting with all those new weapons they are unveiling.  Can we counter them on likely battlefields, or not?   Let's put that ahead of the question of whether or not we can convince them to like us. 

Prevail or not.  Survive or not.  Those are the questions that Belloc would be asking--and so should we.  

Is America still the Arsenal of Democracy? Or is it something less? Two columnists, one on the right, one on the left, weigh in.

With Labor Day coming up, we might give some thought, as well as thanks, to those workers who made the US the "arsenal of democracy," as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it in his speech of December 29, 1940.   It was that industrial strength, just as much as our soldiers and sailors, that enabled us to win a victory and save the world.   As FDR said, nearly 70 years ago:


Guns, planes, ships and many other things have to be built in the factories and the arsenals of America. They have to be produced by workers and managers and engineers with the aid of machines which in turn have to be built by hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the land. In this great work there has been splendid cooperation between the government and industry and labor. And I am very thankful.


American industrial genius, unmatched throughout all the world in the solution of production problems, has been called upon to bring its resources and its talents into action. Manufacturers of watches, of farm implements, of Linotypes and cash registers and automobiles, and sewing machines and lawn mowers and locomotives, are now making fuses and bomb packing crates and telescope mounts and shells and pistols and tanks.


But all of our present efforts are not enough. We must have more ships, more guns, more planes -- more of everything. And this can be accomplished only if we discard the notion of "business as usual." This job cannot be done merely by superimposing on the existing productive facilities the added requirements of the nation for defense. Our defense efforts must not be blocked by those who fear the future consequences of surplus plant capacity. The possible consequences of failure of our defense efforts now are much more to be feared. And after the present needs of our defense are past, a proper handling of the country's peacetime needs will require all of the new productive capacity, if not still more. No pessimistic policy about the future of America shall delay the immediate expansion of those industries essential to defense. We need them.


And so, Roosevelt concluded in this "fireside chat," America must become "the great arsenal of democracy."  A memorable phrase, in and of itself, but also a useful phrase, because threats to our safety and freedom are omnipresent, then and now.

In this slideshow from Life magazine, we get a sense of the scale of industrial mobilization that the US achieved. (And, by the way, unemployment plummeted, during the war--it's possible to argue about the role of Keynesianism in getting us out of the Depression, but it's not possible to argue that military mobilization achieved that goal during the war.)

With all that in mind, we might consider two columns this morning, written by two thoughtful individuals of very different political persuasions, who nonetheless seem to come together around the idea that America should get back to making real tangible things.   But there are some hurdles along the way.

Michael Barone asks in The Washington Examiner, what has happened to the capacity of the federal government to do anything?   He reminds us that the Pentagon was built in 15 months, and LaGuardia Airport built in 25 months.  So why has it gotten to the point today, Barone continues, that the government can't even spend the stimulus money, and when it spends it, the money seems to disappear into a fog of lawyers and agitators?  Yes, we need environmental protections, but protecting the environment is not the same as using environment regulation as an excuse to block everything.

Some new thinking is needed here--unfortunately the Obama administration did not undertake such thinking, asking, for example, if every new project needs to undergo many years of environmental cogitation and litigation, before being, likely as not, struck down by some judge.

Barone is a conservative, but he is also an admirer of FDR, he still retains the sense that sometimes new thinking is needed to confront new problems, such as economic hardship.  And Barone is also a hawk, so he understands the value of military technology.  Finally, he is a native of Detroit, born in the 40s, so he remembers what Detroit was like in its industrial heyday, when America could tackle big projects.

Some might say that it's hopeless to think about building big things-that we are permanently entangled in our mess, that there's no way out.  Others might say that we shouldn't even attempt big things, because we can't be trusted--can't be trusted to safeguard the environment, can't be trusted with our power around the world.   Meanwhile, others would say that any sort of governmental activism is a threat to liberty--an argument that sometimes seems to devolve into the argument that governmental incompetence is to be celebrated, because it discredits the idea of collective action.  To which our greatest leaders, across the centuries, left and right, have said: "Nonsense.  We can do it we want to.  After all, we are Americans.  We can win this war.  We can go to the moon.  We can build the canals and railroads and interstates and national parks that we need."

Another column, by Harold Meyerson, appearing in The Washington Post, takes up some related themes.  Meyerson's argument is that America needs to revive manufacturing--a theme he has emphasized for years.   He pitches his argument mostly by Democrats, telling them that if they want an economic plan that actually creates jobs and builds things--as opposed to bailing out banks--they will help get the unemployed back to work, help rebuild our economic competitiveness, and reignite economic growth.  Which is to say, Republicans, too, might find some of these proposals interesting.    As Meyerson puts it:


If the Democrats focused on boosting manufacturing, with a corollary upgrade to our infrastructure, they'd tap into the only area in which the public wants a more activist government. . . .

Several recent polls have called the Democrats' attention to what should have been obvious to them: That helping America regain its industrial preeminence is one government activity that wins support across the board. One recent survey by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman found 78 percent support for having a "national manufacturing strategy," while 92 percent said they supported infrastructure improvements using only American-made materials. Another survey from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg found 52 percent of respondents preferred government investment "in the future," while just 42 percent favored the alternative course of large spending cuts.

The appeal of bolstering manufacturing and upgrading infrastructure cuts across lines of race, gender and class. Even a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh would have trouble characterizing them, as he did health-care reform, as "reparations." Just as important, the public is right. Every bit of economic news confirms its apprehensions that by off-shoring our manufacturing, we have not only eliminated millions of good-paying jobs but we have also rendered ourselves incapable of regaining our economic health. The two major economies that are booming amidst the global bust are China's and Germany's -- that is, the two major economies most oriented to manufacturing. In the month since I first noted this in a column, China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy, and German exports have continued to soar. If China and Germany's growth rates for their second quarter are annualized, they come to 10 percent and 9 percent, respectively.

Meyerson, neo-New Dealer that he seems to be, is too smart to fall into the trap of talking only about "green jobs."  Green jobs are nice, but in the current crisis, a relative handful of green jobs are no substitute for what's needed--many millions of jobs, period.   We can't let the idea of green jobs, meritorious as they might be, get in the way of re-employing the country.  Doing something useful, such as building airports and power stations.

No doubt Barone and Meyerson supported different candidates in 2008, and probably will in 2010, too. But down the road somewhere, who knows, they might converge on a common re-industrialization platform.   And if both parties took up the challenge of hammering out that platform, bringing their respective views to the common problem of strengthening America--starting, perhaps, with its military and infrastructure, and then not stopping there--that would be a good thing.

Such an agreement on a core agenda would bring us hope and confidence that by working together, we can, indeed, solve our national problems.

"China is Crushing the U.S. In This Economic War"

"China is Crushing the U.S. In This Economic War" -- that's the headline atop Sy Harding's provocative but sobering post in The Business Insider:

Over the last ten years China’s economy has surged past those of Canada, Spain, Brazil, Italy, France, and Germany, and is expected to pass Japan this year, to become the 2nd largest economy in the world, behind the U.S. 

Whether it’s manufacturing efficiency, high-speed rail-line technology, nuclear power plant construction, clean air energy technology, education, China is making impressive global inroads, even in areas where the U.S. still has significant dominance. Much of it has to do with China’s massive population, about which the U.S. can do nothing.

As Harding further observes, the Chinese have been making these strides while the US has devolved into endless partisan acrimony.   

But there's another dimension, too--and that's the military dimension.    As John Pomfret wrote in The Washington Post in June,  it's not hard to find evidence of deep suspicion of, and hostility to, America in the senior ranks of the Chinese military. Pomfret cited the words of 


Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army:

Everything, Guan said, that is going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China. Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the United States. Guan accused the United States of being a "hegemon" and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China's nemesis, Taiwan -- Guan said these prove that the United States views China as an enemy.

It's not hard to draw some ominous conclusions from that outburst.  

We might note that more than a century ago, Japan started to develop according to the slogan, 


Fukoku kyōhei,  富国強兵 which means, "enrich the country, strengthen the military."  We all know what happened in the first half of the 20th century.  But interestingly, the phrase originally comes from China.  And it certainly appears that the Chinese have reimported their slogan.  So we are seeing "enrich the country, strengthen the military," with Chinese characteristics.  

What's needed is the same thing for the US: "enrich the country, AND strengthen the military."