Spending For Self Destruction

DONALD TRUMP does not like diplomacy, and does not believe in diplomacy. Or so one must assume, since the state department building remains half empty, key ambassadorships remain unfilled, and the foreign service diplomatic core has declined precipitously, in funding and personnel, during the two years of the Trump presidency. Donald Trump is a deal maker, and much prefers the hard roughness of give and take to the subtle nuances of diplomatic discussions and negotiations. Meanwhile trump's budget, which is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill, includes a massive increase in military spending, massive increases in spending on redundant weapons systems, cuts in social programs, cuts in the diplomatic corps. Forty years ago Jesse Jackson pointed out that it does little good to upgrade the nation's defense capabilities if there is no nation left to defend. Jackson's warning has a great deal of agreement among high ranking military personnel. With ten thousand Americans celebrating their sixty fifth birthday every day, drastic cuts to Medicare and education might not be the best way to justify enormously enhanced national defense. What, exactly, will we be defending, if we don not support our old and our young? A retired member of the army general staff likened the situation to a medical analogy. Using the military, he said, is much like conducting surgery on a sick patient; its a last resort. Before resorting to military action, risking and costing the lives of untold numbers of Americans and others, the proper approach is to try to resolve disputes through negotiation and communication, through diplomacy. Similarly, before resorting to surgery, proper medical practices consists of trying to maintain or restore proper health through a combination of diet, healthy life style, and whatever medicine is deemed necessary. Cutting open the human body, like using military weaponry in aggression, is the last, least desirable resort. Why invest more money in weaponry, then, without investing at least an equal measure of resources in preventative diplomacy? This makes so much sense that it seems self evident, that nobody could possibly argue that a strong diplomatic establishment is vital to national security, every bit as much as a strong military. It is frightening that we now hive in office a president to whom this needs to be explained, and one who seems unlikely to grasp it even when presented with a clear and detailed explanation. It is noteworthy that the people most resistant to, most reluctant to advance armed conflict as a means of conducting foreign policy are military people. Military people, especially career military people, are inevitably the most repulsed by the thought of going to war, because they understand the implications of war better than non military people who have never experienced it. Among the military are the strongest supporters of the diplomatic approach. President Eisenhower saw more war and was more strongly opposed to the use of force in implementing national policy than any president in modern times. He understand the consequences of war better than any other president Since U.S. Grant, who was himself horrified by war as an instrument of political policy. We have chosen as our president a person entirely unfamiliar with both diplomacy and war, a person whose expertise lies in high rolling, big money calculations and gambles on investment and return. For the primary formulator of national policy to be someone who is far more devoted to preparing for war than preserving peace is well beyond merely alarming.