<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait7jan07,0,6771334,print.story>
The Los Angeles Times
JONATHAN CHAIT
Hey, It Worked for the Romans
Listen up, foreign nations: Meet Uncle Sam's demand for tribute or he'll
pay you a little visit.
January 7, 2005
The Bush administration's foreign policy is centered around fighting a
highly expensive counterinsurgency in Iraq. The administration's domestic
policy is centered around driving federal tax revenues to ever-lower levels.
Some observers say there's an unsolvable contradiction here. I say those
people just aren't thinking creatively enough. There's a simple, logical
way to reconcile President Bush's foreign and domestic policies: Start
demanding tribute from foreign countries.
In the old days, before the rise of fuzzy-minded liberal
internationalists, it was considered utterly normal for powerful states to
force their weaker neighbors to hand over money or material goods as a
price for avoiding military punishment. Although unfair, it was a
reasonably effective method for preventing wars.
Rather than go through the full invade-kill-burn-plunder cycle, which took
a lot out of invader and invadee alike, both sides found it easier and more
humane to simply skip straight ahead to the last stage. It worked for the
Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans and the various peoples fortunate
enough to share borders with them.
Implementing the policy would be quite simple. We would inform heads of
militarily vulnerable states that if they did not wish to have their regime
changed - or, at least, to have large chunks of it blown to smithereens -
they had better make an annual contribution to the U.S. Treasury. I
envision receiving sums more than sufficient to cover our budget deficit.
Sure, this may strain diplomatic relations. But most of the world hates us
anyway. How much worse can it get? If we're going to be an international
pariah, we might as well enjoy some benefit from it.
Some might object that demanding tribute is a hoary, barbaric practice
long ago repudiated by civilized countries. Well, sure, but so is torturing
enemy combatants, or those suspected of being enemy combatants, or those
merely living in the same general vicinity as enemy combatants. The
administration understands that, if we're going to win the war on terror,
we can't allow our hands to be tied by the quaint and obsolete requirements
of the so-called civilized world. The war isn't going to pay for itself,
you know.
Yes, you say, but shouldn't we American taxpayers have to bear the burden
of paying for our own wars? That sentiment would seem at first blush to
have a certain earnest pre-Sept. 11 logic to it. But it has proved
decisively unable to penetrate the brains of our governing party or its
intellectual courtiers.
In the last three months, for instance, the conservative Weekly Standard
has published articles urging the White House to, variously, foment regime
change in North Korea, bomb nuclear sites in Iran, attack Syria and begin
confronting China. These demands for a more aggressive military posture
come at a time when the Pentagon is scrambling to meet demands to cut its
budget, and when the general in charge of the Army Reserve complains in a
memo that overuse threatens to turn the Reserve into a "broken force."
The Weekly Standard is, of course, the same magazine that endorsed every
Bush tax cut, and has published novel defenses of the administration's
high-spending, low-taxing policies. (The publication calls it "big
government conservatism.") The Standard and other Republican hawks betray
not even the faintest glimmer of awareness of tension between their foreign
and domestic policies.
Indeed, all the intellectual energy on the right is directed toward
deepening the contradiction. When not pushing for new military actions
around the globe, neoconservatives like Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp have
urged Bush to pile on additional trillions in debt by diverting tax dollars
into Social Security private accounts without any offsetting benefit cuts.
Reason has failed. It's time to think outside the box. (Or, in this case,
the century.) Can a return to tribute actually happen? I don't see why not.
The particular genius of the conservative movement has been to make the
unthinkable thinkable. A few decades ago, ideas like supply-side economics
and privatizing Social Security were confined to the lunatic fringe. Today
they're conventional wisdom within the GOP.
I'm not optimistic enough to believe that the U.S. government can begin
demanding tribute tomorrow. The idea has to incubate for a while. I propose
a well-placed Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal, followed by a
conference at the American Enterprise Institute ("Paying Tribute to
Tribute"), followed by a resolution in Congress (is Oklahoma Sen. Tom
Coburn interested?), followed by a talk-radio blitz. Soon enough, we will
be regarding opponents of tribute as anachronistic, if not vaguely
anti-American.
--
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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