Monday
CONGRESS AND THE FEDS REFUSE TO LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES by RON PAUL
This month marks
the seventh anniversary of the bursting of the housing bubble and the
subsequent economic meltdown. The mood in Congress following the meltdown
resembled the panicked atmosphere that followed the September 11th attacks. As
was the case after September 11th, Congress rushed to pass hastily written
legislation that, instead of dealing with the real causes of the crisis, simply
gave the government more power.
Just as few understood the role our interventionist foreign policy played in the September 11th attacks, few in Congress understood that the 2008 meltdown was caused by the Federal Reserve and Congress, not by unregulated capitalism. Not surprising to anyone familiar with economic history, the story of the 2008 meltdown starts with the bursting of the Fed-created tech bubble.
Following the collapse of the tech bubble, the Fed began aggressively pumping money into the economy. This money flooded into the housing market, creating the housing bubble. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress also added fuel to the housing bubble. These so-called “free-market” conservatives expanded federal housing programs in hopes of creating an “ownership society.”
If Congress understood the Austrian theory of the business cycle, it would have allowed the recession that followed the housing bubble’s inevitable collapse to run its course. Recessions are the economy’s way of eliminating the distortions caused by the Federal Reserve. Attempts by Congress and the Fed to end a recession via inflation and government spending will only lead to future, and more severe, economic downturns.
The corporate bailouts, government spending, and money creation via quantitative easing that Congress and the Fed have engaged in since the fall of 2008, have failed to produce even the illusion of prosperity. The daily experience of most Americans shows that the government’s doctored statistics drastically understate both unemployment and inflation.
This is not to say that no Americans have benefited from Federal Reserve policies. Even Donald Trump has called quantitative easing “a great deal for guys like me.” Much of the growth of government over the past seven years, from the bailouts to the increases in military and domestic spending to Obamacare, has also benefited politically-connected crony capitalists.
The Federal Reserve’s continued delay of an interest rate increase suggests that, contrary to its public statements, the Fed understands that the economy has not recovered from the meltdown and is on the brink of another major recession. Fear that the Fed is not being fully forthcoming with its view of the economy is one reason the stock market declined following the Fed’s recent decision to once again postpone increasing interest rates.
Learning the full truth about how the Fed evaluates the economy and its plans to respond to another downturn are two reasons why it is important to pass the Audit the Fed bill.
A vote on Audit the Fed would probably be the only good thing to occur in Congress this year. A Congress that cannot defund Planned Parenthood is unlikely to make any serious cuts in spending. Instead of waiting for politicians to do the right thing, those who know the truth must spread the ideas of liberty as far and wide as possible. Only when the teachings of the Austrian school are embraced by a critical mass of Americans will Congress cut warfare spending, cut welfare spending, and audit, and then end, the Fed.
Just as few understood the role our interventionist foreign policy played in the September 11th attacks, few in Congress understood that the 2008 meltdown was caused by the Federal Reserve and Congress, not by unregulated capitalism. Not surprising to anyone familiar with economic history, the story of the 2008 meltdown starts with the bursting of the Fed-created tech bubble.
Following the collapse of the tech bubble, the Fed began aggressively pumping money into the economy. This money flooded into the housing market, creating the housing bubble. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress also added fuel to the housing bubble. These so-called “free-market” conservatives expanded federal housing programs in hopes of creating an “ownership society.”
If Congress understood the Austrian theory of the business cycle, it would have allowed the recession that followed the housing bubble’s inevitable collapse to run its course. Recessions are the economy’s way of eliminating the distortions caused by the Federal Reserve. Attempts by Congress and the Fed to end a recession via inflation and government spending will only lead to future, and more severe, economic downturns.
The corporate bailouts, government spending, and money creation via quantitative easing that Congress and the Fed have engaged in since the fall of 2008, have failed to produce even the illusion of prosperity. The daily experience of most Americans shows that the government’s doctored statistics drastically understate both unemployment and inflation.
This is not to say that no Americans have benefited from Federal Reserve policies. Even Donald Trump has called quantitative easing “a great deal for guys like me.” Much of the growth of government over the past seven years, from the bailouts to the increases in military and domestic spending to Obamacare, has also benefited politically-connected crony capitalists.
The Federal Reserve’s continued delay of an interest rate increase suggests that, contrary to its public statements, the Fed understands that the economy has not recovered from the meltdown and is on the brink of another major recession. Fear that the Fed is not being fully forthcoming with its view of the economy is one reason the stock market declined following the Fed’s recent decision to once again postpone increasing interest rates.
Learning the full truth about how the Fed evaluates the economy and its plans to respond to another downturn are two reasons why it is important to pass the Audit the Fed bill.
A vote on Audit the Fed would probably be the only good thing to occur in Congress this year. A Congress that cannot defund Planned Parenthood is unlikely to make any serious cuts in spending. Instead of waiting for politicians to do the right thing, those who know the truth must spread the ideas of liberty as far and wide as possible. Only when the teachings of the Austrian school are embraced by a critical mass of Americans will Congress cut warfare spending, cut welfare spending, and audit, and then end, the Fed.
Friday
Monday
CONGRESS FIDDLES WHILE THE ECONOMY BURNS by RON PAUL
Reports that the official unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent may appear to vindicate the policies of easy money, corporate bailouts, and increased government spending. However, even the mainstream media has acknowledged that the official numbers understate the true unemployment rate. This is because the government’s unemployment figures do not include the 94 million Americans who have given up looking for work or who have settled for part-time employment. John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics estimates the real unemployment rate is between 23 and 24 percent.
Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, few in Washington, DC acknowledge that America’s economic future is endangered by excessive spending, borrowing, taxing, and inflating. Instead, Congress continues to waste taxpayer money on futile attempts to run the economy, run our lives, and run the world.
For example, Congress spent the majority of last week trying to void the Iranian nuclear agreement. This effort was spearheaded by those who think the US should waste trillions of dollars on another no-win Middle East war. Congressional war hawks ignore how America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy feeds the growing rebellion against the dollar’s world reserve currency status. Of course, the main reason many are seeking an alternative to the dollar is their concern that, unless Congress stops creating — and the Federal Reserve stops monetizing — massive deficits, the US will experience a Greek-like economic crisis.
Despite the clear need to reduce federal spending, many Republicans are trying to cut a deal with the Democrats to increase spending. These alleged conservatives are willing to lift the “sequestration” limits on welfare spending if President Obama and congressional democrats support lifting the “sequestration” limits on warfare spending. Even sequestration's miniscule, and largely phony, cuts are unbearable for the military-industrial complex and the rest of the special interests that control our government.
The only positive step toward addressing our economic crisis that the Senate may take this year is finally holding a roll call vote on the Audit the Fed legislation. Even if the audit legislation lacks sufficient support to overcome an expected presidential veto, just having a Senate vote will be a major step forward.
Passage of the Audit the Fed bill would finally allow the American people to know the full truth about the Fed’s operations, including its deals with foreign central banks and Wall Street firms. Revealing the full truth about the Fed will likely increase the number of Americans demanding that Congress end the Fed's monetary monopoly. This suspicion is confirmed by the hysterical attacks on and outright lies about the audit legislation spread by the Fed and its apologists.
Every day, the American people see evidence that, despite the phony statistics and propaganda emanating from Washington, high unemployment and rising inflation plague the economy. Economic anxiety has led many Americans to support an avowed socialist’s presidential campaign. Perhaps more disturbingly, many other Americans are supporting the campaign of an authoritarian crony capitalist. If there is a major economic collapse, many more Americans — perhaps even a majority — will embrace authoritarianism. An economic crisis could also lead to mob violence and widespread civil unrest, which will be used to justify new police state measures and crackdowns on civil liberties.
Unless the people demand an end to the warfare state, the welfare state, and fiat money, our economy will continue to deteriorate until we are faced with a major crisis. This crisis can only be avoided by rejecting the warfare state, the welfare state, and fiat money. Those of us who know the truth must redouble our efforts to spread the ideas of liberty.
Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, few in Washington, DC acknowledge that America’s economic future is endangered by excessive spending, borrowing, taxing, and inflating. Instead, Congress continues to waste taxpayer money on futile attempts to run the economy, run our lives, and run the world.
For example, Congress spent the majority of last week trying to void the Iranian nuclear agreement. This effort was spearheaded by those who think the US should waste trillions of dollars on another no-win Middle East war. Congressional war hawks ignore how America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy feeds the growing rebellion against the dollar’s world reserve currency status. Of course, the main reason many are seeking an alternative to the dollar is their concern that, unless Congress stops creating — and the Federal Reserve stops monetizing — massive deficits, the US will experience a Greek-like economic crisis.
Despite the clear need to reduce federal spending, many Republicans are trying to cut a deal with the Democrats to increase spending. These alleged conservatives are willing to lift the “sequestration” limits on welfare spending if President Obama and congressional democrats support lifting the “sequestration” limits on warfare spending. Even sequestration's miniscule, and largely phony, cuts are unbearable for the military-industrial complex and the rest of the special interests that control our government.
The only positive step toward addressing our economic crisis that the Senate may take this year is finally holding a roll call vote on the Audit the Fed legislation. Even if the audit legislation lacks sufficient support to overcome an expected presidential veto, just having a Senate vote will be a major step forward.
Passage of the Audit the Fed bill would finally allow the American people to know the full truth about the Fed’s operations, including its deals with foreign central banks and Wall Street firms. Revealing the full truth about the Fed will likely increase the number of Americans demanding that Congress end the Fed's monetary monopoly. This suspicion is confirmed by the hysterical attacks on and outright lies about the audit legislation spread by the Fed and its apologists.
Every day, the American people see evidence that, despite the phony statistics and propaganda emanating from Washington, high unemployment and rising inflation plague the economy. Economic anxiety has led many Americans to support an avowed socialist’s presidential campaign. Perhaps more disturbingly, many other Americans are supporting the campaign of an authoritarian crony capitalist. If there is a major economic collapse, many more Americans — perhaps even a majority — will embrace authoritarianism. An economic crisis could also lead to mob violence and widespread civil unrest, which will be used to justify new police state measures and crackdowns on civil liberties.
Unless the people demand an end to the warfare state, the welfare state, and fiat money, our economy will continue to deteriorate until we are faced with a major crisis. This crisis can only be avoided by rejecting the warfare state, the welfare state, and fiat money. Those of us who know the truth must redouble our efforts to spread the ideas of liberty.
THE REFUGEE PROBLEM - AND HOW TO SOLVE IT by RON PAUL
Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany.
While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and traveling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that this is a man-made crisis and it is a government-made crisis.
The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing “democracy” at the barrel of a gun.
Even when they successfully change the regime, as in Iraq, what is left behind is an almost uninhabitable country. It reminds me of the saying attributed to a US major in the Vietnam War, discussing the bombing of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
The Europeans share a good deal of blame as well. France and the UK were enthusiastic supporters of the attack on Libya and they were early backers of the “Assad must go” policy. Assad may not be a nice guy, but the forces that have been unleashed to overthrow him seem to be much worse and far more dangerous. No wonder people are so desperate to leave Syria.
Most of us have seen the heartbreaking photo of the young Syrian boy lying drowned on a Turkish beach. While the interventionists are exploiting this tragedy to call for direct US attacks on the Syrian government, in fact the little boy was from a Kurdish family fleeing ISIS in Kobane. And as we know there was no ISIS in either Iraq or Syria before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
As often happens when there is blowback from bad foreign policy, the same people who created the problem think they have a right to tell us how to fix it – while never admitting their fault in the first place.
Thus we see the disgraced General David Petraeus in the news last week offering his solution to the problem in Syria: make an alliance with al-Qaeda against ISIS! Petraeus was head of the CIA when the US launched its covert regime-change policy in Syria, and he was in charge of the “surge” in Iraq that contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The idea that the US can salvage its disastrous Syria policy by making an alliance with al-Qaeda is horrific. Does anyone think the refugee problem in Syria will not be worse if either al-Qaeda or ISIS takes over the country?
Here is the real solution to the refugee problem: stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. Embrace the prosperity that comes with a peaceful foreign policy, not the poverty that goes with running an empire. End the Empire!
While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and traveling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that this is a man-made crisis and it is a government-made crisis.
The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing “democracy” at the barrel of a gun.
Even when they successfully change the regime, as in Iraq, what is left behind is an almost uninhabitable country. It reminds me of the saying attributed to a US major in the Vietnam War, discussing the bombing of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
The Europeans share a good deal of blame as well. France and the UK were enthusiastic supporters of the attack on Libya and they were early backers of the “Assad must go” policy. Assad may not be a nice guy, but the forces that have been unleashed to overthrow him seem to be much worse and far more dangerous. No wonder people are so desperate to leave Syria.
Most of us have seen the heartbreaking photo of the young Syrian boy lying drowned on a Turkish beach. While the interventionists are exploiting this tragedy to call for direct US attacks on the Syrian government, in fact the little boy was from a Kurdish family fleeing ISIS in Kobane. And as we know there was no ISIS in either Iraq or Syria before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
As often happens when there is blowback from bad foreign policy, the same people who created the problem think they have a right to tell us how to fix it – while never admitting their fault in the first place.
Thus we see the disgraced General David Petraeus in the news last week offering his solution to the problem in Syria: make an alliance with al-Qaeda against ISIS! Petraeus was head of the CIA when the US launched its covert regime-change policy in Syria, and he was in charge of the “surge” in Iraq that contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The idea that the US can salvage its disastrous Syria policy by making an alliance with al-Qaeda is horrific. Does anyone think the refugee problem in Syria will not be worse if either al-Qaeda or ISIS takes over the country?
Here is the real solution to the refugee problem: stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. Embrace the prosperity that comes with a peaceful foreign policy, not the poverty that goes with running an empire. End the Empire!
Saturday
A PLEA FROM RON PAUL
As I look around the world today, I have never been so concerned over the threat of a major war breaking out.
The central bankers destroy our currency and prosperity, while the crazed neocons have blown up much of the Middle East and unleashed ISIS in the process.
And yet now they want more!
These are terrifying times for those of us who believe that with peace comes prosperity, and that war only brings poverty and moral decay.
But together you and I can stop them.
In fact we are stopping them. In just two years myInstitute for Peace and Prosperity has become a real powerhouse, fighting back against the war machine. But I need your help.
That is why I am writing to ask whether you would support my Institute with a generous tax-deductible donation -- and I have a special, limited-time offer for you at the end!
I’d like to tell you a bit about the Institute’s successes, but first, I’d like to show you what we are up against:
Blame China: The stock market has taken a beating recently. The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of our currency and monetary policy is largely to blame.
But politicians and pundits are rushing to blame someone else.
It’s all China’s fault, they claim. The trillions printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve? China. Their calls for a trade war are dangerous, as trade wars often lead to shooting wars.
War with Russia: In Ukraine, the US is training that country’s military and providing “free” weapons. Next year Washington will spend $200 million on military training in a country openly threatening war with Russia.
We cannot afford it and it makes no sense to unnecessarily provoke a war with Russia.
Libya’s “Liberation”: After the 2011 US-led attack on Libya, the country has been inundated with Islamic extremists. Libya is now in the iron grip of the radicals, with violence often spilling over the border to neighboring countries.
The neocons and “humanitarians” promised us their intervention would usher in a golden age of Libyan democracy. Wrong again.
And now tens of thousands of Libyans are so desperate to escape the mess created by the US-led intervention that they are crossing the sea in whatever they find that can float.
ISIS in Syria and Iraq: In Syria, thousands more refugees are fleeing to Europe to avoid the continuous advance of ISIS – an extremist group that did not exist before the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the four-year US attempt to change the Syrian regime.
You can bet the US government will be right there with the national checkbook to pay for the problem created by those who promised an “Arab Spring” in Syria but delivered ISIS instead.
Through it all, my Institute for Peace and Prosperity has been fighting a fairly lonely battle.
Over the Institute’s first two years we have published more than 2,000 articles directly refuting the false claims of the war party.
During that time, we gained nearly 150,000 Facebook followers and our website has had well over four million readers.
In fact, we are punching so far above our weight, our web traffic is up there with organizations ten times our size!
One of our largest expenses last year was the constant server upgrades needed to handle our huge increases in traffic -- a good problem to have.
Our original articles are regularly re-published by Townhall, CNBC, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Zero Hedge, LewRockwell, Infowars, and more. The Drudge Report has picked up several of our articles as well.
This summer the Institute started its own publishing house and its first release is my new book, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity.
With your help there will be many more to come!
We are planning several exciting programs through my Institute as well, including a Young Communicators Fellowship.
And also, plans are in the works for a week long summer school to teach young people the principles of peace and prosperity they will not learn in government schools or in today’s politically correct universities.
We have even more planned but to carry it out we need your help.
Your tax-deductible donation of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more would enable us to continue our fight against those who would impoverish us -- or worse, launch a war that could end civilization as we know it!
The neocons are counting on unchallenged control over our foreign policy; the banksters are counting on carte blanche to bailout Ukraine and print the money for the next war.
I am counting on you.
Let’s fight back! Please consider making your tax-deductible donation to my Institute for Peace and Prosperity today.
For Peace and Prosperity,
Ron Paul
P.S. You and I can’t let the warmongers win. Help me keep the my Institute for Peace and Prosperity open, and help us keep delivering up the truth Americans so desperately need to hear.
I can’t do it without you.
Above I mentioned my new book, Swords into Plowshares. Through the month of September, for a tax-deductible gift of $100 or more, I will autograph a copy of my book as a gift to you. Want it personalized? Make your donation and then send us an email.
The central bankers destroy our currency and prosperity, while the crazed neocons have blown up much of the Middle East and unleashed ISIS in the process.
And yet now they want more!
These are terrifying times for those of us who believe that with peace comes prosperity, and that war only brings poverty and moral decay.
But together you and I can stop them.
In fact we are stopping them. In just two years myInstitute for Peace and Prosperity has become a real powerhouse, fighting back against the war machine. But I need your help.
That is why I am writing to ask whether you would support my Institute with a generous tax-deductible donation -- and I have a special, limited-time offer for you at the end!
I’d like to tell you a bit about the Institute’s successes, but first, I’d like to show you what we are up against:
Blame China: The stock market has taken a beating recently. The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of our currency and monetary policy is largely to blame.
But politicians and pundits are rushing to blame someone else.
It’s all China’s fault, they claim. The trillions printed out of thin air by the Federal Reserve? China. Their calls for a trade war are dangerous, as trade wars often lead to shooting wars.
War with Russia: In Ukraine, the US is training that country’s military and providing “free” weapons. Next year Washington will spend $200 million on military training in a country openly threatening war with Russia.
We cannot afford it and it makes no sense to unnecessarily provoke a war with Russia.
Libya’s “Liberation”: After the 2011 US-led attack on Libya, the country has been inundated with Islamic extremists. Libya is now in the iron grip of the radicals, with violence often spilling over the border to neighboring countries.
The neocons and “humanitarians” promised us their intervention would usher in a golden age of Libyan democracy. Wrong again.
And now tens of thousands of Libyans are so desperate to escape the mess created by the US-led intervention that they are crossing the sea in whatever they find that can float.
ISIS in Syria and Iraq: In Syria, thousands more refugees are fleeing to Europe to avoid the continuous advance of ISIS – an extremist group that did not exist before the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the four-year US attempt to change the Syrian regime.
You can bet the US government will be right there with the national checkbook to pay for the problem created by those who promised an “Arab Spring” in Syria but delivered ISIS instead.
Through it all, my Institute for Peace and Prosperity has been fighting a fairly lonely battle.
Over the Institute’s first two years we have published more than 2,000 articles directly refuting the false claims of the war party.
During that time, we gained nearly 150,000 Facebook followers and our website has had well over four million readers.
In fact, we are punching so far above our weight, our web traffic is up there with organizations ten times our size!
One of our largest expenses last year was the constant server upgrades needed to handle our huge increases in traffic -- a good problem to have.
Our original articles are regularly re-published by Townhall, CNBC, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Zero Hedge, LewRockwell, Infowars, and more. The Drudge Report has picked up several of our articles as well.
This summer the Institute started its own publishing house and its first release is my new book, Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity.
With your help there will be many more to come!
We are planning several exciting programs through my Institute as well, including a Young Communicators Fellowship.
And also, plans are in the works for a week long summer school to teach young people the principles of peace and prosperity they will not learn in government schools or in today’s politically correct universities.
We have even more planned but to carry it out we need your help.
Your tax-deductible donation of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000, or more would enable us to continue our fight against those who would impoverish us -- or worse, launch a war that could end civilization as we know it!
The neocons are counting on unchallenged control over our foreign policy; the banksters are counting on carte blanche to bailout Ukraine and print the money for the next war.
I am counting on you.
Let’s fight back! Please consider making your tax-deductible donation to my Institute for Peace and Prosperity today.
For Peace and Prosperity,
Ron Paul
P.S. You and I can’t let the warmongers win. Help me keep the my Institute for Peace and Prosperity open, and help us keep delivering up the truth Americans so desperately need to hear.
I can’t do it without you.
Above I mentioned my new book, Swords into Plowshares. Through the month of September, for a tax-deductible gift of $100 or more, I will autograph a copy of my book as a gift to you. Want it personalized? Make your donation and then send us an email.
Tuesday
WHAT I THINK...........TODD PIERCE
Former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul lays out a national security strategy for the United States in his book, Swords into Plowshares, which Carl von Clausewitz , the author of On War, would have approved. Clausewitz, a Prussian general in the early Nineteenth Century, is considered perhaps the West’s most insightful strategist, and On War is his classic work on the inter-relationship between politics and war.
A close reading of On War reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand Strategy, than it is on the mere strategy of warfare. Unfortunately, very few readers have understood that. Indeed, Clausewitz’s target audience may have been principally civilian policy makers with his view that the political perspective must remain dominant over the military point of view in the conduct of war.
Whether or not Ron Paul ever read Clausewitz, Swords into Plowshare restores a proper understanding of statecraft as Clausewitz understood it and today’s American leaders fail to.
Helmuth von Moltke, who became Chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, almost immediately misappropriated and reinterpreted On War for his own militaristic purposes. (Clausewitz died in 1831.) Moltke was followed in this in 1883, when Prussian General Count Colmar von der Goltz, later known as the Butcher of Belgium in World War I, while paying homage to Clausewitz, wrote The Nation in Arms, a revision of Clausewitz’s On War and its complete opposite.
Moltke and Goltz twisted Clausewitz’s arguments in the interests of the Prussian military class that had come into full flower after Clausewitz’s time. For one, they self-servingly distorted On War by reversing the principle of civilian control to argue civilians must not interfere with military decisions. Also, their reinterpretations of Clausewitz as an advocate for total war became the stereotype which most people then accepted as Clausewitz’s thinking.
Most odiously, U.S. Colonel Harry S. Summers, Jr. would later present to a post-Vietnam War audience Goltz’s version of Clausewitz. In doing so, Summers reversed Clausewitz’s position, which was that defense was stronger than attack, an argument against engaging in aggressive war. But Summers was collaborating with neoconservative Norman Podhoretz who shared Goltz’s militarism.
These distortions of Clausewitz’s principles — and that of America’s Founders who even earlier had established the idea of civilian control over the military — continue to the present day with U.S. civilian policy makers now regularly deferring to the narrowly focused point of view of military leaders to the detriment of a sound national security strategy.
In Swords into Plowshares, Ron Paul offers a correction to this and a return to a civilian-directed national security strategy for the U.S. to adopt which would restore a proper understanding of national interests and would be consistent with Clausewitz’s own strategic theory.
Peace as a Goal
Clausewitz would have heartily agreed with Ron Paul that “Having peace as a goal is both a key component of sensible foreign policy and crucial to economic prosperity and equal protection of all people’s liberty.”
Clausewitz would also have agreed with Paul that it is not sound national strategy when the result of having the most powerful military in history means to have “Americans continue to die in a series of wars, the treasury is bare, and the US is the most hated nation in the world.”
Clausewitz made his bones, so to speak, in fighting Napoleonic France which had a similar foreign policy in the early 1800s as the U.S. has in the Twenty-first Century — using warfare and other means to achieve “regime change” — with the same negative results. France finally met its Waterloo (the original Waterloo coming to mean a decisive defeat) in 1815.
The question for the U.S. isn’t if it will reach its own Waterloo, but when. Military solutions to geopolitical problems will inevitably exhaust even the most powerful nation, depleting its resources and manpower. Only by reversing imperial overreach and achieving peace can a sustainable prosperity become possible.
Clausewitz fully understood that reality, which is why he was an advocate of diplomacy and of restoring peace as soon as costs exceeded the benefit of whatever political object the war was being fought over. Clausewitz would be aghast at arguments that a war must be continued to “show resolve” or other such nonsensical purposes.
An expert on Clausewitz, Michael Howard, wrote that Clausewitz was a scholar as well as a Field General and knew and respected the works of political philosopher Immanuel Kant. Accordingly, Clausewitz would no doubt have been aware of and influenced by Kant’s 1795 tract entitled Perpetual Peace. Paul’s Swords Into Plowshares is in that tradition and applies the lessons to today.
Defense, Not Offense
In Clausewitz’s time and place, he had to fight a war of national survival against Napoleon, who could be viewed as the predecessor of today’s American neoconservative idea of using war as the means of imposing political change on other countries.
Clausewitz first fought France for his native country, Prussia, and when Prussia was defeated, he volunteered his services to Russia, serving until Napoleon’s final defeat. Clausewitz then began compiling what he had learned of statecraft and warfare with the experience he had gained.
But this was not for the purpose of encouraging aggressive war but only as recognition that “war” was used as a political tool which had to be addressed in a book of statecraft. “Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy that has created war,” he wrote.
Ron Paul demonstrates a full understanding of that principle as he challenges the neoconservative euphoria for what they claim is now a “perpetual war.” But Paul does not write as a pacifist and Swords into Plowshares is not a pacifist tract.
As Paul writes, “When a people are determined to defend their homeland, regardless of the size of the threat, they are quite capable. Americans can do the same if the unlikely need arises.” That is not the voice of a pacifist but rather of one who has drawn the same lesson as Clausewitz had.
Clausewitz was surely not a pacifist either. His profession was the military. But he wasn’t a militarist, unlike what the Prussian officer class would later become. Clausewitz would not have called for civilian control over military decision-making if he had been a militarist. That was a key point that von Moltke would later repudiate (or ignore) as he ushered in German militarism.
But the purpose of Clausewitz’s profession as a soldier in the early 1800s in central Europe was to defend his native land, Prussia, against a foreign attacker. When he later joined with Russia to fight Napoleon, it was to fight a common enemy, France, which was not a prospective enemy but an actual foreign invader on their respective territories.
Along those lines, Ron Paul suggests that the U.S. model its foreign policy after Switzerland, which has a military to defend itself but not one to wage offensive war outside its borders.
“Switzerland has done rather well with its streak of independence,” Paul writes. “Reasonable fiscal and monetary policy, along with the rejection of foreign intervention, have been beneficial to her.”
Perpetual War and Militarism
The only flaw in Clausewitz’s view that civilian policymakers must prevail over the military is that Clausewitz did not foresee the development of hyper-militarism, or what was called Fascism in the last century. Under Fascism, a sufficiently large number of militaristic civilians took over policy in Germany and Japan in the 1930s, paving the way to World War II.
An analysis of militarism prepared for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in 1942 by Hans Ernest Fried, entitled “The Guilt of the German Army,” describes three types of militarism which had developed in Germany. They were characterized as glorification of the army, glorification of war, and the militarization of civilian life. Fried’s book is disturbing because it could be describing the United States of today with the prevalence of the same three features.
Clausewitz did not anticipate the rise of a civilian political class in the 1930s which was as narrowly militaristic in its attitudes as was the military, another pattern that is repeating itself in the United States of the Twenty-first Century. We are seeing the political dominance of neoconservatives and like-minded “progressive” interventionists who are eager to advocate war, often more so than the U.S. military.
One reason for this reality is that many of these ideological advocates for “perpetual war” are far removed from the actual killing and dying, i.e., they are “chicken hawks” generally from privileged classes and don’t even know many real soldiers.
These “chicken hawks” follow in the footsteps of former Vice President Dick Cheney whose physical safety was sheltered by five deferments from the draft but who still celebrated when other men of his generation were marched off to the Vietnam War. Cheney was again eager to send a new generation of men and women off to the strategically catastrophic Iraq War on the basis of lies that he and President George W. Bush spread.
A Wider Audience
Gaining an understanding of U.S. foreign policy and American militarism by reading Swords into Plowshares is important for the future of the United States and should not be confined to Ron Paul’s usual “libertarian” audience. Instead, it should be studied by those seeking to understand why it is that the more wars we fight and the more Muslims we kill, the more attraction groups like ISIS have.
ISIS and similar militant groups maintain their ability to recruit because they are resisting what they call U.S. imperialism, a war against Islam. This appeal is even reaching into the U.S. and Western Europe as the continuing bloodshed in the Middle East increases the anger and enmity of its victims and their sympathizers. Killing more Muslims does not resolve these hatreds, it exacerbates them, strengthening the political will to resist, as Clausewitz would have understood.
Similarly, Paul understands that U.S. policy is a “combat multiplier” for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
And, as if ISIS and Al Qaeda aren’t trouble enough, the U.S. has now identified a new enemy, nuclear-armed Russia. Neoconservative militarists – led by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and her war enthusiast Kagan family in-laws – have revived the Cold War through their nefarious machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Furthermore, foolish U.S. Generals such as NATO Commander Philip Breedlove, with a name and military policy suggesting he is a real-life character straight out of “Dr. Strangelove,” seems to be doing all in his power to create a hot war with Russia, even at the risk of a nuclear exchange.
But Paul explains that this “incitement to perpetual war has been achieved without an actual threat to our security. We have not engaged in hostilities with any nation since 1945 that was capable of doing harm to us . . . . Our obsession with expanding our sphere of influence around the world was designed to promote an empire. It was never for true national security purposes. To keep hatred and thus war alive, the propagandists must stay active.”
Resisting Interventions
Clausewitz would have understood Ron Paul’s reasoning as expressed here: “The more US interventions caused deaths, incited and multiplied our enemies, imposed extreme costs, and jeopardized our security, the greater my conviction became that all foreign intervention not related to our direct security should cease as quickly as possible. The neoconservatives want an open license to go anywhere, anytime to force our ‘goodness’ on others, even though such actions are resented and the ‘beneficiaries’ want no part of it.”
Clausewitz not only theorized against interventions of that type; he helped defeat Napoleon, who practiced the Nineteenth Century equivalent. Knowing how Napoleon’s wars ended, Ron Paul sees the U.S. as on the wrong side of history.
Paul, consciously or not, has drawn on the strategic insight of Clausewitz, which should be no surprise as it was a frequently expressed truism in the military before 2001, echoing Clausewitz, that wars were so expensive and unpredictable that they were to be avoided if possible. And if unavoidable, they were best kept short.
Cheney and other neocon hawks of the Bush-43 administration threw that wisdom overboard even before 2001. But 9/11 created so much hysteria in today’s military officers, who never had to experience how wars can go sour, that those bitter lessons are being relearned the hard way by a new generation of officers. They would serve the military well by reading Swords into Plowshares and reacquiring that wisdom.
What might turn out to be the tragedy of this book is that its readers will be limited to self-identified “libertarians.” But Paul has shown himself capable of joining liberals such as Democrat Dennis Kucinich in opposing the transformation of the U.S. into an advanced form of militaristic state and resisting the wars which make that possible.
But every attempt at forming antiwar coalitions between libertarians and other political groupings or even co-sponsored forums, in the experience of this writer, go no further than about five minutes before one side or the other insists that before militarism is discussed, the other side has to concede to their respective economics ideology. More times than not, that comes from the libertarians who insist that any taxation is as repressive as military rule. It’s reminiscent of the early 1930s when the Nazis’ political opponents were happiest squabbling amongst themselves, while the Nazis were preparing Dachau and other prisons for members of each of the non-Nazi political parties.
Consequently, American militarists probably need not fear that Swords into Plowshares will interfere with their militaristic plans – and war profiteers need have no concerns for their future profits. But perhaps my prognostication is incorrect. Maybe Americans will realize that our militarists are leading us to the strategic abyss and that we’re already close to the edge.
Americans should find that Paul’s national security strategy is sound regardless of whether they agree with other aspects of his libertarian ideology. There is surely common ground among Americans who recognize that perpetual wars will also mean the suppression of constitutional rights and other encroachments on liberty.
A close reading of On War reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand Strategy, than it is on the mere strategy of warfare. Unfortunately, very few readers have understood that. Indeed, Clausewitz’s target audience may have been principally civilian policy makers with his view that the political perspective must remain dominant over the military point of view in the conduct of war.
Whether or not Ron Paul ever read Clausewitz, Swords into Plowshare restores a proper understanding of statecraft as Clausewitz understood it and today’s American leaders fail to.
Helmuth von Moltke, who became Chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1857, almost immediately misappropriated and reinterpreted On War for his own militaristic purposes. (Clausewitz died in 1831.) Moltke was followed in this in 1883, when Prussian General Count Colmar von der Goltz, later known as the Butcher of Belgium in World War I, while paying homage to Clausewitz, wrote The Nation in Arms, a revision of Clausewitz’s On War and its complete opposite.
Moltke and Goltz twisted Clausewitz’s arguments in the interests of the Prussian military class that had come into full flower after Clausewitz’s time. For one, they self-servingly distorted On War by reversing the principle of civilian control to argue civilians must not interfere with military decisions. Also, their reinterpretations of Clausewitz as an advocate for total war became the stereotype which most people then accepted as Clausewitz’s thinking.
Most odiously, U.S. Colonel Harry S. Summers, Jr. would later present to a post-Vietnam War audience Goltz’s version of Clausewitz. In doing so, Summers reversed Clausewitz’s position, which was that defense was stronger than attack, an argument against engaging in aggressive war. But Summers was collaborating with neoconservative Norman Podhoretz who shared Goltz’s militarism.
These distortions of Clausewitz’s principles — and that of America’s Founders who even earlier had established the idea of civilian control over the military — continue to the present day with U.S. civilian policy makers now regularly deferring to the narrowly focused point of view of military leaders to the detriment of a sound national security strategy.
In Swords into Plowshares, Ron Paul offers a correction to this and a return to a civilian-directed national security strategy for the U.S. to adopt which would restore a proper understanding of national interests and would be consistent with Clausewitz’s own strategic theory.
Peace as a Goal
Clausewitz would have heartily agreed with Ron Paul that “Having peace as a goal is both a key component of sensible foreign policy and crucial to economic prosperity and equal protection of all people’s liberty.”
Clausewitz would also have agreed with Paul that it is not sound national strategy when the result of having the most powerful military in history means to have “Americans continue to die in a series of wars, the treasury is bare, and the US is the most hated nation in the world.”
Clausewitz made his bones, so to speak, in fighting Napoleonic France which had a similar foreign policy in the early 1800s as the U.S. has in the Twenty-first Century — using warfare and other means to achieve “regime change” — with the same negative results. France finally met its Waterloo (the original Waterloo coming to mean a decisive defeat) in 1815.
The question for the U.S. isn’t if it will reach its own Waterloo, but when. Military solutions to geopolitical problems will inevitably exhaust even the most powerful nation, depleting its resources and manpower. Only by reversing imperial overreach and achieving peace can a sustainable prosperity become possible.
Clausewitz fully understood that reality, which is why he was an advocate of diplomacy and of restoring peace as soon as costs exceeded the benefit of whatever political object the war was being fought over. Clausewitz would be aghast at arguments that a war must be continued to “show resolve” or other such nonsensical purposes.
An expert on Clausewitz, Michael Howard, wrote that Clausewitz was a scholar as well as a Field General and knew and respected the works of political philosopher Immanuel Kant. Accordingly, Clausewitz would no doubt have been aware of and influenced by Kant’s 1795 tract entitled Perpetual Peace. Paul’s Swords Into Plowshares is in that tradition and applies the lessons to today.
Defense, Not Offense
In Clausewitz’s time and place, he had to fight a war of national survival against Napoleon, who could be viewed as the predecessor of today’s American neoconservative idea of using war as the means of imposing political change on other countries.
Clausewitz first fought France for his native country, Prussia, and when Prussia was defeated, he volunteered his services to Russia, serving until Napoleon’s final defeat. Clausewitz then began compiling what he had learned of statecraft and warfare with the experience he had gained.
But this was not for the purpose of encouraging aggressive war but only as recognition that “war” was used as a political tool which had to be addressed in a book of statecraft. “Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy that has created war,” he wrote.
Ron Paul demonstrates a full understanding of that principle as he challenges the neoconservative euphoria for what they claim is now a “perpetual war.” But Paul does not write as a pacifist and Swords into Plowshares is not a pacifist tract.
As Paul writes, “When a people are determined to defend their homeland, regardless of the size of the threat, they are quite capable. Americans can do the same if the unlikely need arises.” That is not the voice of a pacifist but rather of one who has drawn the same lesson as Clausewitz had.
Clausewitz was surely not a pacifist either. His profession was the military. But he wasn’t a militarist, unlike what the Prussian officer class would later become. Clausewitz would not have called for civilian control over military decision-making if he had been a militarist. That was a key point that von Moltke would later repudiate (or ignore) as he ushered in German militarism.
But the purpose of Clausewitz’s profession as a soldier in the early 1800s in central Europe was to defend his native land, Prussia, against a foreign attacker. When he later joined with Russia to fight Napoleon, it was to fight a common enemy, France, which was not a prospective enemy but an actual foreign invader on their respective territories.
Along those lines, Ron Paul suggests that the U.S. model its foreign policy after Switzerland, which has a military to defend itself but not one to wage offensive war outside its borders.
“Switzerland has done rather well with its streak of independence,” Paul writes. “Reasonable fiscal and monetary policy, along with the rejection of foreign intervention, have been beneficial to her.”
Perpetual War and Militarism
The only flaw in Clausewitz’s view that civilian policymakers must prevail over the military is that Clausewitz did not foresee the development of hyper-militarism, or what was called Fascism in the last century. Under Fascism, a sufficiently large number of militaristic civilians took over policy in Germany and Japan in the 1930s, paving the way to World War II.
An analysis of militarism prepared for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services in 1942 by Hans Ernest Fried, entitled “The Guilt of the German Army,” describes three types of militarism which had developed in Germany. They were characterized as glorification of the army, glorification of war, and the militarization of civilian life. Fried’s book is disturbing because it could be describing the United States of today with the prevalence of the same three features.
Clausewitz did not anticipate the rise of a civilian political class in the 1930s which was as narrowly militaristic in its attitudes as was the military, another pattern that is repeating itself in the United States of the Twenty-first Century. We are seeing the political dominance of neoconservatives and like-minded “progressive” interventionists who are eager to advocate war, often more so than the U.S. military.
One reason for this reality is that many of these ideological advocates for “perpetual war” are far removed from the actual killing and dying, i.e., they are “chicken hawks” generally from privileged classes and don’t even know many real soldiers.
These “chicken hawks” follow in the footsteps of former Vice President Dick Cheney whose physical safety was sheltered by five deferments from the draft but who still celebrated when other men of his generation were marched off to the Vietnam War. Cheney was again eager to send a new generation of men and women off to the strategically catastrophic Iraq War on the basis of lies that he and President George W. Bush spread.
A Wider Audience
Gaining an understanding of U.S. foreign policy and American militarism by reading Swords into Plowshares is important for the future of the United States and should not be confined to Ron Paul’s usual “libertarian” audience. Instead, it should be studied by those seeking to understand why it is that the more wars we fight and the more Muslims we kill, the more attraction groups like ISIS have.
ISIS and similar militant groups maintain their ability to recruit because they are resisting what they call U.S. imperialism, a war against Islam. This appeal is even reaching into the U.S. and Western Europe as the continuing bloodshed in the Middle East increases the anger and enmity of its victims and their sympathizers. Killing more Muslims does not resolve these hatreds, it exacerbates them, strengthening the political will to resist, as Clausewitz would have understood.
Similarly, Paul understands that U.S. policy is a “combat multiplier” for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
And, as if ISIS and Al Qaeda aren’t trouble enough, the U.S. has now identified a new enemy, nuclear-armed Russia. Neoconservative militarists – led by Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and her war enthusiast Kagan family in-laws – have revived the Cold War through their nefarious machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Furthermore, foolish U.S. Generals such as NATO Commander Philip Breedlove, with a name and military policy suggesting he is a real-life character straight out of “Dr. Strangelove,” seems to be doing all in his power to create a hot war with Russia, even at the risk of a nuclear exchange.
But Paul explains that this “incitement to perpetual war has been achieved without an actual threat to our security. We have not engaged in hostilities with any nation since 1945 that was capable of doing harm to us . . . . Our obsession with expanding our sphere of influence around the world was designed to promote an empire. It was never for true national security purposes. To keep hatred and thus war alive, the propagandists must stay active.”
Resisting Interventions
Clausewitz would have understood Ron Paul’s reasoning as expressed here: “The more US interventions caused deaths, incited and multiplied our enemies, imposed extreme costs, and jeopardized our security, the greater my conviction became that all foreign intervention not related to our direct security should cease as quickly as possible. The neoconservatives want an open license to go anywhere, anytime to force our ‘goodness’ on others, even though such actions are resented and the ‘beneficiaries’ want no part of it.”
Clausewitz not only theorized against interventions of that type; he helped defeat Napoleon, who practiced the Nineteenth Century equivalent. Knowing how Napoleon’s wars ended, Ron Paul sees the U.S. as on the wrong side of history.
Paul, consciously or not, has drawn on the strategic insight of Clausewitz, which should be no surprise as it was a frequently expressed truism in the military before 2001, echoing Clausewitz, that wars were so expensive and unpredictable that they were to be avoided if possible. And if unavoidable, they were best kept short.
Cheney and other neocon hawks of the Bush-43 administration threw that wisdom overboard even before 2001. But 9/11 created so much hysteria in today’s military officers, who never had to experience how wars can go sour, that those bitter lessons are being relearned the hard way by a new generation of officers. They would serve the military well by reading Swords into Plowshares and reacquiring that wisdom.
What might turn out to be the tragedy of this book is that its readers will be limited to self-identified “libertarians.” But Paul has shown himself capable of joining liberals such as Democrat Dennis Kucinich in opposing the transformation of the U.S. into an advanced form of militaristic state and resisting the wars which make that possible.
But every attempt at forming antiwar coalitions between libertarians and other political groupings or even co-sponsored forums, in the experience of this writer, go no further than about five minutes before one side or the other insists that before militarism is discussed, the other side has to concede to their respective economics ideology. More times than not, that comes from the libertarians who insist that any taxation is as repressive as military rule. It’s reminiscent of the early 1930s when the Nazis’ political opponents were happiest squabbling amongst themselves, while the Nazis were preparing Dachau and other prisons for members of each of the non-Nazi political parties.
Consequently, American militarists probably need not fear that Swords into Plowshares will interfere with their militaristic plans – and war profiteers need have no concerns for their future profits. But perhaps my prognostication is incorrect. Maybe Americans will realize that our militarists are leading us to the strategic abyss and that we’re already close to the edge.
Americans should find that Paul’s national security strategy is sound regardless of whether they agree with other aspects of his libertarian ideology. There is surely common ground among Americans who recognize that perpetual wars will also mean the suppression of constitutional rights and other encroachments on liberty.
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