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April 23rd, 7:26pm
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The Vicious Circle
John Norris writes in Foreign Policy on April 13 about a Pentagon report on budget priorities, apparently written by two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The report says, in part:
By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.
To which Norris observes: "Yet, it is investments in America's long-term human resources that have come under the fiercest attack in the current budget environment. As the United States tries to compete with China, India, and the European Union, does it make sense to have almost doubled the Pentagon budget in the last decade while slashing education budgets across the country? .... The United States has established an incentive system that just doesn't make any sense. It continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into agricultural and oil subsidies every single year even as these subsidies make the gravity of the environmental, health, and land-use problems the country faces in the future ever graver. As the report argues, America cannot truly practice the use of "smart power" until it practices "smart growth" at home. While some may be quick to argue that the Pentagon should not be considering issues like smart growth and investments in America's youth, this goes to another key point from the authors: America won't get its approach to policy right if it leaves foreign policy and domestic policy in tidy little silos that ignore the interconnection between the two."
The report goes on to say:
And yet with globalization, we seem to have developed a strange apprehension about the efficacy of our ability to apply the innovation and hard work necessary to successfully compete in a complex security and economic environment. Further, we have misunderstood interdependence as a weakness rather than recognizing it as a strength. The key to sustaining our competitive edge, at home or on the world stage, is credibility -- and credibility is a difficult capital to foster. It cannot be won through intimidation and threat, it cannot be sustained through protectionism or exclusion. Credibility requires engagement, strength, and reliability -- imaginatively applied through the national tools of development, diplomacy, and defense.
I'm reminded of Walter Lippmann's admonition in the New York Herald Tribune in 1944:
“If we fix our minds upon the fact that the capacity to produce is the nation's wealth, and upon the dislocation of that capacity as the supreme evil to be avoided, we shall, I believe, have hold of the saving truth.”
If, in this globalized world, our intellectual resources constitute the true wealth of the nation, and if servicing our debt means chronic underinvestment in human capital, then we are well and truly circling closer to the drain. I predict the pundits to begin writing about the brain drain from America any day now.
Norris adds that the budget deal concluded a few days after this came out cut 8 billion dollars from diplomacy and international development, while leaving the defense budget intact.
