A Military Without War

Recently the Senate passed an amendment that reduced funds for the National Science Foundation completely eliminating funding for any political science projects with two exceptions. They would continue funding these if they were shown to advances the military or our economy. This prompted me to get back to a subject I have often pondered and discussed. Is there a benefit to a military, other than fighting a war and how can we exploit it? George Orwell wrote a novel about ongoing battles against an imaginary enemy somewhere “over there”. The ruling government used the threat of an invasion to more easily control its population. More recently, Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate writing for the New York Times, in an interview talked about the economic boom brought about by the Second World War. With tongue in cheek, he suggested we should proclaim an impending invasion from outer space and preparing for it would get us out of these economic doldrums. I think he was only half kidding. So how could we benefit from a military with no war? Conservatives have been reluctant to support government funded development but have shown a willingness to spend large sums of money on defense. With the ever increasing rate of technological innovation and global competition, it is imperative that we stay ahead of the curve. Basic research is not something suitable for private enterprises and in recent years, large companies such as IBM, known for their applied research and development in the past have been shrinking their scientific staff and facilities and looking outside, not only IBM, but outside the US. In the past science and development for the military was also of interest to the private sector. Some examples are: Development in material science of carbon nano-fibers has the promise of stronger and more lightweight armament for the military and lightweight vehicles with lower fuel consumption for the private sector. The military uses lasers for target designation and shooting down enemy missiles and in the private arena lasers are used in hundreds of applications from bar-code scanners and surgery to toys. Space science has always been closely affiliated with the military but has brought about civilian benefits like GPS and weather satellites. Of course there is the internet. As demonstrated by the amendment the Senate just passed, the Republicans, ever suspicious of science, are reluctant to spend on any development that is not of interest to our military particularly that whose aim is of benefit primarily for our poorest citizens who in many of their minds are only “takers”. Since almost anything can be argued to be of significance to the military, with Republican support we should increase the military budget and move more science into defense. A defense department in a non-war setting could be the hub of research and development and as the research is defense related we could more easily keep it within our borders giving an advantage to our industries Another thought, though much more farfetched, is to implement universal service as is the case in Israel and use the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen to work on projects not well suited to the private sector but would be of benefit to our society as a whole. This could serve a number of purposes. The draft could be arranged so that once someone, man or woman, reaches a certain age, if they are not in school, they would need to serve in the military for two or three years. Attending school would not release them from the obligation but only postpone it. The potential benefits, as I see them, are many. The number of idle young would be greatly reduced. Part of the service would include education and training constantly adjusted to the needs of industry as these change. The discipline which unfortunately is too lacking in too many of our homes can be taught and thus better prepare the young for the workplace they will enter upon completion of their service. One of the problems we face that will only increase with the growing income gap is that people are becoming more and more separated and with this separation more suspicious of each other. I found that when I was a new recruit in the army, with everyone wearing the same clothing and haircuts a lot of what we use to prejudge people based on our ignorance or prejudice is greatly reduced. Individuals from different races, religions and classes can come to better know each other and become more empathetic to a wider range of humanity. (This smells a bit of social engineering and I would keep this benefit under wraps.) A lot of our cities are falling apart. This force could be used to clean up vacant lots and demolish abandoned buildings. They could beautify our parks and other recreation areas. Instead of low cost “guest” workers, farm labor could be provided by these soldiers. In fact as part of the preparation for the outside world, I would have rural kids working on inner city projects and city kids on rural ones. The older and better educated individuals could spend time working in facilities providing assistance, including medical, to the poor. There is a strong desire on the part of conservatives to secure our border. A portion of the soldiers could be deployed there. The recent decade has seen an increase in catastrophic climatic events which are expected to not only continue but to increase. The military could be used to build levies and other barriers against the rising sea levels and be deployed to areas that have been hit by tornados, hurricanes, blizzards and tsunamis. Of course a segment of the military population would continue to prepare for battle, whatever form that may take in the future. Our potential enemies would be overwhelmed by the size of our military and may be reluctant to confront us and in the event of an unavoidable conflict, we could easily and quickly shift to a wartime footing. (This could be a selling point for the right.) And finally, with this much of the labor force taken out of the labor market, wages would increase and after completing the service, young people would return to a better place in better shape to contribute to keeping it that way. Also, since the low wage work would be done by the military, there would be less to attract unskilled immigrants. I don’t believe there is a snowball’s chance in hell that any of this could, or for that matter maybe should, be implemented. But such thinking out of the box could encourage others to also do so and contribute to the development of policies to help us succeed in the volatile future.

Multitasking is Like Plate Spinning

The place where I worked used our product engineers as the hub for satisfying a customer’s needs. They were the sales people that took the orders, engineers who designed the product, project managers and customer service representatives, communicating with the customer throughout the process. Most of the projects did not warrant full time attention so the ability to multitask was a necessary attribute. Having filled that role in the past, recognizing the value of the skill and being head of the organization I would often talk to our product engineers about skills required to effectively multitask. In these discussions I used the analogy of the circus act where a person spins plates sitting on top of tall sticks. As they puts more and more plates on more sticks the plates start to wobble and the performer has to run around giving the sticks a tweak to keep the plates spinning. In these discussions there are a few points I highlight. The level of skill is determined not by how well the plates spin but how many they can keep spinning. No one will come to see only one plate spinning perfectly. To spin many plates successfully requires two main things. You need to see all the plates. In their job as product engineers this vision can be achieved through reports, formal inquiries or just a casual question as people’s paths cross in the hallway. The second and more difficult is to understand how much the plates can wobble without falling. This skill is developed through experience. To truly know how much a plate can wobble before it fall, unfortunately one needs to have dropped a few. Young people tend to undervalue experience thinking that they can do anything strictly based on their intelligence, diligence and desire. In some endeavors where failure is not part of the learning process, I guess that may indeed be the case. (Now I’m starting to sound like an old man.) The plates in our workplace took many forms. Interviewing the customer to determine their need is one. Asking too few questions may lead to an underperforming or overpriced product. Asking too many may annoy the customer pushing them beyond their ability to answer. Either of these would chase the customer away and the plate will fall. Overworking a design limits the number of plates one can spin and not giving it enough attention can sacrifice performance or increase the manufacturing difficulty and cost. In either case the plate will fall. Responding to a customer’s inquiry in an instant can lead to great inefficiency whereas too slowly will lead to dissatisfaction. In all of these the plate falls if the customer doesn’t come back or the product costs more to make than we are getting paid to make it. To reduce the chance of irritating the customers, especially when a less experienced individual is managing the project, we used a second and more experienced set of eyes that can recognize a plate about to fall and catch it before it hit the ground. This person focuses not an every plate of every performer but focuses on the most critical ones and ones that are most likely to fall. The challenge is to allow a number of plates to fall, providing the learning experience to the newer person and catching the plate before it hit the ground, not alienating the customer. Invariably plates would occasionally hit the ground and shatter allowing both the novice and master to advance their skills.

Impact of Empathy on Policy

I was watching Bill Maher’s show the other day where they were talking about Rob Portman’s recent change in position on gay marriage. It seems that his son came out of “the closet” announcing his homosexuality two years ago. Rachel Maddow, one of his guests, made a comment which struck a chord. She said something to the effect that since Republicans change positions when things strike close to home, maybe they should have poor sons and thus have more empathy with the poor. One of the things I have often pondered and have written about is the difference between conservative and progressive views and the notion of empathy may help me understand this difference. The human race has organized itself into various groups ranging from family to tribe, village, region, nation and species. There are other intersecting groupings such as religion, ethnicity, race, gender, occupation and I am sure there are still others I have not thought to mention. If the more closely we align ourselves with a group, the more we want policies favoring that group. The question then is how the value we place on membership in these groups is distributed. At the extremes are the individualists giving primacy to themselves and the globalists the human race. The Buddhists, and to some extent native Americans and some animists take it a step further and feel that we are connected to all things, even inanimate objects. Conservatives espouse individualism and place a higher value on groupings closer to the self and thus individual freedoms, family cohesion, local and regional institutions and their protection become paramount. The value of a nation becomes less important because of its separation from the individual and its diversity. All the overt enthusiastic patriotism and flag waving may just be to cover the guilt from the low value given the national citizenship, (as Shakespeare once said “the lady doeth protest too much”) and the patriotism is more focused on the military and security aspects and tends to be ethnic and not inclusive. To that point, Sarah Palin, while running for VP, talked about being glad to visit a “real America” when she was in some rural community. In her mind, the bowls of Newark NJ belong to some foreign nation, certainly not to her America. People living in rural areas tend to be conservative and in general are isolated from diversity. They tend to have a fear, distrust and misunderstanding of the “others”, be they the other by virtue of race, religion, intellect or culture. They are in favor of States Rights and local control which they can easily see and touch and distrustful of the strangers in a distant place. (You can’t get too much more distant than the UN) Progressives, on the other hand, placing greater value on society and identifying more with the human race as a whole, see the downtrodden, other races and ethnicities as part of their group and are less sympathetic to individual wants. They tend to speak more of American exceptionalism in terms of its ability to assimilate immigrants and care for the needy rather than its military and economic might, considering the latter to be the consequence of the former. Their patriotism though it may be deeply felt, tends to be less demonstrative. Protection of the environment and therefore our species, a global quest, is strongly advocated by progressives. City dwellers by nature of their diversity tend to look more to the federal government rather than the state which often has more of a rural lean. So I think that the degree of empathy may be determined by the relative priority given to the various groupings and to a great extent the resulting empathy drives policy. Though conservatives tend to place more value on groupings closer to the individual and progressives closer to the species, looking at Democrats and Republicans through this lens, one can see significant outliers. On the Republican side, true free marketers really are globalists with a large acceptance criterion, whereas members of unions support Democrats giving high priority to a very narrowly defined grouping. In fact the largest group that placed value only on a single factor was the now defunct Soviet Communists. In trying to “unite the workers of the World”, they gave minimal value to family and nation, none to the individual and made religious organizations illegal. So, is there hope? I heard of a phenomenon called the “Aunt Susy Syndrome”(?) which says that as we become more mobile, we bring into our circle of friend and relatives individuals (Aunt Susys) from unfamiliar groups. Through this interaction we note the similarity and humanity which contradicts the lore of bigotry and gradually come to like Aunt Susy and in so doing, others of her ilk become much less scary and we start expanding our circle or forming a new one to include her kind. If policies are indeed influenced by empathy, which I think they are, they should benefit an ever expanding range of our population as time goes by.

Potential Danger of Globalization

The world is constantly changing with some changes much more dramatic than others, leading to catastrophic events. The industrial revolution brought about technologies causing drastic changes to western societies and shifted manufacturing predominance from east to west. At the turn of the nineteenth century power shifted from England to Germany precipitating the First World War. In the early part of the twentieth century the Russian Bolshevik Revolution gave birth to communism. Fascism came into being in part to counter the threat of communism to the establishment. German fascism not only instigated the Second World War decimating Eastern Europe, but its ethnic cleansing brutally destroyed millions of innocent Jewish lives. We are currently in the midst of another revolution. The information age is greatly accelerating advances in technologies. The most dramatic, of these, social media, allows massive, inexpensive trans-global communication facilitating international commerce. One of the consequences of the globalization is the diminution of the significance of international borders and a potential shift in the balance of power. At the turn of the twentieth century, the threat to humanity came from the left fermented by communist revolutionaries. The risk, as I see it today, is that as power; military, financial and intellectual is more evenly distributed throughout the world and as environmental, security and economic threats require more collaborative responses, fear, xenophobia and the desire for time to stand still could drive us into another world conflict. In this era, the threat is from the right. Conservatives, by their very nature are more susceptible. They may even have a biological predisposition to fear, particularly of the unknown. They want exiting institutions and relationships to continue unchanged and tend to wave the flag with greater gusto. My worry about the future stems from the Republican Party’s need to pull into their tent people whose economic wellbeing is inconsistent with fiscal policies favored by the Party. Theirs is a dangerous strategy playing into these tendencies and using a mix of fear, prejudice and patriotism to expand their electorate. The threats posed by global terrorism and, in response our war on it, unfortunately supports this strategy. My other concern is that since the turn of the twenty first century I started seeing inklings of a dangerous similarity with the past coming from the right. Some of the rhetoric is starting to sound a little bit like that of the German fascists in the early nineteen hundreds. They promoted fear and the resulting hatred of Jews to rally their ill-informed lower middle class. In the west, the political right propagandizes the fear and hatred of Muslims and Islam and in our country the “southern Strategy is still alive and well. The Nazis stressed the superiority of the Arian race while our right constantly chastises its opponents for insufficient acknowledgement of our exceptionalism. In Germany the “fatherland” was part of their battle cry. Here the word “homeland” and the need for its protection is more and more often heard. Collaboration in the control of the political process by the government, church and the industrial complex is a hallmark of fascism. In the last few decades we have had a strong shift to political engagement on the part of the religious right and the rise in economic inequality gives the wealthiest a disproportional influence on government. With the pronouncement of a never ending war on terror, more and more power is placed in the hands of the president and fear has lead us to cede a number of our civil rights. More military operations are undertaken by paramilitary rather than conventional forces. These forces are not subject to the code of military conduct and are responsible to an ever shrinking portion of the government. Fear and the Neo Con’s quest for ever greater military superiority and interventionism could push us in the direction of the German quest for world dominance. Then there is the charismatic leader lacking “intellectual curiosity” with the ability to rouse fear and anger that also scares me. A number of irrational, charismatic contenders were put forth by the right who momentarily lead the pack in Republican primaries (Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, the Pizza guy). Happily they were voted down for now. Fortunately the above are just inklings and thus far not a firm indication of a dangerous direction. Globalization, if we figure out how to navigate effectively through all the technological, environmental, social and economic challenges can make, not only our country but the world as a whole a better place for everyone to live. To this end we need leaders who are intellectually capable of understanding and dealing with complexities which we will invariably encounter with a vision looking well into the future and with the skills to counter the fear and hatred sown by extremes on both the left and right. The electorate will need to be well informed and select senators and congressman to implement policies for not only today but that anticipate impending changes. I think that in time, the information technologies will make people better informed and thus see through the talking points, though I recognize the potential for the same technologies to more efficiently spread propaganda. We will see. Whatever happens, it will be an interesting but hopefully not a lethal time.