Asymmetrical Information

Tell me if you've heard this one...

"Thus, our aim must be to secure all those territories which are of special interest to our defence economy through conquest."

War is the natural consequence of the quest for autarky, as Mises just lurved to point out. (See Omnipotent Government, Liberalism, Human Action, Planned Chaos, etc.) And remember Bastiat's like about how "if goods don't cross borders, troops will".

I think Cobden had some choice words on the subject as well.

"Bastiat's line" is what I meant to say.

Let's not forget the intermediate component of Hitler's acquisition plan: to devalue the mark by inflation, using price controls to keep internal prices stable for a time, while spending the newly created "money" on imported weapons and raw materials for his munitions industries. He timed the thing very nicely, too. Almost got away with it.

There really is such a thing as an "evil genius." At least, there was back then.

Tell me if you've heard this one...

Is this our first Bush = Hitler comment of the thread? I mean, you knew one was coming.

Gee, this sounds like a lot of Conservatives I know, who think that we need to invade other countries to "protect American interests"...you know, make sure we have access to "our oil", and what not.

What a great post! Thank you....

Certainly not going so far as to equate the two (and can one "Godwin" a thread about Nazis?). But, hey, thought I'd just get things going. :)

It confuses me that some with a professed libertarian bent have no problem defending an interventionist foreign policy, that's all.

Jason,

I think it's pretty obvious that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have much more to do with fighting weapons proliferation and islamic facism than oil. It is also obvious that much of the international opposition to the invasion of Iraq was all about oil. Important figures in Russia, France, and the UN were receiving oil bribes etc. The pressure was on in the UN to loosen sanctions.

If we'd wanted oil from Iraq we could have made a deal: relax sanctions and the no fly zones in exchange for allowing American oil companies into Iraq. That would have been less difficult politically and financially than deploying 130k troops.

Also Iraqi oil hasn't been confiscated, it's under Iraqi control and there are no plans to change that. The big question is how exactly the Iraqis should own their nation's oil: should it be a state owned oil company or a public company with shares distributed to Iraqi citizens, and certainly other options are being considered.

During that mixed up era central planning was all the rage because of Russia's fast rise to superpower status and the Great Depression in Europe and the U.S. Autarky was but one way of centrally planning each country's stuggle for existence. I recommend Against the Dead Hand by Brink Lindsey for an account of the era and how it fits into globalization's uncertain future.

I think it's pretty obvious that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have much more to do with fighting weapons proliferation and islamic facism than oil.

There are some Conservatives I know that hold that as their primary justification for their support of the War on Iraq. However, almost every Conservative I know, lists oil among, say, their top 5 reasons for supporting the war in Iraq. Inevitably, as I listen to talk radio, not a week goes by that I'll hear callers talk about the need to keep the oil flowing.

Plus...in the leadup to Gulf War I, Bush Sr. himself made the exact same inference. We needed to protect the supply of oil. Saddam was looking to take over Kuwait, and then Saudi Arabia, so that he would control all of the mid-east oil. Remember that?

My general opinion is...WMD and terrorists are only reasons that have been promoted to generate support for the march to empire only because fighting for oil isn't as sexy. Its amazing what you can get people to go along with when you tell them that they are in danger...(Why do you think Dems have been so good at scaring old people into thinking the Reps will take away their SS checks?)

Also.. How many times have you heard justification for international intervention in foriegn affairs justified underthe banner of "protecting American interests"? I hear it all the time... Even such marginal conservative figures, like Pat Buchanan, who in general oppose such imperial ambitions as Bush's policies pursue, reserve support for international intervention restricted only to "protecting american interests".

In general, Conservatives do not regard market forces as a very efficient way to secure needed resources. They may work to a point, but militarization is the only guarantee.

can one "Godwin" a thread about Nazis?

Apparently. Never underestimate a determined idiotarian.

I swear, if the Nazis didn't already exist, leftists would have to invent them, just to have a shorthand term for "people with whom I disagree."

Jason,

I can't speak for all the conservatives you hear on talk radio and talk radio callers are probably not the best source for insights into conservative thinking on a given topic. That being said, often when conservatives argue for foreign intervention to protect "national interests" they mean they wish to protect our ability, and the ability of other entities, to purchase oil free from arbitrary interventions by tyrants. They don't mean we should invade and steal oil and natural resources like Hitler but rather they wish to prevent people like Saddam from artificially driving up the price of oil by invading a small weaker nation with lots of oil. It was Saddam who didn't believe in acquiring resources through the market but through force.

There are many benefits to having Saddam gone: he can no longer invade his neighbors, needed investment in oil infrastructure may go forward, Saddam cannot maintain a latent WMD program, and he can no longer brutally repress dissidents and ethnic minorities. These are all good developments regardless of your view of how the case for war was made.

The WMD proliferation threat is very real. The revelations about the A Q Khan network is one example. There are very dangerous people who wish to acquire WMD and many of them don't like the west much.

The idea that the US is "marching to empire" is absurd. From the beginning the goal has been to defeat our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, create a stable democratic government, and then leave. The Bush administration has never advocated for permanent control of either contry. And the politics here in the US would make colonization impossible even if that was their aim.

"I swear, if the Nazis didn't already exist, leftists would have to invent them, just to have a shorthand term for "people with whom I disagree.

Not sure where you see leftists here, but folks from either wing of the One Great Party have been using such comparisons for a while.

I think, sausagegut, that you trust too much in the public - for a while, the administration had the country convinced that a representative republican mindset was exportable. Ideologies cannot be delivered with rifles, but opening free markets seems to have that desired effect; setting up permanent bases along with client governments is something we've done poorly at for some time.

"I think it's pretty obvious that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have much more to do with fighting weapons proliferation and islamic facism than oil."

Which is why Iraq was invaded rather than say Pakistan?
Last time I checked Pakistan
(a) was politically Islamic and aggressively exporting a certain world view, as opposed to secular Iraq
(b) had nuclear weapons and was helping other countries build them.

In your Bill O'Reilly worshipping fantasy land, your statements might pass for wisdom, but the rest of us can see it for the self-serving crap it is.

BTW I find it interesting that you includ Islamic fascism as a reason. As far as I know no-one in the US government has ever actually made such a claim. They have blathered on about democracy, but they have also blathered on a whole lot about what a wonderful, peaceful religion Islam is. After all, they don't want to annoy the world's no. 1 Islamic fascists, the Saudi royal family --- they'd rather walk hand in hand with them, looking lovingly into their eyes.

Rich Ard,

I'm not exaclty sure what the point you're trying to make is. I'm not sure about your assumptions:

It hasn't yet been proven that a "representative republican mindset" is or isn't exportable. It may be many years before we know.

Does the polling data show that many americans believe this? Do they believe something different now?

We have and have had bases in many countries. Japan, Germany, and the Philippines for example. What is it we've done poorly at? There have been resentments about our presence obviously but those countries are all democracies and more or less allies, imperfect though they are.

If the United States were going to invede any country in order to take its oil, Venezuela is the obvious choice. We could have engineered some unrest or even a coup (surely you believe we do that all the time), sent in troops to "restore order" and had a puppet government in place in a month. Explain please why we instead chose much more difficult targets and haven't even bothered stealing the oil.

Maynard Handley,

I don't watch O'Reilly or much TV generally besides the Packers and Badgers. I prefer to read and hang out in bars. I certainly don't worship anyone on TV.

Pakistan and Iraq are different cases. Iraq had totally obstinate leadership while Musharaf is at least somewhat cooperative. Musharaf did something about Khan when encouraged and is helping hunt down terrorists.

In Bush's speech at the Pennslyvania Military depot I think he did in fact refer to Islamofacism.

Canada rather than Venezuela would be the #1 choice for oil-stealing. It's our #1 foreign source, after all. Plus it has an appealingly unguarded border, excellent sugar-maple forests, and a fairly docile population.

But you must not forget that Hitler´s economic thinking (if there was any) was modeled after the experiences of the first world war. A relatively open country-Germany- was blockaded by the british navy and cut off from overseas imports. The resulting scarcity -mainly of food- was determinating in eroding the home front spririt. Of course he changed his mind as he realized that this time (1940) Germany could easily (in comparison with 1st world war)grab foreing land and resources.

triticale wrote:

Venezuela is the obvious choice. We could have engineered some unrest or even a coup (surely you believe we do that all the time), sent in troops to "restore order" and had a puppet government in place in a month. Explain please why we instead chose much more difficult targets and haven't even bothered stealing the oil.

The irony, she is sweet.

There already was was an unsuccessful coup in April 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_coup_attempt_of_2002

Several Administration officials had contact with the coup leaders a few days before the attempt. These leaders were caught on tape entering the US Embassy in Venezuela.

The reality is that the Administration knew about the coup but didn't inform Chavez, because it was cheerleading against him. The US acknowledged the Carmona government and did not condemn the coup until after it failed.

So much for Bush's love of democracies.

can one "Godwin" a thread about Nazis?

Sort of -- more like Godwin's Ineverse. As you can see demonstrated above (and soon, below), instead of starting a thread and seeing a high probability of devolution to Hitler or Nazis the longer it progresses, a thread involving Hitler and Nazis is rapidly evolving into pet grudge topics.

So much for Bush's love of democracies.

Yeah, the one they have now is going just swimmingly, wouldn't you say?

Very interesting post. Fascists seem to want to develop modern industrial power, but with pre-modern, mercantilistic economics. Which of course can't work, at least over the long term.

Explain please why we instead chose much more difficult targets and haven't even bothered stealing the oil.

Because we're incredibly stupid?

In 1940 nothing was available cheaply to Germany. It was under naval blockade. Predictably so. Germany's policies were bound to lead to that. In addition the government could not announce its plans to the public. Under these circumstances autarky was rational. Preparedness for a world war means that you either need a navy second to none or a policy of autarky.

Brazil has a centrifuge uranium isotope enrichment plant they don't let us inspect, that has been operating since last year. They have just launched their first successfull solid fuel rocket (200 mile range) and are planning to upgrade. This is not a liquid fuel scud, but a real solid fuel rocket with a one second launch cycle instead of a one hour launch cycle.
Pushing around Venezuela against all of Latin America is not going to fly. 400 million Sunni Iraqis is not something I want to face, especially since about 20 million of them are on the ground here in America looking just like the 20 million native born latinos. Including about 20% of the US army. I really don't want to fight a war with Latin America.
We couldn't win a war with Latin America.

"Also Iraqi oil hasn't been confiscated, it's under Iraqi control and there are no plans to change that. The big question is how exactly the Iraqis should own their nation's oil: should it be a state owned oil company or a public company with shares distributed to Iraqi citizens, and certainly other options are being considered."

Are we determined not to do anything there the way we do here? First we set up a parliamentary democracy, and now we're not even trying to push the idea of private ownership of mineral rights and private oil company compensating mineral right owners for the use of the oil?

triticale writes: "Explain please why we instead chose much more difficult targets and haven't even bothered stealing the oil."

a) they thought it would be easy.
b) it didn't turn out that way, making it difficult to steal the oil.

IF it had turned out to be the cakewalk they expected, and they'd quickly set up a Chalabi kleptocracy, they certainly would be stealing the oil.

Jon H,

Show me one time in history where empires have allowed the difficulty of victory to inhibit their willingness to exploit victory. When have they ever gone through great pains to enact a government through democratic processes? Take a deep breath, take off the tinfoil hat, and consider the fact that it would have been much easier to install a "Chalabi kleptocracy" (if Chalabi was such a U.S. puppet, why did we disassociate ourselves from him so quickly, even in the face of the fact that he has re-emerged as a political player in Iraq with much more ambivalent views toward the U.S.) than instill a democratic process.

A bigger problem with autarky is that the people who want autarky wouldn't know what to do with it if they got it. It's easy to think the vast economic superiority of the Allies assured the outcome of World War II, but that's not really true.

By June 1941, Germany had conquered most of Europe and had favorable trading relationships with the rest of it. It had more resources and labor available than Britain and the Soviet Union combined. The German submarine campaign against the UK was very successful at the time. By the end of the year, Germany had captured territories with about 45% of the Soviet population and over one-half of its industry and resources. Nevertheless, with far smaller industrial bases, the UK and the USSR were each able to consistently match or exceed German weapons production.

The fact is that the German economy had never adopted large-scale American production methods and relied instead on many smaller producers making far too many different models and wasting too much time on fit and finish instead of turning out sufficient numbers. On top of this, the Nazi administration was corrupt, kleptocratic, and almost feudal, even in Germany itself.

I have to conclude that a state that wants autarky enough to conquer its neighbors for it by its nature will have problems organizing its industrial economy efficiently. We should all be grateful for this.

Just to add a touch of heresy to this conversation, autarky is only bad policy when it fails. Would the United States be better off today had it chosen to trade with the native american peoples, rather than pursuing a policy of manifest destiny? Now that we're fat and happy we can sit around and talk about morality. But the idea that war never solved anything is simply wrong.

Hitler's famous cry of despair (which likely is mythical), as the Red Army approached Berlin, of, "Give me my five weeks!", reminds one that if Barbarossa had been better executed, the Nazis may have prevailed.

The Iraqi population, like the the rest of the population of the Persian Gulf, will either achieve self-government, including control of their mineral wealth, and trade profotably with the rest of the world, or they will suffer greatly in the coming decades. The old model of using local despots to enslave the local populations, and thus facilitate oil extraction, cannot work any longer, in that it inevitably leads those populations into conflict with oil consumers.

The oil is going to be extracted, because the rest of the world's populations are not willing to endure the material deprivation entailed in leaving the oil in the ground. The only open question is how many people get slaughtered in extracting the oil.

I firmly believe that capitalist corporate interests have a massive influence on our government's geopolitical decsisions (Adam Smith agreed with this). However, I find it entirely useless to use that belief in making value judgements on specific policy. Who cares if it was in our business interest to intervene in WWII, it was still a good decision. To believe that all geopolitical decsisions are determined by business interests is to adopt an ideology of defeatism, because as poor, insigificant individuals we have no say in what material interests are. It would behoove us to fight our battles on the field of ideas, where we stand a chance to win.

So much for Bush's love of democracies.

Someone else Musharaff (spelling?) over in Pakistan.

How did he come to power?

Oh that's right...he overthrew the democratically elected government in a military coup.

Now he's our buddy.

Now he's our buddy.

Lack of context is the death of text and pretext feeds on the bones.

It seems theat there is a groundswell of opinion here to wage war on Pakistan instead of Iraq. I suggest you send petitions to Pelosi, Murtha, Kerry et al to come up with public positions in support of war with Pakistan by deploying soldiers who will be withdrawn immediately from Iraq.

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