[PEN-L:4650] Re: RE: Re: On Military Keynesianism

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max Sawicky wrote:

>
> >> In that sense, your are correct to observe that its role has
> shifted from domestic economic stimulant to global geopolitical
> weaponry.  But the very nature of war has changed, the link
> between economic warfare and physical conflicts has become
> continuous. >
>
> Whatever all this means, it has nothing to do with military
> keynesianism, whose hallmark is high defense expenditures
> financed by borrowing, neither of which have been in force, and
> neither of which are in the cards.
>

You have described only one half of Kenynesianism - deficit financing of
fiscal expenditure in down cycles.  In up cycles, Keynesianism advocates
surpluses and debt reduction with corresponding reduction of public
sector (including military) spending.  We are you may have heard from
the administration in the 9th year of an up cycle.  Your data does not
prove MK is dead.

> The best explanation for the Yugo intervention is the desire for
> an orderly expansion and consolidation of bourgeois Europe.  The
> fact that the nature of the intervention at this point is feeble
> and likely ineffective, as far as it goes right now, does not
> refute this basic motive, nor its (the goal, not necessarily the
> methods) defensibility from an ethical standpoint.  As things
> stand, there is simply no alternative from an unconstrained
> Milosevic but barbarism and genocide.

You are right that this phase of of the bombing does not have a MK
effective, but unless Yelsin is drunk again, I hear him warning about
the prospect of a European war linked to the bombing.  I have a lot of
sympathy for the Albanians  (they were China's diehard and only ally
throughout the Cultural Revolution) and in a conflict between Christians
and Moslems, I innately will side with the Moslems.  But none of that
justifies Nato bombing.


>
> But my main, minimum purpose here is to throw deserved cold water on
> U.S. military spending -- actual or desired -- as an important factor
> in all this.

You need to look at the patterns rather than one single event.

> One might think that almost any ulterior motive on the part of
> NATO would be subject to some kind of absolution, if the
> prevention of mass butchery was conceivable.  But apparently that
> isn't enough.

NATO being motivated by moral concerns is hard to buy.

Henry