National Security Discussion

National Security Discussion

"The greatest service that can be rendered to any country is to add a useful plant to its culture."

~ Thomas Jefferson

After the world twisted and turned through the turbulent tide of the Twentieth Century, the United States found itself astride the globe as the premier economic and military super-power.  Strengthened by its compassion and emboldened by its market force, this radical experiment inspired the dreams of the destitute and the hopes of the oppressed.  As the breadbasket to the world, the champion of the weak, the United States sowed goodwill and reaped as its reward the adulation of Nations.  Yet complacency, greed and arrogance, hallmarks of a state losing its soul, slowly began their creeping corruption.  Now, as the world turns again, this tribe known as America stares with empty and wondering eyes while the winds of change blow away the illusion that what once was always shall stay the same.  What remains are empty storefronts and factories rusted shut.  The once mighty colossus has knelt, its visage yet strong with determined diversity but its bones broken, its sinews stretched and its arms propped up by the pretense of the past. 

The United States no longer holds its pre-eminent position as the economic engine in the world.  While the rest of the globe still feels the fluctuations of America’s markets, emerging economies are altering the rules of the international money game.  Fostered by the greed of Corporations no longer beholden to the land of their birth, jobs, like rats fleeing a ship of State, have left these shores in favor of slave wages overseas.  Labor is no longer considered, in an age of empty celebrity and fantasies of fortune and fame, a noble enough occupation to reward the efforts of the American psyche…or at least the elites, with their number crunching detachment, would have the masses believe.  Instead, that which is held in highest esteem is the unnatural undulations of usury and getting rich for naught but shifting credit.  All pipers must be paid though, and the golden calf that is financial speculation is no exception.  How is such a price to be paid when there is nothing substantial to back up the shifting illusion of the big board?  Simple…mortgage the price of future generations against the capital of competitors so as to pretend just a little longer that the Land of the Free remains unbound and brave regardless the shackles placed on the generations of tomorrow.

Herein lies the initial concern for the future security of the United States.  The health of a nation can be tied to the wealth of that nation.  When a nation, as with an individual, exists so dominantly on the credit extended by others, that nation becomes, ultimately, an indentured servant to those whom own the notes.  The United States today has sunk itself into a degree of debt unprecedented in the history of this land, the note holders being ideological adversaries and emerging global competitors.  What happens when the note is called in? With what will we pay?  What will our children pay?

If memory serves correctly, it was not long after draining its national resources on a failed military objective, one located in a land where even the great Alexander lost his way, that the Soviet Union began crumbling, unable to sustain itself.  When a treasury is empty, ample room exists for collapse, either as a hollowed shell or as an old bull caught unawares.  After seven years in Afghanistan, accompanied by a much larger compliment in Iraq, the ongoing adventures have left the U.S. a hollowed shell, the same as befell the Soviet Union.  There should be no doubt about the tenacity to stand and fight that exists in this nation, but that is useless facing the primary existing threat.  How does resolve fight an embargo on the now bankrupt United States, one involving essential items such as spare parts or fuel for the machines that run the modern American life? Allow for a moment to let your imagination run wild with all the possibilities you can think of, then consider those you haven’t.  With no further credit available, with no exportable product, with even the service jobs outsourced through non-citizen hiring and the stigma placed on traditional American labor, how will the United States keep its cohesion in the face of such a financial transfer of power?  In order to avoid such a fate, the United States must not only reclaim its manufacturing base, it is critical insofar as needed infrastructure component manufacturing.

The United States is also left vulnerable through its increasing reliance on a single primary crop, both economically as well as catastrophically.  Were there to be a bug, a fungus, a virus or bacteria to develop a significant taste for the homogenized strains which dominate the American corn crop, one such as what happened to the cotton crop with boll weevils or the potatoes in Ireland, how fast will the effects be felt?  Already there is a pinch being felt by the increased use of corn-based ethanol, one that threatens the very core of the American lifestyle, the price of beer.  Were the last commodity of trade in the United States to be stripped and devastated through such a cause, one with historical precedence, the U.S. would not have the finances to sustain a military, especially with its experienced soldiers still on cash consuming adventures overseas.  How long would it take for prices to soar?  Shortages to appear?  Desperation to set in?  How long until runs on the stores, coupled with increasing fuel restrictions, lack of finances and increasing fear leave shelves empty of the staples with supply sporadic at best?  Allow your imagination to run that scenario out a few months at a time and then recall the results of infamous famines.  Extend that scenario to encompass a period as long as that at James Town, the Potato Famine, the Siege of Leningrad or, for consistency and endurance, the reign of the boll weevil.  Now, with such a potential vividly imagined, take it one simple step further and consider that such a scenario does not need to rely on nature alone.  With modern chemistry or a little selective breeding, what innocuous agents can be taught the taste of corn?

If the advice of the Founding Fathers is given any credence anymore, the United States will considered hard the benefits to be found in adding Hemp/Cannabis to the national arsenal of economic resources.   As a primary source of bio-fuel, Hemp not only exists as the superior crop, but it frees corn up to serve its primary role as food.  The price of beer will also remain cheap as barley is no longer directed instead to feed livestock.  Hemp also has the added benefit of serving nutritional needs as well and, due to its hardiness, would be able to serve as a reserve food source if a bug did get hungry for corn.  As an engine of the economy, the cultivation, the processing and the production of Hemp based products, in all possible roles, offers a base for tens of millions of jobs.  To prevent a shortage based upon an embargo of parts, all machinery used in the cultivation and processing of Hemp should be required to be made in the United States.  It is a deadly policy to rely on potential enemies to make the machines needed to survive.  On this commodity, Hemp/Cannabis, for whatever product might be produced of it, should fall a strict and preferential tariff for at least a decade so as to ensure, with the creativity and imagination of American ingenuity and science, the United States achieves an advantage in technology and thus exports products rather than imports basics.  With certain trade partners, such as those that have a positive effect on the U.S. economy like existing automobile importers, technological partnerships should be made with emphasis on domestic production.  Just in considering the dispersion of such a market domestically, a decade long head start before the rest of the world catches on does not even begin to tap the potential economic power possible and a strong economy is the best national defense.