...But the Military is the Only Branch of the US Government that Even Half-Way Functions

Over the years, I have heard one ambassador after another say, “I had to turn to the military because they are the only people who can get anything done.” If you give the U.S. military an order, something usually happens. It may happen late, clumsily, and expensively, but still, something happens.

In contrast, with State and other agencies, most of the time nothing happens. That is true even when budgets are ample. Why? Because the internal culture of our civilian agencies is so rigid, bureaucratic, risk-averse and rule-bound that they cannot act.

Often, the people at the working level are quite talented. They want to do the assigned job. But the internal focus of their agency is so strong they cannot, at least without risking their careers. A single broken rule or bent regulation, undotted i or uncrossed t, and they quickly learn to follow the regs and forget about the product. So nothing happens. _Lind

In the coming Obamanation, we will see resources shifted from the military to various diplomatic and civilian operations on a grand scale. Much money will be spent -- in the trillions of dollars -- but very little will be accomplished.

Diplomats and lawyers are the face of the Brave New Government. These brave new bureaucrats will know how to spend money just as much as the admirals and generals do, but they will have no results to show. There will be no technological spinoffs from the diplomacy brigades, no disaster relief across the globe, no training of practical skills to supply core specialists to the civilian economy such as airline pilots, engineers, law enforcement officers, civil engineers, trauma surgeons . . . only an ever greater surfeit of lawyers -- the glommed curse of any society or economy.

The NY Times is enthusiastic about the coming reich of diplomacracy under Obama, and the apparent decline of the importance of the US military. Over at the NYT they are ready to give "soft power" a chance, the kind of soft power that has given the EU so much leverage with Putin's Russia.

In a front-page story on December 1, “A Handpicked Team for a Foreign Policy Shift” by David Sanger, the Times reported that the new administration’s key national security policy appointees

were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.

The shift, which would come partly out of the military’s huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the coming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.

Whether they can make the change…”will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency,” one of his senior advisors said recently. _NYT _ via _Lind

Wonderful. As long as the wizards at the NYT are in favour of Obama's strategy, we have nothing to worry about.

A society is like a building, it must be built of strong stuff. Modern western societies are increasingly being built of "soft stuff", preferring the "soft power" approach to a world where soft power has never been effective without an indomitable strong power backing. Obama has ridden a wave of acclaim from Chicago to DC, and no one could blame him for beginning to believe his own press. Most of the western world half believes it.

But in the real world where facades crumble and apparently strong nations fail from internal, unseen rot, press releases and propaganda can only go so far. Up to this point, there has been no credible sign that Obama is made of anything stronger than a whimsical and fantastical narcissism. If there is any there, there -- anything beyond facade -- now would be a good time to start displaying it.

H/T Fabius Maximus