February 19, 2009
Although President Obama has been criticized for many of his appointments, the selection of retired Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence appears to have been a wise choice. Blair graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1968. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar contemporaneously with Bill Clinton. (However, I doubt that Blair was standing next to Bill when the former President “didn’t inhale”.) Blair retired from the Navy in 2002.
On Thursday, February 12, Blair appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and surprised his audience with his new threat assessment. As Tom Gjelten reported for National Public Radio:
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair’s dramatic report last week — that the economic crisis is now the United States’ top “near-term security concern” — caught some members of Congress by surprise. But it makes sense.
The global economic downturn could easily change the world. Previously stable countries could become unstable. The geopolitical lineup could shift sharply, some countries becoming more powerful while others get weaker. Allies could turn into adversaries.
Pamela Hess of the Associated Press provided this account of the hearing:
Blair’s 49-page statement opened with a detailed description of the economic crisis. It was a marked departure from threat briefings of years past, which focused first on traditional threats and battlefields like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,” he said in a written statement for the committee.
Blair cited the inability of other nations to meet their humanitarian obligations and hostility toward the United States for causing this crisis as potential causes for unrest, as this AFP report disclosed:
“Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period,” Blair said.
“Besides increased economic nationalism, the most likely political fallout for US interests will involve allies and friends not being able to fully meet their defense and humanitarian obligations.”
* * *
“It already has increased questioning of US stewardship of the global economy and the international financial structure,” Blair said, with trading partners already upset over a “Buy American” provision in a US stimulus bill.
Rosalie Westenskow of UPI noted Blair’s concern that the impact of climate change, coinciding with the economic crisis, could provide a troublesome combination to facilitate government instability:
“The impacts (of climate change) will worsen existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions,” Blair told senators last week.
As temperatures rise, scientists predict natural disasters like floods and drought will also increase and government instability worldwide is likely to follow, he said.
On February 17, during an interview in Tokyo with Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ratified Blair’s concern about the security threat posed by the global economic crisis:
“Yes, we have to look at this as part of our threat matrix,” the secretary of state said. “I know some people have criticized him and said, ‘what does the economy have to do with terrorism.’ That’s a very short-sighted view. I think what director Blair was saying is that we get fixated sometimes on the headlines of dangers, and that is not in any way to underestimate the continuing threat from terrorism, the instability in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere.”
“But this economic crisis, left unresolved, will create massive unemployment,” she said. “It will upend governments, it will unfortunately breed instability, and I appreciated his putting that into the context of the threat matrix.”
It’s nice to know that we have an intelligence director who is not wedded to the Bush administration’s fixation on September 11 -style attacks. As this February 16 editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out:
The new threat isn’t as easy to identify – or vilify – as al Queda, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less serious.
* * *
No one knows what form the next wave of instability will take. The United States must start making preparations now – by shoring up our own flailing economy and supporting our allies as much as we possibly can. Blair’s warning shows how dangerous it will be for Washington to continue battling along the same tired ideological lines that it has for the last several weeks. This economic crisis could be putting more than our wallets at risk.
Of course, we don’t really need another reason to stay awake at night and worry. Fortunately, we now have someone in a crucial position, capable of identifying and focusing on new threats. Thanks for the “heads up” Admiral Blair!
Troublesome Creatures
A recent piece by Glynnis MacNicol of The Business Insider website led me to the conclusion that Shepard Smith deserves an award. You might recognize Shep Smith as The Normal Guy at Fox News. In case you haven’t heard about it yet, a controversy has erupted over a 20-minute crank telephone call made to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by a man who identified himself as David Koch, one of two billionaire brothers, famous for bankrolling Republican politicians. The caller was actually blogger Ian Murphy, who goes by the name, Buffalo Beast. In a televised discussion with Juan Williams concerning the controversy surrounding Wisconsin Governor Walker, Shep Smith focused on the ugly truth that the Koch brothers are out to “bust labor”. Here are Smith’s remarks as they appeared at The Wire blog:
Those “troublesome creatures” called facts have been finding their way into the news to a refreshing degree lately. Emotional rhetoric has replaced news reporting to such an extreme level that most people seem to have accepted the premise that facts are relative to one’s perception of reality. The lyrics to “Crosseyed and Painless” by the Talking Heads (written more than 30 years ago) seem to have been a prescient commentary about this situation:
Budgetary disputes are now resolved on an emotional battlefield where facts usually take a back seat to ideology. Despite this trend, there are occasional commentaries focused on fact-based themes. One recent example came from David Leonhardt of The New York Times, entitled “Why Budget Cuts Don’t Bring Prosperity”. The article began with the observation that because so many in Congress believe that budget cuts are the path to national prosperity, the only remaining question concerns how deeply spending should be cut this year. Mr. Leonhardt provided those misled “leaders” with the facts:
Leonhardt’s objective analysis drew this response from Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism:
Those “troublesome creatures” called facts became the subject of an opinion piece about the budget, written by Bill Schneider for Politico. While dissecting the emotional motivation responsible for “a dangerous political arms race where the stakes keep escalating”, Schneider set about isolating the fact-based signal from the emotional noise clouding the budget debate:
Let’s hope that those “troublesome creatures” keep turning up at debates, “town hall” meetings and in commentaries. If they cause widespread allergic reactions, let nature run its course.