The question of what President-elect Donald Trump has planned for Afghanistan rarely came up during his run for the presidency. As is the sometimes-custom of Trump, apart from several tweets (“Let’s get out of Afghanistan?”) and inflammatory comments (“Karzai is a crook”), it’s unclear what he wants to do in the country, despite the fact that it is the site of the longest war in U.S. history.
Since 2002, the international community has spent some $100 billion on rebuilding the country and its economy. Nearly 70 percent of Afghanistan’s annual income is from international donors. Yet the next American president has been a harsh critic of the very aid the Afghan state depends on, according to Barnett Rubin, director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and a long-time adviser on Afghanistan to both the UN and
“He believes it’s wasted money,” Rubin said. In Afghanistan, Trump may have a strong argument. Despite what the United States has spent there in the name of improving security, UN figures indicate that civilian deaths have reached a new peak since the beginning of the census in 2009. Corruption is also one of the main causes of the extreme poverty afflicting the country. Rubin said Trump would face congressional opposition if he tried to cut off all of Afghanistan’s aid. “But I think [such aid] will come into much greater question than if Hillary Clinton has been elected,” he said.
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The surprising strength of populist, anti-globalization leaders in the industrial West has underscored the declining prospects for the middle and working classes in the United States and Europe. By contrast, Asian elites and middle class workers are widely regarded as the largest beneficiaries of economic globalization.
Chinese debt has accumulated a dizzying 465 percent over the past decade, and totaled nearly 250% of GDP in 2015. Servicing the debt will consume a growing part of the country’s resources and is already exacerbating financial volatility.
Despite enviable growth rates, however, Asian economies have their own worries. China’s economy has manifested troubling signs in the form of two major, inter-related threats. First, mounting public and private debt has raised the risk of a financial crisis and of dramatically slower growth rates. Chinese debt has accumulated a dizzying 465 percent over the past decade, and totaled nearly 250% of GDP in 2015. Servicing the debt will consume a growing part of the country’s resources and is already exacerbating financial volatility.
Second, the country’s adherence to an increasingly inefficient mode of economic growth threatens long-term growth. China powered its phenomenal rise on the backs of exports and investment. But this approach has grown less effective as world demand has fallen and capacity grown redundant. More debt is now required to generate less and less growth. According to economist Ruchir Sharma, China now borrows six dollars to generate one dollar in GDP growth.
To correct these problems, China should consider ways to wean the economy from its dependence on cheap credit, exports and infrastructure investment and instead adopt a more balanced and sustainable mode of growth driven to a much larger degree by consumption and services. Much of the highly publicized “Third Plenum” agenda has centered on establishing the institutions, practices, and policies needed for such an economic transformation. However, implementation of the new policies has been extremely slow and the results largely disappointing. Accordingly, the government has frequently relapsed to loose credit as a way to boost growth and keep unemployment rates low. But these stop-gap measures only delay and compound the long-term structural problems.
Indeed, pessimism about China’s ability to ever carry out needed reform has grown in recent years. The mounting weaknesses in China’s economy come at an inauspicious time. Depressed global demand has left Beijing few options for overseas markets that could ease the pain of its economic transformation. The increasing financial volatility could also spur capital flight, as anxious investors move their savings to more secure and stable markets. Both the developing and developed world would feel the effects. The developed world could see a decline in investment if China opted to enact controls to prevent capital flight.
Although it remains to be seen what policies he may pursue, the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president could exacerbate China’s situation. Trump’s election is illustrative the spreading disenchantment with economic globalization in the industrial West. With Britain’s looming exit from the European Union and nationalist European parties poised to make larger electoral gains, the trend shows little sign of abatement. China’s continued dependence on exports to these countries renders the country highly vulnerable to the types of protectionist policies advocated by President-elect Trump and other nationalist European leaders.
Whether President-elect Trump chooses to pursue tariffs once in office is unclear. But if he chooses to do so, China could retaliate with its own tariffs. The result could be a global trade war that damages growth for all. Grimly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts continued stagnation in advanced economies, which it warned could increase the appeal of anti-trade policies.
Like most other countries that have experienced rapid development, China is struggling to transition from a highly successful but unsustainable economic model. Such a transformation is difficult to carry out in even the best of economic climates, but Beijing faces the additional challenge of executing difficult reforms in the face of an increasingly inhospitable global economy. To avoid global stagnation, the world’s leading economies require even closer coordination and innovative policies to spur global demand. Whether global leaders can resist the growing call for retrenchment and enact policies that invigorate growth remains to be seen.
#2
I want to know what happened to all those leftists that 20 years ago were screaming about how free trade was bad cause China et. al. didn't have our environmental rules, and our labor rules.
Reading of the latest “Allahu Akhbar!” attacks (so far this week) in Germany, Turkey, Jordan, Libya, and Switzerland, one is struck by the politicized incompetence of the authorities. This is true both East and West, but in plainer view to us in the West. News reports carry information that even I know they should not be carrying, about police suspicions. We learn that — at the usual frightful expense — additional security measures are in place at e.g. Christmas markets in several hundred cities, including a couple of miles away in this one. The idea is to put the general public back to sleep, as quickly as possible; to restore what President Harding called “normalcy”; to make the people feel safe in their beds, or waking, busy with their toys and pacifiers.
Apart from the enemy, however, I do not know who can benefit from such information. Too, unnecessary “editorial advice” is provided to the news agencies, not only to keep their language ideologically hygienic, but more systematically to slant and select what is presented. In particular: doubt must be cast on the motives of the perpetrators, and Muslim celebrations of the attacks must be ignored. The general public see through this, partly, but are by now accustomed to the many little lies that shield the big ones on which our liberal-progressive “values” are based.
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On November 22, while the world watched, the U.S. Navy’s newest, most complex warship ground to a stop in the middle of the Panama Canal, both propellers seized. The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) had to be towed out of the canal. While not as embarrassing as watching our sailors being taken hostage by Iran and then publicly humiliated, nonetheless it was pretty embarrassing. Yes, all new classes of ships have teething problems, but this is at least the third major “engineering casualty” that the USS Zumwalt has experienced over the last few months, and it is emblematic of a defense-procurement system that is rapidly losing its ability to meet our national-security needs.
The Zumwalt was going to be the United States’ 21st-century, cruiser-sized, super destroyer that would allow us to dominate the world’s oceans and littorals for the next 50 years. The Navy made big promises: The two overarching goals for the program were that the ship would be very stealthy and that it would set new standards in reducing crew size. Another major element was that it would be able to supply the Naval Surface Fire Support (NSFS) capability the Navy has been promising the Marines since it retired the last of the modernized Iowa-class battleships in 1992. Its 15,000 to 16,000 tons of displacement would be crammed full of new and revolutionary technologies. Its massive generating capacity would allow it to power the energy-hungry lasers and railguns of the future. Its defining glory, its stealth, would allow the Zumwalt to undertake missions that other less stealthy ships could not.
Based on the Navy’s 1999 assurances that each ship would cost just $1.34 billion and that the whole 32-ship program would come in at $46 billion, Congress committed to fund the program. But by 2001, cost growth prompted the Navy to lower the projected class size to only 16 ships. Flash-forward to today and the Navy has capped production at just three ships, with each costing over $4.2 billion in construction costs alone. Toss in over $10 billion for development costs, and you end up at more than $7 billion per ship.
Based on the Navy’s 1999 assurances that each ship would cost just $1.34 billion and that the whole 32-ship program would come in at $46 billion, Congress committed to fund the program. But by 2001, cost growth prompted the Navy to lower the projected class size to only 16 ships. Flash-forward to today and the Navy has capped production at just three ships, with each costing over $4.2 billion in construction costs alone. Toss in over $10 billion for development costs, and you end up at more than $7 billion per ship.
To make matters worse, this cost is still rising — the Navy actually took delivery of, and commissioned, a ship that is far from complete and years away from being ready for combat. Adding insult to injury, absolutely no one has been held accountable for this budget-busting debacle. In fact, every one of the Navy’s four original project managers were almost immediately promoted from captain to admiral upon completing their stint in charge. And the lead contractors for the Zumwalt program — Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics — have received additional hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of defense contracts — even as costs soared, schedules slipped, and capabilities declined.
As we look across a range of big-budget defense programs, we see this pattern repeated over and over and over again. Not only is there zero accountability, but this behavior is rewarded. Indeed, in today’s military, successfully expanding a program beyond its initial budget is viewed highly favorably in terms of rank advancement, as well as being valued by defense contractors looking to hire “team players” who can effectively wield influence with their former colleagues on their behalf.
The Zumwalt is an unmitigated disaster. Clearly it is not a good fit as a frontline warship. With its guns neutered, its role as a primary anti-submarine-warfare asset in question, its anti-air-warfare capabilities inferior to those of our current workhorse, the Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, and its stealth not nearly as advantageous as advertised, the Zumwalt seems to be a ship without a mission.
If that’s the case, how will the Navy use the Zumwalt? Eric Wertheim, author and editor of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Guide to Combat Fleets of the World, noted that “with only three ships, the class of destroyers could become something of a [very expensive] technology demonstration project.” He is not alone in this verdict. Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt Jr. deserved better.
#2
The Navy, like the donks, needs to spend some time in front of a mirror trying to figure out what's wrong with it. A fair amount is 8 years of Obama flag promotions, but the problems go back much farther. And it's not just the Navy. Look at the F-35. At least the Army got out of the FCS early. But nothing has been done to improve the survivability of the branch that takes 80 percent of the casualties. I'd happily trade one Zumwalt for systems that would rescue infantry casualties by 50% while increasing their lethality. A swamp worth draining.
#3
To put it bluntly, when you haven't fought a real war in 70 years, you tend to do stupid stuff like this.
A few years back, I commented about the Navy being "a Fortune 100 Company in uniform." In front of a flag officer, his staff and my CO and her staff. It didn't go over well.
There are advantages to being a civil servant at times.
#4
Hmmm, maybe they should let the Air Force design the ships and pick the contractors and the Navy design the Aircraft/contractors then let the Marines have veto powers over the results. Sec. Maddog doesn't like either one, do over.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
