Destabilizing America
Contributed by Will Howard
I’m an analyst. To analyze something is to see below surface appearances, identify a system’s components and how they function, and then try reassembling the parts in one’s mind to see if that trial assembly achieves the observed functionality.
Some people suspect an evil genius behind a problem — or even a conspiracy of puppet masters. In this tale analyzing an American vulnerability, I start out doing exactly that — but only because it is such an easy path to get across the underlying functionality.
Scientists do this all the time, a famous example being the line of reasoning that led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846. Something was altering the orbit of Uranus; perhaps it was a belt of asteroids like the one between Mars and Jupiter, perhaps a big dense rock, perhaps a small conventional planet. All they knew from the math was that something was out there, but not how that mass was distributed, what it would look like. But one can treat the combined mass of a hundred chunks as if they were concentrated at a single point in their midst, called the center of mass. That told the astronomers where to look for something subtle.
I start with a point-like puppet as the actor, then replace the straw man and the straw conspiracy with the side effects of another endeavor— and then invite you to critique it. Just remember we are still talking about an abstraction like that center of gravity, a stand-in act-alike for something real.
Were one to start with a suspicion that there was a foreign “evil genius” trying to “take over” America, much in the news would seem suspicious. Who promotes, one might ask, the anti-masking and anti-vaccine efforts that only make us collectively weaker? Who benefits from the divisive politics leading us toward a civil war? Who benefits from a Congress that is so divided that it can barely pass continuing budget resolutions? Did someone promote the election of an incompetent narcissist as President, one with no experience in policy or government, likely to rely on advice from his sponsors when appointing public officials and vetoing legislation?
The analyst asks, Cui bono? Who benefits? I suppose that many people, asked to name a possible puppet master, would suggest Vladimir Putin, based both on his history as Russia’s chief spy and because our former narcissist-in-chief has, surprisingly, seemed to favor him. Putin’s possible motivation? In the history books, expanding an empire seems a popular motivation; think of Germany’s Lebensraum (living space) movement that started in the 1890s, well before the two World Wars they started.
While there is no reason to exclude Mr. Putin from consideration, or expansion of empire as a goal, it would be dangerous to stop there; it would leave us blind to the other possibilities. One must ask about what other goals might be in play. In a time of extreme weather and other climate challenges needing quick responses, innocent goals might lead to attempts to corrupt American officials. That is what I am going to analyze.
For my straw conspiracy, I am going to pick the countries that currently import a lot of their food from the US. I doubt they are currently a problem, but in the drought-ridden future of ruined crops, they and others will have important reasons to manipulate American politics, so that they try to corrupt US officials for the good of their own citizens.
While Australia and the Americas are net exporters of food, the other continents are net importers. You might think that the US has a buffer against a bad year, in that we export one-fifth of what we grow, but consider what happened when Russia suddenly stopped exporting grain following the July 2010 mega heatwave that killed 56,000 Russians. Many Mediterranean countries were already in drought when the killer heat wave also ruined 30 percent of the Russian grain crop. The Russians immediately prohibited grain exports, saving the rest of the crop for the Russian winter.
That made it much more expensive for those Mediterranean countries to buy grain on the world market and, because they had not been following the Pharaoh’s policy of keeping a seven year supply in reserve for such occasions, food prices soared when winter arrived, producing bread riots and increasing antigovernment anger, already there for other reasons that varied with the country.
Knowing this history, officials in importing countries might reasonably review their relationship with the US, asking where they stood on the US’s priority list for maintaining food exports if a third mega heat wave should strike North America rather than Eurasia. They might believe that our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, would be our top priority to help out because of the possible border raids. Because Canada and Mexico already receive the largest slices of our food export pie, other importing countries might conclude that they are not going to be favorites unless they work at it.
What might they decide to do in order to improve their chances in an American version of the two Eurasian mega heat waves in 2003 and 2010? A PR campaign would not threaten us, but they might work even harder at making better friends in high places — or at least ones that they could bribe, blackmail, or intimidate with violent threats directed at family. In much of the world, corruption of law enforcement, or cutting their budgets to render them ineffective, would suffice to get the job done.
Speaking of intimidation (what President Trump did to his Vice-President and the entire Congress with his violent January 6th mob): Watching how some lawmakers made excuses afterward for Trump‘s mob, it occurred to me that fear might have been one reason for those lawmakers to so blatantly risk their trustworthy reputation. I worried that such lawmakers might have been sufficiently intimidated to worry about their family’s safety rather than the nation’s.
After all, that’s likely a reason why the National Rifle Association has remained so successful in defeating gun-control legislation despite its popular support; lawmakers might not worry about the NRA itself organizing a mob for Trump-style retribution but some legislators would easily imagine pop-up midnight home visits after closing hours at the local taverns, with the police slow to respond in sufficient strength.
Getting the job done via intimidation is usually a criminal act, but it can be temporarily disguised as free speech; a “peaceful protest march” can, by design, turn into an attacking mob, as happened on January 6. True peaceful protest does not feature people who dress in a threatening manner and carry weapons, the armed vigilantism often seen in Trump’s audiences. Many may not intend to riot, but they do intend to intimidate and are likely to be thanked by Trump for doing so, as after the 2017 Charlottesville racist riot. That’s incitement to riot another time. Trump regularly got away with it, protected by the GOP-dominated Senate. A mob can display a ‘Lord of the Flies’ mentality; people do things as part of a mob that they would never do as individuals.
Foreign governments would probably try something more subtle in preparing for an American mega, such as media campaigns featuring their starving children, or channeling campaign money through an American middleman. Any country that sees the US as having been top dog for an excessive length of time might sympathize with efforts to take the US down a notch. Such dominance struggles are standard fare, and so the US is vulnerable to organized efforts seeking preferential treatment via weakening law enforcement or biasing decisions.
My fictional finale of this Destabilizing America analysis is in Part Two where I imagine an amoral consulting firm somewhere abroad that was hired to help analyze US vulnerabilities that could be exploited. It offers a fictional outsiders’ point of view on America. And these consultants are absurdly Machiavellian.
Your faithful analyst,
WILL HOWARD
WILL HOWARD (a pen name) is, under his own name, the author of many nonfiction books; they have been translated into 16 languages. He was, however, able to supply the editor with an author picture.
In 1955, the author looked nothing like he does 66 years later, making this image worthless for identifying Will Howard. The senior figure is indeed President Harry S Truman.
Credit: The LIFE magazine photographer Eliot Elisofon took the picture; Will Howard was his fetch-and-carry assistant and driver.
The author gives you permission to copy and re-publish this essay: 2021 CC BY.
