From the March 16 maiden floor speech by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark) a veteran of the Iraq war, as reported in “Notable & Quotable: How to Avoid War,” The Wall Street Journal, 3/18/15:
No leader—whether a president, a general, or a platoon leader—wishes to put his troops in harm’s way. War is an awful thing, and takes an unimaginable toll on the men and women who fight it and their families.
But the best way to avoid war is to be willing and prepared to fight a war in the first place. That’s the alternative: military strength and moral confidence in the defense of America’s national security. Our enemies and allies alike must know that aggressors will pay an unspeakable price for challenging the United States.
The best way to impose that price is global military dominance. When it comes to war, narrow margins are not enough, for they are nothing more than an invitation to war. We must have such hegemonic strength that no sane adversary would ever imagine challenging the United States. “Good enough” is not and will never be good enough.
We can look to a very recent historic example to prove this point. Just 25 years ago, a dominant American military ended the Cold War without firing a shot. If we return to the dominance of that era, aggressive despots like Vladimir Putin, rising powers like China, and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran’s ayatollahs will think long and hard before crossing us. And while we may not deter terrorist groups like the Islamic State, al Qaeda and Hezbollah, we will kill their adherents more effectively, while also sending a needed lesson to their sympathizers: join and you too will die.
Senator Cotton was also the author of the recent letter to Iran, signed by 46 other Republican senators. It is tempting to go through this statement line-by-line, as SLL has done in the past with other statements, providing a detailed refutation. However, it may be more salient to offer the text without such point-by-point comments, let it stand, and consider its implications and its appearance in the WSJ.
Senator Cotton is 37-years-old and has been in the Senate for all of two months. Does this statement capture the dominant policy thinking among the Republican powers that be, what they believe but do not say? If it is so interpreted in Moscow, Beijing, the capitals of Europe, and across the Middle East, certain phrases will undoubtedly stand out : “hegemonic strength,” “global military dominance,” “no sane adversary would ever imagine challenging the United States,” “dominance of that era,” “aggressive despots,” and “join and you too will die.”
If Senator Cotton wanted to cite a period of true US dominance, he should have invoked the period right after WWII, when the US had sole possession of the atomic bomb, the only major industrial infrastructure that had not been destroyed, and the dollar was a true reserve currency. By the time the USSR closed up shop, the US’s slide off the pinnacle was well-advanced. It had already lost a long, bloody, and expensive war in Vietnam, and President Nixon had taken us off the gold standard. Our hegemonic strength wasn’t enough to defeat North Vietnam, allied with China and the USSR. Our “reserve” currency was no longer backed by any reserves, only retaining the title because the dollar remained the currency of choice in international trade, especially the oil trade. None of this history apparently has made a dent in Senator Cotton’s thinking.
Nor has more recent history. Senator Cotton acknowledges increasing US might “may not deter terrorist groups,” but “we will kill the adherents more effectively.” To date, our “ineffective” killing has only created more adherents. According to the experts on Islam oft cited on Fox News and the WSJ, the message “join and you too will die” would increase the allure of terrorism, since Islam is supposedly the “religion of death”—martyrdom, paradise in the afterlife, 40 willing virgins, and all that.
Finally, Cotton appears never to have glanced at the US government’s balance sheet, the Treasury’s monthly international flow of capital reports, or a globe. The US is $18 trillion in debt and has over $125 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Where does the senator think the money is going to come from to fund his hegemonic domination? Especially when one of the countries he wants to dominate—China—is our biggest creditor? We’ve had a bad run lately, with draws or losses in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. These aren’t top-tier nations. Russia and China are, and they are already chafing at US aspirations to run the world, especially in their backyards.
What is important here is not so much Cotton’s ignorance, but that the WSJ, would give it pride of place on its opinion pages, that 46 other senators would sign his unprecedented letter to Iran, a triumph of gesture over substance, and that he is being touted as vice presidential material in Republican political circles. Cotton’s thinking does indeed seem to represent the Republican mainstream. Ponder that.
See also: “One of These Is Just Like the Other,” SLL, 3/18/15.
