Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11

Reading the collection of short essays in Higg's slender volume is a reminder that not all the opposition to America's growing war machine comes from the left. There remains a solid core of opposition from the right, anchored in Libertarian principles and voiced in Congress by representative Ron Paul of Texas. Though the material here is neither extensive nor deep, and is too often repetitive, it does serve as a useful reminder of the pre-Cold War Republican party. That was the party of Robert Taft, Main Street America, and small business. They opposed big government, big taxes, international meddling, large standing armies and unionized workers. Their historic defeat came in 1952 with the triumph of the Eisenhower wing and its Wall Street backers. Now, it appears, what's left of that point of view has migrated from the Republicans to the Libertarians, at least as an ideological force. The articles here are uniformly brief, pungent, and incisive, occasionally rising to an eloquence, as in Chapter 20, on America's War Party. There's also an informative chapter on the hidden true size of the Defense budget, showing how deeply our economy is mired in imperial expenditures. The biggest drawback lies with the format which works against the kind of analytic depth some readers may prefer. The book really works best as a collection of op-ed pieces. So, if you're looking for an anti-empire perspective in short, sweet doses that doesn't mirror the Chomskyite left, then this may be your ticket.

"Resurgence of the Warfare State" is a compilation of 47 of Higgs's essays written in reaction to the outpouring of newspeak, disinformation, and propaganda in support of information warfare (IW) since 9/11. With wit and a sense of tragic despair born out of a nostalgic love for an America long gone, Higgs takes us through the last four years of the British fifth column inside Washington, District of Criminals - the Bush Crime Family and its anti-capitalist but very corporatist administration. Higgs's chronicles of American-powered British empire range from political commentary to unorthodox kinds of prose such as poetry. He says in his Introduction that "At every step, of course, the perpetrators have boldy proclaimed that black is white; that the road to peace must be paved with gravestones; that the 'reconstruction' of a city or even an entire country begins by obliterating it with bombs, rockets, shells, and bullets; that 'liberation' takes the form of heavily armed soldiers bursting into homes and mosques and dragging people off to torture them in hideous prisons, then blaming everything on "terrorists" who include, it turns out, little children now with their eyes blinded, their skin burned, or their limbs blown off by U.S. bombs and bullets." The first essay is titled "Glory Days for Government: an economic historian talks about national security crises and the growth of government", which was originally an interview with the author by Reason magazine writer Michael Lynch in which Higgs warned that "historically a large proportion of all government expansion has taken place as an emergency or crisis action". Essay Three is titled "Wake Up to the Law of the Ratchet" coauthored with Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University where the authors explain that every time government increases in response to perceived crises, it never contracts back to its original size - it is left bigger than it was before the crisis. According to this law, America is lost and has been replaced by Amerika, a corporatist state operated Italian-style. Essay Seventeen is titled "Free Enterprise and War, a Dangerous Liaison", which goes far to explain how the British Tories infiltrated America's conservative movement and replaced their pro-capitalism with anti-capitalist corporatism, veiled by Orwellian doublespeak so that most conservatives do not cotton on to the usurpation. ( for further reading see Richard Cockett's "Thinking the Unthinkable".) Essay Twenty-Nine is titled "To Make War, Presidents Lie", which begins with former President McKinley of Canton, Ohio who did the Philippines wrong, and later rode on up to Buffalo but didn't stay too long. Higgs covers Wilson, FDR, LBJ, skips Clinton and concludes with Bush, Jr: "Now President George W. Bush is telling the American people that we stand in mortal peril of imminent attack by Iraqis . . . Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet

I'm sure this one will get snagged on a certain "Guideline" - paint-by-numbers and all that - but I'm going to submit it anyway - if for no other reason than fyi. I've just ordered Resurgence of the Warfare State on the strength of one of the customer reviews. No, not the five star one by Karen Kwiatkowski. Au contraire. It was the one star one by Jill Malter. Didn't much like the sulphurous stench of special pleading coming off it. In fact, I didn't like it so much that I reached straightaway for my 1-click ordering button. Which is by way of saying, sometimes you can judge a book by the covering fire its negative reviewers are laying down. The tripline - the real giveaway - was that stark little sentence: "My litmus test on books of this sort is what they say about Israel." As the old saying goes, I guess that's what makes a horse race. Because funnily enough as an American my litmus test on books of this sort is what they say about America. And as for: "truth is a value. And I thought that whether we actually ought to invade Iraq, making a big military commitment, did indeed depend on the truth of Saddam Hussein's implicit boasts of being on the verge of having a serious threat involving weapons of mass destruction (while explicitly denying it)". Let's see, there's a "depend on the truth" followed by an "implicit" followed by a "boast" followed by an "on the verge" followed by a "serious" followed by a "threat" followed by an "involving". What is that, seven! removes. That's world class weasly. It's just so lame. There's much banging on about America's enemies and threats And then having had its cake the review proceeds to eat it by telling us that "Israel was not immediately threatened by Iraq". You can't have it both ways. If Iraq's tiny but armed to the teeth neighbour Israel isn't threatened how is it that half a world away the world's only superpower is threatened? Two words and a question mark sough in the wind here: "delivery systems?" Bottom line: a wee little case of literary "blowback". In short, I bought the book dear reader. My five star recommendation is based on a reaction, a strong hunch - and, yes, jumping through the hoops of cyberspace "forms". I'll make any required "adjustments" when I've read it.

Sweet Land of Militarism by Karen Kwiatkowski Resurgence of the Warfare State delivers a ferocious punch to those who prefer their states massive and their wars, as Mr. Bush might say, catastrophically successful. The rest of us, preferring our state small, our leviathan caged, and our wars as a last resort rather than feel-good fixes, will savor Dr. Robert Higgs' latest contribution to modern history and politics. Resurgence is a carefully selected set of powerful essays, organized into eight parts, each focusing on a unique aspect of the modern, post 9-11 American warfare state. The book begins with an important post-9/11 interview conducted by Michael Lynch of Reason. Dr. Higgs, an economic historian who is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and editor of their superb journal, The Independent Review, briefly explains the themes of his earlier books, Crisis and Leviathan (1987) and Against Leviathan (2004). What we know, thanks to Higgs' lucid presentation and analysis, is that national crises in American lead to bigger, more invasive, and more hubristic government, the kind that doesn't go away after the crisis fades. In Resurgence, it becomes clear that some national crises are more equal than others in delivering the government goods of more centralization, more spending, more interference in and control over the private life of American citizens. 9/11 was invaluable and has shown itself to be an unsurpassed opportunity for government growth. Just as after the Japanese attack on the sleepy naval base at Pearl Harbor, America is again a super-animated warfare state. Shortly after 9-11, Dr. Higgs predicted "an overwhelming public demand for government to act." He saw clearly that new agencies would form and old agencies would find creative new missions. He forecasted that government would graciously bail out major domestic industries of airlines and insurance, call up reservists, make war abroad, and clamp down on civil liberties at home. "Bombs and missiles" would be dropped, he warned. Of course, he was right in every case. The first set of chapters in Resurgence draws on the wisdom of James Madison, who said, "...of all the enemies of liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded....No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Of course, preserving universal "freedom" is repeatedly voiced by the White House. Yet Vice President Cheney is also quoted by Higgs, with this terrifying gem, "[The present war] may never end....It's a new normalcy." This new normalcy is the warfare state, and Madison's grave insight becomes Cheney's glee. Where Madison's Congress may have been contentious and worried about excess executive power, Cheney's Congress after 9-11 was generous and genuflecting toward the White House, filled with admiration for the architects of war on liberty at home and on various sets of unfortunate villains abroad. Is Washington entirely to blame? Higgs also explains, sometimes humorousl