Surviving Victory Conference, Washington DC 2006

Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security
Green Institute 'Surviving Victory' DC Forum

Analysis: Mideast woes alarm U.S. experts By JACOB RUSSELL UPI Correspondent WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Several prominent policy analysts warned this week that America's foreign policy had to be urgently re-evaluated to prevent wider disaster. The Bush administration should even consider evacuating its military forces from the Middle East, according to experts speaking a meeting of the Green Institute think tank Wednesday. The meeting reflected the growing unease among both traditionally conservative and liberal foreign policy analysts in the U.S. capital about the consequences of the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the growing anti-American sentiments expressed throughout the region. "This is really an effort to assess where we are right now in the wake of the catastrophe with Iraq and Afghanistan, "panelist Roger Morris, senior fellow with the Green Institute, said."We want, above all, to point the way out. We want to ask: what are the alternatives here?" The think tank, hosted by the Green Institute as part of its Global Policy 360 project, and led by Steven Schmidt, co-director for GP360, explored current U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East as well as current national security concerning Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and Israel....
Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security

Sponsored by the Green Institute & Bll Foundation Washington DC September 20, 2006 Analysis: Mideast woes alarm U.S. experts UPI / September 22, 2006 __________________________________ Presentator/Resources: Roger Morris st Strategic Demands of the 21 Century: A New Vision for a New World by Roger Morris & Steven Schmidt / June 2005 [1] The moment requires bold innovative approaches to our interests and responsibilities on a drastically changed, swiftly changing planet. What we see as essential to a wide-ranging democratic discussion and debate is a new strategic discourse, addressing causes as well as effects. We must look ahead, envision and plan without illusion or compromising influence, recognize new realities, tell unpopular truths, put the national interest ahead of office, educate and act Cited: Globalization and Its Discontents / Joseph Stiglitz W.W. Norton, June 2002 Updated: The Three Trillion Dollar War by Joseph Stiglitz & Linda Bilmes Sascha Mller-Kraenner Security in Our One World / Updated: Global Green Recovery / Boell Institute, July 2006 [2] generating new sources of revenues to fund green technologies; intensifying dialogue on existing national green policies; and spurring new international co-operation on green technologies. Charles Pea Winning the Un-War, A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism Potomac Books / March 2006 [3] "Brilliant and incisive demolition of the misguided strategy that the Bush administration concocted in the wake of 9/11. A Smaller Military to Fight the War on Terrorism [PDF] / from Future of US Military Strategy Conference FPRI / December 2005 [4] Our global force posture should transition from a sprawling one to that of a balancer of last resort. We would understand that crises and conflicts that develop around the world, for the most part, actually dont threaten U.S. national securityThe military should be about half the size that it is today. In order to transform the military it needs to learn to do more with less. Reducing the defense budget will drive transformation Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy [5]
Winslow Wheeler Is There Any Hope for Military Reform? [F35 update] [6] How Congress Sacrifices Readiness for Pork: Smoke and Mirrors in the Defense Budget CounterPunch / January 2006 [7] Wastrals of Defense: How Congress Sabotages US Security / October 2004 [8] _____________________________________
Forum Contributors: Steve Clemons The Real State of the Union 2006: A No-Nonsense Assessment of U.S. Foreign Policy and Call to Action / January 2006 [9] The Washington Note NOTE TO VP CHENEY on 9/11: What "Thinking the Unthinkable" Really Looks Like / September 11, 2006 [10] American Strategy Program [11] Susan Rice [U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, nominated 2008] Global Poverty, Weak States and Insecurity / August 2006 [12] Transnational"spillover" from these states includes conflict, terrorism, disease, and environmental degradation. Efforts to illuminate the complex relationship between poverty and insecurity may be unwelcome to those who want assurance that global poverty and U.S. national security are unrelated. However, we ignore or obscure the implications of global poverty for global security at our peril. The Threat of Global Poverty / Spring 2006 [13] Today, more than half the world's population lives on less than $2 per day, and almost 1.1 billion people live in extreme poverty, defined as less than $1 per day. The costs of global poverty are multiple The end of U.S.-Soviet competition, the civil and regional conflicts that ensued, and the rapid pace of globalization have brought to the fore a new generation of dangers. These are the complex nexus of transnational security threats: infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime and drug syndicates, proliferation of small arms and weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. Julia Sweig Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century / Published by PublicAffairs, April 2006 [14] "Since 2000, polls by over a half dozen organizations -- from Pew to Zogby, German Marshall Fund to the Guardian, Eurobarometer to Latinobarmetro -- have tracked the declining views about America, Americans, and U.S. foreign policy in every region of the world."
Reference Links:
[1] http://bit.ly/YzqFld [2] http://www.boell.org/downloads/Global-Green-Recovery_Atlantic_Initative.pdf [updated 2009] [3] http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Un-War-Strategy-WarTerrorism/dp/1574889656/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt/002-0129656-6257608?ie=UTF8 [4] http://www.comw.org/pda/14dec/fulltext/06pena.pdf [5] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coalition_for_a_Realistic_Foreign_Policy [6] http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/26/the_jet_that_ate_the_pentagon [updated] [7] http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler01242006.html [8] http://www.amazon.com/Wastrels-Defense-Congress-Sabotages-Security/dp/159114938X [9] http://www.newamerica.net/events/2006/the_real_state_of_the_union_2006 [10] http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001641.php [11] http://www.newamerica.net/people/steven_clemons [12] http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2006/08/globaleconomics-rice [13] http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2006/03/spring-globaleconomics-rice [14] http://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Fire-Enemies-Anti-American-Century/dp/1586483005
2010 Surviving Victory Update
n the summer of 2010, the 2011 U.S. military spending budget is announced by DoD Secretary Robert Gates. In August he follows with Congressional testimony. The publicly announced figure approaches $700 billion dollars.
What is not discussed by Congress concerned as always with how military spending effects their districts is the true price-tag to the nation and wider ripple effects that extend far beyond the nation's borders. The announced spending does not provide, as the Green Institute's Surviving Victory conference addressed, a true 'full cost' accounting including 'black budget' secret spending (see the Washington Post link below as illustration of the extent of this secret world. The Post's July 2010 investigative series provides a near unique, albeit high level, view of a world few know of, a new burgeoning military-industrial complex which numbers nearly one million Americans with 'top secret' government clearance and which adds hundreds of billions annually to the announced military budget.) Annual military spending, with an aggregate 'white' and 'black' secret budget now approaching a trillion dollars annually, does not take into account the direct costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, separately funded by appropriations bills which add and have added hundreds of billion more annually over a seven year 'Centcom' engagement to date at a cost approaching three trillion dollars according to estimates (see Joseph Stiglitz update below). These almost unfathomable costs do not, upon any clear-eyed review, consider the vast array of additional costs/opportunity costs, 'blowback' costs, related human costs, environmental costs, costs to alliances and the strategic standing of the U.S., costs to U.S. economic competitiveness, drawdown of U.S. capital and government capabilities to invest in private/non military productivity ('guns or butter'), nor does the publicly advanced military budget address the costs of U.S. debt/deficit/annual interest, the generally acknowledged exposure to a mounting debt crisis (and political costs of a frayed political system and decreased ability of political parties and polity to 'solve' problems and produce a comity of cooperation with clear progress)... nor do the public numbers address the peril of Chinese and other foreign entities holding U.S. debt and looming security/economic impact on U.S security and economic positions in the international arena... nor does the debate address the future costs, the costs to the young, the costs to people beyond our shores, to the future of the planet which faces an 'all hands on deck' crisis that greens, scientists and an increasing number of 'everyday folks' are seeing and raising as an actual, real problem -and even an existential threat to life as we know it.... All of this remains un-debated as the military budget is announced and in Florida where I live the vets who've retired in one of the most popular states for ex-military see things from their perspectives and grouse as benefits are threatened and services cut and little is learned, less is debated about the cost of perpetual war and much is in fact forgotten... the clock ticks and the historic democratic American experiment of liberty faces a twilight horizon. SJS - August 2010
[Chart prepared for Surviving Victory Conference, DC, September 2006]
A Hidden World by Dana Priest and William Arkin

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyondcontrol/
"FreeFall" by Joseph Stiglitz

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4108597 [New America Foundation/Washington Note with Joe Stiglitz re: Freefall - America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy] http://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-SinkingEconomy/dp/0393075966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262810665&sr=8-1 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_04/b4164066543966.htm
The True Cost of the Iraq War

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-WarConflict/dp/0393067017/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201718367&sr=8-1
July 19, 2010
A hidden world, growing beyond control
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. [budget update] http://www.pulitzer.org/files/entryforms/WashPost_TSA_Item1.pdf

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Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security

Green Institute 'Surviving Victory' DC Forum

Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security

2010 Surviving Victory Update

[Chart prepared for Surviving Victory Conference, DC, September 2006]

A Hidden World by Dana Priest and William Arkin

"FreeFall" by Joseph Stiglitz

The True Cost of the Iraq War

July 19, 2010

A hidden world, growing beyond control

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