Action and Consequence
Why the future matters
All action flows from some understanding or at least consideration of future consequences. Farmers plant seeds to produce crops for consumption or sale. People learn a trade so that they will prosper or get by in various circumstances. Traditional religion related behavior in this life to sought-for or feared consequences in the hereafter. Even in the absence of traditional religion, some notion of virtue motivates conspicuous displays of beliefs assumed to produce general welfare. While we cannot know the future, we must take it into account in some way. Indeed the most sagacious of us make their desired future happen through their present-day actions, even through a long series of seemingly remote chess-like moves.
Nations likewise apply methods of governance and international relations best adapted to national goals such as peace, health, prosperity, conquest, survival, or glory. Those responsible for national destinies may succeed or fail in such efforts. In democratic societies, success is judged and rewarded by a wide array of interested parties, based on observed consequences. Military defeat and economic collapse are among the most visible consequences of failed policies; interim indicators such as family breakdown, crime, inter-group conflict, moral degeneracy, drug addiction, gross economic inequality, and declining public health and safety might warn of imminent societal failure if heeded. Democratic societies have built-in error-correction methods -- they notice bad things happening and replace the people or institutions responsible. General understanding of the means-ends relationship is central to how this works. Anticipating the likely future consequences of present-day action is the very core of rational governance.
Of course we can't always be right about what we anticipate. But thinking about it helps focus and discipline current action. Thought-experiments bring a variety of historical and personal experience, attitudes, behavioral models, known constraints, fragmentary knowledge, and lately artificial intelligence into consideration of future consequences. Crises appear to force choices made without thought and without consideration of consequence. That bloc of nations known as 'the West', led by the United States, has been afflicted with a style of decision-making devoid of future consideration. Reeling from crisis to crisis of its own creation, it reacts with magical or fantastic notions of results, relying on its ability to obfuscate what can plainly be seen. Meanwhile a sub-rosa contingent of permanent officials acts with its own well-developed sense of consequence. Sometimes at odds with their more visible superiors, and sometimes in alliance with them, they pursue their own aims and their own notions of national goals unchecked by and unknown to the larger society.
Mr Biden is merely a symptom of a course of national self-destruction characterized by willful disregard of the future. Here are three examples.
1. Mr Biden's predilection for grandiloquent gestures ignorant of consequence became clear on Day One of his Administration, with his stoppage of the Keystone Pipeline -- simultaneously destroying thousands of jobs, U.S. energy independence, and reasonably-priced energy for U.S. consumers. Forgotten now, but back in January 2021, this pipeline was destroyed in order to promote 'green energy' and thereby 'save the planet'. The actual consequences were clearly foreseeable, and quickly materialized. Gasoline and all energy prices went up, sending ripples of income-destroying inflation throughout the U.S. economy. Damage control, in the form of ridiculous claims that these inflationary effects were only 'transitory', fooled no one. Perhaps neither Mr Biden nor his advisors foresaw these consequences, and when they materialized, were too embarrassed to admit their adverse effects. Lost in the 'green-energy' rationale was a tectonic tilt toward other energy producers, namely Saudi Arabia and Russia. And when Mr Biden made the customary pilgrimage to Jeddah to beg for more oil, he was summarily rebuffed. Whether he reflected that this humiliation would have been unnecessary had he left the Keystone Pipeline project in place, history does not record.
2. Mr Biden then put his own signature grandiloquent stamp on the unilateral U.S. sanctions regime by stealing $300 billion of Russian assets and expelling Russia from the SWIFT international trading system, contrary to Federal Reserve advice. The Fed had good reason to be concerned about the effects on both the international trading system and the continued use of the Dollar as the world's de facto currency. Fed and Treasury officials are well aware that the U.S. currency's monopoly of international trade settlement is essential to U.S. economic welfare. Mr Biden's extraordinary acts of economic warfare led within months to Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia trading oil without benefit of Dollars; to the first serious efforts by BRICS countries to establish a non-Dollar medium of exchange; to massive gold purchases by China to guarantee its currency; to devaluation of the Dollar in terms of metals, oil, grains, and other commodities; and to Russia's establishment of an independent trading system with India, Iran, and other countries. Messrs Biden, Blinken, and others seem to have believed that their unilateral 'rules regime' would be automatically followed and obeyed. In fact, Mr Biden's grandiloquent policy greatly hastened the shift in terms of trade against the United States and its currency, another self-destructive gesture.
3. Mr Biden had not finished destroying energy pipelines after Keystone. From the earliest days of their term in office, he and his advisors planned and authorized unprovoked sabotage of Russia's Nordstream pipelines supplying inexpensive gas to Germany. As Seymour Hersh has reported in 'How America Took Out the Nordstream Pipeline', this elaborately planned act of war executed by expert U.S. Navy deep-sea divers was originally intended to be carried out in stealth, under cover of routine naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. They attached mine-like explosive devices to the pipelines in 85-meter-deep seawater in June 2022, and detonated them on September 26, 2022. The method of detonation, like everything else in the operation, was exquisitely well-planned and executed. Having set the explosive devices to respond only to a unique set of signals, ignoring the numerous random signals from Baltic Sea shipping traffic and Russian surveillance, a Norwegian airplane dropped the sonar buoy that several hours later activated the explosives. All the participants agreed that stealth was essential to the operation. Hersh quotes CIA and State Dept sources as advising against the whole plan because it would be impossible to keep secret: 'Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out'. Nevertheless they went along with it when persuaded it could be kept secret. The September 26 explosion was followed by fervent denials of responsibility by U.S. officials, and by media efforts to blame Russia for destroying its own pipeline and lucrative revenue source.
Yet, earlier, on February 7, 2022, Mr Biden could not restrain himself from hinting at what he was planning, stating 'there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it'. Asked by a reporter how that would be done, Mr Biden responded with his Mafia-don smirk 'I promise you we can do it'. Not to be outdone, in January 2023 Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, who had previously advertised her prominent role in installing the current Ukrainian government, further burnished her tough-girl resume by expressing satisfaction that 'Nordstream 2 is now... a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea'. Thus a secret sabotage was transformed into something unnecessarily provocative by the braggadocio of Mr Biden and Ms Nuland. Again a grandiloquent gesture served as its own justification, entirely devoid of the slightest consideration of consequence. They live in a world with no future, dumbed-down by a series of crises of their own making. There will be consequences, however; there always are.
Then there is Biden's State of the Union address that lays out in minute detail how the social progressive Administrative State can suck the last bit of power out of the American society. Evil incarnate....
Too bad it’s not a gin and tonic...