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Surviving Victory Conference, 2005/2006, Washington DC

File:Surviving-Victory-conference-Washington-DC-2006.pdf

Conference Permalink: https://www.greenpolicy360.net/mw/images/Surviving-Victory-conference-Washington-DC-2006.pdf

The conference-forum was organized by the Green Institute and Steven Schmidt, editor of the global policy magazine of the Institute.

Roger Morris, Green Institute Senior Fellow, was featured speaker and contributors included Steve Clemons (current national security commentator on MSNBC) and Susan Rice (former US United Nations ambassador and current (as of 2016) US National Security adviser to President Barack Obama).

The conference focused on issues of costs of war, definitions of security, and growing risks of failed policies and interventionism.

The conference served as a foundation for security policy studies of GreenPolicy360. The founding of Strategic Demands in 2014 expanded the work of GreenPolicy360 and continues the work and writing over the years by your GreenPolicy siterunner.

The larger goal is to continue developing a "360" strategic policy vision with New Definitions of National Security toward a horizon of interconnected global, environmental security.

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About Strategic Demands

Orthodox views of national security are challenged in a world connected by next generation networked communication and far-ranging global interests. Conventional interests are giving way to a new world of over-the-horizon understandings, trade, education, and common interests. StratDem envisions new perspectives, new visions for a new world

We begin with a simple construct -- a 360° connected world in a fast-arriving Internet era. Where we connect is a beginning point to participation in a worldwide economy and politics. When we are online, we are shaping politics, government, and transactional markets interactively, forming inter-related communities...

Security is Indivisible

Billions of individuals are connected today as never before — creating a future shaped by networked citizens — citizens of nations and ‘citizens of the planet.’

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Strategic Demands History

The Global Policy project of the Green Institute began strategic security work in 2005 with the publication of an initial security brief written by Roger Morris and Steven Schmidt. Based on the "Strategic Demands of the 21st Century" policy paper, we held a DC conference to look at new definitions of national security. Since then, on multiple fronts and venues, we have continued our work, now further extended with Strategic Demands online.

• Strategic Demands' goal as an policy group is to add independent perspective and opinion to the contemporary national security debate. We bring experience and a belief that the current Washington DC/New York/Boston corridor that holds most all foreign policy think tanks is limited in its politics as a two-party normative system competes for influence and positions under Democrat or Republican administrations.

Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security

Green Institute 'Surviving Victory' DC Forum

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Analysis: Mideast woes alarm U.S. experts

By JACOB RUSSELL

UPI Correspondent / September 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- 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....

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Surviving Victory: A New Definition of National Security

Sponsored by the Green Institute www.greeninstitute.net & Böll Foundation www.boell.org/

Washington DC / September 20, 2006

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Presentator/Resources:

Roger Morris

Strategic Demands of the 21st Century: A New Vision for a New World

by Roger Morris & Steven Schmidt / June 2005 [PDF]

“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 Müller-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 Peña

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 don’t threaten U.S. national security…The 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? F-35 Update [PDF] / September 12, 2006 [6]

How Congress Sacrifices Readiness for Pork: Smoke and Mirrors in the Defense Budget

January 2006 [7]

Wastrals of Defense: How Congress Sabotages US Security / October 2004 [8]

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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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rice [U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, nominated 2008 / National Security Advisor, begininng July 2013]

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 Latinobarómetro -- have tracked the declining views about America, Americans, and U.S. foreign policy in every region of the world."

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Reference Links:

[1] http://www.greeninstitute.deanmyerson.org/files/pdf/NewVision.pdf

[2] http://www.boell.org/downloads/Global-Green-Recovery_Atlantic_Initative.pdf [updated 2009]

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Un-War-Strategy-War-Terrorism/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.realisticforeignpolicy.org/events.php

[6] http://www.cdi.org/PDFS/WheelerSPWG911article.pdf

[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

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Surviving Victory Updates

(2018)  

Tomgram: Making Sense of America's Empire of Chaos

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 4:11PM, May 27, 2018.

  Mark Karlin: How much money has gone to the U.S. war on terror and what has been the impact of this expenditure?

Tom Engelhardt: The best figure I’ve seen on this comes from the Watson Institute’s Costs of War Project at Brown University and it’s a staggering $5.6 trillion, including certain future costs to care for this country’s war vets. President Trump himself, with his usual sense of accuracy, has inflated that number even more, regularly speaking of $7 trillion being lost somewhere in our never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East. One of these days, he’s going to turn out to be right.

As for the impact of such an expenditure in the regions where these wars continue to be fought, largely nonstop, since they were launched against a tiny group of jihadis just after September 11, 2001, it would certainly include: the spread of terror outfits across the Middle East, parts of Asia, and Africa; the creation -- in a region previously autocratic but relatively calm -- of a striking range of failed or failing states, of major cities that have been turned into absolute rubble (with no money in sight for serious reconstruction), of internally displaced people and waves of refugees at levels that now match the moment after World War II, when significant parts of the planet were in ruins; and that’s just to start down a list of the true costs of our wars.

At home, in a far quieter way, the impact has been similar. Just imagine, for instance, what our American world would have been like if any significant part of the funds that went into our fruitless, still spreading, now nameless conflicts had been spent on America’s crumbling infrastructure, instead of on the rise of the national security state as the unofficial fourth branch of government. (At TomDispatch, Pentagon expert William Hartung has estimated that approximately $1 trillion annually goes into that security state and, in the age of Trump, that figure is again on the rise.)

Part of the trouble assessing the “impact” here in the U.S. is that, in this era of public demobilization in terms of our wars, people are encouraged not to think about them at all and they’ve gotten remarkably little attention. So sorting out exactly how they’ve come home -- other than completely obvious developments like the militarization of the police, the flying of surveillance drones in our airspace, and so on …

Donald Trump would have been inconceivable as president without those disastrous wars, those trillions squandered on them and on the military that’s fought them, and that certainly qualifies as “impact” enough.

Read more at Strategic Demands

https://www.strategicdemands.com/surviving-victory-updated/

https://www.strategicdemands.com/surviving-victory-from-the-archive/

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2010 Surviving Victory Update

In 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

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[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-beyond-control/

"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-Sinking-Economy/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 Extended Costs of the Iraq War

The Three Trillion Dollar War (updated: 2008)

Linda J. Bilmes $ Joseph E. Stiglitz

https://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict/dp/0393067017/

Four, Six Trillion... and Counting (updated: 2013)

Extended Costs of War: More Than Dollars

Overextended, the US Overlooks Larger Costs and Greater Risks

http://strategicdemands.com/costsofwar/

The Costs of the National Security State

● http://www.pulitzer.org/files/entryforms/WashPost_TSA_Item1.pdf

"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."

• Annual costs, known and unknown, in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

  Out-of-control spending. 'Dark' budgets.

  Cyber-warfare. Cyber-warfare 'blowback'.

  Loss of privacy, constitutionally protect rights.

Read More @StrategicDemands

• Environmental Security, the Security Horizon

• New Definitions of National Security

Strategic Demands of the 21st Century: A New Vision for a New World

• Strategic Demands of the 21st Century by Roger Morris & Steven Schmidt / PDF Security Brief

About Roger Morris & Steven Schmidt

Roger Morris, a prolific author and former fellow at the Green Institute, has written numerous essays, articles and critically acclaimed books on American politics, including Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, winner of the National Book Award Silver Medal, finalist for the National Critics Circle Award in Biography, and a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year," and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America, a highly-praised and instant best-seller on the New York Times and other lists as well as another Times “Notable Book.”

He is completing Between the Graves — based on thousands of previously secret documents, a history of US-Afghan relations and American policy and covert intervention in South Asia and the Middle East over the past half century. He is also at work for Knopf on Kindred Rivals: America, Russia and Their Failed Ideals, a comparative history of the inner politics of the United States and Soviet Russia, and a major reinterpretation of their competition and its impact on the 21st-century.

Roger Morris entered government service as an aide to former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Morris became a National Security Council senior staff member during the Johnson administration and was asked to continue his service by Richard Nixon. Morris participated in peace negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had his phones tapped during this period. Morris resigned his position in 1970 in protest of Kissinger-Nixon policies ordering the secret invasion of Cambodia.

Morris' books include:

Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician, Henry Holt

Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America, Henry Holt

Haig: The General's Progress

The Money and the Power: the Making of Las Vegas (with Sally Denton), Vintage

Shadow of the Eagle, Alfred Knopf

http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rogermorris/

Re: Nixon-Kissinger/Gelb-Le Duc Tho-Chennault/Watergate-Vietnam connections and failed peace negotiations

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Steven Schmidt first became involved in security issues and politics as a young man who was asked to assist George E. Brown in his campaign for Congress as a representative from East Los Angeles. Their relationship, shared environmental concerns, and debate over nuclear proliferation, was to last for over 35 years as the Congressman mentored and Steve joined and assisted in many environmental and science-based initiatives that comprised the beginning of the modern environmental movement. The Congressman was to become known for his many environmental science initiatives as a member and chair the US House of Representatives Technology, Space and Science Committee. His achievements, that Steve was fortunate to participate in as a confident, included a 1960's and 70's Earth Day 'follow-up' as the Congressman became, as the NY Times put it, key to the establishment of the EPA and writing the legislation that set up the first federal program to study global climate change. George Brown was also a key player in Clean Air legislation and he envisioned the need for "a baseline of science" studying the Earth and proposed and was instrumental in establishing (and protecting) the Landsat earth imaging/science program (making its results available open access to the public). In many way this was the beginning of earth science research from space and, in 2017, Landsat will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

During the 1990's, in many educational roles as a member of the New Mexico State Board of Education and with oversight/management and policy of the public school system and with higher education, technology, and engaged with new, post-Cold War policies of the the New Mexico national labs at Los Alamos and Sandia, Schmidt continued his dialogue and involvement with the Congressman and many public interest groups. The Congressman's leadership in Congress on "big science" issues and policy continued until 1999.

Schmidt began his own public interest work while attending the University of Southern California on academic scholarship. He won the Justin Dart Award with full-fellowship and graduated with honors. During this period in the 60's/70's he came to know and work with Congressman Allard Lowenstein and in DC was involved with the establishment of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. He went on to become a director of California's Vietnam Moratorium peace efforts as part of the nation's largest anti-war group and National Moratorium Day, the largest anti-war demonstration in US history.

Schmidt traveled widely in the US and Europe, speaking and writing to reset American foreign policy. During this period Schmidt assisted two notable figures: Dan Ellsberg, whom he came to know well as the results of Robert McNamara's commissioned history of the war (later to be called the "Pentagon Papers") was being completed by Ellsberg at the Rand Institute; and in Washington DC he assisted Dispatch News Service in the release of Seymour Hersh's war-changing series of investigative news reports (that came to be called the "My Lai" story.)

Schmidt attended graduate school in New York in History of Ideas at the Graduate Faculty of the New School. He entered the publishing industry with Faculty Press and BookLab (Harcourt). He has written and worked widely on environmental and political issues over several decades, including with Governor Jerry Brown, acting as a senior adviser in the 1992 presidential campaign and assisting Governor Brown in the drafting of the campaign platform. He later became an organizer of the new Green Party of the US and key drafter of the founding platform (2000).

Schmidt is, as described by Wikipedia, a "media entrepreneur" and his creative work ranges from the Writers Guild (WGAw) to a network of environmental, strategic and public interest ventures.

More @GreenPolicy: https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/User_talk:Siterunner

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