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Congress "Is The Clearest & Most Present Danger In The World To The Nat'l Security Of The USA"
The Debt Ceiling as a National Security IssueBy Benjamin Wittes
Wednesday, October 16, 2013 at 7:49 AM
If abody other than the Congress of the United States were actively contemplating a step that would, by the accounts of virtually all economists, tank the U.S. economy, cause interest rates to shoot up, and trigger a financial crisis, we would talk about that body as threat to national security. At a minimum, we would talk about the step it is contemplating in national security terms. A government shutdown, after all, can invite a national security event, but by itself it isn’t one. It’s a game of Russian Roulette. A default, by contrast, is a national security event, the loss of one of this country’s great international and domestic assets: Its undoubted creditworthiness. It is an asset on which much of this country’s prosperity and power rests.
Yet for some reason, when Congress flirts with flushing this asset down the toilet, with giving it away for no discernible reason and getting nothing in exchange for it, we do not tend to discuss this in national security terms. Congress may suffer in public opinion polls, as it has done. But we don’t tend to talk about Congress as—at this stage—what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.
There is no chance that tomorrow Al Qaeda will cause this country to default on its debt. Nor is there any chance that Iran will or that North Korea will or that any foreign adversary will. Nor can any of these entities hope to inflict one gazillionth of the damage such an event would entail. There is, however, a considerable chance that Congress will launch such an attack—which, of course, we won’t speak of in those terms.
.................
National security is not just things that go boom. It is not just terrorists and foreign adversaries. It is possible for a country to commit suicide. It is possible for great nations to rot from within. Shelley once called his national legislature: “Time’s worst statute unrepealed.” I’m no historian of the early 19th Century in British politics. But I’ll wager that Parliament in that era never intentionally raced Britain to the edge of a financial meltdown. Nor can I imagine that any sane person looking at congressional behavior today is predicting, as Shelley did back then, that from Congress “a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.”
Yet for some reason, when Congress flirts with flushing this asset down the toilet, with giving it away for no discernible reason and getting nothing in exchange for it, we do not tend to discuss this in national security terms. Congress may suffer in public opinion polls, as it has done. But we don’t tend to talk about Congress as—at this stage—what it plainly is: the clearest and most present danger in the world to the national security of the United States.
There is no chance that tomorrow Al Qaeda will cause this country to default on its debt. Nor is there any chance that Iran will or that North Korea will or that any foreign adversary will. Nor can any of these entities hope to inflict one gazillionth of the damage such an event would entail. There is, however, a considerable chance that Congress will launch such an attack—which, of course, we won’t speak of in those terms.
.................
National security is not just things that go boom. It is not just terrorists and foreign adversaries. It is possible for a country to commit suicide. It is possible for great nations to rot from within. Shelley once called his national legislature: “Time’s worst statute unrepealed.” I’m no historian of the early 19th Century in British politics. But I’ll wager that Parliament in that era never intentionally raced Britain to the edge of a financial meltdown. Nor can I imagine that any sane person looking at congressional behavior today is predicting, as Shelley did back then, that from Congress “a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.”
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/10/the-debt-ceiling-as-a-national-security-issue/#.Ul5-bSMM2DM.twitter
