/lit/ - Literature

There are four ways to address a deficit: by borrowing, by reducing spending, by raising taxes, and by printing money. Because the second and the third have proved politically impossible and the fourth would be economically ruinous, the United States has relied on the first. But it will not always be able to borrow all the money required to fill the gap between the government's expenditures and its revenues. At some point, taxes will have to rise and spending will have to fall. Fewer resources will be available for all other programs, including foreign policy. In these circumstances, with Americans paying more to the government and receiving fewer benefits from it, popular support for an expansive foreign policy will decline. The public will insist more strongly than at any time since before World War II on using its dollars for domestic, rather than international, purposes.

It will not permit expensive military interventions leading to state-building exercises, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will not support the kind of humanitarian interventions, to rescue people under assault from their own governments, that the Clinton administration undertook in the 1990s in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The nation's growing fiscal burden is also likely to put pressure on its most important international missions -- its military presence, which helps keep the peace, in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, places where instability could seriously harm U.S. interests.