“‘The Blob,’ anatomized.”
An exchange with Kelley Vlahos.
28 MAY—We were delighted to be joined last week by the editor and journalist Kelley Vlahos for a Scrum webcast. Vlahos, editorial director of the online magazine Responsible Statecraft and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute, is one the most astute diagnosticians we have of how “the swamp” we know as Washington actually operates. Her close-to-the-ground insights take us several layers down from what is ordinarily visible to those outside the Beltway—and to many within it, indeed.
In the webcast offered here, Vlahos and Scrum co-founder Marshall Auerback take on a number of facets of the D.C. foreign policy “blob,” notably how the defense industry games the system and vacuums up taxpayer dollars with little to show in return. Citing the work of the great defense analyst Chuck Spinney, Vlahos and Auerback explore how bloated and counterproductive defense spending programs are protected by a three-sided alliance among the Pentagon, the arms makers, and Congress. The “normal laws of economy,” as Vlahos puts it, do not apply—the disastrously wasteful F–35 program among the best-known examples.
What is to be done?
As if to address this question, Kelley began by talking about Q.I.’s underlying philosophy. Quincy takes a trans-partisan approach to questions such as our endless wars and bloated defense budgets. There are plenty of liberals and conservatives alike who “object to promoting democracy at the barrel of a gun,” as Vlahos says, and it is Quincy’s intent to bring them under one roof.
Part of the role of Quincy and writers such as Vlahos is to influence prevailing opinion in Washington. And if that is the metric by which to measure success, Vlahos believes there is reason to hope, as the language of restrainers and anti-interventionists at times breaks through, at last. Vlahos is also encouraged to see progressive members of the House “holding Biden's feet to the fire on arms sales to the UAE, to Saudi Arabia, and most recently to Israel, and they are willing to break with Biden over this.”
Kelley and Marshall close with a warning about the continuing strength of the foreign policy establishment as it argues for a “tough line” against China and Iran, while those who dare to argue for more nuance and more diplomacy do so at risk to their reputations.
In addition to her responsibilities at Q.I., Vlahos co-hosts a podcast called Crashing the War Party with the foreign policy writers Daniel Larison and Barbara Boland. Prior to Quincy, Kelley served as executive editor at The American Conservative.
—J.W.C.,
Washington.
"this is probably going to sound odd"...Pretty much.
This is probably going to sound odd but... I was married to a Scotswoman for 15 years and, by the time we divorced, I had come to think of her as having what I call the European disease which is the implicit assumption that she, as a European, knew better than I, an American, did about just about any subject (at least any subject that did not involve detailed technical knowledge). Listening to Ms. Vlahos, I got a similar sense of blind assumption. Don't get me wrong, I think that what the QI is doing is good and important but I think that in the end it will be OBE (overtaken by events).
Listening to her talk about what we should be doing coupled with reports in RT about the EU quite literally proposing to inflict regime change on Russia. Just because apparently. It occurs to me that between the US and the EU+the UK, you have well over 90% of the old colonial powers. These guys are all evil. They are accustomed to coming in and kicking the locals ass with superior weaponry, taking charge, and getting wealthy on the backs of real forced labor. As long as we have these guys, all of whom think they're the greatest thing since pizza and canned beer, running around without having some portion of their anatomy lopped off, they will twizzle with other countries and think it's OK. It is the colonist's disease and, like the European disease, is immune to logic and reality.
I know what Ms. Vlahos is trying to do but I suspect that the US (and probably also the UK and EU) are simply going to continue in their evil ways until at least the US gets kicked in the teeth. Then maybe they will sit up and take notice. But then it is likely to be too late.