[Cushman]

I think it's the same situation. Our military is geared up to fight yesterday's war; the "wars" we're involved in now could be solved more cost-effectively by literally paying our enemies not to fight. The next real war, if it happens, will be fought almost entirely with semi- and fully-autonomous machines. All of the lessons we've learned will be pointless.

Similarly, NASA is geared up for yesterday's space race. We have to send a man to space! We have to send two men to space! We have to send a man to the moon! Uh, now what... We have to send a man to MARS!

Well, no, we really don't. Yes, we could. We know we could. We wouldn't learn anything significant by doing so that we couldn't learn for much cheaper here on Earth. It would be a massively expensive, complicated and dangerous tourist expedition-- a lot like sending soldiers to the Middle East, actually.

We all already live in space, on the largest, safest, most self-sustaining spaceship any of us can conceive of. The future of space exploration lies in the hands of semi- and fully-autonomous machines. There's no good reason for people to be in space, not for the foreseeable future at least.

[colanderman]

the "wars" we're involved in now could be solved more cost-effectively by literally paying our enemies not to fight.

Thereby creating a nation of people dependent on our aid, who, when we cease sending aid due to budget constraints, will likely decide to start a war anyway. coughNorth Koreacough

Not saying that line of reasoning is totally invalid, but it's definitely not so clear-cut that you can use it in an analogy.

[redthrowaway]

The intervention in Libya cost about $2.7BB[1]. With things heating up in Syria, and the need to further isolate Iran, we could be looking at another "low-intensity" operation there in support of the pro-democracy dissidents. Now, what would be more cost-effective: a similar campaign in Syria, or paying Assad $1BB to fuck off to Venezuela and stay there, and a further $1BB distributed to military commanders to get them to agree to cede power to an elected government? Yes it's dirty, but so is bombing the crap out of Damascus.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_L...

[pemulis]

The total wealth of the Assad regime and their associates is in the hundreds of billions. You would have to pay them several trillion dollars at a minimum, though I doubt even that would be enough to convince them to leave.

[fennecfoxen]

I don't know - you don't necessarily have to compete with the hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth; you just need to be able to compete with the expectations of their wealth after you roll in your tanks and attempt to crush them. This is presumably a lower value, iff you have a credible threat to actually go in there and crush them with your tanks (which takes military expertise, expenditure, and the political will to pull it off).

In the current state of the US, however, the political will for new military action is fairly minimal, for better or for worse.

[redthrowaway]

This is what I'm getting at. If the US wanted to remove Assad, he wouldn't have much of a choice: a life of luxury in exile, or death. I disagree, however, that it would require tanks. They could do the same as they did in Libya, which is far more justifiable and politically expedient. The dissidents in Syria are gearing up for war[1], so the ever-problematic boots on the ground would be unnecessary.

The US would only have to make Assad think it was serious about another Libya in order to give him some serious misgivings. Get NATO to make some rumblings, which would encourage Chavez to issue one of his proclamations against American Imperialism, then make a backroom deal to get Assad out.

At the end of the day, the Bush Doctrine of democracy-at-swordpoint is simply ineffective. There exists, however, the very real possibility of using soft/"firm" power to encourage the outcomes you want.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21543538

[pemulis]

I see where you're coming from, but there are a number of things that would need to happen for this to work.

1) The Assad family would have to find the threat from NATO credible. 2) They would have to believe that there is no chance of defeating the rebels militarily and outlasting NATO bombardment. 3) The major power players in the Assad government would have to be willing to accept life in exile, with no opportunity for travel or engagement with the rest of the world. (Even Ben Ali, the dictator who left Tunisia semi-voluntarily, has an international warrant out for his arrest.) 4) Some country (presumably America) would have to be willing to either pay them a significant lump sum out of their own pocket or allow them to loot Syria before they leave.

You could pick any one of these apart.

[huxley]

Citation needed, sounds a bit tinfoily.

Not that I agree with the idea of paying off people, but Syria's total GDP is only about US$60 billion, hard to imagine that it would take "trillions".

[pemulis]

I was going off of a quick Google search of Bashar al-Assad's personal wealth, which led to an MSN article putting it at $112 billion (http://money.ca.msn.com/savings-debt/gallery/dictators-and-t...). Since huge chunks of the economy are controlled by the Assad family and close associates, and have been for decades, I figured that it would be reasonable to assume they had accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars by now.

[cousin_it]

1) How do you convince Assad that the US won't just send some Marines to kill him after he agrees to go to Venezuela? Even if the US president gives some sort of personal guarantee, what stops the next president from violating it?

2) What if the national leader you're trying to pay off believes himself to be a true partiot and refuses to surrender his country to US interests?

[Cushman]

You're gonna need a really strong argument to convince me that, all else being equal, building things is more damaging to a nation than blowing things up.

[dillona]

He's not talking about building things, at least I don't think.

One of the most effective things that has been done to slow down America's middle-eastern conflicts is paying people not to fight. When I say that, I don't mean building schools and hospitals. I mean giving people cash money in exchange for them not shooting our men and women.

[Cushman]

In one sense, yes; in another sense, if I'm paying somebody to not blow up convoys, they're going to do something else. That might as well be building a school.

[retroafroman]

Paying enemies not to fight would probably just result in a lot more enemies who want to get paid all of the sudden.

[billswift]

"Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane."

Rudyard Kipling