Countdown to War

[EtherealN]

All depends on how you count. If you include debt and liabilities from the federal government to various government institutions (that are such that they do have to be repaid - stuff like benefit funds) it's way larger than even that, but the economic shenanigans that happens there is above my pay grade.

 

ZQuickSilverZ, you don't seem to understand how national debt works. The debt in question here is actual debt - not all of it foreign debt though. The typical debt instrument used is bonds and obligations that is issued by the fed to raise money for doing whatever is being done - then people and institutions purchase these bonds and obligations. This is all completely unrelated to aid and trade balance. (Anyone can purhase these obligations, and they are often publically traded as financial instruments and a popular form of secure savings. Most of the debt the US government has accrued is actually held by american institutions, individuals, and corporations, though there is also more than 500 billion dollars worth of it held by the government of the People's Republic of China...)

 

Basically, connecting debt to money entering the USA is 100% false, it's unrelated.

 

Regarding US aid:

(This is, of course, development aid, so subsidised arms sales to allies and things like that are not included, and it also does not include purely humanitarian aid like disaster relief.)

[Boberro]

I think ZQuickSilverZ meant just money which US give away for various donations, help. Example for Kenya US gave 120 millions - Russia 1 million. For Somalia US donated for about 38 millions. Russia, China nothing. There are much more such situations - if US had acted like others they could have spent money for own purposes and needs. But they didn't.

[RIPTIDE]

Funny how when money leaves the USA to another country it is a gift, but when money leaves other countries to the USA it is a debt. We GIVE more money away every year than most countries have in their whole economy.

 

Fact.

Hey man can I borrow a twenty of ya? Paypal be ok? :thumbup:

[EtherealN]

I think ZQuickSilverZ meant just money which US give away for various donations, help. Example for Kenya US gave 120 millions - Russia 1 million. For Somalia US donated for about 38 millions. Russia, China nothing. There are much more such situations - if US had acted like others they could have spent money for own purposes and needs. But they didn't.

 

That type of aid is specifically what the graph I posted shows. ;)

 

Also, couple hundred million dollars here or there is pretty much nothing to the US debt - operating deficit in 2008 was 450 billion dollars, plus a further 200-ish deficit in the social security and similar programs, plus another 400 billion dollars in extra-budgetary spending (anything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the stimulus package). The kenya aid there would, for example, not equal even an hour of the ongoing deficit. :P (And that's just the federal deficit, state finances is separate.)

 

Total US Aid in 2009 was ~40 billion dollars. Compared to a deficit of a trillion dollars it is easy to see that aid programmes are not particularly important to understand the US debt situation. :P

Edited January 7, 2012 by EtherealN

[Viper101]

What money needs to be spent? I think they would make money instead. All that USA needs to do is supply intelligence and weapons to israeli and Saudi military (either one), then they will do all the fighting, basicaly mauling Irans obsolete military equipment from a distance.

 

They dont even need to face ground troops (that would be out of support soon anyway) because occupation is not the objective.

 

:disgust:

 

You cannot be serious. You think if we continue sending billions of OUR dollars in military equipment to two countries we aren't even allied with, our "problem(s)" with Iran will just go away? leaving it to Israel or Saudi Arabia to just take out Iran for us? WRONG! ...

 

First off, Israel can defend and support itself, according to a statement by Netanyahu directly to our senators and members of the house. Saudi Arabia already has the ability to defend and support its own as well. The quickest way to end all of this is to simply retreat all of our forces from the surrounding regions and let the Middle East fight their own fights WITHOUT Western support. Everything we are hearing about is just warmongering and propaganda!

[RIPTIDE]

^^ spot on.

[Boberro]

Total US Aid in 2009 was ~40 billion dollars. Compared to a deficit of a trillion dollars it is easy to see that aid programmes are not particularly important to understand the US debt situation. :P

 

In whole amount of debt it is not huge. But 40 billions is 40 billions which moved outside. For 40 billions you can do few things in own country, can't you? :D

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

Unlike Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland ... USA can print money to pay its obligation. It can do that without much problems as long as US Dollar is a world currency. However, few days ago, it was reported in the news that China and Japan have agreed to use their own currency in bilateral trade. If other countries continue to follow, US dollar will loose its value in a hurry.

[EtherealN]

In whole amount of debt it is not huge. But 40 billions is 40 billions which moved outside. For 40 billions you can do few things in own country, can't you? :D

 

Sure, you can build 80% of the US/Mexico border fence, for example. :P You could also do maintenance on US military assets for a month.

 

My point is that 40 billion dollars is big for us mortal people, but within the context it is quite literally peanuts. You might as well complain about the border fence and it's drain on the economy (there were some hilarious scandals with contractors using illegal labor from Mexico to build it... :D ).

[Pilotasso]

:disgust:

 

You cannot be serious. You think if we continue sending billions of OUR dollars in military equipment to two countries we aren't even allied with, our "problem(s)" with Iran will just go away? leaving it to Israel or Saudi Arabia to just take out Iran for us? WRONG! ...

 

First off, Israel can defend and support itself, according to a statement by Netanyahu directly to our senators and members of the house. Saudi Arabia already has the ability to defend and support its own as well. The quickest way to end all of this is to simply retreat all of our forces from the surrounding regions and let the Middle East fight their own fights WITHOUT Western support. Everything we are hearing about is just warmongering and propaganda!

 

^^ spot on.

 

It has historic precedence.

 

USA not wanting be involved and then a preemptive strike from a "non ally" (on paper) country happens with support under the table. Rings a bell?

 

Seriosuly, israel a Non ally? Saudi non ally? Your kidding??

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

My point is that 40 billion dollars is big for us mortal people, but within the context it is quite literally peanuts.

Well, there is a big discussion right now about a Defense Department cutting 500 billion dollars over 10 years, and that is 50 billion dollars per year. So, 40 billion dollars is indeed big money. Even in the context of 3 trillion dollars budget. Specially, if you don't have that money ...

[EtherealN]

50b per year is still only one 20th of what's needed to solve the deficit.

 

What I was responding to was the suggestion that the debt was somehow related to american aid expenditure, specifically this:

 

Funny how when money leaves the USA to another country it is a gift, but when money leaves other countries to the USA it is a debt. We GIVE more money away every year than most countries have in their whole economy.

 

Fact.

 

I think you'll agree that blaming 40 billion dollars of aid money for a 1 trillion dollar deficit is a bit weird, no? Basically, even if the US were to both remove all aid engagements and completely dismantle it's army - there might still be a small deficit left. (Adding the figures for the out-of-budget war spending is difficult since the numbers are so entangled.)

 

Obviously, completely dismantling the military isn't an option and further savings will have to be done elsewhere, but again - within the context, that's the severity of the problem, and doing what QuickSilver did and blame aid for the situation is... weird. :P

 

Another interesting one to consider is that the annual interest on currently existing debt is in the region of not 40, but over 400 billion dollars annually. That's not far from the total operating and maintenance cost of all US military assets combined... And if there is any further indecision in the houses of congress about debt ceiling and financing the credit institutes might be further downgrading the US credit rating - and then interest rates can sky-rocket as the obligations revolve. Basically, so far I've not seen any savings discussion come from anyone that would be sufficient - the only thing that would be sufficient is to either make a huge hike on federal tax levels or slash the federal buget almost in half. Or both.

 

Of course, there is the option of trying to devalue the debt through letting the printing presses run, but this would also be fairly disastrous - it would destroy a lot of domestic wealth, it would be the nail in the coffin on the dollar as a reserve currency internationally, and might even be ineffective since the credit market might react through demanding correspondingly greater interest.

 

If it was me, I'd go for the "slash the budget" option, including radical decreases in military spending. It would be painful, and I'd definitely not get re-elected, but it has to be done and it can be done - we got ourselves out of a similar situation fine.

Edited January 7, 2012 by EtherealN

[ZQuickSilverZ]

Funny how when money leaves the USA to another country it is a gift, but when money leaves other countries to the USA it is a debt. We GIVE more money away every year than most countries have in their whole economy.

 

Fact.

 

I understand economics just fine EtherealN. I never said anything about our aid causing financial problems. What about what I said even closely resembled that? Looking back at our history though free money tends to flow one way.... out. If you think that document you posted is representative of the money we send out every year that we get zero return on your the one that needs a lesson in economics. Did you know we give Israel a 3 BILLION dollar grant every year since 1985? That is 81 BILLION dollars. The government makes a nice little distinction between aid and a grant, I do not. That alone trumps that document and that is just one example. I do not remember the last time any country gave USA anything. Hence when when money leaves the USA its a gift and when it comes in it is a debt. I stand by what I said.

 

There was nothing weird about my post. It was just an observation and it is the absolute truth.

Edited January 8, 2012 by ZQuickSilverZ

[HiJack]

Make Love :love: Not War :flowers:

[EtherealN]

I understand economics just fine EtherealN. I never said anything about our aid causing financial problems. What about what I said even closely resembled that?

 

The thing you quoted. ;)

 

Looking back at our history though free money tends to flow one way.... out. If you think that document you posted is representative of the money we send out every year that we get zero return on your the one that needs a lesson in economics. Did you know we give Israel a 3 BILLION dollar grant every year since 1985? That is 81 BILLION dollars.

 

Yes, I know that - though it's actually not 3 billion dollars a year, the number har varied between 1.5 and 3. Either way - it's peanuts. Each of those years the federal budget has been hundreds of billions in the red. Aid and "grants" are not sufficient to cover that. And yes, the US probably shouldn't have spent money it doesn't have giving money out to others - no-one should. But the problem isn't that a tiny tiny fraction of the budget was sent to strategic allies (they are strategic allies for a reason - the US apparently believes it gets it's moneys worth through those strategic interests; consider for example the expense of having troops in Korea since the war there, which costs a lot of money but has secured trade that the US has benefited immensely from).

 

The government makes a nice little distinction between aid and a grant, I do not.

 

I don't see the relevance.

 

That alone trumps that document and that is just one example.

 

No, it does not. You are still arguing from a base of a couple billion here and there while the deficit is over the trillion. Consider this for a moment - you took the effort to bold the word "billions" earlier, but the deficit isn't an "illion with a b", it's a trillion. That is almost 10% of the entire US economy that has been running on credit! Since the 60's there are only two-three years that the US budget has not been a deficit! You can't blame that on anyone other than your own politicians.

 

I do not remember the last time any country gave USA anything.

 

Straight off the top of my head: the government of texas got disaster relief aid from a lot of countries after hurrican katrina.

 

Hence when when money leaves the USA its a gift and when it comes in it is a debt. I stand by what I said.

 

Actually, most of the money that leaves the US has nothing to do with aid and grants. They are peanuts in the circumstances. The big one is the trade deficit - the US has been running a trade deficit since the 60's as well, which is also up to close to the trillion-with-a-t. Once again your pet peeve grants and aid is peanuts. Why are you worrying about 3 billion dollars a year to Israel when your government runs an annual deficit of a thousand billions and the trade deficit is varying between 500 and 800 billions?

 

I don't disagree that a case can be made that the US should cease sending money, but it's not nearly sufficient to explain the problem, and indeed it is entirely possible that the US gets it's money's worth. (I doubt it personally, but I suspect neither of us have the data to make an authoritative call on that.)

 

Similarly, what about that border fence? That's 40+ billion dollars, a lot of which ended up where? In Mexico - since the contractors to a great extent used illegal mexican labor to build it!

 

In the end though, I agree the US cannot afford to do all those things. It cannot afford the wars it has been engaging in, it cannot even afford it's domestic policies. It certainly cannot afford a drawn out war with Iran. But in the case of Iran, it might for good reason consider the expense worth it as a lesser evil since nuclear tango between Israel and Iran would be felt greatly in the US as well. (Easy example: if there's a devastating war between those parties, you can say goodbye to followups to the Sandy Bridge technology since that was developed at Intel's Israeli labs - but gave the US-based Intel a lot of profits and thus a lot of revenue to the US government. That tax revenue alone actually pays for the 3 billion dollar grant to Israel this year. ;) )

[ZQuickSilverZ]

Your putting way too much into a simple observation. When money leaves here the USA pays, when money comes here the USA pays, right? Either way, no matter what direction money moves, the USA citizens pay.

 

Peanuts or not that adds up to a lot of money over 5 years. If it is peanuts let another country fit that bill for a while. I nominate yours.

 

We send money to strategic allies? Are Afghanistan and Pakistan our allies. We send them billions a year too.

 

No country gave us tons of money for Katrina. That money came from a world disaster fund. We put money into that fund.

 

I agree with you about the trade deficit.

[primus_TR]

 

We send money to strategic allies? Are Afghanistan and Pakistan our allies. We send them billions a year too.

 

That's not aid. That's buying cooperation. No one's giving anyone anything for free.

[RIPTIDE]

 

Are Afghanistan and Pakistan our allies.

 

Are they? ;)

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

They are peanuts in the circumstances.

From your perspective, billions of dollars might be peanuts. But, in my country, the USA, many (majority?) workers don't have company pensions , the number of people on food stamps is at the historic levels ever, the least number of vacation days among industrial world countries, 50 million people without health insurance, infrastructurewise 12% of the nations bridges are structurally deficient, police department closers due to budget shortfalls, high education cost/debt at record levels.... and on and on and on ....

 

For you, above facts might be peanuts. But for us, who live through all of this, it is a real life. And 50 billion dollars could do a lots of good here ....

 

You are from Sweden, I wonder what is Sweden debt to GDP ratio? I am sure it is less that what we have, which is now at 100% and rising. Also, how many people are on food stamps in Sweden?

[EtherealN]

Your putting way too much into a simple observation. When money leaves here the USA pays, when money comes here the USA pays, right? Either way, no matter what direction money moves, the USA citizens pay.

 

So when money flows into the USA due to foreign sales of intel CPU's, Apple gadgets etcetera, it's the american taxpayers that pay for the goods? Goshdarnit, I thought it was the actual people who bought the product... ;) When someone in europe buys an iPhone, that's money leaving europe for the USA, at zero expense to the US taxpayer. The problem is that there is not enough of that going on to counterbalance all the borrowing that the US does due to the fact that it is financing almost a tenth of it's economy through credit.

 

Again - we've been there. We did all of this in the 80's and early 90's. We fixed it through completely removing our deficit (amidst a lot of gnashing teeth due to various political disputes about where it is okey to make the required savings) and starting to pay our debt through running the government on a surplus.

 

Basically, the deal is that the US either has to get it's deficit under control, or the US is the next Greece. Up to the US to decide how it wants to do that, but that it has to do it is not up for debate. Arguing over about a billion here and a billion there isn't even a start. Quite simply; if you completely eliminate all US strategic aid, development aid, humanitarian aid, all of it - you have still barely touched the deficit. As mentioned - completely ditching your entire armed forces might only barely be enough.

 

Peanuts or not that adds up to a lot of money over 5 years. If it is peanuts let another country fit that bill for a while. I nominate yours.

 

In case you didn't notice, my country happens to be the biggest aid-giver in the world, as a portion of GNI. ;)

 

And sure it adds up. But the other things add up to a LOT more. What do you think costs the most - sending weapons to the israelis, or fighting two wars at the same time in afghanistan and Iraq? I would point out that the aid given to Israel (as an example) doesn't even equal a single day in Afghanistan and Iraq. Same thing on expenses and liabilities accrued in domestic programs - or even just interest on the debt. (Though most of the interest money does stay in the USA, it just goes from taxpayer to bank.)

 

We send money to strategic allies? Are Afghanistan and Pakistan our allies. We send them billions a year too.

 

Well, in the case of afghanistan it's because someone happened to go to war in that country. And interestingly, we - who had nothing to do with it - also have troops there. We're not even part of NATO, yet a whole province is ours to secure.

 

And as an aside, yes, Afghanistan and Pakistan are your allies. You are allied with the afghan government in the fight against taliban and al-Qaeda. Same with Pakistan. The US is also using Pakistan as a logistical ally, and have been doing so since pretty much the cold war when the CIA needed to ship weapons to the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

 

If you feel you shouldn't be seeing some of your tax dollars go over there, that's something you have to bring up with your congressman, but don't kid yourself into thinking that this is big enough to matter at all in the bigger picture of the US economy and national debt.

 

No country gave us tons of money for Katrina. That money came from a world disaster fund. We put money into that fund.

 

So do we. And we did happen to send staff and materiel that we paid for directly over there. ;)

 

And btw, if we take the UN disaster relief fund as an example, 2011 donors did indeed include the USA. UK donated 94 million, Sweden second place at 74, then Norway and Netherlands at 68 and 54. The USA donated 6 million dollars. (There are more funds out there but I don't have the time to dig up numbers for all of them. If you have links to further sources for other programs I'd be interested in seeing that, sources are waaaay too fractionalised usually. :( .)

 

I agree with you about the trade deficit.

 

Now you just need to see that the trade deficit is strongly linked to the budget deficit. No-one is stealing your money, in fact the rest of us (well, those that purchase US bonds, like the Chinese state, various banks and so on) are sending money into the US all the time, which is being spent on things like paying american servicemen and funding social services, medicaid etcetera. For this we charge interest. This is called capitalism.

 

Your statement that money entering the US costs the american taxpayers money is true only in the same sense that it is true for almost the whole developed world. Nobody is giving us money for free. (We pay more in dues to the union than we get in various union programs.) We get our money from the fact that we don't have to borrow money (aside from the normal liquidity lending pretty much all countries and corporations do), and we have a trade surplus - that is, we export more than we import.

 

All of the above is the reason why I think the US will only go to war with Iran if it really-really doesn't have any other option. It just can't afford it. And if it does do it anyway, it will be a strain on the economy that will, yet again, cost more per day than US aid and "grant" programmes cost in total per year. War is expensive, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranian government is betting everything on that; make the US reluctant about going in due to the US fiscal problems, and then present the world with a fait accompli. Basically - do what North Korea did.

 

Here you can see a good run-through of the problems as well, btw:

Khan makes a good job at showing the problem - and you'll note that the big deal is stuff that is domestic to the US with zero involvement by the rest of the world.

[EtherealN]

For you, above facts might be peanuts. But for us, who live through all of this, it is a real life. And 50 billion dollars could do a lots of good here ....

 

Yes, it can. But if you have one thing that costs 600 billion dollars a year, and debt costing 400 billion dollars a year, 50 billions over a 10 year period is peanuts. To me personally this is obviously a huge amount of money, and my country is relatively small (9.3 million people) so our government's figures never touch that kind of numbers. The deal is simply that everything is relative - 40 billion dollars is a huge thing over here. 40 billion dollars in the context of the US financial situation is peanuts.

 

You are from Sweden, I wonder what is Sweden debt to GDP ratio? I am sure it is less that what we have, which is now at 100% and rising. Also, how many people are on food stamps in Sweden?

 

35%. We were at 100% 15 years ago, roughly.

We don't have a "food stamp" system, we have a huge welfare system. I don't know the numbers of welfare benefit users off the top of my head (it's a lot), but we pay for this through taxes that would make most americans dizzy. :P

(Normal worker pays 33% income tax, there is also 30+ percent employer fees on the salary, plus 25% VAT, meaning that if the salary cost is 130 SEK, after all money that ends up in the government is deducted, the worker has 56 SEK to spend...)

 

We also have a comparatively diminutive military (we spend 1.2% of our economy on that, the US spends 4.7%) which is almost exclusively focused on being able to support peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, active in places like various african nations, afghanistan, libya etcetera. The old "total defence force" of the days when little sweden had one of the world's strongest airforces and could mobilize over a million men in short order are long gone, having been cut quite aggressively to rescue the budgets. (Basically, after the cold war no-one could find a way to justify those expenses, and when we had our similar problems back in early 90's the armed forces were one of the things that went almost literally on the chopping block.) We're not without problems though - we have only started to fix some gross inefficiency in the medical system, for example.

 

A point to note though is that if we still had the debt we used to have, we would not be better off than the US is now. We have nice roads and bridges simply due to the fact that we no longer spend a huge portion of the budget simply paying a revolving interest. Remember that if you feel 50 billion would do a lot of good over 10 years, consider what 400+ billion per year would do? That's what you'd save, with no tax increases, no budget cuts, no nothing - if only there wasn't the debt. Imagine what the US could do if debt had stayed where it was when Reagan took office - a trillion. It could fund all those things you want - and more (like a war with Iran...).

Edited January 8, 2012 by EtherealN

[ZQuickSilverZ]

So when money flows into the USA due to foreign sales of intel CPU's, Apple gadgets etcetera, it's the american taxpayers that pay for the goods? Goshdarnit, I thought it was the actual people who bought the product... When someone in europe buys an iPhone, that's money leaving europe for the USA, at zero expense to the US taxpayer.

 

What does that have to do with what we were talking about? You went from talking about government funding to private enterprise. By the way that "American Tech' your buying is manufactured in China. The only people that see money from that in America are the wealthy. Only recently did they start manufacturing CPU's in Texas.

 

And as an aside, yes, Afghanistan and Pakistan are your allies. You are allied with the afghan government in the fight against taliban and al-Qaeda. Same with Pakistan.

 

No Pakistan is not our allie. They found Bin Laden a few miles from a military base. They were clearly harboring him. I refuse to believe Pakistani intelligence is so incompetent that they did not know he was there. Then on top of that they sold USA military tech to China. This is nothing more than the USA trying to buy friends with American tax dollars. A fools purchase.

 

By the way this was my 500th post. I wish it had been a little more DCS'y

Edited January 8, 2012 by ZQuickSilverZ

[EtherealN]

What does that have to do with what we were talking about? You went from talking about government funding to private enterprise.

 

Trade balance is an integral part on whether a country's economy is viable in the long run. The US has a budget deficit and a trade deficit. That's my point. And you may also note the part I mentioned but you didn't quote - that your statement regarding money-in/money-out etcetera is true only in the same sense it is true for every developed country. The only material difference between the situations is specifically the trade balance, which obviously is part of what funds a government. Like I mentioned - Intel alone pays for US military grants to Israel through the money flowing from Israel, via Intel, into the IRS.

 

By the way that "American Tech' your buying is manufactured in China. The only people that see money from that in America are the wealthy. Only recently did they start manufacturing CPU's in Texas.

 

Actually, the really large public companies like Intel and Apple are, to a great level, owned by pension funds and similar. When they make a profit, whoever has their pension invested in that company gets a better pension. (As long as there's no Enron happening.) Similar thing with stock funds which private individuals use to invest their savings.

 

Big problem there of course (and we have the same situation) is that many households fund their consumption partially through credit (just like the state) and don't have much savings in the first place. But there is absolutely nothing stopping the average joe from placing his money in stock. (There's also nothing stopping them from placing it in government securities, indeed most funds use a spread to reduce the overall risk exposure of the fund.)

 

Further, you completely disregarded taxes and duties. An iPod purchase does not go just towards some workers in china and a couple fat cats on wall street. Some goes there, of course, but some goes to the Internal Revenue Service, some goes to people working at US administrative offices for the company, some is used to pay the design staff in the US that designed the product, some goes to all the pension funds and mutuals that own the larger portion of stock in the company (that is, average joe that has some savings capital invested instead of rotting in a bank account) etcetera.

 

No Pakistan is not our allie. They found Bin Laden a few miles from a military base. They were clearly harboring him. I refuse to believe Pakistani intelligence is so incompetent that they did not know he was there.

 

That the US and Pakistan are allied is not up to debate. There is a lot closer co-operation between the US military and Pakistani military than there is, for example, between US military and Swedish military - in spite of us being in Afghanistan. That said, yes, there are portions of the Pakistani intelligence services that are sympathetic to islamists, but that is a matter of corruption. It's basically a case of the US having to accept that since the US needs Pakistani co-operation for Afghanistan. The fact that Pakistan and China co-develop a lot of military hardware was known before that engagement and something the US clearly has accepted as part of the cost of supporting it's Afghan operations.

 

Also, the nature of intelligence service co-operation is such that it might very well have been the Pakistani intelligence service that gave the crucial intel. No-one would say anything about that even if it was the case, because in that world you just don't spill the beans. And having a fugitive close to a security installation isn't enough to mark said security installation as complicit - when I was in high-school I lived in a town where the largers Marijuana plantation in the city was located the floor above the local police station. Does that mean the police were complicit in that? No. It just means no-one told them, and they were too inefficient in their drug-war measures to infiltrate the organization that ran that "facility". Similar thing can easily happen - that military installation, why would they be looking for Osama? It's not like you have a detail going house-to-house to check every building within 50 miles of every installation you have, that's just a bad way to use your resources. All you need for that situation to happen is that no infiltration is successful and no-one defects and rats him out.

 

It's not so much about purchasing friends, it's about having decided to do something in Afghanistan and needing logistics to support that, which in practice means you need a "land-bridge" into the country - and since you're not going to get that established through Iran for obvious reasons, you need Pakistan. (Could theoretically airlift everything through russia and the rented bases in former soviet republics neighboring Afghanistan, but that would raise the cost of the engagement by orders of magnitude - pretty much to the point where it is no longer viable at all. Though personally I'd say it already is economically inviable.)

[hassata]

Some points on US debt:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/34-shocking-facts-about-u-s-debt-that-should-set-america-on-fire-with-anger

[hassata]

Huge surge in the Gulf:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/navy-persian-gulf/