My Amazon Review of Rachel Chrastil's "Bismarck's War:....:

Organization vs. Incompetence

 

I was disappointed in reading Xavier history professor Rachel Chrastil’s history of the Franco-Prussian War. To be sure it is very detailed, and it included many personal vignettes, it leaves out much. In describing battles, she leaves out maps denoting the positioning of the forces and while included in the text, there should have been detailed exhibits consisting of the Tables of Organization and Equipment of the respective forces. I would have also liked to see some discussion in the economic sinews of war of both France and Prussia.

 

After tricking Napoleon III into declaring war against Prussia via the infamous Ems dispatch in July 1870, Prussia wipes France on September 2 at the Battle of Sedan. Napoleon III is captured and immediately a republic is declared in France. The war should have ended then and there, but France fights on for another year bringing with concomitant carnage on both sides. Chrastil rightly attributes Prussia’s victory to superior organization and generalship led by Helmut von Moltke over France’s incompetence.

 

To me it would have been a far better read if she spent more time on the big picture rather than the minute details of the battle. However, one detail did stand out to me. Coralie Cahen, a Jewish woman, helped organize the care for the French wounded and became the Florence Nightingale of the war. Who knew?

 

Europe learned the wrong lesson from the war. Instead of being fearful of mass carnage, the continent began arming to the teeth that would reach its zenith in 1914. 

For the full amazon URL see: Organization vs. Incompetence (amazon.com)

The House Gets it Right, at Last.

Yesterday under the leadership of House Speaker Michael Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the House of Representatives passed the $95 billion foreign aid supplemental that will send needed military supplies to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. (See: Shulmaven: Israel, Iran and the Nazi Gaza War Protesters ) And for good measure the House threw in a forced sale/ban on Tick Tock. 

The leadership succeeded in overcoming challenges from the anti-Israel Hamas Caucus in the Democratic Party and the Putinista Wrecker Caucus apparently being led by Moscow Marjorie Taylor Green in the Republican Party. At last, the center finally held. The measure now moves on to the Senate where it will hopefully pass on Tuesday, much to the relief of the struggling Ukrainian defenders. With shouts of "Churchill not Chamberlain" it seems that the House is beginning to recognize that we are in a prewar situation and has to act accordingly.

Further, in another victory for the center, Congress passed a two year reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which enable warrantless surveillance outside of the United States even if it involves contact with U.S. citizens. This law has served us well for over four decades.

Speaker Michael Johnson put his job on the line with his actions and let us hope that he understands that standing up to the bullies in his own party, will strengthen him, rather than bring him down.

Israel, Iran and the Nazi Gaza War Protesters

Last night Iran launched a massive air attack on Israel that was thwarted by the integrated Israeli air defenses along with help from the United States and regional allies. It was a credit to Israeli diplomacy that Jordan and Saudi Arabia aided Israel. Iran's dastardly attack will deservedly be met with a stern Israeli response, that hopefully will give the ayatollahs second thoughts about resuming their aggressive actions.

Meantime in the United States the Gaza war protestors were cheering Iran on with the slogans "hands off Iran" and "death to America." I guess they really love how well Iran treats its female and gay populations. Indeed, the Gaza War protesters have become the new Nazis in their unceasing efforts to shut down Israeli and Jewish artists and political figures at  numerous venues. Their behavior is very reminiscent of what the Nazis did in pre-Hitler Germany. Simply put we have to put and end to the hecklers' veto. I recently noted in a book review where the Nazis prevented the Berlin opening in December 1930 of the antiwar film "All Quiet on the Western Front." (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Frank McDonough's "The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933" )

In response Congress should immediately pass the supplemental appropriation for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that has been held up by the Republican wrecker caucus in the House. (See: Shulmaven: Crunch Time for Ukraine, Israel and the Border ) Further voters should vote out of office the Hamas caucus within the Democratic Party that voted against supporting Israel's Iron Dome system and the sending of F-35 jets. I close to note that the Iranian attack is further evidence that we are living in a prewar period with its attendant dangers. ( Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today )

My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Union Station"

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis

After years in Europe the Anglo-American journalist John Russell and his actor wife are now living in Los Angeles. This the eighth book of David Downing’s station series, with all of the prior stations being in Berlin from the late 1920’s to the late 1940’s.  (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Wedding Station")Russell is partially employed by a German newspaper and Effie has become a sitcom star on American TV.  Although their life in LA is of wine and roses, Russell gets caught up in a political corruption scandal and Effie is now facing issues with HUAC and the McCarthyism of the era.

 

All of the activity takes place in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, the subsequent struggle for power in the Soviet Union and the anti-Soviet riots in Berlin. Russell’s journalism takes him back to Berlin to investigate a candidate for Congress and Effie is there for a film festival. There is much intrigue in Berlin with several border crossings between east and west as Russell meets up with old friends. Russell fears that Soviet spy chief Beria is out to get him because he possesses compromising evidence on him that would be useful to his Kremlin opponents.

 

Along the way we get a sense of the very segregated Los Angeles of that era and the growing controversy of what is to happen to the Chavez Ravine tract the city has acquired. The Dodgers would move in later in the decade.

 

Downing tells a good story, but to me his dislike for America gets harder and harder to take, especially at the end. He seems to ignore that 1953 was a great year for middle-class white Americans and the Russell family was doing quite well. Downing also throws in a gratuitous hit on Israel, just for good measure. However, once you get over his political biases, he writes a very fast-paced historical novel

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Frank McDonough's "The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918-1933"

 On the Road to Perdition

 

Third Reich historian Frank McDonough has written a year-by-year tick tock history of the Weimar Republic from its founding in 1918 to its demise on January 30, 1933. It is largely a political history where he sometimes goes into excruciating detail about the various cabinet changes over the years. His hero is Gustav Stresemann, prime minister and for many years foreign minister. He was perhaps Germany’s most influential politician from 1925 -1929 where he negotiated a détente with the West though the Locarno Treaty. Unfortunately, deliberate, or not there was not Locarno for the East where Stresemann had designs on the eastern territories taken away from Germany at Versailles.

 

McDonough rightly notes that the premature deaths of Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau by assassination in 1922 and the deaths by disease of President Friedrich Ebert and Stresemann severely eroded the talent of the regime. I have written elsewhere that Stresemann’s death in 1929 removed the last politician of stature who could have stood up to Hitler.

 

Weimar was plagued from the beginning by a flawed constitution and its lack of legitimacy among the German Right. The two fundamental flaws in the constitution were proportional representation that allowed for the smallest of parties to have a voice in Reichstag and Article 48 which enabled the president to rule by decree. That would haunt the government as the economic crisis of the 1930’s hit.

 

Further, it was this government that signed the Versailles Treaty that established Germany’s sole guilt in starting World War I and placed a severe reparations burden on the economy. It was a tough start and that along with crippling inflation almost brought the government down. However, as Robert Gerwath noted in “November 1918: The Great Revolution” Weimar survived and with Dawes Plan loans in 1925 actually prospered.

 

So why did Weimar collapse? To McDonough the faults lie with the lack of responsible parties on the Right and with President Paul von Hindenburg, the hero of World War I, who in the late 1920’s was supportive of the government, returned to his monarchal roots as a Prussian land baron. It was he, along with the intrigues of Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher who brought down the hapless Heinrich Bruning government in 1932. Bruning’s government was imposed on the Reichstag by Hindenburg. He never had a parliamentary majority and with the lack of foreign currency reserves he was forced to impose a draconian austerity policy on an economy already in depression. To me Bruning did not have much of a choice. By the way, the best tick-tock on the end of Weimar is in Rudiger Barth’s and Hauke Friedrichs’ “The Last Winter of the Weimar Republic.”

 

Indeed, the decay was evident in December 1930 when Nazi goons disrupted the German premier of the anti-war film, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” So great were their disruptions that the film was banned a week after the failed premier. This has a familiar ring today in America where pro-Palestine mobs are canceling Jewish performers and Israeli officials.

 

 

Away from politics McDonough discusses the flowering of culture in art (abstract expressionism), architecture (Bauhaus), and film (Metropolis). Indeed, Berlin was second only to Hollywood in film production in the 1920’s. There was also the very free and licentious culture of Berlin’s nightclub scene. It was not for nothing that the recent German TV series was called “Babylon Berlin.” What McDonough does not mention is that this Avant Garde culture just might have turned off small city and rural Germany who overwhelmingly voted for Hitler in 1932.

 

However, my two primary concerns with McDonough’s otherwise excellent work is that he down plays economics. He should have taken seriously the works of Frederick Taylor’s “The Downfall of Money,” and Tobias Straumann’s “1931: Debt Crisis and the Rise of Hitler.” Simply put, Weimar was not up to the task. However, to his credit, McDonough does not that Hitler’s opposition to the Young Plan in 1930 made him respectable.

 

My second concern is that he failed to emphasize the long-standing division in the Left between the Socialists and the Communists. The split started during World War I and was exacerbated by the Socialist government with the support of the Army and the Free Corps in putting down the communist Spartacist Revolt in early 1920. Later in 1929 a different socialist government put down the “Bloody May” communist demonstration in 1929. McDonough doesn’t even mention this and with the communists calling the socialists “social fascists” it less of a surprise seeing them join forces with the Nazis in bringing down the Bruning government and in supporting a transit strike in Berlin in late 1932. Thus, part of the blame for the rise of Hitler has to fall on the disunity of the Left. As I have written previously the global impact of the Russian Revolution was to split the Left and harden the Right. It certainly played out in 1930 Germany.

 

With my concerns aside, McDonough’s book is important. I learned much from it and there are certainly lessons for today.

For the full amazon URL see: On the Road to Perdition (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Ian Buruma's "Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah"

Cancelled

At a time when cancel culture is running rampant in the West, it is useful to note that pernicious as it is, it is not new. In Dutch born Ian Buruma’s biography we find the 23-year-old Baruch Spinoza banned from his Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam for his heretical ideas about G_d and the origins of the Bible. At the time Spinoza had yet to publish anything, but his ideas were so powerful that he threatened both the Jewish and Christian communities alike. Mind you this occurred in 1656 at the height of the Dutch enlightenment. Along the way we learn much about life in the milieu of the Dutch Republic.

Spinoza would go on to write a major book on the philosophy of Descartes and later several books on his own philosophy. He was part of a coterie of intellectuals that viewed him as a cult figure; a reputation that was enhanced by his ascetism and celibacy.

Spinoza’s god was nature itself. Thus, to study nature in the spirit of open scientific inquiry was the pathway to finding G_d. For espousing freedom of thought, Spinoza was cancelled. Although Spinoza did not believe in organized religion, he did believe that it served the purpose of inculcating the values of justice and charity within the broader population.

Buruma himself was cancelled as the editor of the New York Review of Books in 2018 because he didn’t bow down the #MeToo orthodoxy. In writing about Spinoza, Buruma has exacted a modicum of justice against the radical hyenas of the Left. 

For the full amazon Review see: Cancelled (amazon.com)

President Biden's State of the Union: Strong on Form Weak on Substance

Very reminiscent of Harry Truman's "give'em hell" 1948 campaign, President Biden came out swinging against his nameless predecessor and the Republican House of Representatives in his state of union address. ( See: Shulmaven: New Yorker Follows Shulmaven on Biden Election Strategy. ) He was confident, strong, and relaxed and at least for the time being silenced the "bedwetters" in the Democratic Party concerned about his re-election prospects. Further I wouldn't be surprised to see a meaningful bounce in his poll numbers in the coming week.

In terms of substance there was much to be desired. He opened his speech citing Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 state of the union (see below):

" In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt came to this chamber to speak to the nation. He said, “I address you at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union.” Hitler was on the march. War was raging in Europe. President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment. 

Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. Tonight I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either."

President Roosevelt's speech which has become to be known as his "Four Freedoms Speech" was delivered on January 6, 1941. Only a week before Roosevelt gave fireside chat where he declared the United States to be "an arsenal of democracy." The difference today is that President Biden is nowhere near declaring America as an arsenal of democracy. Indeed his proposed defense budget will show a meager 1% increase. Given the tone of his speech and the prewar environment we are now living in, he should have called for a massive increase in defense spending. (See: Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today) Thus his rhetoric is way ahead of his actions.

The other troubling parts of his speech is that he revived all of the old Democratic Party tropes about taxing the rich, going after big Pharma, and spending program upon spending program. He fails to understand that middle-of-the-road voters in 2020 thought they were voting for a Bill Clinton and instead got a Lyndon Johnson. This could come back to haunt Biden as his rhetoric could very well scare away the Nikki Haley voters he will need in November.

My Amazon Review of Jennifer Burns' "Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative"

 The Little Giant 

Standing at exactly five feet, Milton Friedman was short in stature, but very tall intellect. Stanford historian Jennifer Burns has written a very readable biography of one of the great intellectual giants of the 20^th century. From humble beginnings in Rahway, New Jersey we witness Milton Friedman scaling the heights of the economics profession as his once controversial ideas move from the fringes to the mainstream of thought that would ultimately have great effect on public policy.

 

In many respects, I am a child of his ideas. While as an undergraduate at Baruch College, I learned of the Friedman-Savage utility function, price theory from his workbook, the permanent income hypothesis, and the quantity theory of money through “A Monetary History of the United States.”  I also studied the works of his graduate students, in particular Gary Becker on human capital and David Meiselman on the term structure of interest rates. That was quite an economics education for an undergrad in the early 1960’s.

 

Friedman was blessed by having great mentors. At Rutgers and Columbia, he fell under the wing of Arthur Burns and at the University of Chicago he was fortunate to learn from Henry Simons and it certainly did not hurt to have Aaron Director, his wife Rose’s older brother in his corner. The University of Chicago was a hot house of ideas standing athwart the New Deal and Freidman was in the middle of it all. Much of this was discussed in George Tavlas’ “The Monetarists” which I previously reviewed.

 

There is much here that I did not know about Friedman. I knew he was involved in crafting payroll withholding at the Treasury Department during World War II, but I did not know he continuously represented the department at congressional hearings. Interestingly Burns makes a strong case that although Freidman took full credit for the permanent income hypothesis, it was really a joint effort of his wife, Rose and economists Dorothy Brady and Margaret Reid. Those three women had worked on family consumption patterns in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s. Perhaps most troubling was an episode in 1955 when his wife was raped in their Chicago home while Friedman was travelling in India. Initially he did not want to return home, but he had to be talked into it by Arthur Burns.

 

His conservative ideas brought him close to power as he advised Republicans Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan. His conduit to Nixon and Reagan was Chicago dean and high government official, George Schultz. His fame brings him to Chile where his students were leading the charge to reform that nation’s economy. When he was there to advise the government, he turned a blind eye to the atrocities of the Pinochet dictatorship.

 

During the 1970’s heyday of monetarism, Friedman was the most famous economist in the world. His 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association correctly outlined the thesis that there was no long run trade-off between unemployment and inflation proved to be correct in the stagflating 1970’s. However as financial deregulation changed the definition of money the crude MV=PY equation lost its effectiveness as a guidepost to the economy.

 

The world we live in today is very much the product of Friedman’s ideas characterized by Jennifer Burns as Chicago price theory. Those ideas include floating exchange rates, the volunteer army, the negative income tax, school vouchers and the deregulation of licensing requirements. This is the legacy that she writes so well about.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Little Giant (amazon.com)

 

 

New Yorker Follows Shulmaven on Biden Election Strategy.

On January 24th we briefly outlined a strategy for the Biden re-election campaign. (See: Shulmaven: Sleepwalking on the Road to Perdition ) 

"Further Biden has to get out of his sleepwalking mode and, if he is capable, he has to run an all-out campaign a la 1948 Harry Truman against the do nothing Congress. However, that "if" is a BFD, as Biden would say. To continue the Truman analogy, Biden should give an all-out speech calling for a big increase in the defense budget to deal with the axis of evil. Otherwise I fear that we would be sleepwalking on the road to perdition."

Today the New Yorker magazine followed us with a long article  by Evan Osnos. See the excerpt below from Politico.

BIDEN’S TRUMAN MOMENT: EVAN OSNOS ’ full New Yorker profile on Biden and his reelection mission is worth your time. But one moment stuck out to us: the parallel between the president’s pitch and that of HARRY TRUMAN .

“Biden’s opportunity is akin to the one that Harry Truman had in his 1948 campaign for reelection. Trailing in the polls, Truman railed against what he called a ‘Do Nothing Congress,’ which had failed to stop spiking prices and ameliorate a housing crisis. Much as Biden talks about the threat to freedoms worldwide, Truman spoke of a gathering Cold War, a grand mission that served to unify a fractious Democratic Party. He ultimately prevailed,” Osnos wrote.

“It was a matter of pulling together a coalition that was in even worse fragmentation,” historian SEAN WILENTZ told Osnos about Truman. “Truman did it by going to the American people, running against Congress, standing up on both the Cold War and civil rights. It’s possible that ’48 will prove a precursor to what we have now — if the Democrats take heed.”

That suggests that Biden could point, for example, to Republicans scuttling the grand bargain on immigration, and sidelining the national security supplemental for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other priorities in the process. It also suggests focusing on democracy and the rise of autocratic forces could give Biden an edge in his election narrative. (Source: Politico National Security, 3/4/2024)

The problem with the strategy is that Biden does not appear to have the energy to do the equivalent of a 100 city whistle stop tour.

Fascism in Santa Fe

Presented below is my letter to the Santa Fe New Mexican which appeared this morning. The background is that Meow Wolf, an experiential art venue, suddenly cancelled a concert by Matisyahu, a Jewish reggae performer on February 14. One member of their union complained that Matisyahu's support for Israel in its war against Hamas made her feel unsafe. That snowballed into a walkout that left the venue with insufficient staff to accommodate the sold-out audience of 400 people. The next day a Tucson venue did the same thing. Further an attempt to cancel Jerry Seinfeld's performance in Albuquerque failed and his show went on.

"Narrow ideology

In oh-so-progressive and oh-so-artsy Santa Fe, fascism is alive and well. Following the playbook straight out of 1930 Germany, a group of so-called activists pressured Meow Wolf management into canceling a sold out concert by Matisyahu, a Jewish performer whose only sin is supporting Israel in the war against Hamas. This is no different from the tactic used by the jackbooted brown shirts against Jewish artists and businesses. I guess today’s Santa Fe activists no longer believe in free expression and artistic freedom, but they rather act like thugs to enforce their narrow ideology.

David Shulman

Santa Fe"

Time for a Discharge Petition

Time is running out for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The Senate just passed a $95 billion appropriation for assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Putin's murder of Russian democrat Alexei Navalny reinforces the need for immediate action. However, Putin puppet Speaker of the House Mike Brown is holding up action on the legislation. It is he and the Putinista caucus in the Republican Party along with the anti-Israel Hamas caucus within the Democratic Party that are working against the desperately needed aid package. It is important to remember that the Hamas caucus and the Putinista caucus have one thing in common: they both hate America.

Thus when the House reconvenes from its recess on February 28th it will be time for Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies to work in concert with the remaining internationalists in the Republican Party to orchestrate a discharge petition to put the legislation up for a vote on the House floor. Sure it will take political courage for Republicans to vote against their speaker, but that is what they get paid the big bucks for.  Failure to pass the legislation will put us one step closer to the next big war. (See:  Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today)   

My Amazon Review of Benn Steil's "The World that Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century"

America Missed a Bullet

 

On July 21,1944, the Democratic National Convention dumped its pro-Soviet vice president and named Senator Harry Truman as its vice-presidential nominee. With President Franklin Roosevelt operating in the background the political bosses of the Democratic Party, knowing that Roosevelt was likely to die in office, out maneuvered the labor bosses in obtaining the nomination for Truman.

 

With that the United States avoided having an administration led by a Soviet sympathizer who would have placed the communists in charge of State and Treasury, in particular Laurence Duggan at State and Harry Dexter White at Treasury. Should that have happened there would have been no intervention in Greece, no Marshall Plan, and no NATO. Further Germany would have been neutralized there would have been communist governments in France and Italy, a far cry from the Cold War history as it turned out.

 

I previously reviewed Benn Steil’s “The Marshal Plan” (See Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Benn Steil's "The Marshal Plan: Dawn of the Cold War" )and his “The Battle of Bretton Woods,” and with this book he established himself as a leading historian of the mid-1940’s. Steil covers Wallace’s life from his early beginnings as part of an Iowa farm family and later as publisher of a leading agricultural journal. He became interested in plant genetics and founded with others Pioneer Hybrid International. The $7000 invested in 1926 turned into a nearly $10 billion equity valuation by 1999 when it was sold to DuPont. If Wallace stuck to his seed business the world would have been a much better place.

 

Wallace caught the eye of Roosevelt and became his Secretary of Agriculture. In that capacity he was an architect and follower of the New Deal farm programs that worked to prop up big agriculture at the expense of tenant farmers, ploughed under crops and destroyed millions of piglets at a time of mass starvation. Farm income hardly increased in the 1930’s. Also, during the 1930’s Wallace found a “guru” in Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. It is all very bizarre and Steil spends too much time on this.

 

In 1940 with Roosevelt needing support among farmers and the isolationist Midwest, Wallace was picked as his vice-president. In that capacity he is put in charge of the Bureau of Economic Warfare. There he clashes with Jesse Jones, the powerful head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The seeds of his demise start here. He picked the wrong enemy. In 1944 Wallace goes on an extended trip to Siberia where he is completely taken in by the Potemkin Villages set up by the KGB. His trip was orchestrated by spy chief Lavrenty Beria. Where the reality was that of penal colonies, Wallace only saw happy farmers and miners. He didn’t return until June 1944, and he was therefore politically unprepared for the upcoming convention.

 

Truman gave Wallace a consolation prize by making him Commerce Secretary. His nomination was controversial, and the Senate stripped control of the RFC from him. His pro-Soviet leanings get the better of him in a speech at a pro-communist rally in September 1946 at Madison Square Garden where he attacks the Truman Administration as imperialist warmongers. Truman has no choice but to follow him. Much of the speech was written by his staff, many of whom were communists. From then on Wallace mouths every pro-Soviet trope in the book in attacking Truman.

 

After asking advice from of all people Soviet Ambassador Andrey Gromyko, Wallace decides to run as the nominee of the new Progressive Party which was largely staffed by communists including Harry Magdoff, Victor Perlo, John Abt and Lee Pressman. Steil highlights how closely the Soviets watched the campaign and highlighted its role in the 1948 election in Pravda. This was not the first time the Soviets took an interest in the activities of the American Communist Party.

 

After his loss Wallace fades away and later recants his pro-Soviet views. In my opinion too little too late. We now live in a time where the Russians are actively involved in our elections; only this time it is the Republican Party that is the object of their affection. It is also unfortunate that there are no party bosses in the Democratic Party that can fix its ticket, that as of today looks weak. Steil reminds us that we may very well be at another hinge of history and hopefully America will once again miss a bullet. (See: Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today )

For the full Amazon Review see: America Misses a Bullet (amazon.com) 

 

  

Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today

In an article entitled "The Next Global War: How Today's Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones that Produced World War II" on January 26th in Foreign Affairs, Hal Brands, the Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote as follows See:https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/next-global-war) :

"World War II was the aggregation of three regional crises: Japan’s rampage in China and the Asia-Pacific; Italy’s bid for empire in Africa and the Mediterranean; and Germany’s push for hegemony in Europe and beyond. In some ways, these crises were always linked. Each was the work of an autocratic regime with a penchant for coercion and violence. Each involved a lunge for dominance in a globally significant region. Each contributed to what U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1937, called a spreading “epidemic of world lawlessness.” Even so, this wasn’t an integrated mega-conflict from the outset."

and:

"The parallels between this earlier era and the present are striking. Today, as in the 1930s, the international system is facing three sharp regional challenges. China is rapidly amassing military might as part of its campaign to eject the United States from the western Pacific—and, perhaps, become the world’s preeminent power. Russia’s war in Ukraine is the murderous centerpiece of its long-standing effort to reclaim primacy in eastern Europe and the former Soviet space. In the Middle East, Iran and its coterie of proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and many others—are waging a bloody struggle for regional dominance against Israel, the Gulf monarchies, and the United States. Once again, the fundamental commonalities linking the revisionist states are autocratic governance and geopolitical grievance; in this case, a desire to break a U.S.-led order that deprives them of the greatness they desire. Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are the new “have not” powers, struggling against the “haves”: Washington and its allies.

Two of these challenges have already turned hot. The war in Ukraine is also a vicious proxy contest between Russia and the West; Russian President Vladimir Putin is buckling down for a long, grinding struggle that could last for years. Hamas’s attack on Israel last October—enabled, if perhaps not explicitly blessed, by Tehran—triggered an intense conflict that is creating violent spillover across that vital region. Iran, meanwhile, is creeping toward nuclear weapons, which could turbocharge its regional revisionism by indemnifying its regime against an Israeli or U.S. response. In the western Pacific and mainland Asia, China is still relying mostly on coercion short of war. But as the military balance shifts in sensitive spots such as the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, Beijing will have better options—and perhaps a bigger appetite—for aggression."

Shulmaven wrote last November (Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930's - Part 5 ), in far more concise prose, something very similar to Brand's core idea. We are gratified that our thoughts are very similar to that of such a distinguished scholar of global strategy as Professor Brands.  Indeed we recently reviewed his most recent book on strategy. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Hal Brands' Ed. "The New Makers of Modern Strategy...." ) Our thoughts of last November are highlighted below and if anything our view has been amplified by last week's U.S. response to a drone at attack on a Jordan base that killed three Americans.

"We started this series in March 2014 ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s)  with Putin taking Crimea and using his proxies in eastern Ukraine and the last one was in April 2017 with  Trump’s and Obama’s vacillation in Syria in 2013 and 2017. ( Shulmaven: Reliving the 1930s - Part 4) With this blog I go further in that I now believe that we are no longer in the Post-Cold War Era, but rather we are now in what future historians will call a pre-war era.

 

Instead of facing the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis we now face the Russia-China-Iran North Korea Axis We see this new axis playing out in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Taiwan Straits. All the signs were there in the 1930’s with Japan invading Manchuria in 1931 and the heart of China in 1937; Italy invading Abyssinia in 1935, and Germany reoccupying the Rhineland in 1936. However, it was not until 1938 that they were taken seriously."

My Amazon Review of Yaroslav Trofimov's "Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's....."

Ukraine at War

 

The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov is the best war reporter in the business. Here, in a very personal account, Trofimov covers the first year of Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invaders that began on February 24, 2022.  To Trofimov the war is very personal as he was born and grew up in Kyiv. The places he knew as boy were now targets of Russian bombs and missiles. Indeed, Trofimov was in Kyiv when the shooting started.

 

As a reporter he was present at the major battles of the war starting with Russia’s failed air assault on Hostomel Airport. Had that attack succeeded the war would have been over in weeks. At great personal risk he covered Ukraine’s initial counterattack from the Kyiv front which pushed back the Russian forces. Indeed, while I was following the war from afar, I witnessed on YouTube a perfectly executed ambush of Russian tank forces. I was far away and safe; Trofimov was up close and many times he was at great personal risk.

 

Trofimov takes us to the battles Izyum, Kharkiv and Kherson where once great cities were leveled to the ground by artillery and drone attacks. Much of the success of the Ukrainian army can be attributed to the West supplying Javelin antitank missiles and the HIMARS mobile rocket system. To be sure Ukraine was grateful for the western aid, but in many cases, it was too little too late. Trofimov argues, and I agree, that had the West gone all in from the beginning Ukraine would have won the war in a year. Had the aid come earlier the meatgrinder of Bakhmut would have likely been avoided where Ukrainian forces battled it out with Yevgeny Prigozhin Wagner Group of criminals.

 

Aside from covering the war in the field, Trofimov interviews Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and army chief Valeriy Zaluzhy. And he covers the arrival of the various European heads of state that show up in Kyiv to offer moral support and additional arms,

 

Trofimov is correct in viewing the start of the war in 2014 with Russia’s takeover of Crimea. I argued then that it was a wake-up call for the West. ( See: Shulmaven: The Ukraine: What is to be Done ) Unfortunately, that warning was unheeded and now after much devastation the war enters its third year. Where are the promised F-16 fighter jets? Ukraine still waits.

 

Trofimov gave us his first draft of history with his Wall Street Journal stories. This book represents the second draft and hopefully there will soon be a third draft that ends with a Russian retreat from all Ukrainian territory. 

For the full Amazon URL see: Ukraine at War (amazon.com)

Sleepwalking on the Road to Perdition

 With Trump's 12 point victory over Nikki Haley last night in New Hampshire, it seems that we are getting the 2024 election that most Americans did not want. You can't argue that America is a forward looking country with two octogenarians vying for the presidency. Trump is looking backward to the 1950's where he grew up and to the 1930's antecedents to his America First ideas, while Biden is still stuck in 1970's industrial policy time warp and the extreme cultural liberalism of the1972 McGovern campaign which has been adopted by most of the Democratic Party. 

Meantime the world has become more dangerous by the day with the new axis of evil consisting of China, Russia and Iran threatening U.S. interests around the world. While both candidates will likely focus on domestic issues, it is important to note policy mistakes in the domestic area can be reversed with subsequent elections, foreign policy mistakes are not so easily reversible. This is especially true with the wrecker caucus Republicans holding up much needed aid to Ukraine and Israel. (See: Shulmaven: Crunch Time for Ukraine, Israel and the Border ) If Biden were to show some leadership he should make a deal on the Border with the Republicans and get that issue behind him. If not, my guess is that the Republicans will sweep in November.

Further Biden has to get out of his sleepwalking mode and, if he is capable, he has to run an all-out campaign a la 1948 Harry Truman against the do nothing Congress. However, that "if" is a BFD, as Biden would say. To continue the Truman analogy, Biden should give an all-out speech calling for a big increase in the defense budget to deal with the axis of evil. Otherwise I fear that we would be sleepwalking on the road to perdition.

My Amazon Review of Patrick Weil's "The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson"

 William Bullitt: Diplomat and Amateur Psychiatrist

 

Yale law professor Patrick Weil has really written two books in one. The first deals with the joint effort of William Bullitt and Sigmund Freud to write a psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson. The second is an excellent biography of the extraordinarily well-connected diplomat, William Bullitt.  I found the biography of Bullitt far more interesting.

 

Bullitt hooks up with Sigmund Freud in 1926, first as a patient and later as a collaborator as they seek to understand why Woodrow Wilson failed so badly at the Paris Peace Conference and later in his attempt to ratify the Versailles Treaty though the U.S. Senate. Their explanation is rooted in Wilson’s “daddy issues” (my term) and his Christ Complex.  To me, even with Sigmund Freud at the helm, psychoanalysis at a distance is problematic. Further the title of the book calls Wilson a “madman” when in fact Freud used the term neurosis, not psychosis to describe Wilson’s personality. A simpler explanation would be somewhere along the way Wilson, became a stubborn old man, and systematically began to destroy what he had built.

 

Either way Weil shows the importance of personality in diplomatic affairs. Instead of buying into the older explanation the imperialist machinations of France and England combined with the isolationists in the Senate that worked to kill the treaty, Weil puts the blame directly on Wilson’s personality. Wilson didn’t like the advice he was getting from his two key advisors, Secretary of State Lansing and his longtime confidant, Colonel House, so he fired them. He was too stubborn to make a deal with the Senate Republicans that was already blessed by Britain and France that would have enabled passage through the Senate. Indeed, I learned that as part of the deal was a Treaty of Guarantee that would have established a mutual defense pact between the U.S., Britain and France, a precursor to the Atlantic alliance, if you will.

 

Now, as to Bullitt. At 25, Bullitt, as scion of Philadelphia society, was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. In the middle of the conference, he goes off to Russia to try and make a deal with Lenin, which Wilson rejects. He leaves the conference disillusioned by Wilson’s craven dealmaking. A few years later he marries Louise Bryant, John “10 Days that Shook the World” Reed’s widow. In 1933 he became Roosevelt’s ambassador to Russia and later was his ambassador to Paris where he was his eyes and ears to Nazi Europe. Along the way he helped write speeches for Roosevelt.

 

As ambassador to Russia, he hired George Kenan, Charles “Chip” Bohlen and Loy Henderson, who would become mainstays of U.S. Russia policy during the early Cold War years. In Paris he befriended Charles de Gaulle on the right and Leon Blum on the left. In 1943 he wrote a long memo outlining the threats coming from Russia, that Kenan viewed as precursor to his 1946 Long Telegram. As a result, because of Russia policy difference and Bullitt telling Roosevelt about his friend and Deputy Secretary of State Sumner Wells’ homosexual proclivities, the two break and Bullitt endorses Dewey in 1944.

 

Now on the right with respect to Russia policy, Bullitt gets along great with John Foster Dulles, Chiang-Kai-Shek, and Syngman Rhee of South Korea. Indeed, Bullitt at the request of both Rhee and Dulles mediated a position between them that helped end the Korean War. Further Bullitt came very close with Richard Nixon as congressman and later as vice-president.

 

Weil did a huge amount of work going through all of the Bullitt papers at the Yale library, and his efforts show throughout this book. His work includes uncovering the original Freud-Bullitt manuscript. For a history buff like me, this is a terrific book.

For the full Amazon URL see: William Bullitt: Diplomat and Amateur Psychiatrist (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of David Brooks' "How to Know a Person"

 The Art of Human Connection

After reading New York Times columnist David Brooks’ book, I got the sense he must have spent thousands of hours in therapy trying to understand himself and his relationships with those close to him. In writing this book Brooks talked to many psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists searching to understand how deep human connections are made. Further he reinforces the science with a host of very human anecdotes.

To Brooks there are two broad types of people. “Diminishers” who are self-centered who don’t disclose much about themselves and don’t really want to know about the people they meet. Their polar opposite is a much smaller group of people who Brooks calls “Illuminators.” Those people are willing to open up their lives to other people and are truly interested in the people they meet. These folks are the story-telling animals that my friend and colleague Ed Leamer writes about. According to Leamer, humans are story-telling animals, but somehow in today’s fast paced society we don’t slow down enough to tell and more importantly to listen. As the old adage goes, you can learn more by listening than speaking.

The goal is to avoid making ourselves invisible to others while at the same time removing the invisibility from them. The sub-head to the book’s title is “The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen” is the message of the book.

Brooks doesn’t talk much of himself until the very end of the book. My sense is that he should have started with his own personal issues in the beginning. To quote Polonius in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “This above all: to thine own self be true.” To me in order to be seen deeply you have see yourself deeply as well.

Brooks has written an important book on how we can get along better with our neighbors, colleagues, and yes, strangers. That in turn will make it easier to heal the divisions in our society.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Art of Human Connection (amazon.com)