My Amazon Review of David Sanger's "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion....."

Pre-War, Not New Cold Wars

 

New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger is way too close to his sources, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It is an advantage because Sanger puts us behind the scenes to give us a very real sense of the diplomatic events of the past four years, especially the tick-tock of America’s warning to the world about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.  It is a disadvantage, because instead of being a clear-eyed reporter, he was sucked into the world views of Sullivan and Blinken, an apologia, if you will.  He buys into the idea that we will give enough aid to prevent a Russian win, but not enough to allow for a Ukraine victory.

 

In 2014 after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, I noted that this would the start of something big and both the U.S. and Europe would have to respond forcefully. (See:  Shulmaven: The Ukraine: What is to be Done )However, both the E.U. and the Obama White House accepted Russia’s aggression as a fait accompli. Thus, too me it was no surprise that given the lack of will in the West, that Putin would sooner or later go in for the kill.

 

 

If you want to put dates on the start of the new cold wars between the United States and Russia and China, you can start at the 2007 Munich Security Conference where Putin decisively separated himself from the West. In the case of China, you can use Chairman Xi’s 2013 address to the Communist Party where he girded the party cadre to prepare for the struggles ahead. Simply put, the whole policy framework that brought China into the global economy was a failure. In both cases Russia and China returned to their dictatorial roots with Putin viewing himself as the “new Tsar” and Xi as the “new Mao.” (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy's " Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin")

 

Sanger rightly spends much time on the ongoing cyber war with both Russia and China being aggressors attacking both governmental and private web sites. It is here where such private companies as Microsoft, Google and Palantir play leading roles in defense of our country. We also can’t forget Elon Musk’s StarLink system initially saved the day in Ukraine.

 

Sanger picks up on Sullivan’s industrial policy views where the U.S. is now in the business of subsidizing America’s chip production. Because computer chips are at the core of both the modern economy and defense hardware, it makes little sense to import most of our chips from abroad, especially where the bulk of those chips come from very vulnerable Taiwan. (  Shulmaven: My Review* of Chris Miller's "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology") Indeed, in the new Cold War, Taiwan is the new Berlin.

 

Sanger is too casual in his discussion of the new Russo-Chinese alliance that was formed at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 where the two partners stated their relationship was “without limits.” Hello, this foreign policy nightmare happened on the Biden Administration’s watch.  If Kissinger got credit for splitting the Soviets from China, shouldn’t the Sullivan/Blinken team get the blame. Within days Russia invaded Ukraine.

 

What is wrong with Sanger’s book is that he does not discuss defense policy. If we are in new Cold Wars with Russia and China, our stagnant defense budget certainly does not reflect that. Biden in his 2023 State of the Union address called attention to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 address discussing how dangerous our world has become. However, he did not mention that a week before Roosevelt called for America to become “the arsenal of democracy.”  ( See:  Shulmaven: President Biden's State of the Union: Strong on Form Weak on Substance) The defense budget would quadruple in the following year.  Similarly, Biden has yet to make the equivalent of the 1947 Truman Doctrine speech and Sanger has not reported any national security council memorandum equivalent to the 1950 NSC-68 which called for “a massive build-up of conventional and nuclear weapons.”

 

Sanger hardly discusses Iran and North Korea who are objectively aligned with Russia and China, a serious omission. It seems to me the world is a far more dangerous place than the new cold wars that Sanger suggests that are now with us. To me, we are in a far more dangerous pre-war period that we are ill-prepared to deal with it. (See: Shulmaven: Shulmaven Anticipates Hal Brands Foreign Affairs Article on Pre-WW II and Today)

For the full amazon Review see: Pre-War, Not New Cold Wars (amazon.com)

 

 

My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Germany 1923: Hyper Inflation, Hitler's Putsch and...."

 Weimar’s Trial by Fire

I previously reviewed Volker Ullrich’s two volume biography of Adolf Hitler. ( See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939" and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945 )                                      Here the distinguished German historian focuses in on the critical year of 1923 which almost brought with it the premature death of the then five-year year-old Weimar Republic. His hero is the grand coalition prime minister, Gustav Stresemann, who manages to hold it together long enough so that the nascent republic survives its first trial by fire. It won’t be so lucky the next time.

 

What Stresemann faces is a hyper inflation that brings the Mark’s valuation down to 4.2 trillion to the dollar, the French occupation of the Ruhr for nonpayment of reparations, the Hitler Putsch in Munich, and a communist rising ordered by the Comintern in Moscow in Saxony, Thuringia, and Hamburg.  If this weren’t enough a separatist movement arose in the Rhine Valley where one of the leading figures was Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer. As Keynes noted in his “Economic Consequences of the Peace,”  

       “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

 

Indeed, it was this inflation that destroyed the relationship between debtors and creditors, wiped out middle-class savings and immiserated huge swaths of the hitherto prosperous middle-class. Although not fatal at the time, when hard times returned to Germany in 1930, it happened with a vengeance.

 

Yet through it all, with all of its inherent faults, parliamentary democracy survived in Germany. By the end of the year the introduction of the Rentenmark, stabilized the currency which created the precondition for a substantial economic recovery in the late 1920’s. Working very effectively behind the scenes was U.S. Ambassador Alanson Houghton who worked tirelessly with Stresemann to get German acceptance of what was to become the Dawes Plan that enabled American loans to Germany. Later when American credit dried up, the roof fell in.

 

All the while Germany was in political and economic crisis the arts were flourishing. Germany became the second largest producer of motion pictures with such luminaries as Emil Jennings, Fritz Lang, and Conrad Veidt. Veidt would go on to play Major Heinrich Strasser in “Casablanca.” There was also the artist George Grosz, the playwright Bertolt Brecht and the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius.

 

Underneath it was a far right that never accepted democracy, industrialists who sought to undo the labor reforms of 1918, a judicial system that punished the Left far mor more severely than the Right.  Through it all Stresemann, originally a man of the Right, ended up being one of Weimar’s biggest supporters and by 1925, as foreign minister, he negotiated the Locarno Treaty with France confirming Germany’s western borders.

 

After reading this book I became more optimistic about the future of America. If the fledgling Weimar democracy could survive the challenges discussed above, certainly the 250-year-old democracy of the United States can survive our current dyspepsia. Germany faced far worse and came through it.

For the full Amazon URL see: Weimar's Trial by Fire (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Gary Sernovitz's "The Counting House"

 An Endowment CIO under Stress

 

Private equity investor Gary Sernovitz has written a disappointing novel about the trials and tribulations of college endowment chief investment officer. (CIO) The idea for the book, which focuses on the stresses and strains of a CIO as he goes through a year of underperformance. The book excels when it discusses how endowment investments are made and it demonstrates the folly of having 60 separate investment managers to run a $6 billion portfolio. We witness meetings with promoters of every endowment investing fad of the past two decades. All of this is interesting to a finance geek like me.

 

However, this is a novel. The characters are one dimensional. We really don’t get to know the CIO, the college president, and the head of the academic senate with his zany social investing ideas. We hardly get to know his small staff who has to put up with the CIO destroying his laptop computer in a fit of rage.

 

There is also a reclusive hedge fund billionaire alum who refuses to give money to the school. Given the characters in the book, who would give them money and given what is going on today at many elite colleges, it makes no sense to give money to any of them. The billionaire’s role in the book is to highlight the absurdity of the fee driven asset management industry to come up with niche products, that at the end of the day, likely detracts from investment performance.

 

My suggestion is that the book would have been better as nonfiction than fiction.

For the full amazon URL see: An Endowment CIO under Stress (amazon.com)

Joe "No Win" Biden

President Biden has done it again. He doesn’t believe in winning. Just as at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War when the Biden provided enough aid to prevent Ukraine’s defeat, but not enough for Ukraine to win, it now appears he is doing the same thing with respect to the Israel-Hamas War. Last night he announced on CNN that the U.S. will stop the shipments of offensive military aid to Israel should it invade the heart of the Hamas stronghold of Rafah. He also has suspended the shipment of 3500 bombs and thousands of artillery shells.

 

To be sure civilian casualties have been high in the Gaza War, but it is in the nature of the Hamas enemy who cares little about the death of its own people. To them every casualty makes Israel look bad in the eyes of the world. Thus, it is in their interests to increase the body count. When facing an enemy like this, what choice does Israel have?

 

If Biden thinks that will hasten the cease fire negotiations with Hamas, he is sorely mistaken. Hamas will continue to play its waiting game in the hopes that Israel will cave under U.S. pressure. Meantime more Israeli hostages will die in captivity, and it will likely make Hezbollah more aggressive in the north. Remember those bombs and artillery shells are needed to defend Israel in the north.

 

All Biden’s actions will do is to prolong the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The quicker Hamas is defeated in Gaza the quicker the war will end. Never forget that Hamas is the aggressor. ( See: Shulmaven: Hamas Aggression Must be Punished ) A partial arms embargo on Israel is perhaps one of the most counter-productive things Biden has done. Selling out an ally does not do Biden proud and his action will have consequences around the world, especially in Taiwan.

My Amazon Review of Kevin Baker's "The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City"

Play Ball

As a kid growing up in 1950’s Queens, I was totally immersed in baseball, especially the Brooklyn Dodgers. Kevin Baker has written a marvelous history of the game against the backdrop of a growing New York City. He starts out by refuting the idea that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Indeed, it was invented as a street game in 1840’s New York and grew from there.

 

Though interesting the history of the early game didn’t hold a candle to what came in the early 1900’s. His description of the early New York Giants with its great manager John McGraw and its great pitcher Christy Mathewson is fantastic. McGraw’s teams dominated the game for two decades. All the while New York City was exploding with dynamism by building subways, the Hudson Tubes (now PATH), East River bridges, Penn Station, and Grand Central Station.

 

Of course, all of this development was under the aegis of Tammany Hall with all of the corruption that entailed. In the siting of all three New York ball parks, Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium the fingerprints of Tammany Hall were present. Baker highlights the role of Tammany’s Big Tim Sullivan, the vice-lord of lower Manhattan. However, he fails to discuss the role of his boss, Charles Murphy, the chief sachem of Tammany Hall with no explanation given.

 

Although the White Sox were located in Chicago, the big fix of the 1919 World Series originated in New York under the auspices of Arnold Rothstein. In the early days of baseball corruption was more than casual.

 

As we go into the 1920’s the Yankees catch fire with the arrival of Babe Ruth. In the celebrity culture of the 1920’s Ruth was one of the greats, blasting home runs in every major league ballpark. The 1927 Yankees with Ruth backed up by Lou Gehrig, was perhaps the greatest team ever. Rivaling the 1920’s Yankee team was the late 1930’s Yankee team that feature jolting Joe DiMaggio who brought joy to Great Depression New York.

 

There is little discussion of the Dodgers until the Brooklyn Trust takes over the team and installs new management in 1938. From there on the Dodgers become a dynasty especially after luring away Branch Rickey from the St. Louis Cardinals to become its general manager.

Baker highlights the Jim Crow rules of baseball that kept African American players off the field. He discusses the great stars of the Negro Leagues who would have had fantastic careers in the major leagues. Unfortunately, that won’t be remedied until 1947 with the arrival of Jackie Robinson. Baseball and New York post-1945 will be the subject of volume two.

 

There is also a very important business lesson to be learned from the book. The Yankee’s Jacob Rupert continually reinvested in the team, built a farm system, and heavily invested in scouting for new players. Branch Rickey did the same thing at St. Louis and brought that magic to Brooklyn. Rickey signed players in the early 1940’s knowing that they would be drafted. Yet when the war ended, they would become the core of the new Brooklyn Dodgers. In contrast the Stonham family who ran the Giants failed to invest in the team, despite having great players like Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott, to regain their successes of the early 1900’s.

 

Kevin Baker’s history is lively and keeps the reader engaged. If I had one bone to pick, I would have displayed the annual statistics of the key players he discussed. Perhaps in volume two he will do that. 

For the full amazon URL see: Play Ball (amazon.com)