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)