Terms search eg: rail to rail
All games are away.
BOOMERBUSTER
OLD CELLO
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
RE KENNAN AT A CENTURY'S ENDING
'FLASHBACKS', great passage:
"...ambassador to Moscow. The assignment has nothing to do with Soviet - American relations. The present ambassador, it seems, is leaving. It is the election year of 1952. For purely domestic political reasons, the administration is afraid to leave the post vacant. Foreign policy -- policy toward the Soviet Union -- plays no part in the decision. It never occurs to people in the administration that the position of American ambassador to Moscow has anything to do with policy. They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an ambassador is for...."
"They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an ambassador is for." That sums it up nicely.
Monday, March 31, 2014
FAMILY VALUES GENERATIONAL ANALYSIS RANDALL COLLINS STYLE ALEXANDER AND OTHER ERAS EG ROMAN
"Structural Conditions for Murderous Family Infighting
These are not just really bad people; the structural conditions in which they live are conducive, not to love and family solidarity, but to family jealousies and strife. To briefly list the conditions:
-- Marriages are typically arranged as political and diplomatic alliances. The women have no choice in who they marry; rulers regularly offer a daughter, or sister, to gain an ally or buy off a foe. This is an attractive deal on the receiving side, since the children of such a marriage have a claim to the succession of the family state they came from-- not that they will automatically succeed to the throne, since there are probably other candidates, but it is a good investment. And sons too sometimes are used by their fathers in the same fashion, or pawned as hostages. This means young persons of high rank normally expect they will go to live among people they do not really trust; on the other hand, people don’t trust each other that much where they grew up (among other reasons because most people are married to someone they didn’t choose), and there are good opportunities for personalities who develop the skills to plot and manipulate. Some women (for instance, Queen Olympias, Alexander’s mother, who plays a major political role when he is away and after his death) can become quite powerful by playing the game. If women are pawns, they also have close access to the networks of power, and network opportunity is more important than abstract cultural definition of status.
-- Love has nothing to do with marriage. But the term love does exist; we read in the ancient sources that Philip fell in love with the daughter of his general Attalus, and decided to throw off his political-alliance wife in her favor. Later Alexander will choose a wife, Roxane, who he finds captivating beautiful and falls in love with her during his conquests in central Asia; it doesn’t hurt that her father is an important chieftan and the marriage cements an alliance. On the other hand, it does not prevent Alexander, after returning to the Persian capital at the end of his conquests, from arranging a mass wedding of thousands of his soldiers to Persian wives, he himself taking a daughter of the conquered Persian King. (Roxane is still around, and she is still considered mother of the legitimate heir.) Falling in love had more or less the superficial meaning it has today, being smitten by someone’s beauty or sexual charm. We hear about Alexander’s soldiers who want leave to go back to Greece because they are in love with a courtesan; and one of Alexander’s most important generals, Ptolemy, sends for a famous courtesan from Athens to entertain them in Persia; she becomes his mistress and bears him several children, while he becomes King of Egypt.
This shows a way that ordinary women could rise in social rank. Although only women from royal families could play marriage politics, women who were beautiful and accomplished could make themselves so attractive that powerful men would fall in love with them, and even marry them. They were courtesans-- prostitutes; but exclusive enough so that they had to be courted. It was not a pathway that would be open to middle-class women of respectable families, who were closely guarded, even locked up at home; but courtesans who learned the arts of allurement had an arena where they could meet men of the highest rank-- they were famous entertainers at their banquets and drinking parties, and thus they too got a network connection with the elite. Once again, network closeness trumps mere abstract status.
One gets the impression that courtesans, although obviously gold-diggers, were not as cynical as the upper-class women in arranged marriages. We do not hear of courtesans murdering anyone, although they would have had plenty of opportunities. Their lack of family connections made them too vulnerable to risk it.
-- Geopolitics takes the form of multi-sided unstable conflicts. There are more than two great powers; there are three, four, five of them. And there are a lot of smaller players who can maneuver on the margins or in the interstices of the major conflicts, building little local empires without much notice, then intruding into the major conflicts, just as Macedon blindsided the bigger Greek players Athens, Sparta, Thebes, the Boeotian League, and their Asian opponent Persia. Weakening one of the major powers did not mean reducing the number of players, since others’ gains were only temporary. This was not the balance-of-power strategy employed by the British in the 19th and 20th centuries, where they would intervene on the Continent on the side of whichever coalition was weaker; that was a strong third party intervening into a two-sided conflict, whereas the Greek situation was more highly multi-sided. Geopolitical theory of conflict needs to recognize that conflicts among 4 or more are inherently more unstable than conflicts among 3 or less.
-- Combine this multi-sided geopolitical instability with external support for internal rivalries, and the ingredients are present for murderous family conflict. Exiles sheltered by a foreign power; hostages who become acclimated to a foreign point-of-view; these create the danger of “pretenders” to the throne awaiting the opportunity to return. Notice the mixture of altruism and calculated strategy: sympathy for exiles in hard times was also a device for expanding one’s power. (Similar in this respect is the modern practice of humanitarian interventions.) The result is a network of states who are used to receiving and sending well-known persons among each other, and have an interest in each other’s internal affairs. Interfering in the internal affairs of another state became an habitual practice. Rich states, who had a lot of gold, would send funds to the faction they wanted to support in another state, whether a rival state, an ally or one that could swing either way. These could be called bribes (usually by the opposing faction), gifts, subsidies, or even tribute (if the recipient construed the money as a sign of the giver’s inferiority). Today's equivalent would be foreign aid (in the altruistic language of American foreign policy), or subsidies (like those sent by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to rebel factions in Syria, thereby prolonging its interminably multi-sided civil war.)
To sum up: combine hereditary monarchy, arranged political marriages, unstable multi-sided geopolitics, networks of exiles and pretenders, and foreign intrusion in domestic affairs: the result is violence in the heart of the family, uninhibited by love or loyalty."
Saturday, March 29, 2014
re JOHNSON KRUGMAN TYSON PAST BLAST
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/05/re-chalmers-johnson-paul-krugman-and.html
RE BISMARCK
"Bismarck may be Putin's model as well: he wanted to make Prussia supreme in most of Germany, just as Putin wants to restore some of Russia's position in the former Soviet Union, but even Bismarck did not want all German-speaking lands under his control. The Middle East, meanwhile, has essentially abandoned western tutelage. The future relationship of the West and the Far East is, I think, much more uncertain than many of us realize."
Professor Kaiser first put me onto Kennan's works. Especially good was The Decline of Bismarck's European Order, and its sequel.
Professor Kaiser first put me onto Kennan's works. Especially good was The Decline of Bismarck's European Order, and its sequel.
DK'S CURRENT POST EXCERPT SPECIALIZATION COMPARTMENTALIZATION
Great stuff.
"Scholars in the humanities, moreover, have become increasingly narrow. And thus, it seems to me, today's elite students graduate with the ability to assimilate arguments quickly and regurgitate them, but without much experience in diving into large amounts of data and coming out with a conclusion themselves. That in turn makes them much more likely to accept the conventional wisdom of their profession in their careers. It also makes it less likely that they will spend much of their spare time reading long books later in life."
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/09/re-specialized-knowledge-its-own.html
"Scholars in the humanities, moreover, have become increasingly narrow. And thus, it seems to me, today's elite students graduate with the ability to assimilate arguments quickly and regurgitate them, but without much experience in diving into large amounts of data and coming out with a conclusion themselves. That in turn makes them much more likely to accept the conventional wisdom of their profession in their careers. It also makes it less likely that they will spend much of their spare time reading long books later in life."
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/09/re-specialized-knowledge-its-own.html
RE NYT STATE LOCAL NATIONAL GOVERNMENT THINK CHRISTIE BRIDGE CLOSING
Business as usual, all day, everywhere, here.
Terms search: Your state, Christie, New York
Terms search: Your state, Christie, New York
Thursday, March 27, 2014
FURTHER RE SELF DETERMINATION CIVIL WAR VERSUS SECESSION VERSUS REBELLION WILSON THEMES AGAIN
"....Next. As it declared independence and decided to hold a referendum, the Supreme Council of Crimea referred to the United Nations Charter, which speaks of the right of nations to self-determination. Incidentally, I would like to remind you that when Ukraine seceded from the USSR it did exactly the same thing, almost word for word. Ukraine used this right, yet the residents of Crimea are denied it. Why is that?...."
P. Putin, to the Federation, March 21, 2014
P. Putin, to the Federation, March 21, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
the menu
Fetzer California wines especially good now.
Comparable to best Bordeaux vintages, but fruitier, and 5 dollars a bottle.
You might mix, sacrilege, their Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, to approximate a Bordeaux blend.......
Comparable to best Bordeaux vintages, but fruitier, and 5 dollars a bottle.
You might mix, sacrilege, their Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, to approximate a Bordeaux blend.......
Saturday, March 22, 2014
DK'S CURRENT POST BRAVO
"In February 1946, George F. Kennan, then the Chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Moscow, wrote what became known as the Long Telegram in an effort to awaken his superiors in Washington to new realities. No one could have spoken with more authority than Kennan: he spoke Russian fluently and was highly familiar with its literature and history, and he had been serving in the Moscow Embassy for several years. The telegram, which may be read here, stated his case simply and clearly. The wartime alliance against Hitler was over, Kennan wrote, and the Soviet Union's hopes for the new world had little or nothing in common with those of the United States. The Communist leadership deeply believed in the historical necessity of a worldwide struggle against capitalism and would do nothing that did not, in its view, further that cause. Yet Kennan was not without hope, because he did not believe that the Soviets saw the struggle as a military one, or that they had the slightest wish to resume a world war. Eighteen months later he published some of the same insights in his famous X article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." By then he was the chairman of the State Department's Policy Planning Council. By a stroke of extraordinary good fortune, his boss, Secretary of State George Marshall--one of the half-dozen greatest unelected public servants the United States has ever produced--was a man who had risen to the command of the American Army by identifying the ablest available subordinates and following their advice. He believed the Policy Planning Council should plan policy, and during the next two years, Kennan laid the foundation for the strategy of the Cold War.
I cannot pretend to expertise comparable to Kennan's. I have made only one brief visit to Russia, 42 years ago, and I have never studied the language, although The First Circle and Dr. Zhivago are among the books I return to again and again in translation. Yet I would like to think that I learned diplomatic realism from him, among many other sources, and that I can put it to use in examining the new situation that has been created by President Putin's annexation of Ukraine. Kennan has become increasingly unfashionable in recent years, and the publication of his diaries, which are a very poor substitute for his extraordinary memoirs, isn't helping his reputation either. But never in my whole life have I felt so acutely the complete absence of anyone like him in the highest councils of our government--and thus, I am going to yield to temptation and try to suggest what a young Kennan, were he posted in Moscow today, might say.
The Chargé d’affaires to the Secretary of State
March 21, 2014
The current situation in Russia, the Ukraine, and surrounding nations inevitably calls to mind the immediate aftermath of the last great crisis in the Atlantic world in 1933-45, when the defeat of Hitler and the Japanese was immediately followed by the Soviet installation of Communist regimes in various countries of Eastern Europe. It also recalls developments in the wake of the First World War, when Russia was briefly reduced almost to its current extent within Europe, facing a newly independent Ukraine and Baltic States, while retaining control of Belarus. That previous example is, in fact, more relevant. The problem Lenin and Trotsky faced at the time of the German collapse was to recover the territory they had lost early in 1918 in the Peace of Brest Litovsk, and they successfully reincorporated Ukraine into the new Soviet Union, but failed in a war against Poland and had to tolerate the independence of the Baltic states for twenty years, until the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler. The current crisis began, of course, with the collapse of Communism in 1989-90, followed by the complete disintegration of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin did not come to power in Russia until 1999, and he has obviously moved much more slowly than Lenin in 1919 or Stalin in 1920 to begin increasing the extent of his territorial control and influence. The nature of his goals has become clearer in recent years, and his speech last Monday in Moscow, which I encourage all serious students of Russian policy to read, leaves relatively little doubt of how he sees the world and where he may be heading. Our first, and perhaps easiest, task, is to understand what he had to say.
The collapse of Communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union were indeed world-historical events comparable in impact to each of the two world wars. We must be extraordinarily thankful that they were accomplished with relatively little serious bloodshed, a most remarkable outcome, but no one should have expected the emergence of a new order to be a smooth process. Indeed, President Bush and Secretary of State Baker plainly had mixed feelings, to put it mildly, about the disintegration of the USSR, and the kinds of regimes that have emerged in many of the successor states have not been inspiring. In his speech, Putin regretted the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but he did not dwell upon it, much less lay the blame on foreign influences, as he so often likes to do when discussing unpleasant subjects. What he objected to was, first, the way in which the boundaries of Soviet Republics automatically became the borders of newly independent states, and, second, the ways in which, as he sees it, the western powers have taken advantage of the situation over the last 25 years or so. There is not the slightest evidence that Putin wants to embark on a worldwide crusade comparable to those of Lenin and Stalin, and it is highly doubtful, to say the least, that he has any designs even upon eastern European nations such as Poland and Rumania. But he is not willing to accept the situation within the former Soviet Union as it has evolved to date, and the events of the last month show that he has powerful cards to play.
It was to be expected that the collapse of Communist authority over Eastern Europe would lead to turmoil, and even to the redrawing of borders, as indeed it has. The process was not confined to the former USSR. Czechoslovakia immediately separated into its two component parts, ironically vindicating those who in the 1930s pronounced it an artificial creation that was not destined to survive. Yugoslavia, which Serbia had managed to create in 1919 by virtue of having played the key role in unleashing the First World War that destroyed Austria-Hungary, came apart much more bloodily, and it took the better part of a decade to establish new frontiers for Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia--the last still a very fragile construction. The first Bush Administration declined to intervene in the war among the successor states, but the Clinton Administration took a different view. It brought what seemed to be the last phase of the struggle to an end with the agreement on Bosnia in 1995. Then, in 1999, the rump state of Yugoslavia apparently embarked upon a campaign to cleanse Kosovo of ethnic Albanians, and the government of the United States, supported by NATO--but not by the UN Security Council--went to war with it to stop this process. The war, conducted entirely from the air, succeeded, and Yugoslav (really Serbian) authorities gave up Kosovo. Kosovar independence followed, and the United States and other NATO countries recognized it. In the succeeding 15 years, most of the Serb population has been driven out of Kosovo, although peaceably, not violently.
It was the Kosovo war, Putin makes very clear, that established the precedent that he is determined to fight. Confronted with a conflict generated by the collapse of Communism, NATO, as he sees it, unilaterally took responsibility for determining the proper outcome without the endorsement of the UN Security Council, where both Russia and China would have refused assent. And in so doing, NATO only extended the approach it had already taken to the aftermath of the collapse of Communism: its belief that the extension of western influence and western values must be the inevitable result.
It is at this point in the story, it seems to me, that our own government must for a moment reflect upon the wisdom of the choices made by previous administrations. There were those of us who believed that NATO, having functioned successfully for more than 40 years as a defensive alliance against Communism, had lost much of its raison d'etre when Communism collapsed, and that its role in a new world might be re-evaluated. The government of the United States, however, did not take this road. Instead, NATO became a mechanism for expanding western and American influence as far eastward as possible, and all the former Soviet satellite states of the Cold War era, as well as the former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, are now members. The second Bush Administration, indeed, was on the point of offering Ukraine membership in 2008, but the current Administration--wisely in my view--did not pursue this initiative.
The US government made these decisions, it seems to me, in the belief that the Russian government's views did not matter. They also made them in the belief--encouraged by our triumph over our Cold War adversary--that American institutions and American values were destined to triumph over the entire world. That view, specifically enunciated in the National Security Strategy of 2002, still seems to remain the basis of our policy. As one who has never held it--who has instead believed that democracy is the heritage of certain specific nations, who must always be vigilant to make sure that it functions well, and hesitant to assume that it will thrive elsewhere--I cannot say that I believe this to be the basis of a sound foreign policy. In the past five years, we have adopted another set of assumptions highly relevant to the current crisis.
Those assumptions, in essence, seem to hold that any uprising against an authoritarian or dictatorial government must be a good thing, and that the United States should embrace revolutionary movements as soon as they have become large enough to fill the main square of their nation's capital city with demonstrators. That is what the United States has done, Putin points out in his speech, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria--with very mixed results. And that is also what both the United States and the EU did in Ukraine.
Ukraine has been, indeed, the test case for our assumption that democracy must follow Communism, and its recent history has not born it out. We have assumed that anti-Russian elements within Ukraine would be both more democratic and less corrupt, but that did not turn out to be the case. The Orange revolution of 2004 did not have the results we had hoped, and a pro-Russian government returned to power. The Ukrainian people, like so many others in the western world, have been hit hard by the Great Recession, and last year they turned against that government. Both the EU and the United States seized upon this as an opportunity to return a friendly regime to power. To this Putin decided he must respond.
In arranging the secession and rapid accession to Russia of Crimea, Putin, as his speech makes clear, has taken advantage both of ethnic realities and of history. Russians constitute the bulk of the Crimean population, and Khrushchev's decision to transfer it to Ukraine 60 years ago took place within a completely different context. As Putin pointed out in his speech, were a Ukrainian state that included Crimea to join NATO, as has been discussed recently, NATO forces would acquire the only major naval bases in the Black Sea. The referendum just held almost certainly reflects the wishes of the bulk of the population.
In my opinion, our government must reconsider the wisdom of the sanctions it is imposing in response to these events, since we have no means of undoing them. We do face a continuing crisis and we need strategies to face it, but we cannot make Crimea part of Ukraine again, and it will not serve the interests of the American, Russian or Ukrainian peoples to create an endless confrontation over what has taken place. Diplomacy must be based upon reality.
The serious question we now face involves the future of the government of Ukraine. Putin denies its legitimacy, and clearly threatens in his speech to make that a pretext for intervention in Ukraine proper, and perhaps for the separation of the large Russian-speaking portions of eastern Ukraine and their addition to Russia as well. Meanwhile, the new Ukrainian government--which, it must be acknowledged, did not come to power by constitutional means--is moving rapidly to strengthen its ties to the European union. It may ask for NATO membership. Putin, very simply, is determined not to allow the West to choose who shall govern Ukraine. He clearly desires to turn more of the former USSR into a Russian sphere of influence based upon his Eurasian union. He will use what cards he has to play to achieve these goals--but he will only use the military, in all probability, if there is no opposition, as there was not in Ukraine.
Elections are now scheduled in Ukraine. I would suggest that we invest our political capital in ensuring that all interested parties, including the Russian government, will respect the results of those elections. A conflict over the legitimacy of the government within the shrinking territory that divides the NATO alliance from Russia is a recipe for disaster, one that could even lead to war. Meanwhile, we need Russian cooperation to deal with both Syria and the Iranian nuclear program. We need, in short, to do the work diplomacy has always tried to do: to find a solution that we all can live with.
Here the Cold War, properly understood, provides some useful examples. We must face the fact, as we did in 1946-7, that Putin does not share our values or our vision of the future. He feels Russia to be different from the West and he wants to increase its influence. He is not, however, prepared to do so by war. The early years of the Cold War featured a number of struggles within contested nations that were decided by political, rather than military means. Hungary in 1947 and Czechoslovakia in 1948 fell to Communism because of internal political changes, not Soviet military power. Finland and Austria remained outside the Soviet orbit for parallel reasons: their anti-Communist forces proved stronger than Moscow's satellites. That also happened in the critical nations of France and Italy. It will happen now, one way or another, in the Baltic States, Moldova, and Ukraine.
Our assumption that democracy would spread, as it were, automatically, has proven false. That does not however mean that itcannot spread--only that its spread will require determination and character on the part of the nations of the former USSR, and also of the United States and the nations of the European Union. They must assess each situation wisely and do what they can. They must also realize that the Putin government remains very important to a host of broader problems in which we have an enormous interest. Let us not not once again allow dogma to trap us into an endless confrontation with a nuclear power, punctuated by crises that put the whole world at risk. Let us base our ends upon realities and trust to the long-term movement of history.
[sgd) George Kennan
(not really--DK)
(Please share this as widely as you can. Thanks.) "
I cannot pretend to expertise comparable to Kennan's. I have made only one brief visit to Russia, 42 years ago, and I have never studied the language, although The First Circle and Dr. Zhivago are among the books I return to again and again in translation. Yet I would like to think that I learned diplomatic realism from him, among many other sources, and that I can put it to use in examining the new situation that has been created by President Putin's annexation of Ukraine. Kennan has become increasingly unfashionable in recent years, and the publication of his diaries, which are a very poor substitute for his extraordinary memoirs, isn't helping his reputation either. But never in my whole life have I felt so acutely the complete absence of anyone like him in the highest councils of our government--and thus, I am going to yield to temptation and try to suggest what a young Kennan, were he posted in Moscow today, might say.
The Chargé d’affaires to the Secretary of State
March 21, 2014
The current situation in Russia, the Ukraine, and surrounding nations inevitably calls to mind the immediate aftermath of the last great crisis in the Atlantic world in 1933-45, when the defeat of Hitler and the Japanese was immediately followed by the Soviet installation of Communist regimes in various countries of Eastern Europe. It also recalls developments in the wake of the First World War, when Russia was briefly reduced almost to its current extent within Europe, facing a newly independent Ukraine and Baltic States, while retaining control of Belarus. That previous example is, in fact, more relevant. The problem Lenin and Trotsky faced at the time of the German collapse was to recover the territory they had lost early in 1918 in the Peace of Brest Litovsk, and they successfully reincorporated Ukraine into the new Soviet Union, but failed in a war against Poland and had to tolerate the independence of the Baltic states for twenty years, until the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler. The current crisis began, of course, with the collapse of Communism in 1989-90, followed by the complete disintegration of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin did not come to power in Russia until 1999, and he has obviously moved much more slowly than Lenin in 1919 or Stalin in 1920 to begin increasing the extent of his territorial control and influence. The nature of his goals has become clearer in recent years, and his speech last Monday in Moscow, which I encourage all serious students of Russian policy to read, leaves relatively little doubt of how he sees the world and where he may be heading. Our first, and perhaps easiest, task, is to understand what he had to say.
The collapse of Communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union were indeed world-historical events comparable in impact to each of the two world wars. We must be extraordinarily thankful that they were accomplished with relatively little serious bloodshed, a most remarkable outcome, but no one should have expected the emergence of a new order to be a smooth process. Indeed, President Bush and Secretary of State Baker plainly had mixed feelings, to put it mildly, about the disintegration of the USSR, and the kinds of regimes that have emerged in many of the successor states have not been inspiring. In his speech, Putin regretted the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but he did not dwell upon it, much less lay the blame on foreign influences, as he so often likes to do when discussing unpleasant subjects. What he objected to was, first, the way in which the boundaries of Soviet Republics automatically became the borders of newly independent states, and, second, the ways in which, as he sees it, the western powers have taken advantage of the situation over the last 25 years or so. There is not the slightest evidence that Putin wants to embark on a worldwide crusade comparable to those of Lenin and Stalin, and it is highly doubtful, to say the least, that he has any designs even upon eastern European nations such as Poland and Rumania. But he is not willing to accept the situation within the former Soviet Union as it has evolved to date, and the events of the last month show that he has powerful cards to play.
It was to be expected that the collapse of Communist authority over Eastern Europe would lead to turmoil, and even to the redrawing of borders, as indeed it has. The process was not confined to the former USSR. Czechoslovakia immediately separated into its two component parts, ironically vindicating those who in the 1930s pronounced it an artificial creation that was not destined to survive. Yugoslavia, which Serbia had managed to create in 1919 by virtue of having played the key role in unleashing the First World War that destroyed Austria-Hungary, came apart much more bloodily, and it took the better part of a decade to establish new frontiers for Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia--the last still a very fragile construction. The first Bush Administration declined to intervene in the war among the successor states, but the Clinton Administration took a different view. It brought what seemed to be the last phase of the struggle to an end with the agreement on Bosnia in 1995. Then, in 1999, the rump state of Yugoslavia apparently embarked upon a campaign to cleanse Kosovo of ethnic Albanians, and the government of the United States, supported by NATO--but not by the UN Security Council--went to war with it to stop this process. The war, conducted entirely from the air, succeeded, and Yugoslav (really Serbian) authorities gave up Kosovo. Kosovar independence followed, and the United States and other NATO countries recognized it. In the succeeding 15 years, most of the Serb population has been driven out of Kosovo, although peaceably, not violently.
It was the Kosovo war, Putin makes very clear, that established the precedent that he is determined to fight. Confronted with a conflict generated by the collapse of Communism, NATO, as he sees it, unilaterally took responsibility for determining the proper outcome without the endorsement of the UN Security Council, where both Russia and China would have refused assent. And in so doing, NATO only extended the approach it had already taken to the aftermath of the collapse of Communism: its belief that the extension of western influence and western values must be the inevitable result.
It is at this point in the story, it seems to me, that our own government must for a moment reflect upon the wisdom of the choices made by previous administrations. There were those of us who believed that NATO, having functioned successfully for more than 40 years as a defensive alliance against Communism, had lost much of its raison d'etre when Communism collapsed, and that its role in a new world might be re-evaluated. The government of the United States, however, did not take this road. Instead, NATO became a mechanism for expanding western and American influence as far eastward as possible, and all the former Soviet satellite states of the Cold War era, as well as the former Soviet Republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, are now members. The second Bush Administration, indeed, was on the point of offering Ukraine membership in 2008, but the current Administration--wisely in my view--did not pursue this initiative.
The US government made these decisions, it seems to me, in the belief that the Russian government's views did not matter. They also made them in the belief--encouraged by our triumph over our Cold War adversary--that American institutions and American values were destined to triumph over the entire world. That view, specifically enunciated in the National Security Strategy of 2002, still seems to remain the basis of our policy. As one who has never held it--who has instead believed that democracy is the heritage of certain specific nations, who must always be vigilant to make sure that it functions well, and hesitant to assume that it will thrive elsewhere--I cannot say that I believe this to be the basis of a sound foreign policy. In the past five years, we have adopted another set of assumptions highly relevant to the current crisis.
Those assumptions, in essence, seem to hold that any uprising against an authoritarian or dictatorial government must be a good thing, and that the United States should embrace revolutionary movements as soon as they have become large enough to fill the main square of their nation's capital city with demonstrators. That is what the United States has done, Putin points out in his speech, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria--with very mixed results. And that is also what both the United States and the EU did in Ukraine.
Ukraine has been, indeed, the test case for our assumption that democracy must follow Communism, and its recent history has not born it out. We have assumed that anti-Russian elements within Ukraine would be both more democratic and less corrupt, but that did not turn out to be the case. The Orange revolution of 2004 did not have the results we had hoped, and a pro-Russian government returned to power. The Ukrainian people, like so many others in the western world, have been hit hard by the Great Recession, and last year they turned against that government. Both the EU and the United States seized upon this as an opportunity to return a friendly regime to power. To this Putin decided he must respond.
In arranging the secession and rapid accession to Russia of Crimea, Putin, as his speech makes clear, has taken advantage both of ethnic realities and of history. Russians constitute the bulk of the Crimean population, and Khrushchev's decision to transfer it to Ukraine 60 years ago took place within a completely different context. As Putin pointed out in his speech, were a Ukrainian state that included Crimea to join NATO, as has been discussed recently, NATO forces would acquire the only major naval bases in the Black Sea. The referendum just held almost certainly reflects the wishes of the bulk of the population.
In my opinion, our government must reconsider the wisdom of the sanctions it is imposing in response to these events, since we have no means of undoing them. We do face a continuing crisis and we need strategies to face it, but we cannot make Crimea part of Ukraine again, and it will not serve the interests of the American, Russian or Ukrainian peoples to create an endless confrontation over what has taken place. Diplomacy must be based upon reality.
The serious question we now face involves the future of the government of Ukraine. Putin denies its legitimacy, and clearly threatens in his speech to make that a pretext for intervention in Ukraine proper, and perhaps for the separation of the large Russian-speaking portions of eastern Ukraine and their addition to Russia as well. Meanwhile, the new Ukrainian government--which, it must be acknowledged, did not come to power by constitutional means--is moving rapidly to strengthen its ties to the European union. It may ask for NATO membership. Putin, very simply, is determined not to allow the West to choose who shall govern Ukraine. He clearly desires to turn more of the former USSR into a Russian sphere of influence based upon his Eurasian union. He will use what cards he has to play to achieve these goals--but he will only use the military, in all probability, if there is no opposition, as there was not in Ukraine.
Elections are now scheduled in Ukraine. I would suggest that we invest our political capital in ensuring that all interested parties, including the Russian government, will respect the results of those elections. A conflict over the legitimacy of the government within the shrinking territory that divides the NATO alliance from Russia is a recipe for disaster, one that could even lead to war. Meanwhile, we need Russian cooperation to deal with both Syria and the Iranian nuclear program. We need, in short, to do the work diplomacy has always tried to do: to find a solution that we all can live with.
Here the Cold War, properly understood, provides some useful examples. We must face the fact, as we did in 1946-7, that Putin does not share our values or our vision of the future. He feels Russia to be different from the West and he wants to increase its influence. He is not, however, prepared to do so by war. The early years of the Cold War featured a number of struggles within contested nations that were decided by political, rather than military means. Hungary in 1947 and Czechoslovakia in 1948 fell to Communism because of internal political changes, not Soviet military power. Finland and Austria remained outside the Soviet orbit for parallel reasons: their anti-Communist forces proved stronger than Moscow's satellites. That also happened in the critical nations of France and Italy. It will happen now, one way or another, in the Baltic States, Moldova, and Ukraine.
Our assumption that democracy would spread, as it were, automatically, has proven false. That does not however mean that itcannot spread--only that its spread will require determination and character on the part of the nations of the former USSR, and also of the United States and the nations of the European Union. They must assess each situation wisely and do what they can. They must also realize that the Putin government remains very important to a host of broader problems in which we have an enormous interest. Let us not not once again allow dogma to trap us into an endless confrontation with a nuclear power, punctuated by crises that put the whole world at risk. Let us base our ends upon realities and trust to the long-term movement of history.
[sgd) George Kennan
(not really--DK)
(Please share this as widely as you can. Thanks.) "
ONE GOOD IDEA NOT POLITICALLY FEASIBLE HERE DIANE FRANCIS
"No two nations in the world are as integrated, economically and socially, as are the United States and Canada. We share geography, values and the largest unprotected border in the world. Regardless of this close friendship, our two countries are on a slow-motion collision course—with each other and with the rest of the world. While we wrestle with internal political gridlock and fiscal challenges and clash over border problems, the economies of the larger world change and flourish. Emerging economies sailed through the financial meltdown of 2008. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that by 2018, China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States; when combined with India, Japan and the four Asian Tigers—South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong—China’s economy will be bigger than that of the G8 (minus Japan).
Rather than continuing on this road to mutual decline, our two nations should chart a new course. Bestselling author Diane Francis proposes a simple and obvious solution: What if the United States and Canada merged into one country? The most audacious initiative since the Louisiana Purchase would solve the biggest problems each country expects to face: the U.S.’s nation- al security threats and declining living standards; and Canada’s difficulty controlling and developing its huge landmass, stemming from a lack of capital, workers, technology and military might. Merger of the Century builds both a strong political argument and a compel- ling business case, treating our two countries not only as sovereign entities but as merging companies.
We stand on the cusp of a new world order. Together, by marshaling resources and combining efforts, Canada and America have a greater chance of succeeding. As separate nations, the future is in much greater doubt indeed."
RE ZIGGED WHEN SHOULD HAVE ZAGGED AGAIN AND AGAIN RUSSIA CRIMEA
Once again, as so long in our chequered international ideological relations.
The United States chooses the wrong adversary, and selects the wrong kind of fight, leaving enormous other more compelling still half hidden adversities to continue to stew.
The United States chooses the wrong adversary, and selects the wrong kind of fight, leaving enormous other more compelling still half hidden adversities to continue to stew.
Friday, March 21, 2014
RE THE ENLIGHTENMENT REALLY ENDED AROUND 1800
Wikipedia has useful articles; see especially Counter-Enlightenment
FROM DK'S CURRENT POST
"....Politically, I would argue, the Anglo-American world began traveling down a certain very inspiring path in 1688 or so. Three hundred years is a very long time in the history of any civilization. We still have,. of course, our democratic freedoms and institutions but they are a shadow of what they once were. Our ability to act on behalf of the common good is much reduced. Here, surely, is a threat to our civilization at least as serious as global warming, but one that we are only beginning to understand."
Looking at Grant's books on Roman history, he makes clear that the ancient middle class in the Empire, in the ancient cities primarily, was eliminated, in fits and shocks, in the later empire.
This was accompanied by evasion of responsibility, and contribution as well to the costs of defense/offense, by the ruling class, which retired to what were in effect manors away from the cities, worked by slaves and an increasing number of serfs.
There really was always a tension, between cities and peripheral agricultural areas, but the agricultural element was central to the ancient economy.
Looking at Grant's books on Roman history, he makes clear that the ancient middle class in the Empire, in the ancient cities primarily, was eliminated, in fits and shocks, in the later empire.
This was accompanied by evasion of responsibility, and contribution as well to the costs of defense/offense, by the ruling class, which retired to what were in effect manors away from the cities, worked by slaves and an increasing number of serfs.
There really was always a tension, between cities and peripheral agricultural areas, but the agricultural element was central to the ancient economy.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
EG VENICE SELF DETERMINATION AND SO CALLED INTERNATIONAL LAW
See other posts re self determination, etc.
BBC today:
'Luca Zaia, governor of Veneto, the Venice region,
rejected suggestions that the Italian constitution would
prevent secession.
rejected suggestions that the Italian constitution would
prevent secession.
International law, he told Il Quotidiano, allowed "the
right to self-determination".'
I say it has been the coming home to roost of
Sovereignty at Bay, globally.
Liberal global internationalism has shown itself, writ
large, as global anarchy, because its institutions are the
enemy of the autonomous
nation state, not just of the imperial state, or of the
monarchies. It doesn't even like dictators, even when
they keep the sluices of the market open.
Terms search eg Lilienthal
right to self-determination".'
I say it has been the coming home to roost of
Sovereignty at Bay, globally.
Liberal global internationalism has shown itself, writ
large, as global anarchy, because its institutions are the
enemy of the autonomous
nation state, not just of the imperial state, or of the
monarchies. It doesn't even like dictators, even when
they keep the sluices of the market open.
Terms search eg Lilienthal
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