ZenPundit
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WARLORD
Kent's Imperative had a post up that would have been worthy of Coming Anarchy:
Enigmatic biographies of the damned
"....Via the Economist this week, we learn of the death of an adversary whose kind has nearly been forgotten. Khun Sa was a warlord who amassed a private army and smuggling operation which dominated Asian heroin trafficking from remotest Burma over the course of nearly two decades. In the end, despite indictment in US courts, the politics of a failed state permitted him to retire as an investor and business figure, and to die peacefully in his own bed.
The stories of men such as these however shaped more than a region. They are the defining features of the flow of events in a world of dark globalization. Yet these are not the biographies that are taught in international relations academia, nor even in their counterpart intelligence studies classrooms. The psychology of such men, and the personal and organizational decision-making processes of the non-state groups which amassed power to rival a princeling of Renaissance Europe, are equally as worthy of study both for historical reasons as well as for the lessons they teach about the nature of empowered individuals.
Prospective human factors and leadership analysts are not the only students which would benefit from a deeper pol/mil study of the dynamics of warlords and their followers in the Shan and Wa states. The structures which were left behind upon Khun Sa’s surrender were no doubt of enduring value to the ruling junta, and tracing the hostile connectivity provided to a dictatorial government by robust transnational organized crime is an excellent example of the kombinat model in a unique context outside of the classic Russian cases..."
Read the rest here.
There are no shortage of warlords for such a study. Among the living we have Walid Jumblatt, the crafty chief of the Druze during the 1980's civil war in Lebanon, the egomaniacal and democidal Charles Taylor of Liberia, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the Islamist mujahedin commander and a large assortment of Somali, Colombian, Indonesian and El Salvadoran militiamen and paramilitaries. The history of the twentieth century alone offers up such colorful characters as "The Dogmeat General", the ghoulishly brutal Ta Mok of the Khmer Rouge, "The Mad Baron" Ungern von Sternberg, Captain Hermann Ehrhardt and Pancho Villa among many others.
What would such a historical/cross-cultural/psychological "warlord study" reveal ? Primarily the type of man that the German journalist Konrad Heiden termed "armed bohemians". Men who are ill-suited to achieving success in an orderly society but are acutely sensitive to minute shifts that they can exploit during times of uncertainty, coupled with an amoral sociopathology to do so ruthlessly. Paranoid and vindictive, they also frequently possess a recklessness akin to bravery and a dramatic sentimentality that charms followers and naive observers alike. Some warlords can manifest a manic energy or regularly display great administrative talents while a minority are little better than half-mad gangsters getting by, for a time, on easy violence, low cunning and lady luck.
Every society, no matter how civilized or polite on the surface, harbors many such men within it. They are like ancient seeds waiting for the drought-breaking rains.
Kent's Imperative had a post up that would have been worthy of Coming Anarchy:
Enigmatic biographies of the damned
"....Via the Economist this week, we learn of the death of an adversary whose kind has nearly been forgotten. Khun Sa was a warlord who amassed a private army and smuggling operation which dominated Asian heroin trafficking from remotest Burma over the course of nearly two decades. In the end, despite indictment in US courts, the politics of a failed state permitted him to retire as an investor and business figure, and to die peacefully in his own bed.
The stories of men such as these however shaped more than a region. They are the defining features of the flow of events in a world of dark globalization. Yet these are not the biographies that are taught in international relations academia, nor even in their counterpart intelligence studies classrooms. The psychology of such men, and the personal and organizational decision-making processes of the non-state groups which amassed power to rival a princeling of Renaissance Europe, are equally as worthy of study both for historical reasons as well as for the lessons they teach about the nature of empowered individuals.
Prospective human factors and leadership analysts are not the only students which would benefit from a deeper pol/mil study of the dynamics of warlords and their followers in the Shan and Wa states. The structures which were left behind upon Khun Sa’s surrender were no doubt of enduring value to the ruling junta, and tracing the hostile connectivity provided to a dictatorial government by robust transnational organized crime is an excellent example of the kombinat model in a unique context outside of the classic Russian cases..."
Read the rest here.
There are no shortage of warlords for such a study. Among the living we have Walid Jumblatt, the crafty chief of the Druze during the 1980's civil war in Lebanon, the egomaniacal and democidal Charles Taylor of Liberia, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the Islamist mujahedin commander and a large assortment of Somali, Colombian, Indonesian and El Salvadoran militiamen and paramilitaries. The history of the twentieth century alone offers up such colorful characters as "The Dogmeat General", the ghoulishly brutal Ta Mok of the Khmer Rouge, "The Mad Baron" Ungern von Sternberg, Captain Hermann Ehrhardt and Pancho Villa among many others.
What would such a historical/cross-cultural/psychological "warlord study" reveal ? Primarily the type of man that the German journalist Konrad Heiden termed "armed bohemians". Men who are ill-suited to achieving success in an orderly society but are acutely sensitive to minute shifts that they can exploit during times of uncertainty, coupled with an amoral sociopathology to do so ruthlessly. Paranoid and vindictive, they also frequently possess a recklessness akin to bravery and a dramatic sentimentality that charms followers and naive observers alike. Some warlords can manifest a manic energy or regularly display great administrative talents while a minority are little better than half-mad gangsters getting by, for a time, on easy violence, low cunning and lady luck.
Every society, no matter how civilized or polite on the surface, harbors many such men within it. They are like ancient seeds waiting for the drought-breaking rains.
Labels: 4GW, history, kent's imperative, psychology, war, warriors
¶ 7:55 PM 8 comments
Monday, November 05, 2007
INSTANT HISTORY
Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border's with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.
Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the "Must read" pile ? I'm currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.
Picked up both of these on a lark on Saturday, as I cruised through Border's with The Son of Zenpundit, who was getting some independent reader level books about Spider-Man fighting -well- some villain or other. The usual suspects.
Any thoughts from readers as to how high these tomes merit being placed on the "Must read" pile ? I'm currently innundated with things to read, so prioritizing is a must.
Labels: book, bush, COIN, foreign policy, history, insurgency, iraq, islamic world, islamist, mideast, war
¶ 7:35 PM 2 comments
Friday, October 26, 2007
DECLINE OF A NETWORK
La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia of Big Al Capone and Lucky Luciano is on the skids these days.:
"The mob's frailties were evident in recent months in Chicago, where three senior-citizen mobsters were locked up for murders committed a generation ago; in Florida, where a 97-year-old Mafioso with a rap sheet dating to the days of Lucky Luciano was imprisoned for racketeering; and in New York, where 80-something boss Matty "The Horse" Ianniello pleaded to charges linked to the garbage industry and union corruption.
Things are so bad that mob scion John A. "Junior" Gotti chose to quit the mob while serving five years in prison rather than return to his spot atop the Gambino family.
At the mob's peak in the late 1950s, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland Supreme Court. Corporate change came in a spray of gunfire. This was the mob of "The Godfather" celebrated in pop culture.
Today, Mafia families in former strongholds like Cleveland, Los Angeles and Tampa are gone. La Cosa Nostra — our thing, as its initiates called the mob — is in serious decline everywhere but New York City. And even there, things aren't so great: Two of New York's five crime families are run in absentia by bosses behind bars.
....The oath of omerta — silence — has become a joke. Ditto for the old world "Family" values — honor, loyalty, integrity — that served as cornerstones for an organization brought to America by Italian immigrants during the era of Prohibition.
"It's been several generations since they left Sicily," says Dave Shafer, head of the FBI organized crime division in New York. "It's all about money."
At the peak of the mafia's power, the 1950's, it had only 5000 "made" members but it was deeply entrenched in a powerful national labor movement, was entwined in a numerous big city Democratic machines ( notably Chicago's notorious old 1st Ward, where Sam "Momo" Giancana's minions hustled out the ghost vote for JFK) and enjoyed the tolerance of the immensely powerful FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover, who had a taste for the track and shady associates in his off-hours. The mafia not only had mystique and physical force at their disposal, they had the political juice, having in classic Boydian fashion, strategically connected themselves to as many other centers of power as possible.
What happened to the Mob sbsequently is a lesson for all those who study the potential of networks vis-a-vis states. Despite their fluidity and adaptivity, networks are not ten feet tall. They can be disconnected and isolated. Their internal cohesion can be disrupted. Their OODA loops can be disoriented and only in the rarest of circumstances can networks stand toe-to-toe in the open with the massive power of state hierarchies. They are beatable with patience, strategic thinking, consistency and time.
La Cosa Nostra, the Italian mafia of Big Al Capone and Lucky Luciano is on the skids these days.:
"The mob's frailties were evident in recent months in Chicago, where three senior-citizen mobsters were locked up for murders committed a generation ago; in Florida, where a 97-year-old Mafioso with a rap sheet dating to the days of Lucky Luciano was imprisoned for racketeering; and in New York, where 80-something boss Matty "The Horse" Ianniello pleaded to charges linked to the garbage industry and union corruption.
Things are so bad that mob scion John A. "Junior" Gotti chose to quit the mob while serving five years in prison rather than return to his spot atop the Gambino family.
At the mob's peak in the late 1950s, more than two dozen families operated nationwide. Disputes were settled by the Commission, a sort of gangland Supreme Court. Corporate change came in a spray of gunfire. This was the mob of "The Godfather" celebrated in pop culture.
Today, Mafia families in former strongholds like Cleveland, Los Angeles and Tampa are gone. La Cosa Nostra — our thing, as its initiates called the mob — is in serious decline everywhere but New York City. And even there, things aren't so great: Two of New York's five crime families are run in absentia by bosses behind bars.
....The oath of omerta — silence — has become a joke. Ditto for the old world "Family" values — honor, loyalty, integrity — that served as cornerstones for an organization brought to America by Italian immigrants during the era of Prohibition.
"It's been several generations since they left Sicily," says Dave Shafer, head of the FBI organized crime division in New York. "It's all about money."
At the peak of the mafia's power, the 1950's, it had only 5000 "made" members but it was deeply entrenched in a powerful national labor movement, was entwined in a numerous big city Democratic machines ( notably Chicago's notorious old 1st Ward, where Sam "Momo" Giancana's minions hustled out the ghost vote for JFK) and enjoyed the tolerance of the immensely powerful FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover, who had a taste for the track and shady associates in his off-hours. The mafia not only had mystique and physical force at their disposal, they had the political juice, having in classic Boydian fashion, strategically connected themselves to as many other centers of power as possible.
What happened to the Mob sbsequently is a lesson for all those who study the potential of networks vis-a-vis states. Despite their fluidity and adaptivity, networks are not ten feet tall. They can be disconnected and isolated. Their internal cohesion can be disrupted. Their OODA loops can be disoriented and only in the rarest of circumstances can networks stand toe-to-toe in the open with the massive power of state hierarchies. They are beatable with patience, strategic thinking, consistency and time.
Labels: 4GW, history, john boyd, network theory, networks, transnational criminal organization
¶ 6:48 PM 2 comments
Monday, October 22, 2007
CHILDREN OF LIGHT, CHILDREN OF DARKNESS
Reinhold Niebuhr
The Atlantic Monthly has a sometimes thoughtful, at times irritating, article by Paul Elie on the late theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the political struggle being waged by the Left, Middle and Right over his intellectual legacy. An excerpt:
"The biblical sense of history can make Niebuhr seem like something other than a liberal. In the '60's, his religiosity made him suspect on the New Left, and in the years after his death, his work resonated with the thinkers who were turning against that era's liberal reforms"
It wasn't Niebuhr's religiosity that made him suspect with the New Left but his anti-totalitarianism, something that a movement deeply afflicted with an authoritarian certitude and spasmodic nihilism could ill abide; indeed, they still seem to despise Niebuhr for his unwillingness to equivocate about Leftist tyranny. Elie is correct though, that the original Neoconservatives (the ones who actually made an intellectual journey from Left to Right) such as Norman Podhoretz had high regard for Niebuhr's writings. I myself first heard of Niebuhr from reading David Stockman's bitter memoir The Triumph of Politics. Stockman may have repudiated Ronald Reagan but he remained true, almost adulatory, to Niebuhr:
"The scales fell from my eyes as I turned those pages [ of Children of Light, Children of Darkness - ZP] Niebuhr was a withering critic of utopianism in every form. Man is incapable of perfection, he argued, because his estate as a free agent permits-indeed ensures -both good and evil...Through Niebuhr I dimly glimpsed the ultimate triumph of politics" ( Stockman,24).
I do not profess to be an expert on Reinhold Niebuhr or his philosophy, having read only one of his books, but the polemical war over Niebuhr that Elie critiques has, in my view, an air of ahistoricality to it. Perhaps with not the completely unhinged lunacy of the similar debate over Leo Strauss, but like Strauss, Niebuhr has been lifted by both sides out of the mid-20th century intellectual context that illuminated his ideas, in order to serve as a barricade for the political battle over Iraq and the Bush administration.
My gut reaction is that Niebuhr, were he alive today, would be writing things that would not sit well with some of his would-be reinterpreters and with more nuance and wisdom than for which his contemporary critics give him credit.
ADDENDUM:
Peter Beinart, who comes in for much criticism from Elie for the following link, on Reinhold Niebuhr.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The Atlantic Monthly has a sometimes thoughtful, at times irritating, article by Paul Elie on the late theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the political struggle being waged by the Left, Middle and Right over his intellectual legacy. An excerpt:
"The biblical sense of history can make Niebuhr seem like something other than a liberal. In the '60's, his religiosity made him suspect on the New Left, and in the years after his death, his work resonated with the thinkers who were turning against that era's liberal reforms"
It wasn't Niebuhr's religiosity that made him suspect with the New Left but his anti-totalitarianism, something that a movement deeply afflicted with an authoritarian certitude and spasmodic nihilism could ill abide; indeed, they still seem to despise Niebuhr for his unwillingness to equivocate about Leftist tyranny. Elie is correct though, that the original Neoconservatives (the ones who actually made an intellectual journey from Left to Right) such as Norman Podhoretz had high regard for Niebuhr's writings. I myself first heard of Niebuhr from reading David Stockman's bitter memoir The Triumph of Politics. Stockman may have repudiated Ronald Reagan but he remained true, almost adulatory, to Niebuhr:
"The scales fell from my eyes as I turned those pages [ of Children of Light, Children of Darkness - ZP] Niebuhr was a withering critic of utopianism in every form. Man is incapable of perfection, he argued, because his estate as a free agent permits-indeed ensures -both good and evil...Through Niebuhr I dimly glimpsed the ultimate triumph of politics" ( Stockman,24).
I do not profess to be an expert on Reinhold Niebuhr or his philosophy, having read only one of his books, but the polemical war over Niebuhr that Elie critiques has, in my view, an air of ahistoricality to it. Perhaps with not the completely unhinged lunacy of the similar debate over Leo Strauss, but like Strauss, Niebuhr has been lifted by both sides out of the mid-20th century intellectual context that illuminated his ideas, in order to serve as a barricade for the political battle over Iraq and the Bush administration.
My gut reaction is that Niebuhr, were he alive today, would be writing things that would not sit well with some of his would-be reinterpreters and with more nuance and wisdom than for which his contemporary critics give him credit.
ADDENDUM:
Peter Beinart, who comes in for much criticism from Elie for the following link, on Reinhold Niebuhr.
Labels: christianity, history, intellectuals, neoconservatism, philosophy, politics, reinhold niebhur, the atlantic, totalitarianism, war
¶ 6:21 PM 0 comments
CONFERENCE
Away today at a history conference - " 21st Century Freedom" - a refreshing combination of GWOT from a historian's perspective combined with Web 2.0 changing society and the discipline of teaching history. Back later tonight.
Away today at a history conference - " 21st Century Freedom" - a refreshing combination of GWOT from a historian's perspective combined with Web 2.0 changing society and the discipline of teaching history. Back later tonight.
Labels: academia, history, personal, tech
¶ 5:21 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
BOOK
A CFR interview with Walter Russell Mead about God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World . ( Hat tip to Lexington Green)
A CFR interview with Walter Russell Mead about God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World . ( Hat tip to Lexington Green)
Labels: book, history, intellectuals
¶ 8:52 PM 0 comments
Monday, September 24, 2007
THE NIXON ROUNDTABLE
H-Diplo released a roundtable discussion (PDF) on the recent books about Richard Nixon by the following scholars:
Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
Margaret MacMillan - Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World
H-Diplo released a roundtable discussion (PDF) on the recent books about Richard Nixon by the following scholars:
Robert Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
Margaret MacMillan - Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World
Labels: America, biography, diplomatic history, foreign policy, h-diplo, historians, historiography, history, nixon, politics
¶ 9:37 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
THE STRATEGIC THOUGHT DEFICIT
Dr. Barnett, opining yesterday on the recent NYT op-ed on Kennan:
"The dearth of strategic thinking reaches a new low, or maybe this is just a Kennan scholar pre-hawking his new book.
Now we get the out-of-time argument that containment is the answer on radical Islam.
It's not much of an argument, but rather a decent rehashing of Kennan's thinking on the Sovs. The problem here, of course, is that al-Qaida doesn't translate well to an authoritarian empire already in existence.
Another problem, which I flayed at length in PNM, is that global historical forces are moving in a direction very different from that of the late 1940s and early 1950s. We're not in some bilat standoff of camps with little dynamic interchange between them. We're watching a consolidation period unfold following a massive expansion of globalization, one that's simultaneously accompanied by its further expansion thanks to the huge resource draw from rising Asia. "
We have a severe shortage of Kennans these days. While of course, there was only one Kennan writing the Long Telegram there were also the Stimsons, Marshalls, Achesons, Nitzes, Forrestals, Vandenbergs, Lovetts, Dulles', McCloys, Wohlstetters, Kahns and many others who came before and after Kennan who made their own contributions to the development of the Containment strategy. Our diplomatic and national security bench was deep in those days and often, these statesmen brought real experience in international finance, logistics and linguistics to the table ( Wohlstetter and Kahn were the cutting edge of the academic -strategist wave that replaced the Wall Street and Railroad company lawyer generation).
Today, we see most of our big picture and thinkers outside of government and often academia as well, writing books, giving speeches or building private sector companies. Tellingly, the most innovative policy of Bush's second term was developed not by a White House aide or a Cabinet secretary but by General David Petraeus - and his counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq was only accepted by the powers that be out of political and military desperation. The Democrats are no better, having had essentially no new policy ideas in almost two generations and a deep desire to ignore the existence of foreign policy altogether.
In part, this is a generational problem. Not only are the Boomers an amazingly self-centered lot, endlessly obsessing on ( and trying to re-live) the political traumas of their now distant youth, but the statesmen among them cut their teeth on the Cold War, bipolar, pre-Globalization, rigidly hierarchical world and are, for the most part, unwilling to revisit their anachronistic assumptions. There are exceptions but these people are usually outliers in some way, personally or professionally.
We may need to construct our defenses for the 21st century by retooling civil society to become more resilient, adaptive and dynamic - for the short term, our governing class may be a lost cause.
Dr. Barnett, opining yesterday on the recent NYT op-ed on Kennan:
"The dearth of strategic thinking reaches a new low, or maybe this is just a Kennan scholar pre-hawking his new book.
Now we get the out-of-time argument that containment is the answer on radical Islam.
It's not much of an argument, but rather a decent rehashing of Kennan's thinking on the Sovs. The problem here, of course, is that al-Qaida doesn't translate well to an authoritarian empire already in existence.
Another problem, which I flayed at length in PNM, is that global historical forces are moving in a direction very different from that of the late 1940s and early 1950s. We're not in some bilat standoff of camps with little dynamic interchange between them. We're watching a consolidation period unfold following a massive expansion of globalization, one that's simultaneously accompanied by its further expansion thanks to the huge resource draw from rising Asia. "
We have a severe shortage of Kennans these days. While of course, there was only one Kennan writing the Long Telegram there were also the Stimsons, Marshalls, Achesons, Nitzes, Forrestals, Vandenbergs, Lovetts, Dulles', McCloys, Wohlstetters, Kahns and many others who came before and after Kennan who made their own contributions to the development of the Containment strategy. Our diplomatic and national security bench was deep in those days and often, these statesmen brought real experience in international finance, logistics and linguistics to the table ( Wohlstetter and Kahn were the cutting edge of the academic -strategist wave that replaced the Wall Street and Railroad company lawyer generation).
Today, we see most of our big picture and thinkers outside of government and often academia as well, writing books, giving speeches or building private sector companies. Tellingly, the most innovative policy of Bush's second term was developed not by a White House aide or a Cabinet secretary but by General David Petraeus - and his counterinsurgency strategy for Iraq was only accepted by the powers that be out of political and military desperation. The Democrats are no better, having had essentially no new policy ideas in almost two generations and a deep desire to ignore the existence of foreign policy altogether.
In part, this is a generational problem. Not only are the Boomers an amazingly self-centered lot, endlessly obsessing on ( and trying to re-live) the political traumas of their now distant youth, but the statesmen among them cut their teeth on the Cold War, bipolar, pre-Globalization, rigidly hierarchical world and are, for the most part, unwilling to revisit their anachronistic assumptions. There are exceptions but these people are usually outliers in some way, personally or professionally.
We may need to construct our defenses for the 21st century by retooling civil society to become more resilient, adaptive and dynamic - for the short term, our governing class may be a lost cause.
Labels: 20th century, 21st century, barnett, diplomacy, foreign policy, george kennan, history, national security, society, strategy
¶ 7:18 PM 11 comments
Monday, August 06, 2007
AUGUST 6, 1945
"It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth"
"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles
Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans
The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project, and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here
We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history--and won
But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brainchild of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam.* Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.
The secretary of war, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details
His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive force in history, they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety
The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research
It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public
But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.
I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace."
Harry S. Truman
President of the United States
Hiroshima Anniversary Links:
The Glittering Eye
Kiko's House
Wizards of Oz
"It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth"
"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.
It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles
Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans
The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project, and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here
We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history--and won
But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brainchild of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure
We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam.* Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.
The secretary of war, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details
His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive force in history, they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety
The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research
It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public
But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.
I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace."
Harry S. Truman
President of the United States
Hiroshima Anniversary Links:
The Glittering Eye
Kiko's House
Wizards of Oz
Labels: diplomatic history, history, military history, nuclear, truman, wwii
¶ 8:57 AM 2 comments
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
HAIL CAESAR
I just finished Caesar: Life of A Colossus by the military historian Adrian Goldsworthy and found it to be a remarkably worthwhile read from which I learned much about Julius Caesar the commander, yet the flanking movements by Gaulish cavalry and Triplex Acies of the Legions do not overwhelm Goldsworthy's portrait of Caesar the man and populares politician.
Goldsworthy succeeds in breathing life into a figure about whom so much cultural and historical commentary has been encrusted, often to the point of distortion. Caesar is a dynamic and charismatic figure in this biography but also a calculating and, at times, overconfident and reckless one. Goldsworthy is sympathetic to his subject but remains critical of Caesar's errors and propaganda while trying to keep all events in their proper 1st century BC context.
The biography does not have quite the same social and cultural richness of the late Roman Republic to be found in Tom Holland's Rubicon ( which was a work of history) but there are gems of information for the reader, nonetheless . Other useful companions to Goldswothy's effort would be Anthony Everett's biographies Cicero and Augustus, especially the former book given the importance of the brilliant but unsteady Marcus Tullius Cicero as Caesar's sometime rival, ally, critic, adviser, enemy and companion.
An excellent read.
ADDENDUM:
"Heather — The Fall of the Roman Empire", "Ward-Perkins — The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization" by James McCormick at Chicago Boyz
I just finished Caesar: Life of A Colossus by the military historian Adrian Goldsworthy and found it to be a remarkably worthwhile read from which I learned much about Julius Caesar the commander, yet the flanking movements by Gaulish cavalry and Triplex Acies of the Legions do not overwhelm Goldsworthy's portrait of Caesar the man and populares politician.
Goldsworthy succeeds in breathing life into a figure about whom so much cultural and historical commentary has been encrusted, often to the point of distortion. Caesar is a dynamic and charismatic figure in this biography but also a calculating and, at times, overconfident and reckless one. Goldsworthy is sympathetic to his subject but remains critical of Caesar's errors and propaganda while trying to keep all events in their proper 1st century BC context.
The biography does not have quite the same social and cultural richness of the late Roman Republic to be found in Tom Holland's Rubicon ( which was a work of history) but there are gems of information for the reader, nonetheless . Other useful companions to Goldswothy's effort would be Anthony Everett's biographies Cicero and Augustus, especially the former book given the importance of the brilliant but unsteady Marcus Tullius Cicero as Caesar's sometime rival, ally, critic, adviser, enemy and companion.
An excellent read.
ADDENDUM:
"Heather — The Fall of the Roman Empire", "Ward-Perkins — The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization" by James McCormick at Chicago Boyz
Labels: adrian goldsworthy, ancient history, biography, book, historians, historiography, history, julius caesar, military history, roman empire, war, warriors
¶ 1:03 PM 2 comments
Saturday, July 21, 2007
DID NIXON INTEND TO WIN THE VIETNAM WAR?
I was perusing historian David Kaiser's blog History Unfolding, when I came across a remarkable claim regarding Richard Nixon, based in part on Robert Dallek's new book, Nixon and Kissinger:Partners in Power:
"Nixon and Kissinger, to begin with, came into office determined to win the Vietnam War. In an odd parallel to the current Administration—which decided that 9/11 totally discredited the Middle East policies of the last forty years—they evidently believed that the whole experience of the Johnson Administration had nothing whatever to teach them. Nixon, who saw himself far superior both to his two immediate predecessors and to any successor on the horizon, was convinced that Johnson had failed to win the war only because of a lack of will, the quality on which he prided himself the most. One omission from Nixon and Kissinger (which is more of a biographical study than a policy history) is any discussion of NSSM-1, a massive study of Vietnam which Kissinger commissioned upon taking office. It concluded that nothing the US had done had significantly weakened the enemy’s ability to fight, and that no agency of the US government could foresee the day when the South Vietnamese alone could deal with the enemy. A bold and rational leader must have concluded that the United States had to scale down its objectives to end the war, but Nixon did not. He and Kissinger spent about a year vainly trying to get the Soviet Union to end the war by pressuring the North Vietnamese, and then (as Nixon publicly admitted) tried to gain an advantage with the kind of “decisive” action which, Nixon thought, Johnson had avoided—the invasion of Cambodia. Meanwhile, political and military considerations (the latter involving the state of the armed forces) impelled Nixon to withdraw troops, but he continued to believe that he could make the North give in to our terms—an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam—by unleashing an all-out bombing attack whenever he chose. And historian Jeffrey Kimball was right: Nixon was determined not to make peace without giving such a campaign a chance, as eventually, in December 1972, he did—at the cost of 15 American B-52s, and without in the least improving the terms that Kissinger had already negotiated."
For readers who are unfamiliar, Dr. Kaiser is a historian of the Vietnam War era, with special expertise in the Kennedy administration. I have not read the Dallek book yet, though I certainly intend to now ( I did anyway but David's post has advanced it well up my reading list) as the assertion conflicts sharply with what has previously been known about Nixon's strategic thinking at the time.
Nixon was one of the first major political figures to (gingerly to be sure) try to put South Vietnam into the context of it's actual geopolitical value to the United States, which was small, in a major speech at Bohemian Grove and then in a Foreign Affairs article " Asia after Vietnam". Much of the discourse Nixon used about the war among his intimates involved his administration's ( or America's) "credibility" or "toughness" in the eyes of Communist adversaries in Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow. Having read innumerable documents and memoirs I'm hard-pressed to believe that Nixon ever thought the Vietnam War was " winnable" and not an albatross that was hindering him from accomplishing his larger strategic goals, especially the China opening. Nixon desperately wanted to avoid outright defeat in Vietnam, certainly, and to use his handling of the war to send signals elsewhere but throwing his administration, heart and soul into winning the war was never on the table.
Nevertheless, Dallek has new material, according to Kaiser, for a new argument. It needs to be scrutinized objectively to see how or if Dallek broadens our understanding of the war and of Richard Nixon's administration. This is how historical truth advances, one document, one argument, one book at a time.
I look forward to reading it.
I was perusing historian David Kaiser's blog History Unfolding, when I came across a remarkable claim regarding Richard Nixon, based in part on Robert Dallek's new book, Nixon and Kissinger:Partners in Power:
"Nixon and Kissinger, to begin with, came into office determined to win the Vietnam War. In an odd parallel to the current Administration—which decided that 9/11 totally discredited the Middle East policies of the last forty years—they evidently believed that the whole experience of the Johnson Administration had nothing whatever to teach them. Nixon, who saw himself far superior both to his two immediate predecessors and to any successor on the horizon, was convinced that Johnson had failed to win the war only because of a lack of will, the quality on which he prided himself the most. One omission from Nixon and Kissinger (which is more of a biographical study than a policy history) is any discussion of NSSM-1, a massive study of Vietnam which Kissinger commissioned upon taking office. It concluded that nothing the US had done had significantly weakened the enemy’s ability to fight, and that no agency of the US government could foresee the day when the South Vietnamese alone could deal with the enemy. A bold and rational leader must have concluded that the United States had to scale down its objectives to end the war, but Nixon did not. He and Kissinger spent about a year vainly trying to get the Soviet Union to end the war by pressuring the North Vietnamese, and then (as Nixon publicly admitted) tried to gain an advantage with the kind of “decisive” action which, Nixon thought, Johnson had avoided—the invasion of Cambodia. Meanwhile, political and military considerations (the latter involving the state of the armed forces) impelled Nixon to withdraw troops, but he continued to believe that he could make the North give in to our terms—an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam—by unleashing an all-out bombing attack whenever he chose. And historian Jeffrey Kimball was right: Nixon was determined not to make peace without giving such a campaign a chance, as eventually, in December 1972, he did—at the cost of 15 American B-52s, and without in the least improving the terms that Kissinger had already negotiated."
For readers who are unfamiliar, Dr. Kaiser is a historian of the Vietnam War era, with special expertise in the Kennedy administration. I have not read the Dallek book yet, though I certainly intend to now ( I did anyway but David's post has advanced it well up my reading list) as the assertion conflicts sharply with what has previously been known about Nixon's strategic thinking at the time.
Nixon was one of the first major political figures to (gingerly to be sure) try to put South Vietnam into the context of it's actual geopolitical value to the United States, which was small, in a major speech at Bohemian Grove and then in a Foreign Affairs article " Asia after Vietnam". Much of the discourse Nixon used about the war among his intimates involved his administration's ( or America's) "credibility" or "toughness" in the eyes of Communist adversaries in Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow. Having read innumerable documents and memoirs I'm hard-pressed to believe that Nixon ever thought the Vietnam War was " winnable" and not an albatross that was hindering him from accomplishing his larger strategic goals, especially the China opening. Nixon desperately wanted to avoid outright defeat in Vietnam, certainly, and to use his handling of the war to send signals elsewhere but throwing his administration, heart and soul into winning the war was never on the table.
Nevertheless, Dallek has new material, according to Kaiser, for a new argument. It needs to be scrutinized objectively to see how or if Dallek broadens our understanding of the war and of Richard Nixon's administration. This is how historical truth advances, one document, one argument, one book at a time.
I look forward to reading it.
Labels: book, cold war, david kaiser, historians, historiography, history, nixon, robert dallek, Vietnam War
¶ 10:34 PM 2 comments
Sunday, July 15, 2007
TRY YOUR HAND AT BEING NIXON'S ARCHIVIST
Dr. Maarja Krusten, the fomer archivist for the Nixon tapes collection at The National Archives and Federal historian, has an excellent article up at HNN, "How Hard Is the Job of Nixon Archivists? You Decide.". Her article is worth reading for two reasons:
First, Krusten explains the dilemna faced by archivists trying to do their job when faced with political pressure from influential public figures:
"Former U.S. Archivist Robert Warner once told me that "The Archives faces enormous political pressure but never admits that it does." Whether they deal with stand-up guys or bullies, archivists face them alone.
To the reported dismay of NARA’s Inspector General (IG), Archives officials did not turn to him or call the FBI after an apparent theft in 2003. Instead, they tried themselves to retrieve records removed by Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger.
It was not the only recent loss of a file. As the Senate prepared to hold hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice, White House lawyers in 2005 screened files at NARA’s Reagan Presidential Library. They were left alone with documents at the Library because, as Berger also had said, they needed privacy while making phone calls. Soon, thereafter, archivists discovered that a Roberts file about affirmative action was missing. The IG was unable to establish whether the affirmative action file had been removed from the Library or merely misfiled by NARA staff."
Secondly, she offers a test to readers to try to correctly classify a memo that is, I can attest, vintage Richard Nixon:
"How would you classify the December 4, 1970 memo? (If you wish, you first may look at a couple of paragraphs about NARA’s statutes and regulations in a brief description here.)
Here are your voting options.
1) document is purely personal or solely political and has no connection to a President's constitutional or statutory duties. It should be returned to him or his family. It then legally may be destroyed by them, filed away or deeded back to NARA, as personal property.
(2) document offers some personal observations and mentions politics and voters but relates to Presidential duties and is inherently governmental. It should be retained in NARA custody. You may consider restricting all or some portions for privacy, either the President’s or that of third parties, while the people still are alive;
(3) document is governmental, relates to Presidential duties, and should be released during the President's lifetime."
Read the whole article here.
Dr. Maarja Krusten, the fomer archivist for the Nixon tapes collection at The National Archives and Federal historian, has an excellent article up at HNN, "How Hard Is the Job of Nixon Archivists? You Decide.". Her article is worth reading for two reasons:
First, Krusten explains the dilemna faced by archivists trying to do their job when faced with political pressure from influential public figures:
"Former U.S. Archivist Robert Warner once told me that "The Archives faces enormous political pressure but never admits that it does." Whether they deal with stand-up guys or bullies, archivists face them alone.
To the reported dismay of NARA’s Inspector General (IG), Archives officials did not turn to him or call the FBI after an apparent theft in 2003. Instead, they tried themselves to retrieve records removed by Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger.
It was not the only recent loss of a file. As the Senate prepared to hold hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice, White House lawyers in 2005 screened files at NARA’s Reagan Presidential Library. They were left alone with documents at the Library because, as Berger also had said, they needed privacy while making phone calls. Soon, thereafter, archivists discovered that a Roberts file about affirmative action was missing. The IG was unable to establish whether the affirmative action file had been removed from the Library or merely misfiled by NARA staff."
Secondly, she offers a test to readers to try to correctly classify a memo that is, I can attest, vintage Richard Nixon:
"How would you classify the December 4, 1970 memo? (If you wish, you first may look at a couple of paragraphs about NARA’s statutes and regulations in a brief description here.)
Here are your voting options.
1) document is purely personal or solely political and has no connection to a President's constitutional or statutory duties. It should be returned to him or his family. It then legally may be destroyed by them, filed away or deeded back to NARA, as personal property.
(2) document offers some personal observations and mentions politics and voters but relates to Presidential duties and is inherently governmental. It should be retained in NARA custody. You may consider restricting all or some portions for privacy, either the President’s or that of third parties, while the people still are alive;
(3) document is governmental, relates to Presidential duties, and should be released during the President's lifetime."
Read the whole article here.
Labels: historians, history, HNN, krusten, nixon
¶ 7:15 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
HISTORICAL PALEOCON-PESSIMISM
Colonel W. Patrick Lang, a former analyst on the Mideast and now a sharp character on the internet, recently put forward an excellent example of a genre of thinking I like to call the " empire argument". It is a school of thought, a critical one, that prevails on the paleoconservative Right and the anti-war Left, the the two variants use some markedly different assumptions in framing their argument but arrive at a similar conclusion.
Like the historian, Paul Schroeder, Lang eschews much of the hysterical, romanticized, rhetoric that typify the "American empire" writers and sticks to a much more thoughtful, realpolitik interpretation.
"Jefferson might not agree.." Peter Principle"
"I'm afraid I have to side with Britannicus (and Livia, the murderous old hag) on this one. It is in the nature of things for republics, if successful enough, to evolve into empires. It is certainly unrealistic to expect a global superpower like the United States, with worldwide political and economic interests requiring the worldwide projection of military power, to remain one indefinitely. The framers, with their horror of standing armies and European militarism, would probably be surprised to learn it has lasted as long as it has, despite more than 60 years of permanent wartime moblization.
There was a time (like the 1950s) when those who thought about such things could hope that the enormous powers of modern bureaucratic institutions -- corporations, unions, the Pentagon, big media, the organs of state security -- could and would be counterveiling, allowing a system designed for the less gargantuan 18th century to survive into the 21st. But instead those institutions are either in terminal decline (the unions) or are integrating and evolving into a more perfected form of imperial control and self-control. Meanwhile, dissent and opposition (terms that already sound almost archaic) are increasingly channeled to the essentially neutered arena of the fringe parties and the Internet.
I'm not sure how much mourning is called for here. Two hundred and thirty some years is a pretty good run, as constitutions go. The framers built well, but no structure lasts forever. We can pine for a lost republic (which, like it's Roman predecessor, was never as golden as it appeared in hindsight) or we can accept reality and see what can be done to make our new empire more humane and rational than it is at the moment."
I disagree, first of all that America has moved into an " empire" state, though I would agree that aspects of our political system are working poorly and that our bipartisan elite are more timorous, self-centered and corrupt than we have seen in some time. That may be, in part, a generational effect of the current Boomer domination of government and the media and could pass as they move off center stage ( unwillingly, kicking and screaming, no doubt). We will have to wait and see if the Boomer legacy is an institutionalization of their cultural narcicism or a reaction against it.
I also do not believe that "imperial control" is the objective of the cultural shift away from hierarchies toward networked structures, as Lang alludes, so much as that globalization and information technology have made hierarchical modes of organization less efficient than in any time since the rise of the state and the industrial revolution. These are fundamental, global, structural and economic shifts that are going to occurr with or without regard to U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Lang however, still posits an interesting argument regarding the health of the republic. Is it remaining in form, while slowly ebbing in spirit like Rome did in the first century B.C. which was increasingly dominated by strong men, polarized politics and civil war ? I think Colonel Lang's view is overly pessimistic and that the Roman analogy has to be taken in context with the very significant differences between the mindsets and culture of ancient Romans and modern Americans. We aren't them. George W. Bush is no Caesar or Sulla much as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not Cicero or Cato. Our times, Iraq included, are not nearly as bad as the troubles that ripped Roman society apart.
Colonel W. Patrick Lang, a former analyst on the Mideast and now a sharp character on the internet, recently put forward an excellent example of a genre of thinking I like to call the " empire argument". It is a school of thought, a critical one, that prevails on the paleoconservative Right and the anti-war Left, the the two variants use some markedly different assumptions in framing their argument but arrive at a similar conclusion.
Like the historian, Paul Schroeder, Lang eschews much of the hysterical, romanticized, rhetoric that typify the "American empire" writers and sticks to a much more thoughtful, realpolitik interpretation.
"Jefferson might not agree.." Peter Principle"
"I'm afraid I have to side with Britannicus (and Livia, the murderous old hag) on this one. It is in the nature of things for republics, if successful enough, to evolve into empires. It is certainly unrealistic to expect a global superpower like the United States, with worldwide political and economic interests requiring the worldwide projection of military power, to remain one indefinitely. The framers, with their horror of standing armies and European militarism, would probably be surprised to learn it has lasted as long as it has, despite more than 60 years of permanent wartime moblization.
There was a time (like the 1950s) when those who thought about such things could hope that the enormous powers of modern bureaucratic institutions -- corporations, unions, the Pentagon, big media, the organs of state security -- could and would be counterveiling, allowing a system designed for the less gargantuan 18th century to survive into the 21st. But instead those institutions are either in terminal decline (the unions) or are integrating and evolving into a more perfected form of imperial control and self-control. Meanwhile, dissent and opposition (terms that already sound almost archaic) are increasingly channeled to the essentially neutered arena of the fringe parties and the Internet.
I'm not sure how much mourning is called for here. Two hundred and thirty some years is a pretty good run, as constitutions go. The framers built well, but no structure lasts forever. We can pine for a lost republic (which, like it's Roman predecessor, was never as golden as it appeared in hindsight) or we can accept reality and see what can be done to make our new empire more humane and rational than it is at the moment."
I disagree, first of all that America has moved into an " empire" state, though I would agree that aspects of our political system are working poorly and that our bipartisan elite are more timorous, self-centered and corrupt than we have seen in some time. That may be, in part, a generational effect of the current Boomer domination of government and the media and could pass as they move off center stage ( unwillingly, kicking and screaming, no doubt). We will have to wait and see if the Boomer legacy is an institutionalization of their cultural narcicism or a reaction against it.
I also do not believe that "imperial control" is the objective of the cultural shift away from hierarchies toward networked structures, as Lang alludes, so much as that globalization and information technology have made hierarchical modes of organization less efficient than in any time since the rise of the state and the industrial revolution. These are fundamental, global, structural and economic shifts that are going to occurr with or without regard to U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Lang however, still posits an interesting argument regarding the health of the republic. Is it remaining in form, while slowly ebbing in spirit like Rome did in the first century B.C. which was increasingly dominated by strong men, polarized politics and civil war ? I think Colonel Lang's view is overly pessimistic and that the Roman analogy has to be taken in context with the very significant differences between the mindsets and culture of ancient Romans and modern Americans. We aren't them. George W. Bush is no Caesar or Sulla much as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not Cicero or Cato. Our times, Iraq included, are not nearly as bad as the troubles that ripped Roman society apart.
Labels: America, empire, foreign policy, history, roman empire, sic semper tyrannis
¶ 7:53 AM 2 comments
Sunday, June 24, 2007
REVIEWING VAN CREVELD
I have a review of The Changing Face of War posted at Chicago Boyz.
I have a review of The Changing Face of War posted at Chicago Boyz.
Labels: 4GW, book, chicago boyz, historians, history, military history, van creveld
¶ 9:14 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 04, 2007
THE STRATEGIKON
An interesting paper about an obscure military classic of the Byzantine Empire (hat tip to TROUFION )
An interesting paper about an obscure military classic of the Byzantine Empire (hat tip to TROUFION )
Labels: byzantium, classics, history, military, military history, small wars council, theory, war
¶ 10:03 AM 0 comments
Saturday, June 02, 2007
BARNETT ON EURO-AMERICAN -SINO COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Dr. Barnett had a post that used an WSJ op-ed as a launching pad for some big picture historical analysis:
"Message in a bottle"
In turn, I want to use Tom's post in much the same manner. Here are a couple of quotes and my kibbutzing:
"But first the Euros need to catch up with history: they are not the first multinational state or economic union. They did not invent the first unified currency. They were not the first continent to experience insane civil war and thereupon reason their way to a Kantian peace of transparency, free markets, free trade and collective security. "
Very true. Tom is pointing to America here but Europe itself experienced much the same process during the late Roman Republic. Roman citizenship was once so tightly guarded that it was denied even to the traditional Italian allies of Rome ( who played a role in the Republican empire of akin to that of the Scots in Britain's first great expansion during the 18th century - businessmen, colonial soldiers, in rare instances, minor officials) until after the Social Wars and the civil wars of Julius and then Augustus Caesar. After that, one could find Roman citizens who were Gauls, Iberians, Greeks, Germans, Jews, Arabs and peoples more obscure. The empire in many ways proved to be more a meritocratic, " open system" than did the insular city-state republic beloved by Cato.
China too went through not one but many periods of unification and renewal. Had the Ming dynasty and their Q'ing successors not turned toward resolutely inward, we might be talking today about the legacy of Chinese colonization of the Mideast, Africa and the Pacific rim of the Americas ( disconnection imposes heavy costs).
"America made that journey in the latter half of the 19th century, thanks to our Civil War and the bloody build-out of the American West (actually, most of the blood spilled long earlier). We got to our emergent point (much like China's today, but along a very different path) around 1890, following a 25-year healing period after the Civil War (China reaches its emergent point around 2000, 25 years of healing after the Cultural Revolution)."
There's a great number of historical tangents buried in this paragraph. One can draw a comparison between American dollars flowing to China today and the postbellum surge of British and Dutch investment in American railroads and corporations. Or you can look at America as the Not Quite United States from 1787-1865; not unlike China from 1911 - 1989. Or you can compare the administrations of McKinley-Roosevelt with Jiang Zemin-Hu Jintao. Are there modern Chinese intellectual equivalents to the influential role played by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams and Alfred T. Mahan ?
"Europe had a far longer healing point, reflecting the depths to which it sank in its massive civil wars of 1914-1945. It's main problem is that its healing occurred in a very artificial sort of civilizational separateness, which is no longer tenable due to demographics"
Underneath its culture and civilization, Europe remains atavistic. While France has a different and more open tradition because of the French Revolution, many Europeans view their national citizenship primarily in terms of " blood and soil". Third generation Arab and North African citizens are still considered to be "immigrants" as are Turkish descended "gast arbeiters" in Germany.
Historically, China has taken a similar ethnocentric view of citizenship ( it is rare though not impossible, for a foreigner not of Chinese ancestry to become a citizen of China); Beijing's ability to change this and welcome Indians, Americans, Japanese, Koreans and Latins as future "Chinese" will in part, determine China's future role in world affairs.
Dr. Barnett had a post that used an WSJ op-ed as a launching pad for some big picture historical analysis:
"Message in a bottle"
In turn, I want to use Tom's post in much the same manner. Here are a couple of quotes and my kibbutzing:
"But first the Euros need to catch up with history: they are not the first multinational state or economic union. They did not invent the first unified currency. They were not the first continent to experience insane civil war and thereupon reason their way to a Kantian peace of transparency, free markets, free trade and collective security. "
Very true. Tom is pointing to America here but Europe itself experienced much the same process during the late Roman Republic. Roman citizenship was once so tightly guarded that it was denied even to the traditional Italian allies of Rome ( who played a role in the Republican empire of akin to that of the Scots in Britain's first great expansion during the 18th century - businessmen, colonial soldiers, in rare instances, minor officials) until after the Social Wars and the civil wars of Julius and then Augustus Caesar. After that, one could find Roman citizens who were Gauls, Iberians, Greeks, Germans, Jews, Arabs and peoples more obscure. The empire in many ways proved to be more a meritocratic, " open system" than did the insular city-state republic beloved by Cato.
China too went through not one but many periods of unification and renewal. Had the Ming dynasty and their Q'ing successors not turned toward resolutely inward, we might be talking today about the legacy of Chinese colonization of the Mideast, Africa and the Pacific rim of the Americas ( disconnection imposes heavy costs).
"America made that journey in the latter half of the 19th century, thanks to our Civil War and the bloody build-out of the American West (actually, most of the blood spilled long earlier). We got to our emergent point (much like China's today, but along a very different path) around 1890, following a 25-year healing period after the Civil War (China reaches its emergent point around 2000, 25 years of healing after the Cultural Revolution)."
There's a great number of historical tangents buried in this paragraph. One can draw a comparison between American dollars flowing to China today and the postbellum surge of British and Dutch investment in American railroads and corporations. Or you can look at America as the Not Quite United States from 1787-1865; not unlike China from 1911 - 1989. Or you can compare the administrations of McKinley-Roosevelt with Jiang Zemin-Hu Jintao. Are there modern Chinese intellectual equivalents to the influential role played by Frederick Jackson Turner, Brooks Adams and Alfred T. Mahan ?
"Europe had a far longer healing point, reflecting the depths to which it sank in its massive civil wars of 1914-1945. It's main problem is that its healing occurred in a very artificial sort of civilizational separateness, which is no longer tenable due to demographics"
Underneath its culture and civilization, Europe remains atavistic. While France has a different and more open tradition because of the French Revolution, many Europeans view their national citizenship primarily in terms of " blood and soil". Third generation Arab and North African citizens are still considered to be "immigrants" as are Turkish descended "gast arbeiters" in Germany.
Historically, China has taken a similar ethnocentric view of citizenship ( it is rare though not impossible, for a foreigner not of Chinese ancestry to become a citizen of China); Beijing's ability to change this and welcome Indians, Americans, Japanese, Koreans and Latins as future "Chinese" will in part, determine China's future role in world affairs.
Labels: 19th century, 21st century, America, barnett, china, europe, history, PNM
¶ 8:39 PM 0 comments
Monday, May 28, 2007
WHERE ARE THE GREAT MEN (OR WOMEN)?
When I was a teen-ager and in my early twenties I was an avid partisan. In the pre-internet and pre-Talk radio era, I devoured newspapers, TIME, US News, Newsweek and the slick political magazines ( National Review, TNR). I followed all the nuances of issues like Contra aid or the 1986 tax reform. While I was thoroughly Reaganite in my convictions and found liberal hacks like Senator Pat Leahy to be odious fools, I could also look across the aisle to find figures of decency, civility and conviction like Senator Paul Simon and see people whom I could respect.
And now ?
I find it incredibly disillusioning that in what passes for political "debate" these days that a majority of the Republican presidential candidates, Senator McCain excepted, are endorsing torture (!) while most of their Democratic counterparts are enthusiasists for surrender. Except for Senator Edwards who, while being strongly in favor of retreat has one-upped the rest and declared that the war on terror does not even exist ( he's a fantasist).
This is not the country I grew up in. The nation deserves better.
This is one reason why I very seldom venture into discussing political news here. I find it difficult to believe that much of what scripted sound bites are being uttered represent core beliefs of the candidate rather than artificial nonsense lines designed to pander to splinter special interests divined through exhaustive focus grouping. My fear is that the American political class have reached the point of degeneration that these noxious superficialities do indeed reflect what some of the candidates think.
First rate minds have always been rare in politics, historically speaking, but America has always mustered enough for the tasks at hand. Our revolution benefitted from an unusual abundance of great men precisely because the British imperial system of the Hanoverian monarchs so completely shut out American talent from their system. The early Republic saw giants like John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun, to say nothing of Abraham Lincoln who strides across American history like a titan.
The twentieth century boasted no shortage of sage statesmen either, starting with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to FDR and his successors who were " present at the creation" to the peaceful closing of the Cold War with Ronald Reagan and the father of the current president. America was rich in leadership. We had severe trials but seldom were we to be found wanting because our leaders, at least some of them, were authentic. You could disagree with Ronald Reagan or Hubert Humphrey but you were disagreeing with a person who thoroughly represented important and substantive values. Values worth debating.
While I have no empirical basis for this to stand upon I suspect that the last few decades have seen fewer and fewer individuals of this caliber enter politics. The nastiness of the political process, the invasiveness, obtuse stupidity and lack of respect by the media coupled by the greater rewards of private life have kept them away. It reminds me of the climate, if not the form, of the later 19th century which was dominated by corrupt machines and party bosses like Mark Hanna, William Marcy Tweed and George Washington Plunkitt. As a result, we get people running for office or currying favor for appointment who see their opportunities and take them.
The good news is that the raw talent and creativity is out there. There are 21st century equivalents to George Marshall or Henry Kissinger or John F. Kennedy. She may be an Asian-American CFO at a software company or a midwestern entrepreneur in Kansas City or a 21 year old infantryman, a child of immigrants, on patrol right now in Iraq. You may know someone who would make a great city councilman or school board member, state legislator or simply a voice for the community, if only someone will encourage them to speak.
When I was a teen-ager and in my early twenties I was an avid partisan. In the pre-internet and pre-Talk radio era, I devoured newspapers, TIME, US News, Newsweek and the slick political magazines ( National Review, TNR). I followed all the nuances of issues like Contra aid or the 1986 tax reform. While I was thoroughly Reaganite in my convictions and found liberal hacks like Senator Pat Leahy to be odious fools, I could also look across the aisle to find figures of decency, civility and conviction like Senator Paul Simon and see people whom I could respect.
And now ?
I find it incredibly disillusioning that in what passes for political "debate" these days that a majority of the Republican presidential candidates, Senator McCain excepted, are endorsing torture (!) while most of their Democratic counterparts are enthusiasists for surrender. Except for Senator Edwards who, while being strongly in favor of retreat has one-upped the rest and declared that the war on terror does not even exist ( he's a fantasist).
This is not the country I grew up in. The nation deserves better.
This is one reason why I very seldom venture into discussing political news here. I find it difficult to believe that much of what scripted sound bites are being uttered represent core beliefs of the candidate rather than artificial nonsense lines designed to pander to splinter special interests divined through exhaustive focus grouping. My fear is that the American political class have reached the point of degeneration that these noxious superficialities do indeed reflect what some of the candidates think.
First rate minds have always been rare in politics, historically speaking, but America has always mustered enough for the tasks at hand. Our revolution benefitted from an unusual abundance of great men precisely because the British imperial system of the Hanoverian monarchs so completely shut out American talent from their system. The early Republic saw giants like John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun, to say nothing of Abraham Lincoln who strides across American history like a titan.
The twentieth century boasted no shortage of sage statesmen either, starting with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to FDR and his successors who were " present at the creation" to the peaceful closing of the Cold War with Ronald Reagan and the father of the current president. America was rich in leadership. We had severe trials but seldom were we to be found wanting because our leaders, at least some of them, were authentic. You could disagree with Ronald Reagan or Hubert Humphrey but you were disagreeing with a person who thoroughly represented important and substantive values. Values worth debating.
While I have no empirical basis for this to stand upon I suspect that the last few decades have seen fewer and fewer individuals of this caliber enter politics. The nastiness of the political process, the invasiveness, obtuse stupidity and lack of respect by the media coupled by the greater rewards of private life have kept them away. It reminds me of the climate, if not the form, of the later 19th century which was dominated by corrupt machines and party bosses like Mark Hanna, William Marcy Tweed and George Washington Plunkitt. As a result, we get people running for office or currying favor for appointment who see their opportunities and take them.
The good news is that the raw talent and creativity is out there. There are 21st century equivalents to George Marshall or Henry Kissinger or John F. Kennedy. She may be an Asian-American CFO at a software company or a midwestern entrepreneur in Kansas City or a 21 year old infantryman, a child of immigrants, on patrol right now in Iraq. You may know someone who would make a great city councilman or school board member, state legislator or simply a voice for the community, if only someone will encourage them to speak.
Labels: 2008, 21st century, America, history, politics
¶ 8:53 PM 26 comments
Friday, May 18, 2007
EXTENDING THE CONVERSATION
One of the most pleasant aspects of blogging for me is receiving high quality feedback from readers or other bloggers. Oddly, it's impossible to predict which post is going to produce a high volume of comments or links so it is even nicer when a post that I feel is important strikes some readers in the same way. Even moreso as the feedback came from across the political spectrum
I'd like to highlight the responses to the recent "Applied History" post:
From Art Hutchinson at Mapping Strategy:
Art is a premier strategic thinking consultant with Cartegic Group who specializes in scenario planning. He doesn't post all that frequently, so I was very pleased to find that he had delved deeply into the topic of "Cognitive Maps of Future History":
"What's needed to turn the seeming surprise of today's urgent corporate decision into an historically rooted, deeply contextualized choice?
Exactly the same kind of context-setting, "map-making" capability and cross-functional engagement (deciders with academics) that Mark observes to be lacking in the higher echelons of government.
Cartegic does that with modular scenarios, wherein each scenario-building component references analogous situations faced by other industries, in other markets, with other technologies, by other clients and/or at different points in time. (Side note: the dot.com era, as most now appreciate, did not "re-invent" the rules of business; it merely made some business models more viable--and some less viable--than they had been before.)
With the view of the historian (whether geopolitical, industrial or technical) seemingly open-ended, highly uncertain, "new to the world" decisions without any apparent guideposts can be brought down to earth and seen as natural (if imperfect) analogues to things that have gone before.
As the saying goes: "there's nothing new under the sun".
From Nonpartisan, the guiding spirit of the up and coming, left of center, group blog ProgressiveHistorians in the "Friday Open Thread " Nonpartisan welcomed Stewart Brand's historical call to arms:
"At ProgressiveHistorians, we've been advocating this sort of direct policy action on the part of historians since our founding, but it's nice to see the liberal icon who founded the Whole Earth Network taking up our cause. If there's one thing that unites everyone at this site, I think, it's their agreement with some portion of Brand's thesis. It's encouraging how many of us see the meaning in this logical extension of our profession."
In the comments section of " Applied History" I am indebted to Shane Deichman, Managing Director of The Institute for Technologies in Global Resilience and Federal Historian Dr. Maarja Krusten, formerly of The National Archives, for their thoughtful observations, such as:
Deichman:
"Policymaking, on the other hand, is not about asserting truths -- it is about influencing action. Therefore it is an inherently social and, dare I say, "complex" phenomenon that defies linear, reductionist logic. So it is perfectly understandable (even acceptable) for the policymaker to "cherry pick" conclusions that support their objectives (e.g., yellow cake from Nigeria; hostile naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin; the fictitious "Tenth Army" in WW II). This is why I believe so few historians are apt to get involved with policymaking."
Krusten:
"Many thanks for posting this interesting essay on a subject that deserves more attention than it usually receives among academic historians.
There are, of course, federal historians (of which I am one) who work in civil service positions (the so-called GS 170 series). There are others who work as archivists or in other history related job classifications. (When I worked as an employee of the National Archives, screening Richard Nixon's tapes to see what could be released, most of my colleagues had graduate degrees in history.)
Since your posting centers on applied history and policy, you might find interesting this article by Victoria Harden, "What Do Federal Historians Do?"
( Note to aspiring history PhD's - make friends with a professional archivist or academic librarian *before* you begin your dissertation. The cites they can pull off the top of their heads on the most obscure topics imaginable are stunning. They are to historians what historians are to the general public)
Thanks again for the excellent feedback!
One of the most pleasant aspects of blogging for me is receiving high quality feedback from readers or other bloggers. Oddly, it's impossible to predict which post is going to produce a high volume of comments or links so it is even nicer when a post that I feel is important strikes some readers in the same way. Even moreso as the feedback came from across the political spectrum
I'd like to highlight the responses to the recent "Applied History" post:
From Art Hutchinson at Mapping Strategy:
Art is a premier strategic thinking consultant with Cartegic Group who specializes in scenario planning. He doesn't post all that frequently, so I was very pleased to find that he had delved deeply into the topic of "Cognitive Maps of Future History":
"What's needed to turn the seeming surprise of today's urgent corporate decision into an historically rooted, deeply contextualized choice?
Exactly the same kind of context-setting, "map-making" capability and cross-functional engagement (deciders with academics) that Mark observes to be lacking in the higher echelons of government.
Cartegic does that with modular scenarios, wherein each scenario-building component references analogous situations faced by other industries, in other markets, with other technologies, by other clients and/or at different points in time. (Side note: the dot.com era, as most now appreciate, did not "re-invent" the rules of business; it merely made some business models more viable--and some less viable--than they had been before.)
With the view of the historian (whether geopolitical, industrial or technical) seemingly open-ended, highly uncertain, "new to the world" decisions without any apparent guideposts can be brought down to earth and seen as natural (if imperfect) analogues to things that have gone before.
As the saying goes: "there's nothing new under the sun".
From Nonpartisan, the guiding spirit of the up and coming, left of center, group blog ProgressiveHistorians in the "Friday Open Thread " Nonpartisan welcomed Stewart Brand's historical call to arms:
"At ProgressiveHistorians, we've been advocating this sort of direct policy action on the part of historians since our founding, but it's nice to see the liberal icon who founded the Whole Earth Network taking up our cause. If there's one thing that unites everyone at this site, I think, it's their agreement with some portion of Brand's thesis. It's encouraging how many of us see the meaning in this logical extension of our profession."
In the comments section of " Applied History" I am indebted to Shane Deichman, Managing Director of The Institute for Technologies in Global Resilience and Federal Historian Dr. Maarja Krusten, formerly of The National Archives, for their thoughtful observations, such as:
Deichman:
"Policymaking, on the other hand, is not about asserting truths -- it is about influencing action. Therefore it is an inherently social and, dare I say, "complex" phenomenon that defies linear, reductionist logic. So it is perfectly understandable (even acceptable) for the policymaker to "cherry pick" conclusions that support their objectives (e.g., yellow cake from Nigeria; hostile naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin; the fictitious "Tenth Army" in WW II). This is why I believe so few historians are apt to get involved with policymaking."
Krusten:
"Many thanks for posting this interesting essay on a subject that deserves more attention than it usually receives among academic historians.
There are, of course, federal historians (of which I am one) who work in civil service positions (the so-called GS 170 series). There are others who work as archivists or in other history related job classifications. (When I worked as an employee of the National Archives, screening Richard Nixon's tapes to see what could be released, most of my colleagues had graduate degrees in history.)
Since your posting centers on applied history and policy, you might find interesting this article by Victoria Harden, "What Do Federal Historians Do?"
( Note to aspiring history PhD's - make friends with a professional archivist or academic librarian *before* you begin your dissertation. The cites they can pull off the top of their heads on the most obscure topics imaginable are stunning. They are to historians what historians are to the general public)
Thanks again for the excellent feedback!
Labels: blogging, blogroll, historians, historiography, history, readers
¶ 11:05 PM 0 comments
Thursday, May 10, 2007
SINISTER WISDOM
Carl Schmitt was one of those brilliant German intellectuals who, in the anti-democratic traditions of elite European authoritarianism and illiberalism, lent their prestige and moral authority to Fascism. Like his contemporary, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Schmitt became an enthusiastic Nazi and an academic bully. Unlike Heidegger, who in his malice or dotage fellated the radical New Left, Schmitt never recanted his National Socialist past.
That being said, Schmitt's deep learning and insights about the state, the struggle for power and war should not be ignored lightly because of his wicked politics any more than we should eschew learning from the writings of Mao ZeDong, Franz Fanon or Sayyid Qtub. Only a fool ignores the ideas of the enemy.
With that caveat, I recommend Schmitt's " The Theory of The Partisan".
A major hat tip to my friend and fellow blogger Marc Schulman who I suspect unearthed this link in his own research into Alexandre Kojeve.
Carl Schmitt was one of those brilliant German intellectuals who, in the anti-democratic traditions of elite European authoritarianism and illiberalism, lent their prestige and moral authority to Fascism. Like his contemporary, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Schmitt became an enthusiastic Nazi and an academic bully. Unlike Heidegger, who in his malice or dotage fellated the radical New Left, Schmitt never recanted his National Socialist past.
That being said, Schmitt's deep learning and insights about the state, the struggle for power and war should not be ignored lightly because of his wicked politics any more than we should eschew learning from the writings of Mao ZeDong, Franz Fanon or Sayyid Qtub. Only a fool ignores the ideas of the enemy.
With that caveat, I recommend Schmitt's " The Theory of The Partisan".
A major hat tip to my friend and fellow blogger Marc Schulman who I suspect unearthed this link in his own research into Alexandre Kojeve.
Labels: europe, history, insurgency, intellectuals, military, philosophy, schulman, theory, totalitarianism, war
¶ 8:04 PM 2 comments
Friday, May 04, 2007
DOES THE IC NEED TO FIND THE "TEACHABLE MOMENTS"?
From Kent's Imperative:
" The potential implications of this study are of interest not only to those that must manage the effective instruction and mentoring of the next generation of analysts and officers, but there are tantalizing suggestions that similar dynamics may be at work when finding a successful briefer. Given that most decision-makers tend to be more extroverted, and outcomes oriented, the tendency of these individuals to rely more heavily on rapid conclusions drawn from initial thin slice impressions weighed against their own knowledge and experiences, is likely to be even more pronounced than the average student."
Educators have a concept among themselves, known as " the teachable moment" that is somewhat difficult for most outsiders to grasp (though sucessful salesmen, preachers, orators and litigators may recognize it). There is a particular place in time when a presenter of memes and the entirety of the audience to which they speak can meet and, for an instant, merge. Perhaps an accurate descriptor might be " synchronized cognition". In any event, like a wave, where there had once been darkness there is light; where ignorance had ruled, suddenly, insight reigns transcendent.
These moments are rare though accomplished instructors have a record of igniting them. Some became legendary life-influencers. Carroll Quiqley's lectures at Georgetown on the nature and historical legacy of Platonic philosophy, the classroom antics of uber-physicist Richard Feynman , Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom's master-mentoring of his students all were directed to a larger point and yielded ripples of effect far beyond their classrooms that have outlived these scholars themselves.
The IC is of course, not quite the same thing as an academic setting but the cognitive aspect is not unrelated and the stakes are far higher as briefers deal with top level policy maker "customers" who themselves, often, have an impressive store of experience and analytical capabilities of their own ( and very little time available to engage with the briefer). It was probably a fairly nerve-wracking experience for a CIA analyst to have to brief Secretary of State George Schultz with unwelcome news. Or a Zbigniew Brzezinski or any number the more formidible personalities of the Cold War era. Yet at times, briefs created historical tipping points such as the NIE that predicted a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, IMINT analysis of U-2's flying over Cuba and most famously, George Kennan's "Long Telegram" which was less a diplomatic cable than an analytical tour de force by the leading Soviet expert of the Foreign Service.
Briefing has it's teaching aspects and if briefs of unimpeachably solid intelligence are not creating the impact that the substance merits, then it might be time to study techniques of delivery instead of writing off poor results and a lack of influence to "politics" alone.
From Kent's Imperative:
" The potential implications of this study are of interest not only to those that must manage the effective instruction and mentoring of the next generation of analysts and officers, but there are tantalizing suggestions that similar dynamics may be at work when finding a successful briefer. Given that most decision-makers tend to be more extroverted, and outcomes oriented, the tendency of these individuals to rely more heavily on rapid conclusions drawn from initial thin slice impressions weighed against their own knowledge and experiences, is likely to be even more pronounced than the average student."
Educators have a concept among themselves, known as " the teachable moment" that is somewhat difficult for most outsiders to grasp (though sucessful salesmen, preachers, orators and litigators may recognize it). There is a particular place in time when a presenter of memes and the entirety of the audience to which they speak can meet and, for an instant, merge. Perhaps an accurate descriptor might be " synchronized cognition". In any event, like a wave, where there had once been darkness there is light; where ignorance had ruled, suddenly, insight reigns transcendent.
These moments are rare though accomplished instructors have a record of igniting them. Some became legendary life-influencers. Carroll Quiqley's lectures at Georgetown on the nature and historical legacy of Platonic philosophy, the classroom antics of uber-physicist Richard Feynman , Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom's master-mentoring of his students all were directed to a larger point and yielded ripples of effect far beyond their classrooms that have outlived these scholars themselves.
The IC is of course, not quite the same thing as an academic setting but the cognitive aspect is not unrelated and the stakes are far higher as briefers deal with top level policy maker "customers" who themselves, often, have an impressive store of experience and analytical capabilities of their own ( and very little time available to engage with the briefer). It was probably a fairly nerve-wracking experience for a CIA analyst to have to brief Secretary of State George Schultz with unwelcome news. Or a Zbigniew Brzezinski or any number the more formidible personalities of the Cold War era. Yet at times, briefs created historical tipping points such as the NIE that predicted a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, IMINT analysis of U-2's flying over Cuba and most famously, George Kennan's "Long Telegram" which was less a diplomatic cable than an analytical tour de force by the leading Soviet expert of the Foreign Service.
Briefing has it's teaching aspects and if briefs of unimpeachably solid intelligence are not creating the impact that the substance merits, then it might be time to study techniques of delivery instead of writing off poor results and a lack of influence to "politics" alone.
Labels: academia, analytic, CIA, cognition, cold war, consilience, history, IC, intelligence, kent's imperative, teaching
¶ 7:47 PM 0 comments
