Iran promises to use NUKES
Harold
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/12/25/LatestNews/LatestNews.40587.html
"...the establishment of Israel was "the most hideous historic
occurrence in history," and the Islamic world "will vomit her out from
its midst," according to Peres's letter. Rafsanjani told a crowd at
the stadium in Teheran University that the day is approaching in which
the Islamic world will possess atomic weapons. "On that day, the
strategy of the West will hit a dead end, since a single atomic bomb
has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli
counterstrike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world," he
said."
Regards, Harold (Capitalist Pig)
----------
"So the two extremes touch and are, in fact, interchangeable.
Rightist racism springs from the premise that some races are
somehow morally superior. Leftist racism springs from the premise
that some races are also morally superior. The only difference
is the color of skin."
----Andrew Sullivan, 10 Dec 2001
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Scott D. Erb
Tim Starr wrote:
>
> "Scott D. Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message news:<3C647FD1...@worldnet.att.net>...
>
> [snip]
>
> >That rhetoric is just an example of the kind of talk and policies
> >that breed a reaction. Its an old story, really. US policy and
> >anti-communist talk pushed the Soviets to engage in an all out
> >arms building endeavor.
>
> The Soviet arms build-up was a defensive response to provocative US policy and
> rhetoric? Not part of an aggressive campaign of Soviet-sponsored conquest &
> expansion? Sounds like the Soviet rationales for the invasion of Berlin '53,
> Hungary '56, and Czechoslovakia '68, to me.
>
> Of course, you overlook how Soviet policy and rhetoric provoked US policy and
> rhetorical response.
Actually, both sides got involved in that kind of
spiral.
I doubt much could have prevented the Cold War
pre-1953. Stalin was paranoid and ruthless, and given
his behavior he looked an awfully lot like the next
Hitler to the allies, especially as he established
puppet regimes in East Europe. Post 1953 there were
chances. First, the Korean war, which militarized
containment, was followed by a change of behavior from
the Soviet side. From agreements on Finland, Austrian
neutrality, to efforts by Malenkov to move emphasis
from the military to the people, there is evidence that
there may have been room for some kind of alternative
to an arms race. Clearly realists like Kennan thought
so, but the political climate, poisoned by McCarthyist
paranoia, made that impossible. By 1955, as Khrushchev
ousted Malenkov it became more difficult, and the
tumult of Suez alongside the problems in Poland and
Czechoslovakia in 1956 created too much distrust on
each side.
Kennedy, of course, was an anti-communist crusader,
wanting to make American policy more active,
optimistically believing that the US could implement
his 'Grand Design' to recreate the world and expand
western values. His Grand Design was a Grand Illusion,
and the arrogance of US policy makers helped set up
disasters in Vietnam and a crisis that nearly led to
war in Cuba. Only with Nixon and Kissinger did US
policy start reflecting American capabilities, and I
think Nixon and Kissinger really set up the end of the
Cold War with their policies in the late sixties and
early seventies. Brandt's Ostpolitik in Germany added
to that immensely (indeed, German policy really can be
credited with helping create openings the Soviets could
take, and the peaceful end of the Cold War with German
unification can be seen as a sign of the success of the
cooperative blend of Adenauer's Westpolitik and
Brandt's Ostpolitik in German polcy). Reagan deserves
credit for recognizing Gorbachev meant business and
halting the US defense spending increases after 1985,
often angering the right wing of the GOP who didn't
trust Gorbachev and thought that "liberals" in the
White House weren't letting Reagan be Reagan.
So, no, Soviet policy provoked US policy, just as US
policy provoked Soviet policy. The Cold War is an
example of real differences, combined with
misunderstandings, fear, and mistrust leading to a long
but stable period of bipolar competition.
Russil Wvong
> > >[Regarding Iranian threat to destroy Israel]
> > >That rhetoric is just an example of the kind of talk and policies
> > >that breed a reaction. Its an old story, really.
Hmm. I notice that you teach courses in international politics. May
I ask if you're basing this on detailed knowledge of Iranian politics,
or general principles about aggressive rhetoric being used for domestic
political purposes?
[Regarding the Cold War:]
> Actually, both sides got involved in that kind of
> spiral.
>
> I doubt much could have prevented the Cold War
> pre-1953. Stalin was paranoid and ruthless, and given
> his behavior he looked an awfully lot like the next
> Hitler to the allies, especially as he established
> puppet regimes in East Europe. ...
We were discussing the Cold War over on alt.fan.noam-chomsky a few
months ago, and I came across a paper by Douglas Macdonald published
in International Security, arguing that -- based on Soviet documents --
the "traditionalist" school of early Cold War history was correct,
the "revisionists" were dead wrong, and the "realists" were partly
wrong. I tried to do some triangulation to check Macdonald's
credibility, but couldn't find too much (he's written a book,
"Adventures in Chaos", which I haven't looked up yet). Any comments?
Have you heard of Macdonald?
[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/macdon.htm]
What books would you recommend for an intelligent general reader
trying to learn about world history and international politics?
I've put together a list as part of a critical review of Noam
Chomsky, but I imagine that you've read in much more depth in the
field.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988)
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1948, sixth edition 1985)
George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (1946)
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
George Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 and Memoirs 1950-1967
Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After (1977, revised 1986)
Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (1994)
Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America (fifth edition 2000)
William Polk, The Arab World Today (fifth edition 1991)
Roy Gutman and David Rieff, eds., Crimes of War (1999)
[http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/chomsky.html]
Most of my reading has been "realist". There's some gaps: Japan,
Russia, Africa, post-war Europe. I've also been trying to figure
out what the other schools of thought are. From what I can tell:
- Liberal (e.g. Richard Falk, Jimmy Carter). Democracy and
human rights are important; need effective international law.
More supportive of intervention (the caricature is that
conservatives -- i.e. realists -- want to have a big military
and keep it at home, liberals want to have a small military
and send it everywhere).
- Neo-conservative (e.g. Ronald Reagan, Paul Wolfowitz).
Crusading and moralistic ("evil empire", "axis of evil").
Seeks to maintain "benevolent hegemony" (Irving Kristol).
Associated with publications like Commentary (Norman
Podhoretz), the National Interest, the Weekly Standard.
- Radical left (e.g. Noam Chomsky). Capitalist democracy is
fundamentally unjust and must be overthrown. Seeks to
overthrow status quo, therefore anti-US. Also known as
"Seattle Man."
Am I missing anyone?
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Tim Starr
Everytime you say "McCarthyist paranoia," I think of the KGB agent in "The
Unbearable Lightness of Being" asking Tomas why he took part in the "Anti-
Soviet hysteria." :-)
You make it look like the USSR was willing to change its behavior after
Stalin, but the US wasn't. Exactly what US policies do you think were
continued that led to the arms race?
>By 1955, as Khrushchev
>ousted Malenkov it became more difficult, and the
>tumult of Suez alongside the problems in Poland and
>Czechoslovakia in 1956 created too much distrust on
>each side.
How did "the tumult of Suez" create any distrust on the part of either the
US or the USSR? Britain, France, & Israel tried to get the canal back from
Egypt, and the US stopped them.
Also, what on earth are you talking about going on in Czechoslovakia in '56?
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia wasn't until '68, remember?
>Kennedy, of course, was an anti-communist crusader,
>wanting to make American policy more active,
>optimistically believing that the US could implement
>his 'Grand Design' to recreate the world and expand
>western values. His Grand Design was a Grand Illusion,
>and the arrogance of US policy makers helped set up
>disasters in Vietnam and a crisis that nearly led to
>war in Cuba. Only with Nixon and Kissinger did US
>policy start reflecting American capabilities, and I
>think Nixon and Kissinger really set up the end of the
>Cold War with their policies in the late sixties and
>early seventies. Brandt's Ostpolitik in Germany added
>to that immensely (indeed, German policy really can be
>credited with helping create openings the Soviets could
>take...
Yes, of course, your beloved German Social Democrats deserve most of the
credit for ending the Cold War. ZZZzzz...
Tim Starr
Scott D. Erb
Tim Starr wrote:
> "Scott D. Erb" <scot...@maine.edu> wrote in message news:<3C68515A...@maine.edu>...
>
>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>I doubt much could have prevented the Cold War
>>pre-1953. Stalin was paranoid and ruthless, and given
>>his behavior he looked an awfully lot like the next
>>Hitler to the allies, especially as he established
>>puppet regimes in East Europe. Post 1953 there were
>>chances. First, the Korean war, which militarized
>>containment, was followed by a change of behavior from
>>the Soviet side. From agreements on Finland, Austrian
>>neutrality, to efforts by Malenkov to move emphasis
>>
>>from the military to the people, there is evidence that
>
>>there may have been room for some kind of alternative
>>to an arms race. Clearly realists like Kennan thought
>>so, but the political climate, poisoned by McCarthyist
>>paranoia, made that impossible.
>>
>
> Everytime you say "McCarthyist paranoia," I think of the KGB agent in "The
> Unbearable Lightness of Being" asking Tomas why he took part in the "Anti-
> Soviet hysteria." :-)
>
> You make it look like the USSR was willing to change its behavior after
> Stalin, but the US wasn't. Exactly what US policies do you think were
> continued that led to the arms race?
I'm not sure if Malenkov was really ready for a change. Kennan
and a few others thought we should test him on it. Events in
Austria, Finland, and some of what he was saying made it look
possible. We never did. From 1953-55 the US kept the pressure
on the Soviets, building pacts with alliances ringing the Soviet
Union, and undertaking the "new look" with the doctrine of
massive retaliation. Ultimately, Malenkov's failure to get a
change in American policy or a warming of the US to chances of an
early detente helped Khruschsev beat out Malenkov (though he
wasn't as hardline as he had pretended to be). Like most
historians note, this could have been a missed opportunity, but
then again, perhaps the mistrust on both sides was so deep that
it was inevitable things would get worse. It took near war in
1962 before they started moving from the brink.
>>By 1955, as Khrushchev
>>ousted Malenkov it became more difficult, and the
>>tumult of Suez alongside the problems in Poland and
>>Czechoslovakia in 1956 created too much distrust on
>>each side.
>>
>
> How did "the tumult of Suez" create any distrust on the part of either the
> US or the USSR? Britain, France, & Israel tried to get the canal back from
> Egypt, and the US stopped them.
Sorry, I was unclear: during the tumult of the Suez crisis the
Soviets moved in Hungary and events in Poland added to the
mistrust. The US did nominally take the Soviets side in the Suez
crisis, but the subtext was that the US and the Soviets now saw
the Cold War as a battle for the hearts, minds, and leaders of
the third world.
> Also, what on earth are you talking about going on in Czechoslovakia in '56?
> The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia wasn't until '68, remember?
Yikes, I meant Hungary.
>>Kennedy, of course, was an anti-communist crusader,
>>wanting to make American policy more active,
>>optimistically believing that the US could implement
>>his 'Grand Design' to recreate the world and expand
>>western values. His Grand Design was a Grand Illusion,
>>and the arrogance of US policy makers helped set up
>>disasters in Vietnam and a crisis that nearly led to
>>war in Cuba. Only with Nixon and Kissinger did US
>>policy start reflecting American capabilities, and I
>>think Nixon and Kissinger really set up the end of the
>>Cold War with their policies in the late sixties and
>>early seventies. Brandt's Ostpolitik in Germany added
>>to that immensely (indeed, German policy really can be
>>credited with helping create openings the Soviets could
>>take...
>>
>
> Yes, of course, your beloved German Social Democrats deserve most of the
> credit for ending the Cold War. ZZZzzz...
No, I give as much credit to the Christian Democrats, and
Adenauer's Westpolitik. They needed both.
> Tim Starr
>
Tim Starr
Hey, how'd you get out of alt.fan.noam-chomsky? Welcome, anyways! :-)
>We were discussing the Cold War over on alt.fan.noam-chomsky a few
>months ago, and I came across a paper by Douglas Macdonald published
>in International Security, arguing that -- based on Soviet documents
--
>the "traditionalist" school of early Cold War history was correct,
>the "revisionists" were dead wrong, and the "realists" were partly
>wrong. I tried to do some triangulation to check Macdonald's
>credibility, but couldn't find too much (he's written a book,
>"Adventures in Chaos", which I haven't looked up yet). Any comments?
>Have you heard of Macdonald?
>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/macdon.htm]
Hmm, looks good. I believe that site also published some papers by
Richard
Raack, whose book, "Stalin's Drive to the West," is also quite good,
although
considerably narrower in scope (1938-1945) than the whole Cold War.
He's also
sympathetic to the Suvorov "Icebreaker" thesis, which I haven't
studied enough
to make up my mind about it.
>What books would you recommend for an intelligent general reader
>trying to learn about world history and international politics?
>I've put together a list as part of a critical review of Noam
>Chomsky, but I imagine that you've read in much more depth in the
>field.
>
> Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988)
> Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1948, sixth edition 1985)
> George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (1946)
> William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
> George Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 and Memoirs 1950-1967
> Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After (1977, revised 1986)
> Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (1994)
> Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America (fifth edition 2000)
> William Polk, The Arab World Today (fifth edition 1991)
> Roy Gutman and David Rieff, eds., Crimes of War (1999)
> [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/chomsky.html]
A pretty good list, as far as it goes - I'm impressed that you have
Asprey in
there, I've got both editions of his book. For Vietnam, the best
overview I've
come across is Michael Lind's "Vietnam: The Necessary War," although I
don't
agree with all of his conclusions. I like it because he covers the
gamut of
views about Vietnam without misrepresenting any of them or taking them
less
seriously than they deserve.
Your list is also rather short on the Soviet Union itself. Martin
Malia's "The
Soviet Tragedy" is a good anti-revisionist history of the the Soviet
Union, &
I'm told that Robert Service's history of 20th century Russia is also
good.
I've not read it yet, but I've read his bio of Lenin, which is good.
Brian
Crozier's "The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire" is an excellent
history of
Soviet foreign policy. "We Now Know," by John Lewis Gaddis is a good
revision
of Cold War history in light of Soviet archival evidence by a former
moderate
historian of the Cold War. Oh, don't forget Haynes & Klehr's books
based upon
Soviet archival evidence about Soviet influence in the USA, "The
Secret World of
American Communism," "The Soviet World of American Communism", and
"Venona:
Decrypting Soviet Espionage in America."
The Stalin era itself deserves more detailed study. You can't
understand
Stalinism without reading Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow" and
"The Great
Terror." However, you'll have a hard time understanding those books
if you've
not read about the history of the Russian Revolution, so I'd recommend
that
you read Richard Pipes' "The Russian Revolution" and "Russia Under the
Bolshevik
Regime" to prepare you for Conquest. Also make sure to read about the
Nazi-
Soviet Pact. Anthony Read & David Fisher have a pretty good book
about it,
"The Deadly Embrace," & there's another one I've got but haven't yet
read whose
title & author escape me at the moment. Alan Bullock's "Hitler and
Stalin: Parallel Lives" covers this well, along with their other
parallels.
Tim Starr
Russil Wvong
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> Hey, how'd you get out of alt.fan.noam-chomsky? Welcome, anyways! :-)
Thanks! I like alt.fan.noam-chomsky -- low volume, pretty intelligent
level of discussion -- but I thought I'd like to spend some time
discussing international politics, not just arguing against Chomsky. :-)
I thought I'd start by trying to get some discussion of world history
and international politics going on talk.politics.misc, with a view
to maybe getting an alt.politics.international or
talk.politics.international created later.
> >[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/macdon.htm]
>
> Hmm, looks good. I believe that site also published some papers by
> Richard Raack, whose book, "Stalin's Drive to the West," is also quite
> good, although considerably narrower in scope (1938-1945) than the
> whole Cold War. He's also sympathetic to the Suvorov "Icebreaker"
> thesis, which I haven't studied enough to make up my mind about it.
Yes, it's a great site: lots of articles and papers on international
politics, as well as some Cold War documents.
I hadn't heard of Suvorov, but I just did a search and found a
reference to a rebuttal, "The Icebreaker Myth":
[http://www.tau.ac.il/taunews/96winter/russia.html]
> A pretty good list, as far as it goes - I'm impressed that you have
> Asprey in there, I've got both editions of his book. For Vietnam,
> the best overview I've come across is Michael Lind's "Vietnam: The
> Necessary War," although I don't agree with all of his conclusions.
> I like it because he covers the gamut of views about Vietnam without
> misrepresenting any of them or taking them less seriously than they
> deserve.
I've seen a review of Lind's book, I'll check it out.
> Your list is also rather short on the Soviet Union itself.
Afraid so. Robert Conquest is on my to-read list. Thanks for the
recommendations!
> Martin Malia's "The Soviet Tragedy" is a good anti-revisionist history
> of the the Soviet Union, & I'm told that Robert Service's history of
> 20th century Russia is also good. I've not read it yet, but I've read
> his bio of Lenin, which is good. Brian Crozier's "The Rise and Fall
> of the Soviet Empire" is an excellent history of Soviet foreign policy.
> "We Now Know," by John Lewis Gaddis is a good revision of Cold War
> history in light of Soviet archival evidence by a former moderate
> historian of the Cold War. Oh, don't forget Haynes & Klehr's books
> based upon Soviet archival evidence about Soviet influence in the USA,
> "The Secret World of American Communism," "The Soviet World of
> American Communism", and "Venona:
> Decrypting Soviet Espionage in America."
>
> The Stalin era itself deserves more detailed study. You can't understand
> Stalinism without reading Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow" and
> "The Great Terror." However, you'll have a hard time understanding
> those books if you've not read about the history of the Russian
> Revolution, so I'd recommend that you read Richard Pipes' "The
> Russian Revolution" and "Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime" to prepare
> you for Conquest. Also make sure to read about the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
> Anthony Read & David Fisher have a pretty good book about it,
> "The Deadly Embrace," & there's another one I've got but haven't yet
> read whose title & author escape me at the moment. Alan Bullock's
> "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" covers this well, along with their
> other parallels.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Russil Wvong
> Tim Starr wrote:
> > You make it look like the USSR was willing to change its behavior after
> > Stalin, but the US wasn't. Exactly what US policies do you think were
> > continued that led to the arms race?
>
> I'm not sure if Malenkov was really ready for a change. Kennan
> and a few others thought we should test him on it. Events in
> Austria, Finland, and some of what he was saying made it look
> possible. We never did.
There's a 2000 paper by Jeffrey Brooks, "When the Cold War Did Not End",
which discusses this in detail. One major difficulty with Malenkov's
"peace initiative" was that Soviet propaganda had *always* claimed that
the Soviet Union was in favor of peace.
[http://wwics.si.edu/kennan/papers/2000/brooks.pdf]
Scott D. Erb
Thanks for the resource. I think Malenkov probably did
want a break from Stalin's path (even Khruschsev did),
but we was dealing with a military industrial
bureaucratic complex that wasn't about to slow down.
I'm skeptical either side realistically could have
succeeded in turning around the Cold War at that time,
but it's an intriguing idea -- and one I believe Kennan
thought possible. My own view is that Kennan had it
right, but lost a tug of war in the State
Department/White House that led to a more aggressive
American policy that may have played a part in making
the Cold War longer and more costly than necessary.
Ultimately, however, the Soviets may not have been able
to make the changes necessary even if the US had,
thanks to the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
Tim Starr
[snip]
>I hadn't heard of Suvorov, but I just did a search and found a
>reference to a rebuttal, "The Icebreaker Myth":
>[http://www.tau.ac.il/taunews/96winter/russia.html]
Yes, I've got Gorodetsky's english-language book, "Stalin and the German
Invasion of Russia," but haven't read it yet. Suvorov's book is difficult
to find.
>>Your list is also rather short on the Soviet Union itself.
>
>Afraid so. Robert Conquest is on my to-read list. Thanks for the
>recommendations!
Wilkommen!
Tim Starr
Russil Wvong
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > There's a 2000 paper by Jeffrey Brooks, "When the Cold War Did Not End",
> > which discusses this in detail. One major difficulty with Malenkov's
> > "peace initiative" was that Soviet propaganda had *always* claimed that
> > the Soviet Union was in favor of peace.
> > [http://wwics.si.edu/kennan/papers/2000/brooks.pdf]
>
> Thanks for the resource. I think Malenkov probably did
> want a break from Stalin's path (even Khruschsev did),
> but we was dealing with a military industrial
> bureaucratic complex that wasn't about to slow down.
> I'm skeptical either side realistically could have
> succeeded in turning around the Cold War at that time,
> but it's an intriguing idea -- and one I believe Kennan
> thought possible. My own view is that Kennan had it
> right, but lost a tug of war in the State
> Department/White House that led to a more aggressive
> American policy that may have played a part in making
> the Cold War longer and more costly than necessary.
> Ultimately, however, the Soviets may not have been able
> to make the changes necessary even if the US had,
> thanks to the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
You're welcome! One minor point: I'm not sure Kennan was heavily involved
in the debate on the US side, since he was out of the State Department by
then. According to the paper, Charles Bohlen and Churchill thought the
Soviet peace initiative was worth pursuing, but Eisenhower didn't.
By the way, I had a couple questions for you, as a specialist in
international relations (I posted them earlier, but perhaps
you didn't see them). I've mostly learned about history and
international politics from reading on my own. What books would
you recommend for a general reader trying to learn about world
history and international politics? I've put together a list as
part of a critical review of Noam Chomsky, but I imagine that
you've read in much more depth in the field.
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988)
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1948, sixth edition 1985)
George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (1946)
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
George Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 and Memoirs 1950-1967
Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After (1977, revised 1986)
Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (1994)
Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America (fifth edition 2000)
William Polk, The Arab World Today (fifth edition 1991)
Roy Gutman and David Rieff, eds., Crimes of War (1999)
[http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/chomsky.html]
Most of my reading has been "realist". There's some gaps: Japan,
Russia, Africa, post-war Europe. I've also been trying to figure
out what the other schools of thought are. From what I can tell:
- Liberal (e.g. Richard Falk, Jimmy Carter). Democracy and
human rights are important; need effective international law.
More supportive of intervention (the caricature is that
conservatives -- i.e. realists -- want to have a big military
and keep it at home, liberals want to have a small military
and send it everywhere).
- Neo-conservative (e.g. Ronald Reagan, Paul Wolfowitz).
Crusading and moralistic ("evil empire", "axis of evil").
Seeks to maintain "benevolent hegemony" (Irving Kristol).
Associated with publications like Commentary (Norman
Podhoretz), the National Interest, the Weekly Standard.
- Radical left (e.g. Noam Chomsky). Capitalist democracy is
fundamentally unjust and must be overthrown. Seeks to
overthrow status quo, therefore anti-US. Also known as
"Seattle Man."
Am I missing anyone?
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Scott Erb
"Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:afe9ed76.02021...@posting.google.com...
Indeed, by that time Kennan was out of government, in no small part because
his views were out of step by that time. He wasn't silent though. I think
Kennan's general perspective on how to deal with the Soviets was better than
the type of approach adopted with NSC-68.
I just ran across some CIA material from November 1954, stating that the
Soviet regime will not change practices due to a change in leadership, that
Communist China is more an ally than rival of the USSR, but won't act
independently. They estimate economic growth to be at about 5-6% a year for
the future, which is higher than what actually was happening. They argue
that the Soviets will try to avoid war, but expand. Its clear that the US
didn't have much faith that any leadership change in the USSR would matter.
> By the way, I had a couple questions for you, as a specialist in
> international relations (I posted them earlier, but perhaps
> you didn't see them). I've mostly learned about history and
> international politics from reading on my own. What books would
> you recommend for a general reader trying to learn about world
> history and international politics? I've put together a list as
> part of a critical review of Noam Chomsky, but I imagine that
> you've read in much more depth in the field.
Again, Chomsky is someone I haven't read much of -- not only is he a
linguist, but when I do read his work on international politics it seems to
me to be very biased and focused on an agenda.
My speciality is European politics and European foreign policy, especially
Germany. What kind of history or international relations are you interested
in? I'll get back to you on those issues since this is an especially busy
week for me and I have only about a minute left before I head off.
-scott
Scott Erb
> > Russil Wvong wrote:
I have a short break now before I have to head back and start cooking a
valentines day dinner...
> By the way, I had a couple questions for you, as a specialist in
> international relations (I posted them earlier, but perhaps
> you didn't see them). I've mostly learned about history and
> international politics from reading on my own. What books would
> you recommend for a general reader trying to learn about world
> history and international politics? I've put together a list as
> part of a critical review of Noam Chomsky, but I imagine that
> you've read in much more depth in the field.
> Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988)
> Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1948, sixth edition 1985)
> George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (1946)
> William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
> George Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950 and Memoirs 1950-1967
An excellent first set of books there. Kennan is always a joy to read. I
really like Shirer's *The Nightmare Years*, where he talks personally about
his experiences 1930-41, meeting with Gandhi at the start of the decade, and
Hitler at the end. How's that for a range? Also, I'd recommend Barbara
Tuchman's "The Guns of August," it's a classic. A lot of historians don't
like her since she writes in such an entertaining manner, but she makes
history come alive. Other work by her is good too, *The Proud Tower* is a
solid history. It's also interesting to read historians of different
perspectives. Eric Hobsbawm is often attacked for his Marxist views, but as
long as you know the bias of the author ahead of time you can take that into
account -- and his work is good history.
Economics is important too, I think a good book on that is Robert L.
Heilbroner *The Worldly Philosophers* originally published 1953, with later
editions. He discusses various economists and their ideas, sort of an
economic history. A new book I'm just starting on intrigues me: David
Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace." And, as long as you aren't a huge
fan of JFK, Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" is a classic
must-read.
An interesting book I also just picked up is Peter Grose, *Operation
Rollback*, looking at American efforts against communism, noting Kennan was
very involved in developing them. I haven't read through it yet.
An excellent book to consider alongside Morgenthau and Carr (E.H. Carr: The
Twenty Year Crisis -- originally published in 1939) is Hedley Bull's *The
Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics.* A book I'm less
impressed with but which has been dominate is Kenneth Waltz, *Theory of
International Relations* (1979). Beyond those at least poli-sci stuff gets
more into theory and less history. There is a lot of specific stuff on
Germany I'd recommend, but I suspect your interests are broader. Otto
Friedrich's *Before the Deluge* is a fascinating account of Berlin in the
twenties. Biographies are always good. Find one about De Gaulle that looks
interesting (I can't remember specific authors on the top of my head), I
think everyone should read a biography of De Gaulle at some time. I also
find the stories of lesser figures interesting, John Bierman has a good
biography on Napoleon III. If something else comes to mind I'll let you
know, I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. If you want anything that
gets more into theory or specific on Germany and Europe, it's easier for me.
I know European history better than American history.
> Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After (1977, revised 1986)
> Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (1994)
> Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith, Modern Latin America (fifth edition
2000)
> William Polk, The Arab World Today (fifth edition 1991)
> Roy Gutman and David Rieff, eds., Crimes of War (1999)
> [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/chomsky.html]
> Most of my reading has been "realist". There's some gaps: Japan,
> Russia, Africa, post-war Europe. I've also been trying to figure
> out what the other schools of thought are. From what I can tell:
Yeah...Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's *Power and Interdependence* sets up
the complex interdependence alternative to realism, pushed farther by people
like James Rosenau. That gets more theoretical and less historical, but
realism is less convincing to scholars today since it posits states as the
central actors, with sovereignty the principle of the international system.
Not only has that never completely been true anyway, but now in much of the
world globalization is erroding the meaning of sovereignty. Good books on
that: Samuel Huntington's *The Clash of Civilizations*, Barber's *Jihad vs.
McWorld,* and Thomas Friedman's *The Olive and the Lexus Tree.* I don't
really agree with any of them, but they are good books nonetheless.
Huntington's is a bit boring, and Friedman very journalistic (obviously) and
his experiences are clearly elite biased.
Anyway, while the US is still powerful enough to treat sovereignty and
national power as central, most states aren't, and in the EU especially the
very meaning of sovereignty is challenged. That is an especially strong
challenge to realism. I think realism itself reflected a particular social
context (something Morgenthau pretty much himself recognizes, though
'neo-realists' like Waltz try to be more universal), and that environment is
changing. We may be going through a transition similar to Europe in the
17th century, when state sovereignty was invented!
> - Liberal (e.g. Richard Falk, Jimmy Carter). Democracy and
> human rights are important; need effective international law.
Pretty much. It's a tradition coming up from Wilsonian idealism. Nowadays
it has a strong economic component too, looking at how linked economies make
it irrational to have military conflict, and make cooperation the best way
to achieve national interest. That requires building institutions and
cooperative ventures. This includees the WTO, UN, etc.
> More supportive of intervention (the caricature is that
> conservatives -- i.e. realists -- want to have a big military
> and keep it at home, liberals want to have a small military
> and send it everywhere).
Even that's a bit off. Kennedy ignored Ike's threat of a military
industrial complex and both Truman and Kennedy wanted big militaries to send
everywhere. But Nixon and Kissinger certainly had some of the least
aggressive policies, and certainly both Bush I and Clinton were quick to use
the military (I don't see a huge foreign policy difference between Bush I
and Clinton...I'm not sure what Bush II will do yet).
> - Neo-conservative (e.g. Ronald Reagan, Paul Wolfowitz).
> Crusading and moralistic ("evil empire", "axis of evil").
Yes...and that seems to be where Bush II is leaning, though Powell is a
counterweight, a more traditional conservative/realist.
> Seeks to maintain "benevolent hegemony" (Irving Kristol).
> Associated with publications like Commentary (Norman
> Podhoretz), the National Interest, the Weekly Standard.
>
> - Radical left (e.g. Noam Chomsky). Capitalist democracy is
> fundamentally unjust and must be overthrown. Seeks to
> overthrow status quo, therefore anti-US. Also known as
> "Seattle Man."
> Am I missing anyone?
Me! There was a Republican Maine Congressman, Thomas Reed, who was fiercly
anti-imperalist and ended up loosing a lot of clout by losing the argument.
He said that America will end up acting against it's values if it becomes
too involved in world affairs, and argued for an anti-imperialist policy.
I agree with the liberal emphasis on building institutions and creating a
kind of cooperative framework, and think globalization is changing the
nature of politics and will require a shift in thinking (systemic change
like what I suspect we're going through is rarely peaceful). But I think an
interventionist foreign policy is both dangerous to our national interest by
creating enemies and a perception we want to push people around, and
dangerous to our domestic freedoms because being active world wide requires
a more powerful government, and that is always a potential threat to civil
liberties. I'd prefer to see principle put before power. That in some ways
is very conservative, almost like old isolationism, but I don't think it
wrong to build cooperative institutions and recognize that we have to think
outside the box on issues of how to define our sovereignty. I'm not being
very coherent on this as I'm rushing having already taken too much time...so
if you want to talk about those things more let me know. Sorry for errors
above, I don't have time to proof read!
-Scott
Martin McPhillips
>
> Eric Hobsbawm is often attacked for his Marxist views, but as
> long as you know the bias of the author ahead of time you can take that into
> account -- and his work is good history.
Eric Hobsbawm isn't just a Marxist, Scott. He's an unrepentant
Stalinist.
Would you say of David Irving, "he's often attacked for his
pro-Hitler views, but as long as you know the bias of the
author ahead of time you can take that into account -- and
his work is good history?"
In fact, Hobsbawm isn't writing history. He's writing a Marxist
interpretation of history and he's writing it *as* someone whose
perspective on the world is that the Soviet Union, under Joseph
Stalin, was mankind's greatest hope.
No wonder you've been screeching on about McCarthyism for days.
You've rewarmed your Marxist sentiments along with your ardent
and relentless anti-Americanism and you want to be in a position
where when you're called on it either you or one of your "scholars"
can scream "McCarthyism."
You are indeed quite a scream.
Russil Wvong
> Indeed, by that time Kennan was out of government, in no small part because
> his views were out of step by that time. He wasn't silent though. I think
> Kennan's general perspective on how to deal with the Soviets was better than
> the type of approach adopted with NSC-68.
I was reading through the lecture notes you put on your website, and
I thought your explanation of Kennan's "strongpoint" defense, versus
the later strategy of trying to defend *everything*, was a good one.
> I just ran across some CIA material from November 1954, stating that the
> Soviet regime will not change practices due to a change in leadership, that
> Communist China is more an ally than rival of the USSR, but won't act
> independently. They estimate economic growth to be at about 5-6% a year for
> the future, which is higher than what actually was happening. They argue
> that the Soviets will try to avoid war, but expand. Its clear that the US
> didn't have much faith that any leadership change in the USSR would matter.
Interesting. I looked up PPS 23 a while ago, and found that our local
university library has a whole set of shelves devoted to Foreign Relations
of the US documents. I'll have to head back there and start browsing
through them some time.
> > I've mostly learned about history and
> > international politics from reading on my own. What books would
> > you recommend for a general reader trying to learn about world
> > history and international politics? I've put together a list as
> > part of a critical review of Noam Chomsky, but I imagine that
> > you've read in much more depth in the field.
>
> Again, Chomsky is someone I haven't read much of -- not only is he a
> linguist, but when I do read his work on international politics it seems to
> me to be very biased and focused on an agenda.
Agreed. I put together the critical review as a kind of introduction to
international politics, whether for Chomsky fans or anyone else.
> My speciality is European politics and European foreign policy, especially
> Germany. What kind of history or international relations are you interested
> in? I'll get back to you on those issues since this is an especially busy
> week for me and I have only about a minute left before I head off.
Thanks, I'm certainly in no hurry. I guess the problem I'm trying to
tackle is that I think our education system does a woefully inadequate
job of teaching us about the world, and if anything, TV is even worse --
it gives us a very shallow view of the world.
September 11 has raised people's awareness of the importance of
international politics. What I'd like to do is put together an
introduction to world history and international politics, kind of
like the Chomsky review, but aimed at a more general audience.
Maybe turn it into a talk.politics.international FAQ.
I've already put together a Global Issues FAQ:
[http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html]
But that only covers a small corner of international politics,
the area where there really is a global problem that's of concern
to the entire world. Most problems of international politics
aren't like that. So I think I need to start a new FAQ.
In particular, I'd like to include a *short* list of books on
recent world history. Reading the books on the list wouldn't
make people instant experts on world history, but they'd at least
have a grasp of some of the basic ideas and problems.
I guess my question is: If you had to recommend *one* book on the
history of West Germany after World War II, for a general reader,
what would it be? It doesn't have to cover recent events such as
re-unification, to me the big question is how Nazi Germany was
rehabilitated.
What about for France?
Russil Wvong
> I have a short break now before I have to head back and start cooking a
> valentines day dinner...
Good luck! :-)
Thanks for the detailed response! That definitely gives me a lot
to look at. Some authors that you mention I've already encountered --
I've read Heilbroner, Grose, Carr, Huntington. I've read Tuchman's
"A Distant Mirror" (the fourteenth century), but not "The Guns of
August." For economics, I've found Paul Krugman to be a good guide.
(I asked an economist friend a similar question: if you could recommend
a single book on economics for a general reader, what would it be?
He recommended "Peddling Prosperity.")
If you haven't read Kennan's "Around the Cragged Hill" yet, you might
want to take a look at it. It's his most recent book which discusses
foreign policy, I think, and he recommends that the US focus on
its commitments to NATO Europe and Japan, while reducing its
involvements elsewhere, and devote more attention to resolving
domestic problems. Not sure how September 11 would change this
picture.
I'm definitely intrigued by your description of Keohane/Nye. I've
seen arguments that countries are becoming more interdependent, but
I haven't seen any really convincing ones.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond! I hope it didn't make
you too late. :-)
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
> > By the way, I had a couple questions for you, as a specialist in
Scott Erb
-snip-
> Thanks, I'm certainly in no hurry. I guess the problem I'm trying to
> tackle is that I think our education system does a woefully inadequate
> job of teaching us about the world, and if anything, TV is even worse --
> it gives us a very shallow view of the world.
When once a college Freshmen asked me "Was Eisenhower the leader of Russia,"
I realized that my classes had to deal with some basic history in order to
start teaching international relations. I routinely asked "has anyone heard
of Dean Acheson, or Nikita Khruschev, or John Foster Dulles (not to mention
Nitze or Kennan) and its rare. One time someone came up to me when I was
teaching back in Minnesota so it was over six years ago "wow, I never knew
we had a war in Korea!" Not everyone is that far off, some had excellent
teachers, and the education is improving -- students seem more prepared now
than five years ago. But when foreign students come hear they are surprised
by what Americans don't know. It's a real gap. Cold War history is far
from my speciality (except NATO stuff like the multilateral force proposal
and things like that which Americans yawn at), but it's something people
have to know. World War I...few have ever heard of the Franco-Prussian war,
though once a kid remembered it was mentioned on the Simpsons.
> September 11 has raised people's awareness of the importance of
> international politics. What I'd like to do is put together an
> introduction to world history and international politics, kind of
> like the Chomsky review, but aimed at a more general audience.
> Maybe turn it into a talk.politics.international FAQ.
That would be cool. I'd definitely use that as a resource and participate
as well I could. I think often serious groups like that can avoid the kind
of flame wars that are so easy to fall into.
> I've already put together a Global Issues FAQ:
> [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html]
Cool -- I'll check it out.
> But that only covers a small corner of international politics,
> the area where there really is a global problem that's of concern
> to the entire world. Most problems of international politics
> aren't like that. So I think I need to start a new FAQ.
>
> In particular, I'd like to include a *short* list of books on
> recent world history. Reading the books on the list wouldn't
> make people instant experts on world history, but they'd at least
> have a grasp of some of the basic ideas and problems.
>
> I guess my question is: If you had to recommend *one* book on the
> history of West Germany after World War II, for a general reader,
> what would it be? It doesn't have to cover recent events such as
> re-unification, to me the big question is how Nazi Germany was
> rehabilitated.
One book on the history of West Germany after World War II...I'm going to
get back to you on that. The things that pop up in my mind right away are
political sciency stuff and I know if I wrote something off the top of my
head I'd think of something else later. I can tell you that Gordon Craig's
*Germany 1866-1945* is the one book I'd recommend for the pre-1945 era. I
just finished a huge research project (a book manuscript) on German foreign
policy focusing on the last 20 years, so I'll go over my notes and see if
any books stand out.
> What about for France?
I'm going to mull that over too...
-Scott
Russil Wvong
> Scott Erb wrote:
> > Eric Hobsbawm is often attacked for his Marxist views, but as
> > long as you know the bias of the author ahead of time you can take
> > that into account -- and his work is good history.
>
> Eric Hobsbawm isn't just a Marxist, Scott. He's an unrepentant
> Stalinist.
But he is a pretty well-known and respected historian (I've seen
references to him before, although I haven't read any of his books).
Garry Wills, in the New York Review of Books:
Despite the reservations I have expressed about his book,
Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes is a master historian's
synthesis. It weighs factors judiciously, relates events
economically, and throws new light on everything it treats. It is
written with clarity, conviction, and wit. It is narrative history
of a very high order. There is real passion in his description of
the horrible wars of this century, which go far to justify his
label for this as an "age of extremes." Hobsbawm arranges his mass
of materials as a drama -- a tragedy, to judge from its unhappy
ending -- in three acts: The Age of Catastrophe (1917-1945), The
Golden Age (1945-1973), The Landslide (1973-1993). Admittedly he
does not confine his story to his three main themes with rigidity;
but they are the leading motifs nonetheless.
The Age of Catastrophe is marked by the breakdown of the liberal
dream of the nineteenth century, signaled primarily by the
capitalist crisis of the Great Slump. Liberalism's failure gave
rise to the socialist dream, strengthened by the fact that the
Soviet Union, thanks in part to its isolation from other parts of
the world economy, escaped the worst effects of the
Slump. Visitors to the Soviet Union who saw a revolution "working"
were not simply blinded by ideology. They were reacting to the
fact that "during the 1930s, the rate of growth of the Soviet
economy outpaced all other countries except Japan." An
anti-bourgeois avant garde in the arts further delegitimated
liberal ideals, but fed the fears that led to a rise of dictators
(a process on which Hobsbawm is especially good).
The Golden Age, in this scheme, reflects the postwar prosperity of
an American-led economy and the hopeful birth of new nations out
of the falling empires. Capitalism recovered its balance by
tempering laissez faire with regulation and controls. The
socialist ideal was rekindled in the third world, only to crash
with the fall of the Soviet Empire at the end of the
period. Renewed troubles in capitalism combine with that fall to
deprive the current world of any coherent project, leading to
Hobsbawm's gloomy current assessment of the Landslide.
Why did the socialist revolution, in which Hobsbawm had invested
his own hopes, fail so dramatically? He believes that the Soviet
Union's leadership was a disaster from the outset. The revolution
occurred in the wrong place (rural Russia, not industrial Germany)
and adopted the wrong tactics for its spread (secret cadres rather
than open organization of the workers). The superficiality of
communism's hold on the mass of people in its regimes is reflected
in the suddenness of its disappearance when the Party elite
failed. Hobsbawm tempers his great historical disappointment with
the reflection that the revolution saved capitalism's bacon --
first by the huge Soviet sacrifices that made the defeat of Hitler
possible, and then by so scaring the West that it had to modulate
its economies with regulation.
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/426, subscribers only]
> No wonder you've been screeching on about McCarthyism for days.
> You've rewarmed your Marxist sentiments along with your ardent
> and relentless anti-Americanism and you want to be in a position
> where when you're called on it either you or one of your "scholars"
> can scream "McCarthyism."
Marxist sentiments? Ardent and relentless anti-Americanism? I checked
out Scott's website and past postings before starting this discussion,
and from what I can tell, he's neither Marxist nor anti-American.
Why the bile?
Speaking of the Soviet Union, I was reading Timothy Garton Ash's
review of "The Black Book of Communism" a few days ago. Garton Ash
compares Western reactions to Nazism and Communism:
Why the asymmetry of indulgence? A number of reasons can be found.
The Holocaust was a unique attempt to exterminate one of the most
cultured, talented, articulate peoples on earth: the people of the
book, of historical memory. They responded with a determination that
this memory should never die. The French philosopher Alain Besançon
speaks of a "hyperamnesia" of Nazism as opposed to an amnesia of
communism. Moreover, the horrors of Nazism were uncovered by the
wartime victors, by the western allies in Bergen-Belsen and by the
Soviets in the east. About their own camps, by contrast, the Soviet
Union was able to exercise a sustained Orwellian denial. The very
longevity of the Soviet regime, compared with the 13 years of
Nazism, facilitated this. Even the survivors died before they could
tell their tales.
In the west, there remained a strong residue of gratitude for the
Soviet Union's part in defeating Nazism. Then, of course, there was the
presence of powerful communist parties in France and Italy. But even
the non-communist left in France, Italy and elsewhere in western
Europe, fought shy of the equation of Nazism and communism as just two
variants of totalitarianism - an equation identified with the anti-
communist right in the early cold war years. In the class of 1968, this
asymmetrical indulgence was a product less of pro-communism than of
what I call anti-anti-communism. And then there was the fact that the
original utopia of communism was universal, humane and noble in ways
that the utopia of Nazi Volksgemeinschaft patently was not.
For all these reasons, there is a great deficit of memory and history
to be made up. The Black Book is an important first step in that
direction. Quantitatively, communism worldwide has been responsible for
more deaths, tortures and incarcerations than any other political
system in the 20th century. Of this plain fact there should no longer
be any doubt.
[http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=7pt64a%248ip%241%40nnrp1.deja.com]
Tim Starr
[snip]
>Indeed, by that time Kennan was out of government, in no small part because
>his views were out of step by that time. He wasn't silent though. I think
>Kennan's general perspective on how to deal with the Soviets was better than
>the type of approach adopted with NSC-68.
That's funny, because he was the main intellectual influence on NSC-68.
>I just ran across some CIA material from November 1954, stating that the
>Soviet regime will not change practices due to a change in leadership...
Correct, as proven by Hungary '56.
>that Communist China is more an ally than rival of the USSR, but won't act
>independently.
Which was true, except that Mao was more Stalinist than Khruschev, until the
early 1970s.
>They estimate economic growth to be at about 5-6% a year for the future, which
>is higher than what actually was happening.
Economic estimates for the Soviet Union have always been difficult.
>They argue that the Soviets will try to avoid war, but expand.
Quite accurate.
Tim Starr
Scott Erb
> > I have a short break now before I have to head back and start cooking a
> > valentines day dinner...
>
> Good luck! :-)
It went great -- stuffed manicotti (with spinach, mushrooms, onions, and
feta cheese). My wife's a CPA and this is tax season. Plus with
enron in the news, accountants have it rough these days (did you see last
week's cover
of *The Economist*?). Gotta treat her right!
> Thanks for the detailed response! That definitely gives me a lot
> to look at. Some authors that you mention I've already encountered --
> I've read Heilbroner, Grose, Carr, Huntington. I've read Tuchman's
> "A Distant Mirror" (the fourteenth century), but not "The Guns of
> August."
Guns of August is a classic, I think. It made me a Tuchman fan.
>For economics, I've found Paul Krugman to be a good guide.
> (I asked an economist friend a similar question: if you could recommend
> a single book on economics for a general reader, what would it be?
> He recommended "Peddling Prosperity.")
> If you haven't read Kennan's "Around the Cragged Hill" yet, you might
> want to take a look at it. It's his most recent book which discusses
> foreign policy, I think, and he recommends that the US focus on
> its commitments to NATO Europe and Japan, while reducing its
> involvements elsewhere, and devote more attention to resolving
> domestic problems. Not sure how September 11 would change this
> picture.
>
> I'm definitely intrigued by your description of Keohane/Nye. I've
> seen arguments that countries are becoming more interdependent, but
> I haven't seen any really convincing ones.
>
> Thanks again for taking the time to respond! I hope it didn't make
> you too late. :-)
I think the most convincing argument of interdependence is empirical: the EU
combining currencies, global trade increasing dramatically, and changes that
hit states domestically.
Consider: 1985: global invest starts a massive increase, up three fold in
just eight years. Mergers of firms across borders increase, so does trade.
Then: The fall of Communism. The collapse of the Italian 'first Republic,'
Mexico and Japan find their single party dominated governments falling,
Europe moves towards the Euro and European Union. I think we're undergoing
a shift in what world politics is all about, caused by the information and
technology revolutions, similar to the shift caused back in the 16th and
17th century by the similar revolutions (the printing press and advanced
weaponry). I don't think people have come to grips with what this means
yet. Terrorism is an example of that -- a new kind of war, a new kind of
threat. Sovereignty is clearly reeling in most states, perhaps only China,
the US, and maybe Russia, India, and a few others maintain the kind of
ability to pursue truly national policies, and that could change.
I could just be seeing things that aren't there. But the system of
sovereign states emerged when we had an information revolution (books made
info available to people in a way like never before, and allowed traditional
authority structures to be challenged) and weaponry/war (gun powder and new
weapons ushered in a new political order). Are we going through something
similar? Is this a time in history that someday will be studied by
historians as a period of transformation? I don't know. Why do you find
interdependence arguments unconvincing? I do think Morgenthau makes a
pretty powerful argument and traditional realism (unlike Waltz's
neo-realism) is flexible enough to handle new contexts. But the dynamics of
trade and global investment seem to be adding something to the mix that
traditional realists didn't yet have to deal with.
-Scott
Scott Erb
"Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
news:9384ebd6.0202...@posting.google.com...
> "Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:<Q3Oa8.5926$Nf3.3...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>...
>
> [snip]
>
> >Indeed, by that time Kennan was out of government, in no small part
because
> >his views were out of step by that time. He wasn't silent though. I
think
> >Kennan's general perspective on how to deal with the Soviets was better
than
> >the type of approach adopted with NSC-68.
>
> That's funny, because he was the main intellectual influence on NSC-68.
Paul Nitze headed the group that wrote NSC-68. They had a view of
containment that went farther than Kennan wanted, and Kennan was losing most
of the debates by that time, one reason he left. See Walter Lafeber, esp.
page 93 (America, Russia and the Cold War 1945-2000, ninth edition). He
thought NATO hindered a way to step down from the Cold War, and favored some
kind of neutrality for much of Europe. That was very different than what
NSC-68 was laying out. NSC-68 did build upon Kennan's ideas from the Long
Telegram, but in a way Kennan himself did not favor.
> >I just ran across some CIA material from November 1954, stating that the
> >Soviet regime will not change practices due to a change in leadership...
>
> Correct, as proven by Hungary '56.
By then Khrushchev was dominant, so it's hard to say if earlier policies
might not have caused a change. The hardline could have been a
self-fulfilling prophecy. If there was a 'window of opportunity' it closed
fast, leaving the issue debatable.
> >that Communist China is more an ally than rival of the USSR, but won't
act
> >independently.
>
> Which was true, except that Mao was more Stalinist than Khruschev, until
the
> early 1970s.
Actually this wasn't completely true, something Kennan and others realized
earlier -- anyone knowing Russian and Chinese history should doubt an
alliance (and realists certainly would see it as unlikely). They kept an
alliance of sorts relatively stable until 1960, but after 1960 it was clear
that the two were taking separate paths.
> >They estimate economic growth to be at about 5-6% a year for the future,
which
> >is higher than what actually was happening.
>
> Economic estimates for the Soviet Union have always been difficult.
They've always been wrong. I think Pipes in the Reagan Administration was
one of the first high in government to argue that things were much worse off
than most thought.
> >They argue that the Soviets will try to avoid war, but expand.
>
> Quite accurate.
As would a similar claim of the US. The two were in a Cold War. The Soviet
system was, however, sick from the start and I think economic implosion was
inevitable. If they'd expanded and looted other countries they could have
lasted longer, but containment effectively ruled that out.
Scott Erb
> > Scott Erb wrote:> Speaking of the Soviet Union, I was reading Timothy
I was always puzzled by the lack of emphasis on Stalin's crimes. I had an
argument with a prof as an undergrad -- this was a rather conservative prof,
a Russian specialist, who later worked for the CIA, so he couldn't be
accused of wanting ideologically to attack Hitler more. He insisted that
Hitler's crimes were uniquely evil because he killed people for who they
were, while Stalin killed them for what they believed or because he imagined
them a threat. I could see how the former can be especially repugnant, but
I couldn't see how one could say that killing 20 million for 'what they
think' is somehow not as bad as killing 11 million for 'who they are.' The
horror is unimaginable in each. Looking at the 20th century -- as
Brzezinski notes, the deadliest century in history, especially the first
half -- the lesson that centralized power is dangerous is obvious, and the
danger of rationalizing action through ideology is clear. The quote does
explain why somehow Stalin's crimes -- or those of Mao, such as the famine
that he caused that killed millions, the cultural revolution, etc., -- seem
less salient in everyday life.
That's also something that people need a better education on.
Scott Erb
> I've already put together a Global Issues FAQ:
> [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html]
Impressive -- would you mind if I put a link to it on my webpage?
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Scott Erb wrote:
> > > Eric Hobsbawm is often attacked for his Marxist views, but as
> > > long as you know the bias of the author ahead of time you can take
> > > that into account -- and his work is good history.
> >
> > Eric Hobsbawm isn't just a Marxist, Scott. He's an unrepentant
> > Stalinist.
>
> But he is a pretty well-known and respected historian (I've seen
> references to him before, although I haven't read any of his books).
> Garry Wills, in the New York Review of Books:
This review alone -- and Garry Wills is a borderline crank, in my
estimation -- with its reiteration of the rise and fall and rise
of the "socialist ideal" as captured by Hobsbawm, with a litany
of excuses for why the "revolution" didn't work, should be enough
to clue you into Hobsbawm's delusions. And you really need to
find a source other than the New York Review of Books, where
the theme seems to be "we're sorry we are old leftists, we've
got a new leftist approach to things."
> Despite the reservations I have expressed about his book,
> Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes is a master historian's
> synthesis.
<snip to url>
> [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/426, subscribers only]
>
> > No wonder you've been screeching on about McCarthyism for days.
> > You've rewarmed your Marxist sentiments along with your ardent
> > and relentless anti-Americanism and you want to be in a position
> > where when you're called on it either you or one of your "scholars"
> > can scream "McCarthyism."
>
> Marxist sentiments?
Yes, Scott is a Marxist apologist, always has been. Not only that, he's
a Soviet apologist. And if you had checked more closely into his posting
history (it's all available on google), you would have been able to
discern it. He'll deny it all day long, and "condemn" the Soviet Union
and the mistakes of Marx and Marxists, but when push comes to shove
he'll always draw moral equivalency, at least, between the U.S. and
the Soviets during the Cold War. In fact...
> Ardent and relentless anti-Americanism?
If you examine his record closely, you'll find him finding the U.S.
in the wrong throughout the Cold War: in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba,
Nicaragua, even to the point where he steps over the line and
assigns blame to the U.S. for the Cold War itself. Just a
for instance: with regard to Castro, he "improved health care
and increased literacy," while enslaving the Cubans for the
past 40 years, and that makes him better than the "thugs"
he replaced. For Scott, a totalitarian Marxist regime is always
better than these disgraceful little thugs who have no
real ideology that they want to ram down the throats of
their people. And, of course, following the strict Leftist
line that no credit is ever to be given to strong anti-Communists,
the U.S. didn't "win" the Cold War, that great Communist Gorbachev
sensibly retired from the contest. Ronald Reagan, of course,
gets no credit at all. (Scott loves to talk about how he
respects Kissinger's writing, but when you quote him what
Kissinger says about Reagan's impact on the Soviet Union he
basically calls it propaganda, neglecting to note that it
was Kissinger's own policies that were targeted and renounced
by Reagan who also used Kissinger as a punching bag. You
should pick up a copy of Kissinger's *Diplomacy.*)
> I checked
> out Scott's website and past postings before starting this discussion,
> and from what I can tell, he's neither Marxist nor anti-American.
> Why the bile?
Scott is quite cautious to bank his shots. He doesn't like to get
his hands too dirty, as with his, "I've never really read Chomsky,
but I note he says some interesting things about the media" (that's
a paraphrase of his basic line). Scott was very quickly out of the
box after 9-11 to find an explanation for it in U.S. foreign policy,
a la Chomsky, starting out with the absurdity that it was the
U.S. that created Bin Laden and that the U.S. helping the Afghans
throw out the Soviet occupation was the cause of this particular
brand of Islamist terrorism.
That's one of the reasons Scott is so girlishly hysterical about
Joseph McCarthy these days, attempting to have one more dinner
out on that episode as a way of defending his own *entirely* typical
Leftist Anti-Americanism. Scott's personal ideal is "anti-statist
socialism," a dreamy utopian puddle of nonsense. Scott is very
apprehensive, you see, of the concentration of political power.
It's very dangerous. But, oddly enough, he's an ardent cheerleader
for the emerging European superstate, not to mention gleeful at
the idea that the German government carries a mean riding crop
when it comes to free enterprise, exacting all sorts of "benefits."
So, Scott isn't afraid of concentration of political power if
it's a socialist government that does the concentrating.
Scott is also deceitful. He likes to hold all positions at once.
So that in a discussion with him you'll suddenly find him holding
your position, just in case, I suppose, you might be right. And
he likes to change definitions of things in mid-stream and then
just deny it or lie about it. A good example was when he decided
that for the benefit of his "anti-statist socialism" he would
declare that voluntary association was socialism, but he then
turned around in another discussion and insisted that Hillary
Clinton's health care program was *not* socialism.
> Speaking of the Soviet Union, I was reading Timothy Garton Ash's
> review of "The Black Book of Communism" a few days ago. Garton Ash
> compares Western reactions to Nazism and Communism:
>
> Why the asymmetry of indulgence? A number of reasons can be found.
> The Holocaust was a unique attempt to exterminate one of the most
> cultured, talented, articulate peoples on earth: the people of the
> book, of historical memory. They responded with a determination that
> this memory should never die. The French philosopher Alain Besançon
> speaks of a "hyperamnesia" of Nazism as opposed to an amnesia of
> communism. Moreover, the horrors of Nazism were uncovered by the
> wartime victors, by the western allies in Bergen-Belsen and by the
> Soviets in the east. About their own camps, by contrast, the Soviet
> Union was able to exercise a sustained Orwellian denial. The very
> longevity of the Soviet regime, compared with the 13 years of
> Nazism, facilitated this. Even the survivors died before they could
> tell their tales.
Well, you have the "holocaust denial of the Left" -- regarding the Ukrainian
Terror Famine of 1931-32 (seven to ten million peasants intentionally
starved to death) -- right here in this newsgroup, from one of Scott
Erb's favored posters.
And another thing: Scott Erb does not know his own field, and that's
because he doesn't know how to know it.
Tim Starr
> "Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
> news:9384ebd6.0202...@posting.google.com...
> > "Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
> news:<Q3Oa8.5926$Nf3.3...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>...
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > >Indeed, by that time Kennan was out of government, in no small part
> because
> > >his views were out of step by that time. He wasn't silent though. I
> think
> > >Kennan's general perspective on how to deal with the Soviets was better
> than
> > >the type of approach adopted with NSC-68.
> >
> > That's funny, because he was the main intellectual influence on NSC-68.
>
> Paul Nitze headed the group that wrote NSC-68. They had a view of
Better read "Operation Rollback," which I've just finished, before you make
that claim.
>>>I just ran across some CIA material from November 1954, stating that the
>>>Soviet regime will not change practices due to a change in leadership...
>>
>>Correct, as proven by Hungary '56.
>
>By then Khrushchev was dominant...
...IOW, the leadership transition was complete.
>...so it's hard to say if earlier policies might not have caused a change.
It's hard to say if they would've caused any change, too. The period from
the death of Lenin to the rise of Stalin was also one in which the Soviet
leadership succession was incomplete, and the Soviet Union refrained from
expansion.
At the time, the US leadership had no indications that the Soviet Union would
be any less aggressive under Stalin's as-yet-undetermined successor as it had
been under Stalin. In retrospect, there's no reason to think that the USSR
would've been any less aggressive under any other successor to Stalin besides
Khruschev, there's just the speculation of those who would like to blame the US
for the Soviet Union's later aggression. The crackdown in Berlin in '53 is
another indication that things weren't going to get much better after Stalin.
>>>that Communist China is more an ally than rival of the USSR, but won't act
>>>independently.
>>
>>Which was true, except that Mao was more Stalinist than Khruschev, until the
>>early 1970s.
>
>Actually this wasn't completely true...
Yes it was. Did you even read the article Russell Wvong pointed out?
>...something Kennan and others realized
>earlier -- anyone knowing Russian and Chinese history should doubt an
>alliance (and realists certainly would see it as unlikely). They kept an
>alliance of sorts relatively stable until 1960, but after 1960 it was clear
>that the two were taking separate paths.
The only separation was that under Khruschev the Soviet Union was less of a
sponsor of Communist revolutionary expansion than China. Brezhnev quickly
remedied that, taking over North Vietnam as a client from China starting in
'65, although China wasn't eased out until the early '70s. (See Stephen
Morris' "Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia" on this.)
>>>They estimate economic growth to be at about 5-6% a year for the future,
>>>which is higher than what actually was happening.
>>
>>Economic estimates for the Soviet Union have always been difficult.
>
>They've always been wrong.
Yes - including those of the Soviet managers themselves. It's unfair to blame
the CIA for not being able to make estimates the Soviets themselves were unable
to make.
>I think Pipes in the Reagan Administration was one of the first high in
>government to argue that things were much worse off than most thought.
Yes, the same Pipes whose "Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime" you claimed to
have read, but obviously hadn't.
>>>They argue that the Soviets will try to avoid war, but expand.
>>
>>Quite accurate.
>
>As would a similar claim of the US.
No, the US was all set to contract after WWII between about '45-'48, went
through a big military demobilization, abolished the OSS, didn't replace it with
the CIA until years later, etc. It wasn't until the effects of Soviet betrayals
after the war & Kennan's Long Telegram were felt, along with the pleas of
European allies like Britain, France, & Germany to save them from the Red Army,
that the US responded with a plan to defend the Free World against Soviet
aggression. Now you're even contradicting Gaddis, who you also claim to have
read and agreed with.
Tim Starr
Tim Starr
>>Scott Erb wrote:
>>>Eric Hobsbawm is often attacked for his Marxist views, but as
>>>long as you know the bias of the author ahead of time you can take
>>>that into account -- and his work is good history.
>>
>>Eric Hobsbawm isn't just a Marxist, Scott. He's an unrepentant
>>Stalinist.
>
...only by other Commie-sympathizers. Compare his account of the
Soviet and
Chinese collectivizations of agriculture to those of Conquest and
Jasper Becker
(in "Hungry Ghosts"). Hobsbawm portrays them as good policies that
produced
real benefits for the Soviet and Chinese people, at great human cost,
while
Conquest & Becker point out that the human cost of these policies were
of much
greater magnitude than Hobsbawm makes out, and no net benefit. He
also points
to '80s Hungarian agriculture as an alleged example of
collectivization that
worked in practice, but Hungarian agriculture wasn't socialist any
more by that
time.
A better 20th-century history to read would be Paul Johnson's "Modern
Times."
Interestingly, Erb claims to recommend it to his students, but didn't
mention it
to you. Another possibility would be J.M. Roberts' "History of the
20th Century." Although I haven't yet read it, at least it wasn't
written by a
literally unrepentant Stalinist like Hobsbawm.
For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
Tim Starr
Tim Starr
Philosophers,"
is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner, who was convinced
of the
viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse, when
he was
forced by the evidence to admit that "Mises was right." That's Ludwig
von
Mises, who proved in the early 1920s that rational economic
calculation was
impossible under socialism. I do know a libertarian economics
professor who
still used Heilbroner's book as a reference for his students, but he
counted
on his own ability to balance its presentation with his lectures to
his students. He doesn't use it anymore, preferring "New Ideas from
Dead Economists," by Buccholz & Feldstein.
Tim Starr
Scott Erb
criticisms of Paul Johnson too, and he's obviously coming from a particular
perspective. The worst thing a person can do is find a perspective he or
she agrees with and then focus primarily on those works and not try to learn
something from other perspectives too. No one gets it completely right,
interpretations can be doubted, but ideology as a guide more often creates
errors than enlightenment.
"Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
news:9384ebd6.02021...@posting.google.com...
Scott Erb
> Philosophers,"
> is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner, who was convinced
> of the
> viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the Soviet
economic system, including many in the CIA. The fact that you label
Heilbroner a 'Soviet sympathizer' really suggests that you are far too fast
and loose with trying to connect anyone who doesn't follow the line you want
of being akin to a Communist. I remember getting in debates with people in
the early eighties when I was in DC about that very issue -- I was convinced
the Soviet system could not function economically and collapse would come
(though I was afraid they'd use the military to try to ward of the
collapse -- luckily that didn't happen) with conservatives telling me that
the Soviet economy was evil but well oiled and functioning. Socialist
planned economies cannot work, they stagnate into bureaucratic inflexibility
and accounting systems that make enron look spiffy.
>when
> he was
> forced by the evidence to admit that "Mises was right." That's Ludwig
It's nice when someone admits their mistake when the evidence shows they
were wrong. That is a mark of intellectual honesty. And so far, I've seen
no economist who has been right on everything!
> von
> Mises, who proved in the early 1920s that rational economic
> calculation was
> impossible under socialism. I do know a libertarian economics
> professor who
> still used Heilbroner's book as a reference for his students, but he
> counted
> on his own ability to balance its presentation with his lectures to
> his students. He doesn't use it anymore, preferring "New Ideas from
> Dead Economists," by Buccholz & Feldstein.
All books have to be balanced, nothing should be treated as sacred writ.
Heilbroner is a good introduction to economic thinking, though I'm certain
like Galbraith, people will disagree on many points and radical capitalists
will not be satisfied (though their work tends to be theory driven rather
than evidence driven themselves).
The key again: a balance of perspectives, recognition that people are not to
be labeled or branded wrong because of their point of view alone, or because
or one or two wrong claims, and an honest approach to the issues. The worst
thing to do in talking history is to turn it into an ideological jihad.
Bill Bonde
Scott Erb wrote:
>
> "Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
> news:9384ebd6.02021...@posting.google.com...
> > Oh, I also forgot: Scott's economics recommendation, "The Worldly
> > Philosophers,"
> > is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner, who was convinced
> > of the
> > viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
>
> ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the Soviet
> economic system, including many in the CIA.
>
Now, why is this? Perhaps it is because the USSR was capable of going on
for a long time. China has. Cuba has. North Korea has.
> I remember getting in debates with people in
> the early eighties when I was in DC about that very issue -- I was convinced
> the Soviet system could not function economically and collapse would come
>
Yawn.
> (though I was afraid they'd use the military to try to ward of the
> collapse -- luckily that didn't happen) with conservatives telling me that
> the Soviet economy was evil but well oiled and functioning.
>
North Korea shows us how far down you can go without giving up.
> Socialist
> planned economies cannot work, they stagnate into bureaucratic inflexibility
> and accounting systems that make enron look spiffy.
>
Duh. Debate something real, Scott.
Scott Erb
"Bill Bonde" <stderr_...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:3C6E071D...@mail.com...
>
>
> Scott Erb wrote:
> >
> > "Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
> > news:9384ebd6.02021...@posting.google.com...
> > > Oh, I also forgot: Scott's economics recommendation, "The Worldly
> > > Philosophers,"
> > > is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner, who was convinced
> > > of the
> > > viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
> >
> > ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the
Soviet
> > economic system, including many in the CIA.
> >
> Now, why is this? Perhaps it is because the USSR was capable of going on
> for a long time. China has. Cuba has. North Korea has.
In other words, you're agreeing with me that a view that the Soviet system
was viable for a long time does not mean one is a Soviet-sympathizer. Thank
you.
China, however, has done well because its abandoned communism for all
practical purposes. Economically it's embraced the kind of state capitalism
that Taiwan, and the other Asian NICs used in the fifties through seventies
to grow, keeping an authoritarian government. Just as those states have had
to slowly move towards democracy as a middle class has developed, I think
China will face that kind of necessity by 2020. How it handles it will be
telling for the future of that country.
There is a debate raging on whether China or Russia took the best path to
reform. Many argue China did, that reforming the economy first to create
economic stability before political reform is a more successful route to
take (the same argument defenders of Taiwan, South Korea, etc., used to
use). I see the logic in that argument, but I think its best to reform
politically as well. China could set up a real problem if they don't start
gradually moving power from the central government and introducing more
democracy. Russia could have done it better, but economic reform like China
has isn't alone enough. Time will tell.
Russil Wvong
> "Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I've already put together a Global Issues FAQ:
> > [http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html]
>
> Impressive -- would you mind if I put a link to it on my webpage?
Sure, feel free. Glad you liked it!
Russil Wvong
> I was always puzzled by the lack of emphasis on Stalin's crimes. I had an
> argument with a prof as an undergrad -- this was a rather conservative prof,
> a Russian specialist, who later worked for the CIA, so he couldn't be
> accused of wanting ideologically to attack Hitler more. He insisted that
> Hitler's crimes were uniquely evil because he killed people for who they
> were, while Stalin killed them for what they believed or because he imagined
> them a threat. I could see how the former can be especially repugnant, but
> I couldn't see how one could say that killing 20 million for 'what they
> think' is somehow not as bad as killing 11 million for 'who they are.' The
> horror is unimaginable in each.
I can think of at least one way in which Nazi Germany's crimes were worse
than the Soviet Union's: Germany was one of the most civilized and modern
countries in the West, the country of Goethe, Kant, Bach, with one of the
most educated populations in Europe. I think that's one reason that the
mass butchery of the Holocaust is seen as uniquely horrifying, despite
the other monsters of the twentieth century.
I picked up Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror" at the local library
yesterday. (Unfortunately, they didn't have anything by Keohane or Nye;
guess I'll have to check with the central branch.)
Russil Wvong
> It went great -- stuffed manicotti (with spinach, mushrooms, onions, and
> feta cheese). My wife's a CPA and this is tax season. Plus with
> enron in the news, accountants have it rough these days (did you see
> last week's cover of *The Economist*?). Gotta treat her right!
Glad to hear it went well! Yes, the Economist cover was hilarious.
(For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a shark cage with three or four
razor-toothed accountants inside. There's a sign on the cage:
"Don't feed the accountants.")
> I think the most convincing argument of interdependence is empirical:
> the EU combining currencies, global trade increasing dramatically, and
> changes that hit states domestically.
>
> Consider: 1985: global invest starts a massive increase, up three fold in
> just eight years. Mergers of firms across borders increase, so does trade.
> Then: The fall of Communism. The collapse of the Italian 'first Republic,'
> Mexico and Japan find their single party dominated governments falling,
> Europe moves towards the Euro and European Union. I think we're undergoing
> a shift in what world politics is all about, caused by the information and
> technology revolutions, similar to the shift caused back in the 16th and
> 17th century by the similar revolutions (the printing press and advanced
> weaponry). I don't think people have come to grips with what this means
> yet. Terrorism is an example of that -- a new kind of war, a new kind of
> threat. Sovereignty is clearly reeling in most states, perhaps only China,
> the US, and maybe Russia, India, and a few others maintain the kind of
> ability to pursue truly national policies, and that could change.
>
> I could just be seeing things that aren't there. But the system of
> sovereign states emerged when we had an information revolution (books made
> info available to people in a way like never before, and allowed traditional
> authority structures to be challenged) and weaponry/war (gun powder and new
> weapons ushered in a new political order). Are we going through something
> similar? Is this a time in history that someday will be studied by
> historians as a period of transformation? I don't know. Why do you find
> interdependence arguments unconvincing?
I haven't looked into it enough yet, I think. I ought to look up
and read Keohane/Nye, to make sure that I understand the strongest
arguments in favor of this view, but here's a few counter-arguments:
1. Paul Krugman points out that trade and economic integration
aren't unstoppable forces. The world economy was quite integrated
in 1910, too.
Historians sometimes call it the First Global Economy: the era
from the mid-19th century onward in which new technologies of
transportation and communication made large-scale international
trade and investment possible for the first time. In their quest
to create that global economy, to abolish the traditional
constraints of geography, engineers accomplished miracles --
laying telegraph cables beneath the Atlantic, digging tunnels
through the Alps and building paths between the seas. The Panama
Canal, whose construction required breakthroughs not only in
earth-moving technology but in medical science, was the high-water
mark of the age (literally: the locks raise ships 85 feet above
sea level).
And just as the canal reached completion, the global economy fell
apart.
To some extent, the First Global Economy was a casualty of
war. The Panama Canal and the Western Front both went into action
in August 1914. The war and its indirect consequences --
hyperinflation and political instability in Germany, isolationism
in the United States, and so on -- partly explain why the forces
of globalization went into a retreat that by 1945 left the world
economy thoroughly Balkanized. But the truth is that even before
1914, though the volume of trade and investment continued to
expand, the globalist idea was on the defensive. Intelligent men
might explain that wars were no longer worth fighting and borders
obsolete; a sophisticated, cosmopolitan elite -- like the
U.S.-educated technocrats who ran Mexico until they were
overthrown in 1911 -- might move freely between continents; but
the political foundations for a global economy were never properly
laid, and at the first serious shock the structure collapsed.
We are now living in the era of the Second Global Economy -- a
world economy reconstructed, largely under American leadership,
over the past half century. It took a long time to put Humpty
Dumpty back together again: the share of world output entering
into trade didn't reach its pre-1914 levels until the 1970's, and
large-scale investment in "emerging markets" -- that is, places
that are to today's world economy what America was to our
great-grandfathers' -- has revived only in the last decade. But
this time the economic achievement is built on stronger
foundations -- isn't it?
Well, yes -- but maybe not strong enough. True, we have gotten
better at making the distinction between commerce and conquest --
trade no longer follows the flag and blatant imperialism is out of
style. (We handed the Panama Canal back last month.) And Western
nations seem to have more or less grown out of the saber-rattling
nationalism that led to catastrophe back in 1914. But now as then
the global idea is very much a minority persuasion, all too easily
portrayed as an ideology of and for a rootless cosmopolitan elite
that is out of touch with ordinary people.
[http://www.pkarchive.org/column/1200.html]
2. I think nationalism is definitely still a powerful force. The
Economist, at least, thinks that the EU leaders are pushing for
faster integration than people are willing to support; people don't
*feel* that they're simply European, they feel that they're German,
French, Dutch, etc. In Canada, we've been trying to hold the country
together since the 1960s. In 1995, we came to the brink of a major
political crisis: Quebecers came extremely close to voting for
separation -- I think the margin might have been as small as a few
hundred votes. And then there's Yugoslavia.
If I remember correctly, E. H. Carr talks in "The 20 Year's Crisis
1919-1939" about the fact that a community requires each member to be
willing to put the interests of the community before its own interests.
In this sense, there was no world community in 1939, and I don't think
that's changed.
3. Along these lines, David Rieff makes some pretty strong points
in his debate with A. C. Grayling on the proposed International Criminal
Court.
... are we just spreading a European consensus to other parts of
the world, attempting to impose norms for which the historical
bases of legitimacy have not yet been established?
If, for example, during the Wars of Religion, some
extra-terrestrial force could have descended and compelled the
catholics and protestants of France to stop killing each other,
the edict would have made no sense at all to the belligerents. In
the wars of post-colonial succession now taking place in Africa,
they don't make sense either.
That is the problem with law-based schemes of human improvement:
they take no account of history. What you and other advocates of
this new international order fail to recognise is that the
consensus for building a post-national Europe could only come in
the aftermath of the two world wars in which the states of Europe
immolated themselves -- and even then took another 50 years to
achieve the modest form of the EU.
[http://www.unnu.com/newhome/Gallery/etexts/globaljustice.htm]
4. I suspect that the rate at which we currently consume natural
resources is unsustainable. (I know that there's arguments against
this view, e.g. by Julian Simon; I also haven't read "The Skeptical
Environmentalist" yet, although I've seen it reviewed in the
Economist.) So I think the foundations of the global economy are
unstable; I think we might see a number of major crises, economic,
political, and humanitarian, over the next few decades. We might
not, but I think this'll require a lot of effort and also luck.
As you can probably tell, I'm inclined to be a pessimist. :-)
That leads me straight to political realism, although I realize I
should take the time to examine other views as well.
Scott Erb
> > It went great -- stuffed manicotti (with spinach, mushrooms, onions, and
> > feta cheese). My wife's a CPA and this is tax season. Plus with
> > enron in the news, accountants have it rough these days (did you see
> > last week's cover of *The Economist*?). Gotta treat her right!
>
> Glad to hear it went well! Yes, the Economist cover was hilarious.
> (For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a shark cage with three or four
> razor-toothed accountants inside. There's a sign on the cage:
> "Don't feed the accountants.")
-snip-
> > similar? Is this a time in history that someday will be studied by
> > historians as a period of transformation? I don't know. Why do you
find
> > interdependence arguments unconvincing?
>
> I haven't looked into it enough yet, I think. I ought to look up
> and read Keohane/Nye, to make sure that I understand the strongest
> arguments in favor of this view, but here's a few counter-arguments:
>
> 1. Paul Krugman points out that trade and economic integration
> aren't unstoppable forces. The world economy was quite integrated
> in 1910, too.
That is an excellent point. Norman Angell's book *The Great Illusion: A
Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage* (New York,
Putnams) argued that economic links made war irrational and virtually
impossible between industrialized states.
His book appeared in 1913.
> Historians sometimes call it the First Global Economy: the era
> from the mid-19th century onward in which new technologies of
> transportation and communication made large-scale international
> trade and investment possible for the first time. In their quest
> to create that global economy, to abolish the traditional
> constraints of geography, engineers accomplished miracles --
> laying telegraph cables beneath the Atlantic, digging tunnels
> through the Alps and building paths between the seas. The Panama
> Canal, whose construction required breakthroughs not only in
> earth-moving technology but in medical science, was the high-water
> mark of the age (literally: the locks raise ships 85 feet above
> sea level).
>
> And just as the canal reached completion, the global economy fell
> apart.
The automobile in the twenties also created something like the recent dotcom
frenzy, and a similar sort of boom to the one we had in the 90s. That
obviously ended, and to some extent the weakness in the world economy now
could be seen as making possible a reply of the kind of situation that
brought down the system pre-1929.
> To some extent, the First Global Economy was a casualty of
> war. The Panama Canal and the Western Front both went into action
> in August 1914. The war and its indirect consequences --
> hyperinflation and political instability in Germany, isolationism
> in the United States, and so on -- partly explain why the forces
> of globalization went into a retreat that by 1945 left the world
> economy thoroughly Balkanized. But the truth is that even before
> 1914, though the volume of trade and investment continued to
> expand, the globalist idea was on the defensive. Intelligent men
> might explain that wars were no longer worth fighting and borders
> obsolete; a sophisticated, cosmopolitan elite -- like the
> U.S.-educated technocrats who ran Mexico until they were
> overthrown in 1911 -- might move freely between continents; but
> the political foundations for a global economy were never properly
> laid, and at the first serious shock the structure collapsed.
I think that the difference now is that international organizations have
real power and from most states, a real commitment. The EU in Europe is the
extreme example, but the WTO, UN, etc., play an unprecidented role. Also, I
think the communication/information revolution of the last 20 years will be
harder to back away from than the example of the start of the 20th century.
But it depends on state policies. Technology doesn't change the world, but
technology with ideas. The printing press was important, but Luther's
theses spread across Germany and his translation of the Bible to German were
what triggered the reformation, not the printing press alone. And if old
ideas dominate, especially in times of crisis, then we could reprise the
retreat from globalization of the last century. I put my thoughts on ideas
and technology and changes in the system in a little article I wrote for the
journal *The Maine Scholar* back in its December 2000 issue. I could e-mail
you a copy of that if you want.
> We are now living in the era of the Second Global Economy -- a
> world economy reconstructed, largely under American leadership,
> over the past half century. It took a long time to put Humpty
> Dumpty back together again: the share of world output entering
> into trade didn't reach its pre-1914 levels until the 1970's, and
> large-scale investment in "emerging markets" -- that is, places
> that are to today's world economy what America was to our
> great-grandfathers' -- has revived only in the last decade. But
> this time the economic achievement is built on stronger
> foundations -- isn't it?
I think what's amazing is the post-1985 boom in global investment and trade.
That seems to me qualitatively different than even the interdependence
Keohane and Nye were noticing in the seventies.
But I think your skepticism is warranted. When people talk like I am about
some kind of 'new' type of system, skepticism is warranted. That point was
driven home when the proponents of the new kind of economy found out in 2001
that gee, the economic cycle still exists, and value still matters. On the
other hand, 1989 stands out as a year where predictions went haywire, and
people were surprised by events, especially the experts. How could a
superpower like the USSR allow its empire to implode without trying to hang
on? How can a system change so dramatically and peacefully (save, of
course, Yugoslavia). Add to that the difficulty realists have in explaining
the EU, and I believe that there is evidence that these changes have created
qualitatively different conditions. Evidence, but certainly not proof.
And, of course, a lot depends on policy choices.
> Well, yes -- but maybe not strong enough. True, we have gotten
> better at making the distinction between commerce and conquest --
> trade no longer follows the flag and blatant imperialism is out of
> style. (We handed the Panama Canal back last month.) And Western
> nations seem to have more or less grown out of the saber-rattling
> nationalism that led to catastrophe back in 1914.
I wonder what terrorism -- a new kind of war -- and the attacks of last fall
will do.
>But now as then
> the global idea is very much a minority persuasion, all too easily
> portrayed as an ideology of and for a rootless cosmopolitan elite
> that is out of touch with ordinary people.
BTW, the project I just did on Germany argued that German foreign policy had
developed a "Kantian" identity (based on a theory of systemic logics of
anarchy from Alexander Wendt in *A Social Theory of International Politics.*
Wendt argued that anarchy can have different logics, and he looked at a
Hobbesian war of all against all logic, a Lockean logic (which he says
defines the current system) where states are rivals agreeing on certain
ground rules, and a Kantian logic where states would see mutual cooperation
for common goals as the most rational policy. For Wendt, the key word of a
Hobbesian system is "emnity," for a Lockean system it is "rivalry" and for a
Kantian system "friendship." I agree with him that most states (definitely
the US) and the system follows a Lockean logic, but Germany since WWII has
developed a Kantian style of focusing on multilateral cooperation as
defining how Germans determine their foreign policy interests and policy
logic. This kind of approach is catching on more in Europe, and could
potentially be emulated by a Russia needing more ties with the West. If so,
there could be a chance for at least a move towards cooperative institution
building (multilateralism) as a policy norm. The US is the least likely
state to follow that, as American policy makers take the so called Lockean
approach.
I think the 'global idea' is more popular outside the US than here, in other
words, but when you look at the EU and compare European thinking to fifty
years ago its really evolved. Since the sovereign state emerged from
Europe, perhaps these changes in sovereignty (is a state no longer in
control of its money truly sovereign?) are a hint of future developments.
> [http://www.pkarchive.org/column/1200.html]
> 2. I think nationalism is definitely still a powerful force. The
> Economist, at least, thinks that the EU leaders are pushing for
> faster integration than people are willing to support; people don't
> *feel* that they're simply European, they feel that they're German,
> French, Dutch, etc. In Canada, we've been trying to hold the country
> together since the 1960s. In 1995, we came to the brink of a major
The Economist definitely takes a British slant on these issues (BTW, it is
the one magazine I subscribe to which I would never give up, despite its
hefty subscription cost). The elites, especially the business community, is
clearly ahead of the public on this issue, and that could cause problems,
especially if the EU remains overly 'eurocratic.' Subsidiarity, the
principle of keeping government close to the people and not centralizing
more and more things in Brussels is important. Yet the public can be
fickle. When in the mid-nineties Germans overwhelmingly in polls wanted to
keep the D-Mark and opposed the Euro, the SPD made it a campaign theme.
They lost badly in state elections because of that. They then ditched that
idea, realizing that while Germans were hesitant to give up the D-Mark, they
also were opposed to talk or policies that questioned the commitment to
European integration. It'll be interesting to watch what happens now that
they have a common currency.
> political crisis: Quebecers came extremely close to voting for
> separation -- I think the margin might have been as small as a few
> hundred votes. And then there's Yugoslavia.
We here in Maine were joking back a few years ago when the last vote in
Quebec took place that we'd be setting up refugee camps near the border.
Yugoslavia is a fascintating case (German policy in the Gulf War and the
Serbo-Croatian war was my dissertation topic, and I've been fascinated by
the Balkans since). A lot of Europeans see Yugoslavia as an example of the
'old Europe,' reflecting the ideals of pre-1945 Europe, confronting the "new
Europe." The idea is that they need to evolve to fit the times.
> If I remember correctly, E. H. Carr talks in "The 20 Year's Crisis
> 1919-1939" about the fact that a community requires each member to be
> willing to put the interests of the community before its own interests.
> In this sense, there was no world community in 1939, and I don't think
> that's changed.
Agreed, but there certainly is a much deeper community in Europe (and
perhaps that can expand to include all of NATO), and the tools are there to
create more of a sense of world community now. Certainly there is incentive
to do so (though arguably there was before WWII -- I think Stresemann of
Germany and Briand of France were thinking of trying to come up with a kind
of agreement that would have been seen as a precursor to the later EU, but
in the politics of the late 1920s that was a pipe dream).
> 3. Along these lines, David Rieff makes some pretty strong points
> in his debate with A. C. Grayling on the proposed International Criminal
> Court.
>
> ... are we just spreading a European consensus to other parts of
> the world, attempting to impose norms for which the historical
> bases of legitimacy have not yet been established?
Yes, that's pretty much been the case ever since colonialism spread ideas of
sovereignty and 'nation' to the rest of the world.
> If, for example, during the Wars of Religion, some
> extra-terrestrial force could have descended and compelled the
> catholics and protestants of France to stop killing each other,
> the edict would have made no sense at all to the belligerents. In
> the wars of post-colonial succession now taking place in Africa,
> they don't make sense either.
And there you hit a point that I think is really important. The division
between the 1st and 3rd worlds is deep, and its not just economic. We moved
from pre-modern to modern society over a period of centuries, and even then
we had the Romans and Greeks in the past to build on. We're demanding moves
in other parts of the world to happen all at once, meeting standards for
democracy and human rights we in the West didn't even achieve until the 20th
century. That kind of change is inherently destabilizing, and that's one
reason terrorism and the like is a problem likely to continue. I think that
even if the West moves to a more cooperative multilateralist approach, that
is unlikely to spread to much of the third world. Given the changing nature
of war and the ability of terrorism to allow the weak to project power in
ways unimaginable in the past, this could be a very violent era. IOW,
interdependence may reign in the most of the West, but there is a lot of
evidence that it does not have firm roots in the third world (or China?)
The economic links may be there, but the shared norms and values are not.
> That is the problem with law-based schemes of human improvement:
> they take no account of history. What you and other advocates of
> this new international order fail to recognise is that the
> consensus for building a post-national Europe could only come in
> the aftermath of the two world wars in which the states of Europe
> immolated themselves -- and even then took another 50 years to
> achieve the modest form of the EU.
I don't fail to recognize that -- as I often put it, Europeans realized
after WWII that nationalism was a noose with which Europe was hanging
itself, and two bloody wars more or less jolted people into questioning
their old ideals. But I do think that the changes in Europe are real, and
there are possibilities for institution building and cooperation that didn't
exist before, and which bring into question just what 'sovereignty' means.
Violence and instability are more likely to come from the third world or
south, then interstate rivalries of the old sort.
> [http://www.unnu.com/newhome/Gallery/etexts/globaljustice.htm]
>
> 4. I suspect that the rate at which we currently consume natural
> resources is unsustainable. (I know that there's arguments against
> this view, e.g. by Julian Simon; I also haven't read "The Skeptical
> Environmentalist" yet, although I've seen it reviewed in the
> Economist.) So I think the foundations of the global economy are
> unstable; I think we might see a number of major crises, economic,
> political, and humanitarian, over the next few decades. We might
> not, but I think this'll require a lot of effort and also luck.
That is a very good point, and we could add global warming to that as well.
Crisis could unravel even western cooperation, you are absolutely right.
> As you can probably tell, I'm inclined to be a pessimist. :-)
> That leads me straight to political realism, although I realize I
> should take the time to examine other views as well.
I guess all I'd say is that political realism has two weaknesses: the
central role it provides the sovereign state, and its emphasis on so called
'high politics' over the 'low politics' of economic relations. I also
think its assumptions on human nature may be a bit pessimistic. Have you
read Hedley Bull's "Anarchical Society"? Without ditching a lot of what
realists argue, he notes that there is a global society with many shared
norms that create stability.
I can't say I would disagree with your pessimism, at least short term (for
the long run I'm an optimist). If I'm right that we're in a period of
systemic change, then one has to acknowledge that historically systemic
change is violent and difficult. It's that old Chinese curse, 'may you live
in interesting times.' And I definitely find Morgenthau's political
realism very appealling in a number of ways, especially when compared to the
neo-realism of Waltz and others, who tried to make the realist approach more
"scientific." But Morgenthau himself noted that conditions could change
and a new type of system could emerge -- he was skeptical about the
likelihood it would happen anytime soon, and he believed the basics of human
nature would still drive behavior -- and perhaps that's happening now.
Just as the danger of optimistic 'idealist' thinking is that one can naively
overlook the power of self-interest to unravel cooperation, a danger of
pessimistic realism is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if
believed by the policy makers.
Though given that Morgenthau was skeptical about Vietnam, and Kennan very
critical of US Cold War policies. Given even that it was realists who
brought us detente while liberals were prone to aggressive Cold War tactics,
I wonder what Morgenthau would say about the current situation and the war
on terror. What would a realist take be on these events?
ciao, scot
Scott Erb
I think my favorite period in history to read about is the interwar wars in
Europe. Al Stewart even as a CD out "Between the Wars," which is fantastic,
each song as a theme based on life between the wars. It's such a time of
contrasts, and as one reads of the events its like watching a horror movie
where you know disaster is around the corner and no one is aware of it. The
final song on Stewart's CD is "Laughing into 1939," describing a New Years
eve party Dec. 31, 1938, everyone celebrating, wondering what the future
would bring.
I've had a number of conversation with older Germans, a couple of times on
trains as I was traveling, about how they experienced the nazi era. It was
amazing to hear them talk about how they at the time believed Hitler was a
genius, that Germany was victimized, etc. One older lady (who said she was
telling me things she'd never told her kids) said how she realizes now that
she should have known what was happening to the Jews, but at the time she
didn't want to know. The lesson I get when talking to Germans and reading
their own history of the time is that such barbarism is possible for just
about any society, and that people will slip into it without realizing
what's happening. Here in the US I get a real twinge of nervousness when I
see patriotic displays, flags on cars, etc. I believe in the ideals of the
US Constitution, but anyone who has studied Germany can't help but distrust
emotional patriotism. No one is immune from falling into the abyss. One
thing that bothers me about how Nazi Germany is portrayed is that it often
appears as if the Nazis were obvious maniacal animals. The reality is that
they were dangerous because they could fool people and appear reasonable. I
think it was Eden who said after the Rheinland militarization in 1936 that
"sure, we could have intervened, Hitler would have fallen from power, but
what would the world have gained?" Lindbergh was smitten with Nazis
society. Such a thing could happen again.
Tim Starr
> "Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
> news:9384ebd6.02021...@posting.google.com...
> > Oh, I also forgot: Scott's economics recommendation, "The Worldly
> > Philosophers,"
> > is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner, who was convinced
> > of the
> > viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
>
>ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the Soviet
>economic system, including many in the CIA.
Does that commend them to those interested in learning about the economics of
the Soviet Union, or of any other type of economic system?
Tim Starr
Scott D. Erb
Tim Starr wrote:
>
> "Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message ho was convinced
> > > of the
> > > viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
> >
> >ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the Soviet
> >economic system, including many in the CIA.
>
> Does that commend them to those interested in learning about the economics of
> the Soviet Union, or of any other type of economic system?
First of all, don't dodge the fact you tried to claim
that because Heilbroner was wrong about how weak the
Soviet system was, that made him a "soviet
sympathizer." By your definition, most of the CIA and
US military would have to be "Soviet sympathizers."
Second, being wrong about something like that was
common for many very good economists, so no, I do not
think that kind of mistake about a system that was not
open does not make it wrong to read what that economist
says. Almost every economist is wrong on a quite a few
things, its not an exact science. If you demand people
read only economists who are always right, no one can
pass that test.
Russil Wvong
> When once a college Freshmen asked me "Was Eisenhower the leader of Russia,"
> I realized that my classes had to deal with some basic history in order to
> start teaching international relations.
A friend commented that this sounds like something from a Doonesbury
cartoon. :-)
> One book on the history of West Germany after World War II...I'm going to
> get back to you on that. The things that pop up in my mind right away are
> political sciency stuff and I know if I wrote something off the top of my
> head I'd think of something else later. I can tell you that Gordon Craig's
> *Germany 1866-1945* is the one book I'd recommend for the pre-1945 era. I
> just finished a huge research project (a book manuscript) on German foreign
> policy focusing on the last 20 years, so I'll go over my notes and see if
> any books stand out.
Thanks! Congratulations on finishing the project, too.
Identifying a single book which will give a novice reader a good grasp
of the big picture is pretty tough. My current recommendation for
*one* book on world history would be Paul Kennedy's "The Rise
and Fall of the Great Powers" -- it covers 500 years of history,
and I think it conveys a pretty good understanding of the mechanics
of the balance of power. The only problem is that it's so long.
> > What about for France?
>
> I'm going to mull that over too...
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Russil Wvong
"Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> I think that the difference now is that international organizations have
> real power and from most states, a real commitment. The EU in Europe is the
> extreme example, but the WTO, UN, etc., play an unprecedented role. Also, I
> think the communication/information revolution of the last 20 years will be
> harder to back away from than the example of the start of the 20th century.
>
> But it depends on state policies. Technology doesn't change the world, but
> technology with ideas. The printing press was important, but Luther's
> theses spread across Germany and his translation of the Bible to German were
> what triggered the reformation, not the printing press alone. And if old
> ideas dominate, especially in times of crisis, then we could reprise the
> retreat from globalization of the last century. I put my thoughts on ideas
> and technology and changes in the system in a little article I wrote for the
> journal *The Maine Scholar* back in its December 2000 issue. I could e-mail
> you a copy of that if you want.
Sure, that'd be great. I'd be interested in reading your dissertation,
too, if you've got it in electronic form.
I'll be watching the EU with great interest. I have the impression that
in the West there's a lack of trust in governments in general, and I
suspect this will carry over to supra-national institutions. Regarding
sovereignty: does a country which has adopted the Euro have the option
of withdrawing?
(Sociologist Joshua Meyrowitz has a very interesting speculative
explanation, in "No Sense of Place": he thinks that television, by
dissolving information boundaries between different social groups,
between adults and children, and between authorities and citizens,
played a major role in the radical changes in US society which took
place in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, trust in authority has
been greatly weakened. This has ominous consequences for future
governability of the liberal democracies.)
> On the
> other hand, 1989 stands out as a year where predictions went haywire, and
> people were surprised by events, especially the experts. How could a
> superpower like the USSR allow its empire to implode without trying to hang
> on? How can a system change so dramatically and peacefully (save, of
> course, Yugoslavia). Add to that the difficulty realists have in explaining
> the EU, and I believe that there is evidence that these changes have created
> qualitatively different conditions. Evidence, but certainly not proof.
> And, of course, a lot depends on policy choices.
That's certainly true, political realism doesn't tell us much about these
events. I'm wondering if there's precedents for the EU -- the unification
of Germany? Past leagues of German principalities, or Italian city-states?
> BTW, the project I just did on Germany argued that German foreign policy had
> developed a "Kantian" identity (based on a theory of systemic logics of
> anarchy from Alexander Wendt in *A Social Theory of International Politics.*
> Wendt argued that anarchy can have different logics, and he looked at a
> Hobbesian war of all against all logic, a Lockean logic (which he says
> defines the current system) where states are rivals agreeing on certain
> ground rules, and a Kantian logic where states would see mutual cooperation
> for common goals as the most rational policy. For Wendt, the key word of a
> Hobbesian system is "emnity," for a Lockean system it is "rivalry" and for a
> Kantian system "friendship." I agree with him that most states (definitely
> the US) and the system follows a Lockean logic, but Germany since WWII has
> developed a Kantian style of focusing on multilateral cooperation as
> defining how Germans determine their foreign policy interests and policy
> logic.
*Very* interesting. My understanding from reading Morgenthau is that
the logic of the European state system used to be Lockean, but had become
more Hobbesian, as a result of the breakdown of international morality
(due to changes in military technology, and paradoxically, democratic
nationalism as opposed to aristocracy). I haven't read Bull, but I'll
look him up.
In the iterated prisoner's dilemma, a simple strategy that produces
good results is "tit-for-tat": cooperate if the other player
cooperates, defect if the other player defects, and start by
cooperating. Why doesn't this logic apply to the international
state system? Lack of shared values? Higher stakes? Asymmetry
of power? A more complex set of possible interactions? Lack of
predictability?
> Just as the danger of optimistic 'idealist' thinking is that one can naively
> overlook the power of self-interest to unravel cooperation, a danger of
> pessimistic realism is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if
> believed by the policy makers.
Right, that was a point made pretty well by E. H. Carr.
> Though given that Morgenthau was skeptical about Vietnam, and Kennan very
> critical of US Cold War policies. Given even that it was realists who
> brought us detente while liberals were prone to aggressive Cold War tactics,
> I wonder what Morgenthau would say about the current situation and the war
> on terror. What would a realist take be on these events?
My impression is that "International Security" takes a realist approach,
and their latest issue has a number of papers on foreign policy after
September 11 (by Ashton Carter, Philip Heymann, Barry Posen, Stephen Walt).
[http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/BCSIA/ISP.nsf/IS/Forthcoming]
Thanks for your detailed response!
Russil Wvong
Yes, that's a pretty important question: could it happen elsewhere?
I think Americans are too suspicious of government and power for this
to happen in the US, but I'll have to re-read Hannah Arendt's "The Origins
of Totalitarianism." I read it a while ago, but it was too complex for
me at the time.
Russil Wvong
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> >[Eric Hobsbawm]
> >But he is a pretty well-known and respected historian...
>
> ...only by other Commie-sympathizers. Compare his account of the Soviet
> and Chinese collectivizations of agriculture to those of Conquest and
> Jasper Becker (in "Hungry Ghosts"). Hobsbawm portrays them as good
> policies that produced real benefits for the Soviet and Chinese people,
> at great human cost, while Conquest & Becker point out that the human
> cost of these policies were of much greater magnitude than Hobsbawm
> makes out, and no net benefit.
Okay, that would be a pretty good reason to distrust Hobsbawm.
(I haven't seen anyone else claim that Chinese collectivization
produced benefits, even Maurice Meisner.)
To me, what's important isn't whether a writer sympathizes with
Communism or not; it's *whether they value politics above truth*.
Orwell was committed to socialism and opposed to capitalism, but
he was even more committed to the truth, so he's worth reading,
and I trust his judgment. (Chomsky, on the other hand, I don't
trust at all.)
I was discussing this with my wife -- the idea that anyone who
sympathizes with Communism can be dismissed as a moral degenerate,
given the crimes of Stalin and Mao -- and she said, "Is that like
the rule that when someone gets compared to Hitler, the argument's
over?" :-) She also pointed out at least one example of a Marxist
government that wasn't murderous: the government of the state of
Kerala, in India. Kerala has excellent public education and public
health; very high literacy, for both men and women, and very low
infant mortality, despite being extremely poor -- US $300 per
capita per year, I think. (It's not a paradise by any means:
unemployment is high, Ph.Ds work as bus drivers, and the suicide
rate is very high.)
> A better 20th-century history to read would be Paul Johnson's "Modern
> Times." Interestingly, Erb claims to recommend it to his students,
> but didn't mention it to you.
I've read it, actually. I thought it wasn't bad, but I found myself
wanting more detail (e.g. on the Algerian civil war). I was also
somewhat startled by his assessment of Nixon.
> Another possibility would be J.M. Roberts' "History of the 20th
> Century."
I'll look that up.
> For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
I did do a Google search and found the quotes that you posted from
the review.
Russil Wvong
> This review alone -- and Garry Wills is a borderline crank, in my
> estimation -- with its reiteration of the rise and fall and rise
> of the "socialist ideal" as captured by Hobsbawm, with a litany
> of excuses for why the "revolution" didn't work, should be enough
> to clue you into Hobsbawm's delusions. And you really need to
> find a source other than the New York Review of Books, where
> the theme seems to be "we're sorry we are old leftists, we've
> got a new leftist approach to things."
Most of my information I get from the Economist, actually. But
I like the NYRB site a lot. It's like a newsgroup archive dating
back to the 1960s. Where else could you find Hans Morgenthau
saying -- about Walt Rostow's "View from the Seventh Floor" --
"How could such a brilliant mind produce such trash?"
I realized the other day that I don't know much about right-wing
thinkers. I've been doing a bit of research since then: the Economist's
obituary of Robert Nozick mentioned that he, Milton Friedman, and
Kristol/Podhoretz were very important in the neo-conservative movement
of the 1970s. I've been looking at the National Interest and Commentary
websites. I understand that Kristol and Podhoretz were originally liberals;
did they publish some kind of manifesto when they changed their minds?
I've read "Diplomacy". Thought it was pretty good, especially the
explanation of Bismarck's policies. I noted that Kissinger gave
credit to Reagan for helping to bring the Cold War to an end
(Kissinger, unlike say Kennan, accepts US exceptionalism as an
integral part of US politics).
I've been doing more searching through Google, and still haven't
found anything damning on Scott. His views of the Cold War seem
pretty similar to those of Kennan or Gaddis. He uses the "on the
one hand, on the other hand" style of argument a lot, which isn't
too surprising, since he's an academic: you always need to look
at both sides of an issue.
Russil Wvong
> Oh, I also forgot: Scott's economics recommendation, "The Worldly
Read that too, as a kid. Didn't notice any Soviet bias, but back
then I wouldn't have known. :-) These days I think Paul Krugman
provides a pretty good intro to economics.
Ernest Brown
> Starr-
> > For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> > Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
>
> I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
> of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
> he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
> the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
That's not an unfair assessment.
If you want a good overview of the whole mess from the French POV, try
Francois Furet's THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM IN THE
20TH CENTURY. It really is an excellent book.
--
Wisdom's Children: A Virtual Journal of Philosophy & Literature
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/billramey/wisdom.htm
Submissions welcomed.
Scott Erb
It is an excellent book -- a must read, I think.
Scott Erb
> > This review alone -- and Garry Wills is a
-snip-
> I've read "Diplomacy". Thought it was pretty good, especially the
> explanation of Bismarck's policies. I noted that Kissinger gave
> credit to Reagan for helping to bring the Cold War to an end
> (Kissinger, unlike say Kennan, accepts US exceptionalism as an
> integral part of US politics).
>
> I've been doing more searching through Google, and still haven't
> found anything damning on Scott. His views of the Cold War seem
> pretty similar to those of Kennan or Gaddis. He uses the "on the
> one hand, on the other hand" style of argument a lot, which isn't
> too surprising, since he's an academic: you always need to look
> at both sides of an issue.
On Kissinger: he's brilliant when he writes about Metternich and Bismarck,
one can really see that is his area of speciality. His detente seemed to
reflect an effort to create a Metternichian system in modern conditions, but
he found it very difficult to do so in a democracy: public opinion always
got in the way, whether it was the 'left' thinking he should develop a
friendship with the Soviets, or the 'right' thinking he was 'legitimizing
communism.' Still, Nixon-Kissinger had perhaps the best Cold War foreign
policy vis-a-vis the Soviets. I think they could have taken human rights
and the third world a bit more seriously, but...
Scott Erb
I haven't forgotten to look for a good book recommendation on Germany and
France...I'll try to get to that soon. This week my big project is putting
a number of scanned old photos from a variety of countries on the web so I
can use them in intro classes....always something to do! But I like these
kinds of discussions, reminds me of the fun debates and discussions I miss
from grad school.
My dissertation would be too long to e-mail. Also, I'm frankly not sure
it's all that interesting (dissertations seldom are), and my thinking has
changed a bit since then. I don't mind sending it, but you may find it
boring!
> I'll be watching the EU with great interest. I have the impression that
> in the West there's a lack of trust in governments in general, and I
> suspect this will carry over to supra-national institutions. Regarding
> sovereignty: does a country which has adopted the Euro have the option
> of withdrawing?
In the EU the option is always there, but practically it becomes very
difficult and costly. When De Gaulle tried to pull out with his 'empty
seat' policy in 1966 the damage leaving the then-EC would have done to the
French economy caused an uproar. That was in 1966, when the common market
had barely been completed, still full of non-tariff barriers and other
regulations. The links are so deep that leaving would be economic suicide.
The legal ability to leave is where legal sovereignty remains. The
practical ability to actually act on those powers is how sovereignty has
'changed.' The range of actions that will not adversely affect national
interest has been limited, and the necessity of cooperation and links to
other countries limits the range of action as well.
I agree that there is a lack of trust in governments and I HOPE this applies
to the EU. If it just becomes a 'superstate,' I think it'll go the wrong
path and such an effort could fail if conditions get bad economically. I
really hope they figure out a political organization that limits
supranational powers and tries to keep as much competence on most issues
closer to the people, perhaps even more to regions than nation states (the
so called principle of 'subsidiarity.').
> (Sociologist Joshua Meyrowitz has a very interesting speculative
> explanation, in "No Sense of Place": he thinks that television, by
> dissolving information boundaries between different social groups,
> between adults and children, and between authorities and citizens,
> played a major role in the radical changes in US society which took
> place in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, trust in authority has
> been greatly weakened. This has ominous consequences for future
> governability of the liberal democracies.)
Add the computer to that. People have more information, an ability to form
groups across borders and commuicate. You've already seen how this works in
places like the Phillipines where text messaging helped arrange spontaneous
demonstrations that could not have been so easily called before, and I think
that individuals are being empowered by technology in a way that will erode
governmental power. That is one reason I think the EU can't try to simply
create a larger state or centralized bureaucratic system. Government like
that isn't the government of the future, it has to be streamlined and more
receptive to individuals. I don't think this means the death of Social
Democracy or welfare systems, but they will have to adapt as well, as Blair
and Schroeder have realized. It'll be tough, as a lot of vested interests
don't like change.
> > On the
> > other hand, 1989 stands out as a year where predictions went haywire,
and
> > people were surprised by events, especially the experts. How could a
> > superpower like the USSR allow its empire to implode without trying to
hang
> > on? How can a system change so dramatically and peacefully (save, of
> > course, Yugoslavia). Add to that the difficulty realists have in
explaining
> > the EU, and I believe that there is evidence that these changes have
created
> > qualitatively different conditions. Evidence, but certainly not proof.
> > And, of course, a lot depends on policy choices.
>
> That's certainly true, political realism doesn't tell us much about these
> events. I'm wondering if there's precedents for the EU -- the unification
> of Germany? Past leagues of German principalities, or Italian
city-states?
The unification of Germany some say started with the Zollverein (customs
union) which I think was in 1839. That could be a precedent. One could
look at the US or Italy too, but of course the difference is the number of
different languages and ethnic groups. The only time that kind of thing has
been unified that I can recall is via empire (such as the Austrian Empire)
and force. To do so peacefully and voluntarily is amazing, and I think
comparisons across time are hard to make as well -- conditions now are so
different. Though Germany was rather diverse in the midi-19th century. I
still notice that when I travel there, the dialects are very different. I
can understand them usually (I spent a lot of time in Bavaria, the most
difficult dialect), but when older folk really go deep into their dialect it
is another language. So perhaps the German example is fitting -- and that
might explain why Germany is so supportive of the effort, their own history
is less centralized and unified than other states.
I really think that Morgenthau, Hobbes and Machiavelli were all influenced
by writing in or after a period of great violence and chaos. Morgenthau
after two world wars and a holocaust (arguably a very Hobbesian time),
Hobbes wrote around the time of the wars of reformation which were also
bloody and chaotic, and Machiavelli was living through really ruthless times
in Italy. For Morgenthau it was clear that the shared norms and values that
the Metternich system enjoyed had broken down. I think the US helped
reinstall them after WWII with the Bretton Woods system and American
hegemony, and that helps explain the stability we've enjoyed (what Gaddis
called 'The Long Peace,' attributing it as well to the bipolarity of the
cold war). The third world was always on the outside, and that is where
terrorist threats and other systemic problems will come from, assuming at
least that the advanced industrial states don't have some kind of economic
crisis.
>I haven't read Bull, but I'll
> look him up.
*The Anarchical Society.* An excellent book, up there with Morgenthau in
the 'must read' category.
> In the iterated prisoner's dilemma, a simple strategy that produces
> good results is "tit-for-tat": cooperate if the other player
> cooperates, defect if the other player defects, and start by
> cooperating. Why doesn't this logic apply to the international
> state system? Lack of shared values? Higher stakes? Asymmetry
> of power? A more complex set of possible interactions? Lack of
> predictability?
I think in Axelrod's study tit for tat did better than all other strategies,
though not always with good results. But though I've always found game
theory intriguing, it is really limited. You can change the results just by
changing the structure of the game (the payoffs) and its hard to add
complexity. I think your questions definitely address the major problems.
Game theory shows cooperation is possible, and overcoming the prisoners
dilemma can be done, but applying it to international relations always
seemed to me to have limited value. It's been awhile since I've read up on
this, but I recall Duncan Snidal had some really persausive international
relations arguments using game theory -- some of the better ones out there.
> > Just as the danger of optimistic 'idealist' thinking is that one can
naively
> > overlook the power of self-interest to unravel cooperation, a danger of
> > pessimistic realism is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if
> > believed by the policy makers.
>
> Right, that was a point made pretty well by E. H. Carr.
> > Though given that Morgenthau was skeptical about Vietnam, and Kennan
very
> > critical of US Cold War policies. Given even that it was realists who
> > brought us detente while liberals were prone to aggressive Cold War
tactics,
> > I wonder what Morgenthau would say about the current situation and the
war
> > on terror. What would a realist take be on these events?
>
> My impression is that "International Security" takes a realist approach,
> and their latest issue has a number of papers on foreign policy after
> September 11 (by Ashton Carter, Philip Heymann, Barry Posen, Stephen
Walt).
> [http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/BCSIA/ISP.nsf/IS/Forthcoming]
They seem to have a realist approach. "International Organization" tends
to take a more liberal institutional approach. Of course, we could have
probably guessed that from the journals' titles ;)
> Thanks for your detailed response!
This is fun. One reason I post on the usenet is I miss the kind of give and
take. I'm the only International Relations/Comparative Politics person at
my school, so the kind of fun discussion of issues and philosophies is often
missing. Some advanced seminars get to that point, but we don't have any
graduate program, so there's always a limit. This is fun and helps keep my
brain active and thinking in new ways. Thanks!
-scott
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > This review alone -- and Garry Wills is a borderline crank, in my
> > estimation -- with its reiteration of the rise and fall and rise
> > of the "socialist ideal" as captured by Hobsbawm, with a litany
> > of excuses for why the "revolution" didn't work, should be enough
> > to clue you into Hobsbawm's delusions. And you really need to
> > find a source other than the New York Review of Books, where
> > the theme seems to be "we're sorry we are old leftists, we've
> > got a new leftist approach to things."
>
> Most of my information I get from the Economist, actually.
That's unfortunate. You shouldn't get most of your information
from any single source. The Economist is a rather irritating
publication, with a grossly inflated reputation. It's like
getting all your science from Discover magazine.
> But
> I like the NYRB site a lot. It's like a newsgroup archive dating
> back to the 1960s. Where else could you find Hans Morgenthau
> saying -- about Walt Rostow's "View from the Seventh Floor" --
> "How could such a brilliant mind produce such trash?"
Oh.
> I realized the other day that I don't know much about right-wing
> thinkers. I've been doing a bit of research since then: the Economist's
> obituary of Robert Nozick mentioned that he, Milton Friedman, and
> Kristol/Podhoretz were very important in the neo-conservative movement
> of the 1970s. I've been looking at the National Interest and Commentary
> websites. I understand that Kristol and Podhoretz were originally liberals;
> did they publish some kind of manifesto when they changed their minds?
I think they did.
You're a poor researcher, in that case. Or, alternatively, you
dismiss persistent dishonesty as irrelevant when considering
the character of a poster.
> His views of the Cold War seem
> pretty similar to those of Kennan or Gaddis.
He likes to throw their names around, if that's what you mean.
His views are actually most similar to typical Soviet propaganda.
Re-read what I wrote in my last post. It summarizes his views.
On current events, he almost always, perhaps invariably, takes
an anti-American point-of-view. And that is consistent with
his views about the Cold War.
He uses Gaddis and Kennan for cover, just in case someone
notices that he's basically repeating Soviet propaganda. Kennan,
for instance, was one of the founders of Cold War doctrine based
on the idea that the Soviet regime was intransigent and essentially
evil. Scott has often blamed the U.S. for the Cold War, and when
called on that runs to embrace Kennan because Kennan had a less
assertive view of how to handle the Soviets than, say, John Foster
Dulles. Scott plays a shell game like that on virtually every
issue.
But you're a "fan" on the question of international politics.
If you want my advice, and you probably don't, you should take
two years and just pay primary attention to Arnold Toynbee's
A Study of History (the two-volume abridgement). That will give
you perspective.
> He uses the "on the
> one hand, on the other hand" style of argument a lot, which isn't
> too surprising, since he's an academic: you always need to look
> at both sides of an issue.
Well, Scott's very good at holding all positions simultaneously,
particularly when he starts losing an argument. Scott likes to
reassure himself that he's always winning the debate, and when
he isn't he'll assume the better argument as if he had been making
it all along, then push the reset button, and start spouting his
orginal position as though it had not been refuted. He's quite a
card, that Scott.
Martin McPhillips
>
> On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
>
> > Starr-
> > > For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> > > Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
> >
> > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
> > of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
> > he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
> > the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
>
> That's not an unfair assessment.
That's a repulsively unfair assessment.
Horowitz followed the path of many former Leftists, and there was
no overnight conversion. He has seen the Left from the inside, and it
was a great personal struggle with the legacy of his own parents to set
aside his original beliefs, examine them, and take responsibility for
them.
Scott D. Erb
Ernest Brown wrote:
>
> On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
>
> > Starr-
> > > For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> > > Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
> >
> > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
> > of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
> > he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
> > the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
>
> That's not an unfair assessment.
Agreed. I tend to be wary of anyone who seems to put
promotion of an ideology ahead of trying to understand
reality and seek the truth.
> If you want a good overview of the whole mess from the French POV, try
> Francois Furet's THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM IN THE
> 20TH CENTURY. It really is an excellent book.
Well, maybe I'll try to take a closer look, though I'm
not sure I'd label it the "French point of view" -- the
French never have just one point of view!
Tim Starr
>Tim Starr wrote:
>>
>>"Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message ho was convinced
>>>>of the viability of Soviet economics until the Soviet Union's collapse,
>>>
>>>ROTFLOL! A lot of people were convinced about the viability of the Soviet
>>>economic system, including many in the CIA.
>>
>>Does that commend them to those interested in learning about the economics of
>>the Soviet Union, or of any other type of economic system?
>
>First of all, don't dodge the fact you tried to claim
>that because Heilbroner was wrong about how weak the
>Soviet system was, that made him a "soviet sympathizer."
I made no such claim. My claim was in the form of:
X is Y and Z.
Not:
X is Y because of Z.
Heilbroner was a Soviet sympathizer, and wrong about Soviet economics.
>By your definition, most of the CIA and US military would have to be "Soviet
>sympathizers."
No, because they didn't advocate socialism, as Heilbroner did.
>Second, being wrong about something like that was common for many very good
>economists...
You obviously have a different definition of "good economist" than I.
Tim Starr
Tim Starr
>>Oh, I also forgot: Scott's economics recommendation, "The Worldly
>>Philosophers," is by another Soviet-sympathizer, Robert Heilbroner,
...
>
>Read that too, as a kid. Didn't notice any Soviet bias, but back
>then I wouldn't have known. :-) These days I think Paul Krugman
>provides a pretty good intro to economics.
Krugman's good on how economic growth is primarily caused by increased
productivity rather than increased input, but I wouldn't trust him
much farther than I could throw him about much more than that. The
single best introduction to economics I'm aware of has still got to be
Henry Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson."
Tim Starr
Tim Starr
> > russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> > >[Eric Hobsbawm]
> > >But he is a pretty well-known and respected historian...
> >
> > ...only by other Commie-sympathizers. Compare his account of the Soviet
> > and Chinese collectivizations of agriculture to those of Conquest and
> > Jasper Becker (in "Hungry Ghosts"). Hobsbawm portrays them as good
> > policies that produced real benefits for the Soviet and Chinese people,
> > at great human cost, while Conquest & Becker point out that the human
> > cost of these policies were of much greater magnitude than Hobsbawm
> > makes out, and no net benefit.
>
> Okay, that would be a pretty good reason to distrust Hobsbawm.
> (I haven't seen anyone else claim that Chinese collectivization
> produced benefits, even Maurice Meisner.)
Hobsbawm claims that since the initial collectivization of agriculture
in China went so quickly, that it must have been largely voluntary and
beneficial. This was the policy that preceded the Great Leap
Forward/Famine.
>To me, what's important isn't whether a writer sympathizes with
>Communism or not; it's *whether they value politics above truth*.
The question is whether anyone who values politics above truth can
truly be sympathetic to a movement that mass-murdered 80-100 million
people this century, not including combat deaths. Consider the
example of Nazism, of which people are far more willing to be
critical. What would you think of someone claimed that Nazi policies
had terrible human costs, but even greater benefits to the German
people?
Hobsbawm's exactly the sort of Marxist intellectual Orwell wrote about
in "Politics and the English Language."
>Orwell was committed to socialism and opposed to capitalism, but
>he was even more committed to the truth, so he's worth reading,
>and I trust his judgment. (Chomsky, on the other hand, I don't
>trust at all.)
Indeed, I'm a fan of Christopher Hitchens for similar reasons, even
though I don't always agree with him.
>I was discussing this with my wife -- the idea that anyone who
>sympathizes with Communism can be dismissed as a moral degenerate,
>given the crimes of Stalin and Mao -- and she said, "Is that like
>the rule that when someone gets compared to Hitler, the argument's
>over?" :-)
That "rule" is a popular misunderstanding of Godwin's Law, which
merely says that it's extremely likely that comparisons to Hitler will
be made in political discussions on Usenet, not that any mention of
him ends the discussion.
>She also pointed out at least one example of a Marxist
>government that wasn't murderous: the government of the state of
>Kerala, in India. Kerala has excellent public education and public
>health; very high literacy, for both men and women, and very low
>infant mortality, despite being extremely poor -- US $300 per
>capita per year, I think. (It's not a paradise by any means:
>unemployment is high, Ph.Ds work as bus drivers, and the suicide
>rate is very high.)
It also has a very high rate of land property ownership, no
collectivization of agriculture, and is constrained by the higher
levels of government in the scope of what it can get away with.
Indian "socialism" never included collectivization of agriculture,
thus making it far less murderous than Stalinist-Maoist socialism.
India is also a pluralist democracy, unlike most other Marxist
regimes. The degree to which socialism is democidal is the degree to
which socialist regimes have total power to implement their maximum
program. When they are constrained in their power to their minimal
programs, which are designed to be popular and gain them power, they
aren't that bad and can even be beneficial.
What you will not find is any socialist regime which has taken total
power in a sovereign state, unchallenged by any internal political
parties which compete in elections, and unchallenged by any armed
resistance, internal or external, capable of actually overthrowing the
regime, which implements agricultural collectivization, and still has
the sort of social benefits you describe for Kerala above. Cuba
claims thsoe benefits, but those claims are false. For those regimes,
you will invariably find mass-murder.
>>A better 20th-century history to read would be Paul Johnson's
"Modern Times."
>>Interestingly, Erb claims to recommend it to his students, but
didn't mention
>>it to you.
>
>I've read it, actually. I thought it wasn't bad, but I found myself
>wanting more detail (e.g. on the Algerian civil war).
Me, too. I found his discussion of that interesting enough to
stimulate my curiosity, which is partly why I started studying
guerilla warfare.
>I was also somewhat startled by his assessment of Nixon.
Yes, he's too pro-Nixon for me, even more so in his "History of the
American People," which I found good up until the point of the
American Civil War, and pretty much bad after that. It's his
neoconservative Nationalist line that really becomes bothersome after
then.
>>Another possibility would be J.M. Roberts' "History of the 20th
>>Century."
>
>I'll look that up.
I've not read it yet, but have a copy on my shelf and have heard
nothing but good about it.
>>For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
>>Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad
Faith."
>
>I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's
description
>of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz'
case,
>he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
>the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
I don't think that assessment can be sustained if you read his
autobiography, "Radical Son," although I can see how you can get that
impression from reading only his polemics.
Tim Starr
Tim Starr
> On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
>
> > Starr-
> > > For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> > > Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
> >
> > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
> > of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
> > he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
> > the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
>
> That's not an unfair assessment.
I think it is, I agree with Martin here. Have you read "Radical Son,"
or are you basing your judgement solely upon other writings of his?
Which ones?
>If you want a good overview of the whole mess from the French POV,
try
>Francois Furet's THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM IN
THE
>20TH CENTURY. It really is an excellent book.
Own it, haven't read it yet.
Tim Starr
Russil Wvong
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > Most of my information I get from the Economist, actually.
>
> That's unfortunate. You shouldn't get most of your information
> from any single source. The Economist is a rather irritating
> publication, with a grossly inflated reputation. It's like
> getting all your science from Discover magazine.
I try to read other news sources as well -- e.g. the newswire stories
on Yahoo -- but I find the Economist does a pretty good job of covering
world politics (e.g. in places like Africa) with the right amount of
detail: detailed enough to discuss the key issues, but not so
detailed that I don't have enough time to read it.
> > I realized the other day that I don't know much about right-wing
> > thinkers. I've been doing a bit of research since then: the Economist's
> > obituary of Robert Nozick mentioned that he, Milton Friedman, and
> > Kristol/Podhoretz were very important in the neo-conservative movement
> > of the 1970s. I've been looking at the National Interest and Commentary
> > websites. I understand that Kristol and Podhoretz were originally
> > liberals; did they publish some kind of manifesto when they changed
> > their minds?
>
> I think they did.
Any idea where I'd find it? I've been doing an online search with no
luck so far.
> > [Discussing Scott Erb]
> > His views of the Cold War seem
> > pretty similar to those of Kennan or Gaddis.
>
> He likes to throw their names around, if that's what you mean.
No, I mean that Kennan criticizes US foreign policy a great deal --
not for being imperialist, which is the usual left-wing criticism,
but for being moralistic and narcissistic, which is the realist
criticism. It's one of the major themes of his "American Diplomacy"
lectures. I can post some quotes if you'd like. I don't want to
sound like I'm bashing the US; Tim's probably already seen my
assessment of US foreign policy since World War II, but perhaps
I should repost it here.
As you note, Kennan certainly recognized the Soviet threat.
> If you want my advice, and you probably don't, you should take
> two years and just pay primary attention to Arnold Toynbee's
> A Study of History (the two-volume abridgement). That will give
> you perspective.
I always try to listen to advice. But I've already read the abridged
version of Toynbee.
Russil Wvong
> Ernest Brown wrote:
> > On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
> > > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's
> > > description of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause.
> > > In Horowitz' case, he went from being a fervent radical to being
> > > a fervent anti-leftist; the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness
> > > have stayed the same.
> >
> > That's not an unfair assessment.
>
> That's a repulsively unfair assessment.
Sorry. Perhaps I ought to read "Radical Son." I first ran across
Horowitz on Salon; maybe they selected his most inflammatory and
moralistic articles.
> Horowitz followed the path of many former Leftists, and there was
> no overnight conversion. He has seen the Left from the inside, and it
> was a great personal struggle with the legacy of his own parents to set
> aside his original beliefs, examine them, and take responsibility for
> them.
I just found it bizarre that he went from being a radical Marxist
to his current vehement anti-Left stance. I didn't realize that
he'd been a Marxist -- I thought he was just a very committed
neo-conservative -- until I was in a used bookstore and came
across one of his earlier Marxist books (I think it was called
"Empire"). Maybe I don't really understand on a gut level how
people growing up in the US in the 1950s and 1960s came to be
radical Marxists in the first place.
> > If you want a good overview of the whole mess from the French POV, try
> > Francois Furet's THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM IN THE
> > 20TH CENTURY. It really is an excellent book.
Thanks for the recommendation, Ernest. I looked up the reviews on
Amazon. I'll check it out.
r_c_brown
> >
<snip>
>
> If you want my advice, and you probably don't, you should take
> two years and just pay primary attention to Arnold Toynbee's
> A Study of History (the two-volume abridgement). That will give
> you perspective.
>
Please do take this bit of advice. McPhillips clued me into Toynbee's
work a while back (thank you, sir); it's not the easiest stuff to
read, but is well worth the effort.
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Russil Wvong wrote:
> > > Most of my information I get from the Economist, actually.
> >
> > That's unfortunate. You shouldn't get most of your information
> > from any single source. The Economist is a rather irritating
> > publication, with a grossly inflated reputation. It's like
> > getting all your science from Discover magazine.
>
> I try to read other news sources as well -- e.g. the newswire stories
> on Yahoo -- but I find the Economist does a pretty good job of covering
> world politics (e.g. in places like Africa) with the right amount of
> detail: detailed enough to discuss the key issues, but not so
> detailed that I don't have enough time to read it.
>
> > > I realized the other day that I don't know much about right-wing
> > > thinkers. I've been doing a bit of research since then: the Economist's
> > > obituary of Robert Nozick mentioned that he, Milton Friedman, and
> > > Kristol/Podhoretz were very important in the neo-conservative movement
> > > of the 1970s. I've been looking at the National Interest and Commentary
> > > websites. I understand that Kristol and Podhoretz were originally
> > > liberals; did they publish some kind of manifesto when they changed
> > > their minds?
> >
> > I think they did.
>
> Any idea where I'd find it? I've been doing an online search with no
> luck so far.
Amazon.com? I think that the name of Podhoretz's book that scandalized
all his old friends on the Left was "Making It," in which he glorified
the opportunity of American society.
I don't know the titles of any of Kristol's work.
> > > [Discussing Scott Erb]
> > > His views of the Cold War seem
> > > pretty similar to those of Kennan or Gaddis.
> >
> > He likes to throw their names around, if that's what you mean.
>
> No, I mean that Kennan criticizes US foreign policy a great deal --
> not for being imperialist, which is the usual left-wing criticism,
> but for being moralistic and narcissistic, which is the realist
> criticism. It's one of the major themes of his "American Diplomacy"
> lectures. I can post some quotes if you'd like. I don't want to
> sound like I'm bashing the US; Tim's probably already seen my
> assessment of US foreign policy since World War II, but perhaps
> I should repost it here.
No, that's all right. Your thinking will become clear as you
discuss issues.
As for Kennan, it's not unusual for someone to become a critic
once he's no longer a player. Pat Buchanan has done the same thing,
and he was every bit the player and more in his day with Nixon
as Kennan was.
But faced with an international threat (that was organized
internationally) and was immoral, the role that morality played
in American Cold War foreign policy was key and not to be
underestimated. As for it being "narcissistic," I think that's
a bit precious.
But one cannot read Kennan's "X" article from Foreign Affairs
along with some of his later writing about the extent of
the Soviet threat and the kind of threat that it was without
coming away with the clear sense that he knew the Soviets to
be bleak, paranoid, grossly immoral, treacherous, and deceitful.
How could someone propose in the face of that a head-on realist
approach to foreign policy towards them? Realism presupposes
the real national interests of nation-states being the
source of engagement, not a metaphysical ideology that
believes it is riding the wave of the logic of history and
sees the world "proletariat" as a single class of which
it is the natural leader. Clearly, the United States was
right and the Soviets wrong with respect to that ideology,
and there was no point to pretending otherwise.
That is *not* to say that the fundamentals of realism were to
be ignored, but they didn't cover the whole territory of
the Cold War.
I'm a fan of Kennan's, but at the same time he was a policy
man, not a decision maker. And I think that he drifted a tad
leftward as the strains and the years of the Cold War wore
on -- not to the Left, but away from the edge of dealing with
the Communists. I don't begrudge him that, but he left his best
work at the outset of the Cold War, and correctly predicted that
the Soviet Union would fall apart because it was not a
sustainable political society. On the other hand, I don't think
that he quite appreciated the degree to which it needed to be
confronted and pushed, as Reagan did in the '80s. There was
no "historical timer" on the collapse of the Soviet Union; it
might well have lingered on for decades. Reagan gave it the
decisive shove required.
>
> As you note, Kennan certainly recognized the Soviet threat.
>
> > If you want my advice, and you probably don't, you should take
> > two years and just pay primary attention to Arnold Toynbee's
> > A Study of History (the two-volume abridgement). That will give
> > you perspective.
>
> I always try to listen to advice. But I've already read the abridged
> version of Toynbee.
Well, I'm impressed. Do you think that there is an identifiable dominant
minority within the West that has supplanted its creative minority?
And how about the formation of the European Union, does that strike
you as a universal state and, in Toynbee's system, a clear indication
of decline for the West?
Do you regard the radical Islamist movement as an external proletariat
for the West?
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Ernest Brown wrote:
> > > On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
> > > > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's
> > > > description of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause.
> > > > In Horowitz' case, he went from being a fervent radical to being
> > > > a fervent anti-leftist; the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness
> > > > have stayed the same.
> > >
> > > That's not an unfair assessment.
> >
> > That's a repulsively unfair assessment.
>
> Sorry. Perhaps I ought to read "Radical Son." I first ran across
> Horowitz on Salon; maybe they selected his most inflammatory and
> moralistic articles.
What about them did you consider "inflammatory" and "moralistic?"
For instance, Horowitz is a vehement critic of both slave reparations
and political correctness on campus, and combines his criticism
of the two by going to campuses and speaking out against
reparations. Is that "inflammatory?" How does that compare with
the students who show up to drown him out while he tries to
speak and accuse him of being a racist?
Now, I should say that I'm someone who has made what I consider
the conservative argument *for* slavery reparations, complete
with a way to pay for them. *But* I recognize that they are
a political impossibility, for many reasons, and I think that
Horowitz knows the movement for exactly what it is, which
is a "permanent front" with which to keep stoking the fires
of racialism and class conflict -- a typical maneuver of the
Left. And while I have a perfectly good counter-argument to
his argument against reparations, I think that he correctly
perceives their political meaning and is correct in his
practical assessment of what that movement is about.
> > Horowitz followed the path of many former Leftists, and there was
> > no overnight conversion. He has seen the Left from the inside, and it
> > was a great personal struggle with the legacy of his own parents to set
> > aside his original beliefs, examine them, and take responsibility for
> > them.
>
> I just found it bizarre that he went from being a radical Marxist
> to his current vehement anti-Left stance. I didn't realize that
> he'd been a Marxist -- I thought he was just a very committed
> neo-conservative -- until I was in a used bookstore and came
> across one of his earlier Marxist books (I think it was called
> "Empire"). Maybe I don't really understand on a gut level how
> people growing up in the US in the 1950s and 1960s came to be
> radical Marxists in the first place.
Horowitz's parents were Communists. He was a "red-diaper baby."
Billy Beck
russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
>Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>> Ernest Brown wrote:
>> > > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's
>> > > description of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause.
>> > > In Horowitz' case, he went from being a fervent radical to being
>> > > a fervent anti-leftist; the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness
>> > > have stayed the same.
>> >
>> > That's not an unfair assessment.
>>
>> That's a repulsively unfair assessment.
>
>Sorry. Perhaps I ought to read "Radical Son." I first ran across
>Horowitz on Salon; maybe they selected his most inflammatory and
>moralistic articles.
>
>> Horowitz followed the path of many former Leftists, and there was
>> no overnight conversion. He has seen the Left from the inside, and it
>> was a great personal struggle with the legacy of his own parents to set
>> aside his original beliefs, examine them, and take responsibility for
>> them.
>
>I just found it bizarre that he went from being a radical Marxist
>to his current vehement anti-Left stance.
In another post, you said, "I realized the other day that I don't
know much about right-wing thinkers."
To begin with, that "right-wing" characterization is woefully
cheap. Perhaps your actual thinking is of higher quality than that,
and you really are aware that ideological opposition to leftism is
considerably more varied. There are people who oppose the Left *and*
the Right for all the same reasons, and anyone who considers them
"right-wing" is going to miss a hell of a lot of the story.
In any case, here's something that Horowitz points out that I
have seen time after time, for decades on end:
"Progressives have a false consciousness of their own. Being so
noble in their own eyes, how could they *not* be blind? But this
blindness also springs from an insularity created by their contempt
for those not gifted with progressive sight. As a result, radicals
are largely innocent of the ideas and perspectives that oppose their
agendas. The works of von Mises, Hayek, Aron, Popper, Oakeshott,
Sowell, Strauss, Bloom, Kirk, Kristol and other antisocialist thinkers
are virtually unknown on the Left -- excluded from the canons of the
institutions they dominate and absent from the texts they write. This
silencing of ideological opponents in the areas of the culture the
Left controls has led to a situation one academic philosopher lamented
as 'the collapse of serious argument throughout the lower reaches of
the humanities and the social sciences in the universities." [1] The
same judgment cannot be made about the excluded conservatives who are
forced by the cultural dominance of the Left (and by the historic
ferocity of the radical assault) to be thoroughly familiar with the
intellectual traditions and arguments that sustain it. This is one
reason why the vitality of contemporary conservative thought outside
the academy from which it has been driven."
[1] Thomas Nagel, "The Last Word" (New York, 1996), p. 6.
(David Horowitz, "The Politics Of Bad Faith", 1998, Free Press,
p. 46, emphasis original)
I have minor problems with that passage. For one thing, the idea
that "conservatives...are forced by the cultural dominance of the
Left" to deal with leftist ideas strikes me as a cheap complaint
because, in my view, it is a positive intellectual *duty* to confront
them. "Know your enemy."
His main point here, though, is intact throughout all my
experience. Go poke around the political newsgroups, for instance.
Whenever you see a leftist, go ahead and ask whether they've ever
actually read someone like Hayek or Mises. Watch what happens.
What you're generally going to find, with only the rarest
exceptions, is *ignorance*: they do not know what they're talking
about for exactly the reason that you stated in your own life and
words: "I don't know much about right-wing thinkers." Yet, however,
these people have no problem at tossing all kinds of rotten
pejoratives at something they know nothing about. If you need an
extreme example of the dynamic, go mention "Ayn Rand", and stand back.
But be aware that almost nobody who, for instance, calls her a
"fascist", has ever laid eyes on a single word she wrote.
We're talking about a *cultivated* ignorance, and it might be
worthwhile to stop and think about what that really means.
Billy
VRWC Fronteer
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/
Ernest Brown
> Ernest Brown <eeb...@mizzou.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.33.020219...@radon.bengal.missouri.edu>...
> > On 18 Feb 2002, Russil Wvong wrote:
> >
> > > Starr-
> > > > For a nice direct attack on Hobsbawm, see the review of "The Age of
> > > > Extremes" by David Horowitz in his book, "The Politics of Bad Faith."
> > >
> > > I'm a little wary of Horowitz. He reminds me of Eric Hoffer's description
> > > of "The True Believer": someone who needs a cause. In Horowitz' case,
> > > he went from being a fervent radical to being a fervent anti-leftist;
> > > the moralistic, crusading self-righteousness have stayed the same.
> >
> > That's not an unfair assessment.
>
> I think it is, I agree with Martin here. Have you read "Radical Son,"
> or are you basing your judgement solely upon other writings of his?
> Which ones?
I'm basing it on the way he reacted to criticism (and I mean non-weezil
criticism) on discussion boards in Salon. He wasn't quite as degenerate as
GG Allin here, but the same "all good"/"all bad" mentality was in
evidence.
One can be a "true believer" and have -true beliefs,- as Horowitz does
for the most part, it's the -attitude- that's the problem.
> >If you want a good overview of the whole mess from the French POV,
> try
> >Francois Furet's THE PASSING OF AN ILLUSION: THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM IN
> THE
> >20TH CENTURY. It really is an excellent book.
>
> Own it, haven't read it yet.
He does a great job of exposing the anti-capitalist bias at the root of
European anti-Americanism right off the bat.
Russil Wvong
> "Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I'll be watching the EU with great interest. I have the impression that
> > in the West there's a lack of trust in governments in general, and I
> > suspect this will carry over to supra-national institutions. Regarding
> > sovereignty: does a country which has adopted the Euro have the option
> > of withdrawing?
>
> In the EU the option is always there, but practically it becomes very
> difficult and costly. When De Gaulle tried to pull out with his 'empty
> seat' policy in 1966 the damage leaving the then-EC would have done to the
> French economy caused an uproar. That was in 1966, when the common market
> had barely been completed, still full of non-tariff barriers and other
> regulations.
Interesting, I didn't realize that it'd already been tried. (I'm afraid
my knowledge of the history of Western Europe during the Cold War is
pretty sparse.)
I'm wondering whether the single currency may result in a country having
a potentially strong motive to withdraw in the future. I was in Britain
in 1992 when George Soros broke the "crawling peg": the EU countries
had tied their currencies to the Deutschmark, which worked fine until
the Bundesbank raised interest rates to prevent the unification of Germany
from causing inflation. This resulted in very high unemployment in the
rest of Europe -- it was around 12% in the UK, if I recall correctly.
Soros bet that the British government would have to devalue the pound,
and he was right. After that, the British economy recovered and
unemployment went down. I'm wondering whether an EU country might face
a choice like this in the future, due to some kind of severe economic
crisis, combined with barriers to free movement of workers: try to
endure 20% or 30% unemployment, or withdraw from the single currency.
> I agree that there is a lack of trust in governments and I HOPE this applies
> to the EU. If it just becomes a 'superstate,' I think it'll go the wrong
> path and such an effort could fail if conditions get bad economically. I
> really hope they figure out a political organization that limits
> supranational powers and tries to keep as much competence on most issues
> closer to the people, perhaps even more to regions than nation states (the
> so called principle of 'subsidiarity.').
My impression is that some people -- particularly the French -- want
more political integration in order to make Europe an equal partner
and counterweight to the US, not just a collection of junior partners.
So I suspect there'll be a fair amount of pressure to turn Europe into
a state. There'll be counter-pressures, of course. Not sure the
principle of subsidiarity will suffice; to me it seems like the
Canadian division of federal and provincial powers, which in practice
has shifted over time due to political changes.
> > (Sociologist Joshua Meyrowitz has a very interesting speculative
> > explanation, in "No Sense of Place": he thinks that television, by
> > dissolving information boundaries between different social groups,
> > between adults and children, and between authorities and citizens,
> > played a major role in the radical changes in US society which took
> > place in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, trust in authority has
> > been greatly weakened. This has ominous consequences for future
> > governability of the liberal democracies.)
>
> Add the computer to that. People have more information, an ability to form
> groups across borders and commuicate.
I think the optimistic view is that government will adapt to the resulting
social changes. The pessimistic view is that it'll be impossible to
govern effectively....
> I really think that Morgenthau, Hobbes and Machiavelli were all influenced
> by writing in or after a period of great violence and chaos.
Agreed!
> I think the US helped reinstall them [shared values] after WWII
> with the Bretton Woods system and American
> hegemony, and that helps explain the stability we've enjoyed (what Gaddis
> called 'The Long Peace,' attributing it as well to the bipolarity of the
> cold war). The third world was always on the outside, and that is where
> terrorist threats and other systemic problems will come from, assuming at
> least that the advanced industrial states don't have some kind of economic
> crisis.
I guess as a pessimist, it seems likely to me that great violence and
chaos will occur again in the future. That's one reason I'm so interested
in history; like most people who grew up in North America during the
1970s and 1980s, I haven't experienced such violent anarchy myself,
and I want to know if it's likely to happen again in the future. What
are the odds of Western civilization collapsing in the next 50 years?
100 years? 500 years?
> ... though I've always found game
> theory intriguing, it is really limited. You can change the results just by
> changing the structure of the game (the payoffs) and its hard to add
> complexity. I think your questions definitely address the major problems.
> Game theory shows cooperation is possible, and overcoming the prisoners
> dilemma can be done, but applying it to international relations always
> seemed to me to have limited value. It's been awhile since I've read up on
> this, but I recall Duncan Snidal had some really persausive international
> relations arguments using game theory -- some of the better ones out there.
Thanks for the reference. Stephen Walt has a paper on his website
criticizing the rational-choice approach to international politics:
"Rigor or Rigor Mortis?"
[http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.swalt.csia.ksg/files/rigor.pdf]
> This is fun. One reason I post on the usenet is I miss the kind of give and
> take. I'm the only International Relations/Comparative Politics person at
> my school, so the kind of fun discussion of issues and philosophies is often
> missing. Some advanced seminars get to that point, but we don't have any
> graduate program, so there's always a limit. This is fun and helps keep my
> brain active and thinking in new ways. Thanks!
Thank you! Usenet is definitely an interesting place -- you often run
into people with totally different perspectives and assumptions. Which
usually leads to a flame war. :-) But it can be quite useful as a way
of re-examining your own assumptions.
Scott Erb
> "Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > "Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I'll be watching the EU with great interest. I have the
> > In the EU the option is always there, but practically it becomes very
> > difficult and costly. When De Gaulle tried to pull out with his 'empty
> > seat' policy in 1966 the damage leaving the then-EC would have done to
the
> > French economy caused an uproar. That was in 1966, when the common
market
> > had barely been completed, still full of non-tariff barriers and other
> > regulations.
>
> Interesting, I didn't realize that it'd already been tried. (I'm afraid
> my knowledge of the history of Western Europe during the Cold War is
> pretty sparse.)
> I'm wondering whether the single currency may result in a country having
> a potentially strong motive to withdraw in the future. I was in Britain
> in 1992 when George Soros broke the "crawling peg": the EU countries
> had tied their currencies to the Deutschmark, which worked fine until
> the Bundesbank raised interest rates to prevent the unification of Germany
> from causing inflation. This resulted in very high unemployment in the
> rest of Europe -- it was around 12% in the UK, if I recall correctly.
> Soros bet that the British government would have to devalue the pound,
> and he was right. After that, the British economy recovered and
> unemployment went down. I'm wondering whether an EU country might face
> a choice like this in the future, due to some kind of severe economic
> crisis, combined with barriers to free movement of workers: try to
> endure 20% or 30% unemployment, or withdraw from the single currency.
I think that the purpose of the single currency is actually to avoid this
kind of event, and prevent the Bundesbank from exerting undue influence.
That was an interesting little adventure in 1992, driven primarily by the Ge
rman Bundesbank putting pressure on the government not to deficit spend to
pay for unification. With a European Central bank no one country could put
that kind of pressure on other currencies since the ECB would not be
dominate by one country, and would have to take the entire EU into account.
It was, in essence, a way to try to keep Germany in line. That's why the
Bundesbank up until the end was opposed to or skeptical of European
integration, they realized this would take away their power (and one reason
many thought Germany was acting against its interests in pushing for this).
Also, growing interdependence meant that inflationary policies in countries
in the EU could adversely impact other states. Having a common monetary
policy was meant to protect economies from this.
> > I agree that there is a lack of trust in governments and I HOPE this
applies
> > to the EU. If it just becomes a 'superstate,' I think it'll go the
wrong
> > path and such an effort could fail if conditions get bad economically.
I
> > really hope they figure out a political organization that limits
> > supranational powers and tries to keep as much competence on most issues
> > closer to the people, perhaps even more to regions than nation states
(the
> > so called principle of 'subsidiarity.').
>
> My impression is that some people -- particularly the French -- want
> more political integration in order to make Europe an equal partner
> and counterweight to the US, not just a collection of junior partners.
Partially. In a very realist manner they also wanted to link Germany into
the West, its no accident their support for the EU grew after German
unification became a sure thing. They suddenly feared Germany would lurch
eastward and potentially move away from the western integration that had
'tamed' German ambitions. Mitterrand worried about going back to "pre-WWI'
conditions, as did Thatcher. So partially they want to counter the US, but
perhaps more directly they want to make sure Germany is linked to the West
as securely as possible.
> So I suspect there'll be a fair amount of pressure to turn Europe into
> a state. There'll be counter-pressures, of course. Not sure the
> principle of subsidiarity will suffice; to me it seems like the
> Canadian division of federal and provincial powers, which in practice
> has shifted over time due to political changes.
Yeah, though I think it important for the success of the EU that they not
overly centralize. I also think that maintanence of legal if not practical
sovereignty by the states, as well as their historical traditions of being
independent and sovereign will weaken the centralizing trend. But this is
uncharted water, and certainly the eurocrats at the center tend to want to
enhance their power.
> > Add the computer to that. People have more information, an ability to
form
> > groups across borders and commuicate.
>
> I think the optimistic view is that government will adapt to the resulting
> social changes. The pessimistic view is that it'll be impossible to
> govern effectively....
The danger is that often in times of systemic change the optimistic outcome
is only achieved after a violent and chaotic period of transition. I'm an
optimist (in fact I've been told by more than one person that they've never
met anyone as fundamentally and often annoyingly optimistic as me), and that
probably warps my view to some extent. Yet I don't discount the possibility
of major collapses or economic upheaval. In fact I think the current
economic downturn will be deeper and longer lasting that most expect, and
I'm very worried that this war against terrorism will turn into a quagmire
with the US over committed. We could have some difficult times. My
optimism is that I think we CAN (not necessarily will) avoid ungovernability
and turmoil, and we may as well focus on that, even while realistically
recognizing the dangers. And as an optimistic, I will at least recognize
that if things do go bad, I'm experiencing first hand a really important and
exciting period of history. I think regardless of what happens, we're
living in an era historians will study quite intensively for a long time.
> > I really think that Morgenthau, Hobbes and Machiavelli were all
influenced
> > by writing in or after a period of great violence and chaos.
>
> Agreed!
Here's my general explanation of realism, by the way. Since you describe
yourself as a realist, let me know if there are aspects you think I'm a bit
off about:
http://violet.umf.maine.edu/~erb/classes/realism.htm
> > I think the US helped reinstall them [shared values] after WWII
> > with the Bretton Woods system and American
> > hegemony, and that helps explain the stability we've enjoyed (what
Gaddis
> > called 'The Long Peace,' attributing it as well to the bipolarity of the
> > cold war). The third world was always on the outside, and that is where
> > terrorist threats and other systemic problems will come from, assuming
at
> > least that the advanced industrial states don't have some kind of
economic
> > crisis.
>
> I guess as a pessimist, it seems likely to me that great violence and
> chaos will occur again in the future. That's one reason I'm so interested
> in history; like most people who grew up in North America during the
> 1970s and 1980s, I haven't experienced such violent anarchy myself,
> and I want to know if it's likely to happen again in the future. What
> are the odds of Western civilization collapsing in the next 50 years?
> 100 years? 500 years?
Though I'm dispositionally an optimist, I have to agree with you on the
dangers. In fact, when I teach international relations students often tell
me its scary to learn about what is happening because the world is much more
dangerous than they imagined (especially compared to rural Maine). I have
little doubt we'll have a better world in the future...I don't think western
civilization will collapse into a new dark ages...but the path from here to
there may be really difficult. 1960 was better than 1890, but look at what
we went through to get there. That's one reason I get so nervous about
America projecting power like it is, and getting involved in a 'war on
terrorism' that seems to have no specific guidelines. The one way a power
like the US could bring upon a collapse is through over extension and
creating enemies, driven by over estimation of its own power and fear of an
incalculable unknown. I hope that isn't happening, but thats the way major
powers historically screw up.
I also agree history is the best guide to this. During the dotcom bubble I
re-read accounts of the crash of 1929 and was struck by how similar the talk
then was of a new economy with new rules. The more things change...
> > ... though I've always found game
> > theory intriguing, it is really limited. You can change the results
just by
> > changing the structure of the game (the payoffs) and its hard to add
> > complexity. I think your questions definitely address the major
problems.
> > Game theory shows cooperation is possible, and overcoming the prisoners
> > dilemma can be done, but applying it to international relations always
> > seemed to me to have limited value. It's been awhile since I've read up
on
> > this, but I recall Duncan Snidal had some really persausive
international
> > relations arguments using game theory -- some of the better ones out
there.
>
> Thanks for the reference. Stephen Walt has a paper on his website
> criticizing the rational-choice approach to international politics:
> "Rigor or Rigor Mortis?"
> [http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.swalt.csia.ksg/files/rigor.pdf]
Thanks back to you for your reference. I need to read up on game theory,
it's been awhile since I've looked at recent developments.
> > This is fun. One reason I post on the usenet is I miss the kind of give
and
> > take. I'm the only International Relations/Comparative Politics person
at
> > my school, so the kind of fun discussion of issues and philosophies is
often
> > missing. Some advanced seminars get to that point, but we don't have
any
> > graduate program, so there's always a limit. This is fun and helps keep
my
> > brain active and thinking in new ways. Thanks!
>
> Thank you! Usenet is definitely an interesting place -- you often run
> into people with totally different perspectives and assumptions. Which
> usually leads to a flame war. :-) But it can be quite useful as a way
> of re-examining your own assumptions.
Agreed. We all have our own specialities and areas we know well. And I
find I learn alot, even from some of the people I have arguments with. That
makes it worth while. The usenet is something you gotta get what you can
from and not take too seriously.
Russil Wvong
> Krugman's good on how economic growth is primarily caused by increased
> productivity rather than increased input, but I wouldn't trust him
> much farther than I could throw him about much more than that.
Any particular reason? The Keynes/monetarist dispute? The main
criticism I've seen of having an independent central bank change
interest rates to stimulate or slow down the economy is that such
changes have "long and variable lags"; are there others?
Some references for other readers:
- The Myth of Asia's Miracle (Foreign Affairs, November 1994)
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/myth.html
- Vulgar Keynesians (Slate, February 1997)
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/vulgar.html
> The single best introduction to economics I'm aware of has still got
> to be Henry Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson."
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Russil Wvong
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
> > Okay, that would be a pretty good reason to distrust Hobsbawm.
> > (I haven't seen anyone else claim that Chinese collectivization
> > produced benefits, even Maurice Meisner.)
Tim pointed me to a review of "Age of Extremes" by Brad DeLong
(a liberal economist). After reading it, I think Tim's convinced
me that Hobsbawm isn't worth reading.
The book has one single substantive sentence about the Korean War:
"Shaken by the communist victory in China, the U.S. and its allies
(disguised as the United Nations) intervened in Korea in 1950 to
prevent the communist régime in the North of that divided country
from spreading to the South." (p. 237). Now this simply will not do.
It is not fair to tuck Kim Il Sung's army and Stalin's tanks into
that little word, "spreading." ...
Hobsbawm's Cold-War polemics would not, by themselves, necessarily
greatly harm the book ...
But Hobsbawm's past as a Communist acolyte does more damage to the
book. It warps its themes. Hobsbawm's history has one major theme
that takes up nearly forty percent of available space: Communism as
the Tragic Hero of the twentieth century. Too many other aspects of
the century are crammed into the corners left over, with the
positive aspects of the terrible and glorious twentieth century--the
rise of political democracy, the technologically-driven explosion
of material wealth, and the creation of social democracy with its
mixed economies and welfare states--allowed less than one-tenth of
available space.
And this is the wrong focus for anyone's history. The proportions
should be reversed.
The fundamental source of the distortion is that, for Eric Hobsbawm,
World Communism *was* the Tragic Hero of the twentieth century.
[http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/hobsbawmsageofextremes.html]
DeLong has another review of Hobsbawm:
[http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Clean-Up/hobsbawm4898.html]
> [Marxism in Kerala]
> It also has a very high rate of land property ownership, no
> collectivization of agriculture, and is constrained by the higher
> levels of government in the scope of what it can get away with.
> Indian "socialism" never included collectivization of agriculture,
> thus making it far less murderous than Stalinist-Maoist socialism.
> India is also a pluralist democracy, unlike most other Marxist
> regimes. The degree to which socialism is democidal is the degree to
> which socialist regimes have total power to implement their maximum
> program. When they are constrained in their power to their minimal
> programs, which are designed to be popular and gain them power, they
> aren't that bad and can even be beneficial.
Fair enough. I think Kerala is an interesting example because it
provides an alternative model of development. It hasn't been totally
successful, of course.
> What you will not find is any socialist regime which has taken total
> power in a sovereign state, unchallenged by any internal political
> parties which compete in elections, and unchallenged by any armed
> resistance, internal or external, capable of actually overthrowing the
> regime, which implements agricultural collectivization, and still has
> the sort of social benefits you describe for Kerala above. Cuba
> claims those benefits, but those claims are false. For those regimes,
> you will invariably find mass-murder.
I'm afraid I have to say that IMHO, China under Mao, terrible as it
was -- and Mao killed tens of millions of people -- was better than
the chaotic disintegration which came before it. I think you asked
Scott whether he'd have preferred to live in China or in Taiwan from
1950 to 1978. It might be worth thinking about whether people would
rather live in China from 1950 to 1978, or from any period of the
same length between 1850 (when the Taiping Rebellion began) and 1949.
> [David Horowitz]
> I don't think that assessment can be sustained if you read his
> autobiography, "Radical Son," although I can see how you can get that
> impression from reading only his polemics.
I'll check it out.
Russil Wvong
Vancouver, Canada
www.geocities.com/rwvong
Russil Wvong
> [David Horowitz columns on Salon]
> What about them did you consider "inflammatory" and "moralistic?"
Mostly the style, rather than the arguments. Horowitz himself says
that he writes in a polemical, in-your-face style.
> For instance, Horowitz is a vehement critic of both slave reparations
> and political correctness on campus, and combines his criticism
> of the two by going to campuses and speaking out against
> reparations. Is that "inflammatory?"
I think it's fair to describe as "inflammatory" his saying that the
proponents of reparations are racist. (Note: I *agree* with Horowitz
that reparations for slavery should not be paid. Reparations aren't
going to address the problems in inner-city black neighborhoods.)
Scott Erb
> I think it's fair to describe as "inflammatory" his saying that the
> proponents of reparations are racist. (Note: I *agree* with Horowitz
> that reparations for slavery should not be paid. Reparations aren't
> going to address the problems in inner-city black neighborhoods.)
Gee, an issue I agree with Horowitz on as well :)
Russil Wvong
Hmm. Good questions. In Toynbee's analysis, a "time of troubles"
leads to the formation of a universal state, stagnation, and eventual
collapse. World Wars I and II fit the description of a "time of
troubles", and if the US had attempted to set up a universal state
after World War II, this would have fit into the pattern described
by Toynbee. But the US didn't; its relationship with its Western
European allies depends on persuasion rather than authority. Even
if the EU turns into a state, it won't include the US (or Canada
or Australia).
The "creative minority" ... Hmm. I definitely don't see a
"dominant minority" in the West. I think the attractiveness of
the traditional political philosophy of the West -- such ideas as
liberal democracy, freedom of the individual, and individual
fulfilment -- may be fading, both inside and outside the West.
(A comment I've often heard from Chinese people is that the US
has *too much freedom*, leading to juvenile delinquency,
promiscuity, crime, drug use, social breakdown. Within the West,
liberal democracy seems to be losing its legitimacy, with people
complaining about "elected dictatorships.") At the same time,
though, new political ideas are still being generated (the
resurgence of libertarianism is one example), so I think
there's still a functioning "creative minority".
In the area of culture, the dominant modern art form is film.
People complain a lot about lack of creativity in Hollywood
films, but I don't think it's disappeared.
In general I'd say that Western bourgeois civilization is still
alive and kicking. The major challenge of the Cold War has been
successfully met. So what's the next major challenge? My guess
is environmental sustainability. Obviously there's a lot of
creative activity there.
> Do you regard the radical Islamist movement as an external proletariat
> for the West?
No, it seems more like a representative of a competing civilization.
I'm more concerned about the possibility of an *internal proletariat*
of alienated young people. The amount of anger in pop music these
days (e.g. Limp Bizkit) may be one indicator of this.
What do you think?
> As for Kennan, it's not unusual for someone to become a critic
> once he's no longer a player. Pat Buchanan has done the same thing,
> and he was every bit the player and more in his day with Nixon
> as Kennan was.
Sure, but "American Diplomacy" is a collection of lectures that
Kennan gave in 1950. From what I can tell, he was a pretty harsh
critic of US foreign policy throughout his career. (He was the
one who used the word "narcisstic.")
> But faced with an international threat (that was organized
> internationally) and was immoral, the role that morality played
> in American Cold War foreign policy was key and not to be
> underestimated. As for it being "narcissistic," I think that's
> a bit precious.
Well, "narcisstic" was Kennan's description. I don't think realism
necessarily excludes morality or ideology -- Kennan discounts
morality, but not ideology, while Morgenthau discounts ideology,
but not morality.
> I'm a fan of Kennan's, but at the same time he was a policy
> man, not a decision maker. And I think that he drifted a tad
> leftward as the strains and the years of the Cold War wore
> on -- not to the Left, but away from the edge of dealing with
> the Communists. I don't begrudge him that, but he left his best
> work at the outset of the Cold War, and correctly predicted that
> the Soviet Union would fall apart because it was not a
> sustainable political society. On the other hand, I don't think
> that he quite appreciated the degree to which it needed to be
> confronted and pushed, as Reagan did in the '80s. There was
> no "historical timer" on the collapse of the Soviet Union; it
> might well have lingered on for decades. Reagan gave it the
> decisive shove required.
Do you have a recommendation for a book on Reagan's foreign policy?
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > [David Horowitz columns on Salon]
> > What about them did you consider "inflammatory" and "moralistic?"
>
> Mostly the style, rather than the arguments. Horowitz himself says
> that he writes in a polemical, in-your-face style.
Well, you know, I've read a lot of columns by a lot of columnists
over the years, and Horowitz doesn't strike me as being as in-
your-face as a lot of other writers. That's not to say he
minces his words. But that doesn't amount to working outside
of the tradition in column writing.
> > For instance, Horowitz is a vehement critic of both slave reparations
> > and political correctness on campus, and combines his criticism
> > of the two by going to campuses and speaking out against
> > reparations. Is that "inflammatory?"
>
> I think it's fair to describe as "inflammatory" his saying that the
> proponents of reparations are racist.
Given that many of the proponents drop the accusation of racism as
casually as someone slipping coins into a vending machine, maybe
Horowitz believes that attitude and the entire reparations project
forming out of it is, in fact, racist.
Horowitz knows one thing above all others: the corruption of the
Left. He knows it because he was born into it, grew up in it, and
was a significant player in it.
> (Note: I *agree* with Horowitz
> that reparations for slavery should not be paid. Reparations aren't
> going to address the problems in inner-city black neighborhoods.)
That's not why they shouldn't be paid. And "the problems in inner-city
black neighborhoods" can only be solved by the individuals and families
in those neighborhoods.
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Russil Wvong wrote:
> > > I always try to listen to advice. But I've already read the abridged
> > > version of Toynbee.
> >
> > Well, I'm impressed. Do you think that there is an identifiable dominant
> > minority within the West that has supplanted its creative minority?
> >
> > And how about the formation of the European Union, does that strike
> > you as a universal state and, in Toynbee's system, a clear indication
> > of decline for the West?
>
> Hmm. Good questions. In Toynbee's analysis, a "time of troubles"
> leads to the formation of a universal state, stagnation, and eventual
> collapse. World Wars I and II fit the description of a "time of
> troubles",
The 20th Century cultural and political crisis manifest in that
particular continuum of war would be the culmination of the West's
Time of Troubles, the mid-point of which *might* be the French
Revolution.
> and if the US had attempted to set up a universal state
> after World War II, this would have fit into the pattern described
> by Toynbee.
What about NATO as one of the chief predicates for the EU?
> But the US didn't; its relationship with its Western
> European allies depends on persuasion rather than authority.
How much persuading did they need while flat on their backs?
I would suggest that Europe never recaptured its elan after the
20th C. war continuum, and that it is in a state of advanced
decline right now -- despite it's "pretty as a picture" appearance --
and that the EU is a mustering to hold it together that will
only deepen if delay its decline.
> Even
> if the EU turns into a state, it won't include the US (or Canada
> or Australia).
That's not really important. The U.S. has its own problems and taken
together Canada and Australian are just a tad smaller than New York
and California combined, population-wise.
> The "creative minority" ... Hmm. I definitely don't see a
> "dominant minority" in the West.
No? What about the governing class, particularly the hierarchy of
the permanent government bureaucrats and the "democratic" officials
who fuel them and store their power with them?
> I think the attractiveness of
> the traditional political philosophy of the West -- such ideas as
> liberal democracy, freedom of the individual, and individual
> fulfilment -- may be fading, both inside and outside the West.
> (A comment I've often heard from Chinese people is that the US
> has *too much freedom*, leading to juvenile delinquency,
> promiscuity, crime, drug use, social breakdown. Within the West,
> liberal democracy seems to be losing its legitimacy, with people
> complaining about "elected dictatorships.") At the same time,
> though, new political ideas are still being generated (the
> resurgence of libertarianism is one example), so I think
> there's still a functioning "creative minority".
Once the dominant minority emerges, the power of the creative minority
has been eclipsed.
> In the area of culture, the dominant modern art form is film.
> People complain a lot about lack of creativity in Hollywood
> films, but I don't think it's disappeared.
The decadence of Western art in our time -- fine art, music,
literature -- has already lost its shock, that's how far gone
it is.
I don't think that there is a single good book on Reagan's foreign
policy. Two months ago I just threw away about three dozen journals
-- most of them Foreign Affairs -- from the culmination of the
Reagan Era. One thing I noticed in a lot of those artices was the
uniformity with which the scholars got it wrong or simply didn't
understand Reagan or avoided crediting his policy, although some
did.
There's one article by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., from 1985, where
he goes on about how the Soviet Union is here to stay and we'd
better get used to it -- clearly a shot at Reagan's aggressive
approach. There's also an article by Huntington that attacks
declinists and rather eloquently describes the American talent
for renewal, which would comport with Reagan's optimism and
his central belief in American values.
I could spend the rest of today commenting on some of the
questions raised above. The responses I did make have a
certain pessimistic resonance that I don't think that I actually
feel.
Russil Wvong
> In another post, you said, "I realized the other day that I don't
> know much about right-wing thinkers."
>
> To begin with, that "right-wing" characterization is woefully
> cheap. Perhaps your actual thinking is of higher quality than that,
> and you really are aware that ideological opposition to leftism is
> considerably more varied. There are people who oppose the Left *and*
> the Right for all the same reasons, and anyone who considers them
> "right-wing" is going to miss a hell of a lot of the story.
Sorry, I didn't intend a pejorative connotation by saying "right-wing".
I've certainly seen the anti-statist arguments from libertarians,
anarcho-capitalists, and anarcho-syndicalists. I wrote up an unofficial
FAQ for talk.politics.misc a couple weeks ago in which I attempted to
summarize some of the common schools of thought:
groups.google.ca/groups?selm=afe9ed76.0202220953.140871db%40posting.google.com
> In any case, here's something that Horowitz points out that I
> have seen time after time, for decades on end:
>
> "Progressives have a false consciousness of their own. Being so
> noble in their own eyes, how could they *not* be blind? But this
> blindness also springs from an insularity created by their contempt
> for those not gifted with progressive sight. As a result, radicals
> are largely innocent of the ideas and perspectives that oppose their
> agendas. The works of von Mises, Hayek, Aron, Popper, Oakeshott,
> Sowell, Strauss, Bloom, Kirk, Kristol and other antisocialist thinkers
> are virtually unknown on the Left -- excluded from the canons of the
> institutions they dominate and absent from the texts they write. This
> silencing of ideological opponents in the areas of the culture the
> Left controls has led to a situation one academic philosopher lamented
> as 'the collapse of serious argument throughout the lower reaches of
> the humanities and the social sciences in the universities." [1] The
> same judgment cannot be made about the excluded conservatives who are
> forced by the cultural dominance of the Left (and by the historic
> ferocity of the radical assault) to be thoroughly familiar with the
> intellectual traditions and arguments that sustain it. This is one
> reason why the vitality of contemporary conservative thought outside
> the academy from which it has been driven."
I'm a little confused: is Horowitz is referring to leftists,
liberals, progressives, radicals, or all of these? Is Paul Krugman
a leftist, for example? In "Peddling Prosperity", he presents the
ideas of Milton Friedman and Martin Feldstein, and not merely as
caricatures.
Is Brad DeLong a leftist? Reviewing James C. Scott's "Seeing Like
a State":
No one can finish reading Scott without believing--as Austrians
have argued for three-quarters of a century--that
centrally-planned social-engineering is not an appropriate
mechanism for building a better society.
But on a second level, it is an act of displacement. Friedrich
Hayek, after all, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for
making many of Scott's key arguments: that the bureaucratic
planner with a map does not know best, and can not move
humans and their lives around the territory as if on a
chessboard to create utopia; that the local, practical knowledge
possessed by the person-on-the-spot is important; that the
locus of decision-making must remain with those who have the
craft to understand the situation; that any system that functions
at all must create and maintain a space for those on the spot to
use their local, practical knowledge (even if the hierarchs of the
system pretend not to notice this flexibility). These key
arguments are well known: they are the core of the Austrian
economists' critique of central planning.
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Reviews/seeing_like_a_state.html
There may certainly be leftists -- especially on the newsgroups -- who
believe themselves to be noble, righteous, and morally superior, and
who hold conservative and neo-conservatives in such contempt that
they don't bother to read them. But I think Horowitz's argument that
"the Left" is ignorant of conservative and neo-conservative ideas is
vastly overstated, if by "the Left" he includes mainstream liberals
(the New York Review of Books) and not just radicals (Z Magazine).
I think I certainly need to do more exploring of conservative and
neo-conservative ideas; I've been looking at Commentary and the
National Interest. The question which intrigues me the most is:
what was conservatism like *before* the neo-conservatives and the
libertarians became prominent? I read Kennan's "Around the Cragged
Hill" a while back, and Kennan mounts a strong attack on egalitarianism,
defending elitism and noting that destroying wealth doesn't relieve
poverty:
By my own observation, and much of it from life in socialist
countries, I know of no assumption that has been more widely
and totally disproved by actual experience than the assumption
that if a few people could be prevented from living well
everyone else would live better. I have seen village after
village in Russia where the wealthy landlord and his family
had been driven out, killed or dispossessed, where the ashes
of the ruins of his house stood as mute and tragic evidence of
his elimination, but where the prevailing misery could not have
been greater than it was. I have, to be sure, seen welfare
states where a wide improvement in living standards for the
mass of the people indeed went hand in hand with the
disappearance of most evidences of ostentatious prosperity on
the part of the few. But this had been achieved not so much
by the impoverishment of the wealthy as by the prevalent
egalitarian social spirit that had caused the latter to conceal
the evidences of their prosperity rather than to flaunt it. In
itself this was, perhaps, not a bad thing. But it did not prove
that the impoverishment of the few was essential to the
advancement of the living standards among the many.
The plain fact, which I believe will be confirmed by many
economists, is that the luxuries of the very rich are of
relatively little importance as a factor in the general economy
of the modern advanced country. Much of what the rich own must,
after all, be invested in ways which, while indeed they are
normally profitable to one degree or another for the rich
themselves, also benefit, by the very fact of the investment,
the general economy. Which is better?--that the rich should
themselves invest their surplus income or that the government
should take it by taxation, and then, after passing it through
the sticky substance of its own bureaucracy, spend it in its own
favored ways? The government would claim that it spends it (or
what is left of it when the bureaucrats have taken their cut)
for the public good. The rich would say that they themselves
use it, and invest it, more wisely and economically than the
government could. There is much to be said, it seems to me, for
the latter view.
I'm wondering if the most important divide isn't between left and
right, or between statists and anti-statists, but between optimists
(Locke, Mill) and pessimists (Burke, Hobbes). In many ways, the
neo-conservatives and the libertarians seem as optimistic to me
as the liberals. (In case it's not obvious, I'm a pessimist.)
Consider the belief that liberal democracy is the best form of
government, for example. This is definitely an article of faith
for most liberals (the Kangas FAQ has an explicit argument along
these lines). Libertarians criticize this view for placing too
much faith in government, and argue for self-government. In
contrast, here's what a pessimist has to say -- Kennan again,
reviewing Schlesinger's "Cycles of American History":
Schlesinger sees two profoundly rooted but conflicting strains in
the way Americans view themselves - in the role, that is, in which
they cast themselves - as a nation among other nations. Sometimes
these two strains do battle with each other in the same American
breast; more often large segments of opinion lean decisively one
way or another, with the result that each of the strains has had
its period, or periods, of ascendancy in American public life.
One of these views, strong initially among the Founding Fathers
themselves, saw Americans as essentially no different from the
general run of human beings: subject to the same limitations;
affected by the same restrictions of vision; tainted by the same
original sin or, in a more secular view, by the same inner
conflicts between flesh and spirit, between self-love and
charity. This view, in its original eighteenth-century form, was
also informed by the recognition that history had had, to that
time, few examples to show of a solid and enduring republic,
whereas one could point to a number of examples of empires and
monarchies that answered reasonably well to this
description. Against this background of perception, the Founding
Fathers tended, for the most part, to see the establishment of the
national independence and unity of the United States as an
experiment - not an easy one, not one whose success was
automatically assured - rather, as Schlesinger describes it, one
"undertaken in defiance of history, fraught with risk, problematic
in outcome." With this question mark lying across its future, the
fledgling republic could obviously not appear as a guide or
teacher to the rest of humanity. Its first duty was to itself. The
best it could ask of its international environment was to be left
alone to develop its institutions in its own way and to prove, if
it could, that a nation thus conceived and thus dedicated could,
as Lincoln put it, "long endure."
Russil Wvong
> ... "the problems in inner-city
> black neighborhoods" can only be solved by the individuals and families
> in those neighborhoods.
Have you seen William Julius Wilson's argument ("When Work
Disappears") that social breakdown in inner-city neighborhoods is
primarily due to *concentrated unemployment*?
The central premise of Wilson's lecture, which kicked off the
symposium, is contained in the title of his latest book When Work
Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. Jobs in the inner
city ghetto have disappeared, Wilson argues.
"When Robin Williams' The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions was
published in 1947," Wilson said, "the substantial portion
of the urban black population was poor -- but they were working."
Chicago's inner city neighborhoods had employment rates of nearly
70 percent in the 1950s, he said, "but, today, a majority of
adults within inner city neighborhoods are not working in a
typical week."
This absence of jobs has had a serious impact on the social and
cultural life of the inner-city and, in particular, on inner-city
neighborhoods and their residents, Wilson said.
"Work is not simply a way to make a living and support one's family,"
Wilson said. "Work also constitutes a framework for daily behavior
and patterns of interaction, because it imposes discipline and
regularity." And, he pointed out, children who grow up in jobless
families and in jobless neighborhoods are negatively affected in
many ways, from a lack of working role models to the absence of
regularity and routine in their home lives.
[http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/96/10.24.96/Wilson_lecture.html]
If Wilson's analysis is correct, the sustained economic boom and low
levels of unemployment during the 1990s probably helped somewhat.
Wilson's policy recommendations are primarily aimed at expanding
employment for low-skilled workers, particularly young black men.
Russil Wvong
> [discussing Toynbee's analysis of the growth and decay of
> civilizations, as applied to Western civilization]
> I could spend the rest of today commenting on some of the
> questions raised above. The responses I did make have a
> certain pessimistic resonance that I don't think that I actually
> feel.
Hmm. Well, let me ask you this: in your opinion, what is the most
important challenge facing Western civilization today? Do you think
a successful response is forthcoming, or not?
(For other readers: Toynbee's analysis suggests that growth comes
from a challenge/response dynamic. Civilization arises in response
to a challenge; the successful response leads to a new challenge,
and so on. Typically each challenge is met by a "creative minority",
which is rarely the same from one challenge to the next. Stagnation
sets in when the civilization is faced with a challenge which it is
unable to meet successfully; each failure leads to a renewal of the
same challenge.)
Here's my attempt to identify the top three challenges (the Global Issues FAQ):
http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html
> > The "creative minority" ... Hmm. I definitely don't see a
> > "dominant minority" in the West.
>
> No? What about the governing class, particularly the hierarchy of
> the permanent government bureaucrats and the "democratic" officials
> who fuel them and store their power with them?
Doesn't seem like it to me. My view is that the authority of the
"governing class" and governing institutions has radically decreased
throughout the West since the 1950s, to the point where its ability
to govern is seriously in question. Elected officials live in fear
of the electorate (Anthony King, "Running Scared"):
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/scared/scared.htm
The top layer of the bureaucracy changes with each election. The
bureaucracy itself -- that probably varies from country to country,
but at least in Canada, the deficit-reduction measures of the 1990s
were not kind. The federal bureaucracy was cut back by 20%, with
all the attendant problems of morale and burnout. In the US, I
haven't seen any reviews of the overall bureaucracy, but here's a
picture of what's happening in the CIA (Thomas Powers,
"The Trouble with the CIA"):
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15109
So why has this happened? A couple possible answers:
Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone":
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_democracy/v006/putnam.html
Joshua Meyrowitz, "Politics in the Video Eye":
http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/CL46/meyrowit.htm
> > Do you have a recommendation for a book on Reagan's foreign policy?
>
> I don't think that there is a single good book on Reagan's foreign
> policy. Two months ago I just threw away about three dozen journals
> -- most of them Foreign Affairs -- from the culmination of the
> Reagan Era. One thing I noticed in a lot of those artices was the
> uniformity with which the scholars got it wrong or simply didn't
> understand Reagan or avoided crediting his policy, although some
> did.
I did some searching on neo-conservative websites. Have you seen
"Victory", by Peter Schweizer? If so, what'd you think?
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/4834/victory.txt
"Defending the Reagan Legacy", by Mickey Craig:
http://www.ashbrook.org/pubs/monos/craig/
NSDD 75:
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-075.htm
This isn't directly related, but I found an interesting article on
James Burnham, suggesting that his ideas contributed to the
Reagan Administration's strategy.
Francis Sempa, "James Burnham: The First Cold Warrior":
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/articlesTOC.html
For an example of the opposing view (i.e. that Gorbachev should
get all the credit for ending the Cold War):
Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Reagan and the Russians":
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm
Russil Wvong
> [snip interesting comments on the EU]
> Here's my general explanation of realism, by the way. Since you describe
> yourself as a realist, let me know if there are aspects you think I'm a bit
> off about:
> http://violet.umf.maine.edu/~erb/classes/realism.htm
I'm just a general reader, but that looks like a pretty good description
to me. A few comments:
Realism emerged primarily from the study of diplomatic history,
particularly the Metternich system and Bismarck years.
Hmm. I would have said (following E. H. Carr) that realism emerged in
reaction to idealism, following the breakdown of the League of Nations.
The way Carr describes it, whenever a new field of study is launched,
people are primarily concerned with *how* to achieve some goal, e.g.
the alchemists wanting to turn lead into gold, or the post-WWI
international relations theorists wanting to preserve world peace
(idealism). It's only after their initial attempts fail that people
start to think about *if* something is possible or not (realism).
There seems to be an inherent moral code within realism: maintaining
the peace is a primary goal, as well as maintaining the system and
stopping revolutionary powers.
I'm not sure if I'd describe this as realism -- I think it's a common
Anglo-American view, shared by realists and idealists, in reaction to
the slaughter of World War I. I ran across a good description of
peace as a primary goal the other day (Alan Ryan reviewing John Gray):
The first applies to any pluralist society, whether that is a
complicated modern society with a host of moral, religious,
political, and social allegiances or the Roman Republic with
a host of tribally organized peoples subjugated in war and
governed more or less reluctantly. It is the view that peace
is the fundamental value. Allowing different groups to pursue
their own good in their own way is not a matter of principle
but of prudence. ...
This is the true politics of modus vivendi. It is a politics
that sacrifices the desire to tell our neighbors how to live
to the need for coexistence.
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14235]
E. H. Carr, discussing the mistaken idea that peace is in the interests
of *everyone*, as opposed to status quo powers like Great Britain and
the US:
The Common Interest in Peace
Politically, the [incorrect] doctrine of the identity of interests
has commonly taken the form of an assumption that every nation has
an identical interest in peace, and that any nation which desires
to disturb the peace is therefore both irrational and
immoral. This view bears clear marks of its Anglo-Saxon origin. It
was easy after 1918 to convince that part of mankind which lives
in English-speaking countries that war profits nobody. The
argument did not seem particularly convincing to Germans, who had
profited largely from the wars of 1866 and 1870, and attributed
their more recent sufferings, not to the war of 1914, but to the
fact that they had lost it; or to Italians, who blamed not the
war, but the treachery of allies who defrauded them in the peace
settlement; or to Poles or Czecho-Slovaks who, far from deploring
the war, owed their national existence to it; or to Frenchmen, who
could not unreservedly regret a war which had restored
Alsace-Lorraine to France; or to people of other nationalities who
remembered profitable wars waged by Great Britain and the United
States in the past. But these people had fortunately little
influence over the formation of current theories of international
relations, which emanated almost exclusively from the
English-speaking countries. British and American writers continued
to assume that the uselessness of war had been irrefutably
demonstrated by the experience of 1914-18, and that an
intellectual grasp of this fact was all that was necessary to
induce the nations to keep the peace in the future; and they were
sincerely puzzled as well as disappointed at the failure of other
countries to share this view.
The confusion was increased by the ostentatious readiness of other
countries to flatter the Anglo-Saxon world by repeating its
slogans. In the fifteen years after the first world war, every
Great Power (except, perhaps, Italy) repeatedly did lip-service to
the doctrine by declaring peace to be one of the main objects of
its policy. But as Lenin observed long ago, peace in itself is a
meaningless aim. "Absolutely everybody is in favor of peace in
general," he wrote in 1915, "including Kitchener, Joffre,
Hindenburg and Nicholas the Bloody, for everyone of them wishes to
end the war." The common interest in peace masks the fact that
some nations desire to maintain the status quo without having to
fight for it, and others to change the status quo without having
to fight in order to do so. The statement that it is in the
interest of the world as a whole either that the status quo should
be maintained, or that it should be changed, would be contrary to
the facts. The statement that it is in the interest of the world
as a whole that the conclusion eventually reached, whether
maintenance or change, should be reached by peaceful means, would
command general assent, but seems a rather meaningless
platitude. The utopian assumption that there is a world interest
in peace which is identifiable with the interest of each
individual nation helped politicians and political writers
everywhere to evade the unpalatable fact of a fundamental
divergence of interest between nations desirous of maintaining the
status quo and nations desirous of changing it. ...
[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/carr.htm]
Diplomacy:
Diplomacy: For realists, diplomacy is the ideal. Diplomats should
be able to solve every problem. That doesn't mean they always
compromise fairly. The compromise reflects POWER and national
interest. A state whose essential interests are in play and has
the power to protect them will not give in to a less powerful
state. They will reach a settlement that reflects both states
level of interests and potential ability to defend those interests.
Right. And the clearer it is who has the stronger hand, the less likely
that a confrontation will occur. (As in poker -- you don't get a big
pot and a showdown unless you have two or more players who think they
have a good hand.)
It might be worth pointing out that diplomacy includes threats.
If I remember correctly, Morgenthau describes three components
of diplomacy: persuasion, compromise, and pressure (i.e. threats).
The hard part is knowing which to use.
Scott Erb
> Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, "Reagan and the Russians":
> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm
>
> Russil Wvong
> Vancouver, Canada
> www.geocities.com/rwvong
By the way, both Lebow and Stein are very highly regarded in the field of
foreign policy decision making analysis, and well worth reading. I saw a
talk by Lebow about the Cuban missile crisis in 1992, as he was digging into
the Soviet archives and interviewing former Soviet leaders and military
officials about what really happened, one of the first indepth analyses of
that incident.
Scott Erb
> > [snip interesting comments on the EU]
> > Here's my general explanation of realism, by the way. Since you
describe
> > yourself as a realist, let me know if there are aspects you think I'm a
bit
> > off about:
> > http://violet.umf.maine.edu/~erb/classes/realism.htm
>
> I'm just a general reader, but that looks like a pretty good description
> to me. A few comments:
>
> Realism emerged primarily from the study of diplomatic history,
> particularly the Metternich system and Bismarck years.
>
> Hmm. I would have said (following E. H. Carr) that realism emerged in
> reaction to idealism, following the breakdown of the League of Nations.
Yes -- I make that point earlier, noting as well that the claim idealism
failed is perhaps misguided, since it was never really tried. Clemenceau
and Lloyd-George ditched Wilson's ideas at Versailles, and the League of
Nations was never an institute most leaders wanted to make work -- and of
course, Wilson couldn't even get his own country to join. But the key
lesson I think was appeasement. Appeasement could have been a rational
policy if Hitler wasn't leading Germany. It's a misunderstood policy, it
wasn't just 'do what the dictator demands,' but rather a desire to 'appease
legitimate interests' that had been denied Germany with the Versailles
treaty. It would have worked with Stresemann a decade earlier, but with
Hitler it couldn't. Also Chamberlain knew war was very likely, and believed
Britain wouldn't be ready until at least 1943, so appeasement was also a
policy designed to give Britain time to prepare for war. But the result:
following self-determination and idealism, letting the Sudeuten Germans
choose what country they should be part of, was in line with idealist
thought. The fact that this also gave Czech defenses to the Germans without
firing a shot was contrary to realist thought. That crystallized the
problem with idealism in disregard of the reality of power.
> The way Carr describes it, whenever a new field of study is launched,
> people are primarily concerned with *how* to achieve some goal, e.g.
> the alchemists wanting to turn lead into gold, or the post-WWI
> international relations theorists wanting to preserve world peace
> (idealism). It's only after their initial attempts fail that people
> start to think about *if* something is possible or not (realism).
Also the development of political science meshed more directly with
diplomatic history after WWII. Idealism was pretty legalistic and separate
from kind of diplomatic history that Morgenthau would offer. A number of
people claim the field of 'international relations' didn't really emerge as
a true subject of study until after WWII -- before then it was international
law (mostly idealists) and diplomatic history. It's been awhile since I
read about the development of the field, though, so the specifics fail me
now.
> There seems to be an inherent moral code within realism: maintaining
> the peace is a primary goal, as well as maintaining the system and
> stopping revolutionary powers.
>
> I'm not sure if I'd describe this as realism -- I think it's a common
> Anglo-American view, shared by realists and idealists, in reaction to
> the slaughter of World War I. I ran across a good description of
> peace as a primary goal the other day (Alan Ryan reviewing John Gray):
Peace is the primary goal according to Morgenthau, but realism is an
interpretive approach so there are disagreements between realists.
Good quotes.
> Diplomacy:
>
> Diplomacy: For realists, diplomacy is the ideal. Diplomats should
> be able to solve every problem. That doesn't mean they always
> compromise fairly. The compromise reflects POWER and national
> interest. A state whose essential interests are in play and has
> the power to protect them will not give in to a less powerful
> state. They will reach a settlement that reflects both states
> level of interests and potential ability to defend those interests.
>
> Right. And the clearer it is who has the stronger hand, the less likely
> that a confrontation will occur. (As in poker -- you don't get a big
> pot and a showdown unless you have two or more players who think they
> have a good hand.)
>
> It might be worth pointing out that diplomacy includes threats.
Yes.
> If I remember correctly, Morgenthau describes three components
> of diplomacy: persuasion, compromise, and pressure (i.e. threats).
> The hard part is knowing which to use.
Exactly. A threat must be credible, or else it will not only become less
useful, but consistent use of non-credible threats will make war more
likely. It's clear that this is much more difficult in a democracy since
politicians often speak first to the voting public, where it's easier to let
threats slip out in order to stir up public opinion for a policy. The job
of the diplomats is to make the position clear behind closed doors.
-Scott
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > [discussing Toynbee's analysis of the growth and decay of
> > civilizations, as applied to Western civilization]
> > I could spend the rest of today commenting on some of the
> > questions raised above. The responses I did make have a
> > certain pessimistic resonance that I don't think that I actually
> > feel.
>
> Hmm. Well, let me ask you this: in your opinion, what is the most
> important challenge facing Western civilization today? Do you think
> a successful response is forthcoming, or not?
Pessimistically speaking, after clearing a view through Western successes in
science and technology and standards of living -- all the usual indicators
of success in the day-to-day sense -- the West is not facing any challenge
on an ascending path, but rather the complex tangle of disintegration
itself, and the single most important element of and indicator of that
is the abandonment of the Church as the West's great religion (and by
the Church I mean Rome and its Protestant branches as a whole).
This is more difficult -- but not that difficult -- for Americans to see
because America remains a fairly religious country. But it is very
pronounced in Europe, and in the U.S. it may only be masked by the
willingness of people to still identify with religion whereas their
actual spiritual sense is conflicted, divided, and uncertain.
As to the current war on terrorism and the Islamic world being
a challenge of any significance, I don't think it has any serious
import for the *fate* of the West. It's a tangent that I won't take
up at the moment.
Optimistically, it could be that the West is a unique civilization,
that its vitality is such that it can rise in the face of its own
disintegration, and again I think that Europe is key to that and
the United States can look to Europe for signs of renewal against
disintegration. It may be that the U.S., as the foremost march of
the West, will be challenged to renewal *by* a certain final
disintegration in a Europe that will only look like it remains
viable for some time because of how it looks next to Russia
in the East or Islam to the South and East, and Africa to the
South. As I said, Europe is still "pretty as a picture," but it
shows signs of advanced decay, and you can see some of this
reflected, actually, in the U.S. in the state of the universities,
which have a much closer kinship with European styles than with
American values.
> (For other readers: Toynbee's analysis suggests that growth comes
> from a challenge/response dynamic. Civilization arises in response
> to a challenge; the successful response leads to a new challenge,
> and so on. Typically each challenge is met by a "creative minority",
> which is rarely the same from one challenge to the next. Stagnation
> sets in when the civilization is faced with a challenge which it is
> unable to meet successfully; each failure leads to a renewal of the
> same challenge.)
>
> Here's my attempt to identify the top three challenges (the Global Issues FAQ):
> http://www.geocities.com/rwvong/future/globalfaq.html
>
> > > The "creative minority" ... Hmm. I definitely don't see a
> > > "dominant minority" in the West.
> >
> > No? What about the governing class, particularly the hierarchy of
> > the permanent government bureaucrats and the "democratic" officials
> > who fuel them and store their power with them?
>
> Doesn't seem like it to me. My view is that the authority of the
> "governing class" and governing institutions has radically decreased
> throughout the West since the 1950s, to the point where its ability
> to govern is seriously in question. Elected officials live in fear
> of the electorate (Anthony King, "Running Scared"):
> http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/scared/scared.htm
That bureaucracy is a field of competition in which there are winners
and losers doesn't mean that bureaucracy itself isn't always the winner.
Look at the amount of the national income of the United States either
taken as taxes at all levels of government (fed, state, local), which
is 40%, or that is directly allocated by regulation, another 10% (these
are Milton Friedman's numbers), and what you see is *not* a decrease
in the power of the governing class. And that's the U.S., a still
dynamic society, where the bulk of the political debate revolves
around distributing *leftover* resources in government budgets,
leftover *from* the dominant entitlement programs. In other words, competing
for votes by distributing advantages -- or pretending to -- to the
greatest number of people to the disadvantage of all (that's Huntington's
formula for social decline, which he says is not the case here, but one
wonders how far it has to go -- if it's already at 50% of national
income -- for him to see the handwriting on the wall). As to how
this stalls the dynamism that keeps things moving, Philip K. Howard
has written a very basic book on the subject called "The Death of
Common Sense."
In Europe, perhaps you see retrenchments from previous levels of
socialism because the strangulation -- particularly as it did
in Great Britain -- threatened the viability of economies. But
suffice it to say if Thatcherism was the most vigorous free market
reform movement in Europe over the past 20 years, it's not
enough. And the European Union opens up a new field of bureaucratic
competition, between EU bureaucrats and national bureaucrats
and technocrats, and the winner will be, of course, bureaucrats,
the *dominant* *minority.*
> The top layer of the bureaucracy changes with each election.
Does that reassure you somehow?
> The
> bureaucracy itself -- that probably varies from country to country,
> but at least in Canada, the deficit-reduction measures of the 1990s
> were not kind. The federal bureaucracy was cut back by 20%, with
> all the attendant problems of morale and burnout. In the US, I
> haven't seen any reviews of the overall bureaucracy, but here's a
> picture of what's happening in the CIA (Thomas Powers,
> "The Trouble with the CIA"):
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15109
The big picture is that the competition for resources with increasing
departments and levels of bureacracy, on one hand, and the spectre of
bankruptcy on the other, do not *end* any bureaucracy. The bureaucracy
endures: if it can't bear burdens itself it passes the burdens on
to states or localities. It continues to regulate excessively to
continue its mission -- which in the end is always its own survival,
and it's always, through the politicians that create it and store
power with it, bargaining for more power by buying votes through
redistribution of wealth.
> So why has this happened? A couple possible answers:
Bureaucratic retrenchment -- financial retrenchment only -- happens
because the goose that lays the golden egg is being bled to
death and can't keep up with the bills. But has there been one
major program -- no matter how obsolete and ill-conceived it
is -- that has been killed off and isn't simply waiting for
the next tide to come in?
Perhaps, in the U.S., the answer to that would be welfare as
an entitlement -- a not insignificant restatement of value, but
when contrasted to the burgeoning state of middle-class entitlements,
perhaps not all that encouraging.
> Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone":
> http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/journal_of_democracy/v006/putnam.html
>
> Joshua Meyrowitz, "Politics in the Video Eye":
> http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/CL46/meyrowit.htm
>
> > > Do you have a recommendation for a book on Reagan's foreign policy?
> >
> > I don't think that there is a single good book on Reagan's foreign
> > policy. Two months ago I just threw away about three dozen journals
> > -- most of them Foreign Affairs -- from the culmination of the
> > Reagan Era. One thing I noticed in a lot of those artices was the
> > uniformity with which the scholars got it wrong or simply didn't
> > understand Reagan or avoided crediting his policy, although some
> > did.
>
> I did some searching on neo-conservative websites. Have you seen
> "Victory", by Peter Schweizer? If so, what'd you think?
> http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/4834/victory.txt
I'll check these out if I can make some time. I know who
Schweizer is and have heard him speak, but can't recall
the details.
Ronald Reagan finished off the Soviet Union. He threatened
and courted it, called its bluffs, called the bluffs of its
appeasers, kept his eye on the ball, disarmed them even as
they entered the stage of final disintegration, and his successor
George H.W. Bush managed the break-up of the Warsaw Pact
alliance and the USSR itself with a deft hand for which he
also is given no credit.
If you have something specifically that you would like to
raise from any of these articles -- as a point, not simply
a general posting of them as information -- I'll try to
address it.
Jeffrey Davis
Martin McPhillips wrote:
>
> But has there been one
> major program -- no matter how obsolete and ill-conceived it
> is -- that has been killed off and isn't simply waiting for
> the next tide to come in?
You've qualified that question almost to the point of
tautology.
Have their been social programs that have been killed off?
Yes.
--
Jeffrey Davis <res0...@verizon.net>
You know, aside from the fact that I'll never again
experience joy in my life, I don't think Red Zone Cuba had
any kind of negative effect on me.
Billy Beck
Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>Pessimistically speaking, after clearing a view through Western successes in
>science and technology and standards of living -- all the usual indicators
>of success in the day-to-day sense -- the West is not facing any challenge
>on an ascending path, but rather the complex tangle of disintegration
>itself, and the single most important element of and indicator of that
>is the abandonment of the Church as the West's great religion (and by
>the Church I mean Rome and its Protestant branches as a whole).
I emphatically disagree.
The single greatest problem facing the (entire) world today is
the abandonment of thought. The ability to abstract essentials and
integrate concepts is being plowed under the primacy of sentiment
(observe how pervasively the words "I feel" have now supplanted
statements that used to say, "I think", and understand that "I think"
arose as an egalitarian concession of fact to opinion), and all this
as well as wholesale overthrow of definition and logic.
Scott Erb
"Billy Beck" <wj...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3c7ae68c...@news.mindspring.com...
> >
> The single greatest problem facing the (entire) world today is
> the abandonment of thought. The ability to abstract essentials and
> integrate concepts is being plowed under the primacy of sentiment
> (observe how pervasively the words "I feel" have now supplanted
> statements that used to say, "I think", and understand that "I think"
> arose as an egalitarian concession of fact to opinion), and all this
> as well as wholesale overthrow of definition and logic.
Another example of the abandonment of thought is internet posters who refuse
to try to engage in rational discourse and instead call names and insult
people, creating an emotional ersatz of reasoned debate.
Mike Schneider
"Scott Erb" <scot...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
But you're not trying.
--
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/American_Liberty/files/al.htm
There are three categories of those entitled to use 'We' in the
first person: Royalty, Editors, and People With Tapeworms. -- Mark Twain
Reply to mike1@@@usfamily.net sans two @@, or your reply won't reach me.
Russil Wvong
> Exactly. A threat must be credible, or else it will not only become less
> useful, but consistent use of non-credible threats will make war more
> likely. It's clear that this is much more difficult in a democracy since
> politicians often speak first to the voting public, where it's easier to let
> threats slip out in order to stir up public opinion for a policy. The job
> of the diplomats is to make the position clear behind closed doors.
Yes. Another kind of pressure (perhaps more effective) involves actions
rather than words. A classic example would be China's firing missiles
into the Taiwan Strait before Taiwan's presidential election in 1996,
and Clinton's sending aircraft carriers in response.
By the way, Scott, is there a particular book that you use as a textbook
for your introductory classes?
Russil Wvong
> Russil Wvong wrote:
> > [discussing Toynbee's analysis of the growth and decay of
> > civilizations, as applied to Western civilization]
> > important challenge facing Western civilization today? Do you think
> > a successful response is forthcoming, or not?
>
> Pessimistically speaking, after clearing a view through Western successes in
> science and technology and standards of living -- all the usual indicators
> of success in the day-to-day sense -- the West is not facing any challenge
> on an ascending path, but rather the complex tangle of disintegration
> itself, and the single most important element of and indicator of that
> is the abandonment of the Church as the West's great religion (and by
> the Church I mean Rome and its Protestant branches as a whole).
Hmm. When you speak of disintegration, are you referring to spirituality,
social cohesion, moral values, or all of these things?
I'm also concerned about social cohesion and moral values (I've been
reading Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Kennan discusses these issues as well).
With the decline of organized religion, children learn morals --
how they should live, how they should treat other people, basic things
like the Golden Rule -- in two places: their family and their schools.
I'd be open to an argument that these aren't sufficient, that they leave
a vacuum which is filled by television, and that the kind of teachings
provided by organized religion are necessary in order to maintain
tradition and moral values. Is this what you would argue, or am I
misunderstanding you? (e.g. Are you more concerned about Western
unity?)
I'm not sure that a spiritual revival would help us to deal with
the main concrete issues facing us, though, e.g. environmental
sustainability, weapons of mass destruction. (And there's more
general issues such as dealing with technology and social change.)
> [regarding bureaucracy]
> And that's the U.S., a still
> dynamic society, where the bulk of the political debate revolves
> around distributing *leftover* resources in government budgets,
> leftover *from* the dominant entitlement programs. In other words,
> competing for votes by distributing advantages -- or pretending to --
> to the greatest number of people to the disadvantage of all ....
I definitely agree that rent-seeking is a problem. An economist
friend says that nationalism is bad in some respects, but maybe
we need it in order to get people to put the common good above
their own interests, at least some of the time (e.g. to follow
the rules instead of breaking them, or to not engage in
rent-seeking if it's beneficial for them but harmful for
everyone else).
A second problem is that the welfare state makes individuals
dependent (not just people on welfare, but people who depend on
public education, public health, etc.). I'm still turning over
in my head what to do about it.
> [regarding Reagan-era foreign policy]
> If you have something specifically that you would like to
> raise from any of these articles -- as a point, not simply
> a general posting of them as information -- I'll try to
> address it.
Thanks, I'm just posting them as information. I'm going through
the process myself of gathering information on Reagan's foreign
policy from various sources, and trying to triangulate them to
establish their reliability.
Russil Wvong
> The single greatest problem facing the (entire) world today is
> the abandonment of thought. The ability to abstract essentials and
> integrate concepts is being plowed under the primacy of sentiment
> (observe how pervasively the words "I feel" have now supplanted
> statements that used to say, "I think", and understand that "I think"
> arose as an egalitarian concession of fact to opinion), and all this
> as well as wholesale overthrow of definition and logic.
I'd highly recommend that you read Joshua Meyrowitz's "No Sense of Place:
The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior". Among other
provocative observations, Meyrowitz notes that whereas print media
emphasize linear arguments and verbal information, television emphasizes
personalities, images, and "expressive" (non-verbal) information.
Meyrowitz suggests that perhaps the introduction of television was
a major contributing factor to the massive social changes in the US
since the 1950s, using Goffman's analysis of behavior and social
situations and applying it to television as a kind of giant social
situation.
If Meyrowitz is correct, the Internet may be a factor pushing things
in the reverse direction, from feeling to thinking. (Consider the
discussion that we're having now. Feelings play practically no
part in it.)
Scott Erb
"Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:afe9ed76.02022...@posting.google.com...
> I'm also concerned about social cohesion and moral values (I've been
> reading Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Kennan discusses these issues as well).
> With the decline of organized religion, children learn morals --
> how they should live, how they should treat other people, basic things
> like the Golden Rule -- in two places: their family and their schools.
> I'd be open to an argument that these aren't sufficient, that they leave
> a vacuum which is filled by television, and that the kind of teachings
> provided by organized religion are necessary in order to maintain
> tradition and moral values. Is this what you would argue, or am I
> misunderstanding you? (e.g. Are you more concerned about Western
> unity?)
>
> I'm not sure that a spiritual revival would help us to deal with
> the main concrete issues facing us, though, e.g. environmental
> sustainability, weapons of mass destruction. (And there's more
> general issues such as dealing with technology and social change.)
America has become in my opinion an extremely materialist culture, with
spirituality either defined in terms of particular organized religions that
tend to fall in two categories: a) organized ritualistic religions that
provide a belief system that people hold, but do not take too seriously in
every day life; and 2) emotional release religions that provide a sense of
meaning in a culture that seems superficial and transitory. There are
exceptions, of course, but in general I don't think western religions
provide a very solid spiritual base.
I think the problem of modernism in general is that once you take away the
spiritual grounding religion right or wrong provided -- a specific set of
moral values and principles that provide cohesion and stability in
society -- then 'anything goes.' And that's why fascism, communism, and
other ideological extremes arose from the modern era, people were freed from
the religious rules of the past, and like teens suddenly away from their
parents, experimented with a variety of dangerous beliefs and actions.
Modernism puts reason ahead of spirit, and since spirit is of a different
essence than materialist science or rational philosophy, it gets denegrated
and criticized by elites and thinkers.
But that doesn't really provide any reason to deny spirituality or adopt a
radical materialist view of existence. There seems to be an almost
universal intuitive sense that there is 'something more,' a sense that
crosses cultures and most people believe almost implicitly, at least until
they are taught to be cynical. Is this like some say a whimisical belief,
like a child's belief in Santa, a desire for something more when cold hard
reality is all there is? Or is there a spiritual side of life that contains
ethical truths and a sense of value that transcends our particular cultural
constructs and rational philosophies? I think there is -- I'm convinced of
it -- and the question I grapple with and will continue to grapple with
throughout life is how to reconcile a belief in rationality and logic
(recognizing its limitations -- the inability to disprove or prove a
spiritual side of life) with a conviction that life is about the spirit as
much if not more than the material. Since there is no proof, dogmatism is
an easy trap for anyone to fall into who takes a spiritual perspective, and
the only thing I can say with extreme confidence is that in going into such
an investigation and reflection one has to accept that ones' beliefs and
thoughts can be wrong, and there is much for anyone to learn. I hope that
society somehow moves to explore spirituality with the same openness and
tolerance as we have for political ideas (not perfect by any means), and
that this will help ground us, even in a world where the old anchors of
religious authority or pure rationality cannot function.
> I definitely agree that rent-seeking is a problem. An economist
> friend says that nationalism is bad in some respects, but maybe
> we need it in order to get people to put the common good above
> their own interests, at least some of the time (e.g. to follow
> the rules instead of breaking them, or to not engage in
> rent-seeking if it's beneficial for them but harmful for
> everyone else).
Or a sense of ethics. Nationalism and rules are fine, but the best rules
are those that don't have to be enforced, and the best nationalism is a
sense of common identity not defined by opposition to an "other."
> A second problem is that the welfare state makes individuals
> dependent (not just people on welfare, but people who depend on
> public education, public health, etc.). I'm still turning over
> in my head what to do about it.
The key to a welfare system, I think, is to help people help themselves and
create tools that people can choose to use in order to have true
opportunity. Simply providing people an easy way to exist and continue
doesn't help either the recipients or society. But how to do that is a real
tricky issue, especially when the rules govern an entire nation of 280
million, making it hard to deal with exceptions. That makes any particular
system that seems good in the abstract to have many unintended consequences.
I suspect that it is no accident that the most effective welfare systems --
and the most popular ones -- are in small states where people do not feel
government is outside their control or acting as an opponent. America is
too large to administer an effective welfare system, at least as currently
organized. That's an issue I think the left has avoided too long, the only
way to make an effective welfare system is for the left to borrow an idea
from the Republicans: decentralize and give more power to the states (and
more resources, of course).
Scott Erb
read Joshua Meyrowitz's "No Sense of Place:
> The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior". Among other
> provocative observations, Meyrowitz notes that whereas print media
> emphasize linear arguments and verbal information, television emphasizes
> personalities, images, and "expressive" (non-verbal) information.
> Meyrowitz suggests that perhaps the introduction of television was
> a major contributing factor to the massive social changes in the US
> since the 1950s, using Goffman's analysis of behavior and social
> situations and applying it to television as a kind of giant social
> situation.
>
> If Meyrowitz is correct, the Internet may be a factor pushing things
> in the reverse direction, from feeling to thinking. (Consider the
> discussion that we're having now. Feelings play practically no
> part in it.)
>
> Russil Wvong
> Vancouver, Canada
> www.geocities.com/rwvong
Another thing I've noticed is that especially among young people over the
last ten years attention spans are much shorter, and people need stimulation
in order to want to be engaged in reflection and thought. They are used to
the stimulation of video games, television, computer games, etc., and it's
just expected that material will be presented in an interesting and eye
grabbing manner.
Teachers tend to react in two ways. Some bemoan this change and demand that
students think and learn the old fashioned way. Others try to compensate in
their methods, by using different class room techniques to get the students
engaged. I think each extreme has faults. The former loses a lot of really
creative and intelligent students that could do a lot more but just
disengage. The latter just feeds the need for stimulation and entertainment
rather than learning and thinking as its own endeavor. The best approach
IMO is to use enough of interesting techniques to get students attention and
interest, and then once you have it, start requiring them to discover the
stimulation and joy of real learning and thinking. That means a lot of
writing on their part, with detailed responses, focusing on such things as
why "I feel" is not indicative of thought and rational analysis, and not
'enough.'
Scott Erb
Right now I use a typical text book, "International Relations" by Joshua S.
Goldstein.
I also try to use a secondary book that delves into particular issues. This
semester I'm using Kenneth Stiles "Case Histories in International
Relations." I also like John Stoessinger's "Why Nations Go to War."
I don't really enjoying using a 'typical' text -- long and detailed.
Goldstein's is the best I've found. One problem is a lack of history.
International Relations is taught with little emphasis on history in many
programs, but given the lack of knowledge of world history that students
often come to college with, I believe I need to spend three weeks at least
at the start of the semester running through major events in history, before
getting into the typical IR units: war and peace, international political
economy, and international law/organization. I've tried using a series of
books that aren't texts, but they leave a lot of important issues uncovered,
especially for a course that is only three credits (students take five
courses a semester here).
For introduction to Comparative Politics I use a text by Charles Hauss,
*Comparative Politics* which examines a number of countries. I also am
using a secondary book on Sierra Leone this semester (other semesters I use
one on political ideology since students don't usually understand the way
political ideologies have developed). Again, I've toyed with the idea of
dropping the big text and looking at three countries in depth. The
advantage of the 'big text' is that it provides a 'world tour' where
students can learn a lot more about a variety of countries. Given that many
students aren't majoring in poli-sci, that can be very useful for them
(especially since many are future teachers, I teach at a university with a
huge education program). But indepth looks at particular countries is
becoming more popular, as the knowledge gained in the 'world tour' approach
is a bit superficial. I'm considering trying the other approach next year
and compare how it works, though I'm not sure which countries I'd choose.
For the introduction to Foreign Policy I use a history of the Cold War book
(either Gaddis or Lefeber usually), then a text on processes and
institutions (Brown and Snow *United States Foreign Policy Beyond the
Water's Edge* was the last I used), and something about current issues and
problems. This semester I altered that completely, however, using a book on
terrorism (*Terrorism and US Foreign Policy* by Pillar) and starting in a
couple weeks we'll spend a lot of time talking about the current 'case' as a
case study in US policy. That course tends to have upper level students who
have had international relations and hence we can go into more depth.
Billy Beck
russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote:
>wj...@mindspring.com (Billy Beck) wrote:
>> The single greatest problem facing the (entire) world today is
>> the abandonment of thought. The ability to abstract essentials and
>> integrate concepts is being plowed under the primacy of sentiment
>> (observe how pervasively the words "I feel" have now supplanted
>> statements that used to say, "I think", and understand that "I think"
>> arose as an egalitarian concession of fact to opinion), and all this
>> as well as wholesale overthrow of definition and logic.
>
>I'd highly recommend that you read Joshua Meyrowitz's "No Sense of Place:
>The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior". Among other
>provocative observations, Meyrowitz notes that whereas print media
>emphasize linear arguments and verbal information, television emphasizes
>personalities, images, and "expressive" (non-verbal) information.
>Meyrowitz suggests that perhaps the introduction of television was
>a major contributing factor to the massive social changes in the US
>since the 1950s, using Goffman's analysis of behavior and social
>situations and applying it to television as a kind of giant social
>situation.
What follows is a note that I posted to Ray Heizer's CAS list
back in December, on the matter of television. I threw it together
quickly from three-point range and it's really just an outline of my
thinking on the subject, with lots of room for development, but the
basic thrust here is about most peoples' un-critical absorption of
something that they do not understand and almost never think about.
> From: toni thatcher
> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 10:31 AM
> Subject: CAS: Managing Us - We're So Easy
> Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for
> Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week,
> and The Washington Times. He has been published in Playboy, Soldier of
> Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Harper's, National
> Review, Signal, Air&Space, and suchlike. He has worked as a police writer,
> technology editor, military specialist, and authority on mercenary soldiers.
Thank you. I read this the other day somewhere else, where the
URL wasn't included. I had no idea where it came from, and thought,
"Innerestin'. I wonder who this guy is."
This bit...
> Managing Us - We're So Easy
>
> http://www.aldenchronicles.com/news_views_reed.html
>
> by Fred Reed
> Dec. 10, 01
[...]
> Maybe two years ago, I got rid of cable, reasoning that while the world
> might be full of idiots, I wasn't going to pay $40 a month to look at them.
> Recently I resubscribed because I wanted the Spanish channels. The
> experience was startling though nothing had changed. I had just forgotten
> how appallingly propagandistic it was, how didactic, how gnawingly
> relentless in inculcating its messages.
...is something to which I can testify from vivid experience.
In me youthful days of brave struggles with poverty while working
for earnest but two-bit bar-bands, I couldn't afford a TV for nearly
five years. When next I plugged one in, I realized I was changed
forever. I never looked at it the same again, unto this very day.
Art is the selective re-creation of reality, according to the
metaphysics (world-view) and epistemology of the artist. It's nearly
impossible for a person with the least considerable brain-activity in
this country to live without exposure to art: even when my cat was
eating better than I was, I could afford a book now & then, and music
was a constant and broad stream of my life, often replete with dance.
(I worked for nothing at lights electrics in the Strand Theater at
Ithaca, New York -- where I later became the lighting director for
seventy-five dollars a week and a dressing room to live in -- for the
local ballet and opera companies, and we had touring companies in the
place. Alvin Ailey's repertory company came through, once.)
One thing I took from it all was a critical view of art in
classes varied according to intimacy of connection to reality. An
exercise I developed, involved watching television with the audio
turned down. Exclusive observation of the visual element emphasized
how insidious could be reality re-creation in this form, to the point
where reality -- real existence, with all its implications -- is
merely the sacrificial bread on which grows the mold of something
approaching psychosis.
Human beings are greatly visual creatures, and sensory
apprehension is very directly connected to high-level cognitive
faculty; concept formation and processing. A great deal of what we
see is the raw fuel of conception, which burns at all waking times,
albeit to various levels of intensity (complex and ability or focus).
A person of lazy cognitive flex, facing art of such dynamic intimacy
with processes of consciousness including *sub*conscious inertial
activity from second-to-second and automatized over a lifetime, can
easily begin to substitute certain *concepts* of reality for reality
itself, whether or not the two are in accord.
Naturally, it's vitally important that one's concepts of reality
match the real thing. (That's known as "truth".)
Live television challenges the medium to accord with reality in
fact and sequence of events. The frame is subject to certain
technical details like camera mechanics and selection (the "take").
At any point when the subject is at variance with the purpose of
broadcast, the fundamental alternative is to simply stop the show.
Edited video can cross into unreal concepts. Unreal, impossible,
events can take place and fuel subconscious inertial conception: the
mold on the bread of the mind. Time is an interesting element of
distortion: start taking note of every slow-motion sequence you see.
Look for them. One thing you'll find is infinite variety of times: it
can be dialed. Consider the implications for conditioning real-time
-- i.e.: actual -- apprehension of reality. Time can be the exclusive
distortion of reality, not necessarily accompanied by counterfactual
fantasy (space monsters, etc.), so *plausible* unrealities are not
compromised with obvious falsehoods stipulated as false ("ET"
indulgences, etc.), and this is multiplied with repetitive broadcast.
Mutations of false concepts of reality can be engineered over time.
(We see this all the time in political television.)
When we talk about "messages", the subject is what people take
from the reason for the production. This is intellectual activity:
someone had something to say about something when they put the tape
together. The reason why we reason is because we need to know how to
stay alive from one minute to the next and as far out in time as
possible: that's the *necessary, root* connection to reality -- not
its selective re-creation in art -- and reasoning through facts of
life in a culture as rich and dynamic as ours extends to putting
together important details at higher levels of abstraction, up where
the mold grows in peoples' minds, exactly where the unreality of
television can be most effective: the ways they consider the world.
...except, it's not. (The world, that is.)
And nothing in that box ever happens by accident.
Martin McPhillips
>
> Martin McPhillips <jour...@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> > Russil Wvong wrote:
> > > [discussing Toynbee's analysis of the growth and decay of
> > > civilizations, as applied to Western civilization]
> > > ... in your opinion, what is the most
> > > important challenge facing Western civilization today? Do you think
> > > a successful response is forthcoming, or not?
> >
> > Pessimistically speaking, after clearing a view through Western successes in
> > science and technology and standards of living -- all the usual indicators
> > of success in the day-to-day sense -- the West is not facing any challenge
> > on an ascending path, but rather the complex tangle of disintegration
> > itself, and the single most important element of and indicator of that
> > is the abandonment of the Church as the West's great religion (and by
> > the Church I mean Rome and its Protestant branches as a whole).
>
> Hmm. When you speak of disintegration, are you referring to spirituality,
> social cohesion, moral values, or all of these things?
I'm referring to the *dis*-*integration* of all of that and more. I'm
saying that the very elan that makes the West the West has been
evaporating *in* the West for a very long time and that it is now
become obvious in the body social, particularly in Europe, but
also in the United States.
> I'm also concerned about social cohesion and moral values (I've been
> reading Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Kennan discusses these issues as well).
> With the decline of organized religion, children learn morals --
> how they should live, how they should treat other people, basic things
> like the Golden Rule -- in two places: their family and their schools.
> I'd be open to an argument that these aren't sufficient,
Families and schools aren't immune. This isn't something that is
happening "out there," from which families and schools are somehow
protected. We're talking about a negation of the source of the
elan of the West, nothing less than that. That doesn't mean that
every family, every school, every individual is cursed -- far from
it. It transcends individual cases. The drama of a civilization
in danger of crumbling is a long one played out on a stage
we cannot easily know -- because we are on it.
But if you want to see long-term advanced deterioration look
at Orthodox civilization in Russia. That's something we can
understand and identify with because it is the West's twin.
And it wasn't Communism that ruined Orthodox civilization. It
was ruination that allowed Communism to take root there in
the way that it did.
> that they leave
> a vacuum which is filled by television, and that the kind of teachings
> provided by organized religion are necessary in order to maintain
> tradition and moral values. Is this what you would argue, or am I
> misunderstanding you? (e.g. Are you more concerned about Western
> unity?)
What I'm saying is that the roots of this crisis predate things
like television by at least two centuries, and that the obvious signs
of failure are the results, not the predicates, even if those results
roll over as predicates of even steeper deterioration.
> I'm not sure that a spiritual revival would help us to deal with
> the main concrete issues facing us, though, e.g. environmental
> sustainability, weapons of mass destruction.
Those are not "main concrete issues" at all. They are secondary issues,
and manageable.
> (And there's more
> general issues such as dealing with technology and social change.)
Even the very concept of "technology and social change" is
in itself a corruption. It's illusory compared to the main
event.
> > [regarding bureaucracy]
> > And that's the U.S., a still
> > dynamic society, where the bulk of the political debate revolves
> > around distributing *leftover* resources in government budgets,
> > leftover *from* the dominant entitlement programs. In other words,
> > competing for votes by distributing advantages -- or pretending to --
> > to the greatest number of people to the disadvantage of all ....
>
> I definitely agree that rent-seeking is a problem.
That's a raffish concept, *rent-seeking* -- an attempt to
purify corruption by objectifying it, in my opinion.
> An economist
> friend says that nationalism is bad in some respects, but maybe
> we need it in order to get people to put the common good above
> their own interests, at least some of the time (e.g. to follow
> the rules instead of breaking them, or to not engage in
> rent-seeking if it's beneficial for them but harmful for
> everyone else).
That's a needlessly abstract way of looking at this problem,
but not *just* abstract -- it's also isolated from the continuum
of values and energies that make freedom essential to successful
societies and economies.
> A second problem is that the welfare state makes individuals
> dependent (not just people on welfare, but people who depend on
> public education, public health, etc.). I'm still turning over
> in my head what to do about it.
Dependency on the state weakens the family, which is the basic
unit of economic survival. It also weakens the individual, making
him less able to form and support a family. That leads to less
free association and more compulsory association (in schools, in taxes,
in fait accompli political formations, in endless schedules of law
and regulation as the state fulfills its self-given mandate of
managing daily affairs, *and* in personal life itself, weakening
the indivuals who in confluence have the talent and values that
enable them to form communities and societies).
> > [regarding Reagan-era foreign policy]
> > If you have something specifically that you would like to
> > raise from any of these articles -- as a point, not simply
> > a general posting of them as information -- I'll try to
> > address it.
>
> Thanks, I'm just posting them as information. I'm going through
> the process myself of gathering information on Reagan's foreign
> policy from various sources, and trying to triangulate them to
> establish their reliability.
Well, when you've got it all triangulated I'll give it a listen.
Russil Wvong
> "Russil Wvong" <russi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > By the way, Scott, is there a particular book that you use as a textbook
> > for your introductory classes?
>
> Goldstein.
>
> I also try to use a secondary book that delves into particular issues. This
> semester I'm using Kenneth Stiles "Case Histories in International
> Relations." I also like John Stoessinger's "Why Nations Go to War."
>
> I don't really enjoying using a 'typical' text -- long and detailed.
> Goldstein's is the best I've found. One problem is a lack of history.
Thanks, Scott. I thought Morgenthau's "Politics Among Nations" was
pretty good (it's not all realism, he covers international law,
international morality, world public opinion, disarmament, and
international organizations as well), but I'll look up Goldstein's
book to make sure I'm not relying too uncritically on the realist
view.
> International Relations is taught with little emphasis on history in many
> programs, but given the lack of knowledge of world history that students
> often come to college with, I believe I need to spend three weeks at least
> at the start of the semester running through major events in history,
> before getting into the typical IR units....
I would totally agree. I knew practically nothing about world history
when I graduated from high school.
> [Introduction to Comparative Politics]
> Again, I've toyed with the idea of
> dropping the big text and looking at three countries in depth. The
> advantage of the 'big text' is that it provides a 'world tour' where
> students can learn a lot more about a variety of countries.
Thinking about it from a student point of view, I think I'd prefer
the world tour to the in-depth approach: even if it only provides
a relatively superficial view of the world, I think you need a kind
of framework to be able to put more detailed knowledge into place.
And having some knowledge of each region of the world should
hopefully spark interest in learning more (following the principle
that the more you know about a subject, the more interesting you
find it).
Scott Erb
really enjoying using a 'typical' text -- long and detailed.
> > Goldstein's is the best I've found. One problem is a lack of history.
>
> Thanks, Scott. I thought Morgenthau's "Politics Among Nations" was
> pretty good (it's not all realism, he covers international law,
> international morality, world public opinion, disarmament, and
> international organizations as well), but I'll look up Goldstein's
> book to make sure I'm not relying too uncritically on the realist
> view.
Morgenthau's book provides the realist theory, but doesn't do much on
political economy, especially involving international trade, finance, third
world-first world relations, etc. I'd use his book potentially for a course
on international relations theory (representing realism) or diplomatic
history. Goldstein's book describes different theories and issues in IR,
and is of course aimed at college students who have no background in the
material. Goldstein may be a bit too simple for you in many areas, but you
could use him to find other sources.
> > International Relations is taught with little emphasis on history in
many
> > programs, but given the lack of knowledge of world history that students
> > often come to college with, I believe I need to spend three weeks at
least
> > at the start of the semester running through major events in history,
> > before getting into the typical IR units....
>
> I would totally agree. I knew practically nothing about world history
> when I graduated from high school
> > [Introduction to Comparative Politics]
> > Again, I've toyed with the idea of
> > dropping the big text and looking at three countries in depth. The
> > advantage of the 'big text' is that it provides a 'world tour' where
> > students can learn a lot more about a variety of countries.
>
> Thinking about it from a student point of view, I think I'd prefer
> the world tour to the in-depth approach: even if it only provides
> a relatively superficial view of the world, I think you need a kind
> of framework to be able to put more detailed knowledge into place.
> And having some knowledge of each region of the world should
> hopefully spark interest in learning more (following the principle
> that the more you know about a subject, the more interesting you
> find it).
That's my read too, though I have colleagues who argue for the other
approach. There are advanced courses that go indepth. The only thing I
really have to guard against is moving too fast so students don't get lost.
Things like proportional representation vs. single member district systems,
variations of voting systems, parliamentary vs. presidential systems,
judicial review, federal vs. unitary systems, the role political culture,
power relations between institutions, etc., can get very confusing,
especially if they're looking at nine or ten states. Still, its one of my
favorite courses to teach because students (both in Comparative and IR) tend
to have an 'eye opening experience,' they never realized the world was so
interesting. On my evaluations I often get the comment, "I really thought
I'd hate this class because I don't like politics, but this was really
interesting..." That tells me that students aren't ignoring international
relations because they find it boring, they just haven't had the opportunity
to discover just what is going on in the world and how important and
fascinating world affairs are.
Russil Wvong
> ... Modernism puts reason ahead of spirit, and since spirit is of
> a different essence than materialist science or rational philosophy,
> it gets denegrated and criticized by elites and thinkers.
>
> But that doesn't really provide any reason to deny spirituality or adopt a
> radical materialist view of existence. There seems to be an almost
> universal intuitive sense that there is 'something more,' a sense that
> crosses cultures and most people believe almost implicitly, at least until
> they are taught to be cynical. Is this like some say a whimisical belief,
> like a child's belief in Santa, a desire for something more when cold hard
> reality is all there is? Or is there a spiritual side of life that contains
> ethical truths and a sense of value that transcends our particular cultural
> constructs and rational philosophies? I think there is -- I'm convinced of
> it -- and the question I grapple with and will continue to grapple with
> throughout life is how to reconcile a belief in rationality and logic
> (recognizing its limitations -- the inability to disprove or prove a
> spiritual side of life) with a conviction that life is about the spirit as
Hmm. I would agree that Western societies do a very good job of
providing for our material needs, providing abundance (at least for
most people) which is astonishing historically, but which isn't
matched by its ability to provide for our spiritual needs -- hope
for the future, knowledge of right and wrong, ability to face
adversity and death.
I don't have a clear idea of what the answer is. Some thoughts:
- I think revival of spiritual and religious faith would certainly
help, although I think it'll also require fighting against the
tide of modernity. (I admire people who have faith, but I'm
lacking in faith myself.)
- It might also be helpful to revive moral philosophy; the Stoics,
in particular, provide a great deal of practical advice on
dealing with adversity. (I suspect I find Stoic philosophy
appealing because I've internalized my parents' belief that
life is hard, which is easy to forget, living in the West.)
[http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Epictetus.html]
[http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html]
- There's a number of modern manifestations of moral philosophy:
self-help books, psychology, psychotherapy. I think M. Scott
Peck's "The Road Less Traveled" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's
Search for Meaning" are pretty good, for example.
On a more mundane level, even time management and personal
finance books (e.g. Andrew Tobias's "The Only Investment Guide
You'll Ever Need") have some useful things to say about how
one ought to live, e.g. living as though your income is lower
than it actually is.
- I suspect that the abundance and security of modern life may
be a major handicap when it comes to meeting one's spiritual
needs. I haven't figured out yet what to do about it, though.
(I think my parents would say, "Live in China for a few years."
Perhaps the important thing is to seek challenges rather than
comfort.)
Russil Wvong
> > > [discussing Toynbee and Western civilization]
> > > Pessimistically speaking, after clearing a view through Western
> > > successes in science and technology and standards of living --
> > > all the usual indicators of success in the day-to-day sense --
> > > the West is not facing any challenge on an ascending path, but
> > > rather the complex tangle of disintegration itself, and the
> > > single most important element of and indicator of that
> > > is the abandonment of the Church as the West's great religion (and by
> > > the Church I mean Rome and its Protestant branches as a whole).
> >
> > Hmm. When you speak of disintegration, are you referring to spirituality,
> > social cohesion, moral values, or all of these things?
>
> I'm referring to the *dis*-*integration* of all of that and more. I'm
> saying that the very elan that makes the West the West has been
> evaporating *in* the West for a very long time and that it is now
> become obvious in the body social, particularly in Europe, but
> also in the United States.
I was trying to figure out what you meant. By coincidence, I came
across Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard Address. (I was
reading Kennan's "Sketches from a Life" and he referred to
criticism from Solzhenitsyn.) Have you seen this before?
A Decline in Courage [. . .]
may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices
in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage,
both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government,
each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a
decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling
groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of
courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous
individuals but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity
and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even
more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic,
reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is
to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in
courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger
and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing
with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone,
or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they
get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful
governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and
international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage
has been considered the beginning of the end?
... The individual's independence from many types of state pressure
has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted
well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not
even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people
according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor,
happiness, possession of material goods, money and leisure, to an
almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce
all this, why and for what should one risk one's precious
life in defense of common values, and particularly in such
nebulous cases when the security of one's nation must be defended in
a distant country?
Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are
not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being
in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious
mask.
[http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html]
Solzhenitsyn traces the roots of the problem to humanism:
Humanism and Its Consequences
How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did
the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness?
Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its
development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially
in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of
brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found
itself in its present state of weakness.
This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis
of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing
Western view of the world which was first born during the
Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of
the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social
science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or
humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man
from any higher force above him. It could also be called
anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that
exists.
The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable
historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by
exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's
physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we
turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material
with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking,
which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence
of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the
attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western
civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his
material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and
accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and
characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside
the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human
life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for
evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant
flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems
of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.
However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the
time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted
because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the
individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant
religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding
thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have
seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be
granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his
instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations
were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred
from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great
reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming
increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly
enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's
sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and
dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of
Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and
the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political
impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress,
including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth
century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as
in the Nineteenth Century.
Time for me to do more reading and thinking.
[http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0112/reviews/kraynak.html]
Scott Erb
Agreed. This culture has an intense fear of death and people dislike even
thinking about it. That's certainly understandable since it means ending
our existence on this planet, but given that death is something no one
escapes, the idea of relegating it to a topic almost forbidden is misguided
I think. One of my favorite movies is "What Dreams May Come," a wonderful
spiritual fantasy with Robin Williams about death. (If you rent the DVD,
check out the alternate ending, it's much better than the original).
Also it seems that being super wealthy hasn't exactly made us a contented
happy nation. Stress levels are higher than ever, people are depressed,
angry, feel unappreciated, etc. as much if not more than ever. Even the
wealthiest can't seem to find real contentment. Ethics has been replaced by
legalism -- it doesn't matter if it was right or wrong, but was it legal?
Not everyone fits in these categories, of course, and most people in their
own private way find a balance, but its pretty clear that western culture is
much better on material stuff than the spiritual.
> I don't have a clear idea of what the answer is. Some thoughts:
>
> - I think revival of spiritual and religious faith would certainly
> help, although I think it'll also require fighting against the
> tide of modernity. (I admire people who have faith, but I'm
> lacking in faith myself.)
I have faith, but not in an organized religion. I believe there is some
other aspect of life. That's one reason I'm fascinated by science -- when I
read (not wholly understanding to be sure) about advances in quantum
mechanics, theories of the universe, etc., it becomes clear that the world
is much, much different than it appears, more strange and unfathomable.
That is, actually, comforting. There is no reason to believe that a kind
of linear temporal existence of the sort we experience is all that is, or
even all that we are. At the very least, the world we experience could be
just a part of a larger reality, just as our the identity we experience in
this world could be part of a larger self.
The problem with most religious faith is that it is exclusive -- you either
believe this story or not. Yet given the limits of science, all faiths are
unfalsifiable, and there is no rational reason to assume ones' faith is
absolutely true. I think that means religion and faith, if it is to have
value, must move from the pre-modern notion of pure belief in a dogma, to a
modern acceptance that religion is not contrary to science, and cannot claim
certainty. My faith that life is spiritual as well as material is not
something I can prove, and thus not something I can be dogmatic about. In
essence, pre-modern religion treated humans almost as children, telling us
what to believe and giving us rules to follow. Now that we've shed off that
approach, we have to develop a way to understand the world and the
possibility of spirituality (and ethics) in manner that defies absolute
proof and certainty. It's like when children grow up and have to suddenly
have to make their own choices. I think there is a way to rationally do
this: a) recognize that we are responsible for our choices, and choices all
have consequences; b) recognize that other people are responsible for their
choices, and they have no reason to accept my or your beliefs; c) recognize
that we nonetheless share this world and despite holding different sets of
convictions have to develop a manner to mediate disputes and foster
cooperation.
I guess my faith is that I know there is something more to life than
material reality that we experience, I believe that whatever happens I can
make the best of, and that there is a purpose. I could be wrong, of
course, but I strongly believe that I'm basically right...so that's faith, I
guess.
> - It might also be helpful to revive moral philosophy; the Stoics,
> in particular, provide a great deal of practical advice on
> dealing with adversity. (I suspect I find Stoic philosophy
> appealing because I've internalized my parents' belief that
> life is hard, which is easy to forget, living in the West.)
> [http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/browse-Epictetus.html]
> [http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html]
I found a great quote by Rene Descartes, I'll try to find that explains his
approach.
> - There's a number of modern manifestations of moral philosophy:
> self-help books, psychology, psychotherapy. I think M. Scott
> Peck's "The Road Less Traveled" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's
> Search for Meaning" are pretty good, for example.
I've seen them but not yet read them. It sounds interesting.
> On a more mundane level, even time management and personal
> finance books (e.g. Andrew Tobias's "The Only Investment Guide
> You'll Ever Need") have some useful things to say about how
> one ought to live, e.g. living as though your income is lower
> than it actually is.
Hmmm, I've been doing the opposite lately :-)
> - I suspect that the abundance and security of modern life may
> be a major handicap when it comes to meeting one's spiritual
> needs. I haven't figured out yet what to do about it, though.
> (I think my parents would say, "Live in China for a few years."
> Perhaps the important thing is to seek challenges rather than
> comfort.)
My wife is from Russia. Her dad works for an oil company, so they're doing
fine, but when I visited a small village and see how life is there, it
really drives home how petty some of our worries are here. People struggle
just to survive out in the countryside, it's a really hard life. People
here just don't know how good they have it --- and we don't take the time to
appreciate it and enjoy it, either, we just take it for granted. I try not
to, I really think we have to live and appreciate each experience to the
fullest.
Nice to get away from pure politics for awhile here :)
Martin McPhillips
While there's not much that I would take great issue with in either
of those excerpts, I would focus more on the intellectual deterioration
than on the drive for material success and comfort, as the source of the
most deadly blows to the Western spirit. Among the worst disasters
in that respect are Auguste Comte and Karl Marx and the intellectual
tradition spun off from them both separately and in unison. Some writers use
the term Gnosticism rather than Humanism. It's broader and less heavily
trod upon. Though he is superficially different from those two, Nietzche
certainly stands out as a symbol of the inevitable collapse of which
they are a part. Most Englightenment fans have a hard time coming
to grips with its delightful 19th Century by-products.
And *courage* is certainly a centering concept, when it comes to
focusing on what is absent in the midst of the spinelessness of
intellectual discourse in the present-day West.
Oddly enough, I remain an optimist. As an old friend of mine once
put it: "I'm so cynical that I've become cynical about my own
cynacism and have thus become an optimist."
Tim Starr
>tims...@c2.net (Tim Starr) wrote:
>>Krugman's good on how economic growth is primarily caused by
increased
>>productivity rather than increased input, but I wouldn't trust him
>>much farther than I could throw him about much more than that.
>
>Any particular reason?
Yes, that, fundamentally, he's a neo-Keynesian, and neo-Keynesianism
is wrong.
>The Keynes/monetarist dispute?
That might be a good illustration, even though I'm not a monetarist
(Keynes was a monetarist before his "General Theory," when he
abandoned all the good economics he'd ever known), I'm a fan of the
Austrian school of economics. Hazlitt also wrote a good critique of
Keynes, decades ago.
>The main criticism I've seen of having an independent central bank
change
>interest rates to stimulate or slow down the economy is that such
changes have
>"long and variable lags"; are there others?
Oh, my, yes, there certainly are. One is that credit expansion by
central banks setting interest rates below the market-clearing level
causes business cycles, another is that central banks can't tell what
the market-clearing interest rate is to know where to set it.
Tim Starr
Scott Erb
"Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote in message
news:9384ebd6.02031...@posting.google.com...
> russi...@yahoo.com (Russil Wvong) wrote in message
news:<afe9ed76.02022...@posting.google.com>...
> >tims...@c2.net (Tim Starr) wrote:
> >>Krugman's good on how economic growth is primarily caused by
> increased
> >>productivity rather than increased input, but I wouldn't trust him
> >>much farther than I could throw him about much more than that.
> >
> >Any particular reason?
>
> Yes, that, fundamentally, he's a neo-Keynesian, and neo-Keynesianism
> is wrong.
That hasn't been definitely proven, and certainly that isn't an explanation
Tim.
Again, you are arguing by labeling. You apply a label to something and then
use it as a reason to dismiss an argument.
That is not rational. Arguments ahve to be shown right or wrong based on
their content.
> >The Keynes/monetarist dispute?
>
> That might be a good illustration, even though I'm not a monetarist
> (Keynes was a monetarist before his "General Theory," when he
> abandoned all the good economics he'd ever known), I'm a fan of the
> Austrian school of economics. Hazlitt also wrote a good critique of
> Keynes, decades ago.
There are many debates about economics out there. Most economists I know
believe Keynes added to economic theory with valuable insights, and that has
been built upon. There are still numerous desputes between economists and
modern Keynesians certainly haven't been 'proven wrong.' It still seems
you are letting ideology drive your positions, rather than a rational look
at facts and arguments.
Russil Wvong
> [regarding Paul Krugman and neo-Keynesianism]
> >The main criticism I've seen of having an independent central bank change
> >interest rates to stimulate or slow down the economy is that such changes
> >have "long and variable lags"; are there others?
>
> Oh, my, yes, there certainly are. One is that credit expansion by
> central banks setting interest rates below the market-clearing level
> causes business cycles, another is that central banks can't tell what
> the market-clearing interest rate is to know where to set it.
I guess I'll need to look these up in order to evaluate them. Where can
I get more information? Does Hazlitt ("Economics in One Lesson")
discuss both of them?
It's certainly true that if the central bank sets the interest rate
too low, the economy will overheat, resulting in accelerating inflation;
or conversely, if it sets the interest rate too high, the economy will
stall, resulting in increased unemployment. And it's also true that
determining the right interest rate level is very difficult. But it
seems to me that without such a role played by the central bank,
the economy is even more vulnerable to prolonged overheating (e.g.
because of the government running large deficits) or prolonged
stalling (because of a small slump causing a loss of confidence
leading to a larger slump, etc.; theoretically, wages and prices
would drop to compensate, but empirically, they seem to be "sticky"
in the downward direction). Anyway, I suppose I'll need to look
at the counterarguments.
Russil Wvong
> "Tim Starr" <tims...@c2.net> wrote:
> > Yes, that, fundamentally, he's a neo-Keynesian, and neo-Keynesianism
> > is wrong.
>
> That hasn't been definitely proven, and certainly that isn't an explanation
> Tim.
> There are many debates about economics out there. Most economists I know
> believe Keynes added to economic theory with valuable insights, and that has
> modern Keynesians certainly haven't been 'proven wrong.'
That's more or less the impression that I have as well, but I think it's
reasonable for Tim to clarify by saying that he disagrees with Krugman
because Krugman is a neo-Keynesian (rather than because Krugman is a
liberal or a Democrat, say). Then I can look up the arguments against
neo-Keynesianism, and try to construct counter-arguments.