The Diplomat of the Future

SENATOR JOHN S. McCAIN III, 1936-2018: REQUIESCAT IN PACE

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 17:58:00 +0000

"John McCain was born to fight. He did so in the skies and fields of war, in Vietnam, and in politics, soaring to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2008. His death at the age of 81 robs America of one of its most distinctive public servants of the last half century. In both his chosen careers, McCain fought against authority and conventional wisdom, acquiring the reputation of being the quintessential maverick. Although in many respects a rock-ribbed conservative, he always had his own agenda, regardless of party affiliation. Even when fellow Republicans occupied the White House, he had few compunctions in challenging them. He was raised a navy brat. Born on August 29, 1936, in the US-occupied Panama Canal Zone, he was the son and grandson of US Navy admirals, moving wherever his father was stationed. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1958 after a turbulent midshipman’s existence, accumulating so many disciplinary demerits that he qualified for the dubious “century club”. As a navy pilot, he found himself in Vietnam. He survived a terrible fire in 1967 on the USS Forrestal after an onboard missile exploded, killing more than 120 US seamen. In an early indication of his independent thinking, he told a reporter he had befriended, R W Apple, then covering the war for the New York Times: “Now I’ve seen what the bombs and napalm did to the people on our ship, I’m not so sure I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam.” Soon afterwards McCain was shot down over North Vietnam and spent five and a half years in the prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton”. He was repeatedly tortured, to the point that his sandy hair turned snow white, but refused the offer of early release to stay with his fellow prisoners of war. After peace was agreed he returned to the US a hero, broken in body but not spirit. Once mended he resumed his navy career at home but it became apparent he would not become the third admiral in his family. One stint, as a liaison to the US Congress, proved useful, however. When he married his second wife, Cindy Lou Hensley, in 1980, his best man and groomsman were two senators, William Cohen and Gary Hart. The couple moved to Arizona, where politics soon beckoned. McCain ran for the House of Representatives in 1982 and, when attacked in a debate as a carpet-bagging newcomer to the state, he came up with a killing response: “When I think about it now, the place I lived longest was Hanoi.” He won easily and moved up to the Senate four years later. The maverick reputation took hold in his House years. He voted against the Ronald Reagan administration on two controversial issues: to establish a permanent US Marine presence in Lebanon and to override a presidential veto of anti-apartheid legislation. His Senate career was nearly derailed by being caught up in the savings-and-loans scandals of the late 1980s. One suspect bank to go bankrupt was Lincoln Savings and Loan, led by Charles Keating, an Arizonan financier and old friend. Five senators, including McCain, were alleged to have tried to intercede with federal regulators investigating Lincoln. He was reprimanded by the Senate ethics committee but still won re-election in 1992…. McCain broke with President Bush frequently, first over his 2001 tax cuts, which McCain opposed because they were not accompanied by corresponding reductions in spending. Though he supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he was the pre-eminent congressional critic of the conduct of the military occupation, saying he had no confidence in President Bush’s then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld. McCain’s case was that Rumsfeld insisted on deploying too few troops. He was vindicated with the eventual adoption early in 2007 of the troop “surge”, which at least had the effect of reducing American and Iraqi casualties. Never one to mince his words, the senator regularly cast aspersions on Donald Trump’s fitness for the highest office in the land…He let the White House know that Mr Trump would not be welcome at his funeral, which was planned, appropriately, for the National Cathedral in Washington".

Courtney Weaver, "John McCain, US war hero and politician, dies aged 81". The Financial Times. 26 August 2018, in www.ft.com.

>HORATIO: "I saw him once. He was a goodly king". HAMLET: "He was a man. Take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again".

Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act 1, Scene 2.

The late Senator John McCain was to my mind without any doubt a heroic figure. Someone like Maréchal Ney: the bravest of the brave. In retrospect it was and is a tragedy of the first order that he never was elected President. Especially, in year 2000. Which is not to say that I agreed with everything that Senator McCain did or said. Simply that as a man, as a political figure, he was by far the best person by both family background and life story to ascend to the highest office in the land. It is a mark of the current decadence of American politics and indeed the American polity, that to-day the office of the Presidency is held by someone who is in almost every way and or fashion possible the exact opposite of Senator McCain. Indeed, I fear that the mots of Shakespeare in Hamlet are very apt in this instance: that we "shall not look upon his like again".

PETER, THE 6TH BARON CARRINGTON, 1919-2018: REQUIESCAT IN PACE

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 22:34:00 +0000

"Lord Carrington, who has died at the age of 99, was Margaret Thatcher's first foreign secretary, renowned for the Rhodesia settlement of 1979 and for Britain’s response to the invasion of the Falkland Islands three years later. Rhodesia was the Thatcher government’s greatest diplomatic triumph, the Falklands invasion its worst overseas disaster. Together they form a fitting testament to the vicissitudes of Carrington’s 40 years at the heart of Conservative politics. A hereditary peer whose entire political career was spent in the House of Lords, he was the first foreign secretary for 75 years never to have been an elected MP. His ascent was due to the relationship he established with a succession of Tory leaders, particularly with Edward Heath, yet he was among the few who proved able to transfer their loyalty effortlessly to Thatcher. Born on June 6 1919, Peter Carrington succeeded his father to the peerage at the age of 19. The title was one of William Pitt the Younger’s mercantile creations but the family had become conventional landowners.... Carrington followed the well-trodden aristocratic path from Eton to Sandhurst, serving with distinction in north-west Europe in the last months of the second world war. An articulate voice in the postwar Country Landowners’ Association, he was an obvious choice for junior ministerial office in the Lords when the Tories won power in 1951. Three years as high commissioner in Australia (1956-59) exhibited for the first time in a senior post the characteristic mix of patrician charm, bluff common sense and cool decisiveness that endeared him to successive Tory leaders. In 1959 Harold Macmillan brought Carrington back to London as first lord of the Admiralty; he entered the cabinet as leader of the House of Lords under Alec Douglas-Home in 1963. As leader of the opposition in the Lords throughout the Wilson and Callaghan governments, he used his numerical predominance in the upper house with tact, skilfully exploiting the peers’ residual powers to make mischief with Labour legislation. Carrington’s appointment by Heath as defence secretary in 1970 brought him to the political front rank. He later also served as party chairman".

Andrew, Lord Adonis. "Peter Carrington, former UK foreign secretary, 1919-2018". The Financial Times. 10 July 2018, in www.ft.com.

"Lord Carrington, who has just died, may well have been longer in public life than any non-royal person ever. He took his seat in the House of Lords in 1946 (having already won the MC at Nijmegen in 1944), and never really retired until ill health confined him 70 years later. Hereditary privilege, I suppose, put him in; but what kept him there, giving him office under six prime ministers, as well as making him high commissioner to Australia, secretary-general of Nato etc. The obvious answer would be that, as someone who could not be elected, he was like the eunuch in the seraglio. Certainly prime ministers were disposed to trust him, in part because they knew he couldn’t have their job. Certainly, too, he had a strong sense of public service. But this does not explain his rather unaristocratic tenacity and ambition or his undoubted ability....The Peter Carrington view of the world included a defeatism about the possibilities of civilization which when allowed to run a country--as it did to some extent under Macmillian and Heath--had a quiet bad effect. He tended to confuse democracy with populism, and so to dislike both. He was so accustomed to national decline that he almost welcomed it. His effect on the conduct of the country's business abroad--brisk yet easy, conciliatory yet tough, quick-witted, commonsensical, worldly wise--was benign and yet irreplaceable".

Charles Moore, "The Spectator's Notes". The Spectator. 14 July 2018, p. 9.

”Peter [Lord Carrington] has originality, frankness and gaiety. He’s not like other Foreign Secretaries I have known. He is very natural. He has no pomposity whatever and no political bias or prejudice. He is certainly not right wing. He seems to hold his [Tory] party in about the same degree of contempt as RAB [Richard Austen Butler – former Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Secretary of State]. He has the capacity of charming people he doesn’t like. His face falls like Niagara Falls, whenever he wishes to express doubt. He is always ready with a joke. He has time and energy for unimportant people such as drivers, detectives, secretaries…He is of course in a wonderful position at the moment with no constituency – except the whole country. He is acknowledged in the UK at the present time and elsewhere as a colossal success at the job....He also knows enough about the past to be able to give a good analysis of a different problem, for instance of why the popular parallel between 1940 and to-day is inapposite despite Helmut Schmidt’s insistence that it is.”

Nicholas Henderson. Mandarin: The diaries of Nicholas Henderson, 1969-1982. (2000), p. 340. Entry for 9 May 1980.

Peter, the Sixth Baron Carrington bestrode the stage of British high politics and international diplomacy from the mid-1950s to the late early 1990s. Lord Carrington’s style of politics, of diplomacy indeed of humor is not the type that we can imagine seeing again in our lifetimes. It would be accurate to say of Lord Carrington the same mots that Harold Macmillian said of Lord Home in October 1963: "he is an example of the old governing class at its best”. Of course as Charles Moore aptly points out, Carrington was not a colossus akin to say Mrs. Thatcher, Sir Winston Churchill or Lord Salisbury. But he did not have to be any of these things. He merely had to be the ultimate ‘safe pair of hands’. Someone by virtue of his upbringing, education, early life experiences (ten-years as an officer in a guards regiment, six of them during the Second World War), and character was trusted by such different people as Churchill, Eden, Macmillian, Home, Heath and Thatcher. Indeed it is impossible to not be nostalgic about Lord Carrington in the age of Trump. Our Trumpian cauchemar making one all too aware of the fact that individuals of Lord Carrington’s worth and character do not for the most part choose to enter the public arena any longer. And given the degradation of the public mind and the mauvais ton style of politics that has emerged in both the USA and the UK, that is hardly surprising. Au fond one can only remember that not too many years ago, politics was a game played by or for gentlemen. Or those who wished to be seen as a gentleman (A/K/A Edward Heath being a prime example). To-day of course the mere idea that someone is a ‘gentleman’, un chevalier sans pur et sans reproche, is to forever bar one from public office and indeed from public service. To the cost of all us who see that we are ruled by vulgarians of no background and no backbone.

CHINA ON THE TRUMPIAN NIGHTMARE THAT IS AMERICAN DIPLOMACY

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 23:33:00 +0000

"China’s President Xi Jinping told visiting US defence secretary Jim Mattis that China would not yield “one inch” of the South China Sea, rebuffing Washington’s efforts to engage Beijing on the issue. Mr Mattis was visiting the Chinese capital for three days as part of a tour of Asia. On Thursday he flew to Seoul and reassured South Korean leaders that there would be no change in US forces stationed on the Korean peninsula following moves towards peace with Pyongyang. One of his primary aims in China was to deliver what he called a “medium tough” message to Beijing, warning against what Washington sees as Beijing’s militarisation of several artificial islands it has dredged in the South China Sea. Mr Xi, however, poured cold water on his efforts, restating Beijing’s long-held position that Chinese territorial waters include most of the South China Sea. Beijing claims roughly 90 per cent of the sea via what is known as the nine-dash line — an assertion that was shot down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016. China has ignored the ruling. “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors,” said the Chinese leader, according to state media, referring to Taiwan as well as the South China Sea. “What is other people’s, we do not want at all.” In May, China reportedly installed long-range anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles on three of its artificial islands in the South China Sea. Beijing justified its moves by suggesting that US naval manoeuvres in the sea contributed to militarisation of the area".

Charles Clover, "China rejects US concerns over South China Sea militarisation". The Financial Times. 29 June 2018, in www.ft.com.

"Chinese analysts generally attribute shifts in the Trump administration’s foreign policy to US decline. Many Chinese observers assume that the combined forces of globalisation and China’s rise are undermining US predominance, generating a new wave of anxiety within the United States. Due to these underlying assumptions, they often view the Trump administration’s threats against China as the ineffectual flailing of a declining power rather than a genuine warning sign that the US will take action that damages Chinese interests. To be sure, there is also broad recognition in China that Washington increasingly views Beijing through a competitive lens, creating new uncertainties in the Sino-American relationship. However, Chinese analysts are largely optimistic about the future of the relationship, assuming that US national interests will eventually drive the Trump administration towards a more cooperative stance on China. Chinese scholars are even more optimistic at the multilateral level, with many viewing the Trump administration’s actions as facilitating China’s rise as a global power, at the expense of the US".

Melanie Hart & Blaine Johnson, "The Trump Opportunity: Chinese Perceptions of the US Administrations". European Council on Foreign Relations. 20 June 2018, in www.ecfr.eu.

It is self-evident that the Peoples Republic regime in Peking view a United States under President Donald Trump as a 'declining power', which will inevitably give way to a rising China. There are similar perceptions afoot in Putin's Russia. With the occasional Trumpian efforts at showing American 'strength' more than cancelled out by the incoherence and indeed almost irrationality of other actions which demonstrate that the American Administration is almost completely beyond being able to construct any type of strategy. Much less a 'grand strategy'. Indeed, one has the impression that the American President, our modern-day Kaiser William II, creates policy on the hoof, without a thought about what other nations will think, but cares only about the headlines the very next day. In short one can readily say 'goodbye' to anything resembling American diplomacy in the George Kennan or Henry Kissinger sense. Indeed one almost positively remembers with the nostalgia the days of Bud McFarlane, Admiral Poindexter and Anthony Lake. With those (like myself) who hoped that John Bolton would be able to exercise some control on the mercurial American President vastly disappointed. I am afraid that there will be many more disappointments to come in the days ahead.

DONALD TRUMP IN SINGAPORE: THE DIPLOMACY OF A CHIMPANZEE

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 23:25:00 +0000

"The surreal meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday was perhaps best summed up by the performance of former basketball star Dennis Rodman. Wearing his “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap, dark sunglasses and a shirt emblazoned with his marijuana cryptocurrency sponsor, Mr Rodman broke down in tears on CNN as he declared June 12 a great day for the whole world. Mr Trump’s rambling press conference at the conclusion of the summit only enhanced the aura of reality television spectacle. In more than an hour of banter with a room full of reporters, the US president revealed a list of American concessions that went well beyond anything Mr Kim could have imagined. Along with a promise to end joint military exercises with South Korea, Mr Trump said he expected a formal peace treaty between the two countries would be signed soon and indicated his strong desire to eventually remove around 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea (it does not appear to have been consulted before Mr Trump decided to unilaterally end the joint exercises). In that context, the short joint statement signed by the two men can only be interpreted as a victory for the North Korean dictator. Apart from bland commitments on both sides to establish new relations and work towards peace, the document committed Pyongyang to merely “work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.... Mr Trump chose to ignore the fact that Mr Kim’s regime interprets that phrase as the removal of America’s nuclear umbrella from South Korea in exchange for denuclearisation in the north. In outlining the concessions he had extracted from Mr Kim, the US president complained he had not had enough time at this summit to agree a more comprehensive “de-nuke” agreement. If Mr Trump changes his mind and attempts to ramp up sanctions again it is now very unlikely China would be willing to enforce them. Beijing has watched this summit from the sidelines but will celebrate Mr Trump’s talk of troop drawdowns and cancelling US military exercises, which he called “very expensive” and “very provocative”. One of China’s most treasured goals is the eventual removal of US troops from its neighbourhood. At one point in his press conference, Mr Trump provided some insight into his mindset when he asked everyone to “think of it from a real estate perspective”. He advised Mr Kim to imagine the potential of his “beautiful beaches” if he were to stop using them for artillery exercises and built condos on them instead....".

Jamil Anderlini, "Kim Jong Un outmanoeuvres Donald Trump in Singapore" The Financial Times. 12 June 2018, in www.ft.com.

"To see him fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all of the horror of seeing a Sèvres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee".

Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh, The Tablet, 5 May 1951.

Nothing, I declare nothing draws to mind Evely Waugh's great put-down of Steven Spender more than the performance of the American President in Singapore earlier this month. To say as the Financial Times correspondent does that the North Korean Dictator Mr. Kim ran rings around the American President, would be kindness. The fact of the matter is that the American President appears to have had no idea what he was doing or saying in these negotiations and the end-results fully display this fact. Statements such as:

“We will be stopping the war games [with South Korea] which will save us a tremendous amount of money. It is very provocative 1.”

Display fully and easily the essential idiocy of allowing the American President, au fond an ignorant braggart, bounder, montebank, charlatan and rotter, to 'negotiate' anything. Much less a topic as complex and as intricate as the North Korean nuclear issue. The Trump Presidency is an almost daily exercise in masochism for anyone who has the interests of the West, of Christian Civilization at heart. It gives every evidence of being a perpetual nightmare. On an ongoing and daily basis. From the denunciation of the Persian nuclear accord (which is infinitely better than any accord that will ever come out of North Korea), to the apoplexy inducing Presidential idiocy at the G-7 Summit. Being a Burkean Conservative, it is my fundamental hope and desire that 'President Trump' will be soon impeached and forced from office, with jail being clear prospect for this transparent fraudster. The only possible good aspect of the Trump Presidency in that instant would be that his example will put paid to anyone ever again from such a 'background' ever wishing to become President of this or any other country.

1. For this quotation, see: "In quotes: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un". In the Financial Times, 12 June 2018 in www.ft.com.

WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG WITH 'POPULISTS' ITALIAN-STYLE: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 22:52:00 +0000

"Italy’s new government was sworn in on Friday, ending the country’s longest postwar political crisis but pushing the eurozone’s third-largest economy into an era of potentially greater conflict with the EU. Sergio Mattarella, Italy’s president, presided over a ceremony at the Quirinal Palace in Rome on Friday that allows Giuseppe Conte, the new prime minister, to take office along with the rest of the 18-member cabinet. Mr Conte was the compromise candidate chosen by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League after the two parties agreed to strike a deal to govern together after the March general election. Mr Conte is replacing Paolo Gentiloni, the outgoing prime minister, who presided over the final stretch of a five-year period in which centre-left administrations ran the country. On Thursday night Mr Mattarella gave his green light to Mr Conte’s government by approving the ministers picked by Five Star and the League. Matteo Salvini, the League leader, will be interior minister, and Luigi Di Maio, the Five Star leader, will be labour and economic development minister. “We are ready to launch the government of change and improve the quality of life of all Italians,” Mr Di Maio said. Giovanni Tria, a professor of political economy, will be finance minister, while Enzo Moavero, a former EU official, will be foreign minister".

James Politi, "Five Star and League take power in Italy". The Financial Times. 1 June 2018, in www.ft.com.

"Europe is set to enter a new period of political uncertainty after two populist parties in Italy, the Five Star Movement and the League, agreed to form a new government together. After a week of uncertainty that has sppoked markets, Italy, the eurozone’s third and the world’s eighth-largest economy, finds itself run by two populist parties that have in the past expressed deep scepticism of Italy’s membership of the eurozone, as well as opposing EU policies on migration. Italy is a country where the two major EU crises of previous years cross paths. Italy has suffered both from long-standing economic malaise, made more acute in the years of the eurozone crisis, and a mounting migration crisis in the Mediterranean. In both cases, Five Star and the League have fostered the perception of many Italians that the EU not only failed to help but outright harmed Italy by imposing upon it punishing economic reforms and leaving it without help to manage the influx of refugees on its shores. Ideally, this would concentrate the attention of EU elites on the effort to overhaul Europe’s economic governance and management of its external frontier, with an eye to developing more sustainable and equitable policies. Italy is indeed the final frontier of the decade-long governance crisis of the EU: a founding EU member, its fourth-largest country and traditionally a pro-European society, Italy faces very real policy challenges that are seen by its electorate as closely intertwined with its membership of the EU and the eurozone. And yet the populist coalition in Rome has seemed to elicit a different kind of reaction. Political commentators across Europe were quick to frame the Five Star–League partnership as one more episode in the long march of populism in Western democracies. After the defeat of Marine Le Pen in French presidential elections last year gave way to talk that the populist wave might have ebbed, Italy’s potential new government vindicated those who argue populism, illiberalism and even authoritarianism continue to be Europe’s main problem today. Yet the obsessive focus in much of the political, policy and journalistic debate on populism’s challenge to liberal democracy misses an even more important aspect to the story: that in most cases the rise of populism feeds off very real policy failures and very legitimate popular reactions to them. This is particularly true in a context of continental integration that seems to be increasingly unbalanced between a relatively prosperous and sheltered core of northern and western European states and an increasingly powerless periphery bearing the costs of adaptation to economic hardship and the migration crisis".

Angelos Chryssogelos, "The EU Must Realize That Populism Is a Symptom of Real Policy Failure". The Royal Institute of International Affairs. 31 May 2018, in /www.chathamhouse.org

The bien-pensant reaction to the triumph of the Five-Star and the Northern League and their now acquiring the keys of office in Italia are all too typical. Focus on the dangers to Democracy and liberal governance by Italia's new rulers and ignore the very real problems in Italia's economy which have not so magically conjured up the admittedly idiotic policy promises of the new Italian government. Which is not to gainsay the fact that Italia has suffered from one of the worst growth records since the formation of the Eurozone almost twenty-years ago. A hard fact that all the liberal-bourgeois-post-enlightenment-cosmopolitan nostrums will not gainsay or wish away. They are hard and solid and true facts. The real scandal is that many countries were allowed into the Eurozone (Greece, Portugal, Italia, Cyprus and to a degree Spain), who should not be in the Eurozone. It is probably the case, that at this point in time, it would be more of a disaster for all concerned to allow any of these countries, especially Italia to leave the Eurozone. What however the Eurozone needs is something along the lines of a fiscal motor, which will alleviate the fiscal Brunningism that the Southern European countries have been undergoing since 2009. President Macron of France has put forth some reforms that would move things in the right direction. Only time will tell if Germany will sign-on to these reforms. Currently, the signs are not good. Something that Populists in both Italia and elsewhere should jump for joy for.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE TRUMPIAN DREAM OF A NORTH KOREAN SUMMIT: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 25 May 2018 22:59:00 +0000

"President Donald Trump has cancelled a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un after a week when both sides fell back into the kind of rhetorical brinkmanship that had previously raised fears of military confrontation on the Korean peninsula. In a letter to Mr Kim on Thursday, Mr Trump said he would not travel to Singapore for a planned June 12 meeting because of the recent “tremendous anger and open hostility” that Pyongyang has aimed at Washington. “The Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place,” Mr Trump wrote. “You talk about nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.” Mr Trump later acknowledged to reporters that the cancellation was a “setback”, adding the Pentagon had assured him the US military was “ready if necessary”. North Korea on Thursday night, through its official news agency KCNA, reacted by saying that the “decision to scrap US-North Korea summit is not in line with the world’s wishes.” Pyongyang had indicated it was “still willing to resolve issues with the United States whenever, however.” “Kim Jong Un has made utmost efforts to hold a summit with US President Donald Trump,” according to the report".

Demetri Sevastopulo, Katrina Manson and Bryan Harris, "Trump calls off summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un". The Financial Times. 24 May 2018, in www.ft.com.

When President Donald Trump canceled his June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, he told him in a letter that the past few days of “tremendous anger and open hostility” had made it “inappropriate” for the two to meet and discuss denuclearization. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities,” Trump wrote, “but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.” The language echoed a January tweet in which the president wrote, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” The two leaders seem to have made it clear that they are not ready to make the mutual accommodations necessary for diplomacy to succeed. In fact, beneath the surface, the current situation resembles the prelude to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which historical research continues to show was much more dangerous than anyone knew at the time. If the Trump-Kim summit stays canceled, and saber-rattling returns as the dominant mode of communication, the odds of military crisis will rise dramatically. And, as the Cuba experience shows, once begun, a military crisis involving nuclear weapons will almost inevitably bring lots of surprises—ones that could make the shocking twists and turns of the summit buildup look pedestrian by comparison.

George Perkovich, "What Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un Don't Know About Their Own Standoff". The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 25 May 2018, in www.carnegieendowment.org

The collapse of the proposed American-North Korean summit, while not per se a tragic or dangerous event, can as George Perkovich and others have written head in that direction. There is of course no reason for matters to go down the road of a nuclear and or military confrontation. The United States has in actuality nothing, repeat nothing to gain by commencing hostilities with North Korea. That is something which almost every American military planner who has cared to analyze the problem of North Korea in the past twenty-five years has come to terms with. The best and indeed the only rational means of dealing with North Korea is to retain as much economic pressure as is possible, for as long as is possible to hopefully cause the regime to collapse from within. That and deterrence are the best means of dealing with the conundrum of North Korea. To believe that at this stage of the game, when the North Koreans have tens if not more nuclear devices and ICBM's which may have projection power of one to two thousand miles, that bluster and rhetorical threats will do anything positive is the very mid-summer of madness. Unfortunately, when we are dealing with the American President, Mr. Trump, the mot 'madness' in a Emperor William the II sense, almost immediately come to mind. And that is truly the worrying aspect of this crisis.

REVIEW: NIALL FERGUSON, KISSINGER: 1923-1968: THE IDEALIST.

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 17 May 2018 23:03:00 +0000

The following is a book review of mine just published by the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History.

‘This is a biography of an intellectual, but it is more than just an intellectual biography because, in the evolution of Kissinger’s thought, the interplay of study and experience was singularly close. For that reason, I have come to see this volume as what is known in Germany as a bildungsroman – the story of an education that was both philosophical and sentimental. The story is subdivided into five books. The first takes Kissinger from his childhood in interwar Germany through forced emigration to the United States and back to Germany in a U.S. Army uniform. The second is about his early Harvard career, as an undergraduate, a doctoral student, and a junior professor, but it is also about his emergence as a public intellectual as a result of his work on nuclear strategy for the Council on Foreign Relations. The third describes his first experiences as an adviser, first to a candidate for the presidency – Nelson Rockefeller – and then to a President – John F. Kennedy. The fourth leads him down the twisted road to Vietnam and to realization that the war there could not be won by the United States. The fifth and final book details the events leading up to his wholly unexpected appointment as national security advisor by Nixon’ (pp. 31–2).

Henry Kissinger is one of the most quoted, most written about and for a good number of years, was the most hated man in America and indeed the world (topped perhaps only by Richard Nixon), as the widely viewed architect of American foreign policy during the Nixon-Ford Presidencies (1969–77), responsible for (among other ‘state crimes’) the American bombing of Cambodia, the prolonging of the American war in Vietnam, and (allegedly) the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile. For the likes of the one-time left-wing writer Christopher Hitchens these all formed part of a charge sheet titled ‘The trial of Henry Kissinger’ (1), a book which was quickly transformed into a popular film. Not surprisingly, Kissinger has been the subject of a numerous serious books dealing with both his private life before his years in power (Walter Isaacson’s treatment was until now the very best), and his official one (Jussi Hanhimaki’s still the best of the many available).(2) The news that the prolific polymath, British émigré historian Niall Ferguson, now at Harvard University, had been commissioned to write the official biography by Kissinger himself rose more than a few eyebrows. First, Ferguson had never written a conventional biography, nor even written extensively about the role of the individual in history. Second, Ferguson, especially in his more ‘serious’ historical treatments (I do not count herein those BBC-related books, which I frankly believe are a disservice to both the reader and to Ferguson’s own great talents as a historian), has never written extensively about American history. And in particular 20th-century American history. The book keeps to the chronology that Ferguson promises in his introduction. And while it is arguable that some of the material included in his text may not be either necessary, nor particularly important (such as the ten pages that Ferguson devotes to discussing the New York neighborhood of Washington Heights in which Kissinger and his family first resided in the United States), for the most part the narrative flows to where Ferguson wants to take his reader, with manifold insights into the what, where and whys of Kissinger’s career. How did the lowly research fellow at Harvard’s Political Science department, with a specialization in 19th-century diplomatic history become within the space of a few years, (in Ferguson’s words) ‘one of the foremost American experts on nuclear strategy’ (p. 331)? In Ferguson’s telling it was a simple matter of a despondent and discouraged Kissinger (Harvard had refused him tenure) writing a private memorandum on a subject on which he was not by any means an expert to Arthur Schlesinger, which Schlesinger’s private network of Democratic Party notables then gave full publicity to in the halls of power. And soon enough, within six months Kissinger had penned a series of articles on the subject of the possible uses of nuclear weapons in ‘limited wars’. Where to my mind Ferguson falls short in recounting Kissinger’s career as public intellectual, and policy advisor to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, as well as on a part-time basis to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson is in his inability or unwillingness to show how consensual Kissinger’s thinking was. Examples include his belief in the non-existent ‘missile gap’, as well as Kissinger’s advocacy for several years in the mid-to-late 1950s of the potential employment on a limited basis of tactical nuclear weapons. Ferguson is quite content to show that true experts in the field of nuclear strategy (like William Kaufmann, Bernard Brodie and Stefan Possony) regarded with some degree of contempt what Possony referred to as Kissinger’s ‘Academic Blimpism’ (p. 377). Similarly within the consensus mode of establishment thinking was Kissinger’s dismissal of George Kennan’s call in 1957 for mutual pullback by the Western powers and the Soviet Union from Central Europe. Ferguson’s recounting at length (at well over 100 pages one-seventh of the entire book), Kissinger’s frustrating relationship with the Kennedy Administration and in particular with his former superior at Harvard, McGeorge Bundy, is a tour de force of narrative exposition, analysis and insight. Without necessarily providing the reader with anything new by way of, say, the Berlin crisis of 1961–2 or the Cuban Missile crisis, Ferguson demonstrates in detail how Kissinger’s interaction with the Kennedy Administration chimed with the overall scope of American policy, showing this reader at any rate how deeply conflicted Kissinger was in wanting to exercise power without giving up his role as chief foreign policy advisor to Rockefeller. While the 100 plus pages devoted to Kissinger’s part-time advisory role in the Kennedy administration might strike some as unnecessary padding and or an exercise in minutiae, Ferguson tops it by devoting 250 pages of text to the Vietnam War, the origins of American involvement and Kissinger’s own role in the years prior to his appointment as National Security Advisor in January 1969. How does Ferguson carry it off? Aside from some questionable obiter dicta (such as the statement that the overthrow of the Diem Government in November 1963, committed the United States to the defense of South Vietnam), Ferguson is able to take the reader into the morass (in more sense than one) of the war in Indochina, and distill the resulting nightmare. As for Kissinger’s role, in the self-same morass, it is Ferguson’s view that Kissinger, while a public defender of American policy in the Johnson Administration, was in private: ‘a scathing critic’ (p. 583). Insofar as Ferguson makes this claim in the context that Kissinger was from the very beginning critical of American overt military involvement and an adherent of a negotiated solution, then indeed Kissinger could be said to not have been a backer of American policy in the Johnson years. However, the very same thing could be said of almost every civilian policymaker in the Johnson administration with the exceptions of Walt Rostow and President Johnson himself.(3) That being said, Ferguson does give the reader a close, analytical look at Kissinger’s various roles in Lyndon Baines Johnson’s war, from public cheerleader of the war effort in 1965–6, with several trips back and forth between South Vietnam and the USA, to unsuccessful secret negotiator with the North Vietnamese in Paris. A ‘negotiation’ which as Ferguson aptly puts it had more to do with Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ than with true diplomatic negotiations of any sort. In one of his few forays into historiographical controversy which is not directly related to his subject, Ferguson argues cogently and with great insight that the so-called ‘Marigold’ and ‘Pennsylvania’ negotiations were nothing more than a North Vietnamese exercise in ‘psychological warfare’ (p. 733). Finally, in the penultimate chapter, Ferguson takes the reader into why exactly President-elect Richard Nixon chose Dr. Henry Kissinger as his National Security Advisor, on the surface at any rate a singularly odd choice given the fact that Kissinger had chosen to ally himself not only in 1960 and 1964, but even in 1968, with Nixon’s prime opponent Nelson Rockefeller. Contrary to the long-running allegations that Kissinger helped to scuttle a potential breakthrough in the Paris peace negotiations during the 1968 election campaign and that this helped win the election for Nixon, Ferguson counters that: a) Nixon was not in fact reliant upon the sparse information that Kissinger was privy to as per the Paris negotiations; b) that Nixon did not win the election because of the failure of the negotiations. Ferguson explains that Nixon’s choice was mostly due to the quite coincidental fact that Kissinger was running a Harvard Study group on presidential transitions and presidential control of foreign policy, emphasizing that while presidential control of foreign policy could be readily assumed, this should be done via a revived National Security Council (seriously diminished in importance in the Kennedy & Johnson years), with a Special Assistant to supervise it. Ferguson is quite apt in stating that Kissinger had: ‘coauthored one of the most sophisticated job applications in American History’ (p. 850). What can one say then about Niall Ferguson’s voluminous, nay grandiose, first-of-two-volume official biography of ‘Super K’? Mainly that it is a superbly written book, one which shows a deep immersion into both the available (in the case of Kissinger’s own papers, only ‘available’ to Ferguson himself) primary sources as well as the mountainous secondary literature. He has, regardless of any minor errata that the book contains, written the definitive first half of Kissinger’s vita. Which is an especially impressive achievement considering that 20th-century American history is not by any means Ferguson’s natural terrain as a historian. So, with that being said what does Ferguson make of Kissinger and what does the reader make of Ferguson’s Kissinger? That Ferguson’s Kissinger is a man to be viewed to a certain extent positively and with none of the venom that the likes of Christopher Hitchens employs. That in many ways, Kissinger was a part and parcel of the ‘Greatest Generation’, the generation of men who were adolescents during the Great Depression, fought in the Second World War, and subsequently went off to university due to the GI bill and were the pilots in charge of the ship of state when it ran aground in that shoal called ‘Indochina’ in the 1960s and 1970s. In the case of Kissinger, he appears to have come through a particular set of life experiences: being a Jew in Nazi Germany; an intelligence soldier (not an officer), in the midst of the hard battles of the Western Front from mid-1944 to the spring of 1945; and a Jew again in a liberated Germany who witnessed at first hand the abysmal horrors of the concentration and death camps, though with virtually no psychological trauma or scars. Indeed, au fond, Kissinger gives the appearance, because no doubt it is true, that he is that species called the American ‘type-A’ immigrant, someone for who the usual emotional difficulties that immigrants suffer in America were merely phases and experiences to be gotten over and passed-through, not the stuff that one goes to an analyst to ‘discuss’ and then ponder and psychologically wrestle with. Especially illuminating (at least to this reader) is a letter that Kissinger pens to his father in May of 1945, in which he argues that American policy in Germany must consist of showing the Germans that the Americans were in Germany for positive reasons and not merely as mere victors over the vanquished. In contrast to the usual stereotype of Kissinger as a European émigré intellectual, a combination of Dr. Strangelove and Humbert Humbert, he was in fact an American to his fingertips in both his allegiances and his intellectual background. So much so that as he admitted to his ex-Harvard colleague (and my old Professor) MacGeorge Bundy, in the early 1960s, his German vocabulary:

‘is not good enough to speak extemporaneously on a complicated subject. Because my secondary and higher education was in English, all my thinking on international and military affairs has been in English also’ (p. 487).

One point that should be made is that it was President Kennedy's dismissal of him as ‘ponderous and long-winded’, rather than as Ferguson paints it, Bundy's maneuvering, which prevented Kissinger from obtaining a permanent appointment in the Kennedy administration.(4) With this in mind it is not altogether surprising that Kissinger’s student career at Harvard would be under the wings of the eccentric, conservative, southerner William Y. Elliott rather than his fellow German-Jewish emigre Carl J. Friedrich. The Jamesian stance of a George Kennan about the United States, its domestic polity and its foibles in world affairs is conspicuous by its absence in Kissinger’s case.(5) Indeed, as per Ferguson, Kissinger gives the appearance of being a whole-hearted Cold Warrior, in a way that would have been inconceivable to Kennan. Similarly, contrary to John Lewis Gaddis statement that Kissinger was the natural heir to Kennan’s concept of containment, with its stress on the importance of concentrating on the important zones of England, Western Europe, North America and Japan, there is nothing in Ferguson’s opus to indicate anything of the sort.(6) Indeed, unlike say Hans J. Morgenthau, Kissinger does not (in Ferguson’s reading) appear to have given any deep thought to the fact that based upon any ‘realpolitik’ analysis, the entire American commitment to South Vietnam circa 1954 onwards was nonsensical in the extreme. Indeed, despite his private pessimism about the eventual success of the American military and political effort, it is quite apparent from Ferguson’s account that Kissinger was indeed a ‘true believer’ as it pertains to the nominal American ‘mission’ in support of the Government in Saigon, which highlights a point that Ferguson brings up constantly in his narrative: namely that contrary to most of the commentary on Kissinger, in fact Kissinger was not an adherent of realpolitik or machtpolitik. Following in the path of Peter Dickson, Ferguson makes a good argument that it was Kant and not Metternich or Bismarck who influenced his thinking on international relations. Evidence of this for Ferguson is found in Kissinger attacking the American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles for not ‘projecting the deeper things that we stand for’.(7) How plausible is Ferguson’s thesis of ‘Kissinger the Idealist’, and that the first half of Kissinger’s life was akin to the playing out of a ‘bildungsroman’? On the face of it, and regardless of the manifold evidence that Ferguson is able to bring forth, I find both concepts to be of questionable validity. There is little to differentiate Harvard Professor Kissinger circa the 1950s and 1960s from almost every other academic at the time who was eager (and in the case of Kissinger extremely anxious) to climb the road to power. Otherwise, how can one possibly explain the many instances of Kissinger stating one thing in public (like his support for the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policies) and another in private (his oft proclaimed skepticism of the self-same policies). In terms of the contents of Kissinger’s pre-1969 writings, John Bew has made a very strong case, that while Kissinger had little in common with typical academic adherents of realpolitik, it would be more accurate to describe him as having a ‘strong element of American exceptionalism’, incorporated into own peculiar version of realpolitik.(8) Additionally, Ferguson fails to discuss an important leitmotif throughout Kissinger’s academic and official career, which to my mind seriously undermines the concept of ‘Kissinger the Idealist’: a bizarre sort of hero-worship (if one wishes to characterize it as such) by Kissinger of such figures as Zhou En-Lai, Stalin and Mao, something which of course became much more transparent in his diplomacy diplomatic career in the 1970s, and indeed in his memoirs covering the same and his other writings afterwards. The requisite quotation (significantly not quoted in this enormous book) is as follows:

‘Whatever the qualities of the Soviet Leadership, its training is eminently political and conceptual. Reading Lenin or Mao or Stalin, one is struck by the emphasis on the relationship between political, military, psychological and economic factors, the insistence on finding a conceptual basis for political action and on the need for dominating a situation by flexible tactics and inflexible purpose. And the internal struggles in the Kremlin ensure that only the most iron-nerved reach the top. ... As a result; the contest between us and the Soviet system has had many of the attributes of any contest between a professional and an amateur’.(9)

One can only hope that this is a theme which Professor Ferguson will discuss at some length in the next volume of what is in many ways already a superb biography. Notes Christopher Hitchens, The Trial of Henry Kissinger. (New York, NY, 2001).Back to (1) Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: a Biography. (New York, NY, 2005); Jussi Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. (New York, NY, 2004).Back to (2) For this point, see: David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War. (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 360–70, 448–65; Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC and Vietnam. (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 189–226; Gordon M. Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. (New York, NY, 2008), pp. 202–16.Back to (3) On Kennedy's negative view of Kissinger, see: Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. (New York, NY, 2000), p. 68.Back to (4) See: Walter Hickson, Cold War Iconoclast (New York, NY, 1988). David Allen Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of American Foreign Policy (New York, NY, 1988). Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (New York, NY, 1989). In the latter (p. 215), there is a revealing quote in which it is noted that: ‘he [Kennan] toyed with the idea, the drastic alternative of exile, along the lines of Henry James and T. S. Eliot, to a more organic society’, comments which are conspicuously absent from Ferguson's text re Kissinger, of course. Kennan's own memoirs are full of similar sentiments.Back to (5) For Gaddis’ assertion see Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security During the Cold War (New York, NY, 2005), pp. 279–81 and passim. For an explanation of Kennan's concept of Containment, see Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War. (New York, NY, 1992), pp. 175–181,355–60 and passim.Back to (6) For a typical example of this, see: ‘Kissinger’s dissertation, which gained him a Ph. D. in May 1954, was also a statement of the author’s worldview. He was, and would remain, a firm believer in realpolitik, in the primacy of geopolitics and the balance of power’. In Hanhimaki, op. cit., p. 7 and passim. For Peter Dickson’s study, see Peter W. Dickson, Kissinger and the Meaning of History. (New York, NY, 1978).Back to (7) John Bew, Realpolitik: A history (Oxford, 2016), pp. 262.Back to (8) See Henry A. Kissinger Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. (New York, NY, 1957), pp. 434–5. For equally illuminating examples of Kissinger's near sycophantic interaction with both Mao & Zhou, see William Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts: the top secret talks with Beijing and Moscow. (New York, NY, 1999), pp. 86–110 and passim.Back to (9)

DONALD TRUMP AND THE CANCELLATION OF THE IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT OR THE ART OF SELF-DEFENESTRATION.

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Tue, 15 May 2018 22:23:00 +0000

"President Trump on Tuesday said he is pulling the United States out of the international nuclear deal with Iran, announcing that economic sanctions against Tehran will be reinstated and declaring that the 2015 pact was rooted in “fiction.” Trump’s decision, announced at the White House, makes good on a campaign pledge to undo an accord he has criticized as weak, poorly negotiated and “insane.” “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen,” Trump said in remarks at the White House. “In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.” The move amounts to Trump’s most significant foreign policy decision to date. While he cast the U.S. action as essential for national security and a warning to Iran and any other nuclear aspirant that “the United States no longer makes empty threats,” it could also increase tensions with key U.S. allies that heavily lobbied the administration in recent weeks not to abandon the pact and see it as key to keeping peace in the region. They tried to convince Trump that his concerns about “flaws” in the accord could be addressed without violating its terms or ending it altogether".

Anne Gearan & Karen DeYoung, "Trump pulls United States out of Iran nuclear deal, calling the pact ‘an embarrassment’". The Washington Post. 8 May 2018, in www.washingtonpost.com.

"Trump is a performance artist focused on the theatrics of his announcements rather than the substance of his policies. His bombast often appears less menacing in retrospect. Early in his tenure, he withdrew in a huff from the Paris climate accords and the Transpacific Partnership (TPP). Not one of the other 193 signatories followed his lead in leaving the Paris accords. And amid tit-for-tat trade pronouncements by Washington and Beijing, Trump is contemplating rejoining the TPP. Trump enjoys considerable discretion in re-imposing sanctions. So it is not inconceivable that the Iran agreement will limp on. Whatever one thinks of the Obama administration’s approach, the endgame was clear. The economic pressure against Tehran was slowly raised. Space was created for a tradeoff between U.S. sanctions and Iranian centrifuges. In contrast, Trump’s withdrawal announcement, though it was hardly a surprise, offered no Plan B. Neither did the president outline a clear objective. Is Trump seeking a new agreement with Iran? Is he seeking the complete eradication of the Iranian nuclear program? Or is he seeking regime change in Iran? One could plausibly imply from his remarks any, or all, of these results. Sanctions alone will achieve none of them".

Perry Cammack, "Now What?" Carnegie Middle East Center. 9 May 2018, in www.carnegie-mec.org

There is on the face of it, and indeed elsewhere no, I repeat no rationale for American President Donald Trump's latest exercise in diplomatic pyrotechnics. The ending of the Iran / Persian nuclear agreement is sheer and unadulterated madness and insanity. The concessions that the Western powers obtained from Persia were the result of a long campaign of economic and diplomatic sanctions. There is absolutely no likelihood of a similar coalition of countries joining forces to pressure Persia into offering up more concessions. It is simply impossible. The entire method of Trumpian diplomacy (which au fond is the very negation of diplomacy), in announcing the decision has almost completely alienated America's closest allies in Europe. As the Financial Times noted: "The decision marks a bitter defeat for America’s European allies, who have spent months beseeching Mr Trump to stay in a deal" 1. As the always wise and cogent American defense expert Anthony Cordesman, recently stated, Trump's decision is flawed for any number of reasons:

"Provoking an avoidable near-term crisis over a nuclear threat that has largely been defused for at least several years will do nothing to unify support in dealing with these threats from counties like Britain, France, and Italy – or persuade them to build up their power projection capabilities. It will do nothing to unite America’s deeply divided Arab security partners – which now have virtually destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have openly split with Qatar, Oman increasingly stands aside, and a deeply divided Kuwait seeks to mediate. Jordan is under growing economic and refugee pressure and was never integrated into Gulf defense, and Iraq seems to be tilting towards Iran and not the Arab states and the U.S. Seeking regime change in Iran is not a meaningful option. Any such effort ignores the fact that the Iranian government quickly suppressed the most recent demonstrations which were far more limited than those during the "green" uprisings in 2009-2010. The idea also ignores the fact that Iran has steadily been improving its internal security capabilities. Overt U.S.-led threats to Iran seem far more likely to increase popular support for the regime and its hardline elements than catalyze any meaningful resistance" 2.

In short President Trump's decision is the ultimate example of a own-goal. Diplomatically, strategically and in every other sense. It has no logic or rationale. It is purely a self-defeating exercise.

1. Sam Fleming & Katrina Manson, "Donald Trump pulls US out of Iran nuclear deal: President’s decision to re-impose sanctions is defeat for European allies". The Financial Times. 8 May 2018, in www.ft.com.

2. Anthony Cordesman, "Iran and the May 12th Deadline: Finding Winning Compromises". Center for Strategic and International Studies. 1st May 2018, in www.csis.org.

JOSHUA LANDIS ON WASHINGTON'S SYRIAN POLICY: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:13:00 +0000

"The State Department has turned the page on Turkey for it no longer views Ankara as a reliable US partner. Many argue that Washington will abandon Syria’s Kurds in order to assuage Turkish anger. I doubt this. Washington expects more anti-US actions from Erdogan. Many in DC believe that Turkey’s rising Islamism, hardening dictatorship, and worsening anti-Israel rhetoric will only increase in the future. They do not hold out hope that Washington can reverse this trend. The US is increasingly falling back on support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump has clearly set his course and reversed Obama’s effort to balance Iran and the KSA. Trump has thrown Washington’s future in the Middle East in with its traditional allies; it is moving to hurt Iran and Assad. It’s main instrument in gaining leverage in the region seems to be Northern Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Washington is promoting Kurdish nationalism in Syria. Turkey had hoped that when the Islamic State organization was destroyed, Washington would withdraw from northern Syria. In this, Ankara has been disappointed. See my earlier article of Oct 2017: Will the U.S. Abandon the Kurds of Syria Once ISIS is Destroyed? By keeping Damascus weak and divided, the US hopes to deny Iran and Russia the fruits of their victory. Washington believes this pro-Kurdish policy will increase US leverage in the region and help roll back Iran. The Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, David Satterfield, explained to the Senate on January 11, 2018 that US policy is designed to convince the Russians to see that a new constitution for Syria is written and that fair elections, overseen by the UN, are carried out such that Assad will lose. By denying the Damascus access to North Syria, the US says it is convinced it will achieve these stated ends. I am unaware of any analysts who believe this. It is completely unrealistic. Russia, even if it wished to, cannot force Assad to make such concessions. Most analysts brush off such State Department formulations as talking points designed to obscure more cynical objectives. Washington recognizes that its pro-Kurdish policy is forcing Turkey into Russia’s arms, but it seems willing to risk this loss. It is not at all clear what good Erdogan can achieve by invading Afrin. It will not hurt or weaken Washington’s relationship with the Kurds in Eastern Syria. Most likely, it will do the opposite. Those in Washington who see Turkey as an unreliable and misguided partner will only have their negative views of Turkey confirmed. The Kurds will be inflamed. The YPG and PKK will cooperate more closely to mobilize the Kurds of Turkey. For this reason, I believe Erdogan will not invade. He is trying to bring attention to his unhappiness, fire up his base, and prepare for elections that are approaching. But I doubt that he plans to occupy Afrin. He may lob cannon fire into Afrin, as he has done these past few days, but I suspect his ire will end there. America’s current Syria policy is designed to roll back Iran. This is short sighted. The PYD, or Kurdish leadership in North Syria, is a weak reed upon which to build US policy. Neither Assad nor Iran will make concessions to the US or Syria’s opposition in Geneva because of America’s support for the Syrian Democratic Forces, the military force that now controls North Syria and which partnered with the US to defeat ISIS. (It has been named and armed by the US and is led by Kurdish forces who answer to the PYD.) The continuing presence of the United States in North Syria will provide only limited leverage over Damascus. By controlling half of Syria’s energy resources, the Euphrates dam at Tabqa, as well as much of Syria’s best agricultural land, the US will be able to keep Syria poor and under-resourced. Keeping Syria poor and unable to finance reconstruction suits short-term US objectives because it protects Israel and will serve as a drain on Iranian resources, on which Syria must rely as it struggles to reestablish state services and rebuild as the war winds down.... This US position serves no purpose other than to stop trade and prohibit a possible land route from Iran to Lebanon. Iran has supplied Hizballah by air for decades and will continue to do so. What the US does accomplish with this policy is to beggar Assad and keep Syria divided, weak and poor. This will not roll back Iran, but it will go a long way to turn Syria into a liability for both Iran and Russia rather than an asset. But the problem with such a policy is that it is entirely negative. It is designed to punish and impoverish; it provides not vision for a brighter future. The U.S. will rightly be seen as a dog in the manger".

Joshua Landis, "US Policy Toward the Levant, Kurds and Turkey." Syria Comment. 15 January 2018, in www.syriacomment.com.

Joshua Landis is one of the premier specialists on contemporary Syrian politics. Of that there is no doubt. And unlikely many he was correct in positing that the regime of Assad Fils, would not collapse, but would in fact win the Syria Civil War. With that being said, what does one make of his prognosis in re American policy in the Near and Middle East? While I for one am quite willing to credit that American policy has (at least for now) thrown aside Ankara as one of its major regional partners. Which given how erratic the current regime is in Ankara, is not altogether surprising or indeed can easily be gainsayed. Where I differ from Landis is that I am very much skeptical that the current American Administration has either the intelligence, wisdom or even manpower to (in the State Department that is) to carry-out a consistent policy in almost any region in the world other than North Korea. It is for example quite believable to describe the current American Administration as 'anti-Persian'. That per se does not change the fact aside from three-thousand American troops in Northern Syria and their air cover, the Americans have little by way of geopolitical chips to put into this power political poker game. And that if a and when things become rough, the Americans will hardily be able to keep up with the other players (Russia and Persia) in this sometimes dangerous game.

"ONE BELT, ONE ROAD": ILLUSION OR REALITY?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Sat, 06 Jan 2018 01:30:00 +0000

"There is a shorthand among foreign policy types that designates the 20th as the Atlantic century. The 21st, the received wisdom continues, will belong to the Pacific. The last century saw wealth and power concentrated among the littoral states of the north Atlantic as Europe and the US reached across the ocean. But prosperity and power have travelled eastward and southwards. The phrase Pacific century seems to capture China’s rise. Only in part. True, the People’s Liberation Army is building military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China sea to expand its maritime reach into the Western Pacific; and, yes, China could well clash with the US in these waters. But such tensions misread Beijing’s organising ambition. It is looking westwards rather than eastward. Mr Xi’s big play is wrapped up in his “One Belt, One Road” idea — the recreation of the sea and land routes of an earlier age of globalisation. When it looks ahead China imagines an era in which the great land mass of Eurasia becomes the vital fulcrum of global power. And guess who will be the pivotal Eurasian player? Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to president Jimmy Carter who until his death this year was Washington’s sharpest strategic thinker, long ago grasped the significance of what he called the “axial supercontinent”. “A power that dominated Eurasia”, he wrote as far back as 1997, “would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, western Europe and East Asia . . . What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and historical legacy'".

Philip Stephens, "A train that proclaims China’s global ambition". The Financial Times. 20 July 2017, in www.ft.com.

"On October 24, 2017, the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted a new version of the Party Constitution. Along with the name of Secretary General Xi Jinping, the constitution now includes the One Belt One Road (OBOR) concept — Xi’s trademark geo-economic concept that is now used to explain almost every move that China makes outside its borders. The “Belt and Road” concept has become so inflated, that it’s no longer helpful in understanding anything about China’s relationship with the outside world, but only further obscures an already complicated picture.... These and many other theories about China’s strategic rationales behind the Belt and Road are based on Chinese sources and interviews with Chinese scholars, officials and businesspeople. The spectrum of theories reflects not only the diverse backgrounds and research priorities of scholars outside of China looking at Belt and Road, but also the wide range of opinions and approaches toward this initiative taken within China. Since Xi proclaimed the SREB idea in Astana, nearly every university, ministry, region and SOE in China has held at least one event dedicated to OBOR. Newly established think tanks in the PRC, dedicated to studying this issue, already number in the hundreds. At the same time, most Chinese officials and analysts who advise Beijing would acknowledge in private conversations, that the top leadership has not given them much positive direction about what Belt and Road actually is. The only internal instructions that have come so far, have been from Zhongnanhai, and are about banning words like “project” (because the word connotes a goal and timeline, Beijing prefers the looser term “initiative”) as well as banning the publication of official maps purporting to show the scope of OBOR. Lack of stated goals is closely tied to the second feature of the Belt and Road, which distinguishes it from a strategy — the initiative doesn’t have any performance criteria. Xi Jinping did identify five broadly defined facets of the initiative in his Astana speech in 2013, namely, policy communication, road connectivity, trade facilitation, monetary circulation (financial cooperation including promotion of local currencies), and person-to-person ties. Beijing has not, however, identified any quantifiable indicators of success or progress. This means that a great many things can be presented as progress under OBOR. Examples include, establishing a new intergovernmental commission with Russia, financing a new road project in Tajikistan, signing an FTA with Georgia, establishing a currency swap with Switzerland and holding an annual beauty pageant in Sanya.... Last but not least, OBOR doesn’t have a timeframe. No timeframe is to be found in the speeches of Xi Jinping and other officials, or in documents and roadmaps published by the Chinese government. Most of the time, when confronted directly over the timeline issue, Chinese officials and experts say that Belt and Road is a long-term goal that doesn’t have an underlying set of deadlines. Interestingly enough, not only does Belt and Road stretch into the indefinite future, it also reaches into the past. Some of China’s old projects, like the construction of Gwadar Port in Pakistan, which began in 2002, are now listed among the Belt and Road’s flagship achievements. This approach allows Beijing to re-package old deals and projects in OBOR wrapping, and present them to the world as Belt and Road deliverables. China’s current and prospective partners may find this uncertainty and lack of focus problematic. But for the Chinese political system, this lack of clarity around Belt and Road is actually a good thing. After all, the lack of performance criteria gives the government more latitude to declare positive outcomes and address the desire of all governments but, perhaps especially important to singleparty regimes, is the ability to appear successful, victorious and influential on the global stage".

Alexander Gabuev, "Belt and Road to Where?" Carnegie Moscow Center 8 December 2017, in www.carnegie.ru

"About thirty years ago the fear of the 'Yellow Peril' was the fashion. It was said that China and Japan were about to advance towards the economic and perhaps also military conquest of Europe and other regions. Much was written to stress the vast size of the yellow races, their modest standard of living which ensured the low prices of manufactured goods, the political sense of Japan, the reawakening of China after a sleep of centuries".

Vilfredo Pareto. The Other Pareto. Edited by Placido Bucolo. Translated by Placido & Gillian Bucolo. (1980), p. 258. First published on 13 June 1922.

In these days when Communist China appears to be on the fast lane to Superpowerdom, it is wise and useful to be reminded of certain realities as per the Peoples Republic. The chief one is that like most authoritarian regimes in the 21st century (think of Putin's Russia in particular) the regime in Peking is obsessed with legitimacy and with appearing successful. As the American academic at Columbia University Andrew Nathan recently commented: "the regime is hypersensitive about its image because of its shallow legitimacy at home" 1. Much of the rhetoric about 'One Belt, One Road', that the bien-pensant Philip Stephens of the Financial Times appears to accept without much by way of analysis, is as the Russian analyst Alexander Gabuev demonstrates is simply eye-wash. Pur et simple. Which is not to gainsay the fact that of course Peking would love to spread its influence west to Eurasia and from hence to Europe proper. Merely, that there does not appear to be any concrete plans or strategy behind the rhetoric, much less real investments behind the fabled (and thus illusory) expenditures that Peking is enamoured of talking about to Western journalists. Given the nature of the regime in Peking, that is just as well. Per contra to Mr. Stephens, the world will be better off, if there is no 'Asian Century'. Either now or indeed a hundred years from now.

1. Andrew Nathan, "The Chinese World Order". The New York Review of Books. 12 October 2017, in www.nybooks.com.

PREDICTIONS FOR ANNO DOMINI 2018

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:34:00 +0000

"The Financial Times’s team of forecasters had a solid 2017. But not a perfect one. We — OK, I specifically — was wrong to think the US stock market would finally falter. I have therefore retired in disgrace from the prognostication game. John Authers takes over as our S&P 500 psychic this year. We also thought Venezuela would manage to avoid debt default. It did not (although its government and some bondholders are pretending otherwise). We also had too much faith in Donald Trump: we thought he would build at least some of that big, beautiful wall on the Mexican border. But all we got was some small, unattractive prototypes. Overall, the FT got 15 out of 19 questions right (the 20th question, about North Korea, was too hard to call as a “yes” or “no” so the judges tossed it out). This is not nearly as prescient as our reader forecasting contest winner, Katalin Halmai of Leuven, Belgium, who scored a cool 18 of 19. She needed the tiebreaker question to edge out our runner-up, Hamish Vance of Washington DC. Congrats Katalin — for at least one year, you were smarter than the entire FT. Please try to avoid winning next year. That would be hard for us to take. For your own shot at glory in 2018, provide your answers to the 20 questions below, plus the tiebreaker, and submit your (real) name and email. Good luck!" Robert Armstrong

"Will Theresa May remain prime minister in 2018? Yes. Mrs May lost most of her authority with the bungled snap election. But the past few months have been kinder. Sealing a Brexit divorce deal has ensured short-term job security. So until Brexit is formally complete in 2019, or an appealing alternative emerges, the Conservative party will keep her where she is. Remainers and Leavers alike wish to avoid a civil war that would be sparked by moving against her. What was thought to be an unsustainable position is proving surprisingly sustainable". Sebastian Payne

"Will the UK economy be the slowest-growing in the G7? No. This is possible, of course, but with luck, Mrs May has at least now ensured that the UK is not going to tumble over a “no deal” cliff in 2019. In December 2017, Consensus Forecasts’ prediction for the UK was of 1.5 per cent growth in 2018. Its forecasts for Japan and Italy were even lower, at 1.3 per cent. So the chances that the UK will have the slowest-growing economy in the G7 next year should be around one in four". Martin Wolf

"Will the Democrats take back the majority in the midterm election in the US House of Representatives? Yes — by an eyelash. Democrats will need to win an additional 24 seats, meaning they will have to hold on to all 12 Democratic districts that Mr Trump won last year and pick up the 23 Republican districts that voted for Hillary Clinton, plus one or two more for good measure. The math is not on the Democrats’ side, but history is. The president’s party almost always loses some House seats in the midterms, and sometimes loses big, especially when the president has an approval rating below 50 per cent. See Barack Obama in 2010". Courtney Weaver

"Will impeachment proceedings begin against Donald Trump? Yes — just. Democrats will regain control of the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections. Though they will not take charge until January 2019, they will waste no time preparing the House Judiciary paperwork. Mr Trump will label it a “witch hunt”. But another year of his surreal presidency makes it all but inevitable Democrats will campaign on a pledge to hold him to account. Whatever Robert Mueller’s investigation unearths before then is unlikely to turn enough Republicans against him". Edward Luce

Financial Times Writer, "Forecasting the world in 2018". The Financial Times. 29 December 2018, in www.ft.com.

I cannot recall if my prognoseses were as good as those for the Financial Times in Anno Domini 2017. However, there is always 'next year', which in this case, means Anno Domini 2018. So for a little bit of forecasting of my own, here goes:

i.) Will the United States fall into a recession? By June of this year, the current economic expansion will have been running for upwards of nine years. Which will make it the second longest on record (the Bush the Elder / Clinton expansion of 1991-2001 will have been longer). Given that element of longevity, it will not take very much for the American economy to fall into a recession. Certainly a few more kicks upwards to the discount rate by the Federal Reserve should be enough so that by the third quarter of the current year, the economy will commence a serious slow-down with the fourth quarter falling into negative growth, with one or more quarters of the very same in 2019.

ii.) Will President Trump be impeached? If the question is: 'will President Trump be ousted' by impeachment proceedings in Congress, the answer is 'no'. If the question is: will Congress commence impeachment proceedings in calendar year 2018, the answer is: peut-etre. Why? Simple: if President Trump fires Special Counsel Robert Mueller, then it is highly likely that impeachment proceedings will commence in the House of Representatives. And those proceedings might very well succeed, if the Republican party were to direly afraid of losing fifty or more seats in the 2018 elections due solely to President Trump. Another scenario would be that Special Counsel Mueller, prosecutes either the President's son Donald Trump, Junior, or First-son-law, Jared Kushner. And then in order to save them (and of course himself), President Trump issues a blanket Presidential Pardon of both men. That would be more than enough to force Congress, even a Republican Congress to commence impeachment proceedings.

iii.) Will Kanzler Angela Merket survive anno domini 2018? The answer is yes, but only by a hairs breath. Based upon the current reading of the situation, it is highly likely that the SPD will reluctantly decide to form another 'grand coalition' with the Christian Democrats. However, the damage done to the German body politic by having the Alternative for Germany as the 'official opposition', might be enough, barely enough to force the Kanzler out of office. However, my reading of the situation is that in the absence of some other very negative variable occurring in Deutschland (some terrorist outrage by migrants from Syria), Mme. Merkel will remain weakened, but in office.

iv.) Will Prime Minister Theresa May see out anno domini 2018? The answer is yes. As the FT above correctly notes, that it is very much a faute de mieux situation. There is at this point in time no credible successor to May and she has been very very careful to not promote anyone to the Cabinet (Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rory Stewart being the best known), who could possibly be a threat to her. However, I am not sure that this bit of luck on May's part will last much further into anno domini 2019.

And that gentle reader is the end of my prognoseses for Anno Domini 2018. We will know by this time in anno domini 2019, if my predictions are any more accurate than the accumulated wisdom of the FT.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: EYELESS IN FOGGY BOTTOM

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:06:00 +0000

"The foreign policy gossip in Washington largely agrees on two points. First, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson will hit the one-year mark of his tenure and step down. Second, he has taken a wrecking ball to the state department, destroying morale and driving out talent.... Mr Tillerson seems impervious to this criticism. The standard explanation is that, as a former chief executive, he sees the state department as just another business that needs slimming and restructuring. Like any successful corporate leader, he is determined to “make his numbers”. Mr Tillerson has set forth those targets, presumably encouraged by the White House, in “seven ambitious proposals with investments that will generate a minimum deliverable of 10 per cent ($5bn) in efficiencies relative to current spending . . . over the next five years, with an aspirational general interest target of up to 20 per cent ($10bn)”. Again following the corporate model, he is offering buyouts to senior staff to encourage attrition. Mr Tillerson’s language and approach are hardly diplomatic. And if he is driving out an entire generation of talented young foreign service officers, the US may feel the effects on its ability to conduct global diplomacy for a decade at least. Ms Shackelford and many others point to examples where the US is simply throwing away global leadership opportunities because of a lack of direction and personnel.... Sacrificing influence at embassies and missions around the world may not be a price worth paying. Yet although it may be heresy to say so, what if the wrecking ball approach is the only way to bring the scale of change needed to the state department? Secretary after secretary has tried to reform a calcified bureaucracy. The foreign service has not changed substantially since the 1920s, when the diplomatic service merged with the consular service. When she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton followed the example of the Pentagon’s quadrennial defence review with a similar one for diplomacy and development, which I helped lead. John Kerry led the second such review. But, like the Republicans’ tax bill, we could get things done by adding, but never subtracting. Major change was out of the question, often fought by outsiders who suddenly became insiders. A key reason not to appoint assistant secretaries, as Mr Tillerson is doing, is that any political appointees can only survive by standing up for his or her department. Sweeping reform, such as making it possible for individuals in the private and civic sectors to come in and out of the foreign service at multiple levels, requires congressional action. That may seem like swapping one large dysfunctional bureaucracy for another but, if Mr Tillerson breaks enough china, it is possible that Congress and a new administration will be able to work together to renovate and rebuild in a very different direction. The state department building, an enormous, bland edifice, is a relic of the 1950s. For all the talent and dedication of many employees, and notwithstanding the deep need to develop civilian rather than military solutions to global problems, the US approach to diplomacy is often similarly outdated. It may take a thick-skinned outsider like Mr Tillerson to begin the process of genuine change".

Anne-Marie Slaughter, "Rex Tillerson — wrecker or reformer of American diplomacy?" The Financial Times. 20 December 2017, in www.ft.com.

"Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver; Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves".

John Milton. Samson Agonistes. (1671).

There may be a certain amount of logic in what Mme. Slaughter, a former director of the policy planning staff at State Department states in her piece on the egregious Rexford Tillerson. What that logic is exactly I am not entirely sure, unless it is something akin to the idea that by in effect destroying the State Department from within, Tillerson and his employer, President Trump, are engaged in some type of Schumpeter-like exercise in 'creative destruction'. Of course the concept itself, and the two individuals who are allegedly engaged in it, answers (in the negative of course), the feasibility of the idea. It is a nonsense. Absolute unadulterated nonsense. Mr. Tillerson is in the context diplomacy, a lightweight (at best) and a supreme incompetent (at worse). A/K/A a gentler version of President Trump. Given these demonstrable facts, the idea that by destroying the State Department, Tillerson, et. al., are creating the possibility for 'genuine change' is simply false. Unless of course by the mot 'change', Mme. Slaughter is referring to the type of 'genuine change', that say Pompeii could have been said to have undergone when Vesuvius erupted in Anno Domini 79. The fact of the matter is that the type of genuine change Mme. Slaughter advocates for the State Department has been: a) on the table for sixty-years; b) shows little evidence that it would improve the Department's performance. The idea that 'individuals in the private and civic sectors to come in and out of the foreign service at multiple levels', sounds on first hearing a good one. It fits within an American tradition of disparaging bureaucracy and experts, for something akin to 'Citizen-Ambassadors' and diplomats. Of course in reality and as history of the State Department in the past seventy-years has shown, it is precisely the inherited traditions and frame of mind (bureaucracy) and long-term accumulated knowledge and experience of the individuals who are running it (experts) which have always been the State Department's greatest virtues. Indeed the virtues of any large scale governmental organization. Indeed, insofar as the State Department has been much more prone to be infiltrated and suborn by political appointees, many of them inexperienced (id. est., political appointees to the rank of Ambassadors), than its counterparts in the rest of the world, then the State Department has already undergone something approximating to what Mme. Slaughter advocates. And the results are in, and then do not reflect very well on Mme. Slaughters idea. Ask almost any American embassy staff with a political appointee as Ambassador. Quod erat demonstrandum

SOME OF THE ORIGINS OF THE GREAT WAR: A REVIEW OF HALL GARDNER'S LATEST BOOK

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 01:03:00 +0000

The following book review has recently been published on the online portion of the British periodical, the Journal of Intelligence History. A hard copy will appear in the Spring issue of the journal in 2018.

BOOK REVIEW

The failure to prevent World War I: the unexpected Armageddon, Hall Gardner, Surrey, England, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, January 28 2015, 294 pp., $119.00 (hardback), 978-1-4724-3056-4
Hall Gardner’s book on the origins of the First World War is in many ways quite unique. As a political scientist, Gardner explores territory which in terms of a book length treatment, has been much more the terrain of historians than political scientists. And in terms of his thesis, Gardner is also treading on new territory in arguing that ‘the French reaction to the Prussian/ German seizure of Alsace-Lorraine (…) played a crucial role in Anglo-French-Russian-GermanAustrian-Italian diplomatic relations up until the outbreak of the war’. As per Gardner it was the Alsace–Lorraine factor which explains ‘how a “local” conflict in the Balkans between Serbia and Austria resulted in a global war’. Beginning in the prewar diplomacy leading up to the Franco-Prussian war, Gardner endeavors to show how the inability of both monarchical (1871–1877) and republican (1877–1914) French elites to accept the fact of the loss of Alsace–Lorraine, lead France to first to try to subvert the Bismarckian diplomatic ring of encirclement around it, and then with the fall of Bismarck from power in 1890, to gradually construct an anti-German diplomatic ring which by 1907 consisted of France, Russia and the United Kingdom. In Gardner’s telling, the primary goal of France’s ‘encirclement’ policy was per contra to historians like John Keiger, far from being a search for ‘security’ vis-à-vis Germany, was indeed nothing less than that ‘a French strategy of “encirclement” could press Berlin to return Alsace-Lorraine by diplomatic means’. Failing which, Paris was not above even ‘subtle threats of war’, in order to obtain its goal. Breaking with most political science and international relations treatments of pre-1914 diplomacy, Gardner in his relatively quick recounting of European diplomatic history in this period, puts paid (correctly to my mind) to the concept of the ‘Balance of Power’, arguing that ‘neo-realist concepts of “holding the balance of power” and of “balance of power and threat” are largely illusory’. According to our author, one of the great missed opportunities of prewar diplomacy was the failure of London, Paris and Berlin to ‘forge an Anglo-GermanFrench concert in the effort to forge a “United States of Europe”’. Unfortunately, as per Gardner it was a combination of French fixation on regaining Alsace–Lorraine coupled with German refusal to discuss some compromise formula over the two and London’s unwillingness (until it was too late) to forgo its policy of ‘splendid isolation’ which torpedoed the concept. Concerning the July 1914 crisis, Gardner supports the revisionist school of Christopher Clark et. al. in positing that the resulting war was as much caused by the Franco-Russian belligerence as Austro-German aggressiveness. Arguing that while it was Berlin that initiated the two-front war in order to pre-empt the Russo-French parallel military mobilizations … it is also clear that both France and Russia knew that they were playing with fire by supporting pan-Serb and pan-Slav ambitions and by seeking to ‘encircle’ the Austro-Hungarian and Imperial German empires with Great Britain’s backing. Gardner however goes the revisionist school one better by arguing that there was ‘significant circumstantial evidence of Russian if not French involvement’ in the Sarajevo assassination on the 28th of June of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

What is one to make of this unusual attempt by a political scientist to bravely cross the divide which separates his tribe from that of historians and in particular diplomatic historians (full disclosure: I admit to being one of the latter)? In a nutshell, one’s overall assessment is one of disappointment as the author’s stated thesis has both merit and has strangely enough never been truly explored: viz. why France post-1871 failed to reach some sort of type of rapprochement with Imperial Germany and accept the reality of the Treaty of Frankfurt? Just as Austria–Hungary learn to accept the geopolitical consequences of the Treaty of Prague in 1866 after the battle of Königgrätz? Therein lies an important book waiting to be written. In Gardner’s case, the various sins that historians normally accuse political scientists are unfortunately readily apparent: an indulgence in vapor-like political scientist verbiage which one can hardly make either heads or tails of. With an almost complete reliance upon secondary sources, the vast majority of these are in English (notwithstanding the French focus of the book), with at best a mere cursory look at the printed primary source materials and of course almost nothing by way of anything resembling archival research. Additionally, the book is littered with extraneous quotes from figures whose relation to the narrative are at best peripheral: Marx, Engels, D.E. B. Dubois, Bertrand Russell, Victor Hugo and none other than Nietzsche. The end resulting being for most readers is an unnecessary source of distraction and confusion. The structure of the book is also found wanting, as his quick recapping of European diplomatic history from 1870 to 1914 (in under 250 pages no less) fails to convey anything which has not been already recounted in such standard (and superior) treatments as found in say A. J. P. Taylor or William Langer and fails to tell the reader why exactly Delcassé and his successors were so successful in building a ‘ring of encirclement’ around Germany. Was French diplomacy and French diplomats of such superior quality that its practitioners able to run rings around its German counterparts? Or did the erratic nature of German foreign policy in the post-Bismarckian era make things easier for Delcassé and his company? The reader is not given any indication by the author his answer to this query. Similarly, given the nominal French focus of the book, there is a distinct lack of in-depth exploration of French policy in question. One would have greatly appreciated a greater exploration of the internal dynamics of French diplomacy and policy. Finally, Gardner’s idea that there was ‘significant circumstantial evidence’ of Franco-Russian involvement in the Sarajevo murders is completely without any plausible evidence of an empirical nature and best not even discussed in a serious book. Perhaps however the most serious issue that I personally have with Gardner’s book is the sheer number of errata which litter the text, indeed almost fatally so. Among some of the choicer examples: (i) the ‘Humiliation of Olmütz’ did not cause Berlin to seek ‘revenge against France’ (40); (ii) Lexa von Aerenthal was not ‘Foreign Minister’ in the 1870s (60); (iii) Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was not the ‘nephew’ of King of Prussia (42); (iv) the Gladstone Cabinet did not resign in 1886 due to the Russian threat to Afghanistan (72); (v) Bernard von Bülow was not the ‘head of the [German] Foreign Ministry under Caprivi’ (83); (vi) Joseph Chamberlain was not Colonial Secretary in 1894 (89); (vii) Lord Salisbury was not in office in 1894 (105); (viii) Marshall von Biberstein was not an Ambassador in 1896 (109); (ix) the ‘Sir Francis Hertie’ issuing threats against Germany in 1897 must surely be Francis Bertie without yet his knighthood (123); (x) Harold Nicolson, unlike his father never became a ‘British Ambassador’ (140). The errors are so voluminous that one strongly hesitates in recommending such a book to either university or graduate students (for whom the book appears to be aimed at) or the lay educated public. Which is in some sense a real shame as there is indeed

something to be said about trying to cross the divide which separates the historian from the political scientist. Something which diplomatic historians such as Paul Schroeder have shown in the past can in fact be done. Unfortunately, this book most definitely will not serve such a purpose.

THE DOWNFALL OF DAVID CAMERON: A CONSIDERED VIEW NINETEEN MONTHS LATER

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:34:00 +0000

"David Cameron listed many of the achievements of his six years in office as he stood in Downing Street on the day after June’s historic EU referendum. These included rebuilding the economy after the financial crisis and legislating to allow gay marriage. But the grim reality for the departing British prime minister is that he will forever be remembered as the man who took his country out of the EU. It is an ironic epitaph for a politician who once vowed to stop his party from “banging on about Europe”, the issue that has haunted the Conservatives since Margaret Thatcher’s reign. It is an unfortunate one, too, given that he is the most successful leader of the Tories in decades, returning them to power in 2010 after a long spell in the wilderness. But as with the ill-fated Anthony Eden, who resigned after the 1956 Suez crisis, the manner of Mr Cameron’s going is likely to be remembered far more than any other aspect of his time in office. In many ways, it is right this should be the case: for Europe is the issue that has dogged his premiership above all others and on which he has failed to master his party."

James Blitz, "David Cameron pays the price of tactical failure: The PM’s biggest challenge was always going to be Europe". The Financial Times. 12 July 2016, in www.ft.com.

"The key reason why Cameron's premiership becomes so dominated by Europe is down to the Conservative Party itself and the rise of UKIP. Hague anticipates how difficult the party might be, but Cameron is caught off guard by the strength of feeling on the issue....Cameron is infuriated with his backbench Eurosceptics. They gave him no credit earlier in the year for negotiating Britain out of the European Financial Stability Mechanism....The chief whip Patrick McLoughlin is confronted by a spectrum of opponents, from ultras like Cash to those who have said in their election literature they favored a referendum."

Anthony Seldon & Peter Snowdon. Cameron at 10: The inside Story, 2010-2015. (2015), pp. 168-169.

“The Tory party is run by five people….And they all treat their followers with disdain, they are mostly Etonians and Eton is good for disdain”.

Anthony Sampson. Anatomy of Britain. (1962), p. 89.

Reading the Seldon & Snowdon book (hereafter 'Seldon') is a very strange experience. The book itself was completed in August 2015, which places it a few months after the Tory Party's election victory in the May 2015 elections and of course ten-months prior to the British electorate's self-immolation via way of Brexit. Reading the book now, has the odd aspect of looking at the journal entries of a martial couple's salad days prior to said couple's unexpected and immediate breakup. The authors and those who the authors interviewed (all of the major personages it seems), are all of course oblivious of the coming debacle of late June 2016. And while there are glimpses here and there that the upcoming European Union referendum will be a less than pleasant hurdle to climb for then Prime Minister Cameron, et. al., it is readily assumed that having won the AV referendum of 2012 and the Scottish referendum of 2014, that there is no possible reason why Cameron will not emerge once again on top. The book does delve a great deal into the tensions in the Tory Party over Europe. A topic that it is fairly clear, that then Prime Minister Cameron had a limited amount of interest in. It is certainly apparent that Cameron's de haut en bas view of the United Kingdom Independence Party, was easily transferable to the 'Euro-skeptics' in the Tory Party as well. "Swivel-eyed loons" just about does it for both groups from Cameron's perspective 1. Which is not to gainsay the fact (which the book discusses at length) that Cameron was uneasy with aspects of the European Union and the EU project. It is merely the case, that Cameron feels (correctly in my opinion) that: a) the European Union was and is to a limited extent reformable from the 'inside'; b) that the United Kingdom exiting the European Union at that stage of the game (after 43 years of membership) is a 'cure' which is worse than the disease that said cure is supposed to remedy. Something which the subsequent negotiations between the European Union and the Theresa May government are showing more and more to be very much the case 2. Reading this book carefully provides readers (or at least this reader) with the whys of David Cameron's defenestration in June of 2016: au fond Cameron was politically speaking a 'trimmer' in the sense that Stanley Baldwin or (to a degree) Harold Macmillan could be said to be trimmers. The difference being that while Baldwin and Macmillan were highly experienced politicians when they became Prime Ministers, this was hardly the case with Cameron. Also, unlike these two and in particular Baldwin, Cameron failed to effectively hide his distaste for his parliamentary back benchers. Whatever Baldwin's dislike for the Tory Right-wingers in his Conservative Party, he (mostly) kept his opinion to himself. Something that Cameron for a variety of reasons was never able to do. But then again Baldwin was a Harrovian (like Churchill) rather than an Etonian. Also neither Baldwin or Macmillan ever made the mistake of informing the electorate that he was going to retire three to four years prior to doing so `a la Cameron in the Spring of 2015. Indeed, if nothing else this horrible promise provides every explanation as to why Boris Johnson and Michael Gove would jump ship and come out for Brexit when they did in the late winter of 2015-2016. And sans Johnson and Gove it is difficult to imagine that Brexit would ever have a chance in winning the referendum. In short, Cameron's ultimate failure in office is that as a politician, he was a pure tactician whose tactical skills failed him on his last try (or in fact referendum). Which in retrospect is a great pity, since notwithstanding all my disagreements with some of his policies (such as homosexual marriage), David Cameron was by any measurement a first-class politician and a very good Prime Minister. Certainly head and shoulders above his benighted successor.

1. "David Cameron ally: Tory activists are mad, swivel-eyed loons". The Guardian. 17 May 2013. In www.guardian.com.

2. Andrew Lilico, "Get ready for a no deal Brexit". Reaction. 12 October 2017, in www.reaction.life.

THE COMING BREXIT DEBACLE: A COMMENT.

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 23:19:00 +0000

"It is highly likely that the Brexit negotiations will fail, imposing an abrupt shock on the UK economy and ruining relations with its neighbours. This view is condemned by those who insist we must be more positive. That is like advising someone who has just jumped off a building that, if only he thought positively, he could fly. To understand the state we are now in we need to understand the zombie ideas that hold so many Brexiters in their grip. The first such idea is that the EU is being unreasonable in insisting that the broad terms of the divorce (if not the details) are settled before moving on to transitional arrangements. David Davis, who is in charge of the negotiations for the UK, complained to the House of Commons that “they are using time pressure to see if they can get more money out of us. Bluntly that’s what is going on — it’s obvious to anybody.” Indeed, it is. Stop complaining: that is what strong parties do. A linked zombie idea is that the UK is really in a stronger position than the EU, because it runs a trade deficit with it. But, even in goods, UK exports to the EU are three times more important to the UK’s economy than vice versa (7.5 per cent of gross domestic product against 2.5 per cent). Even without the UK, the EU remains the second-largest economy in the world, with an economy almost six times bigger, at market prices, in 2016. The UK is negotiating with an economic superpower. How does that feel? Just ask the Canadians, now negotiating with the US over the North American Free Trade Agreement".

Martin Wolf, "Zombie ideas about Brexit that refuse to die". The Financial Times. 19 October 2017, in www.ft.com.

"Even “no deal” would not mean no trade with EU countries. We have lots of options – even without a formal trade deal with the EU. Business, industry, and people’s livelihoods are at stake here, but unfortunately this bunch do not seem to care about any of this. They care just about making ridiculous headlines. The latest comments from Tusk come on the heels of the European Council summit, where it seemed tentative steps were made towards progressing negotiations onto trade talks. Now we have the use of words like defeat and victory, which have been studiously avoided in negotiations so far. This inflammatory and contradictory language displays just how fickle the EU leaders can be – and how far negotiations have to go. There is plenty of time for EU leaders to delay and frustrate these talks and return to their more usual belligerent tone. The EU needs to stop playing games with the livelihoods of millions on either side of the Channel. Unless the EU gets real’, they risk creating a no deal scenario which will do far more damage to them than to us".

Jayne Adye, "The EU must stop playing games over Brexit". Reaction. 24 October 2017, in www.reaction.life

The chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, Mr. Martin Wolf is of course correct. And the egregiously naive or ill-informed Mrs. Adye is incorrect in assuming that (in her words): "a no deal scenario...will do far more damage to them [the European Union] than to us" 1. As Mr. Wolf cogently and ably points out, the statistics clearly show that the United Kingdom depends three-times as much on trade with the European Union than the European Union does with the United Kingdom. Already there have been plenty of noises coming out from the big Banks and other large companies who use their UK businesses as a platform to export to the rest of the European Union, that sans some sort of mutually agreed road map in place by no later than late this year or early next (say April 2018), then these businesses will commence making plans to move operations out of the United Kingdom rather than take the risk of a 'hard Brexit' or a no-deal Brexit occurring 2. As the pro-Brexit, but realistic Spectator columnist James Forsyth recently commented: "The EU knows that time is on its side. The two-year Article 50 clock strengthen its hand so it is happy to see it tick down" 3. The fact of the matter is that unless and until Prime Minister May makes a firm decision to seek the very best agreement with Brussels that will inevitably involve compromises that not everyone will like in her party, then there is a great risk of there not being an agreement in time to meet the deadline of the end of March 2019. And leave no doubt, for that deadline to be anywhere near approaching without the United Kingdom securing an agreement with the European Union will result in a catastrophic economic slide in the United Kingdom economy, based merely on the uncertainty. The fact is as the commentator Allan Massie recently & correctly noted:

"Mrs May became Prime Minister for an honourable reason : the Queen’s Government must be carried on. It may be also that she is, honourably again, attempting to secure a compromise: a soft Brexit which will enable us to retain many of the advantages of membership of the EU while freeing us of some of the unwelcome burdens. Such a compromise might well be in the national interest, but it will not satisfy the nationalist zealots. She cannot however draw back because even to hint at doing so would inflame the passions of those who believed that “Leave means Leave”. Yet to satisfy these passions and make the clean break – taking the “No Deal” option – will leave the 48 percent who voted Remain variously dismayed, aggrieved and angry. The truth is that there is no General Will. No outcome will please everybody. Every outcome will be felt as a betrayal by millions. We cannot go back to where we were before the politicians supinely chose not to abide by the principles of representative democracy and surrendered their judgement to the people who had elected them to exercise that judgement. So we are in a mess, confusion worse confounded. The best we can hope for is a very British fudge, a Brexit that satisfies nobody, but one that fools most of the people long enough to allow passions to subside 4."

A 'very British fudge' will be infinitely better than a no-deal or hard Brexit. That is a mere fact of life.

1. Jayne Adye, op. cit.

2. See a statement last week from Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, in: Martin Arnold & George Packard, "Blankfein heaps pressure on May over Brexit as he praises Frankfurt". The Financial Times. 19 October 2017, in www.ft.com.

3.James Forsyth, "The plots thicken". The Spectator. 14 October 2017, in www.spectator.co.uk.

4. Allan Massie, "A Brexit to please nobody". Reaction. 25 November 2017, in www.reaction.life.

'HOMAGE TO CATALONIA' REDIVIVUS?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 23:47:00 +0000

"This was in late December 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or 1905, for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Sen~or' or 'Don' ort even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos dias'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also, I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers' State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being".

George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia. Revised Edition. (2010), pp. 6-7.

"Catalonia’s referendum belongs to a very different category. It lacks legal validity and political legitimacy. In their response to the gathering storm, Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, and his ruling Popular party have been cack-handed at best. They have unnecessarily alienated many Catalans and been sluggish and unimaginative. After the crisis erupted in 2010, when Spain’s constitutional court struck down parts of a new statute of autonomy for Catalonia, Madrid let several opportunities for talks go to waste. However, none of this makes the Spanish state the tyrannical ogre that inhabits the fantasies of Catalan separatists. There is a world of difference between the abuses committed against Catalonia under Francisco Franco, the dictator who died in 1975, and the extensive self-government and individual freedom that the region and its people have enjoyed for the past four decades. Catalan nationalists purport to speak in the name of the whole people. It is a baseless claim. In truth, the separatists are driving forward a radical agenda that deeply divides Catalonian society. This will be evident on Sunday. Large numbers of voters will refuse to take part in the referendum because they regard it, correctly, as illegal and because they do not support secession from Spain. Mr Rajoy has the right, indeed the absolute duty, to uphold the law. But his government would be wise to display restraint in coming days, so as not to play into the secessionists’ hands and create a roll-call of martyrs. At some stage, a fresh dialogue must start between Madrid and the Catalan authorities. Yet it must be on the basis of the rule of law. The separatists are treating this principle in the most flagrantly high-handed manner."

Leader. "Catalan secessionism is bad for Spain and Europe". The Financial Times. 29 September 2017, in www.ft.com.

One does not have to be a sympathizer with the idiocy of Catalan nationalism: the ultimate in a cause in search of a country, to realize that Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy made a fundamental mistaken, an erratum by sending in the police to endeavor to stop last week's referendum from taking place. Instead of giving the appearance of masterly inactivity by studiously ignoring the 'referendum' and its 'results', Rajoy played in to the worst fantasies of arch-Catalan nationalists by trying by the employment of force to stop the idiotic voting exercise. Once again: one does not have to be an adherent of Catalan nationalism or small nation nationalism per se, to make the determination that the employment of even a limited amount of force to stop a peaceful if wrong-headed political farce was absolutely the wrong way to proceed in this matter by the authorities in Madrid. Now of course the fat is really in the fire and now the ball is most definitely in the court of the authorities in Barcelona unfortunately. As the British commentator Allan Massie (no friend to Catalan Nationalism) stated earlier this week, that Rajoy would have been well advised to have borrowed the script employed by the former British Prime Minister David Cameron when the latter had to deal with the equally idiotic Scottish referendum three years ago:

"The Unionist case during the campaign was led by Scottish politicians. Mr Cameron made it clear that he hoped Scotland would vote “no”, and his Government pointed out that an independent Scotland would not get everything the Nationalists wanted. In particular It could not share a common currency with the rest of the UK. By and large however the argument was conducted within Scotland by Scottish politicians on Scottish terms. In short no legal obstacles were erected against the Nationalists.They were given their head, conducting the Referendum on their own terms; and they lost. If Mr Cameron had been less accommodating, they might have won. If he had acted as Mr Rajoy has, tens, perhaps hundreds,of thousands of Scots would have been converted to the cause of Independence. So if Mr Rajoy had called him, Mr Cameron might have said, “cool down – give them enough rope and let them hang themselves" 1.

1. Allan Massie, "Mr Rajoy needs some referendum lessons from David Cameron". Reaction. 3 October 2017 in www.reaction.life.

MERKEL'S DEBACLE: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:56:00 +0000

"Angela Merkel has won her fourth term as German chancellor but saw a sharp fall in support for her conservative Christian Democrat-led alliance and advances by the country’s far-right populist party. Her win was marred by her party’s worst election result since 1949 and a bigger-than-expected success for her nationalist opponents — the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany. The AfD capitalised on Germany’s refugee crisis and will surge into the Bundestag as the first substantial rightwing populist party since the second world war. Turnout was more than 76 per cent compared with 71.5 per cent in 2013. Ms Merkel put a brave face on the result, saying she had wanted “a better” outcome but that her CDU bloc remained “the strongest force” and would lead the next government. AfD supporters were jubilant. Alexander Gauland, a party leader, pledged to “hunt” Ms Merkel in parliament and said: “We will take our people and our country back.” The Social Democrats, Ms Merkel’s coalition partner, suffered their worst defeat and said they would go into opposition. Martin Schulz, the SPD leader, said it was “a difficult and bitter day for German social democracy”. Official results published on Monday by the federal returning officer gave Ms Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc 33 per cent of the vote. The Social Democrats won just 20.5 per cent. The AfD secured 12.6 per cent. Under Germany’s election system, the parliament will have 709 members compared with 631 during the last session. The AfD is set for 94 seats".

Stefan Wagstyl, Guy Chazan & Tobias Buck, "Merkel wins fourth term but far-right populists make gains". The Financial Times. 25 September 2017, in www.ft.com

"For you, Frau Merkel, ze war is over. Or, to put it another way, the endgame is just beginning. The most crassly inflated reputation in global politics took a beating in the German elections just concluded, as Angela Merkel’s CDU/SPD was punished by voters. Merkel is now so toxic that Martin Schulz, leader of the spectacularly humiliated SPD, claims he wants to go into opposition rather than rejoin the Grand Coalition that led Germany into cultural and demographic meltdown".

Gerald Warner, "Even Germany has now joined the populist revolt against the political class". Reaction. 25 September 2017, in www.reaction.life

As predicted and written up here back in 2015, Angela Merkel's folly in re the refugee crisis has been (inevitably) followed by Merkel's electoral debacle. Pur et simple. That of course and in general her noticeable drift to the left of the ideological prism in the past four years. However it is doubtful that the CDU-CSU bloc would have suffered its greatest electoral results in the history of the Federal Republic sans Merkel's insane refugee policy 1. A policy which was and is completely senseless and illogical. And which the German Chancellor still defends against all reason and rationality 2. Au fond, Merkel of course is not a conservative and that fact explains her flight of fancy which lead to her disaster of a refugee policy. What seemed both at the time and in retrospect particularly egregious is that while she has for the most part been willing to keep in step with German public opinion as per how to resolve the financial crisis. Something which has been millstone around the necks of most countries in the Eurozone, she has been as we see completely willing to buck German public opinion as per her refugee policy. Were that it were otherwise: courage in combating the financial crisis and realism and intelligence in handling the refugee crisis. As per the latter: to argue (as many of our bien-pensant commentators would have us believe), that German (or British or American) public opinion on such highly emotional matters can be ignored is the height of irrealism. As Ludwig von Rochau, the inventor of the concept of Realpolitik once aptly put it in his opus:

"Even if stupid prejudice or blindfold error weigh heavier than truth in the stable of public opinion [government], may if it is reasonable, not exactly follow prejudice and error blindfold, but give in at least a little and as much as possible so as to not make enemies of these forces" 3.

1. Judy Dempsey, "Merkel’s Bittersweet Victory". Carnegie Europe. 25 September 2017, in www.carnegieeurope.eu

2. For this see: Stefan Wagstyl,"Merkel admits she has ‘polarised’ Germany as grip on power weakens". The Financial Times. 25 September 2017, in www.ft.com.

2. Rochau quoted in: John Bew. Realpolitik: A history. (2016), pp. 40-41.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT 'THE LAST DICTATORSHIP IN EUROPE'?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:13:00 +0000

"Mr. Lukashenka has created a repressive dictatorship on the doorstep of the European Union (EU) and NATO. Unlike any other leader in Europe, his actions impede realization of a Europe whole, free and at peace, and introduce an element of unpredictability and potential instability and insecurity in Europe. Through his track record of fraudulent elections; state-orchestrated "disappearances" of opponents; imprisonment of peaceful, democratic political figures on spurious charges; and repressive tactics to intimidate civil society, Lukashenka has demonstrated that he is incapable of leading Belarus toward a democratic future. Furthermore, as Belarus’ self-imposed isolation intensifies, Lukashenka is increasingly seeking partners from other states of concern".

Department of State, "Report on Belarus, the Last Dictatorship in Europe, Including Arms Sales and Leadership Assets". 16 March 2006, in www.state.gov

"Minsk has been testing the limits of how far it can distance itself from Moscow and rebuild relations with the West, which were frozen between 2010 and 2016. Belarus has released its political prisoners and sought to engage with the European Union, while rejecting Russian demands for an airbase and staying neutral in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. However, Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin seemed to patch up most of their differences at a summit in St Petersburg in April 2017. So how much has really changed between Belarus and Russia? How real have the tensions been? How far is Lukashenka able to turn to the West, and is he really interested in doing so? The key to answering all of these questions is to understand that Lukashenka is still a dictator and his priority is his own survival....There is a modest opportunity for Europe to bring Belarus closer, both in terms of strategic alignment and in pushing for democratisation. Europe should embrace Belarus’s efforts to strengthen its external sovereignty and to pursue a policy of ‘strategic hedging’ and avoid steps that would increase its dependence on Russia. There are constituencies within the administration that see the advantages of moving towards the West, but which also recognise the realities of how far Belarus can go. European states should accept Minsk’s invitation to send military observers to Belarus for Zapad 2017. The invitation provides a degree of transparency but is also a manifestation of Belarus’s sovereignty (given Moscow’s displeasure with this move). An overall deepening of military ties, through military-to-military cooperation and exchange programmes, would also be beneficial. The EU should also further support Lukashenka’s balancing act of maintaining a neutral stance with regard to Russia’s conflicts with its neighbours. The hosting of talks in Minsk has proven useful for the West as well as an effective insurance policy for Belarus. It has allowed Belarus to deflect pressure by Russia and not follow it on crucial foreign policy issues. The net effect of this neutrality has been greater alignment with the EU".

Fredrik Wesslau & Andrew Wilson, "So far from god, so close to Russia: Belarus and the Zapad military exercise". European Council on Foreign Relations. 11 September 2017, in www.ecfr.eu

The military exercises on Belorussian soil have come and gone. Without it appears Belarus being occupied or annexed by Russian forces. So much for the more extreme concerns of some diplomats and commentators a few weeks ago. With that being said, the advice pro-offered by the European Council on Foreign Relations is indeed correct. The only way or means of assisting Minsk to distance itself from Moskva's embrace and to come closer to the European Union, AKA the Western bloc is by the latter exercising its diplomatic arts to the full. To ignore as much as is humanly possible the contretemps that the Lukashenka regime provides by way of its human rights record (egregious as that is). And to endeavor in a sotto voce fashion to fund, support and nurture Belorussian civil society. In short endeavor to grow in a quiet a manner as is possible another color revolution in Belarus. With of course the proper preparation for the very same. That is unfortunately, the only means of trying to maneuver Minsk from Moskva's putative sphere of influence. In the words of the former diplomat and historian Sir Harold Nicolson, what is needed by the West in its dealing with Minsk is the ultra-subtle art of diplomatic patience:

"Patience is an indispensable quality for he successful negotiator. The wind is bound to be contrary at times, and then one has to tack to get into port" 1.

1. Sir Harold Nicolson. Diplomacy. (1939), p. 118.

IS DAME JUDI DENCH TALKING NONSENSE OR IS BREXIT THE RETURN TO 'SPLENDID ISOLATION' ?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:07:00 +0000

"The Dench publicity train arrived at BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, and inevitably one of the questions was about Brexit. Dame Judi is not in favour. Are there any people in the theatre or film in favour of it? Would they dare admit this if they had voted for Brexit? Presumably the actor’s union Equity would be right on their case with sanctions (“it’s Midsomer Murders for you, for five series”) if anyone dared try to say Brexit might not be a disaster. “I shouldn’t even open this bag of worms,” Dame Judi told the BBC. “But the whole business of leaving Europe… There’s something about being inclusive that is more important than being exclusive.” She recalled a celebratory performance when Britain joined the Common Market (if only it had stayed as a Common Market rather than morphing into an integrationist behemoth) in 1973, with an evening of performance with Sir Lawrence Olivier (Larry, lovely Larry) and fellow actor Max Adrian. “There was opera from Italy and the ballet, there was everybody,” said Dame Judy. “Everybody was represented in Europe that evening. There was something so glorious about it"'.

Iain Martin, "Dame Judi Dench and the luvvie myth of British isolation from Europe". Reaction. 11 September 2017, in www.reaction.life.

"Ever since the 1990s, the number of young people in England choosing a language as part of their sixth-form studies has been going down. However, since 2012, the rate of decline has sped up, with French dropping by 17 per cent and German by 12 per cent over a period of just two years".

Teresa Tinsley & Kathyrn Board, "Why aren’t England's A-level students learning languages?" British Council. 14 April 2015, in www.britishcouncil.org

I am afraid that however much I am enamoured of the acting talents of Dame Judi Dench (especially pre-1990's, when she started, Maggie Smith-like to play herself), the fact is that she is talking bogus nonsense or in fact absolute unadulterated rubbish. As the above referenced statistics clearly show, regardless of British membership of the European Union, and one to two million European immigrants migrating to the United Kingdom since the 2004, that has not prevented a very noticeable down-ward shift in the number of British students who study and can reasonably speak a foreign language. Statistics which parallel the decline in language abilities in the general British population overall. Especially, it would appear the two chief European ones, German and French. So whatever is meant (pace Dame Dench), about that very over-used mot 'inclusive', apparently learning continental languages (and the culture that goes with it one presumes) is not meant to apply. And to belabor a point perhaps in the same vein, is it not too surprising, that of all the Prime Ministers who have governed the United Kingdom since it joined the European Union in 1973, only one (Tony Blair) spoke with some level of confidence, a European language (in Blair's case French)? Whereas pre-British membership of the European Union it was not unheard of to have (three in a row actually) Prime Ministers who spoke some level of French (Macmillan and Churchill) and in the case of Sir Anthony Eden, German and Arabic as well. The larger point that I am making herein is that whether or not one is in favor of Brexit (and I am assuredly not - I thought in June of last year and still to-day think it was and is a mistake), is one made by Iain Martin when he concluded his piece on this issue and this piece:

"The idea that we were ever somehow in splendid isolation from the 18th century onwards, restricting ourselves to English lute music and grim plays about coal-mining deaths in the industrial revolution, until we joined the EEC and “became part of Europe” is just not how it was. We have long been European in cultural terms. It is a shame to see otherwise well-intentioned people become so anti-Brexit that they deal in luvvie myths rather than the more interesting historical reality" 1.

1.) Iain Martin, "Dame Judi Dench and the luvvie myth of British isolation from Europe". Reaction. 11 September 2017, in www.reaction.life.

BRITAIN AS A WORLD POWER: DOES IT STILL HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 00:27:00 +0000

"The British Army has been in a state of transition since SDSR 2010, on top of having to contend with continuing operations in Iraq (until 2011) and Afghanistan (until 2014) as well as pressure on the defence budget. This state of affairs does not seem to be ending anytime soon. This was confirmed with the publication of a new SDSR in late 2015, which announced more changes to the structure of the field army, including the formation of two new strike brigades. However, there has been little detail to accompany any of these announcements and it is vital for both UK defence policy and the British Army that the uncertainty surrounding the implementation and eventual impact of SDSR 2015 – the creation of the new formations, including questions about their place in doctrine; and their structure, role, equipment and logistics support requirements – be cleared up as soon as possible. A complicating factor to the army’s work is that ‘defence expenditure has fallen to an unacceptably low level in GDP percentage terms, bearing in mind that, until the mid-1990s, the UK never spent less than 3% of GDP on defence".’

Peter Antill & Jeremy Smith, "The British Army in Transition". RUSI Journal. (June / July 2017), p. 56.

On global power rankings, the UK is somewhere between the second and sixth most powerful country in the world. For example, European Geostrategy’s “Audit of major powers” places the UK comfortably second in the world, the only “global power” apart from the US (France, China, and Russia are the next three, all with “regional power” status). (Those favouring a new post-Brexit partnership with Canada and Australia might note that the three of us together would have a power of around 70 per cent of the US’). We have the world’s third largest military budget, behind the US and China but comfortably ahead of Russia, France or India. In 2016 we were the fifth largest economy in the world, and set to overtake Germany (currently fourth) in the mid-2020s. Britain is not the US. Neither are we a serious challenger to the US. Dropping from being the world’s dominant power in the early twentieth century to being decisively not dominant has indeed involved some psychological adjustment. But there is a lot in between being No. 1 and being no-one. We do not “have to accept” that we are small and irrelevant and cannot have a global role. If we cannot have a global role, no-one other than the US can, and the US doesn’t want to do everything and the US isn’t always right. And Britain’s relative power isn’t going ever-downwards. In recent decades it has, if anything, gone up — particularly as Russia’s has declined.

Andrew Lilico, "The world needs Britain today more than ever". Reaction. 24 January 2017, in www.reaction.life.

There are many responses that one can offer up to the remarks of Mr. Lilico. The best one however is the Anthill & Smith article. As they make quite plain, British governments since the mid-1990's, if not earlier have been taking a hacksaw to the British defense budget. As was noted in the article, for the first time since perhaps the mid-19th century (if not earlier), Britain commenced spending less than three-percent of Gross Domestic Product on Defence. Now the figures are barely north of two-percent (and depending upon how you count it, even less than two-percent). The fact of the matter is that the once highly valued British Defense forces are not, 'fit for purpose', in the sense of fighting a war on any sustained and lengthly level. The army that did so badly in Iraq circa 2004-2006, is no more. It is in fact weaker in terms of equipment, force project capability and numbers. In short the fact is that Britain if it does not change and change greatly its defense expenditure it will soon little more than (in the prescient words of a Cabinet paper from 1958): "that of a European Power with a standing similar to that of the Netherlands or Sweden" 1. The end of Empire indeed.

1. Remarks found in 'conclusions' to "The Position of the UK in world affairs: a report by Officials". 9 June 1958, in The Conservative Government and the End of Empire: Series A. Volume I. Part I. Edited by William Roger Louis & Ronald Hyam. (2000), p. 43.

JACOB REES-MOGG: A MAN FOR OUR TIMES?

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:13:00 +0000

"Let me tell you a joke, people. Jacob Rees-Mogg. He is one hilarious dude! He has named his sixth child Sixtus. He took his nanny canvassing. He is so posh that Latin is his first language. He thinks people who went to state school are “potted plants”. Until recently, he held the record for uttering the longest word spoken in parliament – “floccinaucinihilipilification”. When canvassing in Fife in 1997, he said he couldn’t understand people’s accents. See, not only is he funny, but he is also real. He doesn’t bother with the whole “man of the people” act because he holds most of the people in contempt. This is masked, it appears, by his unfailing politeness. He rocks up on panel shows such as Have I Got News For You, where the audience is encouraged to laugh at this anachronism of a man.... And this is what it is: like all his politics, extremely rightwing and reactionary. This politics has not gone away, but is ceaselessly repackaged. It is not a throwback. We are in its throes. As the Home Office document leaked this week shows, a British-interests-first ideology is now subsumed fully into the Tory high command. No one should be surprised by this any more than they should be surprised that Rees-Mogg is a class warrior (for his class alone) who has a track record of voting down every socially progressive policy. Far from being “eccentric” or “freethinking”, as the extreme right likes to characterise itself, he embodies their tick-box views: anti-gay marriage; anti-abortion; doesn’t believe in climate-change legislation, votes against any rise in benefits, even for disabled people; supports zero-hours contracts and tuition fees. He supported Trump, although he has since distanced himself. This is pure neocon territory. Every so often, he goes too far. I don’t mean him talking about how he never changed nappies. “I don’t think nanny would approve, because I’m sure she would think I wouldn’t do it properly,” he told Nigel Farage on LBC. Had them rolling in the aisles, that one. No, sometimes he says what he really thinks. When the Tory party was pushing for more ethnic-minority candidates, he warned against having too high a proportion of them. “Ninety-five per cent of this country is white. The list can’t be totally different from the country at large,” he said. In 2013, he was “guest of honour” at – and gave a speech to – the annual dinner of Traditional Britain Group (TBG), which describes itself as “the home of the disillusioned patriot”. It wants to return black people to “their natural homelands”. When Doreen Lawrence was made a peer, they suggested that she be made to leave the country. Rees-Mogg later sought to dissociate himself from their views, but bear this in mind: the day before he went to talk to TBG, the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight warned him about them. He went and did it anyway.... As usual, Rees-Mogg’s religious faith is used to excuse his appalling bigotry. He is a Catholic and this kind of fundamentalism is always anti-women, but for some reason we are to respect it. I don’t. It has no place in public life. Far from being iconoclastic, this MP’s views are entirely predictable. He is a fund manager with interests in the tobacco, mining, oil and gas industries. His path to parliament was Eton, Oxford and investment banking".

Suzanne Moore, "Jacob Rees-Mogg isn’t old-fashioned, he’s a thoroughly modern bigot". The Guardian. 6 September 2017, in www.guardian.com.

"Rees-Mogg’s appeal to old-school Tories is obvious. He believes unashamedly in the kind of honest-to-goodness conservatism — minimal state interference, free enterprise, personal liberty within a framework of tradition, self-discipline and family values, low taxes — that the party’s upper echelons have scarcely dared advocate since the Thatcher era. His no-nonsense attitude to the EU goes down well with Ukippers too. ‘You are either in the European Union or you leave it,’ he said on Question Time, wearing the pained expression of a man pointing out something so agonisingly obvious that he’s amazed even his thicko fellow panellists can’t get it. It won him whoops of delight from the audience. What’s more surprising, perhaps, is the extent of his appeal among those teens and millennials who might be expected to prefer Corbyn. Yes, it’s probably true that as with Boris, they find him so funny and charming they’re prepared to overlook the fact that he belongs to the hated Tories. But what I think they warm to even more is his extraordinary authenticity. In youth parlance, Rees-Mogg is ‘based’. He’s quick on his feet, comfortable in his skin, knows his own mind and is beholden to no man. Having made his fortune as a value investor in emerging markets before becoming an MP, he is in the unusual position of being able to say what exactly he thinks — and from a position of knowledge and experience. He’s also funny, self-deprecating, charming, looks great in a bespoke double-breasted suit and even better in the copious memes on social media celebrating his wit, wisdom and magnificence. Moggmentum, that’s what they’re calling it".

James Delingpole, "Let's keep up the Moggmentum". The Spectator. 14 July 2017, in www.spectator.co.uk.

In the era of Trumpian morass and Corbynesque stupidity, it is more than refreshing, it is indeed absolutely, radiantly mesmerizing and enjoyable to behold a politician of the caliber of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The son of Sir William (later Lord) Rees-Mogg, an old Etonian and a graduate of Oxford, Jacob Rees-Mogg while by no means perfect in his political views from my vantage point (I believe in taking legislative action to deal with global warming and I was and am opposed to Brexit, without mind you being an excessively enamored of the European Union), the totality of Mr. Rees-Mogg's political vision puts one in mind of the young Lord Salisbury in his willingness to uphold those ultra views which are highly unfashionable in our bien-pensant influenced age. Or in the words of Lord Macaulay describing the very young William Gladstone, Mr. Rees-Mogg can be said to be: "the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories". It would be a tragedy if he does not become a Prime Minister, but it would be miraculous if he does in fact become one. So to sum up, it could be said of Rees-Mogg (paraphrasing Cyril Connolly on the future Lord Home) that in the 20th century, he would have become Prime Minister before he was fifty. One may only hope that he does become so (like Lord Home) by the time that he is sixty.

OUR PRESENT PENCHANT FOR TOPPLING OF STATUES AND WHY ROBERT E. LEE WAS A GREAT IF FLAWED MAN

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 23:02:00 +0000

"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can’t change history, but you can learn from it....Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”

American President Donald Trump, quoted in: Neil Munshi, "Trump says it is ‘foolish’ to remove Confederate symbols". The Financial Times. 17 August 2017, in www.ft.com.

"Lee was a tactically astute but strategically flawed general who led the Confederacy to defeat during the US civil war of 1861 to 1865. As commander for the slavery-supporting Confederacy, and a cruel slave owner himself, Lee is regarded as a highly offensive figure by African-Americans and many other Americans too. Some southerners argue that the memorials to Lee are about “heritage not hate” and commemorate the ordinary soldiers who died in the tragic conflict that killed more Americans than any other war the nation has ever fought".

Leader, "Past battles should not inflame present disputes". The Financial Times. 18 August 2017, in www.ft.com.

This online journal does not ordinarily discuss or delve into the intricacies of American politics. It is a journal which deals with history and with international politics and diplomacy. The case however of the current American penchant for removing statues of Civil War Confederate leaders and symbols does merit, insofar as it involves a question of History, a comment. In particular, the question raised (in admittedly a very inarticulate fashion) by President Trump does indeed call for a thoughtful response. Especially, in light of the arch typically bien-pensant leader in last week's Financial Times. Without in the least being sympathetic to his general point of view, the American President does indeed raised an ultra-valid concern: where does it stop? If we remove to-day statues of two of the greatest military figures in American History (Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson), for the sin of fighting for the Confederacy, then what is to prevent the throwing down of the statues of say Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt? You can readily add names to the list. The point being that history in all of its complexity and complication, is rarely a source of simple dialectics, stark black and white coloring. History tends to be more on the grey side of the ledger. And while it is a fact that for some people statues of Confederate heroes may seem 'oppressive', et cetera, there is not a person on this planet who may not in one form or fashion or other be 'hurt' by some public monument or other. To some people (like myself actually), the statue of Cromwell (or as I have heard some say: 'the regicide Crownwell') in Westminster Abbey is an abomination. Pur et simple. For others Admiral Lord Nelson or the Duke of Wellington, or for that matter Field-Marshal the Earl Haig or Sir Winston Churchill are damned figures (admittedly not for me). The larger point that I make is that these are all great and heroic figures produced by History. Whether you agree with them or not. They did not exist, and the statues to them were not erected in order to make someone, anyone 'feel better'. If you or I need to 'feel better' than one should either go to an analyst, or take a drink of champagne. If you are made so anxious by a statue of say Cecil Rhodes and are a student at an Oxford College, than you should probably go to another University (the University of Sussex anyone?). For whatever reason, our ultra-gauchist activists, rarely choose to go elsewhere. So the amount of 'hurt' that they are suffering from, appears to be not sufficient to so prompt them to relocate. For reasons of course which are obvious. Enough said...

In the case of Robert E. Lee, it is very much that hate him or love him (and like most 19th century American figures from history, he leaves me mostly indifferent), the fact is that he is without a doubt the greatest soldier produced by this country. If one had to nominate someone who fits the label of a Napoleonic General, a general who one would associate with all the great military commanders in history, then Lee is that man. Not Grant, not Washington, not Pershing, not MacArthur, not Patton, or Eisenhower, but Robert E. Lee. There is a truism that 'there are no Austerlitzes in American military history'. Well, there are and they are the battles that Lee won over the Union army in the Civil War. The fact that Lee won his renown fighting in favor of Slavery and the Confederacy is of course his tragedy. One can well imagine how different the 1860's would have been if Lee had decided to command the armies of the Republic. However it is well to remember that the choice that Lee made, while an erratum, was not as hideous as it may now seem to most people. It is noteworthy to recall that there were many individuals of liberal views, many who were opposed to slavery, who supported (at least initially) the Confederate cause. The names of Williams Gladstone and Sir John Acton being the most worthy of mention 1. With that said, nothing will tarnish the greatness of Lee as a general and to a lesser extent a man. Something that President Eisenhower accurately pointed out some sixty-years ago:

"General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history. From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained" 2.

Given all the ills and manifold problems that contemporary American society suffers from, the penchant for removing statues, for renaming public venues (as in the Princeton Club's recent renaming the 'Woodrow Wilson room' to something else by the administration of the club, without even a vote or a consultation of the members), and other 'progressive' measures is a piece with a society which is deeply un-serious, nay adolescent in mentality. One can only hope that as in the immortal words of Saint Paul:

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" 2.

1. On Gladstone see: Roy Jenkins. Gladstone. (1995), pp. 236-238. On the future Lord Acton, see: Roland Hill. Lord Acton. (2000), pp. 86-88.

2. This quote comes courtesy of Rod Dreher, see: "A Monumental History". The American Conservative. 24 May 2017, in www.theamericanconservative.com.

3. See: First Corinthians, Chapter 13. V. I.

TRUMP AND AFGHANISTAN: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 01:34:00 +0000

"President Donald Trump has revealed a new strategy for Afghanistan that commits to maintaining US forces in the war-torn country and increases pressure on Pakistan to crack down on havens used by terrorists. In a prime-time speech on Monday night, Mr Trump said his instinct had been to withdraw from Afghanistan but that he changed his mind because of concerns about creating a vacuum for terrorists. But he stressed that US support was not a “blank cheque” and that Americans were “weary of war without victory”. “A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists — including Isis and al-Qaeda — would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11,” Mr Trump said at Fort Myer outside Washington. Explaining his reversal, Mr Trump said Isis had emerged because the US withdrew from Iraq in 2011 and that America “cannot repeat in Afghanistan the mistake our leaders made in Iraq”. He did not say whether he would deploy additional forces to bolster the 8,400 US troops in Afghanistan but stressed that he would give the military the flexibility to produce an outcome “worthy of the tremendous sacrifices” made in the country. In June, Mr Trump gave James Mattis, defence secretary, the authority to deploy several thousand more troops in Afghanistan, but Mr Mattis wanted to hold off on any decision until the administration had agreed on a strategy. “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy,” Mr Trump said. “America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.' "

Demetri Sevastopulo & Kiran Stacey, "Donald Trump warns against hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan". The Financial Times. 21 August 2017, in www.ft.com.

"Based on its interests, the United States' primary objectives should be to prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the Afghan government, to target terrorist and insurgent groups that threaten the United States and its core interests, and to improve the capacity of the Afghan government and local allies as much as is feasible. Washington should set a more realistic goal: to ensure that the Taliban doesn't win. These objectives are and should remain limited. The Afghan government is weak and poorly functioning—and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The United States should thus not expect the Afghan government to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield over the next four years of the administration. Instead, Washington should set a more realistic goal: to ensure that the Taliban doesn't win. In order to do this, Washington could take several steps. First, U.S. diplomats need to continue encouraging governance reform in the country, including helping organize transparent elections and undermining large-scale public corruption. U.S. policymakers should also encourage diplomatic reconciliation with the Taliban. Since World War II, there have been roughly 181 insurgencies. Nearly three-quarters have been won on the battlefield. But of the roughly 30 percent that ended in a draw, most settled into a stalemate where neither side assessed that it could win. The Afghan war is at—or close to—a stalemate now. So negotiations may be the most likely path toward ending the violence given the inability of either side to win. Second, the United States should continue to keep at least the current number of 8,400 forces in Afghanistan, although more non-combat troops could be useful for advising Afghan army forces below the corps level. John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has requested several thousand additional troops from the United States and partner nations to train and advise Afghan forces—what some U.S. commanders have referred to as “thickening” advisory efforts. This is a reasonable request, although it is unlikely to break the stalemate".

Seth Jones, "How Trump Should Manage Afghanistan". The Rand Corporation. 21 March 2017, in www.rand.org.

One does not have to be an admirer of President Trump (do such creatures exist any longer?) to agree with his (or should one in fact say that of Generals McMaster & Mattis?) newest strategy for the Afghanistan war. It is the case in fact that a premature withdrawal of American and other Western forces would have been a disaster of the very first-order. That sans American and other Western boots on the ground, it would very much be the case that the Afghan government forces would have faced tremendous pressures from the Taliban. It being the case, that however disagreeable, it is a empirical fact that the regime in Kabul is not yet prepared to stand on its own two feet without Western assistance. Raising the question as to what was in the mind of the prior administration when it talked so freely about a complete withdrawal of all American (and inevitably) all Western forces by 2016? As Anthony Cordesman one of America's premier defense analysts recently noted:

When the U.S. withdrew combat forces in 2014, senior commanders realized all too clearly that the Afghan force was hollow with many units having little more than basic training and limited combat experience. This was due to rushed efforts to mix Afghan forces with police and army to take on the entire military mission of defeating the Taliban and other insurgents. That effort had only really begun to be fully funded in 2011, and many of the required advisors were only present in 2012-2013. It was clear that the Afghan Air Force was years away from having the strike, lift, and medevac capabilities it needed, and the Afghan government—including the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior—lacked core competence and were deeply corrupt. Senior U.S. commanders recommended a train and assist and combat support mission of some 20,000 troops—a mission that could aid the Afghan security forces down to the combat unit level and help it go from a force with basic training to one that could actually fight 1.

In an ideal universe the errata of the prior American administration would have been reversed on day one or two of the current American administration as Cordesman points out. However, it is a truism in this case that 'better late than never'. With the new strategy in effect, one can hope that the minimum, necessary goals of the Western forces in Afghanistan: keeping the Taliban out of power and on the back foot as much as is possible becomes more achievable. Au fond of course Afghanistan is not an important local in and of itself. It is (in the words of Sir Anthony Eden): 'a road to nowhere'. Still, given our truncated world, even atrocious places like Afghanistan have the (negative) merit that one cannot safely ignore them. As the Americans did to their eventual cost from 1990 to 2000. The 'Trump Strategy' for Afghanistan guarantees that this will not occur anytime soon.

1. Anthony Cordesman, "How the Trump Administration is Losing Afghanistan". Center for Strategic and International Studies. 2 August 2017, in www.csis.org

THE MASSACRE IN BARCELONA: A COMMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 23:10:00 +0000

"A van driver deliberately zigzagged into a crowd enjoying a sunny afternoon on Barcelona’s main pedestrian mall Thursday, killing at least 13 people and leaving 80 lying bloodied on the pavement. It was the worst terrorist attack in Spain since 2004, and was at least the sixth time in the past few years that assailants using vehicles as deadly weapons have struck a European city. The police cordoned off the Plaza de Cataluña and Las Ramblas in the heart of Barcelona, both tourist destinations, and began a chaotic pursuit for the people who carried out the attack. Two people were later arrested, including a Moroccan man whose identification documents had been used to rent the van. But the Barcelona police said neither was believed to be the driver, who remained at large. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the assault, which shattered a peaceful summer afternoon in one of Europe’s most picturesque cities. President Trump and other Western leaders quickly condemned the attack and pledged cooperation".

ANNE-SOPHIE BOLON, PALKO KARASZ and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr, "Van Hits Pedestrians in Deadly Barcelona Terror Attack". The New York Times. 17 August 2017, in www.nytimes.com.

"Most organised human societies are plagued by terrorism. Within any structured system there will be a political spectrum, and at the ends of this spectrum there will be extremes populated by people who feel the rest of the society is not hearing a political message they need to be awoken to. Last week, Jonathan Evans, the former head of the UK security service MI5, said he believes that Britain will have to confront Islamist terrorism for at least another 20 years. And the reality is that once we have dealt with that strain of the virus, it will simply morph into a new form. To get to the origins of violent Islamist terrorism, one has to go back far beyond the spectacular attacks on the US on September 11 2001 to 1979, a year that rocked the Muslim world. The Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the siege at the Grand Mosque in Mecca by a group of fanatics all showed the violent force of fundamentalist ideas and their power to upend the established order. These three events showed how violent political movements inspired by Islamic theology could threaten superpowers. This was the lesson drawn by the architects of al-Qaeda’s confrontation with the west that culminated on 9/11. Isis is in many ways simply an evolution from that. The attacks on New York and Washington DC almost 16 years ago were not the first time that terrorism had been visited on the west, of course. Before 9/11, Europe had endured successive waves of terrorist violence. Those responsible included right and leftwing groupuscules, separatist outfits such as the IRA and Eta, Middle Eastern networks often linked to the intelligence services of hostile states, and (in the case of France in particular) violent Islamists linked to Algeria and the conflict in Bosnia".

Raffaello Pantucci, "Terrorism will always be with us". The Financial Times. 15 August 2017, in www.ft.com.

The easy cynicism of the bient-pensant liberal, post-enlightenment intelligentsia on the subject of terrorism can be seen on full display in Mr. Pantucci's commentary of two days ago 1. To-day of course we have been forcible reminded that while it is easy (nay far too easy) for bien-pensant commentators like Mr. Pantucci to state that 'terrorism will always be with us', the brutality of that cynicism is exposed for what it is by the events of Barcelona. Of course the sheer mendacity of Mr. Pantucci's comments and those like them are exposed by the fact that people like him would never in a hundred-years, nay a thousand-years state that (to give some easy examples): 'racism will always be with us', 'sexism will always be with us', 'inequality will always be with us', et cetera, et cetera. As per the gist of Mr. Pantucci's argument, it contains aspects which are both accurate and inaccurate. Where Mr. Pantucci's argument is truthful and empirically verifiable, is in his contention that the Muslim extremist violence of the past twenty some years are per se, nothing new. And that Western societies have had problems with terrorism since the early 1970's. Indeed it would be accurate to state that even the numbers killed by Muslim terrorists were to remain at the elevated level of years 2015 and 2016, it would still not come to more than half the total number of attacks and deaths that Europe saw in the 1970's and 1980's 2. Where however Mr. Pantucci's arguments is in erratum, is his thesis that one type of terrorism inevitably replaces another. History shows that this is in fact erroneous. Viz: prior to 1969-1970, terrorism was a non-existent problem in the Western World. Similarly, in the case of Western Europe, terrorist attacks and deaths went down remarkably as old political conflicts in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country were settled or began to be settled. And then for approximately ten-years, European figures on terrorist attacks and deaths by the same went down greatly. In the case of the United States, the number of terrorist attacks and deaths from the same went down drastically from the late 1970's to a low point in 1994. Thereafter with the rise of Muslim extremism and violence in Western societies, does the figures go higher. Of course it is good to be reminded that comparing absolute numbers of deaths from the 1970's and the 1980's with those of the past ten to fifteen years is something akin to a mugs game due to the fact that many injuries which thirty or forty years ago, resulted in someone dying would to-day, due to advances in medicine, merely result in injury and prolonged hospitalization. My larger point herein, aside from exposing the fallacious arguments of Mr. Pantucci and those like him, is to show that Muslim terrorism is both extraordinary (in its violence and its evilness) and yet treatable. It does not require that our Western societies be cowed in fear and craven-like appeasement to those elements who engage in such violence. What our societies need to do is to tackle the problem of Muslim violence head-on with iron gloves. Engage and try to support, 'moderate Muslims' (insofar as they exist) and deport, banish, and drive-out of our societies those Muslims, many of them economic migrants or 'refugees', who engage and or support violence, extremism and or engage in it. What Western societies need is to restore faith in itself. In its basic and fundamental beliefs and verities: Christianity, the rule of law, equality of opportunity, neighborliness even. Au fond, Western society of fifty or forty years ago, were in the mots of George Orwell, akin to a family (albeit in his words: "A family with the wrong members in control") 3. What is needed and required, via a strict control of third-world immigration is to endeavor to return to those halcyon feelings and day before it is too late.

1. See for a similar type of argument. Not as cynical of course: Martin Wolf, "Overreaction to the terrorist threat is the perpetrators’ prize". The Financial Times. 29 June 2017 in www.ft.com.

2. Data Team, "Terrorist atrocities in western Europe". The Economist. 23 March 2017, in www.economist.com.

3. George Orwell. The Lion and the Unicorn. Part One: England your England. (1940).

THE KOREAN CRISIS ANEW: WHAT HISTORY SUGGESTS MAY PERHAPS BE THE VERY BEST OPTION

noreply@blogger.com (Charles Giovanni Vanzan Coutinho, Ph.D) — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 01:27:00 +0000

"In his acclaimed book The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark wrote about how the great powers of 1914 stumbled into a pan-European war that not only destroyed much of the continent, but unleashed destructive forces that defined the global order for much of the following century. Some of us fear that we are sleepwalking again, blindly unaware of the abyss that lies ahead. As a Chinese friend reminded me recently, war has its own logic. So too do crises. History teaches us they are both hard to stop once they start. The greatest global flash point today is the Korean peninsula. Most analysts regard crisis and conflict over the North Korean nuclear programme as improbable. They are right. But the uncomfortable truth is that it is now becoming more possible".

Kevin Rudd, "Creative diplomacy is vital to defuse Korean crisis". The Financial Times. 11 August 2017, in www.ft.com.

"The whole position of the United States is in the balance".

Dean Acheson, position paper dated the 28th of June 1961 on the Berlin Crisis. In Lawrence Friedman. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. (2000), p. 67.

"We cannot and will not permit the communists to drive us out of Berlin, either gradually or by force....In the thermonuclear age, any misjudgment on either side about the intentions of the other could rain more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all wars of human history".

President John F. Kennedy, Speech on the Berlin Crisis, 25 July 1961, in Friedman, op. cit., p. 71.

History while far from an exact science, does and can tell us a few things concerning the ongoing crisis over North Korea and its mercurial leader. First is that for all the bloodcurdling rhetoric by Mr. Kim Jong Un, as well as its missile and nuclear programme, the fact of the matter is that there is little likelihood that North Korea will unilaterally attack any of its neighbors of the United States. The North Korean nuclear programme is a very expensive and dangerous insurance policy for Mr. Kim. He possesses it, in the expectation that by possessing these weapons and by constructing systems which will allow him to fire nuclear warheads at the United States, that he will ensure the safety of his regime. In point of fact, with the ongoing and now recently strengthened sanctions on his regime, it is far more likely that some day soon, if not this year than in five to ten years from now, the current regime in North Korea will collapse. There most likely will be some coup d'etat by some internal enemy who will: a) oust and probably kill Mr. Kim; b) once 'a' occurs the regime will quickly begin to implode from within. With the eventual crisis resulting in the reunification of the two Koreas and the ending of the North Korean nuclear threat. The upshot is that just as the Americans and their allies withstood the rhetorical blasts of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the years (1958-1962) of the Berlin Crises, so must they do the same now. What occurred was that history was ultimately on the side of the West, the Americans and their allies and the stalemate that ended the crisis, eventually collapsed with the collapse of the DDR in November 1989. It took of course almost thirty years for this to occur. But occur it did. And it is my prognosis that similarly, in due course the regime in North Korea will also eventually collapse, and there is accordingly, absolutely no point in the least to either be provoked by North Korean rhetoric or for that matter North Korean stunts (missiles which are fired off and which hit nothing except empty air and the blue waters of the Pacific). North Korea au fond is a land and a regime of the past. Just as the DDR was. And it will suffer the very same fate. What the Americans and their allies the South Koreans and the Japanese need to do is to keep their nerves and a stiff upper lip while this hoped for event does indeed occur. Accordingly, the less said by the mentally challenged American President the better.