Must-Read: : China’s Struggle for a New Normal: "Beijing must be decisive and yet responsive to the needs of the people...
Strategy
Must-Read: May I say that I do not understand what the entire point of labeling Henry Kissinger an "idealist" would be?
Of course, I also do not understand what the point of the idealist-realist divide is. Everyone has hopes for a better world, and reaches for them. Everyone has to grapple with the world as it is.
The true divisions among international relations specialists are, I think, twofold:
The division between those who are being smart and being stupid.
The division between (i) those who believe that international relations is non-cooperative zero sum and that one's purpose is to advance the interests or one's own nation-state or ethnolinguistic grouping; and (ii) those who believe that international relations is cooperative and positive-sum and that trust via favors with the hope of their subsequent return via gift-exchange is worth building.
Smart vs. stupid; and nationalist vs. cosmopolitan.
Kissinger is, I think, an often- (as in his Nuclear Weapons and American Foreign Policy) but not always-stupid nationalist.
: Machinations of Wicked Men: "[Niall Ferguson's] central claim—Kissinger the idealist—is... wrong. Simply, plainly, fundamentally, and exactly wrong...
Liveblogging the Cold War: March 5, 1946: WInston S. Churchill: "From Stettin... to Trieste... an Iron Curtain Has Descended..."
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow..."
: "Iron Curtain" Speech at Westminster College in Fulton, MO:
I am glad to come to Westminster College this afternoon, and am complimented that you should give me a degree.
The name "Westminster" is somehow familiar to me. I seem to have heard of it before. Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric, and one or two other things. In fact we have both been educated at the same, or similar, or, at any rate, kindred establishments.
Live from the Trumpublicans' and the Rumpublicans' Self-Made Gehenna: : #NeverTrump: "I suppose I should celebrate this letter...
...and I do applaud the work that went into it http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/open-letter-on-donald-trump-from-gop-national-security-leaders/...
But...
Live from La Farine: Kudos to General Hayden for being a real soldier. But I am much less optimistic here than Mark about the national-security, the military-industrial, and the establishment-Republican contexts. I remember that from 2001-2008 we had not one but two buffoons in the White House giving illegal orders. And there were remarkable few peeps of complaint:
: Donald Trump, Michael Hayden, unlawful orders, and the Establishment: "Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who ran the NSA and then the CIA under George W. Bush...
Today's History: : What’s New About the War?: "As for relations at the top...
Live from Cupertino: : Apple's Motion to Vacate: "This one is clear...
...This stuck out to me:
Congress knows how to impose a duty on third parties to facilitate the government’s decryption of devices. Similarly, it knows exactly how to place limits on what the government can require of telecommunications carriers and also on manufacturers of telephone equipment and handsets. And in CALEA, Congress decided not to require electronic communication service providers, like Apple, to do what the government seeks here. Contrary to the government’s contention that CALEA is inapplicable to this dispute, Congress declared via CALEA that the government cannot dictate to providers of electronic communications services or manufacturers of telecommunications equipment any specific equipment design or software configuration.
Live from La Farine: : "So strength. Much peace. https://t.co/RJPGWBPuzv...
...Daniel Drezner Retweeted Olivia Nuzzi: "Jeb! repeats claim that George's foreign policy was defined by 'peace through strength'..."
Live from Moscow/Riyadh: : The United States needs a new Long Telegram. But from where?: "Today marks the 70th anniversary of diplomat George F. Kennan’s Long Telegram...
...a missive he sent from his post in Moscow to explain Soviet intentions to a perplexed and confused State Department in the postwar era. That telegram — which eventually was converted into Kennan’s ‘Sources of Soviet Conduct’ essay in Foreign Affairs — had a dramatic effect on how U.S. policy principals thought about American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. Which raises an interesting question: From where in the world right now could the United States use another Long Telegram?
Live from the Panopticon: I must say that the Obama Administration and the FBI seem to me to be being profoundly stupid here.
The game is whether other governments can go to Apple and say: You helped one Westphalian sovereignty with its internal-security problems, you have to help us. If the U.S. takes a strong stance for privacy here, the likely shape of the world a century hence is better:
: That Apple FBI Back_Door Thing: "Apple has quite rightly made the point that not only does this break company security and therefore customer privacy...
Jeb Bush: Hoisted from Scott Lemieux's Archives from Five Months Ago
: Jeb Bush and the Republican Party's bizarre 9/11 blind spot: "Donald Trump is more of a reality show contestant engaged in the simulacrum of a presidential candidacy...
...than an actual candidate for president. But this comes with an advantage: He can tell the truths that are inconvenient to Republican dogma. This was evident many times during the Republican debate earlier this week. Showing both a talent for getting under the skin of Jeb Bush and a firmer grasp of the fundamentals crucial to winning elections, Trump observed in an exchange with Bush that his brother's presidency had been such a 'disaster' that Abraham Lincoln couldn't have won on the Republican ticket in 2008.
Continue reading "Jeb Bush: Hoisted from Scott Lemieux's Archives from Five Months Ago" »
Live from Trumpland: Memo to grifters on the Republican grift: none of your voters are invested in George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. It never was "he kept us safe". It was "Al Gore wouldn't have killed enough people in response":
: Donald Trump Appears to Be Unscathed. Again: "Donald Trump had a singular debate performance last night in many respects...
Live from "Why, This Is Hell, Nor Am I Out of It": Donald Trump says, correctly, that Marco Rubio is the only person glad that George W. Bush was president and Richard Cheney vice president from January 21 to September 11, 2001.
Live from the Roasterie: Given Republican Senator Tom Cotton and colleagues' letter, wholly credible.
Republicans: Worse than you can imagine, even knowing that they are worse than you can imagine:
: Oh My: "We can by no means take this as a disinterested claim...
...And no specific names are mentioned. But a high-ranking Iranian government official, who is an appointee of reformist President Hassan Rouhani, says that Republicans asked the Iranians to delay last months prisoner exchange deal until after the Presidential election....
(Late) Monday Smackdown: Let Us Once Again Dispel with the Myth That Marco Rubio Knows What He Is Doing...
: Rubio and the “Martyr-State” Myth: "Like other hawks that endorse the ‘martyr-state’ myth...
Live from the Forbidden City: Reading the excellent Minxin Pei this morning. (1) Loss of position, (2) loss of informal influence, (3) loss of cushy life, (4) loss of liberty, and (5) loss of life--those are the five forfeits that can be imposed on the losers in any game of high politics. Systems that impose only (1) and (2) tend to cause substantially fewer human and policy disasters than systems that impose (4) and (5).
As Khrushchev once said, of all his achievements the one that he was proudest of was that starting in his reign the losers in the game of Soviet politics were no longer shot or sent to the concentration camps--instead, they were sent off to manage some small-town factory somewhere. China needs to learn that lesson:
: China’s Rule of Fear: "China is once again gripped by fear in a way it has not been since the era of Mao Zedong...
Early Monday Smackdown: Why Jack Shafer Should Have Retired from Journamalism Decades Ago
Not just not in the "trusted information intermediary" business, but somebody who has no conception of what the trusted information intermediary business is:
Hoisted from a Decade Ago: Some of the News That's Fit to Print (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?): "In Slate, Jack Shafer writes:
Not Just Another Column About Blogging - What newspaper history says about newspaper future. By Jack Shafer: John Q. Blogger can't fly to Baghdad or Bosnia and do the work of a John F. Burns. But what a lot of guild members miss is that not everybody wants to read John F. Burns, not everybody who wants to read about Baghdad is going to demand coverage of the quality he produces...
There's a question Shafer doesn't ask: what quality of coverage does John F. Burns, chief foreign correspondent of the New York Times produce?
It's an important question.
Liveblogging History: January 17, 1961: Eisenhower
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Continue reading "Liveblogging History: January 17, 1961: Eisenhower" »
The Grand Strategy of Rising Superpower Management
Munk School Trans-Pacific Partnership Conference: Geopolitics Panel
Revised and Extended: I could now talk about the risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. You have already heard a lot about the risks in the previous session here. You have heard about dispute resolution and about intellectual property. You have heard about instituting largely-untested dispute resolution procedures in such a way that they will be very difficult indeed to amend or suspend or replace or adjust in the future.
We all know very well the eurozone’s ongoing experience. We remember that the euro single currency is in its origins a geopolitical project. We remember the origins of the eurozone at Maastricht—the decision of the great and good of Europe that something needed to be done to bind Europe more closely together in the wake of the absorption into the Bundesrepublik of the German East and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The creation of a single currency was clearly something.
Continue reading "The Grand Strategy of Rising Superpower Management" »
Today's Economic History: Mary Beard on the Roman Empire
Today's Economic History: : There is no such thing as the fall of the Roman Empire: "The Romans don’t sit down and have a grand plan to conquer the world...
Continue reading "Today's Economic History: Mary Beard on the Roman Empire" »
In Praise of the Late Iain M. Banks and His "Culture"
{For the New York Times Room for Debate:](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/29/what-science-fiction-movie-or-novel-is-most-prescient-today/use-of-weapons-by-iain-banks) Let me put in a plug for the late, alas!, Iain M. Banks (1954-2013) and his truly-astonishing novel [Use of Weapons][1].
The best science fiction is always about us in the here-and-now rather than about them in the there-and-then. It is a distancing that makes us see ourselves more clearly.
Continue reading "In Praise of the Late Iain M. Banks and His "Culture"" »
Weekend Reading: D-Squared Digest: One-Minute MBA: Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101
: The D-Squared Digest One Minute MBA: Avoiding Projects Pursued By Morons 101: "Literally people have been asking me...
...'How is it that you were so amazingly prescient about Iraq? Why is it that you were right about everything at precisely the same moment when we were wrong?' No honestly, they have. I'd love to show you the emails I've received, there were dozens of them, honest. Honest.
Live from La Farine: : Rove: Obama Should React to Terrorism Like Bush: "A Karl Rove column weaves together... delusional optimism about Republican prospects... with hilariously amnesiac attacks on President Obama...
Essence of Decision: Understanding the Real History of the Imperial and Succession Wars
Recommended Star Wars Viewing Order:
- The Force Awakens
- A New Hope
- The Empire Strikes Back
And that is it. Everything else would simply be a letdown, and leave viewers disappointed...
Plus:
Essence of Decision: Understanding the Real History of the Imperial and Succession Wars
The fall of the Empire, and the failure of its successor states to re-establish order in the galaxy, is usually mistold in the history books. Popular, semi-academic, and even academic authors write it as a combination of tabloid soap opera and personal heroics: villains, Jedi Knights, stunning double crosses, the Palpatine succession, and--of course--the bizarre and incomprehensible repeated cross-generational psychodramas of the Skywalker family.
Live from La Farine: We have been tiptoeing around the problem with Republican likely primary voters.
The problem is this: They do not understand and have not internalized America's core freedom-loving and immigrant-friendly values.
The fact that the country has failed to absorb this deviant population culturally and ideologically is, perhaps, the biggest challenge facing America today:
: Republican Voters Like What Donald Trump Is Selling: "These aren't polls of tea partiers...
Must-Watch: : Connecting American Foreign Policy to Economic Policy: "How might a reimagined American foreign policy both bolster the domestic economy...
Live from Caribou Coffee: A strange piece from the sharp Ed Luce on Obama:
: Barack Obama’s Achilles Heel on Terrorism: "It is hard to fault the content of Mr Obama’s response [to ISIS]...
Must-Read: : Obama's Terrorism Speech: "Obama... believes that powerful, structural forces will lead liberal democracies to triumph...
Live from the Roasterie: Henceforth, can we call any members of the Republican Party "Americans"?:
: On Twitter:
Top response to the refugee haters from the State department Spox today -he read this out #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/tqm32Nj5fw
— Chris Doyle (@Doylech) November 18, 2015Or "Christians"?:
: On Twitter:
if only we had a seasonally appropriate story about middle eastern people seeking refuge being turned away by the heartless
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) November 16, 2015I do not recognize these people as belonging to this country. This is not who we are supposed to be. This is not who we were...
Live from Newark Airport: : Fear and Friends: "The news from Paris was horrifying, and deserved... commentary...
Live from Newark Airport: I must say, first Ebola and now Syrian refugees.... It makes me wonder: The next time one of these Republican clowns is in executive office, Daesh comes to them and says: pay us $3 billion and we won't explode a bomb in the U.S. this year, or don't pay us $3 billion and we will.
How does any one of these Republican clowns say?
And have their been messages yet to Sam Brownback in Kansas, Mitch Daniels Mike Pence in Indiana, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, etc., asking them for $30 million for "security" for 2015 for their states? And what have they answered?
: Obama's Sick Burn on Republican Critics of His Refugee Policy: "After a meeting with President Benigno Aquino of the Philipines...
Live from the Outer Banks: : "The consensus among scholars now probably would be that we know less about the historical Mohammed...
Live from the Outer Banks: On Amazon.com:
Live from 1333 H. St.: : 10 Falsehoods That Netanyahu Told During His Appearance At CAP: "1. Settlements aren’t a core issue affecting the peace process.... 2. No new settlements...
Weekend Reading: Phillip Mount: Henry Kissinger
: Henry Kissinger: Every President’s Guru | Prospect Magazine: "[Niall] Ferguson’s pages leave a[n]... impression perhaps more damning than he expected...
...Kissinger’s vatic pronouncements tended to be based on information that was skimpy and second-hand.... He had travelled nowhere in the Third World.... He swallowed, and then regurgitated... conventional wisdom about the non-existent ‘missile gap’.... It is doubtful whether he had fully grasped the wisdom of George Kennan’s ‘long telegram’ from Moscow and his follow-up 1947 article in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym of X.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Phillip Mount: Henry Kissinger" »
Now George H. W. Bush Tells Us...
JEB! Bush has no comment...
: 'Iron-ass' Cheney and 'arrogant' Rumsfeld Damaged America, Says George Bush, Sr.:
George H.W. Bush: "I don’t know, he just became very hardline and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with. The reaction [to 9/11], what to do about the Middle East. Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys who want to fight about everything, use force to get our way in the Middle East..."
Dick Cheney: "I took it [George H.W. Bush's calling me 'iron ass'] as a mark of pride. The attack on 9/11 was worse than Pearl Harbor, in terms of the number people killed, and the amount of damage done. I think a lot of people believed then, and still believe to this day that I was aggressive in defending, in carrying out what I thought were the right policies..."
George H.W. Bush: "[Cheney's building] kind of his own state department..."
Dick Cheney: "[George H.W. Bush's] diary’s fascinating, because you can see how he felt at various key moments of his life. So I’m enjoying the book. I recommend it to my friends. And [I’m] proud to be a part of it..."
George H.W. Bush: "I do worry about some of the rhetoric that was out there--some of it his [George W. Bush's], maybe, and some of it the people around him. Hot rhetoric is pretty easy to get headlines, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the diplomatic problem..."
Continue reading "Now George H. W. Bush Tells Us..." »
Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek!!
Now that Gawker has linked to this, it is time to re-hoist it yet again:
Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek: I'm sorry, but this is just too weird:
Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.: After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about 'unleashing Chang,' his 'mystical warrior' friend. Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
Continue reading "Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek!!" »
Live from the Roasterie: : Benghazi Fever: "I will not assert that the State Department did everything right for [consulate] security [in Benghazi]...
John Scalzi on Twitter: "ATTENTION INTERNET: Please update your memes now. https://t.co/uCdIhqS9n6"
Live from Capitol Hill: : ATTENTION INTERNET: Please update your memes now:
BENGHAZI!!!
Live from the Kansas Union: Let me say that we should all pause, and express our sympathy for the sorrow of the family and friends of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and Glen Doherty, murdered in a cowardly fashion in Libya on September 11, 2012.
And let me also say that it is appropriate for us to express, for Boehner, McCarthy, Ryan, Gowdy, and the clown show that is the rest of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, our scorn, contempt, and slight regard:
: Why Republicans Turned Benghazi Hearing into Blumenthal Hearing: "This was supposed to be the eighth congressional hearing...
Continue reading "BENGHAZI!!!" »
Yes, George W. Bush Deserves 10% of the Blame for 9/11, and 110% of the Blame for His Execrable Performance as a President After
Live from Where the Willamette Meets the Columbia: There is no honor anywhere in the Bush clan, and no pride in their deeds at all:
**: "Does anybody actually blame my brother for the attacks on 9/11?...
...If they do they're totally marginalizing our society. It's what he did afterwards that matters. And I'm proud of him....
Hoisted from U.S. State Department Archives: Tony Blair Screws the Pooch in Spring 2002 More Massively than I Would Ever Have Believed
Weekend Reading: Hendrik Hertzberg: Reviewing "An American Life"
: Reviewing "An American Life": "We knew about Reagan and war movies...
...What Cannon adds is that Reagan loved peace movies, too.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Hendrik Hertzberg: Reviewing "An American Life"" »
Must-Read: : Fantasies and Fictions at GOP Debate: "Modern G.O.P. economic discourse is completely dominated by an economic doctrine...
Michael DeLong: On Euripides's "The Children of Herakles"
: Thoughts on the Children of Heracles:
I just finished rereading Euripides’s play The Children of Heracles. When I first finished the play several months ago, I slammed the book shut and wandered around in a daze for the rest of the day. I then sat down stunned, because its themes and conflicts seemed so modern and relevant. It was a drama about refugees! Something I never expected to find in ancient Greek theatre. I decided to go back and reread it again to see how it held up.
Continue reading "Michael DeLong: On Euripides's "The Children of Herakles"" »
Live from the Roasterie: There is something very wrong with anybody who donates to or votes for today's Republican Party--or who advocates for it in public for any reason other than to become an internal mole pursuing the overriding aim of tearing it down and rebuilding it on less-insane foundations:
: GOP Candidates to Keep Us As Safe As Bush Did: "Wednesday night's... implicit... question...
Live from the World Trade Center: I must say, the amount of evil bullshit spouted by members of the Bush clan is rapidly approaching a singularity:
: Jeb Bush is forgetting something important when he says his brother "kept us safe": "What does he think that's a photo of?
Must-Read: : Solidarity Squandered: "But the squandering had already begun...
Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Hoisted from the Archives from Ten Years Ago
One of many, many reasons why Gabriel Snyder and The New New Republic have a nearly inexhaustible wellspring of credit to draw on...
Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?: Kevin Drum's jaw drops as he contemplates The Old New Republic's Michael Crowley.
Michael Crowley doesn't like public policy. It makes one wonder why he doesn't go and write about things that do interest him. Bill Clinton, you see, likes public policy and likes to talk about it. This makes Michael Crowley mad.
Crowley is, I think, one example of a larger trend:
Comment of the Day: Scowcroft, the GOP, and the Nuclear Deal: "Responsible Republicans acted...
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