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Weekend Reading; Daniel Larison: Scowcroft, the GOP, and the Nuclear Deal

Daniel Larison: Scowcroft, the GOP, and the Nuclear Deal:

Brent Scowcroft writes in favor of the deal with Iran:

Let us be clear: There is no credible alternative were Congress to prevent U.S. participation in the nuclear deal. If we walk away, we walk away alone. The world’s leading powers worked together effectively because of U.S. leadership. To turn our back on this accomplishment would be an abdication of the United States’ unique role and responsibility, incurring justified dismay among our allies and friends. We would lose all leverage over Iran’s nuclear activities. The international sanctions regime would dissolve. And no member of Congress should be under the illusion that another U.S. invasion of the Middle East would be helpful.

Continue reading "Weekend Reading; Daniel Larison: Scowcroft, the GOP, and the Nuclear Deal" »


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Live from Eisenhower Pass: Does Xi Jinping really want the rest of the world to think that he is an idiot?

Apparently so:

Rana Mitter: China’s History Parade: "In newspaper editorials and domestic conferences...

...over the past few weeks and months, new phrases have been used repeatedly to define the country’s war experience. China is described as ‘the major battlefield of World War II in the East’ (by implication downgrading the Pacific Theater, where the US was dominant), and August 1945 has become ‘the first occasion when China won a war completely against a foreign enemy.’

An inability to even say what facts are greatly inhibits the ability to seek truths from facts, and is a very bad sign for China's future.


Liveblogging World War II: August 18, 1945: A Meditation on Twentieth-Century Political-Military History

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A Meditation on Twentieth-Century Political-Military History: Red Army: killed and missing: 10,008,434. Red Army wounded and sick: 18,190,693

Source: David Glantz and Jonathan House (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press: 0700608990).

IIRC, the United States lost about 300,000 killed and missing in the European Theater of Operations during World War II...


Liveblogging World War II: July 26, 1945: Potsdam Declaration

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: Runup to Hiroshima: "The [Potsdam Ultimatum] document makes a reference to the 'self-willed militaristic advisors'...

...and in the same sentence refers to Japan as an 'Empire.' Later on the demand is made for the elimination of the authority of 'those who have misled and deceived the people of Japan.' It's clearly directed at the people in power at that time, which could include the Emperor, but there's nothing here that demands the complete dismantling of the imperial institution. 'Unconditional surrender' is specifically directed to apply to the Japanese armed forces. Also, the term 'utter devastation' is a strong indication of what might be coming.


Must-Read: It is important to remember that the austerity-forever dead-enders who dominate Republican economic policy right now are not exceptional in any way. The "global warming isn't happening" dead-enders are, rhetorically and cognitively, the same. The "ObamaCare is failing" dead-enders likewise. And the same thing is happening in security policy:

Paul Waldman: The next GOP president won’t walk away from the Iran deal: "Now that we have a nuclear deal with Iran, Republicans are jostling each other to determine...

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Today's Economic History: Trying to Make Sense of the Insane Policy of the Bank of France in the 1920s

David Glasner: Trying to Make Sense of the Insane Policy of the Bank of France and Other Catastrophes: "I have occasionally referred to the insane Bank of France...

...or to the insane policy of the Bank of France, a mental disorder that helped cause the deflation that produced the Great Depression. The insane policy began in 1928 when the Bank of France began converting its rapidly growing stockpile of foreign-exchange reserves (i.e., dollar- or sterling-denominated financial instruments) into gold. The conversion of foreign exchange was precipitated by the enactment of a law restoring the legal convertibility of the franc into gold and requiring the Bank of France to hold gold reserves equal to at least 35% of its outstanding banknotes.

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Needed: Large Greek Devaluation or Large-Scale Transfers to Greece. With Bonus Godwin's Law Violation!

Over at Equitable Growth: Consider Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh: Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers:

Www imf org external pubs ft wp 2013 wp1301 pdf

This strongly suggests to me that of the 7%-points by which Greek growth fell below IMF estimates in 2010-2011, 5%-points of that were due to the fiscal consolidation that the IMF had forecast would be imposed on Greece. Consider that the IMF had already expected the Greek economy under baseline to shrink by 4%-points, and for fiscal consolidation to shrink the Greek economy by 3%-points, and we have 4/5 of the damage to the Greek economy--relative to a counterfactual forecast under some zero-spending-austerity baseline was due to austerity.

I find this hard to square with the very-sharp Olivier Blanchard's contribution of today: READ MOAR

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Must-Read: The curious thing about Robert Farley's piece is that he says: "today, the wiser among us recognize that 'dual containment' was, in large part, [more] a solution" rather than a problem. Why the "today"? From 1991-2003, in every sophisticated strategic discussion of the Middle East I participated in, the smart people always made the point that dual containment and the continued maintenance of the Saddam Hussein régime was bad for the people of Iraq but probably good for the people of the Middle East as a whole--and precisely for dual containment reasons.

And, of course, Cheney and Junior Bush's attack on Iraq turned out to be bad for the people of Iraq as well.

Robert Farley: The Ultimate 'What If': A World Where America Never Invaded Iraq: "In 2003, we spoke of the policy of ‘dual containment’ as a problem...

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Étienne Mantoux: End of "The Calumniated Peace: The Economic Consequences of John Maynard Keynes": Today's Economic History

Étienne Mantoux says: Britain and America must allow France to impose a satisfactory peace upon Nazi Germany in 1945--one that places Germany under sufficient territorial, military, political, and economic burdens that it will thereafter lack the power to dominate Europe politically and militarily. If they do not, then perhaps, after 200 years of trying to control or contain Germany, France and the rest of Europe will ally with it. And that would fix those Britons and Americans:

Continue reading "Étienne Mantoux: End of "The Calumniated Peace: The Economic Consequences of John Maynard Keynes": Today's Economic History" »


Must-Read: I understand that voters have short memories, And thus the politicians who predict that, say, the 1993 Clinton tax increase would crater the economy may evade the consequences of having recommended bad policies and remain in office. But they do want to enact policies that will work. So you would think that a Paul Ryan would be thinking twice right now about palling around with a John Cochrane, a Stephen Moore, a Cliff Asness, or an Arthur Laffer. Yet somehow...

I do not understand it:

Paul Krugman: Fraternity of Failure: "Jeb Bush wants to stop talking about past controversies....

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Refereeing Mantoux-Keynes

Note to Self: Rereading Etienne Mantoux: La Paix Calomniée, ou les Conséquences Économiques de M. Keynes. "The Calumniated Peace" of Versailles. OK. So why is the title of the English translation The Carthaginian Peace? Who decided to replace "Caluminiated" with "Carthaginian", and why?

Recall that Etienne Mantoux's review of Keynes's General Theory is quite bad. At its beginning:

With his fascination Keynes combines another of the serpent's attributes--his disconcerting ability to molt at more or less frequent intervals, leaving his former conceptions behind him like so many old integuments from which the reader, somewhat disconcerted, must extract himself, having previously been at no little trouble to get in.... We are to witness a revolution. At least so one would gather from some of the more enthusiastic reviews, which go so far as to make Keynes (much to his disgust no doubt) the direct successor of Karl Marx. "My undertaking is one that has no equal, that none will ever equal. I would change the basis of society, shift the axis of civilization..." Is that facetious to place Proudhon's ironic boasts beside Keynes' ambitious sureness? Yet their two proposals are not so very unlike, for it is by decline of the rate of interest to zero that the latter would see our economic ills remedied. Curious that the most sharp-tongued economist of our time should come back, by this unexpected route, to the thought of the famous inventor of "credit gratuit"...

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Across the Wide Missouri: Yet more journamalism from The New York Times and David Brooks. Once again, I don't understand what game they are playing here:

Scott Lemieux: David Brooks's Pathetic Iraq Excuses - Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money: "David Brooks starts off his apologia with some stoned-dorm-room stuff about how if Hitler had been strangled in the crib we wouldn’t have the GI Bill or as many women in the workforce...

...It does not improve from there. First, note this crafty bit of dissembling:

Continue reading "" »


Must-Read: Nancy Lebovitz: Men Hunting Things: "Drake writes (I'm sure it was in one of the Things/Men anthologies)...

...about the ways in which war has become worse for soldiers--continuous through the night, continuous through the year, louder, the danger is more random... and the punchline was that some have compared war to hunting, but for soldiers in a modern war, it's more like being prey.


Today's Economic History: Montagu Norman and the Czech Gold

Phillip Aldrick (2013): "Was Montagu Norman a Nazi sympathiser?" Torygraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/10214541/Was-Montagu-Norman-a-Nazi-sympathiser.html: "Norman was Britain’s first modern central banker and Governor...

...for a remarkable 24 years until 1944, amassing powers at Threadneedle Street that turned what was a cosy City institution into an arm of the state. But he was also an economic dinosaur, whose determination to put Britain back on the gold standard in 1925 destroyed industry and condemned Britain to a more severe recession than necessary. Adam Posen, a former Bank’s rate-setter, has said that when he could not decide which way to vote he would look at the giant portrait of Norman hanging in the Monetary Policy Committee’s meeting room and ask himself ‘What would Montagu do?’. Then do the opposite.

Continue reading "Today's Economic History: Montagu Norman and the Czech Gold" »


Weekend Reading: Francis Fukuyama (2006): After Neoconservatism

Francis Fukuyama (2006): After Neoconservatism: "How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals?...

...Four common... threads ran through... [Neoconservative] thought... a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends.... The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering... [was] applied... to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare.... The belief in the potential moral uses of American power... [called for] American activism... [to] reshape the structure of global politics....

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Hoisted from Francis Fukuyama's Archives from 2006: He Needs to Take a Much More Jaundiced View of Neoconservatism

Rereading:

Francis Fukuyama (2006): After Neoconservatism: "How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals?...

He gets himself tangled up in knots because he bends over not just backward but completely upside down to provide a sympathetic view of the Neoconservatist impulse.

I have always had a much more jaundiced view:

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Live from Century City: Jonathan Chait:: 61 Times William Kristol Was Reminded of Hitler, Churchill: "I recently asked New York interns Claire Landsbaum and Claire Voon...

...to compile a list of Kristol’s public references to the Munich agreement and its main players. This research ordeal, presented in reverse chronological order, represents the sort of character-building exercise, I am sure Kristol would agree, that today’s youth badly need...

A Munich once every three months. Admittedly, some of them are the same Munich, as the same thing reminds him and then re-reminds him, but still...


(Early) Monday Smackdown: Corey Robin: When George Packer Gets Bored, I Get Scared

I think Corey Robin nails it here. My only objection is that he does not draw the links back to earlier, early twentieth-century attacks on "boring" politics--the "cretinism of parliaments" and similar doctrines:

Corey Robin: When George Packer gets bored, I get scared: It means he’s in the mood for war: "Greg Grandin called me on Friday...

Greg: What are you doing?

Me: Working on my Salon column.

Greg: What’s it on?

Me: George Packer.

Greg: Low-hanging fruit.

Continue reading "(Early) Monday Smackdown: Corey Robin: When George Packer Gets Bored, I Get Scared" »


(Early) Monday Smackdown Watch: Matthew Yglesias on Jeffrey Goldberg's Obama Derangement Syndrome

Matthew Yglesias puts his finger on why friends don't let friends trust any of the conclusions of Jeffrey Goldberg:

Matthew Yglesias: Jeffrey Goldberg's Reality: "Having very successfully set himself up as the American public square's leading arbiter of what is or is not Good For The Jews...

...Jeffrey Goldberg's reluctance endorsement of the Iran deal is a big PR win for the Obama administration.... You won't hear many complaints....

But part of that arbiter role is that he has to take some swipes at the White House, leading to a ridiculous interpretation of how we got here.... [Goldberg's] central--and incorrect--premise... is that the Iran deal (which is good) is better than no deal... but that a tougher approach could have produced some much better utopian deal had Barack Obama really wanted one:

Continue reading "(Early) Monday Smackdown Watch: Matthew Yglesias on Jeffrey Goldberg's Obama Derangement Syndrome" »


The Old Is New Again in the Analysis of Modern Authoritarian Regimes...

Over at Equitable Growth: Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman: ["From the Peru of Alberto Fujimori to the Hungary of Viktor Orban, illiberal regimes have managed to consolidate power without fencing off their countries or resorting to mass murder.... READ MOAR

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April Fools' Festival Day X: James Fallows Watches the Clown Show That Is the Washington Post

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James Fallows: One of Our Major Newspapers Says: What the Hell, Why Not Start Another Unwinnable War?: "On the bright side, Tom Cotton now seems statesmanlike...

...When I published my 'Tragedy of the American Military' article last month, some people said:

No, it's an exaggeration to claim that war is an easy abstraction that people throw around without thinking through the consequences.'

Maybe. But I give you [Josh Muravchik] on the [Fred Hiatt-run] Op-Ed page of our capital city's main newspaper [The Washington Post]....

Continue reading "April Fools' Festival Day X: James Fallows Watches the Clown Show That Is the Washington Post" »


April Fools' Festival Day VII: March 17, 2015

Kept Simple watches John Podhoretz star in the clown show:



Nature or Nurture?: Understanding the Writers for the Old New Republic

Monday Smackdown Watch: Perhaps the most urgent question of the day is: nature or nurture. Is the absence of empathy for the human condition on the part of writers for the pre-Gabriel Snyder Old New Republic a result of their nature--that the New Republic of Marty Peretz and those willing to go the extra mile to cater to his bigotries were predisposed to hire such people--or of their nurture--that their discussions while at the Old New Republic trained them to make arguments like this one?

The estimable Patrick Nielsen Hayden, widely-envied by many not least for his office in the Flatiron Building, administers today's Monday Smackdown:

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Weekend Reading: Ezra Klein on Evan Bayh

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As ex-senator and current lobbyist Evan Bayh beats the drum for the U.S. to launch an attack on Iran, Duncan Black reminds me of what may be the best thing Ezra Klein has ever written:

Duncan Black: What's Evan Bayh Up To Now: "Ezra got a bit suckered once upon a time...

...but got his revenge as well as he could. Now it's more war all the time. It's the greatest grift of all, really. War breaks out, and 'everyone' gets rich.


Ezra Klein: The Sad, Hypocritical Retirement of Evan Bayh: "After two terms in the Senate, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) announced that he was done with Congress...

...'There are better ways to serve my fellow citizens,' Bayh said. 'I love working for the people of Indiana. I love helping our citizens make the most of their lives, but I do not love Congress.

Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Ezra Klein on Evan Bayh" »


Thoughts on David Frum's Excellent Review of Adam Tooze's Superb "The Deluge" and "The Wages of Destruction"

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The Real Story of America as Twentieth-Century Superpower: Today's Economic History

Over at Equitable Growth: Excellent work from David Frum--reviewing even more excellent work from Adam Tooze.

Let's give David the floor:

David Frum: The Real Story of How America Became an Economic Superpower: Reviewing Adam Tooze's Histories of WWI and WWII: "Adam Tooze's... The Wages of Destruction... and The Deluge... READ MOAR

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Can We Please Start Being the Good Guys Again?

Prarie Weather channels Eric Alterman:

Prairie Weather: Torture next door: Eric Alterman digs back in the New York Daily News and comes up with an account of torture right here in our neighborhood.

It documents the abuse ‘tantamount to torture’of 79 Muslims andfive Israeli Jewish! ‘terrorist suspects;’ not in Guantanamo or Iraq, but in a federal prison in Brooklyn, a stone’s throw from the D’ train and within sight of the Statue of Liberty. This one brings the issue of torture home, here in America, for the first time. The mistreatment included sexual abuse, sleep deprivation, exposure to freezing temperatures for extended periods, and frequent unprovoked beatings. Many of the abuses were recorded on video tape. None of the suspects were ultimately found to have any relation to terrorism. Yet, despite the video tapes, the Justice Department has decided no one will be prosecuted. A separate administrative investigation by the Bureau of Prisons appears to be a sham. Of 12 prisoners I interviewed, none had been interviewed by Justice Department prosecutors or Bureau of Prison investigators...

Alterman writes that our image overseas is less about the spread of democracy than about the spread of prisoner abuse.

Can we please start acting like the good guys again? It's not just the right thing to do, it's also good politics. The United States is much more powerful and effective in international affairs when we are and are seen to be the good guys.


Hoisted from the Archives: (A Small Part of) How Russia Suffered in World War II

Red Army: Battle Strength and Casualties During WWII

A Meditation on Twentieth Century Political Military History Brad DeLong s Grasping Reality

The feel-bad piece from the month of October, 2005 on this weblog: the scale of the sacrifice made by the Red Army to defeat the Nazis:

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Putin? Winning? Winning What?: Live from Potemkin's Villages

Maps of Russia Geography pages for Dr Rollinson s Courses and Resources

I read the Economist, and I shake my head in confusion:

The Economist: The View from the Kremlin: Putin’s War on the West: "Look at the world from his perspective...

...and Mr Putin is winning... the Kremlin’s undisputed master... a throttlehold on Ukraine.... His overarching aim is to divide and neuter [the western] alliance.... Only the wilfully blind would think his revanchism has been sated.... To him, Western institutions and values are more threatening than armies. He wants.... supplant them with his own model... [in which] nation-states trump alliances, states are dominated by elites, and those elites can be bought.... The biggest target is NATO’s commitment to mutual self-defence. Discredit that—by, for example, staging a pro-Russian uprising in Estonia or Latvia, which other NATO members decline to help quell--and the alliance crumbles....

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Live from the Roasterie: Today's Holy War Reading

Start with:

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry: Against Crusade Apologias: "Now predictably (all too predictably) comes the predictable conservative riposte...

...defending the Crusades and the Inquisition. This example, on the Crusades, by First Things, is their most liked/shared article on their Facebook page by far. I mean, look, I get it. That’s the environment I grew up in. I read young adult novels about the noble Leper King Baldwin and entertained the nostalgia about the Crusader Dream. And yes, fair enough, the Crusades were envisioned as wars of self-defense to reopen Christianity’s holy sites to pilgrims. That’s true. But also, all historical accounts agree that when the Crusaders took Jerusalem, they massacred almost everyone in the city, Christian, Jew and Muslim. Is that something you want to defend, really?

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Was This the Worst Article Written for the Old New Republic in the Decade of the 2000s?

Peter Beinart: A Fighting Faith: "On January 4, 1947...

130 men and women met at Washington's Willard Hotel to save American liberalism. A few months earlier, in articles in The New Republic and elsewhere, the columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop had warned that 'the liberal movement is now engaged in sowing the seeds of its own destruction.' Liberals, they argued, 'consistently avoided the great political reality of the present: the Soviet challenge to the West.' Unless that changed, 'In the spasm of terror which will seize this country ... it is the right--the very extreme right--which is most likely to gain victory.'

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Turkey and the Washington Post: Live from The Roasterie

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This one starts with Claire Berlinski's much-warrented dismay at who the Washington Post opens its op-ed pages to--without proper vetting or context. The net effect is to subtract from rather than add to most Washington Post readers' understanding of what is going wrong in Turkey right now:

Initial tweet I first saw at: https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/551358577366282240:

@bb1mm1: I don't expect freedom of expression in TR to be an American problem, but what sections of the US press is doing w/ the cemaat is obscene.

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Hard Power, Soft Power, Muscovy, Strategy, and My Once-Again Failure to Understand Where Niall Ferguson Is Coming From: Live from Le Pain Quotidien

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In which I once again fail to understand where Niall Ferguson is coming from...

Niall Ferguson: The ‘Divergent’ World of 2015: "Hard power is resilient...

...Having annexed Crimea to Russia, President Putin still has forces camped out in eastern Ukraine. And all over the Muslim world, myriad Islamist organizations, from Islamic State to the Taliban, are using violence to pursue their atavistic goals. In practice, the Obama administration has had little choice but to keep using hard power, from the airstrikes on Islamic State to the economic sanctions on Russia...

And I think: Of course hard power can be decisive--but one needs to have a lot of it, and be willing not just to threaten to use it but to actually use it, and not care that one's use of it may lead the abyss to look into you, and turn you into something you did not want to be, and so cause you to lose even as you "win".

Continue reading "Hard Power, Soft Power, Muscovy, Strategy, and My Once-Again Failure to Understand Where Niall Ferguson Is Coming From: Live from Le Pain Quotidien" »


Morning Must-Read: Andrew Sullivan: Darkness Visible: Live-Blogging the Torture Report: Daily Focus

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Morning Must-Read: Andrew Sullivan: Darkness Visible: Live-Blogging The Torture Report: "I want to end on a positive note...

Everything that happened in this damning report is because of Americans. But the report itself is a function of other Americans determined to push back against evil done in this country’s name. Those Americans have been heroes in exposing this horror from the get-go, and they include many CIA agents who knew full well what this foul program was doing to their and America’s reputation. But they also include the dogged staff of the Select Committee....

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Hoisted from the Archives: The Best of Spencer Ackerman Weekly

Cthulhu Google Search

Hoisted from My Archives from December 9, 2006: The Best of Spencer Ackerman Weekly--December 9, 2006 Edition:

I continue to get great value from my $60 two-year subscription to Spencer Ackerman weekly (http://toohotfortnr.blogspot.com/).

Here are this week's highlights:

  1. Never fire your best polemicist [as Martin Peretz and Franklin Foer of The New Republic did].
  2. On the Iraq Study Group.
  3. On the Armed Party of Ali in Iraq.
  4. On why Heidi Klum would have been a better chair for the ISG than James Baker.
  5. And, finally, becoming completely unhinged through reading Left Behind.

(1) Never fire your best polemicist:

Continue reading "Hoisted from the Archives: The Best of Spencer Ackerman Weekly" »


Liveblogging the Cuban Missile Crisis: Telegram From the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State: Hoisted from the Non-Internet of 52 Years Ago

Avalon Project: Telegram From the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State:

Dear Mr. President:

I have received your letter of October 25.(1) From your letter, I got the feeling that you have some understanding of the situation which has developed and a sense of responsibility. I value this.

Now we have already publicly exchanged our evaluations of the events around Cuba and each of us has set forth his explanation and his understanding of these events. Consequently, I would think that, apparently, a continuation of an exchange of opinions at such a distance, even in the form of secret letters, will hardly add anything to that which one side has already said to the other.

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D-Squared Explains How It Is That He Was So Amazingly Prescient About Iraq: Wednesday Hoisted from the Archives from Five Years Ago Weblogging

From Five Nominations for the Best Weblog Post Ever!:

Daniel Davies again:

Daniel Davies: D-squared Digest -- FOR bigger pies and shorter hours and AGAINST more or less everything else: 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. Anyway, I note that "errors of prewar planning" is now pretty much a mainstream stylised fact, so I suspect that it might make some small contribution to the commonweal if I were to explain how it was that I was able to spot so early that this dog wasn't going to hunt. I will struggle manfully with the savage burden of boasting, self-aggrandisement and ego-stroking that this will necessarily involve. It's been done before, although admittedly by a madman in the process of dying of syphilis of the brain.

Sorry, where was I?

Continue reading "D-Squared Explains How It Is That He Was So Amazingly Prescient About Iraq: Wednesday Hoisted from the Archives from Five Years Ago Weblogging" »


Across the Wide Mediterranean: Zalmay Khalilzad, Ex-Top US Diplomat, in Laundering Probe

I really hope that there is nothing here. Zalmay Khalilzad was the only member of the Bush Administration who struck me as likable, competent, realistic, and not-evil...

Associated Press: Khalilzad, ex-top US diplomat, in laundering probe: "Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations...

...under President George W. Bush, is being investigated by American authorities for suspected money laundering, Austrian officials said Monday. State prosecutor Thomas Vecsey confirmed a report in the Austrian weekly Profil about the investigation of Khalilzad, who played a key role in the political transition in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and the fall of the Taliban.

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Morning Must-Read: Martin Wolf: The Creation of Weimar Russia

During the 1990s I used to say that after the "End of History" there would be smooth sailing as long as we avoided the creation of four things:

  • The Islamic Reformation (i.e., another outburst of wars of religion like those that happened in 16th and 17th century Europe when a Holy Book met growing mass literacy and political and economic development).

  • National Hinduist India (i.e., India replaying the "national unification via aggressive nationalism directed at an internal other", with India's Muslims cast in the role traditionally reserved for Europe's Jews).

  • Wilhelmine China (i.e., a social caste that has lost both its practical role and its ideological legitimation still somehow dominating the fastest-growing industrial economy in the world and attempting to hang on to power the aggressive nationalism directed at external others).

  • Weimar Russia (i.e., a superpower that regards itself as not just defeated but humiliated, and not welcomed and assisted with its reforms but rather kicked to keep it down, and that then reacts in unpredictable and very dangerous ways).

Well.. National Hinduist India is still only a threat rather than a reality--albeit a threat that is much more visible than it was a decade ago...

Martin Wolf reviews the creation of Weimar Russia:

Martin Wolf: Russia is our most dangerous neighbour: "Russia is both a tragedy and a menace...

...the blend of self-pity and braggadocio currently at work in Moscow... is as depressing as it is disturbing.... For Europe and, I believe, the US, there is no greater foreign policy question than how to deal with today’s Russia.... A defensive alliance defeated the Soviet Union because it offered a better way of life.... Yet President Vladimir Putin, the latest in a long line of Russian autocrats, has stated, instead: 'The collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century'. It was, in fact, an opportunity, one that many in central and eastern Europe seized with both hands. The transition to a new way of life proved unavoidably difficult. The world they now inhabit is highly imperfect. But they have mostly joined the world of civilised modernity. What does this mean? It means intellectual and economic freedom. It means the right to engage freely in public life. It means governments subject to the rule of law and accountable to their people. The west has too often failed to live up to these ideals. But they remain beacons.

In the early 1990s they were beacons to many Russians. As a great admirer of Russian culture and Russian courage, I hoped, fondly perhaps, that the country would find a way.... The alternative of continuing the cycle of despotism was too depressing. With the selection of Mr Putin, a former KGB colonel, as his successor, Boris Yeltsin delivered that outcome.... The west is partly responsible for this tragic outcome. It failed to offer the support Russia needed quickly enough in the early 1990s. Instead it focused, ludicrously, on who would pay the Soviet debt. It acquiesced in the larceny of Russian wealth for the benefit of a few. But more important was the refusal of Russia’s elite to address the reasons for the collapse, then to start afresh.... Today’s Russia feels it is the victim of a historic injustice and rejects core western values. It also feels strong enough to act. Today’s Russian leader also sees these potent emotions as a way to secure power. He is not the first such ruler. His Russia is a perilous neighbour. The west must shed its last post-cold war illusions.


Over at Equitable Growth: Department of "Huh?!" John J. Mearsheimer Thinks the West Caused the Ukraine Crisis?: The Honest Broker for the Week of September 19, 2014

NewImageOver at Equitable Growth: John Mearsheimer is only one of a surprising number claiming that the current crisis in Ukraine is predominantly the U.S.'s, and NATO's, and the Ukraine's fault:

John Mearsheimer: How the West Caused the Ukraine Crisis: Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: "The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility...

...The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement.... For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president--which he rightly labeled a “coup”--was the final straw.... Realpolitik remains relevant--and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border....

Soviet leaders... and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise.... The first round of enlargement... 1999... the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second... 2004... Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly.... The alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine.... Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO would represent a “direct threat” to Russia.... READ MOAR

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