Passing away peacefully of old age and infirmity

 On page 728 of his THE SECOND WORLD WARS, Victor Davis Hanson wrote, “The Axis Bit Three – Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini – all died violently as a result of their defeat.  Allied leaders passed away peaceful of old age and infirmity.”

As much as I admire Hanson, I’m inclined to quibble with this statement.  

Over the years I’ve read several books about World War II.  I might be said to have grown up alongside it.  I was born October 12, 1934 and recall waiting outside our house for my mother to take us to Sunday School at church when my father stepped out on the porch and announced, “The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor.”  

My imagination was captured and I followed the war in our local Wilmington Press Telegram.  The war was over in 1945, but in 1950 the Korean War was in full swing, and I was resolved to get into that one.  I was a great admirer of the Marine Corps and read several books about it from the local library.  Still being a kid, I wanted to make sure I made it through bootcamp, so I maintained a heavy workout program and entered boot camp in July 1952 shortly after graduation from High School.

I was in Korea for the last two Korean War battle seasons, but then the truce was signed, to my great disappointment.  I was a sergeant by the time my enlistment was up and was offered an increase to Staff Sergeant if I would reenlist, but I wasn’t impressed with the Peace-time Marines, especially at 29 Palms and so decided to go to college on the G.I. Bill instead.  I majored in English, and wouldn’t have thought there was a need for such a skill in Aerospace, but engineers were notorious bad writers, and the Air Force officially complained during the Skybolt Program, so I was welcomed aboard that program in Santa Monica in 1959 and continued working for them as they morphed into McDonnell Douglas and eventually submerged in to Boeing.  I retired after 39 years with them in 1999 and have engaged in a variety of activities during retirement including a number of study projects, World War II being one of them.  I had read about the major battles from time to time, but being an admirer of Hanson finally got around to his summing up – in various ways.  No doubt the fact that I am now 91 affected my impression of the Hanson passage I quoted.  I suspect my initial interpretation was not one he intended.

I thought of a male lion in the African jungle too old and infirm to go ahunting with the rest of the pride.  A pack of hyenas gather around and start eating him as he feebly attempts to fend them off.  

Which is not unlike my current experience, doctors gathered around as I feebly fail to fend them off as they strive to medicate me to death.  

I can usually figure out what Hanson means but from my current perspective, dying in battle seems preferable to the “old age and infirmity” Hanson prefers.  

Oddly, my children favor Hanson’s view on this matter.

 

Jorie Graham, Samuel Huntington, Victor Davis Hanson and Danny Vendramini

 

In the current issue of the London Review of Books I read the poem Time Frame by Jorie Graham.  Never having heard of Graham I took the first line, “The American experiment will end in 2030 . . .”  After reading the poem I looked her up in Wikipedia: “Jorie Graham (nee Pepper, born May 9, 1940) is an American poet.  The Poetry foundation called Graham ‘one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation’ . . . She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1996) for The Dream of the Unified Field; Selected Poems 1974-1994 . . .”  Thus, she inadvertently qualifies as part of my desultory interest in (major) award winning writers.  

If Graham’s “Time Frame” is a current poem, I can imagine its pessimism deriving from fear of China’s surpassing the U.S. economically, of Covid’s refusal to be extinguished, and of Putin’s seeming maniacal interest in defeating and incorporating the Ukraine.  

The other day I watch the UK Youtube Telegraph channel interview of Victor Davis Hanson who is “guardedly optimistic about America’s future”: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+victor+davis+hanson+most+current&docid=608027108675027864&mid=2689B6EC5ACB91BE40D62689B6EC5ACB91BE40D6&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

The elements about which Hanson is pessimistic are associated with American movements which strive to overturn traditional governmental elements.  He didn’t sound fearful of China, Covid, or Putin.  I am merely guessing here, perhaps Graham is fearful of something else in our environment, but I took her poem to be about the major current elements alarming a major number of Americans.  

As to China, while they won’t match the U.S. militarily by 2030, they do have an interest in “reacquiring” Taiwan.  I have that in quotes because the Communist government never held Taiwan.  The nationalist government which opposed Mao Tse tung was driven from the mainland and established itself on Taiwan.  The U.S. has since that time supported Taiwan’s independence.  And since that time the Communist mainland has denied that it is independent.  However, the mainland has not so far mustered the boldness to attempt an invasion of Taiwan.  Will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inspire Communist China to become equally bold?  If I were a Chinese Communist, I wouldn’t find Putin’s boldness inspirational.  His Ukrainian goals have in the very least dwindled.  Also, it isn’t just the U.S. that Communist China needs to worry about.  Japan is rapidly arming itself “just in case,” as is South Korea but perhaps South Korea will only act if North Korea supports China in an invasion of Taiwan.  Other nations in the region such as the Philippines might be a threat to China if the war against Taiwan was drawn out and dwindled as the Russian war against Ukraine seems to have.  Perhaps Russia will ultimately claim victory over some part of the Russian-speaking eastern segment.  But it seems unlikely that something like that could be carved out of Taiwan to satisfy Communist China.  So, Graham, worry about China if you like (if that is one of your worries), a lot of people are, but some of us are not.

As to Covid, I have been hiding out like a lot of people.  It is all the congestion out there that annoys me personally.  I would hate to be hospitalized in the midst of it.  I don’t feel especially vulnerable despite the warnings that mostly old people and those with compromised immune system are most at risk.  If one looks into their definition of “old people” one finds the assumption that most old people have underlying symptoms that make them especially vulnerable.   But here I noticed (from the Wikipedia article) that Graham “addressed human frailty and family challenges in her 2017 book Fast.  Aging, sickness, the decline of her parents, as well as her own cancer diagnosis pockmarked this slim volume.”  

I looked up the ages of Graham’s parents.  Her mother, Beverly Pepper was a famous sculptor who received several awards and died at the age of 97.  Her father Curtis Bill Pepper was an American journalist and author who served during WWII in army intelligence in both the British and American armies.  He died at age 96.  Here I am, at age 87, fancying that I have already done my duty as an example of longevity to my children but inasmuch as I am not feeling in any immediate risk of demise, 96 or 97 seems quite a satisfactory time to shuffle off my mortal coil.  Furthermore I would think it rude if any of my children were sad over my “aging, sickness and decline” if I made it all the way to 96 or 97.  However, after giving the above summary of Graham’s Fast some more thought, it was probably the case that her parents didn’t have easy deaths, and if that were true then indeed she would have been challenged.  [All this after not having read Fast, or any of her other poetry, but I just now order her most recent collection, Runaway: New Poems as a form of apology.]

In regard to Putin’s adventure after about 55 days, I recalled Samuel P. Huntington’s comments in his The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, copyrighted in 1996.  He considered the relationship of Russia and Ukraine.  He thought it likely that Ukraine might be split with the eastern segment sticking with Russia and the Western becoming independent. “If civilization is what counts . . . violence between Ukrainians and Russians is unlikely.  These are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships for centuries and between whom intermarriage is common.  Despite highly contentious issues and the pressure of extreme nationalists on both sides, the leaders of both countries worked hard and largely successfully to moderate these disputes.  The election of an explicitly Russian-oriented president in Ukraine in mid-1994 further reduced the probability of exacerbated conflict between the two countries.  While serious fighting occurred between Muslims and Christians elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and much tension and some fighting between Russians and Baltic peoples, as of 1995 virtually no violence had occurred between Russians and Ukrainians.

“A second and somewhat more likely possibility is that Ukraine could split along its fault line and two separate entities, the eastern which would merge with Russia. . .”

Huntington saw the conditions correctly, but he failed to anticipate the war which would occur 26 years after he published his book.  He envisioned a peaceful resolution of the Russian/Ukrainian conflict.  I’m reminded here of the thesis of Danny Vendramini’s Them and Us: How Neanderthal predation created modern humans (published 2011).  There is scant evidence, but traditional anthropologists assumed Neanderthals were peaceful hunter-gatherers and were eventually overcome by bad luck, bad weather and the more aggressive homo sapiens who had the help of dogs.  Those theories aren’t contradicted by any of the evidence.

Vendramini, using the same evidence assumes that Neanderthals, eaters of more meat than their omnivore cousins found it convenient to raid homo sapiens for food.   Neanderthals were initially the apex predators and not like the more peaceful homo-sapiens.  Neanderthals were so successful in eating and/or raping homo sapiens that the later was almost wiped out.  The survivors composed of homo sapiens/ Neanderthal hybrids managed through important changes in their evolution to survive.  Vendramini argues that Neanderthals were hairy, more like chimpanzees.  Something remarkable had to happen for homo sapiens to become relatively hairless.  The disguised estrus of humans, the fake breasts (always seeming to be full of milk) of our women to make them seem to be always nursing, confused the apex predator Neanderthals.  Also we became fastidious about our scent, being relatively hairless helped with that so that the always-hungry Neanderthals couldn’t smell us,  hunt us down and eat us.  Our history with the Neanderthals was such that when we became the apex species, roving bands of cro magnons hunted Neanderthals to extinction.  Whether one accepts Vergamini's arguments or embraces the idea that war-like homo sapiens killed off peaceful Neanderthals, it is inescapable that we homo sapiens like to fight.  Years ago the thesis that we were scavengers and not hunters was popular, but that idea has been largely discredited.  Few scholars, if any, believe that at the present time, but perhaps when Huntington wrote he held that view.  He was as we see wrong.  Russia and Ukraine are solving their conflict in the traditional homo sapiens fashion.  We in these modern times, as a species, don’t seem to be able to accomplish wars of conquest (despite our modern weapons) as successfully as our ancestors did in the past.  

To return to Graham’s poem, there is a political sense in which the “American Project” could end in 2030, if Hanson’s fears our realized and the American constitution and form of government are modified such that they conform to the ideals of those on the “revolutionary” (to use Hanson’s term) left.

Battles of attrition: Grant, Lee and Haig

I recently criticized Haig and Grant for their battles of attrition.  James M. McPherson would disagree with me, at least in regard to Grant.  He wrote, “. . . Grant did not admit culpability for the heavy Union casualties in the whole campaign of May and June 1864.  Nor should he have done so, despite the label of ‘butcher’ and the later analyses of his ‘campaign of attrition.’  It did turn out to be a campaign of attrition, but that was more by Lee’s choice than by Grant’s.  The Union commander’s purpose was to maneuver Lee into a position for open-field combat; Lee’s purpose was to prevent this by entrenching an impenetrable line to protect Richmond and his communications.  Lee was hoping to hold out long enough and inflict sufficient casualties on Union forces to discourage the people of the North and prevent Lincoln’s reelection. 

“Lee’s strategy of attrition almost worked.  That it failed in the end was owing mainly to Grant, who stayed the course and turned the attrition factor in his favor.  Although the Confederates had the advantage of fighting on the defensive most of the time, Grant inflicted almost as high a percentage of casualties on Lee’s army as vice versa.  Indeed, for the war as a whole, Lee’s armies suffered a higher casualty rate than Grant’s (and higher than any other army).  Neither general was a ‘butcher,’ but measured by that statistic Lee deserved the label more than Grant.”

However, it was well known that Lincoln couldn’t find a general who would fight against Lee.  They all backed down or were defeated.  But Grant had a reputation for not backing down and not being defeated; so Lincoln gave him control over all the Northern Armies, and Grant promised there would be no more turning back.  There never was a time, apparently, when Grant, at least during a battle, considered the butcher’s bill too high.  In retrospect, however, he wished he had backed away from Cold Harbor because the bill was too high for the little that was at stake.   Did he keep at Cold Harbor too long because of his promise to Lincoln? 

Haig, it seems, was willing to get in the trenches and grind the German’s down, knowing The British Empire, had more men at its disposal than did the German’s.  Lee got his men into trenches assuming Grant wouldn’t be willing to pay the expense in men’s lives necessary to drive them out, but Grant was willing, and when Lee moved back and retrenched, Grant was willing to drive him out again. 

Years later Yamamoto spent some time in the U.S. and had some idea of its industrial might, but he had a poor opinion of America’s military might, and he was a little bit right because the U.S. military was tiny and not very serious.  Lincoln had to go through a number of inept generals before he ended up with Grant, Sherman and Sheridan and a trial by error process had to occur before America in the Pacific war found admirals able to stand up to Yamamoto.   Lee kept hoping Grant would back down – either that or that the Northern government would force him to stand down.  Yamamoto assumed that America had no ability to produce admirals comparable to his.   Tojo and his army believed the same sort of thing about American Generals.  Tojo's and Yamamoto's forces were surprised in island after island by Marines on the ground and Naval support at sea. 

Late in WWI the Germans had reason to fear the masses of men the U.S. was willing to send to oppose them in Europe, but it was their quantity rather than quality that the German’s feared.  The Americans didn’t fight the Germans long enough to be able to go through the trials and errors necessary to find Generals comparable to Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Patton. 

1918 Spanish flu and WWI deaths

I just began Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, and as it happened during my researching “The Spanish Flu,” I ran across the following in Wikipedia:

“This increased severity has been attributed to the circumstances of the First World War.^[95] In civilian life, natural selection favors a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus. The second wave began, and the flu quickly spread around the world again. Consequently, during modern pandemics, health officials pay attention when the virus reaches places with social upheaval (looking for deadlier strains of the virus).^”

And, “Academic Andrew Price-Smith has made the argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the latter days of the war towards the Allied cause. He provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before the Allied powers and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.”

And, “Also, the outbreak coincided with the deaths and media focus on the First World War.^[126] Another explanation involves the age group affected by the disease. The majority of fatalities, from both the war and the epidemic, were among young adults. The number of war-related deaths of young adults may have overshadowed the deaths caused by flu.^[85]
 
“When people read the obituaries, they saw the war or postwar deaths and the deaths from the influenza side by side. Particularly in Europe, where the war's toll was high, the flu may not have had a tremendous psychological impact or may have seemed an extension of the war's tragedies.^[85] The duration of the pandemic and the war could have also played a role. The disease would usually only affect a particular area for a month before leaving. The war, however, had initially been expected to end quickly but lasted for four years by the time the pandemic struck.”

COMMENT:  Over the years, I’ve read of World War I and attributed the huge number of British deaths to the ineptitude and insensitivity of General Haig.  Now we know that the Spanish flu played a significant role.  How large a role perhaps no one is prepared to guess.  But the large death toll of all the participants (and all were affected by the Spanish Flu) induced many, especially in France and Britain to become pacifists, unilaterally intending to not go to war and to handle all military threats by negotiation.  Seeing these two nations, as well as the Isolationist U.S. as militarily weak, Germany and Japan saw their chance and pounced.   I can’t recall the statistics but my impression is that the total deaths of WWII far exceeded those in WWI.  

All the historians I’ve read on the subject assert that had it not been for WWI, there would have been no WWII.  But perhaps we could also say that had it not been for the Spanish flu, the death tolls among British and French soldiers in WWI would not have been so outrageously high.  Perhaps the numbers would have been reasonable enough to prevent the large numbers of important British and French politicians from becoming pacifists. 

The U.S. wasn’t overtly pacifistic after WWI, but by returning to their prewar isolationism, what they became was similar.  They returned to George Washington’s advice, “avoid foreign wars,” they saw no need to maintain a large army.  Roosevelt had a background with the Navy and saw to it that it was larger and more potent than many realized, and did engage in “lend lease” in order to supply weapons to Britain and the USSR, but the picture the U.S. presented to both Germany and Japan was that of a militarily weak nation that could be taken advantage of.  

“Yes, the U.S. has the ships of a potent Navy,” Yamamoto argued, “but we can wipe out most of it, especially the carriers at Pearl Harbor.  I have a plan to do that.”  He had a good plan, but the carriers didn’t happen to be at Pearl Harbor when he carried it out.  “Not to worry,” he thought.  “They aren’t a military nation.  We can sink their carriers later on. . . long before they can change their impressive industrial system into a war machine.”

There were lots of misunderstandings rising out of World War One.  We Americans, British and Russians have learned from the mistakes of WWI and WWII and now practice the old adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum. . . at least so far. 

Resistance against Rome and several other nations

We used to have someone from France on a forum I was on.  He ran a bookstore if memory serves me.  He once took offense at my suggesting that France was a “client” of the U.S. after WWII.   It is perhaps natural that we think “my country, right or wrong,” and try to make excuses for its weakness if we lived through Vichy France, and for its excesses if we were like Heidegger, living in Nazi Germany.   I was happy to be part of the U.S. which defended Western Europe against Nazi Germany, but the aforementioned Frenchman didn’t like my attitude, nor no doubt the attitude of the arrogant Americans who swept into France in 1945 like conquerors.  In the meantime (not quite but nearly) Heidegger bemoaned the fact that the Germans hadn’t relied upon “tradition” in quite the manner he had hoped. 

I’ve been reading David Mattingly’s An Imperial Possession, Britain in the Roman Empire.  I recall reading Tacitus not especially critically eons ago, but Mattingly is noticeably critical:  In regard to the “resistance” of 47 A.D.  he writes, “Tacitus says the Briton’s chosen field of battle was a defended enclave, which illustrates the character of this so-called revolt.  Far from being on the rampage, some part of the Iceni had refused to hand over arms, and retreated into a defended site.  They only ‘chose’ the field of battle in the sense that that was where the Roman army found them.”

But when the Icenian leader, Prasutagus died, “Roman centurions and imperial slaves plundered the kingdom. . .”  Prasutagus’ widow Boudica “was flogged, her daughters raped . . .”  Tacitus implied that responsibility for this rested with minor officials abusing their power.  Only at the end of this section of his account did he reveal the key information that these events had taken place in the context of the annexation of the kingdom and its incorporation into the province.”   The enraged Boudica caused a huge force to be fielded in retaliation against the Romans and Mattingly speculates about the “Total Roman and provincial dead” was around 40,000.

In regard to the war with the Silures, Tacitus notes that the loss of several senior officers and well over 1,000 casualties were major setbacks.  “Tacitus speculated that either Rome had reduced the vigour of its operations believing the war to be over, or the Britons had been moved by some strange passion to avenge Caratacus.  The more likely scenario is that Roman pacification measures in Silurian territory misjudged the preparedness of the Silures to lay down their arms. The construction of forts, the seizure of crops and animals by foraging parties, and the pillaging of Silurian settlements were provocative acts.  After these two major actions, the Silures mainly reverted to hit-and-run tactics, although two Roman auxiliary units, incautiously engaging in pillage, were cut off by a larger-scale attack.  Roman frustration with this obdurate resistance was such that they evidently declared their intent to exterminate the people or transport them – the extreme reaction of an imperial power to unremitting resistance.”

What happened to the Silures?  The governor fighting them died and it wasn’t until 57 that Quintus Veranius resumed Rome’s offensive against the Silures.  Tacitus wasn’t impressed with Veranius, but the “Silures disappeared from the pages of Tacitus at a stroke and the policy seems to have been continued against the Ordovices by his successor.  “Suetonius Paullinus, another military careerist . . . conquered Ordovician territory within two years and at the start of his third season of campaigning stood facing the island of Anglesey (Mona) across the Menai Straits.  The island’s population was swelled by a large number of refugees (or fugitives to use the Roman terminology).  Tacitus gave the Roman view of the enemy lined up on the opposing shore: armed men, fanatical women bearing torches and druids invoking terrible curses.  From a Roman perspective these were the remaining dregs of British resistance, further tainted by their barbaric religious practices such as human sacrifice.  They could expect no quarter now they had nowhere else to run.  In a well-planned amphibious assault, Suetonius Paullinus led his army across the Straits to ‘cut down all the men’.  There is little doubt that this was a massacre, followed up by the destruction of sacred groves.”

Comment:  Bryan Sykes in his The Seven Daughters of Eve argues that all Europeans (meaning if memory serves me “western Europeans” ) are descended from seven mitochondrial “Eves” whose descendants immigrated to Europe between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago.  Perhaps there are more Eves than seven, but my impression is the Sykes arguments are generally accepted.  The point being that the Romans, who in Mattingly’s interpretations seem every bit as ruthless as German Nazis, Imperial Japanese, or Stalinist Communist are all part of the same mitochondrial groupings that we belong to (if we are genetically European).  Perhaps Rome early on sought to preemptively defeat cities or peoples likely to present a threat later on, but they became so good at it that their soldiers committed atrocities almost casually. 

Sykes also wrote Saxons, Vikings and Celts, the Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.  Unlike Mattingly, Sykes merely wants to know who we are genetically.  The British Isles have only been inhabited this last time (since the most recent ice age) for about 8,000 years.  So whichever Eve or Eves we descended from they were some place in Western Europe before then.  Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial analyses did permit Sykes to distinguish between the Romans and those more “native” to the Islands (bearing in mind that invasions did occur prior to the Roman Invasion).  On page 287 Sykes writes “true Roman genes are very rare in the Isles.”   We might ask, if we could resurrect one of their British governors, “so what was the purpose?”  He would have his answer:  The glory of Rome, the protection of Rome against future incursions, the Roman need for food and supplies, etc.

“How would you like it if someone did that to you,” we might ask?  And he would answer, “that was done and many would have like to do it again.  That was why we became so martial in attitude.  We were forced into it.”

And as we know Hitler said something like that as did the Imperial Japanese and Stalin.  There are always reasons; which isn’t to say that none of them are legitimate, for who can determine that other than the leaders of the city state or nation in question.   It is difficult though not to sympathize with Queen Boudica after she was flogged and her daughters raped by representatives of Rome.  There seems a huge gap between the rationalizations of a British governor and the application of those rationalizations by the Roman soldiers.

Morris's ruling in a Huntington Clash

The title of Morris’s book is Why the West Rules – for Now, and the subtitle is “The Patterns of History, and what they reveal about the future.”  In the realm of Political Science I normally think there are only two paradigms: Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, and Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations.  But there is another, the British Empire paradigm, and I wonder if it isn’t more influential (although probably less respected) than either of the former ones. 

Morris is flip, superficial, he skips matters that bear upon his ideas, and as of page 95 he has yet to explain what he means by “Rules.”  I’m guessing that he means what the Churchill meant when he famously told Eisenhower something along the lines of ‘Britain is no longer able to police the world so it is going to have to be up to you in the future.”  Britain was able to project its power through its unsurpassed navy, but since Churchill passed that baton to Eisenhower only the U.S. is able to project military power (in a significant way) any place in the world.  That is only partially true and I find the term “rules” if my guess about what Morris means is accurate terribly misleading. 

Back in early 2009 I was in a debate with Michael Kuznetsov (in my blog), a patriotic Russian who lived in, or perhaps only worked in, Moscow.  He had a web site that boasted that the Russian Army was the greatest military force in the world.  Given his assumptions about that matter, he was right.  What he meant wasn’t the sort of projection of military force that Churchill and (perhaps) Morris meant but the ability to defend Russia against any sort of attack.  The U.S. could project a military force into Iraq and another into Afghanistan but we don’t possess the ability or will to project one into Russia.  We couldn’t project one into China either.  And we wouldn’t be willing to project a force into virtually any nation at the present time.  But at this point Huntington’s paradigm impinges upon (or perhaps supports) Morris’s:

While the U.S. has neither the means nor the will to successfully invade Russia, it does have the means and under a future president might have the will to defend a nation, even a former S.S.R., on Russia’s border – given provocative circumstances.  The same sort of thing is true in regard to China, even more so perhaps, because the U.S. has very strong ties to Taiwan and the official policy of China is that Taiwan is integral to the Chinese nation and not an independent entity.   The U.S. may back away from the problem if Taiwan initiates a confrontation, but if the Chinese mainland initiates it, the U.S. may very well support Taiwan militarily.  This sort of “Clash” fits into Huntington’s paradigm.  Core nations such as the U.S., China, and Russia will not engage in all-out war with each other in the future.  Instead there will be “clashes” along the borders of the various “Civilizations.” Core nations may or may not become involved in these clashes.  A Clash in Georgia, or Taiwan, for example would fit Huntington’s paradigm.

If my guess about what Morris is up to is accurate, what sort of “rule” does he imagine the U.S. is engaged in – or capable of?  My opinion of Morris’s theories hasn’t grown any since I read his introduction.  He may mean something as banal as the ability to project another military force into another Middle Easter nation such as Iran.  Again, Huntington does a better job of dealing with such a matter.  If Iran decided to hold much of the world hostage by closing the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. in the past would have stepped in and opened them up again.  Much of the world is dependent up oil flowing through these straits.  But if we happened to have an isolationist president who refused to interfere with Iran, arguing that we have enough oil and gas to satisfy our own needs and needn’t come to the aid of other nations, then one of those other nations, perhaps China or Japan would open up the Straits with a military force of their own.  If China did it perhaps Morris would argue that “rule” had passed from the U.S. to China. 

But perhaps I am taking Morris more seriously than he intends.  He seems to be enjoying himself even as he frustrates me: [from page 95] “Rituals are notoriously culture-specific.  Depending on when and where you find yourself, it may be that the mighty ones will listen only if you pour the blood of a live white goat on the right side of this particular rock; or only if you take off your shoes, kneel down, and pray facing in that direction; or if you tell your misdeeds to a man in black who doesn’t have sex . . .”

Japan as a separate civilization

I was in a thread on the causes of the American Civil War when in an aside I mentioned Samuel P. Huntington. A fellow replied to me and we got totally off track. He had no respect for Huntington whatsoever and began listing his sins. One of them was that Japan should have been grouped in the same "Civilization" as China.

Huntington can't really be blamed for the classifications since he announced in the beginning of his Clash of Civilizations that he was accepting some classifications widely accepted by Political Scientists but he has been blamed anyway, particularly by those who have read about Clash of Civilizations but not read the book carefully.

I was in Japan years ago and developed an interest in their history. I moved a lot of my books on Japan to the garage to make room for my ACW library but I did find Japan, the Story of a Nation by Edwin O. Reischauer. What he writes on page 7 seems to support the making of Japan a separate "Civilization."

"Japan . . . is culturally a daughter of Chinese civilization much as the countries of North Europe are daughters of Mediterranean culture. The story of the spread of Chinese civilization to the peoples of Japan during the first millennium after Christ is much like the story of the spread of Mediterranean civilization to the peoples of North Europe during the same period. But the greater isolation of the Japanese from the home of their civilization and from all other people meant that in Japan the borrowed culture had more chance to develop along new and often unique lines. . . Although geographic isolation has made them conscious of learning from abroad, it has also allowed time to develop one of the most distinctive cultures to be found in an area of comparable size. Take, for example, things as basic as their traditional clothing, their cuisine, or their domestic architecture and the manner in which they live at home. The thick straw floor mats, the sliding paper panels in place of interior walls, the open airy structure of the whole house, the recess for art objects, the charcoal-burning braziers (hibachi), the peculiar wooden or iron bathtubs, and the place of bathing in daily life as a means of relaxation at the end of a day's work and, in winter, as a way of restoring a sense of warmth and well-being -- all these and many other simple but fundamental features of daily life in traditional Japan are unique to the country and attest to a highly creative culture rather than of simple imitation.

"Japan's cultural distinctiveness has perhaps been accentuated by its linguistic separateness. Although the Japanese writing system has been derived from that of China and innumerable Chinese words have been incorporated into Japanese in much the same way that English has borrowed thousands of Latin and Greek words, Japanese is basically as different from Chinese as it is from English. Its structure is strikingly like Korean, but even then it appears to be no more closely related to Korean than English is to Russian or the Sanskrit-derived languages of India. Possessing a writing system more complex than any other in common use in the modern world and a language with no close relatives, the Japanese probably face a bigger language barrier between themselves and the rest of the world than any other major national group."

COMMENT: It seems to me I can keep this thread in the realm of history because the Political Scientists making up the classifications of "Civilizations" were basing them upon most of the things Edwin Reischauer mentions in his history. He doesn't mention religion, but even there we have the Shinto religion that doesn't have an equivalent as far as I know in Korea or China. And though Buddhism arrived from India through either Korea or China (I don't recall which) it was transformed into Zen and Nicheren if I recall correctly and was not left as it was in India or China.

So the Political Scientists looked at Japan's history, language, culture etc and couldn't see fit to put it into the "Sino" Civilization.

I don't know to what extent anyone here is familiar with these matters but just looking at the histories of Japan and China, if you had to decide to place Japan with China (meaning it is too close in all those things described above to leave it separate) or leave it as a separate civilization, what would you do?