Springtime on Planet Earth

        A senescent president spends

Beyond measure the wealth 

Of his nation, and supports a

Comedian’s nation pitted against

A Slavic warlord who dreams

Of the war his comrades applaud.

Seeing his foes embroiled,

The leader of Sinitic millions

Likes his chance and seeks to meld

Taiwan into a Chinese whole.

Japanese and South East Asians

Younger than those locked in

Western Ukraine arm themselves

Thinking that they are

More formidable than

The Chinese believe.  In the world 

We try, those of us standing aside,

To hide our faces and hope these

Onslaughts pass us by; yet fire

Burns brightly where we stand.

Somewhere beyond our ken

A malevolence watches these

Stirrings, dipping a finger

Now and then to taste its

Progress.  Humans blind

And dumb in its midst 

Roil inside the growing heat.

Meanwhile, here in the West

 I've been following the war on YouTube.  The Ukrainians have mounted a stirring defense and are being applauded by Western nations.  They claim to only need regular replenishment of their weapons and ammunition in order to drive Russia completely out of most of territorial Ukraine.  Much of the Eastern part is inhabited by Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians.  Samuel P. Huntington years ago in his Clash of Civilizations wrote about this.  He thought that Ukraine would be split up with the Eastern part becoming part of Russia and the Western part becoming forever independent, but he thought it would happen peacefully and logically.  Since his day, however, the view is growing among anthropologists that our species is much more warlike than was previously thought.  The idea of peaceful little scavengers has given way (to a significant degree) to a blood-thirsty ancestry not above eating our fallen enemies.  At one point around 40,000 years ago, during the Cro Magnon period, we went on a rampage and wiped out all competing species.  Huntington missed out on our current view of our species.

Francis Fukuyama in his overly optimistic The End of History and the Last Man thought that Western economic and political systems being so much more efficient than anything else out there would soon pervade the entire world and history, the sort of history involving war, would end.  However, the second part of his thesis involved the risk of autocrats, dictators, leaders whose egos would drive them to start wars for their own ego-centric reasons, and Putin seems to fit that pattern.  And the last men with weak chests and weak wills "may" let them get away with it.  In Putin's case the "may" may have turned to "will."

The historians who have studied Russia describe Russia’s well-deserved paranoia.  Danger historically, even before Napoleon came from the West.  Russians would be driven further and further to the east until the invader’s supply lines became exhausted and then they would retaliate and drive the enemy from their land.  But if their close-by buffer states side with the potential enemy, then the Russians when they are invaded might not have the necessary territory to retreat to. 

We hear mostly about Russian dissidents and soldiers unwilling to fight, but Putin has a lot of support among Russians, and they are as paranoid as he is.  We in the West insist that we have no interest invading Russia, but each year the Russians celebrate the time when the last invasion (Hitler's) was defeated.  There is no longer a Hitler anyplace in the West as far as we know and so we think Putin's paranoia unjustified, but the Russians who lived through the last invasion and their children find the steady encroachment of the West, albeit peaceful from our point of view, threatening. 

On the positive side, the Russian paranoia won't risk nuclear war.  They love their land and have always depended upon their armies -- traditionally not very competent at the beginning of their wars, but as they are winnowed while being driven further and further to the east, the soldiers who remain become super-soldiers well capable of defeating the enemy.  Why should they resort to weapons which could destroy large parts of their homeland?  They don't need to. Their land armies will take care of them. 

Once again, the Russians have begun poorly, but if they don't succeed in reacquiring their Communist era buffer states, they'll settle for what they have -- for now -- and then work on correcting the flaws in their soldiery, tactics and weapons.  They are not interested in World War Three, but later on, if the future gives them some other opportunities, they'll attempt to inch their borders westward once again.

As to what we in the West ought to do.  I think we're doing it.  The Russians may have their paranoia, but it isn't ours and our democratically based economies aren't comfortable with nations which have psychological problems, however historically deserved.  We in the West see no need for Putin's Russia to attack its neighbors.  Why don't they become as peaceful as we are -- as we prepare for war?  We know we have peaceful intentions, but at the same time we will not tolerate nations who start wars and are well prepared and positioned to crush them in warfare -- which we are extremely good at, by the way. :-)

Watching or Playing

Someone in a different forum expressed an inability to understand why people became excited while watching sports.  He recalled getting excited by playing but never by watching.

"Watching or Playing" is an interesting concept when applied to war.  I dearly wanted to "play," and attempted to join the USMC in 1951 when I was 16.  When they discovered my age I was sent home until I was 17.  I was sent to an intelligence unit in Korea, but I planned to transfer to the "front lines," essentially the 38th parallel which was still being contested.  I was informed that truce negotiations were going on and transfers were no longer being approved.  Being there during the last two battle seasons I was entitled to wear two stars on my Korean War Ribbon.  So was I "watching" or "playing"?

In another example, I was the McDonnell Douglas Project Engineer involved in the delivery of the last Nigerian DC-10 (the last or next to the last DC-10 manufactured.  I was also the Project Engineer for the delivery of a DC-10 to Pakistan.  That one and the Nigerian were the last two DC-10s manufactured) and got to know two Nigerian reps (one for Engineering and the other of Product Support) fairly well.  The Engineer was a Catholic and the Product Support fellow was a Muslim.  I had some interesting discussions with the Muslim about Islam.  The Muslim spoke of inheriting a large parcel of land for some reason I didn't understand (he was educated in Scotland and had a strong Scottish accent).  After he returned to Nigeria I received a phone message from him, but he didn't provide enough information to enable me to return his call.  It wasn't inconceivable that he intended to offer me a job.  If so, he may have thought he could convert me to Islam.  My MDC job was to take care of all Engineering and Product Support needs and not argue about Islam, so he never saw the argumentative side of me. 

I subsequently got a translation of the Qur'an and puzzled through most of it.  After 9-11 I was primed to study Islam and Islamism more seriously.  We had many discussions in the Phil-Lit forum on Islam and Islamism back then.  I recall arguing with an adjunct professor in something or other about whether Islamism originated out of Sunni or Shia theology.  I argued for a Sunni origin, believing Said Qutb the prime Sunni theologian and the most potent force in the creation of subsequent movements in various nations.  The adjunct professor in arguing for a Shia origin thought the Ayatollah Khomeini the source of Islamism.  We each had a vicarious understanding.  I had read more Sunni oriented books and he had read more Shia; so we argued.  He was in the process of founding an anti-Islamism organization, and so popped into Phil-Lit looking for recruits.  He sought to recruit me, but I merely argued with him.  I was not delivering any DC-10s to him & so felt free to argue.  Was I "watching or playing"?

Understanding Islamism is an ongoing enterprise.  I have given it up, but I did read from the June 1, 2018 issue of the TLS a review of four books on the Qur'an by Eric Ormsby.  The books reviewed are The Koran in English by Bruce B. Lawrence, Exploring the Qur'an by Muhammad Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an by Nicolai Sinai, and The Sanaa Palimpsest by Asma Hilali.  Ormsby writes, "if there is a single factor that explains the disparity between Muslim and non-Muslim views of the Qur'an it lies in its language.  This disparity is not due simply to the differences between, say, English and Arabic with the latter's more powerful expressive qualities, lexical as well as phonic.  Rather, the disparity arises from the specific idiom of Qur'anic Arabic.  It is a long standing article of Muslim belief that the Qur'an is inimitable; indeed its inimitable (i'jaz in Arabic) has been dogma at least since the days of the theologian al-Baqillani (d. 1013), who codified it.  This is the basis of the ban on translation; the Qur'an by its very nature cannot be translated -- or rather, only its 'meanings' are deemed translatable.  Bilingual editions of the Qur'an in Saudi Arabia, for example, are always identified as containing a translation of the 'meanings', as if to make clear that it is not the Qur'an itself that has been translated. . . ."

I wondered if by chance Eric Ormsby was the fellow I argued with years ago.  Probably not, because the fellow I argued seemed younger than someone born in 1941 (when Ormsby was born).  At the time, the fellow I argued with was languishing some place as an adjunct professor and saw no hope of achieving a serious place in the academic world; so for that fellow to have applied himself such that he became the Eric Ormsby I read about would be remarkable.

Also remarkable is the fact that Eric Ormsby, born in Atlanta in 1941, is "a poet, a scholar, and a man of letters. He was a longtime resident of Montreal, where he was the Director of University Libraries and subsequently a professor of Islamic thought at the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies.  Just because I didn't apply myself single-mindedly, learn Arabic and continue to study the Qur'an and Islamic theology, didn't mean that the adjunct professor I argued with years ago didn't.   And yet, unless he became a Muslim and beyond that an Islamic theologian, isn't his understanding (while admittedly much greater than mine) still 'vicarious.'?  Isn't he still merely "watching"?

Increased death toll when we moved from monarchies to democracies

Chapter two of Leonhard’s Pandora’s Box is entitled “Antecedents: Crises and Containment before 1914.”  Most interesting (and alarming) is his drawing attention to the sorts of wars princes engaged in during the period of the monarchies vs. what came later with democracies.  If a prince wanted to go to war with a neighboring prince, he would raise an army assign a commander and off it would go to do the prince’s bidding.  If the commander lost the army, he would not be given another. 

But with the American Civil War all that changed.  With everyone a citizen, the armies that could be raised were limited only by a nation’s population.  More soldiers were killed in America’s Civil War than in all the subsequent wars America was engaged in.  Grant set the standard for Haig.  If you had more soldiers your enemy,  you could trade with him in battle after battle, confident that your enemy would run out of them before you did. 

Princes were indeed involved in WWI’s beginning, but they had lost much of their power.  Ordinary people were citizens and had rights.  They could also be drafted into armies.  But in 1914 it wasn’t just nations that were contending, it was empires.  Britain, in splendid isolation could draw upon the manpower of an empire larger than anyone else’s. 

Nevertheless the German’s thought they could whip the British and French.   The war degenerated into a trench-warfare stalemate.  The Germans decided to sink the American ships bringing aid to the allies and when they did that America declared war on Germany.  American armies were subsequently assembled.  Initially, Germany wasn’t too worried. It would take America a long time to get their armies to Europe, but when the war dragged on longer than expected, and when the American armies started arriving . . . it was sort of like a chess game.  The Germans seemed to be doing okay, but its best thinkers could see several moves ahead and with larger and larger numbers of Americans arriving, they stood no chance of winning, so they resigned. 

Poorer thinkers later on challenged that decision.  Germany wasn’t properly defeated, they told each other, so they resolved to play the game again and this time all the way to the end.

Leonhard didn’t say all the above.   I have taken the liberty of reasoning from what he has said.  His book is a bit overwhelming – as overwhelming as House of Government, but much more interesting in my opinion.  I have read several books about WWI in the past, but have never encountered much of what Leonhard is presenting, e.g., the increased death-toll of war when we moved from monarchies to democracies.

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. 

Reading about war in the Pacific Islands

In the past I was used to highlighting passages on the pages of hard copies in case I wanted to refer back to them.  Kindle offers something like that.  I can highlight Kindle passages, but I have never mastered successfully referring back to them.  Recently I have purchased hard copies as well.  Thus, I read the Kindle edition of Shattered Sword, but I had the hard copy available to make checking references easier.  I did not however highlight the hard copy; so in a recent discussion I had to rely upon my (faulty) memory instead of turning to hard-copy (or Kindle) highlighted passages. 

I am doing the same thing with Ian Toll’s The Conquering Tide, War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944.  I set it aside to work on Weinberg, but I got as far as the war on Saipan.  So I set Toll aside, sent for and read Saipan, The Battle that Doomed Japan in World II by James H. Hallas, 2019.  Hallas book was published later than Toll’s volume II (published 2015) but I was looking for the best history, not necessarily a history Toll referenced – except in the case of the Shattered Sword which Toll praised.  After a lot of trial and error I found the reference not at the beginning of Toll’s volume II but at the end of his Volume I, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942:  “Taken together, Operations AL and MI represented the commitment of almost the entirety of the Imperial Japanese Navy, write Jon Parshall and Tony Tully in Shattered Sword (2005), their groundbreaking study of the Japanese experience at Midway; ‘all of its carriers, all of its battleships, all but four of its heavy cruisers, and the bulk of its lesser combatants.  Twenty-eight admirals would lead those forces into battle, and they would log more miles and consume more fuel in this single operation than was normally used in an entire year.”

Toll goes on to write [whether or not based upon Parshall and Tully I don’t remember], “The Midway operation was not a product of sound military planning.  It was a farrago of compromises struck to quell internal dissent and to balance the demands of rivals in the Combined Fleet and the naval General Staff.  Not surprisingly, it was shot through with contradictions, flaws, and unnecessary risks.  It exposed a fatal hubris and an unwarranted contempt for the enemy.  The plan spread Japanese forces too thinly over a huge expanse of the North Pacific, and relied on dubious conjectures about how the Americans would react.  It asked too much of a few elite aviators who had been flying and fighting almost without respite since December 7.  Though the Japanese were loath to admit it, the most experienced of their carrier aircrews were bone-weary, while the newcomers lacked the training and seasoning to equal the skill of the veterans.  In his subsequent report on the battle, Admiral Nagumo would observe that there had been ‘considerable turnover in personnel. . . .   Inexperienced flyers barely got to the point where they could make daytime landings on carriers.  It was found that even some of the more seasoned flyers had lost some of their skill.’”

On Japan not being able to produce good pilots later in the war

Years ago I read Samurai by Saburo Sakai.  Also the matter is covered in Toll and some others.  Japanese pilot training methods were exhaustive and time consuming.  Only a relatively small percentage of those who tried out were able to complete the training.  The Japanese pilots we encountered at the beginning were the best in the world.  But as they were killed off or wounded and could no longer fly, the Japanese had to change their methods.  There wasn’t time to train new pilots as thoroughly as they trained them in the past.  I can’t recall whether it was Sakai or one of the other Japanese aces who survived the war that said all of the pilots who washed out during his training were better than the pilots being turned out with abbreviated training toward the end of the war. 

As to planes being destroyed on carriers versus being shot down in combat – this occurred on both sides.  Launching planes from a carrier was time consuming, and if the enemy’s planes showed up before you got yours into the air then you had to stop launching and concentrate on saving your boat.  Lots of planes were destroyed on decks or down below if enemy planes were successful.  But at some point, almost all Japanese pilots being produced were inferior to American pilots.  Also, American planes at some point were superior to the Japanese.  The Japanese hadn’t time to produce a new design.  They tinkered with the Zero, but couldn’t make it as good as the later American planes.