The Sons of Russia's elite evading the draft

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/07/window-on-eurasia-draft-evasion-by.html

The above article was written by Paul Goble. It is entitled “Draft Evasion by Russia’s rich and Powerful Angers the Less Well-Placed.” I’ll quote a few passages and then comment below.

“. . . In an article in this week’s “Argumenty nedeli,” Nadezhda Popova not only provides examples of the current trend in which “the children of well-known parents do not want to serve in the army” but also offers some comments which suggest both rising popular anger concerning that pattern (www.argumenti.ru/publications/10029 ).

“The journalist . . . ‘decided to clarify which of the sons of “big” parents have served or are serving in the army’ and ‘which of them has run away from serving.’ Because this is not something the authorities have any interest in calling attention to at least at the present time, her article consists of a series of telling anecdotes and lists.”

“. . . She recounts that the son of Bryansk Governor Nikolay Denin was called up n 2007 but got local officials to give him a deferment so that he could … get involved in private business. As a result, Popova notes, “instead of the junior Denin someone else went into the army, someone whose father (or mother) was not a governor.

“Worse in some respects, at least in terms of hypocrisy, has been the case of movie star Aleksey Chadov. Although he had a lead role in the war movie, “The 9th Company,” he did not respond to his draft notice. Military officials promised to put him in jail. But apparently his powerful friends have protected him and he is still acting in public.

“Many other actors and performers also have evaded service over the last decade, the “Argumenty nedeli” journalist says. Among them was pianist Yevgeny Kisin, whose open evasion of military service prompted Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov in 2005 to denounce “balalaika players and dancers” who “do not want to serve” their country.”

“. . . But if the sons of many in the current Russian elite are avoiding service through one expedient or another, not all are. Two of the seven current presidential plenipotentiaries served in the military. Moreover, both sons of Army General Anatoly Kvashnin served, and among those who died in Chechnya, “more than 30” were sons of military commanders.

“For the children of workers and peasants, on the other hand, military service remains nearly universal except for those who have serious health problems, are deferred as students, or are willing to pay bribes to officers who work in the draft offices, bribes that as Popova notes are all too often solicited.

“ . . . the fact that some are able to avoid service while others cannot is especially sensitive in large measure because of the frequently reported horrors of Russian military life and because of a growing sense among many Russians that the entire system is tilted against them. . . .”

COMMENT:

What Nadezhda Popova takes offense at is probably typical of any equivalent fighting force. That is, if there is a draft, and there is someway to keep one’s sons out of the army, then some people will pull political strings in order to do that. This is human nature and not at all remarkable – except that there are some in Russia who will think it remarkable. They think the “100% White Russian” is a cut above other ethnicities and when he is in the army, he is more dedicated and more committed. One implication of the article is that some 100% White Russians are not like that.

Of course there are periods and circumstances when a fighting-force can achieve an esprit de corps that is remarkable, but this isn’t something that can be manufactured on a routine basis – at least not in a draft.

I enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. There was a draft at that time, but no one could be forced to go into the marine Corps. We had one “draftee” in our boot-camp platoon. After being drafted he was given the choice of going into the Marine Corps. He said he opted for the Marine Corps because he had more confidence in us. So even though we did accept draftees, they had to want to be in the Marine Corps.

We Americans conducting military operations today, but we have no draft, and I prefer it that way. I don’t believe everyone is suited to the military. Humans are not created equal. They should have equal opportunity, but they aren’t equal. So it shouldn’t really surprise Nadezhda Popova that some Russians don’t want to be in the army. It won’t be entirely the fault of the parents, though that is what she suggests. I’m sure that if a son wanted to be in the military, a parent probably wouldn’t stand in his way. But a parent who has taken the measure of his son and knows he won’t do well in the army, can be excused for not wanting him to serve.

Of course if the situation were extreme – if every male needed to fight as was the case with the Spartans then there could be no choice, but is that the present situation in Russia? Is their existence at stake? Are there still Barbarians at their Gates? I don’t think so.

FDR, Maynard Hutchins, and entering WWII

I have been reading David Fromkin’s In the Time of the Americans, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur, the Generation that Changed America’s role in the world. By page 538 Fromkin is up to 1940. FDR is agonizing over how much to be involved in helping Britain while protecting American interests. FDR’s advisers are swinging around to the idea that Britain can’t defeat Hitler by itself. This was a hot topic in 1940 and 1941. A majority in America wanted to help in some way. At first it was thought that America could get by with being the “arsenal of democracy,” but that idea was weakened by Germany’s success. FDR has Wilson’s portrait above his desk and he was reported to stare up at it at critical times. He thought Wilson made a mistake when he sent American troops to Europe, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake. On the other hand, it was intolerable to allow Germany to defeat all of Europe and Britain. If that happened then, given Germany’s ambitions, they would come after America. It was surely better to fight Hitler with Britain than later on without her.

Fromkin tells us that while FDR’s opinion was swinging in the direction of providing more support to Britain, there were still those who wanted the US to stay out of World War II no matter what: “there were true isolationists: people, in other words, who believed in defending only the Western Hemisphere. Then there were those who, though internationalists, believed the United States should act on its own rather than in alliance with foreign countries, or (though these tended to overlap) who gave priority to the Pacific and Asia rather than to the Atlantic and Europe. There were left-wingers, Progressives, and pacifists like Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago, who still believed, as they had in the early 1930s, that wars were started by and served only the interests of imperialists and arms manufacturers. . . .”

COMMENT:

Robert Maynard Hutchins was an intelligent man (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maynard_Hutchins ). His “Secular Perennialism” is attractive as a framework for higher education. He helped Adler foster the idea of the “Great Books.” So how could such a broad-minded intelligent fellow believe something so patently stupid as “wars were started by and served only the interests of imperialists and arms manufacturers”?

We never do anything for just one reason. Perhaps there are exceptions to that common-sense principle, but I have yet to find any. So is it possible that Hutchins wasn’t aware of this? He was a great advocate of using Aristotelianism and Thomism in higher education and those two, Aristotle and St. Thomas were not overly interested in seeking multiple causes for a single result; so perhaps they colored Hutchins thinking about the causes of war. But if that is what he thought, that the most important principles at work in 1940 and 1941 were imperialism and the greed of the arms manufacturers, then Hutchins seems a strange failure of his own educational philosophy which sought to teach students “how to think.”

What Hitler’s Germany could be described as doing in 1940-41 would qualify as “imperialism,” and without doubt the German arms manufacturers like Krupp were delighted to furnish the German War Machine with weapons, but similar motives could not, with reason, be applied to Britain during this time frame.

I was in the “Arms Manufacturing” business from 1959 to 1999. I was in Engineering and not in Administration, but I was intimately familiar with how various “weapons systems” were developed and sold to the military. It would be true to say that our livelihood depended upon our selling weapons systems. I worked on the C-17 during my last years at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. Unless we could keep selling C-17s from our plant in Long Beach, which was created for that sole purpose, we would be out of jobs and the plant would have to be closed. So we wanted to keep building and selling C-17s. But the idea that we could force Congress to buy them is ludicrous. The military sold the idea to congress. The Marines and Army liked the idea of a transport that could land closer to the front lines on undeveloped landing fields. The C-17 could take troops and out-sized equipment very close to where they would be used. It was a good idea, but McDonnell Douglas didn’t invent it – at least not by itself. The military expressed the need and then there was a competition to see which supplier could best meet it. McDonnell Douglas won the competition, but it was not in control of it.

Were matters different in 1940-41? Not very. There wasn’t time for competition but that didn’t mean the Arms Manufacturers (which for the most part hadn’t come into existence) caused anything. FDRs administration “caused” the commercial aircraft companies to switch over to making military aircraft. The commercial Douglas DC-3 became one of the most successful “weapons systems” of World War II. That success didn’t keep Douglas from failing as a company, however. A few years after I went to work there it was swallowed up by McDonnell. I saw no evidence in all my years in this major industry of the sort of “control” that Robert Maynard Hutchins suggests.

Douglas wanted to sell its DC-3s, but to say that Douglas Aircraft Company and companies like it “caused” America to enter World War II is not “reasonable.” And for Hutchins to argue that position casts doubt upon his own ability to reason – and to realize that for something as complicated as America’s active entry into World War Two, there would be “many reasons” and not just two. And of those many reasons, the two he selected were by no means the most important.

Why study World War I?

It seems to me that there are three main reasons for studying World War I. The first is to question how it came to happen. The second is to ask how Britain, France and the U.S. could have been so unprepared to fight it. The third is to explore how the end of World War I gave rise to, or perhaps more precisely, caused World War II.

For a long time it was thought that World War I occurred as a result of a series of misunderstandings and accidents, but in the 60s the German historian Fritz Fischer published Germany’s Aims in the First World War arguing from German archives that Germany sought war and was looking for a pretext to start one. The incident in Serbia seemed like a series of accidents, and no doubt it was, but if that incident hadn’t furnished the pretext for Germany, some other incident would have. So instead of focusing on the “series of accidents” theory, historians have been exploring why Germany felt a need to go to war.

The second reason for studying the war is to explore why two of the three main opponents of Germany, Britain and the U.S., were so unprepared. Britain and the U.S. both relied upon their navies and the ocean to keep them safe. When it became necessary for them to fight on European soil, first Britain and then the U.S. had to build up to it. In the case of the U.S., had Germany not opted to use its U-Boats to sink American shipping, America may never have entered the war.

The third reason for studying the war is to examine how it gave rise to the Second World War. Some now argue that there was only one war, that the nothing was ended in 1919, that the interwar period did nothing more than allow Germany the time to build its army back up so it could continue the fight.

Whether it was a new war or a continuation of the old one, there seems even less excuse for the unpreparedness of Britain, France and the U.S. Britain and the U.S. thought they had learned something, but the lesson they “learned” was something like what the American Gun Control lobby believes, namely, if you get rid of all the guns then violent crimes will stop. These groups are not students of human nature. If a person or a nation says, “Hey look, I got rid of all my weapons,” this does not inspire all the other people or nations to want to do likewise. Some will sneer, “what a dumb thing to do.” And others will say, “ah ha, a victim.” We see that the states with the toughest gun laws have some of the highest crime rates. And we see that defenseless France was an easy victim of the German Blitzkrieg in World War Two.

And the Japanese were not impressed by America’s unpreparedness. They destroyed many of America’s ships at Pearl Harbor and a great number of planes in the Philippines.

The evidence is persuasive that the unpreparedness of France, Britain, and the U.S. inspired Germany to strike when it did rather than wait for the allies (including Russia) to become better prepared.

In a sense, the European conflict that resulted in World War I was between Germany and France. “Raymond Poincare, president of the French Republic, in terms that outlined concisely his country’s conception of the task at hand. Reminded the delegates that this was the anniversary of the taking by the Germans of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from a prostrate France . . . he said: ‘On this day, forty-eight years ago, on the eighteenth of January, 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed by an army of invasion . . . at Versailles. . . . Born in injustice, it has ended in opprobrium. You are assembled in order to repair the evil that it has done and to prevent a recurrence of it.’” [Fromkin, In the Time of the Americans, p. 300]

If we know anything about Wilson, we know he had something very different in mind, but he couldn’t sway the French. So in 1919 Clemenceau and Poincare could rejoice in reversing what had occurred after the German victory of 1871, but if we fast forward in time we discover Hitler making a point of reversing what had occurred after the French victory in 1919. Fortunately, in a sense, there was no Poincare or Clemenceau, at the end of the Second World War to exact the same kind of vengeance that might inspire Germany to want to keep the ball rolling. There was only De Gaulle. And Roosevelt didn’t really want to invite him to be part of the agreements that were being reached at the end of World War II.

COMMENT:

It would be nice if we could say we’ve learned all our lessons and that we won’t make any of those mistakes again, but we really can’t say that. There are sizeable numbers of people, primarily in the West, that would love to make those mistakes all over again. There are still huge numbers that think guns cause crimes and armaments cause wars. They would be delighted if some law could be passed forcing the destruction of all our guns and armaments. They haven’t learned that such a law would cause us as individuals and as nations to have large “V’s” for “Victim” painted on our chests and on our flag. They haven’t learned anything about human nature.

Or rather it might better be said that they believe human nature is more malleable than it really is. There is no evidence that predators, whether individual or large groups such as nations, can be induced by example to join the ranks of what they are convinced are the “losers” and “victims.” But despite this lack of evidence, nay, despite evidence to the contrary, they continue promoting their schemes for disarmament and their philosophy of pacifism.

So those people haven’t learned anything. They want to be as unprepared as Britain and the U.S. were prior to the two World Wars. Can we say they are in a minority? I don’t know.

FURTHER COMMENT:

Someone might counter what I have written by arguing that there is nothing on the horizon like Germany and Japan were prior to World War II; so matters are entirely different. To some extent that is true. The most immediate concern, from the standpoint of an enemy to be countered, is Islamism, and there is no Islamist force that can mount an attack like Germany and Japan could in World War Two. Further, we seem to be managing the Islamists fairly well. More work needs to be done, but perhaps most of it needs to be done by Muslim nations.

But setting aside the Islamists, suppose we were to not stop after we had gotten our atomic weapons down to zero by 2020, or whenever that is supposed to occur. Suppose we continued on getting rid of all our fighters, bombers, submarines, Aircraft Carriers, etc. Have we learned that this would be an invitation for some nation, perhaps even a nation we don’t recognize as a threat at the present time, to take military advantage of us? I’m not convinced that we have learned that. By “we” I mean a majority of Americans and a majority in the West.

There are still a lot of Europeans and Americans who would love to try pacifism just one more time, not understanding that “one more time” might just mean the end of us.

Wilsonian Obama lectures the Russians

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/07/obama-russia-first-trip

The above article, written by Luke Harding in Moscow and posted in the Guardian is entitled “Barack Obama urges Russia not to interfere in neighbouring States.” I’ll quote a few passages from it and then comment below:

. . .

“Obama delivered a tough, though implicit, critique of Kremlin foreign policy, rejecting the claim it has "privileged interests" in post-Soviet countries. He said the 19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and "great powers forging competing blocs" was finished.

"’In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chessboard are over," he said, speaking to graduates from Moscow's New Economic School.’

. . .

“Crucially, though, Obama indicated that Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia. Russia is winding up full-scale military exercises next to the Georgian border amid ominous predictions that a second conflict in the Caucasus could erupt this summer.

“On Monday Obama reaffirmed Georgia's sovereignty – severely undermined by last year's war and Moscow's subsequent unilateral recognition of rebel-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Today Obama defended "state sovereignty", describing it as "a cornerstone of international order".

“He also said that Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders, and could join Nato if they wanted. Russia is deeply opposed to Ukraine's and Georgia's accession, and wants the White House to rule out their future membership. Today Obama responded by saying that Nato sought collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.

“. . . Last week Obama described Putin, Russia's prime minister, as having ‘one foot in the past’. Today, however, he talked to him for two and a half hours – longer than planned and an admission of Putin's continuing importance. The meeting, their first, was ‘excellent’, Obama said.

“During his speech, however, Obama delivered a withering assessment of Putinism. Without mentioning Russia by name, Obama spelled out the US's commitment to ‘universal values’. These included the rule of law, the equal administration of justice, and competitive elections – all things missing from Putin's vertically managed authoritarian state.

“Obama also stressed the importance of "independent media in exposing corruption at all levels of business and government". Russia's state-controlled TV has largely snubbed Obama's first trip to Moscow, apparently on Kremlin orders, either failing to mention him at all or relegating him to the lower regions of the news schedule.”

COMMENT:

I haven’t had time to check and see if the Guardian is making all this up, but if they aren’t, there is enough toughness in Obama’s message to the Russians to satisfy almost any Redneck. And the fact that the Russians prevented his comments from getting out to the Russian people is also interesting, but I was most interested in Obama’s comments on Russia’s buffer states, the states which became independent – sort of -- after the collapse of the USSR.

Obama disparages the “19th-century doctrine of spheres of influence and ‘great powers forging competing blocs’.” Will the Russians let Obama get away with saying this? They after all have rejected “American Liberal Democracy” and are insisted on 19^th-century Nationalism which they call “Sovereign Democracy.” Obama when he said “Georgia and Ukraine had a right to choose their own foreign policy and leaders,” is insisting upon one of President Wilson’s most controversial points (of his famous 14-Points), the point that declares that all nations have the right of “self-determination.” That “point” gave hope to such groups as the Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Czechs, Magyars, and caused no end of trouble for the old Imperialist powers that used to control them.

Wilson’s “self-determination” proposal lost ground during the 1919 negotiations with the British, French, and Italians who wanted what the Russians today seem to want, control over the less-powerful nations in their orbits. Historians point to Wilson’s principle of “self-determination” as evidence of his naiveté, but here it is again, fresh from the lips of Obama in Russia, telling Russia that the Georgians and Ukrainians have the right to self-determination. Wilson would be proud of him.

Although Wilson was theoretically one of Obama’s Democratic ancestors, the Democrats have not gone out of their way to claim him in recent years. They have been too busy denigrating the Republican Neoconservatism which is, after all, nothing more than Wilsonianism with a little activism thrown in.

It is one of the interesting aspects of American politics that just when one of the major parties carves out for itself a unique popular position, the other party soon takes it up. The Democrats favored making peace with China, for example, but it took a Republican to actually pull it off. And we see traditional liberal programs such as health-care and social security being pushed by Republicans (albeit unsuccessfully); so it ought not be a surprise to see a plank in the Neocon platform (self-determination) being pushed by a Democratic President – but it is.

FURTHER COMMENT:

This idea of self-determination requires more elaboration. Someone might object that the “Neocons” opposed the “self-determination” of Saddam Hussein. But part of the entire Neocon position (if I can describe it as such) opposes politics that get in the way of a nation’s or a people’s ability to move toward Liberal Democracy. Saddam Hussein was opposing Liberal Democracy with his autocratic regime. Removing him was good from the Neocon standpoint, because now the Iraqis would be able to determine for themselves what they would do next politically. The Neocons did not assume that a modern Western-style Liberal Democracy would be the next Iraqi step. But they thought it very worthwhile to get rid of the Saddam Hussein impediment, and didn’t object to doing it militarily.

Obama probably doesn’t plan to do anything militarily (despite telling the Russians that “Washington would not tolerate another Russian invasion of Georgia”). His approach will be diplomatic; which is what caused me to wonder whether the Guardian’s Luke Harding heard Obama correctly. It doesn’t seem, on the face of it, very diplomatic to tell the Russians that their “Sovereign Democracy,” in essence, is something that must be done away with.

What Obama said isn’t original. We heard a bit of it from Ivan Krastev: http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/03/russias-sovereign-democracy.html . But it is remarkable when it comes from the bully-pulpit of a Democratic president – that is, from a Democratic president since Wilson.

Russia and the US, 1917, & the Obama effect

I’ve been reading David Fromkin’s In the Time of the Americans. His subtitle indicates that he is going to emphasize FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall and MacArthur, but he is moving slowly. I’m on Page 200 (out of 706 pages) and he is discussing the challenge placed upon Wilson by Russia’s separate treaty with Germany. Lenin proposed that all nations quit fighting and agree to the borders that existed prior to the start of the war. Furthermore Lenin had published in Izvestia the “hitherto secret treaties between tsarist Russian and her allies, Britain, France, Japan, and Italy, outlining the rewards they would divide among themselves if they won the war. Whole empires were to be shared between the Allies in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific.”

Wilson found the Bolshevik position very upsetting and challenging because Lenin was proposing some of the same things he himself had proposed. But since that time, since the time that Wilson had proposed a cessation of warfare and a return to previous boundaries, American shipping had been sunk by German U-Boats, drawing America into the War.

Wilson didn’t care for the British and he didn’t believe in the Allied cause. He thought Britain, France, and Italy were fighting for booty and not for ideals. Not so the U.S. according to Wilson. Wilson made sure that the U.S. when it sent troops to Europe was not considered to be part of the allies but an “associate.” Pershing was forbidden to integrate America troops into British or French forces, although Pershing did agree to give the French 4 American brigades prior to the time a more substantial force reached Europe. But one can see that Wilson believed that the US was fighting for unselfish reasons while the Allies were not.

Lenin also believed in a greater cause. He and his Bolsheviks believed that the workers of the world would flock to his cause. It was a great shock when he got no takers. It was the clear indication that Russia, as led by the Bolsheviks, was on its own causing Lenin to make his separate peace with Germany.

Wilson was afraid that the U.S. would be “tainted” by the publishing of the “secret treaties,” but not so. A majority of Americans believed in Wilson’s idealism. European leaders (not European people) merely thought him naïve.

Not all Americans were caught up in Wilson’s rhetoric – not Teddy Roosevelt. He “argued in the autumn of 1917 that the United States ‘did not go to war to make democracy safe. . . first and foremost we are to make the world safe for ourselves. This is our war, America’s war. If we do not win it we shall someday have to reckon with Germany single-handed. Therefore, for our own sake let us strike down Germany.’

Fromkin comments, “Whatever its other virtues, this was not the spiritually uplifting message that America wanted to hear . . . .”

In the present time we could say that Bush sounded more like TR to the American people and the world, and we could also say that whatever the virtues of Bush’s ideas, they haven’t been what the American people and much of the rest of the world want to hear. Now we have the more idealistic Obama in his place. The world wants to believe in him, much as it wanted to believe in Wilson.

If we look at present day Russia we see that its Bush-like treatment of its buffer states isn’t working out very well. Even Belarus seems to want to shake loose from Russian control and that seemed to me to be the one nation that never would. Kyrgyzstan was about ready to kick the U.S. out, to close up their Airbase and forbid them the use of Manas. http://blogs.reuters.com/global/2009/07/03/how-much-did-russia-know-about-manas-negotiations Reuters as we see is open to the idea that Kyrgyzstan was influenced by the “Obama effect.” It could have been something else that caused Kyrgyzstan to renew the lease at Manas, but it could have been the Obama effect.

COMMENT:

The thing about the Wilson effect is that he was wrong. The later Neocons were in essence Wilsonian. They shared the same ideals. As long as we are in a war, let us export and insist upon Democracy. And we have learned once again that Liberal Democracy – not merely “democracy” for democracy that isn’t liberal can be anything. It can be Iranian democracy – isn’t exportable. Perhaps Islam can be advanced by force of arms but Liberal Democracy can’t.

It is a safe prediction that after the US forces leave Iraq, that nation will not progress into a Liberal Democracy. It may regress into warring factions much as the former Yugoslavia did, but it won’t become a Liberal Democracy. Bush, if he thought it would, was naïve, much as Wilson was time and time again when he thought to dictate “his” peace in Europe. David Fromkin gave his description of that peace, the peace of 1919, an excellent title when he called his book describing it, “The Peace to End All Peace.” Wilson’s naïve beliefs influenced a lot of people, perhaps more in Europe than in America, but Wilson was wrong and Teddy Roosevelt was right. We had to fight Germany again. Wilson was appalled at the horrors of Verdun and the trench fighting of World War One. What would he think if he knew that his naivety strongly contributed to Germany’s resurgence after his European Peace? What would he think if he knew that his naivety made a way for Hitler and for the Second World War which was far more horrendous than the first?

Today the world seems open to the kinder, gentler, US portrayed by Obama. And, interestingly, Russia’s buffers states, many of them, seem open to it as well. Does Russia really want to keep its buffer states? If so, perhaps it needs a kinder, gentler, leader.

On resisting the inclination to do "our duty" in the military

Since I attempted to enlist in the Marine Corps at age 16 and actually did a year later, that subject, or merely the fact that I was in the Marine Corps seems to elicit an apology, explanation, or justification from those who did not enlist. Even if I encounter someone who’s “war” would have been the Second World War, it is still fresh in their minds that they were not in it. They relive before me the time when they could and perhaps should have enlisted an didn’t.

I have been reading David Fromkin’s In the Time of the Americans, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur, the Generation that Changed America’s Role in the World. The First World War was important to this generation. It occurred when they were finishing their educations and getting started in the world. MacArthur, Marshall, and Eisenhower were already in the military. Many enlisted or tried to – but not everyone.

Old Teddy Roosevelt tried to enlist. On page 167 Fromkin writes, “. . . when war was declared, TR, though physically a wreck, nearly sixty, and half-blind, desperately sought permission to lead a volunteer unit to France to fight. President Wilson rejected his offer, in patronizing terms that foreshadowed the partisan spirit in which the chief executive would conduct the war and the peace.

“Wilson hated TR and was jealous of him. TR despised Wilson. As he came out of his meeting with the President, the ex-President encountered Colonel House and complained of the reception he had just received. As Winston Churchill later told the story, Theodore Roosevelt said: ‘”Wilson was very rough with me. After all, all I asked was to be allowed to die.” House (in his silkiest tones): “Did you make that last point clear to the President?”’

As to FDR, Fromkin tells us “Despite his athletic appearance, he was not robust; he suffered from frequent colds. He could well take the view that he was making a greater contribution to the war effort as assistant secretary of the navy than he could make as a fighting man.”

Fromkin writes “Of the stars of Yale’s graduating class of 1913 – Cole Porter, Averell Harriman, and William Bullitt – Porter was the most shameless in avoiding military service. Apparently disregarding the law that required him to register for selective service, he boarded an ocean liner to France and spent the war living in Paris, where he dressed in Foreign Legion and other French military uniforms, leading everyone to assume that he was serving as an army officer. He kept up the charade in front of his friend and college classmate, the future actor Second Lieutenant Monty Woolley, and in front of Archibald MacLeish, who was to fight in the second battle of the Marne. MacLeish, a close friend of Porter’s Harvard roommate, Dean Acheson, had left Harvard to Join the army, while Acheson stayed on to finish law school before enlisting (as it happened, just before the Armistice brought the war to an end)."

I don’t think Fromkin is correct in regard to Porter. I saw on a French Foreign Legion web site a copy of Cole Porter’s identity card. The French Foreign Legion claims Porter: so I tend to believe them. What may have happened is that Porter embellished his FFL exploits. Bob Dornan, former congressman from California apparently embellished his exploits on bombers during WWII. What he did was farily remarkable. He was never officially assigned to fly on bombers, but he volunteered, going on bomb runs, and risking his life, when he didn’t have to. His embellishment seemed to consist of his saying that what he did was officially sanctioned in some way, if memory serves me, and perhaps saying he went on a couple of bomb runs more than he really flew.

And there has been more than one case of some famous Admiral or General caught wearing a ribbon he wasn’t entitled to. I recall reading of one who committed suicide over having been caught wearing an unauthorized ribbon.

Enlisting, not-enlisting, and then if one is in the military, the temptation to embellish one’s war record – these seem to be important matters to most men. When men have trouble getting to sleep at night because they are busy torturing themselves over things they should have done in their lives, apparently not enlisting in the military (if they didn’t enlist) is very high on the agenda.

On page 164, Fromkin writes, “Robert A. Taft was nothing if not honest. The prosaic young Ohio lawyer admitted that he did not want to be a soldier; but he had a strong sense of duty that led him to try to enlist in the armed forces. He was rejected as physically unfit (his eyes were weak).

“Determined nonetheless to perform national service in wartime, Taft went to work for Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration in Washington, D. C. He served as one of the four attorneys designated as assistant counsel. As such, he dealt with such regulatory matters as the pricing and grading of food products. It was congenial work for a young lawyer who enjoyed paying attention to detail, and he was good at it. He probably would have made an indifferent soldier; he served his country far more effectively as the capable attorney he was. Yet as he rightly observed, ‘My failure to enter the army requires and always will require explanation, and I shall always feel that those who have suffered in the war . . . are regarding me as one who failed to do his real duty.’”

I wonder about those who burned their draft cards rather than do their “real duty” during the Vietnam War. I wonder if they feel that what they did “requires and always will require explanation.” I recall reading in a discussion group of one such fellow from Tennessee drinking with a casual acquaintance in a bar when the subject of military service came up. When he described what he had done, gone to Canada rather than to Vietnam, his acquaintance either punched him or threatened to do so (I can’t recall the details). This fellow commented that if he hadn’t drunk so much, he would have kept his mouth shut. But apparently it is not so easy to do.

The "real" struggle in Iran?

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090629_real_struggle_iran_and_implications_u_s_dialogue

The above is an article by George Friedman entitled, “The Real Struggle in Iran and Implications for U.S. Dialogue.”

Friedman is the head of Stratfor which provides intelligence information to business investors and other parties interested in foreign affairs. His analysis of the “struggle in Iran” isn’t quite what we have been getting from the media. He sees the real struggle as being between the old-guard clerics represented by Rafsanjani and the populists represented by Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani is rich. Ahmadinejad is something of an ascetic.

In trying to determine which side we ought to root for, Friedman tells us it doesn’t make any difference: “The question for the rest of the world is simple: Does it matter who wins this fight? We would argue that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani are minimal and probably would not affect Iran’s foreign relations. This fight simply isn’t about foreign policy.”

In regard to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, Friedman tells us not to worry: “We do not believe that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, a point we have made frequently. Iran understands that the actual acquisition of a nuclear weapon would lead to immediate U.S. or Israeli attacks. Accordingly, Iran’s ideal position is to be seen as developing nuclear weapons, but not close to having them. This gives Tehran a platform for bargaining without triggering Iran’s destruction, a task at which it has proved sure-footed.”

Friedman sees as the more serious threat, and a defensive rather than offensive one, not the doomsday blocking of the straits of Hormuz or the bombing of Israel but Iran’s “capabilities in Iraq and Lebanon. Should the United States or Israel attack, Iran would thus be able to counter by doing everything possible to destabilize Iraq — bogging down U.S. forces there — while simultaneously using Hezbollah’s global reach to carry out terror attacks. After all, Hezbollah is today’s al Qaeda on steroids. The radical Shiite group’s ability, coupled with that of Iranian intelligence, is substantial.

“We see no likelihood that any Iranian government would abandon this two-pronged strategy without substantial guarantees and concessions from the West. Those would have to include guarantees of noninterference in Iranian affairs. Obama, of course, has been aware of this bedrock condition, which is why he went out of his way before the election to assure Khamenei in a letter that the United States had no intention of interfering.

“Though Iran did not hesitate to lash out at CNN’s coverage of the protests, the Iranians know that the U.S. government doesn’t control CNN’s coverage. But Tehran takes a slightly different view of the BBC. The Iranians saw the depiction of the demonstrations as a democratic uprising against a repressive regime as a deliberate attempt by British state-run media to inflame the situation. This allowed the Iranians to vigorously blame some foreigner for the unrest without making the United States the primary villain.”

Friedman tells us that “The fantasy of a democratic revolution overthrowing the Islamic Republic — and thus solving everyone’s foreign policy problems a la the 1991 Soviet collapse — has passed.

“That means that Obama, as the primary player in Iranian foreign affairs, must now define an Iran policy — particularly given Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting in Washington with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell this Monday. Obama has said that nothing that has happened in Iran makes dialogue impossible, but opening dialogue is easier said than done. The Republicans consistently have opposed an opening to Iran; now they are joined by Democrats, who oppose dialogue with nations they regard as human rights violators. Obama still has room for maneuver, but it is not clear where he thinks he is maneuvering. The Iranians have consistently rejected dialogue if it involves any preconditions. But given the events of the past weeks, and the perceptions about them that have now been locked into the public mind, Obama isn’t going to be able to make many concessions.”

The above makes it sound as though Obama might actually have a diplomatic strategy at work, but Friedman’s final paragraph is to the contrary: “It would appear to us that in this, as in many other things, Obama will be following the Bush strategy — namely, criticizing Iran without actually doing anything about it. And so he goes to Moscow more aware than ever that Russia could cause the United States a great deal of pain if it proceeded with weapons transfers to Iran, a country locked in a political crisis and unlikely to emerge from it in a pleasant state of mind”

COMMENT:

I don’t actually subscribe to Strator, but I do get a weekly “teaser article" like the above. As I began reading I thought, “oh no. Friedman has come up with something I haven’t thought of. Perhaps I should subscribe to Strafor after all.” My brain started rationalizing my limitations: I am one man reading foreign affairs publications. How can I be expected to keep up with Stratfor who has agents out in the field.

But then I read Friedman’s bottom line and I would invite any reader to compare it to what I wrote on 6-27-09: http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/06/on-obamas-criticism-of-iran.html . In that article I describe Obama as seeming to follow in Bush’s footsteps rather than engaging in the pursuit of some diplomatic strategy. So I don’t have to give up as many points to Friedman on that issue as I thought I might.

But there is one area where Friedman has come up with something I hadn’t thought of, namely that Iran is not serious about developing nuclear weapons. They are engaging in something very like a bluff: “. . . Iran’s ideal position is to be seen as developing nuclear weapons, but not close to having them. This gives Tehran a platform for bargaining without triggering Iran’s destruction, a task at which it has proved sure-footed.”

If Friedman is right then I am wrong about the need for the US or Israel to prepare to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, much as Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak facility back in 1980. Or rather, it would be right for the US and Israel to “wargame” that attack and be prepared to execute it, but it isn’t correct to assume that Iran will actually try to build nuclear weapons. If Friedman actually knows that as a result of having Stratfor operatives out there in the field, then I would be impressed. We shall see . . . or perhaps we won’t.