Category Archives: History

Better Angels of Our Natures, Why Violence has Declined

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Guest Review by Kathy London

better -angelsI keep running into references to Steven Pinker’s book, so, even though it came out in 2011, I think it was worth a look today.

Pinker sets out to demonstrate that violence has decreased over history and continues to decrease today. Pinker views the decline of violence as one of the most significant and least appreciated developments in history. But he knows most people will refuse to believe it.

Because of preconceptions about violence in the past and today, Pinker must present lots of data – and the evidence is extensive. So this is a long (812 pages of text) and leisurely (84 pages of notes, plus references and index) book.

The book is full of stories as well as studies and statistics. Pinker says “if narratives without statistics are blind, statistics without narratives are empty”. Using sources from Shakespeare to the Bible to Saturday Night Live to word searches across 5 million digitized Google Books, Pinker shows how integrated into everyday life violence was in the past – slavery, rape, murder, feuds, wars, and torture. Europe in the Middle Ages seems especially horrific; enough to ruin any romantic vision of medieval knights.

Pinker is writing about a trend that spans millennia, starting well before written history. Can we learn anything about our pre-human ancestors from the behavior of apes today? Maybe. Lethal raiding among chimps is shockingly brutal.

Are human beings basically good or bad? Pinker presents extensive psychological evidence. This doesn’t seem, strictly speaking, necessary to prove his point on decreasing violence. Pinker feels probability and statistics are counter-intuitive, so you need to see this evidence in detail. He tells me more about power-law distributions than I really wanted to know. There are a lot of words on crime, deterrence, and how to test for reality – and Pinker admits the data present a rat’s nest of implications.

There was no idyllic past. Evidence piles up that hunter-gather societies, once considered peaceful, murdered a substantial percentage of their populations through raids, ambushes, and terrorism (including cannibalism).

With the rise of agriculture and states, a government monopoly on force to protect citizens replaced feuds and personal vengeance. While this was a significant step in reducing overall violence, governments committed mass violence against their citizens: torture, prison, execution, starvation, and slavery.

The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment brought many violent state institutions to an end, though tyranny and war between major states continued.

The Twentieth Century has often been labeled “the most violent century”. The first half was certainly a cascade of world and civil wars: a “hemoclysm”. But the second half of the century avoided war between major powers and led to the astonishing fizzling out of the Cold War. So what does the hemoclysm tell us about long-term trends? Nothing. 

To convince you, Pinker presents data from earlier wars and atrocities that killed more people than Twentieth Century wars. Of the 21 worst things people have ever done to each other, 15 were before World War I. If you rate atrocities by the percentage of the population killed, only one Twentieth Century war even makes the list: quite a surprise. (By the way, the Tang Dynasty rebellion is rated as the worst atrocity: in eight years the rebellion resulted in the loss of two thirds of China’s population – a sixth of the total world population at the time.)

Pinker concludes that five cultural developments decrease violence over time:

1 – State monopoly on force to protect citizens replaces feuds and personal vengeance.

2 – Gentle commerce makes it better to tolerate others than kill them.

3 – “Feminization” of society, or the moving away from “manly honor”. (Think of the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr for manly honor.)

4 – Expanding sympathy for others from kin to tribe and beyond.

5 – Reason, with a broad trend towards self-control and orientation to the future.

Pinker doesn’t claim today’s violence is acceptable or even that the historical trend will continue. This offers little comfort to today’s victims of violence. But it offers perspective and hope. Pinker’s book is well worth the time it takes to read.

PS: Pinker continues to find hopeful trends. For data since WWII and mostly since 1970, see his article here.

In the Garden of Beasts

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garden-of-beastsThe title reveals of the book reveals what Erick Larsen thinks of Hitler and his henchmen. The subtitle “Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” begins to explain the content of the book. William E. Dodd, his wife Martha or “Mattie,” daughter Martha, and son William Jr. “Bill” was the American family, and William Senior was appointed to be ambassador to Nazi Germany in 1933 after several others had turned down the position. The Dodds arrived in Berlin believing initially that the mistreatment of Jews might have some understandable basis. Daughter Martha commented, “We sort of don’t like the Jews anyway.” Dodd clung to the idea Hitler wanted peace for several months.

By the time the Dodds left they had become disgusted with the Nazis and concerned that the German people had been drawn into the clutches of monsters. The outside world did not understand Hitler was merely playing for time while he consolidated power and built a military machine that he intended would dominate the world. It should have been quite easy to understand Hitler’s motives. He announced that Germany was withdrawing from the League of Nations and the disarmament conference underway in Geneva. Consul General Foreign Service officer George Messersmith was filing frequent reports to warn about what he was observing. He wrote that “What they most want to do, however, definitely is to make Germany the most capable instrument of war that has ever existed.” He called the Nazis “a global threat.”

The book was recommended to me by my wife. She knew I would be fascinated with the content. She also knows I am a fan of any book that refers to the Venona project and the uncovering of the massive espionage network established by the Soviet Union in the United States during World War II. (The Venona project was the subject of the first book review I posted on this web site.)The two Dodd children and Martha’s second husband Alfred Stern make it into the Venona list of 349 Americans and U.S. residents who had covert relationships with Soviet intelligence agencies.

It is easy to understand why the first choices for the German ambassador position refused the appointment. The primary assignment of the new ambassador was to see that the $1.2 billion dollars owed by Germany to American creditors was repaid, and that must have been considered an impossible task in the midst of the Great Depression. Also, the atmosphere in Germany was anything but diplomatic. The brown-shirted Sturmabteilung, Storm Troopers or SA, had launched brutal state-condoned violence and were arresting, beating, and murdering Jews, Socialists, and Communists. Dealing with Hitler would not be a prize assignment. The Gestapo and SA are described as being attractive to sadists.

Dodd was not the typical diplomat. Most were wealthy and lived extravagantly. Dodd was not wealthy and strongly believed that frugal living was appropriate. That attitude gained him many enemies in the State Department who decided to think of him simple and shallow instead of frugal. I will admit that I became a fan of Dodd’s as I read the book, so I didn’t think highly of the people in Washington D.C. who undermined Dodd’s reputation and the advice he was giving Roosevelt. His detractors called themselves the “pretty good club,” and Dodd was not a member. At least one member of the club called him “Ambassador Dud.” Germans who dealt with Dodd referred to him as kind, brilliant, and willing to accept open discussion of difficult issues.

Ambassador Dodd and his wife were the picture of proper decorum and daughter Martha was not. She had numerous affairs in the U.S., including one that ended in a failed marriage, and with dignitaries including Carl Sandberg. In Germany she has affairs with several senior Nazi officials, and at one point she was even suggested as a mistress for Hitler. Hitler, proving his reputation of being ambivalent about women, wasn’t interested. She did have a lengthy romantic relationship with the first secretary of the Soviet embassy who was also an “operative” of the NKVD. (He was eventually executed in one of Stalin’s innumerable purges after being forced to write Martha a farewell letter designed “…to keep his death from destroying her sympathy for the Soviet cause.”) One of the staff members of the U.S. embassy referred to it as a house of ill repute. Martha made many other friends, and not all survived the Nazis.

The American reaction to the treatment of Jews is difficult to comprehend with the advantage of historical hindsight. Roosevelt and most State Department officials were eager to avoid any direct statement of condemnation regardless of any inhuman and outrageous behavior reported to them. There was a baffling policy that only a small percentage of the visas available were issued to Jews desperate to escape. Even more baffling is the large number of Jews who did not try to escape. They apparently believed they could “ride out the storm” with careful behavior. Germany’s economy was improving in late 1933 and Hitler seemed to be moderating his hatred. Some Jews actually returned to Germany.

The book has many interesting details and asides. As an example, there is a description of the “bold, black broken cross, or Kakenkeuz” that later became known as the “swastika.” I found it quite odd that Hitler’s favorite movie was said to be King Kong.

Ambassador Dodd rented the bottom floors of a mansion for a very low price by a Jewish family who retained the top floor. Dodd did not understand that the family was buying their safety by having the American ambassador living under them. Daughter Martha especially enjoyed the library’s large brown leather sofa as an asset to her romantic life.

The Dodds began to be swayed against the Nazis by attacks against U.S. citizens who failed to give the Nazi salute as they casually watched parades. Ambassador Dodd said he had hoped to find decent people around Hitler. He then wrote, “I am horrified to discover that the whole gang is nothing but a horde of criminals and cowards.” The State Department reacted to comments such as those by criticizing Dodd. Martha was the slowest to change, saying that she was in the early days intoxicated with the spectacle of the Nazis. “I Heiled as vigorously as any Nazi.”

The trial of five people accused of the Reichstag fire, which Hitler blamed on Communists despite the evidence to the contrary, has a central place in the book. Marinus van der Lubbe insisted he was the only person responsible for the fire, but the prosecution presented massive amounts of evidence there had to be several people involved. Only van der Lubbe was convicted, and he was beheaded by guillotine.

The greatest risk to Hitler was internal. One Nazi observed “There is nobody among the officials of the national Socialists party who would not cheerfully cut the throat of every other official in order to further his own advancement. The commander of the SA Ernst Rohm wanted to take control of the military. Hitler responded by publically praising Rohm while beginning to plan for the murder of Rohm and several hundred other SA members in the “Night of the Long Knives” under the code name ” Kolibri,” or “Hummingbird.” Official Nazi reports said there were under a hundred people executed, but other reports were that as many as fifteen thousand were arrested and several hundred disappeared. All doubt the Dodds had about the possibility that Hitler might have a peaceful nature was eliminated as they noted numerous people who had attended various diplomatic functions had been removed by imprisonment or execution. Dodd hoped the murders would outrage the German people and Hitler would be overthrown. Hitler’s power instead increased. No country filed a protest and the populace did not rise in revulsion. Hitler assumed the position of president as well as chancellor when Hindenburg died, and the world was doomed to endure a long and brutal war.

Dodd’s critics in the State Department finally won their quest to have him ousted. Hull sent Dodd a letter in November 1937 saying that Roosevelt was “requesting” that he leave Berlin. Dodd embarked on a tour giving speeches warning of the German threat that brought protests from Germany. Hull responded that Dodd was a private citizen and could say whatever he wanted. Dodd died a hero to many Germans.

I have violated my guideline of keeping reviews to two pages or less. There are enough interesting and important facts described in the book that would fill more pages. I recommend reading the book to learn how much I left out.

Understanding the Palestinian—Israeli Conflict: A Primer

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israeli-conflictThis is the second book I’ve reviewed by Phyllis Bennis, and she uses answers to questions about an issue to present her views. The writing isn’t engaging, and the views are clearly anti-Israel and by extension anti-US, especially in regard to any of George W. Bush’s policies. However, there are many interesting tidbits of history.
 
I did find it somewhat disappointing that there is no discussion of Harry S. Truman’s pivotal role when the UN created the State of Israel. I lost track of the number of times it is mentioned that Israel’s occupation of Palestine violates international law and creates violence. The Palestinians in Israel are citizens, can vote and several Palestinians serve in the Knesset, or parliament. However, the Palestinians are dominantly second class citizens living mostly unemployed and in poverty.

Palestine became part of the British Empire after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Britain was weakened by World War II and pulled back from Israel after the 1947 UN Partition Agreement that designated 55 percent for a Jewish state and 45 percent for a Palestinian Arab state. Jerusalem was to be left as a separate body under International control. The United States moved into the breach when the British pulled back. Israel took over the West Bank, Gaza, and the last of historic Palestine after the 1967 war. Israel had been giving the green light by President Johnson for that war. The areas taken are called the occupied territories. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but controls the lives of residents. There are about a million Palestinians living in the occupied territories with millions more as refugees in neighboring countries. General Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001 and created the “Jordan is Palestine” campaign in 2002.

There are interesting discussions of the Jewish people who make up 80 percent of the population of Israel. About half arrived from Europe, and many of the earlier settlers were Jews who escaped pogroms in czarist Russia. The other half is called the Mizrahi Jews who arrived from diverse origins in Africa, Asia, Spain, and Latin America. Most of this group emigrated from Arab countries.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization or PLO was formed in 1964. Yasir (or Yasser) Arafat untied several factions to become the leader in 1968. The UN recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People” in 1974. The PLO was invited to participate as an observer within the General Assembly. The PLO drafted a “two-state solution” in 1976 that was put before the Security Council. The US vetoed and the resolution. The PLO was significantly weakened by their decision to side with Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Oil-rich Arab countries that had bankrolled them withdrew their support and Palestinians were expelled from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf states. There were secret negotiations between the Israelis and PLO in 1993 that led to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat presided over by President Clinton. The Oslo peace process established the Palestinian Authority (PA), a quasi-governmental body with limited authority.

The intifada or uprising began in 2000 saw resistance in the form of suicide bombers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. The al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade linked to the Fatah organization led by Yasir Arafat began a suicide bombing campaign. Most were in public places such as cafes when. Israel responded by beginning construction of a 24-foot high wall in the western sector of the West Bank. The International Court of Justice ruled the wall to be illegal. The author names some dignitaries who have described Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as “Apartheid,” which was the Afrikaans word for “apartness” or “separate.” Arafat died in 2004, and with him died much of the Palestinian national identity.

The book has little if anything good to say about George W. Bush. The “illegality of the Iraq war” and the negative effect on the entire region is mentioned. Bush also accepted Sharon’s plan to annex the West Bank settlement blocs and repudiate the Palestinian right of return, which the author judges banished the possibility of a solution to the Palestinian—Israeli conflict.

There is an interesting history of Hamas, which is a Palestinian Islamist and nationalist organization. It was basically a Muslim Brotherhood organization that was created in Gaza in 1987 and was soon seen as a competitor of the PLO. It gained support by establishing a network of social welfare agencies including schools, clinics, hospitals, and mosques that provided services to Palestinians. Hamas also targeted Israel for suicide bombings, and Israel has targeted many Hamas leaders for assassination. The author writes that the huge turnout for Hamas in the 2006 election was created by frustration with the status quo and “…was not really a statement of an Islamist social agenda…” Sanctions imposed by the U.S. created a dramatic decline in the already dangerous humanitarian crises. Non-political civilians were and are paying the price for the conflict. The conflict spread to include the Hezbollah in Lebanon with Israel destroying infrastructure and hunting enemy soldiers while Hezbollah began indiscriminate rocket attacks into Israel.

The U.S. has long welcomed Israel as a valued ally in the Middle East, and supports that country with financial, military, and diplomatic aid. Israel is said to receive 25 percent of the entire U.S. foreign aid budget. Israel receives about $4 billion in aid from the U.S. government and another $5 billion in tax-exempt contributions from private citizens. The U.S. has used the veto power in the UN to protect Israel on numerous occasions. Israel is referred to as the “fifty-first state.”

A peace conference to resolve the Palestinian issue was convened in Madrid in 1991 under joint U.S. and Soviet invitation. However, the U.S. was in charge as the Soviet Union was about to collapse. President George H. W. Bush proposed a plan close to the Oslo formula. The negotiations that plodded along for months and years made little if any progress. The process went on into the Clinton administration, and Secretary of State Warren Christopher accepted Israel’s positions.

The lack of a solution is discussed in the later parts of the book. The author believes a comprehensive peace plan would include establishing equal states for Israel and Palestine and include recognition of the right of Palestinians to return to their homes. The Zionist political movement was established to call for creation of a Jewish State. The Zionist slogan was, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Adherence to the idea that Palestine was “a land without a people” continues to be accepted by Israel. They therefore have refused to agree that the Palestinians are entitled to any of the land now occupied.

In answer to the question of whether a Palestinian state would be a threat to Israeli security, it is mentioned that Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons at Dimona in the Negev desert and that it has refused to be a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). There is no discussion of how nuclear weapons could be used in a conflict within the borders of Israel.

The Road to Communism: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union

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This book by Ted Gottfried is in first of a series covering the history of the Soviet (meaning council of workers, peasants and/or soldiers) Union. The illustrations by Melanie Reim are in the style of Soviet propaganda posters. The book is easy to read, and the key players and events are presented in sufficient detail to give someone new to the subject a good introduction to the remarkable series of events that led the Communists to take over Russia and begin the experiment called the Soviet Union that wouldn’t end for nine decades. Other books take many more pages to present the information in greater detail, which is a validation of the value of this book for someone who wants to read the basic facts.

The peasants who produced the food and wealth for the Romanov Empire lived in primitive and deprived conditions. The tsar and aristocrats seldom if ever considered what was in the best interest of the peasants. Tsar Alexander II issued an emancipation proclamation to free the serfs, but the mortgages and interest on the land sales kept them enslaved. Undeveloped infrastructure often resulted in failure to transport what was produced on the farms to markets and population centers, and there were frequent famines while food rotted near where it was produced.

The eventual success of the Communist revolution was possible because no one other than the Communists promised to do anything to ease the suffering of the peasants. The seeds of the revolution began in the early 1800s when Georg Hegel began campaigning to improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden. Karl Marx was one of Hegel’s disciples, and would write The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Marx also wrote Das Kapital, which predicted that revolution had to occur in an industrialized country and would not occur in pre-industrialized Russia. The teachings of Marx became the basis of the views taken by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Zinoviev. Marx suffered from many medical problems and went through many periods of poverty. Only one of his children lived to see the successful Communist revolution. Marx received financial support from Friedrich Engels, whose money came from an inherited mill.

The landowners and aristocrats often lived beyond their means, and by the 1880s many were deeply in debt to the tsars. They were baffled that their university-educated children became radicals dedicated to bringing down the monarchy. Alexander Ulianov was in that category, and was hanged for being part of a plot by the ultraviolent group called “People’s Will” to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Ulianov’s brother was Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, who would change his name to Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had a checkered history as a Communist leader, since he often ran away from conflict. He fled to Finland soon after shooting broke out in the rebellion that began in 1905 and didn’t return to Russia until the revolution was a reality in 1917.

Tsar Nicholas II and his family were protected from assassins in the early 1900s by a well-funded secret police that carried out “a hideous reign of terror” that “spread all over Russia.”

A bizarre part of the Romanov story involved the frantic efforts of the tsarina to save her son Alexis from hemophilia. She found a holy man in Siberia named Rasputin, or the “Mad Monk,” who seemed to be the only person who could control the bleeding. Rasputin gained immense influence over the tsarina. He was soon courted by everyone who wanted some appointment or favor from the tsar and tsarina. He was described as a filthy man who had hypnotic power, and he often demanded sexual favors for his assistance. There was a plot to murder him, and he did not die easily. Food spiked with cyanide seemed to have no effect. A gunshot to the head momentarily stunned him, but he wandered off and didn’t die until he was hit with more bullets.

The book describes the frequent and violent oppression of Jews in Russia based on rumors that Jews were using the blood of Christian children to prepare for the Passover feast. Jews were savagely murdered in pogroms fostered by the reports. Tsar Nicholas used the anger at the Jews to defuse unrest against his regime among the oppressed peasants. By 1917 more than a third of the surviving Jews had left Russia and immigrated to the United States.

The Second Party Communist Congress was held in Brussels in 1903, and Lenin dominated the meeting. He insisted party membership be restricted to professional revolutionaries, and they called themselves Bolsheviks (those of the majority). Those who didn’t agree with the restrictions were called the Mensheviks (those of the minority). The Communists held several congresses, and effectively made little progress. World War I gave them their chance. Millions of poorly supplied Russian soldiers died, and the tsar decided he had to take direct control of the military at the front. That of course took him out of the royal court and gave more power to Rasputin. Crops rotted in the fields because most of the young men who would normally have done the harvesting were dead or still with the army. Protests and troop rebellions were common. Nicholas was forced to abdicate, his brother refused the crown, and three hundred years of Romanov rule ended. The charismatic Kerensky established a provisional government.

The Germans paid Lenin with millions of dollars in gold to destabilize the Russian regime and transported him and thirty-one other radical Russians in a sealed rail car to St. Petersburg. Lenin’s collaboration with the Germans was eventually revealed, and he was forced to escape to Finland. However, Bolshevism was on a steady rise as more and more thousands joined. The Provisional Government faded away and the Bolsheviks took over in an almost bloodless revolution. The tsar and his family would eventually be executed and buried in secret.

The Communists began to be attacked from all sides. Approximately 60,000 Czechs who had volunteered to fight Germany began attacking via the Trans-Siberian Railway. White Russian forces attacked from several fronts. Western countries including the United States landed troops in Russia to oppose the Communists. The Japanese seized Vladivostok. Trotsky organized the Red Army under former tsarist military officers, and they prevailed. Stalin would never forgive Trotsky for enlisting the tsarists, and probably also never forgave him for being credited with winning. Lenin wanted to expand the revolution and ordered Stalin to invade Poland against Trotsky’s advice. The Poles counterattacked and defeated the Reds. Stalin was recalled to Moscow and censured by Lenin. (George Orwell’s fairy story “Animal Farm” is  about how Stalin eventually vilified Trotsky to gain complete control.)

World War I and the civil wars that followed left Russia in a devastated state. The peasants balked at planting crops when they were told they didn’t own the land. Lenin violated Communist principles by granting peasants ownership of their farms. However, famine had already begun. Lenin appealed to the Capitalist nations for food, and it began to arrive. Herbert Hoover organized a massive international relief effort that saved millions of Russians.

Stalin had taken complete control by the time Lenin died in 1924, and millions would die in purges and as slaves in the Gulags during his thirty-year reign.

Why George H. W. Bush Ended Operation Desert Shield in Iraq

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I recently posted a review of the book “Second Chance:  Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower” by Zbigniew Brzezinski in which he gives President George H. W. Bush a “solid B” for his foreign policy performance. However he said that Bush I’s greatest failure was stopping the Persian Gulf War,or “Operation Desert Shield,” before the last twenty divisions of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard were attacked and destroyed. As a result, the Guard was able to crush a Shiite rebellion that followed the withdrawal of collation forces, which allowed Hussein to remain in power. My recollection was that Bush ended the war because that was what was required by United Nations resolutions. I decided this was a subject worth researching, because the decision has had far-reaching foreign policy effects.

The first thing I found in researching the issue was a YouTube video of Bush announcing the end of the war to a joint session of Congress. Most of the over five minute video is of standing ovations by every member of Congress. The longest ovation was for Cheney and Powell for their role for planning and executing the war.

The Persian Gulf War Resolution was adopted by the House of Representatives and Senate January 12, 1991 and authorized the use of U.S. military force against Iraq “pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678.”  That resolution gave Hussein until January 15, 1991 to withdraw from Kuwait. The UN would employ “all necessary means” to liberate Kuwait after that date. In addition to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the resolution specifically mentions the risks of Iraq using weapons of mass destruction. “Whereas, Iraq’s conventional, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs and its demonstrated willingness to use weapons of mass destruction pose a grave threat to world peace…”  “Operation Desert Shield” was the name selected for the operation probably because of the intent to prevent Hussein from expanding his invasion into Saudi Arabia.

The war began on January 16 with heavy bombing and missile strikes. The land war began on February 23 after Iraq set massive fires in Kuwait’s oil fields. The war lasted a mere 100 hours with coalition forces easily and brutally rolling up the badly outmatched Iraq forces.

UN Resolution 686 states that the members would “…bring their military presence in Iraq to an end as soon as possible consistent with achieving the objectives…” Therefore, after Kuwait had been liberated and the Iraqi army was in full retreat, the UN stipulated that hostilities would end. Those were the orders given by Bush I.

An excellent report on the war and why Bush decided to end it when he did clearly states the war was ended in concert with the UN resolutions that were so crucial in arranging the delicate coalition of Arab and other countries to end Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Bush knew that the war had been approved by the UN to end to occupation of Kuwait, and any expansion would result in difficulties for the coalition and perhaps an even bigger war. There was also the question of swinging the balance of power from Iraq to Iran.

History has shown that the failure to take out the last divisions of Hussein’s Republican Guard has had a long lasting and obviously negative effect on the foreign policies of the United States. It is quite easy with the clarity of a rear view mirror to see what should have been done. However, I can’t help but wonder what skilled diplomats, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, would have done or what they would have counseled should have been done if they had been in the position of advising Bush I. Would they have advised ignoring the UN resolutions that had been so skillfully crafted and negotiated that led to the liberation of Kuwait, or would they have been more aggressive and “imperialist” and ordered coalition forces to crush remaining Iraq forces in violation of the UN resolutions. It doesn’t take too much imagination to picture what would have happened in Iraq if the Republican Guard and effectively the government of Iraq had been destroyed. The Shiite uprising would undoubtedly have created a civil war that would, I speculate, make the current instability in Iraq look mild. What would the United States have done then? Would Brzezinski have advised Bush he needed to establish control to fill the vacuum left by the defeat of Hussein?

My rear view mirror assessment of what Bush I did in Iraq was exactly what most diplomats would have recommended, and he would have been criticized even more strongly if he had ignored the intent of UN resolutions and taken out the Iraq government. Too bad things didn’t work out well after his decisions, but I predict things would have been worse absent his decisions.

Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower

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This book presents Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analysis of the three presidential administrations preceding Barrack Obama. Those administrations represents the period after the United States had emerged as the victor of the Cold War and the “…three American presidents were not mere heads of state but the de facto leaders of the world.” Brzezinski was President Carter’s National Security Advisor. One reviewer of the book on Amazon refers to him as “…the finest foreign policy thinker of the past 100 years.” The review selected to present the less than complimentary side say the book presents “…few insights, but two extremely well-written chapters.” The assessments of the three presidents should not be a surprise to someone who has followed Brzezinski. He has been said to have been a prime source of President Obama’s anti-Iraqi war policy.

The author states that the “…emergence as the world’s most powerful state has saddled Washington’s leadership with three central missions…” A truncated version of those missions is: management of central power relationships, containment and termination of conflicts, and addressing inequalities in the human condition. “One superpower, fifteen years, three presidents: that in a nutshell is the focus of this book.”

George H. W. Bush came into office with an extensive background in foreign affairs, and was by far the most diplomatically skillful of the three presidents. He proved to be a superb crisis manager, but the author judges he ultimately failed as a strategic visionary. His greatest failure was not continuing the first Iraq War to remove Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. That allowed a Shiite rebellion to be crushed and Hussein to remain in power. He was said to have brilliantly and successfully dismantled the Soviet empire and cut down Hussein’s excessive ambitions, but exploited neither. (I have researched the UN resolutions that resulted in ending the Iraq War and dispute Mr. Brzezinski’s assessment as will be detailed in a blog posting.)

Bill Clinton had no experience and was focused almost exclusively on domestic affairs. He is described as “…the brightest and most futuristic, be he lacked strategic consistency…” His focus was globalization, although his critics called it “globaloney.” The foreign policy meetings held during his time in office were described as having little structure. It was said an observer would not have been able to guess that Clinton was the president and not just another person participating in the discussions. His effectiveness in all areas “…suffered from the president’s declining capacity to inspire and lead because of his personal difficulties…”

Clinton is especially criticized for his poor record of dealing with North Korea, India, and Pakistan in their development of nuclear weapons. Sanctions against Iran made it virtually impossible to have open relations with that country. Expansion of NATO and admission of China into the World Trade Organization are listed as Clinton successes. The Senate dealt Clinton and Gore a defeat when it voted 95 to 0 to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol is described as being the “whipping boy” for White House skeptics about the soundness of science in the global warming predictions.

The precipitous withdrawal of forces after the “Black Hawk Down” event encouraged those who believed the United States to be weak. However, the intense bombing campaign by NATO against Serbians sent a different message, as did the mistaken bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. Clinton also approved bombing Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. His Middle East policy drifted from fair to lopsided in favor of Israel which resulted in worse Israeli-Palestinian relations than when he took office. He “…did not leave a historically grand imprint on the world.” His autobiography of over a thousand pages devotes only a few pages to foreign policy.

George W. Bush began with restrained foreign policy. He is described as having “…strong gut instincts but no knowledge of global complexities and a temperament prone to dogmatic formulations.” He dramatically changed from almost completely delegating foreign policy immediately after the 9/11 attacks. His advisors convinced him he was the “…commander in chief of ‘a nation at war’.” He was characterized as arrogant in his approach to foreign policy. The invasion of Iraq is described as his “original sin” that resulted in damage to the nation’s reputation throughout the Middle East and helped encourage the formation of al Qaeda. The author writes that “…the war has caused calamitous damage to America’s global standing…(and) has been a geopolitical disaster.” The actions have divided allies and united  enemies. The fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found caused worldwide distrust. The author can’t help but contain his glee in one regard. “Perhaps the war’s only saving grace is that it made Iraq the cemetery of neocon dreams.”

The book provides a summary of world events leading up and during the fifteen years that is the focus. There are also thumbnail sketches of the key advisors to each of the three presidents. The author can’t resist making light of Ronald Reagan and the “fairy tale” of “an Evil Empire seeking global dominion.” He also disagrees strenuously that Reagan was the architect of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and mentions numerous other people who had, in his opinion, a larger role. The Solidarity movement in Poland led to upheavals in Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Gorbachev was seen as a key player because he allowed political dissent.

The thinking of the author and assessment of the three presidents is mostly focused on the differences between the globalization approach followed by Clinton and the neoconservative doctrine adopted by George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. I’m confident that many so-called “neoconservatives,” including Charles Krauthammer, would disagree with the author’s declaration that “It was essentially an updated version of imperialism and was not primarily concerned with new global realities or novel social trends.” My recollection of the aftermath of 9/11 is radically different than that of the author. He writes that the fear of terrorism that was created “…began to verge on social intolerance, especially toward those whose ethnic origins or appearance could be viewed as giving grounds for suspicion.”

There is interesting information about the well-funded foreign policy lobbies.“The most active of these have been the Israeli-American and Cuban-American lobbies, both of which have the resources to make a difference in congressional fund-raising and command large electoral support in two major states, New York and Florida.”

The final chapter leads by describing “…Bush I was the policeman…Clinton was the social welfare advocate…(and) Bush II was the vigilante…” The “report card” gives Bush I a solid B, Clinton and uneven C, and Bush II a failed F. The author then predicts there will be a second chance if “…the next president (is) aware that the strength of a great power is diminished if it ceases to serve an idea…to the aspirations of politically awakened humanity.”