Let us try to sort out the terms that are now being applied to the newly discovered wartime atrocities found north of Kiev, that term neutral in that it remains problematic whether these events of Russian troops killing civilians, executing them after they are tied behind their backs, is to be treated as a war crime or even a genocide which is what Zelensky says is the case because the Russians are out to eliminate Ukraine as a people. Biden regards them merely as war crimes and regards Putin as a butcher and a war criminal and wants independent authorities to put on trial those who are responsible. Those events of killing civilians are vile and horrendous and certainly to be condemned, but whether to try them is a good question. Today, we say that killing civilians is a war crime because it does not fulfill a military objective. In similar fashion, it is considered a violation of the rules of warfare not to execute prisoners of war and expect combattants to either be wearing a uniform or some insignia or, at the least, be enrolled in a military so that the person is not regarded as a terrorist. But these restrictions only apply to the defeated. Japanese commanders were executed for having mistreated prisoners of war and Germans for having used slave labor camps. But the victors get scot free. Gen. Curtis LeMay was not prosecuted for leveling Japanese cities, the bombing of civilians treated as collateral damage while artillery aimed at civilians is regarded, now as then, as culpable. You could argue that hurting the morale of civilian targets is a military goal, but in that case Russians are now engaged in hurting morale by killing people and so should not be regarded as a war crime.
Read MoreWar By The Book
Some wars are those of necessity in that a civilization is in danger of perishing even if the odds of persevering are slim. That was the case in the Second World War and with the War between the Greeks and the Persians in the Fifth Century B. C. and also, I think, with the Spanish Armada, which was out to destroy what the Protestant Reformation had created. Most wars are less so in that a negotiated peace could have gotten most war aims without the need for carnage. The colonies could have worked out a way to remain tied to Great Britain if Parliament had been willing to negotiate with Benjamin Franklin, the reluctant revolutionary. The North could have swallowed an independent Confederacy, leaving it to its cruelty and rural idiocy while it remained dependent on Northern capital and industry, which in fact is what happened for the hundred years that followed the end of the American Civil War. The Spanish American War was unnecessary for the United States to take over the declined Spanish Empire as part of its economic sphere of influence, sometimes deciding to keep territories, as in Puerto Rico, or give them up, as in Cuba, or hold them only for a half century, as was the case with the Philippines. The logic of the geo-political order trumps the need for war. The same is the case with Ukraine. What appears in newspapers in the past few days are limited Russian war aims--a Ukraine pledge not to join NATO and the annexation into Russia by some eastern Ukraine provinces--could have been agreed to by negotiation before the war started were Putin willing to give up or even defer trying to reconstitute the Russian Empire at the time of Catherine the Great. But some leaders are itching for a fight and we think that prudent leaders are the ones who are reluctant to wager the stakes of war, that you might lose your seat at the table and not just the stakes that had been anted up.
The war of Russia on Ukraine can be understood as a war to rectify the borders of what had happened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, just like the border wars that occurred when Yugoslavia did in the 1990’s. But those were just ethnic conflicts that got out of hand because concentration camps and ethnic cleansing sullied the point by introducing these matters in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. Putin, on the other hand, was to rectify back to the Eighteenth Century and declared war to do so when that had not been necessary to achieve his major objectives. So Biden decided to take sides in the war very vigorously but without shedding American blood on the grounds that Putin had gone to war in the first place. The war itself was the casus belli for taking sides when Biden could have said that let Putin take Ukraine in that it was outside of the Western sphere of influence even though Ukraine was more culturally allied to Europe. But Biden did not let that pass and so has applied the measures available--arms shipments and economic warfare-- to counter Putin. It is clear that either Biden or Putin is the winner, never mind whatever happens to Zelensky and his people.
How do you keep up this war or any war in a way that is responsible and judicious, which means risking not too much to make sure as to command the resources that will allow a side to win. FDR managed he war wisely, by general accounts, because he did not panic but thought that time was on his side in that his ever increasing arms and mobilization would work to create overwhelming force and that the only danger was that the American people might lose heart and give up on the sacrifices, though the protection of two oceans meant that the domestic front was never seriously threatened. The domestic front was pretty normal, prosperous, in fact, even though casualties mounted. FDR made clear to his people that they should not be distracted from his war aims. It was not a war to protect the British Empire nor a war to rescue the Jews. It was an alliance against Fascism and not to repel Stalinism. FDR was, therefore, careful and circumspect, carefully marshaling his resources and avoiding disruptive matters.
Biden is following this circumspect manner. He is not overly ambitious, not suggesting that Putin will fall (until yesterday), even though many commentators were saying that Putin’s fall is now inevitable. Putin used assistance to overcome Ukraine as he could while not escalating the chips on the table by unlimbering the Western arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that being the hole card that Putin may or may not keep in reserve. All in all, Biden is playing by the book in that he minimizes risk and consults his allies on every forward move. That is supposedly the right way to wage war, even though some exceptional politicians, like Lincoln, was dramatic in shaking things up to reshuffle the deck as when he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, but that was also a considered move to mobilize the war as one about freedom rather than just union, and only did so after a victory, so that the war was moving towards its endgame even though it really wasn’t yet there, tht waiting for the continued attrition of the Confederate forces. Similarly, D-Day knew that repulsing the invasion of Europe was Hitler’s last chance while a defeat for the Allies on June 6, 1944 meant only that Eisenhower would have to be replaced by a general who could do the trick the next spring-- providing that the Germans did not develop new weapons that could significantly change the war.
Who are the people who could master how to wield a war? It is difficult to say. Monarchists would say that the terms of office for President or Prime Minister are too short so that they have rough experience so as to master their own administrations much less international statecraft. The difference is that politicians who rise in a democracy often have had decades of experience before they achieve the highest rung and so have played many parts and have met enough foreign leaders that they are familiar with handling world events. And so Biden can be thought of as having been seasoned enough to know the playbook he is handling, having been in the Senate for more than thirty years and then as Vice President for eight. But experience is not the best preparation. Lincoln was not experienced. Kaiser Wilhem was experienced but insufficiently circumspect to see the awful nature of a new war. George H. W. Bush was experienced but still got himself into a quagmire where he had to enforce a no fly zone where he was thereby ever vulnerable to Saddam Hussein's missiles and the very experienced people around George W. Bush got themselves in a situation where everybody was firing on Americans. So experience is not the answer even if Biden rests on it but relies even more on judgment to determine how to read the invisible book from which he reads.
So if going by the book is just being careful and deliberate, Biden is measuring up. He has unified NATO so as to shore up his defenses and shipped arms to fight an offense and protected the home front by not putting Americans at risk. He has denounced aggression and it seems to be successful in getting the support of the American people. But none of these matters have been tested in that the Russians have not done something significantly stabilizing? Would Americans rally to the cause if there were serious cyber warfare attacks against the homeland or if Poland was required to answer the Russians for a bit of chemical warfare against Ukraine? It is hard to say, given how weak are the reasons for our war with Russia over Ukraine. After all, it is about just the fact that there was a war at all and that wars engender civilian casualties, which is perhaps not at all a cause for major escalation. The war between democracies and autocracies would seem a pretty thin reed on which to continue a war with damages to our side, especially since most of the war aims,by Putin, which is Ukraine not in NATO and eastern provinces of Ukraine ceded to russia matters that could have been accomplished by negotiation and still available, or so it seems to Zeelensky. Nothing to fight a major war over. So far, Biden playing by the book has been lucky.
Biden said yesterday that He thought Putin did not deserve to stay in power. That was backtracked as meaning that Biden was just responding to seeing the Ukraine refugees in Poland, just as when he said Putin was criminal because of the slaughter of civilians. But commend biden for saying to the American people what he means, which is that Putin is criminal whether or not there is a war crimes tribunal and that, so too, Putin does not deserve to remain as the head of russia given his misbehaviors, and that no one in the west will feel safe if Putin stays in office and so, sooner or not much later, there will be a reckoning about russian leadership. Biden confides to the American people the sense that the American people sense is the truth. But there may be something more hinted at, which is that we are in the end game in the war, that Putin is clearly losing the war, what with hunkering down around Kiev and not trying to defeat it, and bolstering mainly in Ukraine's east. That is why Biden, more aware than the rest of us about the real situation in the Russian armed forces, can be thinking about the future, or when Putin will leave office. He would not be talking about that if Putin’s worst was still ahead. My fear, however, is that Biden is wrong and the worst might be yet to come, however careful has been Biden’s management of this war.
Some wars are those of necessity in that a civilization is in danger of perishing even if the odds of persevering are slim. That was the case in the Second World War and with the War between the Greeks and the Persians in the Fifth Century B. C. and also, I think, with the Spanish Armada, which was out to destroy what the Protestant Reformation had created. Most wars are less so in that a negotiated peace could have gotten most war aims without the need for carnage. The colonies could have worked out a way to remain tied to Great Britain if Parliament had been willing to negotiate with Benjamin Franklin, the reluctant revolutionary. The North could have swallowed an independent Confederacy, leaving it to its cruelty and rural idiocy while it remained dependent on Northern capital and industry, which in fact is what happened for the hundred years that followed the end of the American Civil War. The Spanish American War was unnecessary for the United States to take over the declined Spanish Empire as part of its economic sphere of influence, sometimes deciding to keep territories, as in Puerto Rico, or give them up, as in Cuba, or hold them only for a half century, as was the case with the Philippines. The logic of the geo-political order trumps the need for war. The same is the case with Ukraine. What appears in newspapers in the past few days are limited Russian war aims--a Ukraine pledge not to join NATO and the annexation into Russia by some eastern Ukraine provinces--could have been agreed to by negotiation before the war started were Putin willing to give up or even defer trying to reconstitute the Russian Empire at the time of Catherine the Great. But some leaders are itching for a fight and we think that prudent leaders are the ones who are reluctant to wager the stakes of war, that you might lose your seat at the table and not just the stakes that had been anted up.
The war of Russia on Ukraine can be understood as a war to rectify the borders of what had happened when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, just like the border wars that occurred when Yugoslavia did in the 1990’s. But those were just ethnic conflicts that got out of hand because concentration camps and ethnic cleansing sullied the point by introducing these matters in Europe for the first time since the Second World War. Putin, on the other hand, was to rectify back to the Eighteenth Century and declared war to do so when that had not been necessary to achieve his major objectives. So Biden decided to take sides in the war very vigorously but without shedding American blood on the grounds that Putin had gone to war in the first place. The war itself was the casus belli for taking sides when Biden could have said that let Putin take Ukraine in that it was outside of the Western sphere of influence even though Ukraine was more culturally allied to Europe. But Biden did not let that pass and so has applied the measures available--arms shipments and economic warfare-- to counter Putin. It is clear that either Biden or Putin is the winner, never mind whatever happens to Zelensky and his people.
How do you keep up this war or any war in a way that is responsible and judicious, which means risking not too much to make sure as to command the resources that will allow a side to win. FDR managed he war wisely, by general accounts, because he did not panic but thought that time was on his side in that his ever increasing arms and mobilization would work to create overwhelming force and that the only danger was that the American people might lose heart and give up on the sacrifices, though the protection of two oceans meant that the domestic front was never seriously threatened. The domestic front was pretty normal, prosperous, in fact, even though casualties mounted. FDR made clear to his people that they should not be distracted from his war aims. It was not a war to protect the British Empire nor a war to rescue the Jews. It was an alliance against Fascism and not to repel Stalinism. FDR was, therefore, careful and circumspect, carefully marshaling his resources and avoiding disruptive matters.
Biden is following this circumspect manner. He is not overly ambitious, not suggesting that Putin will fall (until yesterday), even though many commentators were saying that Putin’s fall is now inevitable. Putin used assistance to overcome Ukraine as he could while not escalating the chips on the table by unlimbering the Western arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that being the hole card that Putin may or may not keep in reserve. All in all, Biden is playing by the book in that he minimizes risk and consults his allies on every forward move. That is supposedly the right way to wage war, even though some exceptional politicians, like Lincoln, was dramatic in shaking things up to reshuffle the deck as when he announced the Emancipation Proclamation, but that was also a considered move to mobilize the war as one about freedom rather than just union, and only did so after a victory, so that the war was moving towards its endgame even though it really wasn’t yet there, tht waiting for the continued attrition of the Confederate forces. Similarly, D-Day knew that repulsing the invasion of Europe was Hitler’s last chance while a defeat for the Allies on June 6, 1944 meant only that Eisenhower would have to be replaced by a general who could do the trick the next spring-- providing that the Germans did not develop new weapons that could significantly change the war.
Who are the people who could master how to wield a war? It is difficult to say. Monarchists would say that the terms of office for President or Prime Minister are too short so that they have rough experience so as to master their own administrations much less international statecraft. The difference is that politicians who rise in a democracy often have had decades of experience before they achieve the highest rung and so have played many parts and have met enough foreign leaders that they are familiar with handling world events. And so Biden can be thought of as having been seasoned enough to know the playbook he is handling, having been in the Senate for more than thirty years and then as Vice President for eight. But experience is not the best preparation. Lincoln was not experienced. Kaiser Wilhem was experienced but insufficiently circumspect to see the awful nature of a new war. George H. W. Bush was experienced but still got himself into a quagmire where he had to enforce a no fly zone where he was thereby ever vulnerable to Saddam Hussein's missiles and the very experienced people around George W. Bush got themselves in a situation where everybody was firing on Americans. So experience is not the answer even if Biden rests on it but relies even more on judgment to determine how to read the invisible book from which he reads.
So if going by the book is just being careful and deliberate, Biden is measuring up. He has unified NATO so as to shore up his defenses and shipped arms to fight an offense and protected the home front by not putting Americans at risk. He has denounced aggression and it seems to be successful in getting the support of the American people. But none of these matters have been tested in that the Russians have not done something significantly stabilizing? Would Americans rally to the cause if there were serious cyber warfare attacks against the homeland or if Poland was required to answer the Russians for a bit of chemical warfare against Ukraine? It is hard to say, given how weak are the reasons for our war with Russia over Ukraine. After all, it is about just the fact that there was a war at all and that wars engender civilian casualties, which is perhaps not at all a cause for major escalation. The war between democracies and autocracies would seem a pretty thin reed on which to continue a war with damages to our side, especially since most of the war aims,by Putin, which is Ukraine not in NATO and eastern provinces of Ukraine ceded to russia matters that could have been accomplished by negotiation and still available, or so it seems to Zeelensky. Nothing to fight a major war over. So far, Biden playing by the book has been lucky.
Biden said yesterday that He thought Putin did not deserve to stay in power. That was backtracked as meaning that Biden was just responding to seeing the Ukraine refugees in Poland, just as when he said Putin was criminal because of the slaughter of civilians. But commend biden for saying to the American people what he means, which is that Putin is criminal whether or not there is a war crimes tribunal and that, so too, Putin does not deserve to remain as the head of russia given his misbehaviors, and that no one in the west will feel safe if Putin stays in office and so, sooner or not much later, there will be a reckoning about russian leadership. Biden confides to the American people the sense that the American people sense is the truth. But there may be something more hinted at, which is that we are in the end game in the war, that Putin is clearly losing the war, what with hunkering down around Kiev and not trying to defeat it, and bolstering mainly in Ukraine's east. That is why Biden, more aware than the rest of us about the real situation in the Russian armed forces, can be thinking about the future, or when Putin will leave office. He would not be talking about that if Putin’s worst was still ahead. My fear, however, is that Biden is wrong and the worst might be yet to come, however careful has been Biden’s management of this war.
The End Game for the War
History is unkind to the people who lose wars. Rather than go back to their corners and renew a war after having become refreshed, as happened for hundreds of years between France and England, regimes and monarchs are overthrown, something new happened after the English Civil War: the King was executed. That had not been the original war aim of Parliament. The French king was killed after the French Revolution and the French Emperor deposed after the Franco-Prussian War and a new republic was established. The Kaiser lost the First World War and he was deposed as well, and there was regime change in Germany, all unexpected, and Hitler was a suicide when the Allies were taking control of Germany even though Claus von Staufffenberg thought that if he had successfully assassinated Hitler a year before, Germany might still have retained some German conquests in a subsequent negotiation with the Allies. Not likely, given the carnage of the war. Some revenge was necessary. Germany had gotten off lightly after World War I with reparations as had the reparations paid by France to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War.
Read MoreA New Kind of War
There is a revolution going on in how to fight wars. Putin is fighting the old way with tanks and troops while Biden is fighting the new way with economic pressure and weapons sent to his proxy war against Russia. That means Putin’s old war can occupy territory and even decapitate Ukraine’s government but at such a cost to the Russian economy that Russia will be either permanently enfeebled or require an internal revolution to make it right, and that might finally put an end to the schloratic Russian Empire, which would be an improvement on the geopolitical map. But first step back before rushing to the future.
Read MoreWhy Not Partition?
Partitioning a country into its parts because ethnic and social differences make it difficult for them to work together is a distasteful but not a bad resolution to the problem and so not a failure but a creative way to solve international relations. The partition of Poland in the late 18th century put up a bd precedent because Poland got nothing from it while Prussia, Russia and Austria gobbled up its pieces, the nation not restored for another hundred years when, by that time, Poland as a civilization had industrialized and developed a domestic, Polish, literary culture, whose roots went back to the time of the scientific revolution. Think instead of more successful partitions. Slovakia and thee Czech Republic separated more or less amicably in the nineties and the largest and historically most significant partition was between India and pakistan, however many people died during the separation, Both are better off following their independent entities, Pakistan as authoritarian and turned west so as to dominate Afghanistan, while India has flourished asa democratically oriented and industrious society with Hindu domination. You cannot say it would have been better off if Hindus and Muslims had tried to go it together rather than each alone in the years since independence in 1947.
In fact, the two great events that shaped the United States can best be understood as a successful and an unsuccessful partition. Unlike the French and English revolutions, where the opposing sides were not centered in regions, the American revolution was an attempt to partition its American colonies from the homeland because they were far away even though the two were similar in politics and culture. It did not have to be if British politicians were more accommodating to Ben Franklin, the de facto Secretary of State of the colonies. The other and unsuccessful partition was the attempt by the Southern states to separate from the Union. The Southern states were a contiguous area shared by geography, economic and social institutions although putatively also shared with the North in Republican principles. The failure to partition allowed the North to allow the South for a century more in its rural idiocy until the North intervened so as to make it again a single country though Southern politics persist in its long lasting tendency to subvert voting rights and allow police violence. Still a bit partitioned.
Consider now the current situation with Ukraine. After the western takeover of Ukraine in 2014, Obama said to Putin that there would need to set up a peace conference to regularize new borders. But Putin has been unwilling to do so because the West will pull a fast one or because Putin prefers to act unilaterally so as to establish that he is just acquiring what he always had, not on the sufferance of the West, and with some good reason, in that Ukraine had been part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years, back to the twelfth century when Russians and Kievians founded it. So, when three days ago, Putin took over the two eastern regions of Ukraine as part of Russia, I thought this a masterstroke in that it meant he was avoiding sending two armies south to encircle Kiev and decapitate the Ukraine government and so set up a full scale war which Putin might quickly win and then sit tight to wait for everyone to calm down. But, instead, Putin was biting only what he could chew: only the part of Ukraine that is heavily backed by Russian speaking and Russian favorable residents, (Jen Psaki said yesterday that an invasion aimed at Kiev from the north has not been ruled out.)
Regarding that invasion from the south as a war rather than recognizing it as a de facto partition was a mistake on Biden’s part, excused only in that he had so clothed himself in the flag of sovereignty and was considering only events of a decade old. But, as usual, Biden has been cagey. He said yesterday the level of sanctions against Putin would depend on what Putin did, and how much further his troops went west. Alittle, fewer sanctions and more a lot of sanctions, knowing that the sanctions would not create severe pain to the Russian regime unless they were well extended. So, in effect, Biden is offering a peace treaty that will not be called that: an agreement on how far into Ukraine the Russians will go so as to partition the east from the rest of a more fully westernized area of Ukraine.
Nothing much happened today. The United States Defense Department insists that Putin is preparing for war but Putin has not invaded the two regions in eastern Ukraine it has declared as independent and so triggered Biden to say tha the invasion had begun and required American and European sanctions. The journalistic commentaries of all these events have been very poor, reduced to saying Putin must be a madman, the only exception Thomas Friedman who noted that here are false moves by the West, particularly the movement of NATO to Russia’s border in 1997, which I thought was wisee even if belligerent because it meant the eastern part of Europe would be second class citizens, subject to Russian influence, rather than part of the European enterprise. I still don;t know why everyone can’t calm down and then draw boundaries and mutual guarantees. That is what peacemaking is about.
A Primer on the Russia-Ukraine War
When, in the first decade of the Eighteenth Century, Peter the Great had ships built for him by Holland, a great maritime sea power, he could take on what was then regarded as the Swedish Empire. Peter succeeded in his Great Northern War and the Swedish Empire was no more. Ever since, for three centuries now, Russia has tried by war to alter the divide between Europe and Russia, sometimes to the East and sometimes to the West. The main division remains the one between Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe, ones that experienced the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and rapid industrialism, to the more scloratic processes that define Russia. The standard division draws a line where the small countries on the eastern edge of the Baltic are within Europe: Lithuania Catholic as was when it was in confederation with the Poles since the Middle Ages; Latvia Protestant, a remnant of that Swedish Empire; and Estonia, because it's people were sent by the Soviets to that territory, atheist then and probably Russian Orthodox today. Poland was the unfortunate buffer between the Russians and Soviets on the East, to which they shared a common boundary, and the equally hated Germans to the West, also with shared boundaries. The southern flank of Eastern Europe was distrusted to the Soviets and the Russians, they always claimed to dominate those territories. Madelyn Albright, who was Clinton’s Secretary of State, was fully aware that the setbacks in Russian power would be temporary after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and tried to arrange measures that would make the division between Russia and Europe more permanent and in accord with the traditional division between the two. Albright had the Baltic states and Romania tied into NATO, which meant that an attack upon one was to be regarded as an attack against all, and so the military integrity of the continent was associated with the economic ties that had been created in the European Union. That would allow whatever storm arose when new more belligerent Russia arose, which happened with Vladimir Putin. Putin always regarded the movement of NATO to its Russian boundary as hostile even if NATO and Biden regard it as a defensive alliance, though the only one there is to defend against is Russia, NATO sending troops to Afghanistan which it regarded as having been an attack against the United States. Defensive versus offensive doesn’t mean much.
Read MoreThe Boxing Match Between Ukraine and Russia
The curious thing behind the ramping up of a possible war between Russia and Ukraine is how the important actors have all limited their options, either overtly or implicitly or by secret agreement, so as to create a kind of Marquis of Queensbury set of rules about how the contest will proceed. The United States has taken off the table sending American troops to Ukraine, which means that they will have to fight it out alone against the very formidable Russian military. Biden suggests that the Russians will take serious casualties, but could probably occupy the entire country, and so will rely on economic pressures to make the russians relent or arrive at some settlement, perhaps with an increased area under Russian control, or economic pressure so significant that russia has to accept a humiliating surrender, which would not make russia look well to China, which Biden believes is the real reason for Russian swagger so that it does not become a very minor antagonist to China. NATO has also stipulated its own self control. It will send munitions to Ukraine but will beef up the military only in the nations already affiliated to NATO to insure that the conflict doesn’t spill over into the Eastern front NATO members. Even more important are the unstated constraints on Russia and the United States. There is no discussion at all about nuclear weapons even given the fact that Russia and the United States have the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world. It seems that nuclear weaponry between the two is passe, and reading the arrangements that ended the Cold War, it seems that the general in charge of the Soviet Rocket Forces are selected or approved of by the United States and so I presume that the guy to be in charge of NORAD is vetted by Moscow. Also, I presume that there are secret agreements between Russia and the United States as to limits on cyberspace. Neither will pull down the electrical grid of the other even if the two will be mischievous and try to get into secret codes of the other so as to spy on one another.
Read MoreWhat's Next?
When dealing with politics or whatever is large enough as a social matter to be considered history, those of us who are viewers or observers or whatever is the audience to politics and history always await what will happen next, knowing that, except for people who are alarmists or very certain about how well off they may be when the world ends, there is no end of new things, just like in a soap opera, where characters emerge and reemerge if the audience likes them or pass from the scene to new figures and their problems. In politics, there is always a new campaign, a new Young Turk, a superannuated figure who lingers on to become President, and new configurations whereby Jews and Blacks and women and Gays can become part of the political elites as well as the political masses. There are new issues, like climate change, and older issues, like abortion or voting rights, that get revived with a slightly different spin. Politics is like going to a carnival where you pick out which game you wish to take part in. The only cost to the game is the willingness of time and attention to deal with it, everyone is a master strategist or a tout who predicts which horse will win. Consequently, the viewers or observers are always trying to construct the succession of events as comprising a story so as to make sense of those events. What candidate will peak too early (like Kamala Harris) or just hold on, like Joe Biden, when, in fact, Biden was always ahead in the popularity contest even if he did not make headway in the delegate votes until after the South Carolina Primary. Nixon thought a candidate should peak just right while Nixon thought you go full out all the time. So, at the moment, a viewer like me thinks politics is at a lull, the dust up over Afghanistan over, waiting for whether Biden can pull off his reconciliation and infrastructure bills, neither voting rights or police violence going to amount to much, Biden a hero if both of the major bills pass and a good chance for him to retain congressional control after the midterms, while losing both will make him regarded as a failed President, and the press uncertain what to make of it if Biden gets infrastructure but has to be very scaled down to get reconciliation of what has now been called social infrastructure, which means the extension of entitlements, which is always the goal of Liberal politics. My theory is that there are lulls and moments of high drama, as when John McCain sustained the Affordable Care Act over President Trump’s objection, partly out of policy and partly out of pique. Isn’t that usually the case?
Read MoreHistorical Mysteries
An historical mystery arises when historians consider why events happened and, after considering all the forces that are at work, there is no satisfactory explanation for why the event or events took place. A good example of an historical mystery is the outbreak of World War I, a topic rigorously investigated from the overly ample materials of the circumstances and events of what is called The July Crisis that occurred after Prince Ferdinand (and his wife) had been assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 and had for some reason precipitated a World War from which we might say we did not all recover until the Soviet Union collapsed and Germany was reunited in the late 1980’s. How had this apocalypse, none of its member states believing it would happen (Germany mistakenly thinking it would be a short war), had nevertheless occurred?
Read More"The Third Man"
Nineteen Forty-Nine was a great year for movies, one that earned the ad of a decade later that “movies were better than ever”. Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet” won the Best Oscar, the awards trying to believe that the most quality movies were also the most popular, but the year also included the musical “On the Town”, a blockbuster musical by the young people of Comden and Green and Leonard Bernstein, “Pinkie”, a movie about a mulatto girl trying to live in the South that showed some of the sorrows of segregation, “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”, which was a story as tightly drawn as a Chaucer story, and even the awful “My Friend Irma” remarkable only because it introduced Martin and Lewis, who stole the show with Martin’s suave deliveries, including his signature ability to caress the microphone, and Jerry Lewis, who was not so much imitating a cripple as much as imitating a nerd before there was such a term. It seems that the movies had moved on beyond World War II to pick up the new issues of the post-war world, such as suburbanization in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” which was produced in 1948, and even in the 1949 and wonderfully comic “I Was a Male War Bride”, where the women were seen as independent minded and responsible and sensible. Cary Grant was the comic foil to Ann Southern’s straight man, the opposite of Burns and Allen, a duo from the era of the Thirties, where Allen played the ditzie foil. Movies were into social issues, such as the overdrawn “Gentleman’s Agreement”. The weekly movie goer didn’t need to read the papers. Those who tuned into the dream factory had plenty of real issues to chew on. The major studios were at work with socially significent stuff, not just with film noir detective and crime stories that portrayed dark emotions shot mostly at night, such as “The Postman Rings Twice” or “Sorry, Wrong Number”, the genre seeming profound because the protagonists were quirky as well as bad. (But, then again, “Richard III” would qualify as a film noir piece.)
Read More