Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

An Obituary

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In the whole of history few people got as bad a name as Stalin, the Soviet dictator who died yesterday sixty-eight years ago, did. That, however, was not always the case. For those of you who are interested, I’ve copied the New York Times obituary, published two days after the dictator’s death. Word by word, without adding or omitting anything. I suggest you pay attention to what it says and, above all, to what it does not say.

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Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State

By The New York Times, March 7, 1953

Joseph Stalin became the most important figure in the political direction of one-third of the people of the world. He was one of a group of hard revolutionaries that established the first important Marxist state and, as its dictator, he carried forward its socialization and industrialization with vigor and ruthlessness.

During the Second World War, Stalin personally led his country’s vast armed forces to victory. When Germany was defeated, he pushed his country’s frontiers to their greatest extent and fostered the creation of a buffer belt of Marxist-oriented satellite states from Korea across Eurasia to the Baltic Sea. Probably no other man ever exercised so much influence over so wide a region.

In the late Nineteen Forties, when an alarmed world, predominantly non-Communist, saw no end to the rapid advance of the Soviet Union and her satellites, there was a hasty and frightened grouping of forces to form a battle line against the Marxist advance. Stalin stood on the Elbe in Europe and on the Yalu in Asia. Opposed to him stood the United States, keystone in the arch of non-Marxist states.

Stalin took and kept the power in his country through a mixture of character, guile and good luck. He outlasted his country’s intellectuals, if indeed, he did not contrive to have them shot, and he wore down the theoreticians and dreamers. He could exercise great charm when he wanted to. President Harry Truman once said in an unguarded moment:

“I like old Joe. Joe is a decent fellow, but he is a prisoner of the Politburo.”

But the Stalin that the world knew best was hard, mysterious, aloof and rude. He had a large element of the Oriental in him; he was once called “Ghengis Khan with a telephone” and he spent much of his life nurturing the conspiracies that brought him to power and kept him there.

Opinion of Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s brilliant and defeated adversary, regarded him as an intellectual nonentity who personified “the spirit of mediocrity” that impregnated the Soviet bureaucracy. Lenin, who valued Stalin highly as a party stalwart, characterized him as “crude” and “rough” and as a “cook who will prepare only peppery dishes.”

But those who survived the purges hailed Stalin as a supreme genius.

Although he remained an enigma to the outside world to the very end of his days, Stalin’s role as Russia’s leader in the war brought him the admiration and high praise of Allied leaders, including President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. And, indeed, only a man of iron will and determination like Stalin’s could have held together his shattered country during that period of the war when German armies had overrun huge portions of Russian territory and swept to the gates of Moscow, Leningrad and the Caucasus. Like Churchill in England, Stalin never faltered, not even at moments when everything seemed lost.

When most of the Government machinery and the diplomatic corps were moved to Kuibyshev in December, 1941, in expectation of the imminent capture of Moscow, Stalin remained in the Kremlin to direct the operations that finally hurled the Nazi hordes from the frontyard of the capital. His battle orders and exhortations to the Russian armies and people to persevere in the fight contributed immensely to final victory. Repeatedly, Churchill referred to him in Parliament as Russia’s “great warrior.”

War Role Paramount

With the turn of the tide against the Germans, Stalin proclaimed himself marshal of the Soviet Union and later generalisimo. Surrounded by a galaxy of brilliant generals, whose names will go down in history as among the greatest of Russia’s military leaders, Stalin was portrayed in the Soviet and foreign press as the supreme commander responsible for over-all strategy. To what extent this was true will have to be determined by the future historian, but that his role in the conduct of the war was paramount is undeniable.

The energy and will power he displayed both before and during the war confirmed the justification for his name, for Stalin in Russian means “man of steel,” a nom de guerre he adopted early in his revolutionary career. Long before he dreamed of becoming the supreme autocrat of Russia he had displayed the steel in his character as a political prisoner under the Czarist regime. A fellow prisoner of that period gave an illustration of Stalin’s grit. This was in 1909, in the prison at Baku. In punishment of rioting by the prisoners, the authorities ordered that they be marched in single file between two lines of soldiers who proceeded to shower blows upon them with rifle butts. With head high, a book under his arm, Stalin walked the gantlet without a whimper, his face and head bleeding, his eyes flashing defiance. It was the kind of grit he demanded from others, the kind that helped save Russia from Nazi conquest and domination. His experience under the Czarist regime and his Asiatic character taught him how to treat political opponents.

In his relations with the Allied powers during the war and in his diplomacy before and after the war Stalin won the reputation of a grim realist.

Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, later to become famous under his revolutionary name of Joseph Stalin, was born in the Georgian village of Gori Dec. 21, 1879.

His father was an impoverished and drunken shoemaker who made him sullen and resentful by regular beatings. His mother, Ekaterina, a peasant’s daughter, was a woman of singular sweetness, patience and strength of character who exercised great influence on her son. She called him Soso (Little Joe) and lived to see him dictator of the world’s largest empire.

Attended a Seminary

When he was 6 or 7, young Stalin contracted smallpox, which left him pock-marked for life. Through the efforts of his mother, who worked as a part-time laundress, Stalin entered a church school at 9. He was remembered there as a bright, self-assertive boy who loved argument and who flew into a fury with those who did not agree with him. He remained in this school from 1888 to 1893.

By heroic exertions, Stalin’s mother obtained for him a scholarship in the Theological Seminary of Tiflis, where he studied from October, 1894, to May, 1899. The seminary was a gloomy institution–a cross between a barracks and a monastery–where the students attended endless lectures on theology and spent their few spare moments plotting to obtain forbidden books from the outside.

Stalin was among the worst offenders. An entry against him in the seminary’s book of discipline has been preserved:

“At 11 A.M. I took away from Joseph Djugashvili Letourneau’s ‘Literary Evolution of the Nations.’ Djugashvili was discovered reading the said book on the chapel stairs. This is the thirteenth time this student has been discovered reading books borrowed from the Cheap Library.”

The official reason for Stalin’s expulsion was that for “unknown reasons” he failed to attend examinations. He declared he was expelled for “propagating Marxism.”

According to the results of a national study released in The Publication 43% of all females 18 to 59 years old, suffer from purchase cialis online some type of mental illness, almost 45% to 75% with moderate to severe physical illness and approximately 35% to 45% from some type of psychiatric disorders like anxiety or depression that require modifications in the lifestyle can also help an individual to cure. Few tadalafil lowest price herbal remedies are beneficial in increasing sexual drive. If a person is going through any of the above conditions can be the cause of it. tadalafil viagra The new kind of medicine offers us the new kind of generic levitra online http://amerikabulteni.com/2012/02/07/lezbiyenligim-tercih-diyen-sex-and-the-city-aktristi-buyuk-tartisma-baslatti/ treatment and at the same time low cost treatment. To support himself he obtained a temporary job as night attendant in the Tiflis Observatory, but he was more concerned with his observations at meetings of Tiflis railway workers during the day than of the stars at night. His revolutionary apprenticeship was served as an organizer of the Tiflis transportation workers. He helped stage street demonstrations and distribute revolutionary leaflets.

In April, 1899, he received his first baptism of fire at a demonstration he helped organize in the heart of the city. The demonstration was drowned in blood by Cossacks, and he went into hiding for a year to escape the police. At this time he assumed the nickname of “Koba,” after a hero in Georgian mythology.

On Nov. 11, 1901, he was elected a member of the Tiflis Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, in his native Georgia. A few weeks later he was deputized to go to Batum, a thriving industrial and commercial center, to direct revolutionary activity. In March of that year he led a strike of oil workers in that city.

In April, 1902, he was arrested and lodged in the Batum prison, from which he was transferred to Kutais. While in prison he learned of the meeting in London, in 1903, of the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic party, at which the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks –extremists and moderates–an event that subsequently determined the entire course of the Russian Revolution. Stalin allied himself with Nikolai Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks. Trotsky was against Lenin, although in 1917, after the revolution, he joined Lenin and became his principal lieutenant in the October Revolution and in the establishment of the Soviet regime.

On July 9, 1903, while in prison in Kutais, Stalin was sentenced to three years of exile to Siberia, and in November of that year he was transferred to the bleak, remote village of Novaya Uda. There he received his first letter from Lenin in response to one posing certain questions concerning Bolshevist policy and tactics. The letter confirmed him in his adherence to Lenin, whom he glorified as “Mountain Eagle.” Determined to escape, Stalin made his way safely to Irkutsk at the end of the year. From there he proceeded to Baku, in the Caucasus, where he experienced his second baptism of fire as leader of a strike of oil workers. It was part of a wave of strikes that swept Russia with her defeat by Japan, a wave that was the harbinger of the Revolution of 1905.

Shortly after the outbreak of the general strike which was the key element in the revolution of 1905, Stalin met Lenin for the first time at a party conference in Tammerfors, Finland.

From the Tammerfors conference Stalin returned to his activity in the Caucasus, where on June 26, 1907, on Erivan Square in Tiflis, he directed the celebrated “expropriation” which netted the Bolshevik party 340,000 rubles. There had been other such “expropriations,” but this was the biggest and most dramatic. Formally, Lenin and his associates had frowned upon these acts, but they, nevertheless, accepted the proceeds to help finance the party’s work. In the Erivan Square affair a band of revolutionists directed by “Koba” fell upon a convoy of two carriages carrying Government funds from the railway station to the state bank, and after bombing the Cossack guard escaped with the money, which was sent to Lenin.

Following the “expropriation,” Stalin was arrested and lodged in Bailov fortress, in Baku, where the incident of his running the gantlet of rifle butts took place. Soon thereafter he was exiled for the second time to Solvychegodsk, in Siberia, from which he escaped on June 24, 1909. He returned to Baku to resume his revolutionary activity, but remained at liberty only eight months, when he was again arrested and sent back to Solvychegodsk. From that place he conducted secret correspondence with Lenin and his staff at Bolshevik headquarters in Cracow.

Eager to attend a party conference in Prague, Stalin again escaped and made his way to St. Petersburg, where he was arrested and exiled to Vologda. Once more he escaped and reached St. Petersburg on the day of the notorious massacre of workers in the Lena goldfields in Siberia. In St. Petersburg he helped found Pravda, the official organ of the Bolshevik party, but on the day of its first issue he was arrested and exiled to Narym, in the Urals. On Sept. 1, 1912, he escaped and returned to St. Petersburg to resume the editorship of Pravda. This time he was betrayed by the agent provocateur Malinovsky, who had him arrested together with Jacob Sverdlov, the future first President of the Soviet Union, at a concert given for the benefit of Pravda. Stalin and Sverdlov were exiled to Turuchansk, in Siberia, from which they were taken to the outlying settlement of Kureika, 800 miles north of the Trans-Siberian Railway. After twenty years of revolutionary activity and repeated imprisonments and exilings. Stalin found himself at a dead end. Letters arrived from Lenin, but they seemed very remote and futile. Then came the news of the First World War in 1914, the war that Lenin predicted would bring the downfall of the Russian autocracy and world revolution.

Stalin was transferred to Atchinsk, on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and it was there he first received word of the revolution of March 12, 1917. Almost the very first act of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, in which Alexander Kerensky was at first Minister of Justice and later Premier, was to order the release of all political prisoners. Among the many thousands who profited by this decree signed by Kerensky was Joseph Stalin. He made his way speedily to Petrograd.

On his arrival in Petrograd in March, 1917, Stalin went directly to the office of Pravda, where he was met by V. M. Molotov and Leo Kamenev. Lenin and most of his staff were in Zurich, Switzerland. It was not until April 16, 1917, that Lenin arrived in Petrograd after his famous journey through Germany in a sealed car provided by the German General Staff. The journey lead across Germany to Stockholm and through Finland. A month later Trotsky arrived from America.

Upon his arrival in Petrograd in May, 1917, from the United States, where he had lived for several months, Trotsky lost no time in associating himself with Lenin in his demand for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, conclusion of an immediate peace, a sweeping Socialist program and advocacy of world revolution. From the very beginning of this development Trotsky completely overshadowed Stalin and all others among Lenin’s lieutenants. He became Lenin’s “big stick.”

In the first Council of Commissars, formed upon the formation of the Soviet Government, Stalin was given the modest, obscure post of Commissar of Nationalities. Nevertheless, that post in the hands of Stalin became symbolic and significant, for it was under Stalin as supreme dictator that the Soviet Union, conceived as a multiple state of nationalities, achieved its greatest expansion, territorially and politically.

In the October Revolution Stalin took a relatively modest part. Although his admirers picture him as taking the initiative with Lenin in planning and executing that historic upheaval against the opposition of Trotsky and others in Lenin’s immediate encourage, the minutes of the Central Committee of the party for Oct. 23, two days before the coup d’etat, show clearly that Lenin and Trotsky took the lead in demanding approval of the uprising, while others were either opposed or hesitant. Stalin supported Lenin. On that occasion, the minutes attest, Lenin, angry and defiant over the refusal of his collaborators to approve the plans for the uprising, rose and, pointing to Trotsky, shouted, “Very well, then, he and I will go to the Kronstadt sailors,” meaning that he would summon the sailors of the Baltic Fleet to rise in rebellion against the Kerensky regime. The Baltic Fleet played a leading role in the uprising. Later these same sailors, who had been gloried by Trotsky as “the pride and beauty of the Russian Revolution,” were shot down en masse by Trotsky in their revolt against the Soviet regime in March, 1921.

During the civil war after the Bolshevik revolution Stalin and Trotsky were at loggerheads. This was particularly true during the fighting on the Tsaritsyn and Perm fronts. Repeatedly Trotsky called him to order and on various occasions Lenin had to intervene to make peace between them. The enmity and hatred between Trotsky and Stalin dated from that period.

Already during Lenin’s illness, which lasted about two years, Stalin began preparing for his future leadership of the party and of the Government. This he ultimately achieved by utilizing his new position as general secretary of the party in building a party machine loyal to him.

Member of Triumvirate

After Lenin’s death, authority was vested by the party in the hands of a triumvirate, consisting of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. There were three principal factions in the party, the left, represented by Zinoviev; the right, headed by Rykov and Bukharin, and the center, of which Stalin was regarded as the spokesman. Trotsky, who was ill a good part of the time, so much so that he had been unable to attend Lenin’s funeral, had plans of his own. He felt that ultimately, as Lenin’s chief collaborator, he would inherit Lenin’s mantle.

In the bitter factional polemics that ensued, Stalin played the left against the right and vice versa, and eventually defeated both, as well as Trotsky.

In 1936, during the period of purges, Stalin proclaimed a new Constitution for Russia, with promises of universal secret suffrage, freedom of the press, speech and assembly. It was interpreted to maintain the dictatorship and to stabilize the revolution.

Not since the days of Peter the Great, who sought to westernize Russia by force, had the country witnessed so violent a transformation. In fact, nothing in the history of revolutions could compare with the gigantic social and economic upheaval brought about under Stalin.

In 1929 Stalin began predicting a second world war and avowed that his purpose was to keep Russia clear of the conflict. Despite this policy, with the advent of Hitler to power he joined in collective security measures. He abruptly abandoned his advocacy of collective security in 1939, when he about-faced and signed a mutual nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany.

It led to World War II, into which Russia later was drawn by Hitler’s attack on her. This onslaught forged a Soviet alliance with the West, an alliance that ultimately enlarged the Soviet sphere.

70th Birthday Celebrated

Stalin’s fiftieth and sixtieth birthdays were celebrated, but the press prepared the Soviet public on his sixty-ninth anniversary for the grim reality that years had left their impress even on “the teacher and inspirer of the world proletariat.” Pictures were published showing that Stalin’s hair had whitened. Then on his seventieth birthday in 1949 his anniversary was celebrated in grand fashion.

It was the first occasion in which Stalin had permitted public participation in his private life, and hence little was known about his personal affairs. He married twice. His first wife was Ekaterina Svanidze, who died after a long illness in 1907. They had a son, Jacob, whose fate has been unknown since he became a German prisoner during World War II. In 1919 the Premier married Nadya Alliluyeva, the 17-year-old daughter of his old revolutionary crony, Sergei Alliluyev. She died in 1932 under mysterious circumstances. They had a daughter and a son. The latter, Vassily, is now a lieutenant-general in the Soviet Air Force. All that became known of the daughter was her name, Svetlana, and her intellectual interests.

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Note that neither collectivization, nor the Gulag, are mentioned.

Guest Article: In Defence of Colonialism

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by

R. Hallpike*

One of the certainties, not to say dogmas, of modern culture is that colonialism was very, very wicked. As a result, it requires grovelling apologies from all the nations that were guilty of it. Having observed it at first hand in Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia fifty years ago, this moralistic certainty strikes me as naive and ignorant. Why? I will now explain.

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The situation of Man over the last five thousand years or so has increasingly been one of advanced civilisations, large, complex societies organized into centralized states at one extreme, and small, illiterate tribal societies with very primitive technologies at the other. In this ancient confrontation a frequent course of events was the domination or conquest of the tribal societies by the empires. Nineteenth- and twentieth century European colonialism was a special episode in this history because the contrasts between their scientific, technological, cultural and political development and that of the tribal societies they dominated was the most extreme of all time, The consequences were global.

Tribal societies are small-scale and inward-looking. Based largely on kinship and without political centralization, in them people mix mainly with those they know and strangers are rare. Technology is primitive, economies barely rise beyond the subsistence level, and violence endemic. Each tribe had its own religious rituals and speaks its own particular language which may only have a few hundreds or thousands users. Early states, however, in some cases developed into large, wealthy civilisations and empires, such as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and the Graeco-Roman world, with much more advanced technology, arts, crafts, and architecture, writing, and professional armies. They were also the major centres of inventions that, especially through trade and navigation, spread widely throughout the world. At the other extreme sub-Saharan Africa, despite its size and diversity of cultures, contributed virtually nothing to world civilisation. No writing; no technological inventions; no significant architecture; a generally low level of craftsmanship; and no systems of political or religious thought.

This inequality between what I shall call imperial and tribal cultures became ever greater through developments in Europe. Meaning, the Renaissance and the development of navigation; the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century; the Enlightenment; and the growth of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout these centuries large areas of the world, such as Oceania and Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, and large parts of the Americas remained populated by small tribal societies. Often with high levels of internal and external violence (violence against women specifically included), low levels of technology, and subsistence economies. To be sure, here and there some particularly powerful tribe succeeded in developing into what, for lack of a better term, I shall call a proto-state. However, they too remained at an illiterate and primitive level of culture.

A number of European nations had been trading with Africa and other areas such as the East Indies for centuries: the Portuguese, for example, had reached the coast of West Africa by 1485. But as the nineteenth century proceeded they began colonising these backward areas of the world and, as they did so, imposing a series of revolutionary changes on them. If only because power is always abused, the process involved considerable brutality, oppression and exploitation; but that was part of the price indigenous societies had to pay. The Romans too were brutal, but their rule in Britain resulted in the longest period of peace that country would enjoy until the Tudors.

Come the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The colonisers, having taken over, amalgamated numbers of tribes into larger national units. Complete with centralised government, administrative systems, codes of laws, judicial systems to settle disputes, police and armed forces to maintain order and put down communal violence, and schools to teach literacy and one of the world languages such as English or French. They also introduced currency to facilitate trade and payment of taxes; developed the economy and cash crops; abolished inhuman practices such as slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, and human sacrifice; introduced hospitals and medical services; and built roads, railways, and telecommunications, water projects, irrigation, and sanitation. Not least, missionaries spread one of the world religions, usually Christianity which, like English or French, allowed people to begin sharing a common culture above and beyond that of their limited tribal world.

These revolutionary developments could never have been produced from within the indigenous tribal societies. Instead, they had to be forcibly imposed by outsiders. The motives of the colonisers varied. Some no doubt loved power; others went out to the colonies to become rich; and still others did what they did because they thought they were doing good. But the motivations of the colonisers were irrelevant. Historically speaking, all that counted was the effect in pushing civilisation and causing it to spread.
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Starting at least as far back as Rousseau, there has long been a tradition that idolises “the noble savage,” If only he had been left alone, so the thinking goes, he would have been much happier. Having lived in tribal societies I know that this a fantasy of the intelligentsia. People who would not survive a week if they had to live in these societies as they used to be in pre-colonial days; surrounded by violence, sickness, famine and starvation, the fear of witches and evil spirits, and grinding physical hardship which their primitive technology could not mitigate.

Modern propaganda also sugests that the propensity to enslave defenceless peoples is engrained in the psyche of Westerners. In fact slavery is one of the oldest and most widespread of human institutions. It was normal in much of the Islamic world. Also, and especially, in Africa, where powerful kingdoms such as Dahomey, Ashanti, Benin and Ghana of West Africa earned huge profits by rounding up and selling the European slave-traders what they needed. In East Africa the Arabs and the Ethiopians had been enslaving black Africans since before the time of Christ. In Saudi Arabia, slavery was only abolished in 1962. Especially in the Americas and the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery and colonialism went together. Not so in the 19th when the movement for the abolition of slavery meant that Britain, and eventually other Western nations, used colonial rule as a means of abolishing it.

But there is a further consequence of colonialism which is seldom appreciated. It was only when tribal societies were combined into modern nation states, with law and order, literacy and schooling, and the ability to speak one of the world languages with access to modern communications and technology, that they could finally take their place in the global community of nations and make themselves known to the rest of the world. International aid schemes and health projects in particular would have been quite impossible in societies still at the tribal level of development.

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To sum up,it was colonialism which laid the essential foundations of the modern world of independent nations. The latter could never have come into existence without that prior stage of colonial nation-building. That this revolutionary process involved considerable hardship and cruelty no one doubts. However, that is in the nature of revolutions; in the end, colonialism vastly improved the lives of its subjects. Its demise which started in 1945, was also the first time in history when powerful colonial empires voluntarily gave freedom and independence to their imperial subjects. Often. As it turned out, before they were ready to enjoy it and, as a result, relapsed into anarchy or despotism.

 

* C. R. Hallpike is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He studied anthropology at Oxford and conducted extensive fieldwork in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. He has published many books, including The Foundations of Primitive Thought and Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains, and regards political correctness as the greatest danger in our time to academic research and freedom of thought generally.

 

Happy Anniversary, My Blog

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The first time on which this blog went online was on 9 April 2013 and has never missed a week since. Today’s post is number 250; time to celebrate, I think. My way of doing so will be to re-post a piece I first posted two years ago. Except for the first sentence, which I have deleted, word for word.

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No, my site has not drawn very large numbers of readers and has not developed into the equivalent of the Huffington Post. And no, I do not do it for profit; though at times I was tempted by offers to open the site to advertising, in the end I rejected them all. As a result, never did I receive a single penny for all the work I have been doing (normally, about two hours per week). More, even: since I am not very computer literate, I rely on my stepson, Jonathan Lewy, to run the site for me. But for him it would not have been possible. So let me use this opportunity to thank him from the bottom of my heart.

What I have received and am receiving is feedback. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Some people have used the appropriate button on the site to say what they think of my work or simply in order to get in touch. Others suggested that they write for me or else responded to my request that they do so. Others still have asked, and received, my permission to repost my work on their own sites. A few have even taken the trouble to translate entire articles into their native languages. Except for a few yahoos who ranted and swore, almost all my contacts with the people in question, many of whom were initially complete strangers, have been courteous, informative, and thought-provoking. Thank you, again, from the bottom of my heart.

Most of the ideas behind my posts are derived from the media. Others have to do with my personal experiences; others still, such as the series on Pussycats, have to do with the research I am currently doing or else were suggested by various people. Perhaps most important of all, I often use my posts as what Nietzsche used to call Versuche. By that he meant attempts to clarify his thoughts and see where they may lead. The most popular posts have been those which dealt with political and military affairs. Followed by the ones on women and feminism, followed by everything else. Given my background and reputation as a longtime professor of military history and strategy, that is not surprising.

At one point I tried to enlist the aid of a friend to have the blog translated into Chinese and make my posts available in that language too. No luck; I soon learnt that the Great Chinese Firewall did not allow them to pass. Why that is, and whether my work has fallen victim to some kind of dragnet or has been specifically targeted I have no idea. Thinking about it, the former seems more likely; to the best of my knowledge I have never written anything against China. But one never knows.

That brings me to the real reason why I write: namely, to exercise my right to freedom of thought. And, by doing so, do my little bit towards protecting it and preserving it. My heroes are Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. The former because he has exposed a few of the less decent things—to put it mildly—out dearly beloved governments have been saying and doing in our name. The latter, because he has shown how vulnerable all of us are to Big Brother and called for reform. Both men have paid dearly for what they have done, which is another reason for trying to follow in their footsteps as best I can.

Freedom of speech is in trouble—and the only ones who do not know it are those who will soon find out. The idea of free speech is a recent one. It first emerged during the eighteenth century when Voltaire, the great French writer, said that while he might not agree with someone’s ideas he would fight to the utmost to protect that person’s right to express them. Like Assange and Snowden Voltaire paid the penalty, spending time in jail for his pains. Later, to prevent a recurrence, he went to live at Frenay, just a few hundred yards from Geneva. There he had a team or horses ready to carry him across the border should the need arise. Good for him.

To return to modern times, this is not the place to trace the stages by which freedom of speech was hemmed in in any detail. Looking back, it all started during the second half of the 1960s when it was forbidden to say, or think, or believe, that first blacks, then women, then gays, then transgender people, might in some ways be different from others. As time went on this prohibition came to be known as political correctness. Like an inkstain it spread, covering more and more domains and polluting them. This has now been carried to the point where anything that may offend anyone in some way is banned—with the result that, as Alan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind has shown, in many fields it has become almost impossible to say anything at all.
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Let me give you just one example of what I mean. Years ago, at my alma mater in Jerusalem, I taught a course on military history. The class consisted of foreign, mostly American, students. At one point I used the germ Gook. No sooner had the word left my mouth than a student rose and, accused me of racism. I did my best to explain that, by deliberately using the term, I did not mean to imply that, in my view, the Vietnamese were in any way inferior. To the contrary, I meant to express my admiration for them for having defeated the Americans who did think so. To no avail, of course.

And so it goes. When the Internet first appeared on the scene I, along with a great many other people, assumed that any attempt to limit freedom of speech had now been definitely defeated. Instead, the opposite is beginning to happen. Techniques such as “data mining” made their appearance, allowing anything anyone said about anything to be instantly monitored and recorded, forever. All over Europe, the thought police is in the process of being established. Sometimes it is corporations such as Facebook which, on pain of government intervention, are told to “clean up” their act by suppressing all kinds of speech or, at the very least, marking it as “offensive,” “untrue,” and “fake.” In others it is the governments themselves that take the bit between their teeth.

Regrettably, one of the governments which is doing so is that of the U.S. Naively, I hoped that Trump’s election would signify the beginning of the end of political correctness. Instead, he is even now trying to prevent people in- and out of the government from discussing such things as global warming and the need to preserve the environment. Not to mention his attacks on the media for, among other things, allegedly misreading the number of those who came up to witness his inauguration. Should this line continue and persist, then it will become imperative to do without him and go against him. Not because of what he has to say about both topics is necessarily wrong, but to ensure the right of others to think otherwise.

This won’t do. That is why I promise my readers, however few or many they may be, one thing: namely, to go on writing about anything I please and go on speaking the truth as I see it. The English poet W. H. (Wystan Huge) Auden, 1907-1973, might have been referring to blogging when he wrote:

I want a form that’s large enough to swim in,

And talk on any subject that I choose.

From natural scenery to men and women

Myself, the arts, the European news.

Writing Dialogue

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As all of you readers know, I am not a novelist but a historian. Not just a historian, but an academic one. Which means that, over the fifty years since I got my first academic post I have never written dialogue. Except, perhaps, for some sketch at a family party; although, to be honest, I cannot remember doing even that.

The way academia sees it, and the constant call for “dialogue” between A and B and C and D and E and F and G and H apart, there are two things to be said about written dialogue. First, literature and drama are full of it. Some of it is excellent and deserves to be studied as if it were holy writ; as with the works of Aeschylus, Plato, William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, and God knows how many others. The rest is trash and can safely be ignored. Second, worried lest they would come up with trash, modern academics themselves seldom write dialogue. Neither of the intellectual type nor of the dramatic one. It has its place, to be sure. But not within the hallowed halls where serious, meaning that it is provided with footnotes, work is done.

I, however, have just published The Gender Dialogues which is dialogue from beginning to end. A special kind of dialogue, mind you; the kind that takes place in an interview, with which I have plenty of experience. How did it all start? When a young lady from Kingman, Arizona, contacted me and asked me to do an interview for her podcast. The topic was my 2013 book, The Privileged Sex. In it I argue that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The advantages of being female are at least as great as the advantages. Everything considered, perhaps a little greater.

So she sent me some questions. And I sent her some of my own that I thought would be worth discussing. And so we exchanged views until we had enough material to talk about and did the interview. A very pleasant one, I hasten to add. By now you can find it on the Net (at https://andyoverthinks.com/womenhaveitbetter/).

As I wrote down the answers to her questions, more questions presented themselves. As I answered those, the process started repeating itself. Soon enough the material expanded. Until it became necessary to divide both questions and answers into sections, each one dealing with a different aspect of the problem. At first the sections were numbered, but later they received titles too. Until they expanded into a book 40,000 words long.

However, neither the contents of the book nor the details of its eventual publication are what I want to write about today. Rather, what I do want to write about is the dialogue form itself. Originally dictated by the interview, I found it a challenge. As well as great fun. A challenge, because I had never done anything like it before. Fun, because it enabled me to ignore the usual rules of academic writing. After half a century of doing the latter, it set me free.

Apart from reading Plato, Cicero, and a few others I have never studied how to write dialogue. Nor did I ever take a “creative writing” course. Instead I went my own way. Searching, trying, erasing, discarding, and re-writing. Thank God for word processing; Plato, it was said, re-wrote the first sentence of The Republic twelve times. As I went along I learnt, or thought I’ve learnt, a few lessons others beside myself might find interesting.

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First, for a reader to follow a very large number of questions and answers is hard. It requires the kind of concentration and memory not everyone is capable of. Sometimes that may even include the author himself. So it you have more than twenty or so of each, better divide your work into sections. Preferably such as have titles rather than mere numbers.

Second, make sure to allow the side whose argument you want to refute to present it in as strong a form as possible. Why? Because he who answers a fool risks becoming one. Galileo in his famous Dialogue of The Two Chief World Systems named one of his characters, Simplicio. In my view that was a bad mistake. Why should anyone want to argue with what a fool has to say? Better follow Plato all of whose characters, though not necessarily very sympathetic, are smart and well spoken.

Third, allow your interlocutors to make life difficult for each other. Easy questions, resulting in easy answers, are boring. For the same reason they should also be allowed to change places from time to time. If only to show that the matter is well in hand, each should express the views of the other. 

Fourth, don’t go too far in putting your learning on display. Goethe’s dictum, mastery is knowing where to stop, applies. More so, perhaps, in a dialogue than in some other kinds of text.

Fifth, spoken language tends to be simpler and less cumbersome than its written equivalent. This fact should be reflected in the dialogue you write. Select the simplest, most succinct, forms of expression you can think of. Write isn’t, not is. Don’t, not do not. Use idioms: make peace, instead of reconcile. Unless, of course, you want to bring out the character of one of the speakers. Such as learning (real or fake), pomposity, etc.

Sixth, and for the same reason, make your sentences as simple and short as you can. They should not sound like a machine gun, which in the kind of dialogue I am writing about is out of place. However, on the whole short ones are clearer and easier to understand. There is an essay by Hugh Trevor-Roper, a one-time Oxford Don famous for his style, about how to write good English. Using the “find” function of my word processor, I checked the average length of his sentences: 18 words. I think that, writing dialogue, you should be able to do better than that.

I could go on and on. However, from this point you are on your own.  Why should you have my laurels free of charge?

How the Republic Collapsed

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No more than anyone else, and in spite of having written Seeing into the Future: A Short History of Prediction, do I have any idea as to the way the current U.S turmoil may end. If, indeed, there is such a thing as an “end.” I am, however, a little familiar with the history of Rome, the empire with which the US is often compared. Hardly a US city of any size and importance where buildings in Graeco-Roman style may not be found. To say nothing of a certain institution known as the Senate (ultimately derived from the Latin word senex, old). So I thought a little timeline of the way Rome turned from a free republic into a slavish empire might not be out of place.

*

205-146 BCE. Following a series of successful wars against foreign enemies, enormous amounts of booty as well as tax money flow into Rome. Including tons and tons of bullion, many hundreds of thousands of slaves, and countless objects d’art of every kind. As always, most of the wealth in question sticks to the hands of the upper classes which provide the republic with its rulers and senior commanders. Whereas the poor, repeatedly conscripted to do long periods of service abroad, neglect their farms and grow poorer still. Inequality reaches unprecedented heights. A few own enormous farms, worked by slaves; most hardly have a stone to rest their heads on. While not new, from this point on this kind of inequality will play a critical role in the events that ultimately led to the fall of the republic.

133 BCE. Following four centuries of near complete domestic peace—perhaps the longest of its kind in the whole of history—an elected popular tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, is beaten to death by a group of Senators. Their leader is none other than the chief priest, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio, a diehard conservative and a former consul. The background? A controversy over Tiberius’ “Leftist” (as it would be called today) plan to confiscate some of the land of the rich in order to distribute it among the plebeian poor.

121 BCE. For the first time, the Senate passes a Senatus consultum ultimum. No translation needed! The purpose? To grant the elected consul, Lucius Opimius, emergency powers to defeat the partisans of Gaius Gracchus who had been following in his dead older brother’s footsteps. Gaius is killed.

107 BCE. Gaius Marius, one of Rome’s most experienced and finest soldiers with strong plebeian sympathies, is elected consul. He uses the opportunity to reform the military; opening what had previously been a citizen army that only existed when there was an enemy to fight into a standing force made up of full time professionals. He also passes some other military reforms, but these do not concern us here. More and more, the soldiers look to their commanders, rather than to the Senate, for pay, promotion, and benefits. Including, above all, land to settle on after their discharge.

105-101 BCE. Marius inflicts a series of heavy defeats on the Germanic tribes in the north. Or about three hundred years thereafter, all serious military threats to Rome will be internal rather than external.

100 BCE. Marius is serving as consul for an unprecedented sixth time. A popular tribune, Lucius Apuleius Saturninus takes up the Gracchis’ cause by proposing the distribution of land to Marius’ veterans. The outcome is envy and resentment among the Roman proletariat. To push his measures through, Saturninus has an opponent, the consular candidate Gaius Memmius, assassinated in the midst of the voting for the consular elections for 99 BCE, leading to widespread violence. The Senate orders Marius, as consul, to put down the revolt, This he does. Saturninus and his chief colleague are killed.

91-88 BCE. Rome’s unfranchised allies in Italy engage in open warfare against their mistress. Though little is known about the so-called Social War, it seems to have been waged with great ferocity. Militarily the forces answerable to the Senate are successful, but politically the war ends with a victory for the allies. They obtain the vote as well as other privileges associated with Roman citizenship.

88 BCE. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the principal Roman commander in the Social War, serves as consul. He prepares to fight Rome’s enemy, king Mithridates VI of Pontus (in today’s Turkey). Behind his back Marius and the Senate reverse his appointment as commander in chief in that theater. Whereupon Sulla, having narrowly escaped with his life, leaves Rome. He raises six legions (approx. 35,000 men in all) and marches on the city, violating the traditional ban that prevents armies from entering it. He purges the Senate of its “left wing” members and declares Marius and his supporters, several of whom are killed, public enemies.

87 BCE. Now it is Marius’ turn to escape. Going to Africa, long a Roman province, he raises new armies. Making use of the fact that Sulla is away, again preparing a campaign against Mithridates, he invades Italy. He enters Rome for the second time and sets out to kill Sulla’s supporters in the Senate. He declares Sulla’s reforms and laws invalid, officially exiles him, and has himself appointed to his rival’s eastern command as well elected consul for 86 BCE. Two weeks later he dies, leaving Rome under the control of his colleague to the consulate, Lucius Cornelius Cinna.

85 BCE. Sulla, who has been warring against Mithridates, concludes a treaty with him. Now he has his hands free to return to Rome.

83-78 BCE. Sulla and his army land in Italy. They proceed to Rome where they proscribe and kill thousands of their opponents. That done, Sulla has the Senate declare him a dictator with unlimited powers. He increases the number of Senators from 300 to 600. He puts into effect various measures designed to prevent any further challenges from the populist “Left” and takes away some of the popular tribunes’ authority. That done, in 79 BCE he resigns. A year later he dies.

78 BCE. No sooner has Sulla died than another commander, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, marches on Rome in attempt to reverse the late dictator’s reforms. In this he fails.
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78-70 BCE. Sulla’s reforms to turn the clock back notwithstanding, by now the authority of the central government in Rome (i.e the Senate) has been decisively weakened. Any number of wars break out both in the provinces and in Italy where the slave revolt, with Spartacus at its head, has to be put down. Out of the confusion and the bloodshed there emerges, as the victor, a single General: Gnaeus Pompeius, soon to be nicknamed Magnus. Vaguely associated with what we today would call the Right, in 70 BCE he violates the constitution by being elected consul without going through the prescribed, much less important, offices first.

70-63 BCE. Now a pro- (meaning, ex) consul, Pompey turns to the east. Waging war first on the pirates of Cilicia (in modern Turkey), then on Mithridates, then on the Seleucids in Syria, and finally in Palestine where he deposes the reigning Hasmonean dynasty. On the way he annexes most of the eastern Mediterranean. Often without so much as informing the Senate of the measures he is taking.

63 BCE. In Italy, a “Lefty” Senator by the name of Lucius Servius Catilina, having failed to be elected to the consulate, twice tries to have the consuls murdered and take over power himself. Or so his opponents, led by the famous orator and consul (in 63 CE) Cicero, claimed. However, his small army was defeated and he himself killed while fighting at its head.

60-57 BCE. Having returned to Rome, Pompeius celebrates an enormous triumph. Next he forms an alliance with two other generals, Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Licinius Crassus, intended to secure their joint rule over Rome. In 59 BCE Caesar, his term as consul over, leaves for Gaul where he spends ten years fighting until the local tribes are finally subjugated. In 57 BCE Crassus, making war against Persia, is defeated and killed. This leaves Pompeius and Caesar in sole control.

49-48 BCE. Caesar, his conquest of Gaul completed, fears what his enemies, with Pompeius at their head, may be doing in Rome. With his army, he crosses the Rubicon, the river marking the border between Cisalpine (meaning, “nearer”) Gaul and Italy. Marching straight on the capital, he forces Pompeius and his followers to flee to Epirus (present day Albania). Caesar turns to Spain, where Pompeius has some supporters, and defeats them. Next he follows his enemy to Epirus. Their armies meet at Dyrrhachium and Pompeius is defeated. He flees to Egypt, which was not yet part of the Roman Empire. As Caesar follows him there, he commits suicide.

48-44 BCE. When Caesar arrives in Egypt the country’s eighteen-year old queen, Cleopatra, throws herself at him and becomes his mistress (he himself is fifty-one years old). Next he defeats the rest of Pompeius’ supporters in Africa and Spain. On 15 March (the “Ides of March”) 44 BCE he is assassinated by a group of Senators who fear he is about to proclaim himself king.

44-43 BCE. It is discovered that Caesar, in his will, has appointed his great-nephew, the nineteen-year old Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, as his successor. Octavianus joins forces with Caesar’s most important general, Marcus Antonius, and with another general named Aemilius who is Marcus Aemilius Lepidus’ son. Together they form a triumvirate for governing Rome. They purge Caesar’s opponents in the capital. Among the dead is Cicero. Next they make war on the conspirators. Defeated, the latter are forced to withdraw to Epirus.

42 BCE. Octavianus and Antonius defeat the conspirators’ army at Philippi, in present day Albania.

33-32 BCE. Octavianus and Antonius, having pushed Lepidus aside, divide the empire between them. The west, Italy included, goes to Octavianus; the east, to Antonius and his wife, who is none other than Queen Cleopatra of Egypt.

30 BCE. Agrippa, Octavianus’ admiral, defeats Antonius at the naval battle of Actium (in western Greece). Antonius and Cleopatra flee to Egypt, where both kill themselves.

28 BCE. Octavianus adds “Augustus” to his name. His title, as supreme ruler, is princeps (first prince). His reign is by no means as bad as that of some of his successors. However, what twenty or so generations of Romans understood as libertas finally comes to an end.

*

Some believe that history, with its infinitely numerous and infinitely complex details, never repeats itself and hence can tell us nothing about the future. Others, that it always repeats itself; socio-economic inequality, as well as tensions generated by the fact that some have rights others do not, leads to conflict. The military and the police are divided like anyone else. New leaders emerge and put themselves at the head of the contending factions. Prolonged and horrific bloodshed ensues. The final outcome is dictatorship.

Which one will it be?

What I Want of Joe Biden

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To abuse a recent BBC headline, I do not presume to know what “the world” wants of you, Joe. I do, however know what I want of you. Or rather, to stay on the modest side, what I would suggest you do. So here is a short list

Domestic Policy

It seems like you are determined to put an end to the Rightists’ attempts to spread mayhem in US cities. Good. But do not forget to do the same with the Leftists who have been doing the same. Only more often.

Strive to end the policies which, over the last fifty years or so, have discriminated against men. Especially such as are white, young, relatively poor, and without a college education. These men are not only frustrated. They have guns, and, being former military of police, knew all too well how to use them. Nor will they necessarily give them up if called upon to do so. Should their grievances not be addressed the results will be incalculable. Quite possibly, worse than those of the Civil War in which 600,000 Americans—about six percent of the entire US population, as it then was—perished. Want a more up to date idea of what it will look like? Lebanon 1975-1990, provides a good model. As does Syria from 2011 on.

Immigration is a sticky subject. Some want more of it, some, less. Whatever you do about it, make sure the US regains control of it. A state that does not know who does and does not live within its territory is, in a very real sense, not a state at all.

Another sticky subject is abortion. Personally I hate it. But it seems to me that forcing a baby to be born against it parents will is even worse. So stay your Party’s course.

Stop throwing vast sums away by lining the pockets of those out of work owing to the corona epidemic. Instead, set up work-creation programs. Just as your illustrious predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, did during the New Deal. For nonacademic youth, set up apprenticeship systems like those of Germany and Switzerland. If college students are assisted in all kinds of ways, why not others? After all, the proverbial plumber, along with the electrician and auto-mechanic and carpenter and builder, is just as necessary to society as his (or her) academically-trained white collar colleague is. Nothing like a sense of purpose and $$$ in a boy’s pocket to turn him from a dangerous vandal into a law-abiding citizen.
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Foreign Policy

Coming to power, Trump promised to mend relations with Russia. Instead, his bluster has only made things worse. A strategy meant to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing by favoring one over the other would make better sense. The way Nixon did it back in 1972-74. Don’t call it divide et impera, of course. But do use the method.

Coming to power, Trump promised to mend relations with China. Again it has not happened, and now something very like the Cold War is rapidly escalating. Make up your mind, Joe, which of the two threats to the US, the Russian or the Chinese, is the more serious one. And act accordingly.

Mend relations with the EU. Trump’s attitude to Europe had been to treat it with contempt. As, for example, when the US tried to make it more difficult to complete Nord Stream, the pipe-system that will provide its allies with Russian natural gas while bypassing the Ukraine. As a result, the US is now at odds with all three of the world’s remaining greatest remaining powers. With all respect, Joe, this is too much. It reminds me of the time around 1890 when the Brits, then the world’s strongest power, spoke of “splendid isolation.” Also, of 1945 when Japan was waging war on the US, and Britain, and China, and finally the Soviet Union, simultaneously.

Israel and the Middle East. Though an Israeli, I am no admirer of Netanyahu and would like to see a two-state solution implemented. However, the one thing Israelis and Palestinians have in common is their decades-long determination to reject any deal the other side would accept. On the other hand, in bringing together Israelis and a number of Arab/Moslem countries your predecessor, and especially his son in law Kushnir, has performed admirably. This is one part of your predecessor’s policy that you can adopt without hesitation.

In case you are thinking of it, don’t send troops to Libya; let them kill each other to their heart’s contents. Ditto Syria. But renew and, above all, extend Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. As long as it stayed in force it was good for the US, for Iran, and for the rest of the Middle East.

*

Both at home and abroad, adopt a style that is less inflammatory less divisive, more balanced, than the one your predecessor used. See the pic at the head of this post.

Just Published!

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Based on twenty years of thought, research and writing, this book provides answers to questions such as:

– In what ways are women privileged?

– What are the main similarities between men and women? What are the main differences?

– Who and what was Mary Wollstonecraft?

– Who understands women better—women or men?

– Why do so many men, including married men, visit prostitutes?

– What is the Kama Sutra all about?

– When will equality between men and women become real?
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– Is the future female?

– Is feminism destroying Western civilization?

– What is love?

– What will a possible reaction to feminism look like?

Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.

“Martin van Creveld has developed a bit of an international cult following with his stringent attack on what he calls ‘The Privileged Sex’. The ‘privileged sex’, he says, is female.”

Kenny, Belfast Telegraph.

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Russia and the West

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7 Jan. 2021

With Karsten Riise*

MvC:

Mr. Riise, in your opinion, what will be the effect of the new American administration on US-Russia relations?

Karsten Riise:

Biden will probably believe himself and the US to be so important that he can speak “pressure” and promise nothing concretely to Russia. This will be delusionary. Hence, Russia will continue to largely ignore the US and deepen cooperation with China in new areas.

Over time, Biden will find it difficult to restore previous US policies with both friends and perceived foes. Then perhaps, Biden will recognize a US need for a comprehensive understanding with Russia which can open new possibilities for both sides. Trump never had any vision for how he saw a US-Russia relationship and Trump did not have the political support of the US Congress or the EU to make deals with Russia. Biden is the candidate of the US establishment. He will have critical views on Russia, but he can make deals with it.

The best possibilities for Russia with the USA will involve the EU. Peace in the Ukraine. De-escalation and cooperation in the Baltic. Belarus. The West Balkans. And Syria. But I also see that Russia and the USA can discuss issues like Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan-Pakistan. Together with the EU and the USA, Russia can be included in a much-needed Pakistan-India peace deal.

MvC:

Please tell me a little more about the way you see EU involvement in all this.

Karsten Riise:

The EU has learned from decades of serious US vacillations. Bill Clinton worked closely with Europe, but the next US president Bush II tried arrogantly to dictate the Europeans, only to find out in his last years that even the US needs partners. Then Obama followed Bush II. The Europeans greeted Obama like a saviour and Obama worked to restore the US-Europe relationship which Bush II had broken down. But the cycle repeated: Obama the “restorer” was again followed by a new breaker. Trump even more adamantly than Bush II broke US partnerships with Europe. Now Biden believes that he like a “second Obama” will meet hordes of US-partners and be hailed to restore US relationships which were broken by his predecessor. It will just not work like that anymore. The EU has also seen that being friend of the USA is often not rewarded and can even be punished. The US imposed cross-sanctions against Airbus, though Boeing enjoys the similar state advantages to what the US accuses Airbus of. Connected with breaking the JCPOA, the US attacked EU firms with secondary sanctions. In the last US deal with China (the “Phase One” deal) the USA in practice agreed that China should push out USD 200 billion of European imports and replace them with American products. And on top, the EU was punished additionally with direct trade-tariffs by the USA. Biden may believe the world starts anew with him 20 January 2021. But not so. The EU has begun to see US presidents as just temporary vacillations. Biden is already surrounding himself with neoconservative foreign policy hawks. Trump demonstrated that strategic EU and American interests may diverge substantially. Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement which the EU sees as a strategic necessity for the planet. The EU has a strategic need for stability in the Middle East for the free flow of oil from the Middle East. The USA, in contrast, is nearly self-supplied with oil and therefore can take more chances with Middle East stability. The EU is investing heavily in China, the USA not. On the Palestinian issue, Trump also revealed strategic differences between the EU and USA. With Biden, the EU will continue a close trans-Atlantic cooperation, but not like earlier. Once and for all, the EU has realized that the EU must establish more Strategic Autonomy from the USA. Therefore, the EU is beginning to make its own deals with China, deliberately disregarding Biden entering office on 20 January 2021.

MvC:

Looking back on the Trump years, how do you see his foreign policy?

Karsten Riise:

Trump laid bare to the EU, how unreliable and self-absorbed the USA can be as a partner. The JCPOA agreement with Iran was a legally binding deal involving USA’s closest partners, the EU. The USA just broke the JCPOA and sanctioned EU firms for upkeeping it. The USA also just broke the Paris Climate agreement. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal was fully negotiated, and the USA just smashed it. Likewise, in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) the EU had invested 5 years of difficult negotiations with the USA – that was all simply thrown into the US wastebin overnight. And Biden may not reverse this: Instead of Trump’s “America First”, Biden says “Buy American”. The best thing about Trump’s years is that he did not start any new wars – no small feat for a US president.

MvC:

And the future?

Karsten Riise:

EU-USA relations will continue to be close, but the EU is no longer infatuated with the USA. The EU will increasingly take strategic action regardless of Biden and the USA, like we just saw in the EU-China investment deal 30 December 2020. The EU needs to make things work with Russia including the Nord Stream gas project, which the USA wants to block. There is no fundamental contradiction between the EU and Russia.

MvC:

Let’s go into a little more detail, if you do not mind. First, the situation in the Ukraine.

Karsten Riise:

The EU and Russia both agree that the Ukraine should continue as a bridge between east and west. Situations like the one on the Crimea have been resolved elsewhere before. The EU must accept that Crimeans can decide for themselves. Even in another referendum on Crimea’s future, I am sure, Crimea will stay Russian, and the EU must accept that.

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MvC:

I see. Now, the Baltic.

Karsten Riise:

In the Baltic, NATO membership of the three Baltic countries has destabilized security there. It is vital for Russia that the Baltic countries never become a staging area for NATO troop-concentrations directed against Russia, and Estonia is only 130 km from St. Petersburg. We need a treaty which limits the number and composition of NATO troops in the Baltic countries to what they are now, and simultaneously limits Russian heavy troops within (say) 20 km of the Baltic borders. Taking care of both sides’ interests. Practical and straightforward.

MvC:

And Belarus? The EU sees it as a bête noire and seems determined to destabilize it as much as it can.

Karsten Riise:

The situation in Belarus is similar. It has in many ways managed a very successful development, with a basic level of living, high level of education, social services etc. Belarus is ready to continue her own life and Russia is open to that. Belarus will become an enormous success when she gains access to the EU market. Russia just need to secure that NATO will not afterwards turn Belarus into an in-official NATO partner against Russia.

MvC:

I am sure you have your views about the rest of the world as well.

Karsten Riise:

In Syria, the EU has neither the capacity nor the appetite to take over. Human rights are terrible in Syria, but Russia avoided a complete collapse in Syria like the one NATO created in Libya. And Russia supports holding elections once the situation stabilizes in Syria. Fundamentally the EU must be relieved that Russia has taken this responsibility and got this far with Syria.

The planet is shrinking – even Afghanistan is no longer far away from Europe. The EU needs to invest a lot more energy in the EU’s two Mega neighborhoods: Africa and Eurasia, stretching from the Ukraine to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the EU does not have neither the physical capacity nor the intellectual capability to deal in politics and security in the vast area of Eurasia. Nor has the USA been any more successful at it. Russia simply has got unique insights, relations, capabilities, and connectivity in Eurasia. The EU critically needs Russia as the only possible EU-partner which can help the EU manage all the issues of a Eurasia which includes Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.

MvC:

Recently there has been some talk about America’s plans for Greenland.

Karsten Riise:

Greenland has got 56,000 people and 2 million km2 of soon-to-be ice-free territory. Greenland has a coastline of no less than 44,000 km with lots of fish and natural riches, and as the ice melts, soon busy sea-lanes to Asia. Tourism is growing with 24% a year, with a steep increase in air traffic and already many cruise ships, which in future may have as many as 2,000 passengers on board. Who has got the capability to assist Greenland in case of airport terrorism? Or in case a cruise ship catches fire or hits an iceberg? Or if two oil-tankers crash? Even the USA cannot manage all that alone since Greenland will not be their territory. Greenland needs deep cooperation with all its neighbors: EU, USA, Canada, and Russia. NATO analyses demonstrate that Russia has a defensive posture in the Arctic. There is scope for cooperation and a new big role for Russia in the Arctic.

MvC:

Finally, China. The elephant in the room.

Karsten Riise:

After the end of Biden’s first term, China will overtake the USA as the biggest economy in the world. China is already a strategic trading-partner which many US friends cannot afford to ignore. Soon, the USA will often only be second trade-partner after China. Biden and the US do not fully understand the implications. China will also be the country with the biggest military-industrial potential. Biden may dream of containing China, but he will not succeed. China is not the Soviet Union. China is too strong, tech-savvy, too many depend on China, and China gets resources from Russia. Absent military blockade and decades of hot and cold war, the US cannot stop China. Such a US “alliance” against China will be split from the beginning. Biden does not seem to have recognized this yet. The US has a rather narrow margin to influence China, mostly to open-up trade. What the US needs is to establish more equal cooperation all around, also with Russia. This includes Central Asia, where China is expanding Belt-and-Road infrastructure and Chinese security interests. Russia will continue a deeper cooperation with China, but Russia will also know how to make use of any US need for strategic Russian cooperation. If the USA at one point becomes willing to offer Russia something very substantial in return for cooperation, Russia will be able to balance relationships with China and the USA in a new way that will be profitable for everyone.

 

* Karsten Riise is Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from University of Copenhagen. Former senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden with a responsibility of US Dollars 1 billion. At time of appointment, the youngest and the first non-German in that top-position within Mercedes-Benz’ worldwide sales organization.

Dialogue No. XIV. Concluding Thoughts

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Based on twenty years of thought, research and writing, this book provides answers to questions such as:

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Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.

“Martin van Creveld has developed a bit of an international cult following with his stringent attack on what he calls ‘The Privileged Sex’. The ‘privileged sex’, he says, is female.”

Kenny, Belfast Telegraph.

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Dialogue No. XIII. Making It Personal

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Based on twenty years of thought, research and writing, this book provides answers to questions such as:

– In what ways are women privileged?

– What are the main similarities between men and women? What are the main differences?

– Who and what was Mary Wollstonecraft?

– Who understands women better—women or men?

– Why do so many men, including married men, visit prostitutes?

– What is the Kama Sutra all about?

– When will equality between men and women become real?
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– Is the future female?

– Is feminism destroying Western civilization?

– What is love?

– What will a possible reaction to feminism look like?

Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.

“Martin van Creveld has developed a bit of an international cult following with his stringent attack on what he calls ‘The Privileged Sex’. The ‘privileged sex’, he says, is female.”

Kenny, Belfast Telegraph.

Hooked? Get it today!