Monthly Archives: June 2021

To Do or Not to Do

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I doubt whether many of you are familiar with the famous Russian/Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1976). I myself came across her when researching a new book I am writing on Stalin. It was said that, in her early poetry in particular, “she was able to capture and convey the vast range of evolving emotions experienced in a love affair. From the first thrill of meeting to a deepening love contending with hatred, and eventually to violent destructive passion or total indifference.” A sad comment on the institution of marriage, isn’t it? And judging from what one keeps hearing about the way it kills love, often an all too realistic one.

Personally, though, I do not believe such an outcome to be inevitable. Rather than submit to it, and if only to remind myself, I have drawn up a short list of things that can be done, or left undone, in order to avoid it.

Here goes.

Things to Do

Make sure nothing and no one is able to come between you. Say a word against my alter ego, and you are out.

Share as many things as possible. Not just major joys and sorrows—that should come naturally as a matter of course. If she has to go to hospital, you want to be with her. And the other way around. But also, and above all, minor, everyday ones: as by taking off a couple of minutes to drink a cup of tea or eat an apple together.

Suspicion and love do not mix. So always put the best interpretation on whatever your spouse says and does. If the point comes where you cannot, better go your separate ways.

Even the best relationship/marriage does not absolutely preclude the possibility of misunderstandings. In case there is one, use humor to put things right. In general, humor is the greatest peacemaker there is. And the best prelude to bed.

Do whatever you can to make the life of your spouse easier, better, brighter. And rather than waiting until you’re asked, do it on your own initiative.

Appreciation, even of the smallest favors, will get you anywhere. So will small gestures, particularly such as are not needed. Holding open a door, for example when he/she comes in; or else a bunch of flowers at an unexpected moment. Just so.

Regardless of who bought it and who made the money, consider that everything you own belongs to both of you jointly. Even if, for tax or any other reasons, it is only registered on the name of one. At the same time, make sure neither of you is in a situation where your spouse has to ask for permission to buy anything.

In case you use nicknames on each other, make sure they are nice and, if at all possible, funny.

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My late grandfather once told me that the last thing he and my grandmother did each night before going to sleep was to have a hug and a kiss. I think that was excellent advice.

 

Things Not to Do

Never ever criticize your spouse in front of others.

Your spouse is not the cause of your misfortunes. If something went wrong, or simply if you are in a bad mood, don’t take it or on him or her.

If there is something you want to do but know you won’t be able to share with your spouse—don’t do it.

Don’t lie, unless in rare situations when it is a question of protecting the other.

Never ask your spouse whether, having sex with you, he or she was thinking about other partners he or she may have had or would like to have.  

Never ask your spouse to talk about his or her sexual experiences with others. Or else you may find yourself in the situation of the husband who asked his wife how many men she had had. Eleven, she answered. So I am number twelve? He asked. No, she said, you were number three.

*

These rules are the same for men and for women.

Good luck.

Barbarossa

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Barbarossa (Redbeard) was the nickname of the medieval German Emperor Frederick I (reigned, 1155-90) whose image graces this post. More pertinent to our business today, it was the name Hitler gave his campaign against the Soviet Union which got under way on 22 June 1941, i.e eighty years ago. Today I want to discuss a few outstanding aspects of the campaign—such as used to shape history throughout the Cold War and in some ways continue to do so right down to the present day.

*

First, at the time Barbarossa opened on 22 June 1941 the idea of gaining Lebensraum (living space) for the German people had been obsessing Hitler for almost two decades. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but always on his mind. Barbarossa, in other words, was the culmination of everything Hitler had ever sought. The loadstar, so to speak, that, along with the destruction of the Jews, seemed to make sense of the gigantic enterprise on which he embarked, causing all the other pieces to fall into place.

Second, Barbarossa was the largest military operation of all time. 3,500,000 men, over 3,500 aircraft, 3,500 tanks, 20,000 artillery barrels, and 600,000 vehicles (most of them horse-drawn and used for supply as well as dragging the artillery) of every kind. The total number of trains that deployed these forces stood at 17,000; that of railway wagons, at about 850,000. Initially the front was 1,500 miles long. Later it extended over 2,500 or so. Nothing like it had been seen before. Thanks to the introduction and spread of nuclear weapons, capable of taking out entire armies and cities almost instantaneously, nothing like it is likely to be seen again.

Third, it was deliberately planned not simply as a war between states but as one of extermination. First, of any Red Army commissars—political officers—who had the misfortune to fall into German hands. Second, of millions of Red Army prisoners who surrendered and were held under such atrocious conditions as to cause about two thirds of them to die. Third, of the Jews. Fourth, of as many as thirty million civilians in the occupied Soviet territories. The territories themselves were to be occupied and opened to settlers—not just Germans but Dutch and Scandinavians as well.

Fourth, it almost succeeded. By the beginning of December 1941 the forward most German troops were so close to Moscow as to enable them to watch the Kremlin’s spires through their binoculars. The city contained the most important railway knots in the entire USSR; including its immediate suburbs, it also accounted for about forty percent of Soviet industrial production. To say nothing of its symbolic value. As Pushkin wrote, it was welded into the soul of every Russian. Whether the fall of Moscow would have caused Barbarossa to end in some kind of German victory is hard to say. Most certainly, though, it would have prolonged the war and claimed even more victims than it actually did.
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Fifth, the most important factors that led to the German defeat were as follows. A. The sheer size of the theater of war in which entire armies could easily get lost; to this must be added its underdevelopment in terms of transportation, communications, and the like. B. the climate which, in October-April each year, hampered operations by making much of the terrain impassable; first by covering it by mud, then by bringing freezing cold, and then by melting the snow. C. The growing numerical superiority of the Red Army—both in manpower and in resources—which increasingly made itself felt from at least the end of 1941 on. D. The fact that Germany, engaged in a war in the west as well as the east, was never able to concentrate all its resources against the latter; that was particularly true from late 1942 on. E. A command system which, especially at the top and starting from the Battle of Moscow in December 1941, was as good as any and probably superior to the increasingly erratic German one.

Sixth, the German attack almost certainly saved Stalin and the Communist system. Ever since it was founded, the Soviet Union had always been held together in large part by terror. Barbarossa, by bringing the system to verge of destruction and threatening much of the Soviet people with extermination, provided a much-needed boost for that terror. Had it not been for the legacy of the war, the Soviet Union might have collapsed much earlier than it did—and, I suspect, amidst much greater bloodshed too.

*

Now for a larger perspective. Starting in the eighteenth century, first Russia and then the Soviet Union was one of several great powers contending for mastery in Europe as the subcontinent that increasingly dominated all the rest. Now with less success, as in 1854-56 and 1914-1918. Now with more, as in 1813-1815 and 1941-45. The German invasion and its aftermath, by leaving the Soviet Union stronger not only than any other European country but than all of them combined, put an end to this situation. It turned the Soviet Union into a world power, rivalled only by the USA with which it engaged on a “Cold War” that lasted forty-five years.

In 1991, largely owing to internal problems rather than external pressure, the Soviet Union collapsed. And Russia, minus much of the territory and the population that had once belonged to it, reverted to its traditional role—that of one power among several. One that, like all the rest, has its own agenda and its own peculiarities. And with which, willy-nilly, the world will have to live.

Writing Like Thucydides (But Without His Genius)

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For all of you readers who did not know, my first love as a budding historian—I may have been eleven years old—was ancient Greece. All those gods and goddesses, cavorting on Mount Olympus where they stayed forever young and had their food (ambrosia) and drink (nectar) brought to them by self-driving robots on wheels. The temples with their various capitals, one kind of which (the Corinthian) was said to resemble “a basketful of toys, topped by a marble plate, covering a child’s grave.” The marketplace where people met to vote on laws and ostracize those of their fellow-citizens considered a danger to the public. The heroic defense against the wicked Persian invaders. And the terrible civil war in which, sadly, the great and noble Pericles died.

What I did not know at the time, but learnt to appreciate a decade or so later when I was a student at the Hebrew University during the late 1960s, was how difficult, how impenetrable, Thucydides, the great historian to whom we owe 90 percent of what we know about that war, really is. Nor was I the only one to find him so. Here is what Dame Mary Beard, a retired Cambridge University professor and as good a classicist as they come, has to say about the matter:

The fact remains that [Thucydides’] History is sometimes made almost incomprehensible by neologisms, awkward abstractions, and linguistic idiosyncrasies of all kinds. These are not only a problem for the modern reader. They infuriated some ancient readers too. In the first century BC, in a long essay devoted to Thucydides’ work, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic and historian himself, contemplated- with ample supporting quotations, of the “forced expressions,” “non sequiturs,” “artificialities,” and “riddling obscurity.” “If people actually spoke like this,” he wrote, “not even their mothers would be able to tolerate the unpleasantness of it.” In fact they would need translators, as if they were listening to a foreign language.

Modern historians, Dame Beard adds, have not been much kinder to the Master. On one hand they never stop praising his utter realism and insight into strategy. On the other, they find him almost impossible to translate. As a result, misunderstandings abound. Often the simpler and more comprehensible the translation, the less faithful it is to the original; and the other way around.

Why Thucydides wrote the way he did we can only guess. One possibility, Dame Beard says, is that he was trying to do something no one before him had done. Namely, to provide his readers with “an aggressively rational, apparently impersonal, analysis of the history of his own times, utterly free from religious modes of explanation.” The other, which Thucydides himself hints at, that war was causing “words to change their ordinary meaning and take on new ones that were forced on them.” Whatever the reason, it was the changing circumstances that sent him in search of new style of writing to describe them.  

These fats can also be deposited during proper muscle toning of buy cialis pills your knee muscles. For instance, generic viagra from usa Vitamin E may help to observe mobility of arthralgia. The medical analyzers explain that PDE5 enzymes create obstructions in the penile region browse around this link levitra prices & therefore, they do not usually contain any interpretive data as it is a psychometric test usually has person-to-person follow-up verification by a qualified practitioner, such as a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. If one feels allergic after taking the buy cialis overnight tabletIt improves the stamina of the impotent to hold on for some more time. At a guess, few if any of my readers are philologists. Though I did dabble in ancient Greek, neither am I. So why devote a post to the matter? Here is why. The other day I was trying to do a piece on identity politics. Specifically, transgender affairs. For me it all started decades ago when I read about one Ms.—as she then was—Germaine Greer. An Australian by birth, she made her name during the 1970ds when hundreds of thousands, myself included, read her book, The Female Eunuch. Later she moved to England where, like Dame Beard, she received an appointment as a professor at Cambridge University. She next came to my attention when she became involved in a controversy surrounding a fellow academic, the astronomer Rachael Padman. And that is where the difficulties started.

Padman’s original given name, meaning the one her parents, presumably in the belief (which she later claimed was wrong) that she was male gave her, was Russel. Later, having undergone the necessary procedures, he/she (or was it she/he?) was turned into a woman. Thus it was how, claiming she had always “really” been a woman, she was able compete for the right to occupy a slot at a female college of the university in question. The upshot was a battle royal. In it Greer, herself what we today would call a second-generation feminist, argued that, since Russel/Rachel had “originally” been male, he/she (or was it she/he?) should be barred from joining the faculty as a woman. At the time, the University “resolved” the question by rejecting Ms. Greer’s arguments and going ahead with the appointment. Though whether a woman can be made a “fellow” or a “master” or a “don” (the term, incidentally, Prof. Beard likes to use in describing herself) remains a questionable right to the present day.

If this had been an isolated case, few people would have to get excited about it. The difficulty is that it is not. Wherever we look, we see transgender women/men (meaning, to put it in the most neutral way I can think of, such as have undergone a sex-change operation) winning competitions against “real” women (i.e. such as have not done so). So in sports such as tennis, swimming, cycling and running where “real” woman are proving no match for their transgender brothers/sisters. So, recently, in beauty contests where they have started winning one title after another. And this is just the beginning. “Transgender athletes are destroying [emphasis in the original] women’s sports,” runs one headline. “American crowned queen in Thai transgender pageant,” runs another. “Transgender wins female beauty pageant in Nevada,” runs a third. Surely Plato’s claim that, on the average, men are better than women in any field was bad enough; now it is beginning to look as if men are better than women even at looking like women, acting like them, and being like them.

Scant wonder feminists have been screaming their heads off. Nor are the implications limited to competitions of every kind. Suppose you meet a person you do not know. You are uncertain about his/her gender and consequently on what to think on him/her her/him and how to address him/her. Her/him. Trying not to offend him/her, her/him, you say, “could you please tell me your name?” That’s being polite, but it may not solve your problem; a growing number of names, are equally applicable to men and to women. E.g Jamie and Jamie, Robin and Robin, Pat and Pat, and so on. Saying “excuse me, what gender do you belong to?” is even worse.

Using terms such as father/mother, son/daughter, brother/sister, exposes one to similar problems. The worst offense is to try and make sure by using words such as “really,” “originally,” “previously” and “former.” People have been fired/hauled to court for less; and those who do not know it yet are the most likely to find out.

So what to do? I can only think of one answer: Unlike Thucydides, we are not geniuses. So let’s stop trying to write as he did.

Revolt of the Retired Generals

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By

Nathan Penkoski*

On April 21, twenty retired French generals published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron and the French government. The letter, which appeared in Valeurs actuelles, calls for France’s leaders to return to honor and defend patriotism: 

The hour is late, France is in peril, and many mortal dangers threaten her. Even though we are retired, we remain soldiers of France. In the present circumstances, we cannot remain indifferent to the fate of our beautiful country . . . today our honor lies in denouncing the disintegration of our country.

The letter identifies several forms of disintegration afflicting France: the ideology of antiracism, Islamism, the scapegoating of the police, and the normalization of attacks on the police and military.

The letter’s preamble makes clear that France unites a variety of religions and races. But it excoriates “antiracism.” Antiracism is “exhibited for one purpose only: to create unrest and even hatred between the communities on our soil.” Activists advancing antiracism are “hateful and fanatical partisans” who “want racial warfare.”

The letter goes on to exhort France’s leadership to find the courage to eradicate the dangers that impel disintegration. The signatories promise that they will support policies that “take into account the preservation of the nation.” If the letter offers any means to address these dangers, they are hardly revolutionary: “often it is enough to apply, without weakness, the laws as they already exist.” Nevertheless the letter states the consequences of continued carelessness and cowardice, and holds France’s leaders to account. “Civil war will break upon this growing chaos, and the deaths, for which you will be responsible, will number among the thousands.”

From an American perspective, the whole text is astonishing. It would be impossible to find twenty retired American generals, let alone two, who would dare suggest that the logic of “antiracism” entails racial warfare.  

But in France, the letter speaks to conventional political debates. Macron and his ministers now launch regular attacks on antiracism and identity politics, arguing that this American-made ideology threatens national unity and the integrity of the Republic. A recent poll indicates that 74 percent of the French think “antiracism” has the opposite effect. It is also not unusual to speak about the threat of war, even civil war, breaking out on French soil. In 2015, after Islamists killed 130 people on the streets of Paris, President François Hollande declared that France was at war. In 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of DGSI (France’s internal security agency) said that France was “on the edge of a civil war.” And another group of generals has just released a short report on how a “hybrid war” has been declared against France.

As a result, it is unlikely that the letter will change much of the national conversation. Still, it is significant because it raises the question of what role the army now plays in France’s beleaguered Republic, what role it has historically played, and what parallels exist.

According to an axiom of the French republican tradition, the French army never speaks publicly. Nicknamed la grande muette, the army has no right to demonstrate, speak on political matters, or go on strike. Any soldier who does so is subject to immediate discipline. Though joining a union is a constitutional right in France, the army has no union. Moreover, for most of the Republic’s history, soldiers had no right to vote; suffrage was extended to women before the army. What the army thinks about political matters, therefore, is a constitutionalized enigma.

The generals are fully aware of this. Even though the letter was organized by retired officers, and even though it takes the form of a polite exhortation to patriotism, it departs from precedent and damages the prestige of Macron’s government. The government would likely have ignored it, had not Marine Le Pen followed up with her own letter, urging the generals to rally to her. It was a clever tactic on her part, because according to a LCI/Harris Interactive poll, 58 percent of the French support the letter and its signatories. Immediately, prominent leftists denounced the letter—not so much for its content, but on the grounds that the army was breaking its precedent of silence, and thereby threatening the Republic. The Minister of the Army denounced it and promised sanctions against any soldier on active duty who signed. The more hysterical voices argued that the letter was akin to the attempted putsch of 1961, when four generals who dissented from de Gaulle’s Algerian policy attempted to overthrow the government. All this gave the letter much more attention. Now 23,312 soldiers have signed. 
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While it is absurd to suggest that writing a letter is the same as plotting to seize radio stations and airports throughout France, the leftist anxiety has some basis. France’s four prior Republics have stood or fallen depending on whether they maintained the support of the army. The First and Second Republics effectively ended with Napoleonic coups d’état. The Third Republic fell in 1940 in large part because it had lost the confidence of the army. Appalled by the failures of political leadership before and during the war, the army would only trust one of their own, Marshall Pétain, to lead the French state thereafter. Some generals evinced their contempt for the parliamentarians by urging Pétain to undertake a coup d’état in July 1940; but Pétain, more respectful of republican proprieties, sought and gained the path of parliamentary legitimacy. A supermajority confirmed him as head of state on July 11.

Yet the leftists are wrong to contend that the army’s entry into politics must culminate in Bonapartist or Caesarist-style authoritarianism, and that it is intrinsically hostile to republicanism. The Third and Fifth Republics have a secret. Without the army, the founding of these republican constitutional orders would not have been possible.  

The Third Republic was only established because its leaders called the National Guard into Paris to suppress the Commune. The fact that the Republic’s leaders were willing to use force to crush the hard left reassured the army and the rest of the country that a republic need not be a Jacobin or “red” republic. That allowed the Third Republic to secure a wide basis of legitimacy, which prevented civil war.

The circumstances that secured the founding of the Fifth Republic are also rather delicate, as there are key parallels between 1940 and 1958. Just as in 1940, the government in 1958 had lost the confidence of the army—this time in the wake of the worsening and badly managed crisis in Algeria. Just as in 1940, in 1958 the very constitution seemed to be part of the problem, an impediment to order. Just as in 1940, in 1958 the army and French people looked to a universally respected military man, General de Gaulle, to restore order. The major difference was that in early 1958, the left-of-center parties opposed, rather than supported, the military man’s entry into politics. De Gaulle lacked the requisite parliamentary majority. So as the Fourth Republic prevaricated and civil war grew more and more likely, the army stepped in. 

In the summer of 1958, troops seized strategic points throughout Algeria, Corsica, and southern France, setting up emergency political authorities called “Committees of Public Safety.” They forced parliament’s hand and compelled it to give General de Gaulle emergency powers. This was the Fourth Republic voting to abolish itself, since it was commonly known that de Gaulle would change the constitution and replace the strong legislative so dear to French republicans with a strong quasi-monarchical executive. It was wholesale regime change, a revolution. Moreover, without the army’s involvement, there would have been civil war instead of the relatively smooth transition to the Fifth Republic that took place. This fact made de Gaulle uneasy. Thereafter, he pretended the army had played a marginal role in his ascent to power in 1958. 

What is the significance of this secret behind France’s Republics? When the Republics have failed to address existential threats to France, their legitimacy has inexorably eroded. As the Republics have descended further into post-constitutionalism, the army has become increasingly implicated in the question of how France should be ruled and what constitutional order best serves the nation. And the French people have again and again looked to the army, and military presidents from MacMahon to Pétain to de Gaulle, to restore the state and secure the Republic. Some attempts have failed. But others have succeeded. It is telling that no one has suggested that the real parallels to the letter lie less in the Algerian putsch, and more in the military’s increasing public assertiveness in the 1950s, as the Fourth Republic floundered and the idea of de Gaulle returning to power became a serious possibility. The idea is too delicate to voice publicly. Better to emphasize the extremist coup that failed than the moderate coup that succeeded.

While it is important not to hyperbolize the 1950s comparison, the pressures placed on contemporary France do suggest some similarities. The French army is the only major European army engaged in combat. It has been in Mali for almost eight years, fighting Islamic terrorists. This mission, ostensibly on behalf of the European Union, sees very little tangible commitment from other E.U. member states. Only France pays for this mission, and only French soldiers die. The recent death of the president of Chad and a stalwart French ally, Idriss Déby, complicates the mission and raises grave concerns about how stable Chad is and whether France should commit more blood and treasure there.

Moreover, the army is under considerable duress. Since the 2015 Muslim attacks in Paris, the French army patrols the entire country. Having decided to give up machine guns at the frontiers to allow open borders, France now has machine guns on every street corner. The army patrols cities, train stations, and airports. It defends schools and synagogues, and appears in front of churches during Christian holidays. Unlike in the past few decades, the French now feel closer to the army because they see more of it; the regularity of the Islamist attacks reminds them why the soldiers are there, and they are grateful. Unlike the police, who have spent the past year issuing fines for not wearing masks, the army preserves its reputation.

It is unclear whether la grande muette thinks well of the country’s political leadership. Macron, the first president who did not do military service, has a tense relationship with the military. Macron’s honeymoon period in the presidency came to a halt in mid-2017, when General Pierre de Villiers, chef d’état major (France’s highest ranking military official, second only to the Minister of the Army) abruptly resigned. Macron had cut the military budget, and de Villiers contended that military equipment was now inadequate to meet the demands placed on the army. A smaller budget would threaten his men, and he could not endorse it. Since then, de Villiers has maintained a sympathetic public profile, published successful books, and considered running for president. He has prominent supporters, including his brother, Philippe de Villiers, a former presidential candidate and one of the right’s most stalwart cultural figures. Moreover, the same LCI/Harris Interactive poll indicates that the French still look to the army to restore the state and secure the Republic. Forty-nine percent support the army intervening to restore order, even without the approval of the government. 

As France drifts closer to its presidential elections, nothing is prearranged and no authoritative prediction should have purchase. Yet alongside the question of whether Macron has adequately addressed France’s existential threats and whether France is adequately governed, we should expect to see the question of the role the army plays in this regime rising in prominence. Once again, the army poses a political question.

Nathan Pinkoski is a postdoctoral research fellow at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. This article was first published at First Things (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/05/revolt-of-the-retired-generals) on 53 May 2021