Tom Tomorrow needs to lighten up. He needs to remember that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia...
Posted by DeLong at September 18, 2002 03:58 PM | TrackbackThis Modern World by Tom Tomorrow: Chocolate rations are up! Donald Rumsfeld is testifying before the House Armed Services Committee as I write this. I just saw him note that, due to the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons, the US was "unable to respond " when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Well, as readers with marginally functioning memories will recall, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski acknowledged in a 1998 interview (which was widely circulated online last year) that the U.S. deliberately provoked a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in hopes of giving them their own Vietnam.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
>>When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them.<<
Here is an interesting question, at least to me, why?
If we understand well why the trick worked back then, then it might tell us something about how to undo current and future similar machinations.
Or do we believe it is socially preferable to lie to or mislead a democracy's electors? I have read quite a few people hint at that lately. It's as if we don't really believe that the point of democracy is precisely the value of getting the national jury to (indirectly) make these decisions in the light of hopefully honest and diverse information.
Or which part in demo-cracy, did I get wrong in my younger formative years? I mean it all sounds to me like a very snicky way of disafrenchising a whole lot of people... But if that's fine, then I guess I am wrong...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 18, 2002 09:36 PM>>Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.<<
Ah! It's important to claim that USSR fell down because of the supposed effectiveness of invasive foreign policy. Whereas any wellborn economist would argue that it fell down because productivity growth could not keep up with that of the West. Krutchev essentially lost his bet.
And Russian were the first ones to be aware of this. This lead to a progressive melting of political cohesion around the merits of communism (for those who were supporting it - obviously.)
But I am certaintly not trying to argue that Cuba wouldn't be in better shape without the embargo and all that. Paradoxically, this very embargo may well have helped Castro a lot to keep his firm grip on power...
Hence, my opinion that welcoming China into the WTO, is Clinton's best ever idea. Bravo several times on that one for all future generations of world citizens. Smart, I mean real smart. Not political smart.
Rumsfeld and Minipax doublepluggood duckspeak. DeLong doublepluscrimethink. Perkins doublepluscrimethink.
Posted by: Paul on September 18, 2002 11:29 PMThe reason no one believed the Soviets was pretty simple. In the Reagan's America, anyone who answered "them" to the question "who are you going to believe, us or them?" was considered at best a communist sympathising scoundrel. That Moscow was not any more likely to lie than Washington was a lesson that never really sunk in. I never have quite seen why. I would gladly tell a stack of lies before I would kill someone. I'd like to think any basically decent person would. If anything, America's former tradition of investigative journalism would give Washington more reason to lie about its international activities than the Soviet Union.
As hard as it may be for people to remember now, during the Cold War most Americans, especially conservatives, considered themselves in a no-holds-barred all-out war with the USSR. Every American politician, down to the local dog-catcher, would argue that the US (and especially those "damn liberal fat cats in Washington") weren't doing enough against communism. Every bad thing that happened, every terrorist act, every political shift, every economic failure, even the rise in cocaine use in the US, was attributed by at least some people to the Kremlin. Lying to the world and the American public in the name of anti-communism was almost a moral obligation.
Of course, many people like to claim that US foreign policy in the 80's, or the Reagan arms build-up, or America's ouvertures to China were what brought down the Soviet Union. That these claims have no basis in fact is beside the point. However, the USSR's inability to sustain high productivity can only be the major cause of its downfall if you accept at least one of a couple of additional factors.
1 - Other countries have suffered poor productivity growth - as bad and worse - without collapsing. Most of them, however, have pretty awful, undemocratic governments. If public disaffection with the Soviet economy is the direct cause of its self-destruction, then it's hard to claim that it was the most evil tyrrany in history. If the USSR was a mere garden variety dysfunctional state rather than Satan incarnate, it becomes hard to justify much of the rhetoric and action of the Cold War.
2- If concerns about productivity were a major worry for the ruling class, then the ruling class must have actually cared about something other than staying in power. The fall of the Soviet Union is then the consequence of an honest effort to improve conditions that got out of control. In the end, this leaves you facing the same conclusion. How can the attitudes and rhetoric of the Cold War be justified in the face of a state that was less horrible than many of America's contemporary allies?
If either or both of these are true, then you have to ask a few more questions. If the USSR could have been better defeated not by harsher rheotic and bigger bombs but by openness and trade to rub their faces in their inefficiencies, is it possible that this is equally true elsewhere, in places like Cuba and the Middle East? If the US overstated its case against the USSR, could it be doing the same in Iraq, Syria or North Korea? You also have to ask why trade and openness have not had the same effect in China, where instead of causing them to liberalise, the state is arguably more repressive than ever and has much more productivity growth than before. Is it possible that the USSR was less America's natural enemy than many of the states the US supported during that period?
America's great enemy for almost two generations surrendered without firing a shot. There was no glory in victory, no metals for bravery, and no ticker-tape parades. Because the end of communism coincided roughly with the beginning of the early 90's recession and the disappearance of a lot of reliable jobs, there was a strong temptation to look at America and wonder if the Cold War hadn't defeated the US too. In the end, it's just easier to believe that Ronald Reagan and American militarism destroyed the USSR rather than think too hard about whether the Cold War was worthwhile.
Posted by: Scott Martens on September 19, 2002 06:41 AMJimmy Carter was a brilliant president but a lousy politician. Ronald Reagan was a terrible president and a brilliant politician (when he was aware of his surroundings).
In addition to his measured reponse to Afghanistan (if not his encouraging the Soviets in their quagmire), don't forget the other main factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union: Solidarity. Imagine, a labor union fighting against Communism! Sure blew away the politically correct notion that Communism is left wing. Carter's measured support was exactly right. No repeat of tanks in 1956 Hungary or any of the other brutal Soviet repressions. They didn't have the excuse.
Meanwhile, Reagan screwed up the response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Politically popular but ultimately self-defeating, he trained and funded the religious fanatics who hated the US as much as they hated the USSR, notably Osama bin Laden.
One Soviet leader pounded a table at the UN with his shoe. His country was buried by a soft spoken leader who pounds nails into houses.
Posted by: Dave Romm on September 19, 2002 07:49 AM>>You also have to ask why trade and openness have not had the same effect in China, where instead of causing them to liberalise, the state is arguably more repressive than ever and has much more productivity growth than before.<<
I aggree the strategy of opnenness to China is a long shot, that's why I think it took Clinton's willingness to leave his mark on history to take it to a higher level. What we have to trust in not communist China, but Chinese people. As median the standards of living rise, the Chinese are unavoidably going to ask for the superior good that political freedom is.
But they will do it in a Chinese way, probably inspired more by confucianism than ancient Greece, obviously. As the post iron curtain Russian experience indicate, one cannot make political choices for an other people, and there may be great virtue in allowing a taste of a sweeter (albeit imperfect) life to take its slow effects on the collective psyche of people who have lived for thousands of years under repressive regimes...
After all, the West did not jump from day 1 to day 2 from feodalism to our modern forms of democracy. Why do we expect other people to figure this out faster than us? Any social change takes time, there is always very strong resistance from the system, vested interests, and the conservative side of the brain of all individuals...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 19, 2002 09:41 AM"You also have to ask why trade and openness have not had the same effect in China, where instead of causing them to liberalise, the state is arguably more repressive than ever and has much more productivity growth than before."
Having followed Chinese affairs for decades, and listening to friends in China, I can tell you that China seems far less repressive today than 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. China is not America, but from economics to the arts there seems a gradual liberalisation.
Posted by: on September 19, 2002 10:27 AM"Ah! It's important to claim that USSR fell down because of the supposed effectiveness of invasive foreign policy. Whereas any wellborn economist would argue that it fell down because productivity growth could not keep up with that of the West. Krutchev essentially lost his bet."
There are lots of theories to explain the fall of Rome. One holds that it was the plumbing that did it. I have not done the survey, but I would be willing to bet all the money in my pocket that more plumbers are familiar with that theory than any other. Brzezinski, a politico/military specialist, thought a clever trap did in the USSR. An economist thinks it was failure of productivity growth.
OK, not that they are interchangeable, but was it DeLong or Krugman who came up with the notion that a system which requires faith in the system to produce superior results (socialism) is highly vulnerable to failure, both of results and then of the faith, and then a spiral of both, while capitalism requires no faith, just self-interest? Why did the USSR fail? Because faith in the system failed. Can the US fail? Yes, but our faith is different. We believe in our civic life. We believe in our institutions. They, and our belief in them, keep us from becoming another muddled culture, sinking to the level of the failed cultures of the past (and present). If we lose that faith, won't we eventually lose the civic life and institutions? Then, we will fail, too. The lies we tell to ourselve, the lies our leaders tell us, erode that faith. How much? I don't know. How strong is that faith? Given what we know of the Cold War, and what we suspect about the present day, hope to hell our faith is strong.
K
Posted by: K Harris on September 19, 2002 01:14 PMRumsfeld wasn't in the government during the Afghan invasion, any comments concerning the US response would have been speculation.
Posted by: Brian on September 19, 2002 03:28 PM>>How strong is that faith? Given what we know of the Cold War, and what we suspect about the present day, hope to hell our faith is strong.<<
The sunny side of your argument is that our faith seem to be extremely resilient to constant attacks from homo politicus of all sorts.
Not to say that observing institutions like the Supreme Court act in a perfectly partisan way in the most important circumstances is not helping with that faith...
Not to say anything about this Administration's secrecy about the making of its policies...
Not to mention how big a role money is allowed to play in Western politics...
But the bottom line, K, is that democracy is a struggle, the struggle of the people at large to keep the making of public decisions in their hands (directly or indirectly), and out of all kinds of dictators taking various disguises, claiming that they know better what's good for you, so-called leaders, while most often only working for themselves and their crownies.
I don't know if I am optimistic about the survical prospect of democracy over the course, say, of a thousand years (assuming our specie is still around...) But I surely am of opinion that the real danger is more likely coming from inside than from outside.
That's why I think it still is somewhat a matter of "faith" or rather trust, of trust in the capacity of individuals to make the best decisions in a decentralized manner thanks to the "invisible hand" of markets, given a proper institutional setup.
But also, of trust in the relevance of everyone's opinion for the making of public decisions. There is no doubt for me that industrial capitalism and democracy, this odd couple, thrive best in symbiosis with each other, if history is any guide, and if we aggree that the goal of the enterprise is the satisfaction of human needs, with an optimum of fairness (more is always better but there are trade-offs...)
After all, trust is the ultimate essence of all human endavours...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 19, 2002 07:11 PM"If the USSR was a mere garden variety dysfunctional state rather than Satan incarnate, it becomes hard to justify much of the rhetoric and action of the Cold War."
Just how old are you? Old enough to remember the deliberate murder of 260 passengers on a Korean Airlines 747? When Maj. Arthur Nicholson was shot and left to bleed to death on the side of a road in East Germany? The construction of the Berlin Wall and the desperate escape attempts?
Certainly not old enough to remember Stalin, but here's yet another story today in my local paper about his not-so-garden variety dysfunctions:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134539679_massgrave21.html
from which:
<<-----quote-------
TOKSOVO, Russia — Working to uncover the secrets of the collapsed Soviet Union, diggers say they have found 20 sets of bones 20 miles outside St. Petersburg in what they believe is a vast grave for thousands of victims of dictator Josef Stalin's firing squads.
[snip]
Russian officials have said they believe millions of people died from executions and brutal imprisonment under Stalin's rule. His security forces ruthlessly arrested people suspected of political disloyalty, espionage, failure to work hard enough in factories or on farms, or of not fighting hard enough against German invaders. Stalin died in 1953.
[snip]
Volunteers working with Memorial searched five years for the grave, which they estimate could contain about 30,000 bodies in an area of about 500 acres near an army artillery range. They began digging in August.
The only other known mass grave in the St. Petersburg area is believed to contain the remains of up to 8,500 people, according to drivers who brought the victims to the execution place in 1937-38, at the height of the terror.
Yet there was no trace of tens of thousands of other victims who were rounded up in and around Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known in Soviet times. According to official Soviet-era data, 39,488 people from the region were executed between Aug. 5, 1937, and Nov. 16, 1938. Almost 7,000 people vanished in 1930-36.
Both the KGB and the Federal Security Service kept silent about where victims were buried, so in the mid-1990s Memorial began publishing appeals for information.
Witnesses who had lived in the villages around Toksovo in the 1930s came forward, testifying that black trucks would make nightly visits to the artillery ground. The vehicles stood with their headlights on as shots rang out from the Rzhevsk testing range.
"The range made this area very convenient for ... executions," said Miron Muzhdaba, one of Memorial's volunteer diggers. "They were to conduct the shooting as secretly as possible, so they hoped the testing would somehow hide the fact of real murders."
-----endquote----->>
Nobody is trying to argue that communist USSR was not a horrible and bloody dictatorship. But paradoxically, from a material point of view, the USSR was not as bad as people were trying to have you believe on your side of the curtain.
I never got the sense that the majority of the Russians were crying out for American intervention in their country. My American friends, there is just one thing we would like you to undertsand: when you are not invited to the party, don't sneak in through the back window...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 21, 2002 03:13 PMBut do not think that the old world errs on the side of a lack of invitations though:
* I don't think Winston Churchill quite understood why it took the US so long to join our great world-wide party after the German invasion of Western Europe... Or is it the Japanese who voluntarily reminded the US that participation is mandatory?
(As any well-born European I can quote Churchill off the top of my head: "We have to trust that our American friends will do the right thing, after having exhausted all other alternatives.")
* And Palestinians have consistenly invited the international community and the US to join their great Middle-Eastern party. Seems like the US has turned a pretty deaf hear to that invitation for a while now...
The truth is that the rest of the world is very thankful about some of the American interventions, but quite angry at a list of pretty awkward interventions destined at serving the self-righteousness of American religious fanatics and other electoral concerns.
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 21, 2002 04:07 PMI want to prehempt the idea that old world countries wouldn't be subject to the same kind of mistake, however: the USSR did wrongly invite itself to many parties, and so this the Nazis and Imperial Japan etc...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 21, 2002 04:18 PMConclusion: that's why our grand-fathers put together the United Nations (this "grand machin" as Charles de Gaulles used to say.) In general, we tend to learn as history goes by, but we also have a tendency to forget why and how we got to do things a certain way afer a while.
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 21, 2002 04:36 PMI think I have a funny way to capture something otherwise tragic:
Right now, the head elephant is very angry because a bad mouse has bitten the tip of its trunck pretty hard. The rest of the forest (that bears no responsability in this) is always very worried when elephants run wildly around the forest. Why don't we just find and collectively lynch all that uggly rodent (if it's still alive)and, arguably, its acolytes and move on with our happy business in our beautiful forest?
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 21, 2002 05:09 PMJean Phillipe claims:
"Nobody is trying to argue that communist USSR was not a horrible and bloody dictatorship."
Then what was this supposed to mean:
"If the USSR was a mere garden variety dysfunctional state rather than Satan incarnate, it becomes hard to justify much of the rhetoric and action of the Cold War." ?
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on September 22, 2002 10:51 AMThe USSR was a garden-variety bloody dictatorship?
Posted by: Jason McCullough on September 22, 2002 02:43 PMDid you get the impression the Russian people were pressing America to come in with tanks and soldiers?
I am sure there were lots of friendly dissidents who would have liked that, but I never got the impression that was anything close to a wish of the majority of Russians.
Or does the US also have to decide for people whether they should welcome its interventions or not?
Eastern Europe might be a different story. But, the West as a whole pretty much let down Eastern Europe after Yalta, so I don't think that's a glorious example anyway.
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 23, 2002 12:21 AMAt last, the EU is starting to take some responsability with Eastern Europe, but it's far from overwheling yet, and most of what needs to be done, actually lies ahead. I hope (but I don't trust fully yet) that it will do a better job than the US with Latin America (in general)...
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 23, 2002 12:27 AM"...and most of what needs to be done, actually lies ahead. "
Congrats, Jean-Philippe, you're the Yogi Berra of the blogosphere.
Posted by: on September 23, 2002 07:43 AMThat's a good one, Mr. Anonymous. You sure will never qualify for lack of the intellectual courrage to reveal your identity...
Specifically I meant that the EU has put strong demands on Eastern Europe for them to join in, but still has to show it is ready to chip in for their convergence towards the EU core as was done with Spain, Portugal and Greece, e.g. Paradoxically it is these countries themselves that are putting a lot of opposition to that...
Do I still qualify? :-)
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 23, 2002 03:13 PMP.S. Yet, the EU does already have the BERD. That's a first good step, I believe. And it is addressing, albeit slowly, Eastern Europe's willingness to join in. And that's not deja vu all over again... ;-)
Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on September 23, 2002 04:08 PM