A review about a new book on George Kennan in The New Yorker

A long review of John Lewis Gaddis's new book on George Kennan is in the Nov 14 issue of The New Yorker.

The review starts off by establishing that Kennan did not much care for Americans (America yes, Americans no).  A number of examples illustrating how Kennan was a dick are included (this is not even the worst):

In January, 1944, when the end of the war was in sight, Kennan served in the American delegation to the European Advisory Commission, in London. Bohlen (who had been in Tokyo when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and was interned for six months) remembered Kennan returning to Washington “appalled by the behavior of American soldiers—their reading of comic books, their foul language, and their obsession with sex, among other things. He wondered whether the United States was capable of being a world power.”

Once we stipulate that Kennan had his flaws as a human being, we are able to get down to business.  A very good discussion of  The Long Telegram and "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" by "X" begins thusly:

In all his reports, Kennan’s repeated message to Washington was “Get real.” He didn’t just disapprove of idealistic policy talk. He deeply loathed it. Declarations about the self-determination of peoples or international economic coöperation—the kind of thing that Roosevelt and Churchill announced as Allied war aims in the Atlantic Charter—seemed to him not only utopian and unenforceable but dangerously restrictive on a government’s scope of action. If you tell the world that you are fighting to preserve the right of self-determination, then any outcome short of that makes you look hypocritical or weak. Concessions to Soviet national-security interests were going to be necessary in Eastern Europe; it was better to be frank about this, and to stop pretending that Moscow and Washington had the same goals and values. But for domestic political reasons the American government always wants to appear virtuous, Kennan thought; so it continued to call the Soviets comrades and allies even as they were clearly preparing to walk all over the Atlantic Charter.

(...)

Kennan was appalled when he read the draft of Truman’s speech [announcing the Truman Doctrine], and for the rest of his life he protested that he had meant containment to be a policy of selective confrontation, and its means to be diplomatic and economic, not military. But he was construed otherwise. Lippmann wrote a book, called “The Cold War,” in 1947, attacking Kennan and containment, on the assumption that the X article, which appeared four months after Truman’s speech, was meant as a justification of the Truman Doctrine. Lippmann had got Kennan completely wrong. Kennan was so upset that he wrote Lippmann a long letter explaining his mistake, but could never bring himself to send it.

Reviewer kinda goes off the rails when he suggests that Kennan's requirement to have suicide pills on hand when stationed in Moscow was so that he could make an honorable exit if his compulsive womanizing were to be discovered.  (The real reason is doubtlessly more prosaic.)  And Gaddis, the author of the book, does not endorse the reviewer's theory on this.

As the exemplification of a realist in international relations, Kennan drew criticism easily:

[I]n 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn attacked Kennan, by name, for refusing to apply moral values to politics. “Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world,” he said.

Solzhenitsyn was right that Kennan was allergic to concepts that were important to Soviet dissidents, concepts like “human rights.” The reason Kennan considered the United Nations a bad idea was that it is an organization based on the pretense that every nation can subscribe disinterestedly to international legal principles—when nations are always, and rightly, interested primarily in preserving or extending their own power. He was horrified by the Nuremberg Trials. “Crimes against humanity” was just the sort of exalted legalism that he thought led to foreign-policy disaster. In any case, he believed that, once the United States accepted Stalin as an ally, it lost the moral authority to condemn Nazism. Kennan spent a good deal of his early life in Germany; in the two volumes of his memoirs, there is not a single mention of the Holocaust.

The review wraps up on a high note:

Still, buried within Kennan’s realism there is a moral view: that in relations of power, which is what he thought international relations ultimately are, people can’t be trusted to do the right thing. They will do what the scorpion does to the frog—not because they choose to but because it’s their nature. They can’t help it. This is an easy doctrine to apply to other nations, as it is to apply to other people, since we can always see how professions of benevolence might be masks for self-interest. It’s a harder doctrine to apply to ourselves. And that was, all his life, Kennan’s great, overriding point. We need to be realists because we cannot trust ourselves to be moralists.

Counterfactual Friday -- How Hitler Could Have Won

Keep the enemy penned in and ruthlessly finish them off before they make sanctuary to fight another day. Avoid vast, unrealistic aims that get you inextricably enmeshed...whoops, there we go again -- ranting like imbeciles about checkables, and this shamelessly off of somebody's splendidly studied counterfactual history  .

From this coming Sunday's NYT Book Review:

How did the Wehrmacht, the best fighting force, lose World War II?

(...)

The title of the book, “The Storm of War,” conceals an answer to Roberts’s central question about the reasons for the German defeat. The notion of war as a storm summons up the Nazi idea of a blitzkrieg, a lightning victory that would somehow resolve all of the political and economic problems of the German state.

(...)

Roberts, the author of several books of English history, maintains the tension in his narrative by suggesting that if the war had been a purely military rather than a political contest, fought without errors on the German side, then the Germans might have won. If one considers the categories of martial endeavor from bottom to top, from the bunker to Berlin, one can see what he means. The Germans enjoyed advantages in weaponry, engagement, tactics and sometimes strategy. But at the moments when strategy was linked to politics, the German advantage was lost. Hitler’s war aims were vast, unrealistic and inextricably enmeshed in an ideology that celebrated destruction, above all of Jews and other racial enemies, but also of Germans when they failed to win. The quick successes in Poland in 1939 and France in 1940 convinced many of the generals that Hitler was indeed a genius.

(...)

Throughout the book, Roberts notes errors that, if avoided, might have helped the Germans to win battles and perhaps even the war itself. Hitler, he says, should have begun the war three years later than he did, in 1942 rather than 1939. He should not have allowed the British to escape at Dunkirk as France fell.

Hess This, Hess That

My [self-redacted] referral for security violation was from DIA Col [self re-dacted] (once commander of Spandau prison, knew Hess), dead now - would have been interested in this.

Hess's flight to Britain almost exactly 70 years ago has remained one of the great mysteries of World War II to this day. What compelled the Führer's right-hand man to risk his life on a spring day when 500 German bombers were carrying out their heaviest attack yet on London? Why did he offer peace to Great Britain at a time when it was the Wehrmacht's last fighting enemy and Hitler was preparing to attack the Soviet Union?

Until now, historians had assumed that Hitler's deputy was acting on his own. "Hess acted without Hitler's knowledge, but in the deep (if confused) belief that he was carrying out his wishes," British author Ian Kershaw wrote in his 2008 book, "Hitler: A Biography". But now a previously unpublished document is casting Hess's notorious one-way trip in a new light: A 28-page, handwritten report that historian Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute Moscow discovered in the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

Some Good Book Reviews

Some really good reviews from tomorrow's NYT Book Review.

Eisenhower, Patton and Bradley: Team of Rivals (quite outstanding, full of great quotes) This review reminded me of that great scene in Tim Weiner's CIA book when senior CIA were briefing Ike (the commander of the largest secret invasion in history) on their retarded Bay of Pigs plans.

How Evolution Explains Altruism

Why the Eichmann Trial Really Mattered

And from tomorrows NYT Magazine, a kinda relevant piece:

Package to Nowhere

Suffer Impounded Afghan Chics Unto Wavering Publics

This classified CIA analysis [6-page pdf] from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. After the Dutch government fell on the issue of dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF-mission.

The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries.

For France it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women.

For Germany it is the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany’s standing in NATO. The memo is a recipe for the targeted [shaping] of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, written by the CIA.

Noteworthy Targeting: ‘Sinister’ German Spy Plan Aimed at Hedge Funds

Just came upon this: ‘Sinister’ German Spy Plan Aimed at Hedge Funds, Analysts Say.

You probably have seen this report already, but if not, you may get a kick out of it. The piece also mentions Spain's national security concerns about economic "attacks" on them by speculators (which we intended to touch on in a recently neglected posting - see below).

We've always been under the impression that economic intel gathering was more common in Europe than elsewhere. We're pretty sure that it is, and it is the target here that makes this newsworthy.

Oh - and here's that related post we prepared but forgot to publish.

A Media Plot against Madrid?: Spanish Intelligence Reportedly Probing 'Attacks' on Economy

Madrid is rushing to calm concerns that Spain could be the next Greece. Now, there are reports that the country's intelligence agency is looking into whether the Anglo-Saxon media has sought to undermine confidence in the Spanish economy.

Methinks it is the Japs that really have grounds for this suspicion. (And originating from culprits other than the media.)

Mohammed El Fazazi Flipped

Merkel might have done better had she spent some time as a trainee on Wall Street before playing for keeps with the big boys of GM and the Obama posse--could've mightily spared the girl a bamboozling and berating smack to her chic-chops.

Meanwhile, some other protestant Krauts are making mighty fine progress in the predominant strategic PSYOP.

Muslims should make peace with Germany, argues former hate preacher Mohammed El Fazazi, the man who once provided religious instruction to the men behind the 9/11 terror attacks. SPIEGEL ONLINE has published an abridged version of his open letter to Muslims.

In 2001, imam Mohammed El Fazazi of Morocco preached that it it is a Muslim obligation to "slit the throats of non-believers" in a Hamburg mosque. Among his listeners and star pupils were Mohammed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh and Marwan al-Shehhi, three of the men who participated in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

Today, eight years later, Mohammed El Fazazi has foresworn acts of terrorism against Western targets. "I admit that I went too far and overshot the target," he wrote in an open letter to his daughter, who lives in Hamburg, and Muslims living in Germany. Muslims living in Germany, he said, should draw attention to themselves and their issues through "peaceful demonstrations, strikes and protests that are far removed from indiscriminate attacks" and the "killing of innocent people with the argument of killing kuffar," or non-believers.

Ohnesorg Revelation

...recently in Berlin--first time back since peri-wallfall times. Commemoration:

The Ohnesorg revelation is really something. The "hidden hand of history" and all.

Even if Kurras had no orders to commit murder, the revelations will prompt Germany to contemplate its recent history once again.

Until now, no one had called into question the notion that Kurras was a "potentially fascist individual" with what German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno called an "authoritarian character."

He remains Ohnesorg's killer, but he can no longer be characterized as a puppet of a potentially fascist state. In fact, he was the puppet of a socialist state imbued with an equally authoritarian character, a realization that highlights yet again the similarities between the two ideologies.

All of this raises an intriguing question: What would have happened if the members of the student protest movement had soon discovered that Kurras was a member of the SED and worked for the Stasi?

Would an important part of German history have fallen by the wayside?

Would there have been no '68 movement, no student rebellion and no terrorist activities committed by the Second of June Movement and the Red Army Faction (RAF)?

Comrade Cell & Hurricane Nikita - About a Wall

...figured that the Cold War story might be of some interest. Always assumed that it had been a Sov decision -- as you know, that's not the kind of action that the client state would have wanted to conduct sans instructions or endorsement.

Who Ordered the Construction of the Berlin Wall?

Historians have long argued over whether East German leader Walter Ulbricht or his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev was ultimately responsible for the construction of the Berlin Wall. A newly discovered Russian document from August 1961 provides some answers.

(...)

For years, historians have been trying to clear this contradiction, and now an answer may be in the offing. It appears in a Soviet document that Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute in Moscow has discovered: a previously unknown record of a conversation that took place between the two leaders on Aug. 1, 1961.

By that time, the preparations for building the Wall were well underway, and the initiative apparently came from Khrushchev, as he said himself in the August meeting with his East German counterpart. A short time earlier, according to the document, Khrushchev had sent the Soviet ambassador in East Berlin to Ulbricht in order to "explain to him my idea of taking advantage of the current tensions with the West and laying an iron ring around Berlin." In the conversation, Khrushchev pointed out that "many engineers" had already left East Germany, and that something "had to be done."

(...)

Khrushchev wanted to convince the East German population that the wall being built would protect them from Western spies, and he said that the Germans would understand.

But even Khrushchev didn't appear to totally believe his own propaganda. When Ulbricht told him, during the August meeting, that he wanted to bring his economic experts into the loop, Khrushchev advised him otherwise. "You should not explain anything before the introduction of the new border regime," he said. "It would only strengthen the flow of people leaving."

If word got out about the wall construction, the Kremlin director recognized correctly, there could be "traffic jams" on Berlin's access roads. Such forms of traffic obstruction would constitute "a certain demonstration," he said.

Jacked & Hacked Spiegel Online

German PSYOP: Andi

Germany has unveiled a new initiative as part of the West's counter-Jihadist PSYOP, one aimed at disrupting the indoctrination of young Muslim immigrants.

Creativity is often found in the most unlikely places. Take, for example, a couple of German state domestic intelligence offices charged with tasks such as tracking far-right extremism and terrorist cells. In Baden-Württemberg, they recently constructed a mock Pakistani terror camp for a touring exhibition about Islamism. And their colleagues in North Rhine-Westphalia are no slouches either: they've commissioned a comic book, in which kids talk about Islam, the ideology of Islamism and terrorism. Its hero is a young German named Andi.

(...)

Andi has all the accoutrements needed to mark him as your run-o-the-mill hipster kid -- baseball cap, hoodie and messy hair -- and he has a Turkish girlfriend, Ayshe. Her brother -- and Andi's buddy -- Murat, is going through a bit of a crisis because he can't find a position as an apprentice, and he blames his rejection letters on xenophobia. That makes Murat the perfect prey for the strange new kid on the playground, Harun, with his serious demeanor and steadfast belief in what he's been fed from Islamists. Harun, in turn, beats it into Murat's head that he will be discriminated against because of his religion.

Huran takes Murat under his wing, and it's not long before he makes some progress by convincing him that he shouldn't have any infidel friends because Islam forbids it. Basketball is taboo, too. And he also needs to make sure that his sister doesn't go to the movies with Andi.

After a while, Harun even takes Murat to meet his favorite sheik, whose sermons are filled with hatred. His preaching goes along these lines: "God has ordered the Muslim to neither associate with nor befriend the infidel!" Huran also shows Murat radical Web sites showing videos of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq. "But a lot of Muslims get killed in those attacks, too," Murat ventures to comment. "They are all hypocrites and liars!" comes the response of the Jihadist sheik. And even if a Muslim were among the dead, he would have died a martyr. What more could a man want?

Of course, after 38 pages, there is the inevitable happy ending: Murat transforms himself from a potential public enemy number one back into a cheerful chap. And, joy upon joy, an apprenticeship position appears out of nowhere, just to hammer home the moral of the story a little bit further.

(...)

It's hard to say whether school kids are going to laugh themselves silly while reading this stuff or if their slippery attention can be held. There will be 170,000 copies of Andi's first adventure and Hamburg is also planning to use them. The second issue in the Andi series is set to hit schools soon.