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By Michael F. Duggan

In World War One, there were big pushes and there were attritional battles. For most of the war however, breaching operations attempted by both sides lacked the suppressing firepower necessary to overcome the defensive advantages of the enemy.  Armor and close air support lacked the power, sophistication, and doctrine for an effective modern combined arms offensive. The final victory of the Allies in the 100 Days campaign in 1918, had less to do with Blitzkrieg than with the arrival of two million American troops and a general collapse of the German lines. 

Between the big offensives of 1916-17 and the 100 Days battles in the summer and fall of 1918, there were trench raids and the development and refinement of infiltration tactics by both sides.  But as the name states, these actions involved tactics—small raids—more than strategy, although, like most of the big pushes, they did little to move the lines. Even the first major tank action at Cambrai at the end of 1917 ultimately proved futile as the lumbering monsters were eventually picked-off piecemeal by artillery after their initial shock and first-day gains.

The problem with tactics, operations, and strategy in the First World War—and never before or since have the three seemed more like one—was the belief that the front embodied a kind of pressurized equilibrium.  Pop the enemy’s bubble, so it went, and a general collapse would follow.  The petering-out of the German Michael Offensive in the spring of 1918 laid waste to this idea.  As Andrew Bacevich recently observed, “Punching holes is a poor substitute for strategy.”¹       

Western sources are now reporting that the Ukrainian offensive is failing, that after significant losses in armor and infantry, it has not breached the Russian lines (how an army is supposed to launch an integrated combined arms offensive without air superiority, massive stocks of artillery ammunition, a superiority in suppressing fire against an entrenched enemy, and a secure communication system to coordinate it all, is not clear).²  These reports tell us what we already knew: that Bradleys and Leopard II tanks were picked-off en masse, like the British Mark IVs at Cambrai. Notably, Cambrai was followed by a German counteroffensive.   

The Russo-Ukrainian War appears to be a culmination of the World Wars and a return to initial states. After the big pushes of the First World War, the massive combined arms offensives of the Second World War, and the aerial bombing of civilians, modern war has come full circle to grinding offensives along a wide front, attrition, forays into no man’s land, an enemy with a flexible, multilayered defense in depth and pre-sighted kill zones, and small unit infiltration and raids into often booby-trapped enemy trenches. Ironically, tanks, originally developed by the British to breach the fortified German lines, now appear to be primary technological victims of the renewal of positional warfare. The drones and loitering munitions are new. As with the first Cold War, a nuclear Sword of Damocles hangs above the action on the ground.

The First World War was a tragedy, but it was also a crime.  After it became apparent in late 1914 and early 1915 that the war would become bogged down into an attritional nightmare, the warring nations should have come to a settlement.  The fact that this was not politically feasible at the time does little to excuse it.  The Ukrainians have fought better than anyone had expected with competence, courage, and tenacity, but the situation on the front presents them with an overwhelming tactical, operational, strategic, and logistical impasse.  As I have written before, through no fault of their own, the numbers are against them.  If the diplomats of our time are to effectively apply the lessons of history, they would to well to succeed where the statesmen of 1914-18 failed.    

Notes

1. Andrew Bacevich, “America’s Compulsion is Intact and Ready for More,” Responsible Statecraft, June 5, 2023.
2. For example, see Daniel L. Davis, “Why Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive is Failing,” Responsible Statecraft, July 20, 2023.  Davis also makes a strong case for a diplomatic solution to the war.   

By Michael F. Duggan

This week 31 of the 50 U.S. states baked in 90+ degree weather, as a heat dome continues to cover the South and Southwest. Hot weather in the summer is hardly news, unless you consider that this week was also the hottest week in recorded history worldwide. The climate crises are here and have been for some time.

The question is whether or not we have reached a tipping point—a demarcation from the known into the chaotic, a change from which there is no return. The other question is whether or not the children and grandchildren of those reading this will be killed by the crises, or if their lives will be merely degraded by it.

By Michael F. Duggan

I’ll put it up front: some of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s statements in recent years have turned me off. That said, in last Wednesday’s live town hall meeting, with a sometimes less-than friendly audience and hosted by Elizabeth Vargas, he acquitted himself well. I watched it not wanting to like him or what I thought he was going to say and came away more impressed than I have been with any American candidate in a long time.

He took on all comers with no topics being out of bounds and gave thorough, thoughtful answers. His stated goal is to bring the Democratic Party back to the values the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society—the party that was largely destroyed by the murders of his uncle and father (before the Democrats become the pro-war, “Republican Lite” party of the Clintons, Obama, et al.). I believe in vaccines and am agnostic on the clarifications he gave of his position on vaccines, and will have to examine them more closely.

He seemed to frustrate Elizabeth Vargas, who prodded him for binary, either/or culture war replies. She seemed baffled that he wouldn’t take the bait, that he did not reply with hostile, divisive answers against those with whom he disagrees. His thoughtful, non-divisive answers to her questions appeared to frustrate her as things outside of her frame of reference.

I have a theory of presidential leadership that I call the “noble executive” model. It holds that the greatest presidents of the 20th century—TR, FDR, and JFK—were all high-minded aristocrats who had experienced a humbling health experience that gave them a strong sense of empathy and undercut snobbery and allowed them to do great things for all Americans. I believe that RFK, Jr., whose history of personal problems are manifold, could fit this mold. The fact that he is from a rich and famous family means that he does not need to tow the line on the orthodoxy and shibboleths of either party. He is his own man and appears to be telling the truth as he sees it. Most of his answers to tough questions on policy were much better than what I have heard from any political candidate in decades. The forthrightness and intelligence of his replies reminded me of the strength and honesty of his father’s answers in a November 1967 edition of Meet the Press.

When I was young, the elder Robert Kennedy, the transformed Bobby of the 1963-68 period, was one of my political touchstones. His assassination is my earliest political memory. What our country needs is not further division, but unity, if it is still possible. RFK, Jr. reminds me of the lost potential of the 1960s. The death of his uncle, his father, and Martin Luther King, Jr. marked the death of a vigorous, tough-minded, result-oriented kind of liberalism in this country that it has never regained. Since then the Democratic Party and the political left have been characterized by watered-down mediocrity with a track record of ineffectiveness or else self-defeating politically correct stridency. The U.S. does not need more “centralist” mediocrities like Biden or, on the right, populist demagogues like Trump. What we need is genuine leadership, redeeming leadership. I do not know if Robert Kennedy, Jr. is the man who can provide it, but last Wednesday, even with his afflicted voice, he sounded as if he could be.

The problem I have with Kennedy is this: right after seeing his strong performance in the town hall event, I saw a clip from a conference with anti-vaxxers in which Kennedy spouted some batshit about how it is possible that the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 might have been the result of vaccine research. This is the kind of thing that reels me back in from Kennedy. There are charlatans (people who know that they are trying to fool you), and there are cranks (people who subscribe to the delusions they push). I suspect that Kennedy falls under the later. The broader issue is that his sensible positions on other issues of domestic and foreign policy may be tainted and dismissed because of the crazy stuff that gives his opponents ammunition. The question is whether these views should disqualify him.

Already the guardians of the status quo, like Vanity Fair, are attacking his Wednesday night performance. The major networks and newspapers snubbed him altogether, and some, like the Los Angeles Times, tried to poison the well before the event and then provided a hostile after-action report. Even though Kennedy has some quirky and even dangerously wrongheaded views, his stated goals of uniting the nation, returning the Democratic party back to its first principles, and demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy, are powerful and eloquent and deserve our attention and consideration. With Democrats backing a catastrophic war in Ukraine, and the GOP willing to embrace strongman extremism, Kennedy’s views may constitute the lesser danger among the current options. The Democratic establishment is mobilizing to destroy his candidacy, and they may succeed.

My advice is that before rejecting him and his candidacy outright, take a look at his performance from last week’s town hall meeting and then weigh him against the others.

By Michael F. Duggan

The Somme Offensive began today on the Western Front 107 years ago. It is also the the 125th anniversary of the Battle of San Juan Hill, the 160th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg and the 333rd anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. Leslie turns 91 today. Leibniz would have been 377 years old. Princess Diana would have been 62.

By Michael F. Duggan

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine devised a topical-analytical term of art—a specialized usage of a common word and its variations—to describe the bases of divisions that now threaten the domestic tranquility of our nation.  The term is incomprehension. His use of the word means an inability of ordinary Americans to understand each other or to communicate on the same wavelength or with similar perceptions and assumptions.

For instance, Democrats and progressives are unable to understand how anyone could fall for someone like Trump.  They regard MAGA supporters to be deluded—either a manifestation of mass psychosis or else a cult phenomenon—and unable to see through the illusion.  Trump supporters say that it is the liberals who are deluded, that they take him too literally out of hostility and cannot understand his greatness (as Salena Zito observed “The press takes [Trump] literally but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally).¹  Non-supporters comprehend him differently from supporters and their comprehension is incomprehensible to the other side, so they must be bad. The MAGA and Woke communities represent different universes that are fundametnally at odds with each other, work on different sets of assumptions, and are therefore Irreconcilable.   

Likewise, the populist right is dumbfounded by the progressive preoccupation with various social-sexual and gender issues.  To those on the right, the liberal focus on transgender issues and activities like drag shows, for instance, is eccentric, outlandish, baffling, and offensive to traditional values.  Other than what they regard to be a calculated attack on their moral beliefs, such causes are incomprehensible to them. These issues are as bewildering to the Right as QAnon conspiracy theories are to the Left. And from such a lack of mutual understanding and sympathy for the other side comes distrust, anger, and then hatred. 

But the incomprehension of our people goes beyond the ideologies of the culture wars.  It is also found in the interactions of daily life.  When white, working class Americans come face to face with newly-arrived immigrants from Latin America, both sides will likely experience incomprehension.  Although members of both groups may embrace variations of Christian faith and may occupy a similar economic space, there is a strong manifestation of cultural and linguistic incomprehension.   

For progressives, or anyone with sympathy for others, it is a difficult thing to admit, but the larger and more diverse a nation becomes, the less governable it becomes.  The smaller and more homogeneous a democracy is, the better its chances (think of a New England town hall meeting or a small country, like Denmark).  This is because the citizens of a small, uniform community or nation can comprehend their fellow citizens and understand and identify with their interests. 

By contrast, the larger and more diverse a nation becomes, the less democratic it becomes as individual rights give way to group rights, identification, interests, and social causes (name a nation as large or larger than the United States with a burgeoning, diverse population that is a showcase for liberal democracy).  Social democracy in a nation as large and varied as the U.S. in 2023 is probably a nonstarter.  As the late Tony Judt observed in 2010, “There may be something inherently selfish in the social service states of the mid-20^th century: blessed for a few decades with the good fortune of ethnic homogeneity and a small, educated, population where almost everyone could recognize themselves in everyone else.”²  The New Deal worked in large part because Americans could see themselves in the faces of the dispossessed.  They could comprehend their fellow citizens and their plight.   

I realize that all of this suggests something ugly about people, a hardwired propensity for tribalism and racism.  I don’t like this fact, and yet we must acknowledge it in order to address it. Rather than resorting to name-calling, it is better to try to understand what lies beneath bigoted attitudes and the foundations of incomprehension.  As the sociobiologist, Edward O. Wilson notes,

“All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs.  An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry.  Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things.  I know this truth from having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s and 1940s.”³

 Although Wilson’s observation flies in the face of the idea that differences sometimes attract and that diversifying the gene pool is a good thing that might be reflected in social behavior, he appears to be right that, on balance, people prefer to be with others that they can comprehend, and that race, language, and beliefs are bases for comprehension.  Wilson’s observation also identifies the inborn propensity for the tribalism that underlies racism, and therefore embraces the idea that racism must be actively opposed.  There is no such thing as the benign neglect of bigotry, and the hope that if we don’t teach children to be bigots they won’t become bigots is a dangerous one.  We must teach and encourage the comprehension of others if we are to bridge the dangerous divides in our country.

I believe it is the conservative political thinker, Peter Viereck (who now reads like a cautious progressive) who observes that when fundamental change comes too quickly, the result is instability and eventually violence.  I would offer that the cause of that instability and violence is a situation in which comprehension does not keep pace with change.  Therefore we must educate all sides about the humanity and rationale of those they oppose, those who they do not comprehend.  We cannot change the nation in fundamental ways and hope that attitudes will just catch up with new social realities.  We must make sure that social change and education about such things are on the same timetable and that the change is wanted and considered to be desirable by a sizable majority. Of course there is no guarantee, or even likelihood that a greater comprehension of both sides by both sides will be welcomed by either side. My sense is that the divides are already too deep to be bridged.     

Notes
1). Selena Zito, “Taking Trump Seriously, not Literally, The Atlantic, Sept. 23, 2016.
2). Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, 2010. 70. 
3) Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, 31.

By Michael F. Duggan

After months of discussion and speculation, the Ukrainian offensive has begun. I don’t know how an army is supposed to launch an effective breaching attack along a fixed line when virtually everybody has called attention to it for so long. Such talk has not helped the Ukrainian cause. I will not repeat anything here that one cannot access on any number of public sites.

What appears to be happening are battalion to brigade-size attacks in front the Russian lines to the south and east of the city of Zaporizhia. There are also attacks in Donetsk around Bakhmut and further to the north. The media, parroting each other, are delighted to have discovered the military term “shaping” to describe these attacks. Although the Ukrainians are certainly trying to shape the emerging battlefields, they are also preforming reconnaissance-in-force attacks, or the use of battalions, regiments, and brigades to probe the Russian defenses in search for weak points and to determine enemy strength generally. These units would then be robust enough to exploit holes in the enemy lines and perhaps act as spearheads for brigades of the main force to the rear.

At this point, there appear to be several possible outcomes for the operations already underway.
First, if Western-trained and equipped probing units reveal that the Russian lines are too strong to be breached, the offensive could be called off, and a new strategy formulated. This could be the beginning of the frozen war of which some commentators have spoken, although the Russians might see an abandoned attack as an opportunity to launch their own offensive (as with the American Civil War, the Western Front in the First World War, and the Eastern Front in the Second, counterpunches could be effectively used in this war).

Second, the Ukrainians could proceed with the offensive and commit the main body of attacking units. If reports are correct that Russian forces have created a defense in depth—successive lines with pre-sighted kill zones between them—the Ukrainians could be facing a strategic disaster that could shift the course and nature of the war. This is because of the inherent advantage of the defensive mode of warfare and the fact that the Russians have had months to dig in. Without a significant advantage in heavy artillery and air superiority, it is doubtful if any combined arms campaign could succeed against a well-entrenched foe.

The front in eastern Ukraine is often compared to the stalemate, the “trenchlock,” of the Western Front in the First World War. Throughout most of WWI, both sides believed that a single exploited breakthrough would rupture the equlibrium and could win the war. But the final victory in that war was actually the result of a general collapse of the German lines due to exhaustion vis-a-vis the arrival of 2 million American troops. It seems possible that even a dynamic breakthrough will not end this war either, so long as both armies have the capacity to fight. The end may come as a general collapse of the line.

Third, the Ukrainian forces break through to Mariupol or Melitopol or some other point or points on the Sea of Azov. If so the Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine would cut in half, and the land bridge from Russia to Crimea would be severed. The Ukrainian forces would then have to immediately turn their focus to the south with a holding action to the north. If not they would find themselves in a narrow corridor facing attacks from two sides (like the allied Arnhem campaign of September 1944). This scenario seems unlikely, and were the Ukrainian forces to push through to the Azov, one can only wonder what would happen next.

Was it wise to put so much pressure on the Ukrainians by suggesting that the entire course of the war was riding on the outcome of the offensive (I have even read that the entire “rule-based international order” of the world is hanging in the balance)? Over the past week, a number of media outlets have been trying to manage expectations by walking back statements on the either/or importance of the offensive. There now appears to be a failure of confidence among the pundits, or else a partial return to caution after so much blather. Did talk help drive events? A video released a few days before the offensive showed a sequence of Ukrainian fighting men sushing the viewer not to talk about the offensive. Good advice. But it was too late for that. The element of surprise was blown months ago, and now efforts to tamp-down speculation about the offensive and expectations are just another part of the story.

Initial reports are that Ukrainian units on the offensive are encountering considerable resistance. A push to the north of Bakhmut near the village of Berkhivka appears to have gained ground, but elsewhere the Russian lines have not been breached. There are now stories and grainy images from the battlefield of destroyed Bradley Fighting Vehicles and a Leopard 2 tank, although at this point in the campaign, such images do not mean much.

By Michael F. Duggan

Like so much in a war that makes little sense, the blowing up of the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam  upriver from Kherson is baffling.  It appears to have been either a mutually destructive act of desperation by one side or the other, or else an accident.   

Why would the Russians blow up the Dam?  Consider:

• The Western media would likely blame Russia in any event, thus giving rise to greater sympathy for Ukraine just as support for the war is flagging in the NATO nations and as Russian dominance on the battlefield appears to be consolidating.
• A major prong of Russian strategy has been to systematically destroy/degrade Ukrainian infrastructure.  Given this, why would Russia so vehemently deny culpability in this particular instance?
• The Russian defensive positions on the bottomland of the “Left Bank” of the Dnieper are lower than the adjacent shore, the Ukrainian-controlled side of the river.  Why would the Russians flood their own positions before pulling back their forces and defenses?
• Why would the Russians turn off the water to Crimea, including the Crimea Canal?
• Why would Russia turn off the water to a nuclear power plant under their control?    
• Taking out the “Kakhovka Sea”—a Great Salt Lake-size reservoir 150 miles long and 14 miles wide at points (and an impressive defensive barrier)—increases the length of front line significantly between Kherson and Zaporizhia.  Once the mud dries, the Dniepro will presumably be easier to cross in this area.  The Russians will now have a considerably longer defensive line to defend.  This will have the practical effect of drawing Russian forces and resources off of other parts of the line (although in the event of a Russian offensive, all of these observations could be applied to the Ukrainians).
• Could Russia have blown the dam in order to thwart an impending cross-river attack on the Russian-controlled portion of the Kherson Oblast?

Why would the Ukrainians blow up the Dam? 

• Why would the Ukrainians intentionally flood large areas of Kherson, a city they fought so hard to retake, as well as dozens of smaller towns?
• Why would they cut off the water to the agricultural areas of southern Ukraine under their control?
• Why would they inflict such a distraction onto themselves immediately before launching the much-discussed spring offensive?    
• The idea that the Ukrainians blew the dam might make sense as an act of extreme desperation to win greater sympathy from Europe and to flood Russian forces on the eastern bank of the lower Dnieper.  It could also be useful as a justification if the spring offensive fails.   

All of the reasons for either side blowing the dame seem thin and/or counterproductive.  Both sides will suffer from the lost irrigation water and from the environmental damage done to the region, the Black Sea, and its fisheries. Perhaps it was an accident of the kind so common in war, a fuckup. Sometimes the least dramatic answer is the real one. The dam had been shelled by the Ukrainians and it is possible that the Russian occupiers let the water behind the dam rise to an unsafe level during and after the winter rains.  

By Michael F. Duggan

In a time when so much of the news ranges from the merely bad to the pre-Apocalyptic, the news out of Brazil was mixed this week. On the one hand, the bossa nova singer, Astrud “The Girl from Impanema” Gilberto, died at 83. On the other hand, Brazilian president, Lula de Silva declared an ambitious plan to stop all illegal cutting in the Amazon basin by 2030. If he succeeds, it will be an important victory for the environment.

Although Lula is committed to environment, I will believe it when I see it. As we all know from the election of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian presidential politics can turn on a 10 Centavos piece, and even the best efforts can be undone in short order. Lula still has three and a half years to begin implementing this noble plan. In an increasingly dark time, it is a singular glimmer of light.

By Michael F. Duggan

Robert F. Kennedy, who died 55 years ago today, represents the last gasp of the vital American liberalism that died along with so much else of the promise of the 1960s in 1968.  What many Americans do not know, is that for much of his life, Bobby Kennedy was suspicious of liberals. 

Bobby had been Jack’s pit bull, his “ruthless” fixer, and there was a hard, pragmatic edge to him that is so conspicuously missing in many progressive politicians from Adlai Stevenson to the present day.  Writing about himself in the third person, Norman Mailer observes “Of course [Mailer] had been partisan to Bobby Kennedy, excited precisely by his admixture of idealism plus willingness to traffic with demons, ogres, and overlords of corruption.”  In spite the depth and soulfulness of his final years and his steady drift to the left, Kennedy had long been skeptical about “professional liberals.”  He once observed that, “They like it much better to have a cause than a course of action that’s been successful.”¹  

Was RFK right?  Do some American liberals prefer to talk about their outrage rather than realistically solve problems?  Could this in part be why conservatives have been more successful than liberals in recent decades and why hard-nosed, unapoligetic progressivism is more or less dead in the United States?  Some of the liberals whose posts I read on social media are happy to express indignation, but do liberals really prefer to be right than successful?  They seem to like pushing back against rhetoric with rhetoric of their own rather than trying to solve the root cause of the serious and not-so-serious problems so conspicuously manifested in the sound and fury of the culture wars.  

For instance, many of progressives I read tend to focus on the outward symptoms of the perspectives that offend them, whether it is racism, sexism, homophobia, and related gender bigotry.  Cleverness appears to be a surrogate for effective action. Their opponents are simply stupid or else bad and without motive beyond a kind of unthinking, unfeeling malice existing in an ahistorical, causal vacuum.  Progressives also seem to take a solemn, righteous joy in the discomfort their positions on gender instill in opponents who embrace traditional morality, and then are quick to resort to name-calling rather than trying to understand the opposing positions and bridge the gap.

They consider their fellow Americans on the populist right to be beyond redemption and seem to have little curiosity about the longstanding issues of economics, bad governance, and national decline that led to such attitudes.  Every day they are disappointed, disbelieving, or righteously indignant over the bigoted or insensitive attitudes of those who oppose them, and who are not sufficiently evolved in their thinking to agree with the moral purity and patent common sense their own enlightened positions.

As long as we address only the symptoms of our national divide, we will never find a way to bridge it. And while we must sometimes treat the symptoms of an illness in order to save a patient, such an approach will never stem a general outbreak.  Americans are an unhistorical people; we prefer to react to what offends us, reinforcing what we already believe, rather than looking at longstanding historical causes and pedigrees behind the attitudes.  As Bertrand Russel observes, “it is pleasant to think of ourselves as virtuous and our enemies wicked,” but we must go beyond appearances and get to the root causes of our differences if we are to bridge them.²  I hope that no reader of mine will think that my criticism is only reserved for the Left. I am far more critical of the extremism of the Right.  But I believe that we must look below the surface of people’s positions in good faith and empathy if we are to effectively address the divides that threaten our nation.

Notes
1. Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 372.
2. Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, 50.

By Michael F. Duggan

For several months, I had been rolling my eyes at the artificial debt ceiling crisis forced by House Republicans.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, as the June 1 deadline loomed in the near distance, a friend of mine asked me if I thought the whole episode smelled like a red herring.  His rationale for calling it a phony crisis is that Big Finance and other powerful economic special interests would never allow far-right, populist extremists in the House to spoil their gig.  At a certain point, they would pressure their representatives in the GOP, and if necessary, some Democrats, to avert a national default and the disastrous downgrading of the U.S. credit rating that would follow. Now, Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has pushed back the date of default to June 5 (phew!).  

The contrived crisis has some curious aspects that lead to rather obvious questions.  Why, for instance, are the Republicans doing this now?  The answer to this one is especially self-evident: as with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Republicans have adopted an attitude of “what is mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable.”  Thus, in their estimation it was fine to increase the debt ceiling three times during the Trump administration (adding an additional $7.8 trillion to the national debt), but it is also sound strategy to hold the largest economy in the world hostage and to threaten national ruin under a Democratic presidency. 

This is not especially surprising; U.S. politics these days is rife with “red button” wedge issues, and propagandistic interpretations of the dustups and skirmishes of the culture wars by both sides. These are designed to keep people mad at each other and to consolidate the bases of the parties. Division is as good for politics as it is for business.

The next question is: why would President Biden negotiate with hostage-takers, given the dismal record of budgetary brinksmanship on the part of those who initiate these bogus crises? The answer to this question is less clear.  Delaying or threatening to withhold routine budgetary functions is an occasional Republican tactic, even though it hasn’t work out happily for the hostage-takers in the past, yet here we are, again (what is it Einstein says about people who keep repeating a failed course of action?). One can only wonder what Biden can gain from negotiations and what he might give away. 

This kind of artificial crisis falls under a historical category that Daniel J. Boorstin calls a “pseudo-event.” ¹ The danger of fake or unnecessary crises is that they can trigger real debacles.  Never underestimate human fallibility and our capacity to blunder and miscalculate.  Punctuating this tenet of historical realism is the observation that this “crisis” feels different. As smug and self-righteous as Newt Gingrich and later budgetary extortionists were, one sensed that beyond the cynicism was a current of self-preserving sanity or cynicism (and presumably they were under some control of the party establishment).  A cynical political hack can be bargained with. A true believer cannot.  Thus the danger of the present crisis. 

The $31.4 trillion national debt is an existential threat to the United States.  When it balloons even further, it may become apparent that the U.S. will never pay it off, and that our economy has become something like a Ponzi scheme, a great machine that exhales more than it inhales.  At that point, it is possible that the Chinese Yuan will supplant the Dollar as the world reserve currency in a global monetary system that is already being de-dollarized as the result of sanctions on Russia.  But averting an eventual economic collapse by threatening an immediate one is not a rational means for solving the problem.  It is theater that could lead to disaster.   

I suspect that a deal will be reached sometime within the coming days or week and the government will agree to pay its bills.  Perhaps some Democrats will be enlisted to push it through the House. 

Note
1), See generally, Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image, A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Random House, 1961).   

Postscript, May 28, 2023
Hours after I wrote yesterdays posting, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy reached an agreement on raising the budget ceiling. I am still at a loss to explain why Biden agreed to negotiations in the first place. Perhaps it is a part of a strategy to minimize the extreme right in the House by making cuts that he and the Republican establishment agree upon (thus taking some of the wind out of charges of Democratic budgetary irresponsibility).

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am in favor of crisis diplomacy and negotiations. But the crisis has to be real, and both sides must be acting on good faith. What Biden has taught the other side is that hostage-taking gets you a seat at the table. It also gets you some of your demands. I suspect that we will see more of this kind of bad behavior in the future.