Realism and Policy

By Michael F. Duggan

Well, wishful thinking, or a hitherto undetected surge of Millennials and Gen-Zers, or legions of closet pro-abortion rights women, or something else flying under the radar, or all of the above appears to have blunted the Great Red Wave. Turned it into a scarlet ripple in spite of Gerrymandering, intimidation, and other forms of suppression. But the indications are still of a slightly rising crimson tide as regards the House of Representatives.

A narrow margin of Republican control of the House will likely put a damper on the more extreme of GOP ambitions for the next two years (e.g. impeaching President Biden), assuming that the Senate remains under Democratic control. For the Democrats, this may be the legislative equivalent of almost surviving a car crash (or being killed but with an unmangled corpse; you get the idea). Unless a bipartisan coalition emerges in the establishment middle, gridlock will likely result from the red tide. Weak control of the House could also undermine Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to defund the war in Ukraine, if he is the new Speaker. We should also remember that it is dashed expectations that spark revolts, and it the the far right may radicalize to an even greater extent than to date. Stay tuned.

But for now, in terms of domestic politics, things could have been worse. And although it is still early and much remains in flux—and a dismal bigger picture remains firmly in place, and Ron DeSantis won in a landslide—I am delighted to have been more wrong than right in my predictions of this one.

By Michael F. Duggan

During the tense run-up to the midterms, I occasionally asked myself what novel would best describe the United States in our time. Moby Dick is perhaps the most obvious choice, and the points of comparison are legion. There is also The Lord of the Flies, but as of now, the comparison is not yet on all fours. The work that comes closest to describing the psychological backdrop of our domestic political situation may be the greatest realistic American novel to come out of the Second World War, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, from 1948.

The dominant current of the book is a power struggle for control of a reconnaissance platoon on a doomed mission by two alpha males. One is Lieutenant Robert Hearn, a high-minded outsider foisted on the unit from above. The other is Staff Sergeant Sam Croft, a cruel but familiar noncom who has led the unit for some time. The former is an educated rational liberal; the latter is a brutal but functional psychopath. Guess which one is still alive at the end of the story.

By Michael F. Duggan

Over the past day or so, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Andrei Kelin, have both stated that Russia will not use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. On its face, this would appear to be extremely good news.

For those of us who have studied the Cuban Missile Crisis and who realize the ideological fervor and determination of the U.S. foreign policy Blob, and the fact that Putin tends not to bluff, this would seem to be best possible news (other than a ceasefire) in what has otherwise been an unmitigated human tragedy. And as far as it goes, it is good news. But it also has ominous implications, if we read between the lines.

In June, John Mearsheimer pointed out an irony in the Ukrainian war, a dangerous inverse ratio that he referred to as ”a perverse paradox.” It is really quite simple and is as commonsensical as a sliding supply and demand chart in economics: if Ukraine and NATO begin to win the war, the odds of an increasingly desperate Russia using nuclear weapons go up proportionately: i.e. as you begin to win, the chances of everybody losing catastrophe also go up. Therefore, the announcement that Russia will not use nuclear weapons suggests confidence on the part of the Russian leaders that they will win the conventional war.

How is this possible? After all, the network media has reported sweeping Ukrainian victories in the northeastern part of the country, small but increasing gains in the southeast around Kherson, and the fact that Russia has not been able to occupy all of the territory of the four provinces it has annexed. Think of the news you are getting as being akin to the movie Money Ball and the idea of Sabermetrics: facts, figures, and numbers—statistics—are important, but they have to be the right numbers, the relevant facts and figures.

What the nightly news is not telling you is that the gains Ukraine is making in the southeast are likely coming at a high cost. As a historian, one of my primary areas of interest is the First World War, and if I have learned anything from that conflict, it is that in a war of position, when one side launches protracted offensives that make small gains against an enemy in strong defensive positions backed by heavy artillery, those gains usually come at a heavy, perhaps extreme cost.

My sense is that most Americans have little idea just how badly Ukraine has already been damaged in this war. An economic basket case before the Russian invasion, it would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild. At the present time, Russia is engaged in a long-term missile and drone campaign to systematically degrade—destroy—Ukraine’s energy networks and other infrastructure related to day-to-day life. What will happen in a nation of 40 million people with greatly diminished access to clean water, heating, lighting, power, transportation, etc., once winter sets in? This is to say nothing about the economic state of Western Europe and its capacity to support its proxies in a raging, open-ended conflict, and to deal with the millions of refugees that have already left Ukraine (will an already over-stretched Europe be able to afford expensive natural gas from the U.S. now that cheap Russian gas is off the table?).

When analyzing the war in Ukraine, do not just look at it in narrow Jominian terms of battles won or lost or who occupies or has retaken what territory, whether it be in areas lightly defended by the Russians like the western Kharkiv region, or in fiercely contested areas along the broad front in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. These things certainly matter, but are only a part of the larger calculus. Rather, look at the war more broadly in Clausewitzian terms of the overall resources of the respective sides. The Russians are getting artillery shells from North Korea and drones from Iran, but Ukraine remains far more dependent on outside support. It is fair to say that almost all of the Ukrainian war effort is being subsidized by the West as Russia mostly supports itself and appears to be positioned to do so indefinitely. Will the people of the Western democracies be similarly committed in economic hard times of their own?

Inflation in the Eurozone stands at 10.7%—higher than in the U.S.—and energy costs are up 42%. Other than these, I do not have the specific numbers of European economics at my fingertips, but I believe that the relevant economic statistics regarding the prosecution of the war would show a considerable Russian advantage. At this point, I infer—and this is mostly just a hunch—that Russia is holding most of the good cards in this war: its economy is more insulated and more capable of autarchy than the nations of the European Union and the United States (and certainly more so than Ukraine). The great danger now is that NATO will expand the war if it becomes apparent that the proxy war strategy (or popular support for it) is failing.

We should all be guardedly relieved that Russia has declared that it will not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (of course there is always the possibility of an accident or miscalculation by either side). But if we look at the bigger picture, to include the domestic and international economics related to the support of Ukraine, it is difficult to see how such support can be sustained. The time to open a back channel to end this war is now (assuming that one is not already open). Perhaps it could be done through a third party with connections to both sides, like Turkey.

By Michael F. Duggan

Almost a year and a half ago, I wrote on this blog that the 2022 midterm elections might be the most consequential, or fateful, in U.S. history. With 17 day until election day, I reaffirm that statement.

At this point, it is likely that the Democrats will lose the House, the Senate, or both. If any of these happen The Hill will return to gridlock and obstruction and President Biden will become a lame duck with two years left in his administration. What happens after that is anybody’s guess, but we can assume that it will not be good. Of course, this is not even a worst case scenario and does not address issues of election denying by the losers in close races or the possibility of outright violence by extremest elements.

A friend of mine recently analogized contemporary American political and social life to a river flowing toward an uncertain end. He recently modified that metaphor to a fast-moving, rapids-strewn, wild river immediately above a great waterfall. Another metaphor might be the event horizon to the black hole that is the future of our nation.

Hope for the best, but strap in.

By Michael F. Duggan

“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff… This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”
-Vladimir Putin, September 21, 2022

“Let me say it plainly: If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will act decisively.”
-Jake Sullivan on Meet the Press, September 26, 2022

So it’s official: the United States is now playing a game of nuclear chicken over a crisis with no vital national interest at stake with a man who does not appear to blink much less bluff. Does Mr. Sullivan really believe that a war with Russia involving nuclear weapons would not have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and the rest of the world as well?

I will say it again: backing a nuclear-armed foe into a position of either accepting defeat and humiliation over what he perceives to be an existential threat, or escalating toward the use of nuclear weapons is not diplomacy. It is not a strategy. It is insanity.

The real enemy is not a temporal regime or a national leader—they and the events they initiate and respond to come and go. The real enemy is the nuclear weapons that threaten us all, and the dangerous events that threaten their use and distract from the crises of the environment.

By Michael F. Duggan

In response to the rolling up of the Russian right flank by Ukrainian forces, Vladimir Putin is calling up 300,000 reservists—a partial mobilization—to fight in Ukraine. More than an escalation, it may be a proportional analog to the Chinese entry into the Korean War in November 1950. In the words of Douglas MacArthur, we may be “facing an entirely new war” in the coming months. Russia is also in the process of conducting a five-day referendum on the assimilation of Ukraine’s eastern most provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson.

From the start, the term “special military operation” has sounded like the typical kind propagandistic newspeak used by militaries worldwide to spin nasty realities (e.g. the “police action” in Korea, “peacemaker” missiles, and mercenaries called “private contractors”). But relative to what could be coming, it might be an apt name for the mission of Russia’s anemic forces in Ukraine to date (Russia probably has around 200,000 military personnel in Ukraine facing a force that can draw from a pool of millions). The mobilization currently underway suggests that, in the language of Texas Hold ‘Em poker, Russia is now “all in,” in case there were any remaining doubts. For historical context, the previous two times Russia mobilized were in 1914 and 1941. This should be keeping all of the rational people in the world up at night.

If this escalation was not significant enough, Russian recognition of the eastern Ukrainian regions as its own territory will mean that any attack there will be regarded as an attack on Russia itself. Worse yet, if the West should escalate and actually launch rockets or missiles from a third country on Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, it might be seen as an attack by NATO on Russia itself. This could mean the beginning of the “hot” war that the United States and Soviet Union successfully avoided fighting during the first Cold War.

Michael F. Duggan

Woody Allen has announced his retirement from filmmaking.

I will not attempt to justify his private life, and I have not followed his legal troubles closely, but one of the tenets of popular wisdom to which I subscribe is: “to be great is to be abnormal.” And Woody Allen is a great director. With the possible exception of Francis Ford Coppola, he is the greatest living American director.

From his standup comedy in the 1960s, to his madcap early films like Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death, to his great period with Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, to his later films like Husbands and Wives, The Mighty Aphrodite, Sweet and Lowdown, Match Point, Midnight in Paris, and Blue Jasmine, Allen has proved himself to be a world-class artist and commentator of the times.

He is a cross between a borscht-belt comedian, an East Village comic of the New Left, and an existentialist philosopher (“Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on a Sunday”). There is also something strikingly original about his work. He is unique and his films have a feel that cannot be duplicated. More than any other director, he captured the Zeitgeist (and angst) of the times in which he lived (or at least a New York version of them). Over 55 years, he directed, wrote, and/or acted in 65 films, about half of which are good and half of those are classics. Without him there would have been no Seinfeld or any number of lesser artists.

I admit that his private life has been a mess (although I’d wager that few people reading this have read all of the court transcripts and investigation interviews in the cases against him, which are apparently available).¹ But the art must be taken on its own merits, just like that of other morally-problematic artists, like Mozart, Beethoven, Byron, van Gogh, Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Jackson Pollock.

If you doubt his greatness as a director and storyteller, watch Annie Hall this week.

Notes
1. John Kendall Hawkins, “Woody’s Wicked and Wicked-er Gravity,” CounterPunch, April 15, 2020.

By Michael F. Duggan

It is one of the oldest maxims of war: hit ’em where they don’t expect it. First, hit ’em hard at a weak point, or a strong point for that matter. Then, when they are distracted and have committed resources elsewhere, attack the real objective in earnest.

Now Putin knows how Marshal Tallard felt at Blenheim, or how the Germans felt when the D-Day invasion forces showed up at Normandy instead of Calais (Operation Fortitude), or how the commander of any quiet sector felt when it suddenly became the focus of the entire war on the Western Front (feints were also used during the Great War to take pressure off of beleaguered portions of the line). Until February 1916, Verdun had been a quiet sector.

A few months ago, I conjectured that the Russian drive towards Kiyv was either an error or a feint to distract from their real objectives to the south and east. Now it seems that the much-reported Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and east was itself a feint from the real objective in the Karkiv Oblast immediately to the east of Donesk and Luhansk. It has been a great success; The Ukrainian right-feint-and-left-hook strategy reintroduced shock and decisiveness to a war that had appeared to have settled into deadlock. The Ukrainians have shown themselves to be remarkable fighters, and, with roughly $1 billion per week in the latest Western weaponry and real-time intelligence, it seems that there is little they cannot do.

Of course a possible alternative is that the southeastern feint and the northern punch were both real attacks—a coordinate right-left, Mike Tyson-like combination, from which only the left hook drew blood. But let us assume that for a moment that the real Ukrainian focus was primarily on the north.

Does this mark a turning point in the war? It is hard to say. The West hopes that this victory will cause a general collapse in Russian morale and that the momentum of revitalized Ukrainian forces will allow them to roll up the line to the south and east. The success of the current offensive will no doubt encourage those supporting Ukraine to continue their support. But the degree to which Russia begins to lose the war will be proportional to the increased risk of an expanded and far more dangerous conflict. Forcing a nuclear-armed foe into a choice between losing face or lashing out with tactical nuclear weapons is no way to resolve a conflict. It is something like insanity.

Of course even if the counteroffensive is a turning point, it may not be decisive or final in a broader strategic sense. It may be just another round of escalation or a change in a shifting tide. As James McPherson observes in Crossroads of Freedom, the American Civil War was like a pendulum and had multiple “turning points.” This is certainly the case of many protracted conflicts, like the Second World War, and anything can happen. Momentum can swing back and forth numerous times in a long war. Along the rest of the line in Ukraine, both sides are dug in and it has hard to imagine Kiyv or Moscow suing for peace at this point. It seems that both sides are likely to redouble their efforts in the face of setbacks.

We know what the Kharkiv Oblast means to the Ukrainians. The question then is how much does it mean to the Russians? If they permanently lose this area, it will (from Russia’s point of view) remain a permanently hostile frontier and perhaps a Western bastion on the Russian border. This may be intolerable to them. If Russian strategy and pride dictate that this area must be retaken and included with Donetsk and Luhansk as a territorial war aim, then there will be a redoubled effort there, a counter punch, a counteroffensive to the present counteroffensive but with no chance of surprise. This would likely signal an even greater intensity of fighting, a magnitude of violence perhaps well beyond what we have seen to date. It will mark yet another escalation, an escalation in the viciousness in the prosecution of the war by both sides.

If the Russian leadership comes to regard Kharkiv as “a bridge too far” relative to their apparent territorial ambitions to the east and south, they might swallow their pride and abandon any ambitions of retaking it. The Kharkiv region is well beyond the prewar separatist areas, but has significant ethnically Russian and Russian-speaking populations.

Fasten your seat belts.

Postscript: December 13, 2022
The Ukrainian victory in Kharkiv three months ago was widely interpreted at the time to be the rolling up of the Russian right flank in the northeast. It now appears to be something like the American victory at St. Mihiel in September 1918. This attack, the first large-scale campaign by the American forces under Pershing, was intended to reduce the long-standing St. Mihiel salient. It was launched on September 12, just as the Germans were withdrawing from the sector. Although it would be an overstatement to say that the Americans only punched air at St. Mihiel (U.S. losses were 4,500 killed with another 2,500 wounded), the reduction of the salient was not the battle that was expected.

Like the Germans in September 1918, it now appears that the Russians were consolidating their positions both in Kharkiv and in Kherson during the late summer and fall of 2022, ceding territory not easily defended—a fighting withdrawal. Unlike the Germans during the final months of the Great War, the Russian forces now seem poised to launch a cold weather offensive that could be decisive.

By Michael F. Duggan

Yesterday is the anniversary of one of the most devastating attacks ever delivered by a foreign enemy on American soil. I refer of course to the defeat of the Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777.

The American forces under Washington were aligned along the east bank of Brandywine Creek at Chads Ford, Pennsylvania, attempting to block the British advance on Philadelphia. With him were Nathaniel Greene, Anthony Wayne, and the Marquis de Lafayette (it was his first battle and he would be wounded in the leg).

Sir William Howe, the British commander, saw the strong defensive position of the Americans. With the aid of local loyalists, he moved a portion of his forces under Charles Cornwallis north and crossed the Brandywine further upstream at Jefferis Ford. Moving south along the creek, they turned Washington’s right flank, and after a vicious fight, defeated the Americans. This opened the way for the capture of Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress. The remaining American forces withdrew intact and would fight again.

Also present on the British side was a Scottish officer, Patrick Ferguson, who had invented, and was now armed with, the technically-sophisticated Ferguson Rifle, an early breechloader based on the La Chaumette design. He wrote in his diary that at one point in the battle, he had an American officer in his sights, but did not take the shot. He considered the targeting of an individual enemy officer to be dishonorable. The American officer may have been George Washington, who was on the part of the field described by Ferguson. Ferguson was wounded—shot through the elbow—at Brandywine.

Major Ferguson was killed on October 7, 1780 at the Battle of Kings Mountain in South Carolina. A near-contemporary source alleges that his body was stripped and urinated on by undisciplined American militiamen before burial.

By Michael F. Duggan

And so the second Elizabethan Era draws to a close.

Not to get all weepy about an accident of birth—and in spite of my ambivalence about monarchy—I liked the Queen. All life is mostly accidental and just in being born each of us has won a trillion lotteries. In terms of social rank, the Queen just won one more lottery than the rest of us. Britain could have (and has) done worse in terms of the monarchy, and although it seems like an anachronism, there are certainly worse systems than constitutional monarchy. Although not a complete surprise, hearing of her death left a feeling that a decent, vaguely benevolent omnipresence had been taken. Approximately the same age as such long-gone people as Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, she seemed like a permanent part of the international landscape.

Okay, she wasn’t a hands-on executive like Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression or WWII, or John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but she was more than a figurehead. She was the moral leader of the British People from the Korean War until yesterday, an omnipresence of constancy and consistency. Both high-minded and tough-minded, she was the dignified Keeper of the Flame of national institutions, a relayer of national continuity.

Oh, sure, critics (Charles Krauthammer?) have long noted that the only political institution more absurd than the American vice presidency is the Royal family. But I think that this is only partially true. Marxians and some progressives deride these kinds of traditions, and yet this particular one is about 1,200-years-old (how old is the oldest Marxist government and to what degree has it lived up to the principles of Marxism?). It obviously resonates with a lot of people as a mostly harmless preoccupation and is the kind of historical and social detail that Marxians and Marxists tend to leave out of their moral-rationalist calculations.

Much of what one reads about the Royal Family and “The Firm” is calculated PR and the lingering pageantry of a dead empire. But as with the outpouring of emotions after Diana’s death, the feelings of ordinary people for the Queen both in Britain and abroad, their sense of loss appears to be a mixture of both false intimacy and real affection. Could it a coincidence that all of the county liquor shops were out of Dubonnet yesterday afternoon? Of course there is also PR that you cannot buy, and a double rainbow is said to have appeared over Buckingham Palace as the sun broke through the clouds yesterday afternoon. I was not there, but I assume that it really happened and was not just a wishful fictional device, like the Angles of Mons.

We all know the trivia: from the girl who could change tires and work on the engines of military vehicles during WWII, the the 25-year-old who inherited a moribund empire after her father’s untimely death, the most-traveled, longest-serving (15 prime ministers, 14 U.S. presidents) British monarch in history. She was not, as Prime Minister Truss (who has now served under two British monarchs) observed, “the rock on which modern Britain was build” (hardly a compliment), but rather the dignified means of relinquishing what Britain had been, both beneficial (the welfare state and social democracy), and problematic (the Empire itself). Above all, she embodied the devotion to duty to the institutions and traditions of Great Britain over a long period of great change and numerous crises.

She was not perfect. As one might expect of royalty, and in spite of the continuing displays of affection by the public, she was often remote from the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, and her grasp of contemporary issues and engagement in addressing them was uneven. Like Churchill and her father, she could be a guiding moral force in troubled times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Perfectly (if predictably) turned out in bright colors and a big hat, and perfectly well spoken, she embodied qualities so conspicuously missing from much of today’s world. She was regal.

But what about her successor to the Throne?

Except for his treatment of Diana—which was in part the tragic result of the absurd and brutal realities of being an heir to the throne—I have always liked Charles (I had the chance to meet him in my old job, but alas, was out sick on the day of his visit). A man of intelligence, ideas, and opinions, and grandnephew and protege of Lord Mountbatten, I think that we can expect a more hands-on monarch in important areas like the environment and perhaps geopolitics. If, like his mother, he is a force for benevolence in the world, let us recognize it and appreciate him.

Certainly no one can say that he has not paid his dues.