I heard a radio re-broadcast this morning of much of Cruz's horrible Liberty University speech. He used the phrase "shining city on a hill" more than once. If it was good enough for Ronald Reagan... (Cruz also referred in passing, and not in an uncomplimentary way, to FDR; again, shades of Reagan.)
Added later: But in both cases, it was just an appropriation of FDR for their own purposes.
Another edit: for the Biblical origins of the '(shining) city on a hill' phrase, see this 2012 post by L.D. Burnett.
Showing posts with label FDR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FDR. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
'Brutal realpolitik' and the Katyn massacre
Jacob Heilbrunn writes:
I agree with Heilbrunn's characterization of FDR's and Churchill's actions, but the puzzling thing about Heilbrunn's post is that he criticizes FDR and Churchill while also seeming to recognize that their alternatives were very limited: "they had a weak hand to play," he notes. In the spring of 1943, Heilbrunn observes, the Nazis discovered the Katyn massacre and, blaming the Soviets for it, hoped to use it to create a rift between Stalin on on hand and Roosevelt and Churchill on the other. "But Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it," he writes.
Of course Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it. In the spring of '43 Hitler's armies were still in the USSR. They were reeling from Stalingrad but not yet totally defeated. The battle of Kursk had not yet started. The overriding aim of Roosevelt and Churchill was to defeat Nazi Germany and there were few lengths to which they would not go in pursuit of that goal. They had to feel some considerable gratitude to the USSR (and, by extension, to Stalin) for repulsing Hitler's invasion at enormous human cost.
You really don't have to know much about World War II to know that, while it was being fought, ideals took a back seat to the perceived requirements of victory in the policy decisions of the main leaders, at least of the Allies. Churchill and FDR allied themselves with a murderous dictator and helped to cover up the Katyn massacre and no doubt would have covered up other crimes of Stalin that came to their attention in the course of the war (perhaps in fact they did). Churchill said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he (Churchill) would make a favorable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons. He was serious. In 1943 victory was still not certain and it is a bit bizarre to think that FDR and Churchill would have created a breach with Stalin over anything. Should they have done so? Not even Heilbrunn says that directly.
There were many individual acts of heroism and idealism on the battlefields (construing that word broadly) of World War II. But in the councils where policy was made and memorandums of state were written, I think it's probably safe to say that World War II was almost entirely 'brutal realpolitik'. It was, if anyone, Hitler who was the least guided by realpolitik, as he insisted on spending bureaucratic and financial and manpower resources on the machinery of the Holocaust long after it became clear that all of Germany's resources should have been going directly into its military effort if the Third Reich were going to have a chance of survival. It was Hitler who put his ideological aims above the dictates of military necessity. FDR and Churchill issued high-minded declarations like the Atlantic Charter, but basically they were focused on one thing: prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. All other considerations got pushed aside. They were facing what they saw, with some considerable justification, as 'a supreme emergency', in Churchill's phrase, and they were going to do what they thought they had to do.
P.s. Stalin of course did a great deal of ideologically motivated killing too, but more before and after the war than during it (the Katyn massacre notwithstanding).
Winston Churchill had said he would "sup with the devil" if it would help bring about victory [in WW2]. So he—and Franklin Roosevelt—did. They allied themselves with Stalin, even pretended, at least publicly, that he was a fine man and the Soviet Union an even finer place. Now, with the release of numerous documents from the National Archives about Stalin's murder of over twenty thousand Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forest in 1940, we know in even more detail just how far they were prepared to go to extol and defend the Soviet Union.Heilbrunn goes on to observe that the newly released documents indicate that Churchill and FDR pretty much knew the Soviets were responsible for the massacre and worked to ensure that an investigation, which the Polish government-in-exile in London called for, would not occur. FDR and Churchill engaged in "a brutal act of realpolitik," Heilbrunn writes, adding that this shows they had given up on Poland's freedom before Yalta.
I agree with Heilbrunn's characterization of FDR's and Churchill's actions, but the puzzling thing about Heilbrunn's post is that he criticizes FDR and Churchill while also seeming to recognize that their alternatives were very limited: "they had a weak hand to play," he notes. In the spring of 1943, Heilbrunn observes, the Nazis discovered the Katyn massacre and, blaming the Soviets for it, hoped to use it to create a rift between Stalin on on hand and Roosevelt and Churchill on the other. "But Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it," he writes.
Of course Roosevelt and Churchill were having none of it. In the spring of '43 Hitler's armies were still in the USSR. They were reeling from Stalingrad but not yet totally defeated. The battle of Kursk had not yet started. The overriding aim of Roosevelt and Churchill was to defeat Nazi Germany and there were few lengths to which they would not go in pursuit of that goal. They had to feel some considerable gratitude to the USSR (and, by extension, to Stalin) for repulsing Hitler's invasion at enormous human cost.
You really don't have to know much about World War II to know that, while it was being fought, ideals took a back seat to the perceived requirements of victory in the policy decisions of the main leaders, at least of the Allies. Churchill and FDR allied themselves with a murderous dictator and helped to cover up the Katyn massacre and no doubt would have covered up other crimes of Stalin that came to their attention in the course of the war (perhaps in fact they did). Churchill said that if Hitler invaded Hell, he (Churchill) would make a favorable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons. He was serious. In 1943 victory was still not certain and it is a bit bizarre to think that FDR and Churchill would have created a breach with Stalin over anything. Should they have done so? Not even Heilbrunn says that directly.
There were many individual acts of heroism and idealism on the battlefields (construing that word broadly) of World War II. But in the councils where policy was made and memorandums of state were written, I think it's probably safe to say that World War II was almost entirely 'brutal realpolitik'. It was, if anyone, Hitler who was the least guided by realpolitik, as he insisted on spending bureaucratic and financial and manpower resources on the machinery of the Holocaust long after it became clear that all of Germany's resources should have been going directly into its military effort if the Third Reich were going to have a chance of survival. It was Hitler who put his ideological aims above the dictates of military necessity. FDR and Churchill issued high-minded declarations like the Atlantic Charter, but basically they were focused on one thing: prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. All other considerations got pushed aside. They were facing what they saw, with some considerable justification, as 'a supreme emergency', in Churchill's phrase, and they were going to do what they thought they had to do.
P.s. Stalin of course did a great deal of ideologically motivated killing too, but more before and after the war than during it (the Katyn massacre notwithstanding).
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Democracy, deception, and war
In my inbox today was an e-mail from the journal International Security containing links to a podcast and to a recent article by John Schuessler. The podcast is a conversation about the article between Schuessler and the journal's editor, Sean Lynn-Jones. (Links below.)
The article, which I have only looked at quickly, examines the ways in which FDR (allegedly) tried to "manufacture" public consent for entry into WW2 by deceiving the public about some of his actions and intentions. Schuessler concludes that this is one case in which deception of this sort was in the national interest. (Note: For a better summary of the article's argument, see the link at the end of this post, which will take you to the abstract; you can also download the pdf of the article for free.)
From a theoretical standpoint, what is going on here, as I understand it from the podacst and a glance at the article, and put in an oversimplified fashion, is this: Dan Reiter and Allan Stam have argued that democracies tend to win the wars they fight, in large part because leaders, constrained by the necessity of obtaining public consent, generally choose to enter wars where victory is likely to be easy. Schuessler says: Hang on a minute. What about those cases where the leader thinks that, for security reasons, a war is necessary, but the war does not promise to be quick and easy? In those cases the leader may resort to deception rather than take his or her chances with trying to persuade the public directly of the war's necessity. America's entry into WW2 and the way FDR approached it, Schuessler argues, was such a case. (Obviously, the reference here is to the period before Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declaration of war against Japan was a foregone conclusion, and Germany's declaration of war on the U.S. brought it directly into the European war, thus fulfilling FDR's original aim, at least according to this argument.)
Now, this argument may be right, but how often are such cases likely to arise? Schuessler himself suggests in the podcast that WW2 was exceptional. If it was an exceptional case, then it may reveal some interesting things about when and how a leader resorts to deception, but it can't pose a severe challenge to the Reiter/Stam thesis. The most it can it do is present an addendum to the thesis, i.e.: yes, leaders of democracies generally choose "easy" wars, but in rare cases 'realist' reasons will incline them to "non-easy" wars and then deception may come into play. Of course one has to add a couple of other complications: (1) wars that most people think are going to be "easy" but turn out not to be (e.g., Iraq 2003); (2) wars that leaders believe mistakenly are necessary for security reasons (I would be very inclined to put the Vietnam War in this category).
So, deception -- accepting for the sake of argument the claim that FDR did engage in it -- may have been in the national interest in the run-up to U.S. entry into WW2, but more often, or so I would argue, deception will not turn out to be in the national interest (Vietnam, Iraq). When in doubt, then, the rule of thumb for a leader in a democracy should probably still be: Go directly to the people, explain your case straightforwardly, and hope they agree with you that the costs -- even if they promise to be high -- are worth bearing. (Whatever you think about the "Afghan surge," for example, it is clear that this is basically the approach Obama took when explaining why he ordered it. Admittedly the example is not on all fours since it involved an ongoing -- i.e., inherited -- war, and an undeclared one.)
Links: podcast; article.
The article, which I have only looked at quickly, examines the ways in which FDR (allegedly) tried to "manufacture" public consent for entry into WW2 by deceiving the public about some of his actions and intentions. Schuessler concludes that this is one case in which deception of this sort was in the national interest. (Note: For a better summary of the article's argument, see the link at the end of this post, which will take you to the abstract; you can also download the pdf of the article for free.)
From a theoretical standpoint, what is going on here, as I understand it from the podacst and a glance at the article, and put in an oversimplified fashion, is this: Dan Reiter and Allan Stam have argued that democracies tend to win the wars they fight, in large part because leaders, constrained by the necessity of obtaining public consent, generally choose to enter wars where victory is likely to be easy. Schuessler says: Hang on a minute. What about those cases where the leader thinks that, for security reasons, a war is necessary, but the war does not promise to be quick and easy? In those cases the leader may resort to deception rather than take his or her chances with trying to persuade the public directly of the war's necessity. America's entry into WW2 and the way FDR approached it, Schuessler argues, was such a case. (Obviously, the reference here is to the period before Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. declaration of war against Japan was a foregone conclusion, and Germany's declaration of war on the U.S. brought it directly into the European war, thus fulfilling FDR's original aim, at least according to this argument.)
Now, this argument may be right, but how often are such cases likely to arise? Schuessler himself suggests in the podcast that WW2 was exceptional. If it was an exceptional case, then it may reveal some interesting things about when and how a leader resorts to deception, but it can't pose a severe challenge to the Reiter/Stam thesis. The most it can it do is present an addendum to the thesis, i.e.: yes, leaders of democracies generally choose "easy" wars, but in rare cases 'realist' reasons will incline them to "non-easy" wars and then deception may come into play. Of course one has to add a couple of other complications: (1) wars that most people think are going to be "easy" but turn out not to be (e.g., Iraq 2003); (2) wars that leaders believe mistakenly are necessary for security reasons (I would be very inclined to put the Vietnam War in this category).
So, deception -- accepting for the sake of argument the claim that FDR did engage in it -- may have been in the national interest in the run-up to U.S. entry into WW2, but more often, or so I would argue, deception will not turn out to be in the national interest (Vietnam, Iraq). When in doubt, then, the rule of thumb for a leader in a democracy should probably still be: Go directly to the people, explain your case straightforwardly, and hope they agree with you that the costs -- even if they promise to be high -- are worth bearing. (Whatever you think about the "Afghan surge," for example, it is clear that this is basically the approach Obama took when explaining why he ordered it. Admittedly the example is not on all fours since it involved an ongoing -- i.e., inherited -- war, and an undeclared one.)
Links: podcast; article.
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