those pesky Poles

Pat Buchanan is living proof of the notion that politics are best described as a circle: he's so far to the right that he's turned into a leftist, as with his recent ruminations on the president's ruminations whether or not 'tis wise to negotiate with nutters like Hitler and Ahmadinejad. Who was to blame for World War II? Come to find, it was the Poles! As he explains:

"The cost of the war that came of [the Poles'] refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror."

There were some other undesirable outcomes of WWII as well, as Mr. Buchanan may or may not be aware. And they all could have been avoided, he thinks, if only the Poles had been willing to give up a wee bit of land around the port of Gdansk! Sure. If he really believes that, I've got a nice city called Prague that he might like to buy....

Britain: the dreary years

Two years ago I signed on for this master's "programme" at King's College London, where half of my classmates were majors in the British army and the rest were civilians and military around the world. The discipline is War in the Modern World--i.e., 1945 to date. Since everyone else in the course was born after 1970, it didn't surprise me that none of the students remembered the harsh days that followed the Second World War, nor our tutors either. But the textbooks--surely they got it right?

Not at all! To my great astonishment, I found that most academics (John Gaddis at Yale being something of an exception) teach the Marshall Plan as a clever dodge by the US to head off its otherwise inevitable return to the Great Depression. As it happens, this was the very same explanation put out by the Cominform in 1948, as part of Stalin’s effort to head off NATO (and, indeed, European recovery). At the time, people dismissed it as Russian propaganda, but it has since become the conventional wisdom in academia, as I blogged in November 2006.

Similarly, on the Usenet forum about WWII, I find that Brits in particular have a collective amnesia about the state of their economy after Germany surrendered, 63 years ago this month. So I was delighted to discover David Kynaston's new book, Austerity Britain, 1945-1951, which deals entirely with those desperate years. By all accounts it's a marvel of historical reporting. I have it on order, and I'll report back when I've had a chance to digest it.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford (there were precious few blue-sky days in Britain in 1945, or indeed ten years later when I was a student there)

China opts for the Burmese model

As a response to natural catastrophe, one would think that the Burmese model--don't let foreign aid workers into the country--had been discredited for all time. But China, only ten days later, opted to go down the same road. Like Obama's young followers shouting 'Yes, we can!', China instead is sending the People's Liberation Army to do what World Vision, Doctors Without Frontiers, and, yes, the U.S. Navy could do better and faster. And, as we have seen in Burma, speed means lives when it comes to helping the stricken.

the challenge from China

What does one do with respect to a military challenger that since 1988 has increased its per capita wealth by a factor of ten--its military investments by 21 times--and that guides its development with the maxim "Combine the military and the civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military"? Mark Helprin has an answer in today's Wall Street Journal. The answer costs money, of course, which means that it won't be addressed in this year's election campaign.

listening to the colonels

One of the astonishing features of the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s and 1940s was the power of its colonels. Tsuji Masanobu, for example, often behaved as if he were a one-man CIA or Delta Force. American colonels, by contrast, were mostly focussed on when they'd get their first star.

Now, however, we are seeing our field-grade officers speaking out in a manner formerly reserved for generals on the retired list. Most interesting is the debate between the COIN advocates and those who argue that the U.S. Army's newfound religion of counter-insurgency is destroying its ability to fight a conventional war, much as seems to have happened to the Israeli defense force. (After learning to cope with two intifadas, the Israelis--unbeatable in wars from 1948 to 1973--proved unable to best Hamas on the ground in Lebanon.)

These arguments are usually played out on the internet. It was good fun, therefore, to hear the actual voices speak out yesterday morning on National Public Radio. (I like to deride NPR as National Partisan Radio for its remorsely leftish slant, but I listen to it nevertheless, especially when my favored classical-music station turns out to be broadcasting treacle). You can listen to it here. (You will first have to listen to a commercial on this non-commercial institution.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford