Category: Politics

You could be excused if you believed you had fallen asleep and awoke to find yourself in Europe in the 1930’s. Armies massing? Bogus staged provocations? Claims of the illegitimacy of neighboring states or governments? Interstate war? Same as it ever was.

There is little surprising in Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Even recently, the Biden administration released unprecedented amounts of US intelligence clearly indicating Russia was preparing to do so, and US government officials made one dire prediction after another. These may have become background noise to some, but if so, those ignoring the warnings missed the true significance. Government officials rarely predict something as serious as war: they almost always emphasize first the ongoing negotiations and offer a tepid “war remains possible” walk off statement. In the past two weeks, US officials flipped the script: talking about how Russia was preparing, warning war was imminent, then giving a feeble “we still hope for negotiations.” It was a tell that an invasion was inevitable.

For some of us, this has been obvious for much longer. Long-time Russia hands remember seventeen years ago when Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century. Neither the holocaust nor Nazism. Neither the holodomor nor the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Not Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The end of the largest authoritarian menace in history was what bothered Putin. Putin publicly dedicated himself then to re-establishing Russia as a great power, feared and respected by the world. Everything he did subsequently was toward that end.

Putin’s Russia will never be a world power, and he knows that. His economy is a mix of what we used to call Third World extraction (oil and minerals) and oligarchic capitalism, benefiting a few corrupt officials. Russian demography remains a disaster: rampant alcoholism and early male death, misogyny and violence leading to few marriages and even fewer births, a shrinking population unparalleled in peacetime. The average Russian is little better off than he was under Communism: and that is totally irrelevant. Putin has a iron grip on Russia itself: he openly jails political foes and kills dissidents with impunity. Russians either admire his strength or fear his vengeance. Remember, this is a country where you can stop in Red Square and take a tourist photo with a Stalin look-alike!

Long term, Russia remains in mortal danger, but Putin has played a mid-term game. Russia was initially too weak to do much but posture. He stabilized the Russian economy during oil price spikes and drops and solidified his position with the oligarchs: they know he will turn on them on a dime if they conspire against him, but they are free to make money if they don’t. He fundamentally remade the Russian military from a massive conscript force to a much smaller, more modern, volunteer force capable of threatening any neighbor, if not NATO writ large. He weathered the so-called color revolutions, losing a client state in Ukraine but holding on to Belarus. He threatened and invaded Georgia, putting its move toward NATO on ice. He has been welcomed into Kazakhstan, and has a “bond without limits” with China (no, I don’t believe this means much either, but it doesn’t hurt).

After President Obama failed to enforce his own red line in Syria (Assad’s chemical weapon attack), Putin moved quickly to ensure his Syrian ally’s security. Then he turned to Ukraine and unleashed his “little green men,” Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) which occupied ethnically Russian potions of the Donbas river basin and all of Crimea.

Russia never accepted the Maidan revolution which had chased off a Russian-friendly government in Kyiv. The Crimea occupation was part practice and part toe-in-the-water experiment. Would the West respond forcefully to naked aggression covered with the only the most transparent fig-leaf? Sanctions indicated the answer was no, and the subsequent Minsk accords gave Russia some cover for its defacto seizures.

Meanwhile, Putin began preparing to finish the job. Russia amassed over $630 billion in hard currency (mostly non-US dollar) reserves in case of future sanctions. His oligarch friends probably did the same with their personal fortunes. The EU estimates current sanctions (pre-invasion) cost the Russian economy $50 billion annually. Assuming the new sanctions are twice as bad, Russia will run out of reserves in . . . only six and a half years! Putin negotiated agreements with friendly states, especially China, to continue trade without using dollars in the event of tightened US sanctions. He began a drumbeat in state-controlled Russian media to show Ukraine was a base of “NATO aggression” or “fascist forces” threatening ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

What happens now? Putin may stop at the Dnieper river to assess the situation. He may not try to take Kyiv in order to avoid the urban destruction and outrage that would entail. He may be willing to occupy ethnic Russian majority areas, establish a land bridge to Crimea and Moldova, and eliminate Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea. From these positions, Putin could pause to negotiate a cease fire and the establishment of a rump Ukrainian state with a government more amenable to Russia. He does not need to, nor does he probably want to, engage in a long-term occupation, which might become the focus of an insurgency.

The Biden administration was dealt a bad hand here: given Putin’s obvious intentions, the West needed to start to act long ago to deter him. However, every administration inherits bad situations, and they are responsible for resolving them. George W. Bush wanted to be “the education President,” focusing on America’s relations with Mexico and embracing “compassionate conservatism”: he got 9/11 instead. President Biden said he knew the world’s leaders on a first name basis; now has come his moment. The President has rightly rallied NATO, even encouraging Finland and Sweden to join in. But this won’t be over soon.

The administration said the array of increasing sanctions were designed to deter a Russian invasion: they have failed to do so. The EU and nations across the globe are joining in sanctions. But will they last? The NordStream 2 pipeline is completed; all Germany did was stop certification. In effect, some bureaucrat in Berlin took the pile of papers off his desk and put them in a drawer. They could resume certification in a moment. Europe needs Russian natural gas (Russia provides over 40% of Europe’s needs), and they cannot fully replace it with exports from the US. Oil prices have spiked to around $100 a barrel, which will further fuel inflation. Putin is betting he, his oligarchs, and the long-suffering Russian people can hold out longer than the–in his view–corrupt and irresolute West. He has a point. Most people forget that the very strict sanctions regime the entire world placed on Saddam Hussein was crumbling just before the Bush administration decided to go to war. We couldn’t keep sanctions on an insignificant country with a certifiable murderer-in-charge; can we do better with Russia?

Was Russian occupation of Ukraine inevitable? Putin took the measure of current Western leaders, and decided he could act. President Biden’s gaffe about a “small invasion” probably didn’t help, but what he said was true (NATO and the US weren’t going to fight to defend Ukraine), even though saying the quiet part out loud was the final nail in Ukraine’s coffin. Putin cannot afford war with NATO. While he would have tactical advantages in location initially, he cannot forestall a NATO build up and eventual counterattack. Any hint of ambiguity about US forces in Ukraine might have given Putin pause. For example, if Biden had rushed the US airborne forces not to Poland, but to Lviv (in far western Ukraine near the Polish border), to set up a permanent defensive perimeter for US diplomats, refugees, and perhaps the Ukrainian government, Putin might have occupied only the eastern parts of the country and steered clear. Even more so if Biden had convinced NATO allies to loin in the action.

Some will counter that American public opinion does not support going to war over Ukraine, and that is true. Neither do I. Yet American public opinion rarely supports going to war. Prior to provocation, the American public wanted to stay out of both World Wars. One major challenge of the presidency is to make the case for why the United States should go to war, if the President sees the need. President Biden ruled out making that case early on, following public opinion rather than leading it. One forgotten lesson of the Cold War is you can only deter an opponent if you have the capability and will to go to war with him; if the opponent doubts either your capability or will, he will not be deterred. The West can’t start the deterrence process by saying “we won’t fight under any circumstances.”

President Biden has announced tougher sanctions. A telling sign was the reaction of the US stock markets: while other markets around the world cratered on news of war in Europe, the US indexes rose! Why? They were expecting much tougher sanctions than the President imposed. We should assume Russia was warned: it makes no sense to rely on some sanctions with a threat of greater ones, if you don’t make it pretty clear how much worse it can get. In the meantime, there is much more the West can do, if the United States leads. All western airlines should be forbidden to land in Russia, and Aeroflot should be denied landing rights anywhere in the West. A review of all Russians on visas in the West for immediate expulsion, and a halt to all Russian visas in process. Russian consulates closed, Russian embassies reduced to minimum personnel. Of course no Russian athlete or team should be allowed into international competitions.

The US military could commence immediate production of ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs), once banned under the INF treaty (from which President Trump withdrew the US), and a replacement system for the Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. These two nuclear capable systems were the bane of Soviet leaders due to their short timelines (six minutes) to hit Moscow from Germany. The US should make clear to the Russian government that these weapons will be forward deployed in NATO countries IF Putin does not withdraw from Ukraine and re-establish the legitimate government in Kyiv.

The sanctions will hurt eventually, but will not soon force Putin’s hand. Instead, the West is in for a short (losing) contest for the future of Ukraine, but more importantly, a long contest to re-establish the notion of deterrence which has been lost. That means more spending on defense, more troops and agreements and exercises, more time and attention to foreign policy, and less time, attention, and money for everything else. All that just to maintain the status quo ante invasion.

Or Europe decides warm houses are more important than Ukraine. We lose focus. Americans resent double-digit inflation or a recession brought on by a massive rate increase by the Fed. China runs a sanctions evasion operation. And yes, China is watching how this all plays out for clues about its future interests in Taiwan.

For all intents and purposes, Putin has accomplished his initial objectives. Ukraine is his, and even NATO members like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia must be wondering about their security. Now the larger game is afoot. Does the US lead a reinvigorated NATO, and to what end? Do we find a way to pressure Putin and Russia to let go of Ukraine? Does China seize the moment, or simply lay low and provide Putin some cover? During the Cold War, every US presidential election had a subtext which went something like this: can this candidate stand up to the Soviet threat? Can they lead the free world, even if that means edging closer to war? That is a focus which was lost in the postwar period. Now it has returned with a vengeance.

On Valentine’s Day, 2065, the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration dropped a bombshell: the US federal government had initiated criminal conspiracy charges against all major American sugar producers. Based on an enormous trove of evidence, sugar was the culprit for a wide-variety of health problems (obesity, heart disease, some cancers, autism and birth defects, even many mental illnesses). Furthermore, Big Sugar executives knew this as far back as the 1960’s, and engaged in a conspiracy to suppress the scientific data and even blame other products (remember the low-fat craze?). Millions of Americans, and other peoples worldwide, suffered and died due to the corporations’ actions.

Sugar immediately became the most suspect ingredient in history. The processed food industry began a race to the bottom of no-sugar in their products. Restaurants proudly posted signs proclaiming “we serve no sugar” or “take your sweet tooth elsewhere!” Sugar-free advertising became a badge of honor. But it didn’t stop there.

Of course, there was no Sugar Bowl college football game that year, or ever again. American sugar company stocks cratered, and advertisers turned down sugar sponsorship offers. The major media ran in-depth stories about the depth of the conspiracy: lies, pay-offs, political connections. Then media ran heart-wrenching stories of lives destroyed: everything from yo-yo dieters who had wasted their lives not realizing they were fighting a sugar addiction to families traumatized by children with autism or birth defects.

Predictably, the tone changed from the obvious (“Sugar is Evil”) to the more conspiratorial (“who knew what when?”). And there were plenty of targets. Big Sugar had many co-conspirators, from advertising agencies to scientists to politicians who played along. But it didn’t stop there.

Such a vast enterprise, operating openly for so long and causing so much heartache required a full and complete re-investigation of our history. Why didn’t federal bureaucrats stop this sooner? Why did some politicians not make this the top health priority? Why didn’t my doctor tell me? Where were the influencers, the sports heroes, the media personalities on this issue?

And so it began. The statue of former President Ron Desantis, who continued defending sugar long after it was obviously wrong, was defaced several times before being removed. Several high schools named for former first lady Michelle Obama dropped the association, since she was pro-nutrition but insufficiently anti-sugar. The House of Representatives changed the name of the Nancy Pelosi House Office Building to the Victims of Sugar Office Building, noting she never investigated Big Sugar while hoarding her designer ice cream. The University of Florida (America’s largest sugar-producing state) announced full-scholarships for students of families with disabilities associated with sugar use. The American Sugar refinery in Louisiana entered bankruptcy negotiations to settle claims for damages. Candy became a symbol of public disgust: you had to be a certain age to buy it in stores, and it was sold from behind the counter in unmarked paper bags. The NBA eliminated its LeBron James Award for Positive Corporate Relations after it became public he had invested in Big Sugar.

Alright, we’ve gone from the sublime to the absurd, so I think I have made my point. When you retroactively apply the thoughts, opinions, or even morality of today to the past, you must take care. I say this as a person who believes in moral absolutes; I always chuckle to myself when Progressives who say morality and truth are relative (to each person), then apply absolute tests of morality to historical figures. Not much for intellectual consistency, what? And to anyone out there thinking, “but Pat, you can’t be comparing sugar to slavery or Jim Crow or genocide or. . . “, I’m not. I am comparing the use of critical theory to history with a hypothetical future, to illuminate just how ridiculous it is, regardless of the seriousness of the subject matter. Plus, if you want to make the “slavery is far more serious argument”, okay, but what are you doing today given that there are almost twenty-five million people living in slavery now? Want to take responsibility for that? Or for ignoring it?

Much of what I wrote about sugar is true. It would not be surprising if some of the exaggerations I made later prove to be true, too. Sugar is terrible for you, it is addictive, Big Sugar did fight to blame fat for obesity and heart disease, politicians did and do protect sugar producers. And many if not most people know all this. Looking at our current lives with a “sugar-only” lens fails to consider how ubiquitous sugar is in our foods, how it causes cravings, and how many other MAJOR HEALTH CRISES compete for our attention. Life is more complicated today then where you stand on sugar.

One of the worst aspects of woke-ism is the assumption we moderns are morally and intellectually superior (because we are on the right side of history) and thus the application of today’s (superior) views to historical persons, places, or things. One might question the superiority of modern man (or woman). Where is today’s Lincoln or Washington? Da Vinci or Augustine? Mother Teresa or Jeanne d’Arc? We seem to have much more information at our fingertips, yet be much less well-informed. I see little reason to profess our intellectual or moral authority.

This is not an academic argument. The America represented in popular tracts like The 1619 Project is a practically-irredeemable place. As a young man growing up in a small town in Indiana, I was taught the standard fare of American history: the battles and the heroes and the missteps. I also learned about slavery, women soldiers in the Revolution and Civil War, the Japanese internment camps and the Jim Crow South. And I grew up far from any progressive educational paradise. All these things were covered in due course: briefly, and with context. If I had digested the American history put forward by Howard Zinn or the New York Times , I never would have dedicated almost forty years of my life to defending America and it’s constitution. Why defend the indefensible? Is that the goal?

G.K. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, “Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” America, as a nation founded on an idea, has few common touchstones. You aren’t an American because of the way you look, or who you know, how you vote, how much money you have, or even how you got to America. You are an American if you believe in the idea of America. History is one of the few anchors our nation has. It must be history warts and all, as it happened and by its own standards at the time. Otherwise it is not history, it is an immature and unwise form of propaganda.

A violent mob attacks a US government building, seizes and occupies it, and attempts to incite a larger revolt. Order is only restored after violence resulting in the deaths of several of the attackers. The press, local and national, provides immediate coverage of a national sensation, calling the attack an “insurrection”, “rebellion,” or “treason.” The surviving attackers are put on trial. Some media relentlessly hype the story, assessing the profound implications of the attack, how things have permanently changed, that some people can no longer be trusted in any way, that there is no way to compromise with evil.

January 6th, 2021? Nope. October 16th, 1859. The attack is now known as John Brown’s Raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. The parallels are frightening, but instructive. No one called it a raid at the time: that was a convention which only happened after the Union won the civil war. It was an insurrection or treason, and those who engaged in it were so charged and executed. The raucous press came from the technological wonders of the telegraph, just then becoming the means of instantaneous communication. The obsessive media coverage was in the South, which not only viewed the attack as the last straw, but used it to further inflame popular opinion. John Brown’s intent to incite a nation-wide slave revolt struck deeply at the fears of Southern plantation life, where hundreds of such revolts (large and small) had created an atmosphere of panic which only needed a small nudge to disunion.

As a spark along the lines of John Brown’s raid, January 6th pales in comparison. Yes, it was ugly, a stain on our nation’s record, and totally unnecessary. But the proximate cause of our next civil war? Sorry, no. For a moment, let’s consider the counterfactual case: this was the spark, it does lead to civil war. What would that look like? Let’s start with some data, shall we?

This graphic shows how the US voted, county by county, in the 2020 election.

The traditional analysis of this data is the US is a “sea of red” areas with little population surrounding isolated blue city-states. One could imagine a contiguous Red-state region comprising the south, midwest, and mountain states, with blue territory in the DC-Boston corridor, the Pacific Northwest, and Arizona/New Mexico. But such a configuration is more illusory than real. Illinois is a blue state; the area east of the Cascade mountains is quite red. Urban areas across the South are big and blue. There are areas where one can never run into a person of a different political perspective (think Roberts County, Texas, or San Francisco), and Americans are increasingly moving to places which align with their political views, but that doesn’t (yet) make either side a coherent nation when looking at the state level. Which means a Second American Civil War would not be an organized one with armies marching on Capitals, but a disorganized one, pitting armed groups against one another. Less Gettysburg, more like Bleeding Kansas.

Where food is produced (green for crops, orange for herds):

There is an obvious advantage to the wide-open red spaces in that that is where much (but not all!) of the food is produced. The longer the disunited battles go on, the more important the need for food. Sieges and starvation are huge weapons to be wielded under such circumstances. However, the other side of the coin is transportation:

It goes without saying that all forms of transport (and communication) go through urban hubs. So while red areas may produce the food, they will find it difficult to share it, and even more difficult to communicate. To borrow a military term, blue city states may have “interior lines of communication” which give them a natural advantage against larger red areas.

Speaking of forces here are the US Armed Forces totals, 2020:

But where do these service members come from?

I have seen some pundits smirking that whoever tries to start a civil war will be no match for the US military. That is true of course, but neither were the Mujaheddin. The US military was totally unprepared to pacify a small place like Iraq, let alone red or blue America. Occupation and pacification is manpower intensive, and the US military simply “does not have the dudes” as my boss used to say. On top of that, more of those in uniform come from red areas, and while some would honor their oath to the Constitution, others would interpret it differently (same as it ever was). The US military would be riven by the same divisiveness as the rest of the country.

Speaking of weapons, here is a 2020 breakdown on the twenty states with the largest registered gun totals:

The key word above is registered. Only 6 million of the 390 million firearms in the US are registered (according to the Pew Research Center). Read that again. And the vast majority of these weapons are in red hands, in red areas.

So where does the data lead us? We have to make two assumptions here. Which side is provoking the action, and which side is trying to be “left alone” rather than dictate to the other side. I think it is fair to argue red America would be more likely to provoke, but also is more likely to want to be left alone. These are arguable assumptions, but we need to make them to push the analysis forward.

After the “spark,” one would see declarations by various states and areas denying federal control or jurisdiction. Local militias set up roadblocks or engage in raids to seize key infrastructure or to terrorize adjacent population centers. Some rural, red areas would sit out the conflict, either siding with their blue state government (Illinois? New York?) or just passively watching and waiting. Likewise, some major urban areas in the south would choose to go with the red flow. Some deep red areas would barely notice a change: a farmer in Iowa might wonder what all the fuss was about?

Blue citizens in the cities would feel a pinch first. Things like water supplies, power generation, even airports are far enough from urban centers to be at risk of occupation. Of course everyone would notice the stoppage of the free flow of goods and people: something far more drastic and uncertain than anything during the pandemic or even 9-11. One real wild card is information flow in this information age. Blue America would hold an advantage here, with an early monopoly on broadcast and social media. But, it is hard to deny broad area access to the internet for extended periods of time. More likely, information access would be a bargaining chip played against other essentials (water or power, for example).

All this happens as a million scores are settled across the land. Red Americans living in the cities will uproot and flee just as rural or suburban blue Americans do the same when violence, or just the threat of violence, beckons. America is a country with a high tolerance for violence, and a second civil war would challenge the upper limit. The absence of pitched battles does not mean the absence of large numbers of casualties.

Both sides would be exhausted within months. Assuming red America just wants to be left alone, there is no need for storming the Hudson river bridges and occupying Wall Street (literally). Blue America would fairly quickly realize there is no way to force red America to capitulate, and where is Idaho, anyway? Negotiations begin, and some of the more moderate people on both sides would question whether the fighting was really worth it. There is no simple geographical resolution, no two-state solution, as the fighting would have made clear. Who gets the nukes? Who gets the federal debt? The infrastructure was unified and can’t be apportioned. How does the place formerly known as America begin to function again?

I bet the daunting nature of the challenges, the horror at the damages inflicted, and the dim prospects for the future would serve to further a tacit re-integration of the United States of America. The peace process would probably include a constitutional convention to address the root causes and prevent a relapse. Some state boundaries would be re-aligned, and states would acquire more authority over theirs laws and resources, to the cost of the federal government. Red states would use this new authority to cement certain cherished conservative positions (e.g., guns, abortion, voter fraud) and blue states would do the obverse. Blue states would seek to limit resources transfers (via the federal government) to red states. If federal authority is lessened, the US might end up with a weakened President and Executive Branch, a single (unicameral) legislature with a mixed representation by state and perhaps other groups, and a more limited Supreme Court. Deep scars would remain, and the re-United States would need a legal remedy to address the war crimes, expropriations, and other calamities.

In this analysis, red and blue America waste countless lives and treasure to end up back where they started, only greatly reduced and with an enforced national commitment to be civil again. Hardly the stuff of patriot dreams. This is only one hypothetical analysis, but the data provided earlier has real and strong implications. It doesn’t require the gift of foresight to know widespread violence rarely leads to a better life. The common folk, red and blue, know this. Southern newspapers inflamed their readers after Harper’s Ferry, so much so that the South began secession before Lincoln even took office! When you hear talk of another civil war today, ask yourself, “are they trying to prevent it, or foment it?”

Much of the recent focus on the possibility of another American Civil War stems from the coverage of the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. I made the case in the last post that this focus on a potential spark misses the point: we aren’t ready for a spark. But what might push the red and blue extremes to make the psychic break that violence is necessary, and therefor create the conditions for a future spark and conflagration?

The key question is how much respect there is–on either side–for the system of government.

During the first civil war, Lincoln famously made the conflict all about the Union, that is, the system which bound the states together.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley

While Lincoln later ennobled the effort to save the Union by including emancipation, his initial impulse was telling: the American system was worth saving at any cost.

The Confederacy also paid mock tribute from their side, borrowing much language from the US Constitution and making the argument that the issue was state’s rights, not slavery (a red herring, but the attempt shows how important was the need to justify the conflict in terms of the existing governmental system.).

Today there is ample evidence for conern that both sides show fundamental distrust for the American system.

How are our norms holding up? It is easy to point out Team Trump’s “deep state” conspiracy, and Trump himself was to political decorum what Genghis Khan was to the law of war. Now President Biden has called the other side traitors favoring a return to Jim Crow. Senator McConnell famously fiddled with US Supreme Court vacancies, making up new traditions as he went. Majority Leader Schumer is calling to ease the filibuster (he might want to whisper in the ear of the late Harry Reid as he lies in state in the US Capitol, and ask how that might work out the next time Republicans are in control of the Senate). For forty years Republican Presidents found their Supreme Court Justices never quite worked out the way they intended; now Democrats insist the court must be term-limited, expanded, or otherwise neutered to the left’s taste. Don’t even mention the electoral college: I don’t blame the average American for not knowing why we have one, or what purpose it serves. And the constant refrain of “American Democracy” has had the predictable effect of leading people to wonder why the popular vote is irrelevant. All of which is to say, yes, our norms are up for debate by both sides, with neither side seeming to understand that if the rules of the games are gone, we are about to engage in political Calvin Ball.

Well, at least we have legitimate elections, right?

Again, Trump’s nascent 2024 campaign seems to be predicated on discredited theories about voter fraud in the 2020 result. And various GOP state parties are trying to amend state election rules to permit political officials to overrule vote counts. But then don’t forget all those who claim the Supreme Court “stole” the 2000 election (they didn’t, according to the NY Times AND the Washington Post), or that the Russians engineered Trump’s 2016 victory because he was their Manchurian Candidate (he wasn’t, and the Steele dossier was garbage). Stacey Abrams claims she lost the 2018 Georgia Governor’s race due to voter suppression in an election where Georgia registered the greatest increase in average voter participation of any state in thirty years. And now Republicans are banking on rolling back more liberal voting rules introduced for the pandemic, and Democrats are calling it Jim Crow 2.0. Except for one small point. There is no evidence greater turnout favors Democrats or hurts Republicans. There is also very little evidence easy registration, drop boxes, early voting rules, absentee ballots or voter identification laws affect voter turnout. Both sides are posturing about this, and calling into question every election at every level of government. If elections are only legitimate when your sides wins, you have a problem.

What about the ability of the American system to force compromise? That too hangs in the balance. Both sides agree the Electoral Act of 1887 needs to be updated to rule out the type of shenanigans Trump’s lawyers peddled about the electoral count. Yet the Democrats haven’t moved on it. Republicans won’t support any form of lifting the debt limit. The Congress passed the infrastructure bill with bipartisan support, but the Democrats insist on stuffing the Build Back Better bill with items even all the Democrats can’t agree on. Both sides and both Houses are set to pass a budget resolution, but mostly because it will reinstate earmarks (designated pork for one’s constituents). I guess that is some hope: Congress can still agree on bacon.

If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering how I come to the conclusion that we’re not ready for a spark. Our norms are under attack, elections results are questioned, our legislature gridlocked. That’s not a pretty picture, but both sides are still fighting within the system. I don’t think the system is healthy right now; I do think that if either side continues to over-react by challenging the system itself, we will set the stage for eventual violence.

What that may look like I’ll consider in part III.

A Canadian academic warns that Canada needs to be prepared for the break-up of it southern neighbor. American academics are far beyond that, warning the nation is on the brink of falling into authoritarianism. US General Officers warn the US military is not prepared for–but should be prepared to suppress– insurrection. President Biden likened the January 6th, 2021, riot to an insurrection (a “knife at the throat of our democracy”), and many more commentators called it the first shot in an increasingly violent political battle. A recent poll found one-third of Americans believe it may be necessary (under some circumstances) to take violent action against the federal government!

I agree we live in volatile times, bordering on the violent. The increasing number of road rage incidents and other violent crimes, and the general state of discourse on social media all confirm it. People are on edge, that is unarguable. But civil war?

I’ll take a few blog posts to talk through why civil wars happen, how they happen, and even consider what another American civil war would look like. To begin, I don’t think a civil war is particularly likely. Too much is made of recent history like the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and not enough attention is paid to deeper trends which are much more important.

First off, why do civil wars happen? They are not accidents of history; they require certain fundamental precedents, much like a wildfire requires a dry spell and under-brush. The most fundamental requirement is deep-seated resentment. Groups have to fear one another, loathe one another, separate from one another, and finally hate one another. The reason is immaterial: the attitude is all important.

Next, for cause, there is the absolute necessity for either side to decide there is no way out except through fighting. This is the realization that despite all the pain and suffering envisioned, the only choice is war. This hurdle is the most difficult to surmount. People understand that civil war brings immense uncertainty to their lives, so they don’t undertake it lightly. If there is an alternative, they will usually choose it.

Finally, the resentment and resignation (to fight), like a wildfire, needs a spark. Something happens which crystallizes the thinking of one side or the other: Things will not get better. Mind you, you may need more than one spark. Leading up to the American Civil War, there were crises over Missouri, Kansas, Texas, California, the Supreme Court ruling on the Fugitive Slave Act (Ableman v. Booth), John Brown’s raid, and finally the election of 1860. Ernest Hemingway’s famous comment about how bankruptcy occurs applies here: “Slowly, and then suddenly.”

So where does the United States stand today against these criteria? We certainly have deep-seated resentments among the polar ends of the political spectrum. Progressives and Trumpsters have nothing but venom for one another, and those of us in the middle often get lumped in with one side or the other for any attempt to provide balance or perspective. While most Americans fall somewhere in between the political extremes, the activists on either side–and the media on either side–work hard to divide. At this they are succeeding.

Has either side decided there is no way out except for fighting? No, but the trends are not good. The Capitol riot was a horrible affair from start to finish, and the President’s intent (even in the rally) was to intimidate the Congress (and the Vice President) into changing the electoral outcome. It was an ill-conceived, poorly planned, and ultimately unsuccessful effort, but the violence it condoned was another escalatory step. On the other side, Progressives explained away the violence of the Black Lives Matter movement as “understandable” and also excused the anarchist violence against the government in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Not at all the same thing, but yet also steps in the wrong direction.

These steps were less important in my opinion than the current moves afoot to change our system of government–or its norms. I will address these changes, and the dangers they pose, in the next bog post. Suffice it to say the current focus on whether January 6th, or the mid-terms, or the 2024 election could be the spark to civil war puts the cart before the horse. Neither side has made the determination that only violence will succeed. But that determination may be forthcoming if it looks like the governmental system itself is up for debate.

In late May and early June of 1940, the German army blitzed across France. The speed and violence of the panzers and stukas left a beleaguered British Expeditionary Force and some remnants of the once-proud French army surrounded along the coast at the tiny port of Dunkirk. Over the period of eight days, the British navy, merchant marines, and thousands of individual ship owners conducted an improvised, hasty withdrawal-under-fire. They rescued over 330,000 soldiers, albeit with nothing more than the soaking wet uniforms on their backs. It was a humiliating defeat, but one tinged with a tiniest glimmer of hope, which was sorely needed by the British people at that point. Prime Minister Churchill reminded his nation that “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

The American experience in Kabul these days has me thinking of Dunkirk.

First off, the President continues to defend his decision to end the “war in Afghanistan.” This statement demonstrates his fundamental lack of understanding. Afghanistan was a theater of war: just one of many. While it is possible to surrender a theater in order to win a larger war, one must always remember that there is a larger war on. We did not start this war. Radical Islamic terrorists declared war on the US back in the 1990’s. We ignored them at the time, like a much-older brother ignores the taunts of a much-younger sibling. But like that sibling, the terrorist movement grew-up, and when they knocked down the towers, the game was on.

The US could not have cared less about Afghanistan or the Taliban but for their harboring Al Qaeda (AQ). When the Taliban refused to turn AQ over to us, they became another campaign in the war. And as I continue to remind, we can not declare that war over: only the loser can. So we can end the war tomorrow by admitting our evil, renouncing our ways, and publicly proclaiming the Shahada (“I bear witness that none deserves worship except Allah, and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”). It really is that simple.

Secondly, I hear much soul-searching about ‘where we went wrong’ in Afghanistan. A few misguided souls says we should never have gone in; I won’t dignify that view with a critique. For the record, I was in favor of going in to Afghanistan to expel the Taliban and root our AQ. BUT, I was also in favor of a cold-hearted, realpolitik approach. Turn the “nation” of Afghanistan over to various regional warlords with this simple admonition: those who fight the Taliban and kill AQ will receive our funds, those who don’t will receive our bombs. Let them fight it out and install whatever puppet-regime the Afghan people could stand in Kabul. Yes, this would have made for atrocities and corruption and human rights violations, but thus was it ever in the Hindu Kush. At least we would be at a distance, and not directly involved in a place where our only interest was the absence of AQ.

When President Bush decided to expand the mission in Afghanistan to nation-building, I thought it was ill-advised but not impossible. I do not understand the logic of those who say “the US can’t do nation-building.” History will long remember our excellent examples in nation-building: Germany and Japan. We took two of the most militaristic cultures of the twentieth century and turned them into committed pacifists barely able to staff military forces (or in Japan’s case, even call them an “army.”) We took nations literally burned to the ground and rebuilt them into economic powerhouses which eventually rivaled us. This took decades to accomplish, even though we had fought a savage war against each.

Bu the best comparative examples for US nation-building are Vietnam and Korea. In the first case, we quit, with predictable results for South East Asia. In the latter case, we stayed. Now somewhere I hear a reader crying “Pat, you can’t be comparing Afghanistan with today’s South Korea!” and to that reader, I say “You’re right; I’m not.” But Afghanistan at year twenty IS comparable to South Korea in 1971. Let me refresh your memory: the Asia Times described South Korea in 1971 as a “Lost Land, . . . a gritty, poverty-racked, unsophisticated nation that was one decade into an industrialization program that would lead to riches.” It varied between democratic leaders, oligarchs, and an occasional military coup. During the previous twenty years, North Korean forces attacked the US and South Korea, killing our soldiers and marines. They continued doing so for the next twenty years.

Now I am not saying Afghanistan was on the path to similar success. But anyone who says we can’t do nation-building is wrong, and anyone who says Afghanistan would never have made it has to explain why South Korea did. Impoverished nation? Check. No democratic culture or history? Check. Pervasive external threat? Check. Persistent US military casualties? Check.

Thirdly (yes, I’m still counting), the President and other senior leaders have said “the Intelligence Community (IC) did not predict such a sudden collapse.” Without having been in the room, I know this is true. It is also a red herring: the IC does not predict anything. Prediction is the realm of prophets and seers, not intelligence professionals. I guarantee you that the IC did consider the possibility of such a scenario and included it as a worst-case one. How do I know that? Because if they didn’t, the President and others would have said as much and fired those responsible. He didn’t (fire them), so they did (cover it).

Likewise, my fourth point is a question. Given that the President has warned for days of a terrorist attack (meaning the IC had good info that an attack was imminent), and given that we remain at war with the Islamic State, and given that the Islamic State is the sworn enemy of the Taliban: why did we wait? Why didn’t we attack the Islamic State in Afghanistan before they attacked us, in order to perhaps disrupt their planning? We didn’t suddenly determine they are our enemy. Nor did we suddenly figure out where ISIS is in Afghanistan. Did we think the Taliban cared? Why the delay? Inquiring minds want to know.

On a tangentially-related, fifth point, who is advising the President on his messaging? Having him stare into the camera and intone “we will not forgive; we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay” is not intimidating. He shuffles on and off stage. He squints at the teleprompter, which is not atop the camera, so it looks at times like he is not speaking to the audience. Either dim the klieg lights, enlarge the size of the font, or get him contacts/glasses. His speech is halting, and no, this is not his well-understood stutter. Joe Biden has been a public figure for well-nigh fifty years. He never was this forgetful, or confused, or halting. Assuming he is still in command of his faculties (and God help us if he isn’t), why are his handlers insisting on putting him in such a bad light?

Sixth and finally (I know, you’re relieved!), the President most recently said he is following the advice of his senior military commanders. This is always re-assuring to hear. The problem is no competent military officer would ever suggest that we conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) of unknown size, from a toe-hold perimeter around a civilian airport in an urban area. Someone made a decision to pull the military forces out first. Someone made a decision to evacuate the US Bagram airbase first. Someone made the decision not to accelerate the visa application process. There are reasons why such decisions might have been made: they are not blatantly stupid decisions. But someone made them. Those persons must be identified and given the opportunity to explain themselves, or suffer the consequences if their explanations do not suffice. Blanket admissions of where the buck stops are irrelevant. Who made the decisions?

Dunkirk is an interesting footnote in the history of World War II. It was not decisive in a military sense. The British could afford to equip and field another army. It was the channel, the Royal Navy, and the brave few pilots of the Royal Air Force whose “finest hour” thwarted any ambitions Hitler had of parading past Buckingham Palace as he had down the Champs-Élysées. But it was the snatching-of-a-small-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat that helped stiffen the English spine for the dark days ahead. During this brief period, Churchill gave a series of impassioned speeches in the House of Commons which are long remembered: “their finest hour” “blood, toils, tears, and sweat” and finally “we shall fight on the beaches, . . . .” Such is the stuff of legendary leadership.

We are still in a generational war against radical Islamic terrorism. We’ve had a Dunkirk moment, one of our own making. President Biden explained his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by asking how many more casualties should we endure? He is now responsible for more casualties in one day than the US experienced in the prior two years. I am still waiting for what is his strategy for the larger war. And for when he will stiffen our spines for the fight.

Within days, we’ll witness a string of atrocities across Afghanistan, as the Taliban consolidates power, takes revenge on those who opposed it, and reimposes its sordid, misogynistic rule. The US went into Afghanistan to evict the Taliban not because they were, and are, evil; we went there because they refused to turn over Al Qaeda to stand justice. For this reason, the US deployed the force necessary to evict the Taliban in a truly amazing display of military power.

In the twenty years since that happened, various American Presidents tried and failed to extricate the nation from the war. It was clear to all that the end of an active US military presence in the Hindu Kush (the ancient term for the area we know as the “nation” of Afghanistan) would mean a return of the Taliban. America tried increasing its presence and operations to destroy the Taliban, tried increasing its civil involvement (building schools, writing laws, fostering businesses), tried reducing its military footprint to reduce frictions, and finally tried negotiating directly with the hated Taliban.

In the last five years, the US engaged in a strategy of delay and stalemate. We provided the Afghan government with all the means to succeed while realizing it never could: in effect we propped it up. We built up the Afghan military so it could resist the Taliban, but only if it retained the continued training, air support, and logistics from the US Army. This strategy succeeded by not losing.

Some decried this strategy as defeatist. While the American way of war emphasizes victory, the American public (and its elected officials) no longer have the stomach for the carnage (both to our soldiers and the enemy) that entails. Waiting the Taliban out was always a long-shot, but it had worked so far. Why did we abandon it?

Some said that Afghanistan was America’s longest war. They are either wrong or simply lying. We have been at war with the People’s Democratic Republic of (North) Korea for seventy-plus years. The fact we currently have an armistice that makes people (even South Koreans) think the war is over is testament to how a strategy of waiting the enemy out can succeed. In the meantime, South Korea evolved into a vibrant economy, a manufacturing powerhouse, and even a nascent democracy.

That long “not peace” was not always as peaceful as it is today. At times after the 1951 armistice, the sides exchanged fire and postured. North Korea infiltrated forces across the DMZ to attack targets in the South, and even master-minded an attack on the Blue House and the terrorist bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987. The US and the Republic of Korea forces suffered casualties, but full-scale combat was avoided. This was a long-term, successful strategy by any measure.

Could this strategy have worked in Afghanistan? It was. Over the past five years, the US drew-down forces and reduced its footprint and operational tempo. We gradually let the Afghan Army take the lead, but were always close at hand in case “things went south” (as we used to say in the Army).

But what of the casualties? I want to be crystal clear here. I was a soldier once; many of my classmates served in Afghanistan, and some died there. No soldier wants to die, and soldiers deserve to know they’re not being sacrificed for no reason. But they do know, from day one in basic training, that they may be sacrificed. Especially in an all-volunteer, professional military, this is a well-understood proposition. Our casualties during the last five years in Afghanistan ran under ten deaths per year. We lose a thousand service-members annually to training accidents. There was no countless-deaths-in-vain reason to withdraw.

But what of the cost? Even with the monumental (and well-documented) corruption, Afghanistan represented a minimal financial burden to the US. In the last few years, we were spending around $50 billion US dollars annually on all activities in Afghanistan; that’s what the entire US government spends in two days. The people who say the cost was too high are the exact same people who said we couldn’t just destroy Al Qaeda and leave the Taliban in charge, we had to create a democracy and build Afghanistan’s civil infrastructure. We tried; it didn’t take, or at least it didn’t take well-enough that Afghani soldiers felt compelled to fight and die to defend it. Maybe it just needed more time, but the clock ran out.

President Trump was wrong to direct a withdrawal from Afghanistan. Like most of his decisions, it went against his own hand-picked advisors, and seemed to be based on his gut instincts or his dislike for the Bush family. He thought he was being decisive in “ending an endless war,” when he simply misunderstood that in combat, only the loser can end a war. He has that decision on his record forever.

Even more execrable is President Biden’s decision to not only withdraw, but to accelerate the timetable. President Biden has seen fit to completely rescind almost every policy President Trump put into place, but here he doubled-down on it. I recall the quote of the Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said Mr. Biden had the unique position of being ‘the only person wrong on every major foreign policy issue in the past forty years.’ Looks like the string remains unbroken. His administration set arbitrary (and inane) deadlines, like withdrawing by September 11th. Then they advanced them further, apparently realizing all hell was breaking loose but not that such a move would be reminiscent of Saigon, 1975.

Proving that this was a policy decision not fully coordinated with the military, the administration conveniently ignored the fact that thousands of Afghanis (and their families) who worked with the US military had to be evacuated or they would be massacred; the haphazard evacuation continues today. Administration spokesmen blithely bat away the helicopters-on-the-rooftops comparison, while the President orders three-thousand US Marines back into Kabul to evacuate the US Embassy. Guess we’ll use Humvees this time.

Yes, this war dragged on. Yes, the US engaged in mission creep, and was never willing to destroy the Taliban. Yes, the US military was going to keep sending soldiers home draped in coffins as long as this war continued. No, there was no compelling need for President Trump’s rash decision, nor President Biden’s inexcusable continuation of it. No, we were not bleeding ourselves dry outside Kandahar, nor were we bankrupting the nation’s treasure bankrolling corrupt Afghan officials. No, this loss was not inevitable. It was a choice.

As I said before–and as it has always been–the losers determine when a war ends. There is no dignity in this withdrawal, whether or not we see people clinging to helicopter skids. Our military did exactly what it was asked to do. This “L” is on our Leaders, who lost hope, lacked fortitude, and thought they could finesse it. There will be no finesse in Kabul soon, only peace, the peace that comes with the grave.

Our leaders always knew, from Day One, what would happen if the Taliban returned. They now share this legacy.

As we close on another American Independence day, I’ve been thinking about the nature of patriotism. It seems to me we Americans have lost the concept of the word. People talk about “love of country” and “American exceptionalism” leading to arguments that miss the point. Patriotism is not uncritical support; it is also not unsupported criticism. It is not the extremism of the fan who thinks only his team should ever win, and every referee’s decision or sport ruling to the contrary is unfair and biased. Yet it is also not detached neutrality, a keeping-your-distance and not-being-emotionally-committed attitude common in academia.

When I worked for the government, I used to remind my employees they were not neutral observers of American foreign policy: they wanted that policy to succeed, whether they personally supported it or not. (Note: we weren’t talking about policies they morally opposed; of course one is required to quit if asked to support a policy you could not in good conscience support). You didn’t need to chant “U…S…A, U…S…A!” all the time, but neither should you act like it made no difference to you.

Enough about what patriotism isn’t; what is it? Try this concept on for size: patriotism is an appreciation for the unique advantages your nationality bestows on you, unmerited on your part. Thus it does not mean your country is better than any other, nor does it mean everything your country does it right or best. This appreciative version of patriotism requires an objective view of your nation’s history, other nation’s histories, and the state of the world today. But it avoids silly chest-thumping on one hand, or ridiculous a-historical criticism on the other.

There is nothing particularly patriotic about believing your country is the greatest ever, nor in thinking solely about its many shortcomings. Both approaches lead to dead ends. There can be little doubt nations and nationalities demonstrate differing areas of excellence, and acknowledging this fact is not unpatriotic, just realistic. Brazil plays beautiful football. Nobody does cheese like France. Taiwan and computer chips. Sometimes patriotic fervor isn’t about absolute excellence, but simply relative excellence or good fit. I wouldn’t prefer the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, but the British cherish it as a national accomplishment nonetheless. It just works for them.

Heaven is where

the police are English,

the chefs are French,

the mechanics are German,

the lovers are Italian,

and the Swiss organize everything.

Hell is where

the Germans are the police,

the English are the cooks,

the French are the mechanics,

the Swiss are the lovers

and the Italians organize everything.

An old joke about Heaven, Hell and Europe

I didn’t storm the beaches at Normandy, but I benefited from the those who put an end to the Nazis. I never enslaved anyone, nor did my Irish forebears, but I was born into a society that had far more opportunity in South Bend than Sligo, just as an African American descended from slaves but born beside me in South Bend had so much more opportunity than a distant cousin still in Soweto. That we both had different (and unequal) opportunities is both a global statement of fact and a call for continued hard work. It is simply amazing to me that some people today think it is a remarkably American failing that inequality exists; if this surprises you, you either haven’t traveled much or weren’t paying attention when you did.

All nations have strengths and weaknesses. As do all forms of government, all ethnic groups, and all individuals. Being honest about these strengths and weaknesses is not disloyal, while only considering one or the other might be. I have little patience for those who say “America: love it or leave it.” I have no patience whatsoever for those who claim unrelenting criticism is some higher form of patriotic fervor.

America is, was, and ever will be far short of perfect. Yet it remains a blessing to be born an American, regardless of race, creed, or color. In praise or criticism, this remains true, and only an ingrate would challenge it.

Happy Independence Day!