A Couple of Things in August

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1961

On vacation, at home, trying to achieve that balance between relaxation/necessary work/creative endeavor. A couple of things have come to mind in the last few days.

First off, we have the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which took the Western Allies in Berlin by surprise at the time, although it shouldn't have. The situation was very tense 50 years ago in Berlin and this tension lasted, if in a lesser degree, to the time 28 years later when the people brought that wall down. So, what was initiated by a state with with limited popular support (based mostly on a grotesque view of the "other") lasted only as long as the people it was meant to control submitted themselves to that control (that is Weberian social action theory). It took 28 years, but it happened which is the point to remember.

There are also those who argue that the whole thing was overblown, that the Soviet Army would never have attacked, that "all they wanted was peace", or "their economy was going down the tubes" ,or amazingly, that it was our military budgets (spending) which drove the USSR over the edge. It's amazing how so many people see these arguments as believable and at the same time today believe in a Global Jihadist Threat. That is the full spectrum of views in regards to the USSR unite in one simplistic view regarding the Global War on Terror.

So to make it even clearer, the USSR as a qualified threat (actually a potentially existential threat) which required certain changes in our government structure (the establishment of the National Security State after 1947) but virtually none in our Constitutional or legal systems, whereas Al Qaida's actions since 2001 have initiated a whole series of drastic (and sometimes illegal) changes in virtually every aspect of our society? Yet in what way is Al Qaida any sort of threat in the way the USSR was?

Recently a documentary was aired in Germany which addressed the Warsaw Pact plans for the conquest of West Berlin which was in turn the subject of a large East German Army field exercise in 1988, that is a year before the wall came down. It's actually a common element in corrupt elites which are on the verge of collapse, that is the consideration of the use of military power to some how remedy the situation, turn things around, remove the pressure to "reform", that is respond to public pressure. Obviously the government of the German Democratic Republic felt secure enough in 1988 to have this as an option, the people were "manageable" enough in terms of propaganda, fear, incentives and what ever other elements of power/inducement the state could muster.

What made a difference at the end of the Cold War, was of course the top man on their side, M. Gorbachev, who was a great human being, but a lousy Communist. "Communist" defined in terms of perpetuating the interests and power of the Communist elite, much as we would define our own leadership/elite today.

Consider how Eastern Europe with a worn out and discredited social/economic system in 1989 compares to the West - and especially the US - today?

So that's one thing.

The other is a response I got on one of FDChief's threads. I commented this to Andy:

"I think most serving in the armed forces today would disagree with your characterization that they are "imperials." "

Agree, but what is the actual effect of what these American "warriors" are doing? Some would argue this is all about empire, or would you argue that there actually exists a "global threat" which requires our military actions on such a scale as a response?

Are we on the defensive or the offensive? Is the enemy a threat to our "freedom" or simply responding to our depredations? A very basic question from a strategic theory perspective; I suppose it comes down to that . . .

Andy was kind enough to respond:

That's a good point, but these wars aren't "imperial" simply because they are strategically incoherent. If we were installing Viceroy's in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and granting US corporations exclusive rights to territorial resources, then I'd think these would be "imperial" wars. We would have a clear purpose that would, theoretically at least, provide us a clear and material benefit.

What have we gained? What is the purpose? IMO, as I've said before, I think these are now wars of national honor and the reason we are still there is that our politicians think they can't leave without a clear "win" and the American people don't want to suffer the perceived psychological consequences of a Vietnam-like "failure." The sunk-cost fallacy is also at work.

After a bit more thinking, I'll add this to my earlier thoughts: Maybe it's an artifact of the AVF, but for me and most people I know, service is in large part about "serving the nation" and the deal is that if you want to serve the nation, you don't get to pick and choose your wars. Almost everyone today, including me, continue to serve by choice despite misgivings about our current conflicts (obviously, my misgivings are not everyone's). Each individual, therefore, has to balance whether service is worth the downsides, whatever those downsides may be. For most people, continued service is not worth the cost and they either choose not to join at all or serve one or two hitches.

So I guess it strikes me as - not sure how to put this - "unfair" to suggest that the sacrifice these men made is somehow diminished because the campaign they fought and died in didn't rise to someone else's arbitrary level of righteousness. I have a hard time entertaining the notion that the sacrifice of a soldier in WWII who was accidentally killed by by his own troops is somehow greater or more honorable than those guys in the 47, or the soldier in Iraq who dies to save his men. Everyone has their own opinion and I'm not claiming any moral high ground here, but for me personally I feel completely unqualified to make such judgments.

I think Andy's comment very articulate and informative, but communicating something else then what he intended, possibly. I assume no agendas/political views beyond the content of this single comment, rather simply separate and develop the points made.

First, my questions were addressed to a citizen/the citizenry of the political community called the USA, not to the troops who go where they are sent. If these military members serve the nation, then it is the responsibility of the citizenry that the political leadership (in theory our elected representatives) ensure that they are actually operating in the interests of the US. An elite that arbitrarily uses the powers of the state for their own narrow interests is by definition a tyranny.

Second, while the US political purpose is "incoherent" it is not blatantly so - no "Viceroys" ruling in our name - and the series of wars seemingly provide no benefit to the nation at all. That is where this consideration ends, though without considering that the wars in question might actually support the interests of the elite, while providing the nation with no benefit, are in fact contrary to our political community's interests. This of course within a context of constant government deception and propaganda, in effect selling this necessarily ambiguous threat as "existential". This in turn would indicate a very serious state of affairs, the collapse of the concept of citizenship, accountability of elected officials, consideration of the long-term effects of what is carried out in our name, how our policies might actually bring about the "war of civilizations" hornets nest we insist on beating . . . the questions only become more serious as you follow this line of thought . . .

Third, it seems that this view argues that as long as the military assumes the war passes whatever their own subjective smell test is, it will continue, since by continuing the military "serves the nation" and upholds its own "honor". For those military members unable to deal with this, they get out after "one or two tours". That is it is only those career military who actually count.

Finally, arguing against these wars is simply exercising an "arbitrary level of righteousness" against, not the political leadership, they enter into this discussion not at all, but against the military: that is "attacking the troops".

In all I would label his view, "21st Century US militarism" which indicates for me a collapse of all our traditional ideals of the citizen, the political leadership, the military and even the use of state force itself.

Postscript (from one of my comments below):

--We're talking a lot about symptoms, but not much about causes. If we go to the actual root causes then I think we get an idea of the extent of the crisis facing not only the US, but also the West (but to a lesser degree).

Systemic failure due to elites who simply cannot divorce themselves from the Weltanschauung which educated, formed and conditioned them and has been shown to be dysfunctional, incapable of reform or even acknowledging the extent of the crisis.

Obama is a product of the same elite system of education and indoctrination. He vacations on Martha's Vineyard since that is where the East Coast elite go and he wishes very much to signal that he is one with that elite. It's not based on race or ethnic background, but on class and sharing the same background which is the glue that holds the whole thing together.

The same Ivy League idiots who ran the economy off a cliff are retained and rewarded since there are no others to replace them with. This crop would be replaced with the same systems managers who caused the last big crack up.

Ditto with every major institution we have - the military included - the same thinking but from the service academies.

Our elite cannot deal with systemic failure because simply they are NOT even aware they are dealing with a failed system, rather for them this is the one and only "reality" and scary brown people who "hate our freedom" are definitely part of it.

Consider the group reading these words. How many of us are autodidacts, who have been fundamental to our own individual educations? How many of us are by nature critical thinkers? How many of us see the world, not in binary black/white, but in infinite shades of gray? How many of us see that in America today there are no actual conservative or progressive political alternatives?

And there's something else . . .

I think those who see this disaster more clearly also have a coherent system of values. I know that word has been debased for decades, but consider what I'm talking about is not "right" and "wrong" but a coherent structure. This was common in the past, btw, in all healthy societies. Values are not what make us "feel good about ourselves", but give meaning to our world. Many times we have found ourselves not living up to our own values, which is the opposite of the sanctimonious buffoonery (actually narrow self-centered interest) common today. These values reflect in turn our belonging to a larger community, and it is in many cases this poor reflection which discourages us perhaps the most.

The country has changed or rather has been changed, but we have not, nor will we. Imo the growing conflict in the US today is not between "Left" and "Right", or "Liberal" and "Conservative", but between the elite and their stooges (both Obamaites and Right Wing Nihilists), and the anti-elite, which is a diffuse and reactionary movement. Given the disparity of power, the best strategy - as we have spoken about before - is one similar to that taken by the peoples of Eastern Europe prior to 1989 . . .

Essentially we are the anti-elite . . .

--

We need to start with simple definitions. First "Empire" . . .

We Are the People! - The Fall of the Berlin Wall - 9 November 1989

Alexanderplatz, East Berlin, 4 November 1989

With all the hoopla about the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall, perhaps we should ask ourselves what exactly is the significance of this event and all the various events associated with that Annus mirabilis of 1989 and revolutions that swept away Stalinist Europe.

A good place to start in considering a retrospective is with Timothy Garton Ash's 1989!. Much to understanding those times is to get a "feel" for the electricity that was in the very air that people breathed. Ash was in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia at just the right times and experienced the moods among the crowds. In his essay he relies on several concepts to help explain not only those events but how they have since been interpreted. For instance the idea of hindsight bias, or simply, "what happened had to happen" or simply deterministic fate. In regards to the Berlin events this runs "Communism was at an end, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was broke, they needed a way out and simply sold out to the West". This goes hand in glove with another dubious notion that Ash doesn't mention in this essay, but is so very common, that is that those in power always call the shots. This notion is the basis of all government conspiracy theories, that is when something happens those with the power made it so. Common people, even organized in great numbers never really make a revolution, maybe a nudge, but not really a difference . . . 1989 proves that wrong and makes the use of mass action possible given the right motivations, conditions and contingencies.

The year started uneventful enough, the leader of the GDR telling the world that the Wall would last "for another 100 years" and who was to disagree with him? The leadership elites of both East and West had become accustomed to the stability the Cold War brought, to the predictability and sustainability of keeping both sides as they were. This did not consider the feelings and aspirations of the people in the Warsaw Pact or even Russia (as opposed to the "Soviet Union"). Clausewitz wrote that the material side of organized force was a "simple wooden handle" as opposed to the moral side which was the "shining, well-honed steel blade". This also assumes that the leadership wielding the sword know what they are doing with it.

There must have been something in the world's air, since in China a democratization movement developed between April and 4 June when it was brutally crushed. What had sparked that protest had been a funeral of a popular official, but the reaction was particularly marked in eastern Europe, where it divided the leadership between hardliners who supported what the Chinese government had done and those who saw the "Chinese example" as something to be avoided at all costs. It is here perhaps were Mikhail Gorbechev, who influenced the events of 1989 more than any other leader, exercised the most significant effect rejecting the Chinese example as an option, or at least the option of using Soviet Troops to do what the PLA had done.

In Poland, Solidarity was elected into office in the first free elections since 1945, and Gorbechev and Glasnost were attempting to rethink "the system " in the USSR. Change was in the air, but at what point would it be seen as too much and at what point would the "Chinese option" kick in? Tensions were high and the situation only needed a bit of a push to set the whole unstable structure in motion, but towards what?

The Hungarians in effect lit the fuze with a picnic in August by opening up a section of their border to Austria as a sort of party between two neighboring towns. This followed a limited crack in the Iron Curtain that the Hungarians had made in May. What they did not anticipate was that over 600 East German vacationers would "crash the party" so to speak and cross over into Austria. Suddenly Hungary became the favorite vacation spot for East Germans, and the Hungarians failed to do anything to stop them. The GDR responded by refusing to allow people to travel to Hungary, but then those wishing to flee started gathering in West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw. This created great pressure both inside and outside the GDR.

At the same time as the "pull" to get out, there was an internal "push" for reform across the GDR. Weekly demonstrations started in September, but gained a much greater momentum on 9 October with the first Monday demonstration in Leipzig following the 40th anniversary of the GDR on 7 October. The Leipzig demos climaxed with the one of 23 October drawing over 300,000 people, gaining Leipzig the title "Hero City" or Heldenstadt der DDR. The reason for the title was clear since in September and October going out to demonstrate against the GDR government meant possible arrest, later police harassment and physical abuse. For instance on 8 October 500 were arrested, and many more beaten, at a peaceful demonstration at the Gethsemane Kirche in East Berlin, which was another center of the protest. The government tried to quell the protests with the semblance of change, Erich Honecker and most of the old line resigned on 18 October, only to be replaced by Egon Krenz who was even less popular than Honecker had been. Krenz had visited China earlier that year and praised the "Chinese example". This only spurred the demonstrators on more which in turn led to the largest demo of them all, one million at Alexanderplatz on 4 November, five days before the fall of the wall.

The "push" met the "pull" with the freedom trains which transported 12,000 East Germans who had been held up in Poland and Czechoslovakia to West Germany during the first week of October, the one event proving a catalyst to the other since the trains were required to pass through Leipzig . . . It was one of the greatest mistakes the GDR leadership made during the whole crisis, but not the biggest nor most spectacular.

That honor belongs to GDR Politburo member Günter Schabowski, who in one of the best examples of the importance of being clear with your meaning at public speaking events botched a news conference and told the people of the GDR they were free to travel outside the country "immediately" (this is a youtube link since you have to see this to believe it). The looks on the Border Guard (including Stasi Passkontrolle) officers is amazing.

The rest is history as they say, although what did happen could have turned out a wide variety of less favorable ways (especially for the Eastern Europeans) and even some more favorable (in terms of economics) than what it fact did occur. This becomes clear when comparing the events in Berlin with those in Prague which also required a whole sequence of contingencies to occur.

What stands out for me is the potential effect of the common person, what people can do for themselves if properly motivated and willing to go through a period of adversity and even pain. That and keeping your wits about you, not reacting violently to power, but making power appear impotent by its inability to instill fear. Get the uniformed "keepers of the peace" to start doubting not only their power but their purpose and watch what happens. Perhaps that is the big message from 1989, that any political elite would not want you to know.

The second thing was the cluelessness of those in power on all sides. Even Gorbi, who was the most influential, had no idea what the effect of his actions would be and went a bit hard line later on. Of the Allied leaders, Pappy Bush probably comes out the best (especially when compared to Thatcher who made even Krenz appear "reform minded") in that he got out of the way of German reunification. During the 1990s there were a whole series of former officials who came out with memoirs explaining how they had known all along what was going on - ninty-nine point nine percent of which is self-serving tripe imo. At the time we (as in strategic intelligence collection) were being told to either "expect anything" or it "will all blow over". It was the ops who were able to adjust well to quickly changing events, less so the managers in my experience. Those closest to the streets were the most clued in, those high up on the food chain, in positions of bureaucratic power, the least.

Where was I on 9 November? It was a Thursday so I was home from work with the family watching TV (usually switching between East and West German and AFN) and heard Schabowski's statement. "WOW, this is big!" I tell the wife and head for Checkpoint Charlie by way of the U-bahn getting off at Koch Strasse. There already were crowds gathered on the West Berlin side and climbing a light pole (I could do stuff like that 20 years ago) I could see hundreds of East Berliners patiently waiting. At this point the corrected version of the new travel law came out and people were spreading the news on our side that it would only come into effect on the 11th, that is the people would have to apply on the 10th and be able to travel the next day. So I went back home, feeling as I was a bit guilty for leaving the wife at home alone with our sick daughter. What I didn't realize until the next day was that Ossies had lost their fear of the system and the GDR authorities had lost their faith in it. The "push" met feeble resistance and kept pushing, so the local border guard commanders simply opened the borders and kept their troops in barracks lacking any coherent orders from above.

The next day my office opened a screening center in a former elevator factory and over the next days I screened scores of "pullers" whereas the "pushers" were mostly back in their East Berlin beds by noon. Some of the first to desert - and those I interrogated - were those who would have under different conditions been those most relied on to enforce the "Chinese option".

In spite of all the work I had to do, I was in a state of euphoria during that entire time and into Spring 1990. It was the most sublime period of my life.

One more link: 20 Years After the Wall