J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 380
April 5, 2018
Should-Read: I need to figure out why the usually-reliabl...
Should-Read: I need to figure out why the usually-reliable Greg Ip has started giving more credence than he should to the claims of Trump hacks and flacks like Kevin Hassett, Larry Kudlow, Peter Navarro, and their ilk: Larry Summers: No, ���Obamasclerosis��� wasnt a real problem: "The Wall Street Journal���s Greg Ip... finds credible... claims that President Barack Obama���s policies... materially slowed economic growth...
... even though Ip acknowledges that the CEA���s assertions regarding magnitudes are likely exaggerated.
The CEA���s thesis is that a wave of tax and regulatory policies reduced both workers��� incentives to work and businesses��� incentives to invest, leading to slower economic growth than would otherwise have been achievable.... At least three broad features of the economic landscape make the CEA���s view an unlikely explanation for disappointing economic growth....
The dominant reason for slow growth has been what economists label slow ���total factor productivity��� (TFP) growth.... There is no basis for supposing that levels of labor input or capital are less than one would expect given the magnitude of the Great Financial Crisis.... This suggests the lack of importance of the various factors adduced by the... [Trumpists'] report....
The biggest surprise of the last few years has been the remarkably low rate of inflation even as the unemployment rate has reached 4 percent..... If, as the CEA believes, our slow economic growth is a result of too little supply of labor and capital, one would expect surprisingly high, rather than surprisingly low, inflation as demand growth collided with constricted supply.... The secular stagnation hypothesis that emphasizes issues on the demand side would predict exactly the combination of sluggish growth, low inflation and low capital costs that we observe....
The... thesis... that capital has been greatly burdened in recent years by onerous regulation, high taxes and a lack of availability of labor... is belied by the behavior of the stock market and of corporate profits.... The observation that share buybacks appear to be the largest use of the proceeds from the Trump tax cuts points in the same direction. Costs of capital have not been responsible for holding back investment in the United States in recent years.
If the ���Obamasclerosis��� theory does not fit the facts of slow growth in recent years, what are its likely causes?... My guess is... hysteresis effects from the financial crisis and associated recession, reduced application of innovation in the economy in recent years, and possibly the adverse effects of rising monopoly power and diminishing competition...
It is puzzling. Kevin Hassett's arguments seem transparently false���claims on the other of magnitude as "supply curves slope up" and "burdensome regulations raise stock prices". They are not the type of thing that I would have expected anyone working for the Wall Street Journal news pages to validate.
It is the case that some Wall Street Journal insiders claim that editor Gerard Baker was a catastrophic choice: that he is a Trumpist true believer who has created a pre-1990 Eastern European atmosphere at the news pages of the Journal as he has decided to light the news pages' credibility as an information intermediary on fire in an attempt to make Trump look less bad in relative perspective by making everybody else look as bad as possible.
Others say that the pressure is coming from Rupert, James, and Lachlan Murdoch and that Baker is trying hard to do as good a job as possible under the circumstances.
Should-Read: Read National Review before... well, before ...
Should-Read: Read National Review before... well, before today... about Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, and you read things like "There���s still quite a bit of experienced managerial and legislative talent walking through the lobby of Trump Tower these days... Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin..." and "A Mama Grizzly Wins in the Sooner State". All that is now, as they say, inoperative. But surely NR could have given its loyal readers a heads-up sometime in the past eight years that MISTAKES WERE MADE?: Mark Antonio Wright: Oklahoma���s Teachers & Education Funding Issues: "No reasonable examination of the facts can avoid laying blame at the feet of Republican governor Mary Fallin...
...Once a rising conservative star, Fallin served three terms as Oklahoma���s lieutenant governor and two terms in the U.S. House before she was elected to the governorship in the GOP-wave year of 2010, accompanied by big Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. The ensuing years, however, have seen a constant stream of budget and funding missteps.... Government in Oklahoma needs deep reform. If the states are meant to be, in our federal system, sovereign ���laboratories of democracy,��� then Oklahoma���s leaders should realize that their current experiment is failing.... Four-day school weeks, classrooms with 40 kids, and students forced to sit on the floor is no one���s idea of a successful educational environment. Conscientious Okies should get to work...
April 4, 2018
NSC-68, U.S. Objectives and Programs for National Security, April 1950
Should-Read: National Security Council (1950): NSC-68, U.S. Objectives and Programs for National Security: "Within the past thirty-five years the world has experienced two global wars of tremendous violence...
...It has witnessed two revolutions--the Russian and the Chinese--of extreme scope and intensity. It has also seen the collapse of five empires--the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Italian, and Japanese--and the drastic decline of two major imperial systems, the British and the French. During the span of one generation, the international distribution of power has been fundamentally altered. For several centuries it had proved impossible for any one nation to gain such preponderant strength that a coalition of other nations could not in time face it with greater strength. The international scene was marked by recurring periods of violence and war, but a system of sovereign and independent states was maintained, over which no state was able to achieve hegemony.
Two complex sets of factors have now basically altered this historic distribution of power. First, the defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the Soviet Union in such a way that power increasingly gravitated to these two centers. Second, the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war.
On the one hand, the people of the world yearn for relief from the anxiety arising from the risk of atomic war. On the other hand, any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled. It is in this context that this Republic and its citizens in the ascendancy of their strength stand in their deepest peril.
The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself. They are issues which will not await our deliberations. With conscience and resolution this Government and the people it represents must now take new and fateful decisions.
II. Fundamental Purpose of the United States: The fundamental purpose of the United States is laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution: ". . . to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.
Three realities emerge as a consequence of this purpose: Our determination to maintain the essential elements of individual freedom, as set forth in the Constitution and Bill of Rights; our determination to create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper; and our determination to fight if necessary to defend our way of life, for which as in the Declaration of Independence, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
III. Fundamental Design of the Kremlin: The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority.
The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.
IV. The Underlying Conflict in the Realm of ideas and Values between the U.S. Purpose and the Kremlin Design: A. NATURE OF CONFLICT: The Kremlin regards the United States as the only major threat to the conflict between idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin, which has come to a crisis with the polarization of power described in Section I, and the exclusive possession of atomic weapons by the two protagonists. The idea of freedom, moreover, is peculiarly and intolerably subversive of the idea of slavery. But the converse is not true. The implacable purpose of the slave state to eliminate the challenge of freedom has placed the two great powers at opposite poles. It is this fact which gives the present polarization of power the quality of crisis.
The free society values the individual as an end in himself, requiring of him only that measure of self-discipline and self-restraint which make the rights of each individual compatible with the rights of every other individual. The freedom of the individual has as its counterpart, therefore, the negative responsibility of the individual not to exercise his freedom in ways inconsistent with the freedom of other individuals and the positive responsibility to make constructive use of his freedom in the building of a just society.
From this idea of freedom with responsibility derives the marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of the free society. This is the explanation of the strength of free men. It constitutes the integrity and the vitality of a free and democratic system. The free society attempts to create and maintain an environment in which every individual has the opportunity to realize his creative powers. It also explains why the free society tolerates those within it who would use their freedom to destroy it. By the same token, in relations between nations, the prime reliance of the free society is on the strength and appeal of its idea, and it feels no compulsion sooner or later to bring all societies into conformity with it.
For the free society does not fear, it welcomes, diversity. It derives its strength from its hospitality even to antipathetic ideas. It is a market for free trade in ideas, secure in its faith that free men will take the best wares, and grow to a fuller and better realization of their powers in exercising their choice.
The idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in history, more contagious than the idea of submission to authority. For the breadth of freedom cannot be tolerated in a society which has come under the domination of an individual or group of individuals with a will to absolute power. Where the despot holds absolute power--the absolute power of the absolutely powerful will--all other wills must be subjugated in an act of willing submission, a degradation willed by the individual upon himself under the compulsion of a perverted faith. It is the first article of this faith that he finds and can only find the meaning of his existence in serving the ends of the system. The system becomes God, and submission to the will of God becomes submission to the will of the system. It is not enough to yield outwardly to the system--even Gandhian non-violence is not acceptable--for the spirit of resistance and the devotion to a higher authority might then remain, and the individual would not be wholly submissive.
The same compulsion which demands total power over all men within the Soviet state without a single exception, demands total power over all Communist Parties and all states under Soviet domination. Thus Stalin has said that the theory and tactics of Leninism as expounded by the Bolshevik party are mandatory for the proletarian parties of all countries. A true internationalist is defined as one who unhesitatingly upholds the position of the Soviet Union and in the satellite states true patriotism is love of the Soviet Union. By the same token the "peace policy" of the Soviet Union, described at a Party Congress as "a more advantageous form of fighting capitalism," is a device to divide and immobilize the non-Communist world, and the peace the Soviet Union seeks is the peace of total conformity to Soviet policy.
The antipathy of slavery to freedom explains the iron curtain, the isolation, the autarchy of the society whose end is absolute power. The existence and persistence of the idea of freedom is a permanent and continuous threat to the foundation of the slave society; and it therefore regards as intolerable the long continued existence of freedom in the world. What is new, what makes the continuing crisis, is the polarization of power which now inescapably confronts the slave society with the free.
The assault on free institutions is world-wide now, and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere. The shock we sustained in the destruction of Czechoslovakia was not in the measure of Czechoslovakia's material importance to us. In a material sense, her capabilities were already at Soviet disposal. But when the integrity of Czechoslovak institutions was destroyed, it was in the intangible scale of values that we registered a loss more damaging than the material loss we had already suffered.
Thus unwillingly our free society finds itself mortally challenged by the Soviet system. No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with ours, so implacable in its purpose to destroy ours, so capable of turning to its own uses the most dangerous and divisive trends in our own society, no other so skillfully and powerfully evokes the elements of irrationality in human nature everywhere, and no other has the support of a great and growing center of military power.
B. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of a free society are determined by its fundamental values and by the necessity for maintaining the material environment in which they flourish. Logically and in fact, therefore, the Kremlin's challenge to the United States is directed not only to our values but to our physical capacity to protect their environment. It is a challenge which encompasses both peace and war and our objectives in peace and war must take account of it.
Thus we must make ourselves strong, both in the way in which we affirm our values in the conduct of our national life, and in the development of our military and economic strength.
We must lead in building a successfully functioning political and economic system in the free world. It is only by practical affirmation, abroad as well as at home, of our essential values, that we can preserve our own integrity, in which lies the real frustration of the Kremlin design.
But beyond thus affirming our values our policy and actions must be such as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system, a change toward which the frustration of the design is the first and perhaps the most important step. Clearly it will not only be less costly but more effective if this change occurs to a maximum extent as a result of internal forces in Soviet society.
In a shrinking world, which now faces the threat of atomic warfare, it is not an adequate objective merely to seek to check the Kremlin design, for the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable. This fact imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership. It demands that we make the attempt, and accept the risks inherent in it, to bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy. We should limit our requirement of the Soviet Union to its participation with other nations on the basis of equality and respect for the rights of others. Subject to this requirement, we must with our allies and the former subject peoples seek to create a world society based on the principle of consent. Its framework cannot be inflexible. It will consist of many national communities of great and varying abilities and resources, and hence of war potential. The seeds of conflicts will inevitably exist or will come into being. To acknowledge this is only to acknowledge the impossibility of a final solution. Not to acknowledge it can be fatally dangerous in a world in which there are no final solutions.
All these objectives of a free society are equally valid and necessary in peace and war. But every consideration of devotion to our fundamental values and to our national security demands that we seek to achieve them by the strategy of the cold war. It is only by developing the moral and material strength of the free world that the Soviet regime will become convinced of the falsity of its assumptions and that the pre-conditions for workable agreements can be created. By practically demonstrating the integrity and vitality of our system the free world widens the area of possible agreement and thus can hope gradually to bring about a Soviet acknowledgement of realities which in sum will eventually constitute a frustration of the Soviet design. Short of this, however, it might be possible to create a situation which will induce the Soviet Union to accommodate itself, with or without the conscious abandonment of its design, to coexistence on tolerable terms with the non-Soviet world. Such a development would be a triumph for the idea of freedom and democracy. It must be an immediate objective of United States policy.
There is no reason, in the event of war, for us to alter our overall objectives. They do not include unconditional surrender, the subjugation of the Russian peoples or a Russia shorn of its economic potential. Such a course would irrevocably unite the Russian people behind the regime which enslaves them. Rather these objectives contemplate Soviet acceptance of the specific and limited conditions requisite to an international environment in which free institutions can flourish, and in which the Russian peoples will have a new chance to work out their own destiny. If we can make the Russian people our allies in the enterprise we will obviously have made our task easier and victory more certain.
The objectives outlined in NSC 20/4 (November 23, 1948)... are fully consistent with the objectives stated in this paper, and they remain valid. The growing intensity of the conflict which has been imposed upon us, however, requires the changes of emphasis and the additions that are apparent. Coupled with the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union, the intensifying struggle requires us to face the fact that we can expect no lasting abatement of the crisis unless and until a change occurs in the nature of the Soviet system.
C. MEANS: The free society is limited in its choice of means to achieve its ends.
Compulsion is the negation of freedom, except when it is used to enforce the rights common to all. The resort to force, internally or externally, is therefore a last resort for a free society. The act is permissible only when one individual or groups of individuals within it threaten the basic rights of other individuals or when another society seeks to impose its will upon it. The free society cherishes and protects as fundamental the rights of the minority against the will of a majority, because these rights are the inalienable rights of each and every individual.
The resort to force, to compulsion, to the imposition of its will is therefore a difficult and dangerous act for a free society, which is warranted only in the face of even greater dangers. The necessity of the act must be clear and compelling; the act must commend itself to the overwhelming majority as an inescapable exception to the basic idea of freedom; or the regenerative capacity of free men after the act has been performed will be endangered.
The Kremlin is able to select whatever means are expedient in seeking to carry out its fundamental design. Thus it can make the best of several possible worlds, conducting the struggle on those levels where it considers it profitable and enjoying the benefits of a pseudo-peace on those levels where it is not ready for a contest. At the ideological or psychological level, in the struggle for men's minds, the conflict is worldwide. At the political and economic level, within states and in the relations between states, the struggle for power is being intensified. And at the military level, the Kremlin has thus far been careful not to commit a technical breach of the peace, although using its vast forces to intimidate its neighbors, and to support an aggressive foreign policy, and not hesitating through its agents to resort to arms in favorable circumstances. The attempt to carry out its fundamental design is being pressed, therefore, with all means which are believed expedient in the present situation, and the Kremlin has inextricably engaged us in the conflict between its design and our purpose.
We have no such freedom of choice, and least of all in the use of force. Resort to war is not only a last resort for a free society, but it is also an act which cannot definitively end the fundamental conflict in the realm of ideas. The idea of slavery can only be overcome by the timely and persistent demonstration of the superiority of the idea of freedom. Military victory alone would only partially and perhaps only temporarily affect the fundamental conflict, for although the ability of the Kremlin to threaten our security might be for a time destroyed, the resurgence of totalitarian forces and the re-establishment of the Soviet system or its equivalent would not be long delayed unless great progress were made in the fundamental conflict.
Practical and ideological considerations therefore both impel us to the conclusion that we have no choice but to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom by its constructive application, and to attempt to change the world situation by means short of war in such a way as to frustrate the Kremlin design and hasten the decay of the Soviet system.
For us the role of military power is to serve the national purpose by deterring an attack upon us while we seek by other means to create an environment in which our free society can flourish, and by fighting, if necessary, to defend the integrity and vitality of our free society and to defeat any aggressor. The Kremlin uses Soviet military power to back up and serve the Kremlin design. It does not hesitate to use military force aggressively if that course is expedient in the achievement of its design. The differences between our fundamental purpose and the Kremlin design, therefore, are reflected in our respective attitudes toward and use of military force.
Our free society, confronted by a threat to its basic values, naturally will take such action, including the use of military force, as may be required to protect those values. The integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or overt, violent or non-violent, which serve the purposes of frustrating the Kremlin design, nor does the necessity for conducting ourselves so as to affirm our values in actions as well as words forbid such measures, provided only they are appropriately calculated to that end and are not so excessive or misdirected as to make us enemies of the people instead of the evil men who have enslaved them.
But if war comes, what is the role of force? Unless we so use it that the Russian people can perceive that our effort is directed against the regime and its power for aggression, and not against their own interests, we will unite the regime and the people in the kind of last ditch fight in which no underlying problems are solved, new ones are created, and where our basic principles are obscured and compromised. If we do not in the application of force demonstrate the nature of our objectives we will, in fact, have compromised from the outset our fundamental purpose. In the words of the Federalist (No. 28) "The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief." The mischief may be a global war or it may be a Soviet campaign for limited objectives. In either case we should take no avoidable initiative which would cause it to become a war of annihilation, and if we have the forces to defeat a Soviet drive for limited objectives it may well be to our interest not to let it become a global war. Our aim in applying force must be to compel the acceptance of terms consistent with our objectives, and our capabilities for the application of force should, therefore, within the limits of what we can sustain over the long pull, be congruent to the range of tasks which we may encounter.
V. Soviet Intentions and Capabilities: A. POLITICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL: The Kremlin's design for world domination begins at home. The first concern of a despotic oligarchy is that the local base of its power and authority be secure. The massive fact of the iron curtain isolating the Soviet peoples from the outside world, the repeated political purges within the USSR and the institutionalized crimes of the MVD [the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs] are evidence that the Kremlin does not feel secure at home and that "the entire coercive force of the socialist state" is more than ever one of seeking to impose its absolute authority over "the economy, manner of life, and consciousness of people" (Vyshinski, The Law of the Soviet State, p. 74). Similar evidence in the satellite states of Eastern Europe leads to the conclusion that this same policy, in less advanced phases, is being applied to the Kremlin's colonial areas.
Being a totalitarian dictatorship, the Kremlin's objectives in these policies is the total subjective submission of the peoples now under its control. The concentration camp is the prototype of the society which these policies are designed to achieve, a society in which the personality of the individual is so broken and perverted that he participates affirmatively in his own degradation.
The Kremlin's policy toward areas not under its control is the elimination of resistance to its will and the extension of its influence and control. It is driven to follow this policy because it cannot, for the reasons set forth in Chapter IV, tolerate the existence of free societies; to the Kremlin the most mild and inoffensive free society is an affront, a challenge and a subversive influence. Given the nature of the Kremlin, and the evidence at hand, it seems clear that the ends toward which this policy is directed are the same as those where its control has already been established.
The means employed by the Kremlin in pursuit of this policy are limited only by considerations of expediency. Doctrine is not a limiting factor; rather it dictates the employment of violence, subversion, and deceit, and rejects moral considerations. In any event, the Kremlin's conviction of its own infallibility has made its devotion to theory so subjective that past or present pronouncements as to doctrine offer no reliable guide to future actions. The only apparent restraints on resort to war are, therefore, calculations of practicality.
With particular reference to the United States, the Kremlin's strategic and tactical policy is affected by its estimate that we are not only the greatest immediate obstacle which stands between it and world domination, we are also the only power which could release forces in the free and Soviet worlds which could destroy it. The Kremlin's policy toward us is consequently animated by a peculiarly virulent blend of hatred and fear. Its strategy has been one of attempting to undermine the complex of forces, in this country and in the rest of the free world, on which our power is based. In this it has both adhered to doctrine and followed the sound principle of seeking maximum results with minimum risks and commitments. The present application of this strategy is a new form of expression for traditional Russian caution. However, there is no justification in Soviet theory or practice for predicting that, should the Kremlin become convinced that it could cause our downfall by one conclusive blow, it would not seek that solution.
In considering the capabilities of the Soviet world, it is of prime importance to remember that, in contrast to ours, they are being drawn upon close to the maximum possible extent. Also in contrast to us, the Soviet world can do more with less--it has a lower standard of living, its economy requires less to keep it functioning, and its military machine operates effectively with less elaborate equipment and organization.
The capabilities of the Soviet world are being exploited to the full because the Kremlin is inescapably militant. It is inescapably militant because it possesses and is possessed by a world-wide revolutionary movement, because it ' is the inheritor of Russian imperialism, and because it is a totalitarian dictatorship. Persistent crisis, conflict, and expansion are the essence of the Kremlin's militancy. This dynamism serves to intensify all Soviet capabilities.
Two enormous organizations, the Communist Party and the secret police, are an outstanding source of strength to the Kremlin. In the Party, it has an apparatus designed to impose at home an ideological uniformity among its people and to act abroad as an instrument of propaganda, subversion and espionage. In its police apparatus, it has a domestic repressive instrument guaranteeing under present circumstances the continued security of the Kremlin. The demonstrated capabilities of these two basic organizations, operating openly or in disguise, in mass or through single agents, is unparalleled in history. The party, the police and the conspicuous might of the Soviet military machine together tend to create an overall impression of irresistible Soviet power among many peoples of the free world.
The ideological pretensions of the Kremlin are another great source of strength. Its identification of the Soviet system with communism, its peace campaigns and its championing of colonial peoples may be viewed with apathy, if not cynicism, by the oppressed totalitariat of the Soviet world, but in the free world these ideas find favorable responses in vulnerable segments of society. They have found a particularly receptive audience in Asia, especially as the Asiatics have been impressed by what has been plausibly portrayed to them as the rapid advance of the USSR from a backward society to a position of great world power. Thus, in its pretensions to being (a) the source of a new universal faith and (b) the model "scientific" society, the Kremlin cynically identifies itself with the genuine aspirations of large numbers of people, and places itself at the head of an international crusade with all of the benefits which derive therefrom.
Finally, there is a category of capabilities, strictly speaking neither institutional nor ideological, which should be taken into consideration. The extraordinary flexibility of Soviet tactics is certainly a strength. It derives from the utterly amoral and opportunistic conduct of Soviet policy. Combining this quality with the elements of secrecy, the Kremlin possesses a formidable capacity to act with the widest tactical latitude, with stealth, and with speed.
The greatest vulnerability of the Kremlin lies in the basic nature of its relations with the Soviet people.
That relationship is characterized by universal suspicion, fear, and denunciation. It is a relationship in which the Kremlin relies, not only for its power but its very survival, on intricately devised mechanisms of coercion. The Soviet monolith is held together by the iron curtain around it and the iron bars within it, not by any force of natural cohesion. These artificial mechanisms of unity have never been intelligently challenged by a strong outside force. The full measure of their vulnerability is therefore not yet evident.
The Kremlin's relations with its satellites and their peoples is likewise a vulnerability. Nationalism still remains the most potent emotional-political force. The well-known ills of colonialism are compounded, however, by the excessive demands of the Kremlin that its satellites accept not only the imperial authority of Moscow but that they believe in and proclaim the ideological primacy and infallibility of the Kremlin. These excessive requirements can be made good only through extreme coercion. The result is that if a satellite feels able to effect its independence of the Kremlin, as Tito was able to do, it is likely to break away.
In short, Soviet ideas and practices run counter to the best and potentially the strongest instincts of men, and deny their most fundamental aspirations. Against an adversary which effectively affirmed the constructive and hopeful instincts of men and was capable of fulfilling their fundamental aspirations, the Soviet system might prove to be fatally weak.
The problem of succession to Stalin is also a Kremlin vulnerability. In a system where supreme power is acquired and held through violence and intimidation, the transfer of that power may well produce a period of instability.
In a very real sense, the Kremlin is a victim of, its own dynamism. This dynamism can become a weakness if it is frustrated, if in its forward thrusts it encounters a superior force which halts the expansion and exerts a superior counterpressure. Yet the Kremlin cannot relax the condition of crisis and mobilization, for to do so would be to lose its dynamism, whereas the seeds of decay within the Soviet system would begin to flourish and fructify.
The Kremlin is, of course, aware of these weaknesses. It must know that in the present world situation they are of secondary significance. So long as the Kremlin retains the initiative, so long as it can keep on the offensive unchallenged by clearly superior counter-force--spiritual as well as material--its vulnerabilities are largely inoperative and even concealed by its successes. The Kremlin has not yet been given real reason to fear and be diverted by the rot within its system.
B. ECONOMIC: The Kremlin has no economic intentions unrelated to its overall policies. Economics in the Soviet world is not an end in itself The Kremlin's policy, in so far as it has to do with economics, is to utilize economic processes to contribute to the overall strength, particularly the war-making capacity of the Soviet system. The material welfare of the totalitariat is severely subordinated to the interest of the system.
As for capabilities, even granting optimistic Soviet reports of production, the total economic strength of the U.S.S.R. compares with that of the U.S. as roughly one to four. This is reflected not only in gross national product (1949: USSR $65 billion; U.S. $250 billion), but in production of key commodities in 1949.... Assuming the maintenance of present policies, while a large U.S. advantage is likely to remain, the Soviet Union will be steadily reducing the discrepancy between its overall economic strength and that of the U.S. by continuing to devote proportionately more to capital investment than the U.S.
But a full-scale effort by the U.S. would be capable of precipitately altering this trend. The USSR today is on a near maximum production basis. No matter what efforts Moscow might make, only a relatively slight change in the rate of increase in overall production could be brought about. In the U.S., on the other hand, a very rapid absolute expansion could be realized. The fact remains, however, that so long as the Soviet Union is virtually mobilized, and the United States has scarcely begun to summon up its forces, the greater capabilities of the U.S. are to that extent inoperative in the struggle for power. Moreover, as the Soviet attainment of an atomic capability has demonstrated, the totalitarian state, at least in time of peace, can focus its efforts on any given project far more readily than the democratic state.
In other fields--general technological competence, skilled labor resources, productivity of labor force, etc.--the gap between the USSR and the U.S. roughly corresponds to the gap in production. In the field of scientific research, however, the margin of United States superiority is unclear, especially if the Kremlin can utilize European talents.
C. MILITARY
The Soviet Union is developing the military capacity to support its design for world domination. The Soviet Union actually possesses armed forces far in excess of those necessary to defend its national territory. These armed forces are probably not yet considered by the Soviet Union to be sufficient to initiate a war which would involve the United States. This excessive strength, coupled now with an atomic capability, provides the Soviet Union with great coercive power for use in time of peace in furtherance of its objectives and serves as a deterrent to the victims of its aggression from taking any action in opposition to its tactics which would risk war.
Should a major war occur in 1950 the Soviet Union and its satellites are considered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be in a sufficiently advanced state of preparation immediately to undertake and carry out the following campaigns.
a. To overrun Western Europe, with the possible exception of the Iberian and Scandinavian Peninsulas; to drive toward the oil-bearing areas of the Near and Middle East; and to consolidate Communist gains in the Far East;
b. To launch air attacks against the British Isles and air and sea attacks against the lines of communications of the Western Powers in the Atlantic and the Pacific;
c. To attack selected targets with atomic weapons, now including the likelihood of such attacks against targets in Alaska, Canada, and the United States. Alternatively, this capability, coupled with other actions open to the Soviet Union, might deny the United Kingdom as an effective base of operations for allied forces. It also should be possible for the Soviet Union to prevent any allied "Normandy" type amphibious operations intended to force a reentry into the continent of Europe.
After the Soviet Union completed its initial campaigns and consolidated its positions in the Western European area, it could simultaneously conduct:
a. Full-scale air and limited sea operations against the British Isles;
b. Invasions of the Iberian and Scandinavian Peninsulas;
c. Further operations in the Near and Middle East, continued air operations against the North American continent, and air and sea operations against Atlantic and Pacific lines of communication; and
d. Diversionary attacks in other areas.
During the course of the offensive operations listed in the second and third paragraphs above, the Soviet Union will have an air defense capability with respect to the vital areas of its own and its satellites' territories which can oppose but cannot prevent allied air operations against these areas.
It is not known whether the Soviet Union possesses war reserves and arsenal capabilities sufficient to supply its satellite armies or even its own forces throughout a long war. It might not be in the interest of the Soviet Union to equip fully its satellite armies, since the possibility of defections would exist.
It is not possible at this time to assess accurately the finite disadvantages to the Soviet Union which may accrue through the implementation of the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, as amended, and the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949. It should be expected that, as this implementation progresses, the internal security situation of the recipient nations should improve concurrently. In addition, a strong United States military position, plus increases in the armaments of the nations of Western Europe, should strengthen the determination of the recipient nations to counter Soviet moves and in event of war could be considered as likely to delay operations and increase the time required for the Soviet Union to overrun Western Europe. In all probability, although United States backing will stiffen their determination, the armaments increase under the present aid programs will not be of any major consequence prior to 1952. Unless the military strength of the Western European nations is increased on a much larger scale than under current programs and at an accelerated rate, it is more than likely that those nations will not be able to oppose even by 1960 the Soviet armed forces in war with any degree of effectiveness. Considering the Soviet Union military capability, the long-range allied military objective in Western Europe must envisage an increased military strength in that area sufficient possibly to deter the Soviet Union from a major war or, in any event, to delay materially the overrunning of Western Europe and, if feasible, to hold a bridgehead on the continent against Soviet Union offensives.
We do not know accurately what the Soviet atomic capability is but the Central Intelligence Agency intelligence estimates, concurred in by State, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Atomic Energy Commission, assign to the Soviet Union a production capability giving it a fission bomb stockpile within the following ranges:
By mid-1950 10-20
By mid-1951 25-45
By mid-1952 45-90
By mid-1953 70-135
By mid-1954 200
This estimate is admittedly based on incomplete coverage of Soviet activities and represents the production capabilities of known or deducible Soviet plants. If others exist, as is possible, this estimate could lead us into a feeling of superiority in our atomic stockpile that might be dangerously misleading, particularly with regard to the timing of a possible Soviet offensive. On the other hand, if the Soviet Union experiences operating difficulties, this estimate would be reduced. There is some evidence that the Soviet Union is acquiring certain materials essential to research on and development of thermonuclear weapons.
The Soviet Union now has aircraft able to deliver the atomic bomb. Our Intelligence estimates assign to the Soviet Union an atomic bomber capability already in excess of that needed to deliver available bombs. We have at present no evaluated estimate regarding the Soviet accuracy of delivery on target. It is believed that the Soviets cannot deliver their bombs on target with a degree of accuracy comparable to ours, but a planning estimate might well place it at 40-60 percent of bombs sorted. For planning purposes, therefore, the date the Soviets possess an atomic stockpile of 200 bombs would be a critical date for the United States, for the delivery of 100 atomic bombs on targets in the United States would seriously damage this country.
At the time the Soviet Union has a substantial atomic stockpile and if it is assumed that it will strike a strong surprise blow and if it is assumed further that its atomic attacks will be met with no more effective defense opposition than the United States and its allies have programmed, results of those attacks could include:
a. Laying waste to the British Isles and thus depriving the Western Powers of their use as a base;
b. Destruction of the vital centers and of the communications of Western Europe, thus precluding effective defense by the Western Powers; and
c. Delivering devastating attacks on certain vital centers of the United States and Canada.
The possession by the Soviet Union of a thermonuclear capability in addition to this substantial atomic stockpile would result in tremendously increased damage.
During this decade, the defensive capabilities of the Soviet Union will probably be strengthened, particularly by the development and use of modem aircraft, aircraft warning and communications devices, and defensive guided missiles...
Should-Read: Jesse K. Anttila-Hughes et al.: Mortality fr...
Should-Read: Jesse K. Anttila-Hughes et al.: Mortality from Nestl��'s Marketing of Infant Formula in Low and Middle-Income Countries: "Intensive and controversial marketing of infant formula is believed to be responsible for millions of infant deaths in low and middle-income countries (LMICs)...
...yet to date there have been no rigorous analyses that quantify these effects. To estimate the impact of infant formula on infant mortality, we pair country-specific data from the annual corporate reports of Nestl��, the largest producer of infant formula, with a sample of 2.48 million births in 46 LMICs from 1970-2011. Our key finding is that the availability of formula increased infant mortality by 9.4 per 1000 births, 95%CI [3.6, 15.6] among mothers without access to clean water, suggesting that unclean water acted as a vector for the transmission of water-borne pathogens to infants. We estimate that the availability of formula in LIMCs resulted in approximately 66,000 infant deaths in 1981 at the peak of the infant formula controversy...
Should-Read: Ben Thompson: The End of Windows: "The story...
Should-Read: Ben Thompson: The End of Windows: "The story of Windows��� decline is relatively straightforward...
...a classic case of disruption:
The Internet dramatically reduced application lock-in
PCs became ���good enough���, elongating the upgrade cycle
Smartphones first addressed needs the PC couldn���t, then over time started taking over >* PC functionality directly
What is more interesting, though, is the story of Windows��� decline in Redmond.... A mere five years ago, when, in the context of another reorganization, former-CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a memo insisting that Windows was the future:
In the critical choice today of digital ecosystems, Microsoft has an unmatched advantage in work and productivity experiences, and has a unique ability to drive unified services for everything from tasks and documents to entertainment, games and communications. I am convinced that by deploying our smart-cloud assets across a range of devices, we can make Windows devices once again the devices to own. Other companies provide strong experiences, but in their own way they are each fragmented and limited. Microsoft is best positioned to take advantage of the power of one, and bring it to our over 1 billion users....
That memo prompted me to write a post entitled Services, Not Devices that argued that Ballmer���s strategic priorities were exactly backwards: Microsoft���s services should be businesses in their own right, not Windows��� differentiators. Ballmer, though, followed-through on.... buying Nokia... dysfunction... allowed to spend billions on a deal that allegedly played a large role in his ouster. That dysfunction was The Curse of Culture:
Culture is not something that begets success, rather, it is a product of it.... The espoused beliefs and values of their founder(s)... lead to real sustained success... slip from the conscious to the unconscious.... The founder no longer needs to espouse his or her beliefs and values to the 10,000th employee; every single person already in the company will do just that, in every decision they make, big or small. As with most such things, culture is one of a company���s most powerful assets right until it isn���t: the same underlying assumptions that permit an organization to scale massively constrain the ability of that same organization to change direction. More distressingly, culture prevents organizations from even knowing they need to do so....
The story of how Microsoft came to accept the reality of Windows��� decline is more interesting than the fact of Windows��� decline; this is how CEO Satya Nadella convinced the company to accept the obvious....
Should-Read: I guarantee you that when the first modern r...
...But it didn���t go unnoticed that, for some in the newsroom, the journalistic mission was not exactly front of mind. ���I just remember younger people with sad faces,��� a person who was there told me, describing those employees as generally being in roles that are adjacent to reporting and editing. Baquet remarked to colleagues in the coming days about how surprised he was by that. ���He���s thinking, We���ve got a great story on our hands,��� my source said. ���That was the first indication that a unified newsroom in the age of Trump was going to be a very difficult thing to achieve or maintain.���...
Should-Read: A Category 3 storm has winds of 111-129 mph....
Should-Read: A Category 3 storm has winds of 111-129 mph. A Category 4 storm has winds of 130-156 mph. A Category 5 storm has winds of 157 mph or more. That's not just "a wind in our face". Interesting that McConnell starts the paragraph wanting to take about "headwinds" and ends it talking about major hurricane damage���we East African Plains Apes are really not very good at keeping our true views hidden, are we?: Morgan Gstalter: McConnell: Midterms could be 'a Category 3, 4 or 5' storm for GOP: "'We know the wind is going to be in our face. We don���t know whether it���s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5'...
...McConnell said he���s��optimistic his party can hold on to a majority in the Senate but the fight for the House, where every seat is up for election this year, will be more daunting. ���I���m hoping we can hold the Senate,��� he said, ���And the principle reason for that, even if we were to lose the House and be stymied legislatively, we could still approve appointments, which is a huge part of what we do.�����
McConnell said he is pleased that his Senate was able to confirm 12 federal circuit judges and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the first year of President Trump���s term. ���That���s more than the first year of any president since the circuit courts were created in 1891,��� McConnell said...
Category 3: 111-129 mph: Devastating damage will occur: Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes.
Category 4: 130-156 mph: Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
Category 5: 157 mph or higher: Catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
Another April Fools Post: Why Does Niall Ferguson Do This to Himself?
I swear, when this showed up in my inbox���sent by somebody who wishes me ill���I really did think it was an April Fools Day parody...
Back up. As the eminent and intelligent John Scalzi says: to play the video game of life���"a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time"���as a straight white male in America is to play it on the lowest difficulty setting: on level one, so to speak.
Everybody else faces bigger obstacles and more distractions. Thus one should not be proud of one's ���score���, however one likes to keep score. One should not pat oneself on the back as being in any way "superior" for what one has accomplished. And one should not whinge about how hard one's life is, and about how many obstacles one faces.
And if one starts whingeing���especially if start whingeing when people point out that one has been playing on level one���if one says one is being oppressed by sexist anti-sexists and racist anti-racists because somebody points out that one's score is at the top primarily because one was playing on level one, and that one is actively assisting others of one's ilk in playing on level one...
Well, one should be embarrassed: Such a fragile ego! Such an unwillingness to contemplate the reality in which one is cushioned! Such a sensitive snowflake!
Why, it is positively unmanly...
And so we get to Niall Ferguson.
He is upset that people are taking screenshots of the Hoover Institution's���public���official conference webpages, which webpages apparently contain "mugshots" of conference speakers, and which screenshots are apparently "the kind of thing anti-Semites once did to condemn the 'over-representation' of Jewish people in academia":
Niall Ferguson: "It's not very fashionable to be a man these days, especially a white one. My latest in @BostonGlobe against the sexism of the anti-sexists and the racism of the anti-racists:
Niall Ferguson: White men are bad?: "Five of the people I invited to give papers were women, but none was able to attend...
...I should have tried harder to find other female speakers, no doubt. But my failure to do so elicited a disproportionately vitriolic response.... The New York Times published photographs of all the speakers, as if to shame them for having participated. Around a dozen academics���male as well as female���took to social media to call the conference a ���StanfordSausageFest.��� So outraged were Stanford historians Allyson Hobbs and Priya Satia that they demanded ���greater university oversight��� of the Hoover Institution, where I work, as it was ���an ivory tower in the most literal sense.���... Publishing the names and mugshots of conference speakers is the kind of thing anti-Semites once did to condemn the ���over-representation��� of Jewish people in academia. Terms such as ���SausageFest��� belong not in civil academic discourse but on urinal walls. What we see here is the sexism of the anti-sexists; the racism of the anti-racists.... This is America in 2018...
I do think that Stanford should do something in the way of better oversight of the Hoover Institution, BTW: whatever Hoover envisioned, it is not, I think, what we have. I do not think he would be pleased with the average quality.
Should-Read: The people who are going to pick the next Pr...
Should-Read: The people who are going to pick the next President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Tamara Lundgren, Rosemary Turner, Alex Mehran**, Barry M. Meyer, Steven E. Bochner, Sanford L. Michelman: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Leadership and Membership Announcements: "Tamara Lundgren, president and CEO, Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc., Portland, OR, has been elected as a class B director...
...and Rosemary Turner, president, UPS Northern California District, Oakland, CA, has been reappointed as a Class C director.... Alex Mehran, chairman and CEO of Sunset Development Company, San Ramon, CA; and Barry Meyer chairman and CEO, retired, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and founder and chairman of North Ten Mile Associates. Mr. Mehran has been redesignated chairman of the board while Mr. Meyer has been redesignated as deputy chairman for 2018.
Tamara Lundgren: Ms. Lundgren is president, CEO and director of Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc., Portland, OR, positions she���s held since 2008. Prior to joining the company in 2005, Ms. Lundgren was a managing director in investment banking at JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank in New York and London, respectively. She serves as an independent director on the boards of Ryder System, Inc. and Parsons Corporation.��She holds a bachelor���s degree from Wellesley College, and a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law. Ms. Lundgren previously served as chair of the Portland branch���s board of directors.
Rosemary Turner: Ms. Turner serves as president of UPS Northern California. In her current role she ensures that UPS provides the logistical capabilities to support new business in Northern and Central California, as well as Northern Nevada. Her territory spans from Ventura, California, to Nevada. Ms. Turner holds a bachelor���s degree in accounting from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Alex Mehran: Mr. Mehran is chairman and CEO of Sunset Development Company, located in San Ramon, CA. He is the former chairman of the board of directors of The Bay Area Council, and a current member of its executive committee. He is also the chairman of the Contra Costa Economic Partnership and a Trustee of the California Institute of Technology. Mr. Mehran graduated with honors from Harvard College, and holds an LLB with honors from Cambridge University. Mr. Mehran served as deputy chairman of the board for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2015-2016.
Barry M. Meyer: Mr. Meyer is the chairman and CEO, retired, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and founder and chairman of North Ten Mile Associates, a strategic consultancy firm specializing in entertainment industry clients and issues. He retired from Warner Bros. in 2013, following a 43-year career at the studio that included 14 years as its chairman and CEO. An active leader in the entertainment industry, he often serves as an advisor on industry-wide production, labor, and regulatory issues. Mr. Meyer holds a bachelor���s degree from the University of Rochester, and a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law.
The balance of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Board includes:
Steven E. Bochner, partner, Wilson Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, P.C., Palo Alto, CA.... Mr. Bochner served as CEO of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati from 2009 to 2012, and is currently a member of its board of directors. He is the chairman of the advisory board of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy, UC Berkeley School of Law. He is also the executive committee vice chairman, 39th Annual Securities Regulation Institute, Northwestern Law School. Mr. Bochner holds a BS in political science from San Jose State University, and a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law....
Sanford L. Michelman, chairman, Michelman & Robinson, LLP, Los Angeles, CA... the chairman of Michelman & Robinson, LLP. He focuses his practice primarily on the insurance, financial services, advertising and digital media industries. He sits on the Board of Directors of other institutions, including the Zimmer Children���s Museum. In addition, he has been honored by the California State Bar for his pro bono work at Bet Tzedek, and was recently appointed to the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation���s (IICF) Western Division Board. Mr. Michelman holds a bachelor���s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law...
Should-Read: Paul Krugman: Trade Wars, Stranded Assets, a...
Should-Read: Paul Krugman: Trade Wars, Stranded Assets, and the Stock Market: "Even a trade war that drastically rolled back globalization wouldn���t impose costs on the economy comparable to the kinds of movement we���ve seen in stock prices...
...But the costs to the economy as a whole might not be a good indicator of the costs to existing corporate assets. Since about 1990 corporate America has bet heavily on hyperglobalization.... Apple could produce... entirely in North America, and probably would in the face of 30 percent tariffs. But the factories it would take to do that don���t (yet) exist. Meanwhile, the factories that do exist were built to serve globalized production���and many of them would be marginalized, maybe even made worthless, by tariffs that broke up those global value chains. That is, they would become stranded assets. Call it the anti-China shock.... My original question was why stocks are dropping so much more than the likely costs of trade war to the economy. And one answer, I���d suggest, is disruption���which business leaders love to celebrate in their rhetoric, but hate when it happens to them.
J. Bradford DeLong's Blog
- J. Bradford DeLong's profile
- 90 followers
