Some Violence

I wonder how well-guarded this tech is against spies?:
http://www.isegoria.net/2014/12/a-new-laser-age/


Proof of the use of experience:
http://www.isegoria.net/2014/12/use-of-force/


I remember hearing this number from WWII and always tended to doubt it based on both my reading and common sense; Cochran's read much more about WWII than I have and doesn't buy it either:
http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/shoot-to-kill/

Exponentializing Orwell

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Our Inner Party is rather more clever and possessed also of rather more technological options than Oceania's Inner Party was. Though not very good qua novel, Orwell's conceptual apparatus strikes me more and more as an indispensable element of political education. Of course that evil and incompetent faggot, Hoover, commenced this subterranean war against the American citizenry back in the 20s. And to this day the FBI is far better at tracking down petty domestic threats than guarding against real threats, like the espionage programs run by major powers. The Farewell Dossier, hand delivered to Reagan via a top Soviet KGB agent in 1981, demonstrated that the Soviets had such a vast and comprehensive spy program in the West--especially in America--that the technology thus acquired had kept their economy and military afloat throughout the Cold War. Of course, before the Cold War we had simply given them our technological riches. In other words, their entire economy and most of their military was founded on exogenous innovation. Outside of modest contributions to pure science and a few military advances, there was no innovation in the Soviet bloc. It was a gigantic, truculent parasite. But, the FBI had detected virtually none of this activity. Apparently catching bank robbers and destroying the John Birch Society was more important in their provincial minds. Now the Chinese are the principal threat, yet no signs of savvy FBI countermeasures appear. Though their economy is more efficiently organized than the Soviet's was, they've yet to demonstrate a capacity for innovation. They are quite good at technology theft though. The FBI's primary role is to manufacture consent domestically. I suspect the DIA/NSA/CIA/NGA/NRO/OICI/TFI/INR/etc. nexus does little more than manufacture consent abroad. The "democracy" part of our polity is strictly for purposes of public entertainment, like the circuses, indeed very like the circuses, in old Rome. Whether this odd configuration of national defense can last one wonders. Against the Soviets, some success may be claimed. But, then, their economic system was so outrageously inefficient, it made us look good in comparison. Their capacity to utilize all the tech their spies stole was badly constrained by their economic system. The Chinese have a better--probably a much better--set up. And, their demographics look much more formidable numerically, and somewhat better qualitatively. Confining American espionage to manufacturing consent at home and abroad will next be measured by its effects on the two remaining great powers. Which will suffer more damage from the firehose of egalitarian propaganda issuing from NYC, LA, and DC?

Review of The Specter of Communism

The Specter of Communism by Melvyn Leffler

This is a brief book on the origins of the Cold War, slanted politically two ways: in its omission of information that undermines the author’s Soviet sympathies and in chastising the Americans for not making the most flattering assumptions about Soviet intentions. Leffler barely mentions, for instance, the pervasive network of Soviet agents throughout American and British government agencies from the 30s on (see the Venona Project). This gave Stalin knowledge of Western plans and strengthened his negotiating position. It also gave him major information on the fission and thermonuclear bombs. Then he fails to mention that the Anglo-American allies permitted the Soviets uncontested access to the Balkans during WWII, despite Churchill’s insistence that the Soviets would impose totalitarian governance on the region postwar. He fails to notice that FDR had intended a joint American-Soviet invasion and occupation of Japan (which would have been strategically disastrous postwar). Leffler ignores the consistently weak hand the Anglo-Americans (i.e., the spy-infested, communist sympathizing Roosevelt administration) played in its dealings with Stalin. Roosevelt is guilty of the terrible folly of presuming moral equivalence between America and the USSR. This presumption led to his belief in fair play with Stalin, a concept utterly alien to that master of realpolitik. Leffler, though, thinks Roosevelt’s approach to Stalin was “shrewd and pragmatic”—an apt description only of Stalin’s management of Roosevelt. Remember, Roosevelt did not demur when Stalin demanded Soviet assimilation of the lands Hitler ceded to him under the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact—a massive concession that condemned many millions to virtual enslavement.

Leffler faults Truman for taking defensive measures in Europe, instead of continuing down the Roosevelt path of incremental surrender.  He accuses Truman of focusing on “the Kremlin’s ominous [postwar] conduct and overlook[ing] signs of Soviet moderation.” He defines moderation here as meaning that Stalin did not conquer new lands at every possible opportunity, but contained himself to submitting only 8 or 10 nations. How is this moderation? Essentially, Leffler wants to excuse all of these Soviet aggressions based on the toll the Soviets had suffered in WWII. Yet, why is this cause that Lithuania or Estonia should cease to exist, that Poland should lose territory and have its people removed to the West, that N. Korea should submit to a puppet communist regime? Stalin, Machiavelli’s best student, took what he believed could be had without a fight (with his spies indicating what America would fight for). Under Roosevelt, it turned out he could get a great deal. Leffler credits Stalin’s moderation for pulling out of Manchuria. But he only did so because he knew it was strategically untenable—the Chinese would eventually fight to recover it, and in the interim it upset the West.

At one point Leffler says of the Truman administration: “U.S. officials were indifferent to the brutality and repression of Stalin’s dictatorship at home so long as the Kremlin showed restraint abroad.” But, of course, they were far from indifferent—otherwise the ideological dimension of the Cold War would have disappeared. In fact, they were fatalistic, quite a distinguishable perspective, and one largely to their credit. They had no reason to believe they could effect regime change, or even the reform of a hostile superpower. Need I mention yet another pro-communist omission by this Leffler hack? China, perhaps a nation of some strategic consequence, went communist in 1949. The effective absence of U.S. aid to the non-communist forces goes unmentioned. He does mention that Stalin aided Mao, but does not dare fault him for it. Double standard? Nah. He merely blames Chiang Kai-shek’s incompetence, then mocks the Republican party for criticizing Truman’s negligent China policy.

He claims Truman in 1947, with the Marshall plan and the Truman Doctrine, had moved “decisively to an adversarial relationship.” Yet, the first was simply economic aid, which was also offered to the Soviets and their substates. The second was a defensive understanding to help freely elected governments resist armed insurrection. To call these measures, under the circumstances, decisively adversarial appears a mischaracterization—is not the insurrection itself, supported by outside communist states, the source of animus? He cites Stalin’s fears that accepting American aid in the Soviet Union and its sphere would have given the U.S. control over the Soviet economy: this is absurd, but Leffler offers no reality check, implying it was a legitimate fear. A few years of aid was no threat even in Eastern Europe, much less in the Soviet Union. Stalin was simply consolidating his empire's ideological purity in the postwar uncertainty. But, declining aid was a paranoid tactical misjudgement. Another unmentioned asymmetry in superpower relations was the freedom of communists in Western nations to form parties and pursue political power. In Eastern Europe this was out of the question. Leffler does kindly notice that American influence abroad was mainly a consequence of “persuasion, inducements, and financial leverage,” implicitly in contrast to Soviet methods. The Berlin blockade receives a straight retelling.

Leffler says that Truman “was willing to fight domestic subversives.” Yet, he kept Harry Dexter White in a leading diplomatic position for two years after the FBI had provided ample evidence that he was a spy. Truman later lied about this, claiming that White was dismissed “promptly.” The considerable damage White did is well-documented. The author does not mention that Truman declined to take the obvious step of intensifying the investigation Soviet espionage in America even after the Soviets tested the fission bomb earlier than expected in 1949. Then Truman vetoed the McCarran Act, his Secretary of State supported Alger Hiss after Hiss was convicted of lying about spying for the Soviets, and he fired his vigorously anti-communist Defense Secretary, Forrestal, for being unpopular with left-wing Democrats (Forrestal died mysteriously a few weeks later).

In apologizing for Soviet connivance in the North Korean attack, Leffler says “Truman and Acheson were unaware of the instrumental effect Kim himself had played in initiating the conflict.” If Stalin and Mao had not approved, it would not have happened. Kim had no effect; he was not instrumental, he was their instrument; this was naked Soviet supported aggression to subjugate a non-communist nation. Stalin is not faulted, of course. He just wanted a “buffer.” They forced Truman’s hand, as Leffler notes: “If the Kremlin thought the Americans would equivocate in a crisis, Moscow might be tempted to act more adventuresomely.” The State Dept, already a leftist stronghold, warned against even trying to free N. Korea—to stand unequivocal was one thing, after all, but to actually believe in the American cause was past the capacity of State. Truman was not sufficiently tamed, though, and set MacArther to take the peninsula entire. The administration’s reluctance to use atomic bombs was reasonable. They were willing to do so if the enemy significantly escalated, also reasonable. Yet, given tremendous qualitative superiority in all respects and quantitative superiority in terms of war production potential, the US could have won decisively without the Bomb. The commitment was not made. Stalemate resulted. I might add that even Eisenhower ducked his responsibilities by signing the Korean armistice right after Stalin died, even though his death presumably weakened the Soviet side.

Of McCarthy Leffler says he focused exclusively on looking for spies, while ignoring foreign policy, though Leffler thinks “few of them actually existed in the American government.” Contra Leffler, counterintelligence is foreign policy! And to claim the Soviets were running only a few spies is demonstrably wrong at this point. The number of communist sympathizers, moreover, at State and elsewhere, bears emphasis as well. But, Leffler contends that “even more threatening to democratic traditions and a free society [than the military-industrial complex] was the new Red Scare.”So, then, unconsciousness of Soviet espionage was the better route—the one which won us the victory of securing nuclear plans for the immaculate dear leader Stalin? McCarthyism was a pathetically inadequate attempt to restore political balance in America after a communist sympathizing four term President and the domestically pro-socialist two term President who succeeded him. Neither the Chief Executive nor the FBI did their jobs in these years. McCarthy’s demagogy was crude and some of it misdirected, since he ought to have concentrated on the federal government and nothing else. The American Left was lucky that the pendulum swing was so weak and so late: they were able to hide their revolutionary machinations for almost twenty years behind the Depression, the World War, and the onset of the Cold War. They had transfomed America from a democracy to a socialist democracy and prepared the ground for the bureaucratic socialist oligarchy forthcoming. In his conclusion, Leffler claims that the Americans “exaggerated the ability of the Soviets to capitalize on [postwar] developments,” including those led by “revolutionary nationalist leaders” in the third world—an absurd claim, motivated again by this Soviet apologist’s urge to blame America first, a habit consistently evidenced in his book from beginning to end.

Leffler does a better job on the conceptual level of explaining the interactions of power and ideology in Cold War tensions. The dynamic of the Cold War: the rivalry was one of ideology and power politics. Power politics is always territorial, but in this case, since each ideology was universalist, both elements of the rivalry urged territorial expansion. Thus, Stalin wanted mastery over Eastern Europe to expand his geopolitical power and to spread his ideology to new lands. And American influence over Western Europe was also geopolitical and ideological. The two motivations usually overlapped, though it might be argued the Soviets were more consistent in aligning the two. American support for the Shah of Iran or the Afghan mujahideen were power political plays, but contrary to our ideology. Even the Soviets, though, had close ties with India, a quasi-capitalist democracy. Generally, when it came to a choice, power politics proved more important to each side.  The game of power politics never yet has ceased, though it forms itself into a variety of configurations in different times and places—in this case a bipolar configuration was inevitable. Before the war it was multipolar, given the power of Germany, Japan, the UK, and France. The ideological dimension has rarely approached the prominence of the capitalist-communist opposition. Comparable to it, though, were wars arising from the theological splits of Muslim-Christian, Muslim-Hindu, Protestant-Catholic, and such like. As a final spur to make the security dilemma inescapable, both powers in the Cold War believed they had to attain at least equal global territorial power to ensure the long-term continuance of their regimes. Neither could long survive international isolation.

Bureaucracies' Intelligence

Some of the conservative establishment fear waterboarding scandals may damage our human "intelligence" agencies. I can't say that I think too much of the CIA or the FBI--it seems as though whenever they're put to the test, they fail. They sometimes even manage to fail against incompetent enemies. They are bureaucrats and, like all bureaucrats, their greatest fear is that some day they may actually be held accountable for their activities. They've arranged their organizational structures with that fear first in mind.
 

OSS/CIA let the Soviets steal the bomb, the invasion of Korea was a complete surprise, the CIA told Truman the Chinese would not intervene in Korea, the CIA conceived, planned and executed the Bay of Pigs operation (at least on this occasion Kennedy inflicted some accountability, taking out the top CIA leaders), the CIA failed in multiple assassination attempts on Castro, the CIA did not know of the Soviet's massive bioweapons program, the Soviet Union's collapse "surprised" the CIA, the CIA/FBI could not prevent 9/11--and that's just off the top of my head and in the public domain. If such a miserable succession of failures hasn't demoralized this ossified, scleroticized, bureaucratized pair of dinosaurs (is it really true they're not union-run?)--I hardly think a bit of "waterboard" publicity will. But, if it does--good. Maybe we can get some new blood in there and introduce some competence.

The Pakistani Way

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10424283

 

The book reviewed revisits the Pakistan-nuclear proliferation nexus managed by Mr. Khan. This is one of America's great foreign policy failures in recent times. If the book's interpretation is accurate, it begets some wonder concerning what other activities our political and intelligence leaders may have decided to let pass as they let Khan's network pass for all those years. Presumably we remain vigilant at least with respect to our rivals--but have we allowed other supposed allies to proceed with WMD programs under cover of our willful ignorance? And doesn't such a policy stance severely diminish our moral standing on counter-proliferation issues? Is this a certain reward now on offer for any nation that allies itself with us--however temporarily? It is difficult to conceive of a more foolishly short-term approach. Also, why did we let Khan run unfettered through the 90's? Pakistan was then less important strategically.

But, of course, the book may be wrong; maybe we just didn't know about Khan--wouldn't that be a relief? Then, our only problem would be somehow to correct our monumentally wasteful and incompetent intelligence services.