Joseph Fouche

Reagan Roundtable: The Cold War Ends

by
I pity the fool. I pity 'em.
I pity the fool. I pity 'em.

It is altogether fitting that Ronald Reagan  reinvigorated the USSR with hate only to kill it with love.

American public discourse offers us two major explanations for the end of the Cold War. One explanation was, “the Soviet Union didn’t fall, it was pushed.” The opposing explanation holds that a tau neutrino fired from a neutron star on the far side of the Andromeda Galaxy 2.6 million years ago that collided with one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s synapses on June 24, 1959 had more to do with the end of the Cold War than either the United States or President Ronald Reagan.

Some observers (kind according to their own lights) take a more moderate course. They’ll concede that Reagan had something to do with the end of the Cold War. Perhaps mesmerized by the sight of his own reflection looking back at him from Gorby’s shiny bald head, the senile old dinosaur was stunned into a quiescence sufficient to allow Gorby  to let peace break out without the hurdle of Reagan’s habitual warmongering. Under other circumstances, Reagan would wake up, eat his Wheaties, break out a map, and plan which bastion of worker’s solidarity he would besiege that day. Gorby’s charm and skill in handling this wild rampaging elephant of imperialist plutocracy was only just enough to overcome even the power of the Breakfast of Champions and end the Cold War.

Others concede that Reagan was more than a patsy skillfully played by a smooth talking Commie. Instead, he was a patsy skillfully played by a smooth talking State Department. In this version, George Schultz and other enlightened diplomats slowly weaned Reagan away from the Precambrian depths of his native  Birchery and convinced him that speaking softly was more constructive than his unthinking waving of a big stick. The mandarins of Foggy Bottom supplied the script and Reagan, secretly yearning the direction of  Hollywood days of yore, performed his role with all the aplomb a B-movie actor could summon. Reagan was convinced that the diminutive Gorby was Bonzo. It  was his job to put the little bald chimp to bed with all the tender care a leading man could devote to an expensive studio prop. If Gorbachev happened to outshine him, it was all in good fun. Reagan understood in the light of the timeless wisdom of W.C. Fields: “Never work with animals or children”.

Read more

Reagan Roundtable: Growing Up Reagan

by
Mr. President
Mr. President

I blame many things.

For one thing, the 1970s were good to my family. Oil prices were high. While a stumbling block for most American families, my father was a geologist specializing in domestic petroleum exploration. Due to the oil shock, his skills were in high demand. He was well paid and our family prospered.  We had all the Star Wars action figures that money could buy.

The 1980s were less kind. The price of oil plunged and soon there was no need for geologists specializing in domestic petroleum exploration. Indeed, an entire generation would pass before that skill set was in demand again. By then it was too late. My father never worked in his field again, subsisting on the occasional odd job or failed business scheme until he was well past retirement age. Things were tight for years afterward.

Another thing: much of my initial self-education came from a 1964 set of Collier’s Encyclopedias my parents had purchased right after they first got married. It was a good investment from my perspective. After I developed an interest in military history, the trusty encyclopedias became a more useful source of knowledge on military history topics than my parents or siblings limited knowledge (or interest) in the subject. As an accidental side effect, I developed a wide range of historical knowledge (for a pre-adolescent). As  Bartholomew  J. Simpson once observed, acquiring facts through study and retaining them in memory is like a whole new way to cheat.

However, there was a vacuüm. My knowledge of history after 1964 was limited to personal experience, what I read in the papers or saw on the TV news, or picked up through anecdotes from family and friends. The second half of the 1960s and the 1970s were a historical black hole. I was completely oblivious to the existence of the Great Society, hippies, Vietnam, Watergate, the Oil Shock, malaise, or other events of that period.

Perhaps I was blessed.

Read more

The Dangling Grand Bargain

by

The thirst for a  magic bullet is profoundly American. In war, the magic bullet manifests itself in the antiseptic wonder weapons that promise to transform conflict into a harmless, contact-free sporting event. In politics,  the magic bullet manifests itself as something like a 2,000+ page health care reform law. In finance, it manifests itself as the AAA rated senior tranche in a collateralized debt obligation (CDO).

In diplomacy, the manifestation of magic bulletry is the “grand bargain”. Every diplomat’s secret desire is making the agreement to end all agreements and conducting the negotiation to end all negotiations. As a magic bullet, the grand bargain would kill all diplomatic disputes for all time,  Unfortunately, over every aspiring  1648 or 1815 hangs the long shadow of 1919. Versailles was intended to be the magic bullet to end all magic bullets. Instead, it became the magic bullet that wasn’t. Inasmuch as it possessed magic, it was the magic to ricochet off its intended target and right back at its originators.

In today’s West, dominated by those high on the heady drug of  global meliorism, the mere act of talking has somehow become an end unto itself. Whether it’s a “peace process”, “six-party talks”, “quartet”, “agreed framework”, “security council resolution”, or some other high-falutin’ hogwash, Western diplomacy resembles is more the decrepit liturgy of a dying baroque cult than the hard-nosed power brokering beloved by naïve realists. Like a general  who puts the desperate lunge for a tactically decisive battle above stodgy strategic logic, a diplomat who puts talking, negotiating, and agreements first puts the tactical cart before the strategic horse.

Strategy seeks to convert power into control to achieve purpose. The ideal was outlined by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 31:

Read more