Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Combustible Boy links to this remarkable gallery of high-quality color photographs dating from the early 1940s to the 1960s.
Well worth looking at.
UPDATE: The entire photo collection, including a lot of background information, is here. (I will permalink this page.)
The Man of High Quality Punditry points out Bill Clinton’s obvious conflict of interest in advising Demo presidential candidates.
Didn’t anyone teach them not to seek medical advice from funeral directors?
I see that this classic film has been re-released and is now showing in various places around the country. (Here is the official movie website; or go here for the trailer. This really is a “must see,” both as art and because it is timely enough that it is being shown at the Pentagon.
Some times events outrun the good idea for a blog post you somehow don’t get around to typing up. I had an idea a while ago that the “strategic ambiguity” which had been, for some unaccountable reason, US policy regarding Taiwan, was dangerous and stupid.
The analogy I saw was with the position of Britain vis a vis Kaiserian Germany in the period prior to World War I. Britain refused to make an unequivocal, publicly acknowledged alliance with France. Britain’s liberal government, led by Prime Minister Henry Asquith and Foreign Minister Edward Grey, seemed to think that they were preserving a balance between Britain’s interests and the isolationist and pacifist sentiments of many of their liberal colleagues. Also, by refusing to commit, they were able to get away with smaller defense budgets than an open military commitment would have required. They refused to come to grips with realistic eventualities, and willed the ends without willing the means.
Instapundit links to a BBC story about Libya’s recent, newly-found diplomatic pliancy. The Beeb claims that it was American threats, not British and American diplomacy which has led to Khaddafy giving up his nuke program. This is news?
Let me be the millionth person in Blogistan to repeat the ancient dictum, “diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” (I always thought it was Metternich who said this, but it was apparently Frederick the Great.) Either way, the old-timers understood that all the jaw-jaw in the world won’t move anybody off a position they think is advantageous unless there is the prospet of war-war (or some lesser threat) to compel them to do so.
Modern liberals like talking so much that the mere fact that there might be consequences, if the talking is going nowhere, seems a bit scandalous to them. To the liberal, an endless faculty meeting, where nothing happens, is the model for the whole world. The Europeans, who don’t want to pay for real military power, like the “all talk, all the time” model, too. Sorry dudes. In international politics, death threats are the coin of the realm, and always will be.
Diplomacy which has no threat underlying it, at minimum withholding some benefit, is mere chit-chat. War without the possibility of some negotiated resolution is mere arbitrary violence. You need both arms and talk, but arms are primary. Of course, when you are fighting against someone like al Qaeda, which isn’t a country, has no interests, has only one desire — your extinction– then there is nothing to talk about. That struggle is like Clausewitz’s hypothesized “absolute war”, which is unlimited in both means and ends and can only conclude with the annihiliation of one side or the other. (Goes who that is going to be.) Fortunately, Col. Khaddafy is someone who can be talked to, i.e. threatened. He has something to lose, and so he is amenable to threats. Which means, with him, diplomacy can work.
UPDATE. This link (Via Drudge), shows some of the European leadership is composed of people who do understand the basics: EU Military Official Says, Time For Europe To Defend Itself. Finnish general, Gustav Hagglund, chairman of the EU’s military committee, proposes that “[t]he American and the European pillars (of NATO) would be responsible for their respective territorial defences, and would together engage in crisis management outside their own territories.” The U.S. forces wold tackle “high-intensity operations involving terrorism and weapons of mass destruction while Europeans would concentrate on sustained low-intensity crisis management such as conflict prevention.” Hmmm. Sounds like we get all the heavy lifting. I think the Europeans are going to need to add some more hard capabilities, like battalions of infantry and lots of tough, sneaky commandos, not just sending people to direct traffic after the USA has spilled blood somewhere. Still, this is more sensible than the status quo. These people need to develop some capacity to defend themselves and participate in imposing order on the world.
A coalition of the willing must be a coalition of the capable. The Europeans need to start developing their capabilities. That will take sustained willpower. And cash. Let’s see how far they are willing to go.
