Believe the Scorpion: 'Winter is Coming'

Review by Bill Doughty

What's the best thing we can do to defeat threats to our nation and world?

Brainy world chess champion Garry Kasparov offers advice, history, analysis and a prescription in his thoughtful "Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped" (PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group, 2015).

Kasparov challenges us to keep human rights in the forefront – to not look away in the name of political expediency – when dealing with President Putin and his cronies. And deal we must, he says, or risk the appearance (or reality) of appeasement.

"Instead of standing on principles of good and evil, of right and wrong, and on the universal values of human rights and human life, we have engagement, resets, and moral equivalence. That is, appeasement by many other names. The world needs a new alliance based on a global Magna Carta, a declaration of fundamental rights that all members must recognize. Nations that value individual liberty now control the greater part of the world's resources as well as its military power. If they band together and refuse to coddle the rogue regimes and sponsors of terror, their integrity and their influence will be irresistible. The goal should not be to build new walls to isolate the millions of people living under authoritarian rule, but to provide them with hope and the prospect of a brighter future."

Havel (L) and Kasparov (R) meet at Democracy & Security conference, 2007.

Former Czech President Václav Havel is quoted, describing "politicians who kiss and embrace politicians, almost dizzy with the smell of oil and gas." According to Kasparov, Putin's wealth and power are provided by Western companies, especially "energy giants," investing in Russia "as Russian oligarchs spread their wealth."

This book comes with an endorsement from former Navy pilot and Vietnam War POW Senator John McCain (pictured below): "As one of the most influential critics of Vladimir Putin's reign of terror, Garry Kasparov has become a champion for the causes of freedom, democracy, and human rights in Russia."

Written after the invasion of Ukraine but before Russia's foray into Syria, this still-timely book shows how Putin – Time's Person of the Year in 2007 – came to power after Gorbachev and Yeltsin in the pivotal first year of the Millennium. 

Among the events in a tumultuous 2000, a faulty torpedo exploded aboard the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the frigid Barents Sea, resulting in the death of 118 Russian sailors. That same year Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda targeted USS Cole (DDG 67), killing 17 American sailors.

Terrorism and military tension were once again on the rise in the 21st century, a combustible mix ready to explode in the fall of 2001.

President Putin.

Grandmaster Kasparov explains how history's chess pieces have moved – from Cuba's Bay of Pigs to Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay, from Chechnya to Ukraine – and dozens of other hotspots on the planet, as ideals of freedom and democracy clashed with fascism and totalitarianism, as elections took place or power was seized and consolidated.

North Korea is mentioned several times. In 2001, "the Russian president had already established personal relations with Kim Jong-il and was ready to play a broker role on the Korean Peninsula."

Former North Korea dictator Kim Jong-il and Putin in 2002.

Kasparov describes the nature of a fascist kleptocracy such as Stalin's and Hitler's. "Dictatorships must be feared to survive and so they cannot bear to be mocked." Fear and disinformation are fomented, and freedom of speech is intolerable. 

Are dictators born or raised that way? "As with most nature-nurture questions, it's both in varying degrees of balance."

This book is filled with word gems, like:

• "If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, compromises on principles are the streetlights."
• "When Putin loaned the presidency to his shadow, Dmitry Medvedev it should have been clear to all that democracy was dead."
• "Even after Western firms were repeatedly betrayed, cheated, and threatened by their Russian partners and kicked out of partnerships or the country, they came back looking for more like beaten dogs to an abusive master."
• "The mullahs, monarchs, and dictators are pushing back against the threat to their medieval ecosystems."
• "True nature can override logic and self-preservation."

The last bullet above refers to fabulist Orson Welles's story of the scorpion and the frog: 

"The frog carries the scorpion across the river on its back, convinced by the scorpion's logic that it will not sting him because if it does , they will both die. In the middle of the river the scorpion stings the frog, who says, dying, 'Logic? There is no logic in this!' The scorpion replies, 'I know, I can't help it. It is my character.'"

Fortunately, "Few humans are truly scorpions – complete psychopaths."

Kasparov warns, "Don't trust a scorpion because logic and being in the right doesn't help you very much when you're dead."

Dissidents are true patriots, dedicated to higher ideals as espoused in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, according to Kasparov.

"If we rouse ourselves from our complacency and relearn how to stand up to the dictators and terrorists who threaten the modern world we have built, we can alter our course," he writes.

In other words: Read books.

Using Malala Yousafzai as an example of how education threatens fascists but empowers citizens, Kasparov, the chess champion prescribes a solution: "What these thugs cannot abide is the flowering of education, with the noteworthy exception of militant religious-teaching that often closes minds instead of opening them. They despise the possibility of an educated population, knowing it would mean the end of their kind for a generation."

"If there is anything I have learned from my extensive travels all over the world to promote chess in education it is that talent exists everywhere. The question is how to give it the opportunity to express itself and to thrive. This opportunity that education creates is what is lacking in so much of the undeveloped world and in parts of the developed world as well if we are honest – a shortfall that has wide-ranging and damaging effects. Education is the most effective way to address poverty and violence, even to tackle complex issues of terrorist groups and vicious warlords."

"Winter Is Coming" is, of course, a title taken from George R. R. Martin's "Game of Thrones," but Kasparov recommends another author "to understand the Putin regime in depth": Mario Puzo, author of "The Godfather" (a book novel published in 1969 that I read in high school English class, hiding a paperback version behind the assigned Carson McCullers book; sorry, Ms. Baker).

Kasparov advises: "The rise of Vladimir Putin and his St. Petersburg clan has been described as Machiavellian, but it is better described by the achievements of Don Vito Corleone: the web of betrayals, the secrecy, and the blurred lines between what is business, what is government, and what is criminal – it's all there in Puzo's books."

Other authors and works recommended or inspired after reading "Winter Is Coming" include David Halberstam's "War in a Time of Peace," George Orwell's "1984," Hanna Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism," and Masha Gessen's "The Man Without a Face."

U.S. Navy Frees Cuba

Review by Bill Doughty

The United States Navy helped the people of Cuba achieve independence from "corrupt, repressive Spanish colonial reign," writes Ivan Musicant in "Empire By Default" (Holt, 1998), a comprehensive reference about a decade of "profound turbulence."

The 1890s included a major economic depression, the annexation of Hawaii, and war with Spain over Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Also during the turbulent decade that led to what the author calls the dawn of the American century:

"The powers, East and West, were carving up the prostrate body of defenseless imperial China. Great Britain, Germany, Russia, France and Japan had scooped out large chunks for naval bases, railroads, mining concessions, and trading zones, eyeing one another with the deadly suspicion of thieves splitting the loot."

Africa was still being partitioned by imperial powers, an "avaricious Japan" was already setting its sights on East and South East Asia, and tensions were high with Germany over Samoa. And in 1895 some Americans were nearly ready to go to war again with Britain over its "arrogance" in the Americas, including over Venezuela's boundaries.

Meantime, Germany, Japan and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt were inspired by the strategic concepts of Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, author of "Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660, 1783." A stronger more powerful Navy was the advantage in the Spanish-American War.

Author Musicant opens and closes the 658+ page "Empire By Default" with references to the great naval thinker. It's another indication of how great Mahan's influence is to the development of the modern Navy and American century.

"Empire" includes copious notes, an extensive bibliography, supporting photos, and a helpful index. Historical profiles are provided on Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, General Campo, General Weyler, Secretary of the Navy Long, Commodore  Dewey, Capt. Sigsbee, Senator Proctor, Capt. Sampson, Brig. Gen. Shafter, and Commodore Schley, among others.

Musicant shows how a mysterious explosion aboard USS Maine ignited war, how Col. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders took San Juan Hill, and why readiness is so important to success in warfare. "In training, discipline, education, seamanship, and engineering, the Spanish navy was woefully behind its American enemy."

The Spanish-American War demonstrated the capabilities of expeditionary forces, reminding the nation of the significance of the Marines, the need for interservice interoperability, and the importance of accurate assessment of capabilities.

"The war for Cuba – and the Philippines and Puerto Rico as well – would depend, in chief, not on the strength and number of soldiers in the field, but on who controlled the sea, and here Spain had not the slightest chance of success. Falling into a fatal mode of military fantasy, in 1895 Spain adopted a new rating system for its navy that was wholly unrealistic and went far to dupe the nation and even foreign naval observers, who should have known better, into classifying the Spanish navy into a much higher material category of strength and readiness than it deserved."

The defeat of Rear Adm. Cervera in Cuba was a turning point not only for the United States Navy but also for the world against imperialism and monarchy. The Spanish Empire was coming to an end just as the United States "forged a new empire" based on altruism and independence, according to Musicant.

The Spanish American War guaranteed the building of a canal in Central America so the Navy could move from ocean to ocean.

And, with the annexation of Hawaii, the nation became "a commanding presence in the Far East ... as a naval base projecting power to the Orient."

"The battle had wrested for the U.S. Navy total control of the sea," Musicant writes. "America, as Alfred Thayer Mahan had predicted, now looked outward."

Wizard of Oz & Navy Core Values

by Bill Doughty

"The Wonderful World of Oz," written by L. Frank Baum of Coronado, Calif. and first published in 1900, was popular with children in its time but is no match for the movie, first released in 1939. The movie celebrates its 75th anniversary this weekend.

Both the movie and the film inspired a number of theories about its symbolism and allegory.

Is Baum's story about the gold standard, geo-politics, religion, industrialization and/or populism? Or is it just a good story, as Baum claimed, written solely to bring happiness to children as a "modernized fairy tale"?

In 2003 then-Rear Adm. Andrew M. Singer* gave a Navy Birthday speech in Sierra Vista, Arizona. His remarks formed the themes in the movie around Navy and Marine Corps core values.

Andrew M. Singer, Intelligence Chair, Naval Postgraduate School

Singer said the movie has a message that exemplifies honor, courage and commitment.

The scarecrow, tin man and lion searched for what they already had: a brain, a heart, the nerve. 

Realization of our innate abilities comes with the journey. With that knowledge comes the ability to make good choices. Singer said, "If you think to do the right thing, you'll do the right thing."

In the movie, the diverse individuals form a team and complete their journey thanks to Dorothy's vision and leadership. [Baum was an advocate for women's rights, marrying the daughter of a suffragist. Incidentally, Baum died in 1919, just one year before the 19th Amendment was ratified giving women throughout the United States the right to vote.]

Singer links the key phrase in the movie, "there's no place like home," with the military's mission to protect the country.

At Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, Marines learn about core values with a special emphasis on the courage to uphold high standards, make good decisions and seek to continuously self improve.

According to senior drill instructor Sgt. Joshua P. McGee, what's important is having self-discipline to do the right thing. “It’s like the cowardly lion in the ‘Wizard of Oz.’ He wanted to be courageous. He wanted to change,” said McGee. “A positive change in our lives takes moral courage.”

McGee said courage is “the moral, mental and physical strength to do what is right; to adhere to a higher standard of personal conduct and to make tough decisions under stress and pressure.”

Among the metaphors and lessons waiting to be discovered or repurposed in Oz are many used by the business community, even internationally.

Brandstorm consultant John Lloyd of South Africa writes, in his essay "Leadership Lessons from the Wizard of Oz," about courage in the face of fear:

"Fear immobilizes us. It’s an obstacle to success and makes us followers instead of leaders. It diminishes our initiative, enthusiasm and desire to succeed. At the end of the movie when the Lion is awarded his medal for courage, he still felt the fear but understood that even courageous people feel fear. He thought that he was courageous and consequently he became so. His medal became an outward validation for an inner change."

Lloyd quotes Winston Churchill: "Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend." And, he reminds us of Franklin D. Roosevelt's post-Great Depression statement: ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

"So the three distinct qualities you need to be an effective leader are a never-ending commitment to improving your knowledge, heartfelt compassion for others and the courage to face your every fear," Lloyd writes.

In the same year L. Frank Baum published "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (1900), he produced a pair of picture books illustrated by Harry (Otis) Kennedy – "The Navy Alphabet" and "The Army Alphabet."

For more about Baum and the alphabet books, read Bill Campbell's insightful blog, The Oz Enthusiast.

Of interest in "The Navy Alphabet" is the illustration and verse showing the Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines under O for Ocean.

"The Wizard of Oz" is a bridge from Grimm and Andersen to more modern fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien ("Lord of the Rings") and George R.R. Martin ("Game of Thrones").

One moral of the Oz story is repeated in some of the best of the genre: True power rests within the individual – whether they know it or not – and sometimes those in power rely on ignorance and fear to deceive people. There is always a need for ethical behavior exemplified in the core values of honor, courage and commitment.

So, who has the courage for "emancipation leadership"? (see the next Navy Reads post, "Turn the Ship Around!")

(*Rear Adm. Singer began his career aboard USS Midway (CV 41) in Yokosuka, Japan in 1978, where he became a surface warfare officer. Later he became a naval cryptologist, with assignments on the East Coast and in the Pacific. He completed his career in uniform after serving as Director for Intelligence at U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii. He now serves as Intelligence Chair at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.)

A Kennedy/Lincoln Link to Mandela

Review by Bill Doughty

Fifty years ago -- Jan. 14, 1964 -- JFK's former top advisor, still grieving from Kennedy's assassination, walked into the Oval Office with his formal letter of resignation to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Ted Sorensen was a top advisor and writer for Senator-then-President John F. Kennedy.  His 2008 autobiography "Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History" is a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at successes and failures in the 1950s and 60s.  Sorensen discusses his role in helping write the former naval officer's "Profiles in Courage" and discusses Lincoln, Civil Rights, Cuban Missile Crisis, LBJ, Nixon, MLK, Vietnam and Nelson Mandela, among other subjects.

Historians consider him to be not at the edge but at the center of history.  He drafted speeches to the nation, wrote articles for the president for influential publications and penned influential correspondence to Soviet Union's leader Nikita Khruschchev.  He was at the heart of the crisis (Cuba) that brought our nation the closest it may have ever been to nuclear war.

Sorensen siblings read Life magazine at home in Lincoln, Nebraska; Ted at left.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Sorensen attended college at the University of Nebraska with contemporary Johnny Carson (Malcolm X was another Nebraskan he mentions in "Counselor").  

Sorensen reflects, "I have occasionally wondered: Can a political career be affected by the name of one's hometown? Hope? Independence?  What I do know is that growing up in a city named for Abraham Lincoln, whose stately statue stood by the state capitol n front of a wall on which his Gettysburg Address was inscribed, intensified my interest in the man, his life, and his speeches -- speeches I have been quoting ever since."

He writes in depth about his relationship with John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family, including Robert F. Kennedy, Edward "Ted" Kennedy and father Joseph P. Kennedy.

In a chapter titled "My Perspective on JFK's Personal Life," Sorensen discusses JFK's virtues, including his service in the Navy as a "WWII combat hero in the Pacific," and vices, including reports of his infidelity.  "Once he became a popular national figure, enough men claimed to have serve on his little PT boat with him to have staffed a battleship ... and after his death, enough women claimed to have gone to bed with him to have left him time and energy for little else."

Sorensen writes of his role and arrangement  with JFK in producing the Pulitzer Prize winning "Profiles in Courage," featured recently here on Navy Reads.

As for Kennedy's own profile in courage, Sorensen says the failure to vote and speak out in a censure of fear monger Senator Joe McCarthy was the only lasting stain on JFK's and his political record.

After JFK's death Sorensen was unable to resolve his ambivalence about supporting President Johnson.  He says he was grateful that Johnson carried on Kennedy's fight for civil rights but profoundly disappointed about another key decision that affected history for decades.

Ted Sorensen in the White House.

"I felt an immense sympathy, almost pity, for the man who had fought the good fight against poverty and racial injustice, who had pushed through so much important legislation for those who, in the end, had turned against him.  then I thought of the tens of thousands of young Americans he had needlessly sent into an escalating war in Vietnam, and all the innocent civilians killed by the tons of American bombs he dropped on the North Vietnamese without breaking their will to battle for independence, and all the federal health and housing programs that had been financially starved because of that war -- and I could not find it in my heart to utter more than a few words of routine praise and gratitude for Lyndon B. Johnson.  For all his brilliant successes, I would always revere the tragically abbreviated thousand days of John F. Kennedy's New Frontier far more than the nearly two thousand days of war and waste in Johnson's Great Society."

After leaving federal service, Sorensen worked for a private legal firm, where in 1993 he met the head of the African National Congress Nelson Mandela.  Then, 20 years ago he took a New Year's to New York on an Irish businessman's private jet, where he talked to "Madiba" about celebrity-social issues, opinions about de Klerk and Mandela's personal-family issues.

"On our flight back to New York on O'Reilly's private jet, Mandela and I had a long, wide-ranging conversation, discussing everything from Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor (both of whom impressed him), to the singer Michael Jackson (was he guilty of sex abuse charges? Mandela asked), to his twenty-seven years' imprisonment and his family life ... He liked George H. W. Bush, who he said was the first head of state to call him upon his release from prison; but he had no regard for Ronald Reagan, who had once alleged that there was no true believer in democracy in Africa, then later amended that to say he had met one -- Zulu chief Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi, Mandela's principal rival, who, Mandela believed, sought guaranteed regional rule without being elected to the post and without cooperating with those who were elected."

Sen. Ted Kennedy presents a bust of JFK to Nelson Mandela, Boston 1990.

Published just two years prior to his death and well after the passing of principals JFK, First Lady Jackie Onassis, LBJ and others, Sorensen writes with the freedom of someone unconstrained to share his opinions -- at the edge or center of history.

In the book's epilogue, he writes:

"...half a century ago, John F. Kennedy showed in fewer than thousand days how quickly our country's role in the world can be changed for the better.  Ultimately, I predict, the American people will grow sick of cynically corrupt political hypocrisy and turn on those who permit our security and international standing to erode, our environment to be despoiled, our fiscal problems to worsen, and our energy independence to wither.  In time, they will return once again to the idealism of the New Frontier."

Ted Sorensen died in 2010. To the end he remained hopeful. He believed in equality. Like military leaders he said he admired most -- General Maxwell, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and General Wesley Clark -- he believed in responsible use of military power.  He left a record of opening gates, building bridges and keeping faith in the future for a freer, more peaceful and safer world.

Sorensen concludes:

"I'm still an optimist.  I still believe that extraordinary leaders can be found and elected, that future dangers can be confronted and resolved, that people are essentially good and ultimately right in their judgments.  I still believe that a world of law is waiting to emerge, enshrining peace and freedom throughout the world.  I still believe that the mildest and most obscure of Americans can be rescued from oblivion by good luck sudden changes in fortune, sudden encounters with heroes."

He concludes, "I believe it because I lived it."

1812: The Navy’s War

by Bill Doughty

We don’t know what we don’t know, and ignorance of history condemns us to repeat past mistakes.

That could explain why the bicentennial of the War of 1812 -- which has lots of lessons from the past, of the present, and for the future -- is so important to the Navy.

It was:

• Our second war for independence;

• A war with Great Britain and Canada, now among our strongest allies; and

• A rebirth for the U.S. Navy, inspiring the Star Spangled Banner.

Author George C. Daughan gives a Navy-oriented history lesson in his 2011 overview, 1812: The Navy’s War.  A reading of the history of the War of 1812 teaches why this conflict was so important to the nation’s development, especially as a world economic power.

We see familiar themes and how they apply today in chapters like “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” “Jefferson’s Embargo and the Slide to War,” and “From Temporary Amistice to Lasting Peace: The Importance of the War.”

The book reveals how the Navy committed to being a blue water, forward-deployed and ready force for a nation that was less than 40 years old, just 25 years since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and a mere five years after two big milestones: Robert Fulton development of the first practical steamboat and the British Parliament’s declaration that it was illegal to buy, sell and transport slaves.

Daughan shows that the strength of the Navy -- demonstrated at Lake Erie, Plattsburgh Bay, Baltimore and New Orleans -- proved to the British that their former colonies made a formidable partner.  The collaboration and cooperation earned on the seas and in the littorals in 1812 would prove invaluable in the next century in two world wars.

Madison - Painting by Chet Jezierski 

The book begins and ends with a discussion of economics and commerce.  President Madison was enthralled with the British Empire’s economic might but, like Thomas Jefferson, championed the more French ideals of human rights and equality.

Daughan shows how Madison’s pragmatic approach with former enemies and strategic conduct of the War of 1812, “within the confines of the Constitution,” contributed to lasting military and diplomatic success.  “In conducting himself in this manner, he immeasurably strengthened the democratic forces that had been building in America since the start of the Revolution and that had accelerated under Jefferson.”

1812: The Navy’s War inspires the reader to think about the rise of nationalism, the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and everything else that was happening in the world during that pivotal time, including and how it might affect history in generations to come:

• 1812 - Napoleon led his Grand Army from France, Germany and Poland into Russia (read Tolsoy’s War and Peace), which had just finished fighting the Russo-Finnish War and was already fighting the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian Wars; 

• From 1808 to 1813 - Napoleonic Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal;

• From 1811 to 1818 - the Egyptian war with Wahhabis, with Egyptian forces retaking Mecca from the Wahhabis in 1813;

• From 1811 to 1825 - Latin-American wars of independence;

• 1812 - Russian establishment of Fort Ross outpost near Bodea Bay in Northern California, Fort Ross. (The Russians tried to lay claim to Alaska in the previous century and established three forts on Kauai, Hawaii beginning in 1817.)

• From 1804 to 1813 - Serbian Insurrection (with WWI implications); and 

• 1812 - Siamese invasion of Cambodia.

Connecting all of those nations, directly or indirectly: the world's oceans and a still-developing world economy.  The slogan for the bicentennial is  "America's Navy... Keeping the sea free for more than 200 years."  The Navy has a 200-years-ago-today timeline on its 1812 bicentennial site as well as an interactive map, historic paintings, classroom curricula, and a list of events, starting with the Navy's kickoff event in April 2012 in Washington, D.C.

Last year we reviewed books tied to the Centennial of Naval Aviation.  This year we look forward to exploring the significance of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and how it shaped the Navy, the United States and the world.

The USS Constitution had a special role to play in 1812, as did its skipper.
According to history.navy.mil: "Captain Hull's time on Constitution was eventful. He took the ship on a European cruise in 1811-12, returning home before the War of 1812 broke out between the United States and Great Britain. An enemy squadron closely pursued his ship off the East Coast in July, but Hull skillfully evaded them. On 19 August 1812, Constitution encountered the British frigate Guerriere at sea and pounded her to a wreck in an action that electrified the Nation and demonstrated that the small U.S. Navy was a worthy and dangerous opponent for Britain's otherwise overwhelming maritime might."