Maritime Strategy vs. The Wall

Review by Bill Doughty

Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman writes a version of history in "Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea" (W. W. Norton, 2018) in which the United States Navy was key in bringing down the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall. 

Admirals Stephen B. Luce and Alfred Thayer Mahan

How did the Navy take on the Soviet Union, and what are the lessons of history for us today in facing 21st century threats?

Starting with the earliest naval history and foundational strategies of Admirals Luce and Mahan, Lehman builds the case for the importance of a forward-deployed, well-resourced, and innovative Navy committed to global exercises with partners and allies. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy earlier in the 20th century, had a deep devotion to the sea service. Under FDR, the Navy was indispensable in winning WWII, especially in the Pacific.

"The U.S. Navy ended World War II with more than seven thousand ships, including ninety-nine aircraft carriers," Lehman writes. "Many politicians demanded that the navy mothball, scrap, or otherwise dispose of this massive and expensive fleet." In fact, they debated the need for a blue-water fleet.

Missouri steams to Turkey as U.S. support against Soviet territorial claims.

The Cold War began almost immediately after the Second World War as the Russia-led Soviet Union began expanding into other nations' territories, desiring supremacy, hegemony and empire.

Truman, a former soldier, showed his preference for the Army. Nevertheless, when it came to flex power and show support to NATO in the face of Soviet aggression, Truman sent "big stick" USS Missouri (BB-63) to Europe. The Korean War was further evidence to the nation of the need for a forward deployed, trained and ready navy.

Lehman shows how LBJ used the Gulf of Tonkin incident, involving Navy ships, as an excuse – "despite skepticism of Navy leaders" – to ignite the Vietnam War. 

USS Halibut (SSN-587) underway in the Pacific Ocean.

Cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines played different but critical roles in countering the Soviet navy. Lehman reveals formerly classified reports and information, including Operation Azorian and recovery of part of Soviet nuclear submarine, K-129, and operation at the heart of John Piña Craven's "The Silent War: The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea."

Although the fleet shrunk under President Richard Nixon, the late 60s and early 70s saw the rise of great strategic thinkers and leaders in the Navy, including Admirals Zumwalt and Holloway.

"In September 1970, the new chief of naval operations, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, launched a detailed, comprehensive, and coherent blueprint for initiatives the navy needed to take to regain momentum and prevent the Russians from gaining naval supremacy. The project was called Project SIXTY. It included many new programs that were essential to prevail against the new cruise missile, submarine, torpedo, Backfire bomber, and missile threats that the Soviets were beginning to deploy in large numbers in their growing blue-water fleet. It included new ship and aircraft systems needed to operate in Arctic waters as well as shallow tropical seas. It provided for planning and training to operate in those unfamiliar and difficult environments. Zumwalt's successor, Adm. James A. Holloway, revised and adjusted some of the priorities, and because of his skills in dealing with Congress, he was able to get funding for the development of most (but not all) of the initiatives, which were then eventually successfully funded and deployed by the navy during the Reagan administration."

Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, who served as Pacific Fleet Commander and CNO, was "a major player in the development of a forward naval strategy."

President Jimmy Carter, a Naval Academy graduate, surprised many Navy veterans by reducing the size of the fleet and "turning the other cheek" instead of confronting the Soviets.

"In the name of détente and cutting the budget, Carter had prepared to give away some of the crown jewels of Mahanian naval superiority," Lehman writes.

On the cusp of President Ronald Reagan coming into power and Lehman becoming Secretary of the Navy, the Soviet navy showed its reach in the Arctic, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, and Soviet-backed Iraq invaded Iran.

President Reagan increased the defense budget, called for a new strategic bomber, reactivated battleships, ordered the building of four new nuclear aircraft carriers, and revised the rules of engagement. "And he sent the U.S. Navy forward."

A rejuvenated U.S. Navy showed its skills in the Norwegian Sea and in the Ocean Venture 81 exercise, involving 15 nations and 250 ships.

Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

Lehman describes how Hollywood's Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson approached Holloway and Lehman with the proposal to produce "Top Gun," which Lehman thought garnered public support for the U.S. Navy in general and naval aviation in particular.  

In a similar venture, Lehman green-lighted Dr. Robert Ballard, in coordination with National Geographic, to use Navy technology to search for and find the Titanic in the North Atlantic. Lehman subsequently declared Ballard "Bottom Gun."

Navy's modernization efforts and maritime strategy were "gaining global velocity" in the early to mid 80s as USS Ticonderoga, the first Aegis cruiser came on line. In 1984, Lehman led a delegation to Beijing to arrange a deal to modernize the Chinese navy "to deal with the Soviet threat."

Readers of "Oceans Ventured" may wish to see more discussion of Lehman's initiative with China as well as the importance of collaboration and cooperation with other nations' navies, although there are several mentions of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (incorrectly called the "Japanese" Maritime Self-Defense Force).

On March 13, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Union. 

"Faced with political economic stagnation, [Gorbachev] advocated and began to implement policy reforms based on perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Glasnost meant giving publicity to problems, issues, and proposed solutions to generate support for perestroika, which meant restructuring the government bureaucracy and rebuilding the economy and industry."In his first dramatic foreign policy move, he suspended deployment of Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missiles in Warsaw Pact states. He then began to cut back on resources to the Soviet Armed Forces, including the navy."

On the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Gorbachev announced a moratorium on nuclear testing. Lehman gives details of how the "diplomatic thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations accelerated."

Adm. James A. Lyons, Jr.

"President Reagan was keenly interested in nuclear arms control and the reduction of the superpowers' bloated nuclear arsenals. He and Gorbachev slowly formed a partnership over the next three years or so to reduce the amount of nuclear weaponry on both sides. He was far less keen than Gorbachev, however, to constrain the U.S. Navy, which he regarded as an essential and unique pillar of U.S. military strength."

Adm. James "Ace" Lyons, who commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet in the mid-80s, "launched into planning a furious succession of exercises, often unprecedented or deviating from their predecessors, especially in their predictability." Lehman notes," Pacific Fleet exercises had already become more aggressive, more forward, more innovative, and less predictable."

On May 6, 1986, three U.S. nuclear-powered submarines, Ray, Hawkbill and Archerfish, surfaced simultaneously at the North Pole, demonstrating the Navy's power and capabilities. Navy surface ships continued successful FONOPS asserting freedom of navigation in Avancha Bay, the Black Sea and near the Kuril Islands.



Was the U.S. Navy solely responsible for turning the tide in the Cold War? Apparently not. Other events put pressure on the Soviet economy.

Chernobyl disaster

In 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl melted down, creating "an unprecedented international crisis." Then, oil prices dropped, hitting Russia and its satellites and forcing Gorbachev to look inward. His military doctrine became less offensive and more defensive.

"For over three years, U.S. and Soviet diplomats had been negotiating to reduce or eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Finally in Washington in December 1987, at their third meeting, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signed the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, agreeing to eliminate completely all their nuclear and conventional ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. This was a major milestone in the warming relations between the two superpowers."

The fall of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1991 accelerated hopes for peace. President George H.W. Bush ordered the withdrawal of tactical nuclear-armed Tomahawk missiles from U.S. Navy ships.

Gorbachev and Reagan sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty in December 1988, committing to a safer world.

The wall came down, and "the once-powerful Soviet navy faced being split apart." United States maritime strategy, "supported by a bipartisan Congress," proved to be the West's advantage in the geopolitical balance of power, according to Lehman.

In "Oceans Ventured's" epilogue, Lehman warns of a new potential axis of China/Russia/Iran, "eerily similar" to Germany/Italy/Japan more than 75 years ago.

U.S. President Trump and Russia President Putin meet in Helsinki, Finland in July 2018

He says Russian President Vladimir Putin has revanchist goals and "seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur," noting, "Putin has become the master of 'hybrid warfare,' using cyber attacks, disinformation, 'fake news,' election meddling, paramilitary 'little green men,' intimidation, and occasionally assassination against adversaries."

Lehman adds, "China presents a different kind of problem. Its leaders do not hide their intention to establish command of the western Pacific, and they are progression rapidly toward achieving that regional goal." He contends that China continues to use North Korea as a foil to distract and "dominate world attention."

What is the history yet to be written for the U.S. Navy? "The lesson of this book is that we must restore the capability of our naval forces and sailors not because we might have to go to war with North Korea, Russia, Iran, or some other adversary but because we must prevent having to go to war at all," Lehman concludes.

‘Strike from the Sea’

The first REGULUS II is launched from US Navy submarine USS GRAYBACK (SSG 574) in the Pacific, 17 September 1958.

Review by Bill Doughty––

U.S. Naval Institute Press has another winner in “Strike from the Sea: The Development and Deployment of Strategic Cruise Missiles Since 1934” by Norman Polmar and John O’Connell (2020). This carefully researched and documented book –– filled with photos, diagrams, statistics, and appendices –– presents a history of some of the world’s most dangerous tools of war.

Told from an American and largely U.S. Navy perspective, "Strike from the Sea" shows the development of Regulus and Regulus II, Rigel, Triton, Polaris, Vertical Launch Tubes, Tomahawk, and the Virginia Payload Module, among others. (Below, painting of an undersea ballistic missile by Walter H. Bollendonk from 1961 “Polaris Underwater Firing,” USNI.)

We see the evolution of submarines and the roles of USS Barbero (SSA317) and USS Medregal (SS 480) USS Grayback (SSG 574) and USS Growler (SSG 577), USS Halibut (SSGN 587) and USS Permit (SSGN 594, and USS Providence (SSN 719) and USS Pittsburgh (SSN 730). The authors also discuss missile development on surface ships, especially cruisers and carriers, as well as related training, refinement and deployment.

Since submarines are center point, Adm. Rickover is mentioned of course. But once again, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt comes across as a true hero of forward-thinking leadership, including regarding the development of sea-based cruise missiles.

“In 1972, at Admiral Zumwalt’s direction, the Navy dropped [Rickover’s] concept but continued its separate strategic (Tomahawk) and tactical (Harpoon) cruise missile programs … Thanks to a strategic arms initiative of Dr. Henry Kissinger and the desire of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to enhance the Navy’s war fighting effectiveness beyond the relatively few large-deck aircraft carriers, the U.S. Navy has generated a massive sea-based cruise missile strike capability.”

The authors show a strong influence of former Secretary of State Kissinger. They also touch on the comparative ambivalence or outright resistance of CNO Adm. James Holloway. “Admiral Holloway, a naval aviator and a former carrier commander, may have been reflecting that community’s disdain for land-attack cruise missiles that could threaten the carrier’s nuclear strike mission.”

Personalities of the people in power can affect policies and strategies. So it’s worthwhile that the authors include the influence of key players to explain how the hardware developed during the Cold War. Any hope of reducing the risk of nuclear weapons, for example, will require international collaboration.

“The Russian navy, despite severe financial, personnel, and other problems, continued a robust program of cruise missile development for surface ships, submarines, and coastal defense –– both anti-ship and land-attack weapons,” the authors note. The Russian initiatives, including development of other vehicles, “were articulated by President Vladimir Putin in March 2018.”

Collective leadership and cooperation have prevented a global nuclear confrontation despite several accidents, malfunctions, close-calls, and misunderstandings. The conclusion of “Strike from the Sea” is compelling and thought-provoking.

In a final section called “Dishonoring a Treaty,” Polmar and O’Connell write:

“The Reagan-Gorbachev Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty of 1987 was the only agreement of the Cold War era that eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons –– land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, with nuclear or conventional warheads, with ranges between 310 to 3,400 miles … In early 2008, the Russians began testing a nuclear-capable cruise missile, designated SSC-8 by Western intelligence (Russian designation 9M729). In 2014, after observing continued testing of the missile, the Obama Administration announced that Russia had violated the INF treaty. However, U.S. administration officials later said that although the missile had a range prohibited by the treaty, as of 2015 test flights apparently had not exceeded the 310-mile mark. Subsequently, Russia began a limited deployment of the missile, which has an estimated range of more than 3,400 miles, with various warhead options, some of which reduce its maximum range. In October 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the landmark treaty because of the alleged Russian violations; the withdrawal became formal on 2 August 2019. The Secretary of Defense at the time, James Mattis, a retired Marine general, had consulted with officials from the 28 other members of NATO, seeing their ideas on how to react to the Russian violations of the INF treaty … The Russian government denied violating the INF treaty and said that U.S. withdrawal would be dangerous and could spark a new nuclear arms race.”

This insight into the Trump-Putin implosion of the bilateral INF treaty leaves a huge question: what comes next –– not only in the evolution of earth-threatening missiles, but also in the re-creation of a world without nuclear weapons?

That question led me to a remarkably interesting and well-written book by French author Guillaume Serina, translated by David A. Andelman: “An Impossible Dream: Reagan, Gorbachev, and a World Without the Bomb” (Pegasus, 2019).

Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev said, “We must demilitarize.” Reagan, with some advice from his Secretary of State George Shultz, told the world, “We proposed the most sweeping and generous arms control proposal in history. We offered the complete elimination of all ballistic missiles –– Soviet and American –– from the face of the Earth by 1996.”

Reagan quoted another great leader in his remarks: “Another president, Harry Truman, noted that our century has seen two of the most frightful wars in history and that ‘the supreme need of our time is for man to learn to live together in peace and harmony.’”

Serina’s book offers an introduction by Gorbachev, who says, “What we need today is precisely this: political will. We need another level of leadership, collective leadership, of course.”

Along with “Strike from the Sea’s” terrific history of cruise missile hardware development it is important to read more about the work of President Reagan, Gorbachev, and other leaders who confronted nuclear arms proliferation. What can be done to achieve nuclear disarmament and prevent global destruction?

PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 17, 2020) – Sailors inspect Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles aboard the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Chicago (SSN 721) in support of Valiant Shield 2020. Valiant Shield is a U.S. only, biennial field training exercise (FTX) with a focus on integration of joint training in a blue-water environment among U.S. forces. This training enables real-world proficiency in sustaining joint forces through detecting, locating, tracking, and engaging units at sea, in the air, on land, and in cyberspace in response to a range of mission areas. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Derek Harkins/Released)

Hornfischer’s 'One Ocean' in the Cold War

Review by Bill Doughty––

In his best, pure “The Last of the Tin Can Sailors” style, James D. Hornfischer tells the harrowing story of the fate of the submarine USS Cochino (SS-345) in “Who Can Hold the Sea: The U.S. Navy in the Cold War, 1945-1960” (Bantam Books, 2022).

USS Cochino and other submarines, including USS Tusk (SS-426), were operating near the Arctic Circle in August 1949, seventy-three years ago this month, four years after World War II and at the start of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Hornfischer writes of the heroism of U.S. Navy Sailors trying to save their submarine after a gas leak, fire, and explosions. “Heroism,” he writes, “was never a function of rank.”

Hornfischer’s account of the Sailors’ valor, both aboard Cochino and the rescue submarine Tusk, is typically gripping and dramatic –– and too long to adequately excerpt here. Readers can find it in Chapter 11, “Abandon Ship.” But readers who invest time in reading all 400-plus pages of this book will be rewarded with an understanding of how the United States Navy and Marine Corps survived, thrived, and helped maintain peace in the aftermath of WWII and in the face of communist expansion, especially by the Soviets.

As a result of America’s commitment to democracy and its alliance with Western Europe –– impelled by the Truman Doctrine –– twelve nations, including the United States, signed the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, four months prior to the Cochino incident. Norway is one of those original NATO members.

Capt. Roy Benson, Commander of Submarine Development Group Two, met with the surviving American Sailors of Cochino and Tusk in Norway. He also met with Norwegian diplomats. Hornfischer writes:

“The relationship between Oslo and Washington, fully reciprocal and secure within NATO, was based on the security needs of democratic Norway and the strategic value of its coast … the Norwegian fjords offered plentiful tactical advantages for an enterprising fleet commander. These included ‘ready concealment; year-round ice-free deepwater paths to the sea by diverse routes, easy protection from surface or ground forces, ideal antiaircraft gun protection possibilities, [and] large seaplane sheltered landing areas. Thus, bases in the fjords could be advantageous to us as denial of them to the opponent would be disastrous to his plans.’ These insights would not be forgotten.

“The Norwegian officers who met Roy Benson and his men were ready to meet Russia in war. ‘Within thirty minutes of declaration of war,’ a host officer boasted to the Americans, ‘every Norwegian male would be in uniform and under arms and in another half hour every Communist would be dead or in custody.’ Scandinavians had known recently the sound of the treads of Russian tanks and held no illusions about Moscow’s continuing ambitions. They knew that Russia coveted naval bases in the fjords as a means of escaping the polar ice prison that constrained their potential to project naval power into the world. As Worthington put it, the Norwegians were ‘happy to see evidence that the U.S. Navy was thinking of their part of the world.’”

In his profound way, Hornfischer observes, “Nations that perceive threats globally were compelled to operate on the outer membrane of the possible.” Freedom and democracy took a stand against Communism and autocracy in the Cold War.

Now there are 30 nations as part of NATO, with Finland and Sweden on their way to becoming members in the face of Russian revanchism after Putin’s unprovoked attack on neighbor Ukraine earlier this year.

Stalin and Putin

Hornfischer examines the mindset of authoritarian Joseph Stalin under “Communism’s self-hypnosis” of blind belief but with the “political reflexes of a perpetually fear-bound despot.” He examines Russia’s national psychology and Stalin’s “mastery of the tools of the paranoid art.” Such feelings of persecution and victimization are familiar in studying other autocrats.

In sharp contrast to Putin, is the pivotal leader who brought about the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died today at the age of 91. A generation after the era covered in this book, Gorbachev famously proposed doing away with nuclear weapons. He worked with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush to reduce nuclear arms. Putin, on the other hand, threatens to use them, especially if NATO threatens to help Ukraine directly. Gorbachev’s USSR was brought down in the aftermath of the Chernobyl meltdown; Putin has his military fire upon and otherwise threaten nuclear power plants in an attempt to make Russia great again.

The fifteen-year span covered in this book covers the evolution of submarines and the nuclear navy and the game-changing development of the Polaris missile. Hornfischer briefly covers the Korean War, U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, “Revolt of the Admirals,” and threats by Communist China to Taiwan. He reveals sometimes startling milestones that occurred in August or September:

• The secret mission of Operation Sandy near Bermuda, in which USS Midway (CV-41) would test for the first time a Navy ship’s ability to launch strategic ballistic missiles, Sept. 2-6, 1947.
• The creation of the CIA, led by its first director, Navy Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Sept. 18, 1947.
• The discovery by a military “Pole Vaulter” from Misawa Air Base of the Soviet Union’s apparent first nuclear test, Sept. 3, 1949.
• The first time Marines moved from ship (USS Sicily CVE-118) to shore aboard helicopters (HRS-1) into the Inchon area in South Korea, Sept. 1, 1952.
• The U.S. Navy’s confrontation with Communist China over bombardment in the staged attack on Quemoy islands in the Taiwan Strait, Aug. 23, 1958. (USS Midway was deployed from Pearl Harbor to provide deterrence and protection to Taiwan.)
• The first (unsuccessful) attempt by USS Nautilus (SSN-571), captained by William Anderson to find an “undersea Northwest Passage in reverse” under the Arctic, Aug. 19, 1957.
• The second (successful) attempt by USS Nautilus, captained by William Anderson, to transit the Arctic, arriving beneath the North Pole on Aug. 2, 1958.

Hornfischer’s taut style, found in “Tin Can Sailors,” "Neptune's Inferno," and "Ship of Ghosts," captures readers as his words pulsate about USS Nautilus's attempt.

USS Nautilus underway.

The submariners squeeze under and around walls of ice, not knowing what might lie ahead. “Only Neptune knew what kind of ice was in store for them in these tight underwater caves.”

From descriptions of Cochino’s failed attempt to transit the Barents Sea and Arctic Circle in August 1949 to Nautilus’s victorious achievement in August 1958, Hornfischer shows the resilience, commitment, and innovation of the U.S. Navy to “Hold the Sea.”

Echoing ret. Adm. James Stavridis, Hornfischer writes, “Though landsmen speak of the world’s seven seas, there is in fact only one global ocean.”

NATO Response Force and Allied Marines from the U.S., Sweden, Finland, and U.K. simulate amphibious assaults on a Swedish beachhead during BALTOPS June 10, 2015. The 17 Allied and partner countries integrated air, land, and sea operations and procedures to demonstrate the combined-forces capability to respond to threats in the Baltic region. (Sgt. Tatum Vayavananda.)

Waking up to ‘The Fate of the Earth’

Review by Bill Doughty––

“The Fate of the Earth” by Jonathan Schell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) is landmark book calling for nuclear weapons control. It was written 38 years ago –– and nearly 38 years after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (pictured above) in order to end the war with Japan in WWII.

Schell asks Americans to open their eyes to a continuing danger of Mutually Assured Destruction that would be brought about by nuclear war, even if the war is started by accident.

“A society that systemically shuts its eyes to an urgent peril to its physical survival and fails to take any steps to save itself cannot be called psychologically well,” Schell asserts. Looking at the problem of mass extinction by nuclear weapons makes us sick, he says, but the true sickness is in not confronting what is real.

Schell contends there’s a new reality: nuclear weapons have made war obsolete. “By effectively removing the limits on human access to the forces of nature, the invention of nuclear weapons ruined war, which depended for its results, and therefore for its usefulness, on the exhaustion of the forces of one of the adversaries.”

Rickover

An icon of the nuclear Navy saw the new reality even during the Cold War.

“On the occasion of his retirement, Admiral Hyman Rickover, who devoted a good part of his life to overseeing the development and construction of nuclear-powered, nuclear-missile-bearing submarines for the United States Navy, told a congressional committee that in his belief mankind was going to destroy itself with nuclear arms. He also said of his part in the nuclear buildup that he was ‘not proud’ of it, and added that he would like to ‘sink’ the ships that he had poured so much of his life into. And, indeed, what everyone is now called on to do is to sink all the ships, and also ground all the planes, and fill in all the missile silos, and dismantle all warheads.”

This book is rich with history, context, and philosophy and includes numerous references to early thinkers (Socrates, Lucretius, Plutarch, and Pericles); historians and philosophers (Arendt, Burke, Camus, de Tocqueville, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, and Clausewitz); and the Bible (Genesis, Ten Commandments, Armageddon, and Jesus Christ –– “prince of peace” and “a servant to all”).

An early image of Jesus Christ: "not to judge the world but to save it."

In a presentation reminiscent of John Hersey’s spellbinding “Hiroshima,” Schell makes a disturbing analysis of the various ways humans would die during and especially after an all-out nuclear conflagration: radiation, fires, starvation, exposure, long-term illnesses, and short-term diseases –– all leading to possible extinction of our species.

“The weight of extinction, like the weight of mortality, bears down on life through the mind and spirit but otherwise, until the event occurs, leaves us physically undisturbed,” Schell writes.

“At present, most of us do nothing. We look away. We remain calm. We are silent. We take refuge in the hope that the holocaust won’t happen, and turn back to our individual concerns. We deny the truth that is all around us. Indifferent to the future of our kind we grow indifferent to one another. We drift apart. We grow cold. We browse our way toward the end of the world. But if once we shook off our lethargy and fatigue and began to act, the climate would change. Just as inertia produces despair –– a despair often so deep that it does not even know itself as despair –– arousal and action would give us access to hope, and life would start to mend: not just life in its entirety but daily life, every individual life. At that point, we would begin to withdraw from our role as both the victims and the perpetrators of mass murder. We would no longer be the destroyers of mankind but, rather, the gateway through which the future generations would enter the world. Then the passion and will that we need to save ourselves would flood into our lives. Then the walls of indifference, inertia, and coldness that now isolate each of us from others, and all of us from the past and future generations, would melt, like snow in the spring. E.M. Forster told us, ‘Only connect!’ Let us connect. Auden told us, ‘We must love one another or die.’ Let us love one another –– in the present and across the divides of death and birth. Christ say, ‘I come not to judge the world but to save the world.’ Let us, also, not judge the world but save the world. By restoring our severed links with life, we will restore our own lives.”

Schell presents a stark choice.

“Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path –– if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our preparations to bring it about –– then we in effect become the allies of death, and in everything we do our attachment to life will weaken: our vision, blinded to the abyss that has opened at our fee, will dim and grow confused; our will, discouraged by the thought of trying to build on such a precarious foundation anything that is meant to last, will slacken; and we will sink into stupefaction, as though we were gradually weaning ourselves from life in preparation for the end. On the other hand, if we reject our doom, and bend our efforts toward survival –– if we arouse ourselves to the peril an act to forestall it, making ourselves the allies of life –– then the anesthetic fog will life; our vision, no longer straining not to see the obvious, will sharpen; our will, finding secure ground to build on, will be restored; and we will take full and clear possession of life again.”

He imagines mechanisms that would prevent the threat of nuclear war: destruction of weapons, destruction of the factories that manufacture them, and clear-eyed verification as part of international cooperation as we realize our ignorance in order to achieve greater reverence for the “swollen power” to destroy ourselves as a species. 

At first, Schell's thesis may come off as overly hopeful or even naive, but he realizes the importance of first strengthening international cooperation in order to achieve mutually assured survival. "The present-day United Nations," he says, "is the empty husk of those irresolute good intentions." 

As usual, education and critical thinking are key to understanding and wisdom.

“We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves.”

In his more recent “The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger” (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company; 2007), Schell ties the nuclear threat to another existential danger: climate change.

“The two perils have a great deal in common. Both are the fruit of swollen human power –– in the one case, the destructive power of war; in the other, the productive power of fossil-fuel energy. Both put stakes on the table of a magnitude never present before in human decision making. Both threaten life on a planetary scale. Both require a fully global response. Anyone concerned by the one should be concerned with the other. It would be a shame to save the earth from slowly warming only to burn it up in an instant in a nuclear war.”

Will 2020 be a turning point for world cooperation in starting to deal with global climate change, a worldwide pandemic, and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons?

Schell’s “Fate of the World” was written on the eve of President Reagan’s historic meeting with leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, so in “The Seventh Decade” he focuses on the potential as well as the missed opportunities during and after the Cold War.

Reagan and Gorbachev

Reagan and Gorbachev tried to have nuclear weapons “dispatched to history’s graveyard. Superior power was no longer the route to dominance. Certainly, global empire was out of the question,” just as all-out war itself had been made obsolete.

The Republican Party of 2020 has no platform, stating, “Resolved, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention,” and “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” Despite no mention in a formal platform, President Trump has boasted about upgrading and building more nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s extensive platform says, in part, “Democrats believe the United States has a moral responsibility and national security imperative to prevent the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and eventually secure their elimination.”

President-elect Biden's platform also resolves:

“Democrats believe that the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal should be to deter—and, if necessary, retaliate against—a nuclear attack, and we will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with our allies and military. We will work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our overreliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons. The Trump Administration’s proposal to build new nuclear weapons is unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”

Notably, the platform echoes President Reagan’s commitment to reducing nuclear dangers by returning to talks and treaties. 

“Democrats commit to strengthening the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, maintaining the moratorium on explosive nuclear weapons testing, pushing for the ratification of the UN Arms Trade Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and extending New START. Just as was the case during the height of the Cold War, it’s in our interest to work with Russia to verifiably limit and reduce our nuclear stockpiles. We will build on this foundation to negotiate arms control agreements that reflect the emergence of new players like China, capture new technologies, and move the world back from the nuclear precipice.”

The position to eventually eliminate nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons comes in a section of the platform called “Renewing American Leadership,” which says, "We can only be strong in the world when we are strong and united at home. We believe that a healthy democracy, just society, and inclusive economy are essential prerequisites for effective American leadership abroad. And we believe that the ultimate measure —and purpose—of our foreign policy is whether it protects and advances America’s security, prosperity and values—and delivers results for all Americans.”

Schell demands an eyes-wide-open examination of the global threats we face. He challenges us to think differently about the future in order to preserve the future –– and our species.

Then-Vice President Joe Biden meets a Sailor aboard Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Biden and Dr. Jill Biden visited San Diego in 2009.

‘A Short [Bloody] History of Russia’ – Part II

Review by Bill Doughty––

Over the centuries, the Russian people turned to autocrats and tyrants when faced with seemingly endless invasions and conquests: Scandinavians, Normans, Mongols, Golden Horde, Khanates, Ottomans, French, Germans, and others. And authoritarian Russian leaders waged war over centuries to capture territory, subjugate neighbors, or put down revolts.

This is the second of a two-part review of Mark Galeotti’s short-but-deep “A Short History of Russia: How the World’s Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin.” We continue to see how the shadow of Russian history frames Putin’s actions and how Russia sees itself compared with the West. [Top photo: Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks at the St. Vladimir Monument in Moscow.]

In 1831, Russia's Tsar Nicholas took away constitutional rights of people in Poland. The Poles revolted, and Nicholas's army crushed the revolution.

Facing other revolutions in Europe in 1848, “even though Russia was suffering from famine caused by unusually poor harvests and a cholera epidemic, Nicholas’s troops would again march in the name of the status quo.” They moved against free thinkers in Hungary, Krakow, and the Moldavian movement and fought Persians, Turks, Brits, and French armies.

“Again, the double-headed eagle looked both ways. Nicholas was at once committed to –– as he saw it –– saving Europe from its own ungodly and illegitimate dalliance with liberalism, as well as protecting Russia from European ideas. Aware of the advances in West from European ideas. Aware of the advances in Western science and technology, he wanted to adopt the elements of the West that looked useful, while ignoring the social, political and legal contexts from which they sprang. Without a thriving mercantile class to generate investment capital, without free and open debate in universities and educated circles to generate ideas, and without greater social mobility to generate new cohorts of innovators and skeptics, Russia would always remain backward, desperately trying to adopt and adapt the inventions of others.”

Tsar Alexander II, Alexander II, Empress Maria, 1870

Differences in the interpretation of orthodox Christianity and a desire to keep and control Crimea continued to fuel conflict between Russia and the West.

Despite the skill of some tsarist generals and the bravery of Russia’s serf army, they were outgunned and out-modernized by British and French forces in Crimea. But the war was a catalyst for “arguably the most ambitious social engineering project Russia had yet to see” under Nicholas’s son, Alexander II –– in effect moving out of feudalism. Reforms, however, triggered protests for more freedoms, leading to the state’s response: more repression.

Alexander’s son and heir, Alexander III, proved to be “that most terrible of leaders, both foolish and dutiful” with no answers to new challenges facing Russia in the modern age with growing imperial powers, including in Asia.

“Russia’s eastward expansion had brought it into conflict over Manchuria and Korea with a rising and aggressive Japan.”

A surprise attack by Japan at Port Arthur ignited the Russo-Japanese war that the Russians thought, wrongly, they could win quickly, bringing a sense of victory home to reunite the country. “It soon became clear that this would be anything but (quick). Japan had, after all, been modernizing rapidly and was fighting closer to home.”

Imperial Russian cruiser Jemchug (Zemstchug), interned by the Imperial Japanese Navy in Manila, Philippines, 1905, following Battle of Tsushima. (NHHC)

Galeotti describes the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, which marked the end of the war, as “an expensive and humiliating defeat.” The tsar was still considered “God’s chosen representative” by the people, but 150,000 protesters turned out for a peaceful demonstration, singing hymns and holding religious icons.

But Imperial Guards fired at them and killed hundreds, triggering the 1905 Revolution and leading inexorably to the revolutions of 1917 and Russian Civil War, 1918-22 and the rise of Communism.

World War I is described as a cataclysm that finally ended Russia’s “zombie regime’s existence.” 

Stalin and Lenin busts

Lenin killed off his rivals to rise to power. After he died, his body was mummified and put on display to be deified by the public. The Communist Party continued a form of imperialism, expanding its borders, promoting authoritarianism, and (ironically) establishing a hierarchy of rapacious aristocrats –– now oligarchs.

Stalin took Lenin’s viciousness to a new level. Stalin was “willing to think own a scale which none of his predecessors had the callous coldheartedness to dream.” Land was confiscated and nationalized. Stalin's collectivization of farmlands brought devastation to Ukraine, where three million people died of famine in 1932-3.

Socialism at any cost was another form of “the age-old Russian dilemma,” Galeotti says, which “after all, had been how to modernize while maintaining state power.”

Stalin turned to terror –– even against his own Communist Party. He purged three quarters of representatives to the Party Congress, ninety percent of military generals, and three of the five Red Army marshals. “He understood power at a visceral level, and kept firm control of the political police.” And he understood the power of propaganda, playing to myths, misinformation, and the Big Lie of the father-like “Good Tsar” to justify autocracy.

“As fascism rose in Europe (in the 1930s), Stalin had first hoped to use it to reach some common cause with Britain and France, then opportunistically made his own deals with Hitler’s Germany, leading to their joint partition of Poland in 1939 … Stalin had hoped to postpone war against Germany to give him as much time as possible to prepare.

“When in June 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, it came as a devastating strategic surprise.”

Russia became a superpower as the "USSR" on the crucible of World War II, subsuming Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, with East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania becoming its vassal states.

Brave Russians, Ukranians, and others fought for their survival and not only turned the Nazis away, as they’d done to Napoleon, but also marched from the east into Germany and Berlin itself.

“No wonder the Russians still call this the Great Patriotic War,” Galeotti observes. “It is impossible to underestimate its importance. More than 20 million died in the war, and everybody suffered.”

After Germany’s signing of surrender, while the rest of the Allies recognized May 8 as VE (Victory in Europe Day), Russia chose May 9 as their own exclusive Victory Day to commemorate their role in defeating the Nazis.

Russian soldiers celebrate the defeat of the Nazis in Berlin in May 1945.

But, “the Great Patriotic War represented the apotheosis of a long-standing Russian messianism,” Galeotti writes. Was Russia really a unique entity? Shrouded in a cloak of Sovietism, was it a true defender of orthodoxy and the West, as it seemed to be in helping defeat Nazism? “The irony is that the savior of Europe then became the occupier of half the continent and the threat to the rest, and the Iron Curtain not only locked Russia away from Europe, it made it more ‘other’ than ever.”

The truth hurt. “Horrific details of Stalinist terror challenged the heroic narrative of Soviet industrialization, and even the triumph of the Second World War was undermined by accounts of bad generalship and a callous disregard for the lives of soldiers,” Galeotti observes.

History was not on the side of the Communist Party or of Russia in the 20th century. So, for the most part, Soviet and Russian leaders have tried to erase or rewrite parts of their history they don’t like.

Afghan resistance fighters observe damage to a village caused by Soviet bombing. (DoD)

Despite some blips to the contrary, Khrushchev and Brezhnev maintained a coexistent detente with the West, but by the time of Brezhnev’s death in 1982, “The Soviet Union was mired in a vicious conflict in Afghanistan in which boys were coming home in zinc coffins while the official media still claimed there was no war there.”

Gorbachev was the reformer who brought about the end of the Soviet Union. “His ambition was to save the soviet system. Instead he was to kill it.”

Gorbachev questioned the tsarist system and dogmatic central planning through “perestroika” (restructuring) and “glasnost” (openness). As a result, he helped burn down the house of cards and end the Soviet Union. Fifteen new nations arose from the ashes, including the Russian Federation.

Gorbachev’s successor, Boris Yeltsin, proved to be a poor leader, overcome by alcohol, health issues, painkillers, and self-indulgence, according to Galeotti. Under Yeltsin, Russia saw a rise in oligarchs, corruption, and organized crime. But with military failures in Chechnya, the Kremlin looked for a new authoritarian leader as a successor to Yeltsin.

KGB agent Putin

“They settled on a relatively unknown figure, a certain Vladimir Putin.” Putin, the “new tsar” and “henchman of choice” promised a return to orthodoxy and order, a “dictatorship of the law. Putin had been a KGB officer before becoming a politician, Yeltsin’s deputy chief of staff, and head of the Federal Security Service (successor to the KGB).

Galeotti says Putin’s vision for his country had three points: (1) Russia is prey when divided, strong when united; (2) Russia is (supposedly) not an aggressor but won’t be a victim of the West; and (3) Neither Asiatic nor Eurasian, Russia “it is European but proper European.” “Its orthodox faith is the genuine form of Christianity.”

“A Short History of Russia” includes some good photos and some great maps by Helen Stirling. One of the maps is labeled “Putin’s Wars” and shows locations for the Second Chechen War, 1999-2009; Cyberattack on Estonia, 2007; Invasion of Georgia, 2008; Annexation of Crimea, 2014; Intervention of Donbas, 2014-; Covert ‘political war’ against West, 2014-; and Intervention into Syria, 2015-.

The Kremlin’s effort to convince the world that the Russians are exceptional and better than the West is belied by Putin’s actions in 2022. The attempt to “persuade Russians that they are a special people, apart from Europe and embattled by its malign cultural and geopolitical forces, demonstrates that they are swimming against the tide,” Galeotti concludes.

“This has become a country in which reimagining history has become not just a national pastime but an industry.”

Galeotti evaluates Putin compared with other Russian leaders of the past, including Ivan the Terrible, Stalin (“the much more terrible”), Peter the Great, Lenin, Catherine the Great, and others. And he concludes, perhaps incorrectly, that Putin is largely just a transitional figure.

He also concludes (albeit from a 2020 perspective) that Russia is moving closer to Europe.

Goya's Saturn (Cronus)

Not under Putin. Not in 2022.

Since Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine beginning February 24, Professor Galeotti has provided invaluable assessments, including in The Spectator last month where he observes how Putin is floundering and “seems determined to turn against those he was once closest to –– out of fear, anger and hubris. In the process, he is only further weakening his regime.”

Galeotti compares Putin to the bloodthirsty Greek titan Cronos, which is appropriate considering Russia’s early history of patricide, fratricide, siblicide, filicide and various other -cides.

“Cronos thought that by devouring his children he would be safe. He actually drove the last [his sixth offspring], Zeus, to slay him. We are a long way from any such potential parricide, but it seems fitting that the very agency which did the most to encourage and benefit from Putin's increasing paranoia and isolation is also the first to suffer from it.”

The Cronos comparison brings us back to the beginning of Russia’s long and bloody history –– starting with pagans and ancient, discredited, and messianic wars of aggression.

Add “genocide” to Putin’s record of homicidal mania. Are we also witnessing Russia’s suicide at the hand of a “weak strongman”?