The Guns of August

 

                                             

In all my long life I have never been as concerned at the prospect of a devastating nuclear war than I am now that war is raging in Ukraine. Russia, one of the participants, has the world's largest nuclear arsenal. NATO, backed by the USA, has taken steps to increase its forces  and prepare its armaments. I fear that an accident or mistake could be catastrophic. I am reminded of events that occurred in August over a hundred years ago. Below is a post I wrote on the events of August 1914 that led to the outbreak of the First World War, as well as to the even more devastating Second World War. 

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This summer media sources are remembering the start of the First World War 100 years ago in August 1914. Somewhat overshadowed has been the events of August, 1945 that brought the Second World War to an end. On August 5, 1945 a U.S. Air Force bomber dropped the first Atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four days later a second Atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki. Five days later on August 15 Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government agreed to accede to Allied demands and surrender unconditionally. 

Earlier that year, on May 8, 1945, the European Allies had accepted the surrender of Germany after Hitler’s suicide. VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe and the Allies could now turn their full attention to the defeat of Japan. Joseph Stalin, the brutal Communist dictator in Russia, had refused to open an Asian front against Japan until the defeat of Germany. 

After VE Day Stalin agreed to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet state in Mongolia within three months. On July 26, 1945 the Allied leaders met at Potsdam and issued a demand to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face utter destruction. While the Russians built up their forces in the East, the United States launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on Japanese cities from their recently taken islands in the Pacific.

When these attacks failed to bring the Japanese to their knees, the Allies made preparations for a full-scale attack on the Japanese mainland. Massive casualties were projected on both sides.  Finally, by the beginning of August scientists had successfully tested the Atom bomb. President Truman then made the decision to use the bomb.

I was six years old at the time and have only the slightest recollection of that world-shattering event. I don’t think anyone at the time could have imagined the awful destruction caused by those two bombs. A few years later, after the Soviet Union had managed to steal the technology and build their own bomb, I remember participating in air raid drills in school. Teachers told us to crouch under our desks or just put our heads on the desks with our hands over them. I guess that this exercise was to protect against shattered windows but even we children realized its futility.

As  I got older I became somewhat aware of the debate that had gone on within the Truman administration about the decision to drop the bomb, as well as the debate that still goes on among scholars and other commentators about the necessity and morality of the action. I’m sure that this question is one in which there are strong arguments on both sides. For myself, I still wonder why it was necessary to drop the second bomb on Nagasaki only four days after Hiroshima. 

Coincidentally, at the time Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The day the Japanese government agreed to surrender was August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Although Catholics had celebrated the feast of the Assumption on August 15 for centuries, the doctrine had never been officially defined by the Church. 

Maybe it was the awful destruction of the Second World War, maybe it was the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe it was the prospect of an atomic arms race, but only five years after the surrender of Japan on August 15, Pope Pius XII, in a rare exercise of Papal infallibility, declared that belief in the Assumption of Mary was a binding doctrine of the Catholic church.

So far, despite the Cold War and the continued development of nuclear weapons, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique.  Although warfare has continued, there has thankfully been no worldwide conflagration to match either WWI  or WWII. It might not seem so, but since August 15, 1945 we have witnessed an unprecedented era of peace. 

Note; Now in 2022 it seems to me that the preservation of this peace is the most important issue of the day. It is far far more important than any other issue facing us today. The consequences of a nuclear exchange would be far more devastating than climate change or any other popular issue. Our government has just decided to spend an incredible amount of money on a myriad of these issues but a spark in the Ukraine could start a fire that would make it all meaningless. 

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Ukraine: a Civil War?

My guess is that Russia’s Vladimir Putin regards the conflict in Ukraine as a Civil war, and not as an invasion of a neighboring country. Unlike others who guess at his motives, I don’t think he is a madman, or a Hitler out to conquer the world. In other words, I believe that for Putin Ukraine has been an integral part of Russia for over 500 years, and that the separation after the recent collapse of the Soviet empire was a dangerous mistake, politically, economically, and militarily.

Looking through an atlas of European history, I noticed that only about the time that Christopher Columbus discovered a New World does the name  Russia appear on the map. Before that it was called Muscovy since in the later Middle Ages, a people from the area of what is now Moscow began to travel, explore, and trade down the great Russian rivers that emanated from the nearby Valdai hills, and that eventually brought them to the Baltic, the Black, and Caspian seas.

The history of Russia under the Czars (Emperors) is a history of conflict with the tribes and peoples they encountered along these rivers, all of whom they eventually brought under subjugation. Eventually, they came up against more powerful opponents like the vast Kingdoms of Lithuania and Poland, as well as the mighty Ottoman or Turkish empire. Thumbing through the atlas I could see that by the nineteenth century  Lithuania and Poland had largely been absorbed by the Russian empire, and that the Ottoman empire was shrinking. 

On none of these maps does the word Ukraine appear. It and its people were always considered a part of the Russian empire. Although the Communist revolution of 1917 did not alter the imperial policy of the Czars, the Soviet leaders did create the fiction of an independent collection of popular republics, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Only then does Ukraine, the land of the Ukrainian people, appear on the map. Nevertheless, like all these Soviet republics, it was ruled with an iron hand by the Communist party leadership in Moscow.  The despotism of Joseph Stalin led to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians before WWII. After the war,  Ukraine became a member of the UN but still remained subject to Russian laws and control.

In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Ukraine shook off its legal ties with Russia, but its government still had close ties with Russia. It agreed, to return the nuclear missiles placed there by the Soviet Union back to Russia in exchange for guarantees of its security. It established close economic ties with Russia and became a major importer of Russian oil and natural gas. 

I am not able to describe what happened in Ukraine after 1991 that led to the present conflict. I do know that there was graft and corruption as wealthy oligarchs profited from the breakup of Communist industries in both Russia and Ukraine. I also know that during the Obama administration, Vice-President Joe Biden was put in charge of US relations with Ukraine. Not only did his son land a lucrative position with a Ukrainian energy company, but also, Biden bragged about holding up a huge aid package to Ukraine until its government removed a prosecutor investigating corruption, an interference in another country’s affairs that seems far more impeachable than President Trump’s famous call to President Zelensky. *

In any event, during the Obama administration Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to reclaim some territory given up in the 1991 agreement. He was quiet during the Trump administration but shortly after President Biden declared last November that he would welcome Ukraine’s admission in NATO, he launched the current military invasion. It seems obvious today that Ukrainian independence had become a more and more bitter pill for Putin to swallow. 

As noted above I believe that Putin regards the current conflict as a Civil war, and , as such, it is no one else’s business. I am reminded of our own Civil War. In 1860 the election of Abraham Lincoln led the Southern states to secede from the Union almost immediately upon his inauguration. Lincoln raised a large army, not to abolish slavery, but to quell a rebellion and bring the seceding states back into the Union. He and his advisors must have thought it would be a brief conflict, but the war turned out to be a long, drawn out affair with over 650000  casualties. 

I wonder whether Lincoln, if he  could have foreseen the death and destruction, might have allowed The South to secede. Looking back, we can see that time and technology would have put an end to slavery in a few years. Rather than creating a more perfect union, the war only inflamed and prolonged sectional animosities.

I believe that Vladimir Putin has made a great mistake in attempting to regain the Ukraine for Russia. Even if he wins the war, the death and devastation will be enormous. He may conquer the country, but he will never gain the friendship and loyalty of the conquered people.  Time and technology could eventually have created a working relationship between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine was Russia’s best customer. Why bomb your best customer?

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* I am still waiting for the book that will examine the role of Vice-President Biden in the affairs of Ukraine during the administration of President Obama. 

No Country for Old Men

“A lowered mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation.” 

President Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the above words at a press conference shortly after he was re-elected to serve a second term in 1936.  Roosevelt offered these remarks on the incapacity of old age in order to justify his plan to pack the Supreme Court with new justices.  During his first term parts of his New Deal agenda had been declared unconstitutional by the Court.  Since Roosevelt could not fire or replace the existing judges, he proposed to add one new judge for every judge on the Court over the age of 70. His remarks, ironic as they were coming from a man crippled with paralysis conveniently hidden by a favorable press, did not go over well and he had to scrap the plan.

Although his remarks on the problems of old age were just a bald-faced attempt to justify his court packing scheme, I can say, at the age of 83, that there is truth in them.  Even when I retired 15 years ago, I was finding it difficult to do the ordinary tasks of my financial planning practice, as well as keep up with new developments in the field. At the time, I realized that it was time to hand over my clients to younger planners. It was time to retire.

Two years ago, when Joe Biden ran for President, it was obvious to me that he was suffering from old age. After a long, undistinguished career, the Democratic party should have put him out to pasture but since none of the other Democratic candidates had any popular appeal, Biden seemed to be the only one with a chance to defeat President Trump. His run for the Presidency was sad to watch as his advisors prevailed upon him to campaign from his basement, and make as few public appearances as possible. 

Now, after 18 months as President, his incapacity is even more obvious. He stumbles and falls. He holds few press conferences and only speaks in public using a teleprompter, and even then, he fumbles for words. At my age, I can understand. I gave up lecturing at my local senior center three years ago because it took too much out of me. But Biden is President of the United States. He carries the nuclear codes around with him. 

I do not want to make a list of mistakes President Biden has made since taking office. But I would like to point out what he hasn’t done and is obviously incapable of doing. He is not capable of being the leader of the free world. Russia invades Ukraine and where is the impassioned appeal for peace from the President of the United States.? Where is the appearance at the U.N. calling for a cease-fire and a peace conference? Two members of that organization are launching missiles at each other. Soldiers and civilians are dying every day. Where is the outrage on the part of our President? What has happened to the summit meeting with Vladimir Putin?

Rather than become a world-class leader the President has become a world-class denier. He takes responsibility for nothing, and just blames others. He denied that the retreat from Afghanistan was a fiasco. He blamed President Trump for 250,000 Covid deaths during his term in office and claimed that alone made him unfit for the office. Now that over 700,000 Covid deaths have occurred since he took office, he expresses no regret and assumes no responsibility. He and his advisors claimed that inflation was only transitory but now that gasoline prices are at an all-time high, his party re-names a multi-billion spending bill, the Inflation Reduction act. 

From the day of his election, I have believed that President Biden would not be able to complete his term of office, much less run again in 2024 at the age of 82. Old age will continue to take its toll, but there is also the possibility that circumstances might lead Democratic party leaders to force him to step down, especially if the upcoming mid-term elections turn out to be a disaster. 

Eight years after Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the words cited above, he was running for an unprecedented fourth term in the midst of WWII. His party pushed his nomination even though leaders knew he was a dying man. James Farley, an astute politician, and one of FDR’s long-time supporters resigned from his leadership position in protest over the impending nomination. He thought the Democratic party would be unfaithful to its principles if it nominated Roosevelt for another term that would likely kill him.

 “anyone with a grain of common sense would surely realize  from the appearance of the President that he is not a well man and there is not a chance in the world for him to carry on four years more and face the problems that a President will have before him; he just can’t survive another presidential term.”

The above quotes are from Bret Baier’s 2019 book on Roosevelt, Three Days at the Brink, FDR’s Daring Gamble to Win World War II.  According to Baier, Farley thought that “Democratic politicians were taking the easy way out, protecting their own hides at the expense of the national good.” 

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Too Darn Hot

 

                                     

 

The country is in the midst of a heat wave, and inevitably headlines are making dire claims about global warming and quoting politicians calling for emergency action. It is totally unreasonable and unscientific to confuse or equate weather and climate. Changes in weather occur routinely every year and range from summertime heat to freezing in winter. It is perfectly normal for temperatures to climb into the 90s during the summer. It is not a sign of global warming. It takes centuries to really notice changes in climate.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, temperatures have been tracked in New York City’s Central Park. Here, for example, is a list of the highest temperatures recorded at the start of each decade since the beginning of the last century

2021—98 degrees

2011—104 degrees 

2001—103 degrees

1991—102 degrees

1981—96 degrees

1971—96 degrees

1961—97 degrees

1951—94 degrees

1941—98 degrees

1931—99 degrees

1921—96 degrees

1911—100 degrees

1901—100 degrees.

The highest temperature recorded was on July 9, 1936. The thermometer hit 106 degrees that day. I know that the figures above are just a statistical snapshot, but they do illustrate that it is supposed to be hot in July and August. Looking at the figures, the only real difference over the past 100 years is that we have done something about the weather. Air-conditioning, one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, has revolutionized life in this country.

Our homes, offices, factories, shopping centers, theaters, arenas, and churches are  comfortably air-conditioned.  Actually, without air-conditioning our modern way of life would be unthinkable. We owe it all to fossil fuels which have provided the electricity that powers every air-conditioning unit. I am old enough to know what it was like to live without air-conditioning and it was not nice. I still think of my poor mother who gave birth to me in July. 

Anyway, weather is not climate. As noted above, weather goes through normal annual cycles, but climate cycles can take centuries to detect. Recently, studies have claimed  that the global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century, and that the increase is due to human activity in the industrial age. I can imagine that today scientists using modern technology can measure global temperatures, but I do not understand how they can come up with global figures from over 100 years ago. 

Moreover, modern climate studies admit that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to factor in the effect of volcanic or solar activity in calculations of global temperature. Some believe that solar activity like sunspots is a significant factor in climate change. After all, the sun is our furnace. 

But let’s assume that the studies are correct, and that global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century. Rather than disaster, it has coincided with the greatest period of human development and prosperity in history. Although headlines carry stories of heat related deaths during the current heat wave, deaths from heat have decreased dramatically over the past century. Deaths related to cold are five times greater. Starvation and malnutrition as a cause of death has also reached all-time lows in the past century even considering the well-known man-made starvation efforts in Communist dominated countries. 

So even if the global climate is changing it might not be such a bad thing.  Our planet has been around for over 4 billion years. It has gone through every imaginable catastrophe during that time. It revolves around a large star 93 million miles away which is itself located on the periphery of a huge galaxy which is moving rapidly through the universe. During my lifetime, this planet has probably carried me millions of miles away from where it was in 1939. 

Human beings  have been around less than 50000 years on this planet. We certainly have the ability to make our lives better or worse but to think we can save Planet Earth seems to me the height of arrogance. In 1933 composer Irving Berlin wrote the song “Heat Wave.” In 1958 composer Cole Porter wrote “Too Darn Hot” for his hit musical “Kiss Me Kate.” Both songs referred to wickedly hot weather like we are experiencing today. Since these songs were written, human ingenuity used air conditioning to do something about the weather. But I suspect that our efforts to deal with climate change will do little good and potentially much harm to life on our planet.

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