Battlefield Diplomacy

Book Review: The Dead Hand - The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

David E. Hoffman's Dead Hand  is both well-researched and well-written - but in its focus on Gorbachev and Reagan, it lacks analysis. When faced with the question, why did  Gorbachev continue funding the hidden, and quite illegal, Soviet biological weapons program while seeking the complete elimination of nuclear and chemical weapons, Hoffman shrugs. Hoffman never raises the question of why the Soviets hated Reagan's SDI ("Star Wars" - ballistic missile defense). Nor does it occur to Hoffman to examine what Reagan did, and could have done, to push his Administration to support his goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons. I don't have a good answer for the last - but Hoffman, as a political reporter, could have presumably done more on the question.

The penultimate chapter of Dead Hand hints at why the Soviets, if not Gorbachev himself, kept the biological weapons program. Namely, it becomes a war-winning weapon in the absence of opposing WMD systems, particularly if the weapons are deployed on the scale envisioned by the Soviets. Compliance with the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BWTC) is still, in 2015, nearly impossible to verify, given the BWTC's lack of any verification protocol. As shown by Aum Shinrikyo's 1994 and 1995 (Tokyo subway) attacks, biological weapons are comparatively easy to acquire and deliver, with research and production of the weapons easily concealed.

Conversely, Hoffman never considers why the Soviets feared a viable ballistic missile defense (BMD). Hoffman takes Reagan at his word, that BMD would be a passive shield. Hoffman never considers that shields and armor exist not to preserve the combatant against repeated, unreturned blows, but to enable the armored fighter to deliver a decisive attack while surviving the exchange.

Let's consider two countries, perfect reciprocals. Both have 1000 missiles with 3 nuclear warheads each. Each has 100 cities with 1 million population each; each city takes 5 warheads to destroy. Likewise, each missile is in a silo, which takes two warheads to destroy. Each missile has 95% accuracy against a city, but only 
60% against a silo. (You have to hit much closer to a hardened silo to destroy it, compared to a city.)

Without BMD, a first strike against silos leaves 100 to 200 missiles to retaliate. The retaliation essentially destroys 90% of the attacker's cities.  If the first striker has BMD to destroy that retaliation, it can strike without injury to itself. And if the BMD has to handle 100 to 200 missiles, rather than 1000, the task is simplified and the efficacy of the shield improved.

The world is safer with fewer nuclear weapons, and will be safer with even fewer still. But the last phase, from several hundred to zero, will be tricky - and much trickier than the Dead Hand would lead one to believe.

Book review: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Compelling. Evocative. Persuasive. Whether you are opposed to the war on drugs, fully support it, are undecided or just uninformed, it is worth your time to read this investigation in to how the war started, who its victims are, and whether it is just making things worse. Even before I read Johann Hari's recent book (published this year (2015)), I believed that drug prohibition had many of the ill effects as alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, with no better chance for success. (Crime, smuggling, corruption, police brutality, poison deaths - all with little effect on usage.)  Hari comes to the same conclusion, looking at the U.S. experience from 1914 to 2014, and at the experience of other countries, notably Switzerland, Portugal, and Uruguay, which have to varying degrees, ended the war on drugs - and seen drug abuse decline as a result.

Hari's subject is controversial, as is Hari himself (he lost his position as popular columnist over plagiarism charges, no doubt one of the reasons he is so careful to document sources in this book).

Hari humanizes his subject, and in particular its victims. Even the drug dealers, mob bosses, and cartel hitmen appear as humans, to the dismay perhaps of those seeking still to divide the world into black and white, good and evil. (Indeed, from the book it appears the only person for whom Hari has no sympathy is the late Dr. Timothy Leary.)

You need not accept Hari's thesis that addiction stems primarily from isolation to perceive that his examples of decriminalization and legalization as successfully reducing the harmful effects of drug use are, at least in their settings, valid. Or vice-versa. The War on Drugs -- Nancy Reagan's facile "Just Say No," "This your brain on drugs," DA.R.E., and harsh raids and punishments you wouldn't inflict on a rabid dog -- has failed. What was that definition of insanity?

Book Review: Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, by Michael S. Neiberg

Did you know:

a) most Europeans did not want a general war in 1914?
b) most Europeans did not expect the war to last more than a few weeks or at most months after it did start?
c) war causes privation, and seeing the dead and wounded from war is emotionally painful?

If your answer to all three is "yes" - skip Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, by Michael S. Neiberg.

Atomic Bombs on Japan - Unnecessary, or Even a War Crime?

Sorry, but I utterly disagree. Full disclosure: if not for the sudden end to the war in the Pacific, unforeseeable without the use of the atomic bomb, I probably wouldn't even be writing this. My father narrowly escaped death off Okinawa, where his lightly-armed, unarmored, and highly vulnerable merchant ship was repeatedly targeted by kamikaze attacks. When the war ended, he was scheduled to return to the Pacific, where the Japanese had five times as many kamikaze attacks readied - Allied planners estimated that 1/3 to 1/2 of the invasion force could be lost before landing.

The last straw was not Soviet attacks against the Japanese army occupying Manchuria, which was not considered a core part of the Japanese Empire. Starting in 1942, most of the Japanese army in Manchuria had been transferred to fight the US; what remained was raw recruits, understrength and poorly equipped. Indeed, in his speech announcing surrender, Emperor Hirohito referred to the atomic bombings, but not once to the Soviet attack, a view he repeated to General MacArthur in September 1945.

I am at the forefront of those calling for further sharp reductions in American (and other states') nuclear weapons. I am proud to be considered a member of the US delegation that negotiated the New START Treaty, which cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons and their launchers for both the US and Russia. I am proud of the work I did to push for a treaty ending production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons (Pakistan continues to block work on such an agreement.) . I have written both of my Senators, and my Congressman, urging them to support the P5+1 Iran deal. I have made my support for that deal very public. I even question whether US interests in the Pacific and Asia were of a such a degree as to risk provoking war with Japan (my internal jury is still out on that one). But I do not let my strong, unshakeable stance against the continued construction and possession of nuclear weapons blind me to their great utility in ending the horrors that would have ensued had World War II been prosecuted after August 1945.

Iran Deal: SEN Chuck Schumer Demands a Unicorn

Senator Chuck Schumer (D - NY) has stated he will oppose the P5+1 deal halting and rolling back efforts by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. https://medium.com/@SenSchumer/my-position-on-the-iran-deal-e976b2f13478  Why? Well, centrally he says: "First, inspections are not “anywhere, anytime” and "Even more troubling is the fact that the U.S. cannot demand inspections unilaterally. "

That's right, Senator, Iran is not going to let foreign inspectors walk into ANY location in Iran, at ANY time, at the sole say-so and direction of its chief global opponent. What country, not prostrate after a total war, would allow that? You, sir, have asked for a unicorn. Under the deal, the IAEA inspections are extremely rigorous, more so than in any other country. Real arms control experts have said it is nearly impossible for Iran to have a nuclear weapons program under this deal. http://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8967147/iran-nuclear-deal-jeffrey-lewis  The level of inspections demanded by Schumer are unneccessary and tantamount to granting the CIA an open door into the entire Iranian government, economy, and society. After the 1953 CIA-backed coup, the Iranians would never agree to that.

Senator Schumer's standards for the key goals under this agreement are fanciful. He might as well ask for a unicorn.

Book Review: Dark Invasion - 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America

Well, the sub-title tells you all you need to know about the subject of the book. The title plays off that of the memoirs of one of the German saboteurs, Dark Invader. Howard Blum's tale is compelling, and reads like an action-adventure novel, only it all happened. Murder, disguise, espionage, sabotage, suicide, attempted assassination of a powerful NY banker, rebellion, war in Mexico, WMD, detective stake-outs and chases, high-level briefings of the US President - it's all here. And it's history, not fiction.

As a story, Dark Invasion is gripping. As history, this well-researched account is even more compelling. In setting out the extensive, notorious and scandalous efforts of German diplomats, agents, and disgracefully not a few dual-nationals to violently block shipments from the "neutral" US to Britain and France in their war with Germany, Blum underscores an often overlooked motivation for America's entry into the Great War - German provocations, which even President Wilson ultimately found too much to withstand.

Blum's focus on Tom Tierney, the NYPD detective trying to halt Germany's attacks on allied shipping in his home town and harbor, is an effective device.  Tierney reminded me of Jack Ryan, but I'd rather have Tierney on my side than Ryan any day.