Picto Diary - 15, 16 April 2023 - Hoover Spring Retreat, Phoenix, AZ (2)
Notes on speaker remarks are mine. I am responsible for errors... omission or commission!
Above: Admiral James O. Ellis, Jr., Senior Fellow Hoover Institution and Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief of the Defense Staff (retired), United Kingdom armed forces. Hoover Institution, Spring Retreat, 15 April 2023.
Multipolar World says Sir Nick
1. We now live in a multipolar world... unlike cold war period when we lived in bipolar world.
Pro West
Anti West
Non-aligned
2. We live in an era of disorder. Post WWII order led by the United States is no longer respected.
3. Character of politics and warfare is changing due to the democratization of information.
Other selected Sir Nick takeaways:
West's indifference to Russia's Crimea annexation and bungled US withdrawal from Afghanistan led to Putin/Russia invasion of Ukraine.
Notwithstanding, Russia surprised by early NATO show of unity.
Russia morphing to North Korea like pariah state.
If Russia is not defeated by Ukraine within the next year, ten years or more of "cold war" like conditions will likely eventuate... a serious distraction from the China problem.
Putin may be a psychopath, but he's also a rational actor. Use of nukes unlikely.
In the West we talk more and act less. This is perceived as weakness by our adversaries.
Tactful Admonitions to America left by Sir Nick:
“We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth, goodwill toward men…” JFK, 22 November 1963 (speech to be delivered on day of JFK assassination).
"First principle of foreign policy: Good government at home." Unidentified member of British Parliament
Movie Anecdote from Mwah (sic) to Sir Nick
Encounter with Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief of the Defense Staff (retired), United Kingdom armed forces. Hoover Institution Spring Retreat, Phoenix AZ, 15 April 2023.
I caught up with Sir Nick in a private coffee break conversation. I referenced his "more action, less talking" admonition to Western leaders in his earlier presentation with an anecdote from the film, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. In the film, the Eli Wallach character, Tuco, is taking a bath in heavy suds in an abandoned hotel. He is surprised by a former nemesis who, intending to kill Tuco, soliloquizes on Tuco's many sins while he holds Tuco at gunpoint. Suddenly, Tuco pulls his six-gun out of the suds and shoots his castigator. After the shooting, Tuco says: "Don't talk, shoot!" I suggested to Sir Nick that he could use that anecdote in future speeches where he admonished more action and less talking. Sir Nick seemed to accept my suggestion amiably. What else would he do? Be dismissive? Nah. I saw Sir Nick and his wife early the next AM (16 April 2023) as we were leaving the hotel. We had another nice little chat. I thanked him for his tactful admonishments to America's leaders given in his remarks the previous day. He smiled, and said, "we in the UK are not without blame when it comes to hesitation on advancing the aims of the West in today's chaotic world."
My Take: Ukraine Distraction
America's multi-billion dollar spend to aid Ukraine unnecessarily escalates the risk of world war while diminishing US focus on more important priorities e.g. rise of China and US border control.
Russia's assault on Ukraine is a regional matter and not a threat to world peace.
Post WWII, the West rightly feared the Bolsheviks because they were set, backed up by nuclear threat, on exportation of Marxist ideology worldwide. Today, Putin, unlike his Bolshevik predecessors, has no designs to ideologically convert the world. He does, however, seek to revive the essence of Mother Russia, culturally crippled under eighty years of Bolshevik rule. Russia, with a population decline of one million annually and half of Russian males inebriated at any given time is dying. Putin knows his patient, fading Russia, needs defibrillation. Teaming with Russian cultural avatar, the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin's last-ditch effort to revive Russian culture extends to incorporating parts of Asia and Europe into Russia where there are concentrations of Russian people and where Russian culture has predominated over the centuries. Russia doesn't have the resources, or the intent, to be a military threat beyond areas of Russian population assemblage. To be sure, Russia's nuclear arsenal is formidable, but Russia's leadership, ruthless though they be, is made up of rational actors who will not resort to the use of nuclear weapons, a surefire end to any hope to revive the current moribund Russian culture. European nations, closer to the fray, may have reason to think differently about Russian aggression in Ukraine, but the US should stay out of it.
US response to Russia's assault on Ukraine has been uncertain and ineffective.
Notwithstanding the undesirability of US intervention to resist Russian aggression in Ukraine, a full-throated effort by NATO/US to oust Russia from Ukraine would have been a better option to respond to Putin's belligerence than the ongoing slow burn, costly, dribbling of US war materiel into Ukraine portending ambiguous war results and depleting stocks of US ammo. Despite its rough edged, seemingly haphazard military effort, Russia has patience and staying power and ability to suffer on a level that most Westerners cannot comprehend. And so, without a US strategy to negotiate a peace, Russia will "win" the war on current trajectory of limited western military sustenance for Ukraine. A US loss in Ukraine will empower Russia to become a world player beyond its true financial and military strength and position China to accelerate its own Russia-like effort to further advance Chinese tribalism by attacking Taiwan.
Former friends temporize in the wake of perceived US weakness as a world leader.
Meanwhile, current, equivocal US "support" for the Ukraine war serves to bolster the strength of the growing non-aligned movement thereby weakening US ties with longtime friends such as Saudi Arabia and India. The strengthening nonaligned group ignores western trade and financial sanctions on Russia and increases its trade in Russian oil and armaments. Some trade deals between heretofore US friendly, now nonaligned nations, and China are being transacted in yuan posing a threat to US dollar reserve currency status. China's military position is strengthened as US ammo stocks are depleted. As a result of its equivocal actions in Ukraine, heretofore strong US allies are hedging their bets on the US. A weakened US, perceived or real, raises the likelihood of world war.
Ergo...
Without a US laser focus on rising China military, cyber, and currency threats, and domestic issues such as the US border fiasco, the world is less safe today as a result of the Biden administration's equivocating, wasteful and unnecessary financial/weapons aid to Ukraine. Pushback, if any, against Russian aggression in Ukraine should come from Europe. Other than angling for negotiations to end the current war, and transitioning arms assistance to Ukraine to European nations, the US should stay out of it and shift its focus to the more important priorities of countering the rise of China and US border control, both of which actions will make the world a safer place.
Above Lanhee Chen. Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution. Hoover Institution, Spring Retreat, 15 April 2023. Topic: Obamacare is here to stay, so what's next? (File Image).
Above: Abbas Milani, Visiting professor of Political Science, and the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University; Research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Understanding protests in Iran | Stanford News
Excerpts from Stanford News article dated 26 September 2022 (link just above).
What broader issues are people protesting against/about, and why?
People want democracy; women insist on equality; a vast majority of people want a normal government at peace with the world; they want independence for a prosperous Iran. The regime offers despotism, misogyny, a bankrupt economy, subservience to Putin and China.
What do people need to know about clerical rule in Iran and its restraints on women’s rights?
The Islamic regime in its constitution bars women from any of the high offices in the country. Based on its iteration of Islamic sharia it considers the life of women literally worth half the life of men. Men have the right to polygamy. Women can file for divorce only under rare circumstances. After divorce, women receive virtually nothing by way of community property and women virtually never get custody of their children. Girls get half their share of inheritance compared to that of their brothers. Women cannot receive a passport without the written approval of their fathers, husbands or grandfathers, or uncles. No surgery can be performed on women without the approval of their male “guardian.” Many academic disciplines are closed to women.
Under the current rule in Iran, what is needed to effect meaningful, democratic change?
For 30 years the people of Iran have tried every conceivable path to reform. Khamenei and his dogmatic defense of clerical despotism and his affinity for Russia have convinced the people that radical change is the only alternative.
What history is important for people to know about the country in order to understand the current protest?
Iranian women have for almost 150 years been struggling for freedom and equality. A couple of years before Seneca Falls [the 1848 convention that launched the women’s rights movement in the United States], a woman in Iran tore asunder her veil and delivered an erudite sermon to a bewildered audience. Women and men of Iran have fought for democracy, sovereignty, and independence ever since. These events are yet another stage in that long, almost Sisyphean, struggle.
The current protests are the latest manifestation of an incessant struggle by Iranian women and men for a secular, democratic Iran. The 1979 revolution was in reality an effort to create such a society. Clerical despotism, obsessively fighting the West, and being supinely subservient to Russia and China was not what the people fought for. The current stage of unrest is yet another effort to set the ship of state on its intended course.
The Iran Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) is a branch of the Iranian military that was founded in 1979 after the country's revolution to protect the Islamic republic political system. It has a significant presence in the region, especially in Iraq and Syria, where it fights against ISIS and other enemies. It also controls the Basij militia and the Quds force, which are involved in domestic and foreign operations. It is estimated to have more than 190,000 active personnel and has close ties to the Supreme Leader and other senior figures. It is designated as a terrorist organization by some countries, including the United States.
Above: Former heads President's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), all affiliated with Hoover Institution today., Michael Boskin (CEA, 1989 to 1993); Kevin Hassett (CEA, 2017 to 2019); Tyler Goodspeed (CEA, 2020 to 2021). File images.
Armchair discussion; selected takeaways:
Efforts to replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency are worrying, but broad success of such endeavors is not imminent. US rule of law and sophisticated orderly markets e.g., futures market insures ongoing trust of the dollar... for now. Also, there are no deep, liquid markets for the Euro, and ongoing risk of retrieving capital from China hinder a rapid move away from the dollar. We cannot deny, however, that there is a beginning of an erosion of faith in the US.
Opportunity zones have made people better off.
California shows the dangers of being a one-party state. $30 billion deficit.
$1.2 trillion subsidies to green projects in next ten years. Rather, we need good tax policy that contributes to capital growth.
Above: Jim Mattis, Hoover Fellow (file image). Hoover Institution Spring Retreat, 15 April 2023.
General Mattis was at the retreat, but, not as a speaker. I can speculate (but absolutely don't know) that he might have come to meet with Sir Nicholas Carter, Chief (retired) UK Defense Staff, this AM's retreat guest speaker (perhaps in concert with Secretary Rice and Admiral Ellis).
At cocktail hour I joined a conversation between two retreat goers and General Mattis. "Should we be worried," I asked, "about stores of ammo being shipped to Ukraine weakening our own defense capability?" "Stores are diminished," said Mattis, "but the manufacturing capacity to replenish them is robust." I asked a second question. "The US military is experiencing a consequential recruiting shortfall. Comment?" General Mattis replied, to the effect, "the reasons for the recruiting shortfall are complicated. But have you ever heard any one of the last four presidents, Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden, publicly tout the value of military service while simultaneously encouraging US young people to sign up? I haven't. So, we have to rely solely on the 'Master Sergeant recruiter in Topeka, Kansas' to shoulder all the burden of recruiting."
Above: Niall Ferguson and Victor Davis Hansen, Hoover Fellows (file images). Hoover Spring Retreat, Phoenix, AZ, 15 April 2023.
Pre-dinner in the McArthur Ballroom, The Biltmore Hotel, Phoenix, AZ. The two rockstar Hoover Fellows lightheartedly tried to find areas where they disagreed, acknowledging that on most things they agree.
One area of disagreement? Great writers. Ferguson: British writers are better than American authors. Voire: Shakespear, Austin, Fleming, More, Dickens, Orwell yada. Hansen: "Your wrong, Niall. We have Steinbeck, Poe, Hemingway, Austin, Cather...hey wait, Niall, you're now an American, what are you doing touting British authors?"
As the Ferguson and Hansen were leaving the stage after their armchair session, I left my table and rushed up to them to say, addressing VDH, "you should be ashamed for leaving off your list of great American writers, Stanford's own Wallace Stegner and his great, Pulitzer Prize winning novel... here VDH interrupted me and said, "yes! 'Angle of Repose!' I read that novel." "Yes," Hansen said smiling, I will include Stegner on my list the next time." Wearing a cheeky smile, Ferguson interjected, "Agatha Christie was a better writer than Stegner!" I rushed back to my table to leave the two Hoover fellows to their own devices after what, perhaps, was an inopportune time for me to waylay them. But they seemed to enjoy the brief discussion.
Next morning (16 April 2023), at an early AM breakfast at the hotel, I saw VDH again as I was leaving the restaurant. I eyed him, smiled, and mouthed the word, "Stegner." VDH soliloquized on how he had once taken a class from Stegner's brother but had never met Stegner himself. I mentioned Stegner's nonfiction writing about John Wesley Powell, "Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West." VDH responded by noting Powell's Civil War history, his having lost an arm etc. Editorial from Mwah (sic): Stanford should do more to push forward its own Wallace Stegner as one of America's greatest authors.
Back to the event the previous evening. Ferguson noted that there may have been another point on which the two scholars disagreed. "Victor," said Ferguson, "you noted that Trump would win the 2024 presidential election if he ran against Biden. I disagree with that." VDH: "I said that Trump would have to be nominated first and it's not clear to me that that is a foregone conclusion." Many of the 300 strong audience of Hoover diners (and donors!) applauded Hansen's prediction about DJT, but a majority (according to my Jack Reacher penchant for accuracy) remained quiet, perhaps reflecting, as a likely, generally Republican** audience, their ambivalence about the prospects of another Trump presidency OR about his electability.
**Note: Hoover Institution is a non-partisan organization dedicated to the preservation of and advancement of free market principles. Likely more Republicans than Democrats sign up for the free-market model these days.