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>What he did understand was diplomacy and statecraft. There are few, if any, people left in the federal government who understand these things. Least of all in

>What he did understand was diplomacy and statecraft. There are few, if any, people left in the federal government who understand these things. Least of all in the upper echelons of the State Department. They are mostly just careerist technocrats who have bought into the arrogant neocon illusion best captured by Karl Rove: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” These days we get better diplomacy and restraint from the Pentagon leadership, ironically.

082349872349872 4y ago
(a) interesting that he wished to unfreeze the Cold War. Unlike Kennedy and Khrushchev*, however, Kennan managed to avoid getting cancelled. (b) viewing action as its own virtue was one of Mussolini's tropes: neo- something other than -con. * the pair of whom, in a different time line, might have managed it? > ... a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. — JFK [Edit: looks like the wake of McCarthy caught Kennan. So he may not exactly have been cancelled, but reading between the lines I suspect that's how he wound up an academic (the modern equivalent of sent to a monastery?)]
thriftwy 4y ago
Whoa, that's the landscape monologue from Russian DMB movie! What year was that? …while the enemy is plotting their assault, we change the landscape, even manually. When the attack starts, the enemy is lost on unfamiliar terrain and loses ability to fight. That's the reason, that's our strategy…
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  if it was the original ДМБ, that was 2000; "Rove" was 2004 (I don't know if he's admitted ownership) As mentioned in a sibling comment, however, elevating "men of action" over "eggheads of reality" has the sort of history that Ezra Pound celebrated in the mid-1900s. IIRC there was a substantially-sized war fought over the principle at the time?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
paganel 4y ago
I'm now reading an interview book with this most excellent gentleman, Alexandre de Marenches [1] (the book was published in the late 1980s, the gentleman has passed away in the meantime), who used to be head of for French foreign intelligence services in the 1970s (among many other things he did in his life). Even back then he was saying pretty much the same thing, i.e. that in the whole free West there were at most 10 people who really understood diplomacy and how geopolitics works, and Kissinger was one of them. Back to the current intellectual nous (or lack thereof) of the current State Department, is telling when you compare how much Kennan intellectually prepared himself prior to him getting posted to Moscow in the 1930s to the low level of intellectual discourse coming from present-day State Department luminaries. Kennan actually took a dive in the dark and visited inland Russia just to experience it and its people, and all this during Stalin's times, during the purges. Something tells me a guy like McFaul (former US ambassador to Moscow) would have never done that, has never done that, but that hasn't stopped him from writing a book on Russia which is taken seriously by some powers that be. As you say, the only hope for the West, from an intellectual coupled with an understanding of geopolitics pov, comes from the Pentagon people. Later edit: More on the Marenches gentleman, who was just a very interesting guy: at some point during the interview (this was happening back in 1986) he did mention as an actual potential threat for the West the possibility of the Shiites getting control of the whole area from the Mediterranean all the way to the border with Pakistan, i.e. Iran managing to extend its control over Iraq and Syria and "get" to the Shiites who live in Lebanon. That is just what has happened, more or less, ever since the West lost the plot in the Syrian Civil War, never mind the whole Iraq War debacle (caused by guys like Rove and his friends). Also, and related to the tech world and this forum, towards the end of the 1970s the same Marenches made up a list of 8 rare metals which he was regarding as essential for modern industrial development (I'm too lazy to copy-paste the list in there, cobalt was part of the list, that I remember). He soon realised that the Russians has direct access to all those 8 metals, while the US and the free West more generally speaking had direct access to only 4 out of those 8. After he quit his job at the helm of the French foreign intelligence services in 1981 he actually presented Reagan with that list and with a map of where each metal was more heavily concentrated/located. Reagan kindly asked Marenches to hand him that list, which Marenches of course did. Prior to that, the same Marenches and French foreign intelligence services were instrumental in setting up the 1978 Battle of Kolwezi, in Southern Congo. It so happens that the region around Kolwezi is very reach in cobalt, as can be seen in maps from this official German website [3]. The US authorities only now realise that they can't let Congo slip [4], but guys like Marenches and Kennan and Kissinger were ahead of the game by decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Marenches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Marenches [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolwezi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolwezi [3] https://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Min_rohstoffe/Downloads/studie_BGR_kupfer_kobalt_kongo_2019_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 https://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Min_rohstoffe/Downloads/st... [4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/12/15/readout-of-meeting-between-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-and-the-presidents-of-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-gabon-liberia-madagascar-nigeria-and-sierra-leone/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

082349872349872 4y ago

(a) interesting that he wished to unfreeze the Cold War. Unlike Kennedy and Khrushchev*, however, Kennan managed to avoid getting cancelled. (b) viewing action as its own virtue was one of Mussolini's tropes: neo- something other than -con. * the pair of whom, in a different time line, might have managed it? > ... a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. — JFK [Edit: looks like the wake of McCarthy caught Kennan. So he may not exactly have been cancelled, but reading between the lines I suspect that's how he wound up an academic (the modern equivalent of sent to a monastery?)]

thriftwy 4y ago

Whoa, that's the landscape monologue from Russian DMB movie! What year was that? …while the enemy is plotting their assault, we change the landscape, even manually. When the attack starts, the enemy is lost on unfamiliar terrain and loses ability to fight. That's the reason, that's our strategy…

082349872349872 4y ago
if it was the original ДМБ, that was 2000; "Rove" was 2004 (I don't know if he's admitted ownership) As mentioned in a sibling comment, however, elevating "men of action" over "eggheads of reality" has the sort of history that Ezra Pound celebrated in the mid-1900s. IIRC there was a substantially-sized war fought over the principle at the time?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

paganel 4y ago

I'm now reading an interview book with this most excellent gentleman, Alexandre de Marenches [1] (the book was published in the late 1980s, the gentleman has passed away in the meantime), who used to be head of for French foreign intelligence services in the 1970s (among many other things he did in his life). Even back then he was saying pretty much the same thing, i.e. that in the whole free West there were at most 10 people who really understood diplomacy and how geopolitics works, and Kissinger was one of them. Back to the current intellectual nous (or lack thereof) of the current State Department, is telling when you compare how much Kennan intellectually prepared himself prior to him getting posted to Moscow in the 1930s to the low level of intellectual discourse coming from present-day State Department luminaries. Kennan actually took a dive in the dark and visited inland Russia just to experience it and its people, and all this during Stalin's times, during the purges. Something tells me a guy like McFaul (former US ambassador to Moscow) would have never done that, has never done that, but that hasn't stopped him from writing a book on Russia which is taken seriously by some powers that be. As you say, the only hope for the West, from an intellectual coupled with an understanding of geopolitics pov, comes from the Pentagon people. Later edit: More on the Marenches gentleman, who was just a very interesting guy: at some point during the interview (this was happening back in 1986) he did mention as an actual potential threat for the West the possibility of the Shiites getting control of the whole area from the Mediterranean all the way to the border with Pakistan, i.e. Iran managing to extend its control over Iraq and Syria and "get" to the Shiites who live in Lebanon. That is just what has happened, more or less, ever since the West lost the plot in the Syrian Civil War, never mind the whole Iraq War debacle (caused by guys like Rove and his friends). Also, and related to the tech world and this forum, towards the end of the 1970s the same Marenches made up a list of 8 rare metals which he was regarding as essential for modern industrial development (I'm too lazy to copy-paste the list in there, cobalt was part of the list, that I remember). He soon realised that the Russians has direct access to all those 8 metals, while the US and the free West more generally speaking had direct access to only 4 out of those 8. After he quit his job at the helm of the French foreign intelligence services in 1981 he actually presented Reagan with that list and with a map of where each metal was more heavily concentrated/located. Reagan kindly asked Marenches to hand him that list, which Marenches of course did. Prior to that, the same Marenches and French foreign intelligence services were instrumental in setting up the 1978 Battle of Kolwezi, in Southern Congo. It so happens that the region around Kolwezi is very reach in cobalt, as can be seen in maps from this official German website [3]. The US authorities only now realise that they can't let Congo slip [4], but guys like Marenches and Kennan and Kissinger were ahead of the game by decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Marenches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Marenches [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolwezi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolwezi [3] https://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Min_rohstoffe/Downloads/studie_BGR_kupfer_kobalt_kongo_2019_en.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 https://www.bgr.bund.de/EN/Themen/Min_rohstoffe/Downloads/st... [4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/12/15/readout-of-meeting-between-president-joseph-r-biden-jr-and-the-presidents-of-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-gabon-liberia-madagascar-nigeria-and-sierra-leone/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...