The war on Gaza in US politics and in international law

Simone Zimmerman discusses her film Israelism (1), which looks at how many young develop a complicated relationship with Israel, whose actions in the current war have drastically affected the view Americans including Jews take of Israel.

... one of the founders of the organization, IfNotNow (one of the leading Jewish organizations advocating for justice in Israel-Palestine), and who served as the national president of J Street U. Zimmerman was deeply involved with Zionist organizations in the Conservative branch of Judaism in her youth and as a member of her campus Israel Action Committee in her early days in college. (2)

Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, reviews international-law questions raised by the current Gaza War (3):




One of Israel’s standard talking points to justify any military action or atrocity it commits is to simply repeat, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Which pretty much nobody disputes. This is a more effective talking point in a short war. But the war on Gaza civilians that began after the Hamas attacks of October 7 is already the longest war Israel has had, and there is currently no end in sight. Their standard PR lines have worn very thin.

So it’s helpful to hear Wittes’ (somewhat frustrating) explanations of the legal context. In an essay of his less than two weeks after the October 7 attack, (4) he gives a brief description of the complicated situation of Gaza under the governance of Hamas, “which won a legislative election in 2006 and seized executive power in a kind of coup the following year.” Facts like that are important, because some defenders of Israel’s current war argue that Gazans are collectively guilty for Hamas’ actions because the population elected them.

Wittes explained how he viewed the conflict in its historical context:

... I start with this portrait [of the legal and historical background] to emphasize the extreme asymmetry of the conflict now unfolding in Gaza: the truly deranged nature of Hamas’s decision to initiate a war against the region’s preemin(3)ent military power—and to do so in a fashion of almost unimaginable brutality that necessarily brings the full weight of Israeli military power against a territory, teeming with civilians, which the militia cannot possibly hope to defend; the impossibility of an effective Israeli military operation in Gaza without horrifying civilian death and destruction; and the concurrent impossibility of refraining from conducting such an operation given the extreme proximity of these two populations across this line and the need to prevent similar atrocities in the future.

These are the conditions against which we have to consider the strategy, law, and morality of Israeli military operations in Gaza ...

It is important both to separate strategy, law, and morality, for they are not co-extensive with one another, but also to consider them in interaction, for they do not exist in isolation from one another in a situation like this one. There are steps, for example, that are lawful but not moral. Conversely, there may be steps that are morally defensible but are prohibited by international humanitarian law. And there are, in my judgment anyway, a great many steps that are moral in the context of a viable strategic framework but not outside of it. [my emphasis]

And he argued that:

... Israel’s friends do it no favors in excusing brutality in the current campaign because of the legitimate self-defense rationale that lies behind the operation. Indeed, in acknowledging that self-defense justifies military actions in which civilians are going to die, I do not mean in any way to argue that Israel is morally or legally entitled to respond however it sees fit. There are significant legal constraints on Israeli action. And there is, in my view anyway, even before those come into play, a high-level moral proposition that people often skate over because it has no enforcement mechanism other than politics and because it is not embedded in any known legal principle. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Why so many young Jews are turning on Israel-Simone Zimmerman-The Big Picture S4E7. Middle East Eye YouTube channel 04/25/2024. <https://youtu.be/Zqg0IvUiVWY?si=XKe7UxnAt8xSnoDl> (Accessed: 28-04-2024).

(2) Hess, Tobias (2024): American Jewish Peace Archive: Simone Zimmerman. The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities/Bard College 02/03/2024. <https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/american-jewish-peace-archive-simone-zimmerman-2024-02-03> (Accessed: 28-04-2024).

(3) Benjamin Wittes — Israel, Gaza and Implications for U.S. Foreign and Domestic Policy. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs YouTube channel. <https://youtu.be/TfBkqP7OTVA?si=5haAF0LgAaPU7g6Y> (Accessed: 28-04-2024).

(4) Wittes, Benjamin (2023): On Strategy, Law, and Morality in Israel’s Gaza Operation. Lawfare 10/17/2023. <https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/on-strategy-law-and-morality-in-israel-s-gaza-operation> (Accessed: 2024-01-05).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 30: Can we find a “usable past”?

Sorting through Lost Cause themes inevitably involves looking at the facts and various narratives about those in a past before the lifetime of anyone still living today.

Andrew Bacevich gives a good summary about how historical memory works in a body politic, a process he describes “manufactured memory”:

Whether related to family, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, or nation, the past is a human construct. lt is not fixed but malleable, not permanent but subject to perpetual reexamination and revision. The value of history correlates with purposefulness. Changing times render obsolete the past that we know and require the discovery of a "new" history better suited to the needs of the moment. (1) [my emphasis]

He's not talking here about just making up fake “facts” and claiming they are real. We do history by constructing understandable narratives that described what happened and how we understand it. That not only changes when increased factual information is discovered/released/uncovered. It also depends on the particular priority of the researchers. Facts always matter. So does understanding them a meaningful context.

It's worth recalling that the philosopher Hegel cautioned (with a heavy dose of irony) about the value of this whole learning-from-history concept:

History and experience teach us that peoples have not learned anything from history at all. Because every age lives in such an individual situation, out of which they make their decisions. This is the character of the time, which is always different. (2)

Hegel may well have been right about that. But it doesn’t stop us from trying.

And it matters how one goes about deriving “lessons” or interpretations from past events. People can do honest history that at the same time can serve as a “usable past.” But not all uses of history are honest.

Casey Nelson Blake credits the Progressives of the early 20th century in the US with the concept of a “usable past” "What is important for us?" asked cultural critic Van Wyck Brooks in his influential 1918 essay, "On Creating a Usable Past": "What, out of all the multifarious achievements and impulses and desires of the American literary mind, ought we to elect to remember?" (1993:225, emphasis in original). Brooks was concerned with his country's literary history, but his desire to approach the past "from the point of view not of the successful fact but of the creative impulse" was shared by many Progressive-era intellectuals who sought to mobilize American memory as a resource for a more democratic. To think of the American past as "usable," as opposed to a dry collection of facts or a completed tradition deserving mute reverence, was to take an essentially pragmatic approach to the study of history. "For the spiritual past has no objective reality," Brooks asserted; "it yields only what we are able to look for in it". The past would become "usable" when it allowed Americans to pry open spaces in the present for future innovation. (3) [my emphasis]

In the case of the Lost Cause narrative, from the very start its usability for those who wanted to minimize the significance of Confederate treason against the United States and the centrality of slavery and white racism in that context depended on falsifying the factual history and substituting dishonest ideological claims and maudlin sentimentality for a reality-based understanding of the events.

Notes:

(1) Bacevich, Andrew (2021): After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed, 9. New York: Metropolitan Books.

(2) Hegel, G.W.F. (1822/23): Philosophie der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte (Hotho transcript). In Gesammelte Werke 27:1 (2015), 11. Dusseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation from the German.

(3) Blake, Casey Nelson (1999): Review: The Usable Past, the Comfortable Past, and the Civic Past: Memory in Contemporary America. Cultural Anthropology 14: 3, 423-435.

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 29: Adelbert Ames, Blanche Ames, LQC Lamar, and John Kennedy

The Atlantic Monthly had a special issue last year on Reconstruction. In one of the articles is by Jordan Virtue, about John Kennedy’s how view of Reconstruction was heavily influenced by Lost Cause dogma. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., later noted that it was the view that Kennedy learned in history classes at Harvard in the 1930s. (1) Schlesinger also noted that after his experiences as President with segregationist Governors like Alabama’s George Wallace and Mississippi’s Ross Barnett, Kennedy began to think more favorable about the advocates of Reconstruction.

Virtue focuses on JFK’s description of two 19th century Mississippi politicians in his book Profiles in Courage (1955). One of them was Adelbert Ames, the best Governor Mississippi ever had and an actual hero of democracy for defending equal rights as Reconstruction Governor there in 1874-76. He had also been a Union General. When he passed away in 1933 at age 97, he was the last surviving Civil War general.

The other Mississippian was Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II, often referred to as LQC Lamar, who served as Mississippi Senator 1877-1885, and later as federal Secretary of the Interior and a Supreme Court Justice. Lamar was an enemy of Reconstruction and democracy, and he supported the anti-democracy “Redeemer” movement to deprive Black Americans of the rights they had won.

Lamar had worked on drafting Mississippi Secession Ordinance and served on the staff of Confederate Gen. James Longstreet, who was the cousin of Lamar’s wife. Had the anti-insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (2) been properly enforced, he would never have been allowed to hold a federal office again. Because he was a Congressional Representative in the 1850s, which meant he had taken an oath to support the Constitution.

Virtue summarizes what was wrong with JFK’s approach this way:

Lamar and Ames were the preeminent politicians of Mississippi Reconstruction. They hated each other. (At one point, Lamar threatened to lynch Ames.) Profiles in Courage had relied heavily on the work of influential Dunning School historians — disciples of the Columbia University professor William A. Dunning, who scorned Black suffrage and promoted the mythology of the Lost Cause. Kennedy may have been genuinely misled by these historians, but he also aspired to higher office and needed to appeal to white southern voters. His book denounced Reconstruction, casting Ames as a corrupt, carpetbagging villain and Lamar as a heroic southern statesman. [my emphasis]

A good example of how views of history and contemporary political postures affect historical narratives.

Virtue tells the story of how Ames’ daughter Blanche repeatedly wrote Kennedy demanding that he revise his book, which he declined to do. “[W]hen when Kennedy refused to amend Profiles, Blanche did what any sensible Massachusetts woman would do: she sat down and wrote her own book.”

Virtue sketches out more of Adelbert Ames’ career, who she accurately describes as “a champion of racial rights [i.e., equal rights for African-Americans], embracing a personal ‘Mission with a large M’ to support Black citizens.

Ames’ daughter Blanche carried on her father’s and mother’s tradition of social justice advocacy:

Adelbert encouraged his daughters to attend college. Blanche went to Smith, where she became class president. At commencement, she delivered a forceful address promoting women’s suffrage, with President William McKinley in the audience. Blanche helped spearhead the Massachusetts women’s suffrage movement, working as a political cartoonist for Woman’s Journal. She founded the Massachusetts Birth Control League. Once, Blanche sauntered onto Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue carrying a hand-carved wooden penis to demonstrate proper condom use; she was arrested, but police released her after realizing she was the daughter of one governor and the granddaughter of another. “If she was a man,” one historian has observed, “there would be five books” about her already.

Virtue’s account also includes this observation:

Before the Civil War, Mississippi had contained some of the richest counties in the nation, but most Mississippians—some 55 percent—were enslaved. After the war, Mississippi was the poorest state in the Union.

JFK as a historian was bad on Reconstruction. And he accounts of Ames and Lamar really are embarrassingly bad. But as President, he acted on civil rights much more in the tradition of Adelbert Ames than that of the thoroughly odious LQC Lamar.

A new biography of Ames was just published, Adelbert Ames, the Civil War, and the Creation of Modern America (2024) by Michael Megelsh.

Richard Nelson Current devotes an excellent chapter to Adelbert Ames in the ironically titled Those Terrible Carpetbagger: A Reinterpretation (1988).

As Virtue reports, Blanche’s own biography of her father (Adelbert Ames: General, Senator, Governor) went to press on the day Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963.

Notes:

(1) Virtue, Jordan (2023): Kennedy and the Lost Cause. Atlantic Monthly Dec. 2022, 90-94.

(2) Temme, Laura (2024): Disqualification from Public Office Under the 14th Amendment. FindLaw 01/08/2024. <https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment14/annotation15.html> (Accessed: 2024-29-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 28: Confederate icons were not popular nationally for decades after the Civil War

The Guardian reported in 2022 about history professor who had a decades-long career in the US Army, Ty Seidule.

Speaking specifically to US military facilities named for Confederate figures like Robert E. Lee, Seidule says:

“The first thing to know is that in the 19th century, most army officers saw the Confederates as traitors.

“That’s not a presentist argument. That’s what they thought. And particularly about Lee, who renounced his oath, fought against this country, killed US army soldiers and as [Union general and 18th president Ulysses S] Grant said, did so for the worst possible reason: to create a slave republic.

“So in the 19th century, they would not have done this … the first memorialisation of a Confederate at West Point is in the 1930s. So, why is that? [It’s about] segregation in America. The last West Point black graduate was 1889. The next one was in 1936. West Point reflects America. [The first memorials] were a reaction to integration.” [my emphasis] (1)

The civilian monuments to traitors who held leadership positions in the Confederacy began decades earlier. But what Seidule says applies to the civilian and military versions, when he rejects the notion that they could be seen a symbols for reconciliation among Americans:

“The problem with that is it was reconciliation among white people, at the expense of Black people.

“There had already been reconciliation. Magnanimously, the United States of America pardoned all former Confederates in 1868 … reconciliation is sort of an agreement among whites that Black people will be treated in a Jim Crow fashion. So no, it’s not a reconciliation based, I would say, on an America we want today.” [my emphasis]

More specifically it was Andrew Johnson, the first President to ever be impeached, who Abraham Lincoln chose for his running mate in 1864 as a “Union Democrat” but who was not at all friendly to serious Reconstruction in the South nor to holding high Confederate officials legally responsible for their crimes, who issued the pardons.

John Wilkes Booth had a serious effect of US history by his assassination of Lincoln.

Seidule is the author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (2021).

He discusses his general view in this video, on which I did a double-take because it’s from the conservative PragerU. Because most conservative Republicans today would not be thrilled with his puncturing of the Lost Cause narrative. (2)



Notes:

(1) Pengelly, Martin (2022): ‘Confederates were traitors’: Ty Seidule on West Point, race and American history. The Guardian 09/05/2022. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/confederates-traitors-seidule-west-point-race-history-ku-klux-klan-plaque-naming-commission> (Accessed: 2024-28-04).

(2) Was the Civil War About Slavery? PragerU YouTube channel. 08/10/2015. <https://youtu.be/pcy7qV-BGF4?si=R2qGkv3U8Y1ZGw0p> (Accessed: 2024-28-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 27: The “First Arkansas” Marching Song

Mississippi by state law recognizes April 27 as Confederate Memorial Day.

To mark the occasion, here’s a great Civil War song. It was the song of a regiment called the First Arkansas. But despite being named for Mississippi’s neighbor states, this was an all-black Union regiment.

This is a performance of their marching song by Tennessee Ernie Ford, a white country singer, from an album of Civil War songs. (1)

It's sung to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” and has some memorable lyrics:

We’re the bully soldiers of the first of Arkansas

We are fighting for the Union we are fighting for the law

We can hit a Rebel further than a white man ever saw

As we go marching on

We have done with hoeing cotton, we have done with hoeing corn

We are Colored Yankee soldiers just as sure as you are born

When the master hears us yelling they will think it’s Gabriel’s horn.

As we go marching on

This gives an indication of why some Southern segregationists were worried that Tennessee Ernie was less than fully devoted to the “Suthun Way of Life.”

The First Arkansas was one of 175 regiments that made up the United States Colored Troops (USCT). As the US Army website tells us:

During the Civil War, the Union established and maintained regiments of black soldiers. This became possible in 1862 through passage of the Confiscation Act (freeing the slaves of rebellious slaveholders) and Militia Act (authorizing the president to use former slaves as soldiers). President Lincoln was initially reluctant to recruit black soldiers. This changed in January 1863, with the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring freedom for all slaves in Confederate states. …

The first black regiments to serve in the Civil War were volunteer units made up of free black men. These included the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers, 5th Massachusetts (Cavalry), 54th Massachusetts (Infantry), 55th Massachusetts (Infantry), 29th Connecticut (Infantry), 30th Connecticut (Infantry), and 31st Infantry Regiment. In May 1863, the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops for the purpose of recruiting African-American soldiers. These became the United States Colored Troops (USCT) and existing volunteer units were converted into USCT regiments.

New regiments were also formed from every Union state. While mostly made up of African-American soldiers, other minorities served in these regiments as well, including Native Americans and Asians, while white Union officers served as commanders. USCT regiments participated in all aspects of the Union war effort as infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineers, though they were often used as rear action garrison troop[s]. ...

By the end of the Civil War, there were 175 USCT regiments, containing 178,000 soldiers, approximately 10% of the Union Army. The mortality rate for these units was exceeding high. One of every five black soldiers in the conflict died, a 35% higher rate than other troops. In the process, sixteen USCT soldiers earned the Medal of Honor for their Civil War service. (2)

Notes:

(1) Marching Song (Of The First Arkansas Negro Regiment). Tennessee Earnie Ford TV YouTube channel. <https://youtu.be/jKss9jF2Yxw?si=Gun7R0kVghPyhEDl> (Accessed: 2024-27-04).

(2) Ferguson, Paul-Thomas (2021): A History of African American Regiments in the U.S. Army. U.S. Army 02/11/2021. <https://www.army.mil/article/243284/a_history_of_african_american_regiments_in_the_u_s_army> (Accessed: 2024-27-04).

The latest round in the politics of the Ukraine War in the US

The funding bill for aid to Ukraine finally made it through Congress, after being stalled in the Republican-controlled House by Donald Trum, the unquestioned party leader at the moment.

But the politics of the issue still creates pressure to exaggerate the short-run prospects of Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine War and to engage in threat inflation around Russia.

Walter Isaacson interviewed Anne Applebaum on Amanpour and Company about the state of the Russia-Ukraine War. (1)

Applebaum is a good journalist and historian who also has worthwhile observations on the dynamics of authoritarian politics in liberal-democratic countries today. Isaacson is the first interviewer I’ve seen mentioned that she is married to Radek Sikorski, the current Foreign Minister of Poland since December 2023. Which she acknowledged with no hint of irritation or defensiveness. That’s just good journalistic practice.

That doesn’t mean we should dismiss what she’s saying or assume that she is speaking for the Polish government. It may come as a surprise to some, but husbands and wives don’t always have the same perspective on political issues. Still, it’s reasonable to assume that she is not likely to take a position on a particular issue that is sharply critical of one that Poland officially takes while her husband serves as Foreign Minister. Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania tend to be particularly hawkish about the Russian threat and tend to take a dim official view of its territorial ambitions.

Her interview also reflects the Biden Administration’s particular position, which of course is aligned with Poland’s at the moment.

Here is my transcript of the last part of the interview (with “uhs” and “you knows” edited out).

Walter Isaacson: You wrote a wonderful book in 2020, It’s a seminal book about our time which is called The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. And it explains why contemporary countries and even some in the West have been weak in defending the old-fashioned liberal ideals of democracy.

Do you feel that Ukraine is the front line of that fight? And, if so, how do you see this fight going over the next decade?

Applebaum: So, I do think that Ukraine is the front line in the international, the geopolitical aspect of that fight. We are now living in a world in which Russia is allied with Iran, China, Venezuela, Belarus, and other autocracies. They have different goals and different kinds of political systems but the do see themselves as aligned against democracy. And particularly against the language of democracy, human rights, rule of law, transparency.

Because those ideas, which are often the ideas used by their own internal opposition would be threatening to their form of dictatorship. And one of the reasons why Russia invaded Ukraine was because Putin wanted to show European in particular that he doesn’t care about their we-don’t-change-borders-by-force rules, or their laws on human rights, or their language [such as] “never again, we mustn’t allow mass murder to happen in Europe again” after the Second World War.

He wanted to show Europeans he doesn’t care. He can kidnap thousands of Ukrainian children, which he has done, and he’s been sentenced by the International Criminal Court for doing so. He can put Ukrainians in concentration camps. He can randomly murder Ukrainian walking down the street in occupied Ukraine.

If we really care about those ideas, if we believe that you shouldn’t be able to occupy other countries and destroy them, and change their identity, and murder their people with impunity, then, yes, this is Ukraine in that sense is the front line in a broader war.

Whether it continue further: [Russian] military into Poland and the Baltic states; whether it continues further into Africa, where there’s a large Russian presence already; whether it just means that Russia is emboldened to use its information warfare and propaganda in new ways all over the world, this [Ukraine] is a place to stop them.

Her perspective falls broadly within the liberal-internationalist view, which we could also accurately call a liberal-imperialist view, that has been common to Democratic Administrations since 1993.

It also assumes that Russia is just on the march to take Poland and the Baltic nations as soon as it gets a chance. It’s advantageous for those countries to promote such a narrative. But if the Russians are massing an invasion force on those borders, they must be keeping it well concealed. There’s a rhetorical slight-of-hand here to act as though those countries were in the same position as Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Ukraine was not a member of NATO and therefore not part of its mutual-defence commitment. Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are members of NATO. Unless Donald Trump should take office again, the Russia leaders know that the risks they would incur by invading a NATO member are orders of magnitude greater than the ones they have taken with Ukraine. Pretending otherwise is basically just continuing the caricatured Munich-analogy way of thinking, in which Hitler is poised to invade Czechoslovakia and the West is about to wimp out and let him start World War II.

“Liberal democracy” as a foreign policy

But the current massive US support of Israel’s Gaza war is the opposite of “defending human rights, rule of law, transparency.” Amnesty International is calling urgent attention to that current state of international law in practice, and not just on the side of Applebaum’s Bad Autocracies. (2)

Applebaum’s formulation of the liberal-internationalist view is essentially a propaganda framework. The neoconservative hawks may be notably more cynical in their insistence that spreading democracy by wars like the invasion of Iraq that blatantly violated international law are not only necessary and motivated by the goal of spreading the blessings of liberal democracy. But a lot of Democratic Party versions of this approach have too often ended in the same moral bankruptcy. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s “We think the price is worth it" moment was an infamous example of the latter. (3)

Agnès Callamard’s interview above brings to mind the famous statement of Abraham Lincoln:

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. (4) [my emphasis]

What are Russia’s territorial goals in the current war with Ukraine?

The safely establishment UK defense think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in February published this analysis:

Russia still maintains the strategic objective of bringing about the subjugation of Ukraine. It now believes that it is winning. Surrender terms currently being proposed by Russian intermediaries include Ukraine ceding the territory already under Russian control along with Kharkiv, and in some versions Odessa; agreeing not to join NATO; and maintaining a head of state approved by Russia. The only significant concession Russia proposes is that what is left of Ukraine can join the EU.

The process by which Russia aims to bring about this outcome is in three stages. The first requires the continuation of pressure along the length of the Ukrainian front to drain the Armed Forces of Ukraine's (AFU) munitions and reserves of personnel. Parallel to this effort, the Russian Special Services are tasked with breaking the resolve of Ukraine's international partners to continue to provide military aid. Once military aid has been significantly limited such that Ukrainian munition stocks become depleted, Russia intends to initiate further offensive operations to make significant – if slow – gains on the battlefield. These gains are then intended to be used as leverage against Kyiv to force capitulation on Russian terms. The planning horizon for the implementation of these objectives, which is providing the baseline for Russian force generation and industrial outputs, is that victory should be achieved by 2026.

It is vital to appreciate that Russian goals may expand with success, and given that the Kremlin has violated almost all significant agreements both with Ukraine and NATO, there is no assurance that even if Russia got what it wanted out of negotiations it would not subsequently endeavour to physically occupy the rest of Ukraine or be emboldened to use force elsewhere. (5)

Serious request: if someone has a legitimate source that specifies a statement by the Russian government or senior officials that says explicitly that their goal is to take all of Ukraine, please put the reference in the comments. Because it has become a standard talking point for New Cold War hawks that Russia has repeatedly stated explicitly that its goal is to conquer all of Ukraine. But I’ve so far not been able such a reference. Grumpy “realist” John Mearsheimer has been saying repeatedly that he has not seen any such explicit statement. And he does keep up with these things. We certainly shouldn’t assume that Putin’s government doesn’t keep some of its goals secrets. But “explicit” means, well, explicit.

Timothy Snyder recently did an interview with one of the most infamous neocons, Butcher’s Bill Kristol, in which Snyder says, “what [the Russians] tell us every day is they’re trying to destroy Ukrainian state and society. That’s their war aim. And so long as they haven’t done that, they’re going to try, they’re going to keep trying to do that on the Ukrainian side, yeah, they can sustain this for a long time.” (6) (my emphasis)

I suppose Snyder could claim that “they’re trying to destroy Ukrainian state and society” is not literally saying Russia wants to conquer all its territory. But that’s what most listeners are likely to take from it.

(Applebaum and Snyder are good weathervanes at the moment for what respectable "MSNBC liberals" are thinking about foreign policy.)

This February 2024 analysis from the Association of the US Army by Amos Fox looks at what the Russian goals can be assumed to be. It includes this graphic of outcome scenarios that would be considered victory or defeat from the Russian point of view (7):

Note that the upper left scenario represents what Fox takes to be the maximum goal of Russia at this point.

Andrew Michta of the Atlantic Council writes:

Russia has launched its third major mobilization wave in anticipation of its upcoming spring/summer campaign to take more land in Ukraine. …

There are various assessments about the extent to which the Russian land forces have been reconstituted since Russia’s initial losses, with some analysts arguing that the process is nearly complete. But regardless of these various assessments, the gap between Russia’s and Ukraine’s military capabilities—and the difference in sheer mass—continues to grow apace, even though Kyiv recently lowered the draft age for Ukrainian males from twenty-seven to twenty-five. [my emphasis] (7)

The Ukrainian draft age is 25?

Recent frontline gains by Russia, along with US aid to Ukraine moving forward in Congress only after months of delays, suggest that a major decision point in the war may be approaching in the coming months. While the US House of Representatives at last agreed on Saturday to send $60.8 billion in aid to Ukraine, which means the United States could soon be sending desperately needed ammunition and air defenses to the front lines, a Russian push already appears to be in its early stages. And it could well create a crisis for the NATO alliance much bigger than the current grumbling over who is spending more on Ukraine’s behalf. [my emphasis]

I tend to think NATO will be in something like a continuing crisis for the next few years. A war in Europe (Russia-Ukraine), a Middle East war that could expand considerably, and the international nuclear-arms limitation arrangements falling by the wayside, a “much bigger” crisis (or crises) “for the NATO alliance” is a very obvious possibility!

Michta assesses the possibilities for Ukraine in 2024 this way:

Given the perceived stalemate on land, and despite clear Ukrainian gains at sea, some analysts today are indeed coming to the view that the war in Ukraine is heading for a negotiated settlement. In such a hypothetical settlement, Ukraine would preserve its sovereignty and independence while Russia keeps its territorial gains in the east, plus Crimea. Setting aside the fact that such an outcome would be tantamount to a Russian victory [a view in keeping with that of Alex Fox described above], these predictions could be undone by developments on the ground, much as the prevailing view in early 2022 that Ukraine would fall fast and resort to guerrilla operations was invalidated by Kyiv’s staunch resolve to stand its ground and fight. So, rather than incessantly speculating about this or that territorial settlement or this or that negotiated deal, what Ukraine and the transatlantic community need most urgently is a shared vision of victory in Ukraine, one that Kyiv and its supporters can rally around. Next, the United States and its allies and partners need a strategy—with resources to match—that will allow Ukraine to achieve that victory. After all, to rephrase a cliché, visions without resources are merely hallucinations. [my emphasis]

The last part is consistent with the hooray-for-the-home-team rhetoric from Ukraine and its most enthusiastic Western boosters. But getting to a position like Amos Fox’s two “defeat” scenarios from Russia’s viewpoint will be a heavy lift for Ukraine in the immediate future, and extremely hard to imagine in 2024. An armistice agreement that would leave Russia in control of Crimea and the Ukrainian eastern provinces it has (illegally) annexed would be a best-case scenario for Ukraine in 2024. And that assumes that, sometime between now and the US Presidential election, Russia and Ukraine would be willing to make such an agreement and that the US would not only be willing but also able to bring key NATO allies like France, Germany, and Poland along.

Michta’s scenario for a US policy shift this year doesn’t even include that option:

In the coming months, the Biden administration could change course on Ukraine. If the Russians advance in Ukraine, the administration would have two choices: stay the course and increase the risk of Ukrainian losses, or shift from a “for as long as it takes” policy to an approach of “whatever the Ukrainians need to beat the Russians back.” This would potentially increase the risk of escalation with Russia, but it would also deflect the electoral risk of being blamed for the failure of US policy in Ukraine, while giving Kyiv a fighting chance to reach a favorable position from which to negotiate. [my emphasis]

Estimations of Donald Trump’s chance of being elected as President again in November will also have an influence on what the leaders of Ukraine and Russia and also the Biden Administration think of as an optimal diplomatic strategy. The careless Russia-Russia-Russia narrative the Democrats use against Trump is clumsy at best, though it’s probably that Trump has some kind of admiration for Putin’s authoritarianism. But Trump is also looking at who is offering him the most appealing bribes. And in many ways he’s a proverbial loose cannon on the ship deck.

Notes:

(1) Anne Applebaum: The GOP’s Pro-Russia Caucus Lost. Now Ukraine Has to Win. Amanpour and Company YouTube channel 04/24/2024. <https://youtu.be/YqBL7Bfh_LY?si=VGDkwJwrDQB8R4oc> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

(2) Global Breakdown of International Law Amid Flagrant War Crimes in Gaza & Beyond, Says Amnesty Chief. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 04/25/2024. (Accessed: <https://youtu.be/9C2vPzWhm7Y?si=B99Dfh4EjGqoehIu> 2024-25-04).

(3) Mahajan, Rahul (2001): ‘We Think the Price Is Worth It’. FAIR 11/01/2001. <https://fair.org/extra/we-think-the-price-is-worth-it/> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

(4) Lincoln, Abraham (1855): Letter to Joshua F. Speed 08/24/1855. In: Van Doren Stern, Philip (1940): The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, 395. New York: The Modern Library/Random House.

(5) Watling, Jack & Reynolds, Nick (2024): Russian Military Objectives and Capacity in Ukraine Through 2024. Royal Institute Services Institute (RUSI) 02/13/224. <https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russian-military-objectives-and-capacity-ukraine-through-2024> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

(6) Timothy Snyder on Ukraine, Russia, America—and What’s at Stake. Conversations with Bill Kristol 03/07/2024. <https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/transcript/timothy-snyder-on-ukraine-russia-america-and-whats-at-stake/> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

(7) Fox, Amos C. (2024): The Russo-Ukrainian War: A Strategic Assessment Two Years Into the Conflict. AUSA (Association of the United States Army) 02/20/2024. <https://www.ausa.org/publications/russo-ukrainian-war-strategic-assessment-two-years-conflict> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

(8) Michta, Andrew (2024): The war in Ukraine could reach a decision point by the NATO summit. Policymakers need to prepare now. Atlantic Council 04/23/2024. <https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-war-in-ukraine-could-reach-a-decision-point-by-the-nato-summit/> (Accessed: 2024-25-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 26: An Irish look from 1862 at the causes of the American Civil War

Today I’m taking a look at another book on the “Slave Power,” this one from 1862, still early in the Civil War. It was written by classical political economist John Eliot Cairnes (1823-1875), the namesake of today’s J.E. Cairnes School of Economics at the University of Galway, Ireland, where he also taught.

As Cairnes wrote, the Confederacy had initially made some attempt to official minimize the role slavery played in secession. But that was always bogus, as he explains:

I have been at some pains to show that the question at issue between North and South is not one of tariffs—a thesis prescribed to me by the state of the discussion six months ago, when the affirmative of this view was pertinaciously put forward by writers in the interest of the South, but which, at the present time, when this explanation of the war appears to have been tacitly abandoned, cannot but appear a rather gratuitous task. (1)

Cairnes' description of the incredulity of the English public when the learned about secession had its echoes in the wake of Trump’s attempted coup of January 6, 2021:

The first announcement by South Carolina of its intention to secede from the Union was received in this country [England] with simple incredulity. There were no reasons, it was said, for secession. What the constitution and laws of the United States had been on the eve of Mr. Lincoln's election, that they were on its morrow. It was absurd to suppose that one half of a nation should separate from the other because a first magistrate [the President] had been elected in the ordinary constitutional course.

The January 6 zealots of 2021 in the US were and are also absurd. But that’s a much later story.

Cairnes explains that, initially, Englanders were inclined to think that there must be some commercial differences or some kind of fiscal policy causing it. He describes what he took to be the prevailing initial English view, which actually bears a strong resemblance to the later Lost Cause type of argument:

The North fancied she had an interest in protection; the South had an obvious interest in free trade. On this and other questions of less moment North and South came into collision, and the antagonism thus engendered had been strengthened and exacerbated by a selfish struggle for place and power-a struggle which the constitution and political usages of the Americans rendered more rancorous and violent than elsewhere. But in the interests of the two sections, considered calmly and apart from selfish ends, there was nothing, it was said, which did not admit of easy adjustment, nothing which negotiation was not far more competent to deal with than the sword.

It was polite of the English public, I guess, that they were willing to take such forgiving view of the obsessive greed for power of American slaveowners. Naïve, surely, but polite.

He proceeds to describe how Englanders viewed the idea of slavery skeptically as a cause of secession:

As for slavery, it was little more than a pretext on both sides, employed by the leaders of the South to arouse the fears and hopes of the slaveholders, and by the North in the hope of attracting the sympathies of Europe and hallowing a cause which was essentially destitute of noble aims. The civil war was thus described as having sprung from narrow and selfish views of sectional interests (in which, however, the claims of the South were coincident with justice and sound policy), and sustained by passions which itself had kindled ; and the combatants were advised to compose their differences, and either return to their political partnership, or agree to separate and learn to live in harmony as independent allies.

Yeah, they really were naïve.

But British views of the Confederacy were never unanimous or fixed in stone. The British workers movement of the time was able to create substantial political pressure on the government to not formally recognize the Confederacy, for instance.

And, not unlike many banks and businesses in the American North, many British companies were making considerable amounts of money on the cotton business fed by the South’s slave economy. So the British business elite was far more receptive to normalizing its relations with the slave South, even though that would have meant helping the slaveowners to win the Civil War. (2)

Cairnes didn’t mince words. He was writing before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued. But he didn’t have trouble seeing what led to civil war. And this is a very good brief summary:

But what has been the career of the Slave Power since [the Missouri Compromise of 1820]? lt is to be traced through every questionable transaction in foreign and domestic politics in which the United States has since taken part - through the Seminole war, through the annexation of Texas, through the Mexican war, through filibustering expeditions under Walker, through attempts upon Cuba, through the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 through Mr. Clay's compromises, through the repudiation of the Missouri Compromise so soon as the full results of that bargain had been reaped, through the passing of the Nebraska Bill and the legislative establishment of the principle of " Squatter Sovereignty," through the invasion of Kansas, through the repudiation of "Squatter Sovereignty" [the doctrine advocated by Northern appeasers of slavery like Stephen Douglas in the 1850s] when that principle had been found unequal to its purposes, and lastly, through the Dred-Scott decision and the demand for protection of slavery in the Territories - pretensions which, if admitted, would have converted the whole Union, the Free States no less than the Territories, into one great domain for slavery. This has been the point at which the Slave Power, after a series of successful aggressions, carried on during forty years, has at length arrived. lt was on this last demand that the Democrats of the North broke off from their Southern allies-a defection which gave their victory to the Republicans, and directly produced the civil war. And now we are asked to believe that slavery has no vital connexion with this quarrel, but that the catastrophe is due to quite other causes-to incompatibility of commercial interests, to uncongeniality of social tastes, to a desire for independence, to anything but slavery.

But we are told that in this long career of aggression the extension of slavery has only been employed by the South as a means to an end, and that it is in this end we are to look for the key to the present movement. " Slavery,'' it seems, "is but a surface question in American politics." The seeming aggressions were in reality defensive movements forced upon the South by the growing preponderance of the Free States; and its real object, as well in its former career of annexation and conquest, as in its present efforts to achieve independence, has been constantly the same-to avoid being made the victim of Yankee rapacity, to secure for itself the development of its own resources unhindered by protective laws. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Cairnes, J[ohn] C[airnes] (1862): The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, & Probable Designs. London: Parker, Son, & Bourn. In: Reprint Edition (2010). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(2) See: British Support During the U.S. Civil War (n/d). Lowcountry Digital History Initiative (LDHI). <https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/liverpools-abercromby-square/britain-and-us-civil-war> Accessed: 2024-25-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 25: Charles Sumner takes the lead in the Senate against the Fugitive Slave Act

In Congress in late 1851, the recently enacted Fugitive Slave Act became a point of hot contention.

In a history published in 1876, Henry Wilson gave an account of the intensity of the controversy in Congress that began after Congress convened in December, 1851, over the Fugitive Slave Act:

The debate at once elicited and exhibited the party tactics that controlled the nation, showing not only the disposition of the slave-masters to dictate terms to the rival parties, but the anxiety of leaders to conciliate and control the political strength of the slave-masters. ...

On the 26th of May, [first-term Massachusetts Senator Charles] Sumner presented a petition from the Society of Friends in New England, asking that the Fugitive Slave Act should be repealed; but there were only ten votes for its consideration. On the 27th of July, he submitted a resolution requesting the Committee on the Judiciary to consider the expediency of reporting a bill for the immediate repeal of that Act. (1)

At the demand of pro-slavery Democrats, the Senate on that occasion refused to allow him to speak on the Senate floor in defense of that petition. But he later used a parliamentary maneuver to defend his position on the floor:

In the Senate, on the 26th of August, he moved to amend the civil and diplomatic bill, so as to provide that no allowance should be made for expenses incurred in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Act, and that such act be repealed. In his speech on their introduction he alluded to the immeasurable importance of the slavery issue, dwarfing all others, and constantly casting its shadow across those halls. Referring to the impotent and inconsistent attempts of the [pro-slavery] propagandists to enforce silence, while always provoking discussion, he denounced the attempt to repress the liberty of speech, protested against the wrong, and claimed the right to be heard on slavery, as on every other subject. "The convictions of the heart," he said, " cannot be repressed. The utterances of conscience must be heard. They break forth with irrepressible might. As well attempt to check the tides of the ocean, the currents of the Mississippi, or the rushing waters of Niagara. The discussion of slavery will proceed wherever two or three are gathered together, — by the fireside, on the public highway, at the public meeting, in the church. The movement against slavery is from the Everlasting Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces, soon to be confessed everywhere. It may not yet be felt in the high places of office and power, but all who can put their ears humbly to the ground will hear and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread."

He arraigned the enactment in the name of the Constitution it violated, of the country it dishonored, of the humanity it degraded, of the Christianity it offended, and affirmed that every attribute of God united against it. Referring to the requirements of the Act that every citizen, when summoned, should aid and assist in its prompt and efficient execution, he boldly affirmed that "by the supreme law which commands me to do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian law of brotherhood, by the Constitution which I am sworn to support, I am bound to disobey this Act." He closed his speech with an earnest demand for the repeal of an act so incompatible with every dictate of truth and every requirement of justice. In the words of Oriental adjuration, he said: " Beware of the wounds of the wounded souls. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart, for a solitary sigh has power to overset a whole world." This speech — learned, logical, exhaustive, and eloquent, worthy of the cause it advocated — placed the new Senator at once among the foremost of the forensic debaters of America. [my emphasis]

Sumner’s biographer David Donald argues that Sumner actually understood his position on slavery as being in the tradition of conservative reform represented by John Quincy Adams, who also opposed slavery. But he also notes that Sumner took inspiration as well from English democratic history:

He liked to fancy himself the [political] descendant of the Separatists of the English revolution, who uncompromisingly contended ‘for religious, intellectual, and political emancipation.” As their heir, he boldly announced that slavery was wrong. (2)

Sumner found in the Separatists his own “usable history.” And since the Puritans who founded the Colony of Massachusetts (and who were rescued from starving to death by the native inhabitants) were Separatists, invoking them as a precedent presumably had some political marketing value in his home state.

Charles Sumner became one of the most important anti-slavery leaders before the war and on the most committed advocates of democratic Reconstruction in the South after the Confederacy’s defeat.

Notes:

(1) Wilson, Henry (1876): History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Vol. 2, 353- Boston: J. R. Osgood. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015028747783>

(2) Donald, David (1960); Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 226. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Biden makes more cosmetic gestures for restraint while he ups support to Israel’s Gaza war

Noa Landau argues that the Biden Administration is trying to save Israel from itself by imposing what are essentially symbolic sanctions on some groups of what look to many Israelis to be nasty actors on the extremist right. (1) Like a few violent settlers and recently a notoriously rogue IDF unit, the Netzah Yehuda battalion.

Landau argues that this US policy “actually reflects America's deep, abiding trust in Israel's institutions as a whole.” But she also argues that it’s over-optimistic on that score:

On the face of it, the argument that, through these measures, the United States is declaring that it no longer believes in the ability of Israeli law enforcement to prosecute and punish the perpetrators, or in the ability of the political system to denounce and eliminate the violence, is correct.

But at the same time, at a deeper political level, this distinction is designed to differentiate between mainstream Israel and its fringes, between nonpartisanship and extremism, and between the system as a whole and its supposedly isolated flaws. Between the settlement expansion policy, which the United States has never been able to stop, and specific violent settlers.

But the problems with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, she points out, aren’t just a matter of a few bad apples. She believes that approach encourages Israeli support for the Netanyahu government’s brutal ethnic-cleansing policies against the Palestinians in Gaza.

[W]hat [the] Israeli majority shares is an unwillingness to accept the argument that everything that happens in Gaza is part of a deliberate Israeli policy. As reflected in the American sanctions policy, for them, as far as intentions, Israel is the "good guy" – and any contradictory conclusion is a localized glitch that can and should be addressed.

Therefore, the American policy of distinction, which should ostensibly be welcomed, also means intensifying this denial. If the United States believes that the problem is only on the fringes, it is easier for these Israelis to imagine that if only these extreme behaviors disappeared from our lives, Israel will "return" to being a magnificent liberal democracy.

That is, without violent right-wing activists the occupation can be accommodated, and without the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, the IDF will go back to being the most moral army in the world. [my emphasis]

But this few-bad-apples policy may well be directed primarily at American public opinion, specifically opinion among Democratic core constituencies. The Biden Administration needs to look to voters at home like it is doing something to restrain the ugliest aspects of Israeli policy.

Occasional expressions of regret over this or that part of Israeli policy or sanctions that make it harder for some of those “bad apples” to use their credit cards have to be weighed against Biden’s still essentially unconditional support of the war, including a brand new injection of money and weapons. And even conducting joint military operations with Israel against Iran’s retaliatory strike responding to Israel’s direct attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria.

As a national-security partner, the State of Israel has basically always been more of a liability than an asset. But US administrations prior to Trump and now Biden were willing to insist on restraint on Israel’s part. Trump and Biden have both followed a policy of unconditional support of Israel.

And with a character like Bibi Netanyahu in charge, that is not a good position for the US to be in.

A Haaretz editorial has an idea of one more meaningful policy in an piece title, “The US Must Recognize Palestine.”

The attempt to portray the Palestinians' application for UN membership as a substitute for negotiations between the parties is an Israeli manipulation. First, because there is no contradiction between the two, but more important, because Israel is not taking a single step that would seem to advance direct negotiations with the Palestinian people, on whose behalf it rejects unilateral recognition.

For 15 years – since 2009 – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from all negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and he did everything possible to thwart the efforts of then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to reach an agreement during the Obama administration.

Consequently, it is not at all clear why the U.S. is embracing Israeli opposition to a move that advances the desired diplomatic solution. (2)

Notes:

(1) Landau, Noa (2024): America's Mobilizing to Save Israel From Itself and Its Extremists. But There's a Problem. Haaretz 04/24/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-04-24/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-u-s-policy-of-distinction-intensifies-israelis-denial/0000018f-0c22-d6a0-a9ef-ccbe55d30000> (Accessed: 2024-24-04).

(2) Editorial. Haaretz. The U.S. Must Recognize Palestine 04/24/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-04-24/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-u-s-must-recognize-palestine/0000018f-0c80-df8a-afcf-af9b26340000>

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 24: Frederick Douglass and the Compromise of 1850

The controversial core of the famous Compromise of 1850 was the strengthened Fugitive Slave Law, which infuriated many free-state citizens who were being required to be complicit in returning escaped slaves to their owners and masters in the slave states.

The escaped slave and major abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was not at all happy about it either. He had contempt for the Great Compromiser and Kentucky Senator Henry Clay who had played a major role in negotiating the package of agreements:

[W]hatever the contemporary [1950] admiration for Clay's parliamentary abilities and personal incorruptibility, Douglass could have no good word for a man who owned fifty slaves. Singling out Clay's first proposal, that of admitting California as a free state, Douglass unloosed his choicest irony. "This liberal and generous concession to be fully appreciated," he wrote, "must be viewed in the light of the fact that California has already, with singular unanimity, adopted a constitution which excludes forever the foul system of bondage from her borders. . . . Mr. Clay's proffered liberality is about as noble as that of a highwayman, who, when in the power of a traveller, and on his way to prison, proposes a consultation, and offers to settle the unhappy difficulty which has occurred between himself and the latter, by accepting half the contents of his purse, assuring him, at the same time, that if his pistol had not missed fire, he might have possessed himself of the whole." (1)

Benjamin Quarles also provides Douglass’ analysis of the goals of the Slave Power (slave states) at that juncture:

To Douglass and his fellow abolitionists there existed in 1850 a slave power conspiracy. Douglass believed that this plot of the "slavocracy" embraced "five cardinal objects. '' He listed them. ''They are these: first, the complete suppression of all anti-slavery discussion; second, the extirpation of the entire free people of color from the United States; third, the unending perpetuation of slavery in this Republic; fourth, the nationalization of slavery to the extent of making slavery respected in every State of the Union; fifth, the extension of slavery over Mexico and the entire South American States.”

The only one of that list that may have been a bit overblown is the last one. Maybe.

This conspiracy was not a “conspiracy theory” in today’s meaning. It was pretty obvious from what the slave states were actually doing in Congress.

Quarles notes that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law provoked a number of escaped former slaves living in the North to flee to “cold Canaan” (Canada). And he notes that “[t]he unpopularity of the Fugitive Slave Law thus dated from the hour of its passage.” And for good reason!

The abolitionists focused on showing the citizens of the free states the danger the Fugitive Slave Law was to their own freedom:

Douglass and the abolitionists … began to stir the collective conscience of the nation by stressing the fact that more than the slave was at stake; freedom itself was at stake. Highlighted by the Fugitive Slave Law, the abolitionist crusade perceptibly broadened from a sympathetic effort on behalf of the slave to a deep concern for the preservation of civil liberties in America.

It's worth noting that many abolitionists were ready to use force to resist the efforts of fugitive-slave hunters to send their fellow citizens back to slavery. A month after the passage of the new law, Douglass addressed an antislavery meeting in Boston:

Charles Francis Adams [son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams], after stating the object of the meeting, called first upon Douglass, asking him especially "to state the condition of the colored people under this new act for their oppression." Arising amid an ovation, Douglass did not mince words. The colored people of Boston, said he, had resolved to suffer death rather than return to bondage. "We must be prepared should this law be put into operation to see the streets of Boston running with blood.”

That didn’t occur in Boston. But the conflict that came to be called Bleeding Kansas – which was not simply a metaphor - broke out in 1854 and was a “small civil war in the United States, fought between proslavery and antislavery advocates for control of the new territory of Kansas under the doctrine of popular sovereignty.” (2)

Notes:

(1) Quarles, Benjamin (1950): Douglass and the Compromise of 1850. Negro History Bulletin 14:1. 24, 19-21. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/44212401>

(2) Editors (2024): Bleeding Kansas. Britannica Online 03/14/2024. <https://www.britannica.com/event/Bleeding-Kansas-United-States-history> (Accessed: 2024-24-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 23: More on how the Compromise of 1850 was terrible

The major provisions of the Compromise of 1850 included a resolution of issues involving the territories seized from Mexico in the war of 1846-48 (la Guerra de los Estados Unidos contra México). Three of the five major provisions of the compromise involved admitting California to the Union as a free state, setting the boundaries of Texas to exclude what became New Mexico, and organizing/establishing the territories of Utah and New Mexico with the question of slavery to be left to “popular sovereignty” in the territories.

This is a map showing the boundaries of Mexico as of 1824 (1):

A fourth element was abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia but allowing slavery itself to remain legal there. This was a cosmetic concession to remove the embarrassing presence of the buying and selling of human beings as property in the national Capital.

The fifth element was the explosive establishment of a new and much tougher Fugitive Slave Law. Its provisions were drastic enough that even former slaves who had been established as free persons in free states for decades became subject to new legal proceedings to return them to bondage.

As unstable and unjust as the Compromise of 1850 was, it can be and has been argued in retrospect that it bought time for the Northern states to strengthen their economy and infrastructure enough to defeat the South in the war set off by the latter in 1861 in defense of slavery.

Frank Heywood Hodder in an article published posthumously in 1936 offered that defense of the compromise:

The defense for the Compromise lies in the f act that, had not some settlement of the outstanding questions been reached in 1850, the secession movement would certainly have been started in the South and could not have been stopped. The building of the railroa.ds in the succeeding decade changed the situation completely. Ten railroads linked the Ohio with the Great Lakes in 1860 where there had been but one in 1850. Five roads joined the Mississippi and Ohio valleys in 1860 where there was none in 1850. The result was the new alignment of the East and the West that saved the Union in the Civil War. (2)

That counterfactual judgment is speculative, of course. But it’s hard to imagine that the advantages the North had in population and industrial development would not have been at least as superior to that of the South in the early 1850s as they would become a decade later. And the North would have had American patriotism and the moral cause of fighting against slavery and the Slave Power then just as they did later.

To tease out that what-if scenario, we would also need to speculate about whether the same Southern coalition of states could have been persuaded to join a Confederacy in 1850. The polarizing experiences of the 1850s like the guerilla war in Kansas and the Dred Scott decision certainly played a polarizing role in hardening Southern resistance to freeing the slaves. The recent shared experience if the Mexican War could have made senior officers more reluctant to enter into a treasonous uprising in 1850.

We would also have to speculate whether President Millard Fillmore (he held the office 1850-1853) would have been more effective and careful in reacting to Southern attempts to secede as Abraham Lincoln was in 1860-61. That’s also speculation. But the answer there is almost certainly: No, he would not have.

But understanding potential and feasible alternative decisions and speculating on their impacts is also part of understanding the situation in which the actual decisions were made.

Notes:

(1) File:Mexico 1824. Wikimedia Commons 06/29/2015. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_1824_(equirectangular_projection).png#filehistory> (Accessed: 2024-23-04).

(2) Hodder, Frank Haywood (1936): The Authorship of the Compromise of 1850. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 22:4, 525-536. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1897319>

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 22: The Compromise of 1850

I want to give some attention to the Compromise of 1850 in this year’s “heritage” posts.

That compromise provided a stopgap solution to the problems raised by the theft of one-third of Mexico’s land, including Texas and California, in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. In those days, seizure of the territories of neighboring countries was standard operating practice for the US. Lots of slaveowners were hot for the annexation of Cuba back then, too.

The evil spirit of American history, John C. Calhoun, was still in the Senate then. He wanted all of the newly-seized territory to be open for slavery. Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay came up with a package of compromises, which Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois (of the Lincoln-Douglas debates fame) steered through Congress. Michael Woods summarizes its provisions this way:

The compromise admitted the free state of California; organized the territories of New Mexico and Utah under the slippery principle of popular sovereignty; reduced Texas’s size but promised to pay its massive debt; restricted the sale, though not the ownership, of enslaved people in Washington, D.C.; and established a draconian Fugitive Slave Act, which made recovery of alleged runaways a federal priority. (1) [my emphasis]

This situation was a major advance for the Slave Power in the South. More slave states had been added to the list. The slave state/free state balance in the Senate was still intact. But the writing was on the wall. The slave states intended to increase their power until they became dominant in the national government.

The Fugitive Slave Act was seen by many in the free states as making them even more complicit in what they viewed as the evil institution of slavery. It also trampled on the “states rights” of the free states. In fact, this was part of a series of efforts by the slave states to override the rights of free states. It was only after Lincoln was democratically elected to the Presidency in 1860 that the slave states suddenly became obsessed again with state sovereignty over federal. The Nullification Controversy of 1832 had been a trial run by the South for this approach.

The phrase “popular sovereignty” was a euphemism for allowing territories to decide themselves by popular vote (among white men, of course) whether they should enter the Union as a slave or free states, and Congress should defer to that choice. The practical outcome of this was displayed in the mini-civil-war in Kansas Territory later that decade, when pro- and anti-slavery forces attempted to achieve a majority in the territory to decide on the slavery issue.

Woods identifies three basic strands of thought on the Compromise of 1850: the triumph of statesmanship and moderation (at the expense of the slaves, of course); viewing the agreement as “a cowardly act of appeasement” (which it was): and, a “skeptical interpretation” that emphasizes “ironic outcomes and the limits of federal influence.”

The praise of the statesmanship of the compromise involves some colorful figures as major actors. But Woods politely but accurately describes Calhoun’s villainy even in the 1850 compromise this way:

Given his efforts to forge a southern political bloc and the secessionist threat embedded in his March 4 address, he fits less easily into the role of patriotic patrician. In the final volume of a massive biography, Charles W. Wiltse insisted that Calhoun remained committed to the Union. More recent interpreters view the glass as half empty: increasingly convinced that northerners would not concede to proslavery demands, Calhoun went to his grave striving to maintain the Union on southern terms while reserving secession as a last resort. From this perspective, Calhoun’s final appeal was less a plea for national unity than a sectional ultimatum. [my emphasis]

Calhoun was a defender of slavery. The only “patriotism” involved was that he would have preferred to make the entirety of the United States a safe haven for human slavery.

As Woods notes, “some historians condemn the Compromise of 1850 as a shameful capitulation to slaveholders.” It certainly was, and it only served to encourage the Slave Power to expand its pressure against democracy.

What Woods refers to as interpretations that emphasize “ironic outcomes and the limits of federal influence” mainly have to do with some of the larger implications it had for the American West. For instance, “the [popular sovereignty] doctrine raised a host of other questions in Utah, where Mormon leaders strove to maintain local control over issues ranging from Indian policy to polygamy.”

Notes:

(1) Woods, Michael E. (2019): The Compromise of 1850 and the Search for a Usable Past. Journal of the Civil War Era 9:3, 438-456. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/26755582>

Is Timothy Snyder stuck in Cold War fantasies? (He certainly expresses immense confidence in Ukraine's abilities.)

Timothy Snyder is a respected historian of Eastern Europe. He has been very engaged with the controversies around the Russia-Ukraine War. Yale University has made available his lecture from a course on “Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine.” It’s very much worth following. Though the title is about “modern Ukraine,” he takes the story back to the days of the Vikings. (Yes, Vikings!) (1)

He also has some excellent analysis of the democracy-vs.-autocracy problem facing democracies worldwide.

But on contemporary foreign policy questions, especially on the Russia-Ukraine War, Snyder has an unfortunate tendency to repeat some of the worst aspects of the old Cold War mentality, particularly Russophobia and threat inflation. And those aspects of his view are painfully obvious in this recent presentation of his. (2)

The “Russia-Russia-Russia” phenomenon

The Democrats’ emphasis on Trump being some kind of Russian puppet had unfortunately repercussions. One of the dumber moments of the 2016 Presidential campaign was during the last debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Trump made a vague comment about how having good relations between the US and Russia wouldn’t be a bad thing and then said that Putting had not respect for Hillary.

She responded, “That's because he'd rather have a puppet [Trump] as president.” To which Trump snapped back, “You’re the puppet.”

The various official investigations of Russian activity in the 2016 election have established clearly that Russia did try to influence the election.

The problem in telling what that may mean has to do with the fact that countries try to influence each other’s politics all the time. That’s why there are international arrangements and national laws that define what is officially acceptable practice and what it not. So, giving or selling a classified document to a foreign power (or to anybody) without formal direction is illegal. Agreeing with some official statement or foreign-policy position of a foreign country is not illegal. In fact, pretty much all of foreign diplomacy is about countries agreeing with each other on many things and disagreeing on others.

That’s why it’s important to have professional press institutions that provide professional journalistic analysis of such things. And why it’s also important for press critics and readers to pay close attention to the potential conflicts of news agencies and their sources. When a government makes up something to discredit another country or otherwise to manipulate that country and other international actors, then, well, that’s manipulation. How clever or responsible that may be or not, it’s important to recognize that it’s a normal thing.

That’s also why I.F. Stone’s comment from 1967 is still so relevant, particularly with relevant to wars and rumors of war: “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.” (3)

Of course, countries pay attention to deliberated “disinformation” being propagated by other countries. That’s just how this thing works. Some of those anti-disinformation efforts are more substantial than others. The EU vs. Disinfo site is one of the more lightweight ones I’ve encountered. But the main thing for voters and news consumers is to pay attention to the quality of information sources.

Snyder on the current war

There seems to be a broad understanding among foreign policy and defense observers that Ukraine has lost the current war, whether we date it from 2014 or 2022. Some of them, especially ones working directly or indirectly for defense contractors, may not find it convenient to say so publicly. And Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government seems to think actively continuing the war is what the Ukrainian people want.

Snyder’s position on the war has been that it was essential for the West to support Ukraine in the war and the more armaments the better, and the faster they are delivered, the better. He doesn’t make any criticisms of the blunderbuss way the US handled NATO expansion when it came to Ukraine, in particular. Because his operative principle seems to be: Russia evil, NATO good, always and everywhere.

He frames his argument by claiming that Ukraine is fighting for “the West,” which is true as a secondary matter, It’s mainly fighting Russian aggression against its legitimate territory.

But he argues that Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion has saved the West from what Synder apparently thinks is Russia’s immediate desire to start seizing the territory of current NATO members. He also claims that Ukraine’s actions the last 2+ years have deterred China from invading Taiwan (!?) and contributed far more than any other country to nuclear nonproliferation in the last two years.

What is he smoking? He’s definitely not an adherent of the “realist” school of foreign policy thought.

Snyder also argues that Russia has said clearly that it intends to incorporate all of Ukraine. I’ve been following John Mearsheimer’s analysis as well as those of analysts who prefer a “restrainer” foreign policy for the US. Mearsheimer, I think, has been giving at least one interview a week on the Russia-Ukraine war. As annoying as Mearsheimer’s “offensive-realist” foreign policy framework can be (and often is!), he pays close attention to this war. He has repeatedly said that the Russians have never explicitly said they intend to take over all of Ukraine. (Snyder has some comments on Mearsheimer’s position on the war in the question period.)

Snyder also argues that Russia has said clearly that it intends to incorporate all of Ukraine. I’ve been following John Mearsheimer’s analysis as well as those of analysts who prefer a “restrainer” foreign policy for the US. Mearsheimer, I think, has been giving at least one interview a week on the Russia-Ukraine war. As annoying as Mearsheimer’s “offensive-realist” foreign policy framework can be (and often is!), he pays close attention to this war. He has repeatedly said that the Russians have never explicitly said they intend to take over all of Ukraine. (Snyder has some comments on Mearsheimer’s position on the war in the question period.)

Snyder is setting up a kind of stab-in-the-back theory of the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine lost because the West was too wimpy in supporting the war!

The NATO interest in Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion

At this point, there seems to be no realistic prospect of Ukraine taking back lost territory in the immediate future. Russia has a considerably larger supply of potential recruits and draftees, and Ukraine is obviously struggling to keep its military’s ranks filled. The first two years of the war meant that artillery for not only Ukraine but NATO countries has been running short. Of course there are plenty of companies that are happy to provide replacements. But they can’t just conjure them out of the air.

NATO also just added two new members, Sweden and Finland. While Ukraine is not a NATO member and NATO countries have no mutual-defense treaties with Ukraine, the NATO mutual-defense obligation does include countries sharing borders with Russia, Sweden and Finland included. As a very practical matter – which in this case does involve the much-overused “credibility” concern – the NATO countries have to give preference to shoring up their military deterrence against Russia over Ukraine’s needs. And despite French President Emmanuel Macron’s foolish speculations, sending NATO combat troops to Ukraine to fight the Russians directly is a highly unlikely prospect.

As a strictly practical matter, it made sense for NATO to provide substantial assistance to Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s 2022 invasion. That doesn’t reduce the need for the West to understand what the very negative practical effects of NATO’s reckless gamble with membership for Ukraine have been. The US in particular wanted to get Ukraine into NATO, and Russia wanted to keep it out. Russia has won that round for the foreseeable future.

Of course, they won that round by seizing Ukrainian territory in violation of international law, and illegally incorporating Crimea and the provinces of Luhansk and Donbas into Russia. The US is on the side of international law on that one, even while it’s trampling it into the dirt by supporting Israel’s gruesome war-and-starvation campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza.

At the moment, the best-case scenario for Ukraine would seem to be a Korean-style long-term ceasefire/armistice in which Ukraine would not be required to renounce sovereignty over their lost territory. But, as we’ve heard many times during this war, the Ukrainians themselves will have to decide what kind of peace they are willing to accept. And any deal the Russians offer them at this point will be bad from Ukraine’s view.

There is also a moral question for the US and other NATO countries whether it is right to continue to arm Ukraine to carry on a war that has no good end in sight – if the Russians offer any kind of half-workable settlement in the current situation.

But if the US doesn’t take the moral questions raised by Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Gazans seriously enough to cut off military aid over them, it’s doubtful that actual moral considerations will weigh heavily on the Biden’s Administration’s policy toward Ukraine, either.

And, of course, a second Trump Administration wouldn’t even pretend to bother about moral considerations. Who is offering the best bribes to Trump and his family and businesses will be decisive on most foreign policy issues.

There are a lot of questions about the future of NATO, even if Trump doesn’t get elected again. Asking NATO to take a major presence in East Asia seems like a very risky undertaking.

Argentinian footnote

Finally, there is a silly footnote to the current NATO discussions. El Loco, aka, Argentine’s ultra-right President Javier Milei, wants Argentina to become a “global partner” of NATO. Also: “On Thursday, the U.S. government announced it was providing Argentina with $40 million in foreign military financing for the first time in more than two decades — a grant that allows key U.S. allies like Israel to buy American weaponry.” (4)

What are Biden’s people thinking? “Defense Minister Petri hailed the acquisition of the advanced warplanes as ‘the most important military purchase since Argentina’s return to democracy’ in 1983.” (5) In other words, since the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. But of all the democratically-minded national government Argentina has had since then, El Loco’s is the one the Biden Administration wants to boost with lavish military sales. El Loco wants to stop any further investigation into that dictatorship’s many crimes.

Yet another move not obviously compatible with the Administration’s preferred Democracy vs. Autocracy framing of the US international position.

Notes:

(1) First lecture in the series: Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 1: Ukrainian Questions Posed by Russian Invasion. YaleCourses YouTube channel 09/03//2022. <https://youtu.be/bJczLlwp-d8?si=iTmH-rHz5l4Cs6YK> (Accessed: 2024-21-04).

(2) The Peril of Slowness: American Mistakes during Russia’s War of Aggression in Ukraine. Foreign Policy Association YouTube channel 04/08/2024.<https://youtu.be/JVs2y-YeiFM?si=2dH5egHVw602EQsf> (Accessed: 2024-21/or-04).

(3) From: In a Time of Torment, 1961-1967 (1967), 317. Source: I. F. Stone. Wikiquote 02/23/2024 <https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=I._F._Stone&oldid=3471027> (Accessed: 2024-21-04).

(4) Argentina asks to join NATO as President Milei seeks a more prominent role for his nation. AP News 04/19/2024. <https://apnews.com/article/president-milei-argentina-nato-f16s-military-bf56ef4b18646438500c921250c66e93> (Accessed: 2024-21-04).

See also: Kollman, Raúl (2024): Milei y su gobierno como sucursal de Washington. Página/12 21.04.2024. <https://www.pagina12.com.ar/730573-milei-y-su-gobierno-como-sucursal-de-washington> (Accessed: 2024-21-04).

And: Argentina formally asks to become ‘global partner’ of NATO. Buenos Aires Times 18.04.2024. <https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentine-defence-minister-holds-high-level-nato-meeting.phtml> (Accessed: 2024-21-04).

Confederate “Heritage” Month 2024, April 21: Former Mississippi Democratic Gov. Ray Mabus on why celebrating Confederate “heritage” is disgusting

Ray Mabus, one of the few really good Governors Mississippi has had over the last century, explains why Republican Gov. Tate Reeves (Mississippi Dems also know him as “Tater Tot”) proclaiming an official Confederate Heritage Month again this year is a bad idea. (1)

Former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus on Saturday condemned Gov. Tate Reeves' decision to declare April as "Confederate Heritage Month" —- calling it "incredibly hurtful" and "dead solid wrong."

It celebrates "something that was truly awful: people trying to own other people," he added.

"First, I didn't do it when I was governor," Mabus told CNN in a video clip posted on Instagram by anchor Victor Blackwell. "And second, Confederate heritage? Really? The heritage that I think of with the Confederacy is slavery, is treason, and is losing. Which of those heritages are we really honoring here?"

Mabus, a Democrat who was Navy secretary under then-President Barack Obama, said the move was "part of the 'lost cause' narrative ... that came about a few years after the Civil War in an attempt to reassert white supremacy." (2)

Well said! It’s a real shame that something so obvious still needs to be said in 2024.

A more expansive quotation of what Mabus said about “Confederate heritage? Really?” here:

But it’s all part of that lost cause narrative, the ‘Moonlight and Magnolias’ that came about few years after the Civil War in an attempt to reassert white supremacy. It came hand-in-hand with Jim Crow. And, it worked for a long, long time. Statues were put up, this heritage notion. But what it does is incredibly hurtful, it is incredibly harmful, and it honors something that we should learn about, know about, but definitely, definitely not honor. (3) [my emphasis]

Mississippians are understandably concerned about the state so often winding up last among the 50 states in various measures of quality of life and economic prosperity. At the moment, the state also has the dubious distinction of being the “last” state in the past three years that official celebrates Confederate “Heritage” Month:

Mississippi is the only state that has dedicated a month to honoring the Confederacy in the last three years, although six other Southern states have done so historically. Mississippi will also recognize Confederate Memorial Day on April 27, as state law requires. But those seeking to protest against these policies will have a tough time: The Supreme Court just effectively abolished protests in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. (4) [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Blackwell, Victor (2024): X (formally Twitter) 04/20/2024. https://x.com/VictorBlackwell/status/1781711591106297859 (Accessed: 04/21/2024).

(2) Golding, Bruce (2024): Former Mississippi Governor Blasts Proclamation of 'Confederate Heritage Month'. HNGN [Headlines and Global News] 04/20/2024. <https://www.hngn.com/articles/259838/20240420/mississippi-proclamation-confederate-heritage-month-governor-tate-reeves-ray-mabus-republican-democrat.htm> (Accessed: 04/21/2024).

(3) Bahney, Jennifer Bowers (2024): ‘Confederate Heritage? Really?’ Former Mississippi Gov Slams State’s Plan to ‘Celebrate’ Confederacy. Mediaite 04/20/2024. https://www.mediaite.com/politics/confederate-heritage-really-former-mississippi-gov-slams-states-plan-to-celebrate-confederate-heritage-month/> (Accessed: 04/21/2024).

(4) Rashid, Hafiz (2024): The Shocking April Holiday That Mississippi Is Still Celebrating. The New Republic 04/16/2024. https://newrepublic.com/post/180736/mississippi-confederate-heritage-month-still-thing> (Accessed: 04/21/2024).