Anatoly F. Dobrynin, RIP

April 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Cuba, International Affairs, National Security, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, UN | Leave a Comment 

Yesterday, the death of Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986, was announced in Moscow. He was 90.

Few diplomats served as long in Washington as Dobrynin. (One who served longer was Ernest Jaakson, who was the representative of the Estonian government-in-exile in Washington, then of the revived nation of Estonia, from 1965 until 1993, and who replaced Dobrynin as dean of the capital’s diplomatic corps in 1986, rather to the latter’s irritation.) During those three-plus decades, he served five Soviet leaders (Khruschchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev) during six Administrations (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan).

The two most significant achievements of Dobrynin’s tenure in Washington came in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and ten years later, when he played a central role on the Soviet side in negotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. The Cuban crisis came six months after his arrival in DC, following a period serving as United Nations Undersecretary-General under Dag Hammarskjold. During the months before President Kennedy learned of Soviet missiles on Cuban territory, Dobrynin managed to establish contacts with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that proved to be the basis of the back-channel negotiations that ultimately defused what, to date, has been the most dangerous military situation the world has faced since 1945. None of Dobrynin’s predecessors as Soviet Ambassador had shown anything approaching his diplomatic poise and skill; had he not been on the scene, events might have taken a tragic turn.

A decade later, Dobrynin, negotiating with National Security Advisor Dr. Henry Kissinger, helped to assemble the ABM treaty, which, for nearly forty years, has been the cornerstone on which the disarmament agreements between the US and USSR (and later Russia) have been built. He also considerably facilitated the process which led to the SALT I agreement of 1972, and helped further the meetings between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev which resulted in full-scale detente between the superpowers.

It should be emphasized that Dobrynin, despite his willingness to steep himself in American culture and his genial persona, was always a loyal representative of the Soviet regime and its ideology. When faced with the human-rights stance of President Carter, he gave no ground, and, in the years before Mikhail Gorbachev gained power, took many a hard-line position where Soviet actions abroad were concerned, especially in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. In his 1995 autobiography, In Confidence, he made it clear that he was unhappy to see the Soviet Union disintegrate. But it should be remembered that as a diplomat, he was committed to dialogue over confrontation, wherever and whenever he thought it possible, and that commitment helped the process which ultimately decreased and finally ended the dangerous tensions of the Cold War.

The Russian site RT.com offers these tributes from Dr. Kissinger, who so many times faced the Ambassador across a negotiating table, and Donald Kendall, a close friend of President Nixon’s:

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remembers Dobrynin when, during the Cold War, he was working in Washington DC, heading the Russian Embassy there. “First he was my professional partner,” says Kissinger, “and then gradually, he became my friend.” Even though, he says, the Soviet politics of those times which the ambassador was standing by, often went against the US policies, “he was always trying to achieve peace, to reduce tensions and to stand by a more peaceful life on the planet,” says the former US Secretary of State. “I think of him with respect and warm-hearted feelings,” concludes Kissinger.

“I hope Dobrynin will get the memorial that he deserves,” said Donald Kendall, former head of the PepsiCo in an interview to ITAR-TASS news agency. He suggested that both Russia and the United States should put a monument to Dobrynin, as a sign of honor and respect for his achievements.

Kendall is convinced that Dobrynin’s “fantastic diplomatic skills” have several times “saved the relationships” between Moscow and Washington. “I have stressed this many times, that if in those times there would have been a different ambassador in Washington, then there could have been a real war between the two countries.”

Beware Of Green Sheep Bearing Urgent Messages

December 11, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Environmental issues, History, International Affairs, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Public Opinion, UN | 2 Comments 

Long ago, the wisest of all men who ever trod earthly sod reminded us to beware of those peddling false information, noting that they often appear in “sheep’s clothing,” but really they are nothing more than “ravenous wolves.” These days we are bearing witness to the resurgence of ideas that have long since been discredited in former form, so the wool suit has been brought out for stealthy reasons. But a closer look reveals that those sheep have really big teeth.

Dust off your old Orwellian “newspeak” dictionary, where words are set free from actual meaning. There is a new code in town and it is worthy of being broken – a barely cryptic puzzle, but one that may, in fact, deceive many. Socialism is not only on the comeback trail via a full frontal political assault in our country (never mind that is has never actually worked anywhere), it is also on the march under a new banner – though to see this we must look through the looking glass. Not only has terminology been tweaked, the political color chart is being revised, as well – while too few actually notice.

Green is the new Red.

The actual practical application of so-called socialist dogma since the days when its seeds were hydrated in the bloodbath of the French Revolution has never come close to living up to its utopian promises. The goals of equality and liberty – noble concepts themselves – have never been achieved through coercive collectivism. Countries have certainly tried to level the playing field – or, if you prefer “spread the wealth around” – but it has always been done at the expense of personal freedom, not to mention the fact that wealth has tended to disappear in the process of that “spreading.” Some of the wealth did, of course, survive – for a time at least – in the coffers of those who happened to be the ruling elite du jour.

In other words, although socialism has regularly been presented as the cultural and political pathway to fairness and prosperity for all, it has had a poor record in history. In fact, it has tended to actually make matters worse. But never mind that: let’s give the tired doctrine one more try. After all, we have smarter people in charge now and the fact that the math still doesn’t add up is irrelevant.

It’s the same with environmentalism. As the world watched what happened this past week in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, the mantra was about saving the planet. But lurking beneath and behind the machinations and rhetoric of this latest climate-change-kum-by-ya moment is the same old ideology, albeit with a leafy facelift. Saving the planet, we are regularly told by the smart people, requires more centralization of power and less individual liberty.

And if there is any doubt as to this agenda, we need only look back to a few days ago when Environmental Protection Agency Czarina, Lisa Jackson, told us all that the EPA regards carbon dioxide as a grave threat to mother earth and that the pollutant must therefore be controlled by government guardians. They’ll be the people wearing those special biohazard suits – yep, you guessed it, the ones made of wool.

It is emerging that there are plans, if the Congress doesn’t do the bidding of the new greed reds, to simply do a smack down on the economy with a method described as “command-and-control.” This is a management style popularized in the now deceased HBO series, “The Sopranos,” as in that memorable line, “I got your ‘command-and-control’ right here – badda bing, badda boom.”

You say, “cap-and-trade,” others say, “command-and-control,” why don’t we call the whole thing off?

Please don’t miss the significance of what Jackson has said. Our entire economy is based just as much on carbon as it is the dollar. A “command-and-control” approach is another way of saying: “You think a take over of health care is a power grab? Wait until you see this!”

What does this have to do with socialism? Environmentalism relates to socialism in much the same way that Marxism relates to Leninism – and for the same reason. Neither is really about giving people a better life or saving the planet. The ultimate agenda – the wolf in sheep’s clothing – is political power and the micromanagement of individual lives through collectivism, with all the strings pulled by an emerging political aristocracy made up of the “really smart” people. And I use that word “aristocracy” deliberately, though with tongue-in-cheek, because the word comes from the Greek and literally means: “the rule of the best.”

The problem is that this latest group of “the best and the brightest” has a clear and present problem with priorities. We are facing some very great crisis-level challenges in America, the top two being, 1. It’s the economy, stupid, and 2. The war against Islamism (or, reverse the order, if you like). But the body language of those “really smart” people is all about matters that, well, don’t actually matter to most Americans – at least not right now.

Seventeenth century British preacher, Thomas Fuller, a man who would have done well in the age of the sound bite, once said: “He that is everywhere is nowhere.” This is the same idea Steven Covey and other management gurus talk about when they warn that the “urgent” can be the enemy of the “important.” And Americans right now are living under a new tyranny – that of the neo-urgent. However, the present “urgent-priority” is being orchestrated by those who seem to simply want power centralized and personal liberties marginalized.

Oh, by the way, Thomas Fuller also famously said, “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth,” which gives me some comfort. That is, until I recall one college professor of mine many years ago – a particularly and regularly befuddled man – who once botched this quote while giving us a pep talk before a major exam: “Now, uh, class, uh, always remember what Thomas Fuller said, ‘It is always darkest before the storm.”

A Community Organizer Takes On The World

September 25, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Cuba, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, UN | 2 Comments 

President Barack Obama’s visit to the United Nations this past week, complete with a major address and some quality time with a gavel, was yet another step in the process of seizing a much sought after role. For decades, U.S. presidents have routinely been referred to as leaders of the free world. For all practical and theoretical purposes now, though, the appellation “free” no longer applies.

We should now be saying that he’s the leader of the world, period.

Until now, the various elements of a particular president’s philosophy and methodology have usually been categorized dichotomously: domestic policy and foreign policy. And since they both involve issues that seldom fly that close to each other – except for matters of trade – the occupants of the Oval Office have generally been analyzed and graded on them separately by historians.

The prevailing wisdom is that a particular president may have been strong on one and weak on the other. Rare was the leader who got high marks for what he did here as well as his approach to things abroad. Sometimes it had to do with passion. Richard Nixon was fascinated with foreign policy, seeing it as the premier role for a president. And in spite of a solid domestic record (which was impressive in some areas), the 37th President is largely rated highly for his achievements on the international stage.

Even for those who seemed to be effective both domestically and diplomatically, there were few similarities in philosophy and methodology between the two vastly different arenas. That is, until now.

Mr. Obama has a philosophy that runs as a common thread between his approaches to everything he touches from the U.S. economy, to national security, and even, yes, foreign policy. What is this important piece of the puzzle? Simple. Though he pays lip service to one of the most basic issues of human nature and how people relate to and interact with each other on a micro or macro scale, his actions actually minimize – or at least, marginalize – a fundamental instinct common to every person, group, community, and nation on the earth.

Self-interest.

The call du jour from the mountaintop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is for all of us to rise above, or in new age parlance “transcend,” mere mortal self-interest. On the domestic level this means that capitalism – a mean, primal, greedy, and materialistic approach to economics that steals from the poor to give to the rich – must be replaced (slowly, but surely) with a more enlightened approach; one that emphasizes social justice and the equitable distribution of wealth.

This is all the rage these days. It may be called “progressive,” but it’s really a barely-if-at-all disguised form of socialism. If it walks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it digests food like a goose, it’s…well.

Never mind that this naïve experiment has never really worked well anywhere, and instead of practicing “to each according to need; from each according to ability,” it actually devolves into “to each according to need; from each according to lack thereof.” As Margaret Thatcher famously said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

You also start running out of freedom. Planned economies involve a construct where the individual trades (wittingly, or not) liberty for some perceived value – all supposedly accomplished on the wings of so-called better angels. The bigger the wings and more aggressive the planners, the greater is the loss of freedom. Capitalism, on the other hand, though often accused of being selfish and cynical, recognizes man’s inbred propensity for selfishness and taps into it.

The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, who wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, referred to this as a “system of natural liberty.” And flaws, cycles, weaknesses aside, it has worked pretty well here in our country. This approach to economics is, in fact, woven into the national fabric.

Everyone gets free healthcare in Cuba. But it’s a good thing there, because the average wage earner in that nation makes less than $30.00 per month, including the doctors. And three out of four workers in that country – where a little more than 50 years ago economic development was the highest in Latin America and advanced even by European standards – now work for the public sector (read: the government tab).

But don’t hold your breath while waiting for Michael Moore to make a movie entitled, “Cuba: A Sad Story.” His current movie, a rant about the evils of capitalism, will be released next week in theaters. Of course, Moore wouldn’t make a movie, or do anything for that matter, out of self-interest. Would he?

It’s no secret if you want a high standard of living in countries with planned economies (the collective version of fixed incomes) you go to work for the government. As you climb the ladder you get better Dachas. This was only true here in the U.S. during the days of the Great Depression and New Deal.

Of course, in fairness, the anti-capitalists are just getting started.

On the international front, lip service may be paid here and there to the concept of national self-interest, as when Mr. Obama told the good old boys and girls at the United Nations the other day: “Now, like all of you, my responsibility is to act in the interest of my nation and my people, and I will never apologize for defending those interests.” However, one just knows that a big fat conjunction is coming signaling the real point: “But,” (see, I told you) “it is my deeply held belief that in the year 2009 – more than at any point in human history – the interests of nations and peoples are shared.”

Really?

The president’s hyperbolic assignation of this year notwithstanding, is it even remotely true that China or Russia share our interests? And even leaving the roguish states out of the discussion, is it at all realistic to ask any nation to act against, or in any way minimize, its own interest – no matter how compelling or romantic the call? And is it even just a little bit ironic that in a speech with the line, “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” our president calls everyone to follow the magnanimous lead of America, now that the Bush administration has been replaced with a collection of more responsible political gnostics?

President Obama does not have separate principles for his domestic and foreign policy approaches. There is one common thread. It’s out with the old and presumably outdated self-interest and in with a brand new era of quasi-utopian-top-down-we-know-best-because-we-are-enlightened peace and prosperity.

Let bells all over the world ring as empathy breaks out all over.

“The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people,” President Obama told the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. But as ambitious and idealistic – even resonant to some – as such a statement is, the fact is that our fundamental nature as human beings has not changed throughout the course of history. Technology has changed, knowledge has increased, landscapes have morphed, and kingdoms and nations have come and gone, but as the Shakespeare of the prophets recorded six centuries before Christ:

All flesh is grass, and the goodliness there of is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth… – Isaiah 40:6-7

The simple, resilient, and undeniable fact is that self-interest is here to stay as long as the world turns. And any philosophy or vision, utopian or otherwise, that fails to take this fact into account, is doomed to failure.

In the waning days of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, he would sometimes lie awake at night worrying about things; the war, his Great Society dreams, and even his own health (his father died relatively young, and Johnson feared the same fate). Occasionally he’d wander the halls finding his way to a portrait of Woodrow Wilson, a man who had been at the pinnacle of power and influence, only to be eventually devastated emotionally and physically by events and the pressures of his office.

LBJ wondered if he’d wind up the same way. After all, didn’t he just want something better for everyone – a higher standard of living and a world safe and at peace? And, hadn’t he been described as a colossus and the most powerful president since FDR, just a few years earlier?

Mark Twain used to say that “history never repeats itself, but it rhymes.” He was right. The cycles of history are not exact, but one time can resemble another and often does.

And one of history’s most enduring lessons is that if anyone begins a visionary journey with dreams and even ideals that fail to take into account the simple fact that people, businesses, communities (organized or otherwise), nations, and groupings of nations all share a passion for themselves, it is like starting with the premise that 2+2=5. This may only seem to be a small error, but when carried out exponentially it becomes a monstrosity.

A New Chapter In Revisionist History

March 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Election 2008, Europe, History, International Affairs, News media, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History, UN, White House | Leave a Comment 

As President Obama travels to Europe to confer with leaders there about how to come to grips with the worldwide recession, Kate Pickert, at Time.com, compares the trip to earlier Presidential travels overseas.

Ms. Pickert is a native of Watertown, New York, and started her career at the Watertown Daily Times, a very highly regarded newspaper; for decades it has been one of the smallest dailies in the country to have a full-time reporter in Washington. The late Alan Emory, who ran its DC bureau from the 1950s to the 1990s, was one of the most respected figures in the Beltway press corps.

Unfortunately, Ms. Pickert seems to have some way to go to fill his shoes.

The reporter starts with a pretty good point – that Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs, at a briefing the day before the President’s departure, was not asked a single question about the trip, since the members of the Fourth Estate present were more concerned about the forced resignation of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ms. Pickert notes that days of old “a President could dominate the news by simply leaving the country and posing for some photo ops. Maybe he’d even sneak in some history-making diplomatic feats. Exhibit A: Richard Nixon.”

Yes, she’s talking about the China trip. The round-the-clock TV coverage that event received – the first time all but a handful of Americans had been able to see China up close and personal – was apparently, in the reporter’s mind, equivalent to a series of “photo ops.”

After giving an account of the visit which reads like a condensation of its Wikipedia entry, Ms. Pickert continues:

Nixon’s China trip was successful, but it’s not as if he ended a war. Woodrow Wilson’s trips in 1919 to the Paris Peace Conference, however, led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first World War.

Let’s leave aside the perennial debate about the degree to which the terms which Germany had to accept at Versailles, mainly at the insistence of the French government, set the stage for the rise of Hitler and another world war.  The useful point to make here is that, while RN’s visit to the PRC may not have ended a fighting war, it brought one major part of the Cold War – the isolation of China from the United States for nearly a quarter-century – to an end, and thus helped to diminish the possibility of a third world war.

Ms. Pickert goes on to discuss the 1945 Yalta Conference, which she says produced as its “end result [...] the partition of Germany and the creation of the United Nations.” It was the Dunbarton Oaks meeting in 1944 which laid the plans for the founding session of the UN, which took place a few days after Yalta; what FDR accomplished at the Black Sea resort was to get a commitment from Stalin to have the USSR join the UN.

But the really startling paragraph in the article is this one:

Of course, not all presidential trips abroad are known for altering the course of world politics. John F. Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Berlin was notable for the speech expressing support for a free West Germany, but infamous because of the four words he used to drive the point home: “Ich bin ein Berliner,” which can be interpreted to literally mean “I am a jelly-filled doughnut.” Some reports say the statement wasn’t mocked in Berlin at the time, but this hardly matters. In popular memory, Kennedy committed an embarrassing gaffe, something presidents try hard not to do while abroad, where they operate under more scrutiny than usual.

Really. JFK’s speech was “infamous?” Then why does Ms. Pickert think Obama, when a candidate last year, chose Berlin to make his one major appearance outside the US during his campaign – an appearance which drew hundreds of thousands? Why is JFK’s speech so prominently featured in his library in Boston? Why was it one of the highlights of former Nixon White House staffer Bruce Herschensohn’s acclaimed documentary Years Of Lightning, Day Of Drums? Why does the “Berliner” line inspire fond memories in older Europeans to this day, many of whom, I daresay, would regard it as a very significant event of the Cold War?

The Watertown Daily Times article about Ms. Pickert’s hiring by Time states that she has a master’s degree from Columbia. The major is not identified, but I’ve got my doubts that it was American history.

Team Of Rivals, Minus One

January 4, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Ethics, Obama administration, Obama family, UN | Leave a Comment 

This afternoon New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, President-elect Obama’s onetime competitor in the 2008 primaries and the P-E’s choice for Secretary of Commerce, announced that he was withdrawing his name from consideration. This came after reports in recent weeks that a Federal grand jury is looking into a situation in which a California company, CDR Financial Products, received contracts from the state government of New Mexico totaling almost $1.5 million after making contributions to three political action committees formed to assist Richardson’s campaigns.

Richardson’s relationship with the President-elect was bound to be awkward no matter what; such political visibility as he has on a national scale is due mainly to his close association with the Clinton Administration, in which he served, successively, as perhaps the most undistinguished UN Ambassador since the post was created, and as Secretary of Energy, in which position he accused scientist Wen Ho Lee of espionage, a charge he later had to admit was unfounded (and which resulted in Lee’s receiving a substantial legal settlement).

As a candidate in the 2008 race, Richardson accomplished little except to postpone his withdrawal from it until the day after the New Hampshire primary, which was probably the factor that kept Obama from defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Granite State and wrapping up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

Ever since Richardson was elected to govern the Land of Enchantment (to use the motto on New Mexican license plates), reports have circulated of somewhat dubious doings in that state’s executive branch. With Congress convening tomorrow and the President-elect arriving today to take up residence in the historic Hay-Adams Hotel for the next week and a half, it may be that Obama’s transition team concluded that between investigative reporters looking into the CDR case, and the questions that would probably be raised at Richardson’s confirmation hearings, it was best to decide now whether to fish or cut bait.

With Richardson’s withdrawal comes the question of who to nominate as Commerce Secretary-designate. Obama has one Hispanic American left in his proposed Cabinet, outgoing Colorado Senator Ken Salazar at Interior, so he is not politically required to find another to replace Richardson.

As it happens, while I was writing my previous post referring to the protracted contest between Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken, more votes were tallied in the recount. These ballots, disputed though many of them may be, still manage to raise the comedian-humorist’s lead to a little over 220, and make it very likely that the Senate Democratic leadership will try to seat Franken sometime this week, once the recount is finished and assuming the lead holds. If that happens, and if Sen. Harry Reid and his cohorts in the upper chamber can reach some kind of rapprochement regarding Illinois’s Roland Burris that would permit him to be seated, then the Democratic majority in the upper chamber would stand at 59 for the time being. Might it be worth Obama’s while to look into the notion of putting either of Maine’s liberal Republican senators into the Commerce spot, permitting that state’s Democratic governor to appoint a replacement and secure the magic number of 60?

Obama has to be aware that it’s not the best start to a new era in governance to have a Cabinet controversy before one’s Cabinet choices have even come before the Senate for confirmation, or to have a pitched battle within one’s party over an appointee to the Senate who is unlikely to remain there for more than a year or so. No doubt he has a lot on his plate already, what with selecting a puppy and getting the young’uns settled in a new school, but he surely knows the above issues just can’t wait until after Inauguration Day to be resolved.

A Thanksgiving Plea For The Congo

November 26, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under UN | Leave a Comment 

The UN’s World Food Program