American Foreign Policy after the Cold War

American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War

History Book Club

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Americans invade Iraq and end rule of Saddam Hussein

Wednesday, January 29, 2020. American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War. In the 1990s, America’s global primacy… The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence.  the defining feature of international politics was American dominance. Then came conflict in former Yugoslavia, and more turmoil among former Soviet and American middle east allies. Rise of Terrorism. Osama bin Laden. G.H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump. Moscow and Beijing. Iran’s Revolution, Iraq, Arab Spring…Libya, Syria, Iran. [Proposed by Bill Owen and Rick Heuser].

Ambassador Burns

William J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and a Case for its Renewal; New York: Random House; 2019

            Ambassador Burns begins his diplomatic career, and this memoir, just as the United States arrived at the pinnacle of global dominance and prosperity. It was autumn of 1991, and he was accompanying President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker at the Madrid Peace Conference. Spain hosted the meeting, but the United States and the USSR sponsored it.  Mikhail Gorbachev, just two months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, was also there.


            In March of that year, President Bush had gained the collaboration of Arab neighbors to land troops in Kuwait and drive the Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein out and back to Baghdad.


            It was a moment when the United States held most of the cards.  The Cold War was over, Russia was about to implode in a bloodless end; China was still turned inward. Bush had changed Reagan’s policy toward Israel, ushering in the possibility of Jewish-Palestinian peace.  


            The question for us was: Should we assume global dominance or draw upon our diplomacy to form a new world order, where our old rivals had a place, and emerging powers had a stake?


            As I read this, I thought about our country today, led by a President whose first and only tendency is toward dominance— “America First”. At this point in our nation’s life, I think we were fortunate to have a leader like Senior Bush, who understood the power of working together with other nations.  A quiet, soft-spoken  man, he recognized that no other nation likes to collaborate with a leader who talks about dominance.


            My own experience, which was spent in 34 years of Cold War, is working with officers from NATO and other allies of the United States, and respect and collegiality with those from non-aligned and even countries of the Communist bloc, when it was possible. Our alliances were like the alliances we formed in World War II. We are never so strong that it is not better to unite with allies to achieve our goals.  


            A year later, Bush was turning over the reins to President Bill Clinton. Russia was in financial turmoil, but communism was gone. Nationalism seemed to be a threat to peace in many parts of the world, and in the Muslim world, Islamic Conservatism was and is a potent threat to democracy as an organizing principle.



            Burns comments on the difference today, when China is growing, is developing formidable military power, and its economy may soon surpass ours.


            Russia appears to have the sense that its revival as a world power depends upon weakening the United States.



            During the Cold War the U.S. replaced the U.K. in being the “father figure” in the Middle East.  I was serving in Iran in 1971 when the Royal Navy sent the radio signal to its forces that it was moving out of “East of Aden”, and leaving that responsibility to the U.S. We were encouraging Iran to assume a larger role in collaboration with the other nations from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, and even west to the Mediterranean. Iran even maintained secret relations with Israel.



            We badly damaged our authority in the region by the Iraqi invasion of 2003, Burns suggests. Burns became ambassador to Russia in 2005, which he describes as his “dream job”.  (I held a lower position in Moscow over two decades prior, and for me that was also my “dream job”. ) 


            Just after Burns arrived in Moscow with his family, with his household goods still stacked in boxes, he welcomed a Congressional visit from Senators including Barack Obama.  

Rice and Putin, Moscow 2006

            Burns relates a visit of George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to Moscow in April 2006, when Vladimir Putin demonstrated that “Russia is back!” and he fully intended to “make Russia great again.”  


            Putin and others rose from low positions in the KGB in the USSR. Others were marked for more success, but Putin overcame them and rose to the top, muscling his way past the ring of powerful men who quickly grabbed huge portions of what had been the state economy of the Soviet Union. Just like the Shah of Iran, he seems to have worked out a system that permits a small group of men to become very wealthy, as long as they do not get “too wealthy” or forget who is boss.

   

           Burns comes across as the quintessential State Department foreign service officer:  Polite, literate, sensible. He was not a braggart or a talker, he was self-effacing and modest, and his career path shows that his seniors detected his fine qualities.  He learned history and studied each piece of the world as he encountered it. He learned the culture and the language. 

            Few can experience the world that he faced and not appreciate the importance of a global approach to international relations, and he responded best to leaders who shared this appreciation: George H. W. Bush, Jim Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, the Clintons, Angela Merkel, and Obama. Likewise, he was less impressed with those leaders who were more comfortable with one-sided relations, like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, and Donald Trump.     

  

Trump and Putin

            Now in the world there is a backlash toward globalization.  Donald Trump’s election and British exit from the European Union are examples of growing popular unease, and a sense among millions that the benefits of globalism are not worth the benefits. Burns retired before Donald Trump entered the White House, but he drew fire in Burns’ book. He found Trump shared the dismissive attitude of many Americans toward the State Department and its officers.  While it’s clear to see what our armed forces do for the country, especially when every family may have men and women who served, there is much less appreciation among many Americans for a service that deals with highly educated, linguistically facile people. That Trump halted hiring of high-level State Department appointees, and cut the departmental budget sharply, was another indication that he saw little value here.



            In his closing chapter, Burns summed up:

Sept. 11, 2001 changed everything. We quickly made the leap to use of military force without trying diplomacy first.

War in Afghanistan (2001)…Iraq(2003)… Global Financial Crisis (2007-8)  withering away of foreign service officers… growth of National Security Council Staff…Trump brought in a different style—brash and narcissistic, with no recognition of history, alliances and multilateral arrangements viewed as millstones and constraints, rather than opportunities for mutual support and collaboration.  His appointment of Rex Tillertson brought on massive personnel reductions, large numbers of senior staff retirement, blacklisting of personnel tainted with work on popular Obama projects.



            Burns lamented Trump’s withdrawals from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 


            Burns ends on a positive note.  Recalling Teddy Roosevelt’s slogan “Speak softly and carry a big stick!” Referring to the fine examples of James Baker, Henry Kissinger and many others, American diplomacy and statecraft will return.







Samuel W. Coulbourn

-end-

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2020

Wednesday, February 26, 2020. America in Reconstruction after the Civil War. It was a terrible time. Civil war soldiers returned home, some in the south facing freed slaves roaming the streets, plantations emptied of their work force, and fear stoked by troublemakers warning of blacks raping white women and killing white men, and angry whites searching out and killing blacks without cause.  The formation of the Ku Klux Klan.  Northern leaders sending carpetbaggers to the south to enforce emancipation and protect freedmen.   

Wednesday, March 25, 2020. Israel, its History and its Prospects. Since its beginning with the proclamation of  nationhood by David Ben Gurion in 1948, followed immediately by the recognition of the new state by President Harry S. Truman, Israel's history has been filled with continual opposition by the Arab nations which surround it, and the Palestinians who were displaced, as well as those who still live there.  Britain, which had held a colonial over former Palestine, objected to nationhood, recognizing that this would stir up a hornet's nest. Israel, in between fighting wars with its neighbors, has turned desert land into fertile orchards, and created a modern state with a population of over 8 million, mostly Jewish, gathered in the ancient Jewish homeland from all over the world. [Suggested by Jason Shaw] 






Wednesday, April 29, 2020. The Effects of Colonialism in the World. Look at Portuguese, Spanish, French, British colonialism and missionary outreach in the world. What were the positive gains? Drawbacks? 



Wednesday, May 27, 2020. Russia since the end of Communism. Look at the seeds for replacing communism and the prospects for a new order. Oligarchs. Corruption. Democratic movements. A new superpower?



Wednesday, June 24, 2020. A History of Alcohol. Men have been fermenting fruit and grain and honey for many thousands of years.  The Babylonians, Greeks and Romans had gods and goddesses and there have been marvelous Bacchanalian feasts and tales of the dreadful effects of too much alcohol.  There have been anti-alcohol drives, temperance marches, Prohibition. Cultural and health effects of alcohol usage. [Proposed by Janos Posfai] 

 

Wednesday, July 29, 2020. China from 1900 to today. China has traveled a long way from the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 when western nations felt free to wander all over the vast country. Sun-Yat-Sen and the last Qing emperor…Military wardlordism ..Chiang Kai-Shek…War against Japan… Mao Zedong and the Communist Revolution, founding of the People’s Republic…”Great Leap Forward” and The Cultural Revolution…World’s No. 2 Economy, on the verge of becoming No. 1. [Proposed by Jason Shaw] 

Farming in America

History of Farming in America

History Book Club

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Wednesday,  November 13, 2019 [Two weeks earlier because of Thanksgiving and another conflict] History of Farming in America.  Examine the American Indians and their farming techniques, the early colonists and the skills they brought from their home countries;  the food discoveries in the New World; Tobacco and Cotton and slavery; Farming and the Dust Bowl; Government and Agriculture; Modern Agribusiness.  [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn] 

Conkin, Paul K. A Revolution Down on the Farm:  The Transformation of American Agriculture Since 1929. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

            If you are going to become the next Secretary of Agriculture, or serve on his or her staff, you should devote a few hours to reading this book.

            Paul Conkin was born in a three-room cabin on a small farm in eastern Tennessee in 1929.  This book relates the story of one farm family from 1929 to 2008, and it interleaves the story of agriculture in that same period, and what our federal government has done, or not done, over that period.

            It’s enough to make your head spin, to trace the story of how an American farm population of in 1929, has shrunken, but put far more acres into active agriculture, and now contributes to a world wide effort to feed a population that is ever expanding.

            The story of a nation suffering from the Crash of 1929 and the terrible Depression which followed… the simultaneous desolation of millions of acres in middle America in the Dust Bowl… and the many federal organizations created by the new administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to cope with all this… is a story for the ages.

            At the time this book was published, 2008, 322,000 farms produced 89% of all domestic food and fiber, as farms continue to grow larger, with fewer people actually doing the farming, but some 70% of the farm workers are mainly Hispanic, and mainly undocumented.

            The remaining  11% of small farms are less efficient, but they are likely to produce products which are more flavorful, but less shippable.  And, the people working on these farms, although most do it only part time, provide the survival of small rural towns all over the country.

            Problems. There is much to dislike in chicken farms where the birds are grown in cages so small that they cannot spread their wings… calves taken from their mothers at birth and grown in small cages and fed artificial feed until they are ready for butchering for veal... dairy cattle kept in small confined areas, not allowed to go to pasture.  And then there are the growth hormones and excessive antibiotics.

            What will farming in the future look like? Will government policy continue to look after some small family farms, or will those just become hobby farms?

            Will we continue to add small farm operations on the tops of buildings and other unique locations?  Will this expand enough to make a dent?

            Will we figure how to live with or modify the effects of global warming?

            Will more of civilization change their food choices, to reduce meat consumption, etc.

             America has led the world in making farming more efficient, but in the process, we've used our best and brightest brains to develop better machines, which reduce the need for working farmers; we've invented new chemicals to add meat to chickens, hogs and cattle; we've invented antibiotics to defeat disease; we've produced legislation which influences how many farms and farmers remain viable; we've manipulated tariffs to affect food and fiber production  worldwide; we've invented new ways to produce food with artificial soil, artificial fertilizer; we've involved use of fossil fuels in food production while growing more corn to convert to fuel; we've modified animals and plants genetically.  We've put more strain on our lands and forests, we've reduced the available water in some locations. We've learned how we might reduce the effects of global warming, and we've done much to bring it on sooner.

              Americans generally remain hopeful that in all these efforts, we can suppress greed and self-dealing, and aim to provide sustainably for the world of the future.

           

Samuel W. Coulbourn

-end-

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2019-2020

 NO MEETING IN DECEMBER

Wednesday, January 29, 2020. American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War. In the 1990s, America’s global primacy… The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence.  the defining feature of international politics was American dominance. Then came conflict in former Yugoslavia, and more turmoil among former Soviet and American middle east allies. Rise of Terrorism. Osama bin Laden. G.H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump. Moscow and Beijing. Iran’s Revolution, Iraq, Arab Spring…Libya, Syria, Iran. [Proposed by Bill Owen and Rick Heuser].

Wednesday, February 26, 2020. America in Reconstruction after the Civil War. It was a terrible time. Civil war soldiers returned home, some in the south facing freed slaves roaming the streets, plantations emptied of their work force, and fear stoked by troublemakers warning of blacks raping white women and killing white men, and angry whites searching out and killing blacks without cause.  The formation of the Ku Klux Klan.  Northern leaders sending carpetbaggers to the south to enforce emancipation and protect freedmen.   

Wednesday, March 25, 2020. A History of Alcohol. Men have been fermenting fruit and grain and honey for many thousands of years.  The Babylonians, Greeks and Romans had gods and goddesses and there have been marvelous Bacchanalian feasts and tales of the dreadful effects of too much alcohol.  There have been anti-alcohol drives, temperance marches, Prohibition. Cultural and health effects of alcohol usage. [Proposed by Janos Posfai] 

Wednesday, April 29, 2020. China from 1900 to today. China has traveled a long way from the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 when western nations felt free to wander all over the vast country. Sun-Yat-Sen and the last Qing emperor…Military wardlordism ..Chiang Kai-Shek…War against Japan… Mao Zedong and the Communist Revolution, founding of the People’s Republic…”Great Leap Forward” and The Cultural Revolution…World’s No. 2 Economy, on the verge of becoming No. 1. [Proposed by Jason Shaw] 

Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020.

Churchill: A Charismatic Leader

Charismatic Leaders in History:

Winston Churchill

History Book Club

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Wednesday, October 30, 2019: Charismatic leaders in History. What were the keys to Hitler’s, Churchill's, Mussolini's, FDR's successes? Keen perception of public moods? Oratory abilities? Character, firm ideology? Connecting to the people? How did they deploy their charisma? How could Napoleon manipulate the masses without TV ads? Why were people so perceptive to a madman in Germany? [Proposed by Janos Posfai] 

Jenkins, Roy, Churchill, A Biography, 2001. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1002 pp.

Johnson, Boris, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, 2014, London: Hodder & Stoughton.

What is a “Charismatic Leader”? 

He (or she) leads by personality and charm.  He is an excellent communicator; he is also an excellent reader of people, their faces, their aspirations, their fears. He is able to sense the mood of a room and shape it to his objectives.

Think of leaders you have observed—see how they communicate with their audience. See how they respond to the needs of their audience, how they can steer that audience to love, or hate, to take action.

Adolf Hitler seems to have been particularly effective at firing up a gathering of many thousands to fight for the perceived needs of the Fatherland. He drew upon natural suspicions and uncertainties of people to carry out a devastating Holocaust, the extermination of millions of Jews, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people.

I was intrigued by a discussion about a book in 2016 by Sara E. Gorman, a public-health expert, and her father, Jack M. Gorman, a psychiatrist and CEO of Franklin Behavioral Health Consultants. Their book is Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us. (2017) Their discussion about charismatic leaders tends over to the dark side.

A charismatic leader may employ certain techniques to get you to follow.

   a.  They may begin by making a firm claim. He or she will cast their arguments in ways that tickle the emotional parts of our brains while telling the more rational lobes to shush.

    b. The charismatic leader may appeal to your insecurity, your fear, your feeling that no one listens to you, your feeling of helplessness. (And they are telling you: “I alone can fix it!”)

     c. He or she creates a very strong ”us-versus-them” narrative, in which they can really point to a very large group of people—no matter what party they're in—it's all of the government is against them and against us, our group.  Once you create a sense of a “them,” you reinforce a strong “us.” And when you reinforce a very strong “us,” a lot of group psychology will sort of kick in. There's a lot of conformity, there's a lot of not questioning things because other people seem to be going along with it. It's harder for individuals who are part of groups to make independent judgments and decisions.

    d.  Constantly reassuring people that they have made the right choice ... or that there is no viable reasonable alternative. (Remember “I alone can fix it!”)

     e. Uses fear and personal stories to heighten risk perception. He or she  will lead with stories of individual people who had what we fear happen to them.  They also positions themselves as the person who will protect all of your rights and all of these huge issues around justice and fairness and freedom of speech. He or she often will bring things back to those huge issues rather than going into more specifics around various policy issues. That makes it harder to disagree with them, and it creates a sort of authoritarian godlike aura around the leader.  Being less specific makes it harder to disagree with them.

Jack Gorman, in his and Sara’s book, explains: This is an oversimplification of the way the brain works…. many scientists have identified this higher-order, rational, slow-working part of the brain, which is basically the prefrontal cortex, and the more primitive parts of the brain that work faster or more automatically, and subserve emotions like fear. And there are good data showing that the first thing that you hear makes the biggest impression—and that if it’s heard under emotional circumstances, that it’s always associated with that emotion.

My candidate for “Charismatic Leader” is Winston Spencer Churchill.

No one in the United Kingdom made more of an impact upon that country, indeed the British Empire, in the Twentieth Century than Winston Churchill.  

Roy Jenkins (1920-2003) was a career politician, entering Parliament in 1948 and staying connected with British government for 50 years.  His biography of Churchill, one of 18 books he wrote, is an excellent look at the long life of Winston Churchill (1874-1965).

Churchill lived his life with a destiny for greatness.  He was a soldier, but unlike nearly any other.  He managed to position himself where he would experience danger, and then he managed to capture the exclusive rights to the story. Even when he was on the Queen’s list as a young soldier, (in India, Sudan and South Africa) he was mailing back thick dispatches to London newspapers.

Churchill’s adventure in 1899 in the Boer War in South Africa had him involved in a small battle on train tracks, trying to get wrecked trucks off a track. He was captured and imprisoned by the Boers but escaped after 24 days. You can be sure this received large attention from the Boer government, and Churchill covered it thoroughly in his autobiography.

Roy Jenkins wrote this voluminous  dissertation of parliamentary history in two and a half years, when he was in his eighties.  At every point one can sense Jenkins’ rather tart view of Churchill.  He gives Winston his due, as a statesman, elegant speaker and writer, but also as an almost mythical character,  who always, in the direst of times, manages to sit down to a well-laid table and enjoy a fine meal, with plenty of champagne, port, brandy and a good cigar.

Jenkins is clear-eyed about Churchill, and his charms.  All that searching for danger, and then writing about it, meant that Churchill was building his résumé, ensuring that all that fine bravery and derring-do was preserved for history. 

Churchill might have been one of those fine men we have seen all through British history, and that of the United States.  The man, born to a leading family, accustomed to wealth and station, attending the “right” schools, occupies reasonably impressive posts in government.  NOTE: Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor, discusses this in crisp and humorous detail.

In America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Averill Harriman, and Jack and Teddy Kennedy come to mind.

Churchill, who tried his utmost time and again to elevate himself in British government, from his days as a “Flailing” First Lord of the Admiralty in World War I, became the right man at the right time after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous handling of relations with Adolf Hitler put Britain at the brink of extinction.

It is not too hard to imagine that if Hitler would have foregone attacking the USSR, and concentrated on conquering Britain, if Chamberlain had remained in power, and if the United States had continued to watch the war in Europe with interest, the Nazis could have gained the British Isles.

It is amazing how Jenkins, an excellent writer, can delve into tons of letters, diaries, official journals and other material to construct a colorful, extremely detailed picture of Winston’s life and his relations with those around him.  Churchill often whisks himself away to the south of France or cadges a voyage in the Mediterranean aboard the yacht of a wealthy acquaintance, and while he is thus “resting”, churns out reams of manuscript for his next book or article.

Churchill’s lifestyle was legendary.  He stayed in bed until noontime, furiously dictating memos, letters, and newspaper articles. Then his valet drew his bath and he lowered his fat, pink body into the tub.   After dressing, he would engage in the performance of luncheon, which routinely involved distinguished guests who would partake of Winston’s rich wit and wisdom.  There were always good food, wine and spirits, and cigars. 

In the afternoon, if Parliament were sitting, he would attend, and perhaps deliver a speech.

Then there would be dinner, another spread of elegant food, drink and people, usually with Winston as the principal figure.

Jenkins’ account of Churchill’s leadership of Britain after he became Prime Minister in May 1940 is particularly interesting.  Winston flew to France numerous times to try to give the French leaders (PM Paul Reynaud et al) encouragement to resist Hitler. At the same time, Churchill was trying his best to bring the United States into the fray, so once he promised the French that American intervention was nigh.  Jenkins called Churchill’s hopefulness of that “living in cloud-cuckoo land”.

Churchill tried everything to get Roosevelt to commit to U.S. intervention.  Roosevelt sent Harry Hopkins to visit Churchill early in 1941, and Hopkins spent a month with him.  The two formed a fast friendship. Jenkins notes that Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s relationship was never that warm sort of friendship.

Here’s this comment:

“…in joint wartime photographs, from Placentia to Yalta, Roosevelt always looked Churchill’s superior. He held his head higher, and his careless yet patrician civilian clothes suited him better than the fancy uniforms which Churchill was only too inclined to assume…..Roosevelt… often enhanced by a long cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. In the nicotine stakes this was a more elegant symbol than Churchill’s often spittle-sodden cigars.” p.663.

Churchill came to lead Britain in its darkest hours at the start of the war with Hitler. He replaced Neville Chamberlain, a man who will forever by identified with weakness and appeasement.   Nazi bombers were pounding London and other British cities, and invasion by the Germans by air and sea seemed imminent.  Morale was low.  His leadership at the beginning was resisted, and unappreciated, but he persisted, and the British people came to see him as the figure leading them to victory.

In 1946, this irreplaceable leader of the British people was voted out of office. Clement Atlee*, who had served as deputy prime minister from 1942 in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, took his Labour party to a landslide victory.

After he was voted out of office, the new United States President Harry Truman invited Churchill to come to Westminster College in Fulton, MO to speak.  This was the famed speech where he declared:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

In this speech, which was met with great animosity not only in the USSR, but in many parts of the U.S., Europe and the U.K., Churchill drew the shape of the Cold War that would dominate our lives for the next four decades.  It was primarily important for sounding the call for an alliance between the U.S. and the U.K. to oppose communism, and the beginning of the idea of a North Atlantic alliance.

Churchill suffered a final stroke 12 January 1965 and died 24 January. His funeral was a grand affair, with his body lying in state in Westminster Hall for three days. This was the first time such an affair for a non-royal personage had taken place since the death of Gladstone in 1898.

Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor.  Just as I was wrestling with the concept of the Charismatic Leader and trying to untangle from the news that has engulfed America since 2016 about a man of great charisma, some followers of whom think he was placed in the White House by God. We shall not touch that.

Boris Johnson is a phenomenon.  To Americans, his dedication to pulling Britain out of the European Union as well as his hairdo, are his distinguishing characteristics.  At the start of his book about Churchill he pays deep respect to Roy Jenkins and his comprehensive biography of Churchill.

Johnson admires Churchill—I think. 

The Churchill Factor is funny, interesting, and well-worth reading, to gain more insight into the life of Churchill, and to Johnson.  Johnson is literate, educated, and in this 2014 book he is already dedicated to pulling Britain out of the European Union.  This book draws several references to the E.U., including the suggestion of what would have happened if Lord Halifax, instead of Churchill, had taken over from Chamberlain at the start of the War.

Halifax, as well as many of Britain’s leaders, including the recent King, now abdicated and married to Wallis Simpson, were inclined to have favored negotiating with Herr Hitler instead of fighting to save Britain.  In that setting, there was a “Nazi European Union” ready to go into operation, Johnson supposes. 

Although Johnson sees Churchill as the champion who led the salvation of Britain, which included jerking the United States into the War, he brings up loads of dirty laundry from Churchill’s past, for all to examine.  It’s no bulletin that Churchill’s childhood, his education, his parentage, his changing political parties, his life style, and many of his judgements and actions, were less than sterling, but in the end, and Johnson states this, as a man who “personally tilted the scales of fate toward freedom and hope.”

Samuel W. Coulbourn

-end-

*Atlee was generally considered to be lacking in charisma, but he was tremendously effective at working behind the scenes. He and the Labour party created a welfare state, including formation of the National Health Service, and nationalization of public utilities and major industries. 

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2019

Wednesday, November 13, 2019 [Two weeks earlier because of Thanksgiving and another conflict] History of Farming in America.  Examine the American Indians and their farming techniques, the early colonists and the skills they brought from their home countries;  the food discoveries in the New World; Tobacco and Cotton and slavery; Farming and the Dust Bowl; Government and Agriculture; Modern Agribusiness.  [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn] 

 NO MEETING IN DECEMBER

Wednesday, January 29, 2020. American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War. In the 1990s, America’s global primacy… The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence.  the defining feature of international politics was American dominance. Then came conflict in former Yugoslavia, and more turmoil among former Soviet and American middle east allies. Rise of Terrorism. Osama bin Laden. G.H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump. Moscow and Beijing. Iran’s Revolution, Iraq, Arab Spring…Libya, Syria, Iran. [Proposed by Bill Owen and Rick Heuser].

Wednesday, February 26, 2020. America in Reconstruction after the Civil War. It was a terrible time. Civil war soldiers returned home, some in the south facing freed slaves roaming the streets, plantations emptied of their work force, and fear stoked by troublemakers warning of blacks raping white women and killing white men, and angry whites searching out and killing blacks without cause.  The formation of the Ku Klux Klan.  Northern leaders sending carpetbaggers to the south to enforce emancipation and protect freedmen.   

Wednesday, March 25, 2020. A History of Alcohol. Men have been fermenting fruit and grain and honey for many thousands of years.  The Babylonians, Greeks and Romans had gods and goddesses and there have been marvelous Bacchanalian feasts and tales of the dreadful effects of too much alcohol.  There have been anti-alcohol drives, temperance marches, Prohibition. Cultural and health effects of alcohol usage. [Proposed by Janos Posfai] 

Wednesday, April 29, 2020. China from 1900 to today. China has traveled a long way from the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 when western nations felt free to wander all over the vast country. Sun-Yat-Sen and the last Qing emperor…Military wardlordism ..Chiang Kai-Shek…War against Japan… Mao Zedong and the Communist Revolution, founding of the People’s Republic…”Great Leap Forward” and The Cultural Revolution…World’s No. 2 Economy, on the verge of becoming No. 1. [Proposed by Jason Shaw] 

Wednesday, May 27, 2020.

Wednesday, June 24, 2020.

Spain's Exploration and Colonization of North America

History Book Club

El Norte: Spain’s Exploration and Colonization

of North America

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Mexican-American War 1846-48.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019: El Norte, the story of Spain’s exploration and colonization of North America.  Often Americans study the growth of America from the standpoint of English colonization and the push westward. There’s another, very complex story, of the exploration of the Caribbean, Mexico, Florida and onward to California by the Spanish. It’s the story of Conquistadors, Priests and Indigenous peoples who created the Republic of Mexico, the nations of the Caribbean and Central America, and made the first cities in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and more. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn] 

Gibson, Carrie. El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America; New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. 2019.

          The traditional way Americans are taught about the history of America is Columbus discovered the New World in 1492; the Pilgrims landed in 1620. From that grew the 13 Colonies. There was a Revolution, we gained our independence, people started to head west. Soon we had acquired states all the way to California and even Hawaii and Alaska.

            Early in that history slaves were brought from Africa to America. Then people came from all over Europe to live here.  

            Carrie Gibson, author of El Norte, tells another story.  After 1492 Spanish explorers—soldiers conquered territory, priests tried to convert the conquered Indians to Christianity, and civilians began colonies all over South America, and North America. Mexico City became the capital of New Spain.

            Time after time, our leaders have shown their dislike and distrust for the Indians they encountered as they traveled over the growing nation, and the same for those brown-skinned people they encountered as they moved into New Spain, and eventually gained Texas and New Mexico, Arizona and California to join the United States. And of course, there were all those black Americans, descendants of those brought here as slaves.

            Gibson starts and ends her exploration of Hispanic North America in Dalton, Georgia. When she graduated from high school there, Mexico was coming to that town. Mexicans continued to come and work in the rug factories there, and today they are the majority in this city which is 1200 miles from Mexico.

            English settlers, and their descendants, as we swept across the continent, built and maintained a particular history that centered upon the white man. The Indians we fought, imprisoned, and drove into reservations.  After the slaves were freed, we worked hard to “keep them in their place”. When the first American settlers arrived in northern Mexico, then called Tejas, we accepted Mexican hospitality, then took the land for America. The same with what is now California, Arizona and New Mexico.

            All the time, we Americans taught our children the history of a white America, with all these red, black and brown-skinned Americans as kind of “background material”. Dalton lived for 20 years in England, as she worked on research projects involving Hispanic America. She was alarmed in 2012 at the words white Americans used to refer to Mexicans, envisioned as “illegals” and “border jumpers”. Then came the populist movement she saw before the 2016 election, in which Mexicans were seen as a threat; the chants to “Build the wall!” to keep out “Mexican murderers and rapists.” 

        

            Dalton quotes Poet Walt Whitman* in 1882 declaring that our history tied to white Englishmen needed to be exposed to its rich Hispanic roots, and that is exactly what she seeks to do in this book. 

            Gibson begins with the landing in what became “Hispaniola” by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Then in 1508 Ponce de León claimed the island of Puerto Rico for Spain. He landed in Florida in 1513 and was shot with an arrow by a Calusa Indian and died in Puerto Rico.

            Getting started in Florida was hard for the Spaniards.  In Mexico Cortez found an established society, and he found gold and silver.  But in Florida the Indians moved from place to place, the weather was steamy and hot or cold, and there were plenty of mosquitoes. But no gold. However, by the early 1600s Florida was firmly in Spain’s orbit, with thousands of Christian converts; the French had been driven out and the Spanish had numerous alliances with Indian tribes.  

            The Spanish were brutal…there was much killing. But there was Bartolomé de las Casas. His father had joined Columbus on his second voyage in 1493, and his son arrived in Santo Domingo in 1502. He saw what was happening with bloodthirsty soldiers, and he soon became a priest who was influential in turning many away from brutality against the Indians.

            In 1521 Spain conquered Mexica, and the whole territory that is now Mexico, and on up into what is now California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas became Nueva España.

            In 1525 the first Spanish settlement in North America was established near Sapelo Sound, GA.  This is just north of St. Simon’s Island and Brunswick, GA. In 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established the first permanent settlement in  Florida, called San Augustine.

            In 1535 Hernando Cortez sailed to Baja California in search of pearls. In 1602 Sebastián Vizcaino reached Cape Mendocino, CA, naming Monterey and San Diego along the way.

            In 1610 Santa Fe was founded in New Mexico. In 1718 the military presidio, San Antonio de Bexár was built in south Texas, followed by construction of the mission San Antonio de Valero, later to be called “The Alamo”.

            Lots of Spaniards were carving out what would become the United States, but white Spaniards often mated with Indians, and they were living in many places long before white English-speaking explorers and settlers arrived. If you grew up in the southwest this is an old story, but somehow the idea that America’s first class of people are white is one that has been pushed since the days of all white settlements in the original 13 colonies. 

            Spaniards established missions all over California, but after Mexico took over, they were secularized. When the Americans took over California, they could see that the missions were quickly disintegrating from neglect, but restoring them would be very costly.  They returned them to the Roman Catholic Church.  Sharp-eyed developers in the late 19^th century saw the value of the missions to help market this glorious new American land. They turned to re-invigorating missions San Juan Bautista, Soledad, San Antonio, Miguel and Luis Obispo, and Santa Inez and Barbara.

            In 2019 about 58.9 million people in the U.S. are of Hispanic heritage.  That is about 18% of the population. In California 38.6% are Hispanic and in Texas 38%. There are more Hispanics in New York state than any other.  It is time for white Americans to recognize that these brown and black people are part of America. They deserve to climb up the social ladder and to become equal partners in achieving the American dream. 

            The debate about immigration policy needs to take on a different tone.  Of course, we cannot throw open our borders and let all enter, but our policy cannot—must not—center upon fear of people because of their race or national origin.

            Many of us are not accustomed to looking at our world this way, and it will take adjustment. 

* Walt Whitman has often been quoted in Hispanic writings and has been used to advance the spirit of democracy, and the spirit of imperialism.

S.W. Coulbourn

HISTORY BOOK CLUB TOPICS FOR 2019

Three charismatic leaders

Wednesday, October 30, 2019: Charismatic leaders in History. What were the keys to Hitler’s, Churchill's, Mussolini's, FDR's successes? Keen perception of public moods? Oratory abilities? Character, firm ideology? Connecting to the people? How did they deploy their charisma? How could Napoleon manipulate the masses without TV ads? Why were people so perceptive to a madman in Germany? Recurring questions.  [Proposed by Janos Posfai] 

Wednesday, November 13, 2019 [Two weeks earlier because of Thanksgiving and another conflict] History of Farming in America.  Examine the American Indians and their farming techniques, the early colonists and the skills they brought from their home countries;  the food discoveries in the New World; Tobacco and Cotton and slavery; Farming and the Dust Bowl; Government and Agriculture; Modern Agribusiness.  [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn] 

 NO MEETING IN DECEMBER

Wednesday, January 29, 2020. American Foreign Affairs after the Cold War. In the 1990s, America’s global primacy… The Cold War had ended with Washington and its allies triumphant; democracy and free markets were spreading like never before. Washington faced no near-term rivals for global power and influence..  the defining feature of international politics was American dominance. Then came conflict in former Yugoslavia, and more turmoil among former Soviet and American middle east allies. Rise of Terrorism. Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, ISIS. G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump. Moscow and Beijing. Libya, Syria, Iran. [Proposed by Bill Owen and Rick Heuser].