Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall - and More

For my post on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the other events that made 1989 such a great year, scroll down to October 31, 2009. For a report on the trips my wife and I took to East Germany in 1979 and 1982, see here.  Also, see other "1989" posts by scrolling down.

1989: Berlin, November 9, 1989

1989: Views of the German Democratic Republic Today

With the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall upon us, what can we make of these two sets of polls? First, a poll this past summer reported that 49% of east Germans agree with the following statement: "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there." A further eight percent agreed with this: "The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today."

On the other hand, a poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducted from August 27 through September 24 reported that 81% of people in east Germany said that they approved of reunification and 85% approved of the change to democracy. Similarly, according to a poll for the German broadcaster ZDF that was published earlier this month, 91% of people in east Germany are happy with the way reunification has gone.

So what do these results tell us? Do they tell us that, while east Germans are happy with reunification, they now think East Germany wasn’t that bad. But how can this be reconciled with the thousands of East Germans who were so desperate to leave the GDR in 1989, and with the pictures of pure joy on November 9-10, 1989, when the Wall opened, and West Berlin hosted a spontaneous street party for East Berliners? Here are a couple of possibilities:

• There is a natural tendency to defend your family if somebody criticizes it. You may not like all of your relatives, but when somebody attacks them, you defend them; they’re family. For many people, it’s the same with their country.
• Time passes; memories fade. It’s human nature to remember the better things and forget or ignore the bad things.
• Germans already have the burden of Hitler and the Nazis. Maybe the east Germans don’t want the GDR to be a similar burden, so they remember it better than it was.

Nicholas Kulish reported in The New York Times on an interview with Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, who grew up in and lived in East Germany:

"‘No one’s life, even in a dictatorship, is completely formed by that dictatorship,’ Mrs. Merkel said. Everyone had fond memories and good experiences as well as the much chronicled bad ones, the chancellor said, and no one wanted to have to abandon all those aspects of their lives all at once."

But the danger is that the good will be remembered more than the bad. It is fine to remember that not everything was bad, but one also has to remember that the bad was, ultimately, more important. When we were in Berlin in May we talked with two men at a restaurant. They work together now. One grew up in a little village in West Germany. The other grew up in East Berlin. The one who grew up in East Berlin said he had been lucky that "die Wende" (German for "change" or "turning point" and the name the Germans have given to 1989) happened at the right time for him, just as he was leaving college. But, he said, the GDR was a good place to grow up.

The GDR may have been a good place for him to grow up in, but it was not a good place to grow up if your parents wanted to baptize you. If you were baptized in East Germany, it was hard to get to go to college. While not East Germany, look at what communism did to people such as Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia. His attempt to merely "live in truth," as he called it, wound him up in prison several times.

Most people were able to get along in East Germany, if they were careful and did not care, openly, about the kind of government they had to live under and the restrictions the government placed on them. But it was a system that brought out the worst in many people. There is good and bad in everyone. The system in the GDR let the bad flourish. James Madison, in Federalist Papers number 51, said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." But men aren’t angels, so we need government. But we need a government that restricts and controls the bad in people, not one, like communism in East Germnay, that effectively gave free rein to, if not encouraged, the bad in people.

And this must be remembered because we need to make sure such a system does not come again.

1989: The Berlin Wall, Before and After

As I said here, "perhaps the best monuments to the victory of freedom in Berlin are those things that are no longer there: The border crossing checkpoints … where for 28 years traffic was blocked and one part of a city was kept from seeing the other part."

Here are two pictures. The first I took of the border crossing checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse in May of 1982:

 

The second I took of the same place on Heinrich-Heine-Strasse in May of this year:

 

1989 – What If

Alternative history or counterfactual history is a lot of fun. Questions such as, what if the Twentieth Maine had not held at Little Round Top or what if that Confederate messenger had not lost Lee’s orders just before Antietam, are fascinating things to think about.

But for counterfactual history to be more than just a flight of fantasy, it has to involve a realistic possibility. An alternate history involving George McGovern beating Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential race is not realistic. Al Gore winning the presidency in 2000 definitely is.

Another way of looking at this is in terms of "contingency". In his great Civil War history, Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson talks of "contingency – the recognition that at numerous critical points during the war things might have gone altogether differently." (p. 858)

Timothy Garton Ash talks about the same thing: "Every writer on 1989 wrestles with an almost unavoidable human proclivity that psychologists have christened ‘hindsight bias’ – the tendency, that is, to regard actual historical outcomes as more probable than alternatives that seemed real at that time …. What actually happened looks as if it somehow had to happen. Henri Bergson talked of ‘the illusions of retrospective determinism.’"

In this light, consider how these counterfactuals or contingencies might have affected what happened in 1989:

• Günter Schabowski does not flub his lines during his press conference on November 9. (See here.)
• East German police and army troops use violence to break up the march in Leipzig on Monday, October 9.
• In West Germany the Free Democrats do not abandon their coalition with Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic Party in 1982 to join a new coalition with Helmut Kohl and the CDU/CSU. The Christian Democrats lose the next election in 1984, and Helmut Kohl is removed as CDU leader.
• John Hinckley’s bullet goes one inch farther, and Ronald Reagan dies on March 30, 1981.
• Pope John Paul I does not die of a heart attack on September 29, 1978, and his papacy continues for another fifteen years.

And finally: What if Don Zimmer had brought Mitch Williams in to pitch to Robby Thompson instead of letting Mike Bielecki pitch to one more batter?

1989: A Letter from Prague

When we visited Czechoslovakia in 1982 we were able to visit a man and his wife in Prague. We got his name from our minister and another member of our church. The man, Jiri, showed us around Prague for two days. It was a wonderful visit, and afterwards we stayed in touch with him, exchanging letters and cards over the years. We were even able to visit with him again when all four of us went to Prague in 1994.

But the one thing we noted when we met him in 1982 was that he did not talk about politics. Architecture, historic buildings, subways, etc., were what we talked about. (He was an urban planner.) When we visited in 1982, I told him I wanted to see the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was from a window in this building that Jan Masaryk fell to his death in March of 1948. Jan Masaryk was Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia and son of Tomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia. Did Jan Masaryk commit suicide or was he pushed by the Communists? It is still a controversy today. It would have been an even bigger controversy back in 1982, but Jiri did not acknowledge it – perhaps because it was too dangerous to talk politics with foreigners.

Then, in December of 1989 we received this letter from Jiri:

"Prague, December 9, 1989

Dear Friends:

We are sending you our best greetings from our country, which is trying to get rid of the evil that was oppressing us for more than forty years. We wish you could feel the splendid atmosphere of joy and euphoria that dominates in Prague these days. There are many meetings and protest demonstrations in the squares and streets of Prague and other towns, the shop-windows and the walls of the metro stations are full of posters with declarations, news and warnings /against the provocateurs/. We could feel a great tension among the people before and the brutal intervention by the police was a spark that set fire to a vast, spontaneous resistance movement against the outrage of the ruling power. The totalitarian, one-party system was abolished at last, however, the fight against the evil forces has not finished yet. There are still many people living in fright, especially in the country, where there are still many smaller dictators in their functions. Notwithstanding, I am convinced that all ends well. I think that we have reached more in three weeks than we could ever have expected:

– amnesty for all political prisoners
– cut out of the article in our Constitution that secured a leading role of the Communist party
– forced resignation of the leading Communist party-men who are responsible for the bad social and economic state in our country
– sweeping of marxismus-leninismus away from our schools
– deep changes in our Federal and National Governments
– promise of free elections
– freedom of speech, religion and of the press, etc.

The events are rapidly following one another – what was a sensational news yesterday is surpassed by another one today.

Our popular artists and once damned /by the communists/ politicians speak to us on TV, on the radio and at many meetings to encourage the people in their fight for freedom. The first big battle has been won: the opponent was surprised by the very rapid succession of events and by the vigour of the protest demonstrations, however, he is beginning to marshal his forces now. The fight may last longer than can be expected. Only free elections will ensure our full victory. It is hope that they can take placed in the middle of the next year.

We consider it a shame that our country of high culture could have had political prisoners. Nothing like that must come again. We must guard our liberty and Masaryk ideals with greater vehemence now. The highest apparatchicks were forced to go, however, there are still thousands on lower levels – in counties, districts, towns and smaller communities. It will take some time before all undesirable functionaries are replaced on all levels of the administration.

We have traveled a lot this year – we toured West Germany and Switzerland in May and spent a beautiful fortnight on the island of Malta in July. Who could have thought that this nice place would be a meeting place of Mr. Bush and M.. Gorbachev a few months later! We are disquieted by what is happening in the USSR. We would be very sorry for M. Gorbachev should he not succeed in his efforts. We owe him very much.

I have written you in brief what has happened in our country since November 17. We feel like being on a merry-go-round and do not know what to do first.

Jiri and Nadja"

Afghanistan: We Need to Decide – Now

It is hard to believe that it was over forty days ago I wrote this post about the need for the President to decide on Afghanistan – and that a decision has still not been made. I understand the decision is not easy, but he has had enough time. The facts are there. The options are there. He needs to review them, think about them and decide.

I realize he does not want to rush, but it’s not like he has just had six weeks. The New York Times reported on August 24 that our military commanders in Afghanistan were saying they needed more troops. General McChrystal’s report was sent to the Pentagon on August 30. For that matter, President Obama was inaugurated over nine months ago.

The President’s indecision is making things worse in Afghanistan. Right now we are losing in Afghanistan. The longer President Obama waits to decide, the worse the situation will get and the farther we are going to have to come back once we do decide to try to turn things around (if that is what he decides).

Also, our indecision is driving away Afghans who might otherwise cooperate with us. The Afghanis are understandably leery of helping us if we might not be there to protect them. They are not going to help us unless they are confident we are going to stay. President Obama’s continuing indecision is making it harder and harder for our troops to convince the Afghanis that we will stay. And after this long, even if President Obama does decide to send the extra troops General McChrystal has said are needed for a proper counterinsurgency effort, will the Afghanis trust him to stay or will they worry he might change his mind the next time he has to decide something?

Some people say that President Obama should wait for the results of the Presidential run-off in Afghanistan before deciding what to do. What about the Afghanis? They might like to know what we are going to do before they decide who to support for President. The fact is there will always be something coming up that it would be nice to know before we decide. But we can’t wait – because then we would never decide.

President Obama needs to decide. And he needs to decide now.

November 9, 1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall and So Much More

As November 9 approaches, I am enjoying all of the 20th anniversary stories about 1989. (It helps that, due to the Internet, I am able to read articles from places other than the United States. If I only had United States media, there would not be that much to read.) I previously quoted Timothy Garton Ash as saying that "[t]he year 1989 was one of the best in European history." In fact, I think it can be argued that 1989 was one of the best years in world history. The victory of freedom that year could be felt in more than just Europe. Perhaps Elizabeth Pond got it right when she, among others, called it "Annus Mirabilis".*

While the celebrations on November 9 are in Germany, the events of 1989 happened across the continent. Solidarity had been fighting in Poland for ten years. Finally, in June of 1989, the government allowed a partially free election. Solidarity was allowed to run candidates for the newly-created Senate and 35% of the seats in the Sejm. Nobody knew what would happen. What did happen was amazing. Solidarity won 99 out of 100 seats in the Senate and 160 out of the 161 seats they were allowed to contest in the Sejm. The victory was so great that by August Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Solidarity was prime minister.

In Hungary, a reformer, Karoly Grosz, became premier in 1987. When long-time Communist leader Janos Kadar was forced to retire in May of 1988, the movement toward democracy began to pick up speed. In February of 1989, the Communist Party announced it would allow a multi-party system in Hungary and would hold free elections. In June Imre Nagy, executed after the 1956 Revolution, was reburied with full honors. In September Hungary announced that East German refugees in Hungary would be allowed to go to the West instead of being returned to the GDR.

In East Germany there were protests in May of 1989 about local elections that had been rigged even more than normal. After the elections, more and more people began attending the Monday prayer meetings for peace at St. Nikolai Church in Leipzig. There were maybe 500 right after the election; 1,250 a month later. Also in May, Hungary began dismantling the fence between itself and Austria, which meant East German vacationers could go to West Germany via Hungary. It was still illegal, but it could be done. Throughout the summer increasing numbers of East Germans escaped through Hungary to the west. Once Hungary decided, on September 10, to allow East Germans to go to West Germany legally, East Germany cut off travel to Hungary. East Germans then flocked to the West German embassy in Prague. On September 30, pressured by Czech communists who felt their rule was being destabilized, the East Germans allowed those occupying the embassy in Prague to go to the West. After they left, thousands more rushed into the embassy. On October 3, the East Germany closed its border with Czechoslovakia.

In the meantime, the Monday protests in Leipzig were growing bigger. Five thousand assembled on September 25. A week later it was 20,000. Protesters were met with force throughout East Germany on October 7 during celebrations of the GDR’s 40th anniversary. But on Monday, October 9, 70,000 marched in Leipzig, and the police, apparently unsure of their instructions, did not interfere. Erich Honecker was removed on October 17. There was a huge and peaceful demonstration in East Berlin on November 4. A new policy on travel was announced on November 6, but it was seen as too little, too late. In announcing yet another new travel policy on November 9, Günter Schabowski fumbled his words in a press conference, making both East Germans and West Germans think the border was being opened immediately. Berliners from both sides of the Wall rushed to the border crossing points, where guards, without clear instructions and facing bigger and bigger crowds, finally opened the Wall because there was little else they could do.

The focus shifted to Czechoslovakia as the momentum of freedom accelerated. In his book, The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash noted:

"My contribution to the velvet resolution was a quip. Arriving in Prague on Day Seven (23 November), when the pace of change was already breath-taking, I met Vaclav Havel in the back-room of his favoured basement pub. In said: ‘In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in Eastern Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!’" (p. 78)

And it happened almost that quickly. In January Vaclav Havel had been in jail. In December he was elected President. Jan Carnogursky went from prisoner to Vice President in two weeks. Jiri Dienstbier went from stoker to Foreign Minister, though he joked he would have to find a replacement at the power plant before he could start.**

But of all of the events that happened in 1989 and in the two years that followed, as first the Warsaw Pact and then even the Soviet Union itself dissolved, it was, I think, in Berlin where the key event happened, the opening of the Berlin Wall. Berlin was, for over 40 years, on the front line of the Cold War. Civil War buffs go to Gettysburg and Antietam and dozens of other sites. Those with an interest in World War II can go to Pearl Harbor, Normandy, Coventry, the Cabinet War Rooms in London, and more.

But the Cold War doesn’t have the battlefields or memorials that other wars do – except in Berlin. Berlin is full of the history of the third great war of the twentieth century. In fact, you can argue that the Cold War started in Berlin. In June of 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all land and water access to Berlin. Unwilling to give in, the Allies decided to supply Berlin – by air.***

I don’t know if anybody expected that the Airlift would be as successful as it was. It started out slowly, but eventually, with the right people in charge, the British and the Americans were able to supply an entire city by air. By the time the Soviets finally gave up and reopened the land routes in May 1949, not only had the Allies saved Berlin, but they won the friendship of the people of Berlin. In less than four years, sworn enemies had become steadfast friends. At Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, the Airlift Memorial is one-third of a monument to the Luftbrücke, the air bridge, and to the American and British pilots who kept Berlin supplied that year. The other two thirds are in Frankfurt and Celle, in West Germany. You can learn about the Airlift at the Allied Museum in southwestern Berlin, a relatively new museum, opened only in 1998, that tells the story of the Allies’ almost 50 years in Berlin.****

Then, on August 13, 1961, came the Wall. The East Germans claimed it was built to protect them against aggression from the West, but anybody who ever saw it knew that was a lie. The Wall’s sole purpose was to keep the East Germans in. While virtually all of the Wall is gone now, bits and pieces can be seen here and there. Also, there are plenty of ways to learn about it. First, and always, there is Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, now called the Mauermuseum. The museum was opened in 1963, just a few yards from the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing point for westerners wanting to go into East Berlin. The museum is getting a little worn, a little dated (we went again in May), but I recommend it for any first-time visitor to Berlin. It is one of best ways to get a feel for the Berlin that was divided from 1961 to 1989.

Near Checkpoint Charlie is a simple memorial for Peter Fechter, an East German bricklayer, who was shot while trying to escape over the Wall in 1962 and allowed to bleed to death by East German border guards.

You can also go to Bernauer Strasse, to the Berlin Wall Documentation Center, for more information on the Wall. Also at Bernauer Strasse there is a small section of the original Wall, with the death strip and all.

Near the documentation center is the place where the Church of Reconciliation stood. The church was trapped in the no-man’s land of the Wall from 1961 until it was finally destroyed by the East Germans in 1985. But now, a new building, the Chapel of Reconciliation, has been built on the site where the church stood.

You can take a bus to Glienicker Brücke. During the Cold War the bridge connected West Berlin with Potsdam, and it is where people like Gary Francis Powers and Natan Scharansky were exchanged.

You can also walk the Berliner Mauerweg, the Wall trail. Where the Wall once stood is now a path for walkers and bikers and, at Mauerpark, for bargain hunters at one of the best flea markets in Berlin.

And of course, there is the Brandenburg Gate. It was here in 1987 that Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

And when it comes to the victory of November 9, 1989, there are the iconic pictures of Berliners standing on the top of the Wall with the Brandenburg Gate in the background. For anybody who ever saw the Brandenburg Gate, cut off and standing alone on the other side of the Wall, that picture is a source of joy and gladness.

I remember our first time back in Berlin after the Wall was down. We were with our children. We got off the S-Bahn at Unter Den Linden. As we walked up the stairs to the street, I still remember seeing the Brandenburg Gate with people walking around it and cars driving through it – and no walls blocking them. It brought a tear to my eye.

But perhaps the best monuments to the victory of freedom in Berlin are those things that are no longer there: The border crossing checkpoints, such as Checkpoint Charlie or the one at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse or any of the others, where for 28 years traffic was blocked and one part of a city was kept from seeing the other part. Now the checkpoints and the blockades and the guards are gone. What is left is just a street, like in any city, where people are free to walk or drive wherever they want.

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A note on sources: I have not included links or cites to the facts in this post. It would have been too time consuming to do so. Please be assured I do have sources for all that is included. I have, however, provided links to some of the sights in Berlin that I have referred to, so that you can get more information on them.

* There was more to be excited about in 1989 than what was happening in Europe: The Cubs were winning again. In what Don Zimmer has called his greatest thrill in baseball, the Cubs won the National League East for the second time in six years. From the Lloyd McClendon game in May to the comeback against the Astros in August (see here), from Rick Wrona’s tenth inning suicide squeeze in June to Luis Salazar’s tenth inning double against the Cardinals on September 9, and finally from Mitch Williams striking out the side with the bases loaded on Opening Day to Mitch Williams striking out the last batter in Montreal with the tying run on third on September 26, it was a great year on the north side of Chicago, too.

** While I have l a recollection of reading this quote, I was unable to find a citation for it. It does, however, express the attitude of many of the leaders of the Velvet Revolution, so I wanted to include it.

*** An interesting point on why the Allies chose the airlift: To supply Berlin by land would have required the Allies to force their way through East Germany. We had the right to use the roads, but we would have had to attack the Soviets to do so. But the Soviets could not block the air routes. They couldn’t put up giant walls in the sky. With the airlift, the Soviets would have had to attack us to stop it. It was a matter of who had to attack first. On the land route, the Allies would have had to attack. On the air route, the Soviets would have had to be the attacker.

**** To get from the U-Bahn station to the Allied Museum, I walked down Clayallee. As I did, I came to a little park, Truman Plaza. In the park I saw a statue. From a distance it almost looked like George Washington or some other person from the American Revolution. And of course, it was. The statue was of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

A final note: Of all of the posts I have written, I think I have enjoyed this one the most. In writing it I have reviewed files and books I have about 1989. It has been almost as exciting to read them again as it was to live through that year. With all of the troubles in the world today and all of the mean-spiritedness in our own country, it was been wonderful to think back on that year – and to look at two of my prized possessions from 1989: The front page of the Chicago Tribune sports page on September 27, 1989, reporting on the Cubs clinching the National League East in Montreal the night before. And the front page of the Chicago Tribune on November 10, 1989, reporting on the opening of the Berlin Wall.

Afghanistan As A Test for Democrats

Will Marshall and Jim Arkedis, of the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, explain here why (i) Afghanistan tests not only President Obama, but also Democrats, and (ii) they support the counterinsurgency option.

A couple of comments on things they said:

"We back the counterinsurgency option not because we're highly confident of its success, but because stabilizing Afghanistan is more consistent with America's long-term security interests and our responsibilities to the Afghan people, who overwhelmingly reject the Taliban."

I appreciate their comment about "our responsibilities to the Afghan people". Too often, Americans, including many of the coastal liberals* who support the PPI and helped elect President Obama, take a "me-first, the heck with what the U.S. (or us) may have said before" approach to the rest of the world. If it becomes too hard, too inconvenient, then too bad. We’re rich, and we can just worry about ourselves. It’s good to hear an acknowledgement of a responsibility to people who have relied on what we promised them.

"Let's be clear: We're not arguing that Obama should make his decision based on a desire to ‘look tough’ on national security. We're saying Democrats ought to think long and hard before forsaking a war that Obama has defined, both during the campaign and as president, as necessary to Americans' security."

With respect to the "war that Obama has defined … as necessary to Americans’ security," coastal liberals never really believed Afghanistan was necessary (or at least they haven’t since they realized it was going to be hard and expensive and they were going to have to do it). It was fine to use Afghanistan as a club with which to hit George Bush during the campaign, but now that President Bush is gone, the club can be put aside; it’s no longer needed. As for those who believed what the coastal liberals said about Afghanistan while George Bush was President, see above.

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* "Coastal" in this instance includes, in addition to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Great Lakes. It does not, however, include the Gulf of Mexico, or at least not very much of it.

President Obama Is Not Going to Berlin – Follow-Up

Timothy Garton Ash, a journalist and commentator who has written some wonderful books on Europe in the 1980s and 1990s (among others, see The Magic Lantern, The File and In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent), writes about "1989!" in The New York Review of Books. It is an excellent overview of 1989, and I recommend it highly.

Of 1989, Mr. Garton Ash says:

"The year 1989 was one of the best in European history. Indeed, I am hard pushed to think of a better one. It was also a year in which the world looked to Europe—specifically to Central Europe, and, at the pivotal moment, to Berlin. World history—using the term in a quasi-Hegelian sense—was made in the heart of the old continent, just down the road from Hegel's old university, now called the Humboldt University."

But President Obama, who found time to fly to Copenhagen to try to get the Olympics for Chicago, who later this year will find time to fly to Oslo to get the Nobel Peace Prize for himself, and who found time earlier this week to sit down with such objective journalists as Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times to complain about how unfair Fox News is to him, cannot fit Berlin into his schedule to celebrate "one of the best [years] in European history."

Maybe President Obama is still mad at the German government for not letting him give that campaign speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate last summer. (President Obama was able to fit Berlin into his schedule last year when he wanted to go there to demonstrate his foreign policy gravitas during the campaign.)

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Update (10/26/09 12:30 a.m.):  Fixed a typo in the third paragraph.

China Tells Obama Not to Meet With the Dalai Lama – Follow-Up

I apologize for not commenting on this sooner.

As I mentioned here, back in April the Chinese government reportedly told President Obama that he "should not meet the Dalai Lama … when he visits the United States in October." I noted the huge amounts of US Treasury debt that China has bought and said that [i]t’s a problem when you have to rely on somebody else for money. They get to have some say in what you do." I predicted that "the Obama administration will limit the Dalai Lama to some kind of unofficial visit, maybe a short chat with the President, but nothing formal."

Oops, I got that one wrong. President Obama isn’t going to meet with the Dalai Lama at all until after the President returns from his visit to China. The Washington Post says the U.S. is doing this because the U.S. doesn’t want to upset the Chinese, by meeting with the Dalai Lama, when the U.S. is looking for Chinese help in negotiations on nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea. I am not sure I understand this. China is going to do what China thinks is in its interest with respect to North Korea and Iran, just as they have been doing for years. China might complain, in public, if President Obama met with the Dalai Lama, but I find it hard to believe they would change their position on North Korea or Iran just because he did.

After all, in 1972 President Nixon resumed bombing North Vietnam and even mined Haiphong harbor just weeks before he was scheduled to travel to Moscow to meet Leonid Brezhnev. General Secretary Brezhnev didn’t like it, but the meetings, at which the SALT Treaty and ABM Treaty were signed, were more important, and they went on. In 1987 President Reagan went to Berlin and told Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this Wall". That didn’t stop General Secretary Gorbachev from going to Washington later that year to sign the INF Treaty with President Reagan.

The fact is that we can stand up for what’s right and still cooperate with countries such as China. You just have to have a President who understands this and is willing to do it.

Cubs Sign Rudy Jaramillo

I think it’s good that the Cubs signed Rudy Jaramillo as their hitting coach. The Cubs needed to do something. Their batting average with runners on base last year was horrible, 15th out of 16 in the National League. Jaramillo seems to be well respected; hopefully he can help.

There are a couple of concerns, however, but only one relates to Rudy Jaramillo himself. The first is the low number of walks the Rangers had last year. Would Jaramillo take us back to the Dusty Baker days where walks clogged the bases and OBP did not matter? Let’s hope not

Second, while Jaramillo was probably the best hitting coach available, I am getting tired of Jim Hendry’s style of general managing, which is to throw money at some big-name outsider. Managers, outfielders, utility infielders. No matter what the problem, Hendry thinks the solution is to find somebody outside of the Cubs organization and give them a long-term, big-bucks contract. Dusty Baker. Alfonso Soriano. Kosuke Fukudome. Milton Bradley. Aaron Miles. I’m getting tired of it.

Let’s hope Mr. Jaramillo is one of those relatively few big-bucks contracts that actually works out for the Cubs.

President Obama Is Not Going to Berlin

President Obama is not going to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Others have already criticized, and others will criticize, him for his decision, but mostly I feel sorry for him that he does not have enough time to go. Susan and I were lucky enough to go to Berlin in May of this year for nine days and it was fantastic. The celebration was already starting, and we were able to see exhibits in both Potsdamer Platz and Alexanderplatz on the fall of the Wall. They were inspiring. It was also inspiring to go back to the place where the border crossing checkpoint at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse was and see what is there today – which is nothing. It is just a street, like any other street in any other city, where you just walk or drive – because there is nothing stopping you.

Part of the problem may be that President Obama is too young to understand what the fall of the Wall means. He was only nine days old when the Wall was built. He wouldn’t remember about Peter Fechter, who was allowed to bleed to death after being shot trying to cross the Wall in 1962. President Obama was still in his teens when two families flew from East Germany to freedom in a home-made balloon. When the Wall was opened on November 9, 1989, he was in law school. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal for him.

But it is too bad he is not going. When President Reagan went to Normandy on June 6, 1984, he paid tribute to the Boys of Pointe du Hoc and all of the others in what Tom Brokaw called "the Greatest Generation". It is too bad that President Obama cannot go to Berlin to do the same for those of the next generation.

Too often it seems that people want to say that it was the Vietnam War that defined America in the last half of the twentieth century. But I disagree. Vietnam was part of our experience – but only part.

Vietnam was just one battle in a much bigger war. That bigger war was fought all over the world. At army bases in Korea, protecting South Korea from another attack from the North. In nuclear submarines under the ocean, protecting against a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. At SAC headquarters in Omaha, directing the ICBMs and B-52s. At Army and Air Force bases in England, defending NATO. And in Berlin, especially Berlin, because Berlin was on the front line of the Cold War for 40 years.

The Cold War was not as dramatic as the war that preceded it, but it was just as important. Maybe you have to be older than President Obama to remember the joy and happiness we felt when Eastern Europe became free. And the relief we felt when we realized we need no longer fear a nuclear war.

Maybe my wife and I can understand this better because we were able to travel to East Berlin and East Germany while the Wall was still up. And to Czechoslovakia, too. We read about life behind the Iron Curtain. We still have the letter we received from our friends in Prague after freedom came to that country, a letter that was filled with so much joy.

Going to Berlin would have been a chance for President Obama to celebrate with our good friends and allies, the citizens of Germany. More importantly, it would have been given him an opportunity to honor all those Americans who, over a period of 40 years, did their part to win this victory – and win this war.

The Next Bubble?

With all of the problems we have had with bubbles lately, the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, the commodity bubble, etc., the last thing you would think we would want is yet another bubble. But it looks like we might be getting one, this time in the stock market.

The market is up over 50% since its April low. While some corporate profits are up, the increases are, in many cases, the result of cost cutting instead of increased economic activity. That doesn’t seem like a solid basis for growth, either in the economy or in the stock market.

Over the last 12-18 months, the Federal Reserve has flooded our economy with money. They lowered short-term interest to just about zero. They have undertaken all kinds of new measures to create additional liquidity in the market. This was necessary. As the velocity of money slowed, the increase in liquidity helped keep the effective money supply from contracting. With the conditions we had last fall and this spring, that was important. A significant drop in the money supply could have turned a bad recession into something much worse.

But eventually the increase in liquidity, if it continues, is going to cause an increase in the effective money supply. It may even be doing it now. And if the money supply goes up, prices will go up – at least to the extent that the money supply goes up faster than the supply of goods goes up. Here is one way to think about it (very simplistically). The price of goods is equal to the amount of money in the economy divided by the amount of goods. If the amount of money goes up more that the amount of goods, the result, the quotient, goes up. If there is nothing stopping a general price increase, i.e., an increase in the prices of all goods and services, then you will have an increase in general inflation. It would be like this:

B: -------------------------- 
       ^   ^   ^   
     ^   ^   ^
A: --------------------------

When the money supply increases more than the amount of goods, prices go up from A to B.

But sometimes there are outside reasons why some prices cannot go up or why it is easy for others to go up. In the early 2000s, the Federal Reserve increased the money supply by dropping interest rates and keeping them low for a long period of time. The Fed was reacting to the attacks on 9/11 and the leftover effects of the bursting of the dot-com bubble. At that time, Chinese imports were keeping a lid on consumer prices. Therefore, the money had to go somewhere else. Some of it went into the stock market – remember the Dow at 14,000? The rest of it, a lot of it, went into housing. It went into housing two ways. Some of it went into housing as an increase in prices. The rest of it went into housing as lending to home buyers. All kinds of "innovative" (a/k/a wild and crazy) kinds of loans and lending practices were devised to increase the rate of return for lenders while keeping borrowing costs low for home buyers. Which worked as long as house prices kept going up. Which they didn’t.

In the face of the bursting of the housing bubble and the near-financial panic after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates (like a rock) and pumped liquidity into the financial markets (like there was no tomorrow – because they were afraid there might not be).

Now, with GNP dropping and unemployment rising, the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates near zero and has continued to add liquidity to the economy. As I mentioned above, when the velocity of money slows down (as it did), pumping liquidity into the economy will not result in an increase in the effective money supply since what ultimately counts is the product of the amount of money times its velocity. However, as the velocity of money picks back up, the effective money supply goes up. And that money has to go somewhere. In normal circumstances (as the diagram above shows), the result is a general increase in inflation.

However, we do not have a normal situation today. Consumer prices cannot go up because of continued pressure from Chinese imports and a combination of excess capacity and high unemployment in the United States. Housing prices cannot go up because of a glut of unsold houses on the market and a tightening (at least by private lenders) of mortgage lending standards. But the money has to go somewhere, so where does it go? To the stock market. And so we have today’s situation, where housing prices and consumer prices can't go up, so the increase in the money supply raises the prices of stocks:

.................. Stocks
..................  ^^^
B: Housing.....   ^^^  .....Consumer Prices
A: -------------------------------------------

Is the increase in the stock market a bubble or is it real? I wish I knew.

Math Scores for Fourth Graders - and Illinois Politicians

According to a report in yesterday's Chicago Tribune, only 38% of Illinois fourth graders score at or above the proficiency level in math. While that is not great, I'm not surprised. I've seen the budgets that our representatives in Springfield pass. Those people clearly don't know how to add; why should we expect anything better from our fourth graders?

Afghanistan, President Kennedy and “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife”

Last week The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "Behind Afghan War Debate, A Battle of Two Books Rages":

"The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books – both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts.

The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vie President Joe Biden is reading it now.

The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight.

It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.

The two books – ‘Lessons in Disaster,’ on Mr. Obama’s nightstand, and ‘A Better War’ on the shelves of military gurus – have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama’s presidency."

I read A Better War eight years ago, before it became popular, when it was just a history of a part of the Vietnam War.* I have not read Lessons in Disaster, though I did watch a show on C-SPAN 2 this past weekend on the book. According to The Wall Street Journal, those in the White House are reading Lessons in Disaster while the generals are reading A Better War. This is unfortunate. It really ought to be the other way around. Each side would probably learn more.

But I would actually suggest two other books that would be more useful than either of these. The first, which is for the politicians (the generals have already read it), is the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. It is not necessary to read all of it. The two forwards (by Lt. Col. John A. Nagl and by General David H. Petraeus and Lt. General James F. Amos) and the introduction (by Sarah Sewall) to the University of Chicago Press edition would be good enough (as I previously suggested here.)

The other book is Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam by Lt. Col. John A. Nagl (ret.).** Col. Nagl compares the British success against the Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s with the U.S. failure in Vietnam, especially from the point of view of the relative abilities of the British Army and the U.S. Army to learn to fight a new type of war as it is being fought. Needless to say, Col. Nagl does not feel that the U.S. Army did a good job of learning how to properly fight an insurgency in Vietnam. (While Mr. Nagl agrees that General Creighton Abrams did a better job than his predecessors in Vietnam, he does not think the U.S. Army under General Abrams did as good a job as Lewis Sorley does in A Better War.)

Col. Nagl’s book shows the importance of not only getting the strategy and doctrine right but also implementing the strategy and the doctrine properly. You need a military that is willing to change its preconceived notions and learn to fight the enemy in front of it, instead of just fighting the war it wants to fight and following its standard doctrine even it isn’t working.

One other point from Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Over the years the keepers of the Kennedy flame have claimed that, if President Kennedy had lived and been re-elected in 1964, he would not have escalated our involvement in Vietnam. Instead of sending more troops in, he would have pulled the troops out. With Kennedy, we would not have had "Vietnam". But that theory has always seemed a little too convenient to me; a little too much based on what liberals want to believe Kennedy would have done. They turned against the war, so they say Kennedy would have, too.

But from reading Col. Nagl’s book, you see a different President Kennedy, you see a President Kennedy who was, from the beginning of his presidency, pushing the Army on counterinsurgency:

"John F. Kennedy took a deep personal interest in counterinsurgency almost immediately on taking office in January 1961: the first question he asked his aides after his inauguration was reportedly ‘What are we doing about guerrilla warfare?’

Kennedy was no stranger to the war in Vietnam, having visited the country as a congressman and as a senator. His understanding of the essentially political nature of insurgency – and of the dramatic changes in military tactics and operations required to defeat it – would present a substantial challenge to the U.S. Army’s preferred method for fighting insurgents. Roger Hilsman remembers an early discussion he had with Kennedy on the subject during which the president stated, ‘The most likely and immediate threat from the communists was neither nuclear war nor large-scale conventional wars, as in Korea, but the more subtle, ambiguous threat of the guerrilla. To meet this threat new military tactics had to be developed, which he hoped the Special Forces would do. But new political tactics also had to be devised, and, most importantly, the two – the military and political – had to be meshed together and blended.’ …

[T]he Special Group (Counterinsurgency), was created in a charter signed by President Kennedy on 18 January 1962. … The Special Group reflected the president’s personal interest in developing American capability for counterinsurgency operations. …

Kennedy worked very hard to get the army behind his counterinsurgency program, concentrating on the subject in his address to the West Point class of 1961 …" (pages 124-25)

I have not read enough other books on this time period to know if what I am about to say is accurate, but based on Mr. Nagl’s book, perhaps a more logical argument might be that President Kennedy would have avoided the disaster that was Vietnam, not by withdrawing our troops at the beginning of his second term, but by continuing to push the military and by eventually forcing them to actually adopt – and implement – a proper counterinsurgency strategy at an early enough time that it might have made a difference. Maybe the legacy of a Kennedy second term would not have been a Vietnam withdrawal but a Vietnam victory.

Which means that, if President Obama wants to emulate President Kennedy, instead of cutting back in Afghanistan, perhaps he needs to start paying closer attention to what is happening in Afghanistan and to make sure that a proper counterinsurgency is both followed and given enough resources to succeed.

----------
* See here for some earlier thoughts on Iraq, Vietnam, counterinsurgency warfare and A Better War.

** The title of the book comes from Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia): "To make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife."

A Sure-Fire Way to Stop the Increase in Health Care Costs – Though I Don't Guarantee You Will Like It

Among the reasons we have a health care crisis, we are told, are that we spend too much money on health care and that costs are rising faster than income. Healthcare already costs 16% of our gross national product, and health care costs are rising much faster than inflation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we will be spending 25% of our gross national product for health care by 2025.  (See here.)

Different politicians are proposing all kinds of plans to "solve" this crisis. The President and most Democrats in Congress want to involve government in health care in a much bigger way than it is now. They say their proposals will hold down costs and not affect care.

Let me suggest a little thought experiment:

Consider an idea that is just about guaranteed to stop the increase in medical costs. Not only will it stop the increase, but after five to ten years, it will probably result in a decrease in costs. And the best part about the idea is that it would not require us to cut back on the level of health care that we have in the United States today. We would be able to keep that same level of health care we have today.

Here‘s the idea: Stop spending money on research and development for new medicines and new treatments and new equipment. But that’s not a lot of money, you say. But it is. Let me explain.

The first thing that happens when you do this is that you save all the money that is currently being spent on research. That is probably more money than you realize. Drug companies; medical equipment companies; researchers. A lot of money goes into developing new treatments and new drugs. All that spending increases medical costs. We stop those increases by stopping that spending.

And within a couple of years, not only will we be saving all the money we would have spent on research, but we will also not have to pay increased medical bills. We will not have to pay for all that new technology and all those new medicines that are so expensive. In fact, as drugs and technology we are now using come off patent, costs will come actually go down because we will be able to use generics. Not only will costs not go up; at some point they can actually go down. And, since we still have all of the great medicines and technology and equipment that we have now, we will be able to maintain the current level of health care we already have.

That is the end of my thought experiment. You might say it was silly. We don’t want to stop all the research. New medicines and new equipment help save lives, and they help us live longer. But even if the idea was a little silly, maybe it did help identify one of the reasons why medical costs keep going up: They keep going up because medical care keeps getting better. As I mentioned before, my mother had glaucoma, and I have it, too. The improvements in glaucoma treatment over the last twenty years are mind-boggling. Personally, I am really glad my idea was not implemented twenty years ago. Even though glaucoma treatment was, twenty years ago, much, much better that it was fifty years ago, I am really glad for all of the improvements in the last twenty years – and I am hopeful for all of the additional improvements in the next twenty years.* But if we are going to have the improvements, we have to spend the money. Butterflies may be free, but improvements in healthcare are not.

But we will only cut the waste, they say. Yeah, right. If they can successfully do that, I hope they will come and help the people in Springfield, Illinois, cut the waste in Illinois government. The people we have in charge down there have been unsuccessful so far. (Unless you define "waste" as spending that helps people but doesn’t help politicians get re-elected. That kind of spending they don’t seem to mind cutting.)

But why is spending in other countries so much less than in the United States? One reason may be that other countries do not spend as much on new drugs and technologies as the United States. The United States spends way more than its share on developing new medicines and new treatments. Other countries are able to get the benefit of these things without paying the cost of developing them.

Also, in some cases, drugs that are available in the United States are not used in other countries, not because of safety but because of cost. They are deemed too expensive for the benefit that comes from using them. Which may be true for society as a whole, but may not be a comforting thought for people who think they might be helped by those expensive, new drugs.

But there are other reasons, too, and I’ll be honest; I don’t know them all. Do doctors earn more in the United States? Does our wide diversity of people and lifestyles mean that we need more health care? Do we try to do more for people in certain situations, perhaps the very young or very old, than is done in other countries? Do we test for things more than other countries; is that good; is it worth the cost?** Do insurance companies take too much money? As I said, I don’t know. And the fact is that the people in Washington with their fancy proposals don’t know, either. Generalizations based on broad statistics can show whatever you want them to show. To figure out the real reasons would require lots of careful, detailed analysis, looking in detail on what other countries spend their money on and why. And what results they get and why. And how the United States and our people are different from those countries and their people. And the answers may not always be clear.

It would be nice to figure out at least some of these answers before we change our healthcare system, but it doesn’t look like President Obama and his party in Congress want to take the time. I guess they think they know all answers. Scary thought.

-------------
* See David Brown, "A Case of Getting What You Pay For," The Washington Post, July 26, 2009, for a discussion of the improvements in the treatment of heart attacks – and the increases in costs those improvements involve.  It is here, but you have to pay for it.

** See an interesting post on this subject by Gary Becker here.

President Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

When I first about this while driving to the train station this morning, I was confused. I thought to myself: WGN doesn’t do satire. What is this?

But upon seeing that this actually did happen, and thinking about it some more, I have come to the realization that it is all part of a very complicated plot by Karl Rove to do two things. First, he makes people who support President Obama, whether overseas or in the United States, look really foolish.

Second, and perhaps even more subtle, by building President Obama up even more than his supporters already have, Mr. Rove is ensuring that President Obama’s fall will be even greater when he actually does fail. Failure in this case being defined as either not getting his programs passed or getting them passed and then having people see how different the actual results are from what President Obama promised.

I know that liberals were always saying Karl Rove was the evil mastermind behind everything George Bush did. I just did not realize he still had so much power today.

Afghanistan: The Problem With Joe Biden and George Will

I talked here about why George Will’s suggestion for leaving Afghanistan would not work. It appears that Vice President Joe Biden is supporting a similar view:

"The opposite view [to that of General McChrystal], espoused for some time by Vice President Biden and a growing number of liberal Democrats, is that such an effort has a slim chance of success given Afghanistan's size and complexities: the suspicion of outsiders, the harsh terrain, the lack of an educated civil service, the endemic corruption and the tribal rivalries. Instead, they argue, the United States should scale back its operations and focus directly on trying to ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ al-Qaeda, the core counterterrorism goals for Afghanistan that Obama endorsed this spring. Special Forces teams and combat aircraft would remain at the ready to target any terrorists with international ambitions who seek to set up shop in the country."

I wanted to come back to the problems with this approach because I did not develop one of the points as much as I should have. What I said in my prior post was just this: "First, why would the government of Afghanistan let us do it?" Let me elaborate.

If the government of Afghanistan does not want us to stay, how do we stay? What is the legal basis? How do we do it practically? This is important because you have to consider whether the government, and the people, of Afghanistan would let us stay if we are only interested in killing the occasional Al-Qaeda terrorist leader. If we are not going to help them against their enemies (i.e., the Taliban), they may not want us to stay. It may not be worth it to them to have us around. They may figure they are better off working out a deal with the Taliban and not worrying whether al-Qaeda re-establishes itself, as long as al-Qaeda focuses on targets in the West.

If we don’t have bases in Afghanistan, if our planes and special forces units are based off-shore, what is the legal basis for attacking terrorist leaders in Afghanistan (or any other country) – unless you say that they are all part of one global battle against Islamic totalitarianism/extremism ("war on terror" being an unfavored term these days)? Is that something Vice President Biden, or even the Obama administration, believes in?

Also, if we are off-shore, what if Afghani leaders don’t want us to fly into Afghanistan to kill a terrorist leader or group of terrorists? Are we just going to do it anyway? What if they fight back; are we going to shoot at them, too? What is the legal basis for doing this? Is it preventive war again?

If the Obama administration does take the Biden approach, I will be interested in seeing how they answer these questions.

Update (10/5/09 10:40 p.m.): One further thought, actually a variation on the question I looked at above. This other question struck me as I was reading this article by James Traub, "The Distance Between ‘We Must’ and ‘We Can’". Mr. Traub asks whether losing Afghanistan to the Taliban would be "a disaster, or merely, as with Vietnam, a terrible misfortune for which the United States could compensate"? Which brings me to my other question: If the United States, after President Obama called for "an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy" in Afghanistan in March and said the fight in Afghanistan was a "war of necessity" in August, decides to change course and adopt the kind of policy that Vice President Biden and Mr. Will suggest, why would Afghanistan, or any other country in a similar position, ever trust the United States enough to cooperate with us on any thing in any way?

Iranian Nukes; Iranian Missiles

A week ago Friday we learned that Iran has been secretly building a second facility for enriching uranium and that this facility is of a size such that it is only good for producing enriched uranium for weapons. It’s too small to produce uranium for civilian power – even though Iran constantly assures the world that its nuclear program is only for civilian purposes.

Then, two days later, Iran test-fired both short range missiles and medium range missiles.

So what do we do? The military option does not sound good – unless our military has some ideas that are better than those we have seen in the media so far. I hope they do, but we can’t count on it. Which leaves diplomacy.

There are those who think diplomacy and sanctions can work. For example, Gerald F. Seib wrote in The Wall Street Journal last month:

"Still, he [Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s finance minister] acknowledged that sanctions sometimes have impact: ‘They worked in Libya,’ which ultimately succumbed to years of economic pressure from the West and pulled the plug on its nuclear program."

I agree there is much to be learned from the Libyan decision, but I am not sure it is effectiveness of sanctions and economic pressure. North Korea and Iran also think there is much to be learned from Libya’s experience. In fact, we can see in the Libyan example an explanation for much of what North Korea and Iran are doing today.

In understanding why Libya decided, in late 2003 and 2004, to voluntarily give up its nuclear weapons, you have to look at what was happening at time. There had been negotiations and sanctions before, but they hadn’t worked. Then something happened in 2003 which changed Libya’s calculations: the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. As Judith Miller wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

"On Dec. 16, 2003, three days after Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole near Tikrit, Robert G. Joseph, who headed counterproliferation on the White House National Security Council, flew to London for a secret meeting with his British and Libyan counterparts to discuss how and when Libya would announce the abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction."*

The United States invaded Iraq because we (and the rest of the world) thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Libya knew it had WMD. According to Colonel Gadhafi’s son, his father abandoned his WMD because he had to. "‘Overnight we found ourselves in a different world,’ said Saif, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. ‘So Libya had to redesign its policies to cope with these new realities.’"**

Ms. Miller continues:

"Mr. [Ma’atouq Mohamed] Ma’atouq [head of Libya’s secret nuclear program] confirmed Saif’s assertion that Libya had decided to renounce the nuclear and WMD programs, after months of debate within Col Gadhafi’s inner circle. He said that Libyan experts had advised Col. Gadhafi that the programs no longer served Libyan national interests. ‘We had discussed many options for securing our state,’ Mr. Ma'atouq recounted. ‘I’m an engineer, a practical man. And I said: Let’s assume we have these weapons. What would we do with them? Who is the target? Who would we use them against? The U.S.? We had no delivery system. Yes, nuclear weapons are a deterrent, but it’s better to have nothing at all than a deterrent without a means of delivery."**

In other words, because Libya had no means of delivering (i.e., effectively using) his nuclear weapons, Colonel Gadhafi decided it was more dangerous to have them than to get rid of them.

That is the lesson that North Korea and Iran have learned from Libya’s decision to give up its WMD; i.e., not that you are better off giving up your nuclear weapons, but that if you are going to have them, you have to have a way to deliver them, too. And that is why Iran’s and North Korea’s missile programs are just as dangerous as their nuclear weapons programs. They are not going to make Colonel Gadhafi’s mistake of having nuclear weapons and not having a way to use them.

---------
* Judith Miller, "Gadhafi's Leap of Faith," The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2006.

** Judith Miller, "How Gadhafi' Lost His Groove," The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2006.

Update (10/3/09 4:35 p.m.): Corrected a typo.

Chicago Loses the Olympics

Now that President Obama could not help Mayor Daley get the Olympics, he has to take care of Mayor Daley’s (and Rahm Emanuel’s) number 1 priority – getting U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald out of town.