George Rebane
Our foreign policy is on the rocks, and has not been so badly mishandled since JFK’s screw-up brought on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Our globally recognized incompetence in that national endeavor has brought us to the brink of WW3 with not only one, but two marginally stable enemies (I discount North Korea and Iran). Russia and Red China are each exhibiting their opportunistic ire in the face of the weak leader now in the White House, one who has visibly weakened and demoralized our military and promises to continue down that path by withdrawing funding for critical technology upgrades and new combat systems procurements required to bring our defense establishment back up to par with our longstanding national security requirements.
A nation’s foreign policy begins at its border. And our president has been purposely and impeachably delinquent with his policies starting at our southern border which he has kept invitingly open to millions of illegal aliens pouring in at a steady stream – over five million during the last two years. This lawless stream has contributed to unmanageable crime, thousands of drug deaths, and an ongoing cultural shock to communities. Upon closer examination, Joe Biden has done nothing to fulfill the oath he took in January 2021. His only accomplishment in keeping half the nation in deep ignorance is his daily stream of historically preposterous lies about the state of the world, the nation, and his political opponents. With a willing and compliant media, and a dumbed-down electorate, almost anything can be passed off as an acceptable and palliative version of reality.
We Americans permit this dangerous assault on national security and our way of life by a continuing, if not deepening, ignorance about the world and our role in it. As mentioned, our media and educational institutions have been partners in keeping Americans in the dark about global happenings and how to relate these to our foreign policy.
This social deficit was first recognized by James F. Byrnes (1882-1972), politician (congressman, senator, governor), jurist (Supreme Court justice), and diplomat (Secretary of State) extraordinaire. He was the ‘President’s Hand’ under Roosevelt and Truman, and critical architect of wartime and postwar policies, including peace treaties with Germany et al and Imperial Japan, and agreements to keep the USSR and international communism at bay. He was America’s principal advisor or principal negotiator at international conferences and head-of-state meetings from 1939 to 1947. Having taught himself shorthand in law school, he became the inveterate note taker at every meeting he attended. No one could cite erroneous memories from previous meetings when Byrnes was involved, since he could read them chapter and verse of direct quotes of who said what when.
After the war Byrnes’ accomplishments became known and his fame spread. There was a national outcry for him to write the definitive record of the war’s diplomatic back story and how the major decisions were made, decisions from whether/when to drop the atomic bomb to how the post-war world should be partitioned. He acceded to this and published a detailed and fascinating history titled Speaking Frankly (1947), which instantly made it to the top of the charts along with being highlighted by the then enormously popular Book-of-the-Month Club. For WW2 history buffs like me, reading it was an expansion of my own knowledge and a thrilling page-turning reveal of the highly classified and secret goings-on that guided where and when the battles occurred. Along with the inevitable barnacles that collect with such a career, he was among the several under-appreciated giants that determined the course of the war and subsequent international relations.
On the subject of foreign policy Byrnes promoted openness and public participation as prerequisites to peace and avoiding unnecessary wars. He wrote –
I continue to think that, if we are to have a lasting peace, it must be a people’s peace. The people can exert their full influence in the conduct of foreign affairs only if they know more about them.
The basic democratic right, the right of the people to know, must be applied increasingly to the conduct of foreign affairs. If that right is essential – as I believe it is - to the functioning of democracy here at home, it is at least equally necessary to apply it in the field of foreign affairs where the need for knowledge and understanding is so much greater. To carry this policy into action involves a break with the diplomatic habits of the past. Such habits are not easily broken. Time, effort, and a constant demand by the public to know what is happening will be needed.
People cannot act intelligently if, in all matters of importance affecting our relations with other governments, they are kept in the dark.
Let there be light – and lots of it!
Scattershots – 2sep23
George Rebane
‘How the AI Revolution Will Reshape the World’ is an essay in the 1sep23 issue of Time that presents an excellent summary of how the advent of generative AI is launching “the greatest redistribution of power in history.” Not only is this new wave of technology based on large language models sufficient to found the greatest revolution in human civilization all by its lonesome, its redistribution of power will be abetted by accompanying technological breakthroughs in synthetic biology, quantum computing, and “abundant new sources of energy.” Having understood all this, it is remarkable that today “this is the most underappreciated aspect of the technological revolution now underway.” What’s more, previous technological leaps were reserved to the capital rich elite or national governments. That’s no longer the case. “We are facing a step change in what’s possible for individual people to do, and at a previously unthinkable pace. AI is becoming more powerful and radically cheaper by the month—what was computationally impossible, or would cost tens of millions of dollars a few years ago, is now widespread.” For the sanguine among us, snooze on at your own peril. (H/T to reader)
Blinders on black governance. It’s with some trepidation that I offer this observation motivated by the recent slum apartment building fire in Johannesburg that killed over seventy poor immigrants to the Union of South Africa. (more here) Over the last generation (i.e. post-apartheid) that nation’s largest city has turned from a crown jewel of Africa into the country’s, perhaps the continent’s, largest favela. And here is the observation to which no one dare give voice – are there any black-governed countries in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, that compare favorably with first-world nations like those in Europe, North America, and Asia? To carry this observation even deeper, the same may be asked of black-run cities in the United States. Instead, these questions remain unasked and unexamined. From an academic or demographic perspective such enquiries remain on terra incognita, and their causal factors define one of our culture’s growing number of forbidden territories. Anyone daring to even explore whether there is any truth to the basis which such questions imply is immediately tagged as a racist or worse. As evidence, I offer the comment stream below.
Posted at 01:09 PM in Culture Comments, Our Country, Our World, Singularity Signposts | Permalink | Comments (13)
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