Graham Allison to speak at the PCFR: Are China and America destined for war?

Coming up at the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com):

On Wednesday, Oct. 11, comes Graham Allison, who will talk about, among other things, Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea. He'll discuss his new book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?

Graham Allison was director of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 1995 until July 2017. Allison is a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy, with a special interest in nuclear weapons, terrorism and decision-making.

On Wednesday Nov. 15, comes prize-winning journalist Maria Karagianis, who will talk about the refugee crisis on the Greek island of Lesbos.

In May 2015, she traveled to Lesbos, which is within sight of Turkey. At that time, hundreds of thousands of refugees were spilling onto the beaches in leaky boats, many of them dying, trying to find freedom from war-torn Syria. The Greek people of the island, who have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their generosity, are now facing an economic catastrophe with tourism, their main source of income, which is now destroyed. She is currently a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow and has traveled across the United States speaking at colleges and universities. She is a former guest editor and award-winning writer on the editorial board of The Boston Globe..

On Wednesday, Jan. 27, comes Victoria Bruce, who will talk about China's near monopoly of rare-earth elements.

She is the author of Sellout: How Washington Gave Away America's Technological Soul, and One Man's Fight to Bring It Home. This is about, among other things, China’s monopolization of rare earths, which are essential in electronics.

Victoria Bruce holds a master's degree in geology from the University of California, Riverside, where she researched the chemistry of volcanic hazards on Mount Rainer in Washington State. She has directed and produced four documentary films, earning the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcast journalism for her film, The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt. She also received the Duke University Human Rights Book Award for Hostage Nation.

On Wednesday, Feb. 21, comes Dan Strechay, who will talk about the environmental and socio-economical effects of the vast palm-oil agribusiness.

He is the U.S. representative for outreach and engagement at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). He'll discuss, among other things, the massive deforestation associated with producing palm oil in the Developing World and what to do about it. Prior to joining the RSPO, he was the senior manager for Sustainability Communications for PepsiCo.

Our Vietnam War -- now and then

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

I watched the first part of the latest Ken Burns/Lynn Novick  series, The Vietnam War.  It was well done – vivid visuals and rigorous research. But as someone who was smack in the middle of the Vietnam War generation (the older Baby Boomers)  and who edited news stories about the war in the ‘70s, I quibble with the assertion that after the war ended (for America), in May 1975, that neither Vietnam vets nor the public wanted to talk about it for years. In fact,  from that time and through the ‘70s, there was nonstop talk, writing, TV shows and movies about it, which, of course, goes on to the present.

Another quibbleis about the distracting cutting back and forth between deeper history (French colonial days, World War II, the French war with the Vietnamese Communists, etc.) and the American war. It would have worked better, in my opinion, as straight chronological history, from before the French to 1975. Indeed, the series would have done well to have included stuff about Vietnam's fraught relations with China over the centuries, which would have provided useful context.

Something I particularly remember from those times was the huge role of chance. A good friend of mine, Steve Perry, was #7 in the Selective Service lottery, was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he was killed near Danang a month after arrival. I had #361,  and so barring a war with the Soviets, I was safe. And by the time I got out of college, in 1970, President Nixon had started to pull troops from that gorgeous if battered little nation.

There was also the role of class. Young men from middle-class and affluent families, who could afford to go to college, usually got higher-education deferments from their local draft boards; poorer people, however, who were less able to go to college, were much more likely to be drafted and sent to Vietnam.  We were very aware and uncomfortable about this in the late ‘60s.

The series reminded me of my late father and me watching CBS News in the summer of ’65 as the war was heating up. My dad, a combat veteran of World War II(North Africa, Europe and the Pacific) who retired from the Navy as a lieutenant commander, looked at me, and very quietly said: “I don’t think you’d look good in uniform.’’ Like many conservatives, he thought that the war was a fool’s errand – an extreme overreaching into a swamp, literal and otherwise.

'Slow, slow'

-- Photo by Aleksander Kaasik

"O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

-- "October,'' by Robert Frost

His fair paintings

"Pygmalion Diptych,'' by Charles W. Hawthorne, is the show "Connections: Hawthorne to {Hans} Hofmann and the Hofmann Students of Berta Walker Gallery, '' Provincetown, Mass., through Nov. 1.

Llewellyn King: GOP tax ideology contains myths, wishful thinking, stock buybacks and feudalization

"The Tax Collector's Office'' (1640), by Peter Brueghel the Younger.

An open letter to the tax writers of Congress:

Even us laymen, us non-economists have opinions about taxes. We pay them. We also benefit from loopholes and are punished for being not rich enough to have investments that lighten the tax load.

Those at the bottom of the tax ladder seem to pay their taxes with more equanimity than those at the top.

For more than three decades, I operated a small business. Over the years, I employed hundreds of people and all were keenly interested in what they would be paid, but none — not one ever — asked what hat their take home pay would be or how that could be finagled, as with benefits. In business parlance, they were interested only in the top line, not the bottom line.

By the same token, other small businesses seemed to be unbothered by taxation, although they all relied on accountants to get them the best deal. Taxes were not a subject that came up in in our trade association meetings. T.J. Zlotnitsky, a member of the progressive Patriotic Millionaires, told me that he and other very successful businesses were not crippled by taxes and saw them as a necessity — a cost of being in business, if you will. Billionaire Warren Buffet andrich economist-actor-writer Ben Stein echo that view.

But big business, unlike small business, and its agents from trade associations to their lobbyists, believes that tax rates are the problem. Take the issue of U.S. companies whose offshore subsidiaries earn profits that are retained in foreign countries to defer paying U.S. corporate tax. It is an act of Republican theology that this money would come back instantly to the United States if the tax threat were removed and that it would be invested in new enterprise, plant and products here.

It is as likely that this money will be used to buy back stock. There are plenty of companies right here in the United States sitting on billions of dollars, not investing them either here or overseas. Explain, please.

Perhaps tax rates, assuming that they are the effective rate that will be paid (seldom the case), should be thought of in terms of pricing. Pricing is a whole science, possibly an art. There is a sweet spot in pricing where buyers and sellers agree.

For President Trump and Congress to say that sweet spot is 20 percent for corporations and 35 percent for individuals is arbitrary. Despite company "inversions," where they move their domicile to tax-friendly countries, corporations, as measured by earnings, are doing nicely, thanks.

It is true that high tax ratescan discourage investment and lead to capital flight. But there are glaring exceptions: Why are companies flocking to high-tax Massachusetts rather than tolow-tax New Hampshire?

My own guess is that the sweet spot is between 25 percent for corporations and 30 percent for individuals. I expect some will try to disabuse me of that idea.

New York, by national standards, is heavily taxed, but businesses and people are pouring in. Explain perceived value, please.

Yet after World War II, when taxes really were too high in Britain, many moneyed people, including almost all the film stars, established residences in Switzerland to escape confiscatory taxes: 90 percent was just too much for the likes of Noel Coward and David Niven. Ninety percent was a sour spot, very sour.

Then, there is the highly speculative issue of how tax reduction will trigger growth. It is an argument that would not pass the loan committee at the local bank: the idea that increasing debt now will lead to huge growth later. Take a piece graph paper and draw an ascending line, make no provision for recession, war or, as now, acts of God. Is it believable?

Finally, there is the vexing question of estate taxes, which — with fiendish cleverness — the opponents have labeled "death taxes."

The fact is that if you remove or reduce these, you guarantee less revenue. But, more important, in a time when the economy has created many billionaires, you risk the creation of super class of Americans, rich in perpetuity and growing richer with even the most conservative investments: a feudalization of the United States.

Is that the America that is great (again)?

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.

Robert Kim Bingham Sr.: Herewith a simple path to legal immigration status for millions

"Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World'' (1886) by Edward Moran. Oil on canvas. The J. Clarence Davies Collection, Museum of the City of New York.

NEW LONDON, Conn.
 
As a retired Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyer, I have often asked myself "What should the federal government do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants in America?"
 
The simple answer is to revive a dormant law.
 
While serving in the general counsel's  offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and ICE for 37 years, I observed many long-time undocumented immigrants facing removal proceedings. They were ineligible for relief from deportation under section 249(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (Act) because they had entered the United States after Jan. 1, 1972. Otherwise, they would have been eligible to apply for the benefit of lawful permanent residence status under section 249(a).
 
In fairness to those who have set down deep roots in America, I urge Congress to enact a bill updating 249's outdated entry requirement from Jan. 1, 1972, to Jan. 1, 2005. This would constitute a major, but fair, breakthrough immigration solution that could benefit thousands of persons who have resided here continuously for more than a decade, including many DACA {Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals}  recipients, and who wish to apply for lawful permanent residence.
 
By changing the eligibility date, long-time foreign-born residents who possess good moral character would have a path to legal status. The section's existing legal bars would still block from legal status "inadmissible criminals, procurers, and other immoral persons, subversives, violators of the narcotic laws or smugglers of aliens."
 
Every applicant would continue to bear the burden of proof to establish eligibility. Once the USCIS or immigration court granted lawful permanent residence, the applicant would typically wait five years thereafter to apply for naturalization, or three years if married to a U.S. citizen.
 
This update of the section would amount to a simple statutory fix with enormous consequences that could be supported even by Republicans who can appreciate that a party hero, Ronald Reagan, was the last president to update section 249(a), on Nov. 6, 1986.
 
Experienced immigration practitioners have expressed solid support for this immigration solution.
 
"It would be the easiest solution, of course," said Rita Provatas, a member of the Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). "(Its) beauty is the statute's simplicity."
 
In its March 14, 2017, editorial, The {New London, Conn.} Day said it "likes the suggestion of Robert Kim Bingham Sr., a veteran attorney with ICE."
 
These are but a couple of the many voices from various political persuasions that have expressed support for the proposal.
 
Given that a significant number of the "11 million" group, who have lived here continuously for over a decade could qualify to become lawful permanent residents under section 249(a), if updated accordingly, the time for Congress to move up the entry date to Jan.  1, 2005 is now.
 
 
Robert Kim Bingham Sr. , who lives in the New London area, retired after working 37 years as an ICE lawyer. He can be reached at  rbingham03@snet.net. Thank you to Chris Powell, of the (Manchester, Conn., Journal Inquirer, for notifying New England Diary about this essay.
 


 
 

My 'fortnight in September'

On the Cape Cod National Seashore.

“My house completed, and tried and not found wanting by a first Cape Cod year, I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go. The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. In my world of beach and dunes these elemental presences lived and had their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant of nature and the year.” 

-- From The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod, by Henry Beston

Harvard briefly honors a traitor

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' at GoLocal24.com:

Harvard’s trendy invitation to the traitorous transsexual exhibitionist/narcissistChelsea Manning to be a fellow at the university’s Kennedy School was revolting. Manning’s theft ofU.S. military and diplomatic secrets and gift of them to the Kremlin tool WikiLeaks should have kept him or her in prison for life. Barack Obama’s commutation last January of Manning’s 35-year sentence, a sentence handed down in 2010, for his/her crimes handed was one of the worst things that the president did.  What an example to the military!

Harvard, faced with a storm of protest, withdrew its offer of the fellowship for Manning but it will take a long time for it to wash away what should be its embarrasment from this case. She would have been a “fellow’’ atHarvard? That’s supposed to be an honor.

Wanna fight?

"Sister Act'' (recycled paper painting), by Betsy Silverman, at Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, Mass., through Oct. 21.

'Heaven's muffled floor'

"The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

the cloud sheaves
in heaven’s fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face

falling — I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace

heaven’s muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain

of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain

now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible

of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.''

-- "Autumn Rain,'' by D.H. Lawrence

BU may take over Wheelock College

This is from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):

"Boston University (BU) and Wheelock College have confirmed they have entered discussions of a possible merger in recent weeks.

"Wheelock College, about a mile away from BU’s south campus, has faced declining enrollment over the past few years, leading Wheelock’s new president, David Chard, to consider a merger.  Wheelock received six responses to its Request for Proposals (RFP), but believed merging with BU would best preserve its mission of educating students in teaching and social work. 

"In the merger, Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life, and Family Studies would merge with BU’s School of Education to create the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. An official date, among other details, have not yet been released by either institution.

“'Over the upcoming weeks the leadership of Boston University and Wheelock College will be working with our faculties and our academic and administrative leaders to shape the vision of our merged academic units and services,' the joint statement said. 'We believe the merger will enhance Boston University’s programs, as well as preserve the mission of Wheelock College to improve the lives of children and families.”'

Editor's note: There seems to be an overpopulation of small colleges in New England, and dozens might close over the next decade.

Wheelock(College) Family Theater.

Chris Powell: U.S. shouldn't have betrayed its principles and Free China

Republic of China (Taiwan) flag.

President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who was first his national-security adviser and then his secretary of state,  are supposed to have been foreign-policy geniuses, most notably for their approach in 1971 and 1972 to what we then called  Red China. The Nixon-Kissinger idea was to further separate the government in Beijing from its great fellow Communist ally, the Soviet Union, and induce both countries to diminish their support for North Vietnam's war against South Vietnam, where the United States was doing most of the fighting.

Recognizing  Red China should have been no big deal ordinarily, for the primary criterion for recognizing governments is not their politics or decency but simply whether they rule distinct territory. But as a Republican U.S. representative and senator, Nixon had been an instigator of the great red scare of the early 1950s and had blamed the Democratic administration of Harry Truman for losing China to communism. So Nixon's reversing his posture on China was almost as sensational as the sudden alliance of Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union in August 1939. Nixon got away with it because most people agreed with the new policy, and so his old red-baiting was forgotten.

But as things turned out China and the Soviet Union did not curtail their support for the Communist side in the Vietnam War, and the U.S. side was defeated two years after Nixon visited China and just after he resigned the presidency to avoid impeachment. Opening China to trade with the United States, normalization boosted China's development and led to the decline of much of U.S. industry.

It also caused the United States to betray its longstanding ally, the Republic of China -- the losing side in the Chinese Civil War, which had moved to the island of Taiwan. The Republic of China was expelled from the United Nations and its diplomatic relations with the United States were demoted from formal to informal, though Taiwan also governed and continues to govern distinct territory.

Now the United States and its Asian allies are being threatened by North Korea as it develops nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. North Korea's neighbors and sponsors, China and Russia, resist cutting off the troublesome country. China is becoming an imperial power (like the United States itself) and is creating islands in the South China Sea to gain control over international navigation there. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and at China's insistence Taiwan is being denied even observer status in international organizations and is losing diplomatic recognition from other countries.

So what does the United States have today to show for the supposed Nixon-Kissinger genius in Asian policy? Not much.

Yes, Communist Vietnam, which defeated the U.S.-backed side in Vietnam's civil war, is increasingly friendly to the United States. But this is despite the Nixon-Kissinger policies, not because of them. That is, like other countries nearby, Vietnam feels threatened by China and on the whole the Vietnamese and the Chinese long have detested other.

Meanwhile Taiwan, whose demotion throughout the world was triggered by the United States' bid to woo mainland China, has become a vigorous and prosperous democracy that might better be called Free China. The brave little country strives quietly to maintain its sovereignty in anticipation of the eventual dissolution of the totalitarian regime that threatens it.

So it seems that the United States would have done better to stay true to its principles and loyal to Free China, whose simple example may be the best hope for democracy on the mainland.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

The woods are 'lovely, dark and deep'

"Birches, Maine,'' by Russell duPont in his show "A Sense of Place: Photographs by Russell duPont,'' through October, at the Whitman (Mass.) Public Library. Mr. duPont has also just published a coming-of-age novel, King & Train, that is available on Amazon.

Tim Faulkner: On the edge in Narragansett Bay

Narragansett Bay.

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

This year’s Watershed Counts report again describes a bay and shoreline under duress and facing an uncertain future. The causes aren't new, but the overarching threat to the Narragansett Bay region is climate change. To illustrate the current and future perils, the report analyzes three topics: oysters, saltwater marshes and waterfront homes. The three make for an ideal summer setting in Rhode Island, but from an ecological perspective they are on the cusp of significant change.

Marshes
The report's profile of saltwater marshes is compelling for its clear illustrations and concise description of one of Narragansett Bay’s most underappreciated resources. Marshes teem with ecological diversity and provide important functions such as sequestering carbon, filtering pollution, and protecting the shoreline from floods and erosion.

Yet, sea-level rise is submerging these habitats faster than they can naturally elevate themselves. Since 1999, the water level in the bay has risen 3 inches, compared to a 1.125-inch accretion rate for marshes. As water becomes trapped atop marshes, the grasses turn to mudflats and eventually open water. According to the report, if sea-level rise increases 5 feet, as projected, the bay will lose 87 percent of its remaining marshes.

Experimental marsh preservation projects are underway in Middletown, Charlestown and Narragansett, R.I. To elevate marshes, sediment from dredged navigation channels and breachways is sprayed on top of the grasses. But the report acknowledges the it will be a challenge to keep up with the inevitable.

“Even if emissions were halted today, it could be at least a hundred years for ocean temperatures and seal level rise to change course," according to the report.

Oysters

Oyster farming is a re-emerging industry that reached its peak in 1922, when farms covered 22 percent of Narragansett Bay. Although oyster farming is a fraction of the size today, they are the state’s largest source of shellfishing revenue. The industry is projected to grow, thanks to strong oversight and management plans from state agencies such as the Coastal Resource Management Council (CRMC) and Department of Health. But warming water impacts spawning, alters the taste of oysters and escalates the likelihood for diseases. Climate change also increase stormwater runoff, which pollutes the bay and leads to shellfish closures.

Even with these threats, however, the report concludes that oyster farming can grow and thrive.

“Rhode Island is well positioned to identify and manage current and future impacts of climate change to the oyster aquaculture industry," according to the report.

North Kingstown, for one, has partnered with state institutions to map and assess the town’s vulnerability to projected sea-level rise. (CRMC)

Waterfront homes

The pursuit of waterfront property is coming back to haunt Rhode Islanders. The development of the coast has destroyed marshes and hardened the shoreline with manmade barriers such as seawalls.

Since the 1970s restrictions have slowed building on marshes and construction of artificial barriers. But with 30 percent of the the bay's shoreline “hardened” by development and rising seas there isn’t much room for nature to adapt or help lessen the force of more powerful storms and erosion wrought by climate change.

Waterfront property owners have to make expensive decisions. Retreat, elevate their homes, or install natural buffers to protect against the inevitable damage expected from the encroaching ocean.

CRMC will initiate the transition to these options with its Shoreline Special Area Management Plan, or Beach SAMP. The guide for coastal property owners about hazards is still being written, but the website offers maps and information about at-risk neighborhoods. Other tools and information about coastal climate risks are available for municipal planners, property owners and the public, such as the recently launched PREP-RI learning site.

The Watershed Counts report warns that shoreline property owners should act soon, as the likelihood of a 100-year storm battering Rhode Island increases. Otherwise, 4,853 coastal homes will be underwater by 2100 thanks to sea-level rise, according to projections.

Watershed Counts is facilitated and paid for by the University of Rhode Island Coastal Institute and the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, with funding from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Tim Faulkner writes for ecoRi News.

Running to paralyze a city

Boston Marathon finish line in 1910.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

It’s past time to end traffic-paralyzing and potentially dangerous road races in downtown Providence. The Sept. 17 CVS Health Downtown 5K showed what a mess these events can make.

Yes, besides being an ad forWoonsocket-based CVS, this event raises money for some nonprofits. But these promotions can also bring other activities to a halt in the middle of New England’s second-largest metro. They can block police, fire and rescue vehicles and prevent consumers from getting to stores,  restaurants and hospitals. Members of the public should just send money to their favorite local charities, without the city going through these disruptive events.

The charity, teamwork and goodwill associated with these races are very nice. But if we must have them why not keep them out in the country or suburbs, where they can’t snarl life for many thousands of locals for hours?

Yes, the Boston Marathon goes into, well, Boston, but mostly on a straight line, not curving around constantly, as doraces in tight little downtown Providence. And most of the Boston Marathon route is in the exurbs and suburbs. Further, it's an international event that really does bring money into Boston. Not so these runs in Providence.

David Warsh: U.S. Russia policy -- containment or cautious engagement?

The abrupt deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations that began in February 2014, when Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev on the last day of the Sochi Olympics, just as Russia sought to show its best face to the world in an elaborate closing ceremony,  is the most serious crossroads in the relationship of the rival nations since the Cuban missile crisis.

The parallels are imprecise. This present episode is much more complicated than those famous thirteen days in October 1962 for having unfolded much more slowly, and for having affected the interpretation of a U.S. presidential election in the process.  Yet for all of that, it has the potential to be as dangerous as the Reagan buildup/Soviet collapse of the early 1980s, given the impetus it has imparted to a new race to manufacture easy-to-use nuclear weapons equipped with hair triggers.

It is important, therefore, to frame properly the events before and after. “Putting Putin in Perspective’’(revealingly retitled “The Putin Problem” by the editors), a useful contribution by two specially well-qualified authors, appeared in the Boston Review earlier this month.

Thomas Graham, a managing director at Kissinger Associates, was senior director for Russia on the US National Security Council 2004-07. Rajan Menon, a professor at the City University of New York, is author of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford, 2016).

“At the core of Russian identity,” they argue, “is the deeply-held belief that Russia must be a great power and that it must be recognized as such. Ever since Peter the Great brought Russia into Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the belief in Russia’s predestined role in the world has informed Russian thinking and actions.”

This is particularly true of the last three Russian leaders, they say – Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Putin, explaining that Dimitri Medvedev, president from 2008-12, never escaped Putin’s shadow. “All three were – or are – consumed by Russia’s future as a great power.”

The article is the best-informed and most persuasive narrative of the last 35 years of U.S.-Russian relations that I have seen. It bears reading by anyone seriously interested in the situation today because, as the authors note, their argument is almost completely at odds with “mainstream thinking” in the U.S., as reflected in political debate and much press coverage: to wit, the conviction that all the blame belongs on Putin.

For purposes of a column I will condense their argument to two main themes – Russian humiliation since the collapse of the USSR in 1991; and U.S. top-loftiness, especially in the form of NATO enlargement since 1995. I compress in order to emphasize an important inflection point in the relationship that Graham and Menon add to a standard list of five others since 1999.  Each of these accounts Russia gave of itself was little noted and much less widely understood. (One was somewhat indirect.) They should have been plain for all to see, since, in each case, Putin was addressing and seeking to persuade a global audience.

·       Putin’s broadside, “Russia at the Turn of the Millennium,” issued in 1999, just as he took the reins of government, in which he sounded an alarm: “Russia is in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history. For the first time in the past 200-300 years, it is facing a real threat of sliding to the second, and possibly even third echelon of states in the world. We are running out of time for removing this threat.”

·       Putin’s Munich speech, in February 2007, when, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham in the audience, he excoriated the United States for having invaded Iraq without winning widespread consent; threatening Russia with NATO expansion; encouraging nuclear proliferation by behaving lawlessly; and for touching off a missile defense arms race.

·       The first hack – when Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s famous “fuck the EU” cell-phone conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was recorded by Russian security officials during a street demonstration in Kiev, and posted on the Web in an appeal to world opinion via YouTube.

·       Putin’s speech in March 2014 to a room full of dignitaries in Moscow explaining the decision to annex the Crimean peninsula after what he described as a coup in Ukraine. “If you compress the spring, it will snap back hard,” he said.

·       Putin’s March 2017 private offer to President Trump via diplomatic channels of an extensive re-set, disclosed to BuzzFeed earlier this month, presumably by the Russians, conceivably by the Americans, quickly confirmed by both sides, and reported by CNN, the WSJ, and Economic Principals last week. The offer seemed to demonstrate how little the Russian understood the situation as it had developed in the United States.

The sixth inflection point, the one that Graham and Menon added to the standard list, may be the most important.  It has been much less hashed over because Putin spoke to a Russian audience about one episode and on the eve of another.

·       “The turning point,” they write, “came in Fall 2004, with the September terrorist attack in Beslan in the Caucasus and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which started in November.” To that point the U.S. and Russia had cooperated successfully in dealing with Islamic extremists. Putin was the first to reach out to the U.S. after 9/11, and Russia provided valuable support in the early stages of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

That autumn Chechen terrorists seized a school in Beslan, in the Caucasus, and held it until negotiations broke down. Nearly 400 persons were killed, most of them children, in the rescue attempt. The U.S. had refused to work closely with Russia against the Chechen rebels, some of whom were moderates in Washington’s eyes, their secessionist grievances legitimate. Not long after the tragedy, Putin spoke obliquely to a television audience about the U.S. and what he considered its goals:

“Some want to tear off a big chunk of our country. Others help them do it. They help because they think that Russia, one of the greatest nuclear powers of the world, is still a threat, and this threat has to be eliminated. And terrorism is only an instrument to achieve these goals.’’

A month later, the Orange Revolution began in Ukraine. In Moscow’s reading, the United States had master-minded the protests and streets scenes in order to install a pro-Western figure as president instead of Yanukovych, the candidate Putin had endorsed. He soon came to view it as a dress rehearsal for regime change in Russia itself. (The authors don’t mention it, but this was the very zenith of George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda”: having taken Baghdad, the administration was being urged by neoconservative strategists to drive on to Teheran.) Soon after Viktor Yushchenko was installed, Putin warned,

“It is extremely dangerous to attempt to rebuild modern civilization, which God had created to be diverse and multifaceted, according to the barracks principles of a unipolar world.’’

So it has proved to be.  Around the corner, in 2008, were the short war with Georgia, on behalf of a couple of small self-proclaimed republics (South Ossetia wanting to remain within the Russian sphere, Abkhazia simply wishing to be free of Georgia);  and, in 2011, the beginning of the Arab Spring. Russia developed two policies to resist the United States abroad, Graham and Menon observe: preserving Russian preeminence in much of the former Soviet space; and supporting alternative global institutions.

Domestically Putin cracked down, especially after winning election to a third term, in 2012. He blamed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for encouraging protests beforehand. Opposition leaders were arrested; Western-funded non-governmental organizations were shut down; laws were passed narrowing the scope for political debate. Putin then embarked on “a wide-ranging cyber and disinformation campaign in the West to tarnish the image of Western democracy and sow domestic discord, of which the interference in last year’s presidential election is only the most prominent example,” the authors say.  Nearly everyone in the West agrees the Russians went too far with their cyber-measures, it seems to me, but no such rough consensus has yet emerged as to the intent, scope, tenor and effect of the campaign.

What’s next? The authors list three options:  treat Russia as an adversary and pursue containment; return to the minimalism by which the U.S, dealt with Moscow from 1920 to 1933  during which time it didn’t even have diplomatic relations with Russia; or undertake what Graham and Menon call engagement leavened by realism. Pretending that Russia doesn’t exist is no longer an option in the modern world, so the choice is basically between containment, with the risk of confrontation, and cautious cooperation. The authors warn of the risks of the former:

“[of] a future of freewheeling rivalry punctuated by intermittent crises, which will have to be managed in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust, even hostility. Moreover, they could spiral into a confrontation. The breakdown in communication and bellicose back-and-forth rhetoric would increase the probability of misperception and miscalculation during dangerous episodes. Given the conventional military power Russia now wields – to say nothing of its nuclear weapons and cyber capabilities – the dangers should be obvious and are already presaged by the hair-raising encounters in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea between U.S. ships and aircraft and Russian warplanes.’’

Engagement leavened with realism would, they say:

“{W}elcome the emergence of democracy in Russia but wouldn’t allow quotidian policy to be shaped by the attendant hope. It would assume that the internal differences between Russia and the United States and the dissimilar geopolitical circumstances each faces would inevitably produce divergent interpretations of, and responses to, events – the wars in Ukraine and Syria being examples. It would expect Russia to regard itself as a great power, defend its interests as defined by its leadership, and, even in times of weakness, act on the premise that recovery and resurgence are inevitable.’’

Crises would continue to erupt, but with the expectation that they could be resolved. Meanwhile, they say, shared interests would accumulate and opportunities accrue.

Consider, for instance, advancing arms control and nuclear non-proliferation; averting war on the Korean peninsula or unregulated rivalry in the Arctic, the thawing of which has made it a maritime passageway as well as a new energy frontier; coordinating policies against terrorism and climate change; avoiding accidental military clashes; stabilizing Syria; and preventing bilateral crises from escalating into armed, especially nuclear, confrontations.

Now, if only we had a president capable of saying as much in his own words – or even persuasively reading speeches written by others! Their prescription is, the authors point out, not very different than how the United States and the USSR dealt with one another (and China) during much of the Cold War – an approach that produced notably soft landings. It may even be Donald Trump’s instinctive response to the situation, but it has been quite beyond him to deliver.

To refresh my memory of the Cuban missile crisis, I went back to Graham Allison’s famous book: Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971). It’s as good as I remember it, with its overlay of what modern political scientists had to say, mostly then new-fangled rational-actor theory, superimposed on a commonsense interpretation, with a substrate devoted to comparing the two accounts (those of “scientists” with “artists”) and fashioning a third model, in search of a satisfying explanation. Allison’s analysis had its good effect, none greater than when he emphasized the gospel of his mentor, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling:  It helps to regularly put yourself in the other person’s shoes before acting.

Most distressing at the present moment, however, is the role of two leading U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, in preferring condemnation and confrontation at every turn (The Times throughout the paper, The Post mainly on its editorial pages).  Granted, the situation has been further confused by Donald Trump’s election as president. 

But long before that, the coverage of Putin reminded me of the demonizing of Saddam Hussein in the build-up to Iraq (or, for that matter, The Times’s initial cheerleading for the Vietnam War, 40 years before). Truth-seeking, in the form of listening to the other side, is often severely wounded before the war begins.

Certainly it is not auspicious that The Times abolished the position of public editor, its in-house critic, just as the controversy heated up.  “Our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful that one person could ever be,” wrote publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., explaining the decision.  

In her final column, public editor Liz Spayd replied:

“It’s not really about how many critics there are, or where they’re positioned, or what Times editor can be rounded up to produce answers. It’s about having an institution that is willing to seriously listen to that criticism, willing to doubt its impulses and challenge the wisdom of the inner sanctum. Having the role was a sign of institutional integrity, and losing it sends an ambiguous signal: Is the leadership growing weary of such advice or simply searching for a new model?’’

We’ll find out soon enough.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t have known about either of these articles, the BuzzFeed scoop and the Boston Review narrative, but for Johnson’s Russia List, the compendium of Russian and Western news reports prepared almost daily by the independently minded scholar David Johnson.

When the history of the Ukraine crisis is finally written, Quaker-raised Johnson will, I think, be a major hero of the story. Neither The Times nor The Post – nor, for that matter, The Wall Street Journal– has yet cast light on his long and invaluable reconnaissance throughout the borderlands of democracy.

David Warsh, a veteran columnist and economic historian, is proprietor of Boston-area-based economicprincipals.com, where this first ran.

Sam Pizzigati: We get sick, they get rich

Via OtherWords.org

Our current health-care system in the United States works just fine — for the corporate executives who run it.

Take, for instance, Michael Mussallem, the CEO at Edwards Lifesciences — a California-based company that makes heart valves and assorted other medical devices. Since 2010, Mussallem has pocketed an astounding $246 million in compensation.

Actually, astounding might not be the right word here. In the health-care industry, colossally large paychecks for top executives have become standard operating procedure. In fact, four health-industry CEOs have made more than Mussallem since 2010.

One made much more. John Martin, the former top executive of the pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, has collected $863 million over the past seven years.

Overall, the CEOs at 70 major American health-care companies have grabbed a combined $9.8 billion since 2010. That comes to an average annual take-home of $20 million per executive.

All these numbers come from researchers at Axios, an online news media outlet. Two top corporate watchdogs — University of Massachusetts-Lowell economist William Lazonick and Matthew Hopkins of the Academic-Industry Research Network — have confirmed the Axios pay figures.

The health-care industry is doing its best to ignore and dismiss these findings. The national outlay for health care last year hit $3.35 trillion. Next to those trillions, the industry reasons, the mere billions that go to health-care executives amount to no more than a tiny drip from an IV.

But this glib defense of executive excess in health care totally ignores the real danger in the big bucks cascading into corporate CEO pockets. Outrageous pay gives CEOs an incentive to behave outrageously — at the expense of our health.

How so?

The vast bulk of corporate executive pay today comes in the form of stock awards. The higher a company’s share price, the heftier the CEO’s compensation. This stock connection encourages CEOs to single-mindedly focus on raising their company share prices by any means necessary.

Among those means: Pharmaceutical CEOs will jack up prices on prescription drugs and do whatever they can to get doctors to prescribe more pills. Health providers will push unnecessary tests and procedures. Hospital chiefs will downsize support staffs for patients.

All these decisions fatten corporate bottom lines, pump up corporate share prices, and leave our health care poorer.

How could health care get better? Blue-ribbon commissions have all sorts of suggestions. They urge us to eliminate unnecessary procedures, tests, and devices. We need to better coordinate care and lower prices.

Corporate CEOs in the health industry have no incentive to take any of these steps. They want to keep the health-care industry a “free market” wild west where the biggest corporate players get to keep whatever they can grab.

We need to break that power.

And that brings us to the good news: Prospects for real change in health care are rapidly moving onto America’s political center stage. We now have 17 U.S. senators on the record supporting an overhaul of the U.S. health-care system — introduced by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — that places people first, not CEO paychecks.

This “single payer” Medicare for all overhaul would both guarantee every American access to health care and give the American public bargaining power against the corporate health-care industry.

Just a few short years ago, this industry had both our major political parties too cowed to even discuss a move to Medicare for all.

That discussion has now begun.

Sam Pizzigati, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, co-edits Inequality.org, where an earlier version of this op-ed appeared.

Blended gasoline and milk

"Barn with Cow'' (ink and watercolor), by Tom Pirozzoli, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

Will Amazon spawn old-fashioned Main Street retailing?

"View of Manchester, Vermont, '' by DeWitt Clinton Boutelle (1870)

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

What will become of cities as more and more work is done on the Internet and more and more stuffis delivered by mail (and drones?). At first glance you might think that these changes will hollow out the cities.

But people seek respite from screens and, for that matter, much paid work will continue to be done off screen.  Consider that big growth areas for future jobs include such trades as electricians, plumbers, roofers, linemen, etc.

Seeing people in the flesh, not just virtually, will become more attractive as we become sated with screen life. Indeed, it’s essential for good health. And important decisions will continue to be best completed, and new ideas most cogently expressed, in real encounters. That’s one reason  that Manhattan still thrives, in spite of its high costs.  You can’t do a merger deal online. You have to meet in person.

Young adults, especially those with children, will continue to move to, or stay in, the suburbs, but future suburbs will look different from ‘50s- and ‘60s-style subdivisions.  For one thing,  they will have dense, very walkable centers for shopping, distribution and entertainment, and, especially, meeting people, with many smaller specialty stores in place of the vast malls and even vaster windswept parking lots around them. There will be fewer ugly big-box stores because so much of their brand-name stuff will be shipped directly to customers via Amazon, etc.

Highly specialized stores, many with unique items – some of them locally made ---can do well in these suburbs-becoming-mini-cities within broader metro areas. They’ll be staffed by salespeoplevery knowledgeable about their products and services and with long-term relationships with customers.  

The Boston Globe reports: “Credit Suisse has predicted that upwards of a quarter of the 1,200 malls in America will close in the next five years.’’

“Today, if you know what you need, you go to Amazon and buy it,’’ Pam Danziger, president of the Pennsylvania-based Unity Marketing, told The Globe. “Where you’re going to find interest is on Main Street and not in these homogeneous same-old, same-old outlet stores. Main Street — where people really know you — that’s where the future of retail is.’’

Read the highly instructive case of  toney Manchester, Vt., suffering from the decline in shopping at its many national chain outlets and so now looking to go more local. Please hit this link:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/09/15/there-app-for-this-retail-town-suffers-age-commerce/uArZDDp6UX5lzQlB0nsciP/story.html

Meanwhile, the car culture, even in the suburbs, will probably continue to fade with further proliferation of such ride-sharing services as Lyft and Uber and the expansion and diversification of mass transit associated with our aging population and environmental concerns.

Some suburbs are starting to look like center cities. Consider Tysons Corner, in suburban Fairfax County, Va., outside of Washington.  Tysons looms like a mini-Manhattan, with office and residential towers. And then there are the small old cities within broader metro areas, of which there are many in New England – think Concord, N.H. and Portland, Maine. I think that they’ll grow as people seek the conveniences of more than traditional suburban density but without the costs of living in such big cities as Boston and New York, whose centers are increasingly for the rich.

Relatively new  suburban places such as Tysons are called“edge cities’’ . But we’ve got what are small  old “edge cities’’ around here, such as Pawtucket, R.I., which might have the urban bones to become more lively and prosperous.

Then there are the mid-size cities, such as Providence, Worcester and New Haven. They’ll draw people with their commercial and cultural attractions but won’t have the critical mass to become big cities. Rather, they’ll be ancillaries that will perform some of the services provided in nearby big cities -- e.g., Boston and New York. They’ll continue to lure folks who want to live in real cities but want/need somewhat less density and considerably lower costs than in Boston and New York.

Even Hartford, now an urban disaster area, ought to be able to eventually turn itself around and market its assets (especially its riverfront) as well as, say, Providence has done with its advantages.

Then there will be new mini-metro areas far away from big cities. One is the Lebanon, N.H.-Hanover, N.H.-White River Junction in the Upper Connecticut River Valley. There, the intersection of two major Interstate highways – Routes 89 and 91 -- along with the presence of a well-known university (Dartmouth College) and associated large medical center has for several decades been creating a kind of city – still sprawling but gradually being pulled together by, among other things, public transportation (encouraged by the proliferation of facilities, many of them high-end, for the elderly in areas with major colleges and medical centers).

New England, with its many still well functioning towns and small cities with an almost European settlement pattern, would seem well placed to benefit from the technological and behavioral changes roiling the country,  the sprawling , utterly car-dependent  metro areas of much of the Sunbelt and Middle West less so.  People will continue to seek community. At leastin New England that will be easier to find and/or rebuild than in most of the country.

'Old earth smiles'

-- Photo by Diego Delso

"Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth, 

This autumn morning! How he sets his bones 

To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 

For the ripple to run over in its mirth; 

Listening the while, where on the heap of stones 

The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. 

That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; 

Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows. 

If you loved only what were worth your love, 

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: 

Make the low nature better by your throes! 

Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!''

-- "Among the Rocks,'' by Robert Browning