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RECOMMENDED READING

A mixed bag tonight as my progeny have worn me out and I cannot yet concentrate on my own writing, so I’m going where the mood strikes me:

Wiggins, the Wohlstetterian defense analyst at Opposed System Design comments on the observations on strategy and theory made by Sonny, the USAF blogger at F-X Based.

Collounsbury and the merry band of Orientalists at ‘Aqoul have dealt extensively with the Wafa Sultan -Ibrahim al-Khouli exhange (Eerie) and have provided the full, translated, al-Jazeera transcript (Meph) and followed up by highlighting a related MEMRI disussion over at Winds of Change ( Col ).

The Drs. Eide at The Eide Neurolearning Blog discuss the recent research demonstrating different brain maturation rates between high and average IQ children ( fodder for Dan’s grad psych paper, I think).

Bruce Kesler at Democracy Project has his own round-up of interesting things so instead of just stealing them shamelessly for a mere hat-tip, I’ll just link to his post and say ” check it out” – particularly the csmonitor article and the bit on Sandy Berger copping to covering his ass by destroying classified historical records.

Dr. Lubos Motl on the Clinton administration’s role in killing the Superconducting Supercollider, which dealt a critical blow to American leadership in experimental physics.

Dave Dilegge, Editor-in-Chief of The Small Wars Journal, points to his top ten online military information resources, all of which and more can be found here.

Ann Althouse on blogging, political parties and the self-defeating, wingnut, behavior at Kos.

Simon at Simon World posts on the self-promotion of China’s public security ministry ( can you imagine what the Soviet MVD would have been like with a blog ?) and some American senators talking out of both sides of their mouth in China.

Jodi at The Asia Pages takes a hard look at the effects of Korea’s education system which, like most Asian educational systems, stresses rigor at the expense of creativity and breadth.

That’s it.

FOREIGN POLICY AND THE AMERICAN ELITE: PART III

Link Preface:

“American foreign policy in an age of proximity” by Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye

“Foreign Policy And The American Elite: Part I” by Zenpundit

“Foreign Policy And The American Elite: Part II” by Zenpundit

Parts I. and II. of this essay discussed the disconnect that exiss between the bipartisan elite and the American people and the history of the old ruling Eastern Establishment. Part III. is about their successors, a bipartisan, bicoastal and increasingly transnationalist elite.

As in any evolutionary political situation, the new elite is partly an amalgamation with the old, thus we see scions of Eastern Establishment families like George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller and so on firmly ensconced in the new American elite. It is tempting to assume that little therefore has changed but what these individuals have benefitted from is simply enjoying comparative advantage vs. other individual members of the new elite. They are still playing by a different set of rules and hold a different worldview from their fathers and grandfathers whose mores were formed at Groton and Andover and finished at Harvard or Yale.

Today’s elite differs from the old Eastern Establishment in two very important aspects:

1. Demographically.

2. Ideologically.

Of the two the former change has been, in my view, mostly positive. The second unfortunately, while not wholly negative, has already had serious consequences in foreign policy and will, if not remediated, cause domestic political upheavals as well as the rulers become progressively more isolated from the ruled.

As mentioned previously, unlike the elite of today, the leaders of the Eastern Establishment took the long view. As early as the 1920’s, it was becoming apparent to them that an increasingly diverse nation 120 million being ruled forever by a numerically tiny Episcopalian ecclesia of Ivy League bankers was not sustainable forever. So, a two-track policy was initiated. Immigration was sharply curtailled while assimilationist policies were pursued in the public schools to inculcate basically Anglo-Protestant ” American values” in immigrant children while social mobility for the most able American citizens would be increased.

Pursuant to this, the number of top tier university ” gateway” schools were increased, some of them, like Stanford and Chicago, had been built by the noveau riche of the previous generation. Harvard University president Charles Conant promoted the SAT test to turn the Ivy League from an aristocracy to a meritocracy. Gradually – very gradually it must be stressed – the Eastern Establishment opened the doors to middle-class Protestants, followed by Catholics, Jews and finally African-Americans and women. Policies such as the GI BIll and support for Civil Rights legislation had intrinsic merits but they were also a safety valve in the eyes of Establishment leaders. Access to the system’s commanding heights – or even the promise of a fair chance at access for one’s children – does a great deal to defuse social frustration.

The SAT and other measures to sift the best from increasingly larger pools of prospective students also had the effect of dramatically raising the mean ability level of the students in top tier and even second tier universities. Harvard students in 2006 would wipe the floor with those who went there in 1946 or even 1966 on any standardized test of IQ. You don’t get a remarkably better engineering or physics education today at MIT than you do at the University of Illinois but you are likely to have far smarter classmates, if not professors, if you go to MIT. As Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Chicago and similar schools produce a disproportionate number of future leaders in government, science, law, business and even the arts, the elite today should be qualitatively better than the Eastern Establishment.

But they aren’t. At least in terms of results it would be hard to argue that politicians who are wholly products of the new elite – basically the Boomers – have been more statesmanlike or wiser than their predecessors. The reason for this disparity between talent and results I think is reflected partly in the ideological differences between the bipartisan elite and the Eastern Establishment. Circumstances create opportunities and dangers but worldviews frame how those dangers or opportunities are perceived. Or if they are perceived at all.

There is not a simple partisan explanation for this either; though in a sense, the academic Left was, many decades ago, a prime mover in starting the change of worldviews among the elite, the outcome was probably very far from what they intended. An intent that was not geared to a specific policy result any more than Leo Strauss interpreting classic texts in the 1960’s was intended to influence neoconservatives to favor an invasion of Iraq in the 21st century. Unintended consequences ruled.

In Part IV. we will examine the ideology of the bipartisan elite and the growing disconnection with the American people, that if left uncorrected, threatens its political legitimacy.

BRIEF NOTE

Busy morning – and I am now headed out the door to get the Firstborn and the Son of Zenpundit their very first library cards. I’m also going to put in an interlibrary loan request for Martin van Creveld’s The Rise and Decline of the State and The Transformation of War so I can write that review of 4GW theory, not having any copies of either in my personal library on hand ( not even in the much feared, overstuffed, packing boxes in the garage).

Part III of Foreign Policy And The American Elite will be posted tonight and possibly a few other things as well.

THE COMING OF THE FREEBOOTERS: PRIVATE MILITARIES ON THE MARCH

Dr. Chet Richards of DNI and author of Neither shall The Sword did not have long to wait to see the start of his predicted trend toward greater availability of PMC combat services.
J. Cofer Black has announced that Blackwater is now able to provide “Brigade-sized force” on short notice for peacekeeping or counterinsugency operations.

Mr. Black’s extensive record at the CIA and State Department in fighting Islamist terrorism was featured in the bestselling book Ghost Wars by Steve Coll.

FOREIGN POLICY AND THE AMERICAN ELITE: PART II

Link Preface:

“American foreign policy in an age of proximity by Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye

“Foreign Policy And The American Elite: Part I” by Zenpundit

In Part I. and on previous occasions I have suggested that there is a disconnect between America’s bipartisan elite and other Americans and that this disconnect is currently being acutely felt on the issue of immigration reform where members of Congress of both parties hold views approximately inverse to those of their constitutents. Put to a referendum, it would be all but certain that the American people would vote for very tough penalties on illegal immigrants and those who employ them. In contrast, the average U.S. Senator is aghast at the thought of any bill that might have real teeth because that would stem the flow of cheap, illegal, labor somewhat and aggravate Mexican nationalist and LaRaza ethnic activis back home.

Now, as I have said, immigration is generally positive, particularly in the long run but the current immigration policy is not, neither economically or in terms of national security. Nor are the costs of immigration, legal and illegal, equitably shared. Tellingly though, the status quo, which is generally unfavorable to America, does benefit our bipartisan elite while imposing real costs on average Americans in the form of depressed wages, higher taxes, higher crime rates and strains on educational, health and welfare systems. When the elite consistently puts its own interests ahead of national interests in so obvious a way, their stewardship of the state loses legitimacy. Part of the reason for this disconnect is that our bipartisan elite has changed significantly in the last forty or so years.

For those old enough to remember, there was once something in this country called ” The Eastern Establishment”, the one hated by Richard Nixon and denounced by the anti-war demonstrators of the New Left. The term has mostly fallen out of use for a number of reasons but it really did exist at one time. It dominated Wall Street, our universities, the legal profession, the media and the most important departments of the Federal government including State, Treasury and Defense as well as the CIA. The Establishment ran the United States for almost a century until it foundered the ship of state on the rocks of Vietnam.

The Eastern Establishment came about as a fusion after the Civil War as the old money elite like the Roosevelts, Livingstons and Lodges sought to co-opt and “civilize” the children of the noveau-riche robber barons like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Stanfords and so on. Sociologically, the Establishment was wealthy, white, well-educated and irrevocably Protestant, preferably Episcopalian though the Presbyterians put in a good showing. Despite the moniker ” Eastern”, Southerners of a genteel ancestry and paternal influence were counted among their numbers as were, more rarely, a few Westerners with sizable interests in banking or railroads.

It was a decidedly exclusionary group. Aside from elitist and fairly deep-seated prejudices against Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, Italians and Women, Irish Catholics rated no higher as readers familiar with the saga of the Kennedy family are no doubt aware. Nor did fellow WASPs who came from humble origins and went to the wrong schools, like Richard Nixon or LBJ, fare much better in their eyes. Members of the Establishment were largely investment bankers and lawyers with Anglophile tastes and an Atlanticist worldview who carried both a sense of entitlement as well as that of noblesse oblige.

Despite a profoundly narrow outlook, the Establishment produced a truly remarkable number of first class statesmen – Charles Francis Adams, John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Stimson, George Marshall, George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, Averrell Harriman, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, John J. McCloy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. – outside of the conquering founders of great empires, there are few examples in history that are comparable to their collective achievment of steering an outlier republic through grave dangers to world hegemony.

The men of the Eastern Establishment were successful not merely because of their often considerable education and social cohesiveness but from their general acceptance of the long view in preference to the short and a serious attention to the underlying economic fundamentals governing world affairs. That they were ” Present at the Creation” was no idle boast – they had a hand in the creating and understood how the institutions that they proposed were going to work in the real world. They married American national interest to the global greater good in a way that most foreign leaders could find attractive or at least, tolerable.

The Establishment is dead and gone. It has been replaced by a new American elite whose values have shifted as a result of the Eastern Establishment’s grand failure in Vietnam but that will be discussed in Part III.