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[by J. Scott Shipman]

Catherine The Great, Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie

Robert K. Massie, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Peter the Great: His Life and World, provides another bigger-than-life portrait in his compelling biography of Catherine the Great (1729-1796). Massie traces the life of an unlikely German princess of humble beginnings to the throne of Russia. Indeed Sophia, as she was then known, was plucked from obscurity by Peter the Great’s youngest daughter, Russian Empress Elizabeth, to be the child bride of a German lad who was the son of Charles Frederick, the Duke of Holstein, who happened also to be married Peter’s eldest daughter and Elizabeth’s favorite. Peter had changed the traditional rule of male primogeniture, allowing the reigning sovereign to designate “his or her successor” and Elizabeth, who came to power in a coup, wanted someone from her father’s line to follow her reign. Hence, she imported these two youngster’s (who were cousins) for the purpose of a marriage, but more importantly to produce an heir, only to be disappointed for seven long years (until Catherine took a lover; her husband had no interest).

This comprehensive biography details the misery of Catherine’s life before she became the Empress of Russia, and it seems she tried to make up for her failed marriage and lost time with “boy toys.” There were serious relationships, to be sure, but even into her old age, Catherine kept a younger man close by. If there is a weakness in this great book, it is Massie’s cataloguing of Catherine’s lovers (my guess, these intimate choices were so central to her personality these facts could not be ignored).

Massie does a very good job of describing Catherine’s substantial intellect, and her theoretical approval of liberal government. She went so far as to convene a group to define laws for Russia, but never relented in her prerogative as the one having the last word. True to form, Massie also provides rich details of the intrigue surrounding Catherine’s court, and who the movers and shakers were behind the throne, as it were.

Catherine read and spoke French and had a healthy correspondence with Voltaire. She also purchased Diderot’s library, and through Diderot many “artists, scientists, architects, and engineers swarmed to solicit appointments to St. Petersburg.” Massie section discussing the French Revolution and the fear it caused many in Europe and Russia is perhaps my favorite, as he provides rich detail of not only the Russian court, but other centers of power in Europe. (his remarks on the guillotine were positively chilling)

In the acknowledgements, Massie mentions his “extraordinary pleasure…in the company of the remarkable woman.” I suspect readers of this superb biography will agree. I finished this book in December 2011 and it is among one of the best books of the year for me and comes with my highest recommendation.

Note:

Massie has made the Russian Romanov family the subject of two other recommended books: Nicholas and Alexandra and The Romanov’s The Final Chapter.

A follow up to Part I.

How does a society, as opposed to individuals, develop a capacity for “strategic thinking” ?

While war is an obvious answer, it is not an advisable first resort. First of all, although war teaches hard lessons about strategy, the costs of losing a war are high. Secondly, the costs of winning a war can be high. Thirdly, few people, relatively speaking to the number involved, have any direct input into genuinely strategic decisions during wartime; most will either gain tactical experience or be relegated to support functions. At best, wars seem to create a cohort of excellent tactical leaders with the potential to, someday, mature into strategic leaders or strategists. At worst, from a war, the wrong lessons may be drawn and institutionalized to create a future disaster.

What conditions produce strategic thinkers for a state? A brief example from American history:

Here are some of the US leadership of WWII, the postwar “Wise Men” and their Cold War successors, collaborators, thinkers and military chiefs:

Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, Joseph Grew, Dean Acheson, Douglas MacArthur, Charles E. Bohlen, George F. Kennan, Paul Nitze, George C. Marshall , Harry S. Truman, Robert A. Lovett, Dwight D. Eisenhower  , John J. McCloy , W. Averell Harriman, William Donovan, James F. Byrnes, Chester Nimitz,  John Foster Dulles,  James Forrestal, Vannevar Bush,  Allen Dulles, Ernest King, Albert Wohlstetter, Dean Rusk, Hyman Rickover, Herman Kahn, Robert McNamara,  Bernard Brodie, Fritz G. A. Kraemer, McGeorge Bundy, Richard Nixon, Thomas Schelling, Henry Kissinger

Some commonalities that these individuals shared, sometimes in pluralities and others in large majorities:

Above average to very high IQ
Middle class to high socioeconomic status
Eastern Establishment
Fraternal organizations
Male
Protestant
Episcopalian
Ivy League education
Law 
Politics
Military service
Diplomacy
Wall St.
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Columbia
Harvard Law
Military Academy
University of Chicago
Berkeley
Skull & Bones
Scroll & Key
WWI
WWII
RAND
Executive Branch
Nuclear weapons/arms control/power

This list could be expanded or reduced on a number of grounds. For example, the list is composed of men primarily because almost no women, with very few exceptions, even from elite backgrounds, had an opportunity during the first 2/3 of the 20th century to contribute to strategic decisions or policy making. We could also include other characteristics, but what we have is sufficient for some broad generalizations.

• First, these men generally engaged in careers that featured complex activities that stressed and rewarded incisive analysis of factual scenarios, assessment of risk and potential benefits, intuitive judgment and organizational abilities – law, politics, the stock market, diplomacy and corporate leadership. A minority of the list had formal training in advanced mathematics.
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• Secondly, the men all had the social wherewithal and ambition to gain entry into educational and social institutions that were by definition, highly exclusive on more than a strictly meritocratic basis. For many from higher SES families, this presented no significant barrier but for the “outsiders” like Kennan, Nixon or Rickover, it was a formidable obstacle to overcome. In either case, there were social mores or even commonly held prejudices to which they had to adapt in order to “fit in”. Despite this demonstration of social intelligence, most members of our list were not  professional politicians (but those that were made an impact on American history much greater than that of an “average” president).
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• Thirdly, the presence of such overlapping experiential commonalities, while not creating a formal “strategic community” was probably sufficient to impart a strategic mentalité as to how the world really worked, red in tooth in claw, as well as implicit ideological assumptions as how the world ought to work, if perfected. This meant that strategic debates about American national security could take place within the framework of commonly held assumptions and reference points. While certain individuals might be disliked (MacArthur, Truman, Nixon) or regarded warily, with little trust (Nixon, FDR, Kahn) their strategic arguments were nevertheless widely understood within the elite and could be assessed on their merits – an excellent environment for building an elite consensus and continuity on matters of policy and strategy. This condition may be a political prerequisite for a democratic state’s formulation and adoption of a successful grand strategy.

If we wonder why the United States has been so ineffective at strategy in recent years, maybe we should look at how our current (and most importantly, future) elite’s formative experiences have sharply diverged from their strategically gifted WWII-Cold War predecessors.