Commentary Magazine's Contentions Blog chose one of my comments as their Post of the Day.
"A large part of MoveOn’s success was rooted in the fact that it was well launched and organized long before the start and most especially the bogging down of the Iraq war provided it with its most effective issue. The Tea Party movement is most interesting because it seems well launched and ready to grow long before the ‘chickens’ inherent in Obama’s statist policies can reasonably be expected to ‘come home to roost.’
There is simply no way to pay for Obama’s initiatives with taxes only on those earning over $250,000 or even $150,000 and there is no way the economy can resume rapid long term growth anytime soon given the much larger share of output that Obama’s plans will consume. The anger at passing on the tax and slower growth burden on to the children and grandchildren will pale next to the anger that will arise once people see taxes and slower growth impact on their own household finances."
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/gjermani/64111
Showing posts with label Contentions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contentions. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Our Brave New World and a change in my understanding of mark to market accounting
When I went to the AOL site this morning to get my email I found a new feature that's like the home price estimator at zillow.com. Having nothing better to do, because corporate recruiters are still among the unneeded and undervalued if not toxic assets of this economy, I clicked on it.
No surprise in the valuation. Our home is now estimated at $330,000, down about 30% from the $470,000 that zillow was estimating it at the very peak of the real estate boom valuations in July of 2007. What was really interesting is that AOL Real Estate has a much better satellite or aerial photo of our home and lot than the one I last saw on zillow a few months ago, and I can almost precisely date that photo.
That photo, a very clear one, shows the redbuds and the crabapples in bloom and my garden as a rectangle. It also shows the big hybrid poplar nearest the house, a tree we had removed in 2006, still in place. Finally, it shows the white plastic recliner out on the lawn in the sun. So it has to have been taken in the late Spring, about mid May, of 2005, almost surely on a Saturday or Sunday since I was working pretty intensively on the weekdays during that period. We all still thought real estate values would rise forever and the biggest business problem at my contract employer was the difficulty of continuing to hire enough new people to expand fast enough to ensure that the other commercial mortgage companies would never catch up in our specialized market niche.
First off, what a brave new technological world we live in. A couple of clicks and I'm looking at an image of our house and lot from above, an image clear enough so I would probably be able make a good guess at the tee shirt I was wearing if I had been in the recliner when it was taken. I think that image is from a stitched together pastiche of aerial photos rather than from a satellite photo. The implication is that the entire country, if not the world, is now imaged at a resolution of about a foot and searchable. Somewhere, some biology graduate student who knows that polar bears do not shit in the woods is counting the brown blobs on the snow and writing a paper on how many craps a polar bear took last week and how far apart they are. Somewhere else, someone with different interests is occasionally stumbling across a picture of a California or Florida swimming pool owner who thought he or she could take a dip in the nude in total privacy.
But enough of that line of thought. I have serious quibbles with the rather simplistic calculation assumptions that zillow and now AOL make about home values. Our home, for instance, appears to be valued almost soley on the basis of its square footage and bedroom and bathroom count. The system they both use assigns little or no value to the land that our home sits on, a much larger and infinitely more private lot than those of the houses presented as comparables. This is only natural because it's no doubt impossible, at least now, to put a value on purely esthetic factors, But the AOL valuation also misses the potential for subdivision of our five acre home lot.
Which brings me to my other point. The other day I asserted that the value of something is simply what someone is willing to pay for the thing. On Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog yesterday I came across a comment that made me recognize a slight wrinkle that I hadn't considered which is perfectly demonstrated by my reaction to AOL's valuation of our house. We, the owners, have a better understanding of both intangible and tangible factors that go into the value of our house. We know that the privacy has great value to us, if not to others in the general marketplace; and we also know that the lot is subdividable.
So there is no way we would trade our house and its lot for one of the comparable houses worth $370,000. As the commenter on Contentions correctly pointed out, accounting for value has to take into consideration the price at which the owner of an asset would be willing to sell it as well as the price at which some other party would be willing to buy it. And for thinly traded assets that bid versus asked spread can be pretty wide. For our home, for instance, the bid versus asked spread is more than the current bid price, at least as simplistically arrived at by zillow and AOL. We might sell if someone showed up tomorrow with a check for double the valuation on AOL; but I'm not sure. Even putting aside the pretty tangible value of subdivision we might not sell. Linda and I both like the pond and the privacy a lot.
So we're back to this question of mark to market accounting. The banks unwilling to sell those so called toxic assets at current bid prices presumably understand those assets somewhat better than the potential buyers do. Hence, the toxic assets are worth more than the bid price as I asserted the other day; but how much more? The mere fact that my best answer to that question is "Who knows?" says that this question of mark to market accounting is more complex than I asserted the other day.
Do bankers know the value of the assets in their vaults? Do bears shit in the woods? Do Californians and Floridians swim in the nude?
Not always.
And - in somewhat related news, here's a 3 minute speech by a member of the European Union parliament that's fantastic. We should offer this guy citizenship and elect him to our congress. It would be refreshing to have one politician down in Washington who makes sense.
"You cannot borrow yourself out of debt."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
No surprise in the valuation. Our home is now estimated at $330,000, down about 30% from the $470,000 that zillow was estimating it at the very peak of the real estate boom valuations in July of 2007. What was really interesting is that AOL Real Estate has a much better satellite or aerial photo of our home and lot than the one I last saw on zillow a few months ago, and I can almost precisely date that photo.
That photo, a very clear one, shows the redbuds and the crabapples in bloom and my garden as a rectangle. It also shows the big hybrid poplar nearest the house, a tree we had removed in 2006, still in place. Finally, it shows the white plastic recliner out on the lawn in the sun. So it has to have been taken in the late Spring, about mid May, of 2005, almost surely on a Saturday or Sunday since I was working pretty intensively on the weekdays during that period. We all still thought real estate values would rise forever and the biggest business problem at my contract employer was the difficulty of continuing to hire enough new people to expand fast enough to ensure that the other commercial mortgage companies would never catch up in our specialized market niche.
First off, what a brave new technological world we live in. A couple of clicks and I'm looking at an image of our house and lot from above, an image clear enough so I would probably be able make a good guess at the tee shirt I was wearing if I had been in the recliner when it was taken. I think that image is from a stitched together pastiche of aerial photos rather than from a satellite photo. The implication is that the entire country, if not the world, is now imaged at a resolution of about a foot and searchable. Somewhere, some biology graduate student who knows that polar bears do not shit in the woods is counting the brown blobs on the snow and writing a paper on how many craps a polar bear took last week and how far apart they are. Somewhere else, someone with different interests is occasionally stumbling across a picture of a California or Florida swimming pool owner who thought he or she could take a dip in the nude in total privacy.
But enough of that line of thought. I have serious quibbles with the rather simplistic calculation assumptions that zillow and now AOL make about home values. Our home, for instance, appears to be valued almost soley on the basis of its square footage and bedroom and bathroom count. The system they both use assigns little or no value to the land that our home sits on, a much larger and infinitely more private lot than those of the houses presented as comparables. This is only natural because it's no doubt impossible, at least now, to put a value on purely esthetic factors, But the AOL valuation also misses the potential for subdivision of our five acre home lot.
Which brings me to my other point. The other day I asserted that the value of something is simply what someone is willing to pay for the thing. On Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog yesterday I came across a comment that made me recognize a slight wrinkle that I hadn't considered which is perfectly demonstrated by my reaction to AOL's valuation of our house. We, the owners, have a better understanding of both intangible and tangible factors that go into the value of our house. We know that the privacy has great value to us, if not to others in the general marketplace; and we also know that the lot is subdividable.
So there is no way we would trade our house and its lot for one of the comparable houses worth $370,000. As the commenter on Contentions correctly pointed out, accounting for value has to take into consideration the price at which the owner of an asset would be willing to sell it as well as the price at which some other party would be willing to buy it. And for thinly traded assets that bid versus asked spread can be pretty wide. For our home, for instance, the bid versus asked spread is more than the current bid price, at least as simplistically arrived at by zillow and AOL. We might sell if someone showed up tomorrow with a check for double the valuation on AOL; but I'm not sure. Even putting aside the pretty tangible value of subdivision we might not sell. Linda and I both like the pond and the privacy a lot.
So we're back to this question of mark to market accounting. The banks unwilling to sell those so called toxic assets at current bid prices presumably understand those assets somewhat better than the potential buyers do. Hence, the toxic assets are worth more than the bid price as I asserted the other day; but how much more? The mere fact that my best answer to that question is "Who knows?" says that this question of mark to market accounting is more complex than I asserted the other day.
Do bankers know the value of the assets in their vaults? Do bears shit in the woods? Do Californians and Floridians swim in the nude?
Not always.
And - in somewhat related news, here's a 3 minute speech by a member of the European Union parliament that's fantastic. We should offer this guy citizenship and elect him to our congress. It would be refreshing to have one politician down in Washington who makes sense.
"You cannot borrow yourself out of debt."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
Thursday, October 23, 2008
And now for a little political incorrectness
Commenter Diane at Commentary Magazine's blog just did the best job I've seen of capturing the reason behind a phenomenon that outrages me - namely the blithe way the news media has attacked Sarah Palin in a way it would never attack a member of any other racial or ethnic group.
Here's a thought to enrage you Barack Obama fans. Sarah Palin is more qualified than Barrack Obama to be President of the United States, at least by demonstrated experience. Barry is better educated, and he's probably smarter; but Sarah has at least done something that looks like governing for a few years. Going by actual experience governing, Barry is a smooth mouth, a talking head. He's all hat and no cattle. He's an empty suit. Even he puts forward nothing but his running of his own campaign as his main executive qualification to run the country. And if you believe he runs his own campaign in detail, or even on an executive level, you must also believe that Kermit the Frog has a third arm and hand tucked up his own back passage to make him move.
But enough of me - here is Diane, the commenter who so aptly captured the reason so many so called elite folks feel free to trash Sarah Palin while they act like Barack Obama is the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt - who was a not too bright governor like Palin when he was elected president, by the way.
Diane Says: October 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 PM
I’d like to get something off my chest re: the hypocrisy of the Left’s attacks of Sarah Palin. I contend that it is a stunning piece of overt reverse racism.
We’re told she isn’t smart enough. Doesn’t have the right college degree. Imagine for a moment if Sarah Palin were a Native American. Everything else about her is the same — hunting, snowmobiling, religious, self-made freshman governor. Would we be hearing the liberal establishment deriding her non-Ivy education, her funny accent, her folksy word-choices? Her family’s size or her children’s morals? Her parenting skills? No, we wouldn’t. Because as a Native American, she would be the long-suffering victim of oppression. Her having risen above it would be a tale of triumph. Her hunting and religious views (let’s say she was an animist who prayed to ancient spirits in a sweat lodge) would be accorded the dignity of a fine and noble cultural heritage.
Cast her in any other ehtnic minority — Hispanic, black –– and the test yields the same results.
We don’t scoff at Thurgood Marshall attending Howard University law school. It was a miracle, we are told, given the advanced state of white oppression, that he attended law school at all. Look at Bolivian president Evo Morales, the high-school drop out, former bricklayer, baker and llama sherpherd whose peculiar Catholic faith included making alcohol and coca offerings to the earth goddess, Pachamama. But because he is a full-blooded indigenous Amerind, none of this disqualifies him in any way from political leadership.
This amounts to a form of political affirmative action. White politicians who aren’t elites are subject to vicious stereotyping and condescension. Non-whites who aren’t elite get a pass, indeed a pat on the back for not kowtowing to “the man.” And minorities who are elites — like Obama — get the double-advantage of full acceptance by elites and massive affirmative-action bonus points for their so-called disadvantaged origins.
Me again - Diane's comment was in response to a post by Abe Greenwald about Christopher Hitchen's blind spot re religion. An interesting post and comment thread if you're into such things.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/39671
Here's a thought to enrage you Barack Obama fans. Sarah Palin is more qualified than Barrack Obama to be President of the United States, at least by demonstrated experience. Barry is better educated, and he's probably smarter; but Sarah has at least done something that looks like governing for a few years. Going by actual experience governing, Barry is a smooth mouth, a talking head. He's all hat and no cattle. He's an empty suit. Even he puts forward nothing but his running of his own campaign as his main executive qualification to run the country. And if you believe he runs his own campaign in detail, or even on an executive level, you must also believe that Kermit the Frog has a third arm and hand tucked up his own back passage to make him move.
But enough of me - here is Diane, the commenter who so aptly captured the reason so many so called elite folks feel free to trash Sarah Palin while they act like Barack Obama is the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt - who was a not too bright governor like Palin when he was elected president, by the way.
Diane Says: October 22nd, 2008 at 3:36 PM
I’d like to get something off my chest re: the hypocrisy of the Left’s attacks of Sarah Palin. I contend that it is a stunning piece of overt reverse racism.
We’re told she isn’t smart enough. Doesn’t have the right college degree. Imagine for a moment if Sarah Palin were a Native American. Everything else about her is the same — hunting, snowmobiling, religious, self-made freshman governor. Would we be hearing the liberal establishment deriding her non-Ivy education, her funny accent, her folksy word-choices? Her family’s size or her children’s morals? Her parenting skills? No, we wouldn’t. Because as a Native American, she would be the long-suffering victim of oppression. Her having risen above it would be a tale of triumph. Her hunting and religious views (let’s say she was an animist who prayed to ancient spirits in a sweat lodge) would be accorded the dignity of a fine and noble cultural heritage.
Cast her in any other ehtnic minority — Hispanic, black –– and the test yields the same results.
We don’t scoff at Thurgood Marshall attending Howard University law school. It was a miracle, we are told, given the advanced state of white oppression, that he attended law school at all. Look at Bolivian president Evo Morales, the high-school drop out, former bricklayer, baker and llama sherpherd whose peculiar Catholic faith included making alcohol and coca offerings to the earth goddess, Pachamama. But because he is a full-blooded indigenous Amerind, none of this disqualifies him in any way from political leadership.
This amounts to a form of political affirmative action. White politicians who aren’t elites are subject to vicious stereotyping and condescension. Non-whites who aren’t elite get a pass, indeed a pat on the back for not kowtowing to “the man.” And minorities who are elites — like Obama — get the double-advantage of full acceptance by elites and massive affirmative-action bonus points for their so-called disadvantaged origins.
Me again - Diane's comment was in response to a post by Abe Greenwald about Christopher Hitchen's blind spot re religion. An interesting post and comment thread if you're into such things.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/greenwald/39671
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Obama will say Ouch! when he reads this
Over at Commentary Magazine's Contentions blog a poster took on the issue of why Barack Obama continues to trade punches with Sarah Palin even though his real opponent is John McCain.
I'm betting the writer is a graduate of a top notch college which has a Womyn's Studies Department. Alternatively, this is such a pitch perfect example of it's genre that the writer may even be Camille Paglia posting under a pseudonym.
"Joe NS Says: September 6th, 2008 at 2:50 PM
The Democratic campaign is not in a meltdown. The proper image, I believe, is that of a long metal chain the links of which are one by one sliding off the edge of a bench. One can see what is happening, very slowly at first and then accelerating, with horror or glee depending on party affiliation; but it’s very definitely underway.
It is nearly impossible to credit it, but the Palin pick has caught the Democrats so flat-footed that they have clearly decided the only counterpunch they have is to argue that Sarah Palin cannot be a mother and a vice-president at the same time. That is a flat-out incredible position for a Democrat to take. It is unvarnished surrealism. And I fear it might even work. The truth, however, is that they really have no other option at this point. Largely because of the psychology of BO himself, I believe.
In any sensible assessment of his current predicament, Obama MUST IGNORE Sarah Palin. To have the Democratic presidential nominee fencing on almost a daily basis with the Republicans nominee for vice-president is only a little short of insane. Palin was wrong on one matter: the longer the jousting between them continues, the more voters will notice that the proper level of comparison of Obama and Palin is not between Obama as community organizer and Palin as mayor, but between Obama as community organizer and Palin as a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, PTA. Obama should put Sarah Palin out of his head. So why can’t he?
It’s simple: She’s sexier than he is.
One of the things that has always seemed to me creepiest about the 2008 presidential campaign has been its erotic - I would even say homoerotic - atmospherics. Sheer celebrity, of course, tends to push things that way, to be sure; but with Obama something else has been going on, something that is often referred to as “narcissism” or “self-absorption” or, more honestly, as “seductiveness.” Though others may take offense, I think it was always more the self-fascination one sees in a young girl posing in front of a mirror. Edwards displayed the syndrome as well, but once he left the race, Obama had the enchantress slot all to himself. McCain? Hillary?? I don’t think so.
Now here is Sarah Palin, who directly threatens the male narcissist’s amour propre because she seems to be reorienting the eroticism in the campaign toward its “traditional” locus in ordinay life: toward the female. Sarah Palin is amazingly erotic. But even more amazing: It’s perhaps the least important thing about her? Like a belle who meets an unforeseen competitor for the title of most alluring, Obama has reacted badly and, let’s be honest, a little bit cattily.
In sum, hell hath no fury . . . ."
I'm betting the writer is a graduate of a top notch college which has a Womyn's Studies Department. Alternatively, this is such a pitch perfect example of it's genre that the writer may even be Camille Paglia posting under a pseudonym.
"Joe NS Says: September 6th, 2008 at 2:50 PM
The Democratic campaign is not in a meltdown. The proper image, I believe, is that of a long metal chain the links of which are one by one sliding off the edge of a bench. One can see what is happening, very slowly at first and then accelerating, with horror or glee depending on party affiliation; but it’s very definitely underway.
It is nearly impossible to credit it, but the Palin pick has caught the Democrats so flat-footed that they have clearly decided the only counterpunch they have is to argue that Sarah Palin cannot be a mother and a vice-president at the same time. That is a flat-out incredible position for a Democrat to take. It is unvarnished surrealism. And I fear it might even work. The truth, however, is that they really have no other option at this point. Largely because of the psychology of BO himself, I believe.
In any sensible assessment of his current predicament, Obama MUST IGNORE Sarah Palin. To have the Democratic presidential nominee fencing on almost a daily basis with the Republicans nominee for vice-president is only a little short of insane. Palin was wrong on one matter: the longer the jousting between them continues, the more voters will notice that the proper level of comparison of Obama and Palin is not between Obama as community organizer and Palin as mayor, but between Obama as community organizer and Palin as a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, PTA. Obama should put Sarah Palin out of his head. So why can’t he?
It’s simple: She’s sexier than he is.
One of the things that has always seemed to me creepiest about the 2008 presidential campaign has been its erotic - I would even say homoerotic - atmospherics. Sheer celebrity, of course, tends to push things that way, to be sure; but with Obama something else has been going on, something that is often referred to as “narcissism” or “self-absorption” or, more honestly, as “seductiveness.” Though others may take offense, I think it was always more the self-fascination one sees in a young girl posing in front of a mirror. Edwards displayed the syndrome as well, but once he left the race, Obama had the enchantress slot all to himself. McCain? Hillary?? I don’t think so.
Now here is Sarah Palin, who directly threatens the male narcissist’s amour propre because she seems to be reorienting the eroticism in the campaign toward its “traditional” locus in ordinay life: toward the female. Sarah Palin is amazingly erotic. But even more amazing: It’s perhaps the least important thing about her? Like a belle who meets an unforeseen competitor for the title of most alluring, Obama has reacted badly and, let’s be honest, a little bit cattily.
In sum, hell hath no fury . . . ."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Once more into the breech
There is probably no more literate and thoughtful geopolitics site on the web than Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" blog but that doesn't mean that folks there don't sometimes see other world issues through lenses colored by their positions on other issues so I found myself in a back and forth with a couple of very well informed fellows. I've removed comments by other parties that didn't bear on the thread.
Russia, Georgia, and IranNoah Pollak - 08.12.2008 - 11:42 AM
The response of the West to Russia’s invasion has been to dress up in tough rhetoric a helpless message: What can we do? And there isn’t much the free world can do. The most aggressive proposals consist only of arming the Georgian army and throwing military and diplomatic support behind other nations which live in Russia’s crosshairs. One important reality narrows options and prevents serious consideration of a First Gulf War-style response: the fact that Russia is a nuclear power.
This is a lesson surely not lost on the Iranian regime, which like Russia has territorial designs on its neighbors, wishes to play an outsized role in its region, and views an American-allied democracy on its borders (Iraq) with about as much benevolence as Putin views such nations on his borders. Those who confidently predict a “containable and deterrable” nuclear Iran should consider the suddenly not-so-deterrable nuclear Russia and ask themselves whether such confidence is warranted.
10 Responses to “Russia, Georgia, and Iran”
2J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Perfect, Noah. The problem with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union was always that it was NOT containable. We never succeeded in containing it, unless you credit the 53+-year armistice in Korea to the “contained” column.
Those who think it would be better to “contain” Iran than disarm Iran misread the history of containment (or don’t even know it).
The “contained” don’t have to directly confront the US, NATO, or anyone else with strategic nukes, to steadily push back our line of “containment.” Their method will be the one perfected by the Soviets: attack nations on the periphery — by subterfuge if possible, rather than outright military invasion — and calculate that, again and again, we will consider ourselves out of position, or not obligated, to respond.
Consider that during the years of the USSR’s existence, there was only one occasion when the US or any other Western power literally reversed, with force, a Soviet-client Marxist coup or incursion in a third party nation. Where did we do this? Grenada. From 1917 to 1989: Grenada.
Containment ain’t all that.
3Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Noah Pollak - I wholeheartedly agree that a nuclear Iran is a seriously bad prospect, but this is a seriously overstretched analogy.
J.E. Dyer - You missed Afghanistan as an example of where a Soviet incursion was reversed.
And both of you missed Vietnam, where a non-nuclear state took over a neighbor despite our massive effort over a very long period.
4Noah Pollak Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:31 PM
Sully, The point of the analogy was to show that when a state with large regional ambitions is also a nuclear power, the ability of its rivals to deter its aggression is significantly reduced. The Soviet incursion into Afghanistan was indeed reversed, but only after years of bloodshed; more importantly, the vital point here which bolsters my argument, and J.E.’s argument, is that the Soviets felt sufficiently undeterred that they launched the incursion in the first place. With nukes, the Iranians will no doubt feel the same way toward, say, Bahrain. Which is exactly my point. No?
5Forbes Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:37 PM
Shorter version: Under a policy of deterrence and containment, a nuclear power is neither sufficiently deterred, nor contained, to prevent acts of aggression.
6J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Sully — nope, didn’t miss either of them. We failed to contain the Soviet client in Vietnam. Period. We lost the whole country to the Soviet client (Hanoi) and the Soviet orbit. Within six months of the fall of Saigon, the Soviet Navy and Air Force were using the old bases in South Vietnam to patrol the South China Sea.
In Afghanistan we supported the rebel tribes, whose persistence and ungovernability eventually induced a Soviet Union that was pulling in its horns on all fronts to withdraw from there also. It’s arguable how to call this one, but I don’t include it with Grenada for several reasons, such as the ten years the Soviet Army occupied Afghanistan, and the sea change that had already been induced by Reagan’s policies in the Soviet posture: agreeing to the INF treaty; not responding when Poland effectively declared her political independence, and Czechoslovakia hers, or when Austria opened her border to the East Germans; remaining passive and impotent as Iraq and Iran duelled in the Persian Gulf, and the US performed the role of enforcer for the safety of international shipping there.
A strong case can be made that we got the Soviets out of Afghanistan — which, after all, IS in Russia’s back yard, and matters to her security as Mexico does to ours — not through a “containment” policy, but by the destruction of the Soviet Union itself, through the package of pressures applied by Reagan. That’s why I don’t include it as a victory for “containment.” The very definition of containment means that you don’t defeat or transform the opposing power itself, you merely pen it in behind a containing perimeter.
And the truth is, that never worked. Only forcing the Soviet Union to disintegrate stopped her career of expansion.
7Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Noah, Again, no argument that Iran will feel more free with nukes, but they already feel pretty darn free to mess around in Iraq without them and they feel pretty darn free to intimidate about the Straits of Hormuz without them. And I suspect that Russia, with its massive conventional forces, would feel pretty darn free to mess with Georgia without them as it did in breaking its assurances about eastern Europe after WW2 without them given the logistics and such of anybody else making an issue of it.
Everything isn’t comparable to Iran just as everything isn’t comparable to Munich.
8Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:01 PM
J.E. Dyer, Good points. And with this “And the truth is, that never worked. Only forcing the Soviet Union to disintegrate stopped her career of expansion” I totally agree.
The problem in Iran is the regime and it will remain a problem as long as it exists.
Re Vietnam - I was over there in a destroyer helping to guard the minesweeper which were pretending to sweep the probably self-deactivated mines in Haiphong harbor. And I was over there a couple of years before that in a different ship to observe the kind of shouldering and electronic harassment we delivered to the Soviet intelligence trawler that periodically visited Yankee Station. I actually had the conn of an aircraft carrier during one such exercise which caused them to leave the area in a hurry and stay away for a while. “What’s the bearing of the trawler? “207 degrees.” “Make your speed 30 knots and make your course 207 degrees.” And then a bit later when he was about 5,000 yards away - “Come right one degree.”
We lost South Vietnam because of self-deterrence rather than deterrence by the Soviets.
9Dellis Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:05 PM
Another analogy to this situation is our allied Gulf states within range of Iranian nuclear missiles. They have seen how little the U.S. will do to protect its ally Georgia in the face of an invasion by a nuclear armed adversery. Why would Saudi Arabia & friends not conclude that they need nuclear weapons too, since the U.S. nuclear shield is nowhere near 100% credible? Do we really want every nation in the world armed with nuclear weapons? How soon until one of these made its hands into terrorists, or until a minor row between states escalated to nuclear war? This is surely America’s national interest at stake, no matter how narrowly you define what America’s interests really are.
10Seth Halpern Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
I hope nobody here is implying that we could invade, regime-change and “reform” Russia even if we had nukes and they didn’t. Maybe the first two things, certainly not the third. If our objective is to unhitch the Slavs from their Slav mentality, way better to rely on natural demographics until Russia shrinks out of its self-imposed harness and explores alternative arrangements. But by then we may need them against the Chinese anyway.
11J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 2:18 PM
Sully — You say, “We lost South Vietnam because of self-deterrence rather than deterrence by the Soviets.”
Truer words were never spoken — but the pretext for our self-deterrence started with the USSR being a nuclear power, all the way back in 1954 when Ike decided not to assist the French at Dien Bien Phu. What people still don’t understand is that we NEVER intended to “win” in Vietnam: to defeat Hanoi and ensure that Vietnam was not subsumed in the Soviet orbit.
A whole cottage industry emerged in the early 1960s to define how to fight “limited wars” in the nuclear age. The basic premise was that no interest was worth a nuclear war to protect, and that we somehow had to figure out how to wage a satisfactory security policy without the “destabilizing” idea of actually changing whatever the current situation was.
So the Soviets could retain whatever they managed to present to us as an existing situation. This was a horrible, bloody travesty in Vietnam, where we lost 58,000 lives in our bid to avoid actually defeating Hanoi.
Your description of shouldering the intelligence collection trawlers (I remember those guys well from the 1980s) is quintessential Robert S. McNamara, Mr. Limited War/Limited Objectives himself. Achieving an actual military effect against North Vietnam would, in his view, have been provocative, destabilizing, and might bring us into direct conflict with the USSR or China. He actually thought it was a good idea, instead, to administer a series of tactical pinpricks to Hanoi and her sponsors, and call that a show of resolve.
This practice got us the Tonkin Gulf incident. It got us a lot of aviators shot down over North Vietnam. What it did NOT get us was any political impression on North Vietnam, other than that we weren’t serious, and would go away eventually if Hanoi could just hang on.
Hanoi was right, and McNamara was wrong. The Soviets were right: we would fold, in a struggle on the periphery, because they were nuclear. They never even had to issue a threat.
15Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 4:16 PM
J.E. Dyer,Again excellent points, but I’m not as sure as you that the nuclear issue was as defining as you state. Particularly I think it mixes up with the disadvantage a morally self limited democratic leader has when up against a bloody minded dictatorial one who cares not a whit (or appears not to) for the safety of his own population let alone that of his adversary.
For one example Eisenhower settled for a draw in Korea against a conventional armed China after Truman fired a bloody minded McArthur in part for suggesting stuff like a nuclear windbreak along the Yalu which would certainly have won the war albeit a bit messily. For another the same Kennedy who brought in McNamara and his system analyst idiots clumsily and riskily backed down the Soviets over the missiles in Cuba when the issue was closer to home.
The good guy necessarily cedes a huge advantage in caring about the population oppressed by the bad guy. Nuclear weapons magnify that advantage but they don’t create it.
Given Iran’s use of children as mine sweepers during the Iraq war I don’t want them to have nuclear weapons but they are a big problem regardless unless we plan to build up a sufficient force to invade and conquer them, which I seriously doubt.
16lester Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:07 PM
or we could accept things aren’t perfect in the world and be thankfull we have more freedom that the people in iran and russia and china and use that freedom to out innovate them, make better movies, steal all their best and brightest, and beat them in the olympics every 4 years.
eventually they will give in when they see there is no hope in planned economies, something we’ve known since 1917 (google “economic calculation problem” )
17M. Simon Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:35 PM
So the Soviets could retain whatever they managed to present to us as an existing situation. This was a horrible, bloody travesty in Vietnam, where we lost 58,000 lives in our bid to avoid actually defeating Hanoi.
Uh, guys. We didn’t lose in Vietnam. Congress gave it away. Go back and read your history again.
As to Georgia. Russia stopped after 5 days. The 1,000+ American trainers are still there. Why would they stop if they were winning? It is not their way. Let us wait until the dust settles and see what the real results are.
18Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Blimey - now I find myself in rough agreement with a lester post!
I’m retiring from this discussion.
Russia, Georgia, and IranNoah Pollak - 08.12.2008 - 11:42 AM
The response of the West to Russia’s invasion has been to dress up in tough rhetoric a helpless message: What can we do? And there isn’t much the free world can do. The most aggressive proposals consist only of arming the Georgian army and throwing military and diplomatic support behind other nations which live in Russia’s crosshairs. One important reality narrows options and prevents serious consideration of a First Gulf War-style response: the fact that Russia is a nuclear power.
This is a lesson surely not lost on the Iranian regime, which like Russia has territorial designs on its neighbors, wishes to play an outsized role in its region, and views an American-allied democracy on its borders (Iraq) with about as much benevolence as Putin views such nations on his borders. Those who confidently predict a “containable and deterrable” nuclear Iran should consider the suddenly not-so-deterrable nuclear Russia and ask themselves whether such confidence is warranted.
10 Responses to “Russia, Georgia, and Iran”
2J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:03 PM
Perfect, Noah. The problem with the nuclear-armed Soviet Union was always that it was NOT containable. We never succeeded in containing it, unless you credit the 53+-year armistice in Korea to the “contained” column.
Those who think it would be better to “contain” Iran than disarm Iran misread the history of containment (or don’t even know it).
The “contained” don’t have to directly confront the US, NATO, or anyone else with strategic nukes, to steadily push back our line of “containment.” Their method will be the one perfected by the Soviets: attack nations on the periphery — by subterfuge if possible, rather than outright military invasion — and calculate that, again and again, we will consider ourselves out of position, or not obligated, to respond.
Consider that during the years of the USSR’s existence, there was only one occasion when the US or any other Western power literally reversed, with force, a Soviet-client Marxist coup or incursion in a third party nation. Where did we do this? Grenada. From 1917 to 1989: Grenada.
Containment ain’t all that.
3Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Noah Pollak - I wholeheartedly agree that a nuclear Iran is a seriously bad prospect, but this is a seriously overstretched analogy.
J.E. Dyer - You missed Afghanistan as an example of where a Soviet incursion was reversed.
And both of you missed Vietnam, where a non-nuclear state took over a neighbor despite our massive effort over a very long period.
4Noah Pollak Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:31 PM
Sully, The point of the analogy was to show that when a state with large regional ambitions is also a nuclear power, the ability of its rivals to deter its aggression is significantly reduced. The Soviet incursion into Afghanistan was indeed reversed, but only after years of bloodshed; more importantly, the vital point here which bolsters my argument, and J.E.’s argument, is that the Soviets felt sufficiently undeterred that they launched the incursion in the first place. With nukes, the Iranians will no doubt feel the same way toward, say, Bahrain. Which is exactly my point. No?
5Forbes Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:37 PM
Shorter version: Under a policy of deterrence and containment, a nuclear power is neither sufficiently deterred, nor contained, to prevent acts of aggression.
6J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Sully — nope, didn’t miss either of them. We failed to contain the Soviet client in Vietnam. Period. We lost the whole country to the Soviet client (Hanoi) and the Soviet orbit. Within six months of the fall of Saigon, the Soviet Navy and Air Force were using the old bases in South Vietnam to patrol the South China Sea.
In Afghanistan we supported the rebel tribes, whose persistence and ungovernability eventually induced a Soviet Union that was pulling in its horns on all fronts to withdraw from there also. It’s arguable how to call this one, but I don’t include it with Grenada for several reasons, such as the ten years the Soviet Army occupied Afghanistan, and the sea change that had already been induced by Reagan’s policies in the Soviet posture: agreeing to the INF treaty; not responding when Poland effectively declared her political independence, and Czechoslovakia hers, or when Austria opened her border to the East Germans; remaining passive and impotent as Iraq and Iran duelled in the Persian Gulf, and the US performed the role of enforcer for the safety of international shipping there.
A strong case can be made that we got the Soviets out of Afghanistan — which, after all, IS in Russia’s back yard, and matters to her security as Mexico does to ours — not through a “containment” policy, but by the destruction of the Soviet Union itself, through the package of pressures applied by Reagan. That’s why I don’t include it as a victory for “containment.” The very definition of containment means that you don’t defeat or transform the opposing power itself, you merely pen it in behind a containing perimeter.
And the truth is, that never worked. Only forcing the Soviet Union to disintegrate stopped her career of expansion.
7Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 12:46 PM
Noah, Again, no argument that Iran will feel more free with nukes, but they already feel pretty darn free to mess around in Iraq without them and they feel pretty darn free to intimidate about the Straits of Hormuz without them. And I suspect that Russia, with its massive conventional forces, would feel pretty darn free to mess with Georgia without them as it did in breaking its assurances about eastern Europe after WW2 without them given the logistics and such of anybody else making an issue of it.
Everything isn’t comparable to Iran just as everything isn’t comparable to Munich.
8Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:01 PM
J.E. Dyer, Good points. And with this “And the truth is, that never worked. Only forcing the Soviet Union to disintegrate stopped her career of expansion” I totally agree.
The problem in Iran is the regime and it will remain a problem as long as it exists.
Re Vietnam - I was over there in a destroyer helping to guard the minesweeper which were pretending to sweep the probably self-deactivated mines in Haiphong harbor. And I was over there a couple of years before that in a different ship to observe the kind of shouldering and electronic harassment we delivered to the Soviet intelligence trawler that periodically visited Yankee Station. I actually had the conn of an aircraft carrier during one such exercise which caused them to leave the area in a hurry and stay away for a while. “What’s the bearing of the trawler? “207 degrees.” “Make your speed 30 knots and make your course 207 degrees.” And then a bit later when he was about 5,000 yards away - “Come right one degree.”
We lost South Vietnam because of self-deterrence rather than deterrence by the Soviets.
9Dellis Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:05 PM
Another analogy to this situation is our allied Gulf states within range of Iranian nuclear missiles. They have seen how little the U.S. will do to protect its ally Georgia in the face of an invasion by a nuclear armed adversery. Why would Saudi Arabia & friends not conclude that they need nuclear weapons too, since the U.S. nuclear shield is nowhere near 100% credible? Do we really want every nation in the world armed with nuclear weapons? How soon until one of these made its hands into terrorists, or until a minor row between states escalated to nuclear war? This is surely America’s national interest at stake, no matter how narrowly you define what America’s interests really are.
10Seth Halpern Says: August 12th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
I hope nobody here is implying that we could invade, regime-change and “reform” Russia even if we had nukes and they didn’t. Maybe the first two things, certainly not the third. If our objective is to unhitch the Slavs from their Slav mentality, way better to rely on natural demographics until Russia shrinks out of its self-imposed harness and explores alternative arrangements. But by then we may need them against the Chinese anyway.
11J.E. Dyer Says: August 12th, 2008 at 2:18 PM
Sully — You say, “We lost South Vietnam because of self-deterrence rather than deterrence by the Soviets.”
Truer words were never spoken — but the pretext for our self-deterrence started with the USSR being a nuclear power, all the way back in 1954 when Ike decided not to assist the French at Dien Bien Phu. What people still don’t understand is that we NEVER intended to “win” in Vietnam: to defeat Hanoi and ensure that Vietnam was not subsumed in the Soviet orbit.
A whole cottage industry emerged in the early 1960s to define how to fight “limited wars” in the nuclear age. The basic premise was that no interest was worth a nuclear war to protect, and that we somehow had to figure out how to wage a satisfactory security policy without the “destabilizing” idea of actually changing whatever the current situation was.
So the Soviets could retain whatever they managed to present to us as an existing situation. This was a horrible, bloody travesty in Vietnam, where we lost 58,000 lives in our bid to avoid actually defeating Hanoi.
Your description of shouldering the intelligence collection trawlers (I remember those guys well from the 1980s) is quintessential Robert S. McNamara, Mr. Limited War/Limited Objectives himself. Achieving an actual military effect against North Vietnam would, in his view, have been provocative, destabilizing, and might bring us into direct conflict with the USSR or China. He actually thought it was a good idea, instead, to administer a series of tactical pinpricks to Hanoi and her sponsors, and call that a show of resolve.
This practice got us the Tonkin Gulf incident. It got us a lot of aviators shot down over North Vietnam. What it did NOT get us was any political impression on North Vietnam, other than that we weren’t serious, and would go away eventually if Hanoi could just hang on.
Hanoi was right, and McNamara was wrong. The Soviets were right: we would fold, in a struggle on the periphery, because they were nuclear. They never even had to issue a threat.
15Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 4:16 PM
J.E. Dyer,Again excellent points, but I’m not as sure as you that the nuclear issue was as defining as you state. Particularly I think it mixes up with the disadvantage a morally self limited democratic leader has when up against a bloody minded dictatorial one who cares not a whit (or appears not to) for the safety of his own population let alone that of his adversary.
For one example Eisenhower settled for a draw in Korea against a conventional armed China after Truman fired a bloody minded McArthur in part for suggesting stuff like a nuclear windbreak along the Yalu which would certainly have won the war albeit a bit messily. For another the same Kennedy who brought in McNamara and his system analyst idiots clumsily and riskily backed down the Soviets over the missiles in Cuba when the issue was closer to home.
The good guy necessarily cedes a huge advantage in caring about the population oppressed by the bad guy. Nuclear weapons magnify that advantage but they don’t create it.
Given Iran’s use of children as mine sweepers during the Iraq war I don’t want them to have nuclear weapons but they are a big problem regardless unless we plan to build up a sufficient force to invade and conquer them, which I seriously doubt.
16lester Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:07 PM
or we could accept things aren’t perfect in the world and be thankfull we have more freedom that the people in iran and russia and china and use that freedom to out innovate them, make better movies, steal all their best and brightest, and beat them in the olympics every 4 years.
eventually they will give in when they see there is no hope in planned economies, something we’ve known since 1917 (google “economic calculation problem” )
17M. Simon Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:35 PM
So the Soviets could retain whatever they managed to present to us as an existing situation. This was a horrible, bloody travesty in Vietnam, where we lost 58,000 lives in our bid to avoid actually defeating Hanoi.
Uh, guys. We didn’t lose in Vietnam. Congress gave it away. Go back and read your history again.
As to Georgia. Russia stopped after 5 days. The 1,000+ American trainers are still there. Why would they stop if they were winning? It is not their way. Let us wait until the dust settles and see what the real results are.
18Sully Says: August 12th, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Blimey - now I find myself in rough agreement with a lester post!
I’m retiring from this discussion.
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