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Movies about War at Sea The Cruel Sea.

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            All war is a vast enterprise.[1]  The two World Wars were fought all over the globe and affected almost all peoples, regardless of whether their own countries joined the fighting.  Representing in art such gigantic passages of history poses all sorts of challenges. 

            A common solution is to focus attention on a small group of people involved in some kind of significant action.  Audiences need characters who are interesting to them, people with whom they can identify or sympathize.  For example, the “Day of Days” episode of “Band of Brothers” is far more compelling than “The Longest Day.” 

            Movies about war at sea can meet this need: even the largest ship is still a single unit; crews are small groups of [until recently] men from varied backgrounds and with varied temperaments who must learn to work together to survive and triumph.  “The Cruel Sea” (dir. Charles Frend,1953) offers an excellent example. 

Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979) started out as a journalist with a love of sailing; served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War as an officer on some of the “little ships” (corvettes, frigates) that guarded convoys of merchant ships in the Atlantic; and then became a writer after the war.  His novel The Cruel Sea (1951) accurately summarized his own war experience.  It became a hit and was turned into a movie. 

Charles Frend (1909-1977) graduated from Oxford and went right into the movie business.  He spent ten years editing other directors’ movies before he got the chance to direct himself.[2]  Since this opportunity came with the outbreak of the Second World War, Frend’s early experience included a couple of propaganda-for-the-Good-Cause movies.  One of these was the sea story “San Demetrio London” (1943).[3]  After the war, he made the British-stiff-upper-lip classic “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948).  Put the two movies together and Frend became the natural choice to direct “The Cruel Sea.”  He was an ordinary director, not a great director, but sometimes ordinary people can still achieve extraordinary things.[4] 

Thucydides tells us that “war is a stern teacher; in depriving [people] of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.”  So it is with the sailors in this story.  Much of the service–herding merchant ships back and forth across the Atlantic–is monotonous and unglamorous.  The men are away from home for months at a time, sometimes returning to find that loved ones have been lost to them through war, accident, or loneliness.  At sea there is constant strain.  The North Atlantic is vast and violent, and men must stand their watches in all weather and at all hours.  The U-boats—the “hump-backed death below”–are hidden and deadly, and one of the ships is lost with most of the hands when torpedoed.   Some men crumble under stress.  Lieutenant Lockhart—Monsarrat—emerges from the war stronger, self-disciplined, self-confident, and with a deep respect for the sailors and the Navy personified by his wartime commander, Captain Erickson.

You can—and should–watch the movie at  Bing Videos 

[1] See: cliche definition – Search (bing.com) 

[2] The learning-by-doing approach to becoming a director preceded the film school approach without worse movies getting made.  Just saying. 

[3] San Demetrio London – Wikipedia  It’s sort of the reverse of the backstory to Conrad’s Lord Jim. 

[4] Which is what both “The Cruel Sea” and Britain’s story in the Second World War are all about. 

The foreign Policy of a Second Trump Administration.

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            In his first term, President Donald Trump moved fast and broke things.  What would he do in a second term?[1]  That is a real guessing game since Trump is not deeply committed to sticking to what he says if he sees either a tactical advantage or a good laugh in changing course.  This doesn’t stop Walter Russell Mead from thinking about the future, and perhaps playing on the fears of both foreigners and Americans. 

            First of all, one has to accept that there are continuities between the first Trump term and the first Biden term.  The human rights and democracy-promotion agendas held no interest to President Trump; it has now gone by the boards with the Biden administration.[2]  It really difficult to get rid of autocrats because they are ruthless people with a strong grip on their security forces.  Of course, a democracy can always invade an autocracy to effect regime change.  The results may not be what the invaders expected.  Similarly, the Biden administration recognizes China as a military and economic rival in a way that Trump’s predecessors were not able to see.  While the Biden administration keeps sending emissaries to China to try to take the rough edges off the conflict, they aren’t willing to just surrender.  Then, a second Trump term would likely see government support for, rather than opposition to, the oil and gas industries.  To this would be added increased spending on weapons procurement and development for defense.  Mead sees this as the mirror image of President Joe Biden’s climate-change industrial policy.  The key point here is that both parties have entered a new era of government intervention in the economy.  Both men seek to create lots of working-class jobs that pay middle-class incomes. 

So, where would Trump differ from the Biden administration?  Mead lists some of the reasonably likely priorities of a second Trump administration.  Chief among them would certainly be a huge effort to stop immigration through the southern border.  Europe’s efforts along these lines have included deals with countries in a position to restrict or even stop such immigration.  Trump could well try to extract the same sort of thing from Central American countries.  This could involve paying people[3] with the power to slow or stop the immigration, or extorting compliance by some means.

Beyond that, things become much more speculative.  Trump could threaten to leave NATO if Germany and other European countries don’t increase their defense spending.  Trump could cut Ukraine adrift.  Trump could seek to strike some kind of “grand bargain” with Xi Jinping. 

            In any case, Trump appears to have “learned nothing and forgotten nothing” from his first term.  One effect will be on America’s allies.  They may have seen his first term as like a very ugly traffic accident.  It could be cleaned up, if not forgotten.  His re-election, and the thrall in which he holds so many Republican politicians, would argue that a critical and durable change has taken place in the direction of American foreign policy.  They would have to begin calculating how best to deal with a world of threats in which America is not a reliable partner from, regardless of which party is in charge. 

            Whoever wins in November 2024, the results will be momentous. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “A ‘Trumpier” Second-Term Foreign Policy,” WSJ, 3 October 2023. 

[2] See his reconciliation with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. 

[3] Would those “people” have to be governments or would a drug cartel do? 

We Got to Get Out of This Place If It’s the Last Thing We Ever Do.

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            Just under one-sixth (16 percent) of Americans trust the Federal government.[1]  It isn’t just the government institutions that are troubling people. 

In an “a pox upon both your houses” evaluation, a recent CBS poll found that 54 percent of Americans see the Republicans as “extreme,” and the same percentage see the Democrats as extreme.  These two groups overlap to a degree, with 28 percent disapproving of both parties.  About the same number, 26 percent, say that having more political parties would make solving our problems easier.[2] 

            President Joe Biden hasn’t had the kind of calming effect that he seemed to promise during the 2020 campaign.  Partly, this may stem from his left-of-center policy program.[3]  Partly, it may stem from the appearance of new problems (Ukraine), the enlargement of pre-existing problems (refugees at the border), and the return of old problems once considered settled (abortion).  Partly, it may stem from the refusal of so many Republicans to let go of Donald Trump in spite of 6 January 2020.[4] 

A recent Pew poll found that 55 percent of Americans are angry about the current political situation and 65 percent are exhausted by it.  A mere 10 percent are excited about the political situation.  A little more than a quarter (27 percent) of Americans think that the political system as a whole is working “very” well or “somewhat” well.  That implies that almost three-quarters (73 percent) think that it is NOT working any flavor of “well.”  Most (63 percent) aren’t confident about its future (or Don’t Know, which seems to me to be the same thing as not confident).  Most Americans, some 64 percent, say that a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 is proof of a “broken” political system.  On the one hand, two-thirds of people doubt that Joe Biden would have the physical or mental capacity to serve as an effective president in a second term.  On the other hand, better than half of Americans think that Donald Trump would be all too active and able in pursuing his goals in a second term. 

            Reading these figures, it is easy to believe that “America is desperate for a new beginning.”[5]  Trouble is that, while “America” may be ready, “Americans” are not.  If they were ready, Donald Trump would not have a 40 point bulge on the Seven Dwarves.  If they were ready, Joe Biden would have been persuaded to spend more time with his Addams-like family.  No serious insurgency has broken out in either party.  Instead, we’re waiting for the Grim Reaper to solve our problems.  In an Age of Medical Marvels at that. 

            Still, when and if it comes, what will that “new beginning” look like? 

[1] It is unclear exactly what people understand by “the Federal government.”  Do they mean all three branches or do they mean one or two branches of the government.  The bureaucracy of the Executive Branch can seem awkward and incapable, and even autocratic.  Congress is a monument to paralysis through divided government, and draws careerists like flies to…sugar.  The Judicial Branch has been the scene of politicization for decades as it has become a means to by-pass legislative impasses.  Now, over half (54 percent) of Americans distrust the Supreme Court.  The “Impeach Early Warren” bill-boards of yore have given way to the “Impeach Clarence Thomas” op-eds of today. 

[2] Nothing in European political systems, where this is common, suggests that it would make things better. 

[3] That program has involved a further expansion of deficit spending as part of his Inflation Act, his reliance upon reconciliation to ram through major legislation, and his resort of rule-writing to impose controversial policies. 

[4] I doubt that many Republicans would have accepted any of Biden’s actions as legitimate, even if he had continued every single Trump administration policy.  They want Orange Man. 

[5] William Galston, “America Is Desperate for a New Beginning,” WSJ, 27 September 2023. 

A World of Woe.

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            The United States led the creation of a post-Second World War international system.  It initiated the creation of the United Nations (UN), the Bretton Woods international economic system, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the strategy of “containment” of aggressive Communism.  Along the way, the United States joined with its chief allies in an effort to create a “rules-based international order.”  This has been a remarkable achievement. 

            Now these achievements face new threats.[1] 

The UN is much disliked because it is much misunderstood.  It could never be a “world government,” merely a dignified place in which the great powers met to work out deals.  Other offices of the UN have sought to deal with improving living standards and health, and with assisting an ever-growing wave of refugees from political upheaval in the non-Western world.  Even this limited, useful role seems beyond its scope in recent decades. 

“Free trade” headed the agenda of economic policy makers for many decades after the Second World War.  Some of the greatest triumphs of that agenda, raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while promoting continual renovation of the advanced economies, finally raised a storm of reaction.[2]  The huge waves of unwanted immigrants swamping the borders of the United States and the European Union has become a divisive force in the democracies.  The immigrants are propelled by especially poverty in their home countries. 

Great powers—Russia and China—and middling powers—Iran and, North Korea—have embarked on campaigns against the American-led order.  Military power and the willingness to use it characterize this effort.  The Russian attack on Ukraine, the Chinese threats against Taiwan, and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs all pose grave dangers.  It has proved difficult to discover effective responses to these threats.[3] 

Authoritarian governments are acting effectively on their agendas in some parts of the world.  Elsewhere the collapse of government is increasingly obvious.  Drug cartels seem to have the upper hand over nation-states in parts of Latin America.  In much of North Africa radical Islamist groups are hard to distinguish from criminal gangs in places where government has collapsed.  Libya offers a good example, but similar things are happening across the Sahel.[4] 

We face a host of troubles that resembles the Thirties.  Can we muster the resources and the resolve to sustain that better world the West once created? 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “World Disorder Is Spreading Fast,” WSJ, 26 September 2023. 

[2] First the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), then the admission of China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on favorable terms were seen as massively disruptive forces in the domestic economies of the advanced economies.  Progress had halted and even gone into reverse. 

[3] Neither the European countries nor the United States wants a shooting war with anyone.  There is always the danger of a nuclear war following on a conventional war.  Economic sanctions and as much military aid as possible has been provided to Ukraine, which serves as a Western proxy.  China is a military and economic threat, but it is also a major trading partner for many countries.  Reorienting trade is contentious, while rebuilding the military power to back-down any Chinese threat will take time and money that may not be available.  The Obama administration’s deal to pause Iran’s nuclear development both made sense and had a certain Mr. Micawber aspect to it.  Plastering North Korea with economic sanctions achieved nothing, but a pre-emptive attack on its nuclear program would just open a huge can of worms. 

[4] The logical conclusion will come when the first criminal enterprise became the actual ruler of a sovereign state.  People used to joke that Monaco was a “sunny place for shady people.”  What if it happens in Mexico?   

Some Choices.

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            Walter Russell Mead, who comments on foreign affairs for the Wall Street Journal, discerns several long-term shifts underway in international affairs.[1] 

            First, Europe continues to decline as a force in world politics.  This can be seen as the latest stage in a long-running process.  The “European Civil War” of 1914-1945 wrecked the basis of European global power.  The Eastern and Western parts of the Continent then found themselves bound to alliances with the Soviet Union and the United States.  However, in Western Europe, dramatic post-war economic modernization and the construction of the European Union (EU) allowed a revived role.[2]  

Now it seems that the wheels have come off in a serious way.  It’s possible to point to all sorts of current problems: the collapse of French influence in Africa; the EU’s confrontation with a Turkish Republic that uses refugees as a weapon; and the dangers to Germany posed by China’s automobile industry, and to all Europe by its trade practices.  More fundamental, says Mead, are the rapid aging and eventual shrinking of Europe’s population; all the policies and incrustations that have produced a low growth economy; the follow-on effect of robbing national security to pay for social security; and the surrender to wishful thinking in diplomacy. 

            Second, there is the “emergence of India as one of the world’s leading powers and as an increasingly close partner of the U.S.”  This should not be misunderstood as a real reflection of Indian economic or military power.  What matters much more is that Europe’s long-term decline has created a tension between the rising nations of Asia and the “South,” on the one hand, and international institutions in which European countries are over-represented, on the other hand.  The advance of India represents an entering wedge for other countries.  Their ambition is a “reform” that shoulders aside the doddering countries of Europe. 

            Third, China, Russia, and some follower-countries are intensifying their challenge to the “American-led”[3] post-1945 world order.  Part of their effort—as it was in the Cold War—is an attack on the existing, Western-dominated, international institutions.  This is intended to play to the ambitions and frustrations of the Indo-Pacific and Global South. 

This convergence of factors creates a dilemma for American policy makers.  It is likely to take some time to resolve because it requires making painful choices.  Mead, a not-unfriendly critic since the start of the Biden Administration, chooses to emphasize the “woke” agenda of current American diplomacy.  The Administration assigns great importance to the Democratic causes of climate-change, human-rights, and democratic government.  The trouble is that most of the countries that need to be courted don’t assign the same importance to these issues as does the Administration.  If anything, they resent being harped-at by American progressives.  Which will you have? 

There is also the far more important issue of American national reconstruction.  No one seems to speak for higher taxes, lower spending, trying to shift values and culture, and pursuing national reconciliation.  Yet those issues matter too, and perhaps most of all. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “The G-20 Reveals a Shifting World Order,” WSJ, 12 September 2023. 

[2] All the same, the post-war fantasies of Charles de Gaulle seem absurd.  Even French historians and policy-makers must be circumlocuting their way around calling him “not very realistic,” to use Stalin’s judgement. 

[3] “American-led” always makes me think of “first among equals,” a label claimed by Octavian. 

The Towering Inferno of Our Time.

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            “The Towering Inferno” (dir. John Guillerman, 1974) was an epic disaster movie about a fire in a Los Angeles skyscraper.  It had an all-star cast and was nominated for eight Academy Awards.  More importantly, it was the highest grossing movie of the year and earned back fifteen times what it had cost to make.[1] 

            Fifty years on, it’s ripe for a remake that adapts the story to the issues of our own time. 

On the one hand, New York City has entered a doom spiral.  The Covid pandemic popularized working from home.  Now it’s hard to get people back in the office.  This imperils the business models of both property developers and big cities like San Francisco and New York.  Big cities depend on big and dense populations with a large share of high-income earners.  Dense crowding leads to small living units; small living units and busy professional lives push people out to restaurants, theaters, galleries, bars, concerts, and museums.  These service industries employ masses of people who can barely afford to live in the molten core of American urbanism.  Then there are the vast numbers employed in the construction industry and all its myriad up-stream suppliers.  Decades of continual growth have led banks to loan immense sums of money to developers.  If people don’t come back to the office, then this skyscraper of cards will crash. 

On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people want to come to America to escape their “shithole countries,” just as did the ancestors of all other Americans.  In the years since the the financial crisis of 2007-2009, a flood of humanity has been entering the United States across the southern border.  After relentlessly criticizing Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, Democrats have seen their own “Remain in Texas” policy fail.  Texas and, to a lesser extent Arizona, have been bussing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to major “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco, Washington, DC, and New York.  Now the counties surrounding New York City have been trying out a “Remain in Manhattan” policy.  New York mayor Eric Adams is loudly complaining that the city’s shelters and services are swamped; he has—so far unavailingly—demanded assistance from the federal government.  Agonizing policy choices for progressives abound.  Where to house these distressed people?  How to pay for housing and all the other services they need without gutting every other part of the city budget?  How to non-coercively assimilate them into American life?  What if they just keep coming?  How will New Yorkers respond?  

The story is set in the recent future.  It weaves together these two strands of problems in the story of “The Towering Inferno.”  The unstoppable influx of impoverished immigrants continually increased the demand for more cheap housing.  Developers have fallen so far behind in their payments on loans, that they have begun to default.  The banks are left owning increasing valueless collateral and lose all interest in maintaining the buildings. 

Developer Peter Rockman appears on the scene as a God-send.  Himself an immigrant from Ukraine, he proposed creating huge numbers of affordable housing units in the vacant floors of under-utilized office buildings.  Construction companies and banks began to see him as a lifeline.  His vision tempts the owners of one tower building into supporting his experiment.  Rockman has a darker side.  His real intention is to flood the towers with immigrants far greater in number than his permits allow, then to rack-rent the tenants.  He expects the impoverished tenants in his Tower of Babel to cause the remaining businesses to flee, permitting him to buy the building at a fire-sale price.  He backed up his appeal with corruption and black-mail to get the necessary permits to repurpose and reconstruct the buildings.  Tenants who complain soon encounter Mike Malik, Rockman’s terrifying Director of Tenant Welfare. 

Over the course of a few years, the planned apartments are sub-divided and open spaces are filled with hovels built of packing crate and palettes; rats scurry along the corridors piled with garbage; without air-conditioning in summer, the tenants have smashed holes in the windows; without heat in winter, the holes are plugged with rags or covered with boards; much of the wiring and electrical fixtures are stripped out; fires for light, heat, and cooking have scorched the floors, the plumbing has failed; criminals seize some of the apartments as bases for their businesses and to prey on the other tenants. 

            The tenants prove not to be the sheep Rockman expects.  They come from Central America, West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.  The story focuses on three of them: a Guatemalan woman fleeing with her children from a drunken and abusive husband who belongs to the MS-13 gang; a Senegalese veteran of ISIS who has lost his faith in “jihad”; and a young couple from India who have run away from looming arranged marriages.  All have hell-hounds on their heels: the MS-13 gunman, two ISIS scalp-hunters, and the elder brothers of the runaway couple. 

Rockman and the Mayor combine forces in an effort to restore their reputations.  An upper floor is transformed into an event-space, with several express elevators restored so that guests can bypass 80 floors of squalid nightmares.  To inaugurate the new venue, the Mayor will attend a gala celebration honoring the casts of some of the television shows set and filmed in New York.  Members of the casts of “Law and Order,” “Blue Bloods,” “Seinfeld,” and “Sex and the City” will attend.  Among the other dignitaries is the British Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Steven Martin-Short. 

Things go terribly wrong.  On the one hand, the Hell-hounds arrive in deadly pursuit of the migrants/fugitives.  Mayhem erupts in different parts of the vertical homeless encampment.  On the other hand, and as a result, fire sweeps through the middle floors on the night of the gala.  The staircases become chimneys. 

Who will live and who will die?  How will the city choose to help those in danger?  The second half of the movie focuses on the struggle for survival of the residents and top-floor guests, and on the heroic efforts of the FDNY. 

The firemen confront a nighttime re-run of the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster.  Blue-eyed men running up the steps toward death.  Swarms of helicopters land on the roof to evacuate the well-heeled, dodging around the news helicopters filming those waiting below in a macabre version of the Oscars’ red-carpet show.  “Look, there’s Tom Selleck!” 

In the fight for survival, the immigrants exhibit the determination and ingenuity that led them to break with their own pasts and gain entry to the United States.  In contrast, the Hell-hounds fall from their inability to abandon the “old ways,” to think anew and act anew. 

In a brief closing scene, New York City donates the burned-out hulk of the building to the Mohegan Tribe as a subsidiary of their reservation in Connecticut. 

[1] The Towering Inferno – Wikipedia 

The Present Danger.

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Competition between states provides the fundamental dynamic in international relations.  Economic wealth and –especially–industrial power translate into military, political, and cultural power.  In alliance with other countries, the United States fought a “Fifty Years’ War” (1940-1990) against aggressive tyrannies.  In the end, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all were laid in the dust.  After 1945, Germany and Japan were reconciled with their foes and became vital pillars of the “West.”  Reconciliation failed with post-Soviet Russia.[1] 

Some countries reacted against the most recent Western victory, and especially against the United States.[2]  China, Russia, and Iran hold pride of place among the “revisionist” states hoping to un-do American leadership (or “hegemony” or “empire”).[3]  China’s headlong drive toward economic power began to pay-off in a dramatic military build-up.  Russia both balked at the American propensity for regime-change and sought to restore much of the territory lost in the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Iran pursued both nuclear weapons and the use of Shi’ite and related groups throughout the Middle East.  Contemporary conservatives tend to blame the Barack Obama administration (2008—2016) for a loss of focus on great-power politics during a critical moment.[4]  However, almost twenty years of botched relations with the “revisionist” states on the part of both the United States and the European Union preceded the arrival in power of this bunch of highly-intelligent, well-educated fools.  Donald Trump then bolted from the multilateral executive agreements crafted in Obama’s second term, leaving both the deal with Iran and the Paris Climate Accord; and alienated America’s European allies. 

The Biden administration seems to have believed that things would snap back into place once the adults regained control in 2021.  Instead, the “revisionist” states doubled-down on their pursuit of national advantage while tightening the bonds between them.  Their bet seems to be that there is something fundamentally wrong with America these days.  That’s a big gamble. 

It took until 2023, but the Biden administration now seems to realize the nature of the situation.  Gone is the open hostility to Saudi Arabia.  India, for all the flaws of its leader Narendra Modi, is being courted.  Engagement with Ukraine deepens, to the point where Americans are increasingly telling Kyiv exactly how to fight the war.  The visit of the Taiwanese leader to the United States, like President Biden’s summit meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea are important steps in opposing Chinese expansionism.[5] 

Could this new conflict spiral out of control into catastrophe?  After 9/11, the danger from “radical Islam” was over-played.  Is this crisis the same or different?  A clear discussion leading to a bi-partisan consensus would support American efforts. 

[1] Why the former Soviet Union did not follow the same path remains an important question for historians.  People who invoke the Marshall Plan analogy don’t know anything about what made the Marshall Plan work. 

[2] Worth a read: James Headley’s essay “Post-Communist Russia and the West: From Crisis to Crisis?” in Steven Fish et al, eds., A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed (2016).  

[3] The future stance of the European Union remains open to question. 

[4] Walter Russell Mead, “Geopolitical Climate Denialism,” WSJ, 10 August 2023. 

[5] Walter Russell Mead, “Power Matters More Than Diplomacy,” WSJ, 22 August 2023. 

Monolithic Only in Their Opposition to the Democrats.

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            Nate Cohn analyzes the very non-monolithic Republican Party a year out from 2024.[1] 

            “Newcomers” amount to one-twelfth (8 percent) of Republicans; are—obviously newcomers to the party and probably former Democrats; are diverse, with a large component of Hispanics (18 percent); see themselves as “moderates” or “liberals,” supporting abortion and transgender rights; are really exercised about the direction of both the economy and the country; and just hate the current “woke,” government-aggrandizing Democratic Party. 

            “Blue Collar Populists” amount to one-eighth (12 percent) of Republicans; are not-as-newcomers and refugees from the Democratic Party; mostly (75 percent) lack a college education;[2] are heavily concentrated in the Northeast; have assimilated legal abortion and marriage equality into their sense of the “traditional values” that are now under attack; strongly oppose immigration “reform”; and strongly support Trump. 

            “Right Wing” Republicans amount to just over a quarter (26 percent) of Republicans, but has a level of “engagement” that magnifies its numbers within the party; predominantly self-identify as “very conservative”; are older and working class; and fervently support Trump.[3] 

            “Traditional Conservatives” figure as just over a quarter (26 percent) of Republicans; support tax cuts, oppose abortion, support immigration reform, and support aid to gallant little Finland—um, Ukraine.  Just a hair over 50 percent of this group’s primary voters support Trump, even though only 39 percent of this group’s general election voters have a strongly positive view of Trump-the-man. 

            “Libertarian Conservatives” amount to one-seventh (14 percent) of Republicans; value individual liberty over any other good; dislike big government; and are wary of both major parties.  They’re not pro-Trump, but not pro-any other major politician either. 

            The “Moderate Establishment” amounts to one-seventh (14 percent) of Republicans; is socially moderate; and thinks Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had the right ideas on immigration, trade, and foreign policy.[4]  While Cohn characterizing this faction as often “Never Trump,” the polling data says even this group would vote for Trump over Biden by 46 percent to 27 percent.[5]  A quarter of 14 percent is 3 percent, of Republican voters willing to vote for Biden. 

            Libertarian Conservatives and Moderate Establishment Republicans (28 percent) are soft to hostile on Trump.  They have nothing else in common and most will go along with Trump. 

            Blue-Collar Populists and Right Wing Republicans (38 percent) strongly support Trump, even though they disagree on other issues. 

            Newcomers and Traditional Conservatives (34 percent) will reliably vote against the Democratic candidate.  If winning means voting for Trump, they’ll do it. 

            Newcomers and Blue-Collar Populists (20 percent) are refugees from the Democratic Party’s evolution over the last 50 years.  Probably no Republicans have become Democrats. 

            Who will Trump pick as his Vice Presidential candidate?  Ted Cruz or Tim Scott? 

[1] Nate Cohn, “Where Trump Stands With These Six Kinds of Republican Voters,” NYT, 22 August 2023. 

[2] Compared to 72 percent of Blacks.  Census Bureau Releases New Educational Attainment Data 

[3] They get their news from Fox and they think all of the recent indictments are hog-wash. 

[4] That is, “Freedom, freedom, and freedom—and let’s keep it that way.” 

[5] Why?  Because they hate the Democratic vision even more than they hate Trump.  Thanks Joe. 

The Viper Pit.

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            The post-Cold War “Era of American Hegemony” proved remarkably brief.  The world has entered a new era of competition.  As in previous such eras, wealth and power form both the means and the ends of these struggles.  It is possible to understand the current Middle East policy of the Biden Administration in this light.[1] 

First, the world’s economy still runs on oil and will for a long time to come.  The pricing policies of the Gulf States affect the performance of the global economy, notably that of the United States.  Even as the Biden administration seeks to de-carbonize the United States, China remains a massive consumer of Middle Eastern oil.  Influence (if not control) over Middle East oil gives the US leverage on China. 

Second, the Middle Eastern oil states buy a lot of military hardware from the United States.  Buying hi-tech weapons systems inevitably ties the purchaser to the manufacturing and support sectors of the producing country.  Buy the first iteration of a weapons system and you go on buying parts and up-dates, and paying for the training on how to use the systems.  All this helps the American balance of payments while spreading the enormous development costs. 

Third, as the United States shifts its primary policy toward the struggle with China, it needs partners to take up the slack elsewhere. Europe and the Middle East figure as the two chief “elsewheres.”  In the Middle East, the chief problem that has to be addressed is the Islamic Republic of Iran.[2]  A crisis point approaches in the long-running civil war in the Muslim world between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran.  The agreement reached between Iran and its opponents during the last stage of the Obama administration had opponents in both the United States and Iran.  President Donald Trump abandoned that agreement and returned to open opposition.  The Biden administration seems to have begun by hoping that—Orange Man having left the scene—the previous agreement could be quickly restored.  Alas, the Iranian opponents of the agreement seem to have gained the upper hand. 

Looking for help in the Middle East, the most promising, but also most problematic, states are Israel and Saudi Arabia.  They are promising because of their long-standing ties with the United States, Israel’s military power (including nuclear weapons) combined with a willingness to use it, and Saudi Arabia’s great wealth and influence over lesser Arab states.  The Trump administration pushed Israeli-Saudi cooperation against Iran as the basis for Middle East stability as America shifted its attention to China.  As with other Trump policies, the Biden administration seems to be recognizing the merits. 

They are problematic because their leaders, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince, seem to think that America has gone soft and also seem to personally despise President Biden.   The “America’s gone soft” view is the older, bigger, and more consequential problem.  The United States spends a lot on its military and it has some impressive weapons systems.  It is much less clear that the United States will fight on foreign soil in the near future.  There also exist some doubts about how well-led are American forces.  Doubting America itself, it must seem like a much safer bet than in the past to treat its president with disdain.   

America needs to solve its own problems to be able to step down on the vipers.   

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Biden’s New Approach to the Middle East,” WSJ, 15 August 2023. 

[2] For previous installments in this long-running “franchise,” see: Iran | Search Results | waroftheworldblog 

Grand Jury.

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            Grand juries are much in the news these days.  What are the essential characteristics of a grand jury?[1]  The grand jury developed as an element of the English Common Law.  As such, it was exported to all the British colonies.  The newly-independent United States preserved the institution in the Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury …”

            Despite the name, they are not part of the court system and they are not overseen by any court.  They are an instrument used by the prosecution. 

            A federal grand jury is made up of 16 to 23 members.  Federal law calls for grand jurors to be chosen from the voter rolls to represent a “fair cross section of the community.”  Grand jurors are not screened for bias and the person under investigation cannot challenge potential jurors.  In the election of November 2020, 92.15 percent of the District of Columbia voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden; in New York county (Manhattan), Biden never fell below 69 percent of the vote and most precincts ran for Biden in the 80 percent-plus range; in Fulton County Georgia, Biden won 72 percent of the vote; and in the three southeastern counties of Florida, Biden won 60-80 percent of the vote. 

To issue an indictment, 12 of the 16-23 jurors must agree that the evidence meets the same “probable cause” standard that applies to police officers: “whether at [the moment of arrest] the facts and circumstances within [an officer’s] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that [a suspect] had committed or was committing an offense.”  Actual criminal trials require a unanimous verdict and apply the tougher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard. 

Grand jury proceedings are not trials, so they are not adversarial in the way that court trials are adversarial.  There is no judge; the prosecutor decides which witnesses to call and what evidence to present; evidence that was obtained illegally and which would not be permitted in a trial, can be presented; the prosecutor is not obligated to reveal exculpatory evidence to the jurors; people appearing before a grand jury do not have a right to have a lawyer present or to cross-examine witnesses. 

It should surprise no one that grand juries almost always follow the recommendation of the prosecutor.  They indict who they are told to indict for the crimes that they are told to charge.  This is the origin of the quote attributed (incorrectly) to New York court of Appeals Judge Sol Wachtler that a district attorney could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”[2] 

While the grand jury was a feature of English Common Law spread all around the globe by the British Empire, only two countries still employ the institution: the United States and Liberia. 

Discussion is good.  Informed discussion is better.    

[1] See: Grand juries in the United States – Wikipedia 

[2] See: Sol Wachtler – Wikipedia  Ah, New York, New York.