Kingdoms of the Blind
Harold Rood in the Time of Ukrainian Boomer Mindset Hysteria
I must admit that I had this book on my shelf for years. I did not read it immediately because, Rood was nearby, at the Graduate School I attended. I went to his talks, and listened to him at various gatherings of a Claremont nature. He was intelligent, and uproariously entertaining. He would be considered a “conspiracy theorist” today—you know the kind that ultimately proves out right. Heck, Churchill was considered a “conspiracy theorist” in his day! Look how they both have been proven to be ultimately correct. Shocking!
Although I never took a class with him—my field was not in international, or, foreign affairs—I respected him and found him one of the few professors in the field of foreign relations to speak the damn honest truth. Believe me, if you never had a chance to meet Rood, you missed out.
For those who do not know, Rood was one of Patton’s tank drivers. He was also an infantryman of the 3rd Army badasses. That type of character in higher ed., was, a rarity. Naturally, he did not succumb to the Boomer Mindset of academe in the 1960s-70s. In fact, to put it in terms today, he likely would have been called the most Based professor of national security of the boomer age.
If you want to hear Rood in action, join my friend Steve Hayward who dug up a rare audio of Rood here. You will not be disappointed.
The assault on Ukraine prompted me to think of Rood and wonder what he would say. We are far off from his experience and assessment of the War, and the Cold War that followed. There are certain aspects of the West that have advanced to such a state that Putin and Russia are viewed more favorably than before—because he stands for something; he represents an ancient view of nationhood and manliness. There are only two genders in the East; the west hates its own citizens and puts on a massive display of weakness while encouraging people who have no idea what their identity is to join the armed forces in the name of….diversity, whatever that means. They hate the west and their own countries. Just look how scary NATO is. I am quaking as a result of their superiority!
I turned to Rood and some other highly intelligent commentators because, I became quickly annoyed with the virus-like spread of Rah-Rah! America, Fuck-Yeah! Not too few of those I respected, and who supported Trump, drank deep and long from the well of the Administrative State, the Globalists, and Davos, and are now supporting the Clintons/Corp Media/McCain’s former Mistress/Hannity, the assassination crier/Mark Levin, another assassination crier/and the Left in the unquestioned bombability of Russia in Urkaine to save…money laundering options I guess. Whether this GAE alliance knows it or not, they are Never-Trumpers together now, especially when the chips are down. They know not themselves. Enjoy your new relationship with the ever growing largess that is Bill Kristol my former frands. Here, I should point the reader to the recent Cicero review I wrote on friendship. Lesson learned in real time, and that’s the reason I do not name names! Perhaps they will get ahold of themselves, and open their eyes, one day. In the meantime, they are asleep.
My smart frand, Fisted by Foucault, has a definite opinion about all this, and he may in the end be quite right. He thinks the U.S. does not care about Ukraine, really. I think this regime does care, but those who make up the regime are too stupid to realize how war is conducted because all they know is losing. This might be small disagreement (and it might not be disagreement at all!) between us, but I will appeal to Rood in a moment to make point.
Putin could not give two rubles about NATO as a real threat, and his incursion into Ukraine (caused by the West) and his incursion into Crimea in 2014 (also caused by the West and O-Biden) speak louder than the moral virtue signaling of NATO. The West is not serious because they have no strategic superiority in the region. Obama and State dept was serious enough to throw out an elected official in Ukraine in their Maidan Color Coup. Yes, Shaytan Obama did that. Why? Laundering. Cashing in at the expense of the good citizens of Ukraine. But, also, forcing everyone to accept through bribes of the new GAE economic system, the stability of a new world order. NYET to that!
How about this consideration too: Mother Russia is not the same Mother Russia of the Communist days. Get a life Boomer, it’s not 1945 anymore. Something has changed. This offends American Communists like….Obama. Bernie Sanders is rumored to be wailing in front of Russian Embassy in sackcloth and ashes moaning lamentations he will not be able to build his 5th house near Red Square.
Fisted’s comment seems plausible:
This crisis was not about Ukraine. Ukraine only provided the setting for which this crisis is playing itself out. The point of this crisis, from the US perspective, is to effect a final cut off of Russia from Europe economically, so as to reduce Russian influence and increase US dominance on the continent, while cashing in by way of LNG exports to replace Russian gas deliveries. That’s it. The USA is more than happy in seeing Kiev occupied by Russian forces, because it kills the NordStream 2 pipeline, and opens up new business for American LNG companies, as well as bigger business for US arms exporters.
Our GAE news media—you know the same folks who lied about Trump, about us, about raysism, about the election, about Covid, about Hunter Biden’s laptop, about everything!—now want us to believe them when they say Putin bad! Notice they never actually quote the rationale of the Russians in this conflict. They can’t because they are liars and lying about Russia’s reasons for entering now, at this time. Read Putin’s own words from 7 months ago about his view of the political landscape. You don’t have to agree with it, but at least you should KNOW what he is saying.
What if all this color revolution coup is to further Globalism/Great Reset viz. Ukraine? Putin is no globalist, while China seems to be. Yet, China is reaping the cash until they can take it all over in their image. Turkey? Nope, not globalist. Hey, Boo Russia in public Turkey, but let us remember it was not too long ago, you were BESS FRANDS.
Is it too far fetched to think that Russia hit Ukraine to take out a major cash cow for the Globalist Cartel?
Enter Rood.
Lessons not Learned
Fisted makes correct point that Europe is cowardly. Rood noted in his book that ALL democracies regardless of level of democrat participation are, in fact, stupid—they have no clue what it means to be strategic. In fact, Rood goes on, they have no idea what the hell politics means in relation to war.
They are Blind. What’s earth shakingly laughable, is, they are too dumb to know it.
Long before mocking our elites was in fashion, Rood was making fun of “elite” brains, who in the end, really have no brains.
Rood does not address the particulars of this world event—he passed in 2011. His book is littered with detail after minute detail on world geopolitics before, and through WW2 into 1968 Czech invasion, Cuban crisis, Yom Kippur War, and many others.
The details do not matter because the lessons Rood drew from these events are as applicable now as they were then. Do we not learn?! No, we do not. Rood always reminds us that democratic countries never seem to learn the lessons that nearly cost them their life (the subtitle of his book).
He notes that, “democratic peoples [discount] the likelihood of war” quite often. The result is that they are always unprepared for it. Hardship comes to them and they seem surprised it came. Worse, those who decry the state of unpreparedness are often pariah. This is what happened to the most famous of the prophets warning war was coming, Winston Churchill. And, Churchill had the facts. He had numbers, real numbers delineating the increase of German armaments. He was ignored and labeled a crazy man. What Price Churchill?
Churchill also warned in 1946 that the Russians respect strength, and hate weakness. While this may be the case, it transcends their political ideology—Russia was communist and is now post-communist. Still their human drive is to hate weak nations.
Rood then writes something quite perceptive: nations in the west love stability above all other things. This is dominate GAE theory of the post WW2 era. Those who hate the new global order will resort to violence. The west wanted to fortify the new world order by peaceful progression, slowly, as if we do not notice it.
In this sense, Rood reminds us that despite the modern penchant to separate politics from war—the two are in fact flip side of the same coin. That is, politics and war go together. Our modern elites hate to think about, or talk about, war because it’s so…mean. Any wonder why they are always unprepared?! They live in a fantasy land of the world they wish was, but is not real. This division between war and politics is why they seek to appease their adversaries—they just don’t believe some people are really evil.
Rood only hints at it, but part of the problem is that in the west, our elites are shot through with arrogance. While they have no idea what politics and war is, and their symbiotic relationship, they also think they know they are superior, and that, to put it in 1930s mindset, it was believed that Japan is inferior—they have no real ingenuity. If you are thinking our elite education institutions were seriously a sham before WW2, you would be correct.
The effect of our wise and all-knowing elites meant that it created in the west an unspoken “ministry of truth.”1 MacArthur would once say, as just one exmaple of this, that Japan would never invade the Philippines. How cute. Western arrogance regards any warning about threats from abroad as fantastical. That Japan would be a threat to the USA goes back into the early 1900s, decades before the 1930s. Nah, our elites disbelieved Japan could ever be a threat, much less have the intelligence to think about being a threat.
Another example of western arrogance and corruption comes with the so-called think tanks of the age. The Carnegie Endowment once stated that Hitler only wanted peace, and that the Germans do not want a war.2 These useful idiots got a lot of play in the media, so much so, that people believed it. They trusted the elites, and the programming from the newspapers.
The lesson of all this? Listen:
From 1918 to 1933, Germany had laid the foundations for a new war machine. These foundations were laid under the very eyes of those powers who had paid such an enormous price to disarm her.3
Germany was rearming immediately after WW1, and the west ignored it all. Surprise!
Rood here marks Russia and China as the biggest threats to the west. Of course, he was writing at a time when Russia still called St. Petersburg, Leningrad.
Czechoslovakia 1968
“Strategic Inferiority of the Handmaiden of Defeat.”4
The lessons not learned continued well into the Cold War. Sometimes Nature must throttle human beings about for decades before they realize she is real. All the necessary signs were evident before the invasion of Czech. But the elites of the day all believed that the Soviet Union would not go so hard on things in Europe. They constantly saw them as a more less lovable adversary.
Now Rood does not say this, but that opinion of Soviets was perhaps because all of America’s institutions were captured by communists. Regardless, the good professor pointed out that they were nevertheless quite incorrect in what they said publicly. Listen to that our elites said:
The situation seems hardly to suggest that the safety of the United States rests in its own hands. But one is told that it requires a terribly sophisticated and cosmopolitan mind to grasp the subtleties of defense policies.
Stupid ordinary Americans could not understand that the Soviets were truly in a submissive position and they would not mess with the United States, even though, as Rood points out, we had less subs, less troops, less surface to air missiles. So you see, we are in an inferior position, but in elite speak, we were more powerful. Got it.
In this situation Rood states something most astonishing: the concept of something like Mutual Assured Destruction, and qualitative (not numerical) superiority is all obfuscation. Then, as now, this means: they may have more nukes, but we have better technology. This is important given the present circumstances, because it clouds the one question that Rood wants us to consider: “who is going to win the war?”
All through the lead up to the war in Czech, the fake news (yes, we had it then) said no invasion was coming. Heck, they even encouraged people to spend the summer vaca in Czechoslovakia! Czechoslovakia is for Lovers!
In the end, Russia invaded; the elite know-it-alls thus decided they would opt in the name of stability, to appease the Soviets instead of risk encouraging Czechoslovakians to fight for their freedom. They were even more shocked and dismayed that people of that country might have the backward notion they should defend their homeland. How dare they! The Soviets had the strategic advantage, Rood states, therefore, they took advantage. It really is that simple. The West was unprepared for any of it.
Cuba
So, why do we keep doing this—ignoring the threat. Well in Cuba, some 70-90 miles offshore in our own hemisphere, it was because we had,
short memory
neglect strategy
disbelieve war is coming
Thomas Jefferson noted that Cuba was a strategic asset to the U.S. Therefore, he would counsel we pay particular attention to the island. Unfortunately, our elites did not pay attention to Jefferson. The Soviets played that to their advantage, and manufactured an event that would decrease our reach around the world. First, they got us out of Libya, thus making our ability to defend allies more difficult—think Israel and the Yom Kippur War—we had no base after leaving Libya with which to assist them quickly. The Soviets could from multiple points, easily drop ship to the Arabs. Even a loss of a potential ally meant world-wide implications for the U.S. This was why the Soviets targeted Cuba—it was perfect to get into the heads of the Americans, and weaken us.
While the U.S. crowed about avoiding conflict and making the Soviets back down, in the final analysis we actually got our asses kicked. The Soviets successfully now had a base and active ally in Cuba with which to cause many troubles not just in our hemisphere but abroad, like in Africa:
For the first time since the Civil War, a major European power sent troops into an independent country in the western hemisphere to establish a regime that would favor its own interests.
Wait for it: as a part of the ending of the crisis in Cuba, the Soviets extracted a promise we would never invade Cuba.
WEAK.
Nations, who permit themselves to give up important strategic assets to purchase the goodwill of dictatorships in order to promote peace will pay a dreadful price when war does come. They may even be defeated.
Think about what Cuba could have done to out shipping lanes in our hemisphere. We now had to worry about that possibility.
Strategic Dimwits—”One may not Cancel what one does not See”
Near the end of the book, Rood speaks about the rhetoric used to defend the indefensible—that is to defend and obfuscate that our real capabilities are weak in comparison to our adversaries. Our elites did not know what they did not know.
War, Rood states, is simply a continuation of politics by violent means. How true. but our elites were completely enraptured by the Communists that they always said, publicly, that they are just closet democrats. How quaint. Now, whether that was just a purposeful lie, or the lie our elites told themselves does not matter because the result is the same.
Rood points out that to the people in charge of our strategic development actually thought that war was inimical to Nature herself. Hence it was always discounted. The military was thus changing into a force that cared more about the containment of politics over the destructive nature of what war was meant to do—further politics. Seems obvious perhaps to people who are not trained in how not to think in our higher ed institutions.
Yet, the elites are in a fog and travel on a ship of fools. They never thought the Soviet military movements would pose a threat to American strategy. They thought this despite time after time being literally proven wrong. I imagine Rood was always exasperated at all of this. Everything the Soviets did up to 1980 was at the expense of the west. They built; we did not. We limited our capabilities; they sought to increase theirs.
Sound familiar? See China.
The fact of the matter is, countries like China, and the former Soviets are always thinking about winning. They hate it when an American starts thinking about winning. Why? because that means the Americans might not accept their rather simple and obvious game. Worse: the Americans just might do something about it.
Kingdoms of the Blind seems dated—it is about old conflicts with a lot of old stats and assessments of old technology in terms of armament. But, the lessons we can glean from the book are timeless.
One piece that recently supports Rood’s thesis is Brian T. Kennedy who writes:
Though we have the technological capacity, America has not built an effective space-based and multilayered missile defense capable of protecting the United States. Despite Russia’s and China’s protestations, our rudimentary missile defense system is, at best, capable of stopping a limited number of North Korean missiles. For 40 years, Joe Biden—a long-time opponent of missile defense—and the Democrat establishment have opposed the necessary investments in our national security that would have provided us with an umbrella defense against nuclear missile attack. If we had a functioning political order we would be working on a national missile defense
—even with the technological challenges posed by hypersonic reentry vehicles and tactical nuclear weapons—with a Manhattan Project level of seriousness, as if our very lives depended on it. To be sure, the Russians and the Chinese have no qualms about building their own missile defenses and space-based capabilities.
What was it that Rood always said? Those who care about winning think about how to win, and build their capabilities so as to have a strategic superiority over their adversaries.
Did the West think it had superiority that they could impose their interest in Ukraine (cause a planned coup), then appoint their own ally to promote western money and western culture (Zelensky), then engage in criminal activity and buy off the authorities like a mafia, then use the country as a staging point to launder money of the Globalist oligarchs, then invite them into NATO and stage military units there? What actual strategic superiority did the West think it had to keep hostile neighbors in the region from acting before any of what they planned took root on the borders of Russia? And, the building of USA bio weapons labs (we now know this is a FACT), were to be used for what?
It is not like Russia did not signal in clear ways it would not permit this to happen—see Crimea invasion. That was their warning. And yet, the west arrogantly thought, nah, war won’t happen. We are superior! GAE is here to stay! Comply or be steamrolled.
Couple this with another important fact: Russia is NOT the Soviet Union. Putin has no love for communism—he never volunteered willingly to be in the party. The party came to him. He and his family was ravaged by Nazi’s though, and so, he is allergic to German Nazism, which he sees as American supported (because the USA funded Nazis in Ukraine. It’s true. Christendom is back in Russia; the country is building and rebuilding old eastern orthodox churches. This is not the Russia of the Boomers. But remind yourselves, the Boomers loved communist Russia, and now that they appear not communist….well, you know how this goes. Boomers are rejected mistresses and now they rage.
The point of all this is throw out my last two paragraphs, and what was the west’s strategic ability to thwart a Russian advance even if we wanted to? We had none. So it makes all the bloviating about war with Russia to protect Ukraine stupid, if not immoral because it puts our country at risk.
Addendum: Just as I was putting the final edits on this piece, something important dropped, which made me glad I delayed posting. The late Angelo Codevilla (memory eternal) wrote a book that is being posthumously published. Fortuitously, he speaks about Ukraine.
Consider this:
Russia has always been a Western country by virtue of its Christianity. Indeed, it has believed itself “The Third Rome,” and has acted as protector of Eurasia’s Christians against Islam. Today’s demographic and economic weakness has made it more Western than ever. No sooner had the USSR died than Russia restored the name Saint Petersburg to Peter the Great’s “window on the West.” As Moscow rebuilt its massive Christ the Savior cathedral to original specifications, it let countless priorities languish. As the Russian Orthodox Church resumed its place as a pillar of the Russia that had been Christianity’s bastion against the Mongol Horde as well as the Muslim Ottomans, golden domes soon shone throughout the land. Whatever anyone might think of the Russian Orthodox Church, it anchors the country to its Christian roots. Even under Soviet rule, Russians had gone out of their way to outdo the West in Western cultural matters. To call someone nekulturny (uncultured) was and remains a heavy insult in Russia.
Adams knew from personal experience, and would remind us, that Russia’s Westernism is not and never was imitation or love of the West. Rather, it is the assertion that Russia is an indispensable part of it. The Russians saved Europe from Napoleon. They are proud of having saved it from Hitler too. Their having done the latter tyrannically, as Soviets, does not, in their minds disqualify them from their rightful place in Europe or justify Europeans, much less Americans, trying to limit Russia’s rightful stature. Adams would recognize that today’s Russian rulers are not gentler or nicer than the emperor who shook off the Mongol yoke—who was not known as “Ivan the Nice Guy.” Today’s Russians, like their forebears, are calculating Russia’s stature in terms of the limits—primarily in Europe—set by their own present power as well as by that of their immediate neighbors. Today’s Russia is all about working the edges of limits it knows too well.
At this point I would make a small quibble, which may be something, and it may be nothing. Codevilla may be absolutely correct, and I could be so far off base that, well, there’s a reason I am not writing the books Codevilla does. Anyway it is this: Christianity cannot be all put together as some western conglomerate. Codevilla may be right that Christianity in the large puts Russia closer to the west. But, I am not so sure. The Eastern Orthodox are not the western orthodox for nothing! In fact, the eastern orthodox are much friendlier to the Muslims than they are the Latins. This is for historical reasons, not the least of which was the 4th Crusade, which, Rome has finally apologized for. I think it is just as possible that Russia becomes more eastern or Eur-Asian than not. Who knows! The Russians could be a bridge to help repair the damage done by the Catholic church (in the eyes of the East I mean). There’s a lot to unpack here, so I will leave it at that, only to say, the Ukrainians trying to westernize Eastern Orthodoxy by creating a whole new Patriarchate did not help matters (I am not making judgment here on whether or not that should have been done, but it ticked off ROC).
Codevilla understands that Russia is not aching for a glorious Soviet past. Putin’s aims are limited. As to the relations between Russia and China—they are not frands, and, if the USA played its cards right, they will eventually be enemies, not frenemies. The aims of the two countries are not the same. Russia has interest in Ukraine, that cannot be controlled, except for the parts that are clearly supportive of Mother Russia. Fun fact, the west cannot control Ukraine to an even lesser degree. So why fight for it?
Codevilla channels JQA for the proper perspective:
But Adams, the Monroe Doctrine’s author, would be willing to wage outright, destructive, economic war on Russia were the Russians to continue support of anti-U.S. regimes in the Western Hemisphere. If you want economic peace with America, he would say, stop interfering in our backyard. We Americans, for our part, are perfectly willing to reciprocate, regarding your backyard.
In sum, nothing would be geopolitically clearer to Adams than that natural policy for both America and Russia is not to go looking for opportunities to get in each other’s way.
Ken Masugi also posting selections from the forthcoming book, notes, much the same—be strong about our interests, promote them, but, realize Russia is not the Russia of the Boomer years. We may yet realize Putin will act beyond his capabilities, but as long as he stays out of our yard, we stay out of his.
In a more robust domestic landscape, promoting western interests might as well be accepted grudgingly by Putin, but even the west hates itself, and promotes all sorts of immoral things I briefly noted above. How Adams would say we had a reasonable ground to stand on to do that is fantasy. This does not make Codevilla or Masugi incorrect. It means we have to recover a reasonable foreign policy to have any change of strategically, and logistically, protect ourselves.
My friend Josiah Lippincott, in an earlier consideration, makes a stronger case about America’s interest. We have dictators at home. Why should we care about dictators abroad? In other words, our nation’s elites did everything they claim Putin is doing, only to their fellow man. The assault on us continues, all in the name of the Great Reset.
Just as we did not consent to be ruled by the present occupant of the White House, Ukrainians sure have not consented to be ruled by us. By the by, the ruling elite in this country already stole an election, and could care less about consent. Their lustful call for war is to secure their wealth, not allow us to pursue our own.
The entire GAE Media Complex only seeks to confuse us, not to clarify things for us. Our real interests are national, not personal. There’s no national concern we have in this conflict.
On that, all the authors in this addendum would seem to agree. As do I.
p. 15.
p. 49.
p. 51.
p. 80.