Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order by Charles Hill

Charles Hill was with the state department for many years, and he is now the ambassador in residence at Yale.  His thesis: you can't really understand statecraft using the reductive methods that dominate the social sciences. 

Instead, you need the big picture, and the big picture comes to us more often in literature or history than in any of the social sciences.  The arguments in the books are not well organized; I often got lost as his transitions are a little sloppy, and I was reading carefully. But it's worth the read anyway because a) I think Hill is right and b) the whole book is like being in conversation about statecraft with an erudite man who has vast experience in the subject, and who likes the same books as you do.  He made me think about Aeschylus and Xenophon in new ways.  A lovely reading experience. 

I can't quite figure out if his chapter on America is weak because I am not as well-versed as I should be on US literature, outside of the Federalist Papers, where the discussion is entirely too short, or whether the discussion is really weak.  It could be both;  Hill is one of those people who gets cranky about  he calls the dismantling of the canon, and acts like reading a book outside of the dead white males will kill you.  I have never understood this perspective.  I don't get why including more people into your reading and education, rather than fewer, makes for a better 'canon' of literature. I'm capable of reading both Mark Twain and Toni Morrison.  Thus the movement is towards inclusion rather than dismantling. 

Here is a link to the book.

And here is Charles Hill talking at the Hoover Institute about the book in a five series of videocasts.  These are well worth watching, even if I think Hill goes off the rails a bit at some points. 

Charles Hill, Part 1

Charles Hill, Part 2

Charles Hill, Part 3

Charles Hill, Part 4

Charles Hill, Part 5

Ike's Bluff by Evan Thomas, Threat Vector by Tom Clancy and ...

There has been for some time an historical literature rehabilitating Eisenhower's reputation as president. Of course, in part he looks better compared to some of his successors. In part, he is now portrayed as a military man who is quite aware of the costs of war, and unwilling to make war--but willing to have others believe he might be willing to use the atomic bomb. That's Thomas's notion of Ike's bluff. It draws on previous work a good deal.

Tom Clancy's last book was also about China as a problematic nation. Resource constraints force them to invade Siberia. In this book, in effect imitating the Japanese before and during WWII, they want to enlarge their influence on South and Southeast Asia to the edge of Australia, and the scheme here cyber invasion of US resources. Lots of hackers, lots of deniability. I can never tell how realistic are these books, and I tend to read to about p. 100 and then read pages 750-835, and sample in between. Thick and light.

Demonic possession, exorcism, and the Devil

So I have been reading Brian Levack's The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West, published by Yale University Press.   I've gotten rather interested the topic, as I have been reflecting on the limits that states place on individual autonomy around issues such as refusing medical care, because of ideological or religious reasons, for children who not at the age of consent.

 Nothing perhaps pushes this idea more than exorcism.  Levack notes that exorcisms have not gone away: there's a real surge in the number of exorcisms in the late 20th and early 21st century.  Levack points out that exorcisms tend to surge during times of social change and unrest--a similar time  would be the surge of exorcisms that occurred during the Reformation.

There are celebrity exorcists! One claims to have to exorcised 70,000 people. 

Levack appeared on Tom Ashcroft's  NPR's On Point. It's very much worth a listen.

The major thesis centers around how demoniacal behavior is embedded within the culture--that is, even where there are obvious cases of mental or neurological illnesses attributed to demonic possession, many of those manifest according to lines where symptoms are culturally transgressive.

 The other interesting point: 70 to 80 percent of demoniacs are women
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PS by Martin Krieger. See the work of Moshe Sluhovsky re women....

Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early Modern Catholicism [Hardcover]  and his earlier work

Moshe Sluhovsky

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Bureaucratic Politics--Allison and Zelikow, Wohlstetters. What Should We Teach?

 I am not sure we  teach our students what might be called bureaucratic politics. I have been reading the second edition of Graham Allison (and Philip Zelikow), Essence of Decision (1971, 1999).  In Allison’s terms, this would be Model III (bureaucratic politics). I know we do his Model I and given our organization and institutional analysis people, we do Model II.

 I had just read Feith’s account of Iraq in the Bush administration, War and Decision, a story that was mostly bureaucratic politics. I would imagine that students who work in government or in other corporate contexts would appreciate the stuff on bureaucratic politics.

I have also been reading Alfred Wohlstetter, the RAND guy on strategic analysis, (Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter)  and the Pearl Harbor book by Roberta W. Do we teach any of this sort of systems analysis? Pearl Harbor is about standard operating procedures and organizational outputs and somewhat lesser bureaucratic politics.  From what I can see International Relations does not do this. (They might do bureaucratic politics, but I don’t know.)

Henry Rowen's long discussion of the Wohlstetters in Nuclear Heuristics is terrific in its detail, its context, and its understanding.

Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared

I am currently reading a book by Christopher Fowler called Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared.Number 27 is Barbara Pym, and I am in a huff on her behalf. She is not forgotten. However, he also includes Dickens and R.L. Stevenson for their their lesser known works.

A quote of Barbara Pym's captures the imagination:

Only two years after her rediscovery, she succumbed to a recurrence of breast cancer. She said 'The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things. The trivial pleasures like cooking, one's home, little poems, especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard."

The book does not have a generalizable theory for why some authors, very popular in their day, fade from the public eye.  Instead, it tells individual, short bios of the authors.  The authors are all novelists, no non-fiction.

Warning: you will find A LOT more books you wish to read, and for those of us with tottering towers on the nightstand, and books stacked on the stairs, and very full backpacks, this may not be good news.

Lean in by Sheryl Sandberg

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg is one of those books you read because it's all over the news and there's The Debate: is it feminist, can be it feminist if there's no interest in social justice whatsoever (there isn't); oh, all those arguments are specious, women are just catty towards successful women like Sandberg and that's why she's getting all this flack, yada yada.  

I am not sufficiently educated in contemporary feminist thought to comment on whether the book is a good reflection of popular feminism, other than I hope it is not. I do know that I found it to be the typical bloviating business memoir fare--and it's probably a sign of progress that a woman finally gets to be the big blowhard dispensing advice and telling long, drawn-out stories about herself that are thinly veiled brags but are intended as Valuable Lessons To All.  And that's generally what we have. She's right about the different way people perceive assertiveness in men and women, but that's been pretty well-known for some time.  The major take-away from the book is that the consequences for having people think you are pushy are less severe than the consequences of not going after what you want, and that's a pretty good message so far as it goes.

And, the advice is generally good: be assertive, ask directly for what you need, make sure you are involved in the key roles/decisions, be a part of a juggernaut company, be willing to make lateral moves if the new roles are enriching enough, expect your partner to contribute to your marriage and family, and don't expect mentors to be interested in you personally (the unstated; in the narcissistic world of upper level managers who fancy themselves great leaders, it's easier to get them to help you if you fawn over them and are generally attractive).

Again, all fine, if somewhat obvious bits of business advice. That said, to get to them you will have to sit through rather long, self-referential stories about that Thing that Happened to Me Me Me.  It's tempting, in a world whether we treat experience as knowledge, to believe that these personal stories are terribly meaningful,  and that others will benefit from them. And that can be true: you just need to  be amusing and brief, but Sandberg isn't.  The result is boring and cringe-worry when you realize you have just spent three pages reading about how, when she was placed on Forbes' most influential women list at number six above Michelle Obama,  she should have taken all the compliments she received more gracefully than she did.  All well and true, no doubt, but not the sort of situation that many of us are likely to have to fret about, and all in order to convey the point that could be summed on that internet meme with the advice-dispensing duck--"Own your successes."

I read these things so that others don't have to.

Oddly, the book's notes are well worth buying the book for. In the notes you get to avoid all the self-congratulations and in-groupy, name-droppy stories and find plenty of recent empirical studies--with tons of intelligent commentary--about the state of women in the workforce.  So if you do bychance wind up with the book,  I'd suggest taking the memoir part very lightly and go straight to the notes.

Julie Annas--An Introduction to Plato's Republic

I've become preoccupied with actor-centered theories of justice lately, and that lead me back to Plato and re-reading The Republic.  I also picked up Julia Annas' Introduction to Plato's Republic as I remember one of my undergraduate professors used a chapter in this book.  The entire book is a terrific guide through The Republic, and Annas is a marvelous writer. I did part company with her, however, towards the end; unlike me, Annas has no time for Book 10 of The Republic, whereas I love that Book.  Plato is so wonderfully playful throughout all his writings, but Book 10 is one of those places where he is both playful and somewhat mystical, and for such an analytical man who was terribly hard on poets, it's great fun to see him cutting loose with his own flight of fancy. I suspect that it's all to impressionistic for most Platonists, given the significance of his other writings.

Just as a refresher, Book 10 is where Plato develops his Myth of Er, and where Socrates turns to his friend (and Plato's brother Glaucon)  with the pronouncement that the soul is, of course, immortal! For me, I've always found the last chapter to be a delightful surprise, even if I've never been 100 percent clear on its interpretation. Annas, however, brooks no sympathy with this odd book: she refers to Book 10 and the myth as "lame" and "messy."  Nonetheless, Annas helped me out tremendously with my studies in humanism.

George Shultz: Turmoil and Triumph

I have been dipping into George Shultz's 1000 page memoir of his being Secretary of State under Reagan. He is famous for:  economists' lags are politicians' nightmares, but there is lots more. The book is Turmoil and Triumph.

As I now read it more sequentially, I am impressed by his account of his thinking, and of how he worked with Reagan, and the bureaucratic politics he had to work with. Reagan comes off better than usually portrayed. I cannot judge if Shultz is reliable or accurate in his account, but at least it is not bragging or hiding. The tone is very very different than Condolezza Rice's recent memoir, where I wish there was more thinking and more detail.

I don't know how Shultz is viewed as a Secretary of State, or more generally in his public service. What I am struck by is his recurrent attempts to make for a strategic plan for moving forward on various issues (he says it is his training as an economist), his negotiating skills (he was a labor economist and mediatory), and his willingness to admit setbacks and defeats.

What is also impressive is his account of Foreign Service Officers, their skills and talents, their imperfections and idiocies.  I could imagine wanting to become such an Officer after reading this book. Neither James Baker's nor Rice's had that effect.

I need to read memoirs by Democratic Secretaries of State, since the end of WWII.