The Lost Balance of Power

In 1990, the Soviet Union disappeared. After 15 years, I realize how much we miss it. Not for its political system, nor for its brand of Marxism (an excuse for dictatorial state-capitalism) and neither for its international policies.

I regret its lost existence.

How come? Tonight, after dinner at our house in Brussels, while we were speaking about the urban problems Budapest suffers under, since the the arrival of wild capitalism, my 83 year-old mother in law, holocaust victim (Auschwitz), who grew up and lived under and after nazism in Budapest, said suddenly: "All that happens, because of the disappearance of the Soviet Union!"
At first, I didn't understand. She left Hungary for the United States in 1948, disgusted with the secret police and censure practices of the then ruling Hungarian Communist Party, of which she was a member since before the war. She was stranded in Brussels on her way to the States, for, under upcoming McCarthyism, as a former CP-member, a visa was denied to her. So, it couldn't be a lost love suddenly revived.

Henry Kissinger, a realpolitiker, *1923 in Germany, (here in 1973 with Chou-En-Lai), and my mother in law Kati, *1922 in Hungary, another realpolitiker...

But, all of a sudden, I understood: This was old and weathered Central-European Jewish wisdom. Never trust humanity. Good intentions, culture, civilization, democracy, they are all O.K. - but only a fine balance of power contains the more wild illusions and the extravagancies they bring about.

The Soviet status as a second superpower contained mad American ambitions. To a far greater degree so, as I subsumed. Before 1990, US behavior on the internal and international stages was limited by caution, care for allies, and an effort to appear as rational, peace-minded and compassionate.
All that is lost now.
I did not expect it.
I did not see, in 1991, how dangerous the Fukuyama propositions were ("The End of History").
I laughed at his vulgar Hegelianism: The World Spirit (Weltgeist) had found its fulfillment in American democracy. No more limits to individual deployment. And, putting the individual on a par with the victorious State: No more limits to State deployment.
These power-drunken illusions were to be transcribed into a cynical power strategy in the neocon papers for "An American Century" (1995). A centenary empire - it should have made me think of the German "Millenary Empire" of some sixty years ago.
For eight years, the Clinton bonhomie masked effectively what was fermenting within American minds. Even George W. Bush, in his first eighteen months, remained, in international affairs, on the cautious side.
But in 1999, the war against Serbia, I should have known: The issue was limited - ending the Serbian oppression of the Kosovar Albanese majority. But the objectives as imposed by the US in Fontainebleau in February, were nothing less than a complete surrender of Serbia, its occupation and a temporary foreign authority as ruling power. The bombing of civil targets, during the campaign, was also imposed by the Americans, while European NATO-allies were at the brakes. The Russian intervention at the end of the campaign was nothing more than symbolic.
But also nothing less than that. It made manifest, that the ruthless ways of the new unique superpower opened opportunities for lesser powers to snatch away some profits for themselves. Profits that are not necessarily to the benefit of Democracy. (It gave them a free hand in Chechnia). And now, the Iranian Mullah regime emerges as the main winner by the US Iraq policy.

I (naïvely) thought, that the checks and balances garanteeing a humane, democratic and cautious approach, were laid down in the American Constitution, its Amendments and its liberal, individualistic culture. But I was wrong. In international policies, the only thing that counts is: power. And power can only be contained by countervailing power.

On the long run, the Soviet Union will be replaced by China as another superpower. That is no consolation. We need a countervailing power sooner, and it should, preferably, be a democratic one.

Be it willy-nilly: It cannot be another than Europe, for now.

Middlesex. 6.2.06 [NL]

6/2: Vandaag verder gelezen in: Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex. Het gaat eigenlijk weinig over sex. 't Is een heel goed geschreven historische familieroman. Prima research, ongelooflijk beeldende details. Maar ik weet nog niet wat de tragische geslachtsvergissing met de hele uitkomst te maken heeft. Aanbevolen als kijk op de twintigste-eeuwe geschiedenis!

 

16/2: Maar, wat kan die man (eerst: vrouw) uitweiden! Bij mij roept hij herinneringen op aan de sfeer van de jaren '40 tot en met '70. Het midden van de 20ste eeuw zal misschien ooit bekend staan als "The Breaking of Families".

 

Verward in de nieuwe tijd, konden langdurige (steeds langduriger) huwelijken het niet houden. James-Stewart illusies over een volkomen nieuw leven voor jongeren, mits na breuk met clan, deden de rest. Individualisme leek op zijn hoogtepunt, maar eigenlijk was het een groot conformisme.

 

Door zijn speciale geschiedenis van identiteitsverwisseling, ontsnapt Eugenides (wat een naam voor een pseudo-hermafrodiet!) daaraan.  En toch blijken liefde en zorg voor elkaar, met zijn nieuwe Japanse vriendin, een oplossing te bieden.

 

Een oplossing die niets anders is dan de terugkeer naar familiaal leven.

 

The Weakly Standard (5): Strong-Government Conservatism

This week's Weekly Standard features a long article by Executive Editor Fred Barnes: Strong-Goverment Conservatism - How George W. Bush has redefined the American Right. (p. 28 sqq.)

The Soviet Union is dead. Personality cult is alive and kicking.

This ridiculous, poster-like, portait of the Strong Man covers an entire page of our favored weekly. Maybe, it should have been the cover of this issue. But then, I think, the Kristol family vetoed it, having some reminiscences of similar propaganda posters, like, for instance, this one:

Or that one:

Or, for that matter, Stakhanov-posters from de Soviet Stalin aera, would also do.

The article itself is of the Byzantinist kind, well known from the eulogies to Walter Ulbricht or to Erich Honecker, that used to eat up so much printing space in East German "theoretical" journals.

I cannot help to be reminded of the texts that people like Karl Radek, Kamenev or Lunacharski, defeated "left" and "right" Bolshevik opponents, dedicated, during the first half of the thirties, to the "genius" of Joseph Stalin. It has not saved their lives: From 1937 on, they were unmasked as capitalist agents and as saboteurs during mock-trials and then disposed of.

Barnes' endless rambling about the un-conservative, un-libertarian, un-small government, un-sound spending policies and idealistic foreign nation-building of Mr. Bush, is in fact a "tongue in cheek" history: All those un-conservative policies on key issues are ... a genial twist in strategy in order to save: Conservatism in the 21st century!

This way of dealing with an unavoidable imperial grip on reality is not unlike the one applied by those historical Bolshevik intellectuals, who had accompanied Lenin from the beginning of the century, had gone through endless theoretical debates then, and knew very well, that Stalin's justifications for "Socialism in One Country", or "the main struggle is against Social(democrat) fascism", or "Death to the Kulacks" had nothing to do with the construction of Socialism and were mere rubbish. Genial rubbish, but rubbish. Their contempt for the intellectual capacities of the Georgian upstart, who reigned as a Czar over their Party, can easily be read between the lines. But always, at the end of their texts, came suddenly and out of the blue their servile praise of the Great Helmsman, whatever his last 180° turn of the moment was: Praise for the genius of the Plan, praise for the genius of abandoning the Plan, praise for the United Fronts against Fascism, praise for the genius of the Treaty with Hitler.

Barnes' life is not in danger. Bush is not a Stalin. Nevertheless, Barnes betrays his inner convictions as if it were.
O.K., for who can read between the lines, it is evident, that this president Bush is an egomaniac, a dangerous fool, full of contradictions.

Even the strong-man poster may be a subtle encouragement to democratic-minded conservatives, to come out and say that this presidential posture is un-American. Such a subtle play might fit into an entrist strategy, which would make the neoconservative weekly perhaps the most effective opposition against Bushist policies.

That is why I will not leave it alone.

Our great poet Henriëtte Roland Holst said it so well, in the middle of strongman's power plays in de revolutionary socialist movement at the end of the First World War:

"De zachte krachten zullen winnen, in het eind":
"(The weakly bodied forces will win, at the end of the day)"

And what about that love boat cruise in February?

Bush and Miers. Bush and Merkel.

Bush and Miers. Bush and Merkel.

Where had I stumbled before, on this same, patronizing, ideal-son-in-law, father-in-law look?
Suddenly I remembered: Bush and Miers! In the White House. When he launched her ill-fated candidacy for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Today, it is Ms. Angela Merkel, incoming German "Bundeskanzlerin", to whom the burning, hopeful eyes of little Caligula Bush are pointed.

It must have something to do with George W.'s relation to his mother, Barabara Bush. Did she neglect little George? Did she prefer the other sons? Was the revenge of George Jr. related to seducing other women to come to his defense? Did that become a neurotic need to have a number of women around, who, in contrast to his mother, cared about little George? Women like Condi, Miers and the new State Department Envoy (Whatshername?), who proclaim, loudly and clearly, that the president is caring?

I cannot go deeper, at this moment, into the sources of this particular presidential way of dealing with strong, caring, women. Who has a clue?