John, I went looking for a review of Matlock's book, and found instead a few more reviews written by him that might be of local interest. He seems to be quite diplomatic in general.
Working backward, in query.nytimes.com he takes on Hitchen's Kissinger book and another one. He is sympathetic to K, and I give him credit for a fairly even-handed discussion.
In a related vein, he takes on Shawcross's latest book in query.nytimes.com . A simlilarly judicious tone prevails. I particularly liked his conclusion:
It is obvious that the world community has not yet created effective international instruments to protect human rights. But the problem may be that human rights can be protected effectively only by the societies in which people live. How the international community can best support the development of civil societies and encourage responsible political leadership is one of the most daunting tasks facing humanity as it enters the new millennium. Pace Shawcross, the answer is likely to involve less military intervention from the outside and greater use of nonviolent political, economic and, especially, moral instruments.
On Vietnam, a recently revived topic, he reviewed McNamara's book and another in query.nytimes.com :
President George Bush's patient work to attract public and Congressional support, his diplomacy to build an international coalition and secure United Nations authority, and his decision to apply intense military force from the outset of hostilities were essential prerequisites to his victory in the gulf war. While that war did not end all the problems in the region, Bush was able to distinguish those issues amenable to a military solution (repelling the invasion of another country) from those that are less likely to be solved by military means (removing a foreign leader, arbitrating a civil war).
Examples of failures when these lessons are ignored are legion. The Carter Administration misunderstood the Soviet mind-set and failed to deter the invasion of Afghanistan. The Reagan Administration misunderstood the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's thinking and avoided direct communication, with the result that limited military actions provoked rather than deterred terrorist acts.
This guy obviously ain't cut out for a second career as bloviating pundit. More directly related to Matlock's personal experience, we got query.nytimes.com on a recent Russian study. I'll quote the lead on that one:
As Russia experiences a rocky transition from Communism to whatever the future may hold, the public has been assaulted by a litany of simplistic explanations for its obvious difficulties. Russia, some say, never experienced the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment or Age of Discovery and therefore cannot be expected to develop the sort of society produced by these formative experiences in West and Central Europe. Some say, in addition, that Russia has always been expansionist and therefore is likely to resume an imperial course whenever its strength allows. And then there is the old argument, often combined with the other two assertions, that Russia is not part of ''Europe'' or ''Western Civilization'' since it borrowed its religion from Constantinople rather than Rome.
In ''Russia Under Western Eyes'' Martin Malia takes on and demolishes these and other cliches that continue to infest our debate about what went wrong in Russia. Western opinion, he points out, has traditionally ''demonized or divinized'' Russia ''less because of her real role in Europe than because of the fears and frustrations, or the hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own domestic problems.''
Finally, he takes on some coverage of the pre-9/11 foreign demon of choice among the right, China, in the form of Chris Patten's account. query.nytimes.com
The claim that Asia's economic success resulted from specific Asian virtues has suffered a severe blow since the monetary and economic setbacks that became apparent last fall. Even so, the fallacy of this argument should have been obvious earlier. As Patten contends, what brought rapid economic development to the Asian ''tigers'' was the same thing that brought it to countries elsewhere: capitalism, hard work, frugality, limited government. There was no Asian miracle; if development was more rapid in some Asian countries than it had been in the West, that was because modern technology and communication have accelerated the process of change and because these countries were playing catch-up. It takes longer for a pioneer to clear the way than for late starters to follow a well-marked trail.
Patten heaps particular scorn on the thesis that authoritarian government fits the Asian character better than democratic institutions. It is understandable that dictators, their sycophants and those who aspire to dictatorship would make the argument; it is harder to explain why intelligent scholars and businessmen should be taken in by it. After all, in country after country we have seen that as people become more affluent they demand a part in their own governance. If this is denied, governments eventually fall (witness South Korea and Indonesia) and sometimes the entire fabric of the state is left in tatters, as in most of the former Soviet Union.
All in all, it makes me want to read more of Matlock. I imagine he's got some real stories to tell about secret war cabinet head Perle, but I doubt we'll ever see those in print. Matlock has also written a bunch of stuff for NYRB, see nybooks.com , you may be familiar with some of those. Finally, one last note from elsewere on the web, quite appropriate for the former George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. : globetrotter.berkeley.edu
George Kennan and the "X" Article
Now you come back to the academy, in a sense, and I've already noted that you are the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. I guess a way to talk about what happened on your watch as ambassador is to talk about George Kennan and his famous "X" article. Did the namesake of the chair that you hold call it right in that "X" article?
Absolutely. I've not agreed with all of the positions he has taken since then, although he's a very good friend of mine and I respect him greatly. But the "X" article I think was one of the most brilliant pieces of diplomatic reportage. It was not just the "X" article, but his long telegram, the official communication that preceded it. The "X" article was then doctored for the public -- it was the same arguments.
And this appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1948.
That's right. But his long telegram, which was sent and on which the "X" article was based, was really the key document which set U.S. policy. He convinced the policy makers on this policy which, broadly speaking, was our policy until the end of the Cold War. And it proceeded precisely as he predicted. Now at the time I think George thought that things would happen a little faster than they did. But the fact is, what he recommended was that we keep pressure on the Soviet Union so that they could not, by expansion, seem to justify an irrational system and thereby force them to confront the contradictions of that system. And that's exactly what happened. He predicted that if they were forced to confront the contradictions, the system would, in effect, collapse or moderate itself of its own accord. This happened. Now I think it happened a couple of decades after he had hoped it would, but that doesn't really matter. The time scales in this sort of thing are not important. The fact is, containment was our policy. It was successfully carried out, even when we were sometimes using methods that Kennan didn't approve of subsequently. The Soviet Union did collapse eventually, and certainly communist control of the Soviet Union collapsed as a result of having to confront these inner inconsistencies.
It's good to see at least one Reaganaut willing to give credit where credit is due on the end of the cold war. Not that that could possibly make any difference if you pay any attention to the legions of bloviating neocon pundits, but I imagine that when real history gets written, the real historians will pay a little more attention to Matlock than they do to the pundits. Doesn't seem to be the kind of guy that will rate many mentions by the local guardians of right wing dogma and self-evidently "correct" policy prescriptions, though. Matlock, like many others, just doesn't seem to be able to get with the "War Now!" program. |
