"WHAT EXCUSE TO WE HAVE FOR NOT WORKING TOGETHER TODAY?"

February 15, 2015

WHAT EXCUSE DO WE HAVE FOR NOT WORKING TOGETHER TODAY?”

Helping Others Who Need Our Help
 in Recognition of Our Common Humanity


More than a decade ago, noted historian Jim Horton was commenting about the meaning of the Underground Railroad, and he said something close to the following:

“If people back then would help others, not even knowing who they were and at risk to their own lives, what excuse do we have for not working together today?”

That powerful statement has motivated me from the day I heard it.  It lies at the heart of my commitment to tell the story of the Underground Railroad and other stories like it which demonstrate man’s humanity and one’s willingness to help another who needs help notwithstanding the personal risk involved.

I was recently reminded of this as I read a remarkable diary of a woman named Iris Origo who lived in the Tuscan countryside during the height of World War II.*  The German Nazi Army was in control of the surrounding land, yet there were allied prisoners of war who had escaped from Nazi internment camps and others who had become detached from their units.

This diary includes many remarkable stories which bring to life the same values of courage and cooperation and perseverance which undergird the story of the Underground Railroad.  They are yet another example of why stories like those of the Underground Railroad can provide inspiration on how we can live at our best today by helping others who need our help no matter where we live.

Iris Origo owned an estate not far from Florence.  She, along with other partisans were risking their lives rescuing escaped allied prisoners of war and other allied soldiers who had been detached from their units.  I love the way she explained the motivation of those who were helping these soldiers at the risk of their own lives.  It reminded me of what motivated the heroes of the Underground Railroad.

“What, it may be asked,” she wrote, “was the motive underlying the generous help given to the hunted Allied prisoners of war by the Italian countryfolk, often at the risk of their own lives?  It would be a mistake, I think, to attribute it to any political – or even patriotic – motive.  There was, it is true, a certain amount of anti-German and anti-Fascist feeling, especially among those peasants whose sons had been in the army against their will.  But the true motive was a far simpler one.  It has been described by an Italian partisan as ‘the simplest of all ties between one man and another; the tie that arises between the man who asks for what he needs, and the man who comes to his aid as best he can.  No unnecessary emotion or pose.’” 

*War in Val D’Orcia – An Italian War Diary – 1943-1944 by Iris Origo



An English officer, himself an escaped prisoner of war, who owed his life to the help given him in this manner, expressed views in almost identical words:  ‘The peasants’ native sympathy with the under-dog and the outcast asserted itself.  Simple Christianity impelled them to befriend those complete strangers, feed them, clothe them, and help them on their way.  All over Italy this miracle was to be seen, the simple dignity of humble people who saw in the escaped prisoners not representatives of a power to be withstood or placated, but individuals in need of their help.’”

This example was repeated many times:

Of the 70,000 Allied p.o.w.s at large in Italy on September 8th, 1943, nearly half escaped, either crossing the frontier to Switzerland or France, or eventually rejoining their own troops in Italy; and each one of these escapes implies the complicity of a long chain of humble, courageous helpers throughout the length of the country. “I can only say,” wrote General O’Connor to Iris Origo, “that the Italian peasants and others behind the line were magnificent.  They could not have done more for us.  They hid us, escorted us, gave us money, clothes and food – all the time taking tremendous risks…We English owe a great debt of gratitude to those Italians whose help alone made it possible for us to live, and finally to escape.”

Iris Origo concluded with these words:

“It will, I think, be obvious that I love Italy and its people.  But I have become chary of generalizations about countries and nations; I believe in individuals, and in the relationship of individuals to one another.  When I look back upon these years of tension and expectation, of destruction and sorrow, it is individual acts of kindness, courage or faith that illuminate them; it is in them that I trust.  I remember a British prisoner of war in the Val d’Orcia helping the peasant’s wife to draw water from the well, with a ragged, beaming small child at his heels.  I remember the peasant’s wife mending his socks, knitting him a sweater, and baking her best cake for him, in tears, on the day of his departure.”

There were other heroes who reached out to save the lives of others.  One of them was the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal della Costa.  When some of his nuns were arrested because they had given shelter to some Jewish women in their convent, he went straight to the German Command.  “I have come to you,” he said, “because I believe you, as soldiers, to be people who recognize authority and hierarchy – and who do not make subordinates responsible for merely carrying out orders.  The order to give shelter to those unfortunate Jewish women was given by me:  therefore I request you to free the nuns, who have merely carried out orders, and to arrest me in their stead.” 

“The German immediately gave orders for the nuns to be freed,” Ms. Origo writes, “but permitted himself to state his surprise that a man like the Cardinal should take under his protection such people as the Jews, the scum of Europe, responsible for all the evils of the present day.  The Cardinal did not enter upon the controversy.  ‘I look upon them,’ he said, ‘merely as persecuted human beings; as such it is my Christian duty to help and defend them.  One day,’ he gave himself the pleasure of adding, ‘perhaps not far off, you will be persecuted:  and then I shall defend you.’”


January 22, 2015

“WORLD ORDER” BY HENRY KISSINGER-THE DANGER OF "MESSIANIC VISIONS"

This is one of the most erudite, comprehensive accumulations of wisdom which I’ve ever read. 


It reveals the insidious impact of "messianic visions" of one's country 
or religion or dogma of any kind that become so "exclusionary" that the rights 
of others are ignored or given scant respect and at worst become the rationale 
for killing others. 

I am not sure there is any antidote to this other than the belief that we are 
all creatures of God endowed with God-given rights-- even though history sadly 
demonstrates that  this antidote is often not strong enough to overcome the 
human tendency to seek meaning for one's existence by comparing ourselves as a 
group to some "other" group. 

I will try to illuminate, using Kissinger’s words, some of these multiple
“messianic visions” which have brought with them great tragedy as well as no small
amount of good. 

Today,these “messianic visions", if pursued unilaterally and without recognition of other people's history and culture and respect for the right of everyone to
“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” will continue to lead to enormous
human suffering.

Theme #1.  The messianic ambition of the United States and how it has formed our policy, leading to great good and considerable harm.  For example: 

·      As John Winthrop, a Puritan lawyer who left East Anglia to escape religious suppression, preached aboard the Arbella in 1630, bound for New England, God intended America as an example for “all people”:

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “may the Lord make it like that of New England.”  For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us.

None doubted that humanity and its purpose would in some way be revealed and fulfilled in America.

·      As the frontiers of the nation crept across the continent, the expansion of America was seen as the operation of a kind of law by nature.  When the United States practiced what elsewhere was defined as imperialism, Americans gave it another name:  “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

·      The American experience supported the assumption that peace was the natural condition of humanity, prevented only by other countries’ unreasonableness or ill will.

·      John Quincy Adams summed up these sentiments in 1821, in a tone verging on exasperation at other countries’ determination to pursue more complicated and devious courses.

America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendships, or equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.  She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.  She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.  She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

·      In 1839, as the official United States Exploring Expedition reconnoitered the far reaches of the hemisphere and the South Pacific, the United States Magazine and Democratic Review published an article heralding the United States as “the great nation of futurity,” disconnected from and superior to everything in history that had preceded it:

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of national Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes.  On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history.

We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march?  Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.

The United States was thus not simply a country but an engine of God’s plan and the epitome of world order.

Talk about haughty presumption.

·      Like many American leaders before him, Woodrow Wilson asserted that a divine dispensation had made the United States a different kind of nation.  “It was as if,” Wilson told the graduating class at West Point in 1916, “in the Providence of God a continent had been kept unused and waiting for a peaceful people, who loved liberty and the rights of men more than they loved anything else, to come and set up an unselfish commonwealth.”

Nearly all of Wilson’s predecessors in the presidency would have subscribed to such a belief.  Where Wilson differed was in his assertion that an international order based on it could be achieved within a single lifetime, even a single administration.

Theme #2.  The messianic vision of Islam.  Its ambition to rule the whole world.  For example:

·      Other religions—especially Christianity—have had their own crusading phases, at times exalting their universal mission with comparable fervor and resorting to analogous methods of conquest and forced conversions.  (Spanish conquistadores abolished ancient civilizations in Central and South American in the sixteenth century in a similar spirit of world-conquering finality.)  The difference is that the crusading spirit subsided in the Western world or took the form of secular concepts that proved less absolute (or less enduring) than religious imperatives.  Over time, Christendom became a philosophical and historical concept, not an operational principle of strategy or international order.  That process was facilitated because the Christian world had originated a distinction between “the things which are Caesar’s” and “the things that are God’s,” permitting an eventual evolution toward pluralistic, secular-based foreign policies within a state-based international system.

·      No single society has ever had the power, no leadership the resilience, and no faith the dynamism to impose its writ enduringly through the world.  Universality has proved elusive for any conqueror, including Islam.  As the early Islamic Empire expanded, it eventually fragmented into multiple centers of power.

·      In the spring of 1947, Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian watchmaker, schoolteacher, and widely read self-taught religious activist, addressed a critique of Egyptian institutions to Egypt’s King Farouk titled “Toward the Light.”  It offered an Islamic alternative to the secular national state.  In studiedly polite yet sweeping language, al-Banna outlined the principles and aspirations of the Egyptian Society of Muslim Brothers (known colloquially as the Muslim Brotherhood), the organization he had founded in 1928 to combat what he saw as the degrading effects of foreign influence and secular ways of life.

Though he did not use the terms, al-Banna was arguing that the Westphalian world order had lost both its legitimacy and its power.  And he was explicitly announcing that the opportunity to create a new world order based on Islam had arrived.  “The Islamic way has been tried before,” he argued, and “history has testified as to its soundness.” 

Ambiguities lingered in al-Banna’s text, but the record of many Islamist thinkers and movements since then has resolved them in favor of a fundamental rejection of pluralism and secular international order.  The religious scholar and Muslim Brotherhood ideologist Sayyid Qutb articulated perhaps the most learned and influential version of this view.  In 1964, while imprisoned on charges of participating in a plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser, Qutb wrote Milestones, a declaration of war against the existing world order that became a foundational text of modern Islam.

In Qutb’s view, Islam was a universal system of offering the only true form of freedom:  freedom from governance by other men, man-made doctrines, or “low associations based on race and color, language and country, regional and national interests” (that is, all other modern forms of governance and loyalty and some of the building blocks of Westphalian order).  Islam’s modern mission, in Qutb’s view, was to overthrow them all and replace them with what he took to be a literal, eventually global implementation of the Quran.

In the purist version of Islamism, the state cannot be the point of departure for an international system because states are secular, hence illegitimate; at best they may achieve a kind of provisional status en route to a religious entity on a larger scale.

·      As Khomeini elaborated, “We must strive to export our Revolution throughout the world, and must abandon all idea of not doing so, for not only does Islam refuse to recognize any difference between Muslim countries, it is the champion of all oppressed people.”  This would require an epic struggle against “America, the global plunderer,” and the Communist materialist societies of Russia and Asia, as well as “Zionism, and Israel.”

Theme #3.  The messianic vision of China. 

·      From its unification as a single political entity in 221 B.C. through the early twentieth century, China’s position at the center of world order was so ingrained in its elite thinking that in the Chinese language there was no word for it.  Only retrospectively did scholars define the “Sinocentric” tribute system.  In this traditional concept, China considered itself, in a sense, the sole sovereign government of the world.  Its Emperor was treated as a figure of cosmic dimensions and the linchpin between the human and the divine.  His purview was not a sovereign state of “China”—that is, the territories immediately under his rule—but “All Under Heaven,” of which China formed the central, civilized part:  “the Middle Kingdom,” inspiring and uplifting the rest of humanity. 

In this view, world order reflected a universal hierarchy, not an equilibrium of competing sovereign states.  Every known society was conceived of as being in some kind of tributary relationship with China, based in part on its approximation of Chinese culture; none could reach equality with it.

A Chinese foreign ministry was not established until the mid-nineteenth century, and then perforce to deal with intruders from the West.  Even then, officials considered their task the traditional practice of barbarian management, not anything that might be regarded as Westphalian diplomacy.

Russia, too, has had its messianic vision, one rekindled by President Putin in recent years.

Needless to say, Nazi Germany was propelled by Hitler's corrupt messianic vision of an exclusive Aryan race ruling the world

 It is from the cloak of exclusive messianic visions that war and untold human tragedy flow.  It is in the failure of these visions to recognize that we all have endowed God-given rights that need to be respected and honored.

*****

Some other mind-opening reflections from Kissinger:

·      We will usually be better served as Edmund Burke once wrote, “to acquiesce in some qualified plan that does not come up to the full perfection of the abstract idea, and to push for the more perfect.”

·      In the United States, the quest for world order functions on two levels: the salvation of universal principles needs to be paired with the recognition of the reality of other regions’ history and culture.  We failed the test on balance many times, including in our relationship with Russia over the past decade.  We failed when we intervened in Iraq as we did and in Vietnam as we did decades before that. 

·      Kissinger relates that, in his youth, he was brash enough to think himself able to pronounce on “The Meaning of History.”  He now knows, he says, “that history’s meaning is a matter to be discovered, not declared; a question we must attempt to answer as best we can and recognition that it will remain open to debate; that each generation will be judged whether the greatest, most consequential issues of the human condition have been faced, and the decision to meet these challenges must be taken by statesmen before it is possible to know what the outcome may be.”

·      Order should not have priority over freedom.  But the affirmation of freedom should be elevated from a mood to a strategy.  The quest for humane values, the expression of elevated principles is a first step; they must then be carried through the inherent ambiguities and contradictions of all human affairs which is the task of policy.

·      Great statesman, or I would say leaders, however different their personalities, almost invariably had an instinctive feeling for the history of their societies.  As Edmnud Burke wrote, “People will not look forward to posterity who never looked back to their ancestors.”

·      There are traps in the all-pervasive technology that exists today.  Approbation has become the goal, Kissinger says.   Communication risks being reduced to a series of slogans designed to capture short-term approbation.  Foreign policy is in danger of turning into a subdivision of domestic politics instead of an exercise in shaping the future.  The search for perspective may well be replaced by a hardening of differences, statesmanship by posturing, per Kissinger.  We’re seeing a lot of that these days.  The challenge of technology is captured in a poem of T.S. Eliot: 

“Where is the Life we’ve lost in living it? 

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? 

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Kissinger:  “Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance, analysis, interpretation, at least in the foreign policy world, depend on context and relevance.




FM_WorldOrder_HenryKissinger122914

A Study in the Power of Trust and Teamwork-"Boys in the Boat"

December 24, 2014


“The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown

A magnificent story of nine young men who labored valiantly with two great coaches from the University of Washington to win the Olympic Gold Medal in 1936 in Berlin.

It is a story that vividly brings to life the power of trust and teamwork and giving one’s last ounce of effort for a noble cause.

It made me appreciate  even more than I had before the values to be gained from great sportsmanship. I came to see as never before how crew like other team sports teaches much of what is most important about life.

It teaches teamwork, for the synchronized effort of the eight crew members and coxswain is fundamental for success.  It teaches the importance of practice, practice, practice.  Of dedication to technique.  It teaches the importance of drawing on the last ounce of one’s energy and courage, past the point of feeling the body could do anymore, or the mind either.  As George Yeoman Pocock, the designer of virtually all the winning crew shells of that generation said, “where is the spiritual power of rowing?  The losing of self entirely to the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole.” 

Joe Rantz, who emerges as perhaps the “hero” of the book, though every one of these boys was a hero, discovered the moment that led him to break through was when Pocock told him that he needed to learn how to trust. “Joe, when you really start trusting those other boys, you will feel a power working within you that is far beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. Sometimes you will feel as if you’ve rowed right off the planet and are rowing among the stars.”

As the “Husky Clipper” (Washington U.’s boat) approached the finish line, author Brown vividly recalls the scene,  “Joe realized with startling clarity that there was nothing more he could do to win the race, beyond what he was already doing.  Except for one thing.  He could finally abandon all doubt, trust absolutely without reservation that he and the boy in front of him and the boys behind him would all do precisely what they needed to do at precisely the instant they needed to do it.  He had known that in that instant that there could be no hesitation, no shred of indecision.  He had no choice but to throw himself into each stroke as if he were throwing himself off a cliff into a void, with unquestioned faith that the others would be there to save him from catching the whole weight of the shell on his blade.  And, he had done it.  Over and over, 44 times per minute, he had hurled himself blindly into his future, not just believing but knowing that the other boys would be there for him, all of them, moment by precious moment.”

Trust in the team. Again and again, I have seen it play out. At P&G, at Yale, at Disney.

The team’s coach, Al Ubrickson, said it this way: “Every man in the boat had absolute confidence in every one of his mates. Why they won cannot be attributed to individuals. Heart felt cooperation all spring was responsible for the victory.”

I am reminded of a belief expressed by the legendary football coach, Vince Lombardi. “I don’t necessarily have to like my associates, but as a man I must love them. Love their loyalty; love their teamwork. Love respects the dignity of the individual. Heart power is the strength of a corporation.”

This also took me back to the wonderful words of Marina Keegan, a young Yale valedictorian that tragically died in a car accident driving home with her boyfriend right after her graduation.  She used these eloquent words to describe what she termed as “the opposite of loneliness”. This is what she felt when she was with her classmates:  “there was just this feeling that there were people, an abundance of people, who were in this together.”

People—in this together—an irreplaceable ingredient not only for success but for happiness.

I loved something else that George Yeoman Pocock said in the book:  “Harmony, balance and rhythm.  They are the three things that stay with you your whole life.  Without them, civilization is out of whack.  And that’s why an oarsman, when he gets out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life.  That’s what he gets from rowing.”

There was another telling reflection in the book that bears on how I have sometimes felt in my role and probably how other people have felt as well.  I refer to Joe Rantz’s belief that “he was the weak link in the crew.”  He recognized that he had been added to the boat last and had often struggled to master the technical side of the sport and he, in his view, still tended to row erratically.  “But what Joe didn’t know,” Brown writes, “and what he wouldn’t, in fact, fully realize until much later, when he and the other boys were becoming old men, was that every boy in the boat felt exactly the same that summer.  Every one of them believed he was simply lucky to be rowing in the boat, and that he didn’t really measure up to the obvious greatness of the other boys, and that he might fail the others at any moment.  Every one of them was fiercely determined not to let that happen.”

And they did not let it happen. In the final race of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin with Hitler in the stands, “Husky Clipper” passed the finish line 6/10th of a second ahead of the boat from Italy and one second ahead of the German boat. Over the 2,000-meter course and in a race that had taken 6 minutes and 25 seconds—or 385 seconds—the margin between the first and third boat was only 1 second. What testimony to the power of teamwork, preparation and the expenditure of every ounce of effort by every team member. Of such elements are victories gained, in every walk of life.

"EVERYONE COUNTS"

December 22, 2014



“EVERYONE COUNTS”

If I were asked to boil down all my thoughts on what should guide our relationships with each other into just two words, they would be:  “Everyone counts.”

CRISIS: RUSSIA, UKRAINE, U.S AND E.U

December 17, 2014

"Woe to the Statesman Whose Arguments for Entering a War Are Not as Convincing at its End as They Were at the Beginning" Otto von Bismarck

***********************************************************************

We are at this moment seeing an unfolding geo-political and  financial crisis in Russia and Ukraine which unless checked will not only severely harm millions of people in these countries but will spill out across Europe and the rest of  the world. The decline in the price of oil, welcome for many reasons, is a significant cause of this but it is greatly compounded by the sanctions being imposed on Russia and the consequent  flight of capital and decline in investments. These elements of course have flowed from the unraveling of trust and clear, fact based communication among leaders of the key actors.

Bismarck's warning, uttered over 150 years ago, demands deep and honest reflection. The risk is very high of making decisions and allowing an out-of-control dynamic to continue which will bring serious, long lasting negative consequences for the world and the self-interest of the countries involved.

Ask yourself: what benefit will Russian military involvement, to whatever degree it is present,  in Eastern Ukraine bring to the Russian people and the people of Ukraine?

Ask yourself: what will sanctions really accomplish for the world? If it deepens a recession in Russia, just about everyone will suffer, especially the Russian people but also the peoples of Western Europe.

What outcomes do we really want to achieve?

Who from our respective countries should sit down, not for a short conversation, but  one that will go as l long as needed to leave the room with a plan to exit from this quagmire.

This is not a game. This is serious business.

I am reposting a paper I wrote on this subject in April. The impasse it described has worsened.  Its basic indicated actions in my view remain unchanged.



Russia-Ukraine-United States and the West
“There’s Plenty Of Blame To Go Around—Now Is The Time for Mature Leaders
To Step Forward To Take The Right Action For The Future”
April 2014
by John E. Pepper, Jr.
Procter & Gamble (1963-2003) Chair of Board and CEO
Introduced P&G to Russian Market in 1991

The most recent turn in the “up and down” relationship among Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the West has been a dismaying sight over the past month or so.  It is the culmination of a number of decisions that might have been different and some historical realities that won’t change.  And, as I reflect how this current situation might have been avoided, there is, I believe, “plenty of blame to go around.”
It is vital to view the situation from the perspectives of all sides, bearing the historical realities and current circumstances of all parties in mind.
 Looking back at the almost 25 years of involvement I have had in Russia and the ex-Soviet Union since 1989, there have been many times when I believed the United States could have done things differently.
 During the challenging ‘90s, we could have provide greater financial, technical and moral support.  We could have gone further in recognizing Russia as a partner.   We never did anything approximating what is now being offered to Ukraine (circa $20 billion; I only hope that it will happen; similar “promises” have gone wanting in the past) or what we did in the Marshall Plan.  As then-Ambassador Jack Matlock reflected on the United States’ role in the reconstruction of Russia’s economy*:  “My point is not that the Bush administration, or the Clinton administration that followed it, is responsible for the mistakes that were made as the Soviet Union abandoned the command economy and Russia subsequently created a market economy.  They are not.  However, it is clear that most of the assistance and advice given by the West was not particularly helpful.  It was based more on a free-market fundamentalism than on the real problems of creating a market economy out of a collapsed command economy, much of the initial advice was not only useless, but sometimes actually damaging.”
 Following that, the West moved to expand NATO into the bordering regions around Russia, including Poland (1999), the Baltic's (2004) and Romania (2004) and Bulgaria (1994).  Then, and of greatest concern to Russia, we advanced the idea of extending NATO to Ukraine and Georgia as well as installing ABM launchers in Poland and the Czech Republic.  With the animosity still overhanging from the Cold War era, this might have been seen in the U.S. as akin to the Soviet Union’s earlier extending the Warsaw Pact to Cuba or Central America. 
*”Superpower Illusions” (pg. 110)
Yes, the expansion was done with a benign intention (defensive) but, to a country that had been attacked many times, it looked to many like a surrounding effort.   At a minimum, it fueled the animus of those who wanted to interpret it that way.  It fed the worst fears and allegations of those who wanted to “go back.”
As former Secretary of War, Robert Gates, says in his new book, “Duty:  Memoirs of a Secretary of War”:   “When I took office in 2007, I had shared with the president my belief that from 1993 onward, the West, and particularly the United States, had badly underestimated the magnitude of Russian humiliation in losing the Cold War and then in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which amounted to the end of the centuries-old Russian Empire.  The arrogance, after the collapse, of American government officials, academicians, businessmen, and politicians in telling the Russians how to conduct their domestic and international affairs (not to mention the internal psychological impact of their precipitous fall from superpower status) had led to deep and long-term resentment and bitterness.” 
 Gates continued:  “What I didn’t tell the president was that I believed the relationship with Russia had been badly mismanaged after Bush 41 left office in 1993.  Getting Gorbachev to acquiesce to a unified Germany as a member of NATO had been a huge accomplishment.  But moving so quickly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to incorporate so many of its formerly subjugated states into NATO was a mistake.  Including the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary quickly was the right thing to do, but I believe the process should then have slowed.  U.S. agreements with the Romanian and Bulgarian governments to rotate troops through bases in those countries was a needless provocation (especially since we virtually never deployed the 5,000 troops to either country).  The Russians had long historical ties to Serbia, which we largely ignored.  Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching.  The roots of the Russian Empire trace back to Kiev in the ninth century, so that was an especially monumental provocation.”
 It was also natural for Putin to view the West’s strong support for Kosovo’s separating from Russia’s long-supported ally of Serbia as violating the rights of the Serbian state.  (To be clear, in my view, Kosovo’s achieving independence was the right outcome.)  And especially in hindsight, Russia viewed the invasion of Iraq as an unsanctioned act by the United States and by some Western countries to overthrow a sovereign leader based on weak, if not manufactured, allegations that Saddam Hussein was in the final stages of developing weapons of mass destruction. 
 These realities were combined with enormous and, for me, overblown sensitivity on Putin’s part, grown in part, I suspect, from his career in the KGB.  To say that he became paranoid about the intentions of the United States would not be an over-statement.  And he surely saw it as a means of strengthening his own popularity at a time when it was declining.
 More recently, I believe Putin has greatly exaggerated the mistreatment of Russians in Ukraine, including Crimea.  Characterization of the folks who went into Maidan Square as “Russia-phobes and Neo-Nazis” has been hyperbolic.  Surely there were some such people there, but to define the entire group in these terms in ludicrous.  Most of them surely simply wanted release from a corrupt and ineffective government.
Finally, we should not be surprised at the reaction that Putin and others in Russia had to the overturning of the agreement that had been reached on February 22 by Yanukovych and other Western countries before the ink was scarcely dry.  This agreement would have probably led to an election by the end of the year which would have voted Yanukovych out of office.  If one believes, as Putin certainly does (and there are reasons for this belief), that the movement in Maidan Square which led to the ouster of Yanukovych was incited to some degree by the West, one could take it as license to act.
 And that’s exactly what Putin did.  I believe he seized on this as an “excuse” to move into Crimea.  It is obviously a purely personal judgment, but I don’t believe if that agreement had been allowed to unfold through the end of the calendar year, Russia would have moved to have the referendum for independence in Crimea or have absorbed it as they have. 
 What’s more, I believe, Putin’s/Russia’s absorption of Crimea will prove to be a costly mistake for Russia and its people.  It will be a financial drain in its own right.  It has already produced sanctions, capital flight, a weaker ruble and it will, at least for a time, dampen foreign direct investment.  Nevertheless, we are where we are.
 Stepping back, Russia has always had and always will have different interests than the United States and the West; some geographical, some ideological in nature.  For example, Russia is far more dedicated to the preservation of existing governments—to very strong governments--that are more autocratic than we believe is right.  The United States acclaims much greater allegiance to individual democracy, to individual rights, to everyone speaking up.
 But, with all that, there are two things that are of paramount importance:
  1. There are many critical issues such as nuclear proliferation, combating terrorism, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, on which it is absolutely critical that Russia, the United States and the West and the entire world work together on cooperatively. 
  2. Alienating and isolating Russia will significantly impede that cooperation.
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So, what now? 
  1. We need to clearly define what we will not tolerate (e.g., any incursion into Ukraine or other independent country).
  2. We should recognize that Russia’s annexation of Crimea is not going to be overturned.
  3. We need to try to agree on what is in the common interest of our countries and the world.
  4. We need to identify the specific agenda items which we need to work together.
  5. We need quiet, tough-minded, no-nonsense, respectful interchanges among leaders in Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the West—leaders who understand each other’s history, culture and contemporary realities.(1)
I would like to add here the excellent perspective provided to me by a Professor of Russian History at the University of Cincinnati, Willard Sunderland.
 “The only point I’d suggest adding to your piece is that we should do everything we can to de-emphasize the neo-Cold War rhetoric and casual anti-Russian prejudice that has crept into the way our politicians and journalists/pundits tend to describe Russia.  There are too many simplifications in the way we are representing things, and there’s the risk that our simplifications will work against us.
 Russia today is not the Soviet Union.  We are not on the edge of a titanic global contest between “our way” and “their way.”  You are absolutely right – we have nothing to gain from isolating the country.  Likewise, though Putin is most definitely not a Western liberal or conservative, as all our TV talking heads are telling us, he’s also not a Brezhnev or an Andropov.  I see him as a Russian statist conservative in the mold of the last great tsarist premiere Petr Stolypin.  He wants a strong Russian state and a stable international neighborhood, while also supporting Russia’s full engagement with the world.  I do not think that there’s a plan afoot to gather up the lands of the old USSR motivated by some sort of imperial nostalgia.  He’s not interested in a lot of difficult and costly border changes.  He is a pragmatist more than he is an ideologue.  And he’s also, in my view, far from in charge of everything we’re seeing.  He’s hardly a grand master poring over a would-be chess board, moving every piece exactly where he wants it.  I think he and the Russian power establishment were as shocked by Yanukovich’s flight from Kiev as anyone else.  Much of what’s happened since then has been more opportunism than master strategy.  Putting all of this together, I see a situation in which there is every reason to work with Putin rather than to double-down against him.  To that end, I think your last point is dead on:  firm engagement is the key.  Quiet, persistent, firm engagement.
That is what we need now!
 (1) I’d note this is the kind of interchange that in times past was conducted by leaders like
George Schultz and Eduard Shevardnadze.  I believe former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, was absolutely right in crediting the cultural sensitivity of certain U.S. leaders as a key factor in establishing good relations with their Russian counterparts:  “One of the keys to the success that Reagan, Schultz, Bush and Baker had in engaging the Soviet leaders,” Matlock writes, “was their attention to this factor [culture].  Reagan may not have mastered every detail of every arms control negotiation…but he spent as much time trying to understand Gorbachev’s thinking and the political constraints on his behavior as he did studying the ‘substance’ of the issues.  George Schultz was acutely aware that Eduard Shevardnadze, a Georgian, was immensely proud of this cultural heritage.  By showing interest in it and respect for it, Schultz was able to establish a degree of personal rapport with the Soviet Foreign Minister that helped them come to terms on issues that had resisted solution for decades.  James Baker picked up where Shultz left off and continued the relationship that benefitted both countries.”*
 *”Superpower Illusions” (pg. 74)
RussiaUkraineUS_PlentyofBlame032814

November 24, 2014

FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL
Remarks delivered on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary 
of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

At the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

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“Once in a lifetime,” the poet Seamus Haney writes, “the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”

These are the inspiring words in the Freedom Center film, “The Struggle Continues,” which I have returned to again and again for hope, for courage and for stamina. 

Surely there are few events in history which demonstrate how “the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme” more emphatically than the Fall of the Berlin Wall. 

It is altogether fitting that we are here today to commemorate that historic event at the Freedom Center.

The Freedom Center’s mission is simple and profound:  “We tell the story of freedom’s heroes from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times in order to inform and inspire all of us to take steps for freedom in our own life today.”

This year, we are celebrating the Freedom Center’s 10th anniversary.  We have done much during the past decade to fulfill our mission.  We have hosted millions of visitors, including over 400,000 students on school visits.  We share with them the history of the fight for freedom and encourage them to reflect on how the values embedded in that fight--values of standing up for what you believe in, of never giving up, of respecting other people--can influence their lives today, whether that might be confronting bullying in a schoolyard or just being a good friend.

Our International Freedom Conductor Award events, the first occurring before we even opened in 1999 when we honored Rosa Parks, to the most recent, when we honored Presidents Nelson Mandela and President Lech Walesa—each of these events put us in touch with the lives of freedom heroes in ways which can inspire us to be at our best as we confront issues of freedom and seek to help one another in our own lives today. 

I feel sure that President Walesa’s courageous leadership of the Solidarity Movement in Poland helped fire the courage and commitment of the hundreds of thousands of East Germans who protested on the streets of Leipzig and other cities of East Germany as the irrepressible momentum for freedom built in October and November of 1989.   And who knows how many were inspired by the immortal words Nelson Mandela uttered in the docket at the Rivonia Trial in April, 1964:  “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.  But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” These words, too perhaps, touched the minds and hearts of many of those brave souls in East Germany who plotted, marched, and risked their own lives and, in some cases, lost their lives, to bring down that Wall. 

This we are certain of--we rise on the shoulders of others, heroes from the era of the Underground Railroad to today as we seek the courage and the stamina to live our lives, being faithful to the highest values.

The Freedom Center’s mission is to showcase those lives and what they mean for us today. 

Recently, the Freedom Center has launched important new initiatives to advance the cause of Freedom today.

We are the home of the only museum-quality exhibit in the world illuminating the horror of contemporary slavery.  Thousands of visitors have told us that the knowledge they have gained from this exhibit is leading them to action.  We have partnered with the U.S. State Department to create a website that will bring to life the stories of heroes from around the world who have fought against human trafficking, allowing us to share the inspiration and learning to be gained from their lives around the world. 
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I find it especially appropriate that we are here today to commemorate the courage of the men and women who led the transforming movement which brought this Wall down.  We need the encouragement and the hope that this provides.  Why?  Because we face many walls today.  Some walls are physical, like the one separating Israel and Palestine.  But many more of the walls—indeed the tallest walls, the hardest walls to breach--are not physical walls at all.  They are ideological walls; walls created by misunderstanding, by the unwillingness to view a situation through other people’s eyes; walls created by viewing people who are different than we are as some “other,” as people unworthy of our respect, of our time; or, in the worst of cases, unworthy even of their lives.

The Freedom Center’s mission is to help us break down these walls--to do it by sharing stories of inspiration like the Underground Railroad story itself, or stories of Nelson Mandela’s life which are now embedded in a new exhibit at the Freedom Center showcasing touch points in his heroic life.

I believe the Fall of the Berlin Wall can give us hope and stamina and courage as we face challenges that often seem to go beyond our ability to cope with.  These challenges are emblazoned on the front pages of our newspapers and the lead-in to nightly news programs.  They range from the sad and dangerous unraveling of our relations with the Russian Federation to the bloody disorder in the Middle East to fissions in our own country revealed in Ferguson, Missouri.  Yet, in the face of all these challenges, there lies hope and lessons to be drawn from what we celebrate today.  For, above all, the fall of the Berlin Wall and people’s brave and decades-long quest for freedom which led to it, is a vivid, hope-fueling demonstration of what is possible, of the imperative to never give up.
 
May this inspire us in the fights for Freedom that continue today.
 
The fight to tear down walls of misunderstanding and disrespect, differences which all too often become the basis for regarding a person of a different ideology or nation or faith or race as almost inhuman. These are walls we must breach by recognizing our common humanity, our common rights which as we avow in our Declaration of Independence (and virtually every Nation does in one way or another in their own constitutions) include the unalienable God-given rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit Of Happiness. These are words to not just admire and utter piously, but to act on. 
 
It is the Mission of the Freedom Center to convert the HOPE for Freedom into ACTION to achieve Freedom, by building awareness of the challenges to Freedom and providing a forum for learning and dialogue that will inspire, guide and motivate us to take the necessary action to overcome these challenges in our own lives. 
 
As we say to our visitors as they leave:  "If not you, then who; If not now, then when?"
 
The world, the society, the city we live in demands and deserves no less from us who can make a difference. 
 
Thank you.