Quote of the Month
"If music be the food of love, play on." - William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1
What I’m Reading:
1. Why Europe—but not NATO—should send troops to Ukraine
Why you should read it: In Foreign Affairs, international security scholars Alex Crowther, Jahara Matisek, and Philips P. O’Brien argue that European nations should send troops to Ukraine to prevent an outright Russian victory.
“To truly change the outcome in Ukraine, however, European countries must do more than simply talk about deployments. If the United States continues to delay aid, and especially if it elects Donald Trump (who has pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, presumably by allowing Putin to keep his ill-gotten gains) as president in November, Europe will be Ukraine’s only defender. European leaders cannot afford to let American political dysfunction dictate European security. They must seriously contemplate deploying troops to Ukraine to provide logistical support and training, to protect Ukraine’s borders and critical infrastructure, or even to defend Ukrainian cities. They must make it clear to Russia that Europe is willing to protect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. Accepting the dire reality of the situation in Ukraine and addressing it now is better than leaving a door open for Russia to accelerate its imperial advance.”
“European forces could undertake either noncombat or combat operations to relieve some of the pressure on Ukraine. A strictly noncombat mission would be easiest to sell in most European capitals. European forces could relieve the Ukrainians performing logistics functions, such as maintaining and repairing combat vehicles. By staying west of the Dnieper River—a natural barrier protecting much of Ukraine from Russian advances—European forces would demonstrate that they are not there to kill Russian soldiers, preempting the inevitable Russian accusation of European aggression. Some Ukrainian vehicles are already being sent to Germany, Poland, and Romania for substantial repairs, but conducting this task closer to the front would speed up the process, reduce the time equipment is out of combat, and free up more Ukrainian forces for combat duties. French, Polish, and other European military advisers could also provide lethal and nonlethal training within Ukraine to further professionalize the country’s military. If additional mobilization expands the Ukrainian military in the coming year—which seems likely—increased capacity to train new recruits inside Ukraine will be particularly useful… Europe needs to consider a direct combat mission that helps protect Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper. In addition to reducing the burden of the Ukrainian military in these regions, the presence of European troops would make it unlikely that Russian forces would advance across the river, protecting much of Ukraine from conquest. One potential Russian target is Odessa, Ukraine’s main port where most of the country’s exports are shipped. If Russian troops were to approach the city, European forces in the vicinity would have the right to defend themselves by firing on the advancing soldiers. They could help thwart a Russian offensive that, given Odessa’s strategic position, could strangle the Ukrainian economy and position Russian forces for a potential invasion of Moldova. Moscow would try to spin any lethal response to a Russian attack as European aggression, but Russia would be responsible for any escalation.”
Why it matters: “Ukraine is doing the best it can, but it needs help—help that European countries are able and increasingly willing to provide. Rather than force Russian escalation, a European troop presence would be more likely to prevent the conflict from spreading and prevent further damage to Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure. European leaders do not need to follow the dictates of an increasingly unreliable United States about how the battle in Ukraine should be waged; they can and should decide for themselves how best to ensure the continent’s freedom and security. Europe must do what it takes to safeguard its own future, and that starts with making sure Ukraine wins this war.”
2. How military aid to Ukraine stacks up with World War II’s Lend-Lease
Why you should read it: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman crunches the numbers and compares the recently-passed aid package for Ukraine with the aid America provided to other Allies under the Lend-Lease Act during World War II.
“Congress appropriated $13 billion [under Lend-Lease] before the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was an immense sum at the time — about 10 percent of America’s annual gross domestic product. Somewhat surprisingly, however, not much of that total consisted of weaponry… Europe had begun rearming years before World War II started, while an isolationist United States hadn’t developed much of a defense industry—to take a famous example, the Sherman tank didn’t go into production until 1942. As a result, most of America’s initial aid took the form of food—at first we were less the arsenal of democracy than its breadbasket.”
“The just-passed package will roughly double the cumulative aid we’ve given Ukraine, but at about $60 billion it’s less than one-fourth of 1 percent of G.D.P. — around one-fortieth the size of the initial Lend-Lease appropriation. Anyone claiming that spending on this scale will break the budget, or that it will seriously interfere with other priorities, is innumerate, disingenuous or both… Remember that in the first year of Lend-Lease, America couldn’t supply much in the way of weapons, despite the immense size of our economy, because years of low military spending had left us with an underdeveloped military-industrial base. It took a couple of years to translate America’s overall industrial might into comparable military might. Right now Europe is in a similar situation: It has the money to help Ukraine, and for the most part it has the will, but it doesn’t have the production capacity to meet Ukraine’s military needs.”
Why it matters: “No, spending on Ukraine isn’t a huge burden on America, coming at the expense of domestic priorities. No, America isn’t bearing this cost alone, without help from our European allies. Yes, U.S. aid is still crucial, in part because Europe can supply money but isn’t yet in a position to supply enough military hardware.”
3. Why the CHIPS Act has been surprisingly successful so far
Why you should read it: In the Financial Times, semiconductor policy expert Chris Miller observes that the investments in semiconductor manufacturing made by CHIPS and Science Act have proven to be a success so far.
“With recent multi-billion-dollar grants to Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Micron, the US government has now spent over half its $39bn in Chips Act incentives. In so doing it has driven an unexpected investment boom. Chip companies and supply chain partners have announced investments totalling $327bn over the next 10 years, according to Semiconductor Industry Association calculations. US statistics show a stunning 15-fold increase in construction of manufacturing facilities for computing and electronics devices. Debate about the Chips Act has focused on delays and manufacturing difficulties, but the vast volume of investment tells a different story… The investment surge this has driven is reducing these [manufacturing] vulnerabilities. Samsung, TSMC, and Intel — the world’s leading chipmakers — are now building major new plants in the US. Intel will manufacture its most advanced chips there, while TSMC will introduce its cutting-edge 2-nanometre process in Arizona around two years after bringing it online in Taiwan. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo notes that by 2030, the US will probably produce around 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips, up from zero today.”
“This still won’t mean complete self-sufficiency, given that the US consumes over a quarter of the world’s chips. Production of smartphones and consumer electronics would be disrupted in the event of a crisis in east Asia, an ever looming fear. But this production would be roughly enough for the needs of critical infrastructure like datacentres and telecoms. Chips aren’t perfectly fungible, of course, and not every plant can easily produce every type, but the US will have much more scope to manage shocks… Manufacturers of autos, missiles or medical devices require large volumes of foundational chips as well. Here, too, the Chips Act is providing significant new supply. Ford and GM have announced major long-term supply deals with US chipmaker GlobalFoundries, which is expanding production with $1.5bn in Chips Act funds. Microchip, a widely used Arizona manufacturer of microcontroller chips, also received a grant to expand. Texas Instruments is building a string of new foundational chip fabs across Texas and Utah, catalysed by generous investment tax credits. Few if any of these investments would have happened without the Chips Act.”
Why it matters: “Will all these promised plants get built? Many of them already are. The scale of fab construction in the US is now stretching contractors’ ability to find workers with speciality skills. TSMC plans high-volume chip production in its first Arizona plant early next year. If the chip market softens, some plants could get postponed, but the disbursement of grants is tied to progress in bringing fabs online… Equity investors will debate whether these new investments can deliver an adequate financial return. Policymakers who see the Chips Act as an insurance policy against geopolitical shocks believe it is already paying dividends.”
4. How a misreading of the First World War leads Europeans to live in terror of escalation with Russia
Why you should read it: Substack columnist Nick Cohen notes how bien-pensant Europeans use the specter of World War I’s origins—or at least the version provided by the historian Christopher Clark in his book Sleepwalkers—to avoid confronting Putin’s Russia or supporting Ukraine in its fight against the Kremlin.
“There is a respectable way of betraying Ukraine. You do not spew out Russian propaganda like Trump and his admirers, and revel in Ukrainian suffering. Rather, you behave like a decent and solid European liberal, who deplores imperialism, but nevertheless refuses to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs… We are so used to appeasement, Nazism and the holocaust being used and abused in contemporary discourse it is easy to miss how the disaster of 1914 can still influence thoughtful people, particularly thoughtful people on the European centre-left… The righteous course is to go easy on the aggressors. Otherwise, we might sleepwalk into a disaster where a humiliated Russia unleashes its full power and lets loose nuclear weapons.”
“Germany’s leaders are explicit about their horrified fascination with the First World War, and their belief that we can learn about 2024 from 1914… At the start of the conflict [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz declared, “I am not Kaiser Wilhelm”. He would not let Germany slide into a European war. Anyone trying to understand the German establishment should note the phenomenal success of Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914… It would be too crude to say that Clark sold so [in Germany] well because he destroyed the notion of war guilt, which the allies demanded the defeated Germany accepted in the Treaty of Versailles. There was no nationalist chest beating in the reception he received. Rather, Clark’s emphasis of unintended consequences appealed to the cautious, pacific strain in German thought, particularly when it lands on Russia.”
Why it matters: “As a historical comparison, the link between the First World War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine does not work. Christopher Clark intervened to tell his German readers that the First World War began ‘in an incredibly complex, around-the-houses way’. Whereas ‘in the case of the invasion of Ukraine, in 2014 and in 2022, “it’s quite clearly a case of the breach of the peace by just one power’… His intervention had no effect on German policy. What German commentators take from the disaster of 1914 is not an intelligent analysis but the simple lesson that no one can predict the future.”
5. Democrats should try patriotism for a change
Why you should read it: Bulwark writer Mona Charen writes that the deep pessimism about and loathing of actually-existing America on the Trump right gives Democrats an opportunity to reclaim patriotism for themselves..
“Today, it is the Republican party that—despite its MAGA slogan—is trafficking in dark, anti-American ideas and imagery. The party that claims to put ‘America first’ is led by a man who describes the nation as ‘failing’ or ‘corrupt’ a hundred times for every one mention of an American virtue… The Republican party has traded patriotism and uplift for an apocalyptic cult. This presents Democrats with an opportunity—if they can seize it.”
“For Democrats to scoop up the banner of patriotism will require rejecting the approach of progressives. I’m a devoted listener to NPR, and they do excellent work. But their progressive bias results in a seemingly endless litany of American sins and shortcomings past and present. Every other story seems to feature a ‘marginalized community,’ discrimination, bias, and hardship. It’s such a pervasive aspect of the brand that I was taken aback, a few months ago, when they aired a segment on the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party that told the tale with amusement and without implied censure of America’s past sins...
Why it matters: “Most Democrats are not progressives though, and they have a golden opportunity to uphold true patriotism in contrast to the nativist nationalism now proclaimed by the Republicans. Admittedly, summoning love of country at a moment when tens of millions of Americans seem prepared to return the keys of the kingdom to a sociopathic crook is not as easy as it once was.”
6. How the right’s hatred of liberalism leads to a hatred of America
Why you should read it: In The UnPopulist Substack, writer Cathy Young contends that the populist right’s hatred of liberalism means it can’t love America, a country founded on liberal principles—and explains why it’s so fond of Putin and other dictators.
“But not all Putin-friendly conservatives are the same. For some, their hatred of the American left overrides any feelings they have about Putin. Others are more ideological: they oppose the Western liberal project itself. Untangling these different strains is key to explaining why so many on today’s right embrace views that, until recently, would have gotten them branded Kremlin stooges by other conservatives… [Tucker] Carlson reflects the dominant mode on the Trumpist right: if not actively pro-Putin, then at best anti-anti-Putin. The anti-anti-Putinists may concede that Putin is kinda bad, but only to insist that other things are far worse: Mexican drug cartels, progressive philanthropist George Soros, ‘the left,’ or America’s ‘ruling class.’ Like the left-wing Soviet apologists of old, they make up faux political prisoners in America to suggest moral equivalency with the dictatorship in the Kremlin.”
“The idea of Russia as a bulwark of traditionalism and ‘anti-woke’ resistance is an image the Putin regime deliberately cultivates—not only to appeal to its own population’s biases but to win friends among conservatives in the West. And many are seduced into an affinity that goes well beyond anti-anti-Putinism… Yet distaste for post-1960s social and sexual liberalism doesn’t entirely explain the right’s Putin love. Some right-wing pro-Putin rhetoric indicates a far more radical rejection of liberalism, even in its more classical varieties (the liberalism of John Locke and John Stuart Mill as opposed to the progressivism of Michel Foucault or Ibram X. Kendi). Obviously, people like neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin, who fantasizes about Putin’s Russia reprising Tsarist Russia’s 19th century role as the crusher of liberalism in Europe, are fringe cranks (though Yarvin has reputed connections to the Trumpian right). But consider the near-panegyric to Putin in a much more respectable venue: a 2017 speech by writer and Claremont Institute senior fellow Christopher Caldwell at a Hillsdale College seminar. Both Claremont and Hillsdale are intellectual hubs of Trumpist national conservatism.”
Why it matters: “Much like pro-Castro leftists of yore, today’s pro-Putin rightists are fundamentally anti-American. They hate American global leadership and power. They hate American foreign policy and national security institutions—hence their eager embrace of Kremlin narratives in which the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, which ousted a pro-Moscow semi-authoritarian regime, was ‘a CIA-backed coup.’ They hate, more fundamentally, 21st century America: an America they see as corrupted by multiculturalism, ‘Third World’ immigration, feminism, gay rights, and sexual liberation—and dominated by ‘elites’ who despise conservatives… What’s more, the grievance and resentment at the heart of Trumpist nationalism in America is in some ways quite similar to the mentality of Putinist nationalism in Russia: One obsesses over losing the culture war and being disrespected by the ‘elites’; the other, over losing the Cold War and being disrespected by the West. Perhaps this explains other similarities in the two mindsets, from the penchant for provocation and in-your-face defiance of norms to the affinity for conspiracy theories. Too many American rightists look at the Putin regime and see kindred spirits.”
7. Why we should stop letting college students dictate our politics
Why you should read it: In his Substack, Josh Barro makes the case against taking college students—especially those who decide they have the authority to shut down campuses—seriously.
“As Dave Weigel has reported, the student protesters camping out for Gaza will tell you they wear face masks outside because of COVID: they’re showing solidarity with the immunocompromised and protesting Joe Biden’s policy of moving on from the pandemic. Of course, concealing your face also reduces your odds of facing university discipline or being exposed on the Internet by counter-activists who want to blackball you from jobs. But if you’re a student protester, there’s a third reason to hide your face: If the public learns who you are, they might discover that you are a silly and immature and emotionally unstable person who has barely reached the age of maturity, and that may make them less likely to take you seriously as a political force.”
“Instead, these protesters, who have somehow arrived at the misimpression that the colleges they attend are actors in the Israel-Palestine conflict, are being treated as a threat not just to their communities but to the republic and the Democratic Party — avatars of a young generation that is supposedly disillusioned with Joe Biden for being insufficiently progressive. In reality, the Gaza War rates far lower in US political consciousness than the news coverage would have you believe, even among the young people who are supposedly in open revolt over it. The recent Harvard Youth Poll found that Israel/Palestine ranks 15th out of 16 policy issues in their importance to American young adults; only student debt, another vastly overhyped concern of young left-wing activists, rates lower. The disconnect between the activists and the polling data makes sense when you remember that most young people aren’t in college, most college students don’t attend selective institutions, and most students at selective institutions aren’t camping on the quad for Gaza. These protesters — like Greta Thunberg and the Sunrise Movement and those weirdos who throw paint at art because of fossil fuels — are all Shiny Youth Objects who cause Democratic politicians to misunderstand what a normal young voter is actually like.”
Why it matters: “When it comes to young people, Democrats’ real challenge entails enhancing Biden’s appeal to marginal voters who tend to be less engaged, less politically progressive, and much less interested in hopeless regional conflicts halfway around the world than the typical campus activist. (What do young people at large actually care about? The things older people also care about — most of all inflation, health care, and housing.) So while the turmoil at college campuses can be interesting in its own right — these schools are coming to face the incompatibility of their extreme social-justice messaging and their purpose as job trainers for corporate America — I’m worried about Democratic politicians fixating on the protests as a manifestation of their problem with the ‘youth vote.’ Not only is trying to woo back the sort of people who think the president is ‘Genocide Joe’ unlikely to work, it distracts the party from winning back less ideologically rigid young voters who are flirting with supporting Trump.”
8. How erstwhile dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn became the Putin Kremlin’s patron saint
Why you should read it: In Foreign Policy, author Casey Michel tells the story of how one-time anti-Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn became the spiritual godfather of revanchist Russian nationalism and Putin’s war against Ukraine.
“While much of Solzhenitsyn’s work—not least Gulag Archipelago, as well as books like Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—remains widely dissected and discussed, Rebuilding Russia [from 1990] is arguably his most overlooked read. And given how closely the Kremlin has hewed to Solzhenitsyn’s policy recommendations in Rebuilding Russia in the years since, that oversight is all the more unfortunate—not least because of what it tells us about what the Kremlin wants in Ukraine, and even beyond.”
“The book itself is relatively scant, with its English translation coming in at around 90 pages—more of a manifesto than a fully developed manuscript. But even in those pages, Solzhenitsyn reveals himself not only as a Russian nationalist, but as someone who dabbles in the kinds of conspiracies and mysticism that would later saturate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Like Putin, Solzhenitsyn approvingly cites Russian fascists like Ivan Ilyin, praising the ‘spiritual life of a nation.’ He also claims that many of the smaller nations colonized by tsarist-era Russian forces ‘lived well’ in the Russian Empire—wholly ignoring how Russian forces brutalized entire nations in northern Asia, stripping them of population and sovereignty alike, even to the point of genocide… But it is in Ukraine—and in Solzhenitsyn’s calls for a Russian Union—that Solzhenitsyn’s revanchism shines through and provides insight into the forces propelling the Kremlin and designs to come. Like many other writers, including figures such as Alexander Pushkin and Joseph Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn drenched his writings on Ukraine in unabashed Russian chauvinism. In a talking point that other Russian nationalists would later pick up, Solzhenitsyn blamed both the ‘Mongol invasion’ and ‘Polish colonization’ for breaking apart Russians and Ukrainians (as well as Belarusians), dividing ‘our people’ into ‘three branches.” Ignoring centuries of scholarship, Solzhenitsyn wrote, ‘All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is a recently invented falsehood.’ Previous attempts at Ukrainian independence were elite-driven, top-down affairs—done ‘without soliciting the opinion of the population at large’—while the more modern efforts to create a separate Ukrainian state were nothing more than campaigns ‘to lop [Ukraine] off from a living organism,’ a ‘cruel partition’ that would shred apart ‘the lives of millions of individuals and families.’
Why it matters: “It’s too much to say that Putin has relied solely on Solzhenitsyn’s blueprints for his monomaniacal obsession with Ukraine and for unleashing the most devastating war Europe has seen in nearly a century… But it’s clear that Solzhenitsyn—an author of unparalleled stature, especially in a collapsing Soviet Union—structured the diffuse strands of Russian nationalism in a way that proved irresistible to future Russian leaders, and to future Russian revanchists. Calling for, and even excusing, Russian irredentism, Solzhenitsyn helped lay the groundwork in 1990 for the neo-imperialism to come—and for the continued, widespread Russian belief in the subordination and inherent falsehood of a modern, independent Ukraine.”
9. Why Boeing’s ongoing woes are only the most visible symptoms of a dark age for American manufacturing
Why you should read it: The Atlantic contributing writer Jerry Useem sees Boeing as a textbook example of how American manufacturing entered a dark age, with corporate leaders so focused on stock prices that they allowed institutional knowledge about actually making things to decay and disappear.
“The two scenes tell us the peculiar story of a plane maker that, over 25 years, slowly but very deliberately extracted itself from the business of making planes. For nearly 40 years the company built the 737 fuselage itself in the same plant that turned out its B-29 and B-52 bombers. In 2005 it sold this facility to a private-investment firm, keeping the axle grease at arm’s length and notionally shifting risk, capital costs, and labor woes off its books onto its ‘supplier.’ Offloading, Boeing called it. Meanwhile the tail, landing gear, flight controls, and other essentials were outsourced to factories around the world owned by others, and shipped to Boeing for final assembly, turning the company that created the Jet Age into something akin to a glorified gluer-together of precast model-airplane kits. Boeing’s latest screwups vividly dramatize a point often missed in laments of America’s manufacturing decline: that when global economic forces carried off some U.S. manufacturers for good, even the ones that stuck around lost interest in actually making stuff.”
“The past 30 years may well be remembered as a dark age of U.S. manufacturing. Boeing’s decline illustrates everything that went wrong to bring us here. Fortunately, it also offers a lesson in how to get back out… When the wave of Japanese competition finally crashed on corporate America, those best equipped to understand it—the engineers—were no longer in charge. American boardrooms had been handed over to the finance people. And they were hypnotized by the new doctrine of shareholder value, which provided a rationale for their ascendance but little incentive for pursuing long-term improvements or sustainable approaches to cost control. Their pay packages rewarded short-term spikes in stock price. There were lots of ways to produce those.”
Why it matters: “Add all the capacity you want. It won’t reverse the country’s long decline as a manufacturing superpower if corporate America keeps gurgling its sad, tired story about the impossibility of making things on these shores anymore. It’s a story that helped pour a whole lot of wealth into the executive pockets peddling it. But a half century of self-inflicted damage is enough. The doors have fallen off, and it’s plain for all to see: The story was barely bolted together.”
Odds and Ends
Plato’s last hours, uncovered in a recently deciphered scroll from Herculaneum…
New frescoes discovered in Pompeii, Herculaneum’s much more famous sister city…
How the U.S. Navy zeppelin USS Los Angeles provided an unparalleled platform for scientists watching the 1925 total solar eclipse across America…
Archaeologists have dated human habitation in a lava tube in what’s now Saudi Arabia back some 7,000 years…
Why insta-takes about Taylor Swift’s new album show how music criticism—and much else besides—is broken…
What I’m Listening To
Some of my favorite songs from Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department:
“loml”
Image of the Month
