3/14/23
Yesterday's winter
Yesterday’s winter
It amazes me how prescient Garry Kasparov was. His book on how the United States and the collective free world should deal with Putin was published all the way back in the Obama Administration. Winter is Coming came out late in 2015, and the title played on the popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones fantasy series, still in its earlier seasons.
The lessons Kasparov taught then were not only insightful, but unfortunately went largely unheeded. At the time, Russia had begun its invasion of Ukraine after attempting to subvert the government in Kyiv, using the failure of that ruse as a premise for its silent invasion—an invasion carried out by “little green men” in the Crimea and “separatists” in the Donbas. It’s easy to forget that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been an ongoing affair for at least nine years.
Kasparov spoke in Philadelphia about his book near the time of its publication. What I find interesting is that his analysis seems just as pertinent now as it did then, even if the current administration has been forced to act more aggressively than the Obama administration, which at the time seemed determined to read peaceful solutions into a situation where a show of strength and force was called for. As Kasparov says.
There’s some déjà vu in there, since the 2016 presidential primaries had just gotten underway. Trump was not the presumed nominee, although Secretary of State Clinton was. Kasparov’s advice went unheeded by the Trump administration, too, since Trump clearly had a great and shameful admiration for dictators.
As Kasparov has said elsewhere many times, the cost of acting later rather than sooner only continues to rise.
"As Kasparov has said elsewhere many times, the cost of acting later rather than sooner only continues to rise."
Others have mentioned, in many contexts, the "inaction bias" that many organizations have. "If we do nothing, we can't be accused of doing the wrong thing." "Abundance of caution."
Inaction is as much a choice as action, and those who choose not to act are as responsible for the consequences of the choice as are those who choose to act.
I feel like changing the subject, so now for something completely - or somewhat - different. I finished the "Gatecrashers" podcast series, and it was quite fascinating. My favorite anecdotes were about the Jewish student communes at Cornell in the 70s and early 80s. The presenter wondered why there's nothing like that now, and concluded that students today are "too young" for independent living, and their parents are too controlling and protective. I agree.
And second, I finished the audio book "I Marched With Patton." The author's girlfriend did not wait for him, but he got over it and fairly quickly married a woman he met as an adult, instead of as a child, and was happy for over 70 years. One of his daughters got into genealogy, and when she started researching her father's ancestry, she found that his maternal grandmother was mysterious. An elderly relative eventually said, "She had a funny way of praying," and described lighting Sabbath candles on Friday and saying Sabbath prayers in Hebrew.
It turned out Mr. Sisson was descended, through his grandmother, from German Jews who had emigrated from the region of Munich in the mid-19th century. They came through Virginia and ended up in Oklahoma in the Land Rush years.