“When Truman became president in 1945, he knew exactly what he wanted to do: complete the economic and social reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal, which had been deferred by World War II. As soon as he asked what needed to be done, though, Truman realized that foreign affairs had absolute priority. He organized his working day so that it began with tutorials on foreign policy by the secretaries of state and defense. As a result, he became the most effective president in foreign affairs the United States has ever known. He contained Communism in both Europe and Asia and, with the Marshall Plan, triggered 50 years of worldwide economic growth.”
We in the West currently live in a “What do I want to do?” type of society.
If that’s working for you, by all means keep doing it.
If it’s not working well for you, consider asking “what needs to be done” – not necessarily by anyone else’s standards, but at least by your own. We won’t belabor this point too long, but do consider that there are alternatives to doing whatever your short term whims are.
Setting a single target and then asking what needs to be done to achieve it is a good way to rise above whimsy.
Nevertheless – remember – you are already prioritizing, consciously or not.
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
***
APPROPRIATE RESPONSE
Knowing what to do isn’t enough – you must do it.
Occasionally, these writings will be on pure philosophy, but the vast majority aim for practical effort and effectiveness.
In Temporal Control #6, Heart of the Matter, we learned the cut right to the issue. What actually matters here? What gets it done?
Contrast: Undercommitment.
Contrast: Overcommitment.
In Temporal Control #1, Prelude, we learned how the British began the disastrous Gallipoli campaign by undercommitting to it, followed by overcommitting after the battlefront had already gotten into a bad place and been lost.
An appropriate response is the opposite of that.
Appropriate response means understanding what the heart of the matter is, and having done good analysis.
The Western Allies did not intervene strongly on Russia’s borders. It is a tragedy – the things that happened in the Baltic States and the Balkans and Central Asia were awful – but practically speaking, any intervention there would have invited more Soviet counterattacking and been harder to defend.
Kennan’s analysis in the Long Telegram said this outright –
“Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventunstic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw--and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.”
Gallipoli went from bad to unmitigated disaster once the British had already taken high losses and then began to feel that their prestige was at stake.
American and Western policy in the early stages of the Cold War, most of the time, was designed to “properly handle” things as they arose, using “strong resistance.”
Please think through these words; there is a key lesson here.
Strong resistance = preventative strong commitment.
Undercommitment invites problems and failings.
But likewise, undercommitting early often puts prestige on the line, leading to that “prestige-engaging showdown” Kennan warned against.
***
BUILDING INSTITUTIONS
In response to the Soviet aggression, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland began constructing and signed into force the North Atlantic Treaty in 1948 and 1949.
One of the more curious and forgotten things about the early United Nations was that its acronym was originally to be “UNO” – United Nations Organization.
Obviously, the UN has had some successes, but the Cold War was likely not what the original signers had in mind.
NATO kept the “O” – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This organization is a smaller version of what the Western Allies had hoped the United Nations would become.
Many of the NATO countries had previously been at war with each other; almost all of them had, in fact.
But no NATO country has gone to war with each other since the signing.
Note, though: treaties are often treated as “scraps of paper” – such was mentioned in Temporal Control #1: Prelude, and echoed by Stalin in his victory speech.
“NATO” wasn’t just a treaty – it was an organization; an institution.
The NATO military coordination was not to be done haphazardly if the Soviets attacked; it would be too late by then.
Instead, the NATO armed forces began training, coordinating, and hardening together, working to get great cohesion and coordination in the event of a crisis.
One of the harder things for me to personally get my mind around has been how to separate out institution-building from personal productivity.
There are always secondary effects of institution-building, and institutions must evolve.
Recommended to revisit Temporal Control #3 (Cyrus the Great), Temporal Control #5 (Mustafa Kemal), and Temporal Control #9 (evolution of the Roman Army) for more on the topic. We won’t linger on it, but note that NATO became a thing; not just a “scrap of paper.”
Likewise, building your own institutions will be key to having reach behind yourself. Perhaps we will do an entire TSR series on Institutions someday, but until then, those three chapters should give more ideas. Institution-building beyond oneself is critical.
***
INTERSUBJECTIVE IDEALS
Henry Kissinger writes in his seminal work, Diplomacy, that justice without force gets crushed, but force without justice invites challenge, revolt, and attack.
Truman reversed course on the more draconian parts of American policy as the Cold War began ramping up.
America became more committed than it had ever previously been to rebuilding and securing both Germany and Japan, as well as treating its allies well in defense of common ideals.
We need not linger on this too long, because “start with why” and “visionary leadership” is popular right now – you have heard a lot of it, perhaps even too much of it, already.
It is critically important, though. Kennan advised meeting the Soviet threat with being genuinely constructive –
“All Soviet propaganda beyond Soviet security sphere is basically negative and destructive. It should therefore be relatively easy to combat it by any intelligent and really constructive program.”
***
RATIONAL ACCOUNTING
Money matters; ideals are terrific, but money matters.
One of Truman’s more impressive accomplishments was getting the Marshall Plan (no relation) approved by a Congress already feeling overtaxed.
At the same time, it was not pure idealism. Having immediately been betrayed by the Soviets with sent weaponry, the American leaders were much smarter this time around. Intelligent and prudent investment, some of it military but primarily economic, went out to beleaguered countries in Europe.
On the home front, millions of men would be coming home and the economy would likely be thrown into chaos – war demobilization has often wrecked economies in the past.
The G.I. Bill was passed in 1944, still under Roosevelt’s Presidency, but I think it’s an understated point that the program was run so effectively under Truman’s tenure. Demobilizing veterans were to receive a baseline of pay for up to a year if needed, college tuition paid, and low-cost mortgages.
Instead of ha
ving a bunch of unemployed young men, people came home, furthered their skills at university, and were able to buy houses and start families. All told, the economy boomed, unrest was extremely low, and America wound up with the best-trained workforce in the world – as well as a baby boom rapidly growing the number of the country’s citizens.
Again, finding money for all of this was an under-heralded aspect of Truman’s Presidency. The domestic economy ramped up even stronger after demobilization, smart investments and grants were made in Europe, especially to the dangerously threated Greece and Turkey, and Truman was able to find the money to get it all done.
***
MACHINATIONS NAVIGATED
Also unheralded, America got four terms of Presidents that were nearly universally loved by workingmen and soldiers – Truman’s first term that he inherited from FDR, Truman’s second term, and Eisenhower’s two terms.
We often do not see problems that never occurred, but had the American labor force gone pro-Soviet, perhaps the Cold War goes the other way.
Truman worked with labor leaders and veterans effectively and kept domestic harmony.
Just as impressively, he navigated an oft-hostile Congress to produce these outcomes, at a time when Americans were still very skeptical of being involved in world affairs.
Truman was optimistic, but not an ideologue – when he could not advance his “Square Deal” policies and was getting Republican backlash after FDR’s death domestically, he was still able to preserve a good working relationship with Congress and get the most critical legislation passed.
***
SMALL THINGS, ALL THINGS
From my friend Greg Nance, I’ve taken an expression. He’ll often say,
“Small things, all things.”
And so it was, too, with President Truman.
The Berlin Airlift is just one of the many interventions he led.
On 24 June 1948, the Soviets began blocking food and fuel coming into American-controlled sector of Berlin, which was completely surrounded by the Soviet area.
Seeing the blockade coming into force, the Western Allies immediately stockpiled months of food.
It’s often easier to do something correctly now instead of waiting for it to become a problem.
When the blockade came into full force, Stalin was testing Western resolve.
In one of the more dramatic outplayings of the Soviet world, the Western Allies began air-freighting food and fuel into the city, plane after plane of it –
“In response [to the blockade], the Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the city's population. Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day, such as fuel and food. The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict. By the spring of 1949, the airlift was clearly succeeding, and by April it was delivering more cargo than had previously been transported into the city by rail. On 12 May 1949, the USSR lifted the blockade of West Berlin. The Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe.”
And what do we see here? Operations, to be sure. Excellent coordination.
Analysis. Resolve. Willpower. Goodwill. Care. Strength. Action – on one of the infinite fronts.
The episode bolstered the prestige of the West, strengthened the resolve of the West Germans, showed the Western Allies would defy Soviet conquest attempts but not necessarily start World War III, and built – well, yes, a better ideological and economic vision for postwar Europe.
14 years later, in a death-knell for their pretenses to being a free and open system, the Soviets build the Berlin Wall to keep East Germans from escaping out of their zone of control.
***
PARTING THOUGHTS
It turns out the Cold War was more complex to write about than I anticipated. My gratitude for joining me through these explorations.
And what marvelous lessons, no?
This Series was,
TEMPORAL CONTROL
1: Prelude
2: Unit of Account
3: Training and Hardening
4: Rational Accounting
5: The Intersubjective
6: Heart of the Matter
7: Operations
8: Institutions
9: Machinations
10: Analysis and Power
11: Infinite Fronts
So what should we be taking from this?
This final chapter looks at surveying the scene – Infinite Fronts. It is not a bad metaphor for life; life often has infinite potential things to do.
To get going, do analysis, then prioritize (you’re already prioritizing, consciously or not), and drive right at the heart of the matter.
To harmonize the short-term actions with longer-term gains, build operations to coordinate tactics over time, institutions that live outside and beyond you, and constantly ensure the people you care for (and yourself) are training and hardening yourselves.
Resources and numbers matter – measure your goals by a unit of account (there’s a variety of KPI’s besides money you can use), and yeah, do rational accounting.
Don’t neglect, nor overrate, intersubjective agreement; heed Churchill’s warning about “sham agreements” – Stalin cared not for treaties. Be aware of the machinations behind the scenes.
And finally, as was so clearly evidenced in the Prelude a the start of World War I –
Small things, all things.
***
FULL CIRCLE
We started here. We’ll end here –
When you hear Temporal Control, think more like “Quality Control” and less like an upset 13-year-old hollering, “Stop controlling me, Dad! I hate you!”
You, obviously, cannot control time.
You can, however, study it – measure it – navigate it. You can choose your next actions and do them. If things don’t unfold the way you like, you can study why and make adjustments. This is a good thing.
And we do this similar to Quality Control engineers.
Most people are too caught up in current moment. They greatly overestimate what they can do now, and underestimate broad and grand arcs of time unfolding.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you were completely unskilled; you had no career, trade, or profession at all. (Perhaps like the upset 13-year-old.)
How fast can you successfully build a career?
Very likely not in the next 30 minutes.
Almost certainly over the next 10 years.
And yet, we get to 10 years in the future by stringing a lot of highly effective 30-minute blocks together.
This is a question we will explore in Temporal Control, but really, you ought to ask yourself the question pretty regularly anyways.
“Is what I’m doing in this current 30-minute block serving to build the next 10 years of my life the way I want to?”
Some readers are nodding. “Oh, yes, a familiar topic. This series sounds nice. Sebastian is going on to something I already know pretty well.”
Other people are perhaps getting a little tiny bit anxious. Maybe saying something like, “Uhh, well, I can’t be doing the right thing all the time, can I?”
Actually, I think you can and should do the right thing all the time.
Really, at the risk of sounding a mix of grandiose and boring, I think taking life seriously makes a lot of sense.
DUBIOUS BATTLE
Dubious Battle #1: Faith vs Works
THE TRAVELER
It is London in 1898, and the poem is an immediate sensation –
“And why the natives were so meek;
Until by chance we heard him speak,
And then we clearly understood
How great
a Power for Social Good
The African can be.
He said with a determined air:
"You are not what your fathers were;
Liberians, you are Free!
Of course, if you refuse to go"
And here he made a gesture so.
He also gave us good advice
Concerning Labour and its Price.
"In dealing wid de Native Scum,
Yo' cannot pick an' choose;
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