IPAK-EDU is taking the deep dive on the lasting effects of The Cold War on how our society is organized and run. This will be interesting. Group discussions, live. You are invited.
Just a decade after WWII western liberal democracies that defeated public-private partnership governance, aka, Fascism, were already coveting the governing model Mussolini and Hitler developed.
'Damned Efficient Slavery' vs. 'Inefficient Freedom'
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.
I respond to this article as a former USAF officer who served on active duty from 1967 to 1988, through the height of the Cold War. I served on the Air Staff in the 1980s and contributed at least marginally to major decisions concerning nuclear deterrence and the Single Integrated Operational Plan (aka in slang "Nuclear Go to War" plan). I also accurately predicted to family friends in Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Empire about ten years before it happened.
I suggest that we cannot fully understand the nature of the western Agency State without also addressing the human nature of the people who inherited it and their responses to the growing complexity of the post-World-War world. Institutions do not develop or persist independently of the people who inhabit or administer them. President Dwight D Eisenhower recognized this reality in his 1961 Farewell Address when he stated that the total influence—economic, political, and even spiritual—was felt in every level of government, and warned, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex".
In an 1887 letter, British historian Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton) wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Having authority makes it easy to ignore regular rules and other people's needs. Thus it seems to me that a major challenge in our country today is to reeducate political leaderships that have lost sight of the value system that chooses limitations in government power to compel behavior in its citizens. To reeducate our leadership we must first reeducate ourselves as citizens -- and do so in a world where misinformation and extreme polarization daily challenge our ability to discriminate right from wrong.
Thanks for an interesting article.
Richard A Lawhern, PhD (UCLA 1976), LT Colonel USAF Retired
"The institutions built during that struggle did not simply vanish in 1991. Intelligence agencies, NATO remained ..." There is a telling omission here: Did Warsaw Pact remain, too? This should be the crux of the matter for without considering it, no meaningful debate may follow.
"Communist governments generally asserted that central planning and disciplined political leadership were necessary to defend the revolution, reorganize economic life, resist foreign interference, and suppress forces considered counterrevolutionary." Given that a dozen foreign armies invaded Soviet Russia in 1918 on the side of the White Army, how were they incorrect?
Just a decade after WWII western liberal democracies that defeated public-private partnership governance, aka, Fascism, were already coveting the governing model Mussolini and Hitler developed.
'Damned Efficient Slavery' vs. 'Inefficient Freedom'
https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist0158uvic_1/mode/2up?view=theater
The Daily Colonist
Victoria Island's Leading Newspaper Since 1858
January 4th, 1958
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.
I respond to this article as a former USAF officer who served on active duty from 1967 to 1988, through the height of the Cold War. I served on the Air Staff in the 1980s and contributed at least marginally to major decisions concerning nuclear deterrence and the Single Integrated Operational Plan (aka in slang "Nuclear Go to War" plan). I also accurately predicted to family friends in Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Empire about ten years before it happened.
I suggest that we cannot fully understand the nature of the western Agency State without also addressing the human nature of the people who inherited it and their responses to the growing complexity of the post-World-War world. Institutions do not develop or persist independently of the people who inhabit or administer them. President Dwight D Eisenhower recognized this reality in his 1961 Farewell Address when he stated that the total influence—economic, political, and even spiritual—was felt in every level of government, and warned, "we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex".
In an 1887 letter, British historian Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton) wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Having authority makes it easy to ignore regular rules and other people's needs. Thus it seems to me that a major challenge in our country today is to reeducate political leaderships that have lost sight of the value system that chooses limitations in government power to compel behavior in its citizens. To reeducate our leadership we must first reeducate ourselves as citizens -- and do so in a world where misinformation and extreme polarization daily challenge our ability to discriminate right from wrong.
Thanks for an interesting article.
Richard A Lawhern, PhD (UCLA 1976), LT Colonel USAF Retired
Dr. Lawhern, may I repost your reply on my X feed? This is insightful at a fundamental level of civic education and engagement.
Feel free to repost.
Yet another banger of an essay JLW!
"The institutions built during that struggle did not simply vanish in 1991. Intelligence agencies, NATO remained ..." There is a telling omission here: Did Warsaw Pact remain, too? This should be the crux of the matter for without considering it, no meaningful debate may follow.
"Communist governments generally asserted that central planning and disciplined political leadership were necessary to defend the revolution, reorganize economic life, resist foreign interference, and suppress forces considered counterrevolutionary." Given that a dozen foreign armies invaded Soviet Russia in 1918 on the side of the White Army, how were they incorrect?