For MEB, as always. 

A Failed Empire by Vladislov Zubok is a very timely analysis of Soviet foreign policy from Stalin to Gorbachev, from a Russian point of view, in effect.

Americans are not so great at taking in multiple interpretaions of events, and to be fair I think a real understanding of Great Power Politics does tend to make your head spin, because of our youth, especially because of our naivete, and because of a little arrogance born of a relatively easy history: so far.

Other than in the War of 1812, so sorry about Pakenham getting the chop by the Napoleon of the Woods, Andrew  Jackson, no American city has been burned to the ground in a long time.

I personally would like to keep it that way, by, for example, whatever the actual merits of Oliver Cromwell and the later Battle of the Boyne, keep our Southern Irish nationalists in Boston reigned in; but then I am Scotch-Irish, of Ulster, of THE UNITED KINGDOM FOREVER.

Sorry you lost the Battle of the Boyne, but Erin Go Braugh too, which is the point.

In any event, it would not seem wise to tick off our Father Country, as sons who pass father in glory are often seen in need of a life threatening ass-beating, especially if, like in 1940, they are not there in someone's life and death hour of need, and also talk what could be seen as hypocritical bullshit about terrorism, while having funded the IRA.

Not smart America, even if it plays well in Boston, as the Southern Irish, last time I checked, do not have the same access to nuclear weapons that the Ulstermen effectively speaking do as the most loyal, because of nowhere else to go, of Their Majesty's Subjects.

After that brief digression into the reality of Great Power Politics, we turn to Mr. Zubok, and his wonderful tale, A Failed Empire, about foreign policy under Soviet rule.

This will be an episodic approach with some themes, in order that whoever is interested can read it for themselves of course, and see what they think themselves.

Just my style.

In any event, as to causality of the Cold War, the "right wing American extremists" it would seem were in fact right about Soviet intent after WWII; even Kennan underestimated Soviet ambitions.

Molotov's objectives outlined in the book, grounded in Soviet archives, in 1945 included not only the usual suspects, the Balts, the Finns, the Poles, the Hungarians, Rumanians, the Czechs (the Czech legion I suppose in the Civil War ?), but also extended to Sweden, Turkey, Iran, the Arabs, anything the Tsars lost to the Japanese, in 1905, long memory America, including Manchuria and Korea, and on a good day, India, like Alexander I wanted at Tilsit from Napoleon.

Stalin made the betrayal of the other Powers by Alexander I at Tilsit seem like a piker in terms of ambition to dominate the world, although, as Stalin was a control maniac, not a control freak, but a control maniac, what I guess, would one expect.

Although I can also sympathize with Zubok's point that, after 25 million dead, the Russians had a right to be made to feel safe.

There is a very moving discussion in Zubok about hopes for a better future after WWII, and then, more terror.

In the end, it is nothing personal in the Hearts with Human Lives Game that is Great Power Politics, domestically and internationally, just that the above list of documented by Zubok Soviet ambitions was also bound to trigger a balancing response from the power that sat out much of the war in a cowardly and devious fashion to keep down casualties, some might say, like the French and British in particular.

Americans have a short memory.

Some of the Powers do not, and we should apologize probably in some way, and cut out this b.s. about the French being chickens, because the Legionaires are not chickens, fought as bravely at Dienbienphuas the Marines did at Khe Sahn, and felt betrayed by the lack of implicitly promised air support, just as the British felt betrayed at Suez.

(Although, I think that Suez was also a test, so they shouldn't get too mad; it is all just a game of Hearts with Human Lives, any way).

In any event, Zubok also is fascinating in his discussion of Khrushchev, and his use of what, to an American mind seems insane brinksmanship at Suez, Berlin twice, and of course my personal favorite, Cuba in 1962.

Of course, one can always hope that the Russian military remembers that this little episode,which as Zubok points out, damaged Russo-Cuban relations, up until a very, very curious episode in Angola I will mention in a minute.

One can hope as well that Mr. Putin ralso remembers that even his former boss KGB Director Andropov, clearly no wimp while KGB Resident in Buda Pesht, with his call to crush Hungary in the name of "defending socialism with an axe," helped oust Khrushchev in October 1964 because of his "adventurism" with nuclear war against Kennedy.

One can only hope that in a pinch, that should Mr. Putin's St. Petersburg clique get too "adventurous," Mr. Putin can peacably retire to nice dacha in Satchi under 24/7 observation to work on his judo, while the younger generation like Medvedev gets a real chance with say, a new monetary order, a new Breton Woods System, based on the British Thermal Unit, in honor of British contributions to civilization, which are massive compared to this young country, yet, and reflective of the reality of Russian energy strength and power, and the Other Powers interest in say, the development of an Iraqi confederation built on oil.

Think of that economic stimulus.

In any event, what is a really another fascinating point of this book, A Failed Empire, is the politics of a dictatorship.

Mr. Zubok rightly in my eyes won the Shulman Prize for the Advancement of Slavic Studies for this work, because to see Khrushchev's sucessor Leonid Brezhnev outmaneuver Kosygin is worth the read alone, because the Kosygin's and Grachevs, old school Stalinist hardliners, could have gotten us all killed when combined with American old school hard cases like Pearle, in a world where your "allies" are often actually your enemies.

And now, we move to the meat of the matter, which is the tragedy I think Mr. Zubok tells about Leonid Brezhnev, who I now see in a much, much different, and much better, light.

It is easy now to make fun of Leonid Brezhnev.

To an American, he needed eyelashes clipped; that reflects what foreigners, rightfully, I think, see as a certain juvenality in American culture.

If that sounds harsh, verbal ass-beatings are significantly better than Great Power ass-beatings.

Actually, when Leonid was young, he was just a good Russian boy, climbing the Stalinist ladder, just like good American boys climbed the corporate ladder here; not so different, because we are all human.

Leonid was big with the ladies, just a big old loveable Russian Bear of  a guy who loved fast cars, fast cars, and vodka, (think Dukes of Moscow, never meant no harm) who of course loved scaring Nixon and Kissinger with his driving, maybe because Nixon tried to convince Brezhnev that he was crazy to help him end Vietnam, who had a story that stayed with him, what Zubok calls the Sermon on the Mount from his father.

In 1940, when Hitler's tanks rolled into France, his father asked Leonid, "What is the height of the Eifel Tower?"

Leonid: "300 meters."

Father: "What is the world's tallest mountain?"

Leonid: "Everest."

Father: "We should build a gallows as tall as the Eifel Tower and put it on top of Mount Everest, and hang all the criminals who launched this war."

Leonid Brezhnev, in other words, was not all bad, because no one is all good and no one is all bad, beacause we are all human.

Actually, he was pretty good, for a Communist, up until he got ill from dealing with the Arabs and Israelis, which could be a warning now.

Zubok correctly, I think, dates Brezhnev's decline to the taking of tranquilizers to cope with the stress of Arab Nasser and Sadat's duplicitous brinksmanship that combined with respectively Israeli paranoia and overreaching, gave the world the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, the latter of which saw Kissinger go over a passed out drunk Nixon's head to declare Defcon 3.

Yes, in 1973, the Russians were mobilizing paratroopers in the Caucusus in response to our declaring as high an alert level as in the Cuban excitement, and although I suppose all's well that ends well in Great Power Demonstrations of Resolve to Defend Allies, there is always the chance of a Sarajevo.

The book A Failed Empire, although academic in character, is thus scarily entertaining, like life.

In any event, the book especially is useful in understanding the failure of detente, and the ultimate intervention in Afghanistan that destroyed the Soviet Union.

Since the United States is in Afghanistan, that is worth thinking about now.

Why did they do that?

Why, as another book I shall review another day, did the Bear go Over the Mountain?

In part, I think Zubok makes a compelling point, because of Russian Blackwaters, but also other Powers manipulations and stupid Games of Hearts with Human Lives.

As to the former, in other words, under the Brezhnev system, if you were an apparatchik of the ruling class, known as the nomenklatura, you got extra pay if you went to places like Somalia (note the pirates now, but also our own hazard pay for our mercenaries, I mean Volunteer Force) and Angola, even if it was not in the real interests of the Soviet state, thereby demonstrating that a pure Realist model of international relations based on unitary actor theory is wrong: even Stalin had domestic constituencies to please.

So, long story short, after the Jackson-Vanik amendment effectively ended detente, which both Brezhnev and Nixon thought was what Zionists and the U.S. military industrial complex wanted in terms of causality, respectively divide and rule from an understandable paranoia, and longstanding acceptance issues, and the latter in terms of greed, gradually a dangerous drift came into Soviet foreign policy, given Brezhnev's declining health.

Being fed more and more tranquilizers by Andropov at KGB, power devolved onto the troika of Andropov (Putin's boss, that matters now), Grachev and Ustinov at Defense, and Gromyko at the Foreign Ministry.

In essence, Zubok makes what I think is a great point that Brezhnev got led down the garden path into Afghanistan in the name of "internationalism," once the Persians under the Shah provoked Mohammed Daoud in Afghanistan to crack down on Leftists in 1975, because Brezhnev's military-intelligence complex was on auto-pilot.

Just like Eisenhower warned about too; which would be the real tragedy of a Great Power War.

That latter fact of Daoud, of course, was the Persian way of generating chaos in Afghanistan, so they that, of course, they could get back Herat in western Afghanistan, which they have had off and on for oh, about two thousand five hundred years and Cyrus the Great, if you like data.

In the event, one scary takeaway lesson from A Failed Empire is how Brezhnev plaintively told Andropov "You got me into this (because of a military-intelligence complez run amok), now get me out."

The British of course found out in 1842, like the Doors said, No one Gets Out of Afghanistan Alive.

Barrack Obama should think about that very carefully right now in terms of General McChrystal or anyone else's advice or pressure to make a decision in terms of troop levels, just as Mr. Putin should think very, very carefully about how Andropov regretted the whole covert Afghan manipulations, even though they looked great on paper, right before they became another slow motion Sarajevo that ended the Soviet Union.

Moreover, another interesting part of the book to my mind is how you see that yes, the Russians penetrated the West German Brandt Cabinet, at the NSC level, personal advisor, and you see how the KGB considered bribing the Bundesraat to ratify the treaties over Berlin, which tells you they could have done it here too someday, and yet... .

Yet, when you look at the Middle East, the Russians complained, like us, that no one can control the Arabs and Israelis because they have Psychotic Sibling Rivalry Issues.

And then again, you see the Persian Shah intervening in Afghanistan and thereby destroying himself, all the while crazy North Vietnamese communist fanatics are provoking American retaliatory bombing while Soviet Prime Minister Koysgin is actually visting Hanoi, and you feel Brezhnev's need for medication for having to deal with the Real Great Power Politics, and all of its, dare we say the word, Conspiracies of Power Elite Politics, per Mosca, Pareto, Michels, and the American Mill.

Long story short, you want an IR book with the drama of Krushchev drunkenly weeping that he might have gone over the edge, a Brezhnev and Nixon whacked on pills and booze playing with crazy Middle Easterners, but Leonid just a Gool Old Bear, never meaning no harm, A Failed Empire makes great reading, especially between the lines, and, has, for once so far, a happy ending, especially, if the Estonians put that stupid statue back up as a start: GOT NUKES, ESTONIA?