I am new here. While I have looked at your page in English (and been disappointed), I have looked at your forum and been somewhat impressed. Here we see many people (diverse as would be called by more fanatical opponents if were we on the same side) united behind common principles.
The principles of human morality whose explanation has been given most cogently in the Bible.
While I do not have videographic skills, nor do I have fine rhetoric, I have an understanding of some Western modes of thought. This may then be applied to predicting the larger strategic situation in the world.
Enough of the Intro, lets get started.
Westerners, Americans particularly, lack historical memory. This is in large part due to not needing it. They have been so successful in other matters that the long-term value of group identity is not apparent to them. Their sociological focus is short-term and fails to understand the rational interactions of emotions and human systems. Liberals grasp only part of it but lack enough rationality to fully understand it. Conservatives understand it instinctively (as do most people) but do not have a full intellectual framework to defend it.
The knowledge an organization has of a region or a specific case is limited in the American sense because the means of evaluation are learned from History and that is not learned in American society. The normal human interactions between people and between peoples are the province of History and to study it is to learn from the mistakes of others.
This is a roundabout way of saying, American diplomats have little idea about the people they are supposedly negotiating with because they cannot think the same way. Observe this article by a supposedly informed observer.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_envoy28_08-28-08_P4BBCTR_v45.4129a65.html
Jim Rosapepe: Biden’s brilliant political intuition in action
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 28, 2008
JIM ROSAPEPE
Joe Biden with Barack Obama on Saturday
AP photo
COLLEGE PARK, Md.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA’S choice of Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice presidential running mate understandably is being analyzed in excruciating detail for its political impacts: Will it unite the Democratic Party? Will he help the ticket in the election? Will his prior disagreements with Senator Obama, for example, on the war in Iraq, help or hurt Obama’s campaign?
These are all important questions. But the larger question for voters really is: What would he bring to the job if their ticket were elected?
As we’ve learned, particularly during the last eight years with Richard Cheney, a vice president who is smart, aggressive, experienced — and is respected by the president — can have a major impact on our lives. Joe Biden is clearly all of those things. So if the Democratic ticket wins, how would he approach the job?
I got a chance to see his approach up close one day in early September 1999, when I was U.S. ambassador to Romania. In the aftermath of NATO’s success in stopping ethnic cleaning in Kosovo, Cabinet members and members of Congress stopped in Bucharest to thank the Romanians for their support of NATO and get a feel for where the Balkan region was going.
Unlike some of the other visitors, whose approach was helpful but remarkably relaxed, Biden was a whirlwind of inquiry, analysis and commentary from the time he landed at Otopeni airport.
On the 20-minute drive into the city, he quizzed me on Romanian attitudes, the status of various government leaders, and the inside story on Romania’s policy toward Slobodan Milosevic, who was still in power next door in Yugoslavia. Because Biden has known all the major Romanian leaders since the dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, the questions were Ph.D. level, not Romania 101. That was remarkable in itself since he is no specialist on Romania; he could do the same, landing in dozens of nations around the world.
In his meetings with President Emil Constantinescu and others, he thanked them sincerely for their support for NATO, and then he drilled right in on Milosevic: How strong did they think he was in Yugoslavia after the war? How did they evaluate the various leaders of the democratic opposition there, whom he asked about name by name, since he knew each of them personally, too. Unlike the Bush administration, which has been accused of tailoring its version of the facts to match its policy, Biden was trying to learn the facts first-hand to figure out what would be the right U.S. policy.
He also exuded a passion for helping the Serbs leave the failed path of ethnic war for a democratic future. Between meetings, I got a running commentary on his discussions with President Clinton as the president had struggled with the tough questions of when and how much military force to use in that war. In the end, air power and diplomacy won the day for NATO. There was no ground invasion and not a single American soldier died in combat.
But Biden was already concerned that the world’s first observation of the extraordinary precision of America’s new high-tech weaponry, particularly launched from the air, would create destabilizing fear in such countries as China. Just months after the Kosovo war had ended, he was looking around the next corner, while not losing focus on the immediate issues.
In most of our meetings, Romanian leaders reiterated their strong interest in joining NATO. At lunch at my house with opposition party leaders, one of them said that NATO membership was important to their country for a reason I’d never heard before.
“If we’re in NATO, we won’t have to worry about NATO attacking Romania over our relations with our Hungarian minority the way you attacked Yugoslavia,” he said. “Since Turkey has been in NATO for decades, you let them do what they want with the Kurdish minority.”
Biden, visibly angry, rose from his chair, leaned across the table closer to the man, and said: “If that’s why you want to get into NATO, I’ll make sure you never do!”
Cooler Romanian heads assured Biden — and me — that the gentleman was being misunderstood and they were committed to good relations with their Hungarian minority. And in fact they were right. When the opposition came to power a year later, the Hungarian party in Romania supported the government. And in 2004, Romania did join NATO — with Joe Biden’s support.
What struck me, beyond the stupidity of that one Romanian comment, was the frank, sincere, passionate statement that Biden made about U.S. policy. He knew when to say the right thing in the right way. And the Romanians clearly respected him for it.
The most extraordinary meeting we had was with Petre Roman, president of the Romanian Senate. He had been prime minister in the early 1990s, so of course Biden had met him before. Biden thanked him for Romania’s help in Kosovo and then grilled him on Serbian politics, a subject which on which Petre Roman was quite expert. In fact, the Serbian democratic leader whom Roman urged the U.S. to work with became the driving force behind defeating Milosevic in the 2000 elections and bringing pro-Western democrats to power in Serbia, where they are today. Biden asked the right guy the right questions.
But as we came out of the meeting, Biden said to me, “What’s that guy so upset about? He looks the way I felt when I chaired my last Judiciary Committee meeting.” He was referring to 1994, when the Republicans won control of the U.S. Senate, relieving Biden of his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“He’s got some big problem on his mind. Do you know what it is?” he asked me.
I was amazed. Without knowing the latest inside Romanian domestic politics, Biden had read Roman’s body language and knew he was talking to a politician under incredible stress.
In fact, Petre Roman was under great pressure because the public support for the coalition government that included his party was plummeting.
Roman was worried about his party’s survival in the next election in 2000. Several months later, he brought down the government, replaced the prime minister and took over the foreign minister’s job himself.
Roman’s party survived the next election, though it went into opposition. But Roman himself was deposed as party leader less than two years after the meeting with Biden.
My question was: How does Biden do it?
I still want to know.
Joe Biden has better intuition about other politicians, American or foreign, than any elected official I’ve ever met.
Even more than his decades of experience, that gift will help a President Obama with his ambitious domestic program as much as it will help in protecting America’s security.
Jim Rosapepe, now a Maryland state senator, was U.S. ambassador to Romania in 1998-2001.Biden's reaction was most likely out of concern that the Romanians were willing (and perhaps planning) to conduct a genocide against Hungarians. Being from Romania, that does not seem even remotely likely. That assumption was made possible because of the lack of knowledge about the region. The relevant information is not just in the past decades but centuries.
Why?
Because that allows you to evaluate the claims of the various nationalists.
That brings us to another problem. Westerners understand "nationalism" differently than Eastern Europeans. To Eastern Europeans, that refers to the simple idea that you have historical/cultural/linguistic/religious groups that have common culture and common interests. That is in of itself unremarkable. The main point of contact between Westerners and "nationalism" has been the term " National Socialism" and the Racial Utopian politics of the Nazis. For me, the relevant part is "Socialism" which means total state control and a supreme radical ideology. Others look simply at the word "nationalism" and assume all who use it are Nazis. This is an automatic way of gaining negative publicity among historically ignorant people.
Because of the security and cultural cocoon of the US diplomatic corps, they rarely observe for themselves the life of the common people. That weakens their rapport with the people (hence heightened anti-American sentiment) and makes them think they can get away with murder. One prime example is the next ambassador being openly Homosexual when transferred to an Orthodox country. He brought his partner to state occasions and pressured the local government to authorize and bless Homosexual organizations and activities. Embassy staff hired young Romanian men for actions that were not consensual due to bans on prostitution and statutory rape. This expressed utter disregard for the values and laws of the local country.
Due to organizational thinking, this was treated as a purely bureaucratic matter, not as a brewing diplomatic crisis.
Later, when a Romanian pop-star (admittedly of fading popularity) was killed by a marine guard having an affair, he was smuggled out of the country so Romanian law could not prosecute something that was clearly in violation of proper conduct. The Court Martial later found him innocent of Adultery (I know from contacts with the other daughter of the relevant diplomat that there was an affair) losing the confidence of the Romanian population.
The US DoS fails to win over the local people by treating their values as lower than the officials own pleasures. Civil Servants indeed.
The other side, relations with the government, brings us back to the article.
The Romanian official who was frank enough to point out another reason (by no means the smallest) to join NATO made the mistake of assuming two things. He assumed that Biden could think strategically, and he assumed that Biden was a friend (who could be trusted).
One should not male the mistake of equating friendship (a willingness to sacrifice for other friends and put their interests above your own) and goodwill. For the Romanians, that meant accepting Romanian claims to Transylvania and the means to keep it. For the Americans, it simply meant no illwill. The two are not the same.
One of the biggest problems of the cordial entente of people here is the perennial one. How do you talk to Westerners?
Sadly, the emotions of leading Westerners are flattered and that is how policy is decided in the short-run. The narcissistic ideologies and groups are then best able to make use of that. As Sam Cavich is aware, it takes a Narcissist to know one.
The Romanian responses to the absurdity of Biden's claims and demands were:
a: Smoothly provide comforting noises (people listen to tone, not content)
b: be silent (no words, no rope to hang you)
c:fob the person off (say yes and ignore it later)
d: (related to c) lie (how can they check up on you?)
Note that none of these actually includes confronting the person with the truth. Some of those responses included the truth but that did not center on it.
Romania had no desire to commit a genocide against Hungarians. The desire to keep them under control was referenced to Jugoslavia where the Americans erroneously believed a genocide was being committed by Serbs. That triggered the "Insane Genocidal Nationalistic Balkans" routine that led to the stupid outburst.
Petru Roman (he even got the name wrong) was certainly under great stress but that probably had to do with having to lie to Biden's face. Telling the truth would not have been accepted. Biden's request/demand that Romania help topple Milosevich would not have likely accepted a No. Petru Roman could neither hurt a friend (Romanian-Jugoslav cooperation goes back decades) nor deny the Americans who controlled Romania's lifeline. The solution? Lie.
The response of silence was interpreted to be respect by the then Ambassador. Sometimes there is real respect, more often it is simply the time people take to reevaluate what you will permit yourself to say and do around the Americans.
What does all this do for American Foreign Policy? It makes it easily manipulable and schizophrenic. Two things happen. Potential friends are alienated due to faulty background data and enemies can hijack support by providing unabashed lies.
Topic: Strategic Interpretations (Americans Say the Craziest Things!) (Read 5548 times)