My journey with John Irving began my freshman year in college when I read SETTING FREE THE BEARS. I have enjoyed his quirky sense of humor, his support for those ostracized by elements in society, and the incredible scenes he has created. Perhaps my favorite scene comes from the novel, THE FOURTH HAND, where the main character, a journalist’s ex-wife, employs a lacrosse stick as a pooper scooper for her dog. This unusual tool in a memorable, somewhat bizarre scene, highlights Irving’s style of blending the absurd with profound themes that have carried forth through some of my favorite Irving novels that include THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE, A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, and TRYING TO SAVE PEGGY SNEED. My journey is very personal as I have taught at a university in New Hampshire, in addition to an elitist boarding school in New England. Further my son played lacrosse at the boarding school and Harvard. In addition, my daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren are Mainers. So, you can see why I have the affinity for the types of novelistic themes and characters that Irving has created. Now that I am a senior citizen it seems that my adulthood is bookended with Irving’s writings and just when I needed an absurdist fix to deal with the reality of living in a Trumpist world he has produced his latest, QUEEN ESTHER, a book which is wonderful at times, and then disappointing at times.
In QUEEN ESTHER, Irving brings back Dr. Wilbur Larch from CIDER HOUSE RULES after four decades managing adoptions at St. Clouds Orphanage where he is the physician and Director. Larch performs abortions for women who have no alternatives and is as cantankerous as ever. The novel starts out in the early 20th century and revolves around Esther Nacht who was born in Vienna in 1905, the only Jewish orphan raised at St. Clouds. On her voyage from Bremerhaven to Portland, ME her father died of pneumonia aboard ship. Later, her mother will be murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch realizes that the abandoned child is not only aware that she is Jewish, but also she is familiar with the biblical Queen Esther after whom she was named. Dr. Larch realizes it will not be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt her, soon he is aware that he will never find any family to adopt her.
At the outset, the novel focuses on the Winslow family who date to 1620 arriving on the Mayflower. The Winslow’s reside in Pennacook, New Hampshire, a town which is the home of Pennacook Academy, an independent boarding school for boys founded in 1781. One of its students was James Winslow, a faculty brat and the grandson of the most revered member of the school’s English Department, Thomas Winslow. Since Jimmy’s mother, Esther was an orphan he could not be considered a “blue blood.” The townspeople had difficulties with his mother’s adoption and as Irving develops the novel they were correct as Esther was the caretaker for Thomas and his wife Constance Winslow’s fourth daughter, Honor. Jimmy’s birth was the result of the “pact” between Esther and Honor; Esther would become pregnant and give the child to Honor who detested the idea of birthing a child. So begins a novel that is typical Irving; layered, funny, heartbreaking, and full of the strange humanity he always captures.
(John Irving in 2010)
The adoption of Esther by Thomas and Constance is important because it allows Irving to delve into societal issues related to abortion. When the Winslow’s set out to adopt a caretaker for their daughter they were clear that they did not want to adopt someone from an orphanage run by nuns or linked to the Christian faith – they could not bear any religious affiliation. After considering a French-Canadian orphanage as too religious they settled on St. Cloud’s where they found Esther, a Jewish child of fifteen who was born in Vienna. As the Winslow’s searched for what turned out to be Esther, Irving presents his pro-abortion views focusing on people who opposed abortion but did not consider the child who would wind up in an orphanage, as it seemed they just wanted to punish the mother. As in all examples of societal issues Irving will present a brief history of the topic and the fact that abortion was not considered illegal from 1620 to the mid-19th century. Irving argues it became illegal as Doctor’s resented midwives who performed them making money at their expense.
Since Esther was Jewish the issue of anti-Semitism soon became the focus of Irving’s characters and thereby his views. He subtly integrates the issue as he believes that New Englanders are covertly anti-Semitic as witnessed by the reaction to Thomas’ lectures on abortion and the adoption of Esther. It is clear that it would be difficult to find parents for Esther because she was Jewish, but since the Winslow’s were a philanthropic, non-Jewish eccentrically non-believing New Hampshire couple, they would be the type open to adopting a teenager like Esther.
The novel spans the 20th century from 1905 to 1981 and at the outset you get the feeling it is about Esther, but in reality it is mostly about Jimmy Winslow, the son who was the center of the “pact.” Esther herself considered her “Jewishness” as the mainstay of her identity, but was not religious, though she could read Hebrew she did not believe in God. Her main goal eventually was to move to Israel as she was consumed by the exile of the Jews from the land of Israel and the diaspora of the Jewish people. Her outlook on life could be summed up from a quote from JANE EYRE which in true Irving fashion was tattooed between her breasts. She traveled to Europe in 1934 with the goal of getting pregnant to honor the “pact” where she would meet Moshe Kleinberg, a Greco-Roman wrestler in the lightweight class who even had a picture taken with General Paul von Hindenburg when he was President of Germany! Moshe, whose nickname was “the little mountain” would become Jimmy’s father but would never meet him which creates another path for Irving to expound upon as Jimmy has many identity issues because of his background.
As Jimmy matured his grandfather exposed him to literary figures, particularly Charles Dickens that factored into his decision to become a writer. Jimmy believed in his intrinsic foreignness and was determined to see himself as an orphan, no matter how his grandparents tried to raise him. In 1963 we find Jimmy in Vienna seeking his roots and a desire to learn German. Esther will find him a German Jewish tutor who of course he falls in love with. Jimmy’s other issue is the Vietnam War and the draft in the United States. His mother, Honor, sent him to Vienna to meet someone, get them pregnant, keep the baby and in this way he would be draft exempt. If that couldn’t take place she wanted him to wrestle with the hope of damaging his leg also making him draft exempt. In the background everyone wonders about Esther who has gone to Palestine – is she a member of the Haganah, a Jewish defense force or something similar to defend Jews and facilitate their immigration to Palestine. Another plot line that is an undercurrent for Jimmy is his goal of being a novelist, and of course the name of the book is THE DICKENS MAN.
In all subjects that Irving integrates into the novel he has excellent command of the history of the topic. Apart from abortion and anti-Semitism Irving expounds on Jewish history, GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens, films like “From Here to Eternity,” a history of circumcision, the rise of the Nazis, the Holocaust, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Cold War era in general, and Israeli politics and society. It is clear Irving has conducted meticulous research for his novel and should be commended as he immerses himself in his subjects until every detail feels authentic even if it meant visiting wrestling gyms, hospitals or tattoo parlors. Further as he constructs his background history he does it in a concise and meaningful manner where the subject matter just blends seamlessly into the story.
Though the novel seems to focus mostly on Jimmy, the progression of Esther in the background until she emerges at the end of the book is powerful, especially in light of what Israel seems to have become and the arguments put forth by Palestinians and Israelis alike. The reviews for QUEEN ESTHER have been mixed and as usual in interviews Irving does not seem to care what is said about his work. Some have panned the novel but his sarcasm, sense of the absurd, character development, and ability to provide scenes that no one else could create make the book a worthwhile read, and of course along with his unique style of writing.
(Mass grave of Polish officers in Katyn Forest, exhumed by Germany in 1943)
The Katyn forest massacre committed by the Soviet Union occurred between April and May 1940. Though killings took place in Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons operated by the NKVD and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest where mass graves were first discovered by the Nazis in April1943. Roughly 22,000 Polish military, police officers, border guards, intellectual prisoners of war were executed by the Soviet Secret Police, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin issued the orders. Once the Nazis announced their findings Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London based Polish government in exile because they asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbles realized the publicity value of the find he immediately contacted the Polish Red Cross to investigate but the Kremlin denied culpability and blamed the Germans. The British and their allies, dependent upon Soviet participation to defeat the Nazis, went along with the falsehood. The Kremlin continued to deny responsibility for the massacre until 1990, when it finally accepted accountability for NKVD’s actions and the concealment of the truth by the Soviet government.
At that time Russian president Boris Yerltsin released top-secret documents pertaining to the investigation and forwarded them to Lech Walesa, Poland’s new President. Among the documents was a plan written by Lavrentiev Beria, the head of the NKVD until 1953 dated March 5, 1940, calling for the execution of 25,700 Poles from the Kozelsk, Ostashkov, and Starobelsk prisoner of war camps, and from prisons in Ukraine and Belarus. After the fall of the Soviet Union the prosecutors general of the Russian Federation admitted Soviet responsibility for the massacres but refused to admit to a war crime or an act of mass murder.
(Aerial view of the Katyn massacre grave)
The historical record acknowledges that Stalin was behind the genocidal atrocity and it was part of his larger plan to remove anyone who might conceivably pose a threat to the imposition of future Soviet rule in Poland – “a decapitation of Polish society strikingly similar to Nazi policy in occupied Poland at the same time.” He wanted to eliminate large elements of the Polish elite to remove any potential obstacle to the later imposition of communist rule. For Stalin, Poland was an artificial creation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty that undid the 1772, 1793 and 1795 partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. Because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 26, 1939, Poland would be divided a fourth time between Germany and the Soviet Union. Stalin could retake Russia’s Polish holdings, Western Ukraine and Belorussia without worrying about German opposition. A second line of reasoning for Stalin centers around the Soviet dictator’s knowledge of Adolf Hitler’s intentions. Stalin had read MEIN KAMPF and was fully cognizant of Hitler’s endgame- Lebensraum or “living space” in the east, and how Russia was to be Germany’s “breadbasket.” By invading Poland on September 16, 1939, completing the fourth partition of Poland he would create a buffer zone for the eventual German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. For Stalin it was a defensive measure.
The mystery clouding responsibility over the massacre is the subject of historian and biographer Jane Rogoyska’s book, SURVIVING KATYN: STALIN’S POLISH MASSACRE AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH which chronicles how the NKVD worked to reshape the facts pertaining to the massacre blaming it on the Nazis. Planting documents on dead bodies to pursuing a truck full of evidence across Europe, destroying records, to staging incidents in European capitals the Stalinist government left no stone unturned in quashing the truth. Only 395 men survived the massacre who were unwitting witnesses to a crime that theoretically never officially happened. In a striking narrative, Rogoyska brings the victims out of the shadows, telling their stories as well as those of the people who desperately searched for them. In a work of moral clarity and precision, the author does not just supply statistics about another World War II atrocity, but how individuals were sacrificed for no reason and whose memory was lost, a sideshow in the battle between two psychotic and demented dictators.
(Map of the sites related to the Katyn massacre)
At the outset Rogoyska introduces the reader to the prisoners of war and their overseers. She lays out the incarceration process, the paranoia of the NKVD, and the incompetence of the bureaucracy of those in charge. Recounting the interrogation process, attempts to propagandize the Poles, and presenting intimate pictures of the prisoners, the author employs interviews, memoirs, and whatever documentation was available in order to the provide the most complete picture of the personalities and events pertaining to the massacre since Allen Paul’s KATYN: STALIN’S MASSACRE AND THE TRIUMPH OF TRUTH.
Initially the prisoners were taken to three camps, Starobelsk, Kozelsk, and Ostashkov. Rogoyska discusses life in all three camps and focuses mostly on Starobelsk as she follows the lives of Bronislav Mlynarski, Jozef Czapski, and Zygmunt Kwarcinke. They would be among the last group that left Starobelsk and were sent to a transit camp at Pavlishchev Bor in a group of 395 out of 14,800 from all three prison camps. On June 14, 1940, they were taken to the Griazovets camp located halfway between Moscow and the Arctic port of Arkhangelsk.
While in Griazovets, Beria, with Stalin’s support, worked to create a Polish Division within the Red Army, a topic that Rogoyska spends a great deal of time discussing. Beria and his henchmen tried to recruit Polish officers to lead it, most refused, but a few from a pro-Soviet group from Starobelsk known as the “Red Corner” agreed. The NKVD was concerned about the officer’s attitudes toward the exiled Polish government in London. While questioning other officers who remained POWs who wanted information about the whereabouts and availability of their compatriots, Beria responded “no, we made a big mistake.” From this phrase the author develops Beria’s guilt in the death of thousands. It would take until May of 1943 for the creation of the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kosciuszko infantry division within the Red Army led by General Zigmunt Berling, an NKVD collaborator. This would satisfy Beria’s goal of a division with a “Polish Face” within the Soviet military.
( Director of the Soviet secret police-NKVD Lavrenty Beria)
During training at Griazovets, the NKVD invested a great deal of time trying to gain the loyalty of the Poles. They created a cultural school employing film, lectures, music, better treatment, etc. to no avail. The NKVD attempt to re-educate these men was an abject failure.
Finally on June 22, 1941, Stalin’s greatest fear came to fruition when the Nazis invaded Russia. The invasion impacted the prisoners in a number of ways. First, conditions at Griazovets worsened as rations were cut 50%, clothing became unavailable, and freedoms were lessened. Secondly, the Polish POWs feared as the Russians collapsed they would be seized and imprisoned by the Germans. Thirdly, a large influx of new prisoners created chaos. Lastly, the London Poles came to an agreement with the Kremlin, known as the Sikorski-Maisky Agreement, restored diplomatic relations between Poland and Russia, instituted an amnesty for all prisoners in Russia, including thousands of women and children. It was decided that General Wladyslaw Andres would command the Polish army after his release from prison on August 4, 1941. The Poles, no longer prisoners, wondered the fate of their comrades – they had no idea that 14,500 of them from the three camps had been massacred.
From this point on Rogoyska explores who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of POWs, who was responsible for their deaths, and how the truth was covered up. Despite the amnesty for prisoners during their arrests they were sent deeper into Russia. These deportations took place between 1940 and 1941 numbered between 1.25 and 1.6 million, though the NKVD argues it “was only” 400,000. The death toll was about 30%.
( Jozef Czapski in uniform, January 1943)
Rogoyska focuses on the major players in her investigation. Generals Anders and Zygmunt Bohusz-Szysk met with Marshal Georgy Zuhkov and General Ivan Pantilov asking for a list of Polish soldiers taken by the Soviet Union. They met six times and meetings were pleasant until the fate of the prisoners were brought up and Zhukov would change the subject and remarked they would eventually be found. Professor Stanislaw Kot, a Polish academic was placed in charge of the prisoner issue by Andres, but he also was stonewalled and got nowhere. His meetings with Andrey Vyshinsky (Stalin’s purge prosecutor in the 1930s) and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov who offered to assist but claimed the NKVD did not maintain detailed records on the missing officers. Kot knew it was a lie, and the author details the meticulous records the NKVD kept. Rogoyska integrates transcripts of their meetings and Kot grows increasingly angry and frustrated with Vyshinsky’s responses. Molotov wrote General Sikorski in December 1941 that “all Polish citizens detained as POWs had now been released and that Soviet authorities had given them all necessary assistance.”
The author addresses the silence surrounding the missing men that gave rise to theories as to their fate. The most plausible thing was that they had been sent to one of the Soviet Union’s remote regions and had not yet been able to make their way south. Another theory rests on the claim that Polish prisoners were working in the mines and construction of military facilities in the Gulag region of Kolyma in the far east of Russia. Andres put former prisoner Jozef Czapski in charge of investigating the plight of these men and basically took over from Professor Kot. After meeting with Major Lenoid Raikhman, who was in charge of the Polish section at the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow who plead ignorance about the fate of the 14,500 officers, Czapski concluded they were probably sent to the remotest parts of the country and very few returned, and even those who made it back could not provide any useful information. Czapski was limited because he was appointed by the exiled Polish government in London and since the British were dependent on their Soviet allies in defeating Hitler they did not want to create waves.
Another key figure in the investigation was Lt. Stanislaw Swianiewicz, a former prisoner in the Kozelek camp and a distinguished professor of economics. The NKVD was interested in him because he had authored a book explaining how the Germans had rearmed. His story is right out of a movie set as the Russians interrogated him, released him, and tried to rearrest him but he escaped. Rogoyska’s chapters on his escapades provide a glimpse into Soviet thinking, the diplomatic game that was taking place between the Polish government in exile, the allies, and the Soviet Union, and Russian duplicity throughout. Swianiewicz was important to the Stalin because he was a witness to Soviet war crimes.
(Andrey Vyshinsky in 1940)
The Soviet smokescreen began in the fall of 1943 after the Red Army retook the Smolensk area. Before the Soviets arrived, the Germans allowed a group of Allied journalists to watch an autopsy prepared by Professor Gerhard Buhtz, the head of Germany’s Army Group Medical Services who pointed out that the bodies were all shot through the back of the head. Not to be out done, the Soviet Union conducted its own investigation headed by Lt. General of the Medical Corps and one time doctor to Stalin, brain specialist Nikolai Burdenko. NKVD operational workers arrived at Katyn in September 1943 under the direction of BG Major Leonid Raikhman whose men proceeded to rearrange the site, swaying witnesses, planting documents on dead bodies to support the charge that the massacre did not occur in 1940, but in August 1941 during the Nazi occupation. After allowing a group of journalists to visit the site, Alexander Werth, British journalist concluded that the evidence was very thin, and the site had a “prefabricated appearance.” He agreed with others that Moscow had committed the massacre. To her credit, the author delves into minute detail of the investigations and the personalities involved who could only conclude based on their findings it was not Germany that was responsible, but the Stalinist regime. She also includes primary source material like the Burdenko Commission report and others that were issued after careful investigations of the site and the exhumed bodies.
(Formal portrait, 1932 Josef Stalin)
The British and the Poles were convinced the NKVD was responsible, but it did not matter as the Soviet Union was needed to defeat Germany, so the allies swallowed their concerns. After the war, the communist government in Warsaw pursued anyone who tried to alter occurrences that would contradict the Soviet rendering of events.
Since the topic of the massacre has fostered a great deal of scholarship it is not surprising that the author does not contain any new revelations. But to her credit her account is lucid and powerful as she recreates the lives of the officers who were artists, scientists, engineers, poets, lawyers, as well as career military men. She chose to examine her topic through the lens of the investigation rather than describing it as it happened which may have been more thought provoking for the reader.
(Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing)
The other day President Trump gave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky an ultimatum, accept his proposed peace plan by Thanksgiving or else. The next day Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the United States was still in negotiations with Kyiv to find a solution for its ongoing war with Russia, and the deadline was cancelled. Another day went by when we learned that Special Enjoy Steve Wycoff had spoken with a top Russian negotiator and provided him with information as to how to maneuver Trump to obtain his approval for Kremlin demands. It appears that the original twenty-eight step proposal ultimatum from Trump was a recasting of Putin’s maximalist position which has not changed despite the recent Alaska Summit.
It seems to me the only way to get Putin to seriously negotiate is to provide Ukraine with long range missiles, ammunition, and other military equipment to place the war on a more even footing. Further the Trump administration should introduce more secondary sanctions on Moscow and others whose purchase of Russian fossil fuels fund Putin’s war, which would create a more level playing field for Ukraine, however the president will not do so no matter how often he hints that he will. Another important aspect is that Trump refused to provide any direct American aid to Ukraine. He will allow the European allies to purchase American equipment and ship it for use by the Ukrainian army. The problem is that it is not quick resupply and the allies have had difficulty agreeing amongst themselves.
As the war progresses Putin has tried to showcase his burgeoning friendship with President Xi Jinping of China. China has purchased millions of gallons of Russian oil, as has India which states it will now find alternative sources, which has bankrolled Moscow in paying for its war against Ukraine. These two autocratic countries are solidifying their relationship after decades of disagreements. It would be important for American national security not to drive a wedge in Chinese-American relations, however, Trump’s obsession with reworking the world economy through his tariff policy seems to be his only concern. Increasing tariffs, threatening trading partners, disrupting trade just angers China and does not allow American businesses to plan based on a supply line that is at the whim of Trump’s next TACO or change of mind!
(President Donald Trump spent his first term pursuing a grand new bargain with China but he only got to phase one)
In this diplomatic environment Michael McFaul, a professor of Political Science at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in addition to being a former U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014) latest book, DEMOCRATS VS. AUTOCRATS: CHINA, RUSSIA, AMERICA AND THE NEW GLOBAL ORDER is rather timely. In his monograph McFaul concludes, the old world order has ended, and we have entered a new Cold War era which is quite different from the one we experienced with the Soviet Union. The new era has witnessed many disconcerting changes; a new alliance emerging between China and Russia, Chinese economic growth has been substantial, and it has allowed them to fund their overwhelming military growth, the far right has grown exponentially in the United States and Europe, and the disturbing shift of the Trump administration toward isolationism, except in the case of Venezuela and the Southern Hemisphere. As a result, we are facing a new world which offers new threats without precedent in the 20th century, and we seem incapable of dealing with them.
McFaul meticulously takes the reader on a journey encompassing the last 300 years as he argues that today’s new power alignments and problems require a fresh approach, unencumbered by our Cold War past or MAGA’s insular nationalist dreams. McFaul’s incisive and analytical approach provides a manifesto that argues against America’s retreat from the world. The author develops three important themes throughout the book. First, Russia’s disruptive ambitions should not be underestimated. Second, China’s capabilities should not be overestimated. Lastly, Trump’s move toward isolationism and autocracy will only weaken America’s place in the world balance of power. These themes are cogent, well researched, and supported by numerous historical examples that McFaul weaves throughout this lengthy work which should be read by all policymakers, members of congress, and the general public.
There is so much to unpack in McFaul’s monograph. He does an excellent job of synthesis in tracing the causes of great power competition today reviewing the history of US-Russia and US-China relations over the last 300 years and explains how we arrived at the tensions that define the global order today. He correctly argues that power, regime types, and individuals have interacted to produce changing cycles of cooperation and conflict between the United States, China, and Russia over the last three centuries. It is clear that over the past few decades these factors have created more conflict after the hopes of democratization that existed in the 1990s.
McFaul argues that there are some parallels between the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the present competition with China and Russia, but we should not go overboard because it distorts what is really happening. Similarities with the Cold War include a bipolar power structure this time between the US and China; there is an ideological component resting on the competition between democracy and autocracy; and all three nations have different conceptions of what the global order should look like. However, we must be careful as we have overestimated Chinese power and exaggerated her threat to our existence for too long. Containing China must be our prime goal but China is not an existential threat to the United States and the free world. China does not threaten the very existence of the United States and our democratic allies. President Xi of China has witnessed the decline of American power particularly after it caused the 2008 financial crash and no longer believes he has to defer to the United States and has taken advantage of American errors over the last twenty years to pose a competitive threat to Washington. Xi is not trying to export Marxist-Leninism, he is employing China’s financial and technological strengths to support autocracies around the world and expand Chinese power in the South China Sea, the developing world, especially in Africa – once again taking advantage of American errors.
(President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson)
Along these same lines we have underestimated Russian power in recent years as under Putin it has the capacity to threaten US security interests, including those of our European allies. Though Russia is not an economic threat she is a formidable adversary because Putin is a risk taker and is more willing to deploy Russian power aggressively than previous Russian leaders. Secondly, its invasion of Ukraine provides military experience and lessons that can only improve their performance on the battlefield. Thirdly, unlike during the Cold War, Russia is closely aligned with China. Putin’s aggressive foreign policy has an ideological component and has sought to propagate his illiberal orthodox values for decades. Unlike his predecessors Putin is willing to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries, i.e., kept Bashir Assad in power in Syria for a decade, interfered in American presidential elections and elections throughout Europe, invaded Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine, etc. Putin sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest disaster for Russia of the 20th century and wants to restore the territorial parameters of the Soviet Empire in his vision of Russian autocracy. As he exports this ideology we can see successes in a number of European countries and certain right wing elements in the United States.
One of his most important chapters recounts the decline of American hegemony since the end of the Cold War. It has been a slow downturn and has resulted in the end of the unipolar world where the US dominated. The Gulf War of 1991 witnessed the United States at its peak power. Following the war the United States decided to reduce its military since the Soviet Union was collapsing. However, after 9/11 US military spending expanded. Under Donald Trump the US spends 1% of GDP on the Pentagon allowing Russia and China to close the gap. Today we correctly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but from 1991-2020 the use of hard power in Kuwait to remove Iraq, the overthrow of Manuel Noriega in Panama, the bombing of Serbia in 1998, interfering in the Somali Civil War in 1992, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011 created power vacuums for terrorist rebels to fill including ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In addition, it cost the United States trillions of dollars to finance. According to economist Joseph Stiglitz the war in Iraq alone cost three trillion dollars, and the trillions lost in Afghanistan money that could have been put to better use domestically and globally to enhance Washington’s reputation worldwide, along with thousands of American casualties resulting in death and life-long injuries. In this environment it is no wonder that the Chinese have expanded their power externally and strengthened their autocracy internally, and Putin feels American opposition is rather hypocritical.
(A satellite overview of Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea as seen on 1 April 2022)
If this use of hard power was not enough along comes Donald Trump to accelerate the decline in US power by turning to disengagement and isolationism as he withdrew from the Transpacific Partnership, the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran nuclear deal, the INF (Intermediate range nuclear forces) treaty, the World Health Organization and severely criticizes the World Trade Organization, NATO, the European Union, and imposed new and higher tariffs on China, and our allies. The Trump administration has done little to promote democracy and weakened the United States’ ability to compete ideologically with China whose reputation and inroads in the developing world have made a difference in their global image at the same time the Trump administration has severely cut foreign aid. His actions have led to little in the area of supporting democracy as an ideological cause as he has curtailed or stopped funding for USAID, NED, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe among many programs, in addition to picking fights with allies, and threatening to withdraw from NATO. If this is not enough, the COVID 19 virus showed how dependent the United States was on Chinese firms for drug production and critical medical supplies.
Domestically, Trump’s immigration policy is becoming a disaster for the American economy as there is a shortfall in certain areas of the labor market, particularly food production and distribution. The policy could be a disaster in the long run as university enrollment of foreign students has declined markedly and if one examines the contributions of immigrants historically in the fields of medical and other types of scientific research this is a loss that eventually we may not be able to sustain. As Trump attacks the independent media and truth, politicizes the American justice system, and uses the presidency for personal gain he appears more and more like an autocratic wannabe, and it is corrosive to American democracy and our image in the world. These are all unforced errors, and China and Russia have taken advantage dramatically, altering the global balance of power and America’s role in it.
McFaul provides an impressive analysis of the relative economic power vis a vie the United States and Russia, and the United States and China. The entanglement of the US and Chinese economies must be considered when their relationship has difficulties. China is both a competitor and a trading partner for the United States. American companies and investors engage profitably with Beijing, i.e., Boeing, Apple, Nvidia, and American farmers have earned enormous profits and supported thousands of jobs. American consumers have benefited from lower-priced products imported from China. Chinese companies trade with and invest in American companies, Chinese scholars conduct collaborative research at American universities, and Chinese financial institutions buy American bonds and go a long way to finance American debt. Their entanglement presents both challenges and opportunities, but the fundamental challenge for the American foreign policy toward China is figuring out the delicate balance between economic engagement and containment.
In turning to difficulties with Russia, the United States does not have the meaningful economic relationship it has with China. In fact, as McFaul correctly points out our issues rest outside the economic realm to the ideological – Putinisim. The Russian autocrat “champions a virulent variant of illiberal, orthodox, and nationalistic ideas emphasizing identity, culture, and tradition.” Putin wants to export his conservative values and attack western values, by supporting a strong state, enhancing autocracy by promoting Russian sovereignty, basically by creating a false image of Russia. China spreads its ideology to the developing world. Russia tries to spread Putinism to the developed world, especially Europe as he tries to foment social polarization in democracies to weaken them. The rhetoric out of Moscow does not bode well for the future and any change in their approach will have to wait until Putin leaves the scene.
Another very important issue for the American consumer and politicians is Chinese-American trade. Those who are against an interdependent economy increasingly call for a decoupling of the economic relationship with China because of the damage it does to Americans. McFaul drills down to show that this is not the case and more importantly how difficult it would be to decouple. The argument that the US does not benefit from this relationship is a red herring as China holds $784 billion in American debt, and Chinese manufacturing production is imperative for the global supply chain. Companies like Apple, pharmaceutical companies, and the robotics industry are entities deeply intertwined between the US and China creating economic growth in both countries. It also must be kept in mind that Chinese growth had a positive effect on the American economy as goods made in China make them cheaper for the US consumer, in fact during the period of increasing US-China trade and investment, the American economy grew more rapidly than any other developed economy. McFaul warns that the US has to learn how to further benefit from the US-Chinese relationship or at least manage economic entanglement better because it is not going away for decades.
(Author, Michael McFaul)
If there is a flaw in McFaul’s monograph it is one of repetition. The structure of the book makes it difficult to avoid this shortcoming. Whether the author is discussing Chinese and Russian approaches to confronting the liberal economic world, interfering in other countries, or the philosophies and actions of Putin, Xi or Trump at times the narrative becomes tedious. The constant reminder that the Chinese threat is much more dire than the Soviet threat was during the Cold War is made over and over as is the constant reminder that our fears of the Chinese are overblown, our attitude toward Russia is not taken seriously enough, and the threat represented by Trump’s devotion to isolationism. To McFaul’s credit he seems aware of the problem as he constantly reminds us he is repeating the same argument or that he will elaborate on the same points later in the book. My question is, if you are aware of a problem why keep repeating it?
McFaul spends the last third of the book warning that the United States cannot repeat their Cold War errors as there are fewer resources today to prevent mistakes. He calls for containing Russia and China, and avoiding what Richard Haass calls “wars of choice,” as took place in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. After critiquing errors like overestimating Soviet military and economic power, in addition to exaggerating the appeal of communism, along with underestimating China’s economic and military rise and the faulty belief that the Chinese communist party would democratize, he offers solutions.
All through the narrative McFaul sprinkles suggestions of what the United States should do to compete and contain China and Russia. Be it encouraging parameters for Ukrainian security, rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, negotiating comprehensive trade agreements with the European Union, the restoration of USAID and other forms of soft power, maintaining and increasing funding for our research institutions, and most importantly lessen the polarization in American politics so China and Russia cannot take advantage. In considering these policy decisions and many others which would restore America’s reputation and position in the world – the major roadblock is the Trump administration who will never act upon them. According to McFaul we must ride out the next three years and hope that the damage that has been caused and will continue can be overcome in the next decade. McFaul is hopeful, but I am less sanguine.
(Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin)
(Children’s toys and personal items lie on the bloodstained floor of a child’s bedroom, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen, in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel, October 17)
By now I can’t imagine that anyone living in our media dominated world has not heard of Hamas’ brutal attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. The Israeli reaction to the attack has resulted in the destruction of large parts of the Gaza Strip and the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians according to the Gazan Health Ministry and accusations of genocide. This barbaric attack carried out by Hamas and other affiliated terrorist groups, took the lives of at least 1,219 people and led to the taking of 251 hostages, most of them Israeli civilians.
As of today, the remaining hostages who are alive and the bodies of those who perished have finally been returned. Even though the Trump administration has brokered a ten step peace plan and America’s Arab allies have promised to help fund the rebuilding of Gaza, based on past history, Hamas’ continued slaughter of anyone who opposes them, and the intransigence of right wing politicians in Israel the odds of a major settlement are from my perspective almost nil.
The current skepticism surrounding a meaningful settlement rests on a number of factors which center around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose political career is on the line. Many have argued that Netanyahu continued the war even as Israeli generals argued that there were no more meaningful targets. Netanyahu who remains under indictment in Israel may have kept the war going to postpone further legal action against himself even as he tried to alter the Israeli judicial system to offset any further prosecution.
(Wall dividing Israel and the Gaza Strip)
The other aspect of Netanyahu’s culpability rests on his government’s prewar policies, particularly his actions toward Hamas. Critics, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, argue that Netanyahu’s long-standing policy of allowing the transfer of Qatari funds to Gaza in order to prop up Hamas’s rule and “buy” quiet ultimately backfired, allowing the group to strengthen and eventually launch the October 7th attack. Further, multiple Israeli security officials, including the heads of the IDF and Shin Bet have admitted their failure to prevent the attack, with Netanyahu being criticized for initially deflecting personal responsibility onto the intelligence services. Warnings from within the military and intelligence apparatus were reportedly disregarded or not acted upon by Netanyahu’s government. However, the larger question is how did we get here, as opposed to where we are today.
(Israeli soldiers carry the body of a victim of an attack by militants from Gaza at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, October 10)
A number of partial answers to this puzzle have been tackled by Yaakov Katz, a former editor and chief of the Jerusalem Post and Amir Bohbot, a journalist and lecturer at Ben-Gurion University in their provocative new book, WHILE ISRAEL SLEPT: HOW HAMAS SURPRISED THE MOST POWERFUL MILITARY IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
The word “partial” is used because there is no definitive answer provided in the book as to why Israel was caught so unaware on October 7, 2023. The best the authors can offer is that there was a failure at all levels of command and leadership as they responded to situations filled with chaos. In trying to ascertain why the attack occurred when it did and why Israeli leadership responded the way it did the authors looked at the mindset of decision makers as 2023 they evolved. The basic problem is that Israel believed it was invincible and that Hamas was incapable of launching such a massive assault. Israeli policy was one of containing Hamas, but by October 2023 that was no longer possible.
The policy of containment dates to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2006 under the government of Ariel Sharon. From that time Israel, according to the authors responded to the attacks, be they rocket or terror attacks in Israel proper with incursions into Gaza, refusing to commit to an all-out invasion for fear of too many Israeli military and Palestinian casualties. This would send a message to Hamas that Israel was afraid to launch a major operation against Gaza. Another factor that developed was the appearance and growth of Hezbollah as a major fighting force in possession of thousands of rockets on the Lebanese border which was a proxy of Iran. Israel’s attention was also diverted to the Iranian nuclear program. Despite intelligence to the contrary the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was caught in a dangerous complacency, believing that Hamas was more interested in a long-term truce and economic stability rather than war. These arguments are well developed based on Israeli documents, interviews with Israeli national security and military officials, and their own reporting over the years.
It is clear that there was enough intelligence that Israeli officials should have been more proactive before the attack took place. The authors begin their account describing the story of seven female soldiers who were part of an IDF unit called “tatzpitaniyot,” Hebrew for observers. These young women, ages nineteen and twenty, were stationed at the Nachal Oz base, a few hundred yards from the Gaza Strip border. These soldiers were tasked to monitor every inch of the Israel-Gaza border. They employed the available technology and their own intuition that something was wrong. They reported their findings to their superiors and were not listened to – they would be killed in the Hamas attack. The authors conclude there was no operational plan for a full-scale offensive in Gaza, and no detailed strategy in the event of war.
(Israeli police stand near the bodies of two men who were killed following a deadly mass-infiltration by gunmen from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023)
The authors ask many pertinent questions, one of which is why did the attack occur when it did. With the Abraham Accords brokered by the first Trump administration normalizing Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020, Hamas did not want Saudi Arabia to join in the normalization process as it seemed they were about to do so by the end of 2023. Since Egypt and Jordan had already abandoned Hamas this may have contributed to the decision to act. Further, Israeli domestic politics may have played a key role. Hamas always wanted to make the Israeli people less resilient which Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the Israeli judicial system to protect himself as he was under indictment was sure to do. Netanyahu’s action provoked the Israeli left seeing the Prime Minister’s actions as a threat to democracy resulting in massive protests throughout Israel and threats by Israeli reserve Air force pilots not to fly missions and by military personnel to do the same. The split in Israeli society certainly contributed to Hamas’ calculations. Hamas’ decision was developed over a long period of time, but its mindset was clear that eventually they would launch a massive attack, an attack they had been preparing for at least a decade.
According to the authors the crisis began on October 6 when the IDF’s premier signal collection unit that monitored activity in Gaza had crashed. Possibly a cyber-attack to blind Israeli surveillance. Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency received troubling alerts on their system but did little in response even as Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar was told, “there is an unclear preparation by Hamas for something” as its leadership was moving toward its bunkers in tunnels. Analysts concluded it was just a “military exercise” not a full scale attack.
(Wall dividing Israel and Gaza)
The authors effectively lays out an almost hour by hour description of the information garnered by AMAN, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate and how they reacted. The problem for any Israeli response was it needed to be done without Hamas being aware of it – they didn’t want to burn intelligence assets or push Hamas to attack if it was only a training exercise as they had done in the past. In addition, Israel did not have one human asset among thousands of Hamas operatives waiting to attack.
Despite intense communication among Israel’s national security apparatus on October 6, the government was caught between the idea Hamas was engaged in a military exercise or was about to launch a low level attack against Israel. This inability to discern what Hamas was up to would have dire consequences as under the cover of 1300 rockets, over 3000 terrorists crossed into Israel at 60 locations.
The authors devote a considerable amount of time laying out and analyzing what Hamas’ leadership was planning and how sophisticated there approach was in developing their plans. Over a decade Hamas operatives, including Gazans who were allowed to work in Israel developed exacting intelligence including maps of kibbutzim, IDF bases, offices of senior commanders, weapons depots etc. Further, carrying out the ideas of Yahya Sinwar they had evaluated the state of the Israeli psyche and developed a plan in a sense to enter into the minds of the Israeli public and make them fear Hamas and force get them to turn against their government as terror attacks increased over the years, and culminating it with a massive assault which came to be October 7.
(Israeli soldiers walk through what Israel’s military says is an iron-girded tunnel designed by Hamas to disgorge carloads of Palestinian fighters for a surprise storming of the border, amid the Israeli army’s ongoing ground operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, close to Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip, December 15, 2023)
The chapter that explores the biography, thought process, and hatred toward Israel of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza is perceptive and provides the reader with insights into a terrorist’s mind and how he would carry out his beliefs. The authors trace his ideological development, particularly as it relates to Israel and its people. His imprisonment for decades allowed him to study Israel, learning Hebrew and developing the ability to think like an Israeli. His release from prison with 1026 other terrorists in return for Galid Shalit, a captured Israeli soldier allowed him to eventually make his way to Gaza, work his way up the Hamas chain of command, and become their ideological leader and convince his compatriots to go along with his goals of revenge and destruction of Israel.
Once Sinwar was released other events allowed Hamas to expand its military preparedness. The arrival of the Arab spring in January 2011 brought to power Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt which opened up the Egyptian-Gazan tunnel complex allowing Hamas to import massive amounts of material, weapons, and building equipment allowing them to expand their tunnel network, military industrial production, and in effect enhance a tunnel complex which was 40-70 meters under Gaza and 300 miles in length. In 2014 Israel responded to an increase in terror attacks and rockets with Operation Protective Edge. By focusing close to the Israel-Gaza border and not launching an invasion, the Israeli government sent the wrong message. Sinwar and his cohorts were convinced that Israel would not hit Hamas hard for fear of casualties. In addition, Sinwar was able to convince Israel that he was committed to improving Palestinian economic conditions, needed to continue to collect subsidies for Qatar, to the point Israel believed Hamas was “deterred,” a term that appears repeatedly among Israeli officials. According to Charles Lane in his Wall Street Journal book review of September 16, 2025; “The Israeli government persuaded itself instead that improving economic conditions, or “facilitating proper civilian life in the Gaza strip,” as one intelligence official put it, would give Gazans a material stake in peace and, by extension, induce pragmatism in Hamas. Israel allowed the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar to Gaza—much of which the terror group diverted into tunnel building and salaries for its militants.”
(An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, November 22, 2023)
There are other important chapters that provide interesting and surprising aspects of Hamas’ development. The chapter that describes the tunnel network that Hamas created is eye opening. They built an entire world underground with tunnels at different levels depending on their purpose. The thoroughness, sophistication, ingenuity, and efficiency of the various types of tunnels amazes, i.e., administrative, attack, logistical tunnels, something that was unimaginable. They integrated their tunnel network as a key component of their military strategy. This was all accomplished under Israel’s nose. Soldiers and civilians heard or felt something was happening below, but officials did little to oppose it.
The Israelis had to develop a new concept of warfare to offset the approach that Hamas employed. Fighting underground was something Israel had never encountered, especially as the tunnels were under homes, apartment buildings, hospitals, mosques, and schools which allowed Hamas fighters to hide and then jump out and attack IDF soldiers. In fact, Hamas’s leadership tunnel bunker was under the al-Shifa hospital. Israel was able to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a digital map that included all the tunnels which became invaluable. The author’s description is fascinating.
(Israel had hunted Gaza for more than a year to find Yahya Sinwar)
The Netanyahu government and the Prime Minister in particular believed Hamas was happy with their monthly transfer of financial assistance from Qatar which was provided with the government’s blessing and were not interested in escalation. The Netanyahu government and intelligence services may have thought it knew its enemy’s intentions. But it was effectively deceived and found out the opposite of its beliefs was true. There were deep flaws in the way Aman thought it understood Hamas. Aman failed to grasp Hamas’ intentions and mistakenly believed that the organization’s leadership wanted a truce rather than war. On the operational level, Israeli intelligence grossly underestimated the scale of Hamas’ plan, even though they had in their possession the “Jericho Plan” that provided clues as to what Hamas might implement. Lastly, on a tactical level, the IDF’s belief that its border defenses would prevent an attack was inadequate. The so-called “iron wall” erected along the border at the cost of over $1 billion was believed to be impenetrable. The authors conclude everything and everyone were wrong – the idea that a fanatical Islamist terror group could be contained and Hamas had been deterred and wanted quiet is tough to accept with hindsight.
I agree with Charles Lane’s conclusions in September 16, 2025, review that “Pondering his dream of an Islamist state erected on the ruins of the Jewish one, Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar observed all of this from Gaza. He sensed that Israel was distracted and divided, its strategists in the grip of an errant conceptzia. He brilliantly fed those illusions through disinformation and deception, while pursuing his phenomenally detailed long-term plan. As Messrs. Katz and Bohbot imply the bloody assault on Israel was an intelligence failure by Israel as well as an intelligence triumph for Hamas.
(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu)
It was an ironic outcome for a nation helmed by Mr. Netanyahu. He had correctly told the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 to beware “the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.” He quoted Winston Churchill on the “want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
Messrs. Katz and Bohbot conclude their book with well-taken recommendations to help Israel’s political, military and intelligence institutions prevent another such debacle. But there’s no organizational cure for human nature, with its tendencies toward groupthink and confirmation bias. “The unfortunate habit” is a stubborn one. Even the most vigilant nations struggle to break it.”
(An aerial view shows damage caused following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel, October 11)
(Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1987. He had considerable influence in global affairs, both before and long after his official tour of duty in the White House.Credit)
When I was a graduate student in the early 1970s I was enrolled in a 20th century diplomatic history course. The professor, a Holocaust survivor from Eastern Europe with a wicked sense of sarcasm presented deeply analytical lectures and a challenging reading list. Perhaps the most important book on the list was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s THE SOVIET BLOC: UNITY AND CONFLICT. Brzezinski’s work presented a comprehensive analysis of the relations between communist states through the late 1960s. The author focused on the process by which Eastern European countries were turned into satellites by the Soviet Union, the first signs of trouble following Stalin’s death, and the uproar unleashed by Khrushchev’s efforts to come to terms with Russia’s Stalinist legacy. In the second edition of the book, he goes on to explore the growth of “polycentrism” in Eastern Europe, particularly with the emergence of the Sino-Soviet split.
As I recall Brzezinski’s analysis it is clear he was developing the precursor to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and would be proven correct as he identified the flaws in the Soviet system. After reading Brzezinski’s later works over the years and following his career his impact on American foreign policy is obvious. There have been one major biography of President Jimmy Carter’s former National Security advisor, Justin Vaisse’s ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINKI: AMERICA’S GRAND STRATEGIST but none as well written, incisively analyzed, and researched as the Financial Times’ American correspondent, and frequent guest on MSNBC’s ”Morning Joe,” Edward Luce. The book entitled, ZBIG:THE LIFE OF ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, AMERICA’S GREAT POWER PROFIT. Luce’s monograph portrays a man who predicted the fall of the Soviet Union as an academic, then set in motion the strategy that eventually ensured its collapse. I found Luce’s book to be a fascinating study of his subject’s ideas and career, and how each influenced them in producing an important intellectual and professional biography.
Even as a young man Brzezinski had an innate sense concerning the Soviet Union. As Moscow overran Poland after the Nazis were defeated he knew “all the Poles understand this is not a liberation but simply a change in the form of terror.” Decades later, as a member of the Carter administration his view of Moscow had not changed. He still fervently believed that the Soviet Union was not a monolith and resentment of Russian colonialism would bring about the demise of Moscow’s Eastern Bloc.
(The Brzezinski family)
Luce immediately gets to the core of Brzezinski’s impact on the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Carter administration waged ideological war against Moscow, and it was Brzezinski who laid the seeds of human rights as a weapon which encouraged hopes for independence in Eastern Europe which provided an impetus for the Solidarity Movement in Poland. Many believe that the Iron Curtain went down on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. But according to Luce the beginning of the breach in the Soviet Bloc occurred on June 4, 1989, when Solidarity swept Polish elections. Brzezinski played a key role in protecting Lech Walesa’s worker-intellectual alliance and nurturing it to victory. Obviously, Moscow saw him as an arch enemy due to his Polish roots and his actions as NSC head, but one thing is apparent, Brzezinski’s impact on the collapse of the Soviet Union is underappreciated even today.
There is no doubt that Brzezinski was a controversial figure. Some believed his Polish roots curtailed his objectivity and would lead to a war against the Soviet Union. Others believed he was anti-Israel and possibly antisemitic because of his Polish heritage as he argued for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine and was a key player in the Camp David Accords. Democratic foreign policy doves also found him wanting as he supported the Vietnam War and opposed McGovernites. Further his clashes with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resulted in the Secretary of State’s resignation as he lost battles with Brzezinski over normalizing relations with China, holding Moscow to account for treatment of dissidents, arming the Afghani resistance to the Soviet Union, and modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal. As Luce develops his narrative it is clear that his subject was his own man and never could be described as an ideologue as he did not fit any category, did not coddle up to the media like Henry Kissinger, and he was unwilling to play the Washington game which took a toll on his influence.
(President Jimmy Carter shakes hands with his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as he presents Brzezinski with the Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on Jan. 17, 1981)
Luce develops Brzezinski’s intellectual development throughout his narrative. Beginning with his subject’s teen years, we can see that his subject is very concerned with Eastern Europe as he writes in his diary each day. Luce does not scrimp in discussing Brzezinski’s personal development but zeroes in on his thoughts. Key aspects include how his father, Tadeuz, a career diplomat imbued in him the concept of the Polish nation that was inclusive. He stressed the role of Joseph Pilsudski who envisioned a Promethean League with Poland playing the major role as the largest player in a multinational group of smaller East European countries that together would be strong enough to resist the squeeze of Russia and Germany. Brzezinski’s World War II diaries reflect this concern and his obsession with Eastern Europe.
Brzezinski’s master’s thesis written while at McGill University at Montreal continues this fixation as his analysis points to his belief that the Soviet Union would come to an end at some point and he laid out a roadmap for defeating the Stalinist regime. He correctly argues that Soviet ideology should not be mistaken for internationalism, as it was a variant of Russian chauvinism disguised as being a champion of the proletariat. He argues further that Moscow inherited the Czarist map which included numerous ethnic groups and nationalities, he predicted that the loyalty of allies would wither away as they would see that worldwide communism only pretended to foster equality. Russia was made up of 50% non-Russians and Stalin could not dispense with his nationality problem, particularly Ukrainians which led to mass deportations. As Russo-Soviet imperialism spread throughout Eastern Europe it would be seen as worse than European colonialism. For Brzezinski, the west’s blueprint to defeat Moscow was the need to repudiate the idea that Russia had the right to a legitimate “spheres of influence” as the developing Tito-Stalin split highlighted, and the idea that Russia as a civilizing influence in the region belied the actions of Beria and his KGB.
Brzezinski’s Ph. D dissertation which eventually would be published in book form as THE PERMANENT PURGE: POLITICS IN SOVIET AUTHORITARIANISM continues his worldview that purges were endemic to Bolshevik rule and the normal tool of totalitarian states. In the absence of counterbalancing constitutional checks, purges became a substitute for politics under Stalin and the immediate years after his death. Lastly, the Soviet system was doomed because it could not reform itself even as Khruschev tried after his DeStalinization speech in February 1956, and later under Mikhail Gorbachev which set events in motion that gave us Vladimir Putin. Brzezinski would visit Russia in 1956, and he concluded “in addition to the nationalities, authoritarian sterility – not Stalinist terror – was the USSR’s long term, problem.” This view was supported by the Hungarian Revolution in November 1956 as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, a fate Poland was able to avoid at the last minute. This provoked Brzezinski’s rage at the President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John F. Dulles who preached “roll back” of Soviet communism but were feckless in response to Russian aggression.
(Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski)
The Kissinger-Brzezinski dynamic is an important aspect of Luce’s narrative. The author spends a great deal of time highlighting their relationship discussing their similarities and differences as their careers cross paths. In a sense it began with John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The Massachusetts senator liked to portray himself as an intellectual and advocated bringing intellectuals into government. Brzezinski became one of Kennedy’s foreign policy advisors and wrote a number of campaign speeches and the candidate would mirror his call for greater economic engagement, cultural ties, and scientific exchanges with Eastern Bloc countries as it shifted its entire focus away from Moscow as saber rattling would only drive the Soviet Bloc closer together.
With Kennedy’s assassination Brzezinski lost a leader who had nominally adopted his Cold War strategy. His attitude toward Lyndon Johnson was not as positive as he believed his obsession with Vietnam created a missed opportunity as the Soviet grip over its satellites was looser than most believed, particularly the Sino-Soviet split, along with his belief that China, not Russia was the main sponsor of global revolution. Luce is correct pointing out that Hanoi was paranoid of China, again a missed opportunity.
Once Johnson withdrew from running for reelection in March 1968 he signed on to coordinate Hubert Humphrey’s bid for the White House. Vietnam would be his albatross and Brzezinski’s visit to Saigon reinforced his view that the war was not winnable even if the United States doubled its commitment to 1,000,000 men and any further escalation of the bombing would exacerbate the situation. Brzezinski, who liked Humphrey as a moral person, did not think he would be a good president and advised him to recalculate what victory in Vietnam would look like. He wanted to keep arming South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover and saw the war as only benefiting Moscow. Brzezinski grew frustrated with Humphrey throughout the campaign as he dithered in his decision making and he saw little daylight with Johnson’s approach. Brzezinski’s disappointment with Humphrey and Johnson increased due to their lack of response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during the campaign – for him it was a replay of Hungary 1956. Luce reviews the accepted analysis of Humphrey’s inability to stand up to Johnson during the campaign especially over a bombing halt until it was too late to win the election, and the Nixon campaign’s role in interfering with negotiations in Paris which Johnson was aware of but did nothing about because of his doubts concerning his Vice-President.
(Zbigniew Brzezinski, right, with Charles Schultz and Jimmy Carter in December 1976)
Vietnam underscored the differences between Kissinger and Brzezinski. For most historians Kissinger was a master manipulator who always seemed to play on both sides. During the 1968 presidential campaign Kissinger was a consultant to the State Department and funneled information concerning the Paris Peace Conference to the Nixon campaign at the same time he was advising Nelson Rockeffeler’s attempt to rest the Republican nomination from Nixon. According to Luce this was the first time the two were on opposite sides, Brzezinski favoring a bombing halt, and Kissinger working to prevent it.
The two men once colleagues at Harvard maintained a somewhat friendly-aversive relationship. As the years melted away the veneer of professionalism fades between the two. Once Kissinger became Secretary of State and National Security Advisor in the Nixon administration, Brzezinski’s criticisms of Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik increased. The issue aside from Vietnam that drove their disagreements centered on “Détente.” Kissinger attacked Brzezinski for abandoning his long-held belief in peaceful engagement and called his latest approach “a right-wing critique.” Kissinger offered a rebuttal to Brzezinski’s criticisms over SALT, preferential trade credits, failure to talk to allies, and Middle East talks. Brzezinski believed Kissinger was an amoral opportunist, and that the Soviets were exploiting Détente for ideological mischief-making. He would support Détente, but not in a one-sided way. Though their interchange was civil and bordering on friendly in private Kissinger was apoplectic and referred to his former colleague as a “whore.” In public they remained sociable, but behind the scenes as the later declassified documents show Kissinger grew angrier and angrier. Indeed, given Kissinger’s backstabbing and Brzezinski’s distaste for social niceties, it is amazing that Brzezinski managed to get as far as he did and have such a deep impact on American foreign policy. Luce argues that his success was due to his intellect, tenacity and sense of mission which he attributes to his “wounded Polishness” and overwhelming distrust of the Soviet Union.
The most important development in Brzezinski’s career was his association with Jimmy Carter. First, he became Carter’s foreign policy advisor during the 1976 presidential campaign and worked on developing the candidate’s policy “chops.” He would focus on Kissinger’s “lone ranger” approach to diplomacy and soon Ford’s Secretary of State became a campaign liability. Further, Kissinger was described as a “false pessimist” based on his forecast that the Soviet Union would probably overtake the United States as a global force in the 1980s. Carter’s speeches reflected Brzezinski’s tutoring as he described a new approach to Détente which would be “reciprocal and comprehensive.”
(June 18, 1979: U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at background, center, looks on as U.S. President Jimmy Carter, left, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev, right, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II Treaty in Vienna, Austria. [AP/Wide World Photo])
The competition between Kissinger and Brzezinski continued during debate preparation as Carter revived the “Kissinger issue,” and he and his tutor trapped Ford into one of greatest gaffes in presidential debate history when Ford stated and then reiterated that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there will never be under a Ford administration.” This error would cost Ford his reelection since the election result was so close.
There was no doubt in Carter’s mind that he wanted Brzezinski as his National Security advisor despite the opposition of Democratic Party elites like Averill Harriman, Clark Clifford, and Richard Holbrook. When Luce describes the new NSC head as having sharp elbows and not caring what others thought of him as long as he was true to his beliefs he is dead on. Carter and Brzezinski would develop a fascinating relationship. It began with Brzezinski as teacher and Carter as pupil and would evolve into a strong partnership. Brzezenski, though at times was frustrated by Carter’s indecisiveness, but admired his character as the President would do what he believed was right for the country no matter the negative political implications for his own popularity. Be it handing back the Panama Canal, aggravating the Jewish lobby over his view of the Palestinians, the need for an energy policy, or appointing Paul Volker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve knowing full well his policies would exacerbate inflation in the short run, Carter did what he believed was best for the country.
Brzezinski finally had his opportunity to be the architect of American Foreign policy. His commitment to human rights and working closely with Karol Wojtyla who would be elected as Pope Paul II in 1978 was brilliant and it sent a message to Moscow as upon assuming the presidency Carter immediately stressed human rights and a new SALT II treaty. In fact, the KGB argued that it was Brzezinski who had fixed the Papal election! Meeting with Soviet dissidents like Andrei Shakarov and Vladimir Bukofsky (in comparison to Ford who refused to meet with Alexander Sohlsenitsyn) angered Leonid Brezhnev who threatened that there would be no SALT treaty unless the US backed off from emphasizing human rights. Brzezinski was unconcerned, stressing the Russians needed a SALT treaty because their economy was in such poor condition.
(U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin shake hands after signing the Camp David Accords)
The other relationship that Luce delves into in detail is that of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. Vance, who was part of Harriman’s brain trust and the last of the Democratic elites, was against stressing human rights, believing that a new SALT treaty was imperative. Luce points to a long list of disagreement between Vance and Brzezinski that included policy disputes over allowing the Shah of Iran to enter the United States for medical treatment after American hostages were seized in 1979; prioritizing Détente instead of a more aggressive approach to Moscow; careful not to antagonize Russia by moving to close to China; and asserting a more aggressive military posture in the world. Their differing worldviews led to a climate of public diplomatic discord which at times left the impression that the administration’s foreign policy lacked coherence. Ultimately, Brzezinski’s more hawkish approach often gained prominence during critical moments, contributing to the eventual resignation of Vance in April 1980 after the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. Luce sums up their relationship perfectly, Vance had Carter’s heart, Brzezinski had his brain!
Despite this bureaucratic infighting Carter achieved a number of diplomatic successes. The Camp David Agreements between Israel and Egypt, the bleeding of Russia by arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan, normalizing relations with China, and the return of the Panama Canal. Luce’s deep dive into these issues is particularly gripping and an important aspect of his book as he provides fascinating commentary. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Begin’s relationship with Brzezinski as both were Polish, despised Russia, and their knowledge of Jewish History. Another instance is the relationship between Deng Xiaoping and Brzezinski which translated into the turning point for the Carter administration as the President sided with his NSC advisor over Vance to normalize relations with China. Further, Luce stresses that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was vindication for Brzezinski over the State Department which had argued repeatedly that the Soviet Union was a status quo power.
(Brzezinski and President Carter)
Despite these successes the Iranian situation overshadows all of them. Luce lays out the familiar history of the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini as the leader in Tehran and the ongoing hostage situation. The Carter national security team was blinded on two fronts. First, they misread the potency of the mullahs and did not take Khomeini’s words seriously. Further, Brzezinski could not accept the concept of a theocratic revolution. Another error was the state of the Shah’s health. Brzezinski repeatedly called for a military crackdown and/or coup, but the Shah was in no condition to effectively deal with the security situation in his country. Luce is correct that the Carter administration’s approach to the Iranian crisis was one of complete chaos highlighted by the inability of the State Department and National Security Council to get along and the fact that there were so many leaks of information to the public. Carter could not make up his mind until it was too late.
I agree with Jonathan Tepperman’s review in the July 10, 2025, edition of the Washington Post concerning any shortfalls to Luce’s biography. “If I were to quibble, I’d have liked more of a window into Brzezinski’s private, deeper self, especially given that Luce had access to all his diaries, correspondence and other papers. But perhaps that was impossible; as Luce repeatedly points out, Brzezinski spent strikingly little time on introspection. He may not have had an inner life worth plumbing.”
In the end according to Tevi Troy in his May 13, 2025, review in the Wall Street Journal that “it was neither the Soviets nor the State Department but an inability to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis that brought about the end of the Carter administration and, apart from some consulting roles, the end of Brzezinski’s time in government. Brzezinski continued to opine on foreign policy. As Mr. Luce points out, however, he did so without being closely affiliated with either political party. Mr. Luce speculates that this independent approach is both why he never returned to government and why he never received “his full due.”
Whatever Brzezinski’s shortcomings were as a foreign policy expert, no one could challenge his intellect, his commitment to his craft and doing what he felt was best for his adopted country. In comparison to the conduct of foreign policy today with a hollowed out State Department and diplomatic core and strategies designed to assist the president in acquiring wealth and bullying allies, I long for the type of diplomacy narrated by Mr. Luce, which described a man who laid the groundwork to understand what Vladimir Putin’s goals are today.
During his presidential campaigns Donald Trump has described American veterans as “suckers and losers.” He “strongly” wonders why veterans went off to fight when it was clear there was nothing in it for them. President Trump’s attitude toward men like John McCain and millions of others is both despicable and ungrateful. These men and women are heroes who defended our country and in most cases selflessly. Those who have survived war zones returned home with numerous ailments from the physical to the psychological. Today, the mental issues have been labeled post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) with veterans suffering from recurring nightmares and flashbacks, uncontrollable rages, social isolation, fears of places and events that evoked memories of the war, resulting in behaviors that they did not have before they shipped out. The label has been mostly applied to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan war veterans, but symptoms were clearly evident for those who fought in and survived World War I and II.
In his latest book, award winning author David Nasaw, who has written such excellent works including; THE LAST MILLION which traces the plight of displaced persons after World War II, THE PATRIARCH a biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, THE CHIEF a biography of William Randolph Hearst, and ANDREW CARNEGIE, has just released a marvelous monograph entitled, THE WOUNDED GENERATION: COMING HOME AFTER WORLD WAR II. Nasaw’s focus in the book is not on the heroism of World War II veterans, but how they adapted to civilian life upon their return from the war, how their wartime experiences impacted familial and other personal relations, and how the country they returned to treated them. Nasaw’s most salient points revolve around the idea that these men and women were not the same people emotionally and physically as they were before the war, and the country which they returned to was quite different than the one they returned to. How they adjusted to their issues and their surroundings are the key to the narrative.
(American Sgt. George Black addressing the crowd of homesick GI’s as they staged a demonstration outside the US Embassy in the French capital in January, 1946. They protested the slowdown in their redeployment from Europe to the US)
As the author writes in his introduction, “if we are to understand the pain and hardship veterans brought home with them we must acknowledge their experiences in the war and of war, their wounds, injuries, and illnesses, their realization that they were expendable, that chance alone would determine whether they lived or dies or returned home body and soul intact,” therefore we must begin, not with their home coming but their actual experiences in the war.
Nasaw spends almost half the book discussing what soldiers experienced in combat, and at the same time how carefully the government informed the public of their plight with an eye on the issues they perceived would emerge once they were discharged. From the outset Nasaw focuses on the issue of “neuropsychiatric disorders” as the term PTSD was not known. It is clear that about 40% or about one million soldiers who were discharged or disabled during the first two years of the war fell into the category of “neuropsychiatric disorders.” The problem for military authorities was that the army and naval medical corps were totally unprepared to deal with psychiatric disorders. They were trained to deal with physical injuries, not mental, which were 33% of all injuries. With the shortage of men, many of these individuals were returned to the front suffering from symptoms of anxiety and depression. In treating these men, medical professionals were unsure if victims would ever recover.
As the narrative progresses the author makes many salient points, some obvious and others based on deeper analysis. The American public was fully aware of what their sons and daughters were experiencing despite military censorship. With an abundance of newspapers, magazines, books, and diaries the public was exposed to information on a delayed basis. However, radio reports made the experience more immediate. The government was in a bind, if it reported too many victories, particularly after the Battle of Midway authorities feared people would become complacent and the war might be close to an end. The government knowingly believed that in “total war” the fighting could drag on for years, particularly against Japan and wanted the public to be educated to that belief. By 1943, authorities in Washington wanted a more accurate representation of the fighting to be used as a tool against complacency in a war that had distinct racial elements to it.
John Dower’s book, WAR WITHOUT MERCY: RACE AND POWER IN THE PACIFIC WAR develops this racial thesis, especially in Asia as the reason for the horrible conditions that soldiers faced when dealing with the enemy. As Nasaw correctly points out, “American boys and men, once peaceful and non-violent souls, had to become merciless, pitiless killers in order to stay alive and defeat a merciless, pitiless enemy.” The American media would caricature the “Japanese as vicious, conniving, beastly hordes of ‘monkeys’ and ‘rats,’ unstoppable, demonic torturers and killers,” while Germans were said to be more law-abiding according to international convention ignoring the Holocaust.
(American troops in a snow-filled trench during the Battle of the Bulge)
An interesting point that Nasaw describes deals with how soldiers spent their spare time. We have all heard the saying “hurry up and wait” pertaining to the military and even in combat that was true. Soldiers did not fight constantly, and outlets had to be provided for men and women. The creation of paperback books was boosted during the war as “pocketbooks” were created for soldiers to read as free reading material by the thousands was provided. The most important ancillary product provided was cigarettes which was seen as a military tool that would calm nerves before and after battle, suppress hunger, and keep soldiers alert when they should have been sleeping. During D-Day they helped to ward off sickness, reduce fear and shaking and sustain men. They were given to soldiers at every opportunity – 63 tons worth of tobacco were delivered to the army, and tobacco farmers were deemed “essential workers during the war. Soldiers were also seen as different if they did not smoke. Cigarettes were provided with C rations and were available everywhere as they were a major resource for soldiers to trade. Other activities that were employed to keep soldiers “sane” were alcohol and condoms. As with nicotine addiction, drinking habits acquired during the war would carry over into peacetime. Drinking served a similar purpose to smoking to calm soldiers and allow them to cope with the atrocities of combat. In addition, during the war over 50 million condoms were distributed by authorities who could not control the sexual drive of soldiers especially after they arrived in Italy in 1943. Women were readily available as prostitutes as locals resorted to sex as a means to earn money, cigarettes to trade on the black market, and just to survive.
The racism that existed after the war, especially as Jim Crow was restored in the south, was a continuation of what went on in military theaters. At first negro soldiers were given menial jobs – cleaning, cooking, waiting tables, and general labor. Later as troop shortages continued experimentally, segregated units were created. These units did quite well, i.e., the Tuskegee Airman, and a few combat units. The fear on the part of southern senators was that if negroes got used to fair treatment and a better racial experience in the army it would carry over into civilian life and there would be certain expectations. They wanted Jim Crow in the army, so negroes did not get any ideas once they were discharged. The behavior of southern whites after the war reinforced Jim Crow as blocking voter registration, the return of brutal lynchings, and the refusal to hire negroes for other than menial jobs they had before the war, as opposed to employment which would allow them to use their military training and wartime experiences dominated race relations below the Mason-Dixon line.
(FDR signs the GI Bill)
Nasaw does an excellent job discussing problems that developed once the allies proved victorious. The issue was demobilization. With the end of the war in Europe soldiers wanted to be discharged, not sent to the Pacific as the Japanese were seen as fighting to the death and after Okinawa, Saipan and the rest of the island hopping strategy was implemented they knew fighting could be brutal. European theater veterans were given 30 days leave and were then to be sent to the Pacific. The dropping of the atomic bomb ended the war for good and domestic politics called for a rapid demobilization, however the United States needed troops for occupation duty. Demobilization would be slow and about 1.5 million would be needed for occupation.
The author spends the remaining 60% of the book on how the war affected American society once fighting ended. Nasaw recounts the repatriation process and once again the racial issue arose as negroes were the last to be discharged. By stressing the racial component to the post war period, the author relies on excellent source material, diaries, interviews of families, and other primary materials.
Politicians in Washington did not want to deal with racial equality as the Democrats needed the support of southern senators to try and create a program which would reintegrate men and women back into civil society. Memories of the Bonus Army of 1931 during the depression and the use of the military to crush it were still fresh in people’s minds. The solution would evolve into the GI Bill whose rationale was not totally one of empathy but one to avoid unemployment, inflation , and retrofitting industry back to peacetime. By providing educational funding for tuition and books it would allow veterans to attend college and not enter the labor force which was undergoing a dramatic change as women began to lose their jobs as the men returned and wanted to reclaim their place in society. Whatever the motivation was for the GI Bill the government implemented a “veteran’s welfare state” throughout the 1940s.
What is clear is that the federal government spent a great deal on white returning veterans. Though Nasaw cannot settle on a figure as to how much the government spent; at times he states it is $17.3 billion, later it is $24 billion, and even later it is closer to $30 billion for the GI, bill the amount dwarfs what was spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the war. Whatever the final figure was between 1945 and 1950 it was in the billions and went along way to implement the veterans’ welfare state of education, job training, medical care, and housing relief. Many in Congress called for expanding this approach to all civilians, but that was not in the cards for decades, and even then it did not match what was spend on white veterans.
Nasaw is clear that the major issue was that veterans brought the war home with them – many were psychologically wounded and many carried diseases within their bodies. Millions returned with undiagnosed untreated psychic wounds that would haunt them for years to come. Men had to live with what they saw and experienced no matter how emotionally devastating it was. For many, these experiences remained with them for the remainder of their lives. Men came home with the characteristics of PTSD, though it was called “combat fatigue” or something similar. When they returned they exhibited what psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton describes in his seminal work on survivors of the atomic bombings, DEATH AS IN LIFE as flashback, nightmares, violent tempers, survival guilt, psychic numbing, all indicative of PTSD. To make it even worse for women, children and the family unit, the military and society in general put the onus of helping their spouses recover on them. They had to grant veterans the leeway to recover which the military stated would eventually occur over time. Most veterans did not commit suicide and learned to live with nightmares and flashbacks they could not erase. In addition to PTSD, many individuals suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) from concussive explosions during the war from which they had not recovered. All this made the recreation of the family unit as it was known before the war, impossible to recapture.
(Tuskegee Airmen)
Nasaw spends a great deal of time on the impact of the war on the family unit discussing the role of women who had lived independently during the war and now were faced with giving that up and allowing the husband to recapture his place as the breadwinner. Many could not and the divorce rate would almost double. The increase was also due to the fact that many men and women could not accept the infidelity of their spouses, women lonely at home, and men lonely overseas seeking comfort.
Nasaw seems to cover every aspect of how service in World War II impacted a myriad of issues following the fighting. His coverage is comprehensive, but he also provides a wonderful touch illustrating his monograph with Bill Mauldin cartoons which were rather provocative for the time period. Tom Brokaw has labeled those who were victorious in World War II as the “greatest generation.” After reading Nasaw’s excellent book I would change that label to the “long suffering generation.”
(Doctors returning to the United States in the Mediterranean or Atlantic circa October 1945, The National WWII Museum)
(A view of the cityscape in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025).
Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the arrival of the mullahs at the head of Iran’s attempt at theocracy relations with the United States have been fraught with hatred. Over the years wars, assassinations, terrorism, computer related attacks, spying, kidnappings, a nuclear deal and its revocation, and economic sanctions have been the norm. Today Iran finds itself at a crossroad. Its Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is eighty-six years old and nearing the end of his reign, and as Karim Sadjadpour writes in his November/December 2025 issue of Foreign Affairs, “The Autumn of the Ayatollahs” the twelve day war last June laid bare the fragility of the system he built. Israel bombed Iranian urban centers and military installations, allowing the United States to drop fourteen bunker busting bombs on their nuclear sites. Tehran’s ideological bravado and its inability to protect its borders along with the defeat of its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas has reduced its threat to the region.
Apart from the succession problem Iran faces a choice of how to prioritize its nuclear program, but with no negotiations, oversight, or concrete knowledge of Tehran’s stock of nuclear material another war with Israel seems inevitable. Despite Donald Trump’s insistence that the United States “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, officials and analysts are less sanguine. Iran may have been weakened, but it has not become irrelevant. As the rhetoric between Iran and the Trump administration ratchets up it is clear that the Tehran government suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Israel and the United States. The Iranian economy continues in a freefall, and the regime remains in power through coercion and threats. In this domestic and diplomatic climate, a novel that reflects the current forceful environment should attract a strong readership. THE PERSIAN by former CIA analyst and best-selling author David McCloskey, fits that need as the author takes readers deep into the shadow war between Iran and Israel and plays out a scenario that is quite plausible.
(Aerial view of Tehran, with the Alborz mountain range in the background)
McCloskey begins the novel describing the assassination of Abbas Shabani, an Iranian scientist who was an expert on drone-cladding, making drones invisible. The murder was carried out by a woman using a joystick at a Mossad site near Tel Aviv. The operation continues Israeli policy of killing anyone it believes is a threat to the Jewish state engaging in any component of Iran’s nuclear preparation – a policy that is accurate in fiction as well as the real world. McCloskey immediately shifts to an Iranian interrogation room where Kamran (Kam) Esfahani, a Persian Jewish dentist. Kam, the main character and narrator of this taut political thriller, is counting down the days until he has enough money to leave Sweden for sunny California. The interrogation allows Kam to rewrite and rework his confession over a three year period enabling the author to recount his novel through Kam’s acknowledgement of being part of a plot that killed Ismail Qaani, a member of the Qods Force, Unit 840. The group is run by Colonel Jaffer Ghorbani whose reason for being created is to kill Jews. Kam had been recruited by Arik Glitzman, head of the Mossad’s Caesarea Division, who offered to pay him a fortune to sow chaos in Iran. Trading the monotony of dentistry for the perils of espionage, he runs a sham dental practice in Tehran as a cover for smuggling weapons and conducting surveillance. McCloskey offers a wonderful description of Glitzman which is emblematic of his character development as the head of the elite team within the Caesarea Division of Mossad is described as “Napoleonic, short and paunchy with a thatch of black hair and a round face bright with a wide smile. There was fun in his eyes and if they had not belonged to a secret servant of the state…they might have belonged to a magician, or a kindergarten teacher.”
In addition to using Kam’s voice to relate a major part of the story, McCloskey organizes the novel by repeatedly shifting back and forth in time and location as he organizes his chapters. A key character who appears often is Roya Shabani who witnessed the assassination of her husband and seeks revenge against Israel. She will be given that opportunity as part of Ghorbani’s unit, initially carrying out low level tasks. Soon her immediate superior, Hossein Moghaddam, a Qods Operation Officer, who falls for her carries out an assassination of Meir Ben-Ami, Arik Glitzman’s deputy reflecting the real world that Israeli and Iranian intelligence regularly engage in.
(Stockholm, Sweden)
McCloskey’s CIA background and research allow him to portray assassinations, the use of technology for spy craft, recruitment of assets, and organizing operations in such a realistic manner heighten the reader’s immersion into the novel. In an NPR interview which took place on “All Things Considered” program on September 29, 2025, McCloskey admits that as a former CIA analyst who has been posted throughout the Middle East he is able to draw upon a great deal of inside knowledge in creating his characters and present them as authentically as possible. The authenticity of his characters and storyline is enhanced as his novel must pass through CIA censors and at times he is amazed as to what the “Publication Review Board” allowed to remain in the book. In a sense the book itself is prewritten as the actions of Iranian and Israeli intelligence officials and agents create the bones of an insane spy novel.
Aspects of McCloskey’s novel weigh heavily on the real world of espionage as the author delves into the fact that Israel was at a disadvantage in the world of espionage since it did not have diplomatic relations with the countries that surround her in the Arab world – it did not have embassies to hide intelligence officers who could carry out its operations. As a result, operational teams are cobbled together, surged to where they are needed, and disbanded when the operation is completed. Israel has to create different types of cover than the United States, United Kingdom and others because of this disadvantage and it amazes how successful they are when the playing field is not level.
(Caspien Sea)
McCloskey is very successful in creating multiple storylines as he goes back and forth between time periods and locations. A major shift occurs when the kidnapping of a target fails as somehow he is murdered. This causes Glitzman to change his plans on the fly resulting in Roya becoming a major focus of the novel. Her evolution from the spouse of a scientist to an espionage asset is fascinating as is that of Kam. The author does an exceptional job tracing Kam’s progression from an unsuccessful Iranian Jewish dentist raised in Sweden into a reluctant and fearful spy into someone who becomes devoted to his mission. The explanation that is offered makes sense as Kam develops his own feelings of revenge toward Iran and its agents who kicked his family out of the country, for decades has laid siege to the country of Israel and wants to eradicate its entire population. The problem is that his mission will result in his capture and the reader must wait until the last page to learn the entire truth bound up in his confession.
(Evin Prison’s main entrance)
The author’s goal in the book, which was already written before the war of last summer, was to go beneath that kind of overt conflict and get to the heart of the shadow war between Israel and Iran. After reading THE PERSIAN it is clear that he accomplishes his goal completely as his characters must survive in a world of intrigue, paranoia, and what appears to be a world of endless violent retribution.
(An aerial view of the U.S. Naval Academy, looking northeast, mid-1930s)
In the tradition of Robert Timberg’s THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG, Bill Murphy, Jr.’s IN A TIME OF WAR: THE PROUD AND PERILOUS JOURNEY OF WEST POINT CLASS 0F 2002, Rick Atkinson’s THE LONG GRAY LINE: THE AMERICAN JOURNEY OF WEST POINT CLASS OF 1966 and Joseph Waugh’s THE CLASS OF 1846 FROM WEST POINT TO APPOMATTOX: STONEWALL JACKSON, GEORGE MCCLELLAN, AND THEIR BROTHERS, Professor Emeritus at the U.S. Naval Academy, Craig L. Symonds latest book, ANNAPOLIS GOES TO WAR: THE NAVAL ACADEMY CLASS OF 1940 AND ITS TRIAL BY FIRE IN WORLD WAR II examines the graduates of one of our service academies and how they were educated, trained, and adapted to warfare. Symonds, who has taught naval history for thirty years and has authored numerous books that include THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, NIMITZ AT WAR, LINCOLN AND HIS ADMIRALS, and OPERATION NEPTUNE has produced a poignant and disturbing story of how the Annapolis Class of 1940 experienced personal growth, pain, loss, and dedication as they participated in many noteworthy battles in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.
The class of 1940 consisted of 456 men out of the 750 who graduated , though not everyone received a commission. Of those who did, 401 became Navy Ensigns, and 25 became Second Lieutenants in the US Marine Corps. They arrived at Annapolis as Adolf Hitler ordered the seizure of the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War was beginning, the Japanese had already seized Manchuria, Mussolini forces were ensconced in Abyssinia, and Stalin had instituted his purges. Despite these events most of the plebes were more concerned with how they would survive the naval academy for the next four years. Symonds follows in detail a number of members of the class who would experience four transformative years, followed by four more hard years in the cauldron of war. The end result was that 76 graduates of the “forties” as the Class of 1940 was known would perish in the war, the highest death rate of any class from either Annapolis or West Point.
(Class of 1940 graduation from the US Naval Academy, June 6, 1940)
Symonds begins his narrative by introducing members of the new class and their socio-economic makeup. What is interesting to note is their diverse backgrounds, the reasons they wanted to attend the academy, and how they achieved their admission. Some were from privileged classes in terms of wealth who used their families political connections to gain an appointment. Others saw it as a free education as their families could not afford college tuition as the depression continued to impact Americans throughout the 1930s. A few saw it as a dream come true from the time they witnessed naval destroyers or cruisers at harbor when they were young men. Curiously, of the new appointees, only one was black, and one was Filipino. Symonds explores the plebes’ daily schedule that could be summed up as “reveille, formation, breakfast, class, lunch, athletics, dinner, study, lights out, repeat!”
The author does an excellent job integrating world events as he relates the experiences of his subjects. He provides important aspects of events, in depth analysis, and the possible impact of what had transpired outside the “Naval Academy bubble” on its newest class. A good example is Symonds discussion of the 1936 Army-Navy game which Navy was victorious by a score of 7-0 and the growing partnership developing between Japan and Germany which the following year would result in the anti-Comintern Pact, and the Panay Incident the following year when the Japanese attacked a US gun boat on the Yangtze River. By September 1939, the fall of Warsaw provoked a growing interest on the part of the “forties” as they could imagine war on the horizon and their renewed commitment to their training resulted.
(USS Arizona, Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941)
The narrative reflects how racist American society was during this period. Aside from racial makeup of the class, their behavior toward certain staff members of the academy was indicative of American values. For example, the “forties” would pay janitors 25 cents a week to sweep their rooms and make their bunks. They would also refer to them as “mokes” which translated to “colored corridor boy!”
Symonds intimate detail is impressive and reflects how intrusive academy regulations could be. The navy had a regulation that men could not marry until they served two years as commissioned officers at sea. Those who secretly married were dismissed from the academy and lost their commissions. However, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the losses the United States suffered in the Pacific the need for more naval officers was acute and the regulation was changed, and men no longer had to wait two years to marry. But again, if they did so before the change was implemented they were dismissed. It did result in a number of the class of 1940 getting married before they shipped out.
(USS Yorktown at sea in the Pacific)
Symonds does not devote much detail on the last three years the Class of 1940 spent at Annapolis. After about a third of the book discussing the ”forties” he jumps to graduation as the situation in Europe, England, and the Atlantic deteriorates as the Nazis become even more aggressive. Upon graduation 50 men are assigned to aircraft carriers, 167 are assigned to battleships, and another 101 are assigned to cruisers. Others transfer to the Marine Corps, submarines, and aviation services. At this time, the Atlantic was more dangerous than the Pacific as German U boats sought to cut off American shipments to England. President Roosevelt would gain passage of the Lend Lease program which expanded the navy’s role in the Atlantic. As US ships conducted search patrols as far as the Azores the navy became more engaged in an undeclared war against the Germans and naval preparation and operations increased and the training of the members of the Class of 1940 was put to use.
By September 1941 it became clear the US navy was increasingly escorting allied convoys in the Atlantic and active combat resulted as the USS Kearny was hit by a German torpedo and the USS Reuben James was sunk. Symonds as he does with the course of the growing conflict explains correctly that Hitler was careful not to push naval confrontation with the United States at this time because he wanted to defeat the Soviet Union which Germany had invaded in June 1941. The US would continue to increase its convoy role in bringing aid to England in the Atlantic, at the same time Roosevelt ratcheted up sanctions against the Japanese in the Pacific which would ultimately lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Symonds description of the attack on Pearl Harbor reflects the standard account of events. What makes it more personal for the reader is how the author integrates the experiences of Class of 1940 graduates. Men like Irving Davenport and Sideny Sherwin served on the USS Oklahoma which was sunk resulting in 429 deaths. Dave Davison was the Officer of the Day on the USS Arizona as was Virgil Gex who made up two the seven “forties” with the over 1000 men who did not survive the attack. Others from the Class of 1940 like Nick Nicholson was the Officer of the Day on the USS California as were a number of others. Symonds stories of those who survived and those who did not reflect the heroism and personal sacrifice so many men experienced on December 7th.
(Photo Robert Kaufman, 97, has of the Japanese surrender ceremony, which ended the U.S.’ involvement in World War II. Kaufman is one of the few remaining Naval Academy 1940 graduates).
The author’s expertise as a naval historian dominates and enhances the monograph. His views are supported by years of research and familiarity with primary and secondary materials. Symonds relies on letters, diaries, family archives, and interviews to augment his portrayal of events and the role of the members of the Class of 1940. One example in particular stands out as he relates General Douglas MacArthur’s fears that building defenses and stockpiling food on Bataan would appear defeatist to Japan. He convinced Washington to allow him to defend all of Luzon, including Manila once the Japanese attacked. This was a grave error as the Japanese landed on Luzon on December 22 and MacArthur was forced to move his headquarters from Bataan to the small, fortified island of Corregidor. Allied forces would surrender on April 7, 1942, after fierce fighting and “Sparky” Campo, the lone Filipino in the Class of 1940 was able to escape by executing a bold torpedo attack against Japanese destroyers.
By 1942 the Class of 1940 was in the thick of combat as convoy escorts became the primary function of the Atlantic fleet. Despite tremendous losses it was decisive for the war effort because of the American ability to build new ships and filling the need to increase protection for the convoys . This increase in American shipping created the need for more naval officers which tapped a number of the 1940 Class’s members. They would fill many new staff positions; engineering, torpedo and gunnery officers, in addition to executive officers on smaller craft.
Symonds describes the difficulty and danger faced by the navy in convoying across the Atlantic. The author provides the speed and size of the convoys, their strategy designed to avoid U boats, even the inability to sleep and eat due to conditions caused by storms and high seas. Symonds zeros in on the USS Buck and USS Bristol as he relates the dangers and anxiety that naval personnel faced. The situation became even more difficult as the US began supplying lend lease aid to the Soviet Union as convoys had to transit the Arctic Ocean around northern Norway where the Nazis had an air base in their attempts to reach the Barent Sea. It became even more difficult as losses caused Roosevelt to suspend certain shipping to Russia which fed Joseph Stalin’s paranoia about the allies using Moscow as a vehicle to defeat the Nazis and at the same time destroy his country. This paranoia and anger against London and Washington would fester and cause difficulties throughout the war and even contributed to the cause of the Cold War after 1945.
(Midshipmen go aboard the battleship Texas (BB-35) near Annapolis on 8 June 1940)
Symonds’ topic is vast because of the geography of the war. His narrative encompasses the Atlantic and Pacific theaters but also devotes his coverage to the Mediterranean theater. What stands out is the convoy support in the Atlantic which suffered tremendous losses of material and lives as we tried to supply our allies. In the Pacific, the battles of Midway and Guadalcanal dominate as the Japanese zeroed in on the USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier at the battle of Midway at the end of May 1942. Luckily, they could not zero in on other carriers, the USS Hornet and USS Enterprise. By chance, the officer on deck was Lt. Junior Grade Peck Greenbacker of the Class of 1940 who was at the center of the storm and eventually the Yorktown could not be saved as it was repeatedly hit by Japanese torpedoes. At Guadalcanal, the US Navy suffered its worst defeat in its history as it lost the USS Quincy killing 370, the USS Vincennes with the loss of 322 men in early August 1942. In addition, more ships were lost and the death total encompassing all losses included a number from the Class of 1942 as class members were involved throughout the battles. So many ships were sunk in the waters off Guadalcanal that it soon earned the nickname, “Ironbottom Sound.”
(Midshipmen holystone the deck of the USS Missouri (BB-63) during their summer training cruise)
In the Mediterranean Operation Torch became Roosevelt’s response to domestic pressure and Winston Churchill to finally take it to the Nazis. Symonds fittingly points out that General George C. Marshall feared diverting assets to North Africa would cause a postponement of any landing in France in 1943, which in the end was the result. The main obstacle to Torch was the French Vichy destroyer, Jean Bart in Casablanca Harbor. Lt. Warren Walker’s USS Massachusetts and his compatriots were able to take out the ship allowing General George Patton’s troops to invade Morocco in November 1942, and later, Walker was involved with the cruiser USS Tuscaloosa’s heavy guns which assisted allied troops as they landed at Utah Beach on D-Day. Another sailor associated with the Class of 1940 was Sam Edelsein who in early July 1943 was sent to the Mediterranean on the eve of the invasion of Sicily to supervise the installation of SG radar sets on Admiral Richard Connolly’s flagship, the USS Biscayne. Edelstein would oversee the acquisition and dissemination of radar intelligence throughout the invasion.
ANNAPOLIS GOES TO WAR is a well written account of the lives of the Class of 1940, and their contribution to the war effort. Based on impressive research his narrative encompasses the vast geography of the naval battles of World War II and in the end is an acknowledgement and salute to those who gave their lives and those who contributed to victory.
There have been many exceptional people throughout history. People who emit bravery, compassion, and genius whose impact on others is immeasurable. Many of these people have been somewhat anonymous historically. One such person was Major Evans Carleson the subject of Stephen R. Platt’s new book; THE RAIDER: THE UNTOLD STORY OF A RENEGADE MARINE AND THE BIRTH OF U.S. SPECIAL FORCES IN WORLD WAR II.
As the book title suggests Major Carleson made many important contributions as to how the American military conducts itself. A career that spanned fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and the Japanese in China, the Makin Islands, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan saw him implement combat tactics that he observed and studied while watching the Chinese Communists engage Japanese forces in the 1930s. The type of fighting is framed as “guerilla warfare,” which would be developed by Carson’s battalion that would be the precursor of US Special Forces known as “the Marine Raiders.”
(Mao Zedong and Zhu De)
According to Platt, Major Evans Carleson may be the most famous figure from World War II that no one has ever heard of. He was a genuine hero whose life was full of contradictions, and he would wind up disowned by his service, pilloried as a suspected radical, and forgotten in the postwar era. Platt makes a number of astute observations, perhaps the most important being Carleson’s repeated warnings not to allow the wartime alliances in China to collapse. Today, US-Chinese relations are in part hindered by events at the end of World War II – something Carleson saw coming.
After reviewing Carleson’s early life and career Platt places his subject in China for the first time in 1927 where he would carry out his lifelong ambition to make a difference in that theater. Carleson would spend the next fifteen years observing the Communist Chinese, promoting democracy, fighting the Japanese, developing a philosophy of warfare which rested on a non-egalitarian approach to training men and leading them in combat. Carleson was a complex individual, and like many people he had his flaws as well as his strengths. On a personal level he had difficulties devoting himself to family life and was happier away from his wives and son, than trying to work on his familial relationships. On a professional level he was an excellent leader of men as his approach was to have the same experience as his men in the field which led to success on the battlefield.
(Chiang Kai-Shek)
It is obvious from the narrative that Platt has a firm command of his subject. He successfully integrates the flow of Chinese history from the late 1920s through the Second World War and the immediate post war era. Platt’s commentary and analysis dealing with Chinese Communists and Kuomintang relations, Chiang Kai-Shek’s authoritarian leadership, the strategies pursued by the Japanese and the United States are well founded and based on intensive research. This allows the reader to gain a clear picture of what Carleson faced at any given time from the “Warlord Era” in China in the late 1920s, his meetings with Communist officials, particularly Zhu De whose combat strategies became the model for what Carleson created with his Marine Raiders, and events on the ground, and other important personalities he interacted with.
Platt is accurate in his comments pertaining to the balance of power in China. He introduces the Soviet threat in the region as Joseph Stalin supplied Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces throughout the 1930s, reigning in the Chinese Communists as he wanted to develop a buffer to thwart any Japanese incursions on Russian territory. The Soviet Union financed the reign of Sun Yat-Sen and continued to do so with Chiang Kai-Shek. Stalin also forced the Communists to work with the Kuomintang and create a “United Front’ against the Japanese, a strategy that Carleson supported. Carleson’s influence on American policy toward China and Japan was enhanced because of the special relationship he developed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his son James who was his executive officer and helped create the “Marine Raiders.” A case in point is when Carleson finally learned that the US was supplying oil, weapons, and other resources to Japan to use in China, he helped convince FDR to embargo these items.
In examining Carleson’s approach to the Sino-Japanese war after he was appointed to be China’s Marine 1st Regimental intelligence officer in 1927, Platt correctly points out that many of his views were formulated because of his closeness to Chiang Kai-Shek, a man he admired despite his authoritarian rule. Since he was getting his information from one source he seemed to follow the Kuomintang line. This will change as he is permitted to imbed himself with Communists forces fighting Japan and his “special relationship” with Zhu De who commanded Chinese Communist forces.
(Agnes Smedley)
Platt will spend an inordinate amount of time tracing his subjects ideological development and personality traits. He stresses Carleson’s need to improve. After reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas as a young man, he becomes a convert to the concept of “self-reliance,” which he intermingled with the concept of “Gung Ho,” or working together which he learned from Zhu De. He pursued a lifetime goal of educating himself and he always seemed to crave a literary career. An important source that Platt makes great use of are Carleson’s letters to his parents where he relates his beliefs concerning the China theater and his own command career which allows him to develop analysis of his subject and the world with which he was involved.
Carleson developed many important relationships during his time in China. Obviously, Zhu De was seen as a model for conducting war against the Japanese, but others like Edgar Snow greatly impacted Carleson. Snow also had access to Chinese Communists leaders and wrote RED STAR OVER CHINA and including in part using Carleson’s intelligence work that the Chinese Communists were not like they had been described in the media. He argued they were friendly, not hostile and open to democracy in the short run, but we know that was Mao Zedong’s strategy before the socialist revolution would emerge. Snow argued that they were well organized, open to an alliance with the United States, and most importantly were not in the pocket of the Soviet Union. Carleson and Snow developed an important relationship intellectually and personally and Carleson agreed with most of Snow’s conclusions.
Platt is a master of detail and is reflected in what Carleson experienced meeting Mao and observing Chinese Communist military strategies. If you explore Zhu De’s approach to training his forces, which he argued were at least as psychological and moral as it was physical, we can see how Carleson mirrored that approach. Apart from Mao and Zhu De, Platt introduces a number of different characters that impacted Carleson’ s life. One in particular is fascinating and had influence over Carleson – Agnes Smedley. Smedley was a left leaning journalist who developed a strong relationship with Carleson, in fact they fell in love with each other, but according to Platt they were never lovers.
(These Japanese prisoners were among those captured by U.S. forces on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomon Islands, shown November 5, 1942).
Carleson was exposed to Japanese military tactics in China and developed ideas as to why Japan could never be totally successful. They had the antithesis of military structure from that of Carleson. He believed the Japanese would fail because of their hierarchical military structure and were extremely vulnerable to surprise attacks and unexpected situations. He further believed that Japanese were not well trained or allowed to think and act on their own. They were more robotic in their approach when compared to Zhu De. Carleson’s positive views on Zhu De would be openly mocked by higher ups, but no matter what was said he continued to speak his mind in interviews, written articles, and reports to FDR and other officials. He would be admonished and warned not to publicize his opinions, but he never wavered by imparting his views no matter what others thought, i.e., he blamed the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor on America’s privileged officer class who lacked incentives to innovate and improve. He argued “they were fearful of any experimentation that might threaten their appearance of infallibility or diminish their prestige.” In the end his superiors had enough of his popularity, refusal to fit in, blurring the boundaries between officers and enlisted men, and idealistic politics promoting him as a means of taking his “Raiders” command away and giving it to a more conventional officer.
Platt delves into the training of the “Marine Raiders,” and the plans for different operations. The results were mixed as the landing on Makin Island, a diversion the US sought to keep supply lines open to Australia which was not a success, while the amphibious landing at Guadalcanal was seen as a victory over Japan as 488 Japanese soldiers were killed as opposed to 16 Americans – eventually the Japanese withdrew from the island. Part of Carleson’s success resides in the area of post-traumatic stress syndrome. It seems that Carleson’s raiders did not suffer from mental issues related to combat as did others. Platt points out that one-third to one-half of all US casualties were sent home because of mental trauma, while the “Marine Raiders” only had one person sent home.
(A U.S. Marine rested behind a cart on a rubble-strewn street during the battle to take Saipan from occupying Japanese forces)
Platt has not written a hagiography of Carleson as he points out his warts. One in particular is interesting is that he would not take Japanese prisoners of war, he instructed his men to shoot them because they had no way to imprison or care for them but also revenge for what they did to Americans. On a personal level he basically abandoned his wives and his only son for his career and was seen as somewhat inflexible in dealing with higher ups in the military chain of command. Many above him felt he had become a communist because of his association with Zhu De, Agnes Smedley, and his criticisms of Chiang Kai-Shek which would follow him for the remainder of his life as his reputation was destroyed during the McCarthy era as J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on him for years.
If there are other biographies to compare Platt’s work to it would be Barbara Tuchman’s STILWELL AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCEIN CHINA , 1911-1945 and Neil Sheehan’s BRIGHT SHINING LIE: JOHN PAUL VANN AND AMERICA IN VIETNAM. One book provides similar reasons to Platt as to why the “United States lost China” after World War II and examines very carefully Washington’s approach to the Chinese Civil War which ended in 1949, the other tells a familiar story why the Vietnam War was such a fiasco. Platt’s work is based on strong research as he was the first historian to receive access to Carleson’s family letters, correspondence, and private journals, allowing him to develop complex personality and belief systems alongside the dramatic events of his life. The result of Platt’s efforts according to Publisher’s Weekly “is a gripping, complex study of a military romantic who mixed ruthlessness with idealism.”
(Japanese expansion in the late 19th and 20th centuries)
Alexander Rose’s review; “The Raider” Review: Evans Carleson Made the Marines Gung Ho, June 6, 2025, Wall Street Journal is dead on when he writes; “Hence Mr. Platt’s superficially disproportionate focus on Carlson and his activities in China before Pearl Harbor and the formation of the Raiders—which was really a capstone to his long fascination and relationships with the Chinese Communists and Nationalists. By the late 1930s, Carlson was regarded as the China expert at home. His reports were circulated at the cabinet level and within the most senior ranks of the Navy department; he even enjoyed a secret, direct line of communication with President Roosevelt.
Yet in some quarters there were concerns that Carlson had, to use a perhaps dated expression, gone native. He had developed a severe case of Good Cause-itis and needed to be reminded, as one analyst commented at the time, that he worked for “Uncle Samuel, not China, the Soong Dynasty, or”—referring to one of the Chinese Communist party’s forces fighting against Japan—“the 8th Route Army.”
These suspicions were not baseless. If Carlson had a weakness, it was that he associated with too many American fellow travelers and idealized the Communists, seeing them as nothing more than slightly zealous New Dealers. He told Roosevelt that Mao had assured him that agrarian revolution, one-party rule and proletarian dictatorship might be on the agenda, but only after a prolonged period of capitalist democracy to guarantee everyone’s individual freedoms..
Similarly, Carlson promoted the astoundingly corrupt Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek and seems to have believed that they and the Communists would make a great team to secure China’s independence, once they ironed out a few inconsequential political differences. It was in 1944 that he finally tired of Chiang and wrote him off as a reactionary warlord. The Communist Party was the sole executor of the “welfare of the people,” he judged, and thus America’s natural friend.
One gets the impression from his reports that Carlson was often told what he wanted to hear and saw what his hosts wanted him to see. He never grasped that the insurgents’ interests rarely matched American ones, even when the two forces were temporarily allied against a common enemy. Carlson, in other words, broke the cardinal rule of being an observer: Don’t fall in love with the side you’re backing; they’re fighting a different war than you are.
For a time, Carlson’s views held sway in the U.S.—he was a popular, progressive figure immediately after the war and was set to run for the U.S. Senate representing California—but his career soon began to go wrong. A heart attack ended his political ambitions, and in his final years he was castigated as a “red in the bed.” He died a disappointed man, as his illusions shattered against the hard rocks of reality. But American understandings of China have often been founded, or have foundered, on self-deception, both before Carlson’s time, and since.”
(Lt. Colonel Evan Carleson after Makin Island raid)
As the current administration guts the Department of Education, coerces universities to adhere to what they think should be taught in classes, and pressures public schools to rewrite their curriculum to reflect its view of history it is important to examine books that tell the truth about history as opposed to a fantasy that makes certain elements in our society feel better. Banning books, censorship, and curtailing funding is no way to examine our past – something from which we should learn! Just because someone write or says something that is critical of American history does not mean it did not happen or is a threat in our current environment. Remembering our past is a precursor to the present and is a necessity and must be carefully examined as we should learn not to repeat previous errors. It is in this context that Siddharth Kara’s latest book, THE ZORG: A TALE OF GREED AND MURDER THAT INSPIRED THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY must be explored.
Kara’s narrative history portrays his subject with compassion, and accuracy based on exceptional research depicting the harsh realities of the 18th century slave trade involving Africa, the Caribbean, and the American colonies providing lessons we should never ignore. This may come across to some as “wok,” but history is something that should never be dismissed or degraded.
(The Slave Ship (1840), J. M. W. Turner‘s representation of the mass killing of enslaved people, inspired by the Zong killings)
The narrative that Kara presents reads as a work of fiction, but it is not. It is a work that is based on fact and presents an accurate picture of the events he describes. Each chapter ends with a hint of what is to come next. Each important observation is related to what will take place in the future and how it will affect his storyline. Kara provides a very detailed history of the Zorg and its ill-fated voyage, describing in mesmerizing detail the story’s evolution as it embarked on a violent Atlantic crossing. A British privateer captured the Zorg during the Anglo-Dutch War in early 1781, and the ship would sail from the Gold Coast of Africa to Kingston, Jamaica, with its ‘etween deck’ loaded with 442 slaves, including women and children, and a small crew which was not sufficient to care for them. Even the Captain was problematical, a former slave ship surgeon, who had little navigational experience, hired by a rich Liverpool slave merchant.
There are a number of important characters that garner the author’s attention. First, Luke Collingwood, Captain of the Zorg and a former slave ship physician who must have been considered competent since his mortality rate for the crew and slaves was considered below average, however he was not trained in navigation and would become a disastrous choice. William Gregson, underwrote the cost of the Zorg and was considered one of Liverpool’s most prominent slave merchants. James Kelsall, was second in command to Collingwood on the Zorg, and was the only knowledgeable navigator apart from the captain. Robert Stubbs, one of the British governors for the Company of Merchants Trading for Africa (CMTA) was a scoundrel who sold slaves, pocketed the profit, and made decisions out of avarice that would end up in disaster. He was eventually fired but wound up on the Zorg as it made its way to Jamaica. William Llewellin, the captain of the British privateer, Alert, who captured the Zorg, which at the time had 120 slaves. He would capture the Dutch slaving ship, Eendracht, and would add its 124 slaves to the Zorg. Richard Hanley, one of the leading slave captains in Liverpool. John Roberts, another CMTA governor who clashed with Stubbs. Amoonay Coomah, the Ashante King who sold his people into slavery. Olaudah Equiano, captured by slave traders at age eleven, he survived the two Middle Passages having been shipped to shipped to Virginia, served as an officer’s slave on British battle ships. In 1766 he would buy his freedom and later would play an important role in trying to free slaves. Lastly, Granville Sharp who early in career witnessed a scene were a black teenager was beaten, sold, and kidnapped and was outraged. Sharp would work to gain the teenager’s freedom and spend his remaining career as an abolitionist developing arguments against slavery. In addition, Kara introduces a series of English abolitionists who assiduously to end the slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th century.
(The Zorg, a replica)
Kara provides excellent background for the reader to gain a true understanding of what life was like on a slave ship. He points to the difficulties in staffing a ship’s crew. It was a daunting task since men new that Guinea voyages had high mortality rates, offered poor wages, required to complete unpleasant tasks, including guarding and feeding hundreds of captive slaves. Many of the crew hired were impressed or had to work off debts acquired while they were drunk. Most crews that were hired were not experienced enough for a successful voyage.
Kara offers a useful description of the British slave infrastructure in Africa, i.e., forts, factories, supply networks, the dungeons slaves were kept in, and the personalities or governors who were in charge. It is eye opening because the of the horrors the Africans faced even before they were forced to board the slave ships. He makes a series of insightful observations. One of the most important is that once Africans were forced into a dungeon or on to a slave ship they had no concept of what was about to happen to them. The dungeon the British built was indicative of the horrors that awaited the Africans. It was built below the Cape Coast Castle designed to house over 1,000 Africans at a time. Kara introduces Ottobah Cugoano who has written a biographical account of his experience in the dungeon, and his Atlantic crossing on a slave ship. Years later, after obtaining his freedom he would become an important voice in England’s abolitionist movement.
The chapter entitled “Coffles” is an important one as it describes the process by which Africans were either seized by Europeans or sold by Ashante tribal leaders into the slave trade from the interior of the Gold Coast. The inhuman treatment was abhorrent as they marched over 150 miles to the coast with little food and water. Once again they did not know where they were going and what awaited them. To highlight this experience Kara develops the name, Kojo to replicate what an African experienced. Kojo would march for six months as part of this process. Later, he would be forced onto the Zorg and along with the other 442 slaves who would be branded to show ownership.
As Kara writes, “it is impossible to know what emotions the Africans experienced as they passed through the ‘door of no return.’ Was it anxiety, dread, anger, bitterness, hopelessness…perhaps even relief to be out of the dungeon? Most Africans from the inland regions had never seen the ocean before. What impact might first sight of the infinite blue have had on them? Many surely feared they were heading for their doom.
Once Collingswood, Stubbs, and Kelsall overstuffed the Zorg with 442 slaves it was a disaster waiting to happen because the ship’s capacity was around 250. The expected two month “Middle Passage” with a crew of 17 was clearly insufficient to care for their cargo. In addition, supplies would not cover their needs. Once the ship departed for Jamaica on September 7, 1781, a nightmare of dysentery would permeate the ‘etween deck’, the crew would also suffer from scurvy, measles, typhus, measles, and malaria in steerage, as did the captain in his cabin. Kara places the blame clearly; poor planning, a lack of organization and administration led to a shortage of supplies, particularly water, and to exacerbate the situation those in charge of the voyage made numerous navigational errors. The key event occurred when Collingwood became so ill he could not continue in command. He appointed his friend Stubbs, who had experience navigating slave ships, but had not done so in sixteen years, instead of the first mate Mr. Kelsall, who probably would have made better decisions and saved a significant number of lives.
Desperation set in as scurvy became rampant. Kara describes the step by step physical and mental deterioration of the crew and cargo on a ship commanded by Stubbs, who was considered a passenger, in addition to the myriad of poor decisions which would result in disaster. To solve the problem of disease and overcrowding a consensus was reached to throw away large numbers of slaves overboard. By November 29, 1781, 122 individuals were tossed off the ship. Mostly women and children providing sharks with a culinary treat as they were shoved out of a window in the captain’s cabin. Kara is correct that this action was a result of hoping to save enough slaves to recoup as much of a profit as possible once they reached Jamaica, Another possibility was to collect insurance payments for the lost freight! When the Zorg arrived in Jamaica on December 22, 1781, only 208 slaves remained, after roughly 224 slaves were thrown overboard. A year later William Gregsonn would file an insurance claim of 30 pounds per head lost, arguing an ominous situation left the crew with no choice but to throw Africans overboard.
(Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From an Abstract of Evidence delivered before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1790 and 1791)
Kara describes the legal battle once the insurers refused to pay as Gregson sued the insurance company in February 1783. The court found for the ship owner resulting in an appeal with England’s Chief Justice believing that the deaths were caused by the crews incompetence, Gregson would withdraw the suit. Finally, Granville Sharpe would publicize the case as a means of forcing the government to abolish the slave trade.
The Zorg reflects a remarkable work of history despite the lack of sources. The author does his best poring over what is available at the Royal African Company’s materials and has reproduced some key documents that highlight his narrative. The most historically important one is an anonymous letter sent to the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser which Kara reprints in full which would light a fire under abolitionist efforts in England that would not be extinguished until all slaves were free. The author should also be commended for integrating the 1783 court transcripts into the narrative which went along way to present the true facts pertaining to the events on the Zorg. Kara’s contribution to the historical record concerning anti-slave movement cannot be denied as he has written a sophisticated account reflecting his moral compass.
(Enslaved Africans in chains marched to the East coast of Africa by Arab slavers)
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(A satellite overview of Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea as seen on 1 April 2022)
(Israel had hunted Gaza for more than a year to find Yahya Sinwar)
![June 18, 1979: U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at background, center, looks on as U.S. President Jimmy Carter, left, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev, right, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II Treaty in Vienna, Austria. [AP/Wide World Photo]](https://2009-2017.state.gov/cms_images/28vance_salt_600.jpg)
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(The Zorg, a replica)
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