Things read and noted:
In the WSJ, Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews Hannah Pakula’s new biography of Song Meiling: The Last Empress. Given that the only other major work to focus on Madame Chiang Kai-shek is Sterling Seagrave’s wretched Soong Sisters you gotta figure that there’s no where to go but up for Ms. Pakula. On a side note, one of my students, fresh from seeing The Great Enterprise (建国大业), made a point of informing my history class that Song Meiling was by far the hottest part of the Chinese revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt put it perhaps more pithily when she remarked that Madame Chiang was a women who spoke so eloquently about democracy despite not seeming to understand it at all. More snow in Beijing. As a New Englander who feels that snow is an integral part of the winter (if not exactly November) experience, I’m loving this. Beijingers, many of whom purchased earned their drivers licenses in the past two years, not so much. Not a good week to be flying in and around North China either. Rumors abound about how much of this is the handiwork of Beijing’s weather gnomes… Finally, nothing to do with China but very cool nonetheless,
Karl Eikenberry and the lessons of Vinegar Joe
President Obama is flying to Asia this week with much on his mind: Should the US commit another 40,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan as stories of official incompetence and political corruption leak daily from the capital of Kabul?
If Britain’s curse was her imperial ambitions, the United States has its hegemonic aspirations. We are once again supporting a regime in a country turned hostile against both the United States. Our support is critical to the success of the current Afghan government, but it is that very (and very public) support which may well ultimately doom the administration of Hamid Karzai as it did to Fulgencia Batista or the government of South Vietnam following the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem.
Three simple rules:
In wars of attrition, the longer it lasts the greater the advantage for the home team. No matter how noble a politician may be, the more he depends on an outside force to maintain his position and power, the less legitimate his administration will seem in the eyes of his fellow countrymen. If you have your own people on the ground, listen to them. They’re seeing things you’re not.
All of these rules apply to the