Aleksei Grogorievich Stakhanov - Hero of Socialist Labor

In August, 1935 Soviet newspapers reported that a twenty-nine year old miner, Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov (Алексе́й Григо́рьевич Стаха́нов) in the Donbass region mined 102 tonnes of coal in five hours, forty-five minutes. The output was fourteen times his quota. Less than a month later, he mined 227 tons in a single shift.

These heroic accomplishments were held up as a model for others to follow. Workers who exceeded their quotas were known as "Stakhanovites." The movement inspired others to follow suit. The government's goal was to exhort individuals to ever greater efforts at productivity.

Several curious things about the Stakhanovite movement.
1. The Soviet Union had just completed a bloody collectivization campaign, collectivizing every industrial and agricultural activity, yet Stakhanov's accomplishment was to exceed a personal, piece-work goal;
2. Central planners also established output goals for enterprises, but managers apparently saw no way to achieve those goals except to prod individual workers;
3. Central planners were heavily engaged at the time in mechanization of production, but management methods followed pre-revolutionary hierarchical and authoritarian models of management;
4. Management focus was on gross output, not quality;
5. Exhortation was a major instrument of motivation - this instrument almost never works well;
6. Seeds of later failure of the Soviet economic model were sown in the late twenties and early thirties.

My main conclusion: Soviet economic shortcomings resulted from poor management methods - methods handed down from at least the time of Peter the Great.

The failure of the Soviet Union as a political system, however, stemmed from the difficulty of incorporating more than 120 nationalities, with as many languages and at least that many cultures.

It was a pretty impossible task. The breakup of the Soviet Union has not completely played out to this day.

Though the experiment failed, it accomplished some amazing things.

Let's Have A Strong Dollar?

Over the past week, I've heard a lot of calls for a "strong dollar."

Strong is good, right?

So who is a strong dollar good for?

For that matter, what is a "strong dollar?"

A "strong dollar" is a dollar with a high value relative to other currencies.

For whom is this good?

It's good for China. They get to make lots of stuff and sell it to us, because their prices are lower than our "strong dollar" prices.

It's good for Germany. They don't have to buy as much of our stuff to be able to sell us Mercedes', BMW's and Braun appliances.

It's good for India, Indonesia and Mexico.

Is it good for Americans? A strong dollar would be good for those who travel abroad. When I plan my next trip to Europe,  I want the dollar to be "strong." What I have to spend for hotels and travel, etc. will be lower.

But for anyone in the export business or in the US tourist industry, a strong dollar is bad.

It raises the price to foreigners of American goods and services.

If you are an American and make stuff for foreign markets, you don't want a strong dollar.

If you make stuff for ordinary Americans to buy, you don't want a strong dollar.

If you are a financier, who only makes deals, not product, you do want a strong dollar. It lets you outsource offshore.

It lets you drive down any salaries you have to pay in this country.

If you are in the top one percent, of course a strong dollar is good!

London Rubble, 1955

The first time I saw London, in 1955, it hadn't been rebuilt. The rubble, though, had been arranged in ordered piles, set off by walls of damaged brick. I shot this from a double decker bus.

Why Wasn't The Higgs Boson Discovered By America?

A serious/humorous take on the issue by New York Times columnist Gail Collins in today's on-line issue here. Worth reading.

Big Science And National Security

Remember the scenes early in "2001: Space Odyssey" when the fictional troubleshooter sent to the moon encounters Russians along the way? Any contemporary update to that movie would have to encounter Chinese in space.

Why are they there and what does it mean for us? Here is a good article in today's New York Times with one answer. It need not be the only answer.

Big science is expensive. Nations will have differing priorities for their scientific endeavors, but be assured of one thing: their first priority will not be to compete in markets. It will be to gain a security advantage.

There are different ways to accomplish this. When the Space Station project became too expensive for an increasingly parsimonious America, we turned it into the International Space Station. Today, without Russian participation, we wouldn't be able to get astronauts to the station.

In the early 1990's as the Superconducting Super Collider was running into problems with Congressional appropriations, an effort was made to internationalize the project. The effort proved too little and too late.

It might be better to think "international" at the outset. Now, at the Large Hadron Collider, we are the tail instead of the dog.

Euro Zone Update

Sigh of relief in some quarters. Greek voters support New Democracy Party that supports staying in the Euro Zone.

But ND didn't win a majority of seats and will have to form a coalition. How will they do that? Germany remains unbending, insisting on austerity rather than economic expansion.

My headline: "Germany remains bent on destroying Euro."

Reflections On A War In Our Own Time

I've been posting updates on the epic of World War II in the Pacific. The Battle of Midway was an enormous victory. Even at the time, though, the victors wondered whether it was due to skill or luck that we prevailed in that battle. We still don't know - a mix, perhaps - but it didn't matter.

However the battle came out, we had vast quantities of war material in production, including more aircraft carriers, planes, tanks, ships and bombs. There was, as Admiral Yamamoto knew full well, no way that Japan could have prevailed against America's might.

The end of the war was not yet in sight. In the Pacific, we could not even say after the battle of Midway that it was the "end of the beginning." Yet in Washington and London, planning was already underway for the end game. Leaders who experienced the collapse of world order after World War I were planning how to have a better outcome this time. We are still living with the fruits of those labors.

But I see no evidence that we are doing any realistic planning for the end game in Afghanistan.

Arguably the task is harder, the complexities greater.

There will be no "unconditional surrender." Who would surrender? And to whom? And surrender what?

Perhaps it is time to declare victory and bring the troops home.

Have parades in Times Square if the troops want it. But it is time to rebuild our own nation.

Troubles In Euroland

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, today conveyed a blunt message to the European Parliament: “The configuration we had for 10 years, which was considered sustainable, has been shown now to be unsustainable unless further steps are undertaken.”

Draghi has taken steps to ease the crisis, but his message seems to be that these measures are not sufficient. Leaving no room for misunderstanding, he criticized Europe's political leaders for taking half-measures that have made the crisis in Europe worse. “The next step is for our leaders to clarify what is the vision for a certain number of years from now,” he said. “The sooner this has been specified, the better. Dispel this fog.”

One consequence of the continuing uncertainty in Europe is that the dollar has been strengthening against the Euro and now stands at a value of about .81 Euro per dollar. "Stengthening" sounds good, doesn't it. It is good news for Americans interested in traveling to Europe of buying products from Europe. But it is bad news for US tourism  (visiting the US has become more expensive for Europeans) and bad news for American companies selling goods and services to Europe.

In Extremis: Greece and Germany

In the ancient past (when I was learning the nautical rules of the road) we were taught that certain ships had the "right of way" when there was risk of collision while other ships were "burdened."

That terminology is no longer used, but the principal is much the same.

How do you know if there is risk of collision? If the other ship is CBDR - that is, on a constant bearing and decreasing range.

It was the duty of the ship having the right of way to maintain course and speed. It was the duty of the burdened vessel to maneuver to avoid collision.

What if both ships insist that they have the right of way and maintain course and speed? At some point, after sounding warning blasts on the ship's whistle, the ships become so close to each other that the only way to avoid collision is for both ships to act.

That situation was known as being "in extremis."

Greece and the European Central Bank have been on a collision course and now are in extremis. At least if the object is to keep Greece in the Eurozone, both vessels must put the helm over and take up a new course.

But no one is at the helm in Greece nor will anyone take the helm for at least a month. Nor is it apparent who is at the helm of the ECB, but it still looks like Germany has the conn.

Europe may be in for a humongous collision.

It's at least time to check out the life vests and life boats.

Nuclear Weapons Rethink?

Later today, Global Zero, a nuclear weapons organization, will issue a report calling for another significant reduction in our nuclear deterrence. Gen. James E. Cartwright, USMC, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the United States’ nuclear forces, has joined with others  calling for reduction in the number of nuclear warheads below the levels set by agreements with Russia.

Five years ago, we learned of the shocking error in our own nuclear force when six nuclear-armed missiles were inadvertently flown from Minot SD to Barksdale AFB Louisiana on a B-52 whose crew thought they were transporting dummy warheads. As I recall, the aircraft and warheads were parked in the open, unguarded, for two days before the error was found.

This incident showed a worrisome degradation in the system of administrative controls in place for nuclear weapons. If you think administrative controls are just boring minutia, you might want to watch the movie "Doctor Strangelove" again.

But the Global Zero report addresses only our strategic weapons. We still have thousands of "tactical" nuclear weapons not only in Europe but also on ships and bases around the world. The smallest of these have nuclear yields on the same order as that of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945.

Tactical nuclear weapons are not covered by any international arms control agreement. Poland and Norway have asked that NATO consider extending arms control to cover tactical nuclear weapons.

Not a bad idea.

Do we know where our nuclear weapons are?

Time To Undo The Euro?

My wife and I were living in Europe a decade ago when the Euro was introduced. Travel within the Eurozone was much more convenient with a single currency instead of having to convert after crossing every border. But I wondered how the inevitable differences in rates of economic growth would be accommodated.

The answer is now clear: not.

From the outset, some economists warned that the system wouldn't work. Here is an account of how Europe's political leaders ignored the warnings and chose to listen to economists who were more optimistic about the Euro.

The fall of the Euro still seems likely to begin in Greece. Greece's May 6 elections resolved nothing. It has proven impossible to form a government, so new elections will be held next month in hopes a government can be formed this time.

Will Greece default on its debts? It seems likely. Will Greece then leave the Euro zone and return to the drachma? It's really hard to see another realistic possibility.

Will such an event force the European Central Bank and, especially Germany, to rethink its policies of austerity?

Stay tuned.

Germany Update

Even Germany isn't immune to political upheavals.

This last weekend's parliamentary elections in Germany's largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, led to a substantial victory for the Social Democrats and defeat of Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, the Christian Democrats. Although many observers emphasize that this election was only local, The Christian Democratic party leader in North-Rhine/Westphalia had claimed during the campaign, that the election is a "referendum" on Angela Merkel's policies.

If so, Merkel lost the referendum.

The Christian Democrats also lost the previous weekend's election in Schleswig-Holstein.

The next scheduled German election is September 2013, but there is speculation Merkel may have to call early elections.

More On The Eurozone

In case you haven't been following events in Europe, things aren't looking so good. The UK is in a double dip recession. The government of Holland has fallen over proposed new austerity measures. The Greek government has been voted out of office. Spain has 23% unemployment, with unemployment among young workers at 50%. The cost of borrowing by the government of Italy has risen. President Sarkozy of France was defeated by a socialist who does not support further austerity.

At the end of this month, Ireland will have a referendum on whether to accept a new EU treaty imposing greater control of fiscal policy from Brussels. By the way, Ireland has declining GDP and high unemployment.

So where does Europe go from here? Some knowledgeable observers expect Greece to fall out of the Eurozone as early as next month. Here's Paul Krugman's take:

"Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like:
1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month.
2. Huge withdrawals from Spanish and Italian banks, as depositors try to move their money to Germany.
3a. Maybe, just possibly, de facto controls, with banks forbidden to transfer deposits out of country and limits on cash withdrawals.
3b. Alternatively, or maybe in tandem, huge draws on ECB credit to keep the banks from collapsing.
4a. Germany has a choice. Accept huge indirect public claims on Italy and Spain, plus a drastic revision of strategy — basically, to give Spain in particular any hope you need both guarantees on its debt to hold borrowing costs down and a higher eurozone inflation target to make relative price adjustment possible; or:
4b. End of the euro.
And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out."

In any event, it looks like the future of the Eurozone is mostly up to Germany, but may be up to European voters.

Liberty

I just finished reading The Attack On The Liberty by James Scott.

The book is a troubling reminder of the deliberate, sustained and unprovoked attack by coordinated air and naval forces of the state of Israel on USS Liberty, AGTR-5, a converted World War II merchant ship of the Victory class. The attack, which occurred in international waters near Egypt June 8, 1967, killed 34 US sailors and wounded 170 others, out of a crew of 300.

For comparison, when an Iraqi pilot under Saddam Hussein fired an Exocet missile at USS  Stark May 17, 1987, 37 sailors died. When Al-qaida conducted a suicide attack against USS Cole October 12, 2000, 17 sailors died.

In the case of Liberty, loss of life could have been much greater except for heroic efforts by all of her surviving sailors, but especially her medical officer, Dr. Richard Kiepfer and her Damage Control Assistant, Ensign John Scott, who managed to keep the ship afloat after devastating damage from an Israeli torpedo.

Israel, which admitted the attack and issued an apology, has never provided a believable account of why the attack occurred.

James Scott, the author, is the son of Ensign John Scott, who kept the ship afloat.

Is America Exceptional? "Not So Much"- E.L. Doctorow

Here are today's thoughts by the author E.L. Doctorow on the issue of American Exceptionalism. Or how to achieve unexceptionalism. He seems to think we have already accomplished that.

On Service

I don't remember when it started, but I was startled the first time someone, on finding that I was retired military, said: "thank you for your service."

I understood that the person who said it was sincere, and meant it respectfully, but it made me uncomfortable all the same. Ever since, I have tried to understand the source of my discomfort.

I just finished reading Drift by Rachel Maddow, and I think I now understand why such statements make me uncomfortable. It implies that military service or, perhaps more broadly any kind of public service is an extraordinary thing. According to Ms. Maddow, in today's America, only one percent of adults have served in the military.

It was not that way in the America in which I grew up. Service was taken for granted. Every young man was subject to military service, and public service in general was viewed in a positive light. A half century ago, President Kennedy told an entering class at the Naval Academy, "I can imagine a no more rewarding career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worth while, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: 'I served in the United States Navy.'"

But America's youth in those days were inspired to serve their fellow citizens in other ways as well. Young people flocked to the newly-created Peace Corps and recent college graduates actively sought positions in government service.

Like their predecessors who struggled to bring America  out of the Great Depression and who served victoriously in World War II (Tom Brokaw called them the Greatest Generation), this new generation chose to serve in a cause greater than themselves.

Would that those of us who remember those times can inspire our latest generation of Americans to such service.

War And Rumors Of War

I am reading Rachel Maddow's new book, Drift, The Unmooring of American Military Power.

I'm not finding it enjoyable - Ms. Maddow hits too many nails right on the head. In particular, the heart of her book reminds me why, after nearly three decades of service in the navy, I decided I could no longer serve the foreign policy and national security policy imperatives of a US administration - that of Ronald Reagan.

As Brutus observes in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "the evil that men do lives after them..." The Reagan departure from our historical traditions and the policies of every US President in my lifetime, from FDR through Nixon and Carter, is captured in Maddow's book by an exchange between Senator Edward Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in 1990:

Kennedy: "....do you agree that the president must obtain the approval of Congress in advance before the United States attacks Iraq?"

Cheney: "Senator, I do not believe the president requires any additional authorization from the Congress before committing US forces to achieve our objectives in the Gulf . . . There have been some two hundred times, in our history, when presidents have committed US forces, and on only five of those occasions was there a prior declaration of war. And so I am not one who would argue, in this instance, that the president's hands are tied or that he is unable, given his constitutional responsibilities as commander in chief, to carry out his responsibilities."

This was a pretty breathtaking repudiation of the Constitutional provision that only Congress has the power to declare war.

But what about those two hundred-odd instances of military action without declaring war? Actually, the figure Cheney cited is a bit inflated, because it includes some very minor actions that would not plausibly constitute war.

But the list also includes some very major military undertakings, including the three-year "quasi-war" with France, the two Barbary Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and countless foreign interventions, including the Boxer Rebellion and the Philippine Insurrection.

On close examination, what is striking about the list is that vast majority of such military actions involved the navy and marine corps, not the army - to be more precise, not the War Department.

It seems too simplistic, but prior to 1947, there were two military departments of our government, the Navy Department and the War Department. If a military action involved only the Navy Department (which includes the marines), there never was a declaration of war. Only if the War Department was involved in a foreign action was there ever a declaration of war.

In one other interesting respect, the Constitution treats the Army and Navy differently. Article I, Section 8 lists the powers of Congress, including:
"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Capture on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy...."

For whatever reason, the Constitution does not include a two year limit on naval appropriations. One could conclude that our founding fathers were deeply suspicious of standing armies, but had no such suspicion of navies. The suspicion of standing armies was also memorably expressed in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

What undid more than a century and a half of Constitutional practice and tradition concerning military affairs was the Unification of Armed Forces Act of 1947. Since that action, creating the Department of Defense, the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an independent Air Force, we have yet to sort these issues out satisfactorily.

Pentagon staff officers in my day often shared the observation that "before the Department of Defense, we never lost a war and since then, we have never won one."

Reviewing the history of our very successful operations during World War II, including significant joint Army-Navy undertakings, one can conclude that Unification of the Armed Forces was not the solution to a problem, but rather a solution in search of a problem. Or a solution that created a problem.

Report On The War: Apr 23 1944

Here Is Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King's Report to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox dated April 23, 1944.

The report is worth reading, since it gives an official view of preparation for and conduct of World War II from the standpoint of one of its principal leaders.

My favorite quote from the report is Admiral King's explanation of the Navy's peacetime efforts to meet its responsibilities:

The Peacetime Navy

Prior to the War in Europe

THE fundamental United States naval policy is "To maintain the Navy in strength and readiness to uphold national policies and interests, and to guard the United States and its continental and overseas possessions."

In time of peace, when the threats to our national security change with the strength and attitude of other nations in the world who have a motive for making war upon us and who are-or think they are-strong enough to do so, it is frequently difficult to evaluate those threats and translate our requirements into terms of ships and planes and trained men. It is one thing to say that we must have and maintain a Navy adequate to uphold national policies and interests and to protect us against potential enemies, but it is another thing to decide what is and what is not the naval strength adequate for that purpose.

In the years following World War I, our course was clear enough-to make every reasonable effort to preserve world peace by eliminating the causes of war and failing in that effort, to do our best to stay clear of war, while recognizing that we might fail in doing so. For a number of years, the likelihood of our becoming involved in a war in the foreseeable future appeared remote, and our fortunate geographical position gave us an added sense of security. Under those circumstances, and in the interest of national economy, public opinion favored the belief that we could get along with a comparatively small Navy. Stated in terms of personnel this meant an average of about 7,900 commissioned officers, all of whom had chosen the Navy as a career, and 100,000 enlisted men more or less.

This modest concept of an adequate Navy carried with it an increased responsibility on the part of the Navy to maintain itself at the peak of operational and material efficiency, with a nucleus of highly trained personnel as a basis for war time expansion.

For twenty years in its program of readiness, our Navy has worked under schedules of operation, competitive training and inspection, unparalleled in any other Navy of the world. Fleet problems, tactical exercises, amphibious operations with the Marines and Army, aviation, gunnery, engineering, communications were all integrated in a closely packed annual operation schedule. This in turn was supplemented by special activities ashore and afloat calculated to train individuals in the fundamentals of their duties and at the same time give them the background of experience so necessary for sound advances in the various techniques of naval warfare. Ship competitions established for the purpose of stimulating and maintaining interest were climaxed by realistic fleet maneuvers held once a year, with the object of giving officers in the higher commands experience and training in strategy and tactics approximating these responsibilities in time of war.

Our peacetime training operations, which involved hard work and many long hours of constructive thinking, were later to pay us dividends. For example, it would be an understatement to say merely that the Navy recognized the growing importance of air power. By one development after another, not only in the field of design and equipment, but also in carrier and other operational techniques-such as dive bombing-and in strategic and tactical employment, the United States Navy has made its aviation the standard by which all other naval aviation is judged and has contributed its full share to the advances which were to make aviation the sine qua non of modern warfare. It may be stated here, with particular reference to naval aviation, that the uniform success which has characterized our naval air operations is unmistakably the result of an organization which was based on the conviction that air operations should be planned, directed and executed by naval officers who are naval aviators, and that in mixed forces naval aviation should be adequately represented in the command and staff organization.

Britain In Recession

Official data released today shows that Britain has slipped into a new recession.

Britain's new recession is not a direct consequence of policies of the European Central Bank, because Britain is not in the Eurozone. It retains its own currency, the pound.

But the Cameron government has been following a policy of economic austerity, insisting that this will lead to economic expansion.

Apparently, not so much.

Actually, Britain's recovery from this recession is worse than its performance in the 1930's following the Great Depression.

More On Europe And The US

Good article in today's Guardian concerning the economic and political turmoil in Europe and the continued intransigence of her economic leaders. The author, Robin Wells, predicts the US may suffer collateral damage.