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<p>The rise of a new American militarism in the last quarter of the twentieth century is one of the defining features of our era. There is something deeply ironic for a historian of europe to find ourselves at the end of a century that began with European militarism holding center stage and america self conciously refusing the call to military power, in a situation in which europe seems committed to an order of permanent peace, but America disposing of more military force than has ever been available to any classic military power and commanding a huge preponderance far beyond the reach of any previous power. As Andrew Bacevich has put it “The new American militarism is the handiwork of several disparate groups that shared little in common apart from being intent on undoing the purportedly nefarious effects of the 1960s.” Given its disparate origins the phenomenon needs multiple histories. The rebuilding of the us military involved rearmament, culture change, nothing short of a biophysical adjustment of the body of the American soldier. But it also involved something else, more subtle. Out of the Vietnam and the terrifying stalemate of nuclear Mutually assured destruction it has involved a rediscovery of military agency, a return of what c wright mills dubbed “military metaphysics”, the sense that soldiers could make history and change the world.</p><p>My hunch the hunch I am going to talk about in this paper is that this involved Germany. What concerned me is the hunch that this transfer of militarism from Europe to the united states was even more direct than my ironic juxtapositions suggests. IN a kind of vampiric blood transfusion in the wake of Vietnam the American military embraced the undead corpse of German militarism. It is of course no secret that in the early years of the Cold War the US took lessons from the Third Reich. By the 1960s Wernher von Braun’s role in the space race had become the object of hilarious popular satire. The interest taken by the Us military in the early phase of the cold war in the German experience on the eastern front is now the subject of serious academic scholarship. But what is more surprising is that the US Army’s fascination with Hitler’s Wehrmacht in fact reached its height not in the days of John Wayne but in the era of John Rambo. To put it at its most blunt the thesis of my paper is that the Army that America built with the largesse of Ronald Reagan’s spending boom was modelled in its equipment, in its doctrine and its vision of military effectiveness on the army that Germany’s generals built with the generous funding provided to them by Hitler. Between the quagmire of Vietnam and the paralyzing nightmare of nuclear armagaddon, the Nazi Blitzkrieg offered a tonic to the American army. It offered a vision of militarism as an autonomous historical force not reducible to other broader and more deeply rooted historical forces – such as economic development or geopolitics. </p><p>Of course what actually happened in 1940-1941 is far from obvious. And what gave the wehrmacht its ability to sustain the war until 1945 remains the object of controversy as well. Our sense of what the blitzkrieg actually was has changed a great deal in the last forty years. But as I came to realize that change in historical understanding was in fact itself in large part the work of military historians in the pay of the American armed forces. Historians such as Russel Stolfi, Williamson Murray, Doughty, Millet, Glantz, Citino et al are all paid up members of what I’m calling the military-historical complex, employed by or sponsored by the Pentagon and above all Andrew Marshall’s office of Net Assessment. So this story is entangled. It is not just that the american military drew lessons from history. Much of what we think we know about recent german military history was produced by people asking question on behalf of the americna military or the bundeswehr. Much of the military history that went into Wages of destruction had in fact been written from 1970s onwards in direct connection with the revival of American military power. And it was so useful for me precisely because the question that I had placed at the heart of my book, hitler’s violent, voluntarist effort to preempt the looming material superiority of America, ran parallel to the practical problem facing the US army from the 1970s. </p><p>By common consent the story of the new American army begins with the return from Vietnam and the refocusing on the problem of Nato’s central front. Bacevich who was serving in the US army at this point puts it very nicely. After the frustrations of Vietnam and the political confusion of Watergate he remarks “…inside the cocoon of military life, there existed one fixed point of absolute and reassuring clarity. Those of us whose day-to-day routine centered on furiously preparing to defend the so-called Fulda Gap, the region in western Germany presumed to be the focal point of any Warsaw pact attack, had no need to torment ourselves with existential questions of purpose …. … here was the lodestar … this was what we understood to be the American soldiers true and honourable calling.” </p><p>But how exactly was this mission to be accomplished? NATO as the Army was only to painfully aware faced Warsaw pact forces that were overwhelmingly superior in quantity and not markedly inferior in terms of quality. So what did an effective defence of the West actually entail? Formulating the official answer at least as far as the US army was concerned was the job of the newly form US Army Training and Doctrine Command or TRADOC, presided over as its first chief by General William dePuy. And key staging posts in my story are three successive editions of the US Army’s basic doctrinal manual FM 100-5, drafted by depuy and his successors at Tradoc, 1976, 1982 and 1986, the last two connected under the slogan of AirLand Battle. </p><p>What opened the door to the US military’s intense preoccupation with German military history was the definition of the military problem facing NATO on the central front as articulated in Field Manual 100-5 released by DePuy in July 1976. Reflecting on the savage intensity of fighting in the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and the preponderance of Warsaw Pact forces on the Central Front the basic operational manual of the US Army stated: “Because the lethality of modern weapons continues to increase sharply, we can expect very high losses to occur in a short period of time. Entire forces could be destroyed quickly if they are improperly employed. Therefore, the first battle of our next war could well be its last battle … this circumstance is unprecedented: (historically unprecedented that is). We (the US army) are an army historically unprepared for its first battle. We are accustomed to victory wrought with the weight of material and population brought to bear after the onset of hostilities. Today the US Army must above all else prepare to win the first battle of the next war.” </p><p>What Depuy was announcing was a reconsideration of the entire “American way of war”. In the civil war, the North had survived repeated setbacks and come back to crush the South. In World War I and World War II the abundance of material had allowed army commanders to go from battlefield disappointment to battlefield disappointment and yet to win ultimate success. In trying to defend the Fulda Gap, American soldiers could no longer afford such an approach. They had to win the the first battle, or be overwhelmed triggering esalation to mad. it was this basic conceptualization of warfare as an urgent and decisive clash of arms, rather than a protracted struggle between entire societies that dictated the increasingly Germanic flavour of American army doctrine over the next decade and a half. The mission of German general staff officers since the 19th century had been to seek and to win decisive battlefield encounters thereby sparing their country a hopeless war of attrition. </p><p>DePuy may have opened the door to Germanism. But his own approach to the problem was, It was above all tactical and firepower based. I think it is fair to say, shaped by his own biography. Thirty years after world war II, in the wake of vietnam&nbsp; depuy was still marked by his first experience of combat experience in Normandy. As he told an Army oral history unit in 1979: “ <em>“The first thing that impressed everybody [in Normandy in 1944] was how a handful of Germans could hold up a regiment by sighting their weapons properly. ... The Germans were just superior at that.”“The difference”</em>, DePuy argued, <em>“ between the good unit and the bad unit is often a factor of four or five, even though they have the same number of men and the same weapons…”. </em>In its first month in Normandy the raw 90th infantry division in which depuy fought suffered a shattering 100 percent casualty rate. Not surprisingly, forever after DePuy became an avid proponent of the master of German infantry tactics Erwin Rommel, whose virtues he was still preaching to junior American officers in 1989. Depuy advocated close collaboration with the bundeswehr at every level including procurement. The Bradly Armoured Fighting Vehicles, for instance, depuy hoped would allow the American infantry to replicate the Panzergrenadier model revived by the Bundeswehr in the late 1960s. </p><p>But depuy’s conceptualization of war not as attrition but as battle opened the door to a far wider discussion. It was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that intellectuals of the military reform movement, figures such as William Lind or Edward Luttwak really took up the cause. The so-called manoeuvre theorists of the late 1970s and early 1980s argued that DePuy he had not gone anywhere near far enough in adopting German solutions. DePuy’s approach to the problem of containing the Red Army was fundamentally too American, too materialistic. If it was to survive a Warsaw Pact Blitzkrieg the American army would need to reorient its entire approach from a concentration on attrition and firepower, towards a true appreciation of the art of operational warfare, based on manoeuvre and deception, flexible attack and counter attack. For this of course the best examples were the triumphs of the Wehrmacht in the early years of World War II and the subsequent defensive battles on the Eastern front.</p><p>In making this case military reform advocates such as William Lind, Edward Luttwak and Richard Canby could draw on the first fruits of a new generation of scholarship on 1940 and the blitzkrieg which was moving decisively beyond the clichés of wartime propaganda and postwar popular history. As marine officer and historian Russel H. Stolfi showed already in 1970, the German victory in 1940 had not been a triumph of new military technologies, Panzers and Stukas etc. As he showed by a simple comparison of forces arrayed in 1940, Germany did not enjoy substantial numerical or material superiority in any area. The key to military success as demonstrated by the Wehrmacht was not material or technical superiority but military art, the effective deployment of their forces to concentrate against the weakest point in the Allied lines and the rapid and ruthless exploitation of every advantage. In the end, of course, the Wehrmacht had gone down to defeat in Russia. But according to Lind this was no argument against the German style of warfare, since the Blitzkrieg could have been made to work against the Soviet Union as well had it not been for the perverse interventions of politics in the form of Hitler. </p><p>For the American military reformers the significance of all this for NATO in the 1970s was obvious. By contrast with the Soviets who had learned their lessons from the Wehrmacht and had mastered the operational art at Stalingrad and Kursk, the us army was clinging to a materialist, attritional fallacy. This preference for material was undeniably deeply rooted in American culture. But for critics such as Lind and Luttwak there was no question that it was the era of the 1960s that had seen the final corruption of the military spirit in the US. The battle calculus and the weapons effectiveness charts that dominated DePuy’s vision of combat smacked of the malign influence of Defence Secretary Macnamara and his accursed crew of systems analysts. It was the technocrats of the 1960s and their drab routines of operational research who had evacuated history and had attempted to reduce the art of warfare to the rationalistic calculations of microeconomics and business management. Faced with an enemy who not only commanded material superiority but who was deeply schooled in the history of operational art, the American army was an organization staffed by careerist, calculating technocrats. </p><p>I am citing here only the most publicly audible voices of criticism. But there is no question from the official histories published by TRADOC that there was deep unease amongst the up and coming cohort of colonels about the limitations of the new doctrine. And those concerned clearly included Andrew Marshall at the office of Net assessment in the pentagon itself. DePuy was as we have seen deeply impressed by German military expertise, so to respond to his critics and with the backing of Marshall he took the initiative to summon the German ghost in person. Unfortunately the two best known German exponents of Blitzkrieg, Generals Guderian and Manstein were dead by the early 1970s. But Hermann Balck the most successful commander of Panzer units in the defensive phase of the war was still very much alive and was hosted in May 1980 in Virginia along with his chief of staff von Mellenthin at a war gaming exercised hosted by BDM corporation, one of the key simulations outfits of the day. Thanks to his bestseller panzer battles Von Mellenthin was a global miltiary history celebrity. But Unlike von Mellenthin balck had refused to speak to American debriefing teams in the 1950s and so his “rediscovery” in the 1970s stirred all the more excitement amongst the aficionados. In Washington, Balck was lionized by the illuminati of the military reform movement, for whom he was a touch stone of everything they felt was missing in the American military. to illustrate this point at his own expense John boyd the marine corps guru liked to tell the story of how during a dinner party he had sought to compliment Balck by suggesting that with his lightening fast reactions he might have become a superb fighter pilot, Balck snapped back: “I am not a technician”. Against the soulless managerialism of modernity, they represented not just history but something even more potent, the personal embodiment of a true military art.</p><p>The BDM wargame in May 1980 was a four day event. And Balck and von Mellenthin put on precisely the kind of show that the advocates of manoeuvre warfare expected. In the war game that was the centre piece of the meeting the grizzled Germans after only five minutes of urgent discussion decided that rather than doggedly defending the forward end of the Fulda Gap, they would entice a soviet armoured thrust all the way to the outskirts of Frankfurt before delivering a massive counterblow –Depuy’s retort as illustrated in this map was that fighting this kind of expansive war in the confined territory of West Germany involved huge risks. And the honour of DePuy’s vision of forward defence was satisfied when Balck and von Mellenthin conceded that in the latter stages of the war, as the red army pressed in on the Reich they too had been constrained in their scope for aggressive manoeuvring by the need to take into account the sensibilities of terrified German civilians. But there were of course other conclusions one could draw. As news of the war game leaked out into the community of security intellectuals it prompted Samuel Huntington taking his cue from the same German sources to advocate an even bolder approach, suggesting that signs of an imminent Warsaw pact attack should be met by a pre-emptive NATO assault out of Bavaria into the soft underbelly of East Germany and Czechoslovakia. </p><p>Certainly, by the early 1980s, given the chorus of criticism both from outside and inside the US Army, DePuys original vision of a conventional concentration on the forward defensive line could no longer be sustained. Fort Leavensworth was heavily involved alongside DePuy’s replacement at TRADOC, general Don Starry, in drafting a new version of FM 100-5 which incorporated much of the argument of the preceding 6 years. Explicitly quoting the advocates of manoeuvre warfare, the 1982 edition for the first time in the history of the US army defined the central focus of the Army’s attention as being the operational level of war, between the tactical and the strategic levels. In its subsequent 1986 edition it fully absorbed an extended German military vocabulary including the Clauswitzian concept of Schwerpunkt, the German command style of Auftragstaktik, a whole vocabulary of German terms incorporated within the expanded notion of the battlefield and combined arms encapsulated in the slogan AirLand battle. </p><p>As Michael Citino puts its, “airland battle was nothing less than a call for US ground forces, working in close cooperation with air power, to re-create the German blitzkrieg. Citino goes on “in the years after 1982, it became difficult to pick up any American military journal without reading something about the German army.” And this is certainly born out by an electronic search of the Military Review the us army’s main forum for doctrinal discussion which summons up literally hundreds of references to keywords such as Blitzkrieg or Guderian.</p><p>But, in any case the reading of the Wehrmacht as the chief exponent of operational art was only one way in which German military history was invoked in American military reform debates. Which brings me to Version II what I will call the Wehrmacht as a model of combat effectiveness. At the Balk and von Mellenthin show in Virginia in May 1980 the war game was just part of the proceedings. What clearly fascinated the Americans was actually to witness these two veterans of Blitzkrieg close up. General William DePuy made a point of writing up the report himself and first on the list of “interesting themes” to emerge from the four day conference he put quite simply “General Balck and von Mellenthin themselves and their relationship to one another.” And DePuy went on in a gushing tone: “Those readers who may not have studied the background of the distinguished German participants might not appreciate the full authority with which they speak – authority growing out of an incomparable set of experiences in war against Russians a record of battlefield performance unsurpassed anywhere in the history of modern warfare. … the character and personalities, as well as the personal relationship between these officers, were fascinating and compelling.” Succumbing quite uninhibitedly to the desire for inclusion in the charismatic circle, the preface to the report considered it necessary to add to the short biography of DePuy, a four star general, former vice chief of staff and commander of TRADOC, the tell tale observation that “Balck and von Mellenthin’s respect for General DePuy was evident in their reference to him as a “kindred spirit”. The Germans were good cop-bad cop buddies of hard-boiled cliché. “General Balck tends to be a man of few words – somewhat brusque almost laconic but deeply thoughtful. He was, and is, clearly a man of iron will and iron nerves.” “Von Mellenthin by contrast was a “more gentle officer on the outside. However, his record and Balck’s esteem tell us that he is also a man of steel at the core.” Twenty five years after the end of a lost war, Balck still exuded “a strong aura of confidence – confidence in himself, in the German Army and in the German soldier. He has no doubt about the superiority of the German over the Russian …” By the fourth day of proceedings “when a large number of interested observers” attended the final session the tone of lacerating self-criticism on the part of the Americans was overwhelming. As DePuy reported “invidious comparisons were being drawn between German and US Armies to the effect that the German leaders were uniformly superior in battlefield tactics. The patent excellence and superb performance of Generals Balck and von Mellenthin … led the audience easily in that direction.” Here is an effort again from the Military review of the 1980s to contrast the remarkable lightening fast, 5 minute decision making process exhibited by Balck and Mellenthin with the ponderous 14 hour cycle more normal in the us army. At the ages of 87 and 76 respectively, Balck and Von Mellenthin were 150 times faster than standard NATO practice provided for.</p><p>Even more than a sophisticated appreciation of operational art it seems that what the Americans wanted amidst the gloom of the post Vietnam era and the decay of its run down barracks in Germany was some of this Wehrmacht spirit. And this point was cruelly driven home by the influential Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld in his widely read book Fighting Power published in 1983 in the midst of this period of turmoil in US army doctrine. What van Creveld set out to explain was why man for man the Germans fought so much better than any of the Allies and better than the Americans in particular. Why this army faced with increasingly overwhelming odds “did not run”, why it did not disintegrate” and why, turning the knife here, why it did not “frag its officers.” Creveld answer was simple. The Germans fought well because they were members of a “well integrated well led team whose structure administration and functioning were perceived to be …. Equitable and just.” Their leaders were first rate and despite the totalitarian regime they served were empowered to employ their freedom and initiative wherever possible. By contrast the social segregation in America’s army was extreme. “American democracy” Creveld opined “fought world war II primarily at the expense of the tired, the poor the huddled masses” “between America’s second rate junior officers “ and their German opposite numbers there simply is no comparison possible.” Nazi Volksgemeinschaft it seems trumped America’s degenerate capitalist democracy.</p><p>In any case, Military effectiveness with the Wehrmacht as the benchmark became one of the buzz words of the 1980s. Andrew Marshall already at the Office of Net Assessment and Richard Perle then Assistant Secretary of defence sponsored the three volume collection on the theme edited by Millet and Murray that appeared in 1988. And the connection to us army doctrine was direct. In the name of flexibility and autonomy, a German kind of freedom as one historian has put it, the 1980s editions of FM 100-5 adopted Auftragstaktik, the German delegated command style, as the basic command style of the US army. The new COHORT system of personnel management was introduced in the 1980s in the hope of creating for the US army the same kind of unit cohesion achieved by the Wehrmacht. The military historian Creveld claims a direct role in its development. To address the issue of fighting power head on, the emphasis on “warrior spirit” in the rhetoric of the US Army became nothing short of oppressive. The rising star Norman Schwartzkopf became legendary even before Desert Storm for an address he gave to his 24 Mech Infantry division prior to one of the new ultra-realistic training sessions at the National training centre in the Mojave desert at which he incited the warriors of his division to “carve a V in the forehead of every enemy soldier.” Strange as it may seem, this willingness to conjur up primal sources of aggression has its specific historical origins in the agonized self criticism of the us army in the early 1980s in which the Wehrmacht served as a phantom scurge. </p><p>And we should be clear about what kind of ghost the Americans were summoning. The Americans in their new love affair with the Wehrmacht inhabited a world eerily close to that satirized by Stanley Kubrik in Dr Strangelove. General Balck was a Wehrmacht officer whose gung-ho, can do enthusiasm managed to alienate even the Waffen SS during the prolonged and bloody defensive battles in Hungary. Though not a war criminal in the strict sense of the word Balck was convicted by a German court in 1947 for the murder by firing squad of one of his subordinates to whom he had not even extended the perfunctory court proceedings provided by Nazi military law. Nor can there be any doubt that Balck had fully imbibed the master-race mentality on which the entire German conduct of the Eastern war was premised. When asked to comment on the rigidity of Syrian offensive formations in the Golan battles of 1973 and possible similarities to Red Army practice, Balck responded with the following bizarre outburst: </p><p>“Normal European and American countries educate their peoples like we do. There is a different class of prairie people – prairie nations like Hungary, like some peoples in Asia. They are used to flat, open terrain, and they use this kind of attack … then there is a third category: mountain people. They adapt more to the features of terrain. … Prairie people should not be used in modern warfare because that courts disaster.”</p><p>General DePuy though himself a native of North Dakota did not even flinch. </p><p>Of course I am not suggesting that the Americans simply imbibed Nazi racism along with their lessons in operational art. But I do want to highlight a deep tension between the two ways in which the Wehrmacht figured in reform arguments in the 1980s. The basic point of Lind’s critique of US army doctrine had been to juxtapose America’s attritional conception warfare to the Russo-German tradition of manoeuvre warfare. Under the influence of von Mellenthin and Balck this assignment of materialistic attrition to the West and artful manoeuvre to the Soviets was now flipped on its head. According to the German reading of the Eastern front, it was the Soviets who were mechanical and incapable of the kind of rapid, operational response that was the true essence of military leadership. By contrast, the art of manoeuvre and a true mastery of the battlefield reflected German attributes, but attributes which as Balck and von Mellenthin were keen to emphasize linked Germany to the common heritage of the West. The German style of warfare was not just a tool that needed to be adopted to bolster NATO, but was nothing less than an expression of the best values of western civilization: intelligence, initiative, mind over matter. According to Balck and von Mellenthin far from being alien to the American mind, Blitzkrieg and manoeuvre warfare, founded as they were on freedom and intelligent individualism were expressions of a common Western civilization. By contrast, whatever technical improvements the Red Army might make, whatever operational skills its generals might possess and whatever fighting qualities were innate to the Russian serviceman, they were forever excluded from the cultural heritage of the West. NATO had nothing to fear, but fear itself. &nbsp;</p><p>Not surprisingly perhaps this anti material and anti technological attitude never sat comfortably with many elements in the US military. The advocates of manoeuvre in the early 1980s always faced a chorus of opposition from more straight forwardly firepower orientated colleagues. Furthermore it could hardly be denied that the AirLand Battle concept that emerged from the doctrinal arguments within the US Army in the early 1980s had new technology at its very core. And this of course dovetailed neatly with what was after all the more traditional understanding of what the German Blitzkrieg victories had really been all about. In 1985 Major General Woodmansee, a famous veteran of the Vietnam air cavalry, made the connection explicitly. Under the tell tale title, “Blitzkrieg and the AirLand Battle”, Woodmansee began by asserting that AirLand Battle was the American Army’s “modern-day blitzkrieg (sic)”. This equation was by now merely conventional. But Woodmansee then went on to develop an interpretation that flew in the face of the new orthodoxy. “The microchip”, Woodmansee argued “is the technological key to the new doctrine – the counterpart to the blitzkrieg’s use of the gasoline engine. “The first military force to learn how this technology can be exploited will have a significant advantage over its opponent. It will be capable of rapid, decisive victory just as clearly as the German armed forces were in their 1940 blitzkrieg (sic).” Woodmansee thus anticipated the enthusiasm for smart munitions and high technology that following Desert Storm was to come to dominate US military debate.</p><p>More seriously not everyone in the US military shared the infatuation with things German. As Citino comments “There were occasional complaints that one needed a German-English dictionary to read a typical issue of military review.” <a href="#_ftn1" title="">[1]</a> Already in 1983 David Schoenbaum in a review of Martin van Creveld’s <em>Fighting Power</em>, could not help wondering what GI Joe really had to learn from the Wehrmacht.<a href="#_ftn2" title="">[2]</a> Dennis Showalter also queried whether it seemed advisable to push the Wehrmacht too far as a model for the American military. But the <em>Military Review</em> gave the last word to Creveld, who silenced his critics not only with his authority as an expert historian, but also by reference to his identity as an Israeli, who lost family members in the Holocaust. The German Army, Creveld insisted, had not been Nazified. Its military performance could be viewed in isolation from the regime. And Creveld capped it all with the following observation: “… one can only hope that the US and its NATO allies on the central front, will fight as tenaciously, and hold out as long, as the Germans did against the same enemy in 1943-45.” At the very moment in the mid 1980s when these nostrums of conservative postwar Germany were coming fundamentally under attack in West Germany, at the moment that Reagan’s visit was causing a trans-Atlantic scandal, the legend of the wehrmacht’s innocence was being written into the American Army’s peculiar vision of twentieth-century history.</p><p>But these tensions aside, whichever version of the new model army you preferrred: the operational artists, the warriors, or the masters of technology there was no question that the American army was in far better shape than it had been after vietnam. To truly escape from Vietnam and to complete the narrative of reconstruction, America’s soldiers needed a victory. And the opportunity arrived on cue. Since the mid 1980s the wargaming community had been considering scenarios in which the Iran-Iraq war spilled over into an Iraqi attack on Saudi Arabia. One such situation was in fact being explored by General Schwartzkopf’s staff in the spring of 1990 as Saddam prepared his ill-fated assault on Kuwait. When the news hit Washington on 2 august 1990 of the occupation, Andrew Marshall within hours turned again to BDM and the wargaming team who had hosted the event with the Wehrmacht generals ten years earlier to explore possible scenarios for a counter attack. </p><p>As it has been repeatedly retold, the story of the American reappropriation of the Art of war culminates in the moment on 14 November 1990 when in an air conditioned bunker deep beneath the Saudi Ministry of defence Norman Schwartzkopf flipped the cover on his display chart to reveal the outline battle plan for operation Desert Storm. The map he displayed was dominated by the famous encircling left hook, the manoeuvre Schwartzkopf tellingly but inaccurately described using the lingo of American football as a Hail Mary pass. Schwartzkopf’s own description of how he arrived at his scheme sticks closely to the new script. </p><p>„If the White House wanted a bold offensive plan, I knew how to deliver one. On an easel to the left of my big desk … was an “enemy situation” map that pinpointed every Iraqi unit in and near Kuwait … the infantry were dug in along the southern border and the gulf coast with armoured divisions in reinforcing positions behind them. The republican guard was arrayed along the Iraq-Kuwait border to the north. . The textbook way to defeat such a force would have been to hold it in place with a frontal attack while sending an even bigger army to outflank it, envelop it, and crush it against the sea. … True, it would require the largest manoeuvre of armor in the desert in us military history – but it seemed the most likely way to end a ground war decisively and fast.”<a href="#_ftn3" title="">[3]</a></p><p>When General Schwartzkopf referred to a textbook solution to the situation facing him in Kuwait it was clearly the doctrinal debates of the 1980s that he was referring to. Rotate his Hail Mary left hook 90 degrees anticlockwise and you have Manstein’s scything blow through beglium and france in 1940. Schwartzkopf was not perhaps one of the greatest Wehrmacht enthusiasts in the 1980s. His personal favourite by all accounts is Hannibal and the classic battle of Cannae. But Cannae is of course precisely the textbook example most favoured by German general staff training at least since the days of Schlieffen. And in 1991 as if to commemorate this connection west point reissued an English language translation of Schlieffen’s famous Cannae studies.</p><p>The reaction of Schwartzkopf’s colleagues to the plan he outlined on 14 November 1990 is in some ways even more symptomatic. Take major general Barry Mccaffrey then commander of the 24th mechanized infantry division, who summed up his reaction as follows: “after the initial shock, (at the boldness of the plan) there was a tremendous feeling of relief. Instead of fighting some narrowly defined battle with tremendous possibilities of casualties, we would be allowed to overwhelm them at an operational level. It was breathtaking.” Just as the new storyline required: To live up to Manstein’s example, the plan must be shockingly bold. It should be risky like a Hail Mary pass in football. But above all it must be “operational” and offer the chance not merely of inflicting casualties but of achieving an authentic military decision. </p><p>But though Desert Storm was clearly a crushing victory, there was a sense in which it could never really fulfill the historical role assigned to it in the Army’s own narrative. As one TRADOC historian admits. Desert Storm was “a bit of a historical anomaly:” “It is a rare event for an operational plan to play out as designed.” The plain truth was that in Moltke’s term there had been no enemy “main force” to encounter in Kuwait, an obstacle the encounter with which might have provided a real test of military leadership and skill. The American and Allied troops ploughed across desert as if engaged in a particularly undemanding war game. The Americans and their Allies were operating against an enemy so inferior both in quality and firepower and so severely damaged by the preceding air assault, that a meaningful assessment of the operational merits of Schwartzkopf’s plan is impossible. Rather than as a triumph of operational art, it was perfectly possible to read the war not so much as a triumph of maneuver as a brutal demonstration of the effectiveness of the traditional American way of war. By contrast, as the military reformers had been at such pains to show, the German Blitzkrieg dash through France from the Ardennes to the sea, like any other significant feat of military artistry had been carried out against a combative enemy and at huge risk. </p><p>At the moment of triumph the lethal paradox within the American Army’s reform effort was painfully exposed. An appreciation of military art and effectiveness for its own sake depends precisely on detaching battlefield performance from its wider strategic, political and material backdrop. In 1973 the distinguished military historian Weigel had concluded his seminal history of <em>The American Way of War</em> with the recognition that “At no point on the spectrum of violence does the use of combat offer much promise for the United States today.”<a href="#_ftn4" title="">[4]</a> The American Army reform movement of the 1970s and 1980s and its sustained invocation of the operational art of the wehrmacht was a sustained effort to escape that conclusion. The Iraq war was a bloody pastiche of 1940s desert war not a truly historic vindication. The only real test of the new American militarism would have been an apocalyptic confrontation with the Red army on the blood-soaked battlefields of Germany, a confrontation that whatever its outcome would have ended in disaster not just for Europe, but for humanity as a whole. </p><p>Of course, the hawkish celebrants of America’s victory in the Cold War will forever insist that it was the American military revival of the 1980s that forced the Soviets to surrender the Cold War. But this ignores the alternative scenario that haunted the Peace Movement of the era and was surely closer to the mark. The first response by the Soviet military to the resurrection of American military power in the early 1980s was not to back down, but to respond with their own aggression. Under the influence of Marshall Ogarkov in the late 1970s, the Warsaw pact too was drawing inspiration from the 1930s and 1940s, to envision an ultra-high speed offensive that would take the Red Army to the Atlantic in a matter of days. In 1984 in response to America’s conventional rearmament Ogarkov warned that the Soviet Union would soon face a huge disadvantage in any land war. It was urgently necessary to reinvigorate the military industrial complex for a new conventional arms race. On both sides, the soldiers were envisioning for themselves a starring role in one final installment in the annals of European military history. The fact that the military capacity of neither side was put to the final test, we owe not to the American military, but to the Soviet political leadership. Within months of taking office as General Secretary Gorbachev brutally asserted his control over the aggressive exponents of “operational art” in Red Army. Ogarkov was retired. The Soviet Union unilaterally pulled back from the brink, leaving the field to the militarism of the United States. We can thank our lucky stars I think that europe has become the place where military history went to die. </p><p><a href="#_ftnref1" title="">[1]</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; btods, 263      <a href="#_ftnref2" title="">[2]</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; D. Schoenbaum, The Wehrmacht and GI Joe: Learning What from history? International Security, 8, 1 (1983), 201-207      <a href="#_ftnref3" title="">[3]</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Schwarzkopf and Petre, It Doesn’t take a hero. General h. Norman Schwarzkopf. The autobiography (London, 1992), 362.      <a href="#_ftnref4" title="">[4]</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Weigel, American way of war 477.    </p>

<!--
{
  "post_id": "40384600.chartbook-audio-4-nazi-soviet-pact",
  "post_date": "2021-08-23T19:06:19.024Z",
  "is_published": true,
  "email_sent_at": "2021-08-23T19:06:19.056Z",
  "inbox_sent_at": "2021-08-23T19:06:19.056Z",
  "type": "newsletter",
  "audience": "everyone",
  "title": "Chartbook Audio #4: Nazi-Soviet Pact",
  "subtitle": "A grim anniversary"
}
-->
<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>My friend Duncan Weldon reminds us that today is the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23 1939. If there was ever a diplomatic decision that inverted prior expectations this was it. It set the stage for the destruction of Poland and freed Germany to make its high-risk blow in the West in May 1940. </p><p>Even if you are familiar with the event and with the logics at work, there is something staggering about this image, of Lenin looking down, as Stalin watches Molotov putting his pen to the document. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png" width="426" height="532.2144772117963" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:932,&quot;width&quot;:746,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:426,&quot;bytes&quot;:1156280,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QxGw!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced8fdc8-c903-4402-9173-3ee26dd84756_746x932.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p>A few years ago, Duncan made this excellent radio show with interviews with the great expert on the Soviet economy Mark Harrison, the Oxford international history Patricia Clavin and yours truly. </p><p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png" width="1456" height="693" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:693,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:584618,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5CNc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6659c641-f487-475e-908e-72f54b7d2629_2736x1302.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>It’s really a good episode. Click <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0007rlg">here</a> for the podcast.</p><p>In fact, the entire series is excellent. </p><p>And if you enjoy Duncan as a wonderfully intelligent and well-informed broadcaster, check out his equally excellent new <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wouldnt-Start-Here-Duncan-Weldon/dp/1408713160/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=weldon+muddling+through&amp;qid=1629745203&amp;sr=8-1">economic history of Britain</a>. </p><p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png" width="590" height="936" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:936,&quot;width&quot;:590,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:806810,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KMsS!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff7417186-eae9-4049-84db-fd5f9ba27d05_590x936.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>If you enjoy all the good stuff you are getting from Chartbook, klick below to become a  supporter of the project.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/subscribe?"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>If you would like to share Chartbook with a friend, click here.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://adamtooze.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Share Chartbook&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share"><span>Share Chartbook</span></a></p>

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<p>https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13639080.2010.534445</p><p>https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&amp;hl=de&amp;user=GGCHjO0AAAAJ&amp;sortby=pubdate&amp;citation_for_view=GGCHjO0AAAAJ:iH-uZ7U-co4C</p>

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<p>https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article/91/1/1/6329186</p>

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<p>https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/revival-of-quantification-reflections-on-old-new-histories/857C3FCC25129D7ED3065D957F1CC528</p>

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<p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 848w, 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srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PmPX!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01996d11-0172-4417-8c2b-d8488b27e80c_864x1052.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/f4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png" width="876" height="1140" 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srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tVmj!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff4e5a01d-ec95-466c-a06f-b295be9b5579_876x1140.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png" width="1456" height="781" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:781,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:315044,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://adamtooze.substack.com/i/40597791?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6e8Q!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fff6a8467-5a57-4456-ae26-568ce969922b_1752x940.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>THE WARTIME TAX EFFORT IN THE UNITED STATES, THE UNITED KINGDOM, AND CANADA* by R. A. MUSGRAVE and H. L. SELIGMAN Jan 1944 </p><p>The role of finance in a war economy is secondary to the task of obtaining the maximum output of war materials. The limits of production are set by the availability of resources and the people's willingness to forego civilian consumption; they are not set by the Government's ability to meet the bill. If the necessary funds can not be obtained through taxation or borrowing from the people, they can always be obtained through borrowing from the banks. Yet, the methods of war finance are of vital importance; they bear directly upon war production, they largely determine the distribution of the economic burden of the war, and they shape the economic conditions after the war. While it is not feasible, politically or economically, to cover the entire cost of the war by taxation, it is generally agreed that taxation should cover as large a share as possible without imposing gross inequities and impairing productive incentive. If an all-out tax effort is made, war finance is a powerful means of adjusting incomes to available civilian supplies; if extensive reliance is placed on free market borrowing, particularly on borrowing from the banks, war finance turns into a source of aggravated inflationary pressures. Equally important, an all-out tax effort during the war reduces the financial difficulties of the postwar period. There is thus good reason for appraising the financial performance of a nation at war in terms of its tax effort.</p><p>https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/FRB/pages/1940-1944/29553_1940-1944.pdf</p><p></p><p></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aear!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc0107ad4-b6a1-49d0-aa6b-f8b029e6bc7d_898x706.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aear!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc0107ad4-b6a1-49d0-aa6b-f8b029e6bc7d_898x706.png 424w, 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height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0JaC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd48e0fc8-9da5-4f92-8674-736854e3b4a1_852x776.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0JaC!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd48e0fc8-9da5-4f92-8674-736854e3b4a1_852x776.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0JaC!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd48e0fc8-9da5-4f92-8674-736854e3b4a1_852x776.png 848w, 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height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" 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height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7s02!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F163ca8c5-40cb-4f6a-a50d-f881bd87fc73_856x714.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7s02!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F163ca8c5-40cb-4f6a-a50d-f881bd87fc73_856x714.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7s02!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F163ca8c5-40cb-4f6a-a50d-f881bd87fc73_856x714.png 848w, 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data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/163ca8c5-40cb-4f6a-a50d-f881bd87fc73_856x714.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:714,&quot;width&quot;:856,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:183359,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7s02!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F163ca8c5-40cb-4f6a-a50d-f881bd87fc73_856x714.png 424w, 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height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Defense effort needs men in uniform power" per man is much greater now t men on active military duty of the Eu in 1938. The following data we</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/aa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png" width="718" height="348" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/aa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:348,&quot;width&quot;:718,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:65771,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1ge!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa163eb9-0495-4d9f-9bf7-8b9cdb7197fc_718x348.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container restack-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-refresh-cw"><path d="M3 12a9 9 0 0 1 9-9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1 6.74 2.74L21 8"></path><path d="M21 3v5h-5"></path><path d="M21 12a9 9 0 0 1-9 9 9.75 9.75 0 0 1-6.74-2.74L3 16"></path><path d="M8 16H3v5"></path></svg></div><div class="pencraft pc-reset icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p>https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40910205.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A49ba5be84b01c45e538c448ba338bce8&amp;ab_segments=&amp;origin=&amp;acceptTC=1</p><p></p><p></p>

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<p>https://odi.org/en/insights/blended-finance-what-donors-can-learn-from-the-latest-evidence/</p>

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<p>Even though the pandemic goes on, its hold on our attention is not solid. But it is fleeting. 18 months on I am repeatedly asked how the pandemic recovery relates to larger and more fundamental problems like climate change. I know exactly what the questioner means. I started the year trying to write about climate and I want very much to go back there. But I want to scream stay in the moment. How can we after a 20 percent shock be talking about other thigns as more fundamental. In fact there are probably four great environmental vectors we have to deal with: climate change is one, loss of biodiversity and zoonotic development  of new viruses is another, pollution and desertification probably complete the group. </p><p>It will be asontishingly ironic if we exit 2020 looking forward to more fundamental shocks. </p><p>I am involuntarily reminded of that famous passage from Marx that everyone likes to quote. No one put this better and with more force than </p><p>Now there are some people for whom the perplexities the bottomless of being in medias res is a kind of liberal surrender, an abaondment of structure and certainty. We surely know. If you dont want to recognize you are being evasive. They know for sure what the res are. </p><p>who respond to this provocation with a certainty, sometimes provided by a reading of Marx, that they are avoiding this problem. That they grasp the truth of the situation in its novelty. That faced with a major war they can confidently state its structural reality. They know where they stand, indeed they do not stand in medias res so much as above the things. </p><p>It is not the operation that is surprising but their confidenc ein doing it. That is enviable and it is necessary for clarity, but stating any such determination with confidence puzzles me. Marx’s diagnosis fills me with a constant worry. Are we in a Madame Tussauds? Are we missing the plot? Indeed you might conclude that invoking Marx might be included amongst the Madam Tussauds wax works museum. That could lead to an endless regress. </p><p>My own solutions such as it is two fold. First engage in deliberate interpretive thought experiments to test ow ar we are fallkng back into fuddy duddy. That is why I started a book about the impact of WWI not in 1914 but in 1916 and ended it in 1931. To induce a kind of defamiliarization, to see whether we could shake some of the dust off. Not self-indulgently but with serious intent. That is why a book about covid is framed by 20 January 2020 and 20 January 2021. The point is not to deny that structure is at work, or framing but to put it up for debate and discussion. </p><p>Second if the challenge is to avoid mistaking the present for the past, the task must be to constantly vigilant both as to what might be old and what might be new in contemporary thought. Sometimes we do more than dresss a “new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language”. Sometimes new framings emerge and new language. New concepts. </p><p>Crashed picked up on macrofinance. That continues in Shutdown. But it is crosscut with the environmental shock. The frame that offered that was the Green New Deal. It itself contains a refernce to the New Deal, which is both energizing and potentially misleading. A key part of hte argument of Shutdown is to avoid fals friends and misrecognition. </p><p>But the encounter with anderson did not leave me siimply unmarked. With Anderson’s remark ringing in my ears, Shutdown is composed self0-consisoucly in a double fashion. It is from within the moment. It is bookended chronologically by the 12 months.</p><p>But haunted as I was by the structure question, it is in fact framed by two which I hope I underline with the necessary clarity. One is neoliberalism, which I defined as ideology, a practice of government, a social structure and a geopolitics. I appear to have stated that bluntly enough to have irritated the Economsit. </p><p>But that by tiself would not do teh jo. It is the great acceleration of environmental history that we must address. AS dicourse the two in fact run closly together over last half century, the quetion that I had begun exploring in the book on carbon, that aws interrupted by the crisis. </p><p>The result is a mess. </p><p>And this is the real challenge of the moment. We are in a moment of intense flux. this is not the normal snafu. We have not navigated forces like this before. </p><p>2020 humbeld everyone. The Green New Deal was brilliantly on point in insisting that environmental, social and economic problems have to be addressed together, but it imagined climate as the most urgent threat of the Anthropocene. It too was overrun by the pandemic. Even if epidemologists saw it coming they did not foresee the collective societal response. Or the way in which it would intersect with the vectors unleashed by the crisis of neoliberalism. </p><p>The result is a very comprehensive unhinging. A new age of radical uncertainty. A breakdown of structure. WE dont have very good words for this. This is brough home by the way in which so many contemporaries have sumoned one of our friendlist ghosts to read the contermpoary scene, the Italian Marxist Gramsci. No quote was more commonly used in the moment than the one about the intrregnum. The temptation is obvious. </p><p>But pause for a second to consider what interregnum entails. Think about in particular in terms of the difficulty of actually staying in medias res, in the middle of things here and how. The concept of interregnum is problematic because it defeats precisely that object. </p><p>It implies that the present is a transition, to somewhere else. It implies indeed a strong structure in which there was a regnum, chaos follows the collapse of that order but on the horizon, even if at a distanct, there is a new regnum to come. It too is a way in a sense of evading the full measure of  our present condition, which may precisely be one with no resolution.  </p><p>it is aking to the way that Central bankers used to talk about normalization. In climate politics we cling to idea of stabilization. In fact faced with pandemic it is as though we are tempted to lurch off to think about </p><p>But we are far far from that reality. What image are we to invoke? In Shutdown I end up with somethwat nightmarish vision of a tight rope without end. If ther eis one thing we do know about that is that you caanot afford to lose your concentration, to drift away from the present from a single second. </p><p>But even if we have a grasp of what 2020 was about, it still tends to slip away from us. It is tempting to say that it is almost a psychological issues at stake. I certainly think of it as analogous to the way in which the mind wanders during meditation or therapy. </p><p>The first temptation the temptation to relativize what we have faced by what we might face that might be even bigger might also be descirbed as the climate problem. One is to relativize what we have lived through by refernece to something else supposedly bigger. Basically this involves the desire to avoid the force of what is in front of us. Cliate bigger than pandemic. I take this as a flight from reality. which is not that the climate problem sis small but we continue to insist that it is our only problem, whereas inf act we clearly have both, and biodiversity loss and pollution and desertification to boot. </p><p>Another response when facing a huge problem is to put on comfortable old clothes. Faced with a drastic situation we reach for familiar models. This has an obvious attracation - think Green New deal - but it can also be disabling. It is rather grand to quote Karl Marx in this context but what could be better. </p><p>We cant avoid it. Some of the old stuff is great. But we should clearly beware. </p><p>One of the things i have learned from my encounter with Anderson and conversation with wise friends is that given our current predicament it ill becomes us to cosplay as either revolutionaries or counterrevolutionaries. Their problems and their possibiltiies, maybe for better, maybe for worse, are not ours. </p><p>and the virus shock. </p><p>But we are not the lords of the structure and no amount of historical wisdom can change that. It is by seeking to explore and render the in medias experience that we actually do justice to the complexity of determinations and our struggle to make sense of them and manipulate them. </p><p>It is what has always interested me in my history writing,</p><p>The foundation for my work is in fact the first book. Statistics. I started out fascinated by macroeconomics and its history. Our effort to orientated ourselves. those can of course be turned to make sense of things like rise of the US or the logic of Nazi germany, but the data and the contruction always remain in play.  We should never lose sight of the fact that we are perching on the shoulders of those in the frontline of the interpretive effort and effort at orietnation. We alawys move abck and forward.</p><p>Since working on crashed I have been involved in critical macrofinance and Shutdown emphatically continues that. That put me in exchange with people like Daniela Gabor whose articulation of the critical macrofinance project I subscribe to. </p><p>But that doesnt mean that we abstain from interpretive attempts.   </p><p>The interpretaiton offfered by shutdown Premise is that we are dealing with a novel convergence of different types of forces. that is read in us and uk to a certain extent as a national crsis. In china as changes not seen in a century. By the EU simply as a polycrisis. </p><p>Even before 2020 a variety of forces were converging: financial intability, geopolitics, politics, social inequality. each of those put in question the status quo which is commonly described as neoliberalism. They had the makings of a conventioanl crisis that was scarmblkng norms of stability, democracy, western-centered order. those are in a sense the histoyf of the 19th century. </p><p>Crosscut by the virus shock. It was a double shock. Both in itself but also because it was the wrong anthropocenic shock. </p><p>I lay this out because a book written from within can appear as though it is trying to evade structural determination. That doesnt follow. </p><p>But a book that attempts to induce that sense of uncertainty may destabilize familiar categories and structures. 1916, 1931. framing pandemic around a 12 month period to force us to look deep. </p><p>In any case whatever device we use we need to shock ourselves because whatever confidence we may have about our big categories reality escapes us. It is not obvious what structural realties are even of lonng ago events. </p><p>The condition of being in media res iso on the one hand fate and profoundly perplexing. </p><p>But a book actually written from within is haunted by the question of in the middle of which forces, who am I n relation to those forces, where is the middle? </p><p>And those quetions are all the more compelling given the broken situation that we are in. POlyc crisi or the 5 effects </p><p>simple thiings are difficult. can we actually stay focused on the virus? </p><p>The first and most obvious challenge is to stay focused on the virus. </p><p>Can we stay in the present and not slide into the past? In thinking about our situation we see huge mobilization of forces it is tempting to imagine social contracts. new deal. That rhetoric has its virtues. But it is a kind of escapsism. </p><p>But I am again and again reminded of 18th brumaire.</p><p>How do we avoid getting dressed up?</p><p>Shifting perspectives helps.</p><p>Constantly touching base with new ideas, trying to scramble. </p><p>Staying the present and not sliding into the future</p><p>third temptation - gramsci temptation</p><p>we look for familiar friends. </p><p>no interregnum. </p><p>Tightrope.  </p><p>not seeing the virus</p><p>seeing the new deal </p><p>thinking in terms of interregnum </p><p>Those are of course well stablished mappings. they are hard to bring together. They are entangled. </p><p>I’m haunted by Marx. </p><p>To answer any of those questions we need some perspective. But if you are posing them you dont have the vantage point of a high altitude satellite circling serenly in orbit. Mine is the perspectivce of the drone operator. </p><p>that isnt right. </p><p>I have used this as a stylistic device. </p><p>It is, as Perry Anderson rightly suspects connected to certain political and philosophical positions to which I am attached. But whereas Anderson sees those as an evasion for me they are a challenge.</p><p>That challenge can be formulated as three questions: ok so we are in the middle of things? What are the things? Who are we in relation to those things? Where is the middle? </p><p>If you think that posing those questions implies that you are evading the obvious fact that we are in x, or y And that furthermore that evasion is ultimately motivated by your complicity or sympathy with those structures, well i would like some of what you are drinking. </p><p>All my work has been in a sense orientate around those questions. From my first book on statistices that tracked precisely this quesiton of knowledge to Shutdown which more than anything I have written to date is dominated by this question. They are attempts to wrestle with the question. </p><p>What haunts me is the risk that we become attached to </p><p>Risk society was one resources and provocation.</p><p>Another reference point is 18th brumaire. </p><p>The point can be put like this. You can see someone situated and know where they are. You describe the scene. </p><p>In medias res is a stylistic device to which I am attached. We land in the middle of things. </p><p>But there is more to it than that. </p><p>The phrase - for which I am indebted to Perry Anderson who used it to describe my work - begs complex questions. </p><p>We are thrown. But what into? What are the things? And were is the middle? How do we orient ourselves. How do we stay attached to realities? And what if the things change. Where are we then? Still in the middle? </p><p>To adopt this stance is not to evade structure but rather to force it to the fore. </p><p>risk society because it seemed so comeplling as a way.</p><p>But thinking about it it seems to me you could also return to 19the Brutmaire. </p><p>For some the reaaction is to cleave to the old religion. That seems paradoxical to say the least. </p><p>Perry Anderson in a review of my work which has hung over me for the last two years associated with a politics that was sitaution al and dispsense with structure. Though I apprecaite the fact that he was willing to see a deep connnection between form and vision of politics, his reading is informed by what stirke me as simplistic assumptions. Broadly speking unless the form was one he recognized it apperqad to be no foform at all. </p><p>I didnt start a book about 1916 to avoid 1914 and the structural reality that the war was between empires. I actually just think it is more complex than that and it changed shaped. </p><p>Im not writing 2020 hiistory in medias res because I dont understand that more distance will give us a different perspective but because I want to force us to see what did happen in that moment. </p><p>Anyone who thinks that to write in medias res is an evasion of structural determination has not thought hard enough about what this condition actually means. The distinction is quite fundamentally false. </p><p>The problem was profoundly difficult. Risk society. </p><p>Im reminded of Marx. </p><p>How do we evade Marx’s problem. </p><p>If you ahve Marx’s self confidence you know what is what. But his account is almost too compelling to permit that. How can we know. </p><p>That is the point of experimenting with structure. </p><p>That is also the point of not being attacked to well worn orthodoxies of critical theory. Those are more often not the battle flags. You have to a strong belief in first principles to believe those will help.  but instead constantly trying to find in modern thought the elements that might actually be new and appropriate to the moment that we are in. </p><p>So this is the mix that goes into Shutdown. An intense awareness of the moment. A macrofinance reading combined with a fairly explicit framing in terms fo teh crisis of teh neoliberalism. But all of that cross cut with environemtnal shock. Obvious frame for that was new deal. Except that it got the wrong crisis. </p><p>In retrospect there is still a difficulty in sifting and placing the experience. Shape shifting. </p><p>If you combined the elements you are left wiht a sense of an intensely broken situation. The things that we are in the middle of are fractured.</p><p>That is vertiginous and at that moment we are tempted to summon friendly ghosts. One of them is gramsci. </p><p>Writing and thinking in medias res is not an evasion it is to accept what ought to be a challenge. </p><p>I’ve done enough therapy to know that finding yourself, locating yourself in any kind of reliable way in the middle of events,  is subject to the same profoundly puzzling slippage and that afflicts most other people too. </p><p>It was hard in 2020 to stay in the moment. The virus seemed to intersect with so much else. The book was in a sense an effort to aid that process. </p><p>They occupy a relationship to the world which is not mine. I dont know whether to envy or pity them for it. </p><p>My own sense is that to grasp the situation that we are in we probably need to proceed experimentally. To try different narratives on for size to see what they do to our position. </p><p>Another operation we can perform is to constantly sift. </p><p>Being in medias res is not a stylistic affectation, or the expression of a disabling liberal blindspot it is, how else can one put it, the human condition. We are thrown into things. That is woh we are, how we think, from the middle of existing discourses, forms of knowledge. For all the reasons mentioned 2020 brought that home with a vengeance. </p><p>, because this is more true of this book than of any intellectual enterprise I have ever undertaken. </p><p>We were all swept up in it and still are. It touched me more directly than anything I have previously written about. </p><p>It is also in medias res because the book itself is an effect of the way in which I have found myself swimming in a sea of discourse on contemporary economic affairs. </p><p>The fact that is has found readers amongst those who do diagnose had the effect that as the crisis broke in March 2020 I was buried in requests for comment and interpretation. And went with the moment. </p><p>It was practically necessary. It was pyschologically necessary. But I also followed the pressure because I wanted to explore writing in medias res as a method. </p><p>As in my previous books I decided to plunge right in. Shutdown is framed tightly between 20 January 2020 and 20 January 2021. </p><p>There is a self-evidence to all of this, which it is worth doubling down on. </p><p>But what absolutely preoccupies me is the question of what it means to be in media res. </p><p>And that reflected another experience that came just before the onset of the pandemic but which was with me then as it is still today. </p><p>In october 2019 perry anderson entirely without warning launched a long essay in the Pages of new Left REview dedicated to a reading of three of my books. He recognized that Crashed was part of a broader conception and tried to decipher its method and politics. If I was enrolled in writing Shutdown, this was another type of enrollment, of interpellation. </p><p>Anderson’s essay was a tour de force in every sense of the phrase. As its object it was not easy to read or to digest. But, as one would expect, Anderson’s account does have its moments. The passages that really stayed with me were the ones in which Anderson draws out a series of connection between my liberal politics, my historical analysis and connects them by way of the phrase “in medias res”. </p><p>“What kind of method permits bracketing of the real economy in a diagnostic of the vicissitudes of finance? What sort of politics informs the architecture of the ensuing work? Initial clues to these questions can be found in two passages from Tooze’s writing. In the first, a review of Geoff Mann’s&nbsp;<em>In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy and Revolution</em>&nbsp;(2017), he defines the distinctive virtue of Keynes’s outlook as a ‘situational and tactical awareness’ of the problems for liberal democracy inherent in the operations of the business cycle in a capitalist economy, requiring pragmatic crisis management in the form of punctual adjustments without illusion of permanency.<a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii119/articles/perry-anderson-situationism-a-l-envers#note-12">footnote12</a> Clearer answers to the two questions raised by Durand—what method is implied in Tooze’s work, and what politics inform it?—start to come into view once&nbsp;<em>The Deluge</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Wages of Destruction</em>&nbsp;are read together as instalments of a common project. In each, a ‘situational and tactical’ approach to the subject in hand determines entry to it&nbsp;<em>in medias res</em>, dispensing with a structural explanation of its origins: in&nbsp;<em>Wages</em>, the Depression, in&nbsp;<em>Deluge</em>, the First World War. In both, the overarching theme is the dynamism of American power as skeleton key to the twentieth century. In both, the political standpoint is, as self-described, that of a left-liberalism.”</p><p>By starting his narrative in 1916, Tooze avoids any reckoning with the question of what determined the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, and so of the nature of the War itself, simply asserting without further ado that American entry, provoked by German aggression, converted it into a battle for democracy and international law.</p><p>Imperialism, in this accounting, was a very recent phenomenon, global competition just a few decades old—the Seven Years’ War and conquest of India might never have happened—and once the War had come to a successful end, the world was confronted with the problem of how it was to be peacefully ordered ‘after imperialism’.<a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii119/articles/perry-anderson-situationism-a-l-envers#note-37">footnote37</a>&nbsp;The narrative is constructed, in other words, by taking for granted the Entente apologetics in contemporary usage, a literature now so abundant that Tooze may have felt it unnecessary to spell out its truths once again, although they have little or nothing to do with a serious understanding of the conflict. ‘The structural reality’, as Alexander Zevin has written in these pages, ‘is that the First World War took place over empires, for empires and between empires’.<a href="https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii119/articles/perry-anderson-situationism-a-l-envers#note-38">footnote38</a></p><p>https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii119/articles/perry-anderson-situationism-a-l-envers</p><p>Anderson’s review left me breathless for a while. Then the crisis happened and all my plans were overturned. The many draft replies I had accumulated by the end of 2019 remained on the hard drive. But the question has hung over the two years since. But Anderson’s words remained with me and Shutdown is in part an echo of that. It is a deliberate effort at in medias res analysis but with some of the structure put back in. </p><p>The puzzling thing for me about Anderson’s description of my work as being distinctive for the fact that it starts in medias res is that it does not seem to me that there is any alternative. </p><p>Medias res can have at least three meanings. I embrace all three. </p><p>It is a stylistic mode.</p><p>It is a kind of tactical situational thinking.</p><p>Furthermore I take the condition to be not just inescapable but full of tension. it is indeed janus-faced. It is on the one hand self-evidently true that we are always already in the middle of things. But, the other side of the coin, recognizing this and coming to terms with it, is far more easily said than done.  </p><p>We are in medias res, you say? In the middle of things? Ok, sure. But, for starters, which things? And are you sure you know where the middle is? Whose middle do we occupy? The trick and it is a challenge constantly to be faced, is actually to try to answer these questions. </p><p>Marx is describing the problem of being in medias res and confusing it for something quite different. </p><p>Clearly there are some for whom the answer to this problem is to cleave to the one true knowledge that reveals the structural realities. So ewe kow what is past and present, what is real and what is borrowed and disguised. Anderson is famous for his olympian deatchment. it is a posture evdery bit as rooted in the present as any other, but marking a reserved distance. It evokes in me profoundly mixed emotions. </p><p>To occupy that position you would need to be pretty convinced. And it would seem to be at extreme risk of succumbing precisely to the risk that Marx lays out, in other words becoming preoccupied with historical dramas unconnected to tha ctual present.</p><p>I read the passage is an injunction not to find the one true knowledge that will unlock every situation, but instead to be constantly vivilgant against preciesely the belief that there is a knowledge to hand handed down from the past that will fit. And on the other hand to be constantly on the look out for knowledge that is not. </p><p>That could of course become a destabilizing helter skelter regress. Even relying on Marx’s 18th brumaire is after all an exercise in appropriation of the past. It could give to skepticism. Anything goes so long as it is not old. </p><p>Alternatively it could give to a kind of retrochic, cosplay appropriation. With some exponents of 21st century marxism one cannot be entirely sure how seriously they can mean it. Or how far it is simply a provocration or exercise in nostalgia. </p><p>I find both options unappealing. The attitude is not one therefore of radical rejection but of wariness and deliberative experimentation. Approaching the current moment or a moemtn of history the starting question is precisely what is the right framing. </p><p>The aim of starting a history in 1916 is not to avoid 1914 but to see what happens when we reframe. </p><p>Anderson’s reaction is telling.</p><p>The other way to discipline this skeptical approach and above all to give it direction is to read contemporary analysis very closely with an eye to the fact that it conatins not just the ballast of the past but also productive insights. We need to constantly engaged with the knowledge that power produces. And no one was a better example of this than Marx himself. </p><p>TAking this into account is key was the approach of my first book which Anderson simply ignores. But in ways that he does not appreciatee it also informs Deluge, Wages and Crashed. Nathan TAnkus remarked in a post about it that he was surprised by how radical the conclusions were from material that was so conventional. I take that as a compliment. That was precisely the point. The same is hopefully true of Shutdown. </p><p>This is not something one does best in isolation.  Macrofinance was that moment and testing its relvenace in 2020 was of acute intereste. It is particularly crucial for me becuase if I am a left liberal that is by way of Keynes. My first book was about figuring out a narrative of macrocnomics that was not keynes. to locate structruel forces. And so a diagnosis of the contermpoary economcy that fundamentaly challenges that paradigm demands urgent attention. </p><p>it is the method pursued in Shutdown. </p><p>Reading those lines does not fill me with a superior sense that I see clearly through the delusions of others. Rather the contrary. It fills me with self-reflexive doubt. </p><p>When we self-confidently assert that serious understanding of the conflict. ‘The structural reality’, must start with x,y,z is there not a moment when we should pause to wonder about Marx’s warning? How can we be sure that what we take to be the structural reality is not a Madam Tussaud filled with the “spirits of the past” and the old “names, battle slogans, and costumes”? Are we sure that we are not under the weight of “dead generations”? Indeed, it can become an infinite regress. In invoking 18th Brumaire are we not doing exactly that? </p><p>For sure, there are different ways of relating to that condition. You can of course own the problem. espouse a kind of camp affectation, retro-chic, or cosplay. We may stay close to the daily action and its protagonists, we may construct for ourselves a detached and superior watchtower, we may pose as cartographers mapping history’s grand contours, we may imagine an Archimedean lever and a historical agent to move it, but all of these intellectual self-positionings should be seen for the stylized gestures that they are—all of them are conditioned by our situation in the here and now, by our history in the “before times,” by our expectation of the future to come. </p><p>Anderson is famous for his Olympian stance. I choose to wrestle directly with the condition of being in medias res. I am looking for novelty and the possibility of shock and diconcerting shift in perspecitve prcisely because it helps me with the 18th brumaire ghosts. How do we capture both an enlightening perspecitve or a shfit in current of contemporary thinking that is not retor or stcuk in thea past. </p><p>Whereas for Anderson apparently any deviation from what he takes to be the necessary script appears simply as apologetics, affectation, forced or an abandonment of historical logic altogether. By contrast, I regard a choice and debate about structure as the first move in a serious politics of history. And in particular it seems the best antidote to a 18th Brumaire problem.  </p><p>The point of starting a book in 1916 was not to avoid talking about 1914 I will come back to 1914). The point was precisely to destabilize conventional framing. To shake loose a few cobwebs. To check whether in traveling back to this point in time a hundred years ago we are not simply summoning old spirits, or perhaps simply to summon some other spirits. The point was precisely to pose the question of framing as such. Anderson’s reaction is not a response but a confirmation of the importance of raising the problem. </p><p>Apart from anything it was puzzlingly inaccurate so that it was a struggle to see how to frame a direct response to claims that were far wide of the mark. It purports to be a syntehtic tretament but leaves out large parts of my work which are actually part of the project. etc etc </p><p>I’ve done enough elementary yoga or meditation to know that being in the moment actually being in medias res in fact requires a strange type of state of mind that requires huge sophistication and practice.</p><p>a maze, but adopting the in medias position seems a more serious way of reflecting on the problem of how we actually go about orienting ourselves. We have to find the map within the maze, we don’t have a drone let alone a satellite. </p><p>The only thing I don’t like about the maze image is that it is too static, too architectural. So imagine that there is a clock running and the maze is full of escalators and moving sidewalks. If we stand still we are carried one way or another and there is every reason to think that for every map we find new walls, pathways and complexity is being added to the maze.  </p><p>what are we in the middle of? </p><p>Since there are no absoltue points of </p><p>That was the spirit in which I set up the somewhat experimental chronologies of Deluge. Starting the book in 1916 is is not an evasion of the crisis of 1914 but an atteempt to see how an earlier period might look if we saw it not as the deathknell of European imperialism, but as the advent of the first unipolar moment. Writing when I did it was the latter that seemed more politically urgent than rehashing a familiar story about clashing european imperialisms.  </p><p>In my own internal life Shutdown tries to unpick what happens when the world of Crashed meets the world of the book I was supposed to be writing, the first comrpehensive anrhtopocenic shock. it is the convergence of these two sorts of factors that constitutes our unsettlement. </p><p>So we are in medias res with a vengeance. Orientating ourselves towards Navigating this condition is anything but easy. So I have in mind two series of posts, one situating Shutdown the other answering Anderson. If the two series start here. They will come together in some kind of conclusion about Left liberal politics, and crisis-fighting experimental machiavellian governance. Situational analysis is indeed the key, which is why I found the discovery of machiavelli so exciting. More on that to come. </p>

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<h1>The politics of neoliberalism </h1><div class="soundcloud-wrap" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1093818007&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;After neoliberalism w/ James Meadway by Politics Theory Other&quot;,&quot;description&quot;:&quot;James Meadway joins PTO to talk about his forthcoming article for Open Democracy on the end of neoliberalism. We talked about why James believes that we're witnessing a transition away from neoliberalism and towards what some are calling authoritarian capitalism, why the left needs to focus more on the high point of globalisation of the early 2000s when thinking about neoliberal forms of governance rather than the late 1970s and 1980s, and we also talked about how the platform tech giants may have been nurtured within the neoliberal system but that their revenue models point to a quite different regime of capital accumulation.&quot;,&quot;thumbnail_url&quot;:&quot;https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-F5TzlYojsfHoLg8w-zPvl6A-t500x500.jpg&quot;,&quot;author_name&quot;:&quot;Politics Theory Other&quot;,&quot;author_url&quot;:&quot;https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother&quot;,&quot;targetUrl&quot;:&quot;&quot;}" data-component-name="SoundcloudToDOM"><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?auto_play=false&amp;buying=false&amp;liking=false&amp;download=false&amp;sharing=false&amp;show_artwork=true&amp;show_comments=false&amp;show_playcount=false&amp;show_user=true&amp;hide_related=true&amp;visual=false&amp;start_track=0&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1093818007" frameborder="0" gesture="media" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div><p></p><p>Set of ideas</p><p>Practice of power</p><p>Class politics </p><p>Geopolitics </p><p>Culture/subjectivity </p>