A New Cold War?
Because every generation wishes to think its challenges are epic and unique, today’s policy-makers/politicians/national security wonks, etc. are hesitant to look at the emerging relationship with China and declare it a “Cold War”. This New York Times piece explores some of the contortions into which grandees are twisting themselves these days in order not to so name it.
The decades long struggle of western capitalist nations to oppose Soviet communism was a triumph of strategy, clear-thinking, statesmanship, and determination, and a society like ours that takes 12 years to build a tunnel and which cannot get a website for signing up people for health insurance right should not be so quick to put aside either the construct or the approaches of an earlier era.
That our economies are intertwined is interesting but not determinative. We have a large, rich (remember, the Soviet Union in aggregate was a rich nation—per capita, not so much), totalitarian, militaristic nation rejecting global norms and threatening/cowing its neighbors. The competition is military, social, diplomatic, and economic.
Our experience with the previous Cold War has created in some a hesitancy to call this period similarly, with the most inane hesitance coming from those who point at the possibility of it becoming a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. No amount of whistling past the graveyard is going to work here, folks. We’re going to need to work at the level of grand strategy to re-orient our economy in order to meet this generational threat. No one in authority today thinks this way, with even those who concerned with China’s rise at most tinkering on the margins. Winter is coming.
Abandoned
With two girls away at college and she who must be obeyed off on a little trip with friends in Florida, yours truly is left to his own devices here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I have been thusly abandoned since Friday, although I softened the blow somewhat with a trip to Charlottesville Saturday to see my Wahoos beat Duke. Additionally, a vagabond friend of ours, who while desperately trying to buy a boat has made use of our lodgings, showed up last evening and is providing stout company.
Recently retired, he is providing me with a solid role model for how to conduct myself when that day comes (not later than 1345 days from now, but who is counting?) for me. He is attending boat shows, has spent a weekend with his son/son’s fraternity bros/fathers, and various/sundry other activities. His bride is in FL (where my paramour has gone), and it looks like for the time being they will divvie up time twixt FL and NC until he has bought his proper sailboat, which will inject cruising New England summers into the mix.
We have begun to consider thinking about a conversation leading to thinking about the possibility of thinking about getting a boat ourselves when the blessed day of retirement comes, and to that end I have tagged along to a couple of boat shows recently (Newport, Annapolis). My girl is a rugged and skilled sailor, but we are looking at power boats. Fifteen summers ago, when she took me out on her Boston Whaler, I nearly lost her when we made up to the dock and I sorta loosely wrapped the line around the piling. “Tie a bowline” she ordered. I looked back cluelessly. You see, all that time in the Navy and commanding a destroyer and all, and I didn’t know how to tie knots…let along work sails. It has been to her eternal shame ever since, and because she wants to have someone competent with her on a boat, we have decided on power. I have some skill with the actual operation/navigation of boats, just not sailing or tying them up. My friend and I are driving over to the Western Shore (when said by an Eastern Shore native, those words are to be spat out with disdain) to visit a boat this afternoon (Monday).
Among the pursuits most prized in the isolation of having been abandoned is my Sherman’s March through the refrigerator. I am a refrigerator minimalist, and the people I live with are not. There is little I enjoy more than a good pruning of leftovers, desiccating fruit, and browned lettuce, followed by the satisfaction of gazing upon order and space and light. I am solo for but a fortnight, but the joy will sustain me.
Another great benefit of the Lady of the Manor leaving is that the cats who allow us to live with them take greater interest in me when she is gone.