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Hoover Digest, 2024, No. 1, Fall
Hoover Digest, 2024, No. 1, Fall
DIGEST
R E SE AR C H + COM M E NTARY
ON P U B L IC P OL ICY
W I N TER 2 024 N O.1
T H E H O OV E R I N S T I T U T I O N • S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y
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ON THE COVER
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Tad and Dianne Taube Director
“Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live
forever.” These famous lines from a poem ERIC WAKIN
by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930)— Deputy Director,
titled, perhaps a bit obviously, “Vladimir Director of Library & Archives
Ilych Lenin”—express a wish for eternal
remembrance of the Bolshevik revolution-
ary he adored. Lenin’s embalmed body
has been on public view in Moscow for a
hundred years, since his death in January
1924. Mayakovsky was at times a symbol
of radical liberation and, at other times, of
an oppressive state. He killed himself in
1930 amid personal and political tumult.
See story, page 198.
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Winter 2024
HOOVER D I G E ST
T HE E CO N O M Y
9 Inflation: No Mystery Here
There are lots of theories about what triggered the recent bout
of inflation. But the strongest one is this: that government
created trillions in debt with no thought of paying it back.
By John H. Cochrane
14 Sound as a Dollar?
Rising US government debt threatens the value of the US
currency. Investors around the world are acting accordingly.
By Kevin A. Hassett
R U SS I A A N D UK R A IN E
24 NATO Holds the Line
Nothing deterred Russia from invading Ukraine, but
deterrence didn’t fail completely. Vladimir Putin hasn’t
crossed any NATO borders—so far. By Rose Gottemoeller
H O O V ER D I G E ST • W inter 2024 3
F O R E I G N P O LICY
35 Cold Comfort
If Cold War truly has returned, so have its many lessons,
including this one: authoritarians will be proven wrong.
By Condoleezza Rice and Niall Ferguson
C H I N A AN D TA IWA N
41 Beijing’s Bill Comes Due
China favored socialist dictates over market principles. Now
it must pay for its economic mismanagement. By Mickey D.
Levy
52 Silicon Triangle
Taiwan and the semiconductor industry are intertwined. In a
time of Chinese aggression, keeping them both secure calls for
partnerships and preparedness. By Larry Diamond,
Jim Ellis, and Orville Schell
59 Innovation Is a Marathon
In the advanced-technology race with China, the United
States is stumbling. Why we need a new tech strategy.
By Michael Brown and Robert Atkinson
80 A Fateful Price
Hoover fellow Bruce S. Thornton’s new book investigates
a democratic paradox: civilians must restrain, but can also
hamper, military leadership. By Jonathan Movroydis
INDIA
88 A Nuanced Look at Nehru
Seeking political advantage, India’s ruling party is denigrating
founding figure Jawaharlal Nehru. The government can learn
from both Nehru’s missteps and his accomplishments. By
Sumit Ganguly
A F G HA N ISTA N
94 Afghanistan: Apartheid State
When US soldiers withdrew, systematic violence against
women resumed. World leaders should join figures in the Arab
and Muslim world to resist this injustice. By Nader Nadery
H O O V ER D I G E ST • W inter 2024 5
L AW
102 “It Leaves People Free to Disagree”
A new book by Hoover senior fellow Michael McConnell
disputes the idea that the Constitution excludes religion
from public life. Instead, he writes, the establishment clause
champions individual conscience. By Monica Schreiber
F R E E EX P R E SSIO N
116 Can We Say That?
Censorship may amplify the power of elites, but it both offends
and endangers free societies. By Peter Berkowitz
C AL I FO R N IA
135 California or Bust
It’s bust. California’s problems show no sign of fixing
themselves. By Lee E. Ohanian
I N T E RVIE WS
144 Does Merit Still Matter?
Hoover senior fellow Thomas Sowell expounds on a familiar
theme: society’s never-ending delusion that equality can
advance at the expense of merit. By Peter Robinson
H O O V ER D I G E ST • W inter 2024 7
VA LU ES
168 Pandora’s Last Gift
Hope remains: for renewal, for a return to America’s founding
principles. By Chris Gibson
HO OV E R A R C HIVE S
174 “The Americans Were a Godsend”
Hoover fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude tells how American
humanitarians, led by Herbert Hoover, fought famine and
saved millions of Russian lives. By Jonathan Movroydis
Inflation: No
Mystery Here
There are lots of theories about what triggered the
recent bout of inflation. But the strongest one is
this: that government created trillions in debt with
no thought of paying it back.
By John H. Cochrane
A
s inflation eases, representatives of different schools of thought
are taking victory laps. But who really deserves one? What have
we learned about inflation?
I think the episode is a smashing confirmation of the fiscal
theory of the price level. Where did inflation come from? Our government
borrowed about $5 trillion and wrote people checks. Crucially, and unlike in
2008, there was no mention of how the new debt would be repaid, no prom-
ise of debt reduction later. The spending was couched as an “emergency
expenditure” not going through the usual budget process or requiring offsets.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argued that “with interest rates at historic
lows”—they were then—debt isn’t a concern, so “the smartest thing we can
do is act big.”
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the
Hoover Institution, a member of Hoover’s Working Group on Economic Policy,
and a contributor to Hoover’s Conte Initiative on Immigration Reform. He is also
a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a
research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an adjunct
scholar at the Cato Institute.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 9
People could have looked at all this new debt, thought it would be repaid
with interest, and therefore regarded it as a good investment. They didn’t.
They chose to try to spend the new debt rather than save it. But we can’t all
sell, so that drives up prices.
Inflation peaked in June
2022 and continues to
A one-time $5 trillion fiscal blowout ease, with interest rates
causes a one-time rise in the level below inflation until April
2023 and no recession.
of prices.
Why? Again, fiscal theory
provides a straightforward answer. A one-time $5 trillion fiscal blowout
causes a one-time rise in the level of prices, just enough to inflate away
the value of the debt by $5 trillion. Then inflation stops, even if the Federal
Reserve does nothing.
H O O V E R D IG E S T • W inter 2024 11
These are core propositions of fiscal theory, stated ahead of time and at
odds with conventional theories.
What of supply shocks, as espoused by “team transitory”—for example,
Alan Blinder recently in the Wall Street Journal? In this view, as Blinder
describes it, “most of the rising inflation wasn’t due to an overheated
economy fueled by monetary and fiscal policy, but rather to several ‘special
factors’ that would disappear on their own. Principal among them were
rising prices for food and energy and supply-side bottlenecks from the
pandemic.”
There are two problems with this view. First, it confuses relative prices
with the price level. If televisions are in short supply, the price will rise
relative to other goods and wages. A supply shock can’t make the price of
everything go up unless the government gives people enough money or debt
to afford the higher prices. Second, it predicts that the price level, not the
inflation rate, will return to where it came from—that any inflation should be
followed by a period of deflation.
Monetarists also took a victory lap, noting the $4 trillion rise in M2
between the onset of the pandemic and inflation’s breakout in early 2021.
This rise was almost mechanical: the Treasury deposited checks in people’s
bank accounts, which are part of M2. After decades, M2 finally seemed to
have something to do with inflation.
But does money alone drive inflation? Suppose there had been no deficit,
and the Fed had done another $5 trillion of quantitative easing, buying
$5 trillion of bonds in exchange for $5 trillion in reserves. Would people with
$5 trillion more cash but
$5 trillion less Treasury
Witch hunts for “greed,” “price bonds, and thus no net
gouging,” and “monopoly” have increase in wealth, have
followed inflation for centuries. tried to spend money,
driving up prices? We
pretty much know the answer—similar QE throughout the 2010s had basi-
cally no effect on inflation. In the monetarist view, more money and less
bonds has exactly the same effect as more money and more bonds. In the
fiscal view, overall government debt, including reserves, matters, not its
particular maturity.
The Phillips Curve remains the predominant mode of thinking about infla-
tion, but this view has utterly failed. In this view, inflation is driven by output
and employment. A year ago, a loud chorus said that inflation couldn’t be
tamed without a recession, and without interest rates substantially above
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. © 2024 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 13
T H E ECO N O M Y
Sound as a
Dollar?
Rising US government debt threatens the value of
the US currency. Investors around the world are
acting accordingly.
By Kevin A. Hassett
W
ith Fitch’s shocking downgrade of the United States’ credit
rating last summer, the question of whether the United
States will default on its debts in the coming years has
become painfully urgent. Just how pressing the question
is can be shown by examining the debt held by the public relative to gross
domestic product from 1939 to 2022 and then projecting its growth through
2053, using the latest Congressional Budget Office forecast. Today, this
measure is almost as high as it was at the end of World War II, and it’s on
track to almost double by 2053. To put the 2053 number of 194.6 percent in
perspective: it would be roughly 75 percent higher than the peak of Weimar
Germany’s indebtedness before it experienced hyperinflation.
But perhaps Weimar Germany was an outlier. Such spikes in debt are
common throughout history. The question, of course, is what typically hap-
pens next.
Governments have often found themselves with massive amounts of debt
after wars or natural disasters. As a practical matter, a government in such
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 15
[Taylor Jones—for the Hoover Digest]
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 17
found that there had been 248 defaults and that these tended to occur in
waves, the most recent of which was just a few decades ago. Given the
global explosion of debt after the COVID-19 pandemic, another wave is not
unthinkable.
Fine, a skeptic might say, but the United States would never default on
its debt. It will somehow find a way, as it always has. But the United States
has defaulted on its debts, or technically on its promises to pay, four times
already. The first default happened during the Civil War, when the convert-
ibility of the currency into precious metals was suspended. A similar decou-
pling of the currency from the promise to deliver precious metal happened as
recently as 1971.
Our skeptic might then turn to the US postwar experience. We honored
our debt from World War II, and the economy boomed. Perhaps we can just
return to the playbook that delivered that miracle?
Perhaps not. A recent study by economists Julien Acalin and Laurence M.
Ball (“Did the US Really Grow Out of Its World War II Debt?” NBER work-
ing paper) looked at the
methods that the US gov-
Given the global explosion of debt ernment used to restore
after COVID-19, another wave of balance and found that
defaults is not unthinkable. it relied on three tools
and a bit of good fortune.
The first tool was our old friend, currency debasement. The government
printed money, inflation was higher than expected, and bondholders were
paid back with devalued money, just as in Syracuse back in the day. The
second tool was something the literature refers to as “financial repression.”
The government ordered financial institutions to hold large quantities of US
debt while it kept the interest rate close to zero. Thus the runaway expense
was controlled, and the fact that low interest rates created little demand
for our debt was neutralized. The third tool was austerity. The government
recognized that it was in a perilous state, and so it regularly ran surpluses.
Finally, the economy helped. Until the 1970s, the economy grew at a rate
that was significantly higher than the interest rate. Higher incomes made it
easier to retire debt.
Today, our productivity slowdown and aging population make it unlikely
that the economic-growth rate will exceed the interest rate; and financial
repression, while an available tool, looks to be a dangerous one in the wake
of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other banks. Congress could decide
to run large surpluses in order to pay back the debt, but neither political
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 19
T H E ECO N O M Y
O
ur Constitution gives Congress the exclusive right (subject to a
president’s veto) to impose taxes on the American people. The
right of a country to make its own tax law is an important aspect
of sovereignty. These United States were founded upon this
principle. Taxation without representation prompted the Boston Tea Party
and the American Revolution.
Sovereignty means respecting the right of each country to make its own
rules. However, the Biden administration, as reflected in a recent article by
former Treasury officials Natasha Sarin and Kimberly Clausing, in defending
its efforts to enact a global tax code advances a novel explanation of sover-
eignty and the Constitution: that the agreement negotiated by the adminis-
tration expands American sovereignty by giving Congress the freedom to
choose higher tax rates.
Aharon Friedman is a director and senior tax counsel at the Federal Policy
Group. Joshua D. Rauh is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the
Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of
Business. He leads the Hoover Institution State and Local Government Initiative.
The fact the Biden administration feels it necessary to craft a formal agree-
ment with the rest of the world to impose minimum tax rates proves that not
all countries prefer higher taxes. Forcing other countries to enact one’s own
policy preferences in order to make it easier to enact those policies at home
is not sovereignty but imperialism.
The Biden administration’s drive for a Global Tax Code, starting with major
corporations, violates our Constitution. By colluding with foreign nations, it aims
to do what Congress has refused to do: increase taxes on US firms’ domestic
profits. The administra-
tion has proposed trillions
Not all countries want higher taxes.
of dollars of tax hikes in
its annual proposed budgets, but a Congress controlled by Democrats in the
administration’s first two years rejected most of those proposals. The adminis-
tration responded by asking voters to elect a Congress supporting tax increases.
Instead, Republicans pledging to oppose tax hikes gained control of the House.
Rather than respect this decision by the American people, Treasury Sec-
retary Janet Yellen is trying to circumvent the elections and the Constitution
by colluding with foreign powers to raise taxes on American companies by
having those other countries raise taxes on profits earned in America. She
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 21
openly boasts that the agreement leaves congressional Republicans with no
choice but to raise taxes on American companies because, otherwise, other
countries will seize those taxes. The Godfather might call this an offer Con-
gress cannot refuse.
Sarin and Clausing mis-
Yellen is trying to circumvent leadingly claim that the
elections and the Constitution by agreement merely allows
colluding with foreign powers. a country like France to
tax the French subsidiary
of a US company to prevent shifting profits out of France. But the agree-
ment does much more. It purports to give the right to France to tax Ameri-
can companies’ domestic US profits, as well as those of all its “undertaxed”
foreign subsidiaries, as long as the company has any subsidiary in France.
France would claim this right if America’s tax rate is below the agreed
minimum, or America’s tax credits are not structured to France’s liking, or
if America allows its companies access to other countries’ tax breaks. The
amount France may seize can be many times the French subsidiary’s total
revenue, let alone profit.
It is true that from time immemorial, France could (in theory) tax or seize
assets from French subsidiaries of American companies on any grounds. But
it has not done so because every previous president would have retaliated
harshly. Yellen is not only refraining from promising to retaliate but actively
encouraging such action.
Do Democrats want to set the precedent that if Congress refuses a future
Republican president’s request to repeal tax provisions beloved by Demo-
crats, like green-energy tax credits, requesting foreign powers to effectively
do so is legitimate?
Sarin and Clausing claim that the global tax code would increase federal
tax revenue because companies would have less incentive to book profits
outside the United States. They ignore the recent conclusion of Congress’s
nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) that the agreement would
cost the United States more than $50 billion, even if Congress decided to
raise taxes on American companies in order to comply, and $100 billion oth-
erwise because foreign countries raising taxes on American companies will
be credited against US taxes.
Sarin and Clausing can disagree with JCT, but their dismissal of JCT
scores as arguments by “Republican lawmakers” is disingenuous. And if
JCT’s score is so unreasonable, Treasury should share its own scores instead
of refusing requests from Congress to do so.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 23
RUSSI A A N D UKRAINE
NATO Holds
the Line
Nothing deterred Russia from invading Ukraine,
but deterrence didn’t fail completely. Vladimir
Putin hasn’t crossed any NATO borders—so far.
By Rose Gottemoeller
D
eterrence clearly failed in Ukraine.
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion Key points
in February 2022, America and its »» America and NATO are
assisting Ukraine, not
NATO allies took steps to warn
fighting for it. Russia is
Russia of dire consequences, including deep refraining from striking
sanctions and political excommunication. None NATO territory.
rage against the arms and equipment that NATO countries are sending
to Ukraine, they have not once touched NATO territory to try to stop the
shipments. The Russians brag, often without confirmation, about destroying
NATO weapons in storage or on the battlefields in Ukraine, but they have not
disrupted transit in NATO countries.
So Russia and NATO
countries are equally
deterred from direct Although the Russians rage, they
confrontation, hewing have not once touched NATO territory
close to the principle to try to stop arms and equipment.
that President Biden
laid down at the outset of the invasion: the necessity to avoid a general war
in Europe that could escalate into global nuclear annihilation. For America
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 25
and NATO, this means assisting Ukraine, but not fighting for it. For Russia, it
means not striking NATO territory.
As the war continues, deterrence is taking on a more nuanced and
complex character that bears close watching. Take the efforts to continue
grain shipments out of
Black Sea ports despite
Both Moscow and Washington see the Russians’ withdrawal
the need to avoid a general war in from the unbrokered
Europe that could escalate into global grain deal. When Rus-
sia left the deal in July,
nuclear annihilation.
it declared a block-
ade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, threatened commercial vessels with
attack, and began bombing Ukrainian ports, destroying grain silos and
infrastructure.
Ukraine responded by appealing to NATO allies to support its efforts to ship
grain and turning to its ports on the Danube. Although these river ports do
not have the capacity of the large Black Sea ports such as Odessa, they do have
certain advantages. One is their proximity to the Bosporus, which shortens the
time it takes for ships to exit the Black Sea.
Another is that a NATO country—Romania—is right across the river.
NATO has been alert to Russian missiles straying over alliance territory,
warning Moscow sharply and keeping its defenses on high alert. Likewise,
it has been policing Black Sea airspace adjacent to NATO countries that
border the sea—Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey—using a combination of
manned aircraft and drones.
These NATO actions are having a deterrence effect that is benefiting
Ukraine. The Russians have attacked the Ukrainian Danube ports of Izmail
and Reni, but not with the
massive firepower that
Russia has attacked Ukrainian has so damaged Odessa.
Danube ports, but not with the Likewise, for the commer-
massive firepower that has so cial vessels operating out
damaged Odessa. of Ukraine’s Danube ports,
the presence of NATO
aircraft over their shipping lanes provides some measure of security from
Russian attacks.
One might call this “proximity deterrence”: the closer a Ukrainian
facility is to NATO territory, the more it will avoid massive Russian
missile strikes. The more sea transport lanes there are close to NATO
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 27
Reprinted by permission of the Economist. © 2024 The Economist News-
paper Limited, London. All rights reserved.
L
ast summer, I stood at the corner of what used to be Pushkin
Street in Kyiv. Since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine in 2022, it has been renamed Yevhen Chykalenko Street,
after a major figure of the early twentieth-century Ukrainian inde-
pendence movement. To lovers of literature and opera, canceling A
lexander
Pushkin, poet and author of Eugene Onegin, might seem a bit over the top.
Putin, yes, but why Pushkin?
For Ukrainians, however, engaged in an existential struggle for their
independence against Russia’s war of recolonization, Pushkin is a symbol of
the Russian imperial-
ism that has long denied
Ukraine’s right to a sepa- To Ukrainians, Alexander Pushkin
rate national existence. symbolizes the Russian imperialism
Pushkin was a great poet that has long denied Ukraine’s right to
but he was also a poet a separate existence.
Timothy Garton Ash is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and partici-
pates in Hoover’s History Working Group. He is Professor of European Studies in
the University of Oxford and the Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St. Antony’s
College, Oxford. His latest book is Homelands: A Personal History of Europe
(Yale University Press, 2023).
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 29
of Russian imperialism, just as Rudyard
Kipling was a great poet but also a poet
of British imperialism.
Pushkin’s “Poltava” depicts the Ukrai-
nian Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa as a
fickle traitor to the heroic Russian czar
Peter the Great, who nonetheless
triumphed over the Swedes in
the 1709 Battle of Poltava—
and twelve years later formally
founded the Russian Empire.
As Russian forces bombarded
Ukraine in 2022, an officially distrib-
uted video showed Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov reciting lines
from Pushkin’s “To the Slander-
ers of Russia,” a poem fulminating
against Western supporters of Slavs
rebelling against Russia. Cutaways
to photos of US President Joe Biden
and a G7 summit made the message
plain. When Russian forces occu-
pied Kherson, billboards
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 31
IN SYNC: A Russian literacy poster from the 1920s quotes “A Bacchic Song,”
a Pushkin poem: “Long live the sun! And down with the night!” Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov set the poem to a choral score in 1876. Russia’s fondness
for Pushkin’s outlook and works has made him poet non grata in Ukraine.
[Poster collection—Hoover Institution Library & Archives]
Central and East European countries all the way to an Iron Curtain running
through the middle of Germany. From Warsaw to Washington, people saw it
as both a Soviet and a Russian empire.
In the 1970s, this imperial superpower still seemed to be a formidable rival
to the United States, even in parts of Africa and Latin America—but by the
1980s it was already in visible decline. Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempted reforms
culminated, between 1989 and 1991, in the most spectacular peaceful collapse of
any empire in history. This collapse dissolved not just Soviet/Russian control of
Central and Eastern Europe, but also the much older imperial bonds between
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Unusually, and precisely because of the complex
relationship between Soviet and Russia, it was the leader of the core imperial
nation, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, who gave the final push.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 33
we should prepare for that. But it will be a long time before Russia finally
accepts that it has lost an empire and begins to find a role.
What we can and must do in the meantime is to ensure that those coun-
tries that seek a better future outside a declining Russian Empire are able
to do so in peace, security, and freedom. Geopolitics, like nature, abhors a
vacuum. In the long run, bringing Ukraine and its smaller neighbors into
both the European Union and NATO, thus securing them against any future
attempt at recolonization, will be a service also to Russia. With the door to
empire finally closed, it can start the long walk to nation-statehood. That
walk will, however, be especially difficult because, unlike old European states
such as France and Portugal, which acquired and then lost overseas empires,
Russia has no historically, geographically, or constitutionally well-defined
state to return to.
Another post-imperial future was possible. Russian-language literature
could have been enriched by the work of Ukrainian and other postcolonial
writers, as English literature has been enriched by the work of South Asian,
African, and Caribbean
writers. Trying to restore
Trying to restore the “Russian world” the “Russian world” by
by force, Putin has destroyed it. force, Putin has destroyed
it. In May 2013, 80 percent
of Ukrainians said they had a positive general attitude to Russia. In May 2023,
only 2 percent of the Ukrainians that pollsters could still reach gave that
answer. And Pushkin Street has been renamed. Putin has done for Pushkin.
Only when Ukraine is securely embraced by both the strong arms of the geo-
political West, the EU, and NATO, will its people be able to sleep easily, as Esto-
nians and Lithuanians do, untroubled by nightly attacks from “Pushkinists.”
Then Ukrainians might even go back to reading Eugene Onegin with pleasure.
Cold Comfort
If Cold War truly has returned, so have its many
lessons, including this one: authoritarians will be
proven wrong.
T
he intensifying rivalry between America and China has led many
to speak of a second Cold War. Others reject the analogy. We can
say this: the world’s two largest economies seem to have little
space for cooperation and a great deal of room for conflict.
The greatest difference with the first Cold War is, of course, the origin of
this rivalry. After the Second World War, the two superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, settled quickly into confrontation. They had
little in common. The Soviet Union was a military giant but an economic
recluse, isolated from most of the global economy.
China, conversely, was brought into the international economy by its own
choices under Deng Xiaoping and by the decisions of global capitalists. For
thirty years it benefited from integration and access to foreign capital and
know-how. Along the way, China acquired an aptitude for indigenous innova-
tion, not just intellectual-property theft.
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director and the Thomas and
Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is the Denning
Professor in Global Business and the Economy at Stanford University’s Graduate
School of Business as well as a professor of political science at Stanford. Niall
Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where
he is chairman of the History Working Group and co-leader of the Hoover His-
tory Lab. He also participates in Hoover’s task forces on military history, digital
currency, global policy, and semiconductors.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 35
[Taylor Jones—for the Hoover Digest]
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 37
agriculture, and the PEPFAR initiative to tackle HIV/AIDS showed that
America could improve the lives of people abroad. The question today is
how far it can take advantage of Chinese missteps with an equally effective
strategy.
From the 1940s to the 1980s, the Hoover Institution, where we are
both fellows, fostered the study of the Cold War. Its archives remain
crucial to scholars of the
period. We would do well
It took Xi Jinping to shock America to understand it and to
and its allies into fully understanding take its lessons to heart.
the challenges. Five stand out.
The first is that allies
matter, for both good and ill. China has clients that are beholden to it in
one way or another. The most important, Russia, has become a liability
because of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. For now, China finds itself
trying to support its Russian “partner without limits” while staying on
the right side of the American and European sanctions line. It is a tough
balancing act.
America, meanwhile, is blessed with a European alliance revitalized
by its firm response to Russia’s aggression and a measurably stronger
NATO with the addition of Finland and, assuming holdouts ratify its
membership, Sweden. America also has strong allies in Asia such as
South Korea and Japan, and in Australia. Its relationship with India is
deepening.
The second lesson is that deterrence requires military capability that
matches the rhetoric surrounding it. China has been improving every aspect
of its military capability while the war in Ukraine and wargaming about
Taiwan have revealed
weaknesses in the West’s.
A war between America and China The West must respond
could be even more dangerous than immediately by procuring
one with the Soviet Union would more advanced weap-
onry, developing secure
have been.
supply chains for critical
materials and components, and rebuilding the defense-industrial base. Peace
through strength really does work.
Third, engage in efforts to avoid accidental war. To this day we benefit
from contacts between the American and Russian armed forces (estab-
lished during the Cold War) to prevent an accident between them. Given the
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 39
Reprinted by permission of the Economist. © 2024 The Economist
Newspaper Limited, London. All rights reserved.
Beijing’s Bill
Comes Due
China favored socialist dictates over market
principles. Now it must pay for its economic
mismanagement.
By Mickey D. Levy
C
hina has evolved from an engine of global growth to a source
of weakness and risk, and it has its leaders and their economic
policies to blame. Sizable government-generated excesses in real
estate and debt are unraveling, weighing heavily on economic
performance and government finances. Declines in household net worth are
undercutting confidence and consumer spending. Many of the largest land
developers have gone into bankruptcy or defaulted on their debt. Global
economies and trade are also adversely affected. The US and Japanese
experiences with real estate
bubbles suggest that China
China will probably need years
will probably need years
to revive economic activity.
to unwind its excesses and
revive dampened economic activity, and a fundamental assessment points to
dramatically slower potential growth.
China’s path from impoverished nation to the world’s second-biggest econ-
omy and leading exporter was built on an odd combination. Chinese leaders
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 41
[Taylor Jones—for the Hoover Digest]
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 43
COOLING OFF: A Chinese steelworker fabricates materials at a mill in Huaian
City, Jiangsu province. Starting around 2000, profits from China’s world-lead-
ing export-related manufacturing generated substantial wealth, which was
used to build productivity-enhancing infrastructure and a modern society.
Productivity gains have now slowed. [Cfoto/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom]
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 45
China’s fiscal policy and debt financing hinged critically on rising real
estate values and expectations. The mounting excesses in real estate
began unraveling in late 2021 as expectations shifted down and housing
demand fell. Land sales and construction collapsed. This undercut local
government finances. More than fifty developers have filed for bank-
ruptcy or defaulted. Some cash-strapped local governments are having
trouble servicing their debt and have requested financial support from
Beijing.
CONSEQUENCES
The Chinese economy must now adjust to the unwinding of the govern-
ment-generated excesses in real estate and debt. Signs of weakness are
spreading. Real estate activity and prices are falling. A reported sixty-
four of sixty-nine cities
report declining prices
The economy must now adjust to the of existing residences,
unwinding of China’s government- and mounting anec-
generated excesses in real estate dotal evidence and debt
and debt. defaults by leading land
developers suggest
declines are steeper than data provided by China’s National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS). Expectations that prices will fall further are deterring
home purchasers.
Consumer spending is weak, reflecting job losses and lower wages in
manufacturing, while household net worth that had become overweight-
ed on real estate has fallen sharply. Consumer confidence has fallen
sharply and will undercut government efforts to stimulate spending. The
NBS has decided to stop publishing the unfavorable confidence survey
data.
Gross capital formation is now a key source of weakness in the domestic
economy. Private business investment is soft, and the financial challenges
facing local governments and LGFVs are severely constraining government
investment spending.
China’s exports and imports are both falling. Exports fell in July 2023 by
14.6 percent year over year in US dollar terms (9.3 percent in yuan terms).
Weak global demand for Chinese goods reflects slow growth globally, with
softer US goods consumption; overall weak conditions in Europe; and efforts
by advanced economies to reduce reliance on Chinese goods and supply
chains. China’s exports to advanced nations fell by larger percentages, but
GLOBAL JITTERS
China’s economic weakness is spreading internationally, contributing to
declining global trade volumes that have fallen below pre-pandemic levels.
Nations and companies with large export exposure to China have been the
hardest hit. Asia, the
world’s biggest trad-
ing bloc, is feeling the China’s economic weakness is
biggest impact. Exports spreading around the world.
of every major Asian
nation (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India)
and Australia are falling, although levels remain above their pre-pandemic
trend lines. Many emerging economies that rely heavily on exporting com-
modities and industrial materials to China are also experiencing declining
exports and falling prices.
European economies have significant exposure to China, both directly and
indirectly, and are experiencing declining manufacturing production. Ger-
many has significant export exposure to China, particularly in motor vehicles
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 47
and parts. China is excelling in the production of electric vehicles (EVs) and
has surpassed Japan and Germany as the world’s largest auto exporter.
The United States is better situated, with relatively less export exposure
to China. Its export of merchandising goods as a percentage of GDP is
nearly one-third less than Europe’s share, according to OECD data. More-
over, the United States’ largest trading partners—Canada and Mexico—
are better positioned than most nations and may benefit from an increase
in production facilities as global companies reduce their supply chain
exposures to China.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 49
Meanwhile, the large and highly productive export-related manufacturing
sectors have begun to feel the impact of efforts by Western nations to reduce
their reliance on Chinese supply chains. This trend is gathering momentum,
with measurable impacts on China’s exports. The Biden administration
has placed limits on US
exports of advanced semi-
A reasonable intermediate-term conductors and quantum-
estimate of China’s potential growth computing capabilities to
is approximately 2 to 3 percent. China and investments
in China that are deemed
important to US national security. Other Western nations are following suit.
China needs such key inputs for its advanced semiconductor and AI develop-
ment, and for its ability to acquire critical technological know-how. This will
constrain productive capacity.
The last official government target for real GDP was 5 percent, but Chi-
nese leaders have backed away from that. They understand that the economy
is sputtering and that fiscal stimulus is limited by the government’s stretched
finances. A reasonable intermediate-term estimate of China’s potential
growth is approximately 2 to 3 percent. Straining for a higher target would
require excessive reliance on government investment in unproductive activi-
ties that would further lower potential growth. Setting a much lower growth
target would be economically rational but the government is highly unlikely
to take such a sharp departure.
Obviously, this puts Chinese leaders in a bind. They are struggling with the
tradeoff between adhering to socialist ideals and maintaining central control
over their citizens, and
weaker economic per-
While no longer the engine of global formance and the unwel-
growth, China is still a powerhouse, come social effects that
the world’s second-largest economy. may follow.
While China is no lon-
ger the engine of global growth, it remains a powerhouse as the world’s
second-largest economy and is highly innovative in an array of high-tech
sectors. Its market for many consumer goods is the biggest in the world.
The surge in China’s production and export of EVs highlights its economic
prowess. Even if its domestic demand growth remains weak and foreign
demand for Chinese goods gradually slows, China will remain the larg-
est and most important manufacturing and global trading hub for years
to come.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 51
C H IN A A N D TAIWAN
Silicon Triangle
Taiwan and the semiconductor industry are
intertwined. In a time of Chinese aggression,
keeping them both secure calls for partnerships
and preparedness.
T
wo of the biggest areas
of risk in an increasingly Key points
fraught US-Chinese rela- »» The United States has two
intertwined interests: safeguard
tionship are the security of the security of global chip supply
Taiwan and the security of the semi- chains and ensure security and
autonomy for Taiwan.
conductor supply chain. Each is high
»» The United States must ensure
stakes and difficult in its own right. But
that its demand for semiconduc-
taken together, they become even more tors is met by friendly countries
challenging. Although each is critically in stable trading partnerships.
Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institu-
tion and the co-chair of Hoover’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and
on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. Jim Ellis (US Navy, Ret.) is the Annenberg
Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Hoover and a member of Hoover’s task forces
on national security, energy policy, and military history. He co-chairs Hoover’s
Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross
Director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations. They are the editors
of Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semi-
conductor Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2023).
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 53
memory chips), Japan, and China, in that order. The United States has fallen
to fifth place.
Policy makers broadly recognize the dangers of leaving the supply chain of
such an essential component in an increasingly digital economy vulnerable
to prolonged disruption—or worse, to deliberate denial by an adversary. The
“chip famine” that emerged globally in 2020 wreaked havoc across a wide
variety of industries. Worse still would be a chip shortage, or an embargo
imposed by a hostile power, that crippled the production and maintenance of
advanced US weapons systems.
That fear is one of many reasons for concern about the security of Taiwan.
Beijing’s escalating military and geopolitical pressure raises an enormous
risk for the United States and its allies: if Beijing were able to success-
fully seize Taiwan, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s regime could suddenly gain
dominance over the most critical manufactured commodity in the world—if
the conflict did not disable or destroy much of Taiwan’s capacity to produce
semiconductors.
Some strategists assume that the semiconductor industry constitutes a
“silicon shield” for Taiwan, because chips are now so critically important
to the global economy and to China’s economy that in the absence of an
extreme crisis or provocation, Chinese leaders would be unlikely to risk a
conflict that could destroy or severely disrupt China’s own (and the world’s)
supply of chips. What is more, the reliance of much of the rest of the world
on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives a host of other governments an
added stake in deterring conflict over Taiwan. Yet placing too much stock
in this logic would be
unwise; if Beijing decides
Chips may be “the new oil,” in one to use force, it will be
view, but their journey from raw impelled principally by
material to end use is far more other political and geopo-
litical reasons.
complex.
In this silicon triangle,
the United States has two intertwined interests: to safeguard the security
of global supply chains for semiconductors—which must include some
prudent degree of reshoring of production—and to ensure security and
autonomous choice for Taiwan. The challenge is to forge a cooperative
strategy in which the pursuit of each goal does not undermine the other.
That requires building on the unique geopolitical strength of the United
States—its dense web of partnerships and alliances—to enhance the resil-
ience of the supply chain while at the same time working with Taiwan to
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 55
Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea. (India is also poised to
become a player in the industry, and the United States should help encour-
age investment in manufacturing there.) And even chip manufacturing in
the United States will depend on working with the most technologically
capable companies, many of them non-American. Taiwan Semiconduc-
tor Manufacturing Company, for example, is already building a $12 billion
manufacturing plant for leading-edge chips in Phoenix. In December 2022, it
announced it would build a second, even more advanced plant there, bring-
ing TSMC’s total investment in the United States to $40 billion, already
exceeding the $39 billion in subsidies for US chip manufacturing provided
by the CHIPS Act.
In addition to subsidies, the United States must provide lower costs, ample
infrastructure, expanded services, and engineering talent to attract further
private investment in semiconductor manufacturing. Congress can help by
extending 100 percent tax depreciation for short-lived capital assets (a rule
that has lapsed). Doing so would reduce the massive upfront costs of semi-
conductor manufacturing equipment needed to set up a new fab and offset
other construction costs that TSMC has estimated to be four times higher
in the United States than in Taiwan. Congress should also extend the chip
manufacturing tax credit in the CHIPS Act beyond its 2027 sunset provision
and broaden the credit to cover key material inputs and the manufacture of
equipment.
Federal and state government should also ease regulatory burdens to
make it possible to construct plants in the United States more quickly. Given
the industry’s relatively short technology cycles, multiyear environmental
reviews will make a significant expansion in chip manufacturing a futile
task. States can also help lure investment by ensuring adequate water and
electricity supplies and providing incentives for related service and equip-
ment companies, fostering the kinds of geographic clusters that helped drive
Taiwan’s semiconductor miracle.
Partnering with Taiwan also offers huge opportunities on the technologi-
cal front. US research centers and universities can benefit from Taiwanese
support on talent development, while Taiwanese firms can benefit from
expanding research and development efforts in the United States. US
policy could help incentivize such collaborations. It could invite leading
semiconductor companies from Taiwan (as well as from South Korea) to
join the United States’ new public-private National Semiconductor Technol-
ogy Center, while also building on efforts such as a collaboration between
Purdue University and the Taiwanese chip designer MediaTek to develop a
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 57
administration’s decision to restrict the export of technologies and tools that
would help China make advanced logic chips.
Another risk to guard against is Chinese dumping of certain kinds of
lower-end chips, which could allow Beijing to drive out competitors from and
achieve a dominant position in important segments of the market. These
“legacy” chips are heavily used not only in consumer products but also in US
weapons systems. Chinese dominance of this market would thus pose serious
economic and security risks.
According to US intelligence and other analysts, Xi has set 2027 as the
year by which China must be militarily ready to attack Taiwan. Although Xi
may have been given second thoughts by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
struggles in his invasion of Ukraine, there is still little time to lose in project-
ing US readiness and resolve and in strengthening Taiwan’s ability to protect
its democracy and the world’s microchip supply chain. Economic, techno-
logical, and strategic competition between China and the United States will
remain the dominant feature of geopolitics for years, if not decades, to come.
To enhance its chances of prevailing in this competition, the United States
will need reliable international partners with whom it can reconfigure and
strengthen its semiconductor supply chain. No partner is more important in
this effort than Taiwan.
Innovation Is a
Marathon
In the advanced-technology race with China, the
United States is stumbling. Why we need a new
tech strategy.
A
s Beijing has become
Washington’s overrid- Key points
ing challenge of the »» China is determined to displace
the United States as the world’s tech-
twenty-first century, nological and economic superpower.
the Chinese leadership has made »» Beijing is using a vast array of
clear that it aims to displace the tactics in its attempt to overtake the
United States. Some have already
United States as the world’s techno- paid off.
logical and economic superpower. »» Large-scale industrial strategy is
This form of competition has no his- nothing new for the United States.
Today, however, we lack consensus
toric precedent. China has a much
about where it should be applied.
larger and more technologically
advanced economy than did the
Soviet Union at its peak, and in contrast to its Soviet predecessor it is deeply
integrated into the global economy. The rivalry between the two powers has
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 59
INVENTION: Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institution, appears
before a House committee investigating military procurement in 1952. Bush,
who chaired the National Defense Research Committee during World War II,
proposed a system of federally funded research universities tightly linked with
government agencies, industry, and the military. [Warren K. Leffler, Harris & Ewing—
Harry S. Truman Library]
significant diplomatic, military, and ideological aspects, but its most impor-
tant dimensions are technological and economic.
China views dominance of advanced industries as a key to national secu-
rity. It aims to increase its power by establishing global pre-eminence in a
broad array of developing technologies. Many of these, such as biotechnology,
artificial intelligence, and aerospace, are current US strengths. As a result,
it is likely that China will continue employing “innovation mercantilist”
trade and economic policies—including outright intellectual-property theft
and forced technology transfer, along with massive subsidies of domestic
industries—to achieve this goal. These tactics have already been successfully
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 61
dominance, the United States could become a shell of its former industrial
self, dependent on China for key imports in many areas, including artificial
intelligence, telecommunications, bioengineering, and quantum sciences.
The United States has a long and successful history of large-scale indus-
trial strategy. In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton proposed the
country’s first such policy
to encourage growth in
The United States risks becoming a domestic manufacturing.
shell of its former industrial self. As Hamilton understood,
without such a base the
nation would remain dependent on European imports. During World War II,
US policy makers recognized the importance of the coordinated development of
future technologies. In June 1945, Vannevar Bush, who as chair of the National
Defense Research Committee served as a science adviser to the US govern-
ment, proposed creating a system of federally funded research universities
tightly linked with government agencies, industry, and the military. Its establish-
ment led to significant advances and made the United States the science and
engineering leader in the world. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of
the satellite Sputnik, the United States focused on developing the technologies
required to win the space race, including rockets, satellites, semiconductors,
numerically controlled machine tools, solar cells, early software prototypes, and
many more advanced technologies.
Yet despite this impressive record, there is no current consensus on US
industrial policy or when and how it should be applied. That uncertainty
is dangerous given what is now at stake in the global competition with
China. Indeed, the country that has the ability to innovate faster and bet-
ter, increase global market share in advanced industry production, and
assimilate new technology across its economy will likely determine the
outcome of great-power competition between China and the United States
for decades to come. And to be effective, a new US industrial strategy will
require recognizing and supporting the large range of technologies now
in play, as well as pushing for advancements and breakthroughs in new
technologies.
For much of history, a single technology, such as making bronze or har-
nessing steam power, often defined an epoch. Today, by contrast, multiple
technologies are being invented, adopted, and adapted at the same time,
with the result that the country that can establish a dominant position in
several areas at once stands to accrue the greatest advantage. Never before
have there been so many new technologies used in combination, nor have the
A ROBUST FRAMEWORK
The US government should communicate to the American people the impor-
tance of this competition, its long timeline, and the large-scale investments
that will be required for a successful outcome. A cultural shift will be neces-
sary to get Americans to engage in this race. Among the ways to accomplish
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 63
this would be to call greater attention to American achievements in science
and technology by recognizing and honoring those individuals and compa-
nies who are helping to win this race, just as the United States celebrated its
astronauts during the space race with the Soviet Union.
Most important, however, is the need for a comprehensive policy frame-
work for advanced industries. This will be essential to ensuring US leader-
ship in development, adoption, and scaling of emerging technologies. The
United States can no longer expect a laissez-faire approach to be successful
when competing with China’s top-down, well-articulated industrial strategy
reinforced by consistent, large investments. Left on their own, the profit-
making strategies of advanced technology companies are unlikely to align
with US national strategic interests and result in the desired range of dual-
use technology development and domestic production.
On the other hand, it
would be counterpro-
It would be counterproductive for ductive to adopt China’s
the United States to imitate China’s approach of anointing
anointing of “national champions.” companies as “national
champions” or impos-
ing direct government control. Instead, the United States should support
advanced technology sectors, not specific companies, by using policies, such
as tax incentives and direct investment in an array of technology programs
(such as the Manufacturing USA program), that are aimed at ensuring US
global leadership in those areas. In other words, a company can become a
market leader in an industry that the government has identified as critical
not because the government designated it a winner but because it offers the
best solution and it beat out the competition, while receiving some support
as well as protection against Chinese techno-predation.
Such a policy framework could include several components. To ensure
proper levels of investment, annual federal funding for science and engineer-
ing research should increase to 2 percent of GDP. That level would match
the historic high point reached in the 1960s and would represent a dramatic
increase from the current 0.66 percent of GDP. Notably, it would also amount
to a ninefold increase over the spending authorized in the CHIPS and Sci-
ence Act, or $460 billion per year.
Such large-scale investment is necessary because the government is the
only source of risk-seeking capital that can be sustained to pursue break-
through technologies over the long term. Although some might expect the
private sector to make these investments, company CEOs and venture
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 65
adoption of technologies in which the government remains the principal
customer. These could range from satellite technology and space-based
communications to unmanned ships and clean-energy technologies such
as advanced batteries.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 67
should include more effective screening of Chinese outbound investment,
shared export controls and limits on technology transfer, enhanced coopera-
tion on commercial counterintelligence, and jointly enacted import limita-
tions on Chinese goods that benefit from unfair practices.
Washington should also lower trade barriers between its allies and part-
ners. To increase the ability of Asian allies and partners to respond to China,
the United States should formalize a pan-Pacific treaty alliance, building on
the AUKUS security pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the
United States, by adding additional countries such as Canada and Japan in
a multipurpose arrangement that includes mutual defense, a stronger allied
defense industrial base, and an enhanced trading bloc.
Policy makers have long recognized that the United States’ asymmetric
advantage is its allies and partners. The scale of this network relative to
China is the only practical way to influence China’s behavior economically,
diplomatically, and militarily. Jointly, the United States and its partners
can rebuild supply chains to eliminate Chinese-controlled chokepoints
and develop alternatives to China for low-cost manufacturing, including
by working more closely with India to help establish it as a manufacturing
hub, especially in electronics. Finally, Washington and partner governments
should collaborate to offer more generous project financing for developing
countries that can serve as an alternative to the punitive debt loads that
China has imposed through its Belt and Road Initiative. In the process, the
United States will attract an even larger set of partners and come closer to
making the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s vision of a “free and
open Indo-Pacific” a reality.
By Nadia Schadlow
I
t’s now almost trite to point out the cracks in
the foundation of the US defense industrial base Key points
»» America’s
(DIB). Many facilities are more than a half cen-
defense industrial
tury old, filled with outdated equipment, unable base is aging, inef-
to meet production requirements, and often depen- ficient, and under
great strain.
dent on minerals and chemicals produced mainly by
»» The Pentagon is
our adversaries. The issue is particularly acute for exploring the idea
missiles and munitions, both the weapons needed for of a public-private
partnership to
today’s fight in Ukraine and future capabilities such as
nurture innovation.
hypersonic weapons.
»» The Defense
However, there is one promising development that Department al-
has largely flown under the radar: the Defense Depart- ready runs t esting
facilities. An up-
ment’s recent suggestions that it is poised to create dated model would
a “munitions campus,” as well as other campuses for lead to faster, bet-
ter innovations.
other sectors, such as microelectronics, may be a step
toward solving a host of DIB problems.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 69
[Taylor Jones—for the Hoover Digest]
The Pentagon’s Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment
Prioritization (MCEIP) office—quite a mouthful!—proposes to address
some of these challenges by creating a network of campuses consist-
ing of testing and manufacturing facilities. The campus design is a
public-private partner-
ship centered around a
hub-and-spoke model. We need to let innovations flourish
At the center of the and find their way quickly into the
hub would be capital- weapons needed by warfighters.
intensive, government-
supported facilities needed to test weapons and components. The spokes
around this hub would be a variety of private companies that could use
these expensive and specialized tools and facilities to develop materials
needed by our armed forces, such as key chemical formulations called
energetics.
Such a campus would have several strengths.
First, it provides a missing link in the DIB. It’s not just about money.
There is a requirement for a physical environment that allows innovations
to flourish and find their way quickly into the weapons needed by warfight-
ers. This requires testing. As the Energetics Technology Center (ETC) and
Defense Department’s recently released National Energetics Plan points
out, such testing is critical for moving a technology from one readiness level
to the next. As the ETC experts put it, new materials “must be tested and
qualified, and the necessary processes are expensive, time-consuming, and
arguably outdated.”
Testing these compounds is not like testing software. Components of muni-
tions are volatile: they are chemicals that in various formulations ultimately
are designed to explode. Without the ability to test new compounds, you can’t
realize innovations. Thus,
the creation of testing
facilities means faster Shared facilities and testing sites
innovation for the Defense significantly reduce costs, especially
Department. for smaller companies.
Second, relatedly, it
would enable innovation by integrating the efforts of smaller companies
around the country. Common facilities and testing sites significantly reduce
costs from these firms’ balance sheets—and could drive collaboration. If a
small company has an idea that could pay dividends to the US military, with
this approach they would be more able to afford to experiment and try new
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 71
ideas. This is particularly important for startup firms that may not have
much cash on hand to invest in expensive testing facilities.
Third, the munitions-campus concept plays to the US government’s
strengths. DoD already runs several testing facilities in a range of areas,
including, for instance, a “Fort Renewable” that allows early-stage com-
panies to test their ideas related to more resilient electrical grids. US
national laboratories around the country allow users from universities
and the private sector to test innovations and carry out experiments in
facilities that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for one company
to build. This is relevant to a range of other sectors too, including space,
which requires testing and evaluation of components like large vacuum
tubes, and hypersonics, which requires testing to understand how various
materials perform.
Fourth, these common facilities are a step toward onshoring domestic
sources of critical chemicals and propellants because providing a place
where R&D and testing takes place can encourage the production of new
compounds at scale. The existing inhospitable environment to testing and
producing energetic materials has contributed to driving US producers out
of the country or out of business.
Finally, DoD’s campus concept gets around the “not in my back yard”
problem. Many Americans understandably don’t consider a munitions
testing or manufacturing facility as a local upgrade. Also, permitting and
regulatory issues are serious impediments to building new facilities. How-
ever, if the federal government encourages states to identify areas where
a campus could be located, it will get bidders who want to compete for the
facility. It is not surprising that states like Texas, Indiana, New Mexico,
Maryland, and Arizona
are enthusiastically creat-
Common facilities are also a step ing hubs of manufacturing
toward onshoring domestic sources and innovation.
of critical chemicals and propellants. DoD’s campus model
could be a big play. It cre-
ates a collaborative space for R&D as well as the testing and prototyping of
new systems that our military needs. It certainly does not address all of the
problems in our DIB. But the concept is a step forward in addressing some
of the underlying problems that hamper the modernization of our weapon
systems.
The challenge, of course, is actual implementation. Too often, that’s where
things break down.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 73
DEFEN SE
Fighting Fires
with Data
Dominating future battlefields demands not just
better weapons but a better way of using them.
Fire suppression—that’s the key.
By Eran Ortal
W
orld order as we have known it since the collapse of the
Soviet Union is rapidly changing for the worse. Commen-
taries link that change with the emergence of Chinese
economic strength and ambition, the rise of Russian
nationalism, the decline of nation-states and the Arab states in particular,
and more. But the defense community cannot escape the fact that a signifi-
cant part of that worsening global order should be attributed to the decline
of Western military deterrence. That decline is due not only to insufficient
investments but also to the rapid erosion of Western military supremacy.
The pressing question the defense community faces is what can be done,
from our perspective, to effect change in these realities.
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
Much has been written and discussed about military change and emerg-
ing technologies. Technology is in fact dominant in the creation of military
Eran Ortal is a contributor to the Hoover Institution’s Middle East and the
Islamic World Working Group. A brigadier general (reserve), he recently re-
tired from the Israel Defense Forces, where he commanded the Dado Center for
Interdisciplinary Military Studies.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 75
successful. Germany addressed its naval deficit through a strategy of block-
ading Britain, using area-denial asymmetric tactics.
How focused are war
planners today, compet-
Battlefield disruption is a matter of ing for technological
problem solving. superiority? Numbers
of troops, weapons, and
equipment are essential, as is superior technology, but these are not the
whole story. We need a theoretical framework. What is the great problem
we are trying to solve?
STRATEGY TRANSFORMED
When Russia’s initial offensive in Ukraine failed in February–March 2022,
most analysts were taken by surprise. Putting aside poor Russian perfor-
mance in chain of command and logistics as well as Ukrainian will and
resilience—all true—what we witnessed that winter in Ukraine was the
prevalence of munitions over maneuver. Putting an end to any prospect of
rapid long movements, so-called ranged fires made the war a huge artil-
lery duel: attrition warfare with few, and very costly, movements on the
battlefield.
The second Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020, involving Armenia and
Azerbaijan, provides another example of the evolution in combat.
Unmanned air surveillance, targeting, loitering munitions, and other forms
of accurate long-range weapons swept Armenia’s largely mechanized
forces off the battlefield. The famous fighting quality of the Armenian
forces was no match for the modern targeting-and-strike system deployed
by their adversaries.
In Yemen, Houthi forces
New, close-in automated targeting also have successfully
will force armies to readapt from their used such capabilities,
customary “stand off” mindset. provided by Iran, to deter
the Saudi-led coalition
from continuing and escalating the war there. The Houthi forces had good
teachers: the Lebanese Hezbollah (HL). Fighting the HL in the war of 2006,
Israeli defense forces proved ineffective at stopping rockets fired at Israel’s
home front. At the same time, they also proved to be vulnerable to modern
anti-tank missiles like the Russian Kornet. Since then, Israel seems to have
given up its traditional direct approach to defense and is as much deterred
by the HL as it is deterring it.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 77
of accurate fire focus on protecting those platforms. Those efforts have
exhausted themselves. Our targeting kill-chains are just not complete and
fast enough to prevent enemy long-range fires from getting through. Modern
force-protection is also insufficient. All single lines of defense are usually
breached. As two defense experts, Tom Karako and Wes Rumbaugh, wrote in
a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, “There are simply
not enough interceptors to sit and play catch.”
There is another path, yet to be exploited: regain maneuverability and at
the same time render enemy resistance irrelevant by suppressing enemy
fires at their source.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 79
DEFEN SE
A Fateful Price
Hoover fellow Bruce S. Thornton’s new book
investigates a democratic paradox: civilians must
restrain, but can also hamper, military leadership.
By Jonathan Movroydis
H
oover research fellow Bruce S. Thornton’s new book under-
scores a paradox in democracy: when people are allowed to be
free, it opens the possibility of popular dissent and of opposi-
tion to the governing institutions that were intended to protect
that freedom. As the editor of Cage Fight: Civilian and Democratic Pressures on
Military Conflicts and Foreign Policy, newly released by the Hoover Institution
Press, Thornton presents case studies on how the demands of democracy
come into conflict with military execution—whether in ancient Athens, the
American Civil War, the Cold War, or US interventions in Vietnam, Afghani-
stan, and Iraq.
Thornton: In the first essay, Paul Rahe explains how the people of ancient
Athens had taken the principle of accountability, in many senses, to a toxic
level, because any citizen could accuse any government official of malfea-
sance or another crime and there would be a trial. This trial would be heard
by several hundred Athenian citizens picked by a lottery. The penalties of a
conviction could be exile, a fine, or even death. The great fourth-century BC
orator Demosthenes alerted the Athenians to the dangers of their justice
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 81
system, in the face of aggression posed by Philip II of the northern Greek
kingdom of Macedon.
Demosthenes said sardonically of Athenian commanders, known as strat-
egoi, that they have a greater chance of being executed because of a trial here
in Athens than dying in battle
against the enemy.
“The military is based on a Eight Athenian admirals
hierarchical model. American suffered such a fate after the
democracy hasn’t done so well Battle of Arginusae during
the Peloponnesian War. Even
with hierarchies.”
though they were victorious
against the Spartans, six of the strategoi were indicted on a capital crime and
executed because a storm prevented them from retrieving the bodies of their
dead sailors.
If you know your Greek literature, in Sophocles’s Antigone, you will remem-
ber the quarrel between Antigone and the tyrant Creon. Antigone’s brothers
Polynices and Eteocles killed each other while fighting in war. The angry
tyrant Creon refused to allow Polynices to be buried with honors. The biggest
obligation families had in Greek society was to bury their dead. So, this whole
business of retrieving the bodies was very important, particularly in a naval
engagement. If the drowned men are never recovered, that means they can’t
reach the underworld. This wasn’t a trivial political issue, although politics
may have played a part. Nevertheless, that level of accountability is very
destructive politically for the city-state. The founders of the United States
were very familiar with this story and its lesson of excess accountability in
public life.
We want accountability. But if accountability becomes excessive, it can con-
strain our military leaders’ ability to achieve mission success. In Vietnam, for
example, the United States was forced to withdraw troops and end material
support for the government of South Vietnam, largely because of the mass
protests that took place on US soil. So, this isn’t just an ancient issue, it’s a
modern one too.
Movroydis: In the second essay, Ralph Peters explores dissent in the efforts
of both sides of the American Civil War. How was that dissent expressed?
Thornton: The Civil War was a conflict over our future national identity.
Some will say it was just a disagreement over tariffs between North and
South. That was part of the problem, but the reason for the war was funda-
mentally about slavery and the nature of American society, in its economic,
Movroydis: In chapter three, Peter Mansoor’s essay talks about the history
of military dissent against elected powers. What did the founders believe
was the appropriate relationship between politicians and high military brass,
especially in times of conflict?
Thornton: As the old saying goes, politics ends at the water’s edge. In other
words, our quarrels shouldn’t be seen by anyone outside the family. We don’t
want our divisions to be exploited by our enemies, especially during war. But
then again, do members of the military not have First Amendment rights?
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, military officers aren’t permit-
ted to freely criticize or undermine their commanders, including the presi-
dent of the United States, who is the commander in chief of the US armed
forces.
Let’s look at this issue from a historical perspective. In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, European aristocracies were mired in dynastic
conflicts. One of those conflicts was the Seven Years’ War, in which the Brit-
ish and French fought each other not only in Europe but in North America,
where both powerful nations had colonial interests.
For colonists like George
Washington, who fought as a
militia officer on the side of “European dynastic struggles
the British, their experience created a huge distrust among
of fighting was not in the the colonists about ‘standing
mass conscripted armies of
armies.’”
Europe, because the colonies
were granted a great deal of self-governance. By their own consent, they
participated in the larger army (what was called the Patriot Army) during
that conflict. This quasi-sovereignty that the colonists enjoyed became the
basis for later struggles with the British.
In addition, these European dynastic struggles created a huge distrust
among the colonists about “standing armies.” The prevailing opinion among
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 83
the colonists was that militias were called up and then disbanded when the
conflict was over. Militias voted in their own officers. By contrast, profes-
sional armies had a process for selecting and appointing officers from the
top down.
The distrust of the standing army runs throughout American history.
We have movies like Seven Days in May about an attempted coup by generals
against the president of the United States.
The First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and assem-
bly, which enable citizens to air grievances against the government, just
add another layer of complexity to this challenge. I’m not sure it is a
challenge that can be solved without a dangerous diminution of freedom.
President Abraham Lincoln restricted speech and press freedoms during
the Civil War. Shortly after America’s entry into World War I, President
Woodrow Wilson signed the Sedition Act of 1918, which criminalized
certain types of speech, expression, and demonstrations. Some people
argue that the Patriot Act of 2001, which expanded state surveillance to
combat terrorism, was an unconstitutional breach of citizens’ rights to
due process.
Movroydis: How do you reform the national security state when threats are
so persistent?
Thornton: The Cold War has unique characteristics that make it difficult
to apply to other circumstances, but there are some points of recognition.
There are people who study the Peloponnesian War and compare it to the
Cold War. Athens was powerful on the seas and Sparta was powerful on the
land. Athens and Sparta, respectively, wanted to fight that war on their own
terms. The two sides engaged in a tournament of proxy wars and attempted
to peel back allies.
During the Cold War, containment worked in the end. But ask yourself:
does a leader like Ronald Reagan always come along when you need him? We
don’t like to think this way, but in many cases fate plays a role in historical
outcomes.
If you think about Nazi Germany in May 1941, it had achieved control over
most of Europe. It enlisted some countries as allies, coerced others to coop-
erate, and occupied those who resisted. What if Adolf Hitler hadn’t invaded
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 85
the Soviet Union? How would that whole postwar world have looked? Hitler
might have been able to preserve his reign over Germany.
Also imagine that there was no atomic bomb and the United States hadn’t
used it to end the war with Japan. Russia had hundreds of thousands of
troops in Eastern Europe. If we had redeployed all our troops from Europe
to Japan, the whole continent would have been left exposed to Soviet aggres-
sion. All the great European powers—Great Britain, France, and Germany—
were exhausted by the war. Thus, without US support, the Soviet Union
would have been able to take over Europe uncontested.
But before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it would have
been inconceivable for most American citizens to support US troop presence
in both the European and Pacific theaters.
In sum, I think it is very difficult to find historical lessons that could be
useful today because many large conflicts are driven by wildcard factors
that are almost impossible to identify. But this makes it all the more impor-
tant that we study the past diligently and carefully so that it speak to us.
Movroydis: The last essay, by Bing West, discusses dissent among the mili-
tary, civilian government, and citizens during the wars of Korea, Vietnam,
and Afghanistan. How does such dissent during wars affect our defense
policy making?
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 87
I NDI A
A Nuanced Look
at Nehru
Seeking political advantage, India’s ruling party is
denigrating founding figure Jawaharlal Nehru. The
government can learn from both Nehru’s missteps
and his accomplishments.
By Sumit Ganguly
T
here is no shortage of books about India’s first prime minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, who led the country from its independence
in 1947 until his death in 1964. From British historian Judith
Brown’s authoritative Nehru: A Political Life (2003) to the more
adulatory Nehru: The Invention of India by Shashi Tharoor, an Indian opposi-
tion lawmaker and former United Nations diplomat, each makes clear that
there is little question that Nehru helped forge the modern Indian state.
As prime minister, Nehru tutored the newly independent India in par-
liamentary democracy and helped knit together a diverse land through
imaginative language policy, under which those attending school would learn
Hindi, English, and a regional language. He fashioned a distinctive foreign
policy, forging a path that sought to steer clear of superpower conflict. And
he helmed the country through many challenges, from resettling refugees
from Pakistan after the partition of India to integrating India’s princely
states into the nascent union.
Like any political leader, Nehru was not without flaws. Even sympathetic
observers have admitted that his faith in a mixed economy, which allowed
private enterprise while reserving a role for the state in promoting economic
development, did not result in sustained growth or significantly reduce
poverty. His neglect of the military and attempts to appease China despite a
border dispute led to the 1962 Sino-Indian War.
Nehru’s achievements, nonetheless, seem to far outweigh his question-
able political choices, especially given what nearly two hundred years of
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 89
British colonial rule wrought in India. But that is not the view of India’s ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In recent
years, Nehru’s legacy has come under sustained attack. This criticism is most-
ly polemical: the current government finds it politically expedient to demonize
Nehru in the public sphere while it enacts policies that shake the very founda-
tions of the Indian state. These attempts to undermine Nehru’s legacy—as
well as that of his Indian National Congress party, the BJP’s principal opposi-
tion—will no doubt gain momentum as national elections approach.
OFTEN VISIONARY
Historian Taylor C. Sherman’s book Nehru’s India: A History in Seven Myths
enters the conversation against this political backdrop. Sherman, who teaches
at the London School of Economics, writes deftly about Nehru and what he
bequeathed to India. Despite the somewhat provocative title, her well-researched
book does not seek to discredit the former Indian leader but rather to provide a
nuanced assessment of his
achievements and failures.
This more complex assessment of Sherman demonstrates
Nehru is a far cry from the caricature that while Nehru initiated a
that India’s ruling party is trying to host of visionary programs,
foist on the electorate. they often met political,
institutional, and societal
barriers to implementation. This more complex assessment of Nehru is a far cry
from the caricature that the BJP is trying to foist on the Indian electorate, which
casts Nehru as inept and idealistic to a fault.
Sherman challenges the notion that Nehru was the sole architect of modern
India, which is treated as an article of faith among some of his admirers.
She focuses on seven policy areas, arguing that the leader’s views were hardly
monochromatic for any of them. In Sherman’s telling, Nehru was a patron
who delegated tasks to those he trusted to carry out his vision; these subor-
dinates did not always share his perspective and were sometimes clumsy in
implementing his goals or thwarted by local authorities. (For example, despite
Nehru’s own commitment to secularism, he could not ensure that its prin-
ciples took hold at the grass-roots level.) In each case, Sherman shows how
myths have developed about Nehru and how careful scrutiny of the available
evidence is necessary to understand his policies in their historical context.
Sherman argues that Nehru’s doctrine of nonalignment—still embraced by
India today, though lacking much of its lofty rhetoric—failed to produce coherent
policy outcomes. Despite Nehru’s commitment in principle to the doctrine (and
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 91
to court the Muslim vote by overturning an Indian supreme court judgment
that granted alimony to a Muslim woman, overriding the strictures of Muslim
personal law. But ultimately, the historical evidence does not justify tarring
Nehru with this particular brush. Today, the BJP actively seeks to marginalize
Muslims and deny them equal rights under the Indian constitution; the ruling
party has attacked Nehru’s successors to justify its own policies.
Those committed to free market reforms in India have critiqued Nehru’s
supposedly unyielding commitment to doctrinaire socialism—essentially call-
ing him an ideologue. But once again, Sherman demonstrates that apart from
Nehru’s penchant for Soviet-inspired five-year plans that set out specific eco-
nomic targets, India hardly embraced socialism under his leadership. At the
time, the country largely did not nationalize crucial industries and instead
exhorted business leaders and entrepreneurs to become good nationalists
and work to improve the
country’s economic lot.
India hardly embraced socialism These policies ended
under Nehru’s leadership. up favoring a handful of
firms, leading to a mostly
oligopolistic market that did little to benefit the Indian consumer. Today,
the BJP also appears to favor a handful of business houses—most notably,
those owned by Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani—making its critiques of
Nehru’s policies ring rather hollow.
Sherman’s most telling discussion has to do with how Indian democracy
functioned under Nehru’s watch. The conventional account suggests that
apart from a few lapses, democracy swiftly took root under Nehru and
proved resilient. Sherman writes that electoral democracy with universal
suffrage did emerge quickly in India, drawing on the work of Israeli historian
Ornit Shani. However, she shows that even the Congress Party was not above
resorting to political chicanery despite its significant popularity; its stalwarts
also used the powers of their office to pursue financial gains. As early as 1956,
when the government passed the Companies Act, a provision in the legisla-
tion permitted corporate donations to political parties.
Such dubious practices, now rampant in India, appear to have long
antecedents. Under BJP rule, the most obvious example is the promotion of
electoral bonds, which individuals and companies can purchase from a gov-
ernment-owned bank and then donate to the political party of their choice.
With no transparency requirement, well-heeled people and groups can direct
financial resources to their preferred party or candidate—presumably with
the goal of influencing policy choices.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 93
A F GHA N I STAN
Afghanistan:
Apartheid State
When US soldiers withdrew, systematic violence
against women resumed. World leaders should
join figures in the Arab and Muslim world to resist
this injustice.
By Nader Nadery
M
ore than two years have passed since US forces withdrew
from Afghanistan as the Taliban recaptured the country.
Unfortunately, there is no cause for celebration, especially
for Afghan women.
The United Nations Security Council’s Sanctions Monitoring team has
found that the Taliban maintains strong and symbiotic links with both Al-
Qaeda and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This and the fact that various
terrorist groups have gained increased freedom of movement in the country
has been widely reported in the media. Moreover, news outlets regularly
highlight the ongoing erosion of rights and freedoms in Afghanistan, particu-
larly for women, as well as the extrajudicial killings of former government
officials and those who supported the US military and civilians throughout
the two decades of the US presence in the country.
Shaista (a pseudonym), a young police officer and the sole breadwin-
ner for her family of five, represents one of the more than nineteen million
DISAPPEARED
The systematic violence against women and the shrinking civic space in
Afghanistan present a dire situation. According to Richard Bennett, the
UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, women and girls
in Afghanistan face severe discrimination that may amount to gender
persecution, a crime against humanity. The de facto authorities appear to
govern through systemic discrimination, intending to place women and
girls under complete subjugation. Bennett’s report, presented to the UN
human rights council on June 19, 2023, further highlights these distress-
ing findings.
Prominent international human rights organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have also documented the profound
impact of the egregious
and systematic viola-
tions on the lives and Women and girls in Afghanistan
well-being of Afghan face severe discrimination that may
women. Afghan media in amount to gender persecution, a
the diaspora, alongside
crime against humanity.
courageous journalists
on the ground, report daily on the suppression of the population, particularly
women, under the Taliban’s authority.
In solidarity with Afghan women’s groups and civil society activists, these
institutions assert that the Taliban’s treatment of women constitutes “gender
apartheid.”
In 2021, Afghan women accounted for 29.39 percent of the country’s four
hundred thousand civil servants. This percentage is close to the average
representation of women (43 percent) in the public sector in South and
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 95
Southeast Asian countries, which is three times higher than in Pakistan.
Before the collapse of the Afghan republic, female lawmakers occupied 27
percent of the seats in parliament. Women’s leadership in the public sector,
including the military, stood at 10 percent.
Historically, most of today’s restrictions against women in Afghanistan
were never universally accepted or considered Islamic. Constitutional chang-
es in Afghanistan since 1919 consistently preserved the rights and freedoms
of Afghan women, with a robust bill of rights. Afghan women gained the right
to vote in 1919 and the constitutional right to enter elected politics in 1964.
Afghan women have been cabinet ministers since 1964.
Since assuming power on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have imple-
mented edicts, decrees, instructions, and new rules that profoundly affect
all aspects of Afghan women’s lives in society. These restrictions cover
SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION
There is a striking resemblance between the Taliban’s treatment of women
in Afghanistan and the actions and policies of the former apartheid regime
in South Africa. A comparative analysis reveals that both systems aimed to
maintain domination and control over specific groups based on gender or
race. The Taliban’s deliberate efforts to subjugate and marginalize Afghan
women mirror the apartheid regime’s intent to enforce racial superiority.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 97
Additionally, both the Taliban and the apartheid regime created contexts of
systematic oppression.
While the term “gender apartheid” may not be explicitly defined in inter-
national law, the policies and actions of the Taliban align with all the ele-
ments that define the crime of apartheid as a crime against humanity. These
elements are outlined in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppres-
sion and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court. To understand the severity of the situation, we
must interpret at least three key elements of apartheid, as drawn from the
Rome Statute:
» The intent to maintain domination is evident in the Taliban’s deliber-
ate and sustained efforts to subjugate and marginalize Afghan women. They
restrict women’s mobility, education, and work opportunities to maintain
patriarchal control and enforce a gender hierarchy that suppresses women’s
agency and independence.
» The context of systematic oppression is vividly present in the Tali-
ban’s policies and practices. These measures curtail women’s access to
education, health care, and participation in public life. The Taliban’s rigid
interpretation of sharia law perpetuates a deeply entrenched system of
gender-based discrimination, depriving women of their basic rights and
freedoms.
» Inhumane acts exemplify the Taliban’s brutality and the suffering
endured by Afghan women. Public punishments such as flogging and execu-
tions are used as tools of
intimidation and control.
Nowhere in the Islamic world— Testimonies from Afghan
except Afghanistan—are girls banned women contain harrowing
from school or universities. accounts of physical and
psychological violence,
forced marriages, sexual assault, and arbitrary imprisonment of women’s
rights activists. The UN report on the human rights situation in Afghanistan
last May recorded 332 acts of public punishment, including flogging and
other corporal punishments of women and men, by the Taliban in six months.
These acts not only violate fundamental human rights but also foster a cli-
mate of fear and subjugation.
“DISTORTION OF RELIGION”
The rejection of the Taliban’s policy against women as “un-Islamic” has
gained widespread support from the Islamic world, including major
ALLIES
In a powerful show of solidarity, a group of female foreign ministers has
recently stepped forward for the third time to stand with Afghan women and
civil society.
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 99
However, the gravity of the situation demands even stronger voices from
human rights advocates and leaders, both men and women. Former US
ambassador Samantha Power, with her distinguished record of human
rights advocacy, could bring significant attention to the recognition of gen-
der apartheid as a crime. Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland;
Zainah Anwar, the Malaysian feminist who headed Sisters in Islam; former
first lady Laura Bush, a longtime advocate of Afghan women’s rights; Hill-
ary Clinton, former US
secretary of state; Ursula
American commitments to human von der Leyen, president
rights should not remain mere of the European Com-
statements of condemnation. mission; Ellen Johnson
They must lead to decisive action. Sirleaf, former president
of Liberia; Najla Bouden,
former prime minister of Tunisia; Retno Marsudi, Indonesian foreign
minister; and others should join in the call for action and accountability
alongside Afghan women and US Special Envoy Rina Amiri. Together, they
could lend their influential voices to the cause, amplifying the urgency and
importance of addressing the dire situation in Afghanistan and demanding
the recognition of gender apartheid as a crime against humanity.
The United States, with its professed commitment to human rights,
freedom, and democracy, bears a moral responsibility to stand up against
gender persecution in Afghanistan. President Biden has repeatedly
emphasized human rights as a focus of his foreign policy priorities, with
his administration emphasizing the promotion of democracy, human
rights, and the rule of law in US engagement with the world. These com-
mitments should not remain mere statements of condemnation; they
demand decisive action.
While some will argue that engaging with the Taliban and establishing a
field presence in Afghanistan would be in the interest of the United States,
lessons learned from dealing with the Islamist group should guide any
assumptions about a “changed Taliban.” The administration must not allow
the gender apartheid regime of the Taliban to become a new normal for the
United States or the rest of the world.
Shifting power dynamics and rising global challenges, including the war
in Ukraine, may tempt policy makers to prioritize other concerns over
human rights issues. However, if Aysha, a sixteen-year-old girl who lost her
father who was fighting alongside US forces in Wardak province, can brave
the brutality of the Taliban and take a stand on the street to demand the
By Monica Schreiber
T
he establishment clause of the First Amendment, “Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” has
inspired two centuries of political debate and reams of case
law. A new book co-authored by Stanford Law School’s Michael
McConnell adds to the often-fraught discussion with a deep dive into what
the founders envisioned when drafting the establishment clause—and how
that vision can promote religious freedom and diversity in contemporary
America.
McConnell is a former judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the
Tenth Circuit. Widely recognized as one of the country’s foremost advocates
for and scholars of religious liberty, McConnell recently received the Can-
terbury Medal from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The award is the
Michael McConnell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Richard
and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and the director of the Constitutional
Law Center at Stanford Law School. Monica Schreiber is assistant director of
communications at Stanford Law School.
Michael McConnell: The establishment clause, probably more than any oth-
er provision of the Constitution, has been at the center of many of our mod-
ern culture-war debates. It specifically pertains to religion, but in a broader
philosophical sense, it has a bearing on a number of issues about which
Americans disagree quite strongly. The basic thrust of the establishment
clause is that matters of deep, personal conviction should be left to individual
choice. The establishment clause is very often misunderstood and seen only
under the rubric of separation of church and state. It is seen as having the
goal of secularizing the
public sphere, walling
“The basic thrust of the establish-
off religion from the
public sphere, but it is ment clause is that matters of deep,
the contention of our personal conviction should be left to
book that that is not only individual choice.”
historically inaccurate
but also normatively unattractive for today. As we explain, the importance of
the establishment clause is that it leaves people free to disagree. And it keeps
us from trying to use the state’s coercive power to win these battles.
I believe the framers thought that this would enhance freedom of con-
science at an individual level because there would be less likelihood of
government coercion, but also that it would bring about more civic peace and
harmony than if we are constantly engaged in trying to make sure “our side”
wins these conflicts. To put it plainly, we are supposed to agree to disagree.
Schreiber: What might people be surprised to learn about the framers of the
Constitution with regard to their views on the role of religion in America?
McConnell: The Supreme Court has said on many occasions that the estab-
lishment clause is in tension with the free exercise clause, which gives a spe-
cial protection for people’s actions when they are exercising their religious
Schreiber: What cases and developments in the area of religious freedom are
you watching now?
McConnell: There will always be genuinely difficult questions, and the cases
are not going to go away. There will always be hard lines to draw when an
individual teacher is expressing religious ideas or practicing their own reli-
gion in the presence of
students who might be
affected or influenced. “There will always be genuinely
Teachers are rights- difficult questions, and the cases are
carrying individuals with not going to go away.”
their own freedom of
speech and freedom of religion. But at the same time, they also wear a hat
as a kind of authority figure within the school. And it’s often difficult to tell
exactly where that line is going to be.
I do think things have been going in the right direction with the courts,
but I also think that religious intolerance is actually on the rise in the United
States, and that worries me. I think in the area of civil liberties, the court is
not doing a bad job, but the hostility to the court is increasing. And the use of
the court as a kind of political punching bag is on the rise, which is bad for all
of us.
Schreiber: What are some broader lessons you think could be taken from the
ten words of the establishment clause?
McConnell: This goes to the last chapter of our book, which is more specula-
tive and doesn’t make a legal argument, but more of a cultural argument.
There are a lot of things in our culture that are like religion in the sense that
they touch very closely on issues of identity and fundamental ideas that are
not usually susceptible to much compromise and change. The establish-
ment clause does not apply directly to these ideas, but our suggestion is that
maybe the wisdom of the establishment clause could apply to them. If people
The Climate
Cudgel
In their attacks on energy companies, cities and
states are abusing the legal system.
By John Yoo
C
limate change has become the
latest opportunity for abuse Key points
»» Tort law is being distorted
of the legal system. For many
to seek outlandish damages
decades, liberals have turned from energy companies for
to the courts when the democratic policy- the alleged harms of global
warming.
making process has posed obstacles to
»» Countries other than the
their grandiose plans. Now, left-leaning United States produce roughly
cities and counties want to distort tort 85 percent of the world’s
greenhouse-gas emissions. US
law, our nation’s basic system for resolving
states can’t touch them.
accidents and harms, to seek outlandish
»» Energy companies have
damages from energy companies for the federal licenses to extract and
alleged harms of global warming. sell fossil fuels. Limiting that
work would be up to Congress.
In the latest example, Multnomah
County, Oregon, sued energy companies
John Yoo is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, the co-host of the Hoover
Institution podcast The Pacific Century (https://www.hoover.org/publications/
pacific-century), the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is
the co-author, with Robert J. Delahunty, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to
the Supreme Court (Regnery Publishing, 2023).
last June for $50 billion for their alleged contribution to the “2021 Pacific
Northwest Heat Dome.” Last summer, four Democratic senators called on the
Department of Justice to follow suit, literally, and pursue energy companies
for allegedly misleading the public about climate change.
Led by New York and San Francisco (of course), liberal cities and coun-
ties have invented lawsuits against every energy company imaginable, from
major producers to refiners and gas sellers, for their role in creating cli-
mate change. Joined by Baltimore; San Francisco; Honolulu; Rhode Island;
Oakland, California; San Mateo, California; and Boulder, Colorado, among
others, public officials in these communities suddenly discovered around
2017 that global warming constituted a “public nuisance” that harmed their
residents and justified financial penalties.
These cities claim that the energy companies have caused broad injury
through the “production and promotion of massive quantities of fossil fuels.”
These businesses allegedly have triggered a “global-warming-induced sea lev-
el rise,” followed by flooding, erosion, and harm to municipal infrastructure
and water systems. These cities also demand that the energy companies fund
a “climate change adaptation program” to build sea walls, raise the elevation
of buildings, and construct “such other infrastructure as is necessary.”
More Smoke,
Less Fire
No, the world is not “on fire”—in fact, areas burned
by wildfire have been shrinking. It’s the rhetoric
that’s overheated.
By Bjorn Lomborg
O
ne of the most common
tropes in our increasingly Key points
alarmist climate debate »» Since the early 2000s, the area
is that global warming of Earth’s surface burned an-
nually in wildfires has trended
has set the world on fire. But it hasn’t. downward.
For more than two decades, sat- »» The latest report by the UN
ellites have recorded fires across climate panel does not attribute
the area burned globally to climate
the planet’s surface. The data are
change.
unequivocal: since the early 2000s,
»» Prescribed burns, wise zoning,
when 3 percent of the world’s land and enhanced land management
caught fire, the area burned annually work better to prevent fires than
climate policy does.
has trended downward. In 2022, the
last year for which there are complete
data, the world hit a record low of 2.2 percent burned area.
Bjorn Lomborg is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, president of the Co-
penhagen Consensus Center, and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business
School. His latest book is Best Things First: The Twelve Most Efficient Solu-
tions for the World’s Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises (Copenhagen
Consensus Center, 2023).
Yet you’ll struggle to find that reported anywhere. Instead, the news media
act as if the world is ablaze.
In late 2021, the New York Times employed more than forty staffers on a
project called “Postcards from a World on Fire,” headed by a photorealistic
SELECTIVE OUTRAGE
Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019–20 earned media headlines such
as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data show this was
a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two Australian states
but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country.
Reprinted by permission of the Wall Street Journal. © 2024 Dow Jones &
Co. All rights reserved.
By Peter Berkowitz
I
n the United States and Britain, ill-informed
and poorly reasoned opinions about transgen- Key points
derism, climate change, COVID-19, Islamist » Censorship
degrades the qual-
extremism, working-class political inclinations ity of information
and voting patterns, race, sex, hate speech, and iden- available to voters
and officeholders.
tity politics dominate progressive elites’ thinking and
» Free speech
drive their policy making. This alone would pose no
undergirds the
special challenge to freedom and democracy. Mis- rights to religious
guided views, shortsighted laws, moralizing, and abuse liberty, assembly,
petition of govern-
of power leave their mark in the best of times. They ment, self-defense,
will persist as long as human beings remain fallible, property, and due
process of law.
self-interested, subject to appetite and emotion, and
» Censorship is
desirous of wealth, status, and dominion. a symptom of
The deeper concern is the determination of journal- anti-democratic
contempt.
ists, professors and university administrators, K–12
educators, government bureaucrats, high-tech titans
and social media moguls, entertainment-industry movers and shakers, and
corporate executives—a preponderance of what was once called “the estab-
lishment”—to silence dissent from progressive orthodoxy through law and
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Insti-
tution and a member of Hoover’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Work-
ing Group.
HERETIC HEROES
Where blasphemy is barred, cursing of the impure, the unclean, and the
vulgar is required. A favorite target for the West’s woke is older, white, male
members of the working class.
In “Rise of the Pigs,” O’Neill explores the casual contempt with which Brit-
ish intellectual and political elites refer to white men who voted for Brexit as
gammon—cured ham or bacon. “So widespread was the use of the gammon
slur in liberal and leftish chatter post-Brexit that, in 2018,” writes O’Neill, “the
Collins English Dictionary chose it as one of its words of the year.” The reduction
of fellow citizens to pig meat signifies their unfitness for politics. The evidence?
Learn by Example
Why do Asian-American students excel? Let’s
stop being afraid to ask.
T
he summer of 2023 brought a seismic shift to higher education:
the Supreme Court’s striking down of affirmative action in col-
lege admissions.
Putting aside the rancorous debates about the rationale and
implications of the decision, at the heart of the Harvard case was clear
evidence that the university was discriminating against Asian-American
students.
A revealing 2022 study of Harvard admissions (“Asian American Discrimi-
nation in Harvard Admissions,” in the European Economic Review) found a
“substantial penalty against Asian-American applicants relative to their
white counterparts.” Given that the overall admissions rate for Asian-Amer-
ican applicants at Harvard was around 5 percent, the scholars estimated,
removing what amounted to a handicap would increase their admissions
chances by at least 19 percent.
What’s more, the researchers took on a surprisingly candid tone when not-
ing the differences between the Asian and white applicant pool:
Michael J. Petrilli is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and the president
of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Amber M. Northern is senior vice president
for research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Startling indeed.
Findings from the Fordham Institute’s new study, “Excellence Gaps by
Race and Socioeconomic Status,” reminded us of this eye-popping imbalance.
Written by Fordham’s
Meredith Coffey and
Two decades ago, Asian-American Adam Tyner, the report
students were already disproportion- digs into how race and
ately reaching advanced levels. socioeconomic status
(SES) interact to shape
academic “excellence gaps”—disparities in performance among groups of
students achieving at the highest levels.
Their analysis uses nearly twenty years of eighth-grade reading and math
assessment data (2003 to 2022) to document the progress of A merica’s
highest-performing students, meaning those who earned “Advanced”
scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a.k.a. “the
Nation’s Report Card.” Among other things, it finds that fewer black and
Hispanic students from the highest-SES group (those with college-educat-
ed mothers) are achieving at Advanced levels than we would expect given
their socioeconomic status. That’s a disparity clearly worth our attention.
But so are the study’s findings on Asian-American high achievers—
who deserve our attention for a different reason. Two decades ago,
Asian-American and Pacific Islander students (AAPI) were already dis-
proportionately reaching the Advanced level of performance, and they’ve
only made more progress since then. Part of that progress is due to raising
the floor: Coffey and Tyner find that among students in the lower-SES
ranks (those whose mothers have a high school diploma or less), there’s
been a substantial increase over time in the proportion of AAPI students
who are Advanced.
Add it up and we can see that the AAPI advantage has only grown.
Now let’s put these numbers into a context that is familiar to admissions
officers at highly selective colleges. If we consider both the percentage of
students in each racial subgroup achieving at the Advanced level and their
share of the student population, what does the racial composition of students
scoring Advanced look like?
COVID’s
Lifetime Tax
Learning losses can persist for decades. Why
we can’t close the books on the young victims of
pandemic policies.
By Eric A. Hanushek
R
eports of drops in student
achievement due to the COV- Key points
ID-19 pandemic are now treated »» The Nation’s Report Card
(NAEP) shows declines in
as old news. Amid abstract students’ math and reading
reporting of test results, a sense of inevitabil- skills since the pandemic.
ity and complacency has developed. After all, »» People who know more,
as measured by tests like
could the fact that students’ math scores fell
NAEP, earn more throughout
by “nine points” truly be important? their working lives.
The reality is that the cohort of students »» The pandemic learn-
in school in March 2020 has been seriously ing losses imply that the
American population will
harmed—implicitly facing a lifetime tax on be less skilled than it would
earnings of 6 percent. And the harm is not have been—to the tune of $28
trillion in economic losses.
going away.
A simple way to assess learning loss from
the pandemic is to compare the performance of students tested in 2023 to
students taking the same tests in 2020. The most recent data come from
Eric A. Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover
Institution. He was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021.
PERMANENT LOSSES
We are struggling as a nation even to get our schools back to where
they were in terms of supporting student learning, but these costs will
be permanent if we just return schools to the status quo of March 2020.
Our schools must improve if we are going to eliminate the burden of lost
learning. Evidence from
a variety of experiences
If schools simply return to business in other nations shows
as usual, the losses will persist. that the losses students
experienced will persist
if schools simply return to business as usual. For example, several German
states had short school years in the 1960s when policy makers sought to
standardize school calendars nationwide. The earnings of students edu-
cated during that period stand out throughout their careers from those
of students educated before and after the adjustment, and not in a good
way. Other examples of extended school disruptions—for example, due to
prolonged teacher strikes—show similarly persistent impacts.
What has been done so far to address learning loss? The federal govern-
ment provided almost $190 billion in COVID relief aid to schools under three
separate appropriations. Only a small portion, however, was required to
be spent on ameliorating learning loss, and most schools have yet to spend
much of these funds even though they disappear in a year.
States and districts have adopted a variety of strategies that most fre-
quently include added instructional time or intensive tutoring. Unfortunate-
ly, the results of these efforts to date have not been good. Even if we opti-
mistically project that the best available programs will be implemented with
fidelity, the losses will not be erased. The scale of current recovery efforts is
ANSWERS
There is a clear roadmap to success, albeit one that leads to political
tension. The one policy that is known from research to be effective is
ensuring that all students have an effective teacher. Recruiting and retain-
ing more effective teachers has, of course, been the goal of many policy
initiatives, but a variant
of this emphasis can
be the solution to the One solution: give incentives to the
learning loss problem: most effective current teachers to
simply provide incen- teach more students.
tives for the most
effective current teachers to teach more students. The highly effective
teachers could teach larger classes or added sections of courses with both
monetary incentives and additional support for this work. Unused federal
funds could immediately support this tactic. Indeed, one could go further
and use part of the funds to buy out the contracts of the least-effective
teachers. These steps could instantly improve the average effectiveness of
instruction, both making up for pandemic-era learning losses and improv-
ing schools going forward.
Such policies have been shown to work in a few large districts, including
Washington, DC, and Dallas. Deploying them now at scale could save the
G
etting advanced learners (a.k.a. “gifted” students) the education
they need, and ensuring that this works equitably for youngsters
from every sort of background, is substantially the responsibility
of state leaders.
Districts and individual schools, charters included, do the heavy lifting, but
states create the policy structures (and funding flows) within which this hap-
pens. They create guidelines for which students are eligible, how they should
be identified, what services must be provided for them, how to track their
progress and the performance of their schools, what qualifications must their
teachers possess, and how to ensure fairness across the board.
Today, sadly, America’s high-flying students—and those with the potential
to soar—face a dizzying array of inconsistent and incomplete state policies
and practices. This is meticulously—and depressingly—documented in the
National Association for Gifted Children’s “State of the States” report. Work-
ing through its tables and analyses yields much insight into what a jumble
Chester E. Finn Jr. is the Volker Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover
Institution and participates in the Hoover Education Success Initiative. He is
Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute.
California or
Bust
It’s bust. California’s problems show no sign of
fixing themselves.
By Lee E. Ohanian
F
or the past five years, my Hoover colleague Bill Whalen and I have
written about the economics of California, its state policies, and
its state politics. Before I began writing in the Hoover Institu-
tion online journal California on Your Mind, I knew that some of
California’s economic policies were poorly designed and creating significant
waste and dysfunction. But it wasn’t until after I began studying these issues
in detail that I found out just how badly California is politically managed. The
problems are so numerous, so glaring, and so costly that I thought California
politicians would self-correct. I was wrong.
Every major policy error I have observed has become worse in the past
five years, including budget waste, the failure of politicians to prioritize what
Californians want, the lack of oversight and accountability within state and
local government, and a deepening of the costly symbiosis between state
politicians and the political interest groups who lie at the center of nearly all
of California’s policy failures. And this nexus will preserve California’s deeply
flawed policy status quo until voters decide that they have had enough.
TRAIN IN VAIN
California’s high-speed rail is perhaps the most striking example of the
state’s pet political spending that provides no value to Californians. In
2008, voters were promised a transportation system that would connect
Northern with Southern California and the Central Valley with the coast,
with trains traveling more than two hundred miles per hour, at a cost of
about $33 billion, to be built by 2020. Voters agreed to a $9.95 billion bond
issue for seed money in 2008, with the expectation that private investment
would be forthcoming.
Fifteen years later, the taxpayer seed money has been spent, and costs
have increased to the point that the original $33 billion budget will not be
enough to complete even a route between Bakersfield and Merced, which is
perhaps more than a decade away—if it’s completed at all. The project has
never attracted private funding, as it has been plagued by mismanagement,
SHAMEFUL SCHOOLS
California’s K–12 public education system is the best illustration of the
damage created by relationships between state policy makers and political
interest groups. More than 75 percent of California students lack proficiency
in math or reading, despite a $128 billion state education budget that exceeds
the entire budget of most states. And as the system fails to educate our chil-
dren, the state’s Department of Education threatens to sue education experts
who would testify against the department for this failure.
Education in California fails because there are inadequate incentives and
accountability within the system. Teacher tenure is frequently awarded after
only eighteen months of teaching, and it is extremely costly to fire a tenured
teacher for poor performance. Education economists have estimated that
Read California on Your Mind, the online Hoover Institution journal that
probes the politics and economics of the Golden State (www.hoover.org/
publications/californiaonyourmind). © 2024 The Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
By Peter Robinson
Robinson: Dr. Martin Luther King said in 1963: “I have a dream that my four
little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” You write that
Dr. King’s message was equal opportunity for individuals regardless of race.
Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy
at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is Social Justice Fallacies (Basic
Books, 2023). Peter Robinson is the editor of the Hoover Digest, the host of
Uncommon Knowledge, and the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the
Hoover Institution.
In the years that followed, the goal changed to equal outcomes for groups.
What now rose to dominance was the social justice agenda. If those backing
the social justice agenda could have everything they wanted, what would the
country look like?
Sowell: They want everybody to have equal outcomes or as close as they can
get to it. Unfortunately, you don’t have the preconditions for that, even in the
same family. One of the examples I use in the book is among five-child fami-
lies, the National Merit finalist is the firstborn just over half the time. That is,
more often than the other four siblings combined. The fifth-born is 6 percent
of the time. And so it was, even where you have almost ideal conditions.
Robinson: You take on various fallacies here. Let’s take on a couple of them.
The “equal chances” fallacy, I’m quoting you: “Even in a society with equal
opportunity, people from different backgrounds do not necessarily even want
to do the same things. In American sports, blacks are very overrepresented
in professional basketball,
whites in professional ten-
“There’s this notion of this inert nis, and Hispanics in Major
mass of people down there and then League Baseball.” Why is
the wonderfully brilliant people at that telling?
the top who ought to be telling them Sowell: Because the implicit
what to do.” assumption and sometimes
explicit assumption is that in
a world where everything was fair, where everyone was treated fairly, things
would be representative of the population, the demographics of the whole
in all these various activities. Imagine a black kid born in Harlem and he’s
born with a body identical to that of Rudolf Nureyev, the great ballet dancer;
the odds are a thousand to one that he’ll become a ballet dancer, much less
another Rudolf Nureyev. Chances are, he wouldn’t even think about it.
Robinson: So, you mean to say that when you tried out for the Brooklyn
Dodgers—you tried out for a pitching position and they didn’t hire you—you
were not being discriminated against?
Sowell: Actually, I was trying out for first base, and the real reason I messed
up was that my position was center field. But in order to be a good center
fielder, I needed hours and hours of practice, and it was a very bad spring. I
got very little practice. And so I figured I’m going to go out and make an idiot
of myself in center field, so I made an idiot of myself at first base.
Sowell: Well, Adam Smith had a very low opinion of abstract theorists who
imagine that they can control a whole society with the ease with which one
puts chess pieces where you want them on a chess board. And so, there’s
this notion of this inert mass of people down there and then the wonderfully
Sowell: Well, if you’re going to try to get some kind of result, you have to
specify through what kinds of mechanism you expect to get that result. And
different mechanisms, whether it’s the governments, the market, the Red
Cross, whatever, they have their own individual things that they’re good at
and not so good at. And so, you can’t get the social justice result that you
want unless you have the kind of institution that’s likely to produce that
result. Politics is not that kind of institution.
Sowell: Yes.
Sowell: Yes, one of the real problems is that you have people making deci-
sions for which they pay no price when they’re wrong, no matter how high a
price other people pay.
Right now, the homicide rates are beyond anything that were around, let’s say,
prior to 1960. And I mention 1960 in this case because that’s when the Supreme
Court remade the criminal law. They discovered rights in the Constitution that
no one had noticed for over a century and they were impervious to evidence.
DURABLE DELUSIONS
Robinson: The big fallacy—at least, I take this is in many ways the heart of
the book—racial fallacies. Almost all of your book is addressed to the cur-
rent moment, but in racial fallacies, you start by going back about a hundred
years to lay out the Progressive position in the 1910s and ’20s and for some
years afterward in addressing immigration from Eastern and Southern
Europe: “This massive increase in immigration begins toward the end of
the nineteenth century and carries on through the 1920s. In addressing the
massive increase in immigration, Progressives claimed that these new immi-
grants were inherently genetically, and therefore permanently, inferior.” So,
your argument is that a century or so ago, Progressives believed roughly the
same about Polish and Italian immigrants that whites in the South had long
believed about blacks.
Sowell: Oh yes.
Robinson: I’ll read a quotation: “With the passing years, more and more evi-
dence undermined the conclusion of the genetic determinists. Jews, who had
scored low on the 1917 Army mental test, began to score above the national
average on various tests as they became a more English-speaking group.
A study showed that black orphans raised by white families had signifi-
cantly higher average IQs than other black children.” You call them genetic
determinists, which is one way of putting it. Some races were permanently
inferior.
Sowell: Yes, on tests written in English. And people who spoke English did
better on those tests.
Sowell: Yes, but even as of the time of World War I, the data show that black
soldiers scored below white soldiers. The people who believed that this was
genetically determined, they said, that’s it, that’s the answer, and they moved
on. Some other people said, let’s look at it more closely. They discovered that
black soldiers from New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and one
or two other states scored “People’s genes do not change
higher than white soldiers when they cross a state line.”
from Mississippi, Alabama, et
cetera. And as I mentioned in the book, people’s genes do not change when
they cross a state line. When you have people who are crusading for some
idea, whatever the idea is, and they find some data that fits what they believe,
that’s the end of the story as far as they’re concerned.
RACIAL ESSENTIALISM
Robinson: From the Progressive position a century ago to the progressive
position today, racial assertions have ranged from the genetic determinism
that we just discussed, which proclaimed that race is everything as an expla-
nation of group differences, to the opposite view that racism is the primary
explanation of group differences. How did this happen?
Sowell: Well, it happened because a lot of people arrived at the same conclu-
sion and they had high IQs and PhDs, and that was the end of the story as far
as many people were concerned. I mean, a high IQ and low information is a
very dangerous combination.
Robinson: You once told me, “Peter, the main advantage of earning a Har-
vard degree is that you never again in all your life have to be intimidated by
anyone who has a Harvard degree.” Tom, as I read this book, for the most
part, it’s objective, it’s calm, it’s analytical, but when you take on this modern
Sowell: No, I don’t. I think that people don’t look for certain evidence and
therefore they don’t find it. And so, on the basis of what they know at a given
time, this may be very plau-
sible. The problem is that
“I think that people don’t look for you really need other people
certain evidence and therefore they with a different orientation
don’t find it.” who are skeptical and who
will then look for things
and find things that are very different from that. One of the things I found
interesting was the fact that there are counties in the United States which are
among the poorest counties in the country. And six of those counties have a
population that ranges from 90 percent white to 100 percent white.
Sowell: Of course, there’s that great book that was written, Hillbilly Elegy.
Sowell: And these are people who have faced zero racism.
Sowell: And they are white, and zero racism, and also back in the 1930s,
when they did IQ studies, their IQs were not only at the same level as those
FALSE LEADERS
Robinson: Now, this book is dedicated to fallacies, to showing errors in
premises and errors in analysis. It’s not dedicated to an alternative explana-
tion. Nevertheless, you’ve got this argument lurking in here that it’s the way
people live, it’s the cultural patterns. So, what are the patterns that pay off?
Sowell: In terms of fallacies for our public policy, what does not pay off is
having charismatic leaders depending upon government to do things, if you
look what has happened to blacks before and after there was a massive gov-
ernment effort on their behalf. The poverty rate among blacks, if you start in
1940 instead of 1960—because 1960 is the magic number for people who say
the government did all these wonderful things and blacks advanced because
of it—in 1940, the black poverty rate was 87 percent. By 1960, it was down to
47 percent. From 1960 to 1970, it went down to 30 percent. And in 1970, affir-
mative action is now in place. It went down to 29 percent. So, in the twenty
years prior to the 1960s, the black poverty rate went down by 40 points and
in the twenty years after 1960, it went down by 18 points.
Robinson: Year zero is 1865 for African-Americans. And the point you make
in a number of places is that the black family is overwhelmingly intact. Right
up to 1960.
Sowell: Not only do people take credit for things that were not their doing,
they overlook the negative things that came in after the 1960s as a result
of policy. In 1940, 17 percent of black children were raised in single-parent
homes. I forget the exact date in the twentieth century, but after these won-
derful reforms were put in, that quadrupled to 68 percent of black children
being raised in single-parent homes. Now, there’s a whole literature on all
the bad things that happen to kids who are raised by single parents; whether
they are black or white, American or British, the studies show the same
Sowell: Yes, and years later when I became a parent, like other new parents,
I wanted to know when a kid was supposed to do this, when he’s supposed
to do that. And I said, how old was I when I started to walk? And the lone
surviving member of the family that raised me said, “Tommy, nobody knows
when you could walk. Somebody was always carrying you.”
Robinson: From Social Justice Fallacies: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
a major factor in ending the denial of basic constitutional rights to blacks
in the South, but there is
no point trying to make
“Consequences matter, or should that the main source of the
matter, more than some attractive or black rise out of poverty.
fashionable theory.” Nor can the left act as if the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
solely their work. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted
for the act.” So, you’re saying something here which is . . .
Sowell: Sacrilege.
Robinson: It’s shocking, it’s heretical. Well, you say the Civil Rights Act
ensured equality before the law. It was overdue, it was necessary, it was just.
It’s an accomplishment in American history, but at about the same time, we
get the creation of a vast expansion of the welfare state, and it does people
harm. It harms the African-American family.
Sowell: Yes, and the other thing too. The Civil Rights Act was not what got
blacks into professional occupations. In the decade prior to 1964, the number
of blacks in professional occupations doubled. So, this is not a result of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Robinson: Tom, let me read a few single sentences from your book and you
tell us what you meant. “Stupid people can create problems, but it often
takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.”
Sowell: If you can get people to believe that their problems are all due to rac-
ists, you will get their votes. But that’s not the case. It’s very doubtful wheth-
er all the racists in the country today have half the negative effect on blacks
as the teachers’ unions have. The teachers’ unions keep the schools lousy in
areas where the people who send their kids to school do not have the option
to send them to a private school.
Robinson: Tom, would you close our discussion by reading a passage from
Social Justice Fallacies?
Sowell: Well, I still agree with it. “Do we want the mixture of students who
are going to be trained to do advanced medical research to be representative
of the demographic makeup of the population as a whole, or do we want stu-
dents with the highest probability of finding cures for cancer and Alzheim-
er’s? Do you want airline pilots chosen for demographic representation of
various groups, or would you prefer to fly with pilots who were chosen for
their mastery of all the complex things that increase your chances of arriving
A Climate of
“Mischief”
In climate research, the science is too often buried
under the politics. Scientist and Hoover senior
fellow Steven E. Koonin shows how.
By Peter Robinson
Steven E. Koonin: Well, I had supposed that humans were warming the
globe. Carbon dioxide was accumulating in the atmosphere, causing all kinds
of trouble, melting ice caps, warming oceans, and so on. And the data didn’t
support a lot of that. And the projections of what would happen in the future
relied on models that were, let’s say, shaky at best.
Robinson: Former senator John Kerry, then President Biden’s special envoy
for climate, said in a 2021 address to the UN Security Council: “Net-zero
emissions by 2050 or earlier is the only way that science tells us we can limit
this planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. . . . Overwhelming evidence tells
us that anything more will have catastrophic implications. We are march-
ing forward in what is tantamount to a mutual suicide pact.” Overwhelming
evidence, science tells us, what’s wrong with that?
Koonin: Well, you should look at the actual science, which I suspect Ambas-
sador Kerry had not done. You know, the United Nations puts out assessment
reports—the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—that
are meant to survey, assess, and summarize the state of our knowledge
about the climate. Those reports are massive, and you really need to be a
scientist to understand them. I can understand this stuff. Ambassador Kerry
and other politicians certainly have not done that. But then, he’s getting his
information perhaps from the summary for policy makers in those reports,
Robinson: Let’s start with what we know. From Unsettled: “We can all agree
that the globe has gotten warmer over the last several decades.” No debunk-
ing needed there.
Koonin: And, in fact, it’s gotten warmer over the past four centuries.
Koonin: Well, yes, that’s correct, but it’s equally supported by the assessment
reports.
Koonin: Right.
Robinson: At the end of each of these cycles, which begin way back in 1988,
they publish a report. From Unsettled: “Most of the disconnect comes from
a long game of telephone that starts with the research literature and runs
through the assessment reports to the summaries of the assessment reports,
and then on to the media coverage. There are abundant opportunities to get
things wrong.” How can it be that this committee, the IPCC nominated by
195 countries—which means 195 parochial interests at play—how can they
produce anything that’s any good in the first place? And yet, you seem quite
relaxed about the original science.
Koonin: The underlying science is expressed in the data and in the research
literature, the journals and research papers people produce, the conference
proceedings, and so on. The IPCC takes those and assesses and summarizes
them. And in general, it does a pretty good job. There’s not going to be much
politics in that, although they might quibble among themselves about adjec-
tives and adverbs. This is “extremely certain,” or this is “unlikely” or “highly
unlikely” and so on.
Koonin: Nobody who isn’t deeply in the field is going to read all that stuff.
So, there is a formal process to create a summary for policy makers, which
is initially drafted by the
governments, not by the
“It’s the governments who have scientists. In the end, it’s
approved the summary for policy the governments who
makers line by line. And that’s where have approved the sum-
the disconnect happens.” mary for policy makers
line by line. And that’s
where the disconnect happens. I’ll give you an example.
Robinson: Please.
Robinson: OK.
Koonin: And that’s true. But what they forgot to tell you was that the warm-
ing of the planet decreased the incidence of extreme cold events. And since
nine times as many people around the globe die from extreme cold than from
extreme heat, the warming from the planet has actually cut the number of
deaths from extreme temperatures by a lot.
So, that statement was completely factual, but factually incomplete in a
way meant to alarm, not to inform.
And so, you get Kerry saying that; you get the secretary general of the
United Nations, António Guterres, saying we’re on a highway to climate hell
with our foot on the accelerator.
Koonin: Yes, of course they are. The climate scientists are negligent for not
speaking up and saying that’s preposterous.
Koonin: Yes. You add the carbon dioxide in, and the temperature goes up too
fast, compared to what we’ve seen already. That’s really disheartening. The
world’s best modelers, trying as hard as they can, get it very wrong at least
40 percent of the time.
Robinson: So, I’m reading this and I’m thinking that these problems that
Dr. Koonin is describing will become less and less, and then we’ll get it.
Koonin: Maybe.
Robinson: And this is one of the most astonishing passages in your book.
“Having better tools and information to work with should make the models
more accurate and more in line with each other. This has not happened. The
spread in results among differing computer models is increasing.” As our
processing power increases, we should be closing in on reliable conclusions.
And yet they seem to be receding faster than we approach them. How can
that be?
Koonin: As the models become more sophisticated, what does that mean?
That means either you made the “grid boxes” a little bit smaller in the
model, so there are more of them, or you made more sophisticated your
description of what goes on inside the grid boxes. The globe is divided into
ten million of these boxes.
The average size of a
“It’s going to be a long time before grid box in the current
generation is a hundred
we get a computer a thousand times
kilometers, or sixty miles.
more powerful than what we have
And within that sixty
today.” miles, there’s a lot that
goes on that we can’t
describe explicitly in the computer: clouds are maybe five kilometers big,
and rain happens here and not there within the grid box. We can’t describe
all that detail.
The current grid boxes are a hundred kilometers. So, you might say, why
not make them ten? Well, suddenly the number of boxes has gone up by a
hundred. So, you need a hundred-times-more-powerful computer, but it’s
worse than that. The time steps have to be smaller, also. And so, the process-
ing power actually goes up as the cube of the grid size. If you want to go from
a hundred kilometers to ten kilometers, the processing power required goes
Robinson: But am I wrong that it’s all reducible to data and we’ll get it
someday?
Koonin: Well, I think we will do better. But I’m still queasy about that. Take
weather prediction. You feed the current state of the weather into the model
and you can predict what the weather’s going to be tomorrow, next day, and so
on. And we’ve gotten better and better at that over the past twenty or thirty
years. But the main reason we’ve gotten so good is the initial data: we know
better and better the state of the atmosphere right now so we can predict it.
Climate’s a different problem. Climate is really driven by the oceans. We have
not-very-good data on the oceans. And to be able to specify the state of the
ocean now and then know it ten or twenty, thirty, forty years from now is a
much harder problem. It’s not obvious to me we’re going to get it right. But it’s
worth trying because it’s a grand computational challenge and we will develop
technologies and learn techniques that will be helpful in other applications.
Koonin: The media, if you’ll excuse me, get their information from reporters
who have little or no scientific training. Reporters on the climate beat have
to produce stories—the
more dramatic, the bet-
ter. When I say some-
“Reporters on the climate beat have
thing about hurricanes,
I quote right from the
to produce stories—the more dramat-
IPCC reports, and it ic, the better.”
doesn’t say that at all.
Koonin: I would say that the United Nations needs to check their press
release against the IPCC reports before they say anything. When I wrote
Robinson: All right, agriculture and a 2019 headline in the New York Times:
“Climate change threatens the world’s food supply, United Nations warns.”
And you write: “Agricultural yields have surged during the past century, even
as the globe has warmed. And projected price impacts of future human-
induced climate changes through 2050 should hardly be noticeable among
ordinary market dynamics.”
HEAVY WEATHER
Robinson: Here are more headlines in that vein. “Heat records are
broken around the globe as earth warms, fast. From north to south,
temperatures are surging as greenhouse gases combined with the
effects of El Niño.”
And: “Heat waves grip three continents as climate change warms earth.
Across North America, Europe, and Asia hundreds of millions endured blis-
tering conditions. A US official called it a threat to all humankind.”
“July heat waves nearly impossible without climate change, studies say.
Record temperatures have been fueled by decades of fossil fuel emissions.”
Koonin: Weather is what happens every day, or maybe even every season.
Climate, the official definition, is a multi-decade average of weather proper-
ties. So don’t tell me about what happened this year but tell me about what
happened the average of the past ten or twenty years, and then we can talk
climate. We have data that go back to about 1979. So, we have good monthly
measures of the global temperature in the lower atmosphere for forty-some-
thing years.
What you see is month-to-month variations, of course, but a long-term
trend that’s going up. No question about it. It’s going up at about 0.13, 0.15—I
won’t get the number exactly right—degrees per decade. That’s some combi-
nation of natural variability and greenhouse gases. Human influences, more
generally. And then, every couple years, you see a sharp spike, and that’s El
Niño.
Robinson: So, let me take you to New York. You spent July there. I happened
to visit in July and we had Canadian wildfires, and the press telling us that
the wildfires are because of climate change. For the first time that anybody
I know could remember, smoke is so heavy in Canada and it gets blown into
Koonin: I understand.
Koonin: I have two responses. We have a very short memory for weather.
Go back in the archives of the newspapers and you can read from even the
nineteenth century on the East Coast descriptions of so-called “yellow days”
when the atmosphere was clouded by smoke from Canadian fires. So, look at
the historical record first, and if it happened before human influences were
significant, you got a much higher bar to clear to blame CO2.
The second response is there’s a lot of variability. Here in California, you
had two decades of drought and the governor was screaming “new normal,
new normal!” And look at what happened last year: record, at least historical
record, torrential rains. People forgot about the 1862 event where the Central
Valley was under many feet of water. Climate is not weather, and the weather
can really fool you.
ADAPTATION
Koonin: Let me talk about adaptation a little bit and give you some
examples that are probably not well known. If you go back to 1900 and you
look from 1900 till today, the globe warmed by about 1.3 degrees Celsius.
That’s the global temperature record that everybody more or less agrees
upon. The IPCC projects about the same amount of warming over the next
hundred years. What’s going to happen over the next hundred years as that
warming happens? We can look at the past to get some sense of how we
might fare.
Since 1900 until now, the global population has gone up by a factor of five.
We’re now at eight billion people. The average lifespan or life expectancy
went from thirty-two years to seventy-three years. The GDP per capita in
constant dollars went up by a factor of seven. The literacy rate went up by a
factor of four, the nutrition, etc. And we’ve seen . . .
Pandora’s Last
Gift
Hope remains: for renewal, for a return to
America’s founding principles.
By Chris Gibson
T
he dysfunction and vitriol that characterize our present political
age have been unfolding for decades. This is among the reasons
Patrick Deneen’s thought-provoking 2018 book, Why Liberalism
Failed, made such an impact on those who care deeply about
America and its future. Deneen painstakingly documented our failing politi-
cal process and the fraying of our social fabric.
But while Deneen provided an accurate and disturbing portrayal of
contemporary America, he misplaced the origins of these developments.
Deneen traced our dysfunction to the very founding of the country when he
claimed America redefined liberty away from self-control, opting instead
for one of unbounded freedom. In the process, Deneen argued that James
Madison and the architects of the Constitution pivoted away from per-
sonal virtue as the cornerstone for our way of life and adopted instead the
unrestrained pursuit of self-interest, which, similar to Adam Smith’s logic,
was thought to ultimately produce public virtue. This defining moment in
REGIME CHANGE?
In both books, Deneen contends that the American founding was a full
embrace of John Locke’s version of liberalism fraught with fatal philosophi-
cal contradictions. He asserts that our two major competing philosophies are
actually two sides of the same coin. First, classical liberalism, which advocates
unfettered capitalism and the protection of personal liberty. This version,
he says, masquerades as “conservatism” in America. The other is progres-
sive liberalism, prominent since the early twentieth century, which favors an
ever-expanding national government to promote the general welfare of its
citizens. Deneen argues that what they share is a deep fear of the people, and
accordingly, despite their occasional narrow differences, often collaborate to
implement legal and normative impediments to keep the people far from the
levers of power. Deneen also argues that both have a zeal for “progress,” a
commitment to constantly changing the “rules of the game” in pursuit of bet-
ter arrangements that ultimately serve the ends of the elite—not the people.
In Regime Change, Deneen argues that a new conservative elite class should
be fostered, one that is committed to the welfare of the people. Contrary to
Marxism, which also purports to advance the cause of the common man, this
new elite must also actu-
ally share the values of
the people, which Deneen How would we stop a new elite from
argues are historically being corrupted by power like the one
conservative; embracing we have now?
national unity, stability,
tradition, and custom. Deneen believes this new conservative elite will address
the vast wealth inequality in America and rein in the social engineering, which
has destroyed the family, the church, and the cherished American way of life.
Deneen concludes that his approach is nested within traditional conservative
philosophy as championed by Edmund Burke and Benjamin Disraeli.
THE FOUNDATION
The Constitution did not usher in a fully Lockean liberal society. Post-
Constitution American society was more a hybrid between Lockean
liberalism and Puritanical communitarianism, producing something new in
the human experience. The conception of the “American dream” provides
evidence for this blend. From Locke we promote the individual, possessed
with God-given rights secured by the new American state and free to rise
WHAT NOW?
Deneen is also right that our current path probably leads to the end of the
republic as we know it. However, in considering a course correction, we
should turn to the classics.
“The Americans
Were a Godsend”
Hoover fellow Bertrand M. Patenaude tells how
American humanitarians, led by Herbert Hoover,
fought famine and saved millions of Russian lives.
By Jonathan Movroydis
A
new book from the Hoover Institution Press, Bread + Medicine:
American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923, tells the story
of how the American Relief Administration, led by future presi-
dent Herbert Hoover, undertook a large-scale humanitarian
relief effort that saved the lives of millions of starving people in Soviet Russia
from 1921 through 1923. The authors, Hoover research fellow Bertrand M.
Patenaude and scholar Joan Nabseth Stevenson, wrote the book as a com-
panion to an exhibition at Stanford University last year.
Jonathan Movroydis: What were the origins of Bread + Medicine and how
did you get involved in it?
of 1921], which was the first real book in English about the famine—surprising
because that’s a major famine. But the story I really wanted to tell was about
the relief mission.
Since completing the book, I’ve always said there were two stories that
someone will come along and do one day. One was the story of Ukraine. We’re
talking about Soviet Russia, it’s dominated by Moscow, but Ukraine is one
of the constituent parts of this fledgling country. But I also said that there’s
an untold story still in the archives having to do with the medical relief. The
American doctors and their counterparts launched this amazingly complex,
vast medical relief effort.
When COVID hit in 2020, I was convinced that what we ought to do is
mark the centennial of the Soviet Russian famine and of the Hoover relief
mission. Given the COVID pandemic and all the focus on medical issues
and the fact that in 1922 the ARA introduced a vaccination program
which was controversial, I thought it would really resonate with
audiences today.
Where does the title
“Maxim Gorky sent out an appeal to come from? The way the
anybody who would help. People are world found out about the
dying. The fields are burning.” famine was that in July
1921, the writer Maxim
Gorky sent out an appeal to anybody who would help. People are dying. The
fields are burning. And the very last line of the appeal says, “Give bread and
medicine.”
I wanted to make clear that in 1921–23, this relief mission succeeds only
because there is a collaboration of Americans and Soviets—which means
Russians in most cases—and including doctors. We highlight in the book
how American and Russian doctors—and Ukrainian doctors as well—work
together for the whole two years. American doctors are spread very thin;
they are there as administrators and they need staffs. They need the local
physicians to help them, people working in the hospitals, nurses, medical
students. And the collaborative dimension of the story is one that I really
wanted to emphasize.
about the famine: Herbert Hoover. He has the organization, the ARA,
the American Relief Administration. He has the experienced personnel,
he has the know-how, and he is also by this point secretary of commerce
in the Harding administration. He has the contacts and he can make the
wheels turn.
The question among historians is, was Lenin’s government in Moscow
surprised when Hoover responded and offered to feed one million children?
Eventually that figure
goes way up, by the way,
“Hoover did think food would cure it. and by the summer of
So, if you started feeding anywhere 1922 the ARA is feed-
in Europe or in Russia, eventually ing 10.5 million Soviet
Bolshevism would go away.” citizens a day, adults and
children. I think they
were surprised. You see in the internal correspondence that Lenin and
company were really panicky about this because Hoover was also known
Movroydis: What was the Russian people’s reaction to Herbert Hoover and
the American Relief Administration? Did they have a favorable view despite
the minders and some of the Soviet propaganda?
Patenaude: The ARA had never mounted a medical program in any of its
operations in Central and Eastern Europe. But in the summer of 1921, it’s
clear that there’s a threat of typhus, especially; typhus might even spread
into Europe through Poland because there are a lot of people trying to get
Movroydis: What was the overall impact of the bread and medicine mission?
Do any data speak to that?
Patenaude: That’s a tough one. How do you add up the number of lives
saved? Here’s the thing that I now know that I wish I had known or been
aware of more clearly twenty years ago: in a famine, most people do not die
of starvation. Few people starve to death. Most people die of famine-related
disease.
There’s one exception in recent times: Mao’s Great Famine and the Great
Leap Forward, with numbers that run up to forty million victims. That’s a
case where probably most of the victims died of outright starvation.
To go back to the ARA and its work in Soviet Russia, it’s hard to add up
how many lives were saved there. But if you think about the big picture—and
how the ARA took it upon itself to install water filters, to put in new piping
for sewers and water lines, and so on—I would feel comfortable saying that
six million died, and it probably would have been double that absent the
ARA’s bread and medicine.
Special to the Hoover Digest. This interview was edited for length and
clarity.
By Benjamin S. Goldstein
B
litzkrieg had disrupted European flights. So, only after a train,
plane, and two separate car rides in early June 1940 did Karl H.
von Wiegand, the sixty-five-year-old German-American “dean of
foreign correspondents,” arrive at the small red-brick Belgian
chateau where he would
conduct the most cru-
Karl H. von Wiegand learned from his
cial—and most contro-
earliest days in journalism to connect
versial—interview of his
personal politics, sensationalism,
long career.
Preserved in von
and interviews with historic figures.
Wiegand’s papers at the Hoover Institution Archives is a letter he sent to his
British assistant, fellow journalist, and mistress Lady Grace Marguerite Hay
Drummond-Hay, wherein he recounted, with the flair of a journalist steeped
in turn-of-the-century sensationalism, this momentous assignment. After
migrated to the United States a few years later. After a peripatetic, gal-
livanting youth throughout the American Midwest and West, he appended
the “von” to his last name as he began dabbling in journalism. A few years
before the outbreak of World War I in Europe, he returned to Europe as
Bolshevism in the new Soviet Union and the explosive politics of early Wei-
mar Germany. Claiming to have met Hitler in 1921, von Wiegand produced
the first known English-language interview of the future Führer, profiling
the thirty-two-year-old
“man of the people”
When the time came, von Wiegand and his movement in
was the Nazis’ interviewer of choice. vivid and exaggerated
detail. He kept in on-
and-off contact with Nazi politics as they ebbed and flowed and ultimately
cemented power in the early 1930s. When the time came, von Wiegand was
the Nazis’ interviewer of choice.
He had been critical of the Nazis at times during the 1930s, but by 1940 he
had changed. Witnessing the wars rippling across Europe, Africa, and Asia
OUTREACH TO AMERICA
The interview with Hitler in June 1940 came at a critical time in US and
world politics. Hitler’s dream of European domination seemed one step
closer to fulfillment: France was all but defeated and the British were pinned
down on the beaches of Dunkirk, hoping to dash across the Channel during
a fighting retreat. Only one thing seemed able to ruin Hitler’s dream: the
Americans. If President Roosevelt were to marshal the industrial and mili-
tary might of the United States to support Hitler’s enemies, or even declare
war, Germany would face serious trouble. So, through this interview and its
subsequent publication through both the US media and Nazi propaganda
channels, Hitler hoped to reassure the United States that he had limited,
justifiable war aims and that he respected US sovereignty. “Europe for the
Europeans, America for the Americans,” was the headline on the New York
Journal-American, Hearst’s New York City flagship paper, on June 14. It was a
bold ploy.
“L
enin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live forever.” These
famous lines from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky
(1893–1930)—titled, perhaps a bit obviously, “Vladimir
Ilych Lenin”—express a wish for eternal remembrance
of the Bolshevik revolutionary he adored. Lenin’s embalmed body has been
on public view in Moscow for a hundred years, since his death in January
1924, except for a brief sojourn in Siberia as World War II raged. Mayakovsky
killed himself not long after, amid tumult in his personal life and a hot-and-
cold relationship with Soviet officialdom.
Mayakovsky, born in Georgia, grew to prominence as a public revolu-
tionary and a flamboyant bad boy of the arts. Tall, glowering, and hand-
some, he plunged into the Russian Futurist scene (its manifesto: “A Slap
in the Face of Public Taste”), which rejected artistic tradition. Being
called “unpoetic” was a compliment. Mayakovsky made himself visible
as an activist, writer, playwright, actor, editor, and poster designer. He
packed an illegal pistol and helped prison breaks. He willingly took to
propaganda and agitprop—the crude persuasive materials meant to
goad the masses into action. Above all, he wrote in his autobiography,
he admired Marx.
Mayakovsky attracted plenty of admiration himself, particularly after he
started writing poetry during his own stint in prison. But there was a shadow
over his devotion to the revolution: he was an artist, an iconoclast, and artists
have a complicated relationship with authority.
He had left the precursor to the party several years before the Bolshe-
viks seized power in 1917, but he met the revolution with enthusiasm. He
and other artistic figures swore their allegiance. Mayakovsky lectured and
recited, and wrote pamphlets for children, in the service of what he called
“communist futurism.” His celebrity grew. He toured outside Russia as a
leading light of leftist art. The summit of his fame came in 1924 with the
composition of his three-thousand-line Lenin tribute, which was rapturously
received and then published as a book. A four-volume edition of his collected
works appeared in 1929.
198 H O O V ER DI GEST • Win ter 2024
But the scene changed. The
Russian Association of Proletarian
Writers began to chafe. Younger
strivers accused Mayakovsky of
being a petit-bourgeois intellectual,
a “false leftist”—worse, a favorite
of Trotsky. Students shouted him
down and the press mocked him.
Mayakovsky had a long trail of
lovers, including an interpreter in
New York who bore him a child,
and a long list of poems about those
women. In 1930, after a romantic
disappointment with one married
woman, he shot himself. A previ-
ous lover and muse, also married,
said that with the poet, suicide was
“a chronic disease inside him.” A
fellow artist regretted that he had
squandered his once-innovative,
rebellious talent to serve the state.
The proletarian writers group shut down all mention of Mayakovsky after his
death and canceled publication of his works.
But Stalin liked him, and that made all the difference. After the poet’s muse
wrote to the Soviet leader in the mid-1930s asking him to intervene, Stalin
declared Mayakovsky “the best and the most talented” poet of the age, and sud-
denly the country was awash in praise. The town of his birthplace was renamed
in his honor, and a Mayakovsky museum and library opened in Moscow.
Sic transit gloria: the Communist Party’s belated sanctification of Maya-
kovsky led to what his close friend Boris Pasternak called a second death for
the poet. After Stalin died, Mayakovsky became in many eyes the pet poet of
Stalin’s oppressive state. Yet later still, younger poets and activists saw him
with fresh eyes. His reputation in the aging Soviet Union fell and rose a few
more times, depending on what passed for avant-garde, but this poster from
the Hoover Archives shows his words still held power in the late twentieth
century. No one knows whether Mayakovsky—like Lenin, like any shooting
star—“will live forever.” The face that scowls from old photos continues to
challenge readers to see him as reformer, romantic, rebel, or revolutionary—
depending on one’s point of view.
—Charles Lindsey
H O O V E R D IG E ST • W inter 2024 199
Board of Overseers
Chair Susan Ford Dorsey
Herbert M. Dwight
John B. Kleinheinz
Steven L. Eggert
Dana M. Emery
Vice Chair Brady Enright
Susan R. McCaw Jeffrey A. Farber
Michael Farello
Members Henry A. Fernandez
Eric L. Affeldt Robert A. Ferris
Katherine H. Alden John J. Fisher
Neil R. Anderson James Fleming Jr.
John Backus Jr. Stephen B. Gaddis
Paul V. Barber Venky Ganesan
Barbara Barrett Samuel L. Ginn
John F. Barrett Shari Glazer
Barry Beal Jr. Michael W. Gleba
Douglas Bergeron Kenneth Goldman
Wendy Bingham Cox Lawrence E. Golub
Robert E. Grady
Jeffrey W. Bird
Jerry Grundhofer
James J. Bochnowski
Cynthia Fry Gunn
Zachary Bookman
Paul G. Haaga Jr.
David Booth Karen Hargrove
Richard Breeden Richard R. Hargrove
Jerome V. Bruni Everett J. Hauck
John L. “Jack” Bunce Jr. Diana Hawkins
Clint Carlson Kenneth A. Hersh
James J. Carroll III Heather R. Higgins
Robert H. Castellini Allan Hoover III
Charles Cobb Margaret Hoover
Jean-Pierre L. “JP” Conte Philip Hudner
Berry R. Cox Claudia P. Huntington
Harlan Crow John K. Hurley
Mark Dalzell Nicolas Ibañez Scott
James W. Davidson James D. Jameson
Lew Davies William E. Jenkins
George H. Davis Jr. Charles B. Johnson
Jim Davis Elizabeth Pryor Johnson
Jean DeSombre Franklin P. Johnson Jr.
Michael Dokupil Gregory E. Johnson
Dixon R. Doll John Jordan
SILICON TRIANGLE
The United States, Taiwan,
China, and Global
Semiconductor Security
Edited by Larry Diamond, James O. Ellis Jr.,
and Orville Schell
A working group of industry and policy experts
contemplate the future role of semiconductors
on the security, economic prosperity, and
technological competitiveness of the United
States, Taiwan, and China.
DEFENSE BUDGETING
FOR A SAFER WORLD
The Experts Speak
Edited by Michael J. Boskin, John N. Rader,
and Kiran Sridhar
CHAIRED BY Condoleezza Rice, John B. Taylor, Jennifer Widom, and Amy Zegart
DIRECTED BY Herbert S. Lin
Emerging technologies are transforming societies, economies, and geopolitics, and at a time of
great-power competition between the United States and China, the stakes today are especially
high. The Stanford Emerging Technology Review brings together scientists, engineers, and
social scientists to account for new developments at Stanford University in 10 key technology
areas, highlight their policy implications, opportunities, and risks, and identify barriers for US
government decision makers and private-sector leaders.
setr.stanford.edu
As Americans try to recover from the COVID pandemic and return to normal, GoodFellows,
a weekly Hoover Institution broadcast, offers a spirited conversation about both today’s
events and what lies ahead. Join Hoover senior fellows John Cochrane, Niall Ferguson, and
H. R. McMaster as they discuss the social, economic, and geostrategic ramifications of our
changed world.
The Battlegrounds interview series focuses on leaders of key countries as they share their
views on problems and opportunities that touch on US foreign policy and national security.
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