The specific source is a day-long seminar held December 1 at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) on the campus of The Royal Institute of Technology entitled Afghanistan After 2014, which I attended.

The general source is the recent and current news of the world which has focused, again, more sharply on Afghanistan because of The announcement by President Obama that the US and NATO military forces will exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014; and, the convening of the Second Bonn Conference on Afghanistan held on 5 December 2011, ten years after the First Bonn Conference. In addition, there have been violent episodes within and without Afghanistan (in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan), even as I compose this article, that bode ill for a strong and peaceful Afghanistan while the foreign troops leave over the next two years.

I have a small authority having worked for thirty days in 2005 as a volunteer consultant in Afghanistan, in the provinces of Kunduz and Wardak. You can see images and some narrative from this visit here.

I will offer links to current news and other sources of information after I present this summary of the seminar.

Seminar Summary, Four Sessions
(Note: remarks attributed to the participants are transcriptions from my hand-written notes; any errors of fact and interpretation are mine).

Twelve experts and scholars provided a comprehensive look at the history, current issues and possible outcomes for Afghanistan and the region around it. I will identify the participants during the course of this article. The sponsoring agencies for the seminar were:

FOI (Swedish Defence Research Agency)
SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute)
UI (Swedish Institute of International Affairs)

First Session: Reconciliation and Peace—a Possibility?

Masood Aziz, former Afghan Diplomat in Washington, D.C. began the formal presentations.

Ten years have passed since the first Bonn Conference in 2001. The news is generally bad in evaluating these years in Afghanistan. There has been some progress, but the outlook is bleak. Mr. Aziz is pessimistic because the Afghan government is weak, corruption is rampant, and the international community is losing interest.

There is a state of crisis, currently. The Afghan government may collapse after NATO/ISAF troops leave by the end of 2014. The Current USA conversation with the Taliban is going nowhere. NATO lacks a credible plan for transition for after 2014.

With a weak central government, and its possible collapse, the strongest remaining institution will be the Afghan army. (Here Mr. Aziz was not explicit, but it was clear that the prospect of a military dictatorship, or of the military playing a dominant role such as in Pakistan, was on his mind).

Counter-insurgency has been the main purpose of NATO and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force of NATO), not nation-building.

What to do?

Generally:

• Redouble efforts to support and establish the legitimacy of the national government in the eyes of the Afghan people. If this confidence cannot be engendered, then collapse of the government is inevitable, with attendant violence between ethnicities and factions.
• Need to buttress the rule of law, versus the rule of men.
• Afghan security forces need to be at the service of the state.

From Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com)

Specifically:

Development of Afghanistan’s mineral resources may be the game changer, e.g., the Chinese-run copper mine and the Indian-run iron ore mine. However, the danger of the “resource curse” may be a down-side. A major portion of the state income from the development of natural resources should be directed as cash transfers to the people, as is done in other resource-rich countries such as Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Bolivia and Mongolia.

Mr. Aziz ended his prepared remarks thus:

The last ten years of NATO operations in Afghanistan have focused on strategic issues, mostly security. Since 2001 there has been a massive inflow of unconditional money from governments and NGOs causing the state to be dependent on these gifts. This is state-building from the outside, not from the inside and from the ground up via the people. Much of this money and other resources have flowed to former warlords.

Cash grants to the people from the income of natural resource development will force the government to rely on the people through the taxation of their income. This will also give new life and purpose to the National Solidarity Program and strengthen the governments and capabilities of the 34 provinces. Local communities will be empowered to take care of their own security and infrastructure projects. Not all security and infrastructure development need be performed by the national government.

Eva Johansson is head of the Afghanistan Section at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). Here are some of her points.

Children are the most often forgotten in the issues addressed. Additionally, SIDA is interested in helping women to participate in the formation of the country. Sweden, through SIDA, has increased its support of these issues to become the second largest donor. The emphasis on security and counter-insurgency has put the issues of women and children in lower priority, despite efforts of SIDA and UNICEF. SIDA continues to be concerned about the condition of women’s rights in Afghanistan.

In the Bazaar, Kunduz, June 2005

Peter Brune, Secretary General of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA/SAK). The Swedish Committee has 6300 people in 12 of the 34 provinces. SCA/SAK have been on the ground in Afghanistan since 1982, providing education and other developmental services to people in the villages (not in the capital, Kabul).

In responding to Mr. Aziz’s comments Mr. Brune said it was a “tough call” to say we’ve failed. Mr. Brune introduced the discussion point that ten years is not enough time. This point was taken up and further developed by other speakers who followed.

Mr. Brune made these other points:

• There needs to be a link between development and education.
• It’s important not to be “diplomatic” in assessing and addressing the problems. We need to examine and learn from failures.
• The state hasn’t failed yet. Girls are going to school; the army is being built, etc.
• Others should do more of what the Swedish Committee is doing. [Link to a Power Point Presentation showing some of what the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is doing]
• SCA/SAK has zero tolerance for weapons in schools. It’s important to separate the military from education and other efforts at the grass roots.
• We (NATO/ISAF, the Afghan government) are scrambling to build an army. Meanwhile the Afghan and Pakistan armies are facing each other on their common border.
• There will be consequences in building a strong army in a weak state (thus buttressing Mr. Aziz’s argument).
• What are the other institutions we can look to? The constitution, the executive and the parliament, none of which existed before the current government was established. [Note: he didn’t mention the judiciary, which is generally seen as corrupt and ineffective at the state level, although not necessarily at the local level).
• Important people and entities are not talking with each other. For example, the Supreme Commander of NATO forces and SIDA have never met.
• Real security is to strengthen the state.

Second Session: Reconciliation and Peace—a Possibility?

Robert Lamb is Director and Senior Fellow at Program on Crisis, Conflict and Cooperation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington D.C.

There have been talks about peace talks, but no peace talks. After the Taliban fell many soldiers and commanders went home without veterans’ benefits. Foes of the Taliban included the Northern Alliance, led primarily by warlords, some of whom are still in place.

In the 2001 Bonn Conference the Taliban were excluded and, since they had no part in the deliberations they have no stake in peace. Therefore, they went to Pakistan and became “insurgents”. The talks about peace talks continue, to date. Pakistan now demands to be part of the conversation.

Bad things began happening in 2010. An imposter apparently representing the Taliban conned the government of Afghanistan out of a lot of money, and created extreme embarrassment for all connected parties. In September of this year the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was been killed by a suicide attacker. He was meeting members of the Taliban at the time in an effort to negotiate toward peace talks.

It’s not clear what we can do to prevent civil war in Afghanistan. Former warlords, some of whom are now regional governors, are hoarding money and weapons.

We need to prevent the collapse of the Afghan state. (Non-military) development is important, “big time”, but will do no good if the government collapses. We need to keep the potential combatants (in a civil war) co-opted in the Afghan Government. This means tolerating “some very bad guys”.

thoseheadcoverings. blogspot.com

Helene Lackenbauer is an FOI analyst and former political aide to the Swedish Force Commander in Afghanistan.

There are very few possibilities leading toward peace. Who are the actors and what do we provide them? What are our prices for peace? Are we prepared to sell out women’s rights? What do we intend for the Taliban?

Mr. Brune responded: Afghanistan is at war. There are police, weapons, explosives and insurgents. The Taliban is not defined in any way. There can’t be a universal strategy; we have to address each group’s needs and grievances. Peace can be based on justice; all their rights have to be recognized and supported (implying the need for a strong and professional, not corrupt, national judiciary).

Robert Lamb “lifts the gloom”

• Eleven years ago Afghanistan was a medieval theocracy. How long does it take to for such a state to become a representative democracy?
• There is a civil service, although it is constantly raided for employees to the better paid NGOs and other private organizations.
• Free speech exists, even if it may be dangerous.
• There are radios and telephones.
• Most areas are less violent than Northern Mexico.
• Ten years is nothing in the history of nation building. Transitioning from Warlord rule to the rule of law doesn’t happen quickly or easily. Afghanistan is still in the warlord phase and will be for a long time.
• Seventy-five percent of Afghans think the government is doing a good job, although the jirgas have more effect at the local level. If the state isn’t there, they figure things out (at the local level).

[Here I am not sure whether Robert Lamb continues, or whether Peter Brune and perhaps others are responding]

• The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan has one-half million girls in school.
• Students have TV and radios.
• Rural areas are more negative on the future and are concerned about the return of the warlords.
• Afghanistan is ethnically divided and is waiting for the next war. If the Taliban returns, they will bring Taliban rules. (Taliban are fundamentalist Sunni Muslims mostly from the Pashtun tribe).

(Note: Languages are Dari (official) 50%, Pashto (official) 35%, Turkic languages 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%;  Ethnic groups are Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%. Religions are Sunni Muslim 80%, Shia Muslim 19%, other 1%.
[Source].

• (Upon the likely collapse of the national government) a new Northern Alliance will emerge to oppose the Taliban.
• The concerns of the people are: civil war, political collapse, financial crisis, jobs disappearing. The current president Hamid Karzai will not be running to succeed himself in the next election—who will rule? If the election collapses, who will emerge, and how?
• Governors are more powerful than the national government in the eyes of the people. When the Soviets left there was chaos. Will there be the same again? After the Soviets left it was worse than with the Soviets.
• People in Kabul are more positive. Children are always more positive (Note: the median age is 18 years: source).

Ann Wilkens, former Swedish ambassador to Pakistan and former Chairman of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, emphasized the point that there is not a unified Taliban group in Afghanistan. There are splinter groups, some interested in insurgency, some in drug traffic and some with other aims, for instance relating to religious practice.

Masood Aziz augmented this observation by noting there is a spectrum of different groups and there is a problem in assessing the association of any of them with Al Qaeda, which is of non-afghan origin led by non-Afghans. In addition, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the past and present leader of the Afghan Taliban, has been hiding out in Pakistan, even when he was head of state during the time when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

Middle East expert at UI Magnus Norell raised the question of the current objective of the Taliban. He suggested they want influence in the current processes addressing the future of Afghanistan. Ann Wilkens asserted that the institution of Sharia law is their objective. Norell said that these were not mutually exclusive.

Masood Aziz said this is not a valid question because there is no unified Taliban. He further noted that strict Sharia law alienated Afghans during their Taliban rule. Afghans felt an alien force took over their state. Mullah Omar, who has no stated or known religious education or lineage, alienated Afghan tribal leaders during his rule.

Kabul, June 2005

Third Session: Counter-insurgency

Context:

• “All the bad stuff” is located in Pakistan: the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network, for instance.
• The tribal and other leaders in Afghanistan have a common enemy in the various Taliban entities, but have no common strategy.
• The stated US objective is to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda. Is it working, or should the US change its objective? President Obama has shifted the focus to counter-insurgency.

Stefan Olsson of the FOI stated the problem with counter-insurgency is that it will take ten years to wipe out the insurgents. There is too little time for this (by the end of 2014) and it won’t work.

Harsh Pant of King’s College, London, said the current tension between the US and Pakistan over insurgents in Pakistan will come to a head as a result of a vicious cycle.

Masood Aziz said that the US military has ever-changing nomenclature for what it is they are doing. “Stability” is now in vogue. Previously it was “Clear/Hold/Build/Transfer”. Before that it was “Fight/Talk/Build”.

Military officers are talking to village elders about democracy; they aren’t experts in this. The US military is trying to embed itself in the culture and change it from the inside. It won’t work.

Stefan Olsson said “counter-insurgency is not nation-building”.

We have to realize our limitations in using only the military to bring “stability”.

Question posed to the panel: Will Afghan security forces be able to fill the vacuum left by the NATO/ISAF departure?

One response: The Afghan people would like the troops to leave, but “not too quickly”.

Stefan Olsson: The Swedish government doesn’t know what the end state should be, or when.  The USA seems to want to fight the insurgents to the negotiating table.

In the Afghan security forces the Army officers are from the former Northern Alliance; that is, they are not of the Pashtun tribe as is the majority of the government officers. The Army may not feel itself subservient to a weak national government.

Other responses:

In that the USA/NATO have announced a time certain by which their troops will leave, the Taliban is in a position to wait to intensify their incursions.

The USA needs to stay after 2014, in some fashion, to deal with other countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

Neither the USA nor NATO has a strategy for filling the vacuum created by their departure.

Question from the audience: Can and will India be a force for good in Afghanistan?

Masood Aziz: Pakistan seems to want the opposite of what everybody else wants in Afghanistan. India, which is right next door, is the world’s largest democracy. In contrast, the military dominates Pakistan, but is not all-powerful because of the influence of organized groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which wants to oust the US-backed Pakistani government.

In response to another question regarding the possible role of the EU, Mr. Masood said that the EU has the talent and moral foundation to help build infrastructure for Afghanistan. As an example of “moral force” he recited a story of how a US Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s left an indelible impression on a now elderly man in a remote village.

Chief Engineer, local construction engineer, and driver -- employees of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, 2005

Fourth and Final Session: Geopolitics and the Regional Dynamics

Context: There has been a change in the global balance of power from West to East, in operational terms. The center of world politics has been Europe, but now is moving toward Asia/China.

Harsh Pant of King’s College, London opened the session.

American priorities are changing: Afghanistan is not as important as before, as China emerges as a priority.

Global priorities are going to be influenced/centered in Asia/Pacific.

Pakistan now realizes that it is not the most important ally the USA has in its region. The USA sees India as its most important ally vis-à-vis China, and Islamabad (Pakistan’s capital) is worried. Pakistan has to hedge its bets; it needs a friendly Kabul (Capital of Afghanistan) so as not to be flanked by enemies—India to the east and Afghanistan to the west.

Pakistan’s self-identity seems to have been that it is not India. The Pakistan military has never won a war, but the Pakistan army points the people of Pakistan to India for its raison d’être as an army. Pakistan has tried to marginalize India in insisting they not be included in Afghan talks. Washington finally realized that Pakistan was playing a double game.

India realized this marginalization and now has decided to invest in Afghanistan (refer to the previously mentioned iron ore mine in Hajigak). Additionally, India has been reaching toward Russia and Iran, both of which flank Afghanistan. India likes a western presence in Afghanistan, but Russia and Iran don’t—but India balances this somehow.

China is feeling encircled by the USA. They are reluctant to talk with the USA about Afghanistan and Pakistan. They don’t want to compromise their relationship with Pakistan.

Current events reveal a conflict between the USA and Pakistan, a symptom of the underlying problem of Pakistan’s feeling of isolation and loss of importance to the USA.

Neil J. Melvin, Director of the Armed Conflict and Conflict Management Programme at SIPRI, responded:

The USA is drawing closer to its Asia/pacific allies and courting new ones such as Burma. Therefore, Afghanistan will remain important to the USA in this context, but where does Afghanistan fit? We don’t know yet.

Russia is courting Afghanistan by encouraging it toward the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (The six-nation SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan attend its meetings as observers. Source).

Harsh Pant added that Pakistan’s uncertainty about the USA’s intentions makes it difficult for them to know how to act.

Former Swedish Ambassador to Pakistan Ann Wilkens stated that the sequencing of events is unfortunate for Pakistan. There are conflicting messages to and from all players in the region. What does the USA want? She noted that the Pakistan army was built by the USA.

Magnus Norell:  A report of the US Marines recommended forgetting nation building and to leave just a small counter-terrorism force in Afghanistan. It should be treated by the USA as a “marginal country”. We’re reading too much importance into it. You can’t solve Afghanistan unless you deal successfully with Pakistan. Let’s not look at Afghanistan as a regional issue. Keep it local.

From the moderator: From the perspective of Iran and Pakistan (which have long borders with Afghanistan) why is everyone waiting to see what the USA is going to do?  The USA doesn’t have the leverage for a regional solution.

Neil J. Melvin: it is a dilemma. Russia, Iran and others want the USA out, but no-one else has the strength to do anything constructive on a regional basis. Iran has around three million Afghan refugees and doesn’t like the Taliban. There needs to be trust building between nations in the region. China is interested in stability and doesn’t want attacks from terrorists, so it keeps a low profile. One of China’s important interests in stability is due to the question of whether to build an additional gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China through Afghanistan.

From the moderator: the world economy affects Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan and things are looking austere for these countries. How does this factor into the regional issues?

Answer from panel: if the world and local economy were better, it still wouldn’t solve Afghanistan’s problem which is one of governance.

Last question form the moderator: What should we do? What should we focus on?

Reponses from the panel:

• The West should continue to support Afghanistan economically.
• Donor nations need more humility in their approach to Afghanistan.
• Get out and stay out, militarily.
• Spend aid on education, etc.
• Don’t pull out (the military) gradually.

The moderators were:

Nathalie Besèr is Advisor to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI)

John Rydqvist is Head of the Asia Security Studies Program at FOI.

END OF CONFERENCE

Links to information sources:

NATO in Afghanistan
Terrorism and Insurgency
Al‐Qaeda and Afghanistan in Strategic Context: Counterinsurgency versus Counterterrorism
The Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) and the Haqqani network pose the greatest threat to stability in Afghanistan
Quetta Shura Taliban
Haqqani Network
Mullah Mohammed Omar
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP)
Purdah
The pragmatic fanaticism of al Qaeda: an anatomy of extremism in Middle Eastern politics.
NATO/ISAF history and facts about its troops

Links to recent and current news affecting Afghanistan and the region

Afghan National Army prepares for life after NATO
‘West must see Afghan job through’, military chief says
Pakistani Taliban splintering into factions
Afghan Peace Effort Hits Wall
Attacks Point to New Afghan Conflict: Bombings of Shiite Worshippers in Two Cities Kill More Than 60 and Introduce Sectarian Strife Absent for a Decade
Kabul Promises Change, Gets Vow of Lasting Aid
A Counterinsurgency Success in Kandahar
Afghan opium production to expand after troops exit
Hornets’ nest: Why Pakistan may be America’s most dangerous ally
Pakistan Was Consulted Before Fatal Hit, U.S. Says; Deadly Border Strike Came After Forces Were Told Area Was Clear of Pakistani Troops, Officials Say
There Are No Moderate Taliban; the people of Afghanistan understand that accommodating the Taliban will result in fear and chaos.
India Wins Bid for ‘Jewel’ of Afghan Ore Deposits

Yevgeniya Albats

My article today will recount the facts, opinions and assertions that Albats offered during a seminar at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs on 15 November 2011. After her presentation a three-person panel, described below, responded to her talk and to questions from the audience.

Vladimir Putin was in office as president of the Russian Federation 7 May 2000 – 7 May 2008. On 8 May 2000, the second day of his first four-year term, he issued a secret decree (ukase) which gave him control over the nation’s alcohol production, then the second largest industry in Russia. Thus began a series of moves which ultimately put into the hands of the president, the governmental apparatus reporting to him, and indirectly and privately through close associates and family, around 15% of the current gross domestic product (GDP) of the nation. The CIA’s 2010 estimate of Russia’s GDP is US$1.465 trillion, so if Albats’s assertion is close to correct, the annual revenues controlled, directly and indirectly, by Putin are around US$220 billion.

Albats presented a chart showing, among others, these additional industries under direct or indirect control: financial services, oil/petroleum, railroads and other transport, construction, metal production, energy, chemicals, media, telecoms, and sport. Most important is that all the industries serving the military are under state control. These are not all owned by the state. Others are  controlled through the state regulatory agencies and through ownership by Putin’s circle of associates, including family. (The three groups through which Putin exercises influence and control are discussed further below)

Vladimir Putin, Past president of Russia, Current Prime Minister, and... future President?

The Russian Duma, equivalent to the lower house in a bicameral legislature, has been made powerless to control the cash flow of state run enterprises. One result of this concentration of control and resultant power is that Putin and his inner circle have become extremely wealthy.

Putin’s presidency ended, per the Russian Constitution, after he completed his second term. His hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, appointed Putin as Prime Minster (formally, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation) which position he still occupies.

In September of this year, President Medvedev announced he had decided not to run for a second term, and put forth Mr. Putin as his choice for the next president in the election to be held on 4 March 2012. Mr. Putin announced his intention to stand for President on 24 September.

This announcement, which serves notice that Putin will, in fact, become the president via the next national election has dismayed many people inside and outside Russia, not the least of whom is the speaker at this conference, Yevgeniya Albats. She refuses to use the term “election” in her news magazine saying “the word ‘election’ implies ‘choice’, but there is effectively no choice in Russia today”.

In the British news magazine The Economist, writer E.L. states “… Mr Putin, a former KGB officer, remade Russian politics in his own image after coming to power. He harassed and jailed opponents and confiscated their energy and media assets; he created a political system in which important elections always go the authorities’ way. The upcoming ones will be no exception…” (Source: The return of the man who never left, Sep 24th 2011).

Neil Buckley of The (UK) Fianancial Times reported from Moscow “… Mr Putin is coming back for a third presidential term, Russia’s intellectual and business elites, at least, are no longer sure this is a good thing. Debates at last week’s annual Valdai Discussion Club, a Putin initiative dating from 2004 that brings together top foreign and domestic specialists on Russia, revealed deep unease… (Excerpted from Rising unease over Putin’s return, 16 November 2011).

How does Putin gain and maintain control of the state apparatus and assets? Through three groups of people:

Siloviki (described below); members of a housing cooperative of which he is a founding member (Ozero); and, his extended family.

The Siloviki

Silovik is a Russian word for politicians from the security or military services, often the officers of the former KGB, the FSB, the Federal Narcotics Control Service and military or other security services who came into power. It can also refer to security-service personnel from any country or nationality. (Source).

“… The most commonly encountered description of the siloviki, a group of current and former Intelligence officers from Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg who wield immense power within the Kremlin and control key sectors of the Russian economy, is both incomplete and misleading. The siloviki clan’s core members—Igor Sechin, deputy head of the presidential administration; Viktor Ivanov, an adviser to the president; and Nikolai Patrushev, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—more or less fit this profile. Surrounding these powerbrokers, however, is a network of individuals who do not. Associates of Sechin, Ivanov, and Patrushev hold top positions not only in the Kremlin and government ministries, but also in the second tier of the bureaucracy, state-owned enterprises, and private companies…” (excerpted from The Siloviki in Putin’s Russia: Who They Are and What They Want, by Ian Bremmer and Samuel Charap).

Ozero

Ozero is a co-operative society allegedly instituted on November 10, 1996 by Vladimir Smirnov (head), Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Yury Kovalchuk, Viktor Myachin, and Nikolay Shamalov. The society united their dachas in Solovyovka, Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, which is located on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near Saint Petersburg. (Source)

I speculate that one or both of these compounds on the southeastern shore of Lake Komsomolskoye is “The Ozero”. Click on the picture for greater detail.

By now, its shareholders have assumed top positions in Russian government and business. As of 2008, Vladimir Putin is the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Yakunin is the Head of Russian Railways, Andrei Fursenko is the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Sergey Fursenko is a brother of Andrei Fursenko, the Director-General of Lentransgaz and the President of the Football Club Zenit (St. Petersburg), Yury Kovalchuk is the Head of the Board of Directors and a major shareholder of the Russia bank, Viktor Myachin is its former Director General (1995-1998, 1999-2004), Nikolay Shamalov and Vladimir Smirnov are prominent businessmen. (Source).

Putin’s Extended Family

Yevgeniya Albats did not dwell on this group, merely mentioning that “nephews” and others hold middle or higher level positions in the state government. The Internet does not quickly offer insight into Putin’s family, except for this from Wikipedia:

On 28 July 1983 Putin married Kaliningrad-born Lyudmila Shkrebneva, at that time an undergraduate student of the Spanish branch of the Philology Department of the Leningrad State University and a former Aeroflot flight attendant. They have two daughters, Mariya Putina (born 28 April 1985 in St. Petersburg) and Yekaterina Putina (born 31 August 1986 in Dresden). The daughters grew up in East Germany and attended the German School in Moscow until his appointment as Prime Minister. After that they studied international economics at the Finance Academy in Moscow. Vladimir’s cousin Igor Putin is a director of Master Bank.

Other methods of control are open to see. On 28 December 2004, the Los Angeles Times Wire Reports stated that “President Vladimir V. Putin set rules for naming Russia’s regional governors after pushing through a law that abolished their direct election. Putin signed the decree that gives the presidential chief of staff the task of drawing up and submitting lists of gubernatorial candidates to the president.” (Source: Putin Signs Decree on Naming of Governors).

Click on the image to view it more clearly

All the people who surround or are connected with Putin depend on him, in varying degrees, for maintaining their positions and lifestyle. Thus they have an interest in him staying in power. As Albats put it, “ it’s hard to break his spell over them” because they will lose power if he leaves the stage. And, by the nature of how he has gained power, he has trapped himself into continuing to do what he has been doing. He and his apparent stooge, Medvedev, have talked about reform, but little has been done in this regard.

Meanwhile, according to Albats: 2000 former business leaders are in labor camps and jails; 80% of all the top dogs in government are ex-KGB employees; the 83 regions keep only 30% of the taxes they collect and must send 70% to the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation is the effective ruler of every subordinate political jurisdiction.

In addition, Putin’s bullying of, and alleged murders of, independent commentators and journalists is notorious:

“The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 shocked the world. ‘Yet for every Anna, there have been many less widely known journalists killed for their work across Russia,’ says the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in a groundbreaking report on the 313 Russian journalists killed since 1993.” (Source: More than 300 journalists killed in Russia since 1993, says joint report).

Russian human rights activists place flowers at a portrait of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on October 7, 2009 during a rally on the third anniversary of her death at the hands of an unknown gunman. (Source: www.lecourrierderussie.com/2011/08/25/)

Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister of Russia and current opposition leader, suggested in a 2011 interview that only those in Ozero really support Putin any more: “Everyone is unhappy with Putin, save perhaps his closest friends, members of the so-called Ozero dacha cooperative [...] In only a few years these fellows turned from medium-sized entrepreneurs into dollar billionaires. For example, the Kovalchuk brothers have seized power over Gazprom; the KGB veteran Gennady Timchenko is now a trader who controls 40 percent of all crude oil exports; Putin’s former (martial arts) coaches, the Rotenberg brothers, continue to get lucrative contracts, and there are a few more people like this.” (Source).

In concluding her formal remarks, Yevgeniya Albats said these things (from my written notes):

Despite everything she has “hope”, but this is in her nature. People are getting sick and tired of seeing the same old faces in positions of power on TV and elsewhere. Rural people are offended by Putin’s “coming back”. Young people are angry at Putin’s announced return and are wondering whether to leave Russia. Only 36% of the people have access to the Internet, but as more come on line they will be able to connect with others who are dissatisfied with the regime.

The program ended with remarks from a panel of experts:

· Lena Jonson, Head of the Russia Research Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs

· Carolina Vendil Pallin, Head of the Russia Research Programme at the Swedish Defence Research Agency

· Torbjörn Becker, Director, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics

· The moderator was Nathalie Besèr, Advisor to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs

Lena Jonson addressed the issue of Russian stagnation because its closed system is resistant to change. She asked Albats her opinion on the likely source of the possible collapse of the Putin regime. Albats responded by saying that there will likely be a confrontation over control of resources, especially form the trade unions, and, there are signs of cleavages inside the elite groups. There are no institutional avenues to accommodate necessary change, therefore action in the street such as currently in Tunisia and Egypt becomes more likely.

Carolina Vendil Pallin focused on the writings of the elite, especially through blogs. She sees that these elite feel “humiliated” by Putin’s actions and style of governance. She sees that growing Internet accdess wil play an important role in creating necessary change. (Personal Note: the Samizdat in the Soviet Union and European communist eastern states played a similar role).

Albats agreed and said that the PR of the Kremlin is out of synch with the rest of society. She said that Putin is aware of this but seems powerless to bridge the gap. He has tried shallow things such as trying to appear more youthful, through plastic surgery and public display of his athleticism, but these are not working. More than anything, there is loss of confidence in public institutions, especially the judiciary.

This could all lead to a collapse of the state, “which would be dangerous to other people, including you guys” (indicating the audience of, mostly, Swedes.

Torbjörn Becker pointed out that Russia looks “relatively OK economically” and still has general political support as a result. Albats agreed that economic times were (relatively) good in Russia right now, but Putin will not reform. She cited others who have heard Putin say that once you start reform, there is no way back, and he (Putin) used Mikhail Gorbachev (the last head of state of the Soviet Union) as an example as what he did not want to do. The growing middle class will put pressure on the current system to reform. The Russian economy has improved due mostly from the rise in the market price of crude oil. The grass roots issue is not economic, but one of representation.

Some final remarks by Yevgeniya Albats in response questions from the audience’s questions:

Putin sees the West as Russia’s enemy, especially the USA.

Putin wants to re-create the Imperial Empire, but it is not possible because of resistance in the “Stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

Despite her native optimism, Yevgeniya Albats is afraid that Russia has lost its opportunity to change peacefully.

(Former President) Jefferson… maintained that the national and state governments were ‘as independent, in fact, as different nations,’ and that the function of one was foreign and that of the other was domestic. President Madison still declared that Congress could not build a road or clear a watercourse; while Congress believed itself authorized to do both, and in that belief passed a law which Madison vetoed. (Source).

Why am I bringing this up 224 years after the adoption of our Constitution? Hasn’t the primacy of the Federal government in almost all matters been settled? Perhaps not. See these recent headlines, and the articles under the links:

• Arizona Senate Passes Bill to Let State Nullify Federal Laws
• 12 States Have Bills to Nullify ObamaCare
• Health Overhaul Heads to Justices

Sitting Supreme Court Justices, 2011

After the successful Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by the Continental Congress in 1776, eleven years passed before the delegates from the 13 former colonies, now “states”, adopted the US Constitution. The USA was governed during these eleven years by a series of Continental Congresses, each with a presiding officer, or “President”, under the rules of governance as contained in The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between The States.

Many of the delegates from the new states were dissatisfied with the Articles. In May, 1787, a remarkable group of men began publishing a series of 85 pseudonymous monographs in the New York press, under the general heading of The Federalist. These are now famously known as The Federalist Papers. The authors, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, advanced their criticisms and recommendations for improvement in the Articles that were “adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union”.

Fearing a return to British-style despotism, some other people, mostly from Virginia, started publishing responses to the Federalist articles, now known as the Anti-Federalist Papers. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried that the position of president in the proposed constitution would lead to a monarchy. Jefferson was sympathetic to the Anti-Federalists.

The Federalists won public support and the Constitution was passed, along with ten amendments, the 9^th and 10^th of which were advanced by those with Anti-Federalist sentiments.

Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to theUnited Statesby the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Source: chogger.com

George Washington wanted a strong central government but he recognized there was danger in appearing as a monarch. During his eight years as the first president, famously saying his title should be “Mr. President”, he said and did as little as possible and deferred where and when possible to the houses of Congress. He did institute the system of departmental “secretaries” in a “Cabinet”, to which he delegated almost completely, including Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State.

As members of Washington’s cabinet Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton argued over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war. Jefferson later compared Hamilton and the Federalists with “Royalism”, and stated the “Hamiltonians were panting after…crowns, coronets and mitres.” Due to their opposition to Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party… Jefferson’s political actions, and his attempt to undermine Hamilton, nearly led George Washington to dismiss Jefferson from his cabinet. Though Jefferson left the cabinet voluntarily, Washington never forgave him, and never spoke to him again.” (Source)

Shortly before Washington’s Vice President and successor left his presidential office, John Adams appointed John Marshall, a Federalist, to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, intending that Marshall should provide a check against the “Jacobin” (i.e., revolutionary) and “democratic” (used as a term of opprobrium by Federalists) tendencies of the incoming President Jefferson. Marshall served 35 years and did indeed perform this function:

The Marshall Courtmade several important decisions relating to federalism, affecting the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law, and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers. (Source).

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, 1801-1835

There still is much argument within and without the courts whether states can effectively nullify any given federal statute. We may well see this decided, again, by the sitting Supreme Court within a few years as the state actions quoted above, and others, are played out in the courts.

How do these states presume to “nullify” existing, or even future, federal legislation? Where does this notion of “nullification” come from? From resolutions, written by Jefferson and Madison, and adopted by two states: the Virginia Resolution of 1798, and the Kentucky Resolution of 1799 wherein the states said they deemed the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional and would not recognize them, or any other unconstitutional law, as binding on the states or their citizens. The issue was never brought to a head and the four Acts either were repealed or expired during Jefferson’s administration.

There have been several other important attempts by states (and the Cherokee Nation) to nullify federal laws, but these have either been made moot by changing circumstances or have been denied by the Supreme Court.

It should be noted that the primacy of the federal government was greatly strengthened through the prosecution and eventual result of the “war between the states”.

A broader view of the relationship between the center of government and the people, from comments by a friend and correspondent, Jay Michlin of San Mateo, California:

An even more interesting question is not just about states versus Washington, D.C., but also about the competing virtues of individual and local liberty versus all forms of centralized governance.

These include questions regarding when individuals should retain autonomy, with neither guidance nor coercion from any governing entity, whether city, state or federal. It includes matters about which cities or towns ought to retain jurisdiction, without interference from state governments. And it includes states rights versus the federal government too.

At one extreme, Jefferson had little trust in governments. He wanted whatever government may be necessary to be as close as possible to citizens, and as much as possible under their control. We denote this with the term “Jeffersonian democracy“. The loose association of states under the Articles of Confederation enacted this concept and was ultimately seen as a failure.

Hamilton saw no way to allow the country to succeed as a loose federation without a potent central government. Yet he too understood the risks of ceding too much power to any government, and he further understood that it would be an exceedingly hard sell to a population fresh from revolution against governance by an unaccountable entity at a great distance—London. He, Jay and Madison wrote The Federalist Papers as a series to sell the idea of a more powerful central government, and more important, to allay citizens’ fears that it would become a tyranny enslaving them.

Busts of Jefferson and Hamilton, which Jefferson placed on opposite sides of the entrance hall at Monticello. This arrangement, he told visitors, showed them "opposed in death as in life". (mahg/ashland/edu)

The Bill of Rights was a political compromise along this order. Hamiltonians rightly said that no such bill was needed since the body of the Constitution rigorously enumerated the powers of the central government. But Jeffersonians didn’t trust a central government and insisted that rights be explicitly spelled out, even if redundant.

As we now know from the vantage point of more than 200 years, the Hamiltonians were right in theory, but the Jeffersonians were right in practice. And this underscores the remarkable gift the Founders gave us in the Constitution. It began with rigorous theory based on studies of governments from ancient times, to-date, then overlaid and strengthened these with brilliant insights into human nature, as the millennia have also taught us.

The Founders understood that the allocation of central authority versus local autonomy would forever be a tense and contentious matter, with each side vying for power. They knew they could not enshrine a division for time immemorial, and they perceived that the resolution would inevitably be political. So they gave us a framework by which each generation could make prudent decisions, with checks and balances to constrain either extreme from wresting definitive control.

Other societies have regularly suffered the same tensions, and usually resolved them by wars of one sort or another. The genius of our Founders is to have bequeathed us a system where we fight the battles politically and rhetorically and, therefore, peacefully.

Ending Summary and Comment

The question remains: how much power must and should the central government retain and exercise to fulfill the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the purposes of U.S. Constitution; and, how much power should be retained by the states to assure the liberties of people residing within each of them—all 50?

The Federalists (later, Republicans) didn’t trust the people and even used the word “democracy” and its derivatives disparagingly. The Anti-Federalists (later, the Democratic-Republicans and, still later, the Democrats) didn’t trust a strong central government, feeling it would lead to the despotism they fought against in order to be free of Great Britain and its hierarchies of power: king, church, aristocracy.

Current day Democrats have been successful in directing more power to the federal government in the name of “fairness” and other abstractions aimed at leveling social and economic disparities among classes of people.

Most elements of the current Republican Party, especially the Libertarian wing, see great danger in the power that has accrued to Washington, D.C. in the past Century.

The historical ironies presented here are worth contemplating. As Mr. Michlin points out, the amazing flexibility of our system allows for such shifts of political perspectives.

For example, without a strong central government would we have had the necessary attention paid to the inequities of “Jim Crow” in most of the southern states?

On the other hand, how far must and should the central government protect us from ourselves in matters of diet and behavior, for instance, without infantilizing the citizenry?

How do you see it?

The following four statements are mine alone:

- Do not accept anything written or said in the contexts described above.

- “Science” is not a thing, or a person, or group of persons which shows anything, or takes any action, or has an opinion.

- What any purported group of scientists “says” is inappropriate to quote, other than from a publication deemed “scientific”, and in the exact language in such a publication.

- Especially discard as false anything a scientist says or is quoted as saying if it contains any variant of the verb ‘to believe’.

How do I justify these dicta? So glad you asked.

What is “science”?

Here is what certain people whom we can comfortably label “scientists” have said:

Fiction is about the suspension of disbelief; science is about the suspension of belief.
— James Porter, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor, Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, USA

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
—Richard Feynman, Nobel-prize-winning physicist

So, suspend your beliefs and develop your skepticism if you wish to be a scientist. Note: Classical philosophical skepticism derives from the Skeptikoi (Greek), a school who “asserted nothing”. (Source).

Fundamental to all “scientific” inquiries is the concept of empiricism:

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. (Source).

Which now brings us to the heart of the matter: The Scientific Method.

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses…

Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results…

(T)he process must be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established….(Source)

There you have it.

But wait! There’s more!!

I recently came across the newspaper article, Fraud in a lab coat. At the end, the writer, Gareth Cook, states: “We need to do better. Science is a quest for the truth. And to know what is true, one must know what is false.”

Is science, indeed, a quest for “truth”?

Karl Popper (Source: http://ub.uni-klu.ac.at/)

Here is what British philosopher of science Karl Popper says on this:

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a “body of knowledge”, but rather as a system of hypotheses, or as a system of guesses or anticipations that in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are “true” . . . (Emphasis added). —Karl R. Popper (1902-1994), The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

So, don’t “believe” in science.

A belief system is (comprised of) ideas that are taken on faith and cannot be scientifically tested. (Source).

I assert that, as compared with the realm of science, a belief system is a relatively closed system. The realm of science cannot be closed or complete. There is always more to doubt, more to hypothesize, more to discover, more to test.

To be fair to the conscientious scientist who is, after all, a human being with desires and goals, I here quote my friend Vasil, a retired MD, PhD psychopharmacologist who spent many productive years in clinical research. He responded to my arguments that a scientist can’t properly believe in anything when pursuing the proof of a hypothesis: “I’m sure that it is true, but not sure that it is absolutely true.”

Finally, I assert that to believe in anything is not a bad thing. Each of us has our set and systems of beliefs. Most of us in any given locale share these beliefs (whether or not we recognize them consciously as such) or the local society tends to disintegrate and disperse.

What a scientist must do, and very difficult it is, is to consciously identify her or his set or system of beliefs and to suspend it in the pursuit of new information about the universe.

“…the ideal of scientific neutrality is itself, like all other ideals, a human invention. And like other human ideals, it is subject to abuse if its character and function are misconceived.” – Philip H. Rhinelander (1908—1987), philosopher, Stanford professor emeritus, and former dean of the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences.

NB: In the spirit of full disclosure, which is a requirement in any scientific paper (see above), I offer this: Regarding Belief, in the Realm of the Religious or Spiritual.

All of the following was written by someone else. I have performed a small amount of formatting and editing to promote clarity.

—

Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists.^[1] It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the [UN’s] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia.^[2] Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside of China have signed the charter.^[3][4] One of the authors of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. [Source]

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THE MANIFESTO

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I. Foreword

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A hundred years have passed since the writing of China’s first constitution. 2008 also marks the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the [United Nations] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the thirtieth anniversary of the appearance of Democracy Wall in Beijing, and the tenth of China’s signing of the [United Nations] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the 1989Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy student protesters. The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.

By departing from these values, the Chinese government’s approach to “modernization” has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse. So we ask: Where is China headed in the twenty-first century? Will it continue with “modernization” under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system?

There can be no avoiding these questions. The shock of the Western impact upon China in the nineteenth century laid bare a decadent authoritarian system and marked the beginning of what is often called “the greatest changes in thousands of years” for China. A “self-strengthening movement” followed, but this aimed simply at appropriating the technology to build gunboats and other Western material objects. China’s humiliating naval defeat at the hands of Japan in1895 only confirmed the obsolescence of China’s system of government.

The first attempts at modern political change came with the ill-fated summer of reforms in 1898, but these were cruelly crushed by ultraconservatives at China’s imperial court. With the revolution of 1911, which inaugurated Asia’s first republic, the authoritarian imperial system that had lasted for centuries was finally supposed to have been laid to rest. But social conflict inside our country and external pressures were to prevent it; China fell into a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms and the new republic became a fleeting dream.

The failure of both “self-strengthening” and political renovation caused many of our forebears to reflect deeply on whether a “cultural illness” was afflicting our country. This mood gave rise, during the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s, to the championing of “science and democracy.” Yet that effort, too, foundered as warlord chaos persisted and the Japanese invasion [beginning in Manchuria in 1931] brought national crisis.

Victory over Japan in 1945 offered one more chance for China to move toward modern government, but the Communist defeat of the Nationalists in the civil war thrust the nation into the abyss of totalitarianism. The “new China” that emerged in 1949 proclaimed that “the people are sovereign” but in fact set up a system in which “the Party is all-powerful.”

The Communist Party of China seized control of all organs of the state and all political, economic, and social resources, and, using these, has produced a long trail of human rights disasters, including, among many others, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), the June Fourth (Tiananmen Square) Massacre (1989), and the current repression of all unauthorized religions and the suppression of the Weiquan Rights Movement.

During all this, the Chinese people have paid a gargantuan price. Tens of millions have lost their lives, and several generations have seen their freedom, their happiness, and their human dignity cruelly trampled. During the last two decades of the twentieth century the government policy of “Reform and Opening” gave the Chinese people relief from the pervasive poverty and totalitarianism of the Mao Zedong era and brought substantial increases in the wealth and living standards of many Chinese as well as a partial restoration of economic freedom and economic rights.

Civil society began to grow, and popular calls for more rights and more political freedom have grown apace. As the ruling elite itself moved toward private ownership and the market economy, it began to shift from an outright rejection of “rights” to a partial acknowledgment of them. In 1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase “respect and protect human rights”; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a “national human rights action plan.”

Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written. The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power and fights off any move toward political change. The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.

As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we seethe powerless in our society²the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas²becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions. The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional.

II. Our Fundamental Principles

This is a historic moment for China, and our future hangs in the balance. In reviewing the political modernization process of the past hundred years or more, we reiterate and endorse basic universal values as follows:

Freedom
Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.

Human rights
Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China’s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime’s disregard for human rights.

Equality
The integrity, dignity, and freedom of every person regardless of social station, occupation, sex, economic condition, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or political belief²are the same as those of any other. Principles of equality before the law and equality of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights must be upheld.

Republicanism
Republicanism, which holds that power should be balanced among different branches of government and competing interests should be served, resembles the traditional Chinese political ideal of “fairness in all under heaven.” It allows different interest groups and social assemblies, and people with a variety of cultures and beliefs, to exercise democratic self-government and to deliberate in order to reach peaceful resolution of public questions on a basis of equal access to government and free and fair competition.

Democracy
The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign and the people select their government. Democracy has these characteristics: (1) Political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people. (2) Political power is exercised through choices that the people make. (3) The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections. (4) While honoring the will of the majority, the fundamental dignity, freedom, and human rights of minorities are protected. In short, democracy is a modern means for achieving government truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Constitutional rule
Constitutional rule is rule through a legal system and legal regulations to implement principles that are spelled out in a constitution. It means protecting the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power, and providing the administrative apparatus necessary to serve these ends.

III. What We Advocate

Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an “enlightened overlord” or an “honest official” and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty. Accordingly, and in a spirit of this duty as responsible and constructive citizens, we offer the following recommendations on national governance, citizens’ rights, and social development:

1. A New Constitution
We should recast our present constitution, rescinding its provisions that contradict the principle that sovereignty resides with the people and turning it into a document that genuinely guarantees human rights, authorizes the exercise of public power, and serves as the legal underpinning of China’s democratization. The constitution must be the highest law in the land, beyond violation by any individual, group, or political party.

2. Separation of powers
We should construct a modern government in which the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive power is guaranteed. We need an Administrative Law that defines the scope of government responsibility and prevents abuse of administrative power. Government should be responsible to taxpayers. Division of power between provincial governments and the central government should adhere to the principle that central powers are only those specifically granted by the constitution and all other powers belong to the local governments.

3. Legislative democracy
Members of legislative bodies at all levels should be chosen by direct election, and legislative democracy should observe just and impartial principles.

4. An Independent Judiciary
The rule of law must be above the interests of any particular political party and judges must be independent. We need to establish a constitutional supreme court and institute procedures for constitutional review. As soon as possible, we should abolish all of the Committees on Political and Legal Affairs that now allow Communist Party officials at every level to decide politically-sensitive cases in advance and out of court. We should strictly forbid the use of public offices for private purposes.

5. Public Control of Public Servants
The military should be made answerable to the national government, not to a political party, and should be made more professional. Military personnel should swear allegiance to the constitution and remain nonpartisan. Political party organizations shall be prohibited in the military.

All public officials including police should serve as nonpartisans, and the current practice of favoring one political party in the hiring of public servants must end.

6. Guarantee of Human Rights
There shall be strict guarantees of human rights and respect for human dignity. There should be a Human Rights Committee, responsible to the highest legislative body that will prevent the government from abusing public power in violation of human rights. A democratic and constitutional China especially must guarantee the personal freedom of citizens. No one shall suffer illegal arrest, detention, arraignment, interrogation, or punishment. The system of “Reeducation through Labor” must be abolished.

7. Election of Public Officials
There shall be a comprehensive system of democratic elections based on “one person, one vote.” The direct election of administrative heads at the levels of county, city, province, and nation should be systematically implemented. The rights to hold periodic free elections and to participate in them as a citizen are inalienable.

8. Rural/Urban Equality
The two-tier household registry system must be abolished. This system favors suburban residents and harms rural residents. We should establish instead a system that gives every citizen the same constitutional rights and the same freedom to choose where to live.

9. Freedom to Form Groups
The right of citizens to form groups must be guaranteed. The current system for registering nongovernment groups, which requires a group to be “approved,” should be replaced by a system in which a group simply registers itself. The formation of political parties should be governed by the constitution and the laws, which means that we must abolish the special privilege of one party to monopolize power and must guarantee principles of free and fair competition among political parties.

10. Freedom to Assemble
The constitution provides that peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, and freedom of expression are fundamental rights of a citizen. The ruling party and the government must not be permitted to subject these to illegal interference or unconstitutional obstruction.

11. Freedom of Expression
We should make freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom universal, thereby guaranteeing that citizens can be informed and can exercise their right of political supervision. These freedoms should be upheld by a Press Law that abolishes political restrictions on the press. The provision in the current Criminal Law that refers to “the crime of incitement to subvert state power” must be abolished. We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.

12. Freedom of Religion
We must guarantee freedom of religion and belief and institute a separation of religion and state. There must be no governmental interference in peaceful religious activities. We should abolish any laws, regulations, or local rules that limit or suppress the religious freedom of citizens. We should abolish the current system that requires religious groups (and their places of worship) to get official approval in advance and substitute for it a system in which registry is optional and, for those who choose to register, automatic.

13. Civic Education
In our schools we should abolish political curriculums and examinations that are designed to indoctrinate students in state ideology and to instill support for the rule of one party. We should replace them with civic education that advances universal values and citizens’ rights, fosters civic consciousness, and promotes civic virtues that serve society.

14. Protection of Private Property
We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.

15. Financial and Tax Reform
We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government²central, provincial, county or local²are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.

16. Social Security
We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.

17. Protection of the Environment
We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendants and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of non-governmental organizations.

18. A Federated Republic
A democratic China should seek to act as a responsible major power contributing toward peace and development in the Asian Pacific region by approaching others in a spirit of equality and fairness. In Hong Kong and Macao, we should support the freedoms that already exist. With respect to Taiwan, we should declare our commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and then, negotiating as equals, and ready to compromise, seek a formula for peaceful unification. We should approach disputes in the national-minority areas of China with an open mind, seeking ways to find a workable framework within which all ethnic and religious groups can flourish. We should aim ultimately at a federation of democratic communities of China.

19. Truth in Reconciliation
We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.

China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must.

The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer. Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement.

Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.

Additionally, the seminar’s title raises the question of the potential enemy against which Europe remains armed, through NATO and therefore through the USA, with nuclear weapons. The Cold War is over. The quick answer is that the potential adversaries are found in East Asia and the Persian Gulf.

The full sentence uttered by Dr. Press that gives rise to this article’s title is, from my notes: “We need to be publicly frank about who really are the adversaries, otherwise our communications will lead toward hypocrisy.”

The sponsors of the seminar were the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). The participants and their credentials are listed at the bottom.

Doomsday Clock

To frame the question more fully, here are essential facts gleaned from the seminar and the Internet:

1. What kind of nuclear arms are there and what are their purposes?
2. Which are the nations that have nuclear arms, and how many?
3. What are factors affecting the continued development and maintenance of nuclear arms?

Strategic: weapons with the greatest range of delivery, with the ability to threaten the adversary’s command and control structure, even though they are based many thousands of miles away in friendly territory. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are the primary delivery platforms for strategic nuclear weapons. The main purpose of strategic weapons is in the deterrence role, under the theory of mutually assured destruction.

Tactical, or “non-strategic”: battlefield weapons, used by a theater commander to offset a numerically superior force. They will be targeted based on rapidly changing local circumstances, not pre-targeted like a strategic weapon. However, even the smallest nuclear weapon is considered a “threshold decision” and is under the control of the highest national authorities, not local commanders. (Source)

Active non-deployed: spare and “responsive” warheads, i.e., those warheads that could be returned to the field quickly to increase the number of deployed warheads. All active warheads are filled with limited life components (e.g., tritium) and are maintained through regular surveillance schedules.

Inactive: warheads still intact but with their tritium removed; thus, it would take longer to return them to service upon a decision to do so.

Nations with Nuclear Arms and their Numbers

Note: “Deployed” include strategic and tactical warheads. “Other warheads” are active and inactive non-deployed warheads.

Although not discussed in the seminar, the seemingly clear distinction between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons is no longer clear:

It is estimated that there are about 2,500 weapons designated as ‘tactical’, of which Russia possesses over 2,000. The United States has fewer than 500, and deploys around 200 of these on the territory of five European countries in accordance with agreements between the United States and its NATO allies. To describe these as ‘tactical’ or ‘theatre’ nuclear weapons (TNW) is misleading outside the context of the Cold War, when over 10,000 were deployed. Though China, France, Israel, India and Pakistan also have short to intermediate range weapons in their arsenals, it is unlikely that these would be classified as ‘tactical’ and considered distinct from these countries’ longer range (strategic) nuclear arsenals. Nowadays it is understood that any crossing of the threshold to use nuclear weapons would have strategic consequences.
(Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy).

Nonetheless, at least two of the four panelists made this distinction due, I believe, to the fact that governments and the communication media still use the terms. There seems to be a lag time between the development of current realities and the ability of the diplomatic and other organizational machinery, and the media, to keep pace. Also, publicly discussing the reduction of the number of strategic warheads provides good political theater for politicians in Russia and the USA.

Using the questionable distinction, it seems that strategic weapons, holdovers in Russia and the USA from the Cold War, are less of a threat than the smaller (but extremely destructive in their potential), tactical weapons. To quote further from the Acronym Institute:

Tactical nuclear weapons are portable, vulnerable and readily usable. They are potentially destabilizing and create additional risks and insecurities, including possible acquisition and use by terrorists. The risk of terrorist acquisition should not be over-stated, and the bombs are protected by a variety of timers, switches, mechanical and electronic locks and procedural safeguards against any attempt to bring about an unauthorised nuclear explosion, but the possibility of detonating at least a radiological ‘dirty’ bomb cannot be discounted.

Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev after signing the new START treaty

The latest START treaty deals only with strategic weapons, those held solely by Russia and the USA:

Under terms of the treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half. The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, which is down nearly two-thirds from the original START treaty, as well as 30% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty… It will also limit the number of deployed and non-deployed inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800. Also, it will limit the number of deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 700. The treaty allows for satellite and remote monitoring, as well as 18 on-site inspections per year to verify limits…The treaty places no limits on tactical systems… (Source). [Emphasis added by Pavellas].

NATO’s “tactical” nuclear bombs in Europe are all owned by the United States and are stored under the control of the US Air Force. So, a discussion about Europe’s security necessarily involves discussion of NATO and the USA, which it did during this seminar.

Although the tone of my article, so far, may be seen as toward the negative, the full discussion by the panel’s participants provided many nuggets which I duly offer here:

• The new START Treaty is a positive development in that it will cause a reduction in nuclear warheads, will restore the idea of nuclear accountability and provides a legal framework for reduction.
• For nations, it is quietly recognized that tactical nuclear weapons have no military value, but are used primarily for political purposes, e.g., in “signaling” other nations about capabilities and intentions. (This does not address the dangers of nuclear arms in the possession of non-nation entities, such as terrorist organizations).
• The domino theory of nuclear arms proliferation (i.e., if country A gets them it will induce country B to get them) is contestable by the facts. For instance, North Korea has them, but South Korea doesn’t and says it won’t. But, of course, the USA has promised to defend South Korea.
• Existing nuclear warheads need to be maintained to be operational, and this is a costly enterprise. The implication is that older warheads will not be maintained fully over time and that there will be a decline in their numbers and capability, everywhere. However, new warheads can be produced by those countries with the means in the “tactical” realm without violating treaties and other public promises.
• Other perceived threats to humans seem more immediate and needful for attention that the funding of nuclear weapon development, such as: climate change, pandemics and secure national borders.
• There is increasing transparency (i.e., visibility) of those activities that threaten national and world stability. This transparency aids the work of civil, i.e., non-governmental, advocacy organizations such as IKFF, university research departments and private think tanks, some of  which were represented at this seminar (see below). Timely and publicly available oversight by such organizations can lead to more timely responses to threats to peace and freedom. (I refer the reader to my article Civil Society Must Succeed Where Governments Have Failed)

Seminar Speakers

Pavel Podvig: affiliate and former research associate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Daryl G. Press: Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth University.

Fredrik Westerlund: Security policy analyst, Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).

Petra Tötterman Andorff: Secretary General, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Sweden (IKFF).

Suggested Resources

Nuclear arms control and non-proliferation: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Strategic Outlook 2010: Swedish Defence Research Agency (PDF)

Center for International Security and Cooperation: Publications on Nuclear Proliferation Issues

The Nuclear Dimension of US Primacy (PDF): by Daryl G. Press

Internet Links provided by: The Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy

Dismantle the War Economy Committee: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy, by Bruce G. Blair and Chen Yali

The Future of Nuclear Weapons in NATO, by Ian Anthony and Johnny Janssen

The Roman Senate

At the center of the book is the Roman Senate.  Outside Rome are the provinces, and the battles led by Caesar, Crassus and Pompey, among others, to add even more territory to the nascent Empire.

The Roman Senate was different from what we see in the US Senate:

The senate passed decrees called senatus consultum, which in form constituted “advice” from the senate to a magistrate. While these advices did not hold legal force, they usually were obeyed in practice.

The senate directed the magistrates, especially the Roman Consuls (the chief-magistrates) in their prosecution of military conflicts. Only the senate could authorize the disbursal of public funds from the treasury. As the empire (NB: not yet Empire) grew, the senate also supervised the administration of the provinces, which were governed by former consuls and praetors, in that it decided which magistrate should govern which province.

The senate also played a pivotal role in cases of emergency. It could call for the appointment of a dictator (a right resting with each consul with or without the senate’s involvement). However, after 202 the office of Dictator fell out use (and was revived only two more times) and was replaced with the senatus consultum ultimum (“ultimate decree of the senate”), a senatorial decree which authorized the consuls to employ any means necessary to solve the crisis.

The senate operated while under various religious restrictions. For example, before any meeting could begin, a sacrifice to the gods was made, and a search for divine omens (the auspices) was taken.

Representation of a sitting of the Roman Senate: Cicero attacks Catilina, from a 19th century fresco in Palazzo Madama, Rome.

Meetings usually began at dawn, and a magistrate who wished to summon the senate had to issue a compulsory order. The senate meetings were public, and were directed by a presiding magistrate, usually a Consul. While in session, the senate had the power to act on its own, and even against the will of the presiding magistrate if it wished. The presiding magistrate began each meeting with a speech, and then referred an issue to the senators, who would discuss the issue by order of seniority. Senators had several other ways in which they could influence (or frustrate) a presiding magistrate. For example, all senators had to speak before a vote could be held, and since all meetings had to end by nightfall, a senator could talk a proposal to death (a filibuster or diem consumere) if he could keep the debate going until nightfall. When it was time to call a vote, the presiding magistrate could bring up whatever proposals he wished, and every vote was between a proposal and its negative. At any point before a motion passed, the proposed motion could be vetoed, usually by a tribune. If there was no veto, and the matter was of minor importance, it could be voted on by a voice vote or by a show of hands. If there was no veto, and the matter was of a significant nature, there was usually a physical division of the house, with senators voting by taking a place on either side of the chamber.

The ethical requirements of senators were significant. Senators could not engage in banking or any form of public contract. They could not own a ship that was large enough to participate in foreign commerce, and they could not leave Italy without permission from the senate. Senators were not paid a salary. Election to magisterial office resulted in automatic senate membership. (Source)

(Source).

All the the constitutional and latent powers of the Senate were used by the various players and factions to further their interests and, for some, their quest for ultimate power. Caesar was a master in this realm. The book shows that certain alliances, and the power they created, were obtained through marriage between influential families, where woman were the pawns in these maneuvers.

After reading this book, I accessed the Internet to  get a larger picture of the events during the 40 years of Roman history it covers. What follows is a recapitulation of some of my reading. I choose to juxtapose Cicero and Cato, the scholars and intellectuals (as well as politicians) dedicated to order and process, against Caesar, the soldier-politician dedicated to accruing power to build the empire he intended to lead.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BCE)

Cicero was an orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Significantly, he was not a soldier; he detested warfare and violence. Although known as a philosopher, he placed politics above philosophical study. The only periods of his life in which he wrote philosophical works were the times he was forcibly prevented from taking part in politics. He was murdered on December 7, 43 BC.

Cicero’s political career was a remarkable one. At the time, high political offices in Rome, though technically achieved by winning elections, were almost exclusively controlled by a group of wealthy aristocratic families that had held them for many generations. Cicero’s family, though aristocratic, was not one of them, nor did it have great wealth. But Cicero had a great deal of political ambition; at a very young age he chose as his motto the same one Achilles was said to have had: to always be the best and overtop the rest. Lacking the advantages of a proper ancestry, there were essentially only two career options open to him. One was a military career, the other a career in the law.

To prepare for the latter career he studied jurisprudence, rhetoric, and philosophy. Cicero proved to be an excellent orator and lawyer, and a shrewd politician. He was elected to each of the principle Roman offices (quaestor, aedile, praetor, and consul) on his first try and at the earliest age at which he was legally allowed to run for them. Having held office made him a member of the Roman Senate.

During his term as consul (the highest Roman office) in 63 BC he was responsible for unraveling and exposing the conspiracy of Catiline, which aimed at taking over the Roman state by force, and five of the conspirators were put to death without trial on Cicero’s orders. Cicero was proud of this, claiming that he had single-handedly saved the commonwealth. Cicero enjoyed widespread popularity at this time – though his policy regarding the Catilinarian conspirators had also made him enemies, and the executions without trial gave them an opening.

Cicero discovering the tomb of Archimedes by the Austrian baroque painter Martin Knoller (1725-1804)

In 60 BC Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus (the First Triumvirate) combined their resources and took control of Roman politics. Recognizing his popularity and talents, they made several attempts to get Cicero to join them, but Cicero hesitated and eventually refused, preferring to remain loyal to the Senate and the idea of the Republic. This left him open to attacks by his enemies, and in January of 58 BC the tribune Clodius (a follower of Caesar’s), proposed a law to be applied retroactively stating that anyone who killed a Roman citizen without trial would be stripped of their citizenship and forced into exile. The law passed. Cicero was forbidden to live within 500 miles of Italy, and all his property was confiscated. This exile provided the time for his first period of sustained philosophical study. After the political conditions changed, his property was restored to him, and he was allowed to return to Rome, which he did to great popular approval, claiming that the Republic was restored with him.

Cicero owed a debt to the triumvirate for ending his exile (and for not killing him), and for the next eight years he repaid that debt as a lawyer. Because he still could not engage in politics, he continued his studies of philosophy.

The triumvirate collapsed with the death of Crassus. In 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon River, entering Italy with his army and igniting a civil war between himself and Pompey. Cicero was on Pompey’s side, though halfheartedly. He felt that at this point the question was not whether Rome would be a republic or an empire but whether Pompey or Caesar would be Emperor, and he believed it would be a disaster in either case. Caesar and his forces won in 48 BC, and Caesar became the first de facto Roman emperor. He gave Cicero a pardon and allowed him to return to Rome in July of 47 BC, but Cicero was forced to stay out of politics. Most of the rest of his life was devoted to studying and writing about philosophy.

After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, Cicero again returned to politics. Hoping to see a restoration of the Republic, he supported Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian (later called Augustus) in the initial stages of Octavian’s power struggle with Marc Antony. But in this case, Cicero had chosen sides too soon: Octavian and Antony were temporarily reconciled, and Cicero was proscribed as an enemy of the state and murdered on December 7, 43 BC. (Major Source).

Marcius Porcius Cato Utensis

Cato (right) and his daughter, Porcia, who married Brutus, one of Caesar’s assassins (et tu brute?). Image source.

Cato the Younger was a Roman political figure whose opposition to Pompey and Caesar helped hasten the collapse of the Roman Republic.

Orphaned when a child and raised in the house of his uncle M. Livius Drusus, the reformer, Cato early cultivated habits of austerity and made a great show of political and moral probity. After serving as military tribune in Macedonia (67-66 B.C.), he toured Asia to prepare himself for public life. As quaestor, or minister of finance, Cato was notable for his punishment of corrupt treasury clerks and the strict rectitude of his accounts. But he was not free of favoritism. As tribune elect in 63, he prosecuted for electoral bribery one of the men who defeated Catiline for the consulship, exempting the other because he was a relative.

Cato’s fiery speech on December 5 led the Senate to vote for the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators who had been caught in Rome after an unsuccessful attempt at seizing control of the state. As tribune in 62, Cato blocked attempts by Metellus Nepos and Julius Caesar to recall Pompey to deal with Catiline and his army in Etruria.

When Pompey returned from the East, Cato led the senatorial opposition against him. He also outraged Crassus and the equestrians by refusing to allow reconsideration of the tax contract for Asia. The result was the formation of the First Triumvirate by Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar to attain their political ends. During Caesar’s consulship in 59 Cato bitterly opposed the triumvirate’s bills for the redistribution of land and the grant of an extraordinary command to Caesar. So violent were Cato’s tactics that Caesar at one point had him imprisoned only to think better of it later. In the following year the triumvirs rid themselves of Cato by offering him a special command in Cyprus. Though Cato was aware he was being removed from the center of power, his exaggerated sense of duty made it impossible for him to refuse.

When he returned to Rome in 56 B.C., he attempted to block the election of Pompey and Crassus to their second consulship. They therefore prevented Cato’s election to the praetorship, for which he had to wait until 54. To check the rioting and anarchy which developed in 53 and 52, Cato supported the proposal of the senatorial leaders to make Pompey sole consul. Thereafter he continued to back Pompey but only as a counterforce to the growing power of Caesar. Because Cato refused to cultivate the great politicians, he failed to win the consulship for 51.

In the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, Cato chose Pompey and was given command in Sicily, which he evacuated after the arrival of the Caesarian forces in order to avoid bloodshed. He garrisoned Dyrrachium for Pompey during the Battle of Pharsalus and after Pompey’s defeat joined the Pompeian refugees in Africa. There he refused military command because he had not held the consulship but took charge of the city of Utica (whence he derived his surname) and organized its defenses. When Caesar crushed the Pompeians in the Battle of Thapsus in 46 and approached the city, Cato committed suicide.

After his death Cato became a symbol of republicanism in the continuing struggle against Caesar, Antony, and Octavian. But during his lifetime his conservatism and obstructionism served only to strengthen the forces he opposed. (Source)

Gaius Julius Caesar, 102 B.C.-44 B.C.

Julius Caesar paved the way both for the end of the republic and the creation of the empire under his nephew Octavian, or Augustus Caesar. As a general he led military operations in Britain and elsewhere, and as dictator of Rome, he put through valuable reforms. But his actions, including his celebrated affair with Cleopatra, earned the distrust even of his closest friends, who conspired in his assassination.

Caesar (image source) was born on July 13, 102 B.C., to an aristocratic but not wealthy family. During his childhood, Rome was caught in a struggle between the aristocratic party, led by Sulla (137-78 B.C.), and the popular party, which—though its members were aristocrats as well—favored a greater distribution of power. With his aunt Julia’s marriage to the popular party leader, Marius (c. 157-86 B.C.), Caesar became linked with that faction, and he further increased his standing by marrying Cornelia (d. 67 B.C.), daughter of Marius’s ally Cinna (d. 84 B.C.) They later had a daughter, Julia.

Sulla established a dangerous example, one Caesar himself would later imitate, when in 88 B.C. he marched his troops into Rome. This ultimately meant the end of Marius’s power, and Sulla demanded that Caesar divorce Cornelia. Caesar refused, and had to go into hiding. His mother’s family convinced Sulla to relent, and Caesar returned to Rome and entered the army.

While serving in Asia Minor in 80 B.C., Caesar earned a high military decoration for bravery in the battle to take Mitylene on the isle of Lesbos, and went on to take part in a war against pirates from Cilicia. Following the death of Sulla, Caesar went back to Rome in 77 B.C., but soon after earning a name for himself as prosecutor in an important legal case, he traveled to Rhodes for further training in rhetoric. On the way, he was captured by Cilician pirates and held for ransom. After his release, he led a force to victory against the pirates, then—without being commanded to do so—led a successful attack against Mithradates of Pontus (r. 120-63 B.C.). Soon after this, he gained his first elected office as military tribune.

Cornelia died in 67 B.C., and within a year, Caesar remarried. Again the marriage had a political angle: Pompeia was the granddaughter of Sulla, and Caesar wanted to establish closer ties with Crassus (c. 115-53 B.C.), a leading figure in the aristocratic party.

To get ahead in Rome, a politician had to spend money on bribes and lavish entertainments for fellow politicians and the Roman citizens. As aedile, a type of magistrate responsible for all manner of public affairs, Caesar heavily outspent his colleague Bibulus (d. 48 B.C.), sponsoring the most magnificent set of gladiatorial games Rome had ever seen. Later, he obtained a position as governor in Spain, where he made back all the money he had spent—probably by means that were less than honorable.

Meanwhile Pompeia became involved in scandal when a character named Pulcher got into an all-female party at her house disguised as a woman. Caesar promptly divorced her. He was soon elected consul with Bibulus, but by then it was clear that only three men in Rome really mattered: Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey (106-48 B.C.)

The latter had just returned from his defeat of Mithradates, and together the three formed the First Triumvirate in 60 B.C. Pompey even married Caesar’s daughter Julia to solidify their bond, but despite their mutual claims of loyalty, the alliance was an uneasy one.

Death of Caesar by Vincenzo Camuccini

The conflict would be delayed for many years, however, while Caesar went to Gaul. Anxious to gain military glory, he went looking for awar, and he soon had one when the Helvetii, from what is now Switzerland, tried to cross Gaul without permission. He drove them back, then dealt with the Suebi from Germany. Next, as a means of preventing the Celts of Britain from aiding their cousins on the mainland, he led the first Roman invasions of that island in 55 and 54 B.C. In the course of these campaigns, Caesar killed perhaps a million people, but eventually placed all of Gaul firmly under Roman control.

Julia died in 54 B.C., breaking the bond between Caesar and Pompey, and in the following year, Crassus was killed in Asia. Soon Pompey ordered Caesar back to Rome, and Caesar, knowing he would be killed if he went back alone, brought his army with him. By crossing the River Rubicon, a shallow stream which formed the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy, he passed a point of no return, making conflict with Pompey inescapable.

Pompey moved his forces to Greece in order to regroup, while Caesar defeated Pompey’s legions in Spain. The two met in battle at Pharsalus in Greece in 48 B.C., and though Caesar’s armies won, Pompey managed to escape. He fled to Egypt, where he was killed, and Caesar, hot in pursuit, soon had his attention diverted by Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.). They began a romance, and Caesar aided her in war against her brother, Ptolemy XII (r. 51-47 B.C.).

At the same time, Mithradates’s teenaged son Pharnaces (r. 63-47 B.C.), taking advantage of Caesar’s distraction in Egypt, had attempted to regain his father’s kingdom in Pontus. Caesar went to Asia Minor, and destroyed Pharnaces’s army in just five days. Afterward, he made his famous report of his victory: “I came, I saw, I conquered”; or in Latin, “Veni, vidi, vici.“

In 47 B.C. Caesar returned to Rome, where he assumed the powers of a dictator, and quickly pushed through a series of reforms. Most notable among these was his effort to reduce unemployment by requiring that every landowner hire one free man for every two slaves working in his fields. He increased the membership in the senate from 300 to 900, and included Celtic chieftains from Gaul in Rome’s legislative body.

Marc Antony offers a king's crown to Caesar, who refuses it

Caesar managed to combine the authority of numerous political offices, giving himself more power than any Roman leader had ever enjoyed; yet he seemed to want more. He placed his portrait on coins, an honor previously reserved only for the gods, and declared that the month of his birth would no longer be called Quintilis but “Julius” or July. Instead of standing before the senate when he spoke to them, as rulers had always done before, he sat—more like a monarch than a citizen. His junior colleague Mark Antony (82?-30 B.C.) even tried to convince him to wear a crown.

Had Caesar accepted the crown, it would have been such an offense to the Romans’ views on government that he would have been an instant target for assassination. As it was, assassination was not long in coming. Just before leaving for a campaign in Persia, Caesar planned to address the senate on the Ides of March, or March 15, 44 B.C. Unbeknownst to him, however, a group of some 60 influential Romans—led by his supposed friends Brutus (85-42 B.C.) and Cassius (d. 42 B.C.)—had joined forces to assassinate him. As he entered the senate chamber, the assassins jumped at him with daggers, stabbing him 23 times. It would fall to Caesar’s nephew Octavian (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) to avenge the murder, which he did on his way to assuming power and establishing what would become the Roman Empire. (Source)

The first book I read is This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience, which was made into a six-part series by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Religion and Music are partners in life and in this book. Since I was around six years old I have felt deep stirrings from hearing music referred to in it.

This is a popular song, rooted in gospel singing, that I responded to in my youngest years:

The second book is My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil rights Experience. The thirty-three stories in this book are short interviews of people who were engaged with the struggle for racial justice, some directly, some peripherally. Most are fascinating, and all are uplifting to the spirit. This book, in addition to the first one mentioned, also encourages me to recount memories–not just about music, but about my own experiences and perceptions regarding racial and ethnic prejudice n America.

Please keep in mind that what I present here are tangential thoughts and memories; I do not attempt to capture the historical sweep and depth of these two books.

I never knew a Negro until age 14, at the beginning of my junior year at Lowell High school in San Francisco, just after the family returned from 5½ years in Brooklyn. His name was Grady Hayes and the remarkable thing about him, for me, was that he was not remarkable—he was a regular guy, someone I could easily talk with. I never met his family, but he said that his mother had a West Indian accent.

I felt, at a very young age, sympathy with the position of Negroes in American society. The major reason for this is from hearing my father’s stories about the inhumane treatment of Negroes in the southern United States, and from his deeply felt philosophical positions which led him to be an active member of the Socialist Labor Party (Democratic Socialist, not Communist) while we lived in San Francisco.

Also, my mother had felt the barbs of ethnic discrimination in her youth, as the only “Greek” in the Portland, Oregon neighborhood where she and her two sisters were foster children. (Her parents were born in Greece; her mother died in San Francisco when she and her sisters were quite young). Mom was very sensitive all her long life to ethnic slurs. When I was around age four or five, just after WWII had begun for the USA, I was disrespectful to a neighbor boy who was of Japanese ancestry. My Uncle Harry rescued me from the wild anger of my mother when she learned of this. The Japanese family disappeared soon after, probably to a “relocation camp.”

My extended family loved to listen to songs sung by Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.

When I was around eight years old, just before we moved to Brooklyn, I took piano lessons from a wealthy woman who lived in Pacific Heights of San Francisco. She had a servant, a black woman. My three-year-old sister accompanied me and my mother to one of these lessons and upon seeing, for the first time, a black person, Diane innocently asked her “why is your face black?” My mother was mortified and I became quite alert to her embarrassment. I will never forget the woman’s calm and gracious reply: “it’s because God wanted me this way.”

Our small family lived in Brooklyn from New Year’s Day 1946 until the Summer of 1951. We were isolated from our extended family and all that was familiar to us in San Francisco and California. Mom, my sister Diane and I had only the radio to connect us with the rest of the world.

The radio was almost always on. It was tuned to a station that played “serious” music. I was enthralled when “Negro spirituals” were on the program, especially when Mahalia Jackson sang.

This was in 1954, at the end of the Korean “Conflict.” After general and technical training for over a year, I was assigned to an aircraft carrier as an electronic technician. I became part of team of 35 sailors who repaired and maintained the ship’s radios, radars, and other equipment.

Most of sailors in my division were from the south and southwest USA. Although all of us scored high in intelligence tests in order to qualify for our jobs, I was astounded to hear these young men utter the foulest words against Negroes. Being my father’s son, I mounted strong arguments against their prejudices, but to no avail. For those who even cared to engage with me, my standing was nil because “I had never lived around them.” My appeals to logic and general humanity fell on deaf ears, and I was becoming a nag. I finally swallowed my bile and accepted that I couldn’t make a difference. I had to live in close quarters with these fellows and work beside them.

Upon being discharged from active duty on the cusp of New Year, 1958, I enrolled in the local community college, got married and moved to Berkeley in 1960 to attend University. My wife and I became friends with a couple, John and Inca. John was a student at Berkeley and had also been in the US Navy. Inca had a job and was homemaker for their two children, Michael and Jenny.

John was a light-skinned Negro from a middle class family in the western US. Inca was born in Holland. Berkeley was one of the few places then where a couple in a “mixed marriage” could feel reasonably comfortable. John and Inca were tall people and their children were strikingly beautiful.

As the racial tensions and freedom marches in the South began to take shape leading up to the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, John began to feel “black” for the first time in his life. He dropped out of university and went to the South to participate in civil rights activities there. Upon his return to Berkeley John said his life would take a new direction. But, shortly afterward, in 1965, he was killed in a traffic accident in San Francisco. He was buried, as a military veteran, at Golden Gate National Cemetery, 10 miles south of San Francisco.

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech in the summer of 1963, just after I had received my B.S. and started studying toward a graduate degree. I have listened to and read this speech many times, but not recently—until I read these books. In addition to the beauty and aptness of his oration, I see the threads of Negro church music in certain poetic phrases, repeated sonorously:

• “Now is the time.”
• ”We are not satisfied.”
• ”Let freedom Ring.”
• ”Free at last.”

From “American Negro Songs ” by J. W. Work:

“Free at last, free at last
I thank God I’m free at last…”

… to which Dr. King referred and quoted in the final words of his speech. It remains as thrilling as it first did, 47 years ago.

I have read recently Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. This is a great work of literature and scholarship in the ethics of Christianity, in which he was appealing to white ministers for sympathy to the cause he was leading.

I lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area until 1976, when I took work in Alaska. These were tumultuous years, as persons my age will recall, especially around San Francisco and Berkeley. These were also seminal days for popular music, including the evolution of black church music into the mainstream. I was thrilled to discover I could still hear the essence of the Negro spirituals I enjoyed in my youth by listening to Ray Charles and, especially, Aretha Franklin.

In the beginning of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder is a poem, a variation on the lyrics to this song sung by Mahalia Jackson:

How I got over
How I got over, my Lord
And my soul looked back and wondered
How I got over, my Lord

The tallest tree in Paradise
The Christians call it tree of life
And my soul looked back and wondered
How I got over, my Lord

Lord, I’ve been ‘buked and I’ve been scorned
And I’ve been talked ‘bout as sure as you’re born
And my soul looked back and wondered
How I got over, my Lord

Oh, Jordan’s river is so chilly and cold
It’ll chill your body but not your soul
And my soul looked back and wondered
How I got over, my Lord

—

These two books have taken me on a soulful journey
through my memories (enhanced by Youtube.com), and through a reminder of recent history that should be revisited by everyone in the USA.

NOTE: The title for this article comes from my memory of the gospel song Give Me that Old Time Religion as I heard it on the radio in the late 1940s.

It was by way of Charles Davis Tillman that the song had incalculable influence on the confluence of black spiritual and white gospel song traditions in forming the genre now known as southern gospel. Tillman was largely responsible for publishing the song into the repertoire of white audiences. It was first heard sung by African-Americans and written down by Tillman when he attended a camp meeting in Lexington, South Carolina in 1889. (Source)

To be clear about the words in quotation marks in the heading of this article:

The Index of “Economic Freedom” is an annual measure, conducted by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, of 10 freedoms – from property rights to entrepreneurship – in 183 countries. These freedoms will be listed, below.

The Legatum Prosperity Index annually ranks 104 nations according to nine building blocks of prosperity, about which more below as well.

The Corruption Perceptions Index is part of an annual report published by Transparency International (TI) which ranks 178 countries according to the perception of corruption in the public sector.  TI defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, in both the public and private sectors. For the purposes of this article and study I have chosen to call TI’s report the “Transparency Index.”

Each of these organizations is independent of the others and employs different methods of measurement, so I thought it useful to see if there are correlations among and between their most recent findings, published in 2010.

Because the Legatum Institute indexed only 104 countries, I limited my country aggregations and comparisons to this number, less one that doesn’t appear in one of the other indexes. Even so, these 103 countries represent approximately 90% of the world’s population.

Here’s a quick take on how these three indexes tracked with each other, comparing data for each country by two indexes at a time:

Let’s see what’s so special about Hong Kong and Singapore:

In Legatum’s Prosperity Index, Singapore and Hong Kong rank 17th and 20th, respectively, out of 110 countries. Singapore ranks 5 and 6 in in *Safety & Security’ and ‘Economy.’ Hong Kong ranks slightly lower in of these areas as well.

In the Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong and Singapore rank 1 and 2, respectively, in a list of 179 countries.

Here are excerpts from the Global Corruption Report of Transparency International regarding Hong Kong:

• In Hong Kong as many as two-thirds of businesses believed that they lost opportunities on account of corruption by competitors within a one-year time frame.
• In Hong Kong, Germany, France and Brazil, fewer than half the surveyed companies reported having a specific procedure for vetting agents and suppliers before entering into a relationship with them.
• (In Hong Kong) laws or regulations require disclosing how a director’s compensation was reviewed and evaluated, but compensation (is not) linked to the director’s performance.
• (In Hong Kong) the legal and regulatory framework (does not) provide whistleblower protection.

Here are excerpts from the Global Corruption Report of Transparency International regarding Singapore:

• Laws or regulations do not require disclosing how a director’s compensation was reviewed and evaluated, but it is recommended by Code of Corporate Governance.
• Compensation linked to the director’s performance is not mandatory, but it is recommended.
• There is whistleblower protection for auditors.
• Singapore has subsidised training related to the adoption of environmental and labour standards.
• Much work remains to be done in the area of Sovereign Wealth Funds (such as Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Government Investment Corporation) in governance and transparency.

My rough summary of these two political entities is that there is so much freedom to establish and operate an enterprise, and so much safety and security in daily life, that these far outweigh any corruption. The latter seems to be addressed in principle, if not fully in application.

The Eight “Intermediate” Outliers

These countries are assigned at least one big favorable finding and at least one big unfavorable finding. The findings may have to do, at least in part, with current perceptions in comparison to past conditions. That is, most things may be not so good now, but they were very much worse in the past and there are some new good things. This seems generally true, from my reading, of the Latin American countries: Argentina, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru. Other than in Argentina, there is much emigration. Generally, there is little confidence in governments including the judiciary branch, despite welcome stability.

On the other hand are the countries whose past performance has provided a strong economic and social base, including infrastructure, but where the government seems to be losing its ability to cope with some major current issues. France and Italy seem to fit this description, even though the cultures and circumstances are quite different. One big difference between these two countries is French optimism and Italian pessimism (my interpretation).

Botswana is unique in its position of being an African country where things are measurably and sensibly improving and improved, despite a low standard of living for most people. There is great mineral wealth and much industry, with personal and business freedoms not found in other poor African countries, or in the five Latin American countries, above.

These summary impressions should be tested by the reader looking at the specific findings and comments under the three separate reports and summary charts.

“Intermediate-low” Countries

Jordan and Saudi Arabia are assigned one favorable outlying position, but also two unfavorable outlying positions.

As far as I can determine, Jordan’s one favorable point is in relation to other countries in a group which register much worse in Transparency, but all are low in Prosperity and Economic Freedom. Personal freedoms are low, as are the levels of social cohesion and health.

Saudi Arabia’s mineral wealth provides the basis for the one positive outlying measure, but personal freedom, safety and security, education, property rights (especially for women) and Transparency are low.

The “Low” Countries

These four countries are found in at least two unfavorable outlying positions, with Zimbabwe found in this position in all three charts. Iran, Ukraine and Venezuela are positioned unfavorably in Prosperity and Transparency. Zimbabwe is also positioned unfavorably in Economic Freedom. None of these countries is positioned favorably in an outlying position.

Personal Conclusions

Where one or two of these indexes may be short on observations or might lack objective accuracy about a given country, one or two of the others will make up for this deficiency, in my reading of them. In the event that one may still not be convinced regarding the placement of any country in these indexes, one always has access to a comprehensive and continually updated profile of all the World’s countries in The World Factbook of the CIA.

Washington as colonel of the Virginia Regiment, painted by Charles Willson Peale, 1772

… that made him “the indispensible man,” as described by historian James Thomas Flexner?

And what was it about him that elicited these encomiums from his contemporaries upon his death?

• “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen”, from a eulogy for George Washington adopted by Congress immediately after Washington’s death, written by Henry Lee, a soldier and political leader from Washington’s home state of Virginia.
• “His example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations as long as our history shall be read.” President John Adams, in a letter to the US Senate, December 23, 1799, on the death of George Washington.
• “To us he has been the sympathising friend and tender father. He has watched over us, and viewed our degraded and afflicted state with compassion and pity—his heart was not insensible to our sufferings. Unbiased by the popular opinion of the state in which is the memorable Mount Vernon—he dared to do his duty, and wipe off the only stain with which man could ever reproach him… “ (H)e who ventured his life in battles…  did not fight for that liberty which he desired to withhold from others—the bread of oppression was not sweet to his taste, and he “let the oppressed go free… he provided lands and comfortable accommodations for them when he kept this “acceptable fast to the Lord”—that those who had been slaves might rejoice in the day of their deliverance.” From the eulogy by Rev. Richard Allen, founder in 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States.

The basis for this article is my reading, primarily, of His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis. In addition, A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror by Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen, provides additional color and verifies the Ellis book, despite its tendency toward the polemical.

George Washington, the man

George Washington was not a revolutionary, a great orator, or an idealist. He was a leader through example, publicly silent and fearless, always ready but never publicly eager for promotion or elevation to high office, and with enormous self-discipline. He was also land hungry (he owned over 50,000 acres upon his death), socially ambitious, sensitive to slights by English officialdom and society, proud, and with his emotions under such great control, sometimes explosive in temper.

George Washington was physically large, held himself erect, and dressed impeccably, appropriate to a landed aristocrat and military officer. He exemplified, almost universally among his contemporaries, what an American leader should be. Thus, he was always chosen during the uncertain and formative years of the republic to lead and to guide the nascent nation.

Winning the revolutionary war did not assure that the colonialists, now free from their masters, could form and maintain a nation. Washington saw it as the highest priority to form a strong nation, with all other considerations, including slavery which he saw as odious and pernicious, being secondary. His personal motivations can be attributed to his hunger for land, especially in the Ohio River Valley, which was forbidden by the British Royal Proclamation of 1763. Even before a revolution was thought of, however, Washington ignored this edict.

Whatever personal motivation he may have had for attaining all his assignments and offices, his vision of a unified nation, combined with a certain few principles he held as essential, were necessary for it to survive after the founders declared it born. These included the primacy of the civilian over the military and the idea that the position of president was important, most of the time, as a symbolic role rather than as a decision-making role.

He invented the cabinet system for running the executive branch of the government and delegated much authority and responsibility to his subordinates, intervening only when critically necessary, as it sometimes was between Secretary of State Jefferson and Secretary of The Treasury Hamilton, for example.

He respected the Indian nations:

He did not view Native Americans As exotic savages, but as familiar and formidable adversaries fighting for their own independence: in effect, behaving pretty much as he would in their place. Moreover, the letters the new president received from several tribal chiefs provided poignant testimony that they now regarded him as their personal protector. (His Excellency, p. 212)

He held idealism in low regard. This ultimately brought him to grief with Jefferson who was ever the idealist. Nonetheless, Jefferson revered Washington, as can be seen in the  eulogy Jefferson wrote 14 years after his death:

Perhaps the strongest feature in [Washington’s] character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath. In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity…His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback…

On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. For his was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example…

These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would vouch at the judgment seat of God, having been formed on an acquaintance of thirty years…

1732-1758

Born in 1732, a fourth generation, landed American colonial, he was appointed at age 21 as major in the British Army’s Virginia Regiment to assess the strength of the French in the Ohio Valley. The French and Indian War had been ongoing for two years and would last another five years. He was actively engaged in this conflict and emerged, in 1758, as a lieutenant general at age 26.

1758-1774

Failing to be permanently appointed as a British Army officer, he returned to civilian life as a planter and politician in the Virginia colony. He married a wealthy widow, Martha Dandridge Custis and took her two children into his household. Washington had no known issue of his own. It was later rumored that he had a brief romantic relationship with the wife of a neighboring plantation owner, but no such scandal was ever publicly aired.

1774-1783

Washington entered the wider political arena as a Virginia delegate to the First Continental Congress, and in 1775 was appointed general and commander-in-chief of the new Continental Army after “the shot heard ‘round the world” at Lexington and Concord amalgamated the delegates against the British. He didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence due to his resignation from the Virginia delegation upon his appointment. He led the Continental Army to victory over the British by 1883, despite being greatly disadvantaged in manpower and matériel against the professional army of Great Britain.

1783-1787

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519 BC–438 BC), an aristocrat and political figure of the Roman Republic, with whom George Washington is often and favorably compared

He resigned his military commission and returned to civilian life, again, in the manner some see as that of Cincinnatus to whom he has been often likened. He was recalled to duty in 1787 as president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

1788-1797

George Washington was elected first President of the United States of America. Against his publicly-stated desires to return to his plantation after four years in office, he was unanimously reelected once, but refused to stand for a third election. He gave his historic Farewell Address, wherein he extolled the benefits of the federal government, warned against the party system, stressed the importance of religion and morality, urged a policy of stable public credit, and warned against permanent foreign alliances and an over-powerful military establishment.

1797-1799

He returned to civilian life, during which period he was commissioned as lieutenant general and Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army to serve as a warning to France, with which war seemed imminent. December 14, he died at Mount Vernon at the age of 67. He arranged for his slaves to be freed in his last will and testament.