A Leadership Legacy: Happy 138th, Winston

Philip White

November 30 was Winston Churchill’s birthday. 138 years after his birth, historians, politicians and the public are still as fascinated as ever about this most iconic of British Prime Ministers. Of course, as with every major historical figure, the

Ivor Roberts-Jones statue of Churchill, Oslo, Norway

amount of one-sided deconstructionism has increased over the past few years, no more useful to the reader than one-sided hagiography. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle–a deeply flawed (aren’t we all!) larger-than-life figure who botched a lot of decisions–notably his resistance to home rule for India and well-meaning but ill-conceived support of Edward VIII during the 1936 abdication crisis–who got the big things right.

Among the latter was Churchill’s foresight over the divisions between the democratic West and the Communist East. Since the inception of Communism and its violent manifestation in the Russian Revolution, Churchill had despised the movement, calling it a “pestilence.” Certainly, his monarchial devotion was part of this, but more so, Churchill believed Communism destroyed the very principles of liberty and freedom that he would devote his career to advancing and defending. Certainly, with his love of Empire, there were some inconsistencies in his thinking, but above all, Churchill believed that the individual should be able to make choices and that systemic freedom–of the press, of religion, of the ballot, must be upheld for individuals to enact such choices. That’s why he vowed to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,” though his plan to bolster anti-Communist forces was quickly shot down by Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George as another of “Winston’s follies.”

In this case, his plan to oppose Communism was indeed unrealistic. There were a small amount of British, Canadian, and American troops and a trickle of supporting materiel going to aid the White Russians toward the end of World War I, but once the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the Allied leaders wanted to get their boys home, not commit more to a seemingly hopeless cause.

But over the next three decades, Churchill’s ideas on how to deal with Communism became more informed, more realistic and, arguably, more visionary. Though he reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally when Hitler turned on Russia in the fateful summer of 1941, Churchill’s pragmatism and public admiration of the Marshal did not blind him to the ills of the Communist system. The Percentages Agreement he signed with Stalin in a late 1944 meeting has since been blamed for hastening the fall of democratic Eastern Europe, but what Churchill was actually doing there was essentially recognizing that the Communist takeover was a fait accompli, and guaranteeing Stalin’s agreement to largely leave the Greek Communists to their own devices in Greece after World War II. Though Moscow did supply arms and it took the Marshall Plan to prop up the anti-Communist side in Greece, Stalin largely honored this pledge.

He was not so good on his word with many other things, however. Among the promises he made to Churchill and FDR were to include the London Poles (exiled during the war) in a so-called representative government in Poland. In fact, the Communist puppet Lublin Poles ran the new regime after the war, and the old guard was either shunned or killed. In fact, horrifyingly, many of the leaders of the Polish Underground were taken out by Stalin’s henchmen, and others were held in former Nazi camps that the Red Army had supposedly “liberated.” At the Potsdam Conference in July 1946, Stalin showed that his vows at Yalta were mere lip service to the British and American leaders.  He made demands for bases in Turkey, threatened the vital British trade route through the Suez canal and refused to withdraw troops from oil-rich Iran.

Churchill, still putting his faith in personal diplomacy, believed he could reason with Stalin, particularly if Harry Truman backed him up. But halfway through the Potsdam meeting the British public sent the Conservative Party to its second worst defeat in one of the most surprising General Election decisions. Churchill was out as Prime Minister and Clement Attlee was in. Off Attlee went to Germany to finish the dialogue with Truman and Stalin. Churchill feared he was headed for political oblivion.

Yet, after a few weeks of moping, he realized that he still had his pen and, as arguably the most famous democratic leader of the age (only FDR came close in global renown), his voice. And so it was that he accepted an invitation to speak at a most unlikely venue in March 1946 – Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri – not least due to the postscript that Truman added to Westminster president Franc “Bullet” McCluer’s invite, offering to introduce Churchill in the President’s home state. There he described the need for a “special relationship” between the British Commonwealth and the United States, which was needed to check the spread of expansionist Communism and the encroachment of the “iron curtain” into Europe. 

As I explained

Philip White speaking at the National
Churchill Museum, Fulton, Missouri, Nov 11, 2012

when I spoke at the National Churchill Museum on, fittingly, Armistice Day, last month, this metaphor entered our lexicon and was embodied in the Berlin Wall–the enduring image of the standoff. Yet the “special relationship” outlived this symbol, as did the principles of leadership Churchill displayed in his brave “Sinews of Peace” speech (the real title of what’s now known as the “Iron Curtain” address). Churchill was willing to speak a hard truth even when he knew it would be unpopular and then, a few days later, after a police escort was needed to get him into New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel as demonstrators yelled “GI Joe is home to stay, Winnie, Winnie, go away,” to boldly declare, “I do not wish to withdraw or modify a single word.” His critics again called him an imperialist, an old Tory and, in as Stalin said, a warmonger. The same insults he had endured when sounding the alarm bell about Hitler in the mid- to late-1930s. And in 1946, just as in the 1930s, Churchill was right.

Not only did Churchill define the Communist-Democratic divide, he also had a plan for what to do about it. Though his more ambitious ideas, including shared US-UK citizenship, did not come to fruition, the broader concepts were embodied in the creation of NATO, European reconciliation, and the Marshall Plan. He also understood not just the Communist system he criticized but the democratic one it threatened, and, the day after the anniversary of Jefferson’s inaugural address, gave a memorable defense of the principles that were, he said, defined by common law and the Bill of Rights. This is something leaders of any political persuasion must be able to do–to articulate what they and we stand for, and why.

As I think of Churchill just after his birthday, that’s what I’m focusing on: vision, understanding and bravery. Such leadership principles will be just as valid 138 years from now as they were on that sunny springtime afternoon in Fulton.

The Cold War Mentality of "A Nation at Risk"

Steven Cromack

“Our nation is at risk,” declared a 1983 report released by the National Commission on Excellence in Education.   The fallout from this simple, short report was astounding.  Its lucid words indicted the American education system and sparked national panic.  Schools across the country scrambled to assess their own standards, revised them, and implemented standardized tests.  Twenty-nine years later, as far as the state of American education is concerned, not all hope is lost.  This document was a product of Cold War mentality.  The Commission examined America’s schools under a microscope of fear. Was the United States losing the Cold War?  Only through education—advancement in math, science, and literacy—could the Land of the Free defeat the Communist threat.  “A Nation at Risk,” its language, and its implications reflect Cold War dogma—in examining this document in the era of globalization, it is evident that the Commission’s Cold War mindset failed to recognize that in the midst of the conflict, America’s schools were not failing; instead, they were shaping the future competition in which the United States finds itself in 2012.

Many Americans believed, as did the Commission, that the United States was not the great giant of innovation it once was.  The Commission asserted, “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.”  Like most Americans, the members of the Commission believed that America was falling far behind the lurking Communists.  America’s greatness, in their eyes, was drowning in its own falling standards.  The Commission echoed national fears: “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  Furthermore, they captured the cynicism of the American public with the declaration, “What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur—others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.”  It seemed to the Commission, and many others, that America was losing the Cold War. 

The language used in the subsequent paragraphs continued to examine the American educational system through the Cold War lens.  “We have squandered the gains in achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge,” the Commission avowed, reaffirming the idea that America had fallen behind the Soviets.  The United States failed to maintain a competitive edge in science and industry.  Ultimately, the Commission argued that the underlying cause of this loss was the faltering education system.  Its members claimed, “We have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible.  We have, in effect, committed an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”  Here, the Commission dropped the phrase that no politician during President Reagan’s first term dared use: “disarmament.”  Many fretted that disarmament would lead to defeat.  Dismantling armaments meant weakening the state.  In using disarmament as a metaphor for not stimulating education, the Commission highlighted its Cold War ideology.  It was a metaphor that reflected the period.
   
With ending of the Cold War came a new way to view the increasingly globalizing world.  The economic boom of the 1990s, albeit an illusion of boom, led to a rise in per capita income.  How was it possible that this boom came on the heels as a “functionally illiterate” generation entered the workforce?  In his book Catching Up or Leading the Way, Yong Zhao asked the question: If America is indeed a nation at risk, and if education is always on the decline, how does the United States maintain its competitiveness?   The Global Competitive Index rates nations on the level of prosperity brought to their citizens.  In 2007, the United States ranked number one of 131 countries (41).  Furthermore, the years between 1993 and 2003 saw a 40 percent increase in college graduation.  That decade also saw a 1 percent increase in the number of graduates who hold science and engineering jobs (42).

In 2011, David von Drehle published an article in Time Magazine titled, “Don’t Bet against the United States.”  Like Zhao, Drehle examined the concept of a “Nation at Risk” in the era of globalization and saw what the Commission could not see with their Cold War mentality.  He argued that throughout the Cold War self doubt drove the United States: from Nixon declaring that America was worse off since Eisenhower left office, to the “crisis of confidence” exuded by Carter.  It was easy to blame schools.   But, Drehle asserts, “fallen trees don’t prove the forest is dying” (35).  Yes, reform is necessary, but America is not on the decline, it just needs to refocus itself in the world it has created.  Drehle concluded, “When more people in more countries are free to rise, to invent, to communicate, to dissent, it’s not the doom of U.S. leadership.  It is the triumph of the American way.”

This Cold War mindset meant that the Commission could not view America’s education and uncertainty as one of its greatest strengths.  The American education system is nowhere near perfect.  The United States must now refocus upon its education system in order to maintain a competitive edge, and drive the competition that the future holds. 

Winston Churchill and the New Digital “Iron Curtain”

Philip White

March 5th will mark the 66th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” address, better known as the “Iron Curtain speech,” delivered in a gymnasium at Westminster College in tiny Fulton, Missouri. There, Churchill provided the epoch-defining view of the division between the Communist “Soviet sphere” and the democratic West, the memorable (and now, almost overused) appraisal of the Anglo-American partnership as the “special relationship” and a word-perfect exhortation of the principles of freedom and liberty.

But all these years later, with the USSR no more, do Churchill’s words still ring true?

In searching for an answer, one need look no further than the recent censorship actions of another Communist regime, North Korea. Following the death of Kim Jong-Il, their Supreme Leader, the Pyongyang authorities declared that anyone caught using a mobile phone during the state-ordered 100-day mourning period would be convicted of a war crime. Similarly, during the recent crackdown in Syria, the tech minions of Bashar al-Assad used a “kill switch” to cut its embattled citizens off from the web – the same tactics used by the panicking regime in Egypt during its last days. Meanwhile, Iran tried to close down all social networking sites to prevent protest organizers from spreading the word.

And how does this relate to Churchill, a technophobe who, after all, denied Westminster College president Franc “Bullet” McCluer’s request to broadcast the Iron Curtain speech by TV, telling him "I deprecate complicating the matter with technical experiments”?

One of Churchill’s reasons for using the “iron curtain” metaphor was that Stalin’s cronies were preventing media access to Poland, Yugoslavia, and other countries struggling under the Red Army’s jackboots. Despite the Marshal’s feigned support for “free and unfettered elections” in the Yalta Declaration, diplomats from Britain, America, and elsewhere were, just weeks later, followed and harassed, and some expelled. Stalin had rung down this solid metal curtain to prevent reports of his puppets’ malfeasance from leaking out, and to keep his new subjects and their tales of woe in.

The modus operandi of the new dictatorships is different, but the spirit is the same. Essentially, the people of Syria, North Korea, and Iran (not to mention China, which also restricts internet use) are living behind a virtual iron curtain, every bit as oppressed as their predecessors in the USSR. And while bright minds in these countries are jerry-rigging internet connections via old fax machines and (for those with the resources) satellite phones, and Twitter provides a platform for Iranian dissidents to show the Revolutionary Guard’s brutality, we are in need of a Churchill to enunciate their plight on the world stage.

In addition, our leaders must be forthright in not only explaining the inherent wickedness of totalitarian rule, but also in their defense of the principles we are privileged to have in a democracy: the rule of law; freedom of religion, the ballot box and expression; and the chance to advance ourselves without the backhanders and corruption that are rampant in a police state. Too often, we take for granted these great pillars of liberty, or we fear that praising them will make us sound like self-righteous imperialists. Churchill knew that this was not so: it is only by confessing our creed that we can hope to perpetuate it, and, by putting it into practice through strong diplomacy, to help others who find themselves under the dictator’s yoke to obtain it. As he said at Fulton, “We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world. ” Just as true now as 66 years ago.

The Berlin Wall 50 Years On: Symbol of Division, and of Hope

Philip White



This past weekend, German citizens turned out en masse to recognize the 50th anniversary of East German authorities putting up the Berlin Wall. Coming 15 years after Winston Churchill’s Sinews of Peace speech, this barrier was the embodiment of the Iron Curtain that the British Prime Minister (ex-PM at the time) had spoken of in March 1946. The Wall not only carved Berlin in twain, but also the political and philosophical world–with liberal democracies with capitalist economic models on the western side and the totalitarian Communist regimes on the eastern.



Many desperate souls from the east (at least 136 reported, with many other likely not counted) died trying to get over the wall and with each failed attempt, the dreams of families hoping for a different life in the west perished, too. The commemoration in Berlin was no celebration, but rather a somber affair marked by church bells pealing out and flags billowing in the breeze at half-mast on the Reichstag. In the spot where the wall stood is now a chapel, which held a memorial service for those who lost their lives during the Wall’s 28-year history.



Before the concrete monstrosity went up, more than 2.5 million Germans had gone to the Allied occupation zones in the west of the city, according to The Daily Telegraph. One of the reasons for constructing the wall was the fear that this flight would leave the eastern part of the city economically destitute. Yet it was also, in many ways, a barrier to keep things out, not least “dangerous” Western ideas about freedom of the ballot box, speech and expression. The 96 miles of guard-patrolled, barbed wire-topped fortification also served the purpose of keeping Western officials and journalists out of Communist Eastern Germany and the nations beyond, preventing them from exposing the continued abuses of power and suppression of individual rights there.



Though it seemed so intimidating and so permanent for so long, the Berlin Wall was only as strong as the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes that had conceived it. By the time Ronald Reagan famously issued his June 1987 plea at the Brandenburg to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”, the bedrock of the U.S.S.R. was already cracking under the pressure of freedom movements in Eastern Europe, an unsustainable military budget, and a flagging economy, not to mention the flourishing of new political ideas within Moscow’s halls of power.



The fall of the Wall two and a half years later, on November 9, 1989, did not solve Germany’s problems, and, in fact, the convergence of two radically different populations presented many new challenges. However, its demise was the symbolic nail in the coffin of the U.S.S.R. and thus, half a century after its creation, the Berlin Wall invokes thoughts of hope, as much as sorrow.

Russian History Roundup

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Michael Johnson, "A Romp Through History," American Spectator, July 18, 2011

Alexander Motyl was clearly having great fun when he wrote his latest book, The Jew Who Was Ukrainian, a comic novel with half-serious historical underpinnings. It manages to amuse and challenge without losing its headlong momentum into the realm of absurdist literature.>>>

Jennifer Siegel, "A Statesman For the Czar," Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2011

No political figure looms quite as large over late imperial Russia as Sergei Iulevich Witte. Among much else, he was Russia's finance minister from 1892 to 1903; its plenipotentiary representative at the Portsmouth negotiations ending the Russo-Japanese War; the foremost instigator of the manifesto that introduced moderate parliamentary representation and united government into the autocratic empire in the wake of the 1905 Revolution; the country's first prime minister; the political and financial architect of the Trans-Siberian Railway; and the mastermind behind the stabilization of the ruble and the implementation of the gold standard, through the construction of an intricate web of foreign capital investment in the empire.>>>

Tony Halpin, "Gulags reveal awful secrets," The Australian, July 18, 2011

The journey to the heart of Joseph Stalin's reign of terror was long and arduous. Finally, hidden behind a clump of trees, the gulag emerged. This is where victims of Stalin's repressions were imprisoned as slave labourers and worked to death on the Road of Bones, the notorious Kolyma highway that connects Khandyga to the port of Magadan, in Russia's far northeast.>>>

Gary J. Bass, "Why the Crimean War Matters," New York Times, July 8, 2011

The Crimean War was the first major war to be covered by professional foreign correspondents, who reported on the disastrous blundering of commanders and the horrors of medical treatment at the battlefront. Today, we remember fragmentary stories: the charge of the Light Brigade, symbolizing the blundering; Florence Nightingale, for the medical treatment. But the real war has faded away, eclipsed by the two vastly worse world wars that were to come.>>>

Thomas Gladysz, "He Who Gets Slapped," San Francisco Chronicle, July 4, 2011

As its closing film, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will show He Who Gets Slapped (1924). It is, in my mind, the finest "sad clown" movie you'll ever see.

He Who Gets Slapped tells the story of "HE," a disgraced intellectual forced to find work as a circus clown. His popular act consists of being repeatedly slapped by the other clowns whenever he attempts to speak even a simple truth. The crowd, which likes to laugh at the misfortunes of others, loves this bizarre and rather pathetic act.>>>

Looking East to the Past

Randall Stephens

"Ostalgie." That's East German nostalgia for the quaint days of communism--drab, bunker-like, late-Stalinist architecture, watches that don't work, tiny little cars, and the romance of scarcity. I encountered a slice of that for the first time in the dark comedy film Good Bye Lenin! Since then I've been curious about this strange sort of public memory. A little like being nostalgic about

the Dust Bowl? (Watch the East German National Anthem scene from Top Secret, embedded here.)

A related travel piece that recently appeared in a UK paper got my attention: Stephen McClarence, "Trains and Trabants," Yorkshire Post, 6 March 2011 19:00

FEW cities are as haunted by their past and their politics as Berlin. Around almost every corner there’s a reminder of its turbulent 20th century history – and one of the most potent of those reminders is being celebrated, if that’s the word, this year.

August sees the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall and I’ve come to explore what remains of it and the divisions it created across the city. It’s not, however, a wholly sober trip. I’ve signed up for a tour in a Trabant, the notorious national car of East Germany, and there’s the prospect of mainland Europe’s biggest department store. . .

The nostalgia flourishes in a movement called Ostalgie – “nostalgia for the East” – which is celebrated at the absorbing DDR Museum. It explores East Berlin life before the Wall came down in 1989. Visitors poke around a recreated 1970s flat, with its floral wallpaper, net curtains, cassette player, copies of Sputnik magazine... and radiators, we’re alarmed to see, exactly like our own at home.

In the late 1990s Daphne Berdahl wrote an influential essay on the phenomenon: "'(N)Ostalgie' for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things," Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 64:2 (1999). After the fall of the Berlin Wall, objects and goods from the East became instant camp for West Germans. But the shoddy products of the East also took gave some weird, sentimental comfort. "In this business of Ostalgie," writes Berdahl, "East German products have taken on new meaning when used the second time around. Now stripped of their original context of an economy of scarcity or an oppressive regime, these products largely recall an East Germany that never existed. They thus illustrate not only the way in which memory is an interactive, malleable, and highly contested phenomenon, but also the processes through which things become informed with a remembering--and forgetting--capacity" (198).

Sounds like a fun way to get at "memory" vs "history"!

Ronald Reagan vs College Students, 1967

Randall Stephens

"NEW HAVEN, Dec. 4 [1967]--Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, who said he had never taught anything before except swimming and Sunday school, sat on a desk at Yale University today and conducted a class in American history." So reported the New York Times on the Gipper's visit to the ivy, where he was met with student protests and plenty of probing questions (December 6, 1967).

"Should homosexuals be barred from holding public office?" a senior from LA asked. The governor was surprised by the question. Rumors had been swirling that his administration had fired two staff members after their sexual preferences came to light. "It's a tragic

illness," said Reagan, after a pause. And, yes, he did think that homosexuality should remain illegal. Some students earlier had demanded that the school rescind its invitation to Reagan. The governor, who visited Yale as a Chubb fellow, gave his $500 honorarium to charity.

The confrontation between the 56-year-old governor and Yale students in 1967 speaks to the culture wars that roiled the decade and continue to reverberate to this day. In the video embedded here the students, with haircuts that make them look like clones of Rob from My Three Sons, square off with Reagan on poverty, race, and Vietnam.

The commemoration of the one-hundredth birthday of the 40th president brought with it the usual fanfare of radio specials, documentaries, guest editorials, and the like. The new HBO doc
Reagan, like PBS's American experience bio, spans the actor-turned-politician's career. (Watch the latter in full here.)

Lost in the telling, sometimes, is the scrappy, intensely ideological cold and cultural warrior from the 1960s and early 1970s. To correct that a bit, see the governor go at it with the somewhat nervous Yalies. Or, observe him lashing out against that "mess in Berkeley." (A clip from the HBO doc showing the governor dress down Berkeley administrators shows that pretty well.) The public memory version--rosy-cheeked, avuncular, sunny--overshadows that more fiery aspect of his personality and politics.

Americans remember their leaders as they choose. (The myths and legends are as stubborn as a Missouri mule.) But it is good to remind ourselves that the politicians and public figures we revere and/or study are rarely as one-dimensional as we'd sometimes think they are.