POLITICAL BOOKNOTES
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Practice and Principles. Peter F. Drucker. Harper & Row, $19.95. Cold type, word processors, chainstore marketing and the like are beginning to make publishing resemble...
...The purpose of the book, then, is to "transform the inner moral debate, often shared with intimates, into public discourse...
...Despite American efforts to depict Libya's Muammar Qadhafi as a murderous outlaw, the moderate Moroccan government entered into a federation with Libya...
...He argues that the fight contributed to both the rise of the New Right and the dawn of the Reagan era...
...nuclear command and control...
...Innovate for the present...
...Foreign Policy...
...But before the year was out, he abruptly withdrew his request for American arms and denounced American policy as excessively pro-Israel...
...That policy, according to Moffett, emerged from a curious alliance of Democratic liberals and multinational corporate executives, meeting in places like the Trilateral Commission...
...But GM has sunk billions into merging with Hughes Aircraft and E.D.S., government contractors who operate strictly off the dole, steering as far clear of the free market as possible...
...They praise John Winthrop for envisioning the "city upon the hill ." For him, Puritan virtue required that he work within his community, rather than retreat, as did Roger Williams, into private purity...
...He sees a great danger in this policy— that our military planning, in a crisis, may itself become a force pushing for war...
...John M Flanagin...
...Carter decided to make it the occasion to unveil a new foreign policy for America after Vietnam...
...Carter won the battle for what Moffett calls his "policy without a constituency," but the cost was high...
...Likewise, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are antagonistic toward Syria's President Hafez al-Assad...
...The Middle East is a case in point...
...Daniel Ford's The Button on the other hand, is an activist's book, that is, lively and scary...
...both Republican and Democratic presidents had negotiated with Panama to write a new treaty...
...Drucker plows some well-tilled earth, then buries the reader under more rules, regulations, and aphorisms than any human being could possibly act on...
...hegemony, to which the new policy was a response, was focused on the Canal by Ronald Reagan in the 1976 campaign, when he attacked a Kissinger agreement that laid the basis for Carter's treaties...
...Written for the non-expert, this collection of nine essays, edited by CSIS senior fellows Barry Blechman and Edward Luttwak, provides a lucid account of the year's international political and military events...
...Gregg Easterbrook Secrets of State: The State Department and the Struggle over U.S...
...Ford also claims the Pentagon has a quick-release, use-them-orlosethem attitude toward its nuclear weapons, in particular land-based ballistic missiles...
...production may not start until 1989...
...Few would argue with Rubin's broad theme—that the State Department is an imperfect instrument of foreign policy and that its problems are getting worse rather than better...
...They believed that after detente the Soviet Union was less important to U.S...
...interests than the newly assertive countries of the Third World...
...They manage to make similar points while being wildly divergent in tone...
...Habits of the Heart laments that the rich language associated with republican and biblical tradition is debased by the language of therapy...
...SALT II, and he had created the enemy that would destroy him, as the conservative opposition became the foundation of the New Right...
...Barry M. Blechman, Edward Luttwak, eds...
...Rather, they are in the "final stages of development," in contrast to the U.S...
...Many of the people interviewed confessed that religion helps them discover their true selves...
...communications system, but in a linear fashion more understandable to lay readers and with anecdotes such as this: On a trip to the Strategic Air Command command post, Ford saw a general pick up a direct phone to the White House and fail to raise so much as an operator...
...Freedom, as Jefferson wrote, was the ability to be a "participator in the government of affairs," while happiness derived from the exercise of that freedom...
...Robert Bellah and his colleagues argue that the goal of government is to serve "the public good," as James Madison said, and that government will succeed in this task only if citizens have developed a sense of personal and social responsibility...
...The authors think a positive view of freedom emerges from what they call the biblical and republican traditions...
...The movement they hope for will not emerge from the portraits of unfulfilled lives or the shame that injustice is still pervasive...
...Meanwhile, what does it say that praise of the entrepreneurial spirit has taken over the business-book business and that even corporate CEOs now routinely condemn hierarchies and call for risk-taking excellence...
...and three "conditions" — " Tivo...
...In order to restore Egypt's good name among its Arab neighbors, Mubarak kept a polite distance from U.S...
...Which is it...
...But Rubin's insipid recommendations at the close of the book—for example: "The most important single factor is the need for competent knowledgeable people in key positions" —suggests that the State Department isn't alone in making solemn, unedifying pronouncements on foreign policy...
...Contradictions of this kind are unfortunate because by discrediting some of the information presented, Soviet Military Power raises questions about all of it...
...On the other side, few interest groups were willing to fight for the treaties...
...Barry Rubin...
...Both are thorough and illuminating...
...Both liberals and conservatives speak as though politics can be measured by a calculus of private freedom, the main difference being that liberals believe that government can, best supply the means and conservatives do not...
...Though originally a journalist, Drucker does not buttress his arguments with reporting, interviews, or specific case studies...
...On the other hand, it is the growing influence of religious extremists inside their own borders that compels moderate Arab leaders to charge that Washington is biased in favor .of Israel...
...the bureaucratic obstacles to coherent policy...
...nuclear forces is a complicated affair involving, among other things, a book of war plans called "the football," multi-digit codes, twoman silo crews, a command post under a mountain, and planes towing mile-long radio antennas...
...Rubin's discussion of the Roosevelt and Truman years, for example, is decorated with quotations lifted from the memoirs of various officials of the time, but it lacks the flavor of the personalities and events...
...In short, Soviet Military Power tells us little about how Comrade Gorbachev's military resources actually compare with ours, or about what he could really do with them...
...Reagan's position—"We built it, we paid for it, it's ours"— touched a nerve in the public...
...Moffett sees Carter as a victim of bad timing and poor public relations...
...Thus, the Soviet Union has forfeited credibility with the three most powerful Arab states...
...Charts and graphs are often exaggerated and inconsistent with the text...
...This presumably leads to missile envy and to MX acquisition...
...Soviet forces are large and capable enough without hype from the Pentagon...
...William Quandt writes that the United States and Soviet Union observed key developments from the sidelines during 1984...
...What about children...
...The book suffers from too little real experience of either the world or the State Department itself...
...The authors hope that demonstrating the emptiness in people's lives will spur them to create a social transformation that will finally fulfill the promise of the civil rights movement and create a just society...
...A series of command and control studies has appeared in recent months, with these two the latest in the genre...
...Barry Rubin has written a diligent but disappointing study of the State Department...
...He had no political capital left for future battles, such as the one over...
...more and more dependent on airborne communications systems—which are vulnerable to many sorts of attack...
...Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven Tipton...
...Moderate and conservative Arab states, meanwhile, remained deeply suspicious of Moscow's close relations with the radical regimes in Syria and Libya...
...Another president might have seen this for the no-win situation it was and made either a token effort or a backroom deal...
...They honor Jefferson for recognizing a law more basic than the statutes allowing slavery: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice can not sleep forever...
...Reagan initiatives in this area are all well and good, but won't make that much difference, according to Blair...
...Public praise for the small entrepreneur is a positive sign...
...Zbigniew Brzezinski, for instance, cites communications fragility when arguing that a limited "Star Wars" missile defense may be a good thing...
...peace talk proposals and cooled relations with Israel...
...Brookings, $32.95...
...Roger Smith of GM talks grandly and often about meeting the Japanese head-on with Saturn but has yet to turn a spade of earth for the factory...
...In the gigantomania category, charts showing strategic missiles, space launch vehicles, and submarines are calibrated by height or length, characteristics that bear little relationship to system performance...
...He has a number of intriguing recommendations, such as the creation of undersea command posts for the president and (my favorite) research into the use of railroad tracks for extremely lowfrequency submarine communications...
...Madison knew that while checks and balances are important, they alone will not guarantee the survival of freedom: "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty and happiness without virtue in the people is a chimerical idea...
...Confusing speeches about innovation with the genuine article is like saying that "patriotism" has swept the country because more people think that somebody else ought to go fight in Nicaragua...
...Unfortunately, in drawing a portrait of people inarticulate about their commitment to the public good, the authors fail to show how participation in the public realm can be a source of happiness...
...Most curious is the book's internally contradictory treatment of the Soviet effort to build laser weapons for strategic defense...
...Cornell University Press, $24.95...
...Every year the Reagan Pentagon issues a widely distributed, glossy volume called Soviet Military Power, which suggests where Soviet forces are in relation to ours, and, by inference, why we need more hardware to match them...
...Each of the contributors confirms the editors' central thesis that the twosuperpower order is disintegrating...
...Examining how command and control has evolved since the mid-sixties, Blair shows how technical constraints and sheer bureaucratic indifference have made the U.S...
...Instead, all manner of historical characters are called on to back up assertions, among them Roger Bacon, William Jennings Bryan, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Dickens, Ben Franklin, Warren G. Harding, Lillian Hellman, Nicolo Machiavelli, Mao Ze Dong, Gregor Mendel, Napoleon Bonaparte, Bertrand Russell, Madame de Sevigne, Jules Verne, and Alfred North Whitehead...
...It doesn't adequately meet the standards of any of these disciplines...
...Bruce Blair's Strategic Command and Control is unmistakably the product of a think-tank fellow...
...It is full of the sort of drama that newsmagazines love: feuds between various national security advisers and secretaries of state...
...Like "life" and "liberty," "the pursuit of happiness" was not a right to be enjoyed only occasionally but was an integral part of daily living...
...the frustrations of career foreign service officers...
...Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, $33...
...Similarly, his discussion of the Carter and Reagan administrations often seems culled from the files of Time and Newsweek...
...power plays by bureaucrats...
...Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was no more cooperative...
...Today, in contrast, freedom usually means an individual's ability to pursue a happiness that he will enjoy in private...
...The apparent fragility of command and control, at best, calls into question whether the doctrine of flexible response in nuclear crises is practical and at worst implies that the nuclear balance is much more unstable than we realize...
...Nevertheless, one is repeatedly left with the Freudian impression that somehow their systems are always bigger than ours...
...This system may in fact be quite tenuous...
...The Canal treaties would both introduce the new American policy and lay the groundwork for future shifts...
...Kathleen Kennedy Townsend The Button—The Pentagon's Command and Control System—Does It Work...
...Although we could use a good East-West force comparison, this book misses the mark...
...Habits of the Heart asks whether the virtue necessary for freedom and happiness is now being developed...
...David Ignatius Soviet Military Power, 1985, Fourth Edition...
...rivalries and intrigues that frustrate policy...
...Thomas Hirschfeld Habits of the Heart...
...I—I would say I have a legal responsibility for them ." In fact, the emergence of this private individual was envisioned by de Tocqueville when he feared that Americans would one day come to have no connections with either their ancestors or their descendants...
...In addition to the Middle East, the Yearbook surveys Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances...
...A mere handful of Soviet warheads—perhaps as few as 250—might effectively destroy U.S...
...George D. Moffett III, an historian, served as an assistant to Hamilton Jordan on the White House staff from 1978 to 1981...
...As we currently have too much wheat, we have too many books, at least too many books just like other books...
...The latest effort from Peter F. Drucker, a management professor who has been writing on economics for 45 years and who contributes an insightful column to The Wall Street Journal, will disappoint his fans...
...One brief chapter on the principles of innovation consists of five "do's"—`A successful innovation aims at leadership" —three "don'ts" — "Don't try to innovate for the future...
...Church morality offers alleviation of private pain, not the courage to address injustice in the community...
...Antipathy to government programs has dominated mainstream American politics at least since 1980 and probably stretching back a decade—Jimmy Carter, let's not forget, deregulated oil, gas, airlines, and interstate trucking...
...As happens with any hot policy topic, there is now a rush to create a literature...
...Nobody can have new ideas all the time, and Drucker, who is 76 years old, shouldn't have jeopardized the stature of his earlier works by dashing off Innovation and Entrepreneurship...
...In reality, control of U.S...
...In each region the pattern is the same: smaller nations asserting their independence from the superpowers...
...When the Soviet Union supplies weapons to a fanatic like Qadhafi, mainstream Arab leaders regard this as subversion...
...According to Quandt, it is the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism that has neutralized Moscow and Washington...
...University of California, $16.95...
...Portrayed in this story, however, is a president without such leadership qualities as: eloquence, passion, conviction, clarity of thought and purpose, or even the basic political sense of when a battle is not worth waging...
...This radical individualism disturbs the authors, who find the pursuit of private happiness has not resulted in either a happy people or a vibrant republic...
...Then, in an afterword, Drucker has the nerve to put down other volumes on entrepreneurship for being "anecdotal...
...Most foolish is the book's treatment of the new Typhoon class Soviet ballistic missile submarine, which is described as the world's largest, and one-third larger than our latest, the Ohio class Trident boat...
...it's just that it's been written already, several times...
...However, as Moffett demonstrates, the "Canal give-away" met with vigorous opposition...
...A larger boat needs bigger and noisier engines, thus making it easier to find and destroy...
...Gordon Rayfield International Security Yearbook 1984/1985...
...A sense of isolation permeates even those institutions such as religion and politics, which are usually associated with creating a sense of the common good...
...Daniel Ford...
...This weakness virtually dictates that the U.S...
...Department of Defense...
...But do we really need to know, for example, that after a news leak about the "Big Pine II" military exercise in Honduras, "an angry Schultz protested directly to Reagan about Clark's failure to keep him informed...
...Precious little indication is given of what an Entrepreneurial Society might be, although Drucker hints that government will wither away even as some unspecified vast new federal program is created to care for "redundant workers" laid off by the smokestack industries...
...Public discontent with the decline of U.S...
...George D. Moffett III...
...The book's conclusion declares that America is on the verge of a monumental "revolutionary" shift from a managerial society to an Entrepreneurial Society...
...Now that controversy over the socalled "window of vulnerability" of American ICBMs has abated, defense experts are focusing increasingly on command structure as the real Achilles heel of strategic forces...
...He also examines in detail weak spots in the U.S...
...In one interview, for instance, a therapist is asked whether she has any responsibility for anyone other than herself...
...They set out to show the debilitating effect of selfreferential individualism and to encourage discussions that will reawaken the ideals of freedom and commitment current 200 years ago...
...in business howto manuals it seems the more obvious the statement, the louder the drumroll...
...An actual button, of course, does not exist...
...have a quick-release, launch-under-attack philosophy of nuclear war, Blair concludes...
...Peter Grier The Limits of Victory: The Ratification of the Panama Canal Treaties...
...shuttle, which has been up and flying for years...
...In the Typhoon case, size is a disadvantage...
...Drucker's "Seven Sources for Innovative Opportunity" and four "Entrepreneurial Strategies" will seem hauntingly familiar to readers of the genre...
...A year later, a group of thenunknown young conservatives— Richard Viguerie, Kevin Phillips, Paul Weyrich, and Terry Dolan, among others—capitalized on that public reaction to unify the scattered forces of a new conservatism...
...You must look carefully at the text to discover that the Ohio is actually the far more capable craft, with solid-fueled missiles rather than liquid, four more missile tubes, and at least ten MIRVs per boat...
...In other words, it tries to convey concern without being alarmist and is very difficult to read...
...The Panama Canal had come to be regarded as an irritant in our relations with Latin America...
...But the real problem with the book is that it doesn't have the intellectual horsepower to digest all the quotations and newspaper clips and say something new and useful about how foreign policy is made...
...Simon and Schuster, $16.95...
...Soviet Military Power fails because of distortions and irrelevancies and because it does not explain the significance of the facts and trends presented...
...Rather than speaking a language that reaches out to others, many of the individuals the authors interviewed tie their conversations to the private individual self...
...If this book were upland cotton, it would go straight into storage...
...Politics becomes a tool to achieve special desires— favorable zoning, higher salaries for teachers, or tax breaks for businesses...
...Cold type, word processors, chainstore marketing and the like are beginning to make publishing resemble farming—burdened by overproduction...
...Not that Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a bad book...
...Italics from the original...
...There is no single switch in the White House that allows a president to send a jolt of electricity 3,000 miles cross-country, instantly launching Minutemen from the missile fields of the Great Plains...
...Carter took office as an adherent to this view, ignoring the military and ideological issues of U.S.-Soviet relations...
...It fell to Jimmy Carter to complete the negotiations in his first year in office and then to seek Senate ratification...
...They extol Lincoln for his use of biblical imagery to express his vision of the Union...
...Our shuttle, by the way, appears nowhere in the book...
...In this useful book he analyzes the Carter administration's 1977 struggle to win ratification of the Panama Canal treaties...
...Instead, Rubin tends to stick to familiar themes that have been explored better by others: the friction between State and the NSC...
...The book takes its title from Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that it is the "habits of the heart," the attitudes and values of our society more than its laws, which maintain democratic institutions...
...Either the planned Soviet system "could be operational by the late 1980s" or "testing of the components of the large-scale development system could begin in the 1990s" or "initial operational deployment is not likely in this century...
...Converting those sentiments to practice is the next challenge...
...The socialist realism tendency becomes apparent when the reader must resort to footnotes to discover that the Soviet medium and heavy space vehicles and reusable space plane, included on a chart of "Space Launch Vehicles," do not really exist...
...The authors find that what Americans commonly understand as freedom and happiness has changed over 200 years...
...No," she replies...
...Qadhafi's designs on Sudan and Chad, two nations traditionally under Egyptian protection, have not endeared him to the Mubarak government...
...Here, five authors mine their knowledge of sociology, history, religion, and philosophy to explore the mores of the American middle class...
...Rubin's book is stranded awkwardly between journalism, history, and political science...
...To succeed, innovators must build on their strengths...
...In early 1984, Jordan's King Hussein facilitated American efforts to bring about Arab-Israeli negotiations...
...Paradoxically, these distortions take the form of three favorite Soviet techniquesgigantomania (bigger/more is better), socialist realism (treating the future as if it were already here), and selective comparison...
...Bruce Blair...
...Oxford University Press, $25...
...Instead, it will be created by people who are willing to risk their present private comfort because they are excited by the promise of a greater public future...
...Carter was never quite able to explain the new policy or his vision—if he had one—of the American role in the world...
...Each of these leaders understood how to reveal transcendence in political life...
...Strategic Command and Control, Redefining the Nuclear Threat...
...Not to worry, though, for he assures that "the numbers [of unemployed factory workers] are not large...
...Holding back the entrepreneurial millenium is the fact that "politics is still based on the age-old assumption that whatever government does is grounded in the nature of human society and therefore 'forever.' As a result there is no political mechanism so far to slough off the old, the outworn, the no-longerproductive in government" What country is he referring to...
Vol. 17 • September 1985 • No. 8
