Briefing note: US Deputy Secretary Of State meeting with Andrei Gromyko (1985)(history.state.gov)
history.state.gov
Briefing note: US Deputy Secretary Of State meeting with Andrei Gromyko (1985)
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v05/d16
55 comments
Burkina Faso (French) was at war with Mali (Soviet) later that year.
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> Burkina Faso: important once, I cannot remember why
Probably because at the time it was in danger of becoming a successful socialist country (under then-president Thomas Sankara), a state of affairs which obviously could not be permitted to continue (Sankara was duly assassinated in 1987 by his best friend who was much more compliant to the West):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
Probably because at the time it was in danger of becoming a successful socialist country (under then-president Thomas Sankara), a state of affairs which obviously could not be permitted to continue (Sankara was duly assassinated in 1987 by his best friend who was much more compliant to the West):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
successful socialist country
What do you count as success? Just a few years earlier, and driven by the same socialist expansion strategy, another developing state turned socialist, Cambodia, with active help from Moscow. Is this what you have in mind as success?
Wasn't Sankara a charismatic leader, and military man who came to power by a coup d'état? Have you looked at the track record of military coup d'états in history ...?
His wikipedia entry, which has no doubt had the usual battles over sources and bias, reports:
> His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles
> Other components of his national agenda included planting over 10 million trees to combat the growing desertification of the Sahel, redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents and establishing a road and railway construction programme. On the local level, Sankara called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities build schools with their own labour. Moreover, he outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. He appointed women to high governmental positions and encouraged them to work outside the home and stay in school, even if pregnant. Sankara encouraged the prosecution of officials accused of corruption, counter-revolutionaries and "lazy workers" in Popular Revolutionary Tribunals. As an admirer of the Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Such programs led to criticism by Amnesty International and other non-governmental organizations for violations of human rights, including extrajudicial executions and arbitrary detentions of political opponents.
So large improvements in material conditions for an extremely poor country - but at the expense of political freedom.
> Have you looked at the track record of military coup d'états in history
As so often in history, those who come to power by violence leave it by violence; he was assassinated.
> His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles
> Other components of his national agenda included planting over 10 million trees to combat the growing desertification of the Sahel, redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents and establishing a road and railway construction programme. On the local level, Sankara called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities build schools with their own labour. Moreover, he outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. He appointed women to high governmental positions and encouraged them to work outside the home and stay in school, even if pregnant. Sankara encouraged the prosecution of officials accused of corruption, counter-revolutionaries and "lazy workers" in Popular Revolutionary Tribunals. As an admirer of the Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Such programs led to criticism by Amnesty International and other non-governmental organizations for violations of human rights, including extrajudicial executions and arbitrary detentions of political opponents.
So large improvements in material conditions for an extremely poor country - but at the expense of political freedom.
> Have you looked at the track record of military coup d'états in history
As so often in history, those who come to power by violence leave it by violence; he was assassinated.
Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin ... made similar promises. Did they deliver?
Political movements cannot meaningfully be evaluated by what they promise, for the all promise the world, but by
- Before they come to power: by what they are likely to deliver (which is predicted from what similar policies have lead to in the past).
- Post facto: what they did deliver.
This is obvious. Everybody in this discussion is aware of this.
There is an interesting social phenomenon at play here, that deserves intellectual curiosity and explanation: there is no identifiable political ideology in the history of humanity that failed to deliver so hard and so often with identical policies, as the Marxist position via Leninist cadre parties. Yet even today, we we see apologias like pjc50's despite Marxist / Leninist cadre parties. I've even pointed to the A/B testing that were the division of Germany and Korea.
Many times people have tried to answer this question. I'm broadly in agreement with Nietzsche on this one ...
Political movements cannot meaningfully be evaluated by what they promise, for the all promise the world, but by
- Before they come to power: by what they are likely to deliver (which is predicted from what similar policies have lead to in the past).
- Post facto: what they did deliver.
This is obvious. Everybody in this discussion is aware of this.
There is an interesting social phenomenon at play here, that deserves intellectual curiosity and explanation: there is no identifiable political ideology in the history of humanity that failed to deliver so hard and so often with identical policies, as the Marxist position via Leninist cadre parties. Yet even today, we we see apologias like pjc50's despite Marxist / Leninist cadre parties. I've even pointed to the A/B testing that were the division of Germany and Korea.
Many times people have tried to answer this question. I'm broadly in agreement with Nietzsche on this one ...
If we’re talking about governance failures, I’d argue that absolute monarchies also generally ended up failing at delivering results. There aren’t very many left for a reason.
> So large improvements in material conditions for an extremely poor country - but at the expense of political freedom.
He had stated goals of improving material conditions for the poor. Every strongman promises that.
Without doing the research, I feel safe assuming none of those improvements actually happened.
But I'll be very happy to have any Burkinabes correct me!
He had stated goals of improving material conditions for the poor. Every strongman promises that.
Without doing the research, I feel safe assuming none of those improvements actually happened.
But I'll be very happy to have any Burkinabes correct me!
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Not to engage the broader question of whether socialism has any success stories, but I think one could more sympathetically read GP's "successful socialist country" in this context as "a country successfully converted to idealogical alignment with the Soviet Union"
That would be misleading, since it would distract attention away from the core reasons of such conflicts.
Aside, during the cold war, many leaders in developing countries played the US and the Soviet union off against each other, in order to get weapons etc. Erdogan in Turkey has been masterfully doing some variation of this for a while.
Aside, during the cold war, many leaders in developing countries played the US and the Soviet union off against each other, in order to get weapons etc. Erdogan in Turkey has been masterfully doing some variation of this for a while.
I have to guess that the extreme tongue-in-cheek quality of the whole presentation played on the expectation that the Soviets would have access to this, themselves, before the meeting, and would find it very difficult to read between the lines and know what it was really saying.
More likely it was meant entirely for the Soviets' amusement/confusion, that they would have been obliged to pretend they had not seen, and some other doc still secret was actually read by (or to) the US crew.
Or, it is really just an inside joke that never had any larger meaning, and got assigned a document number more or less by mistake..
More likely it was meant entirely for the Soviets' amusement/confusion, that they would have been obliged to pretend they had not seen, and some other doc still secret was actually read by (or to) the US crew.
Or, it is really just an inside joke that never had any larger meaning, and got assigned a document number more or less by mistake..
The simplest explanation is that people in the US gov't act and believe this kind of stuff. It aligns with every piece of leaked private correspondence from these people, as well as public statements at the time and now.
If anything the last 4 years (mostly composed of "professional politicians" despite those at the top maybe being outsiders!) should be real "mask off" to the supposed genius and amazing tradecraft of the US.
Ocamm's razor here is that this was the memo.
If anything the last 4 years (mostly composed of "professional politicians" despite those at the top maybe being outsiders!) should be real "mask off" to the supposed genius and amazing tradecraft of the US.
Ocamm's razor here is that this was the memo.
It is striking how moronic and ill informed it is.
When I think of all Ambassadors with grace and favour appointments it makes me grimace. The extraordinary testimony from Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman was at least reassuring that competent people were in government, even if they were being ignored.
When I think of all Ambassadors with grace and favour appointments it makes me grimace. The extraordinary testimony from Fiona Hill and Alex Vindman was at least reassuring that competent people were in government, even if they were being ignored.
> It is striking how moronic and ill informed it is.
I didn't get that at all. Maybe it's discourteous and flippant. The humour is broad rather than refined but I still chuckled.
Hard to evaluate "ill informed" due to distance in time and the fact that I lack insight into the context. It wasn't aiming to be comprehensive and insightful. It was a tongue in cheek crib sheet between people that appeared to know and get where each other was coming from.
I didn't get that at all. Maybe it's discourteous and flippant. The humour is broad rather than refined but I still chuckled.
Hard to evaluate "ill informed" due to distance in time and the fact that I lack insight into the context. It wasn't aiming to be comprehensive and insightful. It was a tongue in cheek crib sheet between people that appeared to know and get where each other was coming from.
An intelligent person can communicate important information through jest. In this ability is found charisma and charm - important characteristics for a diplomat. We wouldn't want our adversaries to think us dull.
I found it incredibly dull and far from charismatic.
It’s quite hard to produce humour that is enjoyed by everyone. To each their own.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯I found the Russian.
Cheers! :)
Cheers! :)
Read the footnotes. It was an internally produced joke.
If it’s any consolation, the US has increasingly moved its diplomatic channels out of their traditional venues into the Pentagon over the past few decades, and it’s absolutely packed to the gills with Vindmans and Hills.
While the State Department might get a new coat of paint under Biden, it’s been being “gutted” for decades.
While the State Department might get a new coat of paint under Biden, it’s been being “gutted” for decades.
I have no idea what you're getting at. While the memo is intended to be humorous, it still requires vast knowledge of the issues to write and/or fully understand.
Humour and professionalism are not incompatible. I know Trump liked to pretend that he is being criticised for failing to adequately play-act the sort of stiff formality his basic understanding of "being presidential" encompasses. But that was never the case.
Humour and professionalism are not incompatible. I know Trump liked to pretend that he is being criticised for failing to adequately play-act the sort of stiff formality his basic understanding of "being presidential" encompasses. But that was never the case.
It ought to be humour. Obviously someone took the time to come up with the title Never Mind the Manganese Ore Export Quotas, Here’re the Enjoyable Popular Music Boys. I’m pretty sure there is no actual album with that title.
[Edit: Apparently the photo is from the National Lampoon, May 1978.]
[Edit: Apparently the photo is from the National Lampoon, May 1978.]
In case someone doesn't know, that title is a play on the album of Sex Pistols.
I am not sure what you point is here?
US diplomats (& members of the Blob) like their counter parts in the foreign service (UK) quite often use humour in internal documents.
Listen to podcasts by insiders like the bombshell's there is also a famous SIS (MI6) document about the death of Rasputin written in the style of teh Daily Mail.
US diplomats (& members of the Blob) like their counter parts in the foreign service (UK) quite often use humour in internal documents.
Listen to podcasts by insiders like the bombshell's there is also a famous SIS (MI6) document about the death of Rasputin written in the style of teh Daily Mail.
Amusingly, the author, or the boss of the author, got promoted to Ambassador to Germany a few months later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burt
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Reminds me of programmers writing hilarious docs and comments so that others will actually read them. Imagine you are a diplomat who gets these sort of documents every day all day. A little humor goes a very long way!
Dated: April 5, 1985. Maybe produced about five days earlier?
Gromyko and Punk Rock? Sorry, that's impossible, for Gromyko "everything was going acording to the plan" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDCDsKHCE8s
> First moves will be to revitalize Soviet economy, end the arms race, and get Mrs. G a charge account at Neiman Marcus
...not The Onion.
These are people smarter than the Onion writers and spies (except the ones that are spies). They went to Georgetown or the Harvard JFK school.
...but it sure reads like one.
> If Soviets dismantle all SS–20s, we are willing to airbrush out Gorbachev’s birthmark in US photographs
> If Soviets dismantle all SS–20s, we are willing to airbrush out Gorbachev’s birthmark in US photographs
I wonder if that's some kind of cheeky remark internal between the SoS and the assistant, or if there was actually a real thought to do this. Ofc, cheap price, but seriously? Did they believe Gorbachev (spelling) was that vain? Was he?
edit: also, "make the world safe for conventional warfare". Hmpf.
edit: also, "make the world safe for conventional warfare". Hmpf.
It reads less as humor if you learn that the only reason Intermediate Missile Ban Treaty happened was that USA was going to use its failure to damage anti-nuke protests and peace movements by proposing "unreasonable ban that Soviets will surely reject".
To utter surprise, the opening argument for "total ban on IRBMs" got accepted wholesale.
To utter surprise, the opening argument for "total ban on IRBMs" got accepted wholesale.
The whole thing is a spoof, dude. Read the footnotes.
I've seen Soviet-era posters with his birthmark airbrushed out, so I guess it's possible.
Ha.
"Point to Make
—We have new proposal: why don’t you send Lenin’s body to US on tour. Just like King Tut exhibit.
—We are prepared to respond by sending Jane Fonda workout group on tour of Soviet cities."
"Point to Make
—We have new proposal: why don’t you send Lenin’s body to US on tour. Just like King Tut exhibit.
—We are prepared to respond by sending Jane Fonda workout group on tour of Soviet cities."
> —We are prepared to respond by sending Jane Fonda workout group on tour of Soviet citise
This was most probably a joke but about 10 years ago I discovered this Soviet aerobics video [1] from 1984 which would have put many Jane Fonda videos to shame. The music all by itself is worth it a thousand times.
[1] https://youtu.be/TkYdZC6R2rE
This was most probably a joke but about 10 years ago I discovered this Soviet aerobics video [1] from 1984 which would have put many Jane Fonda videos to shame. The music all by itself is worth it a thousand times.
[1] https://youtu.be/TkYdZC6R2rE
Mind boggling! Such gems are why HN can be so much fun :-)
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We need a contest to come up with the most plausible album for "Never Mind the Manganese Ore Export Quotas, Here’re the Enjoyable Popular Music Boys."
For those too young to remember or were asleep in Music History, this is a play on "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols".
The Sex Pistols was a British punk band, a project of Malcolm McLaren fronted by Sid Vicious (John Ritchie) and Johnny Rotten (Johnny Lydon), who enjoyed needling then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who badly deserved it.
The Sex Pistols was a British punk band, a project of Malcolm McLaren fronted by Sid Vicious (John Ritchie) and Johnny Rotten (Johnny Lydon), who enjoyed needling then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who badly deserved it.
I’m a little stunned the reference is not obvious to a reasonably well educated person over the age of 20.
I was a baby when this album came out and knew who they were by the time I was probably 10 or so, despite the fact they had been long broken up. This is one of the most influential bands in rock music history... for an adult to be unaware, would almost be like a younger version of myself to be clueless about who Buddy Holly was.
I was a baby when this album came out and knew who they were by the time I was probably 10 or so, despite the fact they had been long broken up. This is one of the most influential bands in rock music history... for an adult to be unaware, would almost be like a younger version of myself to be clueless about who Buddy Holly was.
I'll cop to not getting the reference. I'm 38, overly educated in the liberal arts, reasonably well read. My recent text threads include jokes about Herodotus, Bartleby, Frankie Valli, Jason Derulo, and Belle Delphine.
Sometimes you're just in the tail end of the lucky 10,000.
Sometimes you're just in the tail end of the lucky 10,000.
On an individual level, it’s hard to argue with what a person knows or doesn’t. Regarding my assertion about the band’s relevance and impact in popular culture, wikipedia says the following:
On the band -
“Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they are regarded as one of the most groundbreaking acts in the history of popular music.”
On the album -
“It is frequently listed as the most influential punk album, and one of the most important albums of all time... In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine named the album the second best of the previous 20 years, behind only the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The same magazine named it 41st on their list of 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003, maintaining the position in its updated 2012 list. In 2006, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest albums ever.“
On the band -
“Although their initial career lasted just two and a half years, they are regarded as one of the most groundbreaking acts in the history of popular music.”
On the album -
“It is frequently listed as the most influential punk album, and one of the most important albums of all time... In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine named the album the second best of the previous 20 years, behind only the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The same magazine named it 41st on their list of 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003, maintaining the position in its updated 2012 list. In 2006, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest albums ever.“
Of course! I wasn't refuting your claims either to its popularity or significance. I was only acknowledging that there is very little in this world that boggles my mind somebody doesn't know. There's a long tail on acquiring knowledge.
It's probably one of those cases where a lot of people heard about the band, but have no idea what albums they released.
Perhaps, but this is their only album. As noted above (ref the wiki entry), it stands on its own as one of the most influential in modern music history.
I always thought the word “Bollocks” was internationally recognized slang because of it.
I always thought the word “Bollocks” was internationally recognized slang because of it.
The whole tone of it was corny, even for the standards of the time. But there is a subtext in it worth commenting on. Once you agree to engage on the level of a "serious" discussion in an existential power struggle with committed ideologues, like Reagan and the soviets, you've given key ground.
Even (especially?) communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn't communism. The soviet state was totalitarian, which is essentially defined by the object against which it constantly militates, which is truth in all and any form. The total war on any truth that could allow for an island of private individual identity in opposition to the movement is the sufficient and necessary condition for the totalitarian urge (Arendt, etc.). What made Reagan the oddly ideal person to respond to that movement was it was his cowboy-actor personal boundaries that were anathema to the uncertainty on which the soviet mentality depended and cultivated in people. It was a unique situation.
Obama had a similar "openness," I think, which was not what most people think at all, but rather complete confidence in the boundary between himself and others that enabled him to seem open to any and all circumstances. Reality is nobody ever gets close enough to see the heat and steel behind it. Comparably, Bill Clinton even had more sharp edges than Obama.
Maybe the 80's were just this corny, but the briefing note has some tells of very polished people code switching to what they understood only from the outside as Reagan's aw-shucks earnestness.
Even (especially?) communists will tell you the soviet ideology wasn't communism. The soviet state was totalitarian, which is essentially defined by the object against which it constantly militates, which is truth in all and any form. The total war on any truth that could allow for an island of private individual identity in opposition to the movement is the sufficient and necessary condition for the totalitarian urge (Arendt, etc.). What made Reagan the oddly ideal person to respond to that movement was it was his cowboy-actor personal boundaries that were anathema to the uncertainty on which the soviet mentality depended and cultivated in people. It was a unique situation.
Obama had a similar "openness," I think, which was not what most people think at all, but rather complete confidence in the boundary between himself and others that enabled him to seem open to any and all circumstances. Reality is nobody ever gets close enough to see the heat and steel behind it. Comparably, Bill Clinton even had more sharp edges than Obama.
Maybe the 80's were just this corny, but the briefing note has some tells of very polished people code switching to what they understood only from the outside as Reagan's aw-shucks earnestness.
communists will tell you
the soviet ideology wasn't
communism.
Let's also be clear that Soviets read the works by Marx and Engels in great detail, it's not like they didn't know what Marx and Engels wrote. For example, the Communist Manifesto [1, 2] outlines a few essential demands [3] for a transition that will eventually lead to communist utopia. Every single one of those was executed, and achieved by Stalin.
Exactly what "communism" should mean has never really been clarified, but whatever Marx and Engels meant by it, the fact that carrying out their 10 key demands exacted an 8 digit death toll is an extremely strong indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with Marx and Engels ideas.
Moreover, the world A/B tested this: two countries were split (Germany and Korea), one was ruled by a communist party (Soviet aligned) the other capitalist and within a decade the capitalist one was doing dramatically better than the other. So much so, that you Soviet aligned one had to turn itself to a prison to prevent the population from fleeing. (Yes I am aware that this is not a repeatable scientific experiment. However it is the most decisive 'experiment' you can hope for in politics and social theory. It is what we must learn from. To quote Marx: "A Nation should and can learn from other nations".)
[1] K. Marx, F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. http://activistmanifesto.org/assets/original-communist-manif...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
[3] Briefly (and from [2]): progressive income tax; abolition of inheritances and private property; abolition of child labour; free public education; nationalisation of the means of transport and communication; centralisation of credit via a national bank; expansion of publicly owned land, etc.—the implementation of which would result in the precursor to a stateless and classless society.
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Two out of three ain't bad.
> Don’t blubber. You’re guilty as hell of violating whales
Little joke there - but a very important issue as the USSR was a major factor in almost making whales extinct, and for very little economic gain to themselves.
> Avoid strategic miscalculation: want to talk about Antarctica, Fiji, and Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso: important once, I cannot remember why, and I've not heard that name since the cold war ended.