| 28 June 2005 28 June 2005 Empires John Walton, a billionaire son of the Wal-Mart empire, died in a plane crash in Wyoming yesterday. He was worth $18.2 billion dollars, they say, and was flying an ultra-light airplane out of the airport at Jackson Hole , Wyoming . I can understand the appeal of flying a little plane above the great granite peaks. The majesty of the mountains must help to put the wild illogic of his part of the retail empire into perspective. He ranked as the 11th richest man in the world, tied with one of his brothers, and just behind another. His mother and sister ranked behind him. The money that makes the family dinner table wealthier than some nation-states came from Sam Walton, the founder, who was the richest man in the world when he lived, though he still died. Young John never bought into Sam's vision, not completely. He lived his life listening to his own music. He won a Silver Star in combat when he was younger, and never got caught up in the day-to-day running of the company that accelerated globalization and catapulted China into what might become their own private century. The Walton Family fortune represents a sort of transfer tax on the American way of life, moving small town jobs across the ocean, and returning them as bales of athletic socks. The Chinese will get beyond that. They have a vigorous culture and just needed the help in getting to critical mass. There is much more coming across the ocean, bales of dollars, not textiles. Just give it a little time. There are places where the old order is struggling. I am not going to declare the end of American primacy, not yet. But there are boiling pots everywhere, bubbling away. They have something to do with America , siphoning off the products of the mighty engine of enterprise. Great Empires have their cycles of prosperity, and with underlying factors of energy and good earth, can continue to grow and prosper. Rome lasted eleven centuries, after all. In my own short life I have heard men like Henry Kissinger declare that there could be no victory against the Soviet Union , only slow accommodation to the inevitable. He called it Realpolitik, and smart as he was, he was wrong. All it took was a little attitude from Ronald Reagan, and a little confidence. But consistently bad policy can show the limits of national power. Iraq is an interesting problem, and one that could prove to be one of Secretary Rumsfeld's tipping points. There is another one next door to Iraq , in the ancient land of Persia . I call myself a Cold Warrior, since the bi-polar world of my youth is how we defined ourselves. But in my operational career, literally from my first year, I have been confronted by the boiling spirit of old empires fueled by an intoxicating faith. The hostage-taking in Iran in 1979 was the first time I arrived at the scene of a major traffic wreck, and watched our leaders try to deal with the consequences of the failed policy that seemed to have caused it. I cannot say that it was the abrupt reversal of the Nixon positions on the Shah that did it. The descendents of Xerxes are proud people. But I think it is fair to say that things might have worked out differently if Carter hadn't pulled the plug on the Pahlavis. Instead, we rolled through the rapids with the Mullahs, and then the minor moderates. They are going to get The Bomb, that seems clear. The question is who will exercise control over it. The President-elect of Iran is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is a dark handsome fellow of firm belief. That sort of confidence always troubled me. I had hoped that we might see a continuation of the relative moderation of the man he beat in the finals, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Ahmadinejad beat him by a margin of nearly two-to-one, drawing his strength from the religious underclass. People were emotional about this election. Turnout in the primary round was heavy. The result put the former mayor of Tehran in a position to exercise a mandate, arguably a stronger position than the American President who took a narrow plurality and declared it to be the mandate of heaven. The practical exercise of politics seems to have disabused the American Administration on that count, though the President remains serene in his vision. There are limits to the power of man, if not of heaven. The reach of Iran is small, nothing like it was when the Persians conquered all before them. The Chinese only sought global hegemony once, dispatching a eunuch Admiral to lead a fleet of gigantic ships across the wide ocean. The experience seemed to frighten the imperial court. Books were burned, and maps were destroyed. The empire turned in upon itself, and eventually the barbarians swept over them. But the Chinese are a resilient people, like the Persians. The emissaries of the Emperor are abroad again, and they are talking to people like Ahmadinejad. People with vision and a fire in their belly for a world that is not uni-polar. The Chinese are funding activities in Africa, and building telecommunications links with India . They are talking to the Panamanians, and helping rebuild the railway alongside the American Canal . And with oil at sixty dollars a barrel, they are talking to another man of vision, with fire in his belly. He lives in Venezuela and his name is Hugo Chavez. He believes in tipping points, and as others have thought before, he thinks the time of the Yankees should pass away. He thinks he might just be the man to pull Uncle Sam's beard and get away with it. The Chinese just smile their patient smile. They have plenty of time. It is disconcerting to think that the grin on their faces is the Cheshire Cat vision of Sam Walton. 29 May 2005 Shelf Life Latin strongmen come in various shapes and sizes and with indefinite shelf-lives. I am tempted to make a comparison between the length of the regime with the height of the strongman- tall Castro versus squat Noriega, for example- but that would be misleading. There is much more to it, and I would be curious to hear what President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela would make of my theory. I met wizened old Joaquin Balaguer, Presidente of the Dominican Republic , in 1994. He had been in power since his predecessor Rafael Trujillo was murdered nearly thirty years before. He was stooped and nearly blind and in his eighties. His personal guard had close-fitting black uniforms and Uzis. His protocol officers were spectacularly beautiful women. Trujillo , a man of ordinary height, had become a threat to regional order and Balaguer was not. I never had a chance to meet Manuel Noriega personally, but I have always had a connection to his Panama . My grandfather worked on the Ditch, providing telephones to the Canal Zone and the capital, which was actually in Panama . Under the Treaty, the Zone had been the United States , a swath of land five miles on either side of the Canal, and forty miles long. in the 1950s, there were more than a 100,000 US citizens living and working in a tropical version of small-town America . In the 1960s, riots broke out in Panama City over the provisions of the 1903 Treaty. The American presence in Panama was likened to a hostile power occupying the banks of the Mississippi River , north to south, for a century. Jimmy Carter saw the inequity, and he negotiated an orderly twenty year turnover with strongman Omar Torrijos, who had come to power after an orderly coup in 1968. He ran what he liked to call “a dictatorship with a heart.” The Canal Treaty came in two versions, one acceptable to the US Senate, and the other acceptable to Torrijos. They were never reconciled, but the Carter Administration accepted it. The night in 1979 when the gates to the Zone opened up for the first time, Panamanian taxis flooded the area, honking their horns. A giant Panamanian flag went up on Ancon Hill, flying twenty-four seven, brightly lit at night. Torrijos died in a helicopter crash in 1981, having had a shelf-life of 12 years. After three years of maneuvering, and five governments, career solider Manuel Noriega took over. In a trip in 1983 I was surprised to find his cops roughing up American officers who violated the Treaty provision that banned the wearing of their uniforms. Noriega thought he was bulletproof, figuring he could drain the upper lakes of the Canal and shut it down for years. His behavior relied on his perception of invulnerability, which was erroneous. I was an inadvertent participant in an aborted covert plot to arrest him for drug trafficking in the summer of 1989, and the 82nd Airborne arrived as part of Operation JUST CAUSE in December of that year. Noriega's National Guard fought for five days. The Canal was secured, and the strongman took refuge in the Papal Nuncio's residence, where he was surrounded by US troops who blasted loud rock n' roll music at the building until he surrendered. Then flown to Howard Air force Base, which under the treaty was still considered US soil. He was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration and eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison. That was later reduced to 30 years, and with good behavior, he is eligible for release when he is 88. They say that with the exception of a mild stroke, he has adapted well to his new life in Miami . Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra May 28, 2005 Bantam Despot Strong men come in many sizes and flavors. The strong man in Haiti in July of 1994 was a plucky little Creole Brigadier named Raoul Cedras. He was short of stature, but built like a bantamweight fighter. He had that in common with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela , but he was a bit of a reluctant strongman; he was the best face that the junta could put on the group that ousted the mad priest Aristide, who was elected in the ambiguous legitimacy that made the Americans squirm in their commitment to democracy. That is why we were there. The Administration was in a funk over Haiti , held hostage by Randall Robinson's hunger strike and the demands of the Congressional Black Caucus, there was a growing consensus that only an invasion to re-establish Aristide could salvage the overall agenda. Raoul wanted a chance to get his family and his liquid assets on the afternoon flight to Miami , the gentile exit for deposed strongmen back in the day, and not the machete. My boss had dinner with the junta the night before. Mrs. Cedras cooked it herself, and it was a lavish presentation of tradition and elegance. There were appearances by the three Cedras children. The General wanted to show that he was a devoted family man, and misunderstood. My Boss said Mrs. Cedras was gracious, and the kids seemed nice enough. General Biambi of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti- the FRAPH- objected strongly his characterization as a “thug” over dessert. He felt the characterization of the Front as a death-squad was unwarranted, and the removal of the elected government was actually an act of national salvation. Police Chief Colonel Francois was not present, and though he might have been busy monitoring the Ambassador and me, it could also have been a signal that the Junta was willing to through him to the dogs. It is awkward when a dictatorship asks directly for the United States to sanction some action. Normally this is better stage-managed through surrogates. But Cedras and the Junta could not just turn things over to the Lavalas Family Party of the little priest without being hacked to pieces, and the Administration was committed to the speedy transition. The question was terms. My Boss got the same offer from Cedras that it took Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell and the 82nd Airborne to get later that year, which was safe conduct and a cash buy-out. That wasn't in the cards that month, and the situation had to ripen a bit before Washington would act. President Clinton called the little strongman a "thug" "stooge" and a "killer,” noting that 4,000 civilians had died while he was in power. Given the severity of the rhetoric, the flight to Miami was not an option. When finally invasion was threatened, Cedras reiterated his offer to go. It was a quiet exit, conducted by military transport. Certain frozen Haitian assets were thawed, and three Cedras properties were leased by the embassy for a tidy monthly sum. The Cedras and Biambi families now reside in Panama City , where the plucky strongman operates a computer graphics store downtown, over a Dairy Queen. Police Chief Francois was not as lucky. He got out through the Dominican Republic , and spent several months in jail before avoiding deportation to the US . But last I heard, he was operating a furniture store in Honduras . Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra 27 May 2005 National Holiday I almost was run over by one of those hulking SUVs on the Beltway yesterday, piloted by someone so remote where they sat at the wheel behind the smoked glass that they could be on Mars. That might be where our energy policy is beamed in from. The SUV honked, demanding me to give way, intent on being in the County before the Holiday Rush begins. People should be going the other way this morning, away from downtown. I'm hoping for a light commute this morning. The Senate had a little filibuster over Josh Bolten's nomination to be Ambassador to the United Nations, which I found curious, since I thought the World's Greatest Deliberative Body had struck a compromise on this matter just two days ago. I heard commentary to that effect on the radio as I sat in traffic, snarled in the SUVs trying to get to an afternoon appointment in suburban Reston . I made a mental note to buy some flowers and take them to the Shipmates over at Arlington over the weekend. We are celebrating the Memorial Day Holiday this weekend, and taking Monday as a vacation, though the actual day is Tuesday, the 31st. That is the day I should take time from work and visit The Dead, the ones who gave the ultimate sacrifice for their nation, and all the others who served in the long line that goes back to Valley Forge. But as all our holidays, the secular mingles with the sacred. The pool at Big Pink opens Saturday morning, and I want to keep my streak going as the first one in for the third consecutive year. I hope the weather cooperates, but good or bad, I am looking forward to plunging in. This might be the best time of the year at Big Pink, the leaves in full, the air still cool at night, the pool lights glowing under the blue water. It makes me think of the color of the Caribbean, near the island of Hispaneola . It is an accident of the calendar that our first big holiday of the season is going to be celebrated with a day off on the occasion of a national holiday in the Dominican Republic . I like the DomRep, and would like to go back sometime and completely unplug myself. There was a season when I served as a sort of travel agent to the islands down there, crisscrossing the Caribbean on commercial and private jets. A cog in a machine, to be sure, but it provided me a great view. Monday will be the anniversary of the assassination of Il Jefe, the dictator Rafael Trujillo. It is celebrated as a national holiday in the Dominican Republic . I remember one final approach into Santo Domingo , late in the day, when the blue sparkling waters had dimmed to dark. I marveled at the monument erected by strongman Joaquín Balaguer to honor the 500th anniversary of Columbus ' arrival from the Old World . The Faro de Colón, or “Columbus Lighthouse” sits imposingly on the outskirts of the capital, a massive cross of concrete and earth. Outlining the cross are powerful searchlights that point straight up. When turned up full, they are said to drain the power reserves, plunging the city into darkness in order to illuminate the heavens. Balaguer had miscalculated. The public work was very expensive, and he failed to recognize that the anniversary of the Columbus 's arrival was being commemorated elsewhere as a global tragedy. It is a topic for lively discussion over a cold Presidente beer, the local favorite. It is best, I think, consumed in the square next to the Alcázar de Colon where Diego Columbus lived as Governor. The area was a slum for a few hundred years until the previous strongman Rafael Trujillo had the idea of cleaning up to recognize the importance of this oldest place in the New World . In 1955, he had the shanties ripped down and restored the plaza and the Alcazar to something like their original glory. I drank with a retired Marine. >From our table he pointed out where the Dominican snipers were positioned near the docks during the last incursion of the American Marines in 1965. Trujillo was a prototypical strongman, one of a kind with Papa Doc Duvalier across the border in Haiti , which shares this lovely island. Trujillo had been a clerk in the Telegraph Department when the Marines ruled both nations in the 1920s. The Marines were in the Dominican Republic for eight years, and Haiti for nearly twenty. General Smedley Butler was one of the commanders there, and is one of my heroes from the age of small wars. He said later that he had made Hispaniola safe for the United Fruit Company. The Marines strengthened the military of the DomRep to preserve order when they left. Essentially, they turned it over to Trujillo , who pronounced himself Generalisimo and Leader of the Forces- Generalisimo y Jefe de las Fuerzas. So long as American interests were respected, that was the end of it. Trujillo amassed a personal fortune of a half billion dollars. He was not a pleasant man. US Secretary of State Cordell Hull said "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch." Trujillo remained in power for over 30 years, but toward the end he succeeded in alienating his erstwhile supporters. Castro was rising in Cuba , and the Eisenhower administration felt that Trujillo 's autocratic behavior was encouraging a similar popular movement. He became a threat to order. The last straw was linkage to an abortive assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Romulo Bétancourt. On May 30, 1961, Trujillo 's personal automobile was ambushed on the beach road after a rendezvous with his mistress. The Generalisimo was not permitted the luxury of the trip to the airport for the afternoon flight to Miami . They shot him to pieces there by the beach where Columbus might have first seen the New World . I had some time to kill on that particular trip, and the improbably luxury of access to an embassy car and driver. I had myself driven out on the beach road to stand on the gravel at the wide spot off the highway where that season's threat to order was extinguished. There are plastic bags and broken bottles of Presidente beer, but no monument. But the view to windward is spectacular, and the water an incredible blue. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra |