Author: Andrew Sullivan

Robert Farley sees one major lesson:

As the centenary of World War I approaches, several commentators have argued that the emerging multipolar power structure of East Asia is coming to resemble that of Europe prior to 1914. Setting aside the wisdom of the political comparison for a moment, there is one way in which the comparison is apt. Just as real knowledge of modern, high-intensity warfare was limited in 1914, the emerging great powers of Asia have little experience with the forms of warfare they are planning to use.

Although most of the European powers had experience with colonial wars, they did not have the space or time to work out the implications of the technologies that would eventually characterize World War I (the machine gun, the dreadnought, the submarine, and the airplane). The degree to which military commanders of 1914 were surprised by these technologies has been wildly overstated, but the armies and navies had not developed the tactic, hands-get-dirty experience of how to fight in a new technological environment.

It bears repeating that we have very little sense of what contemporary air and naval warfare between peer or near peer competitors will look like. This is true not only of land warfare (the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is probably the best model we have, but isn’t very helpful) but also of naval and air warfare. And in particular, the emerging East Asian powers lack recent combat experience. China last fought a land war in 1980, a naval conflict in 1974. The Japanese military has not engaged in combat since 1945. The Indian military is in better shape because of its anti-guerrilla efforts and constant sparing with Pakistan, but still has little recent experience with major combat.

Why Circassians are none too happy about the Olympics this year:

The Circassians are an umbrella designation for many ethnic groups from the eastern coast of the Black Sea. In the first half of the nineteenth century, they waged a war against Russia’s expansion into the North Caucasus, which they lost. The Russian Empire annexed their territories, and then either ‘encouraged’ them to emigrate or simply expelled them outright. Nearly 90% of Circassians went into exile. Tsar Alexander II, known as the Liberator (of Russian peasants), proclaimed victory over the Circassian ‘rebels’ in 1864.

The date of 1864 makes 2014 the 150th anniversary of the Circassian expulsion. From the Sochi coast, ships loaded with Circassian refugees set sail for the Ottoman Empire. Circassians died in thousands on the journey, of hunger and disease. The triumphant parade of Russian troops, marking the end of the war, took place on May 21, 1864 in Krasnaya Polyana, site of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Keating looks at the actions of the Circassian diaspora:

Today there are about 3 million to 5 million Circassians living abroad and about 700,000 in the Caucasus. The post-Soviet Russian government has been slow to recognize the extent of what happened to the group and has strongly resisted attempts to label it as genocide—the anti-Russian government of nearby Georgia did so in 2011— portraying Circassian nationalism as merely an outgrowth of the region’s Islamic radicalism. The global community commemorates Circassian Genocide Memorial Day every May 21.

However, the decision to hold the games in the symbolically important city of Sochi has focused new attention on the issue, with Circassian activists in New Jersey launching an international campaign against the “genocide Olympics.” The group has been protesting since Vancouver, and one of its pamphlets informs athletes that they’ll be “skiing on mass graves.” It’s possible that local activists may attempt to stage some sort of opposition at the games themselves, though the authorities have been coming down hard on protests of all kinds.

But the international protests haven’t gotten much attention:

[T]he only high-profile ally the Circassians have won is Doku Umarov, leader of the Islamist insurgence that has grown out of Chechnya’s shattered independence bid, and whose allies recently blew themselves up in the city of Volgograd. “They plan to stage the Olympic Games on the bones of the many, many Muslims who died and are buried on our territory along the Black Sea. We, the Mujahedeen, must not allow this to happen,” Umarov was quoted on his website as saying last summer.

The Circassians could do without such support, since they reject violence and activists’ long-term goal is to regain their homeland. It’s an ambitious aim, a kind of Caucasus Zionism, but the activists think it is feasible. “It might not be easy for the immigrants who are going to the Caucasus, that first generation, but their children are going to be fine. It’ll just be like when my parents came to the U.S.,” said Tamara Barsik, a Circassian-American who lives in New Jersey.

In the meantime, they’ll have to watch the Sochi Olympics on television, like everyone else.

(Photo: Circassians commemorate the banishment of the Circassians from Russia in Taksim, Istanbul. From Wikimedia Commons)

Reacting to some criticism of 12-step programs, a reader writes movingly in support of AA and NA:

For both of my brothers and myself, 12-step recovery programs have literally been the difference between life and death. My younger brother had recently switched from heroin to crack cocaine by the time he entered the Fellowships of NA and AA; my entire family was quite sure that if a drug overdose didn’t kill him, some of the people to whom he owed money would see to it themselves. Eight years later, he has a wife, a lovely daughter, and a college degree, all thanks to working a 12-step program.

As for me, my drug of choice was alcohol.

I had chronic liver pains by age 26, and my hands shook so badly my mother thought I had Parkinson’s Disease. I needed at least 12 beers a day to feel normal, and a minimum of 24 to make myself forget that I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. And even then I wasn’t miserable enough, and needed two more years of research into self-inflicted anguish before I’d reached as low of a bottom as I cared to discover. Seven years later, I am clean, sober, healthy, very successful in my chosen profession, and working a decent program.

Can I throw all of that away? Could I or my brothers or anyone else in a 12-step program pick up tomorrow? Absolutely. Drugs and alcohol are everywhere in this country, and plenty of people are eager to sell me my suicide on the installment plan. But relapse is a conscious choice by the individual, not a failing of the program. AA (my program) works 100 percent of the time for people who are 100-percent committed to the program, while they maintain that level of commitment. (The only exception being those who are “constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” I interpret this to mean those with severe underlying mental ailments such as antisocial personality disorder. You certainly encounter them in the rooms of AA meetings, but you also find them everywhere else in society.)

The problem is that the disease never goes away; it is only in remission. It constantly informs an addict or alcoholic that he’s not really addicted, that his success in life proves it was only youthful excess or poor surroundings or bad luck or anyone’s fault other than his, that science can and will “cure” him like it has “cured” so many others. The disease speaks from the depths of the person’s own sickness, so the script may vary, but the objective never changes – to get the recovering addict alone and despairing, outside of their program, cutting themselves off from their friends in recovery and in a position where they’d rather resume the full course of their misery than stay in the half-measure misery of white-knuckle, program-less sobriety.

(I will never know why Philip Seymour Hoffman relapsed, but I’ve met people with even more time in recovery than he had who have relapsed and died – or, who almost relapsed, but said a prayer instead and returned to the rooms to talk about it. Was the program a failure if one of my friends chose to stick with it, and one decided to abandon it?)

If I speak of this in harsh terms, it’s because it hits close to home for me. Recovery programs are not social clubs or straw-man scapegoats for snake-oil salesmen touting miracle drugs and secularized rehab. Recovery programs are a triage ward where the successful do what the other survivors do and the failures stop doing those things; by four years in recovery I lost count of the number of acquaintances who’d gone back out and died out there, and I knew three friends who joined them in the morgue. This is the program that keeps me alive in those dark nights and reminds me there’s a dawn.

Another reader, an Episcopalian deacon who is also a recovering alcoholic, was struck by Sacha Scoblic’s statement, “AA is an incredible program and a true American achievement for the millions of addicts around the world who desperately needed help when absolutely no one else was offering it”:

Think about that – ”absolutely no one else was offering it.” I’m a Christian, and enough of a believer in the institutional church that I’m willing to don robes and a stole Sunday by Sunday and hold a chalice full of “the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation” to the lips of adults and children who approach the altar for the gifts of grace. And yet I am a member of a church that offered “absolutely no help” to alcoholics in Bill Wilson’s day, and even today relegates me and my alcoholic companions to basement meetings. In fact, the (well-meaning) parish I serve is no better than a landlord to the AA group that meets weekly in the bowels of their building complex. They’re no better than the yacht club across town that lets its space for the morning meeting I attend. They’re a good landlord, but too often it stops there.

The Church doesn’t talk enough about addiction. We Episcopalians sometimes joke about our heritage as drinkers: for us, the light-bulb joke is about booze (it takes three Episcopalians: one to screw in the bulb, one to mix the martinis, and one to complain that the old light bulb is better … har har). We are better than this, and I hasten to add that I would not be sober without the support of a few good Episcopalians who say their prayers and befriend me with courage, love, and insight. I’m not bitter. But I often feel discouraged that churches can and should do more.

Anyone who claims the identity “Christian” – anyone who follows Jesus of Nazareth, who befriended people everyone else had abandoned – should do more. Let’s let my alcoholic friends know that there is life for them on the main floor of the church, too.

Previous Dish on Hoffman and 12-step programs here, here, here, here, and here.

(Photo of an AA “anniversary coin” marking 13 years of sobriety by Flickr user MTSOfan)

The House Republicans still want their pound of flesh for lifting the debt ceiling, but can’t seem to agree on what that flesh should be:

On Thursday, however, two ideas gained traction, with dozens of Republicans predicting that versions of the pitches could hit the floor next week once House members return to Washington. At the top of the list: a proposal to link a one-year extension of the debt ceiling to a restoration of recently cut military benefits. Another popular option is tying the “doc fix,” which would alter the way doctors are reimbursed for Medicare treatments, to an extension. Changes to the federal budget that would reduce fraud or mandatory spending levels also have been mentioned.

Danny Vinik explains the most popular option:

House leadership is considering undoing the changes that the budget agreement made to the cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) for military pensions. Of course, doing that costs money – you didn’t think that Republican debt ceiling extortion actually had something to do with the deficit, did you?

So, how are they going to offset the cost? Nothing has been settled on, but Politico’s Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett report that they may use a budget gimmick known as “pension smoothing” to do so. Pension smoothing allows companies to underfund their pensions in the next few years, boosting their profits, and thus increasing government revenues. Thus, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows this as reducing the deficit over the next decade. But beyond that, it increases the deficit, because those firms eventually have to make those pensions contributions, reducing their future profits and therefore government revenue as well.

Kilgore notices that fiscal restraint is no longer the point:

After years of linking the debt limit vote to proposed spending cuts (or mechanisms for forcing spending cuts, from sequestration to a constitutional balanced budget amendment), now suddenly you have Boehner talking about demanding increased spending in exchange for votes to accommodate more public debt. Whatever else this represents, it shows Boehner being more interested in registering a “win” for his conference than in making a coherent argument for reducing both spending and debt.

How Allahpundit sees the GOP’s game:

Reid also took a hardline “no negotiations” approach during the shutdown, you’ll recall, rejecting a bunch of House bills that would have restored funding for discrete parts of the government but not for ObamaCare. Fund everything or we’ll fund nothing, he insisted. The sole exception: He passed a bill right before the shutdown began to keep money flowing to the military so that troops wouldn’t miss a paycheck. Boehner’s counting on the same thing happening now.

Bernstein blames the GOP’s radicals for obstructing responsible policymaking:

Instead of “forcing” Democrats to accept something they oppose, Boehner now is seeking to use something many Democrats want. That’s what a normal party does: use marginal legislative leverage to attempt to win marginal gains. Of course, Democrats could still hold out for a clean debt limit increase, or they could pile on their own matching demands (say, the minimum wage, or restoring recently-passed cuts in food stamps, or any other Democratic priority that’s popular). Normal parties would then negotiate their way to a win-win deal, because policy doesn’t have to be zero-sum.

But that wouldn’t satisfy Republican demands for extortion for the sake of extortion.

Chotiner isn’t too worried:

[E]ven if Obama were to fold, there is something else that has rendered the debt ceiling hostage racket useless. John Boehner, who quite obviously does not want to rely on the good graces of Kevin Costner, has shown that he won’t let the country default. Not only is Obama unwilling to pay the ransom, then, but Boehner is unwilling to harm the economy. It’s sort of like when someone gets kidnapped in a PG-rated movie: you know nothing too bad will be allowed to occur.