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Stevenson’s army, December 20

– The omnibus bill. including appropriations across the government and the Electoral Count Act as well as other measures, has been released. Here’s the reporting by Politico and RollCall.  Also the bill text and summaries by Democrats and Republicans.

– NYT summarizes the growing criticism of the Supreme Court’s seizure of power from the other branches.

– Guardian reports the embarrassing breakdown of German Puma tanks.

– Vox tries to make sense of the crisis in Peru.

– NYT discovered that a newly elected GOP Congressman faked most of his resume.

To me, the blame goes to the Dems for inadequate oppo research. Punchbowl notes:

Yet the DCCC can hardly be accused of ignoring Santos’ candidacy. The campaign arm compiled an 87-page opposition document in August complete with dozens of social media posts, financial filings and information on Santos’ employment with a scandal-ridden corporation. The bulk of the research centered on Santos’ false claims of voter fraud, his hardline anti-abortion rights stances and support for conspiracy theories.

But the DCCC appears to have missed out on fact-checking basic biographical information, such as Santos’ education and employment. The NYT also revealed that Brazilian authorities charged Santos for making fraudulent purchases with a checkbook in 2010.

There are actions the new Congress could take, as a CRS report indicates.

WOTR hasa good historical summary of Truman, Eisenhower & Kennedy policies on Taiwan.

Charlie added this interesting note later:

I was exchanging reading recommendations with a friend and realized that there have been a few books in recent years that actually changed my mind regarding what I thought happened in history. I read a lot of disappointing books — too shallow, too heavy, too incomplete — but I generally enjoy revisionist historians, especially if they have a provocative thesis and ample evidence. If you want to buy one of these, the best place to look  is https://www.bookfinder.com/ So here’s a short list:

World War I: I’m now persuaded that Russia shares much of the blame for the start of the Great War by its policies to dominate Turkey and by mobilization during the July 1914 crisis. After deep dives into long-hidden Russian archives, Sean McMeekin showed in The Russian Origins of the First World War that even Barbara Tuchman got the sequence wrong by relying on the falsified memoirs of the Russian Foreign Minister. McMeekin’s books on Russian diplomacy and the July crisis changed my view of German war guilt, though Austria-Hungary still deserves shared blame with Russia. See also his Russian Revolution, July 1914, and Stalin’s War, which describes World War II from Stalin’s viewpoint rather than the usual FDR/Churchill one.

Philip Zelikow’s The Road Less Traveled persuaded me that leaders missed a chance to end the war in December 1916 with a poorly staffed peace initiative by Woodrow Wilson that was undercut by Secretary Lansing and “Colonel” House.

FDR’s boldness: I had long admired Franklin Roosevelt’s strategic bravery in maneuvering the United States in support of Britain and against Hitler, believing that he was just ahead of public opinion, skillfully pulling it along. Lynne Olson’s Those Angry Days persuaded me that, much of the time, FDR vacillated, doing less than many of his advisors urged and hoped. He still was a great leader, just not quite as bold as I had thought.

World War II: James Lacey’s The Washington War, a bureaucratic politics analysis of FDR’s leadership, persuaded me that administrative and economic policies had as much to do with America’s ultimate success as its military operations. Phillips Payson O’Brien’s The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff persuaded me that Leahy was far more influential on FDR’s war policy than General George Marshall. Jonathan Schneer’s Ministers at War: Winston Churchill and His War Cabinet persuaded me that much of Britain’s success was due to the way the cabinet worked together; Churchill dominated, but the cabinet mattered.

Postwar American policy: Derek Leebaert’s, Grand Improvisation: America Confronts the British Superpower, 1945-57, persuaded me that Britain hoodwinked America into doing what it wanted until the collapse at Suez. Samuel F. Wells, Jr.’s Fearing the Worst: How Korea Transformed the Cold War, convinced me that American misjudgments in the Korean war made the nuclear arms race with the USSR more likely. Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, persuaded me that JFK lied about his policies and we came dangerously close to a full-scale nuclear war.

Slave Power’s influence on foreign policy:  I never thought that slavery and its perpetuation had much impact on American foreign policy until I read Matthew Karp’s eye-opening history, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy.

Karp details how the South dominated key foreign policy posts and consciously advocated policies to protect and even extend slavery in the decades before the War of the Rebellion. Defenders of slavery really had a “deep state.”

The Revolutionary War:  I used to have a typical American high school student’s view of our war for independence as a story of brave patriots, toughened at Valley Forge and led by George Washington, who finally triumphed at Yorktown. Two books have changed my understanding of that conflict. One was Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy’s of British politics during the conflict, The Men Who Lost America. He argues that the British gave up for broader strategic reasons. Add to this Holger Hoock’s Scars of Independence, which describes the local violence on both sides and the mistreatment of Loyalists during and after the war. The good guys won, but they won dirty.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).