common bases for so many things
shared experiences do need something
Thinking about younger people you meet, don’t assume they know anything about the many topics that influenced your thinking over the decades. They likely do not nor have they ever cared.
This is why history is so important. It gives us a shared knowledge from which we can discuss common topics. Plus, history helps show why actions create consequences.
I lectured at the University of Maryland this morning. The students—graduate students in a rather specialised program—knew little-to-nothing about Tian’anmen Square nor the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. The former set into motion sanctions still at the heart of our strained relationship with Beijing. It was those sanctions which, among many other things, unleashed a far stronger relationship between the leaders in Zhongnanhai and the Kremlin after U.S. arms became off limits to the nation’s leaders who sent tanks to crush students on the evening of 4 June 1989. Had the United States continued selling arms to the PLA, a topic which seems inexplicable today but was a Reagan-Bush era policy (yes, you read that correctly), then perhaps Vlad the Impaler could not have rung up his Beijing buddy to address arms shortages on the Russo-Ukrainian front. I don’t know—not does anyone—whether the ties would have improved but Tian’anmen certainly boosted those links we now see as a dangerous axis.
Similarly, had Bill Clinton not chosen to deploy two carrier battlegroups near the Taiwan Strait in the lead up to the March 1996 presidential vote in Taiwan, then perhaps Beijing would have been slower at modernising the PLA. As it was, the distaste of hearing from CNN about those carrier battlegroups provoked the CCP leaders to try never to confront such an intelligence failure while it also pushed the leadership to assure China’s military power would make U.S. interlocutors think twice (or more often) about easily deploying to that region.
The effect of modernising meant the advent of a large number of Chinese submarines which U.S. Navy commanders must consider as they confront any possible Taiwan ‘contingency’ today. I am not saying that the PLA would not have modernised (supply of money made that demand likely if we believe our own supply side theories) but it might have happened differently…or not.
The people I spoke with this morning knew absolutely none of this. As twenty-somethings, they thought the relationship had always been horrible. Further, one explained to me that Nixon’s decision to go to China in 1972 was to create a huge middle class there which has not happened.
Except that we have documentary evidence that Nixon and Henry the K went to China to signal the Russians during the Cold War. Neither side fully anticipated nor sought fulls cale Sino-U.S. links when Nixon deplaned in late February 52 years back, certainly not to the extent we see them even today. Turns out history has its profound value for understanding ‘why’ questions, even if we too often see it distorted in places like the former Yugoslavia thirty years back.
History books are plentiful so I am not foolish enough to suggest we all read everything to cover conversations that might arise. But don’t assume that your conversations with people who did not experience something will be as fulsome if you don’t assure they have seen some knowledge of the history relevant to these major transformative events.
Funny how that works.
As we know, not everyone experiencing precisely the same event assess it completely the same way. It’s hard being a on the same page on much of late. Anywhere and everywhere.
Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences…as they do. Please circulate this if others might enjoy its content.
It was a nice morning. Only three weeks until spring in the northern hemisphere (eat your hearts out, Aussies). Happy Leap 2024.
Be well and be safe. FIN