A Tufte-esque Approach to De-Mystifying the INF and Its Locus in "Mittleuropa"

Napoleon's Russia campaign, 1812-1813

The image above is, perhaps, the iconic example of the thinking of Edward Tufte. It stands for the proposition: you can use graphics to help people greatly increase their perception of what is going on with a numerically dynamic situation -- the key is to use the plane of the paper to capture the interaction of multiple dimensions simultaneously.

This image illustrates four dimensions together: the size of Napoleon's army as he marched toward (and then away from) Moscow during the War of 1812, the location of the army, the time, and the weather conditions. One can instantly get the picture: an overwhelming force, heading off to fight in Russia, full of confidence and bravado, only to find itself retreating as it is annihilated little by little by cold and hunger and disease. (More about this image on Edward Tufte's website.)

Tufte says, in essence, that we remember to make the fullest possible use of our visual and spatial intelligence. Sure, text and stories are useful; but how about drawing me a picture? (To me, the position Tufte advocates resonates strongly with Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.)

I've been thinking about this particular image for a long time, since I first encountered it when I was in college in the late 1970s. Then, recently, several elements presented themselves to me.

The first is a chart of the pace of nuclear disarmament, showing the advance toward a peak US nuclear weapons arsenal in the 1960s and then progress -- in fits and starts -- in reducing that arsenal:

The American Nuclear Stockpile
Click to view full size on The New York Times website.

The second has been the increased attention that I have begun to give to NATO and the idea of Central Europe as the front line of nuclear confrontation. I read several books by Timothy Snyder, and realized that the bone of contention is an area of land that lies between Germany in the west and Russia and the east -- a place about which most people in the US have only the vaguest notion.

Since I first visited Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna in 1990, I have been fascinated by a sort of terra incognita that lies between the known West (France, England) and the Other in the East (Russia, China) -- a zone that is at once vaguely charming and vaguely menacing. I suppose I should get serious about understanding it; but there is also something appealing about letting it remain mysterious -- a Mittleuropa whose reality and destiny we can leave to someone else to worry about.

I had my "Tufte moment" when I read about a visit by Senator Sam Nunn in 1973 to meet with NATO commanders in Europe. Nunn was stunned to learn that the military assumed that they would use nuclear weapons if there were a fight in Europe. They had scoped out the geography (the chokepoint is a place called the Fulda Gap) and they had run the numbers (150,000 NATO troops vs. 450,000 from Warsaw Pact countries). "The invasion route would put the Warsaw Pact forces quickly within striking distance of Frankfurt and several large American military bases." (Philip Taubman, The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb, p. 198 ff.).

It seems to me that there needs to be an infographic -- analogous to the one of Napoleon's army - that conveys the state of affairs in Central Europe, and how it is controlling our destinies. Perhaps an ingredient that would be helpful would be the events of the 1980s centering on the deployment of Pershing II and SS-20 missiles (see Taubman, p. 230).

An infographic illuminating the historic nuclear confrontation in the center of Europe - this would be a timely inquiry. The US has pulled out of something called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Most people -- including myself -- struggle to understand what's really at stake.

Maybe it's time for someone to draw us a picture.


Postscript

I was stimulated to finally post this note because I had to look up an unfamiliar word -- anabasis -- used by my son in describing the film, Apocalypto. "Anabasis" means both a military advance and a a difficult and dangerous military retreat, and the graphic that Tufte touted came to mind.

By the way, proponents of greater attention to another one of our multiple intelligences -- musical intelligence -- might note that the graphic about the War of 1812 is mightily complemented by one of the great works in our classical music canon: Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture." But that is a blog post for another day . . . .

Would You Buy an Elephant from This Woman?

Svetlana Geier, translator of Dostoevsky's "elephants"* into German
*The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment,  
The Idiot, The Devils, and Raw Youth

I watched the film The Woman with the 5 Elephants again the other night.

I have recommended it to many people. I thought that my recommendation had to do with the fact that it is about the novels of Dostoevsky (the "five elephants" of the title), or because it shed new light for me on people in Ukraine caught between the Nazis and the Soviet Union during World War II.

Svetlana Geier

The Woman with the 5 Elephants is about those things, but watching the film again reminded me there is something else that I really love more about it.

The Woman with the 5 Elephants is really about the beauty of this old woman. Watch how she keeps going . . . cooking with her family . . . traveling with her granddaughter . . . working away with her editor on her translations.

And, yes, there is a tremendous beauty in her ability to boil down all that she has seen and experienced and worked on to some simply-stated truths.

We live in a society that worships youth. But it is old people that are really beautiful!


Related posts

I love to walk around North Pond here in Chicago and notice the asters as September stretches into October. They make me think of my mom . . . .

(See Asters for Eva )








Who are we? The United States, personified by its "great man" President Obama, is a kind nation that is riven by a belief that it should have the ultimate power over life and death, that every being on earth is somehow of lesser importance.

(See Reflecting on America's Split Personality (Moscow Airport Summer Reads) )











I wonder if, years from now, we will be thinking back to today and feeling surprise at how little we thought about some of the developments in our world, and in our country, and how we talked about them even less. Someday will I have to explain to my kids, or to my kids' kids, why it was that "people just weren't talking about it" . . . ?

(See Why Weren't People Talking About It? )

GERMANY TURNS OFF NUCLEAR: The long road to freedom . . . .

One of the most important messages stressed at the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima is that everyone should study the example of Germany's decision to go 100% "zero nuclear" by 2022. I think this is particularly important as the global climate summit is proceeding in Paris, and countries are talking about their commitments to cut fossil fuel use, and to find alternatives.

As I've learned more about the situation in Germany, I've come to understand that three factors have played a big part in this outcome: the threat posed by the big powers, soul-searching within a very "bourgeoise" society, and organizing.


"Kill the people and leave the buildings standing"

Germany: caught in the middle
... between massive US and USSR nuclear forces
(Source: Superpower Rivalry p 36)
(retrieved from Sandy's World History blog)

I have a very clear memory of the time when the US was promoting the idea of a "neutron bomb." The idea was that, if the US and the USSR clashed in Europe, the use of atomic weapons would destroy everything. The "solution" was a new type of weapon that would  "kill the people and leave the buildings standing."

The neutron bomb epitomizes for me the larger predicament that Germany has faced in recent decades: atomic weapon-armed superpowers facing each other down, and Germany caught in the middle.

Awareness of this predicament forced Germans to do some real soul-searching. I think it is not unreasonable to compare this to the far-reaching impact of the draft in the US during the Vietnam War: its effects touched everyone in the society.

In addition, I think the neutron bomb concept was a real wake-up call to the fact that there are no good "solutions" that can be engineered by radiation weapons designers. Nuclear weapons is a field in which "brilliant" just means "more deadly."

Step One in Awareness: recognize the magnitude of the threat posed by empires
Kennedy and Khrushchev (and their nuclear weapons) square off
(Cartoon sourced from Vanchai's Modern World History blog)

Finding the inner compass

Growing up in the US as a Lutheran, with German grandparents, I always had tremendous interest in understanding German culture and society.

It is a simple fact that the preponderance of impressions about Germany that a boy growing up in the US in the '60s and '70s had concerned Nazis and WWII. Blame it on Hogan's Heroes, but also TV shows like the oft-rerun segment on Adolf Hitler on Biography, movies like The Sound of Music, The Great Escape and The Guns of Navarone, books we read in school like Diary of a Young Girl and Escape from Warsaw. The single clearest memory of the local library's shelves was the bold swastika on the spine of the mammoth Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. (And that's just the start of a long list of the products of our war-obsessed entertainment, toy, and leisure industry.) Why, even my adorable Volkswagen Beetle had its roots in the Hitler era.

It was an excruciatingly long process for me to learn that there was more to German culture. It was actually when I was in college in the late '70s that I learned in a course with Franklin Ford that Germany had a culture defined by Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, and many many more. Of course, this didn't completely answer the question for me -- I still couldn't quite see the forest for the trees.

What I eventually came to understand was that Germany was/is a society characterized to a very great degree by the strength of the middle class, by progressive attitudes, by comfortable homes and communities -- in other words, a lot like the small-town life I had experienced in the US! Words like gemütlichkeit -- and by extension mittelstand -- helped me understand an approach to life that is "not too edgy, not too boring ... not too big, not too small ... just right."

1970 time capsule: Brandt and Grass
(Source: Wikipedia)

I have a very distinct memory of reading a book by Günter Grass during the time I was living in Taiwan (1979-80). The book was called From the Diary of a Snail (how's that for a modest avatar?) and it described Grass' activities helping Willy Brandt and others campaign during the German election of 1969. It gave me the impression that the soul of modern Germany lay not in technology, or in wealth, or in culture, but in the need to step back from the heights of experience and surrender to the always more mundane True and Sustainable.

I provide this extended account of my own path in trying to understand Germany in order to say (a) the experience of the members of German society feels to me as if it has enormous relevance (hope?) for the members of US society; (b) there is a discernible path away from distracted by the things of this world and toward consideration of serious choices; and (c) the emergence of a powerful Green Party and progressive movement in Germany in the '80s can be understood.

It is certainly true that the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident and radiation harm to Germans spurred the success of the Greens. But it is interesting to note that other nuclear accidents (Three Mile Island, Fukushima) have not, themselves, given rise to such strong political parties. The overall context is important to consider.

On Feb. 28, Germany's largest anti-nuclear demonstration takes place
against construction of the Brokdorf nuclear plant on the North Sea
coast west of Hamburg. Some 100,000 people face off with 10,000 police
officers. The plant begins operations in October 1986. It is scheduled
to go offline in 2018. (Source: "Nuclear power in Germany: a chronology")

THIS is what a Green Party looks like!

Germany's Green Party

In 2011, Germany decided to close all nuclear reactors by 2022. The process of arriving at that process has had its ups and downs, involving political parties across the spectrum, but I think it is essential to recognize the momentum given to the process -- and to the formation of public opinion -- by Germany's vibrant Green Party.

The Germans also had an anti-nuke party as of 1980, namely the Greens, who carried the concerns of the mass movement into the national parliament, the Bundestag. No other country in the world has had a force so determined and influential in taking on the powerful atomic energy lobby. The Greens emerged out of the New Social Movements of the 1970s, as an alternative to the Social Democrats who were split on the issue of nuclear power. The environmental party entered regional legislatures during the 80s and 90s, and then finally shared in national power in the 1998-2005 “red-green” government. Pushed by the Greens, the government negotiated a compromise with the energy companies to phase out nuclear power over thirty years.

I recommend everyone read "Why Germans Are So Skeptical About Nuclear Energy" by Paul Hockenos on World Policy Blog -- from which the above quote is taken -- for excellent analysis of how the anti-nuclear movement grew in Germany.

"This past weekend, at midnight on Saturday (25.06.2015), the next
shutdown took place: The Grafenrheinfeld power plant in Bavaria has
been removed from the power grid, nearly exactly on schedule.
(Source: "How far along is Germany's nuclear phase-out?" on DW.com)

The struggle continues . . . .


Related posts

Upon returning from the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, I introduced 10 of the post prominent examples of "global hibakusha" about which I learned at the conference.

(See NUCLEAR RADIATION VICTIMS: 10 Dimensions of the #GlobalHibakusha Phenomenon)





The enormous irony is that now one country -- India -- is responding to its past subjugation by the Western imperial program with this hugely self-damaging program, and another country that has struggled with its relationship to the Western imperial program -- Japan -- is doing everything it can to aid and abet.

(See INDIA: Lured into playing the "Great Power" Nuclear Game)

According to the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, "Illinois is by far the most nuclear state in the United States . . . . Illinois was also home to the first commercial power reactor . . . one of the first commercial power reactors to close prematurely . . . . ComEd’s two large PWR reactors in Zion, IL also had to close prematurely . . . . We also have the first and only commercial storage facility for high level waste . . . Besides the 3 plants which closed prematurely, Illinois currently has eleven operating nukes – far more than any other state . . . etc. etc."

(See Chicago, IL: Zero Carbon AND Zero Nuclear! )

Is Germany the Key to Resisting AFRICOM's Africa Takeover?

I've written about how the United States is embarking on a whole new chapter in its history of waging perpetual war - this time in Africa. So I wasn't surprised to be reminded about some of the African countries that have seen U.S. drone use (Somalia, Libya, Mali, Sudan) at the drones conference this past weekend.

What I was surprised by is the central role of Germany in all this.

At the conference, filmmaker and journalist Elsa Rassbach from Drohnen-Kampagne: Keine Kampfrohnen (Drone Campaign Germany: NO COMBAT DRONES) brought us up to speed on key facts, including the following:

(1) Africa HQ Role - Germany is the headquarters for US Command for Africa (AFRICOM) as well as being the European center for the CIA. At the AFRICOM Command Center in Stuttgart, 1,000 experts work on targetting.

(2) Ramstein - 1500 computers - Ramstein AFB is identified as the command center for drones.

(3) Massive US Presence in Germany - All of this needs to be seen in the context of the massive US presence in Germany - 43,000 personnel, 40 bases.

The full scope of all of this has been laid out in recent months by investigative journalism in Germany.  See the Süddeutsche Zeitung series -- see, for instance, US-Streitkräfte steuern Drohnen von Deutschland aus.

Several other details from Elsa's report:

* there are stories of asylum seekers who come to Germany being plied for information that is then fed into the US drone program

* in general, Germany is trying to keep the presence of the drone command function quiet - after all, 18 different African countries already refused to host it

The good news is that the campaign against drones is taking off in Germany . . . as part of a larger questioning of the role of U.S. militarism in Germany . . . and there are political alignments in Germany that may be able to make progress in significantly resisting U.S. militarism and extricating Germany from involvement with what the U.S. is doing.

Related posts

To those of us who have worked hard to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, it is flabbergasting to see reports that U.S. officials see a "need" for someplace else to send troops and material: apparently, there's no such thing as demobilization, only re-deployment.

(See AFRICOM: The Heart of Darkness)

The U.S. has a modus operandi for conducting military strikes while slipping past any genuine public accountability. It's worth a look at the Tuesday, October 29, 2013, New York Times account of a drone strike in Somalia the previous day: "Pentagon Says Shabab Bomb Specialist Is Killed in Missile Strike in Somalia." It's a case study in what's wrong with the U.S. drone wars.

(See October 28 in Somalia: Another Day, Another Drone Killing)

Five big realizations I'm taking away from the 2013 CODEPINK Drone Summit "Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance" in Washington, DC.

(See The 2013 DC Drones Conference: 5 Big Takeaways )