Worldwide Web WorldTribune.com

  Commentary . . .


Lev Navrozov Archive
Thursday, November 20, 2008

Geostrategic reality, freedom and willful ignorance

Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.

The U.S. political journalist Jon Bodenet, prominent during the last presidential election campaign, sent me the following informative and useful e-mail dated Nov. 8, 2008, 4:49 am:

    Lev, your perspective on China is indeed insightful and daunting. But the president elect has vowed to take down our missile defense system, cancel new military projects and cut defense spending while increasing spending on a huge somewhat nebulous domestic civilian security force. I do not understand how this will protect Americans from Chinese aggression. While China has an anti-missile program and is embarking on a space based weapons program, our president elect seems to have his party's backing for deep defense cuts. If the Obama administration believes that security can be achieved by negotiation as Obama has intimated, will that be an effective deterrent to Chinese aggression and will the Chinese, therefore, be inclined to de-escalate the arms race?

Also In This Edition

The question deserves my elaborate answer. The conquest of the democratic West, including the United States, has been and may be the only way for the totalitarian rulers of China to stop the local (Chinese) opposition from the Chinese people in our times when the totalitarian owners cannot cut off their human property from the rest of the world in our epoch of world trade and traffic, of the world Internet, and of all the other world communications. About 100,000 mini-Tiananmens are said to occur annually in China, invisibly for the Westerners.

On the other hand, the totalitarian rulers of China have all the possibilities to become militarily stronger than the U.S.A.:

    (1) the population of China is more than four times larger than that of the U.S.A.;
    (2) the population of China can be channeled by the rulers of China into any military area of science, technology, production, and actual war;
    (3) the U.S.A. has freedom, making it possible for everyone to live freely, with the exception of those convicted with a due legal procedure, for their crimes.

The last point requires comment. Since freedom is the greatest treasure of a free country, it is often assumed that a country's greatest treasure makes it only stronger, never weaker.

Yet history does not confirm such a pleasant conclusion. In the 20th century, France was a free country. In World War I France defeated Germany. In 1940, Hitler's Germany occupied France within a little over one month. The British troops escaped encirclement by beginning to retreat earlier than did the French troops. What was a major factor in the war? In 1940, Hitler's Germany was a totalitarian war machine, while France remained a free France.

Freedom may be power, as was nuclear physics in those countries before WWII where it had been developed by certain gifted individuals on their own initiatives and then used in the United States-and in Germany, where its development slowed down because Hitler had started the war with Stalin's Russia and did not have enough resources for both the war with Russia late in 1941 and his atomic project.

In today's democracy, such as the U.S.A., a thinker or a scholar is no longer defined as mediocrity, talent, and genius. What is important for many free Americans is to receive a title like "director," or "professor," or "doctor" of a certain scientific field, and a salary to comfortably live on.

The Manhattan Project of development of nuclear bombs got under way partly because Einstein, a genius who had emigrated to the United States because of Hitler's anti-Semitism, supported the project through Roosevelt. Thus, in his letter to President Roosevelt of August 2nd, 1939, he said he believed it was his duty to bring to the President's attention certain facts and recommendations in this field.

The new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.

Such is my answer to Jon Budenet's informative response to my column.

A no less friendly e-mail response to the same column of mine came from the Rev. Al Miles, Florida, who begins: "First of all, I wish to compliment on your most informative articles" and ends: "Thanks again for your articles." Al Miles discusses the American buying of Chinese goods because they are, understandably, cheap, since the pay to those who make them in China is so low. "To me it doesn't make sense to feed someone who will end up attacking us some day," Al Miles concludes.

The only negative response to my column came from Dean DeGennaro, who signed his uniquely violent outburst as "Dean." Is he a Dean, that is "a secondary school administrator in charge of disciplining school"? This is how he begins his e-mail fit of wrath, signed "Dean."

    I have long suspected you to be a complete fraud with a totally distorted view of history. Normally, I read your columns for a good laugh. I mean come on, they never really say anything! But your latest installment of revisionist history has forced me to consider mounting an email campaign to ask NewsMax to sever all ties with you for the sake of their credibility.

    Here is just one example:

    You wrote, "Hitler's Germany did not produce a single new weapon (while Stalin's Russia, considered by the West hopelessly backward, terrified the German troops very early in the war with Katyusha rocket launchers). Have you ever heard of the V2 rocket! The list of German weapon innovations during this time period is staggering.

    I know you relish the role of the 'shadowy spy master in the know' but it's time for you to blog in kookville with the rest of the nuts and leave Newsmax to the professionals. Do us all (and yourself) a favor and forward this email to your editor. You're beginning to embarrass yourself and a great news site.

    Dean

The German V2 rocket appeared only in September 1943. Hitler had actually already lost the war, and he thought he needed this propaganda hoax as a "wonder weapon" to keep up the sinking German morale (see Roy Irons, "Hitler's Terror Weapons"). It was a hoax: over 3,000 V2s were launched, resulting in 7,250 deaths. That is, a V2 caused about two deaths, mostly of civilians, since, as far as I know, they were used not against the Soviet troops, but against British and other Western civilian sites, to start Hitler's "wonder weapon" panic.

One V2 cost about 100,000 Reichsmarks, that is, as much as the production of a high-performance fighter, but killed about two civilians on the average. It has also been calculated that for the cost of the V2 program, Hitler could have produced as many as 48,000 tanks.

What's the moral? As I have already argued repeatedly, Hitler was a fool — a German foot soldier, who imagined himself the greatest military commander in history. Had he not been a fool, he could have become the owner of the world, given the weaknesses of the democracies I have mentioned above. Today the "opus" of the National-Socialist Germany is being repeated by the Marxist-Leninist China, except that the China "top leader" may prove to be by no means a fool as Hitler was, while mediocrities will not dominate the culture of the free West, owing to their aggressive insolence, taking advantage of freedom. "Dean" is an example of this aggressive insolence. I have been writing in high-quality U.S. periodicals since our arrival from Russia to the U.S.A. in 1972 (see, for example, Commentary monthly magazine from October 1972 onward). My article, "What the CIA Knows about Russia," in the September, 1978, issue of Commentary, was reprinted or retold in about 500 periodicals all over the West. In the 1980s, I became a staff columnist of a New York daily whose editor-in-chief, Robert Morton, publishes today World Tribune. In the 2000s, I have been writing a weekly column for Newsmax and WorldTribune. Today I have received an e-mail from the head of a show in Las Vegas, Nevada, informing me that he has been reading my columns and reporting my "warnings" on his show for over a year. He proposes to me to appear on his show.

But Dean declares that I am "one of the nuts" and "do us all" (who are "us all"?) "a favor and forward this email to your editor."

"Dean" is too important to inform anyone that I am "one of the nuts" and belong to "kookville with the rest of the nuts." I have to do so on my own, not to waste the time and energy of "Dean." Now, imagine millions of such "Deans" abusing freedom in a democracy and creating its fatal ignorance.


Lev Navrozov can be reached by e-mail at navlev@cloud9.net.
About Us     l    Contact Us     l    Geostrategy-Direct.com     l    East-Asia-Intel.com
Copyright © 2008    East West Services, Inc.    All rights reserved.