My Review of I.S. Berry's "The Peacock and the Sparrow"

 Betrayal in the Desert

Former CIA Officer I.S. Berry has written a terrific first novel set in Bahrein at the time of the Arab Spring. It is a classic espionage novel. Her protagonist is Shawn Collins, an aging CIA officer with an alcohol problem. He finds Rashid, a questionable source within the Iran-backed Shia underground that is attempting to overthrow the ruling Sunni monarchy.

Collins’ new station chief is a young and arrogant Ivy leaguer who thinks he knows it all. The two don’t get along from the start. Collins is attracted to a stunning local artist named Almaisa of European/Arab parentage. She has studied in the west and his interest in her is more personal than professional.

With Almaisa and Rashid we get a sense of the real Bahrein. We get a real smell of the streets and get an understanding of violence associated with uprising. I visited Bahrein on business many years ago and only saw its office towers and a large collection of Mercedes automobiles. I didn’t see the back streets or the outskirts of Manama, the capital.  

Along the way we get a sense of the politics of the CIA and the habits of the elite westerners who reside there. They live in a different world. If I had one criticism it would be the lack of maps, for the country as a whole and Manama. It would have made it much easier to follow the plot.

SHAME

I never felt so ashamed for my country than I did yesterday when I watched President Trump bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the oval office in front of a worldwide television audience. In Trump’s mind Zelensky was guilty of not kissing his ass so Trump stood foursquare for Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and in the process seemed to abandon the Western Alliance. I really should not have been surprised because his administration threw Ukraine under the bus at the Munich Security Conference two weeks ago. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/02/trump-and-new-hitler-stalin-pact.html) 

As I noted then what Trump is doing is not appeasement, but rather he has made the U.S. a co-aggressor with Putin’s Russia. This will end badly with China being the only real winner. If there is a small silver lining here it will be to rouse Europe from its slumber by forcing a massive increase in its hitherto inadequate military expenditures.

In the aftermath of Trump’s bullying, I was nauseated to watch his sycophants cheer him on. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Senator Lindsay Graham all belong in the hall of shame. Trump wanted a cabinet of suck-ups; he certainly has one.

 

"People of Color" Ideology Headed for the Dustbin of History

 Politico in the form of of a column by UC Berkely Professor Jerel Ezzel has come around to the Shumaven view that the term "people of color" belongs in the dustbin of history. (See Below)

"The moment, predictably, triggered a backlash from conservative commentators, who accused King, who is Black and a journalist, of being preoccupied with race. But it was also a reminder of the awkward, clunky and frequently backward attempts by the left (or those perceived to be on the left) to, literally and figuratively, read the room. For years Democrats’ understanding of race has not only not evolved, it has arguably been in full-blown retrograde. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the party’s canned usage of the term “people of color.”" https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/21/people-of-color-race-dei-democrats-00201548?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=0000014e-f0ed-dd93-ad7f-f8edae200000

We discussed this issue in 2022 in writing about the Latino/Black schism in the Los Angeles City Council. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2022/10/peope-of-color-false-political-construct.html ) If anything the election results of 2024 highlighted the fact that "people of color" do not not vote in a bloc and many of them voted for Donald Trump. Indeed blind support of DEI is an election loser.

United to Restart Service to Israel

 United to restart service to Tel Aviv, Israel

(February 4, 2025)

In early February United Airlines announced it would restart service to Israel in mid-March with one flight a day out of Newark which would be upped to two flights a day by the end of the month thereby beating Delta by two weeks. In January we called on the major U.S. air carriers to end their de facto boycott of Israel. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/01/us-air-carriers-stop-boycotting-israel.html) Delta announced their resumption of flights to Israel starting in April later that month.(See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/01/delta-to-resume-flights-to-israel.html)

For United, this should only be the beginning because it has historically had the most flights to Israel of all the U.S. airlines. For example United had flights, in addition to Newark, out of Washington, D.C., Chicago. Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now all we need is American Airlines to follow suit.

Trump and the New Hitler-Stalin Pact

In the early morning hours of August 24th,1939 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop entered into a pact that would ratify the division of Poland and the ceding of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Bessarabia to the Soviets. The press would soon call it the Hitler-Stalin Pact that enabled Germany to invade Poland on September 1st and Soviet Russia to invade three weeks later. 

Today President Trump, echoing Russian propaganda, called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator" and accused him of starting the war in Ukraine, a complete lie. Put bluntly, Trump has thrown Ukraine under the bus. My guess is that Putin called in all his cronies and broke out the vodka in celebration of a new Hitler-Stalin Pact. And to put icing on the cake for Putin, Defense Secretary Hegseth announced substantial budget cuts for the Pentagon.  Instead of dividing Poland, Trump and Putin are setting the predicate for the division of Ukraine. The result in 1939 was a World War. I fear a Trump-Putin condominium will lead to a similar result. 

For previous posts on Ukraine, see for example: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ukraine-what-is-to-be-done.html and https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2022/03/mr-zelinskyy-goes-to-washington-via-zoom.html.

Donald Trump, Four Weeks in: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Donald Trump’s second inauguration certainly did not take its cues from Lincoln’s second where he said, “with malice towards none and charity for all.”  It is turning out like a vengeance tour where he is flooding the zone with a host of initiatives, some of questionable legality. However, he is keeping his campaign promises and is acting in sharp contrast to the somnolescent Biden Administration.  Below is my take on the good, bad, and ugly so far. To be sure it is arbitrary, and it is no way a full list with the bad and ugly massively outweighing the good.

The Good

• A few good cabinet appointments: Marco Rubio at State, Scott Bessent at Treasury, Doug Burgum at Interior and Elise Stefanik, at the U.N.

• Doing away with DEI in the federal government and its contractors.

• Joining social-democratic Europe with restrictions on gender reassignment care for minors.

• Banning biological males from participating in women/girls’ sports.

• Although it can turn ugly fast, passing the Laiken Riley Act and a crackdown on unlawful undocumented immigrants. Tough actions on border security are long overdue. 

• Cracking down on campus antisemitism.

• Unambiguous support for Israel.

The Bad 

• DOGE, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Although the New York City power broker Robert Moses taught us you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, Musk is going way too far in his noble attempt to cut government waste. He is using a butcher knife instead of a scalpel. As a result, many hard-working government employees are living under what they rightly perceive as a reign of terror. Simply put, it is very hard to improve the efficiency of government with a demoralized work force.

The Ugly  

• Pardoning the January 6th rioters.

• Decapitating the FBI, Justice Department and the CIA, leaving us vulnerable to acts of terrorism.

• Horrendous cabinet appointments featuring incompetent and vile people. Namely, Pete Hegseth at Defense, RFK, Jr. at HHS, Tulsi Gabbard at National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI. Yet again the Republicans in the Senate have proved themselves to be moral eunuchs in approving these appointments, with Patel pending. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-party-of-moral-eunuchs.html) With Hegseth, Gabbard and Patel, our security is at risk.

• Starting a trade war with our allies Canada, Mexico, E.U. and Japan. This is a sure-fire way to increase inflation and to lower growth. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-tariffman-strikes.html)

• Practically surrendering Ukraine on a platter to Putin at the Munich Security Conference. 

• Dropping the bribery prosecution of NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

My Review of Williamson Murray's "The Dark Path: War and the Rise of the West"

 War Through the Ages

The late Williamson Murray, a military historian at Ohio State, has written a tour de force history of war from the 1500’s to the present. He argues convincingly that the intense competition for the mastery of Europe led to advances in military technology and the infrastructure of war making were responsible for European success in mastering the globe.  His other thesis is that wars are not won by decisive battles, but rather by brute numbers, organization, economics, finance, and logistics. 

For example, Napoleon’s victory at Jena, which so impressed Hegel and Ludendorff’s victory at Tannenberg did not determine the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, respectively. Napoleon lost because the coalition against him was far better organized and financed and had numbers on their side. Similarly, Germany and its allies lost world War I because with America’s entry into the war they were outnumbered and out financed. However, “time and chance happen to all” or in Clausewitz’s word “friction” and at times friction can overcome a lack of resources. For example, Ukraine is still in the fight, but it appears that heroic country was just sold-out by Trump.

Williamson discusses at length the various revolutions in military affairs. He starts with gun powder rendering castle walls obsolete and he goes on to discuss innovations in sailing that happened 100 years later that enhanced naval power. The most important revolution was the merger of the French Revolution with its levee en masse with the industrial revolution which made war total by making the civilian population enmeshed in warfighting. The flowering of that would occur in the American Civil War where the North was far better organized with far better logistics to overcome the South. The war lasted as long as it did because of poor generalship on the part of the North and better generalship on the part of the South.

If there is a hero in the book, it is Otto von Bismarck, whose strategic vision unified Germany with three wars. He had strategic focus and fully understood Clausewitz’s dictum, “that war is the extension of politics by more violent means.” Thus, the lack of strategic vision is road to ruin in wartime. For example, Bismarck understood that after victory against Austria he chose not seize any territory and that ultimately made Austria an ally.

For recent history Murray relies on the work of Andrew Marshall, the longtime head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. ( A biography on Marshall was reviewed here: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2015/04/my-amazon-review-of-andrew-krepinevichs.html ) In that biography I noted, “As the Cold War was winding down in the mid-1980s he focused his attention on the rise of China and was quick to point out how the revolution in military affairs (precision weapons, computerized command and control and information warfare) in the 1990s would significantly change the nature of future battlefields.” Indeed, this is how Murray viewed Marshall’s work. Further Murray noted that Marshall was among the first to see the Soviets lacked the economic strength and the scientific bench to keep up with the U.S. in 1980’s, which highlighted the fact that war involves far more than kinetic battlefields.

Although “The Dark Path” is a long book, it offers a kaleidoscopic view of the history of war over the past 500 years. It is not for the casual reader, but for those interested in understanding how our world came into being, it is well worth the effort.