Legacies (July 28, 2023)
Welcome to Home & Away. It’s been an eventful week, what with the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates, data showing the surprising strength of the U.S. economy, the unravelling of the Hunter Biden plea deal, reports of new indictments tied to January 6 and the destruction of evidence coming against Donald Trump, growing evidence that the presidential aspirations of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are in free-fall, China’s removal of its foreign minister, record-shattering hot weather, the intensification of the war in Ukraine, and much else.
Bibi’s Legacy
Away, the big story is Israel. The Jewish state is experiencing what is arguably its greatest internal trauma since its founding 75 years ago. The triggering event is the effort of the current right-wing government to reduce the powers of the Supreme Court. The measure passed this week will make it much more difficult for the Court to overrule the Knesset (parliament) when the court judges that an action of the Knesset is unreasonable, an important check on power in a country without a constitution.
This development does not spell the end of Israeli democracy as some have proclaimed. I don’t much like what has happened, but dramatic policy change is what you tend to get with any parliamentary system in which most political power resides in the government, which combines both legislative and executive authority. Israel’s president is a figurehead. It is the prime minister, in this case Bibi Netanyahu, who exercises power so long as he can maintain his ruling coalition, something Bibi is determined to do not just for the normal reasons but to protect himself from his legal difficulties.
There could well be additional steps taken this fall that would further tilt the balance of political power in Israel away from the court toward the government. If this happens, the principal recourse for those who disagree (beyond civil disobedience) will be to find a way to bring down the governing coalition or, failing that, to win the next election.
This promises to be increasingly difficult, as Israel is gradually becoming more right-wing, the result of the growing numbers and role of the ultra-orthodox Jewish community, immigrants from the Middle East and Russia, settlers, and right-wing nationalists. Those more centrist and progressive Israelis and Israeli Arabs arguing for a more secular society and a more accommodating approach to Palestinian nationalism could well face a future of diminished influence.
Just to be clear, it is not that Israel will cease to be a democracy for its citizens. What is at stake is its character. Israel will likely become less liberal for Israelis—and it will not be a democracy at all for those Palestinians living in the occupied territories. If all this comes to pass, it will likely slow or stop the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab countries, prompt many in the high-tech sector to emigrate, weaken both Israel’s economy and military, and dilute the strength of Israel’s ties with both the United States and American Jewry. This as much as anything else could be Bibi Netanyahu’s legacy.
Oppenheimer’s Legacy
I had the chance to see Oppenheimer this week. (I have not, for the record, seen Barbie, but if that changes, I promise to write about its geopolitical import.) As one might expect, the focus of the film is on the personal, on Oppenheimer’s anguish over his central role in developing the nuclear bomb and his concerns over its use on Japan as well as its implications for relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, for which he held some sympathy.
The film had relatively little to say about the decision to use the bomb. That decision, one taken by Harry Truman in the initial months of his presidency, remains one of history’s great “What Ifs.” The conventional wisdom is that the bomb hastened Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what would have been an enormously costly military invasion of Japan. Some challenge this, arguing there were other options (continued fire-bombing of Japanese cities, a blockade, a detonation of a nuclear bomb over some uninhabited island) that promised much the same result but at a lower human cost. And even if the decision to bomb Hiroshima can be explained by what was thought at the time, it is far from clear that the decision to bomb Nagasaki days later was warranted.
Adding to the complication is that historians still debate what, if any, role the belated Soviet entry into the Pacific war played or might have played in Japanese decision-making. Revisionists argue that a principal motive for using the bomb was to intimidate the Soviet Union. It is true that Truman told Stalin at Potsdam about a terrible new weapon, but the exchange was perfunctory by all accounts. All of which is to say that concerns about a looming competition with the Soviet Union seems to have had little impact on U.S. actions in August 1945. Oppenheimer became a proponent of internationalization of the bomb and wrote about this in a 1948 essay for Foreign Affairs, which was a non-starter as the Soviets were determined to get one, which of course they did sooner than expected, in no small part owing to their successful espionage efforts.
One more point. The movie understandably focuses on the horrors of nuclear weapons. Missing was the suggestion of what in fact turned out to be the case, that they introduced a significant degree of caution into what would become the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Nuclear weapons are arguably the main reason the Cold War stayed cold, as they deterred not just nuclear use by either superpower but any use of military force by the United States or the Soviet Union directly against the other. It is another “What If” whether this would have been the case absent the use of nuclear weapons at the end of War World II. Alas, this discussion (as interesting as I find it) does not necessarily make for riveting viewing, which helps explain why my career took me to Washington rather than Hollywood.
Legacy Admissions
Here at home I want to circle back to something I wrote about a few weeks ago in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling. Increasingly, legacy admissions (a policy that favors the college and university applications of the children and grandchildren of previous graduates in an effort to build loyalties that translate into largesse) are in the crosshairs. Wesleyan University announced it was ending the practice, and the Department of Education has launched an investigation into Harvard’s practices. My prediction is that legacy admits will soon become a thing of the past. When the winds in this country change, they often change quickly, and that is what is happening here. As they should. Legacy admissions preserve privilege and advantage for individuals who have not earned it. Equal opportunity must be equal if it is to be more than a slogan.
Brian Harman’s Legacy
As is often the case, I will end with some golf. The big event this past week was The Open, aka the British Open. Either way, it was dominated by a 36-year-old, 5’7” American named Brian Harman, who until now had not particularly distinguished himself. Indeed, he was better known in some quarters for his hunting than his fairway woods, but his performance in the last of this year’s four major tournaments has erased any such perceptions for all time.
Harman took the lead in the third round and kept it through the end on Sunday. He won by 6 strokes over the gaggle that ended in a tie for second place. He performed in sun, wind, and rain. The most stunning statistic was his putting. The average golfer is happy to play a round of golf with maybe 36 putts, averaging two a hole. The goal is to avoid three-putts on any single hole and maybe get a few others to drop. This is probably where I need to explain for non-golfers who against all odds might still be reading this that it doesn’t matter whether your ball travels 300 yards or one inch. A stroke is a stroke is a stroke. It is one of the approximately three million ways that golf can drive anyone who plays it insane. My point, though, is simply that putting can make or break you.
It made Harman. He sank 58 out of 59 putts of ten feet or less. If you don’t think this is amazing, try it sometime. He averaged 27 putts a round – 1.5 a hole – which is beyond good. As the cliché goes, you drive for show and putt for dough. To be sure, Mr. Harman drove extremely consistently, avoiding all sorts of trouble that is the Royal Liverpool course, but it was his putting that more than anything else netted him $3 million for four days work. Which as my father used to say, is good work if you can get it.
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Richard Haass in the news
Monday, July 24: MSNBC Morning Joe on the judicial overhaul vote in Israel and the war in Ukraine (begins at 37:28; audio-only).
Thursday, July 27: MSNBC Morning Joe on China-Russia relations.
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.