DO WE NEED AN EXTERNAL ENEMY TO BE OUR BETTER SELVES?

Even the dullards of local “happy talk” news recognized that there’s now a major feeling of disintegration in the United States. Partisanship has reached such extraordinary levels that Serious People question whether a civil war is possible. Since the election of Bill Clinton, the number of Democrats and Republicans who have a “very unfavorable” view of the other party has climbed to well above 50 percent in both parties. Americans now see each other - not Russia, not China - as the country’s worst enemy. Most Democrats came to the conclusion that the world leader who posed “the greatest threat to peace and security” to the U.S. was Donald Trump. In January 2021, his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup to overturn the 2020 presidential election, or - as they claimed, to restore the election after its “theft.”

This is not the first time the United States has been in this position. Unfortunately, there is no one now alive who was old enough to understand what was happening the last time the country faced such difficulty.

Pundits, analysts and political scientists point to differing reasons to explain why this is happening, from post-industrial decay to changing cultural demographics provoking disaffected whites and others to support Trump to the the domination of public discourse through ideological news channels and social-media platforms where truth takes second place to “belief” to toxic political leadership manipulating people into considering demonstrable facts as “fake news.” The result is that Americans have been effectively herded into partisan tribes.

There is another explanation, which is based on the historical observation that this situation is endemic to democratic republics.

The first great Roman historian, Sallust, who witnessed and wrote about the Roman Republic’s collapse into civil war, said that the reason for internal discord was that Rome had defeated its adversary Carthage. As long as Hannibal and his elephants stalked the Italian peninsula, Roman citizens put their differences aside the face an existential threat. In the eleven years that Hannibal dominated the Italian peninsula, he destroyed ten Roman armies, but each year the Romans built a new one, and in the eleventh year, that army defeated Hannibal. But after Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE, the Romans turned on each other. Sallust observed, “When the minds of the people were relieved of that dread, wantonness and arrogance naturally arose.” The end result was that “the peace for which they had longed in time of adversity, after they had gained it proved to be more cruel and bitter than adversity itself. The community was split into two parties, and between these the state was torn to pieces.”

In “The Prince,” Macchiavelli wrote “The cause of the disunion of republics is usually idleness and peace. The cause of union is fear and war.”

This is the result of our biological evolution as both predator and prey. Our brain evolved to fixate on possible danger, since it could come at any time with fatal result. Modern neuroscience research has demonstrated that our subconscious mind is constantly on the lookout for peril. Several experiments have demonstrated that when people are shown threatening images so quickly that they can’t be consciously recognized, the amygdala (our brain’s “threat center”) has an intense response. The biochemical compound oxytocin causes both intense feelings of trust toward insiders and intense feelings of enmity toward outsiders. Thus, it is in our nature that people external to ourselves are placed in in-groups, or friends, and out-groups, or foes. Today, we don’t face them with spears, clubs and hand-axes, but rather an array of high-powered weapons designed to kill as many “enemies” as fast as possible, up to and including weapons that could end us as a species and the world with us.

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln, who was then 28 years old, gave his first public address, known as the Lyceum Address. In it, Lincoln saw his country coming apart, citing instances of social division, lawlessness, and mob rule. His explanation for this was the peace and security the country was then experiencing. He pointed out that the struggle against Britain for independence had channeled people’s energies outward. “The deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation.” While America was now safe from harm with a rapidly growing population and economy, it was also now safe to start tearing itself to pieces. “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” It would be another 22 years before the Union would nearly founder in such a great cataclysm.

This past Friday, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, spoke about that country’s fall on December 21, 1991, when he resigned as its leader. He spoke of the United States, noting that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, "They grew arrogant and self-confident. They declared victory in the Cold War."

Mr. Gorbachev was not parroting Vladimir Putin when he said that. Many Russians who were involved in the Cold War have made that observation in the past 30 years. The night it happened, Georgi Arbatov, then the USSR's leading "Americanist" and the face of the USSR on American TV in the 80s because he was fluent in English, said during a CNN interview, "We are going to do a terrible thing to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.” He went on to say: “It’s historical, it’s human, you have to have an enemy. So much was built out of this role of the enemy. Your foreign policy, quite a bit of your economy, even your feelings about your country. To have a really good empire, you have to have a really evil empire. I cannot imagine that we will play this game again, and without us you cannot play it either.”

The past 30 years have demonstrated that Mr. Arbatov knew us better than we know ourselves.

He could see that the United States and the Soviet Union had grown strangely interdependent. Each superpower needed the other’s enmity to rally their nation together, to know even who they really were. Novelist Don DeLillo writing the Cold War novel “Underworld,” had one character say it directly: “It’s not enough to hate your enemy. You have to understand how the two of you bring each other to deep completion.”

This has been true of the United States since before we were the United States. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin published the first political cartoon in a North American newspaper. The colonies were portrayed as a snake, with its head as New England and its tail as South Carolina. The snake was cut into pieces and needed to meld itself together in the face of threats from the French and Native Americans: “Join, or Die.”

To accomplish almost all the great things that have been done in our history, we have needed a great enemy, a truly existential threat: the British Empire in the 1770s; the Confederacy in the

Even after becoming the engine of Allied victory in World War II, the United States tried to shrink back to our pre-war isolation, but the Soviet actions in Eastern Europe forced us, as the most powerful country, to organize an internatio Civil War; Imperial Germany in World War I; Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II; the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The rise and fall of these great enemies has spurred periods of unity and progress and, in turn, eras of discord and reaction.

The threat of Britain forced us to become The United States, rather than thirteen independent colonies; the threat of the Confederacy led us to abolish the foundational evil of slavery and te develop the country through the Homestead Act that gave common people a way to become independent, the Merrill Act that led to higher education becoming available to people who could never aspire to it before, and to the Transcontinental Railroad, that tied the country together; fighting to “make the world safe for democracy” in World War I led finally to women getting the vote in the year following its end; World War II and the concomitant Cold War that followed led to both amazing technological development and social progress.

The Cold War, our most recent confrontation with a Major Enemy, did exactly what Arbatov pointed out: it created “Your foreign policy, quite a bit of your economy, even your feelings about your country.”

Even after becoming the Engine of Allied Victory in World War II, the United States at first attempted in the immediate postwar years to retreat to our pre-war isolationism. Soviet moves in eastern Europe (undertaken by “The Enemy” to create buffer states and perhaps prevent a replay of another Western invasion of the the USSR) led to our creation of an international alliance - NATO - that changed our foreign relations. Unfortunately, our observation of Soviet-style Communism in Eastern Europe, where it was imposed on unwilling populations, led us to believe that was the only way Communism grew. This led to the major misunderstanding of how countries like China and Vietnam could adopt communism, that it could be a genuine expression of native national aspirations; this led to the major miscalculations that were the Korean and Vietnam wars. Seeing “communists” where there were none led us to take up Britain’s former role as imperial cop, overthrowing native national leaders throughout the developing world who actually wanted to do nothing more than what the United States had done in its own development between the Revolution and World War I. Had the United States taken the alternative that was possible at the end of the Second World War, to take up our history as the first anti-colonial nation and become the advocate of de-colonization rather than its major opponent, we would live in a vastly different world. But our perception of our Enemy prevented us seeing the real opportunity that was available.

Allow me to present a history of how our perception of an Enemy led to the development of our technology to a place of pre-eminence in the 50s and 60s and even later.

On May 1, 1947, Western observers at the May Day Celebration in Red Square were surprised to see three Boeing B-29s fly over. It was known that three of the bombers - the greatest technological feat of aeronautical development during the war - had landed in the then-neutral USSR and been interned, and at first Western observers thought these might be they. Until a fourth “B-29" appeared. These were the Tupolev Tu-4, a Soviet reverse-engineered B-29. It was announced the airplanes were in “full production.” Two and a half years later, Western intelligence detected the evidence of a Soviet A-bomb, years before it had been thought they could do this. Of course, that could only have happened if the Soviets had stolen the American “Atomic Secrets” (no one paid attention to the fact that, once it was announced that A-bombs had been dropped on Japan, any college freshman with a physics text possessed the “secret” of how to do it - he just needed a few billion dollars to carry it out).

This event, accompanied as it was by the “loss” of China with the victory of Mao’s communists a month after the “secret” of the Soviet A-bomb had been revealed, led to a domestic political cataclysm in the United States - “McCarthyism” - that would last four years and leave those who survived so badly scarred that for the next 20 years they would always act in foreign relations in such a way that they could never be accused of “losing China;” this led directly to the Vietnam War, which resulted in more “domestic discord” that still influences politics.

At the same time, it was crucial that a defense be mounted to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining the ability to stage a nuclear attack on the United States. The B-29/Tu-4 could only reach U.S. targets by flying one-way missions; one might think that was a deterrent, since the Soviet crews might not agree with such a strategy. Why would Soviet crews be different from American? Throughout the Cold War, American aircrews were ready to make one-way missions to targets in the Soviet Union and Red China. My very good friend, the late Air Force historian Walt Boyne, told me how - when he was a young co-pilot assigned to a Strategic Air Command nuclear bomber in 1952 - they were told that once they had dropped their bomb on Kiev, they should fly west until they ran out of fuel, then bail out and “join the resistance.” Another former SAC pilot told me with a straight face that the “recovery airfield” for his B-52 after he had bombed Shanghai was a 5,000-foot dirt airstrip on Formosa.

The difference was that throughout the 1950s, the United States Air Force had an overwhelming superiority in bombers; while the Soviets displayed small numbers of jet bombers at the annual air displays in 1955, ‘56 and ‘58, those airplane were never in mass production as were the B-47s and B-52s; those of us “of a certain age” can remember leaving them contrails in the skies of America during our childhood. The production of over 2,000 jet-powered nuclear bombers during this period was justified by claims the Soviets were producing vast numbers of intercontinental bombers, creating what was called “The Bomber Gap.”

President Dwight Eisenhower had always been skeptical of the Air Force claim about a “bomber gap.” However, there was no way of confirming or denying any of the estimates until 1956. That year, a special long-range high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that had been developed for the CIA by Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson became operational. The Lockheed U-2, operating at 70,000 feet, was considered impossible for the Soviets to intercept. The missions to find out what really existed in the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an engima that was the Soviet Union were among the most important intelligence-gathering flights ever undertaken.

On July 9, 1956, CIA pilot Martin Knutson flew Mission 2020. He photographed 30 M-4 (B-52 equivalent) bombers at an airfield southwest of Leningrad. The mission resulted in national intelligence estimate NIE 11-4-57, issued in November 1957. Extrapolating from the number of bombers photographed on Mission 2020 and multiplying by the number of known Red Air Force bomber bases capable of operating such aircraft, the analysts stated the ADD (the “Soviet SAC”) would have 150-250 operational M-4s by 1958, and more than 600 by 1965. It proved Air Force claims of a “bomber gap” were true.

Follow-up U-2 missions in 1957-58 found no M-4s on any other airfield. The missions revealed the Red Air Force was actually operating at a very low activity level. In April 1958, CIA analyst Sherman Kent stated production of the M-4 appeared to have slowed in anticipation of stopping, and that force estimates should be cut by 80 percent.

The Air Force refused to listen. A counter-report issued in May 1958 suggested M-4 production was taking place at Kyubyshev in Kazakhstan and Irkutsk in Siberia, with the aircraft delivered to Engels-2, Bila Tserkva and Balbasovo air bases - none of which had been overflown. In December 1959, Engels-2 and Kyubyshev were overflown by a U-2 flown by an RAF pilot. There was no sign of bombers or of factories capable of producing them. Dino Brugioni, then a CIA photo interpreter, later related: “Within several months, we could positively produce facts that the bomber gap didn’t exist. We solved the main problem facing President Eisenhower.”

Despite actual superiority, the threat of fleets of Soviet bombers coming “over the pole” led to the expenditure of several hundred million dollars (billions in today’s money) to establish the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line of radar stations across Alaska, northern Canada and Greenland. More than that, the U.S. invested in the technical development of an advanced industrial base to create and support supersonic flight that gave the American aviation industry a permanent “edge.”

The development of “The Century Series” of supersonic fighters called for advances in structures, materials and techniques, propulsion, systems, and aerodynamics that eclipsed everything previous. The bill for aerodynamic research alone was $375 million in 1950s dollars, including the cost of the X-1 series, the X-2, X-3 and the Skyrocket supersonic research aircraft. The cost of engine research and development was $280 million. Between 1950-54, the Air Force spent $397 million developing a heavy-press capable of squeezing large light-alloy forgings that would have been otherwise constructed from many separate parts or sculptured from a solid slab by “hogging.” With this, lightweight single-piece aircraft skins were popped out in minutes. Funding for creating radical new machine tools included $180 million for machines that could remove vast amounts of metal at high speed with extreme precision and for automatic precision machines capable of drilling, countersinking, dimpling, riveting, reaming, bolting and sealing, doing these operations in sequence - all before computers. A brand-new industry to create 500-600 tons of wrought titanium a month was created, since supersonic fighters used this metal in considerable amounts. Hundreds of millions were spent on the development of electrical and hydraulic systems which could reliably operate after soaking at up to 300 degrees Celsius, along with a range of reliable miniaturized electronic devices that still used vacuum tubes, since this was prior to the transistor revolution.

Overall, between 1950-55, the United States spent $2 billion in 1950s dollars, just to acquire the capability of producing supersonic fighters. (That would be $32 Billion in 2021 dollars) The only other program more expensive was the Manhattan Project.

Eventually, Eisenhower’s frustration in dealing with the Air Force and the U.S. aircraft industry that supported the Air Force’s fight for ever more bombers and interceptors to meet a threat that he had learned because of the U-2 never existed would result in the president using his farewell address on leaving office in January 1961 to warn against the “military-industrial complex” as a threat to the republic.

One can also point to the “Space Race” and “the Missile Gap” that was proclaimed with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 leading directly to the technological revolutions of miniaturization and solid-state electronics and computer operations needed for space voyaging which created the technological basis of the world we live in today. Yes - Sputnik led directly to Facebook.

Despite “winning” the Cold War, the forecast “peace dividend” of reduced defense expenditure that would allow domestic programs for people to be developed and funded instead never happened. Three weeks ago, the U.S. Congress approved a 2022 budget for the Department of Defense that is $768.2 billion, including a 2percent increase – $25 billion – over the Biden Administration’s original request. That is ONE YEAR. But spending $175 billion a year over the next ten years to actually improve the lives of Americans will lead to inflation and people spending the money they receive on drugs rather than their children.

In the history of the United States, a powerful enemy has always been important in forging unity. Americans tend not to understand their identity based on an ancient heritage, religion, or language, but rather on a founding creed defined by liberty, equality, and individual rights. Unfortunately, a set of abstract ideas can only do so much to bond a physically enormous country populated by hundreds of millions of immigrants and their descendants. A great foe can make these ideals feel more meaningful and even worth dying for. The American collective memory celebrates the heroic contest with holidays, parades, and fireworks until the glorious tale is woven into the national tapestry.

Historically, the threat of a great enemy has led to a dynamic and activist government that is prepared to raise taxes, regulate the economy, and mobilize the full resources of the citizenry, including women and minorities. To defeat the adversary, American conservatives have been willing to support big government and even consider the radical transformation of society. Between 1941-63, the federal government raised income taxes with the top rate at 90 percent, regulated the economy, and distributed veterans’ benefits, all of which sharply reduced disparities of income. Unions thrived in wartime and worked in partnership with the federal government. In the 1950s, Congress passed the first federal aid for education to compete with Soviet science. The Cold War was a direct cause of the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which declared the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional. The Justice Department urged the Court to decide against segregation solely because of foreign threat: “Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.”

And yet, the times of “peace and prosperity” have brought the greatest conflicts.

The end of the Civil War triggered an era of division and reaction in the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the Populists, socialists, and anarchists, and the worst labor violence of any industrializing country. Lower taxes granted the rich a new birth of freedom in the Gilded Age. Troops were deployed in the South to aid the former slaves, but northerners had no stomach for the fight; the troops were withdrawn, and a new system of apartheid quickly emerged.

America has never since been as completely safe as it was in the 1920s, yet following the victory in World War II there was a wave of lynching in the “bloody summer” of 1919, followed by the the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan, which crushed the nascent civil rights movement. In 1921, the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia was the most violent struggle in American labor history. The 1921 white attacks on “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the worst racial violence in the country’s history.

As Georgi Arbatov warned, the collapse of America’s great enemy the Soviet Union caused an erosion in national identity and discord in the old familiar places: race, class, immigration. It led to a weakening international alliances, and an era of hubris and failed wars. It was fertile soil for the emergence of a populist outsider like Trump, who promised to restore a lost era and “make America great again.”

Pogo was right 60 years ago: “We have met the enemy, and they is us.”

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