Instrument of Finnish liberal democracy according to Jared.
Jared Diamond's trajectory reminds me of Simon Shama--after a single really great book--Landscape and Memory, he became so full of himself that the rest of his production could never match its quality or lucidity but his public pronouncements became more and more haughty. Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" was not as marvelously innovative and strange as "Landscape and Memory" but became much more influential.
The author, as the most sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists in the US, is a left-leaning neocon--left-leaning means that supply-side economics and climate change denial are not a part of inviolable symbol of faith. [1] In his old age, he inherited dogma of liberal neocons but also their pitiful disdain of careful research in favor of grand concepts.
For instance, he writes, countering contemporary Soviet Union during the Winter War of 1930-1940 "...Finland, a liberal capitalist democracy" (p. 66), while acknowledging 8,000 Red Finns shot and 20,000 perished in concentration camps (p.66) out of 3 million-strong population after the Finnish Civil War. Concentration camps in a liberal democracy? Interesting. [2]
He, obviously, did not brush up his history of the Second World War since the middle school. "When I was growing up in the US during World War II, I just thought of Finland as the fourth axis power, along with Germany, Italy and Japan". (p. 80) What about Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria as well as Slovakia, Estonia and Croatia, the latter bunch being carved out from Nazi-occupied states but reconstituted back into their prewar shapes?
"Among his [Kaiser's] many policies that resulted in Germany's entering World War one under unfavorable circumstances leading to defeat was his non-renewal of Bismark's treaty between Germany and Russia..." (p. 248) A simple internet check establishes that Dreikaiserbund --a mutual treaty between German, Austrian and Russian Empires was dissolved by Bismark himself in 1887--three years before the end of his Chancellorship, probably, because he thought that after unification of Germany, the utility of tripartite relationship was nil. In fact, this was Kaiser Wilhelm II who tried to achieve some form of new monarchical rapprochement with Russia in the form of infamous Bjorko Treaty (1905).
Even more numerous are Diamond's instances of extremely questionable judgement. Trying to whitewash the terror of right-wing regimes in Chile and Indonesia, he writes:
"Yet Chilean military crimes can't be blamed on Pinochet alone, because no one has suggested that he personally shot or tortured anyone..." So far, the same exact argument did not win many supporters when Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin were concerned.
"The tortures, killings, grinding poverty and insane policies associated with Communist dictatorships in Cambodia, North Korea and other countries warn us that a Communist alternative to Suharto could have been worse for Indonesia that was Suharto". This paean was repeated many times by dozens of dictators in Latin America and elsewhere. The most obvious problem with this, is that by Diamond's own admission, the 1965 Communist plot had little chances of success and could have been just a pretext for the Indonesian Army to launch a massive campaign of extermination.
"Annexation by Russia had motivated emigration by thousands of well-educated white people... Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians who immigrated after World War Two... didn't share the strong racist prejudices" (pp. 278-280). First, nobody was allowed out after the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1939-1940. The exodus coincided with the withdrawal of the German troops in the end of the Second World II. To find out in which subjects these refugees were "well-educated" and how little racial prejudices they held, he must consult the history of Shoah in the Baltics. In fact, Estonia was the first and only country declared Judenfrei at Wannsee conference (1942). [3]
With respect to Australia of 1950s he also confidently proclaims "...the development of an independent foreign policy, instead of leaving Australia's foreign policy to Britain". Does he know where the British nuclear tests were conducted? Or he dismisses connection between defense and foreign policy altogether?
Sometimes, it seems that he only interviewed his own nationalist contacts in Finland and Chile, not even reading carefully the sources he quoted in his book. For instance, in Collier's history of Chile the Pinochet-era myth of Chile's economic revival is subjected to much more nuanced treatment. First, the years of Allende were not such uniform economic disaster as being claimed by contemporary US propaganda. Second, reforms by imported "Chicago boys" produced economic chaos and only after American advisers were replaced by equally pro-market but more pragmatic Swiss Hernan Buchi, Chile began to return to normalcy. Yet, it suffered a severe financial crisis. According to statistical data provided in Collier, one of his references, the Chilean economy by the end of Pinochet era grew little with respect to the end of Frei I era except for the retail and fisheries sector.
His nationalist lore-inspired history of the Winter War of 1939-1940 is not grotesquely counterfactual but for events further on, when Finland joined the Axis, comes straight from the Nazi propaganda. Finland, the most enthusiastic of the Nazi-allied powers, is even credited with "saving of Leningrad", whose blockade ostensibly "saved" it from Nazi occupation. In fact, Germans never contemplated taking the city outright, fearing the protracted battles in the ruins of the large city--their fears were fully realized in Stalingrad--and Finnish-imposed blockade starved more than a million residents to death. The operations to cut Murmansk--a major supply port for American aid--from the mainland, tasked to Finland, ended up in miserable failure. Among detrimental consequences of the Soviet-friendly policies adopted by postwar Finnish Governments--"Finlandization", Diamond mentions Soviets forcing a nuclear power station on helpless Finns, which still supplies much of their electricity.
Remarkably, his study of countries in crisis omits the paramount survival story of the XX century, the State of Israel. This can be explained only by the fact, that in the climate of moral terror instilled by Derschowitz, Michael Oren and the like, any statement about Israel deviating from Netanyahu propaganda line even in the most respectful way, will likely be castigated and chastised.
Of course, no amount of indoctrination can lower Jared Diamond to the level of Francis Fukuyama or Neil Fergusson--that's why they taught in Harvard and he--in the "lowly" UCLA, so his book contains many useful and interesting observations and his final conclusions are surprisingly enlightened.
[1] Neocon dogma, in the approximate order of centrality:
1. Americans are the master race destined to rule the world by the "scientifically established" facts of geography and history (the concept of master race comes from Nazism, see below, and "scientifically established" predestination of human history--from Marxism).
2. The only perfect way to organize society is Anglo-Saxon financial markets-centered capitalism; all other models are "deviations" from this perfect model.
3. Russians are vermin fouling everything they touch and ought to be enslaved or exterminated, the Jews of our age. (This, strangely central--given a comparatively small role Russian Federation plays in the current scheme of things---symbol of faith comes from the fact that, probably, many of the neocons performed as Nazi generals in middle school and tried to re-imagine World War II with them winning. Later, in their college age they were attracted to Trotskyism--Russia must burn to stoke the flames of the world revolution.)
4. Extremely anthropomorphic view of international relations.
5. There is a wall of separation between the world of "liberal democracies" (the countries with the US military bases or in the military alliances with the US; House of Islam of Islamic theology) and "evil dictatorships" (the ones without; the House of War) and any lasting peace between them is impossible. This, fifth point is a relative innovation coming from the ideology of Jihadis.
[2] Operation of concentration camps seems to be a Finnish trademark. When, during 1941-1944, Finns (re-)occupied Korela, they put all of its Slavic population (40-45 thous.) in concentration camps. Death toll according to (supposedly democratic, scientifically minded) Finnish historians was 4,060 (such precision!), while according to the Russian (mendacious, propaganda-driven) was around eight thousand. Recently, about half of this discrepancy was explained--more than two thousand Jews and Communists were rendered to the German High Command for execution. I would not be surprised if the remaining 2,000 were young women and girls forced into sex slavery in the German and Finnish Army barracks, most of whom were murdered either after contracting STDs or before their withdrawal.
[3] This demonstrates how quick is the path from subscription to the neocon dogma to something bordering on the Holocaust denial even for a prominent Jewish academic from Los Angeles.
