The Neo-cons
As reported in the book, “The Forty Years War,” the strategist behind the stellar conservative movement is a gentleman by the name of
Fritz Kraemer.
He was born in 1908 and his view of the world was seen through the first two great wars and later the cold war.
He disdained Germany’s most influential intellectuals-Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche as “destructive Nihilists.”
He saw the cabarets and the babbling politicians of the liberal Weimar Republic, as reflective of a decadent bourgeoisie, unable to understand the coming revolution, the revolution of nihilism…or Nazism…
Kraemer believed
1.Foreign policy must have primacy over domestic policy to ensure a nations survival.
2.The essence of foreign affairs was “political strength and ultimate military might.”
3.The only policy worth pursuing was the balance of great powers.
He was a thinker and not a doer so he aspired to “ the position of political advisor to the chief of the general staff of the army and eventually political mentor to a great foreign secretary.”
He had a degree in law and when the Nazi’s announced restrictions on the Jews he and his wife moved to Italy. Here he taught at the University of Rome, while taking a second doctorate in political science.
In 1937 when Mussolini became Hitler’s ally Kramer found suitable boarding for his wife and child and departed for Great Britain then to the United States. He worked a number of odd jobs before being drafted in 1943.
“The army quickly noted his talents and gave him the task of lecturing and preparing officers who were going into Germany after D-day. it was during this assignment that he met Kissinger.”
Kraemer would lecture Kissinger on his view of history and current events…as Kissinger later wrote
“Kraemer was as learned as he was dramatic, as dedicated as he was eloquent.”
he continued in his war efforts and reunited eventually with his family.
Kraemer believed Great Britain and France could have stopped Hitler in 1938 at Munich. He called their refusal to act a sign of
“provocative weakness”
In the ashes of ww2 Kraemer applied this theory to the new enemy, communism who’s proletarianism and tyrannical suppression he considered an evil equivalent to Hitler's socialism.
The west yielding to the communists was same as the Allies yielding to Hitler.
In 1948 Kramer accomplished one of his goals by becoming the official advisor to the US army chief of staff.
Kraemers views were not unique. Many philosopher and strategist on the right also said and wrote similar things including Leo Strauss and Andrew Wohlstetter,
Kraemer gave his ideas a more overtly military turn.
In a letter to Kissinger in 1956 he writes,
“History is not really made by pens or printers ink…that in truth, men will adopt the bold imaginative policies we want them to adopt, not because their brains are convinced by conclusive argument but because their hearts are moved.”
He refused promotions and and lived an ascetic life-keeping no tv at home, and staying fit through exercise—he believed this reinforced the purity and force of his arguments.
Kraemer fundamentally distrusted diplomacy that lacked military power.
He dismissed those he considered overeducated and under experienced as “brilliant fools” and feared that a bourgeois society—which he believed the western democracies had already become—would never understand the devastating effect of provocative weakness.
Totalitarian dictatorship like the USSR repeatedly took Western weakness as license to expand their empire.
“Many technicians in high places do not grasp the reality that nothing has ever been granted to nations on a silver platter and that great and difficult goals had never been accomplished without passion and a flame of true conviction.”
Diplomacy was a cardinal example of that basest of sins
moral relativism.
“Intellectual have always preached that everything is relative and there are no absolute values. the result is spiritual emptiness. Everything is possible therefore nothing is. The worst thing about a loss of faith is not the fact they have stopped believing but that they are ready to believe anything.”
“Nothing is possible without power” Kraemer was fond of saying.
Economics is no substitute for military force. The one way to prevent war was to develop military might and make sure that other other countries understood your willingness to use it.
Kraemer believed in seeding the elite with those of superior intellect, pledged to high ideals and trained in his way of thinking.
In the past century he pointed out that small heroic groups had saved civilization by a combination of strength, will and power.
Power was not a privilege, he avowed, but an obligation of the governing elite.
In 1969 when the American public clamored for an end to the war Kraemer wished to expand it.
He felt it was crucial that the incoming President Richard Nixon include Kissinger, Haig and his son Sven as a staffer.
Kissinger in a glowing tribute:
“like the ancient prophets he made no concessions to human frailty or to historic evolution…he was a beacon that amidst the turmoil of the moment he guides us to the transcendental.”
Commentary
The US foreign policy supersedes domestic policy…military spending is more fundamental and basic than social programs…we have super power and we’re not afraid to use it.
Communism led to fascism and a lack of liberty.
Canada is a direct recipient of US militarism…
many Americans say it is nicer to live here…
The US is a secure state…
When you’re poor you vote democrat when you’re rich you vote republican…
alas this is not always the case.
“The real war will never get in the books.” Walt Whitman
http://bookreview.mostlyfiction.com/2010/the-forty-years-war-by-len-colodny-and-tom-schactman/
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