A Rood Awakening* in the Middle East
Recalling some relevant wisdom from the best grand strategist you never heard of
I don’t have that much in the way of original analysis or news on the Israel-Iran War. There’s a flood of it right now, some it very good, and much of it wrong or misinformation. (Social media, in particular, is an abyss for war news you can rely on.)
But the unfolding scene brought to mind my great teacher of grand strategy and international relations—the late Harold W. Rood. Here’s how he began his basic class on international relations:
“Our purpose here is to learn more about our country, our people, our government and our world.
“None of the theories in political science and international relations are very satisfying, so I assign books which are good books, not text books, and I rely on you to begin constructing theories yourselves. If you don’t like a book, you needn’t read it page to page, but you ought to know what’s in these books.
“What they hold is part of our world and part of our education. Sometime, many years from now, when fast cars don’t cut it for you anymore; and going to the moon is a bore; and men and women have fallen into a perspective; and whiskey doesn’t taste as sharp; you will always have your curiosity and your education.
“It’s a terrible thing to be twenty-three or forty-three or seventy-three, and be among the walking dead, the folks for whom there’s nothing out there. Curiosity is our link to immortality. If you’re educated – if you can read and write and think – no one can ever accuse you of not being a full human being. They can’t take that away from you, even though you might have to use an automatic rifle to fight for it once and awhile.”
Prof. Rood used to bring his World War II M-1 rifle to his “diplomacy and military power” class and pass it around. After a long and lyrical presentation about the history of the gun and its virtues in combat, he’d conclude the first class session by saying, “This [meaning the gun] is the basic tool of diplomacy. In our next class we’ll start considering the basic tools of military power.”
Just imagine what would happen if a professor—even a military veteran, if there are any on a college faculty anywhere—brought an unloaded weapon to the classroom. Just think of the “trigger warning” that would require; it definitely wouldn’t be a “safe space.”
One of his statements I recall seems especially on point just now:
“All those ponderous words and phrases like ‘sufficiency,’ ‘deterrence,’ ‘qualitative superiority,’ ‘essential equivalence,’ ‘mutual assured destruction’ and the rest are obscure in meaning and even when explained, leave the ordinary sensible mind with the impression of flim-flam. To be tempted into asking some simple question like, ‘who’s going to win if there’s a war’ is to brand oneself pitifully naïve at best, or at worst, a throwback to some earlier days when wars were won by the side that was strongest and best prepared to wage war.”
Rood was definitely a throwback. Did I mention that he drove a tank in Patton’s Third Army in 1944? You can from this fact alone understand why he wasn’t much impressed with the classroom theories of standard international relations curricula. When a student once asked Dr. Rood whether he subscribed to the Realist Paradigm, he responded by indicating the wall. “That wall is real. If you don’t believe me, try walking through it. Now here . . . .” At this, he waved his hands in empty air. “This is a paradigm. Try walking through that, and see how different it feels.”
I think we know who is best prepared to wage war right now.
I said I didn’t have anything new to offer on the subject of the war. Perhaps I do. I recall Rood making the point that the radical Islamic Iranian revolution of 1979 achieved a major objective of the Soviet Union without the Soviet Union having to act directly (which might have prompted a more direct American response, as their invasion of Afghanistan did): It detached Iran from the United States and the West. Still too early to say that the result of the current war will be the end of this hideous regime and its replacement by a regime that is at least neutral toward, if not friendly with, the West. Among other things, it would change the dynamics of the China question.
And this might occur without any direct U.S. involvement. In other words, this is not an argument for an active “nation building” initiative by the United States. I would hope we have learned our lesson about this. Although, if there’s a Kermit Roosevelt type still working at the CIA. . .
* Several of us had a practice throughout our years in graduate school of having an early breakfast with Professor Rood every Tuesday morning at Walter’s restaurant on Yale Avenue in Claremont. It was always an extension of the classroom, usually with something buried deep in the morning paper that he thought significant, though it took his unconventional imagination and method to see it. Anyway, we used to call these breakfasts our “Rood Awakening.”
With reference to your disdain for "nation-building" let me recommend a book:
Unwinnable Wars: Afghanistan and the Future of American Armed Statebuilding by Adam Wunische
Ostensibly a post-mortem of the Afghanistan war, this is actually a compelling and provocative thesis on why success in limited interventions is difficult, if not impossible. Afghanistan is the primary case history relied upon, and referred to throughout. But it is not the sole example. Wunische also draws upon numerous other examples to illustrate and support his points – Iraq, Cuba, Vietnam, Haiti. The paradox is that everything done in pursuit of victory actually becomes creates conditions that will prevent any such victory from being realized. He rejects the term "nation-building" in favor of "armed state building" - I think his case for it is compelling.
My imagination, which I believe to be at least "active", cannot even begin to imagine a combat veteran in a professor's position. And a tank driver, yet, good heavens.
But I will take one tiny exception to the good doctor's essay about being educated. I am, myself, highly un-educated, a high school dropout at barely sixteen whose prior educational experience was more corporeal than mental.
But still I was blessed and gifted from the very earliest age with the ability and desire to read. I thank my mother for taking this as a project of importance for her first-born and to say it stays with one, being in my mid-seventies now, is very much true.
Would I be more of curious person, and reader, now, had I gotten education? We'll never know. Had I ventured to university, it likely would have been civil or architectural engineering, and we all know about those STEM guys.
Thank you for the reminiscence. You've made Dr. Rood someone I wish I had known.