As expected, there are numerous treats and small treasures in The Point of it All, the new collection of writings by the late Charles Krauthammer assembled by his son Daniel after his too-early death.
Among them Krauthammer’s description of how Thomas Jefferson managed to square his belief in liberty for all of humanity with the unsettling fact that he owned slaves: He installed a dumbwaiter between his dining room and the kitchen beneath it, allowing the food to be brought to his table without the sight of the servants he owned.
“What did the guests see?” Krauthammer writes. “Dinner, without the slaves who prepared it.” He diverted his own attention from them, leaving them unnoticed, unheard, and unseen.
Aside from this and many other valuable insights, the meat of this book lies in what might be called “The Krauthammer Doctrine.” There are several essays scattered throughout about the Cold War, and the world order installed and created by Harry S. Truman, confirmed and established by former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and revived in the 80’s by Ronald Reagan, their successor in spirit
Between the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1947, the United States and its allies did something extraordinary. When the transition of Russia from ally to foe ensured that the United Nations would be utterly useless as a peacekeeping agent, it created an ad hoc and improvised body of mutual assistance among those remaining, so that small powers would not be picked off one-by-one by an aggressive great power, leaving the U.S. to fend for itself.
“For seven decades since the Japanese surrender, our role under 11 presidents had been as offshore balancer protecting smaller nations from would-be aggressors,” Krauthammer tells us. It is a role never consciously sought by America’s leaders, but assumed when they realized there was no other choice possible. The Russians intended to stay in the countries they ‘liberated,’ and expand on their holdings from there.
Ever the psychiatrist (his former profession) Krauthammer has numerous insights into Cold War behaviors that elude other men. Why the did the U.S. station American troops near the borders of West Germany during the Cold War, who were too small in numbers to repel or even delay Russian tanks? To serve as deterrents or trip wires in case of invasion — “a deliberate message to the enemy that if you invade our ally, you will have to kill a lot of Americans … which will galvanize us into full-scale war against you.”
Why is Australia, a small (in population) country an ocean and half a world distant the one country that has backed America wholeheartedly since 1914 in every last one of its wars? Because it is a small country, at the far side of nowhere, with no other allies around. “Australia’s geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace … that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the ‘international community’ and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquillity in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe but are maintained by power — once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.”
Australia has no illusions, and neither does Krauthammer, who understands the Truman Doctrine much better than Trump or Obama. This book should be read by every American, lest illusions grab hold of them, too.
