MACHINA

by Sebastian Marshall

  The fate of the countries of Estonia, North Korea, and South Korea were settled by force, which became objective facts. There was broadly no agreement between the belligerents until it was “judged by the sword” – largely objective facts.

  In less belligerent conditions, we can note things like literally how many people are members of a company, church, government bureau, university, and so on. How many students are enrolled on campus, money in the bank, and so on.

  Intersubjective agreement determines a lot of how an organization is run and flourishes or falls short, but objective facts are of paramount importance as well.

  ***

  WHAT’S AN INSTITUTION?, IV: OPERATIONS

  Last chapter, in Temporal Control #7: Operations, we discussed how ops coordinates tactics over time.

  Institutions have their intersubjective agreements and traditions holding them together, they have the objective facts about them, but then the operations ensures that there is regular turnover of new personnel, missions and projects are updated, and so on.

  This cuts close to “pure ops” which we thoroughly discussed last chapter, and need not have too much more elaboration, but consider the Marian reforms.

  Roman armies – operationally – were formerly raised from volunteers who owned a certain amount of property and they equipped themselves at their own expense.

  Marius made a huge operational shift in recruiting people without property, signing them up for two-decade professional terms of soldiering, equipping them at state expense, and promising them land and money upon retirement.

  This is close to pure Operations at this point: coordinating how armies are assembled, equipped, and discharged.

  The same applies to all other sorts of institutions.

  ***

  WHAT’S AN INSTITUTION?, V: SECONDARY EFFECTS

  And this brings us to the final piece of the puzzle.

  Intersubjective agreement and traditions tend to be the heart of an organization, which is then actualized through objective resources. Decisions about operations – how the resources are managed over time, and which types of agreements are re-negotiated or changed as circumstances change – greatly shape the life of the organization.

  This would all be well and good… until we consider the ever-dangerous secondary effects.

  I’m nearly certain that Marius was not trying to set off 100 years of Civil Wars in Rome that would result in the end of the Republic.

  But his military reforms – albeit badly needed – did just that.

  The secondary effects of the Marian reforms meant that soldiers came to rely on their commander for their entire life and property.

  Rather than be committed to a current campaign for service and glory, and then wanting to return home as happened prior to Marius, afterwards soldiers gave their entire young adult life to the army, and counted on their commander to get them land and money on discharge.

  Gradually, loyalty to the Republic became replaced by loyalty to the commander.

  And thus, Marius’s legions and Sulla’s legions came into conflict; and then Julius Caesar’s legions backed him in his fight against Pompey; on Caesar’s assassination, the Triumverate of Octavian, Anthony, and Lepidus fought the assassin’s forces, before breaking into their own Octavian/Anthony Civil War.

  Octavian was the last man standing.

  The Roman Senate, seeing no other way out, elected him imperator – supreme commander – and voted him unheard-of powers over all the legions.

  Before Marius, there were volunteer soldiers only under the Republic’s command.

  But Marius saw that the Republic had outgrown the ability to defend itself with temporary volunteer soldiers.

  Marius replaced this system – objectively, operationally, and intersubjectively – with a system of professional soldiers who had loyalty to their commander.

  After 100 years of Civil War, the Senate saw that that professional soldiers were still necessary and gave up on the concept of loyalty to the Republic, placing the professional soldiers solely under the command of the Imperator – the Emperor – Octavian, who became Caesar Augustus.

  And the Romans prayed that Augustus Caesar would become a representation and manifestation of the Roman State himself.

  And thus, the Roman Empire was born.

  ***

  SO WHAT, PRAY TELL, IS A “ROMAN ARMY”?

  In any snapshot in time, that’s an easy question to answer.

  But over longer timescales, things evolve.

  I contend any institution is a mix of,

  *Intersubjective agreement and tradition.

  *Intersubjective evolution and re-negotiation.

  *Objective facts and materials.

  *Operations: how things move and get done throughout the institution.

  *Secondary Effects: those oft-dreadful unpredictable consequences of intersubjective policies, objective facts, and operations.

  As a leader yourself, you should always study the bounds of tradition and what the current agreements are between stakeholders. Things change and move as time passes; how are they moving?

  Objective facts – more troops and better equipment in an army – are always important.

  Operations – how everything gets done – are important.

  But then – never, ever, ever neglect secondary effects.

  You can see institutions like Google evolving as their agreements change, their objective facts change, their operations change… but most importantly of all, the often unpredictable secondary effects of those changes.

  This happens at businesses, it happens at universities, it happens in governments, it happens… everywhere.

  You now have some tools to analyze institutions – both as they exist now, and to make predictions of how they’ll continue to move going forwards.

  Oh, and one last time – never, ever, ever neglect secondary effects.

  Temporal Control #9: Machinations

  THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS NOT YET BEEN TOLD THE NEWS

  “Another doctor phoned first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington D.C., informing her that FDR had fainted. She told the doctor she would travel to Georgia that evening after a scheduled speaking engagement. By 3:30 p.m., though, doctors in Warm Springs had pronounced the president dead.

  “Eleanor delivered her speech that afternoon and was listening to a piano performance when she was summoned back to the White House. In her memoirs, she recalled that ride to the White House as one of dread, as she knew in her heart that her husband had died. Once in her sitting room, aides told her of the president’s death. The couple’s daughter Anna arrived and the women changed into black dresses. Eleanor then phoned their four sons, who were all on active military duty. At 5:30 pm, she greeted Vice President Harry Truman, who had not yet been told the news. A calm and quiet Eleanor said, “Harry, the president is dead.” He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

  -- This Day In History: 12 April 1945

  ***

  82 DAYS

  The article continues,

  “Truman had rather large shoes to fill. FDR had presided over the Great Depression and most of World War II, leaving an indelible stamp on American politics for several decades. He also left Truman with the difficult decision of whether or not to continue to develop and, ultimately, use the atomic bomb. Shockingly, FDR had kept his vice president in the dark about the bomb’s development and it was not until Roosevelt died that Truman learned of the Manhattan Project.”

  This point is often stated – how is it possible that Truman did not know about the Atomic Bomb? Shocking!

  But, perhaps not so shocking.

  It’s often noted but perhaps not studied enough that Truman had only served as Vice President for 82 days.

  We should consider this situation thoroughly – there are many lessons here. We will get to know Truman more next chapter; this chapt
er, let us see the man who might have been President.

  Franklin Roosevelt’s health had been waning through the 1940’s; it was commonly thought he might die during his unprecedented fourth term in office.

  Wikipedia –

  “The Democratic Party's 1944 nomination for Vice President of the United States was determined at the 1944 Democratic National Convention, on July 21, 1944. United States Senator Harry S. Truman was nominated to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt's running-mate in his bid to be re-elected for a fourth term. How the nomination went to Harry S. Truman, who did not actively seek it, is, in the words of his biographer Robert H. Ferrell, "one of the great political stories of our century". The fundamental issue was that Roosevelt's health was seriously declining, and everyone who saw Roosevelt, including the leaders of the Democratic Party, realized it. If he died during his next term, the Vice President would become President, making the vice presidential nomination very important. Truman's predecessor as Vice President, the incumbent Henry A. Wallace, was unpopular with some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, who disliked his liberal politics and considered him unreliable and eccentric in general. Wallace was, however, the popular candidate, and favored by the Convention delegates. As the Convention began, Wallace had more than half the votes necessary to secure his re-nomination. By contrast, the Gallup poll said that 2% of those surveyed wanted then-Senator Truman to become the Vice President. To overcome this initial deficit, the leaders of the Democratic Party worked to influence the Convention delegates, such that Truman received the nomination.”

  Well, that’s the sanitized version of it.

  “Liberal policies” might not be an accurate description, though. Harry Truman had perfect liberal-democratic credentials; no, this is more complicated than that.

  It would likewise be unfair to say that President Roosevelt was indifferent to the Vice Presidential nomination in ’44 – but it clearly wasn’t his biggest priority. He was balancing the largest war effort in American history, the largest and longest foreign deployment of American troops in history, navigating two very different and distinct war fronts spanning at least five continents, while also leading the complete re-drawing of the domestic American landscape.

  This is before getting into the scientific and military advances – the Manhattan Project and Atomic Bomb being the most noteworthy – and trying to decipher the upcoming international postwar landscape.

  When there was inter-party opposition to Wallace, FDR largely let the Democratic Party sort it out amongst themselves while focusing on America’s war aims, trying to build a workable peaceful international system (and, though he wouldn’t see it, failing after being deceived by Stalin), while strengthening and finalizing his domestic reforms – the New Deal being the most famous, but also the full industrialization and development of modern American management of industry, war, and government.

  His hands were full.

  So – Truman comes onboard.

  I always hesitate to touch on current-day issues; they tend to excite passions and invite controversy in excess of universal lessons gained… but to relate it briefly to the current day, it might be reckoned to the Vice Presidential choices in the 2016 election. I think it would be generally uncontroversial to say that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump picked “solid party choices” for this current election, and that Democratic VP Candidate Tim Kaine and Republican VP Candidate Mike Pence are not as important to this election as some past Vice Presidents have been.

  You need look no further back than four years ago to see a different scenario: Vice President Biden and Republican VP Candidate Paul Ryan were both more politically significant choices, and perhaps we could say they were both portrayed as more “executive” than Kaine or Pence.

  Roosevelt’s ’44 VP choice was more like 2016 than 2012. Biden and Ryan both brought unique legislative talents and were significant parts of their respective campaigns; I think it’s uncontroversial to say that Kaine and Pence are portrayed as perhaps less executively significant than the 2012 Vice Presidential candidates.

  Enough of the current day! I try to stay out of modern politics; things shift quickly, and we’re looking for deeper lessons of history.

  But Truman, Harry Truman, was a very “safe choice” compared to Wallace.

  ***

  PRE-SHAKEUP INTERNATIONALLY

  A little more background is needed.

  During the ’44 Presidential election, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had already largely had their aggressive abilities defeated, and were now primarily fighting a crippled defensive effort. The Battle of Midway in 1942 had destroyed much of Japan’s Navy and Air Force, meaning the Allies could focus on a “Europe First” strategy.

  D-Day had quickly started rolling back Germany from the Western Front in June 1944; around the same time, Asian Allied Forces savaged the Japanese on land and broke through in Southeast Asia and China. The remainder of Japan’s Carrier Air Force operations had been destroyed in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

  The Soviet and Russian forces had won the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, and had finally been able to start an offensive program of strategic counterattacks. At the start of the war, superior German armaments had led to extremely lopsided casualty numbers: the Russians would have something around 12 soldiers killed for every single Nazi slain.

  This pattern held even until the final moments of the war, but it was turning in 1944. The Soviet Operation Bagration had somewhere between 1.6 and 2.3 million Soviet troops against somewhere between 880,000 and 1 million Nazis.

  The Nazis still took less casualties: 26,000 killed and around 300,000 more captured or missing. The Soviets had 180,000 killed or missing and a staggering 600,000 sick or wounded.

  The Soviet Russians had sustained an insane amount of casualties in World War II… and somehow had endured it intact. After Bagration, the Russians captured most of Poland from German hands; the end looked to be in sight.

  And, while it may be hard to imagine, all these far-flung land and sea battles happening on other continents were half of the trigger for the Democratic Vice President shakeup in the United States – that event that would so surprisingly shape the world.

  ***

  “IT IS NOT A COMMUNIST PARTY CAMPAIGN”

  In my research for this piece, I was looking for notes on Henry Wallace’s commentaries on the Morgenthau Plan for Germany.

  I found something far more interesting.

  “Henry Wallace: A Mind Divided” – from the Atlantic…

  … from 1948.

  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/08/henry-wallace-a-divided-mind/306029/

  The whole thing is a series of gems; you read this Atlantic piece, and you feel like you’re there in the 1940’s. It’s really a remarkable magazine, The Atlantic, having been so sharp for so long –

  “Wallace became a hero and symbol for liberals when they were working in the government with him, when they were projecting their ideas into and through him—and when they were shielding his reputation from the tarnishing effects of his various sorties into the occult typified by the Roerich affair and his fascination with numerology and Navajo Indian medicine men. Only a handful of Wallace's former associates are with him in his present crusade. A majority of the others—though they are as deeply disturbed at the incredible mishandling of American foreign policy by the Truman administration as Wallace—have lost confidence in him. Their loss of confidence is not based on fear of risking their jobs and salaries if they should go with Wallace—a charge he made publicly when asked why so few of his former colleagues are in his camp. This callous accusation reveals either a complete lack of feeling for past relationships, or the exaltation of martyrdom, which persuades him that every former friend who now opposes him is animated by base motives. I believe it is a combination of both.”

  That, that is the adroit sort of slightly-left-of-center thinking that was so penetratingly interesting before it got replaced by more slog
aneering in the 1970’s; The Atlantic stayed good, I enjoy it, but it does not pen that sort of judgment any more.

  This line might generate a laugh, though –

  “The central committee of the U.S.A. Communist Party at its October, 1947, meeting could have laid its most devious and high-powered plans for the campaign. It could have been assured of ample supplies of money with which to retain skilled artificers of screen, radio, and print. All would have availed little had the "confused liberal" not seen his destiny along a road paralleling the one charted by the Communist high command. At best a campaign without Wallace—with a less well known figure—would have been such a fizzle the newsprints would have relegated it to a few stickfuls in the back pages. The campaign, then, is a Wallace-seeking-his-destiny campaign. It is not a Communist Party campaign, despite the closeness with which he has hewn to the Kremlin's Party line and despite the number of Party members and Party-liners manning the machinery of the campaign.”