Below Is A Preview (In Digital Format) Of The Award-Winning Book Adamant Aggressors: How To Recognize And Deal With Them

Preface

Most adversaries have goals that include overlapping areas of common interest with those with whom they’re in conflict, and many or most are willing to negotiate to reach an optimum solution for all parties; not all adversaries are adamant aggressors.  But some are.

Adamant aggression is obsession / fanaticism with power.  An adamant aggressor has simply-defined, inflexible goals, the achievement of which justifies to him / her / it any means deemed feasible.  Anything less than complete achievement is unsatisfactory, though all manner of partial satisfactions may be accepted as steps toward full achievement.  Agreements, truces, cease-fires, appeasements, compromises, or other accommodations short of the goal will be accepted and observed only long enough for the adamant aggressor to consolidate gains and initiate the next move toward the ultimate goals.  Any agreement that grants only part of an adamant aggressor’s ultimate goal ensures that the agreement will be broken not if, but when, the adamant aggressor feels restrictive conditions will not be successfully enforced.

History provides many examples of adamant aggressors—conquerors on a grand scale and leaders with more limited objectives.  History shows many ways of dealing with such aggressors—accommodation, capitulation, confrontation, negotiations of all kinds.  History also shows that responses to such aggressors were, more often than not, based on incomplete understanding, emotions, misjudgments, and shortsightedness . . . and that some responses were more effective than most.

Examining historical adamant aggressors can help us identify today’s adamant aggressors, which isn’t always easy.  And by studying how others reacted to adamant aggression, we can devise more effective strategies for confronting today’s adamant aggressors.

Identifying Adamant Aggressors

Dealing effectively with an adversary requires a clear understanding of the adversary . . . most especially whether the adversary is an adamant aggressor.  This distinction can be resolved by answering a few questions (though determining the correct answers may be far from easy).

1. What is the adversary’s real, long-term goal? . . . Beyond immediate issues, beyond current assertions, even beyond appearances, what goal drives the adversary?  Does that goal diminish our well-being in either its realization or attempted realization?
2. Is the ultimate goal enduring (inflexible / nonnegotiable)? When was it first conceived or articulated, and is it substantially unchanged at the present time?  Is it based on what the adversary believes to be inviolate or fated principles?
3. Does the adversary believe that goal achievement justifies any feasible means?  Does the adversary have the power / means to proceed toward these goals, now or in the future?  What means have been used / threatened thus far?  Has the adversary previously abrogated/ignored agreements or otherwise demonstrated untrustworthiness?

If thoughtful consideration of these questions followed by systematic investigation yields affirmative answers to all three question categories, the adversary is an adamant aggressor.

Dealing with Adamant Aggressors

Understanding that an adversary is an adamant aggressor does not lead automatically to clear countering strategies.  But some guidelines are axiomatic.

1. We must clearly understand our own long-term interests and identify where the adamant aggressor’s goals are in conflict.  Our choice then becomes clear: We must either forego our own interests or prevent the adamant aggressor from realizing his.
2. An adamant aggressor will suspend operations for goal achievement only because of a genuine belief that such operations will not be successful or at death.
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4. We must deal from a position of strength, both real and perceived.  An adamant aggressor will exploit perceived weakness in any area—military, political, economic, social, moral, national will, alliances, stamina, etc.  Ambiguous threats and unenforced ultimatums will be seen as signs of weakness.
5. Any concession to an adamant aggressor reinforces the aggressor’s belief in ultimate success and guarantees renewed conflict at a future time.  Therefore, each and every concession must always be balanced against whatever short-term benefit it may afford.

Case Studies

Historical accounts indicate an almost uniform pattern of armed attack on the part of ancient conquerors and armed confrontation or fortified defense (or capitulation) on the part of their victims.  But we can only infer underlying motivations and beliefs in those times.  So we look at five cases drawn from more recent history that provide more insight and which demonstrate that at least some modern peoples have learned something about dealing with adamant aggressors.

• Mehmed II and the Ottoman Empire (1451-81)
• James K. Polk and the USA (1845-49)
• Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany (1933-45)
• Zionism, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and Israel (1884-1953)
• Joseph Stalin and Communist Russia / USSR (1929-53/1991)

Caution: Examine each case with absolute dispassion.  Resist the urge to make moral judgments, however justified; applying moral values will tend to cloud lessons to be learned.

Chapter 25

Executive Summary

The Cold War between the USSR and the Western Allies led by the United States ended nearly four decades after the death of Joseph Stalin.  On December 25, 1991, the massive Marxist experiment came to an end. Never declared, the Cold War started during World War II or immediately after, when the USSR installed a puppet Communist regime in Poland in violation of the Potsdam agreement.

Very early in his writings, the “father” of international Communism, V. I. Lenin, presented Communism as an international movement that would ultimately include all countries.  Stalin was, in many ways, his protégé before becoming his successor.

Stalin began building his personal power base well before Lenin’s death.  Sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, he evolved from a power-seeking opportunist to an aggressive ideologue seeking world domination.  His views dominated Soviet leadership and behavior well into the mid-1980s.  Stalin displayed his adamant aggressor colors in 1939 when he entered an alliance with Adolph Hitler’s Germany.  Ostensibly a pact to divide the territorial spoils of their joint Polish conquest less than a month later, the pact also provided for a secure eastern flank for Hitler’s aggression in Western Europe.  In rapid succession after signing the pact, Stalin forced Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania into the Soviet empire, USSR, as agreed to with Hitler.  (Finland was the only Soviet-designated country in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that avoided annexation by the USSR.)

Germany’s invasion of the USSR in June 1941 forced Stalin to join the Allies, but he didn’t set aside his aggressive ambitions.  He gained hegemony over Eastern and Central Europe in negotiations with the Allies.  Even after refusing to aid in the war against Japan until its last month, Stalin also gained influence in Mongolia, China, Indo-China, and Korea as well as the territory of

While a formal concept of adamant aggressor had not been articulated in the mid-twentieth century, and guidelines for dealing with such had not been summarized, the failure / danger of prewar appeasement and isolationism was much on the minds of many postwar Western leaders, especially in the United States.  So they embarked upon not-always-consistent responses to contain Soviet aggression and related Communist expansion throughout the world.

Stalin was not recognized by many Western leaders (except perhaps Winston Churchill) as aggressively seeking world domination until after the conclusion of World War II.  However, Truman perceived the Soviet threat even before becoming president following Roosevelt’s death in 1945, and soon after, the United States overtly engaged the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

• In 1945, Truman signaled a change in the U.S. posture when he cut off Lend-Lease aid (briefly) to the USSR in response to Stalin’s reneging on Poland.  Later that year, the United States blocked the USSR from any role in the occupation of Japan and took the USSR to the United Nations over its refusal to remove troops from Iran (Stalin removed the troops).
• In June 1945, the USSR demanded military concessions from Turkey and free passage for its warships through the Bosporus.  Turkey rejected these demands, but continuing Soviet pressures led to rumors of war between the USSR and Turkey.  Nine months later, Truman sent U.S. Naval forces to support Turkey and Greece.  The United States sixth fleet then remained in the Mediterranean throughout the Cold War.
• In March 1947, Truman announced a policy of restricting global Communist expansion (the “Truman Doctrine”) and specific military and economic assistance to Turkey and Greece.  Soviet and Yugoslav support for Communist guerillas in Greece was ended in 1948.  The CIA, also established in 1947, initiated covert support of the Italian Christian Democratic Party in its 1948 election fight with the Italian Communist Party funded by the USSR.  Direct U.S. support for anti-Communist politicians in Italy continued for many years.
• In 1948, the Marshall Plan providing up to $17 billion for European reconstruction was signed into law by Truman.  Also that year, after the USSR refused to accept any Western proposals to end recession in Germany, the West unified the American, French, and British occupation zones and replaced the debased reichsmark with the deutsche mark as official currency.  In response, the USSR began a blockade of Berlin.  The United States countered with a massive airlift
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  of supplies and personnel that lasted until Stalin deemed the blockade a failure and agreed to lift it on May 12, 1949.
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed by the West in 1949, the same year the USSR tested its first atomic bomb.  Truman then moved to upgrade U.S. conventional forces, increase the U.S. stockpile of atomic bombs, and begin development of a more powerful thermonuclear bomb.  In October, Communists won control of China despite massive U.S. support for Chaing Kai-shek, and China soon established ties with Stalin.  That moved Stalin to authorize North Korea to go to war against South Korea.
• In June 1950, North Korea invaded. Truman supported South Korea immediately and unreservedly; fighting continued until an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.

Joseph Stalin died March 5, 1953.  He was an adamant aggressor; his successors were not.  But it took almost forty years of Cold War for Soviet and Western leaders to work past fears and distrust that had been institutionalized by Stalin’s aggressions and U.S. reactions to it.

This study looks chronologically at Stalin and his morphing from criminal opportunist into adamant aggressor, continuing through residual policies followed by Stalin’s successors until Mikhail Gorbachev changed course with a different vision for the Soviet Union.  It suggests that Stalin was, in effect, identified as an adamant aggressor.  And it examines responses by leaders of the United States and its close allies that ultimately prevailed against the USSR without triggering World War III.¹