DESERVING A HAGIOGRAPHY:

Bush in London (David Warren, November 19, 2003)

Fritz Kraemer died recently. What has this got to do with President Bush's visit to London? Let me explain.

The monocle-wearing Prof. Kraemer, a curious survival of Wilhelmine Germany, and an accomplished scholar of international law, political philosophy, and history, died of kidney failure at age 95 in Washington on Sept. 8, as I just learned. It could be argued that his was the clearest mind behind the American prosecution of the Cold War against Soviet Communism. From a small office in the Pentagon, he taught a generation of U.S. officers not only the principles of geostrategic warfare; but the reasons why it must be fought and won.

Kraemer grasped that it takes more than superior man- and firepower to defeat an enemy that is ideologically driven; that geostrategic contests are determined as much by irrational and immaterial factors. He grasped that the great weakness of the United States and the West, after the defeat of Nazism, was identical with the great weakness of Germany that had allowed the rise of Hitler. In each case, it is the existence of an intellectual elite who think about abstractions instead of realities, and whose instinct to appease a mortal enemy is founded in a lazy, cowardly, and conceited moral relativism. Kraemer was father to the phrase, "provocative weakness" -- in two words, the reason why the West is under attack today from such terror networks as Al Qaeda.

The man himself was a miracle of nature. He was of one piece. In the Germany of his early manhood, in the 1930s, he launched himself physically and fearlessly into demonstrations by both Brownshirts and Reds, as a streetfighting army of one.

He merits a full hagiography -- I invite readers to Google-search the obituaries -- but my purpose today is to juxtapose him with Henry Kissinger, whose intellectual mentor Kraemer was. Kraemer disowned his protégé in the détente era of the 1970s. He believed Mr. Kissinger guilty of spineless concessions to the political and intellectual zeitgeist. Kraemer was a man who believed in fighting for the truth, regardless of consequences; and of fighting with no option of surrender or even compromise with evil. He was no "mere conservative".

Donald Rumsfeld is his true protégé in the U.S. government today, and to a lesser extent President Bush. These are men who realize the U.S., and all free peoples, have a mortal enemy in ideological Islamism, and that it must be defeated rather than accommodated. This has made them deeply unpopular with the intelligentsia of our time, and especially with that half-educated reflection of it in the mass media. Europe and Canada are much farther gone down the rat-hole to surrender, but the U.S. itself also teeters.

Here's a good obituary, -OBIT: Fritz Kraemer: Brilliant geopolitical strategist who launched Henry Kissinger's rise to power (Godfrey Hodgson, November 12, 2003, The Guardian)

One hot Louisiana day in the summer of 1944, General Alexander Bolling, commanding officer of the US 84th infantry division, was inspecting a training exercise when he spotted a small man, wearing a monocle, perched on a platform, shouting military commands in impeccable upper-class German. "What are you doing, soldier?" asked the general. "Making German battle noises, sir," said Private Fritz Kraemer. The general, impressed by this unusual recruit, attached him to his headquarters.

Not long afterwards, Kraemer - still sporting his monocle and walking stick - approached a company of the 84th, resting after a 10-mile hike. "Who's in command here?" he barked. A lieutenant colonel admitted that he was. "Sir," said Kraemer, "I've been sent by the general, and I'm going to speak to your company about why we are in this war."

One of the soldiers who heard his eloquent denunciation of the Nazis that day was a certain Private Henry Kissinger, then a recent US immigrant and accountancy student. For the first - and only time - in his life, Kissinger was moved to send a speaker a note, saying how good Kraemer's talk had been. It was the beginning of a friendship that was to change both their lives.

Kraemer, who has died aged 95 of kidney failure in Washington DC, became Kissinger's mentor, interesting him in political philosophy and history. He himself went on to have a 27-year-long career as a Pentagon adviser on geopolitics and strategy; he counselled a succession of US army chiefs of staff and defence secretaries, and served on the White House national security staff under 10 presidents. As recently as last year, he was photographed, still with his trademark, silver-topped stick, jokingly saying "No provocative weakness, please!" to Donald Rumsfeld.

It was almost certainly "provocative weakness" that emboldened (deluded) al Qaeda into believing that 9-11 would serve their purposes.

MORE:
-OBIT: Fritz Kraemer, 95, Tutor to U.S. Generals and Kissinger, Dies (MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN, November 19, 2003, NY Times)
-OBIT: Fritz Kraemer (Daily Telegraph, 10/11/2003)
-LETTER: KISSINGER'S MENTOR: In response to The Education of Henry Kissinger (October 19, 1972) (Theodore H. Draper, NY Review of Books)

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 19, 2003 10:53 AM