Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Monday, December 23, 2024
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Saturday, December 21, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 12/21/1024
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December 21st 2024
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How we chose this week’s image
The Economist
Josie Delap
Christmas editor
Choosing the cover of the end-of-year double issue can feel odd. No matter how tumultuous the news (and events in Syria and Georgia are making sure that the holiday season brings little in the way of calm), it swerves away from it. Instead inspiration comes from myriad special features, which this year include everything from efforts to cancel Pushkin in Odessa, to the glories of the Triassic period, to the afterlife of aeroplanes.
It has become customary for our brilliant designers to come up with two types of cover. The first takes inspiration from just one story to create a single image that nods to the season in some way. The other incorporates all the stories for readers to discover (Christmas Easter eggs, if you like). Last year’s cover was an unapologetically festive version of the second variety: a Christmas tree in suitably seasonal green and red.
This year was no different. Our first idea drew on a piece about Paul Salopek, an American writer who is on a 38,000km journey across the planet, retracing the path of the first human migration—on foot. Our correspondent walked with Mr Salopek through the heat of a Japanese summer.
That didn’t seem quite the right weather for a cover at this time of year so the sketch showed him walking through the snow. In the first iteration he is rather small, dwarfed by the sheer length of his journey but also oddly overshadowed by a telephone pole.
The second idea drew on a story about the world’s greatest fish market, Toyosu, in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. Fish is more Christmassy than you might think. Many countries incorporate fish into their festive meals (herring in Denmark, shrimp on the BBQ in Australia, the feast of the seven fishes in Italy). And a fish market is an icy place, which also seemed to suit the season.
The illustrator, Xinmei Liu, took inspiration from a Japanese woodblock print, “Fish Market at Zakoba”, from the series, “Famous Views of Naniwa”, by Utagawa Hiroshige, which dates back to around 1834. It felt appropriate because apart from the fish market and Mr Salopek’s walk through Japan, we have two other stories about Japan in the issue this year: one about the rigours of Japanese child-rearing, and another about Godzilla, a classic of the Japanese film industry.
Ms Liu used the image as a starting point for a cover showing a fish market that featured references to all the stories in the issue. Her first version works well. A good Samaritan helps someone who has slipped over. An axolotl lurks in a tank (mournfully, I assume, given their status as a delicacy in Japan). A couple canoodle between crustaceans, a nod to the story about how little anyone actually knows about sex. A cat and a dog get under everyone’s feet, representing the tale of America’s abandoned pets and the network of volunteers rescuing them.
It’s all in black and white so it’s hard to imagine the mood of the final design. The colours of the original artwork are muted blues and browns. The blues would work but replicating those tones wholesale wouldn’t bring the cheer we want from a holiday cover. The Harvard pennant looks odd in a tank of water. We’re missing Pushkin, who made a late appearance in the issue in a piece about cancel culture in Ukraine. And there isn’t enough space to advertise the stories in the issue—crucial information to tempt readers.
In the redrafted first option, Mr Salopek looms much larger and the pole has gone. A heavily laden donkey has appeared, a nice allusion to the extent of his journey and the time of year. The balance of the image works far better and overall it is charming. But it might not hold readers’ interest for two weeks.
The reworked fish market is delightful. The colours are warm and cheerful. The fairy lights glow and now include a planetary bulb alluding to a story charting the entire contents of the universe. A new string of lights has been wound around the coppiced bonsai tree. Pushkin has joined the axolotl in the fish tank and the Harvard flag is pinned in a more fitting spot. The references to each story are distinct and cryptic enough to keep you poring over it, if not for a fortnight, then at least for the duration of a glass of mulled wine.
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View large image (“Christmas double issue”)
Christmas specials
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A journalist retraces humanity’s journey out of Africa—on foot
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How do you fit everything in the universe on a chart?
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How better data could lead to better sex
→ A day in the life of Toyosu, the world’s greatest fish market
Friday, December 20, 2024
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Monday, December 16, 2024
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Saturday, December 14, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 12-14-2024
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December 14th 2024
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How we chose this week’s image
The Economist
Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
Our worldwide cover this week was devoted to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad.
A lot of commentary has warned that post-Assad Syria is doomed to descend into religious tyranny or civil war. Many fear that the country will once again export refugees, jihadists and instability.
That is indeed a danger. However, we wanted a cover which, without seeming naive, argued that the fall of the Assads is neither so bleak nor so hopeless.
We thought that such a momentous event would probably demand a news photograph. One choice was whether to feature Bashar al-Assad, the Moscow-based ex-tyrant, or the victorious rebels who deposed him. One looked back at a watershed, the other forward at what it might bring.
Here are some shots that focus on Mr Assad. The ripped poster is powerful, but it has been widely published. The decapitated statue is much fresher—and indeed we ended up using it in our briefing section. However, it features Bashar’s father, Hafez, and it is wrong for the cover. It looks as if the rebellion was taking place in Tallinn or Riga in 1989, rather than in Damascus today.
We also looked for pictures of the rebels. This lot are brandishing their own version of the Syrian flag—with green instead of red at the top and three red stars instead of two green ones. The trouble is that this could have been almost any group with a grievance.
The other picture is too tasteful for a story packed with danger and human tragedy. As the regime collapsed Syrians impoverished under Mr Assad’s rule gawped at his abandoned palaces. Broken people emerged blinking from his prisons; some could no longer remember their own names.
And Syria’s future could very well descend into sectarian strife. In a country crammed with weapons, people have many reasons to seek vengeance. Syria’s new most powerful factions are hardly men of peace—their origins lie in al-Qaeda and Islamic state. Within a day of the regime’s collapse foreign powers were escalating their fighting in Syria so as to advance their own interests.
We were leaning towards focusing on Mr Assad, but we wanted to assess more news pictures to be sure.
This jihadist captures the mix of jubilation and menace that Mr Assad’s ousting inspires. Jubilation, because his benighted regime left behind nothing except ruin, corruption and misery. Menace, because the leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, will struggle to unite Syria. Even if it does, HTS’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, may end up resembling the dictator he has just toppled.
We also looked at another disturbing photograph. At first you register a celebration, as Syrians cheer their liberation after 53 years under the Assads’ yoke. But then you look at the young boy sitting astride the barrel of a tank and you realise that in his short life he has known nothing but war. That is not the only reason the country will be hard to put back together: Syria is a mosaic of peoples and faiths carved out of the Ottoman empire. They have never lived side by side in a stable democracy.
The daunting task of attempting to forge a new political settlement out of a fractured country could well fall to Mr Sharaa. This picture speaks to his violent inheritance.
As ruler of Idlib, a rebel province in the north, Mr Sharaa ran a competent government that nodded at religious pluralism and oversaw a successful economy. However, although he has distanced himself from more radical groups and courted the West, Mr Sharaa has become increasingly autocratic, and had taken to purging rivals and imprisoning opponents.
If he tries to run Syria permanently as a giant Idlib—a Sunni fief dominated by HTS—he will fail. Syria will remain divided between feuding warlords, many of them mini-dictators in their own right.
The shot-up face of Mr Assad was hard to recognise. This picture of contempt was much stronger. A boot is less extreme than a bullet, but seeing it is what counts.
We debated whether to use the photograph in colour or black and white. Some argued that colour was more newsy; others thought the fall of the house of Assad was a piece of history and that black and white would have more weight.
We went with weight. Much will go wrong in a traumatised place like Syria. The effort to rebuild the country is bound to entail a struggle for influence. But it was time to pause for a moment and share Syrians’ joy at bringing down a tyrant.
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Backing stories
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How the new Syria might succeed or fail (Leader)
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Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future (Briefing)
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The Assad regime’s fall voids many of the Middle East’s old certainties (Briefing)
→ Inside Bashar al-Assad’s dungeons (Middle East & Africa)
Thursday, December 12, 2024
My THoughts On The Killing Of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson
I love to get feedback from readers. Our reader Wayne White has been following my op-eds about the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Yesterday he asked me a smile and profound question as follows:
"Jack, how do you personally feel about this killing?"
I have a simple answer. It breaks my heart. This whole incident is a great tragedy for Mr. Thompson's family, his fellow workers at United Healthcare, and his close friends. Imagine what he could have accomplished had he even had 20 years more of life. He could have seen his sons grow up and start their lives. He could have had great achievements in the corporate world. He could have built beautiful memories with his treasured friends.
Luigi Mangione is just 26 years old. Imagine all the good things he could have done with the decades ahead of him. I can imagine being part of a SpaceX engineering team that designs and builds a nuclear rocket engine capable of taking humans to Mars in 35-45 days as opposed to the 180 days now required with chemical rockets. He could have married and brought some wonderful children into the world. He could have gone on to greater and greater achievement. As the saying goes: "The world was his oyster."
What we have building here is a perfect storm for an awful disaster. The Mangione family has fabulous wealth. They will hire the best criminal lawyers in the U.S. to defend their son. The legal team is already mounting a defense against the extradition request request from Pennsylvania.
Eventually, the extradition request will be approved. Luigi will be transported by U.S. Marshals to New York City. What happens next will be a show trial similar to the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995 or the Donald Trump hush money trial.
Luigi's high-powered legal team will fight tooth and nail for their client. The Manhattan District Attorney's office will have to spend a fortune on the trial and deploy their best prosecutors to the case. Other important cases will get scant attention. Like me, these prosecutors will be sure that Luigi did not act alone in this case. Despite his protestations that he acted alone, they will be sure that he had inside help from someone inside United Health Care.
Luigi's legal team will figure out that the best chance of saving their client from decades in prison is to mount an insanity defense. Such defenses have worked in high profile cases including the man who attempted to assassinate President Reagan in 1982.
The Thompson and Mangione families will go through an ordeal lasting many months. They will be under the constant glare of major media coverage and all sorts of questions and conspiracy theories. Regardless of how the case ends, a lot of people will be angry and unhappy.
This whole scenario raises a very troubling concern. Other unbalanced people will come to believe that it is alright "to take the law into their own hands." Many more assassinations will follow. Every business leader will have to surround themselves with security personnel.
I have devoted 53 years of my life to studying Russian history in the 20th and 21st centuries and special attention paid to Josef Stalin and Vladimir Putin. Assassinations of opponents and those considered problematical are frequent and considered "business as usual." The U.S. could be heading in this direction.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Syria-When Hope Came To Town
When Hope Came to Town
Syria
World leaders assumed Syrian President Bashar Assad enjoyed the upper hand in the bloody civil war that erupted in 2011, and continued in fits and starts until settling into a deep freeze.
After all, with Russian and Iranian help, the Syrian regime seemed to control most of the country.
But as the world saw over the weekend, it was all an illusion, an image projected and then shattered as the curtain was pulled back.
And that feat only took 11 days.
On Nov. 27, rebel fighters led by former al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began their offensive to defeat Assad’s troops, capturing Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city, then Hama, and then Homs. They faced half-hearted Russian airstrikes and some Iranian proxies – Hezbollah sent fighters no longer battling Israel. But it wasn’t enough.
HTS entered the capital Damascus facing little resistance over the weekend as government soldiers melted away along with Assad’s allies. The intransigent, brutal leader was, in a last humiliation, forced to flee to Russia.
And just like that, everything changed.
Syrians poured into the streets of Syria crying and exclaiming, “Freedom,” while hoping for a new day. After all they had gone through for the past six decades of Assad family rule and its legacy of brutality and destruction, many still couldn’t process what happened, literally overnight.
“I feel as if I am in a dream,” Fatimeh, from the opposition bastion of Idlib, told the Guardian as she made her way to Damascus. “I haven’t slept and I can’t absorb what’s happened.”
Like Fatimeh, Syrians in Lebanon and elsewhere began crossing the border to return home after years in camps and diaspora communities – about 7 million fled Syria after 2011. Other forced transplants, in Kuala Lumpur, Berlin, Cairo, and elsewhere around the globe, poured out into the streets in joyous celebrations.
In Damascus, after prison doors were shot open, videos showed freed prisoners, exhausted and stunned, stagger out into the night, unsure of what happened or what to do now. At the same time, family members began looking for their lost loved ones, the 100,000 people forcibly disappeared, some jailed for years or even decades, accused of crossing the regime.
Mayasa Marie, 40, said she was looking for her husband, Mohammed, arrested for his anti-government activism 12 years ago. “My son and his uncle went to Sednaya (prison) immediately … but still they didn’t find anything,” she told the Washington Post. “We are finally free but I need my husband with us again.”
Meanwhile, Iranian officials said that Assad was equally “stunned” at how his regime melted away. He shouldn’t have been, defense analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News, because “the army (was) in a complete state of collapse.”
However, the signs of the regime’s deterioration were there, wrote World Politics Review. The country was barely holding on.
Since 2011, more than 7 million Syrians were forced to flee their homes but remained in Syria, eking out an existence in cities and villages that have been reduced to rubble, even as the violence continued – from rebel groups, militants, and the regime.
The country’s economy has plummeted since the revolution, crippled by sanctions and war, but it worsened over the past four years, Foreign Policy wrote. Inflation has been catastrophic for families while basic necessities often became scarce. More than 90 percent of Syrians now live in poverty. Assad, his family, and members of his regime, however, have been earning an estimated $2.4 billion annually from selling a synthetic stimulant, fenethylline, under the name captagon.
And they bragged about their lavish lifestyles on social media.
Meanwhile, as many Syrians rejoiced, world leaders looked on dazed, wondering what’s to come. The US struck at Islamic State targets in Syria over the weekend, worried that the militant group might take advantage of the power vacuum to try to take over large swathes of the country again, as it started to do in 2014. Israel, worried about its security, ordered the military to seize the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.
In the Middle East, officials from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates who had mended fences with Assad wondered, “What now?” as they met on Sunday to discuss the ramifications of Assad’s fall. That’s because the rebels’ success added “a new layer of unpredictability” to the civil war, the New York Times wrote.
Much of that has to do with the HTS’s past connections to al Qaeda, which have raised concerns about the group’s plans for the country’s future, France 24 said. HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani is a former member of the Islamic State in Iraq, founded the ruthless Nusra Front rebel force in 2012, and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda in 2013 before breaking with the terrorist organization in 2016.
The US has designated the group as terrorists. Now, many wonder if they will create yet another version of Islamic State in the country.
Golani, however, has promised elections and freedom and inclusivity for all Syrians – Alawite, Sunni, Shiite, and Christian. For now, many Syrians want to believe him.
Others are not so sure.
“What kind of fresh start will (Syrians) get,” the Economist wondered. “Much depends on whether Syria’s multi-pronged opposition, suddenly bereft of its common enemy, will band together to form a pluralist, federal civilian government over all of Syria, or descend into infighting that plunges the country into a new civil war.”
After all, the magazine added, “Things in Syria have a habit of getting complicated.”
Still, the HTS is already trying to create order – instituting a curfew, beseeching police to remain in their posts, and begging Syrians to refrain from vigilante retribution. But Syria’s new victors face obstacles far stronger than Assad’s base: The country has over the years been partitioned into fiefdoms that include the Turkish-backed Sunni HTS rebels in the northwest, Kurds in the north and east, Jordanian-backed rebels in the south, and the Alawites in the west, all of whom have their own forces and interests.
Meanwhile, the Iranians and Russians, the big losers in this equation, are shut out for now. Russia may lose its only naval base on the Mediterranean that had allowed it a powerful hand in the region, noted Deutsche Welle.
Iran, meanwhile, lost its hub to transfer aid to its proxies, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and with that much of its influence in the region. Analysts now wonder if it will regroup and rebuild.
It’s clear there is much to unpack from the dazzling events of the weekend and many questions that only time will answer, commentators say. But for a few days after this momentous change, “one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations,” as Reuters called it, it’s hope that prevails on the streets of Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo and elsewhere in the country and among Syrians around the world.
“We are exhausted, but happy,” one resident of the northern town of Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, told El PaÃs as drivers honked and crowds cheered Assad’s departure. “We are very happy, we are free.”
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Monday, December 9, 2024
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Someone With Big Money On The Line Or Facing 12 Years In Prison Hired The Hitman Who Killed Brian Thompson
As of the writing of this op-ed, the man who assassinated Brian Thompson has not been officially identified. He is still at large. The manhunt for him is of the intensity that one would find if a U.S. District Court judge had been assassinated, for example. No expense is being spared to find out who he is and where he is.
I have some preliminary conclusions that I would like to share with you. This young man is not a U.S., Canadian, citizen or permanent resident. His fingerprints, DNA, and facial recognition would have tied to somebody. We know he is a Caucasian of slender build and not very tall. He could have come from many different countries around the world. Law enforcement is madly checking Interpol and other databases around the world including Israel's and I suspect China's.
Firearms and criminal investigation experts have studied the videos of the assassination in detail. The man was not a professional killer with training from some military or law enforcement agency. His shooting style was odd and not conventional. A professional would have stood differently and gone right for a headshot. He made a lot of mistakes that left all sorts of clues to his identity.
United Health Care has a sad statistic. It rejects 33% of claims submitted. (In comparison Kaiser where Elena and I have medical coverage rejects 7% of the care applications.) Many people suspect that a relative of his was denied care and died. He was out to get revenge. I reject this supposition. Despite some of the amateur actions of the killer, I can tell you that a large sum of money was invested to get him into position to shoot Brian Thompson. Someone with a large amount of money at stake wanted him killed. I would urge the law enforcement agencies to look carefully at his estranged wife and senior executives at United Health Care. If Brian died, most likely the estranged wife and two of her sons would have received an estate valued in the range of more than $100 million. She would have received far less money in a divorce action. Law enforcement should look carefully to see if she has a new romantic interest who would encourage such an action.
There was a major criminal investigation underway against senior executives of United Healthcare. It is alleged that they used insider information illegally to sell $105 million in United Healthcare stock. One found guilty of insider trading at this level could expect to receive a prison sentence in the range of 12 years. Someone or a group of people may have decided that Brian would have agreed to testify against them. He had to be silenced. It is very odd to me that his security person was not made available to escort him from one hotel to another where he was shot dead.
I think that the assassin fled the US on some airline flight. He is now sitting in a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S.
Law enforcement professionals around the world will tell you that it is not easy to hire "a hit man or woman." These people do not advertise. Signal intelligence agencies like The National Security Agency, and civilian and military intelligence agencies listened in on voice calls, emails, and text messages, to detect such communications. Iranians repeatedly get assassination plots thwarted by vigilance on the part of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Whoever put this assassination together was a real professional who outsmarted all these agencies.
One day a best-selling book and blockbuster movie will be made about this event.
The Economist Magazine Cover For 12-7-2024
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December 7th 2024
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
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We had two covers this week. In Europe we examined the wreckage of French politics amid a government collapse. In America and Asia we reported on a boom in gambling.
As the week drew on, it became increasingly clear that Michel Barnier would become the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. Sure enough, on Wednesday evening, his government was sacked by the parliament. With no party or alliance close to a majority in the National Assembly, France now faces a series of short-lived minority governments that will struggle to accomplish anything.
Amid the political implosion, 50 national leaders were due to assemble in Paris to witness France at its best. They would be celebrating the reopening of Notre Dame, Paris’s 12th-century Gothic cathedral, gutted by fire five years ago but now restored with astonishing speed and loving skill.
Our first thoughts were to bring these contrasting events together. We started with a cathedral rising from the rubble, but that was too triumphant for a country that is mired in crisis.
We tried France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, as a grimacing gargoyle. It was his terrible miscalculation to call a snap election six months ago that led to this impasse—which, the constitution says, cannot be broken by another poll until July at the earliest.
However, the drama goes broader than Mr Macron, and we thought that the allusion to Notre Dame’s roof-top statuary might be obscure.
This coq inattentif is an alternative. France’s underlying problem is that most voters are unwilling to face economic reality. This year the budget deficit is forecast to exceed 6% of GDP. Mr Barnier, at Mr Macron’s behest, was trying to fix that by bringing down the deficit by a percentage point or so. Yet even that was too much for the hard-right National Rally party and the left-wing alliance. They would rather chase power by fanning popular discontent.
This Metro sign was pithier. For the final cover, our artist did an excellent job of setting it in a Haussmannesque boulevard.
It is hard to see how France can resolve its problems. Until voters rediscover the merits of frugality, they will go on voting for the fantasies peddled by the extremes. President after president has failed to get the budget under control. An ageing population and growing threats to national security mean that the fiscal burden will grow. The country’s obstructive political theatrics are accelerating the drift to the extremes.
As our editorial observed, in one way or another, much of Europe is caught in the same wretched trap.
The surge in gambling in America is quite astonishing. This year Americans are on track to wager nearly $150bn on sports, having bet a paltry $7bn in 2018. Another $80bn is being bet in online casinos; in the few weeks when election gambling was legal before the presidential vote, hundreds of millions of dollars were placed on the outcome. Our cover was about what to make of it all.
In part America’s boom reflects the fact that it is catching up with the rest of the world. For decades Uncle Sam confined gambling to casinos, which themselves were restricted to Las Vegas, tribal reservations or riverboats.
This design illustrates the other reason for the boom, which is technology. The ability to bet using your smartphone, and from the stadium or the comfort of your own sofa, has boosted bookmakers and online casinos everywhere.
The design is clever, but the smartphone at the bottom of the pack is hard to make out—and besides, these hands seem to belong to a prestidigitator rather than a punter.
In this cover the bettor and the smartphone are much clearer.
Many people see gambling as a vice that ensnares the poor. For them, taking a punt is an indicator of economic immiseration, and the loosening of prohibitions is a mistake that must be corrected as soon as possible.
For us, freedom is not only measured by speech and political liberty, but also by the ability to spend your money as you wish. It is true that, for some, gambling is a ruinous addiction and that America has a habit of rushing into liberalisation before it has put enough guardrails in place. However, the lesson from other countries is not to ban gambling altogether, but to regulate it. That is how America treats other vices, like alcohol, which are responsible for far more catastrophic harm.
We were keen to get across the idea that the betting boom is partly about sports. Sports-betting is a far cry from sitting at a machine, alone, feeding quarters into a slot. Surveys show that 40% of Americans say they have taken part in what is often a communal activity.
The soccer players are not quite right, though. Although this boom is global, it is at its most exuberant in America. So we switched from soccer to American football and doubled the dice. Place your bets!
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Backing stories
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France steps into deep trouble (Leader)
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Emmanuel Macron loses another prime minister (Europe)
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America’s gambling boom should be celebrated, not feared (Leader)
→ Gambling is growing like gangbusters in America (Briefing)
Friday, December 6, 2024
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
American Civil War II's Closer Than You Think
A couple of years ago, the great hedge fund manager Ray Dalio predicted a 30% chance of a civil war here in the U.S. Ray has now raised that probability to 40%. The movie "Civil War" about a second U.S. civil war became a big hit.
This morning, I want to do a simulation of how such an event could take place. I conclude that actual deaths would be much lower than in American Civil War I. Property damage would be much lower than in 1861-1865. The economic consequences for the US and the rest of the world would be devastating beyond belief. It all centers around the U.S. national debt and the status of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. Right now, we in the U.S. figuratively have a credit card without limit with low interest rates to service the massive $35 trillion debt. A default on that debt could come about if a civil war breaks out.
Here is how I see it falling apart. It starts with the massive program to round up between 11 million and 15 million illegal immigrants here in the U.S. When President Trump comes to power, he is going to direct massive resources to this undertaking. He will deputize law enforcement agencies in the states. He will call up national guards in all states. He will mobilize the U.S. military. He will get intense resistance here because US military personnel are prohibited by law from operating against US citizens in the US. The military will be allowed to put guards on the border, provide logistical support, provide temporary housing for illegal aliens rounded up, give medical care to illegal immigrants detained, and provide transport planes to send aliens back to their country of origin.
The Red States will eagerly respond to Trump's call for full mobilization, while Many Blue States will strongly resist this call. Let us focus on California, which has the fourth or fifth-largest economy in the world and could resist this command for a full mobilization. Trump would respond with threats of criminal prosecution under Title 8 of the US code and cut any money going to California. Governor Newsom could mobilize the California National Guard, California Highway Patrol, and local law enforcement agencies to resist this order.
Trump could not send battalions of US Marines, for example, to force compliance with his orders in California. He would assemble Red State National Guard units from Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, etc. to come to the California border.
A confrontation would follow. Miscalculations happen when large groups of heavily armed people face each other. Firefights could break out. Then the civil war starts. Financial markets would panic and crash. It could reach a point where California secedes from the US and declares itself "The Republic of California." Most likely Oregon and Washington would follow them. Some other Blue States could also "come to the party."
With these states away from the United States, the tax base would erode. There could be a default on the national debt. The US dollar could go from being the reserve currency of the world to a currency like the Argentine peso or the Russian Ruble.
If you are living in one of the Blue States no longer part of the US, you would suffer grievous economic consequences. Any payments you were receiving for Social Security, disability, health care, military retirement, etc. are gone. Your 401(K) would crash as the dollar crashed. This new country would have to be the most innovative and start using cryptocurrency. Let your imagination run wild here!
The conclusion is that a civil war must be avoided at all costs.
Monday, December 2, 2024
Sunday, December 1, 2024
Saturday, November 30, 2024
Te Economist Magazine Cover Fir 11-30-2024
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November 30th 2024
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
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Our two covers this week feature an interview with the free-market maverick remaking Argentina, and an analysis of how Ukraine and its allies should approach talks with Russia.
Javier Milei relishes his status as the bad boy of anarcho-capitalism (though you have to wonder if it has many good boys). Speaking to our Latin America correspondent, Kinley Salmon, Argentina’s president said that he considers “the state to be a violent criminal organisation that lives from a coercive source of income called taxes, which are a remnant of slavery”.
He campaigned wielding a chainsaw, but his economic programme is serious and one of the most radical doses of free-market medicine since Thatcherism. What is more, a year after he was elected, it seems to be working.
Mr Milei is enjoying his best moment since taking office. Brandishing that chainsaw, he has lopped off a third of public spending in real terms, halved the number of ministries and cut through the red tape. Inflation spiked at 25% a month after he devalued the artificially and unsustainably strong peso. It is now under 3% per month. The JPMorgan country-risk index, an influential measure of the risk of default, has fallen from around 2,000 when he became president in December 2023 to about 750 now, its lowest in five years.
The chainsaw is a bit cartoonish, however. Although Mr Milei is a larger-than-life character, running an exceptional country that has suffered more than most from a dysfunctional and predatory state, he has lessons for the world.
Here he is belting out his message. Mr Milei is often lumped in with populist politicians such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orban. In fact he comes from a different tradition. A true believer in open markets and individual liberty, he has a quasi-religious zeal for economic freedom.
We favoured an image that does less to distract from our use of one of the interview’s many arresting quotes as the title. The left detests Mr Milei and the Trumpian right embraces him, but in fact he is at odds with both. He has shown that the continual expansion of the state is not inevitable. And he is a rebuke to opportunistic populism, of the sort practised by Mr Trump. He believes in free trade and free markets, not protectionism; fiscal discipline, not reckless borrowing; and, instead of spinning popular fantasies, brutal public truth-telling.
Much could go wrong in Mr Milei’s Argentina. Poverty is growing, the peso is overvalued and the president is a mercurial and explosive character. But, just now, Mileinarianism is worth watching.
Donald Trump has made clear that, as president, he will be impatient for the shooting to stop in Ukraine. At the same time, Russia’s grinding advance has exposed weaknesses in manpower and morale that could eventually lead to a collapse in Ukraine’s lines. In a conflict that once looked like a stalemate, peace talks beckon—and the common worry is that Mr Trump will use them to impose a disastrous deal on Ukraine.
Our first ideas sought to convey the arrival of diplomacy. In one, the missile is morphing into a fountain pen. In the other, two presidents are balanced on a shell.
However, a deal would not be the end of the war. Ukraine and its allies should not expect Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to feel bound by its terms. He will surely hope that post-war Ukraine, consumed by infighting and recriminations against the West, will fall into his lap. If it does not, he could well conjure up a pretext to seize more territory by force.
The hawk of peace gets this message across, but it feels remote. The tank at a crossroads suggests a moment of decision is afoot, but it points to the battlefield rather than negotiations.
Capitulation to Mr Putin is not inevitable, nor even the likeliest outcome. It would be a public defeat for America and it would spill over into Asia, where the next administration is focusing. And Mr Trump would surely want to avoid the humiliation of being known as the man who lost Ukraine by being out-negotiated by Mr Putin. It is in his own narrow interest to forge a deal that keeps Ukraine safe for at least the four years of his term. In that time Ukraine can accomplish a lot.
To thrive, Ukraine will require political and economic stability, both of which will depend on being safe from Russian aggression. That is why the talks will turn on how to devise a credible and durable framework for Ukrainian security.
Here is the negotiating table. It is cold and wintry. Ukraine, sitting across from Russia, would be alarmingly exposed.
A ceasefire would present two competing visions of Ukraine’s future. Mr Putin’s calculation is that he will win from a deal because Ukraine will rot, Russia will re-arm and the West will lose interest. But imagine that, with Western backing, Ukraine used the lull to rebuild its economy, refresh its politics and deter Russia from aggression. The task is to ensure that this vision prevails over its grim alternative.
Cover image
•
View large image (“What Javier Milei can teach Donald Trump”)
•
View large image (“The least bad deal for Ukraine”)
Backing stories
→
Javier Milei: “My contempt for the state is infinite” (Leader)
→
Javier Milei, free-market revolutionary, speaks to The Economist (The Americas)
→
How to make a success of peace talks with Vladimir Putin (Leader)
→ How will Donald Trump handle the war in Ukraine? (Briefing)
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Friday, November 29, 2024
Ireland Gets $14 Billion Windfall
Tax and Spend
Ireland
Ireland received a windfall of around $14 billion recently when a decade of litigation ended and the European Court of Justice found that Apple owed the country that much in back taxes and interest. “Ireland granted Apple unlawful aid which Ireland is required to recover,” the court wrote, according to the BBC.
The decision might bring an end to a remarkable era in Irish history.
As World Politics Review explained, American tech giants like Dell, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Yahoo! and other international companies have flocked to Ireland since the country cut its corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent in the 1990s, resulting in massive investments and employing more than 400,000 people. This shift altered Ireland forever, transforming it into a fully developed country and vaulting the so-called Celtic Tiger into the global economy.
However, the European Union, of which Ireland is a member, was long angered by what it saw as unfair competition and a flouting of the rules.
Still, while Apple complained that the court was forcing Ireland to change the rules, EU anti-trust chief Margrethe Vestager welcomed the judgment. “Today is a huge win for European citizens and tax justice,” Vestager said.
Many Irish citizens were “flabbergasted” when the case revealed that their leaders had opposed taking the money, added Social Europe. The Eur 14 billion fine amounts to 16 percent of last year’s total tax revenue of Eur 88 billion. The company had benefited for over two decades, the commission said, from two illegal Irish decisions that had artificially reduced its tax charge to as low as 0.005 percent.
The decision will have more implications Experts at Brussels think tank Bruegal, for instance, feared the ruling might ironically solidify low-tax countries’ status as a tax haven because, while it punished the company for not paying sufficient taxes, it vindicated Apple’s aggressive tax strategy of profit-shifting.
In the meantime, the Irish are talking about what they want to do with the money. The Dublin metro could receive billions of euros to improve its rail network or the government could build seven children’s hospitals, or 40,000 very-much needed homes with the cash, wrote the Irish Sun.
An upcoming election on Nov. 29 will give them a chance to see whose plans are most popular.
Prime Minister Simon Harris called elections a year early in a bid to win an unprecedented fourth successive term in office for his center-right Fine Gael political party, the Guardian reported. Fine Gael, which is expected to garner 24 percent of the vote, is now in a coalition with another mainstream party, Fianna Fáil, which is polling at 21 percent. Opposition party Sinn Féin is expected to come in third with 18 percent.
Fine Gael candidates have called for spending more than $10 billion on new homes, the Irish Times reported. The party already had a plan to build more than 300,000 homes for more than $40 billion through 2030.
Sometimes, tax-and-spend works just fine, according to the polls. “We have the Shinners (Sinn Féin) on the back foot for a change and we need to keep them there,” a Fianna Fáil lawmaker told Politico.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Spending On Veteran's Programs Have Blown Out Of Control. Cuts Will Follow with Violent Protests Coming
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spending-veterans-has-blown-out-controlscuts-protests-waldbewohner-pcauc/
A Sabre Tooth Tiger Cub Is Discovered In Siberia
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Discoveries
Purrrrmafrosted Prize
Saber-tooth cats are among the most renowned of prehistoric predators, often depicted with massive fangs and muscular builds.
Now, the new discovery of a mummified saber-toothed kitten in Siberia has provided an exceptional first look at what the ancient predator truly looked like.
The discovery, detailed in a recent study in Scientific Reports, marks the first time modern humans have seen a saber-tooth cat kitten, belonging to the species Homotheridum latidens, which lived in Eurasia until they went extinct at the end of the ice age around 10,000 years ago.
“It’s a fantastic feeling to see with your own eyes the life appearance of a long-extinct animal,” paleontologist Alexey Lopatin, lead author of the study, told CNN. “Especially when it comes to such an interesting predator as the saber-toothed cat.”
The kitten, who is estimated to have died at three weeks, was originally found in 2020, when researchers were hunting mammoth tusks in Eastern Siberia and stumbled across fur sticking out of the ground, wrote Live Science.
Afterward, researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow examined the 37,000-year-old mummy, which was covered in mummified flesh and fur, with the face, forelimbs, and torso all nearly intact. The kitten’s fur was dark brown and very thick, measuring about 0.8 to 1.2 inches long. The mummy still had its whiskers.
Using CT scans to get a deeper look at the bones, Lopatin and the team identified the permafrosted cub as a Homotherium, the last species of saber-toothed cats, a distant relative of modern big cats such as tigers. The species is known for its long canines measuring up to eight inches long.
Paleontologist Jack Tseng, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was “at a loss for words” at the discovery and the wealth of knowledge it can provide scientists. “It’s rare to find bones of this lineage in the first place, let alone soft tissue associated with it,” Tseng told CNN. “I don’t know if other paleontologists’ minds are as blown as mine, but it’s like reality changes now that we’ve seen this.”
Unlike modern cubs, the kitten exhibited longer forelimbs, a larger neck, smaller ears, and a darker coat. The upper lip was also designed to cover its long canines that would grow, more than twice the size of those of modern lion’s cubs, according to Lopatin. The larger size of the cub’s paw, more like a modern bear, seems to suggest that the cats relied more on their forearms, for example, to immobilize their kills.
Not only is the cub the first example of the Homotherium genus, validating previous 3D models based on fossils, but researchers say it gives them a valuable glimpse into the evolutionary history of the feline group.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2024
A Heroic Naval Battle On Thanksgiving Day, 1943
https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/thanksgiving-1943-american-sailors-pull-miraculous-naval-victory
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Monday, November 25, 2024
Russian Cruise Ship With North Korean Generals On Board Sunk By Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcHrognoJ7s
Volcanoes And Migrants Are Causing Political Uphevals In Iceland
Blowing Up
Iceland
A volcano was predicted to erupt just as Icelanders head to the polls to elect a new parliament.
The head of “deformation measurements” at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, Benedikt Gunnar Ófeigsson, told Iceland Monitor in an interview that “magma accumulation” under the volcano system of Svartsengi on the island’s southwest Reykjanes Peninsula was growing and likely to blow at the end of the month.
He was right.
The latest of seven eruptions this year, on Nov. 24 magma sped out about 20 miles from the capital of Reykjavik. But it isn’t likely to disrupt voting when polls open on Nov. 30. Still, the eruptions have been causing headaches for the government, especially political.
After only six months in office, Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson called the elections in mid-October when the government’s coalition of Benediktsson’s center-right Independence Party and the moderate Progressive Party and Left Green Movement collapsed. The three parties failed to agree on immigration, energy, and economic policies, the Associated Press reported.
Among the policies was the government’s reaction to eruptions in the southwest that have displaced thousands and strained the economy, which was already suffering from high inflation and interest rates, Reuters added. Iceland is still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis when its banks collapsed. Ironically, volcanoes, the Northern Lights, and other magnificent sites have created a boom in the tourist industry on the island.
Still, voters appear to want change.
The new, pro-change, pro-European Union Liberal Reform Party is set to win around 20 percent of the vote, or around the same as the opposition Social Democratic Alliance political party, according to the Iceland Review. The Independence Party was expected to garner a record-low number of votes while the Left-Green Movement might lose all its seats.
Voters aren’t flocking to the Centre Party either. Former prime minister Sigmundur DavÃð Gunnlaugsson, who formerly ran the Progressive Party, founded the Centre Party in 2017 after the Panama Papers exposed his unreported offshore accounts, triggering quite a scandal. Since then, he has used his position to espouse xenophobic views about migrants and immigrants who some say have provided a vital pool of labor for the country of fewer than 400,000 people. Many of these migrants, the majority of which come from Eastern Europe, work in tourism.
“This influx has been vital for sustaining Iceland’s labor force, contributing significantly to wealth creation,” wrote ElÃas Þórsson in the ReykjavÃk Grapevine.
Until recently, Iceland had seen very little migration or population growth in prior decades. Now, however, some complain the migrants, now almost a quarter of the population, are causing a spike in crime and that the country needs tighter borders.
Even so, the big question now is Iceland’s future with the EU. The country began its application to join the bloc in 2008 under the Social Democrats, explained the New Federalist. But their successors – including multiple governments that included Benediktsson’s Independence Party – hit pause on the process in 2013. The frontrunners appear ready to restart it.
According to the magazine, on the question of joining the EU, the “yes” vote would likely win.
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Sunday, November 24, 2024
Avoiding Drowning In A Flooded Car
There is sad news of people in Sonoma County, California, drowning in their autos during yesterday's deluge of water. I pointed out an important safety fact to Elena. I will now share it with you. People drive down the road, and suddenly, their cars are submerged and underwater. The pressure of water makes opening the door and egress from the car impossible. In the past car windows were rolled up and down with manual door handles. Now all cars have electric windows that short out when exposed to large quantities of water. In desperation, the trapped person will attempt to break the window. Unfortunately, the window glass is too strong.
One must be thinking fast to survive. The first thing to do is roll down the passenger side window very fast. You can then egress from the car through the open window. You will float to the surface and have a good chance of living
Saturday, November 23, 2024
The Economist Magazine Cover For 11-24-2024
The Economist
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November 23rd 2024
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Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief
In most of our editions, the cover featured Elon Musk. Having reinvented carmaking and space travel, he now wants to reinvent government, too. In his spare time.
In Britain, on the eve of a crucial vote in Parliament, we returned to write about what for us is a matter of principle: the right to die.
Despite America’s economic prowess, much of Main Street, Wall Street and Silicon Valley is frustrated by the government’s profligacy and incompetence. Donald Trump has received a mandate to sort it out and he has turned to America’s richest man. That puts Mr Musk at the apex of power.
Our first two ideas illustrate his ascent by putting King Elon on top of the Empire State Building, arms and legs akimbo, to form the X of his social media business. Or he could be soaring into the stratosphere, as if he were one of his own Starship super heavy-lift launch vehicles. Someone suggested that we put him in an X here, too. But then we thought about the exhaust gas.
This presents Vitruvian Musk, the Renaissance man who can turn his engineering genius to rewiring the machinery of government. That is a project we support. America has a budget deficit of 6% of GDP and a debt ratio of almost 100%. The Pentagon is struggling to adapt to the age of drones and AI. Federal regulations have reached 90,000 pages, near an all-time high. Even if Mr Musk achieved only a fraction of his liberalisation, America would have much to gain.
These covers illustrate our worries: dilettantism and graft. One cover has Mr Musk playing with his toys. Reforming government requires patience and diplomacy, neither of them Mr Musk’s strong suits.
In the other he is swimming in gold—and indeed since the start of September the total value of Musk Inc has risen by 50%, to $1.4trn, as investors bet that the boss will be able to extract exceptional rents from his friendship with the president.
So combustible are Mr Musk and Mr Trump that some of us questioned whether their relationship might blow up before this cover reached the newsstands.
It has lasted to the weekend, at least. But even if it is transient, we worry that it will establish a pattern. As politics expands into trade, industrial policy and technology, the incentives for state capture in America are growing.
In Britain MPs look as if they may vote down a bill on November 29th that proposes to introduce assisted dying into England and Wales. They will be squandering a rare chance to enrich people’s fundamental liberties.
The Economist believes that people should have the right to choose the manner of their own death. So do at least two-thirds of Britons, who for decades have been in favour of assisted dying for those enduring unbearable suffering.
When we have put this subject on the cover in the past we have used images that evoke a peaceful and painless death. Here are two more that share that impulse. But they don’t capture Britain’s situation.
You might think the debate over assisted dying would be about principles. But appealing to God or the sanctity of life is no longer a winning argument. In today’s Britain such moral questions operate in a space that is governed by individual conscience, not the state. Those who can no longer defeat the bill on principle have therefore joined those who worry about the details. We wanted a cover that was more pointed.
We thought about using typography. This draft playfully combines the bill’s dimming prospects with the underlying proposal. The trouble is that you need to know the story before it makes sense.
Opponents of the bill make several arguments. Access to palliative care is too hit-and-miss to give terminally ill patients a genuine choice. The health service is too broken to take on the burden of assisted dying. Patients may be coerced into choosing to die, or fear that they will be a burden. The new law could be a slippery slope that will imperil the mentally ill or disabled.
This is more gritty: a patient is contemplating the choices ahead. It illustrates our presumption that people are best placed to decide their own fate.
In our view, the arguments of the bill’s opponents do not withstand close scrutiny. In fact, assisted dying does not happen more often in places where access to palliative care is bad. In the NHS doctors already routinely make decisions over life and death; a new law would bring that into the open. As for coercion, the idea that an evil relative might go to great lengths to kill someone who will shortly be dead makes no sense. And the slope turns out not to be slippery: in no case has an assisted-dying law restricted to the terminally ill been quietly expanded.
We liked this cover. But it also stands back too far. It belongs to a book about assisted dying, rather than an urgent appeal to wavering MPs.
Instead we chose a stark shot of someone’s empty bed. They have only slipped away into the next room.
Cover image
•
View large image (“Disruptor-in-chief”)
•
View large image (“It’s time: Why Britons should have the right to die”)
Backing stories
→
Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s disrupter-in-chief (Leader)
→
Elon Musk and Donald Trump seem besotted. Where is their bromance headed? (Briefing)
→
Why Britons should have the right to die (Leader)
→ Where British MPs should look before the vote on assisted dying (Britain)
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Friday, November 22, 2024
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Was The USSR Producing Enough Food?
Was the USSR Producing Enough Food?
queue for sausage
U.S. Intelligence Community Monitoring of Soviet Agriculture during the Cold War
Published: Nov 20, 2024
Briefing Book #
873
By James David
For more information, contact:
202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Subjects
Cold War – General
Intelligence and Espionage
Soviet-U.S. Relations
Space Policy
Regions
Russia and Former Soviet Union
Project
Cold War
Intelligence
hexagon
The HEXAGON satellite at the Lockheed facility in Sunnyvale, CA. This was the first photoreconnaissance satellite regularly used to image Soviet agricultural regions. Its color photography of these areas was useful in evaluating crop production. From the normal operating altitude, each frame captured an area roughly 310 miles x 15 miles. There were 19 successful HEXAGON missions from 1971-1984. (National Reconnaissance Office)
landsa
NASA’s LANDSAT 2 satellite, launched in 1975. The CIA used the multispectral imagery of Soviet agricultural regions acquired by LANDSAT satellites to help assess crop vigor. (NASA illustration)
016 multispectral image of Idaho farmland from one of Planet’s Dove satellites
2016 multispectral image of Idaho farmland from one of Planet’s Dove satellites. The red indicates good crop vigor. (Planet Labs)
khrushchev
Nikita Khruschev was the Soviet leader from shortly after Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 until 1964. He enacted major agricultural reforms beginning in 1954, but these were only partially successful in increasing production.
1955 U.S. delegation
Members of the first U.S. agricultural delegation to visit the USSR in 1955. These visits produced useful intelligence. (Source: Peggy Ann Brown)
harriman
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union W. Averell Harriman, who also served as Commerce secretary and led the Mutual Securty Agency under President Truman, visits a state farm in Kazakhstan in 1959. These visits by U.S. and allied officials, which began after Stalin’s death, produced valuable information. (Source: Truman Presidential Library)
Kissinger
Henry A. Kissinger, President Nixon’s National Security Advisor, initiated a review of U.S. intelligence on Soviet agriculture in 1972 after the Soviets bought large amounts of U.S. wheat greatly impacting domestic prices. (Source: henryakissinger.com)
Washington, D.C., November 20, 2024 – The failure of the U.S. intelligence community to adequately warn policymakers about the poor Soviet grain harvest of 1972—resulting in higher food prices in the U.S. and severe criticism of the Nixon administration—led the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin to rely on imagery from LANDSAT and classified photoreconnaissance satellite programs to improve its estimates of Soviet agricultural output, according to documents featured in a new National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book written by James David, retired curator of national security space programs at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.
The new collection consists of declassified intelligence reports, top-level policy memos, and other formerly secret records that illustrate and describe the evolution of U.S. efforts to monitor Soviet agricultural production during the Cold War—from the early reliance on human intelligence (HUMINT) reports to the use of sophisticated space technologies in the 1970s.
Highlights of the new Electronic Briefing Book include:
A 1946 report from the Central Intelligence Group showing the role that HUMINT played in acquiring information about Soviet agriculture at the dawn of the Cold War. (Document 1)
A 1951 CIA report describing a clandestine operation by the Directorate of Plans to secretly obtain samples of Soviet wheat and rye exports. (Document 4)
A March 1954 document that is believed to be the first of many CIA briefings for the National Security Council on the subject of Soviet agriculture. (Document 6)
A detailed trip report from Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman’s 1963 trip to the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries that shows the continuing importance of HUMINT in evaluating Communist agricultural programs (and an attached note from Director of Central Intelligence John McCone showing the Agency’s “keen interest” in the results of Freeman’s trip). (Document 14)
A September 1963 CIA report explaining why, since 1958, the Agency had been producing its own approximations of Soviet agricultural output rather than rely on inflated Soviet estimates and noting that its numbers had been “consistently far below Soviet claims.” (Document 15)
A declassified inventory of Agency reports from the period leading up to the poor 1972 Soviet grain harvest—one of several indications that the CIA was largely accurate in predicting a downturn in agricultural output. (Document 18)
Other records describe the CIA’s first steps in the 1960s toward using overhead photography to help produce crop estimates. Documents from the mid-1970s illustrate the increasingly critical role of unclassified imagery from LANDSAT, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in combination with classified imagery from other satellite programs, in the preparation of Soviet crop estimates.
David is the author of several National Security Archive briefing books on intelligence community efforts against the Soviet target and also donated his Radiological Warfare Collection to the Archive.
* * * * *
Was the USSR Producing Enough Food?
U.S. Intelligence Community Monitoring of Soviet Agriculture during the Cold War
By James David
The inability of a nation to adequately feed its population can have major domestic and foreign repercussions. It can result in loss of popular support for the government and social unrest. Food shortages can also decrease output in other sectors of the economy, reduce agricultural exports that earn foreign exchange or serve as an instrument of foreign policy, and, if severe, can affect military readiness. The use of foreign exchange holdings to acquire foodstuffs from other countries can result in decreased purchases of other needed goods from abroad. Large purchases can disturb domestic markets in the exporting nations and disrupt international markets. Accordingly, foreign agriculture was one of many important economic intelligence targets for the United States during the Cold War. As was the case for virtually all political, military, and economic intelligence targets, the highest priority country was the USSR.[1]
Overview of Soviet Agriculture
In the Soviet economy, the government, not the market, determined the allocation of resources and what goods and services would be produced. A small group of top leaders comprising the Council of Ministers established the production goals for each sector of the economy. They were assisted by central planning bodies that provided the detailed schedules and resource allocations needed to achieve them. In the agricultural sector, the Council established output goals for all crops and dairy and meat products and determined the total acreage to be used for each output. Industries supporting agriculture—such as fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, transportation, and food processing—each had their own production goals. During most of the existence of the USSR, heavy industry and defense production were the top priorities, and other sectors of the economy were left with whatever resources remained. Output goals and resource allocations were set forth in Five- or Seven-Year Plans, which were further broken down into yearly and quarterly Plans. Authorities often revised these during their lifetimes and issued numerous directives for every sector. The centralization of decision making required detailed instructions to the subordinate units on inputs into production and related issues. In turn, the subordinate units submitted lengthy statistical reports.[2]
The agricultural sector had three parts—collective farms, state farms, and privately managed plots. All land was owned by the state. Collective farms represented a pooling of the land and labor of many small peasant farms. Each worker was paid according to the amount and type of work performed, adjusted depending on several factors. The state exercised considerable control, while workers were paid fixed wages. Virtually all the production on collective and state farms went to the state. Collective and state farms accounted for over 95 percent of the sown area, with the balance in the private sector, consisting of families at collective and state farms that gardened small plots and owned livestock. Authorities limited the size of the plots and the number of livestock and, until 1958, took a share of the production. Despite its small size, the private sector contributed a major share of selected vegetables and fruits. For this reason, the state permitted the non-socialist private sector to exist.[3]
The USSR had about one-sixth of the total land area of the world, with about 11 percent under cultivation. Most of this was in the “fertile triangle” that extended from Leningrad to Odessa to Lake Baikal. Growing seasons were short because of the country’s northern location. Annual precipitation in the farming regions, as well as irrigation, was significantly less than that of most comparable areas in the United States and other major agricultural nations.[4]
Wheat was the most important grain and food crop and was cultivated on more acreage than any other crop. Rye was another grain utilized for food. Small amounts of both were also used as livestock feed, seed, and by industry. Although hay and other forage crops normally provided a large amount of livestock feed, grains grown mostly for that purpose included barley, corn, and oats. Potatoes were the second most important food crop. Sugar beets were the only domestic source of sugar. Sunflower seed accounted for most of the edible vegetable oil. Cotton and flax were the leading fiber crops.[5]
Throughout the Cold War, agriculture proved to be one of the weakest sectors of the Soviet economy. A growing population for several decades after the war, the desire to satisfy export commitments and minimize imports and the goal to provide more and better food to the citizenry required steady increases in production. The output of crops and livestock products grew over the decades, but there were often large annual fluctuations or periods of little or no growth. Domestic production accounted for most of the food, feed, and industrial crops consumed or used. Small amounts were exported to communist countries and, on occasion, other nations. Imports were initially low in the postwar period. However, with the increasing emphasis on improving the diet by providing more livestock products and the frequent inability of domestic production and reserve stocks to meet the demand for grain, imports began to increase significantly in the 1960s.[6]
Sources of and Production of Intelligence
In the United States, there was a massive reduction in the personnel and the budgets devoted to the armed forces, the State Department, and the succession of clandestine intelligence agencies that existed after World War II. As a result, almost all of the limited intelligence resources that remained initially were allocated toward higher priority political and military targets rather than economic targets. As additional personnel and funding was authorized beginning later in the decade, there was a slow but steady growth in the amount of raw economic intelligence acquired and the number of finished reports prepared and disseminated to users. National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 2 from 1948 assigned collection responsibilities for economic intelligence to “each agency in accordance with its respective needs.” The directive, however, did not task any agencies to produce specific types of economic intelligence.[7]
The State Department and, beginning in 1947, the CIA, did most of the limited collection and reporting that occurred in the immediate postwar period. The majority of reports were classified. In the CIA, the primary office for analysis and preparing finished intelligence was initially the Office of Reports and Estimates, followed, beginning in 1950, by its successor, the Office of Research and Reports. The latter soon formed the Food and Agriculture Branch, staffed with agronomists and other experts, to analyze and publish finished intelligence on foreign agriculture. It retained that name under the new Office of Economic Research in 1967 and then became the Agricultural Assessments Branch in 1981 under the new Office of Global Issues. Various offices in the State Department performed the same tasks, including the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Department of Agriculture overtly gathered data on foreign agriculture and published unclassified reports. Both the State Department and CIA established liaison with the department in the late 1940s, and these relationships grew in the following years.[8]
To improve the quantity and quality of economic intelligence, the National Security Council tasked the Director of Central Intelligence in 1950 to lead an interagency study on the subject. The report, issued early the following year, recommended that no specific allocation of responsibility be given to individual agencies but that an interagency Economic Intelligence Committee be formed to review requirements, coordinate the effort, and occasionally publish reports. The Intelligence Advisory Committee quickly established the new committee, and one of the groups formed under it was the Subcommittee on Agriculture.[9]
Director of Central Intelligence Directive 15/1, approved by the Intelligence Advisory Committee in 1954, assigned primary production responsibility for foreign “military-economic intelligence” to the Department of Defense, all Sino-Soviet Bloc non-military economic intelligence to the CIA, and all non-military economic intelligence outside the Sino-Soviet Bloc to the State Department. All economic intelligence collected by an agency was to be shared with the one having primary production responsibility. Under this and subsequent authorities, the CIA assumed primary responsibility for the Soviet agricultural target during the remainder of the Cold War.[10]
U.S. intelligence agencies sought a wide range of intelligence about Soviet food production, including: information on its organization, governing policies, and directives; figures on the number of workers employed in the sector and the acreage devoted to each crop; information on crop health, weather conditions, output estimates, final production figures, and livestock numbers; data on the manufacture and employment of farm machinery, the production and use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation systems; and information on the development of improved seeds, the storage and transportation of foodstuffs, food processing, and exports and imports.[11]
U.S. agencies used several sources to obtain this information. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) was a major contributor throughout the Cold War. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the CIA and the British Broadcasting Corporation divided the monitoring and translating of Soviet radio broadcasts (and later television broadcasts) and freely exchanged all translations. The CIA’s Foreign Documents Division, as well as the State Department and other agencies to a lesser degree, collected and translated Soviet newspapers, journals, economic reports, and other government publications. (The Foreign Documents Division became part of FBIS in 1967.) They also translated covertly acquired documents. These broadcasts and materials contained a wide range of important information, although the Soviets considered some data (such as the allocation of grains to various uses, reserve stocks held by the government, and losses in transportation and storage) to be state secrets and never released them. The routine publication of agricultural statistics was often delayed for many months.[12]
Analysts were skeptical of Soviet production figures because officials had a strong incentive to demonstrate that the state-established production goals were being met or exceeded. In the early 1950s, the CIA began generating its own grain production estimates based on weather data, sown acreage, and, within a few years, occasional direct observations of agricultural areas by Westerners. By the end of the decade, more detailed and systematic weather data and increased information on seeding, harvesting, and state procurements enabled more accurate estimates. Improved tools were developed in the following decades using computers that analyzed additional factors in generating increasingly precise estimates.[13]
Limited data was also acquired through HUMINT. State Department personnel, including the agricultural attaché, and U.S. defense attachés occasionally gathered intelligence on Soviet farming in meetings with Soviet officials, discussions with personnel from allied nations, and from Soviet media. Until the mid-1950s, though, Soviet travel restrictions prevented them from visiting agricultural regions. As a result, they had no opportunity to personally observe farms or talk with farmworkers. After the loosening of these travel restrictions, a small but growing number of delegations that often included both U.S. officials and individuals from the private sector made visits to some of these regions. Although the visits were negotiated with and carefully monitored by the Soviet government, they provided the opportunity for personal observations and discussions with farmers and local agricultural officials. Under Project Wringer from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, U.S. Air Force personnel obtained limited information during interrogations of refugees from the USSR and former Soviet POWs. CIA operatives obtained intelligence from a range of sources, including allied intelligence services and covertly acquired Soviet documents.[14]
Beginning in the 1970s, imagery intelligence (IMINT) acquired by photoreconnaissance satellites became an important source of information on Soviet agriculture. This was the result of CIA studies beginning in 1965 examining the value of aerial photography from U-2 reconnaissance aircraft in estimating crop yields in China. These started with overflights of selected wheat, rice, and sugar fields in the United States for which there was accurate data on yields. Of the various types of film used, color was found to be the best to determine crop vigor. The studies were later expanded to review the potential of photoreconnaissance satellites in this regard, as U-2s could not collect against the Soviet Union and had stopped overflying China in 1968. Several HEXAGON photoreconnaissance satellites that flew from 1971 to 1984 carried small amounts of color film and were the first to make a substantial contribution to intelligence on Soviet and Chinese agriculture. (Color imagery was also valuable against certain other targets.) Undoubtedly, digital imagery acquired by the KENNEN satellite series, first launched in 1976, and its successors also made a significant contribution. However, these programs are still classified, and no details are available.[15]
The CIA began to examine the value of multispectral imagery of Soviet and other foreign agricultural regions shortly after the launch of the first Earth Resources Technology Satellite by NASA in 1972. (The program was redesignated LANDSAT later in the decade as additional satellites were placed into orbit.) This was the first civilian remote sensing satellite and the first robotic satellite to carry a multispectral camera, which can detect wavelengths of light beyond the visible spectrum, such as infrared and ultraviolet. The review found that the imagery was very useful in assessing crop health, as well as soil moisture and nutrient levels. It appears that the CIA started regularly acquiring and using multispectral imagery to estimate grain production in 1974. Although details are not available, the imagery from LANDSAT and the classified photoreconnaissance satellites were not redundant, as each provided different but equally important data on crop conditions.[16]
Weather data on the USSR came from several sources. Both the U.S. Weather Service and the Air Force’s Air Weather Service provided it to the CIA beginning in the late 1940s. The former initially furnished its monthly publication on worldwide weather, while the latter provided ten- and thirty-day precipitation totals, temperatures, and snow cover depth. As both organizations improved their collection and analysis, the data received by the CIA increased in quantity and quality. There was a category of communications intelligence (COMINT) designated Special Weather Intelligence, which in the case of the Soviet Union probably targeted encrypted radio transmissions of the three military weather services. However, since the effort remains completely classified, it is not known exactly what weather data it acquired or whether CIA analysts had access to it. The introduction of weather satellites in the early 1960s provided additional information. From 1960 to 1965, NASA launched ten first-generation TIROS weather satellites. The second-generation NASA weather satellites reached orbit beginning in 1964, and later generations followed thereafter. Because NASA’s spacecraft could not give timely and accurate information of the weather over the Sino-Soviet Bloc for the programming of photoreconnaissance satellite cameras, the National Reconnaissance Office initiated the Defense Meteorological Support Program to meet that requirement, launching the first generation of these satellites in 1962 and later generations beginning in 1965. Their data was classified until 1972, and it is unknown whether CIA analysts had access to it during this period.[17]
Intelligence Reporting on Soviet Agriculture
The first postwar Five-Year Plan for 1946-1950 aimed to rebuild the devastated economy. Its modest goals for agriculture called for a 10 percent increase in production over 1940. During this period, little collection or analysis on the agricultural sector took place because of the higher priority of other targets and scarce resources. Most of the small amount of finished intelligence disseminated to users only briefly summarized a HUMINT or OSINT report. This included entries in the Daily Summary, a brief description of the most important events around the world that the Central Intelligence Group began preparing for the president and a small group of other top officials in early 1946. (The CIA assumed responsibility for it the following year.)
The agricultural goals of the first Five-Year Plan were not met, with the CIA and others only beginning to report on it in detail early in the next decade when they received additional collection and analytical resources. Grain output did not exceed the prewar level until 1952. (All output figures herein are official Soviet figures unless otherwise noted.) With a rapidly growing population (from roughly 170 million at the end of the war to over 200 million by 1950), per capita consumption of food decreased between 10 and 17 percent from prewar levels. The reasons for the failure to meet the goals were many, including unfavorable weather, the fact that the total sown area for all crops did not exceed the prewar level until 1951, slow delivery of farm equipment, and the compulsory mobilization of many farm youths for the industrial and transportation sectors that diverted much-needed labor.[18]
Much of the finished intelligence on Soviet agriculture beginning in the 1950s was set forth in CIA publications such as Research Aids, Provisional Intelligence Reports, Intelligence Memorandums, and Economic Intelligence Surveys. One set of National Intelligence Estimates published annually from 1953-1957 also briefly addressed agriculture as part of the larger treatment of the Soviet economy. (The CIA’s Board of Estimates prepared these and sent them to the interagency Intelligence Advisory Committee for review and publication.) There were several briefings of the National Security Council by CIA officials, including one in 1954 on a Soviet decree criticizing agricultural failures and lagging grain production and again in 1957 and 1959 on the food situation in the Sino-Soviet Bloc. Short summaries for the president and a few other top officials continued to be included in the Daily Summary and its successors, the Current Intelligence Bulletin and Central Intelligence Bulletin, as well as in other periodic publications with wider distributions. The Departments of Agriculture and State generated a much smaller number of reports.[19]
The Five-Year Plan for 1951-1955 set forth ambitious agricultural goals, including a 40 to 50 percent increase in grain production over 1950. However, little progress was made in the early years. Total agricultural output in 1953 was only three percent above the prewar level, and the daily caloric intake remained slightly below prewar levels. Shortages of meat, sugar, dairy products, and a few other foods were common. CIA grain estimates during this period generally were within five percent of the Soviet figures.[20]
After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, publicly acknowledged serious problems in the sector and placed a high priority on improving agriculture and the quantity and quality of the average diet. Authorities took numerous steps to achieve these objectives. In 1954, they initiated the New Lands program that developed farmland from virgin and long-fallow land in West Siberia and North Kazakhstan. However, the newly cultivated regions did not have ideal soil or weather and experienced declining productivity over the years. The program soon expanded the sown area for all crops by more than one-third over 1950, and it basically remained at that level for the remainder of the Cold War, as there were few potentially productive areas left to develop. As part of this expansion, the cultivated area for wheat increased by over 50 percent (and for other grains by about 25 percent) within a few years, while the acreage for potatoes and other vegetables remained about the same. Other actions taken included stopping the campaign to end, and lowering taxes on, private plots, accelerating the use of machinery and fertilizers, providing more agricultural and livestock specialists, and revising the procurement system. These measures resulted in major increases in production for many crops, particularly in years that had exceptionally good weather. For example, the total grain output in 1955 set a record. A record for total agricultural production (including grain) was set three years later and represented a 50 percent increase over 1953. From 1954-1958, consumers experienced a small but steady growth in the quality of their diet, although it continued to rely heavily on potatoes and cereal products.[21]
Beginning in 1958, CIA grain output estimates were consistently lower than Soviet figures and by wider margins. For example, the CIA estimate for 1958 was 125 million metric tons while the Soviet Union reported 141 million metric tons. Over the next several years, analysts attributed the increasing variance in these numbers to the CIA’s collection of more and better data and to increased falsification of output by Soviet officials. Additionally, the Soviets apparently began to report “bunker weight” (the weight including excess moisture, trash, dirt, and weeds) instead of “barn harvest” (the weight after cleaning and drying). Analysts believed that the latter was eight to eleven percent below the former.[22]
The Seven-Year Plan for 1959-1965 called for a 70 percent increase in gross agricultural output over 1958. From 1959-1963, however, annual production of grains and almost every other crop fell short of the record year of 1958. The per capita availability of most foods declined or remained stagnant, and there was no improvement in diet. Feed shortages throughout the country resulted in smaller numbers of livestock, and, coupled with price increases for meat, led to major protests in at least one region in 1962. Khrushchev and other leaders repeatedly criticized management of the sector. They quickly implemented an extensive reorganization of agricultural administration, planned major increases in fertilizer and farm machinery production, and expanded the use of irrigation.[23]
Grain output decreased even more in 1963 to 111 million metric tons per Soviet statistics (the CIA estimate was 92 million metric tons). The country imported more than four times as much grain (primarily wheat) than it had in any prior year, representing almost four percent of the total supply. Khrushchev publicly admitted that the imports were needed to avoid rationing. Canada was the largest supplier, but smaller amounts also came from several other countries (including the United States in its first postwar wheat exports to the USSR). Although there was no definitive intelligence on wheat reserves, analysts believed that they were probably low, and that the government was reluctant to draw them down further. Grain output increased by more than one-third in 1964, setting a record. Nevertheless, imports increased to almost six percent of the total supply demonstrating that the demand still exceeded domestic production.[24]
Leonid Brezhnev succeeded Khruschev after the latter’s ouster in 1964. Efforts continued to improve production and the quantity and quality of the diet, particularly raising meat consumption. The measures to accomplish this in the Five-Year Plan for 1966-1970 included using more fertilizers and pesticides, expanding irrigated and drained land, employing improved seed, increasing the supply and quality of feed and the use of vitamins and growth stimulants for livestock, and raising the earnings of farms and farmworkers. Good weather and implementation of many of these measures resulted in greater output for almost all crops and livestock products during most years of the Plan. To satisfy consumer demand for more meat, the share of all grains used for feed increased from one-third in 1966 to almost one-half in 1970. Large amounts of imports continued, ranging from two to five percent of the total supply. Notwithstanding a modest growth in the per capita consumption of meat, milk and milk products, eggs, vegetables, and fruits from 1965 to 1970, about two-thirds of the Soviet diet still consisted of grain and potatoes (compared to less than one-third in the United States).[25]
The Five-Year Plans during the 1970s continued placing the highest priority on providing a better diet. Wheat remained the principal grain, accounting for roughly one-half of all grain produced. However, there was a sizable shift from wheat to feed grains, with barley increasing its share of total grain production since the 1960s to about 25 percent since it usually provided greater yields than spring wheat. There was record grain production in 1970 and a good crop the following year. Unfavorable weather caused a decrease of more than nine percent in the output of all crops (including grains and potatoes) and of almost four percent in livestock products in 1972 over the previous year. To avoid bread shortages and a major decrease in meat, milk, and dairy products, the Soviets imported a record amount of wheat, rye, corn, and soybeans. About two-thirds of the imports came from the United States. Soviet representatives spread out their purchases to not upset the markets and to avoid higher prices for their imports. However, in the United States the purchases eventually resulted in much higher prices for wheat and its products and substantial criticism of the government. Beginning in January of 1972, numerous CIA publications had forecast a poor harvest and predicted increased imports because analysts believed that Soviet reserves were low at a time when it needed more livestock feed and to provide sufficient livestock products. The Agency also quickly reported many of the domestic and foreign purchases the Soviets made. In contrast, the Department of Agriculture’s unclassified reports did not predict a decrease in production until the early summer and did not forecast the increased demand for U.S. grain.[26]
The events led to an interagency study in 1973 under the National Security Council to improve forecasting of Soviet agricultural production, expected imports, and the export demand for U.S. crops the Soviets were purchasing. Among other things, it was to examine the potential role of imagery from NASA’s Earth Resources Technology Satellite and classified photoreconnaissance satellites. There is no further information available on the study, but it undoubtedly recommended using imagery from both systems, since many subsequent CIA intelligence reports heavily relied on LANDSAT and, in the redacted portions, the classified photoreconnaissance satellites. Additionally, in the early 1970s, the CIA developed an improved computerized model to predict yields for each of the grain-growing regions and estimate total grain output. The model, designated UPSTREET, generated estimates early in the growing season that could be further revised every ten days as new weather data was received. Although tests demonstrated the model had errors ranging from two to eight percent in estimating total grain output, it was more accurate than prior methods. The CIA apparently constantly improved the model and used it during the balance of the Cold War.[27]
Although the USSR had excellent harvests in the next two years, in each of those years the country still imported about one-third the amount as in 1973 because domestic production did not satisfy the demand. A dramatic fall in grain production occurred in 1975. The Ford administration suspended sales to the Soviet Union until an agreement was signed preventing disruption to U.S. markets and guaranteeing U.S. farmers a reasonable share of the Soviet market. A record of nearly 26 million metric tons of grain imports the following year helped remedy the shortage in part, with the United States providing almost two-thirds again. Nevertheless, there was still insufficient grain for livestock feed, and the herds had to be reduced. Grain output rebounded and set a record in 1978 with 237 million metric tons, but substantial imports were still made because demand was larger than domestic production. Total agricultural production also set a record that year. Modest growth in per capita consumption of meat, milk and milk products, eggs, vegetables, and fruit took place in the first half the decade and then essentially leveled off.[28]
A decrease in agricultural production in 1979 and in the following two years led to widespread discontent, particularly over the decline in supply of livestock products, fruits, and vegetables. There was increased black market activity, longer queues in stores, and occasional work stoppages. In 1981, imports of grain and meat reached a record 12 percent of the total farm product. Authorities established a temporary rationing system for meat and milk products that year.[29]
Brezhnev and other leaders publicly acknowledged major problems with the agricultural sector. They specifically noted rising consumer discontent with the diet and how the growth in disposable income along with the maintenance of stable prices were together causing demand for food to increasingly outstrip supply. There was significant crop waste and losses, they said, and low rural living standards made it difficult to retain younger workers. The Five-Year Plan for 1981-1985 set ambitious goals for increasing the output of all livestock products and crops throughout the decade, including a nearly 25 percent increase in the production of grain, vegetables, and fruits and an approximately 15 percent increase in livestock products. Brezhnev’s Food Program, implemented beginning in 1982, was a comprehensive effort to improve the production, transportation, storage, and processing of food and thereby increase the quality of the average diet, decrease losses and waste, and cut imports. Among its many provisions were the reorganization of the management of food production, increased investment in the farm sector (production, transportation, storage, food processing, and agricultural machinery), increasing incentives for farm workers and managers, and new production goals for key foods. The CIA’s September 1982 report on The Brezhnev Food Program concluded that for several reasons the production goals would not be met and that the improvements in transportation, storage facilities, and food processing would take nearly a decade to materialize.[30]
Brezhnev died in 1982 and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and finally Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, but the Food Program remained in place. Gorbachev initiated several major economic reforms, including a major reorganization of the agencies governing agriculture and measures to increase the autonomy of farms and improving incentives. However, most had not been fully implemented by the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[31]
For unknown reasons, the Soviets did not disclose grain production and yield data for 1981 through 1985 until 1986. Nevertheless, using UPSTREET the CIA made accurate estimates each year when compared to the statistics released in 1986. As an example, for 1981 the CIA estimated 158 million metric tons, while the official Soviet figure released in 1986 was 158.2. The CIA estimate for 1984 was 178 million metric tons, and the official Soviet figure was 172.6. Additionally, the CIA began to make estimates for other major crops, such as potatoes, vegetables, sugar beets, and sunflowers.[32]
Agricultural output improved in 1982 and 1983 because of good weather and the impact of the Food Program. Combined with larger than normal imports of grain, meat, fruits, vegetables, vegetable oil, and sugar, food availability grew noticeably. Total production fell in 1984, and the following year a record of almost 55 million metric tons of grain was imported. Output of grain, sunflower seeds, and livestock products increased modestly from 1985 through 1987 but for most other crops only grew slightly or declined. There was excess demand for food because of government policies that increased disposable income but kept retail food prices stable and low. By 1987, there were reports of shortages of some foodstuffs and an increase in the rationing of meat and butter. Production of most crops and livestock products fell slightly during the next two years. In 1990, the last year of the USSR, output grew noticeably, including the second largest wheat crop ever. Nevertheless, most of the Food Program targets were not met.[33]
Throughout the Cold War, Soviet agriculture suffered from major problems that numerous reforms and decrees never completely overcame. Despite adequately feeding its citizens in terms of caloric intake through domestic production and, beginning in the early 1960s, imports, it was never able to provide sufficient amounts of the high-quality foods they desired.[34]
The Documents
ebb 873 doc 1
Document 1
Daily Summary, Top Secret, 14 December 1946
Dec 14, 1946
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is an excerpt from the Daily Summary, an intelligence report President Harry Truman asked the Central Intelligence Group to prepare in February of 1946 for dissemination only to him and a small number of advisors. The entry on the USSR summarizes a HUMINT report from the U.S. Legation Helsinki regarding discussions with members of a Finnish Trade Mission that recently returned from Moscow. The members were certain that the Soviet grain crop was “very short” because of the drought in Ukraine and heavy rains during harvest in eastern growing regions. They also saw little flour in the stores. At the time, these fragmentary HUMINT reports, along with limited information from Soviet publications and other OSINT materials, were the only sources of information on Soviet agriculture.
ebb 873 doc 2
Document 2
Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence to the Director of Central Intelligence, Confidential, 31 October 1949
Oct 31, 1949
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
Timely and accurate weather data was critical for analyzing Soviet agriculture and other purposes. This memorandum summarizes contacts between the CIA and the U.S. Weather Service to get the latter to improve the data it was already providing the CIA. The Weather Service and the Air Force’s Air Weather Service were the primary sources of weather data for many years. It is not known whether CIA analysts had access to Special Weather Intelligence, a type of communications intelligence derived from the intercept and analysis of Soviet military weather station traffic.
ebb 873 doc 3
Document 3
Information from Foreign Documents or Radio Broadcasts, Secret, August 1950
Aug 1, 1950
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This Foreign Documents Division report summarizes developments in Soviet agriculture from translations of various Soviet newspaper articles and one periodical from November 1949 to March 1950. Open-source intelligence like this was a key information source throughout the Cold War.
ebb 873 doc 4
Document 4
Information Report, Secret, 31 January 1951
Jan 31, 1951
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This report summarizes a likely Directorate of Plans clandestine operation that obtained samples of Soviet wheat and rye exported to a country whose name is redacted and Hungary. Information on whether U.S. or allied personnel collected the samples and how this was accomplished is also redacted. Officials in an unknown organization conducted tests that found comparable nutritional value and baking characteristics to a sample of American wheat.
ebb 873 doc 5
Document 5
Intelligence Memorandum – Estimate of 1953 Grain Production in the Soviet Bloc, Secret, 13 September 1954
Sep 13, 1954
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This Office of Research and Reports publication is based on prior CIA reports, Department of Agriculture publications, open-source materials, and still-classified sources. Among other things, it concluded that the yields and output for Soviet grains in 1953 were below 1952 and prewar levels due to unfavorable weather. The report predicted that Khrushchev’s New Lands Program and other measures to greatly increase production would likely fall short of their goals for several reasons.
ebb 873 doc 6
Document 6
NSC Briefing – Soviet Decree Indicts Agricultural Failures and Attacks Lagging Grain Production, Secret, 11 March 1954
Mar 11, 1954
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is a summary of a CIA presentation to the National Security Council on the recent Land Reclamation decree of the Soviet Party Central Committee. Among other things, the decree criticized the lack of progress in the agricultural reforms announced the previous year and, for the first time, grain production. Grain yields were down, and the total acreage devoted to grains was less than in 1940. Output had failed to keep up with population growth and resulted in smaller exports, normally a key earner of foreign exchange to pay for imports. Additionally, livestock herds were smaller than in 1940, fodder output was less than in recent years, and there had been inadequate production of agricultural machinery.
ebb 873 doc 7
Document 7
Current Intelligence Bulletin, Top Secret, 3 August 1954
Aug 3, 1954
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is an excerpt from the immediate successor to the Daily Summary. Only President Dwight Eisenhower and a few advisors received it. The entry on the Soviet Union stated that, based on personal observation in July, agricultural attachés at the Moscow embassy concluded that the Ukrainian grain crop would be about two-thirds of the average postwar output because of drought. The few other grain-producing areas they had seen they believed held “fair to good” prospects. Official statistics released by the Soviets late in 1954 disclosed that, although the Ukrainian crop was lower than in 1953, production in other areas resulted in a slight increase in total output over the previous year.
ebb 873 doc 8
Document 8
Secretary, EIC Subcommittee on Agriculture to Secretariat, Economic Intelligence Committee, Secret, 20 July 1956
Jul 20, 1956
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is the Annual Report for 1955-1956 of the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the U.S. Intelligence Board’s Economic Intelligence Committee. At the request of the State Department, much of its work in the past year had been identifying intelligence gaps on Soviet agriculture. Members from the CIA and Departments of Agriculture and State agreed to undertake a joint project to address them. Other efforts included improving the sharing of data on crop output by the three agencies.
ebb 873 doc 9
Document 9
Materials Division Monthly Report, Food and Agriculture Branch, Report for January 1958, Secret, n.d.
Jan 1958
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is a monthly report on the work of the Food and Agriculture Branch in the Office of Research and Reports. It listed its contributions to CIA publications and different types of support to other CIA offices.
ebb 873 doc 10
Document 10
Central Intelligence Bulletin, 10 November 1958, Confidential
Nov 10, 1958
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This excerpt stated that overall Soviet agricultural production set a record in 1958, including an excellent grain harvest and records for sugar beets, fodder, and oil seeds. The record amount of livestock feed stored would enable increased output of meat products in 1959, but Khrushchev’s goal of catching up with the United States in per capita meat production was still far off.
ebb 873 doc 11
Document 11
NSC Briefing – Communist Bloc 1959 Harvest, Confidential, 30 November 1959
Nov 30, 1959
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is a summary of a CIA briefing of the National Security Council on agricultural production in the Sino-Soviet Bloc in 1959. With respect to the USSR, it was conducted before the Soviets released any figures. Due to drought, the CIA predicted a 25 to 35 percent decrease in grain output from the excellent harvest the prior year. This was based on OSINT and a new technique of using weather data that first enabled a prediction of a lower grain crop back in June. The drought also affected other crops, except for cotton.
ebb 873 doc 12
Document 12
Periodic Requirements List (PRL), USSR, (1May – 31 August 1959), Secret, n.d.
May 1 - Aug 31, 1959
Source
Published by the CIA’s Office of Current Intelligence, these documents specified the “information required for current intelligence coverage of significant developments during the 4-month period covered by each PRL.” They were developed in conjunction with other CIA offices and the State Department and disseminated to the collection units of all intelligence agencies. This excerpt from the PRL for the Soviet Union for 1 May to 31 August 1959 set forth the data desired on Soviet agriculture.
ebb 873 doc 13
Document 13
Orville L. Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture to Hon. Allen W. Dulles, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Confidential, October 3, 1961
Oct 3, 1961
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
In this letter, Secretary Freeman noted the excellent relationship between the two agencies and requested intelligence on Sino-Soviet output of major agricultural commodities, Sino-Soviet trade in these commodities, and Sino-Soviet agricultural aid programs, particularly to “underdeveloped agrarian countries.” Undoubtedly, the CIA provided the intelligence.
ebb 873 doc 14
Document 14
Orville L. Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture to Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, et al., Confidential, August 16, 1963
Aug 16, 1963
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This document summarizes the presentation Secretary Freeman gave President John F. Kennedy after a visit to the USSR, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. In addition to meeting with top officials in those countries, he toured agricultural areas. Among his conclusions on this subject were that in the agricultural sector of all the countries there is inefficient use of labor and underemployment. Improved seed, machinery, and practices will ensure continued progress in increasing the production of wheat, corn, sugar beets, and sunflowers. However, there has been little progress in the transportation, storage, and processing of these crops, as well as increasing the production of livestock products, fruits, and vegetables.
ebb 873 doc 15
Document 15
Directorate of Intelligence Memorandum, Secret, 26 September 1963
Sep 26, 1963
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This memorandum initially explains that since the Soviets apparently began inflating grain production statistics in 1958, the CIA’s Office of Research and Reports had been preparing its own estimates based on weather data, acreage, and, when available, direct observations by Westerners. These estimates had consistently been lower, in some cases by almost one-third, and show that output had basically stagnated since 1958. The Soviets did not release any information on reserves. Because both the production estimates and data on consumption were not entirely accurate, no estimates could be made on stocks. The prediction for 1963 was also for a mediocre crop, and the memorandum briefly summarizes the many intelligence reports beginning in November 1962 that reflected this.
ebb 873 doc 16
Document 16
Current Intelligence Memorandum, Top Secret Dinar, 26 December 1963
Dec 26, 1963
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
The classification marking “Dinar” indicates that this report contains COMINT, and the specific information is undoubtedly in the redacted portion of the first sentence. Based on this COMINT, OSINT, the mediocre harvests since the late 1950s, and the record nearly ten million tons of wheat and flour imported during the fall, the CIA stated that the reserves had to be very low.
ebb 873 doc 17
Document 17
Chief, DD/I Collection Guidance Staff to Director, NPIC, Secret, 2 August 1965
Aug 2, 1965
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This letter to the Director of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center requests that the organization examine using overhead photography to improve estimates of “crop types, acreages, and yields” and developing “automatic scanning procedures that would be necessary to make the whole program feasible for agriculture, where large areas must be covered or at least sampled.” A study was undertaken and expanded in the following years.
ebb 873 doc 18
Document 18
Publications Dealing with Soviet Grain Production and Grain Imports, Secret, n.d.
Sep 1971 - Oct 1972
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
The Soviets imported a record amount of grain from the United States following a poor harvest in 1972. This caused a significant increase in the price of many wheat products in the United States and generated substantial public criticism of the Nixon administration. The White House ordered an internal review of the intelligence that had been collected and disseminated. This CIA document was part of the response, summarizing its many reports in 1972 on the subject.
ebb 873 doc 19
Document 19
The President’s Daily Brief, Top Secret, 3 February 1973
Feb 3, 1973
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This entry describes the demotion of the long-time First Deputy Premier to Minister of Agriculture as a response to a series of poor harvests. It also states a U.S. embassy agriculture officer reported that the thin snow cover and extreme cold would result in another poor winter grain crop.
ebb 873 doc 20
Document 20
A.W. Marshall to Brent Scowcroft, Confidential, October 1, 1973, w/attachments
Oct 1, 1973
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This series of correspondence includes a letter from NASA’s Administrator to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget describing the important data on crops that the first Earth Technology Resources Satellite (later redesignated LANDSAT), launched in 1972, was acquiring. He asked for an earlier launch of the second satellite and development of a national policy governing the collection of this economic intelligence by these remote sensing satellites. The internal National Security Council memorandum from Marshall to Scowcroft states that current forecasts for the foreign demand for U.S. agricultural products were not useful. Marshall proposed an interagency study to improve estimates of foreign agricultural production, foreign demand for agricultural products, and the state of the international market for them. The results of any such study are not available.
ebb 873 doc 21
Document 21
National Intelligence Survey – U.S.S.R. – The Economy, Secret, April 1974
Apr 1974
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
The CIA published National Intelligence Surveys for each major country every several years. They covered political, military, and economic developments. This excerpt is the section on agriculture.
ebb 873 doc 22
Document 22
U.S.S.R. – Early August Prospects for Grain Production, GC AB 77-004, Secret NOFORN, 10 August 1977
Aug 10, 1977
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is the fourth in a series of six reports published during the 1977 growing seasons of the Soviet grain crop. The estimates of output were based on crop models that used both historical and current data. The sources for the latter included satellite photography, weather data, HUMINT, and OSINT. Examples of NASA’s LANDSAT imagery of three regions from 1976 and 1997 were included to compare the crop vigor in the two years. The redacted portions probably contain imagery from HEXAGON (which had not been declassified when this report was released) or possibly KENNEN. Based on all the data it had at this point, the CIA estimated total grain production at 220 to 225 million metric tons.
ebb 873 doc 23
Document 23
Chief Interdepartmental Affairs Staff, OPP to Director of Central Intelligence, Secret, 15 December 1981
Dec 15, 1981
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This memorandum concerns an upcoming meeting of the Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade on two issues. The first was whether LANDSAT should be transferred to the private sector, and the second was whether there should be a simultaneous transfer to the private sector of the LANDSAT and civil weather satellite program. On the first issue, the CIA had no objection to the transfer but insisted on a level of continuing federal support required to sustain the program because it provided the CIA (and the Department of Agriculture) with “timely, large area, multi-spectral data necessary for preparation of grain estimates.” Imagery from both LANDSAT and photoreconnaissance satellites was needed as “each imaging system had characteristics that provide unique information about agrotechnical practices and crop conditions.” LANDSAT was transferred to the private sector in 1984, but for various reasons it was returned to the government in 2001.
ebb 873 doc 24
Document 24
The Brezhnev Food Program, An Intelligence Assessment, SOV 82-10130, Confidential, September 1982
Sep 1982
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This report is an initial analysis and assessment of the Food Program adopted earlier in 1982. It was a comprehensive effort to improve the production, transportation, storage, and processing of food and thereby increase the quality of the average diet and cut imports. Among its many provisions were reorganization of the management of food production, increased investment in the farm sector and industries that supported it, increasing incentives for farm workers and managers, and new production goals for key foods. For several reasons, the CIA believed that “the Food Program will fail to provide material relief from shortages” and that “the regime probably will be forced to continue to import food.”
ebb 873 doc 25
Document 25
USSR: 1984 Grain Crop in Trouble, GI M 84-10097, classification redacted, May 1984
May 1984
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This is one in a series of reports on the 1984 grain crop published during the growing seasons. Although the prospects were favorable earlier in the year, they had decreased in recent weeks because of drought in several key regions. The CIA estimated that the target of 240 million metric tons for 1984 would not be met, but that production of 200 million metric tons would be possible if growing conditions improved through the summer. LANDSAT imagery, weather data, and direct observations of the agricultural attaché during April were used in the report.
ebb 873 doc 26
Document 26
USSR: Improving Agricultural Performance Reduces Grain Import Needs, SOV 86-10056, Secret/redacted classification, December 1986
Dec 1986
Source
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
This report concluded that total agricultural output in 1986 might exceed the 1983 record as a result of growth in the livestock sector and increased production of several key crops. No Soviet statistics on final grain output were available since harvesting was not finished. However, based on the information to date a good output was expected that would lower the need for imports over the previous year. The production estimates were based on LANDSAT imagery, weather data, HUMINT, OSINT, and a still-classified source (probably imagery from a successor to KENNEN).
Notes
[1] Agriculture in Communist Countries, n.d.; DD/I Collection Guidance Staff to Director, NPIC, 2 August 1965; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[2] Food Shortages and Agricultural Failures in the USSR, 8 April 1955 and A Survey of Economic Planning in the USSR, CIA/RR RA-13, 15 April 1957, CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[3] National Intelligence Survey, U.S.S.R., Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, December 1968, CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid. USSR: Prospects for Grain and Other Crops, ER IB 75-6, 4 September 1975; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[6] National Intelligence Estimate 11-4-54, Soviet Capabilities and Probable Courses of Action Through Mid-1959, 14 September 1954: U.S.S.R. National Intelligence Survey, April 1974; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[7] National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 2, January 1948; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Thomas L. Burns, U.S. Cryptologic History, Series V, Vol. 1, The Origins of the National Security Agency, 1940-1952 (Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1990).
[8] The Office of Research and Reports (ORR), 29 November 1951; Report to the National Security Council in Compliance with NSC Action 282, 1 April 1951; Reorganization of DDI, n.d.; Non-IAC Agencies, Status Report, 1 July 1948; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[9] Ibid. Memorandum for the National Security Council, 19 April 1951; Economic Intelligence Committee, Minutes of Meeting, 19 July 1951; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[10] Director of Central Intelligence Directive, June 1954; An Assessment of National Foreign Intelligence Production, Volume II, Annex, December 1976; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[11] A Model for Forecasting Soviet Grain Yields, ER RP 75-8, March 1975. Soviet Climate Change: Implications for Grain Production, GI 85-10128, May 1985; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[12] Overview, n.d. and The Foreign Documents Division, 1946-1967, Volume V, April 1974; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[13] Possible Revision of Soviet Grain Statistics, CIA/RR CB 65-18, March 1965; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[14] Guy E. Coriden, “The Intelligence Hand in East-West Exchanges”, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer 1958); William R. Gasser, “Aerial Photograph for Agriculture”, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 11 (Fall 1967); Chief, IAD/CIA to Director, NPIC, 2 August 1965: CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[15] The Hexagon Story, December 1992; National Reconnaissance Office FOIA Electronic Reading Room. National Photographic Interpretation Center, A Review of Color Science and Color Aerial Reconnaissance, January 1972; William R. Gasser, “Aerial Photography For Agriculture”; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[16] USSR: Improving Agricultural Performance Reduces Grain Import Needs, SOV 86-10056, December 1986; [redacted] to Director of Central Intelligence, 15 December 1981; Chief Interdepartmental Affairs Staff, OPP to Director of Central Intelligence, Secret, 15 December 1981; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[17] [redacted], Weather: its Role in Communications Intelligence; National Security Agency FOIA Reading Room. Willard Machle to Director of Central Intelligence, 31 October 1949; W.C. Jacobs, Director of Climatology to Director of Central Intelligence, April 25, 1952; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room. R. Cargill Hall, A History of the Military Polar Orbiting Meteorological Satellite Program; National Reconnaissance Office FOIA Reading Room.
[18] Indexes of Household Consumption in the USSR 1928-55, CIA/RR PR-151, 13 November 1956; NIE 11-3-55 - Estimate of 1953 Grain Production in the Soviet Bloc, CIA/RR IM-395, 13 September 1954, Possible Revision of Soviet Grain Statistics; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[19] Survey of the Office of Current Intelligence, March 21, 1955; NSC Briefing, 11 March 1954; NIE 11-3-55, Soviet Capabilities and Probable Soviet Courses of Action through 1960; Annual Report of the Status of Economic Intelligence Research Projects on the Soviet Bloc; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[20] Preliminary Evaluation of the Fifth Soviet Five-Year Plan, 28 August 1952; Food Shortages and Agricultural Failures in the Sino-Soviet Bloc, n.d.; Estimate of the 1953 Grain Production in the Soviet Bloc; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[21] Food Shortages and Agricultural Failures in the Sino-Soviet Bloc, n.d.; Current Problems of Soviet Agriculture, CIA/RR ER 61-34, July 1961; National Intelligence Survey, U.S.S.R., Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, December 1968; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[22] Possible Revision of Soviet Grain Statistics; USSR: Second Consecutive Good Grain Crop, GI 87-10081, November 1987; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[23] The Soviet Grain Problem, 1 November 1963; Current Problems of Soviet Agriculture; CIA Reporting on the Soviet Grain Situation, OCI No. 2357/63, 26 September 1963; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[24] Ibid. Current Intelligence Memorandum, 26 December 1963; Research Aid, The Soviet Grain Balance, ER 75-68; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[25] National Intelligence Survey, U.S.S.R., Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry, December 1968. USSR: The Food Supply Situation, SOV 85-10042, March 1985; The Soviet Grain Balance, 1960-1973; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[26] Ibid. A.W. Marshall to Henry A. Kissinger, March 30, 1973; The Soviet Economy in 1972 and 1973, ER IM 73-24, February 1973; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[27] A.W. Marshall to Brent Scowcroft, October 1, 1973; A Model for Forecasting Soviet Grain Yields, ER RP 75-8, March 1975; PRED: A Predictive Weather Model for Crop Forecasting, GI M 83-10129, May 1983CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[28] USSR: The Food Supply Situation, March 1985 and The Brezhnev Food Program, SOV 82-10130, September 1982; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[29] The Brezhnev Food Program.
[30] Ibid.
[31] USSR; Second Consecutive Good Grain Crop, SOV 87-10068, November 1987 and Gorbachev’s “Radical” Economic Reform Package: An Initial Evaluation, SOV 87-10081, December 1987, CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[32] The Brezhnev Food Program and USSR: Improving Agricultural Performance Reduces Grain Import Needs, SOV 86-10056, December 1986; USSR: CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[33] Modeling Soviet Agriculture: Isolating the Effects of Weather, SOV 88-10054, August 1988; CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
[34] USSR; Second Consecutive Good Grain Crop. Alan Barkema, “How Will Reform of the Soviet Farm Economy Affect U.S. Agriculture?”, Economic Review, September/October 1991, pp. 5-19.
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