Mr Tantlinger
where is this heading?
Greetings
Welcome to the modest influx of new subscribers. While I continue to write for myself, I hope there is a healthy meeting of your enjoyment with mine. I always welcome comments and recommendations for topics. I am interested in ALMOST EVERYTHING so a poke at a new topic is always welcome. Sorry, but today’s post is a little longer than usual. My goal remains 8 minutes or less so this one is an aberration (and a small one).
While I believe that life continually improves, I wanted to share how fortunate we have been at one of the most dangerous periods in human history. Today is another, in an occasional series of amazing people you probably never heard of. If you like this kind of story, “Our Finest Hour” from 12/05/2021 or “The Norman Conquest” from 01/04/2022 are a similar point of view. If not, forgive the plug and give this one a try at least :) If you read either of them, you will see that I started this Newsletter with the rather creative title of Mark Writes :(!
The last World War ended in 1945, a bit over 77 years ago. To draw a line from 1945 to today, after all that transpired when the world went to war is not easy. The truth is, profoundly evil agendas foisted war upon the world and caused tremendous hardship in their wake both for their neighbors, their enemies, and their own citizens. Some students of history purport that the cause of World War II was the uneven management of the peace after World War I. My fellow history book club members will likely recognize my take on the world in the period after World War I through the Depression and leading up to World War II. People were desperate and all around the world nations CHOSE a dictator. A couple of them managed to choose a benevolent dictator (ours was named FDR). Others opted for Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Hirohito/Tojo, or Churchill. Make no mistake, in desperate times, people choose dictators. It is only a matter of chance whether yours is a maniac.
While I love history, I admit that I don’t know very much about how the post-war strategy after World War II came to be. I do understand what the strategy became. A broad outline as I see it was:
The United States economically entered the war long before fighting via Lend-Lease. By capitalizing and supplying both the British and Russian military, Germany was greatly weakened in a vicious two-front battle while America industrialized for the war effort.
While estimates vary widely, by any measure the United States suffered far and away the least casualties of any of the major combatants. The United States emerged after the War largely unscathed with an industrial capacity of remarkable proportion. US Casualties were perhaps 1/20 of Soviet losses, 1/10 of German losses, and 1/5 of Japanese losses. When civilian losses are considered, the fractions become all the more sobering. The American Civil War remains by a significant margin the greatest loss of life in the American history of war.
The United States had used what we now call weapons of mass destruction on an unimaginable scale. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki uncorked the bottle on civilians in what was best described by Doctor Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist in the development of the bombs.
The firebombings at Dresden and Tokyo were of horrific scale. More deaths occurred in the firebombing of Tokyo than in the Nagasaki blast. The combination of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki approach ALL American deaths in the war in both theaters!
Dr. Oppenheimer, an important figure in the development of atomic weapons chose to quote the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad-Gita to describe where the journey brought him. ”I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”. It is, perhaps, the most well-known line from the Bhagavad-Gita, but also the most misunderstood.
Oppenheimer was quoting the portion of the Bhagavad-Gita describing the end of the world.
The world toiled in an uneasy standoff of the Cold War which ended in December of 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For 46 years two adversaries and a larger defenseless planet existed in a world where one false move could begin a chain of events and a likely man-made mass extinction event.
Were we just lucky? What was the strategy? Why did it work? My opinion is the one nation not touched by the destruction of the war (except Pearl Harbor), the United States CHOSE (and imposed) a completely different approach. The world was now a place where two, then five and now likely ten different nations possess the power to exterminate on a grand scale with fission and fusion as their latest shiny object. The audacity of the strategy, in hindsight, is admirable to me.
The United States CHOSE to lay the groundwork for a liberal democratic system in vanquished Japan and Germany. Despite the SIGNIFICANT sharing of resources and sacrifices of the Lend-Lease program, America continued down this path with the Marshall Plan in Europe and the Dodge Plan in Japan. The world was TIRED of war and economic displacement from almost 1914 to 1945 with only a brief period of stability after World War I. Prior to that, a state of almost constant war in Europe with each battle ending with vanquished adversaries and the buildup to the next conflict. Was it all about democracy? No, I think the other forward-thinking approach was to link like-minded nations with the underpinnings of democracy in a trading system of goods and services to bring us together and displace religion and nationalism which had brought the world to ruin with increasing catastrophe for centuries.
The rebuilding of shattered economies and the opening of markets were great sacrifices endured by the United States. It yielded durable relationships that held together and saw through the end of the Soviet Union. These partnerships were also beneficial to the United States. With the possible exception of our adventurism in the Philipines and our economic monopolism in Central America, the United States largely avoided the traps of colonialism and led the world to a new way of thinking.
I am the last person you might call an America Firster. I reject the jingoism it brings along as baggage. I also believe the leadership of Roosevelt was imperfect. However, judged against the prism of EVERY OTHER MAJOR LEADER at the time and how their countries emerged from the conflict, results dictate that the United States managed the horrific period from Depression to the end of World War II better than any place on earth. I do believe that the way World War II ended and the choices the United States made and remained aligned across parties and ideologies likely delivered us the planet we have today. I believe the period from 1930 to 1990 will be studied in the future as the period when the top of the food chain apex predator homo sapiens on this planet CHOSE a path to get us to the next stage of our survival and thriving.
New challenges will emerge and I can only hope that we do not break down into us or them. Amidst our current and near-future technology, the only thing that can stop our flourishing is becoming insular, embracing conspiracy, and seeing life on this planet for eight billion of us as something we engage in transactionally for the narrow benefit of single nations or ethnicities. Such a balkanization, if it returns, or is fostered is the greatest threat this wonderful blue marble of ours has ever known.
Time for Keith
Now I want to pivot to who I believe will be an unknown character for many. The Economist, a magazine I enjoyed for many years kept to the format of an obituary on the last page of the magazine. How the heck did my mind get to this story? It could have only happened on Substack!
I was reading a comedic Substack Newsletter I occasionally enjoy. Its style is to include prompts at the end to get readers engaged. The comments descended into a discussion of public libraries which in turn reminded me of checking out magazines at mine. I was an off-and-on subscriber of the Economist. FINALLY, we are how I got to today’s inspiration. In one of those issues of the Economist, there was an obituary for a man who spent most of his life in the Pacific Northwest.
The world trading system that the United States built and fostered at the end of World War II was moored on agreements and compromises and some key breakthroughs. Its early stages led to the rebuilding and recovery in Japan, Germany, and throughout Europe. It was a REMARKABLE THING and it bound us together and broke down the barriers between “us and them”. I was unable to find the Economist article but found a seven-minute report from NPR upon the death of Keith Tantlinger. What is the point of all this? Experts in supply chain management credit the development of the shipping container as the PRIMARY BREAKTHROUGH that led to the massive reduction in the cost of ocean freight and the development of specialized port equipment to load and unload these containers. It was the lowly shipping container that gave weight and effectiveness to an inter-connected world trading system. The company he worked for later became Sea-Land and the port at Seattle-Tacoma pioneered this innovation for the whole world. The economic miracles in Europe and Asia created the eventual containment of the Soviet Union and all of the satellites they controlled to lives of misery.
Here is a seven-minute story about Keith if you love the details like me.
So while a stretch for my readers I imagine, I think that the trading agreements post-war between the United States and its allies along with the technical innovations of Mr. Tatlinger and others will one day be recognized as an important lubricant that allowed life on this planet to traverse the dangerous period through the Cold War and emerge with another chance to just make life better. I believe that changing the way wars are settled was a great achievement BY the United States FOR the world. The world trading system that connected us in many ways moved the subset of the world in coalition to genuine Allies and friends. When the Soviet Union collapsed there was no clamor to stay together in Eastern Europe. Whether we traverse the next gauntlet is up to us.
A Bit of Opinion
So what does this all mean? We are ALL interconnected. We all COUNT on each other. Products and sub-assemblies are shipped all over the world and we all NEED each other. When a rube arises and assures us we don’t NEED trading partners, it is just SILLY even with modest analysis. During the unrest in our trading relationships and then the distortion of COVID where shipping containers all ended up in the wrong place, prices skyrocketed. All of this is unwinding and prices for shipping are dropping rapidly. They have a long way to go but things are getting better. The disruption of trading over the last four years I believe is perhaps the ROOT CAUSE of our current battle with inflation.
I wish it were only COVID but a couple of years prior to it is when the prices for shipping containers across the Pacific began to rise out of control. We lost stability in our world during this period. Whether we are comfortable with the responsibility, the stability rests with the United States. Connecting us together as a group of trading partners for mutual benefit has worked since World War II. Don’t let random ranting and yelling convince you otherwise.
It is nice that stability is slowly and methodically returning. Don’t believe what someone on Substack or Twitter says but I encourage you to think about how the disruption of international shipping by container has messed up the world for now almost four years. Here are a couple of examples of what has happened. Mr. Tantlinger gave us a perfectly sensible solution for moving goods around in a very efficient and inexpensive way. It appears the best way to break that is by listening to people that shout a lot. Why does this matter so much? Almost EVERYTHING in our daily lives including food spends some time in a container. Distorting this is not a good plan.
The Poll & Music
A subtle reminder. The more of you that vote in these silly polls increases my joy! I hope they are fun! They are anonymous for those of you concerned.
World War II planted an earworm so you get this song today. Surviving war is always the hope and this song captures the sentiment. Finally, a song about dodging the bullet of weapons we’ve built but perhaps not grasped their consequence. I’ve enjoyed this song for 40+ years.
What’s Next
Next time is a chance for me to get sappy about my brothers and cousins and football, specifically our unhealthy addiction to the Buffalo Bills. Sounds like a trifecta for a guy. I titled it “Family Time”.