Perhaps the best way to explain what I
have in mind, is to tell what happened early when I was in college. It was a
time when some people naively thought that in a decade or so, computers will
have become so much like humans, they might decide to do away with us and rule
the world. Well, several decades have passed, and we realize now how wrong
these people were. But that's another story.
The important thing is that we were advised
what will be the best way to approach the writing of an essay on the
intelligence of computers. (Artificial intelligence had not been coined yet.)
We were told that to be convincing, we must think what it is that
differentiates living matter from inanimate matter. And based on that, we were
to explain what must be included in a computer program such that if a human
conversed with it via a keyboard, the human could not tell if he was
interacting with a computer or a human being.
In fact, what makes life what it is, was
already known to most students. It was the instinct to preserve the self, to
consume nutrients, to reproduce, to evolve and so on. The most fundamental of
these being self-preservation because without it, nothing else matters. And
when we say self-preservation, we mean being protected against a force that is
greater or shrewder than ourselves. For this to happen, we seek to develop the
power with which to fend off a potential aggressor that wants to harm us for
whatever reason.
These memories were brought back when I
read the latest of Clifford D. May's column. It came under the title: “Vlad the
conqueror,” and was published on April 30, 2019 in The Washington Times. Vlad,
seen in the title, is Vladimir Putin, the current President of Russia. I found
it puzzling that a writer can be fascinated by a politician who seeks to secure
self-preservation for his people … and maybe you will too.
Here is what Clifford May says about Putin
at the start of the discussion: “He defines great as powerful, nothing more,
nothing less. If you keep that in mind, everything he does makes perfect
sense.” And here is how May ends the discussion: “His appetite for greatness ––
again, meaning power, only power –– is insatiable. He will not be ignored. If
you keep all that in mind, everything else he does makes perfect sense”.
Were you jolted when you read that
Vladimir Putin “defines great as powerful, nothing less, nothing more”? Did you
question from where Clifford May got that information? Or did you link that saying
to Donald Trump's repeated call to “Make America Great Again”? If you keep in
mind that Putin did not come out one eureka morning and said he discovered the
definition of “great,” as being “powerful,” everything that Clifford May says
in his article, will make perfect sense to you.
In fact, the entire article sounds like a
Clifford May lecture put together for the sole purpose of telling Donald Trump
he should look at Vladimir Putin and learn from him how to Make America Great
Again because Putin made Russia great, playing a weak hand. What follows is a
condensed version of what May has written:
“A summit with Kim Jong-un has allowed
Putin to demonstrate that he gets a seat at the table. Russia has a per capita
GDP lower than that of Portugal or Poland. Yet its military is in the global
top three. Putin plays a weak hand well. His intervention in Syria paid off. He
now has an air base in Latakia and a naval base on the Mediterranean. In Latin
America, a Russian ally is in trouble, and Putin has sprung to his defense. He
sent troops to help shore up Maduro. Putin wins friends and influences people.
He sells arms to nemeses UAE and Qatar. He made common cause with Erdogan,
president of Turkey, a member of NATO. He is allied with Iran and maintains
cordial relations with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Putin's East European and
Central Asian neighbors respect or fear him. He progresses in West Europe. It's
unclear whether Trump understands Putin. Let me assist: Putin has the morals of
a KGB agent, the soul of a commissar and the ambitions of a czar”.
This is the kind of success you can score
when using military power or threaten to use it, says Clifford May. He gives as
evidence the idea that despite having a low GDP, Russia has a military that is
in the top three. So what! He did not elaborate, but we know that one of those
is America.
As well, Putin intervened in Syria and
scored a success, says Clifford May. But so did America … and not only in Syria
but also Iraq. May went on to say that Putin sent troops to Venezuela. So what!
America had troops in several Latin American countries for decades … and
nothing happened to Russia or to America.
Putin makes friends everywhere regardless
of their political affiliations, says Clifford May but not so America.
Oh, wait a minute now. Wait a minute. Was
it not the Jews who introduced into American politics and diplomacy the idea
that, “You're either with us or you're against us”? Was it not Clifford May
who, decade after decade, urged America to stick with the so-called democracies
and stand against all the others?
Is Clifford May so impressed with Vladimir
Putin's performance that he is willing to discard and replace his motto of “us
against them till total victory”?