The well-respected All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (hat tip to AOL.com via Johnson’s Russia List) has found that
46% of Russians think antibiotics kill viruses (I’d hate to see the US figures on that one).
32% think the sun orbits the earth.
29% think human beings coexisted with dinosaurs.
26% think lasers work via sound waves
17% think contemporary humans did not evolve from earlier types (I’d wager one or two limbs that percentage would be significantly higher in the US).

The headline figure was the number of Russians (55%) who thought radiation was a human creation. I’m not willing to read so much into that particular question–it’s easy to misunderstand. James Oberg, speaking with AOL, quite sensibly said that he’d want to see the Russian text. That text is “Vsia radioaktivnost’–delo ruk chelovecheskikh?” More or less, “Do you agree that all radioactivity is the work of human hands?” Of course, the correct answer is no, but given Chernobyl, widespread use of radiation for medical purposes, debates over the implications of nuclear testing, and widespread and legitimate public health concerns about the legacy of Soviet pollution, that doesn’t strike me as quite as ridiculous as believing in an earth-centered solar system.

The biggest point, it seems to me, is not that the Russian public is particularly ignorant of science. It’s that the sorts of things we see in the United States about popular ignorance of history or science need to be put in perspective. Things are bad everywhere. As Schiller said, “Against ignorance, the gods themselves contend in vain.”

In 2010, 242 security service personnel were killed in the North Caucasus Federal District (population nine million). By contrast, in the United States (population 300 million), 162 police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2010. Many of those line-of-duty deaths were accidents; 77 perished from hostile action.

Iott naturally claims that his participation doesn’t mean he endorses Nazism. The Wiking group’s website (I’m not linking to it, but it’s easy enough to find) proclaims that the group’s members are “in no way affiliated with real, radical political organizations (i.e., KKK, Aryan Nation, American Nazi Party, etc.) and do not embrace the philosophies and actions of the original NSDAP party), and wholeheartedly condemn the atrocities which made them infamous.” Moreover, “we salute their courage and loyalty to put their lives on the line in defense of their native soil, no matter what nationality or government.”

Iott argues that this is all just a way to teach and learn about history, but the most positive spin to put on Iott and his fellow re-enactors is that they are woefully ignorant of the history to which they claim to be dedicated . It’s very nice to say that SS re-enactment involves no endorsement of Nazism, just the heroism of the individual soldier. All sordid details of German conduct of the war in the east aside, the SS was created and existed not as a military unit but a Nazi Party organization. it existed precisely to not be a part of the German military, but instead a direct instrument of Adolf Hitler. Moreover, the fiction of “defending native soil” would be more persuasive if members of the SS took an oath to defend Germany, like the imperial German army did. The SS didn’t take an oath to Germany; they took a personal oath to Adolf Hitler.

As he got older and moved from his normal paranoid and ruthless to utterly out of touch with reality, Stalin developed a habit of writing scurrilous comments, many aimed at long-dead political opponents (some at his hand) on fine art prints of male nudes. Any comment would be superfluous.

But most of us can agree that a lot of academic jargon simply serves the purpose of claiming erudition and membership in the club of Great Thinkers. I just read (hat tip to Ralph Luker at Cliopatria) a marvelous takedown of unnecessary jargon in Simon Blackburn’s review of John Searle’s Making the Social World:

“Sometimes the mountains labor and bring forth something not much larger than a mouse. Here is a salient example. Suppose we enter on a joint enterprise. Together we are to shift a rock, carry a coffin, or row a boat. I cannot perform the task solely by myself, and neither can you. In Searle’s pleasantly old-fashioned example we set about getting a manual-shift car with a flat battery to start, by means of my pushing and you letting in the clutch at the right moment. I will only push if I expect you to let in the clutch–and if you do not let in the clutch, I will stop pushing and be annoyed at the waste of effort. Here is Searle’s account of this situation, in what he bills as his canonical notation for representing the structure of intentionality:

a collective B by means of singular A (this ia causes: A car moves, causes: B engine starts). In English this is to be read as: I have a collective intention-in-action B, in which I do my part by performing my singular act A, and the content of the intention is that, in that context, this intention-in-action causes it to be the case, as A, that the car moves which, in that context, causes it to be the case that B, the engine starts. Notice furthermore that the free variables “B” and “A” are bound inside the bracket by the verb phrases “car moves” and “engine starts,” that follow the respective letters.

It may be that Searle is right that this paraphrases the original. He may even be right that the sentence said to be in English is indeed so, although I must say that it is a rather strange and unfamiliar dialect of English. But how, exactly, are we to understand this dialect? Putting my hand on my heart I should say that for all my gray hairs and many years’ experience of fearsome bushwhacking through tangled thickets of logic and philosophy of language, I myself understand it by supposing that it means more or less that we are together trying to start the car by means of my pushing it and you letting in the clutch, which is where we started.”

Romney is either ignorant of the workings of diplomacy or engaging in demogoguery in weighty issues of foreign policy. Neither explanation suits a potential presidential candidate. ALL treaties include clauses allowing the signatories to opt out. The United States can back out of New START as easily as Russia can. Russia’s reservation with regard to missile defense only makes explicit something which has clearly been part of Russian foreign policy since Gorbachev.

Need proof that opting out a treaty is nothing new?

Try Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, clause XV.2:

Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It shall give notice of its decision to withdraw to the other Party six months prior to withdrawal from this Treaty. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events the notifying Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

Or George H. W. Bush’s 1991 Start II, clause XVII.3:

Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It shall give notice of its decision to the other Party six months prior to withdrawal from this Treaty. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events the notifying Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

Or Bill Clinton’s 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, clause IX.2-3:

Each State Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. Withdrawal shall be effected by giving notice six months in advance to all other States Parties, the Executive Council, the Depositary and the United Nations Security Council. Notice of withdrawal shall include a statement of the extraordinary event or events which a State Party regards as jeopardizing its supreme interests.

Or George W. Bush’s 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions, clause IV.3:

Each Party, in exercising its national sovereignty, may withdraw from this Treaty upon three months written notice to the other Party.

So what does New START say (clause XIV.3)?

Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty,
have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that
extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this
Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It shall give
notice of its decision to the other Party. Such notice shall
contain a statement of the extraordinary events the notifying
Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.
This Treaty shall terminate three months from the date of
receipt by the other Party of the aforementioned notice,
unless the notice specifies a later date.

What’s the difference between the opt-out clauses in the treaties negotiated by the previous four presidents and Barack Obama’s treaty? Mitt Romney’s planning on running for president against Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Fred Kaplan is equally unhappy.

I need to be sure to say that coming to historical or present-day conclusions about intelligence is very difficult. To borrow a concept from Donald Rumsfeld, the known unknowns are bad enough and the unknown unknowns are nightmarish. If it turns out that a bunch of Russian sleepers work in the Department of Defense, then I’ll look quite silly.

That said, I think there are some conclusions we can draw.

First, there’s a clear pattern in the covers of the accused spies: they’re in professions that involve a lot of travel, and provide plenty of excuses for chatting up wealthy and influential people: journalist, high-end real estate dealer, travel agent, and (best of all) consultant. The odd thing, which a number of commentators have pointed out (like here and here), is that most wealthy and influential people are happy to talk about themselves and their work. Why go to the trouble of putting an illegal in place at great cost in time and expense when open cover as a Russian journalist or a Russian firm needing to hire expertise would get just as much at a fraction of the risk? Or just google it?

Second, background checks work. None of the names that have popped up so far have been associated with jobs requiring a security clearance. Moscow Center thought that the background stories of the alleged spies could withstand a background check (paragraph 85 of the FBI affidavit); the sleepers themselves weren’t so sure. I’m with the sleepers.

I’ve been on the other end of background checks a number of times (i.e., investigators have asked me about students of mine) and I’ve always wondered about the efficacy of the process. If someone’s taken the birth certificate of a dead child to build a new identity, though, it would be tough to manufacture a lot of friends, neighbors, relatives, and teachers to confirm the legend.

Third, not all cosmopolitan people are spies, but a lot of spies claim to be cosmopolitan people. A striking number of the arrestees claim to be born in one place, citizens of another place, resident in a third (and none of those places Russia). That minimizes the odds of running into somebody from your ostensible home town who might ask awkward questions. And it makes checking somebody’s credentials much tougher. And (previewing the next comment) it helps to explain talking funny.

Fourth, accents are a problem. Even the arrestees with US or Canadian passports seemed to friends and neighbors to be vaguely European. That would almost certainly raise red flags in a background check, or even in interactions with people familiar with Russia and the former Soviet Union. During a research trip to Russia, I read The Charm School, a thriller by Nelson DeMille. The premise was a super-secret school to train Soviet spies to become totally Americanized. I couldn’t buy it–it’s just not possible to take someone past childhood and teach them to speak a foreign language without an accent.

And now the issue is hitting much closer to home. More commentary on THAT coming soon.

The contrast is quite striking with the German experience at Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942, where cut-off German formations maintained their cohesion and held on until they broke out or were relieved. It’s also a contrast with the Soviet experience of spring and summer 1942, when the Germans were advancing as quickly through Ukraine and southern Russia as they had through Belorussia and western Russia in fall 1941, but not were getting nearly the same haul of prisoners. Soviet troops were much more likely to retreat in good order out of German encirclement.

The reasons for the difference don’t seem especially mysterious to me–the Red Army in fall 1941 was badly-commanded, inexperienced, and not particularly thrilled with Stalin. By spring-summer 1942, the Red Army’s high command was getting better and the genocidal nature of the German war effort was increasingly clear. Svechin’s observation is quite striking, and a damning indictment of what Stalin’s regime had done to the Red Army:

“The typical battle of the future is fighting in encirclement, when the enemy will be on all sides and above . . and any sort of precise information on the location of one’s own troops and the enemy will be lost. The greatest achievements of military technology have put the center of gravity back on the human material—on the soldier’s consciousness and dedication to the banner under which he fights.” from Front nauka i tekhniki # 7, 1934, republished in Postizhenie voennogo iskusstvo (Moscow, 1999), p. 423.