Lessons from the Pandemic: Architecture

During much of 2020 and early 2021, researchers devoted much attention to the transmission of the virus which had disrupted daily life around the world and caused people to quarantine. Investigators gathered and analyzed data in massive quantities and at record speeds.

Biologists, virologists, and epidemiologists produced so many reports in such a short time that it may take decades to thoroughly examine the discoveries and understand their true importance.

One area for exploration is the link between building structures and viral transmission.

Data consistently point to reduced infection rates among people who live in free-standing structures, i.e., in houses.

These are structures which are variously categorized: single family dwellings, detached condominiums, and other real estate classifications are used to label them.

Viral transmission is enhanced and amplified by structures like duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, row houses, and high rise buildings.

While it is intuitive that buildings with shared hallways — large condominiums and high rise apartment buildings — lead to more disease transmission, it is significant but less obvious that structures like duplexes do so as well.

While duplexes may feature separate entrances, and thus avoid the communal spaces like hallways, they often share attics, crawl spaces, and some HVAC amenities. Even something as small and simple as an electrical outlet on a shared wall can allow for some air exchange between two otherwise separate living spaces — and with this air exchange, infection.

The data of infection rates in medium and large cities confirm this hypothesis.

In a pandemic caused by an airborne contagion, a free-standing house is an important line of defense against infection.

City planners and urban planners would do well to bear this in mind.

Real Estate Red-Lining: Government Facilitates Racism

“Redlining” is the practice of limiting homeownership in a town or in a neighborhood on the basis of race, or what is perceived as race. It was a real estate practice, found in some locations in the United States in the twentieth century, but now almost extinct. Simply put, real estate agents and homeowners were told to sell houses only to people of certain genetic groups.

“Sundown towns” and “sundown neighborhoods” are a closely related concept. They were areas in which people considered to be “Black” were not to be after dark: i.e., those people weren’t to spend the night, and certainly not to own real estate in those areas. They might be tolerated if they were briefly there during daylight hours for business reasons.

Redlining, and the creation of sundown towns, came into being at the end of the Reconstruction Era in American History. Until the late 1870s, the Republican Party had legislated the presence of military and civilian officials in the former Confederate States in order to protect and preserve the civil rights of the former slaves. It worked: Black people voted in ever-increasing numbers, and African-Americans were elected to Congress and other high offices.

But at the end of the Reconstruction Era, this good trend ceased. The Democratic Party took over city, county, and state governments, and began enacting Jim Crow Laws, and enacting policies which were segregationist and racist.

The principle at work in these events is this: racism is a vile and evil sentiment; it remains merely a sentiment, and therefore toothless, until governments become sufficiently powerful to change sentiment into action.

An undergraduate researcher at the University of Michigan, Audrey Melillo, explains that in a typical “sundown town,” the leaders “encourage people to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t sell their home to anyone who wasn’t white.”

Such pledges were called ‘covenants’ in the real estate business. Such documents were immoral and wrong. But they were also meaningless, until the government agreed to enforce them.

A homeowner might sign such a pledge, but then later decide to sell the house to a Black family anyway. The pledge was simply a piece of paper, and the homeowner could ignore it — until the government stepped in. From local zoning boards to the United States Supreme Court, the government supported, or at least failed to overturn, verdicts based on such pledges.

Only because of a powerful government could racism move from being a nasty sentiment to a truly dangerous reality. What if the United States had more fully embraced the concept of a ‘weak’ or ‘limited’ government? What if the government refused, or lacked the ability, to facilitate racism?

Anna Megdell, also at the U of M, explains how took these pledges, which were initially powerless expressions of sentiment, and turned them into concrete and damaging realities: “Over the years, these policies were enforced formally through ordinances and legal covenants.”

Professor Stephen Berrey, likewise at the U of M, has researched sundown towns and the practice of redlining. He notes that “these rules were embedded in” local “zoning ordinances.”

The foul and indecent practices of redlining and sundown towns continued, in some parts of the country, into the mid-twentieth century; in some places, past mid-century.

The principle at work is this: Racism is a shameful and immoral idea. It remains merely an idea until the government obtains enough power to tempt the racist to leverage that power in favor of racism. Where governments are weak and limited, they cannot enforce concepts like segregation.

It may seem counterintuitive to plead for a “weak” government, but it is precisely a weak or “limited” government which prevents practices like redlining from taking effect. The term “limited” is more palatable, and therefore more common, in such discussions.

When a government is limited, it cannot intervene in free market decisions. The majority of homeowners and the majority of real estate agents — perhaps even all of them — are interested primarily in money. When they are selling houses, they want to sell to the highest bidder. Instantly, race is no longer a consideration.

Imagine a person who has a house to sell. Two offers are made to this owner. One offer is for $500,000 and the other offer is for $600,000. Which offer will the seller accept? The higher one, naturally. The seller will not stop to ask about the race (or gender, or religion, or ethnicity, etc.) of the potential buyer. In a “free market” economy, practices like redlining and sunset towns disappear quickly.

It is only when the government has enough power to force the seller to ignore the obvious economic reality that racist policies can take effect.

Economic transactions in an unregulated free market are the most effective instruments for anti-racism. Societies which allow people to freely buy and sell have no interest in a customer’s skin color; they are only interested in a customer’s money.

When local real estate markets are freed from government intervention — when governments no longer enforce rules and pledges about a customer’s race — then redlining and sunset towns quickly disappear.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 5

Swedish researcher Hans Rosling made a career of pointing out that things in the world are often going better than people assume. His son and daughter-in-law carry on his work in the Gapminder Foundation, which seeks to dispel negative preconceptions about the state of the world.

The three of them co-authored a book titled Factfulness, which includes these observations:

• Safe drinking water is a key variable in public health. The “share of people with water from [a] protected source” around the world rose from 58% in 1980 to 88% in 2015.
• Educating girls as well as boys is a key factor in promoting prosperity as well as intellectual innovation. The “share of girls of primary school age enrolled” in school increased from 65% in 1970 to 90% in 2015.
• Immunization is a major variable in childhood wellbeing. The “share of 1-year-olds who got at least one vaccination” grew from 22% in 1980 to 88% in 2016.
• Adequate nutrition is foundational for other aspects of health. The “share of people undernourished” fell globally from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015.
• The environment affects all humans. In the 1970s scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons damage the atmosphere’s ozone layer. The ozone layer protects us from harmful UV light. In 1970, humans used 1,663,000 tons of “ozone-depleting substances.” In 2016, we used only 22,000 tons. The amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere is increasing.
• Warfare is obviously devastating to human life. In 1986, there were 64,000 nuclear warheads among the world’s military forces. The Soviet Union had the largest number of any nation. By 2017, there were only 15,000 warheads on the planet.
• In the twentieth century, approximately 200 million people were killed in combat, for an average of 2 million per year. In the year 1942 alone, an estimated 20,100,000 people died in war. So far, in the twenty-first century, the rate is much lower. A mere three million people are estimated to have died in combat in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. If this rate continues, the twenty-first century could be one of the safest and most peaceful centuries.
• Smallpox is a horrifying and often fatal disease. In the 1700s, smallpox killed 10% of the population in Sweden and France, and 14% of the population in Russia. In the 1700s and 1800s, it killed hundreds of millions of people. In 1850, 148 different countries reported cases of smallpox. In 1979, that number fell to zero as the disease was eradicated.
• Unique landscapes provide habitats for rare or endangered species. In 1900, only 0.03% of the land on the planet was part of preservation or conservation efforts. By 2016, 14.7% “of Earth’s land surface [was] protected as national parks and other reserves.”
• In 1869, the women in the State of Wyoming became among the very first women on the planet to enjoy the same legal voting rights as men. By 2017, women were voting in 193 countries.
• Although the decision to label a nation-state as democratic is somewhat ambiguous or subjective, in the year 1816, approximately 1% of the world’s population lived in a democracy. By 2015, it was 56%.

Rosling is making two points in his book: first, there is lots of good news to be received; second, that our communication tends to favor bad news. This happens both on a macro level, as the news media tends to publicize bad news ahead of good news, and on a micro level, as individual psychology tends to be more skeptical of good news than of bad.

It remains to be investigated whether this inclination to be distrustful of good news is innate or learned. In either case, it benefits the individual and society to be more deliberate in seeking, digesting, and relaying good news.

Kennedy and Laos: Evaluating JFK’s Foreign Policy

An aging Republican president finishes his second and final term in office, leaves the White House, and moves into his countryside home to enjoy his retirement years. A much younger Democratic president is inaugurated and begins his term in office, having campaigned as a fresh personality in the nation’s political landscape. He, his party, and the news media have stoked expectations for a new and youthful trend in policies.

With Eisenhower comfortably settled in Pennsylvania and Kennedy settling into the White House, however, the change from the one president to the next was not as significant as it was advertised to be, as historian John Stormer writes:

The party in power in Washington changed on January 20, 1961. The basic direction of American foreign policy remained the same.

To be sure, there were some substantial differences between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations: Ike was hesitant to commit American troops into the Vietnam conflict, preferring to send observers, advisors, supplies, and cash. By contrast, Kennedy sent thousands of combat troops into Vietnam.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy spoke sternly against the Soviet Socialists and the international communist conspiracy which the USSR operated. Kennedy’s efforts to implement his rhetoric were, especially early in his presidency, clumsy. John Stormer indicates how one might evaluate JFK’s foreign policy:

John F. Kennedy himself set the standard by which his administration must be judged. On November 8, 1961, he wrote the foreword for To Turn the Tide, a published collection of the speeches and statements he made in his first ten months as President.

Any presidency must be judged primarily on its actions, and only secondarily on its words. Too often the reverse is the case. Under close examination, there will always be some discrepancy between the words of a president and his concrete policies. No president is perfect. But the gap between word and deed should be kept to a minimum.

Kennedy himself expressed essentially this same principle:

Strong words alone, of course, do not make meaningful policy; they must, in foreign affairs, in particular, be backed by both a will and by weapons that are equally strong. Thus a collection of Presidential statements cannot convey their true perspective unless it is realized or recalled precisely what they signified in committing the power and majesty of the American people and government.

More than one president has made strong statements but failed to back them up with equally strong actions, or as John Stormer explains:

To evaluate President Kennedy’s Administration using the the standard he suggested requires a careful analysis of his words and actions in crisis after crisis.

The two-and-a-half years of the Kennedy presidency were indeed filled with multiple crises. Some of the crises would have happened anyway. Others may have been aimed at Kennedy by malevolent leaders like Khrushchev, Mao, and Castro. A few of the crises may have been created by Kennedy’s miscalculations.

The Soviet Socialists created a large number of foreign policy challenges between January 1960 and November 1963, from Cuba to China, from the USSR to southeast Asia, from Berlin to the Congo. How did Kennedy respond to these provocations? John Stormer explains:

In a widely publicized talk with Congressional leaders on March 26, 1961, President Kennedy promised that Laos, then under attack from Red China and North Viet Nam, would not be permitted to fall.

Yet by late 1962, Laos was solidly under the control of a communist dictatorship, and thousands of soldiers from North Vietnam and from communist China were encamped there. Beyond that, the Kennedy administration was sending foreign aid payments to Laos.

Although Sino-Soviet relationships were fraying in 1962, they had not yet ruptured. The Soviet Socialists and communist mainland China can be understood as acting in concert regarding the situation in Laos.

What happened to Laos between March 1961 and late 1962? Did Kennedy make a promise that he was unable to keep? If so, his promise was rashly made, or made without a thorough understanding of the situation. Presumably his promise was sincere. One hopes that he had a genuine desire to protect the lives and freedoms of the people of Laos.

Two interpretative options are open to the reader: either Kennedy didn’t fully know what he was doing, or he made a promise which he didn’t intend to keep. Neither option is appealing. Presidents should be slow to make such pledges.

American policy was in many ways the same during both the Eisenhower presidency and the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy, however, was weaker in the implementation of that policy.

What They Didn’t Discuss in the Presidential Campaign: The Global Situation in 1960

During the 1952 election season, the Cold War was front and center among the topics examined by the candidates, their parties, the news media, and the votes. Concepts like rollback, containment, and the Truman Doctrine held people’s attention, and the Korean War made these matters deadly.

Harry Truman, who was president in 1952, wasn’t running for reelection. The contest was between Eisenhower and Stevenson. General Dwight David Eisenhower, nicknamed “Ike,” had chosen Richard Nixon as his running mate. Adlai Stevenson chose John Sparkman as his candidate for vice president.

In terms of foreign policy, the voters wanted the Korean War to end quickly, but they also didn’t want defeat in that war. They also wanted a sense of strength in the NATO defensive coalition, and the ability to stop the inroads which Soviet Socialism was making in central and south America.

When it came to domestic policy, Sparkman was strongly pro-segregation, and Stevenson was indecisive, arguing that desegregation must be done slowly. Eisenhower and Nixon, on the other hand, were clearly in favor of desegregation and integration.

Eisenhower won handily, earning a large majority of votes cast by women, and enjoying popularity in all regions within the nation, including a large number of African-American voters, understood clearly that Ike was the one who would open the way to desegregation.

The 1956 election was largely a replay of 1952. Adlai Stevenson was again the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, but this time with a different running mate. In the meantime, Eisenhower had created peace in Korea and convinced the public that he was resisting Soviet aggression in Latin America.

By the time the 1960 presidential election rolled around, the political landscape was different. The two candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, were younger than the candidates in the previous two election cycles. The era of artificial orbital satellites had begun. The campaign had a different tone, as historian John Stormer notes:

Unlike the election campaign of 1952 when Communist infiltration of government and appeasement of world communism were key issues, these crucial topics were largely ignored in the 1960 presidential campaign.

At the end of the 1956 presidential campaign, only days before the vote, the Hungarian Revolution began and was quickly ended by brutal Soviet military force. The uprising’s timing was such that the American electorate didn’t have time to fully digest the details and implications of the event before voting. It could have been more thoughtfully examined in the course of the 1960 campaign, but it wasn’t.

Likewise, the 1960 election offered an occasion for a nuanced discussion of the Cuban situation. In 1958-1959, Fidel Castro had led the Communist Revolution to a victory, taken control of Cuba, become the dictator there, and began his reign which would eventually eventually be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Cubans. Yet, in the campaigning, there was little or no serious analysis of Cuba, Castro, the revolution, or the fact that the U.S. State Department had, through malice or incompetence, enabled Castro’s dictatorship, as John Stormer reports:

Tragic handling of the Hungarian revolt was given passing mention by the Democrats, but only in areas with high concentrations of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Castro's rise to power was discussed in a partisan way. The sordid story of the State Department's direct responsibility for hiding the bearded dictator's communist affiliations, as disclosed by a Senate committee, was not mentioned.

A careful parsing of world events was absent because both political parties were intent on marketing their candidates rather than presenting a serious policy platform. The fact that the international communist conspiracy was threatening world peace, and threatening the freedoms of people in many nations, didn’t make for good advertising.

Nixon, as Ike’s VP, didn’t want to talk about any less-than-ideal outcomes which had emerged from the Eisenhower administration. Within the Republican Party, those intent on presenting a pleasant candidate urged those familiar with the global situation to be quiet, as John Stormer writes:

Richard Nixon was not likely to dredge up the record of failure and appeasement of the Administration of which he was part. Under pressures for "party unity" anticommunist Republicans remained silent.

In 1960, there was still a small embattled pro-freedom group within the Democratic Party. It echoed Truman’s sterner words — although Truman’s actions sometimes failed to live up to the sternness of his words — and hoped to speak for human rights and against communism. But the Democratic Party had lost its credibility to speak on the issue of world communism, because it had rallied around Alger Hiss, a known Soviet espionage agent who’d influenced policy decisions during the Roosevelt administration.

A party which supported Hiss, who’d let Stalin have his way at the Yalta Conference, couldn’t be taken seriously if it spoke out against the brutality of Soviet Socialist aggression. Neither party was willing to directly state the matter during the campaign, as John Stormer explains:

The few knowledgeable anti-communists in the Democratic Party were paralyzed by politics also. They knew that any loud voice raised against the dismal record of Modern Republicanism would have provoked only partisan replies, such as, “Well, we don’t have an Alger Hiss in our party.”

In a series of congressional hearings, William Wieland was exposed as having been instrumental in reducing American support for the people of Cuba and thereby helping Castro take power. William Wieland was a diplomat in the U.S. State Department. He, along with William Snow and Roy Rubottom, implemented a policy in which U.S. support for the Cuba people was reduced.

What did this have to do with the 1960 presidential campaign?

John Stormer refers to Wieland and his co-conspirators as “the William Wielands,” a somewhat awkward pluralizing of the name, but this blatant failure to oppose the international communist conspiracy should have been a topic in the 1960 campaign — yet it wasn’t:

Candidate John F. Kennedy didn't turn the spotlight on the tragic actions of the William Wielands in government. Instead, when Kennedy became President, William Wieland was promoted to the State Department committee charged with revising security procedures. As was noted in the opening chapter, President Kennedy denounced the woman reporter who described Wieland as a "security risk" during a televised press conference and questioned his appointment. Kennedy stated that Wieland's record, cleared by the State Department, qualified him for the highly sensitive post.

Historians have written in detail about the 1960 election: how it was a turning-point in the use of media in modern campaigning, how JFK’s youthful image shaped the public perception of the presidency, and how close the ballot counts were. But another aspect of the election was its failure to meaningfully acknowledge or address the threat which the Soviet Socialists and their global network posed.

The Ups and Downs of the Korean War — And of Matthew Ridgway’s Military Career

The Korean War, especially during its first year, was a series of dramatic changes of fortune. North Korea, officially titled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), began with a surprise attack in late June 1950. The North quickly moved to take over almost all of South Korea; only a small area in the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula remained undefeated by August of the year. In the quick invasion, almost all of South Korea, known as the Republic of Korea (ROK), was placed under the domination of the North. This fast attack had taken about a month.

Equally sudden was the reversal of this trend.

In September 1950, when the United Nations and the United States came to the ROK’s aid, a massive counterattack not only liberated the ROK’s entire area from North Korean invaders, but pushed into the DPRK until only a thin sliver of it remained under North Korean control at the beginning of November 1950.

Yet again the direction of the war’s momentum changed suddenly.

At the end of November, with the help of China and the Soviet Union, the DPRK pushed southward, eventually reclaiming all of the North Korean territory and advancing once again into the ROK. By January 1951, North Korea had established a front behind which lay not only all of its land, but approximately 25% of the ROK.

Counteractions by the ROK, the United Nations, and the United States in February, March, and April of 1951 pushed the front northward, back to the original 38th parallel border, and then further north. From May 1951 until the eventual Armistice in July 1953, there was little movement in the front.

With each swing of the pendulum — one side or the other gaining or losing a definitive upper hand — the command structures of the military operations on both sides merit attention.

When North Korea successfully advanced southward in December 1950, General Douglas MacArthur was the commander of the United Nations forces assisting the ROK. When the South was making its strong northward advance in the autumn of 1950, MacArthur had been optimistic, and believed that the ROK’s victory was inevitable. When Chinese and Soviet assistance enabled the DPRK to push the United Nations entirely out of North Korea, MacArthur reversed his mood, and saw the ground war as hopeless. He toyed with the idea that the only way to rescue the ROK was to use nuclear weapons. His flirtation with atomic war raised concerns among US and UN leadership. MacArthur also wanted to strike Northward beyond the DPRK’s borders, into China, another wildly unpopular idea.

Under MacArthur’s supervision, General Walton Walker had been commanding the Eighth US Army in Korea starting in July 1950. Walker died suddenly in December 1950 from non-combat injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. The new leader of the Eighth Army, still under MacArthur’s umbrella of UN command, was Matthew Ridgway.

Ridgway’s installation as leader of the Eighth Army marked — or caused — one of the war’s inflection points.

MacArthur expected that the combined ROK/UN/US forces would be able to use airpower to disrupt the DPRK’s supply lines. This did not happen, as Russell Weigley writes:

The battlefield was not sealed off from enemy reinforcement and supply as MacArthur had counted on, and large Chinese forces threw MacArthur’s troops into a retreat which did not halt until the armies were again south of the thirty-eighth parallel and the Commu­nists had again captured Seoul. In the face of this unanticipated disas­ter, MacArthur’s attitude changed abruptly from complacent opti­mism to the despairing belief that none of Korea could be saved unless the war were widened to include aerial attacks, employing the atomic bomb, against the sources of Chinese power and a naval blockade of China. Fortunately, a new commander of the Eighth Army under MacArthur, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, thought otherwise. Under Ridgway’s ubiquitous battlefield leadership the Eighth Army stiffened, recaptured Seoul, and slowly pushed the enemy northward toward the thirty-eighth parallel, while Mac­ Arthur’s excessive pessimism on the heels of his earlier excess of opti­mism set events in motion toward his recall from command.

Some historians attribute Ridgway’s ability to energize the Eighth United States Army in Korea (EUSAK) to his leadership style, as historian Victor Davis Hanson writes:

When Ridgway arrived at Korea, he quickly discovered, contrary to the general consensus, that an invincible Chinese enemy had not crushed the outnumbered and outgunned Americans led by the once brilliant Douglas MacArthur. The American army was not so much beaten militarily by Chinese and Korean forces, as poorly equipped for winter weather, panicked, terribly led in the field, and without confidence in the nature of its mission. Thus in less than 100 days, Ridgway went on to address those issues, and ended up back across the 38th Parallel, with the Chinese invaders as exhausted and over-extended as the Americans had been in the north during November 1950.

Ridway did what MacArthur thought to be impossible. EUSAK solidified its defense, and then switched to offense, working its way northward parallel to the X Corps, another US Army unit which was moving in the same direction. X Corps would eventually become part of EUSAK.

The rest of the United Nations Command (UNC) harmonized its efforts with EUSAK. The forces of fifteen or more nations joined the ROK against the DPRK. Together they had learned how the North Korean forces, as well as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), operated, and were more able to anticipate North Korea’s moves and weak spots.

Under Ridgway’s leadership, EUSAK effectively coordinated both with UNC and with X Corps. This resulted in battlefield successes, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Despite MacArthur’s dire predictions, EUSAK stabilized the front south of the 38th Parallel in January 1951 and even mounted limited counterattacks. Rebounding under the firm leadership of a new commander, General Matthew B. Ridgway, EUSAK pulled itself together. X Corps, fighting its way to the coast and evacuated by ship, returned to the front, and Ridgway soon commanded a true international army, with professional troops from the British Commonwealth, Turkey, Greece, Colombia, the Philippines, Ethiopia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Thailand. Harassed by UN air strikes, the PLA had increasing difficulty mounting sustained offensives, for it suffered serious supply shortages that its coolie-carrier logistics system could not meet. In addition, EUSAK soldiers now understood Chinese night attacks and mass-infiltration tactics and could defend against them in depth and with massive firepower. When the PLA launched its last grand offensive in April–May 1951, EUSAK fell back in good order, fighting hard, and halted the attack without the crisis of the preceding winter. EUSAK then counterattacked with deliberate advances and awesome artillery and air support, and the PLA began to fall apart, with Chinese soldiers surrendering by the thousands. Despite MacArthur’s pessimism, the soldiers of UNC had proved they could hold South Korea.

Ridgway orchestrated tactical and strategic successes while yet reporting to MacArthur. It was not until April 1951 that MacArthur would be relieved of command. Ridgway needed political instincts to survive under MacArthur, as historian Victor Davis Hanson explains, “Ridgway praised those whose ideas were ensuring defeat, even as” he “quietly proceeded to reject them.”

From mid 1951 onward, the war exhibited fewer dramatic swings. While the front was not entirely static, many books refer to the war from this point onward as a type of “stalemate.” Neither side made major advances or major retreats.

The strategy involved, in part but certainly not in whole, attrition. Resource management was crucial. For the DPRK, China, and the Soviet Socialists, this was the case because they were perpetually operating at the limit of their economic abilities to field armies. For the UN, the ROK, and the US, this was the case because they were simultaneously upholding their NATO obligations to provide a credible defense for Europe against the possibility of Soviet attack.

To reduce the US and UN commitment in Korea, and thereby free up troops for the defense of Europe, some American leaders wanted to help the ROK build up its own military. This is a foreshadowing of Nixon’s strategy of Vietnamization, but it worked better in Korea than in Vietnam. Ridgway was not enthusiastic about it, but it seems to have been effective in the long run.

It was, in part, an economic consideration which finally moved American leaders to embrace the strategy of helping the ROK to build up its own military defenses. Not only would it free up US troops to defend Europe, but it would reduce the financial cost of the Korean war. Eisenhower’s campaign pledge to end the Korean war was fueled not only by a desire for peace, but rather also by a desire to lower the expense of defending South Korea, as William Donnelly writes:

Eighth Army also sought to conserve American manpower by expanding the ROK Army. During 1952, General Van Fleet pressed repeatedly for the United States to support an expansion of the ROK Army from ten to twenty divisions. Initially, Washington and General Matthew B. Ridgway, Commander-in-Chief, Far East Command, rejected these proposals. They believed that supporting such an expansion would consume resources in short supply, such as artillery weapons and ammunition, needed to support the defense of Europe and maintain a strategic reserve. They also argued, pointing to the collapse of several ROK divisions during the Chinese spring 1951 offensives, that the ROK Army’s professional competence and leadership were too immature to support such an expansion. General Van Fleet’s proposals had more success after Mark Clark replaced Ridgway in May 1952. Clark strongly supported expanding the ROK Army, and this support together with several other developments led to a reversal in American policy. Objections on the grounds of the ROK Army’s competence lessened after the performance of ROK units during several successful hard-fought outpost battles in the autumn of 1952. The South Korean government maintained a high level of conscription, which together with casualty rates lower than those of the war’s first year, led to a growing overstrength in existing ROK units that could be tapped to form new divisions. Finally, American leaders wished to end what they saw as an expensive commitment to a secondary area; building up the ROK Army would allow the redeployment of American units. The authorized size of the ROK Army increased to twelve divisions in October 1952, to fourteen in January 1953, and to twenty in May 1953. This change in policy did not lead to a reduction in the number of American divisions in Korea before the armistice because of the time required to form new ROK units and because of lingering doubts about the ROK Army’s competence. From December 1952 to the end of the war, an average of ten ROK divisions were on Eighth Army’s front line; this allowed Eighth Army to keep more of its American infantry in reserve and thus lower the American casualty rate.

In hindsight, the move to help the ROK build up its own defensive forces, and thereby reduce US involvement in Korea, seems to be, if not the right thing to do, at least the necessary thing to do. Ridgway, who’d so brilliantly rejuvenated the EUSAK, opposed it. Why? “Ridgway was not an easy figure to know, or at times, even to be around,” as Victor Davis Hanson explains. Ridgway might have been a genius, but he wasn’t perfect, and he was sometimes inscrutable.

Ridgway bestowed benefits on the EUSAK which outlasted his command. At a moment in history when MacArthur’s pessimism might have become contagious, “Ridgway going on the offensive in Korea,” as Hanson puts it, might not only have saved the day, but saved many days thereafter, creating a psychological momentum and a positive self-concept for the EUSAK.

One of Ridgway’s uplifting tactics was to frequently visit the front lines, and when doing so, to be in the situation of his men, not above them, as Hanson explains:

Ridgway, with live grenade[s] and medical pack hung on his chest, appeared indistinguishable from a sergeant.

One factor which affected the EUSAK’s effectiveness was the frequency and patterns with which individual soldiers were “rotated” out of combat units. A high turnover rate among soldiers in a frontline unit reduces that unit’s cohesion.

The Army Field Forces (AFF) was responsible for training soldiers and providing them to commanders. Korea was one of several destinations for the troops which the AFF supplied. The AFF has since been reorganized and renamed several times; it is currently known as United States Army Forces Command (FORSCOM). Officers from the AFF needed to see Korea in person and learn about conditions there, given that Korea was the destination for many of the soldiers whom they were training.

Not only the rotation of individuals or entire units, but rather also a general manpower shortage, disrupted effectiveness. General James Van Fleet succeeded Ridgway as commander of both the EUSAK and the UNC. Van Fleet contemplated various actions to mitigate the manpower shortage, including experiments with placing ROK soldiers into EUSAK units to bring those units up to strength.

The disadvantages of individual rotation were clear. On the other hand, rotating entire units in and out of combat zones also has disadvantages. American military leaders faced this dilemma, and as they did so, their hands were sometimes forced by domestic politics — especially budget-related considerations — back in the United States, as William Donnelly writes:

In Korea, commanders at the regimental level and above reported that their units often could not maintain the proper level of proficiency. An AFF inspection team in autumn 1952 listed the major problems as “fast rotation, lack of trained officers and non-commissioned officers, lack of continuity of knowledge, with the ensuing lack of team spirit.” General Van Fleet agreed, writing, “it is a damn hard job to keep an army ever fit, ready, and eager to fight — especially when they go home faster than we can train them. It is a real challenge to every commander in Korea,” and “[W]e simply don’t have the leaders and the skills in the lower grades, or sufficient hard combat to produce an outfit fully combat effective.” Some senior officers in Korea argued that the answer to this problem was to change from individual to unit rotation, but the 1,552,000 limit on the Army’s authorized active strength left the service unable to either build new units or mobilize Guard units to support a unit rotation system. (Other senior officers, most notably General Ridgway, opposed unit rotation, arguing that infusing individual replacements into units better maintained Eighth Army’s combat effectiveness than swapping those units for green units.)

After Ridgway left Korea, he was appointed in May 1952 to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) for NATO. His work in this role was generally praised; he took NATO from an idea to a physical reality.

In May 1953, Eisenhower appointed Ridgway to be Chief of Staff of the United States Army (CSA). While this was a promotion and an honor, it brought Ridgway into some tense political conflicts. A complex constellation of civilian politicians and military officers discussed various potential courses of action regarding the situation in Vietnam. There were also decisions made about the size of the Army, decisions based on strategic doctrines about the need for substantial ground forces in the era of nuclear weapons. Ridgway at times criticized Eisenhower. He retired from his role as CSA and from the US Army in June 1955.

The last two years of his career were not pleasant ones, as Victor Davis Hanson writes:

National laurels and a quiet retirement did not meet a triumphant Matthew Ridgway when he returned from Asia. A forced retirement and endless controversies instead marked the next four decades of Ridgway’s long life.

After retirement, Ridgway was active, writing articles and advising presidents. He was part of a group which advised President Johnson on Vietnam. Johnson did not always follow the counsel of the group. Ridgway later worked with President Reagan.

Neither the Korean War nor Ridgway’s military career followed a straight trajectory. The vagaries of both were dramatic.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 3

In the United States, people born into poverty don’t simply have a chance to rise; they actually do rise. Not only do they have opportunities, but they act on those opportunities.

Income can be measured in a variety of ways. One of them is by dividing the population into quintiles. The top fifth is the 20% of people who have the highest income; while the lowest fifth is the bottom 20%. But each method of calculating income has strengths and weaknesses. “Income” is different from “consumption,” and the latter is a more accurate measure of a person’s experienced standard of living.

Remaining in a quintile, rather than rising to the next fifth, doesn’t translate into stagnation, because all quintiles enjoy improving standards of living.

The result is social mobility: The United States is a place where people can rise. In a January 2023 article, co-authors Phil Gramm and John Early explain:

Measured by inflation-adjusted household income, 93% of children who grew up the bottom income quintile were better off than their parents. Of children in the middle three-fifths, 86% grew up to live in families with higher incomes than their parents. Even among those in the top income quintile, 70% were better off.

This upward mobility across all income classifications was possible because of the growth of the American economy. Over the 35 years of the study, real median family income rose by 89%. This American cornucopia was spread across the entire income distribution — with the exception of the prime work-age adults in the bottom quintile who dropped out of the workforce as government transfer payments exploded beginning in the mid-1960s. They benefited from the growth in transfer payments.

Together with John Ekelund, the two authors of this article wrote a book explaining in greater detail their findings: that most Americans experience material improvement during their lives.

Mathematics and economics can explain some of this: as the overall standard of living rises, individuals find that their circumstances improve not only because their income has increased, but also because features of daily life like microwaves and smartphones have become assumed to be part of even the most humble life.

Without accounting for this overall income growth, three independent research efforts have measured relative mobility — the extent to which children reared in families in one income quintile stayed in the same income quintile, rose to a higher quintile, or fell to a lower quintile. The first, an extension of the Pew Charitable Trusts study cited above, looked at parental income from 1967-71, when the children were younger than 18, and 2000-08 when the children were 32 to 58.

The second study, by Raj Chetty of Harvard, looked at parental income from 1996-2000, when children were 15 to 20, and adult children’s income in 2011-12, when the children were in their early 30s. The final study, by Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, compared the income of children who were in their 40s in 2013-17 with that of their parents in their 40s.

Another bit of calculation explains America’s ability to lift people out of poverty: it’s important to distinguish between ‘earned income’ and ‘total consumption’ — as various goods and services are provided by the government, an individual doesn’t need a paycheck to obtain them.

Many states now offer free classes at community colleges: something for which people formerly had to pay. Likewise, senior citizens can receive various services for free, or for a reduced price, like bus fares, healthcare services, or access to physical exercise facilities.

Phil Gramm and John Early continue:

The findings of these three studies covering the past half-century were extraordinarily similar.

Several factors can hide the statistical improvement which people in the U.S. are enjoying: The changing and rising definitions of ‘poverty’ and the distinction between ‘earned income’ and ‘total consumption’ conceal the fact that, even for an individual who remains in quintile into which she or he was born, the standard of living rises significantly over a lifetime.

The share of adult children who grow up to live in a household in the same income quintile as their parents is surprisingly small. The chart shows that for the middle three quintiles, only 22.6% to 24.4% of children remain in their parents’ quintile — barely more than the 20% that would result if income quintiles were assigned at random. On average, 39% of those children as adults rose to a higher quintile.

The result of these opportunities is that the majority of Americans experience an increase in the standard of living during their lives, and enjoy a higher standard of living than their parents did.

Of children reared in the top quintile, 62% fell to one of the lower quintiles, including more than 9% to the bottom quintile. A significant number of the children reared in the top quintile who stayed in the top quintile as adults had incomes far greater than their parents, but statistically they could not rise out of the top quintile.

With few advantages and often trapped in failing public schools, 63% of children who grew up in bottom quintile families rose to a higher quintile, 6.1% rising all the way to the top quintile.

To be sure, social mobility includes the opportunity to move down as well as up. Children born into the very highest levels of income can, and sometimes do, end up with a lower standard of living than their parents. The children of multi-billionaires may well end up with fewer billions than their parents.

Downward mobility can be the result of deliberate choice: the child of a successful lawyer may simply want to be the curator of a museum, an instructor at a college, or a teacher. Downward mobility can also be the result of bad choices, or of unforeseeable tragic accidents.

These studies measure relative mobility by comparing the children’s income quintile then and now. Relative mobility is a zero-sum game — by definition, 20% of households are in the lowest quintile and only 20% in the highest — but income growth isn’t. The vast majority of adult children had higher real incomes than their parents. To rise out of the bottom quintile, children’s inflation-adjusted income had to increase by more than the growth of the income ceiling for the bottom quintile during the years between generations — 35% in Mr. Strain’s study. Children reared in any other quintile had to see their real income as adults rise on average by roughly 50% above their parents’ income simply to avoid falling into a lower quintile than their parents. The climb to a higher quintile is steeper still.

Fortunately, data from the Strain study can be used to measure mobility in a way that takes into account the extraordinary income growth in America between the parents’ generation and the adult children’s generation. When the income of the children is compared with the inflation-adjusted income of their parents using the real income quintiles of their childhood in 1982-86 rather than the income quintiles of 2013-17, measured mobility is dramatically greater. Only 28% of children reared in the bottom quintile had adult incomes that would put them in the bottom childhood quintile, and 26% rose all the way to the childhood top quintile, which required a minimum income of only $111,416 (in 2016 dollars) for a family of four in 1982-86. A family of four with that income in 2013-17 would have been in the middle quintile based on 2013-17 income distribution.

During the 35 years of the study, adult children who worked rode up the American economic escalator as average incomes rose dramatically. Those who climbed as the escalator rose moved up faster. Those who stood still or stumbled down rose more slowly, and those who stayed off the escalator by not working missed the ride. The mobility studies shown in the chart capture the effect of climbing, stumbling and choosing not to ride, but they miss the escalator effect, which came from the growth of the American economy. Many of today’s middle-income adults have a real standard of living that would have put them in the top quintile in their parents’ era.

This incredible income mobility is measured only over one generation. Parents struggle and sacrifice to provide their children with education and opportunities they themselves lacked. Millions of parents have lived out their dreams through the achievements of their children, generation after generation. As a result, America’s real mobility is most visible over multiple generations.

“The American Dream is of individual upward mobility,” Phil Gramm and John Early conclude: “Upward mobility is alive and well in America,” and “the vast majority of adults have higher income than their parents did.”

A younger person who immigrates into the United States, or a young person born in the United States, has exceptionally good opportunities to rise socially and economically.