Don't have a head for it now

For blogging, that is. Probably too many other things on my mind to have things to say. But I'll probably be back.

A Small Selection of Familiar Faces on the Coffee Ride

It probably was too mild. I certainly wasn't wearing my balaclava, and one pair of gloves was also plenty. So the old guy with his wife (I assume it's his wife, although she could be his sister too; he doesn't strike me as the type to have a mistress) on the tandem wasn't out to stare at me. Just when I had decided to wave and say hello he doesn't show up. Regulars we did see were Gert and Roelie de Groot of Westbroek, cousins of my dad's. They were out for a ride again, and this time I yelled out their name, and mine, as I passed them. (So maybe they'll call my mom today, to ask what that was about). They're in their eighties, but tough, and used to being outside. It was a very nice day. Hardly any wind at all, 2 degrees C in Loosdrecht, 4 in Maartensdijk (6 on the way home, there). I left a little late and decided to make up the time by going above the required 17,2 m/h average that gets you to the Vuursche Boer in an hour. I did something between 18.4 and 19 (just under 30 k/h, and 56 minutes of riding), which really caused me to break the no-sweating Coffee Ride rule. This ride out was a little workout, in other words. But it was a very fine morning, and the Utrecht delegation--now regularly adding a few miles to its ride in--agreed that riding the road bike on a calm day like today is a wonderful feeling. Needless to say, the ride home--Maartensdijk, Westbroek, Polder Bethune, Vecht river South to Utrecht, North to Nederhorst den Berg--only extended the pleasure. If the weather keeps improving like this, pretty soon that word, pleasure, won't come into it any more. Instead, it will be about pain again. And coffee stops? As my cycling mentor, Thijs, says: you can get coffee at home.

Shorts, Smiles, and Stares on the Coffee Ride

The shorts definitely weren't mine. It was just below freezing when I left the house this morning, although also calm and sunny. Riding out of town was plain easy, except that you had to watch for icy spots. After a week of commuting it's nice anyway to feel a lighter bike underneath you and nothing on your back. There was a beautiful, but undoubtedly very thin layer of ice on the Hilversums Kanaal. It doesn't look as if it will get a chance to grow. Then riding through Loosdrecht I had to do a double-take, because wasn't that a guy in shorts, passing on the other side of the road? It was. He was on a racing bike, but in spite of his cycling shorts didn't look like a regular cyclist. There is, of course, nothing regular about riding in shorts on a morning like this. Riding by the Loosdrecht temperature gauge a minute later, it was exactly at the freezing mark. But maybe I'm the weirdo (with booties over my winter shoes, double lobster gloves, insulated tights, and a balaclava), because on the way home, there he was again: the old guy with his wife on the tandem, wearing no hat or anything. I was running a little early, and they may have been a little late, so I didn't run into them until just before Nieuwersluis. But it was exactly as the previous times, in spite of the fact that I had decided beforehand that I'd crack a big smile if I saw him again. And I swear to God, he not only looked at me funny again--as if I was some creature from another planet--but as I smiled at him, he turned his head to watch me ride by, never changing his, shall I say, critical expression. Will he stop looking once I don't wear the balaclava any more? Should I greet him, for example by saying: pretty cold, huh? I have a whole week to think about it. He has definitely gotten into my head, probably just by being his own Dutch self.

Grind Week

Last week wasn't so good for doing the hour-long one way to Amsterdam (and a return trip at the end of the day), and this week wasn't a whole lot better, except that this week I went in four days in a row. I wasn't under the weather any more, and that's probably the main difference. The week really started with my return to the Whisper Power Sunday ride. The guys and I figured out that we had not wished each other a happy new year yet. We did our usual loop through the woods to Lage Vuursche (Saturday coffee ride there had been canceled due to rain), and back by way of Loosdrecht and the Alambertskade. I felt iffy and only really took one pull all day. Then for various reasons I saw no reason not to ride to Amsterdam on the next four days. I probably should have detected a reason on Tuesday, because I did check the radar that morning. It looked pretty good, much better than I had expected based on the forecast. Large areas of no rain over the middle of the country, and looking out the window it looked safe as well. But half-way, near Weesp, I rode into some light rain, and it didn't let up until I reached my building on the Singel gracht. Checking the radar again in my office, it was clear I had missed some small areas of showers positioned exactly over the Amsterdam area. I wear good winter stuff (eight winters as a cyclist in Milwaukee) so really didn't suffer much. Yesterday and this morning, however, I began to feel my legs. The wind wasn't too favorable either. It felt a little as if something was rubbing against my wheels. It really did take some work, although a couple of cool ships on the Amsterdam Rijnkanaal always helps to raise one's spirits. And both days ended well--yesterday with one of the better tailwinds I've had so far, today with calm, clear and not yet too cold early evening weather. And now I'm done--I'm taking the (riding) day off tomorrow and look forward to it.

Russia and its Sphere of Influence

As Glenn commented, much of the trouble with Putin's Russia is that it wants the Soviet Union's sphere of influence back. The first problem with that concept was that the reach of that sphere was open-ended. Every part of the world potentially belonged. Another problem was that it wasn't so nice to live under Moscow's influence because you couldn't really make your own decisions. This is why after the Cold War countries like the Czech Republic asked to join that other sphere (some, in a simplification, would call it the U.S. sphere of influence)--NATO, the EU. The "West" doesn't explicitly seek to threaten Putin's Russia, but by virtue of what it is, and by virtue of what Putin's Russia has become, it does. Do we care? Or rather: which do we care about more, Putin's bullying antics, or the right of independent nations such as the Czech Republic or Ukraine to choose their own internationial allegiances? As an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal points out, giving in to Putin on missile defense in Europe (aimed against Iran, remember, not Russia) would go some way toward reintroducing Moscow's influence in Eastern and Central Europe. It would also abandon new, vulnerable allies who have taken political risks believing we'd stand by them. I'm not saying we should move to a mindless, reflexive policy of confrontation with Russia, but at the same time, we can't allow ourselves to be blackmailed either.

Putin and his Phony Everything

A nice way to put it by Arnout Brouwers in today's Volkskrant: in its relations with the West, Putin's Russia raises phony issues (the envisioned anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic--aimed against Iran, powerless against Russia's missiles-- if it will ever work), threatens phony retaliation (missiles to the Kaliningrad enclave), and then may also offer phony concessions (maybe not station these missiles). Meanwhile, the West is going through all kinds of contortions, agonizing over how it can avoid antagonizing Russia. Meanwhile also, Moscow keeps reinforcing its new bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Same, one could say, in Central Asia: on the one hand, Moscow is willing to "help" the U.S. find access to Afghanistan outside of Pakistan, on the other, it undermines the U.S. position in Kyrghizstan by offering the government there a loan on the condition that it sends the U.S. packing from the Manas airbase (used, you guessed it, to supply NATO troops in Afghanistan). Manipulative, bullying, fundamentally untrustworthy: it doesn't appear that being hit by economic trouble, low oil prices, and domestic protests has made Don Putin any less ornery. Same for Western efforts to reason with him. We really should start witholding things he really needs, like Western investments, Western expertise, and Western oil and gas purchases. I'm turning down the heat, put on a sweater, and will ride my bike to work again tomorrow.

Iran and the Cold War

For a long time I've wondered if the Cold War experience with detente (states with competing political systems managing to do mutually beneficial deals in some limited areas) could help us think about the Western relationship with Iran. For example, would it be possible to live with a nuclear theocratic Iran (it's not as if the alternatives are so appealing, after all)? Today, Roger Cohen, writing from Teheran, suggests Cold War history may also help us think about Iran's domestic development. The system isn't working, pressure for reform is rising now that oil prices are down--the question is, will it be Deng Xiao Ping or Gorbachev style? Will the current regime manage to open things up a little while surviving in power, or will there be a reform process that leads to the collapse of the Islamic state? Cohen suggests the U.S. has a vital role to play as Iran decides what to do during its upcoming presidential election: if Washington acts in a threatening way, chances for meaningful reform (and presumably a less aggressive Iranian foreign policy) go down, and vice versa. Cohen is over there, talking to Iranians, so obviously he's looking in the right places for answers to these questions. But I have to think of yet another Cold War experience, one we should guard against, namely believing that the way countries around the world behave depends to a large extent on what the U.S. does.

Back on the Road

First ride into town this week today; first ride anywhere since Saturday. It felt good to ride, even though it was damp and chilly. But it was nice to be outside. There's still ice in the small canals. This morning near Diemen, I saw a cat walk on it. It's not much to report, but as I said, it was nice to be out on the bike again. Count your blessings.

Slump Week

They come along, every now and then. But they're exceptions (fortunately) and therefore usually unsettling. I caught a cold last Thursday, dressing up, but not warmly enough, for the funeral of my friend Piet, and probably made it worse the following day in Amsterdam. On Saturday, there was the beginning of something raspy in my throat, and Sunday I plainly didn't feel good. Stayed in also on Monday, and yesterday decided to take the bus and train to the city, just to be on the safe side. This morning there was some snow on the ground, which means that on my out-of-the-way bike route into town you will likely run into slick spots. I actually changed into my cycling kit and walked out the the door, ready to ride in anyway. But an up-close look at the pavement on the square in front of our house quickly elicited an "I don't need this." Back into the house; change into street clothes; wait for the bus--again. The fourth day in a row of idleness. The streak had better end soon.

Trouble with the U.S. Foreign Relations Record Also

It's not just in Russia that historians run into difficulties when they try to promote the timely release of key archival documents related to foreign policy. There is also big trouble at the State Department's Office of the Historian, responsible for the magnificent series Foreign Relations of the United States, the official record of U.S. foreign relations since 1861. My friend and colleague Doug Selvage has written a column on this for the History News Network, which gives a pretty good view of the situation. He could have gone even further, as recent New Yorker piece did, and simply put the problem squarely at the feet of the Office's head, Marc Susser. (Doug is correct, of course, to argue that the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, now has an opportunity--and an obligation, one could add--to begin fixing this). I only know of the situation through newspaper articles, but the attrition numbers seem to speak for themselves: something's wrong at the top there.

Putin's Russia: It's like the 1970s

The other day I finally got around to reading Martin Walker's review of Jonathan Brent's new book. It is a memoir of his work the past fifteen-plus years on Yale's excellent series Annals of Communism, volumes on Soviet history usually co-written by Russian and Western scholars and containing a significant number of newly released Soviet archival documents in English translation. Discussing the difficulties Russian archivists face in their work today, the review contains an interesting passage about today's Russia:

He [Brent] relates one haunting anecdote of a respected and elderly historian who just two years ago published a straightforward study that included the historically true statement that Red Army troops had occupied Lithuania even before Hitler’s invasion of 1941. Officially ­threatened with the loss of his apartment and pension, and retaliation against his daughter’s career if he dared repeat such allegations, he tells Brent: “It is a return to the 1970s. There is nothing to do about it.” That is a telling point. Russia is not going back to the Terror of the 1930s or to the gulag, but to a softer and greedier form of power that has echoes of Leonid Brezhnev’s years and of prerevolutionary czarism.

During the 1970s, just like today (or until very recently), one could still believe that thanks to high oil prices the Kremlin would be able to buy domestic peace without having to contemplate serious reform. Also during the 1970s, the Soviet leadership was willing to do deals with the West on the basis of equality and without interference in each other's domestic affairs, just like today. There are many differences between the '70s and today, but I had not considered the analogy, and it's an interesting one. The same goes for the reference to "prerevolutionary czarism," a nod to those (historians, for example) who believe that long, historical traditions are as important for an understanding of current affairs as all that's supposedly new.