January Legs

I have them, this was confirmed last Saturday on the first team ride of the year. Last year I logged 6452 miles, but about half of those were from the 87 times I did the out-and-back to work in Amsterdam (32, 34, or 36 miles, depending on the route). So I resolved to do more team rides this year, because riding with the Eendracht guys (hard men all, and one woman; I now wear the jersey) makes you better. I need to get better. Amid the awful winter weather we've had since early December I've tried to keep things going, but a telling statistic is that since December 1 I've only ridden the bike to my Amsterdam office once. Last Sunday my riding partner was able to hurt me a little (while being twelve or thirteen years older). I had been out on Saturday also, and he had not, but I think it is a sign that I don't have endurance, and I don't have high end. All that was confirmed on Saturday, when twelve of us went out on a beautiful winter day. Sunny, dry, a light breeze, and temperatures just above freezing. The first half was with a tailwind, to the town of Woerden, but from there it was into this chilly wind to get home. Having just taken a pull on the curvy little road along the Meije river I let myself drift to the back of the group when a strong guy got to the front and gaps started to open up ahead of me. So I tried to bridge up, but stranded at about 30 meters from the little group that, without really aiming to do so, had separated itself from the rest. In the summer, you just buckle down and sprint across the gap, before it becomes a real separation. This past weekend, I really wanted to do this but just did have it in me. Maybe the pull I had just taken had something to do with it, but I don't think there's a sprint in me right now regardless. I'm still speedskating, and this does impact what you can do on the bike (the infamous "skating legs" that prevent you from spinning easily--or pushing significant gears), but the legs actually moved pretty well the first hour on Saturday. January legs, in other words. The only good thing about them is that if you have them in January, there's still plenty of time to improve. I'm riding to work tomorrow.

Historian on TV

That would be me. Not really tv, just a clip on the web from last Tuesday's History orientation for high school students. We run a class and discussion the way we would for our own students, so that prospective students can get an idea of what it would be like to study with us. I did my current research topic--the Dutch role in NATO's 1979 Dual-track decision on intermediate nuclear weapons--also because it provided an opportunity to draw parallels (and identify differences) with today's debate over a new Dutch mission to Afghanistan (more about that soon). It's all in Dutch, but you can just feel the excitement.

Obama and America at the Crossroads

This may be the common subject of recent pieces--in very different venues--by my colleague Artemy Kalinovsky and me. In an original, and somewhat ominous, discussion for the Foreign Affairs website, Artemy compares Obama, not to one of his U.S. predecessors, but to the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It's an interesting piece and you should read it yourself. The ominous part is where Obama's political style looks similar to that of Gorbachev, that is, usually trying to find a middle way, looking to reconcile opposing positions. Sticking with what historians now also call this indecisiveness cost Gorbachev support, and ultimately it played a big part in his undoing. Artemy believes that Obama can still avoid this fate, arguing the president should probably make some choices soon. In a short piece for the Leeuwarder Courant last Saturday (it's not on the website) I asked if the political debate was likely to become more civil and perhaps lead to a more productive policy process in Washington as a result of the Arizona shooting. I wrote it prior to the president's speech (go here for a lively exchange I had with a friend who, unlike me, does not believe it was beneficial), but I don't think that speech changed (could have changed) the main reasons why the debate is likely to remain deeply ideological and therefore an obstacle to pragmatic politics. Relative U.S. decline is one of these reasons. It is manifested for example in unemployment, national debt, and budget figures, it is real, and it's unprecedented in U.S. history. It's also profoundly un-American in the sense that throughout their existence Americans have become used to--indeed, have seen their national identity defined by--growing opportunity. There were usually enough concrete examples to keep alive the national myths of individual and national opportunity and growth, in spite of eras like the Great Depression, in spite of many stories of personal failure. But in the last couple of years, something seems to have changed. Anxieties about the rise of China is only one, although an important, example of how many Americans seem to understand this. Herein lies a source for the anger, because the change is profoundly unsettling to many Americans. Worries about finding, or holding on to, work are connected to the unsettling realization that things may never be what they used to be. This is more about (national) psychology than about what are still very real day-to-day economic realities. I don't think this relative decline of U.S. financial, economic, and political power in the world is irreversible, but it's real nonetheless and it will go on for a while. At the very least, the country will have to continue a long adjustment after long years of excess, of living beyond its means collectively and often individually. Think of what it's going to take in real pain for real people to get state budgets in order, of the kinds of adjustments envisioned to regain control of the federal government's finances. Depending on where they stand politically, Americans are going to argue passionately over that (they're already doing that), but what will add to the fire is the underlying fear that the old myths no longer hold, that something fundamentally has changed and that someone--the other side--is to blame for this. Much of America's relative decline is indeed the result of its own actions. Most are complicit, either because they actively and consciously acted in ways they knew were not sustainable (ways, at least, not in the general interest), or through willful ignorance. But few are willing yet to acknowledge they may have played a part. The good news is that because the problems are mostly of America's (and Americans') own making, they can also be addressed by things Americans do individually and through their common institutions. The bad news, and the reason why Americans will likely continue to vilify each other, is that until enough people take responsibility, the problems will continue to grow. More people seem to be taking a more pragmatic, and humble, view, but I don't think we've reached a threshold yet. Meanwhile, the presidential primary season is just around the corner. Leadership can make a difference in all this. For all his alleged faults, I think that the kind of vision for the nation's politics that the president has put forward is an excellent place to start. We shall see if in the upcoming State of the Union he will be equally compelling on policy. But leadership can only get you so far. Ultimately Americans themselves (Goldman Sachs very much included) will have take responsibility to stop the bleeding and to infuse the old American myths with new meaning.

Peter Post, R.I.P.

One of the great in post-World War II cycling, Peter Post of Amsterdam, died yesterday at the age of 77. Most people may remember him as the creator and leader of the innovative and dominant TI-Raleigh and Panasonic teams of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, but he was a very good cyclist during a sixteen-year (1956-1972) career on the road and, especially, the track. Thanks to an enormous desire always to win--and a big, powerful physique--he was victorious in no fewer than 65 Six-Day track events. He probably would have won more had a crash in 1972 not put an abrupt end to his career. On the road, his biggest win came in 1964, when he won Paris-Roubaix, averaging 45.129 k/h, which is still the record. (In comparison, last year's winner Fabian Cancellara averaged 39.2 k/h). I mostly followed Post in his capacity of TI-Raleigh team director. (Although I was also excited when, for my 9th or 10th birthday party in 1969 or '70, my dad took my friends and me to the bowling alley Post owned for a while in the Amsterdam suburb of Amstelveen. I remember looking for Post, but have no memory if he was actually there during our visit.) Built around classics specialist Jan Raas, classics threat and time-trialist Gerrie Knetemann, and a cast of supporters capable of winning big races themselves, the team seemed to win at will in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One obituary today claims a total of 1000 victories for the team from 1974 to 1983. Occasionally, they'd also have strong contenders for victories in major stage races, as in 1980 when Joop Zoetemelk (five times runner-up before joining Post's squad) won the Tour de France. In that Tour, the team won no fewer than eleven stages. For years, Post's teams were virtually unbeatable in team time trials, and it was there the "Post formula" was perhaps the most in evidence. Not only was Post a real taskmaster, more than anyone at the time or before he was a team builder, warning riders that their individual interests were subordinate to those of the team (and the sponsor), that the goal for the team always was to win, and that there was nobody, no other team, that could--had a right to--consider themselves equals. This made him an innovator and it has become a central part of his legacy. No small part of the Post formula was about attitude. Riders also had to look good, on the bike and off, because that too was part of being a representative of the team and its sponsors. Post himself always dressed very well--not that he needed it to be noted or respected (his calm but compelling personality took care of that), but it nonetheless became part of his aura. Riders might complain at times about his hard hand, but usually you'd hear how well everything was organized, how well riders were supported if they did their part, the formula so obviously working. The rider who arguably was his most successful, Raas, also gave him the most problems, eventually in 1983 leaving the team to start his own, taking half of Post's riders with him. The two men probably were too much alike, and two of these strong personalities in one team proved to be unsustainable in the long run. Post had a very good second run with his new sponsor, Panasonic, this time primarily with non-Dutch aces such as Eddy Plankaert, Eric Vanderaerden, Phil Anderson, and Viacheslav Ekimov. During the early 1990s he himself began to indicate that professional cycling was developing beyond what his formula would accommodate. At least, I remember a comment about riders' tendency (pioneered by Francesco Moser) to work closely with doctors in a scientific approach to training and racing. Post was skeptical, if not dismissive, and pulled out his much quoted admonishment: riders should "just go" ("rije!"). Don't sit on a trainer with a tube attached to your mouth and sensors taped to your chest, just go out early (Post sometimes would call his riders at 8:30 in the morning to see if they were still at home, instead of out training) and log five, six, or seven hours among the elements. Whether he knew the new medical/scientific era was one in which things like EPO played such a big role (he most probably did--in 1965 he had quite openly declared that he could not do all the racing he did if he didn't take a little doping every now and then; probably amfetamines), by the mid-'90s it had become time to retire. I'll always cherish the memories of the TI-Raleigh years, when the victories just kept on coming, and as a rider I continue to draw motivation from that essential admonition: just cut the bs and go, "rije!"

Afghanistan, again

Have to resume, even if it's hastily. Afghanistan is what it is: we, the West, are there, it's important, and it's not entirely hopeless (at least, that's one way in which one could read Ahmed Rashid's recent article in the New York Review of Books). But we're there, have been there for years, and thereby have made it our problem, if it wasn't that before. Problem is, the public in the West is less and less committed, less and less interested. The new Dutch government last week announced its intention to send 300-some police trainers to the Northern part of the country, supported by several hundred military, as protection. In doing so, it took up an idea, expressed in a proposal passed by parliament last spring, by the Green party and the centrist D'66. These two parties are now on the spot, because due to the rejectionist stance by the Geert Wilders party, the PVV, the two governing parties (Christian Democrats--CDA, and conservatives--VVD) do not have a majority in parliament. The PVV has agreed to support the government, but without joining it, thereby keeping its hands free. The opposition Social Democrats (PvdA), who last winter brought down the old government over the question of a possible extension of the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, have already found a reason to keep looking away from the uncomfortable reality of our, the West's, long-standing involvement, our interests, and our responsibility toward the region, and have stated they will not support this new mission. Politically, it's very safe, because a new opinion poll shows that more than 70% of the Dutch electorate is against the new mission too, and parties (PVV, PvdA, and the Socialists--SP) that oppose it are making gains among the voters. So the easy and politically expedient position would be to say no. There are forces in the Green party (a merger of, among others, the old pacifist socialists and the communists) arguing against last spring's initiative by its parliamentarians, and all opponents have an easy time pointing to the difficulties and the long odds, because there are many. But that's not really the point. The point is that "Afghanistan," of "AfPak," is there, and that we're part of it. Have been, at a great cost to ourselves and others. We can't just throw up our hands and walk away (the implied alternative of the rejectionists), and as much as many among the public apparently would like, we can't just look away. We can't stay forever either, and we can't "fix" it. But there's a strategy to make it a little better (see the Rashid piece, which is all about a feasible exit-strategy) and it deserves a chance. Will the Greens and D'66 come through? It is a tough call, and it would be unpopular. But for the reasons stated here, and others, it would be the right thing to do.