Clarity, Donald Trump, and ‘Three Days of the Condor’

Read Time:5 Minute, 29 Second

by Burr Deming

The incident still seems emblematic. We watched televised replays of our President as the rest of the world saw him in Brussels on May 25, 2017. The Prime Minister of Montenegro was engaged in casual conversation. President Trump approached from behind, found his way blocked, and vigorously pushed aside the Prime Minister in order to stand ahead of him.

The image of the President of the United States tugging on his lapels in self-congratulation has been reinforced by one public incident after another.

It wasn’t always that way. There was a time many of those countries stood shoulder to shoulder with us.

At CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, a statue of William J. Donovan stands watch next to a memorial dedicated to the Office of Strategic Services. General Donovan started the OSS as a unified intelligence agency working against the Nazis in World War II. Spies working behind enemy lines were unspoken heroes. Behind the memorial, a single star honors those who died.

The Robert Redford film Three Days of the Condor has a small bit of dialogue that includes a nonsense line. At least I thought it was nonsense at the time.

Cliff Robertson, as a CIA official, asks John Houseman a simple question about those old days, the dangerous days of the wartime OSS. Rather than answering directly, Houseman waxes poetic.

You served with Colonel Donovan in the OSS, didn’t you, sir?

I sailed the Adriatic with a movie star at the helm.

The Robertson character pursues it a little.

Do you miss that kind of action, sir?

No.

I miss that kind of clarity.

The film was made in 1975. It was decades later that I learned the “movie star at the helm” line was dedicated to an actual person. Sterling Hayden was just starting out as a rising movie star when World War II broke out. He joined the army but was discharged with a broken ankle. He kept re-enlisting until he ended up as a spy in the OSS, delivering supplies to partisans behind enemy lines. He was decorated for his courage in “hazardous sea voyages in enemy-infested waters and reconnaissance through enemy-held areas.”

In the film, the CIA is portrayed as all about contingency plans.

We play games.

What if? How many men? What would it take?

Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime?

That’s what we’re paid to do.

Cliff Robertson tries to justify it to a skeptical Robert Redford. The Redford character isn’t buying it.

Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?

No. It’s simple economics.

Today it’s oil, right? In 10 or 15 years– food, plutonium, and maybe even sooner.

Now, what do you think the people are going to want us to do then?

Ask them.

Not now. Then.

Ask them when they’re running out. Ask them when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask them when their engines stop.

Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry.

You want to know something? They won’t want us to ask them. They’ll just want us to get it for them.

It is a dystopian vision. The world is to be dominated by scarcity. There will be winners and losers, with nothing between. And the most ruthless will win.

The history of humanity holds many adversarial relationships. That is why wars get fought. When World War II ended, there was some brief hope for a lasting peace. Then came the long, twilight struggle that we called the Cold war.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed, there was a revival, of sorts, of that same hope.

Then came a realization that not everyone will play by rules that are meant to benefit everyone.

We have only to look at Putin’s Russia to find a national economic system based on what leadership can steal from those being led. And that certainly bleeds out into international relationships.

Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime?

And, when faced with an adversary that holds a winner-take-everything position, waters do become muddy. Think al Qaeda. Think ISIS. We do not respond with friendship when confronted with unfriendly force.

But the mistake in the winners-and-losers view is that it casts all relationships in an adversarial mold. That view is strong enough to keep surfacing because it is intuitive, shaped by human evolution most of which occurred while life was almost always nasty, brutal, and short.

Humanity has most often flourished during times of prolonged peace when that peace has been based on mutual benefit.

It is a double-edged plowshare. Peace can bring a rising tide of prosperity. But widespread inequity, a world of winners and losers, will bring strife.

There has been a steady pattern in post-conflict American policy. President Obama seemed to see our main competition as coming from totalitarian superpowers. The competition has been complicated. But a matrix of agreements had built steadily strengthening relationships for the US. China’s policies were more adversarial. Russia’s were kleptocratic.

That gave America the edge that might have lasted for decades.

Since then, Russia has grown even more militaristic and aggressive.

But China seems to be engaged in an economic charm offensive. Other countries are responding. They are turning away from the United States and toward China.

This has not happened in a vacuum. Our current national leadership sees all relationships, with one exception, as adversarial.

No-one sees the benefit of engaging with a giant who embraces a one-sided vision: that we are winners only when everyone else loses.

That sad view promotes many divisions.

It puts America against our traditional friends.

There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump.

It puts native-born Americans against immigrants.

They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

It elevates white nationalists, who are against pretty much everyone.

…very fine people, on both sides.

We have elections coming. We can go in a different direction.

And we have an answer to a fictional lament from 4 decades ago.

I miss that kind of clarity.

This year, that kind of clarity is something we do have.

Many thanks to our partner, Burr Deming, and Fair and Unbalanced.

In case you missed it: Our Remarkable Presidents and Then There’s Donald Trump

About Post Author

Burr Deming

Burr is a husband, father, and computer programmer, who writes and records from St. Louis. On Sundays, he sings in a praise band at the local Methodist Church. On Saturdays, weather permitting, he mows the lawn under the supervision of his wife. He can be found at FairAndUNbalanced.com
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5 years ago

Extraordinary article. Kudos!

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