The Limits of Hard Power

Not as much deep history on this one; just some comments on what has seemed to grab the most headlines from outlets like Axios and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). I respect both, especially the latter, as gathering and analyzing important data close to the front lines, whether in the current Israel-Iran conflict, or previously and up to the present in Ukraine. And yet, a certain opacity seems to persist when it comes to getting behind the front lines, which I think is important in the present case.

Over roughly the past 48 hours, Israel has visited on the Islamic Republic of Iran more or less the same treatment that it meted out in Operation Focus some 58 years ago, and again last year — much more relevant to Iran, as well as more current — to Hezbollah (1, 2). Even accepting some Iranian successes in hitting Israeli targets, the one-two punch of Israeli intelligence and air assets is a remarkably hard thing to counter. It's probably fair to guess at this time that Israel retains active operatives on the ground, and near if not total air supremacy.

The major hard power item remaining on the agenda is bunker-busting the Fordow uranium enrichment site — something beyond easy reach for Israeli capabilities. Supposing that Israel does find a way to punch through the side of a mountain, though…

Go back to 1967. Again despite local successes, Arab forces and governments were generally shamed for their poor performance during the Six Day War. Egypt lost Sinai, and within a few years, its union with Syria. Jordan hasn't fought a foreign enemy since that war, and Black September 1970 decisively ended any sense of close cooperation with Palestinian liberation initiatives. But for all of this, Egypt did remain committed to the anti-Israeli cause in the War of Attrition, and Syria regrouped and re-armed for another foray — what we now know in the Israeli-informed West as the Yom Kippur War.

Look at the Islamic Republic. Well might Israeli forces have decapitated the Republican Guard and Iranian military command and control, especially for air and anti-air assets, but are we looking at an Iranian revolution brewing? Not if hard power is all that's in play.

So back to ISW and Axios. Good on their front line reporting. Good on what typically grabs headlines day-by-day, not least with conventional assets as professional, active, and sophisticated as those maintained by Israel. All the better with more from Radio Farda, and the leading edge of Israel's apparent soft power initiatives, all the way up to Netanyahu's direct appeal to the people of Iran.

A follow-up question bears asking here, as well: it seems there should be no question of Israeli opposition to Iran's current government developing nuclear weapons. Would opinion be any different if a restored, pro-Israeli Shah pursued the same program?

Quick Thoughts on Lion Rising (and which one that might be)

Overnight, Israeli forces conducted some two hundred airstrikes and a variety of intelligence, sabotage, and assassination plots across Iran — activities broadly grouped under the heading of "Operation Lion Rising".

Sometimes, a name is just a name, like the World War II-era Operations Cartwheel, Husky, Market Garden, and Mars, or the Vietnam-era Linebacker II. Many Israeli military activities have also had relatively innocuous names like Mole Cricket 19.

However, in a tradition dating back at least to the Six Day War in 1967, and perhaps to independence, the leaders of modern Israel have occasionally put themselves at pains to connect their polity with roots in Jewish culture, religious texts, and occasionally, its symbology.

"Rising Lion" could easily be a reference to the Lion of Judah.

There is also, however, a second lion to consider — for centuries and perhaps millennia, one of the staunchest, most favorable, most indulgent friends and benefactors of the first — and perhaps even with an older lion-based iconography than the first: The Lion (and Sun) of Persia.

• Traditions of Persian statehood going back to the Achaemenid period and perhaps beyond have drawn on the lion as a symbol, as does the Shi'a tradition of Islam — very prominent in Iran for many centuries at this point — tracing back to their founder, Ali ibn Abu Talib.
• Moreover, Isaiah 45:1-4 shows the exiles of Judah looking to Cyrus of Persia by name as their liberator in the sixth century BCE, and the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther all generally give a positive image of the Persian court — not least in contrast to Babylon.

So what does this have to do with the present?

• Until 1979, Iran's flag had the lion and sun iconography in it, with the Pahlavi dynasty drawing on both Persian and Shi'ite traditions.
• Israel's quarrel with Iran since that time has little to do with the people and overall civil society, and much more to do with the top-level government in Tehran.

So what does this mean for Lion Rising?

Perhaps it's just a name. And perhaps it's just an exercise of hard power against Iran's nuclear program. That is, of course, quite possible.

But suppose for a moment that it's something more. Naturally, Israel's government would be almost the last in line to make public statements in favor of Iranian opposition groups, for fear of undermining their legitimacy. And yet, while it's no mystery that the Ayatollahs' grip on power has always been more flimsy and historically contingent than their propaganda has historically suggested (see here, especially from 9:08), this might be a moment for Iran watchers, and maybe the regime itself, to look for Israeli assets at work beyond the hard power strikes.

With a few other circumstances intervening, it may not be surprising to see information and influence operations behind the scenes, promoting revolution. No doubt regime change would be to Israel's liking and short term advantage, but in and of itself it would not guarantee a new order with any higher regard for the Jewish state. Thus, if Persia's lion is set to rise again like a new day's sun, then perhaps the softer side of current Israeli operations — even down to their naming conventions — would help a new Iranian regime to pay a kinder regard to their fellow lion in Judah.

A French Center?

Geopolitics in Western Europe has been dominated by the United States since World War II. That happened for a variety of reasons, many of which are now well out of date. If and as the American presence in Europe recedes, who might step in?

The French, of course! But not just for reasons of capability and prestige in the present day. (1, 2)

Going back to World War II, one might dispute how well Americans were prepared for the hostile seas, skies, and beaches that awaited them, but there is much less question about U.S. supply, logistics, force projection, and financial and infrastructure roles in shaping the late war and postwar order all around the world. Proud societies understandably felt themselves eclipsed by American largesse, and it's reasonable to see the Gaullisme of mid-century France (wikipedia summary here) as partly a reaction to Western Europe's traditional premier land power being completely overshadowed by Germany and Britain in quick succession, and soon enough, the newcomer Americans.

Fast forward to 2025, and the perseverance of France as one of the leading regional powers — and the only nuclear power on the continent of Western Europe — leads fairly rationally to suggestions that France, today, should take a leading role in NATO's ongoing progress into Eastern Europe and beyond.

Rewind to 1725, however, and it's possible to see some fairly deep historical grounding for the role that France is now set to take — perhaps a fair counterpoint to Russia's withdrawal from the European concert. It's around this time that premodern French involvement in Eastern Europe reached its height, amid some curious, potentially informative historical footnotes.

Putting the Band (Barrier) Back Together?

Earlier today, May 28, 2025, Finnish President Alexander Stubb gave an interview with CNN, reproduced on YouTube, here.

I strongly suspect that Stubb's sense of geopolitics is not especially informed by George Friedman's book, The Next Hundred Years (2009, Wikipedia summary here), but both noted the rise of Turkey and Poland as regional powers, and Finland, especially if combined with Sweden and the Baltics, might fairly constitute a third player in that bloc.

But wait!

There was a time when one might identify a Finno-Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, and Turkey with some Balkan allies, as forming a bulwark against Russian ambitions in Eastern Europe. The three powers among themselves did not exactly form a coherent coalition, yet what brought them together on one side was, indeed, the ambition of Russian leaders like Peter the Great, and on the other, Western support. In particular, France was notable for lending subsidies, political support, and at least on occasion, arms — what we would today call foreign aid, diplomatic cover, and, still, arms! The French knew this combination of powers as the Barrière de l'Est, or eastern barrier, broadly intended to keep Russia out of the affairs of the rest of Europe.

There seems to be even more to the conversation, as the Guardian notes here, and not for the first time. Invoking Peter's endurance in the Great Northern War (1700-21), Russian diplomats in the recent Istanbul summit hinted at their intention simply to outlast Western aid to Ukraine. President Putin does correctly note Russia's victory in the Northern War, though this was also the major occasion, at least at times, when France, Sweden-Finland, Poland-Lithuania, and Ottoman Turkey came together most coherently.

Putin might also note that Peter (fl.1682-1725), and pretty much all the rest of Russia's leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries, and well into the 20th, all had their eye on penetrating this eastern barrier so that Russia could not only march west, but also, and rather, engage with the West. Carrying forward Peter's legacy, Russia as a state wanted to be Western, to fit into the European systems of commercial and intellectual exchange, as well as foreign relations!

I opened this blog post thinking that I would discuss the Eastern Barrier coming back together, which it may well do. I close it, however, thinking about Putin not as repeating or even emulating the achievement of Peter the Great, but rather profoundly reversing it, and undoing some 300 years of Russian strategic thought. Thinking on earlier generations, the Treaties of Nerchinsk (1689) and Kiakhta (1727, 1768) were all designed to define and stabilize the East so successive Russian leaders could turn their attention to the West. If Putin and his successors in the coming years put Finlandization to rest, and truly have a NATO-Russia border, then well might we see, not even so much the renewed rise of the old Barrier powers, but rather the return of Russia to what it was before Peter's time: primarily a power of the Eurasian steppe lands, largely excluded from the community of European states.

Revival

Ten years ago, I started the Schumanities Blog as a scratch site to capture some ideas-in-progress as a professional historian, casual commentator on modern politics, and emerging hobbyist in the teaching and learning realm.

As decades go, it's probably been about average for anyone at any time, but it's felt very full.

My personal life has been very full and fulfilling, with marriage, kids, and a reasonable social life. I also survived the pandemic, changed jobs and churches a few times, and shifted my interests ever more toward instructional design, as well as scholarship of teaching and learning.

Professionally, I won a teaching award for how I designed a Historiography class, got a very full taste of faith and learning integration by teaching dual-enrolled courses at a Muslim high school, earned a graduate certificate in Instructional Design and Technology, and published a chapter on multipolar power politics for the New Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, 2023).

All of this to say that it's been a pretty busy decade, and yet, I still stand by a lot of what I wrote before all of this happened. It's not just that I look back with a certain amount of reverie and agreement with my younger self, but also, as an historian, I think the older posts do set up what I think and hope is coming. So here, I'll label them as prequels.

Going forward, I think I have a lot to comment on, both from my ongoing scholarship and with current events both globally and in American education. I'll do my best to tag appropriately.

Knowing is (Only) Half the Battle

A week ago, the New York Times published a commentary on U.S. higher education that seems well worth considering: in short, if students want to know where their skyrocketing tuition is going, look no farther than the burgeoning administration. This is something that attentive faculty have probably known for a long time, and it doesn't help the administration's case that their current bloating resembles Big Auto in the 1970s--not exactly history's best business model.

And yet, I feel like this covers only part of the story, as if Immanuel Kant, in one of my previous posts, had stopped merely with his comments on the Austrian system of education in his time, without remarking on the Dessau School in Prussia. Austria's problem, in the event, was not merely the bureaucratization of its education system, but also its over-regulation. Hence its rigidity as compared to the experimentation that Kant extolled at Dessau.

Are American universities over-regulated, when they offer courses ranging from 'parageography' to particle physics, often with only a minimum of oversight for instructors? At first blush, certainly not! But then, that's not where the regulation really kicks in. It has more to do with accrediting bodies that mostly lie beyond the knowledge (and probably care) of most students, parents, and local businesses. Add to that the multiplication of university-affiliated unions, and these two phenomena alone--one might easily imagine--could account for the vast proliferation of paperwork in recent decades, that would supply the 'market' for administrators mentioned in the article's second-to-last paragraph.

I feel like this is where Kant's reference to the Austrian and Dessau systems is really relevant, despite its age. Sure, it could be nice to loosen restrictions on transfer credits, but Kant's discussion really went beyond mere rigidity in the Austrian teaching curriculum. It was about bureaucratization across the whole academic process--in essence, the demand for administrators, rather than their existence as such. Dessau, by contrast, seems in Kant's time to have placed a premium merely on well trained students and experimental teaching. Unlike in the Austrian system of Kant's time, the Prussians placed a lot of trust in their faculty, administratively as well as pedagogically.

It would be interesting to see a U.S. school with these kinds of priorities, reorienting its demand (or spending, as the case may be) from the concerns of regulation and administration toward simple good teaching, and even some experiments in the classroom. Perhaps Iowa State? One can only hope…

Teaching Notes, part II: Faculty Development?

I guess it's worth reaffirming here that this is a personal blog. As ambitious as I can be about wanting to change global education culture at the levels of policy and philosophy, I must continually realize that my biggest qualification (and contribution) for discussions on education is my ten years of experience in the classroom, and a dozen or so invited lectures, conference presentations and the like.

It's interesting to reflect on these ten years, and to think back on what Kant said about the distinctives of the Dessau school: it's not that the teachers in the old Prussian system really knew what they were doing, so much as that they conferred, sought advice, continually experimented, and--though one certainly hopes it was not merely for novelty's sake--never contented themselves with thinking that they had education all figured out.

This, I think, might be a mistake I've made in recent years. I'm thankful to many cohorts of students for thinking that my libertarian and inquiry-based approaches were a good launching point. I'll probably keep those in many of my future pedagogical thoughts, and practice. But how to do them better--especially for students who are not quite as well prepared to launch into independent thinking, to express themselves in any form whatsoever (let alone formal academic essays), or even to schedule regular times of research and writing.

Even here, I can't really claim my methodology as a cure-all for the ills of contemporary liberal arts instruction, but I wonder: where others perhaps have different ideas for encouraging their students, yet as immature as mine or in some cases even more so, how can I be of service? "Faculty development" is clearly a key phrase, and an important if sometimes under-appreciated activity for teachers at the college level (and other levels of education).

Teaching Notes

Interesting to see that Finland is moving to a pedagogy based on "topics" more than "subjects," perhaps in part to maintain their reputed educational lead over the rest of mankind. I think it's easy to see the "topic" thing and think, "well, that's neat," but what might be lost in the mix is a much more important word: change.

Good to see Finland's government and teaching establishment acting nimbly, and in response to the right stimuli. It's not about testing and the state-level Bureau of Statistics, or profit margins for textbook companies, or the latest demand from teachers' unions. It seems to me that the major impetus for change in Finland's school system is really one coin with two sides.

1. As a society, reflected through its government (the Nordic countries themselves are not perfect at this, but we'll say pretty good…), the Finns are expressing an interest in adapting to changed circumstances in the global economy, and still wanting to be world beaters.
2. Like parents in so many other countries, Finnish parents want the best for their kids. But perhaps unlike in other countries, they have a good and responsive venue in which to express their wishes.

Note #1: keep track of student wants and needs.

Note #2: adapt accordingly, and creatively.

Note #3: keep adapting.

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Another note set, from a book I've been reading: How to Write A Lot, by Paul J. Silvia.

Note #1: read this book. It will seriously change your life as a writer.

Note #2: some great teaching techniques in here, as well, about getting students beyond content, beyond even forms, to even more fundamental structures of learning. Yay schedules.

Note #3: Pilot some of these techniques in my own life and among a few peers, before I inflict them on my students.

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Last note set, from reflections on a variety of inputs from different cultures.

Note #1: The psych and anthro people say that people broadly all learn in similar ways.

Note #2: My older forays into inquiry-based learning didn't turn out too bad. Contrary to the first note set, don't just change for change's sake. Make sure to keep what works.

Note #3: Question: what does learning mean for cultures at varying levels of literacy / pictography? Can I oralize and kiesthetize my learning outcome assessments? How so?  And are oralize and kinesthetize even real words?

A Different Kind of Privilege Check

I've recently been reflecting on the plight of contingent faculty in U.S. higher education, and running that thought against a recent little scandal at Princeton, in which students were asked to "check their privilege."

I think the Princeton exercise was a little uncharitable to the students. It reminds me a bit of Rudyard Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden (1899): the actual builders of empire--soldiers, sailors, merchant-mariners, teachers, postal workers, lower-level bureaucrats--see their efforts satirized and maligned, while the genteel upper-crust of imperial society (American and British in this case) revel both in their own insulation from getting their own hands dirty, and in the notionally-positive "judgment of their peers" in the last line--fellow genteel imperialists.

If one would like to see the Princeton equivalent of those genteel imperialists of 116 years ago, one needs look no farther than the faculty. I don't mean to single out Princeton's faculty, but it may be worth your effort, dear reader, to look at most U.S. faculties, in any department, at any university--and especially the Liberal Arts. Among the faculty, see if you can find Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, Cambridge, Yale, Columbia, California-Berkeley, Oxford, Brown… and then try to look for the schools where the vast majority of the population actually do their learning: Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, Liverpool, Western Michigan, Colorado State, Bristol. These are also good schools, and they do, some more often than others, occasionally place their Ph.D. graduates into reasonably good departments. And yet in the scarce academic economy of the present day--whether actual or artificial scarcity might be another matter…--it's not just the elite students who need to check their privilege. It's the elite former-students, as well.

And as in Kipling's poem, it's not just the lower-level functionaries--the students--who are confronted with the subjects of this intellectual empire. It's also the detached, genteel administration and faculty, whose platitudes about privilege-checking and the tragedy of subjection to empire (by other names) fall a little flat as they name, rename, sanitize and broadly ignore the plight of the real subjects of their empire, the ones upon whose backs they stand in their privilege: graduate teaching assistants (who now do a lot more than merely assist…), part-time and full-time lecturers, contingent faculty, adjuncts.

An astute student of history might recall that Kipling's empire--the British Empire--experienced rapid and violent decline within about two generations after his poem. The judgement of Britain's peers made itself manifest precisely when Kipling wrote, as plucky American and Japanese societies joined the imperial game; within a decade the rise of the German Kriegsmarine made it clear that Britain had viable and hungry challengers among its peers; and the two World Wars--especially the second and its immediate aftermath--starkly revealed Britain's limitations as an Imperial power. The concentration of wealth and power, and the gentrified concern that fretted much and acted little, anticipated doom for the empire in the face of more vibrant, better-balanced societies that valued, not just the upper crust of their communities, but also the oft-excluded middle. Today, 116 years after Kipling, it may be worth reflecting on some societies that are doing exactly that, "broken" as they might seem from the outside: places like China.

So in sum, we have a critique of adjuncts' position not only from the well-established Left, with its tropes about workers' rights and so forth; but also, and critically, from what might be called the Imperial Right. From this perspective, there is simply a way of doing things that predicts a flourishing empire--like the middle-class rhetoric of British society 150 years before Kipling's poem--and a way of doing things that does not. So as the faculty and residential life folks at Princeton continue their salutary "privilege-checking" exercise with students, here's an invitation not only to turn that gaze upon themselves, but also to shoulder differently the burdens of their academic empire.

Gramsci the Libertarian?

I don't think I would take this little article as the best or last word about Antonio Gramsci's thoughts on education, though they are rather provocative. Gramsci was a noted Italian Communist in the 1910s and 20s, jailed and eventually executed by Mussolini's Fascists. His prison notebooks gained international acclaim in the 1970s, and they continue to inspire social theorists up to the present day. It is interesting to note Gramsci's seeming appreciation that schools in nationalist Italy (one would guess Fascist Italy only more so) were too centralized, and too much under the control of the state. How neat, also, to see his ideas line up with the notably Libertarian rhetoric in Richard Neal's book, Escape to Learning.

It is obviously a step too far to see Gramsci and Neal on the same political page, or promoting anything like the same pedagogy. Notwithstanding the obvious anachronism of the comparison, it is nonetheless striking to see their broad agreement on local schools and raising individual consciences. Likewise with their shared, strident-yet-thoughtful opposition to their respective (and remarkably similar) "Educational Establishment" regimes. They even appear to agree that the primary-secondary school system imprisons students' minds in an ideology that supports a stable status quo, rather than being truly generative of new ideas and societal progress--what Gramsci would identify as the seeds of revolution.

Gramsci and Neal broadly agree on the need for students, parents, and the larger society to be aware of shortcomings in government, the state, and the education system. Both call for activism of some sort: Neal for market-based rejection of the state monopoly, Gramsci (and his Communist-leaning contemporaries even more so) for violent revolution against the ruling classes. As with Kant in my previous post (albeit, again, anachronistically), I am left with the impression that Gramsci and Neal would like to see education most in the hands of teachers, students and their parents, with support from the state, perhaps, but as free as possible from its control.