Family ties - US Deputy Secretary of State Nelson Strobridge Talbott III

National Review, Sept 25, 1995 by Martin Sieff

TALL, slim, prematurely balding, distinguished, moral, decent, intense, unworldly, idealistic, and determined to impart the highest moral standards to the conduct of foreign policy. A close personal friend of the head of state. Distrustful of his own country's use -- and, in his eyes, often abuse -- of immense power. Who could it be but Nelson Strobridge Talbott III, deputy secretary of state in the Clinton Administration and key architect of its policies toward Russia and Eastern Europe?

After all, who else could write the following? 'There are few things more dangerous than the constant anxiety for doing something definite. Many diseases may only be handled with gentleness and caution; violent treatment, the determination to force the issue at all costs, will result in nothing but catastrophe.'

Actually, those words were written by another historian turned superpower foreign-policy maker, another tall, slim, prematurely balding, distinguished, moral, decent, intense, unworldly idealist determined to impart high moral standards to the conduct of foreign policy. A man whose physical as well as psychological attributes so uncannily foreshadow those of Strobe Talbott that it is astonishing that no one has previously suggested any intimate connection between them, namely Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, First Earl of Halifax and foreign secretary of Britain in the crucial years 1938 to 1940. Well known as one of the two prime architects of the catastrophic policy of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler, he was shunted by Winston Churchill into the post of ambassador to Washington, where he served until 1946, mingling widely with the East Coast establishment.

Now, Talbott was born on April 25, 1946, which means he was conceived in late July 1945 while Lord Halifax was still on the Eastern Seaboard. Coincidence? I wonder. Surely, here is a challenge to our current crop of ambitious history PhD candidates: Establish the whereabouts of Lord Halifax and Josephine Talbott, Strobe's mum, in the summer of 1945, when all and sundry were letting their hair down after the victory over Nazi Germany, and a brilliant career may be yours, or at least a story worth selling to the National Enquirer.

The spiritual affinity between Strobe Talbott and Lord Halifax is so great that the only thing apart from parentage that would seem to explain it is the Buddhist doctrine of the transmigration of souls. But since Lord Halifax lived on until December 23, 1959, presumably his soul was otherwise occupied during young Strobe's first 13 years on earth.

We could, of course, fall back on a more conventional Judaeo-Christian concept and say that the spirit of Halifax came to rest on Strobe, the way the prophet Elijah's passed on to his successor Elisha in the Second Book of Kings. But the Holy Spirit only transmits spiritual characteristics. Elijah was an hairy man and Elisha was bald. Lord Halifax and Talbott are both bald. Both have domed foreheads. Both have the same air of long-suffering saintliness, as if they are in a permanent state of constipation. No, Christian or Jewish theology will not help here.

BUT IT is the parallels between Halifax's policies and attitudes toward Nazi Germany, and Talbott's toward a chaotic and unpredictable regime in Moscow, that make the most compelling evidence. Nearly sixty years after a catastrophic series of blunders by clever fools and principled cowards gave us what Churchill called 'the unnecessary war' that killed 50 to 80 million people, the same mindset has emerged in control of United States foreign policy.

Halifax was obsessed with coming to an understanding with Hitler's Germany. He thought nothing of serving up entire countries, such as Czechoslovakia, which stood in the way of his grand design. He poured out his wrath on them rather than on the Nazis. Talbott has similarly pursued a policy of Russia first, adamantly refusing to 'endanger' the relationship by threatening retaliation for Moscow's open military aggression against the new neighboring republics of Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan.

Until the German occupation of the Czech heartland in March 1939, Halifax adamantly opposed giving security guarantees to any of the Eastern European nations threatened by Hitler's aggressive policies. Talbott has systematically opposed any concrete moves to expand NATO into Central Europe.

Halifax drew from World War I and from his time as Governor-General of India the same kind of defeatist lessons that Talbott did from Vietnam. Halifax negotiated with Mahatma Gandhi and opened the way for the 1932 Second Round Table Conference that led to the 1935 Government of India Act. This made the granting of independence 12 years later under chaotically rushed circumstances almost unavoidable, despite the delaying efforts of Churchill during World War II. At least a million people died in the chaos of the subcontinent's subsequent partition.

Talbott was as blind to the consequences of the policies he supported on Vietnam -- stop the war now -- as Halifax had been to the consequences of his policy of getting out of India. He never appears to have linked those 'principled' stands of his youth to the horrors of the Vietnamese boat people and the Cambodia genocide. Then Talbott generalized the erroneous conclusions he had drawn from Vietnam and appears now to be applying them to the hard men emerging in Russia, just as Halifax took the lessons he had drawn from appeasing Gandhi and applied them in his negotiations with another high-principled vegetarian, Adolf Hitler.