Cannes, France. I’m here for the film festival. Many memories and current thoughts are flooding my mind. I did part of my law school at Cambridge, where I met the beautiful Maria Fuentes, an international student from San Sebastian, Spain. She was one of those Euro jet setter types. Fish net stockings and shorts skirts. Dressed like that in Richmond, Virginia and the old biddies would have gotten the vapors, but she was 100% haute couture. On one of my trips to visit Maria in Spain, I rented a motorcycle and drove up and down the Cote d’ Azur, staying in multiple towns along the way. Maria was heavily into her Catholicism, which unfortunately for me, prevented our relationship from matriculating in the carnal manner that someone of my shallowness and superficiality desired. For this reason, to this day, I’m a bit peeved at the Vatican.
What strikes me is how much this part of the world has changed since I was at Cambridge back in pre-cell phone days. Indeed, I am in awe at how much the entire world has changed, all for the better. I’ll start with my native Virginia. My friend Will Newton is 86. I call him the Silver Fox because he is a dashingly good looking fellow with impeccable southern manners. Will grew up at “Summer Hill” in Hanover County, on a piece of land given to his family by the King of England in the mid-1600s, what we call a King’s Grant. Cornwallis burnt the first Summer Hill down. It was rebuilt in the Federal Style and sits handsomely today on a small summit. Will went to some of the finest schools in the country, but before he went to college, he grew up without electricity. Think about that, a scion of an ancient family in a beautiful old home; he had to read by candlelight. Will’s great grandfather, a Colonel in the Confederacy, and thought to be the next Governor of Virginia, was shot and killed In Orange County. The Yankees wouldn’t allow the family to bury him in the family cemetery, so he was dropped about 50 feet from the back door at Summer Hill. My point, War. Yankee capital helped some southern cities rebuild quickly, but other parts of the South were poor for generations. The countryside had been destroyed. Confederate money was worthless. Human capital, i. e. manpower had been depleted, and many men didn’t marry as they felt an obligation to take care of wives and children of their brethren. It took a long, long time for some areas to recover. Will didn’t have electricity because there just wasn’t the money to build the infrastructure.
WWII was no picnic for France. During my stay in Nice years ago, the bathrooms were barely more than an outhouse. The city was dirty. One had to speak French. Now, all along the coast, there are sparkling new buildings everywhere. The lingua franca is English. There is wealth everywhere. International capital has flooded into the area. Without it, it would likely look like it did when I first visited. Everyone has a smart phone, everything is modernized. You can get whatever you desire at any store. I’m writing this article on my laptop overlooking the Mediterranean. I got here in less time than it takes me to drive to Savannah. I had internet service on my flight and a choice of a hundred movies to watch. Last night, I had dinner with interesting people from all over the world. We had a great time and now because of technology, we will be instantly connected the rest of our lives. The last time I was in Nice, I was hanging out with my friend Paul Black (he’s now a federal judge). There were no cell phones, we got separated, and there was simply no way to find each other.
We live in an incredible, remarkable world. As I sit here looking and smiling at all the beautiful people walking by, I am just in awe. Of all the billions of people who have come before us, we live in the very best of times, and even the poorest among us are in the top .001 % of comfort and wealth in human history.
Napolean started his Italian campaign from Nice. The Napoleonic Wars are fascinating reading, but what did they really accomplish? Millions were killed all over Europe. The death toll and destruction was staggering, yet France’s borders remained essentially the same, and it was much poorer. Having recently gone through a Napolean reading phase, and seeing the incredible wealth along the Cote d’ Azur, my mind has been racing through all the follies of the past and why they occurred. I grew up well aware of my colonial ancestors who fought the British. I have a picture of 22 of my Coleman family members all dressed in the Confederate gray at their old homeplace Arnoldsville in Caroline County (the Yankees burned it to the ground). Both my grandfathers were in WWI. My Dad hit the beaches on D-Day. My oldest brother dropped out of college and joined the Marines to fight in Vietnam. I mention this because it is so easy for men to want to go to war. It is so easy for politicians to stir up passion, we are naturally wired for violence. I grew up dreaming of being a soldier. It seemed natural. There is nothing wrong with having a martial spirit, indeed it is a civic virtue. But we men through our leaders need to temper our natural testosterone and think through the consequences of when force of arms are appropriate and when they are just mindlessly destructive. History is replete with example after example where combatants fight and destroy themselves for absolutely nothing. The highest stage of virile masculinity is not acting out of hot passion, but acting with a cool head in a manner that ultimately protects our women, children and extended families.
I am convinced the war in Ukraine is an example of the utter hubris of man, a complete shirking of manly responsibilities and a result of ego above rationality. I blame our State Department above all else, along with what I am convinced is a cabal of swamp dwelling, crooked politicians who have something to gain by having so many others die. I’m not sure if Victoria Nuland has a penis, but she and her State Department cronies repeatedly poked the Russian Bear. They did not act with cool heads. Staging a coup in 2014, trashing the Minsk Accords after the future combatants signed off on them and now refusing to negotiate with Russia to end the War. Both Russia and Ukraine are corrupt kleptocracies. Ukraine is not a democracy and has never been one. War is often like divorce. Both parties have differences, but they don’t hate each other. Then the lawyers (like our sleezy political class) get involved and milk both husband and wife of everything they’ve got. Then the combatants settle for exactly what they would’ve settled for before firing the first shot. How in the world is Ukraine or the world better off by being utterly destroyed, losing a generation of men and having 25% of its countrymen leave Ukraine? Isn’t it natural for Russia to have a sphere of influence in Ukraine in the same why that British, U.S. and Italian capital has flowed into the Cote d’ Azur? The longer that countries can stay at relative peace and develop their economic interests through trade and capital investment, the more likely they can achieve a peace that lasts. Peace gives them time to figure out that the way to prosperity is developing political systems capable of attracting outside capital. It’s not just Ukraine and Russia that suffer due to this this senseless war, all of us do. Just like it was counterintuitive for Napolean and Wellington to understand the fruits of free trade and capital investment among nations, the same mental block exists with the monolithic western view of the Ukraine war. We all lose because Russia and Ukraine are wasting their human and financial capital and not providing goods and services that flow into world markets.
Bad foreign policy is almost always a result of bad economic thinking. There is not a limited supply of wealth in the world, where we want to keep it all for ourselves and choke off other countries and keep them poor. Adam Smith understood this 249 years ago. Wealth is created through global cooperation, trade and investment. It never makes sense to destroy wealth. If other countries are wealthy, it does not make us less wealthy. Many wars have been started by not understanding these principles.
PS: Maria, if you are reading this article and still smoking hot, HOLLER at me.
