Who Is History’s Worst Political Adviser? | Hacker News Reader

Who Is History’s Worst Political Adviser?

historytoday.com

23 pointsdiodorus38 comments

> a high-flyer who had enjoyed several brushes with scandal in the past, mainly for rubbing people up the wrong way. Nevertheless, he had his admirers (snip) who thought he was ‘generous and very clever’, ‘an extremely reasonable man’ – just what the stuffy civil service needed at a time of change and rising pressure from Byzantium’s neighbours. Few others saw it that way. Many bristled at Nikephoros’ tactless and aggressive behaviour, at the way he locked others out of important decisions and limited access to the ruler. He was accused, too, of giving his friends a leg up and showing them favours they had not earned and did not deserve. He was arrogant, clumsy and scorned those who criticised him.

Oh man! I was unsure if I was reading about long gone Roman advisor or one of our contemporary ;)

I think whoever advised the shah of Khwarazm to execute the envoy of Genghis Khan has to go down as the worst political adviser in history. Genghis and the Mongol Army practically wiped out the entire country in retaliation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmi...

> the Mongol Army practically wiped out the entire country in retaliation.

He can't have been the worst, then; worse things have happened to countries than just being "practically wiped out".

Compare Nongqawuse, who did not hold an official advisory position, but who nevertheless "successfully" advised the Xhosa that the solution to the stress they were under through contact with the British was to destroy all their crops and slaughter all their cattle.

Unsurprisingly, they mostly starved to death afterwards.

This marked the beginning of the end of the Islamic Golden Age, and Baghdad still hasn't recovered. That is one of the most interesting facts to me, that over 600 years later the Middle East is still in disarray.

That would be Inalchuq (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inalchuq), the governor who killed Genghis Khan’s envoys who were there to make a trade deal and open relations. He suggested that the trade caravan were spies (which may have been correct) and got permission from the shah to kill them and take their goods. The shah repeated the same offense to the khan a second time when Genghis sent a second set of diplomats demanding that Inalchuq be punished or handed over.

Here is one way to think of it:

I think of the US invasion of Iraq as probably the biggest strategic mistake in the world since some WW2 decisions. It's arguably the start of the end of the US super power era.

Was there a particular adviser we can blame for that?

Maybe Cheney? If it was more of a unified team decision, it doesn't fit the question.

The Project for the New American Century[0] think tank is probably the most significant influence here. Naming Cheney alone oversimplifies matters, but he was without a doubt a prominent figure.

> It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan.

> Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...

You could make a strong case that the Vietnam War was a more significant error. Including Iraq and Afghanistan, the War On Terror cost about 6 times as much as the Vietnam War, but Vietnam cost more in terms of American lives. I believe the Vietnam War inflicted greater damage to America's reputation and self-conception, and it ended in unconditional retreat after achieving none of its goals.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-09/war-on-terro...

There is no single advisor, but I'd vote for the group of economists who drank so much of their own Kool-Aid they believed that offshoring all of our industrial capacity was a good idea.

But think of the utils that you’re leaving on the table by not fully exploiting comparative advantage.

Utility is actually a really useful framework, provided you've correctly specified your utility function. [1]

"I've shipped my N95 production off-shore and there is a global pandemic" is the kind of thing economists leave out of their models.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...

The United States of America has a lot of remaining industrial capacity. All of the United States industrial capacity has not been off-shored.

The United States of America has about 1/6th of the world's manufacturing output and the majority of the manufacturing output consumed within the United States is in fact produced within the United States.

> The United States of America has about 1/6th of the world's manufacturing output and the majority of the manufacturing output consumed within the United States is in fact produced within the United States.

Manufacturing output is measured using "manufacturing value added," which is the price the output is sold at minus the price of the input - raw materials, parts from other suppliers, tooling, etc. The United States has such a high "value add" because of cheap parts and raw materials sourced globally for overpriced products sold to the Armed Forces/DoD, the healthcare system, and a vast government/corporate bureaucracy with more money than sense.

It's great to be high up in the value chain but claiming the wealthiest country has 1/6th of the world's manufacturing output because it has the most money to waste isn't accurate.

You should take a close look at what the US actually makes and then reconsider this opinion.

When I read the title, I was thinking of Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger is polarizing, but it’s hard to claim that he should be on a list of worst advisers. Half of the USA (well, half of those that know who he is) think he’s the greatest statesman who ever lived. He wasn’t perfect, but he probably kept the USA and Soviet Union from nuking each other, and Walmart might not exist without him because trade between the USA and China wouldn’t be the same without him.

Walmart was around long before China was the biggest US trade partner.

Okay, Walmart might not exist as we know it because their main business model is to sell products at the lowest prices possible, which has caused most of their suppliers to manufacture in China. If it weren’t for Kissinger opening up relations with China then Walmart might not have become as huge as they are today or they would look very different.

In the universe without Kissinger, the lowest price would simply be a higher price... China didn't even invent low cost labor, it was Japan, Tiwan and Mexico, and if you go back far enough America itself, before them.

> think he’s the greatest statesman who ever lived.

But a significant amount of human rights lawyers maintain that he's a war criminal on a large-scale. When I've looked the facts myself, it seems undeniable that he's a war criminal.

What are we to make of the praise for him from those half of Americans who know him?

Would appreciate any links to what you think is the best case that Kissinger isn't a war criminal. The main defence provided in Kissinger's wikipedia is essentially "many other important people have done things just as bad as Kissinger", which is an offensively stupid defence.

Being a “war criminal” isn’t mutually exclusive with being “the greatest statesman who ever lived”, one doesn’t require the negation of the other, especially among the fans of a realist, balance of power type.

Indeed, many would probably argue it’s a requirement.

If we were having a conversation, I think I'd say "do you hear what you're saying here?"

People who genuinely think that being a war criminal is a requirement for great statesmanship are functionally supporting psychopathy.

What nutcase political realist is going to say enacting atrocities like the Rape of Nanjing is a requirement for greatness in political affairs?

For context, war crime includes everything from sinking merchant ships to My Lai, my statement (mostly) leaned toward the former.

Generally, it’s deviation from the agreed upon rules, and you’ll find no shortage of people with boats named Richelieu believing greatness synonymous with the successful pursuit of interest, ideally done intelligently within the rules of course, ideally.

This is not my actual viewpoint but for arguments sake: a realist would argue that Kissinger’s responsibility was to the citizens of the USA only, not to anyone else in the world. If he thought he could make the USA more powerful by killing foreigners, then he should. Any foreigner’s life is less valuable than America, even if they are innocent. He acted according to his responsibilities. Not holding him accountable should be seen as a failure of the federal government, and possibly the international community. If the government wants their leaders to also follow a moral code, they could do so with a few laws and would stop shielding people from international prosecution. But the government shows that they are okay with people like Kissinger because he produced good results for the country (most of the time).

This is similar to people that claim a company’s responsibility is to maximize shareholder value, and if do that by polluting, operating sweatshops, or treating employees unfairly, then they should. It should be seen as a failure of the regulatory system if they are allowed to get away with it.

I’m not in agreement with the argument I just made, but I understand that people who have an “America first/only” mentality can overlook some pretty bad things. I don’t think that war crimes are a prerequisite for being an effective statesman, but I would say that war crimes might be tolerable for leaders trying to project strength. Other countries are less likely to call a bluff if the lives of innocent people aren’t a an effective shield.

>operating sweatshops

Economists usually consider sweatshops to be good. It helps impoverished countries. For the workers these sweatshops usually pay better or have better working conditions than the alternatives.[0]

[0] https://web.northeastern.edu/econsociety/why-the-world-needs...

Easily the Vietnam War over the Iraq War. The 70s were a turning point for the USA and much had to do with the enormous arrogance and carelessness of the SEA offensives.

At least the Vietnam war ended.

The wars in this century seem eternal, despite also not reaching many goals.

You make a good point on the costs but the Iraq war did more to alienate the US's key allies. So much of the geopolitical strength of the US is from its web of alliances. So I would argue that Iraq did more to weaken the US.

If you're limiting this to just the U.S., maybe, but I'd say the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a bigger blunder.

An even bigger mistake than starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the mistake of keeping those wars going forever.

And that mistake is still ongoing.

Of course, I'm assuming it's a mistake and not a deliberate strategy. But the people advocating for keeping troops there should make explicit again their reason for doing so.

"Worst" here seems mostly to mean "horrible" as opposed to giving particularly bad advice.

I was looking for mention of the "Darién Scheme" by William Paterson and it was only there in passing.

Surely Paul Wolfowitz would have to be a candidate for bad advice in the modern post-Soviet era though?

> "Worst" here seems mostly to mean "horrible" as opposed to giving particularly bad advice.

I noticed the same thing. The example of Seianus makes a strong case that he did a bad job. But he was obviously doing a bad job of being king, not a bad job of being an advisor.

It's a hard question to investigate, though. History's worst political advisors are unlikely to actually be known to history; their states would have been swallowed by other better states.

I was expecting at least an aside for Rasputin, although I'm sure these other clowns were pretty terrible too.

Shouldn't this belong to Anatoly Chernyaev? "One can confidently say that every bold foreign policy initiative advanced by Gorbachev in the years 1985-1991 bears Chernyaev's mark on it."[0]

[0] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB192/

Grima Wormtongue.

This is a matter of perspective.

Since reincarnated as Dominic Cummings.

Roy Cohen. We have him to thank for Trump.

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