![]() ![]() The test was delayed not only by human error but by rules that had unintended consequences by a reluctance to make decisions and, most of all, it seems, by a system’s inability to recognize its own failings. Baird has traced why testing for the coronavirus has not been widely available in the United States, laying out a succession of contradictory and confusing events. But, in a crisis, when churning along will not do, the government cannot function without a leader or at least its proper functioning is severely delayed, as it struggles to adapt to the idea that the leader-who in other respects is something of a control freak and in all respects is terrifying-isn’t going to lead. The government, under Trump, has been partly dismantled, partly corrupted, and partly allowed to churn along, in part because he didn’t feel like paying attention. As his relentless campaign against government has shown, Trump sees the American system of government as a giant bureaucracy. They disdain competence but somehow assume that other people’s competence will fix whatever it is that needs fixing. They like to be in charge, but they can’t be bothered to take charge. But he and Putin share a toxic combination of imperiousness and laziness, a kind of high-handed lassitude. In many ways, he seems the opposite of one-he favors snap decisions, and sweeping ones, and he abhors regulation. I don’t usually think of Trump as a bureaucrat. Perhaps as a result, the Russian Navy and government were overcautious, rejected foreign help, and didn’t even respond to the S.O.S. He saw himself as a figurehead who might get in the way of people doing their work, and seemed unaware that his job was to lead the effort. Putin’s use of bureaucratic language is a means of misleading the public and deflecting responsibility, but it also offers an insight into his understanding of government. ![]() It was a preview of the twenty years since (and possibly the next twenty). The most striking aspect of Putin’s failure to accept responsibility for the Kursk disaster was his retreat into bureaucratese. “I never thought that things were in this kind of condition,” he said.īut there is more. Everyone should keep to his place.” Then he travelled to the Arctic and, under the cover of night, met with the families of the dead sailors, told them that the sailors might still be alive, and also railed against the forces that had destroyed the Russian military. He told television reporters, “I did the right thing, because the arrival of nonspecialists from any field, the presence of high-placed officials in the disaster area, would not help and more often would hamper work. On the seventh day after the explosion, Putin’s aides finally persuaded him to return to Moscow. Then he mumbled something incoherent about the value of the equipment aboard the Kursk. In August, 2000, Russia had thriving independent television and print media that were reporting on the tragedy, but the vacationing President, at first, said nothing. As long as they lived, they kept beating out an S.O.S. Trapped in their underwater capsule, those twenty-three seamen had survived for more than two days. Read The New Yorker’s complete news coverage and analysis of the coronavirus pandemic. By that time, the men inside had been dead a week. It seemed that they lacked the necessary skills, because, ten days later, when a Norwegian crew were finally allowed to attempt a rescue, they docked on their first try. ![]() The Russian Navy sent rescue crews, but they failed to dock to the submarine. All this time, twenty-three men inside what remained of the Kursk awaited rescue at the bottom of the sea. He was on vacation in Sochi, on the Black Sea, and he remained on vacation. The tremors set off by the explosion were picked up by a Norwegian seismic station, but the Russian Navy didn’t acknowledge the accident for nine hours, and President Vladimir Putin wasn’t notified for another nine hours after that. One or two of those torpedoes appear to have exploded onboard, killing most of the men on the submarine. In August, 2000, the Kursk, a giant nuclear submarine, went out to sea off the coast of Murmansk with an undertrained crew and a load of torpedoes that were past their expiration date. Here is one more: often, these days, I think of a submarine. Each of these parallels sheds some light on our current predicament. Recently, people have talked and written about world wars, the Spanish flu, the plague, and the Great Depression. When we face catastrophe, our minds look for points of comparison. ![]()
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