March 2004 99th Issue

Hua Hin Clean Up !

WEBSTER UNIVERSITY

Webster University Thailand (WUT) is organised the third annual Hua Hin Beach Clean up and the second Sand Sculpture Contest on 28 February 2004. These activities establish environmental and societal awareness in the community, in a fun way. Both these events are open to all local residents, families, school children, and tourist under the theme of 'fun in the sun'.

Participants for the Sand Sculpture Contest entered teams of up to 10 people or as a single entry in categories including children, family, teenager, or adult. Various prizes for this event were awarded according to the different catcgories.

The Director of WUT, Kit Jenkins, said, "We are absolutely thrilled to be holding this event for 3 years now. We always want to offer something more meaningful and community-based to our students apart from knowledge in the classrooms.

"We hope that these two events provide a great opportunity for positive cultural exchanges between Thai community members in Hua Hin and our students and members of Hua Hin. Our beach is important and brings great joy to the community."

On this day of community service, Webster students will also present the Mercy House Orphanage in Hua Hin with clothes collected by university students. They hope these two efforts will show their appreciation and commitment to the Hua Hin community.

WUT, an American University and a member or Webster University Worldwide System, prides itself on combining the vitality of American education with the exciting international opportunities that a multi-campus university has to offer.

WUT is situated off the bypass road between Cha-am and Hua Hin, and currently has around 300 students from around the world, including Thailand.
For more information, please contact the University at 032- 456-161.

Two Great Efforts

DUSIT RESORT AND POLO CLUB

Find a Bin to Put It In!

Executives and staff from Dusit Resort and Polo Club aCha Am / Hua Hin, led by Daranee Pipitweeranund, Public Relations Manager, were recently seen cleaning along Petchkasem Road and the hotel surrounding area. They launched their “Find a Bin to Put It In!” campaign to urge all staff to keep the environment clean.

Hua Hin Bridge Club

3 years ago local ex-pat residents started Hua Hin Bridge Club and they welcome new players. They play every Sunday starting at 4 pm, at Star Ice and Coffee, in Amnuyasin Rd, Soi 74
For more info call Arne 071 599 549.

Travel News

MARRIOTT International has further extended its presence in Europe and the Middle East with new properties in Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and Egypt added to its portfolio.
In Germany, the 379-room Berlin Marriott has opened on Potsdamer Platz as the first Marriott-branded hotel and Marriott’s fourth property in Berlin. Mr Rupprecht Queitsch is the general manager and Ms Ilona Angelis is the director of marketing.
The following were opened by Ramada International Hotels & Resorts, a division of Marriott International:
In Italy, the 97-room Ramada & Suites Genoa Center. Located at Via Balbi 38, the Center features two-level suites and flexible meeting rooms able to host 50 guests.
In the Czech Republic, the 56-room Ramada Prague Airport Hotel. Located at 1067 Airport Street, the hotel is a stone’s throw away from the Prague International Airport and has three full-service meeting rooms good for small, brisk meetings.
In Egypt, the 160-room Ramada Ras Sudr Resort in South Sinai, near the Eastern tip of the Suez Canal; and the 42-chalet Ramada El Sokhna Resort in Suez which is about two hours from Cairo and has private balconies overlooking the Red Sea.

AUSTRALIA South-North: "The first passenger train to cross Australia from south to north arrived in Darwin last month to be welcomed by women flashing their breasts and men baring their backsides in a mass "moon". It was not the reception expected by the dozens of dignitaries, including a former prime minister, Gough Whitlam, who had travelled for 47 hours aboard the mile-long train from Adelaide.
"There were about 60 of them all lined up," said a photographer, Clive Hyde. "That's the Outback for you - you're pretty much free to do what you want."

THAILAND’s marine tourism industry was given a massive shot in the arm today with the announcement that the government has at last dropped to zero the customs duty on imported boats.
Until now, boats could be brought into Thai waters and stay for up to 12 months without the owner paying any taxes, but any boat kept in Thailand longer than a year was liable for duty and taxes totalling a swingeing 47 per cent of its value.
Aman Cruises general manager, Mr Bill O’Leary, was quoted from Phuket he was elated at the news. "This is the single most important positive decision the government has ever made for yachting tourism. It will open up the industry for incredible growth and will bring an enormous amount of money into Thailand."
East-West Siam managing director, Mr Vincent Tabuteau, was equally upbeat and said marine tourism will now become Thailand’s new niche market. "I believe it will develop just as diving has done. Travel agents specialising in yachting stand to gain enormously from this development," Mr Tabuteau said.

The What Wat Training Program

By Antonio Graceffo

With unlimited mountains to climb, rivers to paddle, treks to make, and elephants to ride, there is never really a shortage of adventures to be had in Thailand. But, we are all human, and after I come off of one of my trips, and submit the story, I often feel a kind of denouement, a humdrum, let down feeling, as my energy level plummets, dragging my interest level with it.
Seasoned travelers and long term expats are not immune to that feeling of "I couldn't look at another temple." Or, "I don't care if an elephant stampeded my shower stall, I wouldn't even take a photo."
Maybe it's not an individual thing. Maybe it has to do with the alignments of the planets or the phases of the moon. If wide spread boredom were not
endemic of our society, there would be no need for "Scary Movie III." When this depression strikes the expat community in Chiang Mai, we all converge
on The Lost Book Store, where we kill the day, shooting down suggestion after suggestion, in as few syllables as possible.
"Bungee jumping?"
"Done it."
"Thai boxing?"
"Old."
"Eat some fried bugs?"
"Breakfast, yesterday."
"Off Reading?"
"Been there."
"Chili swallowing contest?"
"Champion, two years running."
A while back, we were mired in this played-out dialogue, when a stranger wandered into the shop. He had his hair cut like a retired German Army
Sergeant, with a neon green sunshade pulled down to the rim of his over-thick glasses. His skin was that dry, crackling, peeling deep red that only Teutonic people can achieve, after three minutes exposure to the sun. His "Mai Pen Rai" T-Shirt was stretched over his man breasts.
"I sure am glad to be in Chiang Mai." He said, as if someone had asked. His Thai girlfriend stood quietly behind him, looking as bored as we were. "The rest of this country is so backward. I just came from Mae Rim. Do you know they don't even have coffee there?" He complained, referring to a small town, approximately eighteen kilometers away. He was complaining about coffee, but he was making a global judgment about all the rest of Thailand.
Being heroic types, we felt the need to defend our adopted country from this interloper.
"Of course they have coffee in Mae Rim." I protested. "The whole country's got coffee now."
"Not in Mae Rim." Insisted the stranger.
"I think I heard that too." Said one of our regular crowd, a bit shyly.
Soon, a heated debate broke out about whether or not they had coffee in Mae Rim. As if this were not testament enough to our boredom, what followed took the words "so bored I'd be willing to do anything" to a new level.
"I'll bet you 10 Baht that There's coffee in Mae Rim." I challenged. "I'll even go there and prove it. "
"You're on!" Said the stranger, gloating. He was probably already dreaming about how he was going to spend my 10 Baht.
The gauntlet had been thrown, and accepted. Now I was excited. I had a mission. A trip to Mae Rim and back could easily kill two hours. But it was only 10:30 AM. I needed something that would kill the whole day, leaving me exhausted, so I could collapse on my bed, and hopefully start fresh the next day.
"I got it!" I said, triumphantly, "I'm going to walk to Mae Rim."
My trip to Mae Rim was one of the most pleasant surprises I had ever had.
Walking, as opposed to taking a tuk-tuk or a taxi. I could see everything. The sites, sounds, and smells of Thailand were all accessible to me. Passing a long line of vendors selling strawberries was like strolling through John Lennon's proverbial "Strawberry Fields." The fruit shown bright red, silhouetting the beautiful girls selling it. The aroma was heavenly,
carrying me on, as if in a dream.
On another street, the students were graduating from university. I walked among the smiling families and proud graduates, absorbing their positive energy and good cheer. I didn't know any of them. But when I saw their hopeful faces, optimistic for their future prosperity, I just wanted to hug them, and say "good job!" The streets near the university were lined with flower vendors, blocks and blocks of flowers. Again, aromas, and swirls of color touched my senses. Cars whizzed past, missing the best parts of Thailand. The best part of anything is the secret joy, the beauty that we find in the ugly place, the diamond in the rough. I began to realize that even Thailand's congested cities had treasures to offer up, if we just knew how to ask for them.
Because I was going so much slower, than in a vehicle, I was able to stop and chat with people along the way. If I saw some strange food on a stall by the side of the road, I could stop and buy 5 Baht worth, to give it a try. You would never tell the tuk-tuk to halt because you wanted to sample an
interesting looking dish. When I needed to rest, I would hang out with the street vendors, practicing my Thai. They would smile and ask me where I had
come from, and where I was going. When I told them I was planning to walk 36 kilometers, they always let out an exclamation, telling anyone on the street who cared to listen. At each stop, I inevitably wound up with a large crowd around me.
I stopped for lunch in a small restaurant, across from an army base. They weren't used to foreign visitors, and laughed good naturedly at my funny accent. The food was amazing, if simple, barbecued pork, sticky rice and salad. The price, of course, was a fraction of what one would pay in a
farang hang out. When you walk, you wind up in all the Thai places. The deals are always better, and the experience more authentic.
No one could believe that I was walking just out of sheer boredom. I thought of telling them about the bet. But I figured they wouldn't have believed
this story either. They would probably have given me 10 Baht out of their own pocket, and put me on a bus back to Chiang Mai.
A policeman, from the border patrol, entered the restaurant and began questioning me.
"Are you an American soldier?" He asked.
"No, I'm an unread travel writer."
He frowned, not understanding.
"I'm a tourist." I explained.
"But you look like a soldier."
"No, I'm not a soldier."
"Are you alone?" He asked, suspiciously scanning the horizon. He probably thought I was the advance man for a US invasion.
"Yes, I am alone."
"Why you walk?"
How should I answer this one? The phases of the moon? Boredom? Because when I was two my parents taught me? Or, I missed the bus? I made some excuse about exercise, and pulled up my shirt to reveal my overhanging belly. He was about to let me go, but asked one more time. "You are sure you're
alone?"
"Yes, I am." I said. I almost added. "I don't know anyone daft enough to join me."
When I finally got home that night, I was exhausted, but somehow, the better for wear. I had a nice deep sun tan. I had gotten a phenomenal leg workout. I'd met some nice people, tasted excellent food, frightened a policeman, and best of all, I had only spent about 100 Baht all day.
That walk began what I later referred to as the "What Wat Training Program."
Basically, when I felt the inactivity blues coming on, I would throw my guide book open to a random page, close my eyes, and whatever temple or attraction my finger landed on, that's where I was going for the day. If it was 20 km or less, I would walk. If it was longer, I'd take the bicycle. The destination wasn't important. It was about the journey. Ridding or walking I
would get to see things and experience things that most foreigners would normally miss, besides which, doing all of those trips out of Chiang Mai, I learned every street, soi, and ally like the back of my hand.
If you did every temple in Thailand, imagine how fit you would be. Oh, and in case the crew cut stranger reads this:
"By the way, they did have coffee in Mae Rim. You owe me 10 Baht."

ASIA TIMES online www.atimes.com

China-US: Double bubbles in danger of colliding

By Ian Williams

What happens when two bubbles collide? Do they both burst, or do they coalesce and become an even bigger bubble - which will eventually burst even more spectacularly? That is the question posed by the growth figures from both the US and China, whose growth rates are tied in ways that neither seems to want to admit too loudly.
Even before this week's figures on China's explosive 9.1 percent growth in 2003, which many commentators thought actually understated the reality, the United Nations' annual economic report had identified the People's Republic of China as the locomotive for growth in Asia (with a nod to India), and added that the US with its 4 percent growth rate will do the same job for the industrialized world. But once again, the question must be asked - will these two Chinese and US engines run in the same direction indefinitely, or will they begin to diverge? Indeed, even more scarily, will they have a head-on collision and involve the world economy in the mother of all train-wrecks?
The problems have been noted. The UN report cited "the rapid rising weight of China in the world economy and its role in the present recovery," but it also warned that UN economists see a need for the US to reduce its government deficit. That echoed the very trenchant International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that described the deficit as "perilous" in the long run, posing "significant risks" to the rest of the world. IMF economists also cautioned that one should add to the short term a US$500 billion deficit that the US administration is running, a further US$47 trillion in unfunded long-term commitments for US Social Security and the federally funded Medicare health program for the elderly and indigent. And the IMF pointed out that there were additional liabilities from cash-strapped local governments, forced to borrow to compensate for federal cutbacks.
On the American trade deficit, the IMF also warned ominously, "The United States is on course to increase its net external liabilities to around 40 percent of its GDP within the next few years - an unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country." The report suggested that this situation would push the dollar even further down.
On the other side of the Pacific, perhaps it should not be regarded as a token of maturity that the money managers who poured funds into AOL, MCI, Enron and Tyco - all with problems, to say the least - are now pouring millions into Chinese IPOs with the same enthusiasm. It is difficult to see any more economic rationale in the 1,600-times oversubscribed China Green Holdings than the Internet Bubble of the last decade.
And now US investment banks are licking their chops at the prospects of taking Chinese Banks public. However, the $45 billion that Beijing has put into two of the Big Four government-owned banks can be seen as a mature appreciation of their problems - or as a symptom of the continuing cronyism and lack of democracy and transparency in the system and a down payment on what Standard & Poor's estimates could be up to $600 billion needed to bail out the bad loans. But that little detail probably won't stop Wall Street from rushing to buy if the banks are floated, as Beijing plans.
The China Bubble is expanding dangerously
At one time, China's autarkic economy protected it from outside influence. But along with this week's figures on economic growth came another ominous big number. From once being nearly self-sufficient in oil, China is now the second biggest oil importer in the world - and is on the verge of needing massive coal imports as well. The China Bubble has expanded to a point where it will soon reach the sharp edges of infrastructural capacity and reckless over-investment to the point of over-production. That is when bubbles burst.
Most publicized American forecasters tend to be Panglossianly bullish. They only ever see the upside, usually of the American economic prospects, but many of their China watchers seem to be wearing the same rose-colored glasses, seemingly oblivious to how co-dependent the two economies are.
For a more detached viewpoint, to look at the two economies separately is like looking at the two wheels of a bike without looking at the frame that connects them. Looking at the US-China bi-cycle in motion exacerbates the separate notes of caution that international agencies have sounded against each country. In fact, there is an inherent and additional precariousness in this double bubble act.
Veteran New York money manager Arnold Schmeidler - who did not invest in dot.com IPOs - warns, "We are in a period unlike anything since the 1930s when the world is confronting deflationary forces." The president and founder of A R Schmeidler & Co Inc asks how sustainable it is that "American auto companies are selling their production at zero interest rates, because there is excess capacity. But China is building auto plants to make hundreds of thousands of vehicles, so we have extra capacity being brought into a market where we already have excess capacity. So the trend is towards 40 cents an hour wages and top quality competing against the US."
Schmeidler concludes, "The single greatest force for deflation is when you have open trade between nations that have the ability to import the most efficient manufacturing expertise into a low-wage-base society, and so can produce products of the same quality as the high wage economy. The price pressure on the product allows consumers to get more for their money and they benefit. But it is disinflationary, if not deflationary."
In fact, of course, China currently is lending the US the money to buy Chinese production.
For example, as the "boom" of President George W Bush takes off, puzzled American commentators are asking where are all the extra jobs that the apparently positive indicators should be creating. In fact, they are being created abroad - mostly in China.
China recycles trade surplus into US Treasury bonds American companies may have forgotten what Henry Ford propounded when he first built his Model T: If you do not pay high enough wages to your workers, they can't afford to buy your product. One simple basis for that Bush boom is that China is recycling its US$100 billion-plus trade surplus with the US back into dollars, and especially into US Treasury bonds. Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.
One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.
But far from wanting to devastate the dollar, China is more concerned to maintain its currency's parity with the dollar, even as it devalues massively against the Euro or the Yen. Indeed, without those Sino-dollars flowing back, the dollar would have tanked even more.
There is a big multiplier effect here. China only accounts for 3 percent of the world's GDP, but for from three to five times as much of the world's growth. And its economy is disproportionately trade-oriented. So its double act with the US - both the seller of consumer goods on a huge scale and the financer for US' purchase makes it even more important.
It does not help that the US, which has the experience, certainly shows no signs of using it to assess longer term dangers, and even if China had that foresight of perils ahead, Beijing lacks the experience to act effectively.
Dangerously, the global economy is faced by an addictive combination of China - a developing country with many problems of social instability - and the US - which the recent IMF report hints is a rapidly undeveloping country - whose fiscal irresponsibility is compounded by a political immaturity that tends to ignore geopolitical and economic reality.
If the US economy sinks and Americans stop buying Chinese goods, then it will compound the US slump as China first stops buying US bonds that have inflated the American bubble and then moves on to selling them. On the other hand, if the Chinese economy falters and it stops recycling dollars into the US economy, then the boom stops anyway. Indeed, it seems that China increasingly will need more of that cash to pay for energy imports anyway.
But New York money manager Schmeidler, and others who remember that economics is the dismal science, realize that it is still better science than politicians drumming up votes and investment bankers drumming up business seem to understand. The West is in the red, and if it crashes, the East may join it.

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

Tolkien's Ring: When immortality is not enough
By Spengler

Alone among 20th century novelists, J R R Tolkien concerned himself with the mortality not of individuals but of peoples. The young soldier-scholar of World War I viewed the uncertain fate of European nations through the mirror of the Dark Ages, when the life of small peoples hung by a thread. In the midst of today's Great Extinction of cultures, and at the onset of civilizational war, Tolkien evokes an uncanny resonance among today's readers. He did not write a fantasy, but rather a roman-a-clef.
I spoke too soon when I wrote a year ago that a "reasonably faithful cinematic version" of Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was the "cultural event of the decade" (The Ring and the remnants of the West, Jan 11, '03). With the third installment in cinemas, it appears that director Peter Jackson has buried Tolkien's mythic tragedy under an avalanche of tricks. One wants to hiss along with Gollum: "Stupid hobbit! It ruins it!" We are left with a crackling good adventure, but have lost something precious.
Despite his huge readership, Tolkien during his lifetime never published The Silmarillion, the tragedy of immortals that underlies The Lord of the Rings. Instead he hit upon the genial device of leading the reader to the elements of his story through the eyes of the Little People who are entangled in it. It is as if Shakespeare had published something like Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead rather than Hamlet.
The mortality of the peoples Tolkien took by the horns the great ideological beast of his time. After the Great War, the newly-hatched Existentialist philosophers were shocked to discover that human beings fear for their mortality. In fact, it is quite a commonplace thing to die for one's country, provided that one believes that one's country still will be there. The pull of cultural identity is so strong that men will fling themselves into the jaws of death if they believe such actions will preserve their culture. But what if culture itself - the individual's connection to past as well as future - is in danger? Now, that is really being alone in the universe. Death to preserve one's people is quite a tolerable proposition. The prospective death of the entire people along with its culture is what creates a particularly nasty type of existential angst, the sort that produces a Hitler or an Osama bin Laden.
Small peoples of the Dark Ages, such as Beowulf's Geats, had to think about such things because extinction was the normal outcome. As it turned out, Tolkien's early medieval sources (he had translated Beowulf) mirrored the existentially-challenged world after the Great War, precisely because the subject of national extinction had forced its way back to the surface. The theme of national extinction permeates the entire work. "It is not your own shire," the High-Elf Gildor reproaches Frodo at the outset of his journey in the forests of the shire . "Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more."
A people vanishes from the earth when its language no longer is spoken. Tolkien did not simply invent languages, but recreated the linguistic maelstrom of the early Middle Ages, when the high speech of great civilizations faded from memory while the dialects of small peoples dissolved into larger language groups. Tolkien's great philological skills created a unique means of portraying the temporality of the nations.
As a foil to human mortality, Tolkien invented a deathless and noble race. His Elves suffer from saiety with immortal life. They no longer reproduce. We meet no Elf younger than a millennium. Tolkien's Fair Folk, endowed with marvelous powers of mind and body, possessors of a radiant high culture, merely mark the time before they must leave Middle Earth. Mercifully we are spared their private thoughts. Imagine what dinner-table dialogue would be like between Elrond and daughter Arwen, who will renounce immortality to marry the mortal Aragorn. "Why do you have to date Aragorn? What happend to that nice Elf boy you were going out with in Lothlorien?" "Daddy, I'm three thousand years old and I've dated all the Elf boys. They are so boring!" Minas Tirith, for that matter, houses only half the population it could comfortably hold, as its ancient race of men fails to bring children into the world. Gondor's military weakness stems from its declining population; the army Aragorn leads to the Black Gate in the last battle numbers fewer than the vanguard of the army of Gondor in its prime. Mordor encroaches because Gondor cannot man its borders.
Declining population and crumbling empire is a theme as old as Rome, of course. Nor is it only Latin. In Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon sources, the extinction of the nation lurks behind every setback. The old woman's lament at Beowulf's funeral pyre, for example, foresees the destruction of his Geats after the death of its hero and protector. From the vantage-point of the trenches of the Great War, though, this echo of the Dark Ages took on a new and terrible meaning. The peoples of Europe came out to fight for their predominance and nearly annihilated each other.
Today's Europeans are willing themselves out of existence (see Why Europe chooses extinction, Apr 8, '03). The two world wars of the 20th century destroyed the national illusions of the European peoples, their pretension to strut and swagger upon the world stage. France was the first nation to misidentify its national interests with the fate of Christendom (The sacred heart of darkness, Feb 11, '03), emulated in far more horrible form first by Russia ("the God-bearing nation" in Dostoyevsky's words) and then by Germany. Why is it that radical Islam yet may defeat the West? Migrants from North Africa and the Middle East may overwhelm the shrinking population of Western Europe, without ever assimilating into Western European culture. Collapsing birth rates in formerly Catholic strongholds (including Quebec) coincide with negligible church attendance, and demoralization within the Church itself.
When immortality is not enough - Here is a summary of the mythic tragedy behind The Lord of the Rings: Immortality was not enough for Tolkien's "Light-Elves" (Licht-Alben, precisely what Wagner calls his gods). Possessive love for their own works led them to tragic errors, first among which is Feanor's ill-advised quest for his stolen jewels, the Silmarils. That motivates the Elves' exile in Middle-Earth. Later, the Elvish Smiths of Middle-Earth accept the assistance of the evil Sauron in forging the Three Elven Rings of air, fire and water. In some way or other, the vague association with Sauron contaminates the Three Rings, such that when Sauron's One Ring is destroyed, the power of the three rings must fade as well. That means the end of the magical wood of Lothlorien, which Galadriel has preserved in a sort of perpetual spring, and the demise of Rivendell, which Elrond maintains as the last bastion of lore and art. Presumably Gandalf, who bears the ring of fire, will lose some of his power as well. Sauron furthermore corrupted the Numenoreans, a noble race of Men, by convincing them they could wrest immortality from the Valar (the gods) by invading their Blessed Realm, Valinor.
The Nine Rings granted to mortal Men produce a vampire-like caricature of immortality, as the bearers fade into wraiths. The One Ring bestows a perverse sort of immortality upon its owner, whose body ceases to age while his soul decays, like Dorian Gray's portrait. It is a warped version of the Elves' immortality within the mortal world of Middle-Earth. Once touched, it cannot easily be relinquished; Isildur, heir of the Numenorean "faithful", cannot bear to destroy it. The Hobbits' great virtue is the inner strength to part with the Ring. But all of the three Hobbits who have borne it, Bilbo, Frodo, and Samwise, ultimately must abandon Middle-Earth. Immortality, once tasted, poisons the joy of Middle-Earth even for Hobbits. Galadriel redeems herself by renouncing her works, although in consequence she and her people must leave the mortal realm, that is, Middle-Earth. She refuses the offer of the One Ring ("I will diminish, and remain Galadriel"). The "faithful" survivors of the ruin of Numenor, of whom Aragorn is the heir, accept mortality and thus are redeemed.
Tolkien clearly stated his intentions in his correspondence: "Anyway, all this stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes. With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire ... It has various opportunities of 'Fall'. It may become possessive, clinging to the things made as 'its own', the sub-creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He will rebel against the laws of the Creator - especially against mortality. Both of these (alone or together) will lead to the desire for Power, for making the will more quickly effective, - and so to the Machine (or Magic)."
The Faustian bargain and its resort to Magic were themes long elaborated in Western literature, but Tolkien added a terrible new dimension. In Middle-Earth, as in Europe during the Great War, it was not the mortality of the individual, as in Goethe, but instead the mortality of nations. No serious critic will give Tolkien a place in the literary canon, because his characters generally are stick-figures speaking in stilted declamation. But that is beside the point. He has little time to waste on the petty concerns of the sort of character that populates modern fiction. His concern is the doom of peoples, or, to coin a phrase, the decline of the West.
Europe's decline - Immortality was not enough for the Europeans. That is, Christianity in the confessional, and universal Christian empire in politics, offered the Europeans a form of immortality beyond the existence of the nation. Europe fell from grace when its great constituent nations decided that this sort of immortality was not enough for them, and that they should instead fight for temporal dominance upon the earth. Exhausted from their wars, the peoples of Europe sank into a torpor that is destroying them slowly but with terrible certainty.
Jackson's portrayal of Denethor, the feckless Steward of Gondor, doubtless reminded Americans of European defeatism with respect to Iraq and other venues in the Middle East. Out of context, the character has little motivation. Perhaps Jackson will provide the missing background of Gondor's decline in a future extended version.
It is tricky, of course, to draw analogies between the pride and folly of Feanor or the Numenorians in Tolkien's fantasy, and the pride and folly of the European nations in World War I. But it was a commonplace observation after 1918 that the great European tragedy began with a misguided attempt to cheat mortality through the assertion of national supremacy. One cannot make sense of Hitler's rise to power without observing that many Germans believed with all their heart that the existence of the Volk was in jeopordy. Martin Heidegger gave (and never retracted) his wholehearted support to Hitler, believing that immersion in the Volk was a legitimate answer to the Existential crisis.
A tragic flaw was set in Europe's foundations, in the form of its Faustian bargain with paganism (Why Europe chooses extinction). Christianity offered salvation in another world; the Europeans wanted a taste of immortality in this one. By allowing the pagans to syncretically adopt their old gods into the new religion, Christianity left the Europeans forever torn between Jesus and Siegfried. Richard Wagner returned to the old pagan sources and found in them a foretaste of the Nihilism that would ravage Europe during its Second Thirty Years' War of 1914-1944. Repudiating Wagner, Tolkien hoped to link an ennobling pagan past and the Christian present. In this respect he failed utterly. He is reduced to elegaic yearning for a lost agrarian past. He is a reactionary looking backwards, for his vision is too clear to allow false hopes for the European future.
Tolkien kept faith with the original Christian message. Man must accept not only his own mortality, but the mortality of his nation, the extinction of his culture, the silencing of his mother-tongue, and look instead toward salvation beyond all mortal hope. That is what Christianity offered the pagans during the Great Extinction of Peoples after the collapse of Rome. Frodo knows that the entire race of Hobbits will become extinct. He begins his journey with Gildor's warning that one day others will dwell in the shire when hobbits are no more. Gildor is the first among the High-Elves he meets as he rides toward the Havens, in the company of Elrond and Galadriel, who, along with Gandalf, finally are revealed in their true capacity as the bearers of the Three Elven Rings.
But the European nations threw off the bonds of universal Christian empire and, through Wagnerian nationalism, sought immortality within the mortal realm - the tragic flaw of Feanor, Galadriel and the rebel Eldar. The Great Wars and the fall of Europe were the consequence. Except in the imagination, there was no going back.
The sea-passage to the West, in Peter Jackson's interpretation, represents death. It might just as well represent immigration to America. Unlike all other peoples, Americans need not fear the extinction of their cultural identity, because they have none to begin with. That is America's great weakness but also its abiding strength. It is the reason that America well may endure for all time while the Kulturnationen dissolve into the dust of the libraries. Americans bridle when told that they have no culture. But what can they name whose loss would destroy their sense of national identity? Erase the memory of Homer, and what becomes of the Greeks? Forget Herman Melville, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and even The Simpsons, and Americans still are Americans. If German or French no longer were spoken, the concept of "Germany" or "France" would become meaningless. At the time of their revolution, Americans considered German as a national language. A century from now they might adopt Spanish. America can withstand the loss of the English language itself. As long as America's political covenant remains intact, Americans can change their "culture" as often as convenient. America may fulfill the Christian project, as an assembly of individuals called out of the nations, cut loose from their heathen heritage - an outcome Tolkien could not have imagined.

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