Harry Targ
So Why Isn’t That
Happening Right Now? And What Can Be Done to Change That?
The history of the peace
movement is replete with successes and many failures. Peace movement solidarity
has been intimately connected to anti-racist, pro-labor, women, and
environmental struggles for decades. When Dr. King and Mohammed Ali connected
the evils of Vietnam with racism and poverty at home, proponents of
peace and social and economic justice gained in strength.
Today the movement is dispersed
because peace activists are appropriately struggling to defend what
remains of democracy, women’s’ right to choose, gun control, medical care for
all, and other critical issues.
Meanwhile the
multidimensional character of war continues. War and terrorism on the world
stage persists including the systematic use of hybrid war techniques to starve
populations in states defined as enemies, the spread of new high technological
instruments of slaughter, economic sanctions against governments defined as
enemies of “democracy,” the danger of the return to big power conflict, and
continuing increases in military spending. But, what we might call “the war
system” is not only about peace but about economic justice, saving the
environment, and ending racism and sexism as well.
Therefore, it is useful to
step back and analyze “the time of day” on a worldwide basis as to global class
forces and their ideologies, contemporary techniques of empire and their
consequences for the lives of billions, individual global crises; and to assess
the fundamental structures of President Biden’s stances on war, peace, and
foreign policy in general.
The Ruling Class Agenda
for the United States Role in the World
[Source:
countercurrents.org]
From a Washington
Post editorial, May 21, 2016:
“Hardly a day goes by without evidence that the
liberal international order of the past seven decades is being
eroded. China and Russia are attempting to fashion a world in their
own illiberal image… no matter who takes the Oval Office, it will demand
courage and difficult decisions to save the liberal international order. As a
new report from the Center for a New American Security points out,
this order is worth saving, and it is worth reminding ourselves why: It
generated unprecedented global prosperity, lifting billions of people out of
poverty; democratic government, once rare, spread to more than 100 nations; and
for seven decades there has been no cataclysmic war among the great powers. No
wonder U.S. engagement with the world enjoyed a bipartisan consensus.”
The Washington Post editorial
of 2016 quoted above still clearly articulates the dominant view envisioned by
U.S. foreign policy elites: about global political economy, militarism, and
ideology.
First, it is inspired by the
necessity of 21st century capitalism to defend neoliberal globalization:
government for the rich, austerity for the many, and deregulation of trade,
investment, and speculation.
Second, the Post vision
of a New World Order is built upon a reconstituted United States military and
economic hegemony that has been a central feature of policymaking at least
since the end of World War II even though time after time it has suffered
setbacks.
In addition, despite recent
setbacks, grassroots mass mobilizations against neoliberal globalization and
austerity policies have risen everywhere, including in the United States. However,
The Washington Post speaks to efforts to reassemble the same
constellation of political forces, military resources, and concentrated wealth,
that, if anything, are greater than at any time since the establishment of the
US “permanent war economy” after the last World War.
Historian, Michael Stanley,
in an essay entitled “‘We are Not Denmark’: Hillary Clinton and Liberal
American Exceptionalism,” (Common Dreams, February 26, 2016) pointed to
the ideological glue that has been used by foreign policy elites, liberal and
conservative, to justify the pursuit of neoliberal globalization and
militarism; that is the reintroduction of the old idea of American
Exceptionalism. The Biden administration conceptualization of this ideology is
presented as the struggle between “democracy versus authoritarianism.”
American Exceptionalism
presumes the world has little to offer the United States. The only difference
between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy is whether the
exceptionalism still exists and must be maintained or has dissipated requiring
the need to “make America great again.” Leaders of both parties, however,
support the national security state, high military expenditures, and a global presence—military,
economic, political, and cultural.
Techniques of Empire
Today
Although the imperial agenda,
and the ideological precepts justifying it, has remained the same for two
hundred years the techniques of empire have changed as growing resistance at
home and abroad and new technologies dictate. Changes in warfare, other
violence, and imperial expansion include the following:
-Wars are internal much more
than international and casualties are overwhelmingly civilian rather than
military.
-The global presence of some
form of the United States military is ubiquitous-between 700-and 1,000 military
bases, in anywhere from 40 to 120 countries
- U.S. military operations
have been privatized. It is estimated that ninety percent of such work is being
done by 110 contractors.
- “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”
have been used to kill alleged enemies everywhere.
[Source: wilayah.info]
-U.S. agencies, such as the
CIA, have been engaged in the increased use of assassinations and efforts to
undermine governments. So-called “non-government organizations” fund dissident
groups in countries the United States seeks to destabilize.
-So-called “humanitarian
assistance” is used to support United States policies in the Middle East,
Africa, and Latin America.
-In sum, the United States
increasingly has used economic tools—economic blockades, trade sanctions,
covert financing of pro-US politicians in other countries, and condemnations by
some international organizations to undermine, starve, and ultimately, it is
hoped, to entice people to overthrow their governments. These techniques, often
labeled “hybrid war,” are being used against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and
some thirty other countries.
Imperial “Trouble Spots”:
2022: NATO/Ukraine and a New Cold War
In the last week of June,
2022, three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine starting the recent
and ongoing war, the long-advertised NATO summit opened. Before the meeting the organization’s
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that it would increase NATO’s
“high-readiness military forces from 40,000 to over 300,000,” an increase of
troop levels by 650 percent over the past.
NATO director Jens
Stoltenberg advocated for more NATO funding at NATO summit. [Source: foreignpolicy.com]
Subsequent to the
announcement, leaders of NATO countries met in Madrid from June 29-30 and made
key decisions to advance the organization and militarism in Europe and around
the world. According to a NATO document the 30-nation military alliance identified
“Russia as the most significant and direct threat to Allied security” and
referred to “China for the first time,” and included “other challenges like
terrorism, cyber and hybrid.”
Perhaps most troubling from a
peace point of view was the document’s announcement that deterrence and defense
would be enhanced by “more troops and more pre-positioned equipment and weapon
stockpiles in the east of the Alliance, enhancing NATO’s eight multinational
battlegroups…” Diplomacy was not discussed.
NATO plans included
recommitments of each member country to provide 2 percent of their GDP to the
organization’s budget and invitations to new members, Sweden and Finland. NATO
documents refer to the Russian threat and “China’s growing influence and
assertiveness.”
For the first time other
attendees included representatives from
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the Republic of Korea presumably in regard
to the China “threat.” In addition, the NATO press release referred to a
recommitment “to the fight against terrorism and addressed NATO’s response to
threats and challenges from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel.” And
finally, the NATO partners made long term financial commitments to addressing
the climate crisis.
At the closing press
conference, the NATO Secretary General indicated that “we face the most serious
security situation in decades.” Subsequent to the NATO Summit the war in Ukraine, on all
sides, escalated.
The Asian Pivot
In 2011, U.S. spokespersons
announced that the country would shift resources and attention to Asia from the
Middle East, an area with demanding security and economic interests. Although U.S./Chinese
dialogue continues the United States has criticized China’s repositioning of
what it regards as its possessions in the South China Sea and threatens any
Chinese actions in relation to Twaiwan.. The United States has expanded
military relations with Vietnam, reestablished military bases in the
Philippines, and has generally avoided criticizing efforts by ruling Japanese
politicians to revise their constitution to allow for a full-scale
remilitarization. The United States has threatened North Korea over their
military maneuvers and has bolstered the South Korean military. Dee Knight has described
recent Biden Administration policy proclamations concerning China.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin III bumps elbows with Vietnam’s Defense Minister Phan Van Giang in
Hanoi, July 29, 2021. [Source: thediplomat.com]
And corporations engaged in
military production and research universities have used the China threat as a
justification for increased military spending, research and development,
cyber-security and a whole panoply of tools to fight twenty-first century wars.
The Middle East
Most American politicians
express their belief that the U.S. must maintain a special relationship with
the state of Israel. One of the few active mobilizations for peace today is the
worldwide campaign to demand governments, corporations, and other institutions
boycott, and divest holdings in what is regarded as an apartheid state, Israel,
which oppresses its Arab population and those living in the Occupied
Territories. The campaign is so effective that along with national politicians,
governors and state legislatures have taken stands against the BDS campaign. Israel
continues to expand its occupation of Palestinian land, repress Palestinians
within Israel, and is currently not distributing the covid-19 vaccine to
Palestinian people, while other Israel citizens are inoculated.
Next to the historic U.S.
ties to Israel, Syria, Libya, Yemen and other countries have been torn apart by
civil war fueled by western, primarily U.S. intervention, continuing U.S.
support of Saudi Arabian militarism, and the fractionalization of states in the
region. The Trump administration increased the threat of war with
Iran. President Biden, open to returning to the Nuclear Treaty with Iran from
which Trump withdrew, has achieved little success in reducing tensions with
Iran.
The Saudi Arabian war on
Yemen with U.S. support continues and Biden visited Saudi Arabia to secure
increasing production of oil, in demand since the onset of the war in Ukraine.
Protest outside White House
against Saudi bombing of Yemen. [Source: bbc.com]
Africa
Nick Turse has described the
growing U.S. military presence on the African continent. A special command
structure, AFRICOM, was established in 2008 to oversee U.S. security interests
on the continent. Initially, Turse reported, the Pentagon claimed that it had
one larger base, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. But enterprising researchers
discovered that the U.S. military had a dense network of “cooperative security
outposts,” bases and other sites of military presence, at least 60 across the
continent, in 34 countries. The U.S. has defense attaches in 38
countries.
Turse and colleagues reported
on data indicating that the United States has been engaged in secret military
training of personnel in many countries, what they called ‘a shadowy network of
U.S. programs that every year provides instruction and assistance to
approximately 200,000 foreign soldiers, police, and other
personnel.” (Douglas Gillison, Nick Turse, Moiz Syed, “How the
U.S. Trains Killers Worldwide,” Portside, July 13, 2016). In addition, as Richard Dunn reported, on April 27, Congress overwhelmingly passed the “Countering
Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” warning of the need for greater US
military presence and support of African nations against a “Russian threat.” In
December 2022, President Biden hosted African leaders to announce modest
“development” assistance and to warn of China’s exploitative intentions on the
African continent.
Map of U.S. Special Forces
operations in Africa. [Source: theintercept.com]
Latin America
The influence of the United
States in the Western Hemisphere has weakened since the onset of the Bolivarian
Revolution in the early part of the 21st century. Also Latin
Americans oppose the long-standing efforts of the US to isolate Cuba. However,
during the Trump Administration Obama era
“soft power” approaches toward Cuba were reversed. Trump initiated 243 new
economic sanctions against the island. Biden has not lifted most of them. Cuba
solidarity activists estimate, the economic blockade of Cuba is more severe now
than any time since its initiation in 1960.
June 6-10, 2022, the United
States orchestrated a “Summit of the Americas,” excluding invitations for Cuba,
Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Several Hemisphere nations refused to participate in
the meetings in protest. Mexico and other countries in the region have called for the revitalizing of regional
economic and political organizations without United States participation and
interference. In the United Nations General Assembly all Latin American
countries and virtually all countries in the Global South vote annually to condemn
the US blockade of Cuba. While governments in Colombia, Bolivia, and elsewhere
have emerged to resume the “Pink Tide,” coups in Peru and Argentina suggest
that the right in Latin America (and the United States) are attempting to push
back against it.
[Source: mronline.org]
The Idea of the
National Security State
[Source: twitter.com]
The contradiction that still
needs an explanation is the fact that for the most part the American people
oppose wars and intervention. This is particularly so in the twenty-first
century when so much pain and suffering has been caused by wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The answer can be found in a
variety of explanations of United States imperialism including what Mike
Lofgren has called the “deep state.” Lofgren defined the “deep state”
as “… a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of
top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United
States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through
the formal political process.” (Mike Lofgren, “Anatomy of the ‘Deep
State’: Hiding in Plain Sight,” Online University of the Left, February
23, 2014).
Power to make critical
decisions reside not in the superstructure of the political process; the place
were competitive games are played for all to see, but in powerful institutions
embedded in society that can make decisions without requiring popular approval.
In the end these institutions have involved the United States in death and
destruction all across the globe.
And Military Spending
Continues
("The spending on
contractors continues today at the same rapid clip, accounting for more than half of average Pentagon spending each year. And with
Congress poised to approve a $778 billion one-year spending package… Democrats are slashing the
Build Back Better bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion over ten years.
Meanwhile, Pentagon contractors have received $3.4 trillion over the past
decade." (Lindsay Koshgarian, "U.S. Military Contracts Totaled $3.4
Trillion Over 10 Years,” Institute for Policy Studies, October 28, 2021).
And with the war in Ukraine,
U.S. military spending in 2022 has exceeded $800 billion dollars. As Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg
Hayes said: “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of
course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the Department of Defense]
or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to
replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the next coming
years.” (William Hartung, “How Pentagon Contractors Are Cashing in on the
Ukraine Crisis,” Quincy Institute, April 17, 2022). In December, 2022, Congress
authorized military expenditures of $858 billion (not counting authorizations
to agencies that are really engaging in military activities).
So Where Does the Peace
Movement Go From Here?
Analyses of what is wrong are
easier to develop than thinking through ways to respond. This essay opened with
a dilemma, a dispersed peace movement locally and nationally. It then argued
that the foreign policy elites have had a hegemonic vision of the role of the
United States in the world yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And these
elites and institutions of the national security state have at their disposal
21st century military technologies to maintain their power in the world.
But a revitalized peace
movement can respond to the complexities of “the time of day”. Approaches the
peace movement can take in the near term include the following:
1.Articulate a theory, a
conceptual scheme, that foregrounds two main elements. First, this
“theory” should make crystal clear that there are fundamental interconnections
between the economic system of capitalism, militarism, and the ideology of
American exceptionalism. The peace movement might work on single issues and
aspects of the war problem as circumstances dictate at particular times, but in
the main such movements must unabashedly show how economics, politics,
ideology, and the war system are interconnected and to end war and militarism, all
of the elements must be seen together.
One way to articulate these
connections graphically is to think about a diamond shaped figure. At the base
is an economic system, at this point-in-time finance capitalism and the
exploitation of workers. Above the base at the two side points are militarism
on one side and racism, sexism, and American exceptionalism on the other. At
the top add destruction of nature. Conceptualizing the war problem in this way
we begin to see the connections between the 21st century state of
capitalism as a global system and war, racism, sexism, ideology, and
environmental destruction.
Second, this “theory”
should encourage a shift in thinking about international relations as an issue
of the relations among powerful states to a way of thinking that conceptualizes
economics and militarism as a “North/South” problem.
Theorists
like V. J. Prashad have argued that “older” models of international relations
have overemphasized big power conflict at the expense of understanding how the
countries of the Global North have exploited, invaded, and transformed the
economic and political life of what Prashad has called “The Darker Nations.” To
some extend Eurocentric models of international relations have limited the
peace movements’ understanding that the object of wars and competition have
largely been about countries and peoples of the Global South. (For a useful
comparison of a G7 versus BRICS view of the world see https://fb.watch/ebp1ie-34t/)
Vijay Prashad [Source: wikipedia.org]
2.Use the theory or schema to
develop an educational program that begins with efforts to understand the
fundamentals of the war system, that is connecting economics, to class, race,
gender, ideology, and the environment. Relate the specific issue at hand:
Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, undermining regimes in Latin America for example, to
the diamond.
3.Participate in grassroots
organizing in solidarity with others, linking issues to the war/peace paradigm.
Particular attention should be given to articulating the connections between
domestic issues and the war system.
4.Engage in global
solidarity. The analysis above has emphasized the forces of global hegemony, or
imperialism. Introduce to peace and justice struggles ideas about “North/South connections.
That is, the deep structure of international relations for hundreds of years
has been primarily about violence and exploitation of peoples of the Global
South by nations, particularly from Europe and North America, in the Global
North. For the vast majority of humankind economic inequality, starvation,
disastrous climate change and a host of interrelated problems take precedence
over conflicts in Europe. As V J Prashad has pointed out “war is a crime” and
war includes structural as well as direct violence. https://youtu.be/Lg9c0jv6wTA
The tasks of a
21st century peace movement are not different from those of the past. They
involve education, organization, and agitation. With the growth of worldwide
resistance to neoliberal globalization, austerity, racism, sexism, and
destruction of nature, it seems natural to incorporate concerns for peace
and the right to national and personal self-determination to the budding
radical movements of our day.
(
An earlier version of this paper appeared as “US Foreign Policy, International
Relations, and Militarism Today” 103-116, Contested Terrains: Elections, War
&Peace, Labor, Dialogue and Initiative,2022, Changemaker Publications).