Harry Targ
Energy
can be used as a weapon. You don’t have to go further than the headlines today
to see that’s true….We’re doing this to become better war fighters.”
(Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, quoted in “Purdue, Navy to Unite on Energy
Research,” Lafayette Journal and Courier,
May 9, 2014).
At a public assembly celebrating a formal agreement
endorsed by the United States Navy and Marine Corps and Purdue University,
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and President Mitch Daniels extolled the
virtues of future research collaboration.
Mabus pointed out that the Navy expects that one-half
of its energy consumption by 2020 will come from alternative sources of energy
and a research partnership with universities such as Purdue will ensure the
achievement of that goal. All of this
work, the Secretary said, would support the Navy and Marine Corps effort to
remain the nation with the leading “warfare capacity” in the world. A spokesperson
from the Purdue Energy Center declared that the agreement shows that the Navy
and Purdue University are natural partners. Quoting Mabus again: “We’re going
to benefit from the brains, research and talent of Purdue.”
The positive side of this agreement is that a
multi-billion dollar defense program is committing itself to the development of
alternative energy sources for its projects. What the self-congratulatory
comments from the Navy and the university leave out is the alternative to
research and development of new energy sources for maintaining the U.S war
machine. Another approach to national security policy that should be discussed
is downsizing a military machine that uses (wastes) scarce resources for
purposes of global domination.
Even though pressures to cut federal budgets across
the board, including defense, are great, the Obama Administration remains
committed to stabilizing or increasing U.S. naval capabilities in the
Pacific. For example, in a 2013 Wall Street Journal story Julian E. Barnes
reports that the Pentagon is planning to shift the bulk of its “naval assets”
to Asia. Barnes quoted former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta who declared
that by 2020 sixty percent of “cruisers, destroyers, submarines and other
warships” would be stationed in the Pacific. Barnes pointed out that the shift
from a bi-ocean navy to an Asian based navy would please U.S. allies who feel
threatened by Chinese hegemony in the region (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles).
In February, 2014 current Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel announced plans to cut defense capabilities, presumably to meet budgetary
demands. However, Hagel announced that the Navy would purchase two destroyers
and two new submarines. Thom Shanker and Helene Cooper wrote (The New York Times, February 23, 2014),
“Although consideration was given to retiring an aircraft carrier, the Navy
will keep its fleet of 11-for now.”
Jaime Fuller wrote an article in The Washington Post, (“Four Factors
Shaping President Obama’s Visit to Asia,” April 23, 2014) highlighting
President Obama’s visit to Asia. The article discusses the historical evolution
of the “Asian pivot” policy initiated by former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton in 2011 and endorsed by the President. A centerpiece of the shift of
U.S. military policy to an Asian focus includes renewing U.S. access to naval
bases in the Philippines, supporting expansion of the Japanese military, and
responding to a Chinese naval buildup in the Pacific. The author asserts that
“through its navy, China hopes to reshape the balance of power in Asia. The
naval competition in the western Pacific will set the tone for a large part of
global politics in the coming decades.”
The “liberal” media, such as The New York Times and The Washington
Post, are not the only purveyors of information about the need for a strong
navy. The conservative newspaper The Washington
Times published an article by Bill Gertz on May 7, 2014, with the title,
“Inside the Ring: China’s Missile Cruiser a Major Step to Naval Warfare
Buildup.” The article describes China’s development of “an advanced guided
missile cruiser that represents a major component of Beijing’s large-scale
naval warfare buildup.” To the chagrin of Gertz, the United States is not
planning on building such cruisers. In
terms of U.S. military security, the article quotes Rick Fisher, “a Chinese
military affairs analyst,” who claims that U.S. military planners are not able
to fulfill “ ‘Air Sea battle’ strategies to counter China’s increasingly
capable ‘anti-access’ threats in East Asia”
because of Obama’s short-sighted concern about nuclear weapons and his
domestic agenda.
These news items suggest curious connections. First,
major research institutions such as Purdue University remain instrumentalities
of the military. And, even if research programs are addressing fundamental
human problems such as saving the environment and reducing commitments to a
fossil fuel economy, they are inextricably connected with programs building
“warfare capacity.” These goals are incompatible. (Research and teaching
programs exist at most universities, including Purdue, to explore alternative
approaches to national security that do not depend on expanding the nation’s
“warfare capacity”).
Second, the occasion for the visit by the Secretary
of the Navy to Purdue University was the announcement of a collaborative
project to transform the U.S. Navy away from overreliance on fossil fuels. The
military and the university will be collaborating to improve the environment
and make war-making more efficient.
Third, the Navy/university project is designed to
facilitate the Obama Administration goal of projecting more U.S. military power
in Asia, to curry the favor of some allies in the region, counter-balance
Chinese influence, and prepare for war with the superpower of the future.
Reflecting on these news accounts we see the paradox
of the inextricable interconnectedness of education, research,
environmentalism, militarism, and the pursuit of U.S. great power hegemony. As
a result, progressives must increasingly develop a political program that
addresses the crisis of the global environment and the war problem at the same
time.
