THE NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER REAPPEARS: A Radio Interview and Essay

 A radio discussion of the New International Economic Order:

https://soundcloud.com/user-240416425/2023-01-07-1500-grass-is-greener-targ-on-the-nieo-and-the-global-south

Harry Targ

 

“The Progressive International inaugurated a global process to build a New International Economic Order fit for the twenty-first century at a multilateral summit in midtown Manhattan in partnership with UN Permanent Representatives, sitting and former ministers from eight governments across the Global South. You can watch the proceedings.” (No. 49 | Build the New International Economic Order in Havana).

https://youtu.be/TwhNhRmVEJM

 

 https://act.progressive.international/nieo/

 

The Third World Demands a New International Economic Order: History of an Idea

 

The brutal overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 was reminiscent of traditional US. activities as world policeman. The impact of the coup on the Chilean people in terms of economic justice and political freedom was negative in the extreme. The bloody victory of counterrevolution in Chile and elsewhere, however, came at a period in world history when the rise of Third World resistance to U.S. imperialism was reducing the prospect of more Chiles in the future.

 

By the 1970s, the worldwide resistance to U.S. and international capitalism was growing. The revolutionary manifestation of this resistance was occurring in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Central America and the Caribbean. During the Nixon-Ford period, the United States and its imperialist allies lost control of the Indochinese states, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. South Yemen, Nicaragua, Iran, and Grenada would follow later in the decade. The Rockefeller Foundation and leaders of colonial powers and multinational corporations and banks formed the Trilateral Commission in 1973 to strategize about how to crush rising dissent in the Global South.

 

Along with the rise of revolutionary victories and movements throughout the Third World, a worldwide reformist movement began to take shape around demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Its predecessor, the. nonaligned movement of the 1950s and 1960s, had been nurtured by leading anticolonial figures such as Nasser of Egypt, Nkrumah of Ghana, and Nehru of India. Their goal was to construct a bloc of Third World nations of all ideological hues which could achieve political power and economic advantage by avoiding alliances and political stances that might tie them to the United States or the former Soviet Union. The nonaligned movement saw the interests of member nations tied to the resolution of "north-south" issues, which in their view were of greater importance than "east-west" issues.

 

After two decades of experience with political independence from formal colonialism, revolutionaries who believed that economic exploitation resulted from the structure of the international capitalist system were joined by Third World leaders who saw the need to reform international capitalism. Consequently, a movement emerged, largely within UN agencies, such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), increasingly populated by Third World nations, that addressed Third World poverty and underdevelopment (https://unctad.org). This movement presupposed the possibility of reducing the suffering of Third World peoples without necessarily bringing an end to capitalism as the internationally dominant mode of production.

 

To counter the declining Third World percentage of world trade, fluctuations in prices of exported commodities, foreign corporate repatriation of profits earned in Third World countries, technological dependence, growing international debt, and deepening crises in the supply of food, Third World leaders were forced by material conditions and revolutionary ferment to call for reforms. The inspiration for a NIEO movement came also from

the seeming success of OPEC countries in gaining control of oil pricing and production decisions from foreign corporations.

 

Two special sessions of the General Assembly of the UN in 1974 and 1975 on the NIEO "established the concept as a priority item of the international community" (Laszlo, Ervin, Robert Baker, Jr., Elliott Eisenberg, and Raman Venkata, The Objectives   of the New International Economic Order, New York, Pergamon, xvi). The NEIO became a short-hand reference for a series of interrelated economic and political demands concerning issues that required fundamental policy changes, particularly from wealthy nations. The issue areas singled out for action included aid and assistance, international trade and finance, industrialization, technology transfer, and business practices.

 

Paradoxically, while the NIEO demands were reformist in character and, if acted on, could stave off revolutionary ferment (as did New Deal legislation in the United States in the 1930s), the general position of the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations on the NIEO were negative. European nations were more responsive to selected demands, like stabilizing Third World commodity prices and imports into Common Market countries, but the broad package of NIEO demands continued to generate resistance from the wealthy nations, which benefited from the current system. Nabudere correctly understood the interests of Third World leaders in the NIEO when he wrote that:

"The demands of the petty bourgeoisie of third world countries are not against exploitation of the producing classes in their countries, but of the domination of their class by monopoly. The demands therefore for reform—for more credit to enable the petty bourgeois more room also to exploit their own labor and extract a greater share of the surplus value. This is unachievable, for to do so is to negate monopoly—which is an impossible task outside the class struggle." (Nabudere, D.Wadada,  Essays on the Theory and Practice of Imperialism, London, Onys Press, 1979).

Therefore, the NEIO, commodity cartels like OPEC, and other schemes for marginal redistribution of the profits derived from the international economy would not go beyond increasing the shares which Third World ruling classes received from the ongoing economic system. But minimal benefits to workers and peasants would accrue. Third World successes against monopoly capital, however, would serve to weaken the hold the latter had on the international system. Ironically, while opposing channeling Third World militancy in a reformist direction, such as the NIEO, had the opposite effect of generating a new militancy among masses of Third World peoples where it did not exist before. Those workers, peasants, and intellectuals who gained consciousness of their plight in global structural terms through their leaders' UN activities realized that NIEO demands were not enough. It was feared that they would come to realize what Nabudere argued, namely:

“But in order to succeed, the struggles cannot be relegated to demands for change at international bodies, mere verbal protests and parliamentary debates, etc.  Therefore, demands for a new economic order are made increasingly impossible unless framed in the general context of a new democratic revolution; the role of the working class and its allies is crucial to the achievement, in any meaningful way, of a new international economic order.” (Nabudere, D.Wadada,  Essays on the Theory and Practice of Imperialism, London, Onys Press, 1979.180).

    

 And now in the contexts of demands for reconceptualizing international relations away from fissures between “great powers” to those between the rich of the Global North and the poor of the Global South, the NIEO is being revisited in the contexts of environmental catastrophe, grotesquely growing economic inequality, massive migration, religious fundamentalism, and civil and hybrid wars. Progressives in the Global North should support demands, though modest, for an NIEO.

With Escalating Tensions Between the United States and China While Serving as a Co-Belligerent in Ukraine, the Time is Ripe For the Revitalization of the Peace Movement

 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 21^st 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).

 

 

  

 

Former President Bush's Visit to Purdue University Reminds Me of 2003 and US War Versus the People

BUILDING A PEACE AND JUSTICE MOVEMENT

IN THE NEW AGE OF EMPIRE
By Harry Targ
April 16, 2003

In the aftermath of the February 15 massive worldwide mobilization against US war in Iraq, activists aptly borrowed the metaphor of the “two superpowers” from New York Times reporter Patrick Tyler. One superpower was United States imperialism: the other, the power of the people.

While the two superpower thesis remains appropriate today, we need to develop its content and ground the contesting powers in their material realities. First, we need to clarify the connections between U.S. capitalism, global conquest, and visions of empire. Second, we need to discern whether the imperial superpower is homogeneous or riddled with factional disagreements that can be used for our purposes. For example, we need to discover where multinational corporations and international financiers stand, whether the oil and/or military industries are driving the doctrine of preemption, and which, if any, sectors of the ruling class regard unilateralism, globalism, and militarism as a threat to global trade, production, investment and speculation.

As to the anti-imperial superpower, we must understand it to consist of nations, masses of workers all across the face of the globe, and representatives of a large range of religious, labor, women's, environmental and other groups from civil society. Nations are part of the bloc because of the momentous mass mobilizations of their citizens to say no to war. It was extraordinary to see poor and vulnerable countries such as Cameroons or Angola, and traditional subordinates of the United States, Chile and Mexico, reject US pressure to support war in the United Nations Security Council.

Most importantly, the second superpower is represented by what was perhaps the largest global protest in human history. All indications are that with the launching of war in March, the steadfast opposition has grown in size and militancy.

In the United States protests have occurred in hundreds of cities and towns; city councils in over 160 cities have passed resolutions against war; and every church denomination but the Southern Baptists have said "no" to war. It is true that when war started the "rally round the flag" phenomena kicked in: 70 percent of the people supported President Bush's action. However, just before the war started about half of the U.S. people supported giving the weapons inspectors more time to do their job. Furthermore, support for the war has been more likely among those who believe that there was a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets. Party differences are stark in reference to war: Republicans support the Bush war on Iraq about 20 to 30 percent more than Democrats. Finally, people are scared. They are scared of terrorism, of job loss, of economic depression, of devalued pensions. Some worry about being arrested for conduct defined as criminal by the Patriot Act. In fact, currently we live in a culture that promotes fear.

What can be done to nourish and expand the movement for peace and justice? A consensus seems to be emerging in the peace movement that over the next several months, perhaps years, grassroots organizing-networking across neighborhoods, churches, union locals, and civic groups-will be central. In the U.S. one-third to 40 percent of the population probably supports war and the Bush foreign policy agenda. Perhaps one-third are inalterably opposed. This leaves another third undecided, confused, or marginally supportive of the war on Iraq. The target of grassroots work must be to bring the undecided people into the peace and justice camp. Perhaps what will drive them into the anti-war camp will be fiscal crises at state and local levels, economic stagnation and job loss, the dismantling of our meager health care system, the continued marginalization of public schools, and crumbling infrastructure all around nation. People should be reminded of the fact that while economic crisis grows by the days and weeks, the administration increases defense spending to a record $400 billion and plans to cut taxes on the rich.

Over the next 18 months, this grassroots mobilization must also confront people with the realities of electoral democracy. While President Bush was not really elected president in 2000, he could be elected in 2004. Peace movement goals must include regime change in Washington.

Finally, mass mobilization must be animated by the vision of vibrant international institutions that could represent the "peoples” interests. The United Nations, usually a reflection of the distribution of power in the world, can be made to represent the people of the world. Particularly, the UN General Assembly, where all nations have only one vote, can be made viable as it was in the 1960s and 1970s when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were competing for the "hearts and minds" of the newly independent nations. Also the peace movement should direct its solidarity to the Group of 77, the movement of non-aligned nations who seek social and economic development in a world at peace. During various periods in its history, the Group of 77 has stood up against the forces of global capitalism. The peace movement should stand with the Group of 77 today.

In sum, these are the best of times and the worst of times. We have built a worldwide peace movement of historic proportions. However, Iraq was bombed to destruction. The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld neoconservative wing of the ruling class wants to bomb some more (maybe Iran, or Syria, or North Korea or even Cuba). Our task is to stop the next war. This will take grassroots organizing, building global solidarity, and mobilizing for peoples' power in the United Nations. This may be our last chance to build a peaceful and just world.

Back to NVUSA Global @ Nonviolence USA

The Permanent War Economy (an old one)

 JANUARY 30, 2009

Harry Targ

In the Beginning

After suffering the greatest economic depression in United States history, this country participated in a war-time coalition with Great Britain and the former Soviet Union to defeat fascism in Europe and Japanese imperialism in Asia. As a result of the economic mobilization for war, the United States economy grew to become the most powerful one by war’s end. By 1945, Americans were responsible for three-fourths of the world’s invested capital and controlled two-thirds of its industrial capacity. Near the end of World War II, General Electric CEO Charles Wilson recommended that the U.S. continue the wartime partnership between the government, the corporate sector, and the military to maintain what he called a “permanent war economy.” He and others feared the possibility of return to depression.

To justify a permanent war economy-ever increasing military expenditures, bases all around the world, periodic military interventions, and the maintenance of a large land army, navy, and air force-an external threat was needed. In 1947 President Truman told the American people that there was such a threat, “international communism.”

Many liberals and conservatives remained skeptical about high military expenditures. But, just before the Korean War started, permanent war economy advocates threw their support behind recommendations made in a long- time classified document, National Security Council Document 68, which recommended a dramatic increase in military spending. NSC-68 also recommended that military spending from that point on should be the number one priority of the national government. When presidents sit down to construct a federal budget they should first allocate all the money requested by military and corporate elites and lobbyists concerned with military spending. Only after that should government programs address education, health care, roads, transportation, housing and other critical domestic issues.

When the United States entered the Korean War, Truman committed the nation to a permanent war economy. Each subsequent president did likewise. According to Chalmers Johnson (Blowback, Sorrows of Empire), between 1947 and 1990, the permanent war economy cost the American people close to $9 trillion. Ruth Sivard (World Military Expenditures) presented data to indicate that over 100,000 U.S. military personnel died in wars and military interventions during this period. And, in other countries, nearly 10 million people died directly or indirectly in wars in which the United States was a participant.

Some influential Americans raised criticisms of the new permanent war economy. For example, while he subsequently complied with many of the demands for more military spending, President Eisenhower declared in one of his first speeches in office that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” After eight years in the White House Eisenhower gave a prescient farewell address in which he warned of a “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” which was new in American history. And, he proclaimed; “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Incidentally, his original draft spoke of a “military-industrial-academic complex.”

Seven years later, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.”

The Permanent War Economy (2009)

So we find ourselves in the midst of two wars today-Iraq and Afghanistan-that are already more costly than any war except World War II, against an enemy magnified, demonized, and mythologized as much or more than the cold war enemy to justify a $3 trillion price tag, the deaths of more than 4,000 soldiers, ten times that number of disabled veterans, and casualties and deaths of Iraqis and Afghanis probably approaching a million people. 9/11 afforded the Bush Administration the opportunity to launch a “war on terrorism” and the justification of preemptive war on any human target defined as a possible threat to the United States.The “terrorists” became the post-Cold War “international communists.” This is what the permanent war economy has come to.

Did the vision of Charles Wilson and the framers and advocates of NSC 68 bear fruit in terms of the domestic economy? The answer to this question is complicated but in the end clear. The U.S. economy is subject to cycles of growth and decay; expansion and recession; and periods of increased consumerism and low unemployment versus periods of declining product demand, lower wages, and high unemployment.

Looking at the period since World War II, bursts of increased military spending brought the U.S. economy out of the recessions of the late 1940s and 50s. The 60s economy boomed as the Vietnam war escalated before the economic crises of the 1970s. The so-called Reagan recovery was driven by dramatic increases in military spending. 1980s military spending equaled the total value of such spending between the founding of the nation and 1980.

In addition, military spending has benefited those industries, communities, and universities which have been the beneficiaries of such largesse. In our own day, Halliburton, Bechtel, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root have done quite well. For example, when Dick Cheney left his post as Secretary of Defense in 1993 to become the CEO of Halliburton, its subsidiary, KBR jumped from the 73rd ranked Pentagon contractor to the 18th.

Military spending pumped money into the economy to the advantage of selected multinational corporations and some communities. Usually recipients of defense dollars were part of what C. Wright Mills called, “the power elite,” those powerful individuals who, at the apex of government, corporate, and military institutions, influence policy. On the other hand, most citizens have not been beneficiaries of military spending.

“Indirect effects” of military spending, overwhelm the short-term stimulative effects of such spending. Military spending is “capital intensive,” that is the investment of dollars in military goods and services require less labor power to produce than the investment of comparable dollars in other sectors of the economy. Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier refer to spending on Iraq as a “job killer.” They estimate that $1 billion spent on investments in education, healthcare, energy conservation, and infrastructure would create anywhere from 50 to 100 percent more jobs than comparable spending on the war. They say, “Taking the 2007Iraq war budget of $138 billion, this means that upward of one million jobs were lost because the Bush Administration chose the Iraq sinkhole over public investment” (The Nation, March 31, 2008).

Further, military spending requires government to borrow money from private sources. Consequently, the more borrowing for the military, the less funds are available for non-military economic activity. Non-military spending gets “crowded out” by investment in arms.

Paralleling this, expanding investments in military reduce the resources of society that can be allocated for the production of goods and services that have use values. Military spending constitutes waste in that the resources that go into armies, navies, air forces, and weapons of human destruction cannot be put to constructive use. Looking at government spending alone, the 2008 federal budget increased by $35 billion in military spending, bringing the total to $541 billion. At the same time federal aid to state and local governments fell by $19.2 billion. The war on Iraq has already cost $522.5 billion and it was projected by distinguished economists that the total cost for the war, including paying debts, veterans benefits, and replacing destroyed equipment, will top $3 trillion (Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, Washington Post, March 9, 2008, p.B01).

As a new administration enters office in the context of a deepening depression, 2009 military spending for two wars, over 700 military installations, and contracting with private armies operating everywhere, will push towards a trillion dollars. This prospective allocation of scarce government resources has to be evaluated in the context of President-elect Barack Obama’s call for a massive green-jobs economic stimulus package and bailout programs for some 40 states suffering from their own budget deficits.

The Permanent War Economy in One State (2009)

Citizens of Florida so far have spent $36 billion on the Iraq war. And, the National Priorities Project (www. national priorities.org) estimated that for one year of Iraq war expenditures the state of Florida could have provided 12.7 million people with health care, 25 million homes with renewable electricity, 575,000 music and arts teachers, 11.2 million scholarships for university students, and 613,000 elementary school teachers.

Looking at Broward County, taxpayers have paid $3.9 billion for the war so far. Instead of expenditures for the Iraq war, this money could have provided for one year the following:

-1,385,189 people with health care or

-2,760,979 homes with renewable electricity or

-90,432 public safety officers or

-62,714 music and art teachers or

-1,224,540 university scholarships or

-28,953 affordable housing units or

-2,169,806 children with health care or

-535,663 head start places or

-66,937 elementary school teachers

Andrew Bacevich summed up this tradition of permanent war in reviewing a biography of 1940s Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in The Nation (April 23, 2007):

“From Forrestal's day to the present, semiwarriors have viewed democratic politics as problematic. Debate means delay. To engage in give-and-take or compromise is to forfeit clarity and suggests a lack of conviction. The effective management of national security requires specialized knowledge, a capacity for clear-eyed analysis and above all an unflinching willingness to make decisions, whatever the cost. With the advent of semiwar, therefore, national security policy became the preserve of experts, few in number, almost always unelected, habitually operating in secret, persuading themselves that to exclude the public from such matters was to serve the public interest. After all, the people had no demonstrable ‘need to know.’ In a time of perpetual crisis, the anointed role of the citizen was to be pliant, deferential and afraid.”

It is the task of the peace and justice activists today to build a mass movement, mobilizing the citizenry to reject the role of “pliant, deferential,” and fearful citizens. The people must insist that President Obama say “no” to the semi warriors.

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From the Cost of War Project 2022

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:

• At least 929,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.  
• Many times more have died indirectly in these wars, due to ripple effects like malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
• Over 387,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
• Over 7,050 U.S. soldiers have died in the wars.
• We do not know the full extent of how many U.S. service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
• Many deaths and injuries among U.S. contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that approximately 8,000 have been killed. 
• 38 million people have been displaced by the post-9/11 wars in Afghanstan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
• The U.S. government is conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries, vastly expanding this war across the globe.
• The post-9/11 wars have contributed significantly to climate change. The Defense Department is one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

• The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
• The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of U.S. veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
• Most U.S. government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
• The cost of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere totals about $8 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars.
• The ripple effects on the U.S. economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
• U.S. policymakers scarcely considered alternatives to war in the aftermath of 9/11 or in debating the invasion of Iraq. Some of those alternative paradigms for addressing the problem of terror attacks are still available to the U.S.

SOME DOMESTIC IMPACTS

• War spending created fewer jobs than similar spending investment in clean energy, public education, and health care.

• Federal investment in military assets during the wars made for a lost opportunity to significantly boost capital improvements in core infrastructure such as roads and public transit.

• War spending financed entirely by debt has contributed to higher interest rates charged to borrowers such as new homeowners.

 WHAT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER SAID IN 1953 IS STILL TRUE

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53 [AUDIO]

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CCDS Peace & Solidarity Move the Money Task Force will present a Zoom webinar to address the widening "guns v. butter" trade-off.

"What's War Got to Do With It? Fund Human Need Not Pentagon Greed"

On Monday, November 28, 2022, 8:00 pm EST, the CCDS Peace & Solidarity Move the Money Task Force will present a Zoom webinar to address the widening "guns v. butter" trade-off. This will consider military and national security state expenditures and their effect on domestic social program funding and underserved human needs. As then-President Eisenhower famously expressed it in 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies...a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed...". Emphasis will be placed on the significance of these expenditures with regard to contemporary poverty, inequity, and deprivation in the United States.  

Presentation speakers will be Sandy Eaton of CCDS and the Massachusetts Care Single-Payer Network and Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director for the Coalition of Funding Human Needs. 

Deborah Weinstein has served as the executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs since June 2003. Prior to coming to CHN, Weinstein served for nine years as director of the Family Income division of the Children's Defense Fund, where she worked to lift children and their families out of poverty, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), child support, jobs and wages, housing, nutrition, unemployment insurance, and equitable tax policy. From 1983 to 1993 Weinstein was executive director of the Massachusetts Human Services Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy organization focusing on people's needs, especially those with limited income

Register here

Co-sponsors include: CCDS Socialist Education Project, Massachusetts Peace Action, Wisconsin Peace Action, and the Online University of the Left.

This will be live streamed on the Online University of the Left Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OULeft.org

 

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