Harry Targ
President Biden on Tuesday confirmed that his administration is sending medium-range advanced rocket systems to
Ukraine, responding to a top request from Ukrainian officials who say the weapons are necessary to curb the advance of
Russian forces in the east. (Rachel Pannett, John Hudson, “Biden confirms U.S. is
sending advanced rocket systems to Ukraine”. Washington Post, June 1, 2022)
“America’s
goal is straightforward: We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign
and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against
further aggression.” President Joe Biden.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/biden-ukraine-strategy.html
“Adversaries around the globe are becoming
more sophisticated. To protect soldiers, citizens and infrastructure, our
customers require the most advanced tactical missile capabilities. The Lockheed
Martin High Mobility Artillery Rocket System is a strategic capability,
improving homeland and important asset defense while reducing overall mission
costs”(HIMARS:
Protecting our soldiers with combat proven reliability)
Opposing Imperialism and War at the Same Time
The peace movement has often been faced with a
dilemma. Should it channel its energies in opposition to imperialism, including
economic expansion and covert operations, or should it mobilize against war, or
both. The problem was reflected in President Obama’s August 5, 2015 speech
defending the anti-nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran. On the
one hand he defended diplomacy as the first tool of a nation’s foreign policy
and on the other hand his defense included the argument that through diplomacy
the United States “won” the Cold War, and thereby defeated a bloc of states
that opposed capitalist expansion. The implication of his argument was that
pursuing imperialism remained basic to United States foreign policy but
achieving it through peace was better than through war.
The speech was presented at American University 52
years after President Kennedy called for peaceful competition with the former
Soviet Union. In June, 1963, nine months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which
nearly led to nuclear war, and weeks after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s
call for “peaceful coexistence,” President Kennedy responded by urging the use
of diplomacy rather than war in the ongoing conflict with the Soviet
Union.
A small but growing number of scholars and activists in
the early 1960s had begun to articulate the view that the threat of nuclear
war, growing U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and repeated covert
interventions in Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, and the Congo, had to do with U.S.
imperialism. The dilemma for the peace movement in 1963 then as it is in 2022
is how to respond to United States imperialism at the same time as supporting
the use of diplomacy to forestall wars.
The Two Strands of Imperial Thought:
Neoconservatism and Humanitarian Interventionism Lead to the Same Policies
Despite differences in political discourse since the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, “neoconservative” and “humanitarian
interventionist” factions of the foreign policy elite, have continued to
advocate policies that have retained war as a central tool of US global goals. (This
tool, of course, is a centerpiece of pressure from the arms industry).
Therefore, any foreign policy initiative that reduces the possibility of war
and arguments about its necessity should be supported by the peace movement. In
2015, the agreement with Iran endorsed by most countries except Israel
constituted an effort to satisfy the interests of Iran and the international
community without the shedding of blood and creating the danger of escalation
to global war.
Neoconservatives, celebrants of war, have had a long
and growing presence in the machinery of United States foreign policy. James
Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense in the Truman Administration, was a
leading advocate for developing a militaristic response to the Soviet Union in
the years after World War II. As historian Andrew Bacevich pointed out,
Forrestal was one of the Truman administrators who sought to create a
“permanent war economy.” He was, in Bacevich’s terms, a founding member of the
post-World War II “semi-warriors”.
Subsequent to the initiation of the imperial response
to the “Soviet threat” --the Marshall Plan, NATO, wars in Korea and Vietnam,
the arms race--other semi-warriors continued the crusade. These included the
Dulles brothers (John and Alan), Air Force General Curtis LeMay, and prominent
Kennedy advisors including McGeorge Bundy and Walter Rostow, architect of the
“noncommunist path to development,” in Vietnam.
Later, key semi-warriors such as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick
Cheney, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, and others formed the Project for a New
American Century (PNAC) in the 1990s. They had gained their first experience in
the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The PNAC view of how
the United States should participate in world affairs is to use military
superiority to achieve foreign policy goals. The key failure of Clinton foreign
policy, they claimed, was his refusal to use force to transform the world. For
starters, he should have overthrown Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The neoconservative policy recommendations prevailed
during the eight years of the George Walker Bush administration. International
organizations were belittled, allies were ignored, arms control agreements with
Russia were rescinded and discourse on the future prioritized planning for the
next war. And concretely the United States launched long, bloody, immoral wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Humanitarian interventionists, more liberals than conservatives,
argued that the United States should use force, but more selectively than
proposed by the neoconservatives, to achieve varied goals. Their goals included
interventions that allegedly defended the quest for human rights. Although, advocates
of humanitarian interventionism argued that the United States must use all
means available, military and diplomatic, to maximize interests and values, force
need not be the first or only instrument of policy.
But in the end the humanitarian interventionists encouraged
bombing Serbia, intervening in a civil war in Libya, funding rebels
perpetuating war in Syria, expanding military training and a U.S. presence in
Africa, and funding opposition elements against the government in Venezuela. In
addition, with advice from humanitarian interventionists, the United States
increased the use of drones to target enemies of U.S. interests in East Asia,
the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East.
In the United States both neoconservatives and
humanitarian interventionists have led the charge for war-making since World
War II. Between the end of that war and the 1990s, 10 million people died in
wars in which the United States had a presence. Hundreds of thousands of young
men and women serving in the armed forces of the United States have died or
been permanently scarred by U.S. wars. And the physical landscapes of Southeast
Asia, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and the Middle East have been
devastated by war. And in the United States, foreign policy elites,
politicians, and think tank experts still advocate violence to address
international problems.
And the War in Ukraine Today
Charles Osgood, a social psychologist, developed
his strategy of Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction or GRIT in the
1960s. He claimed it worked during the Cuban Missile Crisis and others have
claimed that it has worked in other conflict situations such as US/Iranian
negotiations. https://savinghumans.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/building-a-spiral-of-trust-through-grit/
GRIT’s basic point is to get one side, in this case
US/NATO/Ukraine, to make some serious but not risky unilateral moves inviting
the other side to reciprocate. (And that is where peace movement activism and pressure
might come in.) And such de-escalatory moves should be continued but not to
endanger the security of the initiating party. (And the recent conversation
between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Minister Sergey
Shoygu was one example which has apparently not been continued).
The GRIT strategy would suggest that the Russians might
eventually stop the killing, perhaps order troops in place, and/or pull back
some troops. One critical goal would be to get a number of nations to
send representatives to negotiate a ceasefire and further tension-reduction. In
this case the Minsk Accords might be a starting place.
GRIT may not work but is worth a try. And if one looks
at the GRIT strategy for tension-reduction US policy is now doing just the
opposite; that is the US is escalating by word and deed including more threats,
more demands, more arms, and more calls for expanding the scope of the
conflict.
And it is in this context that the announcement by
President Biden that the United States is sending
medium-range advanced rocket systems to
Ukraine is a move in the wrong direction. If it is true, as Biden’s New York
Times editorial claims, that he wants negotiation to end the war in Ukraine
he is carrying out policies that are the direct opposite to a de-escalatory
strategy suggested by Osgood and others. And President Biden has put the humanitarian interventionist
gloss on the escalatory policy by declaring that the US goal is to support a “democratic, independent, sovereign and
prosperous Ukraine.”
So, while social psychology is not political economy
or realpolitik, it might help end the killing. And for the peace movement stopping
the killing and reducing the threat of global nuclear war means prioritizing “talks
not war,”
In sum, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is deplorable
and the issues between all contending parties are more intractable today than
the negotiations with Iran referred to above. And yesterday’s announcement of
the reported US transfer of the new round of weapons to Ukraine has deepened
the conflict beyond the Russian invasion of February 25. Russia’s engaging in
violence and destruction, and the United States and NATO supplying
arms to Ukraine, can only lead to more death, hunger, and the danger of
escalation to nuclear war.
Therefore, in the context of a huge arms
industry and global economic and political interests, any presidential
initiative that uses diplomacy rather than force, declares its opposition to
unilateral action, and challenges the war mindset deserves the support of the
peace movement. And any military escalation should be opposed.
