Diary of a Heartland Radical: REFLECTIONS ON THE UKRAINE WAR AND UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: 2022-2023

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

REFLECTIONS ON THE UKRAINE WAR AND UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: 2022-2023

Harry Targ

"Russia alone bears responsibility for this war. Russia alone has the power to end this war immediately. And it’s Russia alone that stands in the way of peace.” President Joe Biden at the United Nations, September 19, 2023.

True or not?

Saturday, February 19, 2022

NATO: FROM FIGHTING SOCIALISM TO GLOBAL EMPIRE, FOREVER WARS CONTINUE

Harry Targ

Original essay on NATO posted on May 12, 2012

During World War II an “unnatural alliance” was created between the United States, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union. What brought the three countries together, the emerging imperial giant, the declining capitalist power, and the first socialist state, was the shared need to defeat fascism in Europe. Rhetorically, the high point of collaboration was reflected in the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, in February, 1945 three months before the German armies were defeated.

At Yalta, the great powers made decisions to facilitate democratization of former Nazi regimes in Eastern Europe, a “temporary” division of Germany for occupation purposes, and a schedule of future Soviet participation in the ongoing war against Japan. Leaders of the three states returned to their respective countries celebrating the “spirit of Yalta,” what would be a post-war world order in which they would work through the new United Nations system to modulate conflict in the world.

Within two years, after conflicts over Iran with the Soviet Union, the Greek Civil War, the replacement of wartime President Franklin Roosevelt with Harry Truman, and growing challenges to corporate rule in the United States by militant labor, Truman declared in March, 1947 that the United States and its allies were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “International Communism.” The post-war vision of cooperation was reframed as a struggle of the “free world” against “tyranny.”

In addition to Truman’s ideological crusade, his administration launched an economic program to rebuild parts of Europe, particularly what would become West Germany, as capitalist bastions against the ongoing popularity of Communist parties throughout the region. Along with the significant program of reconstructing capitalism in Europe and linking it by trade, investment, finance, and debt to the United States, the U.S. with its new allies constructed a military alliance that would be ready to fight the Cold War against International Communism.

Representatives of Western European countries met in Brussels in 1948 to establish a program of common defense and one year later with the addition of the United States and Canada, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. The new NATO charter, inspired largely by a prior Western Hemisphere alliance, the Rio Pact (1947), proclaimed that “an armed attack against one or more of them…shall be considered an attack against them all…” which would lead to an appropriate response. The Charter called for cooperation and military preparedness among the 12 signatories. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb and the Korean War started, NATO pushed ahead with the development of a common military command structure with General Eisenhower as the first “Supreme Allied Commander.”

After the founding of NATO and its establishment as a military arm of the West, the Truman administration adopted the policy recommendations in National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) in 1950 which declared that military spending for the indefinite future would be the number one priority of every presidential administration. As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952, and fueling the flames of Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe).

During the Cold War NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. NATO thus provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of first-strike attack.

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989, and finally the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be.

In the next twenty years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance doubled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined. NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S. led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

An official history of NATO described the changes in its mission: “In 1991 as in 1949, NATO was to be the foundation stone for a larger, pan-European security architecture.” The post-Cold War mission of NATO combines “military might, diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.”

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” The 21st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism.

Reviewing this brief history of NATO, observers can reasonably draw different conclusions about NATO’s role in the world than from those who celebrate its world role. First, NATO’s mission to defend Europe from aggression against “International Communism” was completed with the “fall of Communism.” Second, the alliance was regional, that is pertaining to Europe and North America, and now it is global. Third, NATO was about security and defense. Now it is about global transformation. Fourth, as its biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21st century military instrumentality of global imperialism. And finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

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AN UPDATE FROM THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

February 18, 2022

Top of the Agenda

Biden to Conference With NATO Allies as Cease-Fire Violations Mount in Eastern Ukraine

U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a call (NYT) with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies today to discuss soaring tensions in Eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government and pro-Russia rebels reported a second straight day of increased shelling (Reuters) in the region. Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is in Germany (NPR), where she will meet with European leaders at the kickoff of the Munich Security Conference.

The United States warned the UN Security Council yesterday that Russia is allegedly planning a full scale attack (State Dept.) on Ukraine. The U.S. envoy to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Russia has up to 190,000 troops stationed (Guardian) in and around Ukraine. Top diplomats from the United States and Russia are set to hold a meeting next week.

Analysis

“As the crisis in Ukraine unfolds, the West must not underestimate Russia. It must not bank on narratives inspired by wishful thinking,” the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage write for Foreign Affairs. “The ultimate question is: What action will Putin take if he doesn’t get any concessions from the West after all these talks? Recognizing [breakaway Ukrainian regions] Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states is one alternative option to a broader military invasion and occupation of Ukraine , albeit one that still entails the potential for military action and could shift the paradigm in the standoff between Moscow and the West,” the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy’s Eugene Chausovsky writes for Foreign Policy.

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LIES AND FOREIGN POLICY: AN OLD STORY

We live in a World of Cognitive Warfare

A recent document prepared by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) suggested that “in cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act. Waged successfully, it shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviors to favor an aggressor's tactical or strategic objectives.”

https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/05/20/countering-cognitive-warfare-awareness-and-resilience/index.html)

This NATO document, of course, is addressing the world of international relations but the concept of “cognitive warfare” seems to parallel efforts “to change not only what people think, but how they think and act.” This project animates the efforts of media conglomerates-print, electronic, social media platforms. Changing how people think and act has its historic roots in campaigns to convince citizens to support wars, consume cigarettes, forget climate disasters, and to find flaws in populations because of class, race, gender, sexual preference, and/or religion. The processes of “branding” are similar in all realms of human experience.

Perhaps challenging the process of “branding” should be on the agenda for all those who seek a more humane society. Break up “branding machines.” Democratize the ability to describe and express experiences. And, in the educational sphere, teach students to analyze brands and to evaluate their relative accuracy.

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UKRAINE: PREPARING FOR WAR AGAIN

Harry Targ

Sunday, February 6, 2022

In August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression.

Two days later it was announced that another attack on U.S. ships in international waters had occurred and the U.S. responded with air attacks on North Vietnamese targets. President Johnson then took a resolution he had already prepared to the Congress of the United States. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution declared that the Congress authorizes the president to do what he deemed necessary to defend U.S. national security in Southeast Asia. Only two Senators voted "no." Over the next three years the U.S. sent 500,000 troops to Vietnam to carry out a massive air and ground war in both the South and North of the country.

Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.

President Johnson's lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.

Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of lies about Iraq- imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home, and military casualties abroad.

The American people must insist that their leaders telthe truth about the U.S. role in the world.

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Thursday, February 24, 2022

ON UKRAINE AND THE DANGER OF PERPETUAL AND ESCALATING WAR

Friends,

See below an array of articles, past and current, on Ukraine. The most interesting for me are the statements by the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN on empires and FAIR’s critique of corporate media coverage.

In my opinion while the Russian attack on Ukraine should be condemned, we need to recognize it as part of an ongoing war that has its roots, perhaps, in the era of formal empires of past centuries, or the Western reaction to the Russian Revolution, or the rise of fascism and World War 2, or the construction of NATO and the US drive for global hegemony from World War 2 to the present, or the promises made by George Herbert Walker Bush not to expand NATO and its subsequent expansion eastward in the Clinton era, or NATOs taking on a worldwide role in imposing western dominance (Bosnia, Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan for example), or the 2014 coup supported by the US against a flawed but elected government in Kiev, or full incorporation of the neo-fascist elements of that coup in the Ukraine military, or the possibilities of a Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and/or the refusal of the US to make a modest but significant promise not to expand NATO to include Ukraine.

The list goes on but a “theory of the new war” needs to incorporate most or all of these elements, even while we condemn the Russian assault on Ukraine today.

I think our peace and justice movements, including those who are doing important election work, have to reflect on how the global agenda, imperialism, war, and militarism relate to all of our work.

--An important speech by the Kenyan Ambassador at the UN, Martin Kimani, that condemns all countries who have engaged in or aspire to empire.

https://theintercept.com/2022/02/22/ukraine-vladimir-putin-martin-kimani-speech/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter

--FAIR on media coverage of Ukraine:

https://fair.org/home/western-media-fall-in-lockstep-for-neo-nazi-publicity-stunt-in-ukraine/

--Jack Matlock former US diplomat:

https://usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-jack-f-matlock-jr-todays-crisis-over-ukraine/

--Thomas Friedman:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html

-- Reuters: On the incorporation of neo-Nazis into Ukraine military

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-ukraine-commentary/commentary-ukraines-neo-nazi-problem-idUSKBN1GV2TY

--On Stephen Cohen who spoke with sensitivity about Russia and the former Soviet Union (it may be difficult to access Stephen Cohen's articles in The Nation but there are a number of You Tube interviews available with this now deceased distinguished scholar of the former Soviet Union and Russia)

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/stephen-cohen-ukraine/

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-are-we-in-ukraine/

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MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT THE UKRAINE CRISIS

Sunday, February 27, 2022

Harry Targ

I cannot get out of my mind the question: What do people who are descendants of those who experienced 27 million dead from a fascist invasion through Eastern Europe of German armies think about the world today? Do they/can they regard NATO and its expansion as merely a “security” organization? These questions do not “excuse” the Russian invasion but help explain it.

And why try to explain it? Well understanding the Russian experience and consciousness is necessary to negotiate an end to war now and in the future. Therefore, NATO has to be dismantled. Resolution of disputes between the separatist regions and Ukraine need to be achieved. International organizations need to address “fascist” currents everywhere.

The first priority in my opinion is to understand why this crisis and the ensuing war occurred. I increasingly view on the US side, the expansion of NATO in the 1990s, the Clinton support of Yeltsin’s destruction of whatever existed of socialism, the US supported coup in 2014, and the continuation in office of the “humanitarian interventionists” from the Clinton era, Bill Clinton to Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Biden. These are part of the narrative that must be told and incorporated into our politics. And I/we need to know much more about the ongoing war between the separatist regions and the government of Ukraine from 2014 to the present.

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Thursday, March 3, 2022

SOME FURTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR ALL OF US

Harry Targ

Many of us in the peace movement have had useful conversations (and debates) stimulated by the war on Ukraine. We are discussing the causes of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, both immediate and historical, and how the peace movement should respond to this important crisis.

I commend the Oliver Stone documentary to all as one detailed and informed narrative of a very complicated Ukrainian history. An important element of Stone’s narrative is the role of Ukrainian neo-fascists who were prominently active in the 2014 coup against the elected Ukraine government. These descendants of World War II neo-Nazis, Stone claims, now serve in the Ukraine army.

Ukraine On Fire - Oliver Stone documentary (2016) - YouTube

Also, most accounts of the Ukraine crisis today ignore the extraordinary expansion of NATO in the 1990s and the 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine carried out with the covert support of the United States. Including this in the accounts today adds important context, not for determining good guys and bad guys, but for figuring out what should be done and where peace forces should stand. And to be clear reflection on this context DOES NOT DENY THE IMMORAL AND INHUMANE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE.

My takeaways so far are the following:

1.Russia has fallen into a trap that will significantly and negatively impact on its economy. It also reduces Russian influence around the world and undermines Russia’s renewed economic ties with countries in the Western Hemisphere.

2.The invasion gives fuel to the emerging anti-China Cold War rhetoric for politicians of both parties and the corporate media who suggest that Taiwan will be next, presumably after a Chinese invasion.

3.The Ukraine war is an enormous plus for military/industrial complexes in the US and in Russia as well.

4.The Ukraine story transforms the global narrative from the critical discussion of exploitation by the Global North of the Global South to the Biden narrative of “authoritarians” vs. “democracies.” For example, see the powerful presentation by V J Prashad of the essential nature of the North/South struggle. https://youtu.be/Lg9c0jv6wTA

5.The impacts of the debate on progressive forces in the US and elsewhere are potentially devastating. In the US, our discourse is shifting from a progressive agenda including President Biden’s Build Back Better program for example to stories about the relationships between Putin and former President Trump and so-called “national security.”

Biden’s State of the Union address reflects his “shift to the center.” Now we have a cause all Americans can get behind: opposing the Russians. (I am reminded how the Soviet menace in the 1940s was used to defang CIO militancy, the drive for free health care, Henry Wallace’s call for US/Soviet dialogue and, of course, civil rights for all).

I think the Russian invasion and the incomplete and war-oriented narrative of the Ukraine crisis dominating the news from such sources as the Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and CNN/MSNBC constitute a real setback for us. Media news is a commodity. War and portraits of American exceptionalism are profitable commodities for the increasingly concentrated corporate media.

For these reasons and more, I endorse the Code Pink demands that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine and the United States and its allies pull back NATO forces from its presence in Eastern Europe. In addition, diplomatic efforts should ensue to replace NATO with an organization that can provide security for Europe and the Global South. The Code Pink frame gives appropriate recognition to both the immorality of the Russian action and the context, including NATO expansion and the events in Ukraine since 2014.

Finally, I want to reintroduce the concept of “historical memory.” These memories are important for people and they are legitimate ways to think about what needs to change. The historical memory for many Russians probably includes the 27 million of their ancestors killed during World War II largely from invading German armies crossing through Ukraine. I assume that if I were a Russian such a memory would affect how I think about the world. I know from experience how deeply the Holocaust still affects Jewish people even today.

So peace activists will continue to debate root causes of this senseless war and what to do about it. But for now as Cold Pink and others demand: Stop the War, Withdraw Russian Troops From Ukraine, Reverse the Extension of NATO.

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Saturday, March 5, 2022

LIES AND FOREIGN POLICY: AN OLD STORY

This is an old story. As Professor John Mearsheimer has pointed out, governments, often democracies, lie to convince their citizens that war is justified. As many have pointed out, lies have been perpetrated on all sides about the Ukraine war.

Part of the job of peace activists is to interrogate all the narratives, seek truth, and stand up for basic principles: no war, no interventions overt and covert, and justice for all people.

And it is a testament to the potential wisdom of people that governments feel they must lie to achieve their goals.

July 25, 2003

Harry Targ

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese armed motor boats attacked two U.S. naval vessels off the coast of North Vietnam. The administration of Lyndon Johnson defined the attacks as an unprovoked act of North Vietnamese aggression.

Within a year of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incidents, evidence began to appear indicating that the August 2 attack was provoked. The two U.S. naval vessels were in North Vietnamese coastal waters orchestrating acts of sabotage in the Northern part of Vietnam. More serious, evidence pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the second attack on August 4 never occurred.

President Johnson's lies to the American people about the Gulf of Tonkin contributed to the devastating decisions to escalate a U.S. war in Vietnam that cost 57,000 U.S. troop deaths and upwards of three million Vietnamese deaths.

Forty years later, George W. Bush and his key aides put together a package of lies about Iraq- imports of uranium from Niger, purchases of aluminum rods which supposedly could be used for constructing nuclear weapons, development of biological and chemical weapons, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

As the Vietnamese and Iraqi cases show, foreign policies built on lies can lead to imperial wars, huge expenditures on the military, economic crises at home, and military casualties abroad.

The American people must insist that their leaders tell the truth about the U.S. role in the world.

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From Covert Action:

Peace Movement Needs to Demand Dismantling of NATO

Harry Targ

April 28, 2022

[Source: greatgameindia.com]

NATO went from fighting socialism to enforcing global empire

It looks a lot like a return to the past. Founded in 1949 to defend against the “Soviet threat,” the NATO alliance is facing a return to mechanized warfare, a huge increase in defense spending, and potentially a new Iron Curtain falling across Europe. After struggling to find a new post-Cold War role, countering terrorism following the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 and a humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, NATO is back encroaching on its original nemesis.[1]

U.S. Plans for the Establishment of Global Hegemony: 1945-47

During World War II an “unnatural alliance” was created between the United States, Great Britain, and the former Soviet Union. What brought the three countries together—the emerging imperial giant (the United States), the declining capitalist power (Great Britain), and the first socialist state (the Soviet Union)—was the shared need to defeat fascism in Europe. Rhetorically, the high point of collaboration was reflected in the agreements made at the Yalta Conference, in February 1945, three months before the German armies were defeated.

Big Three leaders pose for photo outside historic Yalta conference. [Source: history.com]

Within two years, after conflicts over Iran with the Soviet Union, the Greek Civil War, the replacement of wartime President Franklin Roosevelt with Harry Truman, and growing challenges to corporate rule in the United States by militant labor, Truman declared in March 1947 that the United States and its allies were going to be engaged in a long-term struggle against the forces of “International Communism.” The post-war vision of cooperation was reframed as a struggle of the “free world” against “tyranny.” It was really a struggle between two kinds of political/economic orders: one socialist, another capitalist.

[Source: apprend.io]

The Economic Foundations of a New World Order

In addition to Truman’s ideological crusade, his administration launched an economic program to rebuild parts of Europe, particularly what would become West Germany, as capitalist bastions against the ongoing popularity of Communist parties throughout the region. Along with the significant program of reconstructing capitalism in Europe and linking it by trade, investment, finance and debt to the United States, the U.S. with its new allies constructed a military alliance that would be ready to fight the Cold War against International Communism.

For Joyce and Gabriel Kolko (The Limits of Power, 1972) and other revisionists, the expansion of socialism constituted a global threat to capital accumulation. With the end of the Second World War, there were widespread fears that the decline in wartime demand for U.S. products would bring economic stagnation and a return to the depression of the 1930s.

[Source: goodreads.com]

The Marshall Plan, lauded as a humanitarian program for the rebuilding of war-torn Europe, was at its base a program to increase demand and secure markets for U.S. products. With the specter of an international communist threat, military spending, another source of demand, would likewise help retain customers, including the U.S. government itself. The idea of empire, which William Appleman Williams so stressed (The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 1959), was underscored by the materiality of capitalist dynamics.

[Source: thecoldwarexperience.weebly.com]

The Marshall Plan inspired European integration of states that were major recipients of Marshall Plan funds. The first significant economic organization, The European Coal and Steel Community, became operational in 1952. Its membership included France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It encouraged the production and trade of core resources such as coal, steel and iron. In 1957, the purview of the ECSC was expanded with the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom).

Other, overlapping European institutions were created during the 1950s and beyond involving the original six and additional countries. In May 1960 seven European nations, not in the EEC, formed the European Free Trade Association to foster trade and economic integration. (In 1973, three countries including Great Britain joined the EEC).

Finally in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union (EU) which, by 2019, had 27 member countries (nine from the former Soviet bloc) with a GDP of 16.4 trillion euros (the EU currency), constituting 15% of world trade. In addition, European nations are embedded in a network of regional and international organizations that deal with trade, finance, indebtedness, security and human rights. (See the diagram below.)

[Source: twitter.com]

The reigning scholarly study of these efforts in the 1960s and beyond, integration theory, postulated that the greater the cross-national interactions of European countries the lesser the likelihood of war among them. Studies were carried out designed to discover how and why integration seemed to be working in Europe but less so in troubled locations, such as on the African continent.

But from another vantage point “regional integration” inspired by and connected to the United States political economy can be seen as a near complete fruition of the vision of U.S. and capitalist hegemony initiated in those crucial early years after World War ll. The 21st century policy program of the United States and most of Europe has been to establish on a global basis a capitalist economic model.

Ideologically, the presupposition is that this model is historically exceptional and therefore must resist threats to its survival and growth. The so-called communist threat of the 1940s is the “authoritarian” threat of the current century. And to the extent that capitalist hegemony is not achievable by consent, it might need to be instituted by force.

While world history is more complicated than this narrative suggests, there is enough plausibility to it to justify fears, particularly when the military instrument—NATO—expanded eastward. From this point of view, NATO itself may not be the only threat to countries in Europe and Asia. But the use of it as a part of global expansion of economic and political institutions, coupled with the ideological expression of American exceptionalism, could create fear and aggression.

NATO As the Military Arm of a Drive for a Hegemonic Global Political Economy

Image from first NATO summit. [Source: nato.int]

The Charter called for cooperation and military preparedness among the 12 signatories. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb and the Korean War started, NATO pushed ahead with the development of a common military command structure with General Eisenhower as the first “Supreme Allied Commander.”

[Source: youtube.com]

As Western European economies reconstructed, Marshall Plan aid programs were shut down and military assistance to Europe was launched. Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and, fueling the flames of the Cold War, West Germany was admitted to NATO in 1955. (This stimulated the Soviet Union to construct its own alliance system, the Warsaw Pact, with countries from Eastern Europe.)

During the Cold War, NATO continued as the only unified Western military command structure against the “Soviet threat.” While forces and funds only represented a portion of the U.S. global military presence, the alliance constituted a “trip wire” signifying to the Soviets that any attack on targets in Western Europe would set off World War III. Thus, NATO provided the deterrent threat of “massive retaliation” in the face of a first-strike attack.

With the collapse of the former Warsaw Pact regimes between 1989 and 1991, the tearing down of the symbolic Berlin Wall in 1989 and, finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, the outspoken purpose for maintaining a NATO alliance presumably had passed. However, this was not to be.

In the next 20 years after the Soviet collapse, membership in the alliance doubled. New members included most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The functions and activities of NATO were redefined. NATO programs included air surveillance during the crises accompanying the Gulf War and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

In 1995, NATO sent 60,000 troops to Bosnia and in 1999 it carried out brutal bombing campaigns in Serbia with 38,000 sorties. NATO forces became part of the U.S.-led military coalition that launched the war on Afghanistan in 2001. In 2011 a massive NATO air war on Libya played a critical role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

Conference in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, March 2019, exposes NATO’s bombing of Yugoslav children. [Source: workers.org]

The NATO history boldly concludes that the alliance was founded on defense in the 1950s and détente with the Soviet Union in the 1960s. With the collapse of Communism in the 1990s, it became a “tool for the stabilization of Eastern Europe and Central Asia through incorporation of new Partners and Allies.” The 21st century vision of NATO has expanded further: “extending peace through the strategic projection of security.” This new mission, the history said, was forced upon NATO because of the failure of nation-states and extremism.

NATO and Ukraine Today

Fourth, with the U.S. as NATO’s biggest supporter in terms of troops, supplies and budget (22-25%), NATO is an instrument of United States foreign policy. Fifth, as a creation of Europe and North America, it has become an enforcer of the interests of member countries against, what Vijay Prashad calls, the “darker nations” of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Sixth, NATO has become the 21st century military instrumentality of global imperialism. And, finally, there is growing evidence that larger and larger portions of the world’s people have begun to stand up against NATO.

In the context of this complex history, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, following eight years of war in Eastern Ukraine. After four weeks thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and more than four million have fled their cities and towns. The President of Ukraine, spokespersons from some NATO countries, and some U.S. politicians have called for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine which would escalate the war to a near-nuclear war situation. In addition, NATO countries, and particularly the United States, have dramatically increased military expenditures. Impactful economic sanctions have been leveled against Russia, and economic instabilities are beginning to affect Europe and the United States. In addition, vital work around combating climate change has been stalled and important pieces of legislation to fulfil social needs have been eliminated from legislative consideration.

What Needs to Be Done?

To quote a tired but true slogan, “war is not the answer.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the lives and property of Ukrainians, the lives of Russian soldiers and protesters, raises fears of an escalation of war throughout Europe, and raises the danger of nuclear war.

“We” need to support “back-channel negotiations” in process as occurred during the Cuban missile crisis, demands that Russia stop the violence and withdraw its military forces from Ukraine, diplomacy at the United Nations, and summit meetings of diplomats from Russia, Ukraine and Europe. And conversations on the agenda should include forbidding Ukraine from joining NATO, establishing regional autonomy for Ukraine citizens who want it, pulling back NATO bases from Eastern European states, and/or abolishing NATO itself because the reason for its creation in the first place, defending against the Soviet Union, no longer exists.

The “we” at this moment could be a resurgent international peace movement, taking inspiration from peace activists in Russia and around the world. As horrible as this moment is, it is potentially a “teachable moment,” a moment when peace becomes part of the global progressive agenda again and people all around the world can begin to examine existing international institutions such as NATO.

[Source: blogger.googleusercontent.com]

And while we react with shock and condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whatever the complicated and understandable motivations, we need to be familiar with the historic context of the very dangerous warfare that we are living through now.

As James Goldgeier wrote more than 20 years ago on a Brookings Institution web page: “The dean of America’s Russia experts, George F. Kennan, had called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe ‘the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.’ Kennan, the architect of America’s post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, believed, as did most other Russia experts in the United States, that expanding NATO would damage beyond repair U.S. efforts to transform Russia from enemy to partner.”[2]

Sabine Siebold and Robin Emmott, “Russia may not stop with Ukraine—NATO looks to its weakest link,” Reuters, March 21, 2022. ↑

James Goldgeier, Brookings Institution, “The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO: How, When, Why, and What Next?“ June 1, 1999. ↑

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Saturday, May 14, 2022

ON GRADUATED RECIPROCATION IN TENSION REDUCTION (GRIT)

Harry Targ

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken endorses negotiations between contending nations in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda August 9, 2022

And the Ukraine?

“The United States is doing everything it can to support the very important African-led mediation efforts, in particular the processes that are being led by Kenya and Angola, to bring peace, security and stability to the eastern Congo. We are not only following this very closely and carefully, we’re engaged in it,” he said. (Jean-Yves Kamale “Blinken calls for end to Congo violence, backs negotiations” Associated Press, August 9, 2022.)

"Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Russian defense minister Sergey Shoygu on Friday, marking the first time the two have spoken since before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine began." (The Hill, May 13,2022).

As a Marxist teaching Peace Studies I always made light of sections of my course and text that dealt with bargaining and negotiation.

However, reflecting on the war in Ukraine and the seething tensions and competing arguments (even among us on the left) I was drawn to this bargaining and negotiation literature I long since forgot. Why? Because I do believe the first priority of the peace movement should be to organize around stopping the killing. We can put off for now debates over the role of NATO, great power chauvinism, self-determination of Ukrainians including those in the Donbas region, and the role or not of neo-Nazi's. In my opinion the first priority is how to get the killing to stop, hopefully coupled with a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

So I recalled the writings and research of a social psychologist, Charles Osgood, who developed his strategy of Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction or GRIT. 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 demands come in.) And such de-escalatory moves should be continued but not to endanger the security of the initiating party. (And the conversation between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Russian Defense Ministery Sergey Shoygu may be a start).

Hopefully, Osgood would have suggested, the Russians would 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 in my opinion it 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 more threats, more demands, more arms, and more calls for expanding the scope of the conflict.

So, while social psychology is not political economy or realpolitik, it might help end the killing. And we all agree that is the first priority for the Ukrainians and is vital for reducing, rather than increasing, the threat of global nuclear war.

http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/antisocial-behavior/grit-tension-reduction-strategy/

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Monday, May 16, 2022

Diplomacy not War: Relevant to Stopping the Ukraine War?

WHERE SHOULD THE PEACE MOVEMENT STAND? IMPERIALISM, WAR, AND/OR DIPLOMACY

(Originally posted August 2, 2015)

Harry Targ

“Not every conflict was averted, but the world avoided nuclear catastrophe, and we created the time and the space to win the Cold War without firing a shot at the Soviets…. Now, when I ran for president eight years ago as a candidate who had opposed the decision to go to war in Iraq, I said that America didn’t just have to end that war. We had to end the mindset that got us there in the first place. It was a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy, a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus, a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported.” (Barack Obama, “Full text: Obama gives a speech about the Iran nuclear deal,” The Washington Post, August 5, 2015).

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 at that time 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 2015 is how to respond to United States imperialism at the same time as supporting the use of diplomacy to forestall wars.

In the context of political discourse in 2015, dominated by “neoconservative” and “humanitarian interventionist” factions of the foreign policy elite, the danger of war always exists. Therefore, any foreign policy initiative that reduces the possibility of war and arguments about its necessity must be supported. The agreement with Iran supported by virtually every country except Israel constitutes an effort to satisfy the interests of Iran and the international community and 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.

Key semi-warriors of our own day, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, Robert Kagan, and others who formed the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in the 1990s, 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, to achieve various goals. These goals included interventions that allegedly defended the quest for human rights. Advocates of humanitarian interventionism argued that the United States must use all means available, military and diplomatic, to maximize interests and values. And 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.

Neoconservatives and humanitarian interventionists (and in earlier times anti-communists) have led the charge for war-making in the United States since World War II. Between the end of the 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 landscape of Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and the Middle East has been devastated by war. And in the United States, foreign policy elites, politicians, and think tank experts still advocate violence to address international problems.

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. Given the long and painful United States war system, the battle to secure the agreement between the P5 plus 1 nuclear agreement with Iran is worthy of support.

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. However, 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.

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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

CONNECTING FOREIGN POLICY TO DOMESTIC NEEDS

Harry Targ

As the tragedy of the Russian invasion and the devastation of Ukraine unfold, the war machines (policymakers, arms manufacturers, educators, media propagandists) of various countries-Russian, NATO alliance partners, and the US-ramp up their calls for more war. These advocates for more violence, more nuclear threats, and more great power chauvinisms increasingly take center stage. Rumors of “back channel” negotiations are demeaned. Feelers for negotiation articulated by key leaders are ignored. And hints of negotiations and compromises and concessions are ridiculed. Finally, any suggestions that China, an “authoritarian state” could play a role in deescalating the crisis are condemned.

And, in the midst of the escalating tensions and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the significant Biden program of substantial social, economic, and environmental changes has been allowed to flounder and die. Now Congress and the Administration eagerly legislate more money for the military and more money for our beleaguered Ukrainian ally (the latest over $40 billion) and increasingly remind the population that China, the real enemy, is lurking in the global background. Biden’s efforts this week to resuscitate an Asian trade bloc and warnings about the US commitment to defend Taiwan are the most recent examples. Health care, debt relief for students, shifts to a Green Jobs Agenda, tax reform, raising the minimum wage all need to be put off for another day.

Last year the New Poor Peoples Campaign showed in an informative flyer how money projected for the military could be used for human needs.

https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/PPC-BBB-fact-sheet.pdf

And elsewhere the NPPC pointed out that:

“Since Vietnam, the United States has waged an ongoing war against diffuse enemies, siphoning massive resources away from social needs. Out of every dollar in federal discretionary spending, 53 cents [go] towards the military, with just 15 cents on anti-poverty programs.”

Many of us remember the dramatic policies proposed, some implemented, of the Great Society. And twenty-five years earlier, during World War and before “the Great Society,” Henry Wallace, spoke of the the prospect of creating the “Century of the Common Man,” the absence of war, social and economic justice, and freedom. President Roosevelt called for a “New Economic Bill of Rights,” in 1944 embodying economic security and justice for all, and even Harry Truman advocated for a national health care system.

And what happened every time, the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and now-threats of war, demands for preparations for war, escalating military expenditures. The tragedy of how war and the mythology of its inevitability is vividly reflected in the defeat of the Great Society programs.

In sum, since the establishment of the permanent war economy in the 1940s millions of proclaimed “enemies” have been killed and seriously injured, mostly in the Global South. Permanent physical and psychological damage has been done to U.S soldiers, predominantly poor and minorities as they too are victims of war.

In addition, military spending has distorted national priorities and invested U.S. financial resources in expenditures that do not create as many jobs as investments in construction, education, or healthcare. And, as Andrew Bacevich, Seymour Melman and others have called it, “the permanent war economy” has created a culture that celebrates violence, objectifies killing, dehumanizes enemies, and exalts super-patriotism through television, music, video games, and educational institutions.

There is no doubt that there is an inextricable connection between war-making abroad and human suffering at home. Now is the time for peace and justice movements to act on these connections.

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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

The United States Escalates War in the Heartland of Europe By Sending Advanced Rockets: Makes Diplomacy More Difficult

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)

\https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/high-mobility-artillery-rocket-system.html#:~:text=High%20Mobility%20Artillery%20Rocket%20System,Lockheed%20Martin

Opposing Imperialism and War at the Same Time

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.

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.

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.

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,”

http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/antisocial-behavior/grit-tension-reduction-strategy/

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.

https://tribune-diplomatique-internationale.com/mouvement_pour_la_paixdissolution_de_lotan/

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/04/28/peace-movement-needs-to-demand-dismantling-of-nato/#comments

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The NATO Summit Closes With New Commitments to Increase the Militarization of Europe (and the World)

Harry Targ

Friday, July 1, 2022

Monday of the week of the long-advertised summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the organization’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that it would increase “high-readiness military forces from 40,000 to over 300,000.” https://truthout.org/articles/nato-will-increase-ranks-of-high-readiness-forces-by-650-percent/

Subsequently, 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 an weapon stockpiles in the east of the Alliance, enhancing NATO’s eight multinational battlegroups…”

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.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_196144.htm

At the closing press conference, the NATO Secretary General indicated that “we face the most serious security situation in decades.” Peace forces can agree with this conclusion but for different reasons. For example, the NATO summit made decisions to:

-Increase the militarization of Central Europe

-Once again increase the membership of the organization

-Define Russia as the number one enemy of international security

-Allude to China as an additional threat to world security

-Globalize the conflict in Europe

-Once again fuel the arms race

-Make permanent the war in Ukraine

-And despite promises to the contrary, to sweep the mortal threat of climate disaster under the rug.

(Just as an aside, NATO in the spring, 1955 decided to admit the then Federal Republic of Germany into membership. One week later the former Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact, a ‘security” organization that mirrored NATO. Six years later, the United States and the Soviet Union almost went to nuclear war over the then divided Germany. In other words, NATO’s expansion over 60 years ago escalated tensions and the danger of nuclear war between the two great powers).

On NATO’s “strategic concept” see:

https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pdf/290622-strategic-concept.pdf

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BUILDING A PEACE AND JUSTICE MOVEMENT IN THE NEW AGE OF EMPIRE: 2003 to 2022

By Harry Targ

Thursday, September 22, 2022

(Revised from an April 16, 2003 essay)

The Peace Movement Said “No” to the Iraq War in 2003

In the aftermath of the February 15, 2003, 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 and the other, the power of the people.

While the two-superpower thesis remains appropriate today, the peace movement needs to develop its content and ground the contesting powers in their material realities today. First, it needs to clarify the connections between US capitalism, global conquest, militarism, and visions of empire. Second, it needs to discern whether individual imperial superpowers are homogeneous or riddled with factional disagreements that can be used for its purposes. For example, in the US case, analyses should 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. Third, the peace movement must analyze the role and presence of multiple super-powers in collaboration with each other (or unilaterally in the Russia case today) who together or singly seek to dominate other nations and peoples.

As to the anti-imperial superpower, the peace movement should understand it to consist of smaller and poorer 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. Most 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 the war on Iraq in the United Nations Security Council in 2003.

Most importantly, the second superpower was represented by what in 2003 was perhaps the largest global protest in human history. With the launching of the Iraq war in March 2003 the steadfast opposition grew in size and militancy.

In the United States in 2003 protests occurred in hundreds of cities and towns; city councils in over 160 cities passed resolutions against war; and every church denomination but the Southern Baptists 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 US people supported giving the weapons inspectors more time to do their job. Furthermore, support for the war was more likely among those who believed that there was a connection between Iraq and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on US targets. Party differences were stark in reference to war: Republicans supported the Bush war on Iraq about 20 to 30 percent more than Democrats.

Finally, people were scared. They were scared of terrorism, of job loss, of economic depression, of devalued pensions. Some worried about being arrested for conduct defined as criminal by the Patriot Act. In fact, then (as now) we lived in a culture that promoted fear.

What was done to nourish and expand the movement for peace and justice during the Iraq War (and what can be done today)? A consensus emerged in the peace movement in 2003 that over several months, perhaps years, grassroots organizing-networking across neighborhoods, churches, union locals, and civic groups-was central. In the US one-third to 40 percent of the population probably supported war in 2003 and the Bush foreign policy agenda. Perhaps one-third were inalterably opposed. This left another third undecided, confused, or marginally supportive of the war on Iraq.

The target of grassroots work was bringing the undecided people into the peace and justice camp. Perhaps, it was thought, what would drive them into the antiwar camp would be fiscal crises at state and local levels, economic stagnation and job loss, the dismantling of the meager health care system, the continued marginalization of public schools, and crumbling infrastructure all around nation. People were reminded of the fact that while economic crisis grows by the days and weeks, the administration increased defense spending to a record $400 billion in 2004 (and over $800 billion today) while state and federal taxes on the rich were cut.

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Monday, October 3, 2022

END THE WAR: DIPLOMACY NOT BOMBS

On September 15, 2022, Peace Activists Hit the Streets from DC to San Francisco Urging Ceasefire in Ukraine

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a massive invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainians responded and their response was fueled by billions of dollars of US and European military equipment and private armies. Thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have died, and millions of Ukrainians have fled the war. The leaders of Russia, the United States, and even Ukraine talk of the possible use of nuclear weapons. Negotiations between competing parties have broken down.

Sectors of the peace movement in the United States have demanded that all sides participate in negotiations not war. Pacifists in Ukraine, presumably a small minority, have urged an end to the fighting and larger numbers of Russians have protested their country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Protestors on September 15 in the US rallied for all sides to stop sending more arms and fighting and begin serious negotiations to end the violence. For example, in Milwaukee

“antiwar activists, including a county supervisor, took their peace flags and "Diplomacy, Not War" signs to the campus of conservative Marquette University, where they passed out hundreds of flyers with QR codes for students to email their Congress members for a ceasefire. Organizer Jim Carpenter, co-chair (with this author) of the foreign policy team of Progressive Democrats of America, told skeptics who want a fight to the last Ukrainian, ‘Are you more concerned about saving lives or saving territory’?" (Marcy Winograd, “Peace Activists Hit the Streets From DC to San Francisco Urging Ceasefire in Ukraine,” Common Dreams, September 20, 2022. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/20/peace-activists-hit-streets-dc-san-francisco-urging-ceasefire-ukraine)

In the face of increased probabilities of nuclear war, the peace movement needs to build a worldwide movement of historic proportions, comparable or greater than in 2003. The task would be to stop the escalation of war in the Ukraine and its spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 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.

Particularly, mass mobilization could 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 that seeks 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 the end, the metaphor of the two superpowers, economic ruling classes, bureaucratic elites, and generals in powerful countries versus their opponents, the people, still make sense. The only hope for humankind is the mobilization of peace movements, the second superpower, to demand an end to war. And for the most part, while displaying solidarity with peace movements everywhere, peace movements in individual countries must target the complicity of their own nations in the making of war.

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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

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

So Why Isn’t That Happening Right Now? And What Can Be Done?

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.

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 Taiwan.. 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).

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FOREIGN POLICY: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (A timely update from a 2017 post which appeared in The Rag Blog)

Harry Targ

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

An Empire in Relative Decline

United States global hegemony continues to be challenged. As the beneficiary of war-driven industrial growth and the development of a military-industrial complex unparalleled in world history, the United States was in a position in 1945 to construct a post-war international political and economic order based on huge banks and corporations. The United States created the international financial and trading system, imposed the dollar as the global currency, built military alliances to challenge the Socialist Bloc, and used its massive military might and capacity for economic penetration to infiltrate, subvert, and dominate most of the economic and political regimes across the globe.

The United States always faced resistance and was by virtue of its economic system and ideology drawn into perpetual wars, leading to trillions of dollars in military spending, the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives, and the deaths of literally millions of people, mostly people of color, to maintain its empire.

As was the case of prior empires, the United States empire is weakening. There is now the possibility of a multipolar world emerging with challenges to traditional hegemony coming from China, India, Russia, and the larger less developed countries such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, South Korea, and Thailand. By the 1970s, even traditional allies in Europe and Japan had become economic competitors of the United States.

The United States throughout this period of change has remained the overwhelming military power, however, spending more on defense than the next seven countries combined. It remains the world’s economic giant even though growth in domestic product between 1980 and 2000 has been a third of its GDP growth from 1960 to 1980. Confronted with economic stagnation and declining profit rates the United States economy began in the 1970s to transition from a vibrant industrial base to financial speculation and the globalization of production.

The latest phase of capitalism, the era of neoliberal globalization, required massive shifts of surplus value from workers to bankers and the top 200 hundred corporations which by the 1980s controlled about one-third of all production. The instruments of consciousness, a handful of media conglomerates, have consolidated their control of most of what people read, see, hear, and learn about the world.

A policy centerpiece of the new era, roughly spanning the rise to power of Ronald Reagan to today, including the eight years of the Obama Administration, has been a massive shift of wealth from the many to the few. A series of graphs published by the Economic Policy Institute in December, 2016 showed that productivity, profits, and economic concentration had risen while real wages have declined, inequality increased, gaps between the earnings of people of color and women and white men grew, and persistent poverty remained for twenty percent of the US population (https://www.epi.org/publication/inequality-2021-ssa-data/ for 2021 data on economic inequality). The austerity policies, the centerpiece of neoliberalism, spread all across the globe. That is what globalization has been about.

Contrary to the shifts toward a transnational capitalist system and the concentration of wealth and power on a global level, the decline of U.S power, relative to other nation-states in the twenty-first century, has increased. China’s economy and scientific/technological base have expanded dramatically. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the spreading violence throughout the Middle East have overwhelmed US efforts to control events. Russia, Iran, China, and even weaker nations in the United Nations Security Council have begun to challenge US power and authority. Mass movements increasingly mobilize against regimes supported by the United States virtually everywhere (including mass mobilizations within the U.S. as well).

However, most U.S. politicians still articulate the mantra of “the United States as the indispensable nation.” The articulation of American Exceptionalism represents an effort to maintain a global hegemony that no longer exists and a rationale to justify the massive military-industrial complex which fuels much of the United States economy.

(For more data on military bases see https://www.davidvine.net/bases.html)

Imperial Decline and Domestic Politics

The narrative above is of necessity brief and oversimplified but provides a backdrop for reflecting on the substantial shifts in American politics. The argument here is that foreign policy and international political economy are “the elephants in the room” as we reflect on the outcomes of recent elections. It does not replace other explanations or “causes” of election results but supplements them.

First, the pursuit of austerity policies, particularly in other countries (the cornerstone of neoliberal globalization) has been a central feature of international economics since the late 1970s. From the establishment of the debt system in the Global South, to “shock therapy” in countries as varied as Bolivia and the former Socialist Bloc, to European bank demands on Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, to Reaganomics and the promotion of Clinton’s “market democracies,” and the Obama era Trans-Pacific Partnership, the wealth of the world has been shifting from the poor and working classes to the rich.

Second, to promote neoliberal globalization, the United States has constructed by far the world’s largest war machine. With growing opposition to U.S. militarism around the world, policy has shifted in recent years from “boots on the ground,” (although there still are many), to special ops, private contractors, drones, cyberwar, spying, and “quiet coups,” such as in Brazil and Venezuela, to achieve neoliberal advances.

One group of foreign policy insiders, the humanitarian interventionists, has lobbied for varied forms of intervention to promote “human rights, democratization, and markets.” 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton and a host of “deep state” insiders advocated for support of the military coup in Honduras, a NATO coalition effort to topple the regime in Libya, the expansion of troops in Afghanistan, even stronger support of Israel, funding and training anti-government rebels in Syria and the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was a major advocate for humanitarian interventionist policies in the Obama administration.

Humanitarian interventionists have joined forces with “neoconservatives” in the new century to advocate policies that, they believe, would reverse the declining relative power of the United States. This coalition of foreign policy influentials has promoted a New Cold War against China and Russia and an Asian pivot to challenge an emerging multipolar world. The growing turmoil in the Middle East and the new rising powers in Eurasia also provide rationale for qualitative increases in military spending, enormous increases in research and development of new military technologies, and the reintroduction of ideologies that were current during the last century about mortal enemies and the inevitability of war.

In sum, the “elephant in the room” for the peace movement pertaining to US politics must include building opposition to an activist United States economic/political/military role in the world and the long history of United States imperialism.

Finally, it must be articulated that to the extent that economics affects domestic politics the neoliberal global agenda that has been enshrined in United States international economic policy since the 1970s, coupled with humanitarian interventionism, has had much to do with rising austerity, growing disparities of wealth and power, wage and income stagnation, and declining social safety nets at home. As millions of Americans struggle to survive poverty, inadequate access to healthcare, homelessness, a variety of environmental disasters it is time to reinsert visions of a non-interventionist, anti-militaristic foreign policy into our progressive political agenda.

How Should the Peace Movement Respond to the Elephant in the Room?

“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” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967)

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been (2023 Doomsday Clock Announcement, January 24, 2023).

The Peace Movement has been engaged in a variety of separate but interconnected tasks. It may be useful to identify them, see how they are interrelated, and think about ways in which it and other social justice campaigns can more effectively work together in the coming period.

Peace Movement tasks should include the following:

1.Oppose war. In 2022 the war in Ukraine has captured the attention of activists everywhere. Attention also has been paid on other wars, such as in Yemen and Palestine. Peace researchers have often referred to the historic need to end “direct violence”; that is killing. That task remains preeminent.

2.Reconceptualize “war” as a problem not only of killing and dying in war but also as a problem of hunger, inequality, environmental spoilation, and powerlessness in a world of power, control, and oppression. Peace researchers have called this “structural violence.” Theorists/activists like Vijay Prashad have argued that the problem of “war,” both direct and structural is more about the divide in resources and power between the countries of the Global North (the traditional imperial powers in Europe and North America) and the vast majority of humankind living in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. For Prashad, the war problem is about hundreds of years of exploitation, occupation, military assault, sanctions, and the threat and destruction of the resources and environment of the Global South. From this point of view, the peace movement task is to engage in solidarity with those struggling for their liberation from domination and control.

3.Oppose militarism. Historically peace movements have identified an inextricable connection between growing militarism and war and further a connection between military spending and concentrated wealth in selected military corporations. From this point of view as the old slogan suggests: “war is a racket.” And that "racket” can be seen as directly reallocating societal resources from fulfilling human needs to the construction of more and more weapons. Some theorists referred to the history of United States foreign policy, at least since World War II, as one of creating a “permanent war economy.”

4.Oppose the use of war to achieve pernicious goals domestically. This perspective sees war preparation as tied to efforts to create solidarity at home, to the detriment of domestic social groups seeking significant social change. For example, as World War II ended, the labor movement sought significant policy changes to improve the rights and conditions of American workers. During the late 1940s, workers were demanding more rights to form unions, national health care, pension systems, and in some unions and communities an end to racism. The emergence of “the Soviet threat” served to stimulate nationalism, a rekindling of the vision of American exceptionalism, and increased repression against those pursuing worker rights and racial justice. In short, the war system, has served to reallocate societal resources and create a virulent nationalism which supports the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The war system, in this sense, is a status quo system. And to justify the war system an increasingly concentrated media institutionalizes narratives justifying war and imperialism.

5.Educate, agitate, and organize around these four major tasks. The questions that peace movements need to address include:

a.How to theorize about the interconnections between these four points? How do we develop a compelling narrative that targeted audiences find compelling for them? Young people, people of color, men, women, gays and lesbians?

b.How to network with other peace and social justice organizations?

c.And for now what kind of programs-education, street heat, networking, organizing- should the peace movement engage in to address the four key elements raised above.

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Imperial Decline and the Threat of a New Cold War With China: Revisiting a Book Review in the Context of Rising Tensions

Harry Targ

February 20, 2023

Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books, 2017.

Researchers affiliated with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who regularly assess the danger of nuclear war declared that the probability of nuclear war has increased over the last year. Using their “doomsday clock” as a metaphor the dial was recently moved to 100 seconds to midnight; midnight signifying the onset of nuclear war. The scientists believe that the danger of nuclear destruction and devastating climate disaster is greater now than at any time since the early 1980s.

The context for this grim prediction is well-reflected in a 2017 book by University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century. The author describes the twentieth century emergence of the US as the global hegemonic power based upon economic superiority and overwhelming military power. However, this economic and military dominance is being challenged today.

Perhaps the most critical challenge to the American empire, he suggests, is the rise of China, particularly as an economic successor to US control of the global political economy: Chinese domestic development, Chinese trade and investment with countries on every continent, and an Asian financial and trading system that challenges the historic US presence in the region. In economic terms the global system is changing from unipolarity to multipolarity.

In response to this decline McCoy suggests that the United States has embarked on a program to expand militarily programs around the globe and in outer space including preparing for cyber space war, occupying space, developing biometrics to identify potential enemies, increasing drone warfare capabilities, and the creation of a whole panoply of weapons that exceed the imagination of science fiction. In sum, therefore, the new militarism is designed to forestall and overcome declining empire.

This book is a must read for the peace movement because it indicates the dangerous world in which we live, the emergence of a New Cold War with China, and the increased probability of global destruction. It suggests that peace activists must continue to oppose militarism and develop a public discourse that celebrates the emergence of a multi-polar world, a world in which more countries can participate in global policy-making. The alternative could be, as the atomic scientists warn, a nuclear apocalypse.

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Washington's New Cold War: a book review

Harry Targ

Socialism and Democracy

A Book Review:

John Bellamy Foster, John Ross, and Deborah Veneziale, with an introduction by Vijay Prashad, Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective, Monthly Review Press, 2023, 99 pp.

The authors of this volume describe in vivid detail the role United States militarism is playing in leading the world down the path to nuclear and environmental destruction. Vijay Prashad, in his brief introduction reports on a conversation he had in 2003 with a US State Department spokesman who reported that US policy is based on “short-term pain and long-term gain.” In sum, Prashad says, the spokesperson was suggesting that the United States was prepared to inflict pain and suffering on victims in other nations and among the working class in the United States in exchange for the long-term revitalization of US hegemony abroad and at home. Prashad reports that this comment was made at the outset of the war in Iraq and two years after the US attacked Afghanistan.

Then John Ross, in a lengthy and comprehensive essay describes the “increasing international military aggression” of the United States characteristic of the recent past. He points out that before Ukraine, US military action primarily targeted poor and/or non-nuclear countries such as Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Libya. Now, Ross warns, the US is engaged in a war against Russia, a nuclear state.

He describes compellingly the thirty-year escalation of US involvement in Ukraine; the expansion of NATO, participation in the Maidan coup, the funding and training of the Ukrainian military, the dismissal of the provisions of the Minsk Accords, and the transferring billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight the Russian armies. He suggests that the Ukraine model is being used against China, by escalating tensions over Taiwan. The author concludes that the Ukraine War and the provocations toward confrontation with China are manifestations of the US project of reestablishing hegemony in a world in which China and the rest of the Global South are seen as challenges to US economic and political dominance. To use Ross’s words the US;

“ relative economic position has weakened tremendously, but its military power is great. Therefore, it attempts to move issues to the military terrain, which explains its escalating military aggression and why this is a permanent trend.”

And he warns us: “This means that humanity has entered a very dangerous period. (21-22).

In the second essay, Deborah Veneziale examines the domestic actors in the United States that are leading the way down a war path. She interrogates for 2023 what has been called the “military/industrial complex.” She demonstrates how once competing factions of the foreign policy elite have come together to advocate a policy of return to US global hegemony, particularly targeting China as the bulwark of opposition to the project. Essentially, she suggests that the controversial document prepared by former defense official Paul Wolfowitz in 1992 calling for the US “to maintain a permanent unipolar position” has been embraced by all major parties to the foreign policy-making process. Second, these elites have decided that China is the main enemy. And third, she describes “the merging of belligerent foreign policy elites” which include influential think tanks, military contractors, big tech corporations, and elite decision-makers circulating from military corporations to governments and back to the corporations again. As she writes:

“The military-industrial complex, composed of generals, politicians, tech companies, and private military contractors, is pursuing a massive expansion of U.S. military capacity. Today, nearly all in Washington use China as well as Russia as their pretext for this build up” (54).

Finally, John Bellamy Foster raises the specter of the inextricable connections between the danger of nuclear war and environmental collapse. He uses E. P. Thompson’s 1980s discussion of “exterminisms” to link the danger of nuclear war with the danger of “nuclear winter.” In other words, the escalating tensions described in the other essays could lead along with death and destruction by nuclear war to a radical elimination of the viability of the planet due to fire, smoke, dramatic declines in the earth’s temperature, and the end to the capacity of survivors to redevelop agriculture. We, he claims, are playing with the dangers of the two “exterminisms,” killing of people and the destruction of the planet. And, ultimately these potential life destroying crises, the New Cold War, have their roots in the logic of capitalism.

After summarizing some of the science that has led to the confirmation of the likelihood of a “nuclear winter” coming from nuclear war, Foster described the dangerous shift in US military policy from a strategy of deterrence (“counter value” or “counter city”), with the former Soviet Union, to a “counterforce” strategy.

The earlier nuclear strategy of the United States and the Soviet Union, MAD, or mutually assured destruction, was based on the proposition that the US (and the former Soviet Union) would maintain enough nuclear capacity to survive a first strike from their enemy and respond in kind. This second-strike capacity would insure that neither side would strike first, knowing that their own society would be destroyed.

In the Reagan period US military doctrine shifted to a “counterforce” strategy, that is billions of dollars are being invested in developing the capacity to destroy a potential enemy’s second strike capacity, by hitting their military targets first. This counterforce strategy, most theorists have argued, makes nuclear war more likely. Some of this fear might have been behind the Russian assault on Ukraine.

In sum the authors portray a contemporary reality that includes the US drive to recreate global hegemony in a more multipolar world and dramatically escalated tensions among nations with nuclear weapons. US policy is rationalized by white supremacist ideology. Finally, enormous profits are derived from dramatically increased military spending.

The small size of the volume, the richness of the data, and the enormity of the warnings make this an important volume for use in classrooms and study groups.

While accessible for discussion, shortcomings remain:

1.The volume does not address or evaluate the intentions of key adversary actors. Particularly, not enough attention is given to the fact that Russia did invade Ukraine, in a sense precipitating the global crisis the authors address.

2.The authors give insufficient attention to contradictions: disagreements within the US foreign policy elite (such as among the so-called “realists” and the influential role of the Quincy Institute as an example), debates among the military, the role (insufficient though it is) of the so-called Squad in Congress, and perhaps most importantly the US and the global peace movement.

3.The authors do not address adequately “what is to be done.” Foster’s compelling linkage of the “exterminisms” of nuclear war and nuclear winter could/should be a centerpiece of peace and environmental movements coming together more effectively. And surely, now, in the midst of the so-called deficit debate the connections between growing economic immiseration, rising healthcare costs, homelessness, and, on the other hand military spending, close to a trillion dollars, should be the basis for rebuilding a unified mass-based movement that sees the connections between United States foreign and domestic policy

Diary of a Heartland Radical

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

REFLECTIONS ON THE UKRAINE WAR AND UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: 2022-2023

The Bookshelf

CHALLENGING LATE CAPITALISM by Harry R. Targ

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