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
