PEACE MOVEMENT SOMETIMES NEEDS TO SUPPORT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Harry Targ

From the standpoint of peace movements, much of modern history has required mobilizations against United States imperialism. In this century, peace activists have mobilized against major wars, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq; interference in and promotion of civil wars as in Libya and Syria; and U.S. defense of regimes that violate human rights such as Israel and Honduras. Peace activists have demanded that their government support, not oppose, grassroots movements which have sought to overthrow oppressive pro-United States rulers, as in Egypt in 2011. In addition, peace activists continue to mobilize against exorbitant military spending, drone warfare, violations of the privacy of citizens and non-citizens alike, and the training of the officer core in Latin America at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.

However, from time to time peace activists need to bring their pressure to bear in support of government policies. Now is such a time as the United States has shifted in the direction of negotiating a de-escalation of tensions with Iran and promoting an end to civil war in Syria.

Last summer, President Obama indicated he was giving serious consideration to selective bombing of military targets in Syria. The proposed scenario sounded a lot like the US/NATO war on Libya in 2011 that facilitated the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and the disintegration of Libyan society into a maze of warring factions.

Anti-war activists around the country hit the streets to protest impending war.  Vocal opposition in Congress to a war on Syria expanded. As a result of this growing resistance to war, the President postponed indefinitely an attack on Syria. Shortly after, Secretary of State Kerry flew to Geneva and began the latest round of discussions with Iranian leaders to eliminate the “threat” of Iran’s nuclear program coupled with the end of the Western economic blockade of that country. 

The result of this flurry of activities is a recently signed six-month agreement between the United States and Iran to give time for further diplomatic negotiations. In addition, the administration announced that negotiations would begin in January to end the civil war in Syria.

New York Times reporter Mark Landler wrote that “…the two nearly simultaneous developments were vivid statements that diplomacy, the venerable but often-unsatisfying art of compromise, has once again become the centerpiece of American foreign policy” (“Obama Signals a Shift From Military Might to Diplomacy,” New York Times, November 25, 2013).

Landler referred to 2008 candidate Obama’s pledge to audiences at home, in Europe, and in the Middle East that his administration would use the traditional tools of diplomacy rather than force to help solve world problems. His 2008 rhetoric stood markedly in contrast to the neo-conservative vision of a foreign policy which would use force as a first resort rather than a last one.  

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a right wing lobby group, advocated in the 1990s for a foreign policy based on “…the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposely promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.” 

The neo-conservative approach to foreign policy which dominated the Bush Administration was unilateralist and militarist, rejecting diplomacy, international institutions, and securing support from friendly nations. A centerpiece of the policy was the Doctrine of Pre-emption, attacking a group or nation that the United States feels might be planning to attack the United States.

Obama in 2008 sided with a more pragmatic view—secure support from allies, work within international organizations to achieve goals, develop policies to deter threats  rather than  pre-empting them with offensive military action, and, most of all, use diplomacy to solve conflicts. From the pragmatist viewpoint military force should only be a last resort (see Harry Targ, “Globalists vs. Pragmatists: Two Styles of Imperialism,” Diary of a Heartland Radical, www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com,  May 31, 2010.)

Once elected, Obama embraced the pragmatist approach to foreign policy for much of his first two years in office—meeting with the G20 countries, loosening restrictions on American contacts with Cuba, criticizing Israel’s expanding settlements in the West Bank, and mildly rebuking the Honduran military for carrying out a coup in that country. Importantly, the president withdrew most U.S. troops from Iraq.

However, after 2010, his policies reflected more the policies of his predecessor. The United States expanded U.S. military bases in Colombia, stalled the de-escalation of tensions with Cuba, and ignored the refusal of the Honduran military and civilian elite to reestablish its elected government. Criticism of Israeli policy declined. And, most significantly, Obama sent 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and supported a NATO-led air war against Libya. Finally, some “boots on the ground” were replaced with an escalated drone anti-terror program against targets in Pakistan and Yemen.

Recent developments in United States policy toward Iran and Syria suggest that the “pragmatist” Obama may be returning. As Phyllis Bennis recently asked: “Could we be seeing the rising role of diplomacy instead of military force as the basis of U.S. foreign policy?”

The neo-conservatives and other legislators, who are guided in their policy perspectives in the Middle East by what the government of Israel supports or opposes, are objecting to the Administration’s pursuit of diplomatic solutions to conflicts with Iran and Syria. Many legislators, both Democratic and Republican, are calling for increased sanctions against Iran which would scuttle the U.S./Iranian agreement.

This time the peace movement should step up to support the foreign policy of the Obama Administration rather than oppose it. If not, the United States will return to the traditional neo-conservative approach to world affairs; send in the military now and think about diplomacy later.

As Phyllis Bennis wrote in reference to peace activists: “As usual, it’s up to us to keep the pressure on. We need to make sure the agreement with Iran holds, and we need to make sure the U.S. doesn’t continue to exclude Iran from participating in Syria peace talks” (“Iran diplomacy Works, Afghan War Winding Down, Palestine Crisis Remains,” New Internationalism, Institute for Policy Studies, 2013, Phyllis@ips-dc.org).

PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S FLAWED RECORD ON CIVIL RIGHTS AND VIETNAM

Harry Targ

Fifty years ago President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and possibly a web of mysterious associates. The “Who Killed Kennedy?” debate has continued and remains alive these many years since the tragedy in Dallas. Less frequent but important discussion recently has arisen about the effectiveness of the Kennedy Administration on domestic and foreign policy. I wish to address these issues in three parts.

First, candidate Kennedy inspired a massive sense of enthusiasm from younger Americans, many first-time voters. His youth, his vigor, his articulateness, and his call for public service resonated with a generation of youth who were beginning to follow the growing struggles for racial justice in the South. In addition young people who began to pay attention to politics in the late 1950s were increasingly frustrated by the Cold War and the cloud of possible  annihilation resulting from the spread of nuclear weapons. In this political climate the young presidential candidate appealed to the best instincts of many American youth. Ironically, the Kennedy mystique inspired a generation of activists whose struggles against racism and the Vietnam War would have appalled the President if he had lived.

Second, as to civil rights, the Kennedy Administration, much like the Eisenhower Administration that preceded it, was a reluctant supporter of the courageous activism, of young people in the South. The activists, Black-led and white supported-- primarily of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference-- courageously fought against racial injustice with little support from the federal government: including Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department , and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by the notorious anti-Communist zealot  J. Edgar Hoover. The Kennedy Administration would have preferred if the historically significant 1963 March on Washington had not occurred. Key representatives of the administration sought to moderate march organizers’ militant demands for racial equality and economic justice.

Third, as to foreign policy, Kennedy surrounded himself with vigorous, articulate, ideologically rigid anti-Communists. While he and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev deescalated tensions after the onset of  the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is clear that the President was willing to go to war, destroying both countries in the process, if he did not achieve a symbolic victory, the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba soil (even though the Secretary of Defense and others had advised him that the weapons on the island did not change the balance of power between the two military giants). In the end, while the Soviet installation of missiles in Cuba was foolish, it was Khrushchev’s decision to withdraw the missiles that saved the world from destruction.

On Vietnam, JFK added 16,000 military “advisers” to South Vietnam during his three year term. He launched the “Strategic Hamlet Program,” which moved thousands of Vietnamese villagers to South Vietnamese government “secure” areas. He launched the program to train Special Forces or Green Berets to fight counterinsurgent wars. He provided military advisers and resources to dictatorships elsewhere including small countries in Latin America. The Kennedy programs were part of a plan to “modernize” what was then called the “Third World” or the “developing countries.” His key aides in this global effort were military advisers such as retired General Maxwell Taylor, defense intellectuals such as Robert McNamara,  McGeorge Bundy, and William Bundy, and academic advisors such as Walter Rostow. Kennedy’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was a long-time diplomat who vigorously opposed what he regarded as the Communist strategy of “wars of national liberation.” For him Vietnam was a test case of United States resolve in the war against Communism.

In short, despite limited evidence from some of Kennedy’s closest supporters, the President for three years promoted a global agenda to push back what he and they regarded as International Communism, arguing that if given a choice, peasant villagers in Vietnam would choose the South Vietnamese government over the government of the North and former guerrilla fighters in the South who fought French colonial rule. JFK’s global vision, like his predecessors and successors, was to promote a global United States agenda that, contrary to predictions, increased violent opposition in the world. There is no compelling evidence that President Kennedy would have reversed the course of United States foreign policy by ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam if he had lived.

Ironically, the nearly forgotten successor to Kennedy was Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He proceeded to mobilize a recalcitrant Congress to pass major civil rights legislation, Medicare, and programs under the rubric of the War on Poverty, which for a time reduced poverty in America to the lowest levels in the twentieth century. He supported policies which established effective pre-school programs and empowered some heretofore marginalized peoples in urban communities to be politically engaged. Tragically, these programs lost their popularity and funding as the Vietnam War escalated.

In sum, candidate and President John F. Kennedy was a political inspiration for many of the sixties generation but as president did not live up to what he promised either in terms of civil rights or foreign policy.

  

  

DAVE CORMIER, LABOR EDUCATOR AND ACTIVIST, DIES

Harry Targ

          Thursday night, November 14, 2013, I received a Facebook message from Jacklyn Yaple-Francisco Cormier reporting that my friend David Cormier passed away on November 12. There will be a memorial service at 2 pm on Saturday November 23th at the Jenkins Funeral Home in Morgantown, West Virginia. Her address is 243 Statler Run Road, Fairview, West Virginia 26570-8568.

          My loss is only overshadowed by the loss that will be felt by the working class and particularly trade union members. Dave was a dear friend and labor activist comrade in the state of Indiana in the 1990s. I owe much of what I learned about the labor movement, the working class, the impacts of globalization on workers, and how to teach students who need knowledge to help improve their lives, to him.

          In 2005 I was asked to write a letter in support of Dave’s candidacy for Professor of Labor Studies at West Virginia University. I draw on that letter to remind all of us who grieve about his death what he did for the labor movement in the state of Indiana. Some of my recollection is personal.

          I met Dave Cormier in 1989. I was a delegate to the Northwest Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO) representing the American Federation of Teachers at Purdue University. He made a presentation introducing Indiana University’s Division of Labor Studies to the Council. He emphasized his commitment to bringing Indiana University’s educational opportunities to labor unions in Central Indiana. He made it clear that he was prepared to meet with trade unionists, plan educational programs, and to teach courses relevant to their needs as workers. I was very impressed with his commitment to the labor movement and to bringing education to non-traditional students.  Shortly after his visit to the Labor Council, Cormier arranged to meet with me to discuss the educational needs of the labor community and to enlist my support for his efforts.

          Over the next decade, Cormier became a valued member of the labor community in Indiana. He met with members of the Northwest Central Labor Council Education Committee often to plan future course offerings. He made it clear he would do the same for every local union in the area. He taught a variety of courses, from two-hour blocks of instruction to six or eight week courses, to semester long courses on labor history. He encouraged trade unionists to take credit courses at Indiana University and to work toward a formal degree in Labor Studies. He was a ready resource for knowledge, data, and bargaining and negotiation information for trade unionists. He was often seen driving up to union halls in his white truck with the overhead machine in the back. Whenever knowledge was needed or a course needed to be taught Council members would say: “Let’s ask Dave.”

          I took several of Dave’s courses over the years. My first field of study was foreign policy and international relations but over the last twenty years I developed an interest in labor studies and political economy. Dave’s courses were a valuable resource for me as I “retooled” for my own teaching and research. In 1992, Dave taught a day-long seminar on the North American Free Trade Agreement. The available evidence at the time suggested that NAFTA would be disadvantageous for workers, particularly from the United States. At the end of the day-long class, participants decided to organize an anti-NAFTA labor/environment/farm coalition to pressure our Congress persons to vote “no” on NAFTA. Dave and I worked together with a group of trade unionists to gather petitions, hold rallies, and meet with Indiana Congress people. The campaign culminated in a statewide AFL-CIO rally in Indianapolis against NAFTA. Dave had convinced the president of the Indiana AFL-CIO of the importance of this activity.

          Dave was such a presence in the Indiana labor movement that he was honored with a special plaque at the annual Northwest Central Labor Council Community Services banquet.

          In 1996, Dave took a leave of absence from the Division of Labor Studies at Indiana University to complete a Ph.D. degree in economics at Notre Dame University. He worked closely with his mentor, labor economist, Charles Craypo. Subsequently Dave and Chuck published important papers on how declining manufacturing was increasing unemployment and economic inequality in formerly economically secure mid-sized cities.

          In 1999, Dave taught a six week evening course called “Worker Economics.” I took that course and learned an enormous amount about both macro- and micro-economics. I told him that I was beginning to study the phenomenon of “globalization” and was interested in his insights on the process: whether qualitative economic and political change was occurring in the global economy and particularly what was happening to trade, investment, production, and financial speculation. He invited me to give a brief presentation on globalization to the Worker Economics class. I did. After class we decided to begin a research project on globalization linking the economic dimension, his expertise, with international relations and foreign policy, my expertise. We discussed writing a book and he insisted that it had to be accessible to workers as well as other students.

          Thus began a research and writing collaboration that continued until he suffered his first stroke in August, 2009. Over the years we published several papers together and presented more at academic conferences. These included presentations in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Montreal, and at meetings of the Global Studies Association and the United Association of Labor Educators, of which he was an enthusiastic member. We never completed the book manuscript that we had been working on for a long time.    

          David Cormier compiled a significant research record aside from the globalization studies.  He and Charles Craypo, Department of Economics, Notre Dame University, developed a methodology for measuring income inequality over time and used the measures to assess the impacts of deindustrialization on three small communities. Also Dave did work on labor’s bargaining power, job restructuring, and a variety of other topics relevant to his work in labor studies. We used all of his research in the papers we presented at conferences and published to better understand how globalization impacted workers.

          David Cormier was a wonderful teacher. I experienced his teaching when he was with Indiana University. He had the capacity to communicate difficult issues in economics to workers, usually non-traditional students, and they had great confidence in his knowledge and commitment to them. He was a skilled economist, a workers’ economist.

        Dave once told me that while he was completing his master’s degree in industrial engineering in 1968, he watched the 1968 Democratic Convention “police riot” on television. Watching the police brutalizing anti-war activists convinced him that he needed to put his talents to a different purpose. He went to work for the United Farm Workers and later became a staff organizer for the 1199 Health Care union.

          He was brilliant, energetic, completely committed to the uplift of the working class and resolved throughout his adult life to link knowledge to radical social change.

        If he had written his own epitaph, I am sure Dave Cormier would have counseled us: “Don’t Mourn. Organize!”

 

           

COMMUNIST THREATS, LOSING THE ARMS RACE, AND FALLING BEHIND IN STEM (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS)

Harry Targ

A spokesperson for Purdue University testified before a Congressional research and technology subcommittee on November 13 warning that the United States is “losing a cadre of innovators that will never come back.” (Maureen Groppe, “Congress Hears Warning About Consequences of Research Cuts,” Journal and Courier, November 14, 2013, C1). The university spokesperson was echoing warnings that have been coming from his university and major research universities all around the country.

Purdue’s President, Mitch Daniels, not unlike other university presidents, has committed increasing shares of his budget to building so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. While support for STEM fields in higher education is not in and of itself a danger to higher education, Daniels has been implying that the United States has been falling behind other, potentially economically and/or militarily competitive nations, because of inadequate STEM funding. And, he has recommended that expanded allocation of resources for scientific and technological research and education should come from cuts in vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In addition, as Governor, Daniels was a leading proponent of the privatization of social services and public education.

The threats of the United States falling behind some fictional adversaries is a similar “meme” to those that have been articulated by economic, political and military elites at least since the end of World War II. A “meme” is generally understood to be an “idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” It is a framework for bundling ideas into a common theme that can be used in speeches, writings, and rituals. The meme or idea of falling behind some imagined competing or threatening force has been misused by political leaders over and over again.

When World War II was coming to an end, members of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were concerned that the economy would return to the depression of the 1930s. What stimulated economic recovery during the war, of course, was the mobilization of the military, corporations, universities, and workers to engage in massive research and production of war material to defeat fascism.

In the context of the winding down of the war, one CEO serving in government recommended that the United States create a “permanent war economy” to maintain the high level of economic and military mobilization and thus forestall economic decline. Support for high levels of military spending and corporate/government/university cooperation required a rationale. This rationale became the “meme” of the international communist threat. It justified the misallocation of societal resources for continued war production that has been a central feature of federal policy ever since.

The threat of “falling behind the Soviets” reverberated in the mass media after the shocking October, 1957 Soviet projection of an earth satellite into space. All of a sudden Americans were made to believe that their institutions were inferior to the enemy and that a new commitment of resources was needed to beat the Soviets to the moon and expand dramatically the American war machine. 

Three years later the threat of falling behind the enemy was used by presidential candidate John Kennedy to mobilize support and encourage new rounds of huge investments in military expansion. Kennedy warned of a “missile gap” that had emerged between the two super powers, a claim that was admitted to be false within a year of the new president’s assuming office.

Twenty years later presidential candidate Ronald Reagan referred to the “window of vulnerability” that had emerged in the 1970s as a result of Soviet/United States arms control negotiations. Although the United States agreed to limitations in arms production the Soviet Union, he claimed, continued their arms buildup creating this vulnerability to Soviet power. Consequently, President Reagan between 1981 and 1987 spent more on the military than the entire period of U.S. history from 1789 to 1981.  

With the end of the Cold War, the meme shifted to wars on “drugs” and today “terrorism.” All of these manifestations of the “falling behind” meme led the United States government to waste trillions of dollars and the loss of millions of lives of Americans and peoples in other countries such as Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Returning to “the STEM crisis,” Michael Anft, in a recent article (“The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 11, 2013), points out that there is much research showing that U.S. higher education is not falling behind some possible competing nations, that American universities are producing as many STEM college graduates as are needed, and that the institutional spokespersons, from universities, the corporate sector, technology associations and others, may be motivated more by institutional interest than demonstrated need.

Further, in an August 30, 2013 article, Robert N. Charette (IEEE Spectrum, http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-s-a-myth) challenges a variety of claims made by advocates of more resources for STEM fields. Among these are the following:

-Many workers in STEM fields do not have STEM degrees and those who hold such degrees do not necessarily find work in their fields.

-STEM jobs have changed over time. For example, long-term engineering jobs have been reduced while shorter-term project driven hires have increased.

-With repeated shifts in the economy, it is difficult to project what STEM job needs will be over long periods of time, five or ten years from now.

-Some studies find that the supply of STEM trained college students exceeds the demand for their labor. In one study by the Economic Policy Institute it was found that more than one-third of computer science graduates in recent years have not been able to find jobs in their chosen field.

-Many STEM jobs have been outsourced. In addition, international workers with STEM qualifications have been enticed to take jobs in the United States, often receiving smaller salaries than American workers. 

-Salaries of those working in STEM fields have been stagnant, much like the broader work force. This is so, some economists suggest, because demand for such trained workers has declined over the last several years.

Charette discussed possible reasons for the hyperbolic calls for quantum shifts toward STEM fields in universities and public investment. He refers to a cycle of “alarm, boom, and bust” that has governed phases of the public policy meme affecting foreign and domestic policy. Recently, the federal government has been spending $3 billion each year on 209 STEM-related initiatives, amounting to “about $100 for every U.S. student beyond primary school.” 

Charette identifies powerful forces in the country that gain from this massive allocation of societal resources. Corporations want a large pool of trained workers from which to choose, thus cheapening the cost of labor. State governments and the Federal government measure their successes in part by how many scientists and engineers they help produce. In addition, a third to one-half of the budgets of large universities come from government and corporate research grants in the STEM fields as public funding for universities has declined. And finally, about 50 cents of every dollar in the federal budget goes to the military, homeland security, and space exploration. 

As Charette points out; “The result is that many people’s fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured.”

-