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.

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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/

 

 

 

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE 21ST CENTURY UKRAINIAN CRISIS; SIMILARITIES AND DANGERS

Harry Targ

Revisiting the Cuban Missile Crisis might provide some lessons and warnings for 21^st century peace activists as we reflect on the current drama in Ukraine. The essay attached below includes descriptions of two competing evaluations of Kennedy Administration policies during the 1962 crisis. Whatever the assessment, it was clear that United States policies contributed to a heightened risk of nuclear war.

The most popular view which has been advanced by historians and journalists is that the careful modulation of US policies during the crisis demonstrated the wisdom and skill of the Kennedy Administration. These included, the narrative suggests, the careful and appropriate use of American power, including boarding Soviet naval vessels, flying US aircraft over Soviet territory, and implicitly threatening nuclear retaliation against the Soviet Union if they did not remove their missiles from the island of Cuba.

A second less popular view is that the United States and the Soviet Union acted recklessly such that the possibility of nuclear war was dramatically increased. This view suggests that issues of “security,” “spheres of influence,” “appearing strong and tough,” and “challenging the spread of communism” were used to justify the President’s willingness to go to the brink of war. Some, for example the journalist I. F. Stone, suggested that while the Soviets were reckless in placing their missiles on Cuban soil, it was they who ended the crisis by withdrawing their missiles and thus avoiding a nuclear war.

Baring in mind the competing views, the Cuban Missile Crisis may provide lessons for assessing the Ukraine crisis today. First, former Soviet, now Russian behavior, played a major role in stimulating in the short run heightened danger of a war, possibly including nuclear weapons.

Second, the Cuban Missile Crisis was part of a long-standing dispute between the United States, the unquestioned global hegemonic power, and a perceived challenger, the then Soviet Union. In 1962, as today, the United States sought/seeks to rekindle or maintain its global dominance in a complicated world, one in which the pursuit of great power dominance is dangerous and wasteful to all.

Third, crises, such as those involving Cuba and Ukraine, give justification for military/industrial complexes in both countries to lobby for more and more of societal resources.

Fourth, crises give legitimacy to cultures of “great power chauvinism:” in the US case “American exceptionalism,” defender of “democracy,” the voice of the “free world,” “the last remaining super-power,” and/or “the indispensable nation.”

Finally, as to domestic politics, international crises are used to “bail-out” politicians whose power and legitimacy are being threatened. President Kennedy had been judged weak after his Vienna meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, the German/Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall, Soviet support for anti-colonial movements, and the continuation of the Cuban Revolution.

At home in the fall of 1962 Democrats feared that they would lose control of the House of Representatives in upcoming elections. Pundits speculated that JFK’s image at home was of youth, inexperience, and lack of resolve. The handling and resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis changed all that.

And today, President Biden’s approval ratings are low. His legislative victories are overshadowed by the image of his failure to achieve his Bring Back Better program, and the much-publicized conflicts within his own party.

And, it should be noted, his major bipartisan legislative achievement is the passage of a $778 billion military budget which is of particular benefit to the sectors of the military/industrial complex which feed off crises like Ukraine. (After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and the Soviet Union did begin to dialogue about tension reduction but US military budgets continued their significant increase, justified by the Vietnam adventure. The US/Soviet competition would be fought out by an arms race and battles in independent nations-places like Vietnam then and Ukraine now).

And as I wrote in the essay below, citing I.F. Stone, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ended with the Soviet withdrawal of missiles. One hopes that the current leadership in Russia will take the initiative and reduce tensions that it initiated because the US record historically has been to exacerbate tensions not reduce them.

“As I.F. Stone suggested shortly after the crisis, nuclear war was avoided because the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from the tense conflict rather than to engage in it further.”

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Harry Targ wrote In October 8, 2012 about the Cuban Missile Crisis:

THE CUBA STORY: THE BAY OF PIGS TO THE MISSILE CRISIS

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-cuba-story-bay-of-pits-to-missile.html

https://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/harry-targ-from-bay-of-pigs-to-missile_17.html?m=0

 

“In the missile crisis the Kennedys played their dangerous game skillfully….But all their skill would have been to no avail if in the end Khrushchev had preferred his prestige, as they preferred theirs, to the danger of a world war. In this respect we are all indebted to Khrushchev. (I.F. Stone, “What If Khrushchev Hadn’t Backed Down?” in In a Time of Torment, Vintage, 1967).

The Kennedy Administration Goes to the Brink of Nuclear War

The period between the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the announcement of the Alliance of Progress economic assistance program, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was one of escalating hostilities. Fidel Castro declared Cuba a Socialist state. The United States pressured members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to expel Cuba. The CIA began campaigns to assassinate the Cuban leader and President Kennedy initiated the complete economic blockade that exists until today. In addition, Castro warned that the U.S. was continuing to plan for another invasion. The Soviet Union began providing more economic and military support to the Cubans, including anti-aircraft missiles and jet aircraft.

In October, 1962, U.S. spy planes sighted the construction of Soviet surface-to-air missile installations and the presence of Soviet medium-range bombers on Cuban soil. These sightings were made after Republican leaders had begun to attack Kennedy for allowing a Soviet military presence on the island. Kennedy had warned the Soviets in September not to install “offensive” military capabilities in Cuba. However, photos indicated that the Soviets had also begun to build ground-to-ground missile installations on the island, which Kennedy defined as “offensive” and a threat to national security.

After securing the photographs Kennedy assembled a special team of advisors, known as EXCOM, to discuss various responses the United States might make. He excluded any strategy that prioritized taking the issue to the United Nations for resolution.

After much deliberation EXCOM focused on two policy responses: a strategic air strike against Soviet targets in Cuba or a blockade of incoming Soviet ships coupled with threats of further action if the Soviet missiles were not withdrawn. Both options had a high probability of escalating to nuclear war if the Soviet Union refused to back down.

High drama, much of it televised, followed the initiation of a naval blockade of Soviet ships heading across the Atlantic to Cuba. Fortunately, the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, sent notes to the President that led to a tacit agreement between the two leaders whereby Soviet missiles would be withdrawn from Cuba and the United States would promise not to invade Cuba to overthrow the Castro government. In addition, the President indicated that obsolete U.S. missiles in Turkey would be disassembled over time.

Most scholars argue that the missile crisis constituted Kennedy’s finest hour as statesman and diplomat. They agree with the administration view that the missiles constituted a threat to U.S. security, despite Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s claim in EXCOM meetings that the missiles did not change the strategic balance between the United States and the Soviet Union. Most of these scholars have agreed that the symbolic value of the installation of Soviet missiles could have had grave consequences for U.S. “credibility.”

Given the importance of the missiles, leading social scientists have written that the Kennedy team carefully considered a multitude of policy responses. EXCOM did not ignore competing analyses, as had been done in the decisional process prior to the Bay of Pigs. The blockade policy that was adopted, experts believe, constituted a rational application of force that it was hoped would lead to de-escalation of tensions. All observers agreed that the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to the brink of nuclear war. Even the President estimated that there was a fifty percent probability of full-scale nuclear war.

In the end the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Analysts said the Soviet Union suffered a propaganda defeat for putting the missiles on Cuban soil in the first place and then withdrawing them after U.S. threats. Khrushchev was criticized by the Chinese government and within a year he was ousted from leadership in the Soviet Union.

In the light of this U.S. “victory,” Kennedy has been defined as courageous and rational. The real meaning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, is different, even fifty years after the event. The crisis actually suggests that the United States quest to maintain and enhance its empire would lead it to go to any extreme, even nuclear war, to defend the interests of capitalism. To avoid serious losses, whether symbolic or material, for capitalism, any policy was justified.

Further, in terms of U.S. politics, Kennedy was calculating the effects of the missiles on the chances for his party to retain control of Congress in 1962. A second “defeat” over Cuba (the Bay of Pigs was the first) would have heightened the opposition’s criticisms of his foreign policy.

Finally, in personal terms, Kennedy was driven by the need to establish a public image as courageous and powerful in confronting the Soviets. Khrushchev had spoken harshly to him at a summit meeting in Vienna in 1961 and Castro had been victorious at the Bay of Pigs. The President’s own “credibility” had been damaged and a show of force in October, 1962, was necessary for his career.

Because of imperialism, politics, and personal political fortunes, the world almost went to nuclear war fifty years ago. As I.F. Stone suggested shortly after the crisis, nuclear war was avoided because the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from the tense conflict rather than to engage in it further.

National Security Archives files referred to in an earlier blog suggest, “the historical record shows that the decisions leading to the crisis which almost brought nuclear war have been repeated over and over again since the early 1960s”  ( www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/). The danger of the unabashed and irresponsible use of force and the legitimation of the idea that diplomacy can be conducted using nuclear weapons and other devastating weapons systems still represents a threat to human survival.

These comments were adapted from Harry Targ, Strategy of an Empire in Decline: Cold War II, 1986. It is the third essay in a series on “The Cuba Story” available at www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com.”

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

 

Original essay on NATO posted on May 12, 2012

 

NATO: NOW IT IS AT IT AGAIN 

Harry Targ

 

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 fullscale 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.

                                  

 

 

 AND THE MEDIA

  

 

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A Webinar and Power Point on International Relations, Militarism, and Foreign Policy

Harry Targ

Webinar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQi3Et5ZHkE

Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action February 14, 2022

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Power Point 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MILITARISM TODAY.pptx

By any measure the pain and suffering caused by 21st century imperialism is staggering. Millions of  people, mostly in the Middle East and South Asia, have died or been displaced by the war on terrorism initiated in 2001. These figures include the untold thousands who have died directly from war and violence in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa and indirectly through “hybrid “wars against such countries as Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba.

Concomitant to war and violence, the 2022 US military budget endorsed by both political parties will exceed $778 billion.

What is the history of US militarism, what Andrew Bacevich calls “the permanent war economy”?

What are connections between the military/industrial complex and the global needs of capitalism?

What are the current sources of international tensions and possible war today?

What is behind US policy towards countries including China, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba?

How should the peace movement respond to militarism and imperialism today?

UKRAINE: PREPARING FOR WAR AGAIN

Harry Targ 

                                                    January 20, 2020

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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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 tell the truth about the U.S. role in the world.

JOHN MCCARTNEY KNEW IDEAS CAN INSPIRE ACTIVISM

 Harry Targ

 OrIGINALLY POSTED ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013

 “I am trying to carry students on a ‘voyage’ in which they transcend their immediate experiences and impressions, and encounter in the process a ‘new’ world of ideas, values, and aspirations.” (quote from a letter Professor McCartney wrote to the Provost, Lafayette College).

John McCartney was a colleague of mine, a political comrade, and a long-time friend, even though we had not been in touch in recent years. He was on the faculty at Purdue University from 1970 to 1979, serving as Assistant Professor of Political Science, and the first director of a new program in African American Studies. He returned to Purdue University in January 2003 to participate in a conference sponsored by Purdue’s Committee on Peace Studies. He gave a lecture on “Martin Luther King Jr. and the Question of Peace.” We in Peace Studies shared our ideas about social change at this conference with McCartney, labor leader Noel Beasley, and peace researcher Betty Reardon.

At that time John invited me to an upcoming conference on “Paul Robeson: His History and Development” at Lafayette College, in Pennsylvania, where he was Department Chair. In April, 2005, John and I gave presentations at that gathering on “Marx and Engels’ Influences on the Development of Robeson’s Intellect.”

While clearing my desk sometime later, I came across the Robeson paper and decided to seek its publication in The Journal of African American Studies. I started to submit the paper online. The journal’s application required the prospective author to submit names and e-mail addresses of three possible article reviewers. So I typed in John’s name and then searched the internet to secure his e-mail address when I found the entry, “Memorial Resolution for John T. McCartney.”

My first reaction was emotional devastation. For me, John was always out there even though we did not keep in touch. On reflection I began to realize how important he was to me as an educator and activist and I decided to share some remembrances. I do so not to celebrate McCartney nor to provide an emotional release for me, but to underscore the power of ideas, the importance of the educational process, and the obligation of us in educational institutions to link our work to political practice.

John came to the Department of Political Science at Purdue University from the University of Iowa, where he was completing a Ph.D. Our department head reported that John would teach urban politics, because that was what people assumed scholars of African descent would teach. But no, to the department’s surprise John was a political theorist, specializing in medieval political thought. Along with teaching a course on the history of political theory, John taught courses on St. Augustine. He was such a wonderful teacher that one would see lots of students carrying around with them The City of God, not the usual political science text being studied in the early 1970s.

John met philosophy professor Kermit Scott, another medievalist and dear friend of mine. Kermit and I worked with other activist faculty on a variety of student, anti-racism, and anti-war activities in those days. John and Kermit decided to team-teach an undergraduate seminar on medieval philosophy. Both were brilliant and had a small but determined following among students.

John led a mysterious life outside the classroom. Always kind, gentle, and caring he lived alone in a small apartment across the river in Lafayette and spent his free time talking with working folks who hung out downtown. At some point, Kermit and John started talking about post-medieval politics and to our surprise Kermit and I learned that John McCartney was the leader of the Vanguard Nationalist and Socialist Party of the Bahamas. Every summer he would return home and walk the streets of Nassau with his comrades talking with virtually every resident of the main island. His name would appear regularly in articles on the front page of the Nassau newspaper referring to “Dr. John McCartney, Purdue University Professor and Chairman of the Vanguard Nationalist and Socialist Party.”

It turns out that John, the oldest of 10 children, received a first-rate British colonial public school education, worked as an officer of the British Customs Service, received a bachelor’s degree at Drake University in Iowa, and his Ph. D at the University of Iowa.

Meanwhile John and a small coterie of comrades were constructing a Socialist party designed to challenge the elected leadership of the post-colonial government of the Bahamas. He was struggling to build a socialist movement to take power from many of those opportunistic Bahamian nationalists who were John’s school mates years earlier. So John, teaching St. Augustine, in Indiana, was sending his salary back home to support his nine siblings and the new Vanguard Party.

John and Kermit, who himself was increasingly drawn to the Marxist tradition, decided to put their copies of The City of God back on the bookshelf and rework their seminar into an in-depth study of Marxism. In addition to a small but dedicated group of students several faculty would sit in on the seminar. I did so three times.

John was a hard driver as a teacher. Our first seminar assignment was to go through volume one of Das Capital. We would read the text line by line. Through most of the class John read a critical passage, explained it, and read it again. Over the three classes I took with John and Kermit we read theorists including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Lukacs, Gramsci, and Euro Communists.

John organized several of us into a reading group that met on Sunday nights. We read Nkrumah, Cabral, Che, and some of the women in our group insisted we add some feminist voices to our readings and discussion. John needed to be brought along on “the woman question,” but of course he was not alone.

Kermit and I, mostly Kermit, began to do some work for the Vanguard Party, writing short essays for study groups that members engaged in back home and Kermit wrote a thorough history of the Bahamas for the party called “The Struggle for Freedom in the Bahamas.” Kermit visited the Bahamas often and I did so once.

During one meeting in the party office, which Kermit and I attended, some young ultra-left members pulled a revolver demanding that the party march “over the hill” and seize state power. John stood up to the leader of the revolt, a gun inches from his face, and asked, “What next?” We could not hold power he added primarily because not enough people would support a violent “revolution.” Fortunately, the rebel withdrew his gun and the next day party members resumed their work, walking the streets, talking to people, explaining socialism, and asking for the people’s support. Most importantly, the regular work in the community was done with respect for different views. John, the medieval scholar, was as much a man of the people as any revolutionary one could think of.

By the middle of the 1980s, the party fell on hard times and John, who had left Purdue and academia in 1979, returned to the United States to take an academic position. He taught for the rest of his life at Lafayette College, a well-known and expensive liberal arts college in Eastern Pennsylvania. In that powerful memorial statement about John, it was pointed out that both the college and John were taking a big risk. Neither the Department of Government and Law nor John were sure that he could adapt to teaching students from wealthy families. But on reflection the decision was a “no-brainer.” John loved people. He could hang out with the guys on the stoop in downtown Lafayette, walk the streets among the people he grew up with, and work hard to teach young people of all kinds the ideas that he valued so much.

When my wife and I attended the conference John McCartney organized in 2005 we caught up on our many years apart only some of which we were able to discuss when he attended the Peace Studies conference at Purdue in 2003. He spoke about how wonderful Lafayette College was, how open and tolerant the students were, and how important it was to communicate ideas to them. He admitted on the side, however, that “I teach a course in the local prison every year to keep in touch with the working class.” A former student reported that when John got sick and did not stop by the local Wawa food market, workers there would say: “Where’s Doc?”

"Doc” knew that ideas mattered; that young people needed to study hard; that ideas had to be put to work changing the world.

Students, teachers, and political activists will miss John McCartney.

https://www.jbhe.com/2012/04/in-memoriam-james-t-mccartney-1938-2012/

 And now, with the rise of the right, escalating racism, the pain and suffering working people face in the Global North and the Global South, and threats educators face when they communicate critical thought, I remember our debt to scholar/activists like John McCartney.

BUILDING A NEW SOCIETY

Harry Targ 

 A powerful concept animated the vision of young people in the 1960s, the idea of community. Many of us came to that decade with little interest in politics. We were not “red diaper” babies but we became outraged by Jim Crow, McCarthyism, and war. Our education had communicated an early version of Margaret Thatcher’s admonition, “there is no alternative,” and our impulses told us then that “another world was possible.” 

 New and old ideas about a better world began to circulate from college campuses, the streets, some churches, and popular culture. A whole body of engaging literature caught the fancy of young people. 

For me Paul Goodman’s description of youth growing up in the sterile 1950s, Growing Up Absurd, resonated. He wrote about alternative possibilities in such books as Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals. Perhaps most startling to a young reader was the earlier analysis Goodman published with his brother Percival, Communitas. In that book the Goodman brothers argued that societies, big and small, were products of values. Architecture and the organization of space, social and political forms, and the ease with which people could communicate and interact with each other varied. And the variations created in space and social forms affected whether communities valued life and sociability or consumption and profit maximization. 

The Goodman’s opened up new intellectual doors for me. I looked at earlier anarchists, such as Peter Kropotkin, who argued that humans-if not separated by time, space, and power structures-often lived in solidarity with their neighbors. A “mutual aid” principle was natural to human existence. And, as a result “the state" sought to stamp it out and replace it with top-down authority. 

Martin Buber, in Paths in Utopia, identified a “centralistic political principle” that emerged when groups and states sought control of markets and natural resources and “the most valuable of all goods,” the lives of people who lived with each other changed as “…the autonomous relationships become meaningless, personal relationships wither; and the very spirit of…” being human “…hires itself out as a functionary.” The alternative for Buber was what he called a decentralized social principle, or community which is “…never a mere attitude of mind” but of “…tribulation and only because of that community of spirit; community of toil and only because of that community of salvation….” 

In 1974, I wrote in summation about these theorists and many others that “the architectural forms and social structures of the Goodmans can profitably be blended with the spiritualism and socialism of Buber to construct a synthesis of all that the utopians and anarchists set out to achieve. The Goodmans show how community can be created in the industrial age and Buber illustrates how the best features of the entire community tradition fit together.” 

The ideas of community, empowerment, and social justice spread from these and other sources. They were articulated for the sixties in The Port Huron Statement, written by founders of the Students for a Democratic Society. While written by and for a relatively privileged sector of disenchanted youth in a period of booming economic growth and military expansion, the document spoke to the passion for justice, participation, and community; “…unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.” It called for the creation of “human interdependence” replacing “…power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance…” by “power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity.” 

By the late sixties many of us were identifying a new society that must be built on core principles. These included; - local control and participatory democracy - racial justice - gender equality - equitable distribution of resources and the collective product of human labor - commitments to the satisfaction of minimal basic needs for all of humankind - the development of an ethic that connects survival to human existence not to specific jobs - human control over technology - a new “land ethic” that conceives of humankind as part of nature, not in conflict with it.

Many of us began to explore the impediments to the construction of a society based on human scale that celebrated both individual creativity and community. Growing familiarization with the critique of capitalism suggested that the capitalist mode of production, dominant over two-thirds of the world, was based upon the exploitation, oppression, dehumanization, and repression of the vast majority of humankind. Incorporating an understanding of the workings of capitalism did not contradict the vision that Buber called the decentralized social principle and the many eloquent calls by others for “community.” It did suggest that building a new society entailed class struggle which would manifest itself in factories and fields, in rich and poor countries, and in political venues from the ballot box to the streets.

Bringing about positive change was a much more complicated affair than activists originally thought but the sustained and sometimes brutal opposition to our visions validated the general correctness of them. Today, new generations of activists, along with older ones, are reflecting and participating in diverse social movements in our cities and towns. They observe with enthusiasm the mobilizations, the militancy, and the passion for justice still unfolding in the Middle East. The efforts of Venezuelans, Bolivians, Ecuadorians, and the Cubans who inspired us so much over the years are applauded. Important debates about social market economies, workers’ management of large enterprises, this or that candidate or political party are occurring on the internet and in the streets. 

Although the times are so different from the 1960s, perhaps the vision of community that animated our thinking then (which we in turn learned from those who preceded us) may still be relevant for today. Without creating new documents or dogmas perhaps it can be proclaimed that we remain committed to the sanctity of human life, to equality, to popular control of all our institutions, to a reverence for the environment, and to the idea that the best of society comes from our communal efforts to make living better for all.