Earlier speakers at the on-line Schiller Institute international conference “The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War” took an informative but somewhat traditional approach, so I decided it might be time for what Germans call eine Denkpause, a pause to think about ‘what fools we mortals be’.
I suggested giving some thought to broader questions: Might there be another way? Why can’t we all just get along?
To put some gravitas behind this approach, I called on a bunch of old friends — an unlikely congeries of ‘Denkers’, who influence my own thinking.
To set the tone, I borrowed an insight from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; namely, human connections are what matter most; that it is only with the heart, not just the eye, that one can see rightly; that most adults have difficulty doing this. And I added the reality that people with little pigment in their skin still tend to see themselves as exceptional.
Included among the dramatis personae I enlisted to expand de Saint-Exupery’s insight:
— Presidents Biden, to Xi, to Putin — Humanist Kurt Vonnegut, to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount — Daniel Berrigan, to Theilhard de Chardin
Concluding, I chose a line from Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy written in 1785, at the same time our Founders were declaring — like Schiller — that all men are created equal. Even then, of course, with their limited vision (and crass economic interest in preserving slavery, plus the subordination of women), the Founders’ declarations and behavior were far from inclusive.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent speech on China yesterday reminds us that, in the view of Washington and the U.S.-led White West, people of color who comprise some three-quarters of the world’s population are, in effect, still not deemed to be “brothers” (or sisters) of whites today.
Ironically, the way that the “world correlation of forces” has evolved, the White West has become “exceptional” indeed — but in a wholly new and detrimental way. Hubris-tinged exceptionalism has reduced the lily-white West to a distinct minority — a minority that, short of nuclear war, is no longer able to work its will on the rest of the world, as was the case ‘back in the day’.
President Biden needs to invite into the room some adults able to see this, and to tell him how exceptionally (no pun intended) dangerous it would be to proceed as though nothing has changed.
In any case, Schiller (and Beethoven) had the right idea:
Alle Menschen werden Brüder — All men are brothers (from An die Freude)
Bipartisanship is a rare and endangered species in today’s bitterly divided Washington. Except when it comes to one thing: the Pentagon budget.
From Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans, all agree that the Defense Department — which already boasts a budget higher, in comparable dollars, than its levels during the Cold War, and bigger than the combined military budgets of the next nine highest-spending countries — must have more. The only argument is how high the “top line” should go.
Ironically, this lone area of bipartisan consensus is a tribute not to the wisdom of the center but to its folly. Even as the military budget keeps going up, Americans are growing less and less secure.
The pandemic has taken the lives of more than 1 million Americans. With much of the world still lacking vaccines, as well as serviceable public health systems, the global toll keeps rising. And neither the United States nor the rest of the world is even close to prepared for the next pandemic, which, given our global economy, is certain to follow.
Meanwhile, last year, the United States alone suffered 20 climate catastrophes that wreaked over $1 billion in damage. Drought now endangers much of the West. Floods threaten the heartland. Hurricanes are predicted to be ever fiercer. Yellowstone National Park, with its recent drastic snowmelt and subsequent devastating floods, is only the most recent victim of a warming climate’s destructive effects. And yet, the Pentagon will get more money while efforts to kick-start investments to address catastrophic climate change are blocked by the Republican opposition in the Senate.
What is all this new defense spending for? Part will go to building up bases and weaponry in Asia to counter China. But the Chinese are competing most effectively not with military forces but with successful economic mercantilism. They are focused on capturing markets, locking up access to resources, and investing to dominate the emerging industries and technologies of the future. The Pentagon’s new weapons and bases won’t substitute for our failure to invest in cutting-edge R&D, in a modern and efficient infrastructure, and in a trade policy that serves Americans rather than multinational corporations.
The other target is Russia. Some of the most popular arguments for more military spending have been exposed as weak while the Ukraine war reveals the limits of the Russian military and Germany and other NATO allies pledge to increase their military spending dramatically. And yet, somehow, the Russian threat, as manifested by its invasion of Ukraine, remains the excuse for more Pentagon spending, not less.
The core of the argument is both logical and absurd. The United States maintains more than 700 bases in some 80 countries around the world. The Pentagon has carried out counterterrorism operations in at least 85 countries, nearly half of the world’s nation-states. It’s now gearing up to be able to take on both Russia and China. If the United States is committed to policing the world, the military budget will always by definition be inadequate. The mission, however, is absurd — and ruinous, if we want to rebuild and secure a healthy and prosperous democracy at home.
What powers the bipartisan consensus on military spending isn’t, of course, logic or even security. Pentagon spending is armed and armored by the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than 60 years ago. Eisenhower was prescient but too optimistic. Now we have, as former intelligence official Ray McGovern dubs it, “MICIMATT”— a military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex that is the most powerful lobby of all.
OpenSecrets, the authoritative, nonpartisan source on campaign financing and lobbying, reports that the weapons industry has spent about $300 million on campaign contributions and $2.5 billion on lobbying during the Pentagon’s post-9/11 spending surge. In any given year, the industry employs an average of 700 lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress. The Pentagon virtually invented the revolving door: A recent Government Accountability Office report identified 1,700 generals, admirals and Pentagon procurement officials who went to work in the 14 major arms contractors after leaving the government. According to a 2020 report, contractors and the Pentagon contributed more than $1 billion to the nation’s top 50 think tanks, another source of sinecures for former military officials, from 2014 to 2019.
None of these, though, are as powerful as the defense industry’s political contracting and production process, which systematically spreads jobs to key congressional districts nationwide. As William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, recently reported, the website for Lockheed Martin, a leading defense contractor, includes a map showing the state-by-state impact of the 250,000 jobs it claims are tied to its work on the troubled F-35 fighter jet. The company claims to have subcontractors in 45 states and Puerto Rico.
As Congress completes work on the defense budget authorization, bipartisan support will likely lift the top line higher even than the Pentagon or the president have asked for. But as the military grows, Americans will become less secure, battered by real threats that more weapons won’t address.
By Jordan Url, June 20, 2022 https://popularresistance.org/congress-lets-school-lunch-program-expire-as-it-ratchets-up-military-spending/ If we cannot take steps to ensure disadvantaged children have enough to eat, what good are we! MICIMATT profiteering on war in Ukraine and on tension with China amounts to THE MOTHER OF ALL OPPORTUNITY COSTS. And our earth is suffering, along with our children. (Yes, poor children ARE our children.)
Ray provides an example of the merits of WikiLeaks’ ‘Cable-gate’Interview with RT International, June 17, 2022 (9 minutes) https://disk.yandex.ru/i/XY0Ujdw3laRQ7w
Mearsheimer serves as the fearless leader of what academics call “the Realist School”, so he stays REAL. Can the rest of us ‘handle the truth’? Or do we suckers find succor in the benighted view that the lily white West is ‘exceptional’?
What passes for punditry by the foreign policy Blob still — get this — STILL approaches the world out of a U.S. exceptionalism mindset. Never mind accumulating evidence that this is a mirage — and, now, quite a dangerous one.
(L-R) Romanian President Iohannis, Italian PM Draghi, Ukrainian President Zelensky, French President Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 16 June 2022.
Henry Kissinger predicted some three weeks ago that the Ukraine war was dangerously close to becoming a war against Russia. That was a prescient remark. The NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in a weekend interview told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper that in the alliance’s estimation, the Ukraine war could wage for years.
“We must prepare for the fact that it could take years. We must not let up in supporting Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, also because of rising energy and food prices,” Stoltenberg said. He added that the supply of state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukrainian troops would increase the chance of liberating the Donbass region from Russian control.
The remark signifies a deeper NATO involvement in the war based on the belief not only that Russia can be defeated in Ukraine (“erase Russia”) but the cost shouldn’t matter. The NATO chiefs traditionally take the cue from Washington, and Stoltenberg was speaking just a fortnight before the alliance’s Madrid summit.
Curiously, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in an op-ed for London’s Sunday Times after a surprise visit to Kiev on Friday virtually complemented Stoltenberg’s words, stressing the need to avoid “Ukraine fatigue.” Johnson noted that with Russian forces gaining ground “inch by inch” it was vital for Ukraine’s friends to demonstrate their long-term support, which meant ensuring “Ukraine receives weapons, equipment, ammunition and training more rapidly than the invader”.
Johnson outlined “four vital steps to recruit time to Ukraine’s cause.” First, he said, “we must ensure that Ukraine receives weapons, equipment, ammunition and training more rapidly than the invader, and build up its capacity to use our help.” Second, “we must help preserve the viability of the Ukrainian state.”
Third, “We need a long-term effort to develop the alternative overland routes” for Ukraine so that its economy “continues to function.” Fourth, crucially, the Russian blockade of Odessa and other Ukrainian ports must be lifted and “we will keep supplying the weapons needed to protect them.”
Johnson admitted that all this requires “a determined effort … lasting for months and years.” But the imperative to strengthen President Zelensky’s capacity to wage the war is also vital for “protecting our own security as much as Ukraine’s.” Stoltenberg and Johnson spoke up after the EU executive recommended that Ukraine should be officially recognised as a candidate to join the bloc (which is expected to be endorsed at a summit set for June 23-24.)
Meanwhile, Russian forces are steadily marking tactical successes in the region of Donbass and in the stabilisation of the frontline in other sectors. The most intense fighting is ongoing in the Severodonetsk-Lysichansk area and around Slavyansk, but the situation is also tense in the Kharkiv region and in Mykolaiv and Kherson Regions in the south.
The Russian forces are pounding the military infrastructure and equipment gatherings of Ukrainian forces. As per Russian MOD, in the five-day period between June 13-17 alone, according to the Russian version, it appears that 1800 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 291 pieces of military equipment and 69 objects of military infrastructure were destroyed.
A defeat in Donbass will be catastrophic for Zelensky, as the destruction of its best military units deployed there virtually leaves the southern regions as low-hanging fruit for Russian forces. For NATO too, its international standing will be seriously eroded. On Friday, two US war veterans detained on Donetsk frontline were put on display on Russian TV appealing to their families for help. More such visuals can be expected in the coming days.
Johnson wrote alarmingly that the Putin Doctrine arrogates to Russia an eternal right to “take back” any territory ever inhabited by Slavs and this “would permit the conquest of vast expanses of Europe, including Nato allies.” This is hyperbole. To take their eastern and southern territories back, the Ukrainians will indeed have to wage a long war but they also will critically depend on enormous military, financial and economic assistance from Europe. On the other hand, European unity is fragile and there is “fatigue” setting in.
There is no coherent vision about the ultimate NATO objective, either. Ukraine is a black hole unworthy of a Marshall Plan. Unsurprisingly, there is great circumspection on the part of Germany to waste its resources over Ukraine.
Finally, the deepening economic crisis in the West — high inflation and cost of living and growing likelihood of recession — is at the gates like wolves howling in a winter wonderland. The European public no longer becomes sentimental at the sight of Ukrainian refugees. The alibi that Putin is responsible for all this won’t fly.
Fundamentally, the Western economies are facing a systemic crisis. The complacency that the reserve-currency-based US economy is impervious to ballooning debt; that the petrodollar system compels the entire world to purchase dollars to finance their needs; that the flood of cheap Chinese consumer goods and cheap energy from Russia and Gulf States would keep inflation at bay; that interest rate hikes will cure structural inflation; and, above all, that the consequences of taking a trade-war hammer to a complex network system in the world economy can be managed — these notions stand exposed.
When the money printing presses whirred in Europe and America, no one felt uneasy about the structural flaws in the system. In a haze of ideological bluster, the Biden Administration and its junior partner in Brussels didn’t pay any due diligence before sanctioning Russia and its energy and resources. Europe is much worse off than America. Inflation in Europe is well into double digits. A European sovereign debt crisis may already have begun.
The accelerating inflationary crisis threatens the standing of western politicians, as they will encounter real popular anger once inflation eats away at the middle class and high energy prices gut business profits.
How to arrest the unfolding slow burn political debacle for both Europe and the US? The logical way is to force Zelensky to go to the negotiating table and discuss a settlement. The narrative of continuing the attrition against Russian forces for the coming months, to inflict hurt on Russia, does not help European politicians. Mariupol, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have fallen. Donbass might also, soon. What’s the next red line? Odessa?
Paradoxically, the long war in Ukraine could only work to Russia’s advantage. President Putin’s speech at the SPIEF at St. Petersburg on Friday shows how thoroughly Moscow studied the western financial and economic system and identified its structural contradictions. Putin is adept at using the weight and strength of his opponents to his own advantage rather than opposing blow directly to blow. The West’s overextension can ultimately be its undoing.
That’s where the actual inflection point lies today — whether the structural contradictions in the western economies have matured into disorder. Putin sees the West’s future as bleak, hit simultaneously by the blowback from its own imposition of sanctions, and the resultant spike in commodity prices, but lacking agility to deflect the blows due to institutional rigidities.
The big question today is at what point Russia retaliates against the countries who are involved in the gun-running business in Ukraine if they accelerate on that path. The air strikes by Russian jets last Thursday on the militant terror groups harboured in the US garrison at Al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border may well have carried a message.
