COMMENT ON AMERICA’S NEW NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW
The just-announced American Nuclear Posture Review is a frightening
new step in treating a peaceful Russia as an enemy and in more or less declaring
America’s right to dominate the planet, America’s declaring America as God’s
chosen people in a bizarre 21st century parody of ancient nonsense.
Russia is not an enemy. Indeed, it is, by every measure, a
potential partner and friendly competitor. And I must say that other nations
specified in the Review – especially China and Iran – are in much the same
position, potential partners and friendly competitors, but they are deliberately
being cast as a twisted new version of the “axis of evil”
We must remember America’s history over last half or so of
the 20th century to appreciate how dangerous this is.
Surprisingly few Americans and their tightly-held allies do
remember that history in any detail.
Nothing makes it easier for the American power establishment
to launch aggressive new policies than this missing memory. Because even though
none of these countries are genuine democracies – and the United States
especially quite far from being one - it still always matters what the great
bulk of any people think about such great matters.
The big boys who really do direct major affairs can only be
grateful that public memory is weak, and, of course, in America’s press, repeating
and quoting the immense output of one-sided views and artificial constructs generated
continuously by the State Department, CIA, Pentagon, and Congress constantly
reinforces the way Americans and her allies are expected to see the world.
America took the easy way to end its war with Japan. It
dropped two atomic bombs on non-military urban target in fairly quick
succession. It did this despite the fact that Japan had unmistakably signaled
its willingness to surrender, only seeking the smallest concession concerning
the Emperor. But nothing less than absolute face-in-the-dirt surrender was what
America demanded, so it proved to the world it was ready to use nuclear weapons
to get it. And it should be noted that America was, indeed, prepared to
continue dropping atomic weapons, a full dozen such targets having been selected
on which to use the supply of bombs then in military stocks.
Later, in Korea, America seriously considered using nuclear
weapons again, but managed to restrain itself by conducting one of the most
brutal conventional bombing campaigns ever seen. North Korea was carpet-bombed
for about three years, an effort which is said to have killed one-fifth of the
county’s entire population - for readers’ perspective, that would be the
equivalent of someone killing over 60 million Americans today. America settled
an armistice but refused to sign any treaty, refuses to hold direct talks with
North Korea, maintains a formidable military force on its border, and keeps
nuclear weapons handy in Guam. Is it any wonder North Korea seeks security
through its own atomic weapons?
In John Kennedy’s time, the Pentagon chiefs strongly argued
for America’s creating and using the capacity for an all-out nuclear first
strike against the Soviet Union. You might call it the deranged grandfather of
today’s nuclear posture review. Kennedy left early from a Pentagon briefing on
the subject, telling an aide later that it had made him sick to his stomach.
In Vietnam, the United States repeated its Korean efforts, carpet
bombing and using napalm and early versions of cluster bombs to kill at least 3
million people, people with whom it wasn’t even formally at war. The use of
nuclear weapons was also seriously considered, especially as a way to create a
cordon sanitaire severing the North and from the artificially-created South
which America wanted to keep as an imperial foothold on mainland Asia.
Another million or so died in Cambodia, owing directly to
illegal American bombing and military incursions there causing the collapse of
a neutral government America hated, a collapse which brought to power the
horrors of the Khmer Rouge and its “killing fields,” a terrible side-effect the
U.S. did absolutely nothing to prevent or correct.
Over the last decade and a half, the United States has waged
a massive war through much of the Middle East. It has used large-scale bombing,
directly invaded some countries, employed mercenary fake-jihadi armies in
others, has permitted the use of poison gas in limited quantities by its
mercenaries to provide an excuse for still more direct bombing, and it has
busied itself creating a huge computerized system for the extrajudicial killing
of people it regards as hostile to its interests. In all this, at least 2
million people have been killed, millions made into refugees, and some well-run
and relatively peaceful countries reduced to chaos.
Of course, along the way between its major destructive
events, American has engaged in dozens of minor actions, from small wars to
generating coups to overthrow governments it didn’t like. In a number of cases,
America’s actions resulted in civil wars killing hundreds of thousands, as in
Central America. In others, its actions resulted in new dictators who
terrorized the population for years, as in Chile. America has generated the
overthrow of governments in many places, the psychopaths of CIA’s operations
division possessing almost limitless resources to do so. The list has included
Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Ukraine, and others.
It is actively working right now on Venezuela. Of course, it
spent many years in terror activity against Cuba in an effort to overthrow its
government, one its people successfully rallied around. Clinton’s ugly little
war in the former Yugoslavia, generally portrayed as a humanitarian effort, was
actually intended to dismember the successor to that state, something it
succeeded in doing.
So, this is the record of the country now announcing
dangerous new doctrines around its massive nuclear arsenal, including
developing new “more usable” types of weapons, frightening new conditions for
the first use of nuclear weapons, expansion of the placement of nuclear weapons,
and generally using unnecessarily hostile language to describe several
important countries.
I don’t have any really clear idea of what Donald Trump
means by “the swamp” he and his followers like to think he is cleaning up. I very
much doubt that he does either, beyond its being a handy pejorative for political
opponents. But if this kind of dangerously aggressive American military
establishment – with its cast of supporting characters in the State Department
and security agencies and Congress - can’t be called a swamp, I just don’t know
what can be.
Trump isn’t cleaning anything up. He’s really insisting on appearing
as the leader of a dangerous new parade of forces, forces certainly beyond his
meagre talents and rather cowardly character to control.
