Zaid had the misfortune
of being born in Iraq, a country
rich with oil.
Iraq had the misfortune
of being invaded by a country
greedy for oil.
The country greedy for oil
had the misfortune of being led
by a man too eager for war.
Zaid’s misfortune multiplied
when his parents were shot down
in front of their medical clinic.
Being eleven and haunted
by the deaths of one’s parents
is a great misfortune.
In Zaid’s misfortune
a distant silence engulfs
the sounds of war.
The late Howard Zinn’s new book “The Bomb” is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society. Those who’ve read “A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments,” by H.P. Albarelli Jr. know that this is a year for publishing the stories of horrible things that the United States has done to French towns. In that case, Albarelli, describes the CIA administering LSD to an entire town, with deadly results. In “The Bomb,” Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over another French town, burning anyone and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime.
In mid-April 1945, the war in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that’s not an oxymoron) to attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war, just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a “victory” in the final weeks of a war already won. He blames the local military commanders’ ambitions. He blames the American Air Force’s desire to test a new weapon. And he blames everyone involved — which must include himself — for “the most powerful motive of all: the habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.”
When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 65 years ago this August. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable crime of the greatest proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs were weapons that needed testing. The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was a different sort of bomb that also needed testing. President Harry Truman wanted to demonstrate nuclear bombs to the world and especially to Russia. And he wanted to end the war with Japan before Russia became part of it. The horrific form of mass murder he employed was in no way justifiable.
Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States, England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other’s international aggressions in places like the Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America’s tin and rubber came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and Japanese Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as “inhuman barbarity” but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Zinn points out that “LIFE magazine showed a picture of a Japanese person burning to death and commented: ‘This is the only way.’” Aware that the war would end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.
Americans allowed these things to be done in their name, just as the Germans and Japanese allowed horrible crimes to be committed in their names. Zinn points out, with his trademark clarity, how the use of the word “we” blends governments together with peoples and serves to equate our own people with our military, while we demonize the people of other lands because of actions by their governments. “The Bomb” suggest a better way to think about such matters and firmly establishes that:
Some things are worth Waging Peace for: our planet and its diverse life forms, including humankind; our children and their dreams; our common future. All of these are threatened by the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.
We live on an amazing planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life, and does so in abundance and diversity. Our planet is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are despoiling and ruining its delicate and beautiful environment.
On our unique planet are creatures of all shapes and sizes: Birds that fly, fish that swim, animals that inhabit jungles and deserts, mountains and plains, rivers and oceans. Life is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are disrespecting and destroying the habitats of creatures great and small.
Among the diverse creatures on our planet are human beings. We are homo sapiens, the knowing ones, and are relative newcomers to the planet. Yet, our impact has been profound. We are creatures capable of learning and loving, of being imaginative and inventive, of being compassionate and kind. We are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would diminish us by undermining our dignity and human rights.
Human beings, like other forms of life, produce offspring who are innocent and helpless at birth. These human children, all children, require care and nurturing as they grow to maturity. The world’s children are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would threaten their future with war and other forms of overt and structural violence.
Children as they grow have dreams of living happy and decent lives, dreams of building a better future in peaceful and just societies. These dreams are worth Waging Peace for – against those whose myopia and greed rob children anywhere of a better future.
Each generation shares a responsibility to pass the planet and civilization on intact to the next generation. Accepting this responsibility is an important part of Waging Peace. It is a way of paying a debt of gratitude to all who have preceded us on the planet by assuring that there is a better future.
In the Nuclear Age, we humans, by our cleverness, have invented tools capable of our own demise. Nuclear weapons are not really weapons; they are instruments of annihilation and perhaps of omnicide, the death of all. Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age requires that we awaken to the dangers that these weapons pose to humankind and all life, and work to rid the world of these insane tools of global devastation.
For too long humanity has lived with nuclear policies of Mutually Assured Destruction, with the appropriate acronym of MAD. We need a new and distinctly different formulation: Planetary Assured Security and Survival, with the acronym PASS for passing the world on intact to the next generation.
Among the greatest obstacles to assuring survival in the Nuclear Age are ignorance, apathy, complacency and despair. These can only be overcome by education and advocacy; education to raise awareness of what needs to change and advocacy to increase engagement in bringing about the needed change.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has three major goals: the abolition of nuclear weapons, the strengthening of international law, and the empowerment of new peace leaders. The Foundation was created in 1982 in the belief that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age and that the people must lead their leaders if we are to assure a safe and secure human future. We need your generous support to continue to educate and advocate for a brighter future for humanity.
I came into the world in a thunderstorm in June 1914, when great changes were beginning to happen. It was in a year when the First World War engulfed Europe and Africa and Asia, when the powers of science and technology brought down the barriers between nations – and great scientists gave us glimpses of our place in the throbbing universe.
Dr. Brian Swime, a noted physicist, said “The vastness of this universe couldn’t have been otherwise…This universe, which is 30 billion light years across, the smallest universe we could fit into…The universe had to expand at this rate to enable our existence. We belong here. This is home. This has been our home for 15 billion years…If you altered the origin of the universe even just slightly, none of us would even be here. That means then, that our existence is implicit. We don’t only stand on our feet, we stand on the original fireball; we stand on the expansion of the universe as a whole.”
When I gaze at your luminous faces, I am convinced that Dr. Swime is right. I am also sure that Albert Einstein was right when he said that if we could understand what we really are we would know that we are glowing fields of electromagnetic energy. We are also collections of dancing atoms filled with negative and positive charges.
There are auras of light around your amazing bodies and your immortal souls are shining through your eyes.
Look at one another. Listen to one another. Touch one another. Become aware of what glorious beings you are. You are far more involved in shaping the future than you have begun to realize.
Humanity is in a tragic situation. You are surrounded by more dangers than any generation before you. And yet you have more strength, more technological knowledge, more allies to help you than any previous people who came into existence in the years past.
How do I dare to make such statements to you? I dare because I have lived in this body for more than 90 years – and I have experienced many miracles.
In my youth, I poured out stories of man’s incredible achievements. I became known as a pioneer of wonder. I brought the book to show you what came forth from me when I was writing science fiction.
One world was not enough for me. I leaped from planet to planet. I was drawn to the stars, as many young people in my time were. When I walked at night in my father’s backyard and gazed at the blazing lights in the sky, I didn’t feel dwarfed by them or overcome by their intensity. I saw them as playgrounds for my mind and spirit – and I still do.
I believe that we human beings will triumph over all the horrible problems we may face, and over the bloody history of our failures. We pray and we play. We have divine sparks in us. We discover what Einstein and other great ones among us discovered. Einstein wrote: “Everyone who is involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifested in the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and we must be humble in our awareness of that Spirit moving among us, shaping the future with us.”
Through play we discover our kinship with the Almighty Being who brought us into life. God laughs and dances. God gave us the power to find endless joy in celebrating the mysteries and wonders of this life. Some of our scientists brought us into the Nuclear Age and made us realize that we must find ways of living in peace or confront unparalleled catastrophes.
I grew up in a praying and playing family and the Glorious Beings I have encountered seem related to me. I went to Catholic schools where the nuns taught me that I shared in the creative mightiness that had shaped the stars. I felt that I was made to speak freely in all circumstances.
As a young reporter on The Kansas City Star I was sent to a press conference sponsored by Franklin D. Roosevelt, just after he had won re-election by millions of votes. I was given a chance to speak directly with him. He said in a soft voice: “As a journalist you have much power, Mr. Kelly.” “Not the powers you have,” I said. He tilted his head and said, “But I think I missed my calling.” “You did?” I said. “Yes,” he answered: “I wanted to be a journalist,” he muttered. “You can ask anybody anything – and people have to respond. And nobody tells you what you have to say.”
“That’s not the kind of power you have,” I replied then. He shook his head. “Everybody tries to tell me what to do,” the President responded.
I left his presence with amazement. He was famous and beloved by millions of his fellow citizens. But he didn’t have the kind of power he wanted!
I realized that some of the Glorious Beings who seem to tower above us do not realize how much strength they have. I had already experienced many frustrations as a journalist, but I didn’t feel defeated or crushed by the limitations on me.
In my many years of pursuing “truth” and “solid answers” in my contacts with leaders in many fields, I became aware that it was a special gift to feel “glorious.”
In my program here tonight I want you to realize that many “creative beings” serve humanity with a demonstrated dedication to public service but feel in their hearts that they can never attain the fulfillment they are encouraged to seek.
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King met violent deaths although they were dedicated to non-violence. Albert Einstein and other great scientists knew that they had helped to build devastating weapons that endangered life on earth. Eleanor Roosevelt never succeeded in putting an end to the arms race. She travelled over many parts of the world, demonstrating her willingness to exhaust herself in the noble efforts of the peacemakers. Harry Truman tried to rebuild areas of the earth, which had been savagely scourged by his use of military power.
When I entered journalism in 1935, I spent my first 10 months on The Star’s staff primarily on death notices. In those months, I gained a deep appreciation of the significance of each human life and its impact on all those in the same stages around them. I realized that Kansas City was a segregated place in those years. Blacks and other minorities were in the background, living in their own atmosphere. They had their own churches, their own emergency services, their own hospitals, their own cemeteries.
I became disturbed by the fact that I knew little by the black people and the many poor families existing in my city. After I became an expert in briefly describing many lives, I was suddenly hurled into the hectic atmosphere of the General Hospital. I rode in ambulances with drivers and doctors to the scenes of accidents, explosions, fires, murders, and domestic violence. I saw people lying in the streets or bleeding in back rooms of apartments and boarding houses. I discovered that many men were brutal. They pounded their wives and children with their fists and straps, they crashed into one another with their autos and motorcycles, ran over pedestrians, and exploded with rage when they were frustrated. They had to be shackled or thrown into jails by tough policemen. I became gradually convinced of the superiority of women and began to believe that women should rule the world.
My estimates of women were affected by the fact that women rarely engaged in violent acts themselves. I was always grateful for the kindness of women, for their tenderness and nurturing affections for their parents, their sisters and brothers, their lovers and husbands, their children and their friends. I knew they had human faults and failings; I knew they could be angry and speak harshly about other people; they could be dominating and vindictive; and occasionally inflict blows on other women and men; but they were rarely killers. I became convinced that the flourishing of humanity depended partly upon the civilizing influences of women.
My father demonstrated the aggressive qualities of men. When he got drunk, he was ready to use his fists and any weapons he carried. When I was 3 years old, in 1917, he responded aggressively to President Woodrow Wilson’s call for a declaration of war against Germany after the Germans sank some American ships. He rushed off to enlist in the army. He was eager to execute the German Kaiser, to make the world safe for democracy. He put me into a little soldier’s suit that made me look like a young soldier. He taught me to salute him and all other officers. He was eager to get into combat in France. He killed Germans in face-to-face struggles in the trenches.
He was severely wounded by a piece of shrapnel that lodged in his neck and his face was twisted by a scar on a deep wound. When he came home, he suffered from nightmares of face-to-face attacks. I had to wake him up from those screaming moments, and his yelling haunted me for the rest of my life.
In war, men sought glory by wounding one another or killing their opponents. The young Germans he encountered in the bloody trenches were often as brave as he was, as sure as he was that the murders they committed were justified. Millions died, striving to validate their manhood.
I remember the Armistice Day – November 11 – in 1918 – when church bells rang and victory sirens sounded. I also remember the weeping and wailing of a woman in the boarding house where my mother and I stayed while we waited for my father to return from France. That woman had received a telegram telling her that her husband had been killed in one of the last battles. For her, as for many others who received similar telegrams, the victory was bitter.
Why did glorious beings kill one another? Why did young men, charged with the energy of youth, use heavy weapons to tear off the heads and arms and eyes of their labeled “enemies?” Nobody could answer those questions for me.
I had taken part in World War II, after the United States was directly attacked. I was assured that there would be peace and lasting joy after Hitler and the Japanese militarists had been eliminated. They were smashed in 1945 and those who had fought against them celebrated wildly.
But then we learned that Russia was dominated by a communist dictatorship and Stalin and his minions had to be eliminated, too. I was asked to write speeches for a president, Harry Truman, who had been compelled to make a horrendous decision – to use atom bombs against Japan to end the Second World War. I discovered that he had given much thought to the creation of a global organization to save humanity from the scourge of war.
Truman carried in his wallet a poem by a Glorious Being – Alfred Tennyson – written in 1842, predicting a final war involving aerial navies, which led to the formation of a Federation for the World, a Parliament for Humanity.
A humble man who never exalted himself, Truman had a glorious agenda. He had helped to launch and uphold the United Nations, and he was determined to make it effective in helping all countries to enter an unprecedented era of lasting peace and prosperity. He strove to get the rich nations to devote some of their tremendous resources to aid the poor nations to reduce or eliminate poverty all over the planet. He proclaimed that “a decent, satisfying life” was “the right of all people.” He shared General Eisenhower’s view that war was a theft from the resources of people.
In the 1948 campaign I helped Truman make the people aware that “the destiny of the United States is to provide leadership in the world toward a realization of the Four Freedoms.” Those Freedoms were articulated in an address to the Congress in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. F.D.R. asserted that the American heritage had developed a full understanding of the basic freedoms vital for human progress: Freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want by assuring a healthy peaceful life – and freedom from fear, by reducing military arms everywhere.
The U.S. had emerged from the horrifying struggle of World War II with a booming economy – and a future with unlimited possibilities. They felt that the future of humanity depended on the ethical behavior of a giant nation.
I shared the hopes of those leaders. I had lived through the transformation of the U.S. from the Depression years, with millions of unemployed and desperate citizens, into a place with dazzling opportunities in every field.
When Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas became chairman of the Center’s board, I worked closely with him. He was a “glorious being,” full of courage and willing to take the initiative in many ways. He advocated Centers in all the major cities of the world.
The Center gave much attention to all the major problems facing humanity, especially the arms race and the Cold War. Two Center pamphlets written by the noted analyst Walter Millis – one on Individual Freedom and the Common Defense and one on The Constitution and the Common Defense – were widely circulated. Millis described what he called “the war system,” and he declared that would have to be dismantled if humanity really wanted to survive. He predicted that the devastating power of nuclear weapons would force the great nations (those with thousands of those weapons) to agree on a nonproliferating treaty to avoid a nuclear holocaust. Albert Einstein, the scientist recognized by all countries, said that the maintenance of such weapons might lead humanity to “drift into an unparalleled catastrophe.” The dire commentaries of many brilliant scientists enabled humanity to avoid that catastrophe during the years of the “cold war” between the U.S. and the Soviets, but the dangers had to be seen for decades.
Nuclear war was avoided but the U.S. plunged into an extensive disaster in Vietnam under several presidents. The Vietnam War brought poverty and slaughter to millions for many years. President Nixon took four years to sanction an American withdrawal.
The “glorious beings” at the Center sponsored a trip to Vietnam by two directors – Harry Ashmore and William Baggs, who went to Vietnam and returned with proposals that could have ended the war in the 1960s. But the leaders on both sides were not ready to settle their differences.
The Center tried in many ways to build foundations for peace through exchanges of ideas and proposals by leaders from many countries who participated in an intervention convocation at the UN based on Pope John’s encyclical Pacem in Terris.
Scholars at the Center were active in many ways. It issued warnings on the decay and disarray of democratic institutions long before the Watergate scandal appeared in the headlines. Other Center publications warned of the creeping pollution of the planet, long before millions of people realized that the web of life might be destroyed by such pollution.
In advance of actual developments, people at the Center revealed the thinking of radical students, the changing attitudes of the young toward the whole society, the implications of the changes in race relations, and the demands of ethnic minorities. The Center showed the defects of the mass media at a time when people were not aware of the corruption of the media and the pervasive impact of the press and broadcasting industries on every facet of modern life.
Six years of discussions, involving dozens of meetings and thoughts of 200 consultants (including historians, judges, political scientists, economists, and others) went into the Center’s drafts for a new American Constitution. A model for the 20th century was finally published in 1970. The principal drafter was Rexford G. Tugwell, a former member of President Roosevelt’s “brains trust.” But the man who pushed it into publication was Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, the elected head of the Center in Santa Barbara.
The model Constitution was not designed for ratification and implementation but as an instrument for thinking about the issues of the 1970s. At a time when American institutions did not seem to be functioning effectively, the Center scholars hoped that the model might awaken hope in millions of apathetic citizens and bring new vitality to a sagging democracy.
But the development of that model document turned out to be one of most controversial projects in which the Center had ever engaged. It was regarded as foolish, futile, and possibly dangerous to the American system. It stirred hot arguments for years, but it did not produce the long-range effects Hutchins had tried to evoke.
When internal strife occurred at the Center in 1967 and 1975, it became evident to people outside the Center that the scholars on Eucalyptus Hill were not able to solve their own constitutional problems.
In spite of its own internal failures, in spite of all the defects and limitations of its own projects, the Center had an impact on scholars, editors, broadcasters, political leaders, lawyers, economists and others in many fields in many countries.
Admiral Hyman Rickover, commander of the American nuclear submarines, took part in several Center conferences and once donated $1,000 to help keep the Center going, said he thought the Center’s budget was relatively small. He referred to the billions he could get from Congress for nuclear ships ad said he thought the Center was more vital for the future of humanity than submarines or other weapons.
Paul Dickson, in his book on American research organizations entitled Think Tanks, said its dedication to future problems gave it a unique role.
Many “glorious beings” were connected with the Center. The threat of annihilation still hangs over humanity’s future. The best thinking of the bravest people will always be needed.
Every four years the White House issues a “nuclear posture review.” That may sound like an anachronism. It isn’t. In a world where the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons — and Iran, North Korea and others have seemingly unquenchable nuclear appetites — what the United States says about its arsenal matters enormously.
President Obama’s review was due to Congress in December. That has been delayed, in part because of administration infighting. The president needs to get this right. It is his chance to finally jettison cold war doctrine and bolster America’s credibility as it presses to rein in Iran, North Korea and other proliferators.
Mr. Obama has already committed rhetorically to the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But we are concerned that some of his advisers, especially at the Pentagon, are resisting his bold ambitions. He needs to stick with the ideas he articulated in his campaign and in speeches last year in Prague and at the United Nations.
These are some of the important questions the posture review must address:
THEIR PURPOSE: Current doctrine gives nuclear weapons a “critical role” in defending the United States and its allies. And it suggests they could be used against foes wielding chemical, biological or even conventional forces — not just nuclear arms. Mr. Obama’s aides have proposed changing that to say that the “primary” purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies. This still invites questions about whether Washington values — and might use — nuclear forces against non-nuclear targets.
Given America’s vast conventional military superiority, broader uses are neither realistic nor necessary. Any ambiguity undercuts Washington’s credibility when it argues that other countries have no strategic reason to develop their own nuclear arms. The sole purpose of American nuclear forces should be to deter a nuclear attack against this country or its allies.
HOW MANY: President George W. Bush disdained arms control as old think, and Washington and Moscow have not signed an arms reduction treaty since 2002. Mr. Obama launched negotiations on a new agreement that would slash the number of warheads each side has deployed from 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675. The talks are dragging on, but there is hope for an agreement soon. Both sides should go deeper.
The review should make clear that the United States is ready to move, as a next step, down to 1,000 deployed warheads — military experts say half that number is enough to wipe out the assets of Russia, which is no longer an enemy. China, the only major nuclear power adding to its arsenal, is estimated to have 100 to 200 warheads. The treaty being negotiated says nothing about the nearly 15,000 warheads, in total, that the United States and Russia keep as backups — the so-called hedge. And it says nothing about America’s 500 short-range nuclear weapons, which are considered secure, or Russia’s 3,000 or more, which are chillingly vulnerable to theft.
The review should make clear that there is no need for a huge hedge, and that tactical weapons have an utter lack of strategic value — as a prelude to reducing both. Certainly no general we know of could imagine exploding a warhead on a battlefield. Today’s greatest nuclear danger is that terrorists will steal or build a weapon. That is best countered by halting proliferation and securing and reducing stockpiles and other material.
NEW WEAPONS: The United States built its last new warhead in 1989. So when aides to President George W. Bush called for building new weapons, with new designs and new capabilities, it opened this country to charges of hypocrisy and double standards when it demanded that North Korea and Iran end their nuclear programs.
Mr. Obama has said that this country does not need new weapons. But we are concerned the review will open the door to just that by directing the labs to study options — including a new weapons design — for maintaining the arsenal. The government has a strong and hugely expensive system for ensuring that the stockpile is safe and reliable. Mr. Obama has already vastly increased the labs’ budgets. The review should make clear that there is no need for a new weapon.
ALERT LEVELS: The United States and Russia each still have about 1,000 weapons ready to fire at a moment’s notice. Mr. Obama has rightly described this as a dangerous cold war relic. The review should commit to taking as many of those forces off hair-trigger alert as possible — and encourage Russia to do the same.
•
In April, Mr. Obama will host a much needed summit meeting on the need to better secure nuclear material from terrorists. In May, Washington will encourage a United Nations-led conference to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the bedrock, and battered, agreement for curbing the spread of nuclear arms.
President Obama will also have to persuade the Senate to ratify the Start follow-on treaty, and we hope he will quickly press the Senate to approve the test ban treaty. He is also working with allies to revive nuclear talks with North Korea and to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. Getting the nuclear posture review right is essential for moving all of this ahead.
This article was originally published on Truthout.
Another year brings another war, so it would seem. Already in the works beforehand, but now hastened by the Christmas “underwear bomber,” we are swiftly moving down a road that could lead straight to another front in the generational war without end. The al-Qaeda bogeyman rears its head, and we respond like clockwork. All aboard folks – next stop, Yemen.
Is this really the most effective way to make national policy and decide the fates of others around the world? When a suggestible and misguided youth attempts an asinine act, does that mean we automatically must respond in kind with foolhardy actions of our own? This has led to disastrous effects already in the Global War on Terror, and equally troubling alterations in the fabric of society here at home. Simply put, if we let the terrorists dictate our course of action, then we have already lost the moral high ground and the upper hand in the larger conflict as well, as Patrick Cockburn suggests in a cogent essay on the situation in Yemen:
“In Yemen the US is walking into the al-Qa’ida trap. Once there it will face the same dilemma it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It became impossible to exit these conflicts because the loss of face would be too great. Just as Washington saved banks and insurance giants from bankruptcy in 2008 because they were ‘too big to fail,’ so these wars become too important to lose because to do so would damage the US claim to be the sole super power…. But the danger of claiming spurious victories is that such distortions of history make it impossible for the US to learn from past mistakes and instead to repeat them by intervening in other countries such as Yemen.”
Consider that we are still embroiled in an escalating war in Afghanistan as a direct response to the events of 9/11. Iraq, of course, was folded into this “terror-response” logic by the Bush administration despite clear evidence to the contrary. Pakistan has now become the new Cambodia to Afghanistan’s Vietnam in the current war that echoes actions of the past. And, now, we have our sights set on Yemen as the next front, which Marwan Bishara contends will almost inevitably lead to disastrous effects that serve to exacerbate the conditions that yield terrorism:
“[O]ver the last several months, Yemen has emerged as the latest front. Reportedly, the US air force has participated in the bombardment of several locations in Yemen and spent tens of millions of dollars. But since the Nigerian man was apparently trained in Yemeni camps that are less threatened than Afghanistan, one can expect this war front to be expanded sooner rather than later. Waging another war in or through Yemen could prove, as in Afghanistan, untenable as the country could descend into chaos. With war against the Houthis in the north, tensions with the secessionists in the south, and the regime’s tenuous hold on power, Yemen could implode.”
If the United States is truly to be a global leader, we are setting a poor example through our war-making policies. We are essentially mere followers in this dynamic, letting the terrorists set the agenda and walking right into the response they expect and desire from us. Recall that up front it was al-Qaeda’s stated intention to bleed America’s moral and economic resources dry by provoking us into direct military interventions in Muslim nations. By choosing the retaliatory option, we are playing precisely into their hands, and thus relinquishing the mantle of leadership.
Similar patterns have taken hold at home. On the heels of 9/11, a fundamental reorientation of the delicate balance between liberty and security ensued. Rights of privacy, due process, habeas corpus and presumed innocence have been lost, perhaps permanently, as the constitutional architecture of two centuries eroded under our feet. Now, following the botched Christmas attack, we are likely to see a ramping up of the security apparatus, including privacy-impinging actions such as pat-downs and full-body scans. Not to mention, of course, the commitment of more resources to continue fighting the war that the terrorists wanted to goad us into all along.
It is a grim picture coming out of 2009, but the symbolic relief of calendar change can be a powerful curative. I would like to suggest that 2010 can become a critical turning point year toward peace and prosperity if we focus our energies positively and proactively. Here are just a few suggestions for moving in that direction and making the new year one that history will recall as the beginning of the end of a mindset that has plunged the world into perpetual warfare.
The Peace Dividend: Whatever your views on war, one thing most people can agree on is the desire to live peaceful and productive lives. This includes the existence of an economy in which ordinary people can prosper and be assured of fairness in their wages, investments and expected contributions. The war ethos has shifted trillions of dollars from public to private coffers, and it has stimulated not economic growth, but a global recession. Ending war means more resources for education, health care, community development and environmental protection – all of which promise better prospects for a peaceful world than does the path we have been on until now.
Cultural Exchange: The high-speed potential of both the Internet and international travel has opened up – perhaps for the first time in human history – the possibility of realizing a truly global society. This does not entail giving up autonomy or sovereignty, but asks only that we remain open to and appreciate the remarkable cultural diversity of our world. The more we become educated in this regard, learning about the myriad ways in which people everywhere share similar hopes and desires despite their unique cultures, the more we will opt for peace.
Politics Is People: For too long we have abdicated control over our lives and fortunes to remote representatives who have failed to adequately protect and promote our interests. Party politics is passé at this point, with the clarity of insight that lobbyists and corporate concerns have essentially purchased a controlling interest in politicians of all stripes. The saving grace in our system is that “the people” retain the ultimate political power, despite repeated attempts to undermine this constitutional gift from our forebears. This power is electoral, but perhaps even more importantly, it is personal, with each of us asked to make numerous daily choices regarding how we will exercise it. Simply put, we can watch peace, purchase peace, eat peace, drive peace and learn peace if we have the will to do so. And, then, politics will have no choice but to follow.
There are many more notions along these lines, which I will leave to your imaginations to develop and implement. The basic point is that we stand today at a critical juncture, and can ill afford to slide blithely back into apathy and torpor if we are to avert that proverbial iceberg sitting just ahead on our present heading. Let history record that 2010 was the year we steered clear and instead charted a new course for ourselves and the world toward peace in our time.
This article was originally published on Truthdig
War memorials and museums are temples to the god of war. The hushed voices, the well-tended grass, the flapping of the flags allow us to ignore how and why our young died. They hide the futility and waste of war. They sanitize the savage instruments of death that turn young soldiers and Marines into killers, and small villages in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq into hellish bonfires. There are no images in these memorials of men or women with their guts hanging out of their bellies, screaming pathetically for their mothers. We do not see mangled corpses being shoved in body bags. There are no sights of children burned beyond recognition or moaning in horrible pain. There are no blind and deformed wrecks of human beings limping through life. War, by the time it is collectively remembered, is glorified and heavily censored.
I blame our war memorials and museums, our popular war films and books, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as much as George W. Bush. They provide the mental images and historical references to justify new conflicts. We equate Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler. We see al-Qaida as a representation of Nazi evil. We view ourselves as eternal liberators. These plastic representations of war reconfigure the past in light of the present. War memorials and romantic depictions of war are the social and moral props used to create the psychological conditions to wage new wars.
War memorials are quiet, still, reverential and tasteful. And, like church, such sanctuaries are important, but they allow us to forget that these men and women were used and often betrayed by those who led the nation into war. The memorials do not tell us that some always grow rich from large-scale human suffering. They do not explain that politicians play the great games of world power and stoke fear for their own advancement. They forget that young men and women in uniform are pawns in the hands of cynics, something Pat Tillman’s family sadly discovered. They do not expose the ignorance, raw ambition and greed that are the engine of war.
There is a burning need, one seen in the collective memory that has grown up around World War II and the Holocaust, to turn the horror of mass murder into a tribute to the triumph of the human spirit. The reality is too unpalatable. The human need to make sense of slaughter, to give it a grandeur it does not possess, permits the guilty to go free. The war makers—those who make the war but never pay the price of war—live among us. They pen thick memoirs that give sage advice. They are our elder statesmen, our war criminals. Henry Kissinger. Robert McNamara. Dick Cheney. George W. Bush. Any honest war memorial would have these statesmen hanging in effigy. Any honest democracy would place them behind bars.
Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, fought against the mendacity of collective memory until he took his own life. He railed against the human need to mask the truth of the Holocaust and war by giving it a false, moral narrative. He wrote that the contemporary history of the Third Reich could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wondered if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.” He wrote of the Jewish collaborator Chaim Rumkowski, who ran the Lodz ghetto on behalf of the Nazis, that “we are all mirrored in Rumkowski, his ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit. His fever is ours, the fever of Western civilization that ‘descends into hell with trumpets and drums.’ ” We, like Rumkowski, “come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting.” We are, Levi understood, perpetually imprisoned within the madness of self-destruction. The rage of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son Casey in Iraq, is a rage Levi felt. But it is a rage most of us do not understand.
A war memorial that attempted to depict the reality of war would be too subversive. It would condemn us and our capacity for evil. It would show that the line between the victim and the victimizer is razor-thin, that human beings, when the restraints are cut, are intoxicated by mass killing, and that war, rather than being noble, heroic and glorious, obliterates all that is tender, decent and kind. It would tell us that the celebration of national greatness is the celebration of our technological capacity to kill. It would warn us that war is always morally depraved, that even in “good” wars such as World War II all can become war criminals. We dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Nazis ran the death camps. But this narrative of war is unsettling. It does not create a collective memory that serves the interests of those who wage war and permit us to wallow in self-exaltation.
There are times—World War II and the Serb assault on Bosnia would be examples—when a population is pushed into a war. There are times when a nation must ingest the poison of violence to survive. But this violence always deforms and maims those who use it. My uncle, who drank himself to death in a trailer in Maine, fought for four years in the South Pacific during World War II. He and the soldiers in his unit never bothered taking Japanese prisoners.
The detritus of war, the old cannons and artillery pieces rolled out to stand near memorials, were curious and alluring objects in my childhood. But these displays angered my father, a Presbyterian minister who was in North Africa as an Army sergeant during World War II. The lifeless, clean and neat displays of weapons and puppets in uniforms were being used, he said, to purge the reality of war. These memorials sanctified violence. They turned the instruments of violence—the tanks, machine guns, rifles and airplanes—into an aesthetic of death.
These memorials, while they pay homage to those who made “the ultimate sacrifice,” dignify slaughter. They perpetuate the old lie of honor and glory. They set the ground for the next inferno. The myth of war manufactures a collective memory that ennobles the next war. The intimate, personal experience of violence turns those who return from war into internal exiles. They cannot compete against the power of the myth. This collective memory saturates the culture, but it is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).
In a remarkable combination of civil society pressure and leadership from a small number of progressive States, a strong ban on the use, manufacture, and stocking of cluster bombs was signed in Oslo, Norway on 3 December 2008. However, all bright sunlight casts a dark shadow, and in this case the shadow is the fact that the major makers and users of cluster munitions were deliberately not there: Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, USA.
Yet as arms negotiations go, the cluster bomb ban has been swift. They began in Oslo, Norway in February 2007 and were thus often called the “Oslo Process.” The negotiations were a justified reaction to their wide use by Israel in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 conflict. The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UNMACC) working in southern Lebanon reported that their density there is higher than in Kosovo and Iraq, especially in built up areas, posing a constant threat to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to UN peacemakers. It is estimated that one million cluster bombs were fired on south Lebanon during the 34 days of war, many during the last two days of war when a ceasefire was a real possibility. The Hezbollah militia also shot off rockets with cluster bombs into northern Israel.
Cluster munitions are warheads that scatter scores of smaller bombs. Many of these sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact, leaving them scattered on the ground, ready to kill and maim when disturbed or handled. Reports from humanitarian organizations and mine-clearing groups have shown that civilians make up the vast majority of the victims of cluster bombs, especially children attracted by their small size and often bright colors.
The failure rate of cluster munitions is high, ranging from 30 to 80 per cent. But “failure” may be the wrong word. They may, in fact, be designed to kill later. The large number of unexploded cluster bombs means that farm lands and forests cannot be used or used with great danger. Most people killed and wounded by cluster bombs in the 21 conflicts where they have been used are civilians, often young. Such persons often suffer severe injuries such as loss of limbs and loss of sight. It is difficult to resume work or schooling.
Discussions of a ban on cluster weapons had begun in 1979 during the negotiations in Geneva leading to the Convention on Prohibition on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons which may be Deemed to be Excessively Injurious or to have Indiscriminate Effects — the “1980 Inhumane Weapons Convention” to its friends.
The indiscriminate impact of cluster bombs was raised with the support of the Swedish government by the representative of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and myself. My NGO text of August 1979 for the citizens of the world on “Anti-Personnel Fragmentation Weapons” called for a ban based on the 1868 St Petersburg Declaration and recommended that “permanent verification and dispute-settlement procedures be established which may investigate all charges of the use of prohibited weapons whether in inter-State or internal conflicts, and that such a permanent body include a consultative committee of experts who could begin their work without a prior resolution of the UN Security Council.”
I was thanked for my efforts but left to understand that world citizens are not in the field of real politics and that I would do better to stick to pushing for a ban on napalm — photos of its use in Vietnam being still in the memory of many delegates. Governments always have difficulty focusing on more than one weapon at a time. Likewise for public pressure to build, there needs to be some stark visual reminders to draw attention and to evoke compassion.
Although cluster munitions were widely used in the Vietnam-Indochina war, they never received the media and thus the public attention of napalm. (1) The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research recently published a study on the continued destructive impact of cluster bombs in Laos noting that “The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has the dubious distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in the world” (2). Cluster-bomb land clearance is still going on while the 1963-1973 war in Laos has largely faded from broader public memory.
The wide use by NATO forces in the Kosovo conflict again drew attention to the use of cluster bombs and unexploded ordnance. The ironic gap between the humanitarian aims given for the war and the continued killing by cluster bombs after the war was too wide not to be noticed. However, the difficulties of UN administration of Kosovo and of negotiating a “final status” soon overshadowed all other concerns. Likewise the use of cluster bombs in Iraq is overshadowed by the continuing conflict, sectarian violence, the role of the USA and Iran, and what shape Iraq will take after the withdrawal of US troops.
Thus, it was the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs against Lebanon in a particularly senseless and inconclusive war that has finally led to sustained efforts for a ban. Cluster weapons were again used by both Georgia and Russia in the 5 days of the August 2008 conflict— a use which was totally unnecessary from a strategic point of view. This use in the Georgia-Russia- South Ossetia conflict proves that as long as such weapons are available to the military, they will be used with little thought of their consequence.
The ban on cluster bombs follows closely the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction which came into force in March 1999 and has been now ratified by 152 States. Many of the same NGOs active on anti-personnel mines were also the motors of the efforts on cluster bombs — a combination of disarmament, humanitarian, and human rights groups.
States signed the treaty on 3 December in Oslo where the negotiations began. If the momentum can be kept up, parliaments should ratify the treaty quickly, and it could come into force by mid-2009. It is important for supporters to contact members of parliament indicating approval of the ban and asking for swift ratification. A more difficult task will be to convince those States addicted to cluster bombs— the Outlaw Seven: Brazil, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, USA. The ban may discourage their use by these States and the USA has a recent export ban on the sale of most cluster weapons, but a signature by them would be an important sign of respect for international agreements and world law. Pressure must be kept up for speedy ratification and for signature on those States outside the law.
After delays, the Russian promise to withdraw its military forces from Georgia seems to be taking shape. By the terms of the French-brokered ceasefire Russian troops will remain in South Ossetia, plus occupy a security belt of undisclosed width in South Ossetia. The situation remains fluid and far from resolved. The South Ossetian leadership has indicated its unwillingness to have international monitors on its territory as was agreed in the ceasefire arrangement. There are also new indications of breakaway intentions on the part of Abkhasia, the other ethnic enclave hostile to Georgian claims of sovereignty, including the seizure of the Kodori Ridge, a strategic strip of land by Abkhas soldiers in the Caucasus Ridge. There is no doubt that at this point the territorial unity of the Georgian state has been shattered on a de facto basis as a result of the crisis, and that Russia power will act as a guarantor of South Ossetian and Abkhasian autonomy, which will achieve at minimum de facto independence for these two ethnic enclaves.
Without qualification the scope and intensity of Russian military moves against Georgia deserve legal, moral, and political condemnation, but at the same time Georgian and United States responsibility for the crisis is significant, and should not be overlooked. Russia violated the core norm of the UN Charter by sending its military forces beyond its borders to attack a small neighbor on August 12, doing heavy damage in the densely inhabited capital city of Tskhinvali by firing a flurry of rockets and missiles, including cluster munitions. There are unconfirmed media reports that as many as 2000 civilians died from the combined Georgian and Russian attacks on South Ossetia, with the bulk of these being caused by Georgia. The violence has also displaced tens of thousands, fleeing both the war zone and fearful of being caught in the ethnic crossfire. It has been established that Russia was especially targeting several villages in the region populated by Georgians, which adds an ethnic cleansing element to the accusations of aggression being made against Russia. These violations of Georgian sovereignty amount clearly to a crime against the peace and the military tactics deployed by Moscow are flagrant violations of the laws of war. Beyond this, if the charges of ethnic cleansing hold up, this would seem to make Russia guilty of crimes against humanity.
The Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili is far from innocent. It did its irresponsible best to provoke the crisis, militarily attacking the Russian peacekeeping presence in the minority republic of South Ossetia five days earlier, and doing serious damage to the resident population, even generating Russian claims of a genocidal Georgian acts and intentions. The apparent objective of this major use of force by Georgia was to disrupt the ceasefire arrangements that had been in place there since 1992, which had allowed a limited number of Russian troops to remain in South Ossetia along with contingents from Georgia and South Ossetia as a tripartite peacekeeping force. Saakashvili made no secret of his goal to drive the Russians out and bringing about a regime change in South Ossetia that would install Georgian leaders compliant with the will of his Tiblisi government in place of the current leader, Eduard Kokoity, who is popular with the local population and enjoys the backing of Russia.
The South Ossetians had voted overwhelmingly in a 2006 referendum to join their brethren in North Ossetia, which enjoys a high degree of autonomy within the Russian state. The disputed sovereignty of South Ossetia poses a delicate issue of self-determination that was just beneath the surface of the current phase of the struggle before the crisis erupted. It has now been brought to the surface by Russia’s formal diplomatic recognition of the political independence of South Ossetia (and Abkhasia), allegedly in response to the Georgian provocation of August 7th that killed South Ossetian civilians and Russians military personnel present in their peacekeeping roles. By taking this step Russia is further antagonizing the West that has seemed so inept in responding to this challenge directed at its Georgian ally. The actual status of South Ossetia is likely to remain contested for the foreseeable future, with Russia, possibly joined by other states, recognizing the de facto independence of the breakaway enclave, and the West continuing to insist that this political entity remains part of Georgia.
This claim is not as simple as it might seem for several reasons. First of all, it had been the understanding that claims of self-determination that fragmented the unity of existing states had no validity in international law, but this consensus was set aside without much hesitation by European countries eager to facilitate the breakup of former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Secondly, the ugly realities in this small enclave of 70,000 or so raise questions about its legitimacy as a political entity, taking into account its small size and considering the prevalence of gangsterism, ranging from money laundering to human trafficking. At this point there is no comfortable solution for the future of South Ossetia or Abkhasia squeezed in a tight geopolitical vise between Russia and the United States/Georgia, and lacking an acceptable self- governing process of its own.
Thirdly, the Russian principled claim that Georgia’s abuse of South Ossetians and Abkhasians resulted in the forfeiture of its sovereign rights contradicts Russia’s brutal and bloody suppression of Chechnya’s secessionist movement. At the same time, the NATO approach to Kosovo’s independence claims, in the face of Russian opposition, was no less state-shattering than what Moscow is seeking to achieve in Georgia, and resting on the same combination of forfeiture and consensus arguments, that is, Serbia’s violation of human rights forfeited their sovereign rights and the Kosovar consensus favored political independence. As with Russia, NATO led by the United States, fought a war to ensure that Serbia would be divested of its sovereign rights in Kosovo, initiated without any prior approval by the UN Security Council. Such a precedent played a role in seeming to establish a precedent for the sort of unilateralism exhibited in 2003 when the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq, and made a variety of claims, including liberating the Iraqi people from tyrannical rule.
Our understanding of this seemingly local struggle cannot get very far without an appreciation of these complex geopolitical forces that are at play. There is to begin with the geopolitics of oil, the strong desire of the West to have pipelines from the Caspian Sea area that pass through a friendly country, and somewhat lessen dependency on Middle Eastern oil. This gives the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline a major strategic importance, as well as directly engaging Turkey’s interest in the conflict. This helps to explain why both Russia and the United States are so interested in controlling the outlook of the Georgian government. Here again Saakashvili, and his backers in Washington that include President Bush, have taken a militaristic approach to security for Georgia that was bound to agitate a leadership in Moscow newly preoccupied with Russian border security and international status. The United States has poured military assistance and training units into Georgia ever since Saakashvili came to power, as well as exerted great pressure a few months ago to gain NATO membership for the country, ignoring warnings from the Russian leadership such a move was unacceptable, and would cause trouble. The major European powers, including France and Germany, were quite sensible in opposing membership in Georgia, being unwilling to accept a future commitment that would include an obligation to defend Georgia in a situation such as now exists. The events of August are quite likely to put NATO membership on hold, perhaps indefinitely, although NATO formally did indicate before the recent crisis that Georgia and Ukraine could become members at some future time. From a Russian perspective recent American moves and rhetoric are bound to be troublesome, especially in the wider context of American plans to deploy an anti-missile interceptor system on Polish soil as well as to locate an elaborate military radar system in the Czech Republic. These recent American moves seem coordinated efforts to threaten Russia with hostile encirclement, although they can be interpreted as gestures of support for the governments along Russia’s borders that are disturbed by this obvious effort by Moscow to reassert its will at the expense of the sovereign rights of its neighbors.
It is impossible to overlook the timing that set off the destabilizing chain of events. The aggressive Georgian posture toward South Ossetia was struck just as Russia was beginning to flex its post-Soviet muscles having apparently regained its geopolitical confidence and ambition. This probably reflects the effects of its sustained rapid economic growth in recent years that has been given added weight as a result of the rising monetary value of its vast energy reserves. Even if Vladimir Putin were a more moderate leader with a better human rights record, Georgian violent provocations in South Ossetia on August 7th would almost certainly produced some sort of show of Russian force, although the extreme rapidity of such a major and organized Russian response raises suspicions that Moscow was waiting for an opportunity for a show of force to challenge Georgia’s sovereign rights. Of course, Saakashvili’s overt hostility to the Putin/Medvedev government seems in this sense to have played into Russia’s hands, especially given the inability of the United States to back Georgia up with any support more tangible than strong words and humanitarian relief. Taking all these considerations into account makes it tragically clear that South Ossetia, and even Georgia, are hapless pawns in the larger geopolitical chess game that is beginning to assume alarming proportions reminiscent of the worst days of the Cold War era.
We are also witnessing a collision of two contrasting geopolitical logics the interplay of which pose great dangers for regional and world peace, as well as to the wellbeing of the peoples of the world. Russian behavior seems mainly motivated by a traditional spatially limited effort to establish a friendly and stable security belt in countries near its borders. It is reasserting an historic sphere of influence that has always been at odd with the sovereign rights of its neighbors, sparking their fear and hostility. We can interpret Russia’s behavior in this respect as seeking indirect control over its so-called ‘near abroad’ that was mainly lost after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992. In light of NATO expansion to incorporate the countries of Eastern Europe, the assertion of Russian primacy in relation to its former Soviet republics is a high priority for which Moscow seems willing to pay a considerable price, including a deep chilling of relations with the United States. Russia’s behavior in Georgia undoubtedly is meant to serve as a warning to other governments on its Southern border, especially Ukraine, not to opt for strong ties with Washington. The clash arises with the United States, which especially during the Bush presidency, has stressed its intention to encourage the democratization of the former Soviet republics. Georgia was treated as the shining example of the success of this policy. From Moscow’s viewpoint, what was proclaimed as democratization was surely perceived as Americanization, with only a slightly disguised anti-Russian agenda. In this sense, Saakashvali was the ideal leader as far as Washington was concerned, being so avowedly committed to the United States, even sending 2,000 troops to aid the American effort in Iraq, but the worst possible leader from the Russian viewpoint. He spoke of Russia in derogatory terms, and was eager to do what Russia feared, join in a dynamic process of military encirclement as part of the American global security project that has pushed so hard during the neoconservative presidency of George W. Bush.
In comparison with Russia, Washington considers that the entire world has become its geopolitical playing field in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, and as an aspect of the global war on terror. The United States follows a global imperial logic rather than Russia’s pursuit of a limited regional sphere of interest logic. Thinking along these lines means that Georgia falls dangerously within both Russia’s sphere of influence and is a battlefield in the American attempt to build an informal global empire that acknowledges no geographic limits. The whole world is Washington’s ‘near abroad.’ This tension if allowed to persist is likely to produce a revival of an arms race reminiscent of the Cold War, and could easily lead to a horrifying renewal of the East-West conflict, even reviving risks of great power warfare fought with nuclear weapons. It is not a happy moment, perhaps the most ominous time from the perspective of world peace since the 9/11 attacks.
There is also much to worry about of a less grandiose character. Russia now joins the United States as a major power willing to use non-defensive force in world politics without authorization from the United Nations, and hence in violation of international law. It adds its irresponsibility to the recklessness of the United States proceeding in 2003 to invade Iraq despite the refusal of the UN Security Council to support the claim of the Bush presidency that the basis for a defensive ‘preemptive war’ existed due to Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and Baghdad’s demonstrated willingness to use force aggressively against foreign states. In this respect, the crisis surrounding the events in South Ossetia puts at greater risk the grand design adopted after World War II, never either fulfilled or renounced, resting on governments foregoing the war option as a matter of foreign policy discretion except in situations of self-defense.
There is much to be learned and much to be feared in relation to these recent events. The Russian resurgence means, above all, that the central rivalry of the last half century again must be treated with utmost seriousness. It can no longer be ignored. Ideally, this should encourage countries threatened by the dangerous geopolitical maelstrom to work toward respect for international law and the authority of the United Nations. If such an effort fails, as it likely will, then it becomes more important than at any time since the breaching of the Berlin Wall that both Moscow and Washington exhibit sensitivity to each other’s fundamental interests as great powers. It will not be possible to avoid encounters arising from this clash between regional and imperial geopolitics, but at least diplomacy can do a far better job of avoiding showdowns than has happened in relation to South Ossetia and Georgia. In the end, prospect for peace and justice in the 21st century depend on respect for sovereign rights, and eventually on the repudiation of geopolitics, but we are not nearly there yet. And these developments suggest that the world may be drifting anew into the most dangerous form of geopolitics, namely, reliance on force to resolve international disputes.
In war, things are rarely what they seem.
Back in 2003, in the days leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon adamantly insisted that the war would be a relatively cheap one. Roughly $50 billion is all it would take to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, it said.
We now know this turned out to be the first of many miscalculations. Approaching its fifth year, the war in Iraq has cost American taxpayers nearly $500 billion, according to the non-partisan U.S.-based research group National Priorities Project. That number is growing every day.
But it’s still not even close to the true cost of the war. As the invasion’s price tag balloons, economists and analysts are examining the entire financial burden of the Iraq campaign, including indirect expenses that Americans will be paying long after the troops come home. What they’ve come up with is staggering. Calculations by Harvard’s Linda Bilmes and Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remain most prominent. They determined that, once you factor in things like medical costs for injured troops, higher oil prices and replenishing the military, the war will cost America upwards of $2 trillion. That doesn’t include any of the costs incurred by Iraq, or America’s coalition partners.
“Would the American people have had a different attitude toward going to war had they known the total cost?” Bilmes and Stiglitz ask in their report. “We might have conducted the war in a manner different from the way we did.”
It’s hard to comprehend just how much money $2 trillion is. Even Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, would marvel at this amount. But, once you begin to look at what that money could buy, the worldwide impact of fighting this largely unpopular war becomes clear.
Consider that, according to sources like Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs, the Worldwatch Institute, and the United Nations, with that same money the world could:
Eliminate extreme poverty around the world (cost $135 billion in the first year, rising to $195 billion by 2015.)
Achieve universal literacy (cost $5 billion a year.)
Immunize every child in the world against deadly diseases (cost $1.3 billion a year.)
Ensure developing countries have enough money to fight the AIDS epidemic (cost $15 billion per year.)
In other words, for a cost of $156.3 billion this year alone – less than a tenth of the total Iraq war budget – we could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, while making huge leaps in the battle against AIDS, saving millions of lives.
Then the remaining money could be put toward the $40 billion to $60 billion annually that the World Bank says is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, established by world leaders in 2000, to tackle everything from gender inequality to environmental sustainability.
The implications of this cannot be underestimated. It means that a better and more just world is far from within reach, if we are willing to shift our priorities.
If America and other nations were to spend as much on peace as they do on war, that would help root out the poverty, hopelessness and anti-Western sentiment that can fuel terrorism – exactly what the Iraq war was supposed to do.
So as candidates spend much of this year vying to be the next U.S. president, what better way to repair its image abroad, tarnished by years of war, than by becoming a leader in global development? It may be too late to turn back the clock to the past and rethink going to war, but it’s not too late for the U.S. and other developed countries to invest in the future.
Craig and Marc Kielburger are children’s rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world. Marc Kielburger is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Board of Directors.