Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
With apologies to Elton John and Bernie Taupin, “peace” seems to be the hardest word, for both Democrats and Republicans.
This is hardly surprising. The National Security State is the unofficial fourth branch of government and arguably the most powerful. Presidents and Congress serve it, and the SCOTUS carves out special exceptions for it. Back in the days of a bit more honesty, it was called the Department of War. And so it remains.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Whether the president’s name is Obama or Trump or Biden, whether it’s the red team in charge or the blue team, there was and remains strong bipartisan support for “modernization” and “investment” in new nuclear weapons for America. The new Sentinel ICBM, the new B-21 Raider bomber, and the new Columbia-class nuclear submarine may cost America as much as $2 trillion over the next thirty years while making genocidal nuclear war more rather than less likely.
This is insanity.
It’s time for a different path. It’s time for deep cuts in nuclear weapons. Not only to save trillions of dollars but to reduce the chances of a world-ending genocide.
Continue reading “Bipartisan Support for More Genocidal Nuclear Weapons”
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Joe Biden has become a major distraction. Much like Donald Trump, he’s demanding far too much attention.
As genocide continues in Gaza, as war continues to rage in Ukraine, as America continues to pursue militarism both at home and abroad, all the press can talk about is whether Biden should stay or go.
The answer is obvious: he should go.
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is marking its 75th anniversary. Created in 1949 as a defensive alliance against an expansive Soviet Union, the alliance should have ceased to exist when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Instead, it continued to expand to the very border of Russia. Talk of Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet republics, joining NATO contributed to tensions that led to the Russia-Ukraine War, now in its third destructive and deadly year.
NATO’s resilience (perhaps “endurance” and “inertia” are better words) in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse demonstrates the power of institutions to sustain themselves long after they’ve lost their reason for being. While President Biden recently claimed to have created NATO, the alliance was really about containing communism in the aftermath of World War II. As European and American leaders openly admitted at the time, NATO kept the U.S. military in Europe while also shoring up U.S. imperial power around the globe. Few Europeans wanted a revived German military after the colossal destruction in part caused by German militarism in World Wars I and II.
Continue reading “NATO Is 75: The Haunting of the Present by the Past”
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
It’s Independence Day in America, so it seems like a good day to declare our independence from the insanity of war.
Sadly, since the presidency of George W. Bush if not before, it’s become routine for U.S. commanders-in-chief to boast of having the world’s finest military in all of history. Obama did it routinely, and Biden recently said the same during his disastrous debate with Trump. Few Americans stop to think about the implications of boasting about having the world’s greatest military – is such a boast truly consistent with democracy, liberty, and freedom?
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Whenever I watch my hometown baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, at Fenway Park I’m told by a message painted along the first and third base lines to “build submarines.” At commercial breaks between innings, sometimes I get another reminder courtesy of the following ad:
