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Ending the Logic of War

Why Western societies need to find new responses to violence and crises

FABIAN SCHEIDLER, MAY 06, 2024  https://fabianscheidler.substack.com/p/ending-the-logic-of-war

Over more than two decades, the Western world has moved further and further into a permanent state of crisis and emergency, which, according to the rhetoric of some of our leading politicians, has now escalated into an outright state of war. It began with the “war on terror” after September 11 and the subsequent attacks in Europe, followed by the responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and finally the Gaza war, which especially the US and Germany are supporting with massive arms supplies. A state of war was also declared by many Western heads of state in response to the pandemic, with Emmanuel Macron famously proclaiming: “We are at war. And that requires our general mobilization.”

In the name of fighting the respective enemies, a massive rearmament of the military, police and surveillance technologies was set in motion, basic civil rights were restricted. Urgent concerns such as social justice and climate protection have been and continue to be marginalized with reference to ever new states of emergency and the overpowering threat posed by the current enemy. In Germany, we are hearing increasingly militaristic tones from top politicians that are reminiscent of the late days of the German Empire, with the Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, calling on the country to become “ready for war”.

While the capitalist world-system is in a permanent structural crisis and the legitimacy of Western political elites is dwindling, governments tend to resort to states of war and emergency, as this allows them to silence domestic conflicts and to justify massive crackdowns on dissidents. In the logic of war, the view is narrowed to the external enemy, societies are called upon to close ranks. Anyone who disagrees runs the risk of being declared an ally of the enemy.

It is obvious that these developments are extremely dangerous for a democracy. In view of the global challenges that are likely to increase in the coming decades due to geopolitical shifts, growing environmental crises and scarcity of resources, it is high time question the logic of war and to highlight different responses to current and future crises.

First of all, when we look back, it should be noted that neither the US nor any EU country has been attacked militarily since the Second World War (apart from the conflict over the British colony of the Falkland Islands in 1982). The attack on September 11, 2001 was a serious crime, but – as the term terrorist attack implies – by definition not a military attack. Since then, despite all internal conflicts, peace has prevailed in these countries. The situation, however, is different when we look the other way around: The US alone has been involved in around 200 military interventions around the globe since 1950. In addition, it has engaged in more than 70 covert regime change operations – often against democratically elected governments – plunging the affected nations into decades of chaos or authoritarian rule. The UK, France, Germany and other Western countries were also involved in numerous military operations abroad, most of which were sold to the public as noble missions in defense of human rights. But the real balance sheet looks different.

The war in Afghanistan alone, the centerpiece of the “war on terror”, has cost 176,000 lives, 98 percent of them Afghans. The September 11 attacks, to which this war was the response, claimed 2996 lives – one sixtieth of the victims of the subsequent war. While 80 percent of Afghans lived in poverty before the war, 97 percent did so after the withdrawal of the USA and its allies. Terrorism has exploded worldwide as a result of these “wars on terror”. Whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya: wherever Western missions have been active, they have left behind failed states and a trail of devastation.

As a result of these interventions, terror finally arrived in Europe. Western societies did not respond to the attacks in Madrid, London, Paris and elsewhere with self-reflection and a change in their policy towards Arab states, but with more military operations abroad, while boosting mass surveillance, militarization of the police, and restrictions on civil liberties domestically. This is despite the fact that even in the years of the most bloody attacks in Europe, more than 100 times as many people died from multi-resistant hospital germs as from terror. If the money had been invested in the healthcare system, ruined by decades of austerity, instead of the military, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved instead of sparking new wars.

We encounter here two essential characteristics of Western responses to crises and violence: firstly, the extreme disproportionality between event and reaction. The threat posed by the enemy is magnified out of all proportion, the responses are completely out of scale in relation to the original act and can even cause orders of magnitude more damage and casualties. Secondly, the inability to grasp the cycle of cause and effect. Acts of violence such as terrorist attacks are interpreted as manifestations of a primordial evil without a history; the world disintegrates into a Manichean duality of good and evil that no longer allows for any complexity or shades. There is no analysis of the causes and prehistory, especially not when it comes to one’s own mistakes or even complicity. On the contrary: anyone who addresses the genesis of the violence and the role of their own governments in it is accused of relativizing and trivializing the enemy.

After the Hamas attacks on Israel, which claimed the lives of 1140 people, one might have expected that lessons would have been learned from the disastrous outcome of the war on terror. But instead, Western governments supported the Israeli government in repeating the mistakes of that time. Once again we are witnessing an almost obscene disproportionality in the military response, which has now claimed the lives of 34,000 people, 14,000 of them children. This is 30 times as many deaths as on October 7. The causes of the violence are not only being ignored, but are even being exacerbated by the permanent traumatization and humiliation of the enemy. An analysis of the roots of the escalation, such as Israel’s 16-year blockade of the Gaza Strip in violation of international law, is denounced as a legitimization of Hamas’ deeds and a betrayal of Israel. Hence, the Israeli government and the Western states supporting it have embarked on a maelstrom of blind destruction without any realistic political goal.

The inability or reluctance to understand the connection between cause and effect, the excessiveness of reactions, the pompous and narcissistic self-adulation as representatives of the good, the denunciation and suppression of criticism, the lack of empathy towards the victims and the inability to comprehend even a minimum of complexity are signs of an alarming mental regression among the political elites of the Western world. Indeed, this regression is disturbingly reminiscent of the “sleepwalkers” on the eve of the First World War.

And that brings us to the war in Ukraine, which, like the Gaza war, carries the risk of global escalation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was undoubtedly a serious violation of international law and a crime against the Ukrainian people. And yet these findings do not exempt us from analyzing the causes and the question of whether and how this war could have been avoided, what role the West played in it – and how it can be ended. It should be a matter of course in political analysis that investigating causes has nothing to do with legitimizing crimes, that there can be more than one culprit in a conflict and that the misdeeds of the one in no way justify those of the other.

But even these minimal requirements for rational thinking seem to go beyond the grasp of Western foreign policymakers and media pundits. Instead of seeing the war in Ukraine as an expression of geopolitical and regional conflicts of interest that have a history and could possibly even be resolved diplomatically, it is portrayed as a Manichean struggle between the ever virtuous, God-sent West against the diabolical dragon from the East, which is driven by an insatiable greed for power, blood and land. A typical indication of this relapse into mythical thinking and propagandistic demonization is the inflation of comparisons between Putin and Hitler, which both the press and top politicians on both sides of the Atlantic routinely indulge in. This tendency culminates in the fully-fledged regressive fantasy that the satanic beast in Moscow wants to devour us all – in other words, the whole of Europe and eventually the rest of the world. In Germany, defense minister Pistorius has already prophesied that the time for a Russian attack on NATO will come in “five to eight years”. Apparently he either disposes of a crystal ball or he sees, like John of Patmos, the approach of the apocalypse in nightly visions. Yet there is not the slightest indication that the Russian leadership would ever be so suicidal as to attack a NATO country and thus send itself to nuclear nirvana.

No, we are not dealing here with an incarnation of primeval evil, not with Voldemort or Sauron, nor with a new Hitler, but with a thoroughly rational, albeit often unscrupulous, actor who in this respect is hardly any different from the major Western powers – just think of the Iraq war. The Russian leadership is pursuing very clearly defined and regionally limited goals with this war. This includes, in particular, the neutrality of Ukraine. According to a recently leaked document on the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, this was also at the heart of a possible ceasefire agreement in spring 2022 – with Ukraine’s express consent. At the time, Russia had held out the prospect of withdrawing to the lines of February 23, 2022 in return.

Today, this option is practically off the table and Ukraine is in a much worse negotiating position. The suppression of sober analysis by mythical thinking has prevented the West from engaging in de-escalation and peacemaking. Instead of participating in the numerous negotiating missions of the Turkish government, of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and later of the South African, Brazilian and Chinese governments, Western politicians, led by the US, have rejected or even sabotaged all diplomacy and opted for the pipe dream of a complete reconquest of the occupied territories, which even according to the Pentagon and the long-time commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has long been completely unrealistic. Once again, the West is lurching towards a permanent escalation with pompous rhetoric, but without a political goal, while a new Verdun is looming in Ukraine. The only answer our political leadership has given to the geopolitical changes associated with the rise of China and the decline of the US hegemony is: more weapons. Almost all other pressing tasks, from social justice to a serious protection of the biosphere, are sacrificed on the altar of rearmament, which supposedly has no alternative. Cults of sacrifice are always part of the logic of war.

But the logic of war is not destiny. The answer to the acts of violence of the recent past lies in our hands. Neither the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor the Hamas attack are forcing us into a spiral of militarization, armament and war. On the contrary, this spiral only makes our lives and the survival of our species on the battered planet Earth even more precarious. We can only achieve security by tackling the causes of violence and creating a new peace order that takes equal account of the security interests of all parties involved: Israelis and Palestinians, Ukrainians and Russians, Americans and Chinese. To achieve this, we must learn to see the world through the eyes of others. The West is not God’s chosen force for good in the world; on the contrary, it has left a 500-year trail of violence on Earth. Its dominance will inevitably come to an end in the 21st century. May we find the wisdom to accept this transition and perhaps even see it as an opportunity for a more peaceful world.

This article was first punished in German by the Berliner Zeitung.

May 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

The End of the World as We Know It

and Democratic presidents, in particular, are often worried about appearing soft on defence—they are easily swayed by their military advisors.

Most of the US public thinks that America has renounced the optional first use of nuclear weapons. But while many presidential candidates have promised to do so, no one in office has ever made it an official policy.

Far from enhancing American national security, or the security of the world, nuclear weapons will lead us to the edge of destruction.

Lawrence M. Krauss 6 May 24, https://quillette.com/2024/05/06/the-end-of-the-world-nuclear-war-weapons-apocalypse

A review of Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen; 400 pages; New York: Dutton (March 2024)

As Chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from 2008–2018, I helped unveil the Doomsday Clock every year for a decade. That meant that each year, I sat down with my colleagues for several days and seriously contemplated how close we might be to the end of civilisation. But even that sombre preparation could not prepare me for the grim realities unveiled in the recent book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, by veteran national security journalist Annie Jacobsen

Jacobsen details the events that would take place, minute by minute, in the 72 minutes from the launch of a rogue intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by North Korea to the destruction of modern civilization and the death of up to five billion people.

Jacobsen imagines the following scenario: 

0 min) A lone ICBM is launched from North Korea.
(19 min) The US launches 50 ballistic missiles at targets in North Korea and instructs submarines to launch 32 additional missiles.
(21 min) Most of Southern California becomes uninhabitable due to a North Korean submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) attack on the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor.
(33 min) Washington DC, together with almost all its 6 million inhabitants, is vaporized by the impact and explosion of the North Korean ICBM.
(49 min) Fearing they are under attack from the US missiles heading toward North Korea, Russia launches 1,000 missiles at US targets. On detection of these, the US launches an ICBM and SLBM attack on 975 Russian targets.  
(51 min) NATO pilots launch an aerial nuclear attack on the Russian targets.
(52 min) North Korea is effectively wiped off the map, following the impact of 32 SLBM and 50 ICBM missiles.  
(57 min) All land-based US military bases are destroyed by Russian SLBMs.

(58 min) Much of Europe is destroyed by a Russian SLBM attack on NATO bases. (59 min) The US launches the remainder of its stock of SLBMs at Russia.
(72 min) 1,000 locations in the United States are hit by Soviet ICBMs. A large fraction of the US population is killed immediately and most of the rest have little or no means of survival. A similar fate befalls Russia several minutes later.

Meanwhile, 52 minutes into this apocalyptic exchange, a nuclear device explodes in space high above the US, producing an electromagnetic pulse that renders almost all communication systems in the continental US inoperative, destroying much of the country’s infrastructure and causing widespread floods and fires, thus further complicating life for the few remaining survivors.

Whether or not one finds the specific scenario Jacobsen outlines plausible, it is clear that any major nuclear confrontation would have apocalyptic consequences. As Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev said shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, in such a situation, “the survivors would envy the dead.”

Military planners have been preparing for scenarios like this since at least 1960, when the first comprehensive nuclear war planning exercise was carried out in the US.

As Jacobsen describes, in 1949, experts estimated that as few as 200 fission-type weapons of the kind that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been sufficient to essentially wipe out the Soviet Union. But despite this, both the US and the Soviets continued to amass weapons. By 1967, the US and USSR had around 30,000 nuclear and thermonuclear warheads each. While their arsenal has since been reduced, the US still has over 1,700 warheads on hair-trigger, launch-on-warning alert. Russia has only slightly fewer. Both countries have over 3,000 additional nuclear weapons stockpiled and available for use.

For the past 79 years, we have been living under the Damoclean sword of mutually assured destruction (MAD), the basis of modern nuclear deterrence. It is argued that since any act of nuclear aggression would lead to the annihilation of most of the world, no rational leader would launch a first strike. What is less frequently stressed, however, is that for this to work, deterrence must never, ever fail. Because once it does, the world as we know it will end.

The madness of having almost 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, capable of being  irretrievably launched on their missions of destruction at the mere warning of an incoming nuclear attack—before a single nuclear explosion has even occurred—has not been lost on US presidential candidates from both parties. Both George W. Bush, and Barack Obama vowed to take us back from the razor’s edge while running for president, but neither made good on this promise while in the White House. I was on Obama’s science policy team during his first run for the presidency. I was gratified when he won because I thought he would fix this lunacy. I was profoundly disappointed when he didn’t.

Most of the US public thinks that America has renounced the optional first use of nuclear weapons. But while many presidential candidates have promised to do so, no one in office has ever made it an official policy.

I have often wondered why successful presidential candidates change their tune once they get into the Oval Office. I suspect that the generals who advise the President and the Secretary of Defence have lived with the idea of launch-on-warning throughout their whole careers and cannot even imagine that a US president might allow a nuclear weapon to explode on American soil without having already launched a response. Since most presidents have no experience with war game planning—and Democratic presidents, in particular, are often worried about appearing soft on defence—they are easily swayed by their military advisors.

The maddening ramping-up of nuclear arsenals is a real-world example of the well-known game theory scenario called The Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which two prisoners, who cannot communicate with either other, are motivated by mistrust to make choices that are in neither party’s best interests.  Likewise, each of the superpowers assumes that its adversary will stockpile ever more nuclear weapons, so it seems logical to stockpile more themselves.

There is a simple way out of this dilemma. Unlike in the game theory example, the prisoners here can talk to each other and, through diplomacy, can jointly arrive at a win-win strategy. The problem is that there are currently almost no front-door communications between either Russia and the US or China and the US on strategic nuclear issues. The resulting perils are clear—especially at this time, with the continuing war in Ukraine, tensions between China and Taiwan, and the brewing catastrophe in the Middle East.

The American public has been misinformed about the gravity of this threat because of a false narrative regarding anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence. Having witnessed Israel’s recent success in defending itself against conventional missiles launched from Iran, many people assume that the US has a working ABM system (a false claim first touted by George W. Bush in around 2004). We don’t—despite having spent almost 176 billion dollars trying to create such a system. As Jacobsen emphasizes in her book, we have only 44 ABM interceptors in place. Moreover, in carefully controlled tests that did not realistically reproduce the many uncertainties inherent in an actual nuclear exchange—including the possible use of decoys—the prototypes of those interceptors have failed more than 50 percent of the time. We have essentially no defences against nuclear weapons. All we can do is try to ensure that they are never used.

For the arms industry, however, nuclear weapons—as horrifying as they are—are the gift that keeps on giving. The Biden administration’s $850 billion defence budget for 2025 allocates $69 billion to nuclear weapons operations and modernisation. Plans for 400 new ICBMs, new nuclear submarines and bombers, and upgrades to existing warheads are currently in the works, at a projected cost of three quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade. MAD isn’t mad enough, it seems. Defence contractors, lobbyists, and right wing think tanks are concerned that 1,700 nuclear weapons are not enough and that “America’s enemies will become even more emboldened… while facing a hobbled and undersized American nuclear deterrent.”

Almost all the nuclear war games that military strategists have engaged in have invariably escalated to the point of Armageddon. Spending further billions to produce weapons whose sole purpose is to lead to nuclear annihilation will not make us safer. Far from enhancing American national security, or the security of the world, nuclear weapons will lead us to the edge of destruction.

I was proud to take the helm of the group established in 1947 by Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons, in part through the annual setting of the Doomsday Clock. But, sadly, that effort has been an abject failure. Perhaps Jacobsen’s new book, reportedly soon to be adapted for the big screen, may bring people to their senses. For the past 79 years, we have been lucky, but our luck may not hold forever. Even a single ICBM launch could lead to a war that abruptly ends over 400,000 years of modern hominid evolution, leaving little or no trace of human existence and of our other technological achievements—all in less time than it took me to write these words.

Lawrence M. Krauss

Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist, is President of the Origins Project Foundation. His most recent book is “The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos.”

May 7, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | 1 Comment