December 29, 2022

Bulletin 320: Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange / The centrality of war resistance in moral politics / 3 days left for 1:1 donation match!

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Previously: Bulletin 319 (12/21/2022): Ukraine; NDAA: omnibus appropriations bill; fundraising --thank you; some matching funds still available

1. Neocon humiliation, or further escalation leading toward nuclear annihilation -- which do you prefer?
2. The centrality of war resistance in moral politics, especially regarding nuclear disarmament
3. Three days left for 1:1 donation match!

(Next time: U.S. plutonium policies in flux)

Dear friends and colleagues --

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday so far!

At this juncture, it's very important to speak out, even though we each may feel we are voices in the wilderness, or candles in the darkness. Many people are telling us they don't know what to do. Please do not lose faith. One candle means a great deal when it is truly dark. It's going to get much darker still if we don't speak up, connect with others, and take uncomfortable political and social risks.

    1. Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange

So with the Christmas season behind us, please do join us in actively working for peace in the new year. We are not, of course, talking about the "peace" that comes when the latest "enemy" -- Russia -- is destroyed. That "peace" is what the neocons running the U.S. government want: the peace of victory.

No matter how much they escalate this war, the U.S. and its NATO vassals won't win. The U.S. and NATO don't have, and can't get, the means to win. Ukraine's army is battered to bits, and Ukraine's economy is entirely dependent on loans that will never be repaid. European leaders have hurt their own economies badly in their slavish devotion to U.S. priorities. Russia, on the other hand, is basically doing fine -- militarily, economically, and politically. Russia is not going to be defeated in Ukraine. Given Washington's delusions, we face an ominous year.

Even if the neocons infesting our government could defeat Russia, using what remains of Ukrainian cannon fodder plus some "coalition of the willing" drawn from NATO states, they'd just move on to China and any other country the U.S. perceives as having too much sovereignty.

The peace U.S. neocons want is the same kind of peace desired by all conquerors: domination. Prospects for that really collapsed some time ago, and have now definitely ended in muddy Ukrainian fields.

What we at the Study Group want, by contrast, is the perfectly feasible and practical peace, the immediate peace right at hand, that results when we stop fighting stupid wars and start investing adequately in humane goals.

The downside of that immediate peace being -- what? Humiliation of the neoconservative ideologues who worked for so many years to set up this war? Is that a problem? That would be a good thing, not a bad thing. The survival of the United States depends on it.

Is the administration, by Russia, of predominately Russian-speaking peoples -- who have voted, lest we forget, to be part of Russia -- some kind of problem? That -- self-determination -- is a good thing too, isn't it? In any case, is preventing self-determination worth the destruction of Ukraine and the very considerable risk of wider war in Europe, and of nuclear war? Forty-seven years after the Vietnam War finally ended, we are destroying Ukraine in order to save it.

But we all know this war is not about Ukraine. That's just the place it's being fought in. Neither the U.S. or NATO is interested in "saving" Ukraine, except as a tool to hurt Russia. If they cared about Ukraine, negotiations to end the war would have concluded many months ago.

The fighting in Ukraine will end some day, one way or another. How? Patrick Lawrence's superb analysis ("A War of Rhetoric & Reality," 12/27/22, Consortium News) asks readers to think about that. Memorably, he quotes a colleague, a "distinguished observer of global affairs" in Texas whose prognosis is, "[e]ither Russia prevails on its terms, or there is a nuclear exchange."

As Lawrence says, a lot has happened in the last two weeks that heightens starkness of that choice, not least the nauseating -- because it is very dangerous -- "Zelensky Show" in Washington. Lawrence:

The Biden administration’s rhetoric since the Ukraine crisis sharpened prior to the outbreak of hostilities in February has cast this conflict as a near-cosmic confrontation between liberalism and authoritarianism. I do not see that this is very different from Bush II’s biblical baloney about Gog and Magog as it prepared to invade Iraq, or Mike Pompeo’s unhinged end-times talk when he was whipping up war fever against Russia and China while serving as Donald Trump’s secretary of state.

This irresponsible rhetoric has painted every breathing, walking-around American into a corner from which the only escape is capitulation. That is why it is dangerous. Russia can win battles and wage extensive artillery and rocket campaigns and remain open to negotiation at any opportunity conditions present. Putin made this point clear once again on Sunday.

It is difficult to see, by contrast, how our addled president can find his way to talks given how he and the third-rate neoconservatives who control his foreign policies have cast this conflict. And it is too easy to imagine these people reaching for the nuclear buttons once their follies become evident. (emphasis added)

The gravity of the situation is underscored by the threats being made through the media about considerations of a "decapitating strike" on Russia by anonymous Pentagon officials -- which is to say, a threat to assassinate the Russian President -- as relayed by Bill Arkin in Newsweek. In response, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov advised that "[i]f someone really has such ideas, then this someone should think long and hard about the possible consequences of such plans."

We urge you to read, ponder, discuss, and share Lawrence's essay, which is yesterday's featured article on our Ukraine "news & views" page.

    2. The centrality of war resistance in moral politics, especially regarding nuclear disarmament: speak up, reach out, take risks

War is not one issue among many. Being at war, or constantly preparing for war, or trying to run a global empire as the U.S. has been doing for many years, means that every social, environmental, and political goal many of us want won't be realized. A militarized economy and the politics of empire are incompatible with every humane and environmental aspiration. However much prosperity, gemuetlichkeit, and environmental virtue-signalling one may find in privileged subgroups, such a society generates tragedy for the poor within it, and devastation for those it targets and feeds upon.

You'd think this would be obvious. Apparently it isn't. It seems that nearly all "progressives," environmentalists, "arms control" and "nuclear disarmament" advocates, "social justice" advocates, and climate activists appear to think that their particular issue can be split off from war and militarism and pursued independently, with success. They are fooling themselves.

Caitlin Johnstone speaks about this with admirable clarity:

Forcefully opposing the warmongering and imperialism of your rulers is the very first step toward political morality. It’s not the only step, but it is the first step, because if you haven’t taken that step then no other ostensibly moral politics you might espouse are meaningful.

Your anti-capitalism is meaningless if you’re not aggressively opposing your government’s mass military murders for power and profit. Your anti-racism is meaningless if you’re not aggressively opposing your government’s butchery and exploitation of brown-skinned people overseas. If you’re not forcefully opposing your government’s warmongering and imperialism, then the rest of your politics are irrelevant, because they are false. A sincerely antiwar right-winger with all the wrong positions on all other issues is still a much better person than you are.

When I see a lefty voicing solid perspectives without also aggressively opposing the warmongering, militarism and imperialism of their rulers, I personally just ignore them, because their failure in that one area has made a lie of their successes in all the other areas.

If this seems strange or not obvious to you, it’s simply because you have not spent enough time sincerely contemplating the immense suffering and savagery that is inflicted upon our world by war and imperialism, or learned enough about who the worst offenders are on that front. Literally the only reason western warmongering isn’t met with a backlash of horror and outrage is because it’s been so normalized and propaganda-distorted for us. If we could see what our rulers are doing to people with fresh eyes, we would fall to our knees and scream with rage.

War is the single worst thing in the world. It’s the most insane thing humans do. The most ruinous. The most traumatizing. The least sustainable. And the US-centralized power alliance is its most egregious perpetrator, by a massive margin.

There’s no excuse for ignoring this. (Emphasis added.)

We believe it is now irresponsible to use phrases like "arms control," nuclear disarmament," let alone "nuclear abolition," without speaking against U.S. policies of aggression against Russia and China. Why? In Russian eyes, the U.S. has proven itself to be thoroughly "not-agreement-capable" many times over, a perception that will take a long time to change, assuming it is even possible to change U.S. behavior.

In addition, as a result of the U.S. and NATO's escalating "proxy" war,

The US and Russia have stopped all substantive cooperation in the field of arms control, in terms of both implementing existing treaties and negotiating future agreements. There is little likelihood that this cooperation will resume any time soon, leaving both nations locked in a potential nuclear arms race unconstrained by the limits of arms control treaties. (Scott Ritter, "The Death of Arms Control," Energy Intelligence, 12/20/22)

We put "proxy" in quotes because the U.S., with political and military help from NATO allies, is supplying real-time targeting information, tens of billions of dollars in weapons and billions more in other aid, mercenaries, military training, global diplomatic support, a gigantic propaganda effort -- and as we are now learning, a covert campaign of sabotage inside Russia under CIA direction. Not counting aid from NATO allies, U.S. aid to Ukraine totals $113 billion -- $68 billion before last week plus $45 billion in the omnibus spending bill. By itself Ukraine could not last a week. This is a NATO war, long-planned and promoted for the explicit purpose of subjugating Russia. Many recent references could be cited, but perhaps this ancient 2015 presentation will be interesting as it is the first time we noticed "a totalitarian shift" in the news media and an "increasing mass psychosis," a condition which could, as we warned then, "make the US incapable of rational response to any crisis."

    3. Fundraising: Thank you so much. 1:1 match for $2,910 is still available!

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Thank you all,

Greg Mello and Trish Williams-Mello, for the Los Alamos Study Group