Did the USA Lose the Cold War?
Thoughts on War with Podcast by George
Yesterday, I appeared on Podcast by George. George Clark and I discussed the Russia-Ukraine War, Gaza, and the military-industrial-congressional complex. Here’s the video:
As George and I discussed America’s constant state of (very expensive and deadly) war, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that my country lost the Cold War that we allegedly won in 1991.
How so? After that “victory,” America was supposed to cash in on its peace dividends, becoming a normal country in normal times, to cite Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Instead, America doubled down on empire and the idea of imperial dominance. Militarism, not democracy, became a leading feature of our society, especially after the trauma of the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government today remains shrouded in secrecy; those who would expose imperial war crimes, like Julian Assange or Daniel Hale, are imprisoned, even tortured.
The national security state, the MICIMATT,* is a colossus, far more insidious and invasive than anything even President Dwight D. Eisenhower imagined in his farewell address against the military-industrial complex in 1961. “Peace” is a word rarely heard in Washington, and the State Department has become a tiny branch of the Pentagon, bragging about weapons sales and shipments overseas rather than embracing diplomatic solutions to increasingly deadly conflicts. Even genocide in Gaza is dismissed as the Biden administration embraces Israel’s right to defend itself—against women and children in Gaza.
Courtesy of John Whitbeck, here’s a handy (and devastating) chart showing the damage inflicted on Gaza:
Chart prepared by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor available at this link:
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6176/Statistics-on-the-Israeli-attack-on-the-Gaza-Strip-(07-October---23-February-2024)
*MICIMATT: military industrial congressional intelligence media academe think tank complex. We might also add Hollywood and the sports world to the complex, since both are so eager to celebrate war and “our” troops.
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies from constant warfare, as James Madison warned us about. It’s worth repeating his words:
Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debt and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare …
The nation as a whole lost, as opposed to the ruling elites, because the underlying ideology of empire was never extinguished. The idea of US global domination was put on hold by the global scale of the Soviet Union (the price for stopping the rise of Germany as a hegemon), but once that dissolved it was game on again. So, after 1990 the US moved from the middle of Germany and enlarged NATO steadily eastward. It was as if prior to 1990 the US had Europe by the waist, and after 1990 it had Europe by the neck. Coupled with the encirclement of east Asia by the US navy, the US has encircled the Eurasian land mass, and Messianic Global Manifest Destiny seems within reach.
The problem of course is that Russia and China still stand in the way as regional hegemons in an increasingly multipolar world, and given US imperial overstretch will thwart the US goal. What is so dangerous is that the US thinks of its ideology as it did in the 19th. century. The reality is that the US is not up against an outgunned group of native Americans or Mexicans, but against powers that can also destroy the world, and just might if they view the US as an existential threat.
True victory for the US, and the world comes when the imperial ideology is snuffed out and replaced with one of being content to be a nation among nations, in a true multipolar world.
What can the US government point to since 9/11 that has been supportive of human rights, of international law, of human progress? How has US foreign policy been positive? How has US government policy, foreign or domestic, been supportive of the American people?
One thing is certain. Since 9/11 big profits have been made. Any company or individual that contracts to the US armed forces has been doing fine. It is also true that Congress has served profit quite well as shown by the takeoff of the 1%.
Though the above is clear for anyone to see, nothing has been done about it. Regulatory agencies of the government have been neutered and this is to be expected since profit controls Congress, confirmed by the continual freeing of profit from restraint. Businesses forget about producing anything and instead pump up their stock with buybacks.
It all comes down to the political system of the US being rotten and the Constitution being just a piece of paper except when profit can employ it as is the case with the 2nd amendment. The 1st amendment is in the process of being proven empty with the Assange case.
To tie a ribbon on the rot, we're down to a contest between a war criminal and a narcissist obsessed with profit for the Presidency, with many people calling on the electorate to vote for one to protect against the other. May the best man win?!
Worst of all, community is on the ropes as people bury themselves in their stuff while fearing the stranger. All of the things I was taught as a youth in school have proven a mirage confirmed by our determination to undercut all that we are supposed to hold dear. Being all in for a genocide without apology shows we have reached the bottom of the barrel.
There is definitely an uproar, but it is unproductive blind rage that looks at immigrants or non-whites or at anything except the real basis of our malaise - the country has been bought by wealth and nobody is looking at the wealthy as being involved, let alone being held responsible to give back what has been stolen under the pretense of "the free market". The blindness is shown by a billionaire with no principles being the champion for change when he is the poster boy for the real problem.
And on the streets of America, as global warming is undeniably in progress due to decades of fossil fuel consumption, the response is a craze for big pickups and SUV's with large gasoline engines. One must ask, are we simply getting what we deserve?