Tag Archives: Nuclear war

Political Rants

Riding Grievance all the way to armageddon

Biden recently announced another $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, this on the heels of Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre-ass junket to the island / breakaway province. This, I think, is called tripling down, based mostly on a calculation common to most U.S. politicians that provoking China is a political winner, regardless of context. That may be true, but only if you’re cravenly pursuing popularity with no thought of human consequence. While that may sound particularly like Donald Trump, it also sounds like pretty much every other modern president.

We live in a time, once again, when criticism of American foreign policy is characterized as either foolishly alarmist or callously dismissive towards the victims of our official adversaries. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called out for not being sufficiently critical of either China or Russia. It’s not enough to say that the leadership of both states is arbitrary and rapacious. You need to cheer on the weapons as they roll off the assembly line and into the waiting hands of our Ukrainian or Taiwanese allies.

The actual grievance narrative

What gets glossed over in this toxic discourse is a fuller understanding of history and motive. What is the power behind Putin? He presents himself as the protector of his people – the strong dude who’s going to rescue them from the ravages imposed by the west. This narrative resonates with many Russians because they lived through a catastrophe in the 1990s – an economic implosion born of the “shock therapy” doctrine pushed by the United States and Europe. Many, many Russians lost their livelihoods, their security, even their lives. They also lost any lingering sense that Russia was a great nation. Into that breach walked Putin.

There’s a similar dynamic with China. Xi Jinping and his cohort seek to present a strong, non compliant nation. While China is far from being a democracy, it’s likely that the Chinese people want to think of their country as consequential. That is probably founded in China’s history over the last 100+ years, which started with decades of humiliation at the hands of Europeans (the British especially), followed by civil war and a long, bitter occupation by imperial Japan. No question but that Xi is a tremendous dick, like Putin, but their grievance narrative is based on something real, unlike that of the Republicans.

Revisionist history 2.0

It’s kind of amazing how little understood this dynamic is. The public radio show On The Media did a story about competing historical narratives regarding Hong Kong and China (thanks to Best of the Left for clipping this). What fascinated me about this was that these narratives, which were presented as mythical, all had varying elements of truth embedded in them. There was this “King of Kowloon” graffiti artist who became notorious for claiming that his family owned the Kowloon Peninsula before the British claimed it. Well, maybe. It was something like a feudal society. Then, of course, there is the tabla rasa myth of British Imperialism – the place was empty when we got here.

But then this NPR reporter talked about how China was rewriting history books again to, in effect, erase British imperialism:

Now they’re claiming that Hong Kong never was a British colony. They’re saying that when the British took over Hong Kong, there were these series of treaties, which the Chinese call unequal treaties. They say they were forced upon them by gunboat diplomacy, by violence, and they never actually agreed to any of these treaties. So sovereignty was never ceded. It’s a crazy argument when you think of all those governors and the British administration of Hong Kong to claim that it was never a colony, but it also shows you the sort of mutability of history.

Is it crazy to say that China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong was taken from them by force? Really? It was a forfeit as a result of one of Britain’s opium wars. What do you call that?

No more gunboats.

We seem to be leaning into our imperial posture. And while it’s natural to empathize with the victims of Russia and China, let’s not forget that there are people directly in the cross-hairs of our policy as well. We need to spare them some concern and intervention as well. We also need to bear in mind that major power conflict in the modern age carries with it an insupportable risk of nuclear war.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Missed us by that much: nuclear brinkmanship

This week was the 76th anniversary of our having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seems like yesterday, doesn’t it? What an insane thing to do – though to be frank, at that point in the war our bombers were laying waste to Japanese cities with conventional bombs, including a 1000 plane raid on Tokyo. (The commander liked the number.)

When we pay homage to those whose lives were lost or permanently altered by this episode, we do so in the knowledge that things went from bad to worse over the years that followed. The system we set up over the arc of the Cold War was aptly described as a “Doomsday Machine”. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg reviews this system in great detail in his recent book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

Planning for first strike/use

One thing that wasn’t particularly surprising about Ellsberg’s book was the fact that U.S. nuclear policy has always been based on the idea of first strike or first use. The reasoning is pretty simple – launch an overwhelming strike that eliminates the enemy’s ability to launch their own attack, partly by targeting their nuclear arsenal. The other component is that of blackmail, in essence – do as we say or we will blow up your cities.

What Ellsberg makes clear is that their actual plan in the 1950s and early 60s was, in the event of a general war, to bomb both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to smithereens, even if the Chinese were not a party to the conflict. Of course, we know now (and they likely knew then) that any large exchange of H-bombs would result in virtual omnicide, but our war planners tried not to dwell on that notion.

Planes, trains, and autonomous vehicles

This insane “war” plan – really, an annihilation plan – was built on the flimsiest platform back in the 1950s. Supposedly only the president could give the order to use nuclear weapons. That authority, according to Ellsberg, was delegated to regional commanders, either explicitly or implicitly (there was supposedly a letter from Eisenhower to his commanders setting out the authority, though no one seemed to be able to produce a copy).

The plan relied on bombers back then and a very unreliable global communication system that could be disrupted by the weather. Later on, it was ICBMs with MIRV’ed warheads (multiple independent H-bomb warheads in a single missile), but the game was the same – use them or lose them.

It got to such a point of madness that during the Carter administration, planners seriously considered a massive construction project out west to support the MX missile program. It was like an enormous shell game, with thousands of miles of track, mobile launchers, bunkers, pools, fake missiles, all to throw the Soviets off.

Still crazy after all these years

Suffice to say that we still live with the remnants of this madness. After a number of close calls, when the entire ramshackle enterprise almost came crashing down on us all, we are still apparently willing to extend the life of these weapons yet another generation.

The longer these weapons exist, the greater the danger that they will be used. If our leaders really wanted to keep us safe, they would take the lead in ending the nuclear standoff once and for all. Their failure to do so speaks volumes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Gaslight village.

There’s something the president has been saying repeatedly lately that probably shouldn’t be allowed to pass without challenge, like most of his insane utterances. (It amazes me sometimes how much this reminds me of the Reagan years, when old right-wing Ronny used to say truly bizarre things and journalists would just wanly shrug and move on.) He keeps claiming that, in responding to COVID-19, he saved millions of lives. The claim goes something like this: If I (Trump) had not acted as decisively as I did, more than 2 million people would be dead of COVID. Instead, it’s a measly 140,000. Aren’t I a hero, then?

I wish I were making this up, but you’ve heard it, I’m sure. I’m beginning to understand why Trump is so determined to save all of those Confederate monuments. He must have gotten a bunch of loser trophies when he was a kid. Actually, his entire life has been a series of loser trophies and mulligans, starting with the fortune that was dropped into his lap, his various bankruptcies and failed scams, then being shoe-horned into the presidency via America’s ultimate grandfather clause, the electoral college. And yet through all of this (and much more), he has insisted that he is a big winner, that no one could have done what he did, and so on … and so on. At the same time, he whines incessantly (like so many on the right do) about how unfair life is to him. Poor little Donnie!

This is some grade-school level gaslighting, to be sure. I mean, the man is saying that by doing the bare minimum required of him as president of the United States, he prevented a precipitous, uncontrolled spread of COVID that would have cost millions of lives, and for this he should be thanked. I hate to break it to fat boy, but not engaging in massive criminal negligence does not exactly place you in Medal of Honor territory. Next we’ll be expected to thank him for NOT randomly noodling with the nuclear football and accidentally launching World War III. That saved billions! No, as president, you don’t get rewarded for NOT blowing up the world this week. (That’s pretty much expected of you, Don.)

R.I.P. Michael Brooks. When political commentator and leftist thinker Michael Brooks died unexpectedly this week, I thought of the people I’ve known who left this world far too soon – people who seemingly had a brilliant future ahead of them. Brooks was one of those people, and he will leave an enormous hole. Condolences to his family and his colleagues on the Majority Report, TMBS, and elsewhere. This year is for shit.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.