Tag Archives: Nuclear war

Political Rants

Time running out.

While you were looking over there, Donald Trump, our racist five-year-old drunken Twitter-troll of a President, pulled out of yet another arms control treaty with the Russians. Signed in 1992 by then president George H.W. Bush, the Open Skies Treaty allowed for short-notice, unarmed reconnaissance flights as a way of verifying compliance with other arms control treaties. As he always does when announcing the end of an international agreement, Trump breezily claimed that the Russians were not adhering to the treaty, and that by pulling out we will eventually end up with a new agreement that’s better than the current one.

This announcement comes in the context of:

  • Withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which removed extremely destabilizing and dangerous medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe;
  • Trump’s reluctance to renew the New START treaty next February when it expires. The accord provides for inspection of nuclear forces in by both parties, and is the final remaining pillar of the U.S.-Russian arms control regime.

This madness is another case of Trump’s key role as a rubber stamp for the most extreme elements in the right-wing political grouping that is currently running the country through him. I am certain Trump did not wake up in the middle of the night and say. “We must toss out all of our arms control agreements with Russia!” My guess is that the president’s strongest negative feeling might be reserved for New START, as that was signed by Obama in 2010, but otherwise this planet-saving series of treaties is probably of very little interest to him. Sure, there is some posing involved here, Trump trying to appear “tough”, trying to please daddy, etc., but why even bother getting into that? The man’s only ideology is himself. He is a uniquely valueless human being – the perfect vessel for a resurgent militarist right.

The administration’s rhetoric points to prompting a new arms race that will spend both China and Russia into a hole. Set aside for a moment the blatant insanity of such a policy (recall the dark days of the early 1980s) – it appears to be based on a popular misconception of what happened in the last arms race. We didn’t spend the Soviet Union into oblivion; empires decay, that’s what they do. We nearly spent ourselves into oblivion, investing trillions of dollars in the production of waste (useless military hardware) instead of putting those dollars into building a better society. Soviet military spending was pretty much flat through the 1980s. A renewed nuclear arms race puts humanity at risk, pure and simple – there’s no upside.

What is presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s position on this issue? Good question. I can’t find anything about it on his web site. For some more discussion about the lack of evidence of a Biden foreign policy, see the current episode of Strange Sound, our new podcast.

luv u,

jp

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

Letter rip.

The letter sent to Iran’s leadership by 47 Republican Senators was both condescending and idiotic. It recalled to mind our erstwhile president George W. Bush, an obvious dumb-ass who had an irritating habit of talking down to you. It’s a bit gob-smacking to think of the likes of Tom Cotton schooling Iran’s government ministers – most if not all of whom earned degrees at universities in the west – on the American constitution, but that’s exactly what he and his colleagues attempted. Based on the negative response on this side of the ocean, more than a few of the signers have backed away kind of rapidly. “I sign a lot of letters,” said John McCain. Per Daily Kos, others have suggested this was some kind of big joke. Funny, huh?

Just what we freaking need: McCain 2.0The mainstream media portray this as a kind of battle royale between the President and Congress, Democrats and Republicans, extreme left and extreme right. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the one-party state we call politics, there is a remarkable consensus on the topic of Iran. Both factions – Democrats and Republicans – consider Iran an outlaw state, both insist that it can have no nuclear technology, both blame it for the abysmal state of relations between our countries, both condemn it as a supporter of international terrorism, both repeat the mantra that “all options are on the table” with respect to Iran (a thinly veiled threat that is in itself a violation of the U.N. charter), etc., etc. What separates the two sides is nothing more than nuance.

There are a few real issues that bear on the Iran nuclear negotiations. They’re detailed in the ANSWER coalition’s open letter to Iran, which I have signed and which I encourage you to sign as well. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. As cosignatories, we are obliged to respect that and to work towards the ultimate goal of arms reduction. We are doing the exact opposite, investing heavily in the “modernization” of our nuclear arsenal (under a Democratic administration, no less).

What ANSWER’s letter doesn’t go into is the degree to which we have tortured Iran for decades on end, from the overthrow of their democratically elected regime back in 1953, to our 25-year support for the Shah’s murderous reign, to our backing of Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s, and on and on.

If this is a dispute, it’s a pretty paltry one. Let’s turn this whole relationship around, finally.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bad guys.

When I watch news reports about the Ukraine crisis, I’m reminded of that Dave Mason song from back in the seventies, that went something like this:

So let’s leave it alone
Because we can’t see eye to eye
There ain’t no good guys
There ain’t no bad guys
There’s only you and me and
We just disagree

Are you scared? Really scared?Right, well … I was never a big fan of Dave’s, but you get the idea. Part of the problem with our once-over-lightly media culture is that there is an extraordinarily rapid resort to black-and-white, wrong vs. right narratives that are easy to report, easy to digest, easy to repeat again and again. In all that, we lose the sense that it’s possible to have two assholes in a fight – adversaries who are divided by conflicting claims, not by a contrast between absolute good and absolute evil.

I guess what particularly galls me about the current state of play is that when you draw attention to this fact, you are accused of being an apologist for the Putin regime. Fact is, Putin’s regime is the model of governance in Russia that the United States clearly preferred, one we actively encouraged and supported relatively uncritically until the falling out around the Iraq war. What we’re staring in the face right now is the product of two failed American policies: (1) support for a strong executive in Russia from the Yeltsin years forward, and (2) insistence not only on perpetuation of NATO after the end of the Cold War, but expansion of the alliance deep into eastern Europe, over the vehement objections of the Russians.

Russia’s objection to NATO expansion? Well, this is just a guess, but I’m pretty sure they are against any major military alliance on their western flank, probably because they were invaded four times, starting with Napoleon, the last time nearly destroying Russian society. That’s a living memory for some in Russia, and something no doubt written in their DNA at this point. You can say they’re a little sensitive about threats from their west. Just a little.

That doesn’t excuse beastly behavior, but you have to admit … compared to the suppression of Hungary or Czechoslovakia, this invasion and  annexation of Crimea has been pretty tame. I’m just saying, we need to dial it back a little, and remember that we still have thousands of nuclear weapons. Indeed, there can be no military conflict between Russia and the United States that won’t practically guarantee the destruction of all of humankind.

If we fight, no one wins. Take that to the bank.

luv u,

jp